discovered that Mr. Lonsdale
was really the younger son of an English earl, I wished I had curled
them, but it was too late then.

He didn't look in the least like a scion of aristocracy. He wore a
cowboy rig and had a scrubby beard of a week's growth. But he was very
jolly and played the violin beautifully. After tea--and a lovely tea
it was, although, as Kate remarked to me later, there was no ham--we
had an impromptu concert. Mr. Lonsdale played the violin; Mrs.
Hopkins, who sang, was a graduate of a musical conservatory; Mr.
Hopkins gave a comic recitation and did a Cree war-dance; Kate gave a
spirited account of our adventures since leaving home and mother; and
I described--with trimmings--how I felt sitting alone in the democrat
in a mud-hole, in a pouring rain on a vast prairie.

Mrs. Hopkins, Kate, and I slept in the one bed the shack boasted,
screened off from public view by a calico curtain. Mr. Lonsdale
reposed in his accustomed bunk by the stove, but poor Mr. Hopkins had
to sleep on the floor. He must have been glad Kate and I stayed only
one night.

* * * * *

The fourth morning found us blithely hitting the trail in renewed
confidence and spirits. We parted from our kind friends in the shack
with mutual regret. Mr. Hopkins gave us a haunch of jumping deer and
Mrs. Hopkins gave us a box of home-made cookies. Mr. Lonsdale at first
thought he couldn't give us anything, for he said all he had with him
was his pipe and his fiddle; but later on he said he felt so badly to
see us go without any token of his good will that he felt constrained
to ask us to accept a piece of rope that he had tied his outfit
together with.

The fourth day we got on so nicely that it was quite monotonous. The
sun shone, the chinook blew, our ponies trotted over the trail
gallantly. Kate and I sang, told stories, and laughed immoderately
over everything. Even a poor joke seems to have a subtle flavour on
the prairie. For the first time I began to think Saskatchewan
beautiful, with those far-reaching parklike meadows dotted with the
white-stemmed poplars, the distant bluffs bannered with the airiest of
purple hazes, and the little blue lakes that sparkled and shimmered in
the sunlight on every hand.

The only thing approaching an adventure that day happened in the
afternoon when we reached a creek which had to be crossed.

"We must investigate," said Kate decidedly. "It would never do to risk
get