_ When the steamer _Anders Fryxell_ pulled out from the pier at Borg Point with Glory Goldie of Ruffluck on board, Jan and Katrina stood gazing after it until they could no longer see the faintest outline of either the girl or the boat. Every one else had left the pier, the watchman had hauled down the flag and locked the freight shed, but they still tarried.
It was only natural that the parents should stand there as long as they could see anything of the boat, but why they did not go their ways afterward they hardly knew themselves. Perhaps they dreaded the thought of going home again, of stepping into the lonely but in each other's company.
"I've got no one but him to cook for now!" mused Katrina, "no one but him to wait for! But what do I care for him? He could just as well have gone, too. It was the girl who understood him and all his silly talk, not I. I'd be better off alone."
"It would be easier to go home with my grief if I didn't have that sour-faced old Katrina sitting round the house," thought Jan. "The girl knew so well how to get on with her, and could make her happy and content; but now I suppose I'll never get another civil word from that quarter."
Of a sudden Jan gave a start. Bending forward he clapped his hands to his knees. His eyes kindled with new-found hope and his whole face shone. He kept his gaze on the water and Katrina thought something extraordinary must have riveted his attention, although she, who stood beside him, saw nothing save the ceaseless play of the gray-green waves, chasing each other across the surface of the lake, with never a stop.
Jan ran to the far end of the pier and bent down over the water, with the look on his face which he always wore whenever Glory Goldie approached him, but which he could never put on when talking to any one else. His mouth opened and his lips moved as though he were speaking, but not a word was heard by Katrina. Smile after smile crossed his face, just as when the girl used to stand and rail at him.
"Why, Jan!" said Katrina, "what has come over you?"
He did not reply, but motioned to her to be still. Then he straightened himself a little. His gaze seemed to be following something that glided away over the gray-green waves. Whatever it was, it moved quickly in the direction the boat had taken. Now Jan no longer bent forward but stood quite upright, shading his eyes with his hand that he might see the better. Thus he remained standing till there was nothing more to be seen, apparently. Then, turning to Katrina, he said:
"You didn't see anything, perhaps?"
"What can one see here but the lake and its waves?"
"The little girl came rowing back," Jan told her, his voice lowered to a whisper. "She had borrowed a boat of the captain. I noticed it was marked exactly like the steamer. She said there was something she had forgotten about when she left; it was something she wanted to say to us."
"My dear Jan, you don't know what you're talking about! If the girl had come back then I, too, would have seen her."
"Hush now, and I'll tell you what she wants of us!" said Jan, in solemn and mysterious whispers. "It seems she had begun to worry about us; she was afraid we two wouldn't get on by ourselves. Before she had always walked between us, she said, with one hand in mine and the other in yours, and in that way everything had gone well. But now that she wasn't here to keep us together she didn't know what might happen, 'Now perhaps father and mother will go their separate ways,' she said."
"Sakes alive!" gasped Katrina, "that she should have thought of that!" The woman was so affected by what had just been said--for the words were the echo of her own thoughts--that she quite forgot that the daughter could not possibly have come back to the pier and talked with Jan without her seeing it.
"'So now I've come back to join your hands,' said he, 'and you mustn't let go of each other, but keep a firm hold for my sake till I return and link hands with you again.' As soon as she had said this she rowed away."
There was silence for a moment on the pier.
"And here's my hand," Jan said presently, in an uncertain voice that betrayed both shyness and anxiety--and put out a hand, which despite all his hard toil had always remained singularly soft. "I do this because the girl wants me to," he added.
"And here's mine," said Katrina. "I don't understand what it could have been that you saw, but if you and the girl want us to stick together, so do I."
Then they went all the way home to their but, hand in hand. _