to take us all."

"I'm afraid he won't find me at home," said Violet sweetly. "I am
going out to Loon Lake with Mr. Spencer."

Mrs. Hill flounced off to bed in a pet. She was disgusted with
everything, she declared to the Major. Things had been going so
nicely, and now they were all muddled.

"Isn't Madison coming up to time?" queried the Major sleepily.

"Madison! It's Violet. She is behaving abominably. She treated poor
Ned shamefully tonight. You saw yourself how she acted with Spencer,
and she's going to Loon Lake with him tomorrow, she says. I'm sure I
don't know what she can see in him. He's the dullest, pokiest fellow
alive--so different from her in every way."

"Perhaps that is why she likes him," suggested the Major. "The
attraction of opposites and all that, you know."

But Mrs. Hill crossly told him he didn't know anything about it, so,
being a wise man, he held his tongue.

* * * * *

During the next two weeks Mrs. Hill was the most dissatisfied woman in
the four districts, and every M.P. down to the rawest recruit
anathemized Spencer in secret a dozen times a day. Violet simply
dropped everyone else, including Madison, in the coolest, most
unmistakable way.

One night Spencer did not come to Lone Poplar Villa. Violet looked for
him to the last. When she realized that he was not coming she went to
the verandah to have it out with herself. As she sat huddled up in a
dim corner beneath a silkily rustling western maple two M.P.s came out
and, not seeing her, went on with their conversation.

"Heard about Spencer?" questioned one.

"No. What of him?"

"Well, they say Miss Thayer's thrown him over. Yesterday I was passing
here about four in the afternoon and I saw Spencer coming in. I went
down to the Land Office and was chatting to Cribson when the door
opened about half an hour later and Spencer burst in. He was pale as
the dead, and looked wild. 'Has Fyshe gone to Rainy River about those
Crown Lands yet?' he jerked out. Cribson said, 'No.' Then tell him he
needn't; I'm going myself,' said Spencer and out he bolted. He posted
off to Rainy River today, and won't be back for a fortnight. She'll be
gone then."

"Rather rough on Spencer after the way she encouraged him," returned
the other as they passed out of earshot.

Violet got up. All the callers were gone, and she swept in to Mrs.
Hill dramatically.

"Edith," she said in the cold, steady voice that, to thos