it. Jerry had pictured herself standing in the very
center of her heritage, where she might "run her eyes around," as Ponk
had said, "and figure how many acres she could see, and they were all
hers." And now she was here.

Wide away before her eyes rippled acre on acre, all hers, and all of
billowing sand, pointed only by a few straggling green shrubs. The glare
of the sunlight on it was intolerable, and the north wind, sweeping cool
and sweet under the oak-trees, brought no comfort to this glaring
desert.

Suddenly she recalled the pitying look in Ponk's eyes when he had begged
her to wait for York Macpherson to come with her to this place, and she
had thought he might be envious of her good fortune. And then she
remembered that Laura Macpherson had put up the same plea for York. He
was the shield and buckler for all New Eden, it would seem. And the
three, Laura and York and Ponk, all knew and were pitying her, Jerry
Swaim, who had been envied many a time, but never, never pitied. Even in
the loss of the Swaim estate in Philadelphia, Mrs. Jerusha Darby had
made it clear to every one that her pretty niece was still to be envied
as a child of good fortune.

Flinging aside her hat and gloves, unconscious of the stray sunbeams
sifting down through the oak boughs on her golden hair, Jerry Swaim
gazed toward the railroad with wide-open, burning eyes, and her white
face was pitiful to see. At length she turned to the young man who still
stood leaning against the oak bough beyond her car, waiting for her to
speak.

"Can I be of any service to you?" he asked, courteously.

"Who are you?" Jerry questioned, with unconscious bluntness.

"My name is Joe Thomson." The smile in his eyes lighted his face as he
spoke.

"Tell me all about this place, won't you?" Jerry demanded, pointing
toward the gleaming sands. "Was it always like this, here? I thought
when the Lord finished the earth He looked on His work and found it
good. Did He overlook this spot?"

Surprise and sarcasm and bitter disappointment were all in her tone as
she asked these questions.

Joe Thomson frowned as he replied:

"It wasn't an oversight at all. There was a fine piece of prairie here
until a few years ago, with only one little sandy strip zigzagging
across it. Ages back, there may have been a stream along that low place
yonder that dried up and blew away some time, when the forest fires
changed the prehistoric woodlands into prairies. I can't be acc