MY ANTONIA

By Willa Cather

CONTENTS

 Introduction BOOK I. The Shimerdas BOOK II. The Hired Girls BOOK III. Lena Lingard BOOK IV. The Pioneer Woman's Story BOOK V. Cuzak's Boys

TO CARRIE AND IRENE MINER In memory of affections old and true

Optima dies. . . Prima fugit VIRGIL

INTRODUCTION

LAST summer I happened to be crossing the plains of Iowa in a seasonof intense heat, and it was my good fortune to have for a travelingcompanion James Quayle Burden--Jim Burden, as we still call him in theWest. He and I are old friends--we grew up together in the same Nebraskatown--and we had much to say to each other. While the train flashedthrough never-ending miles of ripe wheat, by country towns andbright-flowered pastures and oak groves wilting in the sun, we sat inthe observation car, where the woodwork was hot to the touch and reddust lay deep over everything. The dust and heat, the burning wind, reminded us of many things. We were talking about what it is like tospend one's childhood in little towns like these, buried in wheat andcorn, under stimulating extremes of climate: burning summers when theworld lies green and billowy beneath a brilliant sky, when one is fairlystifled in vegetation, in the color and smell of strong weeds and heavyharvests; blustery winters with little snow, when the whole country isstripped bare and gray as sheet-iron. We agreed that no one who had notgrown up in a little prairie town could know anything about it. It was akind of freemasonry, we said. 

Although Jim Burden and I both live in New York, and are old friends, Ido not see much of him there. He is legal counsel for one of the greatWestern railways, and is sometimes away from his New York office forweeks together. That is one reason why we do not often meet. Another isthat I do not like his wife. 

When Jim was still an obscure young lawyer, struggling to make his wayin New York, his career was suddenly advanced by a brilliant marriage. Genevieve Whitney was the only daughter of a distinguished man. Hermarriage with young Burden was the subject of sharp comment at the time. It was said she had been brutally jilted by her cousin, Rutland Whitney, and that she married this unknown man from the West out of bravado. Shewas a restless, headstrong girl, even then, who liked to astonishher friends. Later, when I knew her, she was always doing somethingunexpected. She gave one of her town houses for a Suffrage headquarters, produced one of her own plays at the Princess Theater, was arrestedfor picketing during a garment-makers' strike, etc. I am never able tobelieve that she has much feeling for the causes to which she lends hername and her fleeting interest. She is handsome, energetic, executive, but to me she seems unimpressionable and temperamentally incapable ofenthusiasm. Her husband's quiet tastes irritate her, I think, and shefinds it worth while to play the patroness to a group of young poets andpainters of advanced ideas and mediocre ability. She has her own fortuneand lives her own life. For some reason, she wishes to remain Mrs. JamesBurden. 

As for Jim, no disappointments have been severe enough to chill hisnaturally romantic and ardent disposition. This disposition, though itoften made him seem very funny when he was a boy, has been one of thestrongest elements in his success. He loves with a personal passion thegreat country through which his railway runs and branches. His faithin it and his knowledge of it have played an important part in itsdevelopment. He is always able to raise capital for new enterprises inWyoming or Montana, and has helped young men out there to do remarkablethings in mines and timber and oil. If a young man with an idea can onceget Jim Burden's attention, can manage to accompany him when he goes offinto the wilds hunting for lost parks or exploring new canyons, then themoney which means action is usually forthcoming. Jim is still able tolose himself in those big Western dreams. Though he is over forty now, he meets new people and new enterprises with the impulsiveness by whichhis boyhood friends remember him. He never seems to me to grow older. His fresh color and sandy hair and quick-changing blue eyes are thoseof a young man, and his sympathetic, solicitous interest in women is asyouthful as it is Western and American. 

During that burning day when we were crossing Iowa, our talk keptreturning to a central figure, a Bohemian girl whom we had knownlong ago and whom both of us admired. More than any other person weremembered, this girl seemed to mean to us the country, the conditions, the whole adventure of our childhood. To speak her name was to callup pictures of people and places, to set a quiet drama going in one'sbrain. I had lost sight of her altogether, but Jim had found her againafter long years, had renewed a friendship that meant a great deal tohim, and out of his busy life had set apart time enough to enjoy thatfriendship. His mind was full of her that day. He made me see her again, feel her presence, revived all my old affection for her. 

"I can't see, " he said impetuously, "why you have never written anythingabout Antonia. "

I told him I had always felt that other people--he himself, for one knewher much better than I. I was ready, however, to make an agreement withhim; I would set down on paper all that I remembered of Antonia if hewould do the same. We might, in this way, get a picture of her. 

He rumpled his hair with a quick, excited gesture, which with him oftenannounces a new determination, and I could see that my suggestion tookhold of him. "Maybe I will, maybe I will!" he declared. He stared outof the window for a few moments, and when he turned to me again his eyeshad the sudden clearness that comes from something the mind itself sees. "Of course, " he said, "I should have to do it in a direct way, and saya great deal about myself. It's through myself that I knew and felt her, and I've had no practice in any other form of presentation. "

I told him that how he knew her and felt her was exactly what I mostwanted to know about Antonia. He had had opportunities that I, as alittle girl who watched her come and go, had not. 

Months afterward Jim Burden arrived at my apartment one stormy winterafternoon, with a bulging legal portfolio sheltered under his furovercoat. He brought it into the sitting-room with him and tapped itwith some pride as he stood warming his hands. 

"I finished it last night--the thing about Antonia, " he said. "Now, whatabout yours?"

I had to confess that mine had not gone beyond a few straggling notes. 

"Notes? I didn't make any. " He drank his tea all at once and put downthe cup. "I didn't arrange or rearrange. I simply wrote down what ofherself and myself and other people Antonia's name recalls to me. Isuppose it hasn't any form. It hasn't any title, either. " He went intothe next room, sat down at my desk and wrote on the pinkish face ofthe portfolio the word, "Antonia. " He frowned at this a moment, thenprefixed another word, making it "My Antonia. " That seemed to satisfyhim. 

"Read it as soon as you can, " he said, rising, "but don't let itinfluence your own story. "

My own story was never written, but the following narrative is Jim'smanuscript, substantially as he brought it to me. 

NOTE: The Bohemian name Antonia is strongly accented on the firstsyllable, like the English name Anthony, and the 'i' is, of course, given the sound of long 'e'. The name is pronounced An'-ton-ee-ah. 

BOOK I. The Shimerdas

I

I FIRST HEARD OF Antonia on what seemed to me an interminable journeyacross the great midland plain of North America. I was ten yearsold then; I had lost both my father and mother within a year, and myVirginia relatives were sending me out to my grandparents, who lived inNebraska. I travelled in the care of a mountain boy, Jake Marpole, oneof the 'hands' on my father's old farm under the Blue Ridge, who was nowgoing West to work for my grandfather. Jake's experience of the worldwas not much wider than mine. He had never been in a railway train untilthe morning when we set out together to try our fortunes in a new world. 

We went all the way in day-coaches, becoming more sticky and grimy witheach stage of the journey. Jake bought everything the newsboys offeredhim: candy, oranges, brass collar buttons, a watch-charm, and for me a'Life of Jesse James, ' which I remember as one of the most satisfactorybooks I have ever read. Beyond Chicago we were under the protection of afriendly passenger conductor, who knew all about the country to whichwe were going and gave us a great deal of advice in exchange for ourconfidence. He seemed to us an experienced and worldly man who had beenalmost everywhere; in his conversation he threw out lightly the namesof distant states and cities. He wore the rings and pins and badges ofdifferent fraternal orders to which he belonged. Even his cuff-buttonswere engraved with hieroglyphics, and he was more inscribed than anEgyptian obelisk. 

Once when he sat down to chat, he told us that in the immigrant carahead there was a family from 'across the water' whose destination wasthe same as ours. 

'They can't any of them speak English, except one little girl, and allshe can say is "We go Black Hawk, Nebraska. " She's not much older thanyou, twelve or thirteen, maybe, and she's as bright as a new dollar. Don't you want to go ahead and see her, Jimmy? She's got the prettybrown eyes, too!'

This last remark made me bashful, and I shook my head and settled downto 'Jesse James. ' Jake nodded at me approvingly and said you were likelyto get diseases from foreigners. 

I do not remember crossing the Missouri River, or anything about thelong day's journey through Nebraska. Probably by that time I had crossedso many rivers that I was dull to them. The only thing very noticeableabout Nebraska was that it was still, all day long, Nebraska. 

I had been sleeping, curled up in a red plush seat, for a long whilewhen we reached Black Hawk. Jake roused me and took me by the hand. Westumbled down from the train to a wooden siding, where men were runningabout with lanterns. I couldn't see any town, or even distant lights; wewere surrounded by utter darkness. The engine was panting heavily afterits long run. In the red glow from the fire-box, a group of people stoodhuddled together on the platform, encumbered by bundles and boxes. Iknew this must be the immigrant family the conductor had told us about. The woman wore a fringed shawl tied over her head, and she carried alittle tin trunk in her arms, hugging it as if it were a baby. Therewas an old man, tall and stooped. Two half-grown boys and a girl stoodholding oilcloth bundles, and a little girl clung to her mother'sskirts. Presently a man with a lantern approached them and beganto talk, shouting and exclaiming. I pricked up my ears, for it waspositively the first time I had ever heard a foreign tongue. 

Another lantern came along. A bantering voice called out: 'Hello, areyou Mr. Burden's folks? If you are, it's me you're looking for. I'mOtto Fuchs. I'm Mr. Burden's hired man, and I'm to drive you out. Hello, Jimmy, ain't you scared to come so far west?'

I looked up with interest at the new face in the lantern-light. He mighthave stepped out of the pages of 'Jesse James. ' He wore a sombrerohat, with a wide leather band and a bright buckle, and the ends of hismoustache were twisted up stiffly, like little horns. He looked livelyand ferocious, I thought, and as if he had a history. A long scar ranacross one cheek and drew the corner of his mouth up in a sinister curl. The top of his left ear was gone, and his skin was brown as an Indian's. Surely this was the face of a desperado. As he walked about the platformin his high-heeled boots, looking for our trunks, I saw that he was arather slight man, quick and wiry, and light on his feet. He told us wehad a long night drive ahead of us, and had better be on the hike. Heled us to a hitching-bar where two farm-wagons were tied, and I saw theforeign family crowding into one of them. The other was for us. Jake goton the front seat with Otto Fuchs, and I rode on the straw in the bottomof the wagon-box, covered up with a buffalo hide. The immigrants rumbledoff into the empty darkness, and we followed them. 

I tried to go to sleep, but the jolting made me bite my tongue, and Isoon began to ache all over. When the straw settled down, I had a hardbed. Cautiously I slipped from under the buffalo hide, got up on myknees and peered over the side of the wagon. There seemed to be nothingto see; no fences, no creeks or trees, no hills or fields. If therewas a road, I could not make it out in the faint starlight. There wasnothing but land: not a country at all, but the material out of whichcountries are made. No, there was nothing but land--slightly undulating, I knew, because often our wheels ground against the brake as we wentdown into a hollow and lurched up again on the other side. I had thefeeling that the world was left behind, that we had got over the edge ofit, and were outside man's jurisdiction. I had never before looked upat the sky when there was not a familiar mountain ridge against it. Butthis was the complete dome of heaven, all there was of it. I did notbelieve that my dead father and mother were watching me from up there;they would still be looking for me at the sheep-fold down by the creek, or along the white road that led to the mountain pastures. I had lefteven their spirits behind me. The wagon jolted on, carrying me I knewnot whither. I don't think I was homesick. If we never arrived anywhere, it did not matter. Between that earth and that sky I felt erased, blotted out. I did not say my prayers that night: here, I felt, whatwould be would be. 

II

I DO NOT REMEMBER our arrival at my grandfather's farm sometime beforedaybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcelylarger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head wasflapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skinand black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be mygrandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyesshe smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down on the foot of my bed. 

'Had a good sleep, Jimmy?' she asked briskly. Then in a very differenttone she said, as if to herself, 'My, how you do look like your father!'I remembered that my father had been her little boy; she must oftenhave come to wake him like this when he overslept. 'Here are your cleanclothes, ' she went on, stroking my coverlid with her brown hand as shetalked. 'But first you come down to the kitchen with me, and have a nicewarm bath behind the stove. Bring your things; there's nobody about. '

'Down to the kitchen' struck me as curious; it was always 'out in thekitchen' at home. I picked up my shoes and stockings and followed herthrough the living-room and down a flight of stairs into a basement. This basement was divided into a dining-room at the right of thestairs and a kitchen at the left. Both rooms were plastered andwhitewashed--the plaster laid directly upon the earth walls, as it usedto be in dugouts. The floor was of hard cement. Up under the woodenceiling there were little half-windows with white curtains, and pots ofgeraniums and wandering Jew in the deep sills. As I entered the kitchen, I sniffed a pleasant smell of gingerbread baking. The stove was verylarge, with bright nickel trimmings, and behind it there was a longwooden bench against the wall, and a tin washtub, into which grandmotherpoured hot and cold water. When she brought the soap and towels, I toldher that I was used to taking my bath without help. 'Can you do yourears, Jimmy? Are you sure? Well, now, I call you a right smart littleboy. '

It was pleasant there in the kitchen. The sun shone into my bath-waterthrough the west half-window, and a big Maltese cat came up and rubbedhimself against the tub, watching me curiously. While I scrubbed, mygrandmother busied herself in the dining-room until I called anxiously, 'Grandmother, I'm afraid the cakes are burning!' Then she came laughing, waving her apron before her as if she were shooing chickens. 

She was a spare, tall woman, a little stooped, and she was apt to carryher head thrust forward in an attitude of attention, as if she werelooking at something, or listening to something, far away. As I grewolder, I came to believe that it was only because she was so oftenthinking of things that were far away. She was quick-footed andenergetic in all her movements. Her voice was high and rather shrill, and she often spoke with an anxious inflection, for she was exceedinglydesirous that everything should go with due order and decorum. Herlaugh, too, was high, and perhaps a little strident, but there was alively intelligence in it. She was then fifty-five years old, a strongwoman, of unusual endurance. 

After I was dressed, I explored the long cellar next the kitchen. It wasdug out under the wing of the house, was plastered and cemented, with astairway and an outside door by which the men came and went. Under oneof the windows there was a place for them to wash when they came in fromwork. 

While my grandmother was busy about supper, I settled myself on thewooden bench behind the stove and got acquainted with the cat--he caughtnot only rats and mice, but gophers, I was told. The patch ofyellow sunlight on the floor travelled back toward the stairway, andgrandmother and I talked about my journey, and about the arrival of thenew Bohemian family; she said they were to be our nearest neighbours. Wedid not talk about the farm in Virginia, which had been her home for somany years. But after the men came in from the fields, and we were allseated at the supper table, then she asked Jake about the old place andabout our friends and neighbours there. 

My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me andspoke kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once hisdeliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly, snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard ofan Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive. 

Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they werebright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white andregular--so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. Hehad a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was ayoung man his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery. 

As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances ateach other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper thathe was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led anadventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. Hisiron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he haddrifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relativesin Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year nowhe had been working for grandfather. 

The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper tome about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale;he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, buthe was a 'perfect gentleman, ' and his name was Dude. Fuchs told meeverything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyomingblizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. Hepromised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got outhis 'chaps' and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his bestcowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design--roses, and true-lover'sknots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, wereangels. 

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-roomfor prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles andread several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read sointerestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chaptersin the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word 'Selah. ''He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whomHe loved. Selah. ' I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not. But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words. 

Early the next morning I ran out-of-doors to look about me. I had beentold that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk--untilyou came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Ourneighbours lived in sod houses and dugouts--comfortable, but not veryroomy. Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above thebasement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, withthe windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the groundsloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. Thisslope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies bythe rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, wasa muddy little pond, with rusty willow bushes growing about it. The roadfrom the post-office came directly by our door, crossed the farmyard, and curved round this little pond, beyond which it began to climb thegentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west. There, along the westernsky-line it skirted a great cornfield, much larger than any field I hadever seen. This cornfield, and the sorghum patch behind the barn, werethe only broken land in sight. Everywhere, as far as the eye couldreach, there was nothing but rough, shaggy, red grass, most of it astall as I. 

North of the house, inside the ploughed fire-breaks, grew a thick-setstrip of box-elder trees, low and bushy, their leaves already turningyellow. This hedge was nearly a quarter of a mile long, but I had tolook very hard to see it at all. The little trees were insignificantagainst the grass. It seemed as if the grass were about to run overthem, and over the plum-patch behind the sod chicken-house. 

As I looked about me I felt that the grass was the country, as the wateris the sea. The red of the grass made all the great prairie the colourof winestains, or of certain seaweeds when they are first washed up. Andthere was so much motion in it; the whole country seemed, somehow, to berunning. 

I had almost forgotten that I had a grandmother, when she came out, hersunbonnet on her head, a grain-sack in her hand, and asked me if I didnot want to go to the garden with her to dig potatoes for dinner. 

The garden, curiously enough, was a quarter of a mile from the house, and the way to it led up a shallow draw past the cattle corral. Grandmother called my attention to a stout hickory cane, tipped withcopper, which hung by a leather thong from her belt. This, she said, was her rattlesnake cane. I must never go to the garden without a heavystick or a corn-knife; she had killed a good many rattlers on her wayback and forth. A little girl who lived on the Black Hawk road wasbitten on the ankle and had been sick all summer. 

I can remember exactly how the country looked to me as I walked besidemy grandmother along the faint wagon-tracks on that early Septembermorning. Perhaps the glide of long railway travel was still with me, formore than anything else I felt motion in the landscape; in the fresh, easy-blowing morning wind, and in the earth itself, as if the shaggygrass were a sort of loose hide, and underneath it herds of wild buffalowere galloping, galloping. . . 

Alone, I should never have found the garden--except, perhaps, forthe big yellow pumpkins that lay about unprotected by their witheringvines--and I felt very little interest in it when I got there. I wantedto walk straight on through the red grass and over the edge of theworld, which could not be very far away. The light air about me told methat the world ended here: only the ground and sun and sky were left, and if one went a little farther there would be only sun and sky, andone would float off into them, like the tawny hawks which sailed overour heads making slow shadows on the grass. While grandmother took thepitchfork we found standing in one of the rows and dug potatoes, while Ipicked them up out of the soft brown earth and put them into the bag, Ikept looking up at the hawks that were doing what I might so easily do. 

When grandmother was ready to go, I said I would like to stay up therein the garden awhile. 

She peered down at me from under her sunbonnet. 'Aren't you afraid ofsnakes?'

'A little, ' I admitted, 'but I'd like to stay, anyhow. '

'Well, if you see one, don't have anything to do with him. The bigyellow and brown ones won't hurt you; they're bull-snakes and help tokeep the gophers down. Don't be scared if you see anything look out ofthat hole in the bank over there. That's a badger hole. He's about asbig as a big 'possum, and his face is striped, black and white. He takesa chicken once in a while, but I won't let the men harm him. In a newcountry a body feels friendly to the animals. I like to have him comeout and watch me when I'm at work. '

Grandmother swung the bag of potatoes over her shoulder and went downthe path, leaning forward a little. The road followed the windingsof the draw; when she came to the first bend, she waved at me anddisappeared. I was left alone with this new feeling of lightness andcontent. 

I sat down in the middle of the garden, where snakes could scarcelyapproach unseen, and leaned my back against a warm yellow pumpkin. Therewere some ground-cherry bushes growing along the furrows, full of fruit. I turned back the papery triangular sheaths that protected the berriesand ate a few. All about me giant grasshoppers, twice as big as any Ihad ever seen, were doing acrobatic feats among the dried vines. Thegophers scurried up and down the ploughed ground. There in the sheltereddraw-bottom the wind did not blow very hard, but I could hear it singingits humming tune up on the level, and I could see the tall grasseswave. The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it throughmy fingers. Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadronsaround me. Their backs were polished vermilion, with black spots. Ikept as still as I could. Nothing happened. I did not expect anythingto happen. I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like thepumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more. I was entirely happy. Perhaps we feel like that when we die and become a part of somethingentire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge. At anyrate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete andgreat. When it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep. 

III

ON SUNDAY MORNING Otto Fuchs was to drive us over to make theacquaintance of our new Bohemian neighbours. We were taking them someprovisions, as they had come to live on a wild place where there was nogarden or chicken-house, and very little broken land. Fuchs brought upa sack of potatoes and a piece of cured pork from the cellar, andgrandmother packed some loaves of Saturday's bread, a jar of butter, andseveral pumpkin pies in the straw of the wagon-box. We clambered up tothe front seat and jolted off past the little pond and along the roadthat climbed to the big cornfield. 

I could hardly wait to see what lay beyond that cornfield; but therewas only red grass like ours, and nothing else, though from the highwagon-seat one could look off a long way. The road ran about like a wildthing, avoiding the deep draws, crossing them where they were wide andshallow. And all along it, wherever it looped or ran, the sunflowersgrew; some of them were as big as little trees, with great rough leavesand many branches which bore dozens of blossoms. They made a gold ribbonacross the prairie. Occasionally one of the horses would tear off withhis teeth a plant full of blossoms, and walk along munching it, theflowers nodding in time to his bites as he ate down toward them. 

The Bohemian family, grandmother told me as we drove along, had boughtthe homestead of a fellow countryman, Peter Krajiek, and had paid himmore than it was worth. Their agreement with him was made before theyleft the old country, through a cousin of his, who was also a relativeof Mrs. Shimerda. The Shimerdas were the first Bohemian family to cometo this part of the county. Krajiek was their only interpreter, andcould tell them anything he chose. They could not speak enough Englishto ask for advice, or even to make their most pressing wants known. Oneson, Fuchs said, was well-grown, and strong enough to work the land; butthe father was old and frail and knew nothing about farming. He was aweaver by trade; had been a skilled workman on tapestries and upholsterymaterials. He had brought his fiddle with him, which wouldn't be of muchuse here, though he used to pick up money by it at home. 

'If they're nice people, I hate to think of them spending the winter inthat cave of Krajiek's, ' said grandmother. 'It's no better than a badgerhole; no proper dugout at all. And I hear he's made them pay twentydollars for his old cookstove that ain't worth ten. '

'Yes'm, ' said Otto; 'and he's sold 'em his oxen and his two bony oldhorses for the price of good workteams. I'd have interfered about thehorses--the old man can understand some German--if I'd I a' thought itwould do any good. But Bohemians has a natural distrust of Austrians. '

Grandmother looked interested. 'Now, why is that, Otto?'

Fuchs wrinkled his brow and nose. 'Well, ma'm, it's politics. It wouldtake me a long while to explain. '

The land was growing rougher; I was told that we were approaching SquawCreek, which cut up the west half of the Shimerdas' place and made theland of little value for farming. Soon we could see the broken, grassy clay cliffs which indicated the windings of the stream, and theglittering tops of the cottonwoods and ash trees that grew down inthe ravine. Some of the cottonwoods had already turned, and the yellowleaves and shining white bark made them look like the gold and silvertrees in fairy tales. 

As we approached the Shimerdas' dwelling, I could still see nothing butrough red hillocks, and draws with shelving banks and long roots hangingout where the earth had crumbled away. Presently, against one of thosebanks, I saw a sort of shed, thatched with the same wine-coloured grassthat grew everywhere. Near it tilted a shattered windmill frame, thathad no wheel. We drove up to this skeleton to tie our horses, and thenI saw a door and window sunk deep in the drawbank. The door stoodopen, and a woman and a girl of fourteen ran out and looked up at ushopefully. A little girl trailed along behind them. The woman had on herhead the same embroidered shawl with silk fringes that she wore when shehad alighted from the train at Black Hawk. She was not old, but she wascertainly not young. Her face was alert and lively, with a sharp chinand shrewd little eyes. She shook grandmother's hand energetically. 

'Very glad, very glad!' she ejaculated. Immediately she pointed to thebank out of which she had emerged and said, 'House no good, house nogood!'

Grandmother nodded consolingly. 'You'll get fixed up comfortable afterwhile, Mrs. Shimerda; make good house. '

My grandmother always spoke in a very loud tone to foreigners, as ifthey were deaf. She made Mrs. Shimerda understand the friendly intentionof our visit, and the Bohemian woman handled the loaves of breadand even smelled them, and examined the pies with lively curiosity, exclaiming, 'Much good, much thank!'--and again she wrung grandmother'shand. 

The oldest son, Ambroz--they called it Ambrosch--came out of the caveand stood beside his mother. He was nineteen years old, short andbroad-backed, with a close-cropped, flat head, and a wide, flat face. His hazel eyes were little and shrewd, like his mother's, but more slyand suspicious; they fairly snapped at the food. The family had beenliving on corncakes and sorghum molasses for three days. 

The little girl was pretty, but Antonia--they accented the name thus, strongly, when they spoke to her--was still prettier. I remembered whatthe conductor had said about her eyes. They were big and warm and fullof light, like the sun shining on brown pools in the wood. Her skin wasbrown, too, and in her cheeks she had a glow of rich, dark colour. Herbrown hair was curly and wild-looking. The little sister, whom theycalled Yulka (Julka), was fair, and seemed mild and obedient. While Istood awkwardly confronting the two girls, Krajiek came up from the barnto see what was going on. With him was another Shimerda son. Even from adistance one could see that there was something strange about this boy. As he approached us, he began to make uncouth noises, and held up hishands to show us his fingers, which were webbed to the first knuckle, like a duck's foot. When he saw me draw back, he began to crowdelightedly, 'Hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo!' like a rooster. His mother scowledand said sternly, 'Marek!' then spoke rapidly to Krajiek in Bohemian. 

'She wants me to tell you he won't hurt nobody, Mrs. Burden. He wasborn like that. The others are smart. Ambrosch, he make good farmer. ' Hestruck Ambrosch on the back, and the boy smiled knowingly. 

At that moment the father came out of the hole in the bank. He wore nohat, and his thick, iron-grey hair was brushed straight back from hisforehead. It was so long that it bushed out behind his ears, and madehim look like the old portraits I remembered in Virginia. He wastall and slender, and his thin shoulders stooped. He looked at usunderstandingly, then took grandmother's hand and bent over it. Inoticed how white and well-shaped his own hands were. They looked calm, somehow, and skilled. His eyes were melancholy, and were set backdeep under his brow. His face was ruggedly formed, but it looked likeashes--like something from which all the warmth and light had died out. Everything about this old man was in keeping with his dignified manner. He was neatly dressed. Under his coat he wore a knitted grey vest, and, instead of a collar, a silk scarf of a dark bronze-green, carefullycrossed and held together by a red coral pin. While Krajiek wastranslating for Mr. Shimerda, Antonia came up to me and held out herhand coaxingly. In a moment we were running up the steep drawsidetogether, Yulka trotting after us. 

When we reached the level and could see the gold tree-tops, I pointedtoward them, and Antonia laughed and squeezed my hand as if to tell mehow glad she was I had come. We raced off toward Squaw Creek and did notstop until the ground itself stopped--fell away before us so abruptlythat the next step would have been out into the tree-tops. We stoodpanting on the edge of the ravine, looking down at the trees and bushesthat grew below us. The wind was so strong that I had to hold my hat on, and the girls' skirts were blown out before them. Antonia seemed to likeit; she held her little sister by the hand and chattered away in thatlanguage which seemed to me spoken so much more rapidly than mine. Shelooked at me, her eyes fairly blazing with things she could not say. 

'Name? What name?' she asked, touching me on the shoulder. I told hermy name, and she repeated it after me and made Yulka say it. She pointedinto the gold cottonwood tree behind whose top we stood and said again, 'What name?'

We sat down and made a nest in the long red grass. Yulka curled up likea baby rabbit and played with a grasshopper. Antonia pointed up to thesky and questioned me with her glance. I gave her the word, but she wasnot satisfied and pointed to my eyes. I told her, and she repeated theword, making it sound like 'ice. ' She pointed up to the sky, then to myeyes, then back to the sky, with movements so quick and impulsive thatshe distracted me, and I had no idea what she wanted. She got up on herknees and wrung her hands. She pointed to her own eyes and shook herhead, then to mine and to the sky, nodding violently. 

'Oh, ' I exclaimed, 'blue; blue sky. '

She clapped her hands and murmured, 'Blue sky, blue eyes, ' as if itamused her. While we snuggled down there out of the wind, she learneda score of words. She was alive, and very eager. We were so deep in thegrass that we could see nothing but the blue sky over us and the goldtree in front of us. It was wonderfully pleasant. After Antonia hadsaid the new words over and over, she wanted to give me a little chasedsilver ring she wore on her middle finger. When she coaxed and insisted, I repulsed her quite sternly. I didn't want her ring, and I felt therewas something reckless and extravagant about her wishing to give it awayto a boy she had never seen before. No wonder Krajiek got the better ofthese people, if this was how they behaved. 

While we were disputing 'about the ring, I heard a mournful voicecalling, 'Antonia, Antonia!' She sprang up like a hare. 'Tatinek!Tatinek!' she shouted, and we ran to meet the old man who was comingtoward us. Antonia reached him first, took his hand and kissed it. WhenI came up, he touched my shoulder and looked searchingly down into myface for several seconds. I became somewhat embarrassed, for I was usedto being taken for granted by my elders. 

We went with Mr. Shimerda back to the dugout, where grandmother waswaiting for me. Before I got into the wagon, he took a book out of hispocket, opened it, and showed me a page with two alphabets, one Englishand the other Bohemian. He placed this book in my grandmother's hands, looked at her entreatingly, and said, with an earnestness which I shallnever forget, 'Te-e-ach, te-e-ach my Antonia!'

IV

ON THE AFTERNOON of that same Sunday I took my first long ride on mypony, under Otto's direction. After that Dude and I went twice a week tothe post-office, six miles east of us, and I saved the men a good dealof time by riding on errands to our neighbours. When we had to borrowanything, or to send about word that there would be preaching at the sodschoolhouse, I was always the messenger. Formerly Fuchs attended to suchthings after working hours. 

All the years that have passed have not dimmed my memory of that firstglorious autumn. The new country lay open before me: there were nofences in those days, and I could choose my own way over the grassuplands, trusting the pony to get me home again. Sometimes I followedthe sunflower-bordered roads. Fuchs told me that the sunflowers wereintroduced into that country by the Mormons; that at the time of thepersecution, when they left Missouri and struck out into the wildernessto find a place where they could worship God in their own way, themembers of the first exploring party, crossing the plains to Utah, scattered sunflower seed as they went. The next summer, when the longtrains of wagons came through with all the women and children, they hadthe sunflower trail to follow. I believe that botanists do not confirmFuchs's story, but insist that the sunflower was native to those plains. Nevertheless, that legend has stuck in my mind, and sunflower-borderedroads always seem to me the roads to freedom. 

I used to love to drift along the pale-yellow cornfields, looking forthe damp spots one sometimes found at their edges, where the smartweedsoon turned a rich copper colour and the narrow brown leaves hung curledlike cocoons about the swollen joints of the stem. Sometimes I wentsouth to visit our German neighbours and to admire their catalpa grove, or to see the big elm tree that grew up out of a deep crack in theearth and had a hawk's nest in its branches. Trees were so rare in thatcountry, and they had to make such a hard fight to grow, that we used tofeel anxious about them, and visit them as if they were persons. Itmust have been the scarcity of detail in that tawny landscape that madedetail so precious. 

Sometimes I rode north to the big prairie-dog town to watch the brownearth-owls fly home in the late afternoon and go down to their nestsunderground with the dogs. Antonia Shimerda liked to go with me, and weused to wonder a great deal about these birds of subterranean habit. We had to be on our guard there, for rattlesnakes were always lurkingabout. They came to pick up an easy living among the dogs and owls, which were quite defenceless against them; took possession of theircomfortable houses and ate the eggs and puppies. We felt sorry for theowls. It was always mournful to see them come flying home at sunset anddisappear under the earth. But, after all, we felt, winged things whowould live like that must be rather degraded creatures. The dog-town wasa long way from any pond or creek. Otto Fuchs said he had seen populousdog-towns in the desert where there was no surface water for fiftymiles; he insisted that some of the holes must go down to water--nearlytwo hundred feet, hereabouts. Antonia said she didn't believe it; thatthe dogs probably lapped up the dew in the early morning, like therabbits. 

Antonia had opinions about everything, and she was soon able to makethem known. Almost every day she came running across the prairie to haveher reading lesson with me. Mrs. Shimerda grumbled, but realized it wasimportant that one member of the family should learn English. When thelesson was over, we used to go up to the watermelon patch behind thegarden. I split the melons with an old corn-knife, and we lifted out thehearts and ate them with the juice trickling through our fingers. The white Christmas melons we did not touch, but we watched them withcuriosity. They were to be picked late, when the hard frosts had setin, and put away for winter use. After weeks on the ocean, the Shimerdaswere famished for fruit. The two girls would wander for miles along theedge of the cornfields, hunting for ground-cherries. 

Antonia loved to help grandmother in the kitchen and to learn aboutcooking and housekeeping. She would stand beside her, watching herevery movement. We were willing to believe that Mrs. Shimerda was agood housewife in her own country, but she managed poorly under newconditions: the conditions were bad enough, certainly!

I remember how horrified we were at the sour, ashy-grey bread she gaveher family to eat. She mixed her dough, we discovered, in an old tinpeck-measure that Krajiek had used about the barn. When she took thepaste out to bake it, she left smears of dough sticking to the sides ofthe measure, put the measure on the shelf behind the stove, and let thisresidue ferment. The next time she made bread, she scraped this sourstuff down into the fresh dough to serve as yeast. 

During those first months the Shimerdas never went to town. Krajiekencouraged them in the belief that in Black Hawk they would somehow bemysteriously separated from their money. They hated Krajiek, but theyclung to him because he was the only human being with whom they couldtalk or from whom they could get information. He slept with the old manand the two boys in the dugout barn, along with the oxen. They kept himin their hole and fed him for the same reason that the prairie-dogs andthe brown owls house the rattlesnakes--because they did not know how toget rid of him. 

V

WE KNEW THAT THINGS were hard for our Bohemian neighbours, but the twogirls were lighthearted and never complained. They were always ready toforget their troubles at home, and to run away with me over the prairie, scaring rabbits or starting up flocks of quail. 

I remember Antonia's excitement when she came into our kitchen oneafternoon and announced: 'My papa find friends up north, with Russianmans. Last night he take me for see, and I can understand very muchtalk. Nice mans, Mrs. Burden. One is fat and all the time laugh. Everybody laugh. The first time I see my papa laugh in this kawntree. Oh, very nice!'

I asked her if she meant the two Russians who lived up by the bigdog-town. I had often been tempted to go to see them when I was ridingin that direction, but one of them was a wild-looking fellow and I wasa little afraid of him. Russia seemed to me more remote than any othercountry--farther away than China, almost as far as the North Pole. Ofall the strange, uprooted people among the first settlers, those twomen were the strangest and the most aloof. Their last names wereunpronounceable, so they were called Pavel and Peter. They went aboutmaking signs to people, and until the Shimerdas came they had nofriends. Krajiek could understand them a little, but he had cheated themin a trade, so they avoided him. Pavel, the tall one, was said to be ananarchist; since he had no means of imparting his opinions, probably hiswild gesticulations and his generally excited and rebellious manner gaverise to this supposition. He must once have been a very strong man, butnow his great frame, with big, knotty joints, had a wasted look, and theskin was drawn tight over his high cheekbones. His breathing was hoarse, and he always had a cough. 

Peter, his companion, was a very different sort of fellow; short, bow-legged, and as fat as butter. He always seemed pleased when he metpeople on the road, smiled and took off his cap to everyone, men as wellas women. At a distance, on his wagon, he looked like an old man; hishair and beard were of such a pale flaxen colour that they seemed whitein the sun. They were as thick and curly as carded wool. His rosy face, with its snub nose, set in this fleece, was like a melon among itsleaves. He was usually called 'Curly Peter, ' or 'Rooshian Peter. '

The two Russians made good farm-hands, and in summer they worked outtogether. I had heard our neighbours laughing when they told howPeter always had to go home at night to milk his cow. Other bachelorhomesteaders used canned milk, to save trouble. Sometimes Peter came tochurch at the sod schoolhouse. It was there I first saw him, sittingon a low bench by the door, his plush cap in his hands, his bare feettucked apologetically under the seat. 

After Mr. Shimerda discovered the Russians, he went to see them almostevery evening, and sometimes took Antonia with him. She said they camefrom a part of Russia where the language was not very different fromBohemian, and if I wanted to go to their place, she could talk to themfor me. One afternoon, before the heavy frosts began, we rode up theretogether on my pony. 

The Russians had a neat log house built on a grassy slope, with awindlass well beside the door. As we rode up the draw, we skirted a bigmelon patch, and a garden where squashes and yellow cucumbers layabout on the sod. We found Peter out behind his kitchen, bending overa washtub. He was working so hard that he did not hear us coming. Hiswhole body moved up and down as he rubbed, and he was a funny sightfrom the rear, with his shaggy head and bandy legs. When he straightenedhimself up to greet us, drops of perspiration were rolling from histhick nose down onto his curly beard. Peter dried his hands and seemedglad to leave his washing. He took us down to see his chickens, andhis cow that was grazing on the hillside. He told Antonia that in hiscountry only rich people had cows, but here any man could have one whowould take care of her. The milk was good for Pavel, who was often sick, and he could make butter by beating sour cream with a wooden spoon. Peter was very fond of his cow. He patted her flanks and talked to herin Russian while he pulled up her lariat pin and set it in a new place. 

After he had shown us his garden, Peter trundled a load of watermelonsup the hill in his wheelbarrow. Pavel was not at home. He was offsomewhere helping to dig a well. The house I thought very comfortablefor two men who were 'batching. ' Besides the kitchen, there was aliving-room, with a wide double bed built against the wall, properlymade up with blue gingham sheets and pillows. There was a littlestoreroom, too, with a window, where they kept guns and saddles andtools, and old coats and boots. That day the floor was covered withgarden things, drying for winter; corn and beans and fat yellowcucumbers. There were no screens or window-blinds in the house, and allthe doors and windows stood wide open, letting in flies and sunshinealike. 

Peter put the melons in a row on the oilcloth-covered table and stoodover them, brandishing a butcher knife. Before the blade got fairly intothem, they split of their own ripeness, with a delicious sound. He gaveus knives, but no plates, and the top of the table was soon swimmingwith juice and seeds. I had never seen anyone eat so many melons asPeter ate. He assured us that they were good for one--better thanmedicine; in his country people lived on them at this time of year. Hewas very hospitable and jolly. Once, while he was looking at Antonia, he sighed and told us that if he had stayed at home in Russia perhapsby this time he would have had a pretty daughter of his own to cook andkeep house for him. He said he had left his country because of a 'greattrouble. '

When we got up to go, Peter looked about in perplexity for somethingthat would entertain us. He ran into the storeroom and brought out agaudily painted harmonica, sat down on a bench, and spreading his fatlegs apart began to play like a whole band. The tunes were either verylively or very doleful, and he sang words to some of them. 

Before we left, Peter put ripe cucumbers into a sack for Mrs. Shimerdaand gave us a lard-pail full of milk to cook them in. I had never heardof cooking cucumbers, but Antonia assured me they were very good. We hadto walk the pony all the way home to keep from spilling the milk. 

VI

ONE AFTERNOON WE WERE having our reading lesson on the warm, grassy bankwhere the badger lived. It was a day of amber sunlight, but there wasa shiver of coming winter in the air. I had seen ice on the littlehorsepond that morning, and as we went through the garden we found thetall asparagus, with its red berries, lying on the ground, a mass ofslimy green. 

Tony was barefooted, and she shivered in her cotton dress and wascomfortable only when we were tucked down on the baked earth, in thefull blaze of the sun. She could talk to me about almost anything bythis time. That afternoon she was telling me how highly esteemed ourfriend the badger was in her part of the world, and how men kept aspecial kind of dog, with very short legs, to hunt him. Those dogs, shesaid, went down into the hole after the badger and killed him there ina terrific struggle underground; you could hear the barks and yelpsoutside. Then the dog dragged himself back, covered with bites andscratches, to be rewarded and petted by his master. She knew a dog whohad a star on his collar for every badger he had killed. 

The rabbits were unusually spry that afternoon. They kept starting upall about us, and dashing off down the draw as if they were playing agame of some kind. But the little buzzing things that lived in the grasswere all dead--all but one. While we were lying there against the warmbank, a little insect of the palest, frailest green hopped painfullyout of the buffalo grass and tried to leap into a bunch of bluestem. Hemissed it, fell back, and sat with his head sunk between his long legs, his antennae quivering, as if he were waiting for something to come andfinish him. Tony made a warm nest for him in her hands; talked to himgaily and indulgently in Bohemian. Presently he began to sing for us--athin, rusty little chirp. She held him close to her ear and laughed, buta moment afterward I saw there were tears in her eyes. She told me thatin her village at home there was an old beggar woman who went aboutselling herbs and roots she had dug up in the forest. If you took herin and gave her a warm place by the fire, she sang old songs to thechildren in a cracked voice, like this. Old Hata, she was called, andthe children loved to see her coming and saved their cakes and sweetsfor her. 

When the bank on the other side of the draw began to throw a narrowshelf of shadow, we knew we ought to be starting homeward; the chillcame on quickly when the sun got low, and Antonia's dress was thin. Whatwere we to do with the frail little creature we had lured back to lifeby false pretences? I offered my pockets, but Tony shook her head andcarefully put the green insect in her hair, tying her big handkerchiefdown loosely over her curls. I said I would go with her until we couldsee Squaw Creek, and then turn and run home. We drifted along lazily, very happy, through the magical light of the late afternoon. 

All those fall afternoons were the same, but I never got used to them. As far as we could see, the miles of copper-red grass were drenched insunlight that was stronger and fiercer than at any other time of theday. The blond cornfields were red gold, the haystacks turned rosy andthrew long shadows. The whole prairie was like the bush that burnedwith fire and was not consumed. That hour always had the exultationof victory, of triumphant ending, like a hero's death--heroes who diedyoung and gloriously. It was a sudden transfiguration, a lifting-up ofday. 

How many an afternoon Antonia and I have trailed along the prairie underthat magnificence! And always two long black shadows flitted before usor followed after, dark spots on the ruddy grass. 

We had been silent a long time, and the edge of the sun sank nearer andnearer the prairie floor, when we saw a figure moving on the edge ofthe upland, a gun over his shoulder. He was walking slowly, dragging hisfeet along as if he had no purpose. We broke into a run to overtake him. 

'My papa sick all the time, ' Tony panted as we flew. 'He not look good, Jim. '

As we neared Mr. Shimerda she shouted, and he lifted his head and peeredabout. Tony ran up to him, caught his hand and pressed it against hercheek. She was the only one of his family who could rouse the old manfrom the torpor in which he seemed to live. He took the bag from hisbelt and showed us three rabbits he had shot, looked at Antonia with awintry flicker of a smile and began to tell her something. She turned tome. 

'My tatinek make me little hat with the skins, little hat for winter!'she exclaimed joyfully. 'Meat for eat, skin for hat'--she told off thesebenefits on her fingers. 

Her father put his hand on her hair, but she caught his wrist and liftedit carefully away, talking to him rapidly. I heard the name of old Hata. He untied the handkerchief, separated her hair with his fingers, andstood looking down at the green insect. When it began to chirp faintly, he listened as if it were a beautiful sound. 

I picked up the gun he had dropped; a queer piece from the old country, short and heavy, with a stag's head on the cock. When he saw meexamining it, he turned to me with his far-away look that always mademe feel as if I were down at the bottom of a well. He spoke kindly andgravely, and Antonia translated:

'My tatinek say when you are big boy, he give you his gun. Very fine, from Bohemie. It was belong to a great man, very rich, like what you notgot here; many fields, many forests, many big house. My papa play forhis wedding, and he give my papa fine gun, and my papa give you. '

I was glad that this project was one of futurity. There never were suchpeople as the Shimerdas for wanting to give away everything theyhad. Even the mother was always offering me things, though I knew sheexpected substantial presents in return. We stood there in friendlysilence, while the feeble minstrel sheltered in Antonia's hair went onwith its scratchy chirp. The old man's smile, as he listened, was sofull of sadness, of pity for things, that I never afterward forgot it. As the sun sank there came a sudden coolness and the strong smell ofearth and drying grass. Antonia and her father went off hand in hand, and I buttoned up my jacket and raced my shadow home. 

VII

MUCH AS I LIKED Antonia, I hated a superior tone that she sometimes tookwith me. She was four years older than I, to be sure, and had seen moreof the world; but I was a boy and she was a girl, and I resented herprotecting manner. Before the autumn was over, she began to treat memore like an equal and to defer to me in other things than readinglessons. This change came about from an adventure we had together. 

One day when I rode over to the Shimerdas' I found Antonia starting offon foot for Russian Peter's house, to borrow a spade Ambrosch needed. I offered to take her on the pony, and she got up behind me. There hadbeen another black frost the night before, and the air was clear andheady as wine. Within a week all the blooming roads had been despoiled, hundreds of miles of yellow sunflowers had been transformed into brown, rattling, burry stalks. 

We found Russian Peter digging his potatoes. We were glad to go in andget warm by his kitchen stove and to see his squashes and Christmasmelons, heaped in the storeroom for winter. As we rode away with thespade, Antonia suggested that we stop at the prairie-dog-town and diginto one of the holes. We could find out whether they ran straightdown, or were horizontal, like mole-holes; whether they had undergroundconnections; whether the owls had nests down there, lined with feathers. We might get some puppies, or owl eggs, or snakeskins. 

The dog-town was spread out over perhaps ten acres. The grass had beennibbled short and even, so this stretch was not shaggy and red like thesurrounding country, but grey and velvety. The holes were several yardsapart, and were disposed with a good deal of regularity, almost as ifthe town had been laid out in streets and avenues. One always felt thatan orderly and very sociable kind of life was going on there. I picketedDude down in a draw, and we went wandering about, looking for a holethat would be easy to dig. The dogs were out, as usual, dozens of them, sitting up on their hind legs over the doors of their houses. Aswe approached, they barked, shook their tails at us, and scurriedunderground. Before the mouths of the holes were little patches ofsand and gravel, scratched up, we supposed, from a long way below thesurface. Here and there, in the town, we came on larger gravel patches, several yards away from any hole. If the dogs had scratched the sand upin excavating, how had they carried it so far? It was on one of thesegravel beds that I met my adventure. 

We were examining a big hole with two entrances. The burrow slopedinto the ground at a gentle angle, so that we could see where thetwo corridors united, and the floor was dusty from use, like a littlehighway over which much travel went. I was walking backward, in acrouching position, when I heard Antonia scream. She was standingopposite me, pointing behind me and shouting something in Bohemian. I whirled round, and there, on one of those dry gravel beds, was thebiggest snake I had ever seen. He was sunning himself, after the coldnight, and he must have been asleep when Antonia screamed. When Iturned, he was lying in long loose waves, like a letter 'W. ' He twitchedand began to coil slowly. He was not merely a big snake, I thought--hewas a circus monstrosity. His abominable muscularity, his loathsome, fluid motion, somehow made me sick. He was as thick as my leg, andlooked as if millstones couldn't crush the disgusting vitality outof him. He lifted his hideous little head, and rattled. I didn't runbecause I didn't think of it--if my back had been against a stone wall Icouldn't have felt more cornered. I saw his coils tighten--now he wouldspring, spring his length, I remembered. I ran up and drove at his headwith my spade, struck him fairly across the neck, and in a minute hewas all about my feet in wavy loops. I struck now from hate. Antonia, barefooted as she was, ran up behind me. Even after I had pounded hisugly head flat, his body kept on coiling and winding, doubling andfalling back on itself. I walked away and turned my back. I feltseasick. 

Antonia came after me, crying, 'O Jimmy, he not bite you? You sure? Whyyou not run when I say?'

'What did you jabber Bohunk for? You might have told me there was asnake behind me!' I said petulantly. 

'I know I am just awful, Jim, I was so scared. ' She took my handkerchieffrom my pocket and tried to wipe my face with it, but I snatched it awayfrom her. I suppose I looked as sick as I felt. 

'I never know you was so brave, Jim, ' she went on comfortingly. 'You isjust like big mans; you wait for him lift his head and then you go forhim. Ain't you feel scared a bit? Now we take that snake home and showeverybody. Nobody ain't seen in this kawntree so big snake like youkill. '

She went on in this strain until I began to think that I had longed forthis opportunity, and had hailed it with joy. Cautiously we went back tothe snake; he was still groping with his tail, turning up his ugly bellyin the light. A faint, fetid smell came from him, and a thread of greenliquid oozed from his crushed head. 

'Look, Tony, that's his poison, ' I said. 

I took a long piece of string from my pocket, and she lifted hishead with the spade while I tied a noose around it. We pulled him outstraight and measured him by my riding-quirt; he was about five and ahalf feet long. He had twelve rattles, but they were broken offbefore they began to taper, so I insisted that he must once havehad twenty-four. I explained to Antonia how this meant that he wastwenty-four years old, that he must have been there when white men firstcame, left on from buffalo and Indian times. As I turned him over, Ibegan to feel proud of him, to have a kind of respect for his age andsize. He seemed like the ancient, eldest Evil. Certainly his kind haveleft horrible unconscious memories in all warm-blooded life. When wedragged him down into the draw, Dude sprang off to the end of his tetherand shivered all over--wouldn't let us come near him. 

We decided that Antonia should ride Dude home, and I would walk. As sherode along slowly, her bare legs swinging against the pony's sides, she kept shouting back to me about how astonished everybody would be. I followed with the spade over my shoulder, dragging my snake. Herexultation was contagious. The great land had never looked to me so bigand free. If the red grass were full of rattlers, I was equal to themall. Nevertheless, I stole furtive glances behind me now and then to seethat no avenging mate, older and bigger than my quarry, was racing upfrom the rear. 

The sun had set when we reached our garden and went down the draw towardthe house. Otto Fuchs was the first one we met. He was sitting on theedge of the cattle-pond, having a quiet pipe before supper. Antoniacalled him to come quick and look. He did not say anything for a minute, but scratched his head and turned the snake over with his boot. 

'Where did you run onto that beauty, Jim?'

'Up at the dog-town, ' I answered laconically. 

'Kill him yourself? How come you to have a weepon?'

'We'd been up to Russian Peter's, to borrow a spade for Ambrosch. '

Otto shook the ashes out of his pipe and squatted down to count therattles. 'It was just luck you had a tool, ' he said cautiously. 'Gosh! Iwouldn't want to do any business with that fellow myself, unless I hada fence-post along. Your grandmother's snake-cane wouldn't more thantickle him. He could stand right up and talk to you, he could. Did hefight hard?'

Antonia broke in: 'He fight something awful! He is all over Jimmy'sboots. I scream for him to run, but he just hit and hit that snake likehe was crazy. '

Otto winked at me. After Antonia rode on he said: 'Got him in the headfirst crack, didn't you? That was just as well. '

We hung him up to the windmill, and when I went down to the kitchen, I found Antonia standing in the middle of the floor, telling the storywith a great deal of colour. 

Subsequent experiences with rattlesnakes taught me that my firstencounter was fortunate in circumstance. My big rattler was old, and hadled too easy a life; there was not much fight in him. He had probablylived there for years, with a fat prairie-dog for breakfast whenever hefelt like it, a sheltered home, even an owl-feather bed, perhaps, and hehad forgot that the world doesn't owe rattlers a living. A snake of hissize, in fighting trim, would be more than any boy could handle. So inreality it was a mock adventure; the game was fixed for me by chance, asit probably was for many a dragon-slayer. I had been adequately armed byRussian Peter; the snake was old and lazy; and I had Antonia beside me, to appreciate and admire. 

That snake hung on our corral fence for several days; some of theneighbours came to see it and agreed that it was the biggest rattlerever killed in those parts. This was enough for Antonia. She liked mebetter from that time on, and she never took a supercilious air with meagain. I had killed a big snake--I was now a big fellow. 

VIII

WHILE THE AUTUMN COLOUR was growing pale on the grass and cornfields, things went badly with our friends the Russians. Peter told his troublesto Mr. Shimerda: he was unable to meet a note which fell due on thefirst of November; had to pay an exorbitant bonus on renewing it, andto give a mortgage on his pigs and horses and even his milk cow. Hiscreditor was Wick Cutter, the merciless Black Hawk money-lender, a manof evil name throughout the county, of whom I shall have more to saylater. Peter could give no very clear account of his transactions withCutter. He only knew that he had first borrowed two hundred dollars, then another hundred, then fifty--that each time a bonus was added tothe principal, and the debt grew faster than any crop he planted. Noweverything was plastered with mortgages. 

Soon after Peter renewed his note, Pavel strained himself liftingtimbers for a new barn, and fell over among the shavings with such agush of blood from the lungs that his fellow workmen thought he woulddie on the spot. They hauled him home and put him into his bed, andthere he lay, very ill indeed. Misfortune seemed to settle like an evilbird on the roof of the log house, and to flap its wings there, warninghuman beings away. The Russians had such bad luck that people wereafraid of them and liked to put them out of mind. 

One afternoon Antonia and her father came over to our house to getbuttermilk, and lingered, as they usually did, until the sun was low. Just as they were leaving, Russian Peter drove up. Pavel was very bad, he said, and wanted to talk to Mr. Shimerda and his daughter; he hadcome to fetch them. When Antonia and her father got into the wagon, Ientreated grandmother to let me go with them: I would gladly go withoutmy supper, I would sleep in the Shimerdas' barn and run home in themorning. My plan must have seemed very foolish to her, but she was oftenlarge-minded about humouring the desires of other people. She askedPeter to wait a moment, and when she came back from the kitchen shebrought a bag of sandwiches and doughnuts for us. 

Mr. Shimerda and Peter were on the front seat; Antonia and I sat in thestraw behind and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After the sun sank, a cold wind sprang up and moaned over the prairie. If this turn in theweather had come sooner, I should not have got away. We burrowed down inthe straw and curled up close together, watching the angry red die outof the west and the stars begin to shine in the clear, windy sky. Peterkept sighing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that he was afraid Pavelwould never get well. We lay still and did not talk. Up there the starsgrew magnificently bright. Though we had come from such different partsof the world, in both of us there was some dusky superstition that thoseshining groups have their influence upon what is and what is not tobe. Perhaps Russian Peter, come from farther away than any of us, hadbrought from his land, too, some such belief. 

The little house on the hillside was so much the colour of the nightthat we could not see it as we came up the draw. The ruddy windowsguided us--the light from the kitchen stove, for there was no lampburning. 

We entered softly. The man in the wide bed seemed to be asleep. Tony andI sat down on the bench by the wall and leaned our arms on the table infront of us. The firelight flickered on the hewn logs that supportedthe thatch overhead. Pavel made a rasping sound when he breathed, andhe kept moaning. We waited. The wind shook the doors and windowsimpatiently, then swept on again, singing through the big spaces. Eachgust, as it bore down, rattled the panes, and swelled off like theothers. They made me think of defeated armies, retreating; or of ghostswho were trying desperately to get in for shelter, and then went moaningon. Presently, in one of those sobbing intervals between the blasts, the coyotes tuned up with their whining howl; one, two, three, thenall together--to tell us that winter was coming. This sound brought ananswer from the bed--a long complaining cry--as if Pavel were having baddreams or were waking to some old misery. Peter listened, but did notstir. He was sitting on the floor by the kitchen stove. The coyotesbroke out again; yap, yap, yap--then the high whine. Pavel called forsomething and struggled up on his elbow. 

'He is scared of the wolves, ' Antonia whispered to me. 'In his countrythere are very many, and they eat men and women. ' We slid closertogether along the bench. 

I could not take my eyes off the man in the bed. His shirt was hangingopen, and his emaciated chest, covered with yellow bristle, rose andfell horribly. He began to cough. Peter shuffled to his feet, caught upthe teakettle and mixed him some hot water and whiskey. The sharp smellof spirits went through the room. 

Pavel snatched the cup and drank, then made Peter give him the bottleand slipped it under his pillow, grinning disagreeably, as if hehad outwitted someone. His eyes followed Peter about the room with acontemptuous, unfriendly expression. It seemed to me that he despisedhim for being so simple and docile. 

Presently Pavel began to talk to Mr. Shimerda, scarcely above a whisper. He was telling a long story, and as he went on, Antonia took my handunder the table and held it tight. She leaned forward and strained herears to hear him. He grew more and more excited, and kept pointing allaround his bed, as if there were things there and he wanted Mr. Shimerdato see them. 

'It's wolves, Jimmy, ' Antonia whispered. 'It's awful, what he says!'

The sick man raged and shook his fist. He seemed to be cursing peoplewho had wronged him. Mr. Shimerda caught him by the shoulders, but couldhardly hold him in bed. At last he was shut off by a coughing fit whichfairly choked him. He pulled a cloth from under his pillow and held itto his mouth. Quickly it was covered with bright red spots--I thought Ihad never seen any blood so bright. When he lay down and turned his faceto the wall, all the rage had gone out of him. He lay patiently fightingfor breath, like a child with croup. Antonia's father uncovered one ofhis long bony legs and rubbed it rhythmically. From our bench we couldsee what a hollow case his body was. His spine and shoulder-blades stoodout like the bones under the hide of a dead steer left in the fields. That sharp backbone must have hurt him when he lay on it. 

Gradually, relief came to all of us. Whatever it was, the worst wasover. Mr. Shimerda signed to us that Pavel was asleep. Without a wordPeter got up and lit his lantern. He was going out to get his team todrive us home. Mr. Shimerda went with him. We sat and watched the longbowed back under the blue sheet, scarcely daring to breathe. 

On the way home, when we were lying in the straw, under the jolting andrattling Antonia told me as much of the story as she could. What shedid not tell me then, she told later; we talked of nothing else for daysafterward. 

When Pavel and Peter were young men, living at home in Russia, they wereasked to be groomsmen for a friend who was to marry the belle of anothervillage. It was in the dead of winter and the groom's party went over tothe wedding in sledges. Peter and Pavel drove in the groom's sledge, andsix sledges followed with all his relatives and friends. 

After the ceremony at the church, the party went to a dinner givenby the parents of the bride. The dinner lasted all afternoon; then itbecame a supper and continued far into the night. There was much dancingand drinking. At midnight the parents of the bride said good-bye to herand blessed her. The groom took her up in his arms and carried her outto his sledge and tucked her under the blankets. He sprang in besideher, and Pavel and Peter (our Pavel and Peter!) took the frontseat. Pavel drove. The party set out with singing and the jingle ofsleigh-bells, the groom's sledge going first. All the drivers were moreor less the worse for merry-making, and the groom was absorbed in hisbride. 

The wolves were bad that winter, and everyone knew it, yet when theyheard the first wolf-cry, the drivers were not much alarmed. They hadtoo much good food and drink inside them. The first howls were takenup and echoed and with quickening repetitions. The wolves were comingtogether. There was no moon, but the starlight was clear on the snow. Ablack drove came up over the hill behind the wedding party. The wolvesran like streaks of shadow; they looked no bigger than dogs, but therewere hundreds of them. 

Something happened to the hindmost sledge: the driver lost control--hewas probably very drunk--the horses left the road, the sledge was caughtin a clump of trees, and overturned. The occupants rolled out over thesnow, and the fleetest of the wolves sprang upon them. The shrieks thatfollowed made everybody sober. The drivers stood up and lashed theirhorses. The groom had the best team and his sledge was lightest--all theothers carried from six to a dozen people. 

Another driver lost control. The screams of the horses were moreterrible to hear than the cries of the men and women. Nothing seemed tocheck the wolves. It was hard to tell what was happening in the rear;the people who were falling behind shrieked as piteously as those whowere already lost. The little bride hid her face on the groom's shoulderand sobbed. Pavel sat still and watched his horses. The road was clearand white, and the groom's three blacks went like the wind. It was onlynecessary to be calm and to guide them carefully. 

At length, as they breasted a long hill, Peter rose cautiously andlooked back. 'There are only three sledges left, ' he whispered. 

'And the wolves?' Pavel asked. 

'Enough! Enough for all of us. '

Pavel reached the brow of the hill, but only two sledges followed himdown the other side. In that moment on the hilltop, they saw behind thema whirling black group on the snow. Presently the groom screamed. He sawhis father's sledge overturned, with his mother and sisters. He sprangup as if he meant to jump, but the girl shrieked and held him back. Itwas even then too late. The black ground-shadows were already crowdingover the heap in the road, and one horse ran out across the fields, hisharness hanging to him, wolves at his heels. But the groom's movementhad given Pavel an idea. 

They were within a few miles of their village now. The only sledge leftout of six was not very far behind them, and Pavel's middle horse wasfailing. Beside a frozen pond something happened to the other sledge;Peter saw it plainly. Three big wolves got abreast of the horses, andthe horses went crazy. They tried to jump over each other, got tangledup in the harness, and overturned the sledge. 

When the shrieking behind them died away, Pavel realized that he wasalone upon the familiar road. 'They still come?' he asked Peter. 

'Yes. '

'How many?'

'Twenty, thirty--enough. '

Now his middle horse was being almost dragged by the other two. Pavelgave Peter the reins and stepped carefully into the back of the sledge. He called to the groom that they must lighten--and pointed to the bride. The young man cursed him and held her tighter. Pavel tried to drag heraway. In the struggle, the groom rose. Pavel knocked him over the sideof the sledge and threw the girl after him. He said he never rememberedexactly how he did it, or what happened afterward. Peter, crouching inthe front seat, saw nothing. The first thing either of them noticed wasa new sound that broke into the clear air, louder than they had everheard it before--the bell of the monastery of their own village, ringingfor early prayers. 

Pavel and Peter drove into the village alone, and they had been aloneever since. They were run out of their village. Pavel's own motherwould not look at him. They went away to strange towns, but when peoplelearned where they came from, they were always asked if they knew thetwo men who had fed the bride to the wolves. Wherever they went, thestory followed them. It took them five years to save money enough tocome to America. They worked in Chicago, Des Moines, Fort Wayne, butthey were always unfortunate. When Pavel's health grew so bad, theydecided to try farming. 

Pavel died a few days after he unburdened his mind to Mr. Shimerda, andwas buried in the Norwegian graveyard. Peter sold off everything, andleft the country--went to be cook in a railway construction camp wheregangs of Russians were employed. 

At his sale we bought Peter's wheelbarrow and some of his harness. During the auction he went about with his head down, and neverlifted his eyes. He seemed not to care about anything. The Black Hawkmoney-lender who held mortgages on Peter's livestock was there, and hebought in the sale notes at about fifty cents on the dollar. Everyonesaid Peter kissed the cow before she was led away by her new owner. Idid not see him do it, but this I know: after all his furniture and hiscookstove and pots and pans had been hauled off by the purchasers, when his house was stripped and bare, he sat down on the floor with hisclasp-knife and ate all the melons that he had put away for winter. WhenMr. Shimerda and Krajiek drove up in their wagon to take Peter to thetrain, they found him with a dripping beard, surrounded by heaps ofmelon rinds. 

The loss of his two friends had a depressing effect upon old Mr. Shimerda. When he was out hunting, he used to go into the empty loghouse and sit there, brooding. This cabin was his hermitage until thewinter snows penned him in his cave. For Antonia and me, the story ofthe wedding party was never at an end. We did not tell Pavel's secretto anyone, but guarded it jealously--as if the wolves of the Ukraine hadgathered that night long ago, and the wedding party been sacrificed, to give us a painful and peculiar pleasure. At night, before I went tosleep, I often found myself in a sledge drawn by three horses, dashingthrough a country that looked something like Nebraska and something likeVirginia. 

IX

THE FIRST SNOWFALL came early in December. I remember how the worldlooked from our sitting-room window as I dressed behind the stove thatmorning: the low sky was like a sheet of metal; the blond cornfields hadfaded out into ghostliness at last; the little pond was frozen under itsstiff willow bushes. Big white flakes were whirling over everything anddisappearing in the red grass. 

Beyond the pond, on the slope that climbed to the cornfield, there was, faintly marked in the grass, a great circle where the Indians used toride. Jake and Otto were sure that when they galloped round that ringthe Indians tortured prisoners, bound to a stake in the centre; butgrandfather thought they merely ran races or trained horses there. Whenever one looked at this slope against the setting sun, the circleshowed like a pattern in the grass; and this morning, when thefirst light spray of snow lay over it, it came out with wonderfuldistinctness, like strokes of Chinese white on canvas. The old figurestirred me as it had never done before and seemed a good omen for thewinter. 

As soon as the snow had packed hard, I began to drive about the countryin a clumsy sleigh that Otto Fuchs made for me by fastening a woodengoods-box on bobs. Fuchs had been apprenticed to a cabinetmaker in theold country and was very handy with tools. He would have done a betterjob if I hadn't hurried him. My first trip was to the post-office, andthe next day I went over to take Yulka and Antonia for a sleigh-ride. 

It was a bright, cold day. I piled straw and buffalo robes into thebox, and took two hot bricks wrapped in old blankets. When I got to theShimerdas', I did not go up to the house, but sat in my sleigh at thebottom of the draw and called. Antonia and Yulka came running out, wearing little rabbit-skin hats their father had made for them. Theyhad heard about my sledge from Ambrosch and knew why I had come. Theytumbled in beside me and we set off toward the north, along a road thathappened to be broken. 

The sky was brilliantly blue, and the sunlight on the glittering whitestretches of prairie was almost blinding. As Antonia said, the wholeworld was changed by the snow; we kept looking in vain for familiarlandmarks. The deep arroyo through which Squaw Creek wound was now onlya cleft between snowdrifts--very blue when one looked down into it. Thetree-tops that had been gold all the autumn were dwarfed and twisted, asif they would never have any life in them again. The few little cedars, which were so dull and dingy before, now stood out a strong, duskygreen. The wind had the burning taste of fresh snow; my throat andnostrils smarted as if someone had opened a hartshorn bottle. The coldstung, and at the same time delighted one. My horse's breath rose likesteam, and whenever we stopped he smoked all over. The cornfields gotback a little of their colour under the dazzling light, and stood thepalest possible gold in the sun and snow. All about us the snow wascrusted in shallow terraces, with tracings like ripple-marks at theedges, curly waves that were the actual impression of the stinging lashin the wind. 

The girls had on cotton dresses under their shawls; they kept shiveringbeneath the buffalo robes and hugging each other for warmth. Butthey were so glad to get away from their ugly cave and their mother'sscolding that they begged me to go on and on, as far as Russian Peter'shouse. The great fresh open, after the stupefying warmth indoors, madethem behave like wild things. They laughed and shouted, and said theynever wanted to go home again. Couldn't we settle down and live inRussian Peter's house, Yulka asked, and couldn't I go to town and buythings for us to keep house with?

All the way to Russian Peter's we were extravagantly happy, but when weturned back--it must have been about four o'clock--the east wind grewstronger and began to howl; the sun lost its heartening power and thesky became grey and sombre. I took off my long woollen comforter andwound it around Yulka's throat. She got so cold that we made her hideher head under the buffalo robe. Antonia and I sat erect, but I held thereins clumsily, and my eyes were blinded by the wind a good deal of thetime. It was growing dark when we got to their house, but I refused togo in with them and get warm. I knew my hands would ache terribly if Iwent near a fire. Yulka forgot to give me back my comforter, and I hadto drive home directly against the wind. The next day I came down withan attack of quinsy, which kept me in the house for nearly two weeks. 

The basement kitchen seemed heavenly safe and warm in those days--likea tight little boat in a winter sea. The men were out in the fields allday, husking corn, and when they came in at noon, with long caps pulleddown over their ears and their feet in red-lined overshoes, I usedto think they were like Arctic explorers. In the afternoons, whengrandmother sat upstairs darning, or making husking-gloves, I read 'TheSwiss Family Robinson' aloud to her, and I felt that the Swiss familyhad no advantages over us in the way of an adventurous life. I wasconvinced that man's strongest antagonist is the cold. I admired thecheerful zest with which grandmother went about keeping us warm andcomfortable and well-fed. She often reminded me, when she was preparingfor the return of the hungry men, that this country was not likeVirginia; and that here a cook had, as she said, 'very little to dowith. ' On Sundays she gave us as much chicken as we could eat, and onother days we had ham or bacon or sausage meat. She baked either piesor cake for us every day, unless, for a change, she made my favouritepudding, striped with currants and boiled in a bag. 

Next to getting warm and keeping warm, dinner and supper were the mostinteresting things we had to think about. Our lives centred aroundwarmth and food and the return of the men at nightfall. I used towonder, when they came in tired from the fields, their feet numb andtheir hands cracked and sore, how they could do all the chores soconscientiously: feed and water and bed the horses, milk the cows, andlook after the pigs. When supper was over, it took them a long whileto get the cold out of their bones. While grandmother and I washed thedishes and grandfather read his paper upstairs, Jake and Otto sat onthe long bench behind the stove, 'easing' their inside boots, or rubbingmutton tallow into their cracked hands. 

Every Saturday night we popped corn or made taffy, and Otto Fuchs usedto sing, 'For I Am a Cowboy and Know I've Done Wrong, ' or, 'Bury Me Noton the Lone Prairee. ' He had a good baritone voice and always led thesinging when we went to church services at the sod schoolhouse. 

I can still see those two men sitting on the bench; Otto's close-clippedhead and Jake's shaggy hair slicked flat in front by a wet comb. I cansee the sag of their tired shoulders against the whitewashed wall. Whatgood fellows they were, how much they knew, and how many things they hadkept faith with!

Fuchs had been a cowboy, a stage-driver, a bartender, a miner; hadwandered all over that great Western country and done hard workeverywhere, though, as grandmother said, he had nothing to show for it. Jake was duller than Otto. He could scarcely read, wrote even his namewith difficulty, and he had a violent temper which sometimes made himbehave like a crazy man--tore him all to pieces and actually made himill. But he was so soft-hearted that anyone could impose upon him. Ifhe, as he said, 'forgot himself' and swore before grandmother, he wentabout depressed and shamefaced all day. They were both of them jovialabout the cold in winter and the heat in summer, always ready to workovertime and to meet emergencies. It was a matter of pride with themnot to spare themselves. Yet they were the sort of men who never get on, somehow, or do anything but work hard for a dollar or two a day. 

On those bitter, starlit nights, as we sat around the old stove that fedus and warmed us and kept us cheerful, we could hear the coyotes howlingdown by the corrals, and their hungry, wintry cry used to remind theboys of wonderful animal stories; about grey wolves and bears in theRockies, wildcats and panthers in the Virginia mountains. SometimesFuchs could be persuaded to talk about the outlaws and desperatecharacters he had known. I remember one funny story about himself thatmade grandmother, who was working her bread on the bread-board, laughuntil she wiped her eyes with her bare arm, her hands being floury. Itwas like this:

When Otto left Austria to come to America, he was asked by one of hisrelatives to look after a woman who was crossing on the same boat, tojoin her husband in Chicago. The woman started off with two children, but it was clear that her family might grow larger on the journey. Fuchssaid he 'got on fine with the kids, ' and liked the mother, though sheplayed a sorry trick on him. In mid-ocean she proceeded to have notone baby, but three! This event made Fuchs the object of undeservednotoriety, since he was travelling with her. The steerage stewardesswas indignant with him, the doctor regarded him with suspicion. Thefirst-cabin passengers, who made up a purse for the woman, took anembarrassing interest in Otto, and often enquired of him about hischarge. When the triplets were taken ashore at New York, he had, as hesaid, 'to carry some of them. ' The trip to Chicago was even worse thanthe ocean voyage. On the train it was very difficult to get milk for thebabies and to keep their bottles clean. The mother did her best, butno woman, out of her natural resources, could feed three babies. Thehusband, in Chicago, was working in a furniture factory for modestwages, and when he met his family at the station he was rather crushedby the size of it. He, too, seemed to consider Fuchs in some fashion toblame. 'I was sure glad, ' Otto concluded, 'that he didn't take his hardfeeling out on that poor woman; but he had a sullen eye for me, allright! Now, did you ever hear of a young feller's having such hard luck, Mrs. Burden?'

Grandmother told him she was sure the Lord had remembered these thingsto his credit, and had helped him out of many a scrape when he didn'trealize that he was being protected by Providence. 

X

FOR SEVERAL WEEKS after my sleigh-ride, we heard nothing from theShimerdas. My sore throat kept me indoors, and grandmother had a coldwhich made the housework heavy for her. When Sunday came she was gladto have a day of rest. One night at supper Fuchs told us he had seen Mr. Shimerda out hunting. 

'He's made himself a rabbit-skin cap, Jim, and a rabbit-skin collar thathe buttons on outside his coat. They ain't got but one overcoat among'em over there, and they take turns wearing it. They seem awful scaredof cold, and stick in that hole in the bank like badgers. '

'All but the crazy boy, ' Jake put in. 'He never wears the coat. Krajieksays he's turrible strong and can stand anything. I guess rabbits mustbe getting scarce in this locality. Ambrosch come along by the cornfieldyesterday where I was at work and showed me three prairie dogs he'dshot. He asked me if they was good to eat. I spit and made a face andtook on, to scare him, but he just looked like he was smarter'n me andput 'em back in his sack and walked off. '

Grandmother looked up in alarm and spoke to grandfather. 'Josiah, youdon't suppose Krajiek would let them poor creatures eat prairie dogs, doyou?'

'You had better go over and see our neighbours tomorrow, Emmaline, ' hereplied gravely. 

Fuchs put in a cheerful word and said prairie dogs were clean beastsand ought to be good for food, but their family connections were againstthem. I asked what he meant, and he grinned and said they belonged tothe rat family. 

When I went downstairs in the morning, I found grandmother and Jakepacking a hamper basket in the kitchen. 

'Now, Jake, ' grandmother was saying, 'if you can find that old roosterthat got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we'll take himalong. There's no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn't have got hensfrom her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I reckonshe was confused and didn't know where to begin. I've come strange to anew country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, nomatter what you don't have. 

'Just as you say, ma'm, ' said Jake, 'but I hate to think of Krajiekgetting a leg of that old rooster. ' He tramped out through the longcellar and dropped the heavy door behind him. 

After breakfast grandmother and Jake and I bundled ourselves up andclimbed into the cold front wagon-seat. As we approached the Shimerdas', we heard the frosty whine of the pump and saw Antonia, her head tiedup and her cotton dress blown about her, throwing all her weight on thepump-handle as it went up and down. She heard our wagon, looked backover her shoulder, and, catching up her pail of water, started at a runfor the hole in the bank. 

Jake helped grandmother to the ground, saying he would bring theprovisions after he had blanketed his horses. We went slowly up the icypath toward the door sunk in the drawside. Blue puffs of smoke came fromthe stovepipe that stuck out through the grass and snow, but the windwhisked them roughly away. 

Mrs. Shimerda opened the door before we knocked and seized grandmother'shand. She did not say 'How do!' as usual, but at once began to cry, talking very fast in her own language, pointing to her feet which weretied up in rags, and looking about accusingly at everyone. 

The old man was sitting on a stump behind the stove, crouching over asif he were trying to hide from us. Yulka was on the floor at his feet, her kitten in her lap. She peeped out at me and smiled, but, glancing upat her mother, hid again. Antonia was washing pans and dishes in adark corner. The crazy boy lay under the only window, stretched ona gunny-sack stuffed with straw. As soon as we entered, he threw agrain-sack over the crack at the bottom of the door. The air in the cavewas stifling, and it was very dark, too. A lighted lantern, hung overthe stove, threw out a feeble yellow glimmer. 

Mrs. Shimerda snatched off the covers of two barrels behind the door, and made us look into them. In one there were some potatoes that hadbeen frozen and were rotting, in the other was a little pile of flour. Grandmother murmured something in embarrassment, but the Bohemian womanlaughed scornfully, a kind of whinny-laugh, and, catching up an emptycoffee-pot from the shelf, shook it at us with a look positivelyvindictive. 

Grandmother went on talking in her polite Virginia way, not admittingtheir stark need or her own remissness, until Jake arrived with thehamper, as if in direct answer to Mrs. Shimerda's reproaches. Then thepoor woman broke down. She dropped on the floor beside her crazy son, hid her face on her knees, and sat crying bitterly. Grandmother paid noheed to her, but called Antonia to come and help empty the basket. Tonyleft her corner reluctantly. I had never seen her crushed like thisbefore. 

'You not mind my poor mamenka, Mrs. Burden. She is so sad, ' shewhispered, as she wiped her wet hands on her skirt and took the thingsgrandmother handed her. 

The crazy boy, seeing the food, began to make soft, gurgling noisesand stroked his stomach. Jake came in again, this time with a sack ofpotatoes. Grandmother looked about in perplexity. 

'Haven't you got any sort of cave or cellar outside, Antonia? This is noplace to keep vegetables. How did your potatoes get frozen?'

'We get from Mr. Bushy, at the post-office what he throw out. We got nopotatoes, Mrs. Burden, ' Tony admitted mournfully. 

When Jake went out, Marek crawled along the floor and stuffed up thedoor-crack again. Then, quietly as a shadow, Mr. Shimerda came out frombehind the stove. He stood brushing his hand over his smooth grey hair, as if he were trying to clear away a fog about his head. He was cleanand neat as usual, with his green neckcloth and his coral pin. He tookgrandmother's arm and led her behind the stove, to the back of the room. In the rear wall was another little cave; a round hole, not much biggerthan an oil barrel, scooped out in the black earth. When I got up on oneof the stools and peered into it, I saw some quilts and a pile of straw. The old man held the lantern. 'Yulka, ' he said in a low, despairingvoice, 'Yulka; my Antonia!'

Grandmother drew back. 'You mean they sleep in there--your girls?' Hebowed his head. 

Tony slipped under his arm. 'It is very cold on the floor, and thisis warm like the badger hole. I like for sleep there, ' she insistedeagerly. 'My mamenka have nice bed, with pillows from our own geese inBohemie. See, Jim?' She pointed to the narrow bunk which Krajiek hadbuilt against the wall for himself before the Shimerdas came. 

Grandmother sighed. 'Sure enough, where WOULD you sleep, dear! Idon't doubt you're warm there. You'll have a better house after while, Antonia, and then you will forget these hard times. '

Mr. Shimerda made grandmother sit down on the only chair and pointedhis wife to a stool beside her. Standing before them with his handon Antonia's shoulder, he talked in a low tone, and his daughtertranslated. He wanted us to know that they were not beggars in the oldcountry; he made good wages, and his family were respected there. Heleft Bohemia with more than a thousand dollars in savings, after theirpassage money was paid. He had in some way lost on exchange in New York, and the railway fare to Nebraska was more than they had expected. By thetime they paid Krajiek for the land, and bought his horses and oxenand some old farm machinery, they had very little money left. He wishedgrandmother to know, however, that he still had some money. If theycould get through until spring came, they would buy a cow and chickensand plant a garden, and would then do very well. Ambrosch and Antoniawere both old enough to work in the fields, and they were willing towork. But the snow and the bitter weather had disheartened them all. 

Antonia explained that her father meant to build a new house for them inthe spring; he and Ambrosch had already split the logs for it, but thelogs were all buried in the snow, along the creek where they had beenfelled. 

While grandmother encouraged and gave them advice, I sat down on thefloor with Yulka and let her show me her kitten. Marek slid cautiouslytoward us and began to exhibit his webbed fingers. I knew he wantedto make his queer noises for me--to bark like a dog or whinny like ahorse--but he did not dare in the presence of his elders. Marek wasalways trying to be agreeable, poor fellow, as if he had it on his mindthat he must make up for his deficiencies. 

Mrs. Shimerda grew more calm and reasonable before our visit was over, and, while Antonia translated, put in a word now and then on her ownaccount. The woman had a quick ear, and caught up phrases whenever sheheard English spoken. As we rose to go, she opened her wooden chest andbrought out a bag made of bed-ticking, about as long as a flour sack andhalf as wide, stuffed full of something. At sight of it, the crazy boybegan to smack his lips. When Mrs. Shimerda opened the bag and stirredthe contents with her hand, it gave out a salty, earthy smell, verypungent, even among the other odours of that cave. She measured a teacupfull, tied it up in a bit of sacking, and presented it ceremoniously tograndmother. 

'For cook, ' she announced. 'Little now; be very much when cook, 'spreading out her hands as if to indicate that the pint would swell toa gallon. 'Very good. You no have in this country. All things for eatbetter in my country. '

'Maybe so, Mrs. Shimerda, ' grandmother said dryly. 'I can't say but Iprefer our bread to yours, myself. '

Antonia undertook to explain. 'This very good, Mrs. Burden'--she claspedher hands as if she could not express how good--'it make very much whenyou cook, like what my mama say. Cook with rabbit, cook with chicken, inthe gravy--oh, so good!'

All the way home grandmother and Jake talked about how easily goodChristian people could forget they were their brothers' keepers. 

'I will say, Jake, some of our brothers and sisters are hard tokeep. Where's a body to begin, with these people? They're wanting ineverything, and most of all in horse-sense. Nobody can give 'em that, I guess. Jimmy, here, is about as able to take over a homestead as theyare. Do you reckon that boy Ambrosch has any real push in him?'

'He's a worker, all right, ma'm, and he's got some ketch-on about him;but he's a mean one. Folks can be mean enough to get on in this world;and then, ag'in, they can be too mean. '

That night, while grandmother was getting supper, we opened the packageMrs. Shimerda had given her. It was full of little brown chips thatlooked like the shavings of some root. They were as light as feathers, and the most noticeable thing about them was their penetrating, earthyodour. We could not determine whether they were animal or vegetable. 

'They might be dried meat from some queer beast, Jim. They ain't driedfish, and they never grew on stalk or vine. I'm afraid of 'em. Anyhow, Ishouldn't want to eat anything that had been shut up for months with oldclothes and goose pillows. '

She threw the package into the stove, but I bit off a corner of one ofthe chips I held in my hand, and chewed it tentatively. I never forgotthe strange taste; though it was many years before I knew that thoselittle brown shavings, which the Shimerdas had brought so far andtreasured so jealously, were dried mushrooms. They had been gathered, probably, in some deep Bohemian forest. . . . 

XI

DURING THE WEEK before Christmas, Jake was the most important personof our household, for he was to go to town and do all our Christmasshopping. But on the twenty-first of December, the snow began to fall. The flakes came down so thickly that from the sitting-room windowsI could not see beyond the windmill--its frame looked dim and grey, unsubstantial like a shadow. The snow did not stop falling all day, orduring the night that followed. The cold was not severe, but the stormwas quiet and resistless. The men could not go farther than the barnsand corral. They sat about the house most of the day as if it wereSunday; greasing their boots, mending their suspenders, plaitingwhiplashes. 

On the morning of the twenty-second, grandfather announced at breakfastthat it would be impossible to go to Black Hawk for Christmas purchases. Jake was sure he could get through on horseback, and bring home ourthings in saddle-bags; but grandfather told him the roads would beobliterated, and a newcomer in the country would be lost ten timesover. Anyway, he would never allow one of his horses to be put to such astrain. 

We decided to have a country Christmas, without any help from town. Ihad wanted to get some picture books for Yulka and Antonia; even Yulkawas able to read a little now. Grandmother took me into the ice-coldstoreroom, where she had some bolts of gingham and sheeting. She cutsquares of cotton cloth and we sewed them together into a book. Webound it between pasteboards, which I covered with brilliant calico, representing scenes from a circus. For two days I sat at the dining-roomtable, pasting this book full of pictures for Yulka. We had filesof those good old family magazines which used to publish colouredlithographs of popular paintings, and I was allowed to use some ofthese. I took 'Napoleon Announcing the Divorce to Josephine' for myfrontispiece. On the white pages I grouped Sunday-School cards andadvertising cards which I had brought from my 'old country. ' Fuchs gotout the old candle-moulds and made tallow candles. Grandmother hunted upher fancy cake-cutters and baked gingerbread men and roosters, which wedecorated with burnt sugar and red cinnamon drops. 

On the day before Christmas, Jake packed the things we were sendingto the Shimerdas in his saddle-bags and set off on grandfather's greygelding. When he mounted his horse at the door, I saw that he had ahatchet slung to his belt, and he gave grandmother a meaning look whichtold me he was planning a surprise for me. That afternoon I watchedlong and eagerly from the sitting-room window. At last I saw a dark spotmoving on the west hill, beside the half-buried cornfield, where thesky was taking on a coppery flush from the sun that did not quite breakthrough. I put on my cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to thepond, I could see that he was bringing in a little cedar tree acrosshis pommel. He used to help my father cut Christmas trees for me inVirginia, and he had not forgotten how much I liked them. 

By the time we had placed the cold, fresh-smelling little tree in acorner of the sitting-room, it was already Christmas Eve. After supperwe all gathered there, and even grandfather, reading his paper by thetable, looked up with friendly interest now and then. The cedar wasabout five feet high and very shapely. We hung it with the gingerbreadanimals, strings of popcorn, and bits of candle which Fuchs had fittedinto pasteboard sockets. Its real splendours, however, came from themost unlikely place in the world--from Otto's cowboy trunk. I had neverseen anything in that trunk but old boots and spurs and pistols, anda fascinating mixture of yellow leather thongs, cartridges, andshoemaker's wax. From under the lining he now produced a collection ofbrilliantly coloured paper figures, several inches high and stiff enoughto stand alone. They had been sent to him year after year, by his oldmother in Austria. There was a bleeding heart, in tufts of paper lace;there were the three kings, gorgeously apparelled, and the ox and theass and the shepherds; there was the Baby in the manger, and a groupof angels, singing; there were camels and leopards, held by the blackslaves of the three kings. Our tree became the talking tree of thefairy tale; legends and stories nestled like birds in its branches. Grandmother said it reminded her of the Tree of Knowledge. We put sheetsof cotton wool under it for a snow-field, and Jake's pocket-mirror for afrozen lake. 

I can see them now, exactly as they looked, working about the table inthe lamplight: Jake with his heavy features, so rudely moulded that hisface seemed, somehow, unfinished; Otto with his half-ear and the savagescar that made his upper lip curl so ferociously under his twistedmoustache. As I remember them, what unprotected faces they were; theirvery roughness and violence made them defenceless. These boys had nopractised manner behind which they could retreat and hold people at adistance. They had only their hard fists to batter at the world with. Otto was already one of those drifting, case-hardened labourers whonever marry or have children of their own. Yet he was so fond ofchildren!

XII

ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, when I got down to the kitchen, the men were justcoming in from their morning chores--the horses and pigs always hadtheir breakfast before we did. Jake and Otto shouted 'Merry Christmas!'to me, and winked at each other when they saw the waffle-irons on thestove. Grandfather came down, wearing a white shirt and his Sunday coat. Morning prayers were longer than usual. He read the chapters from SaintMatthew about the birth of Christ, and as we listened, it all seemedlike something that had happened lately, and near at hand. In his prayerhe thanked the Lord for the first Christmas, and for all that it hadmeant to the world ever since. He gave thanks for our food and comfort, and prayed for the poor and destitute in great cities, where thestruggle for life was harder than it was here with us. Grandfather'sprayers were often very interesting. He had the gift of simple andmoving expression. Because he talked so little, his words had a peculiarforce; they were not worn dull from constant use. His prayers reflectedwhat he was thinking about at the time, and it was chiefly through themthat we got to know his feelings and his views about things. 

After we sat down to our waffles and sausage, Jake told us how pleasedthe Shimerdas had been with their presents; even Ambrosch was friendlyand went to the creek with him to cut the Christmas tree. It was asoft grey day outside, with heavy clouds working across the sky, andoccasional squalls of snow. There were always odd jobs to be done aboutthe barn on holidays, and the men were busy until afternoon. ThenJake and I played dominoes, while Otto wrote a long letter home to hismother. He always wrote to her on Christmas Day, he said, no matterwhere he was, and no matter how long it had been since his last letter. All afternoon he sat in the dining-room. He would write for a while, then sit idle, his clenched fist lying on the table, his eyes followingthe pattern of the oilcloth. He spoke and wrote his own language soseldom that it came to him awkwardly. His effort to remember entirelyabsorbed him. 

At about four o'clock a visitor appeared: Mr. Shimerda, wearing hisrabbit-skin cap and collar, and new mittens his wife had knitted. He hadcome to thank us for the presents, and for all grandmother's kindness tohis family. Jake and Otto joined us from the basement and we sat aboutthe stove, enjoying the deepening grey of the winter afternoon andthe atmosphere of comfort and security in my grandfather's house. Thisfeeling seemed completely to take possession of Mr. Shimerda. I suppose, in the crowded clutter of their cave, the old man had come to believethat peace and order had vanished from the earth, or existed only in theold world he had left so far behind. He sat still and passive, his headresting against the back of the wooden rocking-chair, his hands relaxedupon the arms. His face had a look of weariness and pleasure, like thatof sick people when they feel relief from pain. Grandmother insisted onhis drinking a glass of Virginia apple-brandy after his long walk in thecold, and when a faint flush came up in his cheeks, his features mighthave been cut out of a shell, they were so transparent. He said almostnothing, and smiled rarely; but as he rested there we all had a sense ofhis utter content. 

As it grew dark, I asked whether I might light the Christmas tree beforethe lamp was brought. When the candle-ends sent up their conical yellowflames, all the coloured figures from Austria stood out clear and fullof meaning against the green boughs. Mr. Shimerda rose, crossed himself, and quietly knelt down before the tree, his head sunk forward. Hislong body formed a letter 'S. ' I saw grandmother look apprehensively atgrandfather. He was rather narrow in religious matters, and sometimesspoke out and hurt people's feelings. There had been nothing strangeabout the tree before, but now, with some one kneeling beforeit--images, candles. . . Grandfather merely put his finger-tips to hisbrow and bowed his venerable head, thus Protestantizing the atmosphere. 

We persuaded our guest to stay for supper with us. He needed littleurging. As we sat down to the table, it occurred to me that he likedto look at us, and that our faces were open books to him. When hisdeep-seeing eyes rested on me, I felt as if he were looking far aheadinto the future for me, down the road I would have to travel. 

At nine o'clock Mr. Shimerda lighted one of our lanterns and put on hisovercoat and fur collar. He stood in the little entry hall, the lanternand his fur cap under his arm, shaking hands with us. When he tookgrandmother's hand, he bent over it as he always did, and said slowly, 'Good woman!' He made the sign of the cross over me, put on his cap andwent off in the dark. As we turned back to the sitting-room, grandfatherlooked at me searchingly. 'The prayers of all good people are good, ' hesaid quietly. 

XIII

THE WEEK FOLLOWING Christmas brought in a thaw, and by New Year's Dayall the world about us was a broth of grey slush, and the guttered slopebetween the windmill and the barn was running black water. The softblack earth stood out in patches along the roadsides. I resumed all mychores, carried in the cobs and wood and water, and spent the afternoonsat the barn, watching Jake shell corn with a hand-sheller. 

One morning, during this interval of fine weather, Antonia and hermother rode over on one of their shaggy old horses to pay us a visit. It was the first time Mrs. Shimerda had been to our house, and she ranabout examining our carpets and curtains and furniture, all the whilecommenting upon them to her daughter in an envious, complaining tone. In the kitchen she caught up an iron pot that stood on the back ofthe stove and said: 'You got many, Shimerdas no got. ' I thought itweak-minded of grandmother to give the pot to her. 

After dinner, when she was helping to wash the dishes, she said, tossingher head: 'You got many things for cook. If I got all things like you, Imake much better. '

She was a conceited, boastful old thing, and even misfortune could nothumble her. I was so annoyed that I felt coldly even toward Antonia andlistened unsympathetically when she told me her father was not well. 

'My papa sad for the old country. He not look good. He never make musicany more. At home he play violin all the time; for weddings and fordance. Here never. When I beg him for play, he shake his head no. Somedays he take his violin out of his box and make with his fingers onthe strings, like this, but never he make the music. He don't like thiskawntree. '

'People who don't like this country ought to stay at home, ' I saidseverely. 'We don't make them come here. '

'He not want to come, never!' she burst out. 'My mamenka make him come. All the time she say: "America big country; much money, much land formy boys, much husband for my girls. " My papa, he cry for leave his oldfriends what make music with him. He love very much the man what playthe long horn like this'--she indicated a slide trombone. "They goto school together and are friends from boys. But my mama, she wantAmbrosch for be rich, with many cattle. "'

'Your mama, ' I said angrily, 'wants other people's things. '

"Your grandfather is rich, " she retorted fiercely. 'Why he not help mypapa? Ambrosch be rich, too, after while, and he pay back. He is verysmart boy. For Ambrosch my mama come here. '

Ambrosch was considered the important person in the family. Mrs. Shimerda and Antonia always deferred to him, though he was often surlywith them and contemptuous toward his father. Ambrosch and his motherhad everything their own way. Though Antonia loved her father more thanshe did anyone else, she stood in awe of her elder brother. 

After I watched Antonia and her mother go over the hill on theirmiserable horse, carrying our iron pot with them, I turned tograndmother, who had taken up her darning, and said I hoped thatsnooping old woman wouldn't come to see us any more. 

Grandmother chuckled and drove her bright needle across a hole in Otto'ssock. 'She's not old, Jim, though I expect she seems old to you. No, Iwouldn't mourn if she never came again. But, you see, a body never knowswhat traits poverty might bring out in 'em. It makes a woman grasping tosee her children want for things. Now read me a chapter in "The Princeof the House of David. " Let's forget the Bohemians. '

We had three weeks of this mild, open weather. The cattle in the corralate corn almost as fast as the men could shell it for them, and we hopedthey would be ready for an early market. One morning the two big bulls, Gladstone and Brigham Young, thought spring had come, and they began totease and butt at each other across the barbed wire that separated them. Soon they got angry. They bellowed and pawed up the soft earth withtheir hoofs, rolling their eyes and tossing their heads. Each withdrewto a far corner of his own corral, and then they made for each other ata gallop. Thud, thud, we could hear the impact of their great heads, andtheir bellowing shook the pans on the kitchen shelves. Had they not beendehorned, they would have torn each other to pieces. Pretty soon the fatsteers took it up and began butting and horning each other. Clearly, theaffair had to be stopped. We all stood by and watched admiringly whileFuchs rode into the corral with a pitchfork and prodded the bulls againand again, finally driving them apart. 

The big storm of the winter began on my eleventh birthday, the twentiethof January. When I went down to breakfast that morning, Jake and Ottocame in white as snow-men, beating their hands and stamping their feet. They began to laugh boisterously when they saw me, calling:

'You've got a birthday present this time, Jim, and no mistake. They wasa full-grown blizzard ordered for you. '

All day the storm went on. The snow did not fall this time, it simplyspilled out of heaven, like thousands of featherbeds being emptied. Thatafternoon the kitchen was a carpenter-shop; the men brought in theirtools and made two great wooden shovels with long handles. Neithergrandmother nor I could go out in the storm, so Jake fed the chickensand brought in a pitiful contribution of eggs. 

Next day our men had to shovel until noon to reach the barn--and thesnow was still falling! There had not been such a storm in the ten yearsmy grandfather had lived in Nebraska. He said at dinner that we wouldnot try to reach the cattle--they were fat enough to go without theircorn for a day or two; but tomorrow we must feed them and thaw out theirwater-tap so that they could drink. We could not so much as see thecorrals, but we knew the steers were over there, huddled together underthe north bank. Our ferocious bulls, subdued enough by this time, wereprobably warming each other's backs. 'This'll take the bile out of 'em!'Fuchs remarked gleefully. 

At noon that day the hens had not been heard from. After dinner Jake andOtto, their damp clothes now dried on them, stretched their stiff armsand plunged again into the drifts. They made a tunnel through the snowto the hen-house, with walls so solid that grandmother and I could walkback and forth in it. We found the chickens asleep; perhaps they thoughtnight had come to stay. One old rooster was stirring about, pecking atthe solid lump of ice in their water-tin. When we flashed the lanternin their eyes, the hens set up a great cackling and flew about clumsily, scattering down-feathers. The mottled, pin-headed guinea-hens, alwaysresentful of captivity, ran screeching out into the tunnel and tried topoke their ugly, painted faces through the snow walls. By five o'clockthe chores were done just when it was time to begin them all over again!That was a strange, unnatural sort of day. 

XIV

ON THE MORNING of the twenty-second I wakened with a start. Before Iopened my eyes, I seemed to know that something had happened. I heardexcited voices in the kitchen--grandmother's was so shrill that I knewshe must be almost beside herself. I looked forward to any new crisiswith delight. What could it be, I wondered, as I hurried into myclothes. Perhaps the barn had burned; perhaps the cattle had frozen todeath; perhaps a neighbour was lost in the storm. 

Down in the kitchen grandfather was standing before the stove withhis hands behind him. Jake and Otto had taken off their boots and wererubbing their woollen socks. Their clothes and boots were steaming, andthey both looked exhausted. On the bench behind the stove lay a man, covered up with a blanket. Grandmother motioned me to the dining-room. Iobeyed reluctantly. I watched her as she came and went, carrying dishes. Her lips were tightly compressed and she kept whispering to herself:'Oh, dear Saviour!' 'Lord, Thou knowest!'

Presently grandfather came in and spoke to me: 'Jimmy, we will nothave prayers this morning, because we have a great deal to do. Old Mr. Shimerda is dead, and his family are in great distress. Ambrosch cameover here in the middle of the night, and Jake and Otto went back withhim. The boys have had a hard night, and you must not bother them withquestions. That is Ambrosch, asleep on the bench. Come in to breakfast, boys. '

After Jake and Otto had swallowed their first cup of coffee, they beganto talk excitedly, disregarding grandmother's warning glances. I held mytongue, but I listened with all my ears. 

'No, sir, ' Fuchs said in answer to a question from grandfather, 'nobodyheard the gun go off. Ambrosch was out with the ox-team, trying tobreak a road, and the women-folks was shut up tight in their cave. WhenAmbrosch come in, it was dark and he didn't see nothing, but theoxen acted kind of queer. One of 'em ripped around and got away fromhim--bolted clean out of the stable. His hands is blistered where therope run through. He got a lantern and went back and found the old man, just as we seen him. '

'Poor soul, poor soul!' grandmother groaned. 'I'd like to think he neverdone it. He was always considerate and un-wishful to give trouble. Howcould he forget himself and bring this on us!'

'I don't think he was out of his head for a minute, Mrs. Burden, ' Fuchsdeclared. 'He done everything natural. You know he was always sort offixy, and fixy he was to the last. He shaved after dinner, and washedhisself all over after the girls had done the dishes. Antonia heated thewater for him. Then he put on a clean shirt and clean socks, and afterhe was dressed he kissed her and the little one and took his gun andsaid he was going out to hunt rabbits. He must have gone right down tothe barn and done it then. He layed down on that bunk-bed, close tothe ox stalls, where he always slept. When we found him, everything wasdecent except'--Fuchs wrinkled his brow and hesitated--'except what hecouldn't nowise foresee. His coat was hung on a peg, and his boots wasunder the bed. He'd took off that silk neckcloth he always wore, andfolded it smooth and stuck his pin through it. He turned back his shirtat the neck and rolled up his sleeves. '

'I don't see how he could do it!' grandmother kept saying. 

Otto misunderstood her. 'Why, ma'am, it was simple enough; he pulled thetrigger with his big toe. He layed over on his side and put the endof the barrel in his mouth, then he drew up one foot and felt for thetrigger. He found it all right!'

'Maybe he did, ' said Jake grimly. 'There's something mighty queer aboutit. '

'Now what do you mean, Jake?' grandmother asked sharply. 

'Well, ma'm, I found Krajiek's axe under the manger, and I picks it upand carries it over to the corpse, and I take my oath it just fit thegash in the front of the old man's face. That there Krajiek had beensneakin' round, pale and quiet, and when he seen me examinin' the axe, he begun whimperin', "My God, man, don't do that!" "I reckon I'm a-goin'to look into this, " says I. Then he begun to squeal like a rat and runabout wringin' his hands. "They'll hang me!" says he. "My God, they'llhang me sure!"'

Fuchs spoke up impatiently. 'Krajiek's gone silly, Jake, and so haveyou. The old man wouldn't have made all them preparations for Krajiek tomurder him, would he? It don't hang together. The gun was right besidehim when Ambrosch found him. '

'Krajiek could 'a' put it there, couldn't he?' Jake demanded. 

Grandmother broke in excitedly: 'See here, Jake Marpole, don't you gotrying to add murder to suicide. We're deep enough in trouble. Ottoreads you too many of them detective stories. '

'It will be easy to decide all that, Emmaline, ' said grandfatherquietly. 'If he shot himself in the way they think, the gash will betorn from the inside outward. '

'Just so it is, Mr. Burden, ' Otto affirmed. 'I seen bunches of hair andstuff sticking to the poles and straw along the roof. They was blown upthere by gunshot, no question. '

Grandmother told grandfather she meant to go over to the Shimerdas' withhim. 

'There is nothing you can do, ' he said doubtfully. 'The body can't betouched until we get the coroner here from Black Hawk, and that will bea matter of several days, this weather. '

'Well, I can take them some victuals, anyway, and say a word of comfortto them poor little girls. The oldest one was his darling, and was likea right hand to him. He might have thought of her. He's left her alonein a hard world. ' She glanced distrustfully at Ambrosch, who was noweating his breakfast at the kitchen table. 

Fuchs, although he had been up in the cold nearly all night, was goingto make the long ride to Black Hawk to fetch the priest and the coroner. On the grey gelding, our best horse, he would try to pick his way acrossthe country with no roads to guide him. 

'Don't you worry about me, Mrs. Burden, ' he said cheerfully, as he puton a second pair of socks. 'I've got a good nose for directions, and Inever did need much sleep. It's the grey I'm worried about. I'll savehim what I can, but it'll strain him, as sure as I'm telling you!'

'This is no time to be over-considerate of animals, Otto; do the bestyou can for yourself. Stop at the Widow Steavens's for dinner. She's agood woman, and she'll do well by you. '

After Fuchs rode away, I was left with Ambrosch. I saw a side of him Ihad not seen before. He was deeply, even slavishly, devout. He did notsay a word all morning, but sat with his rosary in his hands, praying, now silently, now aloud. He never looked away from his beads, nor liftedhis hands except to cross himself. Several times the poor boy fellasleep where he sat, wakened with a start, and began to pray again. 

No wagon could be got to the Shimerdas' until a road was broken, andthat would be a day's job. Grandfather came from the barn on one of ourbig black horses, and Jake lifted grandmother up behind him. She woreher black hood and was bundled up in shawls. Grandfather tucked hisbushy white beard inside his overcoat. They looked very Biblical as theyset off, I thought. Jake and Ambrosch followed them, riding the otherblack and my pony, carrying bundles of clothes that we had got togetherfor Mrs. Shimerda. I watched them go past the pond and over the hill bythe drifted cornfield. Then, for the first time, I realized that I wasalone in the house. 

I felt a considerable extension of power and authority, and was anxiousto acquit myself creditably. I carried in cobs and wood from the longcellar, and filled both the stoves. I remembered that in the hurry andexcitement of the morning nobody had thought of the chickens, and theeggs had not been gathered. Going out through the tunnel, I gave thehens their corn, emptied the ice from their drinking-pan, and filledit with water. After the cat had had his milk, I could think of nothingelse to do, and I sat down to get warm. The quiet was delightful, andthe ticking clock was the most pleasant of companions. I got 'RobinsonCrusoe' and tried to read, but his life on the island seemed dullcompared with ours. Presently, as I looked with satisfaction about ourcomfortable sitting-room, it flashed upon me that if Mr. Shimerda'ssoul were lingering about in this world at all, it would be here, inour house, which had been more to his liking than any other in theneighbourhood. I remembered his contented face when he was with us onChristmas Day. If he could have lived with us, this terrible thing wouldnever have happened. 

I knew it was homesickness that had killed Mr. Shimerda, and I wonderedwhether his released spirit would not eventually find its way back tohis own country. I thought of how far it was to Chicago, and then toVirginia, to Baltimore--and then the great wintry ocean. No, he wouldnot at once set out upon that long journey. Surely, his exhaustedspirit, so tired of cold and crowding and the struggle with theever-falling snow, was resting now in this quiet house. 

I was not frightened, but I made no noise. I did not wish to disturbhim. I went softly down to the kitchen which, tucked away so snuglyunderground, always seemed to me the heart and centre of the house. There, on the bench behind the stove, I thought and thought about Mr. Shimerda. Outside I could hear the wind singing over hundreds of milesof snow. It was as if I had let the old man in out of the tormentingwinter, and were sitting there with him. I went over all that Antoniahad ever told me about his life before he came to this country; howhe used to play the fiddle at weddings and dances. I thought about thefriends he had mourned to leave, the trombone-player, the great forestfull of game--belonging, as Antonia said, to the 'nobles'--from whichshe and her mother used to steal wood on moonlight nights. There was awhite hart that lived in that forest, and if anyone killed it, he wouldbe hanged, she said. Such vivid pictures came to me that they might havebeen Mr. Shimerda's memories, not yet faded out from the air in whichthey had haunted him. 

It had begun to grow dark when my household returned, and grandmotherwas so tired that she went at once to bed. Jake and I got supper, andwhile we were washing the dishes he told me in loud whispers about thestate of things over at the Shimerdas'. Nobody could touch the bodyuntil the coroner came. If anyone did, something terrible would happen, apparently. The dead man was frozen through, 'just as stiff as a dressedturkey you hang out to freeze, ' Jake said. The horses and oxen would notgo into the barn until he was frozen so hard that there was no longerany smell of blood. They were stabled there now, with the dead man, because there was no other place to keep them. A lighted lantern waskept hanging over Mr. Shimerda's head. Antonia and Ambrosch and themother took turns going down to pray beside him. The crazy boy went withthem, because he did not feel the cold. I believed he felt cold as muchas anyone else, but he liked to be thought insensible to it. He wasalways coveting distinction, poor Marek!

Ambrosch, Jake said, showed more human feeling than he would havesupposed him capable of, but he was chiefly concerned about getting apriest, and about his father's soul, which he believed was in a placeof torment and would remain there until his family and the priest hadprayed a great deal for him. 'As I understand it, ' Jake concluded, 'itwill be a matter of years to pray his soul out of Purgatory, and rightnow he's in torment. '

'I don't believe it, ' I said stoutly. 'I almost know it isn't true. ' Idid not, of course, say that I believed he had been in that very kitchenall afternoon, on his way back to his own country. Nevertheless, afterI went to bed, this idea of punishment and Purgatory came back on mecrushingly. I remembered the account of Dives in torment, and shuddered. But Mr. Shimerda had not been rich and selfish: he had only been sounhappy that he could not live any longer. 

XV

OTTO FUCHS GOT back from Black Hawk at noon the next day. He reportedthat the coroner would reach the Shimerdas' sometime that afternoon, but the missionary priest was at the other end of his parish, a hundredmiles away, and the trains were not running. Fuchs had got a few hours'sleep at the livery barn in town, but he was afraid the grey gelding hadstrained himself. Indeed, he was never the same horse afterward. Thatlong trip through the deep snow had taken all the endurance out of him. 

Fuchs brought home with him a stranger, a young Bohemian who had takena homestead near Black Hawk, and who came on his only horse to help hisfellow countrymen in their trouble. That was the first time I ever sawAnton Jelinek. He was a strapping young fellow in the early twentiesthen, handsome, warm-hearted, and full of life, and he came to us likea miracle in the midst of that grim business. I remember exactly how hestrode into our kitchen in his felt boots and long wolfskin coat, his eyes and cheeks bright with the cold. At sight of grandmother, hesnatched off his fur cap, greeting her in a deep, rolling voice whichseemed older than he. 

'I want to thank you very much, Mrs. Burden, for that you are so kind topoor strangers from my kawntree. '

He did not hesitate like a farmer boy, but looked one eagerly in the eyewhen he spoke. Everything about him was warm and spontaneous. He saidhe would have come to see the Shimerdas before, but he had hired out tohusk corn all the fall, and since winter began he had been going to theschool by the mill, to learn English, along with the little children. Hetold me he had a nice 'lady-teacher' and that he liked to go to school. 

At dinner grandfather talked to Jelinek more than he usually did tostrangers. 

'Will they be much disappointed because we cannot get a priest?' heasked. 

Jelinek looked serious. 

'Yes, sir, that is very bad for them. Their father has done a greatsin'--he looked straight at grandfather. 'Our Lord has said that. '

Grandfather seemed to like his frankness. 

'We believe that, too, Jelinek. But we believe that Mr. Shimerda's soulwill come to its Creator as well off without a priest. We believe thatChrist is our only intercessor. '

The young man shook his head. 'I know how you think. My teacher at theschool has explain. But I have seen too much. I believe in prayer forthe dead. I have seen too much. '

We asked him what he meant. 

He glanced around the table. 'You want I shall tell you? When I was alittle boy like this one, I begin to help the priest at the altar. Imake my first communion very young; what the Church teach seem plain tome. By 'n' by war-times come, when the Prussians fight us. We have verymany soldiers in camp near my village, and the cholera break out in thatcamp, and the men die like flies. All day long our priest go aboutthere to give the Sacrament to dying men, and I go with him to carry thevessels with the Holy Sacrament. Everybody that go near that camp catchthe sickness but me and the priest. But we have no sickness, we haveno fear, because we carry that blood and that body of Christ, and itpreserve us. ' He paused, looking at grandfather. 'That I know, Mr. Burden, for it happened to myself. All the soldiers know, too. Whenwe walk along the road, the old priest and me, we meet all the timesoldiers marching and officers on horse. All those officers, when theysee what I carry under the cloth, pull up their horses and kneel downon the ground in the road until we pass. So I feel very bad for mykawntree-man to die without the Sacrament, and to die in a bad way forhis soul, and I feel sad for his family. '

We had listened attentively. It was impossible not to admire his frank, manly faith. 

'I am always glad to meet a young man who thinks seriously about thesethings, ' said grandfather, 'and I would never be the one to say you werenot in God's care when you were among the soldiers. ' After dinner it wasdecided that young Jelinek should hook our two strong black farm-horsesto the scraper and break a road through to the Shimerdas', so thata wagon could go when it was necessary. Fuchs, who was the onlycabinetmaker in the neighbourhood was set to work on a coffin. 

Jelinek put on his long wolfskin coat, and when we admired it, he toldus that he had shot and skinned the coyotes, and the young man who'batched' with him, Jan Bouska, who had been a fur-worker in Vienna, made the coat. From the windmill I watched Jelinek come out of the barnwith the blacks, and work his way up the hillside toward the cornfield. Sometimes he was completely hidden by the clouds of snow that rose abouthim; then he and the horses would emerge black and shining. 

Our heavy carpenter's bench had to be brought from the barn and carrieddown into the kitchen. Fuchs selected boards from a pile of planksgrandfather had hauled out from town in the fall to make a new floor forthe oats-bin. When at last the lumber and tools were assembled, and thedoors were closed again and the cold draughts shut out, grandfather rodeaway to meet the coroner at the Shimerdas', and Fuchs took off his coatand settled down to work. I sat on his worktable and watched him. He didnot touch his tools at first, but figured for a long while on a piece ofpaper, and measured the planks and made marks on them. While he wasthus engaged, he whistled softly to himself, or teasingly pulled at hishalf-ear. Grandmother moved about quietly, so as not to disturb him. Atlast he folded his ruler and turned a cheerful face to us. 

'The hardest part of my job's done, ' he announced. 'It's the head endof it that comes hard with me, especially when I'm out of practice. Thelast time I made one of these, Mrs. Burden, ' he continued, as he sortedand tried his chisels, 'was for a fellow in the Black Tiger Mine, upabove Silverton, Colorado. The mouth of that mine goes right into theface of the cliff, and they used to put us in a bucket and run us overon a trolley and shoot us into the shaft. The bucket travelled across abox canon three hundred feet deep, and about a third full of water. TwoSwedes had fell out of that bucket once, and hit the water, feet down. If you'll believe it, they went to work the next day. You can't killa Swede. But in my time a little Eyetalian tried the high dive, and itturned out different with him. We was snowed in then, like we are now, and I happened to be the only man in camp that could make a coffin forhim. It's a handy thing to know, when you knock about like I've done. '

'We'd be hard put to it now, if you didn't know, Otto, ' grandmothersaid. 

'Yes, 'm, ' Fuchs admitted with modest pride. 'So few folks does knowhow to make a good tight box that'll turn water. I sometimes wonderif there'll be anybody about to do it for me. However, I'm not at allparticular that way. '

All afternoon, wherever one went in the house, one could hear thepanting wheeze of the saw or the pleasant purring of the plane. Theywere such cheerful noises, seeming to promise new things for livingpeople: it was a pity that those freshly planed pine boards were to beput underground so soon. The lumber was hard to work because it was fullof frost, and the boards gave off a sweet smell of pine woods, as theheap of yellow shavings grew higher and higher. I wondered why Fuchshad not stuck to cabinet-work, he settled down to it with such ease andcontent. He handled the tools as if he liked the feel of them; and whenhe planed, his hands went back and forth over the boards in an eager, beneficent way as if he were blessing them. He broke out now and theninto German hymns, as if this occupation brought back old times to him. 

At four o'clock Mr. Bushy, the postmaster, with another neighbour wholived east of us, stopped in to get warm. They were on their way to theShimerdas'. The news of what had happened over there had somehow gotabroad through the snow-blocked country. Grandmother gave the visitorssugar-cakes and hot coffee. Before these callers were gone, the brotherof the Widow Steavens, who lived on the Black Hawk road, drew up at ourdoor, and after him came the father of the German family, ournearest neighbours on the south. They dismounted and joined us in thedining-room. They were all eager for any details about the suicide, andthey were greatly concerned as to where Mr. Shimerda would be buried. The nearest Catholic cemetery was at Black Hawk, and it might be weeksbefore a wagon could get so far. Besides, Mr. Bushy and grandmother weresure that a man who had killed himself could not be buried in a Catholicgraveyard. There was a burying-ground over by the Norwegian church, westof Squaw Creek; perhaps the Norwegians would take Mr. Shimerda in. 

After our visitors rode away in single file over the hill, we returnedto the kitchen. Grandmother began to make the icing for a chocolatecake, and Otto again filled the house with the exciting, expectant songof the plane. One pleasant thing about this time was that everybodytalked more than usual. I had never heard the postmaster say anythingbut 'Only papers, to-day, ' or, 'I've got a sackful of mail for ye, 'until this afternoon. Grandmother always talked, dear woman: to herselfor to the Lord, if there was no one else to listen; but grandfather wasnaturally taciturn, and Jake and Otto were often so tired after supperthat I used to feel as if I were surrounded by a wall of silence. Noweveryone seemed eager to talk. That afternoon Fuchs told me story afterstory: about the Black Tiger Mine, and about violent deaths and casualburyings, and the queer fancies of dying men. You never really knewa man, he said, until you saw him die. Most men were game, and wentwithout a grudge. 

The postmaster, going home, stopped to say that grandfather wouldbring the coroner back with him to spend the night. The officers of theNorwegian church, he told us, had held a meeting and decided that theNorwegian graveyard could not extend its hospitality to Mr. Shimerda. 

Grandmother was indignant. 'If these foreigners are so clannish, Mr. Bushy, we'll have to have an American graveyard that will be moreliberal-minded. I'll get right after Josiah to start one in the spring. If anything was to happen to me, I don't want the Norwegians holdinginquisitions over me to see whether I'm good enough to be laid amongst'em. '

Soon grandfather returned, bringing with him Anton Jelinek, and thatimportant person, the coroner. He was a mild, flurried old man, a CivilWar veteran, with one sleeve hanging empty. He seemed to find this casevery perplexing, and said if it had not been for grandfather he wouldhave sworn out a warrant against Krajiek. 'The way he acted, and the wayhis axe fit the wound, was enough to convict any man. '

Although it was perfectly clear that Mr. Shimerda had killed himself, Jake and the coroner thought something ought to be done to Krajiekbecause he behaved like a guilty man. He was badly frightened, certainly, and perhaps he even felt some stirrings of remorse for hisindifference to the old man's misery and loneliness. 

At supper the men ate like vikings, and the chocolate cake, which Ihad hoped would linger on until tomorrow in a mutilated condition, disappeared on the second round. They talked excitedly about wherethey should bury Mr. Shimerda; I gathered that the neighbours were alldisturbed and shocked about something. It developed that Mrs. Shimerdaand Ambrosch wanted the old man buried on the southwest corner oftheir own land; indeed, under the very stake that marked the corner. Grandfather had explained to Ambrosch that some day, when the countrywas put under fence and the roads were confined to section lines, tworoads would cross exactly on that corner. But Ambrosch only said, 'Itmakes no matter. '

Grandfather asked Jelinek whether in the old country there was somesuperstition to the effect that a suicide must be buried at thecross-roads. 

Jelinek said he didn't know; he seemed to remember hearing there hadonce been such a custom in Bohemia. 'Mrs. Shimerda is made up her mind, 'he added. 'I try to persuade her, and say it looks bad for her to allthe neighbours; but she say so it must be. "There I will bury him, ifI dig the grave myself, " she say. I have to promise her I help Ambroschmake the grave tomorrow. '

Grandfather smoothed his beard and looked judicial. 'I don't know whosewish should decide the matter, if not hers. But if she thinks she willlive to see the people of this country ride over that old man's head, she is mistaken. '

XVI

MR. SHIMERDA LAY DEAD in the barn four days, and on the fifth theyburied him. All day Friday Jelinek was off with Ambrosch digging thegrave, chopping out the frozen earth with old axes. On Saturday webreakfasted before daylight and got into the wagon with the coffin. Jakeand Jelinek went ahead on horseback to cut the body loose from the poolof blood in which it was frozen fast to the ground. 

When grandmother and I went into the Shimerdas' house, we found thewomenfolk alone; Ambrosch and Marek were at the barn. Mrs. Shimerda satcrouching by the stove, Antonia was washing dishes. When she saw me, sheran out of her dark corner and threw her arms around me. 'Oh, Jimmy, 'she sobbed, 'what you tink for my lovely papa!' It seemed to me that Icould feel her heart breaking as she clung to me. 

Mrs. Shimerda, sitting on the stump by the stove, kept looking over hershoulder toward the door while the neighbours were arriving. They cameon horseback, all except the postmaster, who brought his family in awagon over the only broken wagon-trail. The Widow Steavens rode up fromher farm eight miles down the Black Hawk road. The cold drove the womeninto the cave-house, and it was soon crowded. A fine, sleety snow wasbeginning to fall, and everyone was afraid of another storm and anxiousto have the burial over with. 

Grandfather and Jelinek came to tell Mrs. Shimerda that it was timeto start. After bundling her mother up in clothes the neighbours hadbrought, Antonia put on an old cape from our house and the rabbit-skinhat her father had made for her. Four men carried Mr. Shimerda's box upthe hill; Krajiek slunk along behind them. The coffin was too wide forthe door, so it was put down on the slope outside. I slipped out fromthe cave and looked at Mr. Shimerda. He was lying on his side, with hisknees drawn up. His body was draped in a black shawl, and his head wasbandaged in white muslin, like a mummy's; one of his long, shapely handslay out on the black cloth; that was all one could see of him. 

Mrs. Shimerda came out and placed an open prayer-book against the body, making the sign of the cross on the bandaged head with her fingers. Ambrosch knelt down and made the same gesture, and after him Antonia andMarek. Yulka hung back. Her mother pushed her forward, and kept sayingsomething to her over and over. Yulka knelt down, shut her eyes, and putout her hand a little way, but she drew it back and began to cry wildly. She was afraid to touch the bandage. Mrs. Shimerda caught her by theshoulders and pushed her toward the coffin, but grandmother interfered. 

'No, Mrs. Shimerda, ' she said firmly, 'I won't stand by and see thatchild frightened into spasms. She is too little to understand what youwant of her. Let her alone. '

At a look from grandfather, Fuchs and Jelinek placed the lid on the box, and began to nail it down over Mr. Shimerda. I was afraid to look atAntonia. She put her arms round Yulka and held the little girl close toher. 

The coffin was put into the wagon. We drove slowly away, against thefine, icy snow which cut our faces like a sand-blast. When we reachedthe grave, it looked a very little spot in that snow-covered waste. Themen took the coffin to the edge of the hole and lowered it with ropes. We stood about watching them, and the powdery snow lay without meltingon the caps and shoulders of the men and the shawls of the women. Jelinek spoke in a persuasive tone to Mrs. Shimerda, and then turned tograndfather. 

'She says, Mr. Burden, she is very glad if you can make some prayer forhim here in English, for the neighbours to understand. '

Grandmother looked anxiously at grandfather. He took off his hat, andthe other men did likewise. I thought his prayer remarkable. I stillremember it. He began, 'Oh, great and just God, no man among us knowswhat the sleeper knows, nor is it for us to judge what lies between himand Thee. ' He prayed that if any man there had been remiss toward thestranger come to a far country, God would forgive him and soften hisheart. He recalled the promises to the widow and the fatherless, andasked God to smooth the way before this widow and her children, and to'incline the hearts of men to deal justly with her. ' In closing, he saidwe were leaving Mr. Shimerda at 'Thy judgment seat, which is also Thymercy seat. '

All the time he was praying, grandmother watched him through the blackfingers of her glove, and when he said 'Amen, ' I thought she lookedsatisfied with him. She turned to Otto and whispered, 'Can't you start ahymn, Fuchs? It would seem less heathenish. '

Fuchs glanced about to see if there was general approval of hersuggestion, then began, 'Jesus, Lover of my Soul, ' and all the men andwomen took it up after him. Whenever I have heard the hymn since, it hasmade me remember that white waste and the little group of people; andthe bluish air, full of fine, eddying snow, like long veils flying:

'While the nearer waters roll, While the tempest still is high. '

Years afterward, when the open-grazing days were over, and the red grasshad been ploughed under and under until it had almost disappeared fromthe prairie; when all the fields were under fence, and the roadsno longer ran about like wild things, but followed the surveyedsection-lines, Mr. Shimerda's grave was still there, with a saggingwire fence around it, and an unpainted wooden cross. As grandfather hadpredicted, Mrs. Shimerda never saw the roads going over his head. Theroad from the north curved a little to the east just there, and the roadfrom the west swung out a little to the south; so that the grave, withits tall red grass that was never mowed, was like a little island; andat twilight, under a new moon or the clear evening star, the dusty roadsused to look like soft grey rivers flowing past it. I never came uponthe place without emotion, and in all that country it was the spot mostdear to me. I loved the dim superstition, the propitiatory intent, thathad put the grave there; and still more I loved the spirit that couldnot carry out the sentence--the error from the surveyed lines, theclemency of the soft earth roads along which the home-coming wagonsrattled after sunset. Never a tired driver passed the wooden cross, I amsure, without wishing well to the sleeper. 

XVII

WHEN SPRING CAME, AFTER that hard winter, one could not get enough ofthe nimble air. Every morning I wakened with a fresh consciousness thatwinter was over. There were none of the signs of spring for which I usedto watch in Virginia, no budding woods or blooming gardens. There wasonly--spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vitalessence of it everywhere: in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the palesunshine, and in the warm, high wind--rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay downto be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, Ishould have known that it was spring. 

Everywhere now there was the smell of burning grass. Our neighboursburned off their pasture before the new grass made a start, so that thefresh growth would not be mixed with the dead stand of last year. Thoselight, swift fires, running about the country, seemed a part of the samekindling that was in the air. 

The Shimerdas were in their new log house by then. The neighbours hadhelped them to build it in March. It stood directly in front of theirold cave, which they used as a cellar. The family were now fairlyequipped to begin their struggle with the soil. They had fourcomfortable rooms to live in, a new windmill--bought on credit--achicken-house and poultry. Mrs. Shimerda had paid grandfather tendollars for a milk cow, and was to give him fifteen more as soon as theyharvested their first crop. 

When I rode up to the Shimerdas' one bright windy afternoon in April, Yulka ran out to meet me. It was to her, now, that I gave readinglessons; Antonia was busy with other things. I tied my pony and wentinto the kitchen where Mrs. Shimerda was baking bread, chewing poppyseeds as she worked. By this time she could speak enough English to askme a great many questions about what our men were doing in the fields. She seemed to think that my elders withheld helpful information, andthat from me she might get valuable secrets. On this occasion she askedme very craftily when grandfather expected to begin planting corn. Itold her, adding that he thought we should have a dry spring and thatthe corn would not be held back by too much rain, as it had been lastyear. 

She gave me a shrewd glance. 'He not Jesus, ' she blustered; 'he not knowabout the wet and the dry. 

I did not answer her; what was the use? As I sat waiting for the hourwhen Ambrosch and Antonia would return from the fields, I watched Mrs. Shimerda at her work. She took from the oven a coffee-cake which shewanted to keep warm for supper, and wrapped it in a quilt stuffed withfeathers. I have seen her put even a roast goose in this quilt to keepit hot. When the neighbours were there building the new house, they sawher do this, and the story got abroad that the Shimerdas kept their foodin their featherbeds. 

When the sun was dropping low, Antonia came up the big south draw withher team. How much older she had grown in eight months! She had cometo us a child, and now she was a tall, strong young girl, although herfifteenth birthday had just slipped by. I ran out and met her as shebrought her horses up to the windmill to water them. She wore the bootsher father had so thoughtfully taken off before he shot himself, and hisold fur cap. Her outgrown cotton dress switched about her calves, overthe boot-tops. She kept her sleeves rolled up all day, and her arms andthroat were burned as brown as a sailor's. Her neck came up strongly outof her shoulders, like the bole of a tree out of the turf. One sees thatdraught-horse neck among the peasant women in all old countries. 

She greeted me gaily, and began at once to tell me how much ploughingshe had done that day. Ambrosch, she said, was on the north quarter, breaking sod with the oxen. 

'Jim, you ask Jake how much he ploughed to-day. I don't want that Jakeget more done in one day than me. I want we have very much corn thisfall. '

While the horses drew in the water, and nosed each other, and then drankagain, Antonia sat down on the windmill step and rested her head on herhand. 

'You see the big prairie fire from your place last night? I hope yourgrandpa ain't lose no stacks?'

'No, we didn't. I came to ask you something, Tony. Grandmother wants toknow if you can't go to the term of school that begins next week over atthe sod schoolhouse. She says there's a good teacher, and you'd learn alot. '

Antonia stood up, lifting and dropping her shoulders as if they werestiff. 'I ain't got time to learn. I can work like mans now. My mothercan't say no more how Ambrosch do all and nobody to help him. I can workas much as him. School is all right for little boys. I help make thisland one good farm. '

She clucked to her team and started for the barn. I walked beside her, feeling vexed. Was she going to grow up boastful like her mother, Iwondered? Before we reached the stable, I felt something tense in hersilence, and glancing up I saw that she was crying. She turned her facefrom me and looked off at the red streak of dying light, over the darkprairie. 

I climbed up into the loft and threw down the hay for her, while sheunharnessed her team. We walked slowly back toward the house. Ambroschhad come in from the north quarter, and was watering his oxen at thetank. 

Antonia took my hand. 'Sometime you will tell me all those nice thingsyou learn at the school, won't you, Jimmy?' she asked with a sudden rushof feeling in her voice. 'My father, he went much to school. He know agreat deal; how to make the fine cloth like what you not got here. Heplay horn and violin, and he read so many books that the priests inBohemie come to talk to him. You won't forget my father, Jim?' 'No, ' Isaid, 'I will never forget him. '

Mrs. Shimerda asked me to stay for supper. After Ambrosch and Antoniahad washed the field dust from their hands and faces at the wash-basinby the kitchen door, we sat down at the oilcloth-covered table. Mrs. Shimerda ladled meal mush out of an iron pot and poured milk on it. After the mush we had fresh bread and sorghum molasses, and coffee withthe cake that had been kept warm in the feathers. Antonia and Ambroschwere talking in Bohemian; disputing about which of them had done moreploughing that day. Mrs. Shimerda egged them on, chuckling while shegobbled her food. 

Presently Ambrosch said sullenly in English: 'You take them ox tomorrowand try the sod plough. Then you not be so smart. '

His sister laughed. 'Don't be mad. I know it's awful hard work for breaksod. I milk the cow for you tomorrow, if you want. '

Mrs. Shimerda turned quickly to me. 'That cow not give so much milk likewhat your grandpa say. If he make talk about fifteen dollars, I send himback the cow. '

'He doesn't talk about the fifteen dollars, ' I exclaimed indignantly. 'He doesn't find fault with people. '

'He say I break his saw when we build, and I never, ' grumbled Ambrosch. 

I knew he had broken the saw, and then hid it and lied about it. I beganto wish I had not stayed for supper. Everything was disagreeable tome. Antonia ate so noisily now, like a man, and she yawned often atthe table and kept stretching her arms over her head, as if they ached. Grandmother had said, 'Heavy field work'll spoil that girl. She'll loseall her nice ways and get rough ones. ' She had lost them already. 

After supper I rode home through the sad, soft spring twilight. Sincewinter I had seen very little of Antonia. She was out in the fields fromsunup until sundown. If I rode over to see her where she was ploughing, she stopped at the end of a row to chat for a moment, then grippedher plough-handles, clucked to her team, and waded on down the furrow, making me feel that she was now grown up and had no time for me. OnSundays she helped her mother make garden or sewed all day. Grandfatherwas pleased with Antonia. When we complained of her, he only smiled andsaid, 'She will help some fellow get ahead in the world. '

Nowadays Tony could talk of nothing but the prices of things, or howmuch she could lift and endure. She was too proud of her strength. Iknew, too, that Ambrosch put upon her some chores a girl ought not todo, and that the farm-hands around the country joked in a nasty wayabout it. Whenever I saw her come up the furrow, shouting to her beasts, sunburned, sweaty, her dress open at the neck, and her throat and chestdust-plastered, I used to think of the tone in which poor Mr. Shimerda, who could say so little, yet managed to say so much when he exclaimed, 'My Antonia!'

XVIII

AFTER I BEGAN TO go to the country school, I saw less of the Bohemians. We were sixteen pupils at the sod schoolhouse, and we all came onhorseback and brought our dinner. My schoolmates were none of them veryinteresting, but I somehow felt that, by making comrades of them, Iwas getting even with Antonia for her indifference. Since the father'sdeath, Ambrosch was more than ever the head of the house, and he seemedto direct the feelings as well as the fortunes of his womenfolk. Antoniaoften quoted his opinions to me, and she let me see that she admiredhim, while she thought of me only as a little boy. Before the springwas over, there was a distinct coldness between us and the Shimerdas. Itcame about in this way. 

One Sunday I rode over there with Jake to get a horse-collar whichAmbrosch had borrowed from him and had not returned. It was a beautifulblue morning. The buffalo-peas were blooming in pink and purplemasses along the roadside, and the larks, perched on last year's driedsunflower stalks, were singing straight at the sun, their heads thrownback and their yellow breasts a-quiver. The wind blew about us in warm, sweet gusts. We rode slowly, with a pleasant sense of Sunday indolence. 

We found the Shimerdas working just as if it were a week-day. Marek wascleaning out the stable, and Antonia and her mother were making garden, off across the pond in the draw-head. Ambrosch was up on the windmilltower, oiling the wheel. He came down, not very cordially. When Jakeasked for the collar, he grunted and scratched his head. The collarbelonged to grandfather, of course, and Jake, feeling responsible forit, flared up. 'Now, don't you say you haven't got it, Ambrosch, becauseI know you have, and if you ain't a-going to look for it, I will. '

Ambrosch shrugged his shoulders and sauntered down the hill towardthe stable. I could see that it was one of his mean days. Presently hereturned, carrying a collar that had been badly used--trampled in thedirt and gnawed by rats until the hair was sticking out of it. 

'This what you want?' he asked surlily. 

Jake jumped off his horse. I saw a wave of red come up under the roughstubble on his face. 'That ain't the piece of harness I loaned you, Ambrosch; or, if it is, you've used it shameful. I ain't a-going tocarry such a looking thing back to Mr. Burden. '

Ambrosch dropped the collar on the ground. 'All right, ' he said coolly, took up his oil-can, and began to climb the mill. Jake caught him by thebelt of his trousers and yanked him back. Ambrosch's feet had scarcelytouched the ground when he lunged out with a vicious kick at Jake'sstomach. Fortunately, Jake was in such a position that he could dodgeit. This was not the sort of thing country boys did when they playedat fisticuffs, and Jake was furious. He landed Ambrosch a blow on thehead--it sounded like the crack of an axe on a cow-pumpkin. Ambroschdropped over, stunned. 

We heard squeals, and looking up saw Antonia and her mother coming onthe run. They did not take the path around the pond, but plunged throughthe muddy water, without even lifting their skirts. They came on, screaming and clawing the air. By this time Ambrosch had come to hissenses and was sputtering with nosebleed. 

Jake sprang into his saddle. 'Let's get out of this, Jim, ' he called. 

Mrs. Shimerda threw her hands over her head and clutched as if she weregoing to pull down lightning. 'Law, law!' she shrieked after us. 'Lawfor knock my Ambrosch down!'

'I never like you no more, Jake and Jim Burden, ' Antonia panted. 'Nofriends any more!'

Jake stopped and turned his horse for a second. 'Well, you're a damnedungrateful lot, the whole pack of you, ' he shouted back. 'I guess theBurdens can get along without you. You've been a sight of trouble tothem, anyhow!'

We rode away, feeling so outraged that the fine morning was spoiledfor us. I hadn't a word to say, and poor Jake was white as paper andtrembling all over. It made him sick to get so angry. 

'They ain't the same, Jimmy, ' he kept saying in a hurt tone. 'Theseforeigners ain't the same. You can't trust 'em to be fair. It's dirty tokick a feller. You heard how the women turned on you--and after all wewent through on account of 'em last winter! They ain't to be trusted. Idon't want to see you get too thick with any of 'em. '

'I'll never be friends with them again, Jake, ' I declared hotly. 'Ibelieve they are all like Krajiek and Ambrosch underneath. '

Grandfather heard our story with a twinkle in his eye. He advised Jaketo ride to town tomorrow, go to a justice of the peace, tell him he hadknocked young Shimerda down, and pay his fine. Then if Mrs. Shimerdawas inclined to make trouble--her son was still under age--she wouldbe forestalled. Jake said he might as well take the wagon and haul tomarket the pig he had been fattening. On Monday, about an hour afterJake had started, we saw Mrs. Shimerda and her Ambrosch proudly drivingby, looking neither to the right nor left. As they rattled out of sightdown the Black Hawk road, grandfather chuckled, saying he had ratherexpected she would follow the matter up. 

Jake paid his fine with a ten-dollar bill grandfather had given him forthat purpose. But when the Shimerdas found that Jake sold his pig intown that day, Ambrosch worked it out in his shrewd head that Jake hadto sell his pig to pay his fine. This theory afforded the Shimerdasgreat satisfaction, apparently. For weeks afterward, whenever Jake and Imet Antonia on her way to the post-office, or going along the road withher work-team, she would clap her hands and call to us in a spiteful, crowing voice:

'Jake-y, Jake-y, sell the pig and pay the slap!'

Otto pretended not to be surprised at Antonia's behaviour. He onlylifted his brows and said, 'You can't tell me anything new about aCzech; I'm an Austrian. '

Grandfather was never a party to what Jake called our feud with theShimerdas. Ambrosch and Antonia always greeted him respectfully, and heasked them about their affairs and gave them advice as usual. He thoughtthe future looked hopeful for them. Ambrosch was a far-seeing fellow; hesoon realized that his oxen were too heavy for any work except breakingsod, and he succeeded in selling them to a newly arrived German. Withthe money he bought another team of horses, which grandfather selectedfor him. Marek was strong, and Ambrosch worked him hard; but he couldnever teach him to cultivate corn, I remember. The one idea that hadever got through poor Marek's thick head was that all exertion wasmeritorious. He always bore down on the handles of the cultivatorand drove the blades so deep into the earth that the horses were soonexhausted. 

In June, Ambrosch went to work at Mr. Bushy's for a week, and took Marekwith him at full wages. Mrs. Shimerda then drove the second cultivator;she and Antonia worked in the fields all day and did the chores atnight. While the two women were running the place alone, one of the newhorses got colic and gave them a terrible fright. 

Antonia had gone down to the barn one night to see that all was wellbefore she went to bed, and she noticed that one of the roans wasswollen about the middle and stood with its head hanging. She mountedanother horse, without waiting to saddle him, and hammered on our doorjust as we were going to bed. Grandfather answered her knock. He did notsend one of his men, but rode back with her himself, taking a syringeand an old piece of carpet he kept for hot applications when our horseswere sick. He found Mrs. Shimerda sitting by the horse with her lantern, groaning and wringing her hands. It took but a few moments to releasethe gases pent up in the poor beast, and the two women heard the rush ofwind and saw the roan visibly diminish in girth. 

'If I lose that horse, Mr. Burden, ' Antonia exclaimed, 'I never stayhere till Ambrosch come home! I go drown myself in the pond beforemorning. '

When Ambrosch came back from Mr. Bushy's, we learned that he had givenMarek's wages to the priest at Black Hawk, for Masses for their father'ssoul. Grandmother thought Antonia needed shoes more than Mr. Shimerdaneeded prayers, but grandfather said tolerantly, 'If he can spare sixdollars, pinched as he is, it shows he believes what he professes. '

It was grandfather who brought about a reconciliation with theShimerdas. One morning he told us that the small grain was coming on sowell, he thought he would begin to cut his wheat on the first of July. He would need more men, and if it were agreeable to everyone he wouldengage Ambrosch for the reaping and threshing, as the Shimerdas had nosmall grain of their own. 

'I think, Emmaline, ' he concluded, 'I will ask Antonia to come over andhelp you in the kitchen. She will be glad to earn something, and it willbe a good time to end misunderstandings. I may as well ride over thismorning and make arrangements. Do you want to go with me, Jim?' His tonetold me that he had already decided for me. 

After breakfast we set off together. When Mrs. Shimerda saw us coming, she ran from her door down into the draw behind the stable, as if shedid not want to meet us. Grandfather smiled to himself while he tied hishorse, and we followed her. 

Behind the barn we came upon a funny sight. The cow had evidently beengrazing somewhere in the draw. Mrs. Shimerda had run to the animal, pulled up the lariat pin, and, when we came upon her, she was tryingto hide the cow in an old cave in the bank. As the hole was narrow anddark, the cow held back, and the old woman was slapping and pushing ather hind quarters, trying to spank her into the drawside. 

Grandfather ignored her singular occupation and greeted her politely. 'Good morning, Mrs. Shimerda. Can you tell me where I will findAmbrosch? Which field?'

'He with the sod corn. ' She pointed toward the north, still standing infront of the cow as if she hoped to conceal it. 

'His sod corn will be good for fodder this winter, ' said grandfatherencouragingly. 'And where is Antonia?'

'She go with. ' Mrs. Shimerda kept wiggling her bare feet about nervouslyin the dust. 

'Very well. I will ride up there. I want them to come over and help mecut my oats and wheat next month. I will pay them wages. Good morning. By the way, Mrs. Shimerda, ' he said as he turned up the path, 'I thinkwe may as well call it square about the cow. '

She started and clutched the rope tighter. Seeing that she did notunderstand, grandfather turned back. 'You need not pay me anything more;no more money. The cow is yours. '

'Pay no more, keep cow?' she asked in a bewildered tone, her narrow eyessnapping at us in the sunlight. 

'Exactly. Pay no more, keep cow. ' He nodded. 

Mrs. Shimerda dropped the rope, ran after us, and, crouching down besidegrandfather, she took his hand and kissed it. I doubt if he had everbeen so much embarrassed before. I was a little startled, too. Somehow, that seemed to bring the Old World very close. 

We rode away laughing, and grandfather said: 'I expect she thought wehad come to take the cow away for certain, Jim. I wonder if she wouldn'thave scratched a little if we'd laid hold of that lariat rope!'

Our neighbours seemed glad to make peace with us. The next Sunday Mrs. Shimerda came over and brought Jake a pair of socks she had knitted. Shepresented them with an air of great magnanimity, saying, 'Now you notcome any more for knock my Ambrosch down?'

Jake laughed sheepishly. 'I don't want to have no trouble with Ambrosch. If he'll let me alone, I'll let him alone. '

'If he slap you, we ain't got no pig for pay the fine, ' she saidinsinuatingly. 

Jake was not at all disconcerted. 'Have the last word ma'm, ' he saidcheerfully. 'It's a lady's privilege. '

XIX

JULY CAME ON with that breathless, brilliant heat which makes the plainsof Kansas and Nebraska the best corn country in the world. It seemedas if we could hear the corn growing in the night; under the stars onecaught a faint crackling in the dewy, heavy-odoured cornfields where thefeathered stalks stood so juicy and green. If all the great plain fromthe Missouri to the Rocky Mountains had been under glass, and the heatregulated by a thermometer, it could not have been better for the yellowtassels that were ripening and fertilizing the silk day by day. Thecornfields were far apart in those times, with miles of wild grazingland between. It took a clear, meditative eye like my grandfather's toforesee that they would enlarge and multiply until they would be, notthe Shimerdas' cornfields, or Mr. Bushy's, but the world's cornfields;that their yield would be one of the great economic facts, like thewheat crop of Russia, which underlie all the activities of men, in peaceor war. 

The burning sun of those few weeks, with occasional rains at night, secured the corn. After the milky ears were once formed, we hadlittle to fear from dry weather. The men were working so hard in thewheatfields that they did not notice the heat--though I was kept busycarrying water for them--and grandmother and Antonia had so much to doin the kitchen that they could not have told whether one day was hotterthan another. Each morning, while the dew was still on the grass, Antonia went with me up to the garden to get early vegetables fordinner. Grandmother made her wear a sunbonnet, but as soon as we reachedthe garden she threw it on the grass and let her hair fly in the breeze. I remember how, as we bent over the pea-vines, beads of perspirationused to gather on her upper lip like a little moustache. 

'Oh, better I like to work out-of-doors than in a house!' she used tosing joyfully. 'I not care that your grandmother say it makes me likea man. I like to be like a man. ' She would toss her head and ask me tofeel the muscles swell in her brown arm. 

We were glad to have her in the house. She was so gay and responsivethat one did not mind her heavy, running step, or her clattery way withpans. Grandmother was in high spirits during the weeks that Antoniaworked for us. 

All the nights were close and hot during that harvest season. Theharvesters slept in the hayloft because it was cooler there than in thehouse. I used to lie in my bed by the open window, watching the heatlightning play softly along the horizon, or looking up at the gauntframe of the windmill against the blue night sky. One night there was abeautiful electric storm, though not enough rain fell to damage the cutgrain. The men went down to the barn immediately after supper, and whenthe dishes were washed, Antonia and I climbed up on the slanting roofof the chicken-house to watch the clouds. The thunder was loud andmetallic, like the rattle of sheet iron, and the lightning broke ingreat zigzags across the heavens, making everything stand out andcome close to us for a moment. Half the sky was chequered with blackthunderheads, but all the west was luminous and clear: in the lightningflashes it looked like deep blue water, with the sheen of moonlight onit; and the mottled part of the sky was like marble pavement, like thequay of some splendid seacoast city, doomed to destruction. Great warmsplashes of rain fell on our upturned faces. One black cloud, no biggerthan a little boat, drifted out into the clear space unattended, andkept moving westward. All about us we could hear the felty beat of theraindrops on the soft dust of the farmyard. Grandmother came to the doorand said it was late, and we would get wet out there. 

'In a minute we come, ' Antonia called back to her. 'I like yourgrandmother, and all things here, ' she sighed. 'I wish my papa live tosee this summer. I wish no winter ever come again. '

'It will be summer a long while yet, ' I reassured her. 'Why aren't youalways nice like this, Tony?'

'How nice?'

'Why, just like this; like yourself. Why do you all the time try to belike Ambrosch?'

She put her arms under her head and lay back, looking up at the sky. 'IfI live here, like you, that is different. Things will be easy for you. But they will be hard for us. '

BOOK II. The Hired Girls

I

I HAD BEEN LIVING with my grandfather for nearly three years when hedecided to move to Black Hawk. He and grandmother were getting old forthe heavy work of a farm, and as I was now thirteen they thought I oughtto be going to school. Accordingly our homestead was rented to 'thatgood woman, the Widow Steavens, ' and her bachelor brother, and we boughtPreacher White's house, at the north end of Black Hawk. This was thefirst town house one passed driving in from the farm, a landmark whichtold country people their long ride was over. 

We were to move to Black Hawk in March, and as soon as grandfather hadfixed the date he let Jake and Otto know of his intention. Otto said hewould not be likely to find another place that suited him so well; thathe was tired of farming and thought he would go back to what he calledthe 'wild West. ' Jake Marpole, lured by Otto's stories of adventure, decided to go with him. We did our best to dissuade Jake. He was sohandicapped by illiteracy and by his trusting disposition that hewould be an easy prey to sharpers. Grandmother begged him to stay amongkindly, Christian people, where he was known; but there was no reasoningwith him. He wanted to be a prospector. He thought a silver mine waswaiting for him in Colorado. 

Jake and Otto served us to the last. They moved us into town, putdown the carpets in our new house, made shelves and cupboards forgrandmother's kitchen, and seemed loath to leave us. But at last theywent, without warning. Those two fellows had been faithful to us throughsun and storm, had given us things that cannot be bought in any marketin the world. With me they had been like older brothers; had restrainedtheir speech and manners out of care for me, and given me so much goodcomradeship. Now they got on the westbound train one morning, in theirSunday clothes, with their oilcloth valises--and I never saw them again. Months afterward we got a card from Otto, saying that Jake had been downwith mountain fever, but now they were both working in the Yankee GirlMine, and were doing well. I wrote to them at that address, but myletter was returned to me, 'Unclaimed. ' After that we never heard fromthem. 

Black Hawk, the new world in which we had come to live, was a clean, well-planted little prairie town, with white fences and good greenyards about the dwellings, wide, dusty streets, and shapely little treesgrowing along the wooden sidewalks. In the centre of the town therewere two rows of new brick 'store' buildings, a brick schoolhouse, thecourt-house, and four white churches. Our own house looked down over thetown, and from our upstairs windows we could see the winding line ofthe river bluffs, two miles south of us. That river was to be mycompensation for the lost freedom of the farming country. 

We came to Black Hawk in March, and by the end of April we felt liketown people. Grandfather was a deacon in the new Baptist Church, grandmother was busy with church suppers and missionary societies, and Iwas quite another boy, or thought I was. Suddenly put down among boys ofmy own age, I found I had a great deal to learn. Before the spring termof school was over, I could fight, play 'keeps, ' tease the little girls, and use forbidden words as well as any boy in my class. I was restrainedfrom utter savagery only by the fact that Mrs. Harling, our nearestneighbour, kept an eye on me, and if my behaviour went beyond certainbounds I was not permitted to come into her yard or to play with herjolly children. 

We saw more of our country neighbours now than when we lived on thefarm. Our house was a convenient stopping-place for them. We had a bigbarn where the farmers could put up their teams, and their womenfolkmore often accompanied them, now that they could stay with us fordinner, and rest and set their bonnets right before they went shopping. The more our house was like a country hotel, the better I liked it. I was glad, when I came home from school at noon, to see a farm-wagonstanding in the back yard, and I was always ready to run downtown toget beefsteak or baker's bread for unexpected company. All through thatfirst spring and summer I kept hoping that Ambrosch would bring Antoniaand Yulka to see our new house. I wanted to show them our red plushfurniture, and the trumpet-blowing cherubs the German paperhanger hadput on our parlour ceiling. 

When Ambrosch came to town, however, he came alone, and though he puthis horses in our barn, he would never stay for dinner, or tell usanything about his mother and sisters. If we ran out and questioned himas he was slipping through the yard, he would merely work his shouldersabout in his coat and say, 'They all right, I guess. '

Mrs. Steavens, who now lived on our farm, grew as fond of Antonia aswe had been, and always brought us news of her. All through the wheatseason, she told us, Ambrosch hired his sister out like a man, and shewent from farm to farm, binding sheaves or working with the threshers. The farmers liked her and were kind to her; said they would rather haveher for a hand than Ambrosch. When fall came she was to husk corn forthe neighbours until Christmas, as she had done the year before; butgrandmother saved her from this by getting her a place to work with ourneighbours, the Harlings. 

II

GRANDMOTHER OFTEN SAID THAT if she had to live in town, she thankedGod she lived next the Harlings. They had been farming people, likeourselves, and their place was like a little farm, with a big barn anda garden, and an orchard and grazing lots--even a windmill. The Harlingswere Norwegians, and Mrs. Harling had lived in Christiania until shewas ten years old. Her husband was born in Minnesota. He was a grainmerchant and cattle-buyer, and was generally considered the mostenterprising business man in our county. He controlled a line of grainelevators in the little towns along the railroad to the west of us, andwas away from home a great deal. In his absence his wife was the head ofthe household. 

Mrs. Harling was short and square and sturdy-looking, like her house. Every inch of her was charged with an energy that made itself felt themoment she entered a room. Her face was rosy and solid, with bright, twinkling eyes and a stubborn little chin. She was quick to anger, quickto laughter, and jolly from the depths of her soul. How well I rememberher laugh; it had in it the same sudden recognition that flashed intoher eyes, was a burst of humour, short and intelligent. Her rapidfootsteps shook her own floors, and she routed lassitude andindifference wherever she came. She could not be negative or perfunctoryabout anything. Her enthusiasm, and her violent likes and dislikes, asserted themselves in all the everyday occupations of life. Wash-daywas interesting, never dreary, at the Harlings'. Preserving-time was aprolonged festival, and house-cleaning was like a revolution. WhenMrs. Harling made garden that spring, we could feel the stir of herundertaking through the willow hedge that separated our place from hers. 

Three of the Harling children were near me in age. Charley, the onlyson--they had lost an older boy--was sixteen; Julia, who was known asthe musical one, was fourteen when I was; and Sally, the tomboy withshort hair, was a year younger. She was nearly as strong as I, anduncannily clever at all boys' sports. Sally was a wild thing, withsunburned yellow hair, bobbed about her ears, and a brown skin, for shenever wore a hat. She raced all over town on one roller skate, oftencheated at 'keeps, ' but was such a quick shot one couldn't catch her atit. 

The grown-up daughter, Frances, was a very important person in ourworld. She was her father's chief clerk, and virtually managed hisBlack Hawk office during his frequent absences. Because of her unusualbusiness ability, he was stern and exacting with her. He paid her agood salary, but she had few holidays and never got away from herresponsibilities. Even on Sundays she went to the office to open themail and read the markets. With Charley, who was not interested inbusiness, but was already preparing for Annapolis, Mr. Harling was veryindulgent; bought him guns and tools and electric batteries, and neverasked what he did with them. 

Frances was dark, like her father, and quite as tall. In winter shewore a sealskin coat and cap, and she and Mr. Harling used to walk hometogether in the evening, talking about grain-cars and cattle, like twomen. Sometimes she came over to see grandfather after supper, and hervisits flattered him. More than once they put their wits together torescue some unfortunate farmer from the clutches of Wick Cutter, theBlack Hawk money-lender. Grandfather said Frances Harling was as good ajudge of credits as any banker in the county. The two or three men whohad tried to take advantage of her in a deal acquired celebrity by theirdefeat. She knew every farmer for miles about: how much land he hadunder cultivation, how many cattle he was feeding, what his liabilitieswere. Her interest in these people was more than a business interest. She carried them all in her mind as if they were characters in a book ora play. 

When Frances drove out into the country on business, she would go milesout of her way to call on some of the old people, or to see the womenwho seldom got to town. She was quick at understanding the grandmotherswho spoke no English, and the most reticent and distrustful of themwould tell her their story without realizing they were doing so. Shewent to country funerals and weddings in all weathers. A farmer'sdaughter who was to be married could count on a wedding present fromFrances Harling. 

In August the Harlings' Danish cook had to leave them. Grandmotherentreated them to try Antonia. She cornered Ambrosch the next time hecame to town, and pointed out to him that any connection with ChristianHarling would strengthen his credit and be of advantage to him. OneSunday Mrs. Harling took the long ride out to the Shimerdas' withFrances. She said she wanted to see 'what the girl came from' and tohave a clear understanding with her mother. I was in our yard when theycame driving home, just before sunset. They laughed and waved to meas they passed, and I could see they were in great good humour. Aftersupper, when grandfather set off to church, grandmother and I took myshort cut through the willow hedge and went over to hear about the visitto the Shimerdas'. 

We found Mrs. Harling with Charley and Sally on the front porch, resting after her hard drive. Julia was in the hammock--she was fondof repose--and Frances was at the piano, playing without a light andtalking to her mother through the open window. 

Mrs. Harling laughed when she saw us coming. 'I expect you left yourdishes on the table tonight, Mrs. Burden, ' she called. Frances shut thepiano and came out to join us. 

They had liked Antonia from their first glimpse of her; felt they knewexactly what kind of girl she was. As for Mrs. Shimerda, they found hervery amusing. Mrs. Harling chuckled whenever she spoke of her. 'I expectI am more at home with that sort of bird than you are, Mrs. Burden. They're a pair, Ambrosch and that old woman!'

They had had a long argument with Ambrosch about Antonia's allowancefor clothes and pocket-money. It was his plan that every cent of hissister's wages should be paid over to him each month, and he wouldprovide her with such clothing as he thought necessary. When Mrs. Harling told him firmly that she would keep fifty dollars a year forAntonia's own use, he declared they wanted to take his sister to townand dress her up and make a fool of her. Mrs. Harling gave us a livelyaccount of Ambrosch's behaviour throughout the interview; how he keptjumping up and putting on his cap as if he were through with the wholebusiness, and how his mother tweaked his coat-tail and prompted him inBohemian. Mrs. Harling finally agreed to pay three dollars a week forAntonia's services--good wages in those days--and to keep her in shoes. There had been hot dispute about the shoes, Mrs. Shimerda finally sayingpersuasively that she would send Mrs. Harling three fat geese every yearto 'make even. ' Ambrosch was to bring his sister to town next Saturday. 

'She'll be awkward and rough at first, like enough, ' grandmother saidanxiously, 'but unless she's been spoiled by the hard life she's led, she has it in her to be a real helpful girl. '

Mrs. Harling laughed her quick, decided laugh. 'Oh, I'm not worrying, Mrs. Burden! I can bring something out of that girl. She's barelyseventeen, not too old to learn new ways. She's good-looking, too!' sheadded warmly. 

Frances turned to grandmother. 'Oh, yes, Mrs. Burden, you didn't tellus that! She was working in the garden when we got there, barefoot andragged. But she has such fine brown legs and arms, and splendid colourin her cheeks--like those big dark red plums. '

We were pleased at this praise. Grandmother spoke feelingly. 'When shefirst came to this country, Frances, and had that genteel old man towatch over her, she was as pretty a girl as ever I saw. But, dear me, what a life she's led, out in the fields with those rough threshers!Things would have been very different with poor Antonia if her fatherhad lived. '

The Harlings begged us to tell them about Mr. Shimerda's death and thebig snowstorm. By the time we saw grandfather coming home from church, we had told them pretty much all we knew of the Shimerdas. 

'The girl will be happy here, and she'll forget those things, ' said Mrs. Harling confidently, as we rose to take our leave. 

III

ON SATURDAY AMBROSCH drove up to the back gate, and Antonia jumped downfrom the wagon and ran into our kitchen just as she used to do. She waswearing shoes and stockings, and was breathless and excited. She gave mea playful shake by the shoulders. 'You ain't forget about me, Jim?'

Grandmother kissed her. 'God bless you, child! Now you've come, you musttry to do right and be a credit to us. '

Antonia looked eagerly about the house and admired everything. 'Maybe Ibe the kind of girl you like better; now I come to town, ' she suggestedhopefully. 

How good it was to have Antonia near us again; to see her every day andalmost every night! Her greatest fault, Mrs. Harling found, was thatshe so often stopped her work and fell to playing with the children. Shewould race about the orchard with us, or take sides in our hay-fightsin the barn, or be the old bear that came down from the mountain andcarried off Nina. Tony learned English so quickly that by the timeschool began she could speak as well as any of us. 

I was jealous of Tony's admiration for Charley Harling. Because he wasalways first in his classes at school, and could mend the water-pipesor the doorbell and take the clock to pieces, she seemed to think hima sort of prince. Nothing that Charley wanted was too much trouble forher. She loved to put up lunches for him when he went hunting, to mendhis ball-gloves and sew buttons on his shooting-coat, baked the kind ofnut-cake he liked, and fed his setter dog when he was away on trips withhis father. Antonia had made herself cloth working-slippers out of Mr. Harling's old coats, and in these she went padding about after Charley, fairly panting with eagerness to please him. 

Next to Charley, I think she loved Nina best. Nina was only six, and shewas rather more complex than the other children. She was fanciful, had all sorts of unspoken preferences, and was easily offended. At theslightest disappointment or displeasure, her velvety brown eyes filledwith tears, and she would lift her chin and walk silently away. If weran after her and tried to appease her, it did no good. She walked onunmollified. I used to think that no eyes in the world could growso large or hold so many tears as Nina's. Mrs. Harling and Antoniainvariably took her part. We were never given a chance to explain. Thecharge was simply: 'You have made Nina cry. Now, Jimmy can go home, andSally must get her arithmetic. ' I liked Nina, too; she was so quaint andunexpected, and her eyes were lovely; but I often wanted to shake her. 

We had jolly evenings at the Harlings' when the father was away. If hewas at home, the children had to go to bed early, or they came overto my house to play. Mr. Harling not only demanded a quiet house, hedemanded all his wife's attention. He used to take her away to theirroom in the west ell, and talk over his business with her all evening. Though we did not realize it then, Mrs. Harling was our audience when weplayed, and we always looked to her for suggestions. Nothing flatteredone like her quick laugh. 

Mr. Harling had a desk in his bedroom, and his own easy-chair by thewindow, in which no one else ever sat. On the nights when he was athome, I could see his shadow on the blind, and it seemed to me anarrogant shadow. Mrs. Harling paid no heed to anyone else if he wasthere. Before he went to bed she always got him a lunch of smoked salmonor anchovies and beer. He kept an alcohol lamp in his room, and a Frenchcoffee-pot, and his wife made coffee for him at any hour of the night hehappened to want it. 

Most Black Hawk fathers had no personal habits outside their domesticones; they paid the bills, pushed the baby-carriage after office hours, moved the sprinkler about over the lawn, and took the family driving onSunday. Mr. Harling, therefore, seemed to me autocratic and imperial inhis ways. He walked, talked, put on his gloves, shook hands, like a manwho felt that he had power. He was not tall, but he carried his head sohaughtily that he looked a commanding figure, and there was somethingdaring and challenging in his eyes. I used to imagine that the 'nobles'of whom Antonia was always talking probably looked very much likeChristian Harling, wore caped overcoats like his, and just such aglittering diamond upon the little finger. 

Except when the father was at home, the Harling house was never quiet. Mrs. Harling and Nina and Antonia made as much noise as a houseful ofchildren, and there was usually somebody at the piano. Julia was theonly one who was held down to regular hours of practising, but theyall played. When Frances came home at noon, she played until dinner wasready. When Sally got back from school, she sat down in her hat and coatand drummed the plantation melodies that Negro minstrel troupes broughtto town. Even Nina played the Swedish Wedding March. 

Mrs. Harling had studied the piano under a good teacher, and somehow shemanaged to practise every day. I soon learned that if I were sent overon an errand and found Mrs. Harling at the piano, I must sit down andwait quietly until she turned to me. I can see her at this moment: hershort, square person planted firmly on the stool, her little fat handsmoving quickly and neatly over the keys, her eyes fixed on the musicwith intelligent concentration. 

IV

 'I won't have none of your weevily wheat, and I won't have none of your barley, But I'll take a measure of fine white flour, to make a cake for Charley. '

WE WERE SINGING rhymes to tease Antonia while she was beating up one ofCharley's favourite cakes in her big mixing-bowl. 

It was a crisp autumn evening, just cold enough to make one glad to quitplaying tag in the yard, and retreat into the kitchen. We had begun toroll popcorn balls with syrup when we heard a knock at the back door, and Tony dropped her spoon and went to open it. 

A plump, fair-skinned girl was standing in the doorway. She lookeddemure and pretty, and made a graceful picture in her blue cashmeredress and little blue hat, with a plaid shawl drawn neatly about hershoulders and a clumsy pocket-book in her hand. 

'Hello, Tony. Don't you know me?' she asked in a smooth, low voice, looking in at us archly. 

Antonia gasped and stepped back. 

'Why, it's Lena! Of course I didn't know you, so dressed up!'

Lena Lingard laughed, as if this pleased her. I had not recognized herfor a moment, either. I had never seen her before with a hat on herhead--or with shoes and stockings on her feet, for that matter. And hereshe was, brushed and smoothed and dressed like a town girl, smiling atus with perfect composure. 

'Hello, Jim, ' she said carelessly as she walked into the kitchen andlooked about her. 'I've come to town to work, too, Tony. '

'Have you, now? Well, ain't that funny!' Antonia stood ill at ease, anddidn't seem to know just what to do with her visitor. 

The door was open into the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling satcrocheting and Frances was reading. Frances asked Lena to come in andjoin them. 

'You are Lena Lingard, aren't you? I've been to see your mother, but youwere off herding cattle that day. Mama, this is Chris Lingard's oldestgirl. '

Mrs. Harling dropped her worsted and examined the visitor with quick, keen eyes. Lena was not at all disconcerted. She sat down in the chairFrances pointed out, carefully arranging her pocket-book and greycotton gloves on her lap. We followed with our popcorn, but Antonia hungback--said she had to get her cake into the oven. 

'So you have come to town, ' said Mrs. Harling, her eyes still fixed onLena. 'Where are you working?'

'For Mrs. Thomas, the dressmaker. She is going to teach me to sew. Shesays I have quite a knack. I'm through with the farm. There ain't anyend to the work on a farm, and always so much trouble happens. I'm goingto be a dressmaker. '

'Well, there have to be dressmakers. It's a good trade. But I wouldn'trun down the farm, if I were you, ' said Mrs. Harling rather severely. 'How is your mother?'

'Oh, mother's never very well; she has too much to do. She'd get awayfrom the farm, too, if she could. She was willing for me to come. AfterI learn to do sewing, I can make money and help her. '

'See that you don't forget to, ' said Mrs. Harling sceptically, as shetook up her crocheting again and sent the hook in and out with nimblefingers. 

'No, 'm, I won't, ' said Lena blandly. She took a few grains of thepopcorn we pressed upon her, eating them discreetly and taking care notto get her fingers sticky. 

Frances drew her chair up nearer to the visitor. 'I thought you weregoing to be married, Lena, ' she said teasingly. 'Didn't I hear that NickSvendsen was rushing you pretty hard?'

Lena looked up with her curiously innocent smile. 'He did go with mequite a while. But his father made a fuss about it and said he wouldn'tgive Nick any land if he married me, so he's going to marry AnnieIverson. I wouldn't like to be her; Nick's awful sullen, and he'll takeit out on her. He ain't spoke to his father since he promised. '

Frances laughed. 'And how do you feel about it?'

'I don't want to marry Nick, or any other man, ' Lena murmured. 'I'veseen a good deal of married life, and I don't care for it. I want to beso I can help my mother and the children at home, and not have to asklief of anybody. '

'That's right, ' said Frances. 'And Mrs. Thomas thinks you can learndressmaking?'

'Yes, 'm. I've always liked to sew, but I never had much to do with. Mrs. Thomas makes lovely things for all the town ladies. Did you knowMrs. Gardener is having a purple velvet made? The velvet came fromOmaha. My, but it's lovely!' Lena sighed softly and stroked her cashmerefolds. 'Tony knows I never did like out-of-door work, ' she added. 

Mrs. Harling glanced at her. 'I expect you'll learn to sew all right, Lena, if you'll only keep your head and not go gadding about to dancesall the time and neglect your work, the way some country girls do. '

'Yes, 'm. Tiny Soderball is coming to town, too. She's going to workat the Boys' Home Hotel. She'll see lots of strangers, ' Lena addedwistfully. 

'Too many, like enough, ' said Mrs. Harling. 'I don't think a hotel is agood place for a girl; though I guess Mrs. Gardener keeps an eye on herwaitresses. '

Lena's candid eyes, that always looked a little sleepy under their longlashes, kept straying about the cheerful rooms with naive admiration. Presently she drew on her cotton gloves. 'I guess I must be leaving, 'she said irresolutely. 

Frances told her to come again, whenever she was lonesome or wantedadvice about anything. Lena replied that she didn't believe she wouldever get lonesome in Black Hawk. 

She lingered at the kitchen door and begged Antonia to come and see heroften. 'I've got a room of my own at Mrs. Thomas's, with a carpet. '

Tony shuffled uneasily in her cloth slippers. 'I'll come sometime, butMrs. Harling don't like to have me run much, ' she said evasively. 

'You can do what you please when you go out, can't you?' Lena asked ina guarded whisper. 'Ain't you crazy about town, Tony? I don't carewhat anybody says, I'm done with the farm!' She glanced back over hershoulder toward the dining-room, where Mrs. Harling sat. 

When Lena was gone, Frances asked Antonia why she hadn't been a littlemore cordial to her. 

'I didn't know if your mother would like her coming here, ' said Antonia, looking troubled. 'She was kind of talked about, out there. '

'Yes, I know. But mother won't hold it against her if she behaves wellhere. You needn't say anything about that to the children. I guess Jimhas heard all that gossip?'

When I nodded, she pulled my hair and told me I knew too much, anyhow. We were good friends, Frances and I. 

I ran home to tell grandmother that Lena Lingard had come to town. Wewere glad of it, for she had a hard life on the farm. 

Lena lived in the Norwegian settlement west of Squaw Creek, and she usedto herd her father's cattle in the open country between his place andthe Shimerdas'. Whenever we rode over in that direction we saw herout among her cattle, bareheaded and barefooted, scantily dressed intattered clothing, always knitting as she watched her herd. Before Iknew Lena, I thought of her as something wild, that always lived on theprairie, because I had never seen her under a roof. Her yellow hair wasburned to a ruddy thatch on her head; but her legs and arms, curiouslyenough, in spite of constant exposure to the sun, kept a miraculouswhiteness which somehow made her seem more undressed than other girlswho went scantily clad. The first time I stopped to talk to her, I wasastonished at her soft voice and easy, gentle ways. The girls out thereusually got rough and mannish after they went to herding. But Lena askedJake and me to get off our horses and stay awhile, and behaved exactlyas if she were in a house and were accustomed to having visitors. Shewas not embarrassed by her ragged clothes, and treated us as if we wereold acquaintances. Even then I noticed the unusual colour of her eyes--ashade of deep violet--and their soft, confiding expression. 

Chris Lingard was not a very successful farmer, and he had a largefamily. Lena was always knitting stockings for little brothers andsisters, and even the Norwegian women, who disapproved of her, admittedthat she was a good daughter to her mother. As Tony said, she had beentalked about. She was accused of making Ole Benson lose the little sensehe had--and that at an age when she should still have been in pinafores. 

Ole lived in a leaky dugout somewhere at the edge of the settlement. Hewas fat and lazy and discouraged, and bad luck had become a habit withhim. After he had had every other kind of misfortune, his wife, 'CrazyMary, ' tried to set a neighbour's barn on fire, and was sent to theasylum at Lincoln. She was kept there for a few months, then escaped andwalked all the way home, nearly two hundred miles, travelling by nightand hiding in barns and haystacks by day. When she got back to theNorwegian settlement, her poor feet were as hard as hoofs. She promisedto be good, and was allowed to stay at home--though everyone realizedshe was as crazy as ever, and she still ran about barefooted through thesnow, telling her domestic troubles to her neighbours. 

Not long after Mary came back from the asylum, I heard a young Dane, whowas helping us to thresh, tell Jake and Otto that Chris Lingard's oldestgirl had put Ole Benson out of his head, until he had no more sense thanhis crazy wife. When Ole was cultivating his corn that summer, he usedto get discouraged in the field, tie up his team, and wander off towherever Lena Lingard was herding. There he would sit down on thedrawside and help her watch her cattle. All the settlement was talkingabout it. The Norwegian preacher's wife went to Lena and told her sheought not to allow this; she begged Lena to come to church on Sundays. Lena said she hadn't a dress in the world any less ragged than the oneon her back. Then the minister's wife went through her old trunks andfound some things she had worn before her marriage. 

The next Sunday Lena appeared at church, a little late, with her hairdone up neatly on her head, like a young woman, wearing shoes andstockings, and the new dress, which she had made over for herselfvery becomingly. The congregation stared at her. Until that morning noone--unless it were Ole--had realized how pretty she was, or that shewas growing up. The swelling lines of her figure had been hidden underthe shapeless rags she wore in the fields. After the last hymn hadbeen sung, and the congregation was dismissed, Ole slipped out to thehitch-bar and lifted Lena on her horse. That, in itself, was shocking;a married man was not expected to do such things. But it was nothing tothe scene that followed. Crazy Mary darted out from the group of womenat the church door, and ran down the road after Lena, shouting horriblethreats. 

'Look out, you Lena Lingard, look out! I'll come over with a corn-knifeone day and trim some of that shape off you. Then you won't sail roundso fine, making eyes at the men!. . . '

The Norwegian women didn't know where to look. They were formalhousewives, most of them, with a severe sense of decorum. But LenaLingard only laughed her lazy, good-natured laugh and rode on, gazingback over her shoulder at Ole's infuriated wife. 

The time came, however, when Lena didn't laugh. More than once CrazyMary chased her across the prairie and round and round the Shimerdas'cornfield. Lena never told her father; perhaps she was ashamed; perhapsshe was more afraid of his anger than of the corn-knife. I was at theShimerdas' one afternoon when Lena came bounding through the red grassas fast as her white legs could carry her. She ran straight into thehouse and hid in Antonia's feather-bed. Mary was not far behind: shecame right up to the door and made us feel how sharp her blade was, showing us very graphically just what she meant to do to Lena. Mrs. Shimerda, leaning out of the window, enjoyed the situation keenly, and was sorry when Antonia sent Mary away, mollified by an apronful ofbottle-tomatoes. Lena came out from Tony's room behind the kitchen, very pink from the heat of the feathers, but otherwise calm. She beggedAntonia and me to go with her, and help get her cattle together; theywere scattered and might be gorging themselves in somebody's cornfield. 

'Maybe you lose a steer and learn not to make somethings with your eyesat married men, ' Mrs. Shimerda told her hectoringly. 

Lena only smiled her sleepy smile. 'I never made anything to him with myeyes. I can't help it if he hangs around, and I can't order him off. Itain't my prairie. '

V

AFTER LENA CAME To Black Hawk, I often met her downtown, where shewould be matching sewing silk or buying 'findings' for Mrs. Thomas. IfI happened to walk home with her, she told me all about the dresses shewas helping to make, or about what she saw and heard when she was withTiny Soderball at the hotel on Saturday nights. 

The Boys' Home was the best hotel on our branch of the Burlington, andall the commercial travellers in that territory tried to get into BlackHawk for Sunday. They used to assemble in the parlour after supper onSaturday nights. Marshall Field's man, Anson Kirkpatrick, played thepiano and sang all the latest sentimental songs. After Tiny had helpedthe cook wash the dishes, she and Lena sat on the other side of thedouble doors between the parlour and the dining-room, listening to themusic and giggling at the jokes and stories. Lena often said she hopedI would be a travelling man when I grew up. They had a gay life of it;nothing to do but ride about on trains all day and go to theatreswhen they were in big cities. Behind the hotel there was an old storebuilding, where the salesmen opened their big trunks and spread outtheir samples on the counters. The Black Hawk merchants went to look atthese things and order goods, and Mrs. Thomas, though she was I retailtrade, ' was permitted to see them and to 'get ideas. ' They were allgenerous, these travelling men; they gave Tiny Soderball handkerchiefsand gloves and ribbons and striped stockings, and so many bottles ofperfume and cakes of scented soap that she bestowed some of them onLena. 

One afternoon in the week before Christmas, I came upon Lena andher funny, square-headed little brother Chris, standing before thedrugstore, gazing in at the wax dolls and blocks and Noah's Arksarranged in the frosty show window. The boy had come to town with aneighbour to do his Christmas shopping, for he had money of his own thisyear. He was only twelve, but that winter he had got the job of sweepingout the Norwegian church and making the fire in it every Sunday morning. A cold job it must have been, too!

We went into Duckford's dry-goods store, and Chris unwrapped all hispresents and showed them to me something for each of the six youngerthan himself, even a rubber pig for the baby. Lena had given him one ofTiny Soderball's bottles of perfume for his mother, and he thought hewould get some handkerchiefs to go with it. They were cheap, and hehadn't much money left. We found a tableful of handkerchiefs spread outfor view at Duckford's. Chris wanted those with initial letters in thecorner, because he had never seen any before. He studied them seriously, while Lena looked over his shoulder, telling him she thought the redletters would hold their colour best. He seemed so perplexed that Ithought perhaps he hadn't enough money, after all. Presently he saidgravely:

'Sister, you know mother's name is Berthe. I don't know if I ought toget B for Berthe, or M for Mother. '

Lena patted his bristly head. 'I'd get the B, Chrissy. It will pleaseher for you to think about her name. Nobody ever calls her by it now. '

That satisfied him. His face cleared at once, and he took three redsand three blues. When the neighbour came in to say that it was time tostart, Lena wound Chris's comforter about his neck and turned up hisjacket collar--he had no overcoat--and we watched him climb into thewagon and start on his long, cold drive. As we walked together up thewindy street, Lena wiped her eyes with the back of her woollen glove. 'Iget awful homesick for them, all the same, ' she murmured, as if she wereanswering some remembered reproach. 

VI

WINTER COMES DOWN SAVAGELY over a little town on the prairie. The windthat sweeps in from the open country strips away all the leafy screensthat hide one yard from another in summer, and the houses seem to drawcloser together. The roofs, that looked so far away across the greentree-tops, now stare you in the face, and they are so much uglier thanwhen their angles were softened by vines and shrubs. 

In the morning, when I was fighting my way to school against the wind, I couldn't see anything but the road in front of me; but in the lateafternoon, when I was coming home, the town looked bleak and desolate tome. The pale, cold light of the winter sunset did not beautify--it waslike the light of truth itself. When the smoky clouds hung low in thewest and the red sun went down behind them, leaving a pink flush on thesnowy roofs and the blue drifts, then the wind sprang up afresh, with akind of bitter song, as if it said: 'This is reality, whether you likeit or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, theliving mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, andthis is what was underneath. This is the truth. ' It was as if we werebeing punished for loving the loveliness of summer. 

If I loitered on the playground after school, or went to the post-officefor the mail and lingered to hear the gossip about the cigar-stand, itwould be growing dark by the time I came home. The sun was gone; thefrozen streets stretched long and blue before me; the lights wereshining pale in kitchen windows, and I could smell the suppers cookingas I passed. Few people were abroad, and each one of them was hurryingtoward a fire. The glowing stoves in the houses were like magnets. Whenone passed an old man, one could see nothing of his face but a red nosesticking out between a frosted beard and a long plush cap. The young mencapered along with their hands in their pockets, and sometimes trieda slide on the icy sidewalk. The children, in their bright hoods andcomforters, never walked, but always ran from the moment they left theirdoor, beating their mittens against their sides. When I got as far asthe Methodist Church, I was about halfway home. I can remember how gladI was when there happened to be a light in the church, and the paintedglass window shone out at us as we came along the frozen street. Inthe winter bleakness a hunger for colour came over people, like theLaplander's craving for fats and sugar. Without knowing why, we used tolinger on the sidewalk outside the church when the lamps were lightedearly for choir practice or prayer-meeting, shivering and talking untilour feet were like lumps of ice. The crude reds and greens and blues ofthat coloured glass held us there. 

On winter nights, the lights in the Harlings' windows drew me like thepainted glass. Inside that warm, roomy house there was colour, too. After supper I used to catch up my cap, stick my hands in my pockets, and dive through the willow hedge as if witches were after me. Ofcourse, if Mr. Harling was at home, if his shadow stood out on the blindof the west room, I did not go in, but turned and walked home by thelong way, through the street, wondering what book I should read as I satdown with the two old people. 

Such disappointments only gave greater zest to the nights when we actedcharades, or had a costume ball in the back parlour, with Sally alwaysdressed like a boy. Frances taught us to dance that winter, and shesaid, from the first lesson, that Antonia would make the best danceramong us. On Saturday nights, Mrs. Harling used to play the old operasfor us--'Martha, ' 'Norma, ' 'Rigoletto'--telling us the story while sheplayed. Every Saturday night was like a party. The parlour, the backparlour, and the dining-room were warm and brightly lighted, withcomfortable chairs and sofas, and gay pictures on the walls. One alwaysfelt at ease there. Antonia brought her sewing and sat with us--she wasalready beginning to make pretty clothes for herself. After the longwinter evenings on the prairie, with Ambrosch's sullen silences andher mother's complaints, the Harlings' house seemed, as she said, 'likeHeaven' to her. She was never too tired to make taffy or chocolatecookies for us. If Sally whispered in her ear, or Charley gave her threewinks, Tony would rush into the kitchen and build a fire in the range onwhich she had already cooked three meals that day. 

While we sat in the kitchen waiting for the cookies to bake or the taffyto cool, Nina used to coax Antonia to tell her stories--about the calfthat broke its leg, or how Yulka saved her little turkeys from drowningin the freshet, or about old Christmases and weddings in Bohemia. Ninainterpreted the stories about the creche fancifully, and in spite of ourderision she cherished a belief that Christ was born in Bohemia ashort time before the Shimerdas left that country. We all liked Tony'sstories. Her voice had a peculiarly engaging quality; it was deep, a little husky, and one always heard the breath vibrating behind it. Everything she said seemed to come right out of her heart. 

One evening when we were picking out kernels for walnut taffy, Tony toldus a new story. 

'Mrs. Harling, did you ever hear about what happened up in theNorwegian settlement last summer, when I was threshing there? We were atIversons', and I was driving one of the grain-wagons. '

Mrs. Harling came out and sat down among us. 'Could you throw the wheatinto the bin yourself, Tony?' She knew what heavy work it was. 

'Yes, ma'm, I did. I could shovel just as fast as that fat Andern boythat drove the other wagon. One day it was just awful hot. When we gotback to the field from dinner, we took things kind of easy. The men putin the horses and got the machine going, and Ole Iverson was up on thedeck, cutting bands. I was sitting against a straw-stack, trying to getsome shade. My wagon wasn't going out first, and somehow I felt the heatawful that day. The sun was so hot like it was going to burn the worldup. After a while I see a man coming across the stubble, and when hegot close I see it was a tramp. His toes stuck out of his shoes, andhe hadn't shaved for a long while, and his eyes was awful red and wild, like he had some sickness. He comes right up and begins to talk like heknows me already. He says: 'The ponds in this country is done got so lowa man couldn't drownd himself in one of 'em. '

'I told him nobody wanted to drownd themselves, but if we didn't haverain soon we'd have to pump water for the cattle. 

'"Oh, cattle, " he says, "you'll all take care of your cattle! Ain't yougot no beer here?" I told him he'd have to go to the Bohemians for beer;the Norwegians didn't have none when they threshed. "My God!" he says, "so it's Norwegians now, is it? I thought this was Americy. "

'Then he goes up to the machine and yells out to Ole Iverson, "Hello, partner, let me up there. I can cut bands, and I'm tired of trampin'. Iwon't go no farther. "

'I tried to make signs to Ole, 'cause I thought that man was crazy andmight get the machine stopped up. But Ole, he was glad to get down outof the sun and chaff--it gets down your neck and sticks to you somethingawful when it's hot like that. So Ole jumped down and crawled under oneof the wagons for shade, and the tramp got on the machine. He cut bandsall right for a few minutes, and then, Mrs. Harling, he waved his handto me and jumped head-first right into the threshing machine after thewheat. 

'I begun to scream, and the men run to stop the horses, but the belt hadsucked him down, and by the time they got her stopped, he was all beatand cut to pieces. He was wedged in so tight it was a hard job to gethim out, and the machine ain't never worked right since. '

'Was he clear dead, Tony?' we cried. 

'Was he dead? Well, I guess so! There, now, Nina's all upset. We won'ttalk about it. Don't you cry, Nina. No old tramp won't get you whileTony's here. '

Mrs. Harling spoke up sternly. 'Stop crying, Nina, or I'll always sendyou upstairs when Antonia tells us about the country. Did they neverfind out where he came from, Antonia?'

'Never, ma'm. He hadn't been seen nowhere except in a little town theycall Conway. He tried to get beer there, but there wasn't any saloon. Maybe he came in on a freight, but the brakeman hadn't seen him. Theycouldn't find no letters nor nothing on him; nothing but an old penknifein his pocket and the wishbone of a chicken wrapped up in a piece ofpaper, and some poetry. '

'Some poetry?' we exclaimed. 

'I remember, ' said Frances. 'It was "The Old Oaken Bucket, " cut out ofa newspaper and nearly worn out. Ole Iverson brought it into the officeand showed it to me. '

'Now, wasn't that strange, Miss Frances?' Tony asked thoughtfully. 'Whatwould anybody want to kill themselves in summer for? In threshing time, too! It's nice everywhere then. '

'So it is, Antonia, ' said Mrs. Harling heartily. 'Maybe I'll go home andhelp you thresh next summer. Isn't that taffy nearly ready to eat? I'vebeen smelling it a long while. '

There was a basic harmony between Antonia and her mistress. They hadstrong, independent natures, both of them. They knew what they liked, and were not always trying to imitate other people. They loved childrenand animals and music, and rough play and digging in the earth. Theyliked to prepare rich, hearty food and to see people eat it; to makeup soft white beds and to see youngsters asleep in them. They ridiculedconceited people and were quick to help unfortunate ones. Deep down ineach of them there was a kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, notover-delicate, but very invigorating. I never tried to define it, but Iwas distinctly conscious of it. I could not imagine Antonia's living fora week in any other house in Black Hawk than the Harlings'. 

VII

WINTER LIES TOO LONG in country towns; hangs on until it is stale andshabby, old and sullen. On the farm the weather was the great fact, andmen's affairs went on underneath it, as the streams creep under the ice. But in Black Hawk the scene of human life was spread out shrunken andpinched, frozen down to the bare stalk. 

Through January and February I went to the river with the Harlings onclear nights, and we skated up to the big island and made bonfires onthe frozen sand. But by March the ice was rough and choppy, and thesnow on the river bluffs was grey and mournful-looking. I was tired ofschool, tired of winter clothes, of the rutted streets, of the dirtydrifts and the piles of cinders that had lain in the yards so long. There was only one break in the dreary monotony of that month: whenBlind d'Arnault, the Negro pianist, came to town. He gave a concert atthe Opera House on Monday night, and he and his manager spent Saturdayand Sunday at our comfortable hotel. Mrs. Harling had known d'Arnaultfor years. She told Antonia she had better go to see Tiny that Saturdayevening, as there would certainly be music at the Boys' Home. 

Saturday night after supper I ran downtown to the hotel and slippedquietly into the parlour. The chairs and sofas were already occupied, and the air smelled pleasantly of cigar smoke. The parlour had once beentwo rooms, and the floor was swaybacked where the partition had been cutaway. The wind from without made waves in the long carpet. A coal stoveglowed at either end of the room, and the grand piano in the middlestood open. 

There was an atmosphere of unusual freedom about the house that night, for Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha for a week. Johnnie had been havingdrinks with the guests until he was rather absent-minded. It was Mrs. Gardener who ran the business and looked after everything. Her husbandstood at the desk and welcomed incoming travellers. He was a popularfellow, but no manager. 

Mrs. Gardener was admittedly the best-dressed woman in Black Hawk, drovethe best horse, and had a smart trap and a little white-and-gold sleigh. She seemed indifferent to her possessions, was not half so solicitousabout them as her friends were. She was tall, dark, severe, withsomething Indian-like in the rigid immobility of her face. Her mannerwas cold, and she talked little. Guests felt that they were receiving, not conferring, a favour when they stayed at her house. Even thesmartest travelling men were flattered when Mrs. Gardener stopped tochat with them for a moment. The patrons of the hotel were divided intotwo classes: those who had seen Mrs. Gardener's diamonds, and those whohad not. 

When I stole into the parlour, Anson Kirkpatrick, Marshall Field's man, was at the piano, playing airs from a musical comedy then running inChicago. He was a dapper little Irishman, very vain, homely as a monkey, with friends everywhere, and a sweetheart in every port, like a sailor. I did not know all the men who were sitting about, but I recognized afurniture salesman from Kansas City, a drug man, and Willy O'Reilly, whotravelled for a jewellery house and sold musical instruments. The talkwas all about good and bad hotels, actors and actresses and musicalprodigies. I learned that Mrs. Gardener had gone to Omaha to hear Boothand Barrett, who were to play there next week, and that Mary Andersonwas having a great success in 'A Winter's Tale, ' in London. 

The door from the office opened, and Johnnie Gardener came in, directingBlind d'Arnault--he would never consent to be led. He was a heavy, bulkymulatto, on short legs, and he came tapping the floor in front of himwith his gold-headed cane. His yellow face was lifted in the light, witha show of white teeth, all grinning, and his shrunken, papery eyelidslay motionless over his blind eyes. 

'Good evening, gentlemen. No ladies here? Good evening, gentlemen. Wegoing to have a little music? Some of you gentlemen going to play forme this evening?' It was the soft, amiable Negro voice, like those Iremembered from early childhood, with the note of docile subserviencein it. He had the Negro head, too; almost no head at all; nothing behindthe ears but folds of neck under close-clipped wool. He would havebeen repulsive if his face had not been so kindly and happy. It was thehappiest face I had seen since I left Virginia. 

He felt his way directly to the piano. The moment he sat down, I noticedthe nervous infirmity of which Mrs. Harling had told me. When he wassitting, or standing still, he swayed back and forth incessantly, likea rocking toy. At the piano, he swayed in time to the music, and whenhe was not playing, his body kept up this motion, like an empty millgrinding on. He found the pedals and tried them, ran his yellow hands upand down the keys a few times, tinkling off scales, then turned to thecompany. 

'She seems all right, gentlemen. Nothing happened to her since thelast time I was here. Mrs. Gardener, she always has this piano tunedup before I come. Now gentlemen, I expect you've all got grand voices. Seems like we might have some good old plantation songs tonight. '

The men gathered round him, as he began to play 'My Old Kentucky Home. 'They sang one Negro melody after another, while the mulatto sat rockinghimself, his head thrown back, his yellow face lifted, his shrivelledeyelids never fluttering. 

He was born in the Far South, on the d'Arnault plantation, where thespirit if not the fact of slavery persisted. When he was three weeksold, he had an illness which left him totally blind. As soon as he wasold enough to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, thenervous motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom youngNegro wench who was laundress for the d'Arnaults, concluded that herblind baby was 'not right' in his head, and she was ashamed of him. Sheloved him devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his'fidgets, ' that she hid him away from people. All the dainties shebrought down from the Big House were for the blind child, and she beatand cuffed her other children whenever she found them teasing him ortrying to get his chicken-bone away from him. He began to talk early, remembered everything he heard, and his mammy said he 'wasn't allwrong. ' She named him Samson, because he was blind, but on theplantation he was known as 'yellow Martha's simple child. ' He was docileand obedient, but when he was six years old he began to run away fromhome, always taking the same direction. He felt his way through thelilacs, along the boxwood hedge, up to the south wing of the Big House, where Miss Nellie d'Arnault practised the piano every morning. Thisangered his mother more than anything else he could have done; she wasso ashamed of his ugliness that she couldn't bear to have white folkssee him. Whenever she caught him slipping away from the cabin, shewhipped him unmercifully, and told him what dreadful things old Mr. D'Arnault would do to him if he ever found him near the Big House. Butthe next time Samson had a chance, he ran away again. If Miss d'Arnaultstopped practising for a moment and went toward the window, she saw thishideous little pickaninny, dressed in an old piece of sacking, standing in the open space between the hollyhock rows, his bodyrocking automatically, his blind face lifted to the sun and wearing anexpression of idiotic rapture. Often she was tempted to tell Martha thatthe child must be kept at home, but somehow the memory of his foolish, happy face deterred her. She remembered that his sense of hearing wasnearly all he had--though it did not occur to her that he might havemore of it than other children. 

One day Samson was standing thus while Miss Nellie was playing herlesson to her music-teacher. The windows were open. He heard them get upfrom the piano, talk a little while, and then leave the room. He heardthe door close after them. He crept up to the front windows and stuckhis head in: there was no one there. He could always detect the presenceof anyone in a room. He put one foot over the window-sill and straddledit. 

His mother had told him over and over how his master would give him tothe big mastiff if he ever found him 'meddling. ' Samson had got too nearthe mastiff's kennel once, and had felt his terrible breath in his face. He thought about that, but he pulled in his other foot. 

Through the dark he found his way to the Thing, to its mouth. He touchedit softly, and it answered softly, kindly. He shivered and stoodstill. Then he began to feel it all over, ran his finger-tips along theslippery sides, embraced the carved legs, tried to get some conceptionof its shape and size, of the space it occupied in primeval night. Itwas cold and hard, and like nothing else in his black universe. He wentback to its mouth, began at one end of the keyboard and felt his waydown into the mellow thunder, as far as he could go. He seemed to knowthat it must be done with the fingers, not with the fists or the feet. He approached this highly artificial instrument through a mere instinct, and coupled himself to it, as if he knew it was to piece him out andmake a whole creature of him. After he had tried over all the sounds, he began to finger out passages from things Miss Nellie had beenpractising, passages that were already his, that lay under the bone ofhis pinched, conical little skull, definite as animal desires. 

The door opened; Miss Nellie and her music-master stood behind it, butblind Samson, who was so sensitive to presences, did not know they werethere. He was feeling out the pattern that lay all ready-made on thebig and little keys. When he paused for a moment, because the sound waswrong and he wanted another, Miss Nellie spoke softly. He whirled aboutin a spasm of terror, leaped forward in the dark, struck his head on theopen window, and fell screaming and bleeding to the floor. He had whathis mother called a fit. The doctor came and gave him opium. 

When Samson was well again, his young mistress led him back to thepiano. Several teachers experimented with him. They found he hadabsolute pitch, and a remarkable memory. As a very young child he couldrepeat, after a fashion, any composition that was played for him. Nomatter how many wrong notes he struck, he never lost the intention ofa passage, he brought the substance of it across by irregular andastonishing means. He wore his teachers out. He could never learn likeother people, never acquired any finish. He was always a Negro prodigywho played barbarously and wonderfully. As piano-playing, it was perhapsabominable, but as music it was something real, vitalized by a sense ofrhythm that was stronger than his other physical senses--that not onlyfilled his dark mind, but worried his body incessantly. To hear him, towatch him, was to see a Negro enjoying himself as only a Negro can. Itwas as if all the agreeable sensations possible to creatures of fleshand blood were heaped up on those black-and-white keys, and he weregloating over them and trickling them through his yellow fingers. 

In the middle of a crashing waltz, d'Arnault suddenly began to playsoftly, and, turning to one of the men who stood behind him, whispered, 'Somebody dancing in there. ' He jerked his bullet-head toward thedining-room. 'I hear little feet--girls, I spect. '

Anson Kirkpatrick mounted a chair and peeped over the transom. Springingdown, he wrenched open the doors and ran out into the dining-room. Tinyand Lena, Antonia and Mary Dusak, were waltzing in the middle of thefloor. They separated and fled toward the kitchen, giggling. 

Kirkpatrick caught Tiny by the elbows. 'What's the matter with yougirls? Dancing out here by yourselves, when there's a roomful oflonesome men on the other side of the partition! Introduce me to yourfriends, Tiny. '

The girls, still laughing, were trying to escape. Tiny looked alarmed. 'Mrs. Gardener wouldn't like it, ' she protested. 'She'd be awful mad ifyou was to come out here and dance with us. '

'Mrs. Gardener's in Omaha, girl. Now, you're Lena, are you?--and you'reTony and you're Mary. Have I got you all straight?'

O'Reilly and the others began to pile the chairs on the tables. JohnnieGardener ran in from the office. 

'Easy, boys, easy!' he entreated them. 'You'll wake the cook, andthere'll be the devil to pay for me. She won't hear the music, butshe'll be down the minute anything's moved in the dining-room. '

'Oh, what do you care, Johnnie? Fire the cook and wire Molly to bringanother. Come along, nobody'll tell tales. '

Johnnie shook his head. ''S a fact, boys, ' he said confidentially. 'If Itake a drink in Black Hawk, Molly knows it in Omaha!'

His guests laughed and slapped him on the shoulder. 'Oh, we'll make itall right with Molly. Get your back up, Johnnie. '

Molly was Mrs. Gardener's name, of course. 'Molly Bawn' was paintedin large blue letters on the glossy white sides of the hotel bus, and 'Molly' was engraved inside Johnnie's ring and on hiswatch-case--doubtless on his heart, too. He was an affectionate littleman, and he thought his wife a wonderful woman; he knew that without herhe would hardly be more than a clerk in some other man's hotel. 

At a word from Kirkpatrick, d'Arnault spread himself out over the piano, and began to draw the dance music out of it, while the perspirationshone on his short wool and on his uplifted face. He looked like someglistening African god of pleasure, full of strong, savage blood. Whenever the dancers paused to change partners or to catch breath, hewould boom out softly, 'Who's that goin' back on me? One of these citygentlemen, I bet! Now, you girls, you ain't goin' to let that floor getcold?'

Antonia seemed frightened at first, and kept looking questioningly atLena and Tiny over Willy O'Reilly's shoulder. Tiny Soderball was trimand slender, with lively little feet and pretty ankles--she wore herdresses very short. She was quicker in speech, lighter in movementand manner than the other girls. Mary Dusak was broad and brown ofcountenance, slightly marked by smallpox, but handsome for all that. She had beautiful chestnut hair, coils of it; her forehead was low andsmooth, and her commanding dark eyes regarded the world indifferentlyand fearlessly. She looked bold and resourceful and unscrupulous, andshe was all of these. They were handsome girls, had the fresh colourof their country upbringing, and in their eyes that brilliancy which iscalled--by no metaphor, alas!--'the light of youth. '

D'Arnault played until his manager came and shut the piano. Before heleft us, he showed us his gold watch which struck the hours, and atopaz ring, given him by some Russian nobleman who delighted in Negromelodies, and had heard d'Arnault play in New Orleans. At last he tappedhis way upstairs, after bowing to everybody, docile and happy. I walkedhome with Antonia. We were so excited that we dreaded to go to bed. We lingered a long while at the Harlings' gate, whispering in the colduntil the restlessness was slowly chilled out of us. 

VIII

THE HARLING CHILDREN and I were never happier, never felt more contentedand secure, than in the weeks of spring which broke that long winter. We were out all day in the thin sunshine, helping Mrs. Harling and Tonybreak the ground and plant the garden, dig around the orchard trees, tieup vines and clip the hedges. Every morning, before I was up, I couldhear Tony singing in the garden rows. After the apple and cherry treesbroke into bloom, we ran about under them, hunting for the new neststhe birds were building, throwing clods at each other, and playinghide-and-seek with Nina. Yet the summer which was to change everythingwas coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, lifecan't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and theyhave to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders arealways forgetting. 

It must have been in June, for Mrs. Harling and Antonia were preservingcherries, when I stopped one morning to tell them that a dancingpavilion had come to town. I had seen two drays hauling the canvas andpainted poles up from the depot. 

That afternoon three cheerful-looking Italians strolled about BlackHawk, looking at everything, and with them was a dark, stout woman whowore a long gold watch-chain about her neck and carried a black laceparasol. They seemed especially interested in children and vacant lots. When I overtook them and stopped to say a word, I found them affable andconfiding. They told me they worked in Kansas City in the winter, and insummer they went out among the farming towns with their tent and taughtdancing. When business fell off in one place, they moved on to another. 

The dancing pavilion was put up near the Danish laundry, on a vacantlot surrounded by tall, arched cottonwood trees. It was very much likea merry-go-round tent, with open sides and gay flags flying from thepoles. Before the week was over, all the ambitious mothers were sendingtheir children to the afternoon dancing class. At three o'clock onemet little girls in white dresses and little boys in the round-collaredshirts of the time, hurrying along the sidewalk on their way to thetent. Mrs. Vanni received them at the entrance, always dressed inlavender with a great deal of black lace, her important watch-chainlying on her bosom. She wore her hair on the top of her head, built upin a black tower, with red coral combs. When she smiled, she showed tworows of strong, crooked yellow teeth. She taught the little childrenherself, and her husband, the harpist, taught the older ones. 

Often the mothers brought their fancywork and sat on the shady sideof the tent during the lesson. The popcorn man wheeled his glass wagonunder the big cottonwood by the door, and lounged in the sun, sure of agood trade when the dancing was over. Mr. Jensen, the Danish laundryman, used to bring a chair from his porch and sit out in the grass plot. Someragged little boys from the depot sold pop and iced lemonade under awhite umbrella at the corner, and made faces at the spruce youngsterswho came to dance. That vacant lot soon became the most cheerful placein town. Even on the hottest afternoons the cottonwoods made a rustlingshade, and the air smelled of popcorn and melted butter, and BouncingBets wilting in the sun. Those hardy flowers had run away from thelaundryman's garden, and the grass in the middle of the lot was pinkwith them. 

The Vannis kept exemplary order, and closed every evening at the hoursuggested by the city council. When Mrs. Vanni gave the signal, andthe harp struck up 'Home, Sweet Home, ' all Black Hawk knew it was teno'clock. You could set your watch by that tune as confidently as by theroundhouse whistle. 

At last there was something to do in those long, empty summer evenings, when the married people sat like images on their front porches, and theboys and girls tramped and tramped the board sidewalks--northward tothe edge of the open prairie, south to the depot, then back again to thepost-office, the ice-cream parlour, the butcher shop. Now there was aplace where the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one couldlaugh aloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence. That silenceseemed to ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the blackmaple trees with the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by lightheartedsounds. First the deep purring of Mr. Vanni's harp came in silveryripples through the blackness of the dusty-smelling night; then theviolins fell in--one of them was almost like a flute. They calledso archly, so seductively, that our feet hurried toward the tent ofthemselves. Why hadn't we had a tent before?

Dancing became popular now, just as roller skating had been the summerbefore. The Progressive Euchre Club arranged with the Vannis for theexclusive use of the floor on Tuesday and Friday nights. At other timesanyone could dance who paid his money and was orderly; the railroad men, the roundhouse mechanics, the delivery boys, the iceman, the farm-handswho lived near enough to ride into town after their day's work was over. 

I never missed a Saturday night dance. The tent was open until midnightthen. The country boys came in from farms eight and ten miles away, andall the country girls were on the floor--Antonia and Lena and Tiny, andthe Danish laundry girls and their friends. I was not the only boy whofound these dances gayer than the others. The young men who belonged tothe Progressive Euchre Club used to drop in late and risk a tiff withtheir sweethearts and general condemnation for a waltz with 'the hiredgirls. '

IX

THERE WAS A CURIOUS social situation in Black Hawk. All the young menfelt the attraction of the fine, well-set-up country girls who had cometo town to earn a living, and, in nearly every case, to help the fatherstruggle out of debt, or to make it possible for the younger children ofthe family to go to school. 

Those girls had grown up in the first bitter-hard times, and had gotlittle schooling themselves. But the younger brothers and sisters, forwhom they made such sacrifices and who have had 'advantages, ' never seemto me, when I meet them now, half as interesting or as well educated. The older girls, who helped to break up the wild sod, learned so muchfrom life, from poverty, from their mothers and grandmothers; they hadall, like Antonia, been early awakened and made observant by coming at atender age from an old country to a new. 

I can remember a score of these country girls who were in servicein Black Hawk during the few years I lived there, and I can remembersomething unusual and engaging about each of them. Physically they werealmost a race apart, and out-of-door work had given them a vigour which, when they got over their first shyness on coming to town, developed intoa positive carriage and freedom of movement, and made them conspicuousamong Black Hawk women. 

That was before the day of high-school athletics. Girls who had towalk more than half a mile to school were pitied. There was not atennis-court in the town; physical exercise was thought rather inelegantfor the daughters of well-to-do families. Some of the high-school girlswere jolly and pretty, but they stayed indoors in winter because ofthe cold, and in summer because of the heat. When one danced with them, their bodies never moved inside their clothes; their muscles seemed toask but one thing--not to be disturbed. I remember those girls merelyas faces in the schoolroom, gay and rosy, or listless and dull, cut offbelow the shoulders, like cherubs, by the ink-smeared tops of thehigh desks that were surely put there to make us round-shouldered andhollow-chested. 

The daughters of Black Hawk merchants had a confident, unenquiringbelief that they were 'refined, ' and that the country girls, who'worked out, ' were not. The American farmers in our county were quiteas hard-pressed as their neighbours from other countries. All alike hadcome to Nebraska with little capital and no knowledge of the soil theymust subdue. All had borrowed money on their land. But no matter in whatstraits the Pennsylvanian or Virginian found himself, he would notlet his daughters go out into service. Unless his girls could teach acountry school, they sat at home in poverty. 

The Bohemian and Scandinavian girls could not get positions as teachers, because they had had no opportunity to learn the language. Determinedto help in the struggle to clear the homestead from debt, they had noalternative but to go into service. Some of them, after they came totown, remained as serious and as discreet in behaviour as they had beenwhen they ploughed and herded on their father's farm. Others, like thethree Bohemian Marys, tried to make up for the years of youth they hadlost. But every one of them did what she had set out to do, and senthome those hard-earned dollars. The girls I knew were always helping topay for ploughs and reapers, brood-sows, or steers to fatten. 

One result of this family solidarity was that the foreign farmers in ourcounty were the first to become prosperous. After the fathers were outof debt, the daughters married the sons of neighbours--usually of likenationality--and the girls who once worked in Black Hawk kitchens areto-day managing big farms and fine families of their own; their childrenare better off than the children of the town women they used to serve. 

I thought the attitude of the town people toward these girls verystupid. If I told my schoolmates that Lena Lingard's grandfather was aclergyman, and much respected in Norway, they looked at me blankly. Whatdid it matter? All foreigners were ignorant people who couldn't speakEnglish. There was not a man in Black Hawk who had the intelligence orcultivation, much less the personal distinction, of Antonia's father. Yet people saw no difference between her and the three Marys; they wereall Bohemians, all 'hired girls. '

I always knew I should live long enough to see my country girls comeinto their own, and I have. To-day the best that a harassed Black Hawkmerchant can hope for is to sell provisions and farm machinery andautomobiles to the rich farms where that first crop of stalwart Bohemianand Scandinavian girls are now the mistresses. 

The Black Hawk boys looked forward to marrying Black Hawk girls, andliving in a brand-new little house with best chairs that must not besat upon, and hand-painted china that must not be used. But sometimes ayoung fellow would look up from his ledger, or out through the gratingof his father's bank, and let his eyes follow Lena Lingard, as shepassed the window with her slow, undulating walk, or Tiny Soderball, tripping by in her short skirt and striped stockings. 

The country girls were considered a menace to the social order. Theirbeauty shone out too boldly against a conventional background. Butanxious mothers need have felt no alarm. They mistook the mettle oftheir sons. The respect for respectability was stronger than any desirein Black Hawk youth. 

Our young man of position was like the son of a royal house; the boy whoswept out his office or drove his delivery wagon might frolic with thejolly country girls, but he himself must sit all evening in a plushparlour where conversation dragged so perceptibly that the father oftencame in and made blundering efforts to warm up the atmosphere. On hisway home from his dull call, he would perhaps meet Tony and Lena, comingalong the sidewalk whispering to each other, or the three Bohemian Marysin their long plush coats and caps, comporting themselves with a dignitythat only made their eventful histories the more piquant. If he went tothe hotel to see a travelling man on business, there was Tiny, archingher shoulders at him like a kitten. If he went into the laundry to gethis collars, there were the four Danish girls, smiling up from theirironing-boards, with their white throats and their pink cheeks. 

The three Marys were the heroines of a cycle of scandalous stories, which the old men were fond of relating as they sat about thecigar-stand in the drugstore. Mary Dusak had been housekeeper for abachelor rancher from Boston, and after several years in his serviceshe was forced to retire from the world for a short time. Later shecame back to town to take the place of her friend, Mary Svoboda, who wassimilarly embarrassed. The three Marys were considered as dangerous ashigh explosives to have about the kitchen, yet they were such good cooksand such admirable housekeepers that they never had to look for a place. 

The Vannis' tent brought the town boys and the country girls together onneutral ground. Sylvester Lovett, who was cashier in his father's bank, always found his way to the tent on Saturday night. He took all thedances Lena Lingard would give him, and even grew bold enough to walkhome with her. If his sisters or their friends happened to be among theonlookers on 'popular nights, ' Sylvester stood back in the shadowunder the cottonwood trees, smoking and watching Lena with a harassedexpression. Several times I stumbled upon him there in the dark, and Ifelt rather sorry for him. He reminded me of Ole Benson, who used tosit on the drawside and watch Lena herd her cattle. Later in the summer, when Lena went home for a week to visit her mother, I heard from Antoniathat young Lovett drove all the way out there to see her, and took herbuggy-riding. In my ingenuousness I hoped that Sylvester would marryLena, and thus give all the country girls a better position in the town. 

Sylvester dallied about Lena until he began to make mistakes in hiswork; had to stay at the bank until after dark to make his booksbalance. He was daft about her, and everyone knew it. To escape from hispredicament he ran away with a widow six years older than himself, whoowned a half-section. This remedy worked, apparently. He never looked atLena again, nor lifted his eyes as he ceremoniously tipped his hat whenhe happened to meet her on the sidewalk. 

So that was what they were like, I thought, these white-handed, high-collared clerks and bookkeepers! I used to glare at young Lovettfrom a distance and only wished I had some way of showing my contemptfor him. 

X

IT WAS AT THE Vannis' tent that Antonia was discovered. Hitherto shehad been looked upon more as a ward of the Harlings than as one of the'hired girls. ' She had lived in their house and yard and garden; herthoughts never seemed to stray outside that little kingdom. But afterthe tent came to town she began to go about with Tiny and Lena and theirfriends. The Vannis often said that Antonia was the best dancer of themall. I sometimes heard murmurs in the crowd outside the pavilion thatMrs. Harling would soon have her hands full with that girl. The youngmen began to joke with each other about 'the Harlings' Tony' as they didabout 'the Marshalls' Anna' or 'the Gardeners' Tiny. '

Antonia talked and thought of nothing but the tent. She hummed thedance tunes all day. When supper was late, she hurried with her dishes, dropped and smashed them in her excitement. At the first call of themusic, she became irresponsible. If she hadn't time to dress, she merelyflung off her apron and shot out of the kitchen door. Sometimes I wentwith her; the moment the lighted tent came into view she would breakinto a run, like a boy. There were always partners waiting for her; shebegan to dance before she got her breath. 

Antonia's success at the tent had its consequences. The icemanlingered too long now, when he came into the covered porch to fill therefrigerator. The delivery boys hung about the kitchen when they broughtthe groceries. Young farmers who were in town for Saturday came trampingthrough the yard to the back door to engage dances, or to invite Tony toparties and picnics. Lena and Norwegian Anna dropped in to help her withher work, so that she could get away early. The boys who brought herhome after the dances sometimes laughed at the back gate and wakened Mr. Harling from his first sleep. A crisis was inevitable. 

One Saturday night Mr. Harling had gone down to the cellar for beer. Ashe came up the stairs in the dark, he heard scuffling on the back porch, and then the sound of a vigorous slap. He looked out through the sidedoor in time to see a pair of long legs vaulting over the picket fence. Antonia was standing there, angry and excited. Young Harry Paine, whowas to marry his employer's daughter on Monday, had come to the tentwith a crowd of friends and danced all evening. Afterward, he beggedAntonia to let him walk home with her. She said she supposed he was anice young man, as he was one of Miss Frances's friends, and shedidn't mind. On the back porch he tried to kiss her, and when sheprotested--because he was going to be married on Monday--he caught herand kissed her until she got one hand free and slapped him. 

Mr. Harling put his beer-bottles down on the table. 'This is whatI've been expecting, Antonia. You've been going with girls who havea reputation for being free and easy, and now you've got the samereputation. I won't have this and that fellow tramping about my backyard all the time. This is the end of it, tonight. It stops, short. Youcan quit going to these dances, or you can hunt another place. Think itover. '

The next morning when Mrs. Harling and Frances tried to reason withAntonia, they found her agitated but determined. 'Stop going to thetent?' she panted. 'I wouldn't think of it for a minute! My own fathercouldn't make me stop! Mr. Harling ain't my boss outside my work. Iwon't give up my friends, either. The boys I go with are nice fellows. I thought Mr. Paine was all right, too, because he used to come here. Iguess I gave him a red face for his wedding, all right!' she blazed outindignantly. 

'You'll have to do one thing or the other, Antonia, ' Mrs. Harling toldher decidedly. 'I can't go back on what Mr. Harling has said. This ishis house. '

'Then I'll just leave, Mrs. Harling. Lena's been wanting me to get aplace closer to her for a long while. Mary Svoboda's going away from theCutters' to work at the hotel, and I can have her place. '

Mrs. Harling rose from her chair. 'Antonia, if you go to the Cutters' towork, you cannot come back to this house again. You know what that manis. It will be the ruin of you. '

Tony snatched up the teakettle and began to pour boiling water over theglasses, laughing excitedly. 'Oh, I can take care of myself! I'm a lotstronger than Cutter is. They pay four dollars there, and there's nochildren. The work's nothing; I can have every evening, and be out a lotin the afternoons. '

'I thought you liked children. Tony, what's come over you?'

'I don't know, something has. ' Antonia tossed her head and set her jaw. 'A girl like me has got to take her good times when she can. Maybe therewon't be any tent next year. I guess I want to have my fling, like theother girls. '

Mrs. Harling gave a short, harsh laugh. 'If you go to work for theCutters, you're likely to have a fling that you won't get up from in ahurry. '

Frances said, when she told grandmother and me about this scene, thatevery pan and plate and cup on the shelves trembled when her motherwalked out of the kitchen. Mrs. Harling declared bitterly that shewished she had never let herself get fond of Antonia. 

XI

WICK CUTTER WAS the money-lender who had fleeced poor Russian Peter. When a farmer once got into the habit of going to Cutter, it was likegambling or the lottery; in an hour of discouragement he went back. 

Cutter's first name was Wycliffe, and he liked to talk about his piousbringing-up. He contributed regularly to the Protestant churches, 'forsentiment's sake, ' as he said with a flourish of the hand. He came froma town in Iowa where there were a great many Swedes, and could speaka little Swedish, which gave him a great advantage with the earlyScandinavian settlers. 

In every frontier settlement there are men who have come there to escaperestraint. Cutter was one of the 'fast set' of Black Hawk business men. He was an inveterate gambler, though a poor loser. When we saw a lightburning in his office late at night, we knew that a game of poker wasgoing on. Cutter boasted that he never drank anything stronger thansherry, and he said he got his start in life by saving the money thatother young men spent for cigars. He was full of moral maxims forboys. When he came to our house on business, he quoted 'Poor Richard'sAlmanack' to me, and told me he was delighted to find a town boy whocould milk a cow. He was particularly affable to grandmother, andwhenever they met he would begin at once to talk about 'the good oldtimes' and simple living. I detested his pink, bald head, and his yellowwhiskers, always soft and glistening. It was said he brushed them everynight, as a woman does her hair. His white teeth looked factory-made. His skin was red and rough, as if from perpetual sunburn; he often wentaway to hot springs to take mud baths. He was notoriously dissolute withwomen. Two Swedish girls who had lived in his house were the worse forthe experience. One of them he had taken to Omaha and established in thebusiness for which he had fitted her. He still visited her. 

Cutter lived in a state of perpetual warfare with his wife, and yet, apparently, they never thought of separating. They dwelt in a fussy, scroll-work house, painted white and buried in thick evergreens, witha fussy white fence and barn. Cutter thought he knew a great deal abouthorses, and usually had a colt which he was training for the track. On Sunday mornings one could see him out at the fair grounds, speedingaround the race-course in his trotting-buggy, wearing yellow gloves anda black-and-white-check travelling cap, his whiskers blowing back in thebreeze. If there were any boys about, Cutter would offer one of thema quarter to hold the stop-watch, and then drive off, saying he had nochange and would 'fix it up next time. ' No one could cut his lawn orwash his buggy to suit him. He was so fastidious and prim about hisplace that a boy would go to a good deal of trouble to throw a dead catinto his back yard, or to dump a sackful of tin cans in his alley. Itwas a peculiar combination of old-maidishness and licentiousness thatmade Cutter seem so despicable. 

He had certainly met his match when he married Mrs. Cutter. She was aterrifying-looking person; almost a giantess in height, raw-boned, withiron-grey hair, a face always flushed, and prominent, hysterical eyes. When she meant to be entertaining and agreeable, she nodded her headincessantly and snapped her eyes at one. Her teeth were long and curved, like a horse's; people said babies always cried if she smiled at them. Her face had a kind of fascination for me: it was the very colour andshape of anger. There was a gleam of something akin to insanity inher full, intense eyes. She was formal in manner, and made callsin rustling, steel-grey brocades and a tall bonnet with bristlingaigrettes. 

Mrs. Cutter painted china so assiduously that even her wash-bowls andpitchers, and her husband's shaving-mug, were covered with violets andlilies. Once, when Cutter was exhibiting some of his wife's china to acaller, he dropped a piece. Mrs. Cutter put her handkerchief to her lipsas if she were going to faint and said grandly: 'Mr. Cutter, you havebroken all the Commandments--spare the finger-bowls!'

They quarrelled from the moment Cutter came into the house until theywent to bed at night, and their hired girls reported these scenes tothe town at large. Mrs. Cutter had several times cut paragraphs aboutunfaithful husbands out of the newspapers and mailed them to Cutter ina disguised handwriting. Cutter would come home at noon, find themutilated journal in the paper-rack, and triumphantly fit the clippinginto the space from which it had been cut. Those two could quarrelall morning about whether he ought to put on his heavy or his lightunderwear, and all evening about whether he had taken cold or not. 

The Cutters had major as well as minor subjects for dispute. The chiefof these was the question of inheritance: Mrs. Cutter told her husbandit was plainly his fault they had no children. He insisted that Mrs. Cutter had purposely remained childless, with the determination tooutlive him and to share his property with her 'people, ' whom hedetested. To this she would reply that unless he changed his modeof life, she would certainly outlive him. After listening to herinsinuations about his physical soundness, Cutter would resume hisdumb-bell practice for a month, or rise daily at the hour when his wifemost liked to sleep, dress noisily, and drive out to the track with histrotting-horse. 

Once when they had quarrelled about household expenses, Mrs. Cutterput on her brocade and went among their friends soliciting orders forpainted china, saying that Mr. Cutter had compelled her 'to live by herbrush. ' Cutter wasn't shamed as she had expected; he was delighted!

Cutter often threatened to chop down the cedar trees which half-buriedthe house. His wife declared she would leave him if she were strippedof the I privacy' which she felt these trees afforded her. That was hisopportunity, surely; but he never cut down the trees. The Cutters seemedto find their relations to each other interesting and stimulating, andcertainly the rest of us found them so. Wick Cutter was different fromany other rascal I have ever known, but I have found Mrs. Cuttersall over the world; sometimes founding new religions, sometimes beingforcibly fed--easily recognizable, even when superficially tamed. 

XII

AFTER ANTONIA WENT TO live with the Cutters, she seemed to care aboutnothing but picnics and parties and having a good time. When she wasnot going to a dance, she sewed until midnight. Her new clothes werethe subject of caustic comment. Under Lena's direction she copiedMrs. Gardener's new party dress and Mrs. Smith's street costume soingeniously in cheap materials that those ladies were greatly annoyed, and Mrs. Cutter, who was jealous of them, was secretly pleased. 

Tony wore gloves now, and high-heeled shoes and feathered bonnets, andshe went downtown nearly every afternoon with Tiny and Lena and theMarshalls' Norwegian Anna. We high-school boys used to linger on theplayground at the afternoon recess to watch them as they came trippingdown the hill along the board sidewalk, two and two. They were growingprettier every day, but as they passed us, I used to think with pridethat Antonia, like Snow-White in the fairy tale, was still 'fairest ofthem all. '

Being a senior now, I got away from school early. Sometimes I overtookthe girls downtown and coaxed them into the ice-cream parlour, wherethey would sit chattering and laughing, telling me all the news from thecountry. 

I remember how angry Tiny Soderball made me one afternoon. She declaredshe had heard grandmother was going to make a Baptist preacher of me. 'Iguess you'll have to stop dancing and wear a white necktie then. Won'the look funny, girls?'

Lena laughed. 'You'll have to hurry up, Jim. If you're going to be apreacher, I want you to marry me. You must promise to marry us all, andthen baptize the babies. '

Norwegian Anna, always dignified, looked at her reprovingly. 

'Baptists don't believe in christening babies, do they, Jim?'

I told her I didn't know what they believed, and didn't care, and that Icertainly wasn't going to be a preacher. 

'That's too bad, ' Tiny simpered. She was in a teasing mood. 'You'd makesuch a good one. You're so studious. Maybe you'd like to be a professor. You used to teach Tony, didn't you?'

Antonia broke in. 'I've set my heart on Jim being a doctor. You'd begood with sick people, Jim. Your grandmother's trained you up so nice. My papa always said you were an awful smart boy. '

I said I was going to be whatever I pleased. 'Won't you be surprised, Miss Tiny, if I turn out to be a regular devil of a fellow?'

They laughed until a glance from Norwegian Anna checked them; thehigh-school principal had just come into the front part of the shop tobuy bread for supper. Anna knew the whisper was going about that I wasa sly one. People said there must be something queer about a boy whoshowed no interest in girls of his own age, but who could be livelyenough when he was with Tony and Lena or the three Marys. 

The enthusiasm for the dance, which the Vannis had kindled, did not atonce die out. After the tent left town, the Euchre Club became the OwlClub, and gave dances in the Masonic Hall once a week. I was invited tojoin, but declined. I was moody and restless that winter, and tired ofthe people I saw every day. Charley Harling was already at Annapolis, while I was still sitting in Black Hawk, answering to my name atroll-call every morning, rising from my desk at the sound of a bell andmarching out like the grammar-school children. Mrs. Harling was a littlecool toward me, because I continued to champion Antonia. What was therefor me to do after supper? Usually I had learned next day's lessons bythe time I left the school building, and I couldn't sit still and readforever. 

In the evening I used to prowl about, hunting for diversion. There laythe familiar streets, frozen with snow or liquid with mud. They led tothe houses of good people who were putting the babies to bed, or simplysitting still before the parlour stove, digesting their supper. BlackHawk had two saloons. One of them was admitted, even by the churchpeople, to be as respectable as a saloon could be. Handsome AntonJelinek, who had rented his homestead and come to town, was theproprietor. In his saloon there were long tables where the Bohemian andGerman farmers could eat the lunches they brought from home while theydrank their beer. Jelinek kept rye bread on hand and smoked fish andstrong imported cheeses to please the foreign palate. I liked to dropinto his bar-room and listen to the talk. But one day he overtook me onthe street and clapped me on the shoulder. 

'Jim, ' he said, 'I am good friends with you and I always like to seeyou. But you know how the church people think about saloons. Yourgrandpa has always treated me fine, and I don't like to have you comeinto my place, because I know he don't like it, and it puts me in badwith him. '

So I was shut out of that. 

One could hang about the drugstore; and listen to the old men who satthere every evening, talking politics and telling raw stories. One couldgo to the cigar factory and chat with the old German who raised canariesfor sale, and look at his stuffed birds. But whatever you began withhim, the talk went back to taxidermy. There was the depot, of course; Ioften went down to see the night train come in, and afterward satawhile with the disconsolate telegrapher who was always hoping to betransferred to Omaha or Denver, 'where there was some life. ' He was sureto bring out his pictures of actresses and dancers. He got them withcigarette coupons, and nearly smoked himself to death to possess thesedesired forms and faces. For a change, one could talk to the stationagent; but he was another malcontent; spent all his spare time writingletters to officials requesting a transfer. He wanted to get back toWyoming where he could go trout-fishing on Sundays. He used to say'there was nothing in life for him but trout streams, ever since he'dlost his twins. '

These were the distractions I had to choose from. There were no otherlights burning downtown after nine o'clock. On starlight nights I usedto pace up and down those long, cold streets, scowling at the little, sleeping houses on either side, with their storm-windows and coveredback porches. They were flimsy shelters, most of them poorly builtof light wood, with spindle porch-posts horribly mutilated by theturning-lathe. Yet for all their frailness, how much jealousy and envyand unhappiness some of them managed to contain! The life that went onin them seemed to me made up of evasions and negations; shifts to savecooking, to save washing and cleaning, devices to propitiate the tongueof gossip. This guarded mode of existence was like living under atyranny. People's speech, their voices, their very glances, becamefurtive and repressed. Every individual taste, every natural appetite, was bridled by caution. The people asleep in those houses, I thought, tried to live like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface of things in the dark. The growing piles of ashes and cinders in the back yards were the onlyevidence that the wasteful, consuming process of life went on at all. OnTuesday nights the Owl Club danced; then there was a little stir inthe streets, and here and there one could see a lighted window untilmidnight. But the next night all was dark again. 

After I refused to join 'the Owls, ' as they were called, I made a boldresolve to go to the Saturday night dances at Firemen's Hall. I knew itwould be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfatherdidn't approve of dancing, anyway; he would only say that if I wanted todance I could go to the Masonic Hall, among 'the people we knew. ' It wasjust my point that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew. 

My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as I studied there, I had astove in it. I used to retire to my room early on Saturday night, changemy shirt and collar and put on my Sunday coat. I waited until all wasquiet and the old people were asleep, then raised my window, climbedout, and went softly through the yard. The first time I deceived mygrandparents I felt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time, but Isoon ceased to think about it. 

The dance at the Firemen's Hall was the one thing I looked forward toall the week. There I met the same people I used to see at the Vannis'tent. Sometimes there were Bohemians from Wilber, or German boys whocame down on the afternoon freight from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tinywere always there, and the three Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundrygirls. 

The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in theirhouse behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hungout to dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid hisgirls well, looked out for them, and gave them a good home. He told meonce that his own daughter died just as she was getting old enough tohelp her mother, and that he had been 'trying to make up for it eversince. ' On summer afternoons he used to sit for hours on the sidewalkin front of his laundry, his newspaper lying on his knee, watchinghis girls through the big open window while they ironed and talked inDanish. The clouds of white dust that blew up the street, the gusts ofhot wind that withered his vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm. His droll expression seemed to say that he had found the secret ofcontentment. Morning and evening he drove about in his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironed clothes, and collecting bags of linen thatcried out for his suds and sunny drying-lines. His girls never looked sopretty at the dances as they did standing by the ironing-board, or overthe tubs, washing the fine pieces, their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the brightest wild roses, their gold hair moistwith the steam or the heat and curling in little damp spirals abouttheir ears. They had not learned much English, and were not so ambitiousas Tony or Lena; but they were kind, simple girls and they were alwayshappy. When one danced with them, one smelled their clean, freshlyironed clothes that had been put away with rosemary leaves from Mr. Jensen's garden. 

There were never girls enough to go round at those dances, but everyonewanted a turn with Tony and Lena. 

Lena moved without exertion, rather indolently, and her hand oftenaccented the rhythm softly on her partner's shoulder. She smiled if onespoke to her, but seldom answered. The music seemed to put her into asoft, waking dream, and her violet-coloured eyes looked sleepily andconfidingly at one from under her long lashes. When she sighed sheexhaled a heavy perfume of sachet powder. To dance 'Home, Sweet Home, 'with Lena was like coming in with the tide. She danced every dance likea waltz, and it was always the same waltz--the waltz of coming home tosomething, of inevitable, fated return. After a while one got restlessunder it, as one does under the heat of a soft, sultry summer day. 

When you spun out into the floor with Tony, you didn't return toanything. You set out every time upon a new adventure. I liked toschottische with her; she had so much spring and variety, and was alwaysputting in new steps and slides. She taught me to dance against andaround the hard-and-fast beat of the music. If, instead of going to theend of the railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had stayed in New York and pickedup a living with his fiddle, how different Antonia's life might havebeen!

Antonia often went to the dances with Larry Donovan, a passengerconductor who was a kind of professional ladies' man, as we said. Iremember how admiringly all the boys looked at her the night she firstwore her velveteen dress, made like Mrs. Gardener's black velvet. Shewas lovely to see, with her eyes shining, and her lips always a littleparted when she danced. That constant, dark colour in her cheeks neverchanged. 

One evening when Donovan was out on his run, Antonia came to the hallwith Norwegian Anna and her young man, and that night I took her home. When we were in the Cutters' yard, sheltered by the evergreens, I toldher she must kiss me good night. 

'Why, sure, Jim. ' A moment later she drew her face away and whisperedindignantly, 'Why, Jim! You know you ain't right to kiss me like that. I'll tell your grandmother on you!'

'Lena Lingard lets me kiss her, ' I retorted, 'and I'm not half as fondof her as I am of you. '

'Lena does?' Tony gasped. 'If she's up to any of her nonsense with you, I'll scratch her eyes out!' She took my arm again and we walked out ofthe gate and up and down the sidewalk. 'Now, don't you go and be a foollike some of these town boys. You're not going to sit around here andwhittle store-boxes and tell stories all your life. You are going awayto school and make something of yourself. I'm just awful proud of you. You won't go and get mixed up with the Swedes, will you?'

'I don't care anything about any of them but you, ' I said. 'And you'llalways treat me like a kid, suppose. '

She laughed and threw her arms around me. 'I expect I will, but you're akid I'm awful fond of, anyhow! You can like me all you want to, but ifI see you hanging round with Lena much, I'll go to your grandmother, assure as your name's Jim Burden! Lena's all right, only--well, you knowyourself she's soft that way. She can't help it. It's natural to her. '

If she was proud of me, I was so proud of her that I carried my headhigh as I emerged from the dark cedars and shut the Cutters' gate softlybehind me. Her warm, sweet face, her kind arms, and the true heart inher; she was, oh, she was still my Antonia! I looked with contempt atthe dark, silent little houses about me as I walked home, and thought ofthe stupid young men who were asleep in some of them. I knew where thereal women were, though I was only a boy; and I would not be afraid ofthem, either!

I hated to enter the still house when I went home from the dances, andit was long before I could get to sleep. Toward morning I used to havepleasant dreams: sometimes Tony and I were out in the country, slidingdown straw-stacks as we used to do; climbing up the yellow mountainsover and over, and slipping down the smooth sides into soft piles ofchaff. 

One dream I dreamed a great many times, and it was always the same. Iwas in a harvest-field full of shocks, and I was lying against one ofthem. Lena Lingard came across the stubble barefoot, in a short skirt, with a curved reaping-hook in her hand, and she was flushed like thedawn, with a kind of luminous rosiness all about her. She sat downbeside me, turned to me with a soft sigh and said, 'Now they are allgone, and I can kiss you as much as I like. '

I used to wish I could have this flattering dream about Antonia, but Inever did. 

XIII

I NOTICED ONE AFTERNOON that grandmother had been crying. Her feetseemed to drag as she moved about the house, and I got up from the tablewhere I was studying and went to her, asking if she didn't feel well, and if I couldn't help her with her work. 

'No, thank you, Jim. I'm troubled, but I guess I'm well enough. Gettinga little rusty in the bones, maybe, ' she added bitterly. 

I stood hesitating. 'What are you fretting about, grandmother? Hasgrandfather lost any money?'

'No, it ain't money. I wish it was. But I've heard things. You must 'a'known it would come back to me sometime. ' She dropped into a chair, and, covering her face with her apron, began to cry. 'Jim, ' she said, 'I wasnever one that claimed old folks could bring up their grandchildren. Butit came about so; there wasn't any other way for you, it seemed like. '

I put my arms around her. I couldn't bear to see her cry. 

'What is it, grandmother? Is it the Firemen's dances?'

She nodded. 

'I'm sorry I sneaked off like that. But there's nothing wrong aboutthe dances, and I haven't done anything wrong. I like all those countrygirls, and I like to dance with them. That's all there is to it. '

'But it ain't right to deceive us, son, and it brings blame on us. People say you are growing up to be a bad boy, and that ain't just tous. '

'I don't care what they say about me, but if it hurts you, that settlesit. I won't go to the Firemen's Hall again. '

I kept my promise, of course, but I found the spring months dull enough. I sat at home with the old people in the evenings now, reading Latinthat was not in our high-school course. I had made up my mind to do alot of college requirement work in the summer, and to enter the freshmanclass at the university without conditions in the fall. I wanted to getaway as soon as possible. 

Disapprobation hurt me, I found--even that of people whom I did notadmire. As the spring came on, I grew more and more lonely, and fellback on the telegrapher and the cigar-maker and his canaries forcompanionship. I remember I took a melancholy pleasure in hanging aMay-basket for Nina Harling that spring. I bought the flowers from anold German woman who always had more window plants than anyone else, andspent an afternoon trimming a little workbasket. When dusk came on, andthe new moon hung in the sky, I went quietly to the Harlings' front doorwith my offering, rang the bell, and then ran away as was the custom. Through the willow hedge I could hear Nina's cries of delight, and Ifelt comforted. 

On those warm, soft spring evenings I often lingered downtown to walkhome with Frances, and talked to her about my plans and about thereading I was doing. One evening she said she thought Mrs. Harling wasnot seriously offended with me. 

'Mama is as broad-minded as mothers ever are, I guess. But you know shewas hurt about Antonia, and she can't understand why you like to be withTiny and Lena better than with the girls of your own set. '

'Can you?' I asked bluntly. 

Frances laughed. 'Yes, I think I can. You knew them in the country, andyou like to take sides. In some ways you're older than boys of your age. It will be all right with mama after you pass your college examinationsand she sees you're in earnest. '

'If you were a boy, ' I persisted, 'you wouldn't belong to the Owl Club, either. You'd be just like me. '

She shook her head. 'I would and I wouldn't. I expect I know the countrygirls better than you do. You always put a kind of glamour over them. The trouble with you, Jim, is that you're romantic. Mama's going to yourCommencement. She asked me the other day if I knew what your oration isto be about. She wants you to do well. '

I thought my oration very good. It stated with fervour a great manythings I had lately discovered. Mrs. Harling came to the Opera House tohear the Commencement exercises, and I looked at her most of the timewhile I made my speech. Her keen, intelligent eyes never left my face. Afterward she came back to the dressing-room where we stood, withour diplomas in our hands, walked up to me, and said heartily: 'Yousurprised me, Jim. I didn't believe you could do as well as that. Youdidn't get that speech out of books. ' Among my graduation presents therewas a silk umbrella from Mrs. Harling, with my name on the handle. 

I walked home from the Opera House alone. As I passed the MethodistChurch, I saw three white figures ahead of me, pacing up and down underthe arching maple trees, where the moonlight filtered through the lushJune foliage. They hurried toward me; they were waiting for me--Lena andTony and Anna Hansen. 

'Oh, Jim, it was splendid!' Tony was breathing hard, as she always didwhen her feelings outran her language. 'There ain't a lawyer in BlackHawk could make a speech like that. I just stopped your grandpa andsaid so to him. He won't tell you, but he told us he was awful surprisedhimself, didn't he, girls?'

Lena sidled up to me and said teasingly, 'What made you so solemn? Ithought you were scared. I was sure you'd forget. '

Anna spoke wistfully. 

'It must make you very happy, Jim, to have fine thoughts like thatin your mind all the time, and to have words to put them in. I alwayswanted to go to school, you know. '

'Oh, I just sat there and wished my papa could hear you! Jim'--Antoniatook hold of my coat lapels--'there was something in your speech thatmade me think so about my papa!'

'I thought about your papa when I wrote my speech, Tony, ' I said. 'Idedicated it to him. '

She threw her arms around me, and her dear face was all wet with tears. 

I stood watching their white dresses glimmer smaller and smaller downthe sidewalk as they went away. I have had no other success that pulledat my heartstrings like that one. 

XIV

THE DAY AFTER COMMENCEMENT I moved my books and desk upstairs, to anempty room where I should be undisturbed, and I fell to studying inearnest. I worked off a year's trigonometry that summer, and beganVirgil alone. Morning after morning I used to pace up and down my sunnylittle room, looking off at the distant river bluffs and the roll of theblond pastures between, scanning the 'Aeneid' aloud and committing longpassages to memory. Sometimes in the evening Mrs. Harling called to meas I passed her gate, and asked me to come in and let her play for me. She was lonely for Charley, she said, and liked to have a boy about. Whenever my grandparents had misgivings, and began to wonder whether Iwas not too young to go off to college alone, Mrs. Harling took up mycause vigorously. Grandfather had such respect for her judgment that Iknew he would not go against her. 

I had only one holiday that summer. It was in July. I met Antoniadowntown on Saturday afternoon, and learned that she and Tiny and Lenawere going to the river next day with Anna Hansen--the elder was all inbloom now, and Anna wanted to make elderblow wine. 

'Anna's to drive us down in the Marshalls' delivery wagon, and we'lltake a nice lunch and have a picnic. Just us; nobody else. Couldn't youhappen along, Jim? It would be like old times. '

I considered a moment. 'Maybe I can, if I won't be in the way. '

On Sunday morning I rose early and got out of Black Hawk while the dewwas still heavy on the long meadow grasses. It was the high season forsummer flowers. The pink bee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides, and the cone-flowers and rose mallow grew everywhere. Across the wirefence, in the long grass, I saw a clump of flaming orange-colouredmilkweed, rare in that part of the state. I left the road and wentaround through a stretch of pasture that was always cropped short insummer, where the gaillardia came up year after year and matted overthe ground with the deep, velvety red that is in Bokhara carpets. Thecountry was empty and solitary except for the larks that Sunday morning, and it seemed to lift itself up to me and to come very close. 

The river was running strong for midsummer; heavy rains to the west ofus had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and went upstream alongthe wooded shore to a pleasant dressing-room I knew among the dogwoodbushes, all overgrown with wild grapevines. I began to undress for aswim. The girls would not be along yet. For the first time it occurredto me that I should be homesick for that river after I left it. Thesandbars, with their clean white beaches and their little groves ofwillows and cottonwood seedlings, were a sort of No Man's Land, littlenewly created worlds that belonged to the Black Hawk boys. CharleyHarling and I had hunted through these woods, fished from the fallenlogs, until I knew every inch of the river shores and had a friendlyfeeling for every bar and shallow. 

After my swim, while I was playing about indolently in the water, Iheard the sound of hoofs and wheels on the bridge. I struck downstreamand shouted, as the open spring wagon came into view on the middle span. They stopped the horse, and the two girls in the bottom of the cartstood up, steadying themselves by the shoulders of the two in front, so that they could see me better. They were charming up there, huddledtogether in the cart and peering down at me like curious deer when theycome out of the thicket to drink. I found bottom near the bridge andstood up, waving to them. 

'How pretty you look!' I called. 

'So do you!' they shouted altogether, and broke into peals of laughter. Anna Hansen shook the reins and they drove on, while I zigzagged back tomy inlet and clambered up behind an overhanging elm. I dried myself inthe sun, and dressed slowly, reluctant to leave that green enclosurewhere the sunlight flickered so bright through the grapevine leaves andthe woodpecker hammered away in the crooked elm that trailed out overthe water. As I went along the road back to the bridge, I kept pickingoff little pieces of scaly chalk from the dried water gullies, andbreaking them up in my hands. 

When I came upon the Marshalls' delivery horse, tied in the shade, thegirls had already taken their baskets and gone down the east road whichwound through the sand and scrub. I could hear them calling to eachother. The elder bushes did not grow back in the shady ravines betweenthe bluffs, but in the hot, sandy bottoms along the stream, where theirroots were always in moisture and their tops in the sun. The blossomswere unusually luxuriant and beautiful that summer. 

I followed a cattle path through the thick under-brush until I came to aslope that fell away abruptly to the water's edge. A great chunk ofthe shore had been bitten out by some spring freshet, and the scar wasmasked by elder bushes, growing down to the water in flowery terraces. Idid not touch them. I was overcome by content and drowsiness and by thewarm silence about me. There was no sound but the high, singsong buzzof wild bees and the sunny gurgle of the water underneath. I peeped overthe edge of the bank to see the little stream that made the noise; itflowed along perfectly clear over the sand and gravel, cut off from themuddy main current by a long sandbar. Down there, on the lower shelf ofthe bank, I saw Antonia, seated alone under the pagoda-like elders. Shelooked up when she heard me, and smiled, but I saw that she had beencrying. I slid down into the soft sand beside her and asked her what wasthe matter. 

'It makes me homesick, Jimmy, this flower, this smell, ' she said softly. 'We have this flower very much at home, in the old country. It alwaysgrew in our yard and my papa had a green bench and a table under thebushes. In summer, when they were in bloom, he used to sit there withhis friend that played the trombone. When I was little I used to go downthere to hear them talk--beautiful talk, like what I never hear in thiscountry. '

'What did they talk about?' I asked her. 

She sighed and shook her head. 'Oh, I don't know! About music, andthe woods, and about God, and when they were young. ' She turned tome suddenly and looked into my eyes. 'You think, Jimmy, that maybe myfather's spirit can go back to those old places?'

I told her about the feeling of her father's presence I had on thatwinter day when my grandparents had gone over to see his dead body and Iwas left alone in the house. I said I felt sure then that he was on hisway back to his own country, and that even now, when I passed his grave, I always thought of him as being among the woods and fields that were sodear to him. 

Antonia had the most trusting, responsive eyes in the world; love andcredulousness seemed to look out of them with open faces. 

'Why didn't you ever tell me that before? It makes me feel more sure forhim. ' After a while she said: 'You know, Jim, my father was differentfrom my mother. He did not have to marry my mother, and all his brothersquarrelled with him because he did. I used to hear the old people athome whisper about it. They said he could have paid my mother money, andnot married her. But he was older than she was, and he was too kind totreat her like that. He lived in his mother's house, and she was a poorgirl come in to do the work. After my father married her, my grandmothernever let my mother come into her house again. When I went to mygrandmother's funeral was the only time I was ever in my grandmother'shouse. Don't that seem strange?'

While she talked, I lay back in the hot sand and looked up at the bluesky between the flat bouquets of elder. I could hear the bees hummingand singing, but they stayed up in the sun above the flowers and did notcome down into the shadow of the leaves. Antonia seemed to me that dayexactly like the little girl who used to come to our house with Mr. Shimerda. 

'Some day, Tony, I am going over to your country, and I am going to thelittle town where you lived. Do you remember all about it?'

'Jim, ' she said earnestly, 'if I was put down there in the middle ofthe night, I could find my way all over that little town; and along theriver to the next town, where my grandmother lived. My feet remember allthe little paths through the woods, and where the big roots stick out totrip you. I ain't never forgot my own country. '

There was a crackling in the branches above us, and Lena Lingard peereddown over the edge of the bank. 

'You lazy things!' she cried. 'All this elder, and you two lying there!Didn't you hear us calling you?' Almost as flushed as she had been inmy dream, she leaned over the edge of the bank and began to demolish ourflowery pagoda. I had never seen her so energetic; she was panting withzeal, and the perspiration stood in drops on her short, yielding upperlip. I sprang to my feet and ran up the bank. 

It was noon now, and so hot that the dogwoods and scrub-oaks beganto turn up the silvery underside of their leaves, and all the foliagelooked soft and wilted. I carried the lunch-basket to the top of oneof the chalk bluffs, where even on the calmest days there was always abreeze. The flat-topped, twisted little oaks threw light shadows on thegrass. Below us we could see the windings of the river, and Black Hawk, grouped among its trees, and, beyond, the rolling country, swellinggently until it met the sky. We could recognize familiar farm-houses andwindmills. Each of the girls pointed out to me the direction in whichher father's farm lay, and told me how many acres were in wheat thatyear and how many in corn. 

'My old folks, ' said Tiny Soderball, 'have put in twenty acres of rye. They get it ground at the mill, and it makes nice bread. It seems likemy mother ain't been so homesick, ever since father's raised rye flourfor her. '

'It must have been a trial for our mothers, ' said Lena, 'coming out hereand having to do everything different. My mother had always lived intown. She says she started behind in farm-work, and never has caughtup. '

'Yes, a new country's hard on the old ones, sometimes, ' said Annathoughtfully. 'My grandmother's getting feeble now, and her mindwanders. She's forgot about this country, and thinks she's at home inNorway. She keeps asking mother to take her down to the waterside andthe fish market. She craves fish all the time. Whenever I go home I takeher canned salmon and mackerel. '

'Mercy, it's hot!' Lena yawned. She was supine under a little oak, resting after the fury of her elder-hunting, and had taken off thehigh-heeled slippers she had been silly enough to wear. 'Come here, Jim. You never got the sand out of your hair. ' She began to draw her fingersslowly through my hair. 

Antonia pushed her away. 'You'll never get it out like that, ' she saidsharply. She gave my head a rough touzling and finished me off withsomething like a box on the ear. 'Lena, you oughtn't to try to wearthose slippers any more. They're too small for your feet. You'd bettergive them to me for Yulka. '

'All right, ' said Lena good-naturedly, tucking her white stockings underher skirt. 'You get all Yulka's things, don't you? I wish father didn'thave such bad luck with his farm machinery; then I could buy more thingsfor my sisters. I'm going to get Mary a new coat this fall, if the sulkyplough's never paid for!'

Tiny asked her why she didn't wait until after Christmas, when coatswould be cheaper. 'What do you think of poor me?' she added; 'with sixat home, younger than I am? And they all think I'm rich, because when Igo back to the country I'm dressed so fine!' She shrugged her shoulders. 'But, you know, my weakness is playthings. I like to buy them playthingsbetter than what they need. '

'I know how that is, ' said Anna. 'When we first came here, and I waslittle, we were too poor to buy toys. I never got over the loss of adoll somebody gave me before we left Norway. A boy on the boat broke herand I still hate him for it. '

'I guess after you got here you had plenty of live dolls to nurse, likeme!' Lena remarked cynically. 

'Yes, the babies came along pretty fast, to be sure. But I never minded. I was fond of them all. The youngest one, that we didn't any of us want, is the one we love best now. '

Lena sighed. 'Oh, the babies are all right; if only they don't come inwinter. Ours nearly always did. I don't see how mother stood it. I tellyou what, girls'--she sat up with sudden energy--'I'm going to get mymother out of that old sod house where she's lived so many years. Themen will never do it. Johnnie, that's my oldest brother, he's wanting toget married now, and build a house for his girl instead of his mother. Mrs. Thomas says she thinks I can move to some other town pretty soon, and go into business for myself. If I don't get into business, I'llmaybe marry a rich gambler. '

'That would be a poor way to get on, ' said Anna sarcastically. 'I wishI could teach school, like Selma Kronn. Just think! She'll be the firstScandinavian girl to get a position in the high school. We ought to beproud of her. '

Selma was a studious girl, who had not much tolerance for giddy thingslike Tiny and Lena; but they always spoke of her with admiration. 

Tiny moved about restlessly, fanning herself with her straw hat. 'If Iwas smart like her, I'd be at my books day and night. But she was bornsmart--and look how her father's trained her! He was something high upin the old country. '

'So was my mother's father, ' murmured Lena, 'but that's all the good itdoes us! My father's father was smart, too, but he was wild. He marrieda Lapp. I guess that's what's the matter with me; they say Lapp bloodwill out. '

'A real Lapp, Lena?' I exclaimed. 'The kind that wear skins?'

'I don't know if she wore skins, but she was a Lapps all right, and hisfolks felt dreadful about it. He was sent up North on some governmentjob he had, and fell in with her. He would marry her. '

'But I thought Lapland women were fat and ugly, and had squint eyes, like Chinese?' I objected. 

'I don't know, maybe. There must be something mighty taking about theLapp girls, though; mother says the Norwegians up North are alwaysafraid their boys will run after them. '

In the afternoon, when the heat was less oppressive, we had a livelygame of 'Pussy Wants a Corner, ' on the flat bluff-top, with the littletrees for bases. Lena was Pussy so often that she finally said shewouldn't play any more. We threw ourselves down on the grass, out ofbreath. 

'Jim, ' Antonia said dreamily, 'I want you to tell the girls about howthe Spanish first came here, like you and Charley Harling used to talkabout. I've tried to tell them, but I leave out so much. '

They sat under a little oak, Tony resting against the trunk and theother girls leaning against her and each other, and listened to thelittle I was able to tell them about Coronado and his search for theSeven Golden Cities. At school we were taught that he had not got so farnorth as Nebraska, but had given up his quest and turned back somewherein Kansas. But Charley Harling and I had a strong belief that he hadbeen along this very river. A farmer in the county north of ours, whenhe was breaking sod, had turned up a metal stirrup of fine workmanship, and a sword with a Spanish inscription on the blade. He lent theserelics to Mr. Harling, who brought them home with him. Charley and Iscoured them, and they were on exhibition in the Harling office allsummer. Father Kelly, the priest, had found the name of the Spanishmaker on the sword and an abbreviation that stood for the city ofCordova. 

'And that I saw with my own eyes, ' Antonia put in triumphantly. 'So Jimand Charley were right, and the teachers were wrong!'

The girls began to wonder among themselves. Why had the Spaniards comeso far? What must this country have been like, then? Why had Coronadonever gone back to Spain, to his riches and his castles and his king?I couldn't tell them. I only knew the schoolbooks said he 'died in thewilderness, of a broken heart. '

'More than him has done that, ' said Antonia sadly, and the girlsmurmured assent. 

We sat looking off across the country, watching the sun go down. Thecurly grass about us was on fire now. The bark of the oaks turned redas copper. There was a shimmer of gold on the brown river. Out in thestream the sandbars glittered like glass, and the light trembled in thewillow thickets as if little flames were leaping among them. The breezesank to stillness. In the ravine a ringdove mourned plaintively, andsomewhere off in the bushes an owl hooted. The girls sat listless, leaning against each other. The long fingers of the sun touched theirforeheads. 

Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun wasgoing down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of thered disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great blackfigure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. Onsome upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. Thesun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by thehorizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly containedwithin the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share--blackagainst the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writingon the sun. 

Even while we whispered about it, our vision disappeared; the balldropped and dropped until the red tip went beneath the earth. The fieldsbelow us were dark, the sky was growing pale, and that forgotten ploughhad sunk back to its own littleness somewhere on the prairie. 

XV

LATE IN AUGUST the Cutters went to Omaha for a few days, leaving Antoniain charge of the house. Since the scandal about the Swedish girl, WickCutter could never get his wife to stir out of Black Hawk without him. 

The day after the Cutters left, Antonia came over to see us. Grandmothernoticed that she seemed troubled and distracted. 'You've got somethingon your mind, Antonia, ' she said anxiously. 

'Yes, Mrs. Burden. I couldn't sleep much last night. ' She hesitated, andthen told us how strangely Mr. Cutter had behaved before he went away. He put all the silver in a basket and placed it under her bed, and withit a box of papers which he told her were valuable. He made her promisethat she would not sleep away from the house, or be out late in theevening, while he was gone. He strictly forbade her to ask any of thegirls she knew to stay with her at night. She would be perfectly safe, he said, as he had just put a new Yale lock on the front door. 

Cutter had been so insistent in regard to these details that now shefelt uncomfortable about staying there alone. She hadn't liked the wayhe kept coming into the kitchen to instruct her, or the way he looked ather. 'I feel as if he is up to some of his tricks again, and is going totry to scare me, somehow. '

Grandmother was apprehensive at once. 'I don't think it's right for youto stay there, feeling that way. I suppose it wouldn't be right foryou to leave the place alone, either, after giving your word. Maybe Jimwould be willing to go over there and sleep, and you could come herenights. I'd feel safer, knowing you were under my own roof. I guessJim could take care of their silver and old usury notes as well as youcould. '

Antonia turned to me eagerly. 'Oh, would you, Jim? I'd make up my bednice and fresh for you. It's a real cool room, and the bed's right nextthe window. I was afraid to leave the window open last night. '

I liked my own room, and I didn't like the Cutters' house under anycircumstances; but Tony looked so troubled that I consented to try thisarrangement. I found that I slept there as well as anywhere, and when Igot home in the morning, Tony had a good breakfast waiting for me. Afterprayers she sat down at the table with us, and it was like old times inthe country. 

The third night I spent at the Cutters', I awoke suddenly with theimpression that I had heard a door open and shut. Everything was still, however, and I must have gone to sleep again immediately. 

The next thing I knew, I felt someone sit down on the edge of the bed. I was only half awake, but I decided that he might take the Cutters'silver, whoever he was. Perhaps if I did not move, he would find it andget out without troubling me. I held my breath and lay absolutely still. A hand closed softly on my shoulder, and at the same moment I feltsomething hairy and cologne-scented brushing my face. If the room hadsuddenly been flooded with electric light, I couldn't have seen moreclearly the detestable bearded countenance that I knew was bending overme. I caught a handful of whiskers and pulled, shouting something. Thehand that held my shoulder was instantly at my throat. The man becameinsane; he stood over me, choking me with one fist and beating me in theface with the other, hissing and chuckling and letting out a flood ofabuse. 

'So this is what she's up to when I'm away, is it? Where is she, younasty whelp, where is she? Under the bed, are you, hussy? I know yourtricks! Wait till I get at you! I'll fix this rat you've got in here. He's caught, all right!'

So long as Cutter had me by the throat, there was no chance for me atall. I got hold of his thumb and bent it back, until he let go with ayell. In a bound, I was on my feet, and easily sent him sprawling to thefloor. Then I made a dive for the open window, struck the wire screen, knocked it out, and tumbled after it into the yard. 

Suddenly I found myself running across the north end of Black Hawk inmy night-shirt, just as one sometimes finds one's self behaving inbad dreams. When I got home, I climbed in at the kitchen window. Iwas covered with blood from my nose and lip, but I was too sick to doanything about it. I found a shawl and an overcoat on the hat-rack, laydown on the parlour sofa, and in spite of my hurts, went to sleep. 

Grandmother found me there in the morning. Her cry of fright awakenedme. Truly, I was a battered object. As she helped me to my room, Icaught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. My lip was cut and stoodout like a snout. My nose looked like a big blue plum, and one eye wasswollen shut and hideously discoloured. Grandmother said we must havethe doctor at once, but I implored her, as I had never begged foranything before, not to send for him. I could stand anything, I toldher, so long as nobody saw me or knew what had happened to me. Ientreated her not to let grandfather, even, come into my room. Sheseemed to understand, though I was too faint and miserable to go intoexplanations. When she took off my night-shirt, she found such bruiseson my chest and shoulders that she began to cry. She spent the wholemorning bathing and poulticing me, and rubbing me with arnica. I heardAntonia sobbing outside my door, but I asked grandmother to send heraway. I felt that I never wanted to see her again. I hated her almost asmuch as I hated Cutter. She had let me in for all this disgustingness. Grandmother kept saying how thankful we ought to be that I had beenthere instead of Antonia. But I lay with my disfigured face to the walland felt no particular gratitude. My one concern was that grandmothershould keep everyone away from me. If the story once got abroad, I wouldnever hear the last of it. I could well imagine what the old men down atthe drugstore would do with such a theme. 

While grandmother was trying to make me comfortable, grandfather wentto the depot and learned that Wick Cutter had come home on the nightexpress from the east, and had left again on the six o'clock trainfor Denver that morning. The agent said his face was striped withcourt-plaster, and he carried his left hand in a sling. He looked soused up, that the agent asked him what had happened to him since teno'clock the night before; whereat Cutter began to swear at him and saidhe would have him discharged for incivility. 

That afternoon, while I was asleep, Antonia took grandmother with her, and went over to the Cutters' to pack her trunk. They found the placelocked up, and they had to break the window to get into Antonia'sbedroom. There everything was in shocking disorder. Her clothes hadbeen taken out of her closet, thrown into the middle of the room, andtrampled and torn. My own garments had been treated so badly that Inever saw them again; grandmother burned them in the Cutters' kitchenrange. 

While Antonia was packing her trunk and putting her room in order, to leave it, the front doorbell rang violently. There stood Mrs. Cutter--locked out, for she had no key to the new lock--her headtrembling with rage. 'I advised her to control herself, or she wouldhave a stroke, ' grandmother said afterward. 

Grandmother would not let her see Antonia at all, but made her sit downin the parlour while she related to her just what had occurred the nightbefore. Antonia was frightened, and was going home to stay for a while, she told Mrs. Cutter; it would be useless to interrogate the girl, forshe knew nothing of what had happened. 

Then Mrs. Cutter told her story. She and her husband had started homefrom Omaha together the morning before. They had to stop over severalhours at Waymore Junction to catch the Black Hawk train. During thewait, Cutter left her at the depot and went to the Waymore bank toattend to some business. When he returned, he told her that he wouldhave to stay overnight there, but she could go on home. He bought herticket and put her on the train. She saw him slip a twenty-dollar billinto her handbag with her ticket. That bill, she said, should havearoused her suspicions at once--but did not. 

The trains are never called at little junction towns; everybody knowswhen they come in. Mr. Cutter showed his wife's ticket to the conductor, and settled her in her seat before the train moved off. It was not untilnearly nightfall that she discovered she was on the express bound forKansas City, that her ticket was made out to that point, and that Cuttermust have planned it so. The conductor told her the Black Hawk train wasdue at Waymore twelve minutes after the Kansas City train left. She sawat once that her husband had played this trick in order to get back toBlack Hawk without her. She had no choice but to go on to Kansas Cityand take the first fast train for home. 

Cutter could have got home a day earlier than his wife by any one of adozen simpler devices; he could have left her in the Omaha hotel, andsaid he was going on to Chicago for a few days. But apparently it waspart of his fun to outrage her feelings as much as possible. 

'Mr. Cutter will pay for this, Mrs. Burden. He will pay!' Mrs. Cutteravouched, nodding her horse-like head and rolling her eyes. 

Grandmother said she hadn't a doubt of it. 

Certainly Cutter liked to have his wife think him a devil. In someway he depended upon the excitement He could arouse in her hystericalnature. Perhaps he got the feeling of being a rake more from his wife'srage and amazement than from any experiences of his own. His zestin debauchery might wane, but never Mrs. Cutter's belief in it. Thereckoning with his wife at the end of an escapade was something hecounted on--like the last powerful liqueur after a long dinner. Theone excitement he really couldn't do without was quarrelling with Mrs. Cutter!

BOOK III. Lena Lingard

I

AT THE UNIVERSITY I had the good fortune to come immediately under theinfluence of a brilliant and inspiring young scholar. Gaston Cleric hadarrived in Lincoln only a few weeks earlier than I, to begin his workas head of the Latin Department. He came West at the suggestion of hisphysicians, his health having been enfeebled by a long illness in Italy. When I took my entrance examinations, he was my examiner, and my coursewas arranged under his supervision. 

I did not go home for my first summer vacation, but stayed in Lincoln, working off a year's Greek, which had been my only condition on enteringthe freshman class. Cleric's doctor advised against his going back toNew England, and, except for a few weeks in Colorado, he, too, was inLincoln all that summer. We played tennis, read, and took long walkstogether. I shall always look back on that time of mental awakening asone of the happiest in my life. Gaston Cleric introduced me to the worldof ideas; when one first enters that world everything else fades fora time, and all that went before is as if it had not been. Yet I foundcurious survivals; some of the figures of my old life seemed to bewaiting for me in the new. 

In those days there were many serious young men among the studentswho had come up to the university from the farms and the little townsscattered over the thinly settled state. Some of those boys camestraight from the cornfields with only a summer's wages in theirpockets, hung on through the four years, shabby and underfed, andcompleted the course by really heroic self-sacrifice. Our instructorswere oddly assorted; wandering pioneer school-teachers, strandedministers of the Gospel, a few enthusiastic young men just out ofgraduate schools. There was an atmosphere of endeavour, of expectancyand bright hopefulness about the young college that had lifted its headfrom the prairie only a few years before. 

Our personal life was as free as that of our instructors. There wereno college dormitories; we lived where we could and as we could. I tookrooms with an old couple, early settlers in Lincoln, who had married offtheir children and now lived quietly in their house at the edge oftown, near the open country. The house was inconveniently situated forstudents, and on that account I got two rooms for the price of one. Mybedroom, originally a linen-closet, was unheated and was barely largeenough to contain my cot-bed, but it enabled me to call the other roommy study. The dresser, and the great walnut wardrobe which held allmy clothes, even my hats and shoes, I had pushed out of the way, and Iconsidered them non-existent, as children eliminate incongruous objectswhen they are playing house. I worked at a commodious green-topped tableplaced directly in front of the west window which looked out over theprairie. In the corner at my right were all my books, in shelves Ihad made and painted myself. On the blank wall at my left the dark, old-fashioned wall-paper was covered by a large map of ancient Rome, thework of some German scholar. Cleric had ordered it for me when he wassending for books from abroad. Over the bookcase hung a photographof the Tragic Theatre at Pompeii, which he had given me from hiscollection. 

When I sat at work I half-faced a deep, upholstered chair which stoodat the end of my table, its high back against the wall. I had bought itwith great care. My instructor sometimes looked in upon me when hewas out for an evening tramp, and I noticed that he was more likely tolinger and become talkative if I had a comfortable chair for him to sitin, and if he found a bottle of Benedictine and plenty of the kindof cigarettes he liked, at his elbow. He was, I had discovered, parsimonious about small expenditures--a trait absolutely inconsistentwith his general character. Sometimes when he came he was silent andmoody, and after a few sarcastic remarks went away again, to tramp thestreets of Lincoln, which were almost as quiet and oppressively domesticas those of Black Hawk. Again, he would sit until nearly midnight, talking about Latin and English poetry, or telling me about his longstay in Italy. 

I can give no idea of the peculiar charm and vividness of his talk. Ina crowd he was nearly always silent. Even for his classroom he had noplatitudes, no stock of professorial anecdotes. When he was tired, hislectures were clouded, obscure, elliptical; but when he was interestedthey were wonderful. I believe that Gaston Cleric narrowly missedbeing a great poet, and I have sometimes thought that his bursts ofimaginative talk were fatal to his poetic gift. He squandered too muchin the heat of personal communication. How often I have seen him drawhis dark brows together, fix his eyes upon some object on the wall or afigure in the carpet, and then flash into the lamplight the very imagethat was in his brain. He could bring the drama of antique life beforeone out of the shadows--white figures against blue backgrounds. I shallnever forget his face as it looked one night when he told me about thesolitary day he spent among the sea temples at Paestum: the soft windblowing through the roofless columns, the birds flying low over theflowering marsh grasses, the changing lights on the silver, cloud-hungmountains. He had wilfully stayed the short summer night there, wrappedin his coat and rug, watching the constellations on their path downthe sky until 'the bride of old Tithonus' rose out of the sea, and themountains stood sharp in the dawn. It was there he caught the feverwhich held him back on the eve of his departure for Greece and of whichhe lay ill so long in Naples. He was still, indeed, doing penance forit. 

I remember vividly another evening, when something led us to talk ofDante's veneration for Virgil. Cleric went through canto after cantoof the 'Commedia, ' repeating the discourse between Dante and his 'sweetteacher, ' while his cigarette burned itself out unheeded betweenhis long fingers. I can hear him now, speaking the lines of the poetStatius, who spoke for Dante: 'I was famous on earth with the name whichendures longest and honours most. The seeds of my ardour were the sparksfrom that divine flame whereby more than a thousand have kindled; Ispeak of the "Aeneid, " mother to me and nurse to me in poetry. '

Although I admired scholarship so much in Cleric, I was not deceivedabout myself; I knew that I should never be a scholar. I could neverlose myself for long among impersonal things. Mental excitement wasapt to send me with a rush back to my own naked land and the figuresscattered upon it. While I was in the very act of yearning toward thenew forms that Cleric brought up before me, my mind plunged away fromme, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the places and people of myown infinitesimal past. They stood out strengthened and simplified now, like the image of the plough against the sun. They were all I had foran answer to the new appeal. I begrudged the room that Jake and Otto andRussian Peter took up in my memory, which I wanted to crowd with otherthings. But whenever my consciousness was quickened, all thoseearly friends were quickened within it, and in some strange way theyaccompanied me through all my new experiences. They were so much alivein me that I scarcely stopped to wonder whether they were alive anywhereelse, or how. 

II

ONE MARCH EVENING in my sophomore year I was sitting alone in my roomafter supper. There had been a warm thaw all day, with mushy yards andlittle streams of dark water gurgling cheerfully into the streets out ofold snow-banks. My window was open, and the earthy wind blowing throughmade me indolent. On the edge of the prairie, where the sun had gonedown, the sky was turquoise blue, like a lake, with gold light throbbingin it. Higher up, in the utter clarity of the western slope, the eveningstar hung like a lamp suspended by silver chains--like the lamp engravedupon the title-page of old Latin texts, which is always appearing in newheavens, and waking new desires in men. It reminded me, at any rate, toshut my window and light my wick in answer. I did so regretfully, andthe dim objects in the room emerged from the shadows and took theirplace about me with the helpfulness which custom breeds. 

I propped my book open and stared listlessly at the page of the'Georgics' where tomorrow's lesson began. It opened with the melancholyreflection that, in the lives of mortals the best days are the first toflee. 'Optima dies. . . Prima fugit. ' I turned back to the beginning ofthe third book, which we had read in class that morning. 'Primus ego inpatriam mecum. . . Deducam Musas'; 'for I shall be the first, if I live, to bring the Muse into my country. ' Cleric had explained to us that'patria' here meant, not a nation or even a province, but the littlerural neighbourhood on the Mincio where the poet was born. This was nota boast, but a hope, at once bold and devoutly humble, that he mightbring the Muse (but lately come to Italy from her cloudy Grecianmountains), not to the capital, the palatia Romana, but to his ownlittle I country'; to his father's fields, 'sloping down to the riverand to the old beech trees with broken tops. '

Cleric said he thought Virgil, when he was dying at Brindisi, must haveremembered that passage. After he had faced the bitter fact that he wasto leave the 'Aeneid' unfinished, and had decreed that the great canvas, crowded with figures of gods and men, should be burned rather thansurvive him unperfected, then his mind must have gone back to theperfect utterance of the 'Georgics, ' where the pen was fitted to thematter as the plough is to the furrow; and he must have said to himself, with the thankfulness of a good man, 'I was the first to bring the Museinto my country. '

We left the classroom quietly, conscious that we had been brushed by thewing of a great feeling, though perhaps I alone knew Cleric intimatelyenough to guess what that feeling was. In the evening, as I sat staringat my book, the fervour of his voice stirred through the quantities onthe page before me. I was wondering whether that particular rocky stripof New England coast about which he had so often told me was Cleric'spatria. Before I had got far with my reading, I was disturbed by aknock. I hurried to the door and when I opened it saw a woman standingin the dark hall. 

'I expect you hardly know me, Jim. '

The voice seemed familiar, but I did not recognize her until she steppedinto the light of my doorway and I beheld--Lena Lingard! She was soquietly conventionalized by city clothes that I might have passed heron the street without seeing her. Her black suit fitted her figuresmoothly, and a black lace hat, with pale-blue forget-me-nots, satdemurely on her yellow hair. 

I led her toward Cleric's chair, the only comfortable one I had, questioning her confusedly. 

She was not disconcerted by my embarrassment. She looked about her withthe naive curiosity I remembered so well. 'You are quite comfortablehere, aren't you? I live in Lincoln now, too, Jim. I'm in business formyself. I have a dressmaking shop in the Raleigh Block, out on O Street. I've made a real good start. '

'But, Lena, when did you come?'

'Oh, I've been here all winter. Didn't your grandmother ever write you?I've thought about looking you up lots of times. But we've all heardwhat a studious young man you've got to be, and I felt bashful. I didn'tknow whether you'd be glad to see me. ' She laughed her mellow, easylaugh, that was either very artless or very comprehending, one neverquite knew which. 'You seem the same, though--except you're a young man, now, of course. Do you think I've changed?'

'Maybe you're prettier--though you were always pretty enough. Perhapsit's your clothes that make a difference. '

'You like my new suit? I have to dress pretty well in my business. '

She took off her jacket and sat more at ease in her blouse, of somesoft, flimsy silk. She was already at home in my place, had slippedquietly into it, as she did into everything. She told me her businesswas going well, and she had saved a little money. 

'This summer I'm going to build the house for mother I've talked aboutso long. I won't be able to pay up on it at first, but I want her tohave it before she is too old to enjoy it. Next summer I'll take herdown new furniture and carpets, so she'll have something to look forwardto all winter. '

I watched Lena sitting there so smooth and sunny and well-cared-for, andthought of how she used to run barefoot over the prairie until afterthe snow began to fly, and how Crazy Mary chased her round and roundthe cornfields. It seemed to me wonderful that she should have got on sowell in the world. Certainly she had no one but herself to thank for it. 

'You must feel proud of yourself, Lena, ' I said heartily. 'Look at me;I've never earned a dollar, and I don't know that I'll ever be able to. '

'Tony says you're going to be richer than Mr. Harling some day. She'salways bragging about you, you know. '

'Tell me, how IS Tony?'

'She's fine. She works for Mrs. Gardener at the hotel now. She'shousekeeper. Mrs. Gardener's health isn't what it was, and she can'tsee after everything like she used to. She has great confidence in Tony. Tony's made it up with the Harlings, too. Little Nina is so fond of herthat Mrs. Harling kind of overlooked things. '

'Is she still going with Larry Donovan?'

'Oh, that's on, worse than ever! I guess they're engaged. Tony talksabout him like he was president of the railroad. Everybody laughs aboutit, because she was never a girl to be soft. She won't hear a wordagainst him. She's so sort of innocent. '

I said I didn't like Larry, and never would. 

Lena's face dimpled. 'Some of us could tell her things, but it wouldn'tdo any good. She'd always believe him. That's Antonia's failing, youknow; if she once likes people, she won't hear anything against them. '

'I think I'd better go home and look after Antonia, ' I said. 

'I think you had. ' Lena looked up at me in frank amusement. 'It's a goodthing the Harlings are friendly with her again. Larry's afraid of them. They ship so much grain, they have influence with the railroad people. What are you studying?' She leaned her elbows on the table and drew mybook toward her. I caught a faint odour of violet sachet. 'So that'sLatin, is it? It looks hard. You do go to the theatre sometimes, though, for I've seen you there. Don't you just love a good play, Jim? I can'tstay at home in the evening if there's one in town. I'd be willing towork like a slave, it seems to me, to live in a place where there aretheatres. '

'Let's go to a show together sometime. You are going to let me come tosee you, aren't you?'

'Would you like to? I'd be ever so pleased. I'm never busy after sixo'clock, and I let my sewing girls go at half-past five. I board, tosave time, but sometimes I cook a chop for myself, and I'd be glad tocook one for you. Well'--she began to put on her white gloves--'it'sbeen awful good to see you, Jim. '

'You needn't hurry, need you? You've hardly told me anything yet. '

'We can talk when you come to see me. I expect you don't often have ladyvisitors. The old woman downstairs didn't want to let me come up verymuch. I told her I was from your home town, and had promised yourgrandmother to come and see you. How surprised Mrs. Burden would be!'Lena laughed softly as she rose. 

When I caught up my hat, she shook her head. 'No, I don't want you to gowith me. I'm to meet some Swedes at the drugstore. You wouldn't care forthem. I wanted to see your room so I could write Tony all about it, butI must tell her how I left you right here with your books. She's alwaysso afraid someone will run off with you!' Lena slipped her silk sleevesinto the jacket I held for her, smoothed it over her person, andbuttoned it slowly. I walked with her to the door. 'Come and see mesometimes when you're lonesome. But maybe you have all the friendsyou want. Have you?' She turned her soft cheek to me. 'Have you?' shewhispered teasingly in my ear. In a moment I watched her fade down thedusky stairway. 

When I turned back to my room the place seemed much pleasanter thanbefore. Lena had left something warm and friendly in the lamplight. How I loved to hear her laugh again! It was so soft and unexcited andappreciative gave a favourable interpretation to everything. When Iclosed my eyes I could hear them all laughing--the Danish laundry girlsand the three Bohemian Marys. Lena had brought them all back to me. Itcame over me, as it had never done before, the relation between girlslike those and the poetry of Virgil. If there were no girls like them inthe world, there would be no poetry. I understood that clearly, for thefirst time. This revelation seemed to me inestimably precious. I clungto it as if it might suddenly vanish. 

As I sat down to my book at last, my old dream about Lena coming acrossthe harvest-field in her short skirt seemed to me like the memory of anactual experience. It floated before me on the page like a picture, andunderneath it stood the mournful line: 'Optima dies. . . Prima fugit. '

III

IN LINCOLN THE BEST part of the theatrical season came late, when thegood companies stopped off there for one-night stands, after theirlong runs in New York and Chicago. That spring Lena went with me tosee Joseph Jefferson in 'Rip Van Winkle, ' and to a war play called'Shenandoah. ' She was inflexible about paying for her own seat; saidshe was in business now, and she wouldn't have a schoolboy spendinghis money on her. I liked to watch a play with Lena; everything waswonderful to her, and everything was true. It was like going to revivalmeetings with someone who was always being converted. She handed herfeelings over to the actors with a kind of fatalistic resignation. Accessories of costume and scene meant much more to her than to me. She sat entranced through 'Robin Hood' and hung upon the lips of thecontralto who sang, 'Oh, Promise Me!'

Toward the end of April, the billboards, which I watched anxiously inthose days, bloomed out one morning with gleaming white posters on whichtwo names were impressively printed in blue Gothic letters: the name ofan actress of whom I had often heard, and the name 'Camille. '

I called at the Raleigh Block for Lena on Saturday evening, and wewalked down to the theatre. The weather was warm and sultry and put usboth in a holiday humour. We arrived early, because Lena liked to watchthe people come in. There was a note on the programme, saying that the'incidental music' would be from the opera 'Traviata, ' which was madefrom the same story as the play. We had neither of us read the play, andwe did not know what it was about--though I seemed to remember havingheard it was a piece in which great actresses shone. 'The Count of MonteCristo, ' which I had seen James O'Neill play that winter, was by theonly Alexandre Dumas I knew. This play, I saw, was by his son, and Iexpected a family resemblance. A couple of jack-rabbits, run in off theprairie, could not have been more innocent of what awaited them thanwere Lena and I. 

Our excitement began with the rise of the curtain, when the moodyVarville, seated before the fire, interrogated Nanine. Decidedly, therewas a new tang about this dialogue. I had never heard in the theatrelines that were alive, that presupposed and took for granted, like thosewhich passed between Varville and Marguerite in the brief encounterbefore her friends entered. This introduced the most brilliant, worldly, the most enchantingly gay scene I had ever looked upon. I had never seenchampagne bottles opened on the stage before--indeed, I had never seenthem opened anywhere. The memory of that supper makes me hungry now;the sight of it then, when I had only a students' boarding-house dinnerbehind me, was delicate torment. I seem to remember gilded chairs andtables (arranged hurriedly by footmen in white gloves and stockings), linen of dazzling whiteness, glittering glass, silver dishes, a greatbowl of fruit, and the reddest of roses. The room was invaded bybeautiful women and dashing young men, laughing and talking together. The men were dressed more or less after the period in which the play waswritten; the women were not. I saw no inconsistency. Their talk seemedto open to one the brilliant world in which they lived; every sentencemade one older and wiser, every pleasantry enlarged one's horizon. One could experience excess and satiety without the inconvenienceof learning what to do with one's hands in a drawing-room! When thecharacters all spoke at once and I missed some of the phrases theyflashed at each other, I was in misery. I strained my ears and eyes tocatch every exclamation. 

The actress who played Marguerite was even then old-fashioned, thoughhistoric. She had been a member of Daly's famous New York company, andafterward a 'star' under his direction. She was a woman who could not betaught, it is said, though she had a crude natural force which carriedwith people whose feelings were accessible and whose taste was notsqueamish. She was already old, with a ravaged countenance and aphysique curiously hard and stiff. She moved with difficulty--I thinkshe was lame--I seem to remember some story about a malady of the spine. Her Armand was disproportionately young and slight, a handsome youth, perplexed in the extreme. But what did it matter? I believed devoutly inher power to fascinate him, in her dazzling loveliness. I believed heryoung, ardent, reckless, disillusioned, under sentence, feverish, avidof pleasure. I wanted to cross the footlights and help the slim-waistedArmand in the frilled shirt to convince her that there was still loyaltyand devotion in the world. Her sudden illness, when the gaiety was atits height, her pallor, the handkerchief she crushed against her lips, the cough she smothered under the laughter while Gaston kept playing thepiano lightly--it all wrung my heart. But not so much as her cynicismin the long dialogue with her lover which followed. How far was I fromquestioning her unbelief! While the charmingly sincere young man pleadedwith her--accompanied by the orchestra in the old 'Traviata' duet, 'misterioso, misterios' altero!'--she maintained her bitter scepticism, and the curtain fell on her dancing recklessly with the others, afterArmand had been sent away with his flower. 

Between the acts we had no time to forget. The orchestra kept sawingaway at the 'Traviata' music, so joyous and sad, so thin and far-away, so clap-trap and yet so heart-breaking. After the second act I left Lenain tearful contemplation of the ceiling, and went out into the lobbyto smoke. As I walked about there I congratulated myself that I hadnot brought some Lincoln girl who would talk during the waits about thejunior dances, or whether the cadets would camp at Plattsmouth. Lena wasat least a woman, and I was a man. 

Through the scene between Marguerite and the elder Duval, Lena weptunceasingly, and I sat helpless to prevent the closing of that chapterof idyllic love, dreading the return of the young man whose ineffablehappiness was only to be the measure of his fall. 

I suppose no woman could have been further in person, voice, andtemperament from Dumas' appealing heroine than the veteran actress whofirst acquainted me with her. Her conception of the character was asheavy and uncompromising as her diction; she bore hard on the ideaand on the consonants. At all times she was highly tragic, devoured byremorse. Lightness of stress or behaviour was far from her. Her voicewas heavy and deep: 'Ar-r-r-mond!' she would begin, as if she weresummoning him to the bar of Judgment. But the lines were enough. She hadonly to utter them. They created the character in spite of her. 

The heartless world which Marguerite re-entered with Varville had neverbeen so glittering and reckless as on the night when it gathered inOlympe's salon for the fourth act. There were chandeliers hung from theceiling, I remember, many servants in livery, gaming-tables where themen played with piles of gold, and a staircase down which the guestsmade their entrance. After all the others had gathered round thecard-tables and young Duval had been warned by Prudence, Margueritedescended the staircase with Varville; such a cloak, such a fan, suchjewels--and her face! One knew at a glance how it was with her. WhenArmand, with the terrible words, 'Look, all of you, I owe this womannothing!' flung the gold and bank-notes at the half-swooning Marguerite, Lena cowered beside me and covered her face with her hands. 

The curtain rose on the bedroom scene. By this time there wasn't a nervein me that hadn't been twisted. Nanine alone could have made me cry. Iloved Nanine tenderly; and Gaston, how one clung to that good fellow!The New Year's presents were not too much; nothing could be too muchnow. I wept unrestrainedly. Even the handkerchief in my breast-pocket, worn for elegance and not at all for use, was wet through by the timethat moribund woman sank for the last time into the arms of her lover. 

When we reached the door of the theatre, the streets were shining withrain. I had prudently brought along Mrs. Harling's useful Commencementpresent, and I took Lena home under its shelter. After leaving her, Iwalked slowly out into the country part of the town where I lived. Thelilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after therain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my facewith a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and underthe showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had diedonly yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed somuch, and which had reached me only that night, across long years andseveral languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The ideais one that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever thatpiece is put on, it is April. 

IV

HOW WELL I REMEMBER the stiff little parlour where I used to wait forLena: the hard horsehair furniture, bought at some auction sale, thelong mirror, the fashion-plates on the wall. If I sat down even for amoment, I was sure to find threads and bits of coloured silk clingingto my clothes after I went away. Lena's success puzzled me. She was soeasygoing; had none of the push and self-assertiveness that get peopleahead in business. She had come to Lincoln, a country girl, with nointroductions except to some cousins of Mrs. Thomas who lived there, andshe was already making clothes for the women of 'the young married set. 'Evidently she had great natural aptitude for her work. She knew, asshe said, 'what people looked well in. ' She never tired of poring overfashion-books. Sometimes in the evening I would find her alone inher work-room, draping folds of satin on a wire figure, with a quiteblissful expression of countenance. I couldn't help thinking that theyears when Lena literally hadn't enough clothes to cover herself mighthave something to do with her untiring interest in dressing the humanfigure. Her clients said that Lena 'had style, ' and overlooked herhabitual inaccuracies. She never, I discovered, finished anything by thetime she had promised, and she frequently spent more money on materialsthan her customer had authorized. Once, when I arrived at six o'clock, Lena was ushering out a fidgety mother and her awkward, overgrowndaughter. The woman detained Lena at the door to say apologetically:

'You'll try to keep it under fifty for me, won't you, Miss Lingard? Yousee, she's really too young to come to an expensive dressmaker, but Iknew you could do more with her than anybody else. '

'Oh, that will be all right, Mrs. Herron. I think we'll manage to get agood effect, ' Lena replied blandly. 

I thought her manner with her customers very good, and wondered whereshe had learned such self-possession. 

Sometimes after my morning classes were over, I used to encounter Lenadowntown, in her velvet suit and a little black hat, with a veil tiedsmoothly over her face, looking as fresh as the spring morning. Maybeshe would be carrying home a bunch of jonquils or a hyacinth plant. Whenwe passed a candy store her footsteps would hesitate and linger. 'Don'tlet me go in, ' she would murmur. 'Get me by if you can. ' She was veryfond of sweets, and was afraid of growing too plump. 

We had delightful Sunday breakfasts together at Lena's. At the back ofher long work-room was a bay-window, large enough to hold a box-couchand a reading-table. We breakfasted in this recess, after drawing thecurtains that shut out the long room, with cutting-tables and wire womenand sheet-draped garments on the walls. The sunlight poured in, makingeverything on the table shine and glitter and the flame of the alcohollamp disappear altogether. Lena's curly black water-spaniel, Prince, breakfasted with us. He sat beside her on the couch and behaved verywell until the Polish violin-teacher across the hall began to practise, when Prince would growl and sniff the air with disgust. Lena's landlord, old Colonel Raleigh, had given her the dog, and at first she was not atall pleased. She had spent too much of her life taking care of animalsto have much sentiment about them. But Prince was a knowing littlebeast, and she grew fond of him. After breakfast I made him do hislessons; play dead dog, shake hands, stand up like a soldier. We usedto put my cadet cap on his head--I had to take military drill at theuniversity--and give him a yard-measure to hold with his front leg. Hisgravity made us laugh immoderately. 

Lena's talk always amused me. Antonia had never talked like the peopleabout her. Even after she learned to speak English readily, there wasalways something impulsive and foreign in her speech. But Lena hadpicked up all the conventional expressions she heard at Mrs. Thomas'sdressmaking shop. Those formal phrases, the very flower of small-townproprieties, and the flat commonplaces, nearly all hypocritical in theirorigin, became very funny, very engaging, when they were uttered inLena's soft voice, with her caressing intonation and arch naivete. Nothing could be more diverting than to hear Lena, who was almost ascandid as Nature, call a leg a 'limb' or a house a 'home. '

We used to linger a long while over our coffee in that sunny corner. Lena was never so pretty as in the morning; she wakened fresh with theworld every day, and her eyes had a deeper colour then, like the blueflowers that are never so blue as when they first open. I could sit idleall through a Sunday morning and look at her. Ole Benson's behaviour wasnow no mystery to me. 

'There was never any harm in Ole, ' she said once. 'People needn't havetroubled themselves. He just liked to come over and sit on the drawsideand forget about his bad luck. I liked to have him. Any company'swelcome when you're off with cattle all the time. '

'But wasn't he always glum?' I asked. 'People said he never talked atall. '

'Sure he talked, in Norwegian. He'd been a sailor on an English boat andhad seen lots of queer places. He had wonderful tattoos. We used to sitand look at them for hours; there wasn't much to look at out there. Hewas like a picture book. He had a ship and a strawberry girl on one arm, and on the other a girl standing before a little house, with a fence andgate and all, waiting for her sweetheart. Farther up his arm, her sailorhad come back and was kissing her. "The Sailor's Return, " he called it. '

I admitted it was no wonder Ole liked to look at a pretty girl once in awhile, with such a fright at home. 

'You know, ' Lena said confidentially, 'he married Mary because hethought she was strong-minded and would keep him straight. He nevercould keep straight on shore. The last time he landed in Liverpool he'dbeen out on a two years' voyage. He was paid off one morning, and by thenext he hadn't a cent left, and his watch and compass were gone. He'dgot with some women, and they'd taken everything. He worked his way tothis country on a little passenger boat. Mary was a stewardess, and shetried to convert him on the way over. He thought she was just the one tokeep him steady. Poor Ole! He used to bring me candy from town, hiddenin his feed-bag. He couldn't refuse anything to a girl. He'd have givenaway his tattoos long ago, if he could. He's one of the people I'msorriest for. '

If I happened to spend an evening with Lena and stayed late, the Polishviolin-teacher across the hall used to come out and watch me descend thestairs, muttering so threateningly that it would have been easy to fallinto a quarrel with him. Lena had told him once that she liked to hearhim practise, so he always left his door open, and watched who came andwent. 

There was a coolness between the Pole and Lena's landlord on heraccount. Old Colonel Raleigh had come to Lincoln from Kentucky andinvested an inherited fortune in real estate, at the time of inflatedprices. Now he sat day after day in his office in the Raleigh Block, trying to discover where his money had gone and how he could get some ofit back. He was a widower, and found very little congenial companionshipin this casual Western city. Lena's good looks and gentle mannersappealed to him. He said her voice reminded him of Southern voices, andhe found as many opportunities of hearing it as possible. He painted andpapered her rooms for her that spring, and put in a porcelain bathtub inplace of the tin one that had satisfied the former tenant. While theserepairs were being made, the old gentleman often dropped in to consultLena's preferences. She told me with amusement how Ordinsky, the Pole, had presented himself at her door one evening, and said that if thelandlord was annoying her by his attentions, he would promptly put astop to it. 

'I don't exactly know what to do about him, ' she said, shaking her head, 'he's so sort of wild all the time. I wouldn't like to have him sayanything rough to that nice old man. The colonel is long-winded, butthen I expect he's lonesome. I don't think he cares much for Ordinsky, either. He said once that if I had any complaints to make of myneighbours, I mustn't hesitate. '

One Saturday evening when I was having supper with Lena, we heard aknock at her parlour door, and there stood the Pole, coatless, in adress shirt and collar. Prince dropped on his paws and began to growllike a mastiff, while the visitor apologized, saying that he couldnot possibly come in thus attired, but he begged Lena to lend him somesafety pins. 

'Oh, you'll have to come in, Mr. Ordinsky, and let me see what's thematter. ' She closed the door behind him. 'Jim, won't you make Princebehave?'

I rapped Prince on the nose, while Ordinsky explained that he had nothad his dress clothes on for a long time, and tonight, when he was goingto play for a concert, his waistcoat had split down the back. He thoughthe could pin it together until he got it to a tailor. 

Lena took him by the elbow and turned him round. She laughed when shesaw the long gap in the satin. 'You could never pin that, Mr. Ordinsky. You've kept it folded too long, and the goods is all gone along thecrease. Take it off. I can put a new piece of lining-silk in there foryou in ten minutes. ' She disappeared into her work-room with the vest, leaving me to confront the Pole, who stood against the door like awooden figure. He folded his arms and glared at me with his excitable, slanting brown eyes. His head was the shape of a chocolate drop, and wascovered with dry, straw-coloured hair that fuzzed up about his pointedcrown. He had never done more than mutter at me as I passed him, andI was surprised when he now addressed me. 'Miss Lingard, ' he saidhaughtily, 'is a young woman for whom I have the utmost, the utmostrespect. '

'So have I, ' I said coldly. 

He paid no heed to my remark, but began to do rapid finger-exercises onhis shirt-sleeves, as he stood with tightly folded arms. 

'Kindness of heart, ' he went on, staring at the ceiling, 'sentiment, are not understood in a place like this. The noblest qualities areridiculed. Grinning college boys, ignorant and conceited, what do theyknow of delicacy!'

I controlled my features and tried to speak seriously. 

'If you mean me, Mr. Ordinsky, I have known Miss Lingard a long time, and I think I appreciate her kindness. We come from the same town, andwe grew up together. '

His gaze travelled slowly down from the ceiling and rested on me. 'Am Ito understand that you have this young woman's interests at heart? Thatyou do not wish to compromise her?'

'That's a word we don't use much here, Mr. Ordinsky. A girl who makesher own living can ask a college boy to supper without being talkedabout. We take some things for granted. '

'Then I have misjudged you, and I ask your pardon'--he bowed gravely. 'Miss Lingard, ' he went on, 'is an absolutely trustful heart. Shehas not learned the hard lessons of life. As for you and me, noblesseoblige'--he watched me narrowly. 

Lena returned with the vest. 'Come in and let us look at you as you goout, Mr. Ordinsky. I've never seen you in your dress suit, ' she said asshe opened the door for him. 

A few moments later he reappeared with his violin-case a heavy mufflerabout his neck and thick woollen gloves on his bony hands. Lenaspoke encouragingly to him, and he went off with such an importantprofessional air that we fell to laughing as soon as we had shut thedoor. 'Poor fellow, ' Lena said indulgently, 'he takes everything sohard. '

After that Ordinsky was friendly to me, and behaved as if therewere some deep understanding between us. He wrote a furious article, attacking the musical taste of the town, and asked me to do him a greatservice by taking it to the editor of the morning paper. If the editorrefused to print it, I was to tell him that he would be answerable toOrdinsky 'in person. ' He declared that he would never retract one word, and that he was quite prepared to lose all his pupils. In spite ofthe fact that nobody ever mentioned his article to him after itappeared--full of typographical errors which he thought intentional--hegot a certain satisfaction from believing that the citizens of Lincolnhad meekly accepted the epithet 'coarse barbarians. ' 'You see howit is, ' he said to me, 'where there is no chivalry, there is noamour-propre. ' When I met him on his rounds now, I thought he carriedhis head more disdainfully than ever, and strode up the steps of frontporches and rang doorbells with more assurance. He told Lena he wouldnever forget how I had stood by him when he was 'under fire. '

All this time, of course, I was drifting. Lena had broken up my seriousmood. I wasn't interested in my classes. I played with Lena and Prince, I played with the Pole, I went buggy-riding with the old colonel, whohad taken a fancy to me and used to talk to me about Lena and the 'greatbeauties' he had known in his youth. We were all three in love withLena. 

Before the first of June, Gaston Cleric was offered an instructorship atHarvard College, and accepted it. He suggested that I should follow himin the fall, and complete my course at Harvard. He had found out aboutLena--not from me--and he talked to me seriously. 

'You won't do anything here now. You should either quit school and goto work, or change your college and begin again in earnest. Youwon't recover yourself while you are playing about with this handsomeNorwegian. Yes, I've seen her with you at the theatre. She's verypretty, and perfectly irresponsible, I should judge. '

Cleric wrote my grandfather that he would like to take me East with him. To my astonishment, grandfather replied that I might go if I wished. Iwas both glad and sorry on the day when the letter came. I stayed inmy room all evening and thought things over. I even tried to persuademyself that I was standing in Lena's way--it is so necessary to bea little noble!--and that if she had not me to play with, she wouldprobably marry and secure her future. 

The next evening I went to call on Lena. I found her propped up on thecouch in her bay-window, with her foot in a big slipper. An awkwardlittle Russian girl whom she had taken into her work-room had dropped aflat-iron on Lena's toe. On the table beside her there was a basketof early summer flowers which the Pole had left after he heard of theaccident. He always managed to know what went on in Lena's apartment. 

Lena was telling me some amusing piece of gossip about one of herclients, when I interrupted her and picked up the flower basket. 

'This old chap will be proposing to you some day, Lena. '

'Oh, he has--often!' she murmured. 

'What! After you've refused him?'

'He doesn't mind that. It seems to cheer him to mention the subject. Old men are like that, you know. It makes them feel important to thinkthey're in love with somebody. '

'The colonel would marry you in a minute. I hope you won't marry someold fellow; not even a rich one. ' Lena shifted her pillows and looked upat me in surprise. 

'Why, I'm not going to marry anybody. Didn't you know that?'

'Nonsense, Lena. That's what girls say, but you know better. Everyhandsome girl like you marries, of course. '

She shook her head. 'Not me. '

'But why not? What makes you say that?' I persisted. 

Lena laughed. 

'Well, it's mainly because I don't want a husband. Men are all rightfor friends, but as soon as you marry them they turn into cranky oldfathers, even the wild ones. They begin to tell you what's sensible andwhat's foolish, and want you to stick at home all the time. I prefer tobe foolish when I feel like it, and be accountable to nobody. '

'But you'll be lonesome. You'll get tired of this sort of life, andyou'll want a family. '

'Not me. I like to be lonesome. When I went to work for Mrs. Thomas Iwas nineteen years old, and I had never slept a night in my life whenthere weren't three in the bed. I never had a minute to myself exceptwhen I was off with the cattle. '

Usually, when Lena referred to her life in the country at all, shedismissed it with a single remark, humorous or mildly cynical. Buttonight her mind seemed to dwell on those early years. She told me shecouldn't remember a time when she was so little that she wasn't lugginga heavy baby about, helping to wash for babies, trying to keep theirlittle chapped hands and faces clean. She remembered home as a placewhere there were always too many children, a cross man and work pilingup around a sick woman. 

'It wasn't mother's fault. She would have made us comfortable if shecould. But that was no life for a girl! After I began to herd and milk, I could never get the smell of the cattle off me. The few underclothes Ihad I kept in a cracker-box. On Saturday nights, after everybody was inbed, then I could take a bath if I wasn't too tired. I could make twotrips to the windmill to carry water, and heat it in the wash-boiler onthe stove. While the water was heating, I could bring in a washtub outof the cave, and take my bath in the kitchen. Then I could put on aclean night-gown and get into bed with two others, who likely hadn'thad a bath unless I'd given it to them. You can't tell me anything aboutfamily life. I've had plenty to last me. '

'But it's not all like that, ' I objected. 

'Near enough. It's all being under somebody's thumb. What's on yourmind, Jim? Are you afraid I'll want you to marry me some day?'

Then I told her I was going away. 

'What makes you want to go away, Jim? Haven't I been nice to you?'

'You've been just awfully good to me, Lena, ' I blurted. 'I don't thinkabout much else. I never shall think about much else while I'm with you. I'll never settle down and grind if I stay here. You know that. '

I dropped down beside her and sat looking at the floor. I seemed to haveforgotten all my reasonable explanations. 

Lena drew close to me, and the little hesitation in her voice that hadhurt me was not there when she spoke again. 

'I oughtn't to have begun it, ought I?' she murmured. 'I oughtn't tohave gone to see you that first time. But I did want to. I guess I'vealways been a little foolish about you. I don't know what first put itinto my head, unless it was Antonia, always telling me I mustn't beup to any of my nonsense with you. I let you alone for a long while, though, didn't I?'

She was a sweet creature to those she loved, that Lena Lingard!

At last she sent me away with her soft, slow, renunciatory kiss. 

'You aren't sorry I came to see you that time?' she whispered. 'Itseemed so natural. I used to think I'd like to be your first sweetheart. You were such a funny kid!'

She always kissed one as if she were sadly and wisely sending one awayforever. 

We said many good-byes before I left Lincoln, but she never tried tohinder me or hold me back. 'You are going, but you haven't gone yet, have you?' she used to say. 

My Lincoln chapter closed abruptly. I went home to my grandparents for afew weeks, and afterward visited my relatives in Virginia until I joinedCleric in Boston. I was then nineteen years old. 

BOOK IV. The Pioneer Woman's Story

I

TWO YEARS AFTER I left Lincoln, I completed my academic course atHarvard. Before I entered the Law School I went home for the summervacation. On the night of my arrival, Mrs. Harling and Frances andSally came over to greet me. Everything seemed just as it used to be. Mygrandparents looked very little older. Frances Harling was married now, and she and her husband managed the Harling interests in Black Hawk. When we gathered in grandmother's parlour, I could hardly believe that Ihad been away at all. One subject, however, we avoided all evening. 

When I was walking home with Frances, after we had left Mrs. Harling ather gate, she said simply, 'You know, of course, about poor Antonia. '

Poor Antonia! Everyone would be saying that now, I thought bitterly. Ireplied that grandmother had written me how Antonia went away to marryLarry Donovan at some place where he was working; that he had desertedher, and that there was now a baby. This was all I knew. 

'He never married her, ' Frances said. 'I haven't seen her since she cameback. She lives at home, on the farm, and almost never comes to town. She brought the baby in to show it to mama once. I'm afraid she'ssettled down to be Ambrosch's drudge for good. '

I tried to shut Antonia out of my mind. I was bitterly disappointed inher. I could not forgive her for becoming an object of pity, whileLena Lingard, for whom people had always foretold trouble, was now theleading dressmaker of Lincoln, much respected in Black Hawk. Lena gaveher heart away when she felt like it, but she kept her head for herbusiness and had got on in the world. 

Just then it was the fashion to speak indulgently of Lena and severelyof Tiny Soderball, who had quietly gone West to try her fortune the yearbefore. A Black Hawk boy, just back from Seattle, brought the news thatTiny had not gone to the coast on a venture, as she had allowed peopleto think, but with very definite plans. One of the roving promotersthat used to stop at Mrs. Gardener's hotel owned idle property along thewaterfront in Seattle, and he had offered to set Tiny up in businessin one of his empty buildings. She was now conducting a sailors'lodging-house. This, everyone said, would be the end of Tiny. Even ifshe had begun by running a decent place, she couldn't keep it up; allsailors' boarding-houses were alike. 

When I thought about it, I discovered that I had never known Tiny aswell as I knew the other girls. I remembered her tripping briskly aboutthe dining-room on her high heels, carrying a big trayful of dishes, glancing rather pertly at the spruce travelling men, and contemptuouslyat the scrubby ones--who were so afraid of her that they didn't dareto ask for two kinds of pie. Now it occurred to me that perhaps thesailors, too, might be afraid of Tiny. How astonished we should havebeen, as we sat talking about her on Frances Harling's front porch, ifwe could have known what her future was really to be! Of all the girlsand boys who grew up together in Black Hawk, Tiny Soderball was to leadthe most adventurous life and to achieve the most solid worldly success. 

This is what actually happened to Tiny: While she was running herlodging-house in Seattle, gold was discovered in Alaska. Miners andsailors came back from the North with wonderful stories and pouches ofgold. Tiny saw it and weighed it in her hands. That daring, which nobodyhad ever suspected in her, awoke. She sold her business and set outfor Circle City, in company with a carpenter and his wife whom she hadpersuaded to go along with her. They reached Skaguay in a snowstorm, went in dog-sledges over the Chilkoot Pass, and shot the Yukon inflatboats. They reached Circle City on the very day when some SiwashIndians came into the settlement with the report that there had been arich gold strike farther up the river, on a certain Klondike Creek. Two days later Tiny and her friends, and nearly everyone else in CircleCity, started for the Klondike fields on the last steamer that wentup the Yukon before it froze for the winter. That boatload of peoplefounded Dawson City. Within a few weeks there were fifteen hundredhomeless men in camp. Tiny and the carpenter's wife began to cook forthem, in a tent. The miners gave her a building lot, and the carpenterput up a log hotel for her. There she sometimes fed a hundred and fiftymen a day. Miners came in on snowshoes from their placer claims twentymiles away to buy fresh bread from her, and paid for it in gold. 

That winter Tiny kept in her hotel a Swede whose legs had been frozenone night in a storm when he was trying to find his way back to hiscabin. The poor fellow thought it great good fortune to be cared for bya woman, and a woman who spoke his own tongue. When he was told thathis feet must be amputated, he said he hoped he would not get well; whatcould a working-man do in this hard world without feet? He did, in fact, die from the operation, but not before he had deeded Tiny Soderball hisclaim on Hunker Creek. Tiny sold her hotel, invested half her money inDawson building lots, and with the rest she developed her claim. Shewent off into the wilds and lived on the claim. She bought other claimsfrom discouraged miners, traded or sold them on percentages. 

After nearly ten years in the Klondike, Tiny returned, with aconsiderable fortune, to live in San Francisco. I met her in Salt LakeCity in 1908. She was a thin, hard-faced woman, very well-dressed, veryreserved in manner. Curiously enough, she reminded me of Mrs. Gardener, for whom she had worked in Black Hawk so long ago. She told me aboutsome of the desperate chances she had taken in the gold country, but thethrill of them was quite gone. She said frankly that nothing interestedher much now but making money. The only two human beings of whom shespoke with any feeling were the Swede, Johnson, who had given her hisclaim, and Lena Lingard. She had persuaded Lena to come to San Franciscoand go into business there. 

'Lincoln was never any place for her, ' Tiny remarked. 'In a town of thatsize Lena would always be gossiped about. Frisco's the right fieldfor her. She has a fine class of trade. Oh, she's just the same asshe always was! She's careless, but she's level-headed. She's the onlyperson I know who never gets any older. It's fine for me to have herthere; somebody who enjoys things like that. She keeps an eye on me andwon't let me be shabby. When she thinks I need a new dress, she makes itand sends it home with a bill that's long enough, I can tell you!'

Tiny limped slightly when she walked. The claim on Hunker Creek tooktoll from its possessors. Tiny had been caught in a sudden turn ofweather, like poor Johnson. She lost three toes from one of those prettylittle feet that used to trip about Black Hawk in pointed slippers andstriped stockings. Tiny mentioned this mutilation quite casually--didn'tseem sensitive about it. She was satisfied with her success, but notelated. She was like someone in whom the faculty of becoming interestedis worn out. 

II

SOON AFTER I GOT home that summer, I persuaded my grandparents to havetheir photographs taken, and one morning I went into the photographer'sshop to arrange for sittings. While I was waiting for him to come out ofhis developing-room, I walked about trying to recognize the likenesseson his walls: girls in Commencement dresses, country brides and groomsholding hands, family groups of three generations. I noticed, in aheavy frame, one of those depressing 'crayon enlargements' often seenin farm-house parlours, the subject being a round-eyed baby in shortdresses. The photographer came out and gave a constrained, apologeticlaugh. 

'That's Tony Shimerda's baby. You remember her; she used to be theHarlings' Tony. Too bad! She seems proud of the baby, though; wouldn'thear to a cheap frame for the picture. I expect her brother will be infor it Saturday. '

I went away feeling that I must see Antonia again. Another girl wouldhave kept her baby out of sight, but Tony, of course, must have itspicture on exhibition at the town photographer's, in a great gilt frame. How like her! I could forgive her, I told myself, if she hadn't thrownherself away on such a cheap sort of fellow. 

Larry Donovan was a passenger conductor, one of those train-crewaristocrats who are always afraid that someone may ask them to put upa car-window, and who, if requested to perform such a menial service, silently point to the button that calls the porter. Larry wore thisair of official aloofness even on the street, where there were nocar-windows to compromise his dignity. At the end of his run he steppedindifferently from the train along with the passengers, his streethat on his head and his conductor's cap in an alligator-skin bag, wentdirectly into the station and changed his clothes. It was a matter ofthe utmost importance to him never to be seen in his blue trousers awayfrom his train. He was usually cold and distant with men, but withall women he had a silent, grave familiarity, a special handshake, accompanied by a significant, deliberate look. He took women, married orsingle, into his confidence; walked them up and down in the moonlight, telling them what a mistake he had made by not entering the officebranch of the service, and how much better fitted he was to fill thepost of General Passenger Agent in Denver than the rough-shod man whothen bore that title. His unappreciated worth was the tender secretLarry shared with his sweethearts, and he was always able to make somefoolish heart ache over it. 

As I drew near home that morning, I saw Mrs. Harling out in her yard, digging round her mountain-ash tree. It was a dry summer, and she hadnow no boy to help her. Charley was off in his battleship, cruisingsomewhere on the Caribbean sea. I turned in at the gate it was with afeeling of pleasure that I opened and shut that gate in those days;I liked the feel of it under my hand. I took the spade away from Mrs. Harling, and while I loosened the earth around the tree, she sat downon the steps and talked about the oriole family that had a nest in itsbranches. 

'Mrs. Harling, ' I said presently, 'I wish I could find out exactly howAntonia's marriage fell through. '

'Why don't you go out and see your grandfather's tenant, the WidowSteavens? She knows more about it than anybody else. She helped Antoniaget ready to be married, and she was there when Antonia came back. Shetook care of her when the baby was born. She could tell you everything. Besides, the Widow Steavens is a good talker, and she has a remarkablememory. '

III

ON THE FIRST OR second day of August I got a horse and cart and set outfor the high country, to visit the Widow Steavens. The wheat harvest wasover, and here and there along the horizon I could see black puffs ofsmoke from the steam threshing-machines. The old pasture land was nowbeing broken up into wheatfields and cornfields, the red grass wasdisappearing, and the whole face of the country was changing. Therewere wooden houses where the old sod dwellings used to be, and littleorchards, and big red barns; all this meant happy children, contentedwomen, and men who saw their lives coming to a fortunate issue. Thewindy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enrichedand mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had goneinto it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. Thechanges seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching thegrowth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree andsandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation ofthe land as one remembers the modelling of human faces. 

When I drew up to our old windmill, the Widow Steavens came out to meetme. She was brown as an Indian woman, tall, and very strong. When I waslittle, her massive head had always seemed to me like a Roman senator's. I told her at once why I had come. 

'You'll stay the night with us, Jimmy? I'll talk to you after supper. Ican take more interest when my work is off my mind. You've no prejudiceagainst hot biscuit for supper? Some have, these days. '

While I was putting my horse away, I heard a rooster squawking. I lookedat my watch and sighed; it was three o'clock, and I knew that I must eathim at six. 

After supper Mrs. Steavens and I went upstairs to the old sitting-room, while her grave, silent brother remained in the basement to read hisfarm papers. All the windows were open. The white summer moon wasshining outside, the windmill was pumping lazily in the light breeze. Myhostess put the lamp on a stand in the corner, and turned it low becauseof the heat. She sat down in her favourite rocking-chair and settleda little stool comfortably under her tired feet. 'I'm troubled withcalluses, Jim; getting old, ' she sighed cheerfully. She crossed herhands in her lap and sat as if she were at a meeting of some kind. 

'Now, it's about that dear Antonia you want to know? Well, you've cometo the right person. I've watched her like she'd been my own daughter. 

'When she came home to do her sewing that summer before she was tobe married, she was over here about every day. They've never had asewing-machine at the Shimerdas', and she made all her things here. Itaught her hemstitching, and I helped her to cut and fit. She usedto sit there at that machine by the window, pedalling the life out ofit--she was so strong--and always singing them queer Bohemian songs, like she was the happiest thing in the world. 

'"Antonia, " I used to say, "don't run that machine so fast. You won'thasten the day none that way. "

'Then she'd laugh and slow down for a little, but she'd soon forget andbegin to pedal and sing again. I never saw a girl work harder to go tohousekeeping right and well-prepared. Lovely table-linen the Harlingshad given her, and Lena Lingard had sent her nice things from Lincoln. We hemstitched all the tablecloths and pillow-cases, and some ofthe sheets. Old Mrs. Shimerda knit yards and yards of lace for herunderclothes. Tony told me just how she meant to have everything in herhouse. She'd even bought silver spoons and forks, and kept them in hertrunk. She was always coaxing brother to go to the post-office. Heryoung man did write her real often, from the different towns along hisrun. 

'The first thing that troubled her was when he wrote that his run hadbeen changed, and they would likely have to live in Denver. "I'm acountry girl, " she said, "and I doubt if I'll be able to manage so wellfor him in a city. I was counting on keeping chickens, and maybe a cow. "She soon cheered up, though. 

'At last she got the letter telling her when to come. She was shaken byit; she broke the seal and read it in this room. I suspected then thatshe'd begun to get faint-hearted, waiting; though she'd never let me seeit. 

'Then there was a great time of packing. It was in March, if I rememberrightly, and a terrible muddy, raw spell, with the roads bad for haulingher things to town. And here let me say, Ambrosch did the right thing. He went to Black Hawk and bought her a set of plated silver in a purplevelvet box, good enough for her station. He gave her three hundreddollars in money; I saw the cheque. He'd collected her wages all thosefirst years she worked out, and it was but right. I shook him by thehand in this room. "You're behaving like a man, Ambrosch, " I said, "andI'm glad to see it, son. "

''Twas a cold, raw day he drove her and her three trunks into Black Hawkto take the night train for Denver--the boxes had been shipped before. He stopped the wagon here, and she ran in to tell me good-bye. She threwher arms around me and kissed me, and thanked me for all I'd done forher. She was so happy she was crying and laughing at the same time, andher red cheeks was all wet with rain. 

'"You're surely handsome enough for any man, " I said, looking her over. 

'She laughed kind of flighty like, and whispered, "Good-bye, dearhouse!" and then ran out to the wagon. I expect she meant that for youand your grandmother, as much as for me, so I'm particular to tell you. This house had always been a refuge to her. 

'Well, in a few days we had a letter saying she got to Denver safe, andhe was there to meet her. They were to be married in a few days. He wastrying to get his promotion before he married, she said. I didn't likethat, but I said nothing. The next week Yulka got a postal card, sayingshe was "well and happy. " After that we heard nothing. A month went by, and old Mrs. Shimerda began to get fretful. Ambrosch was as sulky withme as if I'd picked out the man and arranged the match. 

'One night brother William came in and said that on his way back fromthe fields he had passed a livery team from town, driving fast out thewest road. There was a trunk on the front seat with the driver, andanother behind. In the back seat there was a woman all bundled up;but for all her veils, he thought 'twas Antonia Shimerda, or AntoniaDonovan, as her name ought now to be. 

'The next morning I got brother to drive me over. I can walk still, butmy feet ain't what they used to be, and I try to save myself. The linesoutside the Shimerdas' house was full of washing, though it was themiddle of the week. As we got nearer, I saw a sight that made myheart sink--all those underclothes we'd put so much work on, out thereswinging in the wind. Yulka came bringing a dishpanful of wrung clothes, but she darted back into the house like she was loath to see us. WhenI went in, Antonia was standing over the tubs, just finishing up a bigwashing. Mrs. Shimerda was going about her work, talking and scoldingto herself. She didn't so much as raise her eyes. Tony wiped her hand onher apron and held it out to me, looking at me steady but mournful. WhenI took her in my arms she drew away. "Don't, Mrs. Steavens, " she says, "you'll make me cry, and I don't want to. "

'I whispered and asked her to come out-of-doors with me. I knew shecouldn't talk free before her mother. She went out with me, bareheaded, and we walked up toward the garden. 

'"I'm not married, Mrs. Steavens, " she says to me very quiet andnatural-like, "and I ought to be. "

'"Oh, my child, " says I, "what's happened to you? Don't be afraid totell me!"

'She sat down on the drawside, out of sight of the house. "He's run awayfrom me, " she said. "I don't know if he ever meant to marry me. "

'"You mean he's thrown up his job and quit the country?" says I. 

'"He didn't have any job. He'd been fired; blacklisted for knocking downfares. I didn't know. I thought he hadn't been treated right. He wassick when I got there. He'd just come out of the hospital. He lived withme till my money gave out, and afterward I found he hadn't really beenhunting work at all. Then he just didn't come back. One nice fellow atthe station told me, when I kept going to look for him, to give it up. He said he was afraid Larry'd gone bad and wouldn't come back any more. I guess he's gone to Old Mexico. The conductors get rich down there, collecting half-fares off the natives and robbing the company. He wasalways talking about fellows who had got ahead that way. "

'I asked her, of course, why she didn't insist on a civil marriage atonce--that would have given her some hold on him. She leaned her headon her hands, poor child, and said, "I just don't know, Mrs. Steavens. Iguess my patience was wore out, waiting so long. I thought if he saw howwell I could do for him, he'd want to stay with me. "

'Jimmy, I sat right down on that bank beside her and made lament. I cried like a young thing. I couldn't help it. I was just aboutheart-broke. It was one of them lovely warm May days, and the wind wasblowing and the colts jumping around in the pastures; but I felt bowedwith despair. My Antonia, that had so much good in her, had come homedisgraced. And that Lena Lingard, that was always a bad one, say whatyou will, had turned out so well, and was coming home here every summerin her silks and her satins, and doing so much for her mother. I givecredit where credit is due, but you know well enough, Jim Burden, thereis a great difference in the principles of those two girls. And here itwas the good one that had come to grief! I was poor comfort to her. Imarvelled at her calm. As we went back to the house, she stopped to feelof her clothes to see if they was drying well, and seemed to take pridein their whiteness--she said she'd been living in a brick block, whereshe didn't have proper conveniences to wash them. 

'The next time I saw Antonia, she was out in the fields ploughing corn. All that spring and summer she did the work of a man on the farm; itseemed to be an understood thing. Ambrosch didn't get any other handto help him. Poor Marek had got violent and been sent away to aninstitution a good while back. We never even saw any of Tony's prettydresses. She didn't take them out of her trunks. She was quiet andsteady. Folks respected her industry and tried to treat her as ifnothing had happened. They talked, to be sure; but not like they wouldif she'd put on airs. She was so crushed and quiet that nobody seemed towant to humble her. She never went anywhere. All that summer she neveronce came to see me. At first I was hurt, but I got to feel that it wasbecause this house reminded her of too much. I went over there when Icould, but the times when she was in from the fields were the times whenI was busiest here. She talked about the grain and the weather as ifshe'd never had another interest, and if I went over at night she alwayslooked dead weary. She was afflicted with toothache; one tooth afteranother ulcerated, and she went about with her face swollen half thetime. She wouldn't go to Black Hawk to a dentist for fear of meetingpeople she knew. Ambrosch had got over his good spell long ago, and wasalways surly. Once I told him he ought not to let Antonia work so hardand pull herself down. He said, "If you put that in her head, you betterstay home. " And after that I did. 

'Antonia worked on through harvest and threshing, though she was toomodest to go out threshing for the neighbours, like when she was youngand free. I didn't see much of her until late that fall when she begunto herd Ambrosch's cattle in the open ground north of here, up towardthe big dog-town. Sometimes she used to bring them over the west hill, there, and I would run to meet her and walk north a piece with her. Shehad thirty cattle in her bunch; it had been dry, and the pasture wasshort, or she wouldn't have brought them so far. 

'It was a fine open fall, and she liked to be alone. While the steersgrazed, she used to sit on them grassy banks along the draws and sunherself for hours. Sometimes I slipped up to visit with her, when shehadn't gone too far. 

'"It does seem like I ought to make lace, or knit like Lena used to, "she said one day, "but if I start to work, I look around and forgetto go on. It seems such a little while ago when Jim Burden and I wasplaying all over this country. Up here I can pick out the very placeswhere my father used to stand. Sometimes I feel like I'm not going tolive very long, so I'm just enjoying every day of this fall. "

'After the winter begun she wore a man's long overcoat and boots, and aman's felt hat with a wide brim. I used to watch her coming andgoing, and I could see that her steps were getting heavier. One day inDecember, the snow began to fall. Late in the afternoon I saw Antoniadriving her cattle homeward across the hill. The snow was flying roundher and she bent to face it, looking more lonesome-like to me thanusual. "Deary me, " I says to myself, "the girl's stayed out too late. It'll be dark before she gets them cattle put into the corral. " I seemedto sense she'd been feeling too miserable to get up and drive them. 

'That very night, it happened. She got her cattle home, turned them intothe corral, and went into the house, into her room behind the kitchen, and shut the door. There, without calling to anybody, without a groan, she lay down on the bed and bore her child. 

'I was lifting supper when old Mrs. Shimerda came running down thebasement stairs, out of breath and screeching:

'"Baby come, baby come!" she says. "Ambrosch much like devil!"

'Brother William is surely a patient man. He was just ready to sit downto a hot supper after a long day in the fields. Without a word he roseand went down to the barn and hooked up his team. He got us over thereas quick as it was humanly possible. I went right in, and began to dofor Antonia; but she laid there with her eyes shut and took no accountof me. The old woman got a tubful of warm water to wash the baby. Ioverlooked what she was doing and I said out loud: "Mrs. Shimerda, don't you put that strong yellow soap near that baby. You'll blister itslittle skin. " I was indignant. 

'"Mrs. Steavens, " Antonia said from the bed, "if you'll look in the toptray of my trunk, you'll see some fine soap. " That was the first wordshe spoke. 

'After I'd dressed the baby, I took it out to show it to Ambrosch. Hewas muttering behind the stove and wouldn't look at it. 

'"You'd better put it out in the rain-barrel, " he says. 

'"Now, see here, Ambrosch, " says I, "there's a law in this land, don'tforget that. I stand here a witness that this baby has come into theworld sound and strong, and I intend to keep an eye on what befalls it. "I pride myself I cowed him. 

'Well I expect you're not much interested in babies, but Antonia's goton fine. She loved it from the first as dearly as if she'd had a ringon her finger, and was never ashamed of it. It's a year and eightmonths old now, and no baby was ever better cared-for. Antonia is anatural-born mother. I wish she could marry and raise a family, but Idon't know as there's much chance now. '

I slept that night in the room I used to have when I was a little boy, with the summer wind blowing in at the windows, bringing the smell ofthe ripe fields. I lay awake and watched the moonlight shining over thebarn and the stacks and the pond, and the windmill making its old darkshadow against the blue sky. 

IV

THE NEXT AFTERNOON I walked over to the Shimerdas'. Yulka showed methe baby and told me that Antonia was shocking wheat on the southwestquarter. I went down across the fields, and Tony saw me from a long wayoff. She stood still by her shocks, leaning on her pitchfork, watchingme as I came. We met like the people in the old song, in silence, if notin tears. Her warm hand clasped mine. 

'I thought you'd come, Jim. I heard you were at Mrs. Steavens's lastnight. I've been looking for you all day. '

She was thinner than I had ever seen her, and looked as Mrs. Steavenssaid, 'worked down, ' but there was a new kind of strength in the gravityof her face, and her colour still gave her that look of deep-seatedhealth and ardour. Still? Why, it flashed across me that though so muchhad happened in her life and in mine, she was barely twenty-four yearsold. 

Antonia stuck her fork in the ground, and instinctively we walked towardthat unploughed patch at the crossing of the roads as the fittest placeto talk to each other. We sat down outside the sagging wire fence thatshut Mr. Shimerda's plot off from the rest of the world. The tall redgrass had never been cut there. It had died down in winter and come upagain in the spring until it was as thick and shrubby as some tropicalgarden-grass. I found myself telling her everything: why I had decidedto study law and to go into the law office of one of my mother'srelatives in New York City; about Gaston Cleric's death from pneumonialast winter, and the difference it had made in my life. She wanted toknow about my friends, and my way of living, and my dearest hopes. 

'Of course it means you are going away from us for good, ' she said witha sigh. 'But that don't mean I'll lose you. Look at my papa here; he'sbeen dead all these years, and yet he is more real to me than almostanybody else. He never goes out of my life. I talk to him and consulthim all the time. The older I grow, the better I know him and the more Iunderstand him. '

She asked me whether I had learned to like big cities. 'I'd always bemiserable in a city. I'd die of lonesomeness. I like to be where I knowevery stack and tree, and where all the ground is friendly. I want tolive and die here. Father Kelly says everybody's put into this worldfor something, and I know what I've got to do. I'm going to see that mylittle girl has a better chance than ever I had. I'm going to take careof that girl, Jim. '

I told her I knew she would. 'Do you know, Antonia, since I've beenaway, I think of you more often than of anyone else in this part of theworld. I'd have liked to have you for a sweetheart, or a wife, or mymother or my sister--anything that a woman can be to a man. The idea ofyou is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all mytastes, hundreds of times when I don't realize it. You really are a partof me. '

She turned her bright, believing eyes to me, and the tears came up inthem slowly, 'How can it be like that, when you know so many people, andwhen I've disappointed you so? Ain't it wonderful, Jim, how much peoplecan mean to each other? I'm so glad we had each other when we werelittle. I can't wait till my little girl's old enough to tell her aboutall the things we used to do. You'll always remember me when you thinkabout old times, won't you? And I guess everybody thinks about oldtimes, even the happiest people. '

As we walked homeward across the fields, the sun dropped and lay like agreat golden globe in the low west. While it hung there, the moon rosein the east, as big as a cart-wheel, pale silver and streaked with rosecolour, thin as a bubble or a ghost-moon. For five, perhaps ten minutes, the two luminaries confronted each other across the level land, restingon opposite edges of the world. 

In that singular light every little tree and shock of wheat, everysunflower stalk and clump of snow-on-the-mountain, drew itself up highand pointed; the very clods and furrows in the fields seemed to stand upsharply. I felt the old pull of the earth, the solemn magic that comesout of those fields at nightfall. I wished I could be a little boyagain, and that my way could end there. 

We reached the edge of the field, where our ways parted. I took herhands and held them against my breast, feeling once more how strong andwarm and good they were, those brown hands, and remembering how manykind things they had done for me. I held them now a long while, over myheart. About us it was growing darker and darker, and I had to look hardto see her face, which I meant always to carry with me; the closest, realest face, under all the shadows of women's faces, at the very bottomof my memory. 

'I'll come back, ' I said earnestly, through the soft, intrusivedarkness. 

'Perhaps you will'--I felt rather than saw her smile. 'But even if youdon't, you're here, like my father. So I won't be lonesome. '

As I went back alone over that familiar road, I could almost believethat a boy and girl ran along beside me, as our shadows used to do, laughing and whispering to each other in the grass. 

BOOK V. Cuzak's Boys

I

I TOLD ANTONIA I would come back, but life intervened, and it was twentyyears before I kept my promise. I heard of her from time to time; thatshe married, very soon after I last saw her, a young Bohemian, a cousinof Anton Jelinek; that they were poor, and had a large family. Once whenI was abroad I went into Bohemia, and from Prague I sent Antonia somephotographs of her native village. Months afterward came a letter fromher, telling me the names and ages of her many children, but littleelse; signed, 'Your old friend, Antonia Cuzak. ' When I met TinySoderball in Salt Lake, she told me that Antonia had not 'done verywell'; that her husband was not a man of much force, and she had hada hard life. Perhaps it was cowardice that kept me away so long. Mybusiness took me West several times every year, and it was always inthe back of my mind that I would stop in Nebraska some day and go to seeAntonia. But I kept putting it off until the next trip. I did not wantto find her aged and broken; I really dreaded it. In the course oftwenty crowded years one parts with many illusions. I did not wish tolose the early ones. Some memories are realities, and are better thananything that can ever happen to one again. 

I owe it to Lena Lingard that I went to see Antonia at last. I was inSan Francisco two summers ago when both Lena and Tiny Soderball werein town. Tiny lives in a house of her own, and Lena's shop is in anapartment house just around the corner. It interested me, after somany years, to see the two women together. Tiny audits Lena's accountsoccasionally, and invests her money for her; and Lena, apparently, takescare that Tiny doesn't grow too miserly. 'If there's anything I can'tstand, ' she said to me in Tiny's presence, 'it's a shabby rich woman. 'Tiny smiled grimly and assured me that Lena would never be either shabbyor rich. 'And I don't want to be, ' the other agreed complacently. 

Lena gave me a cheerful account of Antonia and urged me to make her avisit. 

'You really ought to go, Jim. It would be such a satisfaction to her. Never mind what Tiny says. There's nothing the matter with Cuzak. You'dlike him. He isn't a hustler, but a rough man would never have suitedTony. Tony has nice children--ten or eleven of them by this time, Iguess. I shouldn't care for a family of that size myself, but somehowit's just right for Tony. She'd love to show them to you. '

On my way East I broke my journey at Hastings, in Nebraska, and set offwith an open buggy and a fairly good livery team to find the Cuzak farm. At a little past midday, I knew I must be nearing my destination. Setback on a swell of land at my right, I saw a wide farm-house, with a redbarn and an ash grove, and cattle-yards in front that sloped down to thehighroad. I drew up my horses and was wondering whether I should drivein here, when I heard low voices. Ahead of me, in a plum thicket besidethe road, I saw two boys bending over a dead dog. The little one, notmore than four or five, was on his knees, his hands folded, and hisclose-clipped, bare head drooping forward in deep dejection. The otherstood beside him, a hand on his shoulder, and was comforting him ina language I had not heard for a long while. When I stopped my horsesopposite them, the older boy took his brother by the hand and cametoward me. He, too, looked grave. This was evidently a sad afternoon forthem. 

'Are you Mrs. Cuzak's boys?' I asked. 

The younger one did not look up; he was submerged in his own feelings, but his brother met me with intelligent grey eyes. 'Yes, sir. '

'Does she live up there on the hill? I am going to see her. Get in andride up with me. '

He glanced at his reluctant little brother. 'I guess we'd better walk. But we'll open the gate for you. '

I drove along the side-road and they followed slowly behind. When Ipulled up at the windmill, another boy, barefooted and curly-headed, ranout of the barn to tie my team for me. He was a handsome one, this chap, fair-skinned and freckled, with red cheeks and a ruddy pelt as thick asa lamb's wool, growing down on his neck in little tufts. He tied my teamwith two flourishes of his hands, and nodded when I asked him if hismother was at home. As he glanced at me, his face dimpled with a seizureof irrelevant merriment, and he shot up the windmill tower with alightness that struck me as disdainful. I knew he was peering down at meas I walked toward the house. 

Ducks and geese ran quacking across my path. White cats were sunningthemselves among yellow pumpkins on the porch steps. I looked throughthe wire screen into a big, light kitchen with a white floor. I saw along table, rows of wooden chairs against the wall, and a shining rangein one corner. Two girls were washing dishes at the sink, laughingand chattering, and a little one, in a short pinafore, sat on a stoolplaying with a rag baby. When I asked for their mother, one of the girlsdropped her towel, ran across the floor with noiseless bare feet, anddisappeared. The older one, who wore shoes and stockings, came to thedoor to admit me. She was a buxom girl with dark hair and eyes, calm andself-possessed. 

'Won't you come in? Mother will be here in a minute. '

Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miraclehappened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and takemore courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. Antonia came inand stood before me; a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curlybrown hair a little grizzled. It was a shock, of course. It always is, to meet people after long years, especially if they have lived as muchand as hard as this woman had. We stood looking at each other. The eyesthat peered anxiously at me were--simply Antonia's eyes. I had seen noothers like them since I looked into them last, though I had looked atso many thousands of human faces. As I confronted her, the changes grewless apparent to me, her identity stronger. She was there, in the fullvigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well. 

'My husband's not at home, sir. Can I do anything?'

'Don't you remember me, Antonia? Have I changed so much?'

She frowned into the slanting sunlight that made her brown hair lookredder than it was. Suddenly her eyes widened, her whole face seemed togrow broader. She caught her breath and put out two hard-worked hands. 

'Why, it's Jim! Anna, Yulka, it's Jim Burden!' She had no sooner caughtmy hands than she looked alarmed. 'What's happened? Is anybody dead?'

I patted her arm. 

'No. I didn't come to a funeral this time. I got off the train atHastings and drove down to see you and your family. '

She dropped my hand and began rushing about. 'Anton, Yulka, Nina, whereare you all? Run, Anna, and hunt for the boys. They're off looking forthat dog, somewhere. And call Leo. Where is that Leo!' She pulled themout of corners and came bringing them like a mother cat bringing in herkittens. 'You don't have to go right off, Jim? My oldest boy's not here. He's gone with papa to the street fair at Wilber. I won't let you go!You've got to stay and see Rudolph and our papa. ' She looked at meimploringly, panting with excitement. 

While I reassured her and told her there would be plenty of time, the barefooted boys from outside were slipping into the kitchen andgathering about her. 

'Now, tell me their names, and how old they are. '

As she told them off in turn, she made several mistakes about ages, andthey roared with laughter. When she came to my light-footed friend ofthe windmill, she said, 'This is Leo, and he's old enough to be betterthan he is. '

He ran up to her and butted her playfully with his curly head, likea little ram, but his voice was quite desperate. 'You've forgot! Youalways forget mine. It's mean! Please tell him, mother!' He clenched hisfists in vexation and looked up at her impetuously. 

She wound her forefinger in his yellow fleece and pulled it, watchinghim. 'Well, how old are you?'

'I'm twelve, ' he panted, looking not at me but at her; 'I'm twelve yearsold, and I was born on Easter Day!'

She nodded to me. 'It's true. He was an Easter baby. '

The children all looked at me, as if they expected me to exhibitastonishment or delight at this information. Clearly, they were proudof each other, and of being so many. When they had all been introduced, Anna, the eldest daughter, who had met me at the door, scatteredthem gently, and came bringing a white apron which she tied round hermother's waist. 

'Now, mother, sit down and talk to Mr. Burden. We'll finish the dishesquietly and not disturb you. '

Antonia looked about, quite distracted. 'Yes, child, but why don'twe take him into the parlour, now that we've got a nice parlour forcompany?'

The daughter laughed indulgently, and took my hat from me. 'Well, you'rehere, now, mother, and if you talk here, Yulka and I can listen, too. You can show him the parlour after while. ' She smiled at me, and wentback to the dishes, with her sister. The little girl with the rag dollfound a place on the bottom step of an enclosed back stairway, and satwith her toes curled up, looking out at us expectantly. 

'She's Nina, after Nina Harling, ' Antonia explained. 'Ain't her eyeslike Nina's? I declare, Jim, I loved you children almost as much as Ilove my own. These children know all about you and Charley and Sally, like as if they'd grown up with you. I can't think of what I want tosay, you've got me so stirred up. And then, I've forgot my English so. I don't often talk it any more. I tell the children I used to speakreal well. ' She said they always spoke Bohemian at home. The littleones could not speak English at all--didn't learn it until they went toschool. 

'I can't believe it's you, sitting here, in my own kitchen. You wouldn'thave known me, would you, Jim? You've kept so young, yourself. But it'seasier for a man. I can't see how my Anton looks any older than the dayI married him. His teeth have kept so nice. I haven't got many left. But I feel just as young as I used to, and I can do as much work. Oh, we don't have to work so hard now! We've got plenty to help us, papa andme. And how many have you got, Jim?'

When I told her I had no children, she seemed embarrassed. 'Oh, ain'tthat too bad! Maybe you could take one of my bad ones, now? That Leo;he's the worst of all. ' She leaned toward me with a smile. 'And I lovehim the best, ' she whispered. 

'Mother!' the two girls murmured reproachfully from the dishes. 

Antonia threw up her head and laughed. 'I can't help it. You know I do. Maybe it's because he came on Easter Day, I don't know. And he's neverout of mischief one minute!'

I was thinking, as I watched her, how little it mattered--about herteeth, for instance. I know so many women who have kept all the thingsthat she had lost, but whose inner glow has faded. Whatever else wasgone, Antonia had not lost the fire of life. Her skin, so brown andhardened, had not that look of flabbiness, as if the sap beneath it hadbeen secretly drawn away. 

While we were talking, the little boy whom they called Jan came in andsat down on the step beside Nina, under the hood of the stairway. Hewore a funny long gingham apron, like a smock, over his trousers, andhis hair was clipped so short that his head looked white and naked. Hewatched us out of his big, sorrowful grey eyes. 

'He wants to tell you about the dog, mother. They found it dead, ' Annasaid, as she passed us on her way to the cupboard. 

Antonia beckoned the boy to her. He stood by her chair, leaning hiselbows on her knees and twisting her apron strings in his slenderfingers, while he told her his story softly in Bohemian, and the tearsbrimmed over and hung on his long lashes. His mother listened, spokesoothingly to him and in a whisper promised him something that made himgive her a quick, teary smile. He slipped away and whispered his secretto Nina, sitting close to her and talking behind his hand. 

When Anna finished her work and had washed her hands, she came and stoodbehind her mother's chair. 'Why don't we show Mr. Burden our new fruitcave?' she asked. 

We started off across the yard with the children at our heels. The boyswere standing by the windmill, talking about the dog; some of them ranahead to open the cellar door. When we descended, they all came downafter us, and seemed quite as proud of the cave as the girls were. 

Ambrosch, the thoughtful-looking one who had directed me down by theplum bushes, called my attention to the stout brick walls and the cementfloor. 'Yes, it is a good way from the house, ' he admitted. 'But, yousee, in winter there are nearly always some of us around to come out andget things. '

Anna and Yulka showed me three small barrels; one full of dill pickles, one full of chopped pickles, and one full of pickled watermelon rinds. 

'You wouldn't believe, Jim, what it takes to feed them all!' theirmother exclaimed. 'You ought to see the bread we bake on Wednesdays andSaturdays! It's no wonder their poor papa can't get rich, he has to buyso much sugar for us to preserve with. We have our own wheat ground forflour--but then there's that much less to sell. '

Nina and Jan, and a little girl named Lucie, kept shyly pointing out tome the shelves of glass jars. They said nothing, but, glancing at me, traced on the glass with their finger-tips the outline of the cherriesand strawberries and crabapples within, trying by a blissful expressionof countenance to give me some idea of their deliciousness. 

'Show him the spiced plums, mother. Americans don't have those, ' saidone of the older boys. 'Mother uses them to make kolaches, ' he added. 

Leo, in a low voice, tossed off some scornful remark in Bohemian. 

I turned to him. 'You think I don't know what kolaches are, eh? You'remistaken, young man. I've eaten your mother's kolaches long before thatEaster Day when you were born. '

'Always too fresh, Leo, ' Ambrosch remarked with a shrug. 

Leo dived behind his mother and grinned out at me. 

We turned to leave the cave; Antonia and I went up the stairs first, and the children waited. We were standing outside talking, when they allcame running up the steps together, big and little, tow heads and goldheads and brown, and flashing little naked legs; a veritable explosionof life out of the dark cave into the sunlight. It made me dizzy for amoment. 

The boys escorted us to the front of the house, which I hadn't yet seen;in farm-houses, somehow, life comes and goes by the back door. Theroof was so steep that the eaves were not much above the forest of tallhollyhocks, now brown and in seed. Through July, Antonia said, thehouse was buried in them; the Bohemians, I remembered, always plantedhollyhocks. The front yard was enclosed by a thorny locust hedge, andat the gate grew two silvery, moth-like trees of the mimosa family. Fromhere one looked down over the cattle-yards, with their two long ponds, and over a wide stretch of stubble which they told me was a ryefield insummer. 

At some distance behind the house were an ash grove and two orchards: acherry orchard, with gooseberry and currant bushes between the rows, and an apple orchard, sheltered by a high hedge from the hot winds. Theolder children turned back when we reached the hedge, but Jan and Ninaand Lucie crept through it by a hole known only to themselves and hidunder the low-branching mulberry bushes. 

As we walked through the apple orchard, grown up in tall bluegrass, Antonia kept stopping to tell me about one tree and another. 'I lovethem as if they were people, ' she said, rubbing her hand over the bark. 'There wasn't a tree here when we first came. We planted every one, andused to carry water for them, too--after we'd been working in the fieldsall day. Anton, he was a city man, and he used to get discouraged. But Icouldn't feel so tired that I wouldn't fret about these trees when therewas a dry time. They were on my mind like children. Many a night afterhe was asleep I've got up and come out and carried water to the poorthings. And now, you see, we have the good of them. My man worked in theorange groves in Florida, and he knows all about grafting. There ain'tone of our neighbours has an orchard that bears like ours. '

In the middle of the orchard we came upon a grape arbour, with seatsbuilt along the sides and a warped plank table. The three childrenwere waiting for us there. They looked up at me bashfully and made somerequest of their mother. 

'They want me to tell you how the teacher has the school picnic hereevery year. These don't go to school yet, so they think it's all likethe picnic. '

After I had admired the arbour sufficiently, the youngsters ran awayto an open place where there was a rough jungle of French pinks, andsquatted down among them, crawling about and measuring with a string. 

'Jan wants to bury his dog there, ' Antonia explained. 'I had to tell himhe could. He's kind of like Nina Harling; you remember how hard she usedto take little things? He has funny notions, like her. '

We sat down and watched them. Antonia leaned her elbows on the table. There was the deepest peace in that orchard. It was surrounded by atriple enclosure; the wire fence, then the hedge of thorny locusts, thenthe mulberry hedge which kept out the hot winds of summer and held fastto the protecting snows of winter. The hedges were so tall that we couldsee nothing but the blue sky above them, neither the barn roof nor thewindmill. The afternoon sun poured down on us through the drying grapeleaves. The orchard seemed full of sun, like a cup, and we could smellthe ripe apples on the trees. The crabs hung on the branches as thick asbeads on a string, purple-red, with a thin silvery glaze over them. Some hens and ducks had crept through the hedge and were pecking atthe fallen apples. The drakes were handsome fellows, with pinkish greybodies, their heads and necks covered with iridescent green featherswhich grew close and full, changing to blue like a peacock's neck. Antonia said they always reminded her of soldiers--some uniform she hadseen in the old country, when she was a child. 

'Are there any quail left now?' I asked. I reminded her how she used togo hunting with me the last summer before we moved to town. 'You weren'ta bad shot, Tony. Do you remember how you used to want to run away andgo for ducks with Charley Harling and me?'

'I know, but I'm afraid to look at a gun now. ' She picked up one of thedrakes and ruffled his green capote with her fingers. 'Ever since I'vehad children, I don't like to kill anything. It makes me kind of faintto wring an old goose's neck. Ain't that strange, Jim?'

'I don't know. The young Queen of Italy said the same thing once, to afriend of mine. She used to be a great huntswoman, but now she feels asyou do, and only shoots clay pigeons. '

'Then I'm sure she's a good mother, ' Antonia said warmly. 

She told me how she and her husband had come out to this new countrywhen the farm-land was cheap and could be had on easy payments. Thefirst ten years were a hard struggle. Her husband knew very little aboutfarming and often grew discouraged. 'We'd never have got through if Ihadn't been so strong. I've always had good health, thank God, and Iwas able to help him in the fields until right up to the time beforemy babies came. Our children were good about taking care of each other. Martha, the one you saw when she was a baby, was such a help to me, andshe trained Anna to be just like her. My Martha's married now, and has ababy of her own. Think of that, Jim!

'No, I never got down-hearted. Anton's a good man, and I loved mychildren and always believed they would turn out well. I belong on afarm. I'm never lonesome here like I used to be in town. You rememberwhat sad spells I used to have, when I didn't know what was the matterwith me? I've never had them out here. And I don't mind work a bit, if Idon't have to put up with sadness. ' She leaned her chin on her hand andlooked down through the orchard, where the sunlight was growing more andmore golden. 

'You ought never to have gone to town, Tony, ' I said, wondering at her. 

She turned to me eagerly. 

'Oh, I'm glad I went! I'd never have known anything about cooking orhousekeeping if I hadn't. I learned nice ways at the Harlings', and I'vebeen able to bring my children up so much better. Don't you think theyare pretty well-behaved for country children? If it hadn't been forwhat Mrs. Harling taught me, I expect I'd have brought them up like wildrabbits. No, I'm glad I had a chance to learn; but I'm thankful none ofmy daughters will ever have to work out. The trouble with me was, Jim, Inever could believe harm of anybody I loved. '

While we were talking, Antonia assured me that she could keep me for thenight. 'We've plenty of room. Two of the boys sleep in the haymow tillcold weather comes, but there's no need for it. Leo always begs to sleepthere, and Ambrosch goes along to look after him. '

I told her I would like to sleep in the haymow, with the boys. 

'You can do just as you want to. The chest is full of clean blankets, put away for winter. Now I must go, or my girls will be doing all thework, and I want to cook your supper myself. '

As we went toward the house, we met Ambrosch and Anton, starting offwith their milking-pails to hunt the cows. I joined them, and Leoaccompanied us at some distance, running ahead and starting up at usout of clumps of ironweed, calling, 'I'm a jack rabbit, ' or, 'I'm a bigbull-snake. '

I walked between the two older boys--straight, well-made fellows, withgood heads and clear eyes. They talked about their school and the newteacher, told me about the crops and the harvest, and how many steersthey would feed that winter. They were easy and confidential with me, as if I were an old friend of the family--and not too old. I felt likea boy in their company, and all manner of forgotten interests revived inme. It seemed, after all, so natural to be walking along a barbed-wirefence beside the sunset, toward a red pond, and to see my shadow movingalong at my right, over the close-cropped grass. 

'Has mother shown you the pictures you sent her from the old country?'Ambrosch asked. 'We've had them framed and they're hung up in theparlour. She was so glad to get them. I don't believe I ever saw herso pleased about anything. ' There was a note of simple gratitude in hisvoice that made me wish I had given more occasion for it. 

I put my hand on his shoulder. 'Your mother, you know, was very muchloved by all of us. She was a beautiful girl. '

'Oh, we know!' They both spoke together; seemed a little surprisedthat I should think it necessary to mention this. 'Everybody likedher, didn't they? The Harlings and your grandmother, and all the townpeople. '

'Sometimes, ' I ventured, 'it doesn't occur to boys that their mother wasever young and pretty. '

'Oh, we know!' they said again, warmly. 'She's not very old now, 'Ambrosch added. 'Not much older than you. '

'Well, ' I said, 'if you weren't nice to her, I think I'd take a cluband go for the whole lot of you. I couldn't stand it if you boys wereinconsiderate, or thought of her as if she were just somebody who lookedafter you. You see I was very much in love with your mother once, and Iknow there's nobody like her. '

The boys laughed and seemed pleased and embarrassed. 

'She never told us that, ' said Anton. 'But she's always talked lotsabout you, and about what good times you used to have. She has a pictureof you that she cut out of the Chicago paper once, and Leo says herecognized you when you drove up to the windmill. You can't tell aboutLeo, though; sometimes he likes to be smart. '

We brought the cows home to the corner nearest the barn, and the boysmilked them while night came on. Everything was as it should be: thestrong smell of sunflowers and ironweed in the dew, the clear blue andgold of the sky, the evening star, the purr of the milk into the pails, the grunts and squeals of the pigs fighting over their supper. I beganto feel the loneliness of the farm-boy at evening, when the chores seemeverlastingly the same, and the world so far away. 

What a tableful we were at supper: two long rows of restless heads inthe lamplight, and so many eyes fastened excitedly upon Antonia as shesat at the head of the table, filling the plates and starting the disheson their way. The children were seated according to a system; a littleone next an older one, who was to watch over his behaviour and to seethat he got his food. Anna and Yulka left their chairs from time to timeto bring fresh plates of kolaches and pitchers of milk. 

After supper we went into the parlour, so that Yulka and Leo could playfor me. Antonia went first, carrying the lamp. There were not nearlychairs enough to go round, so the younger children sat down on thebare floor. Little Lucie whispered to me that they were going to havea parlour carpet if they got ninety cents for their wheat. Leo, witha good deal of fussing, got out his violin. It was old Mr. Shimerda'sinstrument, which Antonia had always kept, and it was too big for him. But he played very well for a self-taught boy. Poor Yulka's efforts werenot so successful. While they were playing, little Nina got up from hercorner, came out into the middle of the floor, and began to do a prettylittle dance on the boards with her bare feet. No one paid the leastattention to her, and when she was through she stole back and sat downby her brother. 

Antonia spoke to Leo in Bohemian. He frowned and wrinkled up his face. He seemed to be trying to pout, but his attempt only brought out dimplesin unusual places. After twisting and screwing the keys, he played someBohemian airs, without the organ to hold him back, and that went better. The boy was so restless that I had not had a chance to look at hisface before. My first impression was right; he really was faun-like. Hehadn't much head behind his ears, and his tawny fleece grew down thickto the back of his neck. His eyes were not frank and wide apart likethose of the other boys, but were deep-set, gold-green in colour, andseemed sensitive to the light. His mother said he got hurt oftener thanall the others put together. He was always trying to ride the coltsbefore they were broken, teasing the turkey gobbler, seeing just howmuch red the bull would stand for, or how sharp the new axe was. 

After the concert was over, Antonia brought out a big boxful ofphotographs: she and Anton in their wedding clothes, holding hands; herbrother Ambrosch and his very fat wife, who had a farm of her own, andwho bossed her husband, I was delighted to hear; the three BohemianMarys and their large families. 

'You wouldn't believe how steady those girls have turned out, ' Antoniaremarked. 'Mary Svoboda's the best butter-maker in all this country, anda fine manager. Her children will have a grand chance. '

As Antonia turned over the pictures the young Cuzaks stood behind herchair, looking over her shoulder with interested faces. Nina and Jan, after trying to see round the taller ones, quietly brought a chair, climbed up on it, and stood close together, looking. The little boyforgot his shyness and grinned delightedly when familiar faces came intoview. In the group about Antonia I was conscious of a kind of physicalharmony. They leaned this way and that, and were not afraid to toucheach other. They contemplated the photographs with pleased recognition;looked at some admiringly, as if these characters in their mother'sgirlhood had been remarkable people. The little children, who couldnot speak English, murmured comments to each other in their rich oldlanguage. 

Antonia held out a photograph of Lena that had come from San Franciscolast Christmas. 'Does she still look like that? She hasn't been homefor six years now. ' Yes, it was exactly like Lena, I told her; a comelywoman, a trifle too plump, in a hat a trifle too large, but with theold lazy eyes, and the old dimpled ingenuousness still lurking at thecorners of her mouth. 

There was a picture of Frances Harling in a befrogged riding costumethat I remembered well. 'Isn't she fine!' the girls murmured. They allassented. One could see that Frances had come down as a heroine in thefamily legend. Only Leo was unmoved. 

'And there's Mr. Harling, in his grand fur coat. He was awfully rich, wasn't he, mother?'

'He wasn't any Rockefeller, ' put in Master Leo, in a very low tone, which reminded me of the way in which Mrs. Shimerda had once said thatmy grandfather 'wasn't Jesus. ' His habitual scepticism was like a directinheritance from that old woman. 

'None of your smart speeches, ' said Ambrosch severely. 

Leo poked out a supple red tongue at him, but a moment later brokeinto a giggle at a tintype of two men, uncomfortably seated, with anawkward-looking boy in baggy clothes standing between them: Jake andOtto and I! We had it taken, I remembered, when we went to Black Hawk onthe first Fourth of July I spent in Nebraska. I was glad to see Jake'sgrin again, and Otto's ferocious moustaches. The young Cuzaks knew allabout them. 'He made grandfather's coffin, didn't he?' Anton asked. 

'Wasn't they good fellows, Jim?' Antonia's eyes filled. 'To this dayI'm ashamed because I quarrelled with Jake that way. I was saucy andimpertinent to him, Leo, like you are with people sometimes, and I wishsomebody had made me behave. '

'We aren't through with you, yet, ' they warned me. They produced aphotograph taken just before I went away to college: a tall youth instriped trousers and a straw hat, trying to look easy and jaunty. 

'Tell us, Mr. Burden, ' said Charley, 'about the rattler you killedat the dog-town. How long was he? Sometimes mother says six feet andsometimes she says five. '

These children seemed to be upon very much the same terms with Antoniaas the Harling children had been so many years before. They seemedto feel the same pride in her, and to look to her for stories andentertainment as we used to do. 

It was eleven o'clock when I at last took my bag and some blankets andstarted for the barn with the boys. Their mother came to the door withus, and we tarried for a moment to look out at the white slope of thecorral and the two ponds asleep in the moonlight, and the long sweep ofthe pasture under the star-sprinkled sky. 

The boys told me to choose my own place in the haymow, and I lay downbefore a big window, left open in warm weather, that looked out into thestars. Ambrosch and Leo cuddled up in a hay-cave, back under the eaves, and lay giggling and whispering. They tickled each other and tossed andtumbled in the hay; and then, all at once, as if they had been shot, they were still. There was hardly a minute between giggles and blandslumber. 

I lay awake for a long while, until the slow-moving moon passed mywindow on its way up the heavens. I was thinking about Antonia and herchildren; about Anna's solicitude for her, Ambrosch's grave affection, Leo's jealous, animal little love. That moment, when they all cametumbling out of the cave into the light, was a sight any man might havecome far to see. Antonia had always been one to leave images in the mindthat did not fade--that grew stronger with time. In my memory therewas a succession of such pictures, fixed there like the old woodcuts ofone's first primer: Antonia kicking her bare legs against the sidesof my pony when we came home in triumph with our snake; Antonia inher black shawl and fur cap, as she stood by her father's grave inthe snowstorm; Antonia coming in with her work-team along the eveningsky-line. She lent herself to immemorial human attitudes which werecognize by instinct as universal and true. I had not been mistaken. She was a battered woman now, not a lovely girl; but she still had thatsomething which fires the imagination, could still stop one's breathfor a moment by a look or gesture that somehow revealed the meaning incommon things. She had only to stand in the orchard, to put her handon a little crab tree and look up at the apples, to make you feel thegoodness of planting and tending and harvesting at last. All the strongthings of her heart came out in her body, that had been so tireless inserving generous emotions. 

It was no wonder that her sons stood tall and straight. She was a richmine of life, like the founders of early races. 

II

WHEN I AWOKE IN THE morning, long bands of sunshine were coming in atthe window and reaching back under the eaves where the two boys lay. Leo was wide awake and was tickling his brother's leg with a driedcone-flower he had pulled out of the hay. Ambrosch kicked at him andturned over. I closed my eyes and pretended to be asleep. Leo lay onhis back, elevated one foot, and began exercising his toes. He picked updried flowers with his toes and brandished them in the belt of sunlight. After he had amused himself thus for some time, he rose on one elbow andbegan to look at me, cautiously, then critically, blinking his eyes inthe light. His expression was droll; it dismissed me lightly. 'This oldfellow is no different from other people. He doesn't know my secret. 'He seemed conscious of possessing a keener power of enjoyment thanother people; his quick recognitions made him frantically impatient ofdeliberate judgments. He always knew what he wanted without thinking. 

After dressing in the hay, I washed my face in cold water at thewindmill. Breakfast was ready when I entered the kitchen, and Yulka wasbaking griddle-cakes. The three older boys set off for the fields early. Leo and Yulka were to drive to town to meet their father, who wouldreturn from Wilber on the noon train. 

'We'll only have a lunch at noon, ' Antonia said, and cook the geese forsupper, when our papa will be here. I wish my Martha could come down tosee you. They have a Ford car now, and she don't seem so far away fromme as she used to. But her husband's crazy about his farm and abouthaving everything just right, and they almost never get away except onSundays. He's a handsome boy, and he'll be rich some day. Everythinghe takes hold of turns out well. When they bring that baby in here, andunwrap him, he looks like a little prince; Martha takes care of him sobeautiful. I'm reconciled to her being away from me now, but at first Icried like I was putting her into her coffin. '

We were alone in the kitchen, except for Anna, who was pouring creaminto the churn. She looked up at me. 'Yes, she did. We were just ashamedof mother. She went round crying, when Martha was so happy, and the restof us were all glad. Joe certainly was patient with you, mother. '

Antonia nodded and smiled at herself. 'I know it was silly, but Icouldn't help it. I wanted her right here. She'd never been away from mea night since she was born. If Anton had made trouble about her when shewas a baby, or wanted me to leave her with my mother, I wouldn't havemarried him. I couldn't. But he always loved her like she was his own. '

'I didn't even know Martha wasn't my full sister until after she wasengaged to Joe, ' Anna told me. 

Toward the middle of the afternoon, the wagon drove in, with the fatherand the eldest son. I was smoking in the orchard, and as I went out tomeet them, Antonia came running down from the house and hugged the twomen as if they had been away for months. 

'Papa, ' interested me, from my first glimpse of him. He was shorter thanhis older sons; a crumpled little man, with run-over boot-heels, and hecarried one shoulder higher than the other. But he moved very quickly, and there was an air of jaunty liveliness about him. He had a strong, ruddy colour, thick black hair, a little grizzled, a curly moustache, and red lips. His smile showed the strong teeth of which his wife was soproud, and as he saw me his lively, quizzical eyes told me that he knewall about me. He looked like a humorous philosopher who had hitched upone shoulder under the burdens of life, and gone on his way having agood time when he could. He advanced to meet me and gave me a hard hand, burned red on the back and heavily coated with hair. He wore his Sundayclothes, very thick and hot for the weather, an unstarched white shirt, and a blue necktie with big white dots, like a little boy's, tied ina flowing bow. Cuzak began at once to talk about his holiday--frompoliteness he spoke in English. 

'Mama, I wish you had see the lady dance on the slack-wire in the streetat night. They throw a bright light on her and she float through the airsomething beautiful, like a bird! They have a dancing bear, like in theold country, and two-three merry-go-around, and people in balloons, andwhat you call the big wheel, Rudolph?'

'A Ferris wheel, ' Rudolph entered the conversation in a deep baritonevoice. He was six foot two, and had a chest like a young blacksmith. 'Wewent to the big dance in the hall behind the saloon last night, mother, and I danced with all the girls, and so did father. I never saw so manypretty girls. It was a Bohunk crowd, for sure. We didn't hear a word ofEnglish on the street, except from the show people, did we, papa?'

Cuzak nodded. 'And very many send word to you, Antonia. You willexcuse'--turning to me--'if I tell her. ' While we walked toward thehouse he related incidents and delivered messages in the tongue he spokefluently, and I dropped a little behind, curious to know what theirrelations had become--or remained. The two seemed to be on terms of easyfriendliness, touched with humour. Clearly, she was the impulse, andhe the corrective. As they went up the hill he kept glancing at hersidewise, to see whether she got his point, or how she received it. Inoticed later that he always looked at people sidewise, as a work-horsedoes at its yokemate. Even when he sat opposite me in the kitchen, talking, he would turn his head a little toward the clock or the stoveand look at me from the side, but with frankness and good nature. Thistrick did not suggest duplicity or secretiveness, but merely long habit, as with the horse. 

He had brought a tintype of himself and Rudolph for Antonia'scollection, and several paper bags of candy for the children. He lookeda little disappointed when his wife showed him a big box of candy I hadgot in Denver--she hadn't let the children touch it the night before. Heput his candy away in the cupboard, 'for when she rains, ' and glancedat the box, chuckling. 'I guess you must have hear about how my familyain't so small, ' he said. 

Cuzak sat down behind the stove and watched his womenfolk and the littlechildren with equal amusement. He thought they were nice, and he thoughtthey were funny, evidently. He had been off dancing with the girlsand forgetting that he was an old fellow, and now his family rathersurprised him; he seemed to think it a joke that all these childrenshould belong to him. As the younger ones slipped up to him in hisretreat, he kept taking things out of his pockets; penny dolls, a woodenclown, a balloon pig that was inflated by a whistle. He beckoned to thelittle boy they called Jan, whispered to him, and presented him with apaper snake, gently, so as not to startle him. Looking over the boy'shead he said to me, 'This one is bashful. He gets left. '

Cuzak had brought home with him a roll of illustrated Bohemian papers. He opened them and began to tell his wife the news, much of which seemedto relate to one person. I heard the name Vasakova, Vasakova, repeatedseveral times with lively interest, and presently I asked him whether hewere talking about the singer, Maria Vasak. 

'You know? You have heard, maybe?' he asked incredulously. When Iassured him that I had heard her, he pointed out her picture and told methat Vasak had broken her leg, climbing in the Austrian Alps, and wouldnot be able to fill her engagements. He seemed delighted to find that Ihad heard her sing in London and in Vienna; got out his pipe and litit to enjoy our talk the better. She came from his part of Prague. Hisfather used to mend her shoes for her when she was a student. Cuzakquestioned me about her looks, her popularity, her voice; but heparticularly wanted to know whether I had noticed her tiny feet, andwhether I thought she had saved much money. She was extravagant, ofcourse, but he hoped she wouldn't squander everything, and have nothingleft when she was old. As a young man, working in Wienn, he had seen agood many artists who were old and poor, making one glass of beer lastall evening, and 'it was not very nice, that. '

When the boys came in from milking and feeding, the long table was laid, and two brown geese, stuffed with apples, were put down sizzling beforeAntonia. She began to carve, and Rudolph, who sat next his mother, started the plates on their way. When everybody was served, he lookedacross the table at me. 

'Have you been to Black Hawk lately, Mr. Burden? Then I wonder if you'veheard about the Cutters?'

No, I had heard nothing at all about them. 

'Then you must tell him, son, though it's a terrible thing to talk aboutat supper. Now, all you children be quiet, Rudolph is going to tellabout the murder. '

'Hurrah! The murder!' the children murmured, looking pleased andinterested. 

Rudolph told his story in great detail, with occasional promptings fromhis mother or father. 

Wick Cutter and his wife had gone on living in the house that Antoniaand I knew so well, and in the way we knew so well. They grew to bevery old people. He shrivelled up, Antonia said, until he looked likea little old yellow monkey, for his beard and his fringe of hair neverchanged colour. Mrs. Cutter remained flushed and wild-eyed as we hadknown her, but as the years passed she became afflicted with a shakingpalsy which made her nervous nod continuous instead of occasional. Herhands were so uncertain that she could no longer disfigure china, poorwoman! As the couple grew older, they quarrelled more and more oftenabout the ultimate disposition of their 'property. ' A new law was passedin the state, securing the surviving wife a third of her husband'sestate under all conditions. Cutter was tormented by the fear that Mrs. Cutter would live longer than he, and that eventually her 'people, ' whomhe had always hated so violently, would inherit. Their quarrels on thissubject passed the boundary of the close-growing cedars, and were heardin the street by whoever wished to loiter and listen. 

One morning, two years ago, Cutter went into the hardware store andbought a pistol, saying he was going to shoot a dog, and adding thathe 'thought he would take a shot at an old cat while he was aboutit. ' (Here the children interrupted Rudolph's narrative by smotheredgiggles. )

Cutter went out behind the hardware store, put up a target, practisedfor an hour or so, and then went home. At six o'clock that evening, whenseveral men were passing the Cutter house on their way home to supper, they heard a pistol shot. They paused and were looking doubtfully atone another, when another shot came crashing through an upstairs window. They ran into the house and found Wick Cutter lying on a sofa in hisupstairs bedroom, with his throat torn open, bleeding on a roll ofsheets he had placed beside his head. 

'Walk in, gentlemen, ' he said weakly. 'I am alive, you see, andcompetent. You are witnesses that I have survived my wife. You will findher in her own room. Please make your examination at once, so that therewill be no mistake. '

One of the neighbours telephoned for a doctor, while the others wentinto Mrs. Cutter's room. She was lying on her bed, in her night-gown andwrapper, shot through the heart. Her husband must have come in while shewas taking her afternoon nap and shot her, holding the revolver near herbreast. Her night-gown was burned from the powder. 

The horrified neighbours rushed back to Cutter. He opened his eyesand said distinctly, 'Mrs. Cutter is quite dead, gentlemen, and I amconscious. My affairs are in order. ' Then, Rudolph said, 'he let go anddied. '

On his desk the coroner found a letter, dated at five o'clock thatafternoon. It stated that he had just shot his wife; that any will shemight secretly have made would be invalid, as he survived her. He meantto shoot himself at six o'clock and would, if he had strength, fire ashot through the window in the hope that passersby might come in and seehim 'before life was extinct, ' as he wrote. 

'Now, would you have thought that man had such a cruel heart?' Antoniaturned to me after the story was told. 'To go and do that poor woman outof any comfort she might have from his money after he was gone!'

'Did you ever hear of anybody else that killed himself for spite, Mr. Burden?' asked Rudolph. 

I admitted that I hadn't. Every lawyer learns over and over how stronga motive hate can be, but in my collection of legal anecdotes I hadnothing to match this one. When I asked how much the estate amounted to, Rudolph said it was a little over a hundred thousand dollars. 

Cuzak gave me a twinkling, sidelong glance. 'The lawyers, they got agood deal of it, sure, ' he said merrily. 

A hundred thousand dollars; so that was the fortune that had beenscraped together by such hard dealing, and that Cutter himself had diedfor in the end!

After supper Cuzak and I took a stroll in the orchard and sat down bythe windmill to smoke. He told me his story as if it were my business toknow it. 

His father was a shoemaker, his uncle a furrier, and he, being a youngerson, was apprenticed to the latter's trade. You never got anywhereworking for your relatives, he said, so when he was a journeyman he wentto Vienna and worked in a big fur shop, earning good money. But a youngfellow who liked a good time didn't save anything in Vienna; there weretoo many pleasant ways of spending every night what he'd made in theday. After three years there, he came to New York. He was badly advisedand went to work on furs during a strike, when the factories wereoffering big wages. The strikers won, and Cuzak was blacklisted. As hehad a few hundred dollars ahead, he decided to go to Florida and raiseoranges. He had always thought he would like to raise oranges! Thesecond year a hard frost killed his young grove, and he fell ill withmalaria. He came to Nebraska to visit his cousin, Anton Jelinek, andto look about. When he began to look about, he saw Antonia, and shewas exactly the kind of girl he had always been hunting for. They weremarried at once, though he had to borrow money from his cousin to buythe wedding ring. 

'It was a pretty hard job, breaking up this place and making the firstcrops grow, ' he said, pushing back his hat and scratching his grizzledhair. 'Sometimes I git awful sore on this place and want to quit, but mywife she always say we better stick it out. The babies come along prettyfast, so it look like it be hard to move, anyhow. I guess she was right, all right. We got this place clear now. We pay only twenty dollars anacre then, and I been offered a hundred. We bought another quarter tenyears ago, and we got it most paid for. We got plenty boys; we can worka lot of land. Yes, she is a good wife for a poor man. She ain't alwaysso strict with me, neither. Sometimes maybe I drink a little too muchbeer in town, and when I come home she don't say nothing. She don't askme no questions. We always get along fine, her and me, like at first. The children don't make trouble between us, like sometimes happens. ' Helit another pipe and pulled on it contentedly. 

I found Cuzak a most companionable fellow. He asked me a greatmany questions about my trip through Bohemia, about Vienna and theRingstrasse and the theatres. 

'Gee! I like to go back there once, when the boys is big enough to farmthe place. Sometimes when I read the papers from the old country, Ipretty near run away, ' he confessed with a little laugh. 'I never didthink how I would be a settled man like this. '

He was still, as Antonia said, a city man. He liked theatres and lightedstreets and music and a game of dominoes after the day's work was over. His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive instinct. He likedto live day by day and night by night, sharing in the excitement of thecrowd. --Yet his wife had managed to hold him here on a farm, in one ofthe loneliest countries in the world. 

I could see the little chap, sitting here every evening by the windmill, nursing his pipe and listening to the silence; the wheeze of the pump, the grunting of the pigs, an occasional squawking when the hens weredisturbed by a rat. It did rather seem to me that Cuzak had been madethe instrument of Antonia's special mission. This was a fine life, certainly, but it wasn't the kind of life he had wanted to live. Iwondered whether the life that was right for one was ever right for two!

I asked Cuzak if he didn't find it hard to do without the gay companyhe had always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright, sighed, and dropped it into his pocket. 

'At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness, ' he said frankly, 'but mywoman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as shecould. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys, already!'

As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over oneear and looked up at the moon. 'Gee!' he said in a hushed voice, asif he had just wakened up, 'it don't seem like I am away from theretwenty-six year!'

III

AFTER DINNER THE NEXT day I said good-bye and drove back to Hastings totake the train for Black Hawk. Antonia and her children gathered roundmy buggy before I started, and even the little ones looked up at me withfriendly faces. Leo and Ambrosch ran ahead to open the lane gate. WhenI reached the bottom of the hill, I glanced back. The group was stillthere by the windmill. Antonia was waving her apron. 

At the gate Ambrosch lingered beside my buggy, resting his arm on thewheel-rim. Leo slipped through the fence and ran off into the pasture. 

'That's like him, ' his brother said with a shrug. 'He's a crazy kid. Maybe he's sorry to have you go, and maybe he's jealous. He's jealous ofanybody mother makes a fuss over, even the priest. '

I found I hated to leave this boy, with his pleasant voice and his finehead and eyes. He looked very manly as he stood there without a hat, thewind rippling his shirt about his brown neck and shoulders. 

'Don't forget that you and Rudolph are going hunting with me up on theNiobrara next summer, ' I said. 'Your father's agreed to let you offafter harvest. '

He smiled. 'I won't likely forget. I've never had such a nice thingoffered to me before. I don't know what makes you so nice to us boys, 'he added, blushing. 

'Oh, yes, you do!' I said, gathering up my reins. 

He made no answer to this, except to smile at me with unabashed pleasureand affection as I drove away. 

My day in Black Hawk was disappointing. Most of my old friends weredead or had moved away. Strange children, who meant nothing to me, wereplaying in the Harlings' big yard when I passed; the mountain ash hadbeen cut down, and only a sprouting stump was left of the tall Lombardypoplar that used to guard the gate. I hurried on. The rest of themorning I spent with Anton Jelinek, under a shady cottonwood tree inthe yard behind his saloon. While I was having my midday dinner at thehotel, I met one of the old lawyers who was still in practice, and hetook me up to his office and talked over the Cutter case with me. Afterthat, I scarcely knew how to put in the time until the night express wasdue. 

I took a long walk north of the town, out into the pastures where theland was so rough that it had never been ploughed up, and the long redgrass of early times still grew shaggy over the draws and hillocks. Outthere I felt at home again. Overhead the sky was that indescribable blueof autumn; bright and shadowless, hard as enamel. To the south I couldsee the dun-shaded river bluffs that used to look so big to me, and allabout stretched drying cornfields, of the pale-gold colour, I rememberedso well. Russian thistles were blowing across the uplands and pilingagainst the wire fences like barricades. Along the cattle-paths theplumes of goldenrod were already fading into sun-warmed velvet, greywith gold threads in it. I had escaped from the curious depression thathangs over little towns, and my mind was full of pleasant things; tripsI meant to take with the Cuzak boys, in the Bad Lands and up on theStinking Water. There were enough Cuzaks to play with for a long whileyet. Even after the boys grew up, there would always be Cuzak himself! Imeant to tramp along a few miles of lighted streets with Cuzak. 

As I wandered over those rough pastures, I had the good luck to stumbleupon a bit of the first road that went from Black Hawk out to the northcountry; to my grandfather's farm, then on to the Shimerdas' and to theNorwegian settlement. Everywhere else it had been ploughed under whenthe highways were surveyed; this half-mile or so within the pasturefence was all that was left of that old road which used to run likea wild thing across the open prairie, clinging to the high places andcircling and doubling like a rabbit before the hounds. 

On the level land the tracks had almost disappeared--were mere shadingsin the grass, and a stranger would not have noticed them. But whereverthe road had crossed a draw, it was easy to find. The rains had madechannels of the wheel-ruts and washed them so deeply that the sod hadnever healed over them. They looked like gashes torn by a grizzly'sclaws, on the slopes where the farm-wagons used to lurch up out of thehollows with a pull that brought curling muscles on the smooth hipsof the horses. I sat down and watched the haystacks turn rosy in theslanting sunlight. 

This was the road over which Antonia and I came on that night whenwe got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to closemy eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be againovercome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that nightwere so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. Ihad the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what alittle circle man's experience is. For Antonia and for me, this had beenthe road of Destiny; had taken us to those early accidents of fortunewhich predetermined for us all that we can ever be. Now I understoodthat the same road was to bring us together again. Whatever we hadmissed, we possessed together the precious, the incommunicable past.