think
you'll find the cattle ready to come in out of the storm when you get good
and through."

"I think I'll let 'em in now," said Pete, by way of excusing himself. "I
expect to put in most of the day from now on getting ready to quit eating.
Save some of everything for me, Selma,--I'll be right back!"

"All right, Pete," said Selma.

CHAPTER XI

THE MOUSE ESCAPES

Jennie played the piano and sang. They all joined in some simple Christmas
songs. Mrs. Woodruff and Jim's mother went into other parts of the house
on research work connected with their converse on domestic economy. The
colonel withdrew for an inspection of the live stock on the eve of the
threatened blizzard. And Jim was left alone with Jennie in the front
parlor. After the buzz of conversation, they seemed to have nothing to
say. Jennie played softly, and looked at nothing, but scrutinized Jim by
means of the eyes which women have concealed in their back hair. There was
something new in the man--she sensed that. He was more confident, more
persuasive, more dynamic. She was used to him only as a static force.

And Jim felt something new, too. He had felt it growing in him ever since
he began his school work, and knew not the cause of it. The cause,
however, would not have been a mystery to a wise old yogi who might
discover the same sort of change in one of his young novices. Jim Irwin
had been a sort of ascetic since his boyhood. He had mortified the flesh
by hard labor in the fields, and by flagellations of the brain to drive
off sleep while he pored over his books in the attic--which was often so
hot after a day of summer's sun on its low thin roof, that he was forced
to do his reading in the midmost night. He had looked long on such women
as Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, Isabel, Cressida, Volumnia, Virginia,
Evangeline, Agnes Wickfleld and Fair Rosamond; but on women in the flesh
he had gazed as upon trees walking. The aforesaid spiritual director, had
this young ascetic been under one, would have foreseen the effects on the
psychology of a stout fellow of twenty-eight of freedom from the toil of
the fields, and association with a group of young human beings of both
sexes. To the novice struggling for emancipation from earthly thoughts, he
would have recommended fasting and prayer, and perhaps, a hair shirt. Just
what his prescription would have been for a man in Jim's position is, of
course, a question. He would, no doubt, have considered car