It would hardly have been possible for any one to be as fond of the little girl as her father was; but it may be truly said that she had a very good friend in old seine-maker Ola.

This is the way they came to be friends:  Glory Goldie had taken to setting out fishing-poles in the brook for the small salmon-trout that abounded there.  She had better luck with her fishing than any one would have expected, and the very first day she brought home a couple of spindly fishes.

She was elated over her success, as can be imagined, and received praise from her mother for being able to provide food for the family, when she was only a little girl of eight.  To encourage the child, Katrina let her cleanse and fry the fish.  Jan ate of it and declared he had never tasted the like of that fish, which was the plain truth.  For the fish was so bony and dry and burnt that the little girl herself could scarcely swallow a morsel of it.

But for all that the little girl was just as enthusiastic over her fishing.  She got up every morning at the ionic time that Jan did and hurried off to the brook, a basket on her arm, and carrying in a little tin box the worms to bait her hooks.  Thus equipped, she went off to the brook, which came gushing down the rocky steep in numerous falls and rapids, between which were short stretches of dark still water and places where the stream ran, clear and transparent, over a bed of sand and smooth stones.

Think of it!  After the first week she had no luck with the fishing.  The worms were gone from all the hooks, but no fish had fastened there.  She shifted her tackle from rapid to still water, from still water to rippling falls, and she changed her hooks—­but with no better results.

She asked the boys at Boerje’s and at Eric’s if they were not the ones who got up with the lark and carried off her fish.  But a question like that the boys would not deign to answer.  For no boy would stoop to take fish from the brook, when he had the whole of Dove Lake to fish in.  It was all right for little girls, who were not allowed to go down to the lake, to run about hunting fish in the woods, they said.

Despite the superior airs of the boys, the little girl only half-believed them.  “Surely someone must take the fish off my hooks!” she said to herself.  Hers were real hooks, too, and not just bent pins.  And in order to satisfy herself she arose one morning before Jan or Katrina were awake, and ran over to the brook.  When near to the stream she slackened her pace, taking very short cautious steps so as not to slip on the stones or to rustle the bushes.  Then, all at once her, whole body became numb.  For at the edge of the brook, on the very spot where she had set out her poles the morning before, stood a fish thief tampering with her lines.  It was not one of the boys, as she had supposed, but a grown man, who was just then bending over the water, drawing up a fish.