The colony from the East had been established, and the harnessed water was doing the will of man. At the head of the valley, where the cultivated fields began to widen into a green expanse of gardens and small farms, Steve Harkness stopped his buggy in the trail and awaited the coming of another buggy he had seen issue from the town. With Harkness sat Pearl and Helen, the latter a slender, awkward girl now, but in the eyes of her father beautiful beyond the power of words to express. The three were dressed in their best—they had been attending church. Harkness shook out his handkerchief to wipe his perspiring face—church services always made him perspire freely—and the scent of cinnamon drops thickened the air.

“It’s Justin and Lucy coming,” said Pearl.

“Yes, I knowed it was; that’s why I pulled in. I don’t reckon a handsomer couple rides this valley trail, present company always accepted. Davison was with ’em at church, but I s’pose he stopped in town to take dinner with some one.”

Harkness tucked his handkerchief into his pocket and looked down the valley, where the fruitful fields were smiling. In the midst of the fields and the gardens were many houses and clumps of shade trees. The flat-topped mountain behind the town lay against the bosom of the summer sky like a great cameo. A Sabbath peace was on the land, and a great peace was in the heart of Steve Harkness.

“It’s nice to have a home,” he declared thoughtfully, as he looked at the quiet valley, “and it’s nice to see other people have homes. But until a man is married and has one of his own he don’t know how ’tis.”

Pearl glanced down at her dress of China silk and settled its folds comfortably and proudly about her.

“I think farming is better than the cattle business, anyway.”

“Yes, farmin’ this way, with irrigation; irrigation with plenty of water beats rainfall in any country under the sun. I’m satisfied. But you don’t never hear me saying anything ag’inst the cattle business; it’s all right, and it will continue in this country fer a good many years yit. But Paradise Valley was cut out fer farmers and their homes. I’m always reckonin’ that the Lord understood his business when he made men and land and cattle. The valleys that can be irrigated fer the farmers, and the high dry land that can’t be fer the men that want to raise cattle. And things will always come out right, if you’ll only give ’em time. It’s been proved right here.”

When, after pleasant greetings, Harkness had driven on, Justin, who did not care to proceed straight home on that beautiful day, turned into the trail that led to the higher land on the edge of the mesa, where the view of the valley was better. Coming out upon the highest point, they saw the valley spread wide before them, green as an emerald. The few groves were many times multiplied. On every hand were homes, girt by gardens and embowered in flowers. Irrigating canals and laterals glittered like threads of silver. Warrior River, uniting with Paradise Creek, had furnished means for the transformation of the desert, and it was literally blossoming as the rose.

Thus surveying the valley, Justin saw the fulfillment of the dream of the dreamer, Peter Wingate. More, he had the satisfaction of knowing that in the position he held, that of superintendent and manager of the irrigating company, he had done his full share in bringing that dream to its beautiful realization. He had helped to make the one-time desert bloom. Years had run their course, yet the dream had come true. He had prospered also, not only financially, but in other ways; he was in the state senate now, the position Fogg had held. And, though he was a farmer and irrigator, he was, also, a ranchman.

As he sat thus viewing the smiling valley, with his wife beside him, seeing there the fulfillment of the dream of the preacher, Justin turned to her whom he loved best of all in the world. Looking into her eyes, where wifely love had established itself, he beheld there the fulfillment of another dream; and beholding it, he bent his head and kissed her.

“Lucy,” he said, with tender earnestness, “this, too, is Paradise.”

By the Author of “The Rainbow Chasers”

BARBARA, A WOMAN OF THE WEST

By JOHN H. WHITSON

Illustrated by C. C. Emerson. 12mo. $1.50

Third Edition

Barbara, the heroine of Mr. Whitson’s first Western novel, is the loyal wife of a self-centred man of literary tastes, living on a ranch in Kansas. “Barbara is a fresh, breezy sort of a girl; and the account of her life and ultimate happiness, as described by Mr. Whitson, makes one of the best stories of the season,” says the St. Paul Globe.

“We are carried from one scene to another with an ease and expeditiousness that plainly betokens the author’s familiarity with the length and breadth of the Western country, and the people he so vividly portrays,” says the San Francisco News-Letter.

Hon. John D. Long, ex-Secretary of the Navy, in a letter to the author, says: “You have the story-teller’s art. I like especially those portions of the book which treat of Western scenes and life—the homestead, the plain, the prairie, the pioneer’s experience, the mining camp, Cripple Creek, and Pike’s Peak. You bring out the growth of the country, the speculative ups and downs, the mountain curves of the narrow railroads; and the winter scene with the dangerous trip over the mountain from Feather Bow is very graphic.”

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers

BOSTON, MASS.

A Stirring Tale of the Plains

THE RAINBOW CHASERS

By JOHN H. WHITSON

Author of “Barbara, A Woman of the West”

Full of the atmosphere of the West, with Dick Brewster, alias Jackson Blake, cowboy, land speculator, and lover, for its hero, Mr. Whitson’s new novel, without being in the least a copy, has many of the attractions of Mr. Wister’s hero, “The Virginian.”

“The Rainbow Chasers” is a virile American novel with its principal scenes laid in Western Kansas during the land boom of '85. The male characters are vigorous men, with red blood in their veins; and the heroine, Elinor Spencer, is a high-spirited but lovable Western girl.

The Brooklyn Eagle says:—

“It is a picturesque narrative, striking in its portrayal of conditions that have vanished. It is one of those works of fiction which, like ‘The Virginian,’ deserve to rank as books of social and economic history, because of the picturing of conditions, vital while they existed, that have passed away.”

With 6 illustrations by Arthur E. Becher. 393 pages.

12 mo. Decorated cloth, $1.50

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, BOSTON

At all Booksellers

“A Spell-binding Creation”—Lilian Whiling

MYSTERIOUS MR. SABIN

By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM

Author of “A Prince of Sinners,” “Anna the Adventuress,” etc.

Illustrated. 397 pages. 12mo. $1.50

Deals with an intrigue of international moment—the fomenting of a war between Great Britain and Germany and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France as a consequence. Intensely readable for the dramatic force with which the story is told, the absolute originality of the underlying creative thought, and the strength of all the men and women who fill the pages.—Pittsburg Times.

Not for long has so good a story of the kind been published, and the book is the more commendable because the literary quality of its construction has not been slighted. He whose pulses are not quickened by the tale must be jaded and phlegmatic indeed.—Chicago Record-Herald.

For a good, grippy story, it is the best of the present season’s output.—Cleveland Leader.

Mr. Oppenheim possesses the magic art of narration.—New York Herald.

If we forget all else in the story, we will remember Mr. Sabin, and freely account him a man of mark among the thronging characters of latter-day literature.—Boston Courier.

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers, BOSTON

At all Booksellers

A Powerful American Novel

THE VISION OF ELIJAH BERL

By FRANK LEWIS NASON

Author of “The Blue Goose” and “To the End of the Trail”

12mo. Decorated cloth. $1.50

Mr. Nason’s new novel deals with the beginnings of orange growing in California by irrigation. Elijah Berl, a New Englander, emigrates to California, and dreams of the time when the barren region in which he has settled shall “blossom as the rose.” Engineering ambitions, the formation of a company for the development of the orange industry, the building of an irrigation dam, and the collapse of a land boom, furnish the author material for a well-constructed plot.

A Story of Adventure, Intrigue, and Love

A PRINCE OF LOVERS

By SIR WILLIAM MAGNAY

Author of “The Red Chancellor,” etc.

Illustrated by Cyrus Cuneo. 12mo. $1.50

In this new novel by Sir William Magnay, the heroine, “Princess Ruperta,” a princess of the blood royal, sick of the monotony and unreality of Court, goes out one night, incognito, with her maid. Danger unexpectedly threatens her, and when she is gallantly rescued from this danger by a young and handsome stranger, it is not unnatural that (betrothed compulsorily as she is for State reasons to a royal person whom she has never seen) love is born in the heart of the Princess as well as in that of her unknown rescuer. Then follows a series of adventures brilliantly imagined and enthrallingly told.

LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., Publishers

BOSTON, MASS.