this
long-planned deed, yielding a little at length, not quite promising to
withhold her hand when the step of her savage husband should sound
outside the door.

"If you are here when he comes, then it will do for another night; if
you are gone, then I will not say."

That was the compromise she made with him at last, turning with no
more argument to prepare his supper, carrying the ax with her as she
went about the work. Often she stood in rigid concentration, listening
for the sound of Swan's coming, such animation in her eyes as a
bride's might show in a happier hour than hers. She sat opposite her
visitor as he made his supper on the simple food she gave him, and
told him the story of her adventure into that heartless land, the
ax-handle against her knee.

A minister's daughter, educated to fit herself for a minister's wife.
She had learned English in the schools of her native land, as the
custom is, and could speak it fairly when family reverses carried her
like a far-blown seed to America. She had no business training, for
what should a minister's wife know of business beyond the affairs of
the parish and the economy of her own home? She found, therefore,
nothing open to her hands in America save menial work in the
households of others.

Not being bred to it, nor the intention or thought of it as a future
contingency, she suffered in humbling herself to the services of
people who were at once her intellectual and social inferiors. The one
advantage in it was the improvement of her English speech, through
which she hoped for better things in time.

It was while she was still new to America, its customs and social
adjustments, and the shame of her menial situation burned in her soul
like a corrosive acid, that she saw the advertisement of Swan Carlson
in a Swedish newspaper. Swan Carlson was advertising for a wife.
Beneath a handsome picture of himself he stated his desires, frankly,
with evident honesty in all his representations. He told of his
holdings in sheep and land, of his money in the bank.

A dream of new consequence in this strange land came to Hertha
Jacobsen as she read the advertisement, as she studied the features of
Swan Carlson, his bold face looking at her from the page. She had seen
men, and the women of such men sharing their honors, who had risen
from peasants to governors and senators, to positions of wealth and
consequence in this strange land with all the romance of a tale out of
a