k an' visit your folks?" asked Bert, one day.
"I'll take care o' things."

"Wal, the fact is, I've be'n away so long they don't care whether I'm
alive er dead. I ain't got no near relatives except a sister, an' she's
got all the fam'ly she can 'tend to."

"Same here. We ain't very affectionate, anyway; our fam'ly and I don't
write. Still I'd like to go back, just to see how they all are."

"Why not go?"

"Well, I don't know. I guess I must one o' these days. I've kind o'
be'n waitin' till we got into a little better shape. I hate to go back
poor."

"So do I. It's hard work f'r me to give up beat; I ain't goin' to do it
yet awhile."

Sometimes a neighbour dropped in during the middle of the day, and on
pleasant days they would harness up the team and take a drive down to
the store and the post-office; but mainly they vegetated like a couple
of huge potatoes in a cellar, as did most of the settlers. There was
nothing else to do.

It was the worst winter since the first that they had spent in the
country. The snow seemed never still. It slid, streamed, rose in the
air ceaselessly; it covered the hay, drifted up the barn door, swept
the fields bare, and, carrying the dirt of the ploughed fields with it,
built huge black drifts wherever there was a wind-break, corn-field, or
other obstruction.

There were moments when Bert was well-nigh desperate. Only contact with
hard work and cold winds saved him. He was naturally a more ambitious,
more austere man than Anson. He was not content to vegetate, but longed
to escape. He felt that he was wasting his life.

It was in December that the letter first came from Flaxen which
mentioned Will Kendall.

O boys! I had the best time. We had a party at our house and lots
of boys came and girls too, and they were nice, the boys, I mean.
Will Kendall he is the nicest feller you ever seen. He has got
black eyes and brown hair and a gold watch-chain with a locket with
some girl's hair in it, and he said it was his sister's hair, but I
told him I didn't believe it, do you? We had cake and popcorn and
lasses candy; and Will he took me out to supper.

Bert was reading the letter, and at this point he stopped and raised
his eyes, and the two men gazed at each other without a word for a long
time. Then Anson laughed.

"She's gittin' over her homesickness. She's all right now she's got out
to a sociable."

After that there was hardly a letter that did no