ad. You're
clearly fresh out from England, and I'm sure we'll be good friends," he
said. "Coombs? Well, Jim Marvin is right. I've set him down in my own mind
as a defaulting deacon, or something of the kind. Did my guardian out of a
hundred and fifty as premium, with duck, brant-goose, and prairie-chicken
shooting thrown in--and he sees I've never time to touch a gun. However,
I'm learning the business; and in spite of his quite superfluous piety he
can farm, in a get-all-you-can-for-nothing kind of way."

"He can't, just because of that same," broke in the prairie-born. "I'm
sick of this talking religion, but you'll see it written plain on furrow
and stock that when the Almighty gives the good soil freely He expects
something back, and not a stinting of dumb beasts and land to roll up
money in the bank. Take all and give nothing don't pan out worth the
washing, and that man will get let down of a sudden some cold day. Hallo!
here's the blamed old reprobate coming."

Coombs slid through the stable with a cat-like gait and little eyes that
noticed everything, while Harry leaned against a stall defiantly sucking
at his pipe, and I wondered whether I was expected to be working at
something.

"Idleness does not pay in this country, Lorimer," he said, with a beatific
air. "Diligence is the one road to success. There is a truss of hay
waiting to go through the cutter. Harry, I notice more oats than need be
mixed with that chop."

He went out, and Harry laughed as he said, "Always the same! Weighs out
the week's sugar to the teaspoonful. But you look tired. If you feed I'll
work the infernal chopper."

So for a time I fed in the hay, while Harry swung up and down at the
wheel, slender and debonair in spite of his coarse blue garments, with
merry brown eyes. He was younger than I, and evidently inferior in muscle;
but, as I know now, he had inherited a spirit which is greater than mere
bodily strength. No man had a truer comrade than I in Harry Lorraine, and
the friendship which commenced in the sod stable that night when I was
travel-worn and he cut the hay for me will last while we two remain on
this earth, and after, hallowed in the survivor's memory, until--but,
remembering Coombs, I know that silence is often reverence, and so leave
Grace's clean lips to voice the eternal hope.

We went back for family prayers, when Coombs read a chapter of Scripture;
and he read passably well, though, for some reason, his tone jarre