turned away from the last habitations of men.
The prairie undulated about them like a sea congealed in motion--but
seemingly vaster than the sea; for at sea the horizon is ever near at
hand; while here the very unevenness of the ground marked, and fixed,
and opened up the awful distances. The grass was short, rich and browned
by the summer sun; and it mantled the distant rounds and hollows with
the changing lights of beaver fur. The only breaks in its expanse were
here and there, springing in the sheltered hollows, coppices or bluffs
of slender poplar saplings, with crowding stems, as close and even as
hair. The leaves were yellowed by the first frosts.

The man rode ahead, slouching on the back of his wretched cayuse, with
eyes blank alike of inward thought or outward observation. He was not
yet forty years old, but bore the cast of premature decay, more aged
than age. What showed of his hair beneath his hat was sparse and faded;
and of his visible teeth he had no more than a perishing stump or two
left in his jaws. His discontented, satiated, exhausted mien, had a
strange look there in the fresh and potent wilderness.

The girl who followed with a travoise dragging at her pony's heels, was,
on the other hand, in harmony with the land. Of the extremes to which the
breeds run in looks, she was of the rare beauties of that strange race.
Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that would have
marked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of beauty
was there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the arched
brows--so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder daughters--and in the
deep soft eyes brooded, even when she was happiest, a heart-disquieting
quality of wistfulness. She was happy now; and ever and anon she raised
her eyes to the slouching back of the man riding ahead with a look of
passionate abandon in which there was nothing civilized at all. She was
slenderer than the run of brown maidens, and her clumsy print dress could
not hide the girlish, perfect contour of her shoulders. In her dusky
cheeks there glowed a tinge of deep rose; testimony to the lingering
influence of the white blood in her veins.

Topping a rise, the man paused for her to overtake him.

"Here we are, Rina," he said indifferently. His voice was oddly cracked.
His manner toward her expressed a good-humoured tolerance. His eyes
approved her casually; inner tenderness there was none.

The girl apparen