rs, "those folks that expects to raise good
fruit by begging graffs, and then layin' abed and readin' newspapers, will
have a good time waitin'. Elbow-grease is the secret of the Blood
Seedlin', ain't it, Al?"

"Well, I reckon, Squire Withers, a man never gits anything wuth havin'
without a tussle for it; and as to secrets, I don't believe in them,
nohow."

A square-browed, resolute, silent, middle-aged man, who loved his home
better than any amusement, regular at church, at the polls, something
richer every Christmas than he had been on the New Year's preceding--a man
whom everybody liked and few loved much--such had Allen Golyer grown to
be.

* * * * *

If I have lingered too long over this colorless and commonplace picture of
rural Western life, it is because I have felt an instinctive reluctance to
recount the startling and most improbable incident which fell one night
upon this quiet neighborhood, like a thunderbolt out of blue sky. The
story I must tell will be flatly denied and easily refuted. It is absurd
and fantastic, but, unless human evidence is to go for nothing when it
testifies of things unusual, the story is true.

At the head of the rocky hollow through which Chaney Creek ran to the
river, lived the family who gave the brook its name. They were among the
early pioneers of the county. In the squatty yellow stone house the
present Chaney occupied his grandfather had stood a siege from Black Hawk
all one summer day and night, until relieved by the garrison of Fort
Edward. The family had not grown with the growth of the land. Like many
others of the pioneers, they had shown no talent for keeping abreast of
the civilization whose guides and skirmishers they had been. In the
progress of a half century they had sold, bit by bit, their section of
land, which kept intact would have proved a fortune. They lived very
quietly, working enough to secure their own pork and hominy, and regarding
with a sort of impatient scorn every scheme of public or private
enterprise that passed under their eyes.

The elder Chaney had married, some years before, at the Mormon town of
Nauvoo, the fair-haired daughter of a Swedish mystic, who had come across
the sea beguiled by dreams of a perfect theocracy, and who on arriving at
the city of the Latter-Day Saints had died, broken-hearted from his lost
illusions.

The only dowry that Seraphita Neilsen brought her husband, besides her
delicate be