him. There was a certain daintiness about
the girl, and her frank appreciation of the good things set before her
only amused him. She was certainly much more companionable than Agatha
had been since she came out to Canada, and her cheerful laughter had a
pleasant ring.

When at last the meal was over Sally bade Gregory draw her chair up to
the stove.

"Now," she said, as she pointed to another chair across the room, "you
can sit yonder and smoke. I know you want to."

Hawtrey remembered that Agatha did not like tobacco smoke, and always
had been inclined to exact a certain conventional deference which he had
grown to regard as rather out of place upon the prairie.

"My chair's a very long way off," he objected.

Sally showed no sign of conceding the point as he had expected, and he
took out his pipe. He wanted to think, for once more instincts deep down
in him stirred in faint protest against what he almost meant to do.
There were also several points that required practical consideration,
and among them were his financial difficulties, though these did not
trouble him so much as they had done a few months earlier. For a minute
or two neither of them said anything, and then Sally spoke again.

"You're worrying about something, Gregory," she said.

Hawtrey admitted it. "Yes," he replied, "I am. My place is a poor one,
and when Wyllard comes home I shall have to go back to it again. Things
would be so much easier for me just now if I had the Range."

The girl looked at him steadily with reproach in her eyes.

"Oh," she said, "your place is quite big enough if you'd only take hold
and run it as it ought to be run. You could surely do it, Gregory, if
you tried."

The man's resistance grew feebler, as it usually did when his prudence
was at variance with his desires. Sally's words were in this case wholly
guileless, as he recognized, and they stirred him. He made no comment,
however, and she spoke again.

"Isn't it worth while, though there are things you would have to give
up?" she asked. "You couldn't go away and waste your money in Winnipeg
every now and then."

Hawtrey laughed. "No," he admitted; "I suppose if I meant to make
anything of the place that couldn't be done. Still, you see, it's
horribly lonely sitting by oneself beside the stove in the long winter
nights. I wouldn't want to go to Winnipeg if I had only somebody to keep
me company."

He turned towards her suddenly with decision in his face, an