PART II.
CHAPTER XII THE YOUNG EAGLE FLUTTERS THE DOVE-COTE The little town of Marmion was built on the high, grassy, parklike bank of the Cedar River; at least, the main part of the residences and stores stood on the upper level, while below, beside the roaring water, only a couple of mills and some miserable shacks straggled along a road which ran close to the sheer walls of water-worn limestone.
The town was considered "picturesque" by citizens of the smaller farm villages standing bleakly where the prairie lanes intersected.

To be able to live in Marmion was held to be eminent good fortune by the people roundabout, and the notion was worth working for.

"If things turn out well we will buy a lot in Marmion and build a house there," husbands occasionally said to their wives and daughters, to console them for the mud, or dirt, or heat, or cold of the farm life.

One by one some of those who had come into the country early, and whose land had grown steadily in value as population increased, were able to rent their farms to advantage and "move into town." Thus the streets gradually lengthened out into the lanes, and brick blocks slowly replaced the battlemented wooden stores of earlier frontier construction.
To Harold Excell, fresh from the wide spaces of the plains, the town appeared smothered in leaves, and the air was oppressively stagnant.

He came into the railway station early one July morning, tired and dusty, with a ride of two days and a night in an ordinary coach.