run to wiry hardness rather than solidity of
frame. Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of shoulder, though the rest
of him was in fine modelling, and he had a pleasant face of the English
blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish
merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient
characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though
his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his
manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one
likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten
neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of
drought and frost in adverse seasons.

As it happened, the grim, hard-faced Sager, who had come there from
Michigan, was just then talking to Stukely about him.

"Kind of tone about that man--guess he once had the gold-leaf on him
quite thick, and it hasn't all worn off yet," he said. "Seen more
Englishmen like him, and some folks from Noo York, too, when I took
parties bass fishing way back yonder."

He waved his hand vaguely, as though to indicate the American Republic,
and Stukely agreed with him. They were also right as far as they went,
for Hawtrey undoubtedly possessed a grace of manner which, however,
somehow failed to reach distinction. It was, perhaps, just a little
too apparent, and lacked the strengthening feature of restraint.

"I wonder," said Stukely reflectively, "what those kind of fellows done
before they came out here."

He had expressed a curiosity which is now and then to be met with on
the prairie, but Sager, the charitable, grinned.

"Oh," he said, "I guess quite a few done no more than make their folks
on the other side tired of them, and that's why they sent them out to
you. Some of them get paid so much on condition that they don't come
back again. Say"--and he glanced towards the dancers--"Dick
Creighton's Sally seems quite stuck on Hawtrey by the way she's looking
at him."

Stukely assented. He was a somewhat primitive person, as was Sally
Creighton, for that matter, and he did not suppose she would have been
greatly offended had she overheard his observations.

"Well," he said, "I've thought that, too. If she wants him she'll get
him. She's a smart girl--Sally."

There were not many women present--perhaps one to every two of the men,
which was, however, rather a large proportion in that country, and none
of their garments were p