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THE
ABLE McLAUGHLINS
The
ABLE McLAUGHLINS
BY
MARGARET WILSON
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE ABLE McLAUGHLINS
Copyright, 1923
By Harper & Brothers
Printed in the U. S. A.
THE
ABLE McLAUGHLINS
THE prairie lay that afternoon as it had lainfor centuries of September afternoons, vastas an ocean; motionless as an ocean coaxed intovery little ripples by languid breezes; silent as anocean where only very little waves slip back intotheir element. One might have walked for hourswithout hearing anything louder than high whiteclouds casting shadows over the distances, or thetall slough grass bending lazily into waves. Onemight have gone on startled only by the fallingof scarlet swamp-lily seeds, by sudden goldfinches,or the scratching of young prairie chickens in theshorter grasses. For years now not even a babybuffalo had called to its mother in those stretches,or an old squaw broken ripening wild grapes fromthe creek thicket. Fifteen years ago one mighthave gone west for months without hearing a humanvoice. Even that day a traveler might easilyhave missed the house where little David and thefatter little Sarah sat playing, for it was less in thevastnesses about it than one short bubble in awave’s crest. Ten years ago the children’s fatherhad halted his ox team there, finishing his journeyfrom Ayrshire, and his eight boys and girls alighting[2]upon the summer’s crop of wild strawberries,had harvested it with shrieks of delight whichbroke forever the immediate part of the centuries’silence. A solitary man would have left the lastsource of human noise sixty miles behin