nd still less fanciful, but when
they moved out into the blackness that closed about them above and
beneath along the slender strip of swaying timber she was glad of the
masterful grip. It seemed in some strange fashion portentous, for she
felt that she would once more be willing to brave unseen perils, secure
only in his guidance. What he felt she did not know, and was sensible
of an almost overwhelming curiosity, until when at last well-stiffened
timber lay beneath them, she contrived to drop a glove just where the
moonlight smote the bridge. Winston stooped, and his face was clear in
the silvery light when he rose again. Maud Barrington saw the relief
in it, and compelled by some influence stood still looking at him with
a little glow behind the smile in her eyes. A good deal was revealed
to both of them in that instant, but the man dare not admit it, and was
master of himself.

"Yes," he said, very simply, "I am glad you are across."

Maud Barrington laughed. "I scarcely fancy the risk was very great,
but tell me about the bridge," she said. "You are living beside it?"

"Yes," said Winston. "In a tent. I must have it finished before
harvest, you see!"

The girl understood why this was necessary, but deciding that she had
on other occasions ventured sufficiently far with that topic, moved on
across the bridge.

"A tent," she said, "cannot be a very comfortable place to live in, and
who cooks for you?"

Winston smiled dryly. "I am used to it, and can do all the cooking
that is necessary," he said. "It is the usual home for the beginner,
and I lived six months in one--on grindstone bread, the tinctured
glucose you are probably not acquainted with as 'drips,' and rancid
pork--when I first came out to this country and hired myself, for ten
dollars monthly, to another man. It is a diet one gets a little tired
of occasionally, but after breaking prairie twelve hours every day one
can eat almost anything, and when I afterwards turned farmer my credit
was rarely good enough to provide the pork."

The girl looked at him curiously, for she knew how some of the smaller
settlers lived, and once more felt divided between wonder and sympathy.
She could picture the grim self-denial, for she had seen the stubborn
patience in this man's face, as well as a stamp that was not born by
any other man at Silverdale. Some of the crofter settlers, who
periodically came near starvation in their sod hovels, and the men fro