“Ah, Donald, dear, I shall let you all starve, I am sure, before I can bring myself down to such mundane affairs as bread and butter again. How delightful this is. I didn’t know I was homesick before, but now I think I must have been. But how did you happen to be with mother, Don?” she babbled. “Our meeting was ‘purely accidental,’ as the fiction writers say. I saw her at the station and heard her inquiring for a carriage to bring her out here, and so I made bold to introduce myself. Of course she saw at a glance the honesty in my face, and knew I was a confidence man—” “Oh, oh!” cried Lissa. “And I told her I was a poor navigator bound for the same harbor and we set sail together,” Donald concluded. Mrs. Clyne nodded. “That is true, notwithstanding Mr. Bartram’s rather mixed metaphor,” she said, smiling. “Ah, how strangely it happened, and fortunately. And now you will spend the winter with us; and you, too, I hope, Donald.” “I have to take charge of a surveying party for a few weeks. After that I may be back to spend some time here.” “Ah, yes, I remember you are a civil engineer. You will enjoy the hunting in the winter on the buffalo grounds.” “Not hunting buffalo, I hope. At the rate they are being slaughtered they will soon be extinct,” said Nathan. “Never fear, Nathan, I’ve little taste that way. It’s too noble an animal,” replied Donald. “Come, now, I have made new tea, and we will have supper. It’s _supper_ here, mother, instead of _dinner_, and I know you are all ravenously hungry after your long ride of twenty-five miles from the station.” “It seems to me an extremely long distance to be from a railway,” said Mrs. Clyne, after they were seated around the table, where Lissa’s silver shone resplendent. “How did you happen to come so far from one when you bought?” Nathan smiled. “I took up the land first, believing at the time the line would run nearer, and it is only a question of time when it will do so.” “I suppose this is a great farming country.” “We have much to contend with here,” said Nathan. “The ground is rich, but has little depth. We are liable to have a wind-storm that will carry the land from one farm to another.” “Free transportation and exchange of farms,” said Donald. “Yes; again, we have a fine crop of grain or corn nearly in ear, when there will come a hot wind and sear the leaves like a fire. We are never quite sure, or able to prognosticate here for the future, whether we will have corn, beans, and potatoes to eat, beans and potatoes, or whether it will be beans alone.” “And you sometimes have real fires,” said Mrs. Clyne. “I have worried about them ever since the one you wrote me about, which Lissa fought. How did you do it, dear?” “Really, I don’t know. I was so frightened that I didn’t have time to think. The grass was not so high on this side of the river or I don’t know what might have happened.” “Lissa aided in turning the fire. I doubt if it would have spared us otherwise,” said Nathan.