sickness, a longing for his father, for the comfortable, ordinary life at home, for everything that was usual and familiar. What would become of him here, he wondered, what could be the end of this venture “on his own”? What a strange place it was to which his journey had led him, what strange people he had met or heard of that day, the clumsy, friendly Swedes, kind-hearted Linda Ingmarsson, that mysterious Jake out on the mountain, that brother Oscar whose road it was that climbed the hill. He ran through the list over and over and found that his mind, with odd insistence, kept coming back to the road that “now went nowhere but some day would go far.”
The announcement that supper was ready interrupted his reflections, after which he received a pressing invitation from Carl to go with him to get the mail. Rudolm knew no such luxury as a postman, it went every night to fetch its letters at the general store where John Benson sold meat and calico and mackinaw coats. The little postmistress who sorted the mail behind her own
