In the building of the Aydelot home there was a memory of the old farmhouse beside the National pike road in Ohio and the old Thaine mansion house of the South. The picture the mirage had revealed to Virginia Aydelot on the afternoon when she rode the long lonely miles from Wykerton with John Jacob's message of hope in her keeping--that wonderful mirage picture had grown toward a reality with the slowly winning years. Tonight, with the lighted rooms and the music of the violin, and the sound of laughter and the rhythm of dancing feet, and outside the May moonlight on the veranda with its vine-draped columns, and the big elm trees throwing long shadows down the lawn, with the odor of plowed fields and blossoming grain and shrub mingled with the perfume floating from the creamy catalpa blooms in the shadowy grove, all made a picture not unworthy to hang beside the painting of an Ohio landscape or an old Virginia mansion. "Here's where the forty-niners get the best of it," Jim Shirley declared, as the older men gathered about the veranda steps. "We're dead certain of ourselves now. We're not like those youngsters in there with their battles before 'em." "There hasn't been such a gathering as this in ten years. Not since the night Darley Champers herded us into the schoolhouse and blew a boom down our throats through a goosequill," Cyrus Bennington declared. "See that black thing away across the prairie east of Aydelot's grove. Wait till the moon gets out from that cloud. Now!" Todd Stewart directed the eyes of all to a tall black object distinct in the moonlight. "That's the Cloverdale Farmers' Company's elevator. Looks like a lighthouse stretching up in that sea of wheat." "There are plenty of derelicts in that sea as well as some human derelicts left afloat," Jim said, with a laugh. "Let's take the census." "Begin with Darley Champers," Asher suggested. "Not present. Who got his excuse?" Jim inquired. "He sent it by me," Horace Carey spoke up. "Business still keeping him busy. He's a humane man." "Up to a point he is," John Jacobs broke in. "Let's be fair. He is a large-sized boomer and a small-sized rascal. A few deals won't bear the light of day, but mainly they are inside the law. I've let him handle all but my grazing land around Wykerton. He's done well by me. But he's been at his line a quarter of a century and he'll end where he began--in a real estate office over in Wykerton, trying to get something for nothing and calling it business." "Horace Carey?" Jim Shirley called next. "Here," Carey replied. "With a big H," Todd Stewart declared. "Same doctor of the old school. Why don't you get married or take a trip to India, Doctor? Not that we aren't satisfied all over with you as you are, though, and wouldn't hear to your doing either one. You belong to all of us now."