an, she lay
down on the bed and bore her child.

"I was lifting supper when old Mrs. Shimerda came running down the
basement stairs, out of breath and screeching:--

"'Baby come, baby come!' she says. 'Ambrosch much like devil!'

"Brother William is surely a patient man. He was just ready to sit down to
a hot supper after a long day in the fields. Without a word he rose and
went down to the barn and hooked up his team. He got us over there as
quick as it was humanly possible. I went right in, and began to do for
Antonia; but she laid there with her eyes shut and took no account of me.
The old woman got a tubful of warm water to wash the baby. I overlooked
what she was doing and I said out loud:--

"'Mrs. Shimerda, don't you put that strong yellow soap near that baby.
You'll blister its little skin.' I was indignant.

[Illustration: Antonia driving her cattle home]

"'Mrs. Steavens,' Antonia said from the bed, 'if you'll look in the top
tray of my trunk, you'll see some fine soap.' That was the first word she
spoke.

"After I'd dressed the baby, I took it out to show it to Ambrosch. He was
muttering behind the stove and would n't look at it.

"'You'd better put it out in the rain barrel,' he says.

"'Now, see here, Ambrosch,' says I, 'there's a law in this land, don't
forget that. I stand here a witness that this baby has come into the world
sound and strong, and I intend to keep an eye on what befalls it.' I pride
myself I cowed him.

"Well, I expect you're not much interested in babies, but Antonia's got on
fine. She loved it from the first as dearly as if she'd had a ring on her
finger, and was never ashamed of it. It's a year and eight months old now,
and no baby was ever better cared-for. Antonia is a natural-born mother. I
wish she could marry and raise a family, but I don't know as there's much
chance now."

I slept that night in the room I used to have when I was a little boy,
with the summer wind blowing in at the windows, bringing the smell of the
ripe fields. I lay awake and watched the moonlight shining over the barn
and the stacks and the pond, and the windmill making its old dark shadow
against the blue sky.

IV

THE next afternoon I walked over to the Shimerdas'. Yulka showed me the
baby and told me that Antonia was shocking wheat on the southwest quarter.
I went down across the fields, and Tony saw me from a long way off. She
stood still by her shocks, leaning on h