He was still, as Antonia said, a city man. He liked theatres and lighted
streets and music and a game of dominoes after the day's work was over.
His sociability was stronger than his acquisitive instinct. He liked
to live day by day and night by night, sharing in the excitement of the
crowd.--Yet his wife had managed to hold him here on a farm, in one of
the loneliest countries in the world.

I could see the little chap, sitting here every evening by the windmill,
nursing his pipe and listening to the silence; the wheeze of the pump,
the grunting of the pigs, an occasional squawking when the hens were
disturbed by a rat. It did rather seem to me that Cuzak had been made
the instrument of Antonia's special mission. This was a fine life,
certainly, but it wasn't the kind of life he had wanted to live. I
wondered whether the life that was right for one was ever right for two!

I asked Cuzak if he didn't find it hard to do without the gay company
he had always been used to. He knocked out his pipe against an upright,
sighed, and dropped it into his pocket.

'At first I near go crazy with lonesomeness,' he said frankly, 'but my
woman is got such a warm heart. She always make it as good for me as she
could. Now it ain't so bad; I can begin to have some fun with my boys,
already!'

As we walked toward the house, Cuzak cocked his hat jauntily over one
ear and looked up at the moon. 'Gee!' he said in a hushed voice, as
if he had just wakened up, 'it don't seem like I am away from there
twenty-six year!'

III

AFTER DINNER THE NEXT day I said good-bye and drove back to Hastings to
take the train for Black Hawk. Antonia and her children gathered round
my buggy before I started, and even the little ones looked up at me with
friendly faces. Leo and Ambrosch ran ahead to open the lane gate. When
I reached the bottom of the hill, I glanced back. The group was still
there by the windmill. Antonia was waving her apron.

At the gate Ambrosch lingered beside my buggy, resting his arm on the
wheel-rim. Leo slipped through the fence and ran off into the pasture.

'That's like him,' his brother said with a shrug. 'He's a crazy kid.
Maybe he's sorry to have you go, and maybe he's jealous. He's jealous of
anybody mother makes a fuss over, even the priest.'

I found I hated to leave this boy, with his pleasant voice and his fine
head and eyes. He looked very manly as he stood there without a hat, the
wind rippling his shirt ab