uietly dropped the
note--it did not seem worth while to fling it--into the stove.

Agatha could forgive Gregory for choosing Sally. Though she was very human
in most respects, that scarcely troubled her, but she could not forgive
him for persisting in his claim to her while he was philandering--and this
seemed the most fitting term--with her rival. Had he only been honest, she
would not have let Wyllard go away without some assurance of her regard
which would have cheered the brave seafarer on his perilous journey. And
it was clear to her that Wyllard might never come back again! Her face
grew hard when she thought of it, and she had thought of it frequently.
For that double-dealing she felt she almost hated Gregory.

A month passed drearily, with Arctic frost outside on the prairie, and
little to do inside the homestead except to cook and gorge the stove,
and endeavor to keep warmth in one's body. Water froze solid inside the
house, stinging draughts crept in through the double windows, and there
were evenings when Mrs. Hastings and Agatha, shivering close beside the
stove, waited anxiously for the first sign of Hastings and the hired
man, who were bringing back a sled loaded with birch logs from a
neighboring bluff. The bluff was only a few miles away, but men sent out
to cut fuel in the awful cold snaps in that country have now and then
sunk down in the snow with the life frozen out of them. There were other
days when the wooden building seemed to rock beneath the buffeting of
the icy hurricane, and it was a perilous matter to cross the narrow open
space between it and the stables through the haze of swirling snow.

The weather moderated a little by and by, and one afternoon Mrs.
Hastings drove off to Lander's with the one hired man that they kept
through the winter. Mr. Hastings had set out earlier for the bluff, and
as the Scandinavian maid had been married and had gone away, Agatha was
left in the house with the little girls.

It was bitterly cold, even inside the dwelling, but Agatha was busy
baking, and she failed to notice that the temperature had become almost
Arctic, until she stood beside a window as evening was closing in. A
low, dingy sky hung over the narrowing sweep of prairie which stretched
back, gleaming lividly, into the creeping dusk, but a few minutes later
a haze of snow whirled across it and cut off the dreary scene.

The light died out suddenly, and Agatha and the little girls drew their
cha