omen and to learn that
just before her lips had closed forever, his beloved had called for
him--just at the moon-rise. Thus, ever since, the Indians claimed,
strange spirit voices spoke through the lone valley at every rising of
the moon.

Thrilled by the beauty of the valley scene, misty in the moonlight, the
big farmer half unconsciously drew rein and listened. All he could
hear at first was the impatient stamp of his horses' feet, the mouthing
of the bits as the animals tossed their heads restlessly, the clink of
the trace-chains; but presently he sensed a subdued undertone of night
noises that wafted mysteriously over the silver water. It was nothing
that could be recognized definitely; rather was it an impression of
strangely merged minor sounds that grew upon him as imagination was
given play under the influence of time and place. It was easy to
supply interpretations of that faint medley, even while one knew that
it was merely the murmur of night airs in the dry grasses, the whisper
of the water-edges, the stirring of restless water-fowl in the dying
reeds.

The man who had ridden all day with his thoughts began unconsciously to
apply other meanings to the sound, to people the night with dim faces
and shapes that came trooping over the edge of the tablelands
above--toil-bent figures of old pioneer farmers, care-worn faces of
women and bright eager faces of little children who were holding out
their hands trustfully to the future. There seemed to be a
never-ending procession--faces that were apathetic from repeated
disappointments, faces that scowled threateningly, brave faces tense
with determination and sad faces on which was written the story of
struggle hidden within many a lonely wind-buffeted shack on the great
bosom of the prairie.

Was it, then, that all the years of toil and hardship were to come to
naught for this great company of honest workers, these brave pioneer
men and women of the soil? Was all their striving forward to find them
merely marking time, shouldered into the backwater while the currents
of organized commercialism swept away their opportunities? Were not
these producers of the world's bread themselves to partake of the
fruits of their labor?

Yes! Surely the answer was _Yes_! It was their Right. Wrong could
not endure forever in the face of Right; else were the world a poor
place, Life itself a failure, the mystic beauty of God's calm night a
mockery.

The man from Aber