One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the clus...

One January day, thirty years ago, the little town of Hanover, anchored on a windy Nebraska tableland, was trying not to be blown away. A mist of fine snowflakes was curling and eddying about the clus...

On one of the ridges of that wintry waste stood the low log house in which John Bergson was dying. The Bergson homestead was easier to find than many another, because it overlooked Norway Creek, a sha...

One Sunday afternoon in July, six months after John Bergson’s death, Carl was sitting in the doorway of the Linstrum kitchen, dreaming over an illustrated paper, when he heard the rattle of a wagon al...

For the first three years after John Bergson’s death, the affairs of his family prospered. Then came the hard times that brought everyone on the Divide to the brink of despair; three years of drought ...

Alexandra and Emil spent five days down among the river farms, driving up and down the valley. Alexandra talked to the men about their crops and to the women about their poultry. She spent a whole day...

It is sixteen years since John Bergson died. His wife now lies beside him, and the white shaft that marks their graves gleams across the wheat fields. Could he rise from beneath it, he would not know ...

It is sixteen years since John Bergson died. His wife now lies beside him, and the white shaft that marks their graves gleams across the wheat fields. Could he rise from beneath it, he would not know ...

Emil reached home a little past noon, and when he went into the kitchen Alexandra was already seated at the head of the long table, having dinner with her men, as she always did unless there were visi...

Alexandra was to hear more of Ivar’s case, however. On Sunday her married brothers came to dinner. She had asked them for that day because Emil, who hated family parties, would be absent, dancing at A...

Carl had changed, Alexandra felt, much less than one might have expected. He had not become a trim, self-satisfied city man. There was still something homely and wayward and definitely personal about ...

Alexandra did not find time to go to her neighbor’s the next day, nor the next. It was a busy season on the farm, with the corn plowing going on, and even Emil was in the field with a team and cultiva...

At dinner that day Alexandra said she thought they must really manage to go over to the Shabatas’ that afternoon. “It’s not often I let three days go by without seeing Marie. She will think I have for...

Marie’s father, Albert Tovesky, was one of the more intelligent Bohemians who came West in the early seventies. He settled in Omaha and became a leader and adviser among his people there. Marie was hi...

On the evening of the day of Alexandra’s call at the Shabatas’, a heavy rain set in. Frank sat up until a late hour reading the Sunday newspapers. One of the Goulds was getting a divorce, and Frank to...

On Sunday afternoon, a month after Carl Linstrum’s arrival, he rode with Emil up into the French country to attend a Catholic fair. He sat for most of the afternoon in the basement of the church, wher...

While Emil and Carl were amusing themselves at the fair, Alexandra was at home, busy with her account books, which had been neglected of late. She was almost through with her figures when she heard a ...

Emil came home at about half-past seven o’clock that evening. Old Ivar met him at the windmill and took his horse, and the young man went directly into the house. He called to his sister and she answe...

Carl came into the sitting room while Alexandra was lighting the lamp. She looked up at him as she adjusted the shade. His sharp shoulders stooped as if he were very tired, his face was pale, and ther...

Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. Th...

Winter has settled down over the Divide again; the season in which Nature recuperates, in which she sinks to sleep between the fruitfulness of autumn and the passion of spring. The birds have gone. Th...

If Alexandra had had much imagination she might have guessed what was going on in Marie’s mind, and she would have seen long before what was going on in Emil’s. But that, as Emil himself had more than...

The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes, stood upon a hill. The high, narrow, redbrick building, with its tall steeple and steep roof, could be seen for miles across the wheat fields, t...

The French Church, properly the Church of Sainte-Agnes, stood upon a hill. The high, narrow, redbrick building, with its tall steeple and steep roof, could be seen for miles across the wheat fields, t...

Signa’s wedding supper was over. The guests, and the tiresome little Norwegian preacher who had performed the marriage ceremony, were saying good night. Old Ivar was hitching the horses to the wagon t...

One evening, a week after Signa’s wedding, Emil was kneeling before a box in the sitting room, packing his books. From time to time he rose and wandered about the house, picking up stray volumes and b...

The next morning Angélique, Amédée’s wife, was in the kitchen baking pies, assisted by old Mrs. Chevalier. Between the mixing board and the stove stood the old cradle that had been Amédée’s, and in it...

When Frank Shabata came in from work at five o’clock that evening, old Moses Marcel, Raoul’s father, telephoned him that Amédée had had a seizure in the wheat field, and that Doctor Paradis was going ...

The Church has always held that life is for the living. On Saturday, while half the village of Sainte-Agnes was mourning for Amédée and preparing the funeral black for his burial on Monday, the other ...

When Frank Shabata got home that night, he found Emil’s mare in his stable. Such an impertinence amazed him. Like everybody else, Frank had had an exciting day. Since noon he had been drinking too muc...

When old Ivar climbed down from his loft at four o’clock the next morning, he came upon Emil’s mare, jaded and lather-stained, her bridle broken, chewing the scattered tufts of hay outside the stable ...

Ivar was sitting at a cobbler’s bench in the barn, mending harness by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm. It was only five o’clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had co...

Ivar was sitting at a cobbler’s bench in the barn, mending harness by the light of a lantern and repeating to himself the 101st Psalm. It was only five o’clock of a mid-October day, but a storm had co...

Late in the afternoon of a brilliant October day, Alexandra Bergson, dressed in a black suit and traveling hat, alighted at the Burlington depot in Lincoln. She drove to the Lindell Hotel, where she h...

The next afternoon Carl and Alexandra were walking across the fields from Mrs. Hiller’s. Alexandra had left Lincoln after midnight, and Carl had met her at the Hanover station early in the morning. Af...