toes of his speckless boots. In no circumstances did the
Colonel forget that he once commanded a famous regiment, and now ruled
drastically over Carrington, while I must have appeared a sufficiently
homely object, in battered slouch hat and torn blue overalls, with the
mire clinging to my leggings.

"You are staking heavily on the weather this year; I wonder what for," he
said, glancing down the long furrows, and I felt there was a warning in
it, for this man seldom wasted words. "The last time I passed it struck me
that you had better, as they say here, go slow and not risk a surety on
the chance of what you can never attain. It takes capital to farm on a
large scale, you know. By the way, I came to tell you that we will not
want the disc-harrows, so you can keep them until your work is finished,
and as Miss Carrington--Miss Grace Carrington--is going to England shortly
we shall be occupied with preparation for some time. This will save you
from wasting precious hours riding over just now in the busy season. Well,
I must join the others. Good-day to you."

He wheeled his horse with a parting salutation, a slender figure waved a
hand to me from the crest of the rise before it sank below the skyline,
and that was the last I saw of Grace Carrington for many a day, while
breathing hard I watched the horseman grow smaller across the prairie. Her
father sometimes delighted to speak in metaphor, and I could not fail to
recognize that it was a plain hint he had, perhaps in grim kindness, given
me. For a moment I wondered whether I should have made him listen in turn,
and I was glad I had not, for his words stung me like a whip, and it would
not have helped matters if I had spoken my mind to him. Then, shaking
myself together, I called to the oxen, reflecting that many a formerly
poor man had married the daughter of even a greater man than Colonel
Carrington, while if it were a matter of land and money that divided us,
every extra furrow brought me so much nearer to her. Still, I was graver
than usual, even until the plowing was done, and Harry, not knowing the
reason, commented satirically upon it.

The thaw came early that year, and the latter snow had been light, while
steady dry weather followed it, and there were times when I felt that I
should have given several years of my life for rain. It came, and, though
there was not much of it, as if by magic tender grain stood a handbreadth
above the black loam, while I watched