was a dude, did you?" Nils gave him a playful tap
which bent the tall boy up like a clasp knife. "See here: I must teach
you to box." Nils thrust his hands into his pockets and walked about.
"You haven't changed things much up here. Got most of my old traps,
haven't you?"

He took down a bent, withered piece of sapling that hung over the
dresser. "If this isn't the stick Lou Sandberg killed himself with!"

The boy looked up from his shoe-lacing.

"Yes; you never used to let me play with that. Just how did he do it,
Nils? You were with father when he found Lou, weren't you?"

"Yes. Father was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we drove along,
Lou's place looked sort of forlorn, and we thought we'd stop and cheer
him up. When we found him father said he'd been dead a couple days. He'd
tied a piece of binding twine round his neck, made a noose in each end,
fixed the nooses over the ends of a bent stick, and let the stick spring
straight; strangled himself."

"What made him kill himself such a silly way?"

The simplicity of the boy's question set Nils laughing. He clapped
little Eric on the shoulder. "What made him such a silly as to kill
himself at all, I should say!"

"Oh, well! But his hogs had the cholera, and all up and died on him,
didn't they?"

"Sure they did; but he didn't have cholera; and there were plenty of
bogs left in the world, weren't there?"

"Well, but, if they weren't his, how could they do him any good?" Eric
asked, in astonishment.

"Oh, scat! He could have had lots of fun with other people's hogs. He
was a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill yourself for a pig--think of that,
now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and quite embarrassed little
Eric, who fell to scrubbing his face and hands at the tin basin. While
he was parting his wet hair at the kitchen looking glass, a heavy tread
sounded on the stairs. The boy dropped his comb. "Gracious, there's
Mother. We must have talked too long." He hurried out to the shed,
slipped on his overalls, and disappeared with the milking pails.

Mrs. Ericson came in, wearing a clean white apron, her black hair
shining from the application of a wet brush.

"Good morning, Mother. Can't I make the fire for you?"

"No, thank you, Nils. It's no trouble to make a cob fire, and I like to
manage the kitchen stove myself" Mrs. Ericson paused with a shovel full
of ashes in her hand. "I expect you will be wanting to see your brothers
as soon as possible. I'll t