The day was a dazzling one.  The rolling prairie on every side looked like a white ocean, with great, sweeping billows of snow as far as eye could see.

The widely separated farm-houses, with their wind-breaks of Lombardy poplars and interspersing clusters of evergreens, looked like ships on this endless, shining, cold sea.

One needed a happy heart and busy hands not to be affected by the vastness and isolation.

Neither of these did Lilian have, and it took her nearly the entire forenoon to get through her bitter struggle with self.

When she finally roused herself she found her mother had put the rooms to rights, and besides her own work, had done all the little tasks Lilian had been used to assume.

This made her remorseful.  She got her books and began to study.  But somehow the brilliant sunshine kept drawing her to the window to look out.

The sky was of an intense blue that was almost purple.  The blue-jays were flitting and calling.  A few stray crows hovered over a distant corn-stubble—­these were all the signs of life she saw.

She stood tapping a tune on the window panes.  Presently she noticed, on the far crest of one of the snow billows, some moving black figures.

They were mere specks against the intense blue beyond, but they fixed her attention.  Almost as soon as she saw them, however, they disappeared in an intervening valley.

“That is on the Hardin road,” she said, trying to fix the direction.  “It can’t be the boys, for Uncle Abner’s road is to the south.”

[Illustration:  THE CHIEF GAVE A WHOOP OF DELIGHT AT SIGHT OF THEM.  HE SPRANG TO HER SIDE AND OPENLY BEGAN PUTTING THEM IN HIS POCKET.]

Almost immediately her curiosity was stimulated again by the re-appearance of the figures on the next rise.  She could not distinguish numbers, but she felt certain it was horsemen.

Again they vanished from the crest into the lower-lying space between the land-billows.  And so she watched them until they were near enough for her to see it was indeed horsemen.

“Mother,” she called, “come here!  There’s somebody coming along the Hardin road.”

Her mother came.

“Who can it be?”

“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven,” counted Lilian.  “There are seven of them!  Perhaps they will turn at the Climbing Hill Corners.  They can’t be coming here.”

“Get the glass,” said Mrs. Wyman.  “See if we can make them out before they strike the valley.”

Lilian ran after the glass.  She adjusted it and raised it to her eyes.  She had only one glimpse, however, before the descending riders were again hidden by an intervening ridge.

“They ride so wildly, mother!” she said, in a kind of breathless wonder.

“They must be skirting that hill along the creek,” said Mrs. Wyman.  “We’ll see in a minute if they come up from the Corners.”