So Wingate remained after the boom bubble broke, encouraging the few sturdy farmers who clung with fondness to the valley. Even when one by one the houses, all but those belonging to the town company, were torn down and borne away, the dream was not shattered. The dreamer became the agent of the company, charged with the care of the remaining houses until the dream should reach again toward fulfillment. While he waited, the dreamer pictured the joy and devotion with which he would minister to the spiritual needs of the new people, who would love him he knew even as he should love them. And thus waiting, he moved the rounds of his simple life, in the midst of the few, who rewarded his love and zeal with ever-renewed devotion. Even those who cared nothing for religion cared for the religious teacher, and came regularly to hear him preach. They could not give much to his support; they had not much themselves, but he needed so very little. He had his small stipend from the missionary organization of his denomination, the garden he tended on the low land by the stream yielded well in the favorable seasons, and the missionary barrel filled with clothing which some worthy ladies had sent him from the East two years before had held such a goodly store of cast-off garments that neither he nor the child, a stout boy now, had required anything in that line since. The shiny, long-tailed coat which he kept so scrupulously clean and which was a world too large for him, and the tight-fitting, ink-spattered sailor suit which the boy wore, had come from the depths of that barrel, which seemed as miraculous in its way as the widow’s cruse of oil. And now, when he had seen no stranger in Paradise for months, and no new face except when he journeyed once a week to preach in the little railroad town at the base of the mountain, there had come this pleasant-voiced man, who spoke well of the prophetic sermon and seemed able to appreciate the promise and future of the land. When Curtis Clayton returned from his ride night had fallen. The Milky Way had stretched its shining trail across the prairies of the sky, and the Dipper was pouring the clouds out of its great bowl and shaking them from its handle. Clayton sat looking at the night sky, and as he sat thus the boy came out to put away his horse. Within the house, Wingate, busy with coffee pot and frying pan, directed him to the room he was to occupy, and announced that supper would be ready soon.