One evening, in the summer, there was a rush of work at the smithy.  At one anvil stood Birger Larsson flattening the heads of nails; his eldest son was at another anvil forging iron rods and cutting off pins.  A second son was blowing the bellows, a third carried coal to the forge, turned the iron, and, when at white heat, brought it to the smiths.  The fourth son, who was not more than seven years old, gathered up the finished nails and threw them into a trough filled with water, afterward bunching and tying them.

While they were all hard at work a stranger came up and stationed himself in the doorway.  He was a tall, swarthy-looking man, and he had to bend almost double to look in.  Birger Larsson glanced up from his work to see what the man wanted.

“I hope you don’t mind my looking in, although I have no special errand here,” said the stranger.  “I was a blacksmith myself in my younger days, and can never pass by a smithy without first stopping to glance in at the work.”

Birger Larsson noticed that the man had large, sinewy hands—­regular blacksmith’s hands.  He at once began to question him as to who he was and whence he came.  The man answered pleasantly, but without disclosing his identity.  Birger thought him clever and likable, and after showing him around the shop, he went outside with him and began to brag about his sons.  He had seen hard times, he said, before the boys were big enough to help with the work; but now that all of them were able to lend a hand, everything went well.  “In a few years I expect to be a rich man,” he declared.

The stranger smiled a little at that and said he was pleased to hear that Birger’s sons were so helpful to him.  Placing his heavy hand on Birger’s shoulder, and looking him square in the eyes, he said:  “Since you have had such good aid from your sons in a material way, I suppose you also let them help you in the things that pertain to the spirit?” Birger stared stupidly.  “I see that this is a new thought to you,” the stranger added.  “Ponder it till we meet again.”  Then he went on his way smiling, and Birger Larsson, scratching his head, returned to his work.  But the stranger’s query haunted his mind for several days.  “I wonder what made him say that?” he mused.  “There must be something back of it all that I don’t understand.”

***

The day after the stranger had talked with Birger Larsson an extraordinary thing took place at Tims Halvor’s old shop, which since his marriage to Karin had been turned over to his brother-in-law, Bullet Gunner.  Gunner was away at the time, and, in his absence, Brita Ingmarsson tended the shop.  Brita was named after her mother, Big Ingmar’s handsome wife, whose good looks she had inherited.  Moreover, she had the distinction of being the prettiest girl ever born and reared on the Ingmar Farm.  Although she bore no outward resemblance to the old Ingmars, she was, nevertheless, quite as conscientious and upright as any of them.