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Title:      Settlers of the Marsh (1925)
Author:     Frederick Philip Grove  (1879-1948)
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eBook No.:  0200861.txt
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Language:   English
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Date first posted:          November 2002
Date most recently updated: November 2002

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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      Settlers of the Marsh
Author:     Frederick Philip Grove (1879-1948)





CONTENTS


One.  Mrs. Lund

Two.  Niels

Three.  Ellen

Four.  Mrs. Lindstedt

Five.  Bobby

Six.  Ellen Again



CHAPTER ONE

Mrs. Lund


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

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

It was the beginning of the month of November.

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

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

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

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

They swung on, for the most part in silence.

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

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

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

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

"Remember the last house?" he asked.

"Yes," said Niels, speaking Swedish.

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

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

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

Niels pointed.

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

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

"Cold?" asked Nelson.

"Not very," Niels answered deprecatingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

They stopped.

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

The stick cracked against something hard.

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

Niels kept close.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Impetuously Nelson pushed it open altogether.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"All right," Niels agreed.

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

Then Nelson exclaimed, "Now I know."

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

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

They went on for a long, long while.

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mrs. Amundsen still poorly?" Nelson asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They went out.

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

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

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

"And he lets the girl handle them!"

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

"Does she work on the farm?"

"Like a man," Nelson said.

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

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

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

The girl drove away; Amundsen returned to the stable.

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

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

Niels watched him covertly till he drove away.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Niels felt ashamed of his behaviour in the morning.

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

"Done any breaking yet?" Amundsen asked.

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

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

"At Hahn's."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Too bad," Nelson repeated.

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

"But why not send for a doctor?"

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then Mrs. Lund ran across him.

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

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

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

"Buy?"  His tone was vacant surprise.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," Mrs. Lund replied.

"Going straight home?"

"ImmeDATEly."

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

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

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

"Come on," Nelson said to Niels.

And both got their sheep-skins and caps.

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

That was Lund's place.

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

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

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

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

"All those children yours?" he asked.

Mrs. Lund laughed a broad, hearty laugh.

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

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

"You've callers," Nelson said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nelson joined the group.

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

"Put the horses in," he replied.

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

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

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

Bobby had run off to join the children.

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

And she led the way into the house.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He looked about, appraisingly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hand-shaking.  Leave-taking . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The girl acquiesced with a smile.

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

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

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

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

"Go and help Bobby," she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It is a beautiful country," he ventured.

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

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

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

Niels did not reply.

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

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

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

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

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

Again Niels looked out.

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

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

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

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

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

"That right?" Nelson asked without interest.

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

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

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

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

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

For a while the meal proceeded in silence.

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

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

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

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

"No, I haven't."

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

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

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

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

"Yes, scrubbing floors," Lund mumbled spitefully.

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

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

They got their wraps and took leave.

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



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

"Strange people," Niels said at last.

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

"Is he really blind?"

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

"Where does he get it?" Niels exclaimed.

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

"How long has he been on the place?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

"Lies?"

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

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

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



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

The decision came on Saturday.

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

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

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

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

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

"I did," Nelson said.

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

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



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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Niels, too, looked up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bobby had all the more to say.

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

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

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

"Like a spring," Nelson said.

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What did that cost you?" Niels asked.

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

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

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



Thus started Niels' first winter in the northern forest.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In the box of her sleigh there were two tanks.

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

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

In a second Niels was by her side.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

Many things happened.  Mrs. Amundsen died.



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I did not know any English."

"Where did you learn?"

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

"From a lady?"

"No, a man."

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

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

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

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

But she had chosen her place well.

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

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

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

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

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

"No," he said brusquely.

"Ask then!"  Look and laugh challenged him.

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

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

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

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

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

                        *     *     *

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

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

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

But the little girl ran away, screaming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Fence," Niels replied.

"Going to buy horses in the fall?"

"I think so."

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

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

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

"Can you hold it for me?"

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And everybody rushed to the door.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



What did it all mean?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He groaned.

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

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

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



CHAPTER TWO

Niels


Fall came.  Niels "worked out."

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amundsen came somewhat closer before he replied.

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

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

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

"Yes," Niels said.  "I'd better be moving."

That was the last Niels ever saw of the man.



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I didn't, mamma," he replied.

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

"You old thunderbuss!" she screamed.  "Don't lie!"

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

Mrs. Lund stopped and laughed.  "Don't act silly!  You can't bully
me!"

But he advanced, raising the fork.

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

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

"Bob-beee!"  Mrs. Lund's voice shrilled out, betraying undisguised
alarm.

The boy came running from behind the stable.

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

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

                        *     *     *

Niels shivered though he did not feel cold.

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

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

In a way Niels agreed with that verdict.

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

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

How chance played into life!

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

"Well, I declare!" Olga greeted him.  "If it isn't Mr. Lindstedt!
Come in."

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

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

Under his look she blushed.

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

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

"Thanks," Niels replied.  "I'm not cold.  I think I'll walk out to
Nelson.  Everything all right?"

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

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

"All right," Olga said.



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

"Well, yes," Niels said.

"It's waiting for you.  You're in no hurry, I hope?  Stay
overnight?"

"If it isn't too much trouble?"

"Well, I guess the wife'll fix you up.  Seen her?"

"I went to the house," Niels replied, somehow embarrassed by
Nelson's way of referring to Olga.

"Find things much changed?"

"Yes.  As I expected."

"Dropped in at the old folks'?"

"No.  Fact is, things don't seem to run smoothly there."

Nelson laughed.  "Guess not.  They miss their slavey.  We haven't
seen them for several months."

"That so?"

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

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

Then they drove back to the yard.  Nelson talked.

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

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



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

Olga reddened; but she seemed pleased.

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



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

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

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

"Clearing new land?"

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

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

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

"No.  What?"

"Amundsen's dead."

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

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

Niels was white.

Nelson said thoughtfully.  "There'll be a pretty good farm for
sale . . ."

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

"Well, come in," Nelson said.  "Breakfast's ready."

And they all went into the house.

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

And Hahn repeated as much as he knew.

"Poor Ellen!" Olga cried.  "She mustn't be left alone.  Couldn't we
go down, Lars?"

Nelson frowned.  "What could we do?"

And Olga subsided at once.

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

Niels rose.  "I'll hitch up," he said.



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

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

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

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

That was the circle of his thought . . .



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I saw you going," she replied, calm and indifferent.

"I wish . . ." he began and hesitated.

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

"I'll be back in the morning . . ."

"Don't bother.  They'll be sitting up with the body.  I'll go to
Lund's."

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

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

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

                        *     *     *

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



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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"For the house," Niels said briefly.

The old man whistled.  "How big?"

"What?"

"The house."

"Four rooms and kitchen."

"Big rooms."

"Fifteen by eighteen," Niels said.

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

"No," Niels said; "don't think so."

                        *     *     *

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

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

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

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

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

One night Sigurdsen came over, driving.

"You done anything about hay?" he asked.

"No."

"Hm . . . tya," the old man ruminated.  "Go together?"

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

"The girl."

"She staying on the farm?"

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

"All right," said Niels.  "You see about the hay."

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

"You come along," he said at last.  "Go now."

"I don't mind," Niels replied casually; but his heart was pounding.

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



It was just before dark when they crossed the bridge.

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

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

"That Bobby?" Niels asked.

"Hi . . . tya!'" the old man laughed.  "Naw.  The girl.  Wear
overalls for work."

Niels coloured; his heart beat faster again . . .

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

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

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

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

"That you, Mr. Sigurdsen?"

"Yea."

"Go into the kitchen.  I'll be out in a minute."

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

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

The old man had matches in his pocket . . .

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

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

Niels fastened his eyes upon her.

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

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

Niels felt that his own head glowed.

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

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

She avoided his name.

"We come about hay," Sigurdsen said.

"Yes?"

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

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

"How much?"

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

"But the stamps?"

The girl laughed lightly.  "Oh, never mind . . ."

"We go together," Sigurdsen explained.  "Lindstedt and I."

"Oh?"--with a questioning inflection.  "All right.  Drop in when
you want to start.  I'll have the permits ready."

"Hm . . ." the old man mused.  "Got your seed in?"

"Yes," the girl answered.  "I have it all done."

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

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

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

"All right."

And a moment later they were outside in the dark.

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

She came and stepped to the side of the wagon.

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

"Tya . . ." Sigurdsen said.  "You mighty good to me . . ."

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

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

The last mile Niels walked.



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

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

Niels drifted about, anxious to make his escape.

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

"Got any hay this year?" he asked.

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

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

"Oh, mamma," her husband broke in, "how you talk!"

"Well," she flashed back.  "It's true, ain't it?"

"We'll get a loan . . ."

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

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

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

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

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

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

                        *     *     *

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

Three days after, it was Sunday, the eighteenth.

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

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

Niels waited for him.

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

"Certainly," Niels replied, not a little astonished at the man's
air of mystery and abject apology.

He helped him on to the seat and drove