The Last Letter Home

I. OLD ABE CALLS

— 1—

It was in the beginning of the age of the telegraph. This remarkable invention was in use everywhere in North America; in a few short minutes it could transfer important news from one end of the country to the other. The morning happenings in the South were known in every city and village of the North long before evening. The telegraph was a miracle not yet become commonplace.

What happened in South Carolina on the morning of Sunday, April 14, 1861, was known to every city dweller in Minnesota within a few hours; the news reached many of the smaller villages before the day was over; more remote settlers were perhaps not aware of it for still another day. It reached the people of Lake Chisago in the forenoon of Monday the fifteenth. This April day was never to be forgotten by any one of those who lived it.

It was the season of seeding. Karl Oskar Nilsson, owner of the first settlement at the lake, was harrowing his field for the spring wheat. For the first time he was driving his recently acquired team of horses. The weather was mild for that time of year, it had rained moderately, and the soil seemed ready after the stirring of the harrow pegs. The black earth was pregnant with growing and sufficiently dry after the rain not to clog his shoes. Pigeons, meadowlarks, and sparrows faithfully followed the team across the field and picked with eager beaks at worms and larvae exposed by the harrow. The horses pulled this heavy implement easily enough with such a brisk pace that the driver had difficulty in keeping up with them. Karl Oskar still dragged his left foot a little due to an old injury in his leg which always made itself known under stress.

He was pleased with his new team. There was a great difference between the lively, brisk horses and the dull, sluggish oxen. Now harrowing was easy. This afternoon he must sow his wheat, for tomorrow morning the Spring Court convened in Center City and he was to serve on the jury.

He had sent his oldest boy, Johan, on an errand to Klas Albert’s store — Persson’s Store, as they called it in Center City — and now and then he glanced down the road. Why was the boy so slow in returning? Finally he spied him down by the old log cabin. As soon as Johan saw his father he began to run. Karl Oskar reined in his team: Why suddenly this hurry?

Before the boy had gained the field he began shouting: From the son the news reached the father: War had broken out.

Johan was excited and short of breath. In Center City he had read a poster on the bulletin board of the parish meetinghouse. The Southern rebels had stormed Fort Sumter and shot down the Union flag. The slave states had begun warring against the North. A great many people had gathered at Persson’s Store, all talking about the war. The boy of fifteen was proud to have carried this message; he panted for breath as he repeated it.

Karl Oskar let the team rest and sat down heavily on the harrow. To him the news was not unexpected. He had long feared war would break out. It had been an uneasy winter, full of anxiety and uncertainty. Now spring had come and with it outbreak of war. And as war finally had come, at least he was relieved of the worry about its breaking out.

Last fall he had been one of those who helped elect Abraham Lincoln, himself a settler’s son. The men of the ax and the plow had placed Abe in the President’s chair: They trusted him. Karl Oskar had thought: Old Abe won’t have a war, if he can help it. He is sure to make peace with the slave states. He also wants what is best for the South — the best of both North and South — they must remain united. He wants the people of the New World to settle their differences peacefully, not with bloodshed. In the Old World the English, French, Russians, Austrians, and Turks had recently fought bloody battles. But over there kings and warlords had always driven their people to death, and people had meekly endured it. But Honest Abe — himself born in a settler’s cabin — is not going to ape leaders who have ruined the Old World.

But now the slave states had inveigled each other to attack the Union. The flag had been shot down! What could the President do now? What must they all do? The one attacked must defend himself.

Johan was standing beside the harrow, keyed up, waiting eagerly and with apprehension: “Do you think, Father, the rebels are coming all the way up here?”

No, his father didn’t think so; the boy mustn’t be afraid. The Southern rebels would never come as far north as Minnesota. Long before they got halfway they would be killed on the battlefields. And he told his boy to go on home and finish cleaning out the sheep pen, a chore he had started in the morning. He must tell Harald to help him, there was great hurry, the sheep manure was to be spread on the oat field before seeding.

Johan looked disappointed but obeyed reluctantly. He had expected his father to unharness the team and come home and forget about the sheep pen. He had in some way expected a reward for bringing the message of war. It was unfair, on a day like this, to have to shovel sheep dung.

A swarm of mosquitoes buzzed around the horses and bit them in the groins; the animals stamped with their hind legs, rattling the harnesses. Karl Oskar remained sitting, squinting at the sun, his thoughts disturbed, pondering. War! Never could a war have started at a more inopportune moment. But whatever happened, he must plant the spring wheat today. A new crop must grow; people would need bread next year also.

He resumed harrowing but row after row with each furrow he was pursued by the question: How many men in America must now leave their daily chores and go to war? He did not stop harrowing until the dinner hour. Kristina, his wife, had already set the table as he entered the kitchen, and he sat down to eat with his family.

Johan repeated to his mother and brothers and sisters what he had read on the poster in Center City. This last year in school he had learned English quite well and could read it almost fluently.

Kristina listened with great calm. A change had come over her these last years; nothing disturbed or frightened her.

“War is punishment for our sins,” she said. “We can only ask God to have mercy on us.”

Karl Oskar said, “Those armies of the South can do us no harm up here. They’ll never get here!”

“I mean: May God have mercy on the people in the South and the people in the North!”

He protested that the rich slave owners in the South had started the war. They alone were to blame, and they alone ought to suffer. If one were attacked by a criminal must he suffer the same punishment as the attacker?

“Punishment belongs to God,” explained Kristina. “A Christian is not allowed to go out and kill.”

“Isn’t he allowed to kill a murderer and criminal?”

“No. He mustn’t kill any human being.”

“But I’ve the right to defend myself. A murderer must blame himself if he gets killed!”

“If someone is killed, is it therefore necessary to kill others?” Kristina replied. “Can it help the dead one if other people die?”

Karl Oskar and Kristina had had many discussions about the South and the North and could not agree. Now he replied, as he had done many times before: If one couldn’t defend oneself against an attacker, no person in the world could live in peace in his home. And the slave states had attacked because the presidential election last fall hadn’t gone the way they wanted.

“They want to govern themselves, as we do,” she said. “Why can’t they?”

“It ruins the Union,” he explained. “The rebels have broken the laws of the Union.”

“But the people of the South don’t like them. They don’t want to obey the same laws as we. Why must they? Why must they be forced to obey?”

Karl Oskar could not make Kristina understand that the slave power in the South was criminal. Hadn’t they not long ago read in their paper Hemlandet about the Souths plan to murder President Abraham Lincoln, the most honest man in North America? The slave owners had conspired to prevent him from occupying his office. For a long time they had planned this deed, and hired the assassins. When Father Abe was to ride the steam wagon to the government house in Washington, the murderers were to turn over the wagon and crush him against the rails. Such was their intent; he was never to reach the presidential chair alive. Praise be God, the conspiracy was discovered in time, Abe was warned, and guards were posted along the whole line of the railroad and he arrived unharmed in Washington. This fully proved that the slave powers instigated murders. And murderers could not be endured in this country.

Kristina looked at him across the table: “And now they must go to war, the men. .?”

It was half a question, but he did not reply this time; he looked down at his plate.

She had something more to say to him but she couldn’t quite get it out now — there was one more question she would have liked to ask him: Are you going?

The next morning, Tuesday, Karl Oskar drove single-horsed to Center City to do jury duty. He tied his horse and walked up the steps to the meetinghouse, which also served as courthouse, where he met Mr. Thorn, the Chisago County sheriff, a tall, well-built man. The sheriff said there would be no sitting of the court today because war had broken out.

Mr. Thorn was a Scotchman. Karl Oskar knew him as an honest and capable person and he had helped elect him sheriff. In Sweden the farmers were never allowed to elect their sheriff; there they must accept whoever the Crown sent them, however badly he might treat them. A Crown sheriff in Sweden was a puffed-up, vain person, a magistrate wearing gold-plated buttons and uniform cap, who cursed and ruled. He threatened and frightened and no one dared do anything but obey. Mr. Thorn on the contrary was a helpful, kind man who neither ruled nor swore at people. And if he had done so he would not have lasted long in his office. There was a great difference between a sheriff in Sweden and a sheriff in America; here the settlers were his equals.

“Old Abe has called for troops,” said Mr. Thorn.

He showed the Swedish settler a big placard nailed to the meetinghouse wall. Yesterday Abraham Lincoln, the President of the Union, had sent this proclamation to all the Northern states; this poster concerned each and every citizen.

Karl Oskar began to spell his way through the poster. He understood most of the English, and what he didn’t understand the sheriff explained to him.

Southern rebels had conspired to get possession of fortresses and war matériel from the Union. The laws of the nation must be enforced and therefore the booty must be recaptured. Lincoln, in his capacity as President, urged all loyal citizens to hasten to the defense of the Union. He asked for 75,000 men to enlist immediately.

The tall Scotchman already knew Lincoln’s proclamation by heart. He spoke with great feeling — those scoundrels in the slave states had besmirched the flag, they had shot at the thirty-two stars in the Union flag. The thirty-second and last star was that of Minnesota. These Southern bandits in shooting at their flag thus, had actually fired at the people of this very county; it was as if they had tried to murder him, Karl Oskar, his friends, and fellow settlers.

Mr. Thorn had his duties as sheriff and because of this, sadly enough, he was forced to stay at home. Otherwise he would already have hearkened to Old Abe’s call and enlisted. As he said this he glanced at the Swede beside him in a way that could not be misunderstood.

Twice Karl Oskar read through the presidential proclamation very carefully while he barely listened to the sheriff. Mr. Thorn kept fingering his badge of office as he poured out his bitterness over the insult to the flag; such an insult could be washed off only in blood.

Karl Oskar untied the halter chain and harnessed his horse to the wagon. He made some purchases in Klas Albert’s store where today the customers elbowed each other. Then he drove back home again; with no court he had nothing more to do in Center City.

And today he wished to be alone to gather his thoughts.

Twenty-two thousand Minnesotans had last fall voted for Old Abe to be President. He himself was one of them. Those 22,000 considered the settlerson Lincoln one of them, indeed, the foremost of them. He was wiser, more capable, and more honest than anyone else. A man’s worth meant everything in the settlers’ republic, and that was why the boy from the log cabin had risen to the highest office in North America. In Sweden it was only required that a man was born in the royal palace and slept in a golden cradle to reach the highest pinnacle in the nation; his ability counted for nothing.

And those who had chosen Honest Abe had confidence that he would preserve the Union.

But the President couldn’t do it single-handedly. Now the Union was threatened and now the people of the North must gather round their elected leader. Today Old Abe called upon all loyal citizens: Help me save the Union!

Karl Oskar assured himself that he was a loyal citizen in the country that had received him and his family and opened a new home for them. The presidential proclamation was directed to him; he had read it carefully: The United States are threatened! You are one of those who elected me President! Now you must help me! Help me against the rebels! Help me save the Union! I have confidence in you: Come!

Old Abe was calling him. Being a citizen he was called on to shoulder his duties. For an honest man there could be only one reply to the call.

But as Karl Oskar approached his claim he looked over his land and the fields his hands had wrested from the wilderness and this acted as a serious reminder: here lay his earth waiting for the seed. Regardless of what happened his fields must be planted. This must not be put aside for anything; if a crop were to be harvested in the fall, seeds must be put in the earth in the spring. This rule of nature must not be altered even by a war. Therefore he must wait for a while yet. He was simply forced to wait. Sowing came first. People must have food next year also. Old Abe, born in a tiller’s cabin, wouldn’t he understand this?

— 2—

Minnesota, the youngest state of the Union, was the first to reply to the President’s call: on the very day it arrived the Republican governor, Alexander Ramsey, offered in a telegram to Lincoln the first regiment of volunteers. And the Minnesota settlers were proud that their state was first. They were seized by an immeasurable anger and bitterness over the insult to the flag at Fort Sumter and several thousand of them were at once ready to sacrifice their lives in battle. Volunteers streamed in in much greater numbers than anyone had counted on. One regiment after another was trained and equipped at Fort Snelling and readied for the war.

Old Abe had asked for 75,000 men. He received in reply a song from the mouths of all the people in the North:

We are coming, Father Abraham,

Six hundred thousand strong. .

In Hemlandet Kristina read about this great joy over the war which had seized people’s minds, and she was profoundly perplexed. She had thought that if people needn’t go to war except of their own free will there wouldn’t be any wars. But her thoughts and feelings had been entirely wrong. Up here in the North no one was forced to go; nothing happened to those who stayed home. Yet they took off, people rushed to the battlefields of their own free will. Of their own free will they went out to kill and be killed. Not only that, they were happy and joyous and exhilarated to be able to kill and be killed. They couldn’t get away fast enough, these volunteers who in their eagerness stepped on each other’s heels at the recruiting places; people were jubilant because they would have an opportunity to kill their neighbors.

The Lord’s commandment was: You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself! But it seemed they hated those neighbors in the South since they were in such a hurry to kill them. This desire of man to kill his own kind must be a curse of the original sin, which would cling to him to the end of time. War was punishment, war was caused by the original sin.

It said in Hemlandet that God took part and fought in the Civil War; fortunately he had decided to be on the side of the North. Eight hundred rebels had for two whole days bombarded Fort Sumter which was defended by one hundred men, but not a single one of the defenders had been killed. Thousands of shots had been fired but not a single Union soldier had fallen — this was a miracle that had taken place in the fort. And this miracle proved that God fought on the side of the Union troops.

How could they print such rot! wondered Kristina. God must have created the Southerners as well as the Northerners and he couldn’t be on either side in the war, for he couldn’t fight against his own creation, his own handiwork. He could only be against the war itself.

Karl Oskar felt the Union must be kept intact whatever the cost. But she replied that if the people in the South didn’t want to belong to the Union, why not let them go? Weren’t they fighting for the right to govern themselves, the same as the people up here in the North? It was senseless; both sides fought for the same thing! Both sides wanted to rule themselves! Why fight over it?

They could easily have come to an understanding if they had said to each other: We will leave you in peace if you leave us in peace! In that way the people of the South as well as the people of the North would have saved their lives.

It wasn’t that easy, explained Karl Oskar. For only through war could the enslavement of the Negroes be abolished. No, said Kristlna, however deeply she felt for the black ones she could not believe that a mass slaughter of other people was the right way to help them. It could not be God’s will that people killed each other by the thousands to liberate some from slavery. To keep your neighbor as a slave was a grave sin, to kill a neighbor was graver.

They could not agree. But the inhabitants of their new country had begun to shed each other’s blood, and each new issue of the paper told about it. In the settlements they read only of the Civil War, but each paper printed a comforting assurance: The North was many times stronger than the South, therefore the North must win. The North would win the war before the summer was over.

They sowed their seed and the kernels sprouted and came up. They planted the potatoes in the furrows and the potatoes returned in rows of dark green stalks. Even in this war spring the black earth fruited with wheat, corn, rye, oats, and root crops. This year too the earth promised the nourishment that would sustain people’s lives.

Summer came and it remained quiet and peaceful in the settlements round Lake Chisago. The thunder of the Civil War rumbled so far away it could not be heard up in Minnesota. Several regiments had left for the battlefields and more were prepared in great hurry. But the void after the soldiers left was not great enough to interfere with daily life; it went on without interruption, each one attending to his chores, no one disturbed in his daily work.

But the war did not go the way the papers had predicted. Everything happened except what was supposed to happen. The war went very badly for the North. Union troops lost one battle after another and were forced to one withdrawal after another. And Northern soldiers fell in unbelievable numbers, their bodies lay stacked in great piles on the battlefields. It was said they fought valiantly but had poor weapons: a soldier could consider himself lucky if he had been given a gun that was no more dangerous to him than to the enemy. Besides, the Union troops had incompetent generals. But the setbacks were not blamed on them as much as on the competent generals of the South.

And after Fort Sumter no more miracles took place to prove that God was fighting on the side of the North. The rebels had the upper hand from the beginning and kept it. Lincoln named a new general to have full command of the North’s forces, but it didn’t help, since the South hadn’t fired any of theirs.

By the end of the summer, when the Union troops already should have won the war, they suffered a great defeat at Bull Run, Virginia. When the papers announced this severe defeat a shock of fear hit the people of the North: Suppose we lose the war?

It seemed the end of the fight was near, but a different end than the one so surely predicted in the spring.

In April Lincoln had asked for 75,000 men, and 600,000 had volunteered. All had been convinced that this great army would be sufficient to win the war. But the inexperienced volunteers had first to be trained and equipped and it was a long time before they could be used in the field. And then came the defeats — and now more soldiers were needed.

In August President Lincoln issued a new call: He asked for another 300,000 men. If this number had not volunteered before the first of October, conscription would be necessary.

This was alarming.

And one day, in the beginning of September, just after the new call had been issued, Karl Oskar Nilsson read in Hemlandet a summons to the Swedish settlers of Minnesota to form a company of their own:

This country has permitted us to settle here in peace, it has received us foreigners with friendship. We enjoy here the same rights, are protected by the same laws, as the natives. Swedes constitute the greatest numbers of foreigners in Minnesota — it is time for us to fight for our adopted land, for the Union!

I myself offer to go! Let’s meet at Fort Snelling, where we ourselves will choose our officers!

A pox on him who says this is a war among Americans and doesnt concern us! This fight concerns us and our children!

We have sworn loyalty to this country!

This country is now in danger!

The appeal was dated, Red Wing, September 2, 1861, signed H. Mattson, “a countryman.” Karl Oskar read it several times, and thought deeply about it.

It was high time. .!

The following night he could not sleep a wink, and in the morning he said to his wife that he was going to Stillwater and sign his name on the volunteer list. He would report for the war.

II. I AM CONCERNED WITH YOUR ETERNAL LIFE

— 1—

Kristina was sewing on her new sewing machine in the living room. Her right hand controlled the balance wheel while her left fed it the cloth. The pedals moved rhythmically, she felt them as a pair of heavy iron soles. She sewed with foot power rather than hand power. This sewing machine, Karl Oskar’s gift to her last Christmas, had already saved her many hours of sewing and basting with needle. American menfolk made many inventions that helped greatly. This machine was an expensive apparatus — it had cost twenty dollars — but with it she could sew ten times faster than by hand. It was a very clever invention: the sewing contraption had pedals and buzzing wheels, shuttle and spool, over-thread and under-thread. It was truly unbelievable that such a capable machine — made for women’s use — would have been invented by a man.

She was sewing shirts for Karl Oskar from a roll of flannel she had bought at Klas Albert Persson’s store. Flannel was the cloth used by Americans for strong everyday wear. Otherwise she bought cheap calico or the most inexpensive cotton but the latter came in only a few ugly patterns at Klas Alberts.

It was a warm day even though it was already in September. Kristina pedaled her machine with bare feet. In winter the iron felt cold against the soles of her feet, but in summer cool and pleasant. The wheel’s buzzing turned into a noisy roar when she pedaled the machine at high speed.

Karl Oskar came in and sat down beside her. She slowed down her tramping and stopped the balance wheel, letting her hand rest on it as she turned to her husband.

She had seen in his face, earlier today, what he had to say. She had expected it for a long time. He had decided at last.

“I can’t delay any longer! I must volunteer! Otherwise I’ll be forced to. .”

She was prepared and calm. Nor had he expected his wife to burst out crying.

She said quietly, “You’re not forced yet.”

“No — but I might be soon. They might start conscription the first of October.”

She raised her voice. “Wait till then!”

“It’s more decent to volunteer before they begin drafting. I’d be ashamed to be forced.”

Kristina looked questioningly at him. She moved her bare feet from the pedals of the sewing machine and rested her hands on her knees. “You wish to go to war of your own free will, Karl Oskar?”

“I’ve fought it the whole summer. Now I must go.”

As early as April Old Abe had called his loyal citizens. It was now September and at last he would answer: I’m coming! He said he had no wish to go out in any war if he could get out of it honorably. He could always find excuses and delays: Last spring the fields needed seeding, now in fall he could say he needed to harvest the crop. Still later he could use the threshing as an excuse not to volunteer. And during the winter there was timber to fell and saw for the new main house he intended to build. That would bring them to spring with the new planting and the same old excuses. In that way he could go on year after year.

Until the North had lost the war!

Of what use would it be then that he had stayed at home and tended to his chores? If the North lost, the slave powers could do what they wanted. The slave owners used their Negroes like cattle and they could use the people up here in the same way. Who could say that they would be allowed to keep their land and their home? Here they had been able to live and govern themselves because the United States was their protection and security. But would it remain so if the Union were broken?

Many had gone out in the war before him. He, as they, had believed it would be over in one summer, in which case it would have been unnecessary to volunteer. But now everyone realized that this misery would last long, and he could not expect others to jeopardize their lives and defend his wife, children, and home while he himself dodged. If a healthy man stayed home after this he must be a coward.

“But I don’t know of anyone hereabouts who has gone,” she said. “You’ll be the only one from our settlement.”

“The others are too old.”

Danjel Andreasson and Jonas Petter were both near sixty; Petrus Olausson and Johan Kron were somewhat younger but both had reached fifty; Anders Månsson was a drunkard and useless for military service; Algot Svensson was about his own age, but last winter he had torn one of his eyes on a sharp branch and consequently was not able-bodied. The only one in their section who would have to go in a draft would be himself.

Kristina’s fingers returned to the piece of cloth in the machine. Would she have to prepare Karl Oskar for war? Then she must hurry up and get these shirts ready for his rucksack.

The memory of an evening long ago in another country came to her. The children were asleep, it was silent in their house, the fire had burned down to glowing embers. Then he had suddenly begun to talk: He had decided they would emigrate to America.

For a long time she had been against it; she wanted to remain in her home community. To emigrate seemed to her as perilous as to go to war. Many had fallen on the emigrants’ road. But he had thought through his decision carefully, and his will had prevailed. Now he wanted to go to war; this time too he had long pondered and weighed before he decided.

Kristina remained silent. Karl Oskar became uneasy. Had his decision hit her harder than he had expected? He added: It was not that he wished to participate in the singing of joyous war songs; it was not in happiness that he went, rather in deep sorrow. But he was forced to, he must not fail, his conscience bade him. If he threw off his duties on others, he would feel like a weakling, a clod.

“You mean you must enlist to set your conscience at rest?”

“Yes, to regain my peace of mind.”

“But your conscience says you must not kill your neighbor. Don’t you know the fifth commandment?”

“That commandment doesn’t hold in war.”

“The catechism doesn’t say war is an exception?”

“One must defend oneself.”

“The neighbor you’ll kill says the same: I must defend myself!”

Karl Oskar moved closer to his wife and took hold of her hand: “Kristina, are you against it? Are you absolutely against it?”

“I only want you to wait till you’re forced to go.”

“But I’d rather go of my free will than be drafted.”

“That’s because of false pride. It’s only vanity.”

She pushed back her chair from the sewing machine. “Do you want to know why I’m against it?” It came almost as an outcry. “I don’t want you to go out and kill people! I don’t want your hands to kill anybody! I don’t want your neighbor’s blood on you! I don’t want you to be guilty of people’s lives! I don’t want you to be a murderer, Karl Oskar!”

“Oh — in that way. .” was his embarrassed reply.

“I don’t want you to go into eternity with blood on you! That’s why! It is your eternal life that is in question! If you take someone else’s you lose your own! I don’t want you to be lost forever! I am concerned with your eternal life!”

He sat quite dumbfounded for some minutes. This was not what he had expected to hear from his wife. He had thought she might say: You want to go to war before you are drafted? You want to leave your home of your own free will? Leave your wife and children, your fields and all you have built up here? Leave us alone with all the work to do here? You want to throw off everything on wife and children? Sacrifice your own life? How much do you really care for me when you are willing to make me a widow? How much do you feel for your children when you’re willing to make them fatherless?

How can you? How can you risk your life in war before you’re forced to? I pray you — stay at home! Stay and be my husband as long as this is allowed you! Remain here and be a father to your children as long as you can! Please, Karl Oskar, stay here!

Thus he had long in advance heard her persuade him, and that was why he had dreaded this moment. But now when it was here none of these words escaped her lips. She said nothing about herself or the children or the home. She only said: I am thinking of your eternal salvation!

As a citizen he had received a call from the nation’s leader, a reminder of his duty. From his wife the husband and father now received another reminder, another call. But it did not concern this world, rather the eternal one.

— 2—

Kristina had accepted her fate and made the best of her lot in life. Nothing could happen to her. That was why she didn’t ask him to consider her. She was not afraid to be left alone. Here at home she and the children would have God’s protection.

During this war summer she had often thought of her mother’s mother, whom she remembered from her childhood home in Duvemåla where the old one had lived on her “reserved rights” for thirty years. She had been left a widow while still a young woman. Toward the end of the last century the Swedish king had made war against the Russian empress, to gain honor and praise, and Grandfather had been forced to go to war. It was always the little ones who must go out and kill each other so the big ones could get along. And Grandfather never returned; he fell on the field of battle. His widow was left alone with seven children on a small plot. She was thirty years of age. For twenty years she slaved stubbornly, in great poverty, for her children. When she was no longer able to work, the farm was sold and she moved into her “reserved room”: Grandmothers reward in life was thirty years of loneliness in this little hole of a room — a farm woman’s life, not much noted or remarked upon because it was the fate of thousands of other women as the result of war.

So it was with women and war; the men went out but the wives were left home with children whom they alone must look after, feed, and foster. The men went out to destroy life, the women stayed at home to preserve it. The men must be alone, without their wives, the wives must be alone, without their husbands. And yet God had created man and woman for each others aid and comfort.

So it had been of old, so it was still, and so it might remain. Kristina had already reconciled herself to the lone woman’s lot in war-torn America.

— 3—

Now Karl Oskar replied to her: She had got it all wrong. He could not become guilty of blood — in the eyes of neither God nor man — if he killed enemies in the war. The guilt would lie with the slave powers who had started the bloodshed. The North had done no injustice to the South. It was the South who wanted to rule America with force, and that they mustn’t allow or suffer.

Didn’t she know how badly they used humans in the slave states? Whoever taught a Negro to read must pay a fine of five hundred dollars for the first offense, and if he were caught a second time five thousand dollars! And should a person be caught a third time teaching a black person to read he would be hanged! Down there they forced the Negroes to work in the infernal heat in the cotton fields so they could sell the cotton cheap. If a Negro fled from the slavery-whip he was pursued by starved bloodhounds and these beasts tore out his entrails as soon as they caught up with him. Could any decent person be on the side of the slave states?

Had they lived in the slave states, he would have been sent to war long ago; all men between seventeen and fifty-five had been drafted. Had they lived in the South, it would soon be time for Johan to go. Here in Minnesota they were still free from the draft but by the first of next month it might begin. And he would feel ashamed and humiliated if he didn’t volunteer before then. Old Abe must think he was a shirker if he must be forced to do his plain duty. Therefore he must volunteer of his own free will, but he did not do it out of false pride: He was forced to by his conscience. He must gain his peace of mind.

Tomorrow he would go to Stillwater and join the Swedish company with other men from the old country who wished to perform their duty to the new one. He had just read in the paper that there were many others who felt the way he did. He presumed that, like him, they wanted to get rid of the pain in their consciences.

“Well, I guess you must then,” she said, as if talking to herself. “If you think you’ll have peace in your soul afterward.”

Karl Oskar was not very concerned as to whether or not he jeopardized his eternal life, she thought. She knew him; his mind could not be changed once it had been made up. It had never yet happened that he had changed a decision. Therefore there was nothing more to say.

Karl Oskar went out, and Kristina resumed her work, starting her sewing machine again. The pedals went up and down, the balance wheel whirled, the machine buzzed. If he was going to war she must finish his flannel shirts. And there were other garments he would need. Now she was in a hurry. Besides, she had other things to do than sit at the sewing machine. Yes, Karl Oskar’s clothing must be the most important of her concerns for the moment.

It must always have been that way, about preparing the husband’s clothing, when he was to go to war.

— 4—

The following evening Kristina was again at her sewing machine after supper. She was expecting Karl Oskar back from Stillwater, but he was late. The children had gotten hungry and so they had eaten their supper without the father at the table. What was left of the corn pancakes she had put into the Prairie Queen to keep warm for him.

It was already bedtime when Karl Oskar returned. The sewing machine kept buzzing and muffled her ear so she didn’t hear him before he was inside the kitchen. She stopped the machine and went to take the plate with the pancakes from the oven; she poured milk into the pitcher and cut a few slices of bread. He threw his hat onto a peg and sat down silently at the table.

Karl Oskar seemed depressed and listless after his journey to Stillwater. Nor had he been especially happy when he left in the morning. But he had never been one of those who kept singing “We are coming, Father Abraham” even though he had a good voice, well noticed in church at the psalm singing. And by now that war song was sung mostly by those stay-at-homes who never had any intention of hearkening to Honest Abe’s call.

Kristina wondered if perhaps he had changed his mind. Had he regretted his decision at the last moment? Maybe he had thought he wouldn’t go out and seek death of his free will. Could it be that he didn’t want to leave them all perhaps never to see them again? Maybe he had changed his mind and would wait until he was drafted for the human slaughter?

Something was wrong with him, that much she could see. But she would not ask. He must come out with it himself. Perhaps he had enlisted and now regretted it — when it was too late.

He mumbled something between swallows — the pancakes tasted awfully good; he had only had a sandwich in Stillwater, he was quite hungry.

He had stilled the worst of his hunger when he said, “Kristina do you want to know — I’m not going to war. .”

“You’re riot! Didn’t you enlist. .?”

“No.”

“You changed your mind in the end? You’ll wait till they take you?”

“No. I didn’t change my mind.”

“What happened. .?”

“They rejected me in Stillwater. I’m not up to it. .”

“They rejected you!”

A powerful feeling of joy pierced Kristina’s heart.

“I’m not good enough to go to war. Because of my leg. My lame shank. .”

Karl Oskar pulled out his left leg from under the table, held it up for his wife to see. It seemed she had never seen her husband’s left leg before. Meanwhile he sat and looked gloomily at the floor.

She had been wrong a moment ago; he had not regretted his decision. Instead he felt disappointed, ashamed. Yes, by jiminy, he was ashamed and gloomy because he had been rejected!

He bent down and felt the leg across the injured bone which he held pointed toward her.

“Some doctor had to examine me first, to see if I could do military service. The doctor rejected me, because of my leg. .”

She was told how everything had happened. The recruiting office in Stillwater was housed in the old tailor’s shop across from the bank, and Swedes and Norwegians who wanted to join the rifle company had to go there. It was called a rifle company because they were to use the new guns with rifles in them to make them shoot much faster than the old guns. An officer in gold-braided uniform with many stripes and tassels had received him and the other volunteers. His name was Captain Silversvärd; he was a Swedish nobleman who had emigrated and he spoke the mother tongue. So in the beginning it was quite like home there in the office. And that man, the captain, was quite a decent sort of fellow and treated them all as equals, since they were all in America where soldiers are free men who themselves select their company commanders. In Sweden a simple soldier had only one duty — to obey — but here he could help select his own officers. The captain had told him he would make a splendid soldier and warrior, so tall and strong as he was; most settlers were of course accustomed to heavy work and severe conditions. He had been a little embarrassed by this talk and had said that he thought his big nose might be in the way when he tried to find the sight to aim at the enemy.

He was promised thirty dollars recruit money the moment he was accepted. During his term of service he would receive fifteen dollars a month besides food and uniform. Old Abe was to his soldiers as a father to his children and saw to it that they received everything they needed, the Swedish captain had said. Karl Oskar would have nothing to worry about while he was in the war.

Then came the physical examination and he was shown to another room where a doctor took charge of him. He had to take off every thread of clothing from his body, standing there so naked in that room that he felt ashamed even though only the doctor and another man were in there. The doctor looked over every part of his body, listened to his chest when he breathed, peeked down his throat, felt him in the groin, as if he must be able between the legs also, or whatever it was for. Then the doctor went to a corner and whispered words he had to repeat and showed him a picture with terribly small letters he had to read. And the medical inspector said the same thing as the captain: He was a fine soldier. Lungs, heart, vision, and hearing were as good as they could be in a human being, each part of his body was in excellent condition, all his faculties perfect.

Finally he was asked to run across the floor, just to try the legs a little. He ran around, strutted about, and stretched out his legs and it did hurt a little in the left shank, as it always did when he moved it quickly. He always dragged that leg when he was tired. After a few turns the doctor asked him how long the leg had bothered him. He told the truth: He had injured it the first year he was in America and it had never healed properly.

He was told to run a few times more. Then the doctor said: “Sorry, your left leg is not good enough for a soldier.” No one could go out in war with such a leg. He limped on it when he ran, and a soldier could not limp in any way, he must be able to run perfectly if need be. He should have taken care of his leg, attended to the injury while there still was time for it to heal right. Now it was grown together in such a way that he would have it as long as he lived.

Karl Oskar himself felt that his leg had improved this last year, he had never for a moment thought it would prevent him from enlisting. Nor did he think it would be so important for a soldier to be able to run fast. The most important thing, in his opinion, was to hold his post and not turn and run away from the enemy. And he had told the doctor as much; he knew he was no runner, but he didn’t think the troops of the North would have to run away all the time. The doctor laughed and said, on the contrary, he was afraid Karl Oskar couldn’t run fast enough to pursue the enemy.

Because of his left leg he had been rejected. The Swedish captain felt very sorry about it, and before Karl Oskar left, this nobleman made a speech and thanked him for having shown his loyalty as a citizen in honestly offering to do his duty to his adopted land. However, since he was a farmer he could still do great service to the Union. He could sow and harvest his crops and raise cattle; those who were in the war needed food, said the captain, probably to make him feel less bad because he had been rejected and was useless for military service.

Kristina pricked up her ears at the last words: Perhaps he needed to be consoled. She said, “Now you can stay home without anyone reproaching you. I hope your conscience is at rest.”

But she had understood right along that he wasn’t satisfied.

“It’s galling to be a useless person,” he said, “one who isn’t quite worthy of full measure. .”

Kristina exclaimed hotly, “Are you ashamed because you aren’t worthy to slaughter people? That’s the silliest thing I’ve heard in my whole life!”

“You don’t quite understand this sort of thing, Kristina.”

“Oh no! It’s an awfully vain man who is ashamed because he can’t go out and kill!”

“Well, I was a little disappointed and hurt when I was rejected as a useless weakling and not up to standard.”

Kristina knew Karl Oskar had some great shortcomings, the shortcomings of all men. He suffered from pride and self-assurance, he thought he was good enough to do anything. This was the original sin in him. Deficient! Because he was rejected as a soldier! If she were a man she would be proud that she was found unsuitable to kill people!

She resumed: When cattle were chosen for slaughter, usually the injured or old or deformed came first, worn-out oxen or cows that gave little milk. But when they sent men to slaughter on the field of battle then they took the healthy and young and perfect first! Those best fitted to live were sent away to die!

Karl Oskar rose slowly from the table this evening. He set down his left foot heavily on the floor, as if he wanted to test it, to assure himself that the leg still was able to carry him. Then he shook his shoulders and threw out both his hands as if shaking off a burden of long standing: “Don’t let’s talk about it any more! You’ll have me here at home now as long as the war lasts!”

If he had heard Kristina’s prayer the evening before, he would have known who had prevented him from going to the Civil War where he might have lost his eternal life.

III. THE FIRST COMMANDMENT FOR EMIGRANTS

Thou shalt not regret Thy emigration,

Thou shalt love America as Thy young

Bride and Sweden as Thine Old Mother.

— 1—

In the evening Kristina dug around the Astrakhan apple tree under the east gable of the house. With her fingers she pulled out quickroot and other weeds, with the spade she piled a bank of black earth round the trunk. In this way her old father in Duvemåla had attended to the fruit trees in fall. This tree, grown from a seed from her parents’ home in Sweden, was already taking on height and breadth. The sapling was now a young tree that had bloomed three springs. But as yet it had produced no fruit. Two springs in succession the blossoms had withered away from severe night frost. Last spring was warmer and the blooms remained, but at fruiting time the tree was covered with caterpillars which gnawed on the stems, and during a storm in June the unripe apples fell to the ground.

The seasons in America were unpredictable and unreasonable. Her Astrakhan tree had suffered badly from exposure so far each year. But the Sweden sapling was still in its early youth and it would surely bear fruit in another year.

The bank of topsoil was ready and Kristina straightened her back and rested her foot on the spade. She had not yet done the evening milking. Johan and Harald had driven the cows into the corral at the barn. Round and about lay the fields where the stubble left from harvested crops shone golden brown in the clear evening light. The sugar maples to the front of the house had changed the color of their leaves to deep yellow and the oaks beyond the field stood rust-red. Already in the mornings a sprinkle of frost, like drops of milk, glittered on the grass. And gusts of wind had begun to feel chilly against the cheeks — the autumnal wind which harrowed the ground with rough strokes.

Soon winter would knock at the door, Kristina’s twelfth winter in North America. She wondered if she would still be alive when the next snow melted and next spring arrived.

Since her miscarriage two and a half years ago she had not enjoyed the same health and strength as before. However little she worked she felt tired and her limbs weak. Her body strength simply would not return. After her childbeds she had quickly recuperated, but perhaps it was harder for a woman to bear a stillborn child than a living one. She suffered also in her soul: the sorrow that she — in bearing a lifeless offspring — had brought death into the world.

From time to time she was bothered with pain in her lower abdomen. The pain might disappear for a few days but it always came back. She wondered if this had anything to do with her great fatigue. Every evening when she went to bed she feared she might be unable to rise next morning. And how she would have liked to stay in bed in the morning! She felt as if she had only just tasted the rest, barely sipped of the refreshment. She would have liked to stay in bed for weeks and months and only enjoy herself. Perhaps this tiredness would remain in her body as long as life itself remained.

But death did not frighten her any more. The day before Robert walked into the forest and lay down to die at the side of a brook he had pointed out to her how he had reconciled himself to leaving this world: He had stopped complaining to the Lord about life and death and was satisfied with man’s lot in life: Believe me, Kristina, Death can bring nothing evil to me — I am untouchable! Now she herself had gained the same conviction: She had conquered the worldly; death could not reach her soul. Why should she fear death which could take nothing from her except this earth, which everyone must lose?

She had over the years harbored longings for earthly things and tried to be satisfied with this world. It bothered her that life offered so much of goodness and beauty which others enjoyed but which she never would have an opportunity to partake of. She suffered because the lot of the emigrant had fallen on her. Year after year she suffered here in America from the thought that never would she return to the land of her childhood and youth. A homeland had once been given to her — she had lost it, and she could never have a new one. Her mind would never be at peace because of her longing for home. She lived as an unhappy and strayed creature and was afraid she might be lost to eternity. Until God rough-handedly showed her the right way and she accepted her lot; until she got rid of her worldly inclination and opened her mind to the thoughts of eternity. Only then did she know that her soul-suffering and inner disturbance were not caused by her inability to liberate herself from the old homeland, but rather that she was unable to give up this world.

The emigration was not her unlucky fate. How could a move on this earth affect a person? What did it matter if she lived her fleeting days in one place on the globe or another? Why was she concerned about dying in one spot or another? In the New World or in the Old? In Sweden or North America? She had her permanent home in a land she could never lose.

There was only one move now that meant anything to Kristina: her soul’s liberation from the body, the move from one life to another, from temporal life to eternity. From this belief sprang her understanding of her life on earth.

And once she had reconciled herself to her fate no more uneasiness disturbed her. Nothing that happened in this world worried or frightened her. But for her husband who shared her life and for the children she had borne into this world she harbored love’s anxiety. She had entrusted them to the Creator: Give me strength to endure a few years more! Don’t make my children motherless as yet!

Every evening Kristina thanked God that she had been granted another day with Karl Oskar and her children.

— 2—

Another day was counted out of her life. She leaned the spade against the house and went into the kitchen for her milkpans.

Karl Oskar had driven to Taylors Falls today and was not yet back. She wondered why he was late. She had sent him on an errand to Anders Månsson’s since he anyway was so close.

As Kristina sat on her milking stool in the stable, her thoughts wandered to Anders Månsson, who had come here before them and had housed them in his cabin during their first months in the Territory. He had been struck by the same misfortune as she — homesickness. But he had sought other aid than she: He tried to drink away his regret over his emigration. He ruined himself and his possessions with the American brännvin. She had heard that he had been forced to sell his last cow, and she felt sorry for Fina-Kajsa and her son that they had now no milk. Her thoughts went to the day when Anders Månsson had lent them the milch-cow Lady during their first winter in the wilderness. The milk had helped her save the lives of her children that winter. Now they themselves had a cow that had just calved and today she had sent milk and some biestings-pudding to the Månssons with Karl Oskar.

Before she was through with the milking she heard the sound of a spring wagon as it stopped before the stable door: Karl Oskar was back. A few moments later he came into the stable.

She noticed at once that his expression was not his usual one. He was tense; his lips were contracted, and his eyes under the wrinkled brows were severe.

Did he bring a message of accident or misfortune?

“Has anything happened?”

“Don’t be upset. Nothing has happened to me, but when I came to Anders Månsson’s this morning. .”

During the last days Fina-Kajsa and her son had often been in Kristina’s thoughts. Perhaps it had meant something?

She received the answer as she now heard what Karl Oskar had to relate.

— 3—

Anders Månsson’s place had seemed completely desolate and deserted when he had arrived there. Not a living soul was in sight outside. The fields were neglected; a rusty plow lay in one field but no fall plowing had been started, some scythes had been left in the grass, the barn door hung askew on one hinge, and by the wall stood the old ox cart — the screech-wagon — with broken wheels. In the potato field were still the frozen, black stalks — the potatoes had not yet been picked in spite of the night frost.

The cabin door was bolted from the inside. Karl Oskar banged at it but no one opened. Not a sound inside. He tried to peek through the window but the curtains were drawn.

He could not discover a sign of life at this place and he got a feeling that something was wrong.

Looking again toward the potato field he noticed something unusual. In among the blackened stalks lay some sort of bundle, a gray pile, it looked like. He thought he recognized pieces of clothing and went over to investigate.

It was old Fina-Kajsa, stretched out on her back in a furrow. She had the hoe beside her. She lay as immobile and still as the earth under her body; her eyes were half-open and stared at the sky. There was something final and finished about the old woman’s position, something fulfilled and irrevocable. Karl Oskar guessed at the first glance how things stood.

As far as he could see Fina-Kajsa was dead. No one except a dead person could lie so peacefully in a furrow in a field. The old one had been hoeing up potatoes and it seemed natural that one laboring in the earth should assume this position at the last. Fina-Kajsa wore her dark gray shawl, the same color as the earth she rested on. Her body lay there like a hummock in the ground, as if it already were part of the soil.

At her head stood a basket, the bottom barely covered with a few great, oblong, reddish tubers, the best kind of America’s potatoes. Her hands still held on to the handle of the hoe. The old hands seemed only sinews and bone under the skin, almost bare bones, and the fingers branched out like thin, peeled twigs. Fina-Kajsa had been miserably lean and scraggly the last years — now she seemed small as a child. Her body seemed mainly a pile of clothing, a heap of bundled-together rags. Her mouth was open, a toothless hole. The caved-in face was brown and scabby but the whites of her eyes shone like white daisies in withered grass in early spring. In those eyes life had remained longest.

The furrow the old one had begun to pick was long, stretching from one end of the field to the other. She had hoed only a few yards when she fell; before her lay much unfinished labor, perhaps she had mumbled to herself before she fell, chewing on her disappointment: She was never to see the great farm and the handsome buildings her son had painted in his letters from North America.

Fina-Kajsa had been hoeing in long, forceful strides. Karl Oskar could see her work here on the field, he could hear her voice mumbling: Hoe on, hoe on! The furrow is long! The field is big! Ackanamej! America is a big country! I’ll never get there! Hoe on, Fina-Kajsa, old woman! Ackanamej! Ackanamej!

The farm woman from Öland, Sweden, had hoed her last in life. The furrows had been long, the field large, and in her basket were only a few potatoes at the bottom. Yet, even after death she had not let go of the hoe.

Karl Oskar remained standing there with the milk pail and the pudding from Kristina. Too late; now the gift could be used at her funeral.

But where was Fina-Kajsa’s son? At the German Fischer’s inn in Taylors Falls? Or did he lie dead drunk in his bed? Where to look for a son who let his worn-out, aged mother pick potatoes alone while he himself — well, where did he keep himself?

As if in reply a noise was heard from the log cabin. The heavy door opened slowly inward and Anders Månsson stepped out on the stoop. Karl Oskar’s banging a few moments ago must have awakened him. He did not look toward the potato field, but went to the corner to let his water.

Karl Oskar hurried toward him.

Fina-Kajsa’s son was bareheaded, his hair stood up straight as nails from the top of his skull, his cheeks were covered with a matted red beard. He was already stooping like a broken man. He peered at the caller with blood-shot, watery eyes as he greeted him.

“How goes it, Nilsson?”

Perhaps it seemed unusual to be lying inside in the middle of forenoon, a sunny, beautiful weekday, and he added apologetically, ashamed: “I was just resting a moment.”

He was still walking half in his sleep, it seemed.

Karl Oskar had no time for greeting. He said tartly, “Your mother lies in the potato field — she’s dead!”

Anders Månsson slowly opened his mouth, looking at his countryman as if he had not understood.

Karl Oskar took him by the arm and together they walked to the field. The son looked in silence at his mother lying so still on her back, her fingers clutching the hoe handle. Openmouthed he beheld the picture before him. Then he rubbed his running eyes and scratched his wild beard. After staring a few moments at the old body in the black-gray shawl he turned questioningly to his countryman beside him, as if Karl Oskar must explain this sight to him — as if he himself understood nothing.

Karl Oskar took him by the shoulder and shook him — wasn’t he awake yet? He stank of whiskey, his head was still in a drunken stupor.

“Are you still drunk? Can’t you talk?”

Anders Månsson had lost his power of speech at the sight of the dead one in the furrow. It was incredible to him that his mother could have laid herself down in this way out in the field, could remain lying so quietly in the same position regardless of how long he looked at her.

Karl Oskar felt sorry for him but couldn’t help showing his impatience: “You must know your own mother!”

At last a word came from Anders Månsson’s gaping mouth: “. . Mother. . oh yes, yes. . Mother. .”

Karl Oskar thought Fina-Kajsa had been dead for several hours, probably since early morning. And he also assumed that her son had been dead drunk since last evening and only now had awakened.

Now he stood here irresolutely and stared at his mother, and it looked as if he could stand like that indefinitely without any intention of doing anything with her lifeless body. Could he possibly have in mind to let her have her grave here in the potato field furrow?

“Help me, Månsson. We must carry her inside. .”

Karl Oskar loosened the hoe from the dead one’s grip. Anders Månsson bent down and took hold of her legs; his hands shook like those of a very old man. Together they carried her toward the cabin. Fina-Kajsa was not heavy, she was not a burden for one man alone, much less for two, but Karl Oskar felt that the son ought to help carry his mother home.

They placed Fina-Kajsa on her bed, and Karl Oskar pulled a blanket over the corpse.

He saw a whiskey keg beside the son’s bed, a five-gallon one from Fischer’s inn; Anders Månsson fed his drunkenness as long as the whiskey lasted. Karl Oskar would have liked to give the drunkard a good talking to: While drinking in bed he had let his mother work herself to death. But what use would there be in reproach? The dead body on the other bed was reproach enough.

In his soul Anders Månsson was a decent person, and now he had double sorrow: his regret over what he had done to his mother.

The two settlers went outside and sat down on the stoop. Karl Oskar said he would help as much as he could with the funeral. On his way home he would stop by at Jonas Petter’s and tell Swedish Anna to come and wash the body and dress it for the coffin. The Irish carpenter in Taylors Falls was sure to make the coffin.

“Thanks, Nilsson. You’re good to me. .”

Karl Oskar replied that Anders Månsson had helped him greatly that first year they were out here; he was glad if he could help in return. Fina-Kajsa’s son breathed heavily and his voice was hoarse; he coughed hollowly, as if his cough came from a deep hole, an empty space in his chest, a hollow, vaulted cellar.

“I don’t feel well. I’ve spoiled my health here in Minnesota.”

His power of speech was returning. He felt his head; returning also was the hangover.

“Life out here is hard on one’s health; not all can take it. .”

“But you must stop drinking, Månsson! You’ll wreck your life and everything. .”

“You mean I’ve wrecked my mother. .?”

“You’re killing yourself as well! Stop your drinking!”

“Oh. . oh. . oh. . ha. . ha. .”

It rattled down in his throat, it almost sounded like an eerie, echoing laughter. Stupefied, Karl Oskar looked at him.

But Anders Månsson was not laughing. There was some irritation in his throat; he coughed — he emitted a sound that was neither cry nor laugh, only an outcry from a man in hopeless despair:

“Stop drinking! What the hell! That’s easy, ya betcha!”

“What’s the matter? Are you still drunk?”

“You said to stop drinking. . as if it were that easy! Like stopping your job or something. Just quit! It isn’t that easy, Nilsson. You don’t understand my trouble! Not one little part of it!”

“Have you tried to stop?”

“Every second day for ten years!”

“Why can’t you stop?”

“Why!?”

“Yes, tell me. .”

“Why. .? Because. . because I’m afraid. .”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Nilsson, you can’t. .”

He stopped. He seemed to have lost his speech again. He looked through the open door into the cabin. He could see the foot end of the bed, he could see a pair of feet in dirty white, worn-out woolen socks, a pair of old feet which today had tramped the earth for the last time.

He leaned over with both hands to his face. His body began to shake.

“What are you afraid of, Månsson?”

He did not reply, only mumbled again: “Mother!”

Karl Oskar waited. Fina-Kajsa’s son must have time to gather his senses. Unprepared, he had seen his mother lying dead in the field — that was about as much as a man could take, even when he was well.

After a moment Anders Månsson began to talk again. He lowered his voice and looked about as if afraid some outsider were listening:

“I’ll tell you, Nilsson. .”

“What are you afraid of?”

“The madhouse. .”

“The madhouse. .?”

“Yes — do you understand, Nilsson. .?”

“No, Månsson, I don’t understand at all.”

But in the next moment he understood. Fina-Kajsa’s son was talking about the insane asylum.

“That place — you know. Can you understand my trouble now?”

Anders Månsson crouched and looked about as if danger lurked, as if something were round the corner of the house that he didn’t want to see, as if the madhouse were quite close, on his own ground. Yes, wasn’t it back there, beyond the field? He had seen it many times, it came closer each time he looked at it. Next time it might be right here, in his own field, opening its doors for him.

“The madhouse. .”

Right here at his doorstep! Cozy and nice! Come right in, Anders Månsson! The doors are wide open! This is your home! Come in!

Fina-Kajsa’s son saw things that weren’t there, and Karl Oskar had received an answer to his question.

— 4—

Anders Månsson had once confided in Kristina that when he came to the Territory there were hardly any people there except Indians. For months on end he had no living soul to speak to; he could not have felt more alone and lost if he had been the only human being in the world. The loneliness made him long for the homeland. Perhaps he could have gathered together enough money for a return ticket but he felt ashamed to go back as poor and empty-handed as he had been when he left. Everyone would call him a failure. And when he left for America he had been so proud and uppity that he had called Sweden a shit-country, and said that he would rather be eaten by carrion than be buried there. He had emigrated with the thought of never returning, and if he went back he would have to suffer for his pride; he would have to eat every word he had uttered about the old country. He was ashamed to go back. Then he had written his parents a letter of lies: He liked it in America, all went well with him, he had a fine farm. They could come and live with him in their old age — he invited them because he was sure they would never come. But one day his mother had arrived and surprised him, and she had asked, where were his fine mansion and his vast fields he had written about? She would never believe he had lied so cruelly to her. As the years went by she became a little peculiar — at the end she thought her son was hiding his fine farm somewhere deep in the forest. And she kept asking, “Anders, where is your American estate?”

And while longing for Sweden Anders Månsson had begun to drink; he kept thinking about what he had done and worried about it, but once having changed countries he could never change back. Thus he had become the eternal whiskey-thirster.

Today Karl Oskar viewed one countryman’s plight. But he could neither advise nor help.

He said, “Whiskey is a poor comforter, Månsson.”

“Better a false than none. .”

“But afterward you lie sick in your bed. .”

Fina-Kajsa’s son took a firm hold of Karl Oskar’s sleeve, his eyes wild: “Yes, yes! And the worst is to wake up. It feels like my head were boiling in a caldron, a slow boil. . Then I get scared to death! That’s when I see the madhouse! The madhouse! Then there’s only one help. . one help. .”

What did it help to warn or advise here? No outsider could lessen a burden or ache in someone else’s body or soul. Anders Månsson fled from his torture to whiskey; he woke up with the same plague and fled again. He was in a vicious circle, he had walled himself in in a prison and each time he escaped he locked himself in more securely.

Fina-Kajsa’s son turned about and looked inside the cabin. He could see two old feet in a pair of old socks, worn and muddy from the potato field. And by and by his eyes began to run, tears streamed down his cheeks and watered his matted beard — he was able to cry.

“. . Mother. .”

Karl Oskar had nothing more to say. He knew of no way in which to help the man beside him who kept crying — a man who had locked himself in and every day kept walling up the door to his prison.

— 5—

The Swedish parish in Chisago County had lost its oldest member: Fina-Kajsa Andersdotter had been seventy-seven years old.

She was buried under the silver maples, on the beautiful promontory beside the lake that had been set aside for burial ground. All the surviving members of that group of immigrants she had come with to the Territory in 1850 followed her to the grave. There were, besides her son, thirteen people, adults and children, who stood by and watched as the earth was shoveled onto her coffin. Only two of the original group were missing: Arvid Pettersson, who lay in an unknown grave, and Robert Nilsson, who had come to this plot before her.

The mortality rate had until now been low in the parish, as most of the immigrants were people in their best years. Only some twenty graves had been dug in the new cemetery, and many of these held children of a year or less. Old age would not for many years become an important cause of death among the immigrants of the St. Croix Valley.

A few weeks after Fina-Kajsa’s funeral Jonas Petter came to Karl Oskar’s and said that Anders Månsson had disappeared. People looking for him had found his cabin unlocked and deserted. He had not been seen in Taylors Falls for some time, not even at Fischer’s inn, where he used to go daily. The German had begun to wonder why his whiskey customer did not show.

His gun was still hanging on its peg in the cabin; he was not out hunting. But some accident could have happened to him in the wilderness, some stray Indian might have murdered him, or he might have done himself some harm. Perhaps he had left because he couldn’t endure living alone after his mother’s death. But in that case, since he was a good old hunter, he ought to have taken his gun with him.

Jonas Petter wanted Karl Oskar to join him in a posse to look for their missing countryman. Danjel Andreasson and his son Sven would also come, and a few American settlers, old hunting friends of Månsson who wished to participate.

All told there were about a dozen men in the posse to look for the missing man. They searched the forest near his claim but found no sign of him. The posse stayed in the wilderness several days without discovering any clues to explain his disappearance. The men dragged the little pond near his cabin but caught only the half-rotten carcass of a drowned elk calf and an old canoe of the kind the Indians used.

Finally the posse gave up. They knew as little when they stopped as when they had begun. What had happened to Anders Månsson? Was he alive or dead?

The mystery was solved some time later.

A boy from Franconia was fishing at the rapids below Taylors Falls when he noticed a hat that had stuck between two stones in the St. Croix River. The boy fished up the hat with his hook. It looked as if it had been long in the water. And in the hat was a clue to its owner: two big letters printed on the sweatband in red ink, now somewhat blurred but still quite legible: A. M. And there was no doubt to whose head this hat had belonged, since Mr. Fischer in Taylors Falls recognized it as belonging to Anders Månsson. He had once forgotten it at the inn.

All thought that Fina-Kajsa’s son had himself jumped into the stream. He could possibly have fallen in while fishing, but he never fished in the St. Croix River, and he could have had no other errand to the rapids.

His body was never found. Undoubtedly it had floated a long way from the place where his hat was stuck between the stones. During the fall rains the strong current might carry a corpse with it to the still greater stream, the Mississippi, which then would take charge and carry it to the big sea.

Anders Månsson had been the first Swedish settler in the St. Croix Valley, but no grave opened for him under the silver maples in the settlers’ cemetery. He himself undertook the one emigration that remained for him.

One single decision had decided his life, the great decision to emigrate, the irrevocable, the irreversible. To him had been put a strong command which he was unable to follow, the first commandment in the emigrants catechism: Thou shalt not regret Thy emigration!

IV. THE SETTLERS’ HOLY DAYS

— 1—

That autumn Karl Oskar cleared and plowed the last of the meadow that had originally stretched from the forest down to the lake. Thus he had turned into a tilled field the entire slope which had at first attracted him and made him select this lakeside for his farm. He had now broken more than thirty acres and no more meadow ground for tilling was available on his claim. And Kristina thought they now had enough without further clearing.

But Karl Oskar liked to sit at the gable window and look out at the oak stand on the out-jutting tongue of land to the east of the house; those mighty, high-breasted oaks with their enormous crowns grew in topsoil at least three feet deep, a ground that was as fertile as his fields. The grove back there called for a tiller as it were; it would add fifteen acres to his field!

Up to now the tiller of these shores by the Indian lake had only needed to put the plow into the ground and turn the turf. It was easy enough to break new fields on even meadowland, it was something else to tackle a heavy oak forest. But those great trees — a mixture of white oak and red oak — kept challenging him: Try to make a field here if you can! Our roots are thick and strong and go deep into the ground — try to pull us from our hold! Here your strength won’t suffice! Come and try!

This oak grove had trees that were four to six feet in diameter. The felling alone would be an immense labor. And afterward the greatest hindrance would remain: the stumps. How could he get rid of them? He pondered this problem at great length. Oak stumps in America were as much of an obstacle to a tiller as stones in Sweden.

How could Karl Oskar conquer these mighty oaks, so securely rooted in the deep soil? Well, his sons were growing up, and becoming stronger; he must wait with this new ground breaking until they could help him. As soon as Johan and Harald could do a full-grown man’s work, they would tackle the oak grove; then the strength of the tiller would be measured against the oaks.

He was also planning for his new buildings. But with the Civil War came dear times. Prices on implements made of iron and steel rose quickly. Everything he needed to buy for his house building grew more expensive. He must wait awhile. He had hauled thick oak logs to the steam mill in Center City, where they had been sawed into planks and boards for the new house; he had a tall pile of timber already. And this year he planned to cut sills and foundation logs.

But the war delayed all activity, all building in this part of the country. There must be an end to destruction and ruination before new undertakings could be started; one could not build a new house while the old was still burning.

— 2—

A mile and a half from their farm stood their church, a modest building of rough timbers, deep in the forest. But the church pointed a little wooden spire toward Heaven, indicating it was a God’s house, a Lord’s temple. The Swedish immigrants had sacrificed many days of labor on their church, they had gone in debt for it and had not yet been able fully to pay for it.

Karl Oskar and Kristina went to the timber church every Sunday unless blizzards or other bad weather prevented them. Once in a great while they would stay at home out of pure tiredness and celebrate their day of rest in the home. But the distance between the church and their home was not so great that they could not hear the ringing of the bell which had been hung last year. The bell had cost all of ninety dollars and was paid for by the “nuisance tax”—fines levied against parish members who in one way or another had misbehaved during the service. Petrus Olausson himself, the church warden, had suggested this tax, and he was greatly lauded for it when at last it bought the church a bell. To the poor parish, barely able to support a pastor, ninety dollars was a great sum. First and always, it was cash that the settlers lacked.

Kristina could again hear the ringing of a church bell. On days when a favorable wind carried the sound it seemed quite close to her. But to Kristina’s ears the new bell did not have the thunderous, sacred tones of a real church bell. As a child home in Ljuder, when she heard the bells she would shudder deep in her heart: The sound came from the heavens, like the thunder of the doomsday trumpet. The ringing from on high called to communion or service. But the settlers’ bell here in America had an entirely different tone. It almost sounded like a dinner bell on a farm, calling to an ordinary meal; it was better suited to a weekday than a Sunday. The bell did have a light, quite beautiful tone, but it jingled rather than rang. The sound was pleasing to Kristina’s ears but found no response in her soul.

To her the church bells of Ljuder signified weddings and funerals, peoples union in life and their departure from it, the move into a new home and the move to eternity. On Sundays the bells from the parish church hurled a mighty command to the inhabitants: It was the Sabbath, they must go to church to confess and shed the burden of sins accumulated through the working week, cleanse body and soul. At the first sound of the bell on Sunday morning her father used to say: Now I hear it is Sunday! I feel it is a holy day! Time to wash and change shirts! Those bells instilled piety in the minds of the listeners.

To Sunday belonged also organ music and the singing of psalms. For many years the Chisago people had held their services and sung their hymns without an organ, even though the service sounded empty without the musical instrument — God’s house was a poorhouse. Then last year they had gone into debt to put in an organ that cost a hundred and sixty dollars. Karl Oskar had voted against this purchase, for he felt they couldn’t yet afford it. And when the organ was installed he did not like the sound of it: It must not be a first-class instrument with a sound that was harsh and screeched in his ears and thundered like the roaring of an ox. It could also be that he didn’t understand organ music.

Kristlna had never missed the organ at the services; if the words of the psalms came from a heart in need of God they would reach him without the aid of an organ. She could feel reverence in her heart without the help of steeple, bell, organ, or other worldly instruments.

— 3—

The Chisago Lake parish had engaged a new pastor who arrived in October. His name, Johannes Stenius, sounded like a good minister’s name and he was a real minister directly from Sweden. There was a dearth of educated preachers, and for several years the Swedes in the St. Croix Valley had borrowed pastors from other parishes. They were now well pleased to have their own shepherd, ordained in their homeland. Rumors had already reached them that Pastor Stenius was a capable preacher of God’s Word, stringently adhering to the pure Lutheran religion.

At the first wedding the new pastor was to perform in the settlers’ church, the bridegroom was related to Kristina — Danjel’s oldest son Sven, her blood cousin.

Sven Danjelsson was to marry Ragnhild Säter, a young Norwegian girl who had recently come to the St. Croix Valley. Women invariably married shortly after their arrival, usually within a month. In this woman-empty land they had only to choose among the many men who showed up as suitors. And the men had indeed flocked around Ragnhild, who was an unusually attractive girl, and who had refused many before she decided to exchange her Norwegian name for a Swedish one and become Mrs. Danjelsson. Sven had staked a claim and built himself a cabin at Acton in Meeker County, at its western border where land still was plentiful and easy to clear. After the wedding, Danjel’s son and daughter-in-law would live in their new home in Meeker.

Karl Oskar and Kristina were invited to the wedding feast, which was given by Danjel Andreasson, as the brides parents were living in her old home in Norway. A heavy rain fell as they started out for the church in the morning. Kristina took the opportunity to use her new umbrella which Karl Oskar recently had bought for her. It was a fine gift, made of dark blue silk. For the first time in her life she was using an umbrella. In Sweden only upper-class wives had this kind of protection against rain; it was an object for show-off and vanity, not suitable for simple farm folk. Therefore Kristina almost felt like a noble lady today as she mounted the spring wagon and put up her umbrella. But here in America all women used many decorations and ornaments which in Sweden were reserved for upper-class wives. Even settler wives wore rosettes and bows and lace and other glitter on their clothes, and flowers and feathers on top of their heads. Moreover, an umbrella was not only an ornament, it was a protection against rain as well.

And it did rain this day! It literally poured from early morning till late at night on Sven’s and Ragnhild’s wedding day. But rain was a good omen since it promised great riches for the bridal couple.

To the parishioners this wedding in their church was a denial of the common statement that Swedes and Norwegians could not get along in America.

After the ritual Pastor Stenius spoke to the young couple of the appalling increase of evil in the world at this time and warned them against religious seducers and wrong preachers who might seek to lead them astray from their mother church. He also warned against the greatest sins of the day: whoring, drinking, and dancing. The pleasure of dancing was invented by the old creeping Snake; in halls of music and dance the virtue of women met its defeat. Finally, the pastor condemned the excesses of female dress which in these latter days stimulated men’s carnal desires and increased the number of whoring men.

It was not a great company that afterward gathered for the wedding feast at Danjel Andreasson’s farm, and the groom’s father had invited only those countrymen who had come with him from the old parish. He had once paid for the journey of Ulrika of Västergöhl, now the wife of Baptist minister Henry O. Jackson. She had not come to the church — she would not enter Lutheran churches — but she joined the guests at the wedding reception.

Kristina was shy when she met people who spoke only English, which thus put her outside the company. She had been in America almost twelve years now but could hardly speak a word of the language, although she was a citizen of this country. She had gone through the years as if deaf and dumb, as far as the language was concerned. Often she had met Americans who seemed kind and helpful but because of the language barrier she had been unable to enjoy their company. She was beginning to regret that she hadn’t started to learn English from the very first day out here. But she still shuddered at the sound of this tongue, so unseemly and twisted. In trying to use one single word she felt she would sprain her tongue. She was told to bite off her words and put her tongue against her teeth. But this only made a hissing and gurgling sound.

Here at the wedding feast in Danjels house, however, Kristina need not feel apart from the company. But she confided to Ulrika: Each kind of animal had been given only one sound — the dogs in America had the same bark as dogs in Sweden — why had the Creator then given people different tongues so they couldn’t understand each other?

“Punishment for their sins! Because they built the Tower of Babel, you know!” informed Ulrika.

Mrs. Henry O. Jackson was not of the opinion that an immigrant could learn English in school and then speak it fluently. The language must come to one’s tongue of its own free will, of its own whim and fancy, on the spur of the moment.

“I myself, I speak English from inspiration!”

“Well, that’s why you spoke it from the beginning, I guess. So your husband-to-be could understand you?”

“Yes, of course. Henry and I understood each other that way from the very beginning.”

Ulrika considered the day when she was married to Pastor Jackson as the greatest happening of her life. Kristina knew she celebrated that day each year; each fourth of May she put on her old bridal gown and the pastor donned his cutaway.

The two women had withdrawn from the other guests and were sitting in a corner of the room. It was only seldom they had the opportunity to speak to each other in confidence.

Ulrika had mentioned her husband’s name, then she sighed and became silent. She seemed depressed. It was not the first time Kristina had been surprised at her behavior when her marriage to Jackson was spoken of. He was such a patient and good-hearted man, but there must be something here that wasn’t quite right as it should be. Had something happened between the couple lately? It sounded as if Ulrika was burdened by something unsaid — why did she always sigh like that at her husband’s name?

“Henry is very good to me, very good,” she said. “But a woman can be happy in one way and unhappy in another.”

“Unhappy in another? What do you mean?” Kristina’s eyes were wide open.

Ulrika looked about and continued in a low voice: “We’re at a wedding today, that’s why my thoughts go in that other way. I’ll tell you, but it must stay between us of course.”

She pulled out her handkerchief, blew her nose thoroughly, and leaned intimately toward Kristina. Henry and she didn’t fit together in bed any more. She had hoped for a long time that it could be worked out, so they would fit, but as they had shared the marital bed now for ten years, she knew there was no hope of improvement. Henry didn’t handle a woman the right way at the very moment when it counted. She didn’t want to blame him in the least for this, because he hadn’t been trained with women from his youth, and when he got a wife — at a ripe age — he was too old to train. And perhaps a man’s way in bed was something he was born with, something that came naturally, if bedplay were to be excellent.

Ulrika looked toward the upper end of the table; there on the bench, in today’s seat of honor, sat the young bridal couple. Her eyes lingered a moment on the young Norwegian girl, whose cheeks were rosy-red with health and from blushing, whose eyes, glitteringly clear, never for a moment left the groom.

Ulrika sighed again in envy and desire: “You see, Kristina, in my marriage I don’t get that bodily bliss a woman craves. The great temptations of my old body have come over me. Desire for sins of the flesh. I have eyed other men. .”

Kristina grew disturbed at Ulrika’s confidence: “What are you talking about?! You mean that you — the wife of Pastor Jackson. .?”

“Yes, it’s true — I’ve been tempted to whoring.”

Kristina made a sudden motion with her hand, as if to silence her. But Ulrika went right on.

“I had to tell you. It happened last summer. A Norwegian tempted me so I had to. . You know him, Sigurd Thomassen. .”

“The shoemaker in Stillwater? The one who always complains because he doesn’t have a woman?”

“Exactly! It was he!”

Kristina remembered the man from Ulrika’s great Christmas party when he had tried to become intimate with her: “I’m a kind man, I don’t wish to do anything wrong with any woman. .”

“Did the Norwegian tempt you to adultery?”

“He wanted the same thing as I.”

And Ulrika’s ample bosom rose with her deep breathing; in this woman-empty America Thomassen was far from the only one who had tried to seduce her. She had met men who had both the inclination, the lust, and the fresh approach. But the Norwegian was the only one whom she herself had been tempted to satisfy, because he had a gentle heart — he was a good man who had lived single for many years, poor devil. She had many times allowed him to take her around the waist and pat her — oh, quite innocently! But his eyes had always told her what he wanted.

Then it had happened, one time last summer. She had left a pair of shoes to be resoled, and late one evening she had gone to Sigurd Thomassen’s house to pick them up. He offered to make coffee for her and she thanked him and stayed. They were alone, he had set the table in his bedroom, and while they drank their coffee he complained of how many years it had been since a woman had comforted him in bed. He was pining and yearning, he was almost at his wit’s end. And then she began to wish sometime she could give him this enjoyment he had so long gone without.

Sometime — and when would be better than at this very moment?

At first she hadn’t thought anything of it that they sat alone in his bedroom; when she came to fetch her shoes she had only innocent thoughts. But by and by the other thoughts came over her. Sigurd’s bedroom was so small, his bed so large; they could barely move in there without touching the bed. And without realizing how it happened she was suddenly on his bed, while he patted and petted her — they were acting like young lovers. Then the thought came to her: What Henry didn’t have the power to give her, the Norwegian might. A man who had lived single for so long must have saved much for a woman.

He was ready to turn her over in his bed, and she was ready to be turned over; she could not resist a man’s hands as they stroked her loins and hips, and she grew utterly faint and helpless. At last she herself turned over on her back.

That was how far it had gone, so close to adultery was she: She herself had turned over.

Then rescue came. At the very last second help had come.

She had not noticed that Sigurd had locked the door when she came in, and this was not the act of a gentleman. Now suddenly someone was knocking to get in. He had already begun to undress and didn’t wish to go and open the door. But the hangings were insistent and at last he had to go; two little children had brought a pair of their father’s boots to be resoled. As Sigurd took the boots she could hear the voices of the children and couldn’t resist opening the door just a little to peek at them. There stood two cute little girls with flaxen braids and rosy cheeks and eyes as blue as heaven itself. And as she looked at them she understood at once.

They were a couple of angels who had knocked on the shoemaker’s door to save her in the moment of her temptation. It was so late in the evening — why would the parents have sent their kids on an errand at this time? It was God himself who had sent them. God’s angels had come to save her.

And as she looked at them she received the strength to resist the desire that was burning her flesh. Her eyes were opened, and in fright she realized how close to the abyss she was. Only in the very last second had the Lord remembered her.

As soon as the children were gone she picked up her newly soled shoes and left. Sigurd didn’t want any pay for repairing the shoes but she forced the money on him — he mustn’t get the idea that he could pinch her for pay! She had long ago been redeemed from that sort of life! But she had told him that she forgave him for tempting her so much; he couldn’t help it, she thought, because the evil one used men as his tools when he led women astray.

“I did no whoring,” Ulrika ended her tale, “but it was pretty close!”

At first Kristina had listened shocked, then she was moved; no woman except Ulrika would have confided in her thus.

“God did indeed save you!”

“Not even a twice-baptized person can help it if she is assailed by temptations. I was overcome by lust, but it was only a sin of weakness — the sins God forgives most easily!”

Kristina understood that even a married woman might have her weak moments, with the flesh eager to gain the upper hand, but it surprised her that Ulrika for one second could feel tempted by Sigurd Thomassen. She remembered well that when he had approached her he exuded such a strong smell of shoemaker that that alone would be sufficient for a woman to resist him. That rancid, pungent odor of tanned leather her nose could not take; the man who exuded it became repulsive to her. Perhaps Ulrika’s weakness could be explained by the life she had led in the old country.

Jonas Petter approached them and asked if they had been watching the newly married couple. He had never seen such a well-made bridal pair, he beamed; that girl from Norway was truly a virgin, a delicious fruit to feast his eyes on! A womanly delight for a man! A fragrance of new-baked bread! Danjel’s boy was indeed fortune’s favorite prince! To lie under the bridal blanket with this fresh, untouched maiden! A king or an emperor could dream of no greater delights than those Sven would experience with Ragnhild!

Ulrika replied that yes, she could understand how his mouth watered, she could see Jonas Petter drool, the old whore-buck, as his eyes devoured the sweet kid he himself couldn’t mount! With old goats the lust grew greater as the strength diminished! She felt indeed sorry for him, poor wretch!

Jonas Petter was hurt and mumbled to himself; since food was being served, he walked toward the table, where Karl Oskar already had a chair next to the bridal couple.

Sven had been fourteen years of age when he came with his father to the St. Croix Valley; now he was twenty-five. He was a capable, industrious young man, who had inherited his father’s weak and brooding nature. He had grown into a handsome youth, no disgrace to his beautiful bride.

Jonas Petter kept his eyes on the bride as he spoke to the groom: “You’ve taken land in Meeker — that’s where the Sioux are; they’re bad.”

“If you don’t disturb them they won’t annoy the whites,” said Sven.

“But that tribe has always been warlike and treacherous.”

“In the old days.”

“I’ve heard you can never trust them. If I had been in your shoes, Sven, I would have taken a claim closer by. There’s still plenty of land hereabouts.”

If Jonas Petter had been in Sven’s shoes — you could see from his eyes on Ragnhild what he wanted; the groom knew him well and tried to hide his smile.

Karl Oskar said he had heard from Mr. Thorn, the sheriff, that some of the Sioux to the west were becoming unmanageable because they hadn’t yet received their pay from the government agent; they had been promised money for the land they gave up. The sheriff thought the slave owners in the South were behind it; they were said to have smuggled rifles to them.

Jonas Petter sat down beside the bride, as close as he could get: “The traders are skinning and cheating the redskins. It’s easy to cheat the Indians, they can’t read and don’t understand numbers.”

“That’s true,” affirmed Sven Danjelsson, in a reproachful voice. “It’s always rascals and knaves who are sent out to deal with the Indians.”

“They should send you instead,” said Karl Oskar.

“I’m going to make friends with the Indians back there,” said Sven. “That’s the right way for a settler to behave!”

Karl Oskar reminisced. Almost every year they had had some scare-rumor about the Indians being on the warpath, but every time it had been a false alarm. And by now they were probably so weakened that they would be unable to do any harm to the whites.

The bride pointed to her father-in-law, who stood at the other end of the table. She asked the guests not to say anything to Danjel about the wild Sioux in Meeker County; now that she and Sven were moving there Danjel might unnecessarily worry himself sick about them.

“I’ll keep my trap shut! Anything Ragnhild asks me I’ll do!” said Jonas Petter. “Even if she asked me to walk on my hands!”

Sitting there at the bride’s side his thoughts had wandered far away from Indian rumors: He had a story to tell, well suited for a wedding. It was about a farmer and a soldier, a rich farmer in Ljuder who hired the village soldier to make an heir for him and offered his bed for the purpose. He had started this story on many occasions, but always someone had said it didn’t fit just now, and he had been silenced. But today, at this wedding, it seemed most proper.

Jonas Petter had made the roses bloom still redder on the cheeks of the girl-bride. Perhaps that was what he wanted. He began: “Once long ago. .”

At that moment the host asked to be heard at the other end of the table: Before the guests sat down to enjoy God’s many gifts he wanted to read a prayer.

The settlers were enjoying a wedding feast, yet at this moment Jonas Petter’s story was less suitable than ever.

— 4—

Karl Oskar and Kristina remained in the bridal house for a while after the other guests had departed. Kristina wanted to talk with Danjel alone.

During their spiritual conversations she would confide implicitly in her uncle. He told her what God’s will was, and gave her advice when she was in doubt. She regretted that she had not spoken to him before she had committed her grave sin of praying to God not to create any more life in her body. Only afterward had she mentioned that prayer to him.

Now Danjel looked at his sister’s daughter and said with concern: “You look so pale and thin, dear Kristina. Life is hard on you, isn’t it?”

“The same as always, but I’m not as able as before. .”

“You look sickly — is your mind at ease?”

“I’m at peace, Uncle. I feel God has taken charge of me.”

“Then there are no troubles left for you.”

Danjel Andreasson had aged noticeably during the last years. His beard and hair had turned ice-gray, his cheeks had become sunken, and all his teeth had fallen out. But deep under his bristling brows shone the mild, good eyes which glorified his face. He had been banished from his mother country because of his religious beliefs, but instead he had seen the Land of Canaan, and he never neglected to thank God for his exile from Sweden.

Kristina said she wanted to pray to God that she might live a few years yet, until the children had grown up some. She had a demanding need to confide all her wishes to her Creator.

“He already knows them all,” smiled Danjel, as if forgiving a child’s fancy.

“Is it wrong to pray for it, Uncle?”

“I don’t think you will anger God with that prayer. He is patient with us. But the soul he has given you he will take back whenever it suits him. Your hour of death is already decided.”

Kristina wanted a special piece of advice today; it concerned Karl Oskar. What could be done with him? He went with her to the Lord’s table in church, he read his confession. But in between he always forgot his prayers. It was as if he didn’t want any help from God. He trusted only in himself, and knew no help in this world except his own strength and his own mind. He thought he could get along by himself. But he must be a grave sinner in his self-reliance; Karl Oskar’s great fault was his conceit. And she worried lest he be lost in eternity. What should she do?

“You must pray to God for him,” said the uncle. “That is all you can do.”

“He’s so stubborn and won’t change.”

“You must wait till his hour comes. Then Karl Oskar will realize that he can no longer help himself. If not before, when his strength is gone and old age frightens him.”

Danjel also wanted his sister’s daughter to keep something important in her mind. It was good that she had peace in her soul. But she must be careful not to fall into the fallacy of believing that she once and for all was guaranteed eternal life. That life she must still earn every day of her earthly life. He himself had once been tempted to self-righteousness, and he had received his punishment. No one must consider himself as God’s chosen; He treats all his created lives alike.

To do good and trust to the Almighty’s mercy — that was the only salvation for a human being here on earth.

Once more Kristina had had the experience that she and Uncle Danjel were united in some marvelous way, they belonged together: They had both given up this life for another. They had gone through the world — they lived for another world, for one their eyes could not see.

V. THE TOMAHAWKS ARE BEING SHARPENED

— 1—

The winter of 1861–62—their twelfth in North America — was the most severe Karl Oskar and Kristina had experienced.

Heavy snowfalls began early and by November high drifts had accumulated which remained throughout the winter. The cold sharpened its edge every day — the frost penetrated into the houses and painted its white nap on the walls. If they had still been living in their old log cabin they would have been unable to exist through this cruel winter. Even in this house — so well built and with good fireplaces — they had great trouble keeping warm. They might let the fires burn till late in the evening, yet when they awakened in the morning all the heat was gone. The first chore was to fire the stove and warm their house again.

It seemed as if Karl Oskar and the boys cut wood and carried it inside all day long. And outside the walls of the house the bitter cold lurked. As soon as anyone stuck his nose outside the door he was assailed by stinging bites. The cold was a persistent pursuer who bit into any unprotected part of the body. The skin on one’s cheeks felt as if covered by a crust. They protected their hands with great woolen mittens, the thickest Kristina could knit, but even with these the fingers grew numb, clumsy, and stiff as wooden sticks.

They must constantly be on guard against frostbite; in this winter weather a limb could be frozen in a few moments, especially those of sensitive children. Dan and Ulrika attended school in the newly built meetinghouse in Center City, but during the coldest days they were kept at home. However much Kristina bundled them up it was never sufficient to keep them warm. If they should get behind in their lessons they might catch up later, but frozen ears, hands, and feet could never be replaced.

They spent most of the winter inside; only chores in the stable, tending the animals, and other necessary errands, brought them outside.

Tree-felling in the forest usually warmed the man who handled the ax, but this winter Karl Oskar had to interrupt his timber cutting for buildings because one of his legs turned numb during the work; the injury to his left leg became worse in this merciless cold. After a day of much walking his swollen shank ached and felt sore during the night, and his limp was more pronounced than before. Apparently he was stuck with this limp for the rest of his life, so he might as well learn to get along with it. The price he had paid for his life that time when he escaped the robbers who had coaxed him onto their wagon must be paid in installments during many years of pain and lameness.

Before he went to bed in the evenings, Kristina would rub his sore leg with camphor-brännvin which somewhat eased the gnawing ache. And each time she poured the fluid on his limb she comforted him about the injury: If he hadn’t had this old injury he might already have lost his life in the war between the states. She herself was grateful:

“I can thank your bad shank I’m not a widow.”

“Are you so pleased to be married to a lame man?”

“Better a lame man than a dead one!”

The sharp smell tickled Kristina’s nostrils as she poured the camphor-brännvin into her hand and rubbed the swollen lower calf of his leg. She recognized God’s meaning and purpose in everything that happened to them; God had lamed Karl Oskar’s leg to save him from the human slaughter on the battlefield.

“I am still sound in life itself, of course,” he said. “But I feel older every day.”

He stopped, embarrassed that he had spoken in a mixture of English and Swedish; Kristina poked fun at his attempts at English and had asked him to use his mother tongue when he spoke with her.

This settler couple at Chisago Lake were still far from old age, if they counted the years. Karl Oskar was thirty-nine, Kristina thirty-seven. They were between youth and old age, they had used only half of life’s measure granted a human being according to David’s words in Holy Writ. But it was not the measure of a person’s years that told if he was old or young, it was what he had gone through in his life. Karl Oskar and Kristina were old before their time, badly bruised by years of hard labor, marked by heavy chores. Minnesota’s violent changes in weather — the summers’ intense heat, the winters’ severe cold — showed its effect in their bodies. Their limbs and joints had stiffened, their backs and shoulders bent. They were a toiling couple, moving heavily and sluggishly when they still ought to have used the uncumbered, light steps of youth.

If one counted the number of heavy work days that had filled their lives Karl Oskar and Kristina were already old people.

— 2—

Lucky he who was warm inside four walls this winter. But there were people in their part of the world who had no timbered walls to protect them against the merciless cold. Kristina could not get her thoughts off the Indians who always — summer and winter alike — lived in wretched huts. A few animal skins and blankets spread over twisted, bent saplings — this was their house. Pelts and woven materials were their only protection; the wind must blow at full hurricane strength through the walls and roofs of the Indians’ huts. Karl Oskar surmised the redskins must have been created different from the whites; perhaps their blood contained some warming fluid that protected them against freezing to death. But Kristina felt it was a miracle that they could survive Minnesota’s winters year after year.

Besides, the Indians were always exposed to hunger in wintertime; the hunting season was over and the ground was covered with snow so deep it was almost impossible to snare game. The ice on the lakes lay so thick they could not catch fish. Perhaps they had saved a little from last summer’s corn—“lazy man’s corn”—which their women grew in small plots. In the fall they gathered wild rice along the lakeshores, but they were so lackadaisical that the rice often was frozen before they got to it. They would also eat roots and ferns and evil lizards and critters white people wouldn’t taste. The savages were not squeamish. But it certainly couldn’t be true that they fried rattlesnakes and considered them delicacies.

The hunger among the Indians this winter was gruesomely described to Kristina one evening when Samuel Nöjd, the old hunter, came around looking for pelts.

Nöjd had lived among the Indians and knew them better than any of the settlers in the valley. At one time he had had a Sioux girl living with him — he maintained he had saved her from starving to death — but she had gone back to her own people. At present he lived alone in his log cabin in Taylors Falls with twelve dogs and twelve cats. The dogs he used for hunting but the cats he kept to lick his plates and pots; the cats in the house, he insisted, did the same service as a woman — they washed the dishes.

Kristina felt sorry for Samuel Nöjd because he was an unbeliever and blasphemer. He was also dirty, with an evil smell, and full of vermin, but she could not feel aversion to him because of this — she had no right to detest any human being, however strangely he was created. But as he now came into their kitchen and sat down on the sofa bench she was afraid a few lice might stray from the old trapper. American lice were much more ravenous and vicious in their bites than their Swedish counterparts, and unbelievably tenacious of life, almost impossible to exterminate. Neither the brass comb nor boiling soap lye helped against American vermin.

Dan and Ulrika came in and stood beside the old man who sat on the bench; he always told them strange stories. Kristina thought, now the children would surely pick up some lice, and a louse became a grandmother in one night; tomorrow they would have grandchildren in the house from Nöjd’s vermin.

The trapper had recently returned from a trip out West where the Sioux were in winter quarters. This year, he said, the hunger among them was worse than ever: The Sioux were eating their own children.

Kristina winced: “What in all the world are you saying, Nöjd?”

“I’m just telling you that there are Indians who eat their own offspring because they don’t have anything else to sustain life.”

As the old man didn’t think she believed him he hastened to assure her. He had with his own eyes, which now rested on them, seen in Meeker County, near Acton, a pile of children’s bones gnawed clean. He had inspected the heap very closely; there were skulls and thighbones and shanks, of people, fresh bones of devoured Indian children. There wasn’t the smallest scrap of flesh left. And he had met soldiers who were stationed at the Indian post at Red Wood who had confirmed that this winter the Indians were eating their own.

They had told him about an Indian woman who had gone so crazy from hunger she had cut up her fourteen-year-old son when her husband was away. She had made the boy go to sleep with his head on her knees and then she had cut his throat and drunk his blood. Later she had sliced her son’s body and cooked the pieces. The neighbors could smell the wonderful meat in her pot and wondered what it was. To keep them from telling her husband she shared the meal with them. The woman and her guests had eaten the boy in one meal; he was so little and skinny that was all there was of him. When her husband came back he missed his son and asked for him. The wife was evasive and wouldn’t tell him but he found the bare bones and then she was forced to confess her deed. The husband instantly killed his wife with his tomahawk.

“You’re scaring us to death, Nöjd!” exclaimed Kristina in horror.

Karl Oskar told the children to leave the kitchen and they obeyed reluctantly.

“It must be stories you carry around,” he said. He looked at Kristina, as much as to say: Don’t believe all you hear from Nöjd.

But the old hunter assured them that he had told only the truth about the devastating starvation among the Indians. Ever since so many of the buffalo had been shot the Sioux had suffered from hunger, but never had their misery been so horrible as this winter. He himself could take almost anything, but this was too much for him. The soldiers at Red Wood hated to be on guard duty at the supply house which was filled with food, while Indians, fainting from hunger, swarmed about outside. No food was permitted to be distributed without cash, and the redskins had no cash because they hadn’t been paid what the government owed them. The food in the supply house was rightly theirs, but they were not allowed to eat it!

Kristina said that the whites, who were Christian people and knew what was right, must accumulate a heavy burden before God when they treated the Indians so meanly. Petrus Olausson used to say that the redskins were under God’s curse and would be exterminated because they wouldn’t turn to Christianity of their own will. But she couldn’t believe that savages who didn’t know the gospel could be under the Lord’s curse. “If any are to be punished it should be the Christians!”

And Samuel Nöjd laughed derisively. The whites had brought the Indians cholera, smallpox, and venereal diseases; if they also came with Christianity the Indians must think it was some new deviltry. No wonder they were suspicious and resisted! At least the Church might have saved them from the missionaries who plagued them with the catechism; Christians ought to show their neighbors some mercy. Worst of all, of course, were those damned French trappers — they even used captured Indians as food for their dogs! Those confounded hunters thought this the easiest way to carry dog food with them!

“I shudder in my heart!” said Kristina, as she poured the evening porridge. “Those poor hungry wild ones! How can they stand it?”

“What can they do?” asked the trapper. “They must choose: Starve, or kill others!”

“What others? Who?”

“Try to guess!” And Samuel Nöjd winked secretively. He looked toward Karl Oskar, who had gone to a corner as far away as possible so as not to have to listen to their guest’s stories.

Who were the others the Indians might kill? After that question there was a moments depressing silence. Kristina put an extra plate on the table; she intended to ask Nöjd to eat supper with them.

When the trapper told the story of the dog food, Karl Oskar had remembered some unfinished business he had with him; it had happened a few times that dogs had killed sheep that belonged to him. Last fall he had found two of his yearling ewes killed back at the Indian cliff, their throats slit open. And just about that time Johan had seen some of Nöjd’s dogs near the path along the lake. There was no doubt they were Nöjd’s, as no one else in the vicinity had dogs of that kind.

Nöjd mostly bought raccoon, mink, and muskrat pelts, but a few times they had also sold him calf and sheepskins.

“If you’re out to buy pelts today I can sell you a couple of sheepskins,” said Karl Oskar slowly.

“All right.”

“But I want thirty dollars apiece!”

Nöjd laughed his derisive laugh again; he thought Karl Oskar was joking. “Thirty dollars apiece! Kiss my ass!”

“But those skins are from the two ewes your dogs killed last fall!”

The old hunter jumped up as if something had stuck him in his behind. “That’s a lie! A hell of a lie!” he shouted.

“They were your dogs, Nöjd!”

“My dogs don’t kill tame animals! That’s a lie! A goddamn lie!”

“Our boy saw the bitches — why do you deny it?”

“No son of a bitch saw my dogs! Never!”

Nöjd’s face took on a savage look; he roared and stomped about. Kristina grew frightened and tried to restrain Karl Oskar. But he took the trapper’s American swearing calmly. “I have proof; you let your dogs run on my property!”

“Your property!” Nöjd spit sneeringly on the floor. “Your property as much as mine, Nilsson!”

“What was that you said?” Karl Oskar’s voice had suddenly changed. “Isn’t this my land? What are you talking about, old-timer?”

“All this land was stolen from the Indians!”

“I haven’t stolen my land; I’ve paid the government a dollar twenty-five an acre for it.”

“Yes, but you have bought stolen property, and cheap at that! You know it as well as I do! Better talk soft about your land, Nilsson! And I’ll let my dogs run where they please!”

Karl Oskar rose. He took a few long, decided steps toward his guest as if he were going to throw himself on him:

“You say I’ve bought stolen property. . you old. .”

He fisted his hands and opened them again, the muscles around his mouth grew taut, his face tense, his eyes contracted and seemed to withdraw into his head. Kristina knew the sign; she rushed between the two inflamed men.

“You have accused me of dishonest dealings!” stuttered the settler.

At the sight of Karl Oskar’s changed face the trapper drew back a step and lowered his voice:

“No! No! Your dealings are honorable, all right — according to the laws of the whites — their own laws — after the theft. There isn’t an acre of land in America that hasn’t been stolen or cheated from the Indians.”

Kristina whispered to her husband: He mustn’t pay any heed to Samuel Nöjd’s talk. But their guest went on: What was the price promised to the Indians when they were forced to give up their land to Swedes and other whites? How much had the government paid for the whole Mississippi Valley? Ten dollars for twenty thousand acres! One two-hundredth of a cent per acre! Could one two-hundredth of a cent be called payment? For the most fertile land in the whole world? It was a thief’s price, that’s what it was! And that’s why they could sell cheap to him, Nilsson! And even this trifle hadn’t yet been paid to the Indians! The only thing left for them was starvation!

The trapper picked up his hat and hurried toward the door, spitting angrily: “Keep your sheepskins, Nilsson! Kiss my ass!” He stopped at the door and added that the whites had stolen all of America, yet they kept proclaiming in every church: Thou shalt not steal!

Their guest disappeared and Kristina said: “His eyes turned awful! He has lived so long among the wild ones we mustn’t pay any attention to him.”

Karl Oskar took a few deep breaths; his anger was soon over: “You’re right; it was silly of me to get excited.”

“And I thought of treating him to supper!”

She removed one plate from the table. But Karl Oskar could not forget what Samuel Nöjd had said: “He accused me of taking part in thievery!”

“Forget it! You know yourself you haven’t stolen anything in America!”

“Only weeds grew here when I came! What grows here now? Crops to nourish us as well as others! I didn’t get anything for nothing. I earned my land when I cleared it and broke it!”

Karl Oskar Nilsson mumbled the last sentence to himself several times as he sat down to supper. Kristina said nothing. After all, there was some truth in Samuel Nöjd’s words, and she realized that that truth remained with Karl Oskar and disturbed him; they were intruders in this country. Other people had been driven away to make room for their home.

— 3—

On the west shore of Lake Chisago rose the tall, red sand cliff which looked strikingly like an Indians head; forehead, eyes, mouth, chin were those of an Indian. The cliff rose like an immense fortress against the sky and threw a deep, broad shadow over the ground and water near it. The Indian head was brown in summer and white in winter, but at all seasons it remained the same good guidepost for those who were not familiar with the paths of this valley.

This winter the Indian’s head was covered with a deep layer of snow which glittered and sparkled in the sunlight; it sparkled as if covered with precious stones. But the sand-brown forehead was bared, and the Indian’s deep, black cave-eyes looked down on the white intruders’ houses along the shores.

When the Chisago people happened to look at the cliff formation they were apt to say: The Indian up there, he is looking at us! He’s watching us! Who knows when. .?

The sight of the Indian head caused them an indefinable apprehension. He had watched here when the lake was still known as Ki-Chi-Saga, he remained when the lake’s name was changed to Chisago. The Indian was made of stone. He could not be chased away. He remained rooted. He would not move — here he would for all time raise his head over the country.

It was the winter of the great Indian famine. At Chisago Lake no one knew what was happening out west where the numerous Sioux had their camp:

The tomahawks were taken out, the war axes were being sharpened. No tribe among the brown hunter people had such beautiful tomahawks as the Sioux. They were painted red and had a big black star on either side of the edge of the blade. The black star was an ancient sign, looked upon with reverence by each warrior who carried a tomahawk. It must always be present on a Sioux war ax. Warriors and hunters of the Sioux tribe had once been marked with this sign by the Great Father who had given them the land. They had kept it on their weapons through thousands of years. The sign was their belief in victory. The sign was a promise: The ax with this sign was sure death to the enemy.

This winter the Sioux axes were being sharpened on a grindstone that gave the sharpest edge to war weapons. Out west, beyond the tall sand cliff, behind the Indian’s powerful back, there it took place:

The tomahawks were being sharpened.

VI. KRISTINA DESERTS HER MILKING STOOL

— 1—

During the cold season, Kristina’s only chore outside her house was the milking. They now had eight cows, and this winter seven gave milk. She sat out in the stable one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening. Karl Oskar tried to help her but his fingers were clumsy and awkward in handling the cow teats. One must learn milking in childhood. Marta was now going on fifteen and had begun with the easy milking cows; the girl was both willing and handy.

The milking was more trying this winter because of the intense cold. Before Kristina walked out to the stable she bundled on all her woolen and heavy garments. In these she moved with difficulty, and she looked like a walking bundle of clothes. But however many garments she wore, she began to feel the chill after sitting for a while on the milking stool. Her limbs felt cold, her arms and legs grew stiff, the fingers around the udder rigid. She would cup her hands and blow in them to warm them with her own breath. And during the milking her cold body unconsciously sought the warmth in the animals; she pressed against the cow’s furred body, her head leaned against the belly as against a soft pillow. She sought protection against the winter’s bite in the warm closeness of living creatures; she felt safety in touching the animal. And the cow ate her mash in the bucket as she stood there calmly with her hind legs spread; she showed confidence in the milkmaid whose head leaned against her side.

Kristina had a good hand with animals and was friendly with her cows. As soon as she appeared in the stable door they would turn their heads toward her and low their welcome. They knew they would get corn mash in their buckets; they were accustomed to her closeness twice a day; twice a day they felt her hands as her fingers squeezed milk from their teats. And on her arrival they greeted her with the only sound they were able to utter. To the milker her cows were not soulless creatures; she felt their confidence in her as a helpless child to its mother. And she felt they wished to show her their gratefulness for looking after them. In the cows’ eyes she read a pained, sad consciousness of the muteness which was their lot. They wished to tell her something but they were unable to do so.

During their first winter in Minnesota a cow had saved the lives of the children with her milk; Kristina showed her gratitude for this to all members of their kind.

During this cold winter Kristina often felt an ache in her lower abdomen. And one evening, milking her cows in the stable, it came upon her. She had only one cow left to milk. She had been sitting so long on the milking stool that her legs were stiff and her fingers lame and awkward. If she could only have used her woolen mittens, she thought. Now only the Princess was left but the Princess was the most difficult of the seven, for she wouldn’t give her milk willingly. Kristina had to press as hard as she could and pull the teats with all her might before any milk ran into her pail. She always left the hard-milking Princess until the last.

She was moving her stool to the last cow for this evening. She rose with the stool in her hand. Then she felt such a sudden heavy pain that her body bent forward. Without her knowing how it had happened she was on the stable floor.

The pain was intense, cutting like a knife through her body. She was sitting on the floor, with the stool in one hand and the pail in the other, and was unable to rise. She remained there, staring in disbelief before her, as if she had done something unreasonable and foolish. The cow she had just finished milking turned its head and looked at her in surprise, as if asking: What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you finished with me? Why do you sit on the floor?

The sharp pain in her abdomen eased but left a fretting itching sensation. It was her old ailment. Then she suddenly felt moist between her legs. Something warm streamed down the inside of her thighs, toward her knees. The fluid kept coming: From inside her body, something pleasantly lukewarm flowed over her cold skin.

Kristina knew what it was. She recognized the tepid, sticky substance that flowed down her legs. She had had this same experience once before on a spring day when she was beating wash down at the lake. She need not lift her skirt to look. She was sure: red runnels down the inside of her thighs and legs. The red flow had come over her again at the moment she rose from the milking stool.

It was Kristina’s own blood that warmed her cold, stiff limbs. But what did it mean? She didn’t know. She only knew that she must get away from here, she must leave the stool and the milk pail.

She tried to raise herself but her legs shook under her, and only at the third attempt did she manage. She was standing straight now and moved one foot with the utmost effort. She took a few steps toward the door. There she sank down to the floor for the second time.

She remembered that Karl Oskar was currying the horses and she called to him. She called several times before he heard.

He rushed up to her: “What’s the matter? Have you hurt yourself? You look pale!”

“I think I’m bleeding. .”

He shot hurried questions at her but she only asked him to help her inside.

The wife put her arms around the husband’s neck and he carried her inside the house. Before she lay down on her bed she removed her skirts. The children grew frightened at the sight of her bloody legs. Karl Oskar found some towel rags and dried her. The blood stuck to her skin so that she felt horribly gory, as she did when cleaning up a carcass after slaughter. She tied broad strips of rags around her as a bandage, but the blood kept on trickling. The flow stopped only after it had drenched a second bandage.

Each word from Karl Oskar was blurted out in apprehension. He wanted to send for Manda Svensson, the neighbor’s wife, who knew something about ailments. Perhaps she could staunch blood? But Kristina said that she was not with child, and so she needed no helping woman. This was not a childbed, not a miscarriage. Therefore it could not be very dangerous; the bleeding would soon be over.

But her assurance did not calm Karl Oskar; rather it increased his anxiety. If the bleeding had been caused by a miscarriage he could have understood it. Then it would have been something natural. But such was not the case and he had to ask: What could this mean?

Kristina had never mentioned to him the pain in her lower abdomen she had felt for so long.

— 2—

Next morning Kristina’s bleeding had entirely stopped. She had been lying on her back as still as she could the whole night. But she was very weak and stayed in bed.

“You’re limp because you’ve lost blood,” said Karl Oskar.

He sent Johan to summon Manda Svensson and it didn’t take long before their neighbor woman was sitting at Kristina’s bedside. She was eager to help, for it was in her nature to take charge and decide for others. In her own home she ruled her submissive husband. Manda was the farmer’s daughter who had married the hired hand. The couple could never become equal, as she had refused to give up the upper hand she had had over her husband from the beginning. Ever since they had come to America she had remained the boss who decided and her husband remained her hired hand.

When Manda heard that it was not a miscarriage that had forced Kristina to take to her bed, she said, “I believe you must be bleeding from pure weakness. That’s a common female trouble. It could also be bleeding sickness.”

Kristina must drink a concoction of healing herbs, insisted the neighbor’s wife. She would have liked to prepare such a concoction but the herbs she needed grew only in Sweden, and she dared not pick and cook from those which grew here in America. She might get hold of poisonous plants. Once she had picked some unfamiliar berries and had vomited them up again; ever after she had been scared of American plants.

She advised Kristina to lie quite still with heated caldron lids on her stomach, night and day. If she had evil fluids in her body they would thus dry up and disappear.

Kristina listened to her neighbor with half an ear. She was not worried about herself. If the Creator wished to take her away from this world, what did it concern her what sickness hastened her departure?

Her weakness forced her to stay in bed. Meanwhile, Karl Oskar was filled with concern for his wife. He prepared nourishing food for the sick one, skimmed the cream off the milk and gave it to her, killed hens that weren’t laying and boiled chicken soup for her, and prepared egg dishes of various kinds. He thought good food would put her on her feet again. But her strength came back very slowly.

The inside chores she had planned this winter remained undone. She had intended to put up the loom and do some weaving; the wool needed carding and spinning after the sheepshearing of last summer; she had wanted to make clothes for the children on her new sewing machine. Before, it would have bothered her that nothing could be done, but now she no longer was disturbed by neglect of worldly concerns. Why should woolen yarn and looms and clothes disturb the peace in her soul? Why should she be concerned for her daily needs which she soon would discard?

But there were chores in the house that must be attended to, and Karl Oskar and Marta assumed them in her place. They helped each other as best they could. From her bed she gave her husband and daughter instructions: how the milking must be done, how much skimmed milk to save for the calves, how to preserve the cream for butter. And they came to her and asked about the cooking: how long they must fire the oven before baking, when to put in the cornbread, how much time was required for the yellow peas, how to handle the pans on the Prairie Queen to keep the food from sticking to the bottom.

From a man never trained for women’s chores there was nothing to expect, and less from a girl not yet fifteen. Kristina praised her successors when they succeeded and scolded them when they failed. However carefully she told them what to do they still made mistakes. There were accidents and failures. Some chores were well performed, others were done in a slovenly way or entirely wrong. And she could see it so clearly; as yet there was no one to take her place — in this house she was still irreplaceable.

She felt no concern for herself. She had peace. Karl Oskar tried to cure her with cream, chicken soup, and egg dishes, Manda Svensson with heated kettle lids. But she had only one she trusted, one who could give her back her health. Her close and loved ones needed her and she felt that God for their sake would let her remain in this world a little longer.

— 3—

Toward the end of January Kristina had regained so much of her strength that she could get up for short intervals and resume some of the easier chores. The merciless cold had eased a little and she didn’t feel chilled so quickly.

Ulrika Jackson came one day to their house with a belated Christmas present for little Ulrika: She had knitted a woolen blouse for her goddaughter. She had planned to come during the holidays but had not dared because of the bitter cold.

At once she noticed Kristina’s pale, gaunt face — Ulrika had not heard about her illness.

“You don’t rest long enough between childbeds!” she said.

No one could believe that Ulrika herself had borne seven children — four in Sweden and three in America. She was twelve years older than Kristina, yet she looked the younger of the two. Soon to be fifty years old, the former Ulrika of Västergöhl appeared to be in the prime of her life. Time had left her clear, healthy complexion intact, uncorroded. Lately her limbs had somewhat fattened and she had put on weight around the waist, but the change was becoming to her. Her step was as quick as ever, and men still let their eyes rest on her.

“You’re lucky, Ulrika, you have been given such good health,” sighed Kristina. “When I look in the mirror an old hag looks back at me!”

Why hadn’t the Lord created the white women like the squaws, wondered Mrs. Jackson. When an Indian woman rode through the forest and felt her hour was near, she jumped off her horse only long enough to bear her child. Then she put it in a bag on her back, jumped back up again on the horse, and rode on as if nothing had happened. A squaw birth took about as much time as a visit to the privy.

“We get labor pains because of the original sin,” said Kristina. “Perhaps the heathen women don’t have the original sin.”

But God had chosen woman as the tool for his creation when he trusted her to bear children into the world and she must be worthy of God’s trust. Kristina herself would always gratefully accept the new lives he wished to grant her. She knew now why a pregnant woman was called blessed.

The Lord had given to women the honor of bearing children because he put women above men, explained Ulrika. The great mistake with men had already occurred at the Creation: God had finished with all the wild beasts and had some stuff left over when he began to make Adam. In fact, he made man from that stuff. That was how some of the qualities of the beasts had got into men. It explained the similarity between men and the bucks in the animal world.

But fortunately there were also men who understood that a woman was made of nobler material than they themselves and didn’t use her for their carnal lust in bed only. They knew she too needed joy and satisfaction.

“Are men really so different in that respect?” wondered Kristina.

“A hell of a lot different in bed, I should say! Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I didn’t. I’ve never had anyone except Karl Oskar.”

“I see,” nodded Ulrika. “No other man has ever got near you.”

Kristina laughed: “What can I say when I can’t compare Karl Oskar with anyone else!”

“But he is a first-class man in bed, isn’t he?”

“I guess he is the best one I’ve had!”

Kristina laughed, but Mrs. Jackson, who once had been Ulrika of Västergöhl, was deeply thoughtful as she dispersed the knowledge of an experienced woman:

“I guess your husband is all right in that respect. It shows on a woman if her man is capable in that way. It shows on you that Karl Oskar can take care of you, for you look satisfied, your disposition is peaceful and even.”

“Karl Oskar and I have always got along.”

“Just what I thought! You’re happy in that way, Kristina!”

Mrs. Jackson’s bosom rose and fell in a deep sigh, and Kristina remembered Ulrika’s confidence at the wedding of Danjels son last fall.

The two women broke off their conversation as Karl Oskar entered the room. He was carrying an armful of firewood which he stacked against the fireplace, he then began to make a fire.

When the flames had a good start Ulrika removed her shoes and put her feet on the hearth. Her toes were cold and stiff after the journey from Stillwater, for she had traveled in a sled that had no heated stones to warm the feet.

It was an un-Christian winter this year, said Karl Oskar. Happily it was a little milder now, and Kristina wanted to resume her milking chores, but she was still so weak from her sickness he wouldn’t allow her to leave the house.

Kristina told of the great flow of blood that had come from her one evening while she was milking.

“That sounds bad!” said Ulrika.

“But I didn’t lose a life — it was not a miscarriage.”

Kristina continued: She had had smaller bleedings before, but she had thought they were her periods coming at an unexpected time and had paid no attention to them. She had also had pains low down in her abdomen. She still had these — they came and went.

Karl Oskar looked up, startled: “What’s that you say? You’ve never mentioned that to me!”

“I didn’t think it was worth mentioning.”

“How long have you suffered with it?”

“This last year.”

“This whole year?” He looked in consternation at his wife. “Why haven’t you told me?”

“I didn’t think much of it.”

“If you ache inside, then something is wrong.”

“Karl Oskar is right!” interrupted Ulrika. “You shouldn’t have kept it to yourself!”

“Well, maybe not. But you can’t go around and complain every time you feel a little pain.”

“But it’s not right to have a sickness and not seek a remedy against it!”

“Not right?” Kristina looked at her. “You mean I have sinned with it?”

“Yes, you have, because God wants people to take care of their health.”

Both Karl Oskar and Ulrika reproached her for having kept her sickness secret. Then all three of them were silent for a few minutes. The only sound was the crackling of the fire as great flames enveloped the dry wood. Karl Oskar kept stroking his thighs in great concern. A spark from the fire hit his cheek and left a red mark but he didn’t seem aware of it.

He only felt this: Something must be done immediately about Kristina.

Ulrika said, “You must get your wife to a doctor, Karl Oskar!”

“That was my first thought when I heard what she said a while ago.”

“It might be something dangerous in the womb!”

“It’ll pass,” said Kristina. “I don’t think I need a doctor.”

Ulrika took her hand imploringly: “You’ve lost a lot of blood! It can’t go on like this! You’ll ruin yourself! You must see a medical man!”

Kristina had never in her life been to a doctor. She had heard that doctors treated people horribly, using evil instruments when they looked for ailments in the body. And now her sickness was in a part of the body which a woman would be embarrassed to bare.

Karl Oskar asked Ulrika: There were doctors in St. Paul and Stillwater — where should he take Kristina?

“We have a new one in Stillwater, Dr. Farnley. I’ve gone to this medical man myself!”

“Is he better than the old one?”

“Much better!”

Cristoffer Caldwell, the old doctor in Stillwater, was also a carpenter and blacksmith, Ulrika said. Caldwell made sturdy tables and benches and no one could shoe a horse better than he. But he was not the right man to handle sick people, for his hands were big and rough and he had some ailment of his own that could only be cured with whiskey. Dr. Caldwell was really a drunkard and he stank of liquor yards away. But Farnley, the new one, was no self-made doctor like Caldwell. He had gone through certified schools and had big thick books piled up along the walls of his room. She had gone to him last spring when she scalded her right knee while cooking syrup. He had been so gentle with her — he had put ointment on her wound and bandaged it as carefully as if he had been swaddling a newborn babe. He didn’t have those sledgehammer hands like Caldwell, his hands were soft and clean, he didn’t use them to sharpen scythes and shoe horses. She had never imagined a strong, husky man could handle a woman’s sore knee so carefully and tenderly. And because the new doctor was so tender — and for no other reason — she had gone to him many more times than she really needed to and let him rebandage her knee.

“You must take Kristina to Dr. Farnley,” concluded Ulrika. “I’ll go with her and interpret for her!”

Karl Oskar replied that there would be no delay in that journey. As soon as he put the new iron runners on his sled they would drive to Stillwater.

“But I don’t want to go to any doctor!” said Kristina with determination, and stood up. She went to the kitchen to put on their dinner, and Ulrika assured Karl Oskar that she would speak to his wife when they were alone and make her go to Farnley.

A while later, when the two women were alone in the kitchen, Ulrika said, “There’s something wrong with you, Kristina. But Dr. Farnley is good — he’ll find out what’s the matter.”

“I know you want the best for me, but I don’t think. .”

“You might wreck yourself, it might be your life. .”

Kristina looked up: “Over my life and death only God has power.”

The words came out evenly and calmly. By them all her actions could be understood.

“But if the Lord blesses the doctor’s hands then he can cure you.”

“Don’t you think God can cure me himself if he wishes?” smiled Kristina. “He doesn’t need the aid of a doctor!”

“The doctor is God’s tool!”

“The Almighty needs no tools. He has created my body and he can make it well also.”

“But your mind is a gift of God — you must use your mind so you don’t ruin your health.”

“It’s already been decided how long I am to live.”

Now Ulrika must play her last card: If Kristina didn’t care about herself and her own good, it was her duty to think of Karl Oskar and the children. They needed her and she must take care of her health for their sake. She must go to the doctor for their sake, since they couldn’t do without her.

To this Kristina did not reply at once. She thought for a few moments. But even before she answered Ulrika knew that she had at last found the right means to persuade Kristina.

“Yes, I’ll do it.” Her voice was low. “Because Karl Oskar wants me to. .”

“I thought you would.”

“Will you go with me to the doctor?”

“Of course I will! I’ll do all the talking for you!”

Kristina could not describe her illness to the American doctor but Ulrika would do it for her. And she must also interpret what the doctor said after he had examined her.

Kristina felt ill at ease: What would the doctor do to find out how things were with her?

“One has to undress, I guess, when he does it? Down to the shift? The thought repels me.”

“You needn’t be afraid of Dr. Farnley — he’ll examine you carefully!”

“But a strange man — and feel my body down there. .”

Ulrika laughed: “You have had so many kids! And you’re as embarrassed as a little girl!”

“It seems disgusting. I can’t help it.”

“Don’t worry! Dr. Farnley is kind and friendly!”

But whatever Ulrika said she could not reconcile Kristina to the thought that she must undress in front of a strange man and that this stranger’s hands might touch her sexual parts. She felt as if she were going to participate in something indecent.

— 4—

One day, when the weather was a little milder and the sledding good, Karl Oskar and Kristina drove to Stillwater. For the first time in her life she was to see a doctor.

It was a strange journey for her; she felt almost as she had at the time of her emigration; she accompanied her husband, but she did so without conviction and half in regret.

VII. HAS GOD INFLICTED THIS UPON US?

— 1—

Karl Oskar Nilsson sat on the sofa in Pastor Jackson’s living room in Stillwater. The sofa was soft and well padded, but he moved back and forth and couldn’t find a comfortable spot. He stretched out his legs and pulled them back, he turned and shifted, looked out the window and changed his position every second minute. He was alone in the house, waiting for Ulrika and Kristina, who had gone to see Dr. Farnley.

He had intended to go with them to the doctor’s house, which was only a few blocks from the pastor’s, but Ulrika had said that he might as well stay at home and look after their house, as Henry was away preaching and the children were in school. She spoke English better than he, and she would be a good interpreter for Kristina and the doctor.

As they left Ulrika turned in the doorway and said, “You can be sure of one thing, Karl Oskar — Dr. Farnley will find out what’s wrong!”

What would the doctor have to say?

Karl Oskar had killed the waiting time by inspecting the furniture in the room as minutely as if he had been an appraiser. He had looked at the pictures on the walls, of miraculous happenings from the Bible. He had leafed through the pastor’s books on a shelf and he had found English words he didn’t understand. Several times he had paced the room, lengthways and crossways, but time still dragged. The hands of the clock seemed glued in their position.

Walking to the doctor’s should take no more than ten minutes, both ways. And the longest Kristina need stay with him might be an hour. They had had plenty of time; they should have been back by now.

He could think of nothing to do except sit and stare in front of him. For a long time he stared at the strange reproduction of Ulrika and Pastor Jackson as bride and groom which hung above the sofa.

It was not a painting made with a brush. Ulrika and Jackson were not painted, they were printed onto the paper. They had been impressed on the paper the way they were at that particular moment. They were accurately alive, made by a photographing apparatus. It seemed like the work of a magician, this exact replica of them. Karl Oskar had read about this new invention in the paper and he knew that it could catch all kinds of things, living or dead. The sight of something, anything, need not disappear but could be preserved to look at forever. The Jacksons could look at themselves the way they were on the day of their wedding. Indeed, discoveries and inventions were manifold these days!

And the same thing could be done with a house: the outside, its appearance, could be imprinted on a paper, never to be obliterated, and the paper could be framed like a painting and sent from America to Sweden.

The bridal couple above the sofa gave Karl Oskar an idea: He would have a man with an apparatus come to their place and make a reproduction of their house which he could send to his mother and sister in Sweden. His relatives in the Old World could then with their own eyes see his house in the New World! That would be something for them to look at!

For the present he was stacking up timber for a new house and he would wait with the photographing until it was built. It would be the fourth house he and Kristina had lived in since they moved to America. The first was a wretched twig hut with the wind howling through it until they shook with cold in the nights. But the next house he would build — that would be something to look at! That would be a house of the best kind! How many times hadn’t he told Kristina: Wait till you see our next house! Only with the new house would he consider his farm complete. It would, as it were, crown his life’s work. And when it was ready he would have it impressed on a paper and sent to Sweden.

The clock on the wall struck three. He had been sitting here waiting almost two hours. Why did it take so long? They should be through at Dr. Farnley’s by now.

And what would the doctor have to say?

It was so late in the afternoon they ought to be starting homeward by now. He had his team hitched to the sleigh, the horses were young and eager and could indeed run, and the sledding was good with the new runners, but he didn’t wish to drive the whole way after dark. The new road from Stillwater to Center City was two miles shorter than the old and they should be home before bedtime. Johan and Marta would have to do the stable chores alone tonight, but there must be a first time when they took care of the cattle by themselves. Children must learn to take over chores from their parents.

But now he couldn’t stand it any longer, not to know. Why not walk over to the doctor’s and wait outside there instead?

Just as Karl Oskar was putting on his overcoat, ready to leave, he heard women’s voices outside: Kristina and Ulrika were stamping off the snow on the stoop. He opened the door for them.

“You must have been waiting for us, Karl Oskar,” began Ulrika. “It did take us a long time.”

She explained the delay: There had been so many sick people waiting to see Dr. Farnley today, and while they were there a couple of men came in with a litter carrying another man who had been hurt; he was with the lumber company sawmill, his nose had been torn off by a scantling which the blade had thrown into his face. The poor man’s whole face was nothing but a bloody mess, like a meatball mixture. The injured man had to be attended to first, and the doctor scraped away what was left of his nose; he cried like a stuck pig under the knife and no one could wonder at that. He was a young, healthy specimen of manhood — too bad his face was ruined. It wouldn’t be easy for him to live without a nose. Because of this accident they had had to wait a long time.

“It seemed long, didn’t it?” Kristina had removed her woolen mittens and was blowing into her hands.

What had the doctor said?

The question was bursting inside Karl Oskar; he felt they ought to be able to hear it without his asking. Ulrika kept feeling sorry for the noseless mill worker, which was her right, but this concerned the person who was closest to him.

What was the matter with Kristina? He tried to interpret her looks, but she seemed as calm and unperturbed now as she had when they left; he could learn nothing from her face.

Ulrika put a wide kitchen apron over her dress: “I’ll get dinner going; you must be hungry, Karl Oskar.”

What did he care about food and drink! It was not thirst or hunger that plagued him. His tongue felt dry and his lips stiff but these were caused by something else. He sputtered out:

“What did the doctor say?”

“We have plenty of time to talk about that. Kristina has had her examination all right.”

“I am not mortally sick — I have no illness,” said his wife quietly.

“No illness? It is in some other way. .?”

“Farnley was careful and particular and examined your wife for the longest time,” said Mrs. Jackson. “And I had a long talk with the doctor afterward.”

Kristina turned to Ulrika: “You promised to explain to Karl Oskar.”

“Sure, my dear. I’ll do as we agreed, I’ll speak to Karl Oskar alone.”

“Alone!” There was a shock in his looks.

“Right you are! Come out in the kitchen with me!”

This sounded like an order and for a moment he wondered if Ulrika was pulling his leg: “Are you. . are you serious. .?”

Ulrika grabbed Karl Oskar firmly by the arm and pulled him with her into the kitchen. He followed her like a foolish schoolchild who must be alone with the teacher to taste the rod.

Ulrika started to make a fire in the stove; she picked up some kindling and pushed it down through a slit in the masonry.

“What is it? Something secret? What did the doctor say?”

“He said I should speak to you, Mr. Nilsson!”

“With me? I’m not sick!”

“No, but it is your wife who must get well!”

“What is it really? Nothing deadly, I hope?”

“That depends on you!”

“On me. .? Have I caused it. .?”

“It depends on you if your wife shall live or die!”

The floor under Karl Oskar’s feet rocked violently. He closed his eyes. When he opened them again the walls and ceiling also rocked. His head buzzed with dizziness. He closed his eyes again.

From somewhere far away he heard a voice:

“. . or die. .?”

“Yes, Mr. Nilsson!”

“You frighten me, Ulrika.”

“Dr. Farnley said I should frighten the hell out of you. And I prefer to do it when we are alone.”

Mrs. Jackson found the match box on the stove shelf, scratched a match against the dry wood, and held the flame to the kindling; a lively fire began to sparkle.

“Kristina is torn to pieces inside, she’s sick because of her last miscarriage and the childbeds before. She can’t take any more!” She threw a quick glance toward the living room door. “Not a single time! Next childbed will be Kristina’s death!”

The words were said, said to him, and his ears had heard them. Just six words he was to hear many times afterward, the same words, however he twisted and changed them. When he heard them now, for the first time, the full impact did not hit him; he was so shocked he could only close his eyes and feel dizzy.

“Now you’ve heard it! Now you know!”

Ulrika pulled out a kitchen chair for Karl Oskar. “Sit down! I’ll explain everything to you. The doctor said to tell you all!”

She had a fire going in the stove and she blew at it to make a draft; between puffs she talked in broken sentences:

After Dr. Farnley had been alone with Kristina for half an hour and examined her thoroughly, he called in Ulrika. Farnley had found injuries in Kristina’s womb; a membrane in there was torn and wounded. The blood had come from the womb and this was easy to understand when one knew there were open sores in there. But the injuries could be healed and then the bleedings would stop. Farnley had given Kristina two kinds of medicine to take three times daily, and she must eat well and not do any heavy chores.

But first and foremost the doctor had ordered her to bring an urgent message to Mrs. Nilsson’s husband: If he wished to keep his wife alive he must stay away from her from now on. He must never again make her pregnant.

Mrs. Jackson’s face stiffened. She leaned toward Karl Oskar, her voice severe:

“Farnley said, word for word: Next childbed will be her death! Now you’ve heard it in English!”

Karl Oskar Nilsson had received the report in clear words, in two languages. He had heard it in their old mother tongue, and in their new. In Swedish and English he had been told: Next childbed will be Kristina’s death.

“I’ve told Kristina, of course, but she doesn’t think of herself. But she asked me to tell you about it.”

Karl Oskar stood with bent head, his ears buzzed, his cheeks burned, there was a weight across his chest. He stood close to Ulrika, he could hear every word she said, understood every one of them. But his mind would not follow, it had stopped with those six words, and it was those he heard all the time, drowning out all other sounds in the world.

“Your wife will get well again if you take good care of her. Be kind to Kristina, don’t ever make her pregnant again.”

Karl Oskar was beginning to feel insulted. Who was this woman to warn him how to take care of his wife? What did she think of him! Why did he keep listening to her admonitions? Why wasn’t he angry? Why didn’t he speak up to her? Why couldn’t he answer Ulrika in one single word? But he only stood quietly and chewed and stared.

“I’m sorry for you, Karl Oskar. Because from now on you must lie in the ox pen!”

Couldn’t that woman there shut her trap! But of course, it was Ulrika of Västergöhl, and no one as yet had made her shut up. Perhaps not even an earthquake would do it. Maybe God on doomsday might.

Karl Oskar had lost his power of speech. He tried to moisten his lips with his tongue, but his tongue was as dry as his lips. At last, with great effort, he managed to stutter forth a few words — he thanked Ulrika for her help at the doctor’s.

That was all he managed; and what more could he say?

What does a man say at the moment when he is forever banished from his wife?

— 2—

A lumberjack from Center City was to ride back with them on their sleigh, so Karl Oskar and Kristina could not talk about Dr. Farnley on the way home. No words on the subject passed between them until they were ready to go to bed that evening. Since they had moved into the new house, they had each occupied a bed in the large room, while the children slept in the gable room and the kitchen. Tonight the children were asleep and the house had grown silent.

Karl Oskar began, “How was it at the doctor’s?”

Kristina was unbuttoning her blouse; she swallowed a little. “It was horrible and repulsive.”

“Did he hurt you. .?”

“The doctor was very gentle, but I guess he had to hurt me. Oh, I was so embarrassed I had to force myself. . No one lets himself be treated that way for the fun of it! Don’t ask me to talk about it!”

“You needn’t, Kristina. .”

He went on: Perhaps he had worried as much as she about this trip to the doctor. He had been afraid it might be some incurable disease. Now he felt relieved, for hadn’t the doctor told Ulrika that the bleedings and the pain might be relieved? If they followed the doctor’s instructions, she might regain her health and strength.

“Didn’t Ulrika tell you everything?”

“Yes, yes of course. .”

“Then you know: I’m no good any more. I’m a useless woman.”

“But you’ll get your health back — that’s the only thing that matters.”

“But I’m no use to you, Karl Oskar. I’m discarded. .” Her voice thickened in a cry.

“You heard me — only one thing matters. .”

“I’m a useless woman, you’ve no wife any longer, Karl Oskar.”

She sat down heavily on her bed; her body trembled and slumped down. The tears came. She threw herself on her stomach and hid her face.

For many years Karl Oskar had not seen his wife cry. In every situation she had remained calm and controlled. But today, at the doctor’s, she had experienced something entirely new. Tonight her strength had deserted her.

“You must be terribly tired, I’m sure. .”

He sat down beside her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulder. Her crying was muffled, almost soundless. She tried to choke back her tears but they flowed evenly, quietly.

He said nothing; it would do no good just now, this he understood. But all the time he kept his arm on her shoulder; she must know he was there with her, ready to help.

Kristina’s hand sought his. Silent, they knew each other’s thoughts. So it had been many times. Perhaps they understood each other best in silence. In speech they had difficulty in finding words, in speech they never came close enough. But in a moment like this there was no need for words; between them was nothing left that words could explain.

In moments when there was nothing to say they came closest to each other. Then they felt most strongly what they meant to each other.

At last she made a decisive motion and sat up. Her tears had stopped. “I ought to feel ashamed — old woman that I am! I shouldn’t be a crybaby any more!”

“There’s no shame in tears if one needs them.”

She looked at him with wide, glazed eyes where the tears quivered. “I’m so sad about my uselessness — that’s why I cried.”

“You shouldn’t reproach yourself. No one is to blame. No one can help it.”

“There must never be another time. . we must never. . that’s why we must. .”

“I know,” he interrupted, and looked away. “Ulrika has made it quite clear to me.”

“The doctor forbids us to be together. . we must stay away from each other. . Did you hear that, Karl Oskar?”

“Yes, I heard it. .”

“What do you think. .?”

What could he say? Need he say anything? She knew so well what he thought.

Those six words were still buzzing in his head. He turned them over, back and forth, changed them:

Next childbirth will be Kristina’s death.

It didn’t help; however much he turned and changed, the word death was always there.

Therefore you must never touch her again. She cannot stand to be pregnant again. Next time it will be her death.

They had always had it good together, he and she. When he had his wife it was his greatest bliss in life. During the day he would go about in expectant joy at the thought of evening and their own moment. So it had been for him ever since in his youth they had found each other. And he knew she felt the same. There were wives who didn’t care, who would just as soon have their men stay away from them. Kristina was not one of them. She too had her joy in their being together. She had said as much many times: He mustn’t think that she liked it less than he. And lately she had said it more often than before. She was a shy woman, but when they were together her shyness disappeared. It might happen she was the first to express the wish: Tonight! He was her husband, it was God’s intent that in lust also they should give each other joy.

Their moments together confirmed to her that they desired each other as much as in youth, that they were still in love.

But from now on it would be forbidden to them to be together. She had asked him what he thought of it and he hadn’t answered, for he felt she knew. No words were needed in this matter.

“Karl Oskar — I’m thinking about something. .”

“Yes

“Do you believe the Lord God has inflicted this upon us?”

Her question surprised him. He himself would never have thought of it. “What do you think?”

“I doubt it. We only know what the doctor in Stillwater said. Why would God begrudge us being together?”

“But we must follow what the doctor said. .”

“He is only a human being like the rest of us.”

“We must obey him anyway.”

“But how can he know if I can stand a childbed or not? Someone else is the all-knowing.”

Karl Oskar rose slowly from his wife’s bed: “We must do only one thing: See to it that you get well and strong again! And now we must go to bed, tonight as always.”

So at last they went to rest in their house, in the same room, in separate beds, at opposite sides of the room.

During their marriage of almost twenty years they had shared the day’s labor and the night’s rest. From this day on they were banished from each other during the night; their living together as man and woman was finished.

— 3—

A settler wife’s evening prayer:

. . dear God and Creator! Tonight as all nights I surrender to your mercy before I go to sleep. I’ve been to a medical man today and sought aid for my pain, but you must not think that I trust him more than you, my Lord. He is only a frail human, like myself, and he can do nothing if he doesn’t get his knowledge from the Almighty. You alone rule! If you bless the doctor’s medicine then only will it heal me.

You mustn’t think, dear God, that his words frightened me in any way. Who knows if I ever will be strong enough to bear another child? You are the only one to know if the next childbed will be my death or not. I’ll come to my end when it’s your will that I shall.

You know how much Karl Oskar and I have loved each other since youth. You know we have been together in sickness and lust. Can it be your will that we must not know each other from now on? Not be together as married people after this? Can you mean that we must stay apart all the time we have left?

Dear God! You know that we, according to your commandments, have kept our conjugal promises and through all the years lived harmoniously and in compassion. My husband has never desired anyone else and I just as little. Karl Oskar has never looked at another woman and I never at a man. Therefore, forgive us if we feel that we should be together as before during the time we have left together here in this world.

Is it only a human whim that we must live apart? I ask your opinion. You will let me know what the actual truth is. If this is a trial from you, then I’ll accept it in humility. I’m only a simple, unschooled woman, but I seek your hand when I’m in doubt and need your advice.

And I pray you, dear God, as always: The children, especially Frank and Ulrika, are so tender still; don’t make my little ones motherless before they have grown bigger.

Bless and keep all of us who sleep in our beds this night in the whole wide world! Amen!

VIII. THE LETTER FROM SWEDEN

Åkerby, Ljuder Parish,

February 19, Anno 1862.

Dear Brother Karl Oskar Nilsson,

Health and Blessing

I will sit down and write a few Lines to tell you that our Mother is dead, which happened the 3rd inst. She left this Life and entered Eternity at half past seven in the Evening of said date. The years of her Life were 67, 2 Months and a few Days. Our Mothers death-suffering was short, as She came to her End by a sudden Stroke. The day before we had found her on the Ground, her senses gone; she remained unconscious until She died the following Evening.

A few days before Christmas our Mother received the Money you had sent her in a draft of Five dollars. We got the money at the Bank in Växjö, it amounted to 18 riksdaler Swedish money. Mother asked to thank you heartily. The last Time I spoke to her before she died she told me not to forget to Write to you in North America and thank you for the great Christmas Gift. Our Mother was buried the 9th inst. we had a quiet Funeral. Auction and Settlement we have also had after her, everything belonging to the Estate carefully noted down as it was at the Hour of Death. The papers will go to Court and then we two surviving heirs will divide the Balance. Your share will be sent to you.

Both our beloved Parents are now gone from Time. It is not in our Power to stop the Guest called death. When a relative lies on Bier we may mirror Ourselves each time and see what shall happen to us.

Forgive my poor writing, I can not put my thoughts on Paper. But we hope to hear from you and forget not your Sister in Sweden. We are only the two of us left now. We had once a happy childhood home and we must not forget each other in this Life.

Best Wishes Brother,

Written Down by your devoted Sister

Lydia Karlsson.