th turned glad eyes in the direction of the sound. The train!

There was the usual bustle. A man brought in a bag of letters, flung
it down, sped out and made a flying leap for the train, which was
beginning to move on. The Post Mistress busied herself with
distributing the mail and Seth walked back and forth, waiting.

Presently he came in at the door, stood at the grated window back of
which she sorted out the letters and then went out again.

After a time he drove slowly by the house in the high blue cart.

"Was there anything for him?" asked the Professor.

The Post Mistress looked after the cart receding into a cloud of dust
blown up by the wind and brushed her fingers across her eyes.

"There was nothing for him," she said.

CHAPTER XIV.

[Illustration]

On the winter following Celia's departure, Seth fared ill.

It was all he could do to keep warmth in the boy's body and his own,
to get food for their nourishment.

And as for homesickness!

There were nights when he looked at the silver moon, half effaced by
wind-blown clouds, and fought back the tears, thinking how that same
moon was shining down on home and her.

Nights when he fell into very pleasant dreams of that tranquil
beauteous and pleasant country where the wind did not blow. Dreams in
which he beheld flowers, not ragged wind-torn flowers of a parched and
ragged prairie, odorless, colorless flowers and tumbleweeds tossing
weirdly over dusty plains, but flowers of his youth, Four o'Clocks,
Marguerites and Daffy-Down-Dillies, nodding bloomily on either side of
an old brick walk leading from door to gate, Jasmine hanging
redolently from lattice, Virginia Creeper and Pumpkin-vine.

And oh!

A radiant dream! Celia, walking out through vine and flower in all her
fresh young beauty to meet him as in the old days, to open wide the
door and welcome him.

Then as she had done, he waked sobbing, man though he was, but he
hushed his sobs for fear of waking the child.

Homesickness!

He dared not dwell on the word lest his few ideas, scattered already
by the sough of the wind, the incessant moan and sob and wail of the
wind, might blow away altogether; lest he throw to those winds his
pride of independence, his resolute determination to make a home for
her and himself and their child in the West, and go back to her.

This, whatever dreams assailed him, he resolved not to do.

And yet there was one dream which he thrust from him fierc