a low voice.

"Magnificent!" Bradley replied; but he thought of her, not the stars.
The team started up, and the worn old seat swayed from side to side so
perilously that Bradley with incredible audacity put his arm around,
and grasped the end of the seat on the other side of Ida.

"I'm afraid you'll fall out," he hastened to explain. She made no
reply, and if she smiled he did not know it.

They climbed the slope on the other side of the bridge, and entered
upon the vast rolling prairie, whose dim swells rose and fell against
the stars. The roads were frightful--gullied with rain, and full of
bowlders on the hillsides. The darkness added a certain wild charm and
mystery to it all.

"How lonesome it seems! What a terrible place to live!" said Ida with a
shudder.

"Civilization hasn't made much of an impress here, that's sure. How
long has this prairie been settled?"

"'Bout twenty-two years," answered the driver; and, being started, he
prattled away, telling the story of his pitiful, tragic life--a life of
incessant toil and hardship. Men cheated and trampled upon him; society
and government ignored him; science and religion never knew him, and
cared nothing for him--and yet this atom bore it all with unapplauded
heroism.

There was something in his voice which made the hearts of his hearers
ache. Ida glanced up at Bradley now and then, at the most dramatic
points, and they seemed to grow nearer together in their sympathy.

"There's the schoolhouse," said the driver joyously, pointing at a dim
red light ahead. They had been riding for nearly an hour across the
treeless swells of prairie, and the wind had penetrated their very
blood. Ida was shivering, and Bradley was suffering with her out of
sympathy. He longed to fold her close in his arms and shield her from
the wind.

Suddenly the schoolhouse loomed upon their eyes. It was a bare little
box, set on the wind-swept crest of a hill, not a tree to shelter it
from the winds of winter or the sun of summer. Teams were hitched about
at the fences, and others could be heard on the hard ground, clattering
along the lanes. Men coming across the fields on foot could be heard
talking. The plain seemed cold and desolate and illimitable.

Bradley helped Ida to alight, and hurried her towards the open door,
from which the hum of talk came forth. They found the room crammed with
men and women--the women all on one side of the room and the men as
decorously on the other,