was
disappearing, and the whole face of the country was changing. There
were wooden houses where the old sod dwellings used to be, and little
orchards, and big red barns; all this meant happy children, contented
women, and men who saw their lives coming to a fortunate issue. The
windy springs and the blazing summers, one after another, had enriched
and mellowed that flat tableland; all the human effort that had gone
into it was coming back in long, sweeping lines of fertility. The
changes seemed beautiful and harmonious to me; it was like watching the
growth of a great man or of a great idea. I recognized every tree and
sandbank and rugged draw. I found that I remembered the conformation of
the land as one remembers the modelling of human faces.

When I drew up to our old windmill, the Widow Steavens came out to meet
me. She was brown as an Indian woman, tall, and very strong. When I was
little, her massive head had always seemed to me like a Roman senator's.
I told her at once why I had come.

'You'll stay the night with us, Jimmy? I'll talk to you after supper. I
can take more interest when my work is off my mind. You've no prejudice
against hot biscuit for supper? Some have, these days.'

While I was putting my horse away, I heard a rooster squawking. I looked
at my watch and sighed; it was three o'clock, and I knew that I must eat
him at six.

After supper Mrs. Steavens and I went upstairs to the old sitting-room,
while her grave, silent brother remained in the basement to read his
farm papers. All the windows were open. The white summer moon was
shining outside, the windmill was pumping lazily in the light breeze. My
hostess put the lamp on a stand in the corner, and turned it low because
of the heat. She sat down in her favourite rocking-chair and settled
a little stool comfortably under her tired feet. 'I'm troubled with
calluses, Jim; getting old,' she sighed cheerfully. She crossed her
hands in her lap and sat as if she were at a meeting of some kind.

'Now, it's about that dear Antonia you want to know? Well, you've come
to the right person. I've watched her like she'd been my own daughter.

'When she came home to do her sewing that summer before she was to
be married, she was over here about every day. They've never had a
sewing-machine at the Shimerdas', and she made all her things here. I
taught her hemstitching, and I helped her to cut and fit. She used
to sit there at that machine by the window, pe