committee meeting, descended from the stars like a benediction. Presley
stepped to the edge of the porch, looking off to southward.

And there before him, mile after mile, illimitable, covering the earth
from horizon to horizon, lay the Wheat. The growth, now many days old,
was already high from the ground. There it lay, a vast, silent ocean,
shimmering a pallid green under the moon and under the stars; a mighty
force, the strength of nations, the life of the world. There in the
night, under the dome of the sky, it was growing steadily. To Presley's
mind, the scene in the room he had just left dwindled to paltry
insignificance before this sight. Ah, yes, the Wheat--it was over this
that the Railroad, the ranchers, the traitor false to his trust, all
the members of an obscure conspiracy, were wrangling. As if human
agency could affect this colossal power! What were these heated, tiny
squabbles, this feverish, small bustle of mankind, this minute swarming
of the human insect, to the great, majestic, silent ocean of the Wheat
itself! Indifferent, gigantic, resistless, it moved in its appointed
grooves. Men, Liliputians, gnats in the sunshine, buzzed impudently in
their tiny battles, were born, lived through their little day, died, and
were forgotten; while the Wheat, wrapped in Nirvanic calm, grew steadily
under the night, alone with the stars and with God.

CHAPTER V.

Jack-rabbits were a pest that year and Presley occasionally found
amusement in hunting them with Harran's half-dozen greyhounds, following
the chase on horseback. One day, between two and three months after
Lyman s visit to Los Muertos, as he was returning toward the ranch house
from a distant and lonely quarter of Los Muertos, he came unexpectedly
upon a strange sight.

Some twenty men, Annixter's and Osterman's tenants, and small ranchers
from east of Guadalajara--all members of the League--were going through
the manual of arms under Harran Derrick's supervision. They were all
equipped with new Winchester rifles. Harran carried one of these himself
and with it he illustrated the various commands he gave. As soon as one
of the men under his supervision became more than usually proficient, he
was told off to instruct a file of the more backward. After the manual
of arms, Harran gave the command to take distance as skirmishers, and
when the line had opened out so that some half-dozen feet intervened
between each man, an advance was made across the