ase when
he could. Neither the sharp whistle of the locomotive nor the
brakeman's call disturbed him. It was not until after the train had
stopped that he rose, put on a Panama hat, took from the rack a
small valise and a flute-case, and stepped deliberately to the
station platform. The baggage was already unloaded, and the stranger
presented a check for a battered sole-leather steamer-trunk.

"Can you keep it here for a day or two?" he asked the agent. "I may
send for it, and I may not."

"Depends on whether you like the country, I suppose?" demanded the
agent in a challenging tone.

"Just so."

The agent shrugged his shoulders, looked scornfully at the small
trunk, which was marked "N.E.," and handed out a claim check without
further comment. The stranger watched him as he caught one end of
the trunk and dragged it into the express room. The agent's manner
seemed to remind him of something amusing. "Doesn't seem to be a
very big place," he remarked, looking about.

"It's big enough for us," snapped the agent, as he banged the trunk
into a corner.

That remark, apparently, was what Nils Ericson had wanted. He
chuckled quietly as he took a leather strap from his pocket and
swung his valise around his shoulder. Then he settled his Panama
securely on his head, turned up his trousers, tucked the flute-case
under his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the town,
as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great fenced
pasture, emerging, when he rolled under the barbed wire at the
farther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up from
the river valley to the high prairies, where the ripe wheat stood
yellow and the tin roofs and weather-cocks were twinkling in the
fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the sun was
sinking and the farm-wagons on their way home from town came
rattling by, covering him with dust and making him sneeze. When one
of the farmers pulled up and offered to give him a lift, he
clambered in willingly. The driver was a thin, grizzled old man with
a long lean neck and a foolish sort of beard, like a goat's. "How
fur ye goin'?" he asked, as he clucked to his horses and started
off.

"Do you go by the Ericson place?"

"Which Ericson?" The old man drew in his reins as if he expected to
stop again.

"Preacher Ericson's."

"Oh, the Old Lady Ericson's!" He turned and looked at Nils. "La, me!
If you're goin' out there you might 'a' rid out in the