the floor gave way and threw him behind the feet of a fiery young
stallion. His foot was caught fast in the floor, and the nervous horse
began kicking frantically. When Canute felt the blood trickling down
into his eyes from a scalp wound in his head, he roused himself from his
kingly indifference, and with the quiet stoical courage of a drunken man
leaned forward and wound his arms about the horse's hind legs and held
them against his breast with crushing embrace. All through the darkness
and cold of the night he lay there, matching strength against strength.
When little Jim Peterson went over the next morning at four o'clock to
go with him to the Blue to cut wood, he found him so, and the horse was
on its fore knees, trembling and whinnying with fear. This is the story
the Norwegians tell of him, and if it is true it is no wonder that they
feared and hated this Holder of the Heels of Horses.

One spring there moved to the next "eighty" a family that made a great
change in Canute's life. Ole Yensen was too drunk most of the time to be
afraid of any one, and his wife Mary was too garrulous to be afraid of
any one who listened to her talk, and Lena, their pretty daughter, was
not afraid of man nor devil. So it came about that Canute went over to
take his alcohol with Ole oftener than he took it alone, After a while
the report spread that he was going to marry Yensen's daughter, and the
Norwegian girls began to tease Lena about the great bear she was going
to keep house for. No one could quite see how the affair had come about,
for Canute's tactics of courtship were somewhat peculiar. He apparently
never spoke to her at all: he would sit for hours with Mary chattering
on one side of him and Ole drinking on the other and watch Lena at her
work. She teased him, and threw flour in his face and put vinegar in
his coffee, but he took her rough jokes with silent wonder, never even
smiling. He took her to church occasionally, but the most watchful and
curious people never saw him speak to her. He would sit staring at her
while she giggled and flirted with the other men.

Next spring Mary Lee went to town to work in a steam laundry. She came
home every Sunday, and always ran across to Yensens to startle Lena
with stories of ten cent theaters, firemen's dances, and all the other
esthetic delights of metropolitan life. In a few weeks Lena's head was
completely turned, and she gave her father no rest until he let her go
to town to