"This is the end of the wilderness! Look up and see the token of light and hope and love. Other hands than mine will bear them to you, but I have shown you their symbol. I, Thaine Aydelot, of Kansas, first of all the world, have dared to stand on your most sacred walls with Old Glory in my hand. Wherever its shadow falls there is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In God's good time they will all come to you in peace as they have come to you now in warfare. Mine today has been the soldier service, and mine today the great reward." CHAPTER XXIV THE CALL OF THE SUNFLOWER Sons and daughters of the prairie, Dreaming, dreaming, Of the starry nights that vary, Gleaming, gleaming! You may wander o'er your country where the vales and mountains be, You may dwell in lands far distant, out beyond the surging sea. But ah! just a yellow sunflower, though across the world you roam, Will take you back to Kansas and the sun-kissed fields of home. --Nancy Parker. Thaine Aydelot sat with Doctor Carey and Pryor Gaines in the latter's home in the Foreign Compound in Peking. "I have done my work here," Pryor was saying. "I have only one wish--to go back to old Grass River in Kansas and spend my days with Jim Shirley. We two will both live to be old because we are useless; and Leigh will be marrying one of these times, if the Lord ever made a man good enough for her. So Jim and I can chum along down the years together." "It is the place for you, Pryor," Doctor Carey asserted. "And now that the ranch is making money while Jim sleeps, you two will be happy and busy as bees. Every neighborhood needs a man or two without family ties. You'll be the most useful citizens in that corner of the prairies. And think of eating Jim Shirley's cooking after this." "And you, Thaine? What now?" Pryor asked as he looked fondly at the young battle-tried soldier. "I have done my work here," Thaine quoted his words. "I've only one wish--to go back to old Grass River in Kansas to take my place on the prairie and win the soil to its best uses; to do as good a work as my father has done." Thaine's dark eyes were luminous with hopefulness, and if a line of pathos for a loss in his life that nothing could fill had settled about his firm mouth, it took nothing from the manliness of the strong young face. "And you, Carey?" Pryor asked. Doctor Carey did not reply at once. A strange weariness had crept over his countenance, and a far-away look was in his eyes. The man who had forgotten himself in his service for others was coming swiftly toward his reward. But neither of his friends noted the change now. At last he said: