his companion's station, and she had
never hidden one aspect or her character from him. It was with a
smothered groan he realized that if he flung the last shred of honor
aside and grasped the forbidden fruit it would turn to bitterness in
his mouth.

"Yes," he said very slowly. "There is a limit which only fools would
pass."

Then there was silence for a while, until, as they swept across the
rise, Maud Barrington laughed as she pointed to the lights that blinked
in the hollow, and Winston realized that the barrier between them stood
firm again.

"Our views seldom coincide for very long, but there is something else
to mention before we reach the Grange," she said. "You must have paid
out a good many dollars for the plowing of your land and mine, and
nobody's exchequer is inexhaustible at Silverdale. Now I want you to
take a check from me."

"It is necessary that I should?"

"Of course," said the girl, with a trace of displeasure.

Winston laughed. "Then I shall be prepared to hand you my account
whenever you demand it."

He did not look at his companion again, but with a tighter grip than
there was any need for on the reins, sent the light wagon jolting down
the slope to Silverdale Grange.

CHAPTER XV

THE UNEXPECTED

The sun beat down on the prairie, which was already losing its flush of
green, but it was cool where Maud Barrington and her aunt stood in the
shadow of the bluff by Silverdale Grange. The birches, tasseled now
with whispering foliage, divided the homestead front the waste which
would lie white and desolate under the parching heat, and that
afternoon it seemed to the girl that the wall of green shut out more
than the driving dust and sun-glare from the Grange, for where the
trees were thinner she could see moving specks of men and horses
athwart the skyline.

They had toiled in the sun-baked furrow since the first flush of
crimson streaked the prairie's rim, and the chill of dusk would fall
upon the grasses before their work was done. Those men who bore the
burden and heat of the day were, the girl knew, helots now, but there
was in them the silent vigor and something of the somberness of the
land of rock and forest they came from, and a time would come when
others would work for them. Winning slowly, holding grimly, they were
moving on, while secure in its patrician tranquillity; Silverdale stood
still, and Maud Barrington smiled curiously as she glanced down at the
long wh