Читать книгу Settlers of the Marsh - Frederick Philip Grove - Страница 4

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On the road leading north from the little prairie town Minor two men were fighting their way through the gathering dusk.

Both were recent immigrants; one, Lars Nelson, a giant, of three years' standing in the country; the other, Niels Lindstedt, slightly above medium size, but compactly built, of only three months'. Both were Swedes; and they had struck up a friendship which had led to a partnership for the winter that was coming. They had been working on a threshing gang between Minor and Balfour and were now on their way into the bush settlement to the north-east where scattered homesteads reached out into the wilderness.

It was the beginning of the month of November.

Niels carried his suitcase on his back; Nelson, his new friend's bundle, which also held the few belongings of his own which he had along. He wore practically the same clothes winter and summer.

Above five miles from town they reached, on the north road, the point where the continuous settlement ran out into the wild, sandy land which, forming the margin of the Big Marsh, intervened between the territory of the towns and the next Russo-German settlement to the north, some twenty miles or so straight ahead.

At this point the road leapt the Muddy River and passed through its sheltering fringe of bush to strike out over a sheer waste of heath-like country covered with low, creeping brush. The wind which had been soughing through the tree tops had free sweep here; and an exceedingly fine dust of dry, powdery ice-crystals began to fly--you could hardly call it snow so far.

It did not occur to Niels to utter or even harbour apprehensions. His powerful companion knew the road; where he went, Niels could go.

They swung on, for the most part in silence.

The road became a mere trail; but for a while longer it was plainly visible in the waning light of the west; in the smooth ruts a film of white was beginning to gather.

The wind came in fits and starts, out of the hollow north-west; and with the engulfing dark an ever thickening granular shower of snow blew from the low-hanging clouds. As the trail became less and less visible, the very ground underfoot seemed to slide to the south-east.

By that time they had made about half the distance they intended to make. To turn back would have given them only the advantage of going with, instead of against, the gathering gale. Both were eager to get to work again: Nelson had undertaken to dig wells for two of the older settlers in the bush country; and he intended to clear a piece of his own land during the winter and to sell the wood which he had accumulated the year before.

They came to a fork in the trail and struck north-east. Soon after the turn Nelson stopped.

"Remember the last house?" he asked.

"Yes," said Niels, speaking Swedish.

"From there on, for twenty miles north and for ten miles east the land is open for homestead entry. But it is no good. Mere sand that blows with the wind as soon as the brush is taken off."

They plodded on for another hour. The trail was crossed and criss-crossed by cattle paths. Which they were on, trail or cattle path, was hard to tell.

Once more Nelson stopped. "Where's north?"

Niels pointed.

But Nelson did not agree. "If the wind hasn't changed, north must be there," he said pointing over his shoulder.

The snow was coming down in ever denser waves which a relentless wind threw sideways into their faces. The ground was covered now.

"Cold?" asked Nelson.

"Not very," Niels answered deprecatingly.

"We're over half," Nelson said. "No use turning back. If we keep north, we must hit Grassy Creek, road or no road."

They plodded on. That they were not on the trail there could be no doubt any longer; they felt the low brush impeding their steps.

Sometimes they stumbled; Niels laughed apologetically; Nelson swore under his breath. But they kept their sides to the wind and went on.

Both would have liked to talk, to tell and to listen to stories of danger, of being lost, of hair-breadth escapes: the influence of the prairie snowstorm made itself felt. But whenever one of them spoke, the wind snatched his word from his lips and threw it aloft.

A merciless force was slowly numbing them by ceaseless pounding. A vision of some small room, hot with the glow and flicker of an open fire, took possession of Niels. But blindly, automatically he kept up with his companion.

Suddenly they came to larger bush. Not that they saw it; but they heard the soughing of the wind through its aisles and its leafless boughs; and they felt the unexpected shelter.

They stopped.

"Danged if I know where we are," said Nelson in English; and he began to beat the air with the stick which he had cut for himself, going forward towards whatever gave the shelter.

The stick cracked against something hard.

"Well," Nelson exclaimed, again in English, "I'll be doggoned!" He had stepped forward and put his hand against the wall of a building. "We've hit something here."

Niels kept close.

At the top of his voice Nelson shouted, "Hi there! Anybody in?" And again he beat against the wall.

They edged and groped along and came to a tiny window which was just then illumined by the flicker of a match.

"Hello!" Nelson sang out in his booming voice. "Open up, will you?"

And, having felt his way a little farther along the building, he came to a door which he recognised as such when his hand struck the knob. He rattled it and hammered the jamb with his fist.

They were on the south side of the house, sheltered from the wind which whistled through trees that stood very near.

A light shone forth from the window. Whoever was inside had lighted a lamp. Nelson redoubled his shouts and knocks. They waited.

At last, after a seemingly endless interval, a bolt was withdrawn, and the door opened the least little bit.

Impetuously Nelson pushed it open altogether.

In its frame stood an old man of perhaps sixty-five, bent over, grey, with short, straggling hair and beard and hollow eyes, one of which was squinting. He held a shotgun in his hands, with one finger on the trigger.

"What you want?" he asked in the tone of distrust.

"Let's in," sang Nelson. "We're lost. Caught in the storm."

"No can," the old man replied with forbidding hostility. "Get on." His threatening gesture was unmistakable.

"You Swedish?" asked Nelson in his native tongue.

The old man hesitated as if taken off his guard by the personal question. "Naw," he said at last, still in English. "Icelandic. Get on."

"Listen here," Nelson reasoned, persisting in his use of Swedish, "you aren't going to turn us out into a night like this, are you? Let's in and get warm at least."

"No can," the old man repeated. "Get on."

"Say," Nelson insisted. "We're going to Amundsen's to dig a well for him. We come from Minor. We don't know where we are or how to get there."

"One mile east and four mile norr," the old man said without relenting.

A draft slammed the door, nearly catching Nelson's hand in the crack. But quick as a flash the giant reached for the knob and held it before the old man could push the bolt into place.

The old man, however, had also reached out; and with unexpected strength he did not allow the door to open for more than an inch. Through this opening he pushed the barrel of the gun right into Nelson's face.

Nelson laughed. "Say," he sang out once more, "tell us at least which way is east."

The old man nodded a direction. "Follow the bush."

When Nelson let go of the door, it slammed shut; and the bolt shot home. Again Nelson laughed his deep, throaty laugh and looked at Niels.

Through the window came the faint glimmer of the little lamp. In its light the two men looked like snowmen. On the lapels of their sheep-skins the snow had consolidated into sheets of ice.

The lamp in the shack went out; and they were left in utter darkness.

For a moment longer they stood, stamping their feet and swinging their arms against their bodies. The mere absence of the wind felt like actual, grateful warmth. They lingered.

But Nelson broke the silence at last. "So much for him. I guess we'll have to try to make Amundsen's. Five miles, he says."

"All right," Niels agreed.

They started out again, in the direction of the nod. Here the snow fell without that furious, driving force which had made it a blinding torment on the open sand-flats. It fell in flakes, now. Still, progress was slow; for, where the wind found its way through openings in the bush, drifts had already been piled in the lee of the trees. Often the two men found themselves in knee-deep banks and fell. It took them an hour to make the first mile.

Then Nelson exclaimed, "Now I know."

They turned north, crossed the huge trough of a creek or river on a bridge, and were engulfed in the winding chasm of a narrow logging trail.

The darkness was inky-black; but a faint luminosity in the clouds above showed the canyon of the swaying trees overhead.

They went on for a long, long while.

"There we are," Nelson exclaimed at last; and the same moment a dog struck up a dismal howl from somewhere about the yard; but he did not come out to bark or snap at them.

Nelson found the house; and his vigorous knocking soon brought a response.

They were admitted by a scantily-dressed man and entered a large kitchen which occupied half the space of the house.

The man inside accepted the fact that Nelson had brought a partner without comment and donned overalls and sheep-skin to fetch straw from the stable, to spread on the floor of the low-ceilinged room. Then he brought blankets and left them alone.

Amundsen's farm consisted of a quarter-section, heavily timbered except for thirty-six acres which were cleared. His buildings, encircling the yard, were of logs well plastered with clay, the dwelling being, besides, veneered with lumber and not only white-washed but painted.

The house held two rooms, a kitchen which also served as dining room; and a bed-room with three beds. Above the beamed ceiling stretched a huge attic. The stable was large enough for four horses and six cows. There were, further, a chicken house, harbouring also a number of geese, ducks, and turkeys; a granary, well-floored; a smoke-house; and a half-open shed for the very complete array of implements. Whatever Amundsen did, he did right.

Niels slept late on the morning of their arrival. It had been past three o'clock when they lay down.

The kitchen was empty. There was a good fire in the range; and he found all he needed for washing. The adjoining room was closed; but he saw through the window that the door to the stable was open; and since he expected to find Nelson and Amundsen there, he went out.

On the yard, the snow lay six inches deep; more was filtering down. It was pleasantly cold.

Niels found Nelson and Amundsen discussing the work to be done.

"Seventy-five cents a foot, down to twenty-five feet," Nelson said in Swedish. "Beyond that a dollar and fifty. We go on till we get water. Unless you want us to stop . . ."

Amundsen laughed. "I must have water," he said emphatically. "Melting snow is too slow. And in summer I have to haul four miles from the creek. However, whenever I want you to stop, I shall pay for what has been done."

Niels looked the man over. Both he and Nelson had nodded to him.

There was something careful, particular about Amundsen's whole appearance. He might be fifty years old. He did not wear overalls under his sheep-skin but a grey suit, the legs of his trousers being tucked into high leather boots which were well greased. About his neck he wore a neatly-tied, plaid-pattern sateen tie. His head was covered with a wedge-shaped cap of black fur. He had a small moustache, trimmed to a short, bristly brush; his cheeks and chin were freshly shaved. His eyes were small and blue and had a trick of avoiding those of his interlocutor. He shrugged his shoulders when he spoke and gesticulated with both hands. Before he spoke, he thought; and, having thought, he spoke with decision. He seemed to realise with great force and made others realise that thought could be changed and modified, but that a spoken word was binding. Every motion of his showed that he watched jealously over his dignity. But his voice was harsh and loud as if he were trying to give a special emphasis and significance to every word. When he listened, he bent his head to one side and looked at the ground, drawing up his thin brows and lending ear with all his might. That gave him the air of being constantly on his guard.

"If it please God," Amundsen said at last decisively, "we shall find water . . . Well, shall we go in?" And he led the way to the house.

"Mrs. Amundsen still poorly?" Nelson asked.

"It has pleased God to confine her to her bed," Amundsen replied with corresponding choice of words in Swedish. He shrugged his shoulders and raised his hands in a deprecatory gesture. "It is a visitation. One must be resigned."

When they entered the house, Amundsen ceremoniously letting the two others precede, a girl of perhaps eighteen or nineteen years was busy at the range. The bed on the floor had been removed; the table was spread.

Niels looked at the girl and expected some kind of introduction; but none was vouchsafed. Neither did she seem to take any notice of the guests.

She was somewhat above medium height, taller than her father, with wide hips and a mature bust. Her hair was straw-yellow and neatly but plainly brushed back and gathered into a knot above the nape of her neck. Her dress was of dark-blue print, made with no view to prettiness or style, but spotlessly clean.

Her whole attitude, even to her father, spoke of self-centred repose and somewhat defiant aloofness.

It was not till the three men were seated at the table that Niels had a glimpse of her face. Her eyes were light-blue, her features round, and her complexion a pure, Scandinavian white. But it was the expression that held him: hers was the face of a woman; not of a girl. There was a great, ripe maturity in it, and a look as if she saw through pretences and shams and knew more of life than her age would warrant. No smile lighted her features; her eyes were stern and nearly condemnatory. But somehow, when Niels looked at her, a great desire came over him to make her smile.

Amundsen noticed his scrutiny and disapproved of it; for with his loud and matter-of-face voice he cut it short.

"Well," he said, "pray." And, standing up, he spoke with a firm and insistent voice a prayer which sounded as if he were rather laying down the law to his creator than invoking his blessing.

Then, without looking up, he sat down. "Ellen, coffee."

"Yes, father," replied the girl with an unexpected note of obsequience oddly at variance with her preoccupied air.

Breakfast was eaten in silence. The girl did not sit down with the men but ate while standing at the range.

Nelson was the first to rise. "Well," he said, "I guess we better get started."

They went out.

Amundsen remained on the yard, busying himself with the sleighs to which apparently he intended to transfer the box from the wagon.

Soon after, when the two men had gathered their tools, picks and shovels, Niels saw to his surprise the girl, clad like a man in sheepskin and big overshoes, crossing the yard to the stable where she began to harness a team of horses. They were big, powerful brutes, young and unruly. But she handled them with calm assurance and unflinching courage as she led them out on the yard.

"They're famous run-aways," Nelson said.

"And he lets the girl handle them!"

"Yea . . ." Nelson replied. "But they don't run away with her. It's him they smash up every once in a while."

"Does she work on the farm?"

"Like a man," Nelson said.

She tied the horses to a rail of the fence and went to join her father. Between them, the two lifted the wagon-box from the wheel-truck, in order to transfer it to the bob-sleighs.

Niels ran over and took hold of the girl's end; but she did not yield without reluctance. A frown settled between her brows. Without a word she went to get the horses.

Nelson had gone on with his work; and Niels rejoined him while Amundsen and his daughter placed two barrels into the wagon-box.

The girl drove away; Amundsen returned to the stable.

"Better not take too much notice of the girl," Nelson said when the man had disappeared. "Amundsen might show you off the place."

When Amundsen, after a while, emerged from the stable, he was leading a team of older, steadier horses which he hitched to a hay-rack still on wheels. He worked in his slow, deliberate way, without a lost motion, and giving to the veriest trifle an importance and a sort of dignity which seemed laughable or sublime.

Niels watched him covertly till he drove away.

Meanwhile he and Nelson worked silently, with the steady team-work peculiar to Swedes.

Then the girl returned from the creek. As she drove in on the yard, she happened to look at Niels. It was a level, quiet look, unswerving and irresponsive. It did not establish a bond; it held no message, neither of acceptance nor of disapproval; it was not meant to have any meaning for him; it was an undisguised, cool, disinterested scrutiny.

Niels coloured under the look. He lowered his eye and went on with his work, a little too eagerly perhaps: he was self-conscious. In order to shake off his embarrassment, and in an impulse of defiant self-assertion, he dropped his pick, straightened his back, wiped his forehead, and sang out, in Swedish, "A penny for your thoughts, miss."

But he repented instantly; for the look of the girl assumed a critical, disapproving expression; the frown settled back between her brows. Thus she turned her attention to her horses and ignored the men at their work.

Nelson, too, had straightened and looked at Niels, grinning. "You've got your nerve," he said admiringly.

Nelson felt still more embarrassed; but he laughed and fell to work again.

Some time during the afternoon Niels had an occasion to go into the house. When he entered the kitchen, the door to the second room stood open; and he had a glimpse of the bed in which the sick woman lay. Ellen was sitting on the edge of the bed and holding her mother's hand.

The woman's face seemed to be all eye: large, dark eyes in large, cavernous sockets. Ear, nose, and cheek had a waxy transparency.

Ellen was in sheep-skin and tam, as she had come in from the yard. When she heard a footfall, she looked back over her shoulder, rose, and closed the door.

Niels felt ashamed of his behaviour in the morning.

At night, after the day's work had reluctantly been brought to a close, the three men sat in the kitchen. Nelson smoked a pipe; Amundsen partook of a dram; Niels declined both tobacco and "schnapps."

"Done any breaking yet?" Amundsen asked.

"Yes," said Nelson. "Three acres last summer. Too late for a crop, though. I'll clear enough to break four or five more in spring."

"That's good," said Amundsen in his slow, deliberate way. "You've bought horses. Where are they?"

"At Hahn's."

"I know him," Amundsen said with a peculiar smile. "He's German. He used to be a good, steady fellow till last year. Then he went crazy and joined the Baptists. As if the word of the Lord were not perfectly clear . . ." And he reached for a Bible on the window-shelf.

But Nelson forestalled him. "Do you intend to break next summer?"

"If I live and am well." Amundsen's smile was deprecating. "I've brushed and cleared three acres in summer. So, if it please God . . ."

"You've surely done well in this country."

"Yes," Amundsen admitted. "It might have been better, of course. But I can't complain. God has blessed my labour."

"You came only seven or eight years ago, didn't you?"

"Nine. But when I came I was in debt. I owe no man now."

"Too bad about your wife," Nelson said after a while. "Have you had the doctor in?"

"She is in the hand of God," Amundsen replied sententiously. "What is to be will be. I am a sinner and a stricken man." It sounded as if he boasted of the fact.

"Too bad," Nelson repeated.

Once more Niels looked at the man. There was something repulsive about his self-sufficiency. His wife was lying at the point of death; but he had not even called in what help human skill and knowledge might give. He relied on God to do for him what could be done . . . And his daughter worked like a man . . .

Next day the sky was bright and clear. Not a wisp of cloud was visible anywhere. But it had been very cold overnight . . .

Work felt grateful: this country seemed to have been created to rouse man's energies to fullest exertion . . . Again the girl was about the yard. She fetched water for the stock and fed cows, horses, and pigs; and when the chores were done, she went with her father to get hay from a stack in the meadow . . .

Without his being conscious of it she intrigued Niels. She was so utterly impersonal. The only softer feature she betrayed consisted in an absent-minded patting of the old dog that limped through the snow across the yard, wagging his tail whenever she came, to return to his lair in the straw-stack as soon as she left.

The place was so utterly lonesome that it reminded Niels of the wood-cutters' houses in fairy tales. Wherever you looked, the bush reared about the buildings: great, towering aspens, now bare and leafless but glittering with the crystals of dry, powdery snow in the cracks of the bark.

Whenever Nelson and Niels were alone, the latter asked questions. Once he enquired after Amundsen's wife. Somehow she reminded him of his own mother; and like his mother she aroused in him a feeling of resentment against something that seemed to be wrong with the world.

"They say he's worked her to death," Nelson said. "I don't know. People talk a lot. Around here the women and children all have to work. I saw her on the hay-stack last year. I've seen lots of others. Soon after, there was a child, born dead. She's never been up again."

"But why not send for a doctor?"

"Nobody here sends for the doctor. He'd charge twenty-five or thirty dollars to come . . ."

The week went by. On Sunday Niels and Nelson were idle.

In the afternoon many people called at the farm in the bush, the women to look in on Mrs. Amundsen; the men, to gossip in the kitchen . . . Where did they all come from in this wilderness?

Some of the callers were Germans, some Swedes and Icelanders, two or three English or Canadian.

The men wore sheep-skins, big boots, and flannelette shirts; most of the women, dark, long skirts, shawls over their shoulders, and white or light-coloured head-kerchiefs. Many of them had babies along which they nursed without restraint.

Nelson knew them all; but it struck Niels that both he and his friend were outside of things. Many spoke German which Amundsen seemed to understand though he spoke it only in a broken way. Apart from the Canadians, one single couple--elderly Swedes--used English exclusively. To Niels it seemed that they were handling it with remarkable fluency. Their name was Lund.

Mr. Lund was between fifty-five and sixty years old: a man who once must have been of powerful build; but he seemed to be nearly blind; and as he walked about, he groped his way as if all his members were disjointed. When he sat down, he either reclined or bent forward, resting his elbows on table or knees. The hair on the huge dome of his head was scanty, grey, straggling; a short, grey beard covered his chin.

His wife was by ten years his junior: a big, fleshy woman of florid features who must have been attractive in the past. She was lively, in a coarse, good-humoured way, not without wit; and she treated her husband with a sort of contemptuous indulgence.

Both man and wife were shabby; though Mrs. Lund wore a glaring waist which would have drawn attention in a city and seemed entirely out of place where she was. Her black hair might have been a beauty if it had been kept tidy.

These were the people for whom Niels and Nelson were to dig the second well.

To Niels it was a foreign crowd. He had no contact with them. He felt lonesome, forlorn . . .

Then Mrs. Lund ran across him.

"So you have only just come into the country, Mr. Lindstedt?" she asked with the air of a lady of the world, speaking Swedish. "And what do you mean to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. Make some money and take up a homestead, I suppose . . ."

"Mr. Lindstedt," she said, leaning over from her seat on a big, old-country trunk, "why don't you buy?"

"Buy?" His tone was vacant surprise.

"Sure. This isn't the old country, you know. Lots of people in this country buy without a cent of money. Crop-payments, you know."

"Well," Niels hesitated, "so long as I can get a homestead for nothing . . ."

"Listen," she interrupted him. "Believe an old homesteader like me. By the time you're ready to prove up, in the bush, you've paid for the place in work three times over. And what with the stumps and stones, everybody is willing to sell out as soon as he gets his patent. Yes, if you could get a homestead out in the open prairie . . . But there the land's all settled. And when a man has proved up and owns his quarter of bush, what can he get for it? Two thousand dollars. And that's for six, seven years of back-breaking work; and sometimes for longer. Take a prairie farm, now, which sells for six thousand dollars, let me say. You work it for six years, and you've paid for it in half crops. And you own all your machinery besides. You are worth ten thousand dollars. And meanwhile you haven't been working so's to make a cripple out of yourself. Think it over, Mr. Lindstedt. That's all I say. Think it over. But you want to get married, of course."

Niels coloured. He was ill at ease . . . There must be a flaw in these arguments.

Mrs. Lund rose. "Carl," she called. "Come on. Time we get home."

"Yes, Anna," her husband replied; and when he had slowly raised himself, he adjusted with trembling hands smoked glasses before his eyes. His wife helped him into a series of three or four coats, each being singly too light for the season. She herself donned a man's coat and, over it, a sheep-skin.

Nelson approached. "Came in the bob-sleighs?"

"Yes," Mrs. Lund replied.

"Going straight home?"

"Immedately."

"We might come along," Nelson suggested, "and tramp it back."

"Why, certainly, Mr. Nelson," Lund said with insincere cordiality. "Certainly, Mr. Nelson. Look the place over."

"Lots of room in the box," Mrs. Lund joined in.

"Come on," Nelson said to Niels.

And both got their sheep-skins and caps.

On the yard there was a great deal of bustle. Four or five different parties prepared to leave. Horses pawed, nickered, plunged. Nelson found Lund's team and backed them out of the row. One of the horses was a tall, ancient white; the other a bony sorrel with elephantine feet.

Assisted by his wife, Lund lifted himself into the box and sat down on its floor, drawing the straw close about him. Mrs. Lund sat on the spring-seat in front; Nelson climbed in beside her, taking the lines; and Niels stood behind them.

"Well," Mrs. Lund sang, "good-by everybody."

It was the first time since their arrival at Amundsen's farm that either of the two friends left the yard. Niels was glad to escape from the crowded house. He felt as if freedom had been bestowed upon him in the wild. Somehow he felt less a stranger in the bush. Though everything was different, yet it was nature as in Sweden. None of the heath country of his native Blekinge here; none of the pretty juniper trees; none of the sea with its rocky islands. These poplar trees seemed wilder, less spared by an ancient civilisation that has learned to appreciate them. They invited the axe, the explorer . . .

The trees stood still, strangely still in the slanting afternoon sun which threw a ruddy glow over the white snow in sloughs and glades . . .

A mile or two from Amundsen's place they passed a lonely school house in the bush. It stood on a little clearing, the trees encroaching on it from every side. Except for Nelson's occasional shout to the horses they drove in silence.

After four miles or so they emerged from the bush on to a vast, low slough which, from the character of the tops of weeds and sedges rising above the snow, must be a swamp in summer. It was a mile or so wide; in the north it seemed to stretch to the very horizon. To the east, in the rising margin of the enveloping bush, Niels espied a single, solitary giant spruce tree, outtopping the poplar forest and heralding the straggling cluster of low buildings which go to make up a pioneer farmstead.

That was Lund's place.

Slowly they approached it across the frozen slough. Taller and taller the spruce tree loomed, dwarfing the poplars about the place . . .

They drove up on a dam; and the view to the yard opened up.

There were a number of low buildings, stable, smokehouse, smithy--none of them more than eight feet high in the front, and all sloping down in the rear. The dwelling at the southern end of the yard was a huge, shack-like affair, built of lumber, twelve feet high in front and also sloping down behind.

The yard was encumbered with all kinds of machinery. Several horses and cows were mixed into the general disorder; and over it all a sprinkling as it were of children was spread out. These struck Niels so forcibly that, for the first time, he took the lead in asking a question.

"All those children yours?" he asked.

Mrs. Lund laughed a broad, hearty laugh.

"We have only two, Mr. Lindstedt. A girl and a boy; and the boy is adopted. Our own boy was drowned in the Muddy River, five years ago. So we adopted Bobby from the children's home."

When they turned in over a rickety culvert of poles bridging the ditch, a number of grown-ups came out from the door of the dwelling.

"You've callers," Nelson said.

"Well," Mrs. Lund laughed, "you know us, Mr. Nelson. We've always callers." Turning to Niels and changing back into Swedish, she added, "This is the general meeting-place for fifteen miles around, post office, boarding house, and news store combined."

Behind the giant spruce tree and the surrounding bluff of poplars a number of teams were tied to the fence-posts.

"Hello," a girl said, coming to meet them in front of the long-extended stable with its low doors which gaped like the entrances into caves, for straw was thrown over roof and back of the building.

The girl was perhaps sixteen years old, fat, overgrown, physically mature; but her face showed a certain baby-like prettiness; and she was gaudily dressed in cheap and flimsy finery. With amazement Niels noticed that her skirt was of black silk . . .

Niels was the first to jump to the ground; and while the others alighted, he looked about. Every one of the five or six horses that stood on the yard had something the matter with it. One was lame; the other humpbacked; and a third was hardly able to move with old age.

Nelson, still holding the lines, shook hands with the girl. Her face bore an almost engaging smile.

"Hello, Mr. Nelson," she said. "And how are you? Didn't it snow up early this year? And how cold it is!"

Mrs. Lund stepped down with the air of a great lady, her numerous wraps gathered loosely over her arm. "This is Mr. Lindstedt, Olga, a friend of Mr. Nelson's. Now listen, Olga. You and Bobby put the horses in. And give them a good feed of oats."

The emphasis on the word "good" attracted Niels' attention.

Nelson tried to interpose. "I'll put them in," he said and bent to unhook the traces.

"Not at all, Mr. Nelson," Mrs. Lund objected. "You know Olga. She'll look after that. Don't you bother."

Olga shot a glance at him, half shy, half coquettish.

"Hello," a pleasant-faced boy of eleven or twelve sang out, joining the group just when they started for the house.

"You look after the horses, Bobby," Mrs. Lund repeated. "Give them a good feed of oats."

Mr. Lund, as if forgotten by everybody, had groped his way out of the box and was standing helpless, feeling about with his hands for something to support himself by. Niels saw it and stepped up to guide him. But again Mrs. Lund protested.

"Never mind daddy, Mr. Lindstedt," she called. "He is on his yard. He can find his way."

The next moment she had mingled in the group at the door of the dwelling. With an elaborate courtesy which would have been becoming in a duchess she started the formalities of introduction. A dozen times Niels had to shake hands. The names went past his ear in bewilderment.

A single one struck him: that of a woman who formed a rather striking contrast to all other women present. It was "Mrs. Vogel."

She was dressed in a remarkably pretty and becoming way, with ruffles around her plump, smooth-skinned, though rather pallid face. In spite of the season she wore a light, washable dress which fitted her slender and yet plump body without a fold. Her waist showed a v-shaped opening at the throat which gave her--by contrast to the other women--something peculiarly feminine; beside her, the others looked neuter.

But more than anything else her round, laughing, coal-black eyes attracted attention. They were in everlasting motion and seemed to be dancing with merriment. Mrs. Lund was like a great lady, accustomed, no matter what she wore and how she looked, to lord it over every one in her surroundings; but even she seemed to live under a strain, as if she kept her spirits up in an eternal fight against adverse circumstances. Her predominance was a physical one, gained by sheer weight and dimensions and held by sonorous contralto and booming ring of the voice. All the other women were subdued, self-effacing, almost apologetic; as if daunted by work and struggling not to be swamped by it. Mrs. Vogel was different. Difficulties and poverty did not seem to reach her. She shrank from them; she smiled till they vanished. She did not step out and fight; she stepped back, into the protection of her sex; and they passed her by.

All this did not become clear to Niels in articulate thought. It gathered into a general impression of attraction. Her sight roused his protective instincts, the impulses of the man in him.

"Mrs. Vogel," Mrs. Lund had said in introducing her, "the gay widow of the settlement."

Mrs. Vogel's face had lighted up. She had shuddered in mock seriousness. "Widow sounds so funereal," she had said and stepped back. But the look from her dancing eyes had sent a thrill through Niels.

The next moment he found himself involved in a conversation with a short, slight man of thirty-five or so who spoke a fluent English. It went, so far, quite beyond Niels' understanding.

Nelson joined the group.

"Where have you been?" Mrs. Lund veered about.

"Put the horses in," he replied.

"Well," she exclaimed, "what do you know about that?"

And at once Nelson was surrounded by a laughing, hand-shaking crowd of men.

On its outskirts lingered Olga Lund, a transfixed smile on her face and a red mark, as from a lover's kiss, on her throat.

Bobby had run off to join the children.

"Well," Mrs. Lund invited. "Come in, folks."

And she led the way into the house.

"Yooh-hooh," a yodling shout rang out as soon as she opened the door.

And Niels who happened to be next behind her saw three men sitting at an oil-cloth-covered table to the left of the large, low room. One of them was the yodler, a tall, slim man with a merry face and a black moustache, unmistakably German. The three were playing at cards.

"Hello, Nelson," the same voice shouted. "Back again?"

And Nelson, pushing through the crowd, shook hands, long and violently, both men laughing the while. There was ostentation and exaggeration about their meeting.

The card-player raised a bottle. "Here, have a schnapps, boy, on your happy return."

For a moment there was a bedlam of noise, shouts, and laughter. Then, when the confusion subsided, Mrs. Lund who had dropped her wraps pushed through, with a view to the proprieties, and introduced Niels.

But a few minutes later he found himself once more on the outskirts of the crowd, partly on account of his inability to speak either English or German, partly because it was his nature to be alone, even in a crowd.

He looked about, appraisingly.

The house, built of lumber, was unfinished inside: the raw joists showed in the walls. The floor was unpainted, splintered up to an alarming degree, its cracks filled with earth and dirt.

The furnishings consisted of oddly assembled pieces: upholstered easy-chairs, worn down as it were to the bones; and threadbare and ragged hangings. In the south-west corner of the large room stood a plank-table, home-made, and strewn with papers: the post-office.

Niels could not help contrasting the shabby, secondhand, defunct gentility of it all, and the squalour in which it was left, with the trim and spotless but bare austerity of Amundsen's house. It struck him how little there was of comfort in that other home: Ellen's home! And yet, how sincere it was in its severe utility as compared with this! Amundsen's house represented a future; this one, the past: Amundsen's growth; this one, decay. Every piece of the furniture here, with the exception of the post-office table and the oil-cloth, came from the home of some rich man; but before it had reached this room, it had slowly and roughly descended the social ladder till at last, at the tenth or twelfth hand, it had reluctantly and incongruously landed here as on a junk pile.

And suddenly the problem of the woman's and the girl's clothes was solved as well: they were second-hand.

In his mind's eye Niels placed Ellen and Olga side by side: easy-going sloth and what was almost asceticism.

He felt immensely depressed; for a moment he felt he must leave the house never to return.

A commotion in the crowd roused him at last from his contemplation. The callers were getting ready to leave. Across the enormous slough the sun was nearing the horizon.

Hand-shaking. Leave-taking . . .

He looked on. He was not concerned. This, too, was a foreign crowd: he had nothing in common with them.

Slowly all went away, till nobody was left but Nelson and he. They, too, made preparation to leave; but Mrs. Lund protested.

"You'll stay for supper. You'll have moonlight for the way back."

And she began to bustle about, clearing the table and shaking down the fire in the stove which was an ancient range, battered and footless, propped up on bricks.

Nelson had sunk back in his chair, an old cradle-rocker, covered with damask which had once been pink; steel-springs and horse-hair protruded through its rents.

For another quarter of an hour there was coming and going outside.

Mrs. Lund turned to Niels where he stood behind the stove, in the shadows. "That's the way," she said in the tone of polite explanation, "it's with us every Sunday."

"And many a week-day, too," Olga added smiling.

"Not that way," Mrs. Lund protested, pushing her sleeves up above her elbows and baring powerful forearms. "You see, Mr. Lindstedt, most of these people come for their mail on Sundays. On week-days nobody has the time." She stepped to the door and, opening it, called in a strident falsetto which could have been heard from half a mile away, "Bob-beee!"

"Yes," the boy answered with startling nearness from just around the corner.

"Attend to your chores, boy," she said. "Get wood in and snow. And do the feeding."

Olga rose. "I'll do the feeding."

"No," Mrs. Lund forbade briefly, "not to-night."

The girl acquiesced with a smile.

"You get the bacon," her mother went on . . .

Thus, in the rising dusk, the preparations went forward.

"Where's daddy?" Mrs. Lund asked suddenly, straightening from the stove.

"Here, mamma," the voice of the man replied from the darkest corner where he lay reclining in a large wicker chair which was unravelling in a dozen places.

"Go and help Bobby," she said.

"All right, mamma," he agreed, raising himself painfully. Then he groped his way along the wall.

"One day," Mrs. Lund went on, addressing Niels, "we are going to have everything as it should be. A large, good house; a hot-bed for the garden; real, up-to-date stables; and . . . everything. And the children are going to learn something. We want Bobby to go to college . . ."

Niels looked at her. Since she had spoken in Swedish, he had understood.

But suddenly he understood far more than the mere words. He understood that this woman knew she was at the end of her life and that life had not kept faith with her. Her voice was only half that with which we tell of a marvellous dream; half it was a passionate protest against the squalour surrounding her: it reared a triumphant vision above the ruins of reality. It was the cry of despair which says, It shall not be so!

Niels was unable to answer. He felt as if he should step over to her and lay his hand on her shoulder to show that he understood. But he knew, if he did so, she would break down and cry.

His eye wandered from her to Nelson and Olga sitting close together and conversing in whispers.

Not knowing what to do, in the intensity of the feeling that had swept over him, he went to the window and looked out into the rising dark.

To his surprise he saw Mr. Lund walking about on the yard without groping his way. His step was uncertain; his back was bent; but on it he carried an enormous bundle of coarse, dried rushes, for litter or feed: and he had no trouble in finding his way.

This sight sobered Niels. Somehow he felt it incumbent upon him to say something.

"It is a beautiful country," he ventured.

"In summer," Mrs. Lund said. "You should see it in summer, Mr. Lindstedt. The flowers and the shrubs! One day," and again that quality rose in her voice, "we shall plant lindens and maples all about the yard and cut all those old poplars down."

Niels looked up. "But the poplars . . . And that wonderful spruce tree . . ."

"Yes," Mrs. Lund agreed, "the spruce tree . . . But if somebody pulled every poplar right out of the ground he'd do us a great big help."

Niels did not reply.

The ruddy glow that was still reflected from the high clouds flaming in the west of the sunken sun spread its dull warmth over the yard: dusk had wiped out the picture of disorder and litter; and like a giant finger pointing upward, to God, the spruce tree stood on guard at the corner . . .

When Niels looked back into the room, the last glimmer of that light played over Nelson's and Olga's heads. The face of the girl was actually beautiful now as she sat there with dreaming eyes, her cheeks suffused with that ecstatic smile of hers.

She, too, had a dream; but her dream was of the future: it was capable of fulfilment, not fraught with pathos as her mother's. . . .

The whole room was softened into some appearance of harmony by the dark: fit setting for the dreams of the young and the retrospection of those whose dreams have come true: a horror to those in despair . . .

As if she felt it, the woman lighted a lamp.

Again Niels looked out.

There, on the yard, Mr. Lund was slowly walking about with closed eyes, a forked willow-branch in his hands. Thus, while Niels watched, he went from place to place, all over the yard, into the corners, across the open, along the stable, towards the gate at the culvert. Suddenly he stopped, standing in the light of the high half moon; and in evident excitement he called to the boy who soon after brought him four poles which he placed on the snow-covered ground.

To Niels his doings seemed inconsequential and irrelevant; such was the influence of the boundless landscape which stretched away in the dim light of the moon . . .

Life had him in its grip and played with him; the vastness of the spaces looked calmly on.

When Lund came in--his grey and hairy face bore a smile of transcendent rapture.

"Well," he said very quietly, as if he were blessing everything, "I have located the well."

"That right?" Nelson asked without interest.

"Yes," Lund replied. "The rod turned very distinctly. We shall get water.

"We need it," Mrs. Lund said skeptically. And, turning to Niels, she added, "We have been using the water from the ditch . . . It gives the horses swamp fever. . . ."

"We'll get it, mamma," Lund repeated. "I know. Don't worry."

The table was set. Mrs. Lund called for supper.

Niels sat between her and Bobby; Nelson, between Olga and Mr. Lund. No grace was said.

For a while the meal proceeded in silence.

Then Nelson spoke. "Going to school, Bobby?"

"Yes," the boy replied with a grin on his frank and humorous face. "Not very regular."

"We send him whenever we can," Mrs. Lund explained. "It's nearly four miles to go; in summer the swamp can't be crossed; then it's more; and in winter the snow is often up to his hips. It isn't work that's keeping him, Mr. Nelson; don't you believe it. We want our children to get an education."

"Yes," Lund agreed, still with the smile on his face. "If we can only send him to the Agricultural College. Have you ever seen it, Mr. Nelson?"

"No, I haven't."

"Why, it's grand! That is farming, I often say to mother. I have been to the college myself, for three years. Did you know it?"

"Don't talk nonsense, daddy," his wife interposed good-naturedly. "What shall the people think of you?" And, turning to Nelson, she added. "He was at the college all right, but feeding pigs."

Lund sighed. A sullen expression settled on his face. Everybody except his wife felt embarrassed.

"We've seen better days, that's true," Mrs. Lund went on. "When I was a young girl, I was a trained nurse. I've spent five years in a spital."

"Yes, scrubbing floors," Lund mumbled spitefully.

Nelson could not forbear a smile; but Mrs. Lund fastened such a forbidding look on her husband that he squirmed in his seat. Olga coloured dark red; and Bobby made things worse by his desperate efforts to suppress a giggle.

Supper went by under a constraint; and when it was over, the friends were glad to escape from the charged atmosphere of the house.

They got their wraps and took leave.

Olga looked after them from the door when they crossed the yard.

The air was crisp; the snow creaked under their steps; the moon stood high; the two young men stepped briskly along.

"Strange people," Niels said at last.

"Yes," Nelson agreed. "I pity the girl."

"Is he really blind?"

"I don't believe it. He is a great actor; and the laziest fellow I've ever met. The woman and the girl do all the heavy work; and the boy, too, does twice his share. The man does nothing except spend the money."

"Where does he get it?" Niels exclaimed.

"Sponges and bums and runs into debt. The homestead is his; but he hasn't proved up."

"How long has he been on the place?"

"Ten years or so. It's the third place he's had. The first was mortgaged to the hilt; and the company foreclosed on him. On the second the buildings burned down; they say he set fire to them. And here he is in debt again to the tune of some two thousand dollars. The woman and the girl run the post office and the farm. They don't want him to prove up. As soon as he gets his title, they'll lose the place; and they know it."

Success and failure! It seemed to depend on who you were, an Amundsen or a Lund . . .

"Why don't you buy?" Niels asked his friend.

Nelson laughed. "Has she put that bug into your head, too? . . . I want to be my own boss. I don't mind working out for a while each year till I get on my feet. But when I go home, I stand on my own soil; and no debts worry me. What I raise is mine. Five, six years from now I shall be independent."

"Yes," Niels said. "But the work it costs would pay for a prairie farm."

"Maybe," Nelson laughed. And after a silence he added, very seriously, "I'll tell you, I like the work. I'd pay to be allowed to do it. Land I've cleared is more my own than land I've bought."

Niels understood. That was his own thought exactly, his own unexpressed, inexpressible thought . . .

They walked on in silence, swinging along in great, vigorous strides. The last few words had filled them with the exhilaration of a confession of faith. High above, far ahead stood an ideal; towards that ideal they walked.

Suddenly, as they were entering the bush, where the moonlight filtered down through the meshes of leafless boughs overhead, a vision took hold of Niels: of himself and a woman, sitting of a mid-winter night by the light of a lamp and in front of a fire, with the pitter-patter of children's feet sounding down from above: the eternal vision that has moved the world and that was to direct his fate. He tried to see the face of the woman; but it entirely evaded him. . . .

Once more during the following week Niels and Nelson, while at work on Amundsen's yard, spoke of Lunds. "Was it true that Mrs. Lund had been a nurse?"

"I don't know," Nelson replied. "She's had more of an education than he. She works in the city after Christmas; at what nobody knows. She says she has a position as companion to a crippled lady. Most people think she hires out as domestic help. She lies, you know."

"Lies?"

"Sure," Nelson laughed. "You heard her repeat twice, the other day, that Olga and Bobby were to give the horses a good feed of oats? Well, I'll bet my bottom dollar that there isn't a grain of oats on the place."

"Is that so?" Niels exclaimed. "But why say it?"

"Pride," Nelson said. "She doesn't like to let on how poor they are. There isn't a person in the whole district, Swedish, German, or English, who doesn't take favours from that woman which she can ill afford to do. Whatever she has and anybody needs or wants she gives away and goes without herself. But it isn't merely good nature; it's part thriftlessness and part ostentation."

Amundsen, after all, did give up. The two men went deeper and deeper and found no water. Then news came that there was a well-drilling outfit in the district, working some eight, ten miles north-east. Amundsen made up his mind to try that machine, chiefly because the cribbing of a really deep well would be very expensive.

The decision came on Saturday.

Since they were not to move till the morrow, Nelson borrowed a gun and a handful of shells from Amundsen; and during the last hours of daylight the two friends went into the bush to look for game. They saw nothing but a rabbit which Nelson brought down and, on their return, contributed to the family larder.

Amundsen carefully figured out their account, prepared a receipt for them to sign, and pushed over to them the sum of forty-one dollars and twenty cents.

"I take five cents out for the cartridge," he explained.

Nelson grinned. "Well," he said, "not that it matters; but I turned the rabbit in."

"I understood," Amundsen argued without the least embarrassment, "you shot the rabbit on my place. You will remember I asked about that."

"I did," Nelson said.

"Then the rabbit was mine anyway," Amundsen decided with finality.

"All right." Nelson laughed. And even Niels could not suppress a smile.

Thus it came to pass that the two friends returned to Lund's sooner than they had expected. When they left Amundsen's place, Ellen nodded to them and said, "Good-by" as to casual strangers.

At Lund's, too, Niels saw Olga harnessing a team of big, weary brutes. She and Bobby were going into the bush after firewood.

Niels watched her as he had watched Ellen. The morning was cold; and the girl was warmly dressed. But there was a difference. None of the silks to-day; but no sheep-skin, either. She wore a multitude of ragged things, each, like those of her father, too thin for the season, but together calculated to keep the cold out, at least. And, whereas Ellen, when she donned her working clothes, had changed from a virgin, cool and distant, into a being that was almost sexless, Olga preserved her whole femininity. The nonchalance of her bearing also stood in strange contrast to the intense determination with which Ellen went after her work. About Olga's movements there was hesitation, an almost lazy deliberation very different from the competent lack of hurry in Ellen. Besides, Ellen ignored the men at their work; Olga stopped, looking on, and chatted with Nelson about his plans.

This more homely atmosphere turned Niels' thoughts back to Sweden, to his poor home where his father and mother had died . . . They, too, had worked very hard.

His mother, for instance, had to the very last, to the day when she was overtaken by her final illness, daily gone into the park owned by Baron Halson to gather dry brush for the stove. That had been allowed by way of charity. To earn her bread she had gone out scrubbing floors even when she was no longer able to do satisfactory work. The people whom she served had kept her on because they were good-hearted, after all; but they had treated her as a being from a lower social, yes, human plane.

He remembered how once, when he was about ten years old, he had stood outside of one of the mansions where she worked, for two, three hours after school, waiting for her because she had forgotten to put the key to the hut in the usual place. There he had stood in the street of the little town, looking at the brass-trimmed door with its polished brass name-plate, longing for his mother to come; for it was cold and he was scantily dressed. Yet he had not dared to touch the shining brass knocker on the well-to-do door which it was not for one like him to lift.

He also remembered how that vision of himself as a child, as a poor child, had haunted him when he grew up till fierce and impotent hatreds devastated his heart, so that at last it had become his dream to emigrate to a country where such things could not be. By some trick in his ancestry there was implanted in him the longing for the land that would be his: with a house of his own and a wife that would go through it like an inspiration: he had come to Canada, the land of the million farmsteads to be had for the asking.

Here, there were big trees which any one could fell for firewood. Nobody looked down upon him because he was poor. Money came easily: he had saved over a hundred and fifty dollars in a few months. No doubt it went easily, too. But he would hold on to it till he owned his land. . . .

Lunds? The trouble with them was that they were children one and all. . . .

In this country there was a way out for him who was young and strong. In Sweden it had seemed to him as if his and everybody's fate had been fixed from all eternity. He could not win out because he had to overcome, not only his own poverty, but that of all his ancestors to boot. . . .

Some time, during that forenoon, Mrs. Vogel came driving on to Lund's yard. She fetched her mail from the house; and then she stopped her pony for a moment at the well-site to look on. Nelson dropped his pick and straightened his back.

"No, no, Mr. Nelson," she said. "Go on; I love to watch strong men work."

Niels, too, looked up.

On her lips lay a smile; her black, beady eyes seemed to dance when they rested on his friend, and to glow with a strange warmth when they lighted on his own.

She wore a plush cap, a real fur coat, and, on the hand which held the lines, a knitted mitt of white wool.

"Oh," she said, "I don't want to keep you. Get up, Prince. Bye-bye. I wanted to see you work, not loaf."

And she drove on, not without throwing over her shoulder a glance which sent a tingling sensation along Niels' spine.

Woman had never figured as a concrete thing in Niels' thought of his future in this new country. True, he had seen in his visions a wife and children; but the wife had been a symbol merely. Now that he was in the country of his dreams and gaining a foothold, it seemed as if individual women were bent on replacing the vague, schematic figures he had had in his mind. He found this intrusion strangely disquieting.

"She seems to have taken a fancy to you," Nelson startled him by saying.

Niels scowled when he bent to his work. His friend's remark was like the violation of a confidence, like an intrusion into the arcana of holy ground; for as yet Niels was chaste to the very core of his being.

There was a distant look in his eyes when at last he brought himself to reply, "Maybe to you."

Nelson laughed. "Don't think so. She's seen me often enough. She's never stopped to flirt with me before."

This word seemed indelicate. It opened a gap between Niels and his friend; it would take time to bridge it over. . . .

A few days later, on Wednesday, Nelson had, as usual, started the digging while Niels drew up the pails and removed the earth from the pit, when a sudden shout made Niels jump back to the edge.

There, in the still shallow hole, he saw Nelson standing to over his hips in water which was still rising, though more slowly now.

"Quick, get me out of here!" Nelson shouted.

But before Niels could reach for the rope and throw it, the water had risen to Nelson's chest.

"Well," Nelson sang out as he burst through the door of the house, dripping, "you've got it!"

"You don't say so!" And Mrs. Lund who was washing the breakfast dishes, barefooted as she was, ran out over the snow.

Even Lund awoke from his contemplative lethargy and was on his feet in an incredibly short time.

"Didn't I tell you?" he triumphed. "Didn't I tell you, Mr. Lindstedt?"

"Struck a pocket or a vein," Nelson called after him. "Stuck the pick in; and she bubbled up. . . ."

"Well, I declare!" Mrs. Lund said when she returned to the house. "That's the first piece of luck we've had since we moved out here. There's water enough for anybody. Thank the Lord, now the hauling and snow-melting is over at last! What'll Olga say when she gets home!"

But Olga did not say very much. Her eyes shone and rested happily on Nelson.

"Isn't it grand!" were her only words.

Bobby had all the more to say.

"And you were right in it when the water came? Was it cold?"

"You bet," Nelson replied. He was warming up by the stove, clad in Niels' summer suit which was much too small for him.

"Gee," Bobby exclaimed. "I wish I'd been there to see. She just bubbled up?"

"Like a spring," Nelson said.

The boy ran off to have another look at this world-wonder, the well.

"She's still rising," he said when he returned. "She's within three feet of the ground now."

"That makes seven feet of water," Lund admired. "Amundsen should have let me locate his well. I told him I would charge him only a bag of barley. . . ."

It was agreed that the work should be paid for out of Mrs. Lund's next "post-office-cheque" which was due in January. Niels and Nelson prepared to leave for the latter's own place, seven miles north and one mile west. . . .

Next morning, the whole family stood on the yard when they left. . . .

On the way, Nelson picked up his horses, from the place of the German settler who lived a mile south of his own place, on a homestead in the bush.

Beyond, now driving, they struck out over unbroken snow. There were drifts here, especially where a last feeler of the big slough in the south crossed their road. . . . The snow was dry and loose like powder; it sparkled and glittered as it was dusted aloft by the horses. . . . A noonday sun glared down on the landscape.

They followed a bush trail, winding from side to side over the timbered road-allowance. . . .

A last crossing: a narrow road-gap east and west: a few hundred yards to the right, and they saw Nelson's tiny yard.

A little log-shanty, twelve by fifteen feet, singularly forlorn and snow-bound; behind it, a still smaller stable, also of logs, its roof consisting of poles covered with straw which in turn supported a dome-like hood of snow. It looked like a fairy dwelling, untouched, virgin, and immeasurably lonesome . . . Bush all around . . .

"There we are," Nelson said not without a touch of pride.

"So this is it?" They had often spoken of the place. Niels was hushed with a sense of longing for his own old home, for his dead mother. . . .

They backed the wagon up to the shack and unhitched the horses. The stable was cold; but the horses stepped in: they knew it. Nelson fetched hay from a little stack which was leaning against the south side of the building.

Then they went to the house and opened the door. A small pile of wood was provided against a homecoming. In a few minutes a fire was roaring in the little tin heater which occupied the centre of the single room. Along the west wall stood a white-enamelled bed, four feet wide; against the east wall, a deal table with two chairs. A small cooking stove, back to back against the heater, and a battered trunk completed the furniture. The walls were plastered with clay but showed the raw poplar logs, peeled of their bark and glistening with tiny ice-crystals which made them look singularly cold and moist. The floor was of axe-squared poplar planks which felt soft to the booted foot.

"What did that cost you?" Niels asked.

"In money? The work I did myself, you know. Nails, door, window, furniture . . . forty dollars."

"I could put up a place for myself!" Niels thought. . . .

When they had unloaded the wagon--it held some oats and groceries brought from Hahn's, the German's, place--they pushed it out of the way and closed the door. The radiating heat from the little stove took effect; and from that moment on this little building became something like a home to Niels. . . .

Thus started Niels' first winter in the northern forest.

Henceforth his life consisted alternately of work in the bush and driving, driving. . . .

One of the two men was always on the road. Sometimes it took three, sometimes four days to make the round trip to Minor where they sold the seasoned wood of last winter's cutting. Occasionally it took a week. Niels learned to know the district. . . .

Often he dropped in on Lunds. Sometimes he saw Ellen.

Once, after a roaring blizzard, he reached Amundsen's place in the afternoon. He had seen Olga that day; and now he saw Ellen who was leaving the yard with the team of colts to go for water.

His face lighted up; he would have liked to speak to her. But she returned his greeting by a mere curt nod. It struck him that she went north-east. He looked after her as she drove swiftly along, holding her prancing and rearing horses with a firm and competent hand. She did not turn back, however. He was no more than a stranger to her, a stranger who happened to have worked on her father's place.

He crossed the bridge over Grassy Creek. On the bare Marsh, the snow was lashed into waves and crests like a boiling sea. There was no road left. He angled across the open land. It took him two hours to make the mile to a huge poplar bluff which rose like an island or a promontory jutting out from the east into the waste of snow. He intended to unhitch and to feed in its shelter.

When he rounded this bluff which, to the south, trailed off into smaller second-growth of poplar, skirting the Marsh, a great piece of good luck befell him; for around a roaring fire a crowd of men were assembled; and many teams and loads of wood were standing in the shelter of the bluff, bound no doubt for the same destination as he. Niels counted the loads; there were twenty-two. The men were a motley crowd, mostly Germans; and they greeted him with shouts and laughter as he drove into sight. They were getting ready to go but offered to wait for him. As best he could he made clear to them that he wanted to feed and to rest his team . . . The caravan set out without him.

Niels looked about as he kept the fire going. And before long it somehow was clear to him that this was his future home. One day, if the place was still open for entry, he would file on it. . . .

The next night, on his return trip, he spent at Lund's, having arrived there after midnight.

In the morning, while waiting for his horses to finish their feeding, he saw to his surprise Ellen Amundsen driving up on the yard.

In the box of her sleigh there were two tanks.

He had just looked in at the stable and was returning to the house. So he stopped in his tracks and greeted her.

Ellen, as usual, turned her eyes upon him and nodded casually. She stopped at the well and sprang to the ground. There was no pump yet; so she reached for pail and rope.

In a second Niels was by her side.

"Oh, never mind," she said. But he paid no attention to her protest and opened the well-trap. For a moment she stood undecided and then stepped back.

He lifted pail after pail and emptied them into her tanks. Not a word did the two exchange; and yet they were quite alone.

The meeting at the well seemed to call for speech; and both of them felt it. But Ellen expected some jesting remark and was on her guard not to provoke it; and Niels knew that, whenever he met her, he was on probation. Neither of them was a conversationalist.

When the barrels were filled, Niels covered them with the rags which Ellen had brought; and he even turned the horses for her.

"All right," he said almost harshly when he jumped to the ground.

Ellen got in and took the lines. For a moment it looked as if she might unbend. But she clicked her tongue, nodded, said, "Thanks," and was gone.

"That's nothing," Niels mumbled, touched his cap, and turned to the house.

The brief meeting filled him with confusion. In his heart there was a great tenderness, such as he had felt for his mother when she had been slaving away to keep her little home free of debt. But there was also a trace of resentment against the unyielding aloofness of the girl. . . .

To add to his confusion, he came at the house upon a scene which was profoundly distasteful to him at the present moment.

Mrs. Lund had picked a geranium flower from one of the potted plants which she nursed and hoarded all through the bitter winter. She stood bent over her husband where he reclined in his frayed wicker chair, and fastened the blossom in the lapel of his ragged coat.

"Don't make me too pretty, mamma," he cooed; "the girls might get gay with me."

"I wish they would, daddy," she replied and rumpled his scant grey hair with a caressing hand.

Niels stopped at the door, with the impulse to turn back. But Mrs. Lund had heard him and looked up.

"Now there's a girl, Mr. Lindstedt," she said, "that'll make a wife for some lucky fellow one day."

Niels coloured. "I don't think she ever dreams of such things."

"Still waters are deep," Mrs. Lund replied.

These long, lonesome drives were conducive to a great deal of thinking, especially on the way home when the horses could be left to themselves.

But more so still were the lonesome days in the bush. There he did a great deal of dreaming and planning; the more the wider his knowledge became of this mixed settlement. And gradually, as he worked at felling and cutting the trees; but especially in the long evenings, when he sat in that little shanty "up north," mechanically keeping his fire going; and most of all when he lay in bed, made wakeful by the mere consciousness of his utter isolation, did he build up a program and a plan for himself and his future life.

Of his material success he had no doubt. Was he not slowly and surely making headway right now? While he was hibernating as it were?

In this country, life and success did not, as they had always seemed to do in Sweden, demand some mysterious powers inherent in the individual. It was merely a question of persevering and hewing straight to the line. Life was simplified.

Yet, material success was not enough. What did it matter whether a person had a little more or less wealth? A strong, healthy body was his; with that he could make a living anywhere; he had made a living in Sweden.

But the accessories of life were really the essentials; they were what made that living worth while: the building up of a whole little world that revolved about him. About him? Not at all. . . .

That vision which was so familiar to him began to dominate him more and more. Already he felt, in the mental realisation of it, a note of impatience.

He himself might be forever a stranger in this country; so far he saw it against the background of Sweden. But if he had children, they would be rooted here. . . . He might become rooted himself, through them. . . .

The picture which he saw, of himself and a woman in a cosy room, with the homely light of a lamp shed over their shoulders, while the winter winds stalked and howled outside and while from above the pitter-patter of children's feet sounded down, took more and more definite form. . . .

There could be no doubt any longer: the woman in the picture was Ellen, the girl. He longed for her sight: he longed to speak to her: to show, to reveal his innermost being to her: not in words, but in deeds, in the little insignificant things of the day. . . .

But even in his dream he felt shy in her presence, bashful, unable to speak when she looked at him, with the cool, appraising expression in her eyes. He felt awkward, dumb, torn by dark passions unworthy of her serene, poised equilibrium. A good many times he saw her as he had seen her at the well, standing by as if she merely submitted to his interference: as if it were merely not quite worth the trouble it would cost to prevent it. Sometimes he caught himself in a sudden sullen anger because she would not see how he longed for her. And then again he would laugh at himself for his folly. How could she do so? What did she know of him? His whole intercourse with her had not comprised more than a few casual meetings: the sum of his conversations with her, no more than a few dozen words. . . .

How much more intimate, he sometimes thought, was his still slenderer acquaintance with Mrs. Vogel! Two or three times only had he met her; yet there was almost a secret understanding between them. . . .

But whenever he had been dreaming of her and his thought then reverted to Ellen, he felt guilty; he felt defiled as if he had given in to sin. Her appeal was to something in him which was lower, which was not worthy of the man who had seen Ellen. . . . Though he could not have told what that something in him which was lower really meant. . . .

And when he felt very self-critical, as when he had been altogether absorbed in his immediate tasks, he seemed to become conscious that in his thought of Mrs. Vogel there was nothing either of the dumb, passionate longing, nothing of the anger and resentment, nothing of the visionary glory which surrounded his thought of the other woman. He could imagine pleasant hours spent in her company; but his future life he could imagine without her. He could no longer imagine a future life without Ellen. . . .

Winter went by; the thaw-up came. Breaking and seeding, on a share of the crop. . . .

Then "working out," in the south. A year since he had come to this country . . . A winter in town, to learn English . . . Another summer. A second winter with Nelson . . .

Many things happened. Mrs. Amundsen died.

When Nelson came and joined him to put in his last season of "working out," Niels heard that the attendance at the funeral had been enormous. It was meant as a protest against Amundsen's treatment of his wife; but Amundsen, crying profusely, had taken it as a tribute to himself. . . .

Nelson had enlarged stable and house; he had built a granary; he had broken enough land to prove up; he had bought a second team. . . . He and Olga Lund were going to be married next spring. . . .

With Lunds matters were going from bad to worse . . .

Niels had over twelve hundred dollars in cash in the bank at Minor.

He filed on the north-east quarter of section seven, in the edge of the Marsh, on the Range Line, which held the big bluff.

Sigurdsen, the old Icelandic settler who had turned them back into the storm on Niels' first trip north, would be his nearest neighbour now. He had become his friend; for during the winters with Nelson he had had repeated opportunities to oblige the old man, bringing tobacco and other trifles from town. . . .

When Niels at last moved out to his claim, he took a little tent along to live in till, after threshing, late in the fall, he could get a building up. He would buy horses then; he needed hay. . . .

Amundsen acted as agent for the absentee landlords who held the hay-land. Niels had to see him.

As he had expected, he found the man on the field, a quarter of a mile north-west of the yard, embedded in the bush. Ellen was driving the team of colts while her father was picking stones off a newly brushed strip of land.

"Yes," Amundsen said in reply to Niels' enquiry. "I have two quarters left. Good quarters, too; the southern half of twenty-one, just west of Lund's. Lund has spoken for one of them; but he has no money . . . The permit is fifteen dollars a quarter . . ."

"Well," Niels said, "I'll look it over. I shall let you know by to-morrow night. Too bad, though, to let the Lunds go without hay . . ."

Amundsen shrugged his broad shoulders, looking at the ground and smiling a deprecatory smile. "That is as it is. I cannot give the hay away. Do you want it for yourself?"

"I am in partnership with old man Sigurdsen," Niels replied. "I myself have filed on the north-west quarter of seven, five miles south." He took care to speak so the girl would hear it.

"That's so? Well, it's good land. If you are steady . . ." Ellen's horses pulled. "Whoa!" he called. "I suppose we better move on." And he clicked his tongue.

For a moment Niels looked after him. He chafed at the man's complacency, at his imperturbable self-assurance, his very neatness and accuracy. . . .

His eyes fell on the girl; he saw her again as he had seen her two and a half years ago. That perfect poise, that forbidding scrutiny seemed to hold him at a distance even now. His mere thoughts of her, the fact that she had figured in his visions of the future, seemed like an intrusion, like the violation of an inviolable privacy. . . .

With a sinking heart he turned and strode off across the clearing. . . .

All around, the bush stood trembling in green. On the berries and drupes of saskatoon and plum lay the first blush of purple. . . .

Niels camped on his claim, cutting willows for fence-posts and staking off his land. . . .

He worked all the time. When he was too tired, from one kind of work, so that his muscles ached, he simply changed over to another and grubbed stones out of the ground on what he had already fixed upon as his future yard. . . .

Even on Sundays he would walk about in that big, rustling bluff of aspens, picking out the straightest trees to be cut for his buildings.

The southern part of his claim was covered with comparatively small growth; for one of the marshfires that broke out every now and then had encroached upon it, some fifteen years ago, consuming everything that would burn. For no apparent reason--perhaps in consequence of a change of wind--the fire had stopped short of that tall, majestic bluff which now stood dominant, lording it over this whole corner of the Marsh.

To the east, there was much willow; though even there, on a rising piece of ground, ten acres or so of primeval forest remained like an island.

West and north of his claim there was sand. Nothing but low, scrubby brush intervened between the claim and the cliff of the forest along the creek.

Niels lived in a continual glow of excitement. He worked passionately; he dreamed passionately; and when he lay down at night, he even slept with something like a passionate intensity. . . .

Life had been flowing placidly for a year or two. His dreams had receded as their realisation approached. But now, in the first flush of reality; now, when all that was needed seemed to be a retracing in fact of what had already been traced in vision: now that vision became an obsession.

Morning and evening he walked over to Sigurdsen's place for water, milk, or eggs--a distance of a mile and a half. These walks became something of a ritual. Always, in going, his look was fixed on that gap in the green-gold forest--gilded by rising or setting sun--where the trail led north, across the old bridge put up by the one-time fuel-hunters who had become settlers: the bush in which Ellen lived.

Everything he did he did for her. Sometimes he felt an overpowering impulse to go right over and to ask her to follow him. Once or twice, on moonlit nights, he went to the bridge and lost himself in the shadows of the road-chasm beyond. But, the nearer he came to that farmstead in the bush, the less did the girl seem approachable to him; the less distinctly did he see her as she had walked along the edge of the field, with her firm, long strides, or as she had stood by his side at the well; and the more forbiddingly did she, instead, look at him as she had done on her father's yard when he had recklessly spoken to her. Out of clear, critical, light-blue eyes she looked. . . .

He knew that he wanted her; that he desired only one thing: to melt that ice which seemed to surround her; to beat down those barriers which defended her against him; yes, finally, with a realisation that made his very body tremble and shake, that sent his blood red-hot to his brain, he became conscious of the ultimate, supreme, physical desire: he wanted to feel her head sinking on his shoulder, her body yielding to his embrace . . .

When he came home after such a paroxysm of passion and despair, he threw himself down on his hard willow-bed on the ground; and he told himself that this would not do; that no girl, no woman was ever wooed from a distance.

How was he to get near her? Her father? No father was ever an obstacle between man and girl . . .

It was she, she alone who kept him away: who kept the world away, and with the world him: for he was merely a part of that world: not a hero who came, acclaimed by the multitudes, borne high on the shoulders of his followers . . .

Haying time. In return for the help of Bobby and Mrs. Lund, Niels was putting up a stack at the post office . . .

In the midst of this work Nelson and Olga were married. Niels was one of the groom's "best men."

The wedding was no elaborate affair. It took place at the end of the regular service in the German church at Odensee. The pastor, in courtesy to the young people, merely changed into English for the ceremony. When it was over, everybody who cared to do so returned to Lund's where a supper was prepared for which Mrs. Lund had boiled a ham.

Niels had not made many friends. He was not a "mixer." Amidst the general joking and celebrating, he again stood apart, in the back of the room.

He could not help thinking of himself as he had stood in this same house three years ago, a newcomer, shy, little sure of himself, full of longings as yet undefined . . .

He looked down on his surroundings with the same critical look.

There was the bride, a bare nineteen years old; and somehow he felt that she must be glad to escape. Lunds might have had a past; Nelson was sure to have a future. For some time already the girl had been indifferent to the worries of her old home.

Niels could not help wondering at the fact that Nelson, young, strong, ambitious, industrious as he was, should have picked the mate of his life from this house. Yet, when he scanned the bride's face, he could not help feeling, either, that she would do as her husband wished; that she was sure to put forth her very best effort to make him an acceptable home . . .

Mrs. Lund, as she worked over the stove, kept softly crying to herself. No doubt she saw her own youth in her daughter . . .

Niels no longer blamed her for the state of her house. The mere fact that she felt the need of referring to better days in the certain past and the possible future showed that she was only too conscious of the fearful shortcomings of the present. Who, from morning to night, walks with bare, bleeding feet over meadow and stubble forgets about niceties, about scrubbing and polishing things . . .

Niels looked for Mr. Lund whom he discovered, as usual, reclining in the far corner of the room. There he sat, shading his eyes; and a singularly insincere smile played about his decaying teeth. It was almost visible that he hated to see his daughter go: it meant two strong arms less on the place, not of his own. When anybody spoke to him, his smile lighted up to an almost transparent artificiality which bared the gums above and below the yellow teeth, behind the straggling, grey hairs of his moustache . . .

Then, when Niels' eye returned to the groups about the table, along the north wall of the room, it passed over a face which seemed to arrest it. The smiling eyes were fixed on him, showing warm and flattering interest. They were Mrs. Vogel's. For a moment Niels looked at her absent-mindedly. Strange to say, while he did so, his thought reverted to Ellen. She and her father had been at church; he had seen her go over, after the ceremony, to speak to the bride. Of course, she had not come along with the crowd. Niels wondered how she might speak to another girl.

And then he realised that it was he at whom Mrs. Vogel was smiling, her whole face dimpled up. She was sitting close to the opposite wall, between door and window; and just as he was awaking to the summons which her eyes held, she put one hand on top of a trunk which stood between her chair and the "post-office-table."

It would have been rude not to obey the summons. Yet, as he went over and sat down by her side, he felt as if he were being entrapped: he felt what was almost a foreboding of disaster. Never in his life had he felt like that; and the memory of this feeling was to come back to him, many years later, when his terrible destiny had overtaken him. Had he obeyed a hardly articulate impulse, he would at once have got up again and gone out.

For a minute or so Mrs. Vogel did not speak but looked at him with a sidelong glance, intensely feminine, nearly coquettish, and full of smiling scrutiny. Niels had never before been looked at in that way. He had never met a woman like her.

"Is it possible," she said at last, "that you are the boy whom I saw here three years ago?" Her voice, too, was smiling, caressing, almost, triumphantly disarming.

Niels felt confused. He reddened. He wished to flee; but the strength had gone out of his limbs. His lips said, mechanically, "Have I changed?"

She laughed: a light, silvery, falsetto laugh: the laugh of a woman perfectly sure of herself and very superior to her interlocutor. "Changed?" she repeated. "I should say so. You were a boy then; now you are a man."

Niels' head was glowing. "I am older."

"Partly," she conceded. "You have learned to speak, too. When I first met you, you were dumb."

"I did not know any English."

"Where did you learn?"

"I took lessons. At night-school in Minor."

"From a lady?"

"No, a man."

"Well, your English is so good that I felt sure it had been a lady . . . You are changed altogether. You are a man with a future. Your shoulders have broadened. Your lips have become straight and firm. You have grown a moustache. I felt sure only a woman could have worked the change . . ."

Flee, Niels' genius seemed to whisper. Flee from temptation! His ears tingled; his scalp felt hot. Her laughter sounded to him as if it came from a distance. There was mockery in it.

"I wonder," she said suddenly, "whether you could smile, Mr. Lindstedt?"

This shocked him. He felt as if somebody were piling a crushing weight on him; or as if he were being stripped of his disguises. His chastity felt attacked. He wanted to get away and looked helplessly at the crowd.

But she had chosen her place well.

The sun was sinking to the west; the bright, red glow which fell through the open door stood like a screen between them and the rest. They were in the shadow of the wall. Theirs was a side-play, acted in a niche and off the stage . . .

Niels frowned . . . And the woman laughed. As if to favour her and to separate them still more from the others, somebody started the old, screeching grammophone going.

Mrs. Vogel's face became serious. She lowered her eyes as if she herself were embarrassed. When she spoke, her voice was a whisper. "I hear we are going to be neighbours?"

Niels felt relieved. This was neutral ground. "Is that so?" he asked rather readily.

Mrs. Vogel looked at him. Her demure air had dropped. The mockery in her eyes was undisguised, "Why don't you ask at least where I live. Or do you know?"

"No," he said brusquely.

"Ask then!" Look and laugh challenged him.

Niels frowned in rebellion; but he asked, though ungraciously.

"Two miles south of here," she replied, whispering, as if imparting a secret. "Of course, I don't always live there. Mostly I live in the city. But I have the place . . . Go north from your corner, across the bridge; then, instead of continuing north, along the trail which would lead you to Amundsen's, turn to the east, along the first logging trail. Three miles from the bridge you will find me. Apart from Sigurdsen who does not count I am your nearest neighbour now . . ."

There was a pause--an awkward pause, awkward for Niels. Mrs. Vogel seemed to enjoy it; she looked at him sideways with a quiet smile . . .

Chance came to his aid. Mrs. Lund had asked some of the men to arrange the tables for supper. Niels got up. "I suppose I had better lend a hand . . ."

But he found that his help was not needed. So, in order to save himself, he slipped out of the door and crossed the yard to where the children were playing about the hay-stack.

* * *

Bobby, now a fine lad of fourteen, was teasing a little girl of four or five. He stood in front of the hay-stack and shouted, "Now, May, watch out. I'm going to blow the hay-stack over. Watch." And he blew his cheeks up to perfect rotundity.

"Don't, Bobby, don't!" the little girl cried, with the tears very near the surface.

"Then I'll blow you over," he threatened, veering about.

But the little girl ran away, screaming.

And Bobby followed her, protesting that he was merely "fooling."

Niels felt as if he were waking up from a terrible dream. He passed his hand over his forehead and went to the stable.

There he met Nelson who was coming back from the gate where the teams were tied.

"Getting rather thick with the widow?" Nelson asked, grinning.

Niels coloured; and the consciousness angered him. "Nonsense," he said.

"I watched you. Better be careful. She's set her cap for you . . . What do you intend to do next?"

"Fence," Niels replied.

"Going to buy horses in the fall?"

"I think so."

"Well, you've got the hay; good hay, too; and lots of it. I'm glad you fixed the Lunds up. Better hold on to what you'll have to spare. Hay's going to be scarce. There's none in the west."

"I have no intention of selling," Niels said. "Maybe in spring . . . Going to work out this fall?"

"Hardly. I've got my hands full on my own place. Thirty-five acres to plow . . . And then . . . when a man's married . . . What am I to do with your share of the barley from the new breaking?"

"Can you hold it for me?"

"Sure. If you buy horses, better keep it. Well, I'll have to go in. So long." And he went to the house.

Somehow Niels felt that a barrier had arisen between him and his friend. So far they had had their interests in common. Nelson had stepped aside; he was going to live in a world from which Niels was excluded. Niels was left alone. He felt in need of the company of one whom he could trust, on whom he could rely, who would understand the turmoil in his heart without an explanation in so many words.

While he stood there, under the giant spruce tree, and looked across the slough at the amber glow of the sky, his thought went back, with affection, to old man Sigurdsen. His world, his workaday world of toil and worry, seemed suddenly so sane as compared with his own world of passion, desire, and longing . . .

At supper, he sat next to Hahn, the German, and his wife; but he did not take part in the general conversation . . .

Mrs. Vogel sat at the other end of the table. Niels looked at her once or twice; but she seemed to avoid his eye; and it suited him so. He was still angry at himself, for an inexplicable feeling of guilt that possessed him. She looked very lovely, he thought; but she looked like sin. She was incomprehensible to him . . .

When the grown-ups had finished their supper, they made room for the children.

While the groups thus re-arranged themselves, a sudden commotion arose. Somebody called for Nelson, somebody else, for the bride. They were not to be found.

Then a small, unobtrusive man who had gone out came running to the door.

"Come on," he shouted; "they're going."

And everybody rushed to the door.

In the confusion which followed Niels reached for his cap and caught Bobby by the shoulder.

"I'm going too," he said to the boy. "Tell your mother I'll be back in the morning to finish the hay."

"All right," said Bobby and squirmed away in the crush.

Nelson was standing in his wagon-box and backed his horses out of the row at the fence. The bride sat on the spring-seat and looked over her shoulder at the crowd which came running.

Everybody had grabbed something, a broken plate, a dish, an old shoe, a handful of rice. Niels was caught in the general onrush and ran with the rest.

A shower of things was thrown after the couple both of whom were laughing and replying to the bantering jokes flung at them from the rear.

Niels felt that part of his life was driving away with them as they swung out on the dam and away into darkness . . .

For a moment the crowd of guests lingered at the gate where Mrs. Lund stood crying unrestrainedly.

Suddenly Niels felt a hand on his arm. Mrs. Vogel stood by him.

"You are going?" She smiled up at him. "Don't forget. North across the bridge. Then east along the first logging trail. Three miles from the bridge. A white cottage. Sooner or later you'll come. Come soon. Before I return to the city. I am a lonely woman, you know . . ." And, nodding at him, she lost herself in the crowd.

What did it all mean?

Without waiting for anybody Niels dodged behind the log-shack which served as a smithy and into the thick bluff beyond.

A plank was lying across the ditch. It was almost dark. The air was strangely quiet for a summer day in the north. The atmosphere was saturated with the smell of hay from the edge of the slough . . .

Beyond, tall, ghostly, white stems of aspens loomed up, shutting out the world . . .

Already, though he had thought he could never root in this country, the pretty junipers of Sweden had been replaced in his affections by the more virile and fertile growth of the Canadian north. The short, ardent summer and the long, violent winter had captivated him: there was something heady in the quick pulse of the seasons . . .

He had been an onlooker so far. But to-night something had happened which he did not understand: he was a leaf borne along in the wind, a prey to things beyond his control, a fragment swept away by torrents.

That made him cling to the landscape as something abiding, something to steady him.

He cut across the corner of the slough; and when he had passed out of eye and earshot of the noisy, celebrating crowd, he stopped, raised his arms above his head, and stretched . . . A lassitude came over him: a desire to evade life's issues . . .

He longed to be with his mother, to feel her gnarled, calloused fingers rumpling his hair, and to hear her crooning voice droning some old tune . . .

And then he seemed to see her before him: a wrinkled, shrunk little face looking anxiously into his own.

He groaned.

That face with the watery, sky-blue eyes did not look for that which tormented him: what tormented him, he suddenly knew, had tormented her also; she had fought it down. Her eyes looked into himself, knowingly, reproachfully. There was pity in the look of the ancient mother: pity with him who was going astray: pity with him, not because of what assailed him from without; but pity with what he was in his heart . . .

It was very clear now that the torrent which swept him away, the wind that bore him whither it listed came from his innermost self. If, for what had happened to him, anybody was to blame at all, it was he . . .

As if to confirm it, there arose in him the vision again of that room where he sat with a woman, his wife. But no pitter-patter of little children's feet sounded down from above; nor were they sitting on opposite sides of a table in front of a fire-place. He was crouching on a low stool in front of the woman's seat; and he was leaning his head on her. And when he looked up into her face, that face bore the features and the smile of the woman who had spoken to him that very night . . .