Involuntarily Ivan pressed his hand to his side where something had been chafing him, and there he felt the little box that held their treasure. Without question Maria had placed it there, Maria must know more than he. So Ivan Gronski turned his back upon Russia, hatred of his country being all that remained of it in his heart, for what other heritage is left to an honest Russian Pole! Three weeks later the two men reached a seaport, after arrest, hunger, and despair, all three in turn, had threatened them; another three weeks, and they stood upon American soil. The brother of Ivan’s rescuer, already well established, met and vouched for both; the friend found quick haven, but Ivan drifted here and there at first, working in ditches, on railways, clutching at every penny to save it for the coming of Maria and the others when he had “made a place,” then losing again through sickness, hearing seldom from her, and then always through Michael, the friend with whom he had come. When working for a junk dealer in Bridgeton, he had been sent one day, in company with another man, out far across country with a load of scrap iron, its destination being Peter Salop’s forge. While his companion bargained about the iron, Ivan had watered the horses and, idle for the moment, stood looking across the pond to where a field of ripening wheat waved to and fro against the blue midsummer sky. He had never set his eyes upon a wheat field since the time when his fellow-worker, in tying sheaves, had spoken of liberty and he had answered. How long ago was that, years or only months? He could hardly tell. And what was that beyond the field edge lying low to the land almost concealed by a tall poplar—was it a peasant’s hut? No, merely the low-built house of some early settler, the wide stone chimney and sloping attic eaves seeming lowered by the intervening hill. But a throb came into Ivan’s throat and tore it, and suddenly the oppression of his race that had gripped him even in the New Land like a paralysis, gave way, and long-drawn sobs swept him until he swayed and shook like the wheat in the wind. A heavy but kindly hand was laid on his shoulder. “What’s the matter, my man?” asked the deep voice of Peter Salop. But before Ivan hid his face in his arms, Peter saw the tears and a reserve fell upon him. “The wheat, the hut, Maria, and I make no place for her,” Ivan explained, piecing out his few words of English with direct gestures. “Homesick?” shouted Peter; “want to go home?” making the common mistake of thinking loud tones help to interpret a strange tongue. “What are you, a Polack or a Slav?” Ivan understood, and a sadness deeper than tears came to him, almost giving dignity to his hunched form. “Me? There is no go home for me, I am a Russe!” Peter Salop might be called dense upon some occasions, but not now. For a moment he too was an immigrant, and that other pond and mill, whose double he had sought in later life in a strange land, were before him.