so much hidden
beauty and real wisdom. Slowly had she ascended the ladder of knowledge,
through his personal instructions and the books he gave her, until she
stood on the last round on the tips of her toes, reaching far out into
the unknown in eagerness to grasp what she believed lurked there. She
was fit to be a queen, to be the companion of the highest man in the
land.

On the other hand, Wade had gained no actual knowledge nor wisdom. He
had, however, gained a knowledge of nature which could not have been
impressed upon him through the mere reading of books. He had gained a
knowledge of the great necessity of higher education; he had gained a
certain knowledge of how desperate men would struggle for what they
believed was rightly their own, how they would lay down their lives for
the principles which they thought were just and true. Such knowledge is
well gained, and assists the educated and enlightened to a higher plane
of equal thought. The person who never reads has no knowledge of what is
going on in the outside world, and we dare to say that the person who
reads only knows nothing of the great struggle going on in the hearts of
the down-trodden farmers whose lives have been made burdensome by the
great evil, the greatest of all other evils, the powerful trusts, trusts
which hold at the throat of every farmer a great, sharp knife, one so
sharp that it is useless to move forward or backward lest life become
extinct. The farmer does not stand alone in the path of this terrible
evil, though he has taken the brunt of the battle in an effort to
unburden all humanity of the awful weight of this heavy yoke, bearing
down on the poor of the entire country with such crushing force that the
time has come when one can hardly maintain an existence so strong is the
yoke and so securely has it been fastened around the necks of humanity
everywhere.

Jack Wade thought of all this, thought of all that had happened. Above
Tom Judson was lying in bed with a bullet hole through the fleshy part
of his left leg just below the thigh. Across the brook old Jim Thompson
was lying in bed writhing in agony because of a bullet hole through his
right shoulder. This was the result of conditions brought about by the
everlasting drudgery of mankind.

In both cases the patients were rapidly mending, the danger point long
since having been passed, and each was cursing the other and swearing
revenge. Wade sat with heart and head bowed, therefor