"I can make bread," said she, after a silence. "Kin you?"

When I told her I couldn't she told me how. It was the old-fashioned
salt-rising bread, the receipt for which she gave me; and when I asked
her to write it down I found that she was even a poorer scribe than I
was. We were two mighty ignorant young folks, but we got it down, and
that night I set emptins[6] for the first time, and I kept trying, and
advising with the women-folks, until I could make as good salt-rising
bread as any one. When we had finished this her father was calling her
to come, as they were starting on toward Negosha; and I gave Rowena
money enough to buy her a calico dress pattern at the next settlement.
She tried to resist, and her eyes filled with tears as she took the
money and chokingly tried to thank me for it. She climbed into the wagon
and rode on for a while, but got out and came back to me while old Tom
went on in those mad rushes of his, and circling within a few yards of
me she said, "You're right good," and darted off over the prairie at a
wide angle to the road.

[6] Our author resists firmly all arguments in favor of the generally
accepted dictionary spelling, "emptyings." He says that the term can not
possibly come from any such idea as things which are emptied, or emptied
out. The editor is reconciled to this view in the light of James Russell
Lowell's discussion of "emptins" in which he says: "Nor can I divine the
original." Mr. Lowell surely must have considered "emptyings"--and
rejected it.--G.v.d.M.

I watched her with a buying eye, as she circled like a pointer pup and
finally caught up with the wagon, a full mile on to the westward. I had
wondered once if she had not deserted the Fewkes party forever. I had
even, such is the imagination of boyhood, made plans and lived them