high road were at a loss for a night's lodging. Many a revel had been
held there, and it was not once only that the cradle had been overturned
in a fight, or that a drunken man had fallen full length across it.

Nikolai's mother was called Barbara, and came from Heimdalhögden,
somewhere far up in the country--a genuine mountain lass, shining with
health, red and white, strong and broad-shouldered, and with teeth like
the foam in the milk pail. She had heard so much about the town from
cattle-dealers that came over the mountain, that a longing and
restlessness had taken possession of her.

And then she had gone out to service in the town.

She was about as suitable there as a tumble-down haystack in a handsome
town street, or as a cow on a flight of stairs--that is to say, not at
all.

She used to waste her time on the market-place by all the hay loads. She
must see and feel the hay--_that_ was not at all like mountain grass.
"No indeed! Mountain grass was so soft, and then, how it smelt! Oh dear
no!"

But her mistress had other uses for her servant than letting her spend
the morning talking to hay-cart drivers. So she went from place to
place, each time descending both as regarded wages and mistress. Barbara
was good-natured and honest; but she had one fault--the great one of
being totally unfit for all possible town situations.

Yet Society has, as we know, a wonderful faculty for making use of,
assimilating and reconstructing everything, even the apparently most