ard often from his daughter. Clara had always been fond of
her father, and happiness made her kinder. She wrote him long accounts
of the voyage to Bergen, and of the trip she and Nils took through
Bohemia to the little town where her father had grown up and where she
herself was born. She visited all her kinsmen there, and sent her father
news of his brother, who was a priest; of his sister, who had married a
horse-breeder--of their big farm and their many children. These letters
Joe always managed to read to little Eric. They contained messages for
Eric and Hilda. Clara sent presents, too, which Eric never dared to take
home and which poor little Hilda never even saw, though she loved to
hear Eric tell about them when they were out getting the eggs together.
But Olaf once saw Eric coming out of Vavrika's house--the old man had
never asked the boy to come into his saloon--and Olaf went straight to
his mother and told her. That night Mrs. Ericson came to Eric's room
after he was in bed and made a terrible scene. She could be very
terrifying when she was really angry. She forbade him ever to speak to
Vavrika again, and after that night she would not allow him to go to
town alone. So it was a long while before Eric got any more news of his
brother. But old Joe suspected what was going on, and he carried Clara's
letters about in his pocket. One Sunday he drove out to see a German
friend of his, and chanced to catch sight of Eric, sitting by the cattle
pond in the big pasture. They went together into Fritz Oberlies' barn,
and read the letters and talked things over. Eric admitted that things
were getting hard for him at home. That very night old Joe sat down and
laboriously penned a statement of the case to his daughter.

Things got no better for Eric. His mother and Olaf felt that, however
closely he was watched, he still, as they said, "heard." Mrs. Ericson
could not admit neutrality. She had sent Johanna Vavrika packing back to
her brother's, though Olaf would much rather have kept her than Anders'
eldest daughter, whom Mrs. Ericson installed in her place. He was not
so highhanded as his mother, and he once sulkily told her that she might
better have taught her granddaughter to cook before she sent Johanna
away. Olaf could have borne a good deal for the sake of prunes spiced in
honey, the secret of which Johanna had taken away with her.

At last two letters came to Joe Vavrika: one from Nils, enclosing a
postal order for