year before they are put to rest in the little graveyard on the
windy hill where exiles of all nations grow akin.

The peculiar species of hypochondria to which the exiles of
his people sooner or later succumb had not developed in Eric until
that night at the Lone Star schoolhouse, when he had broken his
violin across his knee. After that, the gloom of his people
settled down upon him, and the gospel of maceration began its work.

"If thine eye offend thee, pluck it out," et cetera. The
pagan smile that once hovered about his lips was gone, and he was
one with sorrow. Religion heals a hundred hearts for one that it
embitters, but when it destroys, its work is quick and deadly, and
where the agony of the cross has been, joy will not come again.
This man understood things literally: one must live without
pleasure to die without fear; to save the soul, it was necessary to
starve the soul.

The sun hung low above the cornfields when Margaret and her
cavalier left St. Anne. South of the town there is a stretch of
road that runs for some three miles through the French settlement,
where the prairie is as level as the surface of a lake. There the
fields of flax and wheat and rye are bordered by precise rows of
slender, tapering Lombard poplars. It was a yellow world that
Margaret Elliot saw under the wide light of the setting sun.

The girl gathered up her reins and called back to Eric, "It
will be safe to run the horses here, won't it?"

"Yes, I think so, now," he answered, touching his spur to his