“Yes,” I said, “but what will you....”

“Never mind about me,” said she soothingly.  “I’ve thought of another way out.  You go to sleep, now, and don’t think of me or my troubles any more.”

I lay looking at her for a while, and wondering how she could suddenly be so quiet after her agitation of the day; and after a while, the scene swam before my eyes, and I went off into the refreshing sleep of a tired boy.  The sun was up when I awoke.  Rowena was gone.  I went out and found that she had saddled her horse and left sometime in the night; afterward I found out that it was in the gray of the morning.  She had watched by my bedside all night, and left only after it was plain that I was breathing naturally and that my spasm had passed.  She had come into my life that day like a tornado, but had left it much as it had been before, except that I wondered what was to become of her.  I was comforted by the thought that she had “thought of another way.”  And it was a long time before the nobility of her action was plain to me; but when I realized it, I never forgot it.  I had offered her all I had when she begged for it, she had taken it, and then restored it, as the dying soldier gave the draught of water to his comrade, saying, “Thy necessity is greater than mine.”

Once or twice I made an effort to tell Magnus Thorkelson about this, as we worked at our after-harvest haying together that week; but it was a hard thing to do.  Perhaps it would not be a secret much longer; but as yet it was Rowena’s secret, not mine.  I knew, too, that Magnus had been haunting Rowena for two years; that he had been making visits to Blue-grass Manor often when she was there, without taking me into his confidence; that his excuse that he went to help Surajah Fewkes with his inventions was not the real reason for his going.  I remembered, too, that Rowena had always spoken well of Magnus, and seemed to see what most of us did not, that Magnus was better educated in the way foreigners are taught than the rest of us; and she did not look down on him the way we did then on folks from other countries.  I had no way of knowing how they stood toward each other, though Magnus had looked sad and stopped talking lately whenever I had mentioned her.  I knew it would be a shock to him to learn of her present and coming trouble; and, strange as it may seem, I began to put it back into the dark places in my brain as if it had not happened; and when it came to mind clearly as it kept doing, I tried to comfort myself with the thought that Rowena had said that she had thought of another way out.

We had frost early that year—­a hard white frost sometime about the tenth of September.  Neither Magnus nor I had any sound corn, though our wheat, oats and barley were heavy and fine; and we had oceans of hay.  The frost killed the grass early, and early in October we had a heavy rain followed by another freeze, and then a long, calm, warm Indian summer.  The prairie was covered with a dense mat of dry grass which rustled in the wind but furnished no feed for our stock.  It was a splendid fall for plowing, and I began to feel hope return to me as I followed my plow around and around the lands I laid off, and watched the black ribbon of new plowing widen and widen as the day advanced toward night.