s were troubled as she turned her face away.

We reached the manor safely, but I caught no glimpse of Grace, and Colonel
Carrington hardly troubled to thank me, while Harry pitied the team when I
led it into our stable. A few days afterward, when we spent all of one
afternoon discussing finances and our program for spring, he agreed with
me when, contrary to my usual caution, I suggested that we should make a
plunge that year by purchasing a gang-plow and hiring more horses, then,
giving a bond on the homestead and expected crop, sink the last dollar we
could raise in sowing the utmost acreage and breaking more sod on the free
land we had pre-empted. There was a sporting instinct in Harry which made
him willing to run risks that I generally should have avoided.

Now, however, I was bent on playing a bold game, trusting in the axiom
that those who nothing venture cannot expect to win. Also, on the prairie
the credit system is universal, and though some abuse it, it has its
advantages. For instance, the settler may obtain seed, implements, and
provisions on a promise to pay with interest after harvest, and thus he is
enabled to break an extra quantity of virgin soil. If the crop is good all
benefit alike--dealer, maker of implements, and grower of wheat; while if
the grain fails, instead of one man to bear it there are several to divide
the loss.

So we pledged our credit up to the hilt, and, though at times I grew grave
as I wondered what would happen if there should be hail or frost, we
commenced work in earnest with the first of the thaw, and drilled in grain
enough to leave us an ample profit if all went well. Then we would double
our sowing next year, and, so Harry said, in a few seasons rise to
affluence. It was a simple program, and fortunes have been made in that
way; but, as we were to find, it also leads occasionally to disaster.

It was a gray day in spring, and a cold wind swept the grasses as I stood
beside the double yoke of oxen and the great breaker-plow, when Colonel
Carrington, who was passing that way, rode toward me across the prairie.
While I wondered what his errand might be, I saw two mounted figures
outlined against the somber sky on the crest of a distant rise, whom I
recognized as Grace and Captain Ormond. The Colonel rode a splendid bay
horse, and after the first greeting he sat looking down at me ironically
awhile, erect, soldierly, and immaculately neat down to the burnished
stirrups and the