“I’d go down every day and kick the post the boat was goin’ to tie up to,” Oscar Lutz was telling Will.

Will laughed. “What for?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Had to take all the delay out on somethin’ or somebody, so I kicked the post instead o’ Henry, here.”

Sarah, the bride, was a pretty girl. Her hair was crow-black, her cheeks pink as prairie roses, her little black beady eyes had merry wrinkles of laughter around them. Life seemed a joke to her. This forenoon she had decorated the wagon with Indian paint brush, which burned like flames of fire against the dingy white of the canvas cover.

Abbie, in her illness from heat and fatigue and pregnancy, could only sit and wonder how young Sarah Lutz could be so happy and active. Nothing seemed to worry or frighten her. Apparently she had not even been disturbed by the story of the graves at Eight-Mile Grove,—the seven graves under the little clump of trees fenced around with slabs which the blacksmith there had told them were brought from the saw-mill at Rock Bluff. They had asked him innocently enough who was buried there. Abbie almost shivered now at the thought of his answer.

“Claim jumpers ’n horse thieves ’n sich,” he had said indifferently. And, shifting his tobacco, had added definitely, “Hung. Vigilance committee.” And more grimly specific, “To that there tree.”

“Hung?” Some one had repeated in the silence that followed.

“Yep. Hang ’em in summer,” he had explained cheerfully, “ ’n’ poke ’em under the ice in winter.”

Abbie shuddered again at the memory of the grim voice.

The journey on from camp was across the vast prairie itself. As the morning passed, the heat rolled over Abbie in waves like the rippling of the grass. She looked out from the canvas to see Will plodding along, his shoulders drooping. He had not called back any gay cheery thing all forenoon. The grass out there,—would it never cease to wave? There were four rhythmic beats like music, but music which irritated rather than soothed one: Blow . . . wave . . . ripple . . . dip. It beat upon her brain, so that she turned wearily away from the sight. And then, as one fascinated by something distasteful, she looked again. Yes, it never ceased from those four beats: Blow, . . . wave, . . . ripple . . . dip, . . . blow . . . wave . . . ripple . . . dip . . .

Little Mack was sleeping, and Abbie dropped over beside him. She closed her eyes and kept her mind on the lane beside Grandpa Deal’s with the honey-locusts and the maples, on the black walnut grove back of his house and the hazel-nut thickets around the schoolhouse. How cool and pleasant the schoolhouse looked with the green shutters against the white siding! How good it would seem to draw water from Grandpa Deal’s well. In fancy she pulled up the bucket with the windlass and put her face into its cold, dark depths.