pulating the earth! All the wars of primitive man were
inadequate. The vices of civilization have likewise failed. Even man's
mightiest weapon, legislation, couldn't stay the tide for a moment, if
it would. While man is man, and woman is woman, that long, above
government, religion,--life and death itself,--will reign supreme the
eternal instinct of parenthood."

Ichabod caught himself in his own period and stopped, a little ashamed
of his earnestness. He sat up in the seat preparatory to returning to
his own wagon, then dropped his hand once more on the boy's shoulder.

"I'm old enough to be your father, boy, and have done, in all things,
the reverse of what I advised you. Therefore, I know I was wrong. We
may sneer and speak of poetry when the words proceed from another, my
boy; but, as inevitable as death, there comes to every man the
knowledge that he stands accursed of Nature, who hasn't heard the
voice of his own child call 'father!'"

He clambered down, leaving the speechless Ole sprawling on the
wagon-seat. Back in his own wagon, he smiled broadly to himself.

"Strange, how easily the apple falls when it's ripe," he soliloquized.

They drove on clear to the mill without another word; without even a
grin from the broad-faced Ole, who sat in ponderous thought in the
wagon ahead. To a nature such as his the infrequency of a new idea
gives it the force of a cataclysm; during its presence, obliterating
everything else.

It was nearly noon when they reached the narrow fringe of trees and
underbrush--deciduous and wind-tortured all--which bordered the big,
muddy, low-lying Missouri; and soon they could hear the throb of the
engine at the mill, and the swish of the saw through the green lumber;
a sound that heard near by, inevitably carries the suggestion of
scalpel and living flesh. Nothing but green timber was sawed
thereabout in those days. The country was settling rapidly, lumber
was imperative, and available timber very, very limited.

Returning, the heavy loads grumbled slowly along, so slowly that it
was nearly evening, and their shadows preceded them by rods when they
reached the little prairie town. They stopped to water their teams;
and Ole, true to the instincts of his plebeian ancestry, went in
search of a glass of beer. He returned, quickly, his face very red.

"A fellow in there is talking about--about Mrs. Maurice," he blurted.

"In the saloon, Ole?"

The Swede repeated the story, watching the