us. Her eyes drank in the breadth of it, until
her tears blinded her. Then the Genius of the Divide, the great,
free spirit which breathes across it, must have bent lower than
it ever bent to a human will before. The history of every country
begins in the heart of a man or a woman.

Alexandra reached home in the afternoon. That evening she held
a family council and told her brothers all that she had seen and
heard.

"I want you boys to go down yourselves and look it over. Nothing
will convince you like seeing with your own eyes. The river land
was settled before this, and so they are a few years ahead of us,
and have learned more about farming. The land sells for three
times as much as this, but in five years we will double it. The
rich men down there own all the best land, and they are buying
all they can get. The thing to do is to sell our cattle and what
little old corn we have, and buy the Linstrum place. Then the next
thing to do is to take out two loans on our half-sections, and buy
Peter Crow's place; raise every dollar we can, and buy every acre
we can."

"Mortgage the homestead again?" Lou cried. He sprang up and began
to wind the clock furiously. "I won't slave to pay off another
mortgage. I'll never do it. You'd just as soon kill us all,
Alexandra, to carry out some scheme!"

Oscar rubbed his high, pale forehead. "How do you propose to pay
off your mortgages?"

Alexandra looked from one to the other and bit her lip. They had
never seen her so nervous. "See here," she brought out at last.
"We borrow the money for six years. Well, with the money we buy
a half-section from Linstrum and a half from Crow, and a quarter
from Struble, maybe. That will give us upwards of fourteen hundred
acres, won't it? You won't have to pay off your mortgages for six
years. By that time, any of this land will be worth thirty dollars
an acre--it will be worth fifty, but we'll say thirty; then you
can sell a garden patch anywhere, and pay off a debt of sixteen
hundred dollars. It's not the principal I'm worried about, it's
the interest and taxes. We'll have to strain to meet the payments.
But as sure as we are sitting here to-night, we can sit down here
ten years from now independent landowners, not struggling farmers
any longer. The chance that father was always looking for has
come."

Lou was pacing the floor. "But how do you KNOW that land is going
to go up enough to pay the mortgages and--"

"And make us rich besides?