rs, there was a
lecture given one evening at the schoolhouse. Evidently it was meant for
grown-ups, but the two Smaland children were in the audience. They did
not regard themselves as children, and few persons thought of them as
such. The lecturer talked about the dread disease called the White
Plague, which every year carried off so many people in Sweden. He spoke
very plainly and the children understood every word.

After the lecture they waited outside the schoolhouse. When the lecturer
came out they took hold of hands and walked gravely up to him, asking if
they might speak to him.

The stranger must have wondered at the two rosy, baby-faced children
standing there talking with an earnestness more in keeping with people
thrice their age; but he listened graciously to them. They related what
had happened in their home, and asked the lecturer if he thought their
mother and their sisters and brothers had died of the sickness he had
described.

"Very likely," he answered. "It could hardly have been any other
disease."

If only the mother and father had known what the children learned that
evening, they might have protected themselves. If they had burned the
clothing of the vagabond woman; if they had scoured and aired the cabin
and had not used the old bedding, all whom the children mourned might
have been living yet. The lecturer said he could not say positively, but
he believed that none of their dear ones would have been sick had they
understood how to guard against the infection.

Osa and Mats waited awhile before putting the next question, for that
was the most important of all. It was not true then that the gipsy woman
had sent the sickness because they had befriended the one with whom she
was angry. It was not something special that had stricken only them. The
lecturer assured them that no person had the power to bring sickness
upon another in that way.

Thereupon the children thanked him and went to their room. They talked
until late that night.

The next day they gave notice that they could not tend geese another
year, but must go elsewhere. Where were they going? Why, to try to find
their father. They must tell him that their mother and the other
children had died of a common ailment and not something special brought
upon them by an angry person. They were very glad that they had found
out about this. Now it was their duty to tell their father of it, for
probably he was still trying to solve the myst