O Pioneers! / Cather, Willa

[pg/etext92/opion11.txt]


                   O Pioneers!

                 by Willa Cather

                    PART I

                 The Wild Land


                       I

     One January day, thirty years ago, the little
town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Ne-
braska tableland, was trying not to be blown
away.  A mist of fine snowflakes was curling
and eddying about the cluster of low drab
buildings huddled on the gray prairie, under a
gray sky.  The dwelling-houses were set about
haphazard on the tough prairie sod; some of
them looked as if they had been 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 of
permanence, and the howling wind blew under
them as well as over them.  The main street
was a deeply rutted road, now frozen hard,
which ran from the squat red railway station
and the grain "elevator" at the north end of
the town to the lumber yard and the horse
pond at the south end.  On either side of this
road straggled two uneven rows of wooden
buildings; the general merchandise 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 two
o'clock in the afternoon the shopkeepers, hav-
ing 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 country-
men in coarse overcoats, with their long caps
pulled down to their noses.  Some of them had
brought their wives to town, and now and then
a red or a plaid shawl flashed out of one store
into the shelter of another.  At the hitch-bars
along the street a few heavy work-horses, har-
nessed to farm wagons, shivered under their
blankets.  About the station everything was
quiet, for there would not be another train in
until night.

     On the sidewalk in front of one of the stores
sat a little Swede boy, crying bitterly.  He was
about five years old.  His black cloth coat was
much too big for him and made him look like
a little old man.  His shrunken brown flannel
dress had been washed many times and left a
long stretch of stocking between the hem of his
skirt and the tops of his clumsy, copper-toed
shoes.  His cap was pulled down over his ears;
his nose and his chubby cheeks were chapped
and red with cold.  He cried quietly, and the
few people who hurried by did not notice him.
He was afraid to stop any one, afraid to go into
the store and ask for help, so he sat wringing his
long sleeves and looking up a telegraph pole
beside him, whimpering, "My kitten, oh, my
kitten!  Her will fweeze!"  At the top of the
pole crouched a shivering gray kitten, mewing
faintly and clinging desperately to the wood
with her claws.  The boy had been left at the
store while his sister went to the doctor's office,
and in her absence a dog had chased his kit-
ten up the pole.  The little creature had never
been so high before, and she was too frightened
to move.  Her master was sunk in despair.  He
was a little country boy, and this village was to
him a very strange and perplexing place, where
people wore fine clothes and had hard hearts.
He always felt shy and awkward here, and
wanted to hide behind things for fear some one
might laugh at him.  Just now, he was too un-
happy to care who laughed.  At last he seemed
to see a ray of hope: his sister was coming, and
he got up and ran toward her in his heavy
shoes.

     His sister was a tall, strong girl, and she
walked rapidly and resolutely, as if she knew
exactly where she was going and what she was
going to do next.  She wore a man's long ulster
(not as if it were an affliction, but as if it were
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 the distance, without
seeming to see anything, as if she were in
trouble.  She did not notice the little boy until
he pulled her by the coat.  Then she stopped
short and stooped down to wipe his wet face.

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

     "My kitten, sister, my kitten!  A man put
her out, and a dog chased her up there."  His
forefinger, projecting from the sleeve of his coat,
pointed up to the wretched little creature on
the pole.

     "Oh, Emil!  Didn't I tell you she'd get us
into trouble of some kind, if you brought her?
What made you tease me so?  But there, I
ought to have known better myself."  She went
to the foot of the pole and held out her arms,
crying, "Kitty, kitty, kitty," but the kitten
only mewed and faintly waved its tail.  Alex-
andra turned away decidedly.  "No, she won't
come down.  Somebody will have to go up after
her.  I saw the Linstrums' wagon in town.  I'll
go and see if I can find Carl.  Maybe he 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.  Hold
still, till I put this on you."

     She unwound the brown veil from her head
and tied it about his throat.  A shabby little
traveling man, who was just then coming out of
the store on his way to the saloon, stopped and
gazed stupidly at the shining mass of hair she
bared when she took off her veil; two thick
braids, pinned about her head in the German
way, with a fringe of reddish-yellow curls blow-
ing out from under her cap.  He took his cigar
out of his mouth and held the wet end between
the fingers of his woolen glove.  "My God, girl,
what a head of hair!" he exclaimed, quite
innocently and foolishly.  She stabbed him with
a glance of Amazonian fierceness and drew in
her lower lip--most unnecessary severity.  It
gave the little clothing drummer such a start
that he actually let his cigar fall to the side-
walk and went off weakly in the teeth of the
wind to the saloon.  His hand was still unsteady
when he took his glass from the bartender.  His
feeble flirtatious instincts had been crushed
before, but never so mercilessly.  He felt cheap
and ill-used, as if some one had taken advan-
tage of him.  When a drummer had been knock-
ing about in little drab towns and crawling
across the wintry country in dirty smoking-
cars, was he to be blamed if, when he chanced
upon a fine human creature, he suddenly wished
himself more of a man?

     While the little drummer was drinking to
recover his nerve, Alexandra hurried to the
drug store as the most likely place to find Carl
Linstrum.  There he was, turning over a port-
folio of chromo "studies" which the druggist
sold to the Hanover women who did china-
painting.  Alexandra explained her predica-
ment, and the boy followed her to the corner,
where Emil still sat by the pole.

     "I'll have to go up after her, Alexandra.  I
think at the depot they have some spikes I can
strap on my feet.  Wait a minute."  Carl thrust
his hands into his pockets, lowered his head,
and darted up the street against the north
wind.  He was a tall boy of fifteen, slight and
narrow-chested.  When he came back with the
spikes, Alexandra asked him what he had done
with his overcoat.

     "I left it in the drug store.  I couldn't climb
in it, anyhow.  Catch me if I fall, Emil," he
called back as he began his ascent.  Alexandra
watched him anxiously; the cold was bitter
enough on the ground.  The kitten would not
budge an inch.  Carl had to go to the very top
of the pole, and then had some difficulty in tear-
ing her from her hold.  When he reached the
ground, he handed the cat to her tearful little
master.  "Now go into the store with 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 our place?  It's get-
ting colder every minute.  Have you seen the
doctor?"

     "Yes.  He is coming over to-morrow.  But
he says father can't get better; can't get well."
The girl's lip trembled.  She looked fixedly up
the bleak street as if she were gathering her
strength to face something, as if she were try-
ing with all her might to grasp a situation which,
no matter how painful, must be met and dealt
with somehow.  The wind flapped the skirts of
her heavy coat about her.

     Carl did not say anything, but she felt his
sympathy.  He, too, was lonely.  He was a thin,
frail boy, with brooding dark eyes, very quiet
in all his movements.  There was a delicate pallor
in his thin face, and his mouth was too sensitive
for a boy's.  The lips had already a little curl
of bitterness and skepticism.  The two friends
stood for a few moments on the windy street
corner, not speaking a word, as two travelers,
who have lost their way, sometimes stand and
admit their perplexity in silence.  When Carl
turned away he said, "I'll see to your team."
Alexandra went into the store to have her pur-
chases packed in the egg-boxes, and to get warm
before she set out on her long cold drive.

     When she looked for Emil, she found him sit-
ting on a step of the staircase that led up to the
clothing and carpet department.  He was play-
ing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie Tovesky,
who was tying her handkerchief over the kit-
ten's head for a bonnet.  Marie was a stranger
in the country, having come from Omaha with
her mother to visit her uncle, Joe Tovesky.  She
was a dark child, with brown curly hair, like a
brunette doll's, a coaxing little red mouth,
and round, yellow-brown eyes.  Every one
noticed her eyes; the brown iris had golden
glints that made them look like gold-stone, or,
in softer lights, like that Colorado mineral
called tiger-eye.

     The country children thereabouts wore their
dresses to their shoe-tops, but this city child
was dressed in what was then called the "Kate
Greenaway" manner, and her red cashmere
frock, gathered full from the yoke, came almost
to the floor.  This, with her poke bonnet, gave
her the look of a quaint little woman.  She had
a white fur tippet about her neck and made
no fussy objections when Emil fingered it
admiringly.  Alexandra had not the heart to
take him away from so pretty a playfellow, and
she let them tease the kitten together 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 good
nature.  They were all delighted with her, for
they seldom saw so pretty and carefully nur-
tured a child.  They told her that she must
choose one of them for a 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 tiny forefinger delicately over Joe's
bristly chin and said, "Here is my sweetheart."

     The Bohemians roared with laughter, and
Marie's uncle hugged her until she cried, "Please
don't, Uncle Joe!  You hurt me."  Each of Joe's
friends gave her a bag of candy, and she kissed
them all around, though she did not like coun-
try candy very well.  Perhaps that was why she
bethought 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 formed a new circle and
teased the little boy until he hid his face in his
sister'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 were checking
over their groceries and pinning their big red
shawls about their heads.  The men were buy-
ing tobacco and candy with what money they
had left, were showing each other new boots
and gloves and blue flannel shirts.  Three big
Bohemians were drinking raw alcohol, tinctured
with oil of cinnamon.  This was said to fortify
one effectually against the cold, and they
smacked their lips after each pull at the flask.
Their volubility drowned every other noise in
the place, and the overheated store sounded of
their spirited language as it reeked of pipe
smoke, damp woolens, and kerosene.

     Carl came in, wearing his overcoat and carry-
ing a wooden box with a brass handle.  "Come,"
he said, "I've fed and watered your team, and
the wagon is ready."  He carried Emil out and
tucked him down in the straw in the wagon-
box.  The heat had made the little boy sleepy,
but he still clung to his kitten.

     "You were awful good to climb so high and
get my kitten, Carl.  When I get big I'll climb
and get little boys' kittens for them," he mur-
mured drowsily.  Before the horses were over
the first hill, Emil and his cat were both fast
asleep.

     Although it was only four o'clock, the winter
day was fading.  The road led southwest, toward
the streak of pale, watery light that glimmered
in the leaden sky.  The light fell upon the two
sad young faces that were turned mutely toward
it: upon the eyes of the girl, who seemed to be
looking with such anguished perplexity into
the future; upon the sombre eyes of the boy,
who seemed already to be looking into the past.
The little town behind them had vanished 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
were few and far apart; here and there a wind-
mill gaunt against the sky, a sod house crouch-
ing in a hollow.  But the great fact was the land
itself, which seemed to overwhelm the little
beginnings of human society that struggled in
its sombre wastes.  It was from facing this vast
hardness that the boy's mouth had become 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, its peculiar, savage kind of beauty,
its uninterrupted mournfulness.

     The wagon jolted along over the frozen road.
The two friends had less to say to each other
than usual, as if the cold had somehow pene-
trated 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 to
her forehead, brushing back her hair.  "I don't
know what is to become 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 over everything."

     Carl made no reply.  Just ahead of them was
the Norwegian graveyard, where the grass had,
indeed, grown back over everything, shaggy
and red, hiding even the wire fence.  Carl real-
ized that he was not a very helpful companion,
but there was 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 on father
that I don't see how we can go ahead.  I almost
feel as if there were nothing to go ahead for."

     "Does your father know?"

     "Yes, I think he does.  He lies and counts
on his fingers all day.  I think he is trying to
count up what he is leaving for us.  It's a com-
fort to him that my chickens are laying right
on through the cold weather and bringing in a
little money.  I wish we could keep his mind off
such things, but I don't have much time to be
with him now."

     "I wonder if he'd like to have me bring my
magic lantern over some evening?"

     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 box I was carrying?  I tried it all
morning in the drug-store cellar, and it worked
ever so well, makes fine big pictures."

     "What are they about?"

     "Oh, hunting pictures in Germany, and
Robinson Crusoe and funny pictures about
cannibals.  I'm going to paint some slides for
it on glass, out of the Hans Andersen book."

     Alexandra seemed actually cheered.  There is
often a good deal of the child left in people who
have had to grow up too soon.  "Do bring it
over, Carl.  I can hardly wait to see it, and I'm
sure it will please father.  Are the pictures col-
ored?  Then I know he'll like them.  He likes
the calendars I get him in town.  I wish I could
get more.  You must leave me here, mustn't
you?  It's been nice to have company."

     Carl stopped the horses and looked dubi-
ously up at the black sky.  "It's pretty dark.
Of course the horses will take you home, but I
think 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 crouched down and
made a tent of his overcoat.  After a dozen
trials he succeeded in lighting the lantern, which
he placed in front of Alexandra, half covering
it with a blanket so that the light would not
shine in her eyes.  "Now, wait until I find my
box.  Yes, here it is.  Good-night, Alexandra.
Try not to worry."  Carl sprang to the ground
and ran off across the fields toward the Linstrum
homestead.  "Hoo, hoo-o-o-o!" he called back
as he disappeared over a ridge and dropped
into a sand gully.  The wind answered him like
an echo, "Hoo, hoo-o-o-o-o-o!"  Alexandra
drove off alone.  The rattle of her wagon was
lost in the howling of the wind, but her lantern,
held firmly between her feet, made a moving
point of light along the highway, going deeper
and deeper into the dark country.


                     II

     On one of the ridges of that wintry waste
stood the low log house in which John Bergson
was dying.  The Bergson homestead was easier
to find than many another, because it over-
looked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy stream
that sometimes flowed, and sometimes stood
still, at the bottom of a winding ravine with
steep, shelving sides overgrown with brush and
cottonwoods and dwarf ash.  This creek gave a
sort of identity to the farms that bordered upon
it.  Of all the bewildering things about a new
country, the absence of human landmarks is
one of the most depressing and disheartening.
The houses on the Divide were small and were
usually tucked away in low places; you did not
see them until you came directly upon them.
Most of them were built of the sod itself, and
were only the unescapable ground in another
form.  The roads were but faint tracks in the
grass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable.
The record of the plow was insignificant, like
the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric
races, so indeterminate that they may, after all,
be only the markings of glaciers, and not a rec-
ord of human strivings.

     In eleven long years John Bergson had made
but little impression upon the wild land 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 lay looking out
of the window, after the doctor had left him,
on the day following Alexandra'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 him and 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 his cattle
had perished in a blizzard.  The next summer
one of his plow horses broke its leg in a prairie-
dog hole and had to be shot.  Another summer he
lost his hogs from cholera, and a valuable
stallion died from a rattlesnake bite.  Time and
again his crops had failed.  He had lost two
children, boys, that came between 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
was only forty-six, and had, of course, counted
upon more time.

     Bergson had spent his first five years on the
Divide getting into debt, and the last six getting
out.  He had paid off his mortgages and had
ended pretty much where he began, with the
land.  He owned exactly six hundred and forty
acres of what stretched outside his door; his own
original homestead and timber claim, making
three hundred and twenty acres, and the half-
section adjoining, the homestead of a younger
brother who had given up the fight, gone back
to Chicago to work in a fancy bakery and dis-
tinguish himself in a Swedish athletic club.  So
far John had not attempted to cultivate the
second half-section, but used it for 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.  But this land was
an enigma.  It was like a horse that no one
knows how to break to harness, that runs wild
and kicks things to pieces.  He had an idea that
no one understood how to farm it properly, and
this he often discussed with Alexandra.  Their
neighbors, certainly, knew even less about
farming than he did.  Many of them had
never worked on a farm until they took up
their homesteads.  They had been 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 in the sitting-
room, next to the kitchen.  Through the day,
while the baking and washing and ironing were
going on, the father lay and looked up at the
roof beams that he himself had hewn, or out at
the cattle in the corral.  He counted the cattle
over and over.  It diverted him to speculate as
to how much weight each of the steers would
probably put on by spring.  He often called his
daughter in to talk to her about this.  Before
Alexandra was twelve years old she had begun
to be a help to him, and as she grew older he
had come to depend more and more upon her
resourcefulness and good judgment.  His boys
were willing enough to work, but when he
talked with them they usually irritated him.  It
was Alexandra who read the papers and fol-
lowed the markets, and who learned by the mis-
takes of their neighbors.  It was Alexandra who
could always tell about what it had cost to fat-
ten each steer, and who could guess the weight
of a hog before it went on the scales closer than
John Bergson himself.  Lou and Oscar were in-
dustrious, but he could never teach them to use
their heads about their work.

     Alexandra, her father often said to himself,
was like her grandfather; which was his way of
saying that she was intelligent.  John Bergson's
father had been a shipbuilder, a man of consid-
erable force and of some fortune.  Late in life he
married a second time, a Stockholm woman of
questionable character, much younger than he,
who goaded him into every sort of extrava-
gance.  On the shipbuilder's part, this marriage
was an infatuation, the despairing folly of a
powerful man who cannot bear to grow old.
In a few years his unprincipled wife warped the
probity of a lifetime.  He speculated, lost his
own fortune and funds entrusted to him by
poor seafaring men, and died disgraced, leav-
ing his children nothing.  But when all was said,
he had come up from the sea himself, had built
up a proud little business with no capital but his
own skill and foresight, and had proved himself
a man.  In his daughter, John Bergson recog-
nized the strength of will, and the simple direct
way of thinking things out, that had charac-
terized his father in his better days.  He would
much rather, of course, have seen this likeness
in one of his sons, but it was not a question of
choice.  As he lay there day after day he had to
accept the situation as it was, and to be thank-
ful that there was one among his children to
whom he could entrust the future of his family
and the possibilities of his hard-won land.

     The winter twilight was fading.  The sick
man heard his wife strike a match in the kitchen,
and the light of a lamp glimmered through the
cracks of the door.  It seemed like a light shin-
ing far away.  He turned painfully in his bed
and looked at his white hands, with all the
work gone out of them.  He was ready to give
up, he felt.  He did not know how it had come
about, but he was quite willing to go deep un-
der his fields and rest, where the plow could not
find him.  He was tired of making mistakes.  He
was content to leave the tangle to other hands;
he thought of his Alexandra's strong ones.

     "DOTTER," he called feebly, "DOTTER!"  He
heard her quick step and saw her tall figure
appear in the doorway, with the light of the
lamp behind her.  He felt her youth and
strength, how easily she moved 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 all went
to, what it all became.

     His daughter came and lifted him up on his
pillows.  She called him by an old Swedish name
that she used to call him when she was little
and took his dinner to 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 the Blue.  Shall I
call them?"

     He sighed.  "No, no.  Wait until they come
in.  Alexandra, you will have to do 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 want them 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 and beck-
oned to her brothers, two strapping boys of
seventeen and nineteen.  They came in and
stood at the foot of the bed.  Their father looked
at them searchingly, though it was too dark to
see their faces; they were just the same boys, he
told himself, he had not been mistaken in them.
The square head and heavy shoulders belonged
to Oscar, the elder.  The younger boy was
quicker, but vacillating.

     "Boys," said the father wearily, "I want you
to keep the land together and to be guided by
your sister.  I have talked to her since I have
been 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 the oldest, and she knows
my wishes.  She will do the best she can.  If she
makes mistakes, she will not make so many as
I have made.  When you marry, and want a
house 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 keep together.  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 all work the place together."

     "And you will be guided by your sister, boys,
and be good brothers to her, and good sons to
your mother?  That is good.  And Alexandra
must not work in the 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 was
one of my mistakes that I did not find that out
sooner.  Try to break a little more land every
year; sod corn is good for fodder.  Keep turning
the land, and always put up more hay than you
need.  Don't grudge your mother a little time
for plowing her garden and setting out fruit
trees, even if it comes in a busy season.  She has
been a good mother to you, and she has always

     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 red eyes.  They did not eat much,
although they had been working in the cold all
day, 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. Berg-
son was a fair-skinned, corpulent woman, heavy
and placid like her son, Oscar, but there was
something comfortable about her; perhaps it
was her own love of comfort.  For eleven years
she had worthily striven to maintain some sem-
blance of household order amid conditions that
made order very difficult.  Habit was very
strong with Mrs. Bergson, and her unremitting
efforts to repeat the routine of her old life among
new surroundings had done a great deal to keep
the family from disintegrating morally and get-
ting careless in their ways.  The Bergsons had
a log house, for instance, only because Mrs.
Bergson would not live in a sod house.  She
missed the fish diet of her own country, and
twice every summer she sent the boys to the
river, twenty miles to the southward, to fish
for channel cat.  When the children were little
she used to load them all into the wagon, the
baby in its crib, and go fishing herself.

     Alexandra often said that if her mother were
cast upon a desert island, she would thank God
for her deliverance, make a garden, and find
something to preserve.  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 goose plums, like a
wild creature in search of prey.  She made a yel-
low jam of the insipid ground-cherries that grew
on the prairie, flavoring it with lemon peel; and
she made a sticky dark conserve of garden toma-
toes.  She had experimented even with the rank
buffalo-pea, and she could not see a fine bronze
cluster of them without shaking her head and
murmuring, "What a pity!"  When there was
nothing more to preserve, she began to pickle.
The amount of sugar she used in these processes
was sometimes a serious drain upon the family
resources.  She was a good mother, but she was
glad when her children were old enough not to
be in her way in the kitchen.  She had never
quite forgiven John Bergson 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 was possible.  She
could still take some comfort in the world if
she had bacon in the cave, glass jars on the
shelves, and sheets in the press.  She disap-
proved of all her neighbors because of their
slovenly housekeeping, and the women thought
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 fear Mis' Bergson would catch her bare-
foot."


                     III

     One Sunday afternoon in July, six months
after John Bergson's death, Carl was sitting in
the doorway of the Linstrum kitchen, dreaming
over an illustrated 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 front seat, 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 a pair of his
father's, and a pink-striped shirt, with a wide
ruffled collar.  Oscar stopped the horses and
waved to Carl, who caught up his hat and ran
through the melon patch to join them.

     "Want to go with us?" Lou called.  "We're
going to Crazy Ivar's to buy a hammock."

     "Sure."  Carl ran up panting, and clamber-
ing over the wheel sat down beside Emil.  "I've
always wanted to see Ivar's pond.  They say
it's the biggest in all the country.  Aren't you
afraid to go to Ivar's in that new shirt, Emil?
He might want it and take it right off your
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 ever hear him howl,
Carl?  People say sometimes he runs about the
country howling at night because he is afraid
the Lord will destroy him.  Mother thinks he
must have done something awful wicked."

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

     Emil stared.  "Maybe I could hide in a
badger-hole," he suggested doubtfully.

     "But suppose there wasn't any badger-hole,"
Lou persisted.  "Would you run?"

     "No, I'd be too scared to run," Emil ad-
mitted mournfully, twisting his fingers.  "I
guess I'd sit right down on the ground and say
my prayers."

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

     "He wouldn't hurt you, Emil," said Carl
persuasively.  "He came to doctor our mare
when she ate green corn and swelled up most as
big as the water-tank.  He petted her just like
you do your cats.  I couldn'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's better!'"

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

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

     Alexandra spoke up.  "That's what the
Crows said, but he cured their horses, all the
same.  Some days his mind is cloudy, like.  But
if you can get him on a clear day, you can learn
a great deal from him.  He understands ani-
mals.  Didn't I see him take the horn off the
Berquist's cow when she 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 old dugout and
her legs went through and there she stuck, bel-
lowing.  Ivar came running with his white bag,
and the moment he got to her she was quiet and
let him saw her horn off and daub the place
with tar."

     Emil had been watching his sister, his face
reflecting the sufferings of the cow.  "And then
didn't it hurt her any more?" he asked.

     Alexandra patted him.  "No, not any more.
And in two days they could use her milk
again."

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

     Lou looked after them helplessly.  "I wish
I'd brought my gun, anyway, Alexandra," he
said fretfully.  "I could have hidden it under
the straw in the bottom of the wagon."

     "Then we'd have had to lie to Ivar.  Besides,
they say he can smell dead birds.  And if he
knew, we wouldn't get anything out of him,
not even a hammock.  I want to talk to him,
and he won't talk sense if he's angry.  It makes
him foolish."

     Lou sniffed.  "Whoever heard of him talking
sense, anyhow!  I'd rather have ducks for sup-
per than Crazy Ivar's tongue."

     Emil was alarmed.  "Oh, but, Lou, you don't
want to make him mad!  He might howl!"

     They all laughed again, and Oscar urged the
horses up the crumbling side of a clay bank.
They had left the lagoons and the red grass
behind them.  In Crazy Ivar's country the
grass was short and gray, the draws deeper
than they were in the Bergsons' neighborhood,
and the land was all broken up into hillocks
and clay ridges.  The wild flowers disappeared,
and only in the bottom of 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!"
Alexandra pointed 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 would not have seen them at all
but for the reflection of the sunlight upon the
four panes of window-glass.  And that was all
you saw.  Not a shed, not a corral, not a well,
not even a path broken in the curly grass.  But
for the piece of rusty stovepipe sticking up
through the sod, you could have walked over
the roof of Ivar's dwelling without dreaming
that you were near a human habitation.  Ivar
had lived for three years in the clay bank, with-
out defiling the face of nature 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 his house, reading
the Norwegian Bible.  He was a queerly shaped
old man, with a thick, powerful body set on
short bow-legs.  His shaggy white hair, falling in
a thick mane about his ruddy cheeks, made him
look older than he was.  He was barefoot, but he
wore a clean shirt of unbleached cotton, open at
the neck.  He always put on a clean shirt when
Sunday morning came round, though he never
went to church.  He had a peculiar religion of
his own and could not get on with any of the
denominations.  Often he did not see anybody
from one week's end to another.  He kept a
calendar, and every morning he checked off a
day, so that he was never in any doubt as to
which day of the week it was.  Ivar hired him-
self out in threshing and corn-husking time,
and he doctored sick animals when he was sent
for.  When he was at home, he made ham-
mocks out of twine and committed chapters
of the Bible to memory.

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

     On this Sunday afternoon his face shone with
happiness.  He closed the book on his knee,
keeping the place with his horny finger, and
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 their thirst.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of
     Lebanon which he hath planted;
Where the birds make their nests: as for the stork, the
     fir trees are her house.
The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats; and the
     rocks for the conies.
repeated softly:--

     Before he opened his Bible again, Ivar heard
the Bergsons' wagon approaching, and he
sprang up and ran toward it.

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

     "No, Ivar, no guns," Alexandra called reas-
suringly.

     He dropped his arms and went up to the
wagon, smiling amiably and looking at them
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 many birds come."

     Ivar smiled foolishly, and began rubbing the
horses' noses and feeling about their mouths
behind the bits.  "Not many birds just now.
A few ducks this 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.  It is not her sea-
son, of course.  Many of them go over in the
fall.  Then the pond is 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 heard so."

     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 a voice she had!  She came in
the afternoon and kept flying about the pond
and screaming until dark.  She was in trouble
of some sort, but I could not understand her.
She was going over to the other ocean, maybe,
and did not know how far it was.  She was
afraid of never getting there.  She was more
mournful than our birds here; she cried in the
night.  She saw the light from my window and
darted up to it.  Maybe she thought my house
was a boat, she was such a wild thing.  Next
morning, when the sun rose, I went out to take
her food, but she flew up into the sky and went
on her way."  Ivar ran his fingers through his
thick hair.  "I have many strange birds stop
with me here.  They come from very far away
and are great company.  I hope you boys never
shoot wild birds?"

     Lou and Oscar grinned, and Ivar shook his
bushy head.  "Yes, I know boys are thoughtless.
But these wild things are God's birds.  He
watches over them and counts them, as we do
our cattle; Christ says so in the New Testa-
ment."

     "Now, Ivar," Lou asked, "may we water
our horses at your pond and give them some
feed?  It's a bad road to your place."

     "Yes, yes, it is."  The old man scrambled
about and began to loose the 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
your hammocks."

     Ivar led Alexandra and Emil to his little
cave house.  He had but one room, neatly plas-
tered and whitewashed, and there was a wooden
floor.  There was a kitchen stove, a table cov-
ered with oilcloth, two chairs, a clock, a calen-
dar, a few books on the window-shelf; nothing
more.  But the place was as clean as a cup-
board.

     "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 buffalo robe.  "There,
my son.  A hammock is a good bed, and in
winter I wrap up in this 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 superior kind 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
many come?" he asked.

     Ivar sat down on the floor and tucked his
feet under him.  "See, little brother, they have
come from a long way, and they are very tired.
From up there where they are flying, our coun-
try looks dark and flat.  They must have water
to drink and to bathe in before they can go on
with their journey.  They look this way and
that, and far below them they see something
shining, like a piece of glass set in the dark
earth.  That is my pond.  They come to it and
are not disturbed.  Maybe I sprinkle a little
corn.  They tell the other birds, and next year
more come this way.  They have their roads up
there, as we have down here."

     Emil rubbed his knees thoughtfully.  "And
is that true, Ivar, about the head ducks falling
back when they are tired, and the hind ones
taking their place?"

     "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.
Then they fall back and the wedge splits a little,
while the rear ones come up the middle to the
front.  Then it closes up and they fly on, with a
new edge.  They are always changing like
that, up in the air.  Never any confusion; just
like soldiers 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 while Alexandra and Ivar talked
about the birds and about his housekeeping,
and why he never ate meat, fresh or salt.

     Alexandra was sitting on one of the wooden
chairs, her arms resting on the table.  Ivar was
sitting on the floor at her feet.  "Ivar," she said
suddenly, beginning to trace the pattern on the
oilcloth with her forefinger, "I came to-day
more because I wanted to talk to you than be-
cause I wanted to 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 that I 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 country are put upon!  They be-
come unclean, like the hogs in the Bible.  If you
kept your chickens like that, what would hap-
pen?  You have a little sorghum patch, maybe?
Put a fence around it, and turn the hogs in.
Build a shed to give them shade, a thatch on
poles.  Let the boys haul water to them in bar-
rels, clean water, and plenty.  Get them off the
old stinking ground, and do not let them go
back there until winter.  Give them only grain
and clean feed, such as you would give horses
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 of
here.  He'll fill her full of notions.  She'll be for
having the pigs sleep with us, next."

     Oscar grunted and got up.  Carl, who could
not understand what Ivar said, saw that the
two boys were displeased.  They did not mind
hard work, but they hated experiments and
could never see the use of taking pains.  Even
Lou, who was more elastic than his older bro-
ther, disliked to do anything different from
their neighbors.  He felt that it made them
conspicuous and gave people a chance to talk
about them.

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

     That evening, after she had washed the sup-
per dishes, Alexandra sat down on the kitchen
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
of laughter and splashing came up from the
pasture, and when the moon rose rapidly above
the bare rim of the prairie, the pond glittered
like polished metal, and she could see the flash
of white bodies as the boys ran about the edge,
or jumped into the water.  Alexandra watched
the shimmering pool dreamily, but eventually
her eyes went back to the sorghum patch south
of the barn, where she was planning to make her
new pig corral.


                         IV

     For the first three years after John Bergson's
death, the affairs of his family prospered.  Then
came the hard times that brought every one on
the Divide to the brink of despair; three years
of drouth and failure, the last struggle of a wild
soil against the encroaching plowshare.  The
first of these fruitless summers the Bergson boys
bore courageously.  The failure of the corn
crop made labor cheap.  Lou and Oscar hired
two men and put in bigger crops than ever
before.  They lost everything they spent.  The
whole country was discouraged.  Farmers who
were already in debt had to give up their
land.  A few foreclosures demoralized the
county.  The settlers sat about on the wooden
sidewalks in the little town and told each other
that the country was never meant for men to
live in; the thing to do was to get back to Iowa,
to Illinois, to any place that had been proved
habitable.  The Bergson boys, certainly, would
have been happier with their uncle Otto, in the
bakery shop in Chicago.  Like most of their
neighbors, they were meant to follow in paths
already marked out for them, 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
of theirs that they had been dragged into the
wilderness when they were little boys.  A
pioneer should have imagination, should be
able to enjoy the idea of things more than the
things themselves.

     The second of these barren summers was
passing.  One September afternoon Alexandra
had gone over to the garden across the draw to
dig sweet potatoes--they had been thriving
upon the weather that was fatal to everything
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
her pitchfork, her sunbonnet lying beside her
on the ground.  The dry garden patch smelled
of drying vines and was strewn with yellow
seed-cucumbers and pumpkins and citrons.
At one end, next the rhubarb, grew feathery
asparagus, with red berries.  Down the middle
of the garden was a row of gooseberry and cur-
rant bushes.  A few tough zenias and marigolds
and a row of scarlet sage bore witness to 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
garden path, looking intently at Alexandra.
She did not hear him.  She was standing per-
fectly still, with that serious ease so character-
istic of her.  Her thick, reddish braids, twisted
about her head, fairly burned in the sunlight.
The air was cool enough to make the warm sun
pleasant on one's back and shoulders, and so
clear that the eye could follow a hawk up and
up, into the blazing blue depths of the sky.
Even Carl, never a very cheerful boy, and con-
siderably darkened by these last two bitter
years, loved the country on days like this, felt
something strong and young and wild come out
of it, that laughed at care.

     "Alexandra," he said as he approached her,
"I want to talk to you.  Let's sit down by the
gooseberry bushes."  He picked up her sack 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 have
made up our minds at last, Alexandra.  We are
really going away."

     She looked at him as if she were a little fright-
ened.  "Really, Carl?  Is it settled?"

     "Yes, father has heard from St. Louis, and
they will give him back his old job in the cigar
factory.  He must be there by the first of
November.  They are taking on new men then.
We will sell the place for whatever we can get,
and auction the stock.  We haven't enough to
ship.  I am going to learn engraving with a
German engraver there, and then try to get
work in Chicago."

     Alexandra's hands dropped in her lap.  Her
eyes became dreamy and filled with tears.

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

     "Yes, yes, Carl, I know.  You are wasting
your life here.  You are able to do much better
things.  You are nearly nineteen now, and I
wouldn't have you stay.  I've always hoped
you would get away.  But I can't help feeling
scared when I think how I will miss you--
more than you will ever know."  She brushed
the tears from her cheeks, not trying to hide
them.

     "But, Alexandra," he said sadly and wist-
fully, "I've never been any real help to you,
beyond sometimes trying to keep the boys in a
good humor."

     Alexandra smiled and shook her head.  "Oh,
it's not that.  Nothing like that.  It's by under-
standing me, and the boys, and mother, that
you've helped me.  I expect that is the only
way one person ever really can 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 has
happened before."

     Carl looked at the ground.  "You see, we've
all depended so on you," he said, "even father.
He makes me laugh.  When anything comes up
he always says, 'I wonder what the Bergsons are
going to do about that?  I guess I'll go and ask
her.'  I'll never forget that time, when we first
came here, and our horse had the colic, and I ran
over to your place--your father was away,
and you came home with me and showed father
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 remember how homesick I used to get,
and what long talks we used to have coming
from school?  We've someway always felt alike
about things."

     "Yes, that's it; we've liked the same things
and we've liked them together, without any-
body else knowing.  And we've had good times,
hunting for Christmas trees and going for ducks
and making our plum wine together 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 many friends, and will find the work
you were meant to do.  But you'll write to me,
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.  I want 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.  They always
come home from town discouraged, anyway.
So many people are trying to leave 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 I won't listen to any
talk about going.  Sometimes I feel like I'm
getting 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, any-
way, and no good comes of keeping bad news.
It's all harder on them than it is on me.  Lou
wants to get married, poor boy, 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 chilly already, the moment
the light goes."

     Alexandra rose and looked about.  A golden
afterglow throbbed in the west, but the coun-
try already looked empty and mournful.  A
dark moving mass came over the western 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
the little rise across the draw, the smoke was
curling.  The cattle lowed and bellowed.  In
the sky the pale half-moon was slowly silvering.
Alexandra and Carl walked together down the
potato rows.  "I have to keep telling myself
what is going to happen," she said softly.
"Since you have been here, ten years now, I
have never really been lonely.  But I can
remember what it was like before.  Now I shall
have nobody but Emil.  But he is my boy, and
he is tender-hearted."

     That night, when the boys were called to
supper, they sat down moodily.  They had
worn their coats to town, but they ate in their
striped shirts and suspenders.  They were grown
men now, and, as Alexandra said, for the last
few years they had been growing more and
more like themselves.  Lou was still the slighter
of the two, the quicker and more intelligent, but
apt to go off at half-cock.  He had a lively blue
eye, a thin, fair skin (always burned red to the
neckband of his shirt in summer), stiff, yellow
hair that would not lie down on his head, and a
bristly little yellow mustache, of which he
was very proud.  Oscar could not grow a mus-
tache; 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 and unusual endur-
ance; the sort of man you could attach to a
corn-sheller as you would an engine.  He would
turn it all day, without hurrying, without slow-
ing down.  But he was as indolent of mind as
he was unsparing of his body.  His love of
routine amounted to a vice.  He worked like an
insect, always doing the same thing over in the
same way, regardless of whether it was best or
no.  He felt that there was a sovereign virtue
in mere bodily toil, and he rather liked to do
things in the hardest way.  If a field had once
been in corn, he couldn't bear to put it into
wheat.  He liked to begin his corn-planting at
the same time every year, whether the season
were backward or forward.  He seemed to feel
that by his own irreproachable regularity he
would clear himself of blame and reprove the
weather.  When the wheat crop failed, he
threshed the straw at a dead loss to demon-
strate how little grain there was, and thus
prove his case against Providence.

     Lou, on the other hand, was fussy and
flighty; always planned to get through two
days' work in one, and often got only the least
important things done.  He liked to keep the
place up, but he never got round to doing odd
jobs until he had to neglect more pressing work
to attend to them.  In the middle of the wheat
harvest, when the grain was over-ripe and every
hand was needed, he would stop to mend fences
or to patch the harness; then dash down to the
field and overwork and be laid up in bed for a
week.  The two boys balanced each other, and
they pulled well together.  They had been good
friends since they were 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 he expected him
to say something, and Lou blinked his eyes and
frowned at his plate.  It was Alexandra herself
who at last opened the discussion.

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

     At this Lou plunged in.  "You see, Alex-
andra, everybody who can crawl out is going
away.  There's no use of us trying to stick it
out, just to be stubborn.  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 a place 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 buy-
ing 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 the land 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
place wouldn't bring now what it would six
years ago.  The fellows that settled up here just
made a mistake.  Now they're beginning to see
this high land wasn't never meant to grow no-
thing on, and everybody who ain't fixed to graze
cattle is trying to crawl out.  It's too high to
farm up here.  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 four hundred dollars and a
ticket to Chicago."

     "There's Fuller again!" Alexandra ex-
claimed.  "I wish that man would take me for a
partner.  He's feathering his nest!  If only poor
people could learn a little from rich people!
But all these fellows who are running off are
bad farmers, like poor Mr. Linstrum.  They
couldn't get ahead even in good years, and they
all got into debt while father was getting out.
I think we ought to hold on as long as we can on
father's account.  He was so set on keeping this
land.  He must have seen harder times than this,
here.  How was it in the early days, mother?"

     Mrs. Bergson was weeping quietly.  These
family discussions always depressed her, and
made her remember all that she had been torn
away from.  "I don't see why the boys are
always taking on about going away," she said,
wiping her eyes.  "I don't want to move again;
out to some raw place, maybe, where we'd be
worse off than we are here, and all to do over
again.  I won't move!  If the rest of you go, I
will ask some of the neighbors to take me in,
and stay and be buried by father.  I'm not
going to leave him by himself on the prairie,
for cattle to run over."  She began to cry more
bitterly.

     The boys looked angry.  Alexandra put a
soothing hand on her mother's shoulder.
"There's no question of that, mother.  You
don't have to go if you don't want to.  A third
of the place belongs to you by American law,
and we can't sell without your consent.  We only
want you to advise us.  How did it use to be
when you and father first came?  Was it really
as bad as this, or not?"

     "Oh, worse!  Much worse," moaned Mrs.
Bergson.  "Drouth, chince-bugs, hail, every-
thing!  My garden all cut to pieces like sauer-
kraut.  No grapes 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 that Alexandra
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 the women to church, but went down
to the barn immediately after breakfast and
stayed there all day.  When Carl Linstrum came
over in the afternoon, Alexandra winked to
him and pointed toward the barn.  He under-
stood her and went down to play cards with the
boys.  They believed that a very wicked thing
to do on Sunday, and it relieved their feelings.

     Alexandra stayed in the house.  On Sunday
afternoon Mrs. Bergson always took a nap, and
Alexandra read.  During the week she read only
the newspaper, but on Sunday, and in the long
evenings of winter, she read a good deal; read
a few things over a great many times.  She knew
long portions of the "Frithjof Saga" by heart,
and, like most Swedes who read at all, she was
fond of Longfellow's verse,--the ballads and
the "Golden Legend" and "The Spanish Stu-
dent."  To-day she sat in the wooden rocking-
chair with the Swedish Bible open on her knees,
but she was not reading.  She was looking
thoughtfully away at the point where the up-
land road disappeared over the rim of the
prairie.  Her body was in an attitude of perfect
repose, such as it was apt to take when she was
thinking earnestly.  Her mind was slow, truth-
ful, steadfast.  She had not the least spark of
cleverness.

     All afternoon the sitting-room was full of
quiet and sunlight.  Emil was making rabbit
traps in the kitchen shed.  The hens were cluck-
ing and scratching brown holes in the flower
beds, and the wind was teasing the prince's
feather by 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's schemes.  Carl
was interested.

     "I've been thinking, boys," she went on,
"that maybe I am too set against making a
change.  I'm going to take Brigham and the
buckboard to-morrow and drive down to
the river country and spend a few days looking
over what they've got down there.  If I find
anything good, you boys can go down and make
a trade."

     "Nobody down there will trade for anything
up here," said Oscar gloomily.

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

     Lou fidgeted.  "Look out!  Don't agree to
anything.  Don't let them fool you."

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

     After supper Lou put on a necktie and went
across the fields to court Annie Lee, 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 was not long
before the two boys at the table neglected their
game to listen.  They were all big children
together, and they found the adventures of the
family in the 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 and down
the valley.  Alexandra talked to the men about
their crops and to the women about their poul-
try.  She spent a whole day with one young
farmer who had been away at school, and who
was experimenting with a new kind of clover
hay.  She learned a great deal.  As they drove
along, she and Emil talked and planned.  At
last, on the sixth day, Alexandra turned Brig-
ham's head northward and left the river behind.

     "There's nothing in it for us down there,
Emil.  There are a few fine farms, but they are
owned by the rich men in town, and couldn't be
bought.  Most of the land is rough and hilly.
They can always scrape along down there, but
they can never do anything big.  Down there
they have a little certainty, but up with us
there is a big chance.  We must have faith in
the high land, Emil.  I want to hold on harder
than ever, and when you're a man you'll thank
me."  She urged Brigham forward.

     When the road began to climb the first long
swells of the Divide, Alexandra hummed 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 face was
set toward it with love and yearning.  It seemed
beautiful to her, rich and strong and glorious.
Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until her
tears blinded her.  Then the Genius of the
Divide, the great, free spirit which breathes
across it, must have bent lower than it ever
bent to a human will before.  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 council and told
her brothers all that she had seen and heard.

     "I want you boys to go down yourselves and
look it over.  Nothing will convince you like
seeing with your own eyes.  The river land was
settled before this, and so they are a few years
ahead of us, and have learned more about farm-
ing.  The land sells for three times as much as
this, but in five years we will double it.  The
rich men down there own all the best land, and
they are buying all they can get.  The thing to
do is to sell our cattle and what little old corn
we have, and buy the Linstrum place.  Then
the next thing to do is to take 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 began to wind the clock
furiously.  "I won't slave to pay off another
mortgage.  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 your mortgages?"

     Alexandra looked from one to the other and
bit her lip.  They had never seen her so ner-
vous.  "See here," she brought out at last.
"We borrow the money for six years.  Well,
with the money we buy a half-section from
Linstrum and a half from Crow, and a quarter
from Struble, maybe.  That will give us up-
wards of fourteen hundred acres, won't it?
You won't have to pay off your mortgages for
six years.  By that time, any of this land will be
worth thirty dollars an acre--it will be worth
fifty, but we'll say thirty; then you can sell a
garden patch anywhere, and pay off a debt of
sixteen hundred dollars.  It's not the principal
I'm worried about, it's the interest and taxes.
We'll have to strain to meet the payments.  But
as sure as we are sitting here to-night, we can
sit down here ten years from now independent
landowners, not struggling farmers any longer.
The chance that father was always looking for
has come."

     Lou was pacing the floor.  "But how do you
KNOW that land is going to go up enough to pay
the mortgages and--"

     "And make us rich besides?" Alexandra put
in firmly.  "I can't explain that, Lou.  You'll
have to take my word for it.  I KNOW, that's all.
When you drive about over the country you
can feel it coming."

     Oscar had been sitting with his head lowered,
his hands hanging between his knees.  "But we
can't work so much land," he said dully, as if he
were talking to himself.  "We can't even try.
It would just lie there and we'd work ourselves
to death."  He sighed, and laid his calloused
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
are buying up other people's land don't try to
farm it.  They are the men to watch, in a new
country.  Let's try to do like the shrewd ones,
and not like these stupid fellows.  I don't want
you boys always to have to work 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 are crazy.  It must be
crazy, or everybody would be doing it."

     "If they were, we wouldn't have much
chance.  No, Lou, I was talking about that with
the smart young man who is raising the new
kind of clover.  He says the right thing is usu-
ally just what everybody don't do.  Why are
we better fixed than any of our neighbors?
Because father had more brains.  Our people
were better people than these in the old coun-
try.  We OUGHT to do more than they do, and see
further ahead.  Yes, mother, I'm going to clear
the table now."

     Alexandra rose.  The boys went to the stable
to see to the stock, and they were gone a long
while.  When they came back Lou played on
his DRAGHARMONIKA and Oscar sat figuring at his
father's secretary all evening.  They said no-
thing more about Alexandra's project, but she
felt sure now that they would 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 down the
path to the windmill.  She found him sitting
there with his head in his hands, and she sat
down beside him.

     "Don't do anything you don't want to do,
Oscar," she whispered.  She waited a moment,
but he did not stir.  "I won't say any more
about it, if you'd rather not.  What makes you
so discouraged?"

     "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 that way."

     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, we
might as well go deeper.  But it's hard work
pulling out of debt.  Like pulling a threshing-
machine out of the mud; breaks your back.  Me
and Lou's worked hard, and I can't see it's got
us ahead much."

     "Nobody knows about that as well as I do,
Oscar.  That's why I want to try an easier way.
I don't want you to have to grub for every
dollar."

     "Yes, I know what you mean.  Maybe it'll
come out right.  But signing papers is signing
papers.  There ain't no maybe about that."
He took his pail and trudged up the path to the
house.

     Alexandra drew her shawl closer about her
and stood leaning against the frame of the mill,
looking at the stars which glittered so keenly
through the frosty autumn air.  She always
loved to watch them, to think of their vastness
and distance, and of their ordered march.  It
fortified her to reflect upon the great operations
of nature, and when she thought of the law that
lay behind them, she felt a sense of personal
security.  That night she had a new conscious-
ness of the country, felt almost a new relation
to it.  Even her talk with the boys had not
taken away the feeling that had overwhelmed
her when she drove back to the Divide that
afternoon.  She had never known before how
much the country meant to her.  The chirping
of the insects down in the long grass had been
like the sweetest music.  She had felt as if
her heart were hiding down there, somewhere,
with the quail and the plover and all the lit-
tle wild things that crooned or buzzed in the
sun.  Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the
future stirring.



                    PART II

              Neighboring Fields


                     I

     IT is sixteen years since John Bergson died.
His wife now lies beside him, and the white
shaft that marks their graves gleams across the
wheat-fields.  Could he rise from beneath it,
he would not know the country under which he
has been asleep.  The shaggy coat of the prairie,
which they lifted to make him a bed, has van-
ished forever.  From the Norwegian graveyard
one looks out over a vast checker-board, marked
off in squares of wheat and corn; light and
dark, dark and light.  Telephone wires hum
along the white roads, which always run at
right angles.  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 the green and brown and
yellow fields.  The light steel windmills trem-
ble throughout their frames and tug at their
moorings, as they vibrate in the wind that often
blows from one week's end to another across
that high, active, resolute stretch of country.

     The Divide is now thickly populated.  The
rich soil yields heavy harvests; the dry, bracing
climate and the smoothness of the land make
labor easy for men and beasts.  There are few
scenes more gratifying than a spring plowing
in that country, where the furrows of a single
field often lie a mile in length, and the brown
earth, with such a strong, clean smell, and such
a power of growth and fertility in it, yields itself
eagerly to the plow; rolls away from the shear,
not even dimming the brightness of the metal,
with a soft, deep sigh of happiness.  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 the harvesting.
The grain is so heavy that it bends toward the
blade and cuts like velvet.

     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 Lom-
bardy, it seems to rise a little to meet the sun.
The air and the earth are curiously mated and
intermingled, as if the one were the breath of
the other.  You feel in the atmosphere the same
tonic, puissant quality 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 was whistling.  He wore a flannel cap
and duck trousers, and the sleeves of his white
flannel shirt were rolled back to the elbow.
When he was satisfied with the edge of his
blade, he slipped the whetstone into his hip
pocket and began to swing his scythe, still
whistling, but softly, out of respect to the quiet
folk about him.  Unconscious respect, probably,
for he seemed intent upon his own thoughts,
and, like the Gladiator's, they were far away.
He was a splendid figure of a boy, tall and
straight as a young pine tree, with a hand-
some head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set
under a serious brow.  The space between his
two front teeth, which were unusually far
apart, gave him the proficiency in whistling
for which he was distinguished at college.
(He also played the cornet in the University
band.)

     When the grass required his close attention,
or when he had to stoop to cut about 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 think-
ing about the tired pioneers over whom his
blade glittered.  The old wild country, the
struggle in which his sister was destined to suc-
ceed while so many men broke their hearts and
died, he can scarcely remember.  That is all
among the dim things of childhood and has been
forgotten in the brighter pattern life weaves
to-day, in the bright facts of being captain of
the track team, and holding the interstate
record for the high jump, in the all-suffusing
brightness of being twenty-one.  Yet some-
times, in the pauses of his work, the young man
frowned and looked at the ground with an
intentness which suggested that even twenty-
one might have its problems.

     When he had been mowing the better part of
an hour, he heard the rattle of a light cart on
the road behind him.  Supposing that it was
his sister coming back from one of her farms,
he kept on with his work.  The cart stopped at
the gate and a merry contralto voice called,
"Almost through, Emil?"  He dropped his
scythe and went toward the fence, wiping his
face and neck with his handkerchief.  In the
cart sat a young woman who wore driving
gauntlets and a wide shade hat, trimmed with
red poppies.  Her face, too, was rather like a
poppy, round and brown, with rich color in her
cheeks and lips, and her dancing yellow-brown
eyes bubbled with gayety.  The wind was flap-
ping her big hat and teasing a curl of her
chestnut-colored hair.  She shook her head at
the tall youth.

     "What time did you get over here?  That's
not much of a job for an athlete.  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 was going
to give you a lift, if you were done."  She gath-
ered up her reins.

     "But I will be, in a minute.  Please wait for
me, Marie," Emil coaxed.  "Alexandra sent me
to mow our lot, but I've done half a dozen
others, you see.  Just wait till I finish off the
Kourdnas'.  By the way, they were Bohemians.
Why aren't they up in the Catholic grave-
yard?"

     "Free-thinkers," replied the young woman
laconically.

     "Lots of the Bohemian boys at the Univer-
sity are," said Emil, taking up his scythe again.
"What did you ever burn John Huss for, any-
way?  It's made an awful row.  They still jaw
about it in history classes."

     "We'd do it right over again, most of us,"
said the young woman hotly.  "Don't they ever
teach you in your history classes that you'd all
be heathen Turks if it hadn't been for the
Bohemians?"

     Emil had fallen to mowing.  "Oh, there's no
denying you're a spunky little bunch, you
Czechs," he called back over his shoulder.

     Marie Shabata settled herself in her seat
and watched the rhythmical movement of the
young man's long arms, swinging her foot as
if in time to some air that was going through
her mind.  The minutes passed.  Emil mowed
vigorously and Marie sat sunning herself and
watching the long grass fall.  She sat with the
ease that belongs to persons of an essentially
happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot
almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in
adapting themselves to circumstances.  After a
final swish, Emil snapped the gate and sprang
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 over here."

     Marie clucked to her horse.  "Oh, you know
Annie!"  She looked at the young man's bare
arms.  "How brown you've got since you came
home.  I wish I had an athlete to mow my
orchard.  I get wet to my knees when I go
down to pick cherries."

     "You can have one, any time you want him.
Better wait until after it rains."  Emil squinted
off at the horizon as if he were looking for clouds.

     "Will you?  Oh, there's a good boy!"  She
turned her head to him with a quick, bright
smile.  He felt it rather than saw it.  Indeed,
he had looked away with the purpose of not see-
ing it.  "I've been up looking at Angelique's
wedding clothes," Marie went on, "and I'm so
excited I can hardly wait until Sunday.  Ame-
dee will be a handsome bridegroom.  Is any-
body but you going to stand up with him?  Well,
then it will be a handsome wedding party."
She made a droll face at Emil, who flushed.
"Frank," Marie continued, flicking her horse,
"is cranky at me because I loaned his saddle
to Jan Smirka, and I'm terribly afraid he won't
take me to the dance in the evening.  Maybe
the supper will tempt him.  All Angelique's
folks are baking for it, and all Amedee's twenty
cousins.  There will be barrels of beer.  If once
I get Frank to the supper, I'll see that I stay
for the dance.  And by the way, Emil, you
mustn't dance with me but once or twice.  You
must dance with all the French girls.  It hurts
their feelings if you don't.  They think you're
proud because you've been away to school or
something."

     Emil sniffed.  "How do you know they think
that?"

     "Well, you didn't dance with them much at
Raoul Marcel's party, and I could tell how they
took it by the way they looked at you--and at
me."

     "All right," said Emil shortly, studying the
glittering blade of his scythe.

     They drove westward toward Norway Creek,
and toward a big white house that stood on a
hill, several miles across the fields.  There were
so many sheds and outbuildings grouped about
it that the place looked not unlike a tiny village.
A stranger, approaching it, could not help notic-
ing the beauty and fruitfulness of the outlying
fields.  There was something individual about
the great farm, a most unusual trimness and
care for detail.  On either side of the road, for a
mile 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 fruit trees
knee-deep in timothy grass.  Any one there-
abouts would have told you that this was one
of the richest farms on the Divide, and that
the farmer was a woman, Alexandra Bergson.

     If you go up the hill and enter Alexandra's
big house, you will find that it is curiously
unfinished and uneven in comfort.  One room
is papered, carpeted, over-furnished; the next
is almost bare.  The pleasantest rooms in the
house are the kitchen--where Alexandra's
three young Swedish girls chatter and cook and
pickle and preserve all summer long--and the
sitting-room, in which Alexandra has brought
together the old homely furniture that the
Bergsons used in their first log house, the fam-
ily portraits, and the few things her mother
brought from Sweden.

     When you go out of the house into the flower
garden, there you feel again the order and fine
arrangement manifest all over the great farm;
in the fencing and hedging, in the windbreaks
and sheds, in the symmetrical pasture ponds,
planted with scrub willows to give shade to the
cattle in fly-time.  There is even a white 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 in the soil
that she expresses herself best.


                     II

     Emil reached home a little past noon, and
when he went into the kitchen Alexandra was
already seated at the head of the long table,
having dinner with her men, as she always did
unless there were visitors.  He slipped into his
empty place at his sister's right.  The three
pretty young Swedish girls who did Alexandra's
housework were cutting pies, refilling coffee-
cups, placing platters of bread and meat and
potatoes upon the red tablecloth, and continu-
ally 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's
way and giggling at each other's mistakes.  But,
as Alexandra had pointedly told her sisters-in-
law, it was to hear them giggle that she kept
three young things in her kitchen; the work she
could do herself, if it were necessary.  These
girls, with their long letters from home, their
finery, and their love-affairs, afforded her a
great deal of entertainment, and they were com-
pany for her when Emil was away at school.

     Of the youngest girl, Signa, who has a pretty
figure, mottled pink cheeks, and yellow 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
spill the coffee or upset the cream.  It is sup-
posed that Nelse Jensen, one of the six men at
the dinner-table, is courting Signa, though he
has been so careful not to commit himself that
no one in the house, least of all Signa, can tell
just how far the matter has progressed.  Nelse
watches her glumly as she waits upon the table,
and in the evening he sits on a bench behind the
stove with his DRAGHARMONIKA, playing mournful
airs and watching her as she goes about her
work.  When Alexandra asked Signa whether
she thought Nelse was in earnest, the poor child
hid her hands under her apron and murmured,
"I don't know, ma'm.  But he scolds me about
everything, like as if he wanted to have me!"

     At Alexandra's left sat a very old man, bare-
foot and wearing a long blue blouse, open at the
neck.  His shaggy head is scarcely whiter than
it was sixteen years ago, but his little blue eyes
have become pale and watery, and his ruddy
face is withered, like an apple that has clung
all winter to the tree.  When Ivar lost his land
through mismanagement a dozen years ago,
Alexandra took him in, and he has been a mem-
ber of her household ever since.  He is too old to
work in the fields, but he hitches and unhitches
the work-teams and looks after the health
of the stock.  Sometimes of a winter evening
Alexandra calls him into the sitting-room to
read the Bible aloud to her, for he still reads
very well.  He dislikes human habitations, so
Alexandra has fitted him up a room in the barn,
where he is very comfortable, being near the
horses and, as he says, further from tempta-
tions.  No one has ever found out what his
temptations are.  In cold weather he sits by the
kitchen fire and makes hammocks or mends
harness until it is time to go to bed.  Then he
says his prayers at great length behind the
stove, puts on his buffalo-skin coat and goes
out to his room in the barn.

     Alexandra herself has changed very little.
Her figure is fuller, and she has more 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 clear eyes,
and she still wears her hair in two braids wound
round her head.  It is so curly that fiery ends
escape from the braids and make her head look
like one of the big double sunflowers that fringe
her vegetable garden.  Her face is always tanned
in summer, for her sunbonnet is oftener on her
arm than on her head.  But where her collar
falls away from her neck, or where her sleeves
are pushed back from her wrist, the skin is of
such smoothness and whiteness as none but
Swedish 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 talking foolishly.

     To-day Barney Flinn, the big red-headed
Irishman who had been with Alexandra for 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 hap-
pened to be the first silo on the Divide, and
Alexandra's neighbors and her men were skep-
tical 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 he wouldn't have no silo
on his place if you'd give it to him.  He says
the feed outen it gives the stock the bloat.  He
heard of somebody lost four head of horses,
feedin' 'em that stuff."

     Alexandra looked down the table from one
to another.  "Well, the only way we can find
out is to try.  Lou and I have different notions
about feeding stock, and that's a good thing.
It's bad if all the members of a family think
alike.  They never get anywhere.  Lou can learn
by my mistakes and I can learn by his.  Isn't
that fair, Barney?"

     The Irishman laughed.  He had no love for
Lou, who was always uppish with him and who
said that Alexandra paid her hands too much.
"I've no thought 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 from the nail, and
marched out with Emil, who, with his univer-
sity ideas, was supposed to have instigated the
silo.  The other hands followed them, all except
old Ivar.  He had been depressed throughout
the meal and had paid no heed to the talk of
the men, even when they mentioned cornstalk
bloat, upon which he was sure to have opinions.

     "Did you want to speak to me, Ivar?" Alex-
andra asked as she rose from the table.  "Come
into the sitting-room."

     The old man followed Alexandra, but when
she motioned him to a chair he shook his
head.  She took up her workbasket and waited
for him to speak.  He stood looking at the car-
pet, his bushy head bowed, his hands clasped in
front of him.  Ivar's bandy legs seemed to have
grown shorter with years, and they were com-
pletely misfitted to his broad, thick body and
heavy shoulders.

     "Well, Ivar, what is it?" Alexandra asked
after she had waited longer 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 Alexandra in terms of the
deepest respect, hoping to set a good example
to the kitchen girls, whom he thought too fam-
iliar in their manners.

     "Mistress," he began faintly, without raising
his eyes, "the folk have been looking coldly at
me of late.  You know there has been talk."

     "Talk about what, Ivar?"

     "About sending me away; to the asylum."

     Alexandra put down her sewing-basket.
"Nobody has come to me with such talk," she
said decidedly.  "Why need you listen?  You
know I would never consent to such a thing."

     Ivar lifted his shaggy head and looked at her
out of his little eyes.  "They say that you can-
not prevent it if the folk complain of me, if your
brothers complain to the authorities.  They say
that your brothers are afraid--God forbid!--
that I may do you some injury when my spells
are on me.  Mistress, how can any one think
that?--that I could bite the hand that fed
me!"  The tears trickled down on the old man's
beard.

     Alexandra frowned.  "Ivar, I wonder at you,
that you should come bothering me with such
nonsense.  I am still running my own house,
and other people have nothing to do with
either you or me.  So long as I am suited with
you, there is nothing to be said."

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

     Alexandra made an impatient gesture, but
the old man put out his hand and went on
earnestly:--

     "Listen, mistress, it is right that you should
take these things into account.  You know that
my spells come from God, and that I would not
harm any living creature.  You believe that
every one should worship God in the way
revealed to him.  But that is not the way of
this country.  The way here is for all to do alike.
I am despised because I do not wear shoes,
because I do not cut my hair, and because I
have visions.  At home, in the old country,
there were many like me, who had been touched
by God, or who had seen things in the grave-
yard at night and were different afterward.  We
thought nothing of it, and let 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, drinking out
of a creek, he swallowed a snake, and always
after that he could eat only such food as the
creature liked, for when he ate anything else, it
became enraged and gnawed him.  When he
felt it whipping about in him, he drank alcohol
to 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 his stomach.  That is the way; they
have built the asylum for people who are dif-
ferent, and they will not even let us live in the
holes with the badgers.  Only your great pros-
perity has protected me so far.  If you had had
ill-fortune, they would have taken me to Has-
tings long ago."

     As Ivar talked, his gloom lifted.  Alexandra
had found that she could often break his fasts
and long penances by talking to him and let-
ting him pour out the thoughts that troubled
him.  Sympathy always cleared his mind, and
ridicule was poison to him.

     "There is a great deal in what you say, Ivar.
Like as not they will be wanting to take me to
Hastings because I have built a silo; and then
I may take you with me.  But at present I need
you here.  Only don't come to me again telling
me what people say.  Let people go on talking
as they like, and we will go on living as we
think best.  You have been with me now for
twelve years, and I have gone to you for advice
oftener than I have ever gone to any one.  That
ought to satisfy you."

     Ivar bowed humbly.  "Yes, mistress, I shall
not trouble you with their talk 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 in winter."

     Alexandra laughed.  "Oh, never mind about
your feet, Ivar.  We can remember when half
our neighbors went barefoot in summer.  I ex-
pect old Mrs. Lee would love to slip her shoes
off now sometimes, if she dared.  I'm glad I'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.  When you
sent me over with the strawberries, they were
all in town but the old woman Lee and the baby.
She took me in and showed me the thing, and
she told me it was impossible to wash yourself
clean in it, because, in so much water, you could
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,
she washes herself in a little wooden tub she
keeps under her bed."

     Alexandra shook with laughter.  "Poor old
Mrs. Lee!  They won't let her wear nightcaps,
either.  Never mind; when she comes to visit
me, she can do all 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 sor-
rowing, and you send me away with a light
heart.  And will you be so good as to tell the
Irishman that he is not to work the brown
gelding until the sore on its shoulder is healed?"

     "That I will.  Now go and put Emil's mare
to the cart.  I am going to drive up to the north
quarter to meet the man from town who is to
buy my alfalfa hay."


                     III

     Alexandra was to hear more of Ivar's case,
however.  On Sunday her married brothers
came to dinner.  She had asked them for that
day because Emil, who hated family parties,
would be absent, dancing at Amedee Chevalier's
wedding, up in the French country.  The table
was set for company in the dining-room, where
highly varnished wood and colored glass and
useless pieces of china were conspicuous enough
to satisfy the standards of the new prosperity.
Alexandra had put herself into the hands of the
Hanover furniture dealer, and he had conscien-
tiously done his best to make her dining-room
look like his display window.  She said frankly
that she knew nothing about such things, and
she was willing to be governed by the general
conviction that the more useless and utterly
unusable objects were, the greater their virtue
as ornament.  That seemed reasonable enough.
Since she liked plain things herself, it was all
the more necessary to have jars and punch-
bowls and candlesticks in the company rooms
for people who did appreciate them.  Her
guests liked to see about them these reassuring
emblems of prosperity.

     The family party was complete except for
Emil, and Oscar's wife who, in the country
phrase, "was not going anywhere just now."
Oscar sat at the foot of the table and his four
tow-headed little boys, aged from twelve to five,
were ranged at one side.  Neither Oscar nor
Lou has changed much; they have simply, as
Alexandra said of them long ago, grown to be
more and more like themselves.  Lou now looks
the older of the two; his face is thin and shrewd
and wrinkled about the eyes, while Oscar's is
thick and dull.  For all his dullness, however,
Oscar makes more money than his brother,
which adds to Lou's sharpness and uneasiness
and tempts him to make a show.  The trouble
with Lou is that he is tricky, and his neighbors
have found out that, as Ivar says, he has not
a fox's face for nothing.  Politics being the nat-
ural field for such talents, he neglects his farm
to attend conventions and to run for county
offices.

     Lou's wife, formerly Annie Lee, has grown to
look curiously like her husband.  Her face has
become longer, sharper, more aggressive.  She
wears her yellow hair in a high pompadour,
and is bedecked with rings and chains and
"beauty pins."  Her tight, high-heeled shoes
give her an awkward walk, and she is always
more or less preoccupied with her clothes.  As
she sat at the table, she kept telling her young-
est daughter to "be careful now, and not drop
anything on mother."

     The conversation at the table was all in Eng-
lish.  Oscar's wife, from the malaria district of
Missouri, was ashamed of marrying a foreigner,
and his boys do not understand a word of
Swedish.  Annie and Lou sometimes speak
Swedish at home, but Annie is almost as much
afraid of being "caught" at it as ever 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 con-
vention," he was saying, "I saw the superin-
tendent of the asylum, and I was telling him
about Ivar's symptoms.  He says Ivar's case
is one of the most dangerous kind, and it's
a wonder he hasn't done something violent
before this."

     Alexandra laughed good-humoredly.  "Oh,
nonsense, Lou!  The doctors would have us all
crazy if they could.  Ivar's queer, certainly, but
he has more sense than half the hands I hire."

     Lou flew at his fried chicken.  "Oh, I guess
the doctor knows his business, Alexandra.  He
was very much surprised when I told him how
you'd put 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.  We all know that Ivar's perfectly harm-
less.  The girls would as soon expect me to
chase them with an axe."

     Lou flushed and signaled to his wife.  "All
the same, the neighbors will be 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 make complaint, and
he'll be taken up by force.  You'd better send
him yourself and not have any hard feelings."

     Alexandra helped one of her little nephews to
gravy.  "Well, Lou, if any of the neighbors try
that, I'll have myself appointed Ivar's guardian
and take the case to court, that's all.  I am
perfectly satisfied with him."

     "Pass the preserves, Lou," said Annie in a
warning tone.  She had reasons for not wishing
her husband to cross Alexandra too openly.
"But don't you sort of hate to have people see
him around here, Alexandra?" she went on
with persuasive smoothness.  "He IS a disgrace-
ful object, and you're fixed up so nice now.  It
sort of makes people distant with you, when
they never know when they'll hear him scratch-
ing about.  My girls are afraid as death of him,
aren't you, Milly, dear?"

     Milly was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompa-
doured, with a creamy complexion, square
white teeth, and a short upper lip.  She looked
like her grandmother Bergson, and had her
comfortable and comfort-loving nature.  She
grinned at her aunt, 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 favorite of his.  In my opinion Ivar has
just as much right to his own way of dressing
and thinking as we have.  But I'll see that he
doesn't bother other people.  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 it work?"

     Annie came to the fore to give Lou time to
recover himself.  "Oh, it works something
grand!  I can't keep him out of it.  He washes
himself all over three times a week now, and
uses all the hot water.  I think it's weakening
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, if it will ease people's minds.
But before I get a bathtub, I'm going to get a
piano for Milly."

     Oscar, at the end of the table, looked up from
his plate.  "What does Milly want of a pianny?
What's the matter with her organ?  She can
make some use of that, and play in church."

     Annie looked flustered.  She had begged
Alexandra not to say anything about this plan
before Oscar, who was apt to be jealous of what
his sister did for Lou'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 on the organ.  But practising on it so
much spoils her touch.  Her teacher says so,"
Annie brought out with spirit.

     Oscar rolled his eyes.  "Well, Milly must have
got on pretty good if she's got past the organ.
I know plenty of grown folks that ain't," he
said bluntly.

     Annie threw up her chin.  "She has got on
good, and she's going to play for her commence-
ment when she graduates in town next year."

     "Yes," said Alexandra firmly, "I think Milly
deserves a piano.  All the girls around here have
been taking lessons for years, but Milly is the
only one of them who can ever play anything
when you ask her.  I'll tell you when I first
thought I would like to give you a piano, Milly,
and that was when you learned that book of
old Swedish songs that your grandfather used
to sing.  He had a sweet tenor voice, and when
he was a young man he loved to sing.  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 younger
daughter.

     Milly and Stella both looked through the
door into the sitting-room, where a crayon por-
trait of John Bergson hung on the wall.  Alex-
andra had had it made from a little photograph,
taken for his friends just before he left Sweden;
a slender man of thirty-five, with soft hair curl-
ing about his high forehead, a drooping mus-
tache, and wondering, sad eyes that looked
forward into the distance, as if they already
beheld the New World.

     After dinner Lou and Oscar went to the
orchard to pick cherries--they had neither of
them had the patience to grow an orchard of their
own--and Annie went down to gossip with
Alexandra's kitchen girls while they washed the
dishes.  She could always find out more about
Alexandra's domestic economy from the prat-
tling maids than from Alexandra herself, and
what she discovered she used to her own advan-
tage with Lou.  On the Divide, farmers' daugh-
ters no longer went out into service, so Alex-
andra got her girls from Sweden, by paying
their fare over.  They stayed with her until
they married, and were replaced by sisters or
cousins from the old country.

     Alexandra took her three nieces into the
flower garden.  She was fond of the little girls,
especially of Milly, who came to spend a week
with her aunt now and then, and read aloud
to her from the old books about the house, or
listened to stories about the early days on the
Divide.  While they were walking among the
flower beds, a buggy drove up the hill and
stopped in front of the gate.  A man got out and
stood talking to the driver.  The little girls
were delighted at the advent of a stranger, some
one from very far away, they knew by his
clothes, his gloves, and the sharp, pointed cut
of his dark beard.  The girls fell behind their
aunt and peeped out at him from among the
castor beans.  The stranger 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 a low, 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 step forward.  "Can
it be!" she exclaimed with feeling; "can it be
that it is Carl Linstrum?  Why, Carl, it is!"
She threw out both her hands and caught his
across the gate.  "Sadie, Milly, run tell your
father and Uncle Oscar that our old friend Carl
Linstrum is here.  Be quick!  Why, Carl, how
did it happen?  I can't believe this!"  Alexan-
dra shook the tears from her eyes and laughed.

     The stranger nodded to his driver, dropped
his suitcase inside the fence, and opened the
gate.  "Then you are glad to see me, and you
can put me up overnight?  I couldn't go
through this country without stopping off to
have a look at you.  How little you have
changed!  Do you know, I was sure it would be
like that.  You simply couldn't be different.
How fine you are!"  He stepped back and
looked at her admiringly.

     Alexandra blushed and laughed again.  "But
you yourself, Carl--with that 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 her
hands.  "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 the coast."

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

     "Oh, I must!  I am a fortune hunter.  From
Seattle I go on to Alaska."

     "Alaska?"  She looked at him in astonish-
ment.  "Are you going to 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 paint-
ings--"

     He interrupted nervously.  "Oh, water-color
sketches--done for amusement.  I sent them to
remind you of me, not because they were good.
What a wonderful place you have made of this,
Alexandra."  He turned and looked back at the
wide, map-like prospect of field and hedge and
pasture.  "I would never have believed it could
be done.  I'm disappointed in my own eye, in
my imagination."

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

     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 whether their offishness came from
unfriendliness or from embarrassment.  He and
Alexandra led the way to the porch.

     "Carl," Alexandra explained, "is on his way
to Seattle.  He is going to Alaska."

     Oscar studied the visitor's yellow shoes.
"Got business there?" he asked.

     Carl laughed.  "Yes, very pressing business.
I'm going there to get rich.  Engraving's a very
interesting profession, but a man never makes
any money at it.  So I'm going to try the gold-
fields."

     Alexandra felt that this was a tactful speech,
and Lou looked up with some interest.  "Ever
done anything in that line before?"

     "No, but I'm going to join a friend of mine
who went out from New York and has done
well.  He has offered to break me in."

     "Turrible cold winters, there, I hear," re-
marked Oscar.  "I thought people went up
there in the spring."

     "They do.  But my friend is going to spend
the winter in Seattle and I am to stay with him
there and learn something about prospecting
before we start north next year."

     Lou looked skeptical.  "Let's see, how long
have you been away from here?"

     "Sixteen years.  You ought to remember
that, Lou, for you were married just 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," Lou observed more cordially.  "You
won't hardly know it.  But there's a few chunks
of your old sod house left.  Alexandra wouldn't
never let Frank Shabata plough over it."

     Annie Lee, who, ever since the visitor was
announced, had been touching up her hair and
settling her lace and wishing she had worn
another dress, now emerged with her three
daughters and introduced them.  She was
greatly impressed by Carl's urban appearance,
and in her excitement talked very loud and
threw her head about.  "And you ain't married
yet?  At your age, now!  Think of 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 see mother
and hear Milly play.  She's the musician of the
family.  She does pyrography, too.  That's
burnt wood, you know.  You wouldn't believe
what she can do with her poker.  Yes, she goes
to school in town, and she is the youngest in
her class by two years."

     Milly looked uncomfortable and Carl took
her hand again.  He liked her creamy skin and
happy, innocent eyes, and he could see that her
mother's way of talking distressed her.  "I'm
sure she's a clever little girl," he murmured,
looking at her thoughtfully.  "Let me see--
Ah, it's your mother that she looks like, Alex-
andra.  Mrs. Bergson must have looked just
like this when she was a little girl.  Does Milly
run about over the country as you and Alex-
andra used to, Annie?"

     Milly's mother protested.  "Oh, my, no!
Things has changed since we was girls.  Milly
has it very different.  We are going to rent the
place and move into town as soon as the girls
are old enough to go out into company.  A
good many are doing that here now.  Lou is
going into business."

     Lou grinned.  "That's what she says.  You
better go get your things on.  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 to whittle.  "Well,
what do folks in New York think of William
Jennings Bryan?"  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're fixing another to hand them.  Silver
wasn't the only issue," he nodded 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 our responsibilities,
out here, and we ain't afraid, neither.  You
fellows back there must be a tame lot.  If you
had any nerve you'd get together and march
down to Wall Street and blow it up.  Dyna-
mite it, I mean," with a 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
in another street.  The street doesn't matter.
But what have you fellows out here got to kick
about?  You have the only safe place there is.
Morgan himself couldn't touch you.  One only
has to drive through this country to see that
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 of things."

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

     "What do you suppose he's come for?" he
asked, jerking his head 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 was coming?"

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

     Lou shrugged his shoulders.  "He doesn't
seem to have done much for himself.  Wander-
ing around this way!"

     Oscar spoke solemnly, as from the depths of
a cavern.  "He never was much account."

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


                     IV

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

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

     "Do you know, Alexandra," he was saying,
"I've been thinking how strangely things work
out.  I've been away engraving other men's
pictures, and you've stayed at home and made
your own."  He pointed with his cigar toward
the sleeping landscape.  "How in the world
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.  It had its little joke.  It
pretended to be poor because nobody knew how
to work it right; and then, all at once, it worked
itself.  It woke up out of its sleep and stretched
itself, and it was so big, so rich, that we sud-
denly found we were rich, just from sitting still.
As for me, you remember when I began to buy
land.  For years after that I was always squeez-
ing and borrowing until I was ashamed to show
my face in the banks.  And then, all at once,
men began to come to me offering to lend me
money--and I didn't need it!  Then I went
ahead 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, and to 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 from the State University in June,
you know,--but underneath he is more Swed-
ish than any of us.  Sometimes he is so like father
that he frightens me; he is so violent in his feel-
ings like that."

     "Is he going to farm here with you?"

     "He shall do whatever he wants to," Alex-
andra declared warmly.  "He is going to have
a chance, a whole chance; that's what I've
worked for.  Sometimes he talks about studying
law, and sometimes, just lately, he's been talk-
ing about going out into the sand hills and tak-
ing up more land.  He has his sad times, like
father.  But I hope he won't do that.  We have
land enough, at last!"  Alexandra laughed.

     "How about Lou and Oscar?  They've done
well, haven't they?"

     "Yes, very well; but they are different, and
now that they have farms of their own I do not
see so much of them.  We divided the land
equally when Lou married.  They have their
own way of doing things, and they do not alto-
gether like my way, I am afraid.  Perhaps they
think me too independent.  But I have had to
think for myself a good many years and am not
likely to change.  On the whole, though, we
take as much comfort in each other as most
brothers and sisters 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 the same about me.  I
even, if you can keep a secret,"--Carl leaned
forward and touched her arm, smiling,--"I
even think I liked the old country better.  This
is all very splendid in its way, but there was
something about this country when it was a
wild old beast that has haunted me all these
years.  Now, when I come back to all this milk
and honey, I feel like the old German song, 'Wo
bist du, wo bist du, mein geliebtest Land?'--
Do you ever feel like that, I wonder?"

     "Yes, sometimes, when I think about father
and mother and those who are gone; so many
of our old neighbors."  Alexandra paused and
looked up thoughtfully at the stars.  "We can
remember the graveyard when it was wild
prairie, Carl, and now--"

     "And now the old story has begun to write
itself over there," said Carl softly.  "Isn't it
queer: there are only two or three human
stories, and they go on repeating themselves as
fiercely as if they had never happened before;
like the larks in this country, that have been
singing the same five notes over for thousands
of years."

     "Oh, yes!  The young people, they l