ng post-hole deep. And so if a man had wanted
a stone to throw he would have had to walk several miles to find one,
by which time, of course, his anger would have cooled off. Originally
there had been one here and there, but these solitary specimens, being
such a novelty, and standing out so plainly on the flat scene, had been
picked up by farmer or cowboy and taken home. Thus each of the several
stones in those parts was engaged in holding open the barn door or the
ranch gate, or was established in the back yard to crack pecan nuts on,
much to the improvement of flatirons. If a man had stolen one and used
it openly, he would sooner or later have been found out. But why do we
speak of stones?

Shortly after supper, Mrs. Arthur Wright--Kitty they still called
her--came out of the front gate whistling, and going to the middle of
the road, there being no sidewalk that far out from town, she turned to
the left and set out for the Chautauqua meeting at Captain Chase's.
Claxton road, coming in from the county-seat, changed its name a mile
or so out of Thornton and became Claxton Road. The Wright residence
may be said to have been located just where the capital R began. At
this point the barb wire of the prairie thoroughfare gave way, on the
left-hand side, to the white fences of suburban estates with big front
yards and windmills and stables; and on the right there came, at the
same time, an unfenced vacancy, or "free grass," which, though it had a
private owner somewhere, might be called a common. The estates along
Claxton Road faced this big common, looking across it toward the
cottages which marked the edge of town on the other side, and there was
nothing to obstruct the view except a time-blackened frame house which,
for some reason, had posted itself right in the middle of this spacious
prospect. These places along Claxton Road were the homes of cattle and
sheep-men who owned vast ranches in adjacent counties. They had thus
herded themselves together, largely, if not entirely, on account of
Woman and her institutions.

As the Wright place was the farthest out in this row of suburban
estates, Mrs. Wright was frequently the first to start to a Chautauqua
or other social affair; indeed, had it not been that she made a
practice of hurrying up the others as she went along, she would usually
have been the first to arrive. A short walk brought her to Harmon's,
and here bringing to a hurried conclusion the Wedding Ma