ng, and the bow-key held the yoke on. Ah, those far-off, Arcadian
days, and the blessing of blowing those who lived in them!--G.v.d.M.

"Oh!" exclaimed Magnus, "you shouldn't talk so! Ve got plenty to eat.
Dere bane lots people in Norvay would yump at de shance to yange places
wit' us. What nice land here in Iovay! Some day you bane rich man. All
dis slew bane some day dry for plow. I see it in Norvay and Sveden. And
now dat ve got ralroad, dere bane t'ousan's an' t'ousan's people in
Norvay, and Denmark, and Sveden and Yermany come here to Iovay, an' you
an' your vife an' shildern bane big bugs. Yust vait, Yake. Maybe you see
your sons in county offices an' your girls married vit bankers, an' your
vife vare new calico dress every day. Yust vait, Yake. And to-night I
pop some corn if you furnish butter, hey?"

To hear the pop-corn going off in the skillet, like the volleys of
musketry we were so soon to hear at Shiloh; to see Magnus with his coat
off, stirring it round and round in the sizzling butter until one or two
big white kernels popped out as a warning that the whole regiment was
about to fire; to see him, with his red hair all over his freckled face,
lift the hissing skillet and shake it until the volleys died down to
sharpshooting across the lines; and then to hear him laugh when he
turned the vegetable snowdrift out into the wooden butter-bowl a little
too soon, and a last shot or two blew the fluffy kernels all over the
room--all this was the very acme of success in making a pleasant
evening. All the time I was thinking of Magnus's prediction.

"County officer!" I snorted. "Banker! Me!"

"Ay dank so," said Magnus. "Or maybe lawyers and yudges."

"Any girl I would have," I said, "wouldn't have me; and any girl that
would have me, the devil wouldn't have!"

"Anybody else say dat to me, I lick him," he stated.

"There ain't any farm girls out in this prairie," I said; "and no town
girl would come in here," and I spread my hands out to show that I
thought my house the worst place in the world, though I was really a
little proud of it--for wasn't it mine? made with my own hands, mainly?

"Girls come where dey want to come," said he, "in spite of--"

"Of hell and high water," I supplied, as he hesitated.

"So!" he answered, adopting my words, and afterward using them at a
church social with some effect. "In spite of Hell Slew and high water.
An' if dey bane too soft in de hand to come, I bring you out a fin