“I think he does,” said Hugh, remembering that tall figure striding away in the moonlight down Rudolm’s single street.
“Over yonder under that maple,” continued Oscar, “is where I buried little Hendrik, so now I have no company but Hulda. She is not much good to talk to, Hulda isn’t, but she is a nice cow in her way. It has been good to have you here, Hugh, for it has been a little lonely since little Hendrik was gone.”
He laid his scarred hand on Hugh’s knee and looked very steadily out across the hills. Hugh sat very straight, staring at the Pirate’s house with new and fascinated interest, thinking very deeply. Presently he broke out again.
“Oscar,” he said, “why do you live here all alone? You are in danger, you are not happy, what good is it going to do you in the end?”
His friend answered with a little hesitation, his words coming almost shyly at first, but gradually gathering headway as he put into speech the thought that possessed his whole heart.
“It is on account of those people back in Rudolm. They, and my father with them, came over from Sweden, thinking, like children in a fairy tale, that they were coming to a new world where they were to be rich and happy always. My father was the biggest man amongst them, I think it must have been he who persuaded them to come. He was so bitterly unhappy afterward to see how poor and disappointed they were. He gave me the best education he could and encouraged me to work for an even better one after he died; he said more than once that he hoped I could help his comrades since he never could.”
“How did they find such a place as Rudolm to come to?” Hugh asked.
“A good many Swedes had settled in this part of the country, for it is like their own, the same sort of hills and woods full of birch trees and lakes and little rivers. And there was at that time a great cry that these mountains were fabulously rich in iron, some even said in gold and silver, but the iron was thrilling enough. All who could came flocking into Rudolm valley to stake out a claim or to buy one, expecting to grow rich in a single night. My father spent all the money he had from selling his farm in Sweden to buy a few stony acres—where now Linda and her children work all day long to cut the hay.”
“And there were no mines?”
“A few, one or two that were worth working if one had the money to put into them. Some millionaire or other owns what there are, and those Swedes who spent everything they had to buy themselves a hole in the ground, they work for him and live as best they can.”