mained passable.
Other parties of settlers, wending their way westward to the region
where homesteads were still available, or moving in to lands located
the previous year, were overtaken; and again the party were
themselves overtaken by more rapid-moving immigrants from behind, so
that in the course of four or five days their cavalcade stretched far
ahead and far to the rear. Acquaintanceships were made quickly--no
one stood on ceremony; and as the journey wore on the Harrises began
to feel that they already possessed many friends in the country, and
that life on the prairie would not be altogether lonely.

After numerous consultations with McCrae, Harris had arranged that
his immediate destination should be in a district where the scrub
country melted into open prairie on the western side of the Pembina.
The Arthurses, who were also of the party, had homesteaded there, and
Fred Arthurs had built a little house on the land the year before.
Arthurs was now bringing his young wife to share with him the
privations and the privileges of their new home. A friendship had
already sprung up between Mrs. Arthurs and Mrs. Harris, and nothing
seemed more appropriate than that the two women should occupy the
house together while Harris sought out new homestead land and Arthurs
proceeded with the development of his farm. It was McCrae, whose
interest in every member of the expedition was that of a father, that
dropped the germ of this suggestion into Arthurs' receptive ear, and
it was with paternal satisfaction he found the young couples speedily
work out for themselves the arrangements which he had planned for
them all along.

After the crossing of the Pembina the party began to scatter--some to
homesteads already located; others to friends who would billet them
until their arrangements were completed. As team after team swung out
from the main road a certain sense of loss was experienced by those
who were left, but it was cheery words and good wishes and mutual
invitations that marked each separation. At length came the trail,
almost lost in the disappearing snow, that led to Arthurs' homestead.
A quick handshake with McCrae, Ned Beacon, and the doctor, and a few
others who had grown upon them in the journey, and the two young
couples turned out to break their way over the little-used route that
now lay before them.

Darkness was settling down--darkness of the seventh night since their
departure from Emerson--when, like a mol