pains if he got out among people.

He looked a bit hollow-eyed, but he was as jolly and sociable as he
had been the year before. He had barely got down the first mouthful
of food when he and the son of Ol' Bengtsa fell to talking of the
lumber business, of big profits and interest on loans.

The poor rustics round about them, aghast at the mere mention of
these large figures, were afraid to open their mouths. Ol' Bengtsa
was the only one who wanted to have his say in the matter.

"Since you're talking of money," he said, "I wonder, Nils, if you
remember that note for 17,000 rix-dollars I got from the old
ironmaster at Doveness? It was mislaid, if you recollect, and
couldn't be found at the time when I was in such hard straits. Just
the same, I wrote to the ironmaster requesting immediate payment;
but received the reply that he was dying. Later on, after his
death, the administrators of the estate declared they could find no
record of my claim. I was informed that it wasn't possible for them
to pay me unless I produced the note. We searched high and low for
it, both I and my sons, but we couldn't find it."

"You don't mean to tell me that you've come across it at last!" the
son exclaimed.

"It was the strangest thing imaginable!" the old man went on. "Jan
of Ruffluck came over here one morning and told me he knew for a
certainty that the note was in the secret drawer of my cedar chest.
He had seen me take it out in a dream, he said."

"But you must have looked there?"

"Yes, I did search through the secret drawer on the left-hand side.
But Jan said it was in the drawer on the right, and then, when I
looked more carefully, I found a secret drawer that I'd never known
about; and in that lay the note."

"You probably put it there some time when you were in your cups."

"Very likely I did."

The son laid down his knife and fork for a moment, then took them
up again. Something in the old man's tone made him a bit wary.
"Maybe it's just a hoax," he thought to himself. Aloud he said, "it
was outlawed, of course?"

"Oh, yes," replied the old man, "it would doubtless have been so
regarded by any other debtor. But I rowed across to Doveness one
day and took the note to the new ironmaster, who admitted at once
that it was good. 'It's as clear as day that I must pay my father's
debt, Ol' Bengtsa,' he said. 'But you'll have to give me a few
weeks' grace. It is a large sum to pay out all at once.'"

"That was spoken l