me mind regarding
Dagson. Karin never went to the mission house again. But later in
the summer, when a Baptist layman came to the parish, baptizing and
exhorting, she went to hear him, and when the Salvation Army began
to hold meetings in the village, she also attended one of these.

The parish was in the throes of a great religious upheaval. At all
the meetings there were awakenings and conversions. The people
seemed to find what they had been seeking. Yet among all those whom
Karin had heard preach, not one could give her any consolation.

***

A blacksmith named Birger Larsson had a smithy close by the
highroad. His shop was small and dark, with a low door, and an
aperture in place of a window. Birger Larsson made common knives,
mended locks, put tires on wheels and on sled runners. When there
was nothing else to be done, he forged nails.

One evening, in the summer, there was a rush of work at the smithy.
At one anvil stood Birger Larsson flattening the heads of nails;
his eldest son was at another anvil forging iron rods and cutting
off pins. A second son was blowing the bellows, a third carried
coal to the forge, turned the iron, and, when at white heat,
brought it to the smiths. The fourth son, who was not more than
seven years old, gathered up the finished nails and threw them into
a trough filled with water, afterward bunching and tying them.

While they were all hard at work a stranger came up and stationed
himself in the doorway. He was a tall, swarthy-looking man, and he
had to bend almost double to look in. Birger Larsson glanced up
from his work to see what the man wanted.

"I hope you don't mind my looking in, although I have no special
errand here," said the stranger. "I was a blacksmith myself in my
younger days, and can never pass by a smithy without first stopping
to glance in at the work."

Birger Larsson noticed that the man had large, sinewy hands--regular
blacksmith's hands. He at once began to question him as to who he
was and whence he came. The man answered pleasantly, but without
disclosing his identity. Birger thought him clever and likable,
and after showing him around the shop, he went outside with him
and began to brag about his sons. He had seen hard times, he said,
before the boys were big enough to help with the work; but now
that all of them were able to lend a hand, everything went well.
"In a few years I expect to be a rich man," he declared.

The stranger smiled a little