trong, well-built frame was encased, as it were,
in a bundle of rags; and, at the same time, Baard heard the gold watch
ticking in his own pocket. Anders walked to where the fagots lay;
instead of stooping at once to pick them up, he paused, leaned back
against the wood-pile and gazed up at the sky, which glittered brightly
with stars. Then he drew a sigh and muttered,--

"Yes--yes--yes;--O Lord! O Lord!"

As long as Baard lived he heard these words. He wanted to step
forward, but just then his brother coughed, and it seemed so difficult,
more was not required to hold him back. Anders took up his armful of
wood, and brushed past Baard, coming so close to him that the twigs
struck his face, making it smart.

For fully ten minutes he stood as if riveted to the spot, and it is
doubtful when he would have left, had he not, after his great emotion,
been seized with a shivering fit that shook him through and through.
Then he moved away; he frankly confessed to himself that he was too
cowardly to go in, and so he now formed a new plan. From an ash-box
which stood in the corner he had just left, he took some bits of
charcoal, found a resinous pine-splint, went up to the barn, closed the
door and struck a light. When he had lit the pine-splint, he held it
up to find the wooden peg where Anders hung his lantern when he came
early in the morning to thresh. Baard took his gold watch and hung it
on the peg, blew out his light and left; and then he felt so relieved
that he bounded over the snow like a young boy.

The next day he heard that the barn had burned to the ground during the
night. No doubt sparks had fallen from the torch that had lit him
while he was hanging up his watch.

This so overwhelmed him that he kept his room all day like a sick man,
brought out his hymn-book, and sang until the people in the house
thought he had gone mad. But in the evening he went out; it was bright
moonlight. He walked to his brother's place, dug in the ground where
the fire had been, and found, as he had expected, a little melted lump
of gold. It was the watch.

It was with this in his tightly closed hand that he went in to his
brother, imploring peace, and was about to explain everything.

A little girl had seen him digging in the ashes, some boys on their way
to a dance had noticed him going down toward the place the preceding
Sunday evening; the people in the house where he lived testified how
curiously he had acted on M