is pipe. His mother's strategies had always diverted him, even when
he was a boy--they were so flimsy and patent, so illy proportioned
to her vigor and force. "They've been waiting to see which way I'd
jump," he reflected. He felt that Mrs. Ericson was pondering his
case deeply as she sat clicking her needles.

"I don't suppose you've ever got used to steady work," she went on
presently. "Men ain't apt to if they roam around too long. It's a
pity you didn't come back the year after the World's Fair. Your
father picked up a good bit of land cheap then, in the hard times,
and I expect maybe he'd have give you a farm. It's too bad you put
off comin' back so long, for I always thought he meant to do
something by you."

Nils laughed and shook the ashes out of his pipe. "I'd have missed a
lot if I had come back then. But I'm sorry I didn't get back to see
father."

"Well, I suppose we have to miss things at one end or the other.
Perhaps you are as well satisfied with your own doings, now, as
you'd have been with a farm," said Mrs. Ericson reassuringly.

"Land's a good thing to have," Nils commented, as he lit another
match and sheltered it with his hand.

His mother looked sharply at his face until the match burned out.
"Only when you stay on it!" she hastened to say.

Eric came round the house by the path just then, and Nils rose, with
a yawn. "Mother, if you don't mind, Eric and I will take a little
tramp before bed-time. It will make me sleep."

"Very well; only don't stay long. I'll sit up and wait for you. I
like to lock up myself."

Nils put his hand on Eric's shoulder, and the two tramped down the
hill and across the sand creek into the dusty highroad beyond.
Neither spoke. They swung along at an even gait, Nils puffing at his
pipe. There was no moon, and the white road and the wide fields lay
faint in the starlight. Over everything was darkness and thick
silence, and the smell of dust and sunflowers. The brothers followed
the road for a mile or more without finding a place to sit down.
Finally Nils perched on a stile over the wire fence, and Eric sat on
the lower step.

"I began to think you never would come back, Nils," said the boy
softly.

"Didn't I promise you I would?"

"Yes; but people don't bother about promises they make to babies.
Did you really know you were going away for good when you went to
Chicago with the cattle that time?"

"I thought it very likely, if I could make my way."

"I don