after all, it wouldn't be worth
while our raising wheat here unless there were folks back East to eat
it, and if some of them only eat it in the shape of dainty cakes that
doesn't affect the question. Anyway, there's only another dance or
two, and I was wondering whether I could drive you home; I've got
Wyllard's Ontario sleigh."

Sally glanced at him rather sharply. She had half-expected this offer,
and it is possible would have judiciously led him up to it if he had
not made it. Now, as she saw that he really wished to drive her home,
she was glad that she had not done so.

"Yes," she said softly, "I think you could."

"Then," said Hawtrey, "if you'll wait ten minutes I'll be back with the
team."

CHAPTER II.

SALLY TAKES CHARGE.

The night was clear and bitterly cold when Hawtrey and Sally Creighton
drove away from Stukely's barn. Winter had lingered unusually long
that year, and the prairie gleamed dimly white, with the sledge trail
cutting athwart it, a smear of blue-grey, in the foreground. It
was--for Lander's lay behind them with the snow among the stubble belts
that engirdled it--an empty wilderness the mettlesome team swung
across, and during the first few minutes the cold struck through them
with a sting like the thrust of steel. A half-moon hung low above it,
coppery red with frost, and there was no sound but the crunch beneath
the runners, and the beat of hoofs that rang dully through the silence
like a roll of muffled drums.

Sleighs like the one that Hawtrey drove are not common on the prairie,
where the farmer generally uses the humble bob-sled when the snow lies
unusually long. The one in question had, however, been made for use in
Montreal, and bought back East by a friend of Hawtrey's, who was, as it
happened, possessed of some means, which is a somewhat unusual thing in
the case of a Western wheat-grower. He had also bought the team--the
fastest he could obtain--and when the warmth came back to them Hawtrey
and the girl became conscious of the exhilaration of the swift and easy
motion. The sleigh was light and narrow, and Hawtrey, who drew the
thick driving robe higher about his companion, did not immediately draw
the mittened hand he had used back again. The girl did not resent the
fact that it still rested behind her shoulder, nor did Hawtrey attach
any particular significance to the matter. He was a man who usually
acted on impulse, with singularly easy manners. How far