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+Project Gutenberg's A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen, by Hamlin Garland
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen
+
+Author: Hamlin Garland
+
+Release Date: June 18, 2007 [EBook #21850]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE NORSK ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Yingling and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
+produced from scanned images of public domain material
+from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE NORSK
+
+OR
+
+OL' PAP'S FLAXEN
+
+
+
+By
+
+HAMLIN GARLAND
+
+
+
+AUTHOR OF MAIN TRAVELED ROADS, A MEMBER OF THE THIRD HOUSE,
+A SPOIL OF OFFICE, JASON EDWARDS, ETC.
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
+1892
+
+Copyright, 1892,
+By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY.
+
+Printed at the
+Appleton Press, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+    On the Plain.
+
+
+    _My cabin cowers in the pathless sweep
+    Of the terrible northern blast;
+    Above its roof the wild clouds leap
+    And shriek as they hurtle past.
+    The snow-waves hiss along the plain,
+    Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain
+    And race and ramp--with hissing beat,
+    Like stealthy tread of myriad feet,
+    I hear them pass; upon the roof
+    The icy showers swirl and rattle;
+    At times the moon, from storms aloof,
+    Shines white and wan within the room--
+    Then swift clouds drive across the light
+    And all the plain is lost to sight,
+    The cabin rocks, and on my palm
+    The sifted snow falls, cold and calm._
+
+    _God! What a power is in the wind!
+    I lay my cheek to the cabin side
+    To feel the weight of his giant hands--
+    A speck, a fly in the blasting tide
+    Of streaming, pitiless, icy sands;
+    A single heart with its feeble beat--
+    A mouse in the lion's throat--
+    A swimmer at sea--a sunbeam's mote
+    In the grasp of a tempest of hail and sleet!_
+
+
+
+
+Contents.
+
+
+                                                             PAGE
+
+CHAPTER I.
+    Her Adoptive Parents                                        1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+    Her First Trip in a Blizzard                                9
+
+CHAPTER III.
+    The Burial of her Dead Mother                              22
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+    Flaxen Adopts Anson as "Pap"                               32
+
+CHAPTER V.
+    Flaxen Becomes Indispensable to the Two Old Bachelors      38
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+    A Question of Dress                                        46
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+    After Harvest                                              69
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+    An Empty House                                             78
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+    "Baching" it Again                                         86
+
+CHAPTER X.
+    Flaxen Comes Home on a Vacation                           105
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+    Flaxen Grows Restless                                     113
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+    Flaxen Says Good-bye                                      124
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+    Flaxen's Great Need                                       133
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+    Kendall Steps Out                                         148
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+    Bert Comes Back                                           153
+
+
+
+
+A LITTLE NORSK.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+HER ADOPTIVE PARENTS.
+
+
+"Ans, the next time you twist hay f'r the fire, I wish't you'd dodge the
+damp spots," said the cook, rising from a prolonged scrutiny of the
+stove and the bread in the oven. His pose was threatening.
+
+"Cooks are always grumblin'," calmly remarked Anson, drawing on his
+gloves preparatory to going out to the barn; "but seein' 's this is
+Chris'mus, I'll go out an' knock a barrel to pieces. I want them
+biscuit to be O.K. See?"
+
+"Yes: I see."
+
+"Say, Bert!"
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Can't we have some sugar-'lasses on our biscuits, seein' it's
+Chris'mus?"
+
+"Well, I s'pose we can, Ans; but we're gittin' purty low on the thing
+these days, an' they ain't no tellin' when we'll be able to git more."
+
+"Well, jes' as you say, not as I care." Anson went out into the roaring
+wind with a shout of defiance, but came back instantly, as if to say
+something he had forgotten. "Say, wha' d'ye s'pose is the trouble over
+to the Norsk's? I hain't seen a sign o' smoke over there f'r two 'r
+three days."
+
+"Well, now you speak of it, Ans, I've be'n thinkin' about that myself.
+I'm afraid he's out o' coal, 'r sick, 'r somethin'. It 'u'd be mighty
+tough f'r the woman an' babe to be there without any fire, an' this
+blizzard whoopin' her up. I guess you'd better go over an' see what's
+up. I was goin' to speak of it this mornin', but f'rgot it, I'm cook
+this week, so I guess the job falls on you."
+
+"All right. Here goes."
+
+"Better take a horse."
+
+"No: I guess not. The snow is driftin' purty bad, an' he couldn't git
+through the drifts, anyway."
+
+"Well, lookout f'r y'rself, ol' man. It looks purty owly off in the
+west. Don't waste any time. I'd hate like thunder to be left alone on a
+Dakota prairie f'r the rest o' the winter."
+
+Anson laughed back through the mist of snow that blew in the open door,
+his great-coat and cap allowing only a glimpse of his cheeks.
+
+The sky was bright overhead, but low down around the horizon it looked
+wild. The air was frightfully cold--far below zero--and the wind had
+been blowing almost every day for a week, and was still strong. The
+snow was sliding fitfully along the sod with a stealthy, menacing
+motion, and far off in the west and north a dense, shining cloud of
+frost was hanging.
+
+The plain was almost as lone and level and bare as a polar ocean, where
+death and silence reign undisputedly. There was not a tree in sight,
+the grass was mainly burned, or buried by the snow, and the little
+shanties of the three or four settlers could hardly be said to be in
+sight, half sunk, as they were, in drifts. A large white owl seated on
+a section stake was the only living thing to be seen.
+
+The boom had not yet struck Buster County. Indeed, it did not seem to
+Bert Gearheart at this moment that it would ever strike Buster County.
+It was as cold, dreary, and unprofitable an outlook as a man could face
+and not go utterly mad. If any of these pioneers could have forecast
+the winter, they would not have dared to pass it on the plains.
+
+Bert watched his partner as he strode rapidly across the prairie, now
+lost to sight as a racing troop of snow-waves, running shoulder-high,
+shot between, now reappearing as the wind lulled.
+
+"This is gittin' pretty monotonous, to tell the honest truth," he
+muttered as he turned from the little window. "If that railroad don't
+show up by March, in some shape or other, I'm goin' to give it up.
+Gittin' free land like this is a little too costly for me. I'll go back
+to Wiscons', an' rent land on shares."
+
+Bert was a younger-looking man than his bachelor companion; perhaps
+because his face was clean-shaven and his frame much slighter. He was a
+silent, moody young fellow, hard to get along with, though of great
+good heart. Anson Wood succeeded in winning and holding his love even
+through the trials of masculine housekeeping. As Bert kept on with the
+dinner, he went often to the little window facing the east and looked
+out, each time thawing a hole in the frost on the window-panes.
+
+The wind was rising again, and the night promised to be wild, as the
+two preceding nights had been. As he moved back and forth setting out
+their scanty meal, he was thinking of the old life back in Wisconsin in
+the deeps of the little _coulée_; of the sleigh-rides with the boys and
+girls; of the Christmas doings; of the damp, thick-falling snow among
+the pines, where the wind had no terrors; of musical bells on swift
+horses in the fragrant deeps, where the snowflakes fell like caresses
+through the tossing branches of the trees.
+
+By the side of such a life the plain, with its sliding snow and
+ferocious wind, was appalling--a treeless expanse and a racing-ground
+for snow and wind. The man's mood grew darker while he mused. He served
+the meal on the rude box which took the place of table, and still his
+companion did not come. Ho looked at his watch. It was nearly one
+o'clock, and yet there was no sign of the sturdy figure of Anson.
+
+The house of the poor Norwegian was about two miles away, and out of
+sight, being built in a gully; but now the eye could distinguish a
+house only when less than a mile away. A man could not at times be seen
+at a distance of ten rods, though occasional lulls in the wind
+permitted Bert to see nearly to the "First Moccasin."
+
+"He may be in the swale," muttered the watcher as he stood with his eye
+to the loop-hole. But the next time he looked the plain was as wild and
+lone as before, save under the rising blast the snow was beginning to
+ramp and race across the level sod till it looked at times like a sea
+running white with foam and misty with spray.
+
+At two o'clock he said: "Well, I s'pose Ans has concluded to stay over
+there to dinner, though what the Norsk can offer as inducement I swear
+I don't know. I'll eat, anyhow; he can have what's left."
+
+He sat down to his lonely meal, and ate slowly, getting up two or three
+times from his candle-box in a growing anxiety for Ans, using the
+heated poker now to clear a spot on the pane. He expressed his growing
+apprehension, manlike, by getting angry.
+
+"I don't see what the darn fool means by stayin' so late. It'll be dark
+by four o'clock, er jest as soon as that cloud over there strikes us.
+You couldn't beat sense into some men's heads with a club."
+
+He had eaten his dinner now, and had taken to pacing up and down the
+little room, which was exactly six paces long and three wide, and just
+high enough to permit Anson to walk erect in the highest part.
+
+"Nice fix to leave a man in, ain't it? All alone here, an' a blizzard
+comin' on! If I ever git out o' this country alive, I'll bet I'll know
+enough not to come back," he broke out, stamping his foot in a rage. "I
+don't see what he means by it. If he's caught in that blow, his life
+ain't worth a cent."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+HER FIRST TRIP IN A BLIZZARD.
+
+
+At half-past two the feelings of the silent watcher began to change. He
+thought more about his partner out there in the rising wind and
+thickening snow. The blast roared round the little cabin with a deep,
+menacing, rising moan, and laid to the stove-pipe a resounding lip,
+wailing and shouting weirdly. Bert's nervous walk quickened, and he
+looked so often through the pane that the frost had not time to close
+up.
+
+Suddenly, out of the blinding, sweeping snow, not ten rods distant, the
+burly form of Anson burst, head down, blindly staggering forward into
+the teeth of the tempest. He walked like a man whose strength was
+almost gone, and he carried a large bundle in his arms.
+
+Gearhart flung the door open, and called in a cheery voice to guide the
+struggling man to the house. He knew what it was to face such a wind.
+
+"Here ye are, ol' man! Right this way! Keep y'r head down!"
+
+Then, seeing that Anson hardly made headway against the terrible blast,
+he rushed out, bare-headed as he was, and caught and hurried him in and
+shut the door.
+
+Reeling blindly, his breath roaring like a furnace, his eyebrows hung
+with icicles, his face masked with crusted snow, Anson staggered in,
+crying hoarsely, "Take her!" then slid to the floor, where he lay
+panting for breath.
+
+Bert caught the bundle from his arms. A wailing, half-smothered cry
+came from it.
+
+"What is it, Ans?" he asked.
+
+"A kid; warm it," said the giant, trying with his numbed fingers to
+undo the shawl which wrapped the bundle. Bert hurriedly unwound the
+shawl, and a frightened child, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired--flossy as
+unfrosted corn-silk--was disclosed like a nubbin of corn after the
+husks are stripped off.
+
+"Why, it's little Flaxen Hair! Wha' d'ye bring her over for?"
+
+"'Sh!" said Anson hoarsely. "Mind how y' git her warm! Don't y' see
+she's froze?"
+
+The little creature was about five, or possibly six years old, scantily
+clad, but neat and pretty. As her feet began to get warm before the
+fire, she wailed with pain, which Bert tried to stop by rubbing.
+
+"Put her hands in y'r hair, hold her feet in y'r hands--don't rub 'em,"
+commanded Ans, who was stripping the ice from his eyelashes and from
+his matted beard, which lay like a shield upon his breast. "Stir up the
+fire; give her some hot coffee an' some feed. She hain't had anything
+to eat."
+
+Bert tried to do all these things at once, and could not, but managed
+finally to get the child a piece of bread and a cup of coffee, and to
+allay her fears. Ans began to recover from his horrible journey and was
+able to speak, though his lungs were still painful.
+
+"Ol' man," he said solemnly and tenderly, "I came jest as near stayin'
+in that last gully down there as a man could an' not. The snow was up
+to my armpits, an' let me down wherever the weeds was. I had to waller;
+if it hadn't be'n for her, I guess I'd 'a' give up; but I jest grit m'
+teeth an' pulled through. There, guess y' hadn't better let her have
+any more. I guess she'll go to sleep now she's fed an' warmed. Jest le'
+me take her now, ol' man."
+
+"No: you git rested up."
+
+"See here, it'll rest me to hold that little chap. I'm all right. My
+hands is frosted some, an' my ears, that's all, but my breath is
+gittin' back. Come on, now," he pleaded.
+
+Bert surrendered the child, who looked up into the bearded face of the
+rough fellow, then rested her head on his breast, and went to sleep at
+last. It made his heart thrill as he felt her little head against his
+breast. He never had held a child in his arms before.
+
+"Say, Bert, reckon I'm a purty fair picture of a fam'ly man, now, eh?
+Throw in a couple o' twists more o' hay----"
+
+Bert stirred up the fire.
+
+"Well, now the little one is off, what's up over to the Norsk's? Wha'
+d'ye bring the child for?" he asked at last.
+
+"Because she was the only livin' soul in the shanty."
+
+"What?" His face was set in horror.
+
+"Fact."
+
+"Where's the Norsk?"
+
+"I don't know. On the prairie somewhere."
+
+"An' the mother?"
+
+"She's----" Here the little one stirred slightly as he leaned forward,
+and Ans said; with a wink, "She's _asleep_." He winked significantly,
+and Bert understood what the sleep was. "Be a little careful what y'
+say--jes' now; the little rat is listenin'. Jest say _relative_ when y'
+mean her--the woman, y' know."
+
+"Yes; sir," he resumed after a moment; "I was scart when I saw that
+house--when I knocked, an' no one stirred 'r come to the door. They
+wasn't a track around, an' the barn an' house was all drifted up. I
+pushed the door open; it was cold as a barn, an' dark. I couldn't see
+anythin' f'r a minute, but I heard a sound o' cryin' from the bed that
+made my hair stand up. I rushed over there, an' there lay the mother on
+the bed, with nothin' on but some kind of a night-dress, an'
+everythin'--dress, shawl, an' all--piled on an' around that blessed
+child."
+
+"She was sleepin'?"
+
+"Like a stone. I couldn't believe it at first. I raved around there,
+split up a chair an' the shelves, an' made a fire. Then I started to
+rub the woman's hands an' feet, but she was cold an' hard as iron."
+Bert shuddered in sympathy. "Then I took the child up an' rubbed her;
+tried to find somethin' f'r her to eat--not a blessed thing in that
+house! Finally I thought I better bolt f'r home----"
+
+"Lucky you did. Hear that wind! Great heavens! We are in for another
+two-days' blow of it. That woman, of course, stripped herself to save
+the child."
+
+"Yes: she did."
+
+"Jes' like a woman! Why didn't she rip down the shelf an' split up the
+chairs for fuel, or keep walkin' up an' down the room?"
+
+"Now, there it is! She _had_ burnt up a lot o' stuff, then took to bed
+with the child. She rolled her up in all the quilts an' shawls an'
+dresses they was in the house; then laid down by the side of her, an'
+put her arm over her--an' froze--jes' like a mother--no judgment!"
+
+"Well, lay her down now, an' eat some thin' y'rself, while I go out an'
+look after the chores. Lord! it makes me crawl to think of that woman
+layin' there in the shanty all alone!" he turned and said in a peculiar
+hesitating voice. He shivered a little as he spoke. "Say, did y' shut
+the door?"
+
+"Yes: an' it shuts hard. The wind n'r wolves can't open it."
+
+"That's good. I couldn't sleep nights if I thought the coyotes could
+get in." Bert's imagination seized upon that lonely cabin and the
+figure lying cold as iron upon the bed. It appealed to him more than to
+Anson.
+
+By four o'clock it was dark, and the lamp was lighted when Bert came
+in, bringing an immense load of hay-twists. The ferocious wind, as if
+exulting in its undisputed sway over the plain, raved in ceaseless fury
+around the cabin, and lashed the roof with a thousand stinging streams
+of snow. The tiny shanty did not rock; it shuddered as if with fright.
+The drifts rose higher on the windows, and here and there through some
+unseen crevice the snow, fine as bolted flour, found its way like oil,
+seeming to penetrate the solid boards; and to the stove-pipe the storm
+still laid hoarse lip, piping incessantly, now dolorously, now
+savagely, now high, now low.
+
+While the two men sat above the fire that night, discussing the sad
+case of the woman, the child slept heavily, muttering and sobbing in
+her sleep.
+
+"The probabilities are," said Anson, in a matter-of-fact way, "the
+Norsk took his oxen an' started f'r Summit f'r provisions, an' got
+caught in this blizzard an' froze to death somewhere--got lost in some
+gully, probably."
+
+"But why didn't he come an' tell us to look after his fam'ly?"
+
+"Well, I s'pose he was afraid to trust us. I don't wonder, as I
+remember the treatment their women git from the Yankees. We look a good
+'eal worse than we are, besides; an' then the poor cuss couldn't talk
+to us, anyhow, an' he's be'n shy ever since he came, in October."
+
+After a long silence, in which Gearheart went over and studied the face
+of the sleeper, Anson said: "Well, if he's dead, an' the woman's dead
+too, we've got to look after this child till some relative turns up.
+An' that woman's got to be buried."
+
+"All right. What's got to be done had better be done right off. We've
+only one bed, Ans, an' a cradle hasn't appeared necessary before. How
+about the sleepin' to-night? If you're goin' into the orphan-asylum
+business, you'll have to open up correspondence with a furniture
+store."
+
+Ans reddened a little. "It ain't mine any more'n yours. We're pardners
+in this job."
+
+"No: I guess not. You look more like a dad, an' I guess I'll shift the
+responsibility of this thing off onto you. I'll bunk here on the floor,
+an' you take the child an' occupy the bed."
+
+"Well, all right," answered Anson, going over in his turn and looking
+down at the white face and tow-coloured hair of the little stranger.
+"But say, we ain't got no night-clothes f'r the little chap. What'll we
+do? Put her to sleep jes' as she is?"
+
+"I reckon we'll have to to-night. Maybe you'll find some more clothes
+over to the shanty."
+
+"Say, Bert," said Ans later.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"It's too darn cold f'r you to sleep on the floor there. You git in
+here on the back side, an' I'll take the child on the front. She'd be
+smashed flatter'n a pancake if she was in the middle. She ain't
+bigger'n a pint o' cider, anyway."
+
+"No, ol' man. I'll lay here on the floor, an' kind o' heave a twist in
+once in a while. It's goin' to be cold enough to freeze the tail off a
+brass bull by daylight."
+
+Ans bashfully crept in beside the sleeping child, taking care not to
+waken her, and lay there thinking of his new responsibility. At every
+shiver of the cowering cabin and rising shriek of the wind, his heart
+went out in love toward the helpless little creature whose dead mother
+lay in the cold and deserted shanty, and whose father was wandering
+perhaps breathless and despairing on the plain, or lying buried in the
+snow in some deep ravine beside his patient oxen. He tucked the
+clothing in carefully about the child, felt to see if her little feet
+were cold, and covered her head with her shawl, patting her lightly
+with his great paw.
+
+"Say, Bert!"
+
+"Well, Ans, what now?"
+
+"If this little chap should wake up an' cry f'r its mother, what in
+thunder would I do?"
+
+"Give it up, ol' boy," was the reply from the depths of the
+buffalo-robes before the fire. "Pat her on the back, an' tell her not
+to cry, or somethin' like that."
+
+"But she can't tell what I say."
+
+"Oh, she'll understand if y' kind o' chuckle an' gurgle like a fam'ly
+man." But the little one slept on, and when, about midnight, Bert got
+up to feed the fire, he left the stove door open to give light, and
+went softly over to the sleepers. Ans was sleeping with the little form
+close to his breast, and the poor, troubled face safe under his shaggy
+beard.
+
+                    *      *      *      *      *
+
+And all night long the blasting wind, sweeping the sea of icy sands,
+hissed and howled round the little sod cabin like surf beating on a
+half-sunken rock. The wind and the snow and the darkness possessed the
+plain; and Cold (whose other name is Death) was king of the horrible
+carnival. It seemed as though morning and sunlight could not come
+again, so absolute was the sway of night and death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+THE BURIAL OF HER DEAD MOTHER.
+
+
+When Anson woke the next morning, he found the great flower-like eyes
+of the little waif staring straight into his face with a surprise too
+great for words or cries. She stared steadily and solemnly into his
+open eyes for a while, and when he smiled she smiled back; but when he
+lifted his large hand and tried to brush her hair she grew frightened,
+pushing her little fists against him, and began to cry "Mor! Mor Kom!"
+
+This roused Gearheart, who said:
+
+"Well, Ans, what are y' goin' to do with that child? This is your
+mornin' to git breakfast. Come, roll out. I've got the fire goin' good.
+I can't let y' off; it'll break up our system."
+
+Anson rolled out of the bunk and dressed hurriedly in the cold room.
+The only sound was the roar of the stove devouring the hay-twist. Anson
+danced about.
+
+"Thunder an' black cats, ain't it cold! The wind has died down, or we'd
+be froze stiffer'n a wedge. It was mighty good in you, ol' man, to keep
+the stove goin' durin' the night. The child has opened her eyes
+brighter'n a dollar, but I tell you I don't like to let her know what's
+happened to her relatives."
+
+The little one began to wail in a frightened way, being alone in the
+dim corner.
+
+"There she goes now; she's wantin' to go home! That's what she's
+askin', jes' like's not. Say, Bert, what the devil can I do?"
+
+"Talk to her, Ans; chuckle to her."
+
+"Talk! She'll think I'm threatenin' to knock her head off, or
+somethin'. There there, don't ee cry! We'll go see papa soon.--Confound
+it, man, I can't go on with this thing! There, there! See, child, we're
+goin' to have some nice hot pancakes now; goin' to have breakfast now.
+See, ol' pap's goin' to fry some pancakes. Whoop--see!" He took down
+the saucepan, and flourished it in order to make his meaning plainer.
+Bert laughed.
+
+"That's as bad as your fist. Put that down, Ans. You'll scare the young
+one into a fit; you ain't built f'r a jumpin'-jack."
+
+The child did indeed set up a louder and more distracting yell. Getting
+desperate, Anson seized her in his arms, and, despite her struggles,
+began tossing her on his shoulder. The child understood him and ceased
+to cry, especially as Gearheart began to set the table, making a
+pleasant clatter, whistling the while.
+
+The glorious light of the morning made its way only dimly through the
+thickly frosted window-panes; the boards snapped in the horrible cold;
+out in the barn the cattle were bellowing and kicking with pain.
+
+"Do you know," said Bert, impressively, "I couldn't keep that woman out
+o' my mind. I could see her layin' there without any quilts on her, an'
+the mice a-runnin' over her. God! it's tough, this bein' alone on a
+prairie on such a night."
+
+"I knew I'd feel so, an' I jest naturally covered her up an' tucked the
+covers in, the child a-lookin' on. I thought she'd feel better, seein'
+her ma tucked in good an' warm. Poor little rat!"
+
+"Did you do that, ol' man?"
+
+"You bet I did! I couldn't have slep' a wink if I hadn't."
+
+"Well, why didn't y' tell me, so't _I_ could sleep?"
+
+"I didn't think you'd think of it that way, not havin' seen her."
+
+The child now consented to sit in one of the chairs and put her feet
+down by the stove. She wept silently now, with that infrequent, indrawn
+sob, more touching than wails. She felt that these strangers were her
+friends, but she wanted her mother. She ate well, and soon grew more
+resigned. She looked first at one and then at the other of the men as
+they talked, trying to understand their strange language. Then she fell
+to watching a mouse that stole out from behind the flour-barrels,
+snatching a crumb occasionally and darting back, and laughed gleefully
+once, and clapped her hands.
+
+"Now, the first thing after the chores, Ans, is that woman over there.
+Of course it's out o' the question buryin' her, but we'd better go over
+an' git what things there is left o' the girl's, an' fasten up the
+shanty to keep the wolves out."
+
+"But then----"
+
+"What?"
+
+"The mice. You can't shut them out."
+
+"That's so, I never thought o' that. We've got to make a box, I guess;
+but it's goin' to be an awful job for me, Ans, to git her into it. I
+thought I wouldn't have to touch her."
+
+"Le' me go; I've seen her once an' you hain't. I'd just as soon."
+
+"Heaven an' earth! what could I do with the babe? She'd howl like a
+coyote, an' drive me plumb wild. No: you're elected to take care o' the
+child. I ain't worth a picayune at it. Besides, you had your share
+yesterday."
+
+And so, in the brilliant sunshine of that bitterly cold morning,
+Gearheart crunched away over the spotless snow, which burned under his
+feet--a land mocking, glorious, pitiless. Far off some slender columns
+of smoke told of two or three hearth-fires, but mainly the plain was
+level and lifeless as the Polar Ocean, appallingly silent, no cry or
+stir in the whole expanse, no tree to creak nor bell to ring.
+
+It required strong effort on the part of the young man to open the door
+of the cottage, and he stood for some time with his hand on the latch,
+looking about. There was perfect silence without and within, no trace
+of feet or hands anywhere. All was as peaceful and unbroken as a
+sepulchre.
+
+Finally, as if angry with himself, Gearheart shook himself and pushed
+open the door, letting the morning sun stream in. It lighted the bare
+little room and fell on the frozen face and rigid, half-open eyes of
+the dead woman with a strong, white glare. The thin face and worn,
+large-jointed hands lying outside the quilt told of the hardships which
+had been the lot of the sleeper. Her clothing was clean and finer than
+one would expect to see.
+
+Gearheart stood looking at her for a long time, the door still open,
+for he felt re-enforced in some way by the sun. If any one had come
+suddenly and closed the door on him and the white figure there, he
+would have cried out and struggled like a madman to escape, such was
+his unreasoning fear of the dead.
+
+At length, with a long breath, he backed out and closed the door. Going
+to the barn, he found a cow standing at an empty manger, and some hens
+and pigs frozen in the hay. Looking about for some boards to make a
+coffin, he came upon a long box in which a reaper had been packed, and
+this he proceeded to nail together firmly, and to line with pieces of
+an old stove-pipe at such places as he thought the mice would try to
+enter.
+
+When it was all prepared, he carried the box to the house and managed
+to lay it down beside the bed; but he could not bring himself to touch
+the body. He went out to see if some one were not coming. The sound of
+a human voice would have relieved him at once, and he could have gone
+on without hesitation. But there was no one in sight, and no one was
+likely to be; so he returned, and summoning all his resolution, took
+one of the quilts from the bed and placed it in the bottom of the box.
+Then he removed the pillow from beneath the head of the dead woman and
+placed that in the box. Then he paused, the cold moisture breaking out
+on his face.
+
+Like all young persons born far from war, and having no knowledge of
+death even in its quiet forms, he had the most powerful organic
+repugnance toward a corpse. He kept his eye on it as though it were a
+sleeping horror, likely at a sudden sound to rise and walk. More than
+this, there had always been something peculiarly sacred in the form of
+a woman, and in his calmer moments the dead mother appealed to him with
+irresistible power.
+
+At last, with a sort of moan through his set teeth, he approached the
+bed and threw the sheet over the figure, holding it as in a sling;
+then, by a mighty effort, he swung it stiffly off the bed into the box.
+
+He trembled so that he could hardly spread the remaining quilts over
+the dead face. The box was wide enough to receive the stiff, curved
+right arm, and he had nothing to do but to nail the cover on, which he
+did in feverish haste. Then he rose, grasped his tools, rushed outside,
+slammed the door, and set off in great speed across the snow, pushed on
+by an indescribable horror.
+
+As he neared home, his fresh young blood asserted itself more and more;
+but when he entered the cabin he was still trembling, and dropped into
+a chair like a man out of breath. At sight of the ruddy face of Anson,
+and with the aid of the heat and light of the familiar little room, he
+shook off part of his horror.
+
+"Gi' me a cup o' coffee, Ans. I'm kind o' chilly an' tired."
+
+Before drinking he wiped his face and washed his hands again and again
+at the basin in the corner, as though there were something on them
+which was ineffably unclean. The little one, who had been weeping
+again, stared at him with two big tears drying on her hollow cheeks.
+
+"Well?" interrogated Anson.
+
+"I nailed her up safe enough for the present. But what're we goin' to
+do next?"
+
+"I can't see 's we can do anythin' as long as such weather as this
+lasts. It ain't safe f'r one of us to go out an' leave the other alone.
+Besides, it's thirty below zero, an' no road, Moccasin's full of snow;
+an' another wind likely to rise at any time. It's mighty tough on this
+little one, but it can't be helped. As soon as it moderates a little,
+we'll try to find a woman an' a preacher, an' bury that--relative."
+
+"The only woman I know of is ol' Mrs. Cap Burdon, down on the Third
+Moccasin, full fifteen miles away."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+FLAXEN ADOPTS ANSON AS "PAP."
+
+
+For nearly two weeks they waited, while the wind alternately raved and
+whispered over them as it scurried the snow south or east, or shifted
+to the south in the night, bringing "the north end of a south wind,"
+the most intolerable and cutting of winds. Day after day the restless
+snow sifted or leaped across the waste of glittering crust; day after
+day the sun shone in dazzling splendor, but so white and cold that the
+thermometer still kept down among the thirties. They were absolutely
+alone on the plain, except that now and then a desperate wolf or
+inquisitive owl came by.
+
+These were long days for the settlers. They would have been longer had
+it not been for little Elga, or "Flaxen," as they took to calling her.
+They racked their brains to amuse her, and in the intervals of tending
+the cattle and of cooking, or of washing dishes, rummaged through all
+their books and pictures, taught her "cat's cradle," played
+"jack-straws" with her, and with all their resources of song and
+pantomime strove to fill up the little one's lonely days, happy when
+they succeeded in making her laugh.
+
+"That settles it!" said Bert one day, whanging the basin back into the
+empty flour-barrel.
+
+"What's the matter?"
+
+"Matter is, we've reached the bottom o' the flour-barrel, an' it's got
+to be filled; no two ways about that. We can get along on biscuit an'
+pancakes in place o' meat, but we can't put anythin' in the place o'
+bread. If it looks favorable to-morrow, we've got to make a break for
+Summit an' see if we can't stock up."
+
+Early the next morning they brought out the shivering team and piled
+into the box all the quilts and robes they had, and bundling little
+Flaxen in, started across the trackless plain toward the low line of
+hills to the east, twenty-five or thirty miles. From four o'clock in
+the morning till nearly noon they toiled across the sod, now ploughing
+through the deep snow where the unburned grass had held it, now
+scraping across the bare, burned earth, now wandering up or down the
+swales, seeking the shallowest places, now shovelling a pathway
+through.
+
+The sun rose unobscured as usual, and shone down with unusual warmth,
+which afforded the men the satisfaction of seeing little Flaxen warm
+and merry. She chattered away in her own tongue, and clapped her little
+hands in glee at sight of the snowbirds running and fluttering about.
+As they approached the low hills the swales got deeper and more
+difficult to cross, but about eleven o'clock they came to Burdon's
+Ranch, a sort of half-way haven between their own claim and Summit, the
+end of the railway.
+
+Captain Burdon was away, but Mrs. Burdon, a big, slatternly Missourian,
+with all the kindliness of a universal mother in her swarthy face and
+flaccid bosom, ushered them into the cave-like dwelling set in the
+sunny side of Water Moccasin.
+
+"Set down, set right down. Young uns, git out some o' them cheers an'
+let the strangers set. Purty tol'able tough weather? A feller don't git
+out much such weather as this 'ere 'thout he's jes' naturally 'bleeged
+to. Suse, heave in another twist, an' help the little un to take off
+her shawl."
+
+After Mrs. Burdon's little flurry of hospitality was over, Anson found
+time to tell briefly the history of the child.
+
+"Heavens to Betsey! I wan' to know!" she cried, her fat hands on her
+knees and her eyes bulging. "Wal! wal! I declare, it beats the Dutch!
+So that woman jest frizzed right burside the babe! Wal, I never! An'
+the ol' man he ain't showed up? Wal, now, he ain't likely to. I reckon
+I saw that Norsk go by here that very day, an' I says to Cap'n, says I,
+'If that feller don't reach home inside an hour, he'll go through
+heaven a-gittin' home,' says I to the Cap'n."
+
+"Well, now," said Anson, stopping the old woman's garrulous flow, "I've
+got to be off f'r Summit, but I wish you'd jest look after this little
+one here till we git back. It's purty hard weather f'r her to be out,
+an' I don't think she ought to."
+
+"Yaas; leave her, o' course. She'll enjoy playin' with the young uns. I
+reckon y' did all y' could for that woman. Y' can't burry her now; the
+ground's like linkum-vity."
+
+But as Anson turned to leave, the little creature sprang up with a
+torrent of wild words, catching him by the coat, and pleading
+strenuously to go with him. Her accent was unmistakable.
+
+"You wan' to go with Ans?" he inquired, looking down into the little
+tearful face with a strange stirring in his bachelor heart. "I believe
+on my soul she does."
+
+"Sure's y're born!" replied Mrs. Burdon. "She'd rather go with you than
+to stay an' fool with the young uns; that's what she's tryin' to say."
+
+"Do y' wan' to go?" asked Ans again, opening his arms. She sprang
+toward him, raising her eager little hands as high as she could, and
+when he lifted her she twined her arms around his neck.
+
+"Poor little critter! she ain't got no pap ner mam now," the old woman
+explained to the ring of children, who still stared silently at the
+stranger almost without moving.
+
+"Ain't he her pa-a-p?" drawled one of the older girls, sticking a
+finger at Anson.
+
+"He is now," laughed Ans, and that settled the question over which he
+had been pondering for days. It meant that as long as she wanted to
+stay she should be his Flaxen and he would be her "pap." "And you can
+be Uncle Bert, hey?" he said to Bert.
+
+"Good enough," said Bert.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+FLAXEN BECOMES INDISPENSABLE TO THE TWO OLD BACHELORS.
+
+
+They never found any living relative, and only late in the spring was
+the fate of the poor father revealed. He and his cattle were found side
+by side in a deep swale, where they had foundered in the night and
+tempest.
+
+As for little Flaxen, she soon recovered her cheerfulness, with the
+buoyancy natural to childhood, and learned to prattle in broken English
+very fast. She developed a sturdy self-reliance that was surprising in
+one so young, and long before spring came was indispensable to the two
+"old baches."
+
+"Now, Bert," said Ans one day, "I don't wan' to hear you talk in that
+slipshod way any longer before Flaxen. You know better; you've had more
+chance than I have--be'n to school more. They ain't no excuse for you,
+not an ioty. Now, I'm goin' to say to her, 'Never mind how I talk, but
+talk like Bert does."
+
+"Oh, say, now, look here, Ans, I can't stand the strain. Suppose she'd
+hear me swearin' at ol' Barney or the stove?"
+
+"That's jest it. You ain't goin' to swear," decided Anson; and after
+that Bert took the education of the little waif in hand, for he was a
+man of good education; his use of dialect and slang sprang mainly from
+carelessness.
+
+But all the little fatherly duties and discipline fell to Anson, and
+much perplexed he often got. For instance, when he bought her an outfit
+of American clothing at the store they were strange to her and to him,
+and the situation was decidedly embarrassing when they came to try
+them.
+
+"Now, Flaxie, I guess this thing goes on this side before, so's you can
+button it. If it went on so, you _couldn't_ reach around to button it,
+don't you see? I guess you'd better try it so. An' this thing, I judge,
+is a shirt, an' goes on under that other thing, which I reckon is
+called a shimmy. Say, Bert, shouldn't you call that a shirt?" holding
+up a garment.
+
+"W-e-l-l, yes" (after a close scrutiny). "Yes: I should."
+
+"And this a shimmy?"
+
+"Well, now, you've got me, Ans. It seems to me I've heard the women
+folks home talk about shimmies, but they were always kind o' private
+about it, so I don't think I can help you out. That little thing goes
+underneath, sure enough."
+
+"All right, here goes, Flax; if it should turn out to be hind side
+before, no matter."
+
+Then again little Flaxen would want to wear her best dress on
+week-days, and Ans was unable to explain. Here again Bert came to the
+rescue.
+
+"Git her one dress fer ev'ry day in the week, an' make her wear 'em in
+rotation. Hang 'em up an' put a tag on each one--Sunday, Monday, an' so
+on."
+
+"Good idea."
+
+And it was done. But the embarrassments of attending upon the child
+soon passed away; she quickly grew independent of such help, dressed
+herself, and combed her own hair, though Anson enjoyed doing it himself
+when he could find time, and she helped out not a little about the
+house. She seemed to have forgotten her old life, awakening as she had
+from almost deathly torpor into a new home--almost a new world--where a
+strange language was spoken, where no woman was, and where no mention
+of her mother, father, or native land was ever made before her. The
+little waif was at first utterly bewildered, then reconciled, and by
+the time spring came over the prairie was almost happy in the touching
+way of a child deprived of childish things.
+
+Oh, how sweet spring seemed to those snow-weary people! Day after day
+the sun crept higher up in the sky; day after day the snow gave way a
+little on the swells, and streams of water began to trickle down under
+the huge banks of snow, filling the ravines; and then at last came a
+day when a strange, warm wind blew from the northwest. Soft and sweet
+and sensuous it was, as if it swept some tropic bay filled with a
+thousand isles--a wind like a vast warm breath blown upon the land.
+Under its touch the snow did not melt; it vanished. It fled in a single
+day from the plain to the gullies. Another day, and the gullies were
+rivers.
+
+It was the "chinook," which old Lambert, the trapper and surveyor, said
+came from the Pacific Ocean.
+
+The second morning after the chinook began to blow, Anson sprang to his
+feet from his bunk, and standing erect in the early morning light,
+yelled: "Hear that?"
+
+"What is it?" asked Bert.
+
+"There! Hear it?" Anson smiled, holding up his hand joyfully as a
+mellow "Boom--boom--boom" broke through the silent air.
+"Prairie-chickens! Hurrah! Spring has come! That breaks the back o'
+winter short off."
+
+"Hurrah! de 'pring ees come!" cried little Flaxen, gleefully clapping
+her hands in imitation.
+
+No man can know what a warm breeze and the note of a bird can mean to
+him till he is released, as these men were released, from the bondage
+of a horrible winter. Perhaps still more moving was the thought that
+with the spring the loneliness of the prairie would be broken, never
+again to be so dread and drear; for with the coming of spring came the
+tide of land-seekers pouring in: teams scurried here and there on the
+wide prairie, carrying surveyors, land agents, and settlers. At Summit
+trains came rumbling in by the first of April, emptying thousands of
+men, women, and children upon the sod, together with cattle, machinery,
+and household articles, to lie there roofed only by the blue sky.
+Summit, from being a half-buried store and a blacksmith's shop, bloomed
+out into a town with saloons, lumber-yards, hotels, and restaurants;
+the sound of hammer and anvil was incessant, and trains clanged and
+whistled night and day.
+
+Day after day the settlers got their wagons together and loaded up, and
+then moved down the slope into the fair valley of the sleepy James.
+Mrs. Cap Burdon did a rushing business as a hotel-keeper, while Cap
+sold hay and oats at rates which made the land-seekers gasp.
+
+"I'm not out here f'r my health," was all the explanation he ever made.
+
+Soon all around the little shanty of Anson and Bert other shanties were
+built and filled with young, hopeful, buoyant souls. The railway
+surveyors came through, locating a town about three and another about
+twelve miles away, and straightway the bitter rivalry between Boomtown
+and Belleplain began. Belleplain being their town, Bert and Anson swore
+by Belleplain, and correspondingly derided the claims of Boomtown.
+
+With the coming of spring began the fiercest toil of the
+pioneers--breaking the sod, building, harvesting, ploughing; then the
+winter again, though not so hard to bear; then the same round of work
+again. So the land was settled, the sod was turned over; sod shanties
+gave way to little frame houses; the tide of land-seekers passed on,
+the boom burst, but the real workers, like Wood and Gearheart, went
+patiently, steadily on, founding a great State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A QUESTION OF DRESS.
+
+
+One morning eight years later Flaxen left the home of Gearheart and
+Wood with old Doll and the buggy, bound for Belleplain after groceries
+for harvest. She drove with a dash, her hat on the back of her head.
+She was seemingly intent on getting all there was possible out of a
+chew of kerosene gum, which she had resolved to throw away upon
+entering town, intending to get a new supply.
+
+She had thriven on Western air and gum, and though hardly more than
+fourteen years of age, her bust and limbs revealed the grace of
+approaching womanhood, however childish her short dress and braided
+hair might still show her to be. Her face was large and decidedly of
+Scandinavian type, fair in spite of wind and sun, and broad at the
+cheekbones. Her eyes were as blue and clear as winter ice.
+
+As she rode along she sang as well as she could without neglecting the
+gum, sitting at one end of the seat like a man, the reins held
+carelessly in her left hand, notwithstanding the swift gait of the
+horse, who always knew when Flaxen was driving. She met a friend on the
+road, and said, "Hello!" pulling up her horse with one strong hand.
+
+"Can't stop," she explained; "got to go over to the city to get some
+groceries for harvest. Goin' to the sociable to-morrow?"
+
+"You bet," replied the friend, "You?"
+
+"I d'know; mebbe, if the boys'll go. Ta-ta; see ye later." And away she
+spun.
+
+Belleplain had not thriven, or to be more exact, it had had a rise and
+fall; and as the rise had been considerable, so the fall was something
+worth chronicling. It was now a collection of wooden buildings, mostly
+empty, graying under the storms and suns of pitiless winters and
+summers, and now, just in mid-summer, surrounded by splendid troops and
+phalanxes of gorgeous sunflowers, whose brown crowns, gold-dusted,
+looked ever toward the sun as it swung through the wide arch of
+cloudless sky. The signs of the empty buildings still remained, and one
+might still read the melancholy decline from splendours of the past in
+"emporiums," "palace drug stores," and "mansion-houses."
+
+As Flaxen would have said, "Belleplain's boom had bu'sted." Her glory
+had gone with the C., B. and Q., which formed the junction at Boomtown
+and left the luckless citizens of Belleplain "high and dry" on the
+prairie, with nothing but a "spur" to travel on. However, a few stores
+yet remained in the midst of desolation.
+
+After making her other purchases, Flaxen entered the "red-front drug
+store" to secure the special brand of gum which seemed most delectable
+and to buy a couple of cigars for the "boys."
+
+The clerk, who was lately from the East, and wore his moustache curled
+upward like the whiskers of a cat, was "gassing" with another young
+man, who sat in a chair with his heels on the counter.
+
+"Well, my dear, what can I do for you to-day?" he said, winking at the
+loafer, as if to say, "Now watch me."
+
+"I want some gum."
+
+"What kind, darling?" he asked, encouraged by the fellow in the chair.
+
+"I ain't your darling.--Kerosene, shoofly, an' ten cents' worth."
+
+"Say, Jack," drawled the other fellow, "git onto the ankles! Say,
+sissy, you picked your dress too soon. She's goin' to be a daisy, first
+you know. Ain't y', honey?" he said, leaning over and pinching her arm.
+
+"Let me alone, you great, mean thing! I'll tell ol' pap on you, see if
+I don't," cried Flaxen, her eyes filling with angry tears. And as they
+proceeded to other and bolder remarks she rushed out, feeling vaguely
+the degradation of being so spoken to and so touched. It seemed to
+become more atrocious the more she thought upon it.
+
+When she reached home there were still signs of tears on her face, and
+when Anson came out to help her alight, and noticing it asked, "What's
+the matter?" she burst out afresh, crying, and talking incoherently.
+Anson was astonished.
+
+"Why, what's the matter, Flaxie? Can't you tell ol' pap? Are ye sick?"
+
+She shook her head, and rushed past him into the house and into her
+bedroom, like a little cyclone of wrath. Ans slowly followed her, much
+perplexed. She was lying face downward on the bed, sobbing.
+
+"What's the matter, little one? Can't y' tell ol' pap? Have the girls
+be'n makin' fun o' yeh again?"
+
+She shook her head.
+
+"Have the boys be'n botherin' yeh?" No reply. "Who was it?" Still
+silence. He was getting stern now. "Tell me right now."
+
+"Jack Reeves--an'--an' another feller."
+
+"Wha' d' they do?" Silence. "Tell me."
+
+"They--pinched me, an'--an'--talked mean to me," she replied, breaking
+down again with the memory of the insult.
+
+Anson began to understand.
+
+"Wal, there! You dry y'r eyes, Flaxie, an' go an' git supper; they
+won't do it again--not _this_ harvest," he added grimly as he marched
+to the door to enter the buggy.
+
+Bert, coming along from the barn and seeing Anson about to drive away,
+asked where he was going. Anson tried to look indifferent.
+
+"Oh, I've got a little business to transact with Reeves and some other
+smart Aleck downtown."
+
+"What's up? What have they be'n doing?" asked Gearheart, reading
+trouble in the eyes of his friend.
+
+"Well, they have be'n a little too fresh with Flaxen to-day, an' need a
+lesson."
+
+"They're equal to it. Say, Anson, let me go," laying his hand on the
+dasher, ready to leap in.
+
+"No: you're too brash. You wouldn't know when to quit. No: you stay
+right here. Don't say anything to Flaxen about it; if she wants to know
+where I'm gone, tell her I found I was out o' nails."
+
+As Anson drove along swiftly he was in a savage mood and thinking
+deeply. Two or three times of late some of his friends had touched
+rather freely upon the fact that Flaxen was becoming a woman. "Girls
+ripen early out in this climate," one old chap had said, "and your
+little Norsk there is likely to leave you one of these days." He felt
+now that something deliberately and inexpressibly offensive had been
+said and done to his little girl. He didn't want to know just what it
+was, but just who did it; that was all. It was time to make a protest.
+
+Hitching his horse to a ring in the sidewalk upon arrival, he walked
+into the drug store, which was also the post-office. Young Reeves was
+inside the post-office corner giving out the mail, and Anson sauntered
+about the store waiting his chance.
+
+He was a dangerous-looking man just now. Ordinarily his vast frame,
+huge, grizzled beard, and stern, steady eyes would quell a panther; but
+now as he leaned against the counter a shrewd observer would have said,
+"Lookout for him; he's dangerous."
+
+His gray shirt, loose at the throat, showed a neck that resembled the
+spreading base of an oak tree, and his crossed limbs and half-recumbent
+pose formed a curious opposition to the look in his eyes.
+
+Nobody noticed him specially. Most comers and goers, being occupied
+with their mail, merely nodded and passed on.
+
+Finally some one called for a cigar, and Reeves, having finished in the
+post-office department, came jauntily along behind the counter directly
+to where Anson stood. As he looked casually into the giant's eyes he
+started back, but too late; one vast hand had clutched him by the
+collar, and he was jerked over the counter and cuffed from hand to
+hand, like a mouse in the paws of a cat. Though Ans used his open palm,
+the punishment was fearful. Blood burst from his victim's nose and
+mouth; he yelled with fright and pain.
+
+The rest rushed to help.
+
+"Stand back! This is a private affair," said Ans, throwing up a warning
+hand. They paused; all knew his strength.
+
+"It wasn't me!" screamed Reeves as the punishment increased; "it was
+Doc Coe."
+
+Coe, his hands full of papers and letters, horrified at what had
+overtaken Reeves, stood looking on. But now he tried to escape.
+Flinging the battered, half-senseless Reeves back over the counter,
+where he lay in a heap, Anson caught Coe by the coat just as he was
+rushing past him, and duplicated the punishment, ending by kicking him
+into the street, where he lay stunned and helpless. Ans said then, in a
+voice that the rest heard, "The next time you insult a girl, you'd
+better inquire into the qualities of her guardeen."
+
+This little matter attended to, he unhitched his horse from the
+sidewalk, and refusing to answer any questions, rode off home,
+outwardly as calm as though he had just been shaking hands.
+
+Supper was about ready when he drove up, and through the open door he
+could see the white-covered table and could hear the cheerful clatter
+of dishes. Flaxen was whistling. Eight years of hard work had not done
+much for these sturdy souls, but they had managed to secure with
+incredible toil a comfortable little house surrounded with
+outbuildings. Calves and chickens gave life to the barn-yard, and
+fields of wheat rippled and ran with swash of heavy-bearded heads and
+dapple of shadow and sheen.
+
+Flaxen was now the housewife and daughter of these hard-working
+pioneers, and a cheery and capable one she had become. No one had ever
+turned up with a better claim to her, and so she had grown up with Ans
+and Bert, going to school when she could spare the time, but mainly
+being adviser and associate at the farm.
+
+Ans and Bert had worked hard winter and summer trying to get ahead, but
+had not succeeded as they had hoped. Crops had failed for three or four
+years, and money was scarce with them; but they had managed to build
+this small frame house and to get a little stock about them, and this
+year, with a good crop, would "swing clear," and be able to do
+something for Flaxen--perhaps send her to Belleplain to school; togged
+out like a little queen.
+
+When Anson returned to the house after putting out the horse, he found
+Bert reading the paper in the little sitting-room and Flaxen putting
+the tea on the stove.
+
+"Wha' d' y' do to him, pap?" laughed she, all her anger gone. Bert came
+out to listen.
+
+"Oh, nothin' p'tic'lar," answered Ans, flinging his hat at a chicken
+that made as though to come in, and rolling up his sleeves preparatory
+to sozzling his face at the sink. "I jest cuffed 'em a little, an' let
+'em go."
+
+"Is that all?" said Flaxen, disappointedly, a comical look on her round
+face.
+
+"Now, don't you worry," put in Bert. "Anson's cuffin' a man is rather
+severe experience. I saw him cuff a man once; it ain't anythin' to be
+desired a second time."
+
+They all drew about the table. Flaxen looked very womanly as she sat
+cutting the bread and pouring the tea. She had always been old in her
+ways about the house, for she had very early assumed the housewife's
+duties and cares. Her fresh-coloured face beamed with delight as she
+watched the hungry men devouring the fried pork, potatoes, and cheese.
+
+"When y' goin' to begin cuttin', boys?" Collectively they were boys to
+her, but when addressing them separately they were "Bert" and "Pap."
+
+"To-morrow 'r nex' day, I guess," answered Anson, looking out of the
+open door. "Don't it look fine--all yeller an' green? I tell ye they
+ain't anything lays over a ripe field o' wheat in my eyes. You jest
+take it when the sun strikes it right, an' the wind is playin' on
+it--when it kind o' sloshes around like water--an' the clouds go over
+it, droppin' shadders down on it, an' a hawk kind o' goes skimmin' over
+it, divin' into it once in a while----"
+
+He did not finish; it was not necessary.
+
+"Yes, sir!" adjudged Gearheart, after a pause, leaning his elbows on
+the table and looking out of the door on the far-stretching,
+sun-glorified plain.
+
+"The harvest kind o' justifies the winter we have out here. That is,
+when we have a harvest such as this. Fact is, we fellers live six
+months o' the year lookin' ahead to harvest, an' t'other six months
+lookin' back to it. Well, this won't buy the woman a dress, Ans. We
+must get that header set up to-night if we can."
+
+They pushed their chairs back noisily and rose to go out. Flaxen said:
+
+"Say, which o' you boys is goin' to help me churn to-night?"
+
+Anson groaned, while she laughed.
+
+"I don't know, Flax; ask us an easier one."
+
+"We'll attend to that after it gets too dark to work on the machine,"
+added Bert.
+
+"Well, see 't y' do. I can't do it; I've got bread to mix an' a chicken
+to dress. Say, if you don't begin cuttin' till day after to-morrow, we
+can go down to the sociable to-morrow night. Last one o' the season."
+
+"I wish it was the last one before the kingdom come," growled Bert as
+he "stomped" out the door. "They're a bad lot. The idea o' takin' down
+four dollars' worth o' grub an' then payin' four dollars for the
+privilege of eatin' half of it! I'll take my chicken here, when I'm
+hungry."
+
+"Bert ain't partial to sociables, is he, pap?" laughed Flaxen.
+
+"I should hate to have the minister dependin' on Bert for a livin'."
+
+"Sa-ay, pap!"
+
+"Wal, babe?"
+
+"I expect I'll haf t' have a new dress one o' these days."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"You bet."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with the one y' got on? Ain't no holes in it
+that I can see," looking at it carefully and turning her around as if
+she were on a pivot.
+
+"Well, ain't it purty short, pap?" she said suggestively.
+
+"I swear, I don't know but it is," conceded Anson, scratching his head;
+"I hadn't paid much 'tention to it before. It certainly is a lee-tle
+too short. Lemme see: ain't no way o' lettin' it down, is they?"
+
+"Nary. She's clean down to the last notch now," replied Flaxen
+convincingly.
+
+"Couldn't pull through till we thrash?" he continued, still in a
+tentative manner.
+
+"Could, but don't like to," she answered, laughing again, and showing
+her white teeth pleasantly.
+
+"I s'pose it'll cost suthin'," he insinuated in a dubious tone.
+
+"Mattie Stuart paid seven dollars fer her'n, pap, an' I----"
+
+"Seven how manys?"
+
+"Dollars, pap, makin' an' everythin'. An' then I ought to have a new
+hat to go with the dress, an' a new pair o' shoes. All the girls are
+wearin' white, but I reckon I can git along with a good coloured one
+that'll do fer winter."
+
+"Wal, all right. I'll fix it--some way," Ans said, turning away only to
+look back and smile to see her dancing up and down and crying:
+
+"Oh, goody, goody!"
+
+"I'll do it if I haf to borrow money at two per cent a month," said he
+to Bert, as he explained the case. "Hear her sing! Why, dern it! I'd
+spend all I've got to keep that child twitterin' like that. Wouldn't
+you, eh?"
+
+Bert was silent, thinking deeply on a variety of matters suggested by
+Anson's words. The crickets were singing from out the weeds near by; a
+lost little wild chicken was whistling in plaintive sweetness down in
+the barley-field; the flaming light from the half-sunk sun swept along
+the green and yellow grain, glorifying as with a bath of gold
+everything it touched.
+
+"I wish that grain hadn't ripened so fast, Ans. It's blightin'."
+
+"Think so?"
+
+"No: I know it. I went out to look at it before supper, an' every one
+of those spots that look so pretty are just simply burnin' up! But,
+say, ain't it a little singular that Flaxen should blossom out in a
+desire for a new dress all at once? Ain't it rather sudden?"
+
+"Wal, no: I don't think it is. Come to look it all over, up one side
+an' down the other, she's been growin' about an inch a month this
+summer, an' her best dress is gittin' turrible short the best way you
+can fix it. She's gittin' to be 'most a woman, Bert."
+
+"Yes: I know she is," said Bert, significantly. "An' something's got to
+be done right off."
+
+"Wha' d' ye mean by that, ol' man?"
+
+"I mean jest this. It's time we did something religious for that girl.
+She ain't had much chance since she's been here with us. She ain't had
+no chance at all. Now I move that we send her away to school this
+winter. Give her a good outfit an' send her away. This ain't no sort o'
+way for a girl to grow up in."
+
+"Wal, I've be'n thinkin' o' that myself; but where'll we send her?"
+
+"Oh, back to the States somewhere; Wisconsin or Minnesota--somewhere."
+
+"Why not to Boomtown?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell yeh, Ans. I've been hearing a good 'eal off an' on
+about the way we're bringin' her up here 'alone with two rough old
+codgers,' an' I jest want to give her a better chance than the
+Territory affords. I want her to git free of us and all like us, for a
+while; let her see something of the world. Besides, that business over
+in Belleplain to-day kind o' settled me. The plain facts are, Ans, the
+people are a little too free with her because she is growin' up
+here----"
+
+"I know some fellers that won't be again."
+
+"Well, they are beginnin' to wink an' nudge each other an' to say----"
+
+"Go on! What do they say?"
+
+"They say she's goin' to be a woman soon; that this fatherly business
+is bound to play out."
+
+"I'd like to see anybody wink when I'm around. I'd smash 'em!" said
+Anson through his set teeth. "Why, she's our little babe," he broke
+out, as the full significance of the matter came to him. "My little un;
+I'm her ol' pap. Why----" He ended in despair. "It's none o' their darn
+business."
+
+"There ain't no use o' howlin', Ans. You can't smash a whole neighborhood."
+
+"But what are we goin' to do?"
+
+"Well, I'll tell ye what we mustn't do. We mustn't tog her out jest
+yet."
+
+"Why not?" asked Anson, not seeing these subtle distinctions of time
+and place.
+
+"Because, you tog her out this week or next, without any apparent
+reason, in a new hat an' dress an' gloves, an' go down to one o' these
+sociables with her, an' you'd have to clean out the whole crowd. They'd
+all be winkin' an' nudgin' an' grinnin'--see?"
+
+"Wal, go on," said the crushed giant. "What'll we do?"
+
+"Just let things go on as they are for the present till we git ready to
+send her to school."
+
+"But I promised the togs."
+
+"All right. I've stated the case," Gearheart returned, with the air of
+a man who washed his hands of the whole affair.
+
+Anson rose with a sudden gesture. "Jest hear her! whistlin' away like a
+lark. I don't see how I'm goin' to go in there an' spoil all her fun; I
+can't do it, that's all."
+
+"Well, now, you leave it all to me. I'll state the case to her in a way
+that'll catch her--see if I don't. She ain't no common girl."
+
+It was growing dark as they went in, and the girl's face could not be
+seen.
+
+"Well, Bert, are y' ready to help churn?"
+
+"Yes, I guess so, if Ans'll milk."
+
+"Oh, he'll milk; he jest loves to milk ol' Brindle when the flies are
+thick."
+
+"Oh, you bet," said Ans, to make her laugh.
+
+"Now, Flaxen," coughed Gearheart in beginning, "we've been discussin'
+your case, an' we've come to the conclusion that you ought to have the
+togs specified in the indictment" (this to take away the gravity of
+what was to follow); "but we're kind o' up a tree about just what we'd
+better do. The case is this. We've got to buy a horse to fill out our
+team, an' that's a-goin' to take about all we can rake an' scrape."
+
+"We may have to git our groceries on tick. Now, if you could only pull
+through till after----" Anson broke in.
+
+"It's purty tough, Flaxie, an' pap's awful sorry; but if you could jest
+pull through----"
+
+It was a great blow to poor little Flaxen, and she broke down and cried
+unrestrainedly.
+
+"I--I--don't see why I can't have things like the rest o' the girls."
+It was her first reproach, and it cut to the heart. Anson swore under
+his breath, and was stepping forward to say something when Gearheart
+restrained him.
+
+"But, y' see, Flaxie, we ain't askin' you to give up the dress, only to
+wait on us for a month or so, till we thrash."
+
+"That's it, babe," said Anson, going over to where she sat, with her
+arms lying on the table and her face hidden upon them. "We could spend
+dollars then where we couldn't cents now."
+
+"And they won't be any more thingumiyjigs at the church, anyhow, an'
+the wheat's blightin' on the knolls, besides."
+
+But the first keen disappointment over, she was her brave self once
+more.
+
+"Well, all right, boys," she said, her trembling voice curiously at
+variance with her words; "I'll get along somehow, but I tell you I'll
+have something scrumptious to pay for this--see if I don't." She was
+smiling again faintly, "It'll cost more'n _one_ ten dollars for my
+togs, as you call 'em. Now, pap, you go an' milk that cow! An', Bert,
+you glue yerself to that churn-dasher, an' don't you stop to breathe or
+swear till it's done."
+
+"That's the girl to have--that's our own Flaxie! She knows how hard
+things come on a farm," cheered Anson.
+
+"I bet I do," she said, wiping away the last trace of her tears and
+smiling at her palpable hit. And then began the thump of the dasher,
+and out in the dusk Anson was whistling as he milked.
+
+She went down to the sociable the next night in her old dress, and
+bravely looked happy for pap's sake. Bert did not go. Anson was a
+rather handsome old fellow. Huge, bearded like a Russian, though the
+colour of his beard was a wolf brindle, resembling a bunch of dry
+buffalo-grass, Bert was accustomed to say that he looked the father of
+the girl, for she had the same robust development, carried herself as
+erect, and looked everybody in the eye with the same laughing
+directness.
+
+There were some sly remarks among a ribald few, but on the whole
+everything passed off as usual. They were both general favorites, and
+as a matter of fact few people remarked that Flaxen's dress was not
+good enough. She certainly forgot all about it, so complete was her
+absorption in the gayety of the evening.
+
+"Wal, now for four weeks' hard times, Flaxen," said Anson, as they were
+jogging homeward about eleven o'clock.
+
+"I can stand _my_ share of it, pap," she stoutly replied. "I'm no
+chicken."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+AFTER HARVEST.
+
+
+All through those four or five weeks, at every opportunity, the
+partners planned the future of their waif. In the harvest-field, when
+they had a moment together, one would say to the other:
+
+"We'll let her stay two years if she likes it, eh?"
+
+"Certainly; she needn't come back till she wants to. We may be rich
+enough to sell out then, and move back ourselves. I'm gittin' tired o'
+this prairie myself. If we could sell, we'd put her through a whole
+course o' sprouts."
+
+"You bet! Sell when you can find a buyer. I'll sign the deed."
+
+"All right."
+
+And then they would go to work again toiling and planning for the
+future. Every day during August these men worked with the energy of
+demons, up early in the morning and out late at night, harvesting their
+crop. All day the header clattered to and fro with Bert or Ans astride
+the rudder, a cloud of dust rolling up from the ground, out of which
+the painted flanges of the reel flashed like sword-strokes. All day,
+and day after day; while the gulls sailed and soared in the hazy air
+and the larks piped from the dun grass, these human beings, covered
+with grime and sweat, worked in heat and parching wind. And never for
+an hour did they forget their little waif and her needs. And she did
+her part in the house. She rose as early as they and worked almost as
+late. It was miraculous, they admitted.
+
+One night toward the last of the harvest they were returning along the
+road from a neighboring farm, where they had been to head some late
+wheat. The tired horses with down-hung heads and swinging traces were
+walking sullenly but swiftly along the homeward road, the wagon
+rumbling sleepily; the stars were coming out in the east, while yet the
+rose and amethyst of the fallen sun lighted the western sky. Through
+the air, growing moist, came the sound of reapers still going. Men were
+shouting blithely, while voices of women and children came from the
+cabins, where yellow lights began to twinkle.
+
+Anson and Bert, blackened with dust and perspiration and weary to the
+point of listlessness, sat with elbows on knees, talking in low, slow
+tones on the never-failing topic, crops and profits. Their voices
+chimed with the sound of the wagon.
+
+"There's the light," broke out Ans, rousing himself and the team;
+"Flaxen's got supper all ready for us. She's a regular little Trojan,
+that girl is. They ain't many girls o' fourteen that 'u'd stay there
+contented all day alone an' keep all the whole business in apple-pie
+order. She'll get her pay some day."
+
+"We'll try to pay her; but say, ol' man, ain't it about time to open up
+our plans to her?"
+
+"Wal, yes; it is. You kind o' start the thing to-night, an' we'll have
+it over with."
+
+As they drove up, Flaxen came to the door. "Hello, boys! What makes ye
+so late?"
+
+"Finishin' up a field, babe. All done."
+
+She clapped her hands and danced up and down.
+
+"Goody! all done at last. Well, yank them horses out o' their harnesses
+an' come to biscuits. They're jest sizzlin' hot."
+
+"All right. We'll be there in about two jerks of a lamb's tail in
+fly-time. Bert, grab a tug; I'm hungry as a wolf."
+
+It was about the first of September and the nights were getting cool,
+and the steaming supper seemed like a feast to the chilled and
+stiffened men coming in a little later and sitting down with the sound
+of the girl's cheery voice in their ears. The tea was hot; so were the
+biscuits. The pyramid of hot mashed potato had a lump of half-melted
+butter in the hollow top, and there were canned peaches and canned
+salmon.
+
+"Yes: we're about finished up harvestin'," said Bert, as they settled
+themselves at the table, "an' it's about time to talk about gittin' you
+off to school."
+
+"Don't worry about that. It ain't no great job, I reckon. I can git
+ready in about seventeen jiffies, stop-watch time."
+
+"Not if you are goin' away off to some city in the East----"
+
+"Yes: but I ain't, y' see."
+
+"Oh, yes, you are. Bert an' I've be'n talkin' it all over f'r the last
+three weeks. We're goin' to send you back to St. Peter to the
+seminary."
+
+"I guess not, pap. I'd like to know what you think you're a-doin'
+sendin' me 'way back there. Boomtown's good enough fer me."
+
+"There, there, Flaxie; don't git mad. Y' see, we think they ain't
+anythin' good enough for you. Nothin' too good for a girl that stays to
+home an' cooks f'r two old cusses----"
+
+"You ain't cusses! You're jest as good as you can be; but I ain't
+a-goin'--there!"
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"'Cause I ain't; that's why."
+
+"Why, don't y' wan' to go back there where the people have nice houses,
+an' where they's a good----"
+
+"Well, I don't know enough; that's why. I ain't goin' back to no
+seminary to be laughed at 'cause I don't know beans."
+
+"But you do," laughed Bert, with an attempt to lighten the gloom--"you
+know canned beans."
+
+"They'd laff at me, I know, an' call me a little Norsk." She was ready
+to cry.
+
+"I'll bet they won't, not when they see our new dress an' our new gold
+watch--dress jest the color o' crow's-foot grass, watch thirty carats
+fine. I'd laugh to see 'em callin' my babe names then!"
+
+And so by bribing, coaxing, and lying they finally obtained her tearful
+consent. They might not have succeeded even then had it not been for a
+young lady in Boomtown who was going back to the same school, and who
+offered to take her in charge. But there was hardly a day that she did
+not fling herself down into a chair and cry out:
+
+"I jest ain't goin'. I'm all right here, an' I don't see why you can't
+let me stay here. _I_ ain't made no fuss. Seems as if you thought it
+was fun f'r me to go 'way off there where I don't know anythin' an'
+where I don't know anybody."
+
+But having come to a conclusion, the men were relentless. They hired
+sewing-girls, and skirmished back and forth between Boomtown and the
+farm like mad. Their steady zeal made up for her moody and fitful
+enthusiasm. However, she grew more resigned to the idea as the days
+wore on toward the departure, though her fits of dark and unusual
+musing were alarming to Anson, who feared a desperate retreat at the
+last moment.
+
+He took her over to see Miss Holt one day, but not before he had
+prepared the way.
+
+"I s'pose things are in purty good shape around this seminary?" he
+asked.
+
+"Oh, yes, indeed. There are three large buildings; libraries,
+picture-galleries, and music-rooms. The boarding-halls are carpeted and
+the parlors are really elegant."
+
+"Uh-hum!" commented Anson. "Well, now, I'm goin' to bring my girl over
+to see you, an' I guess it 'u'd be jest as well if you didn't mention
+these fineries an' things. Y' see, she's afraid of all such things. It
+'u'd be better to tell her that things weren't very gorgeous
+there--about like the graded school in Boomtown, say. She ain't used to
+these music-halls an' things. Kind o' make her think St. Peter ain't no
+great shakes, anyhow."
+
+"I see," laughed the quick-witted girl. And she succeeded in removing
+a good deal of Flaxen's dread of the seminary.
+
+"Wal, babe, to-morrow," said Anson, as they were eating supper, and he
+was astonished to see her break out in weeping.
+
+"Why don't you keep harpin' away on that the whole while?" she
+exclaimed. "Can't you leave me alone a minute? Seems to me you're jest
+crazy to git rid o' me."
+
+"Oh, we are," put in Bert. "We're jest lickin' our chops to git back to
+sour flapjacks an' soggy bread. Jest seems as though we couldn't wait
+till to-morrow noon, to begin doing our own cookin' again."
+
+This cleared the air a little, and they spent the rest of the evening
+without saying very much directly upon the departure. The two men sat
+up late after Flaxen had gone to bed. There was the trunk and valise
+which would not let them forget even for a moment what was coming on
+the morrow. Every time Anson looked at her he sighed and tried to
+swallow the lump in his throat.
+
+"Say, Bert, let's let her stay if she wants to," he said suddenly after
+they had been in silence for a long time.
+
+"Don't make a cussed fool of yourself, Ans," growled Bert, who saw that
+heroic measures were necessary. "Go to bed an' don't you say another
+word; we've got to take our medicine like men."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+AN EMPTY HOUSE.
+
+
+Anson was the more talkative of the two next morning, however.
+
+"Come, come, brace up, babe! Anybody 'u'd think we'd lost all the rest
+of our family, when we're only doin' the square thing by our daughter.
+That's all. Why, you'll be as happy as a canary in less'n two weeks.
+Young folks is about the same everywhere, an' you'll git acquainted in
+less'n two jiffies."
+
+They were on the road to Boomtown to put Flaxen on the train. It was
+about the tenth of September, early in the cold, crisp air of a perfect
+morning. In the south there was a vast phantom lake, with duplicate
+cities here and there along the winding shores, which stretched from
+east to west. The grain-stacks stood around so thickly that they seemed
+like walls of a great, low-built town, the mirage bringing into vision
+countless hundreds of them commonly below the horizon.
+
+The smoke of steam threshing-machines mounted into the still air here
+and there, and hung long in a slowly drifting cloud above the land. The
+prairie-lark, the last of the singing birds, whistled softly and
+infrequently from the dry grass. The gulls were streaming south from
+the lakes.
+
+They were driving her to Boomtown to avoid the inquisitive eyes of the
+good people of Belleplain. "I may break down an' blubber," said Anson
+to Bert; "an' if I do, I don't want them cussed idiots standin' around
+laughin'--it's better to go on the C., B. and Q., anyhow."
+
+Notwithstanding his struggle to keep talk going, Anson was unsuccessful
+from the very moment that Belleplain faded to an unsubstantial group of
+shadows and disappeared from the level plain into the air, just as
+Boomtown correspondingly wavered into sight ahead. Silence so profound
+was a restraint on them all, and poor Flaxen with wide eyes looked
+wistfully on the plain that stretched away into unknown regions. She
+was thinking of her poor mother, whom she dimly remembered in the
+horror of that first winter. Naturally of a gay, buoyant disposition,
+she had not dwelt much upon her future or her past; but now that the
+familiar plain seemed slipping from her sight entirely, she was
+conscious of its beauty, and, rapt with the associated emotions which
+came crowding upon her, she felt as though she were leaving the tried
+and true for the unknown and uncertain.
+
+"Boys," she said finally, "do you s'pose I've got any folks?"
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if y' had, babe, somewhere back in the ol'
+country."
+
+"They couldn't talk with me if I could find 'em, could they?"
+
+"I reckon not, 'less you study so hard that you can learn their lingo,"
+said Ans, seeing another opportunity to add a reason for going to
+school.
+
+"Well, boys, that's what I'm goin' to do, an' by an' by we'll go over
+there an' see if we can't find 'em, won't we?"
+
+"That's the talk; now you're gittin' down to business," rejoined Ans.
+
+"I s'pose St. Peter is a good 'eal bigger'n Boomtown," she said
+sighfully, as they neared the "emporium of the sleepy James."
+
+"A little," said the astute Gearheart.
+
+The clanging of the engines and the noise of shouting gave her a
+sinking sensation in the chest, and she clung to Anson's arm as they
+drove past the engine. She was deafened by the hiss of the escaping
+steam of the monster standing motionless, headed toward the east, ready
+to leap on its sounding way.
+
+On the platform they found Miss Holt and a number of other friends
+waiting. There was a great deal of clanging and whanging and scuffling,
+it seemed to the poor, overwrought girl. Miss Holt took her in charge
+at once and tried to keep her cheerful. When they had checked her trunk
+and the train was about ready to start, Ans looked uneasy and fidgeted
+about. Bert looked on, silent and dark. Flaxen, with her new long dress
+and new hat, looked quite the woman, and Miss Holt greeted her as such;
+indeed, she kept so close to her that Anson looked in vain for a chance
+to say something more which was on his mind. Finally, as the train was
+about going, he said hesitatingly:
+
+"Elga, jest a minute." She stared for a moment, then came up to him.
+
+"I didn't want to call y' Flaxen afore her," he explained; "but
+you--ain't--kissed us good-bye." He ended hesitatingly.
+
+The tears were already streaming down her cheeks, and this was too
+much. She flung her arms about his neck and sobbed on his bosom with
+the abandon of girlish grief.
+
+"I don't wan' to go 't all, pap."
+
+"Oh, yes, y' do, Elga; yes; y' do! Don't mind us; we'll be all right.
+I'll have Bert writin' a full half the time. There, kiss me good-bye
+an' git on--Bert here, too."
+
+She kissed him twice through his bristling moustache, and going to Bert
+offered her lips, and then came back to Anson and threw herself against
+his broad, strong breast. She had no one to love but these two. It
+seemed as if she were leaving everything in the world. Anson took her
+on his firm arm and helped her on the car, and followed her till she
+was seated beside Miss Holt.
+
+"Don't cry, babe; you'll make ol' pap feel turrible. He'll break right
+down here afore all these people, an' blubber, if y' don't cheer up.
+Why, you'll soon be as happy as a fly in soup. Good-bye, good-bye!"
+
+The train started, and Anson, brushing his eyes with his great brown
+hand, swung himself off and stood looking at her. As the train passed
+him she rushed to the rear end of the car, and remained there looking
+back at the little station till the sympathetic Miss Holt gently led
+her back to her seat. Then she flattened her round cheek against the
+pane and tried to see the boys. When the last house of the town passed
+by her window she sank back in her seat and sobbed silently.
+
+                    *      *      *      *      *
+
+"I feel as if I'd be'n attendin' my own funeral," said Anson, after
+they had got into their wagon and the train had gone out of sight in
+the haze of the prairie.
+
+"Well, it's pretty tough on that child to go off that way. To her the
+world is all a great mystery. When you an' I go to heaven it won't be
+any greater change for us than this change for Flaxen--every face
+strange, every spot new."
+
+"Wal, she ain't far away but we can look out for her. She ain't poor
+n'r fatherless as long as we live, hey?"
+
+And then silence fell on them. As they were jogging homeward they saw
+the gray gulls rise from the sod and go home to the lake for the night.
+They heard the crickets' evening chorus broaden and deepen to an
+endless and monotonous symphony, while behind fantastic, thin, and
+rainless clouds the sun sank in unspeakable glory of colour. The air,
+perfectly still, was cool almost to frostiness, and, far above, the
+fair stars broke from the lilac and gold of the sun-flushed sky. Lights
+in the farm-houses began to appear.
+
+Once or twice Anson said: "She's about at Summit now. I hope she's
+chirked up."
+
+They met threshing-crews going noisily home to supper. Once they met an
+"outfit," engine, tank, separator, all moving along like a train of
+cars, while every few minutes the red light from the furnace gleamed on
+the man who was stuffing the straw into the furnace-door, bringing out
+his face so plainly that they knew him. As the night grew deeper, an
+occasional owl flapped across the fields in search of mice.
+
+"We're bound to miss her like thunder, Bert; no two ways about that.
+Can't help but miss her on the cookin', hey?"
+
+Bert nodded without looking up. As they came in sight of home at last,
+and saw the house silhouetted against the faintly yellow sky, Ans said
+with a sigh:
+
+"No light an' no singin' there to-night."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"BACHING" IT AGAIN.
+
+
+"The fact is, Flaxen has sp'iled us," laughed Anson, a couple of days
+later, when Bert was cursing the soggy biscuit. "We've got so
+high-toned that we can't stand common cookin'. Time was we'd 'a'
+thought ourselves lucky to git as good as that. Rec'lect them flapjacks
+we ust to make? By mighty! you could shoe a horse with 'em. Say, I wish
+I could jest slip in an' see what she's a-doin' about now, hey?"
+
+"She's probably writin' a letter. She won't do much of anythin' else
+for the first week."
+
+"I hope you're right," said Anson.
+
+They got a queer little letter every Wednesday, each one for several
+weeks pitifully like the others.
+
+    Dear boys i thought i would take my pen in hand to tell you i dont
+    like it one bit the school is just as mene as it can be the girls
+    do laugh at me they call me toe-head. if i catch em right i will
+    fix their heads. They is one girl who i like she is from pipestone
+    she dont know no moren i do she says my dress is pritty--ol nig an
+    the drake all rite i wish i was home. ELGA.
+
+The wish to be home was in all these letters like a sob. The men read
+them over carefully and gravely, and finally Anson would put them away
+in the Bible (bought on Flaxen's account) for safe-keeping.
+
+As the letters improved in form their exultation increased.
+
+"Say, Bert, don't you notice she writes better now? She makes big I's
+now in place o' little ones. Seems 's if she runs the sentence all
+together, though."
+
+"She'll come out all right. You see, she goes into the preparatory
+department, where they teach writin' an' spellin'. You'll see her hand
+improve right along now."
+
+And it did, and she ceased to wail for home and ceased to say that she
+hated her studies.
+
+"I am getting along splendid," she wrote some weeks after this. "I like
+my teacher; her name is Holt. She is just as nice as she can be. She is
+cousin to the one who came with me; I live with her uncle, and I can go
+to soshibles whenever I want to; but the other girls cant. I am feeling
+pretty good, but I wish you boys was here."
+
+She did not wish to be at home this time!
+
+Winter shut down on the broad land again with that implacable,
+remorseless brilliancy of fierce cold which characterises the northern
+plain, stopping work on the farm and bolting all doors. Hardly a day
+that the sun did not shine; but the light was hard, white, glittering,
+and cold, the winds treacherous, the snow wild and restless. There was
+now comparatively little danger of being lost even in the fiercest
+storms, but still life in one of these little cabins had an isolation
+almost as terrible as that of a ship wedged amid the ice-floes of the
+polar regions.
+
+Day after day rising to feed the cattle, night after night bending over
+the sooty stove listening to the ceaseless voice of the wind as it beat
+and brushed, whispered, moaned, and piped or screamed around the
+windows and eaves--this was their life, varied with an occasional visit
+to the store or the post-office, or by the call of a neighbour. It is
+easy to conceive that Flaxen's bright letters were like bursts of
+bird-song in their loneliness. Many of the young men, their neighbours,
+went back East to spend the winter--back to Michigan, Iowa, New York,
+or elsewhere.
+
+"Ans, why don't you go back an' visit your folks?" asked Bert, one day.
+"I'll take care o' things."
+
+"Wal, the fact is, I've be'n away so long they don't care whether I'm
+alive er dead. I ain't got no near relatives except a sister, an' she's
+got all the fam'ly she can 'tend to."
+
+"Same here. We ain't very affectionate, anyway; our fam'ly and I don't
+write. Still I'd like to go back, just to see how they all are."
+
+"Why not go?"
+
+"Well, I don't know. I guess I must one o' these days. I've kind o'
+be'n waitin' till we got into a little better shape. I hate to go back
+poor."
+
+"So do I. It's hard work f'r me to give up beat; I ain't goin' to do it
+yet awhile."
+
+Sometimes a neighbour dropped in during the middle of the day, and on
+pleasant days they would harness up the team and take a drive down to
+the store and the post-office; but mainly they vegetated like a couple
+of huge potatoes in a cellar, as did most of the settlers. There was
+nothing else to do.
+
+It was the worst winter since the first that they had spent in the
+country. The snow seemed never still. It slid, streamed, rose in the
+air ceaselessly; it covered the hay, drifted up the barn door, swept
+the fields bare, and, carrying the dirt of the ploughed fields with it,
+built huge black drifts wherever there was a wind-break, corn-field, or
+other obstruction.
+
+There were moments when Bert was well-nigh desperate. Only contact with
+hard work and cold winds saved him. He was naturally a more ambitious,
+more austere man than Anson. He was not content to vegetate, but longed
+to escape. He felt that he was wasting his life.
+
+It was in December that the letter first came from Flaxen which
+mentioned Will Kendall.
+
+    O boys! I had the best time. We had a party at our house and lots
+    of boys came and girls too, and they were nice, the boys, I mean.
+    Will Kendall he is the nicest feller you ever seen. He has got
+    black eyes and brown hair and a gold watch-chain with a locket with
+    some girl's hair in it, and he said it was his sister's hair, but I
+    told him I didn't believe it, do you? We had cake and popcorn and
+    lasses candy; and Will he took me out to supper.
+
+Bert was reading the letter, and at this point he stopped and raised
+his eyes, and the two men gazed at each other without a word for a long
+time. Then Anson laughed.
+
+"She's gittin' over her homesickness. She's all right now she's got out
+to a sociable."
+
+After that there was hardly a letter that did not mention Kendall in
+some innocent fashion among the other boys and girls who took part in
+the sleigh-rides, parties, and sociables. But the morbidly acute Bert,
+if he saw, said nothing, and Anson did not see.
+
+"Who d' y' s'pose this Kendall is?" asked Anson, one night late in the
+winter, of Gearheart, who was reading the paper while his companion
+reread a letter from Flaxen. "Seems to me she's writin' a good 'eal
+about him lately."
+
+"Oh, some slick little dry-goods clerk or druggist," said Bert, with
+unwarrantable irritation.
+
+"She seems to have a good 'eal to say about him, anyway," repeated
+Anson, in a meditative way.
+
+"Oh, that's natural enough. They are two young folks together," replied
+Bert, with a careless accent, to remove any suspicion which his hasty
+utterance might have raised in Anson's mind.
+
+"Wal, I guess you're right," agreed Anson, after a pause, relieved.
+This relief was made complete when in other letters which came she said
+less and less about Kendall. If they had been more experienced, they
+would have been disturbed by this suspicious fact.
+
+Then again, when Anson wrote asking "What has become of that Kendall
+you wrote so much about?" she replied that he was there, and began
+writing of him again in a careless sort of way, with the craft of woman
+already manifest in the change of front.
+
+Spring came again, and that ever-recurring miracle, the good green
+grass, sprang forth from its covering of ice and snow, up from its
+hiding-place in the dark, cold sod.
+
+Again the two men set to work ferociously at the seeding. Up early in
+the wide, sweet dawn, toiling through the day behind harrow and seeder,
+coming in at noon to a poor and badly cooked meal, hurrying back to the
+field and working till night, coming in at sundown so tired that one
+leg could hardly be dragged by the other--this was their daily life.
+
+One day, as they were eating their supper of sour bread and canned
+beans, Gearheart irritatedly broke out: "Ans, why don't you git
+married? It 'u'd simplify matters a good 'eal if you should. 'Old Russ'
+is no good."
+
+"What's the matter with _your_ gittin' married?" replied Anson,
+imperturbably pinching oil the cooked part of the loaf, skilfully
+leaving the doughy part.
+
+"I ain't on the marry; that's all."
+
+"Neither am I."
+
+"Well, you ought to be."
+
+"Don't see it."
+
+"Well, now, let me show it. We can't go on this way. I'm gittin' so
+poor you can count my ribs through my shirt. Jest think how comfortable
+it would make things! No more awful coffee; no more canned baked beans;
+no more cussed, infernal, everlastin', leathery flapjacks; no more
+soggy bread--confound it!" Here he seized the round inner part of the
+loaf, from which the crust had been flaked, and flung it through the
+open door far down toward the garden.
+
+"Bert! that's the last bit of bread we've got in the house."
+
+"What's the odds? We couldn't eat it."
+
+"We could 'a' baked it over."
+
+"We _could_ eat dog, but we don't," replied Bert gloomily. His temper
+was getting frightful of late.
+
+"We'll be all right when Flaxen comes back," said Ans, laughing.
+
+"Say, now, you've said that a thousand times this winter. You know well
+enough Flaxen's out o' this. We ain't countin' on her," blurted
+Gearheart, just in the mood to say disagreeable things.
+
+"Wha' d' y' mean? Ain't she comin' back in June?"
+
+"Probably; but she won't stay."
+
+"No: that's so. She'll have to go back in September; but that's three
+months, an' we may sell out by that time if we have a good crop.
+Anyway, we'll live high fer a spell. We ought to have a letter from her
+to-night, hadn't we?"
+
+"I'm goin' down to see, if you'll wash the dishes."
+
+"All right. Take a horse."
+
+"No: the horses are tired. I'll foot it."
+
+"Wal, ain't you too?"
+
+"Want anythin' from the store?"
+
+"Yes: git a hunk o' bacon an' some canned corn, tomatoes, an' some
+canned salmon; if y' think we can stand the pressure, bring home a can
+o' peaches."
+
+And so Gearheart started off for town in the dusk, afoot, in order to
+spare the horse, as though he had not himself walked all day long in
+the soft, muddy ground. The wind was soft and moist, and the light of
+the stars coming out in the east fell upon Ins upturned eyes with
+unspeakable majesty. Yet he saw them but dimly. He was dreaming of a
+face which was often in his mind now--a face not unlike Flaxen's, only
+older, more glorified, more womanly. He was asking himself some
+searching questions to-night as his tired limbs dragged themselves over
+the grassy road.
+
+What was he toiling for, anyway? What mattered all this terrible
+tramping to and fro--was it an end or only a means? Would there ever
+come anything like satisfaction of desire? Life for him had been a
+silent, gloomy, and almost purposeless struggle. He had not looked
+forward to anything very definite, though vaguely he had hoped for
+something better.
+
+As his eyes fell upon the twinkling, yellow lights of the village his
+thoughts came back to Flaxen and to the letter which he expected to
+receive from her. He quickened his steps, though his feet were sore and
+his limbs stiff and lame.
+
+The one little street presented its usual Saturday-night appearance.
+Teams were hitched to the narrow plank walk before the battlemented
+wooden stores. Men stood here and there in listless knots, smoking,
+talking of the weather and of seeding, while their wives, surrounded by
+shy children, traded within. Being Saturday night, the saloons were
+full of men, and shouts and the clink of beer mugs could be heard at
+intervals. But the larger crowd was gathered at the post-office:
+uncouth farmers of all nationalities, clerks, land-sharks, lawyers, and
+giggling girls in couples, who took delight in mingling with the crowd.
+
+Judge Sid Balser was over from Boomtown, and was talking expansively to
+a crowd of "leading citizens" about a scheme to establish a horse-car
+line between Boomtown and Belleplain.
+
+Colonel Arran, of the Belleplain _Argus_, in another corner, not ten
+feet away, was saying that the judge was "a scoundrel, a blow-hard, and
+would down his best lover for a pewter cent," to all of which the
+placid judge was accustomed and gave no heed.
+
+Bert paid no attention to the colonel or to the judge, or to any of
+this buzzing. "They are just talking to hear themselves make a noise,
+anyway. They talk about building up the country--they who are a rope
+and a grindstone around the necks of the rest of us, who do the work."
+
+When Gearheart reached his box he found a large, square letter in it,
+and looking at it saw that it was from Flaxen directed to Anson. "Her
+picture, probably," he said as he held it up. As he was pushing rapidly
+out he heard a half-drunken fellow say, in what he thought was an
+inaudible tone:
+
+"There's Gearheart. Wonder what's become of his little Norsk."
+
+Gearheart turned, and pushing through the crowd, thrust his eyes into
+the face of the speaker with a glare that paralysed the poor fool.
+
+"What's become o' your sense?" he snarled, and his voice had in it a
+carnivorous note.
+
+With this warning he turned contemptuously and passed out, leaving the
+discomfited rowdy to settle accounts with his friends. But there was a
+low note in the ruffian's voice, an insinuating inflection, which
+stayed with him all along the way home, like a bad taste in the mouth.
+He saw by the aid of a number of these side-lights of late that Flaxen
+never could come back to them in the old relation; but how could she
+come back?
+
+Gearheart stopped and gazed thoughtfully upward. She must come back as
+the wife of Ans or himself. "Pooh! she is only a child," he said,
+snapping his finger and walking on. But the insistence remained. "She
+is not a child--she is a maiden, soon to be a woman; she has no
+relatives, no home to go to but ours after her two or three years of
+schooling are over. It must still be her home; no breath of scandal
+shall touch her if I can prevent it; and after her two years are
+up"--after a long, motionless reverie he strode forward--"she shall
+choose between us."
+
+There had grown up between the two friends of late a constraint, or, to
+be more exact, Gearheart had held himself in before his friend, had not
+discussed these problems with him at all. "Ans is just like a boy," he
+had said to himself; "he don't seem to understand the case, and I don't
+know as it's my duty to enlighten him; he either feels very sure about
+her, or he has not understood the situation."
+
+He was thinking this now as he strode across the spongy sod toward the
+lighted windows of the shanty. The air was damp and chill, for the ice
+was not yet out of the ponds or swamps of tall grasses. An occasional
+prairie-cock sent forth a muffled, drowsy "boom"; low-hung flights of
+geese, gabbling anxiously, or the less-orderly ducks, with hissing
+wings, swept by overhead, darkly limned against the stars. There was a
+strange charm in the raw air. The weary man almost forgot his pain as
+he drew deep breathings of the night.
+
+It was significant of the restraint that had grown up between him and
+Anson that he held the letter from Flaxen unopened in his hand simply
+because it was directed to his friend. He knew that it was as much to
+him as to Anson, and yet, feeling as he had of late, he would not open
+it, for he would have been angry if Anson had opened one directed to
+him. He simply judged Anson by himself.
+
+The giant was asleep when he entered. His great, shaggy head lay beside
+the lamp on his crossed arms. Bert laid the letter down beside him and
+shook him.
+
+"Hello! got back, hey?" the sleeper said, rousing up sluggishly.
+"Anything?" Then he caught sight of the letter. "Oh, bless her little
+heart! Wonder what it is? Picture, bet my hat!" Here he opened it.
+
+"Gee-whittiker, thunder and turf, gosh-all--Friday!--look a-there!
+Ain't she growed!" he yelled, holding the picture by the corner and
+moving it into all sorts of positions. "That's my little girl--our
+Flaxen; she can't grow so purty but what I'd know her. See that hair
+done up on the top of her head! Look at that dress, an' the
+thingumajigs around her neck! Oh, she's gittin' there, Smith, hey?"
+
+"She's changing pretty fast," said Bert listlessly.
+
+"Changin' fast! Say, ol' man, what's the matter with you? Are y' sick?"
+
+"I'm played out, that's all."
+
+"Darn my skin! I should think y' would be, draggin' all day, an' then
+walkin' all o' four mile to the post-office. Jest lay down on the bed
+there, ol' boy, while I read the letter to yeh. Say, ol' man, don't you
+git up in the mornin' till you please. I'll look after the breakfast,"
+insisted Anson, struck with remorse by the expression on Bert's face.
+"But here's the letter. Short an' sweet."
+
+    DEAR BOYS [Bless the little fist that wrote that!]. I send my
+    picture. I think it is a nice one. The girls say it flatters
+    me, but Will says it don't [What the devil do we care what Will
+    says?]--I guess it does, don't you? I wish I had a picture of
+    you both; I want to show the girls how handsome you are [she
+    means me, of course. No, confound it] how handsome you are both
+    of you. I wish you would send me your pictures both of you. I
+    ain't got much to say. I will write again soon.
+
+    ELGA.
+
+Bert looked at the picture over Anson's shoulder, but did not seem to
+pay much attention to it.
+
+"Wal, I'll go out an' shut the barn door. Nights git cold after the sun
+goes down. You needn't peel the 'taters to-night. We'll bake 'em,
+brussels an' all, to-morrow mornin'."
+
+When Anson had gone, Bert snatched up the picture with great eagerness
+and gazed upon it with a steady, devouring glance. How womanly she
+looked with her hair done up so, and the broad, fair face and full
+bosom.
+
+He heard Anson returning from the barn, and hastily laid the picture
+down, and when Anson entered was apparently dropping off to sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+FLAXEN COMES HOME ON A VACATION.
+
+
+It was in June, just before the ending of the school, that Flaxen first
+began to write about delaying her return. Anson was wofully
+disappointed. He had said all along that she would make tracks for home
+just as soon as school was out, and he had calculated just when she
+would arrive; and on the second day after the close of school for the
+summer he drove down to the train to meet her. She did not come, but he
+got a letter which said that one of her friends wanted her to stay two
+weeks with her, until after the Fourth of July.
+
+"She's an awful nice girl, and we will have a grand time; she has a
+rich father and a piano and a pony and a buggy. It will just be grand."
+
+"I don't blame her none," sighed Anson to Bert. "I don't want her to
+come away while she's enjoyin' herself. It'll be a big change for her
+to come back an' cook f'r us old mossbacks after bein' at school an' in
+good company all these months."
+
+He was plainly disturbed. Her vacation was going to be all too short at
+the best, and he was so hungry for the sight of her! Still, he could
+not blame her for staying, under the circumstances; as he told Bert,
+his feelings did not count. He just wanted her to got all she could out
+of life; "there ain't much, anyway, for us poor devils; but what little
+there is we want her to have."
+
+The Fourth of July was the limit of her stay, and on the sixth,
+seventh, and eighth Anson drove regularly to the evening train to meet
+her.
+
+On the third day another letter came, saying that she would reach home
+the next Monday. With this Anson rode home in triumph. During the next
+few days he went to the barber's and had his great beard shaved off.
+"Made me look so old," he explained, seeing Bert's wild start of
+surprise. "I've be'n carryin' that mop o' hair round so long I'd kind
+o' got into the notion o' bein' old myself. Got a kind o' crick in the
+back, y' know. But I ain't; I ain't ten years older'n you be."
+
+And he was not. His long blond moustache, shaved beard, and clipped
+hair made a new man of him, and a very handsome man, too, in a large
+way. He was curiously embarrassed by Bert's prolonged scrutiny, and
+said jocosely:
+
+"We've got to brace up a little now. Company boarders comin', young
+lady from St. Peter's Seminary, city airs an' all that sort o' thing.
+Don't you let me see you eatin' pie with y'r knife. I'll break the
+shins of any man that feeds himself with anythin' 'cept the
+silver-plated forks I've bought."
+
+Flaxen had been gone almost a year, and a year counts for much at her
+age. Besides, Anson had exaggerated ideas of the amount of learning she
+could absorb in a year at a boarding-seminary, and he had also a very
+vague idea of what "society" was in St. Peter, although he seemed
+suddenly to awake to the necessity of "bracing up" a little and getting
+things generally into shape. He bought a new suit of clothes and a
+second-hand two-seated carriage, notwithstanding the sarcastic
+reflection of his partner, who was making his own silent comment upon
+this thing.
+
+"The paternal business is _auskerspeelt_," he said to himself. "Ans is
+goin' in on shape now. Well, it's all right; nobody's business but
+ours. Let her go, Smith; but they won't be no talk in this neighbourhood
+when they get hold of what's goin' on--oh, no!" He smiled grimly. "We
+can stand it, I guess; but it'll be hard on her. Ans is a little too
+previous. It's too soon to spring this trap on the poor little thing."
+
+They stood side by side on the platform the next Monday when the train
+rolled into the station at Boomtown, panting with fatigue from its long
+run. Flaxen caught sight of Bert first as she sprang off the train, and
+running to him, kissed him without much embarrassment. Then she looked
+around, saying:
+
+"Where's ol' pap? Didn't he----"
+
+"Why, Flaxen, don't ye know me?" he cried out at her elbow.
+
+She knew his voice, but his shaven face, so much more youthful, was so
+strange that she knew him only by his eyes laughing down into hers.
+Nevertheless she kissed him doubtfully.
+
+"Oh, what've you done? You've shaved off your whiskers; you don't look
+a bit natural. I----"
+
+She was embarrassed, almost frightened, at the change in him. He
+"looked so queer"; his fair, untroubled, smiling face and blond
+moustache made him look younger than Bert.
+
+"Nev' mind that! She'll grow again if y' like it better. Get int' this
+new buggy--it's ours. They ain't no flies on us to-day; not many," said
+Ans in high glee, elaborately assisting her to the carriage, not
+appreciating the full meaning of the situation.
+
+As they rode home he was extravagantly gay. He sat beside her, and she
+drove, wild with delight at the prairie, the wheat, the gulls,
+everything.
+
+"Ain't no dust on our clo'es," said Ans, coughing, winking at Bert, and
+brushing off with an elaborately finical gesture an imaginary fleck
+from his knee and elbow. "Ain't we togged out? I guess nobody said
+'boo' to us down to St. Peter, eh?"
+
+"You like my clo'es?" said Flaxen, with charming directness.
+
+"You bet! They're scrumptious."
+
+"Well, they ought to be; they're my best, except my white dress. I
+thought you'd like 'em; I wore 'em a-purpose."
+
+"Like 'em? They're--you're jest as purty as a red lily er a wild rose
+in the wheat--ahem! Ain't she, Bert, ol' boy? We're jest about starvin'
+to death, we are."
+
+"I knew you'd be. What'll I stir up for supper? Biscuits?"
+
+"Um, um! Say, what y' s'pose I've got to go with 'em?"
+
+"Honey."
+
+"Oh, you're too sharp," wailed Ans, while Flaxen went off into a peal
+of laughter. "Say, Bert's be'n in the _damnedest_--excuse me--plaguedest
+temper fer the last two munce as you ever did see."
+
+While this chatter was going on Bert sat silent and unsmiling on the
+back seat. He was absorbed in seeing the exquisite colour that played
+in her check and the equally charming curves of her figure. She was
+well dressed and was wonderfully mature. He was saying to himself: "Ans
+ain't got no more judgment than a boy. We can't keep that girl here.
+More'n that, the girl never'll be contented again, unless----" He did
+not allow himself to go farther. He dared not even think farther.
+
+They had a merry time that night, quite like old times. The biscuits
+were light and flaky, the honey was delightsome, and the milk and
+butter (procured specially) were fresh. They shouted in laughter as
+Flaxen insisted on their eating potatoes with a fork, and opposed the
+use of the knife in scooping up the honey from their plates! Even the
+saturnine Bert forgot his gloom and laughed too, as Ans laboriously
+dipped his honey with a fork, and, finally growing desperate, split a
+biscuit in half, and in the good old boyish way sopped it in the honey.
+
+"There, that's the Christian way of doing things!" he exulted, while
+Flaxen laughed. How bright she was--how strange she acted! There were
+moments when she embarrassed them by some new womanly grace or
+accomplishment, some new air which she had caught from her companions
+or teachers at school. It was truly amazing how much she had absorbed
+outside of her regular studies. She indeed was no longer a girl; she
+was a young woman, and to them a beautiful one.
+
+Not a day passed without some added surprise which made Anson exult and
+say, "She's gettin' her money's worth down there--no two ways about
+that."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+FLAXEN GROWS RESTLESS.
+
+
+But as the excitement of getting back died out, poor Flaxen grew
+restless, moody, and unaccountable. Before, she had always been the
+same cheery, frank, boyish creature. As Bert said, "You know where to
+find her." Now she was full of strange tempers and moods. She would
+work most furiously for a time, and then suddenly fall dreaming,
+looking away out on the shimmering plain toward the east.
+
+At Bert's instigation, a middle-aged widow had been hired, at a
+fabulous price, to come and do the most of the work for them, thus
+releasing Flaxen from the weight of the hard work, which perhaps was
+all the worse for her. Hard work might have prevented the unbearable,
+sleepless pain within. She hated the slatternly Mrs. Green at once for
+her meddling with her affairs, though the good woman meant no offence.
+She was jocose in the broad way of middle-aged persons, to whom a
+love-affair is legitimate food for raillery.
+
+But Gearheart's keen eye was on Flaxen as well. He saw how eagerly she
+watched for the mail on Tuesdays and Fridays, and how she sought a
+quiet place at once in order to read and dream over her letters. She
+was restless a day or two before a certain letter came, with an eager,
+excited, expectant air. Then, after reading it, she was absent-minded,
+flighty in conversation, and at last listlessly uneasy, moving slowly
+about from one thing to another, in a kind of restless inability to
+take continued interest in anything.
+
+All this, if it came to the attention of Anson at all, was laid to the
+schooling the girl had had.
+
+"Of course it'll seem a little slow to you, Flaxie, but harvestin' is
+comin' on soon, an' then things'll be a little more lively."
+
+But Gearheart was not so slow-witted. He had had sisters and girl
+cousins, and knew "the symptoms," as Mrs. Green would have put it. He
+noticed that when Flaxen read her letters to them there was one which
+she carefully omitted. He knew that this was the letter which meant the
+most to her. He saw how those letters affected her, and thought he had
+divined in what way.
+
+One day when Flaxen, after reading her letters, sprang up and ran into
+her bedroom; her eyes filled with sudden tears, Gearheart crooked his
+finger at Ans, and they went out to the barn together.
+
+It was nearly one o'clock on an intolerable day peculiar to the Dakota
+plain. A frightfully hot, withering, and powerful wind was abroad. The
+thermometer stood nearly a hundred in the shade, and the wind, so far
+from being a relief, was suffocating because of its heat and the dust
+it swept along with it.
+
+The heavy-headed grain and russet grass writhed and swirled as if in
+agony, and dashed high in waves of green and yellow. The corn-leaves
+had rolled up into long cords like the lashes of a whip, and beat
+themselves into tatters on the dry, smooth spot their blows had made
+beneath them; they seemed ready to turn to flame in the pitiless,
+furnace-like blast. Everywhere in the air was a silver-white,
+impalpable mist, which gave to the cloudless sky a whitish cast. The
+glittering gulls were the only living things that did not move
+listlessly and did not long for rain. They soared and swooped, exulting
+in the sounding wind; now throwing themselves upon it, like a swimmer,
+then darting upward with miraculous ease, to dip again into the
+shining, hissing, tumultuous waves of the grass.
+
+Along the roads prodigious trains of dust rose hundreds of feet in the
+air, and drove like vast caravans with the wind. So powerful was the
+blast that men hesitated about going out with carriages, and everybody
+watched feverishly, expecting to see fire break out on the prairie and
+sweep everything before it. Work in the fields had stopped long before
+dinner, and the farmers waited, praying or cursing, for the wheat was
+just at the right point to be blighted.
+
+As the two men went out to the shed side by side, they looked out on
+the withering wheat-stalks and corn-leaves with gloomy eyes.
+
+"Another day like this, an' they won't be wheat enough in this whole
+county to make a cake," said Anson, with a calm intonation, which after
+all betrayed the anxiety he felt. They sat down in the wagon-shed near
+the horses' mangers. They listened to the roar of the wind and the
+pleasant sound of the horses eating their hay, a good while before
+either of them spoke again. Finally Bert said sullenly:
+
+"We can't put up hay such a day as this. You couldn't haul it home
+under lock an' key while this infernal wind is blowin'. It's gittin'
+worse, if anythin'."
+
+Anson said nothing, but waited to hear what Bert had brought him out
+here for. Bert speared away with his knife at a strip of board. Anson
+sat on a wagon-tongue, his elbows on his knees, looking intently at the
+grave face of his companion. The horses ground cheerily at the hay.
+
+"Ans, we've got to send Flaxen back to St. Peter; she's so homesick she
+don't know what to do."
+
+Ans' eyes fell.
+
+"I know it. I've be'n hopin' she'd git over that, but it's purty tough
+on her, after bein' with the young folks in the city f'r a year, to
+come back here on a farm." He did not finish for a moment. "But she
+can't stand it. I'd looked ahead to havin' her here till September, but
+I can't stand it to see her cryin' like she did to-day. We've got to
+give up the idee o' her livin' here. I don't see any other way but to
+sell out an' go back East somewhere."
+
+Bert saw that Anson was still ignorant of the real state of affairs,
+but thought he would say nothing for the present.
+
+"Yes: that's the best thing we can do. We'll send her right back, an'
+take our chances on the crops. We can git enough to live on an' keep
+her at school, I guess."
+
+They sat silent for a long time, while the wind tore round the shed,
+Bert spearing at the stick, and Anson watching the hens as they vainly
+tried to navigate in the wind. Finally Anson spoke:
+
+"The fact is, Bert, this ain't no place f'r a woman, anyway--such a
+woman as Flaxen's gittin' to be. They ain't nothin' goin' on, nothin'
+to see 'r hear. You can't expect a girl to be contented with this
+country after she's seen any other. No trees; no flowers; jest a lot o'
+little shanties full o' flies."
+
+"I knew all that, Ans, a year ago. I knew she'd never come back here,
+but I jest said it's the thing to do--give her a chance, if we don't
+have a cent; now let's go back to the house an' tell her she needn't
+stay here if she don't want to."
+
+"Wha' d' ye s'pose was in that letter?"
+
+"Couldn't say. Some girl's description of a pic-nic er somethin'." Bert
+was not yet ready to tell what he knew. When they returned to the house
+the girl was still invisible, in her room. Mrs. Green was busy clearing
+up the dinner-dishes.
+
+"I don't know's I ever see such a wind back to Michigan. Seems as if it
+'u'd blow the hair off y'r head."
+
+"Oh, this ain't nothin'. This is a gentle zephyr. Wait till y' see a
+wind."
+
+"Wal, I hope to goodness I won't never see a wind. Zephyrs is all I can
+mortally stand."
+
+Anson went through the little sitting-room and knocked on Flaxen's
+door.
+
+"Flaxie, we want to talk to yeh." There was no answer, and he came back
+and sat down. Bert pointed to the letter which Flaxen had flung down on
+the table. The giant took it, folded it up, and called, "Here's y'r
+letter, babe."
+
+The door opened a little, and a faint, tearful voice said:
+
+"Read it, if ye want to, boys." Then the door closed tightly again, and
+they heard her fling herself on the bed. Anson handed the letter to
+Bert, who read it in a steady voice.
+
+    DEAR DARLING: I have good news to tell you. My uncle was out
+    from Wisconsin to see me and he was pleased with what I had
+    done, and he bought out Mr. Ford, and gave me the whole half
+    interest. I'm to pay him back when I please. Ain't that
+    glorious? Now we can get married right off, can't we, darling?
+    So you just show this letter to your father, and tell him how
+    things stand. I've got a good business. The drug-store is worth
+    $1,200 a year--my half--but knock off fifty per cent and we
+    could live nicely. Don't you think so? I want to see you so
+    bad, and talk things over. If you can't come back soon, I will
+    come on. Write soon.
+
+    Yours till death,
+
+    WILL.
+
+From the first word Anson winced, grew perplexed, then suffered. His
+head drooped forward on his hands, his elbows rested on his vast,
+spread knees. He drew his breath with a long, grieving gasp. Bert read
+on steadily to the end, then glanced at his companion with a deep frown
+darkening his face; but he was not taken by surprise. He had not had
+paternal affection change to the passion of a lover only to have it
+swept down like a half-opened flower. For the first time in his life
+Anson writhed in mental agony. He saw it all. It meant eternal
+separation. It meant a long ache in his heart which time could scarcely
+deaden into a tolerable pain.
+
+Gearheart rose and went out, unwilling to witness the agony of his
+friend and desiring himself to be alone. Anson sat motionless, with his
+hands covering his wet eyes, going over the past and trying to figure
+the future.
+
+He began in that storm: felt again the little form and face of the
+wailing child; thought of the frightful struggle against the wind and
+snow; of the touch of the little hands and feet; of her pretty prattle
+and gleeful laughter; then of her helpful and oddly-womanish ways as
+she grew older; of the fresh, clear voice calling him "pap" and
+ordering him about with a roguish air; of her beauty now, when for the
+first time he had begun to hope that she might be something dearer to
+him.
+
+How could he live without her? She had grown to be a part of him. He
+had long ceased to think of the future without her. As he sat so, the
+bedroom door opened, and Flaxen's tearful face looked out at him. He
+did not seem to hear, and she stole up to him and, putting her arm
+around his neck, laid her cheek on his head--a dear, familiar, childish
+gesture, used when she wished to propitiate him. He roused himself and
+put his arm about her waist, tried to speak, and finally said in a
+sorry attempt at humor, wofully belied by the tears on his face and the
+choking in his throat:
+
+"You tell that feller--if he wants ye, to jest come an'--git ye--that's
+all!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+FLAXEN SAYS GOOD-BYE.
+
+
+Elga went back to her friends, the Holts, in the course of a week. It
+hurt Anson terribly to see how eager she was to get away, and he grew a
+little bitter--a quality of temper Bert did not know he possessed.
+
+"What's that little whipper-snapper ever done for her, that she should
+leave us in the shade f'r him--f'rget us an' all we've done f'r her,
+an' climb out an' leave us just at his wink? It beats me, but it's all
+right. I don't blame her if she feels so--only it does seem queer, now
+don't it?"
+
+"It does, that's a fact--'specially the idea of leaving us for a thing
+like that."
+
+After arriving at a complete understanding of the matter, they said no
+more about it, but went to work to make everything as pleasant for
+Flaxen as possible. Again they rode down to the station with her, down
+past the wide, level fields of grain which the blazing sun had ripened
+prematurely. Again they parted from her at the train, but this time the
+girl was eager to go; and yet a peculiar feeling of sadness was mixed
+with her eagerness to be off.
+
+"Now, boys, you'll come down just as soon as you can this fall, won't
+you?" she said, tearfully, as they stood in the aisle of the car. "I
+wish't you'd sell out an' come back there an' live--I want you to."
+
+"Well, we'll try," Anson said, speaking with difficulty, the lump in
+his throat was so big and so dry.
+
+They rode home in silence again, but this time there was something
+darker and more sullen in their thoughts.
+
+"Well, Ans, that settles it. We're orphaned again, sure." He tried to
+give a little touch of jocoseness to it, but failed miserably.
+
+"Yes," Anson sighed deeply, "we'll haf t' stand it, I s'pose, but it's
+tough."
+
+It was hard, but it would have been harder had not the rush and push of
+the harvest come upon them just as it did. They never spoke of the
+matter again, except as a matter settled, till they received a letter
+from the young people asking their consent to an early marriage.
+
+They both read the letter, and then Anson said, without raising his
+eyes:
+
+"Well, what d' you think of it?"
+
+"Oh, we might as well say yes," replied Bert irritably.
+
+"But she's so young."
+
+"She seems so to us, but my mother was married at fifteen. If she's
+going to leave us, why, the sooner she has a home the better, I
+s'pose."
+
+"I s'pose you're right. But I'd rather have 'em put it off a year."
+
+"Oh, a year wouldn't make any difference, and besides, you can't stop
+the thing now. She's out of our hands."
+
+They wrote giving their consent, and the wedding was fixed for late
+September to enable the fall's work to be put out of the way. For
+Elga's sake they bought new suits and hats before starting on their
+trip, though the harvest hardly justified any extravagance.
+
+Under other circumstances they would have rejoiced over the trip, for
+it was carrying them back to the gleam of leaf-dappled streams and
+waving trees and deep, cool forests. It made their nostrils dilate with
+pleasure as they whirled past fern-filled ravines, out of which the
+rivulets stole with stealthy circuits under mossy rocks. They were both
+forest-born, and it was like getting back home out of a strange desert
+country to come back into "the States."
+
+St. Peter was a small town, situated on the steep bank of a broad
+river--that is to say, the business street was there, but the seminary
+and the residence part of the town was on a high and beautiful plateau.
+Tho country was well diversified with wood and prairie.
+
+Kendall and Elga met them at the station. Elga with flushed face was
+searching the car-windows with eager glance, when Anson appeared on the
+platform. The quick rush she made for him drove out all his bitterness.
+It made him understand that she loved him as if he were her father.
+
+She greeted Bert with a little less warmth, and chattering with joy she
+led the way up the street with Anson. She had a hundred things to tell
+him, and he listened in a daze. She seemed so different from his
+Flaxen. Bert walked behind with Kendall, who did not impress him
+favourably.
+
+He was a harmless little creature enough--small, a little inclined to
+bow-legs, and dudish in manner and dress. His hair was smoothed till it
+shone like ebony, and he wore the latest designs in standing collars,
+high on his slim neck. His hands were beautifully small and white and
+held several rings. He had the manners of a dry-goods clerk.
+
+"He can't abuse her, that's one good thing about the whelp," thought
+Bert as he crushed the young bridegroom's hand in his brown palm, just
+to see him cringe.
+
+As for Kendall, he was a little afraid of these big fellows, so sullen
+and strong; and he tried his best to please them, chirping away
+brightly upon all kinds of things, ending up by telling them his
+business plans.
+
+"We're one o' the best cities on the river. Couldn't be a better place
+fer a business stand, don't you see? And we're getting to the front
+with our wholesale department (of course--ha! ha! my wife's father
+ought to know how I'm getting on), so you're welcome to look over my
+books. Our trade is a cash trade so far as our retail trade goes, and
+we're mighty careful who gets tick from us on the wholesale trade.
+We're developing a great business."
+
+Bert and Anson made no replies to his chatter, and he pattered along by
+Anson's side like a small boy, showing them the town and its beauties.
+Anson inwardly despised the little man, but held it a sort of treason
+to think so, and tried to look upon him kindly.
+
+The wedding took place in the house of the Holt family, and was in
+charge of Miss Holt, Elga's teacher. Kendall's parents could not be
+present, which was a great disappointment to Elga, but Will was
+secretly glad of it. His father was a very crusty and brutal old
+fellow, and he would not have fitted in smoothly beside Bert and Anson,
+who were as uncomfortable as men could well be. Both wished to avoid
+it, but dared not object.
+
+Anson stood bravely through the ceremony as the father of the bride,
+and bore himself with his usual massive, rude dignity. But he inwardly
+winced as he saw Elga, looking very stately and beautiful in her
+bride's veil, towering half a head above the sleek-haired little clerk.
+Not a few of the company smiled at the contrast, but she had no other
+feeling than perfect love and happiness.
+
+When the ceremony was over and Anson looked around for Bert, he was
+gone. He couldn't stand the pressure of the crowd and the whispered
+comments, and had slipped away early in the evening.
+
+Among the presents which were laid on the table in the dining-room was
+a long envelope addressed to Mrs. Will Kendall. It contained a deed for
+a house and lot in one of the most desirable parts of the suburbs. It
+was from Gearheart, but there was no other written word. This gift
+meant the sale of his claim in Dakota.
+
+When Anson got back to the hotel that night, wondering and alarmed at
+his partner's absence, he found a letter from him. It was savage and
+hopeless.
+
+    This climate is getting too frigid for my lungs. I'm going to
+    emigrate to California. I made a mistake: I ought to have gone in
+    for stand-up collars, shiny hair, and bow-legs. You'd better skip
+    back to Dakota and sell your claim. Keep my share of the stock and
+    tools; it ain't worth bothering about. Don't try to live there
+    alone, old man. If you can't sell, marry. Don't let that girl break
+    you all up too. We are all fools, but some can get over it quicker
+    than others.
+
+    If that little bow-legged thing gets under your feet or abuses her,
+    jest get your toe under him and hoist him over into the alley.
+
+    Good-bye and good luck, old man.
+
+    BERT.
+
+And the next day the doubly bereaved man started on his lonely journey
+back to the Dakota claim, back to an empty house, with a gnawing pain
+in his heart and a constriction like an iron band about his throat;
+back to his broad fields to plod to and fro alone.
+
+As he began to realize it all and to think how terrible was this loss,
+he laid his head down on the car-seat before him and cried. His first
+great trial had come to him, and meeting it like a man, he must now
+weep like a woman.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+FLAXEN'S GREAT NEED.
+
+
+Flaxen wrote occasionally, during the next year, letters all too short
+and too far between for the lonely man toiling away on his brown farm.
+These letters were very much alike, telling mainly of how happy she
+was, and of what she was going to do by and by, on Christmas or
+Thanksgiving. Once she sent a photograph of herself and husband, and
+Anson, after studying it for a long time, took a pair of shears and cut
+the husband off, and threw him into the fire.
+
+"That fellow gives me the ague," he muttered.
+
+Bert did not write, and there was hardly a night that Ans lay down on
+his bed that he did not wonder where his chum was, especially as the
+winter came on unusually severe, reminding him of that first winter in
+the Territory. Day after day he spent alone in his house, going out
+only to feed the cattle or to get the mail. The sad wind was always in
+his ears. But with the passage of time the pain in his heart lost its
+intensity.
+
+One day he got a letter from Flaxen that startled and puzzled him. It
+was like a cry for help, somehow.
+
+"Dear old pap, I wish you was here," and then in another place came the
+piteous cry, "Oh, I wish I had some folks!"
+
+All night long that cry rang in the man's head with a wailing, falling
+cadence like the note of a lost little prairie-chicken.
+
+"I wonder what that whelp has been doin' now. If he's begun to abuse
+her I'll wring his neck. She wants me an' da'sn't ask me to come. Poor
+chick, I'll be pap an' mam to ye, both," he said at last, with sudden
+resolution.
+
+The day after the receipt of this letter a telegram was handed to him
+at the post-office, which he opened with trembling hands:
+
+    ANSON WOOD: Your daughter is ill. Wants you. Come at once.
+
+    DR. DIETRICH.
+
+He got into his wagon mechanically and lashed his horses into a run. He
+must get home and arrange about his stock and catch the seven o'clock
+train. His mind ran the round of the possibilities in the case until it
+ached with the hopeless fatigue of it. When he got upon the train for
+an all-night ride, he looked like a man suffering some great physical
+pain.
+
+He sat there all night in a common seat--he could not afford to pay for
+a sleeper; sat and suffered the honest torture that can come to a
+man--to sit and think the same dread, apprehensive wondering thoughts;
+to strain at the seat as if to push the train faster, and to ache with
+the desire to fly like the eagle. He tried to be patient, but he could
+only grow numb with the effort.
+
+A glorious winter sun was beginning to light up the frost foliage of
+the maples lining St. Peter's streets when Anson, stiff with cold and
+haggard with a night of sleepless riding, sprang off the train and
+looked about him. The beauty of the morning made itself felt even
+through his care. These rows of resplendent maples, heavy with
+iridescent frost, were like fairy-land to him, fresh from the treeless
+prairie. As he walked on under them, showers of powdered rubies and
+diamonds fell down upon him; the colonnades seemed like those leading
+to some enchanted palace, such as he had read of in boyhood. Every
+shrub in the yards was similarly decked, and the snug cottages were
+like the little house which he had once seen at the foot of the
+Christmas-tree in a German church years before.
+
+Feet crunched along cheerily on the sidewalks, bells of dray-teams were
+beginning to sound, and workmen to whistle.
+
+Anson was met at the door by a hard-faced, middle-aged woman.
+
+"How's my girl?" he asked.
+
+"Oh, she's nicely. Walk in."
+
+"Can I see her now?"
+
+"She's sleepin'; I guess you better wait a little while till after
+breakfast."
+
+"Where's Kendall?" was his next question.
+
+"I d'n' know. Hain't seen 'im sence yesterday. He don't amount to much,
+anyway, and in these cases there ain't no dependin' on a boy like that.
+It's nachel fer girls to call on their mothers an' fathers in such
+cases."
+
+Anson was about to ask her what the trouble was with his girl, when she
+turned away. She could not be dangerously ill; anyway, there was
+comfort in that.
+
+After he had eaten a slight breakfast of bad coffee and yellow
+biscuits, Mrs. Stickney came back.
+
+"She's awake an' wants to see yeh. Now don't get excited. She ain't
+dangerous."
+
+Anson was alarmed and puzzled at her manner. Her smile mystified him.
+
+"What is the matter?" he demanded.
+
+Her reply was common enough, but it stopped him with his foot on the
+threshold. He understood at last. The majesty and mystery of birth was
+like a light in his face, and dazzled him. He was awed and exalted at
+the same time.
+
+"Open the door; I want to see her," he said in a new tone.
+
+As they entered the darkened chamber he heard his girl's eager cry.
+
+"Is that you, pap?" wailed her faint, sweet voice.
+
+"Yes: it's me, Flaxie." He crossed the room and knelt by the bed. She
+flung her arms round his neck.
+
+"O pappy! pappy! I wanted you. Oh, my poor mamma! O pap, I don't like
+her," she whispered, indicating the nurse with her eyes. "O pap, I hate
+to think of mother lying there in the snow--an' Bert--where is Bert,
+pap? Perhaps he's in the blizzard too----"
+
+"She's a little flighty," said the nurse in her matter-of-fact tone.
+
+Anson groaned as he patted the pale cheek of the sufferer.
+
+"Don't worry, Flaxie; Bert's all right. He'll come home soon. Why don't
+you send for the doctor?" he said to the nurse.
+
+"He'll be here soon. Don't worry over that," indicating Flaxen, who was
+whispering to herself. "They of'n do that."
+
+"Do you s'pose I can find my folks if I go back to Norway?" she said to
+Anson a little after.
+
+"Yes: I guess so, little one. When you get well, we'll try an' see."
+
+"Perhaps if I found my aunt she'd look like mamma, an' I'd know then
+how mamma looked, wouldn't I? Perhaps if the wheat is good this year we
+can go back an' find her, can't we?" Then her words melted into a moan
+of physical pain, and the nurse said:
+
+"Now I guess you'd better go an' see if you can't hurry the doctor up.
+Yes: now he's got to go," she went on to Flaxen, drowning out her voice
+and putting her imploring hands back upon the bed.
+
+Anson saw it all now. In her fear and pain she had turned to him--poor,
+motherless little bird--forgetting her boy-husband or feeling the need
+of a broader breast and stronger hand. It was a beautiful trust, and as
+the great, shaggy man went out into the morning he was exalted by the
+thought. "My little babe--my Flaxen!" he said with unutterable love and
+pity.
+
+Again his mind ran over the line of his life--the cabin, the dead
+woman, the baby face nestling at his throat, the girl coming to him
+with her trials and triumphs. His heart swelled so that he could not
+have spoken, but deep in his throat he muttered a dumb prayer. And how
+he suffered that day, hearing her babble mixed with moanings every time
+the door opened. Once the doctor said:
+
+"It's no use for you to stand here, Wood. It only makes you suffer and
+don't help her a particle."
+
+"It _seems_ 's if it helped her, an' so--I guess I'll stay. She may
+call for me, an' if she does," he said resolutely, "I'm goin' in,
+doctor. How is she now?"
+
+"She's slightly delirious now, but still she knows you're here. She now
+and then speaks of you, but doesn't call for you."
+
+But she did call for him, and he went in, and kneeling by her side he
+talked to her and held her hands, stroked her hair and soothed her as
+he need to when a little child unable to speak save in her pretty
+Norseland tongue, and at last when opiates were given, and he rose and
+staggered from the room, it seemed as though he had lived years.
+
+So weary was he that, when the doctor came out and said, "You may go to
+sleep now," he dropped heavily on a lounge and fell asleep almost with
+the motion. Even the preparations for breakfast made by the
+hoarse-voiced servant-girl did not wake him, but the drawling, nasal
+tone of Kendall did. He sat up and looked at the oily little clerk. It
+was after seven o'clock.
+
+"Hello!" said Kendall, "when d' you get in?"
+
+"Shortly after you went out," said Anson in reply.
+
+Kendall felt the rebuke, and as he twisted his cuffs into place said,
+"Well, y' see I couldn't do no good--a man ain't any good in such
+cases, anyway--so I just thought I'd run down to St. Paul an' do a
+little buying."
+
+Anson turned away and went into the kitchen to wash his face and to
+comb his hair, glad to get rid of the sight of Kendall for a moment.
+Mrs. Stickney was toasting some bread.
+
+"She's awake an' wants to see you when you woke up. It's a girl--thought
+I'd tell ye--yes: she's comfortable. Say, 'tween you an' me, a man 'at
+'u'd run off--waal----" she ended, expressively glancing at Kendall.
+
+Once more Anson caught his breath as he entered the darkened chamber.
+He was a rough, untaught man, but there was something in him that made
+that room holy and mysterious. But the figure on the bed was tranquil
+now, and the voice, though weak and low, was Flaxen's own.
+
+He stopped as his eyes fell on her. She was no longer a girl. The
+majesty of maternity was on her pale face and in her great eyes. A
+faint, expectant smile was on her lips; her eyes were fixed on his face
+as she drew the cover from the little red, weirdly-wrinkled face at her
+throat.
+
+Before he could speak, and while he was looking down at the mite of
+humanity, Kendall stepped into the room.
+
+"Hello, Ellie! How are----"
+
+A singular revulsion came out on her face. She turned to Anson. "Make
+him go 'way; I don't want him."
+
+"All right," said Kendall cheerfully, glad to escape.
+
+"Isn't she beautiful?" the mother whispered. "Does she look like me?"
+she asked artlessly.
+
+"She's beautiful to me because she's yours, Flaxie," replied Anson,
+with a delicacy all the more striking because of the contrast with his
+great frame and hard, rough hands. "But there, my girl, go to sleep
+like baby, an' don't worry any more."
+
+"You ain't goin' away while I'm sick?" she asked, following him with
+her eyes, unnaturally large.
+
+"I won't never go 'way again if you don't want me to," he replied.
+
+"Oh, I'm so glad!" she sighed restfully.
+
+He was turning to go when she wailed reproachfully, "Pap, you didn't
+kiss baby!"
+
+Anson turned and came back. "She's sleepin', an' I thought it wasn't
+right to kiss a girl without she said so."
+
+This made Flaxen smile, and Anson went out with a lighter heart than he
+had had for two years. Kendall met him outside and said confidentially:
+
+"I don't s'pose it was just the thing for me to do; but--confound it! I
+never could stand a sick-room, anyway. I couldn't do any good,
+anyway--just been in the way. She'll get over her mad in a few days.
+Think so?"
+
+But she did not. Her singular and sudden dislike of him continued, and
+though she passively submitted to his being in the room, she would not
+speak a word to him nor look at him as long as she could avoid it; and
+when he approached the baby or took it in his arms a jealous frown came
+on her face.
+
+As for Anson, he grew to hate the sound of that little chuckle of
+Kendall's; the part in the man's hair and the hang of his cut-away coat
+made him angry. The trim legs, a little bowed, the big cuffs hiding the
+small, cold hands, and the peculiar set of his faultless collar, grew
+daily more insupportable.
+
+"Say, looky here, Kendall," said he in desperation one day, "I wish you
+didn't like me quite so well. We don't hitch first rate--at least, I
+don't. Seems to me you're neglectin' your business too much."
+
+He was going to tell him to keep away, but he relented as he looked
+down at the harmless little man, with his thin, boyish face.
+
+"Oh, my business is all right. Gregory looks after it mostly, anyhow.
+But, I say, if you wanted to go into the dray business, there's a
+first-class opening now. Clark wants to sell."
+
+It ended in Anson seeing Clark and buying out his line of drays,
+turning in his claim toward the payment--a transaction which made
+Flaxen laugh for joy, for she had not felt certain before that he would
+remain in St. Peter. She was getting about the house now, looking very
+wifely in her long, warm wraps, her slow motions contrasting strongly
+with the old restless, springing steps Anson remembered so well.
+
+Night after night, as he sat beside the fire and held baby, listening
+to the changed voice of his girl and watching the grave, new
+expressions of her face, the tooth of time took hold upon him
+powerfully, and he would feel his shaggy head and think, "I'll soon be
+gray, soon be gray!" while the little one cooed, and sprang, and pulled
+at his beard, which had grown long again and had white hairs in it.
+
+Kendall spent most of his time at the store, or downtown somewhere, and
+so all of those long, delicious winter evenings were Flaxen's and
+Anson's. And his enjoyment of them was pathetic. The cheerful little
+sitting-room, the open grate, the gracious, ever-growing womanliness of
+Elga, the pressure of soft little limbs; and the babble of a liquid
+baby language, were like the charm of an unexpected Indian-summer day
+between two gray November storms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+KENDALL STEPS OUT.
+
+
+One night Kendall did not come home, but as he had been talking of
+going to St. Paul they were not disturbed about it--in fact, they both
+took but very mild interest in his coming or going. In the morning,
+while they were at breakfast, there came a knock at the door.
+
+"Come in," shouted Anson in the Western way, not rising.
+
+McDaniel, the county sheriff, entered.
+
+"Where's Kendall?" he asked without ceremony.
+
+"I don't know; went away yesterday."
+
+The sheriff looked at his companion. "Skipped between two days."
+
+"What's up?" asked Anson, while Elga stared and baby reached slyly for
+the sugar-bowl.
+
+"Nothing," the sheriff said in a tone which meant everything. "Come out
+here," he said to Anson. Anson went out with him, and he told him that
+Kendall had purchased goods on credit and gambled the money away, and
+was ruined.
+
+His stock of goods was seized, and the house was saved only through the
+firmness of Anson.
+
+Flaxen shut her lips and said nothing, and he could not read her
+silence. One day she came to him with a letter.
+
+"Read that!" she exclaimed scornfully. He saw that it was dated from
+Eau Claire, Wisconsin:
+
+    DEAR DARLING WIFE: I'm all right here with father. It was all
+    Gregory's fault--he was always betting on something. I'm coming
+    back as soon as the old man can raise the money to pay Fitch.
+    Don't worry about me. They can't take the house, anyway. You
+    might rent the house, sell the furniture on the sly, and come
+    back here. The old man will give me another show. I don't owe
+    more than a thousand dollars, anyway. Write soon. Your loving
+
+    WILL.
+
+She did not need to say what she thought of the advice the little
+villain gave.
+
+Anson went quietly on with his work, making a living for himself and
+Flaxen and baby. It never occurred to either of them that any other
+arrangement was necessary. Kendall wrote once or twice a month for
+awhile, saying each time, "I'll come back and settle up," and asking
+her to come to him; but she did not reply, and never referred to him
+outside her home, and when others inquired after him she replied
+evasively:
+
+"He's in Wisconsin somewhere; I don't know where."
+
+"Is he coming back?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+She often spoke of Bert, and complained of his silence. Once she said:
+
+"I guess he's forgot us, pap."
+
+"I guess not. More likely he's thinkin' we've fergot him. He'll turn up
+some bright mornin' with a pocketful o' rocks. He ain't no spring
+chicken, Bert ain't." ("All the same, I wish't he'd write," Anson said
+to himself.)
+
+                    *      *      *      *      *
+
+The sad death of Kendall came to them without much disturbing force. He
+had been out of their lives so long that when Anson came in with the
+paper and letter telling of the accident, and with his instinctive
+delicacy left her alone to read the news, Flaxen was awed and saddened,
+but had little sense of personal pain and loss.
+
+"Young Kendall," the newspaper went on under its scare-heads, "was on a
+visit to La Crosse, and while skating with a party on the bayou, where
+the La Crosse River empties into the Father of Waters, skated into an
+air-hole. The two young ladies with him were rescued, but the fated man
+was swept under the ice. He was the son," etc.
+
+When Anson came back Flaxen sat with the letter in her hand and the
+paper on her lap. She was meditating deeply, but what was in her mind
+Anson never knew. She had grown more and more reticent of late. She
+sighed, rose, and resumed her evening tasks.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+BERT COMES BACK.
+
+
+One raw March evening, when the wind was roaring among the gray
+branches of the maples like a lion in wrath, some one knocked on the
+door.
+
+"Come in!" shouted Anson, who was giving baby her regular ride on his
+boots.
+
+"Come in!" added Flaxen.
+
+Gearheart walked in slowly, closed the door behind his back, and stood
+devouring the cheerful scene. He was poorly dressed and wore a wide,
+limp hat; they did not know him till he bared his head.
+
+"Bert!" yelled Anson, tossing the baby to his shoulder and leaping
+toward his chum, tramping and shaking and clapping like a madman,
+scaring the child.
+
+"My gosh-all-hemlock! I'm glad to see ye! Gimme that paw again. Come to
+the fire. This is Flaxie" (as though he had not had his eyes on her
+face all the time). "Be'n sick?"
+
+Bert's hollow cough prompted this question.
+
+"Yes. Had some kind of a fever down in Arizony. Oh, I'm all right now,"
+he added in reply to an anxious look from Flaxen.
+
+"An' this is----"
+
+"Baby--Elsie," she replied, putting a finishing touch to the little
+one's dress, mother-like.
+
+"Where's he?" he asked a little later.
+
+Anson replied with a little gesture, which silenced Bert at the same
+time that it explained. And when Flaxen was busy a few moments later,
+Anson said:
+
+"Gone up the spout."
+
+At the table they grew quite gay, talking over old times, and Bert's
+pale face grew rosier, catching a reflection of the happy faces
+opposite.
+
+"Say, Bert, do you remember the time you threw that pan o' biscuits I
+made out into the grass an' killed every dog in the township?" Then
+they roared.
+
+"I remember your flapjacks that always split open in the middle, an' no
+amount o' heat could cook 'em inside," Bert replied.
+
+Then they grew sober again when Bert said with a pensive cadence:
+"Well, I tell you, those were days of hard work; but many's the time
+I've looked back at 'em these last three years, wishin' they'd never
+ended an' that we'd never got scattered."
+
+"We won't be again, will we, pap?"
+
+"Not if I can help it," Anson replied.
+
+"But how are you, Bert? Rich?"
+
+Bert put his hand into his pocket and laid a handful of small coins on
+the table.
+
+"That's the size o' my pile--four dollars," he said, smiling faintly;
+"the whole o' my three years' work."
+
+"Well, never mind, ol' man. I've got a chance fer yeh. Still an ol'
+bach?"
+
+"Still an old bach." He looked at Flaxen, irresistibly drawn to her
+face. She dropped her eyes; she could not have told why.
+
+And so "Wood & Gearheart" was painted on the sides of the drays, and
+they all continued to live in the little yellow cottage, enjoying life
+much more than the men, at least, had ever dared to hope; and little
+Elsie grew to be a "great girl," and a nuisance with her desire to
+"yide" with "g'an'pap."
+
+There is no spot more delightful in early April than the sunny side of
+the barn, and Ans and Bert felt this, though they did not say it. The
+eaves were dripping, the doves cooing, the hens singing their
+harsh-throated, weirdly suggestive songs, and the thrilling warmth and
+vitality of the sun and wind of spring made the great, rude fellows
+shudder with a strange delight. Anson held out his palm to catch the
+sunshine in it, took off his hat to feel the wind, and mused:
+
+"This is a great world--and a great day. I wish't it was always
+spring."
+
+"Say," began Bert abruptly, "it seems pretty well understood that
+you're her father--but where do I come in?"
+
+"You ought to be her husband." A light leaped into the younger man's
+face. "But go slow," Anson went on gravely. "This package is marked
+'Glass; handle with care.'"
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS.
+
+APPLETONS' SUMMER SERIES, 1891.
+
+
+_TOURMALIN'S TIME CHEQUES._ By F. Anstey, author of "Vice Versâ," "The
+Giant's Robe," etc.
+
+"Its author has struck another rich vein of whimsicality and humor."--_San
+Francisco Argonaut._
+
+"His special gift is in making the impossible appear probable."--_St.
+Louis Republic._
+
+"A curious conceit and very entertaining story."--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+"Each cheque is good for several laughs."--_New York Herald._
+
+"Certainly one of the most diverting books of the season."--_Brooklyn
+Times._
+
+"Sets a handsome example for the 'Summer Series,' with its neat and
+portable style of half cloth binding and good paper and
+typography."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+
+_FROM SHADOW TO SUNLIGHT._ By the Marquis of Lorne.
+
+"In these days of princely criticism--that is to say, criticism of
+princes--it is refreshing to meet a really good bit of aristocratic
+literary work, albeit the author is only a prince-in-law.... The theme
+chosen by the Marquis makes his story attractive to Americans."--_Chicago
+Tribune._
+
+"A charming book."--_Cincinnati Enquirer._
+
+
+_ADOPTING AN ABANDONED FARM._ By Kate Sanborn.
+
+"It may he mythical, but it reads like a true narrative taken from a
+strong memory that has been re-enforced by a diary and corrected by the
+parish register. It is not only as natural as life, but, as Josh
+Billings used to say, 'even more so.'"--_New York Journal of Commerce._
+
+"A sunny, pungent, humorous sketch.... A bright, amusing book, which is
+thoughtful as well as amusing, and may stimulate, somewhere, thinking
+that shall bear fruit in some really effective remedial action."--_Chicago
+Times._
+
+
+_ON THE LAKE OF LUCERNE, AND OTHER STORIES._ By Beatrice Whitby.
+
+"Six short stories carefully and conscientiously finished, and told
+with the graceful ease of the practiced _raconteur_.--_Literary
+Digest._
+
+"The stories are pleasantly told in light and delicate vein and are
+sure to be acceptable to the friends Miss Whitby has already made on
+this side of the Atlantic."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
+
+"Very dainty, not only in mechanical workmanship but in matter and
+manner,"--_Boston Advertiser._
+
+Each, 16mo. half cloth, with specially designed cover, 50 cents.
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO. 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+RECENT ISSUES IN APPLETONS' TOWN AND COUNTRY LIBRARY.
+
+
+_STEPHEN ELLICOTT'S DAUGHTER._ By Mrs. J. H. Needell, author of "The
+Story of Philip Methuen." 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"I am desirous to bear my humble testimony to the great ability and
+high aim of the work."--Hon. W. E. Gladstone.
+
+"From first to last an exceptionally strong and beautiful
+story,"--_London Spectator._
+
+
+_ONE REASON WHY._ By Beatrice Whitby, author of "The Awakening of Mary
+Fenwick," "Part of the Property," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth,
+$1.00.
+
+"A remarkably well-written story.... The author makes her people speak
+the language of every-day life, and a vigorous and attractive realism
+pervades the book, which provides excellent entertainment from
+beginning to end."--_Boston Saturday Evening Gazette._
+
+
+_THE TRAGEDY OF IDA NOBLE._ By W. Clark Russell, author of "The Wreck
+of the Grosvenor," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"The best sea-story since 'The Wreck of the Grosvenor.' It shows a
+determination to abandon the well-worn tracks of fiction and to evolve
+a new and striking plot.... There is no sign of exhausted imagination
+in this strong tale."--_Philadelphia Public Ledger._
+
+
+_THE JOHNSTOWN STAGE AND OTHER STORIES._ By Robert H. Fletcher, author
+of "A Blind Bargain," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cts.; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"A collection of as charming short stories as one could wish to find,
+most of them Western in scene,"--_San Francisco Argonaut._
+
+"Nine real stories, not studies of character, but narratives of
+interest.... vivaciously and pleasantly told."--_Boston Pilot._
+
+
+_A WIDOWER INDEED._ By Rhoda Broughton and Elizabeth Bisland. 12mo.
+Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"Done with masterly skill. The whole work is strong and well worth
+reading."--_New York Journal of Commerce._
+
+"The story is written with great strength, and possesses a powerful
+interest that never flags,"--_Boston Home Journal._
+
+
+New York; D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+RECENT ISSUES IN APPLETONS' TOWN AND COUNTRY LIBRARY.
+
+
+_THE FLIGHT OF THE SHADOW._ By George MacDonald, author of "Malcolm,"
+"Annals of a Quiet Neighborhood," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth,
+$1.00.
+
+"It is extremely entertaining, contains a charming love-story, and is
+beautifully written, like everything from Mr. MacDonald's pen."--_St.
+Paul Pioneer-Press._
+
+
+_LOVE OR MONEY._ By Katharine Lee, author of "A Western Wildflower,"
+"In London Town," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"In point of cleverness this novel is quite up to the standard of the
+excellent Town and Country Library in which it appears. Most of the
+characters are well drawn, and there are some singularly strong scenes
+in the book."---_Charleston News and Courier._
+
+
+_NOT ALL IN VAIN._ By Ada Cambridge, author of "The Three Miss Kings,"
+"My Guardian," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"A worthy companion to the best of the author's former efforts, and in
+some respects superior to any of them."--_Detroit Free Press._
+
+"A better story has not been published in many moons."--_Philadelphia
+Inquirer._
+
+
+_IT HAPPENED YESTERDAY._ By Frederick Marshall, author of "Claire
+Brandon." 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"An odd, fantastic tale, whose controlling agency is an occult power
+which the world thus far has doubted and wondered at alternately rather
+than studied."--_Chicago Times._
+
+"A psychological story of very powerful interest."--_Boston Home
+Journal._
+
+
+_MY GUARDIAN._ By Ada Cambridge, author of "The Three Miss Kings," "Not
+All in Vain," etc. 12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
+
+"A story which will, from first to last, enlist the sympathies of the
+reader by its simplicity of style and fresh, genuine feeling.... The
+author is _au fait_ at the delineation of character."--_Boston
+Transcript._
+
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+desire."--_Chicago Evening Journal._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+_ELINE VERE._ By Louis Couperus. Translated from the Dutch by J. T.
+Grein. With an Introduction by Edmund Gosse. Holland Fiction Series,
+12mo. Cloth, $1.00.
+
+"The established authorities in art and literature retain their
+exclusive place in dictionaries and hand-books long after the claim of
+their juniors to be observed with attention has been practically
+conceded at home. For this reason, partly, and partly also because the
+mental life of Holland receives little attention in this country, no
+account has yet been taken of the revolution in Dutch taste which has
+occupied the last six or seven years. I believe that the present
+occasion is the first on which it has been brought to the notice of any
+English-speaking public.... 'Eline Vere' is an admirable
+performance."--Edmund Gosse, _in Introduction._
+
+"Most careful in its details of description, most picturesque in its
+coloring."--_Boston Post._
+
+"A vivacious and skillful performance, giving an evidently
+faithful picture of society, and evincing the art of a true
+story-teller."--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
+
+"Those who associate Dutch characters and Dutch thought with ideas of
+the purely phlegmatic, will read with astonishment and pleasure the
+oft-times stirring and passionate sentences of this novel."--_Public
+Opinion._
+
+"The _dénoûment_ is tragical, thrilling, and picturesque."--_New York
+World._
+
+"If modern Dutch Literature has other books as good as this to offer,
+we hope that they will soon find a translator."--_Chicago Evening
+Journal._
+
+
+_A PURITAN PAGAN._ By Julien Gordon, author of "A Diplomat's Diary,"
+etc. 12mo. Cloth, $ 1.00.
+
+"Mrs. Van Rensselaer Cruger grows stronger as she writes.... The lines
+in her story are boldly and vigorously etched."--_New York Times._
+
+"The author's recent books have made for her a secure place in current
+literature, where she can stand fast.... Her latest production, 'A
+Puritan Pagan,' is an eminently clever story, in the best sense of the
+word clever."--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
+
+"Has already made its mark as a popular story, and will have an
+abundance of readers.... It contains some useful lessons that will
+repay the thoughtful study of persons of both sexes."--_New York
+Journal of Commerce._
+
+"This brilliant novel will without doubt add to the repute of the
+writer who chooses to be known as Julien Gordon.... The ethical purpose
+of the author is kept fully in evidence through a series of intensely
+interesting situations."--_Boston Beacon._
+
+"It is obvious that the author is thoroughly at home in illustrating
+the manner and the sentiment of the best society of both America and
+Europe."--_Chicago Times._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+_THE FAITH DOCTOR._ By Edward Eggleston, author of "The Hoosier
+Schoolmaster," "The Circuit Rider," etc. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+"An excellent piece of work.... With each new novel the author of 'The
+Hoosier Schoolmaster' enlarges his audience, and surprises old friends
+by reserve forces unsuspected. Sterling integrity of character and high
+moral motives illuminate Dr. Eggleston's fiction, and assure its place
+in the literature of America which is to stand as a worthy reflex of
+the best thoughts of this age."--_New York World._
+
+"One of _the_ novels of the decade."--_Rochester Union and Advertiser._
+
+"It is extremely fortunate that the fine subject indicated in the title
+should have fallen into such competent hands."--_Pittsburgh
+Chronicle-Telegraph._
+
+"Much skill is shown by the author in making these 'fads' the basis of
+a novel of great interest.... One who tries to keep in the current of
+good novel-reading must certainly find time to read 'The Faith
+Doctor.'"--_Buffalo Commercial._
+
+"A vivid and life-like transcript from several phases of society.
+Devoid of literary affectation and pretense, it is a wholesome American
+novel well worthy of the popularity which it has won."--_Philadelphia
+Inquirer._
+
+"The author of 'The Hoosier Schoolmaster' has enhanced his reputation
+by this beautiful and touching study of the character of a girl to love
+whom proved a liberal education to both of her admirers."--_London
+Athenæum._
+
+
+_AN UTTER FAILURE._ By Miriam Coles Harris, author of "Rutledge." 12mo.
+Cloth, $1.25.
+
+"A story with an elaborate plot, worked out with great cleverness and
+with the skill of an experienced artist in fiction. The interest is
+strong and at times very dramatic.... Those who were attracted by
+'Rutledge' will give hearty welcome to this story, and find it fully as
+enjoyable as that once immensely popular novel."--_Boston Saturday
+Evening Gazette._
+
+"The pathos of this tale is profound, the movement highly dramatic, the
+moral elevating."--_New York World._
+
+"In this new story the author has done some of the best work that she
+has ever given to the public, and it will easily class among the most
+meritorious and most original novels of the year."--_Boston Home
+Journal._
+
+"The author of 'Rutledge' does not often send out a new volume, but
+when she does it is always a literary event.... Her previous books were
+sketchy and slight when compared with the finished and trained power
+evidenced in 'An Utter Failure.'"--_New Haven Palladium._
+
+"Exhibits the same literary excellence that made the success of the
+author's first book."--_San Francisco Argonaut._
+
+"American girls with a craving for titled husbands will find instructive
+reading in this story."--_Boston Traveller._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+_ON THE PLANTATION._ By Joel Chandler Harris, author of "Uncle Remus."
+With 23 Illustrations by E. W. Kemble, and Portrait of the Author.
+12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+"The book is in the characteristic vein which has made the author so
+famous and popular as an interpreter of plantation character."--_Rochester
+Union and Advertiser._
+
+"Those who never tire of Uncle Remus and his stories--with whom we would
+be accounted--will delight in Joe Maxwell and his exploits."--_London
+Saturday Review._
+
+"Altogether a most charming book."--_Chicago Times._
+
+"Really a valuable, if modest, contribution to the history of the civil
+war with in the Confederate lines, particularly on the eve of the
+catastrophe. Two or three new animal fables are introduced with effect;
+but the history of the plantation, the printing-office, the black
+runaways, and white deserters, of whom the impending break-up made
+the community tolerant, the coon and fox hunting, forms the serious
+purpose of the book, and holds the reader's interest from beginning
+to end."--_New York Evening Post._
+
+
+_UNCLE REMUS: His Songs and his Sayings._ The Folk-lore of the Old
+Plantation. By Joel Chandler Harris. Illustrated from Drawings by F. S.
+Church and J. H. Moser, of Georgia. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+"The idea of preserving and publishing these legends, in the form in
+which the old plantation negroes actually tell them, is altogether one
+of the happiest literary conceptions of the day. And very admirably is
+the work done.... In such touches lies the charm of this fascinating
+little volume of legends, which deserves to be placed on a level with
+_Reincke Fuchs for_ its quaint humor, without reference to the
+ethnological interest possessed by these stories, as indicating,
+perhaps, a common origin for very widely severed races."--_London
+Spectator._
+
+"We are just discovering what admirable literary material there is at
+home, what a great mine there is to explore, and how quaint and
+peculiar is the material which can be dug up. Mr. Harris's book may be
+looked on in a double light--either as a pleasant volume recounting the
+stories told by a typical old colored man to a child, or as a valuable
+contribution to our somewhat meager folk-lore.... To Northern readers
+the story of Brer (Brother--Brudder) Rabbit may be novel. To those
+familiar with plantation life, who have listened to these quaint old
+stories, who have still tender reminiscences of some good old mauma who
+told these wondrous adventures to them when they were children, Brer
+Rabbit, the Tar Baby, and Brer Fox come back again with all the past
+pleasures of younger days."--_New York Times._
+
+"Uncle Remus's sayings on current happenings are very shrewd and
+bright, and the plantation and revival songs are choice specimens of
+their sort."--_Boston Journal._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+_THE LAST WORDS OF THOMAS CARLYLE._ Including _Wotton Reinfred_,
+Carlyle's only essay in fiction; the _Excursion (Futile Enough) to
+Paris_; and letters from Thomas Carlyle, also letters from Mrs.
+Carlyle, to a personal friend. With Portrait. 12mo. Cloth, gilt top,
+$1.75.
+
+"The interest of 'Wotton Reinfred' to me is considerable, from the
+sketches which it contains of particular men and women, most of whom I
+knew and could, if necessary, identify. The story, too, is taken
+generally from real life, and perhaps Carlyle did not finish it, from
+the sense that it could not be published while the persons and things
+could be recognized. That objection to the publication no longer
+exists. Everybody is dead whose likenesses have been drawn, and the
+incidents stated have long been forgotten."--James Anthony Froude.
+
+"'Wotton Reinfred' is interesting as a historical document. It gives
+Carlyle before he had adopted his peculiar manner, and yet there are
+some characteristic bits--especially at the beginning--in the Sartor
+Resartus vein. I take it that these are reminiscences of Irving and of
+the Thackeray circle, and there is a curious portrait of Coleridge, not
+very thinly veiled. There is enough autobiography, too, of interest in
+its way."--Leslie Stephen.
+
+"No complete edition of the Sage of Chelsea will be able to ignore
+these manuscripts."--_Pall Mall Gazette._
+
+
+_MEN, MINES, AND ANIMALS IN SOUTH AFRICA._ By Lord Randolph S.
+Churchill. With Portrait, Sixty-five Illustrations, and a Map. 8vo. 337
+pages. Cloth, $5.00.
+
+"The subject-matter of the book is of unsurpassed interest to all who
+either travel in new countries, to see for themselves the new
+civilizations, or follow closely the experiences of such travelers. And
+Lord Randolph's eccentricities are by no means such as to make his own
+reports of what he saw in the new states of South Africa any the less
+interesting than his active eyes and his vigorous pen naturally make
+them."--_Brooklyn Eagle._
+
+"Lord Randolph Churchill's pages are full of diversified adventures and
+experience, from any part of which interesting extracts could be
+collected.... A thoroughly attractive book."--_London Telegraph._
+
+"Provided with amusing illustrations, which always fall short of
+caricature, but perpetually suggest mirthful entertainment."--_Philadelphia
+Ledger._
+
+"The book is the better for having been written somewhat in the line of
+journalism. It is a volume of travel containing the results of a
+journalist's trained observation and intelligent reflection upon
+political affairs. Such a work is a great improvement upon the ordinary
+book of travel. Lord Randolph Churchill thoroughly enjoyed his
+experiences in the African bush, and has produced a record of his
+journey and exploration which has hardly a dull page in it."--_New York
+Tribune._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+_LIFE IN ANCIENT EGYPT AND ASSYRIA._ By G. Maspéro, late Director of
+Archæology in Egypt, and Member of the Institute of France. Translated
+by Alice Morton. With 188 Illustrations. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+"A lucid sketch, at once popular and learned, of daily life in Egypt in
+the time of Rameses II, and of Assyria in that of Assurbanipal.... As
+an Orientalist, M. Maspéro stands in the front rank, and his learning
+is so well digested and so admirably subdued to the service of popular
+exposition, that it nowhere overwhelms and always interests the
+reader."--_London Times._
+
+"Only a writer who had distinguished himself as a student of Egyptian
+and Assyrian antiquities could have produced this work, which has none
+of the features of a modern book of travels in the East, but is an
+attempt to deal with ancient life as if one had been a contemporary
+with the people whose civilization and social usages are very largely
+restored."--_Boston Herald._
+
+"The ancient artists are copied with the utmost fidelity, and verify
+the narrative so attractively presented."--_Cincinnati Times-Star._
+
+
+_THE THREE PROPHETS: Chinese Gordon; Mohammed-Ahmed; Araby Pasha._
+Events before, during, and after the Bombardment of Alexandria. By
+Colonel Chaille-Long, ex-Chief of Staff to Gordon in Africa, ex-United
+States Consular Agent in Alexandria, etc. With Portraits. 16mo. Paper,
+50 cents.
+
+"Comprises the observations of a man who, by reason of his own military
+experience in Egypt, ought to know whereof he speaks."--_Washington
+Post._
+
+"Throws an entirely new light upon the troubles which have so long
+agitated Eyypt, and upon their real significance."--_Chicago Times._
+
+
+_THE MEMOIRS OF AN ARABIAN PRINCESS._ By Emily Ruete, _née_ Princess of
+Oman and Zanzibar. Translated from the German. 12mo. Cloth, 75 cents.
+
+"A remarkably interesting little volume.... As a picture of Oriental
+court life, and manners and customs in the Orient, by one who is to the
+manner born, the book is prolific in entertainment and edification."--_Boston
+Gazette._
+
+"The interest of the book centers chiefly in its minute description of
+the daily life of the household from the time of rising until the time
+of retiring, giving the most complete details of dress, meals,
+ceremonies, feasts, weddings, funerals, education, slave service,
+amusements, in fact everything connected with the daily and yearly
+routine of life."--_Utica (N. Y.) Herald._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+_THE SOVEREIGNS AND COURTS OF EUROPE._ The Home and Court Life and
+Characteristics of the Reigning Families. By "Politikos." With many
+Portraits, 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+"A remarkably able book.... A great deal of the inner history of Europe
+is to be found in the work, and it is illustrated by admirable
+portraits."--_The Athenæum._
+
+"Its chief merit is that it gives a new view of several sovereigns....
+The anonymous author seems to have sources of information that are not
+open to the foreign correspondents who generally try to convey the
+impression that they are on terms of intimacy with royalty."--_San
+Francisco Chronicle._
+
+"The anonymous author of these sketches of the reigning sovereigns of
+Europe appears to have gathered a good deal of curious information
+about their private lives, manners, and customs, and has certainly in
+several instances had access to unusual sources. The result is a volume
+which furnishes views of the kings and queens concerned far fuller and
+more intimate than can be found elsewhere."--_New York Tribune._
+
+"... A book that would give the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
+the truth (so far as such comprehensive accuracy is possible), about
+these exalted personages, so often heard about but so seldom seen by
+ordinary mortals, was a desideratum, and this book seems well fitted to
+satisfy the demand. The author is a well-known writer on questions
+indicated by his pseudonym."--_Montreal Gazette._
+
+"A very handy book of reference."--_Boston Transcript._
+
+
+_MY CANADIAN JOURNAL, 1872-'78._ By Lady Dufferin. Extracts from
+letters home written while Lord Dufferin was Governor-General of
+Canada. With Portrait, Map, and Illustrations from sketches by Lord
+Dufferin. 12mo. Cloth, $2.00.
+
+"A graphic and intensely interesting portraiture of out-door life in
+the Dominion, and will become, we are confident, one of the standard
+works on the Dominion.... It is a charming volume."--_Boston
+Traveller._
+
+"In every place and under every condition of circumstances the
+Marchioness shows herself to be a true lady, without reference to
+her title. Her book is most entertaining, and the abounding
+good-humor of every page must stir a sympathetic spirit in its
+readers."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
+
+"The many readers of Lady Dufferin's Journal of 'Our Vice-Regal Life in
+India' will welcome this similar record from the same vivacious pen,
+although it concerns a period antecedent to the other, and takes one
+back many years. The book consists of extracts from letters written
+home by Lady Dufferin to her friends (her mother chiefly) while her
+husband was Governor-General of Canada; and describes her experiences
+in the same chatty and charming style with which readers were before
+made familiar."--_Cincinnati Commercial-Gazette._
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+HAND-BOOKS OF SOCIAL USAGES.
+
+
+_SOCIAL ETIQUETTE OF NEW YORK._ Rewritten and enlarged. 18mo. Cloth,
+gilt, $1.00.
+
+Special pains have been taken to make this work represent accurately
+existing customs in New York society. The subjects treated are of
+visiting and visiting-cards, giving and attending balls, receptions,
+dinners, etc., débuts, chaperons, weddings, opera and theatre parties,
+costumes and customs, addresses and signatures, and funeral customs,
+covering so far as practicable all social usages.
+
+
+_DON'T_; or, Directions for avoiding Improprieties in Conduct and
+Common Errors of Speech. By Censor. _Parchment-Paper Edition_, square
+18mo. 30 cents. _Vest-Pocket Edition_, cloth, flexible, gilt edges, red
+lines, 30 cents. _Boudoir Edition_ (with a new chapter designed for
+young people), cloth, gilt, 30 cents. 130th thousand.
+
+"Don't" deals with manners at the table, in the drawing-room, and in
+public, with taste in dress, with personal habits, with common mistakes
+in various situations in life, and with ordinary errors of speech.
+
+
+_WHAT TO DO._ A Companion to "Don't." By Mrs. Oliver Bell Bunce. Small
+18mo. cloth, gilt, uniform with _Boudoir Edition_ of "Don't," 30 cents.
+
+A dainty little book, containing helpful and practical explanations of
+social usages and rules. It tells the reader how to entertain and how
+to be entertained, and it sets forth the etiquette of engagements and
+marriages, introductions and calls.
+
+
+"_GOOD FORM" IN ENGLAND._ By An American, resident in the United
+Kingdom. 12mo. Cloth, $1.50.
+
+"The _raison d'être_ of this book is to provide Americans--and
+especially those visiting England--with a concise, comprehensive, and
+comprehensible hand-book which will give them all necessary information
+respecting 'how things are' in England."--_From the Preface._
+
+
+_HINTS ABOUT MEN'S DRESS_: Right Principles Economically Applied. By a
+New York Clubman. 18mo. Parchment-paper, 30 cents.
+
+A useful manual, especially for young men desirous of dressing
+economically and yet according to the canons of good taste.
+
+
+New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3, & 5 Bond Street.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen, by 
+Hamlin Garland
+
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