in Winnipeg asking them to send me anybody."

The girl's eyes shone mistily. "Oh!" she cried, "you have lifted one
weight off my mind."

"I think," observed Mrs. Hastings, "the others will also be removed in
due time."

After that she talked cheerfully of other matters, and Agatha listened
to her with a vague wonder at her own good fortune in falling in with
such a friend.

There are in that country many men and women who are unfettered by
conventions. They stretch out an open hand to the stranger and the
outcast. Toil has brought them charity in place of hardness, and still
retaining, as some of them do, the culture of the cities, they have
outgrown all the petty bonds of caste. The wheat-grower and the
hired-man eat together. Rights are good-humoredly conceded in place of
being fought for, and the sense of grievance and half-veiled suspicion
common elsewhere among employes are exchanged for an efficient
co-operation. It must, however, be admitted that there are also farmers
of another kind, from whom the hired man has occasionally some
difficulty in extracting his covenanted wages by personal violence.

The two women had been talking a long time when a team and a jolting
wagon swept into sight, and Mrs. Hastings rose as the man who drove
pulled up his horses.

"It's Sproatly; I wonder what has brought him here," she remarked.

The man sprang down from the wagon and walked towards the house. She
gazed at him almost incredulously.

"He's quite smart," she added. "I don't see a single patch on that
jacket, and he has positively got his hair cut."

"Is that an unusual thing in Mr. Sproatly's case?" Agatha inquired.

"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings. "It's very unusual indeed. What is stranger
still, he has taken the old grease-spotted band off his hat, after
clinging to it affectionately for the last twelve months."

Agatha thought that the soft hat, which fell shapelessly over part of
Sproatly's face, needed something to replace the discarded band; but in
another moment he entered the room. He shook hands with them both.

"You are looking remarkably fresh, but appearances are not invariably to
be depended on, and it's advisable to keep the system up to par," he
said with a smile. "I suppose you don't want a tonic of any kind?"

"I don't," declared Mrs. Hastings resolutely; "Allen doesn't, either.
Besides, didn't you get into some trouble over that tonic?"

"It was the cough cure," explained Sproatly with a grin