The spring of the memorable year of 1874 opened auspiciously. The peach trees on the Aydelot and Shirley claims bloomed for the first time; more sod had been turned for wheat and corn; gardens and truck patches were planted; cattle were grazing beyond the sand dunes across the river, while the young cottonwood and catalpa groves, less than three feet high it is true, began to make great splotches of darker green on the prairie, promising cool forest shade in coming years. Mail went west on the main trail three times a week. The world was coming nearer to the Grass River settlement which, in spite of his doleful view once, Darley Champers was helping to fill up to the profit of the real estate business. Carey's Crossing, having given up all hope of becoming a county seat, had faded from the face of the earth. The new county seat of Wolf County was confidently expected to be pitched at Wykerton, up in the Big Wolf Creek settlement, where one Hans Wyker, former saloon-keeper of Carey's Crossing, was building up a brewery for the downfall of the community. Dr. Carey was taking an extended medical course in the East, whither Bo Peep had followed him. Darley Champers was hovering like a hawk between Wykerton and the Grass River settlement. Todd Stewart had taken a claim, while John Jacobs, temporarily in the East, was busy planting the seeds for a new town which no Wyker brewery should despoil. All lovely was this springtime of 1874. Midsummer had another story to tell. A story of a wrathful sun in a rainless sky above a parched land, swept for days together by the searing south winds. In all the prairie there was no spot of vivid green, no oasis in the desert of tawny grasses and stunted brown cornstalks, and bare, hot stubble wherefrom even the poor crop of straw had been chaffless and mean. On a Sabbath morning in late July, the little Grass River schoolhouse was crowded, for Sabbath school was the event of the week. It did not take a multitude to crowd the sod-built temple of learning. Even with the infant class out of doors in the shade, the class inside filled the space. The minister school-teacher, Pryor Gaines, called it the "old folks' class," although there was not a person over thirty-five years of age in the whole settlement. Asher Aydelot was the superintendent, and Virginia took care of the infant class. Jim Shirley led the singing, and Pryor Gaines taught the "old folks." He was the same minister school-teacher who had sat at the table with Dr. Carey and Todd Stewart and John Jacobs on the day that Thomas Smith ate his first meal at the Jacobs House. With the passing of Carey's Crossing, he had taken a homestead claim on Grass River. This morning the lesson was short, and the children, finding the heat of the shade outside unbearable, were sitting on the earth floor beside their parents. Nobody seemed ready to go home.