Dr. Horace Carey, coming in from a distant claim, had dropped into this trail for the bits of shade here and there and was letting his pony take its way leisurely along the side of the creek bed. There were only a few shallow pools now where the fall rains would soon put a running stream, and as the doctor's way lay along the moist places the pony's feet fell noiselessly on the soft ground. As he rounded a bend in the stream he caught sight of Virginia, her face outlined against the background of willow sprays, making a picture worth a journey to see, it was such a hopeful, happy face at that moment. Dr. Carey involuntarily checked his pony at the sight. His own countenance was too pale for a Kansas plainsman, and he sat so still that the low strain of Virginia's song reached his ears. Presently Juno lifted her head and Virginia rode away out on the Sunflower Trail, bordered now only by dead pest-ridden stalks. Suddenly lifting her eyes she saw far across a stretch of burned prairie a landscape of exquisite beauty. In a foreground lay a little lake surrounded by grassy banks and behind it, on a slight elevation, stood a mansion house of the old Colonial style with white pillared portico, and green vines and forest trees casting cool shade. Beyond it, wrapped in mist, rose a mountain height with a road winding picturesquely in and out along its side. Virginia caught her breath as a great sob rose in her throat. This was all so like the old Thaine mansion house of her childhood years. "It's only the mirage," she said aloud. "But it was so like--what?" She held Juno back as she looked afar at the receding painting of the plains. "It's like the house we'll have some day on that slope beyond the Sunflower Inn. The mountains are misty. They are only the mountains of memory. But the home and the woods and the water--all may be real." Then she thought of Asher and of the dull prairie everywhere. "I wonder if he would want to go back if he could see this as I see it," she questioned. "But I know he has seen it daily. I can tell by that look in his gray eyes." It was long after moonrise when Asher Aydelot, watching by the corral, heard the sound of hoof-beats and saw the faint outline of a horse and rider swinging in from the northward as once before he had watched the same horse and rider swinging over the same trail before the cool north wind that beat back the September prairie fire. "I have supper all ready. See what grew just for you!" Asher said as he and his wife entered the house. A bunch of forlorn little sunflowers in a brown pitcher graced the table. They could scarcely be called flowers, but to Virginia, who had hardly seen a blossom through the days of drouth, the joy they brought was keener than the joy that the roses and orchids gave in the days of a later prosperity. "I found them in the draw where the wild plums grow," Asher said. "How they ever escaped the hoppers is a miracle."