ork through which surely he could be saved--the
cultivation of wheat.

"Do you love me?" she whispered.

"Do I!... Nothing could ever change my love for you."

"I am your wife, you know."

The shadow left his face.

"Are you? Really? Lenore Anderson..."

"Lenore Dorn. It is a beautiful name now."

"It does sound sweet. But you--my wife? Never will I believe!"

"You will have to--very soon."

"Why?" A light, warm and glad and marveling, shone in his eyes. Indeed,
Lenore felt then a break in the strange aloofness of him--in his
impersonal, gentle acceptance of her relation to him.

"To-morrow I'm going to take you home to your wheat-hills."

CHAPTER XXXII

Lenore told her conception of the history and the romance of wheat to
Dorn at this critical time when it was necessary to give a trenchant
call to hope and future.

In the beginning man's struggle was for life and the mainstay of life
was food. Perhaps the original discoverer of wheat was a meat-eating
savage who, in roaming the forests and fields, forced by starvation to
eat bark and plant and berry, came upon a stalk of grain that chewed
with strange satisfaction. Perhaps through that accident he became a
sower of wheat.

Who actually were the first sowers of wheat would never be known. They
were older than any history, and must have been among the earliest of
the human race.

The development of grain produced wheat, and wheat was ground into
flour, and flour was baked into bread, and bread had for untold
centuries been the sustenance and the staff of life.

Centuries ago an old Chaldean priest tried to ascertain if wheat had
ever grown wild. That question never was settled. It was universally
believed, however, that wheat had to have the cultivation of man.
Nevertheless, the origin of the plant must have been analogous to that
of other plants. Wheat-growers must necessarily have been people who
stayed long in one place. Wandering tribes could not till and sow the
fields. The origin of wheat furnished a legendary theme for many races,
and mythology contained tales of wheat-gods favoring chosen peoples.
Ancient China raised wheat twenty-seven centuries before Christ; grains
of wheat had been found in prehistoric ruins; the dwellers along the
Nile were not blind to the fertility of the valley. In the days of the
Pharaohs the old river annually inundated its low banks, enriching the
soil of vast areas, where soon a green-and-gold ocean of wheat