tion of mankind, the freedom and the
food of the world!

* * * * *

Far up the slow-rising bulge of valley slope above the gleaming river
two cars climbed leisurely and rolled on over the height into what
seemed a bare and lonely land of green.

It was a day in June, filled with a rich, thick, amber light, with a
fragrant warm wind blowing out of the west.

At a certain point on this road, where Anderson always felt compelled to
halt, he stopped the car this day and awaited the other that contained
Lenore and Dorn.

Lenore's joy in the ride was reflected in her face. Dorn rested
comfortably beside her, upon an improvised couch. As he lay half propped
up by pillows he could see out across the treeless land that he knew.
His eyes held a look of the returned soldier who had never expected to
see his native land again. Lenore, sensitive to every phase of his
feeling, watched him with her heart mounting high.

Anderson got out of his car, followed by Kathleen, who looked glad and
mischievous and pretty as a wild rose.

"I just never can get by this place," explained the rancher, as he came
and stood so that he could put a hand on Dorn's knee. "Look, son--an'
Lenore, don't you miss this."

"Never fear, dad," replied Lenore, "it was I who first told you to look
here."

"Terrible big and bare, but grand!" exclaimed Kathleen.

Lenore looked first at Dorn's face as he gazed away across the length
and breadth of land. Could that land mean as much to him as it did
before he went to war? Infinitely more, she saw, and rejoiced. Her faith
was coming home to her in verities. Then she thrilled at the wide
prospect before her.

It was a scene that she knew could not be duplicated in the world. Low,
slow-sloping, billowy green hills, bare and smooth with square brown
patches, stretched away to what seemed infinite distance. Valleys and
hills, with less fallow ground than ever before, significant and
striking: lost the meager details of clumps of trees and dots of houses
in a green immensity. A million shadows out of the west came waving over
the wheat. They were ripples of an ocean of grain. No dust-clouds, no
bleached roads, no yellow hills to-day! June, and the desert found its
analogy only in the sweep and reach! A thousand hills billowing away
toward that blue haze of mountain range where rolled the Oregon. Acreage
and mileage seemed insignificant. All was green--green, the fresh and
hopef