: we can't stand the laugh."

Nils looked sidewise at her. He had never seen her head droop
before. Resignation was the last thing he would have expected of
her. "In your case, there wasn't something else?"

"Something else?"

"I mean, you didn't do it to spite somebody? Somebody who didn't
come back?"

Clara drew herself up. "Oh, I never thought you'd come back. Not
after I stopped writing to you, at least. _That_ was all over, long
before I married Olaf."

"It never occurred to you, then, that the meanest thing you could do
to me was to marry Olaf?"

Clara laughed. "No; I didn't know you were so fond of Olaf."

Nils smoothed his horse's mane with his glove. "You know, Clara
Vavrika, you are never going to stick it out. You'll cut away some
day, and I've been thinking you might as well cut away with me."

Clara threw up her chin. "Oh, you don't know me as well as you
think. I won't cut away. Sometimes, when I'm with father, I feel
like it. But I can hold out as long as the Ericsons can. They've
never got the best of me yet, and one can live, so long as one isn't
beaten. If I go back to father, it's all up with Olaf in politics.
He knows that, and he never goes much beyond sulking. I've as much
wit as the Ericsons. I'll never leave them unless I can show them a
thing or two."

"You mean unless you can come it over them?"

"Yes--unless I go away with a man who is cleverer than they are, and
who has more money."

Nils whistled. "Dear me, you are demanding a good deal. The
Ericsons, take the lot of them, are a bunch to beat. But I should
think the excitement of tormenting them would have worn off by this
time."

"It has, I'm afraid," Clara admitted mournfully.

"Then why don't you cut away? There are more amusing games than this
in the world. When I came home I thought it might amuse me to bully
a few quarter sections out of the Ericsons; but I've almost decided
I can get more fun for my money somewhere else."

Clara took in her breath sharply. "Ah, you have got the other will!
That was why you came home!"

"No, it wasn't. I came home to see how you were getting on with
Olaf."

Clara struck her horse with the whip, and in a bound she was far
ahead of him. Nils dropped one word, "Damn!" and whipped after her;
but she leaned forward in her saddle and fairly cut the wind. Her
long riding-skirt rippled in the still air behind her. The sun was
just sinking behind the stubble in a vast, clear sky, and the