"Walking! You surely do not intend to walk home with all these parcels?"

"They are not heavy, and besides, I am to walk only as far as Mrs.

Delt's. Harry will meet me there later in the evening. They are very busy on the farm at present, and I told them it was quite unnecessary to drive me to town."

Burton wrestled with his thoughts. Here, surely, was an opportunity to offer a service which could be construed only as a business courtesy.

"If you can wait until I close the store-it will be only a minute-I should be very glad to carry your parcels."

"Oh, that is too much-I could not expect you to do that."

"It is not too much-unless you say it is."

Miss Vane laughed. Hers was a quiet, mirthful laugh, like a vocal smile.

"If your offer is made as a kindness to me, I cannot accept it; if it is your own desire, I cannot refuse."

"It is my desire," said Burton. There was no other answer, although he felt that the reply shattered his theory about a business courtesy.

Soon they were walking gaily along the road leading out of the village.

This ran by the amus.e.m.e.nt grounds, where the young men of the town were gathering for an evening's baseball practice. Burton and his companion were not unnoticed.

The talk was of the commonplace: the weather, the seeding, the life of town and country; Burton careful, discriminating in his speech; Miss Vane frank, impetuous, but correct. They had almost reached Delt's when the young woman, placing her fingers to her throat, uttered a cry of dismay.

"I believe I've lost my brooch," she explained, in answer to Burton's anxious inquiry. "It was a gift from Brother Harry, and--"

She found no words to express her emotion, which Burton knew to be greater than she cared to admit.

"I don't think you need worry," the young man said. "The sun is just setting, and we still have an hour of fair light. I noticed the brooch when we left the store, so it must be on the road. I will hurry back and find it."

"We will," she corrected.

Burton set the packages down a little way from the road, and the two hurried back through the gathering twilight, keeping a keen look-out as they walked. It was not until they were almost at the recreation grounds that a faint glint in the dust attracted Burton's eye. He lifted the precious trifle and restored it to the delighted owner, whose profuse thanks called forth blushes that might be seen even in the dusk which was now silently enwrapping all the familiar objects of the prairie and roadside. Retracing their steps they walked more slowly; it became quite dark, but a mild wind blew from the south-west, and there was just enough eeriness in the situation to suggest the necessity of a man's protection. Finally they arrived at Delt's gate, where Harry Grant and young Mrs. Delt were awaiting Miss Vane with growing anxiety.

A horse and buggy swung past them as they left the main road, and Harry Grant called out:

"Ah, here you are at last! And who is this? Why, I declare, if it isn't our friend Burton. That accounts for the delay. 'In the spring a young man's fancy,' you know."

Gardiner, returning from his fruitless drive to the Grants' home, heard the words and recognized the voice.

And they troubled his sleep that night, and for many nights to come.

CHAPTER IV-CROTTON'S CROSSING

"We have heard the cattle lowing in the silent summer nights; We have smelt the smudge-fire fragrance-we have seen the smudge-fire lights- We have heard the wild duck grumbling to his mate along the bank; Heard the thirsty horses snorting in the stream from which they drank; Heard the voice of Youth and Laughter in the long slow-gloaming night; Seen the arched electric splendour of the Great North's livid light; Read the reason of existence-felt the touch that was divine- And in eyes that glowed responsive saw the end of G.o.d's design."

_Prairie Born._

"Why don't you come out and see us sometime, Burton?"

It was Harry Grant speaking at the door of the store one evening early in June.

"I should like to very much," was the reply, "but you see I am busy all day."

"But not all night, surely. Come, you are ready to close up now, and I am just going home. I guess I'll have to come back later in the night for the vet.; he's out of town at present. Hustle round now, and lock 'er up, and I'll be here in a few minutes with the team."

"But I need a shave, and I'm just in my working garb."

"Nonsense; we're farmers at our house."

"Not all of you," said Burton, and was suddenly astonished at his own temerity.

"Oh, that's how the land lies," said Harry, looking quizzically at the other. "Well, if I had any ambitions in which a young lady figured, which, by the way, doesn't seem to be in my line, I'd rather let her see me in my working clothes than not at all. Besides, you are taking her at the same disadvantage. Now, hustle; I'll be back in ten minutes."

As they drove out along the country road Harry remarked, as though the thought had just occurred to him-

"Ever been out to Crotton's Crossing?"

"No, I haven't, though a quiet day there is one of the treats I promise myself. Let's see; it's about ten miles from here, isn't it?"

"Twelve, and as fine a drive on a June Sunday as you could think about.

Myrtle has been coaxing me for a month to take her out, but when a fellow pegs along all week on the farm he likes to lay up on Sundays."

This was rather unlike Harry, for it was well known that twelve hours a day on the land were not enough to keep him off the baseball diamond in the evening.

Burton made some remark about his old opinions of farm-work, and how life in a store had led him to revise them, and was about to dismiss the subject from his mind when Harry, avoiding his eye with a bashfulness usually foreign to his nature, said:

"Well, haven't you got a thought?"

"Nothing to speak of," his friend admitted. "What would you like me to think?"

"See here," said the other, "must I force an idea into your head with these h.o.r.n.y hands? You're bright enough on some subjects but denser than hotel coffee on others. In brief: You want to spend a day at the crossing; so does my cousin. Now do you see light?"

"Do you mean that I should ask her to go with me?" said Burton, almost overwhelmed with the possibility.

"Oh no, not that you should. There's nothing compulsory about it, and if you don't take her, no doubt some one else will. It's my guess that Gardiner wouldn't need a second hint. But it's your privilege to invite her. The worst she can do is refuse. And she won't do the worst, either."

"But the choir?"

"Oh, fight that out with her; I'm not her guardian."

They drove in silence for some distance, their thoughts accompanied by the rhythmic cadence of the jangling trace-chains. The sun was an hour from the setting, and the golden glow of its oblique rays across the prairies and over the fast-greening wheatfields shed an amber radiance that danced along the trail. The shouts of men at their evening's amus.e.m.e.nt, the lowing of cattle, the occasional bark of a dog, the far off drumming of prairie chicken, came through the quiet stillness of the air. When at last Burton spoke it was in a confidential note he had never used since he had helped lay his mother in the hillside.

"Harry," he said, "men don't often talk of these things, but you've guessed my great desire. I know I am foolish; it's unreasonable of me to entertain such ambitions, but our great hopes, like our great sorrows, come to us unbidden. I cannot help what I feel, but I hope I can help what I do. I appreciate beyond expression the words you have said to me, with all that they imply, but would it be fair, if, indeed, it were not presumptuous, for one like me-I mean a boy, for I am nothing more, on a small wage, and with no other means of support-would it be fair that I should meddle in what every one will say are much more appropriate arrangements?"