win," he
said. "Figuring all round, it will fit you better than breaking virgin
prairie, and you'll pay a pile of that mortgage off if you get a good crop
next fall. Then one of you can take up the next quarter-section free land.
More working beasts? I'll trade you my kicking third team at a valuation,
and you can pay me after harvest. If the crop fails? Well, I'll take my
chances."

We spent one night in calculations beside the glowing stove while the
shingles crackled above us under the bitter cold, and found that by
staking everything we could just manage it.

"I dare say I could raise a last hundred from my admiring relatives by
hinting that without it I had serious thoughts of returning home," said
Harry. "I don't know why, but they're particularly anxious to keep me
away."

There was a ring of bitterness in his tone, and when in due time Harry got
money he did not seem by any means grateful for it. It was long afterward
before he told me much about his affairs, and even then I did not
understand them fully, though it seemed probable that somebody had robbed
him of his patrimony. Nobody, however, troubles about his comrade's
antecedents in the West, where many men have a somewhat vivid history. The
new land accepts them for what they are in the present, leaving the past
to the mother country. So a bargain was made, and the vendor received his
first instalments; and as that winter sped I looked forward, half-fearful,
half-exultant, to what the coming year should bring. Our feet at least
were set on the long road which leads to success, and it was well that we
could not see the flints and thorns that should wound them cruelly.

It was a clear spring morning, one of those mornings which on the wide
grass-lands fill one's heart with hope and stir the frost-chilled blood,
when Harry and I stood beside our teams ready to drive the first furrow. A
warm breeze from the Pacific, crossing the snow-barred Rockies, set the
dry grasses rippling; and the prairie running northward league after
league was dappled with moving shadow by the white cloudlets that scudded
across the great vault of blue. Behind us straggling silver-stemmed
birches sheltered the little log-house of Fairmead, which nestled snugly
among them, with its low sod-built stable further among the slender
branches behind. Trees are scarce in that region, and the settlers make
the most of them. The white prairie was broken by a space of ashes and
black loam, w