. The Exchange has samplers down on the trucks at the
railway sidings day and night. During the whole twenty-four hours of
the day there are men digging specially constructed scoops that take
samples from every level of the car-loads of grain, putting the grain
into the small bags, and sending them along to the classification
department.

So swiftly is the work done that the train can pull into the immense
range of special yards, such as those the C.P.R. have constructed for
the accommodation of grain, change its engine and crew, and by the time
the change is effected, samples of all the trucks have been taken, and
the train can go on to the great elevators and mills at Fort William
and Port Arthur.

This rapid handling in no way affects the efficiency of the Exchange.
Its decisions are so sure that the grading of the wheat is only
disputed about forty times in the year. This is astonishing when one
realizes the enormous number of samples judged.

In the same way, and in spite of the apparent confusion about the pit
where they take place, the records of the transactions are so exact
that only about once in five thousand is such a record queried.

The Prince was immensely interested in all the practical details of
working which make this handling of grain a living and dramatic thing,
showing, as usual, that active curiosity for workaday facts that is
essential to the make-up of the moderns.

His directness and accessibility made friends for him with these
hard-headed business men as readily as it had made friends with
soldiers and with the mass of people. Winnipeg had already exerted its
Western faculty for affectionate epithets. He had already been dubbed
a "Fine Kiddo," and it was commonplace to hear people say of him, "He's
a regular feller, he'll do." They said these things again in the
Exchange, declaring emphatically he was "sure, a manly-looking chap."

As he left the Exchange the members switched the chaos of the pit into
shouts of a more hearty and powerful volume, and to listen to a crowd
of such fully-seasoned lungs doing their utmost in the confined space
of a building is an awe-inspiring and terrific experience.

The friendliness here was but a "classified sample"--if the Winnipeg
Exchange will permit that expression--of the friendliness in bulk he
found all over Canada, and which he found in the great West, upon which
he was now entering.

CHAPTER XIV

THE FRINGE OF THE GREAT NORTHWES