h now, and I'll tell you what she wants of us!" said Jan, in
solemn and mysterious whispers. "It seems she had begun to worry
about us; she was afraid we two wouldn't get on by ourselves.
Before she had always walked between us, she said, with one hand in
mine and the other in yours, and in that way everything had gone
well. But now that she wasn't here to keep us together she didn't
know what might happen, 'Now perhaps father and mother will go
their separate ways,' she said."

"Sakes alive!" gasped Katrina, "that she should have thought of
that!" The woman was so affected by what had just been said--for
the words were the echo of her own thoughts--that she quite forgot
that the daughter could not possibly have come back to the pier and
talked with Jan without her seeing it.

"'So now I've come back to join your hands,' said he, 'and you
mustn't let go of each other, but keep a firm hold for my sake till
I return and link hands with you again.' As soon as she had said
this she rowed away."

There was silence for a moment on the pier.

"And here's my hand," Jan said presently, in an uncertain voice
that betrayed both shyness and anxiety--and put out a hand, which
despite all his hard toil had always remained singularly soft. "I
do this because the girl wants me to," he added.

"And here's mine," said Katrina. "I don't understand what it could
have been that you saw, but if you and the girl want us to stick
together, so do I."

Then they went all the way home to their but, hand in hand.

THE LETTER

0ne morning when Glory Goldie had been gone about a fortnight, Jan
was out in the pasture nearest the big forest, mending a wattled
fence. He was so close to the woods that he could hear the murmur
of the pines and see the grouse hen walking about under the trees,
scratching for food-along line of grouse chicks trailing after her.

Jan had nearly finished his work when he heard a loud bellowing
from the wooded heights! It sounded so weird and awful he began to
be alarmed. He stood still a moment and listened. Soon he heard it
again. Then he knew it was nothing to be afraid of, but on the
contrary, it seemed to be a cry for help.

He threw down his pickets and branches and hurried through the
birch grove into the dense fir woods, where he had not gone far
before he discovered what was amiss. Up there was a big,
treacherous marsh. A cow belonging to the Falla folk had gone down
in a quagmire and Jan saw at once