CHAPTER XXXIV

That summer,—the one in which Abbie Deal was eighty,—was the summer of the Great Harvest. Nebraska was favored of the gods. Ceres’ throne was in Nebraska. It was as though she chose the state from all others upon which to lavish her goods,—as though the bulk of her fortune had been given to a favorite child. From the old Missouri to the foot of the sand-hills,—from the Kansas border to the land of the Dakotas, the wheat fields, like the sun’s reflection, lay ripe under the July sky. In every direction one saw a thr…