many
thousand miles are stretched out between.

* * * * *

Ralph had often said that the hollyhocks were growing too many and
should be uprooted, but Barbara's begging for their lives somehow
always saved them in the end. They had spread out from the door and
advanced down the hill in marching regiments, a glowing mass of
color. The singing, yellow-banded bees were busy all day in the cups
of scarlet fading to pink and white, and white shading into yellow.
The afternoon sun was behind them, lighting them to unwonted glory,
when Felix came plodding along the lane on each side of which the
apple trees were beginning to grow tall. Barbara was in the garden
cutting sweet peas into her apron and Ralph, beside her, was standing
in silence, watching the bees. A dozen times the girl had read that
same thought in his mind, that he would give ten years of life to
unsay the words that had driven his brother away and that had taught
himself such a bitter lesson. Then suddenly Barbara uttered such a cry
of joy that even the bees hummed and hovered lower, and slow old Chloe
came hurrying to the door. The old woman smiled, with tears running
down her wrinkled face, as she saw who it was that came trudging up
the hill.

"There's good luck come back to this house at last," she said aloud an
hour later when Felix, as the twilight was falling, sat down upon the
doorstep and began to play his violin.

He never grew tired of telling the tale of his adventurous journey,
nor did his sister and brother ever grow tired of listening. Ralph
Brighton had lost, in that one dreadful hour, his love for dollar
signs, and he nodded in wise agreement over Felix's decision to give
up the quest for gold. Barbara would hearken in awed fascination to
that story of the man lost in the desert, whose eyes looked once upon
fabulous wealth but who could never find it again.

Wherever gold mines are, there is to be found such a legend, a tale of
greater riches just beyond men's knowledge. No matter how dazzling is
the wealth at hand there is always that tantalizing story of the lost
mine, sometimes reputed to be far and inaccessible, sometimes only
just over the next hill, yet always as difficult to discover as the
end of the rainbow. But, as Abner Blythe said, it is so a country
grows, and when men cease from following rainbows, then will the world
stand still.

CHAPTER X

A MAN OF STRAW

The shower had lifted