ton picked up his broad hat, which was
trampled into shapelessness, and turned towards the wagon. There was
dust and spume upon him, a rent in the blue shirt, and the knuckles of
one hand dripped red, but he laughed as he said, "I did not know we had
an audience, but this, you see, is necessary."

"Is it?" asked Miss Barrington, who glanced at the plowing. "When
wheat is going down?"

Winston nodded. "Yes," he said. "I mean, to me; and the price of
wheat is only one part of the question."

Miss Barrington stretched out her hand, though her niece said nothing
at all. "Of course, but I want you to help us down. Maud has an
account you have not sent in to ask you for."

Winston first turned to the two men who now stood by the idle machine.
"You'll have to drive those beasts of mine as best you can, Tom, and
Jake will take your team. Get them off again now. This piece of
breaking has to be put through before we loose again."

Then he handed his visitors down, and Maud Barrington fancied as he
walked with them to the house that the fashion in which the damaged hat
hung down over his eyes would have rendered most other men ludicrous.
He left them a space in his bare sitting-room, which suggested only
grim utility, and Miss Barrington smiled when her niece glanced at her.

"And this is how Lance, the profligate, lives!" said she.

Maud Barrington shook her head. "No," she said. "Can you believe that
this man was ever a prodigal?"

Her aunt was a trifle less astonished than she would once have been,
but before she could answer Winston, who had made a trifling change in
his clothing, came in.

"I can give you some green tea, though I am afraid it might be a good
deal better than it is, and our crockery is not all you have been used
to," he said. "You see, we have only time to think of one thing until
the sowing is through."

Miss Barrington's eyes twinkled. "And then?"

"Then," said Winston, with a little laugh, "there will be prairie hay
to cut, and after that the harvest coming on."

"In the meanwhile, it was business that brought me here, and I have a
check with me," said Maud Barrington. "Please let us get it over first
of all."

Winston sat down at a table and scribbled on a strip of paper. "That,"
he said gravely, "is what you owe me for the plowing."

There was a little flush in his face as he took the check the girl
filled in, and both felt somewhat grateful for the entrance of a man in
bl