"It really doesn't matter," he responded. "I shall no doubt get upon his trail in due time."

They reached the highroad a minute or two later, and the girl turned to him.

"Thank you again," she said. "If you go straight on you will come to the village in about a quarter of an hour."

She turned away and left him standing with his soft hat in his hand. He stood quite still for almost a minute after she had gone. When he reached the inn its old-world simplicity delighted him. It was built with thick walls of slate, and roofed with ponderous flags. In Canada, where the frost was Arctic, they used thin cedar shingles. The room in which his meal was spread was paneled with oak that had turned black with age. Great rough-hewn beams of four times the size that anybody would have used for the purpose in the West supported the low ceiling. There was a fire in the wide hearth and the ruddy gleam of burnished copper utensils pierced the shadows. The room was large, but there was only a single candle upon the table. He liked the gloomy interior, and he felt that a garish light would somehow be out of harmony.

By and by his hostess appeared to clear the things away. She was a little, withered old woman, with shrewd, kindly eyes, and a russet tinge in her cheeks.

"There's a good light, and company in the sitting-room," she said. "We've three young men staying with us. They've been up the Pike."

"I'd sooner stay here, if I may," replied Wyllard. "I don't quite know yet if I'll go on to-morrow. One can get through to Langley Dale by the Hause, as I think you call it?"

The wrinkled dame said that pedestrians often went that way.

"There are some prosperous folks—people of station—living round here?" Wyllard asked casually.

"There's the vicar. I don't know that he's what you'd call prosperous. Then there's Mr. Martindale, of Rushyholme, and Little, of the Ghyll."

"Has any of them a daughter of about twenty-four years of age?" Wyllard described the girl he had met to the best of his ability.

It was evident that the landlady did not recognize the description, but she thought a moment.

"No," she answered, "there's nobody like that; but I did hear that they'd a young lady staying at the vicarage."

She changed the subject abruptly, and Wyllard once more decided that the English did not like questions.

"You're a stranger, sir?" she inquired.

"I am," said Wyllard. "I've some business to attend to further on, but I came along on foot, to see the fells, and I'm glad I did. It's a great and wonderful country you're living in. That is," he added gravely, "when you get outside the towns. There are things in some of the cities that most make one ill."

He stood up. "That tray's too heavy for you. Won't you let me carry it?"

The landlady was plainly amazed at his words, but she made it clear that she desired no assistance. When she went out Wyllard, who sat down again, took out the photograph. He gazed at it steadfastly.

"There's rather more than mere prettiness there, but I don't know that I want to keep it now," he reflected. "It's way behind the original. She has grown since it was taken—just as one would expect that girl to grow."

He lighted his pipe and smoked thoughtfully until he arrived at a decision.

"One can't force the running in this country. They don't like it," he said. "I'll lie by a day or two, and keep an eye on that vicarage."

In the meanwhile his hostess was discussing him with a niece.

"I'm sure I don't know what that man is," she informed the younger woman. "He has got the manners of a gentleman, but he walks like a fell shepherd, and his hands are like a navvy's. A man's hands now and then tell you a good deal about him. Besides, of all things, he wanted to carry his tray away. Said it was too heavy for me."

"Oh," replied her niece, "he's an American. There's no accounting for them."



CHAPTER VI

HER PICTURE

Wyllard stayed at the inn three days without seeing anything more of the girl whom he had met beside the stream, although he diligently watched for her. He had long felt it was his duty to communicate with the relatives of the lad that he had befriended, and the fact that he had found the girl's photograph in the young Englishman's possession made it appear highly probable that she could assist him in tracing the family. Apart from this, he could not quite analyze his motives for desiring to see more of the Englishwoman, though he was conscious of the desire. Her picture had been a companion to him in his wanderings, and now and then he had found a certain solace in gazing at it. Now that he had seen her in the flesh he was willing to admit that he had never met any woman who had made such an impression on him.

It was, of course, possible for him to call at the vicarage, but though he meant to adopt that course as a last resort, there were certain objections to it. He did not know the girl's name, and there was nobody to say a word for him. So far as his experience went, the English were apt to be reticent and reserved to a stranger. It seemed to him that, although the girl might give him the information which he required, their acquaintance probably would terminate then and there. She would, he decided, be less likely to stand upon her guard if he could contrive to meet her casually without prearrangement.

On the fourth day fortune favored him, for he came upon her endeavoring to open a tottering gate where a stony hill track led off from the smooth white road. As it happened, he had received a letter from Mrs. Hastings that morning, fixing the date of her departure, and it was necessary for him to discharge the duty with which Hawtrey had saddled him as soon as possible. The Grange, where he understood Miss Ismay was then staying, lay thirty miles away across the fells, and he had decided to start early on the morrow. That being the case, it was clear that he must make the most of this opportunity; but he realized that it would be advisable to proceed circumspectly. Saying nothing, he set his shoulder to the gate, and lifting it on its decrepit hinges swung it open.

"Thank you," said the girl. Remembering that the words were the last that she had said to him, she smiled, as she added: "It is the second time you have appeared when I was in difficulties."

In spite of his resolution to proceed cautiously, a twinkle crept into Wyllard's eyes, and suggested that the fact she had mentioned was not so much of a coincidence as it probably appeared. She saw the look that told her what he was thinking, and was about to pass on, when he stopped her with a gesture.

"The fact is, I have been looking out for you the last three days," he confessed.

He feared the girl had taken alarm at this candid statement, and spread his hands out deprecatingly. "Won't you hear me out?" he added. "There's a matter I must put before you, but I won't keep you long."

The girl was a little puzzled, and naturally curious. It struck her as strange that his admission should have aroused in her very little indignation; but she felt that it would be unreasonable to suspect this man of anything that savored of impertinence. His manner was reassuring, and she liked his face.

"Well?" she said inquiringly.

Wyllard waved his hand toward a big oak trunk that lay just inside the gate.

"If you'll sit down, I'll get through as quick as I can," he promised. "In the first place, I am, as I told you, a Canadian, who has come over partly to see the country, and partly to carry out one or two missions. In regard to one of them I believe you can help me."

The girl's face expressed a natural astonishment.

"I could help you?"

Wyllard nodded. "I'll explain my reasons for believing it later on," he said. "In the meanwhile, I asked you a question the other night, which I'll now try to make more explicit. Were you ever acquainted with a young Englishman, who went to Canada from this country several years ago? He was about twenty then, and had dark hair and dark eyes. That, of course, isn't an unusual thing, but there was a rather curious white mark on his left temple. If he was ever a friend of yours, that scar ought to fix it."

"Oh!" cried the girl, "that must have been Lance Radcliffe. I was with him when the scar was made—ever so long ago. We heard that he was dead. But you said his name was Pattinson."

"I did," declared Wyllard gravely. "Still, I wasn't quite sure about the name being right. He's certainly dead. I buried him."

His companion made an abrupt movement, and he saw the sudden softening of her eyes. There was, however, only a gentle pity in her face, and nothing in her manner suggested the deeper feeling that he had half expected.

"Then," she said, "I am sure that his father would like to meet you. There was some trouble between them—I don't know which was wrong—and Lance went out to Canada, and never wrote. Major Radcliffe tried to trace him through a Vancouver banker, and only found that he had died in the hands of a stranger who had done all that was possible for him." She turned to Wyllard with a look which set his heart beating faster than usual. "You are that man?"

"Yes," said Wyllard simply, "I did what I could for him. It didn't amount to very much. He was too far gone."

Briefly he repeated the story that he had told to Hawtrey, and, when he had finished, her face was soft again, for what he said had stirred her curiously.

"But," she commented, "he had no claim on you."

Wyllard lifted one hand with a motion that disclaimed all right to commendation. "He was dying in the bush. Wasn't that enough?"

The girl made no answer for a moment or two. She had earned her living for several years, and she was to some extent acquainted with the grim realities of life. She did not know that while there are hard men in Canada the small farmers and ranchers of the West—and, perhaps above all, the fearless free lances who build railroads and grapple with giant trees in the forests of the Pacific slope—are as a rule, distinguished by a splendid charity. With them the sick or worn-out stranger is seldom turned away. Watching the stranger covertly, she understood that this man whom she had seen for the first time three days before had done exactly what she would have expected of him.

"I saw a great deal of Lance Radcliffe—when I was younger," she said. "His people still live at Garside Scar, close by Dufton Holme. I presume you will call on them?"

Wyllard said that he purposed doing so, as he had a watch and one or two other mementos that they might like to have, and she told him how to reach Dufton Holme by a round-about railway journey.

"There is one point that rather puzzles me," she said, after she had made it plain how he was to find the Radcliffe family. "How did you know that I could tell you anything about him?"

Wyllard thrust his hand into his pocket, and took out a little leather case.

"You are by no means a stranger to me," he remarked as he handed her the photograph. "This is your picture; I found it among the dead lad's things."

The girl, who started visibly, flashed a keen glance at him. It was evident that he had not intended to produce any dramatic effect. She flushed a little.

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

Wyllard smiled gravely, for he recognized that while she was clearly grieved to hear of young Radcliffe's death, she could have had no particular tenderness for the unfortunate lad.

"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 clew, 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 explained, "I didn't want to be precipitate—you English folk don't seem to like that. 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."

His frankness was startling, but the girl showed neither astonishment nor resentment. She felt certain that this stranger was not posing or speaking for effect. It did not occur to Wyllard that he might have gone too far, and for a moment or two he leaned against the gate, 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 cold wind, and the song of the river came up brokenly out of the valley. An odor 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 grayness with shadowy grandeur.

Then Wyllard aroused 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." 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. 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."

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 her name, and he decided that he could in all probability obtain it from Major Radcliffe. 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 George 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 both of the houses he intended 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 in the morning when he started, and three in the afternoon when he reached the inn, where he found an answer to one of the 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 gray-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 great deal, recognized, 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. The gray-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 quarreled," 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, 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 the mine shortly before my correspondent learned that he had been employed there, and all that the banker could tell me was that an unknown prospector had nursed my boy until he died."

Wyllard 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 explained presently.

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 Mr. Radcliffe urged him to dine with them on the following evening he hesitated.

"The one difficulty is that I don't know yet whether I shall be engaged then," he said. "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 he noticed a faint gleam in Mrs. Radcliffe's eyes.

"Well," she observed, "if you 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 indicating any sign of the curiosity they naturally felt, for Mrs. Radcliffe's face had suggested that she understood the situation, which was beginning to appear a little more difficult to him. It was, it seemed, his task to explain delicately to a girl brought up among such people what she must be prepared to face as a farmer's wife in Western Canada. He was not sure that this task 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 certainly had suggested courage, but, after all, it was the courage of ignorance, and he had now some notion of the life of ease and refinement her English friends enjoyed. He was beginning to feel sorry for Agatha Ismay.



CHAPTER VII

AGATHA DOES NOT FLINCH

The next evening Wyllard sat with Mrs. Radcliffe in a big low-ceilinged room at Garside Scar. He looked about him with quiet interest. He had now and then passed 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 than a mere appeal to the material side of his nature. Though he had lived for the most part in the bush and on the prairie, he had somehow acquired an artistic susceptibility.

The furniture was old, and perhaps a trifle shabby, but it was of beautiful design. Curtains, carpets and tinted walls formed a harmony of soft coloring, and there were scattered here and there dainty works of art, little statuettes from Italy, and wonderful Indian ivory and silver work. A row of low, stone-ribbed windows pierced the front of the room. Looking out he saw the trim garden lying in the warm evening light. Immediately beneath the windows ran a broad graveled terrace, which was evidently raked smooth every day, and a row of urns in which hyacinths bloomed stood upon its pillared wall. From the middle of the terrace a wide stairway led down to the wonderful velvet lawn, which was dotted with clumps of cupressus with golden gleams in it, and beyond the lawn 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 of the cultured English people, 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 many Englishmen would have regarded Garside Scar as a very second-rate country house, and would have 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. Wyllard could imagine the Major standing fast at any cost upon some minute point of honor, and it seemed to him that Mrs. Radcliffe, with all the graces of an earlier age and the smell of the English lavender upon her garments, might have stepped down from some old picture. Then he remembered that, after all, Englishwomen lived somewhat coarsely in the Georgian days, and that he had met in Western Canada hard-handed men grimed with dust and sweat who also could stand fast by a point of honor. Though the fact did not occur to him, he had, for that matter, done it more than once himself.

He recalled his wandering thoughts as his hostess smiled at him.

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

"Yes," said Wyllard. "In fact, I'd like to spend some hours here and look at everything. I'd begin at the pictures and work right around."

Mrs. Radcliffe'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 persons there, 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 exist only in these still valleys and in cathedral closes. It strikes me more because it is something I've never been accustomed to."

Mrs. Radcliffe 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 realize 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 money we make is sunk again in seed and extra teams and plows."

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

"No," Wyllard rejoined gravely, "that's not it exactly. At least, not with the most of us. It's rather the pride of wresting another quarter-section from the prairie, taking—our own—by labor, breaking the wilderness. You"—and he added this as if to explain that he could hardly expect her quite to 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 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 other's throats, and at a tactless word or sign of wavering, either party would have pulled him down."

"You'll have to forgive me"—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 favorite one out West. No doubt it's a delusion. I should have known that all of us are born like that."

Mrs. Radcliffe 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 whom he had met at the stepping stones came in. She was dressed in trailing garments which became her wonderfully, and he noticed now the shapely delicacy of her hands and the fine, ivory pallor of her skin. Mrs. Radcliffe 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.

She held out her hand before she turned to speak to Mrs. Radcliffe. It was a relief to both when dinner was announced.

Wyllard sat next to his hostess, and was not sorry that he was called upon to take part only in casual general conversation. He thought once or twice that Miss Ismay was unobtrusively studying him. It was nearly an hour after the dinner when Mrs. Radcliffe left them alone in the 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 in a low chair near the hearth, and it occurred to Wyllard, who took a place opposite her, that she was 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 the careless ease of manner, which he had once liked, was too much in evidence.

Agatha turned to him.

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

Wyllard assured her that Hawtrey was convalescing, and Agatha said quietly, "He wants me to go out to him."

Wyllard felt that if a girl of that sort had promised to marry him he would not have sent for her, but would 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 replied, "I understand! You needn't labor with excuses. But doesn't the same thing apply to you?"

"It certainly did. Now, however, things have become a little easier. My holding is 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 was 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!" exclaimed 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 favor.

"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 there was a stream in the bottom of it. He stood high up on a staging close beneath the rails. 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. 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 loose the bolt around which we had our lashings. 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. 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 cried, "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 spoke again.

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

"In those days when money was scarce we had to be whatever we could. There wasn't much specialization 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!" replied Agatha. "Besides, he was always wonderfully quick. He could learn any game by just watching it a while. 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 practiced on the prairie, demands a great 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 the grain shrivels under the harvest frost, or when the 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 her confidence had Hawtrey 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 favor, 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 so long. He wanted to make them as easy as possible for you, and now he would like you to realize what is before you."

He was surprised at the girl's quick comprehension, for she glanced around 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 be in harmony only with them?"

"Yes," answered 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 great 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 capable only of living in luxury?"

"I didn't go quite 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," replied 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 naturally I 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 is 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 is 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 ocher and burnished copper waves, it is more wonderful still. One sees the fulfillment of the promise, and takes courage."

"Then," asked Agatha, who had scarcely suspected him of such appreciation of nature, "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 evidently was 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 do it only once a week."

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

"Then the farmer's wife 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 a supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled and are frozen almost stiff beneath the robes."

"Still," interposed 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 in the meanwhile. Every dollar must be guarded and plowed 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, couldn't she?"

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

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

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

He spoke as he felt. This girl, he knew, 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 luxuriously furnished room, she leaning back in her big, low chair, with the soft light on her delicately tinted face. By and by he looked at her.

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

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 to Gregory doesn't seem of any particular consequence."

Wyllard was not quite sure of this. He had thought about this girl often, and certainly had been conscious of a curious thrill of satisfaction when he had met her at the stepping-stones. That feeling had 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 declared, "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 relatives 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 TRAVELING COMPANION

A gray 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 two steam tugs that lay alongside mingled with the din it made. A gangway from one of them 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 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. Each steamer carried as many as she could hold.

As the stream poured out of the gangway, the doctor glanced at each newcomer's face, and then seizing him by the wrist uncovered it. Then he looked at the official, who made a sign, and the man moved on. 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.

A group of first-class passengers, leaning on the thwartship rails close by, looked on, with complacent satisfaction or half-contemptuous pity. Among them stood Mrs. Hastings, Miss Winifred Rawlinson, and Agatha. It was noticed that Wyllard, with a pipe in his hand, sat on a hatch forward, near the head of the gangway. Agatha drew Mrs. Hastings' attention to it.

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

Mrs. Hastings, who was wrapped in furs, to protect her from the sting in the east wind, smiled at her.

"That," she answered, "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 is more to the purpose, he is rather addicted to taking a hand in them. It is 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 the emigrants 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, shuffling in broken boots, was following a haggard woman. The physician drew him aside, and after he had 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. She blocked the passage, and a quarter-master drove her, expostulating in an agony of terror, forward among the rest. Nobody appeared concerned about this alien's tragedy, except one man, and Agatha was not surprised 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 Mrs. Hastings and once more a smile crept into the older woman's eyes.

"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings, "I guessed he would feel that he had to interfere. That is a man who can't see any one in trouble." She added, with a little whimsical sigh, "He had a bonanza harvest last fall, anyway."

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 ocher gleam amid the haze over the starboard hand, and then at the long row of painted buoys that moved back to them.

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

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

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

"Well," he answered, "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 looked as if they would take 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 would refer his case to the immigration people at the other end. It is scarcely likely that they'll make trouble. As a rule, they only throw out folks who are certain to become a charge on the community."

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

"No," Wyllard responded dryly. "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 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 touched with compassion, but there was another matter that must be mentioned, though she felt that the time was 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 have filled up every room."

"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 would 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 nature, 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 the wind had changed. The Scarrowmania was steaming head-on into a glorious northwest breeze. The shrouds sang; chain-guy, and stanchion, and whatever caught the wind, set up a deep-toned throbbing; and ahead ranks of little, white-topped seas rolled out of the night. A half-moon, blurred now and then by wisps of flying cloud, hung low above them, and odd spouts of spray that gleamed in the silvery light leaped up about the dipping bows. Wyllard was leaning on the rail when Agatha stopped beside him. She glanced towards the lighted windows of the smoking-room not far away.

"How is it you are not in there?" she asked, noticing that he held a cigar in his hand.

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

"And you object to cards?"

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

"What sort of excitement do 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," returned 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 labor,—teams—no end of them—breakers, and big gang-plows. 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 look at them without wavering—the drought, the hail, the harvest frost, I mean. 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 he feels when he drives in the binders!"

Agatha had imagination, and she could realize something of the toil, the hazard, and the exultation of that victory.

"You have felt it often?" she inquired.

"Twice we helped to fill a big elevator," Wyllard answered. "But 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. So far as her experience went, these were things that did not invariably accompany each other.

"And when the harvest comes up to your expectations, you give your money away?" she asked with a lifting of her brows.

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, and when Wyllard strolled away the women passed some time leaning on the rails, and looking at the groups of shadowy figures on the forward deck. The attitude of the steerage passengers was dejected and melancholy, but one cluster had gathered around a man who stood upon the hatch.

"Oh," he declared, "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 I was armorer 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 cried, "what a horrible man!"

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

The sergeant let the jibe go by. He said: "Louis's bucks could shoot! We had them corraled 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 poor man. In the summer he can sleep beneath a bush."

For some reason this eulogy haunted Agatha when she retired to her stateroom that night, and she wondered what awaited all those aliens in the new land. It occurred to her that in some respects she was situated very much as they were. For the first time, vague misgivings crept into her mind as she realized that she had cut herself adrift from all to which she had been accustomed. 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. The waves 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 because she carried 3,000 tons of railway iron she rolled distressfully. Her tall spars swayed athwart the vivid blueness of the morning sky with the rhythmic regularity of a pendulum. The girl was not troubled by any sense of sea-sickness. The keen north-wester that sang amid 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," answered Wyllard, pointing to the black opening in the fore-hatch that led to the steerage quarters. "An acquaintance of mine who's traveling 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. He can't live upon his pension, that is why he's going out to Canada. Now you'll excuse me."

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

Wyllard looked at her 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!" she replied.

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 odor floated up to her. 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 amid 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 garments, 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 ineffective efforts to straighten up the mess.

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 labor was wasted, for the Scarrowmania was rolling viciously, and as soon as a few were placed upright half of them collapsed again. Wyllard glanced towards the boys 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. "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 of them. 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!" commanded 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 remarked. "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 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," announced 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," answered 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 by, 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 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 that the sergeant and the petty officer who was going out almost penniless to Canada, had saddled themselves with the task of looking after those helpless lads. It was wholly unpaid labor, 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 believed that Wyllard 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 Hawtrey, and that her ideas had been a little unformed then.

In the evening, Mrs. Hastings, with whom he was evidently a favorite, 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," Mrs. Hastings answered 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 remember his offering to point out duty to other folks, and I don't think he goes about in search of an opportunity of benefiting humanity. Still, 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," remarked Agatha.

Mrs Hastings shook her head. "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 organized charity."



CHAPTER IX

THE FOG

During the next two days before a moderate gale the Scarrowmania shouldered her way westwards through the big, white-topped combers that rolled down upon her under a lowering sky. There were no luxurious, steam-propelled hotels in the Canadian trade at this time, and loaded deep with railway metal as she was, the vessel slopped in the green seas everywhere, and rolled her streaming sides out almost to her bilge. She 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 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, nor 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 physician 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 doctor 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 to trouble you just now," apologized Wyllard, "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," declared 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 slip between the doctor and the entrance to the saloon, but she saw also 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," the skipper said.

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

The skipper turned towards the doctor and Agatha guessed that he had overheard part of the conversation. "Don't you think you had better go—at once?" suggested the skipper.

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?" returned Wyllard, beginning 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, 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 thought 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 gray-haired Canadian looked up. "Yes," he agreed, "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 since then, though it was 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 feeling's 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 is 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 by our Legislature will have to wake up and stop them from getting in."

He went on with his dinner, but his observations left Agatha thoughtful. She was beginning to understand one side of Wyllard'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 persons 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 recognized 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 he almost invariably appeared with a pair of powerful glasses. She was watched over, her wishes were 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 great deal about him during the last few days, and rather less than usual about Gregory, which was partly the reason 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 vapor, and the half-seen shape of an anchored schooner loomed up, rolling wildly on gray 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 imagined, now and then, that the fog had a depressing effect on him, and that when the dory lay beneath the rail there had been an unusual look in his face.

A breeze came out of the northwest, 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 gray seas smashing about her bows. It was bitterly cold and the raw wind pierced to the bone, but the voyage was rapidly shortening.

One evening Agatha paced the deck with Wyllard. The girl was in a strangely unsettled mood. Perhaps it was merely the gloom of the sea and sky reacting upon her that caused her to look forward to the landing with a certain half-conscious shrinking. They stopped by the rails presently, looking out upon the tumbling seas that, tipped with livid froth, rolled out of the sliding haze, 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 Agatha had been troubled with a half-apprehensive longing to see what lay before her. She noticed the lookout, a lonely, shapeless figure, standing amid the spray that whirled about the plunging bows. By and by she saw him turn and wave an arm toward the bridge behind her, and she heard a hoarse cry. What it meant she could not tell, but in another moment the Scarrowmania's whistle shrieked.

A gray shape burst out of the vapor and grew with astonishing swiftness into dim tiers of slanted sailcloth swaying above a strip of hull that moved amid a broad white smear of foam. It was a brig under fore-course and topsails, and as the girl watched the vessel it sank to the tilted bowsprit, and a big gray and white sea foamed about the bows.

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

Wyllard did not answer. He was gazing up at the bridge, and once more the whistle gave a warning blast. It seemed that the two vessels could hardly pass clear of each other.

Wyllard laid a hand upon Agatha's shoulder.

"The skipper's starboarding. We'll go around to the stern," he said.

His grasp was reassuring, and Agatha watched the straining curves of canvas and the line of half-submerged hull. The brig rose with streaming bows, swung high above the sea, sank again, and vanished with bewildering suddenness into a belt of driving fog.

Agatha was not sure that there had been any peril, but it was certainly past 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 decided not to trouble herself about the reason for this, and presently she looked up at him. The expression that she had noticed now and then was once more in his face.

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

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

"Why?"

"It recalls something that still gives me a very bad few minutes every once in a while. 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. "I haven't told it often, but you shall hear," he replied. "It's a tale of a black failure." He stretched out a hand and pointed to the 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 hard, as it usually does where the Polar ice comes down into the Behring Sea. They'd been shooting seals. We meant to bring the men off if we could manage it."

"Wouldn't one boat have been enough?"

"No," answered Wyllard dryly, "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 shoot them only 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. I fancy they must have broken or lost an oar then. We 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 as solid as a wall. Any way, we pulled off, and went out with a foot of water in one boat. One of the rescued men took my oar when I let it go."

"Why did you let it go?"

Wyllard laughed in a grim fashion.

"My head was laid open with a sealing club," he said. "Some of the other men 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 the boat, and the spray was flying everywhere. If there had been only two boats we probably would have found out our misfortune, and perhaps would have set it straight. As it was, we couldn't tell that 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!" cried Agatha, "they were drowned?"

Wyllard made a 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 the men could have faced the sea that piled up when the gale came down. In all probability, they had an oar short, and the boat 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 had reached shore?"

"It's difficult to say. They could 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 concluded, "you see why I hate the fog."

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

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

He abruptly began to talk of something else, and by and by 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 inquired.

Agatha was 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 friend's question seemed to place a significance upon the fact.

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

"Then the rest of them will wonder whether 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 Winifred 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. She added, with a 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 subconscious feeling that the word "deputy" was not a 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," rejoined Winifred, "then if Mr. Wyllard's strong points merely heighten Gregory's virtues, I've nothing more to say. Any way, I'll reserve my homage until I've seen Gregory. Perfection among men is scarce nowadays."

She turned away, and left Agatha thoughtful. In the meanwhile, Mrs. Hastings came upon Wyllard alone in the music-room.

"You look quite serious," she remarked.

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

"In what way?"

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

Mrs. Hastings nodded. "As a matter of fact, that's very much what I felt from the first," she admitted. "Still, you see, there's the important fact that she's fond of him, and it should smooth out a good many difficulties. Anyway, she's evidently rather a courageous person."

Wyllard sat silent a moment or two. "I wasn't troubling about the material difficulties—lack of wealth and all that," he said. "I was wondering if she really could be fond of him. It is some years since she was much in his company."

"Hawtrey is not a man to change."

"That," returned 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." Mrs. Hastings smiled significantly.

"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 to marry him," said Mrs. Hastings, raising her eyebrows.

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

He went out, and Mrs. Hastings 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 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 froze, and the decks grew slippery. 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 that became bewilderingly thick at times, but the steamer slid on through it with whistle hooting. At last toward sunset the snow cleared away and Agatha stood shivering under a deck-house. She looked about her with a curiously heavy heart.

A gray haze stretched across the great river, which was dim and gray, 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, gray water, there was no sign of life ashore, and they seemed to be steaming into a great desolation.

Presently, 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. There her heart grew a little lighter. Once more she was conscious of the 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."

He went on, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha.

"We're a little late, and Gregory will be waiting for us in the station now," she announced. "No doubt he's got the wagon 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 color crept into her cheeks, and Mrs. Hastings was glad to see it, for she had noticed that the girl was looking pale and haggard. The strain of the last few months that she had spent in England was beginning to tell on her. She had borne it courageously, but a reaction had set in, and the trip had been fatiguing. The Scarrowmania had plunged along, bows under, against fresh northwesterly gales most of the way across the Atlantic, and 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. Moreover, Agatha had scarcely slept during the few days and nights that she had spent in the train. It takes time to become accustomed to the atmosphere of a heated sleeper, and since she had landed she had been in a state of not unnatural nervous tension.

She had found it difficult to preserve an outward serenity, the previous day. When, at last, 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 Gregory, 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. Something had gone wrong with Hawtrey's wagon 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 the accident, but for all that his absence was an unpleasant shock.

Feeling that her companions' 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, grayish-white, and not green, as it had been in England. The sky was low and gray, too, and the only thing that broke the dreary monotony of lifeless color was the formless, darker smear of a birch bluff that rose out of the empty levels. Her heart throbbed unpleasantly fast as the few remaining minutes slipped away. 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. A willow bluff, half filled with old cans and garbage, flitted by, a big bell began tolling, and Agatha rose when Mrs. Hastings took up her furs from a seat close by. After that, the girl 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 whom she had not seen for four years.

Though she paid no great attention to them the surroundings had a depressing effect on her. There was, however, very little to see. The mass of the great elevators that were silhouetted against a lowering sky, the little cluster of houses, and the sea of churned-up mire between them and the track comprised Clermont. There 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.

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 mud. His fur cap looked greasy, and the fur had been rubbed off it in patches. But while Agatha noticed these things it was Hawtrey's face that struck her most distinctly, 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 that she remembered had gone out of the eyes. They were harder, bolder, than they used to be. The mouth was slack—it looked almost sensual—and the man's whole personality seemed to have grown coarser. As she thrust the disconcerting fancies from her the car stopped.



In another moment Hawtrey sprang up on the platform, and his arms were about her. That brought the blood to her face, but she felt none of the thrill that she had expected. Indeed, she was conscious of a certain shrinking from his embrace. He must have lifted her down, for, when she was next aware of the presence of the friends with whom she had traveled, she stood beside the track with Mrs. Hastings, a man whom she supposed to be Mr. Hastings, Winifred and Wyllard about her. Another man also was standing close by, apparently waiting until they noticed him. He was covered with mire, his skin coat was very dilapidated, and Agatha thought that his boots never had been cleaned. His hair, which had evidently been badly cut, straggled out from under his old fur cap.

Gregory apparently explained 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."

Agatha's cheeks flamed, for she realized that it was her wedding of which they were speaking; 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 his people in England.

Winifred had separated herself from the group. She was standing near her baggage, which had been flung out beside the track, when Wyllard strode up to her.

"Feeling rather out of it? I do, any way," he remarked. "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 forlorn a few moments earlier, but the announcement Wyllard made was reassuring, and she brightened perceptibly as he signaled to a man who was standing a little further along the track. The stranger wore rather good 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, of which apparently he had been asked to make use. She had found it easier to get on with men who looked upon her as merely part of the office equipment.

"Mr. Hamilton is in charge of the elevator yonder," explained Wyllard, pointing to one of the huge buildings.

Then he introduced Miss Rawlinson.

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

"Typist and stenographer?" he asked. "Know anything about keeping accounts?"

Winifred admitted that she possessed these qualifications 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," answered Hamilton. "I've seen a good many and I'm inclined to believe some of the folks who showed them to me must have bought them." He waved his hand. "Mr. Wyllard assures me that you'll do, and 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 for which she had longed.

"There's another matter," she said hesitatingly, when she was left with Wyllard, "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. She's a Scotch Calvinist, and even if she isn't particularly amiable you'll be in safe hands. We'll consider it as fixed, but you're to stay with Mrs. Hastings for a fortnight. Sproatly"—he signed to the man in the skin coat—"will you get Miss Rawlinson's baggage into your wagon?"