“But then I have been happy as well.  I have been getting everything ready in your room—­yours and his!  You will see it all when you come, but I must tell you a little about it now.  I have put down cork matting all over the floor, to keep out the draught.  But when I had done it, I had a sort of guilty feeling.  Only a bit of matting—­nothing much, after all—­but it came into my mind that many children have to run about on bare floors where the cold can nip their feet through the cracks.  And I felt almost as if I ought to pull it all up again.  But, after all, it was for him—­and what could be too good for him!  I would lay it double in his room!

“I have some good news for you.  The Perakorpi road is already begun.  And then some bad news—­the drainage business looks like being given up altogether—­just when everything was ready, and we were going to start.  Just quarrelling and jealousy among the people round—­real peasant obstinacy, and of course with Tapola Antti at the head.  A miserable lot!  I should like to knock some of them down.  I have fought as hard as I could for it, thundering like Moses at Sinai, and sacrificing the golden calf.  The thing must go through at any cost.  If they will not back me up, then I will start the work alone.  And there are not many of them, anyway—­we are to have a meeting again to-morrow.

“And then, when you come home, I can set to work in earnest.  If only he may turn out as I hope—­then perhaps one day we might work on it together.  I wish I had wings—­then I should not need to sit sweating over this wretched paper!

“Keep well and strong, and may all good angels watch over you both!—­Your impatient....

“Write soon—­at once!”

“8 September 1900.

“DEAR,—­Your letter was like a beating of your own heart.  Yourself in every word—­and it showed me a side of your nature that I care for more than I can tell.

“You are anxious—­but there is nothing to be anxious about.  How could there ever be anything wrong with our child—­in body or soul?  Of course we must expect more troubles yet—­but that has nothing to do with the child!  I know you were in low spirits then, but body and soul were sound enough.  And I feel so well and strong and happy now myself that it must be passed on to him—­even if he were a stone!  And then I am all overflowing with love for you and confidence in the future.  And I shall feed him with it too, and then he will be the same.  All that about the magpie and the woodpecker—­you read it wrongly, that is all.  The magpie simply came to give you my love—­poor thing, she can’t help having an ugly voice!  And then the woodpecker—­don’t you see, it was just pecking out the worms from the timber—­there must be no worm-eaten timber in his home!  That’s what it meant.

“But I am glad you wrote about it all the same.  For it showed me that he will be as we hope.  Now I understand how terribly you must have suffered these last years.  You’d never make a criminal, Olof; even I, a woman, could commit a crime with colder courage.  Oh, but I love you for it!  And you don’t know how glad I am to think my child’s father is like that.  A wakeful, tender conscience—­that is the best thing you can give him, though you give him so much.