He greeted her somewhat bashfully.  And Lenore returned the greeting calmly, watching him steadily and waiting for the nameless sensations she had imagined would attend this meeting.  But whatever these might be, they did not come to overwhelm her.  The gladness of his voice, as he had spoken so eagerly to her father about the debt, had made her feel very kindly toward him.  It might have been natural for a young man to resent this dragging debt.  But he was fine.  She observed, as he sat down, that, once the smile and flush left his face, he seemed somewhat thinner and older than she had pictured him.  A shadow lay in his eyes and his lips were sad.  He had evidently been working, upon their arrival.  He wore overalls, dusty and ragged; his arms, bare to the elbow, were brown and muscular; his thin cotton shirt was wet with sweat and it clung to his powerful shoulders.

Anderson surveyed the young man with friendly glance.

“What’s your first name?” he queried, with his blunt frankness.

“Kurt,” was the reply.

“Is that American?”

“No.  Neither is Dorn.  But Kurt Dorn is an American.”

“Hum!  So I see, an’ I’m powerful glad....  An’ you’ve saved the big section of promisin’ wheat?”

“Yes.  We’ve been lucky.  It’s the best and finest wheat father ever raised.  If it rains the yield will go sixty bushels to the acre.”

“Sixty?  Whew!” ejaculated Anderson.

Lenore smiled at these wheat men, and said:  “It surely will rain—­and likely storm to-day.  I am a prophet who never fails.”

“By George! that’s true!  Lenore has anybody beat when it comes to figurin’ the weather,” declared Anderson.

Dorn looked at her without speaking, but his smile seemed to say that she could not help being a prophet of good, of hope, of joy.

“Say, Lenore, how many bushels in a section at sixty per acre?” went on Anderson.

“Thirty-eight thousand four hundred,” replied Lenore.

“An’ what’ll you sell for?” asked Anderson of Dorn.

“Father has sold at two dollars and twenty-five cents a bushel,” replied Dorn.

“Good!  But he ought to have waited.  The government will set a higher price....  How much will that come to, Lenore?”

Dorn’s smile, as he watched Lenore do her mental arithmetic, attested to the fact that he already had figured out the sum.

“Eighty-six thousand four hundred dollars,” replied Lenore.  “Is that right?”

“An’ you’ll have thirty thousand dollars left after all debts are paid?” inquired Anderson.

“Yes, sir.  I can hardly realize it.  That’s a fortune—­for one section of wheat.  But we’ve had four bad seasons....  Oh, if it only rains to-day!”

Lenore turned her cheek to the faint west wind.  And then she looked long at the slowly spreading clouds, white and beautiful, high up near the sky-line, and dark and forbidding down along the horizon.