A minute she blushed.  Then, perceiving her opportunity, she dropped herself to the floor and walked up to August.

“August, you are to be turned off to-morrow night.”

“What have I done?  Anything wrong?”

“No.”

“Why do they send me away?”

“Because—­because—­” Julia stopped.

But silence is often better than speech.  A sudden intelligence came into the blue eyes of August.  “They turn me off because I love Jule Anderson.”

[Illustration:  A LITTLE RUSTLE BROUGHT HER TO CONSCIOUSNESS.]

Julia blushed just a little.

“I will love her all the same when I am gone.  I will always love her.”

Julia did not know what to say to this passionate speech, so she contented herself with looking a little grateful and very foolish.

“But I am only a poor boy, and a Dutchman at that”—­he said this bitterly—­“but if you will wait, Jule, I will show them I am of some account.  Not good enough for you, but good enough for them.  You will—­”

“I will wait—­forever—­for you, Gus.”  Her head was down, and her voice could hardly be heard.  “Good-by.”  She stretched out her hand, and he took it trembling.

“Wait a minute.”  He dropped the hand, and taking a pencil wrote on a beam: 

“March 18th, 1843.”

“There, that’s to remember the Dutchman by.”

“Don’t call yourself a Dutchman, August.  One day in school, when I was sitting opposite to you, I learned this definition, ’August:  grand, magnificent,’ and I looked at you and said, Yes, that he is.  August is grand and magnificent, and that’s what you are.  You’re just grand!”

I do not think he was to blame.  I am sure he was not responsible.  It was done so quickly.  He kissed her forehead and then her lips, and said good-by and was gone.  And she, with her apron full of eggs and her cheeks very red—­it makes one warm to climb—­went back to the house, resolved in some way to thank Cynthy Ann for sending her; but Cynthy Ann’s face was so serious and austere in its look that Julia concluded she must have been mistaken, Cynthy Ann couldn’t have known that August was in the barn.  For all she said was: 

“You got a right smart lot of eggs, didn’t you?  The hens is beginnin’ to lay more peart since the warm spell sot in.”

CHAPTER IV.

A COUNTER-IRRITANT.

“Vot you kits doornt off vor?  Hey?”

Gottlieb Wehle always spoke English, or what he called English, when he was angry.

“Vot for?  Hey?”

All the way home from Anderson’s on that Saturday night, August had been, in imagination, listening to the rough voice of his honest father asking this question, and he had been trying to find a satisfactory answer to it.  He might say that Mr. Anderson did not want to keep a hand any longer.  But that would not be true.  And a young man with August’s clear blue eyes was not likely to lie.