dance to rhythmic riot. Perhaps,
too, amid the prairie snow, it gains something that gives it a closer
compelling grip.

Hawtrey was breathless when it ceased, and Sally's eyes flashed with the
effulgence of the Northern night when her partner found her a
resting-place upon an upturned barrel.

"No," she declared, "I won't have any cider." She turned and glanced at
him imperiously. "You're not going for any more either."

It was, no doubt, not the speech a well-trained English maiden would
have made, but, though Hawtrey smiled rather curiously, it fell
inoffensively from Sally's lips. Though it is not always set down to
their credit, the brown-faced, hard-handed men as a rule live very
abstemiously in that country, and, as it happened, Hawtrey, who
certainly showed no sign of it, had already consumed rather more cider
than anybody else. He made a little bow of submission, and Sally resumed
their conversation where it had broken off.

"We could let you have our ox-team to do that breaking with," she
volunteered. "You've had Sproatly living with you all winter. Why don't
you make him stay and work out his keep?"

Hawtrey laughed. "Sally," he said, "do you think anybody could make
Sproatly work?"

"It would be hard," the girl admitted, and then looked up at him with a
little glint in her eyes. "Still, I'd put a move on him if you sent him
along to me."

She was a capable young woman, but Hawtrey was dubious concerning her
ability to accomplish such a task. Sproatly was an Englishman of good
education, though his appearance seldom suggested it. Most of the summer
he drove about the prairie in a wagon, vending cheap oleographs and
patent medicines, and during the winter contrived to obtain free
quarters from his bachelor acquaintances. It is a hospitable country,
but there were men round Lander's who, when they went away to work in
far-off lumber camps, as they sometimes did, nailed up their doors and
windows to prevent Sproatly from getting in.

"Does he never do anything?" Sally added.

"No," Hawtrey assured her, "at least, never when he can help it. He had,
however, started something shortly before I left him. You see, the house
has needed cleaning, the last month or two, and we tossed up for who
should do it. It fell to Sproatly, who didn't seem quite pleased, but he
got as far as firing the chairs and tables out into the snow. Then he
sat down for a smoke, and he was looking at them through the window when
I