party thought it needful to take a teamload of
supplies when they went north after moose. It would have been a
catastrophe if they had missed their dinner."

"Going without one's dinner has its inconveniences," said George.

"And thinking too much about it has its perils," she retorted.

George nodded. He thought he knew what she meant, and he agreed with
it. He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by
degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amusements to
which they had confined their efforts. Some had become mere club
loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence. This
had had its effect on him: he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful,
and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities
until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.

"Well," he said, "nobody could call this a good country for the
pampered loafer."

Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie. In the foreground it
was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs
stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of grass that ran on beyond
them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline. It was almost
beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a
sense of vastness and solitude. The effect was somehow daunting. One
thought of the Arctic winter and the savage storms that swept the wilds.

"I've heard it called hard," she said. "It undoubtedly needs hard men;
there is nothing here that can be easily won. That's a fact that the
people you're sending over ought to recognize."

"They soon discover it when they get out. When they've had a crop
hailed or frozen, the thing becomes obvious."

"Did you lose one?"

"I did," George rejoined rather gloomily. "I've a suspicion that if we
get much dry weather and the usual strong winds, I may lose another.
The wheat's getting badly cut by driving sand; that's a trouble we
don't have to put up with in the old country."

"I'm sorry," said Flora; and he knew she meant it. "But you won't be
beaten by one bad season?"

"No," George answered with quiet determination. "I must make a success
of this venture, whatever it costs."

She was a little puzzled by his manner, for she did not think he was
addicted to being needlessly emphatic; but she asked no questions, and
soon afterward the others joined them and they went back to the house.
Early on the following mornin