he said, with a slow smile, "I have never got used to
anything,--not even living." And so she baffled them all, yet won them.

The weeks went by. Elizabeth Astrado attended to her bees, milked her
cow, fed her fowls, baked, washed, and cleaned, like the simple women
about her, saving that as she did it a look of ineffable content lighted
up her face, and she sang for happiness. Sometimes, amid the ballads
that she hummed, a strain slipped in of some great melody, which
she, singing unaware, as it were, corrected, shaking her finger in
self-reproval, and returning again to the ballads and the hymns. Nor
was she remiss in neighborly offices; but if any were ailing, or had a
festivity, she was at hand to assist, condole, or congratulate, carrying
always some simple gift in her hand, appropriate to the occasion.

She had her wider charities too, for all she kept close to her home.
When, one day, a story came to her of a laborer struck down with heat in
putting in a culvert on the railroad, and gossip said he could not
speak English, she hastened to him, caught dying words from his lips,
whispered a reply, and then what seemed to be a prayer, while he
held fast her hand, and sank to coma with wistful eyes upon her face.
Moreover 'twas she who buried him, raising a cross above his grave, and
she who planted rose-bushes about the mound.

"He spoke like an Italian," said the physician to her warily.

"And so he was," she had replied.

"A fellow-countryman of yours, no doubt?"

"Are not all men our countrymen, my friend?" she said, gently. "What are
little lines drawn in the imagination of men, dividing territory, that
they should divide our sympathies? The world is my country--and yours,
I hope. Is it not so?"

Then there had also been a hapless pair of lovers, shamed before their
community, who, desperate, impoverished, and bewildered at the war
between nature and society, had been helped by her into a new part of
the world. There had been a widow with many children, who had found
baskets of cooked food and bundles of well-made clothing on her step.
And as the days passed, with these pleasant offices, the face of the
strange woman glowed with an ever-increasing content, and her dark,
delicate beauty grew.

John Hartington spent his vacation at Des Moines, having a laudable
desire to see something of the world before returning to his native
town, with his college honors fresh upon him. Swiftest of the college
runners w