ink so
then, and the whole scene could scarcely have lasted five minutes, but it
filled my mind for days afterward, and I can recall it clearly still.

CHAPTER VII

HARVEST HOME

It was a bitter night when Harry and I rode into the red glow of light
that beat out through the windows of Lone Hollow, the furthest outlying
farm of the Carrington group, where, now that the last bushel of his wheat
had been sold in Winnipeg, Raymond Lyle was celebrating a bounteous
harvest. Round about it, drawn up in ranks, stood vehicles--or rigs, as we
call them--of every kind, for it seemed as if the whole country-side had
driven in. Most of them were of better make than those we and the majority
of the poorer settlers used, and it was hard not to covet when we managed
to find a stall for our beasts.

When one has wasted precious time that in the whole season can scarcely be
made up again, by riding behind oxen at the exhilarating pace of some two
miles an hour, or hauling in grain with half-tamed horses which jib at
every hill, it is easy to realize the advantages of an efficient team, and
any of those we saw in the Lone Hollow stables would have saved us many
dollars each year. Even in the West the poor man is handicapped from the
beginning, and must trust to ready invention and lengthened hours of labor
to make up for the shortcomings of indifferent tools.

Lyle, who had heard the trampling of hoofs, met us at the door. "It was
kind of you to come, and I hope you will enjoy yourselves," he said. "We
have tried to make things homely, but, as you know, this isn't England."

We shook off our wrappings and entered the long lamp-lit hall, partly
dazed by the sudden glare and warmth after the intense cold. It certainly
was different from anything I had seen at home, for here in place of paint
and gilding the decoration was in harmony with the country, bizarre and
bountiful, with a beauty that was distinctly its own. Few oat-heads grown
from English furrows might compare with the pale golden tassels that
drooped in graceful festoons from the wall, while among the ruddier
wheat-ears and bearded barley, antelope heads peeped out beside the great
horns of caribou which the owner of Lone Hollow had shot in the muskegs of
the north. Rifles and bright double-bitted axes of much the same pattern
as those with which our forbears hewed through Norman mail caught the
light of the polished brass lamps and flashed upon the wainscot, while