-beens."

Abel threw back his head and laughed till the room rang.

"Hear her, my girl! Just hear her! That's ma! That's Mercy! She's
caught the fever, or whatever 'tis, that ails this town. She's got no
more time to hark back. It's always get up and go ahead. What you
think? She's advising me to build a new tavern. _Me! Mercy_ advising
it! What do you think of that?"

"That it's a capital idea. We shall need it. We shall need more than
one tavern if all goes well. And it will. Now that the Indians are
gone forever,"--here Kitty breathed a gentle sigh,--"the white people
are no longer afraid. They have heard of our wonderful country and our
wonderful location,--right in the heart of the continent, with room on
every side to spread and grow eternally, indefinitely."

"Kitty, I sometimes think you an' Gaspar are a little _off_ on the
subject of your native town; for 'twasn't his'n; seein' what a
collection of disreputable old houses an' mud holes an' sloughs
of despond there's right in plain sight. But you seem to think
something's bound to happen and you two'll be in the midst of it."

The Sun Maid laughed, as merrily as in the old days, and answered
promptly:

"_I've_ never found any sloughs of despond and something _is_ bound
to happen. Katasha's dreams, or prophecies, whichever they were, are
to come true. There is something in the very air of our lake-bordered,
wind-swept prairie that attracts and exhilarates, and binds. That's
it,--_binds_. Once a dweller here by this great water, a man is bound
to return to it if he lives. Those soldiers who have gone away from
us, a mere handful, so to speak, will spread the story of our
beautiful land and will come again--a legion. It is our dream that
this little pestilence-visited hamlet will one day be one of the
marvels of the world; that to it will assemble people from all the
nations, to whom it will be an asylum, a home, and a treasure-house
for every sort of wealth and wisdom. In my fancies I can see them
coming, crowding, hastening; as in reality I shall some day see them,
and not far off. And in the name of all that is young and strong and
glorious--I bid them welcome!"

She stood in the open doorway and the sunlight streamed through it,
irradiating her wonderful beauty. The two old people, types of the
past, regarded her transfigured countenance with feelings not unmixed
with awe, and after a moment Abel spoke:

"Well, well, well! Kitty, my girl. Hum, hum! Yo