that I carried my head high as I emerged from
the dark cedars and shut the Cutters' gate
softly behind me. Her warm, sweet face, her
kind arms, and the true heart in her; she was,
oh, she was still my Antonia! I looked with
contempt at the dark, silent little houses about
me as I walked home, and thought of the
stupid young men who were asleep in some of
them. I knew where the real women were,
though I was only a boy; and I would not be
afraid of them, either!

I hated to enter the still house when I went
home from the dances, and it was long before
I could get to sleep. Toward morning I used
to have pleasant dreams: sometimes Tony and
I were out in the country, sliding down straw-
stacks as we used to do; climbing up the yellow
mountains over and over, and slipping down
the smooth sides into soft piles of chaff.

One dream I dreamed a great many times,
and it was always the same. I was in a harvest-
field full of shocks, and I was lying against one
of them. Lena Lingard came across the stubble
barefoot, in a short skirt, with a curved reap-
ing-hook in her hand, and she was flushed like
the dawn, with a kind of luminous rosiness all
about her. She sat down beside me, turned to

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v?