f
exquisite beauty. In a foreground lay a little lake surrounded by grassy
banks and behind it, on a slight elevation, stood a mansion house of the
old Colonial style with white pillared portico, and green vines and forest
trees casting cool shade. Beyond it, wrapped in mist, rose a mountain
height with a road winding picturesquely in and out along its side.
Virginia caught her breath as a great sob rose in her throat. This was all
so like the old Thaine mansion house of her childhood years.

"It's only the mirage," she said aloud. "But it was so like--what?" She
held Juno back as she looked afar at the receding painting of the plains.
"It's like the house we'll have some day on that slope beyond the
Sunflower Inn. The mountains are misty. They are only the mountains of
memory. But the home and the woods and the water--all may be real."

Then she thought of Asher and of the dull prairie everywhere.

"I wonder if he would want to go back if he could see this as I see it,"
she questioned. "But I know he has seen it daily. I can tell by that look
in his gray eyes."

It was long after moonrise when Asher Aydelot, watching by the corral,
heard the sound of hoof-beats and saw the faint outline of a horse and
rider swinging in from the northward as once before he had watched the
same horse and rider swinging over the same trail before the cool north
wind that beat back the September prairie fire.

"I have supper all ready. See what grew just for you!" Asher said as he
and his wife entered the house.

A bunch of forlorn little sunflowers in a brown pitcher graced the table.
They could scarcely be called flowers, but to Virginia, who had hardly
seen a blossom through the days of drouth, the joy they brought was keener
than the joy that the roses and orchids gave in the days of a later
prosperity.

"I found them in the draw where the wild plums grow," Asher said. "How
they ever escaped the hoppers is a miracle."

"We will christen our claim 'The Sunflower Ranch' tonight, and these are
our decorations for the ceremony. It is all we have now. But it is ours,"
Virginia declared.

And then she told the story of the bank failure at Cloverdale.

"The last bridge is burned surely," Asher commented as he looked across
the table at Virginia. "This is the only property we have except youth and
health and hope--and--each other."

"And the old Aydelot heritage to stand for principle, and your mother's
belief in the West and in y