sual for her to mend for the hired man, too. Besides
that, there are always odds and ends of tasks, but the time when you
feel the strain most is in the winter. Then 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 now and then;
and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company,
rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or a supper somewhere,
perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled and are frozen almost
stiff beneath the robes."

"Still," interposed Agatha, "that does not last."

The man understood her. "Oh!" he said, "one makes progress--that is, if
one can stand the strain--but, as the one way of doing it is to sow for
a larger harvest and break fresh sod every year, there can be no
slackening in the meanwhile. Every dollar must be guarded and plowed
into the soil again."

He broke off, feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be
expected of him, and Agatha asked one question.

"A woman who didn't slacken could make the struggle easier for the man,
couldn't she?"

"Yes," Wyllard assured her, "in every way. Still, she would have a great
deal to bear."

Agatha's face softened. "Ah," she commented, "she would not grudge the
effort in the case of one she loved."

She looked up again with a smile. "I wonder," she added, "if you really
thought I should flinch."

"When I first heard of it, I thought it quite likely. Then when I read
your letter my doubts vanished."

He saw that he had not been judicious, for there was, for the first
time, a trace of hardness in the girl's expression.

"He showed you that?" she asked.

"One small part of it," assured Wyllard. "I want to say that when I
first saw this house, and how you seemed fitted to it, my misgivings
about Gregory's decision troubled me once more. Now,"--and he made an
impressive gesture--"they have vanished altogether, and they'll never
come back again."

He spoke as he felt. This girl, he knew, would feel the strain; but it
seemed to him that she had strength enough to bear it cheerfully. In
spite of her daintiness, she was one who, in time of stress, could be
depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat together in
the luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back in her big, low chair,
with the soft light on her delicate