when she saw the clear, fresh water, for even in her sleep her throat felt parched.
There the dream ended. But from that moment she knew who was to be her husband; for the one who comes in the dream and offers you water when you have eaten dream-pancake, he is the one you will marry.
Mamselle Lisa Maja wondered how this could come about, for at that time she did not know any one by the name of Lagerlöf. But one day, soon after New Year's, as she was standing at the window, a sledge came up the driveway. Suddenly she gave a cry and nipped the housekeeper by the sleeve.
"Here comes the one I saw in the dream," she said. "You'll find that his name is Lagerlöf."
And 'twas just as she had said. The man in the sledge was Daniel Lagerlöf, manager of the Kymsberg Iron Works, who had come to buy hay.
The first sight of him must have been a disappointment. He was not handsome and he looked so sombre she did not see how she could ever like him.
He stayed the night at Mårbacka. In the morning the stableboy came in and said that a fox and two wolves had fallen into the fox-pit. None of the men on the place seemed to know what to do to get the trapped animals out, but the Kymsberg manager jumped into the pit with no weapon but a knotted stick. He dealt the wolves a couple of blows on the head, stunning them, then slipped a noose round their necks by which to draw them up.
