After my first three years of school, I roamed again in the Western
country through four strange summers.

During this time I seemed to hang in the heart of chaos, beyond the
touch or voice of human aid. My brother, being almost ten years my
senior, did not quite understand my feelings. My mother had never gone
inside of a schoolhouse, and so she was not capable of comforting her
daughter who could read and write. Even nature seemed to have no place
for me. I was neither a wee girl nor a tall one; neither a wild Indian
nor a tame one. This deplorable situation was the effect of my brief
course in the East, and the unsatisfactory "teenth" in a girl's years.

It was under these trying conditions that, one bright afternoon, as I
sat restless and unhappy in my mother's cabin, I caught the sound of the
spirited step of my brother's pony on the road which passed by our
dwelling. Soon I heard the wheels of a light buckboard, and Dawée's
familiar "Ho!" to his pony. He alighted upon the bare ground in front
of our house. Tying his pony to one of the projecting corner logs of the
low-roofed cottage, he stepped upon the wooden doorstep.

I met him there with a hurried greeting, and, as I passed by, he looked
a quiet "What?" into my eyes.

When he began talking with my mother, I slipped the rope from the pony's
bridle. Seizing the reins and bracing my feet against the dashboard, I
wheeled around in an instant. The pony was ever ready to try his speed.
Looking backward, I saw Dawée waving his hand to me. I turned with the
curve in the road and disappeared. I followed the winding road which