“She ain’t no longer,” said Old Man Fewkes, “a member o’ my family.  I shall will my proputty away from her.  I’ve made up my mind, Jake:  an’ now le’s talk about the Speak.  Our plans was never better laid.  Celebrate, tell Jake how we make our money a-goin’, and you, Surrager, denote to him your machine f’r gittin’ out the gold.”

I was too absorbed in thinking about Rowena to take in what Surajah and Celebrate said.  I have a dim recollection that Celebrate’s plan for making money was to fill the wagon box with white beans which were scarce in Denver City, as we then called Denver, and could be sold for big money when they got there.  I have no remembrance of Surajah Dowlah’s plan for mining.  I declined to go with them, and they went away toward Monterey Centre, saying that they would stay there a few days, “to kind of recuperate up,” and they hoped I would join them.  What about Rowena?  They had been so mysterious about her, that I had a new subject of thought now, and, for I was very fond of the poor girl, of anxiety.  Not that she would be the worse for losing her family.  In fact, she would be the better for it, one might think.  Her older brothers and sisters, I remembered, had been bound out back east, and this seemed to show a lack of family affection; but the tremor in Ma Fewkes’s voice, and the agitation in which Old Man Fewkes had delivered what in books would be his parental curse, led me to think that they were in deep trouble on account of their breach with Rowena.  Poor girl!  After all, they were her parents and brothers, and as long as she was with them, she had not been quite alone in the world.  My idea of what had taken place may be judged by the fact that when I next saw Magnus I asked him if he knew that Rowena and her people had had a fuss.  I looked upon the case as that of a family fuss, and that only.  Magnus looked very solemn, and said that he had seen none of the family since we had finished our work for Gowdy—­a year ago.

“What said the old man, Yake?” he asked anxiously.

“He said he was going to will his property away from her!” I replied, laughing heartily at the idea:  but Magnus did not laugh.  “He said that she ain’t no longer a member of his family, Magnus.  Don’t that beat you!”

“Yes,” said Magnus gravely, “dat beat me, Yake.”

He bowed his head in thought for a while, and then looked up.

“Ay can’t go to her, Yake.  Ay can’t go to her.  But you go, Yake; you go.  An’ you tal her—­dat Magnus Thorkelson—­Norsky Thorkelson—­bane ready to do what he can for her.  All he can do.  Tal her Magnus ready to live or die for her.  You tal her dat, Yake!”

I had to think over this a few days before I could begin to guess what it meant; and three days after, she came to see me.  It was a Sunday right after harvest.  I had put on my new clothes thinking to go to hear Elder Thorndyke preach, but when I thought that I had no longer any pleasure in the thought of Virginia, no chance ever to have her for my wife, no dreams of her for the future even, I sat in a sort of stupor until it was too late to go, and then I walked out to look at things.