Justin Wingate, Ranchman

f a romantic hope and where he was to bury his own shattered dream. The rain of the morning had cleared away the bluish ground haze, the very air had been washed clean, and the land lay rev

n cellars, and the foundation lines of vanished buildings, marking the site of the abandoned town. Beside the school house, from which came n

y, and wore polished riding boots. His unlined face showed depression and weariness. In spite of this it was a handsome face, lighted by clear dark eyes. The brow, massive and prominent, was the brow of a thinker. Over it, beneath the riding cap, was

congregation, young farmers and their wives and small children, with wind-burned, honest faces. Apart from the others was a boy, whose slight form fitted easily

acher's desk which served as pulpit, lifted his voice, beating the time energetically with the book he held, and the hymn was caught up again

text from the thirty-f

as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice even with joy and singing.... Strengthen ye the w

he people. He had entered to get away from his own thoughts more than anything else

rain, he saw the good omen. The desert was there now, but men should till it and it should blossom as the rose; yellow grain fields should billow before the breezes that came down from the mountain; the blue bloom of alfalfa should make of the valley a violet cup spilling its rich perfume on

then had receded, leaving these few caught as the drift on the shore. The preacher was one of them; and he looked into their eyes with loving devotion and flushing face,

ong and every way too large, the white neatly-set cravat, and the protruding cuffs, which he was sure were scissors-trimmed. Now he looked only at the man's face, wit

ught. "He prophesies the impossible; yet by and by some one may appear who will

ged for a mental companionship which the members of his congregation could not give hi

sitors here now," said t

ey walked together by the banks of the tepid stream and looked at the deserted houses and the blaze of the sun behind the flat-topped mountain. The boy who had sat so far fo

valley, Clayton took his horse from the preacher's stable and set out for a ride

st, which he pictured as a rough land filled with rough and Godless men, drew him. He had found it poorer than the East, more direct and simp

ill a boy in years, told the story of the child, and placed in Wingate's hands its few belongings, he spoke of Paradise. At first the spiritual-minded minister thought he referred to spiritual things, then understood that he was speaking of a new town, situated in a wonderful valley that widened down fr

. He had long preached of a spiritual Paradise; here was the germ of an earthly one. From rim to rim, from mountain to mesa, it was, to his eyes, a favored valley, fitted for happy homes. The town vanished, and the settlers departed, but the dream remained. The dreamer still saw the pos

e by one the houses, all but those belonging to the town company, were torn down and borne away, the dream was not shattered. The dream

m he knew even as he should love them. And thus waiting, he moved the rounds of his simple life, in the midst of the few, who rewarded his love and

and the missionary barrel filled with clothing which some worthy ladies had sent him from the East two years before had held such a goodly store of cast-off garments that neither he nor the child, a stout boy now, had required anything in that line since. The shiny, l

week to preach in the little railroad town at the base of the mountain, there had come this pleasant-voiced

d stretched its shining trail across the prairies of the sky, and the Dipper

ay his horse. Within the house, Wingate, busy with coffee pot and frying pan, direc

n had been burning letters in the tiny stove; and beside the lamp on the little table, with scorched edges still smoking, stood the photograph of a beautiful woman. Clayton had evidently committed it to the flames, and then relenting had

ngly beautiful face, and wondered blindly. He saw that the stranger was not listening to the talk of the minister; and observed, too, what the dreamer did not, that the stran

t a small book into the stranger's hands. Clayton stared at it, then looked up, and for the first time saw the boy. He had already seen a face and form and a sail

e said, speak

ise. He had already spok

real son to me in all

in Clayton's hands. Some writing showed on the fl

e words, and my name there-Jus

ain at the boy. The record on the fly-leaf

nths old. May God bless and preserv

this, but that was all; not ev

it, too; it

open at another place an

d Wingate. "It was found besid

layton sat holding the open Bible in his hands, Wingate told th

he set out, and that he would fetch them later. But he never came again,-he was only a boy, and boys forget-and I even f

over slowly, and look

name," he sa

the real father love he had never known. But Clayton, after that simple statement, dropped into silence. This absence of speech was not observed by Wingate, who had found in the story of the boy an opportunity to take up

his hands crept away to bed. Wingate sat up until a late hour, talking of his dream, receiving now and then a monosyllabic

any you could let one of those houses,

dreamer flushe

assu

d-to me; it doesn't matter which one. I

nths, sat down at his little writing desk, and in a fever of renewed hope began to pen a letter to