The Project Gutenberg eBook of O Pioneers!, by Willa Cather (2024)

PRAIRIE SPRING

Evening and the flat land,
Rich and sombre and always silent;
The miles of fresh-plowed soil,
Heavy and black, full of strength and harshness;
The growing wheat, the growing weeds,
The toiling horses, the tired men;
The long empty roads,
Sullen fires of sunset, fading,
The eternal, unresponsive sky.
Against all this, Youth,
Flaming like the wild roses,
Singing like the larks over the plowed fields,
Flashing like a star out of the twilight;
Youth with its insupportable sweetness,
Its fierce necessity,
Its sharp desire,
Singing and singing,
Out of the lips of silence,
Out of the earthy dusk.

PART I.
The Wild Land

I

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on awindy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of finesnowflakes was curling and eddying about the cluster of low drab buildingshuddled on the gray prairie, under a gray sky. The dwelling-houses were setabout haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of them looked as if they hadbeen moved in overnight, and others as if they were straying off by themselves,headed straight for the open plain. None of them had any appearance ofpermanence, and the howling wind blew under them as well as over them. The mainstreet was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard, which ran from the squat redrailway station and the grain “elevator” at the north end of thetown to the lumber yard and the horse pond at the south end. On either side ofthis road straggled two uneven rows of wooden buildings; the generalmerchandise stores, the two banks, the drug store, the feed store, the saloon,the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with trampled snow, but at twoo’clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, having come back from dinner,were keeping well behind their frosty windows. The children were all in school,and there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking countrymenin coarse overcoats, with their long caps pulled down to their noses. Some ofthem had brought their wives to town, and now and then a red or a plaid shawlflashed out of one store into the shelter of another. At the hitch-bars alongthe street a few heavy work-horses, harnessed to farm wagons, shivered undertheir blankets. About the station everything was quiet, for there would not beanother train in until night.

On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores sat a little Swede boy, cryingbitterly. He was about five years old. His black cloth coat was much too bigfor him and made him look like a little old man. His shrunken brown flanneldress had been washed many times and left a long stretch of stocking betweenthe hem of his skirt and the tops of his clumsy, copper-toed shoes. His cap waspulled down over his ears; his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped and redwith cold. He cried quietly, and the few people who hurried by did not noticehim. He was afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into the store and ask forhelp, so he sat wringing his long sleeves and looking up a telegraph polebeside him, whimpering, “My kitten, oh, my kitten! Her willfweeze!” At the top of the pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewingfaintly and clinging desperately to the wood with her claws. The boy had beenleft at the store while his sister went to the doctor’s office, and inher absence a dog had chased his kitten up the pole. The little creature hadnever been so high before, and she was too frightened to move. Her master wassunk in despair. He was a little country boy, and this village was to him avery strange and perplexing place, where people wore fine clothes and had hardhearts. He always felt shy and awkward here, and wanted to hide behind thingsfor fear some one might laugh at him. Just now, he was too unhappy to care wholaughed. At last he seemed to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and hegot up and ran toward her in his heavy shoes.

His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she walked rapidly and resolutely, asif she knew exactly where she was going and what she was going to do next. Shewore a man’s long ulster (not as if it were an affliction, but as if itwere very comfortable and belonged to her; carried it like a young soldier),and a round plush cap, tied down with a thick veil. She had a serious,thoughtful face, and her clear, deep blue eyes were fixed intently on thedistance, without seeming to see anything, as if she were in trouble. She didnot notice the little boy until he pulled her by the coat. Then she stoppedshort and stooped down to wipe his wet face.

“Why, Emil! I told you to stay in the store and not to come out. What isthe matter with you?”

“My kitten, sister, my kitten! A man put her out, and a dog chased her upthere.” His forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat, pointedup to the wretched little creature on the pole.

“Oh, Emil! Didn’t I tell you she’d get us into trouble ofsome kind, if you brought her? What made you tease me so? But there, I ought tohave known better myself.” She went to the foot of the pole and held outher arms, crying, “Kitty, kitty, kitty,” but the kitten only mewedand faintly waved its tail. Alexandra turned away decidedly. “No, shewon’t come down. Somebody will have to go up after her. I saw theLinstrums’ wagon in town. I’ll go and see if I can find Carl. Maybehe can do something. Only you must stop crying, or I won’t go a step.Where’s your comforter? Did you leave it in the store? Never mind. Holdstill, till I put this on you.”

She unwound the brown veil from her head and tied it about his throat. A shabbylittle traveling man, who was just then coming out of the store on his way tothe saloon, stopped and gazed stupidly at the shining mass of hair she baredwhen she took off her veil; two thick braids, pinned about her head in theGerman way, with a fringe of reddish-yellow curls blowing out from under hercap. He took his cigar out of his mouth and held the wet end between thefingers of his woolen glove. “My God, girl, what a head of hair!”he exclaimed, quite innocently and foolishly. She stabbed him with a glance ofAmazonian fierceness and drew in her lower lip—most unnecessary severity.It gave the little clothing drummer such a start that he actually let his cigarfall to the sidewalk and went off weakly in the teeth of the wind to thesaloon. His hand was still unsteady when he took his glass from the bartender.His feeble flirtatious instincts had been crushed before, but never somercilessly. He felt cheap and ill-used, as if some one had taken advantage ofhim. When a drummer had been knocking about in little drab towns and crawlingacross the wintry country in dirty smoking-cars, was he to be blamed if, whenhe chanced upon a fine human creature, he suddenly wished himself more of aman?

While the little drummer was drinking to recover his nerve, Alexandra hurriedto the drug store as the most likely place to find Carl Linstrum. There he was,turning over a portfolio of chromo “studies” which the druggistsold to the Hanover women who did china-painting. Alexandra explained herpredicament, and the boy followed her to the corner, where Emil still sat bythe pole.

“I’ll have to go up after her, Alexandra. I think at the depot theyhave some spikes I can strap on my feet. Wait a minute.” Carl thrust hishands into his pockets, lowered his head, and darted up the street against thenorth wind. He was a tall boy of fifteen, slight and narrow-chested. When hecame back with the spikes, Alexandra asked him what he had done with hisovercoat.

“I left it in the drug store. I couldn’t climb in it, anyhow. Catchme if I fall, Emil,” he called back as he began his ascent. Alexandrawatched him anxiously; the cold was bitter enough on the ground. The kittenwould not budge an inch. Carl had to go to the very top of the pole, and thenhad some difficulty in tearing her from her hold. When he reached the ground,he handed the cat to her tearful little master. “Now go into the storewith her, Emil, and get warm.” He opened the door for the child.“Wait a minute, Alexandra. Why can’t I drive for you as far as ourplace? It’s getting colder every minute. Have you seen the doctor?”

“Yes. He is coming over to-morrow. But he says father can’t getbetter; can’t get well.” The girl’s lip trembled. She lookedfixedly up the bleak street as if she were gathering her strength to facesomething, as if she were trying with all her might to grasp a situation which,no matter how painful, must be met and dealt with somehow. The wind flapped theskirts of her heavy coat about her.

Carl did not say anything, but she felt his sympathy. He, too, was lonely. Hewas a thin, frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet in all hismovements. There was a delicate pallor in his thin face, and his mouth was toosensitive for a boy’s. The lips had already a little curl of bitternessand skepticism. The two friends stood for a few moments on the windy streetcorner, not speaking a word, as two travelers, who have lost their way,sometimes stand and admit their perplexity in silence. When Carl turned away hesaid, “I’ll see to your team.” Alexandra went into the storeto have her purchases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get warm before she setout on her long cold drive.

When she looked for Emil, she found him sitting on a step of the staircase thatled up to the clothing and carpet department. He was playing with a littleBohemian girl, Marie Tovesky, who was tying her handkerchief over thekitten’s head for a bonnet. Marie was a stranger in the country, havingcome from Omaha with her mother to visit her uncle, Joe Tovesky. She was a darkchild, with brown curly hair, like a brunette doll’s, a coaxing littlered mouth, and round, yellow-brown eyes. Every one noticed her eyes; the browniris had golden glints that made them look like gold-stone, or, in softerlights, like that Colorado mineral called tiger-eye.

The country children thereabouts wore their dresses to their shoe-tops, butthis city child was dressed in what was then called the “KateGreenaway” manner, and her red cashmere frock, gathered full from theyoke, came almost to the floor. This, with her poke bonnet, gave her the lookof a quaint little woman. She had a white fur tippet about her neck and made nofussy objections when Emil fingered it admiringly. Alexandra had not the heartto take him away from so pretty a playfellow, and she let them tease the kittentogether until Joe Tovesky came in noisily and picked up his little niece,setting her on his shoulder for every one to see. His children were all boys,and he adored this little creature. His cronies formed a circle about him,admiring and teasing the little girl, who took their jokes with great goodnature. They were all delighted with her, for they seldom saw so pretty andcarefully nurtured a child. They told her that she must choose one of them fora sweetheart, and each began pressing his suit and offering her bribes; candy,and little pigs, and spotted calves. She looked archly into the big, brown,mustached faces, smelling of spirits and tobacco, then she ran her tinyforefinger delicately over Joe’s bristly chin and said, “Here is mysweetheart.”

The Bohemians roared with laughter, and Marie’s uncle hugged her untilshe cried, “Please don’t, Uncle Joe! You hurt me.” Each ofJoe’s friends gave her a bag of candy, and she kissed them all around,though she did not like country candy very well. Perhaps that was why shebethought herself of Emil. “Let me down, Uncle Joe,” she said,“I want to give some of my candy to that nice little boy I found.”She walked graciously over to Emil, followed by her lusty admirers, who formeda new circle and teased the little boy until he hid his face in hissister’s skirts, and she had to scold him for being such a baby.

The farm people were making preparations to start for home. The women werechecking over their groceries and pinning their big red shawls about theirheads. The men were buying tobacco and candy with what money they had left,were showing each other new boots and gloves and blue flannel shirts. Three bigBohemians were drinking raw alcohol, tinctured with oil of cinnamon. This wassaid to fortify one effectually against the cold, and they smacked their lipsafter each pull at the flask. Their volubility drowned every other noise in theplace, and the overheated store sounded of their spirited language as it reekedof pipe smoke, damp woolens, and kerosene.

Carl came in, wearing his overcoat and carrying a wooden box with a brasshandle. “Come,” he said, “I’ve fed and watered yourteam, and the wagon is ready.” He carried Emil out and tucked him down inthe straw in the wagonbox. The heat had made the little boy sleepy, but hestill clung to his kitten.

“You were awful good to climb so high and get my kitten, Carl. When I getbig I’ll climb and get little boys’ kittens for them,” hemurmured drowsily. Before the horses were over the first hill, Emil and his catwere both fast asleep.

Although it was only four o’clock, the winter day was fading. The roadled southwest, toward the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered in theleaden sky. The light fell upon the two sad young faces that were turned mutelytoward it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be looking with suchanguished perplexity into the future; upon the sombre eyes of the boy, whoseemed already to be looking into the past. The little town behind them hadvanished as if it had never been, had fallen behind the swell of the prairie,and the stern frozen country received them into its bosom. The homesteads werefew and far apart; here and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a sod housecrouching in a hollow. But the great fact was the land itself, which seemed tooverwhelm the little beginnings of human society that struggled in its sombrewastes. It was from facing this vast hardness that the boy’s mouth hadbecome so bitter; because he felt that men were too weak to make any mark here,that the land wanted to be let alone, to preserve its own fierce strength, itspeculiar, savage kind of beauty, its uninterrupted mournfulness.

The wagon jolted along over the frozen road. The two friends had less to say toeach other than usual, as if the cold had somehow penetrated to their hearts.

“Did Lou and Oscar go to the Blue to cut wood to-day?” Carl asked.

“Yes. I’m almost sorry I let them go, it’s turned so cold.But mother frets if the wood gets low.” She stopped and put her hand toher forehead, brushing back her hair. “I don’t know what is tobecome of us, Carl, if father has to die. I don’t dare to think about it.I wish we could all go with him and let the grass grow back overeverything.”

Carl made no reply. Just ahead of them was the Norwegian graveyard, where thegrass had, indeed, grown back over everything, shaggy and red, hiding even thewire fence. Carl realized that he was not a very helpful companion, but therewas nothing he could say.

“Of course,” Alexandra went on, steadying her voice a little,“the boys are strong and work hard, but we’ve always depended so onfather that I don’t see how we can go ahead. I almost feel as if therewere nothing to go ahead for.”

“Does your father know?”

“Yes, I think he does. He lies and counts on his fingers all day. I thinkhe is trying to count up what he is leaving for us. It’s a comfort to himthat my chickens are laying right on through the cold weather and bringing in alittle money. I wish we could keep his mind off such things, but I don’thave much time to be with him now.”

“I wonder if he’d like to have me bring my magic lantern over someevening?”

Alexandra turned her face toward him. “Oh, Carl! Have you got it?”

“Yes. It’s back there in the straw. Didn’t you notice the boxI was carrying? I tried it all morning in the drug-store cellar, and it workedever so well, makes fine big pictures.”

“What are they about?”

“Oh, hunting pictures in Germany, and Robinson Crusoe and funny picturesabout cannibals. I’m going to paint some slides for it on glass, out ofthe Hans Andersen book.”

Alexandra seemed actually cheered. There is often a good deal of the child leftin people who have had to grow up too soon. “Do bring it over, Carl. Ican hardly wait to see it, and I’m sure it will please father. Are thepictures colored? Then I know he’ll like them. He likes the calendars Iget him in town. I wish I could get more. You must leave me here, mustn’tyou? It’s been nice to have company.”

Carl stopped the horses and looked dubiously up at the black sky.“It’s pretty dark. Of course the horses will take you home, but Ithink I’d better light your lantern, in case you should need it.”

He gave her the reins and climbed back into the wagon-box, where he croucheddown and made a tent of his overcoat. After a dozen trials he succeeded inlighting the lantern, which he placed in front of Alexandra, half covering itwith a blanket so that the light would not shine in her eyes. “Now, waituntil I find my box. Yes, here it is. Good-night, Alexandra. Try not toworry.” Carl sprang to the ground and ran off across the fields towardthe Linstrum homestead. “Hoo, hoo-o-o-o!” he called back as hedisappeared over a ridge and dropped into a sand gully. The wind answered himlike an echo, “Hoo, hoo-o-o-o-o-o!” Alexandra drove off alone. Therattle of her wagon was lost in the howling of the wind, but her lantern, heldfirmly between her feet, made a moving point of light along the highway, goingdeeper and deeper into the dark country.

II

On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in which JohnBergson was dying. The Bergson homestead was easier to find than many another,because it overlooked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy stream that sometimesflowed, and sometimes stood still, at the bottom of a winding ravine withsteep, shelving sides overgrown with brush and cottonwoods and dwarf ash. Thiscreek gave a sort of identity to the farms that bordered upon it. Of all thebewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is oneof the most depressing and disheartening. The houses on the Divide were smalland were usually tucked away in low places; you did not see them until you camedirectly upon them. Most of them were built of the sod itself, and were onlythe unescapable ground in another form. The roads were but faint tracks in thegrass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable. The record of the plow wasinsignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, soindeterminate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers, andnot a record of human strivings.

In eleven long years John Bergson had made but little impression upon the wildland he had come to tame. It was still a wild thing that had its ugly moods;and no one knew when they were likely to come, or why. Mischance hung over it.Its Genius was unfriendly to man. The sick man was feeling this as he laylooking out of the window, after the doctor had left him, on the day followingAlexandra’s trip to town. There it lay outside his door, the same land,the same lead-colored miles. He knew every ridge and draw and gully between himand the horizon. To the south, his plowed fields; to the east, the sod stables,the cattle corral, the pond,—and then the grass.

Bergson went over in his mind the things that had held him back. One winter hiscattle had perished in a blizzard. The next summer one of his plow horses brokeits leg in a prairiedog hole and had to be shot. Another summer he lost hishogs from cholera, and a valuable stallion died from a rattlesnake bite. Timeand again his crops had failed. He had lost two children, boys, that camebetween Lou and Emil, and there had been the cost of sickness and death. Now,when he had at last struggled out of debt, he was going to die himself. He wasonly forty-six, and had, of course, counted upon more time.

Bergson had spent his first five years on the Divide getting into debt, and thelast six getting out. He had paid off his mortgages and had ended pretty muchwhere he began, with the land. He owned exactly six hundred and forty acres ofwhat stretched outside his door; his own original homestead and timber claim,making three hundred and twenty acres, and the half-section adjoining, thehomestead of a younger brother who had given up the fight, gone back to Chicagoto work in a fancy bakery and distinguish himself in a Swedish athletic club.So far John had not attempted to cultivate the second half-section, but used itfor pasture land, and one of his sons rode herd there in open weather.

John Bergson had the Old-World belief that land, in itself, is desirable. Butthis land was an enigma. It was like a horse that no one knows how to break toharness, that runs wild and kicks things to pieces. He had an idea that no oneunderstood how to farm it properly, and this he often discussed with Alexandra.Their neighbors, certainly, knew even less about farming than he did. Many ofthem had never worked on a farm until they took up their homesteads. They hadbeen handwerkers at home; tailors, locksmiths, joiners, cigar-makers,etc. Bergson himself had worked in a shipyard.

For weeks, John Bergson had been thinking about these things. His bed stood inthe sitting-room, next to the kitchen. Through the day, while the baking andwashing and ironing were going on, the father lay and looked up at the roofbeams that he himself had hewn, or out at the cattle in the corral. He countedthe cattle over and over. It diverted him to speculate as to how much weighteach of the steers would probably put on by spring. He often called hisdaughter in to talk to her about this. Before Alexandra was twelve years oldshe had begun to be a help to him, and as she grew older he had come to dependmore and more upon her resourcefulness and good judgment. His boys were willingenough to work, but when he talked with them they usually irritated him. It wasAlexandra who read the papers and followed the markets, and who learned by themistakes of their neighbors. It was Alexandra who could always tell about whatit had cost to fatten each steer, and who could guess the weight of a hogbefore it went on the scales closer than John Bergson himself. Lou and Oscarwere industrious, but he could never teach them to use their heads about theirwork.

Alexandra, her father often said to himself, was like her grandfather; whichwas his way of saying that she was intelligent. John Bergson’s father hadbeen a shipbuilder, a man of considerable force and of some fortune. Late inlife he married a second time, a Stockholm woman of questionable character,much younger than he, who goaded him into every sort of extravagance. On theshipbuilder’s part, this marriage was an infatuation, the despairingfolly of a powerful man who cannot bear to grow old. In a few years hisunprincipled wife warped the probity of a lifetime. He speculated, lost his ownfortune and funds entrusted to him by poor seafaring men, and died disgraced,leaving his children nothing. But when all was said, he had come up from thesea himself, had built up a proud little business with no capital but his ownskill and foresight, and had proved himself a man. In his daughter, JohnBergson recognized the strength of will, and the simple direct way of thinkingthings out, that had characterized his father in his better days. He would muchrather, of course, have seen this likeness in one of his sons, but it was not aquestion of choice. As he lay there day after day he had to accept thesituation as it was, and to be thankful that there was one among his childrento whom he could entrust the future of his family and the possibilities of hishard-won land.

The winter twilight was fading. The sick man heard his wife strike a match inthe kitchen, and the light of a lamp glimmered through the cracks of the door.It seemed like a light shining far away. He turned painfully in his bed andlooked at his white hands, with all the work gone out of them. He was ready togive up, he felt. He did not know how it had come about, but he was quitewilling to go deep under his fields and rest, where the plow could not findhim. He was tired of making mistakes. He was content to leave the tangle toother hands; he thought of his Alexandra’s strong ones.

“Dotter,” he called feebly, “dotter!” Heheard her quick step and saw her tall figure appear in the doorway, with thelight of the lamp behind her. He felt her youth and strength, how easily shemoved and stooped and lifted. But he would not have had it again if he could,not he! He knew the end too well to wish to begin again. He knew where it allwent to, what it all became.

His daughter came and lifted him up on his pillows. She called him by an oldSwedish name that she used to call him when she was little and took his dinnerto him in the shipyard.

“Tell the boys to come here, daughter. I want to speak to them.”

“They are feeding the horses, father. They have just come back from theBlue. Shall I call them?”

He sighed. “No, no. Wait until they come in. Alexandra, you will have todo the best you can for your brothers. Everything will come on you.”

“I will do all I can, father.”

“Don’t let them get discouraged and go off like Uncle Otto. I wantthem to keep the land.”

“We will, father. We will never lose the land.”

There was a sound of heavy feet in the kitchen. Alexandra went to the door andbeckoned to her brothers, two strapping boys of seventeen and nineteen. Theycame in and stood at the foot of the bed. Their father looked at themsearchingly, though it was too dark to see their faces; they were just the sameboys, he told himself, he had not been mistaken in them. The square head andheavy shoulders belonged to Oscar, the elder. The younger boy was quicker, butvacillating.

“Boys,” said the father wearily, “I want you to keep the landtogether and to be guided by your sister. I have talked to her since I havebeen sick, and she knows all my wishes. I want no quarrels among my children,and so long as there is one house there must be one head. Alexandra is theoldest, and she knows my wishes. She will do the best she can. If she makesmistakes, she will not make so many as I have made. When you marry, and want ahouse of your own, the land will be divided fairly, according to the courts.But for the next few years you will have it hard, and you must all keeptogether. Alexandra will manage the best she can.”

Oscar, who was usually the last to speak, replied because he was the older,“Yes, father. It would be so anyway, without your speaking. We will allwork the place together.”

“And you will be guided by your sister, boys, and be good brothers toher, and good sons to your mother? That is good. And Alexandra must not work inthe fields any more. There is no necessity now. Hire a man when you need help.She can make much more with her eggs and butter than the wages of a man. It wasone of my mistakes that I did not find that out sooner. Try to break a littlemore land every year; sod corn is good for fodder. Keep turning the land, andalways put up more hay than you need. Don’t grudge your mother a littletime for plowing her garden and setting out fruit trees, even if it comes in abusy season. She has been a good mother to you, and she has always missed theold country.”

When they went back to the kitchen the boys sat down silently at the table.Throughout the meal they looked down at their plates and did not lift their redeyes. They did not eat much, although they had been working in the cold allday, and there was a rabbit stewed in gravy for supper, and prune pies.

John Bergson had married beneath him, but he had married a good housewife. Mrs.Bergson was a fair-skinned, corpulent woman, heavy and placid like her son,Oscar, but there was something comfortable about her; perhaps it was her ownlove of comfort. For eleven years she had worthily striven to maintain somesemblance of household order amid conditions that made order very difficult.Habit was very strong with Mrs. Bergson, and her unremitting efforts to repeatthe routine of her old life among new surroundings had done a great deal tokeep the family from disintegrating morally and getting careless in their ways.The Bergsons had a log house, for instance, only because Mrs. Bergson would notlive in a sod house. She missed the fish diet of her own country, and twiceevery summer she sent the boys to the river, twenty miles to the southward, tofish for channel cat. When the children were little she used to load them allinto the wagon, the baby in its crib, and go fishing herself.

Alexandra often said that if her mother were cast upon a desert island, shewould thank God for her deliverance, make a garden, and find something topreserve. Preserving was almost a mania with Mrs. Bergson. Stout as she was,she roamed the scrubby banks of Norway Creek looking for fox grapes and gooseplums, like a wild creature in search of prey. She made a yellow jam of theinsipid ground-cherries that grew on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel;and she made a sticky dark conserve of garden tomatoes. She had experimentedeven with the rank buffalo-pea, and she could not see a fine bronze cluster ofthem without shaking her head and murmuring, “What a pity!” Whenthere was nothing more to preserve, she began to pickle. The amount of sugarshe used in these processes was sometimes a serious drain upon the familyresources. She was a good mother, but she was glad when her children were oldenough not to be in her way in the kitchen. She had never quite forgiven JohnBergson for bringing her to the end of the earth; but, now that she was there,she wanted to be let alone to reconstruct her old life in so far as that waspossible. She could still take some comfort in the world if she had bacon inthe cave, glass jars on the shelves, and sheets in the press. She disapprovedof all her neighbors because of their slovenly housekeeping, and the womenthought her very proud. Once when Mrs. Bergson, on her way to Norway Creek,stopped to see old Mrs. Lee, the old woman hid in the haymow “for fearMis’ Bergson would catch her barefoot.”

III

One Sunday afternoon in July, six months after John Bergson’s death, Carlwas sitting in the doorway of the Linstrum kitchen, dreaming over anillustrated paper, when he heard the rattle of a wagon along the hill road.Looking up he recognized the Bergsons’ team, with two seats in the wagon,which meant they were off for a pleasure excursion. Oscar and Lou, on the frontseat, wore their cloth hats and coats, never worn except on Sundays, and Emil,on the second seat with Alexandra, sat proudly in his new trousers, made from apair of his father’s, and a pink-striped shirt, with a wide ruffledcollar. Oscar stopped the horses and waved to Carl, who caught up his hat andran through the melon patch to join them.

“Want to go with us?” Lou called. “We’re going to CrazyIvar’s to buy a hammock.”

“Sure.” Carl ran up panting, and clambering over the wheel sat downbeside Emil. “I’ve always wanted to see Ivar’s pond. They sayit’s the biggest in all the country. Aren’t you afraid to go toIvar’s in that new shirt, Emil? He might want it and take it right offyour back.”

Emil grinned. “I’d be awful scared to go,” he admitted,“if you big boys weren’t along to take care of me. Did you everhear him howl, Carl? People say sometimes he runs about the country howling atnight because he is afraid the Lord will destroy him. Mother thinks he musthave done something awful wicked.”

Lou looked back and winked at Carl. “What would you do, Emil, if you wasout on the prairie by yourself and seen him coming?”

Emil stared. “Maybe I could hide in a badger-hole,” he suggesteddoubtfully.

“But suppose there wasn’t any badger-hole,” Lou persisted.“Would you run?”

“No, I’d be too scared to run,” Emil admitted mournfully,twisting his fingers. “I guess I’d sit right down on the ground andsay my prayers.”

The big boys laughed, and Oscar brandished his whip over the broad backs of thehorses.

“He wouldn’t hurt you, Emil,” said Carl persuasively.“He came to doctor our mare when she ate green corn and swelled up mostas big as the water-tank. He petted her just like you do your cats. Icouldn’t understand much he said, for he don’t talk any English,but he kept patting her and groaning as if he had the pain himself, and saying,‘There now, sister, that’s easier, that’sbetter!’”

Lou and Oscar laughed, and Emil giggled delightedly and looked up at hissister.

“I don’t think he knows anything at all about doctoring,”said Oscar scornfully. “They say when horses have distemper he takes themedicine himself, and then prays over the horses.”

Alexandra spoke up. “That’s what the Crows said, but he cured theirhorses, all the same. Some days his mind is cloudy, like. But if you can gethim on a clear day, you can learn a great deal from him. He understandsanimals. Didn’t I see him take the horn off the Berquist’s cow whenshe had torn it loose and went crazy? She was tearing all over the place,knocking herself against things. And at last she ran out on the roof of the olddugout and her legs went through and there she stuck, bellowing. Ivar camerunning with his white bag, and the moment he got to her she was quiet and lethim saw her horn off and daub the place with tar.”

Emil had been watching his sister, his face reflecting the sufferings of thecow. “And then didn’t it hurt her any more?” he asked.

Alexandra patted him. “No, not any more. And in two days they could useher milk again.”

The road to Ivar’s homestead was a very poor one. He had settled in therough country across the county line, where no one lived but someRussians,—half a dozen families who dwelt together in one long house,divided off like barracks. Ivar had explained his choice by saying that thefewer neighbors he had, the fewer temptations. Nevertheless, when oneconsidered that his chief business was horse-doctoring, it seemed rathershort-sighted of him to live in the most inaccessible place he could find. TheBergson wagon lurched along over the rough hummocks and grass banks, followedthe bottom of winding draws, or skirted the margin of wide lagoons, where thegolden coreopsis grew up out of the clear water and the wild ducks rose with awhirr of wings.

Lou looked after them helplessly. “I wish I’d brought my gun,anyway, Alexandra,” he said fretfully. “I could have hidden itunder the straw in the bottom of the wagon.”

“Then we’d have had to lie to Ivar. Besides, they say he can smelldead birds. And if he knew, we wouldn’t get anything out of him, not evena hammock. I want to talk to him, and he won’t talk sense if he’sangry. It makes him foolish.”

Lou sniffed. “Whoever heard of him talking sense, anyhow! I’drather have ducks for supper than Crazy Ivar’s tongue.”

Emil was alarmed. “Oh, but, Lou, you don’t want to make him mad! Hemight howl!”

They all laughed again, and Oscar urged the horses up the crumbling side of aclay bank. They had left the lagoons and the red grass behind them. In CrazyIvar’s country the grass was short and gray, the draws deeper than theywere in the Bergsons’ neighborhood, and the land was all broken up intohillocks and clay ridges. The wild flowers disappeared, and only in the bottomof the draws and gullies grew a few of the very toughest and hardiest:shoestring, and ironweed, and snow-on-the-mountain.

“Look, look, Emil, there’s Ivar’s big pond!” Alexandrapointed to a shining sheet of water that lay at the bottom of a shallow draw.At one end of the pond was an earthen dam, planted with green willow bushes,and above it a door and a single window were set into the hillside. You wouldnot have seen them at all but for the reflection of the sunlight upon the fourpanes of window-glass. And that was all you saw. Not a shed, not a corral, nota well, not even a path broken in the curly grass. But for the piece of rustystovepipe sticking up through the sod, you could have walked over the roof ofIvar’s dwelling without dreaming that you were near a human habitation.Ivar had lived for three years in the clay bank, without defiling the face ofnature any more than the coyote that had lived there before him had done.

When the Bergsons drove over the hill, Ivar was sitting in the doorway of hishouse, reading the Norwegian Bible. He was a queerly shaped old man, with athick, powerful body set on short bow-legs. His shaggy white hair, falling in athick mane about his ruddy cheeks, made him look older than he was. He wasbarefoot, but he wore a clean shirt of unbleached cotton, open at the neck. Healways put on a clean shirt when Sunday morning came round, though he neverwent to church. He had a peculiar religion of his own and could not get on withany of the denominations. Often he did not see anybody from one week’send to another. He kept a calendar, and every morning he checked off a day, sothat he was never in any doubt as to which day of the week it was. Ivar hiredhimself out in threshing and corn-husking time, and he doctored sick animalswhen he was sent for. When he was at home, he made hammocks out of twine andcommitted chapters of the Bible to memory.

Ivar found contentment in the solitude he had sought out for himself. Hedisliked the litter of human dwellings: the broken food, the bits of brokenchina, the old wash-boilers and tea-kettles thrown into the sunflower patch. Hepreferred the cleanness and tidiness of the wild sod. He always said that thebadgers had cleaner houses than people, and that when he took a housekeeper hername would be Mrs. Badger. He best expressed his preference for his wildhomestead by saying that his Bible seemed truer to him there. If one stood inthe doorway of his cave, and looked off at the rough land, the smiling sky, thecurly grass white in the hot sunlight; if one listened to the rapturous song ofthe lark, the drumming of the quail, the burr of the locust against that vastsilence, one understood what Ivar meant.

On this Sunday afternoon his face shone with happiness. He closed the book onhis knee, keeping the place with his horny finger, and repeated softly:—

He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the hills;
They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses quench theirthirst.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon which he hathplanted;
Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the fir trees are herhouse.
The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the rocks for the conies.

Before he opened his Bible again, Ivar heard the Bergsons’ wagonapproaching, and he sprang up and ran toward it.

“No guns, no guns!” he shouted, waving his arms distractedly.

“No, Ivar, no guns,” Alexandra called reassuringly.

He dropped his arms and went up to the wagon, smiling amiably and looking atthem out of his pale blue eyes.

“We want to buy a hammock, if you have one,” Alexandra explained,“and my little brother, here, wants to see your big pond, where so manybirds come.”

Ivar smiled foolishly, and began rubbing the horses’ noses and feelingabout their mouths behind the bits. “Not many birds just now. A few ducksthis morning; and some snipe come to drink. But there was a crane last week.She spent one night and came back the next evening. I don’t know why. Itis not her season, of course. Many of them go over in the fall. Then the pondis full of strange voices every night.”

Alexandra translated for Carl, who looked thoughtful. “Ask him,Alexandra, if it is true that a sea gull came here once. I have heardso.”

She had some difficulty in making the old man understand.

He looked puzzled at first, then smote his hands together as he remembered.“Oh, yes, yes! A big white bird with long wings and pink feet. My! what avoice she had! She came in the afternoon and kept flying about the pond andscreaming until dark. She was in trouble of some sort, but I could notunderstand her. She was going over to the other ocean, maybe, and did not knowhow far it was. She was afraid of never getting there. She was more mournfulthan our birds here; she cried in the night. She saw the light from my windowand darted up to it. Maybe she thought my house was a boat, she was such a wildthing. Next morning, when the sun rose, I went out to take her food, but sheflew up into the sky and went on her way.” Ivar ran his fingers throughhis thick hair. “I have many strange birds stop with me here. They comefrom very far away and are great company. I hope you boys never shoot wildbirds?”

Lou and Oscar grinned, and Ivar shook his bushy head. “Yes, I know boysare thoughtless. But these wild things are God’s birds. He watches overthem and counts them, as we do our cattle; Christ says so in the NewTestament.”

“Now, Ivar,” Lou asked, “may we water our horses at your pondand give them some feed? It’s a bad road to your place.”

“Yes, yes, it is.” The old man scrambled about and began to loosethe tugs. “A bad road, eh, girls? And the bay with a colt at home!”

Oscar brushed the old man aside. “We’ll take care of the horses,Ivar. You’ll be finding some disease on them. Alexandra wants to see yourhammocks.”

Ivar led Alexandra and Emil to his little cave house. He had but one room,neatly plastered and whitewashed, and there was a wooden floor. There was akitchen stove, a table covered with oilcloth, two chairs, a clock, a calendar,a few books on the window-shelf; nothing more. But the place was as clean as acupboard.

“But where do you sleep, Ivar?” Emil asked, looking about.

Ivar unslung a hammock from a hook on the wall; in it was rolled a buffalorobe. “There, my son. A hammock is a good bed, and in winter I wrap up inthis skin. Where I go to work, the beds are not half so easy as this.”

By this time Emil had lost all his timidity. He thought a cave a very superiorkind of house. There was something pleasantly unusual about it and about Ivar.“Do the birds know you will be kind to them, Ivar? Is that why so manycome?” he asked.

Ivar sat down on the floor and tucked his feet under him. “See, littlebrother, they have come from a long way, and they are very tired. From up therewhere they are flying, our country looks dark and flat. They must have water todrink and to bathe in before they can go on with their journey. They look thisway and that, and far below them they see something shining, like a piece ofglass set in the dark earth. That is my pond. They come to it and are notdisturbed. Maybe I sprinkle a little corn. They tell the other birds, and nextyear more come this way. They have their roads up there, as we have downhere.”

Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully. “And is that true, Ivar, about thehead ducks falling back when they are tired, and the hind ones taking theirplace?”

“Yes. The point of the wedge gets the worst of it; they cut the wind.They can only stand it there a little while—half an hour, maybe. Thenthey fall back and the wedge splits a little, while the rear ones come up themiddle to the front. Then it closes up and they fly on, with a new edge. Theyare always changing like that, up in the air. Never any confusion; just likesoldiers who have been drilled.”

Alexandra had selected her hammock by the time the boys came up from the pond.They would not come in, but sat in the shade of the bank outside whileAlexandra and Ivar talked about the birds and about his housekeeping, and whyhe never ate meat, fresh or salt.

Alexandra was sitting on one of the wooden chairs, her arms resting on thetable. Ivar was sitting on the floor at her feet. “Ivar,” she saidsuddenly, beginning to trace the pattern on the oilcloth with her forefinger,“I came to-day more because I wanted to talk to you than because I wantedto buy a hammock.”

“Yes?” The old man scraped his bare feet on the plank floor.

“We have a big bunch of hogs, Ivar. I wouldn’t sell in the spring,when everybody advised me to, and now so many people are losing their hogs thatI am frightened. What can be done?”

Ivar’s little eyes began to shine. They lost their vagueness.

“You feed them swill and such stuff? Of course! And sour milk? Oh, yes!And keep them in a stinking pen? I tell you, sister, the hogs of this countryare put upon! They become unclean, like the hogs in the Bible. If you kept yourchickens like that, what would happen? You have a little sorghum patch, maybe?Put a fence around it, and turn the hogs in. Build a shed to give them shade, athatch on poles. Let the boys haul water to them in barrels, clean water, andplenty. Get them off the old stinking ground, and do not let them go back thereuntil winter. Give them only grain and clean feed, such as you would givehorses or cattle. Hogs do not like to be filthy.”

The boys outside the door had been listening. Lou nudged his brother.“Come, the horses are done eating. Let’s hitch up and get out ofhere. He’ll fill her full of notions. She’ll be for having the pigssleep with us, next.”

Oscar grunted and got up. Carl, who could not understand what Ivar said, sawthat the two boys were displeased. They did not mind hard work, but they hatedexperiments and could never see the use of taking pains. Even Lou, who was moreelastic than his older brother, disliked to do anything different from theirneighbors. He felt that it made them conspicuous and gave people a chance totalk about them.

Once they were on the homeward road, the boys forgot their ill-humor and jokedabout Ivar and his birds. Alexandra did not propose any reforms in the care ofthe pigs, and they hoped she had forgotten Ivar’s talk. They agreed thathe was crazier than ever, and would never be able to prove up on his landbecause he worked it so little. Alexandra privately resolved that she wouldhave a talk with Ivar about this and stir him up. The boys persuaded Carl tostay for supper and go swimming in the pasture pond after dark.

That evening, after she had washed the supper dishes, Alexandra sat down on thekitchen doorstep, while her mother was mixing the bread. It was a still,deep-breathing summer night, full of the smell of the hay fields. Sounds oflaughter and splashing came up from the pasture, and when the moon rose rapidlyabove the bare rim of the prairie, the pond glittered like polished metal, andshe could see the flash of white bodies as the boys ran about the edge, orjumped into the water. Alexandra watched the shimmering pool dreamily, buteventually her eyes went back to the sorghum patch south of the barn, where shewas planning to make her new pig corral.

IV

For the first three years after John Bergson’s death, the affairs of hisfamily prospered. Then came the hard times that brought every one on the Divideto the brink of despair; three years of drouth and failure, the last struggleof a wild soil against the encroaching plowshare. The first of these fruitlesssummers the Bergson boys bore courageously. The failure of the corn crop madelabor cheap. Lou and Oscar hired two men and put in bigger crops than everbefore. They lost everything they spent. The whole country was discouraged.Farmers who were already in debt had to give up their land. A few foreclosuresdemoralized the county. The settlers sat about on the wooden sidewalks in thelittle town and told each other that the country was never meant for men tolive in; the thing to do was to get back to Iowa, to Illinois, to any placethat had been proved habitable. The Bergson boys, certainly, would have beenhappier with their uncle Otto, in the bakery shop in Chicago. Like most oftheir neighbors, they were meant to follow in paths already marked out forthem, not to break trails in a new country. A steady job, a few holidays,nothing to think about, and they would have been very happy. It was no fault oftheirs that they had been dragged into the wilderness when they were littleboys. A pioneer should have imagination, should be able to enjoy the idea ofthings more than the things themselves.

The second of these barren summers was passing. One September afternoonAlexandra had gone over to the garden across the draw to dig sweetpotatoes—they had been thriving upon the weather that was fatal toeverything else. But when Carl Linstrum came up the garden rows to find her,she was not working. She was standing lost in thought, leaning upon herpitchfork, her sunbonnet lying beside her on the ground. The dry garden patchsmelled of drying vines and was strewn with yellow seed-cucumbers and pumpkinsand citrons. At one end, next the rhubarb, grew feathery asparagus, with redberries. Down the middle of the garden was a row of gooseberry and currantbushes. A few tough zenias and marigolds and a row of scarlet sage bore witnessto the buckets of water that Mrs. Bergson had carried there after sundown,against the prohibition of her sons. Carl came quietly and slowly up the gardenpath, looking intently at Alexandra. She did not hear him. She was standingperfectly still, with that serious ease so characteristic of her. Her thick,reddish braids, twisted about her head, fairly burned in the sunlight. The airwas cool enough to make the warm sun pleasant on one’s back andshoulders, and so clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and up, into theblazing blue depths of the sky. Even Carl, never a very cheerful boy, andconsiderably darkened by these last two bitter years, loved the country on dayslike this, felt something strong and young and wild come out of it, thatlaughed at care.

“Alexandra,” he said as he approached her, “I want to talk toyou. Let’s sit down by the gooseberry bushes.” He picked up hersack of potatoes and they crossed the garden. “Boys gone to town?”he asked as he sank down on the warm, sun-baked earth. “Well, we havemade up our minds at last, Alexandra. We are really going away.”

She looked at him as if she were a little frightened. “Really, Carl? Isit settled?”

“Yes, father has heard from St. Louis, and they will give him back hisold job in the cigar factory. He must be there by the first of November. Theyare taking on new men then. We will sell the place for whatever we can get, andauction the stock. We haven’t enough to ship. I am going to learnengraving with a German engraver there, and then try to get work inChicago.”

Alexandra’s hands dropped in her lap. Her eyes became dreamy and filledwith tears.

Carl’s sensitive lower lip trembled. He scratched in the soft earthbeside him with a stick. “That’s all I hate about it,Alexandra,” he said slowly. “You’ve stood by us through somuch and helped father out so many times, and now it seems as if we wererunning off and leaving you to face the worst of it. But it isn’t as ifwe could really ever be of any help to you. We are only one more drag, one morething you look out for and feel responsible for. Father was never meant for afarmer, you know that. And I hate it. We’d only get in deeper anddeeper.”

“Yes, yes, Carl, I know. You are wasting your life here. You are able todo much better things. You are nearly nineteen now, and I wouldn’t haveyou stay. I’ve always hoped you would get away. But I can’t helpfeeling scared when I think how I will miss you—more than you will everknow.” She brushed the tears from her cheeks, not trying to hide them.

“But, Alexandra,” he said sadly and wistfully, “I’venever been any real help to you, beyond sometimes trying to keep the boys in agood humor.”

Alexandra smiled and shook her head. “Oh, it’s not that. Nothinglike that. It’s by understanding me, and the boys, and mother, thatyou’ve helped me. I expect that is the only way one person ever reallycan help another. I think you are about the only one that ever helped me.Somehow it will take more courage to bear your going than everything that hashappened before.”

Carl looked at the ground. “You see, we’ve all depended so onyou,” he said, “even father. He makes me laugh. When anything comesup he always says, ‘I wonder what the Bergsons are going to do aboutthat? I guess I’ll go and ask her.’ I’ll never forget thattime, when we first came here, and our horse had the colic, and I ran over toyour place—your father was away, and you came home with me and showedfather how to let the wind out of the horse. You were only a little girl then,but you knew ever so much more about farm work than poor father. You rememberhow homesick I used to get, and what long talks we used to have coming fromschool? We’ve someway always felt alike about things.”

“Yes, that’s it; we’ve liked the same things and we’veliked them together, without anybody else knowing. And we’ve had goodtimes, hunting for Christmas trees and going for ducks and making our plum winetogether every year. We’ve never either of us had any other close friend.And now—” Alexandra wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron,“and now I must remember that you are going where you will have manyfriends, and will find the work you were meant to do. But you’ll write tome, Carl? That will mean a great deal to me here.”

“I’ll write as long as I live,” cried the boy impetuously.“And I’ll be working for you as much as for myself, Alexandra. Iwant to do something you’ll like and be proud of. I’m a fool here,but I know I can do something!” He sat up and frowned at the red grass.

Alexandra sighed. “How discouraged the boys will be when they hear. Theyalways come home from town discouraged, anyway. So many people are trying toleave the country, and they talk to our boys and make them low-spirited.I’m afraid they are beginning to feel hard toward me because Iwon’t listen to any talk about going. Sometimes I feel like I’mgetting tired of standing up for this country.”

“I won’t tell the boys yet, if you’d rather not.”

“Oh, I’ll tell them myself, to-night, when they come home.They’ll be talking wild, anyway, and no good comes of keeping bad news.It’s all harder on them than it is on me. Lou wants to get married, poorboy, and he can’t until times are better. See, there goes the sun, Carl.I must be getting back. Mother will want her potatoes. It’s chillyalready, the moment the light goes.”

Alexandra rose and looked about. A golden afterglow throbbed in the west, butthe country already looked empty and mournful. A dark moving mass came over thewestern hill, the Lee boy was bringing in the herd from the other half-section.Emil ran from the windmill to open the corral gate. From the log house, on thelittle rise across the draw, the smoke was curling. The cattle lowed andbellowed. In the sky the pale half-moon was slowly silvering. Alexandra andCarl walked together down the potato rows. “I have to keep telling myselfwhat is going to happen,” she said softly. “Since you have beenhere, ten years now, I have never really been lonely. But I can remember whatit was like before. Now I shall have nobody but Emil. But he is my boy, and heis tender-hearted.”

That night, when the boys were called to supper, they sat down moodily. Theyhad worn their coats to town, but they ate in their striped shirts andsuspenders. They were grown men now, and, as Alexandra said, for the last fewyears they had been growing more and more like themselves. Lou was still theslighter of the two, the quicker and more intelligent, but apt to go off athalf-co*ck. He had a lively blue eye, a thin, fair skin (always burned red tothe neckband of his shirt in summer), stiff, yellow hair that would not liedown on his head, and a bristly little yellow mustache, of which he was veryproud. Oscar could not grow a mustache; his pale face was as bare as an egg,and his white eyebrows gave it an empty look. He was a man of powerful body andunusual endurance; the sort of man you could attach to a corn-sheller as youwould an engine. He would turn it all day, without hurrying, without slowingdown. But he was as indolent of mind as he was unsparing of his body. His loveof routine amounted to a vice. He worked like an insect, always doing the samething over in the same way, regardless of whether it was best or no. He feltthat there was a sovereign virtue in mere bodily toil, and he rather liked todo things in the hardest way. If a field had once been in corn, hecouldn’t bear to put it into wheat. He liked to begin his corn-plantingat the same time every year, whether the season were backward or forward. Heseemed to feel that by his own irreproachable regularity he would clear himselfof blame and reprove the weather. When the wheat crop failed, he threshed thestraw at a dead loss to demonstrate how little grain there was, and thus provehis case against Providence.

Lou, on the other hand, was fussy and flighty; always planned to get throughtwo days’ work in one, and often got only the least important thingsdone. He liked to keep the place up, but he never got round to doing odd jobsuntil he had to neglect more pressing work to attend to them. In the middle ofthe wheat harvest, when the grain was over-ripe and every hand was needed, hewould stop to mend fences or to patch the harness; then dash down to the fieldand overwork and be laid up in bed for a week. The two boys balanced eachother, and they pulled well together. They had been good friends since theywere children. One seldom went anywhere, even to town, without the other.

To-night, after they sat down to supper, Oscar kept looking at Lou as if heexpected him to say something, and Lou blinked his eyes and frowned at hisplate. It was Alexandra herself who at last opened the discussion.

“The Linstrums,” she said calmly, as she put another plate of hotbiscuit on the table, “are going back to St. Louis. The old man is goingto work in the cigar factory again.”

At this Lou plunged in. “You see, Alexandra, everybody who can crawl outis going away. There’s no use of us trying to stick it out, just to bestubborn. There’s something in knowing when to quit.”

“Where do you want to go, Lou?”

“Any place where things will grow,” said Oscar grimly.

Lou reached for a potato. “Chris Arnson has traded his half-section for aplace down on the river.”

“Who did he trade with?”

“Charley Fuller, in town.”

“Fuller the real estate man? You see, Lou, that Fuller has a head on him.He’s buying and trading for every bit of land he can get up here.It’ll make him a rich man, some day.”

“He’s rich now, that’s why he can take a chance.”

“Why can’t we? We’ll live longer than he will. Some day theland itself will be worth more than all we can ever raise on it.”

Lou laughed. “It could be worth that, and still not be worth much. Why,Alexandra, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Our placewouldn’t bring now what it would six years ago. The fellows that settledup here just made a mistake. Now they’re beginning to see this high landwasn’t never meant to grow nothing on, and everybody who ain’tfixed to graze cattle is trying to crawl out. It’s too high to farm uphere. All the Americans are skinning out. That man Percy Adams, north of town,told me that he was going to let Fuller take his land and stuff for fourhundred dollars and a ticket to Chicago.”

“There’s Fuller again!” Alexandra exclaimed. “I wishthat man would take me for a partner. He’s feathering his nest! If onlypoor people could learn a little from rich people! But all these fellows whoare running off are bad farmers, like poor Mr. Linstrum. They couldn’tget ahead even in good years, and they all got into debt while father wasgetting out. I think we ought to hold on as long as we can on father’saccount. He was so set on keeping this land. He must have seen harder timesthan this, here. How was it in the early days, mother?”

Mrs. Bergson was weeping quietly. These family discussions always depressedher, and made her remember all that she had been torn away from. “Idon’t see why the boys are always taking on about going away,” shesaid, wiping her eyes. “I don’t want to move again; out to some rawplace, maybe, where we’d be worse off than we are here, and all to doover again. I won’t move! If the rest of you go, I will ask some of theneighbors to take me in, and stay and be buried by father. I’m not goingto leave him by himself on the prairie, for cattle to run over.” Shebegan to cry more bitterly.

The boys looked angry. Alexandra put a soothing hand on her mother’sshoulder. “There’s no question of that, mother. You don’thave to go if you don’t want to. A third of the place belongs to you byAmerican law, and we can’t sell without your consent. We only want you toadvise us. How did it use to be when you and father first came? Was it reallyas bad as this, or not?”

“Oh, worse! Much worse,” moaned Mrs. Bergson. “Drouth,chince-bugs, hail, everything! My garden all cut to pieces like sauerkraut. Nograpes on the creek, no nothing. The people all lived just like coyotes.”

Oscar got up and tramped out of the kitchen. Lou followed him. They felt thatAlexandra had taken an unfair advantage in turning their mother loose on them.The next morning they were silent and reserved. They did not offer to take thewomen to church, but went down to the barn immediately after breakfast andstayed there all day. When Carl Linstrum came over in the afternoon, Alexandrawinked to him and pointed toward the barn. He understood her and went down toplay cards with the boys. They believed that a very wicked thing to do onSunday, and it relieved their feelings.

Alexandra stayed in the house. On Sunday afternoon Mrs. Bergson always took anap, and Alexandra read. During the week she read only the newspaper, but onSunday, and in the long evenings of winter, she read a good deal; read a fewthings over a great many times. She knew long portions of the “FrithjofSaga” by heart, and, like most Swedes who read at all, she was fond ofLongfellow’s verse,—the ballads and the “Golden Legend”and “The Spanish Student.” To-day she sat in the woodenrocking-chair with the Swedish Bible open on her knees, but she was notreading. She was looking thoughtfully away at the point where the upland roaddisappeared over the rim of the prairie. Her body was in an attitude of perfectrepose, such as it was apt to take when she was thinking earnestly. Her mindwas slow, truthful, steadfast. She had not the least spark of cleverness.

All afternoon the sitting-room was full of quiet and sunlight. Emil was makingrabbit traps in the kitchen shed. The hens were clucking and scratching brownholes in the flower beds, and the wind was teasing the prince’s featherby the door.

That evening Carl came in with the boys to supper.

“Emil,” said Alexandra, when they were all seated at the table,“how would you like to go traveling? Because I am going to take a trip,and you can go with me if you want to.”

The boys looked up in amazement; they were always afraid of Alexandra’sschemes. Carl was interested.

“I’ve been thinking, boys,” she went on, “that maybe Iam too set against making a change. I’m going to take Brigham and thebuckboard to-morrow and drive down to the river country and spend a few dayslooking over what they’ve got down there. If I find anything good, youboys can go down and make a trade.”

“Nobody down there will trade for anything up here,” said Oscargloomily.

“That’s just what I want to find out. Maybe they are just asdiscontented down there as we are up here. Things away from home often lookbetter than they are. You know what your Hans Andersen book says, Carl, aboutthe Swedes liking to buy Danish bread and the Danes liking to buy Swedishbread, because people always think the bread of another country is better thantheir own. Anyway, I’ve heard so much about the river farms, Iwon’t be satisfied till I’ve seen for myself.”

Lou fidgeted. “Look out! Don’t agree to anything. Don’t letthem fool you.”

Lou was apt to be fooled himself. He had not yet learned to keep away from theshell-game wagons that followed the circus.

After supper Lou put on a necktie and went across the fields to court AnnieLee, and Carl and Oscar sat down to a game of checkers, while Alexandra read“The Swiss Family Robinson” aloud to her mother and Emil. It wasnot long before the two boys at the table neglected their game to listen. Theywere all big children together, and they found the adventures of the family inthe tree house so absorbing that they gave them their undivided attention.

V

Alexandra and Emil spent five days down among the river farms, driving up anddown the valley. Alexandra talked to the men about their crops and to the womenabout their poultry. She spent a whole day with one young farmer who had beenaway at school, and who was experimenting with a new kind of clover hay. Shelearned a great deal. As they drove along, she and Emil talked and planned. Atlast, on the sixth day, Alexandra turned Brigham’s head northward andleft the river behind.

“There’s nothing in it for us down there, Emil. There are a fewfine farms, but they are owned by the rich men in town, and couldn’t bebought. Most of the land is rough and hilly. They can always scrape along downthere, but they can never do anything big. Down there they have a littlecertainty, but up with us there is a big chance. We must have faith in the highland, Emil. I want to hold on harder than ever, and when you’re a manyou’ll thank me.” She urged Brigham forward.

When the road began to climb the first long swells of the Divide, Alexandrahummed an old Swedish hymn, and Emil wondered why his sister looked so happy.Her face was so radiant that he felt shy about asking her. For the first time,perhaps, since that land emerged from the waters of geologic ages, a human facewas set toward it with love and yearning. It seemed beautiful to her, rich andstrong and glorious. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her tearsblinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great, free spirit whichbreathes across it, must have bent lower than it ever bent to a human willbefore. The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

Alexandra reached home in the afternoon. That evening she held a family counciland told her brothers all that she had seen and heard.

“I want you boys to go down yourselves and look it over. Nothing willconvince you like seeing with your own eyes. The river land was settled beforethis, and so they are a few years ahead of us, and have learned more aboutfarming. The land sells for three times as much as this, but in five years wewill double it. The rich men down there own all the best land, and they arebuying all they can get. The thing to do is to sell our cattle and what littleold corn we have, and buy the Linstrum place. Then the next thing to do is totake out two loans on our half-sections, and buy Peter Crow’s place;raise every dollar we can, and buy every acre we can.”

“Mortgage the homestead again?” Lou cried. He sprang up and beganto wind the clock furiously. “I won’t slave to pay off anothermortgage. I’ll never do it. You’d just as soon kill us all,Alexandra, to carry out some scheme!”

Oscar rubbed his high, pale forehead. “How do you propose to pay off yourmortgages?”

Alexandra looked from one to the other and bit her lip. They had never seen herso nervous. “See here,” she brought out at last. “We borrowthe money for six years. Well, with the money we buy a half-section fromLinstrum and a half from Crow, and a quarter from Struble, maybe. That willgive us upwards of fourteen hundred acres, won’t it? You won’t haveto pay off your mortgages for six years. By that time, any of this land will beworth thirty dollars an acre—it will be worth fifty, but we’ll saythirty; then you can sell a garden patch anywhere, and pay off a debt ofsixteen hundred dollars. It’s not the principal I’m worried about,it’s the interest and taxes. We’ll have to strain to meet thepayments. But as sure as we are sitting here to-night, we can sit down here tenyears from now independent landowners, not struggling farmers any longer. Thechance that father was always looking for has come.”

Lou was pacing the floor. “But how do you know that land is goingto go up enough to pay the mortgages and—”

“And make us rich besides?” Alexandra put in firmly. “Ican’t explain that, Lou. You’ll have to take my word for it. Iknow, that’s all. When you drive about over the country you canfeel it coming.”

Oscar had been sitting with his head lowered, his hands hanging between hisknees. “But we can’t work so much land,” he said dully, as ifhe were talking to himself. “We can’t even try. It would just liethere and we’d work ourselves to death.” He sighed, and laid hiscalloused fist on the table.

Alexandra’s eyes filled with tears. She put her hand on his shoulder.“You poor boy, you won’t have to work it. The men in town who arebuying up other people’s land don’t try to farm it. They are themen to watch, in a new country. Let’s try to do like the shrewd ones, andnot like these stupid fellows. I don’t want you boys always to have towork like this. I want you to be independent, and Emil to go to school.”

Lou held his head as if it were splitting. “Everybody will say we arecrazy. It must be crazy, or everybody would be doing it.”

“If they were, we wouldn’t have much chance. No, Lou, I was talkingabout that with the smart young man who is raising the new kind of clover. Hesays the right thing is usually just what everybody don’t do. Why are webetter fixed than any of our neighbors? Because father had more brains. Ourpeople were better people than these in the old country. We ought to domore than they do, and see further ahead. Yes, mother, I’m going to clearthe table now.”

Alexandra rose. The boys went to the stable to see to the stock, and they weregone a long while. When they came back Lou played on his dragharmonikaand Oscar sat figuring at his father’s secretary all evening. They saidnothing more about Alexandra’s project, but she felt sure now that theywould consent to it. Just before bedtime Oscar went out for a pail of water.When he did not come back, Alexandra threw a shawl over her head and ran downthe path to the windmill. She found him sitting there with his head in hishands, and she sat down beside him.

“Don’t do anything you don’t want to do, Oscar,” shewhispered. She waited a moment, but he did not stir. “I won’t sayany more about it, if you’d rather not. What makes you sodiscouraged?”

“I dread signing my name to them pieces of paper,” he said slowly.“All the time I was a boy we had a mortgage hanging over us.”

“Then don’t sign one. I don’t want you to, if you feel thatway.”

Oscar shook his head. “No, I can see there’s a chance that way.I’ve thought a good while there might be. We’re in so deep now, wemight as well go deeper. But it’s hard work pulling out of debt. Likepulling a threshing-machine out of the mud; breaks your back. Me andLou’s worked hard, and I can’t see it’s got us aheadmuch.”

“Nobody knows about that as well as I do, Oscar. That’s why I wantto try an easier way. I don’t want you to have to grub for everydollar.”

“Yes, I know what you mean. Maybe it’ll come out right. But signingpapers is signing papers. There ain’t no maybe about that.” He tookhis pail and trudged up the path to the house.

Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her and stood leaning against the frameof the mill, looking at the stars which glittered so keenly through the frostyautumn air. She always loved to watch them, to think of their vastness anddistance, and of their ordered march. It fortified her to reflect upon thegreat operations of nature, and when she thought of the law that lay behindthem, she felt a sense of personal security. That night she had a newconsciousness of the country, felt almost a new relation to it. Even her talkwith the boys had not taken away the feeling that had overwhelmed her when shedrove back to the Divide that afternoon. She had never known before how muchthe country meant to her. The chirping of the insects down in the long grasshad been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding downthere, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild thingsthat crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt thefuture stirring.

PART II.
Neighboring Fields

I

IT is sixteen years since John Bergson died. His wife now lies beside him, andthe white shaft that marks their graves gleams across the wheat-fields. Couldhe rise from beneath it, he would not know the country under which he has beenasleep. The shaggy coat of the prairie, which they lifted to make him a bed,has vanished forever. From the Norwegian graveyard one looks out over a vastchecker-board, marked off in squares of wheat and corn; light and dark, darkand light. Telephone wires hum along the white roads, which always run at rightangles. From the graveyard gate one can count a dozen gayly painted farmhouses;the gilded weather-vanes on the big red barns wink at each other across thegreen and brown and yellow fields. The light steel windmills tremble throughouttheir frames and tug at their moorings, as they vibrate in the wind that oftenblows from one week’s end to another across that high, active, resolutestretch of country.

The Divide is now thickly populated. The rich soil yields heavy harvests; thedry, bracing climate and the smoothness of the land make labor easy for men andbeasts. There are few scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing in thatcountry, where the furrows of a single field often lie a mile in length, andthe brown earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such a power of growthand fertility in it, yields itself eagerly to the plow; rolls away from theshear, not even dimming the brightness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh ofhappiness. The wheat-cutting sometimes goes on all night as well as all day,and in good seasons there are scarcely men and horses enough to do theharvesting. The grain is so heavy that it bends toward the blade and cuts likevelvet.

There is something frank and joyous and young in the open face of the country.It gives itself ungrudgingly to the moods of the season, holding nothing back.Like the plains of Lombardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun. The airand the earth are curiously mated and intermingled, as if the one were thebreath of the other. You feel in the atmosphere the same tonic, puissantquality that is in the tilth, the same strength and resoluteness.

One June morning a young man stood at the gate of the Norwegian graveyard,sharpening his scythe in strokes unconsciously timed to the tune he waswhistling. He wore a flannel cap and duck trousers, and the sleeves of hiswhite flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow. When he was satisfied withthe edge of his blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip pocket and beganto swing his scythe, still whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quietfolk about him. Unconscious respect, probably, for he seemed intent upon hisown thoughts, and, like the Gladiator’s, they were far away. He was asplendid figure of a boy, tall and straight as a young pine tree, with ahandsome head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set under a serious brow. The spacebetween his two front teeth, which were unusually far apart, gave him theproficiency in whistling for which he was distinguished at college. (He alsoplayed the cornet in the University band.)

When the grass required his close attention, or when he had to stoop to cutabout a head-stone, he paused in his lively air,—the “Jewel”song,—taking it up where he had left it when his scythe swung free again.He was not thinking about the tired pioneers over whom his blade glittered. Theold wild country, the struggle in which his sister was destined to succeedwhile so many men broke their hearts and died, he can scarcely remember. Thatis all among the dim things of childhood and has been forgotten in the brighterpattern life weaves to-day, in the bright facts of being captain of the trackteam, and holding the interstate record for the high jump, in the all-suffusingbrightness of being twenty-one. Yet sometimes, in the pauses of his work, theyoung man frowned and looked at the ground with an intentness which suggestedthat even twenty-one might have its problems.

When he had been mowing the better part of an hour, he heard the rattle of alight cart on the road behind him. Supposing that it was his sister coming backfrom one of her farms, he kept on with his work. The cart stopped at the gateand a merry contralto voice called, “Almost through, Emil?” Hedropped his scythe and went toward the fence, wiping his face and neck with hishandkerchief. In the cart sat a young woman who wore driving gauntlets and awide shade hat, trimmed with red poppies. Her face, too, was rather like apoppy, round and brown, with rich color in her cheeks and lips, and her dancingyellow-brown eyes bubbled with gayety. The wind was flapping her big hat andteasing a curl of her chestnut-colored hair. She shook her head at the tallyouth.

“What time did you get over here? That’s not much of a job for anathlete. Here I’ve been to town and back. Alexandra lets you sleep late.Oh, I know! Lou’s wife was telling me about the way she spoils you. I wasgoing to give you a lift, if you were done.” She gathered up her reins.

“But I will be, in a minute. Please wait for me, Marie,” Emilcoaxed. “Alexandra sent me to mow our lot, but I’ve done half adozen others, you see. Just wait till I finish off the Kourdnas’. By theway, they were Bohemians. Why aren’t they up in the Catholicgraveyard?”

“Free-thinkers,” replied the young woman laconically.

“Lots of the Bohemian boys at the University are,” said Emil,taking up his scythe again. “What did you ever burn John Huss for,anyway? It’s made an awful row. They still jaw about it in historyclasses.”

“We’d do it right over again, most of us,” said the youngwoman hotly. “Don’t they ever teach you in your history classesthat you’d all be heathen Turks if it hadn’t been for theBohemians?”

Emil had fallen to mowing. “Oh, there’s no denying you’re aspunky little bunch, you Czechs,” he called back over his shoulder.

Marie Shabata settled herself in her seat and watched the rhythmical movementof the young man’s long arms, swinging her foot as if in time to some airthat was going through her mind. The minutes passed. Emil mowed vigorously andMarie sat sunning herself and watching the long grass fall. She sat with theease that belongs to persons of an essentially happy nature, who can find acomfortable spot almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in adaptingthemselves to circ*mstances. After a final swish, Emil snapped the gate andsprang into the cart, holding his scythe well out over the wheel.“There,” he sighed. “I gave old man Lee a cut or so, too.Lou’s wife needn’t talk. I never see Lou’s scythe overhere.”

Marie clucked to her horse. “Oh, you know Annie!” She looked at theyoung man’s bare arms. “How brown you’ve got since you camehome. I wish I had an athlete to mow my orchard. I get wet to my knees when Igo down to pick cherries.”

“You can have one, any time you want him. Better wait until after itrains.” Emil squinted off at the horizon as if he were looking forclouds.

“Will you? Oh, there’s a good boy!” She turned her head tohim with a quick, bright smile. He felt it rather than saw it. Indeed, he hadlooked away with the purpose of not seeing it. “I’ve been uplooking at Angélique’s wedding clothes,” Marie went on, “andI’m so excited I can hardly wait until Sunday. Amédée will be a handsomebridegroom. Is anybody but you going to stand up with him? Well, then it willbe a handsome wedding party.” She made a droll face at Emil, who flushed.“Frank,” Marie continued, flicking her horse, “is cranky atme because I loaned his saddle to Jan Smirka, and I’m terribly afraid hewon’t take me to the dance in the evening. Maybe the supper will tempthim. All Angélique’s folks are baking for it, and all Amédée’stwenty cousins. There will be barrels of beer. If once I get Frank to thesupper, I’ll see that I stay for the dance. And by the way, Emil, youmustn’t dance with me but once or twice. You must dance with all theFrench girls. It hurts their feelings if you don’t. They thinkyou’re proud because you’ve been away to school orsomething.”

Emil sniffed. “How do you know they think that?”

“Well, you didn’t dance with them much at Raoul Marcel’sparty, and I could tell how they took it by the way they looked atyou—and at me.”

“All right,” said Emil shortly, studying the glittering blade ofhis scythe.

They drove westward toward Norway Creek, and toward a big white house thatstood on a hill, several miles across the fields. There were so many sheds andoutbuildings grouped about it that the place looked not unlike a tiny village.A stranger, approaching it, could not help noticing the beauty and fruitfulnessof the outlying fields. There was something individual about the great farm, amost unusual trimness and care for detail. On either side of the road, for amile before you reached the foot of the hill, stood tall osage orange hedges,their glossy green marking off the yellow fields. South of the hill, in a low,sheltered swale, surrounded by a mulberry hedge, was the orchard, its fruittrees knee-deep in timothy grass. Any one thereabouts would have told you thatthis was one of the richest farms on the Divide, and that the farmer was awoman, Alexandra Bergson.

If you go up the hill and enter Alexandra’s big house, you will find thatit is curiously unfinished and uneven in comfort. One room is papered,carpeted, over-furnished; the next is almost bare. The pleasantest rooms in thehouse are the kitchen—where Alexandra’s three young Swedish girlschatter and cook and pickle and preserve all summer long—and thesitting-room, in which Alexandra has brought together the old homely furniturethat the Bergsons used in their first log house, the family portraits, and thefew things her mother brought from Sweden.

When you go out of the house into the flower garden, there you feel again theorder and fine arrangement manifest all over the great farm; in the fencing andhedging, in the windbreaks and sheds, in the symmetrical pasture ponds, plantedwith scrub willows to give shade to the cattle in fly-time. There is even awhite row of beehives in the orchard, under the walnut trees. You feel that,properly, Alexandra’s house is the big out-of-doors, and that it is inthe soil that she expresses herself best.

II

Emil reached home a little past noon, and when he went into the kitchenAlexandra was already seated at the head of the long table, having dinner withher men, as she always did unless there were visitors. He slipped into hisempty place at his sister’s right. The three pretty young Swedish girlswho did Alexandra’s housework were cutting pies, refilling coffeecups,placing platters of bread and meat and potatoes upon the red tablecloth, andcontinually getting in each other’s way between the table and the stove.To be sure they always wasted a good deal of time getting in each other’sway and giggling at each other’s mistakes. But, as Alexandra hadpointedly told her sisters-in-law, it was to hear them giggle that she keptthree young things in her kitchen; the work she could do herself, if it werenecessary. These girls, with their long letters from home, their finery, andtheir love-affairs, afforded her a great deal of entertainment, and they werecompany for her when Emil was away at school.

Of the youngest girl, Signa, who has a pretty figure, mottled pink cheeks, andyellow hair, Alexandra is very fond, though she keeps a sharp eye upon her.Signa is apt to be skittish at mealtime, when the men are about, and to spillthe coffee or upset the cream. It is supposed that Nelse Jensen, one of the sixmen at the dinner-table, is courting Signa, though he has been so careful notto commit himself that no one in the house, least of all Signa, can tell justhow far the matter has progressed. Nelse watches her glumly as she waits uponthe table, and in the evening he sits on a bench behind the stove with hisDRAGHARMONIKA, playing mournful airs and watching her as she goes about herwork. When Alexandra asked Signa whether she thought Nelse was in earnest, thepoor child hid her hands under her apron and murmured, “I don’tknow, ma’m. But he scolds me about everything, like as if he wanted tohave me!”

At Alexandra’s left sat a very old man, barefoot and wearing a long blueblouse, open at the neck. His shaggy head is scarcely whiter than it wassixteen years ago, but his little blue eyes have become pale and watery, andhis ruddy face is withered, like an apple that has clung all winter to thetree. When Ivar lost his land through mismanagement a dozen years ago,Alexandra took him in, and he has been a member of her household ever since. Heis too old to work in the fields, but he hitches and unhitches the work-teamsand looks after the health of the stock. Sometimes of a winter eveningAlexandra calls him into the sitting-room to read the Bible aloud to her, forhe still reads very well. He dislikes human habitations, so Alexandra hasfitted him up a room in the barn, where he is very comfortable, being near thehorses and, as he says, further from temptations. No one has ever found outwhat his temptations are. In cold weather he sits by the kitchen fire and makeshammocks or mends harness until it is time to go to bed. Then he says hisprayers at great length behind the stove, puts on his buffalo-skin coat andgoes out to his room in the barn.

Alexandra herself has changed very little. Her figure is fuller, and she hasmore color. She seems sunnier and more vigorous than she did as a young girl.But she still has the same calmness and deliberation of manner, the same cleareyes, and she still wears her hair in two braids wound round her head. It is socurly that fiery ends escape from the braids and make her head look like one ofthe big double sunflowers that fringe her vegetable garden. Her face is alwaystanned in summer, for her sunbonnet is oftener on her arm than on her head. Butwhere her collar falls away from her neck, or where her sleeves are pushed backfrom her wrist, the skin is of such smoothness and whiteness as none butSwedish women ever possess; skin with the freshness of the snow itself.

Alexandra did not talk much at the table, but she encouraged her men to talk,and she always listened attentively, even when they seemed to be talkingfoolishly.

To-day Barney Flinn, the big red-headed Irishman who had been with Alexandrafor five years and who was actually her foreman, though he had no such title,was grumbling about the new silo she had put up that spring. It happened to bethe first silo on the Divide, and Alexandra’s neighbors and her men wereskeptical about it. “To be sure, if the thing don’t work,we’ll have plenty of feed without it, indeed,” Barney conceded.

Nelse Jensen, Signa’s gloomy suitor, had his word. “Lou, he says hewouldn’t have no silo on his place if you’d give it to him. He saysthe feed outen it gives the stock the bloat. He heard of somebody lost fourhead of horses, feedin’ ’em that stuff.”

Alexandra looked down the table from one to another. “Well, the only waywe can find out is to try. Lou and I have different notions about feedingstock, and that’s a good thing. It’s bad if all the members of afamily think alike. They never get anywhere. Lou can learn by my mistakes and Ican learn by his. Isn’t that fair, Barney?”

The Irishman laughed. He had no love for Lou, who was always uppish with himand who said that Alexandra paid her hands too much. “I’ve nothought but to give the thing an honest try, mum. ’T would be only right,after puttin’ so much expense into it. Maybe Emil will come out an’have a look at it wid me.” He pushed back his chair, took his hat fromthe nail, and marched out with Emil, who, with his university ideas, wassupposed to have instigated the silo. The other hands followed them, all exceptold Ivar. He had been depressed throughout the meal and had paid no heed to thetalk of the men, even when they mentioned cornstalk bloat, upon which he wassure to have opinions.

“Did you want to speak to me, Ivar?” Alexandra asked as she rosefrom the table. “Come into the sitting-room.”

The old man followed Alexandra, but when she motioned him to a chair he shookhis head. She took up her workbasket and waited for him to speak. He stoodlooking at the carpet, his bushy head bowed, his hands clasped in front of him.Ivar’s bandy legs seemed to have grown shorter with years, and they werecompletely misfitted to his broad, thick body and heavy shoulders.

“Well, Ivar, what is it?” Alexandra asked after she had waitedlonger than usual.

Ivar had never learned to speak English and his Norwegian was quaint and grave,like the speech of the more old-fashioned people. He always addressed Alexandrain terms of the deepest respect, hoping to set a good example to the kitchengirls, whom he thought too familiar in their manners.

“Mistress,” he began faintly, without raising his eyes, “thefolk have been looking coldly at me of late. You know there has beentalk.”

“Talk about what, Ivar?”

“About sending me away; to the asylum.”

Alexandra put down her sewing-basket. “Nobody has come to me with suchtalk,” she said decidedly. “Why need you listen? You know I wouldnever consent to such a thing.”

Ivar lifted his shaggy head and looked at her out of his little eyes.“They say that you cannot prevent it if the folk complain of me, if yourbrothers complain to the authorities. They say that your brothers areafraid—God forbid!—that I may do you some injury when my spells areon me. Mistress, how can any one think that?—that I could bite the handthat fed me!” The tears trickled down on the old man’s beard.

Alexandra frowned. “Ivar, I wonder at you, that you should come botheringme with such nonsense. I am still running my own house, and other people havenothing to do with either you or me. So long as I am suited with you, there isnothing to be said.”

Ivar pulled a red handkerchief out of the breast of his blouse and wiped hiseyes and beard. “But I should not wish you to keep me if, as they say, itis against your interests, and if it is hard for you to get hands because I amhere.”

Alexandra made an impatient gesture, but the old man put out his hand and wenton earnestly:—

“Listen, mistress, it is right that you should take these things intoaccount. You know that my spells come from God, and that I would not harm anyliving creature. You believe that every one should worship God in the wayrevealed to him. But that is not the way of this country. The way here is forall to do alike. I am despised because I do not wear shoes, because I do notcut my hair, and because I have visions. At home, in the old country, therewere many like me, who had been touched by God, or who had seen things in thegraveyard at night and were different afterward. We thought nothing of it, andlet them alone. But here, if a man is different in his feet or in his head,they put him in the asylum. Look at Peter Kralik; when he was a boy, drinkingout of a creek, he swallowed a snake, and always after that he could eat onlysuch food as the creature liked, for when he ate anything else, it becameenraged and gnawed him. When he felt it whipping about in him, he drank alcoholto stupefy it and get some ease for himself. He could work as good as any man,and his head was clear, but they locked him up for being different in hisstomach. That is the way; they have built the asylum for people who aredifferent, and they will not even let us live in the holes with the badgers.Only your great prosperity has protected me so far. If you had had ill-fortune,they would have taken me to Hastings long ago.”

As Ivar talked, his gloom lifted. Alexandra had found that she could oftenbreak his fasts and long penances by talking to him and letting him pour outthe thoughts that troubled him. Sympathy always cleared his mind, and ridiculewas poison to him.

“There is a great deal in what you say, Ivar. Like as not they will bewanting to take me to Hastings because I have built a silo; and then I may takeyou with me. But at present I need you here. Only don’t come to me againtelling me what people say. Let people go on talking as they like, and we willgo on living as we think best. You have been with me now for twelve years, andI have gone to you for advice oftener than I have ever gone to any one. Thatought to satisfy you.”

Ivar bowed humbly. “Yes, mistress, I shall not trouble you with theirtalk again. And as for my feet, I have observed your wishes all these years,though you have never questioned me; washing them every night, even inwinter.”

Alexandra laughed. “Oh, never mind about your feet, Ivar. We can rememberwhen half our neighbors went barefoot in summer. I expect old Mrs. Lee wouldlove to slip her shoes off now sometimes, if she dared. I’m gladI’m not Lou’s mother-in-law.”

Ivar looked about mysteriously and lowered his voice almost to a whisper.“You know what they have over at Lou’s house? A great white tub,like the stone water-troughs in the old country, to wash themselves in. Whenyou sent me over with the strawberries, they were all in town but the old womanLee and the baby. She took me in and showed me the thing, and she told me itwas impossible to wash yourself clean in it, because, in so much water, youcould not make a strong suds. So when they fill it up and send her in there,she pretends, and makes a splashing noise. Then, when they are all asleep, shewashes herself in a little wooden tub she keeps under her bed.”

Alexandra shook with laughter. “Poor old Mrs. Lee! They won’t lether wear nightcaps, either. Never mind; when she comes to visit me, she can doall the old things in the old way, and have as much beer as she wants.We’ll start an asylum for old-time people, Ivar.”

Ivar folded his big handkerchief carefully and thrust it back into his blouse.“This is always the way, mistress. I come to you sorrowing, and you sendme away with a light heart. And will you be so good as to tell the Irishmanthat he is not to work the brown gelding until the sore on its shoulder ishealed?”

“That I will. Now go and put Emil’s mare to the cart. I am going todrive up to the north quarter to meet the man from town who is to buy myalfalfa hay.”

III

Alexandra was to hear more of Ivar’s case, however. On Sunday her marriedbrothers came to dinner. She had asked them for that day because Emil, whohated family parties, would be absent, dancing at Amédée Chevalier’swedding, up in the French country. The table was set for company in thedining-room, where highly varnished wood and colored glass and useless piecesof china were conspicuous enough to satisfy the standards of the newprosperity. Alexandra had put herself into the hands of the Hanover furnituredealer, and he had conscientiously done his best to make her dining-room looklike his display window. She said frankly that she knew nothing about suchthings, and she was willing to be governed by the general conviction that themore useless and utterly unusable objects were, the greater their virtue asornament. That seemed reasonable enough. Since she liked plain things herself,it was all the more necessary to have jars and punchbowls and candlesticks inthe company rooms for people who did appreciate them. Her guests liked to seeabout them these reassuring emblems of prosperity.

The family party was complete except for Emil, and Oscar’s wife who, inthe country phrase, “was not going anywhere just now.” Oscar sat atthe foot of the table and his four tow-headed little boys, aged from twelve tofive, were ranged at one side. Neither Oscar nor Lou has changed much; theyhave simply, as Alexandra said of them long ago, grown to be more and more likethemselves. Lou now looks the older of the two; his face is thin and shrewd andwrinkled about the eyes, while Oscar’s is thick and dull. For all hisdullness, however, Oscar makes more money than his brother, which adds toLou’s sharpness and uneasiness and tempts him to make a show. The troublewith Lou is that he is tricky, and his neighbors have found out that, as Ivarsays, he has not a fox’s face for nothing. Politics being the naturalfield for such talents, he neglects his farm to attend conventions and to runfor county offices.

Lou’s wife, formerly Annie Lee, has grown to look curiously like herhusband. Her face has become longer, sharper, more aggressive. She wears heryellow hair in a high pompadour, and is bedecked with rings and chains and“beauty pins.” Her tight, high-heeled shoes give her an awkwardwalk, and she is always more or less preoccupied with her clothes. As she satat the table, she kept telling her youngest daughter to “be careful now,and not drop anything on mother.”

The conversation at the table was all in English. Oscar’s wife, from themalaria district of Missouri, was ashamed of marrying a foreigner, and his boysdo not understand a word of Swedish. Annie and Lou sometimes speak Swedish athome, but Annie is almost as much afraid of being “caught” at it asever her mother was of being caught barefoot. Oscar still has a thick accent,but Lou speaks like anybody from Iowa.

“When I was in Hastings to attend the convention,” he was saying,“I saw the superintendent of the asylum, and I was telling him aboutIvar’s symptoms. He says Ivar’s case is one of the most dangerouskind, and it’s a wonder he hasn’t done something violent beforethis.”

Alexandra laughed good-humoredly. “Oh, nonsense, Lou! The doctors wouldhave us all crazy if they could. Ivar’s queer, certainly, but he has moresense than half the hands I hire.”

Lou flew at his fried chicken. “Oh, I guess the doctor knows hisbusiness, Alexandra. He was very much surprised when I told him how you’dput up with Ivar. He says he’s likely to set fire to the barn any night,or to take after you and the girls with an axe.”

Little Signa, who was waiting on the table, giggled and fled to the kitchen.Alexandra’s eyes twinkled. “That was too much for Signa, Lou. Weall know that Ivar’s perfectly harmless. The girls would as soon expectme to chase them with an axe.”

Lou flushed and signaled to his wife. “All the same, the neighbors willbe having a say about it before long. He may burn anybody’s barn.It’s only necessary for one property-owner in the township to makecomplaint, and he’ll be taken up by force. You’d better send himyourself and not have any hard feelings.”

Alexandra helped one of her little nephews to gravy. “Well, Lou, if anyof the neighbors try that, I’ll have myself appointed Ivar’sguardian and take the case to court, that’s all. I am perfectly satisfiedwith him.”

“Pass the preserves, Lou,” said Annie in a warning tone. She hadreasons for not wishing her husband to cross Alexandra too openly. “Butdon’t you sort of hate to have people see him around here,Alexandra?” she went on with persuasive smoothness. “He IS adisgraceful object, and you’re fixed up so nice now. It sort of makespeople distant with you, when they never know when they’ll hear himscratching about. My girls are afraid as death of him, aren’t you, Milly,dear?”

Milly was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompadoured, with a creamy complexion,square white teeth, and a short upper lip. She looked like her grandmotherBergson, and had her comfortable and comfort-loving nature. She grinned at heraunt, with whom she was a great deal more at ease than she was with her mother.Alexandra winked a reply.

“Milly needn’t be afraid of Ivar. She’s an especial favoriteof his. In my opinion Ivar has just as much right to his own way of dressingand thinking as we have. But I’ll see that he doesn’t bother otherpeople. I’ll keep him at home, so don’t trouble any more about him,Lou. I’ve been wanting to ask you about your new bathtub. How does itwork?”

Annie came to the fore to give Lou time to recover himself. “Oh, it workssomething grand! I can’t keep him out of it. He washes himself all overthree times a week now, and uses all the hot water. I think it’sweakening to stay in as long as he does. You ought to have one,Alexandra.”

“I’m thinking of it. I might have one put in the barn for Ivar, ifit will ease people’s minds. But before I get a bathtub, I’m goingto get a piano for Milly.”

Oscar, at the end of the table, looked up from his plate. “What doesMilly want of a pianny? What’s the matter with her organ? She can makesome use of that, and play in church.”

Annie looked flustered. She had begged Alexandra not to say anything about thisplan before Oscar, who was apt to be jealous of what his sister did forLou’s children. Alexandra did not get on with Oscar’s wife at all.“Milly can play in church just the same, and she’ll still play onthe organ. But practising on it so much spoils her touch. Her teacher saysso,” Annie brought out with spirit.

Oscar rolled his eyes. “Well, Milly must have got on pretty good ifshe’s got past the organ. I know plenty of grown folks thatain’t,” he said bluntly.

Annie threw up her chin. “She has got on good, and she’s going toplay for her commencement when she graduates in town next year.”

“Yes,” said Alexandra firmly, “I think Milly deserves apiano. All the girls around here have been taking lessons for years, but Millyis the only one of them who can ever play anything when you ask her. I’lltell you when I first thought I would like to give you a piano, Milly, and thatwas when you learned that book of old Swedish songs that your grandfather usedto sing. He had a sweet tenor voice, and when he was a young man he loved tosing. I can remember hearing him singing with the sailors down in the shipyard,when I was no bigger than Stella here,” pointing to Annie’s youngerdaughter.

Milly and Stella both looked through the door into the sitting-room, where acrayon portrait of John Bergson hung on the wall. Alexandra had had it madefrom a little photograph, taken for his friends just before he left Sweden; aslender man of thirty-five, with soft hair curling about his high forehead, adrooping mustache, and wondering, sad eyes that looked forward into thedistance, as if they already beheld the New World.

After dinner Lou and Oscar went to the orchard to pick cherries—they hadneither of them had the patience to grow an orchard of their own—andAnnie went down to gossip with Alexandra’s kitchen girls while theywashed the dishes. She could always find out more about Alexandra’sdomestic economy from the prattling maids than from Alexandra herself, and whatshe discovered she used to her own advantage with Lou. On the Divide,farmers’ daughters no longer went out into service, so Alexandra got hergirls from Sweden, by paying their fare over. They stayed with her until theymarried, and were replaced by sisters or cousins from the old country.

Alexandra took her three nieces into the flower garden. She was fond of thelittle girls, especially of Milly, who came to spend a week with her aunt nowand then, and read aloud to her from the old books about the house, or listenedto stories about the early days on the Divide. While they were walking amongthe flower beds, a buggy drove up the hill and stopped in front of the gate. Aman got out and stood talking to the driver. The little girls were delighted atthe advent of a stranger, some one from very far away, they knew by hisclothes, his gloves, and the sharp, pointed cut of his dark beard. The girlsfell behind their aunt and peeped out at him from among the castor beans. Thestranger came up to the gate and stood holding his hat in his hand, smiling,while Alexandra advanced slowly to meet him. As she approached he spoke in alow, pleasant voice.

“Don’t you know me, Alexandra? I would have known you,anywhere.”

Alexandra shaded her eyes with her hand. Suddenly she took a quick stepforward. “Can it be!” she exclaimed with feeling; “can it bethat it is Carl Linstrum? Why, Carl, it is!” She threw out both her handsand caught his across the gate. “Sadie, Milly, run tell your father andUncle Oscar that our old friend Carl Linstrum is here. Be quick! Why, Carl, howdid it happen? I can’t believe this!” Alexandra shook the tearsfrom her eyes and laughed.

The stranger nodded to his driver, dropped his suitcase inside the fence, andopened the gate. “Then you are glad to see me, and you can put me upovernight? I couldn’t go through this country without stopping off tohave a look at you. How little you have changed! Do you know, I was sure itwould be like that. You simply couldn’t be different. How fine youare!” He stepped back and looked at her admiringly.

Alexandra blushed and laughed again. “But you yourself, Carl—withthat beard—how could I have known you? You went away a little boy.”She reached for his suitcase and when he intercepted her she threw up herhands. “You see, I give myself away. I have only women come to visit me,and I do not know how to behave. Where is your trunk?”

“It’s in Hanover. I can stay only a few days. I am on my way to thecoast.”

They started up the path. “A few days? After all these years!”Alexandra shook her finger at him. “See this, you have walked into atrap. You do not get away so easy.” She put her hand affectionately onhis shoulder. “You owe me a visit for the sake of old times. Why must yougo to the coast at all?”

“Oh, I must! I am a fortune hunter. From Seattle I go on toAlaska.”

“Alaska?” She looked at him in astonishment. “Are you goingto paint the Indians?”

“Paint?” the young man frowned. “Oh! I’m not a painter,Alexandra. I’m an engraver. I have nothing to do with painting.”

“But on my parlor wall I have the paintings—”

He interrupted nervously. “Oh, water-color sketches—done foramusem*nt. I sent them to remind you of me, not because they were good. What awonderful place you have made of this, Alexandra.” He turned and lookedback at the wide, map-like prospect of field and hedge and pasture. “Iwould never have believed it could be done. I’m disappointed in my owneye, in my imagination.”

At this moment Lou and Oscar came up the hill from the orchard. They did notquicken their pace when they saw Carl; indeed, they did not openly look in hisdirection. They advanced distrustfully, and as if they wished the distance werelonger.

Alexandra beckoned to them. “They think I am trying to fool them. Come,boys, it’s Carl Linstrum, our old Carl!”

Lou gave the visitor a quick, sidelong glance and thrust out his hand.“Glad to see you.”

Oscar followed with “How d’ do.” Carl could not tell whethertheir offishness came from unfriendliness or from embarrassment. He andAlexandra led the way to the porch.

“Carl,” Alexandra explained, “is on his way to Seattle. He isgoing to Alaska.”

Oscar studied the visitor’s yellow shoes. “Got businessthere?” he asked.

Carl laughed. “Yes, very pressing business. I’m going there to getrich. Engraving’s a very interesting profession, but a man never makesany money at it. So I’m going to try the goldfields.”

Alexandra felt that this was a tactful speech, and Lou looked up with someinterest. “Ever done anything in that line before?”

“No, but I’m going to join a friend of mine who went out from NewYork and has done well. He has offered to break me in.”

“Turrible cold winters, there, I hear,” remarked Oscar. “Ithought people went up there in the spring.”

“They do. But my friend is going to spend the winter in Seattle and I amto stay with him there and learn something about prospecting before we startnorth next year.”

Lou looked skeptical. “Let’s see, how long have you been away fromhere?”

“Sixteen years. You ought to remember that, Lou, for you were marriedjust after we went away.”

“Going to stay with us some time?” Oscar asked.

“A few days, if Alexandra can keep me.”

“I expect you’ll be wanting to see your old place,” Louobserved more cordially. “You won’t hardly know it. Butthere’s a few chunks of your old sod house left. Alexandra wouldn’tnever let Frank Shabata plough over it.”

Annie Lee, who, ever since the visitor was announced, had been touching up herhair and settling her lace and wishing she had worn another dress, now emergedwith her three daughters and introduced them. She was greatly impressed byCarl’s urban appearance, and in her excitement talked very loud and threwher head about. “And you ain’t married yet? At your age, now! Thinkof that! You’ll have to wait for Milly. Yes, we’ve got a boy, too.The youngest. He’s at home with his grandma. You must come over to seemother and hear Milly play. She’s the musician of the family. She doespyrography, too. That’s burnt wood, you know. You wouldn’t believewhat she can do with her poker. Yes, she goes to school in town, and she is theyoungest in her class by two years.”

Milly looked uncomfortable and Carl took her hand again. He liked her creamyskin and happy, innocent eyes, and he could see that her mother’s way oftalking distressed her. “I’m sure she’s a clever littlegirl,” he murmured, looking at her thoughtfully. “Let mesee—Ah, it’s your mother that she looks like, Alexandra. Mrs.Bergson must have looked just like this when she was a little girl. Does Millyrun about over the country as you and Alexandra used to, Annie?”

Milly’s mother protested. “Oh, my, no! Things has changed since wewas girls. Milly has it very different. We are going to rent the place and moveinto town as soon as the girls are old enough to go out into company. A goodmany are doing that here now. Lou is going into business.”

Lou grinned. “That’s what she says. You better go get your thingson. Ivar’s hitching up,” he added, turning to Annie.

Young farmers seldom address their wives by name. It is always“you,” or “she.”

Having got his wife out of the way, Lou sat down on the step and began towhittle. “Well, what do folks in New York think of William JenningsBryan?” Lou began to bluster, as he always did when he talked politics.“We gave Wall Street a scare in ninety-six, all right, and we’refixing another to hand them. Silver wasn’t the only issue,” henodded mysteriously. “There’s a good many things got to be changed.The West is going to make itself heard.”

Carl laughed. “But, surely, it did do that, if nothing else.”

Lou’s thin face reddened up to the roots of his bristly hair. “Oh,we’ve only begun. We’re waking up to a sense of ourresponsibilities, out here, and we ain’t afraid, neither. You fellowsback there must be a tame lot. If you had any nerve you’d get togetherand march down to Wall Street and blow it up. Dynamite it, I mean,” witha threatening nod.

He was so much in earnest that Carl scarcely knew how to answer him.“That would be a waste of powder. The same business would go on inanother street. The street doesn’t matter. But what have you fellows outhere got to kick about? You have the only safe place there is. Morgan himselfcouldn’t touch you. One only has to drive through this country to seethat you’re all as rich as barons.”

“We have a good deal more to say than we had when we were poor,”said Lou threateningly. “We’re getting on to a whole lot ofthings.”

As Ivar drove a double carriage up to the gate, Annie came out in a hat thatlooked like the model of a battleship. Carl rose and took her down to thecarriage, while Lou lingered for a word with his sister.

“What do you suppose he’s come for?” he asked, jerking hishead toward the gate.

“Why, to pay us a visit. I’ve been begging him to for years.”

Oscar looked at Alexandra. “He didn’t let you know he wascoming?”

“No. Why should he? I told him to come at any time.”

Lou shrugged his shoulders. “He doesn’t seem to have done much forhimself. Wandering around this way!”

Oscar spoke solemnly, as from the depths of a cavern. “He never was muchaccount.”

Alexandra left them and hurried down to the gate where Annie was rattling on toCarl about her new dining-room furniture. “You must bring Mr. Linstrumover real soon, only be sure to telephone me first,” she called back, asCarl helped her into the carriage. Old Ivar, his white head bare, stood holdingthe horses. Lou came down the path and climbed into the front seat, took up thereins, and drove off without saying anything further to any one. Oscar pickedup his youngest boy and trudged off down the road, the other three trottingafter him. Carl, holding the gate open for Alexandra, began to laugh. “Upand coming on the Divide, eh, Alexandra?” he cried gayly.

IV

Carl had changed, Alexandra felt, much less than one might have expected. Hehad not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still somethinghomely and wayward and definitely personal about him. Even his clothes, hisNorfolk coat and his very high collars, were a little unconventional. He seemedto shrink into himself as he used to do; to hold himself away from things, asif he were afraid of being hurt. In short, he was more self-conscious than aman of thirty-five is expected to be. He looked older than his years and notvery strong. His black hair, which still hung in a triangle over his paleforehead, was thin at the crown, and there were fine, relentless lines abouthis eyes. His back, with its high, sharp shoulders, looked like the back of anover-worked German professor off on his holiday. His face was intelligent,sensitive, unhappy.

That evening after supper, Carl and Alexandra were sitting by the clump ofcastor beans in the middle of the flower garden. The gravel paths glittered inthe moonlight, and below them the fields lay white and still.

“Do you know, Alexandra,” he was saying, “I’ve beenthinking how strangely things work out. I’ve been away engraving othermen’s pictures, and you’ve stayed at home and made your own.”He pointed with his cigar toward the sleeping landscape. “How in theworld have you done it? How have your neighbors done it?”

“We hadn’t any of us much to do with it, Carl. The land did it. Ithad its little joke. It pretended to be poor because nobody knew how to work itright; and then, all at once, it worked itself. It woke up out of its sleep andstretched itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we suddenly found we wererich, just from sitting still. As for me, you remember when I began to buyland. For years after that I was always squeezing and borrowing until I wasashamed to show my face in the banks. And then, all at once, men began to cometo me offering to lend me money—and I didn’t need it! Then I wentahead and built this house. I really built it for Emil. I want you to see Emil,Carl. He is so different from the rest of us!”

“How different?”

“Oh, you’ll see! I’m sure it was to have sons like Emil, andto give them a chance, that father left the old country. It’s curious,too; on the outside Emil is just like an American boy,—he graduated fromthe State University in June, you know,—but underneath he is more Swedishthan any of us. Sometimes he is so like father that he frightens me; he is soviolent in his feelings like that.”

“Is he going to farm here with you?”

“He shall do whatever he wants to,” Alexandra declared warmly.“He is going to have a chance, a whole chance; that’s whatI’ve worked for. Sometimes he talks about studying law, and sometimes,just lately, he’s been talking about going out into the sand hills andtaking up more land. He has his sad times, like father. But I hope hewon’t do that. We have land enough, at last!” Alexandra laughed.

“How about Lou and Oscar? They’ve done well, haven’tthey?”

“Yes, very well; but they are different, and now that they have farms oftheir own I do not see so much of them. We divided the land equally when Loumarried. They have their own way of doing things, and they do not altogetherlike my way, I am afraid. Perhaps they think me too independent. But I have hadto think for myself a good many years and am not likely to change. On thewhole, though, we take as much comfort in each other as most brothers andsisters do. And I am very fond of Lou’s oldest daughter.”

“I think I liked the old Lou and Oscar better, and they probably feel thesame about me. I even, if you can keep a secret,”—Carl leanedforward and touched her arm, smiling,—“I even think I liked the oldcountry better. This is all very splendid in its way, but there was somethingabout this country when it was a wild old beast that has haunted me all theseyears. Now, when I come back to all this milk and honey, I feel like the oldGerman song, ‘Wo bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtestLand?’—Do you ever feel like that, I wonder?”

“Yes, sometimes, when I think about father and mother and those who aregone; so many of our old neighbors.” Alexandra paused and looked upthoughtfully at the stars. “We can remember the graveyard when it waswild prairie, Carl, and now—”

“And now the old story has begun to write itself over there,” saidCarl softly. “Isn’t it queer: there are only two or three humanstories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had neverhappened before; like the larks in this country, that have been singing thesame five notes over for thousands of years.”

“Oh, yes! The young people, they live so hard. And yet I sometimes envythem. There is my little neighbor, now; the people who bought your old place. Iwouldn’t have sold it to any one else, but I was always fond of thatgirl. You must remember her, little Marie Tovesky, from Omaha, who used tovisit here? When she was eighteen she ran away from the convent school and gotmarried, crazy child! She came out here a bride, with her father and husband.He had nothing, and the old man was willing to buy them a place and set themup. Your farm took her fancy, and I was glad to have her so near me. I’venever been sorry, either. I even try to get along with Frank on heraccount.”

“Is Frank her husband?”

“Yes. He’s one of these wild fellows. Most Bohemians aregood-natured, but Frank thinks we don’t appreciate him here, I guess.He’s jealous about everything, his farm and his horses and his prettywife. Everybody likes her, just the same as when she was little. Sometimes I goup to the Catholic church with Emil, and it’s funny to see Marie standingthere laughing and shaking hands with people, looking so excited and gay, withFrank sulking behind her as if he could eat everybody alive. Frank’s nota bad neighbor, but to get on with him you’ve got to make a fuss over himand act as if you thought he was a very important person all the time, anddifferent from other people. I find it hard to keep that up from oneyear’s end to another.”

“I shouldn’t think you’d be very successful at that kind ofthing, Alexandra.” Carl seemed to find the idea amusing.

“Well,” said Alexandra firmly, “I do the best I can, onMarie’s account. She has it hard enough, anyway. She’s too youngand pretty for this sort of life. We’re all ever so much older andslower. But she’s the kind that won’t be downed easily.She’ll work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all night, anddrive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning. I could stay by a job, but Inever had the go in me that she has, when I was going my best. I’ll haveto take you over to see her to-morrow.”

Carl dropped the end of his cigar softly among the castor beans and sighed.“Yes, I suppose I must see the old place. I’m cowardly about thingsthat remind me of myself. It took courage to come at all, Alexandra. Iwouldn’t have, if I hadn’t wanted to see you very, verymuch.”

Alexandra looked at him with her calm, deliberate eyes. “Why do you dreadthings like that, Carl?” she asked earnestly. “Why are youdissatisfied with yourself?”

Her visitor winced. “How direct you are, Alexandra! Just like you used tobe. Do I give myself away so quickly? Well, you see, for one thing,there’s nothing to look forward to in my profession. Wood-engraving isthe only thing I care about, and that had gone out before I began.Everything’s cheap metal work nowadays, touching up miserablephotographs, forcing up poor drawings, and spoiling good ones. I’mabsolutely sick of it all.” Carl frowned. “Alexandra, all the wayout from New York I’ve been planning how I could deceive you and make youthink me a very enviable fellow, and here I am telling you the truth the firstnight. I waste a lot of time pretending to people, and the joke of it is, Idon’t think I ever deceive any one. There are too many of my kind; peopleknow us on sight.”

Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow with a puzzled,thoughtful gesture. “You see,” he went on calmly, “measuredby your standards here, I’m a failure. I couldn’t buy even one ofyour cornfields. I’ve enjoyed a great many things, but I’ve gotnothing to show for it all.”

“But you show for it yourself, Carl. I’d rather have had yourfreedom than my land.”

Carl shook his head mournfully. “Freedom so often means that oneisn’t needed anywhere. Here you are an individual, you have a backgroundof your own, you would be missed. But off there in the cities there arethousands of rolling stones like me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we knownobody, we own nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to buryhim. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our mourners, and we leavenothing behind us but a frock-coat and a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter,or whatever tool we got our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to payour rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square feet ofspace near the heart of things. We have no house, no place, no people of ourown. We live in the streets, in the parks, in the theatres. We sit inrestaurants and concert halls and look about at the hundreds of our own kindand shudder.”

Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the moon made on thesurface of the pond down in the pasture. He knew that she understood what hemeant. At last she said slowly, “And yet I would rather have Emil grow uplike that than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we paydifferently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don’t move lightly andeasily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the world were no wider than mycornfields, if there were not something beside this, I wouldn’t feel thatit was much worth while to work. No, I would rather have Emil like you thanlike them. I felt that as soon as you came.”

“I wonder why you feel like that?” Carl mused.

“I don’t know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of oneof my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields, and a few years agoshe got despondent and said life was just the same thing over and over, and shedidn’t see the use of it. After she had tried to kill herself once ortwice, her folks got worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations.Ever since she’s come back she’s been perfectly cheerful, and shesays she’s contented to live and work in a world that’s so big andinteresting. She said that anything as big as the bridges over the Platte andthe Missouri reconciled her. And it’s what goes on in the world thatreconciles me.”

V

Alexandra did not find time to go to her neighbor’s the next day, nor thenext. It was a busy season on the farm, with the corn-plowing going on, andeven Emil was in the field with a team and cultivator. Carl went about over thefarms with Alexandra in the morning, and in the afternoon and evening theyfound a great deal to talk about. Emil, for all his track practice, did notstand up under farmwork very well, and by night he was too tired to talk oreven to practise on his cornet.

On Wednesday morning Carl got up before it was light, and stole downstairs andout of the kitchen door just as old Ivar was making his morning ablutions atthe pump. Carl nodded to him and hurried up the draw, past the garden, and intothe pasture where the milking cows used to be kept.

The dawn in the east looked like the light from some great fire that wasburning under the edge of the world. The color was reflected in the globules ofdew that sheathed the short gray pasture grass. Carl walked rapidly until hecame to the crest of the second hill, where the Bergson pasture joined the onethat had belonged to his father. There he sat down and waited for the sun torise. It was just there that he and Alexandra used to do their milkingtogether, he on his side of the fence, she on hers. He could remember exactlyhow she looked when she came over the close-cropped grass, her skirts pinnedup, her head bare, a bright tin pail in either hand, and the milky light of theearly morning all about her. Even as a boy he used to feel, when he saw hercoming with her free step, her upright head and calm shoulders, that she lookedas if she had walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when hehad happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the water, he hadoften remembered the young Swedish girl and her milking pails.

Carl sat musing until the sun leaped above the prairie, and in the grass abouthim all the small creatures of day began to tune their tiny instruments. Birdsand insects without number began to chirp, to twitter, to snap and whistle, tomake all manner of fresh shrill noises. The pasture was flooded with light;every clump of ironweed and snow-on-the-mountain threw a long shadow, and thegolden light seemed to be rippling through the curly grass like the tide racingin.

He crossed the fence into the pasture that was now the Shabatas’ andcontinued his walk toward the pond. He had not gone far, however, when hediscovered that he was not the only person abroad. In the draw below, his gunin his hands, was Emil, advancing cautiously, with a young woman beside him.They were moving softly, keeping close together, and Carl knew that theyexpected to find ducks on the pond. At the moment when they came in sight ofthe bright spot of water, he heard a whirr of wings and the ducks shot up intothe air. There was a sharp crack from the gun, and five of the birds fell tothe ground. Emil and his companion laughed delightedly, and Emil ran to pickthem up. When he came back, dangling the ducks by their feet, Marie held herapron and he dropped them into it. As she stood looking down at them, her facechanged. She took up one of the birds, a rumpled ball of feathers with theblood dripping slowly from its mouth, and looked at the live color that stillburned on its plumage.

As she let it fall, she cried in distress, “Oh, Emil, why did you?”

“I like that!” the boy exclaimed indignantly. “Why, Marie,you asked me to come yourself.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” she said tearfully, “but I didn’tthink. I hate to see them when they are first shot. They were having such agood time, and we’ve spoiled it all for them.”

Emil gave a rather sore laugh. “I should say we had! I’m not goinghunting with you any more. You’re as bad as Ivar. Here, let me takethem.” He snatched the ducks out of her apron.

“Don’t be cross, Emil. Only—Ivar’s right about wildthings. They’re too happy to kill. You can tell just how they felt whenthey flew up. They were scared, but they didn’t really think anythingcould hurt them. No, we won’t do that any more.”

“All right,” Emil assented. “I’m sorry I made you feelbad.” As he looked down into her tearful eyes, there was a curious, sharpyoung bitterness in his own.

Carl watched them as they moved slowly down the draw. They had not seen him atall. He had not overheard much of their dialogue, but he felt the import of it.It made him, somehow, unreasonably mournful to find two young things abroad inthe pasture in the early morning. He decided that he needed his breakfast.

VI

At dinner that day Alexandra said she thought they must really manage to goover to the Shabatas’ that afternoon. “It’s not often I letthree days go by without seeing Marie. She will think I have forsaken her, nowthat my old friend has come back.”

After the men had gone back to work, Alexandra put on a white dress and hersun-hat, and she and Carl set forth across the fields. “You see we havekept up the old path, Carl. It has been so nice for me to feel that there was afriend at the other end of it again.”

Carl smiled a little ruefully. “All the same, I hope it hasn’t beenquite the same.”

Alexandra looked at him with surprise. “Why, no, of course not. Not thesame. She could not very well take your place, if that’s what you mean.I’m friendly with all my neighbors, I hope. But Marie is really acompanion, some one I can talk to quite frankly. You wouldn’t want me tobe more lonely than I have been, would you?”

Carl laughed and pushed back the triangular lock of hair with the edge of hishat. “Of course I don’t. I ought to be thankful that this pathhasn’t been worn by—well, by friends with more pressing errandsthan your little Bohemian is likely to have.” He paused to give Alexandrahis hand as she stepped over the stile. “Are you the least bitdisappointed in our coming together again?” he asked abruptly. “Isit the way you hoped it would be?”

Alexandra smiled at this. “Only better. When I’ve thought aboutyour coming, I’ve sometimes been a little afraid of it. You have livedwhere things move so fast, and everything is slow here; the people slowest ofall. Our lives are like the years, all made up of weather and crops and cows.How you hated cows!” She shook her head and laughed to herself.

“I didn’t when we milked together. I walked up to the pasturecorners this morning. I wonder whether I shall ever be able to tell you allthat I was thinking about up there. It’s a strange thing, Alexandra; Ifind it easy to be frank with you about everything under the sunexcept—yourself!”

“You are afraid of hurting my feelings, perhaps.” Alexandra lookedat him thoughtfully.

“No, I’m afraid of giving you a shock. You’ve seen yourselffor so long in the dull minds of the people about you, that if I were to tellyou how you seem to me, it would startle you. But you must see that youastonish me. You must feel when people admire you.”

Alexandra blushed and laughed with some confusion. “I felt that you werepleased with me, if you mean that.”

“And you’ve felt when other people were pleased with you?” heinsisted.

“Well, sometimes. The men in town, at the banks and the county offices,seem glad to see me. I think, myself, it is more pleasant to do business withpeople who are clean and healthy-looking,” she admitted blandly.

Carl gave a little chuckle as he opened the Shabatas’ gate for her.“Oh, do you?” he asked dryly.

There was no sign of life about the Shabatas’ house except a big yellowcat, sunning itself on the kitchen doorstep.

Alexandra took the path that led to the orchard. “She often sits thereand sews. I didn’t telephone her we were coming, because I didn’twant her to go to work and bake cake and freeze ice-cream. She’ll alwaysmake a party if you give her the least excuse. Do you recognize the appletrees, Carl?”

Linstrum looked about him. “I wish I had a dollar for every bucket ofwater I’ve carried for those trees. Poor father, he was an easy man, buthe was perfectly merciless when it came to watering the orchard.”

“That’s one thing I like about Germans; they make an orchard growif they can’t make anything else. I’m so glad these trees belong tosome one who takes comfort in them. When I rented this place, the tenants neverkept the orchard up, and Emil and I used to come over and take care of itourselves. It needs mowing now. There she is, down in the corner.Maria-a-a!” she called.

A recumbent figure started up from the grass and came running toward themthrough the flickering screen of light and shade.

“Look at her! Isn’t she like a little brown rabbit?”Alexandra laughed.

Maria ran up panting and threw her arms about Alexandra. “Oh, I had begunto think you were not coming at all, maybe. I knew you were so busy. Yes, Emiltold me about Mr. Linstrum being here. Won’t you come up to thehouse?”

“Why not sit down there in your corner? Carl wants to see the orchard. Hekept all these trees alive for years, watering them with his own back.”

Marie turned to Carl. “Then I’m thankful to you, Mr. Linstrum.We’d never have bought the place if it hadn’t been for thisorchard, and then I wouldn’t have had Alexandra, either.” She gaveAlexandra’s arm a little squeeze as she walked beside her. “Hownice your dress smells, Alexandra; you put rosemary leaves in your chest, likeI told you.”

She led them to the northwest corner of the orchard, sheltered on one side by athick mulberry hedge and bordered on the other by a wheatfield, just beginningto yellow. In this corner the ground dipped a little, and the blue-grass, whichthe weeds had driven out in the upper part of the orchard, grew thick andluxuriant. Wild roses were flaming in the tufts of bunchgrass along the fence.Under a white mulberry tree there was an old wagon-seat. Beside it lay a bookand a workbasket.

“You must have the seat, Alexandra. The grass would stain yourdress,” the hostess insisted. She dropped down on the ground atAlexandra’s side and tucked her feet under her. Carl sat at a littledistance from the two women, his back to the wheatfield, and watched them.Alexandra took off her shade-hat and threw it on the ground. Marie picked it upand played with the white ribbons, twisting them about her brown fingers as shetalked. They made a pretty picture in the strong sunlight, the leafy patternsurrounding them like a net; the Swedish woman so white and gold, kindly andamused, but armored in calm, and the alert brown one, her full lips parted,points of yellow light dancing in her eyes as she laughed and chattered. Carlhad never forgotten little Marie Tovesky’s eyes, and he was glad to havean opportunity to study them. The brown iris, he found, was curiously slashedwith yellow, the color of sunflower honey, or of old amber. In each eye one ofthese streaks must have been larger than the others, for the effect was that oftwo dancing points of light, two little yellow bubbles, such as rise in a glassof champagne. Sometimes they seemed like the sparks from a forge. She seemed soeasily excited, to kindle with a fierce little flame if one but breathed uponher. “What a waste,” Carl reflected. “She ought to be doingall that for a sweetheart. How awkwardly things come about!”

It was not very long before Marie sprang up out of the grass again. “Waita moment. I want to show you something.” She ran away and disappearedbehind the low-growing apple trees.

“What a charming creature,” Carl murmured. “I don’twonder that her husband is jealous. But can’t she walk? does she alwaysrun?”

Alexandra nodded. “Always. I don’t see many people, but Idon’t believe there are many like her, anywhere.”

Marie came back with a branch she had broken from an apricot tree, laden withpale yellow, pink-cheeked fruit. She dropped it beside Carl. “Did youplant those, too? They are such beautiful little trees.”

Carl fingered the blue-green leaves, porous like blotting-paper and shaped likebirch leaves, hung on waxen red stems. “Yes, I think I did. Are these thecircus trees, Alexandra?”

“Shall I tell her about them?” Alexandra asked. “Sit downlike a good girl, Marie, and don’t ruin my poor hat, and I’ll tellyou a story. A long time ago, when Carl and I were, say, sixteen and twelve, acircus came to Hanover and we went to town in our wagon, with Lou and Oscar, tosee the parade. We hadn’t money enough to go to the circus. We followedthe parade out to the circus grounds and hung around until the show began andthe crowd went inside the tent. Then Lou was afraid we looked foolish standingoutside in the pasture, so we went back to Hanover feeling very sad. There wasa man in the streets selling apricots, and we had never seen any before. He haddriven down from somewhere up in the French country, and he was selling themtwenty-five cents a peck. We had a little money our fathers had given us forcandy, and I bought two pecks and Carl bought one. They cheered us a good deal,and we saved all the seeds and planted them. Up to the time Carl went away,they hadn’t borne at all.”

“And now he’s come back to eat them,” cried Marie, nodding atCarl. “That IS a good story. I can remember you a little, Mr. Linstrum. Iused to see you in Hanover sometimes, when Uncle Joe took me to town. Iremember you because you were always buying pencils and tubes of paint at thedrug store. Once, when my uncle left me at the store, you drew a lot of littlebirds and flowers for me on a piece of wrapping-paper. I kept them for a longwhile. I thought you were very romantic because you could draw and had suchblack eyes.”

Carl smiled. “Yes, I remember that time. Your uncle bought you some kindof a mechanical toy, a Turkish lady sitting on an ottoman and smoking a hookah,wasn’t it? And she turned her head backwards and forwards.”

“Oh, yes! Wasn’t she splendid! I knew well enough I ought not totell Uncle Joe I wanted it, for he had just come back from the saloon and wasfeeling good. You remember how he laughed? She tickled him, too. But when wegot home, my aunt scolded him for buying toys when she needed so many things.We wound our lady up every night, and when she began to move her head my auntused to laugh as hard as any of us. It was a music-box, you know, and theTurkish lady played a tune while she smoked. That was how she made you feel sojolly. As I remember her, she was lovely, and had a gold crescent on herturban.”

Half an hour later, as they were leaving the house, Carl and Alexandra were metin the path by a strapping fellow in overalls and a blue shirt. He wasbreathing hard, as if he had been running, and was muttering to himself.

Marie ran forward, and, taking him by the arm, gave him a little push towardher guests. “Frank, this is Mr. Linstrum.”

Frank took off his broad straw hat and nodded to Alexandra. When he spoke toCarl, he showed a fine set of white teeth. He was burned a dull red down to hisneckband, and there was a heavy three-days’ stubble on his face. Even inhis agitation he was handsome, but he looked a rash and violent man.

Barely saluting the callers, he turned at once to his wife and began, in anoutraged tone, “I have to leave my team to drive the old womanHiller’s hogs out-a my wheat. I go to take dat old woman to de court ifshe ain’t careful, I tell you!”

His wife spoke soothingly. “But, Frank, she has only her lame boy to helpher. She does the best she can.”

Alexandra looked at the excited man and offered a suggestion. “Whydon’t you go over there some afternoon and hog-tight her fences?You’d save time for yourself in the end.”

Frank’s neck stiffened. “Not-a-much, I won’t. I keep my hogshome. Other peoples can do like me. See? If that Louis can mend shoes, he canmend fence.”

“Maybe,” said Alexandra placidly; “but I’ve found itsometimes pays to mend other people’s fences. Good-bye, Marie. Come tosee me soon.”

Alexandra walked firmly down the path and Carl followed her.

Frank went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his face to the wall,his clenched fist on his hip. Marie, having seen her guests off, came in andput her hand coaxingly on his shoulder.

“Poor Frank! You’ve run until you’ve made your head ache, nowhaven’t you? Let me make you some coffee.”

“What else am I to do?” he cried hotly in Bohemian. “Am I tolet any old woman’s hogs root up my wheat? Is that what I work myself todeath for?”

“Don’t worry about it, Frank. I’ll speak to Mrs. Hilleragain. But, really, she almost cried last time they got out, she was sosorry.”

Frank bounced over on his other side. “That’s it; you always sidewith them against me. They all know it. Anybody here feels free to borrow themower and break it, or turn their hogs in on me. They know you won’tcare!”

Marie hurried away to make his coffee. When she came back, he was fast asleep.She sat down and looked at him for a long while, very thoughtfully. When thekitchen clock struck six she went out to get supper, closing the door gentlybehind her. She was always sorry for Frank when he worked himself into one ofthese rages, and she was sorry to have him rough and quarrelsome with hisneighbors. She was perfectly aware that the neighbors had a good deal to put upwith, and that they bore with Frank for her sake.

VII

Marie’s father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligent Bohemianswho came West in the early seventies. He settled in Omaha and became a leaderand adviser among his people there. Marie was his youngest child, by a secondwife, and was the apple of his eye. She was barely sixteen, and was in thegraduating class of the Omaha High School, when Frank Shabata arrived from theold country and set all the Bohemian girls in a flutter. He was easily the buckof the beer-gardens, and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his silk hat andtucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and carrying a little wisp ofa yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with splendid teeth and close-croppedyellow curls, and he wore a slightly disdainful expression, proper for a youngman with high connections, whose mother had a big farm in the Elbe valley.There was often an interesting discontent in his blue eyes, and every Bohemiangirl he met imagined herself the cause of that unsatisfied expression. He had away of drawing out his cambric handkerchief slowly, by one corner, from hisbreast-pocket, that was melancholy and romantic in the extreme. He took alittle flight with each of the more eligible Bohemian girls, but it was when hewas with little Marie Tovesky that he drew his handkerchief out most slowly,and, after he had lit a fresh cigar, dropped the match most despairingly. Anyone could see, with half an eye, that his proud heart was bleeding forsomebody.

One Sunday, late in the summer after Marie’s graduation, she met Frank ata Bohemian picnic down the river and went rowing with him all the afternoon.When she got home that evening she went straight to her father’s room andtold him that she was engaged to Shabata. Old Tovesky was having a comfortablepipe before he went to bed. When he heard his daughter’s announcement, hefirst prudently corked his beer bottle and then leaped to his feet and had aturn of temper. He characterized Frank Shabata by a Bohemian expression whichis the equivalent of stuffed shirt.

“Why don’t he go to work like the rest of us did? His farm in theElbe valley, indeed! Ain’t he got plenty brothers and sisters? It’shis mother’s farm, and why don’t he stay at home and help her?Haven’t I seen his mother out in the morning at five o’clock withher ladle and her big bucket on wheels, putting liquid manure on the cabbages?Don’t I know the look of old Eva Shabata’s hands? Like an oldhorse’s hoofs they are—and this fellow wearing gloves and rings!Engaged, indeed! You aren’t fit to be out of school, and that’swhat’s the matter with you. I will send you off to the Sisters of theSacred Heart in St. Louis, and they will teach you some sense, Iguess!”

Accordingly, the very next week, Albert Tovesky took his daughter, pale andtearful, down the river to the convent. But the way to make Frank want anythingwas to tell him he couldn’t have it. He managed to have an interview withMarie before she went away, and whereas he had been only half in love with herbefore, he now persuaded himself that he would not stop at anything. Marie tookwith her to the convent, under the canvas lining of her trunk, the results of alaborious and satisfying morning on Frank’s part; no less than a dozenphotographs of himself, taken in a dozen different love-lorn attitudes. Therewas a little round photograph for her watch-case, photographs for her wall anddresser, and even long narrow ones to be used as bookmarks. More than once thehandsome gentleman was torn to pieces before the French class by an indignantnun.

Marie pined in the convent for a year, until her eighteenth birthday waspassed. Then she met Frank Shabata in the Union Station in St. Louis and ranaway with him. Old Tovesky forgave his daughter because there was nothing elseto do, and bought her a farm in the country that she had loved so well as achild. Since then her story had been a part of the history of the Divide. Sheand Frank had been living there for five years when Carl Linstrum came back topay his long deferred visit to Alexandra. Frank had, on the whole, done betterthan one might have expected. He had flung himself at the soil with savageenergy. Once a year he went to Hastings or to Omaha, on a spree. He stayed awayfor a week or two, and then came home and worked like a demon. He did work; ifhe felt sorry for himself, that was his own affair.

VIII

On the evening of the day of Alexandra’s call at the Shabatas’, aheavy rain set in. Frank sat up until a late hour reading the Sundaynewspapers. One of the Goulds was getting a divorce, and Frank took it as apersonal affront. In printing the story of the young man’s maritaltroubles, the knowing editor gave a sufficiently colored account of his career,stating the amount of his income and the manner in which he was supposed tospend it. Frank read English slowly, and the more he read about this divorcecase, the angrier he grew. At last he threw down the page with a snort. Heturned to his farm-hand who was reading the other half of the paper.

“By God! if I have that young feller in de hayfield once, I show himsometing. Listen here what he do wit his money.” And Frank began thecatalogue of the young man’s reputed extravagances.

Marie sighed. She thought it hard that the Goulds, for whom she had nothing butgood will, should make her so much trouble. She hated to see the Sundaynewspapers come into the house. Frank was always reading about the doings ofrich people and feeling outraged. He had an inexhaustible stock of storiesabout their crimes and follies, how they bribed the courts and shot down theirbutlers with impunity whenever they chose. Frank and Lou Bergson had verysimilar ideas, and they were two of the political agitators of the county.

The next morning broke clear and brilliant, but Frank said the ground was toowet to plough, so he took the cart and drove over to Sainte-Agnes to spend theday at Moses Marcel’s saloon. After he was gone, Marie went out to theback porch to begin her butter-making. A brisk wind had come up and was drivingpuffy white clouds across the sky. The orchard was sparkling and rippling inthe sun. Marie stood looking toward it wistfully, her hand on the lid of thechurn, when she heard a sharp ring in the air, the merry sound of the whetstoneon the scythe. That invitation decided her. She ran into the house, put on ashort skirt and a pair of her husband’s boots, caught up a tin pail andstarted for the orchard. Emil had already begun work and was mowing vigorously.When he saw her coming, he stopped and wiped his brow. His yellow canvasleggings and khaki trousers were splashed to the knees.

“Don’t let me disturb you, Emil. I’m going to pick cherries.Isn’t everything beautiful after the rain? Oh, but I’m glad to getthis place mowed! When I heard it raining in the night, I thought maybe youwould come and do it for me to-day. The wind wakened me. Didn’t it blowdreadfully? Just smell the wild roses! They are always so spicy after a rain.We never had so many of them in here before. I suppose it’s the wetseason. Will you have to cut them, too?”

“If I cut the grass, I will,” Emil said teasingly.“What’s the matter with you? What makes you so flighty?”

“Am I flighty? I suppose that’s the wet season, too, then.It’s exciting to see everything growing so fast,—and to get thegrass cut! Please leave the roses till last, if you must cut them. Oh, Idon’t mean all of them, I mean that low place down by my tree, wherethere are so many. Aren’t you splashed! Look at the spider-webs all overthe grass. Good-bye. I’ll call you if I see a snake.”

She tripped away and Emil stood looking after her. In a few moments he heardthe cherries dropping smartly into the pail, and he began to swing his scythewith that long, even stroke that few American boys ever learn. Marie pickedcherries and sang softly to herself, stripping one glittering branch afteranother, shivering when she caught a shower of raindrops on her neck and hair.And Emil mowed his way slowly down toward the cherry trees.

That summer the rains had been so many and opportune that it was almost morethan Shabata and his man could do to keep up with the corn; the orchard was aneglected wilderness. All sorts of weeds and herbs and flowers had grown upthere; splotches of wild larkspur, pale green-and-white spikes of hoarhound,plantations of wild cotton, tangles of foxtail and wild wheat. South of theapricot trees, cornering on the wheatfield, was Frank’s alfalfa, wheremyriads of white and yellow butterflies were always fluttering above the purpleblossoms. When Emil reached the lower corner by the hedge, Marie was sittingunder her white mulberry tree, the pailful of cherries beside her, looking offat the gentle, tireless swelling of the wheat.

“Emil,” she said suddenly—he was mowing quietly about underthe tree so as not to disturb her—“what religion did the Swedeshave away back, before they were Christians?”

Emil paused and straightened his back. “I don’t know. About likethe Germans’, wasn’t it?”

Marie went on as if she had not heard him. “The Bohemians, you know, weretree worshipers before the missionaries came. Father says the people in themountains still do queer things, sometimes,—they believe that trees bringgood or bad luck.”

Emil looked superior. “Do they? Well, which are the lucky trees?I’d like to know.”

“I don’t know all of them, but I know lindens are. The old peoplein the mountains plant lindens to purify the forest, and to do away with thespells that come from the old trees they say have lasted from heathen times.I’m a good Catholic, but I think I could get along with caring for trees,if I hadn’t anything else.”

“That’s a poor saying,” said Emil, stooping over to wipe hishands in the wet grass.

“Why is it? If I feel that way, I feel that way. I like trees becausethey seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. Ifeel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When Icome back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where Ileft off.”

Emil had nothing to say to this. He reached up among the branches and began topick the sweet, insipid fruit,—long ivory-colored berries, tipped withfaint pink, like white coral, that fall to the ground unheeded all summerthrough. He dropped a handful into her lap.

“Do you like Mr. Linstrum?” Marie asked suddenly.

“Yes. Don’t you?”

“Oh, ever so much; only he seems kind of staid and school-teachery. But,of course, he is older than Frank, even. I’m sure I don’t want tolive to be more than thirty, do you? Do you think Alexandra likes him verymuch?”

“I suppose so. They were old friends.”

“Oh, Emil, you know what I mean!” Marie tossed her headimpatiently. “Does she really care about him? When she used to tell meabout him, I always wondered whether she wasn’t a little in love withhim.”

“Who, Alexandra?” Emil laughed and thrust his hands into histrousers pockets. “Alexandra’s never been in love, youcrazy!” He laughed again. “She wouldn’t know how to go aboutit. The idea!”

Marie shrugged her shoulders. “Oh, you don’t know Alexandra as wellas you think you do! If you had any eyes, you would see that she is very fondof him. It would serve you all right if she walked off with Carl. I like himbecause he appreciates her more than you do.”

Emil frowned. “What are you talking about, Marie? Alexandra’s allright. She and I have always been good friends. What more do you want? I liketo talk to Carl about New York and what a fellow can do there.”

“Oh, Emil! Surely you are not thinking of going off there?”

“Why not? I must go somewhere, mustn’t I?” The young man tookup his scythe and leaned on it. “Would you rather I went off in the sandhills and lived like Ivar?”

Marie’s face fell under his brooding gaze. She looked down at his wetleggings. “I’m sure Alexandra hopes you will stay on here,”she murmured.

“Then Alexandra will be disappointed,” the young man said roughly.“What do I want to hang around here for? Alexandra can run the farm allright, without me. I don’t want to stand around and look on. I want to bedoing something on my own account.”

“That’s so,” Marie sighed. “There are so many, manythings you can do. Almost anything you choose.”

“And there are so many, many things I can’t do.” Emil echoedher tone sarcastically. “Sometimes I don’t want to do anything atall, and sometimes I want to pull the four corners of the Dividetogether,”—he threw out his arm and brought it back with ajerk,—“so, like a table-cloth. I get tired of seeing men and horsesgoing up and down, up and down.”

Marie looked up at his defiant figure and her face clouded. “I wish youweren’t so restless, and didn’t get so worked up overthings,” she said sadly.

“Thank you,” he returned shortly.

She sighed despondently. “Everything I say makes you cross, don’tit? And you never used to be cross to me.”

Emil took a step nearer and stood frowning down at her bent head. He stood inan attitude of self-defense, his feet well apart, his hands clenched and drawnup at his sides, so that the cords stood out on his bare arms. “Ican’t play with you like a little boy any more,” he said slowly.“That’s what you miss, Marie. You’ll have to get some otherlittle boy to play with.” He stopped and took a deep breath. Then he wenton in a low tone, so intense that it was almost threatening: “Sometimesyou seem to understand perfectly, and then sometimes you pretend youdon’t. You don’t help things any by pretending. It’s thenthat I want to pull the corners of the Divide together. If you WON’Tunderstand, you know, I could make you!”

Marie clasped her hands and started up from her seat. She had grown very paleand her eyes were shining with excitement and distress. “But, Emil, if Iunderstand, then all our good times are over, we can never do nice thingstogether any more. We shall have to behave like Mr. Linstrum. And, anyhow,there’s nothing to understand!” She struck the ground with herlittle foot fiercely. “That won’t last. It will go away, and thingswill be just as they used to. I wish you were a Catholic. The Church helpspeople, indeed it does. I pray for you, but that’s not the same as if youprayed yourself.”

She spoke rapidly and pleadingly, looked entreatingly into his face. Emil stooddefiant, gazing down at her.

“I can’t pray to have the things I want,” he said slowly,“and I won’t pray not to have them, not if I’m damned forit.”

Marie turned away, wringing her hands. “Oh, Emil, you won’t try!Then all our good times are over.”

“Yes; over. I never expect to have any more.”

Emil gripped the hand-holds of his scythe and began to mow. Marie took up hercherries and went slowly toward the house, crying bitterly.

IX

On Sunday afternoon, a month after Carl Linstrum’s arrival, he rode withEmil up into the French country to attend a Catholic fair. He sat for most ofthe afternoon in the basem*nt of the church, where the fair was held, talkingto Marie Shabata, or strolled about the gravel terrace, thrown up on thehillside in front of the basem*nt doors, where the French boys were jumping andwrestling and throwing the discus. Some of the boys were in their whitebaseball suits; they had just come up from a Sunday practice game down in theballgrounds. Amédée, the newly married, Emil’s best friend, was theirpitcher, renowned among the country towns for his dash and skill. Amédée was alittle fellow, a year younger than Emil and much more boyish in appearance;very lithe and active and neatly made, with a clear brown and white skin, andflashing white teeth. The Sainte-Agnes boys were to play the Hastings nine in afortnight, and Amédée’s lightning balls were the hope of his team. Thelittle Frenchman seemed to get every ounce there was in him behind the ball asit left his hand.

“You’d have made the battery at the University for sure,’Médée,” Emil said as they were walking from the ball-grounds backto the church on the hill. “You’re pitching better than you did inthe spring.”

Amédée grinned. “Sure! A married man don’t lose his head nomore.” He slapped Emil on the back as he caught step with him. “Oh,Emil, you wanna get married right off quick! It’s the greatest thingever!”

Emil laughed. “How am I going to get married without any girl?”

Amédée took his arm. “Pooh! There are plenty girls will have you. Youwanna get some nice French girl, now. She treat you well; always be jolly.See,”—he began checking off on his fingers,—“there isSévérine, and Alphosen, and Joséphine, and Hectorine, and Louise, andMalvina—why, I could love any of them girls! Why don’t you getafter them? Are you stuck up, Emil, or is anything the matter with you? I neverdid know a boy twenty-two years old before that didn’t have no girl. Youwanna be a priest, maybe? Not-a for me!” Amédée swaggered. “I bringmany good Catholics into this world, I hope, and that’s a way I help theChurch.”

Emil looked down and patted him on the shoulder. “Now you’re windy,’Médée. You Frenchies like to brag.”

But Amédée had the zeal of the newly married, and he was not to be lightlyshaken off. “Honest and true, Emil, don’t you want ANY girl? Maybethere’s some young lady in Lincoln, now, very grand,”—Amédéewaved his hand languidly before his face to denote the fan of heartlessbeauty,—“and you lost your heart up there. Is that it?”

“Maybe,” said Emil.

But Amédée saw no appropriate glow in his friend’s face.“Bah!” he exclaimed in disgust. “I tell all the French girlsto keep ’way from you. You gotta rock in there,” thumping Emil onthe ribs.

When they reached the terrace at the side of the church, Amédée, who wasexcited by his success on the ball-grounds, challenged Emil to a jumping-match,though he knew he would be beaten. They belted themselves up, and Raoul Marcel,the choir tenor and Father duch*esne’s pet, and Jean Bordelau, held thestring over which they vaulted. All the French boys stood round, cheering andhumping themselves up when Emil or Amédée went over the wire, as if they werehelping in the lift. Emil stopped at five-feet-five, declaring that he wouldspoil his appetite for supper if he jumped any more.

Angélique, Amédée’s pretty bride, as blonde and fair as her name, who hadcome out to watch the match, tossed her head at Emil and said:—

“’Médée could jump much higher than you if he were as tall. Andanyhow, he is much more graceful. He goes over like a bird, and you have tohump yourself all up.”

“Oh, I do, do I?” Emil caught her and kissed her saucy mouthsquarely, while she laughed and struggled and called, “’Médée!’Médée!”

“There, you see your ’Médée isn’t even big enough to get youaway from me. I could run away with you right now and he could only sit downand cry about it. I’ll show you whether I have to hump myself!”Laughing and panting, he picked Angélique up in his arms and began runningabout the rectangle with her. Not until he saw Marie Shabata’s tiger eyesflashing from the gloom of the basem*nt doorway did he hand the disheveledbride over to her husband. “There, go to your graceful; I haven’tthe heart to take you away from him.”

Angélique clung to her husband and made faces at Emil over the white shoulderof Amédée’s ball-shirt. Emil was greatly amused at her air ofproprietorship and at Amédée’s shameless submission to it. He wasdelighted with his friend’s good fortune. He liked to see and to thinkabout Amédée’s sunny, natural, happy love.

He and Amédée had ridden and wrestled and larked together since they were ladsof twelve. On Sundays and holidays they were always arm in arm. It seemedstrange that now he should have to hide the thing that Amédée was so proud of,that the feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring the othersuch despair. It was like that when Alexandra tested her seed-corn in thespring, he mused. From two ears that had grown side by side, the grains of oneshot up joyfully into the light, projecting themselves into the future, and thegrains from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody knew why.

X

While Emil and Carl were amusing themselves at the fair, Alexandra was at home,busy with her account-books, which had been neglected of late. She was almostthrough with her figures when she heard a cart drive up to the gate, andlooking out of the window she saw her two older brothers. They had seemed toavoid her ever since Carl Linstrum’s arrival, four weeks ago that day,and she hurried to the door to welcome them. She saw at once that they had comewith some very definite purpose. They followed her stiffly into thesitting-room. Oscar sat down, but Lou walked over to the window and remainedstanding, his hands behind him.

“You are by yourself?” he asked, looking toward the doorway intothe parlor.

“Yes. Carl and Emil went up to the Catholic fair.”

For a few moments neither of the men spoke.

Then Lou came out sharply. “How soon does he intend to go away fromhere?”

“I don’t know, Lou. Not for some time, I hope.” Alexandraspoke in an even, quiet tone that often exasperated her brothers. They feltthat she was trying to be superior with them.

Oscar spoke up grimly. “We thought we ought to tell you that people havebegun to talk,” he said meaningly.

Alexandra looked at him. “What about?”

Oscar met her eyes blankly. “About you, keeping him here so long. Itlooks bad for him to be hanging on to a woman this way. People thinkyou’re getting taken in.”

Alexandra shut her account-book firmly. “Boys,” she said seriously,“don’t let’s go on with this. We won’t come outanywhere. I can’t take advice on such a matter. I know you mean well, butyou must not feel responsible for me in things of this sort. If we go on withthis talk it will only make hard feeling.”

Lou whipped about from the window. “You ought to think a little aboutyour family. You’re making us all ridiculous.”

“How am I?”

“People are beginning to say you want to marry the fellow.”

“Well, and what is ridiculous about that?”

Lou and Oscar exchanged outraged looks. “Alexandra! Can’t you seehe’s just a tramp and he’s after your money? He wants to be takencare of, he does!”

“Well, suppose I want to take care of him? Whose business is it but myown?”

“Don’t you know he’d get hold of your property?”

“He’d get hold of what I wished to give him, certainly.”

Oscar sat up suddenly and Lou clutched at his bristly hair.

“Give him?” Lou shouted. “Our property, our homestead?”

“I don’t know about the homestead,” said Alexandra quietly.“I know you and Oscar have always expected that it would be left to yourchildren, and I’m not sure but what you’re right. But I’ll doexactly as I please with the rest of my land, boys.”

“The rest of your land!” cried Lou, growing more excited everyminute. “Didn’t all the land come out of the homestead? It wasbought with money borrowed on the homestead, and Oscar and me worked ourselvesto the bone paying interest on it.”

“Yes, you paid the interest. But when you married we made a division ofthe land, and you were satisfied. I’ve made more on my farms sinceI’ve been alone than when we all worked together.”

“Everything you’ve made has come out of the original land that usboys worked for, hasn’t it? The farms and all that comes out of thembelongs to us as a family.”

Alexandra waved her hand impatiently. “Come now, Lou. Stick to the facts.You are talking nonsense. Go to the county clerk and ask him who owns my land,and whether my titles are good.”

Lou turned to his brother. “This is what comes of letting a woman meddlein business,” he said bitterly. “We ought to have taken things inour own hands years ago. But she liked to run things, and we humored her. Wethought you had good sense, Alexandra. We never thought you’d do anythingfoolish.”

Alexandra rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles. “Listen, Lou.Don’t talk wild. You say you ought to have taken things into your ownhands years ago. I suppose you mean before you left home. But how could youtake hold of what wasn’t there? I’ve got most of what I have nowsince we divided the property; I’ve built it up myself, and it hasnothing to do with you.”

Oscar spoke up solemnly. “The property of a family really belongs to themen of the family, no matter about the title. If anything goes wrong,it’s the men that are held responsible.”

“Yes, of course,” Lou broke in. “Everybody knows that. Oscarand me have always been easy-going and we’ve never made any fuss. We werewilling you should hold the land and have the good of it, but you got no rightto part with any of it. We worked in the fields to pay for the first land youbought, and whatever’s come out of it has got to be kept in thefamily.”

Oscar reinforced his brother, his mind fixed on the one point he could see.“The property of a family belongs to the men of the family, because theyare held responsible, and because they do the work.”

Alexandra looked from one to the other, her eyes full of indignation. She hadbeen impatient before, but now she was beginning to feel angry. “And whatabout my work?” she asked in an unsteady voice.

Lou looked at the carpet. “Oh, now, Alexandra, you always took it prettyeasy! Of course we wanted you to. You liked to manage round, and we alwayshumored you. We realize you were a great deal of help to us. There’s nowoman anywhere around that knows as much about business as you do, andwe’ve always been proud of that, and thought you were pretty smart. But,of course, the real work always fell on us. Good advice is all right, but itdon’t get the weeds out of the corn.”

“Maybe not, but it sometimes puts in the crop, and it sometimes keeps thefields for corn to grow in,” said Alexandra dryly. “Why, Lou, I canremember when you and Oscar wanted to sell this homestead and all theimprovements to old preacher Ericson for two thousand dollars. If I’dconsented, you’d have gone down to the river and scraped along on poorfarms for the rest of your lives. When I put in our first field of alfalfa youboth opposed me, just because I first heard about it from a young man who hadbeen to the University. You said I was being taken in then, and all theneighbors said so. You know as well as I do that alfalfa has been the salvationof this country. You all laughed at me when I said our land here was aboutready for wheat, and I had to raise three big wheat crops before the neighborsquit putting all their land in corn. Why, I remember you cried, Lou, when weput in the first big wheat-planting, and said everybody was laughing atus.”

Lou turned to Oscar. “That’s the woman of it; if she tells you toput in a crop, she thinks she’s put it in. It makes women conceited tomeddle in business. I shouldn’t think you’d want to remind us howhard you were on us, Alexandra, after the way you baby Emil.”

“Hard on you? I never meant to be hard. Conditions were hard. Maybe Iwould never have been very soft, anyhow; but I certainly didn’t choose tobe the kind of girl I was. If you take even a vine and cut it back again andagain, it grows hard, like a tree.”

Lou felt that they were wandering from the point, and that in digressionAlexandra might unnerve him. He wiped his forehead with a jerk of hishandkerchief. “We never doubted you, Alexandra. We never questionedanything you did. You’ve always had your own way. But you can’texpect us to sit like stumps and see you done out of the property by any loaferwho happens along, and making yourself ridiculous into the bargain.”

Oscar rose. “Yes,” he broke in, “everybody’s laughingto see you get took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows he’s nearlyfive years younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Alexandra, you areforty years old!”

“All that doesn’t concern anybody but Carl and me. Go to town andask your lawyers what you can do to restrain me from disposing of my ownproperty. And I advise you to do what they tell you; for the authority you canexert by law is the only influence you will ever have over me again.”Alexandra rose. “I think I would rather not have lived to find out what Ihave to-day,” she said quietly, closing her desk.

Lou and Oscar looked at each other questioningly. There seemed to be nothing todo but to go, and they walked out.

“You can’t do business with women,” Oscar said heavily as heclambered into the cart. “But anyhow, we’ve had our say, atlast.”

Lou scratched his head. “Talk of that kind might come too high, you know;but she’s apt to be sensible. You hadn’t ought to said that abouther age, though, Oscar. I’m afraid that hurt her feelings; and the worstthing we can do is to make her sore at us. She’d marry him out ofcontrariness.”

“I only meant,” said Oscar, “that she is old enough to knowbetter, and she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done it long ago,and not go making a fool of herself now.”

Lou looked anxious, nevertheless. “Of course,” he reflectedhopefully and inconsistently, “Alexandra ain’t much like otherwomen-folks. Maybe it won’t make her sore. Maybe she’d as soon beforty as not!”

XI

Emil came home at about half-past seven o’clock that evening. Old Ivarmet him at the windmill and took his horse, and the young man went directlyinto the house. He called to his sister and she answered from her bedroom,behind the sitting-room, saying that she was lying down.

Emil went to her door.

“Can I see you for a minute?” he asked. “I want to talk toyou about something before Carl comes.”

Alexandra rose quickly and came to the door. “Where is Carl?”

“Lou and Oscar met us and said they wanted to talk to him, so he rodeover to Oscar’s with them. Are you coming out?” Emil askedimpatiently.

“Yes, sit down. I’ll be dressed in a moment.”

Alexandra closed her door, and Emil sank down on the old slat lounge and satwith his head in his hands. When his sister came out, he looked up, not knowingwhether the interval had been short or long, and he was surprised to see thatthe room had grown quite dark. That was just as well; it would be easier totalk if he were not under the gaze of those clear, deliberate eyes, that saw sofar in some directions and were so blind in others. Alexandra, too, was glad ofthe dusk. Her face was swollen from crying.

Emil started up and then sat down again. “Alexandra,” he saidslowly, in his deep young baritone, “I don’t want to go away to lawschool this fall. Let me put it off another year. I want to take a year off andlook around. It’s awfully easy to rush into a profession you don’treally like, and awfully hard to get out of it. Linstrum and I have beentalking about that.”

“Very well, Emil. Only don’t go off looking for land.” Shecame up and put her hand on his shoulder. “I’ve been wishing youcould stay with me this winter.”

“That’s just what I don’t want to do, Alexandra. I’mrestless. I want to go to a new place. I want to go down to the City of Mexicoto join one of the University fellows who’s at the head of an electricalplant. He wrote me he could give me a little job, enough to pay my way, and Icould look around and see what I want to do. I want to go as soon as harvest isover. I guess Lou and Oscar will be sore about it.”

“I suppose they will.” Alexandra sat down on the lounge beside him.“They are very angry with me, Emil. We have had a quarrel. They will notcome here again.”

Emil scarcely heard what she was saying; he did not notice the sadness of hertone. He was thinking about the reckless life he meant to live in Mexico.

“What about?” he asked absently.

“About Carl Linstrum. They are afraid I am going to marry him, and thatsome of my property will get away from them.”

Emil shrugged his shoulders. “What nonsense!” he murmured.“Just like them.”

Alexandra drew back. “Why nonsense, Emil?”

“Why, you’ve never thought of such a thing, have you? They alwayshave to have something to fuss about.”

“Emil,” said his sister slowly, “you ought not to take thingsfor granted. Do you agree with them that I have no right to change my way ofliving?”

Emil looked at the outline of his sister’s head in the dim light. Theywere sitting close together and he somehow felt that she could hear histhoughts. He was silent for a moment, and then said in an embarrassed tone,“Why, no, certainly not. You ought to do whatever you want to. I’llalways back you.”

“But it would seem a little bit ridiculous to you if I marriedCarl?”

Emil fidgeted. The issue seemed to him too far-fetched to warrant discussion.“Why, no. I should be surprised if you wanted to. I can’t seeexactly why. But that’s none of my business. You ought to do as youplease. Certainly you ought not to pay any attention to what the boyssay.”

Alexandra sighed. “I had hoped you might understand, a little, why I dowant to. But I suppose that’s too much to expect. I’ve had a prettylonely life, Emil. Besides Marie, Carl is the only friend I have everhad.”

Emil was awake now; a name in her last sentence roused him. He put out his handand took his sister’s awkwardly. “You ought to do just as you wish,and I think Carl’s a fine fellow. He and I would always get on. Idon’t believe any of the things the boys say about him, honest Idon’t. They are suspicious of him because he’s intelligent. Youknow their way. They’ve been sore at me ever since you let me go away tocollege. They’re always trying to catch me up. If I were you, Iwouldn’t pay any attention to them. There’s nothing to get upsetabout. Carl’s a sensible fellow. He won’t mind them.”

“I don’t know. If they talk to him the way they did to me, I thinkhe’ll go away.”

Emil grew more and more uneasy. “Think so? Well, Marie said it wouldserve us all right if you walked off with him.”

“Did she? Bless her little heart! SHE would.” Alexandra’svoice broke.

Emil began unlacing his leggings. “Why don’t you talk to her aboutit? There’s Carl, I hear his horse. I guess I’ll go upstairs andget my boots off. No, I don’t want any supper. We had supper at fiveo’clock, at the fair.”

Emil was glad to escape and get to his own room. He was a little ashamed forhis sister, though he had tried not to show it. He felt that there wassomething indecorous in her proposal, and she did seem to him somewhatridiculous. There was trouble enough in the world, he reflected, as he threwhimself upon his bed, without people who were forty years old imagining theywanted to get married. In the darkness and silence Emil was not likely to thinklong about Alexandra. Every image slipped away but one. He had seen Marie inthe crowd that afternoon. She sold candy at the fair. Why had she everrun away with Frank Shabata, and how could she go on laughing and working andtaking an interest in things? Why did she like so many people, and why had sheseemed pleased when all the French and Bohemian boys, and the priest himself,crowded round her candy stand? Why did she care about any one but him? Whycould he never, never find the thing he looked for in her playful, affectionateeyes?

Then he fell to imagining that he looked once more and found it there, and whatit would be like if she loved him,—she who, as Alexandra said, could giveher whole heart. In that dream he could lie for hours, as if in a trance. Hisspirit went out of his body and crossed the fields to Marie Shabata.

At the University dances the girls had often looked wonderingly at the tallyoung Swede with the fine head, leaning against the wall and frowning, his armsfolded, his eyes fixed on the ceiling or the floor. All the girls were a littleafraid of him. He was distinguished-looking, and not the jollying kind. Theyfelt that he was too intense and preoccupied. There was something queer abouthim. Emil’s fraternity rather prided itself upon its dances, andsometimes he did his duty and danced every dance. But whether he was on thefloor or brooding in a corner, he was always thinking about Marie Shabata. Fortwo years the storm had been gathering in him.

XII

Carl came into the sitting-room while Alexandra was lighting the lamp. Shelooked up at him as she adjusted the shade. His sharp shoulders stooped as ifhe were very tired, his face was pale, and there were bluish shadows under hisdark eyes. His anger had burned itself out and left him sick and disgusted.

“You have seen Lou and Oscar?” Alexandra asked.

“Yes.” His eyes avoided hers.

Alexandra took a deep breath. “And now you are going away. I thoughtso.”

Carl threw himself into a chair and pushed the dark lock back from his foreheadwith his white, nervous hand. “What a hopeless position you are in,Alexandra!” he exclaimed feverishly. “It is your fate to be alwayssurrounded by little men. And I am no better than the rest. I am too little toface the criticism of even such men as Lou and Oscar. Yes, I am going away;to-morrow. I cannot even ask you to give me a promise until I have something tooffer you. I thought, perhaps, I could do that; but I find Ican’t.”

“What good comes of offering people things they don’t need?”Alexandra asked sadly. “I don’t need money. But I have needed youfor a great many years. I wonder why I have been permitted to prosper, if it isonly to take my friends away from me.”

“I don’t deceive myself,” Carl said frankly. “I knowthat I am going away on my own account. I must make the usual effort. I musthave something to show for myself. To take what you would give me, I shouldhave to be either a very large man or a very small one, and I am only in themiddle class.”

Alexandra sighed. “I have a feeling that if you go away, you will notcome back. Something will happen to one of us, or to both. People have tosnatch at happiness when they can, in this world. It is always easier to losethan to find. What I have is yours, if you care enough about me to takeit.”

Carl rose and looked up at the picture of John Bergson. “But Ican’t, my dear, I can’t! I will go North at once. Instead of idlingabout in California all winter, I shall be getting my bearings up there. Iwon’t waste another week. Be patient with me, Alexandra. Give me ayear!”

“As you will,” said Alexandra wearily. “All at once, in asingle day, I lose everything; and I do not know why. Emil, too, is goingaway.” Carl was still studying John Bergson’s face andAlexandra’s eyes followed his. “Yes,” she said, “if hecould have seen all that would come of the task he gave me, he would have beensorry. I hope he does not see me now. I hope that he is among the old people ofhis blood and country, and that tidings do not reach him from the NewWorld.”

PART III.
Winter Memories

I

Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Naturerecuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn andthe passion of spring. The birds have gone. The teeming life that goes on downin the long grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rabbitsrun shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and are hard put to it tofind frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night the coyotes roam the wintry waste,howling for food. The variegated fields are all one color now; the pastures,the stubble, the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows andtrees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth, whose slaty hue theyhave taken on. The ground is frozen so hard that it bruises the foot to walk inthe roads or in the ploughed fields. It is like an iron country, and the spiritis oppressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe that in thatdead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness were extinct forever.

Alexandra has settled back into her old routine. There are weekly letters fromEmil. Lou and Oscar she has not seen since Carl went away. To avoid awkwardencounters in the presence of curious spectators, she has stopped going to theNorwegian Church and drives up to the Reform Church at Hanover, or goes withMarie Shabata to the Catholic Church, locally known as “the FrenchChurch.” She has not told Marie about Carl, or her differences with herbrothers. She was never very communicative about her own affairs, and when shecame to the point, an instinct told her that about such things she and Mariewould not understand one another.

Old Mrs. Lee had been afraid that family misunderstandings might deprive her ofher yearly visit to Alexandra. But on the first day of December Alexandratelephoned Annie that to-morrow she would send Ivar over for her mother, andthe next day the old lady arrived with her bundles. For twelve years Mrs. Leehad always entered Alexandra’s sitting-room with the same exclamation,“Now we be yust-a like old times!” She enjoyed the libertyAlexandra gave her, and hearing her own language about her all day long. Hereshe could wear her nightcap and sleep with all her windows shut, listen to Ivarreading the Bible, and here she could run about among the stables in a pair ofEmil’s old boots. Though she was bent almost double, she was as spry as agopher. Her face was as brown as if it had been varnished, and as full ofwrinkles as a washerwoman’s hands. She had three jolly old teeth left inthe front of her mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as ifwhen you found out how to take it, life wasn’t half bad. While she andAlexandra patched and pieced and quilted, she talked incessantly about storiesshe read in a Swedish family paper, telling the plots in great detail; or abouther life on a dairy farm in Gottland when she was a girl. Sometimes she forgotwhich were the printed stories and which were the real stories, it all seemedso far away. She loved to take a little brandy, with hot water and sugar,before she went to bed, and Alexandra always had it ready for her. “Itsends good dreams,” she would say with a twinkle in her eye.

When Mrs. Lee had been with Alexandra for a week, Marie Shabata telephoned onemorning to say that Frank had gone to town for the day, and she would like themto come over for coffee in the afternoon. Mrs. Lee hurried to wash out and ironher new cross-stitched apron, which she had finished only the night before; achecked gingham apron worked with a design ten inches broad across the bottom;a hunting scene, with fir trees and a stag and dogs and huntsmen. Mrs. Lee wasfirm with herself at dinner, and refused a second helping of apple dumplings.“I ta-ank I save up,” she said with a giggle.

At two o’clock in the afternoon Alexandra’s cart drove up to theShabatas’ gate, and Marie saw Mrs. Lee’s red shawl come bobbing upthe path. She ran to the door and pulled the old woman into the house with ahug, helping her to take off her wraps while Alexandra blanketed the horseoutside. Mrs. Lee had put on her best black satine dress—she abominatedwoolen stuffs, even in winter—and a crocheted collar, fastened with a bigpale gold pin, containing faded daguerreotypes of her father and mother. Shehad not worn her apron for fear of rumpling it, and now she shook it out andtied it round her waist with a conscious air. Marie drew back and threw up herhands, exclaiming, “Oh, what a beauty! I’ve never seen this onebefore, have I, Mrs. Lee?”

The old woman giggled and ducked her head. “No, yust las’ night Ima-ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa-ash out, no fade. My sister sendfrom Sveden. I yust-a ta-ank you like dis.”

Marie ran to the door again. “Come in, Alexandra. I have been looking atMrs. Lee’s apron. Do stop on your way home and show it to Mrs. Hiller.She’s crazy about cross-stitch.”

While Alexandra removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Lee went out to the kitchen andsettled herself in a wooden rocking-chair by the stove, looking with greatinterest at the table, set for three, with a white cloth, and a pot of pinkgeraniums in the middle. “My, a-an’t you gotta fine plants; such-amuch flower. How you keep from freeze?”

She pointed to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias and geraniums.

“I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Lee, and when it’s very cold I putthem all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other nights I only putnewspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me for fussing, but when theydon’t bloom he says, ‘What’s the matter with the darnedthings?’—What do you hear from Carl, Alexandra?”

“He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose I won’thear any more until spring. Before he left California he sent me a box oforange flowers, but they didn’t keep very well. I have brought a bunch ofEmil’s letters for you.” Alexandra came out from the sitting-roomand pinched Marie’s cheek playfully. “You don’t look as ifthe weather ever froze you up. Never have colds, do you? That’s a goodgirl. She had dark red cheeks like this when she was a little girl, Mrs. Lee.She looked like some queer foreign kind of a doll. I’ve never forgot thefirst time I saw you in Mieklejohn’s store, Marie, the time father waslying sick. Carl and I were talking about that before he went away.”

“I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you going to sendEmil’s Christmas box?”

“It ought to have gone before this. I’ll have to send it by mailnow, to get it there in time.”

Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket. “I knit thisfor him. It’s a good color, don’t you think? Will you please put itin with your things and tell him it’s from me, to wear when he goesserenading.”

Alexandra laughed. “I don’t believe he goes serenading much. Hesays in one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to be very beautiful, butthat don’t seem to me very warm praise.”

Marie tossed her head. “Emil can’t fool me. If he’s bought aguitar, he goes serenading. Who wouldn’t, with all those Spanish girlsdropping flowers down from their windows! I’d sing to them every night,wouldn’t you, Mrs. Lee?”

The old lady chuckled. Her eyes lit up as Marie bent down and opened the ovendoor. A delicious hot fragrance blew out into the tidy kitchen. “My,somet’ing smell good!” She turned to Alexandra with a wink, herthree yellow teeth making a brave show, “I ta-ank dat stop my yaw fromache no more!” she said contentedly.

Marie took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with stewed apricots,and began to dust them over with powdered sugar. “I hope you’lllike these, Mrs. Lee; Alexandra does. The Bohemians always like them with theircoffee. But if you don’t, I have a coffee-cake with nuts and poppy seeds.Alexandra, will you get the cream jug? I put it in the window to keepcool.”

“The Bohemians,” said Alexandra, as they drew up to the table,“certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than any other people inthe world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at the church supper that she couldmake seven kinds of fancy bread, but Marie could make a dozen.”

Mrs. Lee held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown thumb andforefinger and weighed it critically. “Yust like-a fedders,” shepronounced with satisfaction. “My, a-an’t dis nice!” sheexclaimed as she stirred her coffee. “I yust ta-ake a liddle yelly now,too, I ta-ank.”

Alexandra and Marie laughed at her forehandedness, and fell to talking of theirown affairs. “I was afraid you had a cold when I talked to you over thetelephone the other night, Marie. What was the matter, had you beencrying?”

“Maybe I had,” Marie smiled guiltily. “Frank was out latethat night. Don’t you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when everybodyhas gone away?”

“I thought it was something like that. If I hadn’t had company,I’d have run over to see for myself. If you get down-hearted, what willbecome of the rest of us?” Alexandra asked.

“I don’t, very often. There’s Mrs. Lee without anycoffee!”

Later, when Mrs. Lee declared that her powers were spent, Marie and Alexandrawent upstairs to look for some crochet patterns the old lady wanted to borrow.“Better put on your coat, Alexandra. It’s cold up there, and I haveno idea where those patterns are. I may have to look through my oldtrunks.” Marie caught up a shawl and opened the stair door, running upthe steps ahead of her guest. “While I go through the bureau drawers, youmight look in those hat-boxes on the closet-shelf, over where Frank’sclothes hang. There are a lot of odds and ends in them.”

She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Alexandra went into theclothes-closet. Presently she came back, holding a slender elastic yellow stickin her hand.

“What in the world is this, Marie? You don’t mean to tell me Frankever carried such a thing?”

Marie blinked at it with astonishment and sat down on the floor. “Wheredid you find it? I didn’t know he had kept it. I haven’t seen itfor years.”

“It really is a cane, then?”

“Yes. One he brought from the old country. He used to carry it when Ifirst knew him. Isn’t it foolish? Poor Frank!”

Alexandra twirled the stick in her fingers and laughed. “He must havelooked funny!”

Marie was thoughtful. “No, he didn’t, really. It didn’t seemout of place. He used to be awfully gay like that when he was a young man. Iguess people always get what’s hardest for them, Alexandra.” Mariegathered the shawl closer about her and still looked hard at the cane.“Frank would be all right in the right place,” she saidreflectively. “He ought to have a different kind of wife, for one thing.Do you know, Alexandra, I could pick out exactly the right sort of woman forFrank—now. The trouble is you almost have to marry a man before you canfind out the sort of wife he needs; and usually it’s exactly the sort youare not. Then what are you going to do about it?” she asked candidly.

Alexandra confessed she didn’t know. “However,” she added,“it seems to me that you get along with Frank about as well as any womanI’ve ever seen or heard of could.”

Marie shook her head, pursing her lips and blowing her warm breath softly outinto the frosty air. “No; I was spoiled at home. I like my own way, and Ihave a quick tongue. When Frank brags, I say sharp things, and he neverforgets. He goes over and over it in his mind; I can feel him. Then I’mtoo giddy. Frank’s wife ought to be timid, and she ought not to careabout another living thing in the world but just Frank! I didn’t, when Imarried him, but I suppose I was too young to stay like that.” Mariesighed.

Alexandra had never heard Marie speak so frankly about her husband before, andshe felt that it was wiser not to encourage her. No good, she reasoned, evercame from talking about such things, and while Marie was thinking aloud,Alexandra had been steadily searching the hat-boxes. “Aren’t thesethe patterns, Maria?”

Maria sprang up from the floor. “Sure enough, we were looking forpatterns, weren’t we? I’d forgot about everything but Frank’sother wife. I’ll put that away.”

She poked the cane behind Frank’s Sunday clothes, and though she laughed,Alexandra saw there were tears in her eyes.

When they went back to the kitchen, the snow had begun to fall, andMarie’s visitors thought they must be getting home. She went out to thecart with them, and tucked the robes about old Mrs. Lee while Alexandra tookthe blanket off her horse. As they drove away, Marie turned and went slowlyback to the house. She took up the package of letters Alexandra had brought,but she did not read them. She turned them over and looked at the foreignstamps, and then sat watching the flying snow while the dusk deepened in thekitchen and the stove sent out a red glow.

Marie knew perfectly well that Emil’s letters were written more for herthan for Alexandra. They were not the sort of letters that a young man writesto his sister. They were both more personal and more painstaking; full ofdescriptions of the gay life in the old Mexican capital in the days when thestrong hand of Porfirio Diaz was still strong. He told about bull-fights andco*ck-fights, churches and fiestas, the flower-markets and the fountains,the music and dancing, the people of all nations he met in the Italianrestaurants on San Francisco Street. In short, they were the kind of letters ayoung man writes to a woman when he wishes himself and his life to seeminteresting to her, when he wishes to enlist her imagination in his behalf.

Marie, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the evening, often thoughtabout what it must be like down there where Emil was; where there were flowersand street bands everywhere, and carriages rattling up and down, and wherethere was a little blind boot-black in front of the cathedral who could playany tune you asked for by dropping the lids of blacking-boxes on the stonesteps. When everything is done and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasantto let the mind wander forth and follow a young adventurer who has life beforehim. “And if it had not been for me,” she thought, “Frankmight still be free like that, and having a good time making people admire him.Poor Frank, getting married wasn’t very good for him either. I’mafraid I do set people against him, as he says. I seem, somehow, to give himaway all the time. Perhaps he would try to be agreeable to people again, if Iwere not around. It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he canbe.”

Later in the winter, Alexandra looked back upon that afternoon as the lastsatisfactory visit she had had with Marie. After that day the younger womanseemed to shrink more and more into herself. When she was with Alexandra shewas not spontaneous and frank as she used to be. She seemed to be brooding oversomething, and holding something back. The weather had a good deal to do withtheir seeing less of each other than usual. There had not been such snowstormsin twenty years, and the path across the fields was drifted deep from Christmasuntil March. When the two neighbors went to see each other, they had to goround by the wagon-road, which was twice as far. They telephoned each otheralmost every night, though in January there was a stretch of three weeks whenthe wires were down, and when the postman did not come at all.

Marie often ran in to see her nearest neighbor, old Mrs. Hiller, who wascrippled with rheumatism and had only her son, the lame shoemaker, to take careof her; and she went to the French Church, whatever the weather. She was asincerely devout girl. She prayed for herself and for Frank, and for Emil,among the temptations of that gay, corrupt old city. She found more comfort inthe Church that winter than ever before. It seemed to come closer to her, andto fill an emptiness that ached in her heart. She tried to be patient with herhusband. He and his hired man usually played California Jack in the evening.Marie sat sewing or crocheting and tried to take a friendly interest in thegame, but she was always thinking about the wide fields outside, where the snowwas drifting over the fences; and about the orchard, where the snow was fallingand packing, crust over crust. When she went out into the dark kitchen to fixher plants for the night, she used to stand by the window and look out at thewhite fields, or watch the currents of snow whirling over the orchard. Sheseemed to feel the weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches hadbecome so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried to break a twig.And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the roots of the trees, the secret oflife was still safe, warm as the blood in one’s heart; and the springwould come again! Oh, it would come again!

II

If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what was going onin Marie’s mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on inEmil’s. But that, as Emil himself had more than once reflected, wasAlexandra’s blind side, and her life had not been of the kind to sharpenher vision. Her training had all been toward the end of making her proficientin what she had undertaken to do. Her personal life, her own realization ofherself, was almost a subconscious existence; like an underground river thatcame to the surface only here and there, at intervals months apart, and thensank again to flow on under her own fields. Nevertheless, the undergroundstream was there, and it was because she had so much personality to put intoher enterprises and succeeded in putting it into them so completely, that heraffairs prospered better than those of her neighbors.

There were certain days in her life, outwardly uneventful, which Alexandraremembered as peculiarly happy; days when she was close to the flat, fallowworld about her, and felt, as it were, in her own body the joyous germinationin the soil. There were days, too, which she and Emil had spent together, uponwhich she loved to look back. There had been such a day when they were down onthe river in the dry year, looking over the land. They had made an early startone morning and had driven a long way before noon. When Emil said he washungry, they drew back from the road, gave Brigham his oats among the bushes,and climbed up to the top of a grassy bluff to eat their lunch under the shadeof some little elm trees. The river was clear there, and shallow, since therehad been no rain, and it ran in ripples over the sparkling sand. Under theoverhanging willows of the opposite bank there was an inlet where the water wasdeeper and flowed so slowly that it seemed to sleep in the sun. In this littlebay a single wild duck was swimming and diving and preening her feathers,disporting herself very happily in the flickering light and shade. They sat fora long time, watching the solitary bird take its pleasure. No living thing hadever seemed to Alexandra as beautiful as that wild duck. Emil must have feltabout it as she did, for afterward, when they were at home, he used sometimesto say, “Sister, you know our duck down there—” Alexandraremembered that day as one of the happiest in her life. Years afterward shethought of the duck as still there, swimming and diving all by herself in thesunlight, a kind of enchanted bird that did not know age or change.

Most of Alexandra’s happy memories were as impersonal as this one; yet toher they were very personal. Her mind was a white book, with clear writingabout weather and beasts and growing things. Not many people would have caredto read it; only a happy few. She had never been in love, she had neverindulged in sentimental reveries. Even as a girl she had looked upon men aswork-fellows. She had grown up in serious times.

There was one fancy indeed, which persisted through her girlhood. It most oftencame to her on Sunday mornings, the one day in the week when she lay late abedlistening to the familiar morning sounds; the windmill singing in the briskbreeze, Emil whistling as he blacked his boots down by the kitchen door.Sometimes, as she lay thus luxuriously idle, her eyes closed, she used to havean illusion of being lifted up bodily and carried lightly by some one verystrong. It was a man, certainly, who carried her, but he was like no man sheknew; he was much larger and stronger and swifter, and he carried her as easilyas if she were a sheaf of wheat. She never saw him, but, with eyes closed, shecould feel that he was yellow like the sunlight, and there was the smell ofripe cornfields about him. She could feel him approach, bend over her and lifther, and then she could feel herself being carried swiftly off across thefields. After such a reverie she would rise hastily, angry with herself, and godown to the bath-house that was partitioned off the kitchen shed. There shewould stand in a tin tub and prosecute her bath with vigor, finishing it bypouring buckets of cold well-water over her gleaming white body which no man onthe Divide could have carried very far.

As she grew older, this fancy more often came to her when she was tired thanwhen she was fresh and strong. Sometimes, after she had been in the open allday, overseeing the branding of the cattle or the loading of the pigs, shewould come in chilled, take a concoction of spices and warm home-made wine, andgo to bed with her body actually aching with fatigue. Then, just before shewent to sleep, she had the old sensation of being lifted and carried by astrong being who took from her all her bodily weariness.

PART IV.
The White Mulberry Tree

I

The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes, stood upon a hill. Thehigh, narrow, red-brick building, with its tall steeple and steep roof, couldbe seen for miles across the wheatfields, though the little town ofSainte-Agnes was completely hidden away at the foot of the hill. The churchlooked powerful and triumphant there on its eminence, so high above the rest ofthe landscape, with miles of warm color lying at its feet, and by its positionand setting it reminded one of some of the churches built long ago in thewheat-lands of middle France.

Late one June afternoon Alexandra Bergson was driving along one of the manyroads that led through the rich French farming country to the big church. Thesunlight was shining directly in her face, and there was a blaze of light allabout the red church on the hill. Beside Alexandra lounged a strikingly exoticfigure in a tall Mexican hat, a silk sash, and a black velvet jacket sewn withsilver buttons. Emil had returned only the night before, and his sister was soproud of him that she decided at once to take him up to the church supper, andto make him wear the Mexican costume he had brought home in his trunk.“All the girls who have stands are going to wear fancy costumes,”she argued, “and some of the boys. Marie is going to tell fortunes, andshe sent to Omaha for a Bohemian dress her father brought back from a visit tothe old country. If you wear those clothes, they will all be pleased. And youmust take your guitar. Everybody ought to do what they can to help along, andwe have never done much. We are not a talented family.”

The supper was to be at six o’clock, in the basem*nt of the church, andafterward there would be a fair, with charades and an auction. Alexandra hadset out from home early, leaving the house to Signa and Nelse Jensen, who wereto be married next week. Signa had shyly asked to have the wedding put offuntil Emil came home.

Alexandra was well satisfied with her brother. As they drove through therolling French country toward the westering sun and the stalwart church, shewas thinking of that time long ago when she and Emil drove back from the rivervalley to the still unconquered Divide. Yes, she told herself, it had beenworth while; both Emil and the country had become what she had hoped. Out ofher father’s children there was one who was fit to cope with the world,who had not been tied to the plow, and who had a personality apart from thesoil. And that, she reflected, was what she had worked for. She felt wellsatisfied with her life.

When they reached the church, a score of teams were hitched in front of thebasem*nt doors that opened from the hillside upon the sanded terrace, where theboys wrestled and had jumping-matches. Amédée Chevalier, a proud father of oneweek, rushed out and embraced Emil. Amédée was an only son,—hence he wasa very rich young man,—but he meant to have twenty children himself, likehis uncle Xavier. “Oh, Emil,” he cried, hugging his old friendrapturously, “why ain’t you been up to see my boy? You cometo-morrow, sure? Emil, you wanna get a boy right off! It’s the greatestthing ever! No, no, no! Angel not sick at all. Everything just fine. That boyhe come into this world laughin’, and he been laughin’ ever since.You come an’ see!” He pounded Emil’s ribs to emphasize eachannouncement.

Emil caught his arms. “Stop, Amédée. You’re knocking the wind outof me. I brought him cups and spoons and blankets and moccasins enough for anorphan asylum. I’m awful glad it’s a boy, sure enough!”

The young men crowded round Emil to admire his costume and to tell him in abreath everything that had happened since he went away. Emil had more friendsup here in the French country than down on Norway Creek. The French andBohemian boys were spirited and jolly, liked variety, and were as muchpredisposed to favor anything new as the Scandinavian boys were to reject it.The Norwegian and Swedish lads were much more self-centred, apt to beegotistical and jealous. They were cautious and reserved with Emil because hehad been away to college, and were prepared to take him down if he should tryto put on airs with them. The French boys liked a bit of swagger, and they werealways delighted to hear about anything new: new clothes, new games, new songs,new dances. Now they carried Emil off to show him the club room they had justfitted up over the post-office, down in the village. They ran down the hill ina drove, all laughing and chattering at once, some in French, some in English.

Alexandra went into the cool, whitewashed basem*nt where the women were settingthe tables. Marie was standing on a chair, building a little tent of shawlswhere she was to tell fortunes. She sprang down and ran toward Alexandra,stopping short and looking at her in disappointment. Alexandra nodded to herencouragingly.

“Oh, he will be here, Marie. The boys have taken him off to show himsomething. You won’t know him. He is a man now, sure enough. I have noboy left. He smokes terrible-smelling Mexican cigarettes and talks Spanish. Howpretty you look, child. Where did you get those beautiful earrings?”

“They belonged to father’s mother. He always promised them to me.He sent them with the dress and said I could keep them.”

Marie wore a short red skirt of stoutly woven cloth, a white bodice and kirtle,a yellow silk turban wound low over her brown curls, and long coral pendants inher ears. Her ears had been pierced against a piece of cork by her great-auntwhen she was seven years old. In those germless days she had worn bits ofbroom-straw, plucked from the common sweeping-broom, in the lobes until theholes were healed and ready for little gold rings.

When Emil came back from the village, he lingered outside on the terrace withthe boys. Marie could hear him talking and strumming on his guitar while RaoulMarcel sang falsetto. She was vexed with him for staying out there. It made hervery nervous to hear him and not to see him; for, certainly, she told herself,she was not going out to look for him. When the supper bell rang and the boyscame trooping in to get seats at the first table, she forgot all about herannoyance and ran to greet the tallest of the crowd, in his conspicuous attire.She didn’t mind showing her embarrassment at all. She blushed and laughedexcitedly as she gave Emil her hand, and looked delightedly at the black velvetcoat that brought out his fair skin and fine blond head. Marie was incapable ofbeing lukewarm about anything that pleased her. She simply did not know how togive a half-hearted response. When she was delighted, she was as likely as notto stand on her tip-toes and clap her hands. If people laughed at her, shelaughed with them.

“Do the men wear clothes like that every day, in the street?” Shecaught Emil by his sleeve and turned him about. “Oh, I wish I lived wherepeople wore things like that! Are the buttons real silver? Put on the hat,please. What a heavy thing! How do you ever wear it? Why don’t you tellus about the bull-fights?”

She wanted to wring all his experiences from him at once, without waiting amoment. Emil smiled tolerantly and stood looking down at her with his old,brooding gaze, while the French girls fluttered about him in their whitedresses and ribbons, and Alexandra watched the scene with pride. Several of theFrench girls, Marie knew, were hoping that Emil would take them to supper, andshe was relieved when he took only his sister. Marie caught Frank’s armand dragged him to the same table, managing to get seats opposite the Bergsons,so that she could hear what they were talking about. Alexandra made Emil tellMrs. Xavier Chevalier, the mother of the twenty, about how he had seen a famousmatador killed in the bull-ring. Marie listened to every word, only taking hereyes from Emil to watch Frank’s plate and keep it filled. When Emilfinished his account,—bloody enough to satisfy Mrs. Xavier and to makeher feel thankful that she was not a matador,—Marie broke out with avolley of questions. How did the women dress when they went to bull-fights? Didthey wear mantillas? Did they never wear hats?

After supper the young people played charades for the amusem*nt of theirelders, who sat gossiping between their guesses. All the shops in Sainte-Agneswere closed at eight o’clock that night, so that the merchants and theirclerks could attend the fair. The auction was the liveliest part of theentertainment, for the French boys always lost their heads when they began tobid, satisfied that their extravagance was in a good cause. After all thepincushions and sofa pillows and embroidered slippers were sold, Emilprecipitated a panic by taking out one of his turquoise shirt studs, whichevery one had been admiring, and handing it to the auctioneer. All the Frenchgirls clamored for it, and their sweethearts bid against each other recklessly.Marie wanted it, too, and she kept making signals to Frank, which he took asour pleasure in disregarding. He didn’t see the use of making a fussover a fellow just because he was dressed like a clown. When the turquoise wentto Malvina Sauvage, the French banker’s daughter, Marie shrugged hershoulders and betook herself to her little tent of shawls, where she began toshuffle her cards by the light of a tallow candle, calling out,“Fortunes, fortunes!”

The young priest, Father duch*esne, went first to have his fortune read. Marietook his long white hand, looked at it, and then began to run off her cards.“I see a long journey across water for you, Father. You will go to a townall cut up by water; built on islands, it seems to be, with rivers and greenfields all about. And you will visit an old lady with a white cap and goldhoops in her ears, and you will be very happy there.”

“Mais, oui,” said the priest, with a melancholy smile.“C’est L’Isle-Adam, chez ma mère. Vous êtes très savante, mafille.” He patted her yellow turban, calling, “Venez donc, mesgarçons! Il y a ici une véritable clairvoyante!”

Marie was clever at fortune-telling, indulging in a light irony that amused thecrowd. She told old Brunot, the miser, that he would lose all his money, marrya girl of sixteen, and live happily on a crust. Sholte, the fat Russian boy,who lived for his stomach, was to be disappointed in love, grow thin, and shoothimself from despondency. Amédée was to have twenty children, and nineteen ofthem were to be girls. Amédée slapped Frank on the back and asked him why hedidn’t see what the fortune-teller would promise him. But Frank shook offhis friendly hand and grunted, “She tell my fortune long ago; badenough!” Then he withdrew to a corner and sat glowering at his wife.

Frank’s case was all the more painful because he had no one in particularto fix his jealousy upon. Sometimes he could have thanked the man who wouldbring him evidence against his wife. He had discharged a good farm-boy, JanSmirka, because he thought Marie was fond of him; but she had not seemed tomiss Jan when he was gone, and she had been just as kind to the next boy. Thefarm-hands would always do anything for Marie; Frank couldn’t find one sosurly that he would not make an effort to please her. At the bottom of hisheart Frank knew well enough that if he could once give up his grudge, his wifewould come back to him. But he could never in the world do that. The grudge wasfundamental. Perhaps he could not have given it up if he had tried. Perhaps hegot more satisfaction out of feeling himself abused than he would have got outof being loved. If he could once have made Marie thoroughly unhappy, he mighthave relented and raised her from the dust. But she had never humbled herself.In the first days of their love she had been his slave; she had admired himabandonedly. But the moment he began to bully her and to be unjust, she beganto draw away; at first in tearful amazement, then in quiet, unspoken disgust.The distance between them had widened and hardened. It no longer contracted andbrought them suddenly together. The spark of her life went somewhere else, andhe was always watching to surprise it. He knew that somewhere she must get afeeling to live upon, for she was not a woman who could live without loving. Hewanted to prove to himself the wrong he felt. What did she hide in her heart?Where did it go? Even Frank had his churlish delicacies; he never reminded herof how much she had once loved him. For that Marie was grateful to him.

While Marie was chattering to the French boys, Amédée called Emil to the backof the room and whispered to him that they were going to play a joke on thegirls. At eleven o’clock, Amédée was to go up to the switchboard in thevestibule and turn off the electric lights, and every boy would have a chanceto kiss his sweetheart before Father duch*esne could find his way up the stairsto turn the current on again. The only difficulty was the candle inMarie’s tent; perhaps, as Emil had no sweetheart, he would oblige theboys by blowing out the candle. Emil said he would undertake to do that.

At five minutes to eleven he sauntered up to Marie’s booth, and theFrench boys dispersed to find their girls. He leaned over the card-table andgave himself up to looking at her. “Do you think you could tell myfortune?” he murmured. It was the first word he had had alone with herfor almost a year. “My luck hasn’t changed any. It’s just thesame.”

Marie had often wondered whether there was anyone else who could look histhoughts to you as Emil could. To-night, when she met his steady, powerfuleyes, it was impossible not to feel the sweetness of the dream he was dreaming;it reached her before she could shut it out, and hid itself in her heart. Shebegan to shuffle her cards furiously. “I’m angry with you,Emil,” she broke out with petulance. “Why did you give them thatlovely blue stone to sell? You might have known Frank wouldn’t buy it forme, and I wanted it awfully!”

Emil laughed shortly. “People who want such little things surely ought tohave them,” he said dryly. He thrust his hand into the pocket of hisvelvet trousers and brought out a handful of uncut turquoises, as big asmarbles. Leaning over the table he dropped them into her lap. “There,will those do? Be careful, don’t let any one see them. Now, I suppose youwant me to go away and let you play with them?”

Marie was gazing in rapture at the soft blue color of the stones. “Oh,Emil! Is everything down there beautiful like these? How could you ever comeaway?”

At that instant Amédée laid hands on the switchboard. There was a shiver and agiggle, and every one looked toward the red blur that Marie’s candle madein the dark. Immediately that, too, was gone. Little shrieks and currents ofsoft laughter ran up and down the dark hall. Marie started up,—directlyinto Emil’s arms. In the same instant she felt his lips. The veil thathad hung uncertainly between them for so long was dissolved. Before she knewwhat she was doing, she had committed herself to that kiss that was at once aboy’s and a man’s, as timid as it was tender; so like Emil and sounlike any one else in the world. Not until it was over did she realize what itmeant. And Emil, who had so often imagined the shock of this first kiss, wassurprised at its gentleness and naturalness. It was like a sigh which they hadbreathed together; almost sorrowful, as if each were afraid of wakeningsomething in the other.

When the lights came on again, everybody was laughing and shouting, and all theFrench girls were rosy and shining with mirth. Only Marie, in her little tentof shawls, was pale and quiet. Under her yellow turban the red coral pendantsswung against white cheeks. Frank was still staring at her, but he seemed tosee nothing. Years ago, he himself had had the power to take the blood from hercheeks like that. Perhaps he did not remember—perhaps he had nevernoticed! Emil was already at the other end of the hall, walking about with theshoulder-motion he had acquired among the Mexicans, studying the floor with hisintent, deep-set eyes. Marie began to take down and fold her shawls. She didnot glance up again. The young people drifted to the other end of the hallwhere the guitar was sounding. In a moment she heard Emil and Raoulsinging:—

“Across the Rio Grand-e
There lies a sunny land-e,
My bright-eyed Mexico!”

Alexandra Bergson came up to the card booth. “Let me help you, Marie. Youlook tired.”

She placed her hand on Marie’s arm and felt her shiver. Marie stiffenedunder that kind, calm hand. Alexandra drew back, perplexed and hurt.

There was about Alexandra something of the impervious calm of the fatalist,always disconcerting to very young people, who cannot feel that the heart livesat all unless it is still at the mercy of storms; unless its strings can screamto the touch of pain.

II

Signa’s wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome littleNorwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony, were sayinggood-night. Old Ivar was hitching the horses to the wagon to take the weddingpresents and the bride and groom up to their new home, on Alexandra’snorth quarter. When Ivar drove up to the gate, Emil and Marie Shabata began tocarry out the presents, and Alexandra went into her bedroom to bid Signagood-bye and to give her a few words of good counsel. She was surprised to findthat the bride had changed her slippers for heavy shoes and was pinning up herskirts. At that moment Nelse appeared at the gate with the two milk cows thatAlexandra had given Signa for a wedding present.

Alexandra began to laugh. “Why, Signa, you and Nelse are to ride home.I’ll send Ivar over with the cows in the morning.”

Signa hesitated and looked perplexed. When her husband called her, she pinnedher hat on resolutely. “I ta-ank I better do yust like he say,” shemurmured in confusion.

Alexandra and Marie accompanied Signa to the gate and saw the party set off,old Ivar driving ahead in the wagon and the bride and groom following on foot,each leading a cow. Emil burst into a laugh before they were out of hearing.

“Those two will get on,” said Alexandra as they turned back to thehouse. “They are not going to take any chances. They will feel safer withthose cows in their own stable. Marie, I am going to send for an old womannext. As soon as I get the girls broken in, I marry them off.”

“I’ve no patience with Signa, marrying that grumpy fellow!”Marie declared. “I wanted her to marry that nice Smirka boy who workedfor us last winter. I think she liked him, too.”

“Yes, I think she did,” Alexandra assented, “but I supposeshe was too much afraid of Nelse to marry any one else. Now that I think of it,most of my girls have married men they were afraid of. I believe there is agood deal of the cow in most Swedish girls. You high-strung Bohemiancan’t understand us. We’re a terribly practical people, and I guesswe think a cross man makes a good manager.”

Marie shrugged her shoulders and turned to pin up a lock of hair that hadfallen on her neck. Somehow Alexandra had irritated her of late. Everybodyirritated her. She was tired of everybody. “I’m going home alone,Emil, so you needn’t get your hat,” she said as she wound her scarfquickly about her head. “Good-night, Alexandra,” she called back ina strained voice, running down the gravel walk.

Emil followed with long strides until he overtook her. Then she began to walkslowly. It was a night of warm wind and faint starlight, and the fireflies wereglimmering over the wheat.

“Marie,” said Emil after they had walked for a while, “Iwonder if you know how unhappy I am?”

Marie did not answer him. Her head, in its white scarf, drooped forward alittle.

Emil kicked a clod from the path and went on:—

“I wonder whether you are really shallow-hearted, like you seem?Sometimes I think one boy does just as well as another for you. It never seemsto make much difference whether it is me or Raoul Marcel or Jan Smirka. Are youreally like that?”

“Perhaps I am. What do you want me to do? Sit round and cry all day? WhenI’ve cried until I can’t cry any more, then—then I must dosomething else.”

“Are you sorry for me?” he persisted.

“No, I’m not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldn’t letanything make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at the fair, Iwouldn’t go lovering after no woman. I’d take the first train andgo off and have all the fun there is.”

“I tried that, but it didn’t do any good. Everything reminded me.The nicer the place was, the more I wanted you.” They had come to thestile and Emil pointed to it persuasively. “Sit down a moment, I want toask you something.” Marie sat down on the top step and Emil drew nearer.“Would you tell me something that’s none of my business if youthought it would help me out? Well, then, tell me, please tell me, whyyou ran away with Frank Shabata!”

Marie drew back. “Because I was in love with him,” she said firmly.

“Really?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes, indeed. Very much in love with him. I think I was the one whosuggested our running away. From the first it was more my fault thanhis.”

Emil turned away his face.

“And now,” Marie went on, “I’ve got to remember that.Frank is just the same now as he was then, only then I would see him as Iwanted him to be. I would have my own way. And now I pay for it.”

“You don’t do all the paying.”

“That’s it. When one makes a mistake, there’s no tellingwhere it will stop. But you can go away; you can leave all this behindyou.”

“Not everything. I can’t leave you behind. Will you go away withme, Marie?”

Marie started up and stepped across the stile. “Emil! How wickedly youtalk! I am not that kind of a girl, and you know it. But what am I going to doif you keep tormenting me like this!” she added plaintively.

“Marie, I won’t bother you any more if you will tell me just onething. Stop a minute and look at me. No, nobody can see us. Everybody’sasleep. That was only a firefly. Marie, stop and tell me!”

Emil overtook her and catching her by the shoulders shook her gently, as if hewere trying to awaken a sleepwalker.

Marie hid her face on his arm. “Don’t ask me anything more. Idon’t know anything except how miserable I am. And I thought it would beall right when you came back. Oh, Emil,” she clutched his sleeve andbegan to cry, “what am I to do if you don’t go away? I can’tgo, and one of us must. Can’t you see?”

Emil stood looking down at her, holding his shoulders stiff and stiffening thearm to which she clung. Her white dress looked gray in the darkness. She seemedlike a troubled spirit, like some shadow out of the earth, clinging to him andentreating him to give her peace. Behind her the fireflies were weaving in andout over the wheat. He put his hand on her bent head. “On my honor,Marie, if you will say you love me, I will go away.”

She lifted her face to his. “How could I help it? Didn’t youknow?”

Emil was the one who trembled, through all his frame. After he left Marie ather gate, he wandered about the fields all night, till morning put out thefireflies and the stars.

III

One evening, a week after Signa’s wedding, Emil was kneeling before a boxin the sitting-room, packing his books. From time to time he rose and wanderedabout the house, picking up stray volumes and bringing them listlessly back tohis box. He was packing without enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine about hisfuture. Alexandra sat sewing by the table. She had helped him pack his trunk inthe afternoon. As Emil came and went by her chair with his books, he thought tohimself that it had not been so hard to leave his sister since he first wentaway to school. He was going directly to Omaha, to read law in the office of aSwedish lawyer until October, when he would enter the law school at Ann Arbor.They had planned that Alexandra was to come to Michigan—a long journeyfor her—at Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him.Nevertheless, he felt that this leave-taking would be more final than hisearlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with his old home and thebeginning of something new—he did not know what. His ideas about thefuture would not crystallize; the more he tried to think about it, the vaguerhis conception of it became. But one thing was clear, he told himself; it washigh time that he made good to Alexandra, and that ought to be incentive enoughto begin with.

As he went about gathering up his books he felt as if he were uprooting things.At last he threw himself down on the old slat lounge where he had slept when hewas little, and lay looking up at the familiar cracks in the ceiling.

“Tired, Emil?” his sister asked.

“Lazy,” he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her. Hestudied Alexandra’s face for a long time in the lamplight. It had neveroccurred to him that his sister was a handsome woman until Marie Shabata hadtold him so. Indeed, he had never thought of her as being a woman at all, onlya sister. As he studied her bent head, he looked up at the picture of JohnBergson above the lamp. “No,” he thought to himself, “shedidn’t get it there. I suppose I am more like that.”

“Alexandra,” he said suddenly, “that old walnut secretary youuse for a desk was father’s, wasn’t it?”

Alexandra went on stitching. “Yes. It was one of the first things hebought for the old log house. It was a great extravagance in those days. But hewrote a great many letters back to the old country. He had many friends there,and they wrote to him up to the time he died. No one ever blamed him forgrandfather’s disgrace. I can see him now, sitting there on Sundays, inhis white shirt, writing pages and pages, so carefully. He wrote a fine,regular hand, almost like engraving. Yours is something like his, when you takepains.”

“Grandfather was really crooked, was he?”

“He married an unscrupulous woman, and then—then I’m afraidhe was really crooked. When we first came here father used to have dreams aboutmaking a great fortune and going back to Sweden to pay back to the poor sailorsthe money grandfather had lost.”

Emil stirred on the lounge. “I say, that would have been worth while,wouldn’t it? Father wasn’t a bit like Lou or Oscar, was he? Ican’t remember much about him before he got sick.”

“Oh, not at all!” Alexandra dropped her sewing on her knee.“He had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make something ofhimself. He was a quiet man, but he was very intelligent. You would have beenproud of him, Emil.”

Alexandra felt that he would like to know there had been a man of his kin whomhe could admire. She knew that Emil was ashamed of Lou and Oscar, because theywere bigoted and self-satisfied. He never said much about them, but she couldfeel his disgust. His brothers had shown their disapproval of him ever since hefirst went away to school. The only thing that would have satisfied them wouldhave been his failure at the University. As it was, they resented every changein his speech, in his dress, in his point of view; though the latter they hadto conjecture, for Emil avoided talking to them about any but family matters.All his interests they treated as affectations.

Alexandra took up her sewing again. “I can remember father when he wasquite a young man. He belonged to some kind of a musical society, a malechorus, in Stockholm. I can remember going with mother to hear them sing. Theremust have been a hundred of them, and they all wore long black coats and whiteneckties. I was used to seeing father in a blue coat, a sort of jacket, andwhen I recognized him on the platform, I was very proud. Do you remember thatSwedish song he taught you, about the ship boy?”

“Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anythingdifferent.” Emil paused. “Father had a hard fight here,didn’t he?” he added thoughtfully.

“Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He believed in theland.”

“And in you, I guess,” Emil said to himself. There was anotherperiod of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect understanding,in which Emil and Alexandra had spent many of their happiest half-hours.

At last Emil said abruptly, “Lou and Oscar would be better off if theywere poor, wouldn’t they?”

Alexandra smiled. “Maybe. But their children wouldn’t. I have greathopes of Milly.”

Emil shivered. “I don’t know. Seems to me it gets worse as it goeson. The worst of the Swedes is that they’re never willing to find out howmuch they don’t know. It was like that at the University. Always sopleased with themselves! There’s no getting behind that conceited Swedishgrin. The Bohemians and Germans were so different.”

“Come, Emil, don’t go back on your own people. Father wasn’tconceited, Uncle Otto wasn’t. Even Lou and Oscar weren’t when theywere boys.”

Emil looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He turned on hisback and lay still for a long time, his hands locked under his head, looking upat the ceiling. Alexandra knew that he was thinking of many things. She felt noanxiety about Emil. She had always believed in him, as she had believed in theland. He had been more like himself since he got back from Mexico; seemed gladto be at home, and talked to her as he used to do. She had no doubt that hiswandering fit was over, and that he would soon be settled in life.

“Alexandra,” said Emil suddenly, “do you remember the wildduck we saw down on the river that time?”

His sister looked up. “I often think of her. It always seems to meshe’s there still, just like we saw her.”

“I know. It’s queer what things one remembers and what things oneforgets.” Emil yawned and sat up. “Well, it’s time to turnin.” He rose, and going over to Alexandra stooped down and kissed herlightly on the cheek. “Good-night, sister. I think you did pretty well byus.”

Emil took up his lamp and went upstairs. Alexandra sat finishing his newnightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his trunk.

IV

The next morning Angélique, Amédée’s wife, was in the kitchen bakingpies, assisted by old Mrs. Chevalier. Between the mixing-board and the stovestood the old cradle that had been Amédée’s, and in it was his black-eyedson. As Angélique, flushed and excited, with flour on her hands, stopped tosmile at the baby, Emil Bergson rode up to the kitchen door on his mare anddismounted.

“’Médée is out in the field, Emil,” Angélique called as sheran across the kitchen to the oven. “He begins to cut his wheat to-day;the first wheat ready to cut anywhere about here. He bought a new header, youknow, because all the wheat’s so short this year. I hope he can rent itto the neighbors, it cost so much. He and his cousins bought a steam thresheron shares. You ought to go out and see that header work. I watched it an hourthis morning, busy as I am with all the men to feed. He has a lot of hands, buthe’s the only one that knows how to drive the header or how to run theengine, so he has to be everywhere at once. He’s sick, too, and ought tobe in his bed.”

Emil bent over Hector Baptiste, trying to make him blink his round, bead-likeblack eyes. “Sick? What’s the matter with your daddy, kid? Beenmaking him walk the floor with you?”

Angélique sniffed. “Not much! We don’t have that kind of babies. Itwas his father that kept Baptiste awake. All night I had to be getting up andmaking mustard plasters to put on his stomach. He had an awful colic. He saidhe felt better this morning, but I don’t think he ought to be out in thefield, overheating himself.”

Angélique did not speak with much anxiety, not because she was indifferent, butbecause she felt so secure in their good fortune. Only good things could happento a rich, energetic, handsome young man like Amédée, with a new baby in thecradle and a new header in the field.

Emil stroked the black fuzz on Baptiste’s head. “I say, Angélique,one of ’Médée’s grandmothers, ’way back, must have been asquaw. This kid looks exactly like the Indian babies.”

Angélique made a face at him, but old Mrs. Chevalier had been touched on a sorepoint, and she let out such a stream of fiery patois that Emil fled fromthe kitchen and mounted his mare.

Opening the pasture gate from the saddle, Emil rode across the field to theclearing where the thresher stood, driven by a stationary engine and fed fromthe header boxes. As Amédée was not on the engine, Emil rode on to thewheatfield, where he recognized, on the header, the slight, wiry figure of hisfriend, coatless, his white shirt puffed out by the wind, his straw hat stuckjauntily on the side of his head. The six big work-horses that drew, or ratherpushed, the header, went abreast at a rapid walk, and as they were still greenat the work they required a good deal of management on Amédée’s part;especially when they turned the corners, where they divided, three and three,and then swung round into line again with a movement that looked as complicatedas a wheel of artillery. Emil felt a new thrill of admiration for his friend,and with it the old pang of envy at the way in which Amédée could do with hismight what his hand found to do, and feel that, whatever it was, it was themost important thing in the world. “I’ll have to bring Alexandra upto see this thing work,” Emil thought; “it’s splendid!”

When he saw Emil, Amédée waved to him and called to one of his twenty cousinsto take the reins. Stepping off the header without stopping it, he ran up toEmil who had dismounted. “Come along,” he called. “I have togo over to the engine for a minute. I gotta green man running it, and I gottato keep an eye on him.”

Emil thought the lad was unnaturally flushed and more excited than even thecares of managing a big farm at a critical time warranted. As they passedbehind a last year’s stack, Amédée clutched at his right side and sankdown for a moment on the straw.

“Ouch! I got an awful pain in me, Emil. Something’s the matter withmy insides, for sure.”

Emil felt his fiery cheek. “You ought to go straight to bed,’Médée, and telephone for the doctor; that’s what you ought todo.”

Amédée staggered up with a gesture of despair. “How can I? I got no timeto be sick. Three thousand dollars’ worth of new machinery to manage, andthe wheat so ripe it will begin to shatter next week. My wheat’s short,but it’s gotta grand full berries. What’s he slowing down for? Wehaven’t got header boxes enough to feed the thresher, I guess.”

Amédée started hot-foot across the stubble, leaning a little to the right as heran, and waved to the engineer not to stop the engine.

Emil saw that this was no time to talk about his own affairs. He mounted hismare and rode on to Sainte-Agnes, to bid his friends there good-bye. He wentfirst to see Raoul Marcel, and found him innocently practising the“Gloria” for the big confirmation service on Sunday while hepolished the mirrors of his father’s saloon.

As Emil rode homewards at three o’clock in the afternoon, he saw Amédéestaggering out of the wheatfield, supported by two of his cousins. Emil stoppedand helped them put the boy to bed.

V

When Frank Shabata came in from work at five o’clock that evening, oldMoses Marcel, Raoul’s father, telephoned him that Amédée had had aseizure in the wheatfield, and that Doctor Paradis was going to operate on himas soon as the Hanover doctor got there to help. Frank dropped a word of thisat the table, bolted his supper, and rode off to Sainte-Agnes, where therewould be sympathetic discussion of Amédée’s case at Marcel’ssaloon.

As soon as Frank was gone, Marie telephoned Alexandra. It was a comfort to hearher friend’s voice. Yes, Alexandra knew what there was to be known aboutAmédée. Emil had been there when they carried him out of the field, and hadstayed with him until the doctors operated for appendicitis at fiveo’clock. They were afraid it was too late to do much good; it should havebeen done three days ago. Amédée was in a very bad way. Emil had just comehome, worn out and sick himself. She had given him some brandy and put him tobed.

Marie hung up the receiver. Poor Amédée’s illness had taken on a newmeaning to her, now that she knew Emil had been with him. And it might soeasily have been the other way—Emil who was ill and Amédée who was sad!Marie looked about the dusky sitting-room. She had seldom felt so utterlylonely. If Emil was asleep, there was not even a chance of his coming; and shecould not go to Alexandra for sympathy. She meant to tell Alexandra everything,as soon as Emil went away. Then whatever was left between them would be honest.

But she could not stay in the house this evening. Where should she go? Shewalked slowly down through the orchard, where the evening air was heavy withthe smell of wild cotton. The fresh, salty scent of the wild roses had givenway before this more powerful perfume of midsummer. Wherever thoseashes-of-rose balls hung on their milky stalks, the air about them wassaturated with their breath. The sky was still red in the west and the eveningstar hung directly over the Bergsons’ wind-mill. Marie crossed the fenceat the wheatfield corner, and walked slowly along the path that led toAlexandra’s. She could not help feeling hurt that Emil had not come totell her about Amédée. It seemed to her most unnatural that he should not havecome. If she were in trouble, certainly he was the one person in the world shewould want to see. Perhaps he wished her to understand that for her he was asgood as gone already.

Marie stole slowly, flutteringly, along the path, like a white night-moth outof the fields. The years seemed to stretch before her like the land; spring,summer, autumn, winter, spring; always the same patient fields, the patientlittle trees, the patient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling atthe chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled andweakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead woman, who mightcautiously be released. Marie walked on, her face lifted toward the remote,inaccessible evening star.

When she reached the stile she sat down and waited. How terrible it was to lovepeople when you could not really share their lives!

Yes, in so far as she was concerned, Emil was already gone. They couldn’tmeet any more. There was nothing for them to say. They had spent the last pennyof their small change; there was nothing left but gold. The day of love-tokenswas past. They had now only their hearts to give each other. And Emil beinggone, what was her life to be like? In some ways, it would be easier. She wouldnot, at least, live in perpetual fear. If Emil were once away and settled atwork, she would not have the feeling that she was spoiling his life. With thememory he left her, she could be as rash as she chose. Nobody could be theworse for it but herself; and that, surely, did not matter. Her own case wasclear. When a girl had loved one man, and then loved another while that man wasstill alive, everybody knew what to think of her. What happened to her was oflittle consequence, so long as she did not drag other people down with her.Emil once away, she could let everything else go and live a new life of perfectlove.

Marie left the stile reluctantly. She had, after all, thought he might come.And how glad she ought to be, she told herself, that he was asleep. She leftthe path and went across the pasture. The moon was almost full. An owl washooting somewhere in the fields. She had scarcely thought about where she wasgoing when the pond glittered before her, where Emil had shot the ducks. Shestopped and looked at it. Yes, there would be a dirty way out of life, if onechose to take it. But she did not want to die. She wanted to live anddream—a hundred years, forever! As long as this sweetness welled up inher heart, as long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt asthe pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it encircled andswelled with that image of gold.

In the morning, when Emil came down-stairs, Alexandra met him in thesitting-room and put her hands on his shoulders. “Emil, I went to yourroom as soon as it was light, but you were sleeping so sound I hated to wakeyou. There was nothing you could do, so I let you sleep. They telephoned fromSainte-Agnes that Amédée died at three o’clock this morning.”

VI

The Church has always held that life is for the living. On Saturday, while halfthe village of Sainte-Agnes was mourning for Amédée and preparing the funeralblack for his burial on Monday, the other half was busy with white dresses andwhite veils for the great confirmation service to-morrow, when the bishop wasto confirm a class of one hundred boys and girls. Father duch*esne divided histime between the living and the dead. All day Saturday the church was a sceneof bustling activity, a little hushed by the thought of Amédée. The choir werebusy rehearsing a mass of Rossini, which they had studied and practised forthis occasion. The women were trimming the altar, the boys and girls werebringing flowers.

On Sunday morning the bishop was to drive overland to Sainte-Agnes fromHanover, and Emil Bergson had been asked to take the place of one ofAmédée’s cousins in the cavalcade of forty French boys who were to rideacross country to meet the bishop’s carriage. At six o’clock onSunday morning the boys met at the church. As they stood holding their horsesby the bridle, they talked in low tones of their dead comrade. They keptrepeating that Amédée had always been a good boy, glancing toward the red brickchurch which had played so large a part in Amédée’s life, had been thescene of his most serious moments and of his happiest hours. He had played andwrestled and sung and courted under its shadow. Only three weeks ago he hadproudly carried his baby there to be christened. They could not doubt that thatinvisible arm was still about Amédée; that through the church on earth he hadpassed to the church triumphant, the goal of the hopes and faith of so manyhundred years.

When the word was given to mount, the young men rode at a walk out of thevillage; but once out among the wheatfields in the morning sun, their horsesand their own youth got the better of them. A wave of zeal and fiery enthusiasmswept over them. They longed for a Jerusalem to deliver. The thud of theirgalloping hoofs interrupted many a country breakfast and brought many a womanand child to the door of the farmhouses as they passed. Five miles east ofSainte-Agnes they met the bishop in his open carriage, attended by two priests.Like one man the boys swung off their hats in a broad salute, and bowed theirheads as the handsome old man lifted his two fingers in the episcopal blessing.The horsem*n closed about the carriage like a guard, and whenever a restlesshorse broke from control and shot down the road ahead of the body, the bishoplaughed and rubbed his plump hands together. “What fine boys!” hesaid to his priests. “The Church still has her cavalry.”

As the troop swept past the graveyard half a mile east of the town,—thefirst frame church of the parish had stood there,—old Pierre Seguin wasalready out with his pick and spade, digging Amédée’s grave. He knelt anduncovered as the bishop passed. The boys with one accord looked away from oldPierre to the red church on the hill, with the gold cross flaming on itssteeple.

Mass was at eleven. While the church was filling, Emil Bergson waited outside,watching the wagons and buggies drive up the hill. After the bell began toring, he saw Frank Shabata ride up on horseback and tie his horse to thehitch-bar. Marie, then, was not coming. Emil turned and went into the church.Amédée’s was the only empty pew, and he sat down in it. Some ofAmédée’s cousins were there, dressed in black and weeping. When all thepews were full, the old men and boys packed the open space at the back of thechurch, kneeling on the floor. There was scarcely a family in town that was notrepresented in the confirmation class, by a cousin, at least. The newcommunicants, with their clear, reverent faces, were beautiful to look upon asthey entered in a body and took the front benches reserved for them. Evenbefore the Mass began, the air was charged with feeling. The choir had neversung so well and Raoul Marcel, in the “Gloria,” drew even thebishop’s eyes to the organ loft. For the offertory he sang Gounod’s“Ave Maria,”—always spoken of in Sainte-Agnes as “theAve Maria.”

Emil began to torture himself with questions about Marie. Was she ill? Had shequarreled with her husband? Was she too unhappy to find comfort even here? Hadshe, perhaps, thought that he would come to her? Was she waiting for him?Overtaxed by excitement and sorrow as he was, the rapture of the service tookhold upon his body and mind. As he listened to Raoul, he seemed to emerge fromthe conflicting emotions which had been whirling him about and sucking himunder. He felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it aconviction that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good waspossible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a kind of rapture inwhich he could love forever without faltering and without sin. He looked acrossthe heads of the people at Frank Shabata with calmness. That rapture was forthose who could feel it; for people who could not, it was non-existent. Hecoveted nothing that was Frank Shabata’s. The spirit he had met in musicwas his own. Frank Shabata had never found it; would never find it if he livedbeside it a thousand years; would have destroyed it if he had found it, asHerod slew the innocents, as Rome slew the martyrs.

San—cta Mari-i-i-a,

wailed Raoul from the organ loft;

O—ra pro no-o-bis!

And it did not occur to Emil that any one had ever reasoned thus before, thatmusic had ever before given a man this equivocal revelation.

The confirmation service followed the Mass. When it was over, the congregationthronged about the newly confirmed. The girls, and even the boys, were kissedand embraced and wept over. All the aunts and grandmothers wept with joy. Thehousewives had much ado to tear themselves away from the general rejoicing andhurry back to their kitchens. The country parishioners were staying in town fordinner, and nearly every house in Sainte-Agnes entertained visitors that day.Father duch*esne, the bishop, and the visiting priests dined with FabienSauvage, the banker. Emil and Frank Shabata were both guests of old MoiseMarcel. After dinner Frank and old Moise retired to the rear room of the saloonto play California Jack and drink their cognac, and Emil went over to thebanker’s with Raoul, who had been asked to sing for the bishop.

At three o’clock, Emil felt that he could stand it no longer. He slippedout under cover of “The Holy City,” followed by Malvina’swistful eye, and went to the stable for his mare. He was at that height ofexcitement from which everything is foreshortened, from which life seems shortand simple, death very near, and the soul seems to soar like an eagle. As herode past the graveyard he looked at the brown hole in the earth where Amédéewas to lie, and felt no horror. That, too, was beautiful, that simple doorwayinto forgetfulness. The heart, when it is too much alive, aches for that brownearth, and ecstasy has no fear of death. It is the old and the poor and themaimed who shrink from that brown hole; its wooers are found among the young,the passionate, the gallant-hearted. It was not until he had passed thegraveyard that Emil realized where he was going. It was the hour for sayinggood-bye. It might be the last time that he would see her alone, and today hecould leave her without rancor, without bitterness.

Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was full of the smell ofthe ripe wheat, like the smell of bread baking in an oven. The breath of thewheat and the sweet clover passed him like pleasant things in a dream. He couldfeel nothing but the sense of diminishing distance. It seemed to him that hismare was flying, or running on wheels, like a railway train. The sunlight,flashing on the window-glass of the big red barns, drove him wild with joy. Hewas like an arrow shot from the bow. His life poured itself out along the roadbefore him as he rode to the Shabata farm.

When Emil alighted at the Shabatas’ gate, his horse was in a lather. Hetied her in the stable and hurried to the house. It was empty. She might be atMrs. Hiller’s or with Alexandra. But anything that reminded him of herwould be enough, the orchard, the mulberry tree... When he reached the orchardthe sun was hanging low over the wheatfield. Long fingers of light reachedthrough the apple branches as through a net; the orchard was riddled and shotwith gold; light was the reality, the trees were merely interferences thatreflected and refracted light. Emil went softly down between the cherry treestoward the wheatfield. When he came to the corner, he stopped short and put hishand over his mouth. Marie was lying on her side under the white mulberry tree,her face half hidden in the grass, her eyes closed, her hands lying limplywhere they had happened to fall. She had lived a day of her new life of perfectlove, and it had left her like this. Her breast rose and fell faintly, as ifshe were asleep. Emil threw himself down beside her and took her in his arms.The blood came back to her cheeks, her amber eyes opened slowly, and in themEmil saw his own face and the orchard and the sun. “I was dreamingthis,” she whispered, hiding her face against him, “don’ttake my dream away!”

VII

When Frank Shabata got home that night, he found Emil’s mare in hisstable. Such an impertinence amazed him. Like everybody else, Frank had had anexciting day. Since noon he had been drinking too much, and he was in a badtemper. He talked bitterly to himself while he put his own horse away, and ashe went up the path and saw that the house was dark he felt an added sense ofinjury. He approached quietly and listened on the doorstep. Hearing nothing, heopened the kitchen door and went softly from one room to another. Then he wentthrough the house again, upstairs and down, with no better result. He sat downon the bottom step of the box stairway and tried to get his wits together. Inthat unnatural quiet there was no sound but his own heavy breathing. Suddenlyan owl began to hoot out in the fields. Frank lifted his head. An idea flashedinto his mind, and his sense of injury and outrage grew. He went into hisbedroom and took his murderous 405 Winchester from the closet.

When Frank took up his gun and walked out of the house, he had not the faintestpurpose of doing anything with it. He did not believe that he had any realgrievance. But it gratified him to feel like a desperate man. He had got intothe habit of seeing himself always in desperate straits. His unhappytemperament was like a cage; he could never get out of it; and he felt thatother people, his wife in particular, must have put him there. It had nevermore than dimly occurred to Frank that he made his own unhappiness. Though hetook up his gun with dark projects in his mind, he would have been paralyzedwith fright had he known that there was the slightest probability of his evercarrying any of them out.

Frank went slowly down to the orchard gate, stopped and stood for a moment lostin thought. He retraced his steps and looked through the barn and the hayloft.Then he went out to the road, where he took the foot-path along the outside ofthe orchard hedge. The hedge was twice as tall as Frank himself, and so densethat one could see through it only by peering closely between the leaves. Hecould see the empty path a long way in the moonlight. His mind traveled aheadto the stile, which he always thought of as haunted by Emil Bergson. But whyhad he left his horse?

At the wheatfield corner, where the orchard hedge ended and the path led acrossthe pasture to the Bergsons’, Frank stopped. In the warm, breathlessnight air he heard a murmuring sound, perfectly inarticulate, as low as thesound of water coming from a spring, where there is no fall, and where thereare no stones to fret it. Frank strained his ears. It ceased. He held hisbreath and began to tremble. Resting the butt of his gun on the ground, heparted the mulberry leaves softly with his fingers and peered through the hedgeat the dark figures on the grass, in the shadow of the mulberry tree. It seemedto him that they must feel his eyes, that they must hear him breathing. Butthey did not. Frank, who had always wanted to see things blacker than theywere, for once wanted to believe less than he saw. The woman lying in theshadow might so easily be one of the Bergsons’ farm-girls.... Again themurmur, like water welling out of the ground. This time he heard it moredistinctly, and his blood was quicker than his brain. He began to act, just asa man who falls into the fire begins to act. The gun sprang to his shoulder, hesighted mechanically and fired three times without stopping, stopped withoutknowing why. Either he shut his eyes or he had vertigo. He did not see anythingwhile he was firing. He thought he heard a cry simultaneous with the secondreport, but he was not sure. He peered again through the hedge, at the two darkfigures under the tree. They had fallen a little apart from each other, andwere perfectly still—No, not quite; in a white patch of light, where themoon shone through the branches, a man’s hand was plucking spasmodicallyat the grass.

Suddenly the woman stirred and uttered a cry, then another, and another. Shewas living! She was dragging herself toward the hedge! Frank dropped his gunand ran back along the path, shaking, stumbling, gasping. He had never imaginedsuch horror. The cries followed him. They grew fainter and thicker, as if shewere choking. He dropped on his knees beside the hedge and crouched like arabbit, listening; fainter, fainter; a sound like a whine; again—amoan—another—silence. Frank scrambled to his feet and ran on,groaning and praying. From habit he went toward the house, where he was used tobeing soothed when he had worked himself into a frenzy, but at the sight of theblack, open door, he started back. He knew that he had murdered somebody, thata woman was bleeding and moaning in the orchard, but he had not realized beforethat it was his wife. The gate stared him in the face. He threw his hands overhis head. Which way to turn? He lifted his tormented face and looked at thesky. “Holy Mother of God, not to suffer! She was a good girl—not tosuffer!”

Frank had been wont to see himself in dramatic situations; but now, when hestood by the windmill, in the bright space between the barn and the house,facing his own black doorway, he did not see himself at all. He stood like thehare when the dogs are approaching from all sides. And he ran like a hare, backand forth about that moonlit space, before he could make up his mind to go intothe dark stable for a horse. The thought of going into a doorway was terribleto him. He caught Emil’s horse by the bit and led it out. He could nothave buckled a bridle on his own. After two or three attempts, he liftedhimself into the saddle and started for Hanover. If he could catch the oneo’clock train, he had money enough to get as far as Omaha.

While he was thinking dully of this in some less sensitized part of his brain,his acuter faculties were going over and over the cries he had heard in theorchard. Terror was the only thing that kept him from going back to her, terrorthat she might still be she, that she might still be suffering. A woman,mutilated and bleeding in his orchard—it was because it was a woman thathe was so afraid. It was inconceivable that he should have hurt a woman. Hewould rather be eaten by wild beasts than see her move on the ground as she hadmoved in the orchard. Why had she been so careless? She knew he was like acrazy man when he was angry. She had more than once taken that gun away fromhim and held it, when he was angry with other people. Once it had gone offwhile they were struggling over it. She was never afraid. But, when she knewhim, why hadn’t she been more careful? Didn’t she have all summerbefore her to love Emil Bergson in, without taking such chances? Probably shehad met the Smirka boy, too, down there in the orchard. He didn’t care.She could have met all the men on the Divide there, and welcome, if only shehadn’t brought this horror on him.

There was a wrench in Frank’s mind. He did not honestly believe that ofher. He knew that he was doing her wrong. He stopped his horse to admit this tohimself the more directly, to think it out the more clearly. He knew that hewas to blame. For three years he had been trying to break her spirit. She had away of making the best of things that seemed to him a sentimental affectation.He wanted his wife to resent that he was wasting his best years among thesestupid and unappreciative people; but she had seemed to find the people quitegood enough. If he ever got rich he meant to buy her pretty clothes and takeher to California in a Pullman car, and treat her like a lady; but in the meantime he wanted her to feel that life was as ugly and as unjust as he felt it.He had tried to make her life ugly. He had refused to share any of the littlepleasures she was so plucky about making for herself. She could be gay aboutthe least thing in the world; but she must be gay! When she first came to him,her faith in him, her adoration—Frank struck the mare with his fist. Whyhad Marie made him do this thing; why had she brought this upon him? He wasoverwhelmed by sickening misfortune. All at once he heard her criesagain—he had forgotten for a moment. “Maria,” he sobbedaloud, “Maria!”

When Frank was halfway to Hanover, the motion of his horse brought on a violentattack of nausea. After it had passed, he rode on again, but he could think ofnothing except his physical weakness and his desire to be comforted by hiswife. He wanted to get into his own bed. Had his wife been at home, he wouldhave turned and gone back to her meekly enough.

VIII

When old Ivar climbed down from his loft at four o’clock the nextmorning, he came upon Emil’s mare, jaded and lather-stained, her bridlebroken, chewing the scattered tufts of hay outside the stable door. The old manwas thrown into a fright at once. He put the mare in her stall, threw her ameasure of oats, and then set out as fast as his bow-legs could carry him onthe path to the nearest neighbor.

“Something is wrong with that boy. Some misfortune has come upon us. Hewould never have used her so, in his right senses. It is not his way to abusehis mare,” the old man kept muttering, as he scuttled through the short,wet pasture grass on his bare feet.

While Ivar was hurrying across the fields, the first long rays of the sun werereaching down between the orchard boughs to those two dew-drenched figures. Thestory of what had happened was written plainly on the orchard grass, and on thewhite mulberries that had fallen in the night and were covered with dark stain.For Emil the chapter had been short. He was shot in the heart, and had rolledover on his back and died. His face was turned up to the sky and his brows weredrawn in a frown, as if he had realized that something had befallen him. Butfor Marie Shabata it had not been so easy. One ball had torn through her rightlung, another had shattered the carotid artery. She must have started up andgone toward the hedge, leaving a trail of blood. There she had fallen and bled.From that spot there was another trail, heavier than the first, where she musthave dragged herself back to Emil’s body. Once there, she seemed not tohave struggled any more. She had lifted her head to her lover’s breast,taken his hand in both her own, and bled quietly to death. She was lying on herright side in an easy and natural position, her cheek on Emil’s shoulder.On her face there was a look of ineffable content. Her lips were parted alittle; her eyes were lightly closed, as if in a day-dream or a light slumber.After she lay down there, she seemed not to have moved an eyelash. The hand sheheld was covered with dark stains, where she had kissed it.

But the stained, slippery grass, the darkened mulberries, told only half thestory. Above Marie and Emil, two white butterflies from Frank’salfalfa-field were fluttering in and out among the interlacing shadows; divingand soaring, now close together, now far apart; and in the long grass by thefence the last wild roses of the year opened their pink hearts to die.

When Ivar reached the path by the hedge, he saw Shabata’s rifle lying inthe way. He turned and peered through the branches, falling upon his knees asif his legs had been mowed from under him. “Merciful God!” hegroaned.

Alexandra, too, had risen early that morning, because of her anxiety aboutEmil. She was in Emil’s room upstairs when, from the window, she saw Ivarcoming along the path that led from the Shabatas’. He was running like aspent man, tottering and lurching from side to side. Ivar never drank, andAlexandra thought at once that one of his spells had come upon him, and that hemust be in a very bad way indeed. She ran downstairs and hurried out to meethim, to hide his infirmity from the eyes of her household. The old man fell inthe road at her feet and caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head.“Mistress, mistress,” he sobbed, “it has fallen! Sin anddeath for the young ones! God have mercy upon us!”

PART V.
Alexandra

I

Ivar was sitting at a cobbler’s bench in the barn, mending harness by thelight of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm. It was only fiveo’clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had come up in the afternoon,bringing black clouds, a cold wind and torrents of rain. The old man wore hisbuffalo-skin coat, and occasionally stopped to warm his fingers at the lantern.Suddenly a woman burst into the shed, as if she had been blown in, accompaniedby a shower of rain-drops. It was Signa, wrapped in a man’s overcoat andwearing a pair of boots over her shoes. In time of trouble Signa had come backto stay with her mistress, for she was the only one of the maids from whomAlexandra would accept much personal service. It was three months now since thenews of the terrible thing that had happened in Frank Shabata’s orchardhad first run like a fire over the Divide. Signa and Nelse were staying on withAlexandra until winter.

“Ivar,” Signa exclaimed as she wiped the rain from her face,“do you know where she is?”

The old man put down his cobbler’s knife. “Who, themistress?”

“Yes. She went away about three o’clock. I happened to look out ofthe window and saw her going across the fields in her thin dress and sun-hat.And now this storm has come on. I thought she was going to Mrs. Hiller’s,and I telephoned as soon as the thunder stopped, but she had not been there.I’m afraid she is out somewhere and will get her death of cold.”

Ivar put on his cap and took up the lantern. “Ja, ja, wewill see. I will hitch the boy’s mare to the cart and go.”

Signa followed him across the wagon-shed to the horses’ stable. She wasshivering with cold and excitement. “Where do you suppose she can be,Ivar?”

The old man lifted a set of single harness carefully from its peg. “Howshould I know?”

“But you think she is at the graveyard, don’t you?” Signapersisted. “So do I. Oh, I wish she would be more like herself! Ican’t believe it’s Alexandra Bergson come to this, with no headabout anything. I have to tell her when to eat and when to go to bed.”

“Patience, patience, sister,” muttered Ivar as he settled the bitin the horse’s mouth. “When the eyes of the flesh are shut, theeyes of the spirit are open. She will have a message from those who are gone,and that will bring her peace. Until then we must bear with her. You and I arethe only ones who have weight with her. She trusts us.”

“How awful it’s been these last three months.” Signa held thelantern so that he could see to buckle the straps. “It don’t seemright that we must all be so miserable. Why do we all have to be punished?Seems to me like good times would never come again.”

Ivar expressed himself in a deep sigh, but said nothing. He stooped and took asandburr from his toe.

“Ivar,” Signa asked suddenly, “will you tell me why you gobarefoot? All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask you. Is it fora penance, or what?”

“No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my youth up Ihave had a strong, rebellious body, and have been subject to every kind oftemptation. Even in age my temptations are prolonged. It was necessary to makesome allowances; and the feet, as I understand it, are free members. There isno divine prohibition for them in the Ten Commandments. The hands, the tongue,the eyes, the heart, all the bodily desires we are commanded to subdue; but thefeet are free members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even totrampling in filth when my desires are low. They are quickly cleanedagain.”

Signa did not laugh. She looked thoughtful as she followed Ivar out to thewagon-shed and held the shafts up for him, while he backed in the mare andbuckled the hold-backs. “You have been a good friend to the mistress,Ivar,” she murmured.

“And you, God be with you,” replied Ivar as he clambered into thecart and put the lantern under the oilcloth lap-cover. “Now for aducking, my girl,” he said to the mare, gathering up the reins.

As they emerged from the shed, a stream of water, running off the thatch,struck the mare on the neck. She tossed her head indignantly, then struck outbravely on the soft ground, slipping back again and again as she climbed thehill to the main road. Between the rain and the darkness Ivar could see verylittle, so he let Emil’s mare have the rein, keeping her head in theright direction. When the ground was level, he turned her out of the dirt roadupon the sod, where she was able to trot without slipping.

Before Ivar reached the graveyard, three miles from the house, the storm hadspent itself, and the downpour had died into a soft, dripping rain. The sky andthe land were a dark smoke color, and seemed to be coming together, like twowaves. When Ivar stopped at the gate and swung out his lantern, a white figurerose from beside John Bergson’s white stone.

The old man sprang to the ground and shuffled toward the gate calling,“Mistress, mistress!”

Alexandra hurried to meet him and put her hand on his shoulder.“Tyst! Ivar. There’s nothing to be worried about. I’msorry if I’ve scared you all. I didn’t notice the storm till it wason me, and I couldn’t walk against it. I’m glad you’ve come.I am so tired I didn’t know how I’d ever get home.”

Ivar swung the lantern up so that it shone in her face. “Gud! Youare enough to frighten us, mistress. You look like a drowned woman. How couldyou do such a thing!”

Groaning and mumbling he led her out of the gate and helped her into the cart,wrapping her in the dry blankets on which he had been sitting.

Alexandra smiled at his solicitude. “Not much use in that, Ivar. You willonly shut the wet in. I don’t feel so cold now; but I’m heavy andnumb. I’m glad you came.”

Ivar turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her feet sent back acontinual spatter of mud.

Alexandra spoke to the old man as they jogged along through the sullen graytwilight of the storm. “Ivar, I think it has done me good to get coldclear through like this, once. I don’t believe I shall suffer so much anymore. When you get so near the dead, they seem more real than the living.Worldly thoughts leave one. Ever since Emil died, I’ve suffered so whenit rained. Now that I’ve been out in it with him, I shan’t dreadit. After you once get cold clear through, the feeling of the rain on you issweet. It seems to bring back feelings you had when you were a baby. It carriesyou back into the dark, before you were born; you can’t see things, butthey come to you, somehow, and you know them and aren’t afraid of them.Maybe it’s like that with the dead. If they feel anything at all,it’s the old things, before they were born, that comfort people like thefeeling of their own bed does when they are little.”

“Mistress,” said Ivar reproachfully, “those are bad thoughts.The dead are in Paradise.”

Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was in Paradise.

When they got home, Signa had a fire burning in the sitting-room stove. Sheundressed Alexandra and gave her a hot footbath, while Ivar made ginger tea inthe kitchen. When Alexandra was in bed, wrapped in hot blankets, Ivar came inwith his tea and saw that she drank it. Signa asked permission to sleep on theslat lounge outside her door. Alexandra endured their attentions patiently, butshe was glad when they put out the lamp and left her. As she lay alone in thedark, it occurred to her for the first time that perhaps she was actually tiredof life. All the physical operations of life seemed difficult and painful. Shelonged to be free from her own body, which ached and was so heavy. And longingitself was heavy: she yearned to be free of that.

As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly than for manyyears, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being lifted and carried lightly bysome one very strong. He was with her a long while this time, and carried hervery far, and in his arms she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on herbed again, she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life, she sawhim, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and his face was covered. Hewas standing in the doorway of her room. His white cloak was thrown over hisface, and his head was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong asthe foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the elbow, was dark andgleaming, like bronze, and she knew at once that it was the arm of themightiest of all lovers. She knew at last for whom it was she had waited, andwhere he would carry her. That, she told herself, was very well. Then she wentto sleep.

Alexandra wakened in the morning with nothing worse than a hard cold and astiff shoulder. She kept her bed for several days, and it was during that timethat she formed a resolution to go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata. Ever sinceshe last saw him in the courtroom, Frank’s haggard face and wild eyes hadhaunted her. The trial had lasted only three days. Frank had given himself upto the police in Omaha and pleaded guilty of killing without malice and withoutpremeditation. The gun was, of course, against him, and the judge had given himthe full sentence,—ten years. He had now been in the State Penitentiaryfor a month.

Frank was the only one, Alexandra told herself, for whom anything could bedone. He had been less in the wrong than any of them, and he was paying theheaviest penalty. She often felt that she herself had been more to blame thanpoor Frank. From the time the Shabatas had first moved to the neighboring farm,she had omitted no opportunity of throwing Marie and Emil together. Because sheknew Frank was surly about doing little things to help his wife, she was alwayssending Emil over to spade or plant or carpenter for Marie. She was glad tohave Emil see as much as possible of an intelligent, city-bred girl like theirneighbor; she noticed that it improved his manners. She knew that Emil was fondof Marie, but it had never occurred to her that Emil’s feeling might bedifferent from her own. She wondered at herself now, but she had never thoughtof danger in that direction. If Marie had been unmarried,—oh, yes! Thenshe would have kept her eyes open. But the mere fact that she wasShabata’s wife, for Alexandra, settled everything. That she wasbeautiful, impulsive, barely two years older than Emil, these facts had had noweight with Alexandra. Emil was a good boy, and only bad boys ran after marriedwomen.

Now, Alexandra could in a measure realize that Marie was, after all, Marie; notmerely a “married woman.” Sometimes, when Alexandra thought of her,it was with an aching tenderness. The moment she had reached them in theorchard that morning, everything was clear to her. There was something aboutthose two lying in the grass, something in the way Marie had settled her cheekon Emil’s shoulder, that told her everything. She wondered then how theycould have helped loving each other; how she could have helped knowing thatthey must. Emil’s cold, frowning face, the girl’scontent—Alexandra had felt awe of them, even in the first shock of hergrief.

The idleness of those days in bed, the relaxation of body which attended them,enabled Alexandra to think more calmly than she had done since Emil’sdeath. She and Frank, she told herself, were left out of that group of friendswho had been overwhelmed by disaster. She must certainly see Frank Shabata.Even in the courtroom her heart had grieved for him. He was in a strangecountry, he had no kinsmen or friends, and in a moment he had ruined his life.Being what he was, she felt, Frank could not have acted otherwise. She couldunderstand his behavior more easily than she could understand Marie’s.Yes, she must go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata.

The day after Emil’s funeral, Alexandra had written to Carl Linstrum; asingle page of notepaper, a bare statement of what had happened. She was not awoman who could write much about such a thing, and about her own feelings shecould never write very freely. She knew that Carl was away from post-offices,prospecting somewhere in the interior. Before he started he had written herwhere he expected to go, but her ideas about Alaska were vague. As the weekswent by and she heard nothing from him, it seemed to Alexandra that her heartgrew hard against Carl. She began to wonder whether she would not do better tofinish her life alone. What was left of life seemed unimportant.

II

Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Alexandra Bergson, dressed ina black suit and traveling-hat, alighted at the Burlington depot in Lincoln.She drove to the Lindell Hotel, where she had stayed two years ago when shecame up for Emil’s Commencement. In spite of her usual air of surenessand self-possession, Alexandra felt ill at ease in hotels, and she was glad,when she went to the clerk’s desk to register, that there were not manypeople in the lobby. She had her supper early, wearing her hat and black jacketdown to the dining-room and carrying her handbag. After supper she went out fora walk.

It was growing dark when she reached the university campus. She did not go intothe grounds, but walked slowly up and down the stone walk outside the long ironfence, looking through at the young men who were running from one building toanother, at the lights shining from the armory and the library. A squad ofcadets were going through their drill behind the armory, and the commands oftheir young officer rang out at regular intervals, so sharp and quick thatAlexandra could not understand them. Two stalwart girls came down the librarysteps and out through one of the iron gates. As they passed her, Alexandra waspleased to hear them speaking Bohemian to each other. Every few moments a boywould come running down the flagged walk and dash out into the street as if hewere rushing to announce some wonder to the world. Alexandra felt a greattenderness for them all. She wished one of them would stop and speak to her.She wished she could ask them whether they had known Emil.

As she lingered by the south gate she actually did encounter one of the boys.He had on his drill cap and was swinging his books at the end of a long strap.It was dark by this time; he did not see her and ran against her. He snatchedoff his cap and stood bareheaded and panting. “I’m awfullysorry,” he said in a bright, clear voice, with a rising inflection, as ifhe expected her to say something.

“Oh, it was my fault!” said Alexandra eagerly. “Are you anold student here, may I ask?”

“No, ma’am. I’m a Freshie, just off the farm. Cherry County.Were you hunting somebody?”

“No, thank you. That is—” Alexandra wanted to detain him.“That is, I would like to find some of my brother’s friends. Hegraduated two years ago.”

“Then you’d have to try the Seniors, wouldn’t you?Let’s see; I don’t know any of them yet, but there’ll be sureto be some of them around the library. That red building, right there,”he pointed.

“Thank you, I’ll try there,” said Alexandra lingeringly.

“Oh, that’s all right! Good-night.” The lad clapped his capon his head and ran straight down Eleventh Street. Alexandra looked after himwistfully.

She walked back to her hotel unreasonably comforted. “What a nice voicethat boy had, and how polite he was. I know Emil was always like that towomen.” And again, after she had undressed and was standing in hernightgown, brushing her long, heavy hair by the electric light, she rememberedhim and said to herself, “I don’t think I ever heard a nicer voicethan that boy had. I hope he will get on well here. Cherry County; that’swhere the hay is so fine, and the coyotes can scratch down to water.”

At nine o’clock the next morning Alexandra presented herself at thewarden’s office in the State Penitentiary. The warden was a German, aruddy, cheerful-looking man who had formerly been a harness-maker. Alexandrahad a letter to him from the German banker in Hanover. As he glanced at theletter, Mr. Schwartz put away his pipe.

“That big Bohemian, is it? Sure, he’s gettin’ alongfine,” said Mr. Schwartz cheerfully.

“I am glad to hear that. I was afraid he might be quarrelsome and gethimself into more trouble. Mr. Schwartz, if you have time, I would like to tellyou a little about Frank Shabata, and why I am interested in him.”

The warden listened genially while she told him briefly something ofFrank’s history and character, but he did not seem to find anythingunusual in her account.

“Sure, I’ll keep an eye on him. We’ll take care of him allright,” he said, rising. “You can talk to him here, while I go tosee to things in the kitchen. I’ll have him sent in. He ought to be donewashing out his cell by this time. We have to keep ’em clean, youknow.”

The warden paused at the door, speaking back over his shoulder to a pale youngman in convicts’ clothes who was seated at a desk in the corner, writingin a big ledger.

“Bertie, when 1037 is brought in, you just step out and give this lady achance to talk.”

The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger again.

When Mr. Schwartz disappeared, Alexandra thrust her black-edged handkerchiefnervously into her handbag. Coming out on the streetcar she had not had theleast dread of meeting Frank. But since she had been here the sounds and smellsin the corridor, the look of the men in convicts’ clothes who passed theglass door of the warden’s office, affected her unpleasantly.

The warden’s clock ticked, the young convict’s pen scratched busilyin the big book, and his sharp shoulders were shaken every few seconds by aloose cough which he tried to smother. It was easy to see that he was a sickman. Alexandra looked at him timidly, but he did not once raise his eyes. Hewore a white shirt under his striped jacket, a high collar, and a necktie, verycarefully tied. His hands were thin and white and well cared for, and he had aseal ring on his little finger. When he heard steps approaching in thecorridor, he rose, blotted his book, put his pen in the rack, and left the roomwithout raising his eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came in, bringingFrank Shabata.

“You the lady that wanted to talk to 1037? Here he is. Be on your goodbehavior, now. He can set down, lady,” seeing that Alexandra remainedstanding. “Push that white button when you’re through with him, andI’ll come.”

The guard went out and Alexandra and Frank were left alone.

Alexandra tried not to see his hideous clothes. She tried to look straight intohis face, which she could scarcely believe was his. It was already bleached toa chalky gray. His lips were colorless, his fine teeth looked yellowish. Heglanced at Alexandra sullenly, blinked as if he had come from a dark place, andone eyebrow twitched continually. She felt at once that this interview was aterrible ordeal to him. His shaved head, showing the conformation of his skull,gave him a criminal look which he had not had during the trial.

Alexandra held out her hand. “Frank,” she said, her eyes fillingsuddenly, “I hope you’ll let me be friendly with you. I understandhow you did it. I don’t feel hard toward you. They were more to blamethan you.”

Frank jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers pocket. He had begunto cry. He turned away from Alexandra. “I never did mean to donot’ing to dat woman,” he muttered. “I never mean to donot’ing to dat boy. I ain’t had not’ing ag’in’dat boy. I always like dat boy fine. An’ then I find him—” Hestopped. The feeling went out of his face and eyes. He dropped into a chair andsat looking stolidly at the floor, his hands hanging loosely between his knees,the handkerchief lying across his striped leg. He seemed to have stirred up inhis mind a disgust that had paralyzed his faculties.

“I haven’t come up here to blame you, Frank. I think they were moreto blame than you.” Alexandra, too, felt benumbed.

Frank looked up suddenly and stared out of the office window. “I guessdat place all go to hell what I work so hard on,” he said with a slow,bitter smile. “I not care a damn.” He stopped and rubbed the palmof his hand over the light bristles on his head with annoyance. “I no cant’ink without my hair,” he complained. “I forget English. Wenot talk here, except swear.”

Alexandra was bewildered. Frank seemed to have undergone a change ofpersonality. There was scarcely anything by which she could recognize herhandsome Bohemian neighbor. He seemed, somehow, not altogether human. She didnot know what to say to him.

“You do not feel hard to me, Frank?” she asked at last.

Frank clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. “I not feel hard atno woman. I tell you I not that kind-a man. I never hit my wife. No, never Ihurt her when she devil me something awful!” He struck his fist down onthe warden’s desk so hard that he afterward stroked it absently. A palepink crept over his neck and face. “Two, t’ree years I know datwoman don’ care no more ’bout me, Alexandra Bergson. I know sheafter some other man. I know her, oo-oo! An’ I ain’t never hurther. I never would-a done dat, if I ain’t had dat gun along. I don’know what in hell make me take dat gun. She always say I ain’t no man tocarry gun. If she been in dat house, where she ought-a been—But das afoolish talk.”

Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had stopped before. Alexandrafelt that there was something strange in the way he chilled off, as ifsomething came up in him that extinguished his power of feeling or thinking.

“Yes, Frank,” she said kindly. “I know you never meant tohurt Marie.”

Frank smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears. “Youknow, I most forgit dat woman’s name. She ain’t got no name for meno more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman what make me do dat—Honestto God, but I hate her! I no man to fight. I don’ want to kill no boy andno woman. I not care how many men she take under dat tree. I no care fornot’ing but dat fine boy I kill, Alexandra Bergson. I guess I go crazysure ’nough.”

Alexandra remembered the little yellow cane she had found in Frank’sclothes-closet. She thought of how he had come to this country a gay youngfellow, so attractive that the prettiest Bohemian girl in Omaha had run awaywith him. It seemed unreasonable that life should have landed him in such aplace as this. She blamed Marie bitterly. And why, with her happy, affectionatenature, should she have brought destruction and sorrow to all who had lovedher, even to poor old Joe Tovesky, the uncle who used to carry her about soproudly when she was a little girl? That was the strangest thing of all. Wasthere, then, something wrong in being warm-hearted and impulsive like that?Alexandra hated to think so. But there was Emil, in the Norwegian graveyard athome, and here was Frank Shabata. Alexandra rose and took him by the hand.

“Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get you pardoned.I’ll never give the Governor any peace. I know I can get you out of thisplace.”

Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence from her face.“Alexandra,” he said earnestly, “if I git out-a here, I nottrouble dis country no more. I go back where I come from; see my mother.”

Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it nervously. He putout his finger and absently touched a button on her black jacket.“Alexandra,” he said in a low tone, looking steadily at the button,“you ain’ t’ink I use dat girl awful bad before—”

“No, Frank. We won’t talk about that,” Alexandra said,pressing his hand. “I can’t help Emil now, so I’m going to dowhat I can for you. You know I don’t go away from home often, and I cameup here on purpose to tell you this.”

The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexandra nodded, and hecame in and touched the white button on his desk. The guard appeared, and witha sinking heart Alexandra saw Frank led away down the corridor. After a fewwords with Mr. Schwartz, she left the prison and made her way to thestreet-car. She had refused with horror the warden’s cordial invitationto “go through the institution.” As the car lurched over its unevenroadbed, back toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought of how she and Frank had beenwrecked by the same storm and of how, although she could come out into thesunlight, she had not much more left in her life than he. She remembered somelines from a poem she had liked in her schooldays:—

Henceforth the world will only be
A wider prison-house to me,—

and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some such feeling as hadtwice frozen Frank Shabata’s features while they talked together. Shewished she were back on the Divide.

When Alexandra entered her hotel, the clerk held up one finger and beckoned toher. As she approached his desk, he handed her a telegram. Alexandra took theyellow envelope and looked at it in perplexity, then stepped into the elevatorwithout opening it. As she walked down the corridor toward her room, shereflected that she was, in a manner, immune from evil tidings. On reaching herroom she locked the door, and sitting down on a chair by the dresser, openedthe telegram. It was from Hanover, and it read:—

Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here until you come. Please hurry.

CARL LINSTRUM.

Alexandra put her head down on the dresser and burst into tears.

III

The next afternoon Carl and Alexandra were walking across the fields from Mrs.Hiller’s. Alexandra had left Lincoln after midnight, and Carl had met herat the Hanover station early in the morning. After they reached home, Alexandrahad gone over to Mrs. Hiller’s to leave a little present she had boughtfor her in the city. They stayed at the old lady’s door but a moment, andthen came out to spend the rest of the afternoon in the sunny fields.

Alexandra had taken off her black traveling suit and put on a white dress;partly because she saw that her black clothes made Carl uncomfortable andpartly because she felt oppressed by them herself. They seemed a little likethe prison where she had worn them yesterday, and to be out of place in theopen fields. Carl had changed very little. His cheeks were browner and fuller.He looked less like a tired scholar than when he went away a year ago, but noone, even now, would have taken him for a man of business. His soft, lustrousblack eyes, his whimsical smile, would be less against him in the Klondike thanon the Divide. There are always dreamers on the frontier.

Carl and Alexandra had been talking since morning. Her letter had never reachedhim. He had first learned of her misfortune from a San Francisco paper, fourweeks old, which he had picked up in a saloon, and which contained a briefaccount of Frank Shabata’s trial. When he put down the paper, he hadalready made up his mind that he could reach Alexandra as quickly as a lettercould; and ever since he had been on the way; day and night, by the fastestboats and trains he could catch. His steamer had been held back two days byrough weather.

As they came out of Mrs. Hiller’s garden they took up their talk againwhere they had left it.

“But could you come away like that, Carl, without arranging things? Couldyou just walk off and leave your business?” Alexandra asked.

Carl laughed. “Prudent Alexandra! You see, my dear, I happen to have anhonest partner. I trust him with everything. In fact, it’s been hisenterprise from the beginning, you know. I’m in it only because he tookme in. I’ll have to go back in the spring. Perhaps you will want to gowith me then. We haven’t turned up millions yet, but we’ve got astart that’s worth following. But this winter I’d like to spendwith you. You won’t feel that we ought to wait longer, on Emil’saccount, will you, Alexandra?”

Alexandra shook her head. “No, Carl; I don’t feel that way aboutit. And surely you needn’t mind anything Lou and Oscar say now. They aremuch angrier with me about Emil, now, than about you. They say it was all myfault. That I ruined him by sending him to college.”

“No, I don’t care a button for Lou or Oscar. The moment I knew youwere in trouble, the moment I thought you might need me, it all lookeddifferent. You’ve always been a triumphant kind of person.” Carlhesitated, looking sidewise at her strong, full figure. “But you do needme now, Alexandra?”

She put her hand on his arm. “I needed you terribly when it happened,Carl. I cried for you at night. Then everything seemed to get hard inside ofme, and I thought perhaps I should never care for you again. But when I gotyour telegram yesterday, then—then it was just as it used to be. You areall I have in the world, you know.”

Carl pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the Shabatas’ emptyhouse now, but they avoided the orchard path and took one that led over by thepasture pond.

“Can you understand it, Carl?” Alexandra murmured. “I havehad nobody but Ivar and Signa to talk to. Do talk to me. Can you understand it?Could you have believed that of Marie Tovesky? I would have been cut to pieces,little by little, before I would have betrayed her trust in me!”

Carl looked at the shining spot of water before them. “Maybe she was cutto pieces, too, Alexandra. I am sure she tried hard; they both did. That waswhy Emil went to Mexico, of course. And he was going away again, you tell me,though he had only been home three weeks. You remember that Sunday when I wentwith Emil up to the French Church fair? I thought that day there was some kindof feeling, something unusual, between them. I meant to talk to you about it.But on my way back I met Lou and Oscar and got so angry that I forgoteverything else. You mustn’t be hard on them, Alexandra. Sit down here bythe pond a minute. I want to tell you something.”

They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Carl told her how he had seen Emiland Marie out by the pond that morning, more than a year ago, and how young andcharming and full of grace they had seemed to him. “It happens like thatin the world sometimes, Alexandra,” he added earnestly. “I’veseen it before. There are women who spread ruin around them through no fault oftheirs, just by being too beautiful, too full of life and love. Theycan’t help it. People come to them as people go to a warm fire in winter.I used to feel that in her when she was a little girl. Do you remember how allthe Bohemians crowded round her in the store that day, when she gave Emil hercandy? You remember those yellow sparks in her eyes?”

Alexandra sighed. “Yes. People couldn’t help loving her. Poor Frankdoes, even now, I think; though he’s got himself in such a tangle thatfor a long time his love has been bitterer than his hate. But if you saw therewas anything wrong, you ought to have told me, Carl.”

Carl took her hand and smiled patiently. “My dear, it was something onefelt in the air, as you feel the spring coming, or a storm in summer. Ididn’t see anything. Simply, when I was with those two youngthings, I felt my blood go quicker, I felt—how shall I say it?—anacceleration of life. After I got away, it was all too delicate, toointangible, to write about.”

Alexandra looked at him mournfully. “I try to be more liberal about suchthings than I used to be. I try to realize that we are not all made alike.Only, why couldn’t it have been Raoul Marcel, or Jan Smirka? Why did ithave to be my boy?”

“Because he was the best there was, I suppose. They were both the bestyou had here.”

The sun was dropping low in the west when the two friends rose and took thepath again. The straw-stacks were throwing long shadows, the owls were flyinghome to the prairie-dog town. When they came to the corner where the pasturesjoined, Alexandra’s twelve young colts were galloping in a drove over thebrow of the hill.

“Carl,” said Alexandra, “I should like to go up there withyou in the spring. I haven’t been on the water since we crossed theocean, when I was a little girl. After we first came out here I used to dreamsometimes about the shipyard where father worked, and a little sort of inlet,full of masts.” Alexandra paused. After a moment’s thought shesaid, “But you would never ask me to go away for good, would you?”

“Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about thiscountry as well as you do yourself.” Carl took her hand in both his ownand pressed it tenderly.

“Yes, I still feel that way, though Emil is gone. When I was on the trainthis morning, and we got near Hanover, I felt something like I did when I droveback with Emil from the river that time, in the dry year. I was glad to comeback to it. I’ve lived here a long time. There is great peace here, Carl,and freedom.... I thought when I came out of that prison, where poor Frank is,that I should never feel free again. But I do, here.” Alexandra took adeep breath and looked off into the red west.

“You belong to the land,” Carl murmured, “as you have alwayssaid. Now more than ever.”

“Yes, now more than ever. You remember what you once said about thegraveyard, and the old story writing itself over? Only it is we who write it,with the best we have.”

They paused on the last ridge of the pasture, overlooking the house and thewindmill and the stables that marked the site of John Bergson’shomestead. On every side the brown waves of the earth rolled away to meet thesky.

“Lou and Oscar can’t see those things,” said Alexandrasuddenly. “Suppose I do will my land to their children, what differencewill that make? The land belongs to the future, Carl; that’s the way itseems to me. How many of the names on the county clerk’s plat will bethere in fifty years? I might as well try to will the sunset over there to mybrother’s children. We come and go, but the land is always here. And thepeople who love it and understand it are the people who own it—for alittle while.”

Carl looked at her wonderingly. She was still gazing into the west, and in herface there was that exalted serenity that sometimes came to her at moments ofdeep feeling. The level rays of the sinking sun shone in her clear eyes.

“Why are you thinking of such things now, Alexandra?”

“I had a dream before I went to Lincoln—But I will tell you aboutthat afterward, after we are married. It will never come true, now, in the wayI thought it might.” She took Carl’s arm and they walked toward thegate. “How many times we have walked this path together, Carl. How manytimes we will walk it again! Does it seem to you like coming back to your ownplace? Do you feel at peace with the world here? I think we shall be veryhappy. I haven’t any fears. I think when friends marry, they are safe. Wedon’t suffer like—those young ones.” Alexandra ended with asigh.

They had reached the gate. Before Carl opened it, he drew Alexandra to him andkissed her softly, on her lips and on her eyes.

She leaned heavily on his shoulder. “I am tired,” she murmured.“I have been very lonely, Carl.”

They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind them, under theevening star. Fortunate country, that is one day to receive hearts likeAlexandra’s into its bosom, to give them out again in the yellow wheat,in the rustling corn, in the shining eyes of youth!

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