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Show always I0mdm ANOTH ER. f immMi year. mm- MARTHA Zy; J" W.N.U.SER.VICE CQTKIGHr MAKIHA 05UN1Q SYNOPSIS Anna ("Silver") Grenoble, daughter daugh-ter of "'Gentleman Jim," formerly of the community, but known as a eembler, news of whose recent murder mur-der In Chicago has reachad the town, cornea to Heron River to live with Sophronfa Willard, Jim Grenoble's Bister. Sophronia's household consists of her husband, and stepsons, Roderick Roder-ick and Jason. The Willards own only half of the farm, the other half being Anna's. On Silver's arrival Duke Melbank, shiftless youth, makes himself obnoxious. Roderick is on the eve of marriage to Cortnne Header. Silver says she wants to live on the farm, and has no intention inten-tion of selling her half, which the Willards had feared. Silver tells Sophronla ("Phronie," by request) something but by no means all of her relations with Gerald Lucas, gambler friend of her father. Roddy marries Corinne. Silver again meets Lucas, who has established a gambling gam-bling resort near town. She Introduces Intro-duces him to Corinne, though against her will. Friendship between the two develops, to Silver's dismay. At a dance Duke Melbank insults Silver. Sil-ver. Determined to break up the growing Intimacy between Lucas and Corinne, Silver tells Roddy she has decided to sell her portion of the farm. Not understanding, he reproaches re-proaches her for her "treachery." Roddy finds he Is falling in love with Silver, and is dismayed. Silver warns Corinne against Lucas. Despite De-spite herself, her love for Roddy grows, but she determines to save Corinne from disaster. Corinne returns, re-turns, with purchases little suitable for farm life, and having spent all the money Roddy has givrr: her. He tells Silver he Is sure Lucas and Corinne met In the city. While Silver Sil-ver is alone Duke Melbank comes, in a drunken condition. Roddy's arrival arriv-al frightens him "away, and in her perturbation Silver unwittingly reveals re-veals her love for Roddy. He responds, re-sponds, ending all doubt as to their mutual feelings. CHAPTER XII Continued 12 Silver's brow puckered Into a little lit-tle frown of laughing denial. "Certainly "Cer-tainly not! And you stop looking for trouble. You're ever so much better this morning. This sun Is doing do-ing wonders for you." "Yes," Phronie sighed, "wonders for me but what Is it doin' to the crops? It hasn't really rained since I got sick, has it?" "Now, there you go," Silver rebuked re-buked her. "If It isn't one thing, It's another. Roddy says there's no real danger yet, so get your mind " "I've seen It go like this before, my girl. I know what I'm talking about." Sophronla shifted herself to a more comfortable position In her chair. "I wish one of you would take a run up and see how Paula Is," she said uneasily. "We haven't had a word from them In a week." Silver looked at her and put her hands on her hips. "Will you stop talking and worrying about things! I have to go and fix up the house. I'll look out on you In fifteen minutes min-utes and If you're not asleep, I'll call Doctor Woodward." "Oh, dear!" Sophronla sighed, settling set-tling herself finally. Silver stood with a hamper containing con-taining a coffee pot and a dish of buttered rolls, and listened at the screen door of Roddy's house. She was hoping that Corinne might go along with her down to the field where the men were at work, as she had done before. But there was no sound from within. Corinne was probably not yet awake. It was only a little after seven, and she had been at a dance last night at the Richter cottage on the lake. Roddy was working alone at the upper, end of the plot. Silver came quietly up to the old wooden fence that surrounded It, stepping carefully care-fully over the ripe strawberries Sophronla So-phronla craved, and stood watching him, scarcely drawing a breath. Carefully, Intently, Roddy exposed ex-posed the silk of the vivid green sheath beneath the transparent sack In which It had been enclosed, and poured upon It the pollen from the tassel which had been painstakingly painstak-ingly collected In a similar sack to prevent Its scattering elsewhere on the wind. The corn plot. In the motionless j blue and gold atmosphere of early morning, was fixed In the clean dark 1 of earth and the glistening, vortical 1 green stain of the stalks, viable and proud. It was almost as though i some great emerald stood between j (lie small field and the sun, shed-, shed-, ding a lovely, calm, and vertiginous dow upon the fresh curve of the j young leaves, upon the purplish I tloom of the furrow. But It was actually a dew of earth, before hot I winds rose. Silver, standing in the ! rough meadow outside the field, felt j the dew Rbout her ankles and saw i It sparkling on the ribboned leaves beneath Roddy's hands. j In tne pure. Jeweled light, the j fragile, while-cold silks of the slim 1 young e:irs received the yellow pol len as Roddy dusted It out of the tassel-bag. Suddenly, from the pasture pas-ture near-by, a meadow-lark flung up Into the silence a fountain of liquid notes. Roddy glanced around and saw Silver leaning over the fence watching him. He reddened dully and pushed his wide straw hat back from his brow. Then, with a quizzical, perplexed smile he came aud stood looking down at her. "I've been watching you," she said, nodding toward the corn. "I wish I could help." "Why don't you?" he replied. "You'd get a real kick out of It." She raised the hamper toward him. "I brought some fresh buttered rolls," she said. "I suppose Corrle Isn't up yet," he remarked, taking the hamper from her. "I listened at the door," Silver told him, "but I didn't hear any stir, so I came on alone." He set the hamper on the grass at his feet, then spoke In a low, vehement voice that became thrilling thrill-ing agony In her heart. "These weeks have been h 1, Silver. I don't know how I've stood It. I don't know how I'm going to go on standing stand-ing It " "Oh Roddy," she pleaded breathlessly. breath-lessly. He stepped closer to her and the yearning and despair In his bronzed face drew from her an involuntary, broken cry. She thrust her hands across the fence toward him. Roddy took them and pressed them to his lips and eyes. "I'm no good, Silver," he muttered. "I can't go through with this farce. I've got to tell her " Swiftly Silver leaned forward and brushed his blue shirt-sleeve with her cheek. "Roddy Roddy," she whispered in a stilled voice. "You can't tell her you can't ever tell her! It would be too terrible!" "It wouldn't," he protested. "She doesn't love me I don't think she ever did." "You mustn't say that," Silver argued. ar-gued. "You mustn't do anything you can't! And it won't be for long, Roddy. As soon as Phronie is well again " He swept his hat from his head and ran his fingers through his thick hair In a gesture of mortified anguish. an-guish. "G d, what a spectacle I am standing here, talking like this ! I have no right " He broke off suddenly. "Of course you must go away." "As soon as Phronie gets a little stronger, I'll tell her. And we you and I must not talk like this again, Roddy. It's too hard on us. I I can't stand It." "I know," he said flatly. "It's terrible ter-rible ! But I want you to know that I never had any Idea what love was like until this happened." "Nobody will ever mean anything to me again, Roddy after you," she told him. "You " She could not go on. Tears seemed to be running backward, down into her throat, choking her words. With a smothered oath, Roddy Rod-dy flung his arm across the fence, strained her desperately to him for a moment, then released her and turned abruptly away, swept up the hamper and strode down the edge of the fields as though he were half blind. Silver moved back into the grass pasture, knelt down and began picking pick-ing berries for Sophronla, gathering leaves and flowers Indiscriminately with hands that shook, CHAPTER XIII DY followed day, and the sky over iheparchedand livid land became like a dome of colorless metal, all the blue beaten out of It by the Intense In-tense heat. Fears that had smoldered smol-dered separately throughout the district, stole out, linked, and became be-came flaming panic. But tile drouth was only a fore-runner of a graver holocaust. In Fjelstad's feed and Implement store, Roddy Wiiiard talked with Sven Krickson and John Michener. lie struggled to conceal the alarm he felt as he spoke. "The county agent can't he expected ex-pected to do It all by himself," be said sharply. "It takes Just one day for a good army of grasshoppers grasshop-pers to eat the chimney off your house ! "I was talking with the agent yesterday," Roddy continued. "Poison "Poi-son bran has been distributed to nil the farmers west of here, r'.zht to the state line. But some of them don't give a d n, the shiftless hohunks! Their farms are going to be seized for taxes anyhow, so they can't be bothered about saving their crops." "Joe Fisher came through from Brookings yesterday," .Michener ob- i served, "and he had to put chains on his tires. That sounds like a tall one. but Joe swears it's the God's truth! He stopped at a place where a fellow said the hoppers ate the harness 'off a horse's back for the salt in the leather. You can take that or leave it." Roddy thoughtfully rolled a cigarette. ciga-rette. "Well, I wouldn't believe Joe even if I knew he was telling the truth. But it's bad enough, anyhow. any-how. I disked and harrowed last fall, and made a thorough inspection inspec-tion of my land this spring for locust lo-cust eggs. My land is clean. But even poison bait won't keep them from doing a lot of damage before they die if they begin coming In clouds." John Michener and Roddy fell to talking then of the comparative danger of the differential and the lesser migratory grasshoppers, and Sven, to whom a locust was merely a locust and a pest, listened eagerly. ea-gerly. "Darn It, anyhow," Michener said at last, his expletive rather humorous humor-ous In his deep voice, "if it would only rain ! It gathered up fine yesterday, yes-terday, and then sailed off again to the north. A couple more days like this and there won't be enough left for a grasshopper's lunch." "Veil I spose dey starve to death, den," Sven observed. The searing heat continued and In a few days the earth, from the top of the Willard hill, looked like one great mottled leaf curled up at the edges, the dry atmosphere giving the horizon a scalloped effect Silver, Sil-ver, who had gone In the afternoon to the brushwood above the farmstead farm-stead In quest of a breath of air, gazed down into the shallow valley below with a sinking heart The door of the stone house opened and Sophronla came out, walking slowly, unsteadily still, up the slope toward the barns. Y'ester-day Y'ester-day she had ventured as far as the chicken-house for the first time. Silver had made an effort to tell her, only last night, that she had written to Benjamin Hubbard In Chicago and that he had secured a position for her. But Just at the moment mo-ment when she might have spoken, Sophronia's head had dropped forward for-ward over her crocheting and the gray exhaustion of her face had filled Silver with an alarm that prevented pre-vented her uttering a word of her plans. The leaves of the poplars above her rustled sharply, but the breeze that moved them was like a gust The Leaves of the Poplars Above Her Rustled Sharply. from an oven. Silver got to her feet and saw In the cornfield to the east the gray-white wave of air moving over the pale, brittle' tassels. The heat licked over the field like horrid hor-rid little tongues of dull fire. Silver paused In the dry grass half way down to the yard. Suddenly Sudden-ly every fiber of her being was alert to a sound In the air that was more than the burning flow of the wind. She knew at once that the sound had been present from the moment when she had gone up the hill, that her preoccupation with her own thoughts had shut It out. It was a brisk drone, muffled and yet somehow sharp, as a keen sound might strike on the ear of a person partly deaf. Silver glanced apprehensively appre-hensively about her, then upward at the sun. It seemed now that the hot chatter in the air was Increasing In-creasing In volume with every second. sec-ond. She saw Roddy and Steve drive In from the highway In the trnck and stop In the shadow of the barns. She hurried back down the hill and into the yard. On the hard, level ground In front of the barn, whore a tarpaulin had been spread, Roddy and Steve had dumped a quantity of bran. In a Inrgn tin container, old Roderick was mixing the water, arsenic and molasses. Sophronla was standing to one side watching the men. "Phronie:" Silver cried. "What are you doing out here?" T.ein' out here won't do me as much harm as sittin' In the house and worryin'," Sophronla retorted. "Steve, you old galloot, you're lettln' that bran run off on the ground, there." Silver stepped forward and lift ed the edre of the tarpaulin and olionk the bran hark info plnco. Then old Roderick poured the ar senic mixture over the pile of bran j while Roddy and Steve turned the mass over and over with scoop shovels. Each then took a corner of the tarpaulin and lifted it Into the truck. Roddy climbed up and seated seat-ed himself at the wheel. "You get into the house and He down, rhronie," Silver commanded command-ed severely. "I'm going out and help spread It." They bumped along for some distance dis-tance in silence. "Is there something I have to learn about scattering the bran?" Silver ventured finally. "There's a right way and a wrong way," Roddy told her. "Scatter "Scat-ter it in flakes not In lumps. We don't want the cattle to get a dose of It. They might uncover it in the fall and cattle don't thrive on poison, as a usual thing. Just watch the way Steve does It." The air had become Infested as though by a swift, green-brown hail which swept horizontally along the earth. The hysterical sound of the advancing hordes of Insects Individualized Itself hideously hide-ously on the senses, and In the scorching heat seemed, to Silver, to be burrowing into her brain. The grasshoppers, in their Insane, headlong head-long flight, batteretl themselves against the sides of the truck, dashed with the sting at pebbles Into the very faces of the riders. And constantly, up and down the succulent stalks of corn, the appalling ap-palling myriads moved with small, ferocious alacrity. Incredible jrreed. From time to time. Roddy swore softly under his breath or burst out anew In futile wrath at the lackadaisical lacka-daisical farmers to the westward who had not done their share In helping to stop the advance of the plague. Roddy glanced up at Silver and saw that her face was white and drawn under the superficial flush caused by the beat "Here, kid ! Yob look nbout ready to drop !" he cried with dismay. Ho turned the truck about aud started more rapidly In the direction direc-tion of the pasture below the hill. '"You get out here, now," he said, "and run home. I don't know what I've been thinking about! Beat It!" Silver got down unsteadily and started off. "Look In on Corinne," Roddy called after her. "She wasn't feeling feel-ing so well when I left the house." Silver found Corinne In her room upstairs, In a pitiful huddle on her bed, the counterpane drawn over her head and shoulders. "Corrle!" Silver said gently as she seated herself on the side of the bed. "You'll die here, In this heat." There was no response save for the muffled sound of the girl's sobbing. Silver's patience suddenly left her. "Here pull yourself together!' she said severely. "It's no worse for you than It Is for the rest of us." The counterpane was flung violently vio-lently aside and Corinne sat up. Her tear-stained face worked spasmodically. spasmodi-cally. "Listen to me, Corinne," Silver said firmly. "You get out of bed and take a cold shower and come down to the other house. You can't go on like this. Everybody feels crazy enough without your carrying carry-ing on like a two-year-old." But Corinne recoiled In sullen obstinacy. "I'll not stir out of this house today. Go away and leave me alone." After a moment, Silver got up from the bed and started toward the door. Corinne sprang suddenly to her feet. "What do you mean by going to Gerald Lucas and talking to him about me?" she demanded. "I know you did." Silver paused and turned to look at her. "Did Gerald tell you that?" she asked. "Why shouldn't he tell me?" "I thought he'd have more sense, that's all," Silver replied. Corinne laughed contemptuously. "I should think you'd have mora sense than to Interfere In my affairs. af-fairs. It's really funny you nnd Roddy the salt of the earth trying try-ing to reform me." Her mood changed abruptly. "I'll not have- It I'll live my own life as I want to live It and I don't want any missionary mis-sionary work on my behalf by you or anyone else. From now on, please remember " "Corinne!" Silver Interrupted agitatedly, agi-tatedly, and stepped toward her. "I'm not trying to reform you. I was simply trying to appeal to Gerald's Ger-ald's decency." "Decency I What does anyone In this place know about decency? Roddy had his chance to be decent He could have taken me out of this hole last January (f he could have thought of anyone but himself." Silver stared at her Incredulously. Incredulous-ly. "Corinne," Ehe stammered, "doe Roddy's love for this land mean nothing to you?" Corinne, her eyes glinting, looked shrewdly at Silver. "How nincb docs It mean to you?" she asked. Silver's cheeks burned suddenly. "So much that I have changed my mind about selling my land this smrrmer," she said quietly. "Roddy ran stay on as long as he likes, so far as I am concerned. I'm going hark to Chicago ns soon as Phronie Is strong enough to let me go." A lightning rhnntre came over C'o-rinne's C'o-rinne's fare. "Well!" phe breathed. "So flint's the next thing. That means we'll te here next winter and for the rest of our lives, then. What made you change your mind''' (TO HE CUMI.WLUJ |