Niels

Fall came. Niels “worked out.”

In many ways he was changed. Every Sunday, during the summer, he had fought a savage fight with himself. He had gone across the sandy corner of the Marsh, to the bridge; and there he was torn between two desires: the desire to see Ellen and to have her quietly, critically gaze at him out of her eyes as if she were searching for something in him; and the desire to see, and to listen to, the other woman whose look and voice sent a thrill through his body and kindled his imagination.

Invariably he had at last returned to his homestead and his tent without seeing either . . .

One of these women had seemed to demand; the other, to give. Yet one was competent; the other, helpless. One was a mate; the other, a toy . . .

When, on Monday mornings, he went to work again, fencing his claim, he shook all visions off and felt a grim sort of satisfaction at having resisted both temptations. But the fight drew sharp lines into his face and made him seem older than he was. He had become reticent again as he had perforce been during his first year in the new country. He never spoke a word beyond what was exactly needed to convey his meaning . . .

He had grown tremendously strong. Among the harvest crews he enjoyed, though he never fought, the reputation of being a fighter. The men who chaffed everybody else left him alone . . .

His outlook also had changed. Life seemed irrelevant; success seemed idle. All he did he did mechanically.

He returned to his homestead bringing a team. He began to cut the trees for his buildings, clearing a little field . . .

And he put the buildings up, a stable and a granary which, so far, was to serve as a house . . .

Then he thought of going for the grain which was his, as his share of Nelson’s crop . . .

It was a cold, frosty winter morning when he set out, driving his horses.

At the bridge he saw Amundsen working on the ice of the creek.

Belated rains which, in the bush, had fallen on frozen ground had caused an abundant run-off; enough to fill the creek which usually, at the time of freeze-up, consisted merely of a string of pools at the bottom of the wide trough. The water, however, had at once frozen over; and, since the bed of the creek proceeded in a succession of terraces downward, it had run out from under the frozen bridges of ice, thus creating large, hollow vaults at the bottom of which the trickle of the stream still fell or ran from pool to pool.

Amundsen was working with the axe, breaking this ice-bridge so as to reach the water underneath.

Niels stopped and looked down. Amundsen nodded to him; and he returned the greeting.

“You never got the drill after all,” Niels shouted at last.

Amundsen came somewhat closer before he replied.

“No,” he said. “The beggars were at Kurtz’s. Eight miles from my place. But Kelm wanted them; and Hahn; and several others. So they asked half a dollar more to come down here, the cut-throats!”

Niels felt the same odd repulsion for the man which he had always felt.

“We get a little water from the well you dug with Nelson,” Amundsen went on. “I’ve put the cribbing in. But it isn’t enough for the stock. For a while we hauled from Lund’s. But they got mad about the hay last year. There’s no snow yet to speak of. So we’ve got to get at the creek. Going north?”

“Yes,” Niels said. “I’d better be moving.”

That was the last Niels ever saw of the man.

In the winding chasm of the bush road he met Ellen who was coming with her barrels in the sleigh. She was driving the run-away team.

Niels guided his horses right into the underbrush, giving her the whole of the road.

But the girl also edged over on her side, disdaining to take advantage of him.

All the while her clear, inscrutable eyes were fixed on his face as they passed each other.

In a sudden resentment he repeated a phrase which had often tingled in his ears and which the other woman had used. “I wonder,” he muttered as he nodded his greeting, “whether you could smile, Miss Amundsen?”

She had not changed. She looked and acted exactly as she had done three years ago.

Then, as he drove over the virgin snow, he began, as usual, to argue with himself.

Why should he be angry with her? He had seen her, she him, a dozen times. All the words spoken between them counted up to a score or so . . . Why should she smile at him, a perfect stranger? In due time he came out on the slough. It was near the dinner hour. Nelsons might be at Lund’s. He would call there to see. But when he drove up on the dam, close to the yard, he found himself the unwilling witness of a scene which made him go on.

Lund was standing in front of the stable, pitching manure on to a sleigh-box.

Mrs. Lund, a pail in her hand, was coming from the house. Neither saw Niels.

Mrs. Lund, however, caught sight of a little calf gambolling about and sprinting off into the snow-covered clearing behind the yard.

“Who’s let the calf out?” she shouted angrily and ran over to the stable. The door was open.

Lund stopped in his work, leaned on his fork, and fumbled with a shaking hand at the dark glasses protecting his eyes.

“What did you let that calf out for?” she repeated.

“I didn’t, mamma,” he replied.

The sleigh was gliding noiselessly over the soft, loose snow; every word sounded clearly across to Niels.

“You old thunderbuss!” she screamed. “Don’t lie!”

“What?” The old man rose in arms, grasping his fork.

Mrs. Lund stopped and laughed. “Don’t act silly! You can’t bully me!”

But he advanced, raising the fork.

Mrs. Lund’s laughter died away; and from defiance her attitude changed into one of hunted fright. “Well, I declare!” she said and dropped her pail.

The next moment they had grappled. Mrs. Lund wrested the fork from his grasp and threw it away. Then she bowled him over as if he were a child. He lay on the ground, groaning.

“Bob-beee!” Mrs. Lund’s voice shrilled out, betraying undisguised alarm.

The boy came running from behind the stable.

“Quick,” shouted Mrs. Lund. “Help me get daddy to bed.”

The last Niels saw as he drove past the bluff shielding the yard was the picture of the two bending over the prostrate body and trying to lift it.

Niels shivered though he did not feel cold.

Could marriage lead to that? Most people would have laughed at such a scene . . .

Strange stories were current in the district about Lund. But everybody agreed in declaring Mrs. Lund to be “a mighty fine lady.”

In a way Niels agreed with that verdict.

Somehow he saw Olga in her. She, too, had one day been full of love, full of hope, full of happy anticipations. No doubt her husband, then her lover, had seemed the fairy prince to her. You could still see in this wreck of him that as a young man he must have been handsome. Perhaps he, too, had promised her a carefree life and a princedom in the world’s domains. But how his promises had gone to pieces!

Niels thought of himself. If he had remained in Sweden, he would, like the rest, have laughed at this household. He would have accepted what is as immutable and pre-arranged.

How chance played into life!

He had emigrated; and the mere fact that he was uprooted and transplanted had given him a second sight, had awakened powers of vision and sympathy in him which were far beyond his education and upbringing. If one single thing had been different, everything might have run a different course . . .

If Lund had held on to one of the places which he was said to have owned in his life, instead of giving in to adverse circumstances; or if his boy had not been drowned, success might have been his instead of failure . . .

What, then, was in store for him, Niels?

He could not defend himself just now against a feeling of fear: the fear of life . . .

As, late in the day, he neared his last turn, he shook the lines over the horses’ backs; and a few minutes later he was within sight of Nelson’s yard.

The house looked very different as compared with a few years ago. There were three rooms now, the kitchen being the old log-shanty to which the main building had been added. The walls were of logs; but the roof was shingled.

The stable, too, had been much enlarged; and there was a granary. The yard was neatly fenced with woven wire: the gate was a real farm-gate, of bent pipe.

But nothing struck Niels so much as the pleasant look of the white-curtained windows in the house.

He alighted, went to the door, and knocked. It was a minute or so before it was opened.

“Well, I declare!” Olga greeted him. “If it isn’t Mr. Lindstedt! Come in.”

Niels hardly recognised in this young woman the girl he had seen slaving behind the plow, barefooted, dishevelled, clad in rags.

She wore a loose-fitting dress of dark print, a white dusting cap, and shoes which were almost high-heeled.

Under his look she blushed.

“I have the horses to look after,” Niels said. “Nelson in?”

“No, Lars is out in the bush. That way, I believe. Cutting logs for a smoke-house. Put your horses in the stable, Mr. Lindstedt, and come in and get warm.”

“Thanks,” Niels replied. “I’m not cold. I think I’ll walk out to Nelson. Everything all right?”

“Everything is just grand!” Olga said emphatically. “Have you had your dinner?”

“No, I haven’t. But I’d like to see Nelson first. He’ll knock off, I suppose. We’ll come in for a bite if it isn’t inconvenient.”

“All right,” Olga said.

Nelson greeted Niels in a very cordial, though not the old way. “Hello, Lindstedt,” he sang out and shook him by the hand. Formerly he had called him Niels though Niels had never called him Lars. “Coming for your grain?” Nelson had always spoken Swedish to Niels; he was using English now.

“Well, yes,” Niels said.

“It’s waiting for you. You’re in no hurry, I hope? Stay overnight?”

“If it isn’t too much trouble?”

“Well, I guess the wife’ll fix you up. Seen her?”

“I went to the house,” Niels replied, somehow embarrassed by Nelson’s way of referring to Olga.

“Find things much changed?”

“Yes. As I expected.”

“Dropped in at the old folks’?”

“No. Fact is, things don’t seem to run smoothly there.”

Nelson laughed. “Guess not. They miss their slavey. We haven’t seen them for several months.”

“That so?”

“Old man thinks we should both work for him now and pull him out of his hole. Well, I suppose I better knock off and call it a day.”

But Niels had seized one of the logs that lay ready to be loaded; and so they worked on for another half hour.

Then they drove back to the yard. Nelson talked.

“Tell you,” he said. “When I got my supplies from Minor, along in the fall, I came back with a wagon load of groceries, flour, etc. I put in at Lund’s for the night. In the morning I hitch up. But the load seems somehow small. I start to check things over and find that I’m two bags of flour short. I in and asks the old man, Do you know anything about that flour of mine?—Flour? He says. I? What should I know about it?—Well, I says, I’m two bags short.—Must have lost them on the way, he says.—Lost them on the way, nothing! I says. I checked them over last night.—Where did you leave your wagon? he asks.—Well, you know, I says. By the hay-stack.—Maybe some Indians sneaked in and stole them, he says, lying there in his wicker chair as you know.—Indians? I says. I’ll find them Indians.—And out I go and back to the load; for I had an idea. There I begin to stoke about in the hay; and sure enough, before long I pull them flour-bags out of the stack. I back to the house. Well, I says; and the old lady looks at me kind of funny. I’ve found the Indians. They were in the hay.—The old lady screams. Daddy, she cries, you’re a disgrace to the fambly!” And Nelson laughed uproariously at the recital.

Niels looked out on the road, his eyes fixed on vacancy. Was this man his friend? He was glad that at least Olga had not been present.

When they entered the house, Nelson sang out, “Hello, girlie! Got a bite for your men?” And he stepped up to his wife, kissed her, and pinched her cheek.

Olga reddened; but she seemed pleased.

The conversation turned to Niels. What had he been doing?

Niels was glad, after supper, to return outside where Nelson helped him to load his grain. It made a heavy load.

Meanwhile they spoke of common acquaintances, of their problems . . .

“I’ve got my patent,” Nelson said. “I’m getting a loan on the place. A thousand dollars. I want to buy stock and a pure-bred bull.”

“Clearing new land?”

“Don’t know yet. Hope so. But a man doesn’t seem to get any time when he’s married. Need a lot of frills you never thought of before . . .”

Next morning, just before breakfast, Hahn came over on horseback. He was the German neighbour of Nelson’s, a giant in stature and strength. The two friends were harnessing their horses in the stable.

“Heard the news?” Hahn shouted over to them as they came to the door.

“No. What?”

“Amundsen’s dead.”

“What?” Niels fairly jumped. “I saw him well and alive only yesterday morning.”

“Yes,” the giant said, dismounting. “Chunk of ice fell on him in the creek. Crushed him right up, they say. Bobby Lund was over to tell me this morning. The girl didn’t know what to do. He lived till noon. She rode over to Lund’s to ask them to drive for a doctor. When the doctor came, after dark, Amundsen was dead; and the girl asked Bobby to let the people know. So he up and rode about, from midnight till daylight. I promised to tell you.”

Niels was white.

Nelson said thoughtfully. “There’ll be a pretty good farm for sale . . .”

Olga stood in the door of the house, her apron thrown over shoulders and bare arms.

“Well, come in,” Nelson said. “Breakfast’s ready.”

And they all went into the house.

“My God,” Olga said. “How did it happen, Mr. Hahn?”

And Hahn repeated as much as he knew.

“Poor Ellen!” Olga cried. “She mustn’t be left alone. Couldn’t we go down, Lars?”

Nelson frowned. “What could we do?”

And Olga subsided at once.

“There’ll be lots of people about,” Nelson went on. “They’ll do all that’s needed. If I thought she’d be left alone, I’d go myself. But Lindstedt’s going . . . No doubt your mother’s gone . . . And all the others.”

Niels rose. “I’ll hitch up,” he said.

Niels was reclining on the bags that were piled on the grain while the horses slowly plodded along.

A sense of oppression was weighing on him . . . The apparent futility of all endeavour was almost more than he could bear. Amundsen’s impeccability in life, his trivial vanity, his slow deliberation and accuracy: where had all these taken him? To our common goal, the grave . . .

Niels thought of the girl, almost critically, without any personal bias: of her unquestioning obedience to him who was dead; of her youthful strength; of her inscrutable look which, in the light of yesterday’s disaster, seemed to peer out into life and to reject it: where would her life take her?

He thought of himself and his great strength which had become a marvel to him; of his work on the homestead which he carried on without fathoming any longer the why and the wherefore. Inside of himself, in his mental make-up, he carried a spring which was tightly wound and which would keep the works of his life revolving till it had either unwound itself or spent its strength. Was it really best not to question and just to live on? But living on—what was the use of it if it led him . . . There? Where?

That was the circle of his thought . . .

When at last he stopped at the gate where several other teams were tied, he felt vacant; his gloomy pessimism had exhausted itself; he was apathetic.

Slowly he crossed the yard. Ellen came out of the house. She wore sheep-skin and tarn; apparently she was about to do her chores.

Niels looked at her, dully, incomprehendingly. How could she be doing chores? . . . Except for a slight pallour and a touch of weariness about her eyes she seemed perfectly composed.

She nodded briefly. “The body is inside,” she said. “There are others there.” And she proceeded, pulling on her mitts as she went.

At that moment the sound of singing struck Niel’s ear. A hymn was being sung inside.

Not knowing what to do, he entered the house. The door to the room beyond the kitchen was open; and Niels caught a glimpse of a body which lay on a bed, rigid and still, covered with a sheet which revealed its form . . .

The German pastor from Odensee was standing in the centre of the kitchen. A dozen men and women were standing about him, singing. Among them Niels recognised Mrs. Lund and old man Sigurdsen. Their faces were solemn, as if cast in an unyielding mould.

Somehow their sight as well as that of the big, fat pastor was distasteful to him. He slipped out again before the singing was finished.

He crossed to the stable where he found Ellen feeding a strange team of horses, presumably those that had brought the pastor.

For a moment he looked on. Then he asked, “Anything I can do?”

“Thanks,” said Ellen without turning, though she had stopped in her work.

“I’m sorry,” he faltered. “I went to Nelson’s yesterday. I did not hear about it till this morning.”

“I saw you going,” she replied, calm and indifferent.

“I wish . . .” he began and hesitated.

“I know,” she nodded. “There is nothing . . . The crowd has been here all day. They look after everything . . .”

“I’ll be back in the morning . . .”

“Don’t bother. They’ll be sitting up with the body. I’ll go to Lund’s.”

A feeling of utter uselessness invaded Niels; and he resented it. For a moment longer he lingered; then he turned and went away.

Between him and the girl an abyss seemed to yawn which nothing could bridge . . . He untied his horses, turned back to the road, and drove on.

When he got home, he went to work on the clearing of his yard as if he had to give vent to some pent-up powers within him in order to avoid an explosion . . .

Niels did not go to the funeral. He saw the teams file out from the gap of the bridge and turn west, along the road at the edge of the bush, past Sigurdsen’s. He came near succumbing to an impulse to run and to get his horses ready. But he caught himself and, swinging his axe high through the air, he gathered all the tremendous strength of his body into one single blow and brought it down with a vicious bite into the butt of a giant tree . . .

Henceforth Niels thought of his former dreams with nothing but silent scorn. And yet there was only one excuse for his life in the present; and that excuse lay in the possible future. He had, in the past, planned a homestead with that future in view; and the plan persisted.

His only intercourse was with Sigurdsen now. The old man was slowly decaying. At best he had only a few years to live.

All through the winter Niels worked at clearing yard and field, at squaring and fitting timbers . . .

In the beginning of March he began to dig a well. He intended to get help as soon as he reached a depth of seven or eight feet. But when he reached that level, wild blizzards began to blow, wiping out all traces of the roads and throwing up trenches and bulwarks all about the entrance to his yard. Niels went on digging by himself.

On the fourth day the temperature fell to one of its lowest levels; and all through the night, while lying in his improvised house, the granary, Niels heard the frost booming in the big bluff . . .

Again he went at his well alone. He made a sort of ladder of poles and put it into the hole; and that way he carried the clay and marl out in pails. Then he struck gravel and sand; and before laying off for dinner he noticed a slight trickle of water from the upper edge of the sandy layer. Under ordinary circumstances this sight would have filled him with exultation. As it was, he heaved a sigh and worked on before eating till he had the proper depth below the spring. Next morning there were six feet of water in the well. He got the lumber for the cribbing ready.

In the evening, it being a clear, frosty night, he walked across to Sigurdsen’s to bespeak the old man’s help.

On the north side of Niel’s yard, in the lee of the big bluff, lay the squared timbers, thirty-two feet long.

“What that?” Sigurdsen asked when he came in the forenoon of the following day.

“For the house,” Niels said briefly.

The old man whistled. “How big?”

“What?”

“The house.”

“Four rooms and kitchen.”

“Big rooms.”

“Fifteen by eighteen,” Niels said.

Again the old man whistled. “You going get married?” he asked while they crossed the yard.

“No,” Niels said; “don’t think so.”

Spring came. The breaking began; Niels had lumber to haul besides, for the house.

While breaking in daytime, he dug the basement of the house at night . . .

May went; June opened up. Blossoms broke out all around: plums, pincherry, chokecherry, saskatoon, cranberry: the brief saturnalian summer of the north . . .

White mists crept over the Marsh at night, filling the hollows with snow-white pools.

A sort of intoxication came over Niels; work developed into an orgy . . .

One night Sigurdsen came over, driving.

“You done anything about hay?” he asked.

“No.”

“Hm . . . tya,” the old man ruminated. “Go together?”

“Like last year? if you want to. Who sells the permits?”

“The girl.”

“She staying on the farm?”

“The Amundsen girl? Tya. They all want buy. She say no. Get married, I say. She say, No; I can do the work.”

“All right,” said Niels. “You see about the hay.”

The old man looked at him, his toothless mouth tightly shut; his chin seemed to touch his nose.

“You come along,” he said at last. “Go now.”

“I don’t mind,” Niels replied casually; but his heart was pounding.

The seemingly common-place phrases had been charged with electricity. A struggle was concealed in them. The old man carried the victory. Niels was like a son to him . . .

It was just before dark when they crossed the bridge.

Ahead of their own team they saw another wagon disappearing around a bend in the winding trail. Since there were barrels in the wagon-box, Niels had no doubt but that it was Ellen . . .

But when, on a straighter stretch of the road, they came once more within sight of the team, he saw somebody climbing over the front barrels into the back of the box. This somebody looked like a lad, not like a young woman.

“That Bobby?” Niels asked.

“Hi . . . tya!’” the old man laughed. “Naw. The girl. Wear overalls for work.”

Niels coloured; his heart beat faster again . . .

When, in a little less than an hour, they drew up at the gate, Niels saw the wagon with the barrels still standing on the yard. While Sigurdsen tied his horses, he saw a slim figure flitting into the house.

He felt strangely moved. Had it not been for his companion, he would have turned back . . .

From the barn across the yard the sullen, slow bark of an aged dog rang across . . .

Sigurdsen knocked at the door. For a moment no answer. Then the girl’s voice rang out from within.

“That you, Mr. Sigurdsen?”

“Yea.”

“Go into the kitchen. I’ll be out in a minute.”

The two men entered. It was very dark inside. But a line of light showed where the door led to the other room.

“There’s a lamp on the table. Just light it,” Ellen’s voice rang out for the third time. “You’ll find matches on the shelf by the stove.”

The old man had matches in his pocket . . .

Niels stood by the door, in a dull and incomprehensible excitement. He had known, of course, that Ellen was living alone on the place; but for the first time he became aware of what that meant. Loneliness had weighed upon him at times; now it assailed him like a savage beast. He was a man!

The door to the next room opened. Ellen came out, carrying a second lamp.

Niels fastened his eyes upon her.

She had changed to a light print dress. She seemed taller, slenderer than she had looked; more girlish, younger even; above all, less impersonal.

There was still the same poise; the same level, critical look in her eyes. But something happened which destroyed the distancing effect of that look. For, as she caught sight of Niels by the door and recognised him, a scarlet flood suffused her face. Her lips parted as if about to smile . . .

Niels felt that his own head glowed.

She turned to the table and put her lamp upon it.

“Sit down, Mr. Sigurdsen,” she said with a steady voice; and, turning to Niels, she nodded and repeated, “Sit down.”

She avoided his name.

“We come about hay,” Sigurdsen said.

“Yes?”

“The south-west quarter of twenty-one, in the slough.”

“You can have it,” the girl said quickly, with a voice that was almost ingratiating.

“How much?”

“Thirteen fifty,” the girl replied, still speaking fast. “It’s fifteen dollars with my commission. I am not going to let you pay for that.”

“But the stamps?”

The girl laughed lightly. “Oh, never mind . . .”

“We go together,” Sigurdsen explained. “Lindstedt and I.”

“Oh?”—with a questioning inflection. “All right. Drop in when you want to start. I’ll have the permits ready.”

“Hm . . .” the old man mused. “Got your seed in?”

“Yes,” the girl answered. “I have it all done.”

The two men rose. In vain Niels searched for something to say.

Sigurdsen held out his hand. Then he suddenly bethought himself and drew his pocket-book.

“Never mind,” Ellen said. “Pay when you get the permit.”

“All right.”

And a moment later they were outside in the dark.

As they crossed the yard, the girl, too, came out, carrying a lighted lantern and two pails which she deposited at the door of the house. Then she turned back and, just as Sigurdsen was untying his horses, she followed the men to the gate. The darkness made her move more freely, more gracefully still . . .

She came and stepped to the side of the wagon.

“I baked to-day,” she said to the old man. “I brought you a loaf of fresh bread.”

“Tya . . .” Sigurdsen said. “You mighty good to me . . .”

She laughed as she slipped back through the gate. “Good-night.”

The two men remained silent while they drove the four miles through the bush. Even at parting neither spoke a word.

The last mile Niels walked.

Why had the old man insisted on his coming along? Apparently he was on the most friendly terms with the girl . . .

Why had she blushed when she saw him, Niels? Did she know what his thoughts had been with regard to her? For the first time she had smiled and even laughed. She had stepped down from a pedestal and walked among humans . . .

Did she even suspect what his thoughts had been with regard to her? Had been? . . .

The blood sang in his veins as he stepped briskly along the familiar Marsh trail.

The darkness was peopled with blushing faces and strange, soft voices . . .

There, in front of him, behind that dimly looming bluff, he suddenly saw his house erected: a palace in the wilderness; and behind it stretched the farm, a secluded kingdom . . . The farm and the house . . . His farm and his house! The work of his hands, dreamt of, planned, and built to harbour her!

When he reached his yard, he could not think of going in to sleep . . .

The song of the softly rustling leaves, just sprouted on the poplars overhead, held a new and perturbing note. The stars in the heavens were eyes and smiled at him. The sound of his horses, champing in the stable, munching their hay, had a strangely home-like, sheltered, protected ring. A whip-poor-will whistled his clarion call in the bluff . . .

Niels lighted a lantern and walked about on the yard: his yard, as for months it had no longer seemed to be. He went to the stable, patted the horses on the rump, and gave the newly bought cow an extra feed of hay.

He went over to the site of his house where the logs lay ready, squared and notched to be fitted together; and the lumber for floors, partitions, ceilings, rafters, roof, and stairs, neatly piled; doors and windows were stored in the granary. Stones were gathered in a huge pile for the foundation; the cellar was dug . . .

He went to the clearing where his first breaking lay, seeded to barley. Soon he would add to it . . . Already he had started to cut the brush . . .

At last he returned to the granary, his provisional house. It was not lonely now; it was peopled with dreams. He lay awake till dawn; and then he looked out into the eastern gates of heaven, aflame with glory . . .

That very day he went north to bespeak help in building the house . . .

Soon it grew up, a mansion, holding four rooms, with a lean-to kitchen . . .

But then, here he was sitting on the Marsh; five miles north, she was sitting in the bush. How were they to get together?

He went to Lund’s. She was not there. Instead, there was the usual crowd.

Kelm, the German, and his cronies were playing at cards . . . Lund, as ever, was reclining in his wicker chair . . . Bobby greeted Niels, blushing with pleasure, for Niels and Nelson were still his idols: he was a big boy of fifteen now, with the angular movements of adolescence.

Niels drifted about, anxious to make his escape.

But so as not to be lacking in common civility, he turned to Mr. Lund and sat down.

“Got any hay this year?” he asked.

“No,” the man replied, groping about with uncertain hands and smiling his overdone smile. “Oh, it’s Mr. Lindstedt, is it? . . . No. The south-west quarter of twenty-one is still open . . . But we don’t know . . .”

Mrs. Lund, having heard a word or so of the conversation, came over and spoke in a lowered voice. “The truth of the matter is, Mr. Lindstedt, we have to wait till the seventeenth. Then the post-office-cheque will come in. But you know, that cheque cannot pay for everything . . .”

“Oh, mamma,” her husband broke in, “how you talk!”

“Well,” she flashed back. “It’s true, ain’t it?”

“We’ll get a loan . . .”

“There you go again. Who is going to give you a loan? You haven’t even got your patent.”

“I can prove up any time,” Lund said, darkening with displeasure. “I have forty acres broken . . .”

“Yes,” she snapped, “and the Jew takes it all . . . Mr. Lindstedt,” she added in desperation, tears almost in her eyes, “there isn’t enough flour in the house to make breakfast with to-morrow morning. Whatever we get the Jew puts his hand on. We’ve three acres of potatoes in; and the crop is sold already for twenty cents a bushel. Other people get fifty cents and sixty cents; but we get twenty because we’ve got to sell in advance . . . That’s the way it goes with this man . . .”

Niels felt immensely embarrassed. “Mrs. Lund,” he said, “will you let me help you out? I’ve got ten dollars in my pocket which I don’t need just now. Take it and pay me back when your cheque comes in.”

“Well,” she said, “thanks, Mr. Lindstedt. I’ll take it. But be sure to come over on Sunday the eighteenth . . .”

As he drove home, Niels thought, Where is Nelson? Where Olga?

It was the middle of July before haying began. Rains had delayed it.

Three days after, it was Sunday, the eighteenth.

Niels returned to Lund’s. Mrs. Lund had his money ready.

Niels was untying his horses from the fence in order to leave again when he saw Mr. Lund coming blindly across the yard. The old man was in a hurry; he stumbled forward, feeling his way, nearly running into the wall of the smithy, but swerving back the very last moment.

Niels waited for him.

“Mr. Lindstedt,” Lund called. “Ah, there you are . . . Say, Mr. Lindstedt, will you give me a ride down to Sigurdsen’s?”

“Certainly,” Niels replied, not a little astonished at the man’s air of mystery and abject apology.

He helped him on to the seat and drove out on the dam in a brisk trot.

The two sat in silence. Niels was thinking, thinking . . .

Suddenly the man by his side began to speak.

“Mr. Lindstedt,” he said after clearing his throat repeatedly, his voice grating with artificial cordiality, “You have helped me out before . . . Can you loan me thirty-five dollars?”

Niels betrayed his surprise by his silence.

At once Lund tried to forestall the implied refusal.

“You see,” he said, “I have a brother living in Minnesota who is very well off. I want to go and see him. I am sure he would help me. If I can get a loan of two or three thousand dollars, I can prove up and straighten things out . . .”

“Well,” Niels said without harshness—the man was a visionary after all—“I haven’t the cash . . .”

“You could give me a cheque . . . I’d pay you good interest . . . I’d pay . . . I’d pay you ten percent a month.”

That decided Niels. This man could not be trusted with money. “As far as the interest goes,” he said, “I don’t care about that. But I can’t.”

“You think it over,” Lund pleaded. “Think it over, Mr. Lindstedt. I shall see you again . . .”

When Sigurdsen saw whom Niels had with him, he glared with suspicion. Apparently he wanted to speak to Niels alone. “Go to the house, Lund,” he said.

And when Lund had gone, he turned to Niels. “The girl . . . She come this morning see me. She want help in haying.”

“Well,” Niels pondered. “How would it be if we did our work in the morning and then went and helped her together?”

“Fine, tya. You go tell her.”

“Now?”

“Yea. She be waiting for me. You go.”

“All right,” Niels consented though he felt a sudden panic running through his body; and he turned his horses and drove back the way he had come. He tied his horses at Ellen’s gate, hardly knowing what to do next. But the difficulty solved itself: the girl stepped out of the house and came to meet him.

“Hello,” Niels said, his head aglow.

“Hello,” she replied, her voice strangely steady.

“Sigurdsen was speaking to me . . .”

“Well,” she asked, “may he come?” It sounded as if she were faintly amused.

“We’ll both come to-morrow. Right after noon. Where is your hay?”

The girl nodded backwards. “Beyond the field. Have your dinner here. We’ll use my teams.”

Niels assented.

“Won’t you come in?” she invited casually, opening the little gate.

Niels followed mechanically as she led the way.

She did not go to the house but to a spot in the bush, north of it, where a little table and a folding chair stood in a sort of bower formed by hazelbrush and plum trees. A tin box with smouldering grass inside spread a smoky haze to keep the mosquitoes away.

“I’ll get a chair,” she said.

“Never mind. I’ll sit on the grass . . .”

They sat down, Ellen resuming a crochet-hook and some wool with which she had beguiled the time.

“You’ve been building?” she asked after a while. She was quite at ease.

“Yes,” he said. “I’ve built a house.”

“A large house? A regular mansion, Sigurdsen says.”

Niels coloured. “Four rooms; besides the kitchen which is a lean-to.”

“Four rooms?” Ellen exclaimed, dropping her hands to her knees. “What do you want four rooms for?”

“And there is space for two small attic rooms besides,” Niels went on with sudden recklessness.

Ellen stared at him. Then both laughed; and Niels, too, felt at ease.

“Well,” he said, “people here think more of their machinery than of their houses; more of their farms than of their lives. The house is merely a piece of the farm, a place to sleep in while you are not at work. I want a house of which the farm is a part, the place where what is needed in the house is grown. These people here, when they get anywhere, are rich at best. Their life has slipped by; they have never lived. Especially the women.”

The girl looked at him. Her eyes had lost their critical, distancing look; they were frankly questioning.

Niels looked back at her, without speaking. He noticed that her abundant, straw-yellow hair was no longer so severely brushed down. It had little waves and ripples in it; a looser way of doing it up had given it freedom to follow its natural bend. He remembered how, as a girl, she had seemed to him singularly mature; now that in age she was a woman, she seemed almost girlish . . .

“I’ve looked about a good deal,” he said at last. “I’ve seen Lund’s place; Hahn’s; and a few others. Of course, I believe the men do work hard . . .”

“Lund doesn’t,” Ellen interrupted.

“No,” Niels agreed quite seriously. “Not Lund. But Hahn. He’s strong. If he does work hard, he can stand it. His wife works just as hard . . .”

“Harder,” Ellen interrupted again.

“Yes,” Niels went on. “She has the house and the children; the cows to milk; the sheep to feed. In summer she stacks the grain and the hay; and when threshing time comes . . .”

“Help is hard to get,” Ellen objected.

“Perhaps . . . Then why not do a little less?”

“Well,” Ellen pondered, “I’ll tell you. During the first few years it is really the woman that makes the living on a pioneer farm. She keeps chickens, cows, and pigs. The man makes the land.”

“But when it is made?”

“That’s where the trouble comes in. Then there are children; and the house takes a fearful amount of time. Nobody thinks of relieving her of any work. She has always done it. Why can she not do it now?”

“I passed Kelm’s place last year,” Niels said. “He was breaking with his new tractor. He sat on his engine. But she walked behind the plows, bare-footed, and picked out the stones and dragged the roots into piles. Kelm passes as a well-to-do man.”

Ellen laughed. A low, self-possessed laugh. “I’ve done it myself,” she said. “I am still doing it, though on a smaller scale.”

“You shouldn’t,” he answered boldly.

“I’m independent,” she objected and resumed her work. But after a silence of a few minutes she dropped it again. “Isn’t it strange that we should have been neighbours for over a year and have never spoken?”

“I did not dare,” Niels said.

“Dare?”

“You looked so forbidding. As if you would resent it if I spoke.”

She mused for a while. “Do you remember,” she said at last, “how you first came here to dig the well and spoke only Swedish?”

Niels blushed. “I do.”

“Do you know what I thought? One morning you did speak. ‘A penny for your thoughts, miss,’ you called.”

Niels felt uncomfortable under the remembrance.

“And I probably frowned. Another one of those silly youngsters, I thought. When they see a girl, they think they must act up in order to please her. I knew the kind . . .”

“I was silly enough,” Niels admitted ruefully.

“I suppose. But you kept silent after that.”

And silent they kept for another half hour.

Then Niels stirred. “Hadn’t I better go?”

“If you wish.”

He did not wish; but he got up nevertheless.

“Well, good-by,” he said and hesitated.

Ellen held out her hand; and he touched it.

“Till to-morrow,” she said. “I shall have dinner ready at twelve.”

The hand he had touched was small and shapely; but it was hard and calloused from work.

What a fool I have been! What a fool I have been! Niels said to himself as he drove home . . .

Next morning, Sigurdsen joined Niels in the meadow west of Lund’s place only after he had taken Lund home. It was easily seen that he was out of sorts.

“Anything wrong?” Niels asked.

Sigurdsen grunted. “That man! He keep me awake till two in the morning.”

“Talking?”

“Yea,” Sigurdsen grumbled. “Begging.”

“He didn’t ask you for money, I hope.”

“No? He ask you?”

“Yes,” Niels said. “He asked me for thirty-five dollars.”

“Get it?”

“No. I hope he got nothing from you.”

“Every cent. Twenty-two dollars.”

“What a shame!” Niels exclaimed.

He was angry with himself for having taken Lund over to the old man’s . . .

The morning went by; they stacked a few loads in the field; by eleven o’clock they were ready to go; both had their racks filled again.

When they reached Ellen’s yard, the girl stepped out of the house. “Dinner will be ready in a few minutes. Come in and rest.” Her manner was that of a man to two friends.

A thought struck Niels. He spoke to Sigurdsen.

“Ellen!” He was surprised at the ease with which her name came from his lips. “How if we pitched these loads off? We’d have three racks. To-night we could each take a load of your hay home.”

“Why,” Ellen said. “I hadn’t thought of that. It would save time, wouldn’t it?”

“Sure,” Niels said. “Where do you want it?”

“In the loft,” Ellen called from the door.

In the meadow, a quarter of a mile north-west of the yard, Niels proposed that Ellen and the old man should stay on the rack while he pitched to them.

Ellen objected.

“Get up there,” Niels laughed. “I’ll keep you busy.”

And when she obeyed, he pitched as he had never pitched before. The load was up in record time.

Niels stood leaning on his fork and shook the sweat from his head, laughing.

Ellen, too, laughed. She was flushed with exertion. It was very hot.

“You take the load home and pitch it off on the yard,” she said. “So you have a rest.”

“Rest, nothing!” he replied. “We want to get five or six loads in at least. You take it home. Meanwhile we’ll get the next load up.”

The third load Sigurdsen drove. Niels pitched again.

“You are as good as a man,” he praised the girl.

“I can load,” she said. “I’m no good at pitching.”

“You shouldn’t do it. That is a man’s work.”

“But you said I was as good as a man.”

Both laughed. The hay was in cocks. With every forkful Niels lifted such a load as left only gleanings where the pile had been.

The girl’s eyes widened in admiration of his strength. He, feeling it, was childishly happy in his exertions.

Sigurdsen returned; and again Niels was urged to take a load home. Again he declined. But this time he proposed to fill the three racks and to take them home in a body so they would be able to stack properly and to round off the top in case it should rain. Again it was done as he suggested.

The sun was sinking. The old man began to show signs of wear.

“Now we’ll fill up for the last time,” Niels said. “To-morrow we’ll be back. You’ll have nine loads tonight. As many to-morrow and once again, and your hay will be in.”

When they returned, Ellen invited them for supper. But the old man declined. “Unload and feed . . . soon dark.”

“Well,” she said when they were ready to go, “I am sure I am grateful. How much do I owe you folks?”

“Hm . . .” Sigurdsen began, much embarrassed.

Niels laughed. “I haven’t been working for wages. I’ve been working for the fun of it . . .”

Ellen frowned. “But that isn’t right . . .”

“Oh, let a man do something for you once in a while,” Niels said lightly. “Come and help us tomorrow. We’ll get a load more.”

Laughingly Ellen consented.

Next day, however, when Ellen appeared in their meadow, Niels absolutely refused to let her work. “I’ll pitch three loads,” he said. “And then we’ll stack. The next three loads go to your place. You take the first one home and get dinner. Then there’s an odd load at night; you haul it; to Amundsen’s to-day; to my place tomorrow.”

This was a deeply laid scheme of his to get her to look at his house . . .

The sun was touching the horizon when they emerged from the bridge on the Marsh, next day, and parted from Sigurdsen who turned to the west.

Niels slipped off his load; his horses knew the road and needed no guiding.

Before them stood the bluff that sheltered his yard: a softly glistening dome. From the east beyond, dark shadows rose; overhead, the sky was still shot with polished beams.

“Look at that,” he called to the girl as he strode along beside her load and waved his arm aloft.

She nodded in silence.

Satisfaction with what he had, longing for what he had not were strangely mixed in him as he stepped out, his head erect, by the side of her wearily plodding horses.

Again the blood sang in his veins. He felt like an adventurer coming home with booty; he longed to shout to his house which lay hidden behind the trees. This girl that was reclining on her load should be there, should be waiting for him and look out as he rounded the bluff . . .

A moment later the vista opened on his yard.

The girl gave a little cry of surprise. Niels swelled with pride.

“Well,” she exclaimed as they turned. “I don’t wonder that everybody talks of your house. It is a mansion.”

He opened the gate, and they drove in. Niels took her horses by the bridle and led them up to the stack.

“Come down,” he called. “I’ll pitch the load off.”

She obeyed.

“Go in,” he said. “I want you to look at the house.”

She blushed. “I’d like to. But . . .”

“But nonsense,” he ruled. “Go in. There’s a lamp on the table in the kitchen. The house isn’t furnished yet. I use only one room. By the time you’ve looked it over I’ll be through with your load.”

He watched her as she walked across the yard and opened the door and disappeared in the house. For a moment his old, familiar vision became so strong that it amounted to an illusion. Yes, such was his home; this was what he had wished and longed and worked for; and children running out to the gate to meet and greet him . . .

In thought he followed her through the house: now she was standing in the front room, a sort of hall: a wide, hardwood staircase, without banisters so far, led up into the upper story. Behind the front room lay the dining room from which a door led into the lean-to kitchen to the east. Would she go upstairs? To see the two rooms there, half joined, half parted by a little landing?

Ellen came out again. And when Niels had finished pitching her hay off, he sprang down from the rack.

“The house is lovely,” she said, her cheeks aglow. “But so large . . .”

“Did you go upstairs?”

“Yes, and even into the cellar.”

He longed to cry out, “I built it for you!” But his tongue was tied . . . He reached for the lines and turned her horses.

A moment later they stood by the gate in the dusk: the sun had sunk. She held out her hand.

“I don’t know how to thank you . . .”

“May I come?” he asked. “To call? . . .”

“Of course,” she laughed as if his shyness put her at ease. “Come on Sundays. I am always sitting behind the house in the afternoon . . . Get up, Pete.”

And he found himself holding the gate for her to pass out . . .

That night Niels did not sleep. A thousand times he repeated to himself, “What would she have said if I had asked her to-night?” . . . And then he answered himself, “No; not yet; I must have thirty acres cleared and broken before I can ask her.”

Next morning he went to work again with a will . . . On Sunday, in order to have the pretext for calling on Ellen that he was passing her yard, he went to Lund’s to ask for his mail . . .

It was early; there were no guests yet.

For the first time he thought he detected a certain coolness of manner in Mrs. Lund. He attributed it to the fact that he had refused her husband the loan.

“What we are going to do for hay this year,” Mrs. Lund said at last in the course of a desultory conversation, “is beyond my guessing . . .”

“Mrs. Lund,” Niels said, “if you’d like me to loan you the money for the permit, I’d be glad to do so. That I refused the loan to your husband is an entirely different matter . . .”

“My husband? Did daddy ask you for a loan?”

“Did you not know?” Niels asked. He realised that he had blundered; he hesitated. But, after a moment’s thought, he went on, determined not to shield the man; surely his wife had a right to know . . . “He asked me for thirty-five dollars to pay his fare to Minnesota so he could see his brother about that loan . . .”

“He did, eh?” Mrs. Lund said, stopping in her work of washing the dishes and fixing a cold eye on Niels. “Well, let me tell you, daddy has no brother in Minnesota; nor anywhere else; and don’t you let him have any money.”

“Well,” Niels went on, “if that’s the case, I suppose I’d better tell you that he borrowed twenty-two dollars from old man Sigurdsen; and it was all the money the old man had.”

Mrs. Lund laughed: a bitter, hollow laugh.

Niels understood that her coolness sprang merely from her exasperation with life.

“You going already?” she said as he reached for his mail. “Just as well, Mr. Lindstedt; just as well. This is no place for you any longer. I suppose daddy must be thinking of skipping the country. But where he’d go if he left us here, I don’t know. Don’t worry,” she went on. “Old Sigurdsen shall get his money back. Don’t you worry.”

Niels hesitated. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Lund,” he stammered, feeling that he had touched on things beyond the remedy of words. “I didn’t mean to give you pain . . . As for the hay . . .”

“Don’t worry about the hay either,” she said. “Soon there will be no need for hay here any longer. You helped us last year, Mr. Lindstedt. It isn’t forgotten.”

Niels left the house. On the yard, Lund was tinkering about at a mower, sitting on the seat of the rickety machine.

When he heard a footfall, he looked up and smiled his most artificial smile. “That you, Mr. Lindstedt?”

“Yes,” Niels replied.

“About that loan,” Lund went on, getting to his feet and whispering. “I’ll pay you ten percent a month; and I need the money only for a week. I’ll send it back as soon as I get to my brother’s . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Niels interrupted him curtly. “I can’t do a thing in the matter.”

And with that he went quickly to the gate to untie his horses.

Lund looked vacantly after him. Then he dropped back to the seat of the mower.

When Niels swung up on the dam, he heard Mrs. Lund’s piercing call, “Dad-deee!”

It was half past two when he reached Ellen’s place in the bush. For a moment he hesitated. Then he saw the girl in the little clearing north of the house. She, too, had seen him and came to the gate.

“Come in,” she said, smiling. “Put your horses to the hay. You’ll stay for a while, won’t you?”

“If I may,” Niels said.

Instead of an answer she opened the gate . . . Soon after, Niels went south, with his team this time, as foreman of the threshing gang . . .

“It has been pleasant this summer,” Ellen said when he took leave. “I shall miss our Sundays.”

Niels had arranged with Sigurdsen to look after the harvesting and threshing of his own little crop.

It was a different man who joined the threshers this year. He was as quiet as ever; but he no longer treated his fellow workers with that silent contempt which had galled them . . .

Then, with the snow-up, he returned to his claim, carrying in his wagon things galore for his house . . .

Once more the old life began: work from dawn to dark: he was clearing the land that was to bear his crops . . . Was he making progress? He was. Last year his little store of grain had come from Nelson’s place; this year he had twice as much; and it came from his own . . . Had Sigurdsen faithfully looked after cutting and threshing? He had. There were three hundred odd bushels of barley in his granary; and a hundred of them he took to Kelm’s to get crushed. He thought of chickens and pigs for the following year: for then he would have a crop to sell, a crop of wheat . . .

He worked at the house again: the walls were to be finished with plaster-board inside . . .

On Sundays, he resumed his trips to Ellen’s place. He told her, of course, how things were going: well indeed, but much, much too slow . . . They could not sit outside any longer; so they sat by the fire in the kitchen . . .

Though Bobby was a strong lad now, things went badly with Lunds. Not even the crops of forty acres and the hard work of a woman and a boy can keep things going on a pioneer farm when it staggers along under debt . . . “When Olga was still here,” Mrs. Lund said to Niels one day, “I could go to the city in winter. Daddy was still able to get along by himself . . . But daddy is getting to be like a child, Mr. Lindstedt. He cannot be trusted any longer alone. He cannot be trusted . . .”

“Oh mamma,” said Lund, “how you talk!”

But he sat in his wicker chair which was fraying more and more and which would soon break and fall in a heap. Even his meals were now served to him there: pancakes and molasses three times a day . . .

“But Nelson . . .” Niels said.

“Don’t mention Nelson,” Mrs. Lund exclaimed. “The least said, the best . . .”

Niels cleared his land . . .

Spring came.

He enlarged his stable and built a chicken house. He sold hay . . .

Then breaking and seeding, with propitious weather towards the end of April. He had eighteen acres in crop, six of wheat, four of oats, and the rest in barley.

This spring, one day, Lund disappeared. No one knew where he had gone. For a few days the excitement was great. Everybody helped in the search . . .

Then . . . Well . . . Mrs. Lund went to Odensee and opened a little store. Bobby went to Nelson’s. He was cheap help; you don’t pay a brother-in-law the regular wages; you give him a little pocket-money, that is all . . .

The summer went by. Sunday afternoons in the open, north of the house in the bush . . .

Working out in the threshing crews . . . Niels bought a team of pure-bred Percherons, an enormous gelding, a mare for breeding, with filly and in foal . . .

And winter again . . .

Between Niels and Ellen a friendship had sprung up; an intimate friendship . . . And yet . . .

Niels was not quite sure of his impression; but he thought he noticed a change, an ever so slight change in her of late . . .

She was almost gay when, apart from himself, the old man was present. But when he saw her alone, there seemed to be something of restraint in their intercourse. Sometimes he thought this restraint arose from him: from his efforts to hold back the all-important question. At other times he was fully convinced that, on the contrary, there was something she wished to say and held back . . .

When a silence fell . . . Always their intercourse had been full of silences; but they had been more friendly even, more companionable than their conversations . . . When a silence fell, they seemed to drift apart. Ellen was apt to muse along lines of her own . . . An expression as of sadness and pity came over her . . .

Yet, since more and more he persuaded himself that she knew, that she must know, he also became convinced that she accepted his courtship; that silently all things were agreed upon . . .

The strange thing was that, whenever he felt surest of himself, the next moment there came over him a realisation as if what he longed for had somehow become quite impossible of fulfilment . . .

Then he sought for a pretext to leave—which Ellen did not contradict . . .

After Christmas the true western winter came: with winds that roared through the bush and leapt careering over the edge of the Marsh to hit the bluff with sounds of cannonading. Snow-sheets were whirled and flung; forts were thrown up, and trenches dug; and the world seemed to reel and to dance madly about the big house which he had painted white by now: the house which Niels had built for Ellen . . .

On such days, when work in the open became impossible, Niels went about in those large rooms that were like a coat too loose about his shoulders.

Every now and then he would go out, over his sheltered yard, and look in on the horses and the cow; and then he would stroll over to the gate which remained open now. There, the wind would strike him, whistling or moaning around the corner of the bluff, and throw the snow into his face in a fine, prickling, pelting dust . . .

He would go back to the house and open boxes and bundles and take out stuffs for curtains: plain, white scrims, and others with coloured borders; and he would hold them up against the bare windows and fold them again and put them away . . .

Or he would take a book and read for a while: books he almost knew by heart: the English Bible, old magazines, some volumes of reports of the Department of Agriculture . . .

When night fell, at five, he would go once more and feed his horses and milk his cow . . .

And sometimes, on such days, he would then go to bed and lie and dream wakeful dreams and perhaps get up again: perhaps to put wood in the stove; and perhaps merely to walk about once more . . .

At other times he would put on sheep-skin and leggings and fight his way blindly across the ribbon of the Marsh that intervened between his and Sigurdsen’s places . . .

The old man was getting to be stranger and stranger. Sometimes he would talk to himself for a long while, taking no notice of Niels’ presence.

“Hi . . . tya,” he would say. “Listen to the wind. That’s the rigging howling! How she keels over! Mind, George, that girl in Copenhagen? Hi . . . tya! She laugh . . .”

He had been a sailor in his day.

Niels would nod. He understood that the old man was talking to the phantoms of his youth. Strange, disquieting things he would sometimes say, trailing off into Icelandic which Niels understood only half: things that seemed to withdraw a veil from wild visions, incomprehensible in one so old . . .

“Tya . . . Yo, she laugh . . . and she turn her hips. And her breasts . . . Hi . . . tya. And she bite! Sharp teeth she had, the hussy . . .”

And this decay of the human faculties, the reappearance of the animal in a man whom he loved, aroused in Niels strange enthusiasms: as if he could have got up and howled and whistled, vying with the wind . . .

Thus half the night would pass. And perhaps the wind would cease; and morning dawned bright and clear, with the temperature down to its lowest levels . . .

Then Niels would set out with a load of wheat, or perhaps of barley or hay . . .

That winter Niels became naturalised . . .

And soon after, when he heard that Bobby had left Nelson’s because he wanted to earn real wages, he went and saw him, in the livery stable of Minor, and proposed to him to come to his, Niels’, place, at regular wages, the year around . . .

And Bobby came . . .

Thirty-four acres under crop . . .

Spring again. Breaking and seeding . . .

Niels proved up.

Sigurdsen was unable to do his work: Niels and Bobby did it for him.

More changes: an American moved into the district, having bought Kelm’s farm. Kelm received nine thousand dollars in cash. He bought a half section of Hudson’s Bay land, just across the creek, north of the bridge . . .

There was much discussion about this between Niels and Ellen. They would not sell. They were on their land because they loved it: to them it was home.

Yet, since Niels had proved up, there was no obstacle any longer . . . Why did he wait? . . .

There had re-entered into their relationship something of the distancing effect of the first few years . . . Niels began almost to dread the coming of the decisive moment . . .

There was some unsounded depth in him or the girl . . .

Something dreadful was coming, coming . . .