eastward was at its height, the farmers
and the railway, and Canada in general would have been at its mercy. We
wish Mr. Anderson a prosperous election (it is said, indeed, that he is
not to be opposed) and every success in his political career. He is, we
believe, Canadian born--sprung from a farm in Manitoba--so that he has
grown up with the Northwest, and shares all its hopes and ambitions."

The old man, with both elbows on the table, crouched over the
newspaper, incoherent pictures of the past coursing through his mind,
which was still dazed and stupid from the drink of the night before.

Meanwhile, the special train sped along the noble Red River and out into
the country. All over the prairie the wheat was up in a smooth green
carpet, broken here and there by the fields of timothy and clover, or
the patches of summer fallow, or the white homestead buildings. The June
sun shone down upon the teeming earth, and a mirage, born of sun and
moisture, spread along the edge of the horizon, so that Elizabeth, the
lake-lover, could only imagine in her bewilderment that Lake Winnipeg or
Lake Manitoba had come dancing south and east to meet her, so clearly
did the houses and trees, far away behind them, and on either side, seem
to be standing at the edge of blue water, in which the white clouds
overhead were mirrored, and reed-beds stretched along the shore. But as
the train receded, the mirage followed them; the dream-water lapped up
the trees and the fields, and even the line they had just passed over
seemed to be standing in water.

How foreign to an English eye was the flat, hedgeless landscape! with
its vast satin-smooth fields of bluish-green wheat; its farmhouses with
their ploughed fireguards and shelter-belts of young trees; its rare
villages, each stretching in one long straggling line of wooden houses
along the level earth; its scattered, treeless lakes, from which the
duck rose as the train passed! Was it this mere foreignness, this
likeness in difference, that made it strike so sharply, with such a
pleasant pungency on Elizabeth's senses? Or was it something else--some
perception of an opening future, not only for Canada but for herself,
mingling with the broad light, the keen air, the lovely strangeness of
the scene?

Yet she scarcely spoke to Arthur Delaine, with whom one might have
supposed this hidden feeling connected. She was indeed aware of him all
the time. She watched him secretly; watching herself, to