But all summer the Lieutenant went on dumping stone into the clay, and when by autumn it was still uncertain whether the foundation would hold, he decided to put off the masonry work till the following year, in order to see how the blue clay would behave in the spring, when the frost was out of the ground.
As soon as the snow was gone, the Lieutenant went down to have a look at his wall. Yes, it was still there, no cracks in it. But then the regular spring thaw had not begun.
Every day, and many times a day, he went down to see how things were going. The wall remained intact, and the ground seemed now to be free of frost, so he ventured to send word to the master mason to come with his journeymen, and begin work.
They put up the walls on the north and east sides first, so as to give the insecure foundation on the west side time to settle. The latter part of June they began work on the doubtful side, and by the middle of July, when they had got almost up to the coping, they noticed some cracks in the wall. Then, all at once, the wall began to sag, and several layers of brick had to be torn down quickly, lest the whole wall give way.
Now things began to look serious for Lieutenant Lagerlöf. What to do next he did not know. By that time the money he had received from his father-in-law was used up. But Squire Wallroth, who was both open-handed and reasonable, would no doubt have let him have an additional sum, had he written and ex-
