ur
land from the Macpherson Mortgage Company three years ago. The lease
expires to-day. You remember what it was worth when you saw it before. I
shall hand it over to you now, worth thirty dollars an acre. Thirty
thousand dollars, at the very least, besides the value of the crop. I
got beyond the blowout and followed it up. I plowed and planted. Lord!
how I plowed and planted! And as with old Paul and Apollos, it was God
who gave the increase."

"Joe! Oh, Joe! You are a miracle-worker!" Jerry cried.

"A worker, all right, maybe. And all life is a miracle," Joe declared,
gravely.

"But your own land, Joe. They told me that your house was gone and that
maybe you had gone with it, and that these roads down here were
impassable and nobody could find you."

Joe came to the side of the little gray car where Jerry sat with her
white hands crossed on the steering-wheel. Her soft white gown, fitted
for a summer afternoon on the Macpherson porch, seemed far more lovely
in the evening light down by the oak-trees. Her golden hair was blown in
little ringlets about her forehead, and her dark-blue eyes--Joe wondered
if Nature ever gave such eyes to another human being!

"No, Jerry, my house isn't gone. My father built it up pretty high above
the river, and I saved almost everything loose before the flood reached
my place. It was the Ekblad house that went down the river. I went over
there to help Thelma get her brother and the baby to safety on the high
ground. She had started out to warn old Fishin' Teddy, thinking her own
family was secure, and afraid he would get caught. She could not get
back to them, nor anywhere else. I saved her, all right, but when I went
back after Paul and the baby, the home and those in it were gone
down-stream. Thelma thought we were all lost. That's how the story got
started. Old Teddy is gone, but I heard later that the others are saved.
Their home wasn't worth so very much. They got most of the real
valuable things--photographs of their dead father and mother, and the
family Bible, and deeds, and a few trinkets. Other things don't count.
Money will replace them. Anyhow, York Macpherson is buying their land at
a good figure. It will give Thelma the chance she's wanted--to go to a
college town and teach botany. She will make her way and carry a name
among educators yet, and support Paul and the baby, all right, too. Did
the folks miss me and say I had gone down the river? Well, I didn't. I'm
here.