cried Sam, waving his hand. "Good luck!"

Franklin was for a time busy in keeping his team upon the trail, but
soon they settled down into a steady, shuffling trot, to which they
held for mile after mile over the hard prairie road. The day was
bright and clear, the air sweet and bracing. An hour's drive from the
town, and the traveller seemed in a virgin world. A curious coyote sat
on a hill, regarding intently the spectacle of a man travelling with
wheels beneath him, instead of the legs of a horse. A band of antelope
lined up on the crest of a ridge and stood staring steadfastly. A
gray-winged hawk swept wide and easily along the surface of the earth
on its morning hunting trip. Near by the trail hundreds of cheerful
prairie dogs barked and jerked their ceaseless salutation. An ancient
and untroubled scheme of life lay all around him, appealing in its
freshness and its charm. Why should a man, a tall and strong man, with
health upon his cheek, sit here with brooding and downcast eye,
heedless of the miles slipping behind him like a ribbon spun beneath
the wheels?

Franklin was learning how fast bound are all the ways of life to the
one old changeless way. This new land, which he and his fellow-men
coveted, why was it so desired? Only that over it, as over all the
world behind it, there might be builded homes. For, as he reflected,
the adventurers of the earth had always been also the home-builders;
and there followed for him the bitter personal corollary that all his
adventure was come to naught if there could be no home as its ultimate
reward. His vague eye swam over the wide, gray sea about him, and to
himself he seemed adrift, unanchored and with no chart of life.

CHAPTER XXIII

MARY ELLEN

Lifting and shimmering mysteriously in the midday sun, as though
tantalizing any chance traveller of that wide land with a prospect
alluring, yet impossible, the buildings of the Halfway station now
loomed large and dark, now sank until they seemed a few broken dots and
dashes just visible upon the wide gray plain. Yet soon the tall frame
of the windmill showed high above the earth, most notable landmark for
many a mile, and finally the ragged arms of the corral posts appeared
definitely, and then the low peak of the roof of the main building.
For miles these seemed to grow no closer, but the steady trot of the
little horses ate up the distance, and Franklin found himself again at
the spot with which h