He understood now why the Turners had coveted it. It seemed the acme of luxury to them. And more clearly than ever he understood why the Rosses had died, sooner than relinquish it, and why its usurpation by the Turners had left such a debt of hatred to Linda. It was such a house as men dream about, a place to bequeath to their children and to perpetuate their names. Built like a rock, it would stand through the decades, to pass from one generation to another,--an enduring monument to the strong thews of the men who had builded it. All men know that the love of home is one of the few great impulses that has made toward civilization, but by the same token it has been the cause of many wars. It was never an instinct of a nomadic people, and possibly in these latter days--days of apartments and flats and hotels--its hold is less. Perhaps the day is coming when this love will die in the land, but with it will die the strength to repel the heathen from our walls, and the land will not be worth living in, anyway. But it was not dead to the mountain people. No really primitive emotion ever is. Perhaps, after all, it is a question of the age-old longing for immortality, and therefore it must have its seat in a place higher than this world of death. Men know that when they walk no longer under the sun and the moon it is good to have certain monuments to keep their name alive, whether it be blocks of granite at the grave-head, or sons living in an ancestral home. The Rosses had known this instinct very well. As all men who are strong-thewed and of real natural virtue, they had known pride of race and name, and it had been a task worth while to build this stately house on their far-lying acres. They had given their fiber to it freely; no man who beheld the structure could doubt that fact. They had simply consecrated their lives to it; their one Work by which they could show to all who came after that by their own hands they had earned their right to live. They had been workers, these men; and there is no higher degree. But their achievements had been stolen from their hands. Bruce felt the real significance of his undertaking as never before. He saw the broad lands lying under the moon. There were hundreds of acres in alfalfa and clover to furnish hay for the winter feeding. There were wide, green pastures, ensilvered by the moon; and fields of corn laid out in even rows. The old appeal of the soil, an instinct that no person of Anglo-Saxon descent can ever completely escape, swept through him. They were worth fighting for, these fertile acres. The wind brought up the sweet breath of ripening hay.