Masters of the Wheat-Lands. Harold Bindloss

a photograph show the clean, sanguine temperament of a man, his impulsive generosity, and cheerful optimism?”

      Miss Rawlinson rose, and critically surveyed the photograph on the mantel.

      “I don’t want to be discouraging, but after studying that one I’m compelled to admit that it can’t. No doubt it’s the artist’s fault, but I’m willing to admit that a young girl would be rather apt to credit a man with a face like that with qualities he didn’t possess.” She sat down again with a thoughtful expression. “The fact is, you set him up on a pedestal and burned incense to him when you were not old enough to know any better, and when he came home for a few weeks four years ago you promised to marry him. Now it seems he’s ready at last, and wants you to go out to the new country. Perhaps it doesn’t affect the question, but if I’d promised to marry a man in Canada he’d certainly have to come for me. Isn’t there a certain risk in the thing?”

      “A risk?”

      Winifred nodded. “Yes,” she said, “rather a serious one. Four years is a long time, and the man may have changed. In a new country where life is so different, it must be a thing they’re rather apt to do.”

      A faint, half-compassionate, half-tolerant smile crept into Agatha’s eyes. The mere idea that the sunny-tempered, brilliant young man to whom she had given her heart could have changed or degenerated in any way seemed absurd to her. Winifred, however, went on again.

      “There’s another point,” she said. “If he’s still the same, which isn’t likely, there has certainly been a change in you. You have learned to see things more clearly, and have acquired a different standard from the one you had then. One can’t help growing, and as one grows one looks for more. One is no longer pleased with the same things; it’s inevitable.”

      She broke off for a moment, and her voice became gentler.

      “Well,” she added, “I’ve done my duty in trying to point this out to you, and now there’s only another thing to say: since you’re clearly bent on going, I’m going with you.”

      Agatha looked astonished, but there was a suggestion of relief in her expression, for the two had been firm friends and had faced a good deal together.

      “Oh!” she exclaimed, “that gets over the one difficulty!”

      Winifred made a little whimsical gesture.

      “I’m not quite sure that it does. The difficulty will probably be when I arrive in Canada, but I’m a rather capable person, and I believe they don’t pay ninepence a thousand words in Winnipeg. Besides, I could keep the books at a store or a hotel, and at the very worst Gregory could, perhaps, find a husband for me. Women, I hear, are held in some estimation in that country. Perhaps there’s a man out there who would treat decently even a little, plain, vixenish-tempered person with a turned-up nose.”

      Crossing the room again she banged the cover down on the typewriter, and then turned to Agatha with a suggestion of haziness in her eyes.

      “Anyway, I’m very tired of this country. It would be intolerable when you went away.”

      Agatha stretched out a hand and drew the girl down beside her. She no longer feared adverse fortune and loneliness, and she was filled with a gentle compassion, for she knew how hard a fight Winifred had made, and part at least of what she had borne.

      “My dear,” she said, “we will go together.”

      Then she opened the second letter, which she had forgotten while they talked.

      “They want me to stay at the Grange for a few weeks,” she announced, and smiled. “An hour ago I felt crushed and beaten—and now, though my voice has probably gone for good, I don’t seem to mind. Isn’t it curious that both these letters should have come to sweep my troubles away to-night?”

      “No,” answered Winifred, “it’s distinctly natural—just what one would have expected. You wrote to the man in Canada soon after you’d seen the specialist, and his answer was bound to arrive in the next few days.”

      “But I certainly didn’t write the folks at the Grange.”

      Winifred’s eyes twinkled. “As it happens, I did, two days ago. I ventured to point out their duty to them, and they were rather nice about it in another letter.”

      With a little sigh of contentment Agatha stretched herself out in the low chair. “Well,” she said, “it probably wouldn’t have the least effect if I scolded you. I believe I’m horribly worn out, Winny, and it will be a relief unspeakable to get away. If I can arrange to give up those pupils I’ll go to-morrow.”

      Winifred made no answer. Kneeling with one elbow resting on the arm of Agatha’s chair, she gazed straight in front of her. Both of the girls were very weary of the long, grim struggle, and now a change was close at hand.

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

THE OLD COUNTRY

       Table of Contents

      It was a still, clear evening of spring when Wyllard, unstrapping the rücksack from his shoulders, sat down beside a frothing stream in a dale of Northern England. On his arrival in London a week or two earlier he had found awaiting him a letter from Mrs. Hastings, who was then in Paris, in which she said that she could not at the moment say when she would go home again, but that she expected to advise him shortly.

      After answering the letter Wyllard started North, and, obtaining Agatha’s address from Miss Rawlinson, went on again to a certain little town, which, encircled by towering fells, stands beside a lake in the North Country. He had already recognized that his mission was rather a delicate one, and he decided that it would be advisable to wait until he heard from Mrs. Hastings before calling upon Miss Ismay. There remained the question, what to do with the next few days. A conversation with several pedestrian tourists whom he met at his hotel, and a glance at a map of the hill-tracks decided him. Remembering that he had on several occasions kept the trail in Canada for close on forty miles, he bought a Swiss pattern rücksack, and set out on foot through the fells.

      Incidentally, he saw scenery that gave him a new conception of the Old Country. He astonished his new friends, the tourists, who volunteered to show him the way over what they considered a difficult pass. To their great astonishment the brown-faced stranger, who wore ordinary tight-fitting American attire and rather pointed American shoes, went up the mountainside apparently without an effort, and for the credit of the clubs to which they belonged it was incumbent on them to keep pace with him. They did not know that he had carried bags of flour and mining tools over very much higher passes, close up to the limit of eternal snow, but they did know that he set them a difficult pace, and after two days’ climbing they were relieved to part company with him.

      A professional guide who overtook them recognized the capabilities of the man when he noticed the way in which he lifted his feet and how he set them down. This, the guide decided, was a man accustomed to walking among the heather, but he was wrong; for it was the trick the bushman learns when he plods through leagues of undergrowth and fallen branches, or the tall grass of the swamps; and it is a memorable experience to make a day’s journey with such a man. For the first hour the thing seems easy, as the pace is never forced, but the speed never slackens; and as the hours go by the novice, who flounders and stumbles, grows horribly weary of trying to keep up with the steady, persistent swing.

      Wyllard had traveled since morning along a ridge of fells when he sat down beside the water and contentedly filled his pipe. On the one hand, a wall of crags high above was growing black against the evening light, and the stream, clear as crystal, came boiling down among great boulders. But the young man had wandered through many a grander and more savage