ld. But there was no bright red wagon standing bravely
in wait for her as she entered; there was nothing under her breakfast
plate, even, when she turned it over. She ate her grits and milk in
silence, choking a little when she swallowed, and, as soon as she could,
rushed away to the corn-crib to see if the brown-paper package were
still there.

It was gone!

Then she knew that her big brothers had sent it away.

She crept back to the house and climbed the ladder to the attic, where
she meant to hide and mourn alone. But no sooner had she gained her feet
beneath the peaked roof, than she saw what she had been seeking.

It hung by its scarlet tongue from a beam, flanked on one side by the
paper of sage that was being saved to season the holiday turkeys, and on
the other by the bag that held the trimmings of the Yule-tree. And the
little girl, sitting tearfully beneath it, tried to count on her fingers
the days that must pass before Christmas.

VII

TWICE IN JEOPARDY

COOL and sparkling after its morning rain-bath, and showing along its
green ridges those first, faint signs of yellow that foretell a coming
ripeness, the grass-mantled prairie lay beneath the warm noon sun. The
little girl, cantering over it toward the sod shanty on the farther
river bluffs, frightened the trilling meadow-larks, as she passed, from
their perch on the dripping sunflowers, and scattered the drops on the
wild wheat-blades with the hoofs of her blind black pony.

The storm had wept so copiously upon the fading plains that the furrows,
turned along the edge of the broad wheat-field to check fires, ran full
and swift down the gentle slope that the little girl was crossing and
almost kept pace with her pony. Every hollow in her path was filled to
the brim, and the chain of sloughs to the south, now resounding with the
joyous quacks of bluewings and mallards, were swelling their waters with
the feeding of countless streams. And the drenched ground, where the
flowers bent their clean faces as if worn with the heavy downpour, sent
up that grateful essence that follows in the wake of a shower.

The blind, black pony felt the new life in the springy turf and the
fresh air and flirted his unshod heels dangerously near to a tracking
wolf-dog as he splashed through runlet and pool. _Pluff-et-y-pluff,
pluff-et-y-pluff, pluff-et-y-pluff_, he drummed softly, and the panting
hound, muzzle down, followed with a soft _swish, swish_. But to the