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Here the senator paused a moment so that his hearers would be able to follow him. "And now she sends the money to me," he continued, "with the request that I come down to the Ashdales and see that this matter is properly settled with the new owner of Falla; so that he won't be able to play any new trick later on."
The girls stood stockstill. They looked a bit shy at first, but he soon helped them over their momentary embarrassment. Then it was "good-day" and "our kind Emperor." It was plain they were really glad to see him again. These little misses were not like Katrina and the rest of the Ashdales folk.
"I am not very well acquainted in this district," said the senator, "but I gather that this must be the place in the Ashdales that is called Ruffluck Croft." It was of course. Every one nodded in the affirmative, but no one was able to utter an audible word. They wondered that Katrina had the presence of mind to nudge Börje, and make him get up and give his chair to the senator.
The road to the Ashdales was as rocky then as at the time when Eric of Falla and his wife had driven her to the parsonage, to have her christened, and now she and the driver tramped on either side of the wagon steadying a couple of large trunks that stood on end behind the seat, to prevent them being jolted into the ditch.
Then of course Katrina and Jan had to tell them all about the travelling merchant's visit, and when they learned how it had come about they were all glad that Fortuna had thought of taking a little peep into the humble home down in the Ashdales. There were sons of landed proprietors who declared that if this girl had been of less humble origin they would have proposed to her then and there.
It was not windy and cold, however, but rather a bit sultry. If Jan had not held the little girl in his arms he would have lost heart. "My dear Jan Anderson," he would have said to himself. "You must remember that you live away down in the Ashdales, by Dove Lake, where there isn't but one decent farmhouse and here and there a poor fisherman's hut.
You came to me and I says to you like this: 'Are you out for a walk, Jan of the Ashdales? 'Yes, says you, 'but now I'm Jan of the Vale of Longings. 'Then, well met, says I. 'There's where I have lived all my life." Whereupon she disappeared again, and Jan, startled by her strange words, did not immediately resume his work, but stood pondering. In a moment or two she was there again.
Every other minute she would ask him whether any one had come along yet and if he thought it prudent to keep the infant out in the damp air any longer. Jan turned his eyes up toward Great Peak, rising high above the little groves and garden-patches of the Ashdales, like a watch tower atop some huge fortress, keeping all strangers at a distance.
But on either of these she had not cared to travel or perhaps she had not even known about them. She had come by wagon from the railway station to the Ashdales. So after all Jan of Ruffluck did not have the pleasure of welcoming his daughter at the Borg pier, where for fifteen years he had awaited her coming. Yes, it was all of fifteen years that she had been away.
It was only Katrina who stood at the door and received the little girl on her homecoming. She had been sitting at the spinning wheel all day and had just stopped to rest for a moment, when she heard the rattle of a team down the road. It so seldom happened that any one drove through the Ashdales that she stepped to the door to listen.
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