And so they--Otto Gumaelius and his wife--gave her the freedom of their home--freedom to work, and peace, and the best of care for nearly a year, until the book was finished. Now, at last, she could write from morning till night. It was the happiest time of her life. But when the story was finished at the close of the summer, it looked queer. It was wild and disordered, and the connecting threads were so loose that all the parts seemed bent upon following their old inclination to wander off, each in its own way. It never became what it should have been. Its misfortune was that it had been compelled to wait so long to be told. If it was not properly disciplined and restrained, it was mostly because the author was so overjoyed in the thought that at last she had been privileged to write it. * * * * * BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR JERUSALEM, A Novel (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) CHRIST LEGENDS (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF NILS (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) FURTHER ADVENTURES OF NILS (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) GIRL FROM THE MARSH CROFT (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) LEGEND OF THE SACRED IMAGE (_Trans. from Swedish by Velma Swanston Howard_) MIRACLES OF ANTICHRIST (_Trans. from Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flach_) STORY OF GÖSTA BERLING (_Trans. from Swedish by Pauline Bancroft Flach_) FROM A SWEDISH HOMESTEAD (_Trans. from Swedish by Jessie Bröchner_) End of Project Gutenberg's The Girl From the Marsh Croft, by Selma Lagerlöf