"What a view! Th' vera kingdom of earth at y'r feet! The river wimplin'--wimplin'--wimplin' wi' a silver laugh over the stones, an' the light violet as a Scotch lass's eye! An' the green fields of alfalfa--Have y' ever noticed how th' light above the alfalfa turns purple? An' y'r Rim Rocks roasted fire red by the heat. 'Tis the same view A've gazed on many a time when A was young." He drew a deep sigh of the longing that only the passing frontiersman knows. "'Tis like if the Devil came tempting to-day, 't would be such a place as this! Many's the time He came to us in them old days, lawless days! 'Tis different to-day. He'd not bait men savage naked now. The kingdoms of the earth, he'd offer--wealth an' success--wealth an' success--the fetish o' sons o' men to-day. 'Twould not be simple cards for drink y'd play! Bigger stakes--bigger stakes, boys! He'd bait men's souls wi' bigger stakes! If I were young I'd take his bet an' play for the biggest stakes outside o' Hell--" "Hey? What is that?" queried Brydges; and he winked at Wayland. "We'd been talking of a bunco game when you came up." "Y' had, had you?" The old frontiersman measured Brydges through and through. "Well, judging from y'r brass an' the up-and-coming kind of it, A'm thinking y'r stakes would be pea-nuts under little shells! 'Tis bigger stakes I'd play for if I had m' life to live over--" "What?" asked Wayland curiously. Mr. Bat Brydges was revising his inventory of the old "duffer." Wayland was laughing openly. The old man had become oblivious of both, with a triangling of sharply intersected lines between his brows and tense compression of the lips-- "The--fate--o'--this--land," he ripped out in hammer raps, "the fate of this land, boys, with all time lookin' on since ever Time began! Y're the fiery furnace of all the world's hopes and fears, of all earth's people, of all poets' dreams; an' God only knows what a mess o' slag y're turning out! Y'r muck rakers are belching y'r failures to the four corners of earth! Justice perverted! Courts in fee to the highest bidder! More murders--murders in this fresh new clean land than all the stew pots o' filth the old nations have brewed in a thousand years; and murders unpunished! Y'r Government--the great world experiment--is it the wull o' the people, or the wull of a gilded clique o' tricksters?"