"Oh, yes, I have looked out a duet which you will be able to manage." She took it out, he stood at a distance of two ells and looked at it--grew very red, and passed his hands through his hair. "Do you know it?" He never answered; it was a piece of his own, he called it the "Mountain Brook," and he had often played it for Kallem upstairs; now it had been arranged as a duet; in this way she wished to make up for the last time. "Come, now!" In the same red silk dress, with the same lace falling over her long playing-fingers, there she sat, the same figure, the same wonderfully dreamy eyes looking at him, sometimes in a way that made him shiver. But now he was himself in new clothes, and his hair was cut and well arranged, as was his whole person. And the "mountain brook" came rushing from under her nimble fingers; if he were not always able to keep up with her, she waited to take him along. At last, if not quite perfect, it was at all events not so bad but what she graciously promised in the future to go on with it. He bowed, and would have gone. "It is Sunday," said she, "you can't have anything to do?" "No." "Shall we go for a walk?" "Yes, if you.... Oh, yes!" Quick as an arrow he came down in overcoat and fur cap, and she appeared in her pretty cloak and the coquettish American hat with feathers. "Let us go up the hill and meet the doctor." They went off. She felt she would have to talk the whole time, so she began to describe the snow-storms on the American prairies, and what the consequences could be for both man and beast. He saw how little by little the colour came to her cheeks, and how her small feet could hurry along the road. There was no sun that October day, but it was not cold; the fields were dark and dull, and the foliage was just beginning to turn; but he saw nothing of all that, he was overcome by the thought that she had wished to walk with him, she, the most refined, the most musical woman he knew. For her sake he would so gladly roll in the dust, shoot himself with a pistol, or jump into the lake. This was no imaginary woman, it was Ragni Kallem in the red silk dress under the soft cloak, and the American hat with feathers--the one that all his companions admired so much. Those eyes gazed at him; and he dared not go down to their very depths. She walked and talked with him before everybody. Then he too began to talk, as they went from winter in America to winter in the forest districts. His father, Pastor Meek's son Otto, was a doctor and had married a farmer's daughter from a large farm in the forest district, and lived there like any other peasant. Together with him Karl had been across the river-bed, away up in the solitude of the wooded mountains; he had helped at the felling of timber, the netting of deer, and shooting; he talked of scenery and impressions of which she had not the slightest idea. He described the appearance of a black-cock, its courtship, habits, the flapping of its