“Ask him if it is the Sea-gull Light,” begged Gerda, when she heard of it; “and find out if Karen is his sister.”

And it was indeed so.  The young man had been in the woods all winter, and was on his way to the lighthouse, which he had hoped to reach in a few days, for the river current was swift and the logs were making good progress down to Lulea.

“You shall reach home sooner than you expected,” said Lieutenant Ekman the next morning, “for you shall go with us this very day.”

“Fine!  Fine!  Fine!” cried Gerda joyously when she heard of it.  “Pack your bundle, Erik, for you are going with us, too.”

While their clothes, and all the little keepsakes of the trip, were being hurried into the satchels, Gerda’s tongue flew fast with excitement, and her feet flew to keep it company.

“What do you suppose Karen will say, when she sees us bringing her brother over the rocks?” she ran to ask Birger in one room, and then ran to ask her father in another.

At nine o’clock the injured man was moved into the train, the children took their last look at the mining town, and then began their return over the most northerly railroad in the world, back through the swamps and forests, across the Polcirkel, and out of Lapland.

Lulea was reached at last and Josef Klasson was transported from the train to the steamer, “Just as if he were a load of iron ore from the mines,” Birger declared.

“Not quite so bad as that,” said his father, and took the twins to see the great hydraulic lift that takes up a car loaded with ore, as easily as a mother lifts her baby, and dumps the whole load into the hold of a vessel.

The children were so full of interest in all the new life around them that Josef Klasson almost forgot his pain in telling them about his winter in the lumber camp, and the long dark night, when for over a month there was not even a glimpse of the sun, and no light except that of the moon and the frosty stars.

It seemed but a very short time before Gerda was crying, “I can see the Sea-gull Light, and Karen is out on the rocks.”

Then came all the excitement of landing.  The twins told Karen about finding her brother, and the reindeer, and the midnight sun, and the logs in the river, all in one breath; while Lieutenant Ekman explained Josef’s accident to the lighthouse keeper and his wife, who had both hurried down to the wharf to find out the meaning of the return of the government boat.

Then, after Josef had been welcomed with loving sorrow because of his injury, and they had carried him up to the house and made him comfortable, Gerda told about her desire to take Karen home with her.

At first the father and mother would not hear of such a thing; but when Herr Ekman told of the medical gymnastic exercises that might cure her lameness, Josef spoke from his cot.

“Let her go,” he said.  “It is a terrible thing to be lame.  These few days that I have been helpless are the worst I have ever known.  If there is a chance to make Karen well, let her go.”