r. Some of the roughest characters in the neighborhood
rose and professed repentance, for a season, even old Barton, the
profanest man in the township, experienced a "change of heart."

We all enjoyed the singing, and joined most lustily in the tunes. Even
little Jessie learned to sing _Heavenly Wings_, _There is a Fountain
filled with Blood_, and _Old Hundred_.

As I peer back into that crowded little schoolroom, smothering hot and
reeking with lamp smoke, and recall the half-lit, familiar faces of the
congregation, it all has the quality of a vision, something experienced
in another world. The preacher, leaping, sweating, roaring till the
windows rattle, the mothers with sleeping babes in their arms, the
sweet, strained faces of the girls, the immobile wondering men, are
spectral shadows, figures encountered in the phantasmagoria of
disordered sleep.

CHAPTER X

The Homestead on the Knoll

Spring came to us that year with such sudden beauty, such sweet
significance after our long and depressing winter, that it seemed a
release from prison, and when at the close of a warm day in March we
heard, pulsing down through the golden haze of sunset, the mellow _boom,
boom, boom_ of the prairie cock our hearts quickened, for this, we were
told, was the certain sign of spring.

Day by day the call of this gay herald of spring was taken up by others
until at last the whole horizon was ringing with a sunrise symphony of
exultant song. "_Boom, boom, boom!_" called the roosters; "_cutta,
cutta, wha-whoop-squaw, squawk!_" answered the hens as they fluttered
and danced on the ridges--and mingled with their jocund hymn we heard at
last the slender, wistful piping of the prairie lark.

With the coming of spring my duties as a teamster returned. My father
put me in charge of a harrow, and with old Doll and Queen--quiet and
faithful span--I drove upon the field which I had plowed the previous
October, there to plod to and fro behind my drag, while in the sky above
my head and around me on the mellowing soil the life of the season,
thickened.

Aided by my team I was able to study at close range the prairie roosters
as they assembled for their parade. They had regular "stamping grounds"
on certain ridges, Where the soil was beaten smooth by the pressure of
their restless feet. I often passed within a few yards of them.--I can
see them now, the cocks leaping and strutting, with trailing wings and
down-thrust heads, displayi