ago Asher and Virginia Aydelot had
lived alone with each other and God, in the heart of the wide solitary
wilderness, the town of Cloverdale was staked out now over the prairie.

Stock in the new venture sold rapidly, and nobody ever knew how much clear
profit came to Champers & Co. from this venture. A big slice of the
Cloverdale ranch went into the staking of the new city, and prosperity
seemed wedded to Jim Shirley. He ceased farming and became a speculator
with dreams of millions in his brain. Other settlers followed his example
until the fever had infected every man in the community except Asher
Aydelot, who would not give up to it, and Pryor Gaines, who had nothing to
give up.

Everything fell out as advertised. The railroad grade swelled up like a
great welt across the land, seemingly in a day. Suburban additions
radiated for miles in every direction. Bonds were voted for light and
water and public buildings and improvements. Speculators rushed to invest
and unload their investments at a profit. The Grass River Farmers'
Company built the Grass River Creamery. And because it looked big and good
they built the Grass River Sugar Factory and the Grass River Elevator. But
while they were building their money into stone and machinery they forgot
to herd cattle to supply the creamery and to grow cane for the sugar
product and to sow and reap grain to be elevated.

Also, the Cloverdale Farmers' Company, made up mostly of the members of
the Grass River Farmers' Company, built the Cloverdale Hotel, and the
Cloverdale State Bank, and the Cloverdale Office Block. And the sad part
of it all was that mortgaged and doubly mortgaged farms and not the price
of crops had furnished the capital for the boom building.

It is an old story now, and none too interesting--the story of a boom
town, founded on prairie breezes and built out of fortune seekers'
dreams.

Meanwhile, Asher Aydelot, watching the sudden easy prosperity of his
neighbors, fought down the temptation to join them and resolutely strove
with the soil for its best yield. The drouth and hot winds had not
forgotten all their old tricks, and even the interest on his mortgage
could not be met promptly sometimes. Yet with the same old Aydelot
tenacity with which his father had held Cloverdale in Ohio away from the
old farm beside the National pike road, the son of this father held the
boundary of the Sunflower Ranch intact, nor yielded up one acre to be
platted into a