And the wheat looked a century old.

Here and there a straight, dusty road stretched from hill to hill, becoming a thin white line, to disappear in the distance.

The sun shone hot, the wind blew hard; and over the boundless undulating expanse hovered a shadow that was neither hood of dust nor hue of gold.

It was not physical, but lonely, waiting, prophetic, and weird.

No wild desert of wastelands, once the home of other races of man, and now gone to decay and death, could have shown so barren an acreage.