The crop that year was so abundant, it seemed as if the good old times were back with us again. The haylofts along the way were so full, shutters and doors could not be closed; the rye fields were decked with close rows of shooks; the apple trees in the front yards hung heavy with reddening fruit, and the fallow fields, newly sown, showed a tender crop just turning green. I sat thinking that here was something Lieutenant Lagerlöf--whose centenary it was that day--would have liked to see. Here was prosperity. It was not as in 1918 and 1917 and 1915 and 1914 and 1911--those dreadful years of drouth! How he would have rejoiced at this! He would have nodded to himself, and averred that nowhere in all Värmland could they raise such crops as in his parish. During the whole long drive to the church, my father was in my thoughts. On this very road he had driven many and many a time. I pictured with what keen interest he would have noted all the changes. Every house which had been repainted, every new window, every roof where tiling had replaced the old shingles, he would have pointed out and commented upon. The cottage Där Fram at Ås, which had remained unaltered, would have delighted him; but he would have been sorry to find Jan Larsson’s old house--the finest in the parish in his time--torn down. Certainly he had never been opposed to changes and improvements, though there were some time-honoured things he had wished to leave undisturbed. Were he here now, he would think us a shiftless lot to have in this day and age the old crooked, sagging fences that were here in his time. He would be shocked to find the road ditches still choked with weeds, the bridges weak and full of holes, and the dung-yards still lying at the edge of the road. When I came to the crossing where the village road runs into the great highway, how I wished I might have pointed out to him the fine health resort among the hills, and told him that Ås Springs were now visited every year by hundreds of people. It would have gladdened him to know that his idea--that this would some day be a popular watering-place--had not been so far afield. I could have wished he were beside me in the carriage as I drove across the Ämtan Bridge! It would have been a joy to show him that the river had at last been dredged, and now ran in a straight course, no longer overflowing its banks.