ou, and the Thaine stubbornness about giving up
what they want to keep," Virginia declared.

"As our days so shall our strength be," Asher added, as he saw his wife's
face bright with hope and determination, and remembered the sweet face of
his mother as it had looked that night on the veranda of the old
farmhouse by the National pike road.

* * * * *

For a long time down by the willows thinly shadowing Wolf Creek a
white-faced man sat looking out toward the west, where a horse and rider
had vanished into the mellow tones of distance.

CHAPTER VIII

ANCHORED HEARTHSTONES

Dear Mother of Christ, who motherhood blessed,
All life in thy Son is complete.
The length of a day, the century's tale
Of years do His purpose repeat.
As wide as the world a sympathy comes
To him who has kissed his own son,
A tenderness deep as the depths of the sea,
To motherhood mourning is won.
No life is for naught. It was heaven's own way
That the baby who came should stay only a day.

Living by faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, is good for
the spirit but reducing to the flesh. Yet it was much by faith that the
frontier settlers lived through the winter after the grasshopper raid. Jim
Shirley often declared in that time between crops that he could make three
meals a day on Pryor Gaines' smile. And Todd Stewart asserted that when
the meat was all gone from their larder his family lived one whole week on
John Jacobs' belief in the future of their settlement. For the hardship of
that winter was heavy. All the more heavy because the settlers were not
stupid pauper-bred folk but young men and women of intelligence and
culture, whose early lives had known luxuries as well as comforts. But the
saving sense of humor, the saving power of belief in themselves, and the
saving grace of brotherly love carried them through.

The winter was mercifully mild and the short grass of the prairies was
nourishing to the stock that must otherwise have perished. Late in
February a rainfall began that lasted for days and Grass River, rising to
its opportunity, drowned all the fords, so that the neighbors on widely
separated claims were cut off from each other. No telephones relieved the
loneliness of the country dwellers in those days, and each household had
to rel