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formerly cheerful family had suddenly descended into the grave. 
One may suppose that this member is only the source of unnecessary 
trouble, but still one day he may chance to leave behind him a void 
which nothing can fill. It was so with the hen. Nobody had thought 
what she was to them all, before she was gone. She had been the sole 
diversion of their lives. The thunderstorms she had provoked had 
cleared the air; now it hung about them heavy and dead. And how¬ 
ever it may have been, she had also brought on hours of sunshine. 
They were first reminded of it afterwards. How many times had not 
Mother Malena gone away with half a score of eggs to sell, and come 
back with coffee and sugar, and in a good humor. She herself had 
thawed, and she had invited the others to join her. And they had sat 
there at their warm cups, drunk healths from the tea-pot, and talked 
of all that was happening out in the world: how John Johnson’s 
Kristina had gone to America, or how Peer and Katy had taken out 
their banns, and everything else of the sort that had happened and 
ought not to have happened, which was naturally the most interesting 
of all. And so they had forgotten the years and ailments and the evil 
way of the world and had been heartily content for awhile. But now 
this was over. Malena went about unchanging; she looked surly, was 
silent, and coffee was not to be thought of. 
At first it was believed that in a fit of vexation Mother Malena 
had gone and sold her hen, but little by little the truth leaked out. It 
was no flattering certificate of character that Nils Matson got in the 
poor-house. 
“The rich can do just as they please,” was the verdict given in a 
ferment of indignation. There was a rumbling to the lowest founda¬ 
tions of the community. 
But strange are the ways of fate; this time there was no revo¬ 
lution. 
One day when Nils Matson stood feeding his chickens, there crept 
from the brush heap a phantom, disheveled and thin, with a breast¬ 
bone like the blade of a carving knife—the veritable ghost of a hen. 
What Nils Matson felt at that moment cannot be described: pity, 
remorse, and a fervent desire to make atonement. He was completely 
overpowered, had tears in his eyes, and said to himself in a maternal 
tone: “Good Lord! the poor thing, the poor miserable thing.” There¬ 
upon a whole handful of corn rained out to the brush heap. 
Lying on one side and scrambling forward with her one leg as 
with an oar, the hen began to peck. That delighted Nils Matson’s 
old heart, but he told nobody what he had concealed in the brush heap. 
In a short time, however, the hen was in such good condition that 
she came limping forward to the other fowls, wry in the leg, which had 
taken on a peculiar swinging motion, but cheerful and communica¬ 
tive, glad to have survived her affliction and to accept her injury. 
