Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/125

 over from Sweden, thinking, like children in a fairy tale, that they were coming to a new world where they were to be rich and happy always. My father was the biggest man amongst them, I think it must have been he who persuaded them to  come. He was so bitterly unhappy afterward to see how poor and disappointed they were. He gave me the best education he could and encouraged me to work for an even better one after he  died; he said more than once that he hoped I could  help his comrades since he never could.”

“How did they find such a place as Rudolm to come to?” Hugh asked.

“A good many Swedes had settled in this part of the country, for it is like their own, the same  sort of hills and woods full of birch trees and  lakes and little rivers. And there was at that time a great cry that these mountains were fabulously rich in iron, some even said in gold and  silver, but the iron was thrilling enough. All who could came flocking into Rudolm valley to  stake out a claim or to buy one, expecting to grow  rich in a single night. My father spent all the