After we came out of the cave our host, apparently wishing to give evidence of his friendship, led us to a shed which he had built close to the edge of the little stream that meandered along the bottom of the gully. He had covered it with a stack of prairie hay, so that it was quite warm. Inside were a yoke of oxen, a cow, two pigs, and a number of hens and ducks. The pride of the Russian's face as he showed them was something to behold and afterwards go away, humbled and thinking. Sneezit was on the road to independence! The drab curtain of oppression which had hung about the Sneezits since the beginning of their race he had torn in two, and through the rent his grizzled face beheld a world of hope and promise, a world in which he was as good as his neighbour! As soon after our return from harvesting as our duties permitted it we paid another visit to Mrs. Alton. Sandy saw us afar off and swept down upon us like a tornado. Apparently he had known us at the first glimpse, or the first sniff, whichever was his source of information, for there was no question this time about our welcome. His barking and tail-wagging accompanied us all the remainder of the way to the little box that Mrs. Alton called home. The widow had had time to dress since we hove in view--that is one of the advantages of prairie life not set out in the immigration booklets--and it was a dainty and spick-and-span Mrs. Alton that greeted us when our wagon lumbered up to her door. "I said, 'It's our friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two'--you see how I am picking up your prairie way of numbering your farms instead of naming them--I said, 'It's our friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two' as soon as I heard Sandy's first bark. That was before you were in sight, so far as my poor eyes could see. But Jerry, who was up in the wagon playing teamster cried, 'I see dem, Mudder; oxes and Mith Lane.' He's crazy about Miss Lane." "Jerry is a young man of discrimination," I said, scoring for once. But my wit was lost in the wild and panting hug which Jean was bestowing upon my rival. "So he's Jerry now," said Jean, releasing her embrace enough for speech. "That sounds like getting down to earth. Ever so much more chummy than Gerald." "Do you think so?" Mrs. Alton queried. "And I had vowed that, _whatever_ came, I never would call him Jerry. Too reminiscent of Jeremiah, and lamentations, and all that sort of thing that I wanted to get away from." Mrs. Alton stopped short, as though she had said more than she intended, then brightly took up the thread again. "I vowed I would leave my lamentations behind," she continued. "I take it that this is a country where there is room for everything but regrets." It was evident that Mrs. Alton's bereavement was filling a good part of her mind, so Jean deftly switched the conversation back to the boy, and presently was conducting a foot-race to the chicken shed with herself, Jerry, and Sandy as the competitors. Sandy won.