It was a slow proceeding bringing together those who were to be at the first table.  The host and hostess moved about a long while seeking the highest worthies, but somehow they failed to come up to him.

Not far from the Emperor sat a couple of old spinsters, chatting, who had not the least expectation of being called up then.  They were speaking of Linnart, son of the late Bjoern Hindrickson, saying it was well that he had come home in time for a reconciliation with his father.

Not that there had been any actual enmity between father and son, but it happened that some thirty years earlier, when the son was two and twenty and wanted to marry, he had asked the old man to let him take over the management of the farm, so that he could be his own master.  This Bjoern had flatly refused to do.  He wanted the son to stay at home and go on working under him and then to take over the property when the old man was no more.  “No,” was the son’s answer.  “I’ll not stay at home and be your servant even though you are my father.  I prefer to go out in the world and make a home for myself, for I must be as good a man as you are, or the feeling of comradeship between us will soon end.”  “That can end at any time, if you choose to go your own ways,” Bjoern Hindrickson told him.  Then the son had gone up into the wilderness northeast of Dove Lake, and had settled in the wildest and least populated region, where he broke ground for a farm of his own.  His land lay in Bro parish, and he was never again seen in Svartsjoe.  Not in thirty years had his parents laid eyes on him.  But a week ago, when old Bjoern was nearing the end, he had come home.

This was good news to Jan of Ruffluck.  The Sunday before, when Katrina got back from church and told him that Bjoern was dying, he immediately asked whether the son had been sent for.  But it seems he had not.  Katrina had heard that Bjoern’s wife had begged and implored the old man to let her send for their son and that he would not hear of it.  He wanted to die in peace, he said.

But Jan was not satisfied to let the matter rest there.  The thought of Linnart away out in the wilds, knowing nothing of his father’s grave condition had caused him to disregard old Bjoern’s wishes and go tell the son himself.  He had heard nothing as to the outcome until now, and he was so interested in what the two old spinsters were saying, that he quite forgot to think about either the first or the second table.

When the son returned he and the father were as nice as could be to each other.  The old man laughed at the son’s attire.  “So you’ve come in your working clothes,” he said.  “I suppose I should have dressed up, since it’s Sunday,” Linnart replied.  “But we’ve had so much rain up our way this summer and I had thought of hauling in some oats to-day.”  “Did you manage to get in any?” the old man asked him.  “I got one wagon loaded, but that I left standing in the field when word came