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 that it was the best cow they had
on the farm, one for which Lars Gunnarson had been offered two
hundred rix-dollars. She had sunk deep in the mire and was now so
terrified that she lay quite still and sent forth only feeble and
intermittant bellowings. It was plain that she had struggled
desperately for she was covered with mud clear to her horns, and
round about her the green moss-tufts had been torn up. She had
bellowed so loud that Jan thought every one in Ashdales must have
heard her, yet no one but himself had come up to the marsh. He did