tion, but it had sustained him
before, and Winston's head was a somewhat exceptional one, though there
was as a rule nothing in any way remarkable about his conversation, and
he was apparently merely one of the many quietly-spoken, bronze-faced
men who are even by their blunders building up a great future for the
Canadian dominion. He accordingly drew his old rug tighter round him,
and instinctively pulled his fur cap lower down when the lights of the
settlement faded behind him and the creaking wagon swung out into the
blackness of the prairie. It ran back league beyond league across
three broad provinces, and the wind that came up out of the great
emptiness emphasized its solitude. A man from the cities would have
heard nothing but the creaking of the wagon and the drumming fall of
hoofs, but Winston heard the grasses patter as they swayed beneath the
bitter blasts stiff with frost, and the moan of swinging boughs in a
far-off willow bluff. It was these things that guided him, for he had
left the rutted trail, and here and there the swish beneath the wheels
told of taller grass, while the bluff ran black athwart the horizon
when that had gone. Then twigs crackled beneath them as the horses
picked their way amidst the shadowy trees stunted by a ceaseless
struggle with the wind, and Winston shook the creeping drowsiness from
him when they came out into the open again, for he knew it is not
advisable for any man with work still to do to fall asleep under the
frost of that country.

Still, he grew a trifle dazed as the miles went by, and because of it
indulged in memories he had shaken oft at other times. They were
blurred recollections of the land he had left eight years ago, pictures
of sheltered England, half-forgotten music, the voices of friends who
no longer remembered him, and the smiles in a girl's bright eyes. Then
he settled himself more firmly in the driving seat, and with numbed
fingers sought a tighter grip of the reins as the memory of the girl's
soft answer to a question he had asked brought his callow ambitions
back.

He was to hew his way to fortune in the West, and then come back for
her, but the girl who had clung to him with wet cheeks when he left her
had apparently grown tired of waiting, and Winston sent back her
letters in return for a silver-printed card. That was six years ago,
and now none of the dollars he had brought into the country remained to
him. He realized, dispassionately and