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Show r bnites and T'ided men were bIng borne up frc low together with the sickening sn f burning wood. Th girl's prayei, if.- strength to sacrifice her father hi i-been answered. , "The signs fiuick, the signal!" was ' him; she wstill clutching the iron. Eliza turned her sombre eyes upon ; him! she was still clutching the lrou. "The whole leart of things is dead, j Jim," she whispered. . . Hand in hand they descended to tne : scene of the wreck. Some townsmen had already carried Old Sol in a dying condition to his home. "He was c'ean mad when we found him," one of the men explained to Jim, "and was draggin' his poor broken body to a pool of water the rain had made. And all the time he kept say-in' say-in' 'It's the sea, Lize. it's the sea.'" j the tower with Jim and watch for you as you pull in tomorrow night." she told him. "Be standln' on the platform plat-form and I'll wave to you. "I'd like to see things myself," she sighed. "But perhaps It's just as well. , I rjight come back brazen-faced, like I Saliy Merritt after she'd been to Chi-! Chi-! cago." She recalled the words of her school teacher a year before, when she had unfolded a simple minded plan to go to a great city and earn her living. "Give up that idea and get married, child," the woman had said. "It would be awful for you to learn the world, to know its deceits and hardnesses and its everlasting selfishness. How much better if you knew only one of Its humbler sons who will give you his love and keep the light .alive always in your eyes; one whose soul has not been frozen by the world's atmosphere." Lize had not entirely understood, but she had gone home with less of restlessness, rest-lessness, to mend the clothes and wash the dishes, and to pray to her very human God. The intense heat of the next day succeeded in coaxing reluctant rain clouds from the West. Towards evening even-ing they drew nearer, very black, and the HtMe town of Kiowa was rejoicing. rejoi-cing. With rain some of the crops might yet be saved. A neighbor had dropped in to ask Lize If she thought it was "really goin' to rain." It was almost time for her father's train to be passing the switch station and the girl chafed under her caller's garrul-ousness. garrul-ousness. "Mag Brown has gone clear daft, out on her farm," the woman persisted conversationally "thinks the wind 13 sayln' things. I was out there yestidy 1 and she was a fright, wilh her hair Farmer's Dream of tha Sea. BY JESSIE LLEWELLYN. . Anthor "The Red Milk Wagon," etc. (Copyright, 1900, Daily Story Pub. Co.) ' It was a few months after the opening open-ing of the Oklahoma strip. A merciless, merci-less, scorching south wind swept the broad prairies of Western Kansas. Weary pilgrims, discouraged in vain fforts to hold barren claims against lawlessness and murder, were forced to halt their white-winged white-winged prairie schooners; for the hot sand, like molten lava, was too , much alike for the bony, drooping horses and the numerous unkempt children whose brown faces protruded in the gapB of white canvass. Green things were no where to be seen. All vegetation had long since put cn a . mourning of dead brown. Fields of almost black corn whispered helplessly helpless-ly in the wind and shook and rustled far into the night as though conspiring against the injustices of nature. TfcT little town of Kiowa, which was something of a railroad center, seemed the onlr' thing alive for miles around. As night came on uncertain lights began be-gan to flicker from first one and then another of the dust-sick houses. In one of these, a small frame house near the railroad tracks, lived old Sol Bur-tan Bur-tan and his daughter "Lize." Although the heat was oppressive, Eliza had closed the doors and windows win-dows to shut out a whirlwind of sand; from time to time while about her . task she glanced at the shaggy figure near the window. It was Sol's accust'smed seat; he i would draw his rickety old arm-chair to the closed window night after night, staring out silently at the lights along the track. Sometimes for variety he would produce a tattered note-book in orhir-h h marifi man'" fliriiro- - |