the hill and across the sand creek into the dusty highroad beyond.
Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at
his pipe. There was no moon, and the white road and the wide
fields lay faint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness
and thick silence, and the smell of dust and sunflowers. The
brothers followed the road for a mile or more without finding a
place to sit down. Finally, Nils perched on a stile over the wire
fence, and Eric sat on the lower step.
"I began to think you never would come back, Nils," said the
boy softly.
"Didn't I promise you I would?"
"Yes; but people don't bother about promises they make to
babies. Did you really know you were going away for good
when you went to Chicago with the cattle that time?"
"I thought it very likely, if I could make my way."
"I don't see how you did it, Nils. Not many fellows could."
Eric rubbed his shoulder against his brother's knee.
"The hard thing was leaving home you and father. It was easy
enough, once I got beyond Chicago. Of course I got awful homesick;
used to cry myself to sleep. But I'd burned my bridges."
"You had always wanted to go, hadn't you?"
"Always. Do you still sleep in our little room? Is that
cottonwood still by the window?"
Eric nodded eagerly and smiled up at his brother in the grey
darkness.
"You remember how we always said the leaves were whispering
when they rustled at night? Well, they always whispered to me
about the sea. Sometimes they said names out of the geography
books. In a high wind they had a desperate sound, like someone
trying to tear loose."
"How funny, Nils," said Eric dreamily, resting his chin on his
hand. "That tree still talks like that, and 'most always it talks
to me about you."
They sat a while longer, watching the stars. At last Eric
whispered anxiously: "Hadn't we better go back now? Mother will
get tired waiting for us." They rose and took a short cut home,
through the pasture.
II
The next morning Nils woke with the first flood of light that
came with dawn. The white-plastered walls of his room reflected
the glare that shone through the thin window shades, and he found
it impossible to sleep. He dressed hurriedly and slipped down the
hall and up the back stairs to the half-story room which be used to
share with his little brother. Eric, in a skimpy nightshirt, was
sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing his eyes, his pale yellow
hair standing up in tufts all over his head. When he saw Nils, he
murmured something confusedly and hustled his long legs into
his trousers. "I didn't expect you'd be up so early, Nils," he
said, as his head emerged from his blue shirt.
"Oh, you thought I was a dude, did you?" Nils gave him a
playful tap which bent the tall boy up like a clasp knife. "See
here: I must teach you to box." Nils thrust his hands into his
pockets and walked about. "You haven't changed things much up
here. Got most of my old traps, haven't you?"
He took down a bent, withered piece of sapling that hung over
the dresser. "If this isn't the stick Lou Sandberg killed himself
with!"
The boy looked up from his shoe-lacing.
"Yes; you never used to let me play with that. Just how did
he do it, Nils? You were with father when he found Lou, weren't
you?"
"Yes. Father was going off to preach somewhere, and, as we
drove along, Lou's place looked sort of forlorn, and we thought
we'd stop and cheer him up. When we found him father said he'd
been dead a couple days. He'd tied a piece of binding twine round
his neck, made a noose in each end, fixed the nooses over the ends
of a bent stick, and let the stick spring straight; strangled
himself."
"What made him kill himself such a silly way?"
The simplicity of the boy's question set Nils laughing. He
clapped little Eric on the shoulder. "What made him such a silly
as to kill himself at all, I should say!"
"Oh, well! But his hogs had the cholera, and all up and died
on him, didn't they?"
"Sure they did; but he didn't have cholera; and there were
plenty of bogs left in the world, weren't there?"
"Well, but, if they weren't his, how could they do him any
good?" Eric asked, in astonishment.
"Oh, scat! He could have had lots of fun with other people's
hogs. He was a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill yourself for a pig--
think of that, now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and
quite embarrassed little Eric, who fell to scrubbing his face and
hands at the tin basin. While he was parting his wet hair at the
kitchen looking glass, a heavy tread sounded on the stairs. The
boy dropped his comb. "Gracious, there's Mother. We must have
talked too long." He hurried out to the shed, slipped on his
overalls, and disappeared with the milking pails.
Mrs. Ericson came in, wearing a clean white apron, her black
hair shining from the application of a wet brush.
"Good morning, Mother. Can't I make the fire for you?"
"No, thank you, Nils. It's no trouble to make a cob fire, and
I like to manage the kitchen stove myself" Mrs. Ericson paused with
a shovel full of ashes in her hand. "I expect you will be wanting
to see your brothers as soon as possible. I'll take you up to
Anders' place this morning. He's threshing, and most of our boys
are over there."
"Will Olaf be there?"
Mrs. Ericson went on taking out the ashes, and spoke between
shovels. "No; Olaf's wheat is all in, put away in his new barn.
He got six thousand bushel this year. He's going to town today to
get men to finish roofing his barn."
"So Olaf is building a new barn?" Nils asked absently.
"Biggest one in the county, and almost done. You'll likely be
here for the barn-raising. He's going to have a supper and a dance
as soon as everybody's done threshing. Says it keeps the voters in
good humour. I tell him that's all nonsense; but Olaf has a head
for politics."
"Does Olaf farm all Cousin Henrik's land?"
Mrs. Ericson frowned as she blew into the faint smoke curling up
about the cobs. "Yes; he holds it in trust for the children, Hilda
and her brothers. He keeps strict account of everything he raises
on it, and puts the proceeds out at compound interest for them."
Nils smiled as he watched the little flames shoot up. The
door of the back stairs opened, and Hilda emerged, her arms behind
her, buttoning up her long gingham apron as she came. He nodded to
her gaily, and she twinkled at him out of her little blue eyes, set
far apart over her wide cheekbones.
"There, Hilda, you grind the coffee--and just put in an extra
handful; I expect your Cousin Nils likes his strong," said Mrs.
Ericson, as she went out to the shed.
Nils turned to look at the little girl, who gripped the coffee
grinder between
her knees and ground so hard that her two braids
bobbed and her face flushed under its broad spattering of
freckles. He noticed on her middle finger something that had not
been there last night, and that had evidently been put on for
company: a tiny gold ring with a clumsily set garnet stone. As her
hand went round and round he touched the ring with the tip of his
finger, smiling.
Hilda glanced toward the shed door through which Mrs. Ericson
had disappeared. "My Cousin Clara gave me that," she whispered
bashfully. "She's Cousin Olaf's wife."
III
Mrs. Olaf Ericson--Clara Vavrika, as many people still called
her--was moving restlessly about her big bare house that morning.
Her husband had left for the county town before his wife was out of
bed--her lateness in rising was one of the many things the Ericson
family had against her. Clara seldom came downstairs before eight
o'clock, and this morning she was even later, for she had dressed
with unusual care. She put on, however, only a tightfitting black
dress, which people thereabouts thought very plain. She was a
tall, dark woman of thirty, with a rather sallow complexion and a
touch of dull salmon red in her cheeks, where the blood seemed to
burn under her brown skin. Her hair, parted evenly above her low
forehead, was so black that there were distinctly blue lights in
it. Her black eyebrows were delicate half-moons and her lashes
were long and heavy. Her eyes slanted a little, as if she had a
strain of Tartar or gypsy blood, and were sometimes full of fiery
determination and sometimes dull and opaque. Her expression was
never altogether amiable; was often, indeed, distinctly sullen, or,
when she was animated, sarcastic. She was most attractive in
profile, for then one saw to advantage her small, well-shaped head
and delicate ears, and felt at once that here was a very positive,
if not an altogether pleasing, personality.
The entire management of Mrs. Olaf's household devolved upon
her aunt, Johanna Vavrika, a superstitious, doting woman of fifty.
When Clara was a little girl her mother died, and Johanna's life
had been spent in ungrudging service to her niece. Clara,
like many self-willed and discontented persons, was really very
apt, without knowing it, to do as other people told her, and to let
her destiny be decided for her by intelligences much below her own.
It was her Aunt Johanna who had humoured and spoiled her in her
girlhood, who had got her off to Chicago to study piano, and who
had finally persuaded her to marry Olaf Ericson as the best match
she would be likely to make in that part of the country. Johanna
Vavrika had been deeply scarred by smallpox in the old country.
She was short and fat, homely and jolly and sentimental. She was
so broad, and took such short steps when she walked, that her
brother, Joe Vavrika, always called her his duck. She adored her
niece because of her talent, because of her good looks and
masterful ways, but most of all because of her selfishness.
Clara's marriage with Olaf Ericson was Johanna's particular
triumph. She was inordinately proud of Olaf's position, and she
found a sufficiently exciting career in managing Clara's house, in
keeping it above the criticism of the Ericsons, in pampering Olaf
to keep him from finding fault with his wife, and in concealing
from every one Clara's domestic infelicities. While Clara slept of
a morning, Johanna Vavrika was bustling about, seeing that Olaf and
the men had their breakfast, and that the cleaning or the butter-
making or the washing was properly begun by the two girls in the
kitchen. Then, at about eight o'clock, she would take Clara's
coffee up to her, and chat with her while she drank it, telling her
what was going on in the house. Old Mrs. Ericson frequently said
that her daughter-in-law would not know what day of the week it was
if Johanna did not tell her every morning. Mrs. Ericson despised
and pitied Johanna, but did not wholly dislike her. The one thing
she hated in her daughter-in-law above everything else was the way
in which Clara could come it over people. It enraged her that the
affairs of her son's big, barnlike house went on as well as they
did, and she used to feel that in this world we have to wait
overlong to see the guilty punished. "Suppose Johanna Vavrika died
or got sick?" the old lady used to say to Olaf. "Your wife
wouldn't know where to look for her own dish-cloth." Olaf
only shrugged his shoulders. The fact remained that Johanna did
not die, and, although Mrs. Ericson often told her she was
looking poorly, she was never ill. She seldom left the house,
and she slept in a little room off the kitchen. No Ericson, by
night or day, could come prying about there to find fault without
her knowing it. Her one weakness was that she was an incurable
talker, and she sometimes made trouble without meaning to.
This morning Clara was tying a wine-coloured ribbon about
her throat when Johanna appeared with her coffee. After putting
the tray on a sewing table, she began to make Clara's bed,
chattering the while in Bohemian.
"Well, Olaf got off early, and the girls are baking. I'm
going down presently to make some poppy-seed bread for Olaf. He
asked for prune preserves at breakfast, and I told him I was out
of them, and to bring some prunes and honey and cloves from
town."
Clara poured her coffee. "Ugh! I don't see how men can eat
so much sweet stuff. In the morning, too!"
Her aunt chuckled knowingly. "Bait a bear with honey, as we
say in the old country."
"Was he cross?" her niece asked indifferently.
"Olaf? Oh, no! He was in fine spirits. He's never cross if
you know how to take him. I never knew a man to make so little
fuss about bills. I gave him a list of things to get a yard
long, and he didn't say a word; just folded it up and put it in
his pocket."
"I can well believe he didn't say a word," Clara remarked
with a shrug. "Some day he'll forget how to talk."
"Oh, but they say he's a grand speaker in the Legislature.
He knows when to keep quiet. That's why he's got such influence
in politics. The people have confidence in him." Johanna beat up
a pillow and held it under her fat chin while she slipped on the
case. Her niece laughed.
"Maybe we could make people believe we were wise, Aunty, if
we held our tongues. Why did you tell Mrs. Ericson that Norman
threw me again last Saturday and turned my foot? She's been
talking to Olaf."
Johanna fell into great confusion. "Oh, but, my precious,
the old lady asked for you, and she's always so angry if I can't
give an excuse. Anyhow, she needn't talk; she's always tearing
up something with that motor of hers."
When her aunt clattered down to the kitchen, Clara went to
dust the parlour. Since there was not much there to dust, this did
not
take very long. Olaf had built the house new for her before
their marriage, but her interest in furnishing it had been short-
lived. It went, indeed, little beyond a bathtub and her piano.
They had disagreed about almost even, other article of furniture,
and Clara had said she would rather have her house empty than full
of things she didn't want. The house was set in a hillside, and
the west windows of the parlour looked out above the kitchen yard
thirty feet below. The east windows opened directly into the front
yard. At one of the latter, Clara, while she was dusting, heard a
low whistle. She did not turn at once, but listened intently as
she drew her cloth slowly along the round of a chair. Yes, there
it was:
I dreamt that I dwelt in ma-a-arble halls.
She turned and saw Nils Ericson laughing in the sunlight, his
hat in his hand, just outside the window. As she crossed the room
he leaned against the wire screen. "Aren't you at all surprised to
see me, Clara Vavrika?"
"No; I was expecting to see you. Mother Ericson telephoned
Olaf last night that you were here."
Nils squinted and gave a long whistle. "Telephoned? That must
have been while Eric and I were out walking. Isn't she
enterprising? Lift this screen, won't you?"
Clara lifted the screen, and Nils swung his leg across the
window-sill. As he stepped into the room she said: "You didn't
think you were going to get ahead of your mother, did you?"
He threw his hat on the piano. "Oh, I do sometimes. You see,
I'm ahead of her now. I'm supposed to be in Anders' wheat-field.
But, as we were leaving, Mother ran her car into a soft place
beside the road and sank up to the hubs. While they were going for
the horses to pull her out, I cut away behind the stacks and
escaped." Nils chuckled. Clara's dull eyes lit up as she looked
at him admiringly.
"You've got them guessing already. 1 don't know what your
mother said to Olaf over the telephone, but be came back looking as
if he'd seen a ghost, and he didn't go to bed until a dreadful
hour--ten o'clock, I should think. He sat out on the porch in the
dark like a graven image. It had been one of his talkative days,
too." They both laughed, easily and lightly, like people who have
laughed a great deal together; but they remained standing.
"Anders and Otto and Peter looked as if they had seen ghosts,
too, over in the threshing field. What's the matter with them
all?"
Clara gave him a quick, searching look. "Well, for one thing,
they've always been afraid you have the other will."
Nils looked interested. "The other will?"
"Yes. A later one. They knew your father made another, but
they never knew what he did with it. They almost tore the old
house to pieces looking for it. They always suspected that he
carried on a clandestine correspondence with you, for the one thing
he would do was to get his own mail himself. So they thought he
might have sent the new will to you for safekeeping. The old one,
leaving everything to your mother, was made long before you went
away, and it's understood among them that it cuts you out--that she
will leave all the property to the others. Your father made the
second will to prevent that. I've been hoping you had it. It
would be such fun to spring it on them." Clara laughed mirthfully,
a thing she did not often do now.
Nils shook his head reprovingly. "Come, now, you're malicious."
"No, I'm not. But I'd like something to happen to stir them
all up, just for once. There never was such a family for having
nothing ever happen to them but dinner and threshing. I'd almost
be willing to die, just to have a funeral. You wouldn't
stand it for three weeks."
Nils bent over the piano and began pecking at the keys with
the finger of one hand. "I wouldn't? My dear young lady, how do