horus of crickets sang
joyously in the short brown grass about the sunflowers. The cottonwoods
along the river course gleamed like alabaster in the white night-splendor,
and the prairie breeze sang its low crooning song of evening as it flowed
gently over the land. "How beautiful the world is," Virginia said, as she
caught the full radiance of the light on the prairie.

"Is this beautiful to you, Virgie?" Asher asked, as he drew her close to
him. "I've seen these plains when they seemed just plain hell to me, full
of every kind of danger: cholera, poison, cold, hunger, heat, hostile
Indian, and awful loneliness. And yet, the very fascination of the thing
called me back and hardened me to it all. But why? What is there here on
these Kansas prairies to hold me here and make me want to bring you here,
too? Not a feature of this land is like the home country in Virginia. When
the Lord gave Adam and Eve a tryout in the Garden of Eden, He gave them
everything with which to start the world off right. Out here we doubt
sometimes if there is any God west of the Missouri River. He didn't leave
any timber for shelter, nor wood, nor coal for fuel, nor fruit, nor nuts,
nor roots, nor water for the dry land. All there is of this piece of the
Lord's leftovers is just the prairie down here, and the sky over it. And
it's so big I wonder sometimes that there is even enough skystuff to cover
it. And yet, it is beautiful and maddening in its hold, once it gets you.
Why?"

"Maybe it is the very unconquerableness that cries out to the love of
power in you. Maybe the Lord, who knew how easily Adam let Eden slip
through his fingers, decided that on the other side of the world He would
give a younger race of men, a fire-tried race in battle, the chance to
make their own Eden. So He left the stuff here for such as you and me to
picture out our own plan and then work to the pattern. It is the real land
of promise. Everything waiting to be done here."

"And there's only one way to do it. I am sure of that," Asher replied.
"Armies don't win, they terrorize and destroy. We whipped back the Indians
out here; they'd come again, if they dared--but they never will," he added
quickly, as he saw his wife's face whiten in the moonlight. "It's a
struggle to win the soil, with loneliness and distance and a few thousand
other things to fight, beside. But I told you all this before I asked you
to come out here."

"I wish I could have brought some property t