on a hot day?"

Mary Hope smiled faintly. "Mr. Boyle hauled us a load of sage brush,
and the boys chop wood mornings and noons--it's a punishment when they
don't behave, or if they miss their lessons. But--the stove doesn't
seem to draw very well, in this wind. It smokes more than it throws
out heat." She added hastily, "It drew all right yesterday. It's this
wind."

"What you going to do if this wind keeps up? It's liable to blow for a
week or two, this time of year."

"Why--we'll manage to get along all right. They'd probably be out
playing in it anyway, if they weren't in school."

"Oh. And what about you?" Tom looked at her, blinking rapidly with his
left eye that was growing bloodshot and watery.

"I? Why, I've lived here all my life, and I ought to be used to a
little bad weather."

"Hunh." Tom shivered in the draught. "So have I lived here all my
life; but I'll be darned if I would want to sit in this shack all day,
the way the wind whistles through it."

"You might do it, though--if it was your only way of earning money,"
Mary Hope suggested shrewdly.

"Well, I might," Tom admitted, "but I sure would stop up a few
cracks."

"We've hardly got settled yet," said Mary Hope. "I intend to stuff the
cracks with rags just as soon as possible. Is your eye still paining?
That dirt is miserable stuff to stick in a person's eye. Shall I try
and get it out? Yesterday I got some in mine, and I had an awful
time."

She dismissed the children primly, with a self-conscious dignity and
some chagrin at their boorish clatter, their absolute ignorance of
discipline. "I shall ring the bell in ten minutes," she told them
while they scuffled to the door. "I shall give you two minutes after
the bell rings to get into your seats and be prepared for duty. Every
minute after that must be made up after school."

"Ay skoll go home now, sen you skoll not keep me by school from tan
minootes," the oldest of the Swedes stopped long enough to bellow at
her from the doorway. "Ole og Helge skoll go med. Ve got long way from
school, og ve don't be by dark ven ve come by home!"

He seized the square tobacco boxes, originally made to hold a pound
of "plug cut," and afterwards dedicated to whatever use a ranch man
might choose to put them. Where schools flourished, the tobacco boxes
were used for lunch. The Swedes carried three tied in flour sacks and
fastened to the saddles. The wind carried them at a run to the corral.
The two small