learns the witchery of the clanging reel and the swing of the
Strathspey. It is doubtless not high art, but there is probably no
music in the world that fires the blood like this and turns the sober
dance to rhythmic riot. Perhaps, too, it gains something that gives it
a closer compelling grip amidst the prairie snow.

Hawtrey, at least, was breathless when it ceased, and Sally's eyes
flashed with the effulgence of the Northern night when her partner
found her a resting-place upon an upturned barrel.

"No," she said, "I won't have any cider." She turned and glanced at
him imperiously. "You're not going for any more either."

It was, no doubt, not the speech a well-trained English maiden would
have made, but, though Hawtrey smiled rather curiously, it fell
inoffensively from Sally's lips. Though it is not always set down to
their credit, the brown-faced, hard-handed men as a rule live very
abstemiously in that country, and, as it happened, Hawtrey, who,
however, certainly showed no sign of it, had already consumed rather
more cider than anybody else. He made a little sign of submission, and
Sally resumed their conversation where it had broken off.

"We could let you have our ox-team to do that breaking with," she said.
"You've had Sproatly living with you all winter. Why don't you make
him stay and work out his keep?"

Hawtrey laughed. "Sally," he said, "do you think anybody could make
Sproatly work?"

"It would be hard," the girl admitted, and then looked up at him with a
little glint in her eyes. "Still, I'd put a move on him if you sent
him along to me."

She was a rather capable young woman, but Hawtrey was very dubious of
her ability to accomplish as much as this. Sproatly was an Englishman
of good education, though his appearance seldom suggested it, who drove
about the prairie in a waggon vending cheap oleographs and patent
medicines most of the summer, and contrived to obtain free quarters
from his bachelor acquaintances during the winter. It is a hospitable
country, but there were men round Lander's who when they went away to
work in far-off lumber camps, as they sometimes did, nailed up their
doors and windows to prevent Sproatly getting in.

"Does he never do anything?" Sally added.

"No," said Hawtrey; "at least, never when he can help it. He had,
however, started something shortly before I left him. You see, the
house has wanted cleaning the last month or two, and we tossed up for
who