s her inherent right of admiration and devotion. When I
bade her good-bye a look of sadness was in her eyes. It rebuked my
spirit somehow, although Heaven knows I had given her no cause to miss
me. But my carriage was waiting and I hurried away. For a moment only
her image lingered with me, and then I forgot her entirely; for every
turn of the wheel was bringing me to Kansas, to the prairies, to the
beautiful Neosho Valley, to the boys again, to my father and home, but
most of all to Marjie.

It was twenty months since I had seen her. She had spent a year in Ohio
in the Girls' College at Glendale, and had written me she would reach
Springvale a month before I did. After that I had not heard from her
except through a marked copy of the _Springvale Weekly Press_, telling
of her return. She had not marked that item, but had pencilled the news
that "Philip Baronet would return in three weeks from Massachusetts,
where he had been enjoying the past two years in school."

Enjoying! Under this Marjie had written in girlish hand, "Hurry up,
Phil."

On the last stage of my journey I was wild with delight. It was
springtime on the prairies, and a verdure clothed them with its richest
garments. I did not note the growing crops, and the many little
freeholds now, where there had been only open unclaimed land two years
before. I was longing for the Plains again, for one more ride, reckless
and free, across their broad stretches, for one more gorgeous sunset out
on Red Range, one more soft, iridescent twilight purpling down to the
evening darkness as I had seen it on "Rockport" all those years. How the
real Rockport, the Massachusetts town, faded from me, and the sea, and
the college halls, and city buildings. The steam and steel and brick and
marble of an older civilization, all gave place to Nature's broad
handiwork and the generous-hearted, capable, unprejudiced people of this
new West. However crude and plain Springvale might have seemed to an
Eastern boy suddenly transplanted here, it was fair and full of delight
for me.

The stage driver, Dever, by name, was a stranger to me, but he knew all
about my coming. Also he was proud to be the first to give me the
freshest town gossip. That's the stage-driver's right divine always. I
was eager to hear of everybody and in this forty miles' ride I was
completely informed. The story rambled somewhat aimlessly from topic to
topic, but it never lagged.

"Did I know Judson? He'd got a c