d only just see one--it
would be like a drink of water on Sahara!

At long intervals they hired a boy from the village to watch their
flocks for a couple of days, while they made an excursion to some town.
There they filled up on candy and picture-shows until they were glad to
return home.

In many ways the first winter of their squatting in the Nicola Valley
was a tester on the ex-bankclerks. They sometimes felt like giving up;
not because they needed food or drink, but because of the youth in
them. Young men are impetuous animals; they want to be forever
shifting. Sometimes Evan had to walk in the beautiful winter night
until he was tired out, so that he could forget his yearnings for city
life, especially New York life. He felt the lure of the White Way at a
distance of three thousand miles. Others had felt it from the ends of
the earth, and had succumbed to it.

But Nelson did not succumb. He knew he must take his mind off the
East, if he would succeed in the West, and he did so. He read more and
more every week. When Henty was away at the scantlings Evan studied
and thought. At last he began to write down his thoughts; he
discovered that there was great satisfaction in expressing himself to a
sheet of paper. He eventually sent to Vancouver for a typewriter,
bought a book of instruction, and for twenty-one days studied the touch
method. He practised six and eight hours a day, with his eyes on the
chart before him. At the end of the twenty-one days he was a
touch-typist, accurate and fairly rapid. The typewriter off his mind,
he wrote and wrote. His heart was fast wrapping itself in vellum.
Henty looked on in silence for a few weeks, then shook his head and
said facetiously:

"I'm afraid you don't love me any more, Nelsy."

But spring soon came to A. P.'s relief, with the advent of which Evan
had to set aside his typewriter and dream without writing down his
dreams. Because of faculties newly awakened, however, he found more
beauty and entertainment in Nature than he had ever seen there before.
He began to think poems as he worked on the land. The plots of stories
came to him, and articles grew upward from the horizon to the sun, or
in columns like Oriental writings. At night he would sit up an hour
longer than his big red-faced friend, and pour out his imaginings to
the typewriter--the poor typewriter. The speed he developed was a
detriment to composition; the faster he went the more hyperbol