proves obdurate," he said. "He is, however, by no
means the type of man I expected to find, and I venture to surmise that
you will eventually discover him to be a less undesirable addition to
Silverdale than you are at present inclined to fancy."

CHAPTER VIII

WINSTON COMES TO SILVERDALE

There was warmth and brightness in the cedar-boarded general room of
Silverdale Grange, and most of the company gathered there basked in it
contentedly after their drive through the bitter night. Those who came
from the homesteads lying farthest out had risked frost-nipped hands
and feet, for when Colonel Barrington held a levee at the Grange nobody
felt equal to refusing his invitation. Neither scorching heat nor
utter cold might excuse compliance with the wishes of the founder of
Silverdale, and it was not until Dane, the big middle-aged bachelor,
had spoken very plainly, that he consented to receive his guests in
time of biting frost dressed otherwise than as they would have appeared
in England.

Dane was the one man in the settlement who dare remonstrate with its
ruler, but it was a painful astonishment to the latter when he said in
answer to one invitation, "I have never been frost-bitten, sir, and I
stand the cold well, but one or two of the lads are weak in the chest,
and this climate was never intended for bare-shouldered women. Hence,
if I come, I shall dress myself to suit it."

Colonel Barrington stared at him for almost a minute, and then shook
his head. "Have it your own way," he said. "Understand that in itself
I care very little for dress, but it is only by holding fast to every
traditional nicety we can prevent ourselves sinking into Western
barbarism, and I am horribly afraid of the thin end of the wedge."

Dane having gained his point said nothing further, for he was one of
the wise and silent men who know when to stop, and that evening he sat
in a corner watching his leader thoughtfully, for there was anxiety in
the Colonel's face. Barrington sat silent near the ample hearth whose
heat would scarcely have kept water from freezing but for the big
stove, and disdaining the dispensation made his guests, he was clad
conventionally, though the smooth black fabric clung about him more
tightly than it had once been intended to do. His sister stood, with
the stamp of a not wholly vanished beauty still clinging to her gentle
face, talking to one or two matrons from outlying farms, and his niece
by a litt