ners in the house and
listeners without. The colonel and the pastor set on foot an inquiry
for the man who had appeared months ago at the hospital, but with no
apparent result. The interest in the search gradually died away, and
it was the general conclusion that the man had returned discouraged to
his native land.

As for Nono, he was quite changed. He did not give up the hope of
finding his own father. He seemed always listening, looking out for,
expecting something. Yet he did his work faithfully, and was more than
ever thoughtful of Karin, and dutiful and obedient towards Jan. There
was a special tenderness towards the dear friends in the cottage, as if
the time of parting might be near. The likeness of the princess seemed
meanwhile to have become especially dear to him. He would stand and
look at it long and wistfully, as if he would ask his friend some deep
question, or read in her inmost soul.

Pelle watched the boy narrowly, and grew uneasy about him. Nono was
not inclined to talk about his father, and Pelle would not force his
confidence. He was afraid some wild scheme was forming in the mind of
the boy, some plan of going off in search of his father. Pelle took
occasion at one time to speak of the sorrow Frans had caused in his
home by his disappearance; at another, he enlarged on the dangers that
beset young lads without the protecting care of those who understood
life better than they did, etc., with innumerable variations.

Nono listened in respectful silence, but with a wandering, wistful look
in his eyes.

Alma had been intensely interested in Decima's story. Nono's life was
quite like a romance, she said, and she wished she could turn to the
last page of the story, as she often did in a book she was reading.
She, too, was watching and waiting and expecting. The sound of a
hand-organ brought her at once to the window, and many a wandering
musician was astonished with questions in Swedish and Italian as to
whether he was looking for the golden house, where he had left a baby
long ago; what had become of Pionono, the bear; if Francesca were dead,
etc. Such questions, put so suddenly and skilfully, Alma fancied would
be sure to bring out the truth. The puzzled stragglers often went away
from Ekero half suspecting that they were losing their own wits or the
young lady had quite lost hers, or that Swedish and Italian were now so
confused in their brains that they could fully understand neith