Jerusalem | Page 4

you were feeling so happy.
Ponder well this one thing: in father's time all the neighbours were
guided by him in all their undertakings. The morning he began
haymaking they did likewise and the day we started in to plow our
fallow field at the Ingmar Farm, plows were put in the earth the length
and breadth of the valley. Yet here I've been plowing now for two
hours and more without any one having so much as ground a
plowshare.
"I believe I have managed this farm as well as any one who has borne
the name of Ingmar Ingmarsson," he mused. "I can get more for my hay
than father ever got for his, and I'm not satisfied to let the weed-choked
ditches which crossed the farm in his time remain. What's more, no one
can say that I misuse the woodlands as he did by converting them into
burn-beaten land.

"There are times when all this seems hard to bear," said the young man.
"I can't always take it as lightly as I do to-day. When father and
grandfather lived, folks used to say that the Ingmarssons had been on
earth such a long time that they must know what was pleasing to our
Lord. Therefore the people fairly begged them to rule over the parish.
They appointed both parson and sexton; they determined when the river
should be dredged, and where gaols should be built. But me no one
consults, nor have I a say in anything.
"It's wonderful, all the same, that troubles can be so easily borne on a
morning like this. I could almost laugh at them. And still I fear that
matters will be worse than ever for me in the fall. If I should do what
I'm now thinking of doing, neither the parson nor the judge will shake
hands with me when we meet at the church on a Sunday, which is
something they have always done up to the present. I could never hope
to be made a guardian of the poor, nor could I even think of becoming a
churchwarden."
Thinking is never so easy as when one follows a plow up a furrow and
down a furrow. You are quite alone, and there is nothing to distract you
but the crows hopping about picking up worms. The thoughts seemed
to come to the man as readily as if some one had whispered them into
his ear. Only on rare occasions had he been able to think as quickly and
clearly as on that day, and the thought of it gladdened and encouraged
him. It occurred to him that he was giving himself needless anxiety;
that no one expected him to plunge headlong into misery. He thought
that if his father were only living now, he would ask his advice in this
matter, as he had always done in the old days when grave questions had
come up.
"If I only knew the way, I'd go to him," he said, quite pleased at the
idea. "I wonder what big Ingmar would say if some fine day I should
come wandering up to him? I fancy him settled on a big farm, with
many fields and meadows, a large house and barns galore, with lots of
red cattle and not a black or spotted beast among them, just exactly as
he wanted it when he was on earth. Then as I step into the farmhouse--"
The plowman suddenly stopped in the middle of a furrow and glanced
up, laughing. These thoughts seemed to amuse him greatly, and he was
so carried away by them that he hardly knew whether or not he was still
upon earth. It seemed to him that in a twinkling he had been lifted all

the way up to his old father in heaven.
"And now as I come into the living-room," he went on, "I see many
peasants seated on benches along the walls. All have sandy hair, white
eyebrows, and thick underlips. They are all of them as like father as one
pea is like another. At the sight of so many people I become shy and
linger at the door. Father sits at the head of the table, and the instant he
sees me he says; 'Welcome, little Ingmar Ingmarsson!' Then father gets
up and comes over to me. 'I'd like to have a word with you, father,' I
say, 'but there are so many strangers here.' 'Oh, these are only relatives!'
says father. 'All these men have lived at the Ingmar Farm, and the
oldest among them is from way back in heathen times.' 'But I want to
speak to you in private,' I say.
"Then father looks round and wonders whether he ought to step into the
next room, but since it's