[VII. THE GHOST OF THE ISLAND]
TWO LITTLE FINNS
[CHAPTER I]
AN IMPORTANT TRUST
EARLY in the present century—that is to say, somewhere about the year 1816—there lived on the borders of a great forest in Finland a woodcutter and his two children. Their home was a log hut built in two storeys. On the lower floor was a kitchen, a tiny corner of which was screened off for a bedroom, while upstairs were two small chambers, one for the man, Grubert Reuss, and the other for his little daughter, Blonda, a girl eleven years of age. The boy, Anthony, commonly called Tonie, who was thirteen, slept downstairs, and made himself very useful, especially in the early mornings, by bringing in wood, filling the water-tub from the lake that bounded this part of the forest on one side, lighting the fire, and sweeping out the kitchen all ready for Blonda when she came down to prepare breakfast.
They were very poor—Grubert and his children—but this did not hinder them from being contented and happy. Their food was coarse and wanting in variety, consisting for the most part of black rye bread, barley porridge, vegetable soup, eggs, goat's milk, and the mushrooms, roots and berries that they found in the woods. But they had enough to eat, and their clothing was not of an expensive kind; so they managed to get along very well, especially now that Blonda was becoming quite a clever little housekeeper, and was able to make her father's earnings go almost as far as her mother had done in years gone by, before the fever which devastated that part of Finland swept her away, leaving the little home bereft.