if she lets him go to the river. She got a
bad scare last time, and it isn't any use arguing with her."

"But won't you let us talk to her, Nils?" one of the lumbermen proposed.
"It is a tangled skein, and I don't pretend to say that I can straighten
it out. But two men have been killed and one crippled since the little
chap was taken away. And in the three years he was with us no untoward
thing happened. Now that speaks for itself, Nils, doesn't it?"

"It does, indeed," said Nils, with an air of conviction.

"And you'll let us talk to your wife, and see if we can't make her
listen to reason," the man urged.

"You are welcome to talk to her as much as you like," Nils replied,
knocking out his pipe on the heel of his boot; "but I warn you that
she's mighty cantankerous."

He rose slowly, and tried to open the door. It was locked. "Open, Inga,"
he said, a trifle impatiently; "there are some men here who want to see
you."

II.

Inga sat crouching on the hearth, hugging little Hans to her bosom. She
shook and trembled with fear, let her eyes wander around the walls, and
now and then moaned at the thought that now they would take little Hans
away from her.

"Why don't you open the door for papa?" asked little Hans, wonderingly.

Ah, he too was against her! All the world was against her! And her
husband was in league with her enemies!

"Open, I say!" cried Nils, vehemently. "What do you mean by locking the
door when decent people come to call upon us?"

Should she open the door or should she not? Holding little Hans in her
arms, she rose hesitatingly, and stretched out her hand toward the
bolt. But all of a sudden, in a paroxysm of fear, she withdrew her hand,
turned about, and fled with the child through the back door. The alder
bushes grew close up to the walls of the cottage, and by stooping a
little she managed to remain unobserved. Her greatest difficulty was
to keep little Hans from shouting to his father, and she had to put her
hand over his mouth to keep him quiet; for the boy, who had heard the
voices without, could not understand why he should not be permitted to
go out and converse with his friends the lumbermen. The wild eyes and
agitated face of his mother distressed him, and the little showers of
last night's rain which the trees shook down upon him made him shiver.

"Why do you run so, mamma?" he asked, when she removed her hand from his
mouth.

"Because the bad men want to take you away