"I never knew he had it," she said. "Perhaps he got it from his sister." She paused, and then, as though impelled to make the fact quite clear, added, "I certainly never gave it him."

Wyllard smiled gravely, for he recognised that while she was clearly grieved to hear of his death, she could have had no particular tenderness for the unfortunate lad. He was, however, a little off his guard just then.

"Well," he said, "perhaps he took it in the first place for the mere beauty of it, and it afterwards became a companion—something that connected him with the Old Country. It appealed in one of those ways to me."

Again she flashed a sharp glance at him, but he went on unheeding:

"When I found it I meant to keep it merely as a clue, and so that it could be given up to his relatives some day," he added. "Then I fell into the habit of looking at it in my lonely camp in the bush at night, and when I sat beside the stove while the snow lay deep upon the prairie. There was something in your eyes that seemed to encourage me."

"To encourage you?"

"Yes," Wyllard assented gravely; "I think that expresses it. When I camped in the bush of the Pacific slope we were either out on the gold trail—and we generally came back ragged and unsuccessful after spending several months' wages which we could badly spare—or I was going from one wooden town to another without a dollar in my pocket and wondering, how I was to obtain one when I got there. For a time it wasn't much more cheerful on the prairie: twice in succession the harvest failed. Perhaps Lance Radcliffe felt as I did."

The girl cut him short. "Why didn't you mention the photograph at once?"

Wyllard smiled at her. "Oh," he said, "I didn't want to be precipitate—your folks don't seem to like that; I've met them out West. I think"—and he seemed to consider—"I wanted to make sure you wouldn't be repelled by what might look like Colonial brusquerie. You see, you have been over snow-barred divides and through great shadowy forests with me. We've camped among the boulders by lonely lakes, and gone down frothing rapids. I felt—I can't tell you why—that I was bound to meet you some day."

It was, perhaps, a trifle startling, but the girl now showed neither astonishment nor resentment. She felt curiously certain that this stranger was not posing or speaking for effect. It did not occur to him that he might have gone too far, and for a space he leaned against the gate, saying nothing, while she looked at him with what he thought of as her gracious English calm.

Pale sunshine fell upon them, though the larches beside the road were rustling beneath a little cold wind, and the song of the river came up brokenly out of the valley. An odour of fresh grass floated about them, and the dry, cold smell of the English spring was in the air. Across the valley dim ghosts of hills lighted by evanescent gleams rose out of the east wind greyness with shadowy grandeur.

Then Wyllard seemed to rouse himself. "I wonder if I ought to write Major Radcliffe and tell him what my object is before I call?" he said. "It would make the thing a little easier."

The girl rose. "Yes," she assented, "that would, perhaps, be wiser." Then she glanced at the photograph which was still in her hand. "It has served its purpose. I scarcely think it would be of any great interest to Major Radcliffe."

She saw his face change as she made it evident that she did not mean to give the portrait back to him; but there was, at least, one excellent reason why she would not have her picture in a strange man's hands.

"Thank you," she said, "for the story. I am glad we have met; but I'm afraid I have already kept my friends waiting for me."

Then she turned away, and it occurred to Wyllard that he had made a very indifferent use of the opportunity, since she had neither asked his name nor told him hers. It was, however, evident that he could not well run after her and demand it, and he decided that he could in all probability obtain it from Major Radcliffe when he called upon him. Still, he regretted his lack of adroitness as he walked back to the inn, where he wrote two letters when he had consulted a map and his landlady. Dufton Holme, he discovered, was a small village within a mile or two of the Grange where, as Miss Rawlinson had informed him, Agatha Ismay was then staying. One letter was addressed to her, and he formally asked permission to call upon her with a message from Gregory Hawtrey. The other was to Major Radcliffe, and in both he said that an answer would reach him at the inn which his landlady had informed him was to be found not far from either of the houses he proposed to visit.

He set out on foot next morning, and after climbing a steep pass followed a winding track across a waste of empty moor until he struck a smooth white road, which led past a rock-girt lake and into a deep valley. It was six o'clock when he started, and three when he reached the inn, where he found an answer to one of his letters awaiting him. It was from Major Radcliffe, who desired an interview with him as soon as possible.

Within an hour he was on his way to the Major's house, where a grey-haired man, whose yellow skin suggested long exposure to a tropical sun, and a little withered lady were waiting for him. They received him graciously, but there was an indefinite something in their manner and bearing which Wyllard, who had read a good deal, recognised, though he had never been brought into actual contact with it until then. He felt that he could not have expected to come across such people anywhere but in England, unless it was at the headquarters of a British battalion in India.

He told his story tersely, softening unpleasant details, and making little of what he had done, and the grey-haired man listened gravely with an unmoved face, though a trace of moisture crept into the little lady's eyes. There was silence for a moment or two when he had finished, and then Major Radcliffe, whose manner was very quiet, turned to him.

"You have laid me under an obligation which I could never wipe out, even if I wished it," he said. "It was my only son you buried out there in Canada."

He broke off for a moment, and his quietness was more marked than ever when he went on again.

"As you have no doubt surmised, we quarrelled," he said. "He was extravagant and careless—at least I thought that then—but now it seems to me that I was unduly hard on him. His mother"—and he turned to the little lady with an inclination that pleased Wyllard curiously—"was sure of it at the time. In any case, I took the wrong way, and he went out to Canada. I made that, at least, easy for him—and I have been sorry ever since."

He paused again with a little expressive gesture. "It seems due to him, and you, that I should tell you this. When no word reached us I had inquiries made, through a banker he called upon, who, discovering that he had registered at a hotel as Pattinson, at length traced him to a British Columbian silver mine. He had, however, left it shortly before my correspondent learned that he had been employed there, and all the latter could tell me was that an unknown prospector had nursed him until he died."

Wyllard, who said nothing, took out a watch and the clasp of a workman's belt from his pocket, and laid them gently on Mrs. Radcliffe's knee. He saw her eyes fill, and turned his head away.

"I feel that you may blame me for not writing sooner, but it was only a very little while ago that I was able to trace you, and then it was only by a very curious—coincidence," he said presently.

This was the most apposite word that occurred to him, for he did not consider it advisable to mention the photograph. It seemed to him that the girl would not like it. Nor, though he was greatly tempted, did he care to make inquiries concerning her just then. In another moment or two the Major spoke again.

"If I can make your stay here pleasanter in any way I should be delighted," he said. "If you will take up your quarters with us I will send down to the inn for your things."

Wyllard excused himself, but when the lady urged him at least to dine with them on the following evening he appeared to consider.

"The one difficulty is that I don't know yet whether I shall be engaged then," he explained. "As it happens, I've a message for Miss Ismay, and I wrote offering to call upon her at any convenient hour. So far I have heard nothing from her."

"She's away," Mrs. Radcliffe informed him. "They have probably sent your letter on to her. I had a note from her yesterday, however, and expect her here to-morrow. You have met some friends of hers in Canada?"

"Gregory Hawtrey," said Wyllard. "I have promised to call upon his people, too."

He saw Major Radcliffe glance at his wife, and the faint gleam in the latter's eyes.

"Well," she said, "if you will promise to come I will send word over to Agatha."

Wyllard agreed to this, and went away a few minutes later. He noticed the tact and consideration with which his new friends had refrained from expressing any sign of the curiosity he fancied they naturally felt, for Mrs. Radcliffe's face had suggested that she understood the situation. The latter was, however, commencing to appear a little more difficult to him. It was, it seemed, his task to explain to a girl brought up among such people delicately what she must be prepared to face as a farmer's wife in Western Canada. He was not sure that this would be easy in itself, but it was rendered much more difficult by the fact that Hawtrey would expect him to accomplish it without unduly daunting her. Her letter had certainly suggested courage, but, after all, it was as he reflected the courage of ignorance, and he had now some notion of the life of ease and refinement her English friends led. He was commencing to feel sorry for Agatha Ismay.



CHAPTER VII.

AGATHA DOES NOT FLINCH.

Next evening Wyllard sat with Mrs. Radcliffe in a big low-ceilinged room at Garside Scar, looking about him with quiet interest. He had now and then spent a day or two in huge Western hotels, but he had never seen anything quite like that room. The sheer physical comfort of its arrangements appealed to him, but after all he was not one who had ever studied his bodily ease very much, and what he regarded as the chaste refinement of its adornment had a deeper effect. Though he had lived for the most part in the bush and on the prairie, he had been endued with or had somehow acquired an artistic susceptibility.

The furniture was old, and perhaps a trifle shabby, but it was, as he noticed, of beautiful design. Curtains, carpets, tinted walls, formed, it seemed to him, a harmony of soft colouring, and there were scattered here and there dainty works of art, little statuettes from Italy, and wonderful Indian ivory and silver work. Then a row of low, stone-ribbed windows pierced the front of the room, and looking out he saw the trim garden lying in the warm evening light. Immediately beneath the windows ran a broad gravelled terrace, which was apparently raked smooth every day, with a row of urns in which hyacinths bloomed upon its pillared wall. From the middle of it a wide stairway led down to the wonderful velvet lawn, which was dotted with clumps of cupressus with golden gleams in it, and beyond that clipped yews rose smooth and solid as a rampart of stone.

It all impressed him curiously—the order and beauty of it, the signs of loving care. It gave him a key, he fancied, to the lives the cultured English led, for there was no sign of strain and fret and stress and hurry here. Everything, it seemed, went smoothly with rhythmic regularity, and though it is possible that a good many Englishmen would have regarded Garside Scar as a very second-rate country house, and seen in Major Radcliffe and his wife nothing more than a somewhat prosy old soldier and a withered lady, old-fashioned in her dress and views, this Westerner had what was, perhaps, a clearer vision. He could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some minute point of honour, and it seemed to him that his lady might have stepped down from some old picture with all the graces of an earlier age and the smell of the English lavender upon her garments. Then he remembered that, after all, Englishwomen lived somewhat coarsely in the Georgian days, and that he had met hard-handed men grimed with dust and sweat who could also stand fast by a point of honour in Western Canada. Though the latter fact did not occur to him, he had, for that matter, done it more than once himself.

Then he recalled his wandering thoughts as his hostess smiled at him.

"You are interested in all you see?" she asked frankly.

"Yes, madam," said Wyllard—and the word rose instinctively to his lips, for it seemed to him the only fitting way to address her. "In fact, I'd like to spend some hours here and look at everything. I'd begin at the pictures and work right round."

His companion's smile suggested that she was not displeased.

"But you have been in London?"

"I have," said Wyllard. "I had one or two letters to folks there from big flour shippers, and they did all they could to entertain me. Still, their places were different; they hadn't the—charm—of yours. It's something which I think could only exist in these still valleys and in cathedral closes. It strikes me more because it is something I've never been accustomed to."

The lady was interested, and fancied that she partly understood his attitude.

"Your life is necessarily different from ours," she suggested.

Wyllard smiled. "It's so different that you couldn't realise it. It's all strain and effort from early sunrise until after dusk at night. Bodily strain of aching muscles, and mental stress in adverse seasons. We scarcely think of comfort, and never dream of artistic luxury. The dollars we raise are sunk again in seed and extra teams and ploughs."

"After all, a good many people are driven rather hard by the love of money here."

"No," said Wyllard gravely, "that's not it exactly. At least, not with most of us. It's rather the pride of wresting another quarter-section from the prairie, taking—our own—by labour, breaking the wilderness. You"—and he added this as though to explain that he could hardly expect her to quite grasp his views—"have never been out West?"

His hostess laughed. "I have stayed down in the plains through the hot season in stifling cantonments, and I have once or twice been in Indian cholera camps. Besides, I have seen my husband sitting, haggard and worn with fever, in his saddle holding back a clamorous crowd that surged about him half-mad with religious fury. There were Hindus and Moslems to be kept from flying at each others' throats, and at a tactless word or sign of wavering either party would have pulled him down."

"You'll have to forgive me, madam"—and Wyllard's gesture was deprecatory, though his eyes twinkled. "The notion that we're the only ones who really work, or, at least, do anything worth while, is rather a favourite one out West. No doubt it's a delusion. I should have known that all of us are born like that."

His hostess forgave him readily, if only for the "all of us," which struck her as especially fortunate. A few minutes later there were voices in the hall, and then the door opened, and the girl he had met at the stepping stones came in. She was dressed differently, in trailing garments which, it seemed to him, became her wonderfully, and he noticed now the shapely delicacy of her hands and the fine, ivory pallor of her skin. Then his hostess turned to him.

"I had better present you formally to Miss Ismay," she said. "Agatha, this is Mr. Wyllard, who I understand has brought you a message from Canada."

There was no doubt that Wyllard was blankly astonished, and for a moment the girl was clearly startled, too.

"You!" was all she said.

[Illustration: "'You!' was all she said."

She, however, held her hand out before she turned to speak to Mrs. Radcliffe, but it was a slight relief to both when somebody announced that dinner was ready.

Wyllard sat next to his hostess, and was not sorry that he was only called upon to take part in casual general conversation, though he fancied once or twice that Miss Ismay was unobtrusively studying him. It was also nearly an hour after the meal was over when Mrs. Radcliffe left them alone in her little drawing-room.

"You have, no doubt, a good deal to talk about, and you needn't join us until you're ready," she said. "The Major always reads the London papers after dinner."

Agatha sat down in a low chair near the hearth, and it first of all occurred to Wyllard, who took a place opposite her, that she was, although of full stature, too delicate and dainty, too over-cultivated, in fact, to marry Hawtrey. This was rather curious, since he had hitherto regarded his comrade as a typical, well-educated Englishman; but it now seemed to him that there was a certain streak of coarseness in Gregory. The man, it suddenly flashed upon him, was self-indulgent, and his careless ease of manner, which he had once liked, was rather too much in evidence. In a few moments, however, Agatha turned to him.

"I understand that Gregory is recovering rapidly?" she said.

Wyllard assured her that this was the case, and Agatha said quietly, "He wants me to go out to him."

Wyllard felt that if a girl of this kind had promised to marry him he would not have sent for her but have come in person, if he had been compelled to pledge his last possessions, or crawl to the tideway on his hands and knees. For all that, he was ready to defend his friend.

"I'm afraid it's necessary," he said. "Gregory was quite unfit for such a journey when I left, and he must be ready to commence the season's campaign with the first of the spring. Our summer is short, you see, and with our one-crop farming it's indispensable to get the seed in early: in fact, he will be badly behind as it is."

This was not particularly tactful since, without intending it, he made it evident that he felt his comrade had been to some extent remiss; but Agatha smiled.

"Oh," she said, "I understand! You needn't labour the excuse. But doesn't the same thing apply to you?"

"It certainly did. Now, however, things have become a little easier. My holding's larger than Gregory's, and I have a foreman who can look after it for me."

"Gregory said that you were a great friend of his."

Wyllard seized this opportunity. "He is a great friend of mine, and I like to think it means the same thing. In fact, it's reasonably certain that he saved my life for me."

"Ah!" said Agatha; "that is a thing he didn't mention. How did it come about?"

Wyllard was glad to tell the story: he was anxious to say all he honestly could in Hawtrey's favour.

"We were at work on a railroad trestle—a towering wooden bridge, in British Columbia. It stretched across a deep ravine with great boulders and a stream in the bottom of it, and we stood high up on a staging close beneath the metals. A fast freight, a huge general produce train, came down the track, with one of the new big locomotives hauling it, and when the cars went banging by above us we could hardly hold on to the bridge. Still, the construction foreman was a hustler, and we had to get the spikes in. I was swinging the hammer when I felt the plank beneath me slip. The train, it seems, had jarred the bolt we had our lashings round loose. For a moment I felt that I was going down into the gorge, and then Gregory leaned out and grabbed me. He had only one free hand to do it with, and when he felt my weight one foot swung out from the stringer he had sprung to. It seemed certain that I would pull him with me, too. We hung like that for a space—I don't quite know how long."

He paused for a moment, apparently feeling the stress of it again, and there was a faint thrill in his voice when he went on.

"It was then," he said, "I knew just what kind of man Gregory Hawtrey was. Anybody else would have let me go; but he held on. Then I got my hand on some of the framing, and he swung me on to the stringer."

He saw the gleam in Agatha's eyes. "Oh!" she said, "that is just what he must have done. He was like that always—impulsive, splendidly generous."

Wyllard felt that he had succeeded, though he knew that there were men on the prairie who called his comrade slackly careless, instead of impulsive. Agatha, however, spoke again.

"But Gregory wasn't a carpenter," she said.

"In those days when dollars were scanty we had to be whatever we could. There wasn't much specialisation of handicrafts out there then. The farmer whose crop was ruined took up the railroad shovel, or borrowed a saw from somebody and set about building houses, or anything else that was wanted."

"Of course!" said Agatha. "Besides, he was always wonderfully quick. He could learn any game by just watching it awhile. He did all he undertook brilliantly."

It occurred to Wyllard that Gregory had, at least, made no great success of farming; but that occupation, as practised on the prairie, demands a good deal more than quickness and what some call brilliancy from the man who undertakes it. He must, as they say out there, possess the capacity for staying with it; the grim courage to hold fast the tighter under each crushing blow, when his teams die, or the grain shrivels under the harvest frost, or ragged ice hurtling before a roaring blast does the reaping. It was, however, evident that this girl had an unquestioning faith in Gregory Hawtrey, and once more Wyllard felt compassionate towards her. He wondered if she would have retained it had the man spent those four years in England instead of Canada: for it was clear from the contrast between her and her picture that she had grown in many ways since she had given her promise to her lover. He had said what he could in Hawtrey's favour, but now he felt that something was due to the girl.

"Gregory told me to explain what things are like out there," he said. "I think it is because they are so different from what you are accustomed to that he has waited as long as he has done. He wanted to make them as easy as possible for you, and now he would like you to realise what is before you."

He was almost astonished at the girl's comprehension, for she glanced round the luxurious room with a faint smile.

"You look on me as part of—this? I mean it seems to you that I fit in with my surroundings, and would only be in harmony with them?"

"Yes," said Wyllard gravely, "I think you fit in with them excellently."

Agatha laughed. "Well," she said, "I was once, to a certain extent, accustomed to something similar; though, after all, one could hardly compare the Grange with Garside Scar. Still, that was some time ago, and I have earned my living for several years now. That counts for something, doesn't it?"

She glanced down at her dress. "For instance, this is the result of a good deal of self-denial, though the cost of it was partly worked off in music lessons, and the stuff was almost the cheapest I could get. I sang at concerts—and it was part of my stock-in-trade. After all, why should you think me only capable of living in luxury?"

"I didn't quite go that far."

She laughed again. "Then is Canada such a very dreadful place? I have heard of other Englishwomen going out there as farmers' wives. Do they all live unhappily?"

"No," said Wyllard; "at least, they show no sign of it, and some of them and the city-born Canadians are, I think, the salt of this earth. Probably it's easy to be calm and gracious in such a place as this—though I naturally don't know since I've never tried it—but when a woman who toils from sunrise to sunset most of the year keeps her sweetness and serenity, it's a very different and much finer thing. But I'll try to answer the other question. The prairie isn't dreadful; it's a land of sunshine and clear skies. Heat and cold—and we have them both—don't worry one there. There's optimism in the crystal air. It's not beautiful like these valleys, but it has its beauty. It's vast and silent, and, though our homesteads are crude and new, once you pass the breaking it's primevally old. That gets hold of one somehow. It's wonderful after sunset in the early spring, when the little cold wind's like wine, and it runs white to the horizon with the smoky red on the rim of it melting into transcendental green. When the wheat rolls across the foreground in ochre and burnished copper waves, it's more wonderful still. One sees the fulfilment of the promise, and takes courage."

"Then," said Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of a capacity for such flights as this, "what is there to shrink from?"

"In the case of a small farmer's wife, the constant, never-slackening strain. There's no hired assistance; she must clean the house, and wash, and cook—though it's not unusual for the men to wash the plates."

The girl was evidently not much impressed, for she laughed.

"Does Gregory wash the plates?" she asked.

Wyllard's eyes twinkled. "When Sproatly won't," he said. "Still, in a general way they only do it once a week."

"Ah," said Agatha, "I can imagine Gregory hating it. As a matter of fact, I like him for it."

"Then she must bake, and mend her husband's clothes. Indeed, it's not unusual for her to mend for the hired man too. Besides that, there are always odds and ends of tasks, but the time when you feel the strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff beneath the robes."

"Still," said Agatha, "that does not last."

The man understood her. "Oh!" he said, "one makes progress—that is, if one can stand the strain—but, as the one way of doing it is to sow for a larger harvest and break fresh sod every year, there can be no slackening down in the meanwhile. Every dollar must be guarded and ploughed into the soil again."

He broke off, feeling that he had done all that could reasonably be expected of him, and Agatha asked one question.

"A woman who didn't slacken could make the struggle easier for the man?"

"Yes," said Wyllard simply, "in every way. Still, she would have a great deal to bear."

Agatha's face softened. "Ah," she said, "she would not grudge the effort in the case of one she loved."

Then she looked up again with a smile. "I wonder," she added, "if you really thought I should flinch."

"When I first heard of it, I thought it quite likely. Then when I read your letter my doubts vanished."

He saw he had not been judicious, for there was, for the first time, a trace of hardness in the girl's expression.

"He showed you that?" she asked.

"One small part of it," said Wyllard. "I want to say that when I saw this house, and how you seemed fitted to it, my misgivings about Gregory's decision troubled me once more. Now"—and he made a little impressive gesture—"they have vanished altogether, and they'll never come back again."

He spoke as he felt. This girl, he fancied, would feel the strain; but it seemed to him that she had strength enough to bear it cheerfully. In spite of her daintiness, she was one who, in time of stress, could be depended on. He often remembered afterwards how they had sat together in the little, luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back, with the soft light on her delicately tinted face, in her big, low chair. In the meanwhile she said nothing, and by and bye he looked up at her.

"It's curious that I had your photograph ever so long, and never thought of showing it Gregory," he said.

Agatha smiled. "I suppose it is," she admitted. "After all, except that it might have been a relief to Major Radcliffe if he had met you sooner, the fact that you didn't show it Gregory doesn't seem of any particular consequence."

Wyllard was not quite sure of this. He had thought about this girl often, and had certainly been conscious of a curious thrill of satisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones a few days earlier. That feeling had also suddenly disappeared when he had learned that she was his comrade's promised wife. He had, however, during the last hour or two made up his mind to think no more of her.

"Well," he said, "the next thing is to arrange for Mrs. Hastings to meet you in London, or, perhaps, at the Grange. Her husband is a Canadian, a man of education, who has quite a large homestead not far from Gregory's. Her folks are people of station in Montreal, and I feel sure that you'll like her."

They decided that he was to ask Mrs. Hastings to stay a few days at the Grange, and then he looked at the girl somewhat diffidently.

"She suggests going in a fortnight," he said.

Agatha smiled at him. "Then," she said, "I must not keep her waiting."

She rose, and they went back together to join their hostess.



CHAPTER VIII.

THE TRAVELLING COMPANION.

A grey haze, thickened by the smoke of the city, drove out across the water when the Scarrowmania lay in the Mersey, with her cable hove short, and the last of the flood tide gurgling against her bows. A trumpeting blast of steam swept high aloft from beside her squat funnel, and the splash of the slowly turning paddles of the couple of steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them led to the Scarrowmania's forward deck, and a stream of frowsy humanity that had just been released from overpacked emigrant boarding-houses poured up it. There were apparently representatives of all peoples and languages among that unkempt horde—Britons, Scandinavians, Teutons, Italians, Russians, Poles—and they moved on in forlorn apathy, like cattle driven to the slaughter. One wondered, from the look of them, how they had raised their passage money, and how many years' bitter self-denial it had cost them to provide for their transit to the land of promise.

At the head of the gangway stood the steamboat doctors, for the Scarrowmania was taking out an unusual number of passengers, and there were two of them. They were immaculate in blue uniform, and looked very clean and English by contrast with the mass of frowsy aliens. Beside them stood another official, presumably acting on behalf of the Dominion Government, though there were few restrictions imposed upon Canadian immigration then, nor for that matter did anybody trouble much about the comfort of the steerage passengers. Though they have altered all that latterly, each steamer, in a general way, carried as many as she could hold.

As the stream poured out of the gangway, the doctor glanced at each new comer's face, and then seizing him by the wrist uncovered it. Since this took him two or three seconds, one could have fancied that he either possessed peculiar powers, or that the test was a somewhat inefficient one. Then he looked at the official, who made a sign, and the man moved on.

In the meanwhile a group of first-class passengers leaning on the thwart-ship rails close by looked on, with complacent satisfaction with the fact that they were born in a different station, or half-contemptuous pity, as their temperament varied. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. The latter noticed that Wyllard sat on a hatch forward near the head of the gangway, with a pipe in his hand. She drew Mrs. Hastings's attention to it.

"Whatever is Mr. Wyllard doing there?" she asked.

Her companion, who was wrapped in furs, for there was a sting in the east wind, smiled at her.

"That," she said, "is more than I can tell you; but Harry Wyllard seems to find an interest in what other folks would consider most unpromising things, and, what's more to the purpose, he's rather addicted to taking a hand in. It's a habit that costs him something now and then."

Agatha asked nothing further. She was interested in Wyllard, but she was at the moment more interested in the faces of those who swarmed on board. She wondered what they had endured in the lands that had cast them out, and what they might still have to bear. It seemed to her that the murmur of their harsh voices went up in a great protest, an inarticulate cry of sorrow. While she looked on the doctor held back a long-haired man who was following a haggard woman shuffling in broken boots. He drew him aside, and when, after he had apparently consulted with the other official, two seamen hustled the man towards a second gangway that led to the tug, the woman raised a wild, despairing cry. It, however, seemed that she blocked the passage, and a quartermaster drove her, expostulating in an agony of terror, forward among the rest. Nobody appeared concerned about this alien's tragedy, except one man, but Agatha was not astonished when Wyllard rose and quietly laid his hand upon the official's shoulder.

A parley appeared to follow, somebody gave an order, and when the alien was led back again the woman's cries subsided. Agatha looked at her companion, and once more a smile crept into Mrs. Hastings's eyes.

"Yes," she said, "I guessed he would feel he had to stand in. That's a man who can't see any one in trouble." Then she added, with a little whimsical sigh, "He had a bonanza harvest last fall, any way."

They moved aft soon afterwards, and the Scarrowmania was smoothly sliding seawards with the first of the ebb when Agatha met Wyllard. He glanced at the Lancashire sandhills, which were fading into a pale ochre gleam amidst the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that moved back to them ahead.

"You're off at last! The sad grey weather is dropping fast astern," he said. "Out yonder, the skies are clear."

"Thank you," said Agatha, "I'm to apply that as I like? As a matter of fact, however, our days weren't always grey. But what was the trouble when those steerage people came on board?"

Wyllard's manner, as she noticed, was free alike from the complacent self-satisfaction which occasionally characterises the philanthropist, and any affectation of diffidence.

"Well," he said, "there was something wrong with that woman's husband. Nothing infectious, I believe, but they didn't seem to consider him a desirable citizen. They make a warning example of somebody with a physical infirmity now and then. The man, they decided, must be put ashore again. In the meanwhile, somebody else had hustled the woman forward, and it almost looked as if they'd have taken her on without him. The tug was almost ready to cast off."

"How dreadful!" said Agatha. "But what did you do?"

"Merely promised to guarantee the cost of his passage back if they'd refer his case to the immigration people at the other end. It's scarcely likely that they'll make trouble. As a rule, they only throw folks who're certain to become a charge on the community."

"But if he really had any infirmity, mightn't it lead to that?"

"No," said Wyllard drily. "I would engage to give him a fair start if it was necessary. You wouldn't have had that woman landed in Montreal, helpless and alone, while the man was sent back again to starve in Poland?"

He saw a curious liquid gleam in Agatha's eyes, and added in a deprecating manner, "You see, I've now and then limped without a dollar into a British Columbian mining town."

The girl was a little stirred; but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was somewhat inopportune.

"Miss Rawlinson, who had only a second-class ticket, insists upon being told how it is that she has been transferred to the saloon."

Wyllard's eyes twinkled, but she noticed that he was wholly free from embarrassment, which was not quite the case with her.

"Well," he said, "that's a matter I must leave you to handle. Anyway, she can't go second-class now. One or two of the steerage exchanged when they saw their quarters, for which I don't blame them, and they've filled every room right up."

"You haven't answered the question."

Wyllard waved his hand. "Miss Rawlinson is your bridesmaid, and I'm Gregory's best man. It seems to me it's my business to do everything just as he'd like it done."

He left her a moment later, and, though she did not know how she was to explain the matter to Miss Rawlinson, who was of an independent disposition, it occurred to her that he, at least, had found a rather graceful way out of the difficulty. The more she saw of this Western farmer, the more she liked him.

It was after dinner when she next met him, and, for the wind had changed, the Scarrowmania was steaming head-on into a glorious north-west breeze. The shrouds sang; chain-guy, and stanchion, and whatever caught the wind, set up a deep-toned throbbing; and ranks of little, white-topped seas rolled out of the night ahead. A half-moon hung low above them, blurred now and then by wisps of flying cloud, and odd spouts of spray that gleamed in the silvery light leapt up about the dipping bows. Wyllard was leaning on the rails, with a cigar in his hand, when she stopped beside him, and she glanced towards the lighted windows of the smoke-room not far away.

"How is it you are not in there?" she asked, for something to say.

"I was," said Wyllard. "It's rather full up, and it seemed they didn't want me. They're busy playing cards, and the stakes are rather high. In a general way, a steamboat's smoke-room is less of a men's lounge than a gambling club."

"And you object to cards?"

"Oh, no!" said Wyllard. "They merely make me tired, and when I feel I want some excitement for my dollars I get it another way. That one seems tame to me."

"Which is the one you like?"

The man laughed. "There are a good many that appeal to me. Once it was collecting sealskins off other people's beaches, and there was zest enough in that, in view of the probability of the dory turning over, or a gunboat dropping on to you. Then there was a good deal of very genuine excitement to be got out of placer-mining in British Columbia, especially when there was frost in the ranges, and you had to thaw out your giant-powder. Shallow alluvial workings have a way of caving in when you least expect it of them. After all, however, I think I like the prairie farming best."

"Is that exciting?"

"Yes," said Wyllard, "if you do it in one way. The gold's there—that you're sure of—piled up by nature during I don't know how many thousand years, but you have to stake high if you want to get much of it out. One needs costly labour, teams—no end of them—breakers, and big gang-plough. The farmer who has nerve enough drills his last dollar into the soil in spring, but if he means to succeed it costs him more than that. He must give the sweat of his tensest effort, the uttermost toil of his body—all, in fact, that has been given him. Then he must shut his eyes tight to the hazards against him, or, and we can't all do that, look at them without wavering—the drought, the hail, the harvest frost. If his teams fall sick, or the season goes against him, he must work double tides. Still, it now and then happens that things go right, and the red wheat rolls ripe right back across the prairie. I don't know that any man could want a keener thrill than the one you feel when you drive the binders in!"

Agatha had imagination, and she could realise something of the toil, the hazard, and the clean thrill of that victory.

"You have felt it often?" she said.

"Twice we helped to fill a big elevator up," said Wyllard quietly. "Still, I've been very near defeat."

The girl looked at him thoughtfully. It seemed that he possessed the power of acquisition, as well as a wide generosity that came into play when by strenuous effort success had been attained, which, so far as her experience went, were things that did not invariably accompany each other.

"And when the harvest comes up to your expectations, you give your dollars away," she said.

Wyllard laughed. "You shouldn't deduce too much from a single instance. Besides, that Pole's case hasn't cost me anything yet."

Mrs. Hastings joined them soon afterwards, and when Wyllard strolled away they spent some time leaning on the rails, and looking at the groups of shadowy figures on the forward deck. Their attitude was dejected and melancholy, but one cluster had gathered round a man who stood upon the hatch.

"Yes," he said, "you'll have no trouble. Canada's a great country for a poor man. He can sleep beneath a bush all summer, if he can't strike anything he likes."

This did not appear particularly encouraging, but the orator went on. "Been over for a trip to the Old Country, and I'm glad I'm going back again. Went out with nothing except a good discharge, and they made me sergeant of Canadian militia: After that armourer to a rifle club. There's places a blame long way behind the Dominion, and I struck one of them when we went with Roberts to Afghanistan. It was on that trip I and a Pathan rolled all down a hill, him trying to get his knife arm loose, and me jabbing his breastbone with my bayonet before I got it into him. I drove it through to the socket. You want to make quite sure of a Pathan."

Miss Rawlinson winced at this. "Oh," she said, "what a horrible man!"

"It was 'most as tough as when you went after Kiel, and stole the Scotchman's furs," suggested a Canadian.

The sergeant let the jibe go by. "Oh," he said, "Louis's bucks could shoot! We had them corralled in a pit, and every time one of the boys from Montreal broke cover he got a bullet into him. Did any of you ever hear a dropped man squeal?"

Agatha had heard sufficient, and she and her companions turned away, but as they moved across the deck the sergeant's voice followed her.

"Oh, yes," he said, "a grand country for a poolman. In the summer he can sleep beneath a bush."

For some reason this eulogy haunted Agatha when she retired to her room that night, and she wondered what awaited all those aliens in the new land, until it occurred to her that in some respects she was situated very much as they were. Then, for the first time, vague misgivings crept into her mind as she realised that she had cut herself adrift from all that she had been accustomed to. She felt suddenly depressed and lonely.

The depression had, however, almost vanished when, awakening rather early next morning, she went up on deck. A red sun hung over the tumbling seas that ran into the hazy east astern, and they rolled up in crested phalanxes that gleamed green and incandescent white ahead. The Scarrowmania plunged through them with a spray cloud flying about her dipping bows. She was a small, old-fashioned boat, and—for she had some 3,000 tons of railway iron in the bottom of her—she rolled distressfully. Her tall spars swayed athwart the vivid blueness of the morning sky, with the rhythmic regularity of a pendulum. The girl, however, was troubled by no sense of sickness; the keen north-wester that sang amidst the shrouds was wonderfully fresh; and when she met Wyllard crossing the saloon deck her cheeks were glowing from the sting of the spray, and her eyes were bright.

"Where have you been?" she asked.

"Down there," said Wyllard, pointing to the black opening in the fore-hatch that led to the steerage quarters. "An acquaintance of mine who's travelling forward asked me to take a look round, and I'm rather glad I did. When I've had a word with the chief steward I'm going back again."

"You have a friend down there?"

"I met the man for the first time yesterday, and rather took to him. One of your naval petty officers, forcibly retired, who can't live upon his pension, which is why he's going out to Canada. Now you'll excuse me."

"I wonder," said Agatha, "if you would let me go back with you?"

Wyllard looked at her rather curiously. "Well," he said, with an air of reflection, "you'll probably have to face a good deal that you don't like out yonder, and in one way you won't suffer from a little preparatory training. This, however, is not a case where sentimental pity is likely to relieve anybody. It's the real thing."

"I think I told you at Garside Scar that I haven't lived altogether in luxury!"

Wyllard, who made no comment, disappeared, and merely signed to her when he came back. They reached the ladder that led down into the gloom beneath the hatch, and Agatha hesitated when a sour and musty odour floated up to her, apparently out of the depths of the ship. She went down, however, and a few moments later stood, half-nauseated, gazing at the wildest scene of confusion her eyes had ever rested on. A little light came down the hatchway, and a smoky lamp or two swung above her head, but half the steerage deck was wrapped in shadow, and out of it there rose a many-voiced complaining. Flimsy, unplaned fittings had wrenched away, and men lay inert amidst the wreckage, with the remains of their last meal scattered about them. There were unwashed tin plates and pannikins, knives, and spoons, sliding up and down everywhere, and the deck was foul with slops of tea, and trodden bread, and marmalade. Now and then, in a wilder roll than usual, a frowsy, huddled object slid groaning down the slant of slimy planking, but in every case the helpless passenger was fully dressed. Steerage passengers, in fact, seldom take off their clothes. For one thing, all their worldly possessions are, as a rule, secreted among their attire, and for another, most of those hailing from beyond the Danube have never been accustomed to disrobing. In the midst of the confusion, two half-sick steward lads were making wholly ineffective efforts to straighten up the mess.

Then Agatha made out that a swarm of urchins were huddled together in a helpless mass, along one side of the horrible place. The sergeant was haranguing them, while another man, whom she supposed to be the petty officer, pulled them to their feet one by one. A good deal of his labour was wasted, for the Scarrowmania was rolling viciously, and as soon as he had got a few upright half of them collapsed again. Wyllard glanced towards them compassionately.

"I believe most of them have had nothing to eat since they came on board, though it isn't the company's fault," he said. "There's food enough served out, but before we picked the breeze up the men laid hands upon it first and half of it was wasted in the scramble. Then it seems they pitched these youngsters out of their berths."

"Don't they belong to anybody?" Agatha asked. "Is there no one to look after them?"

Wyllard smiled drily. "I believe one of your charitable institutions is sending them out, and there seems to be a clergyman, who has a curate and a lay assistant to help him, in charge. The assistant won't be available while this rolling lasts, and the other two very naturally prefer the saloon. In a way, that's comprehensible."

He left her, and proceeded to help the man who was dragging the urchins to their feet.

"Get up!" said the sergeant. "Get up, and fall in. Dress from the left, and number off, the ones who can stand."

It appeared that the lads had been drilled, for they scrambled into a line that bent and wavered each time the Scarrowmania's bows went down. After that, every other lad stepped forward at the word; the order was, "Left turn! March, and fall in on deck," and when they feebly clambered up the ladder Wyllard, who turned to Agatha, pointed to a door in a bulkhead of rough white wood.

"It should have been locked, but I fancy you can get in that way, and up through another hatch," he said. "The single women, and women with children are in yonder, and if you want to be useful there's a field for you. Get as many as possible up on deck."

Agatha left him, and her face was rather white when at last she came up into the open air, with about a dozen forlorn, draggled women trailing helplessly after her. The lads were now sitting down in a double line on deck, each with a tin plate and a steaming pannikin in front of him. There were, she fancied, at least a hundred of them, and a man with a bronzed face and the stamp of command upon him was giving them the order of the voyage. He was the one she had already noticed.

"You'll turn out at the whistle at half-past six," he said. "Shake mattresses, roll up blankets, and prepare for berth inspection. Then, at the next whistle, you'll fall in on deck stripped to the waist for washing parade. Fourth files numbering even are orderlies in charge of the plates and pannikins."

"And," said the sergeant, "any insubordination will be sharply dealt with. Now, when I was with Roberts in Afghanistan——"

Wyllard, who was standing close by, turned to Agatha.

"I don't think we'll be wanted. You have probably earned your breakfast."

They went back to the saloon deck, and the girl smiled when he looked at her inquiringly.

"It was a little horrible, but I hadn't so many to deal with," she said. "Do you, and those others expect to bring any order out of that chaos?"

"No," said Wyllard, "with a little encouragement they'll do it themselves—that is, the English, Danes, and Germans. One can trust them to evolve a workable system. It's in their nature. You can trace most things that tend to wholesome efficiency back to the old Teutonic leaven. By and bye, they'll proceed to put some pressure on the Latins, Slavs, and Jews."

"But is it your business to offer them that encouragement?"

Wyllard laughed. "Strictly speaking, it isn't in the least, but unnecessary chaos is rather hateful, and, any way, I'm not the only one who doesn't seem to like it. There's the petty officer, and our friend, the sergeant, who was with Roberts in Afghanistan."

Agatha said nothing further. She was a little surprised to feel that she was anxious to keep this man's good opinion, though that was not exactly why she had nerved herself for the venture into the single women's quarters. Leaving him out altogether, it seemed to her that there was something rather fine in the way the petty officer who was going out almost penniless to Canada, and the sergeant, had saddled themselves with the task of looking after those helpless lads. It was wholly unpaid labour, for which the men who preferred to remain within the safe limits of the saloon deck would presumably get the credit. After all, she decided there were, no doubt, men in every station who helped to keep the world sweet and clean, and she fancied that her companion was to be counted among them. He certainly differed in many ways from Gregory, but then Gregory was unapproachable. She did not remember that it was four years since she had seen the latter, and that her ideas had been a little unformed then.

During the evening, Mrs. Hastings, with whom he was evidently a favourite, happened to speak of Wyllard, and the efforts he was making in the steerage, and Agatha asked a question.

"Does he often undertake this kind of thing?"

"No," said Mrs. Hastings with a smile. "Any way, not on so large a scale. He's very far from setting up as a professional philanthropist, my dear. I don't ever remember him offering to point out their duty to other folks, and I don't think he goes about in search of an opportunity of benefiting humanity. Still, as I suggested, when an individual case thrusts itself beneath his nose, he generally—does what he can."

"I've heard people say that the individual method only perpetuates the trouble," said Agatha.

Her companion laughed. "That," she said, "is a subject I'm not well posted on, but it seems to me that if other folks only adopted Harry Wyllard's simple plan, there would be considerably less need for organised charity."



CHAPTER IX.

THE FOG.

During the next two days the Scarrowmania shouldered her way westwards through the big, white-topped combers that rolled down upon her under a lowering sky before a moderate gale. There were no luxurious, steam-propelled hotels in the Canadian trade just then, and, loaded deep with railway metal as she was, she slopped the green seas in everywhere, and rolled her streaming sides out almost to her bilge. She also shivered and rattled horribly when her single screw swung clear and the tri-compound engines ran away.

Wyllard went down to the steerage every now and then, and Agatha, who contrived to keep on her feet, not infrequently accompanied him. She was glad of his society, for Mrs. Hastings was seldom in evidence, and no efforts could get Miss Rawlinson out of her berth. The gale, however, blew itself out at length, and the evening after it moderated Agatha was sitting near the head of one fiddle-guarded table in the saloon waiting for dinner, which the stewards had still some difficulty in bringing in. Wyllard's place was next to hers, but he had not appeared yet, nor, as it happened, had the skipper, who, however, did not invariably dine with the passengers. One of the two doors which led from the foot of the branching companion stairway into either side of the saloon stood open, and presently she saw Wyllard standing just outside it.

He beckoned to the doctor, who sat at the foot of her table, and the latter merely raised his brows a trifle. He was a rather consequential person, and it was evident to the girl that he resented being summoned by a gesture. She did not think anybody else had noticed Wyllard, and she waited with some curiosity to see what he would do. He made a sign with a lifted hand, and she felt that the other would obey it, as, in fact, he did, though his manner was very far from conciliatory. By dint of listening closely, she could hear their conversation.

"I'm sorry," said Wyllard, "to trouble you just now, and I didn't come in because that would have set everybody wondering what you were wanted for; but one of those boys forward has been thrown down the ladder, and has cut his head."

"Ah!" said the doctor. "I'll see to him—after dinner."

"It's a nasty cut," said Wyllard. "He's losing a good deal of blood."

"Then I would suggest that you apply to my assistant."

"As I don't know where he is, I have come to you."

The doctor made a sign of impatience. "Well," he said, "you have told me, which I think is as far as your concern in the matter goes. I may add that I'm not accustomed to dictation on behalf of a steerage passenger."

Agatha saw Wyllard quietly slip between him and the entrance to the saloon, but she also saw, as neither of the others apparently did, the skipper appear a few paces behind them, and glance at them sharply. He was usually a silent man, at home in the ice and the clammy fog, but not a great acquisition in the saloon.

"Something wrong down forward, Mr. Wyllard? They were making a great row a little while ago," he said.

"Nothing very serious," said Wyllard. "One of the boys, however, has cut his head."

The skipper turned towards the doctor quietly; but Agatha fancied he had overheard part of the conversation.

"Don't you think you had better go—at once?" he said.

The doctor evidently did, for he disappeared, and Wyllard, who entered the saloon with the skipper, sat down at Agatha's side.

"How do you do it?" she asked.

"What?" asked Wyllard, attacking his dinner.

"We'll say persuade other folks to see things as you do."

"You evidently mean the skipper, and I suppose you heard something of what was going on. In this case, as it happens, I'm indebted to his prejudices. He's one of the old type—a seaman first of all—and what we call bluff, and you call bounce, has only one effect upon men of his kind. It gets their backs up."

Agatha fancied that he did not like it, either, but she changed the subject.

"There really was a row forward," she said. "What was the trouble over? You were, no doubt, somewhere near the scene of it."

Wyllard laughed. "I sat upon the steerage ladder, and am afraid I cheered the combatants on. It was really a glorious row. They hammered each other with tin plates, and some of them tried to use hoop-iron knives, which fortunately doubled up. They broke quite a few of the benches, and wrecked the mess table, but so far as I noticed the only one seriously hurt was a little chap who was quietly looking on."

"And you encouraged them?"

"I certainly did. It was a protest against dirt, disorder, and the slothfulness that's a plague to the community. Isn't physical force warranted when there's no other remedy?"

A grey-haired Canadian looked up. "Yes," he said, "I guess it is. The first man who pulled his gun in British Columbia was hanged right away, and they've scarcely had to make an example of another ever since, though it's quite a while ago."

He paused, and smiled approvingly. "A mess of any kind worries us, and we don't take long to straighten it out. Same feelings in the Germans and Scandinavians. I'll say that for them, any way. Your friends swept up the steerage?"

"They took the Slavs and Jews, and pitched them down the second hatch on to the orlop deck. Things will go smoothly now our crowd are on top."

"Your crowd?" said Agatha.

The Canadian nodded. "That's what he meant," he said. "There are two kinds of folks you and the rest of them are dumping into Canada. One's the kind that will get up and hustle, break land, and build new homes—log at first, frame and stone afterwards. They go on from a quarter-section and a team of oxen to the biggest farm they can handle, and every fresh furrow they cut enriches all of us. The other kind want to sit down in the dirt and take life easily, as they've always done. The dirt worries everybody else, and we've no use for them. By and bye our Legislature will have to wake up and stop them getting in."

He went on with his dinner after this, but his observations left Agatha thoughtful. She was, for one thing, beginning to understand one side of her companion's character. He, it seemed, stood for practical efficiency. There was a driving force in him that made for progress and order. It was apparently his mission to straighten things out. Some folks of his kind, she reflected, now and then made a good deal of avoidable trouble; but there was in this man, at least, a half-whimsical toleration, which rendered that an unlikely thing in his particular case. Besides, she had already recognised that she was in some respects fortunate in having such a man for her companion.

Her deck chair was always set out in the most sheltered and comfortable place. If there was anything to be seen, a cargo boat plunging along forecastle under, or a great iron sailing ship thrashing out to the westwards, with the spray clouds flying about her hove up weather side, he almost invariably appeared with a pair of powerful glasses. She was watched over, her wishes anticipated, and the man was seldom obtrusively present when she felt disposed to talk to somebody else. It struck her that she had thought a good deal about him during the last few days, and rather less than usual about Gregory, which was partly why she did not walk up and down the deck with him, as usual, after dinner that evening.

Three or four days later the Scarrowmania ran into the Bank fog, and burrowed through it with whistle hooting dolefully at regular intervals. Now and then an answering ringing of bells came out of the clammy vapour, and the half-seen shape of an anchored schooner loomed up, rolling wildly on grey slopes of sea. Once, too, a tiny dory, half filled with lines and buoys, slid by plunging on the wash flung off by the Scarrowmania's bows, and Agatha understood that the men in her had escaped death by a hairsbreadth. They were cod fishers, Wyllard told her, and he added that there was a host of them at work somewhere in the sliding haze. She, however, fancied, now and then, that the fog had a depressing effect on him, and that when the dory lay beneath the rail there had been a somewhat unusual look in his face.

Then a breeze came out of the north-west, with the sting of the ice in it, but the fog did not lift, and the Scarrowmania plunged on through it with spray-wet decks and the grey seas smashing about her bows. It was bitterly cold and clammy, the raw wind pierced to the bone, but the voyage was, at least, rapidly shortening, and one evening Agatha paced the deck with Wyllard in a somewhat curious mood. Perhaps it was merely the gloom re-acting upon her, for she was looking forward to the landing with a certain half-conscious shrinking.

They stopped by the rails presently, looking out upon the tumbling seas that rolled out of the sliding haze tipped with livid froth, and the dreariness of the surroundings intensified the girl's depression. There was something unpleasantly suggestive in the sight of the fog that hid everything, for she had of late been troubled with a half-apprehensive longing to see what lay before her. In the meanwhile, she noticed the look-out standing, a lonely, shapeless figure, amidst the spray that whirled about the plunging bows. By and bye she saw him turn and wave an arm apparently towards the bridge behind her, and she heard a hoarse, wind-out cry. What it meant she could not tell, but in another moment the Scarrowmania's whistle shrieked again.

Then a grey shape burst out of the vapour, and grew with astonishing swiftness into dim tiers of slanted sailcloth swaying above a strip of hull that moved amidst a broad white smear of foam. It was a brig under fore-course and topsails, and as Agatha watched her she sank to her tilted bowsprit, and a big grey and white sea foamed about her bows.

"Aren't we dreadfully near?" she asked.

Wyllard did not answer. He was gazing up at the bridge, and once more the whistle hurled out a great warning blast. It hardly seemed to her that the two vessels could pass clear of each other. Then Wyllard laid a hand upon her shoulder.

"The skipper's starboarding. We'll go round her stern," he said.

His grasp was reassuring, and she watched the straining curves of canvas and line of half-submerged hull. It rose with streaming bows, swung high above the sea, sank again, and vanished with bewildering suddenness into a belt of driving fog. She was not sure that there had been any peril, but it was certainly over now, and she was rather puzzled by her sensations when Wyllard had held her shoulder. For one thing, she had felt instinctively that she was safe with him. She, however, decided not to trouble herself about the reason for this, and by and bye she looked up at him. The expression she had already noticed was once more in his face.

"I don't think you like the fog any more than I do," she said.

"No," said Wyllard, with a quiet forcefulness that almost startled her. "I hate it."

"Why do you go as far as that?"

"It recalls something that still gives me a very bad few minutes every now and then. It has been worrying me again to-night."

"I wonder," said Agatha simply, "if you would care to tell me?"

The man looked down on her with a little wry smile. "I haven't told it often, but you shall hear," he said. "It's a tale of a black failure." He stretched out a hand and pointed to the sliding fog and ranks of tumbling seas. "It was very much this kind of night, and we were lying, reefed down, off one of the Russians' beaches, when I asked for volunteers. I got them—two boats' crews of the finest seamen that ever handled oar or sealing rifle."

"But what did you want them for?"

"A boat from another schooner had been cast ashore. It was blowing tolerably hard, as it usually does where the Polar ice comes down into the Behring Sea. They'd been shooting seals from her. We meant to bring the men off if we could manage it."

"Wouldn't one boat have been enough?"

"No," said Wyllard drily, "we had three, and I think that was one cause of the trouble. There was one from the other schooner. You see, those seals belonged to the Russians, and we free-lances could only shoot them clear off shore. I'm not sure that the men in the wrecked boat had been fishing outside the limit."

Agatha did not press for further particulars, and he went on:

"We managed to make a landing, though one boat went up bottom uppermost," he said. "I fancy they must have broken or lost an oar then. We also got the wrecked men, but we had trouble while we were getting the boats off again. The surf was running in savagely, and the fog shut down solid as a wall. Any way, we pulled off, and went out with a foot of water in us, while one of the rescued men took my oar when I let it go."

"Why had you to let it go?"

Wyllard laughed in a rather grim fashion.

"I got my head laid open with a sealing club," he said. "Some of the rest had their scratches, but they managed to row. For one thing, they knew they had to. They had reasons for not wanting to fall into the Russians' hands. Well, we cleared the beach, and once or twice as I tried to bale there was a shout somewhere near us, and the loom of a vanishing boat. It was all we could make out, for the sea was slopping into her, and the spray was flying everywhere. If there had only been two boats we'd probably have found out our misfortune, and perhaps have set it straight. As it was, we couldn't tell it was the same boat that had hailed us."

He broke off for a moment, and then added quietly, "Two boats reached the schooners. There was a nasty sea running then, and it blew viciously hard next day. There were three men in the other."

"Ah," said Agatha, "they were drowned?"

Wyllard made a little forceful gesture. "I'm not quite sure. That's the trouble. At least, the boat was nowhere on the beach next day, and it's difficult to see how they could have faced the sea that piled up when the gale came down. In all probability, they had an oar short, and she rolled them out when a comber broke upon her in the darkness." The girl saw him close one hand tight as he added, "If one only knew!"

"What would have befallen them if they'd got ashore?"

"It's difficult to say. In a general way, they'd have been handed over to the Russian authorities. Still, sealers poaching up there have simply disappeared."

He stopped again, and glanced out at the gathering darkness. "Now," he added, "you see why I hate the fog."

"But you couldn't help it," said Agatha.

"Well," said Wyllard, "I asked for volunteers, and the money that's now mine came out of those schooners. It's just possible those men are living still—somewhere in Northern Asia. I only know they disappeared."

Then he abruptly commenced to talk of something else, and by and bye Agatha went down to the saloon, where Miss Rawlinson, who had not been much in evidence during the voyage, presently made her appearance.

"Aren't you going into the music-room to play for Mr. Wyllard—as usual?" she said.

Agatha was almost disconcerted. She had fallen into the habit of spending half an hour or longer in the little music-room every evening, with Wyllard standing near the piano; but now her companion's question seemed to place a significance upon the fact.

"No," she said, "I don't think I am."

"Then the rest of them will wonder it you have fallen out with him."

"Fallen out with him?"

Winifred laughed. "They've naturally been watching both of you, and, in a general way, there's only one decision they could have arrived at."

Agatha flushed a little, but her companion went on:

"I don't mind admitting that if a man of that kind was to fall in love with me, I'd black his boots for him," she said. Then she added, with a whimsically rueful gesture, "Still, it's most unlikely."

Agatha looked at her with a little glint in her eyes.

"He is merely Gregory's deputy," she said, with a sub-conscious feeling that the epithet was not a remarkably fortunate one. "In that connection, I should like to point out that you can estimate a man's character by that of his friends."

"Oh," said Winifred, "then if Mr. Wyllard's strong points are merely to heighten Gregory's credit, I've nothing more to say. Anyway, I'll reserve my homage until I've seen him. Perfection among men is scarce nowadays."

She turned away, and left Agatha thoughtful. In the meanwhile, Mrs. Hastings came upon Wyllard in the music-room. There was just then nobody else in it.

"You look quite serious," she said.

"I've been thinking about Miss Ismay and Gregory," said Wyllard. "In fact, I feel a little anxious about them."

"In which way?"

"Without making any reflections upon Gregory, I somehow feel sorry for the girl."

Mrs. Hastings nodded. "As a matter of fact, that's very much what I felt from the first," she said. "Still, you see, there's the important fact that she's fond of him, and it should smooth out a good many difficulties. Anyway, what we can call the material ones won't count. She's evidently rather a courageous person."

The man sat silent a moment or two. "I wasn't troubling about them," he said. "I was wondering if she really could be fond of him. It's some years since she was much in his company."

"Hawtrey is not a man to change."

"That," said Wyllard, "is just the trouble. I've no doubt he's much the same, but one could fancy that Miss Ismay has changed a good deal since she last saw him. She'll look for considerably more than she was probably content with then."

"In any case, it isn't your affair."

"In one sense it certainly isn't; but I can't help feeling a little troubled about the thing. You see, Gregory is quite an old friend."

"And the girl is going out to marry him," said Mrs. Hastings.

Wyllard rose. "That," he said, "is quite uncalled for. I would like to assure you of it."

He went out, and the lady sat still in a reflective mood.

"If she begins to compare him with Hawtrey, there can be only one result," she said.

The fog had almost gone next morning, and pale sunshine streamed down upon a froth-flecked sea. A bitter wind, however, still came out of the hazy north, and the Scarrowmania's plates were crusted with ice where the highest crests of the tumbling seas reached them. The spray also froze, and the decks grew slippery, until when darkness came nobody but the seamen faced the stinging cold. Agatha felt the engines stop late that night, and when she went out next morning the decks were white, and she could see dim ghosts of sliding pines through a haze of falling snow. It grew bewilderingly thick at times, but the steamer slid on through it with whistle hooting, and when at last towards sunset the snow cleared away Agatha stood shivering under a deck-house, looking about her with a curiously heavy heart.

A grey haze stretched across the great river, which was also dim and grey, and odd wisps of pines rose raggedly beneath the white hills that cut against a gloomy, lowering sky. Deck-house, boat, and stanchion dripped, and every now and then the silence was broken by a doleful blast of the whistle. Nothing moved on the still, grey water; there was no sign of life ashore; and they seemed to be steaming into a great desolation.

By and bye, Wyllard appeared from somewhere, and after a glance at her face slipped his hand beneath her arm, and led her down to the lighted saloon. Then her heart grew a little lighter. Once more she was conscious of an unreasoning feeling that she was safe with him.



CHAPTER X.

DISILLUSION.

The long train was speeding smoothly across the vast white levels of Assiniboia, when Agatha, who sat by a window, looked up as the conductor strode through the car. Mrs. Hastings asked him a question, and he stopped a moment.

"Yes," he said, "we'll be in Clermont inside half an hour."

Then he went on, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha.

"We're a little late, and Gregory will be waiting for us in the depot now," she said. "No doubt he's got the waggon fixed up right, but I'd like to feel sure of it. There's a long drive before us, and I want to reach the homestead before it's dark."

Agatha said nothing, but a faint tinge of colour crept into her cheeks, and her companion was glad to see it, for she had noticed that the girl was looking rather pale and haggard. This was partly due to the fact that the strain of the last few months she had spent in England was commencing to tell on her. She had borne it courageously, but a reaction had afterwards set in, and, as it happened, the Scarrowmania had plunged along bows under against fresh north-westerly gales most of the way across the Atlantic. There is very little comfort on board a small, deeply-loaded steamer when she rolls her rails in, and lurches with thudding screw swung clear over big, steep-sided combers. In addition to this, Agatha had scarcely slept during the few days and nights she had spent in the train. It takes some time to become accustomed to the atmosphere of a stove-heated sleeper car, and since she had landed she had been in a state of not altogether unnatural nervous tension.

Indeed, she had found it a little difficult to preserve an outward serenity the previous day, and when at length the great train ran into the depot at Winnipeg, where Gregory had arranged to meet them, it was with a thrill of expectancy and relief that she stood upon the car platform. There was, however, no sign of him, and though Wyllard handed her a telegram from him a few minutes later the fact that he had not arrived had a depressing effect on her. Quiet as she usually was, the girl was highly strung. It appeared that something had gone wrong with Hawtrey's waggon while he was driving in to the railroad, and as the result of it he had missed the Atlantic train. She could not blame him for this, but for all that his absence had been an unpleasant shock.

Feeling that her companion's eyes were upon her, she turned, and looking out of the window found no encouragement in what she saw. The snow had gone, and a vast expanse of grass ran back to the horizon; but it was a dingy, greyish-white, and not green as it had been in England. The sky was low and grey, too, and the only thing that broke the dreary monotony of lifeless colour was when the formless, darker smear of a birch bluff rose out of the empty levels. Her heart throbbed unpleasantly fast as the few remaining minutes slipped away, and at length she started when a dingy mass of something that looked like buildings lifted itself above the prairie.

"The Clermont elevators," said Mrs. Hastings. "We'll be in directly."

The mass separated itself into two or three tall component blocks. A huddle of little wooden houses grew into shape beneath them, and a shrill whistle came ringing back above the slowing cars. Then a willow bluff, half filled with old cans and garbage, flitted by, a big bell commenced tolling, and Agatha rose when Mrs. Hastings took up her furs from a seat close by. After that, she found herself standing on the platform of the car, though she did not quite know how she got there, for she was sensible only of the fact that in another moment or two she would greet the lover she had last seen four years ago.

In the meanwhile, though she paid them no great attention, the surroundings had a depressing effect on her. There was, however, very little to see; the mass of the great elevators that cut against a lowering sky, the little cluster of houses, and the sea of churned-up mire between them and the track. There also appeared to be no station except a big water tank and a rather unsightly shed, about which stood a group of blurred and shapeless figures. It seemed very cold, and Agatha shivered as she felt the raw wind strike through her.

Then one of the figures detached itself from the rest and grew clearer. The man wore an old skin coat spattered with flakes of mire, and his long boots were covered with clots of the same material. His fur cap looked greasy, and the fur had been rubbed off it in patches; but while she noticed these things it was his face that struck her most, and she became conscious of an astonishment which was mixed with vague misgivings as she gazed at it, for it had subtly changed since she had last seen it. The joyous sparkle she remembered had gone out of the eyes. They were harder, bolder, than they used to be. The mouth was slack—it almost looked sensual—and the man's whole personality seemed to have grown coarser. Then as she thrust the disconcerting fancies from her the car stopped.

In another moment Hawtrey sprang up on the platform, and she felt his arms about her. That brought the blood to her face, but she felt none of the thrill she had expected. Indeed, she was subconsciously sensible of a certain shrinking from his embrace. Then, and she fancied he must have lifted her bodily down, she stood beside the track with Mrs. Hastings, a man whom she supposed to be the latter's husband, Winifred, and Wyllard about her. Another man was also standing close by, apparently waiting until they noticed him. He was flecked with mire all over, his skin coat was very dilapidated, and Agatha fancied that his boots had never been cleaned. His hair, which had evidently been very badly cut, straggled out from under his old fur cap.



In the meanwhile, Gregory was apparently explaining something to Mrs. Hastings. "No," he said, "I'm sorry it can't be for another week. Horribly unfortunate. It seems they've sent the Methodist on down the line, and we'll have to wait for the Episcopalian. He'll be at Lander's for a few days."

Then Agatha's cheeks flamed, for she recognised that it was her wedding they were speaking of; but it brought her a curious relief to hear that it had been deferred. A moment or two later Gregory turned to her with questions about her throat, and his people in England, and Winifred separated herself from the group. She was standing near her baggage, which had been flung out beside the track, a little, lonely figure, while the train went on, when Wyllard strode up to her.

"Feeling rather out of it? I do, any way," he said. "Since we appear superfluous, we may as well make the most of the opportunity, especially as it will probably save you a long drive. There's a man here who wants to see you."

Winifred had felt very forlorn a few moments earlier, but the announcement Wyllard had just made was reassuring, and she pulled herself together as he signed to a man standing a little further along the track. The latter wore rather neat store clothes, and his manner was brisk and wholly business-like. It was a certain relief to the girl to see that he evidently regarded her less as a personality than as a piece of commercial machinery, which he had apparently been asked to make use of. She had found it easier to get on with men who confined themselves to that point of view.

"Mr. Hamilton, in charge of the elevator yonder," said Wyllard, pointing to one of the huge buildings. "This is Miss Rawlinson."

The elevator man made her the curtest of inclinations, and proceeded to arrange matters with a rapidity which almost took her breath away.

"Typist and stenographer?" he said. "Know anything about account-keeping?"

Winifred admitted that she possessed these abilities, and Hamilton appeared to reflect for a moment or two.

"Well," he said, "in a fortnight we'll give you a show. You can start at—" and he mentioned terms which rather astonished Winifred. "If you can keep things straight we may raise you later."

"Won't you want to see any testimonials?" she asked.

"No," said Hamilton. "I've seen a good many, and I'm inclined to fancy some of the folks who showed them me must have bought them." He waved his hand. "Mr. Wyllard assures me that you'll do, and in the meanwhile that's quite enough for me."

It struck Winifred as curious that, while Agatha had written to Hawtrey on her behalf, it was Wyllard who had secured her the opportunity she had longed for; but she thanked the elevator man before she turned to him.

"There's another matter," she said hesitatingly. "I'll have to live here?"

Wyllard smiled. "I've seen to that, though if you don't like my arrangements you can alter them afterwards. Mrs. Sandberg will take you in, and even if she isn't particularly amiable you'll be in safe hands."

Hamilton laughed. "Oh, yes," he said. "She's Scotch—old type Calvinist at that. No frivolity about that woman. Married a Scandinavian, and was just breaking him in when he was killed back East along the track."

"We'll consider it as fixed, but in the meanwhile you're to stay with Mrs. Hastings for the fortnight," said Wyllard. "Sproatly"—and he signed to the man in the skin coat—"will you get Miss Rawlinson's baggage into your waggon?"

The man took off his fur cap. "If Miss Rawlinson would like to see Mrs. Sandberg, I'll drive her round," he suggested. "We'll catch you up in a league or so. Gregory has a bit of patching to do on his off-side trace."

"He might have had things straight for once," said Wyllard half-aloud.

Winifred permitted Sproatly to help her into his waggon—a high, narrow-bodied vehicle, mounted on tall, spidery wheels, but she had to hold fast to it while they jolted across the track and through a sea of mire into the unpaved street of the little town. She liked her companion's voice and manner, though she was far from prepossessed by his appearance. Two or three minutes later he drew up before a little wooden house, where they were received by a tall, hard-faced woman, who frowned at Sproatly.

"Ye'll tak' your patent medicines somewhere else. I'm wanting none," she said.

Sproatly grinned. "You needn't be afraid of them. They couldn't hurt you. I was talking to a Winnipeg doctor who'd a notion of coming out a day or two ago. I told him if he did he'd have to bring an axe along."

Then he explained that Wyllard had sent Winifred there, and the woman favoured her with a glance of careful scrutiny.

"Weel," she said, "ye look quiet, anyway." Then she added, as though further satisfied, "I'll make ye a cup of tea if ye can wait."

Sproatly assured her that this was not the case, and in a few more minutes the girl, who went into the house, got into the waggon again, with relief in her face.

"I think I owe Mr. Wyllard a good deal," she said.

Sproatly laughed. "You're not exactly singular in that respect, but you had better hold tight. These beasts are rather less than half broken."

He flicked them with the whip, and they went across the track at a gallop, hurling great clods of mud left and right, while the group of loungers who still stood about the station raised a shout.

"Got any little pictures with nice motters on them?" asked one, and another flung a piece of information after the jolting waggon.

"There's a Swede down at Branker's wants a bottle that will supple up a wooden leg," he said.

Sproatly grinned, and waved his hand to them before he turned to his companion.

"We have to get through before dark, if possible, or I'd stop and sell them something sure," he said. "Parts of the trail further on are simply horrible."

It occurred to Winifred that it was far from excellent as it was, for spouts of mud flew up beneath the sinking hoofs and wheels, and she was already getting unpleasantly spattered.

"You think you would have succeeded?" she asked.

"Oh, yes," said Sproatly. "If I couldn't plant something on to them when they'd given me a lead like that, I'd be no use in this business. At present, my command of Western phraseology is my fortune."

"You sell things, then?"

Sproatly pointed to a couple of big boxes in the bottom of the waggon. "Anything from cough cure to hair restorer, besides a general purpose elixir that's specially prepared for me. It's adaptable to any complaint and season. All you have to do"—and he lowered his voice confidentially—"is to put on a different label."

Winifred, who had not felt like it a little earlier, laughed when she met his eyes.

"What happens to the people who buy it?" she asked.

"Most of them are bachelors, and tough. They've stood their own cooking so long that they ought to be, and if anybody's really sick I hold off and tell him to wait until he can get a doctor. A sensitive conscience," he added reflectively, "is quite a handicap in this business."

"You have always been in it?" asked Winifred, who was amused at him.

"No," said Sproatly, "although you mightn't believe it, I was raised with the idea that I should have my choice between the Church and the Bar. The idea, however, proved—impracticable—which, in some respects, is rather a pity. It has seemed to me that a man who can work off cough cures and cosmetics on to healthy folks with a hide like leather, and talk a scoffer off the field, ought to have made his mark in either calling."

He looked at her as if for confirmation of this view, but Winifred, who laughed again, glanced at the two waggons that moved on, perhaps, two miles away across the grey-white sweep of prairie.

"Will we overtake them?" she asked.

"We'll probably come up with Gregory. I'm not sure about Wyllard."

"He drives faster horses?"

"That's not quite the reason. Gregory has patched up one trace with a bit of string, and odd bolts are rather addicted to coming out of his waggon. Sometimes it makes trouble. I've known the team leave him sitting on the prairie, thinking of endearing names for them, and come home with the pole."

"Does he generally let things fall into that state?"

Sproatly, however, was evidently on his guard.

"Well," he said, "it's certainly that kind of waggon."

Then he flicked the team again, and the jolting rendered it difficult for Winifred to ask any more questions. The prairie sod was soft with the thaw, and big lumps of it stuck to the wheels, which every now and then plunged into ruts other vehicles had made.

In the meanwhile, Agatha and Hawtrey found it almost as impossible to sustain a conversation, which was, on the whole, a relief to the girl. The string-patched trace still held, and the waggon pole was a new one, but where they were just then the white grass was tussocky and long, and the trail they occasionally plunged into to avoid it had been churned into a quagmire. Hawtrey had packed the thick driving robe high about his companion, and slipped one arm about her waist beneath it; but she was conscious that she rather suffered this than derived any satisfaction from it. She strove to assure herself that she was jaded with the journey, which was, in fact, the case, and that the lowering sky, and the cheerless waste they were crossing, had occasioned the dejection she felt, which was also possible. There was not a tree upon the vast sweep of bleached grass which ran all round her to the horizon. It was inexpressibly lonely, a lifeless desolation, with only the ploughed-up trail to show that man had ever traversed it; and the raw wind which swept it set her shivering.

She was, however, forced to admit that her weariness and the dreary surroundings did not quite explain everything. Even her lover's first embrace had brought her no thrill, and now the close pressure of his arm left her quite unmoved. This was almost disconcertingly curious; but while she would admit no definite reason for it, there was creeping upon her a vague consciousness that the man was not the one she had so often thought of in England. He seemed different—almost, in fact, a stranger—though she could not exactly tell where the change in him began. His laughter jarred upon her. Some of the things he said appeared almost inane, and others were tinged with a self-confidence that did not become him. It almost seemed to her that he was shallow, lacking in comprehension, and once she found herself comparing him with another man. She, however, broke off that train of thought abruptly, and once more endeavoured to find the explanation in herself. Weariness had induced this captious, hypercritical fit, and by and bye she would become used to him, she said.

Hawtrey was, at least, not effusive, for which she was thankful, but when they reached a somewhat smoother surface he commenced to talk of England.

"I suppose you saw a good deal of my folks when you were at the Grange?" he said.

"No," said Agatha, "I saw them once or twice."

"Ah!" said the man, with a trace of sharpness, "then they were not particularly agreeable?"

It seemed to Agatha that he was tactless in suggesting anything of the kind, but she answered candidly.

"One could hardly go quite so far as that," she said. "Still, I couldn't help a feeling that it was rather an effort for them to be gracious to me."

"They did what they could to make things pleasant when they were first told of our engagement."

Agatha was too worn-out to be altogether on her guard, which was partly why she had admitted as much as she had done, though his relatives' attitude had wounded her, and she answered without reflection.

"I have fancied that was because they never quite believed it would lead to anything."

She knew this was the truth now, though it was the first time the explanation had occurred to her. Gregory's folks, who were naturally acquainted with his character, had, it seemed, not expected him to carry his promise out. She, however, felt that she had been injudicious when she heard his little harsh laugh.

"I'm afraid they never had a very great opinion of me," he said.

"Then," said Agatha, looking up at him, "it will be our business to prove them wrong; but I can't help feeling that you have undertaken a big responsibility, Gregory. There must be so much that I ought to do, and I know so little about your work in this country." She turned, and glanced with a shiver at the dim, white prairie. "It looks so forbidding and unyielding. It must be very hard to turn it into wheat fields—to break it in."

It was merely a hint of what she felt, and it was rather a pity that Hawtrey, who lacked imagination, usually contented himself with the most obvious meaning of the spoken word. Things might have gone differently had he responded with comprehending sympathy.

"Oh," he said, with a laugh that changed her mood, "you'll learn, and I don't suppose it will matter a great deal if you don't do it quickly. Somehow or other one worries through."

She felt that this was insufficient, though she remembered that his haphazard carelessness had once appealed to her. Now, however, she realised that to undertake a thing light-heartedly was a very different matter from carrying it out successfully. Then it once more occurred to her that she was becoming absurdly hypercritical, and she strove to talk of other things.