“It calls,” said he, “for an application of the doctrine of idem sonans—­but it will serve, it will serve.”

I marveled that the Gowdy carriage still was astern of me after all this time; and speculated as to whether there was not some other road between Dyersville and Independence, by which they had passed me; but a few miles east of Independence they came up behind me as I lay bogged down in a slew, and drove by on the green tough sod by the roadside.  I had just hitched the cows to the end of the tongue, by means of the chain, when they trotted by, and sweeping down near me halted.  Virginia still sat as if she had never moved, her hand gripping the iron support of the carriage top, her foot outside the box as if she was ready to spring out.  Buck Gowdy leaped out and came down to me.

“In trouble, Mr. Vandemark?” he inquired.  “Can we be of any assistance?”

“I guess I can make it,” I said, scraping the mud off my trousers and boots.  “Gee-up there, Liney!”

My cows settled slowly into the yoke, and standing, as they did now, on firm ground, they deliberately snaked the wagon, hub-deep as it was, out of the mire, and stopped at the word on the western side of the mud-hole.

“Good work, Mr. Vandemark!” he said.  “Those knowledgy folk back along the road who said you were trading yourself out of your patrimony ought to see you put the thing through.  If you ever need work, come to my place out in the new Earthly Eden.”

“I’ll have plenty of work of my own,” I said; “but maybe, sometime, I may need to earn a little money.  I’ll remember.”

I stopped at Independence that night; and so did the Gowdy party.  I was on the road before them in the morning, but they soon passed me, Virginia looking wishfully at me as they went by, and Buck Gowdy waving his hand in a way that made me think he must be a little tight—­and then they drove on out of sight, and I pursued my slow way wondering why Virginia Royall had asked me so anxiously if I knew any good people who would take in and shelter a friendless girl—­and not only take her in, but fight for her.  I could not understand what she had said in any other way.

I had a hard time that day.  The road was already cut up and at the crossings of the swales the sod on which we relied to bear up our wheels was destroyed by the host of teams that had gone on before me.  That endless stream across the Dubuque ferry was flowing on ahead of me; and the fast-going part of it was passing me every hour like swift schooners outstripping a slow, round-bellied Dutch square-rigger.