th the honey from the
bees in the garden. They both seemed very remote, very primitive even to
me, to my friend Cross they were exactly like characters in a story. He
could only look and listen and smile from his seat in the corner.

William, a skilled bee-man, described to us his methods of tracking wild
swarms, and told us how he handled those in his hives. "I can scoop 'em
up as if they were so many kernels of corn," he said. After supper as we
all sat on the porch watching the sunset, he reverted to the brave days
of fifty-five when deer and bear came down over the hills, when a rifle
was almost as necessary as a hoe, and as he talked I revived in him the
black-haired smiling young giant of my boyhood days, untouched of age or
care.

He was a poet, in his dreamy reticent way, for when next morning I
called attention to the beauty of the view down the valley, his face
took on a kind of wistful sweetness and a certain shyness as he
answered with a visible effort to conceal his feeling--"I like it--No
place better. I wish your father and mother had never left the valley."
And in this wish I joined.

On the third day we resumed our journey toward Dakota, and the Doctor,
though outwardly undismayed by the long hard ride and the increasing
barrenness of the level lands, sighed with relief when at last I pointed
out against the level sky-line the wavering bulk of the grain elevator
which alone marked the wind-swept deserted site of Ordway, the end of
our journey. He was tired.

Business, I soon learned, had not been going well on the border during
the two years of my absence. None of the towns had improved. On the
contrary, all had lost ground.

Another dry year was upon the land and the settlers were deeply
disheartened. The holiday spirit of eight years before had entirely
vanished. In its place was a sullen rebellion against government and
against God. The stress of misfortune had not only destroyed hope, it
had brought out the evil side of many men. Dissensions had grown common.
Two of my father's neighbors had gone insane over the failure of their
crops. Several had slipped away "between two days" to escape their
debts, and even little Jessie, who met us at the train, brave as a
meadow lark, admitted that something gray had settled down over the
plain.

Graveyards, jails, asylums, all the accompaniments of civilization, were
now quite firmly established. On the west lay the lands of the Sioux and
beyond them t