"We will christen our claim 'The Sunflower Ranch' tonight, and these are our decorations for the ceremony. It is all we have now. But it is ours," Virginia declared. And then she told the story of the bank failure at Cloverdale. "The last bridge is burned surely," Asher commented as he looked across the table at Virginia. "This is the only property we have except youth and health and hope--and--each other." "And the old Aydelot heritage to stand for principle, and your mother's belief in the West and in you, and the Thaine stubbornness about giving up what they want to keep," Virginia declared. "As our days so shall our strength be," Asher added, as he saw his wife's face bright with hope and determination, and remembered the sweet face of his mother as it had looked that night on the veranda of the old farmhouse by the National pike road. * * * * * For a long time down by the willows thinly shadowing Wolf Creek a white-faced man sat looking out toward the west, where a horse and rider had vanished into the mellow tones of distance. CHAPTER VIII ANCHORED HEARTHSTONES Dear Mother of Christ, who motherhood blessed, All life in thy Son is complete. The length of a day, the century's tale Of years do His purpose repeat. As wide as the world a sympathy comes To him who has kissed his own son, A tenderness deep as the depths of the sea, To motherhood mourning is won. No life is for naught. It was heaven's own way That the baby who came should stay only a day. Living by faith, which is the substance of things hoped for, is good for the spirit but reducing to the flesh. Yet it was much by faith that the frontier settlers lived through the winter after the grasshopper raid. Jim Shirley often declared in that time between crops that he could make three meals a day on Pryor Gaines' smile. And Todd Stewart asserted that when the meat was all gone from their larder his family lived one whole week on John Jacobs' belief in the future of their settlement. For the hardship of that winter was heavy. All the more heavy because the settlers were not stupid pauper-bred folk but young men and women of intelligence and culture, whose early lives had known luxuries as well as comforts. But the saving sense of humor, the saving power of belief in themselves, and the saving grace of brotherly love carried them through.