on, Harris, hand it over. I got t'
have it, or I can't make the grade."

"Well, you'll make the grade first to-night," said Harris.

After that the doctor remained silent for some time. Then suddenly he
demanded: "Shay, Harris, where you takin' me to, anyway?"

"I'm taking you home."

"Home? What home? I got no home, jus'a--"

"I'm taking you to my home."

"Wha' for? You're all right, I guess..." Suddenly the doctor stood
erect. "Harris, is your wife sick?"

"That's why I came for you."

"Well, why the devil didn't you say so? Here, give me that whip.
Harris, Harris, what did you waste time arguing for?"

"I didn't waste much. The argument was mostly on your side."

"Harris," said the doctor, after a long silence, "you think I'm a
fool. You're right. It isn't as though I didn't know. I know the road
I'm going, and the end thereof... And yet, in a pinch, I can pull
myself together. I'm all right now. But it'll get me again as soon as
this is over... Any good I am, any good I do, is just a bit of
salvage out of the wreck. The wreck--yes, it's a good word
that--wreck."

***

Just as the dawn was breaking he knelt beside her. Her eyes were very
large and quiet, and her face was white and still. But she raised one
pale hand, and the thin fingers fondled in his hair. She drew his
face very gently down, and big silent tears stood in his eyes.

"We will call him Allan," he said.

CHAPTER VI

IN THE SPELL OF THE MIRAGE

A quarter of a century is a short time as world history goes, but it
is a considerable era in the life of the Canadian West. More
things--momentous things--than can be hinted at in this narrative
occurred in the twenty-five years following the great inrush of 1882.
The boundless prairie reaches of Manitoba were now comparatively well
settled, and the tide of immigration, which, after a dozen years'
stagnation, had set in again in greater flood than ever, was now
sweeping over the newer lands still farther west. Railways had
supplanted ox-cart and bob-sleigh as the freighters of the plains;
the farmer read his daily paper on the porch after supper, while his
sons and daughters drove to town in "top" buggies, tailor-made suits,
and patent-leather shoes. The howl of the coyote had given way to the
whistle of the locomotive; beside the sod hut of earlier days rose
the frame or brick house proclaiming prosperity or social ambition.
The vast sweep of the horizon, once undefiled by a