Alexan­dra drew her shawl clos­er about her and stood lean­ing against the frame of the mill, look­ing at the stars which glit­tered so keen­ly through the frosty au­tumn air. She al­ways loved to watch them, to think of their vast­ness and dis­tance, and of their or­dered march. It for­ti­fied her to re­flect up­on the great op­er­a­tions of na­ture, and when she thought of the law that lay be­hind them, she felt a sense of per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty. That night she had a new con­scious­ness of the coun­try, felt al­most a new re­la­tion to it. Even her talk with the boys had not tak­en away the feel­ing that had over­whelmed her when she drove back to the Di­vide that af­ter­noon. She had nev­er known be­fore how much the coun­try meant to her. The chirp­ing of the in­sects down in the long grass had been like the sweet­est mu­sic. She had felt as if her heart were hid­ing down there, some­where, with the quail and the plover and all the lit­tle wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Un­der the long shag­gy ridges, she felt the fu­ture stir­ring.

— O Pioneers! by Willa Cather (25%)