busy," Laura suggested.

The country around New Eden was still new to her. Although she
overflowed the town with her sunny presence, her lameness had kept her
nearer to "Castle Cluny" than her brother had comprehended. She did not
understand the laws, nor lawlessness, of what her brother called the
"blowout," nor had she ever seen the desolation that marked its
broadening path.

"A blowout is never satisfied until it has swallowed all the land in the
landscape," York explained. "I remember a few years ago there was just a
sandy outcrop along a little draw below Joe's claim, the line of some
prehistoric river-bed, I suppose. That was the beginning of the thing
Joe is fighting to-day. Something started the sand to drifting. It
increased as the wind blew away the soil; the more wind, the more sand;
the more sand, the more wind. They worked together until what had been a
narrow belt spread enormously, gradually overlapping Joe's claim, making
acres of waste ground. I hate to see Joe shoulder a mortgage to try to
drive back that monstrous thing. But Joe is one of those big,
self-contained fellows who takes the bit in his teeth and goes his own
gait in spite of all the danger signals you wigwag at him."

"Why do you loan him money if you know he can't succeed?" Laura
inquired.

"Making farm loans is the business of the Macpherson Mortgage Company.
That's how we maintain our meager existence," York replied, teasingly.
"Joe wants to fight back the blowout creeping over his south border
farther and farther each year. Our company gets its commission while he
fights. See?"

"Oh, you grasping loan shark! If I didn't know how easy it is for you to
lie I'd disown you," Laura declared, flinging a chair pillow at her
brother, who was chuckling at her earnestness.

But York was serious himself in the next minute.

"Our company doesn't want the prairie; it wants prosperity. A foreclosed
mortgage is bad business. It brings us responsibility and ill-will. What
we want is good-will and interest money. I have put the thing up to Joe
just as it is. Man is a free agent to choose or let alone. I have a
bigger problem than Joe to handle now. I had a letter this evening from
Miss Geraldine Swaim, of Philadelphia. Do you remember her, Laura? She
used to come up to Winnowoc when she was a little girl."

"I remember little Jerry Swaim, Jim and Lesa's only child," York's
sister declared. "She was considerably younger than I. I pushed her in