coming journey
across the desert.

The Dean's widow glanced around the room. Several persons tried to
speak to her, but that day she heard nothing whatever. Suddenly she
put up her hand, and said in that hard, dry voice in which deaf
people are wont to speak: "You do not come to see _me_ any more;
therefore, I have come to _you_, to warn you not to go to Jerusalem.
It is a wicked city. It was there they crucified our Saviour."

Karin attempted to answer the old lady, who apparently did not
hear, for she went right on:

"It is a wicked city," she repeated. "Bad people live there. 'Twas
there they crucified Christ. I have come here to-day," she added,
"because this has been a good house. Ingmarsson has been a good
name; it has always been a good name. Therefore, you must remain in
our parish,"

Then she turned and walked out of the house. Now she had done her
part, and could die in peace. This was the last service that life
demanded of her.

After the old lady had gone, Karin broke into tears. "Perhaps it
isn't right for us to go," she sighed. But she was pleased that the
Dean's widow had said that Ingmarsson was a good name--that it had
always been a good name.

It was the first and only time Karin had been known to waver, or
to express any doubt as to the advisability of the great
undertaking.

THE DEPARTURE OF THE PILGRIMS

One beautiful morning in July, a long train of carts and wagons set
out from the Ingmar Farm. The Hellgumists had at last completed
their arrangements, and were now leaving for Jerusalem--the first
stage of their journey being the long drive to the railway station.

The procession, in moving toward the village, had to pass a
wretched hovel which was called Mucklemire. The people who lived
there were a disreputable lot--the kind of scum of the earth which
must have sprung into being when our Lord's eyes were turned, or
when he had been busy elsewhere.

There was a whole horde of dirty, ragged youngsters on the place,
who were in the habit of running loose all day, shrieking after
passing vehicles, and calling the occupants bad names; there was an
old crone, who usually sat by the roadside, tipsy; and there were a
husband and wife who were always quarrelling and fighting, and who
had never been known to do any honest work. No one could say
whether they begged more than they stole, or stole more than they
begged.

When the Jerusalem-farers came alongside this wretched hovel, which