, and you have customs of your own, but you'll certainly get
lost and frozen on the prairie if you leave this house before to-morrow
morning."

They stood facing each other, a curious contrast, the pinched and bowed
cobbler and the army officer, but there was the same stubborn pride in
both; for with a quaint dignity, which in some measure covered its
discourtesy, the former made answer in the tongue of the spinning
country:

"I thank thee, but I take no favors from the rich. Thou and the others
like thee have all the smooth things in this life, though even they cannot
escape the bitterness that is hidden under them. Well, maybe thou'lt find
a difference in the next. Good night to thee."

He marched out, and we heard the door crash to.

"I dare say he is right," the Colonel said, with a curious smile. "At
times I almost hope we will. An interesting character, slightly mad, I
think; heard of such people, but I never met them."

This was evidently true, for the lot of Colonel Carrington had not been
cast among the alleys of a spinning town where the heavens are blackened
by factory smoke, and as the silver value changes in the East there is
hunger among the operatives. In such places the mind of many a thinking
man, worn keen as it were by poor living, sickened by foulness and
monotony, makes fantastic efforts to reach beyond its environment, and
occasionally hurries its owner to the brink of what some call insanity,
and perhaps is not so.

Then one lonely and pathetic figure, with bent head and shambling gait,
grew smaller down the great white waste of prairie.

"I am very sorry for him," Grace said, "but the poor old man will never
reach Willow Lake on foot, even if he could find the way. He must have
walked many miles already, and he will be frozen before morning. Some one
must go after him."

"If you will allow us, Miss Carrington, I think we had better take our
leave and drive him there on our homeward way. I am sorry that all this
happened under your roof," I said. "Harry, we must hurry before we lose
him;" and Colonel Carrington answered coldly.

"I am inclined to agree with you."

Brief leavetakings followed. Miss Carrington was cordial, but, and it may
have been exaggeration of sentiment, I dare not look at Grace with the
shadow of such a charge hanging over me. Neither, I think, did the Colonel
shake hands with me; and when the sleigh sped hissing down the beaten
trail Harry said:

"Ralph, you almo