tting toil from which one
desisted only long enough to eat and sleep, and he was one of the
workers. Mrs. Gladwyne had been right--it was no place for this
delicately nurtured girl with her sensitiveness and artistic faculties.

"For those who can live as you live, it would be hard to find the equal
of this part of England," he said. "But I'm not sure you can keep it very
much longer as it is."

"Why?" she asked.

It was a relief to talk of matters of minor interest, for he dare not let
his thoughts dwell too much on the subject that was nearest them.

"Well," he replied, "there's the economic pressure, for one thing; the
growth of your cities; the demand for food. I see land lying almost idle
that could be made productive at a very moderate outlay. Our people often
give nearly as much as it's worth here for no better soil."

"But how do they make it pay?"

He laughed.

"The secret is that they expect very little--enough to eat, a shack they
build with their own hands to sleep in--and they're willing to work
sixteen hours out of the twenty-four."

"They can't do so in winter."

"The hours are shorter, but where the winter's hardest--on the open
middle prairie--the work's more severe. There the little man spends a
good deal of his time hauling home stove-wood or building-logs for new
stables or barns. He has often to drive several leagues with the
thermometer well below zero before he can find a bluff with large enough
trees. In the Pacific Slope forests, where it's warmer, work goes on much
as usual. The bush rancher spends his days chopping big trees in the rain
and his nights making odd things--furniture, wagon-poles, new doors for
his outbuildings. What you would call necessary leisure is unknown."

This was not exaggeration; but he spoke of it from a desire to support
his resolution by emphasizing the sternest aspects of western life. It
had others more alluring: there were men who dwelt more or less at their
ease; but they were by no means numerous, and the toilers--in city
office, lonely bush, or sawmill--were consumed by or driven into a
feverish activity. As one of them, it was his manifest duty to leave this
English girl in her sheltered surroundings. There was, however, one
remote but alluring possibility that made this a little easier--he might,
after all, win enough to surround her with some luxury and cultured
friends in one of the cities of the Pacific coast. Though they differed
from those in