am in her eyes at which Sproatly apparently took
warning, for he said no more upon that subject, and they talked about
other matters until he took his departure an hour or two later. It was
next afternoon when he appeared again, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at
Agatha as he and Winifred drove away together.

"Thirty miles is a long way to drive in the frost. I suppose you have
noticed that she calls him Jim?" she said. "Anyway, there's a good
deal of very genuine ability in that young man. He isn't altogether
wild."

"His appearance rather suggested it when I first met him," said Agatha
with a laugh. "Was it a pose?"

"No," said her companion reflectively. "I think one could call it a
reaction, and it's probable that some very worthy people in the Old
Country are to blame for it. Sproatly is not the only young man who
has suffered from having too many rules and conventions crammed down
his throat. In fact, they're rather plentiful."

Agatha said nothing further, for the little girls appeared just then,
and it was not until the next afternoon that she and Mrs. Hastings were
alone together again. Then as they drove across the prairie wrapped in
the heavy waggon robes her companion spoke of the business they had in
hand.

"Gregory must keep those men," she said. "There's no doubt that Harry
meant to do it, and it would be horribly unfair to turn them loose now
when there's absolutely nothing going on. Besides, Tom Moran is a man
I'm specially sorry for. As I told you, he left a young wife and a
very little child behind him when he came out here."

"One would wonder why he did it," said Agatha. "He had to. There
seems to be a notion in the Old Country that we earn our dollars
easily, but it's very wrong. We'll take that man's case as an example.
He has a little, desolate holding up in the bush of Ontario, a hole
chopped out of the forest studded all over with sawn-off fir-stumps,
with a little, two-roomed log shack on it. In all probability there
isn't a settlement within two or three leagues of the spot. Now, as a
rule, a place of that kind won't produce enough to keep a man for
several years after he has partially cleared it, and unless he can earn
something in the meanwhile he must give it up. Moran, it seems, got
heavily into debt with the nearest storekeeper, and had to choose
between selling the place up or coming out here where wages are higher.
Well, you can probably imagine what it must be to th