on. Gregory has patched up one trace with a
bit of string, and odd bolts are rather addicted to coming out of his
wagon. Sometimes it makes trouble. I've known the team to leave him
sitting on the prairie, thinking of endearing names for them, while they
came home with the pole."

"Does he generally let things fall into that state?"

Sproatly was evidently on his guard.

"Well," he rejoined, "it's certainly that kind of wagon."

He flicked the team again, and the jolting rendered it difficult for
Winifred to ask any more questions. The prairie sod was soft with the
thaw, and big lumps of it stuck to the wheels, which every now and then
plunged into ruts the other vehicles had made.

In the meanwhile, Agatha and Hawtrey had found it almost impossible to
sustain a conversation. It was a relief to the girl to be able to sit
silent and observant beside the man whom she had promised to marry. The
string-patched trace still held, and the wagon pole was a new one. The
white grass was tussocky and long, and the trail here and there had been
churned into quagmire. Hawtrey had packed the thick driving-robe high
about Agatha and had slipped one arm about her waist beneath it; but she
was conscious that she rather suffered this than derived any
satisfaction from it. She strove to assure herself that she was jaded
with the journey, which was, in fact, the case, and that the lowering
sky, and the cheerless waste they were crossing, had occasioned the
dejection that she felt. There was not a tree upon the vast sweep of
bleached grass which ran all around her to the horizon. It was
inexpressibly lonely, a lifeless desolation, with only the plowed-up
trail to show that man had ever traversed it. The raw wind which came
across the prairie set her shivering.

She was forced, however, to admit that her weariness and the dreary
surroundings did not quite explain everything. Gregory's first embrace
had brought her no happiness, and now the close pressure of his arm left
her quite unmoved. This was disconcerting; but while she would admit no
definite reason for it, there was creeping upon her a vague consciousness
that the man beside her was not the one of whom she had so often thought
in England. He seemed different--almost, in fact, a stranger--though she
could not exactly tell where the change in him began. His laughter jarred
upon her. Some of the things he said appeared almost inane, and others
were tinged with a self-confidence th