farm in Virginia, which had been her home for so many years. But after the
men came in from the fields, and we were all seated at the supper table,
then she asked Jake about the old place and about our friends and
neighbours there.

My grandfather said little. When he first came in he kissed me and spoke
kindly to me, but he was not demonstrative. I felt at once his
deliberateness and personal dignity, and was a little in awe of him. The
thing one immediately noticed about him was his beautiful, crinkly,
snow-white beard. I once heard a missionary say it was like the beard of
an Arabian sheik. His bald crown only made it more impressive.

Grandfather's eyes were not at all like those of an old man; they were
bright blue, and had a fresh, frosty sparkle. His teeth were white and
regular--so sound that he had never been to a dentist in his life. He had
a delicate skin, easily roughened by sun and wind. When he was a young man
his hair and beard were red; his eyebrows were still coppery.

As we sat at the table, Otto Fuchs and I kept stealing covert glances at
each other. Grandmother had told me while she was getting supper that he
was an Austrian who came to this country a young boy and had led an
adventurous life in the Far West among mining-camps and cow outfits. His
iron constitution was somewhat broken by mountain pneumonia, and he had
drifted back to live in a milder country for a while. He had relatives in
Bismarck, a German settlement to the north of us, but for a year now he had
been working for grandfather.

The minute supper was over, Otto took me into the kitchen to whisper to me
about a pony down in the barn that had been bought for me at a sale; he had
been riding him to find out whether he had any bad tricks, but he was a