nthusiasm, dragged himself somewhat disconsolately
back to the immigration building with the information that his search
had been fruitless.

At the door he met Tom Morrison and another, whom he recognized as
the teller of Indian stories which had captivated the children of his
car. Morrison was a man of forty, with a dash of grey in his hair and
a kindly twinkle in his shrewd eyes; his companion was A bigger man,
of about the same age, whose weather-beaten face bore testimony to
the years already spent in pioneer life on the prairie.

"And what luck have ye had?" asked Morrison, seizing the young man by
the arm. "Little, I'll be thinkin', by the smile ye're forcin' up.
But what am I thinkin' of? Mr. McCrae is from 'way out in the Wakopa
County, and an old-timer on the prairie. He knows every corner in the
town, I'm thinkin'--"

"Aleck McCrae," said the big man. "We leave our 'misters' east of the
Great Lakes. An' Ah'm not from Wakopa, unless you give that name to
all the country from Pembina Crossing to Turtle Mountain. Ah'm doing
business all through there, an' no more partial to one place than
another."

"What is your line of business, Mr. McCrae?" asked Harris.

"Aleck, I said, an' Aleck it is."

"All right," said the other, laughing. "What is your business,
Aleck?"

"My business is assisting settlers to get located on suitable land,
an' ekeing out my own living by the process. There's a strip of
country in there, fifty miles long by twenty miles wide, that Ah know
like you knew your own farm down East. It cost me something to learn
it, an' Ah sell the information for part of what it cost. Perhaps Ah
can do something for you later, along professional lines. Just now,
as Tom here tells me, you're hunting a house for the wife. Ah know
Emerson too well to suppose you have found one."

"I haven't, for a fact," said Harris, reminded of the urgency of his
mission. "I've tramped more mud this morning than would make a good
farm in Ontario, but mud is all I got for my trouble."

"It's out of the question," said McCrae. "Besides, it's not so
necessary as you think. What with the bad time our train made, an'
the good time the stock-train made, an' the fact that they started
ahead of us, they're in the yards now. That's a piece of luck, to
start with. 'S nothing unusual for settlers to be held Up here two
an' three weeks waiting for their freight, an' all the time bills
piling up an' the cash running down in a wa