ing furs.

"You told me there was something you wished me to do, and, though it
was difficult, it is done," she said. "My holding will be sown with
wheat this spring."

Winston turned his head aside a moment, and apparently found it needful
to fumble at the fastenings of the furs, while there was a curious
expression in his eyes when he looked round again.

"Then," he said, with a little smile, "we are quits. That cancels any
little obligation which may have existed."

He had gone in another minute, and Maud Barrington turned back into the
stove-warmed room very quietly. Her lips were, however, somewhat
closely set.

CHAPTER XII

SPEED THE PLOW

Winter had fled back beyond the barrens to the lonely North at last,
and though here and there a little slushy snow still lay soaking the
black loam in a hollow, a warm wind swept the vast levels, when one
morning Colonel Barrington rode with his niece and sister across the
prairie. Spring comes suddenly in that region, and the frost-bleached
sod was steaming under an effulgent sun, while in places a hardy flower
peeped through. It was six hundred miles to the forests on the
Rockies' eastern slope, and as far to the Athabascan pines, but it
seemed to Maud Barrington that their resinous sweetness was in the
glorious western wind, which awoke a musical sighing from the sea of
rippling grass. It rolled away before her in billows of lustrous
silver-gray, and had for sole boundary the first upward spring of the
arch of cloudless blue, across which the vanguard of the feathered host
pressed on, company by company, towards the Pole.

The freshness of it all stirred her blood like wine, and the brightness
that flooded the prairie had crept into her eyes, for those who bear
the iron winter of that lonely land realize the wonder of the
reawakening, which in a little space of days dresses the waste, that
has lain for long months white and silent as the dead, in living green.
It also has its subtle significance that the grimmest toiler feels, and
the essence of it is hope eternal and triumphant life. The girl felt
the thrill of it, and gave thanks by an answering brightness, as the
murmuring grasses and peeping flowerets did, but there was behind her
instinctive gladness a vague wonder and expectancy. She had read
widely, and seen the life of the cities with understanding eyes, and
now she was to be provided with the edifying spectacle of the gambler
and outcast tur