"

Winston sat down and opened the first envelope under the big lamp. It
was from a land agent and mortgage broker, and his face grew a trifle
grimmer as he read, "In the present condition of the money market your
request that we should carry you over is unreasonable, and we regret
that unless you can extinguish at least half the loan we will be
compelled to foreclose upon your holding."

There was a little more of it, but that was sufficient for Winston, who
knew it meant disaster, and it was with the feeling of one clinging
desperately to the last shred of hope he tore open the second envelope.
The letter it held was from a friend he had made in a Western city, and
once entertained for a month at his ranch, but the man had evidently
sufficient difficulties of his own to contend with.

"Very sorry, but it can't be done," he wrote. "I'm loaded up with
wheat nobody will buy, and couldn't raise five hundred dollars to lend
any one just now."

Winston sighed a little, but when he rose and slowly straightened
himself nobody would have suspected he was looking ruin in the face.
He had fought a slow losing battle for six weary years, holding on
doggedly though defeat appeared inevitable, and now when it had come he
bore it impassively, for the struggle which, though he was scarcely
twenty-six, had crushed all mirth and brightness out of his life, had
given him endurance in place of them. Just then a man came bustling
towards him, with the girl, who bore a tray, close behind.

"What are you doing with that coat on?" he said. "Get it off and sit
down right there. The boys are about through with the mail and
supper's ready."

Winston glanced at the steaming dishes hungrily, for he had passed most
of the day in the bitter frost, eating very little, and there was still
a drive of twenty miles before him.

"It is time I was taking the trail," he said.

He was sensible of a pain in his left side, which, as other men have
discovered, not infrequently follows enforced abstinence from food, but
he remembered what he wanted the half-dollar in his pocket for. The
hotel-keeper had possibly some notion of the state of affairs, for he
laughed a little.

"You've got to sit down," he said. "Now, after the way you fixed me up
when I stopped at your ranch, you don't figure I'd let you go before
you had some supper with me?"

Winston may have been unduly sensitive, but he shook his head. "You're
very good, but it's a long ri