hought held something of injustice, the wind
blew with such gentleness, kissing his cheek.

His mind ran dangerously on in the current of insanity. He endeavored
to quiet it.

The thought of his mother came to him.

Once he had heard her crying in the night, waiting for his father to
come home, not knowing where he was, wondering as women will, and
fearfully crying.

Then he heard her begin to count aloud in the dark:

"One, two. One, two, three," she had counted, to quiet her brain.

He fell mechanically to counting as she had done:

"One, two. One, two, three."

He must preserve his sanity, he said to himself, for the sake of the
child. Otherwise it would be good to lose all remembrance, to forget,
to dream, to lapse into the nothingness of the vacant eye, the
down-drooping lid and the drivel.

"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, the wind listening.

In spite of the counting, with his eyes fixed on the desolation of the
prairie, his thoughts on Celia, suddenly he felt himself seized by
gusts of violent rage. The desire to dash out his brains against the
unyielding wall of his relentless destiny tore him like the fingers of
a giant hand.

"One, two. One, two, three," he counted, and between the words came
the cry of the child.

If he could only render his mind a blank until it recovered its
equilibrium, a ray of sunshine must leak in somewhere.

It must for the sake of the child.

But how was it possible for him to go back to the ghastliness of the
dugout, the bereft house, where it was as if the most precious inmate
had suddenly died--to the place that had held Celia but would hold her
no more!

It was necessary to count very steadily here, to strangle an outcry of
despair.

"One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three, four, five."

He could count no further.

The wind, seeing his distress, soughed with a weird sweet sound like
aeolian harps in the effort to comfort him, but he dropped the reins
and laid his face in the hollow of his arm.

It was the attitude of a woman, grief-stricken.

He had evidently fallen into a lethargy of grief from which he must be
aroused.

So thought the wind. It blew a great blast. It whistled loudly as if
calling, calling, calling!

Was it the wind or his heart? Was it his Mother Nature, his Guardian
Angel, or God?

Again pitifully, distinctly, wailingly, came the cry of the child.

He raised his head, grasped the reins and hurried.

On he we