sed him. She was certainly much
more amusing than Agatha had been since she came out to Canada, and her
cheerful laughter had a pleasant ring. When at length the meal was
over she bade him draw her chair up to the stove.

"Now," she said, and pointed to another chair across the room, "you can
sit yonder and smoke. I know you want to."

Hawtrey remembered that Agatha did not like tobacco smoke, and had
always been inclined to exact a certain conventional deference which he
had grown to regard as rather out of place upon the prairie.

"That's a very long way off," he objected.

Sally showed no sign of conceding the point as he had expected, and he
took out his pipe. He wanted to think, for once more instincts deep
down in him stirred in faint protest against what he almost meant to
do. There were also several points that required practical
consideration, and among them were his financial difficulties, though
these did not trouble him so much as they had done a few months
earlier. For a minute or two neither of them said anything, and then
Sally spoke again.

"You're worrying about something, Gregory?" she said.

Hawtrey admitted it. "Yes," he said, "I am. My place is a poor one,
and when Wyllard comes home I shall have to go back to it again.
Things would be so much easier for me just now if I had the Range."

The girl looked at him steadily with reproach in her eyes.

"Oh," she said, "your place is quite big enough if you'd only take hold
and run it as it ought to be run. You could surely do it, Gregory, if
you tried."

The man's resistance grew feebler, as it usually did when his prudence
was at variance with his desires. Sally's words were in this case
wholly guileless, as he recognised, and they stirred him. He said
nothing, however, and she spoke again.

"Isn't it worth while, though there are things you would have to give
up?" she said. "You couldn't go away and waste your dollars in
Winnipeg every now and then."

Hawtrey laughed. "No," he admitted; "I suppose if I meant to make
anything of the place that couldn't be done. Still, you see, it's
horribly lonely sitting by oneself beside the stove in the long winter
nights. I wouldn't want to go to Winnipeg if I had only somebody to
keep me company."

He turned towards her suddenly with decision in his face, and Sally
lowered her eyes.

"Don't you think you could get anybody if you tried?" she asked.

"The trouble," said Hawtrey gravely