r years in self-effacement, hid her sorrow in her heart, and went
about her work with a resignation which he mistook for cheerfulness,
and which confirmed him in his opinion that she knew more of Beulah's
intentions than she had cared to admit. Only with Allan his relations
remained unchanged; indeed, the attachment between the two grew
deeper than ever. The young man avoided any reference to Beulah; what
he felt in his own heart he kept to himself, but the father shrewdly
guessed that he laid the whole blame on Travers.

So the summer wore on; the black bosom of the fallow field widened
day by day, and the smell of growing wheat filled the dew-laden
evening air. The picnic season, the time of athletic competitions,
baseball matches, and rural sociability, rolled by, but Harris
scarcely knew of its passing. He had long ago ceased to take any
personal interest in the frivolities of the neighbourhood; he saw in
picnics and baseball games only an unprofitable misuse of time, and
when he thought of them at all it was to congratulate himself that
Allan was not led away by any such foolishness. Finding no great
happiness in his own home, he had fallen into the way of walking over
to Riles's on Sunday afternoons, and the two spent many hours in
discussion of their proposed land-seeking expedition.

Meanwhile Mary plodded along with her housework, toiling doggedly
from five in the morning until half-past nine or ten at night.
Beulah's departure had left all the labours of the home upon her
hands; her husband had made no suggestion of securing help, and she
had not asked any. The new man made no offer to milk any of the cows;
a dozen hours in the field was day enough for him, and whatever time
was over he spent smoking cigarettes in the shelter of the barn.
Allan occasionally did help with the milking, and more frequently
with turning the separator, but it was so late when he stopped his
work in the field she was sorry for him, and tried to have the milk
cleared away before he arrived on the scene. One or two postcards she
had had from Beulah, but they brought no great information. They came
in the open mail; her husband was welcome to read them if he chose,
but as he had sought his own company exclusively since Beulah's
departure she made no attempt to force them upon him.

At last one morning came a letter, a big fat letter, left in by a
neighbour passing by, as the custom was for any settler going to town
to bring out the