d Mrs. Hastings talked with the housekeeper for awhile, and an
hour had slipped away when Wyllard suggested that he should show her
the sloo beyond the bluff.

"It's the nearest approach to a lake we have until you get to the
alkali tract," he said.

Agatha went with him through the shadow of the wood, and when at length
they came out of it he found her a seat upon a fallen birch. The house
and ploughing were hidden now, and they were alone on the slope to a
slight hollow, in which half a mile of gleaming water lay. Its surface
was broken here and there, by tussocks of grass and reeds, and beyond
it the prairie ran back unbroken, a dim grey waste, to the horizon.
The sun had dipped behind the bluff, and the sky had become a vast
green transparency. There was no wind now, but a wonderful
exhilarating freshness crept into the cooling air, and the stillness
was only broken by the clamour of startled wildfowl which presently
sank again. Agatha could see them paddling in clusters about the
gleaming sloo.

"Those are ducks--wild ones?" she asked.

"Yes," said Wyllard; "duck of various kinds. Most of them the same as
your English ones."

"Do you shoot them?"

Agatha was not greatly interested, but he seemed disposed to silence,
and she felt, for no very clear reason, that it was advisable to talk
of something.

"No," he said, "not often, anyway. If Mrs. Nansen wants a couple I
crawl down to the long grass with the rifle and get them for her."

"The rifle? Doesn't the big bullet destroy them?"

"No," said Wyllard. "You have to shoot their head off or cut their
neck in two."

"You can do that--when they're right out in the sloo?" asked Agatha,
who had learned that it is much more difficult to shoot with a rifle
than a shot-gun, which spreads its charge.

Wyllard smiled. "Generally; that is, if I haven't been doing much just
before. It depends upon one's hands. We have our game laws, but as a
rule nobody worries about them, and, anyway, those birds won't nest
until they reach the tundra by the Polar Sea. Still, as I said, we
never shoot them unless Mrs. Nansen wants one or two for the pot."

"Why?"

"I don't quite know. For one thing, they're worn out; they just stop
here to rest."

His answer appealed to the girl. It did not seem strange to her that
the love of the lower creation should be strong in this man, who had no
hesitation in admitting that the game laws were no restraint to him.
For the