ad put twenty-five miles between itself and that last outpost of
civilization.

"Why don't you let the horses trot down this hill slope, Asher?" The
woman's voice had the soft accent of the South.

"Are you tired, Virgie?" Asher Aydelot looked earnestly down at his wife.

"Not a bit!" The bright smile and vigorous lift of the shoulders were
assuring.

"Then we won't hurry. We have several miles to go yet. It is a long day's
run from Carey's to our claim. Wolf County is almost like a state. The
Crossing hopes to become the county seat."

"Why do they call that place Carey's Crossing?" Mrs. Aydelot asked.

"It was a trading post once where the north and south trail crossed the
main trail. Later it was a rallying place for cavalry. Now it's our
postoffice," Asher explained.

"I mean, why call it Carey? I knew Careys back in Virginia."

"It is named for a young doctor, the only one in ten thousand miles, so
far as I know."

"And his family?" Virginia asked.

"He's a bachelor, I believe. By the way, we aren't going down hill. We are
on level ground."

Mrs. Aydelot leaned out beyond the wagon bows to take in the trail behind
them.

"Why, we are right in a big saucer. All the land slopes to the center down
there before us. Can't you see it?"

"No, I've seen it too often. It is just a trick of the plains--one of the
many tricks for the eye out here. Look at the sunflowers, Virgie. Don't
you love them?"

Virginia Aydelot nestled close to her husband's side and put one hand on
his. It was a little hand, white and soft, the hand of a lady born of
generations of gentility. The hand it rested on was big and hard and brown
and very strong looking.

"I've always loved them since the day you sent me the little one in a
letter," she said in a low voice, as if some one might overhear. "I
thought you had forgotten me and the old war days. I wasn't very happy
then." There was a quiver of the lip that hinted at the memory of intense
sorrow. "I had gone up to the spring in that cool little glen in the
mountain behind our home, you know, when a neighbor's servant boy, Bo
Peep, Boanerges Peeperville, he named himself, came grinning round a big
rock ledge with your letter. Just a crushed little sunflower and a sticky
old card, the deuce of hearts. I knew it was from you, and I loved the
sunflower for telling me so. Were you near here then? This land looks so
peaceful and beautiful to me, and homelike somehow, as if we should