place was filled with the smell of hot
iron which an over-driven stove gives out, and the subtle odors of old
skin coats.

The guests, however, were accustomed to an atmosphere of that kind, and
it did not trouble them. For the most part, they were lean, spare,
straight of limb and bronzed by frost and snow-blink, for though
scarcely half of them were Canadian born, the prairie, as a rule,
swiftly sets its stamp upon the newcomer. Also, there was something in
the way they held themselves and put their feet down that suggested
health and vigor, and, in the case of most of them, a certain alertness
and decision of character. Some were from English cities, a few from
those of Canada, and some from the bush of Ontario; but there was a
similarity among them for which the cut and tightness of their store
clothing did not altogether account. They lived well, though plainly,
and toiled out in the open unusually hard. Their eyes were steady, their
bronzed skin was clear, and their laughter had a wholesome ring.

A fiery-haired Scot, a Highlander, sat upon a barrel-head sawing at a
fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. To tone he did not
aspire, but he played with Caledonian nerve and swing, and kept the
snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that sets the blood
tingling, causes the feet to move in rhythm, though the exhilarating
effect of it was rather spoiled by the efforts of the little French
Canadian who had another fiddle and struck clanging chords from the
lower strings.

In the cleared space they were dancing what was presumably a quadrille,
though it bore almost as great a resemblance to a Scottish country
dance, or indeed to one of the measures of rural France, which was,
however, characteristic of the present country.

The Englishman has set no distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It
has absorbed him with his reserve and sturdy industry, and apparently
the Canadian from the cities is also lost in it, too, for his is the
leaven that works through the mass slowly and unobtrusively, while the
Scot and the habitant of French extraction have given the life of it
color and individuality. Extremes meet and fuse on the wide white levels
of the West.

An Englishman, however, was the life of that dance, and he was
physically a larger man than most of the rest, for, as a rule, the
Colonial born run to wiry hardness rather than to solidity of frame.
Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of should