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Updated: May 23, 2025
"Heaven give me breadth and courage and memory, too," he added, "when that time comes not to be unkind; but to be brave to let you go. Only, Thaine, there's no bigger place to go than to a big, fine Kansas farm. Oh! we fathers are all alike. What Clover Creek was to Francis Aydelot, Grass River is to me. Will it be given to you to see bigger things?"
It happened that when a band of Quaker exiles had sought refuge in Virginia and was about to be driven out by the autocratic Cavaliers, young Aydelot, out of love for a Quaker girl, had championed their cause vehemently. And he was so influential in the settlement that he might have succeeded, but for one family the wealthy and aristocratic Thaines.
Other settlers followed his example until the fever had infected every man in the community except Asher Aydelot, who would not give up to it, and Pryor Gaines, who had nothing to give up. Everything fell out as advertised. The railroad grade swelled up like a great welt across the land, seemingly in a day. Suburban additions radiated for miles in every direction.
"I understand," Horace Carey said, looking out toward the purple notches now more clearly outlined against the sky. "How this country has changed since that cold day when Mrs. Aydelot came almost to the old Crossing after me. The sand dunes narrow and the river deepens a little every year. The towns come and go on the prairies, but the homesteaders build better.
Even as Asher Aydelot watched the storm cloud, long tongues of fire came licking up the valley toward him, not a towering height, but a swift crawling destruction which he looked at with unseeing eyes, for his only thought was for Virginia. "How could I have missed her if she started to meet me? Yet, where can she be now?" he groaned.
But, Leigh, if my father as administrator and trustee for John Jacobs' estate can sell me the ground and your inheritance from Jane Aydelot pays for it, what is there left for me to do after all? I can't take favors and give none. I'll run away and enlist with the Regulars first." A rueful look came over his face now, and behind the words Leigh read a determined will.
Even in the shadow, his mother noted the patient expression of the gray eyes looking up at her. "Asher, it is Aydelot tradition to be determined and self-willed, and the bitterness against Jerome Thaine and his descendants has never left the blood till now." She stroked his hair lovingwise, as mothers will ever do. "Do you suppose father will ever change?" "I don't believe he will.
Asher's face was bright with anticipation. "You are a dreamer, Aydelot." "No, Jim Shirley's a dreamer," Asher insisted. "Mrs. Aydelot and I planned our home the first night she came a bride to our little one-roomed soddy.
Everywhere was the desolation of ignorance and fear, saddening enough, without the Boxer rebellion to intensify it with months of dreadful warfare. As Thaine fell into his place he thought of the Aydelot wheatfields and of the alfalfa that Leigh Shirley's patient judgment had helped to spread over the Cloverdale Ranch.
"Yes, yes, now these two make the very site we want. You are lucky, for you are ready right now to start things. How much stock do you want, Aydelot, and how will you sell?" As Asher listened he seemed to see the whole scheme of the town builder bare itself before him, and he wondered at the credulity of his neighbors.
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