iless,
furnace-like blast. Everywhere in the air was a silver-white,
impalpable mist, which gave to the cloudless sky a whitish cast. The
glittering gulls were the only living things that did not move
listlessly and did not long for rain. They soared and swooped, exulting
in the sounding wind; now throwing themselves upon it, like a swimmer,
then darting upward with miraculous ease, to dip again into the
shining, hissing, tumultuous waves of the grass.

Along the roads prodigious trains of dust rose hundreds of feet in the
air, and drove like vast caravans with the wind. So powerful was the
blast that men hesitated about going out with carriages, and everybody
watched feverishly, expecting to see fire break out on the prairie and
sweep everything before it. Work in the fields had stopped long before
dinner, and the farmers waited, praying or cursing, for the wheat was
just at the right point to be blighted.

As the two men went out to the shed side by side, they looked out on
the withering wheat-stalks and corn-leaves with gloomy eyes.

"Another day like this, an' they won't be wheat enough in this whole
county to make a cake," said Anson, with a calm intonation, which after
all betrayed the anxiety he felt. They sat down in the wagon-shed near
the horses' mangers. They listened to the roar of the wind and the
pleasant sound of the horses eating their hay, a good while before
either of them spoke again. Finally Bert said sullenly:

"We can't put up hay such a day as this. You couldn't haul it home
under lock an' key while this infernal wind is blowin'. It's gittin'
worse, if anythin'."

Anson said nothing, but waited to hear what Bert had brought him out
here for. Bert speared away with his knife at a strip of board. Anson
sat on a wagon-tongue, his elbows on his knees, looking intently at the
grave face of his companion. The horses ground cheerily at the hay.

"Ans, we've got to send Flaxen back to St. Peter; she's so homesick she
don't know what to do."

Ans' eyes fell.

"I know it. I've be'n hopin' she'd git over that, but it's purty tough
on her, after bein' with the young folks in the city f'r a year, to
come back here on a farm." He did not finish for a moment. "But she
can't stand it. I'd looked ahead to havin' her here till September, but
I can't stand it to see her cryin' like she did to-day. We've got to
give up the idee o' her livin' here. I don't see any other way but to
sell out an' go back East s