FRU RAKLITZ’S reformation may not have been so complete after all, for the old housekeeper could never sufficiently impress upon the little Lagerlöf children what a fortunate thing it was for Mamselle Lisa Maja that she got so good a husband as Paymaster Daniel Lagerlöf. He was no rich man; but wise, and kindly, and honourable he had always been. In him she had found just the protector she needed. To be sure he was no priest, but his father and grandfather, his great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather had all been clergymen and married to daughters of clergymen, so that he could claim kinship with all the old clerical families of Värmland. Any preaching or speech-making gift he had not inherited from his forebears, but the tendency to guide and govern a whole community was in his blood. The Ämtervik peasants, who at first thought ill of him because he had married the Mårbacka parson’s daughter--thereby upsetting the old order--soon grew accustomed to having him run the important affairs of the parish. The children were astonished to hear the housekeeper speak in that way of their grandfather. They had heard stories of him which were common among the people. He was said to have been a great violinist, and in his youth, at least, was so moody and high-strung that the humdrum of home life wore on him and he had to go his own ways. But that the old housekeeper denied most emphatically. No, indeed, there was nothing queer about the Paymaster of the Regiment. She could not imagine who had put such ideas into the children’s heads. It was merely that his official duties forced him to live away on journeys most of the time. As Paymaster of the Regiment once a year he had to travel through the whole of Värmland, to collect the war tax. And not only was he Paymaster of the Regiment, but Manager of the Kymsberg Iron Works, far up by the Norwegian boundary; and all at once he had to be up and off for there. Then, too, he had such a good name that people were always asking him to serve as executor and administrator. Most bothersome of all had been his trusteeship for Judge Sandelin’s wife, who had inherited seven foundries from Iron Master Antonsson. He had to spend months on end at these various foundries, straightening out the tangled affairs. But as soon as ever he could get away he hurried back to Mårbacka. If he chanced to come home some morning, unobserved, he would hunt up his violin and stand outside the bedroom window, and awaken his wife with music. Now that much may have been true, perhaps; but that he ran away from home and was gone for long periods without letting anyone know his whereabouts--that was just something folks imagined, because ’twas always the wife who ruled at Mårbacka. The children were very sorry to hear that their grandfather had been such a sober, serious, matter-of-fact person. And of course they had to believe what the old housekeeper told them.