HOMME FARM:

A few weeks later, Old Guro showed up on the doorstep at Homme. Behind her stood a slender young woman who carried a large pack. "Sveinung went and minted himself a bag of brass coins," Guro grumbled. "One of his creditors wasn't as dull as the rest, and reported him to the sheriff."

Birgit gasped.

"Not to worry." Guro snorted. "He had notice, strapped on his skis, took off to parts unknown. Kari and the children have enough set by to tide them over the winter, but I've had enough of that foolishness."

Birgit peered around her mother. "Did you come by sleigh? Oh!" She caught sight of two pairs of skis leaning against the barn. At seventy-two, her mother was in finer shape that Birgit had ever seen her -- more fit and spry in the freedom of old age than she'd ever been in her oppressed youth.

"This is Signe, my housegirl," Guro grumbled. "You don't want her here, say so, and she'll go back to Sveinung's service. Supposing, that is, that Sveinung ever comes home. Where am I to sleep?"

"Farmor!" cried Tone, running to her grandmother. "You come for a visit?"

"I'm coming to stay." She maintained her usual gruff expression, to which Tone gave no heed.

The three-year-old took her grandmother's hand and beamed. "We have lots of fun, Farmor!"

Jon and Birgit passed each other amused looks behind the elderly woman's back. "This way, Mor," Birgit said. "We'll give you Halvor Lamefoot's room, and he can take the loft."

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ÅE FARM:

Gunnhild finally got her first letter from across the sea. Tall Såmund, Laki, and Knut had arrived at New York harbor – "hundreds and hundreds of buildings, like a starling rookery!" – and then took passage on a steamship with the other Norwegians along the inland waterways to the western frontier. "We sailed along the Hudson River," Såmund wrote, "up the Erie Canal, and then across the Great Lakes. Like freshwater seas, those were! For much of that crossing, no land to be seen on the horizon. Found timber work in Wisconsin territory. Should soon have enough money to buy a small plot of farmland. Many lakes here, but the land is too lazy to make mountains. Small hills and low ridges, but the soil is rich. We saw a herd of buffalo in the distance, when we crossed the lowland plains. Tell Åsne I've found her a husband from the Kickapoo tribe. Nei, I'm joking, at least about the husband. But the tribe really is named Kickapoo."

Laki sent one short letter. "Was that you I heard calling, Mor Gunna? Did you save me a piece of fresh flatbread?"

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BEHIND THE SCENES

After the many adventures in this saga that I've cooked up out of thin air, this is one that actually happened. Sveinung Saddle-maker turned to counterfeiting coins and narrowly escaped arrest, taking off by ski "to the north" for a year until the heat died down.