They haven't had
anything so interesting to chatter about since the grasshopper year.
It'll give them a new lease of life. And Olaf won't lose the
Bohemian vote, either. They'll have the laugh on him so that they'll
vote two apiece. They'll send him to Congress. They'll never forget
his barn party, or us. They'll always remember us as we're dancing
together now. We're making a legend. Where's my waltz, boys?" he
called as they whirled past the fiddlers.

The musicians grinned, looked at each other, hesitated, and began a
new air; and Nils sang with them, as the couples fell from a quick
waltz to a long, slow glide:

"_When other lips and other hearts
Their tale of love shall tell,
In language whose excess imparts
The power they feel so well,_"

The old women applauded vigorously. "What a gay one he is, that
Nils!" And old Mrs. Svendsen's cap lurched dreamily from side to
side to the flowing measure of the dance.

"_Of days that have as ha-a-p-py been,
And you'll remember me._"

VII

The moonlight flooded that great, silent land. The reaped fields lay
yellow in it. The straw stacks and poplar windbreaks threw sharp
black shadows. The roads were white rivers of dust. The sky was a
deep, crystalline blue, and the stars were few and faint. Everything
seemed to have succumbed, to have sunk to sleep, under the great,
golden, tender, midsummer moon. The splendor of it seemed to
transcend human life and human fate. The senses were too feeble to
take it in, and every time one looked up at the sky one felt unequal
to it, as if one were sitting deaf under the waves of a great river
of melody. Near the road, Nils Ericson was lying against a straw
stack in Olaf's wheat-field. His own life seemed strange and
unfamiliar to him, as if it were something he had read about, or
dreamed, and forgotten. He lay very still, watching the white road
that ran in front of him, lost itself among the fields, and then, at
a distance, reappeared over a little hill. At last, against this
white band he saw something moving rapidly, and he got up and walked
to the edge of the field. "She is passing the row of poplars now,"
he thought. He heard the padded beat of hoofs along the dusty road,
and as she came into sight he stepped out and waved his arms. Then,
for fear of frightening the horse, he drew back and waited. Clara
had seen him, and she came up at a walk. Nils took the horse by the
bit and stroked his neck.

"What