kets, and increases in prices due to the world's demand
for food had made him one of the wealthy men of the city. The desire of
many young farmers to enlist had also afforded an opportunity to acquire
their holdings for small considerations, and Transley had proved his
patriotism by facilitating the ambitions of as many men in this position
as came to his attention. The fact that even before the war ended the
farms which he acquired in this way were worth several times the price
he paid was only an incident in the transactions.

But no word of Transley's domestic affairs reached Grant, who told
himself that he had ceased to be interested in them, but kept an alert
ear nevertheless. It would seem that Transley rather eclipsed his wife
in the public eye.

So Grant set about with the development of his own farm, and kept his
mind occupied with it and with his larger experiment--except when it
went flirting with thoughts of Phyllis Bruce. He was rather proud of
the figure he had used to Linder, of the head, hands, and heart of
his organization, but to himself he admitted that that figure was
incomplete. There was a soul as well, and that soul was the girl whose
inspiring presence had in some way jerked his mind out of the stagnant
backwaters in which the war had left it. There was no doubt of that. He
had written to Murdoch to come west and undertake new work for him. He
had intimated that the change would be permanent, and that it might be
well to bring the family....

He selected a farm where a ridge of foothills overlooked a broad valley
receding into the mountains. The dealer had no idea of selling him this
particular piece of land; they were bound for a half section farther up
the slope when Grant stopped on the brow of the hill to feast his
eyes on the scene that lay before him. It burst upon him with the
unexpectedness peculiar to the foothill valleys; miles of gently
undulating plain, lying apparently far below, but in reality rising in
a sharp ascent toward the snow-capped mountains looking down silently
through their gauze of blue-purple afternoon mist. At distances which
even his trained eye would not attempt to compute lay little round lakes
like silver coins on the surface of the prairie; here and there were
dark green bluffs of spruce; to the right a ribbon of river, blue-green
save where the rapids churned it white, and along its edge a fringe of
leafy cottonwoods; at vast intervals square black plots of pl