“Think how you boys used to beat me when we were children!” she rattled on.  “Even now I have to take thrashings.  But when it came to catechism examinations, I could beat you all.  ’No one can catch Ingeborg napping,’ the dean used to say.  ’She always knows her lessons.’  And I’m good friends with the little misses at Loevdala Manor.  I recite the catechism for them both questions and answers—­ from beginning to end.  And what a memory I’ve got!  I know the whole Bible by heart and the hymn book, too, and all the dean’s sermons.  Shall I recite something for you, or would you rather hear me sing?”

Jan said nothing whatever, but went to threshing again.  Ingeborg, undaunted, seated herself on a sheaf of straw and struck up a chant of some twenty stanzas, then she repeated a couple of chapters from the Bible, whereupon she got up and went out.  Jan thought she had gone for good, but in a little while she reappeared in the doorway of the barn.

“Hold still!” she whispered.  “Hold still!  Now we’ll say nothing but what we were going to say.  Only be still—­still!”

Then up went her forefinger.  Now she held her body rigid and her eyes open.  “No other thoughts, no other thoughts!” she said.  “We’ll keep to the subject.  Only hush your pounding!”

She waited till Jan minded her.

“You came to me last night in a dream—­yes, that was it.  You came to me and I says to you like this:  ’Are you out for a walk, Jan of the Ashdales?’ ‘Yes,’ says you, ’but now I’m Jan of the Vale of Longings.’  ‘Then, well met,’ says I.  ’There’s where I have lived all my life.’”

Whereupon she disappeared again, and Jan, startled by her strange words, did not immediately resume his work, but stood pondering.  In a moment or two she was there again.

“I remember now what brought me here,” she told him.  “I wanted to show you my stars.”

On her arm was a small covered basket bound with cord, and while she tugged and pulled at a knot, to loosen it, she chattered like a magpie.

“They are real stars, these.  When one lives in the Vale of Longings one isn’t satisfied with the things of earth; then one is compelled to go out and look for stars.  There is no other choice.  Now you, too, will have to go in search of them.”

“No, no, Ingeborg!” returned Jan.  “I’ll confine my search to what is to be found on this earth.”

“For goodness sake hush!” cried the woman.  “You don’t suppose I’m such a fool as to go ahunting for those which remain in the heavens, do you?  I only seek the kind that have fallen.  I’ve got some sense, I guess!”

She opened her basket which was filled with a variety of stars she had evidently picked up at the manors.  There were tin stars and glass stars and paper stars—­ornaments from Christmas trees and confectionery.

“They are real stars fallen from the sky,” she declared.  “You are the only person I’ve shown them to.  I’ll let you have a couple whenever you need them.”