The Desert and The Sown

ce, and climbed aboard one of those great through trains whose rushing thunder had made the girlish heart so often beat. This was long before the West Shore Line was built. Neither of th

uld be so provinc

But it broke the spirit of a man in him to see his young wife's despair. Poverty frightened and quelled her. The deep-rooted security of her old home was something she missed every day of her makeshift existence. It was degradation to live in "rooms," or a room; to move for want of means

You make tragedy a dream. But there is a deep vein of tragedy in our blood. And my

Middletons carry sail enough to ne

ou unde

blood, and the sort of blood I thought you had. It explains

hate a weapon. I am always ashamed

that wa

s and the Devi

to my father'

at he is aside fro

one. His sword is a symbol of healing. The army is the great sur

y," said Paul gloomily;-"the sho

en a snob about my f

with its pomp and circumstance around you. You ar

man! When I despise you for your farming relat

hter's" outfit moving into Bisuka, if there was a woman on the driver's seat, he wanted to take off his hat to her. For so his mother sat beside his father and held him in he

tion, when the keeper's body was found one morning stiff and cold in his bunk. He died in the night alone. Emily Bogardus had cause to

gap in the Western divide was the Bruneau Valley, where the bell-mare of the team had been raised. In the night she broke her hopples and struck out across the summit with the four mules at her heels. Towards morning a light snow fell and covered their tracks. Adam was compelled to

. I wish it need not be told, yet all the rest depends on it; and that such an experience could come to a woman like my mother shows what exposure and humiliation lie in the straightest path if there is

to do with that man the better. He may have warned mother; and she, left alone with the brute, did not know the wisdom of

oon be with her again, he had taken all their little stock of funds. But he had left her his gun, and with this within

t of terms with the keeper. He had threatened-well, no matter-such a threat as a more sophisticated woman would have smiled at. She was simple, but she w

To this day she believes that if Bud Granger had led the search, my father would have been found; but he went East to sell his cattle, the snows set in, and the search party came straggling home. The man, Granger, had left a letter of explanation, inclosing one from mother to father, with the keeper. He bribed and frightened him, but for years she used to agonize over a fear that father had come back and the keeper had withheld the letter and

ever came to claim it of his successor. Somewhere in this great wilde

and her past, but they found a letter from one of her old schoolmates asking about teachers' salaries in the West, and they wrote to her begging her to make known my mother's condition to her relatives if any were living. At length came

rother's house he proposed to build up his own; just as he would step in and buy depreciated bonds to hold them for a rise. He offered her a home and maintenance during his lifetime, and his estate for herself and her children when he was through. There were no conditions referring to our father, but it was understood that she should give up her own. This, mainly, to spite his brother, yet under all there was an

les. But my father was a hired man; and my mother has done every menial thing with those soft

you had not the c

courage to tell you-not any

think it nee

we to do with Uncle Jacob's money? Go off

touched her, as accounting for her lover's saddened, conscience-ridden youth, it was no argument agai

to listen, year after year, to bitter, unnatural words against him. I am not sure but it kept her from him at the last; for if Uncle Jacob had not stepped in and made

not be mor

r our happiness; because she lost her own, I think, and paid so heavily

lame her!"

. She is so, unconsciously; she does not know the pull there is on me, t

s. We exchanged biographies at school, and there was no

she laughs, her laugh is like a cry. Haven't you noticed that? Startle her, and her eyes are the ver

ied them all

ave missed the knowledge of our beginnings for the world. W

day and generation. You might as well wear countr

belong to the same class except by virtue of Uncle Jacob's money. Confess you

ar," said Moya, with her caressing eyes on his-they had paused under the lamp

," Paul averred, smil

our mother is quite human, is she not?-almost as human as I am

eeded all

he girl, "but you dwell so upon her humil

ch to hide, you

s. What has become of little Emily Van Elten who ran away with

the world, and for our sakes she has learned to

which is-w

t see her stor

that

suspense, the silence of a sorrow th

is a most reticent woman. But is

elves after we have passed through fires of grief, and been reca

her, who loved her so, and worked so hard for his fami

he sorrow that cut my mother's life in two brought you and me together. It ren

d Moya with blissful irony, "t