ry hard to turn it into wheat
fields--to break it in."

It was merely a hint of what she felt, and it was rather a pity that
Hawtrey, who lacked imagination, usually contented himself with the
most obvious meaning of the spoken word. Things might have gone
differently had he responded with comprehending sympathy.

"Oh," he said, with a laugh that changed her mood, "you'll learn, and I
don't suppose it will matter a great deal if you don't do it quickly.
Somehow or other one worries through."

She felt that this was insufficient, though she remembered that his
haphazard carelessness had once appealed to her. Now, however, she
realised that to undertake a thing light-heartedly was a very different
matter from carrying it out successfully. Then it once more occurred
to her that she was becoming absurdly hypercritical, and she strove to
talk of other things.

She did not find it easy, nor, though he made the effort, did Hawtrey.
There was a restraint that he chafed at upon him, for he had when he
first saw her been struck by the change in the girl. She was graver
than he remembered her, and, it seemed, very much more reserved. He
had tried and failed, as he thought of it, to strike a spark out of
her. She did not respond, and he became uneasily conscious that he
could not talk to her as he could, for instance, to Sally Creighton.
There was something wanting in him or her, but he could not at the
moment tell what it was. Still, he said, things would be different
next day, for the girl was evidently very weary.

In the meanwhile, the creeping dusk settled down upon the wilderness.
The horizon narrowed in, and the stretch of grass before them grew dim.
The trail they now drove into seemed to grow rapidly rougher, and it
was quite dark when they came to the brink of a declivity still at
least a league from the Hastings's homestead. It was one of the steep
ravines that seam the prairie every here and there, with a birch bluff
on the sides of it, and a little creek flowing through the hollow.

Hawtrey swung the whip when they reached the top, and the team plunged
furiously down the slope. He straightened himself in his seat with
both hands on the reins, and Agatha held her breath when she felt the
light vehicle tilt as the wheels on one side sank deep in a rut. Then
something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble and
plunge. The other beast flung its head up, Hawtrey shouted something,
and ther