her came nearer, tumbling over and
over through the grass. Remembering her stick, the little girl backed
slowly toward it, not taking her eyes off him for an instant. But, as
she retreated, the string tightened again, and the gopher advanced as
before. The little girl, still too far from the stick, trembled more
than ever at his wild cries, and her hand shook so that she could hardly
hold the snare. He was attacking it with all his might, bounding into
the air and, blindly fearless in his danger, coming toward her faster
than she could step backward.

A moment she paused, shaking her apron to try to scare him. But as,
hissing and fighting, he rolled against her bare feet, she dropped the
string, turned her face from the meadow--and fled!

* * * * *

EVERY Sunday afternoon the Swede boy came to the farm-house and,
squatting opposite the little girl as she sat enthroned upon the lounge
in all the glory of a stiff Turkey-red dress, eyed her furtively while
her mother read aloud the story of Mazeppa. His pale eyes, under their
heavy white brows, never wavered from her face, even during the most
stirring danger to the Cossack chief. Upon these occasions the little
girl's mind wandered, too; for the tale of bravery recalled the
colonel's son at the army post, the pride of the troop, who, in campaign
hat, yellow-striped trousers, and snug, bright-buttoned coat, was a
sturdy military figure. And had the Swede boy known it, he was less to
her than a cockle-bur in her blind black pony's tail.

But youth is fickle and the reservation was far. So, when the rain was
over next morning, she ran to the barn, bridled her horse, climbed from
the manger to his back, and, lying flat to escape the top casing of the
door, went out of the stable toward the Swede shanty at a run. Down deep
in the long, narrow, jack-knife pocket of her apron lay a new gopher
snare, culled, as before, from the tail of the cultivator mare.

As she scoured across the prairie, her hair whipping her shoulders and
her skirts fluttering gaily, the last few clouds in the sky, white and
almost empty, dispersed tearfully above the distant forks of the
Vermillion. And when the river was reached and forded, and the steep
bank climbed on the other side, a drying wind that had sprung up
promised, with the sun, to prepare the timothy for that afternoon's
snaring.

The Swede boy listened silently while the little girl unfolded her plan,
an