th all
that bunch of cattle, anyhow?" he added.

"I'll share what I've got with th' stuff, an' if part of it dies I'll drag
it out on th' hill t' rot; th' rest I'll stay by," was the stubborn reply.
"As for them eggs a-hatchin', they'll be good ones if they can stand a
Kansas winter; they'll do a blamed sight better'n any eggs Mrs. Farnshaw
gethers in. They'd better go south."

This raised a laugh. The grim humour of anything, that could get away,
spending a winter in Kansas, appealed to these grizzly pioneers, who
struggled with the question of fuel in a country where there was little
natural timber, and coal must be paid for before it was burned. But all
their arguments would not turn him from his course.

"Your wife's turrible set on goin', Farnshaw," one of the men said to him
as they went to the stable for their horses when the meeting broke up.

"Women's always wantin' things," was the indifferent reply. "Say, you've
got a stack of wheat straw. What'll you take for it?"

In the house the sympathetic daughter helped her mother prepare for bed.

"I thought sure to-night we'd get to go," the child said. "If you could
get back East you might get to stay; and then you wouldn't have to cry so
much," she added as she picked up the abandoned clothing her mother had
left lying on the floor.

Mrs. Farnshaw, who was turning the same matter over disconsolately as she
sat on the side of the bed, shook her head with the bitter certainty that
her fate would pursue her, and replied hopelessly:

"It wouldn't make no difference, I guess, Lizzie. He'd be there, an' it'd
be just the same."

And the girl, who was naturally reflective, carried with her to the loft
overhead that night a new idea: that it was not the place, but the manner
in which lives were lived, which mattered.

The preparations for the coming of that winter were the strangest ever
witnessed in a farming community. Never had any man known fuel to be so
scarce. Cornstalks, which were usually staple articles for fuel in that
country, had been eaten almost to the very ground, but the stubs were
gathered, the dirt shaken from them, and they were then carted to the
house. Rosin weeds were collected and piled in heaps. The dried dung of
cattle, scattered over the grazing lands, and called "buffalo chips," was
stored in long ricks, also, and used sparingly, for even this simple fuel
was so scarce as to necessitate care in its use.

To keep out the driving winds,