y got Darley
Champers to look out for. The day I see them two drivin' out of Wykerton
towards Little Wolf, the time she'd closed the Cloverdale ranch deal, I
knowed the white lilac mother used to love was sweeter in my back lot."

"I could not take Miss Jane's property and be happy," Leigh went on.
"Besides, I can earn a living. See what my brushes can do, and see the
secret I learned in the Coburn book."

Leigh held up the sketch she was finishing, then pointed to the broad
alfalfa acres, refreshingly green in the May sunlight.

"Well, I brought down a copy of the late Miss Aydelot's will that she left
with Doc Carey, who is goin' to Chiny in a few days, him an' Thaine
Aydelot, Doc writes me. An' you can look over it. I've got to go to
Cloverdale next week an' settle things there, an' see that the probatin's
are straight. Lemme hear from you before I go. I must be gettin' on.
Danged fine country, this Grass River Valley. Who'd a' thought it back in
the seventies when Jim Shirley an' Asher Aydelot squatted here? Goodday."

Left alone, Leigh Shirley opened the big envelope holding the will of
Francis Aydelot and read in it the stern decree that no child of Virginia
Thaine should inherit the Aydelot estate in Ohio.

"That's why Miss Jane couldn't leave it to Asher's son," she murmured.

Then she read the will of the late Jane Aydelot. When she lifted her face
from its pages, her fair cheeks were pink with excitement, her deep
violet eyes were shining, her lips were parted in a glad smile. She went
down to the meadow fence and plucked the first little golden sunflower
from its stem, and stood holding it as she looked away to where the three
headlands stood up clear and shimmering in the light of the May afternoon.
That night two letters were hurried to the postoffice. One went no farther
than Wykerton to tell Darley Champers that Leigh would heartily approve of
any action he might take in the business that was taking him to Ohio.

CHAPTER XXII

THE FARTHER WILDERNESS

And beyond the baths of sunset found new worlds.
--London.

Dr. Carey and Thaine Aydelot sat watching the play of a fountain in a
moonlit garden of tropical loveliness. In the Manila hospital Thaine had
gone far down the Valley of the Shadow of Death before he reached a
turning point. But youth, good blood, a constitution seasoned by camp and
field, the watchful care of his physi