like to keep a store in a place like this, Jacobs?" Asher
Aydelot asked, as the two men waited for their meal.

"I had the chance once. I turned it down. How would you like to keep a
tavern in such a place?" Jacobs returned.

"I turned down a bigger tavern than this once to be a farmer. I have never
regretted it," Asher replied.

"The Sunflower Ranch has always interested me. How long have you had it?"
Jacobs asked.

"Since 1869. I was the first man on Grass River. Shirley came soon
afterward," Asher said.

"And your ranches are typical of you, too," John Jacobs said thoughtfully.
"How much do you own now?"

"Six quarters," Asher replied. "I've added piece by piece. Mortgaged one
quarter to buy another. There's a good deal of it under mortgage now."

"You seem to know what's ahead pretty well," Jacobs remarked.

"I know what's in the prairie soil pretty well. I know that crops will
fail sometimes and boom sometimes, and I know if I live I mean to own
three times what I have now; that I'll have a grove a mile square on it,
and a lake in the middle, and a farmhouse of colonial style up on the
swell where we are living now and that neither John Jacobs nor the First
National Bank of Careyville will hold any mortgage on it." Asher's face
was bright with anticipation.

"You are a dreamer, Aydelot."

"No, Jim Shirley's a dreamer," Asher insisted. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned
our home the first night she came a bride to our little one-roomed soddy.
There are cottonwoods and elms and locust trees shading our house now
where there was only a bunch of sunflowers then, and except for Jim's
little corn patch and mine, not a furrow turned in the Grass River Valley.
We have accomplished something since then. Why not the whole thing?"

"You have reason for your faith, I admit. But you are right, Shirley is a
dreamer. What's the matter with him?"

"An artistic temperament, more heart than head, a neglected home life in
his boyhood, and a fight for health to do his work. He'll die mortgaged,
but he has helped so many other fellows to lift theirs, I envy Jim's
'abundant entrance' by and by. But now he dreams of a thousand things and
realizes none. Poor fellow! His dooryard is a picture, while the weeds
sometimes choke his garden."

"Yes, he'll die mortgaged. He's never paid me interest nor principal on my
little loan, yet I'd increase it tomorrow if he asked me to do it," John
Jacobs declared.

"You are a blood-sucking Sh