back to bid
you good-by, and to say that you've been so good to me that I can't
think of it without tears! Good-by, Jacob!"

She lifted my face between her two hands, kissed me the least little
bit, and ran off. Back in the darkness I saw the tall figure of Grandma
Thorndyke, who seemed to be looking steadily off into the distance.
Virginia locked arms with her and they went away leaving me with my cows
and my empty wagon--filled with the goods in which I took so much pride
when I left Madison.

With the first rift of light in the east I rose from my sleepless bed
under the wagon--I would not profane her couch inside by occupying
it--and yoked up my cattle. Before noon I was in Cedar Falls; and from
there west I found the Ridge Road growing less and less a beaten track
owing to decreasing travel; but plainly marked by stakes which those two
pioneers had driven along the way as I have said for the guidance of
others in finding a road which they had missed themselves.

We were developing citizenship and the spirit of America. Those wagon
loads of stakes cut on the Cedar River in 1854 and driven in the prairie
sod as guides for whoever might follow showed forth the true spirit of
the American pioneer.

But I was in no frame of mind to realize this. I was drawing nearer and
nearer my farm, but for a day or so this gave me no pleasure. My mind
was on other things. I was lonelier than I had been since I found Rucker
in Madison. I talked to no one--I merely followed the stakes--until one
morning I pulled into a strange cluster of houses out on the green
prairie, the beginning of a village. I drew up in front of its
blacksmith shop and asked the name of the place. The smith lifted his
face from the sole of the horse he was shoeing and replied,
"Monterey Centre."

I looked around at my own county, stretching away in green waves on all
sides of the brand-new village; which was so small that it did not
interfere with the view. I had reached my own county! I had been a part
of it on this whole wonderful journey, getting acquainted with its
people, picking up the threads of its future, now its history.

Prior to this time I had been courting the country; now I was to be
united with it in that holy wedlock which binds the farmer to the soil
he tills. Out of this black loam was to come my own flesh and blood, and
the bodies, and I believe, in some measure, the souls of my children.
Some dim conception of this made me draw in a