them; and they gave a tremendous cheer when they saw little Hans's face
above the water. He looked a trifle pale and shivery, and he gave a
funny little snort, so that the water spurted from his nose. He had lost
his hat, but he did not seem to be hurt. His little arms clung tightly
about his father's neck, while Nils, dodging the bobbing logs, struck
out with all his might for the shore. And when he felt firm bottom under
his feet, and came stumbling up through the shallow water, looking like
a drowned rat, what a welcome he received from the lumbermen! They all
wanted to touch little Hans and pat his cheek, just to make sure that it
was really he.

"It was wonderful indeed," they said, "that he ever came up out of that
horrible jumble of pitching and diving logs. He is a child of luck, if
ever there was one."

Not one of them thought of the boy's mother, and little Hans himself
scarcely thought of her, elated as he was at the welcome he received
from the lumbermen. Poor Inga stood dazed, struggling with a horrible
feeling, seeing her child passed from one to the other, while she
herself claimed no share in him. Somehow the thought stung her. A sudden
clearness burst upon her; she rushed forward, with a piercing scream,
snatched little Hans from his father's arms, and hugging his wet little
shivering form to her breast, fled like a deer through the underbrush.

From that day little Hans was not permitted to go to the river. It was
in vain that Nils pleaded and threatened. His wife acted so unreasonably
when that question was broached that he saw it was useless to discuss
it. She seized little Hans as a tigress might seize her young, and held
him tightly clasped, as if daring anybody to take him away from her.
Nils knew it would require force to get his son back again, and that he
was not ready to employ. But all joy seemed to have gone out of his
life since he had lost the daily companionship of little Hans. His work
became drudgery; and all the little annoyances of life, which formerly
he had brushed away as one brushes a fly from his nose, became burdens
and calamities. The raft upon which he had expended so much labor went
to pieces during a sudden rise of the river the night after little
Hans's adventure, and three days later Thorkel Fossen was killed
outright by a string of logs that jumped the chute.

"It isn't the same sort of place since you took little Hans away,"
the lumbermen would often say to Nils. "The