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they had treated her as a being from a lower social, yes, human plane.
    He remembered how once, when he was about ten years old, he had stood outside of one of the mansions where she worked, for two, three hours after school, waiting for her because she had forgotten to put the key to the hut in the usual place. There he had stood in the street of the little town, looking at the brass-trimmed door with its polished brass name-plate, longing for his mother to come; for it was cold and he was scantily dressed. Yet he had not dared to touch the shining brass knocker on the well-to-do door which it was not for one like him to lift.
    He also remembered how that vision of himself as a child, as a poor child, had haunted him when he grew up till fierce and impotent hatreds devastated his heart, so that at last it had become his dream to emigrate to a country where such things could not be. By some trick in his ancestry there was implanted in him the longing for the land that would be his: with a house of his own and a wife that would go through it like an inspiration: he had come to Canada, the land of the million farmsteads to be had for the asking.
    Here, there were big trees which any one could fell for firewood. Nobody looked down upon him because he was poor. Money came easily: he had saved over a hundred and fifty dollars in a few months. No doubt it went easily, too. But he would hold on to it till he owned his land.…
    Lunds? The trouble with them was that they were children one and all.…
    In this country there was a way out for him who was young and strong. In Sweden it had seemed to him as if his and everybody’s fate had been fixed from all eternity . He could not win out because he had to overcome, not only his own poverty, but that of all his ancestors to boot.…
    S OME TIME , during that forenoon, Mrs. Vogel came driving on to Lund’s yard. She fetched her mail from the house; and then she stopped her pony for a moment at the well-site to look on. Nelson dropped his pick and straightened his back.
    â€œNo, no, Mr. Nelson,” she said. “Go on; I love to watch strong men work.”
    Niels, too, looked up.
    On her lips lay a smile; her black, beady eyes seemed to dance when they rested on his friend, and to glow with a strange warmth when they lighted on his own.
    She wore a plush cap, a real fur coat, and, on the hand which held the lines, a knitted mitt of white wool.
    â€œOh,” she said, “I don’t want to keep you. Get up, Prince. Bye-bye. I wanted to see you work, not loaf.”
    And she drove on, not without throwing over her shoulder a glance which sent a tingling sensation along Niels’ spine.
    Woman had never figured as a concrete thing in Niels’ thought of his future in this new country. True, he had seen in his visions a wife and children; but the wife had been a symbol merely. Now that he was in the country of his dreams and gaining a foothold, it seemed as if individual women were bent on replacing the vague, schematic figures he had had in his mind. He found this intrusion strangely disquieting.
    â€œShe seems to have taken a fancy to you,” Nelson startled him by saying.
    Niels scowled when he bent to his work. His friend’s remark was like the violation of a confidence, like an intrusion into the arcana of holy ground; for as yet Niels was chaste to the very core of his being.
    There was a distant look in his eyes when at last he brought himself to reply, “Maybe to you.”
    Nelson laughed. “Don’t think so. She’s seen me often enough. She’s never stopped to flirt with me before.”
    This word seemed indelicate. It opened a gap between Niels and his friend; it would take time to bridge it over.…
    A FEW DAYS LATER , on Wednesday, Nelson had, as usual, started the digging while Niels drew up the pails and removed the earth from the pit, when a sudden shout made Niels jump back to the edge.
    There, in the still