tarried there was the week that Eric Hermannson was helping Jerry
Lockhart thresh; a week earlier or a week later, and there would
have been no story to write.

It was on Thursday and they were to leave on Saturday. Wyllis
and his sister were sitting on the wide piazza of the ranchhouse,
staring out into the afternoon sunlight and protesting against the
gusts of hot wind that blew up from the sandy riverbottom twenty
miles to the southward.

The young man pulled his cap lower over his eyes and remarked:

"This wind is the real thing; you don't strike it anywhere
else. You remember we had a touch of it in Algiers and I told you
it came from Kansas. It's the keynote of this country."

Wyllis touched her hand that lay on the hammock and continued
gently:

"I hope it's paid you, Sis. Roughing it's dangerous business;
it takes the taste out of things."

She shut her fingers firmly over the brown hand that was so
like her own.

"Paid? Why, Wyllis, I haven't been so happy since we were
children and were going to discover the ruins of Troy together some
day. Do you know, I believe I could just stay on here forever and
let the world go on its own gait. It seems as though the tension
and strain we used to talk of last winter were gone for good, as