men and women of the vanishing Border displayed her in
a new and noble guise.

If anything was lacking--any least quality of adaptation, it was
supplied when, that evening, my uncles and my father discovered that
Zulime could not only read music, but that she could play all the old
songs which they loved to have me sing. This accomplishment completed
their conquest, for under her deft hands the piano revived the wistful
melodies of _Minnie Minturn_, _Maggie_, and _Nellie Wildwood_, and when
my mother's voice, sweet as ever, but weak and hesitant, joined with
mine in singing for our guests, I was both glad and sad, glad of my
young wife, sad with a realization of my mother's weakness and age.

She did not reproach me for not bringing the daughter sooner. She had
but one regret. "I wish Frank was here," she said, her thought going out
to her other son.

How far away, how remote, how tender that evening seems to me after more
than twenty years work and travel! To Zulime it unrolled like a scene
from one of my novels, to me it was the closing, fading picture of an
era, the end of an epoch, the passing of a race, for the Garlands and
McClintocks, warriors of the western conquest, representatives of a
heroic generation were even then basking in the light of a dying
camp-fire, recounting the deeds of brave days gone.

When we were again alone in my study, Zulime said, "I'm going to enjoy
it here. I like your people, and I hope they liked me."

* * * * *

It was in this humble fashion that I brought to my mother the new
daughter for whom she had longed, and it was in this homely way that the
Garlands and McClintocks received my wife. Amid surroundings which were
without grace of art or touch of poetry, the informal and very plain
ceremony took place, but the words were sincere, and the forms and
features of the speakers deeply significant of the past. No matter what
my mother's storms and sorrows had been, she was now at peace. With a
smiling face she confronted the future.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

My Father's Inheritance

At half-past six on the morning following our arrival at the Homestead,
my father opened the stairway door and shouted, just as he had been wont
to do in the days when I was a boy on the farm--"Hamlin! Time to get
up!" and with a wry grin I called to Zulime and explained, "In our
family, breakfast is a full and regular meal at which every member of
the household is ex