tly," he was saying. "But I'm glad to tell you
we'll pay twenty thousand dollars on the debt as soon as we harvest. If
it rains we'll pay it all and have thirty thousand left."

"Good! I sure hope it rains. An' that thunder sounds hopeful," responded
Anderson.

"It's been hopeful like that for several days, but no rain," said Dorn.
And then, espying Lenore, he seemed startled out of his eagerness. He
flushed slightly. "I--I didn't see--you had brought your daughter."

He greeted her somewhat bashfully. And Lenore returned the greeting
calmly, watching him steadily and waiting for the nameless sensations
she had imagined would attend this meeting. But whatever these might be,
they did not come to overwhelm her. The gladness of his voice, as he had
spoken so eagerly to her father about the debt, had made her feel very
kindly toward him. It might have been natural for a young man to resent
this dragging debt. But he was fine. She observed, as he sat down, that,
once the smile and flush left his face, he seemed somewhat thinner and
older than she had pictured him. A shadow lay in his eyes and his lips
were sad. He had evidently been working, upon their arrival. He wore
overalls, dusty and ragged; his arms, bare to the elbow, were brown and
muscular; his thin cotton shirt was wet with sweat and it clung to his
powerful shoulders.

Anderson surveyed the young man with friendly glance.

"What's your first name?" he queried, with his blunt frankness.

"Kurt," was the reply.

"Is that American?"

"No. Neither is Dorn. But Kurt Dorn is an American."

"Hum! So I see, an' I'm powerful glad.... An' you've saved the big
section of promisin' wheat?"

"Yes. We've been lucky. It's the best and finest wheat father ever
raised. If it rains the yield will go sixty bushels to the acre."

"Sixty? Whew!" ejaculated Anderson.

Lenore smiled at these wheat men, and said: "It surely will rain--and
likely storm to-day. I am a prophet who never fails."

"By George! that's true! Lenore has anybody beat when it comes to
figurin' the weather," declared Anderson.

Dorn looked at her without speaking, but his smile seemed to say that
she could not help being a prophet of good, of hope, of joy.

"Say, Lenore, how many bushels in a section at sixty per acre?" went on
Anderson.

"Thirty-eight thousand four hundred," replied Lenore.

"An' what'll you sell for?" asked Anderson of Dorn.

"Father has sold at two dollars and twenty-five c