As she crossed the southern slope, setting her horse into a run with her whip, she chanced to glance up toward the summit, and her eyes met an unfamiliar object. The next moment, despite her solicitude for her mother, the oncoming storm and the long road ahead, she reined him in so abruptly that he sat back upon his haunches, and then urged him up the incline to where, in place of the usual pile of stones, was a low, dark mound of earth with a pipestone cross at its head.

Halted beside the mound, her curiosity changed to sudden awe; for, leaning from her horse, she read aloud a word that imparted painful knowledge carefully kept from her for almost fourteen years,—a word that was chiseled deep into the polished face of the cross:

FATHER

Looking down thus, for the first time, at the uncovered grave, no feeling of grief succeeded her surprise and wonder. But instantly the thought came that it was here, in happy ignorance of the meaning of the pile, that every spring and summer she had sat to watch the big brothers at work in the fields, the gophers, the birds, the herd in the slough below; to think over her baby problems and sorrows; or to build castles from a beloved book. She read the chiseled word again, softly and reverently, then backed the sorrel away and once more rode on rapidly, making for the railroad and sitting her horse with the tense erectness of a trooper on parade.

All at once, a little way out on the prairie, a terror seized her, and she began to lash the sorrel with all her might. The black hillock behind, with its graven head-mark, had borne to her heart a new fear that perhaps her mother, too, would soon sleep upon the hillside. She put the thought of her father away, and centered her efforts on reaching the station and the doctor. As she galloped at breakneck speed, the damp wind swept her face, cutting it sharply, and whipped out her horse's mane and tail till they fluttered on a level with the saddle.

At the track she ceased striking the sorrel and let him fall into a slow, steady canter. The downpour was near now, sweeping south in the strong grasp of a squall to cross her path. She could see that its front was a sheet not of rain, but of driving hail that rebounded high from the dry grass. She crouched in her seat and pulled her hat far down to shield her face.

Before the sorrel made another quarter of a mile, the hailstones had passed the ties and were kicking up the soft dirt of the embankment like a volley of shrapnel. When they moved their fire forward to the wagon-road, they almost hurled the little girl from her saddle. She cried out in agony as the icy bullets cleft the air and pounded her cruelly on head and shoulders. A stone the size of a wild duck's egg split the skin of her rein-hand, and she dropped the bridle and let the sorrel go at random. Squealing shrilly whenever a missile reached his tender ears, he stayed in the road, but stopped running, and whirled in a circle to avoid his punishment. The little girl, though she flinched under the shower, remained on his back grittily and waited until the fall thinned and suddenly ended.

Wounded from head to foot, she continued her journey over a road deep with hail. When the station came in sight, she stopped to wipe the blood from a hurt on her cheek and to wind her handkerchief around her injured hand. Then she raced through town and left her message at the doctor's door.

The doctor hitched up his buggy and, accompanied by his wife, set off for the farm behind the little girl, who at times rode anxiously far in the lead, and, again, drew up and trotted beside the vehicle to ask him to travel faster. But when the farm-house was neared, she could not bear to lag any longer, and gave the sorrel the bit. As she passed the carnelian bluff, she skirted it well, though she could not see the mound or the cross. It had grown dark and they were shrouded in stormy shadows. But she kept her eyes continually in that direction, and talked to the horse to quiet a nervous throbbing in her breast that she did not admit to herself. At the barn she unbuckled the saddle and the bridle outside the door, let the sorrel trot in alone, and ran toward the kitchen.

When the doctor completed his diagnosis that night, he told the little girl's mother only what she had long known: that she might live to see her daughter a grown woman and her sons old men; that she might pass away before the end of another week, or another day. The little girl was not in the room to hear him, and on returning later to the canopied bed, neither her mother nor the neighbor woman repeated his words. He was gone again, leaving only a few pellets to check a possible sinking-spell. For there was nothing else that could be done at the farm-house—except wait and hope.

But, as if she divined by instinct what there was to fear, the little girl stoutly refused to leave her mother that night and seek rest. After prevailing upon the neighbor woman to lie down on the lounge close by, she sat on the carpet beside the bed, weary but unswerving, and reached up every little while to touch a hand, or rose to listen to the spasmodic beating of the tortured heart.

At midnight her mother awoke and asked for nourishment. Having eaten and drunk, she motioned the little girl to a seat on the edge of the bed and began to talk, slowly at the beginning but more hurriedly toward the last, as if she were freeing herself of something long ago thought out and long delayed in the saying.

"I've been thinking of the fields and hedges of dear old England," she whispered. "I can see them so plainly to-night. I have just been there in my dreams, I think; and I have come back to tell you how beautiful they are. Of course the plains are beautiful, too,—beautiful but lonely. England is dotted with homes, and there are trees everywhere, and flowers so many months of the year. Oh, one never could feel lonely there."

She turned her face away and seemed to be asleep. But presently she came back to the little girl and took her hand with a smile.

"Years ago," she went on, "when I was a hearty, happy girl, only two or three years older than you are now, pet lamb, your father and I came West and took up this farm. Hardly anybody lived here in those days. They were a few squatters; but they either trapped in the winter and went away during the summer, or hunted and farmed in the summer and left in the fall. So life was very quiet, quieter even than it is now, except that there were Indians here by the hundreds. They stole from us by night and shot our stock, and would have murdered us only that they could get more out of us by letting us live. They came by in processions, put up their wigwams in our very yard, and ate up everything we had in the house. We dared not see the wrong they did. I was often alone when they came, and I always wondered if that would not be the last of me and my little boys.

"But, though here and there men and women and even little babies were tomahawked, we were never harmed, for some reason; and, as the years went by, people began to come and settle near us. Then the post was established, and we could go to church once a summer. I went with the boys, because some one always had to remain home to watch the farm. That is why I never visited a town the first ten years after we settled here. Then you came,—just a few days—before—we lost—your—father."

The little girl smoothed back her mother's hair lovingly. The time had come to tell of her discovery on the bluff. "I've seen it," she said in a low voice.

Her mother understood. "We wanted you to find it out by yourself," she answered. "The boys took away the stones and put up the cross the night before they left." She sighed and then went on:

"I have been thinking about you to-night—about your future—in recalling my years here on the plains. I am no longer young, pet lamb; I was never very strong. I may not always be with you." Her voice broke a little. She tightened her grasp of the little girl's fingers.

"I do not worry about the boys. They will marry and settle down among our good neighbors. But you, my little girl, what will you do? Not stay, I hope, hoeing and herding and working your life out in the kitchen, with nothing to brighten the days. I cannot bear to think of that. I lived on here after your father was taken because I feared the responsibility of raising my boys in a great, strange city; and I dreaded the thought of leaving your father's grave. But now I often wonder if I have acted for the best. Selfish in my grief and loss, have I not deprived the boys of the advantages they should have had? For you, it is not yet too late.

"Whether I am taken from you or not, I want you to leave the prairie and spend the rest of your life where you can enjoy the best things that life offers—music and pictures and travel, and the friendship of cultivated people. In twenty years—perhaps less, for the plains are changing swiftly—all these level, fertile miles will be covered with homes. Every quarter-section will hold a house, and there will be chimneys in sight in every direction. Churches and better schools will follow. The roads will be planted with trees. There will be fences about the fields, and no Indians to thieve and kill. And this valley, the 'Jim,' or the Missouri, will not be the edge of civilization, for the frontier will have moved far to the west.

"And yet, though I can see it all coming, I am not willing for you to wait for it and spend your young womanhood here. One woman in a family is enough to sacrifice to the suffering and drudgery of frontier life. So I want you to go East, to go where the sweetest and best influences can reach you. The prairie has given you health. It has never given you happiness. Your life, like that of every other child on the plains, has had few joys and many little tragedies. They say the city child ages fast; but do they ever think of the wearing sameness and starving of heart that puts years on the country child? Ah! those who are born and bred on the edge of things give more than the work of their hands to the country's building."

They sat in silence a long time, their hands clasped. Then the little girl kissed her mother softly. "I want to go, mother," she said, with shining eyes. "I want to go away to school, and you must go with me."

Her mother did not answer for a moment.

"'I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee,'" she breathed at last. And not till long afterward, when tears had worn the first keen edge from her grief, did the little girl know the full meaning of the promise.

"Pull back the curtains from the eastern windows," said her mother; "I want to see the sky. Is the night clear?"

"The stars are out, mother."

"Ah, I love the stars!"

"Are they the same ones that I'll see when—when—I'm away from here?"

"The very same, pet lamb."

"You and I will watch them and think of that, mother."

The neighbor woman turned on the lounge, and they fell into silence again. The little girl remained standing at a window, her face pressed close to the glass.

As she waited there, the whole east began gradually to spring into flame. The sky blazed as ruddily as if a great fire were just beyond the horizon and racing to leap it and sweep across upon the farm. A broad fan of light, roseate at its pivot and radiating in shafts of yellow and red, was rising and paling the stars with its shining edge. Wider and wider it grew, until from north to south, and almost as far up as the zenith, were thrust its shining sticks. Then out of the cold mist floating over the distant Sioux showed a copper segment of the moon, which rose into sight and careened slowly heavenward, lighting up the wide plains, glimmering on the placid water of the sloughs, and shining full into the face of the dreaming little girl.

* * * * *

ONLY the neighbor woman was at the farm-house next day to comfort the little girl and help her through the sad hours. There was no sign of the pig-wagon all morning, and as the afternoon passed slowly away the little girl ceased to strain her eyes along the road leading to the school-house, and never left her mother's side. It was the neighbor woman who, not daring to leave the room even to do the chores about the barn and coops, looked south every few moments with the hope that the biggest brother would return before it was too late.

As the day drew toward its close the sun, which had been lurking sulkily behind the clouds, came out brightly and shone into the sitting-room, where its beams lay across the foot of the canopied bed like a warm coverlet. The room was robbed of its gloom, and the little girl's mother opened her eyes and looked about her, long and thoughtfully, as one gazes upon a loved scene that is drifting from sight.

The walls were hung with spatter-work that the biggest brother had done, and with photographs and magazine pictures in splint frames. Over the front door was tacked the first yarn motto that the little girl had ever worked. It was faded, but her mother, though her eyes were dimming, could read the uneven line: "God Bless Our Home." The new cane-seated chairs were set about against the walls, and a bright blue cover hid the round, oak center-table. The eldest brother's violin lay in its case on the organ that had come into the house the month before when the wheat was sold. Up on the clock-shelf was a Dresden shepherd in stately pose before his dainty shepherdess. The curtains on the windows hung white and soft to the carpet.

Presently the mother asked to be raised on her pillow, and the neighbor woman and the little girl turned the bed so that she could look out of the windows at the setting sun.

The western heavens rioted in a fuller beauty that afternoon than had the eastern half at moon-rise the night before. As the sun sank behind the clouds piled high upon the horizon, it colored them in gorgeous array and threw them out in wonderful shapes and sharp relief against a clearing sky. Castles towered on one side, vast turrets standing forth above their walls; on the other, banks of tinted vapor formed a huge cloud-seat.

The little girl, calm, though her heart was torn with pain, looked out with her mother upon the dying glories. She had often before in her life seen that changing panorama which, thrown up one moment, melted into nothingness the next. At night she had learned to kneel with her face that way,—to the great billows that always seemed to her a seat in the sky, that were always something more than mere vapor. She could pray better when, long after sundown, they hung above the horizon, robbed of their colors but still glorious. And there had grown up in her mind the comforting thought that on those very billows was God's throne, and from them, at sunset, He looked down upon that part of the earth that was sinking into the night, and blessed it and told it farewell. She even thought she could see His face in the heavens sometimes,—His flowing white robes, and the amethyst stool upon which He rested his feet.

As the sun dropped behind the prairie, the cloud-throne loomed forth against the blue more vividly than ever. The little girl kept her eyes dumbly upon it, watching the crimson and gold slowly fade to royal purple where the King sat.

"Remember what I said, pet lamb," her mother whispered. She could not see, yet she was still holding the little girl's hands firmly. "Remember what I told you to do."

The little girl could not answer; she could only bow her head in reply. Tearless, she waited beside the bed, where, for the second time, Life was striving with Death,—and was to lose. There was no sound in the room until there came a last whisper, "Pray."

The little girl slipped down from the edge of the bed to the carpet and knelt toward the west. A collie trotted up to her and licked her cheek. She put him gently aside. She was trying to think of something to say in behalf of her mother to Him who, even now, was taking His farewell look. At last a thought came to her, and her lips moved to speak aloud the only petition she could think of:

"O God," she pleaded, raising her eyes to where the seat, marvelous in purple and burning gold, loomed high over the prairie against the sky, "please be good to my mother."

And as she knelt there, strong in her faith and brave in her grief, a messenger came down from the western cloud-throne—a messenger of peace from the God of the little girl.



XVIII

THE LITTLE TEACHER

WITH one of the biggest brother's checked jumpers pinned across her breast, and with suds spattered up her bare arms to her shoulders, the little girl was valiantly attacking the weekly wash. A clothes-basket at her feet was piled with white garments awaiting the bluing. The tub was full of colored things that were receiving a second rub. Out of doors, on a line stretched between the corner of the kitchen and the high seat of the big farm wagon, flapped the drying sheets and pillow-cases. Breakfast was cleared away, the beds were made, the sitting-room was tidied, and it was not eight o'clock, yet she was nearly done. And while she worked steadily to finish, the boiler on the stove behind her kept time with its clanking cover to the grating tune of her washboard.

The little girl no longer had to make use of a three-legged milking-stool in order to reach the tub. Instead, she stood square on the floor. For she was tall for her scant fifteen years, having grown so rapidly in the last twelve months that she now came up to the youngest brother's chin, and required fully ten yards of cloth for a dress. But she still wore her hair down her back, and, as she bobbed over the clothes to give them their added drubbing, shiny strands shook themselves loose from their curly, captive neighbors and waved damply against her flushing cheeks, till she looked like a gay yellow dandelion a-sway in a gusty wind.

When the last red shirt was wrung from the water, she began to dip bucketfuls and empty them on the sloping ground at the farther side of the storm-cellar, singing blithely as she hurried back and forth. She was so intent on her carrying that she did not see a horseman who was turning in at the ash lane, his face eagerly lifted to the windows of the farm-house. Even when, having tied his mount at the block in front, he rapped on the sitting-room door, she did not hear him. Finally, when, receiving no answer, he walked around the corner to the entry, she stepped out with her last pail and came face to face with him.

Joy leaped into his eyes as he dropped his whip and lifted his hat; something more than surprise lighted hers as she let her suds fall and spill over the stone step. Then, stammering a welcome, she surrendered her hands to the glad grasp of the colonel's son.

"My! it's good to see you!" he cried, looking at her with the old frankness. He stepped back a little to measure her from top to toe. "And haven't you shot up!"

"Like a ragweed," she laughed, taking him into the kitchen, where she brought him a chair from the sitting-room.

"You're a full-fledged housekeeper, too," he declared. "How do you like the change from herding?"

"Oh, I haven't herded much for a long while," she replied proudly, as she refilled her tub from a barrel in the corner that had been drawn by the biggest brother; "I helped mother in the house all last summer." She grew sober suddenly, and the colonel's son hastened to change the subject.

"You're looking awfully well," he assured her.

"I've worn off some of my tan," she explained.

"Well, that's partly it," he said, and his glance was boyishly eloquent.

She fell to rubbing again, and he watched her admiringly, noticing how trim was her black dress, and how spotless were the lace at her throat and the ribbon that bound back her hair.

"I don't believe you can guess where I'm started for," he said, after a moment of silence.

She straightened up to rest her back and looked out through an open window. "I thought you were just coming here."

"No." He watched her for a sign of pleased astonishment when he continued, "I'm on my way to St. Paul."

She turned swiftly, her eyes open wide. "College?" she questioned in a low, strained voice.

"Nearly that; I shall prepare for West Point. The bishop has chosen a school for me."

Her eyes went back to the window, but a mist was over them now, and she could not see the square of cottonwoods and barley framed by the sash.

"I left the Wyoming post a week ago," he went on. "Father's orderly brought my trunk to Chamberlain, and I rode down from there to the reservation—and then came here. I shall take the train at the station. It's changed to morning time, I believe, and goes by about 10:30."

She seemed not to hear him. Her face was still turned away, and she was murmuring to herself. "The bishop!" she repeated; "the bishop!" All at once she ran out of the room. When she returned, she held a tin spice-box in her hand. She took a letter from it and held it toward the colonel's son. "Read this," she said. "It's from the bishop to mother."

He spread out the written sheet, which was dated two years back, and read it aloud.

"'Whenever that spirited little maid of yours is ready to take up the studies she cannot enjoy where you are, send her to me. I will get her ready for the college she dreams about, and, if God takes you from her soon, as you fear, and as I pray not (though His will be done!), I will watch over her like a father.'"

When he finished, he looked up at her, his face fairly sparkling. "Of course you'll go," he said.

"No," she answered sadly, shaking her head; "I can't go. I haven't any money. The boys have just bought some land that joins ours. If I left, they'd have to pay my expenses and then hire some one to take my place. So they wouldn't be able to pay for the land. I shall have to wait till I can earn something myself."

"It's a shame!" declared the colonel's son. "Because if you work here, how can you earn anything?"

She shook her head again. "I don't know. Only I shall go some day. I'm—I'm glad you're going, though."

"But it's been more your hope than mine. I'm sorry it isn't different—that we aren't just changed around. I don't care to study much, anyway. I want to be a soldier, like father. I don't see why I should study so much for that. I've been everywhere with him after Indians. I wish I could go on at it without stopping to study."

"I don't know what I want to be. I only know that I love to read and study. If I could read and study I wouldn't mind living on the plains."

"You wouldn't?" cried the colonel's son. "Why, maybe I shall always have to live here, and—" He stopped in confusion, and got up hastily, hat in hand. "Good-by," he said. He stepped toward her, his head lowered bashfully. She wiped her hands on the jumper.

"Do you have to go?" she asked. "Can't you stay and have dinner? My brothers would love to see you. And I'd cook you something nice."

"No," he replied, a little agitated. "I won't more than catch my train." He shook hands and started out. At the door he glanced back, and was startled at her colorless face. "What is it?" he pleaded, coming back to her side.

She sat down on a bench by the window, the jumper crushed in her fingers. "Oh, I want to go! I want to go!" she said, her voice deep with pain and longing. "I'm lonesome here. I miss mother terribly. I'm always listening for her; I'm always getting up and going into the next room as if she were there. And then I remember—" She broke down and wept, all her pride gone.

"Don't, don't," whispered the colonel's son, tenderly. "It'll all come out right. Next year, when I'm on my way back, I'll stop, and we'll talk it over again. That won't be long. Maybe something will turn up, too, between now and then."

"Maybe," she said hopelessly. But she checked her tears and rose to follow him out. At the mounting-block they shook hands again. Then he sprang into the saddle and galloped through the yard toward the north.

"A year isn't long," she whispered to herself, as she watched him disappear in the corn, and she went bravely back to her tub.

* * * * *

A MONTH went by,—a month of dull routine that was enlivened only by the harvesters. Day after day she plodded through a heavy program of breakfast, dinner, supper, bed-making, sweeping, and the care of the chickens and pigs; her calendar was the added duties that each morning entailed of washing, ironing, mending, scrubbing, and baking. The promise of the colonel's son came to cheer her sometimes; but it was a peep into the tin spice-box each evening that heartened her most. For to her the bishop's letter was the single link between the prairie and the longed-for campus.

Then one afternoon, as she sat churning, the dasher in one hand, in the other a spoon that busily returned the cream frothing from the hole of the cover, there came a second tap at the front door. This time she heard, and ran through the sitting-room, still grasping the spoon, to invite the new settler to enter.

He tramped in with a jocund greeting, sat down on the kitchen floor in a path of sunlight, and leaned against the wall, smoking. "Go right on—go right on," he urged. "Like to see you trouncing the cream. And what I've got to say won't sour it."

She went on with her butter-making, the tall, wooden vessel firmly held between her feet.

"Had a meeting of the school committee yesterday," he began, puffing at his pipe slowly. "We talked over hunting up another teacher to take the place of the one the Dutchman hired."

"She isn't coming?" asked the little girl.

"No, she isn't coming; she's going to take a school near Sioux Falls," he answered crossly. "I'm tired of these teachers that pretend to the little schools away off nowhere that they're ready to take them, when all the while they've got their eyes peeled for a school near town. So I've proposed to the committee that we get some one about here to take the school—some one that won't fail us, and that can handle my young ones, the two little chaps from the West Fork, and one or two of the Dutchman's. That's about all the scholars there'll be this term. What do you think about it?"

"I—I should think it would be all right," she faltered, churning so hard that the froth climbed up the dasher, carrying pieces of fresh butter with it and leaving them midway on the handle.

"I should think so, too," said the new settler; "and that's about the way we fixed it up. And—well, we thought we'd offer it to you."

She got up, her color coming and going swiftly, and stood before him. "To me?" she asked. "Do you mean it?"

He assented by a nod.

"Oh, it's too good to be true," she went on. "I can hardly believe it." She began to laugh tearfully. "You see, I've—I've—" Then, at sight of the braid lying over her shoulder, she put up her hands and gathered her hair into a knot. "I'll take it," she said.

"Glad of that," answered the new settler, cheerily, and, with a glance at the handle of the dasher, "I think that butter's come."

* * * * *

IT was just a week later when she rode south and took charge of the school. The day was full of joy and misgivings. She was happy when, with one of the new settler's babies before the chart, she could point out the very lines the Yankton man had shown her, and hear the little one striving to lisp and learn them. She was filled with doubts when, having dismissed a class, the pupils looked back at her from their seats, some mockingly, she thought, others with laughing eyes that challenged hers. But at four o'clock, when, at the tap of the hand-bell, they cleared their desks and sat straight with folded arms, they seemed to have gotten over the novelty of her supervision, and marched out, with good-bys as they passed the teacher's table, just as they had in former terms. She rode home, feeling that her work was well begun.

The first six weeks of the term passed without incident. There had sprung up a complete understanding between her and the children, and her affection for them was returned with gratifying respect. Then, one Monday morning, there entered a disturbing element.

A Polish woman, whose husband had moved his family down from Pierre to occupy the Irishman's shack, came to the school, bringing her son, a gawky, hangdog lad of twelve. While she recited a long account of his past experiences with teachers, and dictated her wishes as to his treatment by the little girl, he acted as interpreter. When she finally departed, with admonitions and sidewise wags of the head, he shuffled defiantly to a desk.

He occupied his first hour in slyly flipping wet-paper wads at a picture of Shakspere pinned above him on the wall. The little girl, who was well versed in all school tricks from her years of sitting in a rear seat, knew what he was doing, but hesitated to speak to him. At last, seeing that he was attracting the attention of all the other children, she sent him to the blackboard to copy his spelling ten times.

By ingenious counting he soon completed his work, and then began to draw pipe-stem men for the Dutchman's youngest to giggle at. He was sent back to his desk, where he spent the time in wriggling his ears.

The little girl saw that trouble was before her,—saw, too, that her position would be imperiled if she failed in her discipline. That night, when the biggest brother helped her to get supper and make the beds, she shared her fears with him.

"It's one thing to get a school," she said sorrowfully, as he tried to comfort her; "it's another to keep it."

But next day she called the pupils to order cheerfully.

It was evident that the young Pole had been well discussed by the children. They watched him constantly to see what new prank he was preparing for their entertainment. He swaggered under their astonished gaze, and insolently made requests aloud without raising his hand for permission to speak. Just before recess, upon chancing to glance his way, the little girl caught him tossing a note over to the other side of the room.

She suddenly came to a halt beside his desk, and anger, strange and almost unreasonable, possessed her. It flashed into her mind that before her, ignorant, slouchy, indifferent, was one who, by his mischief, threatened to deprive her of what her mother and the biggest brother had long desired, what she herself yearned after with all the earnestness of her soul. She could scarcely refrain from attempting to send him off then and there! She trembled with indignation. Meeting her eyes for a moment, he saw a dangerous glint in them, and for the rest of the morning was more circumspect.

But at noon, a full dinner, a lazy hour, and the ill-concealed admiration of the other children put him again into a mean mood. He got out of line in marching, and pulled the hair of one of the little fellows from the West Fork. The little girl passed the afternoon with her eyes upon him. When he went so far that the school was interrupted, she walked toward him and gave him some task, or stayed beside his desk while she was hearing a class. But though in a measure it kept him in subjection, her power over the others, she found, was being woefully lessened, and her discipline destroyed. At dismissal she took up her hat and pail with a weariness that was not physical, but of the spirit, and rode home, bowed and silent.

But, unknown to her, the Polish boy defeated his own evil ends that same evening, and solved to her satisfaction, and to that of the committee and the scholars, the question of her rule.

He was sent to the Swede's to inquire after a turkey that his mother thought had strayed up the river and nested near the reservation road; and, in asking after the hen, he departed from his errand long enough to boast to the Swede boy of his fun at the school-house. The latter listened to him eagerly, though quietly, grinned slyly once or twice during the story, and at the close of it remarked, with his finger on his nose, that he thought he had better go back to school again himself.

The following morning, when she entered, to her surprise, the little girl found him seated in the back of the room, his lunch in a newspaper beside him, his books in a strap at his feet. "Ay kome tow lairn again," he said, and then waited until she assigned him a desk.

He was so interested in the little girl that, for the first hour after school was called, he forgot to watch the young Pole. Everywhere she moved, he kept his eyes upon her. If she caught his glance, she saw in it only pride and encouragement and was content.

But the young Pole, seeing that the Swede boy did not look at him, became piqued at last and set about gaining not only the attention of the new pupil, but of the entire school. He rummaged his pockets for a bean-shooter, and, finding one, proceeded to let the dry beans fly, snapping them loudly against the benches.

The anger, resentment, and mortification on the little girl's face at his audacity made the Swede boy squirm in his seat. But he said nothing, seemed not to watch the bean-shooting, and bided his time.

At last, interrupted in her teaching and goaded to the point of rebuke, the little girl dismissed a class and, rising in her chair, called the school to attention. "I am sorry to have to speak to any one before the rest," she said, her face white, her voice almost gone with excitement; "but I must have order." She looked straight at the young Pole.

He scraped his feet and smirked at her, at the same time flipping a bean from between his thumb and finger. It struck the stove with a sharp ring that brought the Swede boy to his feet. His hand was raised to attract her attention. She nodded.

The Swede boy lowered his arm very slowly, looking about him with an air of deprecation. "Ay doan know," he said in a low voice, "eef yo theenk like me. Bote she"—he pointed to the little girl—"komes, takes th' skole, lairns us. We bay gote to pay hair back." He shifted till he stood over the young Pole. "So eef somebodey no bay gote," he added, with a threatening note in his voice, "ay make hame." Then he sank to his seat again, having for the second time in that school-room saved her from bitter humiliation.

The next morning the school-house withstood its last throe. At ten o'clock, in the midst of a reading-lesson, there entered the young Pole's father. His ox-gad was in his hand; he did not remove his hat, but strode forward to the teacher's desk, sputtering broken English. When he came near, he shook his empty fist so close to the little girl that she caught the scent of hay on it, for he had been throwing down feed to his cattle.

"No touch my flesh unt blut," he cried savagely; "no touch my flesh unt blut."

A half-recumbent figure in the rear, whose pale eyes rested upon her, gave the little girl courage. "No one has been touched," she replied. "But if the school is made noisy by a pupil, then that pupil will be punished, or will leave."

The Pole raised his gad with a grunt of rage. "Eh?" he shouted, cursing in his own tongue. He nourished his arms and stamped up and down wildly. Of a sudden he saw the Swede boy, who had come forward and halted beside the table. His gaze fell before the pale, half-shut eyes, his voice lowered, and he ceased to swing his whip and swear. Then he hedged adroitly, speaking in broken English again and giving quick looks at the Swede boy's huge, red hands, that hung, clenched and twitching, on either side of his stalwart person.

"I hav-v no trouble wid you," he said to the little girl, his manner changing to one of apology, "bud I lick my boy mineself," and he moved down the aisle and disappeared through the door.

His son gazed after him in amazement and disgust, gave a sniff of contempt, and replied to the triumphant look on the little girl's face by extracting his geography and going to work. He played his pranks no more, and the term passed peaceably, under the mental guidance of the little girl and the physical overlordship of the Swede boy.

* * * * *

ON the afternoon of the last day of school, when her pupils had said their good-bys and were straying homeward laden with their books and slates, the little girl stayed behind. And, sitting in the very place to which in former years she had raised reverent eyes, she looked round the building, every crack and corner of which had its memory.

On the bench by the door, close beside the leaky water-bucket, was the same battered, greasy basin in which the neighbor woman's daughter had placed a horse-hair one day, stoutly maintaining that in due time the hair would miraculously turn into a worm.

The broken pointer reminded her of a certain fierce encounter when, having confided to one of the Dutchman's seven that on the previous Sunday the farm-house had partaken of a dish of canned frogs' legs, she had been hailed in return as "Miss Chinaman," and the teacher had closed the event by routing her tormentors.

She thought of the morning the Dutch children first came in leather shoes, an occasion recalled by the pencil-marks behind the chart, where she had stood her punishment for too much smiling.

The stove-poker brought back the terrible moment she had dared to put her tongue against it in the icy school-room, and had had to sit with the iron cleaving to her until the teacher warmed some water.

The peg above the coal-bins reminded her of the winter day when she took down the well-rope and tied it to the faithful Luffree's collar, so that, with his keener, finer instinct for direction, he could lead teacher and pupils through a blizzard to the safety of the farm-house.

She was suddenly awakened from her day-dreams by the sound of galloping. A horseman was approaching from the direction of the farm-house, and she hurried to the door to see who it could be. As he came near, she ran out joyfully to meet him. It was the colonel's son.

"They told me you were here," he cried, springing from his saddle. She could scarcely answer him for sheer happiness, and when he brought out her mount and they started away through the twilight, he leading the horses, she walked beside him silently.

He told her about his trip, his months at the preparatory school, his new friends, the wonders of the big city in which he had been living, hardly taking a breath in his excitement as his narrative swept along. Suddenly he became quiet and bent toward her anxiously, penitently.

"Go on," she urged; "it's fine!"

"But I've forgotten to ask you how you've been and what you've been doing. Or whether—next year—Of course I wish awfully that you could—"

He faltered, stopped. Then, after a moment, "But you're as brave as can be to just go right on at this school and let your teacher help you all she can. It'll all count, you'll find, when you start in studying some place else."

She laughed merrily. "You haven't heard," she said. Even in the dusk he could see that her face was beaming.

"Heard what?" he asked.

"That I've been going to school, but—not in the way you think."

He halted in the road. "What do you mean?"

"I've been teaching."

* * * * *

IT was a long way from the school to the farm-house, yet the colonel's son and the little girl had so much to tell each other that they were not done even when the lane was reached. So they paused in its gloom, under the budding ash-boughs. A red-breasted thrush, just returned to his old haunts, twittered inquiringly at them from a twig above, and the horses nickered and champed on their bits. But they heard only each other until, having lighted the lamp in the sitting-room, the biggest brother strolled toward them, singing a gay love-song.



XIX

TOWARD THE RISING SUN

THE big brothers sat in a sullen circle about the sitting-room table, the eldest smoking, the biggest studying his fingers, the youngest whittling jackstraws. Near, silent and troubled, hovered the little girl, watching the three who, like the Fates themselves, seemed to be settling her destiny.

"So you don't want her to go," said the biggest, taking up the discussion where it had been dropped a few moments before; "though you know it was mother's last wish, an' that the youngster's always wanted it. Well, your reasons; let's hear 'em again from first to last."

"What'll she do with all this eddication she's hankerin' for?" demanded the eldest, flashing angry eyes around. "Tell me that."

"Huh!" grunted the biggest, and he threw back his head with a hearty laugh. "Well! well!" he exclaimed, when he could speak; "that's what's worrying you, is it! Jus' let me ask you something. Did you ever hear of anybody in your life that had an eddication fastened on to 'em an' didn't know what t' do with it? What'll she do with it? Wait till she's got it. Then she an' me'll sit down an' tell you a-a-all about it."

There was a note of ridicule in his voice that fired the eldest, who made no reply, but struck the wooden bowl of his pipe so savagely against his boot-heel that it split and fell from its stem. Then he turned upon the youngest with a wave of the hand that commanded an opinion.

"Yes, what've you got to say?" inquired the biggest, also turning.

The youngest shrugged his shoulders. "You two run the business to suit yourselves," he said; "I wash my hands of it." He began another jackstraw without glancing up.

"That's good," said the biggest; "that counts you out." He tilted his chair around until he faced the eldest. "I'm no dog in the manger," he continued; "I didn't have a chance to learn more than the law allows, or to go to a city school. But I wanted to, bad enough. That's why I know how she feels." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder at the little girl. "I'm for her goin'; an', whatever comes of it, I'll stand by her. Books is all she wants—let her have 'em. We ain't got no right to hold her back."

"She can have 'em here," interposed the eldest.

"Yes, along with work that's too hard on her. You wouldn't think of puttin' a fine animal like the blue mare on the plow; no, of course you wouldn't. There's some horses born for teamin' an' some for high-toned carriage pullin'. It happens in this case we ain't talkin' about a draft plug." He was trembling in his earnestness. After a pause he went on. "She might stay here. That's right. But she'd never have a cent to call her own 'less she earned it teachin'. Some way or other, the boys in a family always think they own the farm; girls ain't got no share, no matter how hard they've drudged around the kitchen or the garden, or even in the fields. They can take anything that's given 'em till they marry; or they can hang around an' play nurse-girl an' kitchen-girl to their brothers' wives."

"I've always noticed," broke in the eldest, changing his ground, and ignoring what the biggest said, "that every country girl who goes to town polishes herself up like a milk-pan till she's worn off the prairie look, an' then she marries some dude with a head like an addled egg."

The biggest threw the little girl a swift, roguish glance. "I ain't afraid of the dude part of it," he said; "I'm willin' to trust her taste, anyway. I don't have to live with him; neither do you."

"Do you mean to say," asked the eldest, giving the table a blow with his fist, "that you think a city's the place for a girl, friends or no friends? Nobody's goin' to look after her, when she leaves here, as careful as we do."

"The bishop," suggested the little girl, advancing almost imploringly.

"The bishop!" sneered the youngest.

"I thought you washed your hands of this," reminded the biggest, with a look that instantly quieted the youngest; "I guess maybe you didn't get 'em clean. At any rate, you'd better jus' make jackstraws." He faced the eldest again.

"I say the city's no place for her," the latter continued hotly. He pointed through the open door to where, above the ash-trees, a hawk was pursuing a field-sparrow that vainly, by sudden dips and rises, strove to escape its enemy. "You see that?" he cried. "Well, in every city there's a thousand hawks with their claws out waiting to swoop down on them that don't watch. She'd better not go, I say. She'll be safe and happy here. It was so long since mother'd seen a big place she forgot how it is there. It's not too late to stop gettin' ready. You'd better stay." He stood up and whirled about upon the little girl.

The biggest brother gave a dissenting shake of the head. "She'll be safe enough," he said. "It's only when a little bird gets careless that the hawk gets him. What do you know about a city, anyhow?"

"The hardware man says—" began the eldest.

The biggest cut him short. "There's some people in this world that can't do a lick of good," he said, "but they can do any amount of mischief. That hardware man's one of 'em."

"She ain't got enough money to last her more 'n six months," the eldest asserted, once more changing ground.

"I've got what I've just made teaching," said the little girl.

The biggest shook a warning finger at her. "I'm runnin' this parley-voo," he laughed. Then he became serious again. "She's got what she's jus' made teachin'," he agreed. "Well, that won't last her long. So—" He hesitated, arose, and began to walk the floor nervously. "Course," he faltered, "I bought that quarter-section from the Swede. But I don't need it more 'n a cat needs two tails. Jus' bought it to be a-doin'. So—I've concluded to call the bargain off, and buy some land later on. The—the—youngster can have the little pile I've got."

For a moment no one spoke. Then the little girl put out her arms, and the biggest brother drew her to him. "That's the way we've settled it," he said. His voice was husky, his eyes overflowing. "I want to help her get away. An'—an'—Heaven knows how I am going to miss her. You two'll not feel it as I will." He buried his face in her shoulder. Finally he spoke again. "Next year, when her money runs out, she'll have my share of the crop and herd; an' every year she'll have my share till she's through an' ready to do something for herself. Then I'll buy that quarter-section. It belongs to the Swede boy. He'll keep it to sell it to me any time in the next ten years. He says so; that's his part toward helpin' her."

"Oh, dear old brother," whispered the little girl, "thank you! thank you!" She was dangerously near to tears and could say no more.

"We've decided," said the biggest, "that we might as well get this thing over. So—so—she's goin' to-day."

"To-day?" The eldest and the youngest almost shouted in their surprise.

"Yes, to-day," repeated the biggest. "She's goin' to do a little studyin' this summer; now, I'm goin' to hitch up," he added, as he kissed the little girl and went out.

The eldest and the youngest remained beside the table, the former battling with disappointment and sorrow, the latter suddenly wrathful and concerned. As they sat there, the little girl packed a few last garments into a leather satchel and put on her hat and coat. Then she climbed the stairs to the attic to tell the low, bare room good-by.

Ever afterward, when she thought of the farm-house, it was the attic that first pictured itself in her mind, for the rooms below had seen many improvements since her birth-night over fifteen years before, but the attic had remained unchanged. Above the litter of barrels and boxes that covered the western half of the floor, hung the Christmas trimmings in their little bag; seeds for the spring planting, each kind done up separately; strings of dried peppers; rows of cob-corn, suspended by the shucks; slippery-elm, sage, and boneset in paper packages; unused powder-horns; and the big brothers' steel traps. To the east of the stovepipe were their beds, covered with patchwork quilts made by the mother, and the boxes in which they kept their clothes and trinkets.

The little girl halted sadly beneath the slanting rafters to look round. When she finally turned away to descend, she had to feel her way carefully, though the morning sun, but lately risen, was pouring in its light.

The farewells in the sitting-room were soon over. With many a promise to write, with fond pats to the dogs that crowded about her hoping she would take them on her drive, with tender kisses on the pillows of the old canopied bed, and glances behind, she went out into the frosty air and took her seat in the buckboard.

Her face was calm and her eyes were dry as they drove out of the yard. She was bravely fighting down her grief at leaving, and she looked back again and again to wave her hand to the eldest and the youngest, who were standing outside the kitchen, swinging their hats in tardily repentant and approving response.

At sight of the carnelian bluff, she suddenly sat very still, and a pang shot through her heart. Looking down at the well-worn, weed-bordered road, she remembered the November morning when, with even deeper sorrow, she walked behind her who was never to pass through the corn again.

Opposite the bluff the biggest brother stopped the buckboard and the little girl stepped down, crossed the half-thawed drifts that still lay on the western slope, and went up to the graves. A brisk wind was blowing over the plains and shaking the scent from the first wild prairie-violets that dotted the new grass.

She paused but a moment at the pipestone cross, but beside the other grave she knelt and looked long and lovingly at the white headboard. The chaplain had put it up the day after the funeral, and had lettered on it in black:

MOTHER "Blessed are the pure in heart."

A few minutes later she joined the biggest brother, and the buckboard hurried on. She did not look around at the house or bluff until the highest point between the track and the farm was reached. Then, as if he read her wish, the biggest brother again drew rein.

She stood up to look back. She could see the herd, peacefully trailing across the river meadows in search of green feeding. Beyond lay the awakening fields under the cold sun, the bluff, the house shining in a new coat of red, the board barn towering over the low sod one at its back. And she caught a glimpse of the two dark figures still standing against the kitchen, watching her out of sight. She did not see a third, whose pale eyes were so dim that he in turn could not see her as he loitered mournfully by the side of a stack.

"Good-by," she said softly; "good-by." A sob came from her biggest brother. She sank to the seat and, putting her arms about his neck, clung to him, weeping aloud.

As they drove on, he manfully strove to restrain his grief. When he turned east at the railroad, he drew his sleeve across his eyes and clucked to the horse.

"It'd be a lot worse if you had to stay," he said. "There's everything before you where you're goin', if you want to work for it. Here there's nothing."

The little girl lifted her head from his shoulder with fresh courage. "I know it," she said. She gave him a grateful smile, and turned to look back once more.

Suddenly a cry parted her lips. She pointed off beyond the farm-house. "See!" she exclaimed, and the biggest brother brought the horse to a stand.

Hanging against the sky was a spectral city whose buildings, inverted and magnified, loomed through the clear, crisp air in marble-like grandeur, and whose spires, keen-tipped and transparent, were thrust far down toward the earth.

Breathlessly the little girl watched the mirage, which to her seemed divine, as if He who sat at sunset upon the throne of clouds were showing her the longed-for city of her dreams in a celestial image, high and white and beautiful. Joy shone on her face at the wonderful thought; and into her eyes there came a light of comprehension, of determination, and of enduring hope,—it was the radiant light of womanhood. And the biggest brother, looking proudly at her, knew at that moment that she was no longer a little girl.

* * * * *

Transcriber's Notes:

Obvious punctuation errors repaired.

Page 44, "bulk" changed to "bull" (great white bull)

Page 165, "disapprovel" changed to "disapproval" (disapproval at every tug)

Both Vermillion and Vermilion were used and retained in this text.

THE END