The Reclaimers

"It was a desert-like scene; just yellow-gray plains, with no trees at all. And in the farther distance the richest purples and reds of a sunset sky into which the land sort of diffused. No landscape on this earth was ever so yellow-gray, or any sunset ever so like the Book of Revelation, nor any horizon-line so wide and far away. It was the hyperbole of a freakish imagination. And yet, Aunt Jerry, there was a romantic lure in the thing, somehow."

Jerry Swaim's face was grave as she gazed with wide, unseeing eyes at the vista of fresh June meadows from which the odor of red clover, pulsing in on the cool west breeze of the late afternoon, mingled with the odor of white honeysuckle that twined among the climbing rose-vines above her.

"Humph! What else?" Aunt Jerry sniffed a disapproval of unpleasant landscapes in general and alluring romances in particular. Love of romance was not in her mental make-u