t about a head-stone, he paused in his lively air,--the
"Jewel" song,--taking it up where he had left it when his scythe
swung free again. He was not thinking about the tired pioneers
over whom his blade glittered. The old wild country, the struggle
in which his sister was destined to succeed while so many men broke
their hearts and died, he can scarcely remember. That is all among
the dim things of childhood and has been forgotten in the brighter
pattern life weaves to-day, in the bright facts of being captain
of the track team, and holding the interstate record for the high
jump, in the all-suffusing brightness of being twenty-one. Yet
sometimes, in the pauses of his work, the young man frowned and
looked at the ground with an intentness which suggested that even
twenty-one might have its problems.

When he had been mowing the better part of an hour, he heard the
rattle of a light cart on the road behind him. Supposing that it
was his sister coming back from one of her farms, he kept on with
his work. The cart stopped at the gate and a merry contralto voice
called, "Almost through, Emil?" He dropped his scythe and went
toward the fence, wiping his face and neck with his handkerchief.
In the cart sat a young woman who wore driving gauntlets and a wide
shade hat, trimmed with red poppies. Her face, too, was rather
like a poppy, round and brown, with rich color in her cheeks and
lips, and her dancing yellow-brown eyes bubbled with gayety. The
wind was flapping her big hat and teasing a curl of her chestnut-colored
hair. She shook her head at the tall youth.

"What time did you get over here? That's not much of a job for
an athlete. Here I've been to town and back. Alexandra lets you
sleep late. Oh, I know! Lou's wife was telling me about the way
she spoils you. I was going to give you a lift, if you were done."
She gathered up her reins.

"But I will be, in a minute. Please wait for me, Marie," Emil
coaxed. "Alexandra sent me to mow our lot, but I've done half a
dozen others, you see. Just wait till I finish off the Kourdnas'.
By the way, they were Bohemians. Why aren't they up in the Catholic
graveyard?"

"Free-thinkers," replied the young woman laconically.

"Lots of the Bohemian boys at the University are," said Emil, taking
up his scythe again. "What did you ever burn John Huss for, anyway?
It's made an awful row. They still jaw about it in history classes."

"We'd do it right over again, most of us," said th