It is the spring of Lissa’s second year in her Nebraska home. Nathan, through with his winter duties at the post, has become farmer again, and the prairie, yet gray with the tall wild grass of the previous year, is black-dotted with patches of newly plowed land, while the upspringing verdure gives the landscape a gray-green tint of great beauty. Lissa has grown to love this Western home, and as we see her now, tripping about the floor of her humble cabin, there is a maturer look in her bright face and pliant figure, and though she is paler in cheek and lip, her smile speaks the joy in her heart. Her neat calico gown is supplemented by a white cambric apron, and as she critically glances about her she is a picture of womanly contentment. She is obliged to make up in swiftness now the time demanded from her work to care for the little seraph who kicks, squirms, and even cries in her waking hours if she is not given immediate and undivided attention. Their house has grown with their family, and a nice little lean-to has been built, giving an extra room, and Lissa seems to have forgotten to wish for the spacious walls or wide balconies of her former home. She has as good as her neighbors, and luxuries are only comparative, after all. It must be confessed, Lissa is not a little vain of the handsome silver, few pieces of cut-glass, and dainty napery which were among her wedding gifts, and which she can now display on occasions to the admiration and envy of her less fortunate neighbors. Only Alice, of all her neighborhood, can outshine her in this, but Mark is an army officer, and quite the great man of the place, and she cannot feel envious of one of the family. It is nearly dinner time and baby must be put aside while Lissa prepares the table. A motherly solicitude shines in her dark eyes as she places the little autocrat in her crib (a large wicker clothes-basket), puts in her clutching, uncertain grasp the rubber ring, and turns toward her work. “There, there, baby Lucy, lie still with your toys, For papa is coming and does not like noise,” she sings, in her clear treble. “Hush, hush, there’s a deary, or mamma ’ll be weary; There, there, but a minute, you’ll have to be in it, Till mamma makes dinner, then baby’s the winner.” Thus sings and rhymes the girl-mother, and the cloth is laid in a short space of time, and few moments later the dignified, manly figure of Nathan enters. “How smoky it is getting outside,” Lissa says as she catches a glimpse of the atmosphere through the open doorway. “Yes, the fires must be making considerable headway across the river. The smoke is much denser than it was this morning when I began plowing.” “You think it is all across the river? No danger of its getting over here?” Lissa questions, a note of anxiety in her voice. “O, no; the river ’ll protect us. I should think Linkwell and Jordan, over there, would need to start back fires, though.”