n's
unfinished dreams.

Before the house a broad roadway, smooth as a city boulevard, ran
straight to the bright, clean, populous city where Ascalon, with its
forgotten shame and tragedies, once stood. And far and away, over the
swell of gentle ridge, into the dip of gracious valley, spread the
benediction of growing wheat. Wisdom and faith and love had worked their
miracle. This land had become the nation's granary; it was a land
redeemed.

* * * * *

Under the giant cottonwoods, gray-green of leaf as the desert grasses
were gray-green in the old cattle days, the brown walls, the low roof,
of a sod house stood, the lawn clipped smooth around its humble door,
lilac clumps green beside its walls, sweet honeysuckle clambering over
its little porch. And there came, in the tender last beams of the
setting sun, a man and woman to its door.

Not old, not bent, not gnarled by the rack of blind-groping, undirected
toil, for such of the chosen out of nature's nobility are never old.
Hair once dark as woodland shadows was shot with the sunlight of many
years; hair once bright as the mica tossed by joyous waves upon a sunny
beach was whitened now by the unmelting snows of winters numbered
swiftly in the brief calendar of man. But shoulders were unbent by the
burdens which they had borne joyously, and their feet went quickly as
lovers' to a tryst.

This little sod house stood with all its old-time furnishings, like a
shrine, and on this day, which seemed to be an anniversary, it had been
brightened with vases of flowers. This man and this woman, not old,
indeed, entered and stood within its door, where the light was dimming
through the little window high in the thick wall. The man crossed the
room, and stood where a belt with holsters hung upon the wall. She drew
near him, and lifted his great hand, and nestled it against her cheek.

"Old Seth Craddock's guns," he said, musing as on a recurring memory.

"His guns!" she murmured, drawing closer into the shadow of his
strength.

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Transcriber's Notes:

1. The author's consistent use of a lower-case letter following an
exclamation point or a question mark inside quoted dialect has
been retained.

2. Punctuation has been changed to contemporary standards.

3. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK TRAI