fore, it had been the custom to cut down the saplings, leave them on the ground to dry, then burn them where they lay. The following year the ashes were sown with rye, and, later, these burn-beaten clearings were covered with wild strawberries and raspberries. Mamselle Lovisa naturally took it to heart when her brother no longer burned such "falls."
"Mark my words," she said to him, "there'll soon be an end to the wild berries. Where will they grow if the woods are not burn-beaten? If all were to do as you are doing, we'd never again be able to sit of a summer's evening and watch the pretty fires round the wooded hills."
And she was not pleased with the new barn, either. Of course she did not know very much, she said, but she had been told there was never any comfort in a stone barn.
When the new barn was finished and the old one torn down, and the Lieutenant talked of laying out a new garden, Mamselle Lovisa was beside herself.
"I trust you know what you're about," she said. "A large garden requires constant care, so you will have to figure on keeping a gardener. Unless a garden is properly tended and kept clear of weeds, one might better have none at all."
The Lieutenant let her admonitions go into one ear and out of the other. In the autumn he began tearing down the fences, which had been there since Pastor Wennervik's time—those enclosing the kitchen garden
