She sensed the odours of the sea and before her eyes rose a vision of boats and sea-faring folk--hardly the sea itself, but sea-shells and jelly-fish and crabs and star-fish and weakfish and mackerel. Then from some obscure recess of memory emerged the little red house in Karlagatan. She saw the bird of paradise, Fru Strömberg, the _Jacob_, Gray Island, Östra Hamngatan, the _Uddeholm_, and the three horses that drew the big carriage. And last, she saw the horses turn in on a large sward, surrounded by low red buildings and enclosed by a white fence. They stopped before a wide red house, with small windows and a little porch, and she heard all in the carriage cry as with one voice: “Thank God we’re home again!” The others, she remembered, recognized the place at once as Mårbacka, but not she. Had she been alone she would not have known what place it was. To be sure, she remembered her home, though until then she had never seen how it looked. On the porch stood a little sweet-faced, slightly bent, white-haired old lady in a striped skirt and black jacket. That was her grandmother. Her she remembered quite well, though she had never before noticed her appearance. It was the same with her brother Daniel and the baby, the housekeeper and Othello the spaniel--they were all quite new to her. True, she remembered them in a way; but this was the first time she had actually seen them. Moreover, sitting in the little church, her head bowed over the prayer book, she knew that on that Strömstad visit she had not only learned to walk but to see. It was thanks to that journey that she remembered her nearest and dearest as they were in their prime, when life was a joy to them. But for that, everything relating to those times would have faded out of mind. But with the help of the little red ribbon they lived on. “Let not forgetfulness grow over all this,” the ribbon said to her. “Remember your parents, who gave themselves no rest till they had found a cure for you. Remember Back-Kaisa, her great love and patience, how she braved the terrors of land and sea for your sake.” THE OLD HOUSEKEEPER’S TALES I GRANDMOTHER THE year after the Strömstad visit the little Mårbacka children had a great sorrow. They lost their dear grandmother. Almost up to the very last they had sat with her on the corner sofa in the bedroom and listened to her stories and songs. They could not remember a time when their grandmother had not sung and narrated to them. It had been a glorious life. Never were children so favoured. Where their grandmother had learned her stories and ballads they did not know, but she herself believed every word of them. When she had told something very wonderful, she would look deep into the eyes of the little children and say, with the utmost conviction: “All this is as true as that I see you and you see me.”