All this time the settlers' wives sat listening to the considerations that meant so much to them. They wore calico dresses, and not one of them had on a hat. But their sun-bonnets were clean and stiffly starched, and, while they were humbly clad, there was not a stupid face among them; neither was their conversation stupid. Their homes and home devices for improvement, the last reading in the all too few papers that came their way, the memories of books and lectures and college life of other days, and the hope of the future, were among the things of which they spoke. Virginia Aydelot was no longer the pretty pink and white girl-bride who had come to the West three years before. Her face and arms were brown as a gypsy's, but her hair, rumpled by the white sunbonnet she had worn, was abundant, and her dark eyes and the outlines of her face had not changed. She would always be handsome without regard to age or locality. Nor had the harshness of the wilderness made harsh the soft Southern tongue that was her heritage. At Stewart's words, Asher glanced at his wife, and he knew from her eyes what her choice would be. "When I was a boy on the old farm back at Cloverdale, Ohio, my mother's advice was as useful to me as my father's." Swift through Asher's mind ran the memory of that moonlit April night on his father's veranda five years before. "Out here it is our wives who bear the heaviest burdens. Let us have their thoughts on the situation." "That's right," Jim Shirley exclaimed. "Mrs. Aydelot, you are first in point of time in this settlement. What do you say?" "It's a big responsibility, Mrs. Aydelot," Bennington, who had not smiled hitherto, said with a twinkle in his eye. "As goes Asher Aydelot, so goes Grass River," Todd Stewart declared. "You speak for him, Mrs. Aydelot, and tell us what to do." "I cannot tell _you_ what to do. I can speak only for the Aydelots," Virginia said. "When we came West Asher told me he had left one bridge not burned. He had put aside enough money to take us back to Ohio and to start a new life, on small dimensions, of course, back East, whenever we found the prairies too hostile. They've often been rough, never worse than now, but"--her eyes were bright with the unconquerable will to do as she pleased, true heritage of the Thaines of old--"but I'm not ready to go yet." Jim Shirley clapped his hands, but Pryor Gaines spoke earnestly. "There is no failure in a land where the women will to win. By them the hearthstones stand or crumble to dust. The Plains are master now. They must be servant some day." "Amen!" responded Asher Aydelot, and the Sabbath service ended.