THE BAIL JUMPER

THE BAIL JUMPER

BY

ROBERT J. C. STEAD

LONDON

T. FISHER UNWIN

ADELPHI—TERRACE

First published in 1914.

[All rights reserved.]

CONTENTS

• [CHAPTER I—A FRIEND AND AN ENEMY]
• [CHAPTER II—SECRETS OF SUCCESS]
• [CHAPTER III—TWO ON THE TRAIL]
• [CHAPTER IV—CROTTON’S CROSSING]
• [CHAPTER V—UNDER SUSPICION]
• [CHAPTER VI—THE ARM OF THE LAW]
• [CHAPTER VII—ONLY A BARNARDO BOY]
• [CHAPTER VIII—A MYSTERIOUS ACQUAINTANCE]
• [CHAPTER IX—A FUGITIVE]
• [CHAPTER X—PLAYING THE GAME]
• [CHAPTER XI—A FRIEND IN NEED]
• [CHAPTER XII—LOVE—OR LAW?]
• [CHAPTER XIII—GROPING]
• [CHAPTER XIV—THE SACRIFICE OF SILENCE]
• [CHAPTER XV—STILL PLAYING THE GAME]
• [CHAPTER XVI—KIT MCKAY]
• [CHAPTER XVII—THE HOMESTEAD LINE]
• [CHAPTER XVIII—RIGHT ABOUT FACE!]
• [CHAPTER XIX—THE LIGHT AT LAST]

THE BAIL JUMPER

[CHAPTER I—A FRIEND AND AN ENEMY]

The short winter day was at an end. The gloom of five-o’clock twilight gathered about the frost-shrouded team and the farm sleigh which crunched complainingly behind. For twenty miles the team had plodded, steadily, laboriously—their great heads undulating with their gait, through the snow-blocked roads. The two fur-clad men had long ago dropped all attempt at conversation, and an occasional swing of their arms, in an effort to revive the chilled circulation, was the only evidence that the vital spark still burned in their deep-bosomed bodies.

Suddenly a shape loomed through the grey mist of the night. The horses lurched back upon the double trees, their trace-chains clattering with the slack. The shape took form; a frightened team were seen plunging in the deep snow by the roadside; the vehicles interlocked.

“What d’ye mean by crowdin’ me off the road like that?” cried an angry voice, as a man’s form rose in the opposing cutter.

“I didn’t crowd you off,” returned the driver of the sleigh. “It was your own reckless speed that got you into trouble. See, man, your nigh horse is down; I’m thinkin’ he needs your attention more than me.”

“But it’s you will have it first,” came the savage reply, as the speaker sprang from the cutter on to the side of the sleigh. But almost before he landed a great bear-like arm shot out, and the assailant would have fallen in a crumpled mass beside his struggling horses, had not the same arm jerked him forward into the sleigh.

In the deep gloom the two men thrust their faces close, then drew suddenly back.

“And what way is this to greet a neighbour on the public road, Hiram Riles?” demanded the driver of the sleigh. “Ye’ll have strange tales for the wife to-night, I’m thinkin’, by the breath o’ you. Away home with ye, and mind the road. It’s no fit night for a man in your shape, Hiram.”

The other murmured thickly, “I’m all right,” but showed no further belligerent tendencies; and when the team had been extricated from their entanglement and set upon the road again, the two old-timers parted in their opposite directions.

“It’s a sore temptin’ o’ Providence for a man to venture on the country roads a winter’s night without all his senses, Raymond,” said the elder man, as they drove on. “See ye’re no guilty of it. There’s many a tragedy blamed to the climate that’s begun in the gin-shop.”

Already the town lights were peering mistily through the haze, and in a few minutes the sleigh drew up at the door of Gardiner’s general store. The two men got out and lifted a trunk to the sidewalk, when the elder resumed his seat in the sleigh.

“Hadn’t you better put in the team and stay all night, father? The horses are dog-tired, and it’ll be better driving in the morning.”

“No, Raymond. I’ll push back as far as Mathesons’, and spend the night there. I’m no hand for stayin’ in town. I’ll be leavin’ now, and mind, boy, we’re expectin’ you to make good.”

The two men grasped hands in a moment’s clasp; the next, sleigh and driver had disappeared in the night.

The young man stood on the sidewalk, in the momentary irresolution of the stranger. He had been in Plainville before, and knew Mr. Gardiner by sight; but then, he met him as a customer, and now it was to be as employee. Overcoming his bashfulness, he pushed open the store door and entered. The white glare of the gasoline lights revealed a boy of twenty-one, sturdy and well set up, although of somewhat smaller stature than the average in the country; with clean, weather-beaten face and eyes accustomed to look squarely before them. The nose rose strong and resolute from the cheeks, but in the quiet mouth there was a lurking sadness suggestive of melancholy.

Raymond Burton unbuttoned his coat and threw back the collar, when a cheery voice said, “Hello, Burton, you got in? Hardly expected you to-night, the roads are so full. Throw off your coat and warm yourself, and then go up to Mrs. Goode’s boarding-house and make yourself at home. I have arranged accommodation for you there. She is one of our best customers, and she runs a good house.”

There was nothing stand-offish about Gardiner. He met his employees on a basis of friendship and equality, and had a ready way with him that was continually swelling his list of customers, notwithstanding the competition of the Sempter Trading Co., the oldest and strongest mercantile firm in the town. Indeed, Gardiner was little more than a boy himself, who, a few years before, had come up from one of the Eastern Provinces to engage in business in the West.

Gardiner walked around to the boarding-house with Burton, after giving a boy a quarter to deliver the trunk. Mrs. Goode, herself, answered the bell. She was a sprightly, motherly woman, with a quick step, a ready tongue, and a hearty laugh; hair that hinted of fifty, but a smile that said she was twenty-five; and, withal, not entirely blind to her own accomplishments.

“This is my new clerk, Mr. Burton, Mrs. Goode,” said Gardiner. “I brought him here because I knew the house you run. He has driven most of the day, and just needs one of your hot suppers to make him feel the luck he has in being one of Mrs. Goode’s boarders.”

“Well, I do give a good supper, if I say it myself,” said Mrs. Goode. “No hungry people in my house, if I know it. But you want to go to your room. Alice, show Mr. Butler to room sixteen. Sweet sixteen, I call it, and I always save it for the young men,” she added, with a coquettish glance at her new customer.

Alice Goode, aged eighteen, emerged from the dining-room, and Burton having been introduced, as “Mr. Garden’s new clerk,” she demurely led the young man upstairs. “I hope you will like your room,” she said, and, the business obligations of the situation discharged, continued, “Do you dance?”

“Why, a little,” Burton admitted. “But I never learned, properly. Just country dances, you know.”

“Gee, that’s all is any good, anyway. None of your city camel-strides for me, but a good turkey-in-the-straw alamen-lefter an’ you can count me in every trip. There’s a hop on at Grant’s to-night. Going?”

“I’m afraid I haven’t an invitation, and I don’t even know the people.”

“That don’t matter. There’ll be some loads goin’ out from town, an’ you better just roll into one of them. It’s about five miles, an’ the ride will be dandy. Besides, Grant’s are the best there is, an’ you’ll be as welcome as a rich sinner in church. The hoe-down is in honour of their niece, who has come out from the East, an’s goin’ to live with them. They say she’s pretty an’ a swell singer. It’ll be quite a show-ring affair, I expect, but all to the good.”

“Al-i-c-e!” cried her mother. “Set them good silver knives an’ forks, cause Mr. Burtle’s here, an’ get a two-step on yuh now or never a foot will yuh go to the dance to-night.”

Alice disappeared, and Burton was left to examine his quarters. They were small and cheaply furnished, but comfortable enough. “At any rate,” he soliloquised, “I shall not be very lonely, if Miss Alice is a sample of Plainville society.”

The smell from Mrs. Goode’s supper table justified that lady’s high opinion of it. When Burton came in he was introduced to each boarder in turn. There were two lady school-teachers, two bank clerks, a couple of store employees, a young lawyer, and several who might be termed “not classified.” A spirit of good fellowship prevailed, and Burton was surprised at the point to which banter was carried. Alice waited on the table, while Mrs. Goode presided in the kitchen. Mr. Goode, a tall, cadaverous man, moved shyly about the house, in which he occupied a minor position. It was understood that Mrs. Goode held him in much disfavour on account of his emaciated appearance, which she felt to be a reflection upon her boarding-house.

“How can I expect to prosper when I have a walkin’ sign-post like that?” she lamented to her neighbour, Mrs. O’Brien.

“Fade him on breakfast food with a little ‘barm’ in til’t,” was that honest woman’s advice.

After supper Burton was reading in his room, when a knock came at the door, and Gardiner burst in.

“Say, Burton, come with me to the dance at Grant’s to-night,” said the visitor. “I’m driving out in my cutter, and I want company. They’re O.K. people, and there’s a new-comer out there we all want to see. As for an invitation—well, I have instructions to see that all the desirables are asked, and I figure you in that bunch. Come along. The sooner you get acquainted here the better, both for yourself and from a business point of view.”

Burton surmised that the “business point of view” had a good deal to do with most of Gardiner’s attitudes, but he was glad enough to accept the invitation. The drive, in a top cutter, behind a spirited team, was so different from the dreary monotony of the afternoon that Raymond could scarce believe it was the same country. There were many rigs on the road, but the trail was banked so high (for in prairie countries the winter roads rise high above the surrounding snow) that it was impossible to pass, and before reaching Grant’s the scattered rigs had gathered into a long procession.

The Grant boys, George and Harry, were at the stable with lanterns, and hurried about, exchanging greetings while they wrestled with frozen tugs, and directed drivers blinking in the light. The young ladies became the charge of Susy Grant, who bundled them in at the front door of the house, while her brothers herded the swains into the kitchen, for be it known, that while women may be ushered into parlour or bedroom, the kitchen is the proper reception place for men. There they sit on stools and wood-boxes, or crowd into corners, exchanging anecdotes or revelling in amusement furnished by the wits of the countryside. Burton was introduced by his employer to a few of the men and boys nearest by, but none Waited for an introduction when there was occasion to speak. They were a mixed company, some from the town, and others from the country district in which the Grant homestead lay, but all were acquainted and most were friends. Presently the door opened and a new-comer ambled in; a strange human contrivance, half man, half boy, who tripped over his long coat on the doorstep and projected himself in a heap in the midst of the laughing crowd.

“Hello, London, what flew up an’ hit you?” said one, as the boy scrambled clumsily to his feet. “Been to town on your way over?”

“Hit’s my bloomin’ coat,” explained London. “Hi fall w’en hever Hi try to stand hup.”

“Take it ’hoff,’” shouted the crowd, as London proceeded to remove his outer garments. This operation revealed the fact that London, as the Barnardo lad was popularly called, although a boy in stature, aspired to the wearing of man’s clothes, with the result that his trousers were turned up almost to his knees and his coat hung down below them, the two extremes meeting, as it were, about a foot from the floor. His commodious boots had been recently blacked, and a heavy brass chain stretched from pocket to pocket of his vest; but, most glorious of all, was the bright red tie speared with a pin in the form of a horseshoe and intended, doubtless, to indicate that its wearer was a sport of the first blood.

“How did you get away to-night, London? Couldn’t Riles find anything for you to do?”

“’E could. ’E’ll find work for them as comes to ’is funeral. But ’e’s comin’ ’imself, an’ has Hi was specially named in Missus Grant’s hinvitation”—this with an air of profound importance—“’e could ’ardly ’elp letting me come, ’specially has Hi said Hi would burn down the ’ouse hif they came with-hout me.”

“Good boy, London,” was the comment. “That’s the way to bring him to time.”

“Hi drownded a pig hin the well one day ’e went to town an’ wouldn’t take me,” said London, proudly. “Hand another time——”

What happened another time was never made public, for at that moment Big Jack McTavish, official caller-off and master of ceremonies at every dance in the Plainville district for a dozen years, strode into the dining-room and shouted, “Partners for the Circashyun Circle.”

The men from the kitchen swarmed into the dining-room and parlour, which had been cleared of carpets and furniture. The piano stood in the hall, where it was presided over by Miss Green, the school-teacher; on a chair alongside sat old Dave Cottrell, the fiddler, who had spent the sixty-odd years of his life in struggle to draw the maddening music from his violin, and had succeeded in that, and in nothing else; along the stairs, and in the bedrooms above, were crowded the girls and young women. This was partners’ dance, and in a few moments the floor was crowded. Then the music struck up and the feet kept time, and the dance had started. In the intricacies of the Circassian Circle every couple is made to dance with every other couple, so that all have a chance to exchange greetings before the first set is over, and it affords as appropriate an opening selection as Old Hundred at morning service. Before Big Jack’s ample hands came together as a signal that the first dance was ended the last atom of reserve had been swept away, and everybody was in tune to make a night of it. Gardiner danced with every lady in the room, from Alice Goode to little Miss Green, who was persuaded to leave the piano for just one set, and even London found young women who did not scorn his clumsy advances. The dances were quadrilles, lancers, schottisches and reels, with an occasional waltz or two-step just to indicate that if they did not give city dances the place of prominence it was through choice, not ignorance.

Among the ladies was one whom Burton knew to be the guest of honour, even before he was told; a young woman his own age, or older, dressed in a creamy white, with a single real rose in her hair. Her dark, full eye-lashes, the finely shaped nose and ears, the firm but sympathetic mouth, electrically responsive to every wave of emotion of her alert brain, were not lost upon the country youth. There were many graceful dancers, many radiant, happy-faced girls, but hers was a grace distinct from theirs and a happiness more subtle, more delightful, more pervading. The little tricks of speech which distinguish between the intelligent and the well-educated; the little delicate courtesies which distinguish between the well-meaning and the well-bred; the inborn and self-effacing refinement which is the touchstone of true culture—these were evidenced in every word, every motion, every gesture. Burton forgot about dancing, forgot that he was expected to dance, as he drank in a music unheard by the less discerning ears about him, and revelled in an intoxication not of wine. It was not until Gardiner came to his corner and, with a friendly slap, said, “Burton, old man, get up and dance. What are you moping for?” that he was recalled to his surroundings.

“I’m not moping; just dreaming,” he said, springing to his feet.

“Never dream while you are awake; it doesn’t pay. There’s Alice Goode; she has glanced your way a dozen times—and there’s worse girls than Alice.”

Burton took the hint, and in a few moments was threading his way through the meshes of a quadrille amid the pepsin aroma of the sweet Alice. He discharged his obligation with credit, thanked his partner courteously, and retired into his corner until supper was called at midnight.

Mrs. Grant supervised the work in the kitchen, while willing, although not always skilful, hands assisted in the distribution of the refreshments. This was the stage of the evening’s entertainment at which the social spirit flowed highest; men and women, boys and girls, sat or stood about in disorganised groups, eating sandwiches, cake and pie, and consuming great cups of hot coffee, the while sharpening their wits at each other’s expense and joining as heartily in the laugh when it happened to be at their own.

A middle-aged gentleman whose appearance stirred some old memory in Burton, seeing the young man seated a little by himself, came over and engaged in conversation.

“If my old eyes do not deceive me, you are a son of John Burton’s,” said he.

“I am Raymond Burton. And you—surely I should remember you?”

“Man, man, I know your father like my own brother. Sure you’ve heard him speak of Dick Matheson? We shantied together on the Muddywaski, and a better man than John Burton never rode a log in the Ottaway country, which is sayin’ a good deal. I do not see you dancin’ much. I’m thinkin’ you will have your father’s quiet way; like a sleepy kitty, he was, when left alone, but a roarin’ lion when put to the bit. But times are changed, and men win more now with soft speech than we did with hard knuckles. And whichever the game, a Burton should be to the fore. Grant,” he said, addressing the head of the house, as he was about to pass, “this is Raymond Burton. I knew his father on the Muddywaski.” To honest Dick Matheson no further credentials seemed necessary.

“Glad to meet you,” said Mr. Grant, cordially. “Have you been introduced to my niece? Dear me, I’m afraid the reception committee are too busy with the sandwiches. Myrtle, just a moment,” as the young lady emerged from an eddy of humanity, “let me present Mr. Burton. Mr. Burton—Miss Vane,” and the two elder gentlemen allowed themselves to be swept into the vortex of the crowd.

Miss Vane took Burton’s hand in a friendly grip—a grip that was not afraid to speak of the soul behind it. “I am a stranger here, and I meet so many people, but I shall remember you,” she said in quiet, musical tones, in such striking contrast, Burton thought, to the strident country voices about him.

“I am a stranger too,” the young man answered for want of a better thing to say.

“Then we at least have something in common,” said Miss Vane, and it occurred to Raymond that he had said the best thing possible.

In a moment the young lady was claimed by other guests. But Burton was satisfied.

When supper was over and the conversation began to lag, some one suggested that Miss Vane should sing. The proposal was received with applause.

“If it will give you any pleasure,” said the young lady. Miss Green resumed her seat at the piano, and in a few moments human tones such as never before had been heard in Plainville district filled the sturdy house from kitchen to attic. Deep, melting, melodious tones—the cultured expression of the greatest musical instrument God Himself could devise—the human voice! To what degrading uses it is so often put! She sang, not the popular airs of the day, nor classical selections beyond the ken of her audience, however dear to herself, but the old Scotch songs which are strong enough to force a way to the roughest intellect, yet fine enough to stir the slightest chord in the galaxy of human accomplishment; deep enough to send men raging to battle and gentle enough to croon little children to sleep. As she wandered on and on, through the heroic, the pathetic, the tenderly sentimental, the dancers sat in the rapture of a spell as new to them as the angel chorus to the shepherds of Palestine, and when at last the low voice poured forth the sanctified lament of “The Land o’ the Leal,” Big Jack’s wife went sobbing to the kitchen, and Mrs. Grant slipped a motherly arm around little Mrs. Dale, whose misty eyes were seeing a year-old mound and a little white slab that stared stolidly through the snow:

“Our bonnie bairn’s there, Jean,

She was baith gude and fair, Jean,

And oh, we grudged her sair,

Tae the Land o’ the Leal.”

Even London forgot to dangle his watch-chain, and his employer, Riles, who had sold his soul to Mammon twenty years ago, laughed quietly at the tear on the boy’s cheek.

When the singer had finished, and the spell was broken by the commonplace talk which someone always finds necessary to introduce on such occasions, Dick Matheson got up and said, “We have all listened to Miss Vane with great delight, and feel that she is no longer a stranger among us. But we have another stranger here to-night, and it is but fair that we should hear him too. Burton, let’s hear from you. Your father could sing ‘The Death of Jimmie Whalen’ with any man in the shanties. I knew his father on the Muddywaski,” he explained.

Burton blushed and made excuses, but a popular suggestion in such a company is tantamount to a command. Surrendering to the inevitable, he arose, saying, “I do not sing at all, but I will repeat some verses, if you insist.”

“We insist,” came the chorus, and, when silence was secured, he began in a strong, human voice, lacking the finish of culture, but vibrant with sympathy with the spirit of the poem:

“This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,

Sails the unshadowed main—

The venturous bark that flings

On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings

In gulfs enchanted, where the siren sings——”

He had not repeated four lines until he discovered that he had made a mistake. The soul may respond to music it cannot comprehend, as a rusty wire may thrill with vibrations from the throat of a Melba, but the mind of man makes no answer to poetry beyond its grasp. Burton was forcing himself against an immovable resistance; projecting a thought, live, warm, charged with the germs of a million inspirations, against a stone wall of mental vacuity. And yet he was sustained, as in an electric coil a single wire thinner than a human hair may support the current that flashes on two oceans at once, and he proceeded. In the second stanza his eyes met Miss Vane’s, and heaven was opened before him. She understood! Her mind was pacing the “caves of thought” with his; her mentality was producing the current that he transformed into speech. He remembered the advice of a great orator—“Speak to one soul in your audience, and forget all others,” and he obeyed. Not again did he look at Miss Vane; he dared not double-circuit the delicate current that carried him on, but he poured forth the solemn cadences of Holmes’ great poem with a fire and enthusiasm that commanded the attention of the company until, focusing his energy in the last stanza, the walls trembled with the vibrations of his intensity:

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll;

Leave thy low-vaulted past!

Let each new temple, nobler than the last,

Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,

Till thou at length art free,

Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea.”

There was a clapping of hands, which Burton knew to be a courtesy rather than a compliment, and Susy Grant went so far as to say that it was a very nice piece. Matheson justified all by repeating that he “knew his father on the Muddywaski,” but the young man cared not what they said or thought. For a dozen years he had spent the long winter evenings on the farm in reading and self-culture, thereby opening to himself a door through which none of these could follow. None—save one. And she had followed. She understood!

The dancing was then revived, more vigorously, if possible, than in the earlier part of the evening. Burton noticed that Gardiner twice engaged Miss Vane as his partner, but himself did not dare claim so great a boon. He was but a country boy, and Gardiner was a town man, a business man, and—his employer.

Before the dance broke up a laugh was caused by the discovery of London in the kitchen, deep amid the sandwiches and pie.

“You must be hungry, London,” said one of the young men, as a group gathered round him.

“You bet Hi ham,” answered the lad, unabashed. “Hi ’aven’t ’ad wot you’d call a decent meal hin a month.”

“Fill your pockets, then; there’s lots there,” was the good advice given, which London proceeded to take.

At the back of the group was a coarse, animal-looking man, with heavy, scowling features and an eye whose natural repulsiveness was heightened by a deep scar along the brow, which caused the livid eye-lids to loop outward as they approached the nose. He noted the incident, and as he heard the conversation a look of malignant hate deepened in the glaring eyes, and the mouth twitched in a brutal lust for revenge. It was Riles.

At last it was time to go home, and the gathering broke up. Gardiner lingered a moment with Miss Vane, and Burton proceeded to the stable. On the way he passed near by the Grant summer-house, now little more than a great mound of snow. Through his fur covering he fancied he heard a strange noise; he turned down the collar, and listened. Unmistakable sounds of violence, of muffled cursing, of hard, short breathing, came from beyond the summer-house. Burton ran in that direction, and the gibbous moon which now shone dimly through the scattering clouds revealed a form in the snow and another above kicking viciously, endeavouring to sink the heavy boots in the face of the fallen man. As the victim threw up his arms to protect his face he received the blows in the chest, driving the breath from his lungs in great gasps. Burton, seeing how desperate was the situation, rushed upon the assailant, and, crossing his arms about the other’s neck, gripped his throat in a strangle-hold that sent him to his knees in a moment. Every effort to break loose was vain; the vital supply of air was shut off, and in a few seconds the big frame rolled helplessly in Burton’s arms. The muscles relaxed, the head fell back, the face turned up to the pale light of the moon, and the eyes, glaring and misshapen, glared into his. It was Riles.

London, seeing help at hand, sent up a lusty shriek, and in a few minutes a big crowd had gathered about the combatants. Gardiner hurried to Burton’s side and whispered, “Let him go, that’s not what I hired you for.” Burton released his grip and Riles fell in the snow, London sending up a fresh series of shrieks when he saw his oppressor again at liberty. The big man soon recovered himself and scrambled to his feet, and the crowd rapidly dispersed. But before Riles went he found occasion to hiss in Burton’s ear, “You got the drop on me that time, young meddler, but I’ll square it with ye yet, if I do murder for it.”

Burton laughed, but the words left an unpleasant taste.

[CHAPTER II—SECRETS OF SUCCESS]

A month’s experience in the general store business brought much new light to Burton. He had imagined that a man who stood behind the counter, wearing good clothes, talking pleasantly to ladies and joking with men, commencing work at eight in the morning and quitting, well, he didn’t just know when—such a man surely was a favoured individual. He had contrasted a business career with life on the farm: Up at five; breakfast by lamplight; cows and horses to care for in evil-smelling stables; innumerable chores before the day’s work was properly begun; then the long, heavy labour, in crackling frosts, in suns that burned the flesh like a searing iron, in miserable, damp, murkiness; in dust laden winds that filled the eyes and choked the lungs, in all the numberless vagaries of climate; the coarse clothing demanded by such a vocation; the plain fare and simple home comforts; and then, tired to the point of exhaustion, bed, which was alike the end of one day’s labours and the starting point of another round of continuous toil, irksome and often ill-requited. Such comparisons had, to some extent, influenced his decision to seek his future in a life of commercial activity; and, while he had not admitted any regret, there now were nights when he felt that a good day’s labour in the harvest field or on the plough would be a welcome and refreshing diversion. He had not guessed that a business career demanded so much physical energy; it was a new discovery to him that the closing of a difficult sale was more exhausting than forking to the top of a stack. Nevertheless, he had set his hand to the plough, and he was determined to finish the furrow, and the very knowledge that physical energy played so great a part in the commercial battle of the age came to him as an encouragement and a fresh hope. But where bodily strength and a fair degree of intelligence might, unaided, win success in agricultural pursuits, he had discovered that another element was absolutely essential in the business world. It was tact. No energy was sufficiently indomitable, no brain sufficiently farseeing and alert, to win success in the surroundings in which he now found himself without the magic touchstone of tact. Energy, intelligence, and tact; these three, but the greatest of these is tact.

It was in the middle of winter, the dull season after the Christmas trade, and before the spring activity begins, and Gardiner had allowed a higher priced clerk to go, believing that he could handle all the business with the assistance of Burton. This, although it entailed more work, was to the young man’s advantage, as it brought him into close and almost constant contact with his employer, and forced him to attempt many things that he would otherwise have left to more experienced hands. Already he found it unnecessary to summon Gardiner when a lady asked for three-quarters of a yard of velvet, cut on the bias; could discuss the merits of Dongola and calf with the assurance of an expert, and tell at a glance whether goods would “wash.” But there were other things he found more difficult to learn.

Mrs. Mandle was in search of cotton—good, strong cotton, not too dear. Burton showed her an eight-cent web which he thought conformed to her specifications. After a lengthy examination, the good lady admitted that it satisfied her in some ways, but not in others. “The price is about what I wanted,” she said, “but the quality is very poor.”

“Indeed, we have sold a great deal of that cotton, and it seems to give good satisfaction.”

“Oh, so it might, for some work, but it hardly suits me. I guess I will just step around to the Sempter Trading Company and see what they can let me have.”

“Well, look at this,” said Burton, producing another web.

“Yes, that’s about what I wanted. And what will the price on that be?”

“Ten cents.”

“Ten cents! What a dreadful price for a piece of cotton. My, everything is getting so dear, I can’t see what we farmers are comin’ to. Mrs. Winters sent to Winnipeg for hers, and you ought to see it—the very loveliest cotton, and only six and a half cents, and a box of slate pencils thrown in for the children. No, dear me, I couldn’t pay such a price as that. I might, yes, I would be willing to pay eight cents for it, the same as the other, now, an’ you’re makin’ a good profit on it at that.”

“I am sorry, Madam,” said Burton, trying not to be annoyed at her attempt to take charge of the firm’s business, “but our prices are as close as we find it possible to handle the goods, especially on staples like cotton. That is a really good article; may I cut off the amount you require?”

“Yes, at eight cents——”

Burton returned his scissors to his pocket, and the lady started for the door, when Gardiner, who had finished with his customer and stood listening to the dialogue, called her back.

“Don’t be in a hurry, Mrs. Mandle,” he said, in a winning voice that appealed to the lady’s instinct for flattery, “there is a web here that Mr. Burton didn’t know about, and perhaps it will suit you.”

Gardiner went behind the counter and pulled out the very eight-cent piece that had been already shown.

“Now here is a ten-cent line that I can recommend to you,” he said, leaning well across the counter and speaking in a confidential voice. Burton was about to point out his mistake, when something in the eye of his employer warned him that the transaction had been taken out of his hands. “This is a regular ten-cent line, and extra value at that, but I got something a little special on it by taking an unusual quantity from the factory at one time. Of course, we generally figure when we get a snap on a purchase that at least part of the bargain should be ours, but with an old and valued customer like you hard and fast rules don’t always apply. It’s something I really should not do, but under the circumstances I will let you have anything up to twenty yards off this web for eight cents.”

Mrs. Mandle beamed with pleasure. “That’s like you, Mr. Gardiner, I always find that I can deal with you. Not that I have anything against this young man——” she continued, as though anxious not to place Burton in an unfavourable light.

“Oh, that’s all right,” laughed Gardiner. “Mr. Burton has general instructions applying to our regular customers, but when he knows you better he will meet your requirements as well as I do, I am sure. Now shall it be twenty yards?”

“I only wanted twelve,” Mrs. Mandle confessed, “but since it is what you might call a bit of a bargain, I believe I will just take the twenty.”

Gardiner smiled genially and measured off the cloth, but Burton observed that as he did so he had a crook in each thumb, which allowed about a half an inch of over-lap on each yard measured. Mrs. Mandle paid for her purchase, and left with a smile to Gardiner and a friendly nod to Burton, and said she would probably be in in a few days with a case of eggs and some other produce.

“Bring them right in here, Mrs. Mandle,” said Gardiner, as he closed the door after her. Coming back to the counter, he said to Burton, half-apologetically, “I forgot to tell you, Burton, to put up all prices on Mrs. Mandle. She is one of those dear souls who, as a matter of principle, will never buy unless they think they are getting some concession in price. It’s a simple matter to raise the price and drop it again, and it pleases them.”

Burton flushed a little. He had been brought up to believe that strict honesty was the best policy, and it seemed to him that the very foundations of his conception of business success were being swept away. These great merchant princes, who were lauded in the papers and welcomed in the most distinguished circles, were they men of high standards and noble principles, or were they consummate liars and cheats?

“I do not mean to question your methods,” he said, at length, “but—is it, such a transaction as that, I mean, exactly honest?”

If he expected Gardiner to be angry at his frankness his fear was soon dispelled.

“Why not?” laughed his employer. “The cotton is ours; we can sell it for what we like, can’t we? If we ask fifty cents for it that’s our business, or if we choose to give it away, that’s our business. These people who are always trying to beat us down really don’t mean any harm, and we don’t do them any harm. We just make them happy. Take Mrs. Mandle, for instance. She thinks she saved forty cents, and that thought will lighten her troubles for a week. As a matter of fact, she bought eight yards more than she needed, but no doubt it will come handy sometime.”

“I think I would give a real cut, if I pretended to,” persisted Burton.

“You can’t afford to. See, that ten-cent cotton costs me six and three-quarter cents. You may think I could sell at eight and get out on it. I can’t. Let me explain my position, so you will understand it better. Last year I sold thirty-seven thousand dollars worth of goods. My net profits were four thousand five hundred dollars, or just about thirteen per cent. Now, no matter what an article may cost me, if I give fifteen per cent. off the established selling price, I am losing money. Isn’t that clear? And as some people have the bargain mania, we have to give them fictitious bargains, just as the doctor prescribes fictitious drugs for patients who think they can’t get well unless they take something.”

Burton said no more, but he was not convinced.

A few days later a customer asked for a pound of fifty-cent black bulk tea. Burton found the fifty-cent bin empty. “I’m sorry,” said he, “but we appear to be out of the fifty-cent line. How would this suit?” and he was about to offer another brand when Gardiner, who had overheard the remark, called across the store, “That’s fifty-cent tea in the left-hand bin.”

Now the left-hand bin contained thirty-five cent tea, and Burton knew it.

To refuse to fill the order from the bin indicated would amount to resigning his position, yet he was determined not to take advantage of any customer. For a moment he hesitated. Then he weighed the tea out of the thirty-five cent bin, but he gave the customer a pound and seven ounces.

Under the grocery counter were a number of swinging standards on which sugar and salt barrels were swung in and out as desired. The reserve supply was kept in a warehouse at the back, and on a quiet day it occurred to Burton to bring in a number of barrels and fill all the standards. Gardiner observed him and suggested that the barrels should be left outside until needed. Burton answered that he thought it would be an advantage to have them in; besides, it was damp in the shed, and the sugar showed some disposition to cake, while the salt became very hard.

“Yes,” admitted Gardiner, “but it will weigh two per cent. more as it is than after it stands in here for a week, and we handle sugar on less than five per cent.”

In selling a gallon of coal oil Burton discovered that the oil pump brought rather less than a gallon at a stroke. He reported the matter, thinking the pump needed repairing.

“How much do you estimate it is running short?” asked his employer.

“About five per cent.”

“That’s too bad. It should be ten.”

“But surely you don’t mean to short-measure our customers? When we sell a gallon, we sell a gallon, do we not?”

“Theoretically, yes. But some things do not work out in practice quite the same as in theory. Look here, Burton,” and Gardiner’s voice took on a serious tone, “I have sold coal oil for ten years, for myself and others, and in all that time I have never opened a barrel that gave the merchant full measure. If he gets off with a ten per cent. loss he can consider himself lucky. I have seen barrels that were quite empty, yet we had to pay for full measurement. It’s all very well to have principles and theories, but what are you to do when you are face to face with such conditions?”

“Raise the price until it will show a profit, but give full measurement.”

Gardiner laughed. “You wouldn’t sell a barrel in a year,” he said. “The public would refuse to pay your price. They would rather be cheated, and not know it, than pay an honest price, and know it. The public bring these things upon themselves. They place a premium upon dishonesty. They will actually coax a man to lie to them. Tell a man, or better still, a woman, that you are selling a two dollar article for a dollar, and she will fight her way to the counter; but tell her the truth, that you are selling an article worth a dollar for a dollar, and she will pass your store in search of a merchant who has fictions more to her liking. If the public want us to play fair, why do they refuse to set the example, or at least show some appreciation of fair treatment? They are never tired of telling of the dishonesty of their merchants; I could relate deeds of trickery resorted to by customers which make the devices we practise look like the harmless sport of little children. But, to return to the subject, we could adulterate the coal oil and give them full measurement, if that would please you better.”

“But isn’t adulteration against the law?”

“So are turkey raffles.”

Burton winced. He had attended one of these country gatherings the previous evening, and come home considerably lighter in pocket although without any feathered trophies.

“I do not mean to be personal,” Gardiner said, kindly enough. “I merely want to show that, after all, the law takes very little notice of the man who steals in a gentlemanly way. Robbery is an art, and it is the crude thief that gets into trouble.”

“Speaking of adulteration reminds me of one of my employers, who was a druggist as well as a general store keeper. He was an honest, well-intended fellow, but he didn’t propose to let any one get very much the better of him. Now it happened that the rural municipality required a thousand ounces of strychnine, put up in half-ounce bottles, for gopher poison. The drug at that time was worth fifty-eight cents an ounce wholesale, and when the council came to the boss for his price he quoted seventy-five cents, which was not unreasonable, seeing that he had to furnish the bottles and labels and do the bottling—not a job to be desired. But these councillors, being anxious to safeguard the interests of their good friends the ratepayers, and incidentally give a lesson in good bargaining, sent to the city for prices. When they came back and told the boss they could get their supply for sixty cents I expected he would tell them to go and get it, and to make certain other calls while they were about it, but he just laughed and said if the city firm could do it for that he guessed he could, and he took the order. And he cleared three hundred dollars on that transaction.”

“How could that be possible, if the strychnine cost him fifty-eight cents, and he sold for sixty?” queried Burton.

“Because Epsom salts cost him four cents a pound and the gophers never knew the difference.”

Both men laughed, and at that moment the store door opened, and a farmer, furred and frost covered, struggled in with a case of eggs.

“Where will you have the eggs, Mr. Gardiner?” he called, kicking the door shut with his heel.

“Just set the case down, Mr. Mandle, we will attend to them,” but the obliging Mr. Mandle insisted on carrying it to the rear of the store.

“The missus will be in in a minute, an’ fight it out with ye,” announced Mr. Mandle. “She got off at the post-office. She’s wantin’ a bit coat, an’ she’s been writin’ to the city for prices, an’ I’m thinkin’ she’s expectin’ an answer to-day. But just let me have half a pound of MacDonald chewin’ an’ she can do as she likes with the rest.”

In a few minutes Mrs. Mandle appeared, and was promptly taken in hand by Gardiner. The selling of the coat was, as he expected, a difficult matter, but she was finally persuaded that a regular $24.50 coat at $20 was good buying. The price-tag, which Gardiner had deftly slipped off the coat before showing it, was marked $18.

“I suppose it isn’t necessary to ask you,” said the merchant, after the purchases had been wrapped up, “but, just to assure ourselves, those eggs are all quite fresh, aren’t they?”

“Fresh? My goodness, there isn’t one of them ten days old. Our hens are laying wonderful for this time of the year.”

“That’s what comes of understanding poultry,” remarked Gardiner. But as soon as his customer was gone he told Burton to take the eggs down to the cellar and candle them.

“She sold me a six-pound block of ice in a tub of butter once, and I’ve watched her ever since,” he explained.

When Burton had finished his task he reported.

“Two dozen and a half bad, and six dozen short. There were two layers without any eggs in them.”

Gardiner made a rapid calculation. “Eight-and-a-half times thirty—is two-fifty-five. And I did her two dollars on the coat. There’s fifty-five cents coming to me yet.”

“What shall I do with the bad eggs, Mr. Gardiner?” asked the clerk.

“Put them under the counter and sell them to the restaurants,” were the instructions.

“That last barrel of vinegar seems to be very strong,” remarked Gardiner one day.

“I should say it is,” Burton agreed. “I took down a quart for Mrs. Goode yesterday, and she said it was the strongest she had ever bought since she came West.”

No more was said on the subject, but in the afternoon Burton, who was standing at the front of the store dreamily surveying the wintry landscape, saw his employer tip the vinegar barrel on end, knock out the faucet, substitute a funnel, and pour in two pails of water. At that moment the merry sound of sleigh bells was heard, and a cutter and dashing team swung down the street. Burton caught a hurried glimpse as they passed. It was Mr. Grant and Miss Vane.

And then, by some strange law of telepathy or suggestion, the words went throbbing through his brain:

“Build thee more stately mansions, O my soul,

As the swift seasons roll——”

The door opened, and with a smothered execration the young man turned to wait on a lady who was quite sure that in the city three spools were sold for ten cents.

[CHAPTER III—TWO ON THE TRAIL]

“Plainville has a sure-enough singer at last,” declared Alice Goode to her mother the morning after the Grant party.

“That’ll be the new-comer at Grand’s,” said Mrs. Goode, who had a talent, amounting almost to genius, for mispronouncing proper names.

“You’re on,” Alice agreed. “I don’t claim to be much of a judge of warbles, but I like her samples.”

“You’ll be gettin’ her into the choir, for the Grands are Presbyterians. You want to speak to the minister about her, Alice.”

“Sure I do, but it means war with Mrs. Fairley. She’s led the choir so long and so far she’s sure to flare up at the prospect of a real singer breakin’ in. But I don’t care. She only keeps me because she knows I can’t sing either. Here’s where the fat goes into the fire.”

Alice went to the telephone and called up the Rev. Andrew Guthrie.

“Hello—that you, Mr. Guthrie?—hello—Alice Goode speaking—yes—say, you ought to been at Grant’s dance last night—what’s that?—Oh, that don’t matter—Me?—well, I just went on church business, rustlin’ new chickens for your flock, an’ I caught one, a lulu—Mr. Grant’s niece, an’ she can sing some. Say, Mr. Guthrie, you get after her to join the choir, before the Methodists get busy.... No, don’t leave it to Mrs. Fairley, she’s too jealous. Just get her to sing with us once, an’ Mrs. Fairley can come in or stay out, as the weather suits her.... Perhaps, but she’s an old crank, anyway. She spoils the effect of the sermons, an’ that ain’t fair to you, Mr. Guthrie. That’s why I go to dances instead of prayer-meeting.... That’s right, drive out and see her. She’ll change the look of those empty pews, or I’m no guesser.”

Whether it was due to the doubtful compliments of this conversation or the unquestionable sincerity which prompted Alice Goode’s suggestion may never be known, but the fact is that the Reverend Mr. Guthrie called that afternoon on Mrs. Fairley, and deftly announced that a friend of the Grants’ was staying with them, and, he understood, would be willing to take advantage of the facilities afforded by the choir. Now, Mrs. Fairley, good woman, never attended anything so worldly as a dance, and supposed that the recruit was some country girl anxious for a chance to be seen by the congregation. She had no objection to an additional worshipper in the choir—the meanest service of the Lord must not be despised, Mr. Guthrie—so long as she proved bidable, Mr. Guthrie, and did not spoil the effect of those who could sing. Armed with this authority from the autocrat of the choir, Mr. Guthrie hitched up horse and cutter and drove to the Grant homestead. It was a place where he always found a warm welcome, and he would gladly have called oftener, had it not been for the jealousy of some of his parishioners who objected when he failed to visit them, and gave him little courtesy when he did. He remained to tea, and, indeed, long after, and when at last he drove home it was with feelings of mingled gratification and mistrust.

“Well, Mary,” he announced, as his wife helped to remove his great-coat, “I have found an addition for our choir. But I rather suspect that she will soon be the choir, and the present members will constitute the addition. Mrs. Fairley made two conditions; that the new-comer should not spoil the music, and should be amenable to those in authority, meaning herself. Both these conditions I will guarantee, but there are cases when authority forsakes officials and returns to its original source—the people. And when the congregation have heard Miss Vane sing, they will insist on a change in the leadership of the choir.”

“Oh, it may not be so bad as that,” said his wife, always eager to smooth the difficulties from the path of her over-worked and under-paid husband.

“So good as that, you mean,” exclaimed Andrew Guthrie, exultantly.

The next Sunday saw a new face in the choir, and the expectant glances of the congregation indicated that a large percentage of Mr. Guthrie’s flock had not attained to the godliness of Mrs. Fairley, who eschewed dances.

The opening hymn was announced, and before three bars were sung a buzz of excitement was electrifying the congregation. At the end of the first line Mrs. Fairley stopped and looked straight at Miss Vane. For ten years, whenever Mrs. Fairley stopped singing, the music stopped, and so accustomed had the organist become to this understanding, that she expected always to double back when the familiar voice was no longer heard. But this morning a new precedent was established. Mrs. Fairley stopped, but the music went on. The new singer sang on, quite unconscious of the epoch-making nature of her hardihood. For one full line Mrs. Fairley remained silent, and in that brief space of time she surrendered for ever the leadership of the choir of Plainville Presbyterian church.

After the service Mrs. Fairley went to the minister. Her chagrin was apparent, and it was evident that she blamed him for no small share of her undoing.

“I think it was quite unnecessary to bring that young woman into the choir,” she said. “We were getting along very well, and the music was all that Plainville desired.”

“No one, surely, will complain of the music,” said Mr. Guthrie, very mildly, “but if this young woman wishes to take part in the singing, how shall we despise even the meanest service of the Lord? And how shall we avoid accepting that service? We must not ask her to remain away, and we cannot ask her not to sing when we rise to worship Him with psalms and hymns. It is, therefore, merely a question of whether she shall sing in the choir or in the congregation.”

This view of the situation was a bomb-shell to Mrs. Fairley. If Miss Vane’s presence in the choir was aggravating, in the congregation it would become demoralising. As argument failed her she answered, hotly:

“Well, if the people don’t want my singing, they won’t have to listen to it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Mr. Guthrie. “We must all give what service we can——”

But Mrs. Fairley had flounced down the aisle and out of the church.

So it came about that Miss Vane was officially declared leader of the choir. Her position necessitated her coming to town twice on Sundays and once during the week, and although her cousins were always glad enough to drive her in, it was observed that Mr. Gardiner frequently relieved them of the duty.

Burton, also, was afforded the opportunity of meeting Miss Vane at church, and occasionally waiting on her in the store, but their acquaintance developed slowly. He found himself while in her presence hampered by a self-consciousness amounting to bashfulness. Thus, while they frequently met at the rink, he had never asked her to skate. He wondered whether she thought of him at all.

And so the winter wore on, and at length the spring was in the land. For five months the wind had studiously avoided the south-west, but now it fell into that favoured quarter, and the snow shrank before its balmy breath. The sun beat down with June brilliancy; the creeks and ponds filled with blue snow-water; the life that had lain dormant since November stirred itself in sod, and flower, and leaf. In the town the period of depression was followed by one of great activity; every merchant, implement dealer, and tradesman was working under high pressure to keep up with the demands of his customers. Gardiner’s store shared in the general prosperity; in fact, as the proprietor thought, they were receiving rather more than their share. This meant busy days for Burton and his employer, but both were eager for work, and from week to week Gardiner postponed his intention of engaging another clerk. He was well satisfied with Burton, and had freely congratulated himself upon securing for a moderate wage a young man of so much value to his store. But circumstances were already in the mould which were destined to alter his opinion.

On an evening late in May, Gardiner left the store early, saying his horse needed exercise, and as the day’s work was practically over he would go out for a drive. Burton remained to tidy the store and lock up, but he noticed that Gardiner’s horse took the well-known road to Grants’.

As he was sweeping behind the counter a young woman entered the store, and Burton, looking up, was surprised to see Miss Vane.

“I hope I am not too late, Mr. Burton. I have had a number of errands to do for Aunty, and it always takes longer than one expects. I wonder if you will let me have this small bill of groceries?”

“You are not too late; you are just in time,” assured Burton, who felt that the moment was the most opportune of the whole day.

He quickly filled the order, and said, “If you will tell me where your buggy is, Miss Vane, I will take your packages around and put them in it.”

“Oh, I have no buggy this time, I’m walking.”

“Walking! You surely do not intend to walk home with all these parcels?”

“They are not heavy, and besides, I am to walk only as far as Mrs. Delt’s. Harry will meet me there later in the evening. They are very busy on the farm at present, and I told them it was quite unnecessary to drive me to town.”

Burton wrestled with his thoughts. Here, surely, was an opportunity to offer a service which could be construed only as a business courtesy.

“If you can wait until I close the store—it will be only a minute—I should be very glad to carry your parcels.”

“Oh, that is too much—I could not expect you to do that.”

“It is not too much—unless you say it is.”

Miss Vane laughed. Hers was a quiet, mirthful laugh, like a vocal smile.

“If your offer is made as a kindness to me, I cannot accept it; if it is your own desire, I cannot refuse.”

“It is my desire,” said Burton. There was no other answer, although he felt that the reply shattered his theory about a business courtesy.

Soon they were walking gaily along the road leading out of the village. This ran by the amusement grounds, where the young men of the town were gathering for an evening’s baseball practice. Burton and his companion were not unnoticed.

The talk was of the commonplace: the weather, the seeding, the life of town and country; Burton careful, discriminating in his speech; Miss Vane frank, impetuous, but correct. They had almost reached Delt’s when the young woman, placing her fingers to her throat, uttered a cry of dismay.

“I believe I’ve lost my brooch,” she explained, in answer to Burton’s anxious inquiry. “It was a gift from Brother Harry, and——”

She found no words to express her emotion, which Burton knew to be greater than she cared to admit.

“I don’t think you need worry,” the young man said. “The sun is just setting, and we still have an hour of fair light. I noticed the brooch when we left the store, so it must be on the road. I will hurry back and find it.”

“We will,” she corrected.

Burton set the packages down a little way from the road, and the two hurried back through the gathering twilight, keeping a keen look-out as they walked. It was not until they were almost at the recreation grounds that a faint glint in the dust attracted Burton’s eye. He lifted the precious trifle and restored it to the delighted owner, whose profuse thanks called forth blushes that might be seen even in the dusk which was now silently enwrapping all the familiar objects of the prairie and roadside. Retracing their steps they walked more slowly; it became quite dark, but a mild wind blew from the south-west, and there was just enough eeriness in the situation to suggest the necessity of a man’s protection. Finally they arrived at Delt’s gate, where Harry Grant and young Mrs. Delt were awaiting Miss Vane with growing anxiety.

A horse and buggy swung past them as they left the main road, and Harry Grant called out:

“Ah, here you are at last! And who is this? Why, I declare, if it isn’t our friend Burton. That accounts for the delay. ‘In the spring a young man’s fancy,’ you know.”

Gardiner, returning from his fruitless drive to the Grants’ home, heard the words and recognized the voice.

And they troubled his sleep that night, and for many nights to come.

[CHAPTER IV—CROTTON’S CROSSING]

“Why don’t you come out and see us sometime, Burton?”

It was Harry Grant speaking at the door of the store one evening early in June.

“I should like to very much,” was the reply, “but you see I am busy all day.”

“But not all night, surely. Come, you are ready to close up now, and I am just going home. I guess I’ll have to come back later in the night for the vet.; he’s out of town at present. Hustle round now, and lock ’er up, and I’ll be here in a few minutes with the team.”

“But I need a shave, and I’m just in my working garb.”

“Nonsense; we’re farmers at our house.”

“Not all of you,” said Burton, and was suddenly astonished at his own temerity.

“Oh, that’s how the land lies,” said Harry, looking quizzically at the other. “Well, if I had any ambitions in which a young lady figured, which, by the way, doesn’t seem to be in my line, I’d rather let her see me in my working clothes than not at all. Besides, you are taking her at the same disadvantage. Now, hustle; I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

As they drove out along the country road Harry remarked, as though the thought had just occurred to him—

“Ever been out to Crotton’s Crossing?”

“No, I haven’t, though a quiet day there is one of the treats I promise myself. Let’s see; it’s about ten miles from here, isn’t it?”

“Twelve, and as fine a drive on a June Sunday as you could think about. Myrtle has been coaxing me for a month to take her out, but when a fellow pegs along all week on the farm he likes to lay up on Sundays.”

This was rather unlike Harry, for it was well known that twelve hours a day on the land were not enough to keep him off the baseball diamond in the evening.

Burton made some remark about his old opinions of farm-work, and how life in a store had led him to revise them, and was about to dismiss the subject from his mind when Harry, avoiding his eye with a bashfulness usually foreign to his nature, said:

“Well, haven’t you got a thought?”

“Nothing to speak of,” his friend admitted. “What would you like me to think?”

“See here,” said the other, “must I force an idea into your head with these horny hands? You’re bright enough on some subjects but denser than hotel coffee on others. In brief: You want to spend a day at the crossing; so does my cousin. Now do you see light?”

“Do you mean that I should ask her to go with me?” said Burton, almost overwhelmed with the possibility.

“Oh no, not that you should. There’s nothing compulsory about it, and if you don’t take her, no doubt some one else will. It’s my guess that Gardiner wouldn’t need a second hint. But it’s your privilege to invite her. The worst she can do is refuse. And she won’t do the worst, either.”

“But the choir?”

“Oh, fight that out with her; I’m not her guardian.”

They drove in silence for some distance, their thoughts accompanied by the rhythmic cadence of the jangling trace-chains. The sun was an hour from the setting, and the golden glow of its oblique rays across the prairies and over the fast-greening wheatfields shed an amber radiance that danced along the trail. The shouts of men at their evening’s amusement, the lowing of cattle, the occasional bark of a dog, the far off drumming of prairie chicken, came through the quiet stillness of the air. When at last Burton spoke it was in a confidential note he had never used since he had helped lay his mother in the hillside.

“Harry,” he said, “men don’t often talk of these things, but you’ve guessed my great desire. I know I am foolish; it’s unreasonable of me to entertain such ambitions, but our great hopes, like our great sorrows, come to us unbidden. I cannot help what I feel, but I hope I can help what I do. I appreciate beyond expression the words you have said to me, with all that they imply, but would it be fair, if, indeed, it were not presumptuous, for one like me—I mean a boy, for I am nothing more, on a small wage, and with no other means of support—would it be fair that I should meddle in what every one will say are much more appropriate arrangements?”

“You are referring to Gardiner,” said Harry. “And in the first place, I want you to know that every one will not say that that would be a more appropriate arrangement. It may be true that you are young, that you have your own way to make in the world, but all that is in your favour. You are well educated; better than most town boys, for you have learned to spend your idle hours to advantage, which they, as a rule, do not; you have a good constitution and a clear conscience, and the girl who isn’t willing to face the battle of life with a companion so equipped isn’t worthy to be his wife. In this country women do not marry men who have achieved distinction; in almost every case where wealth or honour come, they come after marriage. If you think my cousin isn’t wise enough to know that in the battle of life as it must be waged in this great new country a man’s mental and physical equipment count for more than any cash capital, you do her intelligence a grave injustice. But I want to warn you that I am not speaking for her; I have not been given, and I have not asked, her confidence in these matters. But I know Gardiner well, and I know you a little, and I have my cousin’s happiness sufficiently at heart to say what I have said.”

This was a remarkable speech for the young farmer, who usually disposed of a subject in a sentence, and Burton felt that it was, indeed, a great compliment to him. He knew that Harry had spoken in all sincerity; had opened a corner of his heart to one who was little more than a stranger, and he resolved to follow the cue he had been given.

Mrs. Grant, Susy Grant, and Miss Vane were in the garden as the young men drove up. They greeted Burton cordially, and as Harry went to look after his team entertained their visitor with a walk through the garden and a discussion of the various flowers in which Mrs. Grant so much delighted. Presently, however, the elder lady felt the night air becoming chill, and, reminding Susy that the separator would be ready to wash, entered the house, accompanied by her daughter.

“Oh, you haven’t seen my pony, have you, Mr. Burton?” said Miss Vane. “He’s the dearest little fellow. Uncle gave him to me because he said he couldn’t have me walking to town and getting home at midnight, although when he knew I had your protection he admitted that altered the circumstances. I keep him in the pasture—the pony, you know. Shall we walk over and see him? Then you can lead him home, and I will ride.”

Nothing pleased the young man better, and in a few minutes they were tripping along the well-beaten cowpath that led into the pasture. Night was setting in, and when they reached the stream, girded with dense willows, it was quite dark. The pony was not easily found, and several times they approached cattle in mistake; but at length Miss Vane’s call brought his answering whinny, as he came running to her, through the bushes.

“Now sir, I shall ride you home,” she said, rubbing her pet’s nose, “and Mr. Burton will lead you. This is Mr. Burton, Frisky.”

“But you have no saddle,” said Burton.

“Surely I am westernised enough to ride without a saddle by this time,” said the young woman, “especially as the gait is not to exceed a walk. But I am afraid I shall have to have some assistance before we can start.”

She stood with her right arm over the pony’s back. In the darkness he seemed unusually tall.

For a lady in an ordinary habit to mount a horse, especially without the assistance of a saddle, is a feat of some difficulty, as Burton discovered before it was accomplished. As they journeyed slowly back to the farmhouse the young man inquired if Miss Vane had ever been to Crotton’s Crossing.

“No, indeed, and they say it is one of the most delightful drives. I have been at Harry a dozen times to take me, but he always has some excuse, and George—well, I must admit that George seems to be more interested in our friend Miss Green than in his little orphan cousin.”

“I was wondering,” said Burton, mustering all his resolution for the task, “if you would accept an invitation to drive there with me next Sunday?”

“One can never tell,” said the young woman demurely.

“Tell what?” asked Burton, a little piqued at the irrelevance of the remark.

“What one will do under certain circumstances, until the circumstances occur.”

“By which you mean?”

“Well, if I must be blunt, Mr. Burton, I cannot tell you whether I would accept such an invitation until I receive it.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Raymond, and both laughed. “Miss Vane, will you honour me with your company to Crotton’s Crossing on Sunday?”

“Rather formal, but strictly correct,” commented Miss Vane. “But there is the choir——”

“Ah, yes, I had thought of that.”

“And what solution had you discovered?”

“Not any, I fear.”

“Under those circumstances it seems I will not be able——”

“Of course,” Burton admitted, “they can’t get along without you in the choir.”

“Do you think so? Well, that is too bad, because next Sunday—they’ll have to.”

Sunday dawned, cloudless and warm. The rainy season had not set in in earnest, and, although farmers complained, the liverymen were well pleased that the roads were conducive to pleasure drives. A light wind blew from the south-east, just fresh enough to keep the air in motion, as at 9 a.m. Burton drove out of town with as good an equipage as the place afforded. The fields wore a heavy coat of dark green grain, waving in the breeze like ripples on a pond; the mirthsome gophers frolicked on the road, and clear-voiced barnyard fowl rent the air with their morning dissertations. As Burton drove up to the Grant farmhouse he was met by Harry and George; the former in his working clothes, but his brother dressed in his Sunday best.

“Wish I could get the fever too,” lamented Harry. “Here’s George with a special engagement at church, and Susy tidying up for a caller, and pretty cousin Myrtle putting the final tiffics on her fascination, while I come down to the prosaic business of running milk through the separator. But mind you, Burton, a word of warning. They say the road to a popular resort is paved with good intentions. There’s many in this district will aver the road to Crotton’s Crossing is paved with broken hearts.”

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Ray,” called Susy Grant from the verandah. Susy never troubled to “mister” her male acquaintances after the second meeting. “Harry’d be only too glad to take your drive himself if Myrtle was somebody else’s cousin.”

“And he’d be no man if he wouldn’t,” declared George. “Hang it, I’m kind o’ sorry I’m barred, myself.”

“Don’t say that,” said Harry. “Many a good wife has graduated from pedagogy.”

This allusion to Miss Green had the effect of silencing the younger brother, and in a moment Miss Vane appeared. She wore a dress of creamy white, such as on the night Raymond had first seen her. From the toes of her little kid shoes to the tip of her modest hat she was white, absolutely white, save where one large red rose nestled in the hat’s protecting shelter, and an historic brooch gleamed at her half-exposed throat. Her dark, waving hair, the wonderfully deep, lustrous eyes, the electrically sensitive mouth, the superb lines of her chin and neck, the whole supported by a figure chaste, symmetrical and beautiful, asked no grander setting than the emblem of purity she wore. Burton had thought her beautiful on the night he first met her, but he told himself it was her mentality that had so irresistibly attracted his, and as their acquaintance had ripened his delight had been in her alert intellect, her glorious voice, her easy grace of manner, gesture, and speech; but this morning he saw in her a ravishment of personal, physical beauty such as he thought had never before been vested in woman. The joy he felt in her mere presence, which had been to him a delightful and inexplicable mystery, was revealed in an instant as though a great cloud had been swept away. He recognised the magnet and the steel, wedded in an affinity defying every analysis of man, but everlasting and indissoluble as the eternal hills. In one brief glance the great light and the great responsibility had burst upon him, and his heart swelled and throbbed in a panic of prayer that he might be able to keep his secret.

“I bet you have forgotten something,” cried Mrs. Grant, to her niece, as Burton tightened the reins.

“I never bet,” laughed Miss Vane, “but Mr. Burton will defend my memory.”

“In that case, I bet she didn’t,” declared Burton, gallantly.

“Well, here is the proof,” said Mrs. Grant, advancing with a well laden basket.

“It isn’t mine,” said Miss Vane. “I don’t know anything about it.”

“But it’s yours, just the same. It’s well you have an aunty to think about you, dearie. You are so excited over your drive with Mr. Burton that you would let the poor boy starve for his trouble.”

For a moment the young woman looked aghast. “Oh, Aunty, you darling,” she cried, as the basket was tucked in the back of the buggy, “and you with so much other work. You should have told me to do it.”

“Hush, hush, child. You may please the young gentleman’s eyes best, but I’m thinkin’ your old aunty still knows the short cut to a man’s heart.”

In the pioneer days the Poplar river had presented a serious obstacle to traffic in the spring and early summer freshets, until old Simon Crotton had squatted on the bank and constructed a passable ford. Simon had a team of shaganappies whose only virtue seemed to be that they were proof against every form of abuse, and when the settler, with his wagonload of rude implements or household effects, became entangled in the river, old Simon, if not too thoroughly intoxicated, could be depended upon to lend the assistance of himself and team, receiving therefore such dole as the settler could afford or his generosity prompted. A fine steel bridge now spanned the river at the spot, and Simon Crotton had long ago been gathered to his fathers, but the place retained the name of Crotton’s Crossing and will probably so be known until the end of time. In such humble ways do common men leave their indelible impress upon a new country.

The road from Grant’s to the crossing lay through a well-settled farming district where almost every acre except the road allowances had come under the plough. At one time the country had been partly covered with shrub, and willows and poplars still grew along the road, affording cover for prairie chickens and resting roosts for their relentless enemy, the hawk. The air was laden with the smell of wild flowers, of bursting buds, of fragrant red willows and balm-of-Gileads. For a mile or two there was little conversation; Burton knew not what to say, and Miss Vane was so enwrapped in the beauty of the country, so thrilled with its glorious air, so inspired with its immensity, that she seemed to have almost forgotten her companion’s presence. At last, as they crested a hill, and a vista of long, narrow road, of neat, quadrangular farms, of comfortable homes, of pastures fencing sleek, drowsy cattle and horses turned out for their Sunday holiday, with a white church and school-house by the road, opened before them, she turned to Burton with a strange mildness in her eyes, and exclaimed, “And still people with means at their command, who are in a measure the masters of their destiny, live in the cities!”

“Then you prefer the country?”

“Prefer! How is any other choice possible? What great thing has ever been that could not be traced to the land?”

“Yet our great men go to the cities, and these men you see about you, these farmers, every one of them laments his lot. They feel that the hands of all mankind are against them.”

“The same spirit prevails in the city, especially among the labouring classes. They think how fortunate they would be if they were wringing their living from the soil, instead of in the service of what they call capital.”

“But the intellectual advantages of the city?”

“Ah, there you have it. And yet, although you have had no college education, no free lectures, no public night schools, no young men’s clubs, I venture to think you are better prepared for the battle of life than many of those whom, you imagine, are more fortunately situated.”

The words recalled Harry Grant’s statement, and Burton did not pursue the subject.

It was mid-day when they wound down the steep banks of the Poplar river to the broad, elm-studded parkland below. Burton swung the team to the left, and they plunged into the recesses of the forest along an old and little used trail, which presently brought them to the edge of the water. Here they unhitched and Burton tied the horses where they could find a little grass, while Miss Vane spread the contents of the lunch basket on a rug beside the water. The long drive in the bright morning sunshine had whetted their appetites, but no sauce of hunger was necessary to give flavour to Mrs. Grant’s chicken sandwiches and currant jelly, with a thermos bottle of hot coffee. After the luncheon they gathered up the fragments, and climbing gingerly down to the stones which studded the shallow water, washed their hands in the stream that rippled by their feet. Then they picked their way across the river on the stones, for the water was low, and found a path leading through enchanted corridors fenced with great elms, and so they delved into the fastness of the wood. Finally, tired with their explorations, they recrossed the stream, startling a lazy fish that lay, head against the current, in the shelter of a stone, and found a great flat rock that overlooked the water. Here they sat, gazing down into its silvery depths, while the ripple of the running water caricatured their reflections. The faces below them were one moment long and sober, the next broad and merry, and then, by a little freak of the current, suddenly blended into one.

Both laughed. “The water is teasing,” said Miss Vane.

Burton sat in a great happiness of body and soul.

Aloud he repeated in a gentle undertone,

“And here and there a foamy flake,

Upon me as I travel;

With many a silvery waterbreak,

Above the golden gravel.

“I steal by lawns and grassy plots,

I slide by hazel covers;

I move the sweet forget-me-nots

That grow for happy lovers.”

He stopped short, half ashamed; the poet had tricked him into a word he had not meant to use.

The hours fled faster than they knew, and it was not until the setting sun burst in great golden bars between the trunks of the stately elms that they realized it was growing late.

“We must go,” said Miss Vane. “’Twill be dark before we can reach home. And yet I am loath to leave a scene of so much happiness.”

“The day will be a mile-post in my memory,” said Raymond. “It has been to me a season of delight. But how could it be otherwise with such companionship?”

It was his first attempt at a compliment.

“Please do not speak to me in that way,” said Miss Vane, and there was a ring, not so much of anger as of pain, in her voice.

Burton was crushed. He had understood that compliments were always acceptable to a woman.

“Listen,” she continued, with a sudden deep kindliness in her voice, “I would not have you misunderstand me. My environment has, all my life, been very different from yours. I was brought up in the city, in an atmosphere of refinement and, if not luxury, at least moderate wealth. My associations were among what were called the best circles in the city. I met many men, handsome, wealthy, clever men, and I will not pretend that I did not know their attitude toward me. But I found that these men, although they could discuss affairs of government, of finance, of literature and art, in the frankest manner among themselves, could not address to me the commonest remark without wrapping it in a compliment. To a man they would speak as an equal, a rational being, but a woman must be flattered and cajoled. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, which I do not believe; but still more foolish is the idea, held by most men, that the way to a woman’s heart is through her vanity. Whoever adopts such an attitude toward a woman, every compliment from his lips is an insult. We women may be frail, and foolish, and unreasonable, but surely, surely we deserve the truth. And this morning, when I said I loved the country, it was, most of all, for its sincerity. I have sometimes thought I could, perhaps, love a man, if I found one who was not a liar.”

The hard word came out with a crash; the wonderful, electric mouth closed in a firmness that might have led men to battle, the deep eyes lit up with a blaze that was not from the setting sun.

Burton mumbled an apology. “But I meant what I said, Miss Vane!”

She looked fairly in his eyes.

“I believe you,” she said, simply.