ll, you see, I know
his drawbacks, and I know mine. There were two or three pieces of work,
done before I left, that I now see might have been better planned."

Helen went to the door, for she heard a soft drumming of hoofs on beaten
snow.

"Sadie's coming," she said. "Perhaps she has some news."

Festing followed her and Sadie stopped the horses, but did not get down.

"I've a telegram from Bob; he'll be home to-morrow," she said. "He wants
you both to meet him at the station."

"Did he say anything about the job being finished?" Festing asked as he
went down the steps.

"No," said Sadie. "He seemed particularly anxious to see you at the
depot; my hands are too numb or I'd show you the telegram. I haven't
time to come in and don't want the team to stand in the cold."

Then she waved her hand to Helen and drove away.

About six o'clock next evening Helen and Festing walked up and down
beside the track at the railroad settlement. There was no platform, but
the agent's office stood near the rails, with a baggage shed, and a big
tank for filtering saline water near the locomotive pipe. Behind these,
three tall grain-elevators, which had not been finished when Festing saw
them last, rose against the sky, dwarfing the skeleton frame of a new
hotel. The ugly wooden houses had extended some distance across the
snow, and Festing knew the significance of this. It was not dark yet,
but the headlamp of a locomotive in the side-track flung a glittering
beam a quarter of a mile down the line. In the west, a belt of saffron
light, cut by the black smear of a bluff, glimmered on the horizon.
Festing indicated the settlement.

"It has grown fast, but if things go as some of us expect, the change
will soon be magical. In a year or two you'll see a post-office like a
palace, and probably an opera-house, besides street cars running north
and south from the track."

"I think I should like that," Helen remarked. "When it comes, you will
have an office and a telephone, and be satisfied to superintend."

Festing laughed. "It's possible, but there's much to be done first, and
I'm not getting on very fast just now. Still I don't feel knocked out
and I've walked half a mile."

Glancing at the elevator towers and blocks of square-fronted houses
that rose abruptly from the snow, Helen mused. The settlement jarred
her fastidious taste, but she had seen Western towns that had, in a few
years, grown out of their raw ugliness and blossom