me to the surface, a current
of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had
first come from England the change in her had been a shock to him, and
it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since then, however,
her coldness and half-perceived disdain had angered him, and the
interview which was just past had left him in an unpleasant mood. Though
it was, perhaps, the last effect he would have expected, it had stirred
him to desire a fulfillment of her pledge. It was consoling to feel that
he could exact the keeping of her promise. His face grew coarser as he
assured himself of his claim, but he had never realized the shiftiness
and instability of his own character. It was his misfortune that the
impulses which swayed him one day had generally changed the next.

This became apparent when, having occasion to drive in to the elevators
on the railroad a week later, he called at a store to make one or two
purchases. The man who kept the store laid a package on the counter.

"I wonder if you'd take this along to Miss Creighton as a favor," he
said. "She wrote for the things, and Elliot was to take them out, but I
guess he forgot. Anyway, he didn't call."

Hawtrey told the clerk to put the package in his wagon. He had scarcely
seen Sally since his recovery, and he suddenly remembered that, after
all, he owed her a good deal, and that she was very pretty. Besides, one
could talk to Sally without feeling the restraint that Agatha's manner
usually laid on him.

The storekeeper laid an open box upon the counter.

"I guess you're going to be married by and by," he said. Hawtrey was
thinking of Sally then, and the question irritated him.

"I don't know that it concerns you, but in a general way it's probable,"
he replied.

"Well," said the storekeeper good-humoredly, "a pair of these mittens
would make quite a nice present for a lady. Smartest thing of the kind
I've ever seen here; choicest Alaska fur."

Hawtrey bought a pair, and the storekeeper took a fur cap out of another
box.

"Now," he said, "this is just the thing she'd like to go with the
mittens. There's style about that cap; feel the gloss of it."

Hawtrey bought the cap, and smiled as he swung himself up into his
wagon. Gloves are not much use in the prairie frost, and mittens, which
are not divided into fingerstalls, will within limits fit almost
anybody. This, he felt, was fortunate, for he was not quite sure that he
meant