"I did not say you were impertinent," she returned. "I remembered seeing
you--notice me, that is all."

Self-possessed, aloof, and kind, Miss Anderson now became an
impenetrable mystery to Dorn. But that only accentuated the distance she
had intimated lay between them. Her kindness stung him to recover his
composure. He wished she had not been kind. What a singular chance that
had brought her here to his home--the daughter of a man who came to
demand a long-unpaid debt! What a dispelling of the vague thing that had
been only a dream! Dorn gazed away across the yellowing hills to the dim
blue of the mountains where rolled the Oregon. Despite the color, it was
gray--like his future.

"I heard you tell father you had studied wheat," said the girl,
presently, evidently trying to make conversation.

"Yes, all my life," replied Kurt. "My study has mostly been under my
father. Look at my hands." He held out big, strong hands, scarred and
knotted, with horny palms uppermost, and he laughed. "I can be proud of
them, Miss Anderson.... But I had a splendid year in California at the
university and I graduated from the Washington State Agricultural
College."

"You love wheat--the raising of it, I mean?" she inquired.

"It must be that I do, though I never had such a thought. Wheat is so
wonderful. No one can guess who does not know it!... The clean, plump
grain, the sowing on fallow ground, the long wait, the first tender
green, and the change day by day to the deep waving fields of gold--then
the harvest, hot, noisy, smoky, full of dust and chaff, and the great