earthquake or a cyclone, and a city marshal, even Morgan, could not fend
against them if they were to come.

"You have trampled your place among the thorns," said Rhetta.

"It looks like I've pulled a good deal down with me," he returned,
viewing the seat of fire with a softening of pity in his grave face.

"All that deserves to rise will rise again," she said in confidence.
"It's a good thing it burned--it's purged of its old shame and old
monuments of corruption. I'm glad it's gone."

There was a quiet over the place, as if the heart of turbulence had been
broken and its spirit had taken flight. In the southwest, in the faces
of the two watchers at the margin of this ruin, a vast dark cloud stood
like a landfall rising in the mariner's eye out of the sea. It had been
visible since four o'clock, seeming to hesitate as if nature intended
again to deny this parched and suffering land the consolation of rain.
Now it was rising, already it had overspread the sunset glow, casting a
cool shadow full of promise over the thirsting prairie wastes.

"It will rain this time," Rhetta prophesied. "It always comes up slowly
that way when it rains a long time."

"A rain will work wonders in this country," he said, his face lifted to
the promise of the cloud.

"And wisdom and faith will do more," she told him, her voice tender and
low.

"And love," said he, voice solemn as a prophet's, yet gentle as a
dove's.

"And love," she whispered, the wind, springing like an inspiration
before the rain, lifting her shadowy hair.

Joe Lynch came driving into the stricken square down the road beside
them, bringing a load of bones.

"Had to burn the town to fetch a rain, huh?" said Joe, his ghostly dry
old face tilted to catch the savor of the wind. So saying, he drove on,
and paused not in his labor of off-bearing the waste of failure that
must be cleared for the new labor of wisdom, faith, and love.

* * * * *

Thirty years will do for a cottonwood what two centuries will do for an
oak. Thirty years had built the cottonwoods of great girth, and lifted
them in dignity high above the roof of Calvin Morgan's white farmhouse,
his great barns and granaries. Elm trees, bringing their blessings of
wide-spreading branch more slowly, led down a broad avenue to the white
manse with its Ionian portico. Over the acres of smooth, luxuriant green
lawn, the long shadows of closing day reached like the yearning of me