then
being opened up. To-day, men are only too happy to make homes in this
wonderful country, which has very aptly been termed the future granary
of the world.

Money is a loadstone that few men can resist, and when I heard that
$80 a month was being paid out there for operators, I resigned my
position in Montreal, and with $20 and a pass in my pocket started for
Manitoba.

On reaching Winnipeg, I was at once sent out to Elkhorn, a bit of a
station 150 miles farther west. When I took charge, in November, four
inches of snow already hid the earth, which did not see the sun again
till March.

Two passenger trains a day, and an occasional construction train,
formed the only break in the monotonous life which I led. It was a
dreadfully solitary existence. I was alone in the station, and as
December began to wane, and the dread blizzards commenced their wild
revelry, heaping the snow into such huge mounds on the tracks that the
trains were delayed for days, I got as homesick and nervous as a girl
of fourteen instead of a young man of twenty.

Christmas eve ushered in bitter weather. All day it had been snowing
and storming. At 1 a.m. the glass showed twenty-two below zero. The
storm had risen and risen until it was blowing a perfect blizzard from
the west. The riotous wind, as it swept along the vast prairie,
unobstructed for scores of miles by houses or trees, caught up the
newly-fallen snow in its mad embrace, and drove it with amazing force
against the little telegraph office which sheltered me from its
deathly embrace, as though enraged against this earnest of approaching
civilization. So fierce, at times, was the onslaught that the tense
telegraph wires could be heard humming even above the demoniacal glee
of the storm.

I knew it was unmanly, but I could not help it: the tears would start
to my eyes. It was Christmas, and I was spending it in such a queer
manner! My thoughts had been with mother and dear old London, where I
had left her two years before to try my fortune in Montreal. I knew
she was thinking of her eldest born.

"Christians, awake, salute the happy morn."

All I had to do was to close my eyes, and I could hear my companions
singing that grand old hymn in the greatest city in the world.

It was a relief to hear the telegraph instrument, which had been quiet
for hours, call my office. Both passenger trains were nearly ten hours
late, and were slowly struggling towards my station. It was ju