acres of wheat increasing in area
every year without wondering why the Lord let me be such a fool."

"Well, you've spent a lot of days in an easy chair in the shade of a
county office since then while I was driving a reaper in the hot
sunshine," Asher insisted.

"You are the strongest man here now, for all your farm work, Aydelot,"
John Jacobs asserted. "It is the store that really breaks a man down."

"Not in his nerve, nor in pocketbook," Todd Stewart added. "Here's a
toast, now, to the second generation, and especially to Thaine Aydelot,
son of the Sunflower Ranch. Nineteen years old tonight."

"What is Thaine going to follow, Asher?" someone inquired. "I suppose
you'll be making a gentleman out of him, since he's your only child."

"My father tried to make a gentleman out of me and failed, as you see,"
Asher replied.

"Tragic failure," Jim groaned.

"Seriously, Aydelot, what's Thaine to do?" The query came from Dr. Carey;
the company awaited the answer.

"He isn't wanting to follow anything right now. He has a notion that the
earth is following him," Asher said with a smile. "And having handled
Aydelots all my life, I'm letting him alone a little with the hope that at
last he'll come back to the soil as I did. He goes to the Kansas
University this fall and he has all sorts of notions, even a craving for
military glory. I can't blame him. I had the same disease once. I don't
believe in any wild oats business. I hope Thaine will be a gentleman, but
I don't wonder that a green country boy who has looked out all his life on
open prairies and lonely distances should have a longing for city
pavements and the busy haunts of men. How well he will make his way and
what he will let these things fit him to do depends somewhat on how well
grounded the farm life and home life have made him. The old French Aydelot
blood had something of the wanderlust in it. I hope that trait may not
reappear in Thaine. But where's Pryor Gaines in this rollcall? We are
getting away from the subject before the house."

Jim Shirley's handsome face grew sorrowful.

"He was not affected by the boom. He has been the same man in spirit and
fortune for twenty-five years. But we are going to lose him. That's why
he's not here tonight," Jim hurried on as the others were about to
interrupt him. "He won't say good-by to anybody. You can understand why.
He's going to start for China tomorrow morning--missionary! It's the last
of Pryor Gaines for u