On the second day the heat had not abated. It had rather increased. The burning winds blew stronger. They raged with a sudden fury, died down to a whisper, and raged again. John, when he led the field hands in, shook his head and took his place at the table in silence. Seth, setting their meal before them, crept to the door and looked out. He turned faint and sick at heart at the sight of the fields, for the tassels had drooped and the broad green leaves were slowly changing to a parched and withered brown, parched and withered as his face, which had been bared to the heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years, parched and withered as his heart which had borne the brunt of sadness and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and it could bear no more. On the third day the hot winds grew vengeful. They swept across the prairies with a hissing sound as of flames sizzling through the heat of a furnace. The tassels, burnt now to a dingy brown, hung in wisps. The leaves drooped like tired arms. They no longer sang in the wind. They rattled, a hoarse, harsh rattle premonitory of death. Far and near the fields lay scorched, withered, burnt to a crisp as if by the fast and furious blast of a raging prairie fire. There was no longer need of harvest hands. The harvest, gathered by the hot winds, was ended. The ruin was complete. Their mission accomplished, the winds died down suddenly as they had risen and passed away across the barren prairies in a sigh. Then up came the cooling breezes from the Gulf, light, zephyry clouds gathered, shut off the brazen sunlight and burst into a grateful shower, which descended upon the parched and deadened fields of corn. But Seth! Flung on his knees by the side of the bed in the corner of the hole in the ground, his face buried in his arms, he listened to the patter of those raindrops on the corn. His eyes were dry; but a spring had broken somewhere near the region of his heart. He owned himself defeated. He gave up the fight. CHAPTER XX. [Illustration] Cyclona had gone to Seth's dugout and found a note from him on the table. It contained few words, but they held a world of meaning. Simple words and few, tolling her knell of doom. "I have gone to Celia," it read. Cyclona crushed the paper, flung it to the floor and ran from the hole in the ground, afraid of she knew not what, engulfed in the awful fear which encompasses the hopeless,--the fear of herself. She sprang to her saddle and urged her broncho on with heel and whip, upright as an Indian in her saddle, her face set, expressionless in its marble-like immobility. She scarcely heeded the direction she took. She left that to her broncho, who sped into the heat of the dusty daylight, following hard in the footsteps of the wind. What she wished to do was to go straight to God, to stand before Him and ask him questions.