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Björn Hindrickson's wife had taken the little girl over to the blue cupboard, and given her a cookie and a lump of sugar, and Björn Hindrickson himself had asked her name and her age; whereupon he had opened his big leather purse and presented her with a bright new sixpence.
"That can end at any time, if you choose to go your own ways," Björn Hindrickson told him. Then the son had gone up into the wilderness northeast of Dove Lake, and had settled in the wildest and least populated region, where he broke ground for a farm of his own. His land lay in Bro parish, and he was never again seen in Svartsjö. Not in thirty years had his parents laid eyes on him.
Then, in the middle of this sore predicament, he heard Linnart Hindrickson exclaim: "Why, there stands the fellow who came to me last Sunday and told me that father was sick!" "What are you saying?" questioned the mother. "But are you certain as to that?" "Of course I am. It can't be any one but he. I've seen him before to-day, but I didn't recognize him in that queer get-up.
Perhaps he was thinking of old Björn Hindrickson and himself, for there was that in his own life which had taught him the true worth of a love that never fails you. But Glory Goldie did not yet understand. She had thought of her father only with aversion and dread since her return and muttered something about his being a madman. Linnart heard what she said, and it hurt him.
Glory Goldie was so furious that she wanted to say something dreadful to make Linnart hush, but somehow she couldn't. All she could do was to run away from him. Linnart Hindrickson made no attempt to follow her further. He had said what he wanted to say and he was not displeased with that morning's work.
"Well?" was all she said. "I replied that these enemies I, too, had seen," returned Linnart Hindrickson curtly. The girl gave a short laugh. "But instantly I regretted having said that," pursued the man. "For then Jan cried out in despair: 'Oh, pray to God, my dear Linnart, that I may be able to save the little girl from all evil! It doesn't matter what becomes of me, just so she is helped."
Therefore he was as rich as the richest, as great as the greatest, and now he was going straight to the big house of Björn Hindrickson to pay his respects to his fine relatives, for the first time in his life. The visit at the big house was not a long one. In less than an hour after their arrival, Jan and the little girl were crossing the house-yard toward the gate.
When going past the old Hindrickson homestead she saw a big, broad-shouldered man, with a strong, grave-looking visage, standing at the roadside mending a picket fence. The man gave her a stiff nod as she went by. He stood still for a moment, looking after her, then hastened to overtake her. "This must be Glory Goldie of Ruffluck," he said as he came up with her. "I'd like to have a word with you.
The daughter and son-in-law of the late Björn Hindrickson walked back and forth at the side of the hearse and looked at him. They regretted no doubt that they could not ask him to ride in one of the first carriages. Nor did he wish to incommode any one. He was what he was in any case.
Surely they could not be thinking of calling upon the Hindricksons, here in Loby? To be sure Björn Hindrickson's wife was a half-sister of Jan's mother, so that Jan was actually related to the richest people in the parish, and he had a right to call Hindrickson and his wife uncle and aunt. But heretofore he had never claimed kinship with these people.
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