ng as he tore the husks from the
ears.

Greedy crows were still cawing about before they flapped
homeward. When he drove out to the highway, the sun was going
down, and from his seat on the load he could see far and near.
Yonder was Dan's wagon, coming in from the north quarter; over
there was the roof of Leonard Dawson's new house, and his
windmill, standing up black in the declining day. Before him were
the bluffs of the pasture, and the little trees, almost bare,
huddled in violet shadow along the creek, and the Wheeler
farm-house on the hill, its windows all aflame with the last red
fire of the sun.

XV

Claude dreaded the inactivity of the winter, to which the farmer
usually looks forward with pleasure. He made the Thanksgiving
football game a pretext for going up to Lincoln,--went intending
to stay three days and stayed ten. The first night, when he
knocked at the glass door of the Erlichs' sitting-room and took
them by surprise, he thought he could never go back to the farm.
Approaching the house on that clear, frosty autumn evening,
crossing the lawn strewn with crackling dry leaves, he told
himself that he must not hope to find things the same. But they
were the same. The boys were lounging and smoking about the
square table with the lamp on it, and Mrs. Erlich was at the
piano, playing one of Mendelssohn's "Songs Without Words." When
he knocked, Otto opened the door and called:

"A surprise for you, Mother! Guess who's here."

What a welcome she gave him, and how much she had to tell him!
While they were all talking at once, Henry, the oldest son, came
downstairs dressed for a Colonial ball, with satin breeches and
stockings and a sword. His brothers began to point out the
inaccuracies of his costume, telling him that he couldn't
possibly call himself a French emigre unless he wore a powdered
wig. Henry took a book of memoirs from the shelf to prove to them
that at the time when the French emigres were coming to
Philadelphia, powder was going out of fashion.

During this discussion, Mrs. Erlich drew Claude aside and told
him in excited whispers that her cousin Wilhelmina, the singer,
had at last been relieved of the invalid husband whom she had
supported for so many years, and now was going to marry her
accompanist, a man much younger than herself.

After the French emigre had gone off to his party, two young
instructors from the University dropped in, and Mrs. Erlich
introduced Claude as her "l