s backsetting, and they're buying new teams
and ploughs. Can't you do what they do, though I guess they don't go
off for weeks to Winnipeg?"

The man was silent. He had an incentive to work hard which she was not
acquainted with, and he had certainly done so, but the long, iron
winter, when there was nothing that could be done, had proved too much
for him. It was very dreary sitting alone evening after evening beside
the stove, and the company of the somnolent Sproatly was not much more
cheerful. Now and then his pleasure-loving nature had revolted from
the barrenness of his lot when he drove home from an odd visit to a
neighbour, stiff with cold, through the stinging frost, and, arriving
in the dark, found the stove had burned out and water frozen hard
inside the house. These were things his neighbours patiently endured,
but Hawtrey had fled for life and brightness to Winnipeg.

Sally glanced up at him with a little nod. "You take hold with a good
grip. Everybody allows that," she said. "The trouble is you let
things go afterwards. You don't stay with it."

"Yes," assented Hawtrey. "I believe you have hit it, Sally. That's
very much what's the matter with me."

"Then," said the girl with quiet insistence, "won't you try?"

A faint flush crept into Hawtrey's face. The girl was less than
half-taught, and unacquainted with anything beyond the simple,
strenuous life of the prairie. Her greatest accomplishments consisted
of some skill in bakery and the handling of half-broken teams; but she
had once or twice given him what he recognised as excellent advice.
There was something incongruous in the situation, but, as usual, he
preferred to regard it whimsically.

"I suppose I'll have to, if you insist. If ever I'm the grasping owner
of the biggest farm in this district I'll blame you," he said.

Sally said nothing further on that subject, and some time later the
sleigh went skimming down among the birches in a shallow ravine.
Hawtrey pulled the horses up when they reached the bottom of it, and
glanced up at a shapeless cluster of buildings that showed black amidst
the trees.

"Lorton won't be back until to-morrow, but I promised to pitch the bags
into his granary," he said. "If I hump them up the trail here it will
save us driving round through the bluff."

He got down, and though the bags were heavy he managed to hoist the
first of them on to his shoulders, with Sally's assistance, and then
staggered