sure-gauge.

"She's doing her best," he said, "and she'll need to. I guess we'll find
drifts in the hollows, and the snow will come down again presently. It's
only coming up now."

I ought to have known better, but, although a British custom is more
honored in the breach than the observance in Western Canada, I had met men
who could pocket their pride, and, after fumbling in my wallet, I held out
a slip of paper, saying, "She's doing splendidly. I wish you would buy
Mrs. Robertson something with this."

"No, sir!" was the prompt answer. "You can keep your bill. If that fraud
gets in ahead of you you'll probably want it. I get good pay, and I earn
it, and you're not big enough to give presents to me."

A new arrival might have been astonished. I only felt that I had deserved
the rebuke, and was thankful that Aline had slipped the flask and some of
Martin Lorimer's cigars into my pocket, while Robertson smiled broadly as
in defiance of his orders he emptied the silver cup. It was a gift from my
cousin Alice.

"I apologize. Should have remembered it," I said bluntly.

Then we were racing through stiller air again, with the driving cloud
behind; for each of the curious rushes of wind that precedes a prairie
storm keeps to a definite path of its own. Several times, with a roar of
wheels flung back to us, we swept through a sleeping town, where thin
frame houses went rocking past until the tall elevators shut them in, and
again there was only a dim stretch of prairie that rolled up faster and
faster under the front trailing-wheels.

At last, when the lights of Brandon glimmered ahead, Heysham fell over the
fireman as the locomotive jumped to the checking of the brake, and a
colored flicker blinked beside the track. The glare of another head-lamp
beat upon us as we rolled through the station, while amid the clash of
shocking wheat-cars that swept past I caught the warning:

"Look out for the snow-block east of Willow Lake! Freight-train on the
single track; wires not working well!"

"I guess we'll take our chances," said Robertson; and Number Forty panted
louder, hurling red sparks aloft as he rushed her at an up-grade. Still,
his brows contracted when, some time later, he beckoned me, and I saw a
wide lake draw near with silky drifts racing across its black ice. They
also flowed across the track ahead, while beyond it the loom of what might
be a flag station was faintly visible against a driving bank of cloud.

"Sn