ver-ending source of delight and interest to her. Their
problems at home as well as at school were subjects of common discussion.
He had been the beginning and the end of her social life. Now she took him
into her dream of going away, and discussed her ideas of the best way of
disposing of the stock by sale or gift, the sort of home she would have
with her grandparents, and pictured, with a vivid imagination, the woods
and streams she had heard her father describe. If she only could go! They
stopped at every field to watch the voracious insects, which were eating
every green thing upon which they happened to alight. A turnip patch on
the corner of the Farnshaw place which had been straggling, but green,
when the cattle had passed through it that afternoon, had not a leaf to
show as they returned. The ground was dotted all over the patch with small
holes where the hungry swarms, not satisfied with the tops, had followed
the stems down into the earth, eating out the bulbs to the very taproots.

They drove the cattle across to the usual feeding place, but the
grasshoppers flew up in continuous clouds before every moving object, and
it was impossible for them to eat.

"Why don't you take them in and shut them up?" Luther asked when he saw
that the herd was so restless that the child could not manage them alone.

"Pa wouldn't let me," she sighed, and continued to ride around her
charges.

Luther had intended going home long before this, but he knew that Lizzie
could not control the restless cattle, and so he stayed with her, rather
glad of the excuse to do so. Josiah Farnshaw's temper was a matter of
neighbourhood knowledge. A word of explanation to his father, Luther knew,
would be all that he would need to make the fact of his absence
commendable. He was glad of any excuse which would leave him with Lizzie
Farnshaw for an extra hour, but he was to find that hour disappointing,
for the cattle were restless and kept them both in constant motion.

When at last the time came to corral the stock a new calamity was
discovered. The cattle wandered into the edge of a field of flax as they
neared the barn. Luther, following them, dropped from the back of his pony
and stopped to examine the grain. The girl was excitedly getting the
straying animals crowded on toward the pens and it was not till she had
the gate shut fast on them that she could take time to join him.

"What is it?" she asked as she rode up.

The lanky boy, who