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day, excepting during the three months when he took travelling school in the mountains. And Hjorth and Johanna were never ill.

Her uncle invited her to go up with him to fetch the flocks home again this time. She consented. The affair took them three days. One whole day they drove up in the old family carriole into the hills, meeting on the way scores of others on the same errand as themselves. The next was occupied by a sorting of the sheep (which had been driven into pens in the valley by boys) and a village entertainment. The third saw the return journey. Johanna took the whole occasion with more than usual quietude. She had no disappointment to face. The blank lack of interest that life at Helga meant for her would not, she had felt, be dispelled by the three days' jaunt to the hills. She had expected no change. She accepted the listless joylessness of existence, and did not even sigh for sorrow that such life was. But her uncle noticed her indifference, and determined to lose no time in settling the girl. He had already an eligible bridegroom for her in his eye. He reminded himself of Ole Ormond. Some sensible man like Ormond would, as the farmer put it mentally, make all the difference to Johanna. Herr Berg knew nothing of his niece's passion for Hjorth. If he had, his honest heart would have beat heavily with emotion, for Johanna was strangely, pathetically wistful, and Berg was aware that, just as it ran in the family to be concentrative, so did it to be constant. Without any idea but that his niece was sad, and needed brightening, he thought often of her mother, his sister, who, after three months of wedded happiness had lost her husband, and had herself died a heart-broken woman directly after Johanna's birth. Even, however, had Berg been conscious of the reason of his niece's grief, he must have acted as he did. For he would have felt quite surethat