f another way." And it
was a long time before the nobility of her action was plain to me; but
when I realized it, I never forgot it. I had offered her all I had when
she begged for it, she had taken it, and then restored it, as the dying
soldier gave the draught of water to his comrade, saying, "Thy necessity
is greater than mine."

Once or twice I made an effort to tell Magnus Thorkelson about this, as
we worked at our after-harvest haying together that week; but it was a
hard thing to do. Perhaps it would not be a secret much longer; but as
yet it was Rowena's secret, not mine. I knew, too, that Magnus had been
haunting Rowena for two years; that he had been making visits to
Blue-grass Manor often when she was there, without taking me into his
confidence; that his excuse that he went to help Surajah Fewkes with his
inventions was not the real reason for his going. I remembered, too,
that Rowena had always spoken well of Magnus, and seemed to see what
most of us did not, that Magnus was better educated in the way
foreigners are taught than the rest of us; and she did not look down on
him the way we did then on folks from other countries. I had no way of
knowing how they stood toward each other, though Magnus had looked sad
and stopped talking lately whenever I had mentioned her. I knew it would
be a shock to him to learn of her present and coming trouble; and,
strange as it may seem, I began to put it back into the dark places in
my brain as if it had not happened; and when it came to mind clearly as
it kept doing, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Rowena
had said that she had thought of another way out.

We had frost early that year--a hard white frost sometime about the
tenth of September. Neither Magnus nor I had any sound corn, though our
wheat, oats and barley were heavy and fine; and we had oceans of hay.
The frost killed the grass early, and early in October we had a heavy
rain followed by another freeze, and then a long, calm, warm Indian
summer. The prairie was covered with a dense mat of dry grass which
rustled in the wind but furnished no feed for our stock. It was a
splendid fall for plowing, and I began to feel hope return to me as I
followed my plow around and around the lands I laid off, and watched the
black ribbon of new plowing widen and widen as the day advanced
toward night.

Nothing is so good a soil for hope as new plowing. The act of making it
is inspired by hope. The emblem of h