otten all about the hot winds!" he moaned. "I had forgotten
all about the hot winds!"

* * * * *

The softness of the spring air gave place to heat, to extreme heat,
sudden and blighting. A copper sun blazed in a copper sky.

The cooling breezes under the influence of the heat changed to
scorching winds. These winds blew menacingly through the rustling
stalks of the strong green corn.

For one long day they laughed defiance, holding firmly erect their
brave heads upon which the yellow tassels were beginning to thrust
themselves aloft in silken beauty; and Seth, watching, braced himself
with the hope that they would somehow stand the ordeal, that the heat
might abate, that in some way, by the special finger of Providence,
perhaps, the threatened ruin might be warded off, that a cooling
breeze might come blowing up from the Gulf or a shower might fall and
he could still go back home.

On the second day the heat had not abated. It had rather increased.
The burning winds blew stronger. They raged with a sudden fury, died
down to a whisper, and raged again.

John, when he led the field hands in, shook his head and took his
place at the table in silence.

Seth, setting their meal before them, crept to the door and looked
out.

He turned faint and sick at heart at the sight of the fields, for the
tassels had drooped and the broad green leaves were slowly changing to
a parched and withered brown, parched and withered as his face, which
had been bared to the heat of the Kansas prairies for so many years,
parched and withered as his heart which had borne the brunt of sadness
and sorrow and separation until the climax was reached and it could
bear no more.

On the third day the hot winds grew vengeful. They swept across the
prairies with a hissing sound as of flames sizzling through the heat
of a furnace. The tassels, burnt now to a dingy brown, hung in wisps.
The leaves drooped like tired arms. They no longer sang in the wind.
They rattled, a hoarse, harsh rattle premonitory of death.

Far and near the fields lay scorched, withered, burnt to a crisp as if
by the fast and furious blast of a raging prairie fire.

There was no longer need of harvest hands.

The harvest, gathered by the hot winds, was ended. The ruin was
complete.

Their mission accomplished, the winds died down suddenly as they had
risen and passed away across the barren prairies in a sigh.

Then up came the cooling