“Can you, . . .” she asked, when he had finished, “can you play a song called ‘The Lady of the Lea’ . . .?”

For answer, he drew the bow again and the melody came lightly, delicately, hauntingly. Abbie had not sung it for four or five years, but now she threw back her head and took the air to the violin’s accompaniment.

“Oh, the Lady of the Lea,

Fair and young and gay was she,

Beautiful exceedingly,

The Lady of the Lea.”

In the sod house with its cook-stove and the turned-over boiler and the burning twisted hay, with its crude what-not and its sod bed, its store-box book-shelves and its burlap floor covering, she put into her voice all the longing of her heart, all the vague hopes for the best that life could give her children.

“For she had gold and she had land,

Everything at her command,

The Lady of the Lea.”

It was as though, through sheer force of will, she was trying to make all the desires for her children’s future come true,—all her dreams for them turn to realities.

“Dreaming visions longingly,

The Lady of the Lea.”

“You have a good voice,” the stranger said soberly. “You ought to do something with it.”

“There are lots of things one ought to do,” Abbie replied,—and looked over at Will to see whether he had detected the bitterness which she had not been able to keep out of her reply.

The man put his violin carefully, tenderly, into the case. “It’s a Stradivarius,” he said. “A man in Omaha offered me six hundred dollars for it.”

Will looked up in surprise. “Offered you six hundred dollars . . . for a fiddle?” It seemed a fortune. “And you mean you wouldn’t sell it?”

“No,” said the man simply. “I couldn’t. Thank you very much for the supper.” And he went, a little unsteadily, out of the door.

Abbie walked over to the small-paned half-window set in the sod, and looked out at the gray twilight coming across the prairie. The winds that were never still blew past the house in their unending flight.

How queer people were. All the folks in the new country were hoarding things, hanging on to old heirlooms. They became their symbols of refinement and culture. Sarah Lutz had a painting that drew your eyes to it the minute you opened the door. Oscar Lutz’s wife had a pink quilted bedspread that she kept rolled up in newspapers. Even Christine Reinmueller had a bright blue vase with magenta-colored roses on it, standing up on top of the cupboard. They stood for something besides the land and the corn and the cattle. They must hang onto them, never lose them out of their lives, for if lost, everything was lost. She must hang onto the pearls and everything they stood for; Sarah must keep her painting; Martha Lutz, her bedspread; Christine, her blue vase. Else what was there in the future for the children?