desire. For a moment an awful
confusion had the mastery, and then suddenly a clear light broke into his
eyes, his face flushed healthily and shone, his arms went up, and there
rang in his ears the words:

"Then I think, with bitter pain,
Shall we ever meet again
When the swallows homeward fly?"

"Alice!--Alice!" he called, and tottered forward up the aisle, followed by
John Bickersteth.

"Alice, I have come back!" he cried again.

GEORGE'S WIFE

"She's come, and she can go back. No one asked her, no one wants her, and
she's got no rights here. She thinks she'll come it over me, but she'll
get nothing, and there's no place for her here."

The old, gray-bearded man, gnarled and angular, with overhanging brows and
a harsh face, made this little speech of malice and unfriendliness,
looking out on the snow-covered prairie through the window. Far in the
distance were a sleigh and horses like a spot in the snow, growing larger
from minute to minute.

It was a day of days. Overhead the sun was pouring out a flood of light
and warmth, and, though it was bitterly cold, life was beating hard in the
bosom of the West. Men walked lightly, breathed quickly, and their eyes
were bright with the brightness of vitality and content. Even the old man
at the window of this lonely house, in a great, lonely stretch of country,
with the cedar hills behind it, had a living force which defied his
seventy-odd years, though the light in his face was hard and his voice was
harder still. Under the shelter of the foothills, cold as the day was, his
cattle were feeding in the open, scratching away the thin layer of snow
and browsing on the tender grass underneath. An arctic world in
appearance, it had an abounding life which made it friendly and
generous--the harshness belonged to the surface. So, perhaps, it was with
the old man who watched the sleigh in the distance coming nearer, but that
in his nature on which any one could feed was not so easily reached as the
fresh young grass under the protecting snow.

"She'll get nothing out of me," he repeated, as the others in the room
behind him made no remark, and his eyes ranged gloatingly over the cattle
under the foothills and the buildings which he had gathered together to
proclaim his substantial greatness in the West. "Not a _sou markee_!" he
added, clinking some coins in his pocket. "She's got no rights."

"Cassy's got a