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diff --git a/21850.txt b/21850.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..ea7f141 --- /dev/null +++ b/21850.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4156 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of 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 +Posting Date: June 18, 2007 [EBook #21850] +Last Updated: May 16, 2017 +Character set encoding: utf-8 + +Produced by Robert Homa, David Yingling and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from +scanned images of public domain material from the Google Print project.) + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A LITTLE NORSK *** + +A Little Norsk +Or +Ol' Paps' Flaxen + +By +Hamlin Garland + +Author of +Main Traveled Roads, A Member of the Third House, A Spoil of Office, +Jason Edwards, etc. + +Publisher's logo + + + +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! + + + + + +Table of Contents. + A Little Norsk + 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. He 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 somethin' 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 thingumyjigs 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 off 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 his 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 get 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 cheek 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. +The 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 +used 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 utside 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 a +while, 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. +Appleton's 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 Marquise 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 be 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. +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. + +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. + +"The dénoûment is all that the most ardent romance-reader could +desire."--Chicago Evening Journal. + +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 yean. 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. + +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. + +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 within 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. + +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. +Eveybody 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. + +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 Egypt, 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. + +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. + +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 l8mo, 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, and 5 Bond Street. + + + + +Transcriber's Notes. + + +Introduction. + +Welcome to Project Gutenberg's edition of A Little Norsk, or Ol' Pap's +Flaxen by Hamlin Garland. This novel was published in 1892, and it was +not reprinted. A scanned copy of this book is available through +Hathitrust, courtesy of the University of California. + +Emendations. + +We have made the following emendations to the text: + + +Chapter 9. + +On Page 102: The mark in the book between Gee whittiker is assumed to be +an imperfection in the page. + +Chapter 11. + +On Page 121: The mark in the book between drug store is assumed to be an +imperfection in the page. There are three other occurrences of drug +store in the novel without the hyphen, and none with. + +D. 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