"We are here at last, Mrs. Aydelot. Welcome to our neighborhood!" Asher said bravely as the team halted. Virginia sat still on the wagon seat, taking in the view of sunset sky and twilight prairie. "This is our home," she murmured. "I'm glad we are here." "I'm glad you are glad. I hope I haven't misrepresented it to you," her husband responded, turning away that he might not see her face just then. It was a strange place to call home, especially to one whose years had been spent mainly in the pretty mountain-walled Virginia valleys where cool brooks babbled over pebbly beds or splashed down in crystal waterfalls; whose childhood home had been an old colonial house with driveways, and pillared verandas, and jessamine-wreathed windows; with soft carpets and cushioned chairs, and candelabra whose glittering pendants reflected the light in prismatic tintings; and everywhere the lazy ease of idle servants and unhurried lives. The little sod house, nestled among sheltering sunflowers, stood on a slight rise of ground. It contained one room with two windows, one looking to the east and the other to the west, and a single door opening on the south. Above this door was a smooth pine board bearing the inscription, "Sunflower Inn," stained in rather artistic lettering. A low roof extending over the doorway gave semblance to a porch which some scorched vines had vainly tried to decorate. There was a rude seat made of a goods box beside the doorway. Behind the house rose the low crest of a prairie billow, hardly discernible on the level plains. Before it lay the endless prairie across which ran the now half-dry, grass-choked stream. A few stunted cottonwood trees followed its windings, and one little clump of wild plum bushes bristled in a draw leading down to the shallow place of the dry watercourse. All else was distance and vastness void of life and utter loneliness. Virginia Aydelot looked at the scene before her. Then she turned to her husband with a smile on her young face, saying again, "I am glad I am here." There is one chord that every woman's voice touches some time, no matter what her words may be. As Virginia spoke, Asher saw again the moonlight on the white pillars of the south veranda of the old Aydelot farmhouse, and his mother sitting in the shadows; and again he caught the tone of her voice saying, "Thy shoes shall be iron and brass; and as thy days, so shall thy strength be." He leaped from the wagon seat and put up his arms to help his wife to the ground. "This is the end of the trail," he said gaily. "We have reached the inn with 'The Sign of the Sunflower.' See the signboard Jim has put up for us." At that moment a big shepherd dog came bounding out of the weeds by the river and leaped toward them with joyous yelps; a light shone through the doorway, and a voice at once deep and pleasant to the ear, called out: