have a boy about.
Whenever my grandparents had misgivings, and began to wonder whether I
was not too young to go off to college alone, Mrs. Harling took up my
cause vigorously. Grandfather had such respect for her judgment that I
knew he would not go against her.

I had only one holiday that summer. It was in July. I met Antonia
downtown on Saturday afternoon, and learned that she and Tiny and Lena
were going to the river next day with Anna Hansen--the elder was all in
bloom now, and Anna wanted to make elderblow wine.

'Anna's to drive us down in the Marshalls' delivery wagon, and we'll
take a nice lunch and have a picnic. Just us; nobody else. Couldn't you
happen along, Jim? It would be like old times.'

I considered a moment. 'Maybe I can, if I won't be in the way.'

On Sunday morning I rose early and got out of Black Hawk while the dew
was still heavy on the long meadow grasses. It was the high season for
summer flowers. The pink bee-bush stood tall along the sandy roadsides,
and the cone-flowers and rose mallow grew everywhere. Across the wire
fence, in the long grass, I saw a clump of flaming orange-coloured
milkweed, rare in that part of the state. I left the road and went
around through a stretch of pasture that was always cropped short in
summer, where the gaillardia came up year after year and matted over
the ground with the deep, velvety red that is in Bokhara carpets. The
country was empty and solitary except for the larks that Sunday morning,
and it seemed to lift itself up to me and to come very close.

The river was running strong for midsummer; heavy rains to the west of
us had kept it full. I crossed the bridge and went upstream along
the wooded shore to a pleasant dressing-room I knew among the dogwood
bushes, all overgrown with wild grapevines. I began to undress for a
swim. The girls would not be along yet. For the first time it occurred
to me that I should be homesick for that river after I left it. The
sandbars, with their clean white beaches and their little groves of
willows and cottonwood seedlings, were a sort of No Man's Land, little
newly created worlds that belonged to the Black Hawk boys. Charley
Harling and I had hunted through these woods, fished from the fallen
logs, until I knew every inch of the river shores and had a friendly
feeling for every bar and shallow.

After my swim, while I was playing about indolently in the water, I
heard the sound of hoofs and wheels on the bridg