t tone. "I've got a great surprise for you!"

"How charmingly Gertrude speaks!" Ingmar was thinking. "She has the
sweetest, the cheeriest, and most tuneful voice I have ever heard!"

"About a week ago," Gertrude continued, "I left home intending to
go straight on to Gothenburg, so as to be there when the Hellgumists
arrive. The first night I stopped over at Bergsana with a poor
widow whose name it Marie Boving. That name I want you to remember
Ingmar--_Marie Boving_. If she should ever come to want, you must
help her."

"How pretty Gertrude is!" he thought, as he nodded and promised to
remember Marie Boving's name. "How pretty she is! What will become
of me when she goes? God forgive me if I did wrong in giving her up
for an old farm! Fields and meadows can never be the same to you as
a human being; they can't laugh with you when you're happy, nor
comfort you when you're sad! Nothing on earth can make up for the
loss of one who has loved you."

"Marie Boving," Gertrude went on, "has a little room off her
kitchen, which she let me have for the night. 'You'll surely sleep
well to-night,' she said to me, 'as you are to lie on the bedding
which I bought at the sale on the Ingmar Farm.' But as soon as I
laid down, I felt a hard lump in the pillow under my head. After
all, it wasn't such extra good bedding Marie had bought for herself,
I thought; but I was so tired out from tramping around all day,
that I finally dropped off to sleep. In the middle of the night I
awoke and turned the pillow, so I shouldn't feel that hard lump.
While smoothing out the pillow, I discovered that the ticking had
been cut and clumsily basted together. Inside there was something
hard that crackled like paper. 'I don't have to lie on rocks,' I
said to myself; then I ripped open a corner of the pillow, and
pulled out a small parcel, which was done up in wrapping paper and
tied with string."

Gertrude paused and glanced at Ingmar, to see whether his curiosity
was aroused; but apparently he had not listened very closely to
what she was telling.

"How prettily Gertrude uses her hands when she talks!" he thought.
"I don't think I've ever seen any one as graceful as she is.
There's an old saying that man loves mankind above everything.
However, I believe that I did the right thing, for it wasn't only
the farm that needed me, but the whole parish." Just the same, he
felt to his discomfort that now it was not so easy to persuade
himself that he lov