ng at a Farmers' Conference. Awful shindy yesterday!--between the
farmers and the millers. Row about the elevators. The farmers want the
Dominion to own 'em--vow they're cheated and bullied, and all the rest
of it. Row about the railway, too. Shortage of cars; you know the old
story. A regular wasp's nest, the whole thing! Well, the
Governor-General came this morning, and everything's blown over! Can't
remember what he said, but we're all sure somebody's going to do
something. Hope you know how he does it!--I don't."

Anderson laughed as he sat down beside Elizabeth, and the train began to
move.

"We seem to send you the right men!" she said, smiling--with a little
English conceit that became her.

The train left the station. As it did so, an old man in the first
emigrant car, who, during the wait at Regina, had appeared to be asleep
in a corner, with a battered slouch hat drawn down over his eyes and
face, stealthily moved to the window, and looked back upon the now
empty platform.

Some hours later Anderson was still sitting beside Elizabeth. They were
in Southern Alberta. The June day had darkened. And for the first time
Elizabeth felt the chill and loneliness of the prairies, where as yet
she had only felt their exhilaration. A fierce wind was sweeping over
the boundless land, with showers in its train. The signs of habitation
became scantier, the farms fewer. Bunches of horses and herds of cattle
widely scattered over the endless grassy plains--the brown lines of the
ploughed fire-guards running beside the railway--the bents of winter
grass, white in the storm-light, bleaching the rolling surface of the
ground, till the darkness of some cloud-shadow absorbed them; these
things breathed--of a sudden--wildness and desolation. It seemed as
though man could no longer cope with the mere vastness of the earth--an
earth without rivers or trees, too visibly naked and measureless.

"At last I am afraid of it!" said Elizabeth, shivering in her fur coat,
with a little motion of her hand toward the plain. "And what must it be
in winter!"

Anderson laughed.

"The winter is much milder here than in Manitoba! Radiant sunshine day
after day--and the warm chinook-wind. And it is precisely here that the
railway lands are selling at a higher price for the moment than anywhere
else, and that settlers are rushing in. Look there!"

Elizabeth peered through the gloom, and saw the gleam of water. The
train ran along beside it fo