"No, the effect on this cabin if the wind had a sweep through two weak places in the wall. I built this thing to stay till I get ready to go away from it, not for it to go off and leave me sitting here under the sky some stormy day. Of course, the real home, the old Colonial style of house, will stand higher up after awhile, embowered in trees, and the wind may play about its vine-covered verandas, and its stately front columns, but that comes later." "All right, but what was the second reason for the one doorway? You said you had two?" Virginia broke in. "Oh, did I? Well, the other reason is insignificant, but effective in its way. I had only one door and no lumber within three hundred miles to make another, and no money to buy lumber, anyhow." "You should have married a fortune," his wife said demurely. "I did." The smile on the lips did not match the look in the gray eyes. "My anxiety is that I shall not squander my possession, now I have it." "You are squandering your dooryard by plowing out there in front of the house. Isn't there ground enough if the wind will be merciful, not to use up our lawn?" Virginia would not be serious. "I have plowed a double fireguard, and I've burned off the grass between the two to put a wide band of protection about us. I take no chances. Everything is master in the wilderness except man. When he has tamed all these things--prairie fire, storm and drouth, winds and lonely distances, why, there isn't any more wilderness. But it's tough work getting acclimated to these September breezes, I know." Virginia did not reply at once. All day the scream of the wind had whipped upon her nerves until she wanted to scream herself. But it was not in the blood of the breed to give up easily. Something of the stubborn determination that had made the oldtime Thaines drive the Quakers from Virginia shone now in the dark eyes of this daughter of a well-bred house. "It's all a matter of getting one's system and this September wind system to play the same tune," she said. "Virginia, you look just as you did that day when you said you were going through the Rebel ranks in a man's dress to take a message for me to the Union officer of my command, although you ran the risk of being shot for a spy on either side of the lines. When I begged you not to do it, you only laughed at me. I thought then you were the bravest girl I ever saw. Now I know it." "Well, I'll try not to get hysterical over the wind out here. It is a matter of time and adjustment. Let's adjust ourselves to dinner now." Beyond her lightly spoken words Asher caught the undertone of courage, and he knew that a battle for supremacy was on, a struggle between physical outcry and mental poise.