I will see that it is all nice for him. He
looks so sick and tired. I am sure Marie will do her best for him, she
was so fond of Nono. And, dear papa, we can use my money for him. I
have ever so much still left in my little cottage. Let me, please,
papa!"

The colonel gazed lovingly at Alma as he said,--

"Now you look so like your dear mother. It is just what she would have
said. Certainly we will keep him here."

Enricho was only too glad to leave Pietro in the pleasant quarters that
were prepared for him before evening. When the weary old man lay down
in his comfortable bed, with everything neat and clean about him, he
felt as if he were in some strange, blissful dream. He was not to see
his boy; but how lovingly they had spoken of him!

Karin cried like a child when she heard that Nono's poor father had
appeared; the very man she had dreaded to think of, who might come at
any time to carry off the boy who was as dear to her as her own
children. How she wished she could speak the poor father's language,
and tell him what Nono had been to her! Later, she did try to make him
understand it all, not only by broken Swedish words and signs, but with
Frans sometimes as a translator. Mr. Frans had been studying Italian
with his father, and was glad himself to talk about Nono.

Pietro, broken down by hardship and illness, and thin and worn, seemed
older than he really was. Pelle and Pietro were soon good friends. It
was a precious time for Frans when he translated the conversation
between these two veterans from life's battles--the one defeated,
wounded, near his death; the other humble, yet triumphant, victorious,
and soon to be summoned to the court of his King for a more than
abundant reward.

"I am not fit to be the father of a boy like Nono," said Pietro one
day--"not fit to be his father."

Pietro's old superstitious confidence in the religion of his country
had passed into a dull unbelief in all that was sacred. He had a
disease which Pelle found he could not reach.

Then the colonel came and sat day by day in Pietro's room, and talked
to the poor Italian out of the fulness of his heart as he had never
talked to a human being before. There, in that small room, the colonel
won a victory greater than the triumphs of war. There he won a soul
for the heavenly King! The colonel, by nature so self-controlled, so
reticent, was moved to warmth and tender tears as Pietro grasped his
hand and thanked