“Marie Boving,” Gertrude went on, “has a little room off her kitchen, which she let me have for the night.  ’You’ll surely sleep well to-night,’ she said to me, ’as you are to lie on the bedding which I bought at the sale on the Ingmar Farm.’  But as soon as I laid down, I felt a hard lump in the pillow under my head.  After all, it wasn’t such extra good bedding Marie had bought for herself, I thought; but I was so tired out from tramping around all day, that I finally dropped off to sleep.  In the middle of the night I awoke and turned the pillow, so I shouldn’t feel that hard lump.  While smoothing out the pillow, I discovered that the ticking had been cut and clumsily basted together.  Inside there was something hard that crackled like paper.  ‘I don’t have to lie on rocks,’ I said to myself; then I ripped open a corner of the pillow, and pulled out a small parcel, which was done up in wrapping paper and tied with string.”

Gertrude paused and glanced at Ingmar, to see whether his curiosity was aroused; but apparently he had not listened very closely to what she was telling.

“How prettily Gertrude uses her hands when she talks!” he thought.  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen any one as graceful as she is.  There’s an old saying that man loves mankind above everything.  However, I believe that I did the right thing, for it wasn’t only the farm that needed me, but the whole parish.”  Just the same, he felt to his discomfort that now it was not so easy to persuade himself that he loved his old home more than he loved Gertrude.

“I put the parcel down beside the bed, thinking that in the morning I would give it to Marie.  But at daybreak I saw that your name was written on the wrapper.  On closer examination I decided to take it along, and turn it over to you without saying anything about it, either to Marie or to any one else.”  Then taking a little parcel from the bottom of her basket, she said:  “Here it is, Ingmar.  Take it; it’s your property.”  She supposed, of course, that he would be happily surprised.

Ingmar took the parcel, without much thought as to what he was receiving.  He was struggling to ward off the bitter regrets that were stealing in on him.

“If Gertrude only knew how bewitching she is when she’s so sweet and gentle!  It would have been better for me had she come to upbraid me.  I suppose I ought to be glad that she is as she is,” he thought, “but I’m not.  It seems as if she were grateful to me for having failed her.”

“Ingmar,” said Gertrude, in a tone that finally made him understand that she had something very important to tell him.  “When Elof lay sick at the Ingmar Farm, he must have used that very pillow.”

She took the parcel from Ingmar and opened it.  Then she counted out twenty crisp, new bank notes, each of which was a thousand-krona bill.  Holding the money in front of his eyes, she said: 

“Look, Ingmar! here’s every krona of your inheritance money.  It was Elof, of course, who hid it in the pillow!”