dkerchief knotted and thrown loosely over his shoulders, a slouched
hat pulled darkly over a head of long tangled hair, which, however,
shadowed a round, comfortable face, scantily and youthfully bearded,
were part of these confusing inconsistencies.

The shadows of the team wagon were already lengthening grotesquely over
the flat, cultivated fields, which for some time had taken the place of
the plains of wild oats in the branch road into which they had turned.
The gigantic shadow of the proprietor, occasionally projected before it,
was in characteristic exaggeration, and was often obliterated by a puff
of dust, stirred by the plodding hoofs of the peaceful oxen, and swept
across the field by the strong afternoon trades. The sun sank lower,
although a still potent presence above the horizon line; the creaking
wagon lumbered still heavily along. Yet at intervals its belligerent
proprietor would start up from his slouching, silent march, break out
into violent, disproportionate, but utterly ineffective objurgation
of his cattle, jump into the air and kick his heels together in some
paroxysm of indignation against them,--an act, however, which was
received always with heavy bovine indifference, the dogged scorn of
swaying, repudiating heads, or the dull contempt of lazily flicking
tails.

Towards sunset one or two straggling barns and cottages indicated their
approach to the outskirts of a country town or settlement. Here the team
halted, as if the belligerent-looking teamster had felt his appearance
was inconsistent with an effeminate civilization, and the oxen were
turned into an open waste opposite a nondescript wooden tenement, half
farmhouse and half cabin, evidently of the rudest Western origin. He may
have recognized the fact that these "shanties" were not, as the ordinary
traveler might infer, the first rude shelter of the original pioneers
or settlers, but the later makeshifts of some recent Western immigrants
who, like himself, probably found themselves unequal to the settled
habits of the village, and who still retained their nomadic instincts.
It chanced, however, that the cabin at present was occupied by a New
England mechanic and his family, who had emigrated by ship around Cape
Horn, and who had no experience of the West, the plains, or its people.
It was therefore with some curiosity and a certain amount of fascinated
awe that the mechanic's only daughter regarded from the open door of her
dwelling the ar