here to meet us. We'll be glad to ride out with
you."

Asher lifted Thaine into the buggy with the words. A certain reserve
between the two men had never been broken, although they respected each
other deeply and were fast friends.

The train cleared the crossing and the three went south over the bridge
across the dry North Fork Creek, beyond the cattle pens, and on to the
open country leading out toward the Grass River Valley. The morning was
glorious with silvery mists lifting along the river's course and a
shimmering light above golden stubble and brown plowed land and level
prairie; while far away, in all its beauty, hung the deep purple veil that
Nature drops between her finite and her infinite, where the things that
are seen melt into the things that are not seen.

"Take the lines, Aydelot, and let me visit with Thaine," Horace Carey
said, giving Asher the reins.

He was fond of children and children were more than fond of him. Thaine
idolized him and snuggled up in his lap now with complete contentment of
soul.

"Tell me all about it now, Thaine. Where have you been so long? I might
have missed you down on the Sunflower Ranch this morning if I had driven
faster and headed off the through train as it came in."

"Oo-o!" Thaine groaned at the possible disaster to himself. "We've been to
Topeka, a very long way off."

"And you saw so many fine things?" Carey questioned.

"Yes, a big, awful big river. And a bridge made of iron. And it just
rattled when we went across. And there were big pieces of the Statehouse
lying around in the tall weeds. And such greeny green grass just
_everywhere_. And, and, oh, the biggest trees. So many, all close
together. Papa said it was like Ohio. Oh, so big. I never knew trees
could grow so big, nor so many of them all together."

Little Thaine spread his short arms to show how wondrous large these trees
were.

"He has never seen a tree before that was more than three inches through,
except two or three lonesome cottonwoods. The forests of his grandfather's
farm in Ohio would be gigantic to him. How little the prairie children
know of the world!" Asher declared.

Dr. Carey remembered what Jim Shirley had told him of that lost estate in
Ohio, and refrained from comment.

"You'd like to live in Topeka where the big Kaw river is, and the big
trees along its banks, and so much green grass, wouldn't you, Thaine?"

"No!" The child's face was quaintly contemptuous. "It's too--to