na had to take her away and try to get her quieted. Then a
big, sturdy boy baby let himself be vaccinated with never a
whimper. But the instant Katrina was back at the table with her
girl the trouble started afresh. She could not hold the child still
long enough for the sexton to make even a single incision.

Now there was no one left to vaccinate but Glory Goldie of
Ruffluck. Katrina was in despair because of her child's bad
behaviour. She did not know what to do about it, when Jan suddenly
emerged from the shadow of the door and took the child in his arms.
Then Katrina got up to let him take her place at the table.

"You just try it once!" she said scornfully, "and let's see whether
you'll do any better." For Katrina did not regard the little
toil-worn servant from Falla whom she had married as in any sense
her superior.

Before sitting down, Jan slipped off his jacket. He must have
rolled up his shirt sleeve while standing in the dark, at the back
of the room, for his left arm was bared.

He wanted so much to be vaccinated, he said. He had never been
vaccinated but once, and there was nothing in the world he feared
so much as the smallpox.

The instant the little girl saw his bare arm she became quiet, and
looked at her father with wide, comprehending eyes. She followed
closely every movement of the sexton, as he put in the three short
red strokes on the arm. Glancing from one to the other, she noticed
that her father was not faring so very badly.

When the sexton had finished with Jan, the latter turned to him,
and said:

"The li'l' lassie is so still now that maybe you can try it."

The sexton tried, and this time everything went well. The little
girl was as quiet as a mouse the whole time--the same knowing look
in her eyes. The sexton also kept silence until he had finished;
then he said to the father:

"If you did that only to calm the child, we could just as well
have made believe--"

"No, Sexton," said Jan, "then you would not have succeeded. You
never saw the like of that child! So don't imagine you can get her
to believe in something that isn't what it passes for."

THE BIRTHDAY

On the little girl's first birthday her father was out digging in
the field at Falla; he tried to recall to mind how it had been in
the old days, when he had no one to think about while at work in
the held; when he did not have the beating heart in him, and when
he had no longings and was never anxious.

"To thin