Like his father, he sniffed the sweet-smelling breezes. He thrust his great hands into the sunbeams. He reached down and plucked one of a bunch of white flowers that had sprung up overnight. The Dream was born of the breezes and the sunshine and the spring flowers. It came from them and it had sprung into his mind because he was young and strong. He knew! It couldn’t come to his father or Donkov, the tailor, or Poborino, the smith. They were old and weak, and Ivan’s dream was one that called for youth and strength. “Ay, for youth and strength,” he muttered as he gripped the plow. “And I have it!” That evening Big Ivan of the Bridge spoke to his wife, Anna, a little woman, who had a sweet face and a wealth of fair hair. “Wife, we are going away from here,” he said. “Where are we going, Ivan?” she asked. “Where do you think, Anna?” he said, looking down at her as she stood by his side. “To Bobruisk,” she murmured. “No.” “Farther?” “Ay, a long way farther.” Fear sprang into her soft eyes. Bobruisk was eighty-nine versts away, yet Ivan said they were going farther. “We—we are not going to Minsk?” she cried. “Ay, and beyond Minsk!” “Ivan, tell me!” she gasped. “Tell me where we are going!” “We are going to America.” “_To America?_” “Yes, to America!” Big Ivan of the Bridge lifted up his voice when he cried out the words “To America,” and then a sudden fear sprang upon him as those words dashed through the little window out into the darkness of the village street. Was he mad? America was 8,000 versts away! It was far across the ocean, a place that was only a name to him, a place where he knew no one. He wondered in the strange little silence that followed his words if the crippled son of Poborino, the smith, had heard him. The cripple would jeer at him if the night wind had carried the words to his ear. Anna remained staring at her big husband for a few minutes, then she sat down quietly at his side. There was a strange look in his big blue eyes, the look of a man to whom has come a vision, the look which came into the eyes of those shepherds of Judea long, long ago. “What is it, Ivan?” she murmured softly, patting his big hand. “Tell me.” And Big Ivan of the Bridge, slow of tongue, told of the Dream. To no one else would he have told it. Anna understood. She had a way of patting his hands and saying soft things when his tongue could not find words to express his thoughts. Ivan told how the Dream had come to him as he plowed. He told her how it had sprung upon him, a wonderful dream born of the soft breezes, of the sunshine, of the sweet smell of the upturned sod and of his own strength. “It wouldn’t come to weak men,” he said, baring an arm that showed great snaky muscles rippling beneath the clear skin. “It is a dream that comes only to those who are strong and those who want—who want something that they haven’t got.” Then in a lower voice he said: “What is it that we want, Anna?”