een large and full and black
had shrunk to the size of pin heads.

"No," she said. "I will wait and keep the house beautiful for Seth.
Last night I saw him in a dream. He'll be coming home soon now to the
beautiful house."

She walked to the window and looked out. She sank into a chair there,
folded her hands and smiled contentedly, looking out through the
leaves of the trees down the sunlit road.

"I will wait here for Seth," she repeated. "He won't be long now.
He'll be coming home soon. I saw his face last night in a dream, and
he smiled at me."

CHAPTER XXIX.

[Illustration]

The whittlers of the little sticks sitting on dry goods boxes which
surrounded the corner grocery looked up as a wagon came lumberingly
down the Lexington Pike, rounded the corner and made its way up Main
Street to Tom Coleman's livery stable.

They watched a man get out, lift an enormous trunk and carry it into
the stable on his shoulders. They saw the man bend earthward beneath
the weight of the trunk.

"Seth Lawson," they explained to some newcomers. "He's got a place at
last. Drivin' the baggage wagon from Burgin to Harrodsburg and back
again."

Tom Grums, the grocer, puffed a few whiffs of his pipe.

"That's the man," he explained succinctly, "whut was goin' to conquer
the West. That's the man whut said he was goin' to build the Magic
City at the forks of two rivahs wheah the wind didn't blow."

By and by, when he had unhitched and fed his horse Seth came down the
street, passed the whittlers of the little sticks and went on up the
Lexington Pike to his home and Celia's.

He walked laggingly. There was something that he must tell Celia and
he was afraid. It was impossible for him to keep the place.

He was not young enough. He was not sufficiently nimble. They wanted a
younger man, they told him, to lift the trunks. He had been months
getting the place and now he had lost it. He had lost it within a
week.

He walked slowly through the hall to the kitchen where Celia stood at
the old stove, cooking their supper. He sat by the window presently,
watching her.

No. He wouldn't tell her. He could not. He hadn't the courage to face
the scorn of her eye, to face the cold steely blue of it.

He ate the supper she set silently before him slowly. It had the taste
to sawdust.

After supper he went out on the porch awhile and sat looking into the
dusk, looking over the fine soft green of the dim grass on the
opposite l