Of a sudden Jan gave a start. Bending forward he clapped his hands to his knees. His eyes kindled with new-found hope and his whole face shone. He kept his gaze on the water and Katrina thought something extraordinary must have riveted his attention, although she, who stood beside him, saw nothing save the ceaseless play of the gray-green waves, chasing each other across the surface of the lake, with never a stop.
Jan ran to the far end of the pier and bent down over the water, with the look on his face which he always wore whenever Glory Goldie approached him, but which he could never put on when talking to any one else. His mouth opened and his lips moved as though he were speaking, but not a word was heard by Katrina. Smile after smile crossed his face, just as when the girl used to stand and rail at him.
"Why, Jan!" said Katrina, "what has come over you?"
He did not reply, but motioned to her to be still. Then he straightened himself a little. His gaze seemed to be following something that glided away over the gray-green waves. Whatever it was, it moved quickly in the direction the boat had taken. Now Jan no longer bent forward but stood quite upright, shading his eyes with his hand that he might see the better. Thus he remained standing till there was nothing more to be seen, apparently. Then, turning to Katrina, he said:
"What can one see here but the lake and its waves?"
"The little girl came rowing back," Jan told her, his voice lowered to a whisper. "She had borrowed a boat of the captain. I noticed it was marked exactly like the steamer. She said there was something she had forgotten about when she left; it was something she wanted to say to us."
"My dear Jan, you don't know what you're talking about! If the girl had come back then I, too, would have seen her."
"Hush now, and I'll tell you what she wants of us!" said Jan, in solemn and mysterious whispers. "It seems she had begun to worry about us; she was afraid we two wouldn't get on by ourselves. Before she had always walked between us, she said, with one hand in mine and the other in yours, and in that way everything had gone well. But now that she wasn't here to keep us together she didn't know what might happen, 'Now perhaps father and mother will go their separate ways,' she said."