"The real thing is left to you," she replied, "the biggest work of all. You must go out and tame the soil. Your father bought his first quarter with money his father had left him by will, but he had no inheritance to buy all the other quarters that make the big Aydelot wheat fields of the Sunflower Ranch. If every acre of the prairie was covered with a layer of eastern capital, borrowed or inherited, it would not make one stalk of wheat grow nor ripen one ear of corn. But you may turn up the soil with your plow and find silver dollars in the furrow. You may herd cattle on the plains, and their dun hides will bring you cloth-of-gold. You may seed the brown fields with alfalfa, and it will take away the fear of protest or over-draft, as the Coburn book says it will. I know, because I've tried and proved it. Oh, Thaine, with all your grand battles in the East which is always our West, Luzon is still a jungle and China isn't yet in the light. You have only prepared the way for the big things that are to follow. I never hear the old Civil War veterans telling of their achievements in a Grand Army meeting without wishing that, after their great story is told, the Grand Army of the Prairies would tell their tale of how the men and women fought out the battles here with no music of drums nor roar of cannon, nor bugle calls, nor shoulder straps, nor comradeship, nor inspiring heroic climaxes, and straight, fierce campaigns to victory. But just loneliness, and discouragements, and long waiting, and big, foolish-seeming dreams of what might be, with only the reality of the unfriendly land to work upon. I'm so glad you want to stay here and to take that open prairie beyond the Purple Notches for our kingdom." The happiness in Leigh Shirley's eyes took from Thaine's mind the memory of all the hardship and tragedy of his two years on the battlefield. Her pride in his achievements, her joy in his return and her dream of their future together in a work so full of service, filled his soul with rejoicing, as the May morning opened for these two its paradise of Youth and Love. * * * * * Asher and Virginia Aydelot had come out on the veranda to look for Leigh. A moment they waited, then Asher said softly: "He has forgotten us, but he has come back to the life we love." "And he will come back to us tenfold more ours, because his heart is here," Virginia answered, and the two stole softly indoors. "See the roses Jim brought; they seem to belong to that beautiful vase," Virginia said as they stood at the door of the dining room. "I think Jim must have meant them for Leigh and Thaine." "Yes, he brought us sunflowers in an old tin peach-can wrapped with a newspaper, and we had no mahogany dining room set and not so much cut-glass and china and silver in our cupboard, nor quite such a good rug on our hardwood floor," Asher replied.