a
cry. Now at length, he knew the meaning of it all.

"Why--I--I, I LOVE her," he cried. Never until then had it occurred to
him. Never until then, in all his thoughts of Hilma, had that great word
passed his lips.

It was a Memnonian cry, the greeting of the hard, harsh image of man,
rough-hewn, flinty, granitic, uttering a note of joy, acclaiming the new
risen sun.

By now it was almost day. The east glowed opalescent. All about him
Annixter saw the land inundated with light. But there was a change.
Overnight something had occurred. In his perturbation the change seemed
to him, at first, elusive, almost fanciful, unreal. But now as the light
spread, he looked again at the gigantic scroll of ranch lands unrolled
before him from edge to edge of the horizon. The change was not
fanciful. The change was real. The earth was no longer bare. The land
was no longer barren,--no longer empty, no longer dull brown. All at
once Annixter shouted aloud.

There it was, the Wheat, the Wheat! The little seed long planted,
germinating in the deep, dark furrows of the soil, straining, swelling,
suddenly in one night had burst upward to the light. The wheat had
come up. It was there before him, around him, everywhere, illimitable,
immeasurable. The winter brownness of the ground was overlaid with a
little shimmer of green. The promise of the sowing was being fulfilled.
The earth, the loyal mother, who never failed, who never disappointed,
was keeping her faith again. Once more the strength of nations was
renewed. Once more the force of the world was revivified. Once more
the Titan, benignant, calm, stirred and woke, and the morning abruptly
blazed into glory upon the spectacle of a man whose heart leaped
exuberant with the love of a woman, and an exulting earth gleaming
transcendent with the radiant magnificence of an inviolable pledge.

CHAPTER III

Presley's room in the ranch house of Los Muertos was in the second story
of the building. It was a corner room; one of its windows facing the
south, the other the east. Its appointments were of the simplest. In
one angle was the small white painted iron bed, covered with a white
counterpane. The walls were hung with a white paper figured with knots
of pale green leaves, very gay and bright. There was a straw matting
on the floor. White muslin half-curtains hung in the windows, upon
the sills of which certain plants bearing pink waxen flowers of which
Presley did not know the n