of the new Territories of Kansas and Nebraska was
on to the finish. Nebraska was far North. Kansas only interested the
Southerner. The frontiersmen were crossing the boundary lines years
before Congress formally opened them for settlement.

After a brief stop in West Tennessee the Doyles had succeeded in
reaching Miami County, just beyond the Missouri border, in 1853. They
had settled on a fertile quarter section on the Pottawattomie Creek in a
small group of people of Southern feeling.

The sun of a new world had begun to shine at last for the humble but
ambitious woman who had borne five strong children to be the athletic
sons and daughters of a free country. Her soul rose in a triumphant song
that made her little home the holy of holies of a new religion. Her
husband was the lord of a domain of fertile land. His fields were green
with wheat. She loved to look over its acres of velvet carpet. In June
her man and three stalwart boys, now twenty, eighteen and fourteen years
of age, would swing the reaper into that field and harvest the waving
gold without the aid of a hired laborer. She and her little girls would
help and sing while they toiled.

There was no debt on their books. They had horses, cows, sheep, pigs,
chickens, ducks, turkeys. Their crib was bulging with corn. The bins in
their barn were filled with grain.

Their house was still the humble cottage of the prairie pioneer, but her
men had made it snug and warm against the winds and snows of winter.
Their farm had plenty of timber on the Pottawattomie Creek which flowed
through the center of the tract. They had wood for their fires and logs
with which to construct their stable and outhouses.

The house they built four-square with sharp gables patterned after the
home they had lost. There were no dormers in the attic, but two windows
peeped out of the gable beside the stone chimney and gave light and air
to the boys' room in the loft. A shed extension in the rear was large
enough for both kitchen and dining room.

The home stood close beside the creek, and the murmur of its waters made
music for a busy mother's heart.

There was no porch over the front door. But her boys had built a lattice
work that held a labyrinth of morning glories in the summer. She had
found the gorgeous wild flowers blooming on the prairies and made a
hedge of them for the walks. They were sending their shoots up through
the soil now to meet the sun of spring. The warm rays had a