ntive for hard work about which she
was ignorant, and he had certainly done much, but the long, iron winter,
when there was nothing that could be done, had proved too severe a test
for him. It was very dreary sitting alone evening after evening beside
the stove, and the company of the somnolent Sproatly was not cheerful.
Now and then his pleasure-loving nature had revolted from the barrenness
of his lot when, stiff and cold, he drove home from an odd visit to a
neighbor, and arriving in the dark found the stove had burned out and
water had frozen hard inside the house. These were things his neighbors
patiently endured, but Hawtrey had fled for life and brightness to
Winnipeg.

Sally glanced up at him with a little nod. "You take hold with a good
grip. Everybody allows that," she observed. "The trouble is you let
things go afterwards. You don't stay with it."

"Yes," assented Hawtrey. "I believe you have hit it, Sally. That's very
much what's the matter with me."

"Then," said the girl with quiet insistence, "won't you try?"

A faint flush crept into Hawtrey's face. Sally was less than
half-taught, and unacquainted with anything beyond the simple, strenuous
life of the prairie. Her greatest accomplishments consisted of some
skill in bakery and the handling of half-broken teams; but she had once
or twice given him what he recognized as excellent advice. There was
something incongruous in the situation, but, as usual, he preferred to
regard it whimsically.

"I suppose I'll have to, if you insist. If ever I'm the grasping owner
of the biggest farm in this district I'll blame you," he answered.

Sally said nothing further on that subject, and some time later the
sleigh went skimming down among the birches in a shallow ravine. Hawtrey
pulled the horses up when they reached the bottom of the ravine, and
glanced up at a shapeless cluster of buildings that showed black amid
the trees.

"Lorton won't be back until to-morrow, but I promised to pitch the bags
into his granary," he said. "If I hump them up the trail here it will
save us driving round through the bluff."

He got down, and though the bags were heavy, with Sally's assistance he
managed to hoist the first of them on to his shoulders. Then he
staggered with it up the steep foot-trail that climbed the slope. He was
more or less accustomed to carrying bags of grain between store and
wagon, but his mittened hands were numbed, and his joints were stiff
with cold. S