in the air with a pointing forefinger. He had
entered into the spirit of the thing eagerly.

"It's half-past nine now," he went on, looking at the clock. "It'll be
eleven time we get the stuff loaded and hauled up there. Let's go out
and get at it. Lucky the bobs are on the wagon; they don't make such a
racket as wheels."

He took the lantern from its nail behind the door and lighted it, after
which he put on his boots, cap, and mittens, and flung his overcoat
across his shoulders. Nels, meanwhile, had put on his outer garments,
also.

"Shut up the stove, Nels." Charlie blew out the light and opened the
door. "There, hang it!" he exclaimed, turning back. "I forgot the note.
Ought to be in ink, I suppose. Well, never mind now; we won't put on any
style about it."

He took down a pencil from the shelf, and, extracting a bit of wrapping
paper from a bundle behind the wood-box, wrote the note by the light of
the lantern.

"There, I guess that will do," he said, finally. "Come on!"

Outside, the night air was cold and bracing, and in the black vault of
the sky the winter constellations flashed and throbbed. The shadows of
the two men, thrown by the lantern, bobbed huge and grotesque across the
snow and among the bare branches of the cottonwoods, as they moved
toward the barn.

"Ay tank ve put on dose extra side poards and make her an even fifty
pushel," said Nels, after they had backed the wagon up to the granary
door. "Ve might as vell do it oop right, skence ve're at it."

Having carried out this suggestion, the two shovelled steadily, with
short intervals of rest, for three quarters of an hour, the dark pile of
grain in the wagon-box rising gradually until it stood flush with the
top.

Good it was to look upon, cold and soft and yielding to the touch, this
heaped-up wealth from the inexhaustible treasure-house of the mighty
West. Charlie and Nels felt something of this as they viewed the results
of their labours for a moment before hitching up the team.

"It's A number one hard," said Charlie, picking up a handful and sifting
it slowly through his fingers, "and it'll fetch seventy-four cents. But
you can't raise any worse on this old farm of ours if you try," he
added, a little proudly. "Nor anywhere else in the Jim River Valley, for
that matter."

As they approached the Roney place, looking dim and indistinct in the
darkness, their voices hushed apprehensively, and the noise of the
sled-runners slipping t