of Kansas," Asher was running on, till John Jacobs threw a chair cushion
at his head and Jim called out:

"Cyrus Bennington."

"Busted by the boom. Lived at the public crib ever since. Held every
little county office possible to get, asking now for your votes this fall
for County Treasurer. Will end his days seeking an election and go at last
to be with the elected," Cyrus Bennington frankly described himself.

"Not so bad yet as Todd Stewart," Todd declared. "He lost everything in
the boom except his old Scotch Presbyterian faith. Now head clerk in J.
Jacobs' dry goods and general merchandise store. Had the good sense,
though, this old Todd did, to send his son back to the land and make a
farmer out of him, and the second generation of Stewarts in this valley
promises to make it yet. Why don't you revert to the soil, too,
Bennington?"

"Todd is doing well with his leases," Asher Aydelot declared. "He'll be a
landowner yet."

"My family, especially the girls, object to living on a farm," Cyrus
Bennington said gravely. "They have notions of city life I can't overcome.
Jo especially dislikes the country and Jo runs things round the Bennington
place."

"James Shirley, Esquire," Jim announced and added quickly:

"The biggest sucker in the booming gang. Lost his farm to the Champers
Company. Holds a garden patch and homestead only, where once the
Cloverdale Ranch smiled. All under mortgage also to other capitalists.
Boys, I'd be ready to give up if it wasn't for my little girl. What's the
use in a man as big as I am, with no lung power, keeping at it?" There was
a sad hopelessness in Shirley's tone.

"No, no!" the men chorused in one voice. "Go on, Jim, go on!"

"Asher Aydelot." Jim pretended it was the rollcall they demanded.

"Gentlemen," John Jacobs began seriously. But at that moment Leigh
Shirley, followed by Rosie Gimpke, came from the side door with a tray of
glasses and a pitcher of lemonade.

"Gentlemen, a toast to the man who stuck to the soil and couldn't be
blasted to financial ruin by a boom, the wheat king of these prairies. Our
host, Asher Aydelot."

"The clod-hopper, Buckeye farmer," Jim added affectionately, and they
drank to Asher's health.

"Lord bless you, Aydelot. You said the money was in the soil, not on top
of it. I remember you looked like a prophet when you said it," Cyrus
Bennington declared. "But I was wild to get rich quick and let my soil go.
I never look at Aydelot's spreading