opper toes and store-made laces. But when she had reached the
wheat, the booming, like a will-o'-the-wisp, had been temptingly farther
on; and she had turned back to the newly marked corn-land.

Her big brothers had sent her out to drop and cover eighty rows, the
last corn-planting to be done that year on the big Dakota farm. They had
finished the rest of the field themselves and, intent on getting in the
rutabaga crop, had turned over the remaining strip to the little girl,
declaring that she could drop and cover forty rows in the morning and
forty in the afternoon, and not half try. To make sure that she would
have time to finish the work, they had started her off immediately after
a five-o'clock breakfast; and in order that she should not lose any time
at noon, they had made her take her dinner with her in a tall tin pail.

Her first glimpse of the unplanted piece had greatly discouraged her,
for it seemed dreadfully wide and long. So, after deciding to plant the
whole of it before doing any covering with the hoe, because the dropping
of the corn was much easier and quicker to do than the hoeing, she went
to work half-heartedly. Now, to make her task seem short, she had
further determined to play "city."

It was such fun to pretend that, as she went bobbing and bowing up and
down the rows, she forgot to stop her game and throw clods at the gray
gophers. They lived in the timothy meadow, and were so bold that, if
they were not watched, they would come out of their burrows and follow
the rows, stealing every kernel out of the hills as they went along and
putting the booty in their cheek-pouches.

After she had dropped corn as much as a whole hour, the little girl's
back ached, and when she went to refill her seed-bag at the corn-barrel
that stood on the border of the meadow near the row-marker, she sat down
to rest a moment. The marker resembled a sleigh, only it had five
runners instead of two, and there were rocks piled on top of it to make
it heavy. So the minute the little girl's eyes fell upon it and she saw
the runners, she thought of winter. Winter instantly reminded her of the
muskrats in the slough below the bluff. And with that thought she could
not resist starting down to see if they were busy after the thaw.

She gathered many flowers on the way, and stopped to pull off her shoes
and stockings. At last she reached the slough and waded in to a muskrat
house, where she used her hoe-handle as a poker to sca