ally you, Luther?" Elizabeth asked, and there was no mistaking
the glad tones.

They looked each other over for changes; they sat beside each other at the
table, and Elizabeth asked questions and talked excitedly while he ate.

"Your hair is darker, and it's curly," she remarked, remembering the
tow-coloured locks cut square across the boyish, sunburned neck.

Luther Hansen's face crinkled into fine lines and his blue-gray eyes
laughed amusedly.

"Got darker as I got older, Lizzie, an' th' typhoid put them girl-twists
into th' ends of it. Bet you're a wishin' for it--all th' women folks do.
Wish you had it."

They went for a walk after supper and talked of many things. He was the
same Luther, grown older and even more companionable. Elizabeth learned
that both his parents had died, leaving the then seventeen-year-old boy a
piece of land heavily mortgaged, and with nothing but a broken down team
and a superannuated cow to raise the debt. By constant labour and
self-denial the boy had lifted the financial load, and then happening to
meet a man who owned this Kansas land had traded, with the hope that on
the cheaper land he could reach out faster and get a good increase on the
original price besides.

"I remembered th' kind of land it was about here, an' didn't need t' come
an' see it first," he said. "I was goin' t' hunt you up 'fore long,
anyhow. I never thought of these folks a knowin' you, though, after I got
here. Funny, ain't it? I'm right glad t' be back t' you," was his frank
confession.

And Elizabeth Farnshaw looked up happily into his face, meeting his eye
squarely and without embarrassment. It was as natural to have Luther, and
to have him say that he wanted to see her, as it would have been to listen
to the announcement from her brother.

"I'm so glad," she replied, "and I've so much to tell you that I hardly
know where to begin."

Luther laughed.

"Mrs. Hornby thought I'd be put out about that room, but I told 'er
nothin' like that'd bother me if it brought you t' th' house. I've been
sleepin' under th' wagon all th' way down from Minnesoty an' I can go
right on doin' it."

They did not go far, but wandered back and sat on Nathan's unpainted
doorstep while the stars came out, and Elizabeth forgot all about the
trials of the morning, and told him of her engagement to John Hunter.

"I'm going to live right next to your farm, Luther, and you must----"

Elizabeth Farnshaw had started to say that h