in you
have to put up at a hotel. There's no more camping in a birch bluff
under your waggon. Besides, you have to wear store clothes."

Hastings glanced at Winifred, and Agatha fancied she understood what
was in his mind.

"Some folks would sooner sleep in a hotel," he said, with a twinkle in
his eyes.

"Then," said Sproatly, decisively, "they don't know very much. They're
the kind of men who'd spend an hour every morning putting their clothes
on, and they haven't found out that there's no comfort in any garment
until you've had to sew two or three flour bag patches on to it. Then
think of the splendid freeness of the other thing. You make your
supper when you want, and just how you like it, when you put up in a
bluff, and no tea tastes as good as the kind you drink with the wood
smoke in it out of a blackened can. You can hear the little birch
leaves and the grasses whispering about you when you lie down at night,
and you drive on in the glorious freshness--just when it pleases
you--when morning comes. Now the Company have the whole route and
programme plotted out for me. They write me letters demanding most
indelicately why I haven't done this and that."

Winifred looked at him sharply. "Civilisation," she said, "implies
responsibility. You can't live just how you like without it being
detrimental to the community."

"Oh yes," said Sproatly with a rueful gesture, "it implies no end of
giving up. You have to fall into line, and that's why I kept outside
it just as long as I could. I don't like standing in a rank, and," he
glanced down at his clothing, "I've an inborn objection to wearing
uniform."

Agatha laughed as she caught Hastings's eye. She fancied that Sproatly
would be sorry for his candour afterwards, but she understood what he
was feeling to some extent. It was a revolt against cramping customs
and conventionalities, and she partly sympathised with it, though she
knew that such revolts are dangerous. Even in the West, those who
cannot lead must march in column with the rank and file or bear the
consequences of their futile mutiny. It is a hard truth that no man
can live as he pleases.

"Restraint," said Winifred, "is a wholesome thing, but it's one most of
the men I have met are singularly deficient in. That's why they can't
be left alone but must be driven, as they are, in companies. It's
their own fault if they now and then find it a little humiliating."

There was a faint gle