for one was ever right for two!

I asked Cuzak if he did n't find it hard to do without the gay company he
had always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright,
sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.

"At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness," he said frankly, "but my
woman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as she
could. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,
already!"

As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over one ear
and looked up at the moon. "Gee!" he said in a hushed voice, as if he had
just wakened up, "it don't seem like I am away from there twenty-six
year!"

III

AFTER dinner the next day I said good-bye and drove back to Hastings to
take the train for Black Hawk. Antonia and her children gathered round my
buggy before I started, and even the little ones looked up at me with
friendly faces. Leo and Ambrosch ran ahead to open the lane gate. When I
reached the bottom of the hill, I glanced back. The group was still there
by the windmill. Antonia was waving her apron.

At the gate Ambrosch lingered beside my buggy, resting his arm on the
wheel-rim. Leo slipped through the fence and ran off into the pasture.

"That's like him," his brother said with a shrug. "He's a crazy kid. Maybe
he's sorry to have you go, and maybe he's jealous. He's jealous of anybody
mother makes a fuss over, even the priest."

I found I hated to leave this boy, with his pleasant voice and his fine
head and eyes. He looked very manly as he stood there without a hat, the
wind rippling his shirt about his brown neck and shoulders.

"Don't forget that you and Rudolph are going hunting with me up on the
Niobrara next summer," I said. "Your father's agreed to let you off after
harvest."

He smiled. "I won't likely forget. I've never had such a nice thing
offered to me before. I don't know what makes you so nice to us boys," he
added, blushing.

"Oh, yes you do!" I said, gathering up my reins.

He made no answer to this, except to smile at me with unabashed pleasure
and affection as I drove away.

My day in Black Hawk was disappointing. Most of my old friends were dead
or had moved away. Strange children, who meant nothing to me, were playing
in the Harlings' big yard when I passed; the mountain ash had been cut
down, and only a sprouting stump was left of the tall Lombardy poplar that
used to guard the gate. I hurried on. The r