“I have thought of all this, Horace, and I mean to make more of her than simply a servant. In time she will grow to be my trusted friend and companion, I am sure. Why may she not? She is well-born; better than many in our best society.” “You dear little philanthropic soul, you’d better adopt her at once. But don’t pick up too many pretty girls to waste sympathy upon or _I_ shall be neglected, I fear. Besides, I have often noticed how illy such kindness is repaid. You might have cause to regret it.” Mr. Wylie picked up the evening paper and was soon absorbed in its columns. CHAPTER IV THROUGH CLAIRVOYANT VISION And now, as the exhibitor of a panorama might say, it becomes necessary to introduce our readers or audience to new scenes and stranger people. But these strangers being near and dear to the heart of the writer, if not yet to the reader, become in their lives so intermingled and interwoven in the lives and histories of the persons first introduced that we can no longer allow them to remain behind the scenes. We must also go back in time several years to a period when the prairies of the West were in some portions less thickly populated than at present, and the mushroom growth of the towns was still a marvel to the slower growing East. To a time, also, when the so-called modern spiritualism was of a newer growth and when esoteric philosophy, occultism, and the many other _isms_ dealing with the life beyond the grave were less talked of. The place, a small town in western Iowa, and a country farm-house, nestles down in one of the horse-shoe coves formed by the bluffs above the eastern border of the Missouri River. There are no neighboring dwellings in sight, though but a few rods away are other houses situated also in coves in the bluffs, forming quite a large community, living near but out of sight of each other. Large herds of horses and cattle are seen grazing upon the unfenced pasture land, and a small schoolhouse standing out like a beacon from a ridge of highland is the only building visible, except the barns and corn-cribs belonging to the farms. The house itself is low and long, with several additions or lean-tos, but has an air of comfort and hospitality, looking out as it does upon the many acres of rolling plateau, where far away is seen the dark line of the country road winding about the base of the bluffs or climbing steeply up the sides of them. A long lane branches from the main road and leads up to the house, and affords a view of any coming visitor for some distance away, and lines of cowpaths thread the steep hills at the back of the dwelling. Thus sequestered and hill-environed lived Squire Bartram with his wife and two sons, enjoying the peace and plenty of the average well-to-do farmer, with none of the business care and excitements which a life in town might bring.