Along the edge of this lower land there ran low earthen fences made by the white man, who had laid claim upon the kingdom of the Father of the Floods--vainly-builded fences of earth, hopelessly seeking to hedge out the imperious flow of Messasebe, the ancient, the enduring. Father Messasebe, seeing these things, called back to the following legions of his children that here was time for sport. And all the waters laughed loud and long, dallying with their prey. "In the North they have robbed me," said Father Messasebe to his legions. "Here in the South they would bind me. Ho! now for the game of letting in the floods, of making anew my wilderness. "For a wilderness," said Father Messasebe, "the world has ever had. And whether gentle overpower barbarian, or barbarian in turn overcast the gentle, always there will be a wilderness, and out of it will come combat. "But the World is ancient and abiding," said Father Messasebe to his children, "and the World cares no whit for those things sometimes called good and new. In the years, that which is new becomes old. Only the World and its children endure. Only the old prevails. Only the wilderness, and the combat of weak and strong, remain for ever. "And at all combat," said Father Messasebe to his children, "the World smiles, knowing that the strong must win; and knowing that in time the strong will become weak. Wherefore let us build our wilderness for a time, like to that which will one day rise again along all my shores, great trees growing where cities are to-day. "Only in the ages," said Father Messasebe to his children, "do the weak come to be the strong. Wherefore must the strong prevail, each in his own day. It is the Law!" BOOK III CHAPTER I EDDRING, AGENT OP CLAIMS Some three years subsequent to that mysterious departure of Miss Lady in search of a world beyond the rim of the confining forest, there sat in his office, one fine morning in June, no less a person than John Eddring, formerly claim agent of the Y.V. railway. Eddring looked older, more wearied. He seemed disappointed in his years of fruitless search, in the following of false clues, in the death of new hopes. And yet from the man's clear eye there shone a certain grim comfort of accomplishment. He was now surrounded, as before, with the customary paraphernalia of a business office. A few desks, a cabinet letter-file, a typewriter stand or two, a chart, a picture askew upon the wall--this might still have been the office of the Y.V. railway. Indeed, there was printed upon the office door the modest sign, "John Eddring, Agent of Claims."