join
his voice to hers.

It was a moment of sorrow for us all but only for a moment, for Deborah
struck up one of the lively "darky pieces" which my father loved so
well, and with its jubilant patter young and old returned to smiling.

It must be now in the Kingdom a-comin'
In the year of Jubilo!

we shouted, and so translated the words of the song into an expression
of our own rejoicing present.

Song after song followed, war chants which renewed my father's military
youth, ballads which deepened the shadows in my mother's eyes, and then
at last, at my request, she sang _The Rolling Stone_, and with a smile
at father, we all joined the chorus.

We'll stay on the farm and we'll suffer no loss
For the stone that keeps rolling will gather no moss.

My father was not entirely convinced, but I, surrounded by these farmer
folk, hearing from their lips these quaint melodies, responded like some
tensely-strung instrument, whose chords are being played upon by
searching winds. I acknowledged myself at home and for all time. Beneath
my feet lay the rugged country rock of my nativity. It pleased me to
discover my mental characteristics striking so deep into this typically
American soil.

One by one our guests rose and went away, jocularly saying to my father,
"Well, Dick, you've done the right thing at last. It's a comfort to have
you so handy. We'll come to dinner often." To me they said, "We'll
expect to see more of you, now that the old folks are here."

"This is my home," I repeated.

When we were alone I turned to mother in the spirit of the builder.
"Give me another year and I'll make this a homestead worth talking
about. My head is full of plans for its improvement."

"It's good enough for me as it is," she protested.

"No, it isn't," I retorted quickly. "Nothing that I can do is good
enough for you, but I intend to make you entirely happy if I can."

Here I make an end of this story, here at the close of an epoch of
western settlement, here with my father and mother sitting beside me in
the light of a tender Thanksgiving, in our new old home and facing a
peaceful future. I was thirty-three years of age, and in a certain very
real sense this plot of ground, this protecting roof may be taken as the
symbols of my hard-earned first success as well as the defiant gages of
other necessary battles which I must fight and win.

* * * * *

As I was leaving next day fo