gh it were yesterday the first time
Carlstrom really impressed himself upon me. It was in my early blind
days at the farm. I had gone to him with a part of a horse-rake which I
had broken on one of my stony hills'.

"Can you mend it?" I asked.

If I had known him better I should never have asked such a question. I
saw, indeed, at the time that I had not said the right thing; but how
could I know then that Carlstrom never let any broken thing escape him?
A watch, or a gun, or a locomotive--they are all alike to him, if they
are broken. I believe he would agree to patch the wrecked chariot of
Phaethon!

A week later I came back to the shop.

"Come in, come in," he said when he saw me.

He turned from his forge, set his hands on his hips and looked at me a
moment with feigned seriousness.

"So!" he said. "You have come for your job?"

He softened the "j" in job; his whole speech, indeed, had the engaging
inflection of the Scandinavian tongue overlaid upon the English words.

"So," he said, and went to his bench with a quick step and an air of
almost childish eagerness. He handed me the parts of my hay-rake without
a word. I looked them over carefully.

"I can't see where you mended them," I said.

You should have seen his face brighten with pleasure! He allowed me to
admire the work in silence for a moment and then he had it out of my
hand, as if I couldn't be trusted with anything so important, and he
explained how he had done it. A special tool for his lathe had been
found necessary in order to do my work properly. This he had made at his
forge, and I suppose it had taken him twice as long to make the special
tool as it had to mend the parts of my rake; but when I would have paid
him for it he would take nothing save for the mending itself. Nor was
this a mere rebuke to a doubter. It had delighted him to do a difficult
thing, to show the really great skill he had. Indeed, I think our
friendship began right there and was based upon the favour I did in
bringing him a job that I thought he couldn't do!

When he saw me the other day in the door of his shop he seemed greatly
pleased.

"Come in, come in," he said.

"What is this I hear," I said, "about your going back to Sweden?"

"For forty years," he said, "I've been homesick for Sweden. Now I'm an
old man and I'm going home."

"But, Carlstrom," I said, "we can't get along without you. Who's going
to keep us mended up?"

"You have Charles Baxter," he sai