laneous and destroy the papers. Well, I've done with
that extravagance, any way, and it's to hear the truth I'm paying you
quite a big fee. If I go on just as I'm doing, how long would you give
me?"

"Two years. Then the bank will put the screw on you. The legislature may
pull you up earlier, but I can tell you more when I've squared up
to-morrow."

There was a curious look in Clavering's dark eyes, but he laughed again.

"I guess that's about enough. But I'll leave you to it now," he said.
"It's quite likely I'll have got out of the difficulty before one of those
years is over."

He went out, and a few minutes later stopped as he passed the one big
mirror in the ranch, and surveyed himself critically for a moment with a
dispassionate interest that was removed from vanity. Then he nodded as if
contented.

"With Torrance to back me it might be done," he said. "Liberty is sweet,
but I don't know that it's worth at least fifty thousand dollars!"

XII

THE SPROUTING OF THE SEED

Late in the afternoon of a bitter day Grant drove into sight of the last
of the homesteaders' dwellings that lay within his round. It rose, a
shapeless mound of white, from the wilderness that rolled away in billowy
rises, shining under the sunlight that had no warmth in it. The snow that
lay deep about its sod walls and upon the birch-branch roof hid its
squalidness, and covered the pile of refuse and empty cans, but Grant knew
what he would find within it, and when he pulled up his team his face grew
anxious. It was graver than it had been a year ago, for Larry Grant had
lost a good deal of his hopefulness since he heard those footsteps at the
depot.

The iron winter, that was but lightly felt in the homes of the
cattle-barons, had borne hardly on the men huddled in sod-hovel, and
birch-log shanty, swept by the winds of heaven at fifty degrees below.
They had no thick furs to shelter them, and many had very little food,
while on those who came from the cities the cold of the Northwest set its
mark, numbing the half-fed body and unhinging the mind. The lean farmers
from the Dakotas who had fought with adverse seasons, and the sinewy
axe-men from Michigan clearings, bore it with grim patience, but there
were here and there a few who failed to stand the strain, and, listening
to the outcasts from the East, let passion drive out fortitude and dreamed
of anarchy. They had come in with a pitiful handful of dollars to build
new homes