lk toward the house.

"Oh, fiddle! Always take care of a horse like it was a prize poodle. Farms
like he was decorating chinaware. Good enough dad, but too particular. Me
for the State University and the professional or military life. This ranch
is all right for Asher Aydelot, but it's pretty blamed slow for T. A. And
Jo Bennington doesn't like a farm either," he added with a smile.

In the superiority of his youth Thaine fumed at his father's commands, but
failed not to obey them. He was just nineteen, as tall as his father, and
brawny with the strength of the outdoors life of the prairie ranch.
Strength of character was not expressed in his face so much as the promise
of strength with the right conditions for its development in future days.
His features were his mother's set in masculine lines, with the same
abundant dark hair, the same lustrous dark eyes, the same straight nose
and well-formed chin. The same imperious will of all the Thaines to do as
he chose was his heritage, too, and he walked the prairies like a king.

"The real story of the plains is the story of the second generation; the
real romance here will be Thaine Aydelot's romance, for he was born
here."

So Virginia Aydelot had declared on the day she had gone to visit the
Bennington baby, Josephine, and coming home had met Asher with little
Thaine beside Mercy Pennington's grave. Sorrow for the dead had become a
tender memory that day, and joy in the living made life full of hope.

In Virginia's mind a pretty romance was begun in which Thaine and
Josephine were central figures. For mothers will evermore weave romances
for their children so long as the memory of their own romance lives.

The time of the second generation came swiftly, even before the wilderness
of the father's day had been driven entirely from the prairie. Some
compensation for the loss of eastern advantages belonged to the simple
life of the plains children. If they lacked the culture of city society
they were also without its frivolity and temptations. What the prairies
denied them in luxuries they matched with a resourcefulness to meet their
needs. Something of the breadth of the landscape and of the free sweeping
winds of heaven gave them breadth and power to look the world squarely in
the face, and to measure it at its true value, when their hour for action
came.

The Grass River children could ride like Plains Indians. They could cut a
steer out of a herd and prevent or esca