ce would redeem her promise.
Counted days as a rule pass slowly, but that fortnight fled, for there was
little opportunity to think of anything but the work in hand in the hurry
of the spring campaign, and one night Raymond Lyle, of Lone Hollow, and
another of the Carrington colonists spent an hour with us. Since Aline
honored Fairmead with her presence we had frequent visits from the younger
among them. Aline was generally piquant, and these visitors, who, even if
a few were rather feather-brained, were for the most part honest young
Englishmen, seemed to find much pleasure in her company. Lyle, however,
was a somewhat silent and thoughtful man, for whom I had a great liking,
and he had come to discuss business.

"Listen to me, Lorimer, while I talk at length for once," he said. "A few
of the older among us have been considering things lately, and it doesn't
please us to recognize that while nearly every outsider can make money, or
at least earn a living on the prairie, farming costs most of us an
uncertain sum yearly. We are by no means all millionaires, and our idea is
not to make this colony a pleasure ground for the remittance-man. We have
the brains, the muscle, and some command of money; we were born of
landowning stock; and we don't like to be beaten easily by the raw
mechanic, the laborer, or even the dismissed clerk. Still, while these
farm at a profit we farm at a loss."

"I belong to the latter class," I said; "and here are a few reasons. We
are plowing and grain-hauling while you shoot prairie-chicken or follow
the coyote hounds. We work late and early, eat supper in dusty garments,
and then go on again; while you take your hand at nap after a formal
dinner, and--excuse me--you look on farming as an amusement, while the
land demands the best that any man can give it--brain and body. Besides,
you are lacking in what one might call commercial enterprise."

"I agree with you," said Lyle, "especially the latter. Anyway, we have had
almost sufficient of farming as a luxury, and mean to make it pay. Colonel
Carrington's ideal of an exclusive semi-feudal Utopia is very pretty, but
I fear it will have to go. Now I'm coming to the point. You and Jasper
have shown us the way to make something out of buying young Western stock;
but we're going one better. Breeding beef is only one item. What about the
dairy? We couldn't well drink up all the milk, even if we liked it; and we
have definitely decided on a Carrington cr