ances at
each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that
he was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an
adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. His
iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had
drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives
in Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now
he had been working for grandfather.

The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to
me about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale;
he had been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but
he was a 'perfect gentleman,' and his name was Dude. Fuchs told me
everything I wanted to know: how he had lost his ear in a Wyoming
blizzard when he was a stage-driver, and how to throw a lasso. He
promised to rope a steer for me before sundown next day. He got out
his 'chaps' and silver spurs to show them to Jake and me, and his best
cowboy boots, with tops stitched in bold design--roses, and true-lover's
knots, and undraped female figures. These, he solemnly explained, were
angels.

Before we went to bed, Jake and Otto were called up to the living-room
for prayers. Grandfather put on silver-rimmed spectacles and
read several Psalms. His voice was so sympathetic and he read so
interestingly that I wished he had chosen one of my favourite chapters
in the Book of Kings. I was awed by his intonation of the word 'Selah.'
'He shall choose our inheritance for us, the excellency of Jacob whom
He loved. Selah.' I had no idea what the word meant; perhaps he had not.
But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the most sacred of words.

Early the next morning I ran out-of-doors to look about me. I had been
told that ours was the only wooden house west of Black Hawk--until
you came to the Norwegian settlement, where there were several. Our
neighbours lived in sod houses and dugouts--comfortable, but not very
roomy. Our white frame house, with a storey and half-storey above the
basement, stood at the east end of what I might call the farmyard, with
the windmill close by the kitchen door. From the windmill the ground
sloped westward, down to the barns and granaries and pig-yards. This
slope was trampled hard and bare, and washed out in winding gullies by
the rain. Beyond the corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw, was
a muddy little pond, with ru