ey upon the table," he said, "and I
shall never touch it again, for I see now that it has unlocked the
door to everything which I had hoped to shut out."

Whereupon the schoolmaster put the key down, took up his hat, and
walked straight over to the pastor.

"I want to thank you, Parson, for coming to hear me to-day," he
said; "for if you hadn't come to-day you never could have heard
me."

THE WILD HUNT

There were many who thought that Elof Ersson should have found no
peace in his grave for the shameful way in which he had dealt with
Karin and young Ingmar. He had deliberately made way with all of
his and Karin's money, so she would suffer hardship after his
death. And he left the farm so heavily mortgaged, that Karin would
have been forced to turn it over to the creditors, had not Halvor
been rich enough to buy in the property and pay off the debts.
Ingmar Ingmarsson's twenty thousand kroner, of which Elof had been
sole trustee, had entirely disappeared. Some people thought that
Elof had buried the money, others that he had given it away; in any
case, it was not to be found.

When Ingmar learned that he was penniless, he consulted Karin as to
what he should do. Ingmar told his sister that of all things he
would prefer to be a teacher, and begged her to let him remain with
the Storms until he was old enough to enter college. Down at the
village he would always be able to borrow books from the
schoolmaster or the pastor, he said, and, moreover, he could help
Storm at the school, by reading with the children; that would be
excellent practice.

Karin turned this over in her mind before answering. "I suppose you
wouldn't care to remain at home, since you can't become master
here?" she said.

When Storm's daughter heard that Ingmar was coming back, she pulled
a long face. It seemed to her that if they must have a boy living
with them, they might better have the judge's good-looking son,
Bertil, or there was jolly Gabriel, the son of Hoek Matts Ericsson.

Gertrude liked both Gabriel and Bertil, but as for Ingmar, she
couldn't exactly tell what her feelings were toward him. She liked
him because he helped her with her lessons and minded her like a
slave; but she could also become thoroughly put out with him
sometimes, because he was clumsy and tiresome and did not know how
to play. She had to admire his diligence and his aptitude for
learning, yet at times she fairly despised him for not being able
to show off