I'm ahead
of her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field. But, as we were
leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place beside the road and sank
up to the hubs. While they were going for the horses to pull her out,
I cut away behind the stacks and escaped." Nils chuckled. Clara's dull
eyes lit up as she looked at him admiringly.

"You've got them guessing already. I don't know what your mother said
to Olaf over the telephone, but be came back looking as if he'd seen
a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful hour--ten o'clock, I
should think. He sat out on the porch in the dark like a graven image.
It had been one of his talkative days, too." They both laughed, easily
and lightly, like people who have laughed a great deal together; but
they remained standing.

"Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts, too, over
in the threshing field. What's the matter with them all?"

Clara gave him a quick, searching look. "Well, for one thing, they've
always been afraid you have the other will."

Nils looked interested. "The other will?"

"Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but they never
knew what he did with it. They almost tore the old house to pieces
looking for it. They always suspected that he carried on a clandestine
correspondence with you, for the one thing he would do was to get his
own mail himself. So they thought he might have sent the new will to
you for safekeeping. The old one, leaving everything to your mother, was
made long before you went away, and it's understood among them that it
cuts you out--that she will leave all the property to the others. Your
father made the second will to prevent that. I've been hoping you
had it. It would be such fun to spring it on them." Clara laughed
mirthfully, a thing she did not often do now.

Nils shook his head reprovingly. "Come, now, you're malicious."

"No, I'm not. But I'd like something to happen to stir them all up, just
for once. There never was such a family for having nothing ever happen
to them but dinner and threshing. I'd almost be willing to die, just to
have a funeral. _You_ wouldn't stand it for three weeks."

Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with the finger
of one hand. "I wouldn't? My dear young lady, how do you know what I can
stand? _You_ wouldn't wait to find out."

Clara flushed darkly and frowned. "I didn't believe you would ever come
back--" she said defiantly.

"Eric be