ome and let him drive up to the school with Leigh
and the other little folks down your way. We can pay him better wages and
he will have a real home, not a lonely cabin by himself, and you will be
fortunate in having such a man in your household."

"Just the thing, Virginia," Jim declared. "Why haven't we done it before?
He always says I'm his heart and he's my lungs. We might stack up to a
one-man power. Old bachelors should be segregated, anyhow, out here. The
West needs more families. And think what Pryor Gaines' cultivated mind
will mean to a little artist soul like Leigh Shirley's. Glorious!"

"Well, Virgie, if you will also segregate John Jacobs and Dr. Carey, we'll
settle the bachelors once for all. A quartette of royal good fellows, too,
State-makers who really make. They ought to be in the legislature, but
Carey and Pryor are democrats and Jim and Jacobs are republican. They
balance too well for the interests of any party. Anyhow, if Pryor agrees,
the school problem is fixed," Asher asserted.

Pryor Gaines did agree, to the welfare of many children, who remember him
still with that deep-seated affection of student for teacher unlike any
other form of human devotion. But especially did this cultured man put
into Leigh Shirley's life a refining artistic power that stood her well in
the years to come.

CHAPTER XI

LIGHTS AND SHADOWS

They saw not the shadow that walked beside,
They heard not the feet with silence shod.
--Whittier.

With successive seasons of good crops, combining with the time of the
crest between two eras of financial depression, and with Eastern capital
easy to reach, a mania of speculation known as "the boom" burst forth; a
mania that swept men's minds as prairie fires sweep along the wide lengths
of the plains, changing both the face of the land and the fortunes of the
land owners, and marking an epoch in the story of the West. New counties
were organized out of the still unoccupied frontier. Thousands of citizens
poured into these counties. Scores of towns were chartered and hundreds of
miles of railroad were constructed. Colleges and universities sprouted up
from the virgin soil of the prairie. Loans on real estate were easy to
secure. Land, especially in town lots, took on an enormously inflated
valuation and the rapid investment in real estate and the rapid
transference from buyer to seller was bewilde