ves at the State House, and had also
let himself be inveigled into buying "a few margins." That was the
bitterest drop in his cup. Wheat had dropped steadily from the very day he
had begun buying. A steady decline in prices was unthinkable, and it was
not till their land was endangered that the trusting man began to take
alarm, and even then he let the speculators who profited by the sales
induce him to make one more wild investment to save that which he had
already lost.

His certainty that his neighbors would take revenge upon _him_ for
political differences by sly prods regarding speculation was of slight
importance, but Susan was to be humiliated before them!--Susan, who had
tried to help him to see the dangers--Susan, who did not complain when she
was called upon to sign the deeds to the land she had helped to win from
the Indians and the wilderness of uncultivated things. Nathan remembered
on that bitter day that but for her adventurous spirit he would have been
working at day's wages in old Indiana, instead of having a home and being
an active member of his community and a member of the legislature of his
state, with opportunities to prove himself a man in the world of men. He
had failed, and his failure reacted upon her. It was not the loss of money
and political prestige alone which bit. Another phase of their life in
Topeka added its humiliation. Nathan had wanted his wife to share his
political honours and had found himself ignorant of every means by which
these things could be brought to her. He had heard of gay winters at the
Capital, but they lived apart from it all. The house in which he had
placed her was attractive and on a good street, but the men whom he met at
the State House soon saw that nothing was to be gained through knowing
Nathan Hornby, and failed to ask their wives to call upon his wife.

Disaster is in exact ratio to our valuation of things. Although Nathan
Hornby had lost three fourths of his land, his reputation as a business
man and politician, and his faith in men, he still had left the one
essential gift which should have helped him to win again all that which he
had lost. Susan Hornby, like Ruth of old, abandoned all else and abode
with her husband in love, cheering him at each problematical step, and
saying as they returned from the notary's office after signing away their
land to a stranger:

"Never mind, Nate, there are only two of us," and for the first time since
their little d