suburban addition to the new Cloverdale in the Grass River
Valley in Kansas. And all the while the Aydelot windbreaks strengthened;
the Aydelot grove struck deeper root; the long corn furrows and the acres
on acres of broken wheat stubble of the Sunflower Ranch wooed the heavier
rainfall, narrowing the sand dunes and deepening the water courses.

For two brief years Cloverdale, in the Grass River Valley in Kansas, had a
name, even in the Eastern money markets. Speculation became madness; and
riotous commercialism had its little hour of strut and rave.

Then the bubble burst, and all that the boom had promised fell to
nothingness. Many farms were mortgaged, poor crops worked tribulation,
taxes began to eat up acres of weed-grown vacant town lots, Eastern money
was withdrawn to other markets, speculators departed, the strange
enthusiasm burned itself out, and the Wilderness came again to the Grass
River Valley. Not the old Wilderness of loneliness, and drouth, and
grasshoppers, and prairie fires that had dared the pioneer to conquest;
but the Prairie, waiting again the kingly hand on the plow handle, gave no
quarter to him whom the gilded boom had lured to shipwreck.

PART TWO

THE SON

Give me the land where miles of wheat
Ripple beneath the wind's light feet,
Where the green armies of the corn
Sway in the first sweet breath of morn;
Give me the large and liberal land
Of the open heart and the generous hand;
Under the wide-spaced Kansas sky
Let me live and let me die.
--Harry A. Kemp.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ROLLCALL

Nothing is too late
Until the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
--Longfellow.

The twilight had fallen on the prairie. Grass River, running bank full
from the heavy May rains, lay like a band of molten silver glistening in
the after-sunset light. The draw, once choked with wild plum bushes in the
first days of the struggle in the wilderness, was the outlet now to the
little lake that nestled in the heart of the Aydelot grove. The odors of
early summer came faintly on the soft twilight breeze. Somewhere among the
cottonwoods a bird called a tender good-night to its mate. Upon the low
swell the lights were beginning to twinkle from the windows