“I need a farm man, if you’d care to stay about here,” he said presently; “to begin, twenty a month if I board you, thirty and you find yourself; more, bimeby if you fit in.” “Yeas, yeas, oh yeas,” gasped Ivan, clinging only to the first proposition, which for the moment overshadowed the others. Ivan stayed; indeed, he seemed rooted to the spot, and this time was now three years past. In the working hours he only worked, but after, he schemed and planned in his little room in the horse barn about the place for Maria, always with the cottage back of the grain field in his mind. Now the plans had taken solid shape and this spring she would come, for did not the letter say so, the letter she had written him at Christmas?—that is, if he had the money ready. This being so, had not the good friend Michael arranged about the passage, and made all safe? For it is not wise for a wife to have much money in the house or write many letters, when the spy shadow has rested on the husband and he has escaped. * * * * * The cows came slowly up the road, nipping a green tuft here and there, before turning each to her particular stall. The boy who drove them, a grandson of Peter’s and a namesake as well, gave a whoop of delight as the last one entered the door, and carefully taking a slender trout pole from its resting-place on a beam, he unearthed a bait box from beneath the door stone and sped off through the alders up-stream, to make the most of the hour of twilight, waving his hand to old Peter as he went. The milking over, Ivan turned the cows into the yard, carried the pails up to the milk-room door, where he received his own small can, then throwing his coat about him as if it were a sleeveless cloak, and raising his head as though lifting the day’s toil from his shoulders, he strolled slowly toward the pond. The evening mail was overdue by this time, and each night he thought might there not be a letter saying when? For surely it was spring now: April the 15th said the Insurance calendar on the barn door. But primitive Ivan had a truer almanac in his head, made up of ice and snow, sun and wind, water, flower colours, and bird songs, though he could not call them by name; for three years this calendar had grouped itself about him and spoken to him in clearer tones than printed figures. Yes, it was spring in truth and fulness. Twice the marsh frogs had piped up and been stilled again by ice; that was in March. Now they had chanted for fourteen uninterrupted evenings; that meant April. Also yesterday, and the day before that, the straight wild goose arrows had crossed the sky from south to the north-eastward.