"I don't believe that the administrator had anything to do with it," she said after a time. "I know that man. He would sell his mother out into the streets. Now I wonder who has influenced the bank into giving us this time...."

"Bless me, dear lord. But right now I am too tickled to try to think who. To be saved is enough all at once. Later, I shall try to figure out who has been my benefactor." And with this he left the house and went to walk with his joy in the fields where George was plowing corn, unconscious of the fact that the team he was driving was to have been seized on the morrow and sold for debt.

"Now I wonder who saved papa," Agnes said to herself, taking a seat by the window and gazing abstractedly out into the road. She employed her wits to estimate what had brought it about, and as she sat there, Jean Baptiste came driving down the road. He had not been there since breakfast the morning before. He had taken his morning's meal at the restaurant in the town. As he drove down the slope that began above the house wherein she sat, his dark face was lighted with a peaceful smile. He drove leisurely along, concerned with the bright prospects of his four hundred acres of crop. He was so absorbed in his thoughts that he passed on by without seeing Agnes at the window; without even looking toward the house.

Upon seeing him Agnes had for the moment forgotten what she was thinking about. But when he had passed by, she was suddenly struck with an inspiration. She jumped quickly to her feet: She raised her hands to her breast and held them there as if to still a great excitement, as she cried:

"Jean! Jean, Jean Baptiste! It was you, you, who did it. It was you who saved my father, saved me; saved us all! Oh, my Jean!"

She was overcome then with a great emotion. She sank slowly upon a chair. And as she did so sobs broke from her lips and she wept long and silently.

CHAPTER XVI

Table of Contents

BILL PRESCOTT PROPOSES

SUMMERTIME over the prairie country; summertime when the rainfall has been abundant, is a time of happiness to all settlers in a new land. And such a summer it was in the land of our story. God had been unusually kind to the settlers; he had blessed them with abundant moisture; with sunshine, not too warm and not too cold. The railroad was under course of construction and would be completed far enough west for the settlers from the most remote part—from the farthest corner of the reservation to journey with their grain or hogs, chickens or cattle to it and return to home the same day. And now the fields which had been seeded to winter wheat had turned to gold. Only a few thousand acres had been sowed over the county, and of this amount one hundred thirty acres grew on the homestead of Jean Baptiste. The season for its growth had been ideal, and the prospects for a bumper yield was the best. Ripe now, and ready to cut, the air was filled with its aroma.