"And here's my hand," Jan said presently, in an uncertain voice that betrayed both shyness and anxiety--and put out a hand, which despite all his hard toil had always remained singularly soft. "I do this because the girl wants me to," he added. "And here's mine," said Katrina. "I don't understand what it could have been that you saw, but if you and the girl want us to stick together, so do I." Then they went all the way home to their hut, hand in hand. THE LETTER One morning when Glory Goldie had been gone about a fortnight, Jan was out in the pasture nearest the big forest, mending a wattled fence. He was so close to the woods that he could hear the murmur of the pines and see the grouse hen walking about under the trees, scratching for food-along line of grouse chicks trailing after her. Jan had nearly finished his work when he heard a loud bellowing from the wooded heights! It sounded so weird and awful he began to be alarmed. He stood still a moment and listened. Soon he heard it again. Then he knew it was nothing to be afraid of, but on the contrary, it seemed to be a cry for help. He threw down his pickets and branches and hurried through the birch grove into the dense fir woods, where he had not gone far before he discovered what was amiss. Up there was a big, treacherous marsh. A cow belonging to the Falla folk had gone down in a quagmire and Jan saw at once that it was the best cow they had on the farm, one for which Lars Gunnarson had been offered two hundred rix-dollars. She had sunk deep in the mire and was now so terrified that she lay quite still and sent forth only feeble and intermittant bellowings. It was plain that she had struggled desperately for she was covered with mud clear to her horns, and round about her the green moss-tufts had been torn up. She had bellowed so loud that Jan thought every one in Ashdales must have heard her, yet no one but himself had come up to the marsh. He did not tarry a second, but ran straight to the farm for help. It was slow work setting poles in the marsh, laying out boards and slipping ropes under the cow, to draw her up by. For when the men reached her she had sunk to her back, so that only her head was above the mire. After they had finally dragged her back onto firm ground and carted her home to Falla the housewife invited all who had worked over the animal to come inside for coffee. No one had been so zealous in the rescue work as had Jan of Ruffluck. But for him the cow would have been lost. And just think! She was a cow worth at least two hundred rix-dollars.