ealth was merely an incident--a pleasant but by no means
essential by-product of their lives. They lived simply, but well;
they worked honestly, but did not slave; and in all their living and
working they shed a kindliness and courtesy that communicated itself
to all with whom they came in contact. The cowboys, Beulah soon
discovered, were as unlike the cowboys of fiction and of her
imagination as a Manitoba steer is unlike his Alberta brother; they
did not carry revolvers, nor swagger in high boots, nor rip the air
with their profanity; and their table manners reminded her of George
and Harry Grant, and the Grants were outstanding examples of right
living in the Plainville district. And Mrs. Arthurs, gentle and kind
in all her doings, and yet firm and strong and calm, she was--such a
woman, Beulah told herself, as her own mother might have been, had
her soul not been crushed under a load of unceasing labour. But, most
of all, it was to Fred Arthurs that the heart of the young girl
turned. Whether he sat over his desk at his letters, or dispensed
hospitality at his table (for all who passed up or down the valley,
as a matter of course, stopped for a meal at the Arthurses), or
cantered across the foothills, or shouted behind his lagging herds
(such shouting as it was, fit to split the canyons!}, or played ball
with the boys in the evening, or discussed theology with the
travelling missionary, or philosophy with his book-worm neighbour
from across the river, or read poetry with his wife on the Sunday
afternoons, or sang with his great voice in the mellow, yellow
eventide, or--most of all--when he looked at Beulah with his fine
eyes, and she caught the mirrored reflection of the hunger in his
soul, she felt that here was a man who had lived his life to the
uttermost and would go on living it through all eternity. She only
half guessed what his thoughts toward her were--she did not know that
Fred and Lilian Arthurs had at last agreed that they could do better
than leave their wealth to charity, and that a new will was soon to
be drawn--but to her he seemed pure gold, and a gentleman to his last
gesture. And she vowed one night that if ever she met a single man
like Fred Arthurs she would marry him although all the canons and
conventions of Christendom stood between them.

And then, quite unexpected, it came upon her, and thrilled her frame
from toe to temple. Jim Travers! It had been in the background of her
mind for month