you have to
do is to cook and----"

"Oh! go along, Abel, and get me that calico. Don't set there till you
take root. I ain't a-complainin', an' I 'low I'm as much looked up to
here in Chicago without my bedstead as I was in the woods with it."

"Looked up to? I should say so. There ain't a woman in the settlement
holds her head as top-lofty as you do. And with good reason, I 'low. I
don't praise you often, ma, but when I do, I mean it. If you hadn't
been smarter 'n the average, and had more gumption to boot, you'd
never been asked in to help them army women cook Kitty's weddin'
supper. By the way, where are the youngsters now? I hain't seen 'em
to-day."

"Off over the prairie on their horses, just as they used to be when
they were little tackers. I never saw bridal folks like them; from the
very first not hangin' round by themselves, but mixing with everybody,
same's usual, and beginning right away to do all the good they can
with Gaspar's money. Off now to see some folks burned their own barn
up----"

"W-H-A-T?" demanded Abel, with paling face.

"What ails you? A fool of a woman took a lighted candle into her hay
loft and ruined herself. That happened the night Gaspar found Kitty;
and they call it part of their weddin' tower to go there and lend the
farmer the money to replace it. Gaspar was for giving it outright,
though he's a shrewd feller too, but Kit wouldn't. 'They aren't
paupers, and it would hurt their pride,' she said. 'Lend it to them on
very easy terms, and they'll respect themselves and you.'"

"Well, of course he done it."

"Sure. When a man gets a wife as wise as Kitty he'd ought to hark to
her."

"I'll go and get the calico now, Mercy," said Abel, and left rather
suddenly.

At nightfall the young couple rode homeward once more, facing the
moonlight that whitened the great lake and touched the homely hamlet
beside it with an idealizing beauty; and looking upon it, the Sun Maid
recalled her vision concerning it and repeated it to her husband.

"Ever since then, my Gaspar, the dream comes back to me in some form
or shape. But it is always here, right here, that the crowds gather
and the great roar of life sounds in my ears. In some strange way we
are to be part of it; part of it all. In the dream I see the tall
spires of churches, thick and shouldering one another like the trees
in the forest behind us."

"But, my darling, you have never seen a church of any sort. How,
then, can you dream o