"You have been to America, Father Paul, haven't you?" he asked.

America? Yes, Verdayne had been to America. It was in America that he
had passed one season of keenest anguish. He had good reason to remember
it--such good reason that in all their wanderings about the world he had
never seen fit to take the Boy there.

But something had aroused the young fellow's passing interest, and now
nothing would satisfy him save that he must hear all about America; and
so, for a full hour, as best he could, Verdayne described the country of
the far West as he remembered it.

"Nothing in America appealed to me so strongly as the gigantic
prairies," he said at last. "You were so deeply moved by our trip to
Africa, Boy, that you must remember the impression of vastness and
infinity the great desert made upon us. Well, in the glorious West of
America it is as if the desert had sprung to life, and from every grain
of sand had been born a blade of grass, waving and fluttering with the
joy of new birth. Oh, it is truly wonderful, Paul! Once I went there
with the soil of my heart scorched as dry and lifeless as the burning
sands of Sahara, but in that revelation of a new creation, some pulse
within me sprang mysteriously into being again. It could never be the
same heart that it once was, but it would now know the semblance of a
new existence. And I took up the burden of life again--albeit a strange,
new life--and came home to fight it out. The prairies did all that for
me, Boy!" He paused for a moment, and then spoke in a sadder tone. "It
was soon after that, Paul, that I first found you."

Paul Zalenska thought that he understood. That, of course, was after
Isabella Waring had wrecked his life. Cruel, heartless Isabella! He had