utioned you to be on your guard," said the wife.

"You begged and teased me to come here so that I should forget what
day it was, and now I get this reminder!"

Again Lars raised the brandy bottle to his lips. This time,
however, the wife cast herself upon him with prayers and tears.
Replacing the bottle on the table, he said with a laugh: "Keep it!
Keep it for all of me!" With that he rose and kicked the chair out
of his way. "Good-bye to you, Ol' Bengtsa," he said to the host. "I
hope you will pardon my leaving, but to-day I must go to a place
where I can drink in peace."

He rushed toward the gate, his wife following. When he was passing
out into the road, he pushed her back. "Why can't you let me be!"
he cried fiercely. "I've had my warning, and I go to meet my doom!"

SUMMERNIGHT

All day, while the party was going on at the seine-maker's, Jan of
Ruffluck kept to his hut. But at evening he went out and sat down
up on the flat stone in front of the house, as was his wont. He was
not ill exactly, but he felt weak and tired. The hut had become so
overheated during the long, hot sunny day that he thought it would
be nice to get a breath of fresh air. He found, however, that it
was not much cooler outside, but he sat still all the same, mostly
because there was so much out here that was beautiful to the eye.

It had been an excessively hot and dry month of June and forest
fires, which always rage every rainless summer, had already got
going. This he could tell by the pretty bluish-white smoke banks
that rose above the hills at the other side of the lake. Presently,
away off to southward, a shimmery white curly cloud head appeared,
while in the west, over against Great Peak, huge smoke-blended
clouds rolled up and up. It seemed to him as if the whole world
were afire.

No flames could be seen from where he sat, but there was no
mistaking that fire had broken out and could hold sway indefinitely.
He only hoped it would confine itself to the forest trees, and not
sweep down upon huts and farmsteads.

He could scarcely breathe. It was as if such quantities of air had
been consumed that there was very little of it left. At short
intervals he sensed an odour, as of something burning, that stuck
in his nostrils. That odour did not come from any cook stove in the
Ashdales! It was a salutation from the great stake of pine needles,
and moss, and brushwood that sizzled and burned many miles away.

A little while ago