The Family at Gilje. Jonas Lie

alone will cost us over one hundred dollars this year, and when Thinka is going to Ryfylke, we shall not get off with two hundred."

      "Over two hundred dollars!—Are you crazy? Are you crazy—really crazy, Ma? I think you have a screw loose!" He made a sudden turn over the floor. "The letter shall rather go at once into the stove."

      "Very well; you know that I think everything you do is sensible, Jäger."

      He stopped, with the letter in his hand and his mouth half open.

      "And the slight chance Inger-Johanna might have of being provided for, that perhaps is not so much to be taken into account. She is certainly the nearest relation. There is nothing in the way to prevent her being the heir also.—N-no, do as you will and as you like, Jäger. You probably see more clearly in this than I do.—And then you will take the responsibility yourself, Jäger,"—she sighed.

      The captain crumpled the letter together, gave her a hasty glance like a wounded lion, and then stood awhile and stared at the floor. Suddenly he threw the letter on the table and broke out: "She must go!—But the cost of the campaign—the cost of the campaign, Ma, that, I learned in my strategy, must be borne by the enemy! And the governor's wife must naturally take care of her outfit there."

      "The governor's wife, Jäger, must not pay for anything—not a bit—before she has decided if she will keep her. We must not be anxious to be rid of her; but she shall be anxious to get her; and she must ask us for her, both once and twice, you understand."

      That the winter was coming on was less noticed this year than usual. Two children were to be fitted out. Soon spinning-wheel and reel accompanied, in the short day and long evening, the murmur of the stove. Ma herself spun all the fine woof for the linsey-woolsey dresses. There was knitting, weaving, and sewing, nay, also embroidery on linen—"twelve of everything for each one." And in school hours in the office the captain worked not less zealously with the French grammar.

      The stiffening cold frost, which blew about the house and cut like ice from every crack; the cold so fierce that the skin was torn off the hands when any one was unlucky enough to take hold of the latch of the outer door or of the porch without mittens; complaints of nail ache, when the children came in from out-of-doors; or else that the drinking-water was frozen solid in the tubs and pails, that the meat must be thawed out—this was only what was usual in the mountain region. The doleful, monotonous howling and the long, hungry yelling of the wolves down on the ice could be heard from the Gilje hills both by day and by night. The road on the lake lasted a long time. It was there till long into the spring thaw, though worn, unsafe, and blue with its dirt-brown mudstreak.

      But when it did disappear, and the ice was melted by the heat of the sun, there lay on the steep hill behind the house a long line of bleaching linen, so shining white that it seemed as if the snow had forgotten to go away there.