By the time the second trousseau was well on the way, the affections of the girl's sweetheart had wafted away and wound themselves about another girl.
Here and there the prairie farmers had planted out trees in rows and clumps, taking tree claims from the Government for that purpose.
In many instances cyclones had bent these prospective forests double in their extreme youth, leaving them to grow that way, leaning heavily forward in the attitude of old men running.
Of course, there were demons. God could have nothing to do with their devilments, Seth said. Seth had great belief in God.
One had maliciously torn up all the churches in a town by the roots, turned them upside down and stuck their steeples in the ground as if in mockery of religion.
"Why do you call them cyclones?" the old man at the corner grocery had asked. "They are not cyclones. They are tornadoes."
And this old man who had once been a doctor of medicine in an Eastern village and who was therefore learned, though he had been persuaded by some Wise men to go West and grow up with the Fools, went on to explain the difference.
"A cyclone," he said, "is miles and miles in width. It sweeps across the prairie screeching and screaming, but doing not so very much damage as it might do, just getting on the nerves of the people and helping to drive them insane. That is all.
"Then along comes a hailstone. It drops into the southeast corner of this cyclone and there you are! It generates a tornado and That is the Thing that rends the Universe."
Seth had listened to these stories undismayed; for what had they to do with his ranch and the Magic City upon which it was to be built?