nd stretched their wings up over their backs.

I could never be much of a man, I thought, on a forty-acre farm, nor
build much of a house. I had come all the way from York State for this!
The bubble had grown brighter and brighter as I had made my strange way
across the new lands, putting on more and more of the colors of the
rainbow, and now, all had ended in this spot of water on the floor of
the earth. I compared myself with the Fewkeses, as I remembered how I
had told Virginia just how the rooms of the house should be arranged,
and allowed her to change the arrangement whenever she desired, and even
to put great white columns in front as she said they did in Kentucky. We
had agreed as to just what trees should be set out, and what flowers
should be planted in the blue-grass lawn.

All this was gone glimmering now--and yet as I sit here, there are the
trees, and there are the flowers, very much as planned, in the soft
blue-grass lawn; about the only thing lacking being the white columns.

I was lying on the ground, looking out across the marsh, and as my
misfortunes all rolled back over my mind I turned on my face and cried
like a baby. Finally, I felt a large light hand laid softly on my head.
I looked up and saw Magnus Thorkelson bending over me.

"Forty acres," said he, "bane pretty big farm in Norvay. My fadder on
twenty acres, raise ten shildren. Not so gude land like dis. Vun of dem
shildern bane college professor, and vun a big man in leggislatur. Forty
acre bane gude farm, for gude farmer."

I turned over, wiped my sleeve across my eyes, and sat up.

"I guess I dropped asleep," I said.

"Yass," he said. "You bane sleep long time. I came back to ask if I stay
vith you. I halp you. You halp me. Ve halp each udder. Ve be neighbors
alvays. I get farm next you. I halp you build house, an' you halp me.
Maybe ve lif togedder till you git vooman, or I git vooman--if American
vooman marry Norwegian man. I stay?"

I took his hand and pressed it. After a few days' studying over it, I
made up my mind that in the kindness of his heart he had come back just
to comfort me. And all that he had said we would do, we did. Before long
we had a warm dugout barn built in the eastern slope of the hillside,
partly sheltered from the northwestern winds, and Magnus and I slept in
one end of it on the sweet hay we cut in the marsh while the cows ranged
on the prairie. Together we broke prairie, first on his land, then on
mine.