After some correspondence with an old army friend, Will bought his land, “sight unseen.” He was pleased with his purchase. It was railroad land and he paid two dollars an acre for it. Some people from Michigan by the name of Lutz were getting two quarter-sections near him.

“It’s only thirty-five miles from Nebraska City and about ten miles from Weeping Water. The county seat, Plattsmouth, has a hotel and some houses and a grist mill . . . It only takes a couple of hours to grind a sack of corn.”

“Yes, providing you’ve got the corn.” Abbie could not yet enter heartily into the plans.

“Oh, we’ll have the corn all right. They say the soil is the finest and blackest you ever saw.”

And then, before they were ready, Abbie knew that she was to be a mother again.

On a morning in July they started. Red and Baldy, in front of Grandpa Deal’s, stood hitched to the prairie-schooner in their stupid, stolid way. All the possessions were in the wagon, covered now with its new white canvas. Every one was there to see them off. Mother Mackenzie, with her pudding-bag-shaped body and her blue-black Irish eyes and her white cap, brought the calf-skin-covered box and the Seth Thomas clock with the little brown church painted on the glass.

“You take the chest, Abbie . . . I want ye to have it. You can keep the pearls in it. And the clock, too, . . . it seems like it’s yours. I mind how ye was al’a’s sayin’ no one could stop Time.”

The Reverend and Mrs. Whitman came. Mrs. Whitman had a box of paints and some canvas for Abbie. “Keep on with your little painting talent, Abbie,” she told her.

“Yes,” the Reverend Whitman said, a little pompously, “and with your music. We can do with our lives whatever we will, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” agreed Abbie.

Grandma Deal, in her black cap, was sputtering because she had not had time to put her bread in loaves. Why didn’t they tie the chicken-coop on better? Why hadn’t they started the day before? The weather looked as though it might storm. What did they bother with a dog for? There, a bird flew in front of the oxen,—that was a bad sign.

Doctor Matthews stopped in his new top-buggy.

Grandpa Deal’s ice-blue eyes were clouded with sadness. “Good luck to you, my boy. And Abbie, a real daughter couldn’t have been kinder.”

Abbie’s heart was in her throat. Oh, stop the wind rushing by. Stop Time for a few minutes, until she could think whether this move was the thing to do. Life was not right. It was not meant that you should leave your own this way. It was not meant that weeks and weeks of travel should separate you from your folks. The baby, little Mack, would forget Mother Mackenzie and kind old Grandpa Deal. And the next baby would never know them.