O Pioneers!

Cather, Willa

Published: 1913
Categorie(s): Fiction, Westerns
Source: http://gutenberg.org

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About Cather:
Wilella Sibert Cather (December 7, 1873 – April 24, 1947) is
an eminent author from the United States. She is perhaps best
known for her depictions of U.S. life in novels such as O Pion-
eers!, My Ántonia, and Death Comes for the Archbishop.

Also available on Feedbooks for Cather:

• Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927)
• A Lost Lady (1923)
• My Ántonia (1918)
• One of Ours (1923)
• Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940)
• The Song of the Lark (1915)
• The Professor's House (1925)
• The Troll Garden and Selected Stories (1905)
• Youth and the Bright Medusa (1920)
• Not Under Forty (1936)

Copyright: This work is available for countries where copy-

right is Life+50 or in the USA (published before 1923).

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 Part 1
The Wild Land

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Chapter 1
One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover,
anchored on a windy Nebraska 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 sa-
loon, the post-office. The board sidewalks were gray with
trampled snow, but at two o'clock in the afternoon the shop-
keepers, having come back from dinner, were keeping well be-
hind their frosty windows. The children were all in school, and
there was nobody abroad in the streets but a few rough-looking
countrymen 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, harnessed 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

4
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 no-
tice 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 kit-
ten, 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 kitten 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 unhappy 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 in-
tently 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.

5
 "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. Al-
exandra 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 blowing 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 sever-
ity. It gave the little clothing drummer such a start that he ac-
tually let his cigar fall to the sidewalk 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 flirta-
tious instincts had been crushed before, but never so merci-
lessly. He felt cheap and ill-used, as if some one had taken ad-
vantage of him. When a drummer had been knocking about in
little drab towns and crawling across the wintry country in
dirty smokingcars, 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 portfolio of
chromo "studies" which the druggist sold to the Hanover wo-
men who did chinapainting. Alexandra explained her predica-
ment, and the boy followed her to the corner, where Emil still
sat by the pole.

6
 "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
tearing 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 getting 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 trying 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 si-
lence. When Carl turned away he said, "I'll see to your team."
Alexandra went into the store to have her purchases 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 sitting on a step of
the staircase that led up to the clothing and carpet depart-
ment. He was playing with a little Bohemian girl, Marie

7
Tovesky, who was tying her handkerchief over the kitten'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 nurtured 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 in-
to the big, brown, mustached faces, smelling of spirits and to-
bacco, 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 country 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.

8
 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 buying
tobacco and candy with what money they had left, were show-
ing 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 carrying 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 wagonbox. 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 murmured 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 re-
ceived them into its bosom. The homesteads were few and far
apart; here and there a windmill gaunt against the sky, a sod
house crouching in a hollow. But the great fact was the land it-
self, which seemed to overwhelm the little beginnings of hu-
man society that struggled in its sombre wastes. It was from fa-
cing this vast hardness that the boy's mouth had become so bit-
ter; 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 uninter-
rupted mournfulness.

9
 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 penetrated to their hearts.
"Did Lou and Oscar go to the Blue to cut wood to-day?" Carl
asked.
"Yes. I'm almost sorry I let them go, it's turned so cold. But
mother frets if the wood gets low." She stopped and put her
hand 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
realized 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 de-
pended so on father that I don't see how we can go ahead. I al-
most 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 comfort 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

10
soon. "Do bring it over, Carl. I can hardly wait to see it, and I'm
sure it will please father. Are the pictures colored? 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 dubiously 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 high-
way, going deeper and deeper into the dark country.

11
Chapter 2
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
overlooked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy stream that some-
times 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 bewil-
dering things about a new country, the absence of human land-
marks 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 no-
ticeable. The record of the plow was insignificant, like the
feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterm-
inate that they may, after all, be only the markings of glaciers,
and not a record of human strivings.
In eleven long years John Bergson had made but little im-
pression 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

12
summer one of his plow horses broke its leg in a prairiedog
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 mort-
gages 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 distinguish 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 be-
gun to be a help to him, and as she grew older he had come to

13
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 followed the markets, and who
learned by the mistakes of their neighbors. It was Alexandra
who could always tell about what it had cost to fatten 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 industrious, 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 intelli-
gent. John Bergson's father had been a shipbuilder, a man of
considerable 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 ex-
travagance. On the shipbuilder's part, this marriage was an in-
fatuation, 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, leaving 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
recognized the strength of will, and the simple direct way of
thinking things out, that had characterized 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 thankful that there was one among his chil-
dren 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 shining 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 under his

14
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 beckoned 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

15
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 missed the old country."
When they went back to the kitchen the boys sat down si-
lently 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. Bergson was a fair-skinned, corpulent
woman, heavy and placid like her son, Oscar, but there was
something comfortable about her; perhaps it was her own love
of comfort. For eleven years she had worthily striven to main-
tain some semblance 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 getting care-
less 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 sum-
mer she sent the boys to the river, twenty miles to the south-
ward, 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.

16
 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
yellow 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 tomatoes. 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 pro-
cesses was sometimes a serious drain upon the family re-
sources. 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 disapproved 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 barefoot."

17
Chapter 3
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 clambering 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 coun-
try 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 sug-
gested doubtfully.
"But suppose there wasn't any badger-hole," Lou persisted.
"Would you run?"

18
 "No, I'd be too scared to run," Emil admitted 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 animals. 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 suf-
ferings 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 con-
sidered that his chief business was horsedoctoring, it seemed

19
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, followed 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 supper 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 cor-
ral, 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, without defiling the face
of nature any more than the coyote that had lived there before
him had done.

20
 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 himself out in thresh-
ing and corn-husking time, and he doctored sick animals when
he was sent for. When he was at home, he made hammocks 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 door-
way 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 repeated softly:—
He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among the
hills;
They give drink to every beast of the field; the wild asses
quench their thirst.
The trees of the Lord are full of sap; the cedars of Lebanon
which he hath planted;

21
 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.
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 reassuringly.
He dropped his arms and went up to the wagon, smiling ami-
ably and looking at them out of his pale blue eyes.
"We want to buy a hammock, if you have one," Alexandra ex-
plained, "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
season, 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 un-
derstand her. She was going over to the other ocean, maybe,
and did not know how far it was. She was afraid of never get-
ting there. She was more mournful than our birds here; she
cried in the night. She saw the light from my window and dar-
ted 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

22
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 Testament."
"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 plastered and whitewashed, and there
was a wooden floor. There was a kitchen stove, a table covered
with oilcloth, two chairs, a clock, a calendar, a few books on
the window-shelf; nothing more. But the place was as clean as
a cupboard.
"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 shin-
ing, 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."

23
 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 because 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, sis-
ter, the hogs of this country are put upon! They become un-
clean, like the hogs in the Bible. If you kept your chickens like
that, what would happen? You have a little sorghum patch,
maybe? Put a fence around it, and turn the hogs in. Build a
shed to give them shade, a thatch on poles. Let the boys haul
water to them in barrels, clean water, and plenty. Get them off
the old stinking ground, and do not let them go back there un-
til 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

24
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 brother, 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 be-
cause 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 supper dishes, Alex-
andra 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. Alex-
andra 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.

25
Chapter 4
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 coun-
try 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 happi-
er 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 coun-
try. 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

26
end, next the rhubarb, grew feathery asparagus, with red ber-
ries. Down the middle of the garden was a row of gooseberry
and currant 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 pro-
hibition of her sons. Carl came quietly and slowly up the
garden path, looking intently at Alexandra. She did not hear
him. She was standing perfectly still, with that serious ease so
characteristic 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 considerably 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 frightened. "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, Alexan-
dra," 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

27
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 wistfully, "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 understanding 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 any-
thing 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 nev-
er 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 some-
way always felt alike about things."
"Yes, that's it; we've liked the same things and we've liked
them together, without anybody 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."

28
 "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, anyway, and no good comes of keeping
bad news. It's all harder on them than it is on me. Lou wants to
get married, 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 country 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-sec-
tion. 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 go-
ing 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

29
(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. Os-
car could not grow a mustache; his pale face was as bare as an
egg, and his white eyebrows gave it an empty look. He was a
man of powerful body and unusual endurance; 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 slowing 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, re-
gardless 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 irre-
proachable regularity he would clear himself of blame and re-
prove the weather. When the wheat crop failed, he threshed
the straw at a dead loss to demonstrate 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."

30
 At this Lou plunged in. "You see, Alexandra, 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 buying and trading for every bit of land he
can get up here. It'll make him a rich man, some day."
"He's rich now, that's why he can take a chance."
"Why can't we? We'll live longer than he will. Some day 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 nothing 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 exclaimed. "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

31
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 be-
longs 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, everything! My garden all cut to pieces like
sauerkraut. 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 break-
fast and stayed there all day. When Carl Linstrum came over in
the afternoon, Alexandra winked to him and pointed toward
the barn. He understood 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 Student." 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 upland road disappeared over the
rim of the prairie. Her body was in an attitude of perfect re-
pose, such as it was apt to take when she was thinking

32
earnestly. Her mind was slow, truthful, 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 clucking 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, be-
cause people always think the bread of another country is bet-
ter 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

33
family in the tree house so absorbing that they gave them their
undivided attention.

34
Chapter 5
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 poultry.
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, Alexan-
dra turned Brigham'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 radi-
ant that he felt shy about asking her. For the first time, per-
haps, 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.

35
 "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 farming. 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 nervous. "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 upwards 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,"

36
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 usually 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 country. We OUGHT to do
more than they do, and see further ahead. Yes, mother, I'm go-
ing 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 nothing 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."

37
 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 threshingmachine 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 consciousness 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 in-
sects down in the long grass had been like the sweetest music.
She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, some-
where, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild
things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long
shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.

38
 Part 2
Neighboring Fields

39
Chapter 1
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 vanished 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 yel-
low fields. The light steel windmills tremble 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 bright-
ness of the metal, with a soft, deep sigh of happiness. The
wheatcutting 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 Lombardy,

40
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 Nor-
wegian graveyard, sharpening his scythe in strokes uncon-
sciously 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 fig-
ure of a boy, tall and straight as a young pine tree, with a
handsome head, and stormy gray eyes, deeply set under a seri-
ous 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 cor-
net 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 thinking 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 child-
hood 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 sometimes, 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. Suppos-
ing 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

41
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
flapping 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 gathered 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 graveyard?"
"Free-thinkers," replied the young woman laconically.
"Lots of the Bohemian boys at the University are," said Emil,
taking up his scythe again. "What did you ever burn John Huss
for, anyway? It's made an awful row. They still jaw about it in
history classes."
"We'd do it right over again, most of us," said the young wo-
man 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

42
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 orch-
ard. 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 seeing 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.
Amedee will be a handsome bridegroom. Is anybody 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 be-
cause 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 noticing the beauty
and fruitfulness of the outlying fields. There was something

43
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 thereabouts 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 kit-
chen—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 family 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.

44
Chapter 2
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 un-
less 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 coffeecups,
placing platters of bread and meat and potatoes upon the red
tablecloth, and continually 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 company 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 supposed 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 pro-
gressed. 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 wheth-
er she thought Nelse was in earnest, the poor child hid her
hands under her apron and murmured, "I don't know, ma'm.

45
But he scolds me about everything, like as if he wanted to have
me!"
At Alexandra's left sat a very old man, barefoot 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 member 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, fur-
ther from temptations. 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

46
foreman, though he had no such title, was grumbling about the
new silo she had put up that spring. It happened to be the first
silo on the Divide, and Alexandra's neighbors and her men
were skeptical 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 any-
where. 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 al-
ways uppish with him and who said that Alexandra paid her
hands too much. "I've no thought but to give the thing an hon-
est try, mum. 'T would be only right, after puttin' so much ex-
pense 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 university 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?" Alexandra 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 carpet, his
bushy head bowed, his hands clasped in front of him. Ivar's
bandy legs seemed to have grown shorter with years, and they
were completely misfitted to his broad, thick body and heavy
shoulders.
"Well, Ivar, what is it?" Alexandra asked after she had waited
longer than usual.

47
 Ivar had never learned to speak English and his Norwegian
was quaint and grave, like the speech of the more old-fash-
ioned 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 familiar 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 cannot 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 coun-
try, there were many like me, who had been touched by God,
or who had seen things in the graveyard at night and were

48
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 al-
ways 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 different,
and they will not even let us live in the holes with the badgers.
Only your great prosperity has protected me so far. If you had
had ill-fortune, they would have taken me to Hastings long
ago."
As Ivar talked, his gloom lifted. Alexandra had found that she
could often break his fasts and long penances by talking to him
and letting him pour out the thoughts that troubled him. Sym-
pathy 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 liv-
ing 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 expect 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 coun-
try, to wash themselves in. When you sent me over with the

49
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
sorrowing, 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 go-
ing to drive up to the north quarter to meet the man from town
who is to buy my alfalfa hay."

50
Chapter 3
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 con-
scientiously 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 reas-
onable enough. Since she liked plain things herself, it was all
the more necessary to have jars and punchbowls and candle-
sticks in the company rooms for people who did appreciate
them. Her guests liked to see about them these reassuring em-
blems 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 un-
easiness 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

51
natural 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 youngest daughter to "be careful
now, and not drop anything on mother."
The conversation at the table was all in English. Oscar's wife,
from 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 moth-
er was of being caught barefoot. Oscar still has a thick accent,
but Lou speaks like anybody from Iowa.
"When I was in Hastings to attend the convention," he was
saying, "I saw the superintendent of the asylum, and I was
telling him 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, cer-
tainly, 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 harmless. 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-own-
er 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."

52
 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 per-
fectly 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 smooth-
ness. "He IS a disgraceful 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 scratching about. My girls are
afraid as death of him, aren't you, Milly, dear?"
Milly was fifteen, fat and jolly and pompadoured, with a
creamy complexion, square white teeth, and a short upper lip.
She looked like her grandmother Bergson, and had her com-
fortable 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 go-
ing 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 jeal-
ous 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

53
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 go-
ing to play for her commencement 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 portrait of John Bergson hung on the
wall. Alexandra 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 curling about his high forehead, a
drooping mustache, and wondering, sad eyes that looked for-
ward into the distance, as if they already beheld the New
World.
After dinner Lou and Oscar went to the orchard to pick cher-
ries—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 eco-
nomy from the prattling maids than from Alexandra herself,
and what she discovered she used to her own advantage with
Lou. On the Divide, farmers' daughters no longer went out into
service, so Alexandra 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

54
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 Alex-
andra 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!" Alexandra shook the tears from her eyes
and laughed.
The stranger nodded to his driver, dropped his suitcase in-
side 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 in-
tercepted 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

55
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 astonishment. "Are you going
to paint the Indians?"
"Paint?" the young man frowned. "Oh! I'm not a painter, Al-
exandra. I'm an engraver. I have nothing to do with painting."
"But on my parlor wall I have the paintings—"
He interrupted nervously. "Oh, water-color sketches—done
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 ad-
vanced 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 embarrass-
ment. 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
goldfields."
Alexandra felt that this was a tactful speech, and Lou looked
up with some interest. "Ever done anything in that line
before?"

56
 "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," remarked 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 ob-
served more cordially. "You won't hardly know it. But there's a
few chunks of your old sod house left. Alexandra wouldn't nev-
er 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 thought-
fully. "Let me see— Ah, it's your mother that she looks like, Al-
exandra. Mrs. Bergson must have looked just like this when
she was a little girl. Does Milly run about over the country as
you and Alexandra 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

57
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 al-
ways "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. Sil-
ver 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 re-
sponsibilities, out here, and we ain't afraid, neither. You fel-
lows 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. Dy-
namite 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 busi-
ness 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."

58
 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. Wandering 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 An-
nie was rattling on to Carl about her new dining-room fur-
niture. "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.

59
Chapter 4
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 def-
initely 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 himself
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 expec-
ted to be. He looked older than his years and not very strong.
His black hair, which still hung in a triangle over his pale fore-
head, 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 Alexandra 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 it-
self. It woke up out of its sleep and stretched itself, and it was
so big, so rich, that we suddenly 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 squeezing and borrow-
ing until I was ashamed to show my face in the banks. And

60
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 curi-
ous, 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 Swedish 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," Alexandra 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 talking about going out
into the sand hills and taking 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 di-
vided the land equally when Lou married. They have their own
way of doing things, and they do not altogether 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 prob-
ably feel the same about me. I even, if you can keep a
secret,"—Carl leaned forward and touched her arm, smil-
ing,—"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?"

61
 "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 re-
member 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 hu-
man stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as
if they had never happened before; like the larks in this coun-
try, that have been singing the same five notes over for thou-
sands of years."
"Oh, yes! The young people, they live so hard. And yet I
sometimes envy them. There is my little neighbor, now; the
people who bought your old place. I wouldn't have sold it to
any one else, but I was always fond of that girl. You must re-
member her, little Marie Tovesky, from Omaha, who used to
visit here? When she was eighteen she ran away from the con-
vent school and got married, crazy child! She came out here a
bride, with her father and husband. He had nothing, and the
old man was willing to buy them a place and set them up. Your
farm took her fancy, and I was glad to have her so near me.
I've never been sorry, either. I even try to get along with Frank
on her account."
"Is Frank her husband?"
"Yes. He's one of these wild fellows. Most Bohemians are
good-natured, but Frank thinks we don't appreciate him here, I
guess. He's jealous about everything, his farm and his horses
and his pretty wife. Everybody likes her, just the same as when
she was little. Sometimes I go up to the Catholic church with
Emil, and it's funny to see Marie standing there laughing and
shaking hands with people, looking so excited and gay, with
Frank sulking behind her as if he could eat everybody alive.
Frank's not a bad neighbor, but to get on with him you've got
to make a fuss over him and act as if you thought he was a very
important person all the time, and different from other people.
I find it hard to keep that up from one year's end to another."
"I shouldn't think you'd be very successful at that kind of
thing, Alexandra." Carl seemed to find the idea amusing.
"Well," said Alexandra firmly, "I do the best I can, on Marie's
account. She has it hard enough, anyway. She's too young and

62
pretty for this sort of life. We're all ever so much older and
slower. But she's the kind that won't be downed easily. She'll
work all day and go to a Bohemian wedding and dance all
night, and drive the hay wagon for a cross man next morning. I
could stay by a job, but I never had the go in me that she has,
when I was going my best. I'll have to take you over to see her
to-morrow."
Carl dropped the end of his cigar softly among the castor
beans and sighed. "Yes, I suppose I must see the old place. I'm
cowardly about things that remind me of myself. It took cour-
age to come at all, Alexandra. I wouldn't have, if I hadn't
wanted to see you very, very much."
Alexandra looked at him with her calm, deliberate eyes.
"Why do you dread things like that, Carl?" she asked earnestly.
"Why are you dissatisfied with yourself?"
Her visitor winced. "How direct you are, Alexandra! Just like
you used to be. Do I give myself away so quickly? Well, you
see, for one thing, there's nothing to look forward to in my
profession. Wood-engraving is the only thing I care about, and
that had gone out before I began. Everything's cheap metal
work nowadays, touching up miserable photographs, forcing
up poor drawings, and spoiling good ones. I'm absolutely sick
of it all." Carl frowned. "Alexandra, all the way out from New
York I've been planning how I could deceive you and make you
think me a very enviable fellow, and here I am telling you the
truth the first night. I waste a lot of time pretending to people,
and the joke of it is, I don't think I ever deceive any one. There
are too many of my kind; people know us on sight."
Carl paused. Alexandra pushed her hair back from her brow
with a puzzled, thoughtful gesture. "You see," he went on
calmly, "measured by your standards here, I'm a failure. I
couldn't buy even one of your cornfields. I've enjoyed a great
many things, but I've got nothing to show for it all."
"But you show for it yourself, Carl. I'd rather have had your
freedom than my land."
Carl shook his head mournfully. "Freedom so often means
that one isn't needed anywhere. Here you are an individual,
you have a background of your own, you would be missed. But
off there in the cities there are thousands of rolling stones like
me. We are all alike; we have no ties, we know nobody, we own

63
nothing. When one of us dies, they scarcely know where to
bury him. Our landlady and the delicatessen man are our
mourners, and we leave nothing behind us but a frock-coat and
a fiddle, or an easel, or a typewriter, or whatever tool we got
our living by. All we have ever managed to do is to pay our
rent, the exorbitant rent that one has to pay for a few square
feet of space near the heart of things. We have no house, no
place, no people of our own. We live in the streets, in the
parks, in the theatres. We sit in restaurants and concert halls
and look about at the hundreds of our own kind and shudder."
Alexandra was silent. She sat looking at the silver spot the
moon made on the surface of the pond down in the pasture. He
knew that she understood what he meant. At last she said
slowly, "And yet I would rather have Emil grow up like that
than like his two brothers. We pay a high rent, too, though we
pay differently. We grow hard and heavy here. We don't move
lightly and easily as you do, and our minds get stiff. If the
world were no wider than my cornfields, if there were not
something beside this, I wouldn't feel that it was much worth
while to work. No, I would rather have Emil like you than like
them. I felt that as soon as you came."
"I wonder why you feel like that?" Carl mused.
"I don't know. Perhaps I am like Carrie Jensen, the sister of
one of my hired men. She had never been out of the cornfields,
and a few years ago she got despondent and said life was just
the same thing over and over, and she didn't see the use of it.
After she had tried to kill herself once or twice, her folks got
worried and sent her over to Iowa to visit some relations. Ever
since she's come back she's been perfectly cheerful, and she
says she's contented to live and work in a world that's so big
and interesting. She said that anything as big as the bridges
over the Platte and the Missouri reconciled her. And it's what
goes on in the world that reconciles me."

64
Chapter 5
Alexandra did not find time to go to her neighbor's the next
day, nor the next. It was a busy season on the farm, with the
corn-plowing going on, and even Emil was in the field with a
team and cultivator. Carl went about over the farms with Alex-
andra in the morning, and in the afternoon and evening they
found a great deal to talk about. Emil, for all his track practice,
did not stand up under farmwork very well, and by night he
was too tired to talk or even to practise on his cornet.
On Wednesday morning Carl got up before it was light, and
stole downstairs and out of the kitchen door just as old Ivar
was making his morning ablutions at the pump. Carl nodded to
him and hurried up the draw, past the garden, and into the
pasture where the milking cows used to be kept.
The dawn in the east looked like the light from some great
fire that was burning under the edge of the world. The color
was reflected in the globules of dew that sheathed the short
gray pasture grass. Carl walked rapidly until he came to the
crest of the second hill, where the Bergson pasture joined the
one that had belonged to his father. There he sat down and
waited for the sun to rise. It was just there that he and Alexan-
dra used to do their milking together, he on his side of the
fence, she on hers. He could remember exactly how she looked
when she came over the close-cropped grass, her skirts pinned
up, her head bare, a bright tin pail in either hand, and the
milky light of the early morning all about her. Even as a boy he
used to feel, when he saw her coming with her free step, her
upright head and calm shoulders, that she looked as if she had
walked straight out of the morning itself. Since then, when he
had happened to see the sun come up in the country or on the
water, he had often remembered the young Swedish girl and
her milking pails.

65
 Carl sat musing until the sun leaped above the prairie, and in
the grass about him all the small creatures of day began to
tune their tiny instruments. Birds and insects without number
began to chirp, to twitter, to snap and whistle, to make all
manner of fresh shrill noises. The pasture was flooded with
light; every clump of ironweed and snow-on-the-mountain
threw a long shadow, and the golden light seemed to be rip-
pling through the curly grass like the tide racing in.
He crossed the fence into the pasture that was now the
Shabatas' and continued his walk toward the pond. He had not
gone far, however, when he discovered that he was not the
only person abroad. In the draw below, his gun in his hands,
was Emil, advancing cautiously, with a young woman beside
him. They were moving softly, keeping close together, and Carl
knew that they expected to find ducks on the pond. At the mo-
ment when they came in sight of the bright spot of water, he
heard a whirr of wings and the ducks shot up into the air.
There was a sharp crack from the gun, and five of the birds fell
to the ground. Emil and his companion laughed delightedly,
and Emil ran to pick them up. When he came back, dangling
the ducks by their feet, Marie held her apron and he dropped
them into it. As she stood looking down at them, her face
changed. She took up one of the birds, a rumpled ball of feath-
ers with the blood dripping slowly from its mouth, and looked
at the live color that still burned on its plumage.
As she let it fall, she cried in distress, "Oh, Emil, why did
you?"
"I like that!" the boy exclaimed indignantly. "Why, Marie, you
asked me to come yourself."
":Yes, yes, I know," she said tearfully, "but I didn't think. I
hate to see them when they are first shot. They were having
such a good time, and we've spoiled it all for them."
Emil gave a rather sore laugh. "I should say we had! I'm not
going hunting with you any more. You're as bad as Ivar. Here,
let me take them." He snatched the ducks out of her apron.
"Don't be cross, Emil. Only—Ivar's right about wild things.
They're too happy to kill. You can tell just how they felt when
they flew up. They were scared, but they didn't really think
anything could hurt them. No, we won't do that any more."

66
 "All right," Emil assented. "I'm sorry I made you feel bad." As
he looked down into her tearful eyes, there was a curious,
sharp young bitterness in his own.
Carl watched them as they moved slowly down the draw.
They had not seen him at all. He had not overheard much of
their dialogue, but he felt the import of it. It made him, some-
how, unreasonably mournful to find two young things abroad in
the pasture in the early morning. He decided that he needed
his breakfast.

67
Chapter 6
At dinner that day Alexandra said she thought they must really
manage to go over to the Shabatas' that afternoon. "It's not of-
ten I let three days go by without seeing Marie. She will think I
have forsaken her, now that my old friend has come back."
After the men had gone back to work, Alexandra put on a
white dress and her sun-hat, and she and Carl set forth across
the fields. "You see we have kept up the old path, Carl. It has
been so nice for me to feel that there was a friend at the other
end of it again."
Carl smiled a little ruefully. "All the same, I hope it hasn't
been QUITE the same."
Alexandra looked at him with surprise. "Why, no, of course
not. Not the same. She could not very well take your place, if
that's what you mean. I'm friendly with all my neighbors, I
hope. But Marie is really a companion, some one I can talk to
quite frankly. You wouldn't want me to be more lonely than I
have been, would you?"
Carl laughed and pushed back the triangular lock of hair
with the edge of his hat. "Of course I don't. I ought to be thank-
ful that this path hasn't been worn by—well, by friends with
more pressing errands than your little Bohemian is likely to
have." He paused to give Alexandra his hand as she stepped
over the stile. "Are you the least bit disappointed in our coming
together again?" he asked abruptly. "Is it the way you hoped it
would be?"
Alexandra smiled at this. "Only better. When I've thought
about your coming, I've sometimes been a little afraid of it. You
have lived where things move so fast, and everything is slow
here; the people slowest of all. Our lives are like the years, all
made up of weather and crops and cows. How you hated
cows!" She shook her head and laughed to herself.

68
 "I didn't when we milked together. I walked up to the pasture
corners this morning. I wonder whether I shall ever be able to
tell you all that I was thinking about up there. It's a strange
thing, Alexandra; I find it easy to be frank with you about
everything under the sun except—yourself!"
"You are afraid of hurting my feelings, perhaps." Alexandra
looked at him thoughtfully.
"No, I'm afraid of giving you a shock. You've seen yourself for
so long in the dull minds of the people about you, that if I were
to tell you how you seem to me, it would startle you. But you
must see that you astonish me. You must feel when people ad-
mire you."
Alexandra blushed and laughed with some confusion. "I felt
that you were pleased with me, if you mean that."
"And you've felt when other people were pleased with you?"
he insisted.
"Well, sometimes. The men in town, at the banks and the
county offices, seem glad to see me. I think, myself, it is more
pleasant to do business with people who are clean and healthy-
looking," she admitted blandly.
Carl gave a little chuckle as he opened the Shabatas' gate for
her. "Oh, do you?" he asked dryly.
There was no sign of life about the Shabatas' house except a
big yellow cat, sunning itself on the kitchen doorstep.
Alexandra took the path that led to the orchard. "She often
sits there and sews. I didn't telephone her we were coming, be-
cause I didn't want her to go to work and bake cake and freeze
ice-cream. She'll always make a party if you give her the least
excuse. Do you recognize the apple trees, Carl?"
Linstrum looked about him. "I wish I had a dollar for every
bucket of water I've carried for those trees. Poor father, he was
an easy man, but he was perfectly merciless when it came to
watering the orchard."
"That's one thing I like about Germans; they make an orch-
ard grow if they can't make anything else. I'm so glad these
trees belong to some one who takes comfort in them. When I
rented this place, the tenants never kept the orchard up, and
Emil and I used to come over and take care of it ourselves. It
needs mowing now. There she is, down in the corner. Maria-a-
a!" she called.

69
 A recumbent figure started up from the grass and came run-
ning toward them through the flickering screen of light and
shade.
"Look at her! Isn't she like a little brown rabbit?" Alexandra
laughed.
Maria ran up panting and threw her arms about Alexandra.
"Oh, I had begun to think you were not coming at all, maybe. I
knew you were so busy. Yes, Emil told me about Mr. Linstrum
being here. Won't you come up to the house?"
"Why not sit down there in your corner? Carl wants to see
the orchard. He kept all these trees alive for years, watering
them with his own back."
Marie turned to Carl. "Then I'm thankful to you, Mr. Lin-
strum. We'd never have bought the place if it hadn't been for
this orchard, and then I wouldn't have had Alexandra, either."
She gave Alexandra's arm a little squeeze as she walked beside
her. "How nice your dress smells, Alexandra; you put rosemary
leaves in your chest, like I told you."
She led them to the northwest corner of the orchard,
sheltered on one side by a thick mulberry hedge and bordered
on the other by a wheatfield, just beginning to yellow. In this
corner the ground dipped a little, and the blue-grass, which the
weeds had driven out in the upper part of the orchard, grew
thick and luxuriant. Wild roses were flaming in the tufts of
bunchgrass along the fence. Under a white mulberry tree there
was an old wagon-seat. Beside it lay a book and a workbasket.
"You must have the seat, Alexandra. The grass would stain
your dress," the hostess insisted. She dropped down on the
ground at Alexandra's side and tucked her feet under her. Carl
sat at a little distance from the two women, his back to the
wheatfield, and watched them. Alexandra took off her shade-
hat and threw it on the ground. Marie picked it up and played
with the white ribbons, twisting them about her brown fingers
as she talked. They made a pretty picture in the strong sun-
light, the leafy pattern surrounding them like a net; the
Swedish woman so white and gold, kindly and amused, but ar-
mored in calm, and the alert brown one, her full lips parted,
points of yellow light dancing in her eyes as she laughed and
chattered. Carl had never forgotten little Marie Tovesky's eyes,
and he was glad to have an opportunity to study them. The

70
brown iris, he found, was curiously slashed with yellow, the
color of sunflower honey, or of old amber. In each eye one of
these streaks must have been larger than the others, for the ef-
fect was that of two dancing points of light, two little yellow
bubbles, such as rise in a glass of champagne. Sometimes they
seemed like the sparks from a forge. She seemed so easily ex-
cited, to kindle with a fierce little flame if one but breathed
upon her. "What a waste," Carl reflected. "She ought to be do-
ing all that for a sweetheart. How awkwardly things come
about!"
It was not very long before Marie sprang up out of the grass
again. "Wait a moment. I want to show you something." She
ran away and disappeared behind the low-growing apple trees.
"What a charming creature," Carl murmured. "I don't wonder
that her husband is jealous. But can't she walk? does she al-
ways run?"
Alexandra nodded. "Always. I don't see many people, but I
don't believe there are many like her, anywhere."
Marie came back with a branch she had broken from an
apricot tree, laden with pale yellow, pink-cheeked fruit. She
dropped it beside Carl. "Did you plant those, too? They are
such beautiful little trees."
Carl fingered the blue-green leaves, porous like blotting-pa-
per and shaped like birch leaves, hung on waxen red stems.
"Yes, I think I did. Are these the circus trees, Alexandra?"
"Shall I tell her about them?" Alexandra asked. "Sit down like
a good girl, Marie, and don't ruin my poor hat, and I'll tell you
a story. A long time ago, when Carl and I were, say, sixteen
and twelve, a circus came to Hanover and we went to town in
our wagon, with Lou and Oscar, to see the parade. We hadn't
money enough to go to the circus. We followed the parade out
to the circus grounds and hung around until the show began
and the crowd went inside the tent. Then Lou was afraid we
looked foolish standing outside in the pasture, so we went back
to Hanover feeling very sad. There was a man in the streets
selling apricots, and we had never seen any before. He had
driven down from somewhere up in the French country, and he
was selling them twenty-five cents a peck. We had a little
money our fathers had given us for candy, and I bought two
pecks and Carl bought one. They cheered us a good deal, and

71
we saved all the seeds and planted them. Up to the time Carl
went away, they hadn't borne at all."
"And now he's come back to eat them," cried Marie, nodding
at Carl. "That IS a good story. I can remember you a little, Mr.
Linstrum. I used to see you in Hanover sometimes, when Uncle
Joe took me to town. I remember you because you were always
buying pencils and tubes of paint at the drug store. Once, when
my uncle left me at the store, you drew a lot of little birds and
flowers for me on a piece of wrapping-paper. I kept them for a
long while. I thought you were very romantic because you
could draw and had such black eyes."
Carl smiled. "Yes, I remember that time. Your uncle bought
you some kind of a mechanical toy, a Turkish lady sitting on an
ottoman and smoking a hookah, wasn't it? And she turned her
head backwards and forwards."
"Oh, yes! Wasn't she splendid! I knew well enough I ought
not to tell Uncle Joe I wanted it, for he had just come back from
the saloon and was feeling good. You remember how he
laughed? She tickled him, too. But when we got home, my aunt
scolded him for buying toys when she needed so many things.
We wound our lady up every night, and when she began to
move her head my aunt used to laugh as hard as any of us. It
was a music-box, you know, and the Turkish lady played a tune
while she smoked. That was how she made you feel so jolly. As
I remember her, she was lovely, and had a gold crescent on her
turban."
Half an hour later, as they were leaving the house, Carl and
Alexandra were met in the path by a strapping fellow in over-
alls and a blue shirt. He was breathing hard, as if he had been
running, and was muttering to himself.
Marie ran forward, and, taking him by the arm, gave him a
little push toward her guests. "Frank, this is Mr. Linstrum."
Frank took off his broad straw hat and nodded to Alexandra.
When he spoke to Carl, he showed a fine set of white teeth. He
was burned a dull red down to his neckband, and there was a
heavy three-days' stubble on his face. Even in his agitation he
was handsome, but he looked a rash and violent man.
Barely saluting the callers, he turned at once to his wife and
began, in an outraged tone, "I have to leave my team to drive

72
the old woman Hiller's hogs out-a my wheat. I go to take dat
old woman to de court if she ain't careful, I tell you!"
His wife spoke soothingly. "But, Frank, she has only her lame
boy to help her. She does the best she can."
Alexandra looked at the excited man and offered a sugges-
tion. "Why don't you go over there some afternoon and hog-
tight her fences? You'd save time for yourself in the end."
Frank's neck stiffened. "Not-a-much, I won't. I keep my hogs
home. Other peoples can do like me. See? If that Louis can
mend shoes, he can mend fence."
"Maybe," said Alexandra placidly; "but I've found it some-
times pays to mend other people's fences. Good-bye, Marie.
Come to see me soon."
Alexandra walked firmly down the path and Carl followed
her.
Frank went into the house and threw himself on the sofa, his
face to the wall, his clenched fist on his hip. Marie, having seen
her guests off, came in and put her hand coaxingly on his
shoulder.
"Poor Frank! You've run until you've made your head ache,
now haven't you? Let me make you some coffee."
"What else am I to do?" he cried hotly in Bohemian. "Am I to
let any old woman's hogs root up my wheat? Is that what I
work myself to death for?"
"Don't worry about it, Frank. I'll speak to Mrs. Hiller again.
But, really, she almost cried last time they got out, she was so
sorry."
Frank bounced over on his other side. "That's it; you always
side with them against me. They all know it. Anybody here
feels free to borrow the mower and break it, or turn their hogs
in on me. They know you won't care!"
Marie hurried away to make his coffee. When she came back,
he was fast asleep. She sat down and looked at him for a long
while, very thoughtfully. When the kitchen clock struck six she
went out to get supper, closing the door gently behind her. She
was always sorry for Frank when he worked himself into one of
these rages, and she was sorry to have him rough and quarrel-
some with his neighbors. She was perfectly aware that the
neighbors had a good deal to put up with, and that they bore
with Frank for her sake.

73
Chapter 7
Marie's father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligent
Bohemians who came West in the early seventies. He settled in
Omaha and became a leader and adviser among his people
there. Marie was his youngest child, by a second wife, and was
the apple of his eye. She was barely sixteen, and was in the
graduating class of the Omaha High School, when Frank
Shabata arrived from the old country and set all the Bohemian
girls in a flutter. He was easily the buck of the beer-gardens,
and on Sunday he was a sight to see, with his silk hat and
tucked shirt and blue frock-coat, wearing gloves and carrying a
little wisp of a yellow cane. He was tall and fair, with splendid
teeth and close-cropped yellow curls, and he wore a slightly
disdainful expression, proper for a young man with high con-
nections, whose mother had a big farm in the Elbe valley.
There was often an interesting discontent in his blue eyes, and
every Bohemian girl he met imagined herself the cause of that
unsatisfied expression. He had a way of drawing out his cam-
bric handkerchief slowly, by one corner, from his breast-pock-
et, that was melancholy and romantic in the extreme. He took
a little flight with each of the more eligible Bohemian girls, but
it was when he was with little Marie Tovesky that he drew his
handkerchief out most slowly, and, after he had lit a fresh ci-
gar, dropped the match most despairingly. Any one could see,
with half an eye, that his proud heart was bleeding for
somebody.
One Sunday, late in the summer after Marie's graduation,
she met Frank at a Bohemian picnic down the river and went
rowing with him all the afternoon. When she got home that
evening she went straight to her father's room and told him
that she was engaged to Shabata. Old Tovesky was having a
comfortable pipe before he went to bed. When he heard his
daughter's announcement, he first prudently corked his beer

74
bottle and then leaped to his feet and had a turn of temper. He
characterized Frank Shabata by a Bohemian expression which
is the equivalent of stuffed shirt.
"Why don't he go to work like the rest of us did? His farm in
the Elbe valley, indeed! Ain't he got plenty brothers and sis-
ters? It's his mother's farm, and why don't he stay at home and
help her? Haven't I seen his mother out in the morning at five
o'clock with her ladle and her big bucket on wheels, putting li-
quid manure on the cabbages? Don't I know the look of old Eva
Shabata's hands? Like an old horse's hoofs they are—and this
fellow wearing gloves and rings! Engaged, indeed! You aren't
fit to be out of school, and that's what's the matter with you. I
will send you off to the Sisters of the Sacred Heart in St. Louis,
and they will teach you some sense, ~I~ guess!"
Accordingly, the very next week, Albert Tovesky took his
daughter, pale and tearful, down the river to the convent. But
the way to make Frank want anything was to tell him he
couldn't have it. He managed to have an interview with Marie
before she went away, and whereas he had been only half in
love with her before, he now persuaded himself that he would
not stop at anything. Marie took with her to the convent, under
the canvas lining of her trunk, the results of a laborious and
satisfying morning on Frank's part; no less than a dozen photo-
graphs of himself, taken in a dozen different love-lorn atti-
tudes. There was a little round photograph for her watch-case,
photographs for her wall and dresser, and even long narrow
ones to be used as bookmarks. More than once the handsome
gentleman was torn to pieces before the French class by an in-
dignant nun.
Marie pined in the convent for a year, until her eighteenth
birthday was passed. Then she met Frank Shabata in the Union
Station in St. Louis and ran away with him. Old Tovesky for-
gave his daughter because there was nothing else to do, and
bought her a farm in the country that she had loved so well as
a child. Since then her story had been a part of the history of
the Divide. She and Frank had been living there for five years
when Carl Linstrum came back to pay his long deferred visit to
Alexandra. Frank had, on the whole, done better than one
might have expected. He had flung himself at the soil with sav-
age energy. Once a year he went to Hastings or to Omaha, on a

75
spree. He stayed away for a week or two, and then came home
and worked like a demon. He did work; if he felt sorry for him-
self, that was his own affair.

76
Chapter 8
On the evening of the day of Alexandra's call at the Shabatas',
a heavy rain set in. Frank sat up until a late hour reading the
Sunday newspapers. One of the Goulds was getting a divorce,
and Frank took it as a personal affront. In printing the story of
the young man's marital troubles, the knowing editor gave a
sufficiently colored account of his career, stating the amount of
his income and the manner in which he was supposed to spend
it. Frank read English slowly, and the more he read about this
divorce case, the angrier he grew. At last he threw down the
page with a snort. He turned to his farm-hand who was reading
the other half of the paper.
"By God! if I have that young feller in de hayfield once, I
show him someting. Listen here what he do wit his money."
And Frank began the catalogue of the young man's reputed
extravagances.
Marie sighed. She thought it hard that the Goulds, for whom
she had nothing but good will, should make her so much
trouble. She hated to see the Sunday newspapers come into
the house. Frank was always reading about the doings of rich
people and feeling outraged. He had an inexhaustible stock of
stories about their crimes and follies, how they bribed the
courts and shot down their butlers with impunity whenever
they chose. Frank and Lou Bergson had very similar ideas, and
they were two of the political agitators of the county.
The next morning broke clear and brilliant, but Frank said
the ground was too wet to plough, so he took the cart and
drove over to Sainte-Agnes to spend the day at Moses Marcel's
saloon. After he was gone, Marie went out to the back porch to
begin her butter-making. A brisk wind had come up and was
driving puffy white clouds across the sky. The orchard was
sparkling and rippling in the sun. Marie stood looking toward it
wistfully, her hand on the lid of the churn, when she heard a

77
sharp ring in the air, the merry sound of the whetstone on the
scythe. That invitation decided her. She ran into the house, put
on a short skirt and a pair of her husband's boots, caught up a
tin pail and started for the orchard. Emil had already begun
work and was mowing vigorously. When he saw her coming, he
stopped and wiped his brow. His yellow canvas leggings and
khaki trousers were splashed to the knees.
"Don't let me disturb you, Emil. I'm going to pick cherries.
Isn't everything beautiful after the rain? Oh, but I'm glad to get
this place mowed! When I heard it raining in the night, I
thought maybe you would come and do it for me to-day. The
wind wakened me. Didn't it blow dreadfully? Just smell the wild
roses! They are always so spicy after a rain. We never had so
many of them in here before. I suppose it's the wet season. Will
you have to cut them, too?"
"If I cut the grass, I will," Emil said teasingly. "What's the
matter with you? What makes you so flighty?"
"Am I flighty? I suppose that's the wet season, too, then. It's
exciting to see everything growing so fast,—and to get the
grass cut! Please leave the roses till last, if you must cut them.
Oh, I don't mean all of them, I mean that low place down by my
tree, where there are so many. Aren't you splashed! Look at
the spider-webs all over the grass. Good-bye. I'll call you if I
see a snake."
She tripped away and Emil stood looking after her. In a few
moments he heard the cherries dropping smartly into the pail,
and he began to swing his scythe with that long, even stroke
that few American boys ever learn. Marie picked cherries and
sang softly to herself, stripping one glittering branch after an-
other, shivering when she caught a shower of raindrops on her
neck and hair. And Emil mowed his way slowly down toward
the cherry trees.
That summer the rains had been so many and opportune that
it was almost more than Shabata and his man could do to keep
up with the corn; the orchard was a neglected wilderness. All
sorts of weeds and herbs and flowers had grown up there;
splotches of wild larkspur, pale green-and-white spikes of hoar-
hound, plantations of wild cotton, tangles of foxtail and wild
wheat. South of the apricot trees, cornering on the wheatfield,
was Frank's alfalfa, where myriads of white and yellow

78
butterflies were always fluttering above the purple blossoms.
When Emil reached the lower corner by the hedge, Marie was
sitting under her white mulberry tree, the pailful of cherries
beside her, looking off at the gentle, tireless swelling of the
wheat.
"Emil," she said suddenly—he was mowing quietly about un-
der the tree so as not to disturb her—"what religion did the
Swedes have away back, before they were Christians?"
Emil paused and straightened his back. "I don't know. About
like the Germans', wasn't it?"
Marie went on as if she had not heard him. "The Bohemians,
you know, were tree worshipers before the missionaries came.
Father says the people in the mountains still do queer things,
sometimes,—they believe that trees bring good or bad luck."
Emil looked superior. "Do they? Well, which are the lucky
trees? I'd like to know."
"I don't know all of them, but I know lindens are. The old
people in the mountains plant lindens to purify the forest, and
to do away with the spells that come from the old trees they
say have lasted from heathen times. I'm a good Catholic, but I
think I could get along with caring for trees, if I hadn't any-
thing else."
"That's a poor saying," said Emil, stooping over to wipe his
hands in the wet grass.
"Why is it? If I feel that way, I feel that way. I like trees be-
cause they seem more resigned to the way they have to live
than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I
ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never
have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off."
Emil had nothing to say to this. He reached up among the
branches and began to pick the sweet, insipid fruit,—long
ivory-colored berries, tipped with faint pink, like white coral,
that fall to the ground unheeded all summer through. He
dropped a handful into her lap.
"Do you like Mr. Linstrum?" Marie asked suddenly.
"Yes. Don't you?"
"Oh, ever so much; only he seems kind of staid and school-
teachery. But, of course, he is older than Frank, even. I'm sure
I don't want to live to be more than thirty, do you? Do you
think Alexandra likes him very much?"

79
 "I suppose so. They were old friends."
"Oh, Emil, you know what I mean!" Marie tossed her head
impatiently. "Does she really care about him? When she used
to tell me about him, I always wondered whether she wasn't a
little in love with him."
"Who, Alexandra?" Emil laughed and thrust his hands into his
trousers pockets. "Alexandra's never been in love, you crazy!"
He laughed again. "She wouldn't know how to go about it. The
idea!"
Marie shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, you don't know Alexan-
dra as well as you think you do! If you had any eyes, you would
see that she is very fond of him. It would serve you all right if
she walked off with Carl. I like him because he appreciates her
more than you do."
Emil frowned. "What are you talking about, Marie?
Alexandra's all right. She and I have always been good friends.
What more do you want? I like to talk to Carl about New York
and what a fellow can do there."
"Oh, Emil! Surely you are not thinking of going off there?"
"Why not? I must go somewhere, mustn't I?" The young man
took up his scythe and leaned on it. "Would you rather I went
off in the sand hills and lived like Ivar?"
Marie's face fell under his brooding gaze. She looked down
at his wet leggings. "I'm sure Alexandra hopes you will stay on
here," she murmured.
"Then Alexandra will be disappointed," the young man said
roughly. "What do I want to hang around here for? Alexandra
can run the farm all right, without me. I don't want to stand
around and look on. I want to be doing something on my own
account."
"That's so," Marie sighed. "There are so many, many things
you can do. Almost anything you choose."
"And there are so many, many things I can't do." Emil echoed
her tone sarcastically. "Sometimes I don't want to do anything
at all, and sometimes I want to pull the four corners of the
Divide together,"—he threw out his arm and brought it back
with a jerk,—"so, like a table-cloth. I get tired of seeing men
and horses going up and down, up and down."

80
 Marie looked up at his defiant figure and her face clouded. "I
wish you weren't so restless, and didn't get so worked up over
things," she said sadly.
"Thank you," he returned shortly.
She sighed despondently. "Everything I say makes you cross,
don't it? And you never used to be cross to me."
Emil took a step nearer and stood frowning down at her bent
head. He stood in an attitude of self-defense, his feet well
apart, his hands clenched and drawn up at his sides, so that
the cords stood out on his bare arms. "I can't play with you like
a little boy any more," he said slowly. "That's what you miss,
Marie. You'll have to get some other little boy to play with." He
stopped and took a deep breath. Then he went on in a low
tone, so intense that it was almost threatening: "Sometimes
you seem to understand perfectly, and then sometimes you
pretend you don't. You don't help things any by pretending. It's
then that I want to pull the corners of the Divide together. If
you WON'T understand, you know, I could make you!"
Marie clasped her hands and started up from her seat. She
had grown very pale and her eyes were shining with excite-
ment and distress. "But, Emil, if I understand, then all our good
times are over, we can never do nice things together any more.
We shall have to behave like Mr. Linstrum. And, anyhow,
there's nothing to understand!" She struck the ground with her
little foot fiercely. "That won't last. It will go away, and things
will be just as they used to. I wish you were a Catholic. The
Church helps people, indeed it does. I pray for you, but that's
not the same as if you prayed yourself."
She spoke rapidly and pleadingly, looked entreatingly into
his face. Emil stood defiant, gazing down at her.
"I can't pray to have the things I want," he said slowly, "and I
won't pray not to have them, not if I'm damned for it."
Marie turned away, wringing her hands. "Oh, Emil, you won't
try! Then all our good times are over."
"Yes; over. I never expect to have any more."
Emil gripped the hand-holds of his scythe and began to mow.
Marie took up her cherries and went slowly toward the house,
crying bitterly.

81
Chapter 9
On Sunday afternoon, a month after Carl Linstrum's arrival, he
rode with Emil up into the French country to attend a Catholic
fair. He sat for most of the afternoon in the basement of the
church, where the fair was held, talking to Marie Shabata, or
strolled about the gravel terrace, thrown up on the hillside in
front of the basement doors, where the French boys were
jumping and wrestling and throwing the discus. Some of the
boys were in their white baseball suits; they had just come up
from a Sunday practice game down in the ballgrounds.
Amedee, the newly married, Emil's best friend, was their pitch-
er, renowned among the country towns for his dash and skill.
Amedee was a little fellow, a year younger than Emil and much
more boyish in appearance; very lithe and active and neatly
made, with a clear brown and white skin, and flashing white
teeth. The Sainte-Agnes boys were to play the Hastings nine in
a fortnight, and Amedee's lightning balls were the hope of his
team. The little Frenchman seemed to get every ounce there
was in him behind the ball as it left his hand.
"You'd have made the battery at the University for sure,
'Medee," Emil said as they were walking from the ball-grounds
back to the church on the hill. "You're pitching better than you
did in the spring."
Amedee grinned. "Sure! A married man don't lose his head
no more." He slapped Emil on the back as he caught step with
him. "Oh, Emil, you wanna get married right off quick! It's the
greatest thing ever!"
Emil laughed. "How am I going to get married without any
girl?"
Amedee took his arm. "Pooh! There are plenty girls will have
you. You wanna get some nice French girl, now. She treat you
well; always be jolly. See,"—he began checking off on his fin-
gers,—"there is Severine, and Alphosen, and Josephine, and

82
Hectorine, and Louise, and Malvina—why, I could love any of
them girls! Why don't you get after them? Are you stuck up,
Emil, or is anything the matter with you? I never did know a
boy twenty-two years old before that didn't have no girl. You
wanna be a priest, maybe? Not-a for me!" Amedee swaggered.
"I bring many good Catholics into this world, I hope, and that's
a way I help the Church."
Emil looked down and patted him on the shoulder. "Now
you're windy, 'Medee. You Frenchies like to brag."
But Amedee had the zeal of the newly married, and he was
not to be lightly shaken off. "Honest and true, Emil, don't you
want ANY girl? Maybe there's some young lady in Lincoln,
now, very grand,"—Amedee waved his hand languidly before
his face to denote the fan of heartless beauty,—"and you lost
your heart up there. Is that it?"
"Maybe," said Emil.
But Amedee saw no appropriate glow in his friend's face.
"Bah!" he exclaimed in disgust. "I tell all the French girls to
keep 'way from you. You gotta rock in there," thumping Emil
on the ribs.
When they reached the terrace at the side of the church,
Amedee, who was excited by his success on the ball-grounds,
challenged Emil to a jumping-match, though he knew he would
be beaten. They belted themselves up, and Raoul Marcel, the
choir tenor and Father Duchesne's pet, and Jean Bordelau,
held the string over which they vaulted. All the French boys
stood round, cheering and humping themselves up when Emil
or Amedee went over the wire, as if they were helping in the
lift. Emil stopped at five-feet-five, declaring that he would spoil
his appetite for supper if he jumped any more.
Angelique, Amedee's pretty bride, as blonde and fair as her
name, who had come out to watch the match, tossed her head
at Emil and said:—
"'Medee could jump much higher than you if he were as tall.
And anyhow, he is much more graceful. He goes over like a
bird, and you have to hump yourself all up."
"Oh, I do, do I?" Emil caught her and kissed her saucy mouth
squarely, while she laughed and struggled and called, "'Medee!
'Medee!"

83
 "There, you see your 'Medee isn't even big enough to get you
away from me. I could run away with you right now and he
could only sit down and cry about it. I'll show you whether I
have to hump myself!" Laughing and panting, he picked An-
gelique up in his arms and began running about the rectangle
with her. Not until he saw Marie Shabata's tiger eyes flashing
from the gloom of the basement doorway did he hand the
disheveled bride over to her husband. "There, go to your grace-
ful; I haven't the heart to take you away from him."
Angelique clung to her husband and made faces at Emil over
the white shoulder of Amedee's ball-shirt. Emil was greatly
amused at her air of proprietorship and at Amedee's shameless
submission to it. He was delighted with his friend's good for-
tune. He liked to see and to think about Amedee's sunny, nat-
ural, happy love.
He and Amedee had ridden and wrestled and larked together
since they were lads of twelve. On Sundays and holidays they
were always arm in arm. It seemed strange that now he should
have to hide the thing that Amedee was so proud of, that the
feeling which gave one of them such happiness should bring
the other such despair. It was like that when Alexandra tested
her seed-corn in the spring, he mused. From two ears that had
grown side by side, the grains of one shot up joyfully into the
light, projecting themselves into the future, and the grains
from the other lay still in the earth and rotted; and nobody
knew why.

84
Chapter 10
While Emil and Carl were amusing themselves at the fair, Alex-
andra was at home, busy with her account-books, which had
been neglected of late. She was almost through with her fig-
ures when she heard a cart drive up to the gate, and looking
out of the window she saw her two older brothers. They had
seemed to avoid her ever since Carl Linstrum's arrival, four
weeks ago that day, and she hurried to the door to welcome
them. She saw at once that they had come with some very def-
inite purpose. They followed her stiffly into the sitting-room.
Oscar sat down, but Lou walked over to the window and re-
mained standing, his hands behind him.
"You are by yourself?" he asked, looking toward the doorway
into the parlor.
"Yes. Carl and Emil went up to the Catholic fair."
For a few moments neither of the men spoke.
Then Lou came out sharply. "How soon does he intend to go
away from here?"
"I don't know, Lou. Not for some time, I hope." Alexandra
spoke in an even, quiet tone that often exasperated her broth-
ers. They felt that she was trying to be superior with them.
Oscar spoke up grimly. "We thought we ought to tell you that
people have begun to talk," he said meaningly.
Alexandra looked at him. "What about?"
Oscar met her eyes blankly. "About you, keeping him here so
long. It looks bad for him to be hanging on to a woman this
way. People think you're getting taken in."
Alexandra shut her account-book firmly. "Boys," she said ser-
iously, "don't let's go on with this. We won't come out any-
where. I can't take advice on such a matter. I know you mean
well, but you must not feel responsible for me in things of this
sort. If we go on with this talk it will only make hard feeling."

85
 Lou whipped about from the window. "You ought to think a
little about your family. You're making us all ridiculous."
"How am I?"
"People are beginning to say you want to marry the fellow."
"Well, and what is ridiculous about that?"
Lou and Oscar exchanged outraged looks. "Alexandra! Can't
you see he's just a tramp and he's after your money? He wants
to be taken care of, he does!"
"Well, suppose I want to take care of him? Whose business is
it but my own?"
"Don't you know he'd get hold of your property?"
"He'd get hold of what I wished to give him, certainly."
Oscar sat up suddenly and Lou clutched at his bristly hair.
"Give him?" Lou shouted. "Our property, our homestead?"
"I don't know about the homestead," said Alexandra quietly.
"I know you and Oscar have always expected that it would be
left to your children, and I'm not sure but what you're right.
But I'll do exactly as I please with the rest of my land, boys."
"The rest of your land!" cried Lou, growing more excited
every minute. "Didn't all the land come out of the homestead?
It was bought with money borrowed on the homestead, and Os-
car and me worked ourselves to the bone paying interest on it."
"Yes, you paid the interest. But when you married we made a
division of the land, and you were satisfied. I've made more on
my farms since I've been alone than when we all worked
together."
"Everything you've made has come out of the original land
that us boys worked for, hasn't it? The farms and all that comes
out of them belongs to us as a family."
Alexandra waved her hand impatiently. "Come now, Lou.
Stick to the facts. You are talking nonsense. Go to the county
clerk and ask him who owns my land, and whether my titles
are good."
Lou turned to his brother. "This is what comes of letting a
woman meddle in business," he said bitterly. "We ought to
have taken things in our own hands years ago. But she liked to
run things, and we humored her. We thought you had good
sense, Alexandra. We never thought you'd do anything foolish."
Alexandra rapped impatiently on her desk with her knuckles.
"Listen, Lou. Don't talk wild. You say you ought to have taken

86
things into your own hands years ago. I suppose you mean be-
fore you left home. But how could you take hold of what wasn't
there? I've got most of what I have now since we divided the
property; I've built it up myself, and it has nothing to do with
you."
Oscar spoke up solemnly. "The property of a family really be-
longs to the men of the family, no matter about the title. If any-
thing goes wrong, it's the men that are held responsible."
"Yes, of course," Lou broke in. "Everybody knows that. Oscar
and me have always been easy-going and we've never made
any fuss. We were willing you should hold the land and have
the good of it, but you got no right to part with any of it. We
worked in the fields to pay for the first land you bought, and
whatever's come out of it has got to be kept in the family."
Oscar reinforced his brother, his mind fixed on the one point
he could see. "The property of a family belongs to the men of
the family, because they are held responsible, and because
they do the work."
Alexandra looked from one to the other, her eyes full of in-
dignation. She had been impatient before, but now she was be-
ginning to feel angry. "And what about my work?" she asked in
an unsteady voice.
Lou looked at the carpet. "Oh, now, Alexandra, you always
took it pretty easy! Of course we wanted you to. You liked to
manage round, and we always humored you. We realize you
were a great deal of help to us. There's no woman anywhere
around that knows as much about business as you do, and
we've always been proud of that, and thought you were pretty
smart. But, of course, the real work always fell on us. Good ad-
vice is all right, but it don't get the weeds out of the corn."
"Maybe not, but it sometimes puts in the crop, and it some-
times keeps the fields for corn to grow in," said Alexandra
dryly. "Why, Lou, I can remember when you and Oscar wanted
to sell this homestead and all the improvements to old preach-
er Ericson for two thousand dollars. If I'd consented, you'd
have gone down to the river and scraped along on poor farms
for the rest of your lives. When I put in our first field of alfalfa
you both opposed me, just because I first heard about it from a
young man who had been to the University. You said I was be-
ing taken in then, and all the neighbors said so. You know as

87
well as I do that alfalfa has been the salvation of this country.
You all laughed at me when I said our land here was about
ready for wheat, and I had to raise three big wheat crops be-
fore the neighbors quit putting all their land in corn. Why, I re-
member you cried, Lou, when we put in the first big wheat-
planting, and said everybody was laughing at us."
Lou turned to Oscar. "That's the woman of it; if she tells you
to put in a crop, she thinks she's put it in. It makes women con-
ceited to meddle in business. I shouldn't think you'd want to re-
mind us how hard you were on us, Alexandra, after the way
you baby Emil."
"Hard on you? I never meant to be hard. Conditions were
hard. Maybe I would never have been very soft, anyhow; but I
certainly didn't choose to be the kind of girl I was. If you take
even a vine and cut it back again and again, it grows hard, like
a tree."
Lou felt that they were wandering from the point, and that in
digression Alexandra might unnerve him. He wiped his fore-
head with a jerk of his handkerchief. "We never doubted you,
Alexandra. We never questioned anything you did. You've al-
ways had your own way. But you can't expect us to sit like
stumps and see you done out of the property by any loafer who
happens along, and making yourself ridiculous into the
bargain."
Oscar rose. "Yes," he broke in, "everybody's laughing to see
you get took in; at your age, too. Everybody knows he's nearly
five years younger than you, and is after your money. Why, Al-
exandra, you are forty years old!"
"All that doesn't concern anybody but Carl and me. Go to
town and ask your lawyers what you can do to restrain me
from disposing of my own property. And I advise you to do
what they tell you; for the authority you can exert by law is the
only influence you will ever have over me again." Alexandra
rose. "I think I would rather not have lived to find out what I
have to-day," she said quietly, closing her desk.
Lou and Oscar looked at each other questioningly. There
seemed to be nothing to do but to go, and they walked out.
"You can't do business with women," Oscar said heavily as he
clambered into the cart. "But anyhow, we've had our say, at
last."

88
 Lou scratched his head. "Talk of that kind might come too
high, you know; but she's apt to be sensible. You hadn't ought
to said that about her age, though, Oscar. I'm afraid that hurt
her feelings; and the worst thing we can do is to make her sore
at us. She'd marry him out of contrariness."
"I only meant," said Oscar, "that she is old enough to know
better, and she is. If she was going to marry, she ought to done
it long ago, and not go making a fool of herself now."
Lou looked anxious, nevertheless. "Of course," he reflected
hopefully and inconsistently, "Alexandra ain't much like other
women-folks. Maybe it won't make her sore. Maybe she'd as
soon be forty as not!"

89
Chapter 11
Emil came home at about half-past seven o'clock that evening.
Old Ivar met him at the windmill and took his horse, and the
young man went directly into the house. He called to his sister
and she answered from her bedroom, behind the sitting-room,
saying that she was lying down.
Emil went to her door.
"Can I see you for a minute?" he asked. "I want to talk to you
about something before Carl comes."
Alexandra rose quickly and came to the door. "Where is
Carl?"
"Lou and Oscar met us and said they wanted to talk to him,
so he rode over to Oscar's with them. Are you coming out?"
Emil asked impatiently.
"Yes, sit down. I'll be dressed in a moment."
Alexandra closed her door, and Emil sank down on the old
slat lounge and sat with his head in his hands. When his sister
came out, he looked up, not knowing whether the interval had
been short or long, and he was surprised to see that the room
had grown quite dark. That was just as well; it would be easier
to talk if he were not under the gaze of those clear, deliberate
eyes, that saw so far in some directions and were so blind in
others. Alexandra, too, was glad of the dusk. Her face was
swollen from crying.
Emil started up and then sat down again. "Alexandra," he
said slowly, in his deep young baritone, "I don't want to go
away to law school this fall. Let me put it off another year. I
want to take a year off and look around. It's awfully easy to
rush into a profession you don't really like, and awfully hard to
get out of it. Linstrum and I have been talking about that."
"Very well, Emil. Only don't go off looking for land." She
came up and put her hand on his shoulder. "I've been wishing
you could stay with me this winter."

90
 "That's just what I don't want to do, Alexandra. I'm restless. I
want to go to a new place. I want to go down to the City of
Mexico to join one of the University fellows who's at the head
of an electrical plant. He wrote me he could give me a little
job, enough to pay my way, and I could look around and see
what I want to do. I want to go as soon as harvest is over. I
guess Lou and Oscar will be sore about it."
"I suppose they will." Alexandra sat down on the lounge be-
side him. "They are very angry with me, Emil. We have had a
quarrel. They will not come here again."
Emil scarcely heard what she was saying; he did not notice
the sadness of her tone. He was thinking about the reckless life
he meant to live in Mexico.
"What about?" he asked absently.
"About Carl Linstrum. They are afraid I am going to marry
him, and that some of my property will get away from them."
Emil shrugged his shoulders. "What nonsense!" he mur-
mured. "Just like them."
Alexandra drew back. "Why nonsense, Emil?"
"Why, you've never thought of such a thing, have you? They
always have to have something to fuss about."
"Emil," said his sister slowly, "you ought not to take things
for granted. Do you agree with them that I have no right to
change my way of living?"
Emil looked at the outline of his sister's head in the dim light.
They were sitting close together and he somehow felt that she
could hear his thoughts. He was silent for a moment, and then
said in an embarrassed tone, "Why, no, certainly not. You
ought to do whatever you want to. I'll always back you."
"But it would seem a little bit ridiculous to you if I married
Carl?"
Emil fidgeted. The issue seemed to him too far-fetched to
warrant discussion. "Why, no. I should be surprised if you
wanted to. I can't see exactly why. But that's none of my busi-
ness. You ought to do as you please. Certainly you ought not to
pay any attention to what the boys say."
Alexandra sighed. "I had hoped you might understand, a
little, why I do want to. But I suppose that's too much to ex-
pect. I've had a pretty lonely life, Emil. Besides Marie, Carl is
the only friend I have ever had."

91
 Emil was awake now; a name in her last sentence roused
him. He put out his hand and took his sister's awkwardly. "You
ought to do just as you wish, and I think Carl's a fine fellow. He
and I would always get on. I don't believe any of the things the
boys say about him, honest I don't. They are suspicious of him
because he's intelligent. You know their way. They've been
sore at me ever since you let me go away to college. They're al-
ways trying to catch me up. If I were you, I wouldn't pay any
attention to them. There's nothing to get upset about. Carl's a
sensible fellow. He won't mind them."
"I don't know. If they talk to him the way they did to me, I
think he'll go away."
Emil grew more and more uneasy. "Think so? Well, Marie
said it would serve us all right if you walked off with him."
"Did she? Bless her little heart! SHE would." Alexandra's
voice broke.
Emil began unlacing his leggings. "Why don't you talk to her
about it? There's Carl, I hear his horse. I guess I'll go upstairs
and get my boots off. No, I don't want any supper. We had sup-
per at five o'clock, at the fair."
Emil was glad to escape and get to his own room. He was a
little ashamed for his sister, though he had tried not to show it.
He felt that there was something indecorous in her proposal,
and she did seem to him somewhat ridiculous. There was
trouble enough in the world, he reflected, as he threw himself
upon his bed, without people who were forty years old imagin-
ing they wanted to get married. In the darkness and silence
Emil was not likely to think long about Alexandra. Every image
slipped away but one. He had seen Marie in the crowd that af-
ternoon. She sold candy at the fair. WHY had she ever run
away with Frank Shabata, and how could she go on laughing
and working and taking an interest in things? Why did she like
so many people, and why had she seemed pleased when all the
French and Bohemian boys, and the priest himself, crowded
round her candy stand? Why did she care about any one but
him? Why could he never, never find the thing he looked for in
her playful, affectionate eyes?
Then he fell to imagining that he looked once more and
found it there, and what it would be like if she loved him,—she
who, as Alexandra said, could give her whole heart. In that

92
dream he could lie for hours, as if in a trance. His spirit went
out of his body and crossed the fields to Marie Shabata.
At the University dances the girls had often looked wonder-
ingly at the tall young Swede with the fine head, leaning
against the wall and frowning, his arms folded, his eyes fixed
on the ceiling or the floor. All the girls were a little afraid of
him. He was distinguished-looking, and not the jollying kind.
They felt that he was too intense and preoccupied. There was
something queer about him. Emil's fraternity rather prided it-
self upon its dances, and sometimes he did his duty and danced
every dance. But whether he was on the floor or brooding in a
corner, he was always thinking about Marie Shabata. For two
years the storm had been gathering in him.

93
Chapter 12
Carl came into the sitting-room while Alexandra was lighting
the lamp. She looked up at him as she adjusted the shade. His
sharp shoulders stooped as if he were very tired, his face was
pale, and there were bluish shadows under his dark eyes. His
anger had burned itself out and left him sick and disgusted.
"You have seen Lou and Oscar?" Alexandra asked.
"Yes." His eyes avoided hers.
Alexandra took a deep breath. "And now you are going away.
I thought so."
Carl threw himself into a chair and pushed the dark lock
back from his forehead with his white, nervous hand. "What a
hopeless position you are in, Alexandra!" he exclaimed fever-
ishly. "It is your fate to be always surrounded by little men.
And I am no better than the rest. I am too little to face the criti-
cism of even such men as Lou and Oscar. Yes, I am going away;
to-morrow. I cannot even ask you to give me a promise until I
have something to offer you. I thought, perhaps, I could do
that; but I find I can't."
"What good comes of offering people things they don't
need?" Alexandra asked sadly. "I don't need money. But I have
needed you for a great many years. I wonder why I have been
permitted to prosper, if it is only to take my friends away from
me."
"I don't deceive myself," Carl said frankly. "I know that I am
going away on my own account. I must make the usual effort. I
must have something to show for myself. To take what you
would give me, I should have to be either a very large man or a
very small one, and I am only in the middle class."
Alexandra sighed. "I have a feeling that if you go away, you
will not come back. Something will happen to one of us, or to
both. People have to snatch at happiness when they can, in this

94
world. It is always easier to lose than to find. What I have is
yours, if you care enough about me to take it."
Carl rose and looked up at the picture of John Bergson. "But I
can't, my dear, I can't! I will go North at once. Instead of idling
about in California all winter, I shall be getting my bearings up
there. I won't waste another week. Be patient with me, Alexan-
dra. Give me a year!"
"As you will," said Alexandra wearily. "All at once, in a single
day, I lose everything; and I do not know why. Emil, too, is go-
ing away." Carl was still studying John Bergson's face and
Alexandra's eyes followed his. "Yes," she said, "if he could have
seen all that would come of the task he gave me, he would
have been sorry. I hope he does not see me now. I hope that he
is among the old people of his blood and country, and that tid-
ings do not reach him from the New World."

95
 Part 3
Winter Memories

96
Chapter 1
Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in
which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between
the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds
have gone. The teeming life that goes on down in the long
grass is exterminated. The prairie-dog keeps his hole. The rab-
bits run shivering from one frozen garden patch to another and
are hard put to it to find frost-bitten cabbage-stalks. At night
the coyotes roam the wintry waste, howling for food. The varie-
gated fields are all one color now; the pastures, the stubble,
the roads, the sky are the same leaden gray. The hedgerows
and trees are scarcely perceptible against the bare earth,
whose slaty hue they have taken on. The ground is frozen so
hard that it bruises the foot to walk in the roads or in the
ploughed fields. It is like an iron country, and the spirit is op-
pressed by its rigor and melancholy. One could easily believe
that in that dead landscape the germs of life and fruitfulness
were extinct forever.
Alexandra has settled back into her old routine. There are
weekly letters from Emil. Lou and Oscar she has not seen since
Carl went away. To avoid awkward encounters in the presence
of curious spectators, she has stopped going to the Norwegian
Church and drives up to the Reform Church at Hanover, or
goes with Marie Shabata to the Catholic Church, locally known
as "the French Church." She has not told Marie about Carl, or
her differences with her brothers. She was never very commu-
nicative about her own affairs, and when she came to the point,
an instinct told her that about such things she and Marie would
not understand one another.
Old Mrs. Lee had been afraid that family misunderstandings
might deprive her of her yearly visit to Alexandra. But on the
first day of December Alexandra telephoned Annie that to-mor-
row she would send Ivar over for her mother, and the next day

97
the old lady arrived with her bundles. For twelve years Mrs.
Lee had always entered Alexandra's sitting-room with the same
exclamation, "Now we be yust-a like old times!" She enjoyed
the liberty Alexandra gave her, and hearing her own language
about her all day long. Here she could wear her nightcap and
sleep with all her windows shut, listen to Ivar reading the
Bible, and here she could run about among the stables in a pair
of Emil's old boots. Though she was bent almost double, she
was as spry as a gopher. Her face was as brown as if it had
been varnished, and as full of wrinkles as a washerwoman's
hands. She had three jolly old teeth left in the front of her
mouth, and when she grinned she looked very knowing, as if
when you found out how to take it, life wasn't half bad. While
she and Alexandra patched and pieced and quilted, she talked
incessantly about stories she read in a Swedish family paper,
telling the plots in great detail; or about her life on a dairy
farm in Gottland when she was a girl. Sometimes she forgot
which were the printed stories and which were the real stories,
it all seemed so far away. She loved to take a little brandy, with
hot water and sugar, before she went to bed, and Alexandra al-
ways had it ready for her. "It sends good dreams," she would
say with a twinkle in her eye.
When Mrs. Lee had been with Alexandra for a week, Marie
Shabata telephoned one morning to say that Frank had gone to
town for the day, and she would like them to come over for cof-
fee in the afternoon. Mrs. Lee hurried to wash out and iron her
new cross-stitched apron, which she had finished only the
night before; a checked gingham apron worked with a design
ten inches broad across the bottom; a hunting scene, with fir
trees and a stag and dogs and huntsmen. Mrs. Lee was firm
with herself at dinner, and refused a second helping of apple
dumplings. "I ta-ank I save up," she said with a giggle.
At two o'clock in the afternoon Alexandra's cart drove up to
the Shabatas' gate, and Marie saw Mrs. Lee's red shawl come
bobbing up the path. She ran to the door and pulled the old
woman into the house with a hug, helping her to take off her
wraps while Alexandra blanketed the horse outside. Mrs. Lee
had put on her best black satine dress—she abominated
woolen stuffs, even in winter—and a crocheted collar, fastened
with a big pale gold pin, containing faded daguerreotypes of

98
her father and mother. She had not worn her apron for fear of
rumpling it, and now she shook it out and tied it round her
waist with a conscious air. Marie drew back and threw up her
hands, exclaiming, "Oh, what a beauty! I've never seen this one
before, have I, Mrs. Lee?"
The old woman giggled and ducked her head. "No, yust las'
night I ma-ake. See dis tread; verra strong, no wa-ash out, no
fade. My sister send from Sveden. I yust-a ta-ank you like dis."
Marie ran to the door again. "Come in, Alexandra. I have
been looking at Mrs. Lee's apron. Do stop on your way home
and show it to Mrs. Hiller. She's crazy about cross-stitch."
While Alexandra removed her hat and veil, Mrs. Lee went out
to the kitchen and settled herself in a wooden rocking-chair by
the stove, looking with great interest at the table, set for three,
with a white cloth, and a pot of pink geraniums in the middle.
"My, a-an't you gotta fine plants; such-a much flower. How you
keep from freeze?"
She pointed to the window-shelves, full of blooming fuchsias
and geraniums.
"I keep the fire all night, Mrs. Lee, and when it's very cold I
put them all on the table, in the middle of the room. Other
nights I only put newspapers behind them. Frank laughs at me
for fussing, but when they don't bloom he says, 'What's the
matter with the darned things?'— What do you hear from Carl,
Alexandra?"
"He got to Dawson before the river froze, and now I suppose
I won't hear any more until spring. Before he left California he
sent me a box of orange flowers, but they didn't keep very well.
I have brought a bunch of Emil's letters for you." Alexandra
came out from the sitting-room and pinched Marie's cheek
playfully. "You don't look as if the weather ever froze you up.
Never have colds, do you? That's a good girl. She had dark red
cheeks like this when she was a little girl, Mrs. Lee. She looked
like some queer foreign kind of a doll. I've never forgot the first
time I saw you in Mieklejohn's store, Marie, the time father
was lying sick. Carl and I were talking about that before he
went away."
"I remember, and Emil had his kitten along. When are you
going to send Emil's Christmas box?"

99
 "It ought to have gone before this. I'll have to send it by mail
now, to get it there in time."
Marie pulled a dark purple silk necktie from her workbasket.
"I knit this for him. It's a good color, don't you think? Will you
please put it in with your things and tell him it's from me, to
wear when he goes serenading."
Alexandra laughed. "I don't believe he goes serenading
much. He says in one letter that the Mexican ladies are said to
be very beautiful, but that don't seem to me very warm praise."
Marie tossed her head. "Emil can't fool me. If he's bought a
guitar, he goes serenading. Who wouldn't, with all those Span-
ish girls dropping flowers down from their windows! I'd sing to
them every night, wouldn't you, Mrs. Lee?"
The old lady chuckled. Her eyes lit up as Marie bent down
and opened the oven door. A delicious hot fragrance blew out
into the tidy kitchen. "My, somet'ing smell good!" She turned
to Alexandra with a wink, her three yellow teeth making a
brave show, "I ta-ank dat stop my yaw from ache no more!" she
said contentedly.
Marie took out a pan of delicate little rolls, stuffed with
stewed apricots, and began to dust them over with powdered
sugar. "I hope you'll like these, Mrs. Lee; Alexandra does. The
Bohemians always like them with their coffee. But if you don't,
I have a coffee-cake with nuts and poppy seeds. Alexandra, will
you get the cream jug? I put it in the window to keep cool."
"The Bohemians," said Alexandra, as they drew up to the
table, "certainly know how to make more kinds of bread than
any other people in the world. Old Mrs. Hiller told me once at
the church supper that she could make seven kinds of fancy
bread, but Marie could make a dozen."
Mrs. Lee held up one of the apricot rolls between her brown
thumb and forefinger and weighed it critically. "Yust like-a fed-
ders," she pronounced with satisfaction. "My, a-an't dis nice!"
she exclaimed as she stirred her coffee. "I yust ta-ake a liddle
yelly now, too, I ta-ank."
Alexandra and Marie laughed at her forehandedness, and fell
to talking of their own affairs. "I was afraid you had a cold
when I talked to you over the telephone the other night, Marie.
What was the matter, had you been crying?"

100
 "Maybe I had," Marie smiled guiltily. "Frank was out late that
night. Don't you get lonely sometimes in the winter, when
everybody has gone away?"
"I thought it was something like that. If I hadn't had com-
pany, I'd have run over to see for myself. If you get down-
hearted, what will become of the rest of us?" Alexandra asked.
"I don't, very often. There's Mrs. Lee without any coffee!"
Later, when Mrs. Lee declared that her powers were spent,
Marie and Alexandra went upstairs to look for some crochet
patterns the old lady wanted to borrow. "Better put on your
coat, Alexandra. It's cold up there, and I have no idea where
those patterns are. I may have to look through my old trunks."
Marie caught up a shawl and opened the stair door, running up
the steps ahead of her guest. "While I go through the bureau
drawers, you might look in those hat-boxes on the closet-shelf,
over where Frank's clothes hang. There are a lot of odds and
ends in them."
She began tossing over the contents of the drawers, and Al-
exandra went into the clothes-closet. Presently she came back,
holding a slender elastic yellow stick in her hand.
"What in the world is this, Marie? You don't mean to tell me
Frank ever carried such a thing?"
Marie blinked at it with astonishment and sat down on the
floor. "Where did you find it? I didn't know he had kept it. I
haven't seen it for years."
"It really is a cane, then?"
"Yes. One he brought from the old country. He used to carry
it when I first knew him. Isn't it foolish? Poor Frank!"
Alexandra twirled the stick in her fingers and laughed. "He
must have looked funny!"
Marie was thoughtful. "No, he didn't, really. It didn't seem
out of place. He used to be awfully gay like that when he was a
young man. I guess people always get what's hardest for them,
Alexandra." Marie gathered the shawl closer about her and still
looked hard at the cane. "Frank would be all right in the right
place," she said reflectively. "He ought to have a different kind
of wife, for one thing. Do you know, Alexandra, I could pick out
exactly the right sort of woman for Frank—now. The trouble is
you almost have to marry a man before you can find out the
sort of wife he needs; and usually it's exactly the sort you are

101
not. Then what are you going to do about it?" she asked
candidly.
Alexandra confessed she didn't know. "However," she added,
"it seems to me that you get along with Frank about as well as
any woman I've ever seen or heard of could."
Marie shook her head, pursing her lips and blowing her
warm breath softly out into the frosty air. "No; I was spoiled at
home. I like my own way, and I have a quick tongue. When
Frank brags, I say sharp things, and he never forgets. He goes
over and over it in his mind; I can feel him. Then I'm too giddy.
Frank's wife ought to be timid, and she ought not to care about
another living thing in the world but just Frank! I didn't, when
I married him, but I suppose I was too young to stay like that."
Marie sighed.
Alexandra had never heard Marie speak so frankly about her
husband before, and she felt that it was wiser not to encourage
her. No good, she reasoned, ever came from talking about such
things, and while Marie was thinking aloud, Alexandra had
been steadily searching the hat-boxes. "Aren't these the pat-
terns, Maria?"
Maria sprang up from the floor. "Sure enough, we were look-
ing for patterns, weren't we? I'd forgot about everything but
Frank's other wife. I'll put that away."
She poked the cane behind Frank's Sunday clothes, and
though she laughed, Alexandra saw there were tears in her
eyes.
When they went back to the kitchen, the snow had begun to
fall, and Marie's visitors thought they must be getting home.
She went out to the cart with them, and tucked the robes about
old Mrs. Lee while Alexandra took the blanket off her horse. As
they drove away, Marie turned and went slowly back to the
house. She took up the package of letters Alexandra had
brought, but she did not read them. She turned them over and
looked at the foreign stamps, and then sat watching the flying
snow while the dusk deepened in the kitchen and the stove
sent out a red glow.
Marie knew perfectly well that Emil's letters were written
more for her than for Alexandra. They were not the sort of let-
ters that a young man writes to his sister. They were both more
personal and more painstaking; full of descriptions of the gay

102
life in the old Mexican capital in the days when the strong
hand of Porfirio Diaz was still strong. He told about bull-fights
and cock-fights, churches and FIESTAS, the flower-markets
and the fountains, the music and dancing, the people of all na-
tions he met in the Italian restaurants on San Francisco Street.
In short, they were the kind of letters a young man writes to a
woman when he wishes himself and his life to seem interesting
to her, when he wishes to enlist her imagination in his behalf.
Marie, when she was alone or when she sat sewing in the
evening, often thought about what it must be like down there
where Emil was; where there were flowers and street bands
everywhere, and carriages rattling up and down, and where
there was a little blind boot-black in front of the cathedral who
could play any tune you asked for by dropping the lids of
blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When everything is done
and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant to let the mind
wander forth and follow a young adventurer who has life be-
fore him. "And if it had not been for me," she thought, "Frank
might still be free like that, and having a good time making
people admire him. Poor Frank, getting married wasn't very
good for him either. I'm afraid I do set people against him, as
he says. I seem, somehow, to give him away all the time. Per-
haps he would try to be agreeable to people again, if I were not
around. It seems as if I always make him just as bad as he can
be."
Later in the winter, Alexandra looked back upon that after-
noon as the last satisfactory visit she had had with Marie. After
that day the younger woman seemed to shrink more and more
into herself. When she was with Alexandra she was not spon-
taneous and frank as she used to be. She seemed to be brood-
ing over something, and holding something back. The weather
had a good deal to do with their seeing less of each other than
usual. There had not been such snowstorms in twenty years,
and the path across the fields was drifted deep from Christmas
until March. When the two neighbors went to see each other,
they had to go round by the wagon-road, which was twice as
far. They telephoned each other almost every night, though in
January there was a stretch of three weeks when the wires
were down, and when the postman did not come at all.

103
 Marie often ran in to see her nearest neighbor, old Mrs.
Hiller, who was crippled with rheumatism and had only her
son, the lame shoemaker, to take care of her; and she went to
the French Church, whatever the weather. She was a sincerely
devout girl. She prayed for herself and for Frank, and for Emil,
among the temptations of that gay, corrupt old city. She found
more comfort in the Church that winter than ever before. It
seemed to come closer to her, and to fill an emptiness that
ached in her heart. She tried to be patient with her husband.
He and his hired man usually played California Jack in the
evening. Marie sat sewing or crocheting and tried to take a
friendly interest in the game, but she was always thinking
about the wide fields outside, where the snow was drifting over
the fences; and about the orchard, where the snow was falling
and packing, crust over crust. When she went out into the dark
kitchen to fix her plants for the night, she used to stand by the
window and look out at the white fields, or watch the currents
of snow whirling over the orchard. She seemed to feel the
weight of all the snow that lay down there. The branches had
become so hard that they wounded your hand if you but tried
to break a twig. And yet, down under the frozen crusts, at the
roots of the trees, the secret of life was still safe, warm as the
blood in one's heart; and the spring would come again! Oh, it
would come again!

104
Chapter 2
If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have
guessed what was going on in Marie's mind, and she would
have seen long before what was going on in Emil's. But that, as
Emil himself had more than once reflected, was Alexandra's
blind side, and her life had not been of the kind to sharpen her
vision. Her training had all been toward the end of making her
proficient in what she had undertaken to do. Her personal life,
her own realization of herself, was almost a subconscious exist-
ence; like an underground river that came to the surface only
here and there, at intervals months apart, and then sank again
to flow on under her own fields. Nevertheless, the under-
ground stream was there, and it was because she had so much
personality to put into her enterprises and succeeded in put-
ting it into them so completely, that her affairs prospered bet-
ter than those of her neighbors.
There were certain days in her life, outwardly uneventful,
which Alexandra remembered as peculiarly happy; days when
she was close to the flat, fallow world about her, and felt, as it
were, in her own body the joyous germination in the soil. There
were days, too, which she and Emil had spent together, upon
which she loved to look back. There had been such a day when
they were down on the river in the dry year, looking over the
land. They had made an early start one morning and had driv-
en a long way before noon. When Emil said he was hungry,
they drew back from the road, gave Brigham his oats among
the bushes, and climbed up to the top of a grassy bluff to eat
their lunch under the shade of some little elm trees. The river
was clear there, and shallow, since there had been no rain, and
it ran in ripples over the sparkling sand. Under the over-
hanging willows of the opposite bank there was an inlet where
the water was deeper and flowed so slowly that it seemed to
sleep in the sun. In this little bay a single wild duck was

105
swimming and diving and preening her feathers, disporting
herself very happily in the flickering light and shade. They sat
for a long time, watching the solitary bird take its pleasure. No
living thing had ever seemed to Alexandra as beautiful as that
wild duck. Emil must have felt about it as she did, for after-
ward, when they were at home, he used sometimes to say,
"Sister, you know our duck down there—" Alexandra re-
membered that day as one of the happiest in her life. Years af-
terward she thought of the duck as still there, swimming and
diving all by herself in the sunlight, a kind of enchanted bird
that did not know age or change.
Most of Alexandra's happy memories were as impersonal as
this one; yet to her they were very personal. Her mind was a
white book, with clear writing about weather and beasts and
growing things. Not many people would have cared to read it;
only a happy few. She had never been in love, she had never in-
dulged in sentimental reveries. Even as a girl she had looked
upon men as work-fellows. She had grown up in serious times.
There was one fancy indeed, which persisted through her
girlhood. It most often came to her on Sunday mornings, the
one day in the week when she lay late abed listening to the fa-
miliar morning sounds; the windmill singing in the brisk
breeze, Emil whistling as he blacked his boots down by the kit-
chen door. Sometimes, as she lay thus luxuriously idle, her
eyes closed, she used to have an illusion of being lifted up bod-
ily and carried lightly by some one very strong. It was a man,
certainly, who carried her, but he was like no man she knew;
he was much larger and stronger and swifter, and he carried
her as easily as if she were a sheaf of wheat. She never saw
him, but, with eyes closed, she could feel that he was yellow
like the sunlight, and there was the smell of ripe cornfields
about him. She could feel him approach, bend over her and lift
her, and then she could feel herself being carried swiftly off
across the fields. After such a reverie she would rise hastily,
angry with herself, and go down to the bath-house that was
partitioned off the kitchen shed. There she would stand in a tin
tub and prosecute her bath with vigor, finishing it by pouring
buckets of cold well-water over her gleaming white body which
no man on the Divide could have carried very far.

106
 As she grew older, this fancy more often came to her when
she was tired than when she was fresh and strong. Sometimes,
after she had been in the open all day, overseeing the branding
of the cattle or the loading of the pigs, she would come in
chilled, take a concoction of spices and warm home-made wine,
and go to bed with her body actually aching with fatigue. Then,
just before she went to sleep, she had the old sensation of be-
ing lifted and carried by a strong being who took from her all
her bodily weariness.

107
 Part 4
The White Mulberry Tree

108
Chapter 1
The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes,
stood upon a hill. The high, narrow, red-brick building, with its
tall steeple and steep roof, could be seen for miles across the
wheatfields, though the little town of Sainte-Agnes was com-
pletely hidden away at the foot of the hill. The church looked
powerful and triumphant there on its eminence, so high above
the rest of the landscape, with miles of warm color lying at its
feet, and by its position and setting it reminded one of some of
the churches built long ago in the wheat-lands of middle
France.
Late one June afternoon Alexandra Bergson was driving
along one of the many roads that led through the rich French
farming country to the big church. The sunlight was shining
directly in her face, and there was a blaze of light all about the
red church on the hill. Beside Alexandra lounged a strikingly
exotic figure in a tall Mexican hat, a silk sash, and a black vel-
vet jacket sewn with silver buttons. Emil had returned only the
night before, and his sister was so proud of him that she de-
cided at once to take him up to the church supper, and to make
him wear the Mexican costume he had brought home in his
trunk. "All the girls who have stands are going to wear fancy
costumes," she argued, "and some of the boys. Marie is going
to tell fortunes, and she sent to Omaha for a Bohemian dress
her father brought back from a visit to the old country. If you
wear those clothes, they will all be pleased. And you must take
your guitar. Everybody ought to do what they can to help
along, and we have never done much. We are not a talented
family."
The supper was to be at six o'clock, in the basement of the
church, and afterward there would be a fair, with charades and
an auction. Alexandra had set out from home early, leaving the
house to Signa and Nelse Jensen, who were to be married next

109
week. Signa had shyly asked to have the wedding put off until
Emil came home.
Alexandra was well satisfied with her brother. As they drove
through the rolling French country toward the westering sun
and the stalwart church, she was thinking of that time long ago
when she and Emil drove back from the river valley to the still
unconquered Divide. Yes, she told herself, it had been worth
while; both Emil and the country had become what she had
hoped. Out of her father's children there was one who was fit
to cope with the world, who had not been tied to the plow, and
who had a personality apart from the soil. And that, she reflec-
ted, was what she had worked for. She felt well satisfied with
her life.
When they reached the church, a score of teams were
hitched in front of the basement doors that opened from the
hillside upon the sanded terrace, where the boys wrestled and
had jumping-matches. Amedee Chevalier, a proud father of one
week, rushed out and embraced Emil. Amedee was an only
son,—hence he was a very rich young man,—but he meant to
have twenty children himself, like his uncle Xavier. "Oh, Emil,"
he cried, hugging his old friend rapturously, "why ain't you
been up to see my boy? You come to-morrow, sure? Emil, you
wanna get a boy right off! It's the greatest thing ever! No, no,
no! Angel not sick at all. Everything just fine. That boy he come
into this world laughin', and he been laughin' ever since. You
come an' see!" He pounded Emil's ribs to emphasize each
announcement.
Emil caught his arms. "Stop, Amedee. You're knocking the
wind out of me. I brought him cups and spoons and blankets
and moccasins enough for an orphan asylum. I'm awful glad it's
a boy, sure enough!"
The young men crowded round Emil to admire his costume
and to tell him in a breath everything that had happened since
he went away. Emil had more friends up here in the French
country than down on Norway Creek. The French and Bohemi-
an boys were spirited and jolly, liked variety, and were as
much predisposed to favor anything new as the Scandinavian
boys were to reject it. The Norwegian and Swedish lads were
much more self-centred, apt to be egotistical and jealous. They
were cautious and reserved with Emil because he had been

110
away to college, and were prepared to take him down if he
should try to put on airs with them. The French boys liked a bit
of swagger, and they were always delighted to hear about any-
thing new: new clothes, new games, new songs, new dances.
Now they carried Emil off to show him the club room they had
just fitted up over the post-office, down in the village. They ran
down the hill in a drove, all laughing and chattering at once,
some in French, some in English.
Alexandra went into the cool, whitewashed basement where
the women were setting the tables. Marie was standing on a
chair, building a little tent of shawls where she was to tell for-
tunes. She sprang down and ran toward Alexandra, stopping
short and looking at her in disappointment. Alexandra nodded
to her encouragingly.
"Oh, he will be here, Marie. The boys have taken him off to
show him something. You won't know him. He is a man now,
sure enough. I have no boy left. He smokes terrible-smelling
Mexican cigarettes and talks Spanish. How pretty you look,
child. Where did you get those beautiful earrings?"
"They belonged to father's mother. He always promised them
to me. He sent them with the dress and said I could keep
them."
Marie wore a short red skirt of stoutly woven cloth, a white
bodice and kirtle, a yellow silk turban wound low over her
brown curls, and long coral pendants in her ears. Her ears had
been pierced against a piece of cork by her great-aunt when
she was seven years old. In those germless days she had worn
bits of broom-straw, plucked from the common sweeping-
broom, in the lobes until the holes were healed and ready for
little gold rings.
When Emil came back from the village, he lingered outside
on the terrace with the boys. Marie could hear him talking and
strumming on his guitar while Raoul Marcel sang falsetto. She
was vexed with him for staying out there. It made her very
nervous to hear him and not to see him; for, certainly, she told
herself, she was not going out to look for him. When the supper
bell rang and the boys came trooping in to get seats at the first
table, she forgot all about her annoyance and ran to greet the
tallest of the crowd, in his conspicuous attire. She didn't mind
showing her embarrassment at all. She blushed and laughed

111
excitedly as she gave Emil her hand, and looked delightedly at
the black velvet coat that brought out his fair skin and fine
blond head. Marie was incapable of being lukewarm about any-
thing that pleased her. She simply did not know how to give a
half-hearted response. When she was delighted, she was as
likely as not to stand on her tip-toes and clap her hands. If
people laughed at her, she laughed with them.
"Do the men wear clothes like that every day, in the street?"
She caught Emil by his sleeve and turned him about. "Oh, I
wish I lived where people wore things like that! Are the but-
tons real silver? Put on the hat, please. What a heavy thing!
How do you ever wear it? Why don't you tell us about the bull-
fights?"
She wanted to wring all his experiences from him at once,
without waiting a moment. Emil smiled tolerantly and stood
looking down at her with his old, brooding gaze, while the
French girls fluttered about him in their white dresses and rib-
bons, and Alexandra watched the scene with pride. Several of
the French girls, Marie knew, were hoping that Emil would
take them to supper, and she was relieved when he took only
his sister. Marie caught Frank's arm and dragged him to the
same table, managing to get seats opposite the Bergsons, so
that she could hear what they were talking about. Alexandra
made Emil tell Mrs. Xavier Chevalier, the mother of the twenty,
about how he had seen a famous matador killed in the bull-
ring. Marie listened to every word, only taking her eyes from
Emil to watch Frank's plate and keep it filled. When Emil fin-
ished his account,—bloody enough to satisfy Mrs. Xavier and to
make her feel thankful that she was not a matador,—Marie
broke out with a volley of questions. How did the women dress
when they went to bull-fights? Did they wear mantillas? Did
they never wear hats?
After supper the young people played charades for the
amusement of their elders, who sat gossiping between their
guesses. All the shops in Sainte-Agnes were closed at eight
o'clock that night, so that the merchants and their clerks could
attend the fair. The auction was the liveliest part of the enter-
tainment, for the French boys always lost their heads when
they began to bid, satisfied that their extravagance was in a
good cause. After all the pincushions and sofa pillows and

112
embroidered slippers were sold, Emil precipitated a panic by
taking out one of his turquoise shirt studs, which every one had
been admiring, and handing it to the auctioneer. All the French
girls clamored for it, and their sweethearts bid against each
other recklessly. Marie wanted it, too, and she kept making
signals to Frank, which he took a sour pleasure in disregard-
ing. He didn't see the use of making a fuss over a fellow just
because he was dressed like a clown. When the turquoise went
to Malvina Sauvage, the French banker's daughter, Marie
shrugged her shoulders and betook herself to her little tent of
shawls, where she began to shuffle her cards by the light of a
tallow candle, calling out, "Fortunes, fortunes!"
The young priest, Father Duchesne, went first to have his
fortune read. Marie took his long white hand, looked at it, and
then began to run off her cards. "I see a long journey across
water for you, Father. You will go to a town all cut up by water;
built on islands, it seems to be, with rivers and green fields all
about. And you will visit an old lady with a white cap and gold
hoops in her ears, and you will be very happy there."
"Mais, oui," said the priest, with a melancholy smile. "C'est
L'Isle-Adam, chez ma mere. Vous etes tres savante, ma fille."
He patted her yellow turban, calling, "Venez donc, mes gar-
cons! Il y a ici une veritable clairvoyante!"
Marie was clever at fortune-telling, indulging in a light irony
that amused the crowd. She told old Brunot, the miser, that he
would lose all his money, marry a girl of sixteen, and live hap-
pily on a crust. Sholte, the fat Russian boy, who lived for his
stomach, was to be disappointed in love, grow thin, and shoot
himself from despondency. Amedee was to have twenty chil-
dren, and nineteen of them were to be girls. Amedee slapped
Frank on the back and asked him why he didn't see what the
fortune-teller would promise him. But Frank shook off his
friendly hand and grunted, "She tell my fortune long ago; bad
enough!" Then he withdrew to a corner and sat glowering at
his wife.
Frank's case was all the more painful because he had no one
in particular to fix his jealousy upon. Sometimes he could have
thanked the man who would bring him evidence against his
wife. He had discharged a good farm-boy, Jan Smirka, because
he thought Marie was fond of him; but she had not seemed to

113
miss Jan when he was gone, and she had been just as kind to
the next boy. The farm-hands would always do anything for
Marie; Frank couldn't find one so surly that he would not make
an effort to please her. At the bottom of his heart Frank knew
well enough that if he could once give up his grudge, his wife
would come back to him. But he could never in the world do
that. The grudge was fundamental. Perhaps he could not have
given it up if he had tried. Perhaps he got more satisfaction out
of feeling himself abused than he would have got out of being
loved. If he could once have made Marie thoroughly unhappy,
he might have relented and raised her from the dust. But she
had never humbled herself. In the first days of their love she
had been his slave; she had admired him abandonedly. But the
moment he began to bully her and to be unjust, she began to
draw away; at first in tearful amazement, then in quiet, un-
spoken disgust. The distance between them had widened and
hardened. It no longer contracted and brought them suddenly
together. The spark of her life went somewhere else, and he
was always watching to surprise it. He knew that somewhere
she must get a feeling to live upon, for she was not a woman
who could live without loving. He wanted to prove to himself
the wrong he felt. What did she hide in her heart? Where did it
go? Even Frank had his churlish delicacies; he never reminded
her of how much she had once loved him. For that Marie was
grateful to him.
While Marie was chattering to the French boys, Amedee
called Emil to the back of the room and whispered to him that
they were going to play a joke on the girls. At eleven o'clock,
Amedee was to go up to the switchboard in the vestibule and
turn off the electric lights, and every boy would have a chance
to kiss his sweetheart before Father Duchesne could find his
way up the stairs to turn the current on again. The only diffi-
culty was the candle in Marie's tent; perhaps, as Emil had no
sweetheart, he would oblige the boys by blowing out the
candle. Emil said he would undertake to do that.
At five minutes to eleven he sauntered up to Marie's booth,
and the French boys dispersed to find their girls. He leaned
over the card-table and gave himself up to looking at her. "Do
you think you could tell my fortune?" he murmured. It was the

114
first word he had had alone with her for almost a year. "My
luck hasn't changed any. It's just the same."
Marie had often wondered whether there was anyone else
who could look his thoughts to you as Emil could. To-night,
when she met his steady, powerful eyes, it was impossible not
to feel the sweetness of the dream he was dreaming; it reached
her before she could shut it out, and hid itself in her heart. She
began to shuffle her cards furiously. "I'm angry with you,
Emil," she broke out with petulance. "Why did you give them
that lovely blue stone to sell? You might have known Frank
wouldn't buy it for me, and I wanted it awfully!"
Emil laughed shortly. "People who want such little things
surely ought to have them," he said dryly. He thrust his hand
into the pocket of his velvet trousers and brought out a handful
of uncut turquoises, as big as marbles. Leaning over the table
he dropped them into her lap. "There, will those do? Be care-
ful, don't let any one see them. Now, I suppose you want me to
go away and let you play with them?"
Marie was gazing in rapture at the soft blue color of the
stones. "Oh, Emil! Is everything down there beautiful like
these? How could you ever come away?"
At that instant Amedee laid hands on the switchboard. There
was a shiver and a giggle, and every one looked toward the red
blur that Marie's candle made in the dark. Immediately that,
too, was gone. Little shrieks and currents of soft laughter ran
up and down the dark hall. Marie started up,—directly into
Emil's arms. In the same instant she felt his lips. The veil that
had hung uncertainly between them for so long was dissolved.
Before she knew what she was doing, she had committed her-
self to that kiss that was at once a boy's and a man's, as timid
as it was tender; so like Emil and so unlike any one else in the
world. Not until it was over did she realize what it meant. And
Emil, who had so often imagined the shock of this first kiss,
was surprised at its gentleness and naturalness. It was like a
sigh which they had breathed together; almost sorrowful, as if
each were afraid of wakening something in the other.
When the lights came on again, everybody was laughing and
shouting, and all the French girls were rosy and shining with
mirth. Only Marie, in her little tent of shawls, was pale and
quiet. Under her yellow turban the red coral pendants swung

115
against white cheeks. Frank was still staring at her, but he
seemed to see nothing. Years ago, he himself had had the
power to take the blood from her cheeks like that. Perhaps he
did not remember—perhaps he had never noticed! Emil was
already at the other end of the hall, walking about with the
shoulder-motion he had acquired among the Mexicans, study-
ing the floor with his intent, deep-set eyes. Marie began to take
down and fold her shawls. She did not glance up again. The
young people drifted to the other end of the hall where the gui-
tar was sounding. In a moment she heard Emil and Raoul
singing:—
"Across the Rio Grand-e There lies a sunny land-e, My bright-
eyed Mexico!"
Alexandra Bergson came up to the card booth. "Let me help
you, Marie. You look tired."
She placed her hand on Marie's arm and felt her shiver. Mar-
ie stiffened under that kind, calm hand. Alexandra drew back,
perplexed and hurt.
There was about Alexandra something of the impervious
calm of the fatalist, always disconcerting to very young people,
who cannot feel that the heart lives at all unless it is still at the
mercy of storms; unless its strings can scream to the touch of
pain.

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Chapter 2
Signa's wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome
little Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ce-
remony, were saying good-night. Old Ivar was hitching the
horses to the wagon to take the wedding presents and the
bride and groom up to their new home, on Alexandra's north
quarter. When Ivar drove up to the gate, Emil and Marie
Shabata began to carry out the presents, and Alexandra went
into her bedroom to bid Signa good-bye and to give her a few
words of good counsel. She was surprised to find that the bride
had changed her slippers for heavy shoes and was pinning up
her skirts. At that moment Nelse appeared at the gate with the
two milk cows that Alexandra had given Signa for a wedding
present.
Alexandra began to laugh. "Why, Signa, you and Nelse are to
ride home. I'll send Ivar over with the cows in the morning."
Signa hesitated and looked perplexed. When her husband
called her, she pinned her hat on resolutely. "I ta-ank I better
do yust like he say," she murmured in confusion.
Alexandra and Marie accompanied Signa to the gate and saw
the party set off, old Ivar driving ahead in the wagon and the
bride and groom following on foot, each leading a cow. Emil
burst into a laugh before they were out of hearing.
"Those two will get on," said Alexandra as they turned back
to the house. "They are not going to take any chances. They
will feel safer with those cows in their own stable. Marie, I am
going to send for an old woman next. As soon as I get the girls
broken in, I marry them off."
"I've no patience with Signa, marrying that grumpy fellow!"
Marie declared. "I wanted her to marry that nice Smirka boy
who worked for us last winter. I think she liked him, too."
"Yes, I think she did," Alexandra assented, "but I suppose she
was too much afraid of Nelse to marry any one else. Now that I

117
think of it, most of my girls have married men they were afraid
of. I believe there is a good deal of the cow in most Swedish
girls. You high-strung Bohemian can't understand us. We're a
terribly practical people, and I guess we think a cross man
makes a good manager."
Marie shrugged her shoulders and turned to pin up a lock of
hair that had fallen on her neck. Somehow Alexandra had irrit-
ated her of late. Everybody irritated her. She was tired of
everybody. "I'm going home alone, Emil, so you needn't get
your hat," she said as she wound her scarf quickly about her
head. "Good-night, Alexandra," she called back in a strained
voice, running down the gravel walk.
Emil followed with long strides until he overtook her. Then
she began to walk slowly. It was a night of warm wind and
faint starlight, and the fireflies were glimmering over the
wheat.
"Marie," said Emil after they had walked for a while, "I won-
der if you know how unhappy I am?"
Marie did not answer him. Her head, in its white scarf,
drooped forward a little.
Emil kicked a clod from the path and went on:—
"I wonder whether you are really shallow-hearted, like you
seem? Sometimes I think one boy does just as well as another
for you. It never seems to make much difference whether it is
me or Raoul Marcel or Jan Smirka. Are you really like that?"
"Perhaps I am. What do you want me to do? Sit round and
cry all day? When I've cried until I can't cry any more,
then—then I must do something else."
"Are you sorry for me?" he persisted.
"No, I'm not. If I were big and free like you, I wouldn't let
anything make me unhappy. As old Napoleon Brunot said at
the fair, I wouldn't go lovering after no woman. I'd take the
first train and go off and have all the fun there is."
"I tried that, but it didn't do any good. Everything reminded
me. The nicer the place was, the more I wanted you." They had
come to the stile and Emil pointed to it persuasively. "Sit down
a moment, I want to ask you something." Marie sat down on
the top step and Emil drew nearer. "Would you tell me
something that's none of my business if you thought it would

118
help me out? Well, then, tell me, PLEASE tell me, why you ran
away with Frank Shabata!"
Marie drew back. "Because I was in love with him," she said
firmly.
"Really?" he asked incredulously.
"Yes, indeed. Very much in love with him. I think I was the
one who suggested our running away. From the first it was
more my fault than his."
Emil turned away his face.
"And now," Marie went on, "I've got to remember that. Frank
is just the same now as he was then, only then I would see him
as I wanted him to be. I would have my own way. And now I
pay for it."
"You don't do all the paying."
"That's it. When one makes a mistake, there's no telling
where it will stop. But you can go away; you can leave all this
behind you."
"Not everything. I can't leave you behind. Will you go away
with me, Marie?"
Marie started up and stepped across the stile. "Emil! How
wickedly you talk! I am not that kind of a girl, and you know it.
But what am I going to do if you keep tormenting me like this!"
she added plaintively.
"Marie, I won't bother you any more if you will tell me just
one thing. Stop a minute and look at me. No, nobody can see
us. Everybody's asleep. That was only a firefly. Marie, STOP
and tell me!"
Emil overtook her and catching her by the shoulders shook
her gently, as if he were trying to awaken a sleepwalker.
Marie hid her face on his arm. "Don't ask me anything more.
I don't know anything except how miserable I am. And I
thought it would be all right when you came back. Oh, Emil,"
she clutched his sleeve and began to cry, "what am I to do if
you don't go away? I can't go, and one of us must. Can't you
see?"
Emil stood looking down at her, holding his shoulders stiff
and stiffening the arm to which she clung. Her white dress
looked gray in the darkness. She seemed like a troubled spirit,
like some shadow out of the earth, clinging to him and entreat-
ing him to give her peace. Behind her the fireflies were

119
weaving in and out over the wheat. He put his hand on her
bent head. "On my honor, Marie, if you will say you love me, I
will go away."
She lifted her face to his. "How could I help it? Didn't you
know?"
Emil was the one who trembled, through all his frame. After
he left Marie at her gate, he wandered about the fields all
night, till morning put out the fireflies and the stars.

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Chapter 3
One evening, a week after Signa's wedding, Emil was kneeling
before a box in the sitting-room, packing his books. From time
to time he rose and wandered about the house, picking up
stray volumes and bringing them listlessly back to his box. He
was packing without enthusiasm. He was not very sanguine
about his future. Alexandra sat sewing by the table. She had
helped him pack his trunk in the afternoon. As Emil came and
went by her chair with his books, he thought to himself that it
had not been so hard to leave his sister since he first went
away to school. He was going directly to Omaha, to read law in
the office of a Swedish lawyer until October, when he would
enter the law school at Ann Arbor. They had planned that Alex-
andra was to come to Michigan—a long journey for her—at
Christmas time, and spend several weeks with him. Neverthe-
less, he felt that this leavetaking would be more final than his
earlier ones had been; that it meant a definite break with his
old home and the beginning of something new—he did not
know what. His ideas about the future would not crystallize;
the more he tried to think about it, the vaguer his conception
of it became. But one thing was clear, he told himself; it was
high time that he made good to Alexandra, and that ought to
be incentive enough to begin with.
As he went about gathering up his books he felt as if he were
uprooting things. At last he threw himself down on the old slat
lounge where he had slept when he was little, and lay looking
up at the familiar cracks in the ceiling.
"Tired, Emil?" his sister asked.
"Lazy," he murmured, turning on his side and looking at her.
He studied Alexandra's face for a long time in the lamplight. It
had never occurred to him that his sister was a handsome wo-
man until Marie Shabata had told him so. Indeed, he had never
thought of her as being a woman at all, only a sister. As he

121
studied her bent head, he looked up at the picture of John
Bergson above the lamp. "No," he thought to himself, "she
didn't get it there. I suppose I am more like that."
"Alexandra," he said suddenly, "that old walnut secretary you
use for a desk was father's, wasn't it?"
Alexandra went on stitching. "Yes. It was one of the first
things he bought for the old log house. It was a great extravag-
ance in those days. But he wrote a great many letters back to
the old country. He had many friends there, and they wrote to
him up to the time he died. No one ever blamed him for
grandfather's disgrace. I can see him now, sitting there on
Sundays, in his white shirt, writing pages and pages, so care-
fully. He wrote a fine, regular hand, almost like engraving.
Yours is something like his, when you take pains."
"Grandfather was really crooked, was he?"
"He married an unscrupulous woman, and then—then I'm
afraid he was really crooked. When we first came here father
used to have dreams about making a great fortune and going
back to Sweden to pay back to the poor sailors the money
grandfather had lost."
Emil stirred on the lounge. "I say, that would have been
worth while, wouldn't it? Father wasn't a bit like Lou or Oscar,
was he? I can't remember much about him before he got sick."
"Oh, not at all!" Alexandra dropped her sewing on her knee.
"He had better opportunities; not to make money, but to make
something of himself. He was a quiet man, but he was very in-
telligent. You would have been proud of him, Emil."
Alexandra felt that he would like to know there had been a
man of his kin whom he could admire. She knew that Emil was
ashamed of Lou and Oscar, because they were bigoted and
self-satisfied. He never said much about them, but she could
feel his disgust. His brothers had shown their disapproval of
him ever since he first went away to school. The only thing that
would have satisfied them would have been his failure at the
University. As it was, they resented every change in his
speech, in his dress, in his point of view; though the latter they
had to conjecture, for Emil avoided talking to them about any
but family matters. All his interests they treated as
affectations.

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 Alexandra took up her sewing again. "I can remember father
when he was quite a young man. He belonged to some kind of
a musical society, a male chorus, in Stockholm. I can remem-
ber going with mother to hear them sing. There must have
been a hundred of them, and they all wore long black coats and
white neckties. I was used to seeing father in a blue coat, a
sort of jacket, and when I recognized him on the platform, I
was very proud. Do you remember that Swedish song he
taught you, about the ship boy?"
"Yes. I used to sing it to the Mexicans. They like anything dif-
ferent." Emil paused. "Father had a hard fight here, didn't he?"
he added thoughtfully.
"Yes, and he died in a dark time. Still, he had hope. He be-
lieved in the land."
"And in you, I guess," Emil said to himself. There was anoth-
er period of silence; that warm, friendly silence, full of perfect
understanding, in which Emil and Alexandra had spent many of
their happiest half-hours.
At last Emil said abruptly, "Lou and Oscar would be better
off if they were poor, wouldn't they?"
Alexandra smiled. "Maybe. But their children wouldn't. I
have great hopes of Milly."
Emil shivered. "I don't know. Seems to me it gets worse as it
goes on. The worst of the Swedes is that they're never willing
to find out how much they don't know. It was like that at the
University. Always so pleased with themselves! There's no get-
ting behind that conceited Swedish grin. The Bohemians and
Germans were so different."
"Come, Emil, don't go back on your own people. Father
wasn't conceited, Uncle Otto wasn't. Even Lou and Oscar
weren't when they were boys."
Emil looked incredulous, but he did not dispute the point. He
turned on his back and lay still for a long time, his hands
locked under his head, looking up at the ceiling. Alexandra
knew that he was thinking of many things. She felt no anxiety
about Emil. She had always believed in him, as she had be-
lieved in the land. He had been more like himself since he got
back from Mexico; seemed glad to be at home, and talked to
her as he used to do. She had no doubt that his wandering fit
was over, and that he would soon be settled in life.

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 "Alexandra," said Emil suddenly, "do you remember the wild
duck we saw down on the river that time?"
His sister looked up. "I often think of her. It always seems to
me she's there still, just like we saw her."
"I know. It's queer what things one remembers and what
things one forgets." Emil yawned and sat up. "Well, it's time to
turn in." He rose, and going over to Alexandra stooped down
and kissed her lightly on the cheek. "Good-night, sister. I think
you did pretty well by us."
Emil took up his lamp and went upstairs. Alexandra sat fin-
ishing his new nightshirt, that must go in the top tray of his
trunk.

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Chapter 4
The next morning Angelique, Amedee's wife, was in the kitchen
baking pies, assisted by old Mrs. Chevalier. Between the
mixing-board and the stove stood the old cradle that had been
Amedee's, and in it was his black-eyed son. As Angelique,
flushed and excited, with flour on her hands, stopped to smile
at the baby, Emil Bergson rode up to the kitchen door on his
mare and dismounted.
"'Medee is out in the field, Emil," Angelique called as she ran
across the kitchen to the oven. "He begins to cut his wheat to-
day; the first wheat ready to cut anywhere about here. He
bought a new header, you know, because all the wheat's so
short this year. I hope he can rent it to the neighbors, it cost so
much. He and his cousins bought a steam thresher on shares.
You ought to go out and see that header work. I watched it an
hour this morning, busy as I am with all the men to feed. He
has a lot of hands, but he's the only one that knows how to
drive the header or how to run the engine, so he has to be
everywhere at once. He's sick, too, and ought to be in his bed."
Emil bent over Hector Baptiste, trying to make him blink his
round, bead-like black eyes. "Sick? What's the matter with your
daddy, kid? Been making him walk the floor with you?"
Angelique sniffed. "Not much! We don't have that kind of ba-
bies. It was his father that kept Baptiste awake. All night I had
to be getting up and making mustard plasters to put on his
stomach. He had an awful colic. He said he felt better this
morning, but I don't think he ought to be out in the field, over-
heating himself."
Angelique did not speak with much anxiety, not because she
was indifferent, but because she felt so secure in their good
fortune. Only good things could happen to a rich, energetic,
handsome young man like Amedee, with a new baby in the
cradle and a new header in the field.

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 Emil stroked the black fuzz on Baptiste's head. "I say, An-
gelique, one of 'Medee's grandmothers, 'way back, must have
been a squaw. This kid looks exactly like the Indian babies."
Angelique made a face at him, but old Mrs. Chevalier had
been touched on a sore point, and she let out such a stream of
fiery PATOIS that Emil fled from the kitchen and mounted his
mare.
Opening the pasture gate from the saddle, Emil rode across
the field to the clearing where the thresher stood, driven by a
stationary engine and fed from the header boxes. As Amedee
was not on the engine, Emil rode on to the wheatfield, where
he recognized, on the header, the slight, wiry figure of his
friend, coatless, his white shirt puffed out by the wind, his
straw hat stuck jauntily on the side of his head. The six big
work-horses that drew, or rather pushed, the header, went
abreast at a rapid walk, and as they were still green at the
work they required a good deal of management on Amedee's
part; especially when they turned the corners, where they di-
vided, three and three, and then swung round into line again
with a movement that looked as complicated as a wheel of ar-
tillery. Emil felt a new thrill of admiration for his friend, and
with it the old pang of envy at the way in which Amedee could
do with his might what his hand found to do, and feel that,
whatever it was, it was the most important thing in the world.
"I'll have to bring Alexandra up to see this thing work," Emil
thought; "it's splendid!"
When he saw Emil, Amedee waved to him and called to one
of his twenty cousins to take the reins. Stepping off the header
without stopping it, he ran up to Emil who had dismounted.
"Come along," he called. "I have to go over to the engine for a
minute. I gotta green man running it, and I gotta to keep an
eye on him."
Emil thought the lad was unnaturally flushed and more ex-
cited than even the cares of managing a big farm at a critical
time warranted. As they passed behind a last year's stack,
Amedee clutched at his right side and sank down for a moment
on the straw.
"Ouch! I got an awful pain in me, Emil. Something's the mat-
ter with my insides, for sure."

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 Emil felt his fiery cheek. "You ought to go straight to bed,
'Medee, and telephone for the doctor; that's what you ought to
do."
Amedee staggered up with a gesture of despair. "How can I?
I got no time to be sick. Three thousand dollars' worth of new
machinery to manage, and the wheat so ripe it will begin to
shatter next week. My wheat's short, but it's gotta grand full
berries. What's he slowing down for? We haven't got header
boxes enough to feed the thresher, I guess."
Amedee started hot-foot across the stubble, leaning a little to
the right as he ran, and waved to the engineer not to stop the
engine.
Emil saw that this was no time to talk about his own affairs.
He mounted his mare and rode on to Sainte-Agnes, to bid his
friends there good-bye. He went first to see Raoul Marcel, and
found him innocently practising the "Gloria" for the big con-
firmation service on Sunday while he polished the mirrors of
his father's saloon.
As Emil rode homewards at three o'clock in the afternoon, he
saw Amedee staggering out of the wheatfield, supported by
two of his cousins. Emil stopped and helped them put the boy
to bed.

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Chapter 5
When Frank Shabata came in from work at five o'clock that
evening, old Moses Marcel, Raoul's father, telephoned him that
Amedee had had a seizure in the wheatfield, and that Doctor
Paradis was going to operate on him as soon as the Hanover
doctor got there to help. Frank dropped a word of this at the
table, bolted his supper, and rode off to Sainte-Agnes, where
there would be sympathetic discussion of Amedee's case at
Marcel's saloon.
As soon as Frank was gone, Marie telephoned Alexandra. It
was a comfort to hear her friend's voice. Yes, Alexandra knew
what there was to be known about Amedee. Emil had been
there when they carried him out of the field, and had stayed
with him until the doctors operated for appendicitis at five
o'clock. They were afraid it was too late to do much good; it
should have been done three days ago. Amedee was in a very
bad way. Emil had just come home, worn out and sick himself.
She had given him some brandy and put him to bed.
Marie hung up the receiver. Poor Amedee's illness had taken
on a new meaning to her, now that she knew Emil had been
with him. And it might so easily have been the other way—Emil
who was ill and Amedee who was sad! Marie looked about the
dusky sitting-room. She had seldom felt so utterly lonely. If
Emil was asleep, there was not even a chance of his coming;
and she could not go to Alexandra for sympathy. She meant to
tell Alexandra everything, as soon as Emil went away. Then
whatever was left between them would be honest.
But she could not stay in the house this evening. Where
should she go? She walked slowly down through the orchard,
where the evening air was heavy with the smell of wild cotton.
The fresh, salty scent of the wild roses had given way before
this more powerful perfume of midsummer. Wherever those
ashes-of-rose balls hung on their milky stalks, the air about

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them was saturated with their breath. The sky was still red in
the west and the evening star hung directly over the Bergsons'
wind-mill. Marie crossed the fence at the wheatfield corner,
and walked slowly along the path that led to Alexandra's. She
could not help feeling hurt that Emil had not come to tell her
about Amedee. It seemed to her most unnatural that he should
not have come. If she were in trouble, certainly he was the one
person in the world she would want to see. Perhaps he wished
her to understand that for her he was as good as gone already.
Marie stole slowly, flutteringly, along the path, like a white
night-moth out of the fields. The years seemed to stretch be-
fore her like the land; spring, summer, autumn, winter, spring;
always the same patient fields, the patient little trees, the pa-
tient lives; always the same yearning, the same pulling at the
chain—until the instinct to live had torn itself and bled and
weakened for the last time, until the chain secured a dead wo-
man, who might cautiously be released. Marie walked on, her
face lifted toward the remote, inaccessible evening star.
When she reached the stile she sat down and waited. How
terrible it was to love people when you could not really share
their lives!
Yes, in so far as she was concerned, Emil was already gone.
They couldn't meet any more. There was nothing for them to
say. They had spent the last penny of their small change; there
was nothing left but gold. The day of love-tokens was past.
They had now only their hearts to give each other. And Emil
being gone, what was her life to be like? In some ways, it
would be easier. She would not, at least, live in perpetual fear.
If Emil were once away and settled at work, she would not
have the feeling that she was spoiling his life. With the memory
he left her, she could be as rash as she chose. Nobody could be
the worse for it but herself; and that, surely, did not matter.
Her own case was clear. When a girl had loved one man, and
then loved another while that man was still alive, everybody
knew what to think of her. What happened to her was of little
consequence, so long as she did not drag other people down
with her. Emil once away, she could let everything else go and
live a new life of perfect love.
Marie left the stile reluctantly. She had, after all, thought he
might come. And how glad she ought to be, she told herself,

129
that he was asleep. She left the path and went across the pas-
ture. The moon was almost full. An owl was hooting some-
where in the fields. She had scarcely thought about where she
was going when the pond glittered before her, where Emil had
shot the ducks. She stopped and looked at it. Yes, there would
be a dirty way out of life, if one chose to take it. But she did not
want to die. She wanted to live and dream—a hundred years,
forever! As long as this sweetness welled up in her heart, as
long as her breast could hold this treasure of pain! She felt as
the pond must feel when it held the moon like that; when it en-
circled and swelled with that image of gold.
In the morning, when Emil came down-stairs, Alexandra met
him in the sitting-room and put her hands on his shoulders.
"Emil, I went to your room as soon as it was light, but you were
sleeping so sound I hated to wake you. There was nothing you
could do, so I let you sleep. They telephoned from Sainte-Agnes
that Amedee died at three o'clock this morning."

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Chapter 6
The Church has always held that life is for the living. On
Saturday, while half the village of Sainte-Agnes was mourning
for Amedee and preparing the funeral black for his burial on
Monday, the other half was busy with white dresses and white
veils for the great confirmation service to-morrow, when the
bishop was to confirm a class of one hundred boys and girls.
Father Duchesne divided his time between the living and the
dead. All day Saturday the church was a scene of bustling
activity, a little hushed by the thought of Amedee. The choir
were busy rehearsing a mass of Rossini, which they had stud-
ied and practised for this occasion. The women were trimming
the altar, the boys and girls were bringing flowers.
On Sunday morning the bishop was to drive overland to
Sainte-Agnes from Hanover, and Emil Bergson had been asked
to take the place of one of Amedee's cousins in the cavalcade
of forty French boys who were to ride across country to meet
the bishop's carriage. At six o'clock on Sunday morning the
boys met at the church. As they stood holding their horses by
the bridle, they talked in low tones of their dead comrade. They
kept repeating that Amedee had always been a good boy, glan-
cing toward the red brick church which had played so large a
part in Amedee's life, had been the scene of his most serious
moments and of his happiest hours. He had played and
wrestled and sung and courted under its shadow. Only three
weeks ago he had proudly carried his baby there to be
christened. They could not doubt that that invisible arm was
still about Amedee; that through the church on earth he had
passed to the church triumphant, the goal of the hopes and
faith of so many hundred years.
When the word was given to mount, the young men rode at a
walk out of the village; but once out among the wheatfields in
the morning sun, their horses and their own youth got the

131
better of them. A wave of zeal and fiery enthusiasm swept over
them. They longed for a Jerusalem to deliver. The thud of their
galloping hoofs interrupted many a country breakfast and
brought many a woman and child to the door of the farmhouses
as they passed. Five miles east of Sainte-Agnes they met the
bishop in his open carriage, attended by two priests. Like one
man the boys swung off their hats in a broad salute, and bowed
their heads as the handsome old man lifted his two fingers in
the episcopal blessing. The horsemen closed about the carriage
like a guard, and whenever a restless horse broke from control
and shot down the road ahead of the body, the bishop laughed
and rubbed his plump hands together. "What fine boys!" he
said to his priests. "The Church still has her cavalry."
As the troop swept past the graveyard half a mile east of the
town,—the first frame church of the parish had stood
there,—old Pierre Seguin was already out with his pick and
spade, digging Amedee's grave. He knelt and uncovered as the
bishop passed. The boys with one accord looked away from old
Pierre to the red church on the hill, with the gold cross flaming
on its steeple.
Mass was at eleven. While the church was filling, Emil
Bergson waited outside, watching the wagons and buggies
drive up the hill. After the bell began to ring, he saw Frank
Shabata ride up on horseback and tie his horse to the hitch-
bar. Marie, then, was not coming. Emil turned and went into
the church. Amedee's was the only empty pew, and he sat
down in it. Some of Amedee's cousins were there, dressed in
black and weeping. When all the pews were full, the old men
and boys packed the open space at the back of the church,
kneeling on the floor. There was scarcely a family in town that
was not represented in the confirmation class, by a cousin, at
least. The new communicants, with their clear, reverent faces,
were beautiful to look upon as they entered in a body and took
the front benches reserved for them. Even before the Mass
began, the air was charged with feeling. The choir had never
sung so well and Raoul Marcel, in the "Gloria," drew even the
bishop's eyes to the organ loft. For the offertory he sang
Gounod's "Ave Maria,"—always spoken of in Sainte-Agnes as
"the Ave Maria."

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 Emil began to torture himself with questions about Marie.
Was she ill? Had she quarreled with her husband? Was she too
unhappy to find comfort even here? Had she, perhaps, thought
that he would come to her? Was she waiting for him? Over-
taxed by excitement and sorrow as he was, the rapture of the
service took hold upon his body and mind. As he listened to
Raoul, he seemed to emerge from the conflicting emotions
which had been whirling him about and sucking him under. He
felt as if a clear light broke upon his mind, and with it a convic-
tion that good was, after all, stronger than evil, and that good
was possible to men. He seemed to discover that there was a
kind of rapture in which he could love forever without faltering
and without sin. He looked across the heads of the people at
Frank Shabata with calmness. That rapture was for those who
could feel it; for people who could not, it was non-existent. He
coveted nothing that was Frank Shabata's. The spirit he had
met in music was his own. Frank Shabata had never found it;
would never find it if he lived beside it a thousand years; would
have destroyed it if he had found it, as Herod slew the inno-
cents, as Rome slew the martyrs.
SAN—CTA MARI-I-I-A,
wailed Raoul from the organ loft;
O—RA PRO NO-O-BIS!
And it did not occur to Emil that any one had ever reasoned
thus before, that music had ever before given a man this equi-
vocal revelation.
The confirmation service followed the Mass. When it was
over, the congregation thronged about the newly confirmed.
The girls, and even the boys, were kissed and embraced and
wept over. All the aunts and grandmothers wept with joy. The
housewives had much ado to tear themselves away from the
general rejoicing and hurry back to their kitchens. The country
parishioners were staying in town for dinner, and nearly every
house in Sainte-Agnes entertained visitors that day. Father
Duchesne, the bishop, and the visiting priests dined with Fabi-
en Sauvage, the banker. Emil and Frank Shabata were both
guests of old Moise Marcel. After dinner Frank and old Moise
retired to the rear room of the saloon to play California Jack
and drink their cognac, and Emil went over to the banker's
with Raoul, who had been asked to sing for the bishop.

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 At three o'clock, Emil felt that he could stand it no longer. He
slipped out under cover of "The Holy City," followed by
Malvina's wistful eye, and went to the stable for his mare. He
was at that height of excitement from which everything is fore-
shortened, from which life seems short and simple, death very
near, and the soul seems to soar like an eagle. As he rode past
the graveyard he looked at the brown hole in the earth where
Amedee was to lie, and felt no horror. That, too, was beautiful,
that simple doorway into forgetfulness. The heart, when it is
too much alive, aches for that brown earth, and ecstasy has no
fear of death. It is the old and the poor and the maimed who
shrink from that brown hole; its wooers are found among the
young, the passionate, the gallant-hearted. It was not until he
had passed the graveyard that Emil realized where he was go-
ing. It was the hour for saying good-bye. It might be the last
time that he would see her alone, and today he could leave her
without rancor, without bitterness.
Everywhere the grain stood ripe and the hot afternoon was
full of the smell of the ripe wheat, like the smell of bread bak-
ing in an oven. The breath of the wheat and the sweet clover
passed him like pleasant things in a dream. He could feel noth-
ing but the sense of diminishing distance. It seemed to him
that his mare was flying, or running on wheels, like a railway
train. The sunlight, flashing on the window-glass of the big red
barns, drove him wild with joy. He was like an arrow shot from
the bow. His life poured itself out along the road before him as
he rode to the Shabata farm.
When Emil alighted at the Shabatas' gate, his horse was in a
lather. He tied her in the stable and hurried to the house. It
was empty. She might be at Mrs. Hiller's or with Alexandra.
But anything that reminded him of her would be enough, the
orchard, the mulberry tree… When he reached the orchard the
sun was hanging low over the wheatfield. Long fingers of light
reached through the apple branches as through a net; the
orchard was riddled and shot with gold; light was the reality,
the trees were merely interferences that reflected and refrac-
ted light. Emil went softly down between the cherry trees to-
ward the wheatfield. When he came to the corner, he stopped
short and put his hand over his mouth. Marie was lying on her
side under the white mulberry tree, her face half hidden in the

134
grass, her eyes closed, her hands lying limply where they had
happened to fall. She had lived a day of her new life of perfect
love, and it had left her like this. Her breast rose and fell
faintly, as if she were asleep. Emil threw himself down beside
her and took her in his arms. The blood came back to her
cheeks, her amber eyes opened slowly, and in them Emil saw
his own face and the orchard and the sun. "I was dreaming
this," she whispered, hiding her face against him, "don't take
my dream away!"

135
Chapter 7
When Frank Shabata got home that night, he found Emil's
mare in his stable. Such an impertinence amazed him. Like
everybody else, Frank had had an exciting day. Since noon he
had been drinking too much, and he was in a bad temper. He
talked bitterly to himself while he put his own horse away, and
as he went up the path and saw that the house was dark he felt
an added sense of injury. He approached quietly and listened
on the doorstep. Hearing nothing, he opened the kitchen door
and went softly from one room to another. Then he went
through the house again, upstairs and down, with no better
result. He sat down on the bottom step of the box stairway and
tried to get his wits together. In that unnatural quiet there was
no sound but his own heavy breathing. Suddenly an owl began
to hoot out in the fields. Frank lifted his head. An idea flashed
into his mind, and his sense of injury and outrage grew. He
went into his bedroom and took his murderous 405 Winchester
from the closet.
When Frank took up his gun and walked out of the house, he
had not the faintest purpose of doing anything with it. He did
not believe that he had any real grievance. But it gratified him
to feel like a desperate man. He had got into the habit of see-
ing himself always in desperate straits. His unhappy tempera-
ment was like a cage; he could never get out of it; and he felt
that other people, his wife in particular, must have put him
there. It had never more than dimly occurred to Frank that he
made his own unhappiness. Though he took up his gun with
dark projects in his mind, he would have been paralyzed with
fright had he known that there was the slightest probability of
his ever carrying any of them out.
Frank went slowly down to the orchard gate, stopped and
stood for a moment lost in thought. He retraced his steps and
looked through the barn and the hayloft. Then he went out to

136
the road, where he took the foot-path along the outside of the
orchard hedge. The hedge was twice as tall as Frank himself,
and so dense that one could see through it only by peering
closely between the leaves. He could see the empty path a long
way in the moonlight. His mind traveled ahead to the stile,
which he always thought of as haunted by Emil Bergson. But
why had he left his horse?
At the wheatfield corner, where the orchard hedge ended
and the path led across the pasture to the Bergsons', Frank
stopped. In the warm, breathless night air he heard a murmur-
ing sound, perfectly inarticulate, as low as the sound of water
coming from a spring, where there is no fall, and where there
are no stones to fret it. Frank strained his ears. It ceased. He
held his breath and began to tremble. Resting the butt of his
gun on the ground, he parted the mulberry leaves softly with
his fingers and peered through the hedge at the dark figures
on the grass, in the shadow of the mulberry tree. It seemed to
him that they must feel his eyes, that they must hear him
breathing. But they did not. Frank, who had always wanted to
see things blacker than they were, for once wanted to believe
less than he saw. The woman lying in the shadow might so eas-
ily be one of the Bergsons' farm-girls… . Again the murmur,
like water welling out of the ground. This time he heard it
more distinctly, and his blood was quicker than his brain. He
began to act, just as a man who falls into the fire begins to act.
The gun sprang to his shoulder, he sighted mechanically and
fired three times without stopping, stopped without knowing
why. Either he shut his eyes or he had vertigo. He did not see
anything while he was firing. He thought he heard a cry simul-
taneous with the second report, but he was not sure. He
peered again through the hedge, at the two dark figures under
the tree. They had fallen a little apart from each other, and
were perfectly still— No, not quite; in a white patch of light,
where the moon shone through the branches, a man's hand
was plucking spasmodically at the grass.
Suddenly the woman stirred and uttered a cry, then another,
and another. She was living! She was dragging herself toward
the hedge! Frank dropped his gun and ran back along the path,
shaking, stumbling, gasping. He had never imagined such hor-
ror. The cries followed him. They grew fainter and thicker, as if

137
she were choking. He dropped on his knees beside the hedge
and crouched like a rabbit, listening; fainter, fainter; a sound
like a whine; again—a moan—another—silence. Frank
scrambled to his feet and ran on, groaning and praying. From
habit he went toward the house, where he was used to being
soothed when he had worked himself into a frenzy, but at the
sight of the black, open door, he started back. He knew that he
had murdered somebody, that a woman was bleeding and
moaning in the orchard, but he had not realized before that it
was his wife. The gate stared him in the face. He threw his
hands over his head. Which way to turn? He lifted his tormen-
ted face and looked at the sky. "Holy Mother of God, not to suf-
fer! She was a good girl—not to suffer!"
Frank had been wont to see himself in dramatic situations;
but now, when he stood by the windmill, in the bright space
between the barn and the house, facing his own black door-
way, he did not see himself at all. He stood like the hare when
the dogs are approaching from all sides. And he ran like a
hare, back and forth about that moonlit space, before he could
make up his mind to go into the dark stable for a horse. The
thought of going into a doorway was terrible to him. He caught
Emil's horse by the bit and led it out. He could not have
buckled a bridle on his own. After two or three attempts, he lif-
ted himself into the saddle and started for Hanover. If he could
catch the one o'clock train, he had money enough to get as far
as Omaha.
While he was thinking dully of this in some less sensitized
part of his brain, his acuter faculties were going over and over
the cries he had heard in the orchard. Terror was the only
thing that kept him from going back to her, terror that she
might still be she, that she might still be suffering. A woman,
mutilated and bleeding in his orchard—it was because it was a
woman that he was so afraid. It was inconceivable that he
should have hurt a woman. He would rather be eaten by wild
beasts than see her move on the ground as she had moved in
the orchard. Why had she been so careless? She knew he was
like a crazy man when he was angry. She had more than once
taken that gun away from him and held it, when he was angry
with other people. Once it had gone off while they were strug-
gling over it. She was never afraid. But, when she knew him,

138
why hadn't she been more careful? Didn't she have all summer
before her to love Emil Bergson in, without taking such
chances? Probably she had met the Smirka boy, too, down
there in the orchard. He didn't care. She could have met all the
men on the Divide there, and welcome, if only she hadn't
brought this horror on him.
There was a wrench in Frank's mind. He did not honestly be-
lieve that of her. He knew that he was doing her wrong. He
stopped his horse to admit this to himself the more directly, to
think it out the more clearly. He knew that he was to blame.
For three years he had been trying to break her spirit. She had
a way of making the best of things that seemed to him a senti-
mental affectation. He wanted his wife to resent that he was
wasting his best years among these stupid and unappreciative
people; but she had seemed to find the people quite good
enough. If he ever got rich he meant to buy her pretty clothes
and take her to California in a Pullman car, and treat her like a
lady; but in the mean time he wanted her to feel that life was
as ugly and as unjust as he felt it. He had tried to make her life
ugly. He had refused to share any of the little pleasures she
was so plucky about making for herself. She could be gay
about the least thing in the world; but she must be gay! When
she first came to him, her faith in him, her adoration—Frank
struck the mare with his fist. Why had Marie made him do this
thing; why had she brought this upon him? He was over-
whelmed by sickening misfortune. All at once he heard her
cries again—he had forgotten for a moment. "Maria," he
sobbed aloud, "Maria!"
When Frank was halfway to Hanover, the motion of his horse
brought on a violent attack of nausea. After it had passed, he
rode on again, but he could think of nothing except his physical
weakness and his desire to be comforted by his wife. He
wanted to get into his own bed. Had his wife been at home, he
would have turned and gone back to her meekly enough.

139
Chapter 8
When old Ivar climbed down from his loft at four o'clock the
next morning, he came upon Emil's mare, jaded and lather-
stained, her bridle broken, chewing the scattered tufts of hay
outside the stable door. The old man was thrown into a fright
at once. He put the mare in her stall, threw her a measure of
oats, and then set out as fast as his bow-legs could carry him
on the path to the nearest neighbor.
"Something is wrong with that boy. Some misfortune has
come upon us. He would never have used her so, in his right
senses. It is not his way to abuse his mare," the old man kept
muttering, as he scuttled through the short, wet pasture grass
on his bare feet.
While Ivar was hurrying across the fields, the first long rays
of the sun were reaching down between the orchard boughs to
those two dew-drenched figures. The story of what had
happened was written plainly on the orchard grass, and on the
white mulberries that had fallen in the night and were covered
with dark stain. For Emil the chapter had been short. He was
shot in the heart, and had rolled over on his back and died. His
face was turned up to the sky and his brows were drawn in a
frown, as if he had realized that something had befallen him.
But for Marie Shabata it had not been so easy. One ball had
torn through her right lung, another had shattered the carotid
artery. She must have started up and gone toward the hedge,
leaving a trail of blood. There she had fallen and bled. From
that spot there was another trail, heavier than the first, where
she must have dragged herself back to Emil's body. Once
there, she seemed not to have struggled any more. She had lif-
ted her head to her lover's breast, taken his hand in both her
own, and bled quietly to death. She was lying on her right side
in an easy and natural position, her cheek on Emil's shoulder.
On her face there was a look of ineffable content. Her lips were

140
parted a little; her eyes were lightly closed, as if in a day-
dream or a light slumber. After she lay down there, she seemed
not to have moved an eyelash. The hand she held was covered
with dark stains, where she had kissed it.
But the stained, slippery grass, the darkened mulberries, told
only half the story. Above Marie and Emil, two white butterflies
from Frank's alfalfa-field were fluttering in and out among the
interlacing shadows; diving and soaring, now close together,
now far apart; and in the long grass by the fence the last wild
roses of the year opened their pink hearts to die.
When Ivar reached the path by the hedge, he saw Shabata's
rifle lying in the way. He turned and peered through the
branches, falling upon his knees as if his legs had been mowed
from under him. "Merciful God!" he groaned;
Alexandra, too, had risen early that morning, because of her
anxiety about Emil. She was in Emil's room upstairs when,
from the window, she saw Ivar coming along the path that led
from the Shabatas'. He was running like a spent man, tottering
and lurching from side to side. Ivar never drank, and Alexandra
thought at once that one of his spells had come upon him, and
that he must be in a very bad way indeed. She ran downstairs
and hurried out to meet him, to hide his infirmity from the eyes
of her household. The old man fell in the road at her feet and
caught her hand, over which he bowed his shaggy head. "Mis-
tress, mistress," he sobbed, "it has fallen! Sin and death for the
young ones! God have mercy upon us!"

141
 Part 5
Alexandra

142
Chapter 1
Ivar was sitting at a cobbler's bench in the barn, mending har-
ness by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the
101st Psalm. It was only five o'clock of a mid-October day, but
a storm had come up in the afternoon, bringing black clouds, a
cold wind and torrents of rain. The old man wore his buffalo-
skin coat, and occasionally stopped to warm his fingers at the
lantern. Suddenly a woman burst into the shed, as if she had
been blown in, accompanied by a shower of rain-drops. It was
Signa, wrapped in a man's overcoat and wearing a pair of
boots over her shoes. In time of trouble Signa had come back
to stay with her mistress, for she was the only one of the maids
from whom Alexandra would accept much personal service. It
was three months now since the news of the terrible thing that
had happened in Frank Shabata's orchard had first run like a
fire over the Divide. Signa and Nelse were staying on with Al-
exandra until winter.
"Ivar," Signa exclaimed as she wiped the rain from her face,
"do you know where she is?"
The old man put down his cobbler's knife. "Who, the
mistress?"
"Yes. She went away about three o'clock. I happened to look
out of the window and saw her going across the fields in her
thin dress and sun-hat. And now this storm has come on. I
thought she was going to Mrs. Hiller's, and I telephoned as
soon as the thunder stopped, but she had not been there. I'm
afraid she is out somewhere and will get her death of cold."
Ivar put on his cap and took up the lantern. "JA, JA, we will
see. I will hitch the boy's mare to the cart and go."
Signa followed him across the wagon-shed to the horses'
stable. She was shivering with cold and excitement. "Where do
you suppose she can be, Ivar?"

143
 The old man lifted a set of single harness carefully from its
peg. "How should I know?"
"But you think she is at the graveyard, don't you?" Signa per-
sisted. "So do I. Oh, I wish she would be more like herself! I
can't believe it's Alexandra Bergson come to this, with no head
about anything. I have to tell her when to eat and when to go
to bed."
"Patience, patience, sister," muttered Ivar as he settled the
bit in the horse's mouth. "When the eyes of the flesh are shut,
the eyes of the spirit are open. She will have a message from
those who are gone, and that will bring her peace. Until then
we must bear with her. You and I are the only ones who have
weight with her. She trusts us."
"How awful it's been these last three months." Signa held the
lantern so that he could see to buckle the straps. "It don't seem
right that we must all be so miserable. Why do we all have to
be punished? Seems to me like good times would never come
again."
Ivar expressed himself in a deep sigh, but said nothing. He
stooped and took a sandburr from his toe.
"Ivar," Signa asked suddenly, "will you tell me why you go
barefoot? All the time I lived here in the house I wanted to ask
you. Is it for a penance, or what?"
"No, sister. It is for the indulgence of the body. From my
youth up I have had a strong, rebellious body, and have been
subject to every kind of temptation. Even in age my tempta-
tions are prolonged. It was necessary to make some allow-
ances; and the feet, as I understand it, are free members.
There is no divine prohibition for them in the Ten Command-
ments. The hands, the tongue, the eyes, the heart, all the bod-
ily desires we are commanded to subdue; but the feet are free
members. I indulge them without harm to any one, even to
trampling in filth when my desires are low. They are quickly
cleaned again."
Signa did not laugh. She looked thoughtful as she followed
Ivar out to the wagon-shed and held the shafts up for him,
while he backed in the mare and buckled the hold-backs. "You
have been a good friend to the mistress, Ivar," she murmured.
"And you, God be with you," replied Ivar as he clambered in-
to the cart and put the lantern under the oilcloth lap-cover.

144
"Now for a ducking, my girl," he said to the mare, gathering up
the reins.
As they emerged from the shed, a stream of water, running
off the thatch, struck the mare on the neck. She tossed her
head indignantly, then struck out bravely on the soft ground,
slipping back again and again as she climbed the hill to the
main road. Between the rain and the darkness Ivar could see
very little, so he let Emil's mare have the rein, keeping her
head in the right direction. When the ground was level, he
turned her out of the dirt road upon the sod, where she was
able to trot without slipping.
Before Ivar reached the graveyard, three miles from the
house, the storm had spent itself, and the downpour had died
into a soft, dripping rain. The sky and the land were a dark
smoke color, and seemed to be coming together, like two
waves. When Ivar stopped at the gate and swung out his lan-
tern, a white figure rose from beside John Bergson's white
stone.
The old man sprang to the ground and shuffled toward the
gate calling, "Mistress, mistress!"
Alexandra hurried to meet him and put her hand on his
shoulder. "TYST! Ivar. There's nothing to be worried about. I'm
sorry if I've scared you all. I didn't notice the storm till it was
on me, and I couldn't walk against it. I'm glad you've come. I
am so tired I didn't know how I'd ever get home."
Ivar swung the lantern up so that it shone in her face. "GUD!
You are enough to frighten us, mistress. You look like a
drowned woman. How could you do such a thing!"
Groaning and mumbling he led her out of the gate and
helped her into the cart, wrapping her in the dry blankets on
which he had been sitting.
Alexandra smiled at his solicitude. "Not much use in that,
Ivar. You will only shut the wet in. I don't feel so cold now; but
I'm heavy and numb. I'm glad you came."
Ivar turned the mare and urged her into a sliding trot. Her
feet sent back a continual spatter of mud.
Alexandra spoke to the old man as they jogged along through
the sullen gray twilight of the storm. "Ivar, I think it has done
me good to get cold clear through like this, once. I don't be-
lieve I shall suffer so much any more. When you get so near the

145
dead, they seem more real than the living. Worldly thoughts
leave one. Ever since Emil died, I've suffered so when it rained.
Now that I've been out in it with him, I shan't dread it. After
you once get cold clear through, the feeling of the rain on you
is sweet. It seems to bring back feelings you had when you
were a baby. It carries you back into the dark, before you were
born; you can't see things, but they come to you, somehow, and
you know them and aren't afraid of them. Maybe it's like that
with the dead. If they feel anything at all, it's the old things, be-
fore they were born, that comfort people like the feeling of
their own bed does when they are little."
"Mistress," said Ivar reproachfully, "those are bad thoughts.
The dead are in Paradise."
Then he hung his head, for he did not believe that Emil was
in Paradise.
When they got home, Signa had a fire burning in the sitting-
room stove. She undressed Alexandra and gave her a hot foot-
bath, while Ivar made ginger tea in the kitchen. When Alexan-
dra was in bed, wrapped in hot blankets, Ivar came in with his
tea and saw that she drank it. Signa asked permission to sleep
on the slat lounge outside her door. Alexandra endured their
attentions patiently, but she was glad when they put out the
lamp and left her. As she lay alone in the dark, it occurred to
her for the first time that perhaps she was actually tired of life.
All the physical operations of life seemed difficult and painful.
She longed to be free from her own body, which ached and was
so heavy. And longing itself was heavy: she yearned to be free
of that.
As she lay with her eyes closed, she had again, more vividly
than for many years, the old illusion of her girlhood, of being
lifted and carried lightly by some one very strong. He was with
her a long while this time, and carried her very far, and in his
arms she felt free from pain. When he laid her down on her bed
again, she opened her eyes, and, for the first time in her life,
she saw him, saw him clearly, though the room was dark, and
his face was covered. He was standing in the doorway of her
room. His white cloak was thrown over his face, and his head
was bent a little forward. His shoulders seemed as strong as
the foundations of the world. His right arm, bared from the el-
bow, was dark and gleaming, like bronze, and she knew at

146
once that it was the arm of the mightiest of all lovers. She
knew at last for whom it was she had waited, and where he
would carry her. That, she told herself, was very well. Then she
went to sleep.
Alexandra wakened in the morning with nothing worse than
a hard cold and a stiff shoulder. She kept her bed for several
days, and it was during that time that she formed a resolution
to go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata. Ever since she last saw
him in the courtroom, Frank's haggard face and wild eyes had
haunted her. The trial had lasted only three days. Frank had
given himself up to the police in Omaha and pleaded guilty of
killing without malice and without premeditation. The gun was,
of course, against him, and the judge had given him the full
sentence,—ten years. He had now been in the State Peniten-
tiary for a month.
Frank was the only one, Alexandra told herself, for whom
anything could be done. He had been less in the wrong than
any of them, and he was paying the heaviest penalty. She often
felt that she herself had been more to blame than poor Frank.
From the time the Shabatas had first moved to the neighboring
farm, she had omitted no opportunity of throwing Marie and
Emil together. Because she knew Frank was surly about doing
little things to help his wife, she was always sending Emil over
to spade or plant or carpenter for Marie. She was glad to have
Emil see as much as possible of an intelligent, city-bred girl
like their neighbor; she noticed that it improved his manners.
She knew that Emil was fond of Marie, but it had never oc-
curred to her that Emil's feeling might be different from her
own. She wondered at herself now, but she had never thought
of danger in that direction. If Marie had been unmarried,—oh,
yes! Then she would have kept her eyes open. But the mere
fact that she was Shabata's wife, for Alexandra, settled
everything. That she was beautiful, impulsive, barely two years
older than Emil, these facts had had no weight with Alexandra.
Emil was a good boy, and only bad boys ran after married
women.
Now, Alexandra could in a measure realize that Marie was,
after all, Marie; not merely a "married woman." Sometimes,
when Alexandra thought of her, it was with an aching tender-
ness. The moment she had reached them in the orchard that

147
morning, everything was clear to her. There was something
about those two lying in the grass, something in the way Marie
had settled her cheek on Emil's shoulder, that told her
everything. She wondered then how they could have helped
loving each other; how she could have helped knowing that
they must. Emil's cold, frowning face, the girl's content—Alex-
andra had felt awe of them, even in the first shock of her grief.
The idleness of those days in bed, the relaxation of body
which attended them, enabled Alexandra to think more calmly
than she had done since Emil's death. She and Frank, she told
herself, were left out of that group of friends who had been
overwhelmed by disaster. She must certainly see Frank
Shabata. Even in the courtroom her heart had grieved for him.
He was in a strange country, he had no kinsmen or friends, and
in a moment he had ruined his life. Being what he was, she felt,
Frank could not have acted otherwise. She could understand
his behavior more easily than she could understand Marie's.
Yes, she must go to Lincoln to see Frank Shabata.
The day after Emil's funeral, Alexandra had written to Carl
Linstrum; a single page of notepaper, a bare statement of what
had happened. She was not a woman who could write much
about such a thing, and about her own feelings she could never
write very freely. She knew that Carl was away from post-of-
fices, prospecting somewhere in the interior. Before he started
he had written her where he expected to go, but her ideas
about Alaska were vague. As the weeks went by and she heard
nothing from him, it seemed to Alexandra that her heart grew
hard against Carl. She began to wonder whether she would not
do better to finish her life alone. What was left of life seemed
unimportant.

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Chapter 2
Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Alexandra
Bergson, dressed in a black suit and traveling-hat, alighted at
the Burlington depot in Lincoln. She drove to the Lindell Hotel,
where she had stayed two years ago when she came up for
Emil's Commencement. In spite of her usual air of sureness
and self-possession, Alexandra felt ill at ease in hotels, and she
was glad, when she went to the clerk's desk to register, that
there were not many people in the lobby. She had her supper
early, wearing her hat and black jacket down to the dining-
room and carrying her handbag. After supper she went out for
a walk.
It was growing dark when she reached the university cam-
pus. She did not go into the grounds, but walked slowly up and
down the stone walk outside the long iron fence, looking
through at the young men who were running from one building
to another, at the lights shining from the armory and the lib-
rary. A squad of cadets were going through their drill behind
the armory, and the commands of their young officer rang out
at regular intervals, so sharp and quick that Alexandra could
not understand them. Two stalwart girls came down the library
steps and out through one of the iron gates. As they passed
her, Alexandra was pleased to hear them speaking Bohemian
to each other. Every few moments a boy would come running
down the flagged walk and dash out into the street as if he
were rushing to announce some wonder to the world. Alexan-
dra felt a great tenderness for them all. She wished one of
them would stop and speak to her. She wished she could ask
them whether they had known Emil.
As she lingered by the south gate she actually did encounter
one of the boys. He had on his drill cap and was swinging his
books at the end of a long strap. It was dark by this time; he
did not see her and ran against her. He snatched off his cap

149
and stood bareheaded and panting. "I'm awfully sorry," he said
in a bright, clear voice, with a rising inflection, as if he expec-
ted her to say something.
"Oh, it was my fault!" said Alexandra eagerly. "Are you an old
student here, may I ask?"
"No, ma'am. I'm a Freshie, just off the farm. Cherry County.
Were you hunting somebody?"
"No, thank you. That is—" Alexandra wanted to detain him.
"That is, I would like to find some of my brother's friends. He
graduated two years ago."
"Then you'd have to try the Seniors, wouldn't you? Let's see;
I don't know any of them yet, but there'll be sure to be some of
them around the library. That red building, right there," he
pointed.
"Thank you, I'll try there," said Alexandra lingeringly.
"Oh, that's all right! Good-night." The lad clapped his cap on
his head and ran straight down Eleventh Street. Alexandra
looked after him wistfully.
She walked back to her hotel unreasonably comforted. "What
a nice voice that boy had, and how polite he was. I know Emil
was always like that to women." And again, after she had un-
dressed and was standing in her nightgown, brushing her long,
heavy hair by the electric light, she remembered him and said
to herself, "I don't think I ever heard a nicer voice than that
boy had. I hope he will get on well here. Cherry County; that's
where the hay is so fine, and the coyotes can scratch down to
water."
At nine o'clock the next morning Alexandra presented herself
at the warden's office in the State Penitentiary. The warden
was a German, a ruddy, cheerful-looking man who had
formerly been a harness-maker. Alexandra had a letter to him
from the German banker in Hanover. As he glanced at the let-
ter, Mr. Schwartz put away his pipe.
"That big Bohemian, is it? Sure, he's gettin' along fine," said
Mr. Schwartz cheerfully.
"I am glad to hear that. I was afraid he might be quarrelsome
and get himself into more trouble. Mr. Schwartz, if you have
time, I would like to tell you a little about Frank Shabata, and
why I am interested in him."

150
 The warden listened genially while she told him briefly
something of Frank's history and character, but he did not
seem to find anything unusual in her account.
"Sure, I'll keep an eye on him. We'll take care of him all
right," he said, rising. "You can talk to him here, while I go to
see to things in the kitchen. I'll have him sent in. He ought to
be done washing out his cell by this time. We have to keep 'em
clean, you know."
The warden paused at the door, speaking back over his
shoulder to a pale young man in convicts' clothes who was
seated at a desk in the corner, writing in a big ledger.
"Bertie, when 1037 is brought in, you just step out and give
this lady a chance to talk."
The young man bowed his head and bent over his ledger
again.
When Mr. Schwartz disappeared, Alexandra thrust her black-
edged handkerchief nervously into her handbag. Coming out
on the streetcar she had not had the least dread of meeting
Frank. But since she had been here the sounds and smells in
the corridor, the look of the men in convicts' clothes who
passed the glass door of the warden's office, affected her
unpleasantly.
The warden's clock ticked, the young convict's pen scratched
busily in the big book, and his sharp shoulders were shaken
every few seconds by a loose cough which he tried to smother.
It was easy to see that he was a sick man. Alexandra looked at
him timidly, but he did not once raise his eyes. He wore a
white shirt under his striped jacket, a high collar, and a neck-
tie, very carefully tied. His hands were thin and white and well
cared for, and he had a seal ring on his little finger. When he
heard steps approaching in the corridor, he rose, blotted his
book, put his pen in the rack, and left the room without raising
his eyes. Through the door he opened a guard came in, bring-
ing Frank Shabata.
"You the lady that wanted to talk to 1037? Here he is. Be on
your good behavior, now. He can set down, lady," seeing that
Alexandra remained standing. "Push that white button when
you're through with him, and I'll come."
The guard went out and Alexandra and Frank were left
alone.

151
 Alexandra tried not to see his hideous clothes. She tried to
look straight into his face, which she could scarcely believe
was his. It was already bleached to a chalky gray. His lips were
colorless, his fine teeth looked yellowish. He glanced at Alexan-
dra sullenly, blinked as if he had come from a dark place, and
one eyebrow twitched continually. She felt at once that this in-
terview was a terrible ordeal to him. His shaved head, showing
the conformation of his skull, gave him a criminal look which
he had not had during the trial.
Alexandra held out her hand. "Frank," she said, her eyes
filling suddenly, "I hope you'll let me be friendly with you. I un-
derstand how you did it. I don't feel hard toward you. They
were more to blame than you."
Frank jerked a dirty blue handkerchief from his trousers
pocket. He had begun to cry. He turned away from Alexandra.
"I never did mean to do not'ing to dat woman," he muttered. "I
never mean to do not'ing to dat boy. I ain't had not'ing ag'in'
dat boy. I always like dat boy fine. An' then I find him—" He
stopped. The feeling went out of his face and eyes. He dropped
into a chair and sat looking stolidly at the floor, his hands
hanging loosely between his knees, the handkerchief lying
across his striped leg. He seemed to have stirred up in his
mind a disgust that had paralyzed his faculties.
"I haven't come up here to blame you, Frank. I think they
were more to blame than you." Alexandra, too, felt benumbed.
Frank looked up suddenly and stared out of the office win-
dow. "I guess dat place all go to hell what I work so hard on,"
he said with a slow, bitter smile. "I not care a damn." He
stopped and rubbed the palm of his hand over the light bristles
on his head with annoyance. "I no can t'ink without my hair,"
he complained. "I forget English. We not talk here, except
swear."
Alexandra was bewildered. Frank seemed to have undergone
a change of personality. There was scarcely anything by which
she could recognize her handsome Bohemian neighbor. He
seemed, somehow, not altogether human. She did not know
what to say to him.
"You do not feel hard to me, Frank?" she asked at last.
Frank clenched his fist and broke out in excitement. "I not
feel hard at no woman. I tell you I not that kind-a man. I never

152
hit my wife. No, never I hurt her when she devil me something
awful!" He struck his fist down on the warden's desk so hard
that he afterward stroked it absently. A pale pink crept over his
neck and face. "Two, t'ree years I know dat woman don' care
no more 'bout me, Alexandra Bergson. I know she after some
other man. I know her, oo-oo! An' I ain't never hurt her. I never
would-a done dat, if I ain't had dat gun along. I don' know what
in hell make me take dat gun. She always say I ain't no man to
carry gun. If she been in dat house, where she ought-a been—
But das a foolish talk."
Frank rubbed his head and stopped suddenly, as he had
stopped before. Alexandra felt that there was something
strange in the way he chilled off, as if something came up in
him that extinguished his power of feeling or thinking.
"Yes, Frank," she said kindly. "I know you never meant to
hurt Marie."
Frank smiled at her queerly. His eyes filled slowly with tears.
"You know, I most forgit dat woman's name. She ain't got no
name for me no more. I never hate my wife, but dat woman
what make me do dat— Honest to God, but I hate her! I no man
to fight. I don' want to kill no boy and no woman. I not care
how many men she take under dat tree. I no care for not'ing
but dat fine boy I kill, Alexandra Bergson. I guess I go crazy
sure 'nough."
Alexandra remembered the little yellow cane she had found
in Frank's clothes-closet. She thought of how he had come to
this country a gay young fellow, so attractive that the prettiest
Bohemian girl in Omaha had run away with him. It seemed un-
reasonable that life should have landed him in such a place as
this. She blamed Marie bitterly. And why, with her happy, af-
fectionate nature, should she have brought destruction and
sorrow to all who had loved her, even to poor old Joe Tovesky,
the uncle who used to carry her about so proudly when she
was a little girl? That was the strangest thing of all. Was there,
then, something wrong in being warm-hearted and impulsive
like that? Alexandra hated to think so. But there was Emil, in
the Norwegian graveyard at home, and here was Frank
Shabata. Alexandra rose and took him by the hand.

153
 "Frank Shabata, I am never going to stop trying until I get
you pardoned. I'll never give the Governor any peace. I know I
can get you out of this place."
Frank looked at her distrustfully, but he gathered confidence
from her face. "Alexandra," he said earnestly, "if I git out-a
here, I not trouble dis country no more. I go back where I come
from; see my mother."
Alexandra tried to withdraw her hand, but Frank held on to it
nervously. He put out his finger and absently touched a button
on her black jacket. "Alexandra," he said in a low tone, looking
steadily at the button, "you ain' t'ink I use dat girl awful bad
before—"
"No, Frank. We won't talk about that," Alexandra said, press-
ing his hand. "I can't help Emil now, so I'm going to do what I
can for you. You know I don't go away from home often, and I
came up here on purpose to tell you this."
The warden at the glass door looked in inquiringly. Alexan-
dra nodded, and he came in and touched the white button on
his desk. The guard appeared, and with a sinking heart Alexan-
dra saw Frank led away down the corridor. After a few words
with Mr. Schwartz, she left the prison and made her way to the
street-car. She had refused with horror the warden's cordial in-
vitation to "go through the institution." As the car lurched over
its uneven roadbed, back toward Lincoln, Alexandra thought of
how she and Frank had been wrecked by the same storm and
of how, although she could come out into the sunlight, she had
not much more left in her life than he. She remembered some
lines from a poem she had liked in her schooldays:—
Henceforth the world will only be A wider prison-house to
me,—
and sighed. A disgust of life weighed upon her heart; some
such feeling as had twice frozen Frank Shabata's features
while they talked together. She wished she were back on the
Divide.
When Alexandra entered her hotel, the clerk held up one fin-
ger and beckoned to her. As she approached his desk, he
handed her a telegram. Alexandra took the yellow envelope
and looked at it in perplexity, then stepped into the elevator
without opening it. As she walked down the corridor toward
her room, she reflected that she was, in a manner, immune

154
from evil tidings. On reaching her room she locked the door,
and sitting down on a chair by the dresser, opened the tele-
gram. It was from Hanover, and it read:—
Arrived Hanover last night. Shall wait here until you come.
Please hurry. CARL LINSTRUM.
Alexandra put her head down on the dresser and burst into
tears.

155
Chapter 3
The next afternoon Carl and Alexandra were walking across
the fields from Mrs. Hiller's. Alexandra had left Lincoln after
midnight, and Carl had met her at the Hanover station early in
the morning. After they reached home, Alexandra had gone
over to Mrs. Hiller's to leave a little present she had bought for
her in the city. They stayed at the old lady's door but a mo-
ment, and then came out to spend the rest of the afternoon in
the sunny fields.
Alexandra had taken off her black traveling suit and put on a
white dress; partly because she saw that her black clothes
made Carl uncomfortable and partly because she felt op-
pressed by them herself. They seemed a little like the prison
where she had worn them yesterday, and to be out of place in
the open fields. Carl had changed very little. His cheeks were
browner and fuller. He looked less like a tired scholar than
when he went away a year ago, but no one, even now, would
have taken him for a man of business. His soft, lustrous black
eyes, his whimsical smile, would be less against him in the
Klondike than on the Divide. There are always dreamers on the
frontier.
Carl and Alexandra had been talking since morning. Her let-
ter had never reached him. He had first learned of her misfor-
tune from a San Francisco paper, four weeks old, which he had
picked up in a saloon, and which contained a brief account of
Frank Shabata's trial. When he put down the paper, he had
already made up his mind that he could reach Alexandra as
quickly as a letter could; and ever since he had been on the
way; day and night, by the fastest boats and trains he could
catch. His steamer had been held back two days by rough
weather.
As they came out of Mrs. Hiller's garden they took up their
talk again where they had left it.

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 "But could you come away like that, Carl, without arranging
things? Could you just walk off and leave your business?" Alex-
andra asked.
Carl laughed. "Prudent Alexandra! You see, my dear, I hap-
pen to have an honest partner. I trust him with everything. In
fact, it's been his enterprise from the beginning, you know. I'm
in it only because he took me in. I'll have to go back in the
spring. Perhaps you will want to go with me then. We haven't
turned up millions yet, but we've got a start that's worth fol-
lowing. But this winter I'd like to spend with you. You won't
feel that we ought to wait longer, on Emil's account, will you,
Alexandra?"
Alexandra shook her head. "No, Carl; I don't feel that way
about it. And surely you needn't mind anything Lou and Oscar
say now. They are much angrier with me about Emil, now, than
about you. They say it was all my fault. That I ruined him by
sending him to college."
"No, I don't care a button for Lou or Oscar. The moment I
knew you were in trouble, the moment I thought you might
need me, it all looked different. You've always been a tri-
umphant kind of person." Carl hesitated, looking sidewise at
her strong, full figure. "But you do need me now, Alexandra?"
She put her hand on his arm. "I needed you terribly when it
happened, Carl. I cried for you at night. Then everything
seemed to get hard inside of me, and I thought perhaps I
should never care for you again. But when I got your telegram
yesterday, then—then it was just as it used to be. You are all I
have in the world, you know."
Carl pressed her hand in silence. They were passing the
Shabatas' empty house now, but they avoided the orchard path
and took one that led over by the pasture pond.
"Can you understand it, Carl?" Alexandra murmured. "I have
had nobody but Ivar and Signa to talk to. Do talk to me. Can
you understand it? Could you have believed that of Marie
Tovesky? I would have been cut to pieces, little by little, before
I would have betrayed her trust in me!"
Carl looked at the shining spot of water before them. "Maybe
she was cut to pieces, too, Alexandra. I am sure she tried hard;
they both did. That was why Emil went to Mexico, of course.
And he was going away again, you tell me, though he had only

157
been home three weeks. You remember that Sunday when I
went with Emil up to the French Church fair? I thought that
day there was some kind of feeling, something unusual,
between them. I meant to talk to you about it. But on my way
back I met Lou and Oscar and got so angry that I forgot
everything else. You mustn't be hard on them, Alexandra. Sit
down here by the pond a minute. I want to tell you something."
They sat down on the grass-tufted bank and Carl told her
how he had seen Emil and Marie out by the pond that morning,
more than a year ago, and how young and charming and full of
grace they had seemed to him. "It happens like that in the
world sometimes, Alexandra," he added earnestly. "I've seen it
before. There are women who spread ruin around them
through no fault of theirs, just by being too beautiful, too full of
life and love. They can't help it. People come to them as people
go to a warm fire in winter. I used to feel that in her when she
was a little girl. Do you remember how all the Bohemians
crowded round her in the store that day, when she gave Emil
her candy? You remember those yellow sparks in her eyes?"
Alexandra sighed. "Yes. People couldn't help loving her. Poor
Frank does, even now, I think; though he's got himself in such
a tangle that for a long time his love has been bitterer than his
hate. But if you saw there was anything wrong, you ought to
have told me, Carl."
Carl took her hand and smiled patiently. "My dear, it was
something one felt in the air, as you feel the spring coming, or
a storm in summer. I didn't SEE anything. Simply, when I was
with those two young things, I felt my blood go quicker, I
felt—how shall I say it?—an acceleration of life. After I got
away, it was all too delicate, too intangible, to write about."
Alexandra looked at him mournfully. "I try to be more liberal
about such things than I used to be. I try to realize that we are
not all made alike. Only, why couldn't it have been Raoul Mar-
cel, or Jan Smirka? Why did it have to be my boy?"
"Because he was the best there was, I suppose. They were
both the best you had here."
The sun was dropping low in the west when the two friends
rose and took the path again. The straw-stacks were throwing
long shadows, the owls were flying home to the prairie-dog
town. When they came to the corner where the pastures

158
joined, Alexandra's twelve young colts were galloping in a
drove over the brow of the hill.
"Carl," said Alexandra, "I should like to go up there with you
in the spring. I haven't been on the water since we crossed the
ocean, when I was a little girl. After we first came out here I
used to dream sometimes about the shipyard where father
worked, and a little sort of inlet, full of masts." Alexandra
paused. After a moment's thought she said, "But you would
never ask me to go away for good, would you?"
"Of course not, my dearest. I think I know how you feel about
this country as well as you do yourself." Carl took her hand in
both his own and pressed it tenderly.
"Yes, I still feel that way, though Emil is gone. When I was on
the train this morning, and we got near Hanover, I felt
something like I did when I drove back with Emil from the river
that time, in the dry year. I was glad to come back to it. I've
lived here a long time. There is great peace here, Carl, and
freedom… . I thought when I came out of that prison, where
poor Frank is, that I should never feel free again. But I do,
here." Alexandra took a deep breath and looked off into the red
west.
"You belong to the land," Carl murmured, "as you have al-
ways said. Now more than ever."
"Yes, now more than ever. You remember what you once said
about the graveyard, and the old story writing itself over? Only
it is we who write it, with the best we have."
They paused on the last ridge of the pasture, overlooking the
house and the windmill and the stables that marked the site of
John Bergson's homestead. On every side the brown waves of
the earth rolled away to meet the sky.
"Lou and Oscar can't see those things," said Alexandra sud-
denly. "Suppose I do will my land to their children, what differ-
ence will that make? The land belongs to the future, Carl;
that's the way it seems to me. How many of the names on the
county clerk's plat will be there in fifty years? I might as well
try to will the sunset over there to my brother's children. We
come and go, but the land is always here. And the people who
love it and understand it are the people who own it—for a little
while."

159
 Carl looked at her wonderingly. She was still gazing into the
west, and in her face there was that exalted serenity that
sometimes came to her at moments of deep feeling. The level
rays of the sinking sun shone in her clear eyes.
"Why are you thinking of such things now, Alexandra?"
"I had a dream before I went to Lincoln— But I will tell you
about that afterward, after we are married. It will never come
true, now, in the way I thought it might." She took Carl's arm
and they walked toward the gate. "How many times we have
walked this path together, Carl. How many times we will walk
it again! Does it seem to you like coming back to your own
place? Do you feel at peace with the world here? I think we
shall be very happy. I haven't any fears. I think when friends
marry, they are safe. We don't suffer like—those young ones."
Alexandra ended with a sigh.
They had reached the gate. Before Carl opened it, he drew
Alexandra to him and kissed her softly, on her lips and on her
eyes.
She leaned heavily on his shoulder. "I am tired," she mur-
mured. "I have been very lonely, Carl."
They went into the house together, leaving the Divide behind
them, under the evening star. Fortunate country, that is one
day to receive hearts like Alexandra's into its bosom, to give
them out again in the yellow wheat, in the rustling corn, in the
shining eyes of youth!

160
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