ue jean with the tea. It was of very indifferent quality, and he had
sprinkled a good deal on the tray, but Winston felt a curious thrill as
he watched the girl pour it out at the head of the bare table. Her
white dress gleamed in the light of a dusty window, and the shadowy
cedar boarding behind her forced up each line of the shapely figure.
Again the maddening temptation took hold of him, and he wondered
whether he had betrayed too much when he felt the elder lady's eyes
upon him. There was a tremor in his brown fingers as he took the cup
held out to him, but his voice was steady.

"You can scarcely fancy how pleasant this is," he said. "For eight
years, in fact ever since I left England, no woman has ever done any of
these graceful little offices for me."

Miss Barrington glanced at her niece, and both of them knew that, if
the lawyer had traced Courthorne's past correctly, this could not be
true. Still, there was no disbelief in the elder lady's eyes, and the
girl's faith remained unshaken.

"Eight years," she said, with a little smile, "is a very long while."

"Yes," said Winston, "horribly long, and one year at Silverdale is
worth them all--that is, a year like this one, which is going to be
remembered by all who have sown wheat on the prairie, and that leads up
to something. When I have plowed all my own holding, I shall not be
content, and I want to make another bargain. Give me the use of your
unbroken land, and I will find horses, seed, and men, while we will
share what it yields us when the harvest is in."

The girl was astonished. This, she knew, was splendid audacity, for
the man had already staked very heavily on the crop he had sown, and
while the daring of it stirred her she sat silent a moment.

"I could lose nothing, but you will have to bring out a host of men,
and have risked so much," she said. "Nobody but you and me and three
or four others in all the province is plowing more than half his
holdings."

The suggestion of comradeship set Winston's blood tingling, but it was
with a little laugh he turned over the pile of papers on the table, and
then took them up in turn.

"'Very little plowing has been done in the tracts of Minnesota
previously alluded to. Farmers find wheat cannot be grown at present
prices, and there is apparently no prospect of a rise,'" he read.
"'The Dakota wheat-growers are mostly fallowing. They can't quite
figure how they would get eighty cents for the doll