A minister's daughter, educated to fit herself for a minister's wife. She had learned English in the schools of her native land, as the custom is, and could speak it fairly when family reverses carried her like a far-blown seed to America. She had no business training, for what should a minister's wife know of business beyond the affairs of the parish and the economy of her own home? She found, therefore, nothing open to her hands in America save menial work in the households of others. Not being bred to it, nor the intention or thought of it as a future contingency, she suffered in humbling herself to the services of people who were at once her intellectual and social inferiors. The one advantage in it was the improvement of her English speech, through which she hoped for better things in time. It was while she was still new to America, its customs and social adjustments, and the shame of her menial situation burned in her soul like a corrosive acid, that she saw the advertisement of Swan Carlson in a Swedish newspaper. Swan Carlson was advertising for a wife. Beneath a handsome picture of himself he stated his desires, frankly, with evident honesty in all his representations. He told of his holdings in sheep and land, of his money in the bank. A dream of new consequence in this strange land came to Hertha Jacobsen as she read the advertisement, as she studied the features of Swan Carlson, his bold face looking at her from the page. She had seen men, and the women of such men sharing their honors, who had risen from peasants to governors and senators, to positions of wealth and consequence in this strange land with all the romance of a tale out of a book. Perhaps fate had urged her on to this unfriendly shore only to feed her on the bitter herbs for her purification for a better life. The minister of her church investigated Swan Carlson and his claims, finding him all that he professed to be. Hertha wrote to him; in time Swan came to visit her, a tall, long-striding man, handsomer than his picture in the paper, handsome as a Viking lord with his proud foot on the neck of a fallen foe. So she married him, and came away with him to the sheeplands, and Swan's hand was as tender of her as a summer wind. It was shearing time when they reached home; Swan was with her every day for a little while, gathering his flocks from the range into the shearing sheds. He was master of more than fifteen thousand sheep. When the shearing was done, and Swan had gone with his wagons to ship the clip, returning with his bankbook showing thousands in added wealth, a change came into her life, so radiant with the blossoms of a new happiness. Swan's big laugh was not so ready in his throat any more; his great hand seemed forgetful of its caress. He told her that the time of idling now was over; she must go with him in a sheep-wagon to the range and care for her band of sheep, sharing the labors of his life as she shared its rewards.