“In vain I protest and remind him of our betrothal. He insists that your mother will surely win you back, as she is making great efforts to discover where you are. He will not hear of my going out to service. I know that you will say, ‘Come to me, and we will be married,’ but knowing your plans and your agreement with your employer, this I will not do until Christmas comes again. One thing is possible, if you will undertake it. You are, of course, known in your village as a working-man. There must be some one there who wishes a young, strong woman to do housework, sewing, anything, in short,—you know my hands are used to work of all kinds. Find some lady who will pay my passage money, to be taken out in service, and I will come. Thus I, too, shall be independent. I can sometimes see you, and when we then marry at Christmas, no one will know that we are not as we seem, and we shall begin on a sure footing. Do not attempt to stop me, dearest. Let me also work. “Your ANDREA.” This letter cut Waldsen to the heart as well as stirred his pride, and his first impulse was to return at once to Denmark for Andrea. Then he considered all the threads that must be unravelled, the dispersal of many plans so nicely made, and he paused, perplexed. Andrea clearly did not realize that he was not really a servant even in name, and that he could not allow her to fill a drudge’s place in some farm-house. Stop! why should he not consult Margaret? She might suggest something, and, at least, her advice would be in accord with local custom, so that neither he nor Andrea would be criticised in future by those among whom they were to live. He wrote a few comforting lines to his betrothed, which he prepared to post that night that the letter might go by the next day’s steamer, for he had the habit, that a man bred in a large city seldom loses, of noting the coming and going of the iron monsters that bind the continents. It was after one o’clock when he went downstairs, shoes in hand, and nearly three when he returned from his six-mile walk, after dropping his letter through the well-worn slit in the post-office door. The stairs creaked provokingly as he made his way up. He heard a slight noise and saw a light under Margaret’s door, which, as he passed by, opened, and Margaret herself peered out, shading her candle with her hand, and looking down the hall. She almost screamed when she saw Gurth so near, and said quickly, with a catch in her breath: “I heard a noise and thought the stair door had blown open. Are you ill? Can I do anything for you?” He looked at her a moment as she stood there in her loose wool wrapper, her hair hanging in long braids, and it seemed like an answer to his perplexity. His heart whispered, Trust her, consult her, and he said gravely, “I am not ill, I thank you, and you can do something for me, but not to-night.”