ns
for dinner, putting away stores, and chatting to the two clear-eyed
women who loved her, and would not for the world have let her try her
strength too much! For she who was so eagerly planning the help of
others must now be guarded and cherished herself--lest ill befall!

But now she was at the window watching for Anderson.

The trail from Donaldminster to Battleford passed in front of the house,
dividing the farm. Presently there came slowly along it a covered wagon
drawn by a pair of sorry horses and piled at the back with household
possessions. In front sat a man of slouching carriage, and in the
interior of the wagon another figure could be dimly seen. The whole
turn-out gave an impression of poverty and misfortune; and Elizabeth
looked at it curiously.

Suddenly, the wagon drew up with a jerk at the gate of the farm, and the
man descended, with difficulty, his limbs being evidently numb
with cold.

Elizabeth caught up a fur cloak and ran to the door.

"Could you give us a bit of shelter for the night?" said the man
sheepishly. "We'd thought of getting on to Battleford, but the little
un's bad--and the missus perished with cold. We'd give you no trouble if
we might warm ourselves a bit."

And he looked under his eyebrows at Elizabeth, at the bright fire behind
her, and all the comfort of the new farmhouse. Yet under his shuffling
manner there was a certain note of confidence. He was appealing to that
Homeric hospitality which prevails throughout the farms of the
Northwest.

And in five minutes, the horses were in the barn, the man sitting by the
kitchen fire, while Elizabeth was ministering to the woman and child.
The new-comers made a forlorn trio. They came from a district some fifty
miles further south, and were travelling north in order to take shelter
for a time with relations. The mother was a girl of twenty, worn with
hardship and privation. The father, an English labourer, had taken up
free land, but in spite of much help from a paternal Government, had not
been able to fulfil his statutory obligation, and had now forfeited his
farm. There was a history of typhoid fever, and as Elizabeth soon
suspected, an incipient history of drink. In the first two years of his
Canadian life the man worked for a farmer during the summer, and loafed
in Winnipeg during the winter. There demoralisation had begun, and as
Elizabeth listened, the shadow of the Old World seemed to be creeping
across the radiant Canadi