"What was the next thing, Rowena?"

"W'y, if it wouldn't be kind o' nice to have some one around, even if she wa'n't very pretty, and was ignorant, if she was willin' to learn, an' would always be good to you, to have things kind o' cheerful at night—your supper ready; a light lit; dry boots warmed by the stove; your bed made up nice, and maybe warmed when it was cold: even if she happened to be wearin' an old apern like this—if you knowed she was thinkin' in her thankful heart of the bashful boy that give it to her back along the road when she was ragged and ashamed of herself every time a stranger looked at her!"

Dumbhead as I was I sat mute, and looked as blank as an idiot. In all this description of hers I was struck by the resemblance between her vision and mine; but I was dreaming of some one else. She looked at me a moment, and took her hand away. She seemed hurt, and I thought I saw her wiping her eyes. I could not believe that she was almost asking me to marry her, it seemed so beyond belief—and I was joked so much about the girls, and about getting me a wife that it seemed this must be just banter, too. And yet, there was something a little pitiful in it, especially when she spoke again about my little gift to her so long ago.

"I never looked your place over," said she at last. "That's what I come over fur. Show it to me, Jacob?"

This delighted me. We looked first at the wheat, and the corn, and some of my cattle were near enough so that we went and looked at them, too. I told her where I had got every one of them. We looked at the chickens and the ducks; and the first brood of young turkeys I ever had. I showed her all my elms, maples, basswoods, and other forest trees which I had brought from the timber, and even the two pines I had made live, then not over a foot high.

I just now came in from looking at them, and find them forty feet high as I write this, with their branches resting on the ground in a great brown ring carpeted with needles as they are in the pineries.

We sat down on the blue-grass under what is now the big cottonwood in front of the house. I had stuck this in the sod a little twig not two feet long, and now it was ten or twelve feet high, and made a very little shade, to be sure, but wasn't I proud of my own shade trees! Oh, you can't understand it; for you can not realize the beauty of shade on that great sun-bathed prairie, or the promise in the changing shadows under that little tree!

Rowena leaned back against the gray-green trunk, and patted the turf beside her for me to be seated.

Every circumstance of this strange day comes back to me as I think of it, and of what followed. I remember just how the poor girl looked as she sat leaning against the tree, her cheeks flushed by the heat of the summer afternoon, that look of distress in her eyes as she looked around so brightly and with so gay an air over my little kingdom. As she sat there she loosened her belt and took a long breath as if relieved in her weariness at the long ramble we had taken.

"I never have had a home," she said. "I never had no idee how folk that have got things lived—till I went over—over to that—that hell-hole there!" And she waved her hand over toward Blue-grass Manor. I was startled at her fierce manner and words.

"Your folks come along here the other day," I said, to turn the subject, I guess.

"Did they?" she asked, with a little gasp. "What did they say?"

"They said they were headed for Pike's Peak."

"The old story," she said. "Huntin' f'r the place where the hawgs run around ready baked, with knives an' forks stuck in 'em. I wish to God I was with 'em!"

Here she stopped for a while and sat with her hands twisted together in her lap. Finally, "Did they say anything about me, Jacob?"

"I thought," said I, "that they talked as if you'd had a fuss."

"Yes," she said. "They're all I've got. They hain't much, I reckon, but they're as good as I be, I s'pose. Yes, a lot better. They're my father an' my mother, an' my brothers. In their way—in our way—they was always, as good to me as they knowed how. I remember when ma used to kiss me, and pa held me on his lap. Do you remember he's got one finger off? I used to play with his fingers, an' try to build 'em up into a house, while he set an' told about new places he was goin' to to git rich. I wonder if the time'll ever come ag'in when I can set on any one's lap an' be kissed without any harm in it!"

There was no false gaiety in her face now, as she sat and looked off over the marsh from the brow of the hill-slope. A feeling of coming evil swept over me as I looked at her, like that which goes through the nerves of the cattle when a tornado is coming. I remembered now the silence of her brothers when her father and mother had said that she was no longer a member of their family, and was not going with them to "the Speak."

The comical threat of the old man that he would will his property away from her did not sound so funny now; for there must have been something more than an ordinary family disagreement to have made them feel thus. I recalled the pained look in Ma Fewkes's face, as she sat with her shoulder-blades drawn together and cast Rowena out from the strange family circle. What could it be? I turned my back to her as I sat on the ground; and she took me by the shoulders, pulled me down so that my head was lying in her lap, and began smoothing my hair back from my forehead with a very caressing touch.

"Well," said she, "we wun't spoil our day by talkin' of my troubles. This place here is heaven, to me, so quiet, so clean, so good! Le's not spoil it."

And before I knew what she meant to do, she stooped down and kissed me on the lips—kissed me several times. I can not claim that I was offended, she was so pretty, so rosy, so young and attractive; but at the same time, I was a little scared. I wanted to end this situation; so, pretty soon, I proposed that we go down to see where I kept my milk. I felt like calling her attention to the fact that it was getting well along in the afternoon, and that she would be late home if she did not start soon; but that would not be very friendly, and I did not want to hurt her feelings. So we went down to the spring at the foot of the hill, where the secret lay of my nice, firm, sweet butter. She did not seem very much interested, even when I showed her the tank in which the pans of milk stood in the cool water. She soon went over to a big granite boulder left there by the glaciers ages ago when the hill was made by the melting ice dropping its earth and gravel, and sat down as if to rest. So I went and sat beside her.

"Jacob," said she, with a sort of gasp, "you wonder why I kissed you up there, don't you?"

I should not have confessed this when I was young, for it is not the man's part I played; but I blushed, and turned my face away.

"I love you, Jacob!" she took my hand as she said this, and with her other hand turned my face toward her. "I want you to marry me. Will you, Jacob? I—I—I need you. I'll be good to you, Jake. Don't say no! Don't say no, for God's sake!"

Then the tragic truth seemed to dawn on me, or rather it came like a flash; and I turned and looked at her as I had not done before. I am slow, or I should have known when her father and mother had spoken as they did; but now I could see. I could see why she needed me. As an unsophisticated boy, I had been blind in my failure to see something new and unexpected to me in human relations; but once it came to me, it was plain. I was a stockman, as well as a boy; and my life was closely related to the mysterious processes by which the world is filled with successive generations of living beings. I was like a family physician to my animals; and wise in their days and generations. Rowena was explained to me in a flash of lightning by my every-day experiences; she was swept within the current of my knowledge.

"Rowena," said I, "you are in trouble."

She knew what I meant.

I hope never again to see any one in such agony. Her face flamed, and then turned as white as a sheet. She looked at me with that distressful expression in her eyes, rose as if to go away, and then came back and sitting down again on the stone, she buried her head on my breast and wept so terribly that I was afraid. I tried to dry her tears, but they burst out afresh whenever I looked in her face. The poor thing was ashamed to look in my eyes; but she clung to me, sobbing, and crying out, and then drawing long quivering breaths, which seemed to be worse than sobs. When she spoke, it was in short, broken sentences, sometimes unfinished, as her agony returned upon her and would not let her go on.

I could not feel any scorn or contempt for her; I could as soon have looked down on a martyr burning at the stake for an act in which I did not believe. She was like a dumb beast tied in a burning stall, only able to moan and cry out and endure.

I have often thought that to any one who had not seen and heard it, the first thing she said might seem comic.

"Jacob," she said, with her face buried in my breast, "they've got it worked around so—I'm goin' to have a baby!"

But when you think of the circumstances; the poor, pretty, inexperienced girl; of that poor slack-twisted family; of her defenselessness in that great house; of the experienced and practised and conscienceless seducer into whose hands she had fallen—when you think of all this, I do not see how you can fail to see how the words were wrung from her as a statement of the truth. "They" meant all the forces which had been too strong for her, not the least, her own weakness—for weakness is one of the most powerful forces in our affairs. "They had got it worked around"—as if the very stars in their courses had conspired to destroy her. I had no impulse to laugh at her strange way of stating it, as if she had had nothing to do with it herself: instead, I felt the tears of sympathy roll down my face upon her hair of rich brown.

"That's why my folks have throwed me off," she went on. "But I ain't bad, Jacob. I ain't bad. Take me, and save me! I'll always be good to you, Jake; I'll wash your feet with my hair! I'll kiss them! I'll eat the crusts from the table an' be glad, for I love you, Jacob. I've loved you ever since I saw you. If I have been untrue to you, it was because I was overcome, and you never looked twice at me, and I thought I was to be a great lady. Now I'll be mud, trod on by every beast that walks, an' rooted over by the hawgs, unless you save me. I'll work my fingers to the bone f'r you, Jacob, to the bone. You're my only hope. For Christ's sake let me hope a little longer!"

The thought that she was coming to me to save her from the results of her own sin never came into my mind. I only saw her as a lost woman, cast off even by her miserable family, whose only claim to respectability was their having kept themselves from the one depth into which she had fallen. I thought again of that wretch who had been kind to me in Buffalo, and of poor Rowena, in poverty and want, stripped of every defense against wrongs piled on wrongs, rooted over, as she said, by the very swine, until she should come to some end so dreadful that I could not imagine it; and not of her alone. There would be another life to be thought of. I knew that Buckner Gowdy, for she had told me of his blame in the matter, of her appeal to him, of his light-hearted cruelty to her, of how now at last, after months of losing rivalry between her and that other of his victims, the wife of Mobley the overseer, she had come to me in desperation—I knew there was nothing in that cold heart to which Rowena could make any appeal that had not been made unsuccessfully by others in the same desperate case.

I had no feeling that she should have told me all in the first place, instead of trying to win me in my ignorance: for I felt that she was driven by a thousand whips to things which might not be honest, but were as free from blame as the doublings of a hunted deer. I felt no blame for her then, and I have never felt any. I passed that by, and tried to look in the face what I should have to give up if I took this girl for my wife. That sacrifice rolled over me like a black cloud, as clear as if I had had a month in which to realize it.

I pushed her hands from my shoulders, and rose to my feet; and she knelt down and clasped her arms around my knees.

"I must think!" I said. "Let me be! Let me think!"

I took a step backward, and as I turned I saw her kneeling there, her hair all about her face, with her hands stretched out to me: and then I walked blindly away into the long grass of the marsh.

I finally found myself running as if to get away from the whole thing, with the tall grass tangling about my feet. All my plans for my life with Virginia came back to me: I lived over again every one of those beautiful days I had spent with her. I remembered how she had come back to bid me good-by when I left her at Waterloo, and turned her over again to Grandma Thorndyke; but especially, I lived over again our days in the grove. I remembered that for months, now, she had seemed lost to me, and that all the hope I had had appeared to be that of living alone and dreaming of her. I was not asked by poor Rowena to give up much; and yet how much it was to me! But how little for me to lose to save her from the fate in store for her!

I can not hope to make clear to any one the tearing and rending in my breast as these things passed through my mind while I went on and on, through water and mud, blindly stumbling, dazed by the sufferings I endured. I caught my feet in the long grass, fell—and it did not seem worth while to rise again.

The sun went down, and the dusk came on as I lay there with my hands twisted in the grass which drooped over me. Then I thought of Rowena, and I got upon my feet and started in search of her, but soon forgot her in my thoughts of the life I should live if I did what she wanted of me. I was in such a daze that I went within a rod of her as she sat on the stone, without seeing her, though the summer twilight was still a filtered radiance, when suddenly all went dark before my eyes, and I fell again. Rowena saw me fall, and came to me.

"Jacob," she cried, as she helped me to my feet, "Jacob, what's the matter!"

"Rowena," said I, trying to stand alone, "I've made up my mind. I had other plans—but I'll do what you want me to!"



CHAPTER XVIII

ROWENA'S WAY OUT—THE PRAIRIE FIRE

The collapse of mind and body which I underwent in deciding the question of marrying Rowena Fewkes or of keeping unstained and pure the great love of my life, refusing her pitiful plea and passing by on the other side, leaving her desolate and fordone, is a thing to which I hate to confess; for it was a weakness. Yet, it was the directing fact of that turning-point not only in my own life, but in the lives of many others—of the life of Vandemark Township, of Monterey County, and of the State of Iowa, to some extent. The excuse for it lies, as I have said, in the way I am organized; in the bovine dumbness of my life, bursting forth in a few crises in storms of the deepest bodily and spiritual tempest. I could not and can not help it. I was weak as a child, as she clasped me in her arms in gratitude when I told her I would do as she wanted me to; and would have fallen again if she had not held me up.

"What's the matter, Jacob?" she said, in sudden fright at my strange behavior.

"I don't know," I gasped. "I wish I could lay down."

She was mystified. She helped me up the hill, telling me all the time how she meant to live so as to repay me for all I had promised to do for her. She was stronger than I, then, and helped me into the house, which was dark, now, and lighted the lamp; but when she came to me, lying on the bed, she gave a great scream.

"Jake, Jake!" she cried. "What's the matter! Are you dying, my darling?"

"Who, me dying?" I said, not quite understanding her. "No—I'm all right—I'll be all right, Rowena!"

She was holding her hands up in the light. They were stained crimson where she had pressed them to my bosom.

"What's the matter of your hands?" I asked, though I was getting drowsy, as if I had been long broken of my sleep.

"It's blood, Jacob! You've hurt yourself!"

I drew my hand across my mouth, and it came away stained red. She gave a cry of horror; but did not lose her presence of mind. She sponged the blood from my clothes, wiping my mouth every little while, until there was no more blood coming from it. Presently I dropped off to sleep with my hand in hers. She awoke me after a while and gave me some warm milk. As I was drowsing off again, she spoke very gently to me.

"Can you understand what I'm saying?" she asked; and I nodded a yes. "Do you love her like that?" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "I love her like that."

Presently she lifted my hand to her lips and kissed it. She was quite calm, now, as if new light had come to her in her darkness; and I thought that it was my consent which had quieted her spirits: but I did not understand her.

"I can't let you do it, Jacob," said she, finally. "It's too much to ask.... I've thought of another way, my dear.... Don't think of me or my troubles any more.... I'll be all right.... You go on loving her, an' bein' true to her ... and if God is good as they say, He'll make you happy with her sometime. Do you understand, Jacob?"

"Yes," I said, "but what will you...."

"Never mind about me," said she soothingly. "I've thought of another way out. You go to sleep, now, and don't think of me or my troubles any more."

I lay looking at her for a while, and wondering how she could suddenly be so quiet after her agitation of the day; and after a while, the scene swam before my eyes, and I went off into the refreshing sleep of a tired boy. The sun was up when I awoke. Rowena was gone. I went out and found that she had saddled her horse and left sometime in the night; afterward I found out that it was in the gray of the morning. She had watched by my bedside all night, and left only after it was plain that I was breathing naturally and that my spasm had passed. She had come into my life that day like a tornado, but had left it much as it had been before, except that I wondered what was to become of her. I was comforted by the thought that she had "thought of another way." And it was a long time before the nobility of her action was plain to me; but when I realized it, I never forgot it. I had offered her all I had when she begged for it, she had taken it, and then restored it, as the dying soldier gave the draught of water to his comrade, saying, "Thy necessity is greater than mine."

Once or twice I made an effort to tell Magnus Thorkelson about this, as we worked at our after-harvest haying together that week; but it was a hard thing to do. Perhaps it would not be a secret much longer; but as yet it was Rowena's secret, not mine. I knew, too, that Magnus had been haunting Rowena for two years; that he had been making visits to Blue-grass Manor often when she was there, without taking me into his confidence; that his excuse that he went to help Surajah Fewkes with his inventions was not the real reason for his going. I remembered, too, that Rowena had always spoken well of Magnus, and seemed to see what most of us did not, that Magnus was better educated in the way foreigners are taught than the rest of us; and she did not look down on him the way we did then on folks from other countries. I had no way of knowing how they stood toward each other, though Magnus had looked sad and stopped talking lately whenever I had mentioned her. I knew it would be a shock to him to learn of her present and coming trouble; and, strange as it may seem, I began to put it back into the dark places in my brain as if it had not happened; and when it came to mind clearly as it kept doing, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Rowena had said that she had thought of another way out.

We had frost early that year—a hard white frost sometime about the tenth of September. Neither Magnus nor I had any sound corn, though our wheat, oats and barley were heavy and fine; and we had oceans of hay. The frost killed the grass early, and early in October we had a heavy rain followed by another freeze, and then a long, calm, warm Indian summer. The prairie was covered with a dense mat of dry grass which rustled in the wind but furnished no feed for our stock. It was a splendid fall for plowing, and I began to feel hope return to me as I followed my plow around and around the lands I laid off, and watched the black ribbon of new plowing widen and widen as the day advanced toward night.

Nothing is so good a soil for hope as new plowing. The act of making it is inspired by hope. The emblem of hope should be the plow; not the plow of the Great Seal, but a plow buried to the top of the mold-board in the soil, with the black furrow-slice falling away from it—and for heaven's sake, let it fall to the right, as it does where they do real farming, and not to the left as most artists depict it! I know some plows are so made that the nigh horse walks in the furrow, but I have mighty little respect for such plows or the farms on which they are used.

My cattle strayed off in the latter part of October; being tolled off in this time between hay and grass by the green spears that grew up in the wet places in the marsh and along the creek. I got uneasy about them on the twentieth, and went hunting them on one of Magnus Thorkelson's horses. Magnus was away from home working, and had left his team with me. I made up my mind that I would scout along on my own side of the marsh until I could cross below it, and then work west, looking from every high place until I found the cattle, coming in away off toward the Gowdy tract, and crossing the creek above the marsh on my way home. This would take me east and west nearly twice across Vandemark Township as it was finally established.

I expected to get back before night, but when I struck the trail of the stock it took me away back into the region in the north part of the township back of Vandemark's Folly, as we used to say, where it was not settled, on account of the slew and the distance from town, until in the 'seventies. Foster Blake had it to himself all this time, and ran a herd of the neighbors' stock there until about 1877, when the Germans came in and hemmed him in with their improvements, making the second great impulse in the settlement of the township.

2

There was a stiff, dry, west wind blowing, and a blue haze in the air. As the afternoon advanced, the sun grew red as if looked at through smoked glass, burning like a great coal of fire or a broad disk of red-hot iron.

There was a scent of burning grass in the air when I found my herd over on Section Eight, about where the cooperative creamery and store now stand. The cattle seemed to be uneasy, and when I started them toward home, they walked fast, snuffing the air, and giving once in a while an uneasy, anxious falsetto bellow; and now and then they would break into a trot as they drew nearer to the places they knew. The smell of smoke grew stronger, and I knew there was a prairie fire burning to the westward. The sun was a deeper red, now, and once in a while almost disappeared in clouds of vaporous smoke which rolled higher and higher into the sky. Prairie chickens, plover and curlew, with once in a while a bittern, went hurriedly along to the eastward, and several wolves crossed our path, trotting along and paying no attention to me or the cows; but stopping from time to time and looking back as if pursued from the west.

They were pursued. They were fleeing from the great prairie fire of 1859, which swept Monterey County from side to side, and never stopped until it struck the river over in the next county. I felt a little uneasy as I hiked my cattle down into the marsh on my own land, and saw them picking their way across it toward my grove, which showed proudly a mile away across the flat. I had plowed firebreaks about my buildings and stacks, and burned off between the strips of plowing, but I felt that I ought to be at home. So I rode on at a good trot to make my circuit of the marsh to the west. The cattle could get through, but a horse with a man on his back might easily get mired in Vandemark's Folly anywhere along there; and my motto was, "The more hurry, the less speed."

As I topped the hill to get back to the high ground, I saw great clouds of smoke pouring into the valley at the west passage into the big flat, and the country to the south was hidden by the smoke, except where, away off in the southwest in the changing of the wind, I could see the line of fire as it came over the high ground west of the old Bill Trickey farm. It was a broad belt of red flames, from which there crept along the ground a great blanket of smoke, black at first, and then turning to blue as it rose and thinned. I began making haste; for it now looked as if the fire might reach the head of the slew before I could, and thus cut me off. I felt in my pocket for matches; for in case of need, the only way to fight fire is with fire.

I was not scared, for I knew what to do; but not a mile from where I saw the fire on the hilltop, a family of Indiana movers were at that moment smothering and burning to death in the storm of flames—six people, old and young, of the score or more lost in that fire; and the first deaths of white people in Vandemark Township. Their name was Davis, and they came from near Vincennes, we found out.

And within five minutes, as I looked off to the northwest, I saw a woman walking calmly toward the marsh. She was a long way off, and much nearer the fire than I was. I looked for the wagon to which she might belong, but saw none, and it took only one more glance at her to show me that she was in mortal danger. For she was walking slowly and laboriously along like a person carrying a heavy burden. The smoke was getting so thick that it hid her from time to time, and I felt, even at my distance from the fire, an occasional hot blast on my cheek—a startling proof of the rapid march of the great oncoming army of flames.

I kicked my heels into the horse's flanks and pushed him to a gallop. I must reach her soon, or she would be lost, for it was plain that she was paying no attention to her danger. I went down into a hollow, pounded up the opposite hill, and over on the next rise of ground I saw her. She was standing still, now, with her face turned to the fire: then she walked deliberately toward it. I urged my horse to a faster gait, swung my hat, and yelled at her, but she seemed not to hear.

The smoke swept down upon her, and when I next could see, she was stooped with her shawl drawn around her head; or was she on her knees? Then she rose, and turning from the fire, ran as fast as she could, until I wheeled my horse across her path, jumped to the ground and stopped her with my arm about her waist. I looked at her. It was Rowena Fewkes.

"Rowena," I shouted, "what you doin' here? Don't you know you'll get burnt up?"

"I couldn't go any closer," she said, as if excusing herself. "Would it hurt much? I got scared, Jake. Oh, don't let me burn!"

There was no chance to make the circuit of the slew now, even if I had not been hampered with her. I told her to do as she was told, and not bother me. Then I gave her the horse to hold, and sternly ordered her not to let loose of him no matter what he did.

I gathered a little armful of dry grass, and lighted it with a match to the leeward of us. It spread fast, though I lighted it where the grass was thin so as to avoid a hot fire; but on the side toward the wind, where the blaze was feeble, I carefully whipped it out with my slouch hat. In a minute, or so, I had a line two or three rods long, of little blazes, each a circle of fire burning more and more fiercely on the leeward side, and more feebly on the side where the blaze was fanned away from its fuel. This side of each circle I whipped out with my hat, some of them with difficulty. Soon, we had a fierce fire raging, leaving in front of us a growing area of black ashes. We were now between two fires; the great conflagration from which we were trying to protect ourselves came on from the west like a roaring tornado, its ashes falling all about us, its hot breath beginning to scorch us, its snapping and crackling now reaching the ear along with its roar; while on the east was the fire of my own kindling, growing in speed, racing off away from us, leaving behind it our haven of refuge, a tract swept clean of food for the flames, but hot and smoking, and as yet all too small to be safe, for the heat and smoke might kill where the flames could not reach. Between the two fires was the fast narrowing strip of dry grass from which we must soon move. Our safety lay in the following of one fire to escape the other.

The main army of the flames coming on from the west, with its power of suction, fanned itself to a faster pace than our new line could attain, and the heat increased, both from the racing crimson line to the west, and the slower-moving back-fire on the other side. We sweltered and almost suffocated. Rowena buried her face in her shawl, and swayed as if falling. I took her by the arm, and leading the excited horse, we moved over into our zone of safety. She was trembling like a leaf.

I was a little anxious for a few minutes for fear I had not started my back-fire soon enough; but the fear soon passed. The fire came on with a swelling roar. We followed our back-fire so close as to be almost blistered by it, coughing, gasping, covering our mouths and nostrils in such a heat and smother that I could scarcely support Rowena and keep my own footing. Suddenly the heat and smoke grew less; I looked around, and saw that the fire had reached our burnt area, and the line was cut for lack of fuel. It divided as a wave is split by a rock, and went in two great moving spouting fountains of red down the line of our back-fire, and swept on, leaving us scorched, blackened, bloodshot of eye and sore of lips, but safe. We turned, with great relief to me at least, and made for the open country behind the lines. Then for the first time, I looked at Rowena.

If I had been surprised at the way in which, considering her trouble, she had kept her prettiness and gay actions when I had last seen her, I was shocked at the change in her now. The poor girl seemed to have given up all attempt to conceal her condition or to care for her looks. All her rosy bloom was gone. Her cheeks were pale and puffy, even though emaciated. Her limbs looked thin through her disordered and torn clothes. She wore a dark-colored hood over her snarled hair, in which there was chaff mixed with the tangles as if she had been sleeping in straw. She was black with smoke and ashes. Her skirts were draggled as if with repeated soaking with dew and rain. Her shoes were worn through at the toes, and through the holes the bare toes stuck out of openings in her stockings. While her clothes were really better than when I had first seen her, she had a beggarly appearance that, coupled with her look of dejection and misery, went to my heart—she was naturally so bright and saucy. She looked like a girl who had gone out into the weather and lived exposed to it until she had tanned and bleached and weathered and worn like a storm-beaten and discouraged bird with its plumage soiled and soaked and its spirit broken. And over it all hung the cloud of impending maternity—a cloud which should display the rainbow of hope. But with her there was only a lurid light which is more awful than darkness.

I could not talk with her. I could only give her directions and lend her aid. I tried putting her on the horse behind me, but he would not carry double; so I put her in the saddle and walked by or ahead of the horse, over the blackened and ashy prairie, lit up by the red glare of the fire, and dotted here and there with little smokes which marked where there were coals, the remains of vegetable matter which burned more slowly than the dry grass. She said nothing; but two or three times she gave a distressed little moan as if she were in pain; but this she checked as if by an effort.

When we reached the end of the slew, we turned south and crossed the creek just above the pond which we called Plum Pudd'n' Pond, from the number of bitterns that lived there. It disappeared when I drained the marsh in the 'eighties. Then, though, it spread over several acres of ground, the largest body of water in Monterey County. We splashed through the west end of it, and Rowena looked out over it as it lay shining in the glare of the great prairie fire, which had now swept half-way down the marsh, roaring like a tornado and sending its flames fifty feet into the air. I could not help thinking what my condition would have been if I had tried to cross it and been mired in the bog, and like any good stockman, I was hoping that my cattle had got safe across in their rush for home and safety.

"What water is that?" asked Rowena as we crossed.

"Plum Pudd'n' Pond," I told her.

"Is it deep?" she said.

"Pretty deep in the middle."

"Over your head?"

"Oh, yes!"

"I reckoned it was," said she. "I was huntin' fur it when you found me."

"That was after you saw the fire," I said.

"No," said she. "It was before."

In my slow way I pondered on why she had been hunting water over her head, and sooner than is apt to be the case with me I understood. The despair in her face as she turned and looked at the shining water told me. She had refused to accept my offer to be her protector, because she saw how it hurt me; but she was now ready to balance the books—if it ever does that—by taking shelter in the depths of the pool! And this all for the pleasure of that smiling scoundrel!

"I hope God will damn him," I said; and am ashamed of it now.

"What good would that do?" said she wearily. "This world's hard enough, Jake!"

3

We got to my house, and I helped her in. I told her to wait while I went to look at the fire to see whether my stacks were in danger, and to put out and feed the horse. Then I went back, and found her sitting where I had left her, and as I went in I heard again that little moan of pain.

The house was as light as day, without a lamp. The light from the fire shone against the western wall of the room almost as strong as sunlight, and as we sat there we could hear the roar of the fire rising in the gusts of the wind, dying down, but with a steady undertone, like the wind in the rigging of a ship. I got some supper, and after saying that she couldn't eat, Rowena ate ravenously.

She had gone away from Blue-grass Manor, whipped forth by Mrs. Mobley's abuse, days and days before, living on what she had carried with her until it was gone, drinking from the brooks and runs of the prairie, and then starving on rose-haws, and sleeping in stacks until I had found her looking for the pool. If people could only have known! Presently she moaned again, and I made her lie down on the bed.

"What will you do with me, Jacob?" she asked.

"We'll think about that in the morning," said I.

"Maybe you can bury me in the morning," she said after a while. "Oh, Jake, I'm scared, I'm scared. My trouble is comin' on! My time is up, Jake. Oh, what shall I do! What shall I do?"

I went out and sat on the stoop and thought about this. Finally I made up my mind what she really meant by "her trouble," and I went back to her side. I found her moaning louder and more agonizingly, now: and in my turn I had my moment of panic.

"Rowena," I said, "I'm goin' out to do something that has to be done. Will you stay here, and not move out of this room till I come back?"

"I'll have to," she said. "I guess I've walked my last."

So I went out and saddled the fresh horse, and started through that fiery night for Monterey Centre. The fire had burned clear past the town, and when I got there I saw what was left of one or two barns or houses which had caught fire from the burning prairie, still blazing in heaps of embers. The village had had a narrower escape from the rain of ashes and sparks which had swept to the very edges of the little cluster of dwellings. I rode to Doctor Bliven's drug store, climbed the outside stairway which led to his living-room above, and knocked. Mrs. Bliven came to the door. I explained that I wanted the doctor at once to come out to my farm.

"He's not here," said she. "He is dressing some burns from the fire; but he must be nearly through. I'll go after him."

I refused to go in and sit until she came back, but stood at the foot of the stair on the sidewalk. The time of waiting seemed long, but I suppose he came at once.

"Who's sick, Jake?" he asked.

"A girl," I said. "A woman."

"At your house?" asked he. "What is it?"

"It's Rowena Fewkes," said I.

"I thought they had gone to Colorado," said the doctor.

"They said they were leaving her behind," said Mrs. Bliven. "They said.... Do you say she's at your house? Who's with her?"

"No one," said I. "She's alone. Hurry, Doctor: she needs you bad."

"Just a minute," said he. "What seems to be the matter? Is she very bad?"

"It's a confinement case," said I. I had been thinking of the proper word all the way.

"And she alone!" exclaimed Mrs. Bliven. "Hurry, Doctor! I'll get your instruments and medicine-case, and you can hitch up. You stay here, Jake. I want to speak to you."

She ran up-stairs, and down again in a few seconds, with the cases, and wearing her bonnet and cloak. I could hear the doctor running his buggy out of the shed, and speaking to his horses. She set the cases down on the sidewalk, came up to me, put her hand on my arm and spoke.

"Jake," said she, "are you and Rowena married?"

"Us married!" I exclaimed. "Why, no!"

"This is bad business," said she. "I am surprised, and there's no woman out there with the poor little thing?"

"No," I said; "as soon as I could I started for the doctor because I thought he was needed first. But she needs a woman—a woman that won't look down on her, I wish—I wish I knew where there was one!"

"Jake," said she, "you've done the fair thing by me, and I'll stand by you, and by her. I'll go to her in her trouble. I'll go now with the doctor. And when I do the fair thing, see that you do the same. I'm not the one to throw the first stone, and I won't. I'm going with you, Doctor."

"What for?" said he.

"Just for the ride," she said. "I'll tell you more as we go."

They outstripped me on the return trip, for my horse was winded, and I felt that there was no place for me in what was going on at the farm, though what that must be was very dim in my mind.

I let my horse walk. The fire was farther off, now; but the sky, now flecked with drifting clouds, was red with its light, and the sight was one which I shall never see again: which I suppose nobody will ever see again; for I do not believe there will ever be seen such an expanse of grass as that of Iowa at that time. I have seen prairie fires in Montana and Western Canada; but they do not compare to the prairie fires of old Iowa. None of these countries bears such a coating of grass as came up from the black soil of Iowa; for their climate is drier. I can see that sight as if it were before my eyes now. The roaring came no longer to my ears as I rode on through the night, except faintly when the breeze, which had died down, sprang up as the fire reached some swale covered with its ten-foot high saw-grass. Then, I could see from the top of some rising ground the flames leap up, reach over, catch in front of the line, kindle a new fire, and again be overleaped by a new tongue of fire, so that the whole line became a belt of flames, and appeared to be rolling along in a huge billow of fire, three or four rods across, and miles in length.

The advance was not in a straight line. In some places for one reason or another, the thickness or thinness of the grass, the slope of the land, or the varying strength of the wind, the fire gained or lost ground. In some places great patches of land were cut off as islands by the joining of advanced columns ahead of them, and lay burning in triangles and circles and hollow squares of fire, like bodies of soldiers falling behind and formed to defend themselves against pursuers. All this unevenness of line, with the varying surface of the lovely Iowa prairie, threw the fire into separate lines and columns and detachments more and more like burning armies as they receded from view.

Sometimes a whole mile or so of the line disappeared as the fire burned down into lower ground; and then with a swirl of flame and smoke, the smoke luminous in the glare, it moved magnificently up into sight, rolling like a breaker of fire bursting on a reef of land, buried the hillside in flame, and then whirled on over the top, its streamers flapping against the horizon, snapping off shreds of flame into the air, as triumphantly as a human army taking an enemy fort. Never again, never again! We went through some hardships, we suffered some ills to be pioneers in Iowa; but I would rather have my grandsons see what I saw and feel what I felt in the conquest of these prairies, than to get up by their radiators, step into their baths, whirl themselves away in their cars, and go to universities. I am glad I had my share in those old, sweet, grand, beautiful things—the things which never can be again.

An old man looks back on things passed through as sufferings, and feels a thrill when he identifies them as among the splendors of life. Can anything more clearly prove the vanity of human experiences? But look at the wonders which have come out of those days. My youth has already passed into a period as legendary as the days when King Alfred hid in the swamp and was reproved by the peasant's wife for burning the cakes. I have lived on my Iowa farm from times of bleak wastes, robber bands, and savage primitiveness, to this day, when my state is almost as completely developed as Holland. If I have a pride in it, if I look back to those days as worthy of record, remember that I have some excuse. There will be no other generation of human beings with a life so rich in change and growth. And there never was such a thing in all the history of the world before.

I knew then, dimly, that what I saw was magnificent; but I was more pleased with the safety of my farmstead and my stacks than with the grim glory of the scene; and even as to my own good fortune in coming through undamaged, I was less concerned than with the tragedy being enacted in my house. I could not see into the future for Rowena, but I felt that it would be terrible. The words "lost," "ruined," "outcast," which were always applied to such as she had become, ran through my mind all the time; and yet, she seemed a better girl when I talked with her than when she was running over the prairie like a plover following old Tom and the little clittering wagon. Now she seemed to have grown, to have taken on a sort of greatness, something which commanded my respect, and almost my awe.

It was the sacredness of martyrdom. I know this now: but then I seemed to feel that I was disgracing myself for not loathing her as something unclean.

"It's a boy!" said Doctor Bliven, as I came to the house. "The mother ain't in very good shape. Seems exhausted—exhausted. She'll pull through, though—she'll pull through; but the baby is fat and lusty. Strange, how the mother will give everything to the offspring, and bring it forth fat when she's as thin as a rail—thin as a rail. Mystery of nature, you know—perpetuation of the race. Instinct, you know, instinct. This girl, now—had an outfit of baby clothes in that bundle of hers—instinct—instinct. My wife's going to stay a day or so. I'll take her back next time I come out."

"You must 'tend to her, Doc," said I. "I'll guarantee you your pay."

"Very well, Jake. Of course you would—of course, of course," said he. "But between you and me there wouldn't be any trouble about pay. Old friends, you know; old friends. Favors in the past. You've done things for me—my wife, too. Fellow travelers, you know. Never call on us for anything and be refused. Be out to-morrow. Ought to have a woman here when I go. Probably be milk for the child when it needs it; but needs woman. Can get you a mover's wife's sister—widow—experienced with her own. Want her? Bring her out for you—bring her out to-morrow. Eh?"

I told him to bring the widow out, and was greatly relieved. I went to Magnus's cabin that night to sleep, leaving Mrs. Bliven with Rowena. I hoped I might not have to see Rowena before she went away; for the very thought of seeing the girl with the child embarrassed me; but on the third day the widow—they afterward moved on to the Fort Dodge country—came to me, and standing afar off as if I was infected with something malignant, told me that Mrs. Vandemark wanted to see me.

"She ain't Mrs. Vandemark," I corrected. "Her name is Rowena Fewkes."

"I make it a habit," said the widow, whose name was Mrs. Williams, "to speak in the present tense."

Whatever she may have meant was a problem to me; but I went in. Rowena lay in my bed, and beside her was a little bundle wrapped in a blanket made of one of my flannel sheets. The women were making free of my property as a matter of course.

"What are you goin' to do with me, Jake?" she asked again, looking up at me pleadingly.

"I'm goin' to keep you here till you're able to do for yourself," I said. "Time enough to think of that after a while."

She took my hand and pressed it, and turned her face to the pillow. Pretty soon she turned the blanket back, and there lay the baby, red and ugly and wrinkled.

"Ain't he purty?" said she, her face glowing with love. "Oh, Jake, I thank God I didn't find the pond before you found me. I didn't know very well what I was doin'. I'll have something to love an' work fur, now. I wonder if they'll let me be a good womern. I will be, in spite of hell an' high water—f'r his sake, Jake."



4

As I lay in Magnus's bed that night, I could see no way out for her. She could get work, I knew, for there was always work for a woman in our pioneer houses. The hired girl who went from place to place could find employment most of the time; but the baby would be an incumbrance. It would be a thing that the eye of censure could not ignore, like the scarlet "A" on the breast of the girl in Nathaniel Hawthorne's story. I could not foresee how the thing would work out, and lay awake pondering on it until after midnight, and I had hardly fallen asleep, it seemed to me, when the door was opened, and in came Magnus. He had finished his job and come back.

"You hare, Yake?" he said, in his quiet and unmoved way. "I'm glad. Your house bane burn up in fire?"

I told him the startling news, and as the story of poor Rowena slowly made its way into his mind, I was startled and astonished at its effect on him; for he has always been to me a man who would be calm in a tornado, and who would meet shipwreck or earthquake without a tremor. I have seen him standing in his place in the ranks with his comrades falling all about loading and firing his musket, with no more change in his expression than a cold light of battle in his mild buttermilk eyes. I have seen him wipe from his face the blood of a fellow-soldier spattered on him by a fragment of shell, as if it had been a splash of water from a puddle. But now, he trembled. He turned pale. He raged up and down the little room with his hands doubled into fists and beating the air. He bit down upon his Norwegian words with clenched teeth. I was afraid to talk to him at last. Finally, he turned to me and said:

"Ay know de man! So it vas in de ol' country! Rich fallar bane t'inking poor girl notting but like fresh fruit for him to eat; a cup of vine for him to drink; an' he drink it! He eat de fruit. But dis bane different country. Ay keel dis damned Gowdy! You hare, Yake? Ay keel him!"

Of course I told him that this would never do, and talked the way we all do when it is our duty to keep a friend from ruining himself. He sat down while I was talking, and as far as I could see heard never a word of what I said. Finally I talked myself out, and still he sat there as silent as a statue.

"Ay—tank—Ay—take—a—valk," he said at last, in the jerky way of the Norwegian; and he went out into the night.

I lay back expecting that he would come in pretty soon, when I had more of which I had thought to talk to him about; but I went to sleep, and having been a good deal broken of my rest, I slept late. He was still absent when I woke up. When I got to my place, the widow told me that he had been there and had a long talk with Rowena, and had hitched up his team and driven away.

Rowena was asleep when I looked in, and I went out to plow. If Magnus had gone to kill Buck Gowdy, there was nothing I could do to prevent it. As a matter of fact, I approved of his impulse. I had felt it myself, though not with any such wrathful bitterness. I had known for a long time that Magnus had a tenderness toward Rowena; but he was such a gentle fellow, and seemed to be so slow in approaching her, with his fooling with Surajah's inventions and the like, that I set down his feeling as a sort of sheepish drawing toward her which never would amount to anything. But now I saw that his rage against Gowdy was of the kind that overpowered him, stolid as he had always seemed. It rose above mine in proportion to the passion he must have felt for her, when she was a girl that a man could take for a wife. I pitied him; and I did not envy Buck Gowdy, if it chanced that they should come together while Magnus's white-hot anger was burning; but I rather hoped they would meet. I did not believe that in any just court Magnus would be punished if he supplied the lack in the law.

When I turned out at noon, I saw Magnus's team, and a horse hitched to a buggy tied to my corn-crib; and when I went into the house, I half expected to find Jim Boyd, the sheriff, there to arrest Magnus Thorkelson for murder, at the bedside of Magnus's lady-love. I could imagine how N. V. Creede, whom I had already resolved I would retain to defend Magnus, would thrill the jury In his closing speech for the prisoner as the bar.

What I found was Elder Thorndyke and grandma and the widow, all standing by Rowena's bed. The widow was holding the baby in her arms, but as I came in she laid it in a chair and covered it up, as much as to indicate that on this occasion the less seen of the infant the better. Magnus was holding Rowena's hand, and the elder was standing on the other side of the bed holding a book. Grandma Thorndyke stood at the bed's foot looking severely at a Hostetter's Almanac I had hanging on the head-board. The widow was twittering around from place to place. When I came in, Magnus motioned me to stand beside him, and as I took my place handed me a gold ring. Rowena looked up at me piteously, as if to ask forgiveness. Sometime during the ceremony we had the usual hitch over the ring, for I had put it in my trousers pocket and had to find it so that Magnus could put it on Rowena's finger. I had never seen a marriage ceremony, and was at my wit's end to know what we were doing, thinking sometimes that it was a wedding, and sometimes that it might be something like extreme unction; when at last the elder said, "I pronounce you man and wife!"



CHAPTER XIX

GOWDY ACKNOWLEDGES HIS SON

Now I leave it to the reader—if I ever have one besides my granddaughter Gertrude—whether in this case of the trouble of Rowena Fewkes and her marriage to Magnus Thorkelson, I did anything by which I ought to have forfeited the esteem of my neighbors, of the Reverend and Mrs. Thorndyke, or of Virginia Royall. I never in all my life acted in a manner which was more in accordance to the dictates of my conscience. You have seen how badly I behaved, or tended to behave in the past, and lost no friends by it. In a long life of dealing in various kinds of property, including horse-trading, very few people have ever got the best of me, and everybody knows that this is less a boast than a confession; and yet, this one good act of standing by this poor girl in her dreadful plight degraded me more in the minds of the community than all the spavins, thorough-pins, poll-evils and the like I ever concealed or glossed over. We are all schoolboys who usually suffer our whippings for things that should be overlooked; and the fact that we get off scot free when we should have our jackets tanned does not seem to make the injustice any easier to bear.

Dick McGill, the editor of the scurrilous Monterey Journal was, as usual, the chief imp of this as of any other deviltry his sensational paper could take a part in. Of course, he would be on Buck Gowdy's side; for what rights had such people as Magnus and Rowena and I?

"A wedding took place out on the wild shores of Hell Slew last week," said this paper. "It was not a case, exactly, of the funeral baked meats coldly furnishing forth the marriage supper; but the economy was quite as striking. The celebration of the arrival of the heir of the Manor (though let us hope not of the manner) was merged in the wedding festivities. We make our usual announcements: Married at the residence of J.T. Vandemark, Miss Rowena Fewkes to Mr. Magnus Thorkelson. It's a boy, standard weight. The ceremonies were presided over by Doctor Bliven, our genial disciple of Esculapias, and by Elder Thorndyke, each in his respective sphere of action. Great harmony marked the carrying out of these usually separate functions. The amalgamation of peoples goes on apace. Here we have Yankee, Scandinavian and Dutch so intertwined that it will take no common 'glance of eye, thought of man, wing of angel' to separate the sheep from the goats in the sequel. Nuff ced."

He little knew the sequel!

I did not read this paper. In fact, I did not read anything in those days; and I do not believe that Magnus and Rowena knew for some time anything more about this vile and slanderous item than I did. It was only by the way we were treated that we felt that the cold shoulder of the little world of Vandemark Township and Monterey County was turned toward us. Of course Magnus and Rowena expected this; but I was hurt more deeply by this injustice than by anything in my whole life. Grandma Thorndyke came out no more to red up my house, and exhibit her samples of prospective wives to me. The neighbors called no more. I began driving over to the new railroad to do my marketing, though it was twice as close to go to Monterey Centre. When Elder Thorndyke, largely through the contributions of Governor Wade and Buckner Gowdy, succeeded in getting his church built, I was not asked to go to the doings of laying the corner-stone or shingling the steeple. I was an outsider.

I quit trying to neighbor with the Roebucks, Smiths, and George Story, my new neighbors on the south; and took up with some French who moved in on the east, the families of Pierre Lacroix and Napoleon B. Bouchard. We called the one "Pete Lackwire" and the other "Poly Busher." They were the only French people who came into the township. They were good neighbors, and fair farmers, and their daughters made some of the best wives the sons of the rest of us got. One of my grandsons married the prettiest girl among their grandchildren—a Lacroix on one side and a Bouchard on the other.

It may well be understood that I now took no part in the township history, which gets more complex with the coming in of more settlers; but it was about this time that what is now Vandemark Township began agitating for a separate township organization. We were attached to Centre Township, in which was situated the town of Monterey Centre. This town, dominated by the County Ring, clung to all the territory it could control, so as to spend the taxes in building up the town. A great four-room schoolhouse was finished in the summer of 1860; most of it built by taxes paid by the speculators who still owned the bulk of the land.

The Vandemark Township people made a great outcry about the shape of Centre Township, and called it "The Great Crane," with our township as the neck, and a lot of other territory back of us for the body, and Monterey Centre for the head. I took no part in this agitation, for I was burning with a sense of indignation at the way people treated me; but the County Ring compromised by building us a schoolhouse on my southwest corner, now known as the Vandemark School. But I cared nothing about this. I had no children to go to school, and while I never ceased to dream of a future with Virginia as my wife, I kept saying to myself that I never should have a family. Consistency is the least of the necessaries of our visions and dreams. I never tried to see Virginia. I avoided the elder and Grandma Thorndyke. I knew that she was disgusted with me for even an innocent connection with the Thorkelson matter, and I supposed that Virginia felt the same way. So I went on trying to be as near to a hermit as I could.

2

I know now that things began to change for me in the minds of the people when Rowena's baby was christened. This took place early in the winter. Magnus asked me to go to the church; so I was present when Magnus and Rowena stood before the altar in a ceremony which Rowena would have given anything to escape, and Magnus, too, but he believed that the child's soul could not be saved if it died unchristened, and she yielded to his urgings in the matter. He held his head high as he stood by her, as he always stood in every relation in life, witnessing before God and man that he believed her a victim, and that whatever guilt she may have incurred, she had paid for it in full. After the responses had been made, Elder Thorndyke unfolded a paper which had been handed him with the name of the child on it; then he went on with his part of the ceremony: "In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, I baptize thee—" And then he carried on a whispered conversation with the mother, gave the loudest honk I ever heard him utter, and went on: "I baptize thee, Owen Lovejoy Gowdy."

They said that Gowdy swore when he heard of this, and exclaimed, "I don't care about her picking me out; but I hate to be joined with that damned Black Abolitionist."

The elder seemed dazed after he had done the deed, and looked around at the new church building as if wondering whether he had not committed some sort of crime in thus offending a man who had put so much money in it. He had not, however; for in advertising in this way Gowdy's wrong to one girl, he ended forever his sly approaches, under the excuses of getting her some fictitious property, saving his soul, and the like, to another.

I think it was the word of what Gowdy said about the christening that finally wrought Magnus up to the act he had all along resolved upon, the attempt on Gowdy's life. He armed himself and went over to the Blue-grass Manor looking for Buck; but found that his man had gone to Kentucky. Magnus left word for Gowdy to go armed and be prepared to protect himself, and went home. He said nothing to me about this; but the next spring when Gowdy came back, Magnus started after him again with a gun loaded with buckshot, and Gowdy, who, I suppose, looked upon Magnus as beneath him, had him arrested. I went to Monterey Centre and put my name on Magnus's bond when he was bound over to keep the peace.

I hinted to Magnus that he needn't mind about the bond if he still believed in his heart that Gowdy needed killing; but Rowena pleaded with him not to ruin himself, me and her by pursuing his plan of executing what both he and I believed to be justice on a man who had forfeited his life by every rule of right. This lapse into lawlessness on his part and mine can not be justified, of course. It is set forth here as a part of the history of the place and the time.

I am not equipped to write the history of the celebrated Gowdy Case, which grew out of these obscure circumstances in the lives of a group of pioneers in an Iowa township. Probably the writers of history will never set it down. Yet, it swayed the destiny of the county and the state in after years, when Gowdy had died and left his millions to be fought over in courts, in caucuses, in conventions, state and county. If it does not go into the histories, the histories will not tell the truth. If great law firms, governors, judges, congressmen and senators, lobbyists and manipulators, are not judged in the light of the secret as well as the surface influence of the Gowdy Case, they will not be rightly judged.

The same thing is true of the influence of the loss of the county funds by Judge Stone. Who was guilty? Was the plan to have the bag of "treasure" stolen from us by the Bunker gang a part of the scheme of whoever took the money? Did the Bushyagers know about the satchel? Did they know it was full of salt instead of money? Of course not, if they were in the thing.

Did some one mean to fix it so the Bunkers would rob us of the satchel and thus let everybody off? And if so, what about me? I should have had to fight for the money, for that was what I was hired for. Was I to be killed to save Judge Stone, or Governor Wade, and if so, which?

My part in the affair was never much spoken of in the hot newspaper and stump-speech quarrels over the matter; but after a while, when I had had time to figure it all out, I began to think I had not been treated quite right; but what was I anyhow? This was another thing that made me sore at all the Monterey Centre crowd, including the elder and grandma, with their truckling to Gowdy and Wade and Stone and the rest who helped the elder build his church. I suppose that the stolen money, some of it, went to pay for that church; but if every church had remained unbuilt that has stolen money in it, there would be fewer temples pointing, as the old song says, with taper spire to heaven, wouldn't there?

Of course these scandalous matters were soon lost sight of in the excitement of the Civil War. This thing which changed all our lives the way war does, came upon me like a clap of thunder. I was living like a hermit, and working like a horse, not trying to make any splurge, as I might have done, even having given up the idea of getting me a team of horses, which I had been thinking of for a while back with the notion of maybe getting a buggy and beginning to take Virginia out buggy-riding, and thus working up in a year or two to popping the question to her. But now I sulked in my cabin.

3

I guess the war surprised the people who read about it as much as it did me. I often thought of the poor slaves, and liked Dunlap and Thatcher, the men I had run into back in Wisconsin on the road in 1855, for going down into Kansas to fight for Free Soil; but as for fighting in which I should have any interest; bless you, it never occurred to any of us, either North or South. The trouble was always going to be off somewhere else. I guess that's the way with the oncoming of wars. If we knew they would come to us, we'd be less blood-thirsty.

I heard of the Dred Scott Decision, and thought J.P. Roebuck was talking foolishness when he came to me one day over in my back field to borrow a chew of tobacco—he was always doing that—and said that this decision made slavery a general thing all over the Union. I didn't see any slavery around Vandemark Township, and no signs of any. I heard of Old John Brown, and had a hazy idea that he was some kind of traitor who ought to have been hanged, or the government wouldn't have hanged him. You see how inconsistent I was. But wars are fought by inconsistent men who suffer and die for other people's ideas: don't you think so? Abraham Lincoln was nominated about corn-planting time; but I was not thrilled. I had never heard of him. The nation was drifting down the rapids to the falls; and for all the deafening roar that came to our ears, we did not know or think of the cataract we were to be swept over.

I was a voter now, and so was Magnus; but he was for Lincoln, and I was not. It seemed to me that the Republican Party was too new. And yet I was not satisfied with Douglas. Why? It was merely because I had got it into my mind that he had been beaten in a debate by Lincoln, and it seemed that this defeat ought to put him out of the running for president. I sat down a few rods from the polls and thought over the matter of choosing between Edward Everett and John C. Breckenridge, pestered by Governor Wade and H.L. Burns and N.V. and the rest, until finally they left me and when I had made my decision, I found that the polls had closed. I was a good deal relieved.

I am giving you a glimpse into the mind of a conscientious and ignorant voter. If I had read more, my mind would have been made up beforehand, but by some one else. I was not a fool; I was just slow and bewildered. The average voter shoots at the flock and gets it over with. He has had his mind made up for him by some one—and maybe it's just as well: for when he tries, as I did, to make it up for himself, he is apt to find that he has no basis for judgment. That is why all governments, free and the other kind, have always been minority governments, and always will be. And I reckon that's just as well, too.

Lincoln's first call for volunteers took only a few men out of the county, and none from Vandemark Township, except George Story. I had not begun to take much interest in the matter; and when in the summer of 1861 there began to be war meetings to spur up young men to enlistment the speakers all shouted to us that the war was not to free the slaves, but to save the Union. Now this was a new slant on the question, and I had to think over it for a while.

Sitting in the wagon of history with my feet dangling down and facing the rear, as we all ride, I can now see that the thing was as broad as it was long. The Union could not be preserved without freeing the slaves, for all of what Lincoln said when he stated that he would save the Union by freeing the slaves if he could do that, or by keeping them slaves if he could do that, or by freeing some of them and leaving the rest in servitude if he could do that; but that save the Union he would. Now in my narrow way, I could see some point in freeing the slaves, but as for the Union, I hardly knew whether it was important or not. I needed to think it over. It might be just as well not to fight to preserve the Union; and when I had heard men say, "I enlisted to save the Union, and not to free niggers," as a lot of them did, I scratched my head and wondered why I could not feel so devoted to the Union as they did. Looking back from the tail-end of the wagon, I now see what Lincoln meant by the importance of keeping us all under one flag; but I didn't know then, and I don't believe one man in a hundred who shouted for the Union knew why the Union was so important. There never was a better cause than the one we sung for in "The Union, the Union forever!" but thousands and thousands sang and shouted it, and died for it—how bravely and wonderfully they died for it!—who knew as little what it meant as I did. And the rebels—how gallantly they died for their cause, too. Not for slavery, as we blindly thought, misjudging them as we must always misjudge our foes (or we should not have the hate in our hearts to fight them); but for the very thing we were fighting for—liberty, as they believed.

Both sides are always right in war.

I finally began to see light when I thought one night of my old life on the canal, and asked myself how it would affect us in Iowa if York State and the East should secede, as the South was trying to do. It would put them in shape to starve us of the West by levying duties on our crops when going to market. But, said I to myself, we could then ship down the Mississippi; but the river was already closed and would always be controlled by the Confederacy. This was serious; but when I said to myself that the East would never secede, the question, Why not? could not be answered if the principle of secession could once be set up as correct and made good by victory. Then, it came into my mind after a month or two of thinking, that any state or group of states could secede whenever they liked; that others would go to war with them to keep such unions as were left; and we should never be at peace long: so after all, the Union was important, and must be preserved.

The question must be settled now in this war.

But I don't know how long I should have studied this matter over in my lonely benightedness, if I had not seen Virginia one night at a war meeting that I sneaked into in the Centre, with a young man dressed in store clothes whom I afterward knew as Will Lockwood, the principal of the Monterey Centre school, who seemingly was going forward to put his name down as enlisted. I jumped in ahead of him, so as to show Virginia that her fellow was not the only patriot, and beat him to it.

"So you are going to fight Kaintucky?" said she to me as if I had engaged to ruin everything she held dear.

"We must save the Union," I said. "I didn't think of you being on the other side!"

"Mr. Lockwood," said she, "this is Teunis Vandemark, an old friend of mine. He's going to fight my friends, too."

In two or three minutes I found that he was from Herkimer County, had lived along the Erie Canal, and was actually the son of my old teacher Lockwood, to whom I had gone when I was wintering with Mrs. Fogg in the old canalling days. He was my best friend during all my service as a soldier—which you will soon see was not long. We left him on the field at Shiloh.

4

The recruiting officer got us uniforms—or somebody did; and during the nice weather—it was October when I enlisted—our company did some drilling. We had no arms, but used shotguns, squirrel rifles, and even sticks. Will Lockwood tried to drill us, but made a bad mess of it. Then one day Buckner Gowdy, who had also enlisted, took charge of a squad of men and in ten minutes showed that he knew more about drill than any one else in the county. He had been educated at a military school in Virginia.

All the skill in drill that we ever got, we owed to him. The sharp word of command; the quick swing to the proper position; the snappy step; everything that we knew more than a lot of yokels might be expected to know, we got from Buck Gowdy. Magnus admitted it, even; but he turned pale whenever he was in a squad under Gowdy's command. It was gall and wormwood for me, and worse for him; but when it came to electing a captain of our company, I voted for Gowdy, and under the same conditions would do it again. It was better to have a real captain who was a scoundrel, than a man who knew nothing but kept the Commandments. War is hell in more than one respect. I felt that Gowdy would be more likely to bring us safe out of any bad hole in which we might find ourselves, than any one else. But I was glad, sometimes, when he was rawhiding us into shape, that Magnus Thorkelson was drilling with a wooden gun. I wondered how the new captain himself felt about this.

Governor Wade gave us a great entertainment at his farm just before we marched—still without guns—to the railroad to take the cars for Dubuque, where boats were supposed to be waiting to take us down the river—if we could make it before navigation was closed by the ice. His great barns were cleared out for tables, and the house was open, and there were flags and transparencies expressing the heroism of those who were willing to do anything to get us into the fight.

Everybody was there—except Judge Stone. I remember looking through the open door at the great iron safe into which he had put the county satchel—I am careful not to commit myself as to the money part of it—and all the events of the previous visit came back through my mind; but mainly how angry I had been with Virginia for being kissed by Bob Wade. And Bob was there, too, all spick and span in his new lieutenant's uniform with Kittie Fleming hanging on his arm, her eyes drinking him in with every glance. The governor was in no position to make a row about this. The occasion had caused an armistice to be signed as to all our neighborhood quarrels, and Bob Wade was emancipated from the stern paternal control, as Jack had been when he went off with the first flight in the original seventy-five thousand—emancipated by the uniform. Bob and Kittie sailed along in the face and eyes of the governor and his wife in spite of the fact that such association was forbidden—and sailed down to Waterloo where they were married before we went off hurrahing for the cause.

Virginia was there with the elder and grandma. The old preacher and his wife looked more shabby than I had ever seen them, grandma's gloves more extensively darned, the elder's clothes shinier, his cuffs in all their whiteness more frayed, and there were beautifully darned places in the stiff starched bosom of his shirt. He pressed my hand warmly as he said, "God bless you, Jacob, and bring you safe back to us, my boy!" Grandma's eyes glistened as she echoed his sentiments and began asking me about my underwear and especially my socks. Virginia looked the other way; but when I went off by myself, Will Lockwood came and drew me away into a corner to talk with me about old times along the canal; and suddenly we found Virginia there, and Will all at once thought of some one he wanted to speak to and left us together.

"I didn't mean that I thought you ought not to go to the war, Teunis," said she. "You must go, of course."

"Maybe your friends," I said after standing dumb for a while, "will be on the Union side."

"No," said she. "I have no relations—and few friends there; but all I have will be on the other side, I reckon. It makes no difference. They've forgotten me by this time. Everybody has forgotten me that once liked me—everybody but Elder Thorndyke and Mrs. Thorndyke. They love me, but nobody else does."

"I thought some others acted as if they did," I said.

"You thought a lot about it!" she scoffed. Then we sat quite a while silent. "I shall think every day," said she at last, "about the only happy time I have had since Ann took sick—and long before that. The only happy time, and the happiest, I reckon, that I ever'll have. I'll think of it every day while you're at the front. I want you to know when you are suffering and in danger that some one thinks of the kindest thing you ever did—and maybe the kindest thing any boy ever did. You don't care about it now, maybe; but the time may come when you will."

"What time was that?" I asked.

"You know, Teunis," the tears were falling in her lap now. "Those days when we were together alone on the wide prairie—when you took me in and was so good to me—and saved me from going wild, if not from anything else bad. I remember that for the first few days, I was not quite easy in my feelings—I reckon your goodness hadn't come to me yet; but one day, after you had been away for a while, there in the grove where we stayed so long, you looked so pale and sorry that I began talking to you more intimately, you remember, and we suddenly drew close to each other, and for the first time, I felt so safe, so safe! Something has come between us lately, Teunis. I partly know what; and partly I don't; but something—"

She stopped in the middle of what she seemed to be saying. At first I thought she had choked up with grief, but when I looked her in the face, except for her eyes shining very bright, I could not see that she was at all worked up in her feelings. She spoke quite calmly to some one that passed by. I was abashed by the thought that she was giving me credit for something I was not entitled to. She spoke of the day when I was in my heart the meanest: but how could I explain? So I said nothing, much, but hummed and hawed, with "I—" and "Yes, I—," and nothing to the point. Finally, I bogged down, and quit.

"We are very poor," said she, nodding toward the elder and grandma. "So, ignorant as I am, I kept a school last summer—did you know that?"

"Yes," I said, "I knew about it. Over in the Hoosier settlement."

"I ain't a good teacher," she said, "only with the little children; but sometimes we shouldn't have had the necessaries of life, if it hadn't been for what I earned. I can't do too much for them. They have been father and mother to me, and I shall be a daughter to them. If—if they want me to go with—with—in circles which I—I—don't care half so much about as for—for the birds, and flowers—and the people back in our grove—and for people who don't care for me any more—why, I don't think I ought to disobey Mrs. Thorndyke. But I don't believe as she does—or did—about things that have happened to you since—since we parted and got to be strangers, Teunis. And neither does any one else, nor she herself any more. People respect you, Teunis. I wanted to say that to you, too, before you go away—maybe forever, Teunis!"

She touched on so many things—sore things and sacred things—in this speech, that I only looked at her with tears in my eyes; and she saw them. It was the only answer I could make, and before she could say any more, the elder and his wife came and took her home. I had got half-way to Cairo, Illinois, before I worked it out that by "the people back in our grove," she must have meant me; for the only others there had been that gang of horse-thieves: and if so she must have meant me when she spoke of "people who don't care for me any more"—but it was too late to do anything in the way of correcting this mistake then. All I could pride myself on was having a good memory as to what she said. I guess this proves my relationship to that other Dutchman who took so long to build the church. Remember, though, that he finally built it.



5

The Civil War is no part of the history of Vandemark Township; and I had small part in the Civil War. But one thing that took place on the field of Shiloh does belong in this history. Most of the members of my company enlisted in October, 1861, but we did not get to the front until the very day of the Battle of Shiloh. I was in one of the two regiments whose part in the battle has caused so much controversy. I gave Senator Cummins an affidavit about it only the other day to settle something about a monument on the field.

We came up the Tennessee River the night of the day before the battle, and landed at Pittsburgh Landing at daybreak of the first day's fight. We had not had our guns issued to us yet. Some have thought it a little hard on us to be shoved into a great battle without ever having loaded or fired our muskets. When we were landed the guns were issued to my company, and we were given about half an hour's instruction in the way they were worked. Of course most of us had done shooting, and were a little better than green hands; but Will Lockwood during the fight loaded his gun until it was full of unfired loads, and forgot to put a cap on. Then he discovered his mistake, and put on a cap, and would have blown off his own head by firing all the stuff out at once, when Captain Gowdy saw what he was doing and snatched the gun away from him calling him a damned fool, and broke the stock off the musket on the ground. There were plenty of guns for Will to select from by that time which were not in use, so he picked up another and made a new start; but not for long.

After the guns were issued to us, we stood there on the bank, and lounged about on the landing, waiting for the issue of cartridges. An orderly came to me with Magnus following him, and gave me the captain's order to report to him in the cabin of the transport which lay tied up at the river bank. We looked at each other in wonder, but followed the orderly into the cabin, where we stood at attention. The captain returned our salutes, dismissed the orderly, and after his footsteps had gone out of hearing, turned to us.

"Thorkelson and Vandemark," said he, "I have a few words to say to you. I don't find anything in the books covering the case, and am speaking as man to man."

"Yes, sir," said I.

"Ay hare," said Magnus.

"Thorkelson," Gowdy went on, "you have had an ambition to put an end to me. Well, now's your chance, or will be when we get out there where the shooting is going on. You've had a poor chance to practise marksmanship; but maybe you can shoot well enough to hit a man of my size from the rear—for my men will be to the rear of me in a fight"

He stopped and looked straight in Magnus's eyes; and Magnus stared straight back. At last, Gowdy's eyes swept around toward me, and then back again.

"Well," said he, "what do you and your friend say? The bond to keep the peace doesn't run in Tennessee."

"I think," said I, "as man to man, that you deserve shooting; but maybe this ain't the place for it. I voted for you for captain because you seem to know your business—and I don't b'lieve we've got another that does. That's how I feel."

Gowdy laughed, that friendly, warm, musical laugh of his, just as he would have laughed in a horse trade, or over the bar, or while helping the church at a donation party.

"Well," said he, "I called you in here—especially you, Thorkelson—to say that if you feel bound by any vow you've made, to shoot me, why, you may shoot and be damned. I shan't pay any attention to the matter. From the way it sounds out there at the front, it will be only one bullet added to a basketful. That's all, Thorkelson."

"Captain Gowdy," said Magnus.

"Go on, Thorkelson," said Gowdy.

"Van Ay bane svorn in," said Magnus, "Ay take you for captain. You bane a dam good-for-nothing rascal, but you bane best man for captain. Ay bane tied up. You bane necessary to maybe save lives of a hundred dam sight better men dan you. Ay not shoot. You insult me ven you talk about it."

"In spite of the somewhat uncomplimentary and insubordinate language in which you express yourself," said Gowdy, "which I overlook under the peculiar circumstances, I reckon I must admit that I did assume an attitude on your part of which you are incapable, and that such an assumption was insulting—if a private can be insulted by a commissioned officer. This being man to man, I apologize. You may go, Thorkelson."

Magnus clicked his heels together in the way he had learned in the old country, and saluted; Captain Gowdy returned the salute, and Magnus marched out with his head high, and his stomach drawn in.

"Devilish good soldier!" said Gowdy as he went out. "Well, that clears the atmosphere a little! So, Vandemark, you think I need killing, eh?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, it's all in the point of view," said he, leaning toward me and smiling that ingratiating smile of his. "Sometimes I think so, too; but there's only one policy for me—lose 'em and forget 'em. I sometimes think that the time may come when I shall wish I had married that girl. Have you seen the baby lately?"

"I used to see it every few days," said I. "It's runnin' all over the place."

"Look like me?"

"It will when it gits older."

"When you go back," said he, "if I don't, will you do me and this little offspring of mine—and its mother—a favor?"

"I'll have to wait and see what it is," said I.

"Same old cautious Vandemark!" said he, laughing. "Well, that's why I picked you to do this, if you will be so good. You can look the matter over in case it comes to anything, and act if you think best; but I think you will decide to act. Please go to Lusch in Waterloo and ask for a packet of papers I left there, to be opened in your presence and at your request if I wink out in this irrepressible conflict. Remember, I shall be on the other side of Jordan or some other stream. Inside of the outer envelope will be a letter to Rowena, which please deliver. There will also be one for you, with some securities and other things to be held in trust for the benefit of Rowena's boy—and mine. I hate that 'Owen Lovejoy' part of his name; but he is entitled to the name of Gowdy, and in view of the fact that he has it, I want him to have a good chance—as good as he can have in view of the irregularity of his birth. To tell you the plain truth, as my affairs are now situated, I'm giving him more than he could take as my son if he were legitimate—for as neighbor to neighbor, I'm practically bu'sted. All I'm doing is hanging on for land to rise. Now this isn't much to do, and you won't have to act unless you want to. Will you have the papers opened, and act for the dead scoundrel if it seems the proper thing to do? You see, there's hardly anybody else who is satisfactory to me, and at the same time a friend to the other parties."

"I'll have the papers opened," said I; "but remember, this don't take back what I said a few minutes ago. I think you ought to be killed."

"Thank you," said he. "Private Vandemark! You may go!"

Now I have told this story over and over again in court, to commissioners taking testimony, to lawyers in their offices, to lawyers out at my farm. It has been printed in court records, including the Reports of the Supreme Court of Iowa. Judges of the Supreme Court of Iowa have been nominated or refused nomination because of their views, or their lack of views, or their refusal to state in advance off in some hole and corner, what their views would be on the legal effect of this conversation between me and Buckner Gowdy in the cabin of the transport on the morning of the first day's battle of Shiloh—so N.V. says—but this is the first time I have had a chance to tell it as it was, without some squirt of a lawyer pointing his finger at me and trying to make me change the story; or some other limb of the law interrupting me with objections that it was incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial, not the best evidence, hearsay, a privileged communication, and a lot of other balderdash. This is what took place, just as I have stated it; and this is all the Vandemark Township, Monterey County, or Iowa history there was in the battle so far as I know—except that Iowa had more men in that fight than any other state in proportion to her population.

Just to show you that I didn't run away, I must tell you that we had ammunition issued to us after a while, and were told how to use it. We got forty rounds of cartridges at first and ten rounds right afterward. Then we formed and marched, part of the time at the double, out into a cotton-field. In front of us a few hundred yards off, was a line of forest trees, and under the trees were tents, that I guess some of our other men were driven out of that morning. Here we were at once under a hot fire and lost a lot of men. We went into action about half-past nine or ten o'clock in the forenoon, and two regiments of us stood the enemy off along that line until about noon. Then they rushed us, and such of us as could went away from there. Those that didn't are most of them there yet. I stayed, because of a shot through my leg which splintered the bone. The enemy trampled over me as they drove our men off the field, and a horse stepped on my shoulder, breaking the collar-bone. Then, when the Johnnies were driven back, I was mauled around again, but don't remember much except that I was thirsty. And then, for months and months, I was in one hospital or another; and finally I was discharged as unfit for service, because I was too lame to march. I can feel it in frosty weather yet; but it never amounted to much except to the dealers in riding plows and the like. So ended my military life. I had borne arms for my country for about three hours!

It was the eighth of January, 1863, when I got home. I rode from the railroad to Foster Blake's in his sleigh, looked over my herd which he was running on shares for me, and crossed Vandemark's Folly Marsh on the hard snow which was over the tall grass and reeds everywhere. How my grove had grown that past summer! I began to feel at home, as I warmed the little house up with a fire in the stove, and rolling up in my blankets, which for a long time were more comfortable to me than a bed, went to sleep on the floor. I never felt the sense of home more delightfully than that night. I would set things to rights, and maybe go over to Monterey Centre and see Virginia next day. I could see smoke at Magnus's down the road. I felt a pleasure in thus sneaking in without any one's knowing it.

I had not gone to see Mr. Lusch in Waterloo, for I had learned that so far from being killed, Captain Gowdy had come through Shiloh without a scratch, and that he had soon afterward resigned and gone back to Monterey County. It has always been believed, but I don't know why, that he was allowed to resign either because of his relationship to the great Confederate families of Kentucky, or because of his record there before he went to Iowa. Anyhow, he never joined the G.A.R. or fellowshipped with the soldiers after the war. I always hated him; but I do him the justice to say here that he was a brave man, and except for his one great weakness—the weakness that I am told Lord Byron was destroyed by—he would have been a good man. I feel certain that if he had been given a chance to make a career in either army, he would have been a general before the war was over.

That afternoon, J.P. Roebuck, who had seen my smoke, came over to welcome me home and to talk politics with me. We must have a township for ourselves, he said. Now look at the situation in the school. We had a big school in the Vandemark schoolhouse, thirteen scholars being enrolled. We had a good teacher, too, Virginia Royall. But there wasn't enough fuel to last two days, and those Monterey Centre folks were dead on their feet and nobody seemed to care if the school closed down. He went on with his argument for a separate township organization; I all the time thinking with my mind in a whirl that Virginia was near, and I could see her next day. When he said that we would have to get the vote of Doc Bliven, who was a member of the Board of Supervisors, I began to take notice.

"Bliven always seemed to like you," said Roebuck. "We all kind of wish you'd see what you can do for us with him."

"I think I can get his vote," I said, after thinking it over for a while—and as I thought of it, the Dubuque ferry in 1855, the arrest of Bliven in the queue of people waiting at the post-office, my smuggled passenger, and the uplift I felt as the Iowa prairie opened to my view as we drew out of the ravines to the top of the hills—all this rolled over my memory. Roebuck looked at me like a person facing a medium in a trance.

"Yes," I said, "I believe I can get his vote. I'll try."



CHAPTER XX

JUST AS GRANDMA THORNDYKE EXPECTED

I was surprised next morning to note the change which had taken place in the weather. It had been cold and raw when I was crossing the prairies to my farm, with the wind in the southeast, and filled with a bitter chill In the night the wind had gone down, and it was as still as death in the morning. For the first time in my life, and it has happened but twice since, I heard the whistles of the engines on the railroad twelve miles away to the north. There was a little beard of hoar frost along the side of every spear of grass and weed; which, as the sun rose higher, dropped off and lay under every twig and bent, in a little heap if it stood up straight, or in a windrow if it slanted; for so still was the air that the frost went straight down, and lay as it fell. I could hear the bawling of the cattle in every barnyard for miles around, and the crowing of roosters as the fowls strutted about in the warm sun. It was thawing by ten o'clock. The temperature had run up as the wind dropped; and as I now know, with the lowering of the pressure of the barometer, if we had had one.

"This is a weather-breeder!"

This was my way of telling to myself what a scientist would have described as marked low barometer; and he would have predicted from his maps that we should soon find ourselves in the northwest quadrant of the "low" with high winds and falling temperature. It all comes to the same thing.

Instead of going to see Virginia before her school opened in the morning, I went to work banking up my house, fixing my sheds, and reefing things down for a gale as I learned to say on the Lakes. I made up my mind that I would go to the schoolhouse just before four and surprise Virginia, and hoped it would be a little stormy so I could have an excuse to take her home. I need not have worried about the storm. It came.

At noon the northwestern sky, a third of the way to a point overhead, was of an indigo-blue color; but it still seemed to be clear sky—though I looked at it with suspicion, it was such an unusual thing for January. As I stood gazing at it, Narcisse Lacroix, Pierre's twelve-year-old boy, came by with his little sister. I asked him if school was out, and he said the teacher had sent them home because there was no more fuel for the stove; but it was so warm that the teacher was going to stay and sweep out, and write up her register.

As the children went out of sight, a strange and awful change came over the face of nature. The bright sun was blotted out as it touched the edge of that rising belt of indigo blue. This blanket of cloud, like a curtain with puckering strings to bring it together in the southeast, drew fast across the sky—very, very fast, considering that there was not a breath of wind stirring. It was a fearful thing to see, the blue-black cloud hurrying up the sky, over the sky, and far down until there was no bright spot except a narrowing oval near the southeastern horizon; and not a breath of wind. The storm was like a leaning wall, that bent far over us while its foot dragged along the ground, miles and miles behind its top. Everything had a tinge of strange, ghastly greenish blue like the face of a corpse, and it was growing suddenly dark as if the day had all at once shut down into dusk.

I knew what it meant, though I had never seen the change from calm warmth to cold wind come with such marked symptoms of suddenness and violence. It meant a blizzard—though we never heard or adopted the word until in the late 'seventies. I thought I had plenty of time, however, and I went into the house and changed my clothes; for I wanted to look my best when I saw my girl. I put on new and warm underwear, for I foresaw that it might be bad before I could get home. I put on an extra pair of drawers under my blue trousers, and a buckskin undervest under my shirt. I thanked God for this forethought before the night was over.

As I stood naked in making this change of clothes, suddenly the house staggered as if it had been cuffed by a great hand. I peeped out of the window, and against the dark sky I could see the young grove of trees bowing before the great gusts which had struck them from the northwest. The wall of wind and frost and death had moved against them.

2

The thought in my mind was, Hurry! Hurry! For what if Virginia, in the schoolhouse without fuel, should try to reach the place where she boarded, or any inhabited house, in that storm? As yet there was no snow in the air except the few flakes which were driven horizontally out of the fierce squall; but I knew that this could not last; for the crust on the blanket of snow already on the ground would soon be ground through wherever exposed to the sand-blast of particles already driven along the surface of the earth in a creeping sheet of white. As I hurriedly finished my dressing, I heard the rattle of a shower of missiles as they struck the house; and looking out I saw that the crust was already being cut through by this grinding process; and as the wind got a purchase under the crust, it was torn up in great flakes as if blown up by a thousand explosions from underneath. In an instant, almost, for these bursts of snow took place nearly all at once, the air was filled with such a smother of snow that the landscape went out of sight in a great cloud of deep-shaded whiteness. The blizzard was upon us. I should have my work cut out for me in getting to the schoolhouse.