But, as he uttered it, it became oracular, the
most sacred of words.

Early the next morning I ran out of doors
to look about me. I had been told that ours
was the only wooden house west of Black
Hawk -- until you came to the Norwegian
settlement, where there were several. Our
neighbors lived in sod houses and dugouts --
comfortable, but not very roomy. Our white
frame house, with a story and half-story above
the basement, stood at the east end of what I
might call the farmyard, with the windmill
close by the kitchen door. From the windmill
the ground sloped westward, down to the
barns and granaries and pig-yards. This slope
was trampled hard and bare, and washed out
in winding gullies by the rain. Beyond the
corncribs, at the bottom of the shallow draw,
was a muddy little pond, with rusty willow
bushes growing about it. The road from the
post-office came directly by our door, crossed
the farmyard, and curved round this little
pond, beyond which it began to climb the
gentle swell of unbroken prairie to the west.
There, along the western sky-line, it skirted a
great cornfield, much larger than any field I
had ever seen. This cornfield, and the sor-

[[15]]

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v?