ed with sleughs and lakes of varying size, a
country as richly fertile and as fair to look upon as is given the
eyes of man to behold anywhere in God's good world. In the dullest
weather this rolling, tree-decked, sleugh-gemmed prairie presents a
succession of scenes surpassingly beautiful, but with a westering
sun upon it, and on a May day, it offers such a picture as at once
entrances the soul and lives forever in the memory. The waving
lines, the rounded hills, the changing colour, the chasing shadows
on grass and bluff and shimmering water, all combine to make in
the soul high music unto God.

For an hour and more the buckboard hummed along the trail smooth
and winding, the bronchos pulling hard on the lines without a sign
of weariness, till the bluffs began to grow thicker and gradually
to close into a solid belt of timber. Beyond this belt of timber
lay the Ruthenian Colony but newly placed. The first intimation
of the proximity of this colony came in quite an unexpected way.
Swinging down a sharp hill through a bluff, the bronchos came upon
a man with a yoke of oxen hauling a load of hay. Before their
course could be checked the ponies had pitched heavily into the
slow moving and terrified oxen, and so disconcerted them that they
swerved from the trail and upset the load. Immediately there rose
a volley of shrill execrations in the Galician tongue.

"Whoa, buck! Steady there!" cried Jack French cheerily as he steered
his team past the wreck. "Too bad that, we must go back and help to
repair damages."

He tied the bronchos securely to a tree and went back to offer aid.
The Galician, a heavily-built man, was standing on the trail with a
stout stake in his hand, viewing the ruins of his load and expressing
his emotions in voluble Galician profanity with a bad mixture of
halting and broken English. Kalman stood beside French with wrath
growing in his face.

"He is calling you very bad names!" he burst out at length.

French glanced down at the boy's angry face and smiled.

"Oh, well, it will do him good. He will feel better when he gets
it all out. And besides, he has rather good reason to be angry."

"He says he is going to kill you," said Kalman in a low voice,
keeping close to French's side.

"Oh! indeed," said French cheerfully, walking straight upon the man.
"That is awkward. But perhaps he will change his mind."

This calm and cheerful front produced its impression upon the
excited Galician.

"Too