For three days and three nights people saw the father rowing round and round the spot, without taking either food or sleep; he was dragging the lake for the body of his son.  And toward morning of the third day he found it, and carried it in his arms up over the hills to his gard.

It might have been about a year from that day, when the priest, late one autumn evening, heard some one in the passage outside of the door, carefully trying to find the latch.  The priest opened the door, and in walked a tall, thin man, with bowed form and white hair.  The priest looked long at him before he recognized him.  It was Thord.

“Are you out walking so late?” said the priest, and stood still in front of him.

“Ah, yes! it is late,” said Thord, and took a seat.

The priest sat down also, as though waiting.  A long, long silence followed.  At last Thord said: 

“I have something with me that I should like to give to the poor; I want it to be invested as a legacy in my son’s name.”

He rose, laid some money on the table, and sat down again.  The priest counted it.

“It is a great deal of money,” said he.

“It is half the price of my gard.  I sold it today.”

The priest sat long in silence.  At last he asked, but gently: 

“What do you propose to do now, Thord?”

“Something better.”

They sat there for a while, Thord with downcast eyes, the priest with his eyes fixed on Thord.  Presently the priest said, slowly and softly: 

“I think your son has at last brought you a true blessing.”

“Yes, I think so myself,” said Thord, looking up, while two big tears coursed slowly down his cheeks.

WHEN FATHER BROUGHT HOME THE LAMP

BY

JUHANI AHO

In spite of ethnological and philological distinctions, geographical association makes it more natural to include a Finnish tale in the volume with Scandinavian stories than in any other volume of this collection.

From “Squire Hellman.”  Translated by R. Nisbet Bain.  Published by the Cassell Publishing Co.

WHEN FATHER BROUGHT HOME THE LAMP

BY

JUHANI AHO

When father bought the lamp, or a little before that, he said to mother: 

“Hark ye, mother—­oughtn’t we to buy us a lamp?”

“A lamp?  What sort of a lamp?”

“What!  Don’t you know that the storekeeper who lives in the market town has brought from St. Petersburg lamps that actually burn better than ten parea? [Footnote:  A pare (pr. payray; Swed., perta; Ger., pergei) is a resinous pine chip, or splinter, used instead of torch or candle to light the poorer houses in Finland.] They’ve already got a lamp of the sort at the parsonage.”