, peeping from beneath the robe, saw her brother by the colts'
heads.

"Thanks for the ride!" she observed with mild sarcasm. Angus stiffened
arm and body against a sudden lunge.

"Stand still, you!" he commanded, "or I'll club you till you'll be glad
to!" And to Jean: "They wouldn't face it, and I don't blame them. I
thought we were over once."

"Some hail!" Jean commented. "I never saw anything like it."

But already the storm was passing. Came a tail-end spatter of rain, and
the sky began to clear. But as he wheeled his team out from shelter
Angus' face was very grave, and a sudden thought struck his sister.

"Why," she exclaimed, her brown eyes opening wide, "do you suppose that
hail struck the ranch?"

"I don't know," he replied, "but if it did, there won't be any threshing
this year. It was bad."

As they drove on there was evidence of that. The grass was beaten flat,
bushes were stripped of leaves. They passed the body of a young grouse
which, caught in the open and confused, had been pelted to death. It was
without doubt very bad hail.

When they came in sight of the ranch, Jean, unable to restrain her
impatience, rose to her feet and, holding her brother's shoulder, took a
long look. He felt her hand tighten, gripping him hard. Then she dropped
back into the seat beside him.

"It--it hit us!" she said.

In a few moments Angus could see for himself. The fields of grain which,
as they had driven away that morning, had rippled in the fresh wind,
nodding full, heavy heads to the blue sky, were beaten flat. The heads
themselves were threshed by the icy flail of the storm. He knew as he
looked at the flattened ruin that there would be no threshing. He was
"hailed out"!

Though the event assumed the proportions of a disaster, Angus said not a
word. His black brows drew down and his mouth set hard. That was all. He
felt Jean's arm go beneath his and press it.

"I'm sorry, old boy!" she said. "We needed the money, didn't we!"

"Yes," he replied.

"Oh, well, it can't be helped," she said. "I'll stay home this winter,
of course. I can do that much to help, anyway."

"You will do nothing of the sort," her brother declared.

"But----"

"I will find the money. You will finish what you have begun, and that is
all there is to it."

"I won't----"

"You _will_!" Angus said in a voice his sister had never heard before.
"I say you will. You have a right to your education, and you shall have
it. If I canno