d from
him. Struthers is resolute in her belief that he's in hiding somewhere
about the mountain-slopes of Banff. But I am just as resolute in my
scorn for all such suspicions. And yet, and yet,--if I wasn't so busy
I'd be tempted to hold solemn days of feasting and supplication that
Lady Alicia Elizabeth Newland might wade out beyond her depth in the
pellucid waters of Lake Louise.

_Friday the Sixteenth_

Peter surprised me yesterday by going in to Buckhorn and bringing out
a machinist to work on the windmill tower. By mid-afternoon they had
it ready for hoisting and rebolting to its new anchor-posts. So just
before supper the team and the block-and-tackle were hitched on to
that attenuated steel skeleton, Whinnie took one guide rope and I took
the other, and our little Eiffel Tower slowly lifted itself up into
the sky.

Peter, when it was all over, and the last nut tightened up, walked
about with the triumphant smile of a Master-Builder who beholds his
work completed. So I said "Hello, _Halvard Solness_!" as I stepped
over to where he stood.

And he was bright enough to catch it on the wing, for he quoted back
to me, still staring up at the tower-head: "From this day forward I
will be a free builder."

Whereupon I carelessly retorted, "Oh, there's some parts of Ibsen that
I despise."

But something in Peter's tone and his preoccupation during supper both
worried and perplexed me. So as soon as I could get away from the
shack I went out to the windmill tower again. And the small platform
at the end of the sloping little iron ladder looked so tempting and
high above the world that I started up the galvanized rungs.

When I was half-way up I stopped and looked down. It made me dizzy,
for prairie life gives you few chances of getting above the flat floor
of your flat old world. But I was determined to conquer that feeling,
and by keeping my eyes turned up toward the windmill head I was able
to reach the little platform at the top and sit there with my feet
hanging over and my right arm linked through one of the steel
standards.

I suppose, as windmills go, it wasn't so miraculously high, but it was
amazing how even that moderate altitude where I found myself could
alter one's view-point. I felt like a sailor in a crow's-nest, like a
sentinel on a watch-tower, like an eagle poised giddily above the
world. And such a wonderful and wide-flung world it was, spreading out
beneath me