come. It
will surely come, either to-night or in the morning."

"You don't answer me," cried the old woman, "you don't tell what I
want to know. Maybe you don't intend to take me along if no call
comes to me!"

"It will come, it will come!" the Hellgumists shouted.

"You don't answer me!" screamed the old woman in a frenzy.

"Dear Eva, we can't take you along if God doesn't call you!" the
Hellgumists protested. "But the call will come, never fear."

Then the old dame suddenly rose from her kneeling attitude,
straightened her rickety old body, and brought her cane down on the
floor with a thud. "You people mean to go away and leave me to
perish!" she thundered. "Yes, yes, yes, you mean to go and let me
perish!" She had become furiously angry, and once more they saw
before them Eva Gunnersdotter as she had been in her younger days--
strong and passionate and fiery.

"I want nothing more to do with you!" she shrieked. "I don't want
to be saved by you. Fie upon you! You would abandon wife and
children, father and mother, to save yourselves. Fie! You're a
parcel of idiots to be leaving your good farms. You're a lot of
misguided fools running after false prophets, that's what you are!
It's upon you that fire and brimstone will rain. It is you who must
perish. But we who remain at home, we shall live."

THE BIG LOG

At dusk, on this same beautiful February day, two young lovers
stood talking together in the road. The youth had just driven down
from the forest with a big log, which was so heavy that the horse
could hardly pull it. All the same he had driven in a roundabout
way so that the log might be hauled through the village and past
the big white schoolhouse.

The horse had been halted in front of the school, and a young woman
had come out to have a look at the log. She couldn't seem to say
enough in praise of it--how long and thick it was, and how
straight, and what a lovely tan bark it had, and how firm the wood
was, and how flawless!

The young man then told her very impressively that it had been
grown on a moor far north of Olaf's Peak, and when he had felled
it, and how long it had been lying in the forest to dry out. He
told her exactly how many inches it measured, both in circumference
and diameter.

"But, Ingmar," she said, "it is only the first!"

Pleased as she was, the thought that Ingmar had been five years
getting down the first bit of timber toward the building of their
new home made her