Hawtrey's Deputy

day or two in huge Western hotels, but he had never seen anything quite like that room. The sheer physical comfort of its arrangements appealed to him, but

h and on the prairie, he had been endued with or

erful Indian ivory and silver work. Then a row of low, stone-ribbed windows pierced the front of the room, and looking out he saw the trim garden lying in the warm evening light. Immediately beneath the windows ran a broad gravelled terrace, which was apparently raked smooth every day,

ry house, and seen in Major Radcliffe and his wife nothing more than a somewhat prosy old soldier and a withered lady, old-fashioned in her dress and views, this Westerner had what was, perhaps, a clearer vision. He could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some minute point of honour, and it seemed to him that his lady might have stepped down from some old picture with all the graces

ndering thoughts as his

d in all you see?"

med to him the only fitting way to address her. "In fact, I'd like to spend some h

e suggested that she

ave been i

tertain me. Still, their places were different; they hadn't the-charm-of yours. It's something which I think could only exi

and fancied that she part

arily different from

after dusk at night. Bodily strain of aching muscles, and mental stress in adverse seasons. We scarcely think of co

ple are driven rather hard

ting another quarter-section from the prairie, taking-our own-by labour, breaking the wilderness. You"-and he ad

des, I have seen my husband sitting, haggard and worn with fever, in his saddle holding back a clamorous crowd that surged about him half-mad with religious fury.

e notion that we're the only ones who really work, or, at least, do anything worth while, is rather a f

, and then the door opened, and the girl he had met at the stepping stones came in. She was dressed differently, in trailing garments which, it seemed to

" she said. "Agatha, this is Mr. Wyllard, who I u

blankly astonished, and for a moment

as all s

was all

speak to Mrs. Radcliffe, but it was a slight relief t

eral conversation, though he fancied once or twice that Miss Ismay was unobtrusively studying him. It was

ou needn't join us until you're ready," she said. "Th

n fact, to marry Hawtrey. This was rather curious, since he had hitherto regarded his comrade as a typical, well-educated Englishman; but it now seemed to him that there was a certain streak of coarseness in

regory is recovering

the case, and Agatha said quietl

r her but have come in person, if he had been compelled to pledge his last possessions, or c

ready to commence the season's campaign with the first of the spring. Our summer is short, you see, and with

ending it, he made it evident that he felt his comra

needn't labour the excuse. But do

a little easier. My holding's larger than Gregory's,

t you were a grea

mine, and I like to think it means the same thing. In fa

s a thing he didn't mentio

y: he was anxious to say all he h

motives hauling it, and when the cars went banging by above us we could hardly hold on to the bridge. Still, the construction foreman was a hustler, and we had to get the spikes in. I was swinging the hammer when I felt the plank beneath me slip. The train, it seems, had jarred the bolt we had our lashings round loose. For a mo

g the stress of it again, and there was a

y was. Anybody else would have let me go; but he held on. Then I got

d, "that is just what he must have done. He was

re were men on the prairie who called his comrade slackly c

asn't a carpen

sation of handicrafts out there then. The farmer whose crop was ruined took up the railroad shovel

nderfully quick. He could learn any game by just wat

old fast the tighter under each crushing blow, when his teams die, or the grain shrivels under the harvest frost, or ragged ice hurtling before a roaring blast does the reaping. It was, however, evident that this girl had an unquestioning faith in Gregory Hawtrey, and once more Wyllard felt compassionate towards her. He wondered i

re so different from what you are accustomed to that he has waited as long as he has done. He wante

comprehension, for she glanced round

eems to you that I fit in with my surroundin

ely, "I think you fit in

r; though, after all, one could hardly compare the Grange with Garside Scar. Still, that was some

of it was partly worked off in music lessons, and the stuff was almost the cheapest I could get. I sang at con

quite go

ul place? I have heard of other Englishwomen going ou

finer thing. But I'll try to answer the other question. The prairie isn't dreadful; it's a land of sunshine and clear skies. Heat and cold-and we have them both-don't worry one there. There's optimism in the crystal air. It's not beautiful like these valleys, but it has its beauty. It's vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you pass the breaking it's primevally

pected him of a capacity for such flights

strain. There's no hired assistance; she must clean the house, and w

tly not much impres

wash the plate

ly won't," he said. "Still, in a gene

ne Gregory hating it. As a matt

en you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle n

Agatha, "that

as the one way of doing it is to sow for a larger harvest and break fresh sod every year, there can b

all that could reasonably be expected

ken could make the strug

in every way. Still, she woul

said, "she would not grudge the ef

ile. "I wonder," she added, "if yo

ht it quite likely. Then when I re

there was, for the first time, a trace

you that?

med fitted to it, my misgivings about Gregory's decision troubled me once more. Now"-and he made

ness, she was one who, in time of stress, could be depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat together in the little, luxuriously furnished room

graph ever so long, and never thoug

ight have been a relief to Major Radcliffe if he had met you sooner, the fac

tisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones a few days earlier. That feeling had also suddenly disappeared when he had lea

at the Grange. Her husband is a Canadian, a man of education, who has quite a large homestead not f

s to stay a few days at the Grange, and then

oing in a fortn

Then," she said, "I mus

ent back together to