village bar, while the latter drew a picture of
rising colour of the possibilities which the new lands afforded.
Harris was not a man who abused himself with liquor, and Riles, too,
rarely forgot that indulgence was expensive, and had to be paid for
in cash. Moreover, Allan occasioned his father some uneasiness. He
was young, and had not yet learned the self-control to be expected in
later life. More than once of late Allan had crossed the boundary of
moderation, and John Harris was by no means indifferent to the
welfare of his only son. Indeed, the bond between the two was so real
and so intense that Harris had never been able to bring himself to
contemplate their separation, and the boy had not even so much as
thought of establishing a home of his own. Harris sometimes wondered
at this, for Allan was popular in the neighbourhood, where his good
appearance, strength, and sincere honesty made him something of a
favourite. The idea of homesteading together assured further years of
close relationship between father and son, and the younger man fell
in whole-heartedly with it.

"We'll hurry up the ploughing, Dad, and run West before the harvest
is on us," Allan said as they rode home through the darkness. "We can
file on our land and get back for the fall work. Then we will go out
for the winter and commence our duties. The only question is, Can
they grow anything on that land out there?"

"That's what they used to ask when we came to Manitoba," said his
father. "And there were years when I doubted the answer myself. Some
parts were froze out year after year, and they're among the best in
the country now, and never think of frost. The same thing'll happen
out there, and we might as well be in the game."

To do him justice, it was not altogether the desire for more wealth
that prompted Harris, It was the call of new land; the call he had
heard and answered in the early eighties; the old appetite that had
lain dormant for a quarter of a century, but was still in his blood,
waiting only a suggestion of the open spaces, a whiff from dry grass
on the wind-swept plains, the zigzag of a wagon-trail streaking afar
into the horizon, to set it tingling again. The thought of
homesteading revived rich old memories--memories from which the
kindly years had balmed the soreness and the privation and the
hardship, and left only the joy and the courage and the comradeship
and the conquering. It was the call of the new land, which has l