rown of his skin. His teeth and the palms of his hands were very
white. His head, which looked hard and stubborn, lay indolently in the
green cushion of the wicker chair, and as he looked out at the ripe
summer country a teasing, not unkindly smile played over his lips.
Once, as he basked thus comfortably, a quick light flashed in his eyes,
curiously dilating the pupils, and his mouth became a hard, straight
line, gradually relaxing into its former smile of rather kindly mockery.
He told himself, apparently, that there was no point in getting excited;
and he seemed a master hand at taking his ease when he could. Neither
the sharp whistle of the locomotive nor the brakeman's call disturbed
him. It was not until after the train had stopped that he rose, put on
a Panama hat, took from the rack a small valise and a flute case, and
stepped deliberately to the station platform. The baggage was already
unloaded, and the stranger presented a check for a battered sole-leather
steamer trunk.

"Can you keep it here for a day or two?" he asked the agent. "I may send
for it, and I may not."

"Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose?" demanded the agent
in a challenging tone.

"Just so."

The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the small trunk,
which was marked "N.E.," and handed out a claim check without further
comment. The stranger watched him as he caught one end of the trunk and
dragged it into the express room. The agent's manner seemed to remind
him of something amusing. "Doesn't seem to be a very big place," he
remarked, looking about.

"It's big enough for us," snapped the agent, as he banged the trunk into
a corner.

That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. He chuckled
quietly as he took a leather strap from his pocket and swung his valise
around his shoulder. Then he settled his Panama securely on his head,
turned up his trousers, tucked the flute case under his arm, and started
off across the fields. He gave the town, as he would have said, a wide
berth, and cut through a great fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolled
under the barbed wire at the farther corner, upon a white dusty road
which ran straight up from the river valley to the high prairies, where
the ripe wheat stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks were
twinkling in the fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles,
the sun was sinking and the farm wagons on their way home from town came
ratt