"Yes, he can do it all right. But mark me, now, the day he runs Hans Wyker out of that doggery business it will be good-by to John Jacobs. You see if it isn't. I wouldn't start him after it too quick." Darley Champers spent two weeks with his physician, and the many friends of Dr. Carey smiled and agreed with Todd Stewart, who declared: "Carey would win Satan to be his fast friend if the Old Scratch would only let Carey doctor him once." But nobody understood how the awakening of the latent manhood in Darley Champers and his determination to protect an orphan girl were winning the doctor to him as well. CHAPTER XVII THE PURPLE NOTCHES Two things greater than all things are. One is Love, and the other War. And since we know not how War may prove, Heart of my heart, let us talk of Love. --The Ballad of the King's Jest. The summer ran its hot length of days, but it was a gay season for the second generation in the Grass River Valley. Nor drouth nor heat can much annoy when the heart beats young. September would see the first scattering of the happy company for the winter. The last grand rally for the crowd came late in August. Two hayrack loads of young folks, with some few in carriages, were to spend the day at "The Cottonwoods," a far-away picnic ground toward the three headlands of the southwest. Few of the company had ever visited the place. Distances are deceiving on the prairies and better picnic grounds lay nearer to Grass River. On the afternoon before the picnic Leigh Shirley took her work to the lawn behind the house. What most ranches gave over to weed patches, or hog lots, or dumping grounds along the stream, at Cloverdale had become a shady clover-sodded lawn sloping down to the river's edge. The biggest cottonwoods and elms in the whole valley grew on this lawn. A hedge of lilac and other shrubbery bordered by sunflowers and hollyhocks bounded it from the fields and trellises of white honeysuckle screened it from the road. [Illustration: Leigh turned to see Thaine Aydelot looking down at her as he leaned over the high back of the rustic seat] In a rustic seat overlooking the river and the prairies beyond, Leigh Shirley bent lovingly above a square of heavy white paper on which she was sketching a group of sunflowers glowing in the afternoon sunlight. Leigh's talent was only an undeveloped inheritance, but if it lacked training it's fresh originality was unspoiled. "The top of the afternoon to you."