the
dense and dangerous depths of the Forest Primeval for the setting up
of their hearthstones, so the courageous pioneers of the desolate and
treeless West were forced to fight the fury of the winds.

The graves of them lie mounded here and there in the uncultivated
corners of the fields, though more often one wanders across the level
country, looking for them in the places where they should be and are
not, because of the tall and waving corn that covers the length and
breadth of the land.

And yet the dead are not without memorial. Each steady stalk is a
plumed standard of pioneer conquest, and through its palmy leaves the
chastened wind remorsefully sighs requiems, chanting, whispering,
moaning and sighing from balmy springtime on through the heat of the
long summer days, until in the frost the farmers cutting the stalks
and stacking them evenly about in the semblance of long departed
tepees, leave no dangling blades to sigh through, nor tassels to
flout.

THE AUTHOR.

The Way of the Wind

CHAPTER I.

[Illustration]

Looking back upon it, the little Kentucky town seemed to blossom for
Celia like the rose, one broad expanse of sloping lawns bordered with
flower beds and shaded by quiet trees, elms and maples, brightly green
with young leaflets and dark with cedars and pines, as it was on the
day when she stood on the vine-covered veranda of her mother's home,
surrounded by friends come to say good-by.

Jane Whitcomb kissed her cheek as she tied the strings of her big poke
bonnet under her chin.

"I hope you will be happy out theah, Celia," she said; "but if it was
me and I had to go, I wouldn't. You couldn't get me to take such
risks. Wild horses couldn't. All them whut wants to go West to grow
up with the country can go, but the South is plenty good enough fo'
me."

"Fo' me, too," sighed Celia, homesickness full upon her with the
parting hour. "It's Seth makes me go. Accordin' to him, the West is
the futuah country. He has found a place wheah they ah goin' to build
a Magic City, he says. He's goin' to maik a fortune fo' me out theah,
he says, in the West."

"Growin' up with the country," interrupted Sarah Simpson, tying a
bouquet of flowers she had brought for Celia with a narrow ribbon of
delicate blue.

"Yes," admitted Celia, "growing up with the country."

Sarah handed her the flowers.

"It's my opinion," concluded she, "that it's the fools, beggin' youah
pahdon, whut's goin' out