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44 caught. At the same moment the whirlwind ceased, and the sky was again clear. This appeared to him ominous; the scrap of paper had certainly a meaning to him, a meaning for him; the unknown whom he had not really spoken to, yet had been so exceedingly busy with, could not quite accidentally have thus conveyed this to his hands, and with throbbing heart he retired from the window to read the message.

One side of the paper was blank; in the left-hand corner of the other side was written "beloved," and a little below it seemed as if there had been a signature, but now there was nothing left excepting the letters "geb."

"'Geb,' what does that mean?" asked Fritz Bagger, with dark humor. "If it had been gek, I could have understood it, although it were incorrectly written. Geb, Gebrer, Algebra, Gebrüderbuh,—I am a big fool."

"But it is no matter, she shall have an answer," he shouted after a while, and seated himself to write a long, glowing love-letter. When it was finished and read, he tore it in pieces.

"No," said he, "if destiny has intended the least thing by acting to me as mail-carrier through the window, let me act reasonably." He wrote on a little piece of paper:

"As the old Norwegians, when they went to Iceland, threw their high-seat pillars into the sea with the resolution to settle where they should