her was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we drove
along, Lou's place looked sort of forlorn, and we thought we'd stop
and cheer him up. When we found him father said he'd been dead a
couple days. He'd tied a piece of binding twine round his neck, made
a noose in each end, fixed the nooses over the ends of a bent stick,
and let the stick spring straight; strangled himself."

"What made him kill himself such a silly way?"

The simplicity of the boy's question set Nils laughing. He clapped
little Eric on the shoulder. "What made him such a silly as to kill
himself at all, I should say!"

"Oh, well! But his hogs had the cholera, and all up and died on him,
didn't they?"

"Sure they did; but he didn't have cholera; and there were plenty of
hogs left in the world, weren't there?"

"Well, but, if they weren't his, how could they do him any good?"
Eric asked, in astonishment.

"Oh, scat! He could have had lots of fun with other people's hogs.
He was a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill yourself for a pig--think of
that, now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and quite
embarrassed little Eric, who fell to scrubbing his face and hands at
the tin basin. While he was patting his wet hair at the kitchen
looking-glass, a heavy tread sounded on the stairs. The boy dropped
his comb. "Gracious, there's Mother. We must have talked too long."
He hurried out to the shed, slipped on his overalls, and disappeared
with the milking-pails.

Mrs. Ericson came in, wearing a clean white apron, her black hair
shining from the application of a wet brush.

"Good morning, Mother. Can't I make the fire for you?"

"No, thank you, Nils. It's no trouble to make a cob fire, and I like
to manage the kitchen stove myself." Mrs. Ericson paused with a
shovel full of ashes in her hand. "I expect you will be wanting to
see your brothers as soon as possible. I'll take you up to Anders'
place this morning. He's threshing, and most of our boys are over
there."

"Will Olaf be there?"

Mrs. Ericson went on taking out the ashes, and spoke between
shovels. "No; Olaf's wheat is all in, put away in his new barn. He
got six thousand bushel this year. He's going to town to-day to get
men to finish roofing his barn."

"So Olaf is building a new barn?" Nils asked absently.

"Biggest one in the county, and almost done. You'll likely be here
for the barn-raising. He's going to have a supper and a dance as
soon as everybody's done threshing. Says it keeps