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think she hires out as domestic help. She lies, you know.”
    â€œLies?”
    â€œSure,” Nelson laughed. “You heard her repeat twice, the other day, that Olga and Bobby were to give the horses a good feed of oats? Well, I’ll bet my bottom dollar that there isn’t a grain of oats on the place.”
    â€œIs that so?” Niels exclaimed. “But why say it?”
    â€œPride,” Nelson said. “She doesn’t like to let on how poor they are. There isn’t a person in the whole district, Swedish, German, or English, who doesn’t take favours from that woman which she can ill afford to do. Whatever she has and anybody needs or wants she gives away and goes without herself. But it isn’t merely good nature; it’s part thriftlessness and part ostentation.”
    A MUNDSEN , after all, did give up. The two men went deeper and deeper and found no water. Then news came that there was a well-drilling outfit in the district, working some eight, ten miles north-east. Amundsen made up his mind to try that machine, chiefly because the cribbing of a really deep well would be very expensive.
    The decision came on Saturday.
    Since they were not to move till the morrow, Nelson borrowed a gun and a handful of shells from Amundsen; and during the last hours of daylight the two friends went into the bush to look for game. They saw nothing but a rabbit which Nelson brought down and, on their return, contributed to the family larder.
    Amundsen carefully figured out their account, prepared a receipt for them to sign, and pushed over to them the sum of forty-one dollars and twenty cents.
    â€œI take five cents out for the cartridge,” he explained.
    Nelson grinned. “Well,” he said, “not that it matters; but I turned the rabbit in.”
    â€œI understood,” Amundsen argued without the least embarrassment, “you shot the rabbit on my place. You will remember I asked about that.”
    â€œI did,” Nelson said.
    â€œThen the rabbit was mine anyway,” Amundsen decided with finality.
    â€œAll right.” Nelson laughed. And even Niels could not suppress a smile.
    T HUS IT CAME to pass that the two friends returned to Lund’s sooner than they had expected. When they left Amundsen’s place, Ellen nodded to them and said, “Good-by” as to casual strangers.
    A T LUND’S , too, Niels saw Olga harnessing a team of big, weary brutes. She and Bobby were going into the bush after firewood.
    Niels watched her as he had watched Ellen. The morning was cold; and the girl was warmly dressed. But there was a difference. None of the silks to-day; but no sheep-skin, either. She wore a multitude of ragged things, each, like those of her father, too thin for the season, but together calculated to keep the cold out, at least. And, whereas Ellen, when she donned her working clothes, had changed from a virgin, cool and distant, into a being that was almost sexless, Olga preserved her whole feminity. The nonchalance of her bearing also stood in strange contrast to the intense determination with which Ellen went after her work. About Olga’s movements there was hesitation, an almost lazy deliberation very different from the competent lack of hurry in Ellen. Besides, Ellen ignored the men at their work; Olga stopped, looking on, and chatted with Nelson about his plans.
    This more homely atmosphere turned Niels’ thoughts back to Sweden, to his poor home where his father and mother had died … They, too, had worked very hard.
    His mother, for instance, had to the very last, to the day when she was overtaken by her final illness, daily gone into the park owned by Baron Halson to gather dry brush for the stove. That had been allowed by way of charity. To earn her bread she had gone out scrubbing floors even when she was no longer able to do satisfactory work. The people whom she served had kept her on because they were good-hearted, after all; but