nyway, he didn't call."

Hawtrey told the clerk to put the package in his waggon. He had
scarcely seen Sally since his recovery, and he suddenly remembered
that, after all, he owed her a good deal, and that she was very pretty.
Besides, one could talk to Sally without feeling the restraint that
Agatha's manner usually laid on him. Then the storekeeper laid an open
box upon the counter.

"I guess you're going to be married by and bye," he said.

Hawtrey was thinking of Sally then, and the question irritated him.

"I don't know that it concerns you, but in a general way it's
probable," he said.

"Well," said the storekeeper good-humouredly, "a pair of these mittens
would make quite a nice present for a lady. Smartest thing of the kind
I've ever seen here; choicest Alaska fur."

Hawtrey bought a pair, and the storekeeper took a fur cap out of
another box.

"Now," he said, "this is just the thing she'd like to go with the
mittens. There's style about that cap; feel the gloss of it."

Hawtrey bought the cap, and smiled as he swung himself up into his
waggon. Gloves are not much use in the prairie frost, and mittens,
which are not divided into finger-stalls, will within limits fit almost
anybody. This, he felt, was fortunate, for he was not quite sure that
he meant to give them to Agatha.

It was bitterly cold, and the pace the team made was slow, for the snow
was loose and too thin for a sled of any kind, which, after all, is not
very generally used upon the prairie. As the result of this, night had
closed down and Hawtrey was frozen almost stiff when at last a birch
bluff rose out of the waste in front of him. It cut black against the
cold blueness of the sky and the spectral gleam of snow, but when he
had driven a little further a stream of ruddy orange light appeared in
the midst of it. A few minutes later he pulled his team up in front of
a little log-built house, and getting down with difficulty saw the door
open as he approached it. Sally stood in the entrance silhouetted
against a blaze of cheerful light.

"Oh!" she said. "Gregory!"

Hawtrey recognised the thrill in her voice, and took both her hands, as
he had once been in the habit of doing.

"Will you let me in?" he asked.

The girl laughed in a rather strained fashion. She had been a little
startled, and was not quite sure yet as to how she should receive him;
but in the meanwhile Hawtrey drew her in.

"The old folks are out," she sai