She was the prize of the village; he was neither well-off nor popular, but plain and unhandsome. He was not her only suitor, but the first had taken some pique at her attentions to a stranger in the village, that offended the haughty admirer of her beauty, and each was claimant for her entire devotion. Miss Hartwell’s father was a tall black-eyed Virginian, warm-blooded, swarthy, and impulsive, and liked not the manner of his daughter’s new friendship. He put his foot down with emphasis. He insisted on obedience. He wanted position, old family, wealth and social standing, or no marriage. Grace could not always govern her scholars, but herself she was determined to control. Herein both father and daughter were much alike. Time passed; attachment increased by opposition. Such is more often the way of lovers separated; but these were not wholly separated. At the death of Richard’s stepfather a division of the estate netted a round three thousand to the young farmer, who had done nearly all the farm work lately, and now started on an early Northwestern visit to the wheat-growing regions, resolved on a test of climate, comparison of prices, and general outlook for an investment. He bought early and largely in prairie lands of finest quality. He struggled, prospered, and grew well-to-do as a farmer. And what became of Grace, the teacher? Letters to and from Dakota, neatly written, choicely worded, and carefully punctuated, from one side; hurried notes, badly composed, from the other. The mind is never quite full of two subjects at once, and the surest cure for heartache is active employment and earnest work. The increasing cares of farming, the magnitude of the business, the constant desire for money (for the seed-time of farming is in its early stages), were a source of daily anxiety to Richard. “My poor Richard” was not a common name for a heading to Grace’s letters; truly she had found a fit name for her absent lover; a lover of land and of cattle, a lover of acres and of reapers, a lover of fences and shade-trees, and a growing Northwesterner; but poor, indeed, in actual happiness. They were married; Grace removed to her rude quarters and furnished them by taste, skill, and refinement. She took to her new home all the delicacy of rare machine-work, neat stitching, and tidy ornaments of her Eastern education; the sewing of many odd hours of industry. It seemed like an endless harvest, a long busy day, a strife and a struggle, in a wilderness of bleak broad fields at great distance from market. They raised vast crops, but sold at low prices. The panic of ’73, and the cold winter following, made not a very happy honeymoon to both, but they endured it all, risked all in a fond large hope of abundant future riches. In a land of no railroads (it’s changed now; it’s as much more brilliant to-day as an electric light compared with the light of a common candle), Dakota was then rather a dreary country.