the approval of T. Albertus, who was nearly seventeen -her days ran swiftly.

Saturdays at the Dines farm she helped to gather her father's corn, repair fences, drive Uncle Billy's milch cows to and from the stalk field. She shuddered, as she always had, at the inevitable horror of hog-killing. Sunday mornings she drove with her aunt to church at Big Grove, and in the afternoons harvested from the creek bottoms walnuts, hickory nuts, pecans and baskets of wild grapes for jelly. Evenings, before the wood fire in the Dines front room, she read books borrowed from Mrs. Hardwick's "sets" of Washington Irving, Dickens, Bulwer-Lytton, Scott. A Tour of the Prairies especially interested her. Mrs. Hardwick put it into her hands with the remark:

"My father met Washington Irving at Fort Gibson in 1832, just before Mr. Irving started for the buffalo country to get material for that book; father was on his way to join Sam Houston and fight for Texas."

Nan read it aloud, and its pictures of the prairie, still dimly recognizable, stirred Susan and Billy Dines profoundly. They had known men mentioned in the book, recalled stories concerning them.

Christmas vacation came, a period of comparative leisure, of real holiday. Nan helped in the house and with the chores, went quail shooting with Billy Dines, read Ivanhoe and David Copperfield in the evenings. She spent a night with Myrtle Dunkin, four miles north on Walnut Creek, popping corn and crack

ing hickory nuts until midnight, when Myrtle's brother Paul came in with his dogs from a coon hunt in the creek bottom.

Only the haunting longing for her father clouded her happiness.

She returned to school, soon to be recalled to the farm by news of an accident to Uncle Billy.

B

CHAPTER VI

HAY IN THE STACK

ILLY DINES had been thrown from a wagon

by a runaway team, had suffered a fearfully strained back, and lay helpless. In pained cheerfulness, he submitted to young Dr. Hardwick's thorough examination.

"I expect you learned to treat 'em rough up there in that St. Louis hospital, didn't you, Doc?" he asked, grinning wryly.

"No, just comes natural, Uncle Billy!" Presently he turned down his shirt sleeves and put on his coat. "From what Nan said, I thought I'd have to put you all together again; but there's nothing broken, and you'll be out in two or three months-if you don't begin to worry." The doctor, who had come back from his service as interne in a St. Louis hospital the day before to practice at his old home in Big Grove, left his first patient to Susan Dines.

Sitting by the bedside, after her aunt had rubbed an oily liniment into the reddened skin of Billy Dines's back, Nan heard his account of the accident:

"You recollect, Nancy, Harvey Stokes half promised us ten days of balin' in the fall, but he couldn't come then. I was just as well pleased because there wasn't

any market for hay. But lately there's been some inquiries, an' I went to see if Stokes couldn't move a crew in on us. He got some men together an' was to come next Monday. I thought I'd go out an' take the top off of a stack so's he could get right to work. Alone like I was, I oughtn't to've hitched up them colts, but I wanted to get 'em hardened a bit before spring plowin' begins.

"They jumped at a wisp of hay blowin' under their feet, just as I stepped into the wagon, went off like a shot before I could get a grip on the lines, swerved an' upset the wagon, dumped me against one of them locust posts you an' me set, an' it sure didn't give way, Nancy!" He twisted his face on the pillow to grin at her, adding:

"I've sent word to Stokes not to come."

"But why, Uncle Billy? Can't we go ahead?"

"Don't think so. Too much for Susan to do in the house as 'tis, with me on my bed, without cookin' for a balin' crew."

"But I'll stay and help," Nan insisted warmly. "Aunty and I can manage all right, and you've got 'Blondy' to do the chores, look after the stock and start spring plowing."

"We wanted you to stay in school, Nancy." With Nan's assistance, he turned slowly and painfully to lie on his back and search the girl's face with serious eyes. "Susan an' me, we're mighty proud of you an' the way you're gettin' along at the Academy. Seems like it's

what you need-book learnin' an' mixin' with girls and boys your own age.'

“Oh, please, Uncle Billy! I can study here and keep up with my classes. It's to help Dad, too; and that's more important than school! Don't you think so?"

"Looks like it's goin' to be a longer fight for your pa than we thought at first," the old man observed slowly, "although Kearns says the court is fair to him down there-give him an adjournment from December to May so's he could sort of round up his evidence. He's got to find that missing gun."

"But waiting so long-Dad must get awfully blue." Nan tried to picture the effects of long prison restraint; and wondered anxiously if her father's slender stock of courage would hold out.

They talked on until Susan Dines came in, to subject the invalid to another careful rubbing. It was finally decided that Nan should stay, and late in the afternoon she rode Bess's Dolly up Walnut Creek to tell Harvey Stokes to move the baling crew in on Monday morning as at first arranged.