"Those are the old highroads," I went on, following the lines of trade with my finger. "And those are the old markets. We must find a new territory, make it, create the roads. And it must be a territory that is waiting, fertile, unexplored! Here it is!" My hand ran down the map southwestward, crossing Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Indian Territory, resting on the broad tract marked Texas. "For us that will be what the Northwest has been for our fathers. There lies the future--our future!" "Our future," she repeated slowly, with pleasure in the words. "You plan to feed this land?" "Settlers are pouring in there, now, like vermin. The railroads are following, and already there are the only strong markets we have to-day--those I have been building up for five years." We sat there on the floor before the atlas, and the bigness of the idea got hold of both of us. I pointed out the great currents of world trade, and plotted a new current, to rise from that same wheat land of the Dakotas, flowing southward to the ports of the Gulf. Already, as I knew, the wheat and corn and meat of this Western land had begun to turn southward, avoiding the gate of Chicago with its heavy tolls, to flow by the path of least resistance out through the ports of the Gulf to Europe and Asia. [Illustration: _I pointed out the great currents of world trade._] "This is but the beginning, then--this packing company?" she questioned slowly, putting her finger on the inner truth, as was her wont. "Perhaps!" I laughed back in the recklessness of large plans. "The meat business is nothing to what's coming. We shall have a charter that will let us build elevators, railroads, own ports, run steamship lines--everything that has to do with the handling of food stuffs. Some day that canal will be dug, and then, then".... I can't say how long we were there on our knees before that atlas. It may all seem childish, but the most astonishing thing is that most of what we imagined then has come true in one way or another. And faster even than my expectation. At last we looked up, at the same moment, and our eyes rested on the portrait above us. The cloth had slipped from the canvas, and there was the speaking face, old and saddened--the face without hope, without desire. It seemed the face of despair, chiding us for our thoughts of youth and hope. Mrs. Dround arose from the floor and hung the cloth in its place, touching the portrait softly here and there. Then she stood, resting her hands on the frame, absorbed in thought. A kind of gloom had come over her features. "This--this scheme you have plotted, is life! It is imagination!" She drew a long breath as though to shake off the lethargy of years. "That art," she pointed to the picture of a pale, ghostly woman's face, hanging near by us on the wall--"that is a mere plaything beside yours."