ur's ability to detect it.
A few days later, when he found he could safely leave the rancho alone,
he rode to Fair Plains.

The floods were out along the turnpike road, and even seemed to have
increased since his last journey. The face of the landscape had changed
again. One of the lower terraces had become a wild mere of sedge and
reeds. The dry and dusty bed of a forgotten brook had reappeared, a
full-banked river, crossing the turnpike and compelling a long detour
before the traveler could ford it. But as he approached the Hopkins
farm and the opposite clearing and cabin of Jim Hooker, he was quite
unprepared for a still more remarkable transformation. The cabin, a
three-roomed structure, and its cattle-shed had entirely disappeared!
There were no traces or signs of inundation. The land lay on a gentle
acclivity above the farm and secure from the effects of the flood, and
a part of the ploughed and cleared land around the site of the cabin
showed no evidence of overflow on its black, upturned soil. But
the house was gone! Only a few timbers too heavy to be removed,
the blighting erasions of a few months of occupation, and the dull,
blackened area of the site itself were to be seen. The fence alone was
intact.

Clarence halted before it, perplexed and astonished. Scarcely two weeks
had elapsed since he had last visited it and sat beneath its roof with
Jim, and already its few ruins had taken upon themselves the look of
years of abandonment and decay. The wild land seemed to have thrown off
its yoke of cultivation in a night, and nature rioted again with all its
primal forces over the freed soil. Wild oats and mustard were springing
already in the broken furrows, and lank vines were slimily spreading
over a few scattered but still unseasoned and sappy shingles. Some
battered tin cans and fragments of old clothing looked as remote as if
they had been relics of the earliest immigration.

Clarence turned inquiringly towards the Hopkins farmhouse across the
road. His arrival, however, had already been noticed, as the door of the
kitchen opened in an anticipatory fashion, and he could see the slight
figure of Phoebe Hopkins in the doorway, backed by the overlooking heads
and shoulders of her parents. The face of the young girl was pale and
drawn with anxiety, at which Clarence's simple astonishment took a shade
of concern.

"I am looking for Mr. Hooker," he said uneasily. "And I don't seem to be
able to find either him