Wild Geese PDF 1925

 * A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook * This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. I...

 * A Distributed Proofreaders Canada eBook * This eBook is made available at no cost and with very few restrictions. These restrictions apply only if (1) you make a change in the eBook (other than alteration for different display devices), or (2) you are making commercial use of the eBook. If either of these conditions applies, please contact a https://www.fadedpage.com administrator before proceeding. Thousands more FREE eBooks are available at https://www.fadedpage.com. This work is in the Canadian public domain, but may be under copyright in some countries. If you live outside Canada, check your country's copyright laws. IF THE BOOK IS UNDER COPYRIGHT IN YOUR COUNTRY, DO NOT DOWNLOAD OR REDISTRIBUTE THIS FILE. Title: Wild Geese Date of first publication: 1925 Author: Martha Ostenso (1900-1963) Illustrator: H. O. Hofman Date first posted: May 9, 2022 Date last updated: May 9, 2022 Faded Page eBook #20220527 This eBook was produced by: Mardi Desjardins, Cindy Beyer & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net  COPYRIGHT, 1925, B DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY, I. Published, October, 1925 Second printing, October, 1925 Third printing, November, 1925 Fourth printing, November, 1925 Fifth printing, November, 1925 Sixth printing, November, 1925 PRINTED IN U. S. A. THE VAIL-BALLOU PRESS BINGHAMTON AND NEW YORK  To M F  WILD GEESE CHAPTER I 1 I was not openly spoken of, but the family was waiting for Caleb Gare. Even Lind Archer, the new school teacher, who had come late that afternoon all the way from Yellow Post with the Indian mail carrier and must therefore be hungry, was waiting. Amelia Gare, Caleb’s wife, with all her cheerful bustling about the kitchen as if everything weren’t quite ready, could not break the suspense. Judith and Charlie had milked several of the cows, and had come in and out of the house repeatedly for no reason whatever. Martin, slow and clumsy of feeling as he was, had cleaned the entire stable so thoroughly that it looked unnatural. Ellen, Martin’s twin, was playing the organ, but appeared to have forgotten even the more familiar parts of her repertoire, such as Red Wing and the less recent Ben Bolt. Ellen played, harmoniously enough, “by ear.” The Teacher sat quietly in the low red plush rocker, listening to the springs of it exclaim as she rocked to and fro. She reflected, with some misgivings, on the noncommittal opinions that had been expressed at Yellow Post the day before in reply to her delicately asked questions about the Gares. She remembered also, with increasing discomfort, the short, scornful grunt of John Tobacco, the mail carrier, when she had sought from him what manner of being she might expect in Caleb Gare. Now, the squeaking rocker kept her mind off her hunger. The rocker seemed to say, “Caleb! Caleb! Caleb!” It amused the Teacher, rather wanly. Presently the outer door swung open. Judith had come in again. Lind Archer saw her against the dim light of the lantern that hung by the kitchen door. She had a great, defiant body, her chest high and broad as a boy’s; her hair was wild-locked and black and shone on top of her head with a bluish luster; her eyes were in sullen repose now, long and narrow; her lips were rich and drooped at the corners. She wore overalls and a heavy sweater, and stood squarely on her feet, as if prepared to take or give a blow.  Judith approached Lind with a heavy, swinging stride. Lind thought she had never before seen such vigorous beauty. “Are you hungry?” the girl asked her abruptly. “A little,” Lind admitted. Ellen’s hands paused in mid-air over the organ keys. Her eyes held a reproach as she looked at Judith. But the younger girl, ignoring her sister, took a few long steps and disappeared into the pantry. She emerged with a plate on which were two slices of bread well-buttered, and a glass of milk. Ellen’s reproach grew. She stood up before the organ. “Jude, you know father doesn’t——” “This won’t spoil your supper any—if you’re ever goin’ to get it,” said Jude to the Teacher, breaking in upon Ellen’s speech. Lind took the proffered food, too embarrassed to refuse it. Ellen rose erectly and without a word walked into the kitchen. Lind felt that she was conferring in a whisper with her mother. The Teacher nibbled uncomfortably at her bread and took a sip of the milk. Jude, who had been winding a bit of twine about a stick, threw herself on the floor at Lind’s feet. “You might as well know that he’ll try to bully you,” she said matter-of- factly. “He’s starting by keeping supper waiting. He always does the same thing when a new teacher comes. He expects you to be a man. All the teachers have been men. He’s in for a jolt. But you stick up for yourself, Miss Archer. Don’t you let him bully you.” Amelia spoke from the doorway. “Judith!” “Never mind, Ma. I’m only tellin’ her the truth.” Ellen came back into the room and placed a pitcher of water heavily on the table, as if she had miscalculated the distance between the table and her hand. A pucker of anxiety drew her brows together. Ellen wore silver rimmed glasses that were not originally prescribed for her. As a result the pupils of her eyes were always dilated and strained, the lids reddish and moist. She stood before the table for a moment and shot a bitter glance in the direction of Judith. Then she passed quickly out of the room. Lind Archer finished her bread and butter in silence. There was a raw feeling in the air that no superficial remark could dispel. Judith, apparently bent on tormenting her sister Ellen, whistled to her dog where he lay in the niche under the staircase. The dog looked up. “Caleb!” she said sharply. The dog started, pricking up his ears.  Jude smiled maliciously toward Ellen, who moved about the kitchen as though she had not heard. “You see—” said Judith, then began on another line. “He loves to ride around in the cart to show the Icelanders how much spare time he has during the busy season, while the rest of us slave around in the muck all day.” A feeling of apprehension was growing upon Lind. The high romance which had attended her setting out for this isolated spot in the north country was woefully deserting her. She had never before looked upon the naked image of hate. Here it was, in the eyes of a seventeen-year-old girl. The light, gritting sound of wheels came from outside. Ellen returned to the organ stool, her face, for all its youth, bearing the hard serenity of a strong woman in a crisis. Lind wondered why the occasion should call for such fortitude. “Judith, you had better call Martin,” Ellen said in a thin voice. “Father has come.” Judith got to her feet without a word. In the kitchen, Amelia hastily cleared the sink and placed in it a clean basin of hot water. She whipped the towel from its roller and put a fresh one in its place. Untying her apron, she straightened her dress and combed her hair briskly back before the cracked mirror on the wall. Then the door opened. At first, Caleb seemed to be a huge man. As he drew into the center of the kitchen, Lind could see that he was, if anything, below medium height, but that his tremendous shoulders and massive head, which loomed forward from the rest of his body like a rough projection of rock from the edge of a cliff, gave him a towering appearance. When attention was directed to the lower half of his body, he seemed visibly to dwindle. He had harsh gray hair that hung in pointed locks about his head, a weedy, tobacco-stained mustache, and startling black brows that straggled together across the bridge of a heavy, bony nose. His eyes were little beads of light that sought Lind out where she sat in the lamp glow of the other room. He did not speak until he had hung his coat and hat on a peg, and had washed himself at the sink. Lind saw that with Caleb was a frowsy-looking farmer in a red mackinaw. He also relieved himself of his outer garments and sat down without a word on a chair in the kitchen. Mrs Gare spoke to him but he answered only in broken monosyllables which Lind could not distinguish. The Teacher noticed, however, that Amelia addressed him with the same calm deference that had been in her attitude when Lind first met her in the barnyard that afternoon, upon her arrival with John Tobacco.  Caleb did not speak until he had finished washing. He did not so much as touch a comb to his ragged hair. “Skuli will stay the night,” he announced finally to Amelia. His voice surprised Lind. It was remarkably soft, almost like a purr. “But I have no extra bed. The teacher has come,” Mrs Gare protested mildly. “The teacher—yes, of course—the teacher. Skuli stays the night,” he repeated, with no more emphasis in his voice than when he had first spoken. He called Skuli and proceeded, with a sort of hulking shuffle into the dining room, which constituted the other part of the ground floor of the log house, and also served as a living room. “You are the teacher, I suppose,” he said, seating himself near the iron stove with his back half turned from Lind. There was nothing in the expression of his face to indicate that he was surprised to find the new teacher a girl. She rose and extended her hand, which he ignored. Lind flushed helplessly. “This is the other trustee of your school, Skuli Erickson,” said Caleb, with an elaborate sweep of his hand toward the Icelander. Lind gave Skuli her hand and he shook it heavily. “There should by rights be three of us,” Caleb went on in a wearied tone, as though he was giving perfunctory and tiresome information that might as well be dispensed with, “but there ain’t been another appointed since old Josh Curtis died. Out here in this unorganized territory things go on much as the weather sees fit. And I don’t know but what it ain’t just as good with the two of us. Eh, Skuli?” Skuli uttered a grunt which might have been an affirmation or a denial. He was slightly deaf, spoke very little English and understood little more. In a few minutes they were all seated for supper, Lind between Ellen and Martin, Skuli directly at the other end of the long table from Caleb Gare. “Looks like an early spring, eh, Skuli?” Caleb called to the Icelander. Skuli nodded. “Ya,” he agreed, helping himself well to potatoes and gravy. There was a silence, during which the food was passed around the table. The children, all except Judith, sat with their eyes lowered to their plates, shame-facedly self-conscious in the unused presence of one so pretty and dainty as the new Teacher. “Much rain down your way lately?” Caleb asked Skuli, calling the length of the table. Amelia glanced with faint dismay from her husband to Lind. “Naat muts,” Skuli replied. “Soom last veek. Purty dry.” Throughout the meal Caleb exchanged observations with the brief- spoken Skuli. You would have thought Skuli the honored guest of the evening. Lind looked across at Jude, whose eyes were smoldering. The Teacher smiled. Caleb’s evident obliviousness of her was not half so humiliating to her as it was to Judith. After supper the situation remained unchanged. Caleb ignored the Teacher as cleanly as if she were air. She withdrew to the horsehair couch in a corner and opened a book. Martin and Charlie, the youngest of the family, went out to finish milking, while Judith scraped and piled the dishes and removed them to the kitchen. “Play us a piece, Ellen, play us a piece,” Caleb requested. He and Skuli had drawn their chairs up to the stove in the center of the room and had taken out their pipes. A feeler of blue smoke curled up and around Caleb’s head. Lind was reminded of a painting she had once seen of the fixed, sardonic face of a fakir, lifting his eyes upward to catch the demoniacal image of his conjuring. While Judith helped in the kitchen, Ellen obediently went to the organ. She sat erect and prim in her washed-out gingham dress, that had apparently shrunk and, grown too small even for her narrow shoulders and uncertain breast. Her fine brown hair, that was lighter in color and much less luxuriant than Judith’s, was drawn back without a relenting wave from her rather prominent, austerely white brow. Her eyebrows were exquisitely shaped and black as ink-lines. Behind the magnifying glass of her spectacles her dark blue eyes swam liquid and vague. Her raw-looking, thin fingers sought out the keys. “Yes, Bjarnasson’s got the best fishing sites, no doubt about it—no doubt about it,” Caleb declared in a loud voice, while Ellen played Lead, Kindly Light. “But he’d better not get to thinkin’ he’s goin’ to hog the whole lake. Not by a damned sight—not by a damned sight. I’m goin’ to send Martin over there one of these days with some new nets—too far to do anything during the freeze-up. What do you think about it, Erickson? Is he showin’ you any fight?” “Na-aow,” Skuli grunted. “He geev me v’at I vant, de dirty djevil. I tak it first.” Caleb and Skuli both broke into stormy laughter at the Icelander’s joke. Ellen faltered over the keys. Caleb glanced sharply at her and she hurriedly picked up the thread of the song. Judith came in from the kitchen and sat down on a fur rug on the floor. Her dog followed and snuggled his head in her lap. The girl sighed and leaned wearily against the wall. Lind noted again how strangely beautiful she was. Like some fabled animal—a centauress, perhaps. Caleb launched upon an account of an involved sale of timber, at times almost shouting into Skuli’s ear to make clear to him the technicalities. The strains of the hymn mourned lamely to an end. Ellen hastened into a patriotic march, stumbled over the keys, shifted to a lullaby and then to a waltz. A spot of red showed on either cheekbone. Her mouth was tightly drawn, her chin flat and long so that in profile she looked like an old, tired woman. Amelia came and stood by the table. She turned up the wick of the lamp slightly. As she did so, the light picked out the shadows under her eyes, the rigid lines about her mouth, the pale sandy hair whitening about her temples. Amelia was fifty and was beginning to put on flesh, but she bore herself with a dignified reserve that seemed almost a part of her physical being, so that the grace which was hers in youth still clung to her. She seemed preposterously ill-fitted to her environment. Lind was filled with pity as she watched her move about the room, picking up a paper, straightening a doily, or, from a habit Lind realized must have been formed in another life, pulling down the shades before the windows. Amelia must surely have been worthy of a better lot. “That reminds me,” Caleb Gare began again. “How did you make out with those furs you sent to the Siding? Grini buy ’em up?” “Ya-a. Gode monney.” Skuli said, sucking comfortably at his pipe. “Fur- rrs—naow gode. Grini, he’s fool himself. Hee! Hee!” “Did I show you that wolf pelt Martin got east of here? Big beast he was too, eh, Martin? Where’s the pelt? Find the pelt, Martin. Made a rug out of it, Skuli—you ought to do that with some of yours. Here—Jude—show Skuli the rug!” Martin had crossed the floor to take the rug from Jude. The girl got up slowly. Her resentment flooded in a dark wave across her face. “Skuli has seen it three times already,” she muttered, snatching up the rug. Martin took it from her, a half grin on his face at her anger. Martin had long since learned the futility of indignation. He was twenty, past. Caleb smiled blandly. “Skuli forgets what a rug it is. Heh, heh!” His laugh was genial. The Icelander examined it again, to please his host. He commented upon its quality, then handed it back to Caleb, who sat holding it while he resumed his talk. Judith called Pete, the dog, and strode out of the room. Amelia sighed and sat down with a lapful of worn stockings and a handleless cup over which to mend them. Presently Judith returned, without the dog, and seated herself beside Lind. Caleb still held the rug. Charlie was playing solitaire at the table. “Here, Charlie,” Caleb said to him. “Bought ye a new deck of cards at Yellow Post to-day. Couldn’t think of anything to buy the girls—they have everything.” Judith thrust her shoes out before her. The toe-cap was off one of them. Amelia glanced at her quickly and shook her head in protest behind Caleb’s back. Ellen yawned behind her hand. “Cheer up, Ellen my dear, we’ll all be goin’ to bed soon,” Caleb said. “Skuli and I are both tired. Had a hard day, eh, Skuli?” Judith sprang up. “Well, I’m goin’ anyway!” she asserted. Caleb looked gently at Amelia, pointing with his pipe at Jude. “Mother, Jude had better be lookin’ to her manners, eh?” he suggested in his softest voice. Amelia’s eyes darted to Judith. “Judie—remember——” The girl reseated herself carelessly enough beside Lind, but the Teacher saw that her hands were clenched. Lind felt then that, like the other members of the household, she would come to hate and fear Caleb Gare. 2 I was so arranged that Judith slept with Lind that night. Amelia begged the Teacher to overlook the irregularity—Skuli, the Icelander, must be accommodated. The great loft was curtained off into three compartments—the bed rooms of all the children and such infrequent guests as chanced to come. In the room below Caleb and Amelia slept; their bed was a cabinet during the day, folded up against the wall.  The floor of the loft was composed of pine boards scrubbed white and smooth. You could look down through a knothole and see the stove glowing red in the darkness of the room below. Above, the rough, cobweb-hung rafters leaned down upon you; and on a wild night a jet of wind would ripple over your cheek if you lay with your face to the wall. In a winter dawn even tiny siftings of snow might be found in the crease of your pillow. Judith undressed. When she came to her undergarments she put her nightgown on with her arms free beneath it, so that she might finish disrobing in this manner. She watched Lind taking off her trim outer clothing. When she saw that she wore dainty silk underthings she glanced at her more covertly. She made no comment. After both girls had undressed, Judith picked up a string of amber beads Lind had placed on the stand near the bed. There was also a pair of ear rings of the same limpid yellow substance. “Wild honey! Drops of wild honey!” Judith exclaimed in a whisper. “Just the color of you!” Lind looked at her curiously. “You may have the beads, Judith,” she said on an impulse. Judith laughed. It was a rich laugh, from her deep young lungs. “My, wouldn’t I look funny with them on! Specially, cleaning the stables. No, thanks. They were made for you, Miss Archer.” When the girl was asleep beside her, Lind, restless in her new surroundings, knelt at her window and looked out into the night. There was still a pale glow from the sunset, and the land stretched out black and remote under it. 3 F out across the prairie a lantern was swinging low along the earth, and dimly visible was the squat, top-heavy form of a man. It was Caleb Gare. He walked like a man leaning forward against a strong wind. He frequently went out alone so, with a lantern; no one knew where, nor why; no one asked. Judith had once told Amelia scornfully that it was to assure himself that his land was still all there.... Caleb pressed on through the half-dark, leaning forward as if against some invisible obstacle. Presently he came to a ridge from which he could look east and west, north and south, upon the land that was his; the two tame hayfields, separated from each other, by a neck of timber belonging to Fusi Aronson (it would be well to own that timber, a fine stand it was); the dark, newly plowed furrows where in another five months the oats would again be stirring like a tawny sea under the sun; the acres where barley and rye would be sown for cattle feed, vanishing into the blue night toward the south; the small rectangle of wheat that he raised for chicken feed; the acres of narrow woodland stretching northward like a dark mane upon the earth; and the good, flat grazing land with two bluffs, that might have extended farther westward had it not encountered the holdings of that miser, Thorvald Thorvaldson; and, beyond the muskeg and a dried lake bottom, his cherished field of flax. Southeast, under the ridge, bottomless and foul, lay the muskeg, the sore to Caleb’s eye. In the heat of summer it gave up sickly vapors in which clouds of mosquitoes rose. Cattle and horses, breaking through the pasture fence and heading for the hayfield, had disappeared beneath its spongy surface. South of it lay his flax field, the most precious part of all his land. To get rid of the useless land and buy in its place the neck of timber held by Fusi Aronson: that was an honest ambition and one to be achieved. That Fusi Aronson would part with his right hand rather than sell him a square inch of ground, Caleb knew all too well. But many a better man had been glad to part with a right hand in certain exigencies. There was the little matter of Bjorn Aronson’s slight dishonesty, for instance, that was not generally known in the community—that little discrepancy in Bjorn’s moral balance that hurt Fusi more than any other thing on earth. What a comfort it was to Fusi that Bjorn was now one of the trustees of the Yellow Post church fund, a connection that would surely brace his manhood and beat into him a true metal. Caleb smiled as he thought of the trusting Fusi. Something might come up that could be used to good advantage. Somehow he would use brother against brother... he would wait. Caleb felt a glow of satisfaction as he stood there on the ridge peering out over his land until the last light had gone. He could hold all this, and more—add to it year after year—add to his herd of pure bred Holsteins and his drove of horses—raise more sheep—experiment with turkey and goose for the winter markets in the south—all this as long as he held the whip- hand over Amelia. Amelia’s word would start the children, then it would be all over—the results of his labor would be swept from these fields like chaff from a barn floor. He was too old to carry on alone. Hired help was worse than none—lazy, treacherous, rapacious. As long as he kept track of the outcome of that little folly of hers.... And, so far, he had managed very well. True, he might at any time lose that little contact—the boy, good Lord, he must be a man now—might even die. He had come out of the war safely, in spite of Amelia’s praying... oh, no doubt the woman had prayed that he would die! But it was an uncertain world. Amelia, she was a soft fool, thank God! Not many women would be so conveniently sentimental and self- sacrificing for the sake of a son born out of wedlock—and that son a man grown, and a stranger to his own mother. Well, if she was loth to have Mark Jordan learn of his parentage, Caleb Gare would not reveal it to him— providing that Amelia kept her place and did not force him to.... Mark Jordan was a fine young fellow, too, according to Bart Nugent. Bart had kept track of him very well, in the town where Caleb was unable to do his own spying. The good fathers in the mission had taken Amelia’s story for truth, and Mark had grown up with the solid idea that he was the last of a family of saints. There was a joke for you! The war had saved the boy from the priesthood, Bart Nugent had thought, and it had also radically altered his philosophy. He had always been interested in architecture, and had gone into it seriously after the war. Bart had written that a nervous disorder had lately developed in Mark Jordan from overwork, and that he might take to farming for a spell. Perhaps—the coincidence was not beyond thought.... It might not be well, however.... Amelia might weaken if she saw him. There was no guessing what a woman’s reactions might be. Amelia had loved the boy’s father, that he knew. The knowledge had eaten bitterly into his being when he was a younger man and had sought to possess Amelia in a manner different from the way in which he possessed her now. In that earlier passion of the blood he had found himself eternally frustrated. The man who had been gored to death by a bull on his own farm in the distant south had taken Amelia’s soul with him, and had unwittingly left her bearing in her body the weapon which Caleb now so adroitly used against her. His control over her, being one of the brain only, although it achieved his ends, also at moments galled him with the reminder that the spirit of her had ever eluded him. Caleb lifted the lantern and examined the wick. Things would turn out to his liking. He would hold the whip hand. Judith, yes, she was a problem. She had some of his own will, and she hated the soil... was beginning to think she was meant for other things... getting high notions, was Judith. She would have to be broken. She owed him something... owed the soil something. The twins, they would stay—no fear of their deserting. Martin and Ellen would not dare to leave; there was no other place for them. And Amelia, she was easy... yes, yes, she was easy, Amelia was! Caleb glanced again at the coveted bit of woodland, and crossed the ridge toward home. After he had crawled through the barbed wire fence that surrounded the second hayfield he turned down the wick and blew out the flame in the lantern. No need of wasting oil.... 4 L woke to the comfortable drowsiness of farmhouse lofts and piece quilts, and the inarticulate outdoor sounds of early spring mornings. Something had wakened her. She did not know then that it was the three knocks of the broom handle upon the ceiling of the room below, which was nothing else but the planks of the loft floor. She lifted herself upon her elbow and looked down upon the dusky rose cheek of the girl beside her. Judith was more than three years younger than Lind, but somehow there was a wisdom that Lind did not share in the bountiful, relaxed beauty of her body as she lay asleep. An intangible fragrance rose from her, like warmth. Like the warmth of milk, or newly mown hay. Lind touched her lightly to waken her. Jude’s eyes slowly opened, veiled like a waking child’s. She yawned and stretched her round, strong arms above her head. Then she turned over on her stomach and lay for a few moments without speaking. Lind got out of bed and prepared to wash. “I hate to get up,” Jude declared from the pillows. “Some day I’m going to have a silk bed and lie in it forever, and hear cows bellowing right at my elbow and know I don’t have to get up to water ’em.” Lind laughed at the absurd picture, while she saw the pathos in it. Three more knocks sounded peremptorily against the floor, and the Teacher turned questioningly toward Jude. Judith drew herself lazily out of bed and began to pull on her stockings under her nightgown. “You’d better hurry,” she said to Lind. “There goes Ellen down.” Lind wrinkled her brows. “You don’t mean that I must hurry?” “He won’t let breakfast be kept for anybody,” Jude told her briefly. Lind was thoroughly amazed. “But it must be only five o’clock! Whatever shall I do every morning until nine?” she exclaimed. “Hm-p!” Jude retorted, relishing the perverse contempt she felt for the Teacher together with her admiration and envy. “You might milk a cow or two, or chase skunks. There’s lots of ’em in the bush. That’s Pete after one now. Hear him barkin’? The smell ain’t bad—isn’t bad—when you get used to it.”  The Teacher shook herself free from the annoyance she felt at Caleb’s rigor, and resolved to make the best of it. After all, it was rather amusing. Breakfast, it turned out, was a meal eaten in almost complete silence. It was a fixed duty discharged without zest. Except Jude, the children did not seem half awake. The toil of the day before hung about them still like a tedious dream. “Guess we’ll plow up that fallow field over east, after all, Martin,” Caleb said, settling back in his chair while he wiped his mustache with his hand. “Jude can start it all right this morning, eh, Martin?” Martin continued eating his porridge. He was a slow eater, as he was a thinker. He could not quite appraise the meaning of his father’s words. It was folly to seed the worn-out east field this spring. And as for Jude’s plowing it—it was a heavy field, full of stones, difficult enough for a man. And hadn’t there been talk of Jude continuing morning school as she had done last year, so that she might write her entrance examinations? “Well—” Martin began solemnly. His face reddened as he found himself unable to protest. “Guess I could do it. Kind o’ tough for Jude.” “Tough for Jude? Pshaw! Hear that, Jude? He says you can’t do it! Guess there ain’t a field that’d stump you, eh, Jude? Some girl, that, Miss Archer. Look at the arm on her! Bigger’n mine. Heh! Heh!” It was the first time he had addressed Lind that morning. The Teacher shrank from the tyranny so thinly veiled behind his jocularity. She ventured to smile at Judith, who appeared not to have heard her father’s sally. After breakfast, Judith went out to milk, and Lind accompanied her. The cow pen was overhung at one end by weeping willows, which were putting forth tiny buds. Judith led her cow to that extremity of the pen. “It’s a little prettier over here,” she explained. The cattle sheds and the shelters for the other animals were all of gray logs, the low roofs sodded and showing faintly green now, although it was still cold and raw. The ruts of the cow pen, since there had been no rain or snow for weeks, were hard as cement, and reminded Lind of the relief maps children made at school. The deep tracks of the cattle were almost indistinguishable from the human tracks intermingled with them. The cold of winter had fixed them there and only the rains of spring would wash them away. “When did you stop school, Judie?” Lind asked. She had seated herself on a stone near the girl, and was watching the straight white stream of milk striking the bottom of the pail with a thin churring sound. The cow’s flanks were satiny, her tail clotted with manure. The animal looked over her shoulder with a round, vague inquiry, and went on chewing her cud. “Went half a day last year—every morning. Guess I won’t go at all this year. He hasn’t said, lately. He talked some about it during the freeze-up, and it sort of cheered me up then. But I guess he didn’t mean anything by it.” Lind felt her indignation mounting once more against Caleb. This was criminal, denying the girl what education was at hand. “Oh, my dear, hasn’t your mother a thing to say about it? Do you want to go?” “Wantin’ and goin’ is two different things,” she replied, looking into the pail between her knees. “But Judith,” Lind said earnestly, bending toward her, “is there no way to arrange for your going—can he not do without you here?” “He can, but he won’t. There’s no use talkin’.” Judith shifted her great body on the milk stool. She seemed to have grown suddenly shy, with this talk that lay so close to her inmost desires. Lind rose and touched Jude’s shoulder. As she did so Caleb appeared from the end of the barn. He glanced sharply toward the girls once, then looked studiously away. “You’d best go. He ain’t likin’ you being here,” said Judith. Feeling helplessly a culprit, Lind picked her way back across the rutted ground. She decided to go early to the school house and air the place thoroughly before the children came. It would give her something to do. 5 T stood the school house, across the trail from the Gare farm. It was low and square, and built of uneven logs: the white paint of it had peeled and fallen off here and there in large flakes. There it stood, in unashamed relief against the gray green haze of spruce and tamarack. Lind would have liked Judith’s company that first day at school. A teacher who had formerly taught at Oeland had told her of how he had actually been trampled in a stampede that had broken out among the young ruffians from beyond Latt’s Slough. By nine o’clock, the school room, the porch outside, and the playground were overrun by the sturdy demons who had gathered from miles around for what was an acknowledged holiday. Lind rose from her desk and rang a small bell, which instantly brought order out of chaos. There was a general scamper indoors, and a hurried selection of the best and most remote seats by the stronger of the small band. Lind looked down upon the children, and saw that every seat was occupied; a condition that would never prevail again throughout the term. The children, some of them six feet tall and well on in their ’teens, had come from every direction, even from other districts—half of them with the sole purpose of conveying to their elders their impressions of the Teacher of Oeland, and with no intention of coming a second day. Lind sat at her desk and introduced herself. There was dead quiet while she spoke. Every eye was fixed upon her face. “We are going to have a very nice time together here, I know,” said Lind. “You will keep the seats you have for to-day, and to-morrow I shall move you about according to your grades. Don’t you think that will be best?” She smiled down at two of the ruddy cheeked girls who sat together at one desk, and because their opinion was thus sought, they nodded their heads energetically, and afterwards whispered to each other how pretty the new teacher was. Lind opened a large black record book and began to take their names, up one row and down another. “Thorvaldson—Sophia, Anna, Una,” Lind repeated after three little girls in the foreground with pigtails as white as snow. Behind them sat two boys from Yellow Post, half-Cree, who did not know their last names and looked back in great fright to their elder brother who sat in the rear. And so on down the line. The Sandbos, who lived two miles to the east of the Gares, and five of whom attended school. The black-eyed Hungarian Klovacz children, whose father had a homestead several miles east of the Sandbos. The Bjarnassons, who came from the great lake on the west, and drove seven miles to school. Swarthy faced young tartars from north of Latt’s Slough, momentarily impressed and suppressed, most of whom were too old to go to school and would probably not appear on the second day at all. Lind saw with relief that she had captivated the children. There would be no trouble. She looked around at the dingy whitewashed walls. “We shall have to have some pictures,” she said. “How would you like to do a little painting this morning?” There was vigorous assent. A little apple-cheeked Icelandic boy from the Narrows and a halfbreed girl from Yellow Post importantly passed around the paint boxes and the coarse paper Lind had found in the store closet. And so the first day of school began at Oeland.  6 I was April and the little buds were opening stickily on the elms, and tingeing their boughs with purple and brown. The cottonwoods were festooned with ragged catkins. A softness was unfurling like silk ribbons in the pale air, and the earth was breaking into tiny warm rifts from which stole a new green. The children came to school in the mornings with their arms loaded with the long green catkins of the gray birch, which Lind told them was the Betula Lutea; which they promptly forgot. The ditches along the wood road became a gray blur of pussy willows; and one day Lind heard the first robin. It was a time of intense wonder in the north, after the long, harsh months when the heart is shut out from communion with the earth. Lind frequently walked alone through the green filter of light in the woods that led away from the Gare farm northward to the acres of Fusi Aronson. She thought of Caleb Gare and Amelia, and wondered how a human soul could keep from breaking utterly. Lind had wakened early one morning and had looked out from her window to see Amelia staring with transfixed eyes at the dawn—at something beyond the dawn, it seemed. It was not like a farm woman to do that. There must be some reason for Amelia’s endurance. Was it a hope of compensation of some kind? The children? No, there was not enough affection among them—after the precious flame had been sucked into the very earth upon which and by which they lived—to make the sacrifice worth while. There must be something else.... On a Friday evening, Lind prepared to leave for the Sandbos’, whose homestead was in sight down the wood road from the Gares’. Caleb and Martin were repairing the chicken house, removing the winter sod from the roof and sparingly inserting shingles wherever there was a leak. Judith came out of the house with the Teacher, who had with her a small bundle. Mrs Sandbo would expect her to stay the night, at least. “I’m going to ride down with you—the cattle are down that way,” said Judith, glancing toward the chicken house, where Martin was standing on a ladder swinging a hammer upon the damp shingles. Judith turned toward the log barn that crouched like an old moss-backed turtle between the wagon shed and the granary. Except for the blows of Martin’s hammer on the soggy shingles there was not a sound abroad. The air and the earth seemed to be held together in a glass bowl. There was that thin luster over everything that comes only on a clear April evening. The dank, clinging smell of newly turned soil rose like a presence. Lind was glad that Judith was to accompany her. They would have many things to talk about. Even at her age, Judith had a certain fineness of mind which came to an extent, perhaps, from the seasonal contact with the teachers of Oeland, but more from a deep native consciousness drawn from Amelia. Lind delighted in the rich spontaneity of the girl, in her naïve reactions. She saw much less of her than she might wish to. Caleb saw to it that Judith was busy about the place or in the fields during the day, and at night she wished for sleep more than for the comfort of friendship. The Teacher stood below Martin and talked to him while she waited for Judith. Caleb had gone into the tool shed near the barn. “Martin, it must be wonderful to make things—and mend them, with your hands,” she ventured. Martin talked so little. He had not yet voluntarily addressed her. He looked down at her and half grinned, drawing in his under lip bashfully. “ ’Tain’t so wonderful—got to do it in any kind o’ weather,” he managed to say. His long, dull face became suffused; he intently inspected another shingle. Poor Martin! At twenty he understood only one thing: work. Caleb came out of the shed. With his left hand he brushed the right side of his weedy mustache: a gesture that had become familiar to Lind. He did not look at the Teacher. She was rather glad that he had adopted the policy of ignoring her. It gave her more opportunity to watch him. Judith, mounted on the mare, Lady, beckoned to Lind. Caleb turned and saw her. “Too early to go for the cattle,” he said, lifting the bank of his eyebrows toward her meaningly. “That old seeder has to be fetched from Thorvaldsons’. Charlie can bring in the cattle.” “Charlie can get the seeder,” Judith said in a clear voice. She sat straight and formidable in her saddle, facing Caleb coldly. Of the two, Lind felt that the girl was the more to be feared, for sheer physical power. “Did you hear what I said, Jude?” Caleb asked, handing a box of nails up to Martin. His voice was gentle, casual. In answer, Judith wheeled the mare toward the gate and started down the wood road. Lind mounted the pony that the Sandbo children had left for her. On the road she met Jude, her face dark with anger.  “I’m through putting up with it!” Jude flared. “He’s got to quit thinkin’ we’re animals he can drive around.” They rode along together for a short distance. Then Judith turned to go back. “It’s no use—he’ll take it out on Ma. He knows I’m goin’ to the Sandbos’. Find out if Sven is really comin’ home, will you, Lind?” The Teacher had asked her to call her Lind. She nodded in response to the girl’s request and rode on down the shimmering wood trail. In the shallow ravine on either side lay a mist of flowering dogwood trees. Behind her, growing fainter now, came the thudding sound of Martin’s hammer on the rotten shingles of the chicken house. 7 T S boasted a frame house, and a wire fence around their buildings, not a sagging wooden one such as the Gares did with. The entire place was so over-grown with chokecherry and wild plum trees that in a short time now the house and barn and cowshed would be hidden in a white nebula. This beauty was more by accident than by design, for Mrs Sandbo would have preferred the frame house to be in full view to passers-by the whole year round. Frame houses were rare at this distance from the Siding of Nykerk. In a remote time, which Mrs Sandbo liked to speak of as a year or two ago, the family had lived in a small village where a locomotive and passenger coaches were seen three times a week and where a freight train was a daily sight and nothing to be marveled at. The Gare children, never having been beyond a radius of ten miles from home (save perhaps Martin and Ellen on their trips with the cattle to Nykerk), had never seen one of these wonders of modern times, and as for having ridden in one—! Well, the Sandbos, all of them except little Lars, who was born at Oeland, had ridden on the railway. So, although they were friendly enough from Mrs Sandbo’s point of view, there was a gulf between the two families that could not be spanned. Mrs Sandbo, having lived in a village, awaited Lind in the parlor. Emma, a ponderous girl of fifteen who still attended school half days, was stiff and sober in a clean dress which had been donned for the occasion. She ushered Lind into the presence of her mother without a word. She suffered, in fact, the sensation of strangling until the Teacher was out of her sight behind the parlor door. All the blinds, except one, were closely drawn in the room where Mrs Sandbo sat. There was a dry smell of wall paper, as if the windows had been nailed down since the day the room was decorated. Mrs Sandbo herself looked like wall paper, as if she had no sizable depth but a crisp, flat surface, the back of which would be gritty. On each of the four walls of the room, in geometrically precise relation, hung an enlarged photograph of one or more of the Sandbo family. The photographs bore the rainy-day look of all enlargements. That which first met the eye was an enormous likeness of the late Ludvig Sandbo himself, Mrs Sandbo’s husband. Lind entered and greeted Mrs Sandbo in her warm manner. Her hostess had been sitting on an upright settee of pale brown imitation leather and elaborately carved and scrolled oak. “I em glad to see you, Mees Archer,” Mrs Sandbo beamed with a square, Norwegian intonation. “Seet down. I vill get coffee. The girls say you like it at Gares. Iss that so? You are the first then, much so I hate to say it. But vait —the coffee cooks.” She rustled out of the room without waiting for a word from Lind. The Teacher sat down before the frame of Ludvig Sandbo. He had eyes like black shoe buttons. They chilled Lind. She moved to a chair near the lighted window. Mrs Sandbo returned with steaming coffee and little round pink-frosted cakes. She assailed Lind at once with questions, not so much to get an answer as to reveal to the Teacher her familiarity with objects of the world beyond Oeland. “Oh, yess, my husband, Ludvig, he vass there, many, many times,” she interrupted when Lind mentioned the city she had come from. “It iss him, up on the vall. And a stinker he vass, too. Good land, I say, t’ousand times a day, I em heppy he iss gone. Vhat he could drink, that von! Never vonce sober in six years!” She smacked her lips over her coffee cup and wiped her eyes with the corner of her apron. “Was he not kind to you?” Lind asked gently. “Kind? Him? Good land, I vass a dog under him. Now I live good, not much money, but no dirt from him, t’ank God!” She lifted her eyes up to the photograph, and Lind saw unmistakably a look of wistfulness in them. “Hess Mrs Gare in her new teet’ yet?” she asked presently, her pale eyebrows lifting eagerly above her glasses.  “I don’t believe she has,” said Lind, hesitating. “I think she expects to get them.” “Expects?” Mrs Sandbo almost snorted. “Her? She don’t expect not’ing —not from him. She been getting these teet’ now four five years while I get these two sets, and vhat have I got to buy vit’ teet’? Old Gare—he got money to buy teet’ for hundred head cattle. My man, he vass a devil, but he vass easy vit the money. He say, long before my teet’ vass all gone, he say, ‘Sigri, you tak couple dollar and go to dentist.’ He vass alvays easy—for easy, I told him. Much for easy!” She looked fondly up at the photograph and sighed. This time there was certainly no doubt as to the wistfulness. Lind was impressed. Mrs Sandbo hitched her chair more closely to Lind’s and puckered her brows. She lowered her voice. “Tell me—how goes it there? Iss he crenky vit you, too?” “No, he hasn’t bothered me,” Lind told her. “He’s a rascal, Caleb Gare,” Mrs Sandbo lamented with a shake of her head. “I feel sorry for the poor woman. To be merried to such a man!” “Why does she stand it?” “Vell—” Mrs Sandbo hesitated mysteriously, “I vould not say it again, but they say who knows it, that he bragged vonce to von of the Icelanders that he hess it on her. Vhat more, I can not say. Vhat you t’ink, Mees Archer? She iss scared purty near cresy of him, I t’ink.” Lind could venture no opinion. Mrs Sandbo drifted into other subjects, then rose ceremoniously to show Lind about the place and to offer her the freedom of the entire farm. Lind liked the Sandbos. There had been ten of them, but there were only eight left at home. They were big-boned children, solemn and hard working. The eldest daughter, Dora, had married and lived on a homestead north of Latt’s Slough. Sven, of whom Mrs Sandbo spoke proudly, had gone to work in town. He was expected home in May. Emma, the eldest daughter at home, spent much time thinking. At least her eyes were always downcast, her full, healthy face inscrutable. Lind watched her come up the path leading Rosabelle, the Jersey. She clumped along, a great hulk of a girl, in step with the cow. “What are you dreaming about, Emma dear?” Lind called to her from where she sat on the stone step of the milk shed. Emma looked up, confused. Lind drew her down beside her on the step. “What are you thinking of, Emma?” she asked again.  But Emma blushed more furiously than ever, and Lind concluded that if she had really been thinking of anything, it was just as well left unsaid. Emma kept her silence and got up to milk Rosabelle. Her thoughts were, indeed, too profound for utterance. When Lind was out of sight, Emma burst into tears of emotion. The Teacher was too beautiful and too sweet. She could not endure familiarity with her. Such was the effect of Lind’s coming to Oeland. 8 O S evening, Lind walked home through a fine mist drifting down from the swamps that lay to the northward. Against the strange pearly distance she saw the giant figure of a man beside a horse. As she walked across the field he came toward her, and she saw that it was Fusi Aronson, the great Icelander. Lind had spoken to him only once before, when she and Jude had found the cattle over on his land. He doffed his hat when she spoke to him, and returned her greeting in the quaint English that seemed odd in a man of his size. There was a vast, rough charm about the man. He was grand in his demeanor, and somehow lonely, as a towering mountain is lonely, or as a solitary oak on the prairie. Fusi walked back with her along the margin of a stand of spruce that pointed up blackly above the mist. “I was just thinking how lucky you people are up here to have spring so close to you,” Lind said, glancing up at him. “Yes, we are very, very lucky,” he responded slowly, carefully. “But few of us know it.” “Don’t you think most of the farmers realize it—in one way or other?” “No,” he said. “Here the spirit feels only what the land can bring to the mouth. In the spring we know only that there is coming a winter. There is too much of selfishness here—like everywhere.” His voice was deep, sonorous, the tone almost oracular, as if his statement were made as much to the air as to Lind. She looked at him furtively. “I wondered just what Caleb Gare was feeling about this—this mist,” she ventured. “Caleb Gare—he does not feel. I shall kill him one day. But even that he will not feel.” There was no anger in Fusi’s voice. Only deep, prescient certainty. Lind started. “Why?” she murmured. “He took the lives of two of my brothers. There was epidemic here with the Indians some years back. It was a snowstorm and my brothers asked in at his door. They were blind from the storm. They were not sick—my brothers. But Caleb Gare feared the sickness—it was the devil sickness—he feared for himself. And he closed the door in their faces. One I found dead a mile from Caleb Gare’s farm, two day after the storm. He was frozen so stiff we could not put on him his Sunday clothes and he was buried just so he was. The other died from the cold. I could not get the cold out of him, how long I worked. But first he told me about Caleb Gare.” There was iron in Fusi’s voice. His face against the darkening air was like iron. Lind was silent. Fear had come to her. Fear of this harsh land. Far overhead sounded a voluminous prolonged cry, like a great trumpet call. Wild geese flying still farther north, to a region beyond human warmth... beyond even human isolation....  CHAPTER II 1 L stayed in the school house working over the children’s lessons usually until the light faded and she knew the Gares would be sitting down to supper. Although they were crowded with work, these were lonely hours, when the last sunlight streamed in across the deserted desks and blurred with a vague gold the dusty blackboards, so that you could not make out the awkward figures that had been written upon them. Lind would often take out from her desk drawer the letters she had received from home in the twice-weekly mail, and, ashamed and impatient with herself as she would feel afterwards, she could not check the tears that rose to her eyes. And then, strangely enough, she would wipe her eyes and suddenly realize that it was not herself that she had been thinking of at all, but the Gares—Amelia, with her inviolable reserve and quiet graciousness, behind which she lived who knew what life; Ellen, prim to a point of agony; Martin, the stumbling dreamer, forever silent in his dream; the boy, Charlie, whom Caleb pampered and played against the others; Judith, vivid and terrible, who seemed the embryonic ecstasy of all life; and Caleb, who could not be characterized in the terms of human virtue or human vice—a spiritual counterpart of the land, as harsh, as demanding, as tyrannical as the very soil from which he drew his existence. The Teacher was lonely, and even more conscious of the stark loneliness of Amelia, of Judith, of Ellen and Martin, each within himself. Work did not destroy the loneliness; work was only a fog in which they moved so that they might not see the loneliness of each other. Days came when the loam was black and rich with rain. Judith and Martin, being the strongest of the workers under Caleb Gare, carried the soil’s heaviest burden. Judith mounted the seeder and wove like a great dumb shuttle back and forth, up and down, across the rough tapestry of the land. In the adjacent field Martin worked with the bowed, unquestioning resignation of an old unfruitful man. Occasionally Judith threw a glance at him. Then she would scowl and exclaim profanely to the plodding horse.  What with the work in the fields and the occasional trips with ax and saw into the bush there was not much time for play. And in the evening the body and the brain would be heavy with sleep, and there was nothing to do but throw one’s self down like a spent animal, and seek oblivion from thought and feeling. Lind felt that the rigid routine of the farm was imposed by Caleb to keep anything out of the ordinary from happening. And nothing happened; nothing happened. Day in and day out, not a soul came to the Gare farm; not a soul left it, not even to visit the Sandbos, two miles or less away. And Caleb went about with the fixed, unreadable face of an old satyr, superficially indifferent to what went on, unconscious of those about him; underneath, holding taut the reins of power, alert, jealous of every gesture in the life within which he moved and governed. 2 S formed a sort of interval. Caleb was the only one of the family who attended church at Yellow Post, but since the minister preached there only every third Sunday, coming all the way from the Nykerk parish, the amount of spiritual guidance the others missed was not so great as it might have been. It happened that the second Sunday after Lind’s coming was Easter Sunday, and a new minister was expected to hold services. Amelia rose as early as on week days, although usually an hour’s grace was allowed on Sunday, to prepare Caleb’s breakfast and lay out his white collar and black broadcloth suit with the greenish velvet lapels. His shoulders were not so square as they had been the decade or so before when the suit had been bought, and the back of the coat hunched up and made a little groove just below the collar, which Amelia could not remove with any amount of pressing. Each time he put the coat on, she was afraid he would notice it and complain of her careless treatment of it. Amelia had had to wash the stiff collar he had bought through the mail order catalogue, and its wings had lost some of their contour in the starching. So that by the time Caleb rose and knocked on the ceiling to waken the children, and then came into the kitchen to wash, Amelia was thoroughly worried about how the day would go. “Martin washed the gig over yesterday—after work. It looks real nice,” she said to him cheerfully as he spread the shaving soap over his jaw. Ever since they were first married, Caleb had looked most human and likeable when he was lathering his face preparatory to shaving, and she had often approached him at such times with requests or confessions that she dared not make before or after his toilet had been completed. Caleb stropped his razor blade to his satisfaction before he replied. He always took his time in answering Amelia. It gave him leisure to weigh his words and to create a certain uneasiness in the woman concerning his reply, that was flattering to him even when the matter under discussion was a trivial one. This morning he was in a generous mood. “Martin did well. I’m half a mind to take him with me. He’s a way of doin’ things without bein’ driven to it,” he chuckled, as though there were some underlying humor in the observation. “Martin would like to go,” said Amelia, careful not to make her voice too eager. She set the coffee on to boil. Then she went to the door and stood for a moment looking down toward the wood road where the willows were drooping in early bud as delicate as a green rain. It would be sweet going to church this Easter morning, she thought. It was a long time now since this had been a reverent custom with her. Amelia had been Roman Catholic before her marriage to Caleb Gare. There had been one Easter more blessed and more joyous than all the others, when she had ridden across country to church with Mark Jordan’s father. She had been a girl then—such a girl—not like her own daughters, but like Lind Archer. Her heart caught her suddenly, and her cheek warmed at the little disloyalty to her own flesh and blood. No reason why Judith or Ellen should not be like Lind. Was there none? A strange little jealousy crept into her breast. Lind had undoubtedly gone to church of an Easter Sunday, just as she had done— perhaps even sung in a choir, just as she had done. Jude and Ellen knew nothing of such things. Caleb did not see fit to permit them to go to Yellow Post services, where the lusty young swains of the entire countryside gathered to worship in good weather. He had once remarked pointedly to Amelia that, as she well knew, little good could come of their mixing in with that lot, and their salvation might easily prove their damnation. Amelia had seen through his pretenses very clearly. And she had come to regard with a bitter humor the sermons he brought home each Sunday after he had been to Yellow Post, genially reading the text from the Bible and giving a résumé of the minister’s words as nearly as he remembered them, all before dinner. She forgot the sweetness of the willows and went back to the kitchen stove with the faint tightening about the lips that was all that was ever visible of Amelia’s impatience with her lot. There was no sound in the kitchen save the crackling of the wood in the stove and the little scraping of Caleb’s razor. In the loft above, she could hear the children stirring, and she hoped they would not delay in coming down. When Caleb saw his collar it would be enough to set him off, without further vexation. Lind was the first to come down. Amelia glanced at her quickly and saw how pretty she was in a blue silk gown that seemed to make her hair even more lustrous and her skin more delicate. “Let me set the table for you, Mrs Gare,” Lind offered. “No—don’t bother,” said Amelia, in an abrupt tone that made Lind look at her in surprise. A slight flush came into Amelia’s cheek. She could not understand herself for hating the girl at the moment. “You go out and see how nice it is,” she hastened to add, “and Jude’ll be down and set the table.” Wondering a little, Lind went out to the corral where a pair of yearlings came up to the wooden bar and reached out their muzzles to her for stroking. Caleb finished shaving and pulled on his starched white shirt. Then he picked up the collar Amelia had laid out for him. He looked at it once and laid it down again, without a word. Amelia, stirring the porridge on the stove, prepared herself for his usual sneering comment. She was thankful Lind had gone out. But no remark came from Caleb. He left the collar where it was and passed softly into the other room. Jude and Ellen and the boys came down one after the other and breakfast was on the table in a few minutes. Lind entered from the front doorway that looked out on the horse corral, and her silk gown billowed softly in the little breeze that came in behind her. She carried an armful of pussy willows that she had gathered in the ditch near the school house, and placed them in a basket beside the organ. Ellen gave them a glance and went into the kitchen abruptly. “Cluttering up the house like that,” she sniffed to Amelia, “Father will have something to say about her taking it on herself.” Amelia, sighed. “Let him say it, then, Ellen,” she replied. “Go and eat your breakfast. Tell the others to sit in. He’ll not get to church if we don’t eat right away.” On Sundays Caleb said grace. Meals on the other days were taken up with discussions of things on the farm. Lind and the others bowed their heads, but Judith sat upright and looked straight ahead of her. She forced herself to think of something else until Caleb had said “Amen.” The thing that actually came into her mind was that he had not the Lord to thank for what they were about to receive, but her, and Martin, and Ellen, Amelia, and even Charlie, whose downcast face was hiding a grin. “I’d like to take you with me this morning, Martin,” said Caleb. “It’d do you a heap o’ good, gettin’ out among young people for a change. But I don’t want you to be ashamed o’ your own father, Martin.” Martin’s long countenance lifted questioningly. He did not understand Caleb’s remark, and before the Teacher he dared not ask. So he fell to eating his porridge again, slowly so that he should make no uncouth sound in Lind’s presence. Every one ate in silence. An expression of pained regret had come over Caleb’s face when he spoke. Amelia knew what that meant. What he was about to say was designed to mortify her, she knew. “No, Martin, you’ll have to wait until some time when I have a clean collar to wear,” he said slowly, mildly, almost humorously. Amelia’s face flamed. Her eyes darted to Lind to see if she had heard. But the Teacher went on serenely eating her breakfast. Judith spoke up, in spite of Amelia’s quick frown. “Well—I guess you’d have plenty of clean collars if you’d buy more than one a year,” she snapped. “And send the stiff ones to Nykerk instead of expecting Ma to do ’em up.” “You’re right, Jude. You’re right,” Caleb chuckled. “Guess I’m a little careless.” He pushed his chair back and rose from the table. “Mind hitchin’ up Lady, Charlie? You and me’ll go to church anyway, collar or no collar.” He turned his stooped back upon them and moved into the kitchen. Amelia followed him. “Caleb—you’re not going to church without a collar on?” she said in dismay. He turned slowly and looked at her. “Think the Icelanders’ll see what a fine wife you are, eh?” he asked softly. “Well—you go talk to Jude. See she looks to her manners. That young one is gettin’ a sight too smart. Understand?” The sour grimace appeared on his face that Amelia was so used to seeing there. He ran his hand over his mustache as if to wipe the expression away. He put on his coat and went out of the house. Amelia was thankful he had not noticed the hump behind his coat collar. She hurriedly set about clearing the table, and spoke to Judith in a low tone. “You must not cross him or be cheeky to him, Jude. You know he’s getting old and can’t stand it,” she murmured, so that Lind should not hear. “He’s no older now than he ever was. He’s always been as bad, and I’m through standin’ for it,” Jude replied promptly and in no low tone. “Seems to me I’ve just started growin’ a brain enough to know how I hate him!” “Judith!” cried Ellen, aghast. “Your own father!”  “He’s not! I don’t care if he is! I don’t give a damn for him, and you shut up with your talk!” Jude cried, wheeling upon Ellen. “Be quiet, Jude!” Amelia said calmly. “You’re crazy to go on so! Before strangers!” Lind had discreetly slipped out the front door. “She’s been that way ever since the Teacher came. As if nothing here is good enough for her any more,” Ellen said tartly. “That’s not so! The Teacher has nothing to do with it. I’ve stood enough of his bullying of all of us. If he doesn’t get a man here soon I’m going to leave!” “Don’t talk nonsense, Judith. You have no place to go,” Amelia told her. “Haven’t I? You’ll see!” She went on drying the dishes then without another word. Ellen’s face was a study. Lind crept under the fence of the sheep pasture and set out across the field. The scene was painful enough without Lind’s further agonizing Amelia with her presence. Distressing conflicts of this kind had become increasingly common. She felt vaguely that her coming had incited Jude to greater rebellion. Lind wondered, as she had wondered time and again since her coming to Oeland, if there were any means in her power by which she might bring a little happiness into the lives of the Gares. And then in a moment, she was overwhelmed by her helplessness against the intangible thing that held them there, slaves to the land. It extended farther back than Caleb, this power, although it worked through him. Lind found herself longing for some one of her own world to talk with, some one to whom she might escape from the oppression of the Gares. Judith surlily attended to the milking and helped Amelia with the separator, then took out Turk, one of the colts, and proceeded to break him into the saddle. The outraged animal threw her twice, while Martin looked on with a dry smile. “I don’t need to be thrown, Martin,” Jude protested when she heard his rare laugh, “but I kind o’ like it.” “Aw—yes you do,” Martin grinned. “So does Turk.” “Well—you see if he does it again,” she retorted, jumping into the saddle once more. Lind, who had returned from her walk, came and sat on the ground beside Martin. He moved over for her deferentially, and blushed. It was a beautiful morning, full of sunshine, and with Caleb away the atmosphere on the farmstead was almost radiant. Although there was not much change in their conduct, Lind felt a releasing of reserve among the children, and delighted in being with them. She stared at Judith on the plunging horse, her amazement at the girl’s dexterity increasing every moment. The animal reared and snorted, pawed the air with his forelegs and tossed his mane like a black cloud. He was a handsome colt, slender and glossy as black satin, with a fine blazing eye. For a half hour Jude wrestled with him, careening in mad circles about the corral, taking near somersaults as the horse’s forelegs straightened under him and his rear hoofs shot into the air time after time. Her laugh rang out in peals, her eyes were full of mockery. When she came close to the bar of the corral, Lind could see that her wrists, about which the rein was tightly wound, were bleeding. “Don’t you think she ought to stop, Martin?” Lind asked anxiously. “She wouldn’t,” said Martin shortly. “He’s near done.” When it was over, Jude unsaddled the panting, froth-covered animal, and threw herself down beside Lind and Martin. “Nothing like a little exercise to make you feel good,” she said, wiping her wrists. Her cheeks were deep red, and little beads of moisture shone on her tilted upper lip. “You’re marvelous, Judie,” Lind said admiringly, “but you did frighten me once or twice.” “Gee, it’s a great day, Mart,” Judith observed lightly. “Couldn’t you manage to sneak the spring wagon after dinner and take us up to the Slough? I’d like to get some crocuses. The air smells full of ’em.” “He’d say you was gaddin’, like as not,” Martin returned dubiously, but his eyes were unwontedly bright as he leaned back on his elbows and looked on the distant horizon. “I might try, though.” Lind looked with mixed feelings from one to the other of these two Gares. The height of their desire this precious April Sunday was to go gathering crocuses, and simple as the wish was, they took it for granted that somehow it would be denied. “He’ll be back from church about now. Sorry you couldn’t go, Mart?” Judith’s eyes twinkled with mischief, and Martin in appreciation smiled his twisted smile. Lind sat quietly watching the two while they talked with random happiness about momentous small things. A half hour later the rattle of a cart sounded down the road, and Martin rose quickly to unbar the gate. Presently Caleb drove in with Charlie sitting very straight and important beside him. It was the first time in his life that Charlie had gone to church, and the experience had left its mark on his face and bearing much as a physical shock might have done. Martin, in his quiet, perceiving way, looked at the boy as he got out of the gig. Caleb went on to the house, leaving the two boys to unharness. “How’d ye like it?” Martin asked. “I liked the singin’ all right, but the rest—I dunno as it was wuth goin’ for,” he said with a noncommittal swagger, hands thrust in pockets. “But the singin’—yeah, it was pretty good. Everybody sung. I sung.” He looked down sheepishly and kicked a pebble along the ground. “You better go next time, Mart. There was a lot o’ guys there from up north way. An’ some girls. I didn’t talk to ’em, though—I mean the guys. Pa said not. Said they was Swedes and like to beat a little fella like me up—huh!—I could o’ licked any of ’em!” Martin led the horse to the corral. He saw that Lind and Jude had gone indoors. He was glad. Lind’s presence was disturbing to him, he did not know why. Charlie walked thoughtfully beside him. “Say, Mart—does Pa think he’s goin’ to make us all stay here after we get big?” he asked, frowning. He was an undersized lad and looked up to his brother with some respect because of his superior height. As Caleb had always made a favorite of him, and was amused by his heedlessness, he had nothing but contempt for his sisters who had been trained never to disobey their father or to speak impudently to him. “Well, I’m big, Charlie, ain’t I? I guess like as not we’ll all stay,” Martin replied soberly. So now Charlie was beginning to wonder, too, he thought. Charlie was silent as they went to the house. He was only fifteen, it was true. But to-day he had heard singing, and had found he liked to sing, with a lot of young folks like himself or a little older. There was one boy there he would have liked to talk to. The boy had a red tie, and put collection in the plate from his own pocket. Before dinner on Sunday it was the custom for the family to assemble in the sitting room and hear Caleb recite the sermon that had been delivered at Yellow Post church. Although for reasons of his own he did not think it well to permit the family to go to the service, he felt that it was unbefitting a Christian to keep them from the grace of God’s word. “Will you join us in hearing the sermon, Miss Archer?” Caleb asked the Teacher when Amelia was drawing the chairs into a semicircle in the middle of the room. His manner was his best, suave, gentle and benevolent. He had taken the Bible down from its place on the shelf above the organ, and held it a little distance away from him as he had seen the new preacher do, as if not to desecrate the book by contact with his sinfully mortal person.  Lind could not well refuse. She sat down with the others, and Ellen at the organ played Lead, Kindly Light. Then Caleb held up a hand and intoned the Lord’s prayer. His voice was miraculously soft. Suddenly Lind found herself wanting to cry out against the farce, and confront Caleb with the monstrousness of his act. But she sat silent. Caleb opened the Bible and read: “Again, I considered all travail, and every right work, that for this a man is envied of his neighbor. This is also vanity and vexation of spirit. “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh. “Better is an handful in quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit. “Then I returned, and I saw vanity under the sun.” Caleb paused, cleared his throat, and looked significantly at each member of the family, dwelling last upon Lind. The Teacher stirred with discomfort under the steely condemnation in the old man’s eyes. His voice went on, rising to a grand sonorousness: “There is one alone, and there is not a second; yea, he has neither child nor brother: yet is there no end of all his labor; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither saith he, For whom do I labor, and bereave my soul of good? This is vanity, yea, it is a sore travail. “Two are better than one; because they have a good reward for their labor. “For if they fall, the one will lift his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. “Again, if two lie together, then they have heat: but how can one be warm alone? “And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.” Caleb sternly closed the book. “So endeth the lesson,” he said huskily. The children, waiting for the end of the ordeal, had only half heard the words. But Amelia, naturally pious, had drunk them in. One phrase stuck in her mind. “The fool foldeth his hands together, and eateth his own flesh.” That was what he was doing. That was what she was helping him do. Eating his own flesh, here on the land. But for her there was no alternative, no choice save which of her flesh she should eat. O God, it was unendurable! Caleb was going on—and on—the sermon—the new preacher’s sermon... “So must we, who dwell in this lonely land and strive to live Christian lives on the acres the Lord hath given us, cling together for warmth and for good reward for our labor. ‘Better is an handful with quietness, than both the hands full with travail and vexation of spirit.’ Better live here like we are, poor but content, than to seek the world and all its vices for enlargement of our worldly wealth. That, Jude, is for you to think of, careful, and for you, Ellen and Martin, and like as not, for you, Charlie. ‘For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe’—hear me—‘woe to him that is alone when he falleth.’ Do they understand the lesson, Amelia?” Amelia murmured, “Yes, I think they all understand it.” She could have shouted aloud, beaten his face for his hypocrisy. She could have risen and belabored him with all her strength for his bland misappropriation of a noble passage from the book that had given her many an hour’s comfort. But she did nothing but sit and listen attentively until he had, in a hushed voice, given the last blessing. “This was not strictly an Easter Sunday sermon, you understand. But Reverend Blossom thought it more like for us to have a sermon that would fit in with the season, so he said. What do you think, Amelia?” “I think it was a well chosen sermon,” said Amelia quietly. Then they all rose and sat down at the table, while Mrs Gare brought the food from the kitchen, and Judith, yawning with boredom, helped her. 3 O the following Friday, Gertrude Bjarnasson, who had been friendly toward Ellen the time or two that she had talked with her at Yellow Post, invited Ellen and the Teacher for a visit, sending the message to them through the younger children who went to school. Ellen made so bold as to ask Caleb for permission to accompany Lind to the great stone house of the Icelanders on the lake. Caleb regarded her with pained surprise. “Do you want them to show you their fine house, and their fishing nets, and their boats, and their windmill, when your own father is too poor to have such things? You know how much better they think they are than us,” he said gently, wagging his head, “but if you must go...”  Ellen sighed. She had never been at the great stone house. She would never, perhaps, be permitted to go. But it was of no use to protest—Amelia would be seen weeping a short time afterward if she did. There was nothing to do but bear with things. And wonder if Malcolm would ever be coming back again. He had said—ah, yes, he had said that he would, in the spring. It was just a year since Malcolm had left to work in the lumber mills to the south. And before that there had been only a week or two of incomprehensible, guilty rapture. Malcolm had kissed Ellen but once when they were alone in the barn after milking. An unromantic place it was save for the witching flood of light from a full moon. It had been a moment of unforgettable bliss. Had Malcolm been less diffident that evening, had he seized the opportunity and taken her away before she had time to reflect, everything would have been different. But Ellen, sustained by her habitual loyalty to Caleb and by the fact that Malcolm had Indian blood in his veins, regained overnight her unbendable control, and Malcolm, wounded and perplexed, went away soon afterward. It was only the pain in her eyes that prompted him to tell her that he would be coming back again. And here it was spring—after the long winter.... So, without Ellen, Lind went home that Friday evening with the children of the Bjarnassons, the great clan who lived to the westward. The air was soft and vibrant with the whir of migratory wild fowl. Rain pools filled the ditches along the road, and lay like stained glass in the low sun; the overhanging willows were in full leaf now, the sedges vividly green and as yet unbowed by a single wind. Such a new, ecstatic world of growth! Behind the Bjarnasson children in the cart, Lind held out her hands as if to gather in the beauty of it from the wide air. In the great stone house on the lake, dwelt four generations of Bjarnassons. Old Erik, who was among the first of the Icelanders to settle at Oeland, had seen his land pass in turn from his son to his son’s son. Erik was well into his eighties now, a time for dreaming much, and fishing a little when the sun was warm on the white rocks in the cove. Young Erik, his grandson, had married long since and now sent his children to Oeland School. It was young Erik’s father, Mathias, who had built the stone house. Mathias was a massive man, sixty now, but eternal in endurance, eternal in warmth and hospitality of nature. The house he had built with his own hands was like him, was a square stone image of him. He had excavated the earth and built its rugged, lasting foundation; had hauled stones in slow wagon-loads, and with the care and fineness of a woman patterning lace, had fitted them together in the mortar and had built four broad walls to the blue.  In all that region, there was not another house like it. Like a welcome, its western windows were aflame with light from a red sun, when Andres and Helga drove up the road with the Teacher. Below the house lay the lake, wrought through and through with silver and rose. Helga escorted Lind into the house. The immaculate kitchen had a warm, good smell, like cinnamon. The floor was white as bread. On it were round, braided rag mats of bright, clear colors. Helga’s mother had never been in Iceland, but her English was so little used that it halted here and there. Such was the isolation of the place. “You will like coffee, now, maybe,” she said to Lind, half shyly. “Bring the teacher a chair, Helga.” She hurried about, a round little figure of a woman with a round, unchanging face. From an immense wooden cupboard with red glass doors she brought out cups and saucers, and certain thin wafers rolled up tightly in sugar. And while Lind ate and drank, she sat with her hands clasped in her lap, saying never a word. From an inner room, Lind heard a steady, muffled sound, between a hum and a purr. “It is grandmother, spinning,” said Mrs Bjarnasson. “She is blind, but she spins. She spins all of our wool.” “She speaks no English, of course,” said Lind. She spoke none. But when Lind went in and shook hands with her, the ancient lady raised her face to hers as if she were looking at her with recognition. She was so stooped that as she sat at the spinning wheel, her head was almost level with the distaff. She murmured something in Icelandic. “She means that you are good to look on,” said Mrs Bjarnasson the younger. “She always says she can see people’s faces when they speak the first time to her. She will tell your fortune if you ask her.” Lind was eager to hear the old lady, who drew aside from her spinning and took both of the Teacher’s hands in her own withered ones. She held them and turned her knotted, brown face, that had something of the sheen of a cocoon, upward to the light, her eyes sealed. She spoke rapidly, in a queer, lilting voice. The younger Mrs Bjarnasson interpreted as she went along. “She says you will have a lover very soon,” Lind was told. “There is a shadow over him. You will never know the secret of him. But you will be happy. That is all—that is enough, she has told you.” Lind laughed, but a ripple crossed her heart. “Does she always tell the truth?” the Teacher asked. “Wait and see,” said Mrs Bjarnasson, nodding her head. Superstition here lay along life in a broad vein. The men came in to supper from work in the fields and along the shore: young Erik’s brothers, Peter and Valdemar, and his cousin, Johan; Mathias, laughing mightily at some joke he had turned on one of them. They spoke in the Icelandic, simple and rough, not thinking to change in deference to the Teacher. They spoke no ill: why should they affect a strange tongue to prove it? Each greeted Lind with an awkward politeness. The women of the family they each kissed in turn. It was the custom. There were other women in the family as well: Gertrude and Althea, sisters of young Erik, and Althea, his maiden aunt. The women were in constant attendance upon Lind, to see that she was at ease. While supper was being prepared the elder Althea, who was somewhat intellectual, brought her a book of Icelandic sagas translated into English, and placed a stool under her feet to insure her comfort: then she moved as quietly away as a wraith. The supper was a vast affair of fish that had been brought from the “great” river, dried meats, potatoes, and many kinds of crisp sugared cakes, and many cups of coffee. The men ate heartily of the fish, greatly of the potatoes. To Lind it was a revelation. A wind rose suddenly before the meal was over, and in a surprisingly short time the lake was breaking in a long shudder against the rocky shore. Quiet descended upon the family group, as though from some unseen force outside. “Baldur will not rest to-night,” the elder Althea murmured in the language. Her eyes were bright and strangely young, although she was fifty and had never married. “Baldur was a fool to defy the lake that night. He will be a long time on the bottom,” grunted the younger Erik. But he started as a door slammed shut in the upper part of the house. “Tell the Teacher,” Gertrude said. She was round-eyed and pretty. She had stared uninterruptedly at Lind throughout the meal. Now there was a detached look in her face. “The Teacher has heard, like as not,” began young Erik, in the uneven vowel tones of the Icelander. “The Gares know, I think.”  “No,” said Lind. “I have not heard anything.” “The lake has two of our family. One, my brother, Gisli, one my sister Althea’s promised husband. They were friends, and they quarreled. They carried their quarrel into the lake in two boats. It was a storm—the lake took them. We have not yet found any of them—not a small sign. Until so, we do not let others fish in the lake. Caleb Gare, he says, yes, he shall fish. We say no. We are a family, Mees Archer—a great family. We shall not let others in to fish where our dead is buried.” Young Erik ended sternly. The wind and water screamed against the shore. Lind trembled, and thrilled. “No, they will not rest until we find them,” said the elder Althea. Her niece and namesake sat still with her eyes downcast. There followed tales of supernatural events, of visions and omens, and of disaster that befell the unheeding. The great, grizzled Mathias told solemnly of the ancient pride of the Bjarnassons in Iceland, and of the dire fate of one who was disloyal to that pride, to that great bond. Told of how the curse of the ancients fell upon him, and of how his days were a torment and his nights a madness, so that even death could not bring forgetfulness. There was a weird poetry in Mathias’ telling, a great rhythm of melancholy romance. He had lived much in communion with solitude, and had come to know that there is an unmeasurable Alone surrounding each soul, and that nameless and undreamed are the forms that drift within that region. So that it was well for the members of a great family to cleave together and so ward off the menaces and the dreads of the great Alone. When the Teacher went to bed finally, the storm had abated. High above the soughing of the wind under the great eaves of the stone house, Lind heard the trailing clangor of the wild geese. Their cry smote upon the heart like the loneliness of the universe... a magnificent seeking through solitude —an endless quest. 4 T farm of Thorvald Thorvaldson lay half-way between the Gares’ and the Bjarnassons’. Thorvald had nine girls, and no boys. Consequently his farm was a fragment of neglect, a ragged piece of land of no value save as a hindrance to Caleb Gare’s ambition to extend his pastures farther westward. Which hindrance, Thorvald maintained, was gratifying in itself.  Lind stopped there on her way home from the Bjarnassons’ to speak to Mrs Thorvaldson about the condition of the scalps of her younger daughters. She would bring the matter up delicately. From the seat of the Bjarnasson children’s cart, Lind saw Mrs Thorvaldson struggling with the cattle in the milk yard—saw her pushed and jostled about by the unmanageable animals, which she was trying to separate. Lind saw also that she was heavy with child. Somehow, Lind could not bring herself to mention the heads. She waved good morning to the woman and then told Andres to drive back to the road. She herself would use kerosene on the young ones. From the top of the sharp ridge that looked down upon the forks where three roads met, from the north, the east and the west, Lind saw a man on horseback. His head was bare, his hat slung across the pommel of his saddle. His clothes, the contour of his well-groomed head, even the way he sat astride his horse signified to Lind that he was from the world beyond Nykerk Siding, from the direction of which he had come. For some reason she felt shy about encountering him, and asked Andres to rein in and let the stranger pass ahead of them on the forks. Andres stopped the horse, and Lind was confident that the man on horseback rode on without having seen them. 5 M J smiled to himself as he jogged along the road on the Indian pony he had hired at the Siding to take him to the farm of the Hungarian, Anton Klovacz. His greenish, ironical eyes, that could in an instant take on the shadow of a dream, searched the dust in the road ahead of him, and saw never the track or trace of human passage. For a day, then, fully, the road had been empty save, perhaps, for the foraging sparrows. What an ideal place to come to, away from Arbuthnot and his wife and their eternal friends, who would leave their tracks on pavement, if self- importance counted for anything. But then—perhaps he was unfair. Arbuthnot wasn’t such a rotter in some ways. But he did get on the nerves of a man whose nerves were raw to begin with—with his everlasting talk on art and the City Beautiful of To-morrow. A good architect, in his way, but an unbearable ass. No better as an architect than Mark himself, if it came to that, for all his name and fame. Well, he was free of it all for a half year, thanks to good old Doc Brisbane! There was a medico with perception! One who could tell what the soul of a man wanted long before the body tumbled to it, fret about as it might in the quest. God, how good this air was! It smelt like the young lilac leaves you used to suck against your lips and break with a snap when you were a kid, or like the slippery elm bark you used to chew and make a viscous cud of! Dwelling on his childhood, Mark thought of the kindly old priests in the mission who had given him everything in the way of training and education in the hope that his mind would develop along religious lines. If they had harbored any resentment, they had concealed it well, and had encouraged him when he took early to architecture. He would have to go back and visit them when this “jump cure” as old Brisbane called it, was effected. Mark paused in the road and looked out over the prairie, flat and new looking, as though hills had not yet been dreamt of by its Creator. On the north side of the road there was stiff timber, scantily green as yet, springing up from ground that was black and scarred from an old fire. Mark dismounted and stepped in among the charred stumps of the old trees. At the base of one, leaning against it as if for shelter, grew a tiny wood violet, almost colorless. He looked at it but did not pluck it as he was first tempted to do. He laughed at himself for his compassion and walked back to his horse. “We all do that—lean up against burnt stumps—somehow or other,” he mused. And then he wondered, rather relevantly, he thought, “What would have happened to me if mother and father had lived?” As he rode along, a mood of loneliness overtook him—the same cold feeling of belonging nowhere that he had had at night when he was a little boy, after the priest had put the light out and he lay listening to the rain on the glass of the window. He shook himself impatiently. Time he was getting over that morose habit now, nearing thirty. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the sun made only a fillip of gold on the rim of the horizon. A steady blue was creeping over the prairie in place of the magnificent light that had been there the moment before. The churr of the frogs had begun in the ditches along the road, and the small leaves on the willows hung with a faint indolence. Suddenly Mark stopped his horse to listen. He lifted his face up to catch the strange sound that was passing over him, a great summoning trumpet-call, that seemed to hollow out the heavens. “Wild geese,” he said aloud. “They sound as if they know something about it—something about being alone.”  CHAPTER III 1 O a morning ringing with bird-song, Ellen and Martin took the wagon into the “bush” for wood. It was before school time, an hour after sunrise, and the Teacher, who always breakfasted, of course, with the family, rode with them. When the horse came to a stand, Lind asked Ellen and Martin to listen. In the stillness among the dogwood trees the first sunlight lay like a faint yellow dust. Suddenly a cat-bird called. Lind trilled, whistled. The cat-bird returned the salute on the identical note. Lind laughed. There was a birdish laugh from the trees. “We used to do that when we were kids,” said Ellen. “A long time ago ——” “Remember that blue-jay we saw, Ellen? That one that was mad at the cat-birds,” Martin put in. There was something almost eager in his voice. Ellen laughed her half-startled laugh. She did everything suddenly, nervously, after a period of slow considering. Lind followed them into the timber, where Martin fell to with the ax, cleaving with sloping blows into the bole of a dry birch. The swing and shock of the ax broke into the cool morning and woke a chorus of echoes. While Martin chopped, Lind helped Ellen drag the trees, which were small, into a clearing. Then Ellen, with a hatchet, trimmed them down to the trunk. Afterward they piled them into the wagon, and saw that the sun was now free of the bush and that it must be well on toward nine o’clock. Before Ellen returned to the wagon the last time she ran a thorn through her shoe and into her foot. But she said nothing about it. Ellen had come to pride herself on her stoic endurance of physical pain, and no matter how small or great it was, pain was no longer distinguished for her by its degree. Martin was happy this morning. Lind saw that he was, and would have liked to engage him in conversation about himself, but knew his shyness. It always made him happy to feel his strength where results were immediate. He did not know, however, that this was the cause of his mood. He would have whistled, or even stamped with both feet on the floor of the wagon had the Teacher not been there. Caleb Gare was inspecting a number of cattle in the barnyard when Martin and Ellen returned. They had left the Teacher at the school. Caleb called to Martin. “These steers go in to the Siding to-morrow. Take Ellen with you.” Martin wondered to himself what object there was in selling steers just now, but he said nothing. Then he noticed that one of the animals was a favorite of Judith’s, which she had raised and planned to sell in the fall in order to purchase a winter coat. Still he made no comment. It was Judith’s steer.... That day Ellen applied poultices of hot soaked bread to her foot. Amelia was concerned about it, but, as was her way, made no mention of it to Caleb when he came in for the noon meal. Charlie had given Amelia further cause for distress that morning. He had ridden the mare so hard that she had come home in a white froth: and Charlie knew it was forbidden to spend the animal in such a way. The mare was still quivering in the stable when Caleb examined her. It happened that Judith had just returned from the muskeg where, mounted on Prince, she had roped out a calf that had broken from the pasture with a number of cows. Caleb entered the house. Amelia, busily taking biscuits from the oven for dinner, saw his face and knew that something had happened. Ellen’s foot and now trouble over the mare. Amelia pushed her hair back from her hot forehead. “Where is Judith?” Caleb demanded, the points of his eyes fixed. Ellen, who was setting the table, straightened her narrow back and listened. So Judith, thoughtless of Amelia, had done something again. “She’s putting ointment on her hands,” Amelia said. “And well she might! Ointment! T—t—ch! Bring her here!” “What is it, Caleb? What has she done?” “Done! Bring her here, I say!” The veins in his neck swelled to livid welts. Amelia hurried past him to call Jude from the loft, but the girl had heard the conversation where she stood upstairs. She came into the kitchen, her hands hanging before her and covered with yellow salve where the rope with which she had rescued the calf had burned into the flesh. She regarded Caleb coldly. “Well?” she asked. Caleb approached her, his head jutting forward from his shoulders.  “Don’t you ‘well’ me! What have you done with the mare? What have you done with her, I say?” His voice rose from a sort of husky whisper to a thin peal. “I wasn’t riding the mare!” “Then who had her? Who had her but you—tell me that.” “Charlie rode the mare, Caleb! I told him before he took her out to be easy with her,” Amelia put in hurriedly. Caleb threw back his head with a jerk. He laughed. “You did! Well, well!” Laughing softly, he shuffled into the other room and sat down to the table. Presently the others came in and quietly took their places. When Lind entered and threw her wide lacy hat upon the hair sofa, Amelia winced at the incongruity of her presence in the room. The Teacher smiled at them all and sat down in her chair. “It’s the most beautiful day we have had yet this spring,” she remarked. “I have never seen the sky so blue or the trees so green. The rain last night seems to have cleared the whole world. It must have been fine for the crops, Mr Gare?” “Hm—yes, yes indeed. So she threw you, eh, Charlie?” Caleb asked the boy, scarcely glancing at Lind in reply to her question. He winked at Charlie and Charlie grinned broadly. The youngest of the Gares had an habitual snuffle which Amelia had tried in vain to correct. He was an anæmic looking boy, and cared little for anything except that which was forbidden. This trait appealed to Caleb, and he chose to humor it, to the annoyance and indignation of the others, especially Judith. Charlie had always taken advantage of his father’s leniency. “Nix,” said Charlie. “She smelt a bear. The Klovaczs shot at two last night—one got away with a pig.” “Bears, eh? That means trouble,” Caleb observed, to switch the subject. “Have to look out on the way to Nykerk to-morrow, Martin. Keep Ellen under cover. She’s nice and plump. Eh, Ellen?” He leaned over and playfully tweaked Ellen’s arm. She smiled, dutifully. Judith made a grimace which she did not try to hide. To the end of the meal Caleb was genial, jovial, in fact. No further mention was made of the mare. Judith had not ridden her, after all. 2  F the rest of that day, Judith’s hands were of no use to her, so she slipped away with her dog, Pete, through the bush to a little ravine where a pool had gathered below the thread of a spring. Pete caught a scent and was off, and Judith was left alone. It was clingingly warm, as before rain. Not knowing fully what she was doing, Judith took off all her clothing and lay flat on the damp ground with the waxy feeling of new, sunless vegetation under her. She needed to escape, to fly from something—she knew not what. Caleb... Ellen... the farm, the hot reek of manure in the stable when it was close as to-day. Life was smothering, overwhelming her, like a pillow pressed against her face, like a feather tick pinning down her body.