bluff at the edge of a clump of pines. It was morning, and Whitefaced Mountain shone solemnly clear, without a touch of cloud or mist from its haunches to its crown. In his eyes, as in hers, was a sane light; and his voice, as hers, said indescribable things. Her head sank upon his shoulder, her eyes closed. She was asleep. Fingall laid her down with a sob in his throat, then he sat up and clutched Pierre's hand. They knocked at the hut door, and in answer to a voice entered. The sunlight streamed in over a woman lying upon a heap of dried flowers in a "In the East, where the doctors corner, and a man kneeling beside her. cured me, I heard," he said, pointing They came near, and saw that the to her, "and I came to find her. I was woman was Cynthie. 66 Then Pierre broke out suddenly: Fingall!" and caught the kneeling man by the shoulder. At the sound of his voice the woman's eyes opened. "Fingall!-Oh, Fingall!" she said, and reached up a hand. The bearded man stooped and caught her to his breast: "Cynthie! Poor girl! Oh, my poor Cynthie!" he said. just in time. I found her yesterday." "And she knew you?" whispered Pierre. "Yes; but the fever came hard after." He turned and looked at her, and, kneeling, smoothed away the hair from the smiling, pathetic face. "Poor girl!" he said. "Poor girl!" "She will get well?" asked Pierre. "God grant it!" Fingall replied. "She is better-better." 66 Lawless and Pierre softly turned and a voice crept through the stillstole away, leaving the man alone with ness. Fingall! Oh, Fingall!-Finthe girl. gall!" The two stood in silence, looking upon the river beneath. It was the voice of a woman returnPresently ing from the dead. MILLION THE OPENING OF AN EMPIRE. BY CY WARMAN. ILLIONS of acres of land are lying idle in western Kansas and Nebraska, in Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, New Mexico, and California, wanting only the magic touch of water to make them bloom into a flower garden, and yet producing nothing but lean coyotes, sun-dogs, and scenery. One million acres of land, worth one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, or one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, if watered, would bring eleven million two hundred and fifty thousand. According to the estimates of Major Powell, there are one million square miles of these lands which need only water to render them productive. Special Agent Hinton estimates that there are seventeen million acres of arid lands which the general government could and should reclaim. If we can add seventeen million acres to our cultivable domain, we shall increase our capacity for sup We porting a farming population as much as though we had absorbed one-third of the cultivated land of the United Kingdom, or one-fifth of that of France, or one-fourth that of Germany, or all the cultivated land of Sweden, Norway, and Greece put together. can annex a Canada of our own without asking anybody's leave, and have a million acres to spare. We can have within our own borders as much cultivable land, in addition to our present two hundred and eight million acres, as Australia and Holland combined have under cultivation. A CHANGE COMING. The farm is more desirable than the poorhouse. It is better to "bug" potatoes than to walk in the rear ranks of an industrial army, receiving bayonets when you ask for bread. The reclamation of the arid lands, or a part of them, will open a new empire to our people. It will provide a new place where men may go and plant a vine and a fig tree. Here will they build a vast, uncrowded city in the open air, with ten-acre lots, and streets as long as a river. Think of the advantage of living in such an atmosphere, surrounded by such scenes as this new country will afford! What a change it would be to the thousands who are now breathing the bad air of the overfull cities! The editor of the "Irrigation Age," writing in the "Review of Reviews," says of this wondrous country "In their rugged grandeur, in their multiform and fantastic shapes, in their variety and vividness of coloring, and in the wonder of their everchanging aspect, the mountains of the arid West are the noblest works of Omnipotence. To see their snowwhitened summits outlined against the tender blue of a morning sky, or the golden glow of sunset, is to behold a poem that defies translation. And the valleys that nestle between these peaks are like jewels on fair hands." The opening of these lands will provide homes in the future for the thousands of people who, for the past twenty years, have been leaving the "Godmade-country" and seeking the man made town. And when all the acres between the Rocky Mountains and Kansas are under cultivation by a system of irrigation, as they are sure some day to be, there will no more hot winds go thirsting over the cornfields of Kansas and Nebraska. The moisture from these irrigated fields would so temper the dry winds that they would come to the Kansas farmer as soft as the winds from the sea; and the sun-parched plain, where now scarcely enough grass grows to pasture a grasshopper, will, when watered, be transformed into one great garden. The demand for Eastern products of agriculture in the Rocky Mountain States is increasing faster than the supply, and already these States furnish a larger market for such products than Cuba, Port Rico, Central America, and South America combined. Of the one hundred and thirty-one million dollars in gold, silver, copper, and lead produced in the mountain States in 1890, fifty million dollars went to the Eastern States for manufactured articles, and thirty million dollars for agricultural products, chiefly grain and fruit. No small amount went East as dividends to stockholders whose money has helped largely to develop the mines. of the West. These figures are the certain assurance of good returns for all investments that may be made in agricultural development and in manufacturing enterprises. Certain it is that the great tide of humanity which for the past two decades has been running into the cities must now begin to flow back. The factories and shops of the East are idle, not from any political misfortune, but because the building of railroads and towns in the West has ceased. When Nebraska was "booming," when Kansas was constructing her nine thousand miles of railroad, and building a county seat every evening where the track ended, the factories were kept busy. Now this work is completed, and labor is without employment. rain or shine on any or all of his acres when he wills. An irrigated farm never wears out. There are farms in New Mexico that have been irrigated for two hundred and fifty years, and they are to-day as good as new. The Pima Indians of Arizona, we are told, have cultivated the same lands for five hundred years, and nothing has been applied but the water which freshened and fertilized the fields. In Egypt there are farms four thousand years old that are kept rich by the new soil and sediment carried to them every season through the irrigating ditches. What can be accomplished by irrigation has been demonstrated in northern Colorado, the garden spot of the THE IRRIGATED FARM THE ONLY SURE West, if not of the world. T. De FARM. The irrigated farm is the only "sure-thing" farm on the face of the earth. Here a man may, for the small sum of one dollar an acre, make it Witt Talmage, having seen this garden which has been planted in the desert wastes of a waveless sea, returned to Brooklyn and preached a sermon on irrigation, saying: "About eight hundred millions of people of the earth to |