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Carl stopped the horses and looked dubiously up at the black sky "It's pretty dark Of course the horses will take you hoht your lantern, in case you should need it"

He gave her the reins and clion-box, where he crouched down and made a tent of his overcoat After a dozen trials he succeeded in lighting the lantern, which he placed in front of Alexandra, half covering it with a blanket so that the light would not shine in her eyes "Noait until I find ht, Alexandra Try not to worry" Carl sprang to the ground and ran off across the fields toward the Linstrum homestead "Hoo, hoo-o-o-o!" he called back as he disappeared over a ridge and dropped into a sand gully The wind answered him like an echo, "Hoo, hoo-o-o-o-o-o!" Alexandra drove off alone The rattle of her wagon was lost in the howling of the wind, but her lantern, held fir the highway, going deeper and deeper into the dark country

II

On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in which John Bergson was dying The Bergson homestead was easier to find than many another, because it overlooked Norway Creek, a shallow, muddy stream that sometimes flowed, and so ravine with steep, shelving sides overgroith brush and cottonwoods and dwarf ash This creek gave a sort of identity to the fars about a new country, the absence of hu The houses on the Divide were small and were usually tucked away in low places; you did not see them until you came directly upon them Most of them were built of the sod itself, and were only the unescapable ground in another forrass, and the fields were scarcely noticeable The record of the ploas insignificant, like the feeble scratches on stone left by prehistoric races, so indeterlaciers, and not a record of huson had made but little impression upon the wild land he had coly moods; and no one knehen they were likely to co over it Its Genius was unfriendly toout of the , after the doctor had left hi Alexandra's trip to town There it lay outside his door, the sae and draw and gully between him and the horizon To the south, his plowed fields; to the east, the sod stables, the cattle corral, the pond,--and then the grass