that he would harm a cat, was the Lieutenant. She knew that his mother had taught him better.
"This'll never do, Master," she said to the Lieutenant every time he came into the barn. "You don't know how worried I am! The cats are leaving me."
"I don't see but they're running in front of my feet the same as usual," the Lieutenant replied.
"If there be thirteen left, 'tis all and no more," wailed the cow-girl. "I'd hate to be standing in the shoes of the one that's doing this! And worst of all, the farm'll suffer for it."
Now in those days the Lieutenant was a strong young man and an ambitious, enterprising farmer. He had big plans for Mårbacka. The estate was not extensive, but the soil was rich and the fields, spreading in one continuous stretch of expanse, were level and clear of stones. It would be no fault of his if the farm did not some day become the finest in the whole Fryken Valley. He had money at his command, for his father-in-law. Squire Wallroth, who was a man of means, admired his son-in-law's initiative and enterprise, and gave him the support he needed.
The Lieutenant set about reparcelling the land for rotation of crops. He dug ditches a fathom deep for drainage, and sowed timothy and clover in the meadows, so that they would produce something besides wild flowers; he bought a threshing machine, which did away with their having to stand in a barn all winter beating out the grain with flails, and he also procured some tall,
