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college all right, but feeding pigs.”
    Lund sighed. A sullen expression settled on his face. Everybody except his wife felt embarrassed.
    â€œWe’ve seen better days, that’s true,” Mrs. Lund went on. “When I was a young girl, I was a trained nurse. I’ve spent five years in a spital.”
    â€œYes, scrubbing floors,” Lund mumbled spitefully.
    Nelson could not forbear a smile; but Mrs. Lund fastened such a forbidding look on her husband that he squirmed in his seat. Olga coloured dark red; and Bobby made things worse by his desperate efforts to suppress a giggle.
    Supper went by under a constraint; and when it was over, the friends were glad to escape from the charged atmosphere of the house.
    They got their wraps and took leave.
    Olga looked after them from the door when they crossed the yard.
    T HE AIR WAS CRISP ; the snow creaked under their steps; the moon stood high; the two young men stepped briskly along.
    â€œStrange people,” Niels said at last.
    â€œYes,” Nelson agreed. “I pity the girl.”
    â€œIs he really blind?”
    â€œI don’t believe it. He is a great actor; and the laziest fellow I’ve ever met. The woman and the girl do all the heavy work; and the boy, too, does twice his share. The man does nothing except spend the money.”
    â€œWhere does he get it?” Niels exclaimed.
    â€œSponges and bums and runs into debt. The homestead is his; but he hasn’t proved up.”
    â€œHow long has he been on the place?”
    â€œTen years or so. It’s the third place he’s had. The first was mortgaged to the hilt; and the company foreclosed on him. On the second the buildings burned down; they say he set fire to them. And here he is in debt again to the tune of some two thousand dollars. The woman and the girl run the post office and the farm. They don’t want him to prove up. As soon as he gets his title, they’ll lose the place; and they know it.”
    Success and failure! It seemed to depend on who you were, an Amundsen or a Lund …
    â€œWhy don’t you buy?” Niels asked his friend.
    Nelson laughed. “Has she put that bug into your head, too? … I want to be my own boss. I don’t mind working out for a while each year till I get on my feet. But when I go home, I stand on my own soil; and no debts worry me. What I raise is mine. Five, six years from now I shall be independent.”
    â€œYes,” Niels said. “But the work it costs would pay for a prairie farm.”
    â€œMaybe,” Nelson laughed. And after a silence he added, very seriously, “I’ll tell you, I like the work. I’d pay to be allowed to do it. Land I’ve cleared is more my own than land I’ve bought.”
    Niels understood. That was his own thought exactly, his own unexpressed, inexpressible thought …
    They walked on in silence, swinging along in great, vigorous strides. The last few words had filled them with the exhilaration of a confession of faith. High above, far ahead stood an ideal; towards that ideal they walked.
    Suddenly, as they were entering the bush, where the moonlight filtered down through the meshes of leafless boughs overhead, a vision took hold of Niels: of himself and a woman, sitting of a mid-winter night by the light of a lamp and in front of a fire, with the pitter-patter of children’s feet sounding down from above: the eternal vision that has moved the world and that was to direct his fate. He tried to see the face of the woman; but it entirely evaded him.…
    O NCE MORE during the following week Niels and Nelson, while at work on Amundsen’s yard, spoke of Lunds. “Was it true that Mrs. Lund had been a nurse?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Nelson replied. “She’s had more of an education than he. She works in the city after Christmas; at what nobody knows. She says she has a position as companion to a crippled lady. Most people