seat; Antonia and I sat in the straw behind
and ate our lunch as we bumped along. After
the sun sank, a cold wind sprang up and
moaned over the prairie. If this turn in the
weather had come sooner, I should not have
got away. We burrowed down in the straw and
curled up close together, watching the angry
red die out of the west and the stars begin to
shine in the clear, windy sky. Peter kept sigh-
ing and groaning. Tony whispered to me that
he was afraid Pavel would never get well. We
lay still and did not talk. Up there the stars
grew magnificently bright. Though we had
come from such different parts of the world,
in both of us there was some dusky supersti-
tion that those shining groups have their influ-
ence upon what is and what is not to be. Per-
haps Russian Peter, come from farther away
than any of us, had brought from his land,
too, some such belief.

The little house on the hillside was so much
the color of the night that we could not see it
as we came up the draw. The ruddy windows
guided us -- the light from the kitchen stove,
for there was no lamp burning.

We entered softly. The man in the wide
bed seemed to be asleep. Tony and I sat down

[[59]]

p058 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p059w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p060

v?