hile across the whole dream
picture drove an alternate haze of dust and snow."

Grace shivered as though the relation troubled her, and was silent until
she said with a smile:

"It must be that ghostly music. Louis of Sapin Rouge has missed his
vocation. We will talk no more of it. You once did me a kindness; I wonder
whether you would repeat it."

"I would go to the world's end," I commenced hotly, but stopped abashed as
she checked me with a gesture, though I fancied that she did not seem so
displeased at my boldness as she might have been. Then she answered,
smiling:

"I thought you were too staid and sensible for such speeches, and they
hardly become you, because of course you do not mean it. It is nothing
very serious. There are signs of bad weather, and my aunt is not strong,
so, as Miss Lyle presses us, we shall stay here until to-morrow noon, and
I want you to ride over and tell my father. He might grow uneasy about
me--and for some reason I feel uneasy about him, while, as he has been
ailing lately, I should not like for him to venture across the prairie. It
seems unfair to ask you, but you are young and strong; and I should like
you to meet him. He has his peculiarities, so our neighbors say, but he
has ever been a most indulgent parent to me, and he can be a very firm
friend. You will do this, as a favor, won't you?"

She gave me her hand as she rose, and, mastering a senseless desire to do
more than this, I bowed over it and hurried away, feeling that hers was
the favor granted, for Ormond and many others would gladly have ridden
fifty miles through a blizzard to do her bidding. It was for this reason
that I made my excuses to our host quietly, and Harry laughed as he said:
"I'll ride over with the others for you when the dance is finished, but
that won't be until nearly dawn. The length of these prairie festivities
is equaled only by their rarity. But beware, Ralph. You are a poor
wheat-grower, and too much of those bright eyes is not good for you."

I was glad of the skin coat and fur cap before I even reached the stables,
and Jasper's horse made trouble when I led him out. He knew the signs of
the weather and desired to stay there, because they were not promising.
Now, though winter is almost Arctic in that region, the snow-fall is
capricious and generally much lighter than that further east, though it
can come down in earnest now and then. Thus, swept by the wind, the grass
was bare on the levels,