“Well, I wish we had it here with us, Belle. We could have it all wrapped up in quilts in the wagon . . . and then some day out in Blackhawk County when we get rich, we could build us a grand house with a wide curving stairway and hang the picture on the landing . . . and everybody that come . . .”

“Abbie! Belle!” A voice came suddenly from the other wagon. “Sure’n you’re the talkers. Settle yoursel’s now. We want to get a good early start by sunup.”

Abbie started. From a dreamy journey into the fields of romance she had been drawn back to the prosaic world of reality by her mother’s voice. She could not quite reconcile good fat Mother with the romantic figure of the pretty girl at the well, picking a rose for an aristocratic gentleman. But then, Mother was almost an old woman, now,—thirty-seven.

Abbie turned to the opening in the canvas cover and looked out again at the night. Yellow-white, the moon rose higher over the dark clumps of trees. A thousand stars, looking down, paled at its rising. An owl gave its mournful call. The smell of burning maple boughs came from the fire. A wolf howled in the distance so that James got up and took out the other gun from the wagon. There was a constant tick-tacking in the timber,—all the little night creatures at their work. It was queer how it all hurt you,—how the odor of the night, the silver sheen of the moon, the moist feeling of the dew, the whispering of the night breeze, how, somewhere down in your throat it hurt you. It was sad, too, that this evening would never come again. The night winds were blowing it away. You could not stop the winds and you could not stop Time. It went on and on,—and on. To-morrow night would come and the moon would look down on this same spot,—the trees and the grass, the wagon-tracks and the dead campfire. But she would not be here. Her heart swelled with an emotion which she could not name. Tears came to her eyes. The telling of the story always brought that same feeling.

“Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie,” she said it over until it took upon itself the cadence of a melody, the rhythm of a poem. “I shall be like her,” she thought. “I have hair like her now and hands like her. I shall be lovely. And I shall do wonderful things . . . sing before big audiences and paint pictures inside of gold frames and write things in a book.” She wondered how you got things put in a book. There were some books in one of the wooden chests over in the other wagon. A man with a long name that began S-h-a-k-e-s . . . had made some of them. They had been Father’s. Mother didn’t read them. She didn’t read anything but her Bible. Even that was hard for her, so that she read the same verses over and over. Yes, she would be like Father and Isabelle Anders-Mackenzie, not like Mother’s family with their cottage on the side of the hill and their dark shawls over their heads. She would be rich and lovely . . . with a velvet dress and a long sweeping plume . . . under the moon . . . and the night wind, . . . that felt of your body with its long . . . slender fingers . . . that tapered at the ends . . .