erness. He could hardly have been happy, Prescott thought, in his
untidy and comfortless house at the farm; but, after all, it had been a
home, and now he was rudely flung adrift. It was true that the man was
largely responsible for the troubles that had fallen upon him, but this
was no reason for refusing him pity, and Cyril had his strong points. He
had staunchly declined to profit by a felicitous change of fortune out of
consideration for the relatives who had once disowned and the woman who
had deserted him. Jernyngham had been a careless fool, and Prescott
suspected that he was not likely to alter much in this respect, but he
did not expect others to pay for his recklessness when the reckoning
came. Then Prescott started his team.

Two days later, he was busy in front of his homestead putting together a
new binder which had just arrived from the settlement. It was the latest
type of harvesting implement and designed to cut an unusually broad
swath. While he was engaged, the trooper he had met when accompanying
Jernyngham rode up with a corporal following. He stopped his horse and
glanced at the binder with admiration.

"She's a daisy, Jack; I guess she cost a pile," he said. "Where did you
get the money to buy a machine of that kind?"

"It wasn't easy to raise it," Prescott replied. "But I'll save something
in labor--harvest wages are high--and I've long wanted this binder. When
Trant came round from the implement store yesterday morning I thought I'd
risk the deal. Will you wait for dinner?"

"No, thanks," the corporal broke in. "We're making a patrol north; just
called to look at your guards. Several big grass fires have been reported
in the last few days."

Prescott pointed to the rows of plowed furrows which cut off his holding
from the prairie. The strip of brown clods, which was two or three yards
in width, seemed an adequate defense, and after a glance at it the
corporal nodded his satisfaction.

"Good enough," he said. "We'll take the trail."

He trotted away with his companion and it was evening when they rode
along the edge of a ravine which pierced a high tract of rolling country.
The crest of the slope they followed commanded a vast circle of grass
that was changing in the foreground from green to ocher and silvery
white. Farther back, it ran on toward the sunset, a sweep of blue and
neutral gray, flecked with dusky lines of bluffs, interspersed with
gleaming strips of water, but nowhere in the w