arth or sky, as
his thoughts were in the far past, or in the clouds of the sorrowful
present. By his side, close pressed to him, with her small
black-gloved hand laid on his knee, sat a little nine-year-old girl,
her sad-coloured suit in strange contrast with the flood of golden hair
that streamed from under her hat, and fell in shining waves down to her
slight waist. The fair young face was very serious, and the mild blue
eyes were full of loving light, as she now and then peeped cautiously
at her father. He did not notice the child, and she made no effort to
attract his attention.

"Papa! papa! what's that? what's that?" suddenly cried out the little
boy. "What's that that's so like the gingerbread baby Marie made me
yesterday? Just such a skirt, and little short arms!"

The father's attention was caught, and he turned his eyes in the
direction pointed out by the child's eager finger.

The sweet sound of a bell came from the strange brown wooden structure,
an old-time belfry, set not on a roof or a tower, but down on the
ground. Slanting out wide at the bottom, to have a firm footing, it
did look like a rag-dolly standing on her skirts, or a gingerbread
baby, as the young stranger had said.

A stranger truly in the land of his fathers was fat little Frans.
Alma, his sister, had often reproached him with the facts that he had
never seen his own country and could hardly speak his own language.
Born in Italy, he had now come to Sweden for the first time, with the
funeral train which bore the lifeless image of his mother to a
resting-place in her much-loved northern home.

"Is that the church, papa?" Alma ventured to ask, seeing her father
partially roused from his reverie.

The barn-like building was without any attempt at adornment. There was
no tower. The black roof rose high, very high and steep from the
thick, low white walls, that were pierced by a line of small rounded
windows.

"That is Aneholm Church," the father said, half reprovingly. "There
your maternal ancestors are buried, and there their escutcheons stand
till this day. I need not tell you who is now laid in that churchyard."

He turned his face from the loving eyes of the child, and she was
silent.

A few more free movements of the swift horses, and the carriage stopped
before a white-arched gateway. A wall of high old lindens shut in the
churchyard from the world without, if world the green pastures, quiet
groves, and low cottages