"It wouldn't pay," and the Colonel grew suddenly grave. "Very few men in the district are going to sow all their holding. Wheat is steadily going down."

"Then if n.o.body sows there will be very little, and shouldn't that put up the prices?"

Barrington's eyes twinkled. "Who has been teaching you commercial economy? You are too pretty to understand such things, and the argument is fallacious, because the wheat is consumed in Europe--and even if we have not much to offer, they can get plenty from California, Chile, India, and Australia."

"Oh, yes--and Russia," said the girl. "Still, you see, the big mills in Winnipeg and Minneapolis depend upon the prairie. They couldn't very well bring wheat in from Australia."

Barrington was still smiling with his eyes, but his lips were set. "A little knowledge is dangerous, my dear, and if you could understand me better, I could show you where you were wrong. As it is, I can only tell you that I have decided to sell wheat forward and plough very little."

"But that was a policy you condemned with your usual vigour. You really know you did."

"My dear," said the Colonel, with a little impatient gesture, "one can never argue with a lady. You see--circ.u.mstances alter cases considerably."

He nodded with an air of wisdom as though that decided it; but the girl persisted. "Uncle," she said, drawing closer to him with lithe gracefulness, "I want you to let me have my own way just for once, and if I am wrong I will never do anything you do not approve of again.

After all, it is a very little thing, and you would like to please me."

"It is a trifle that is likely to cost you a good deal of money," said the Colonel dryly.

"I think I could afford it, and you could not refuse me."

"As I am only your uncle, and no longer a trustee, I could not," said Barrington. "Still, you would not act against my wishes?"

His eyes were gentle, unusually so, for he was not as a rule very patient when any one questioned his will; but there was a reproach in them that hurt the girl. Still, because she had promised, she persisted.

"No," she said. "That is why it would be ever so much nicer if you would just think as I did."

Barrington looked at her steadily. "If you insist, I can at least hope for the best," he said, with a gravity that brought a faint colour to the listener's cheek.

It was next day when Witham took his leave, and Maud Barrington stood beside him as he put on his driving furs.

"You told me there was something you wished me to do, and, though it was difficult, it is done," she said. "My holding will be sown with wheat this spring."

Witham turned his head aside a moment and apparently found it needful to fumble at the fastenings of the furs, while there was a curious expression in his eyes when he looked round again.

"Then," he said with a little smile, "we are quits. That cancels any little obligation which may have existed."

He had gone in another minute, and Maud Barrington turned back into the stove-warmed room very quietly. Her lips were, however, somewhat closely set.

CHAPTER XI

SPEED THE PLOUGH

Winter had fled back beyond the barrens to the lonely North at last, and though here and there a little slushy snow still lay soaking the black loam in a hollow, a warm wind swept the vast levels when one morning Colonel Barrington rode with his niece and sister across the prairie. Spring comes suddenly in that region, and the frost-bleached sod was steaming under an effulgent sun, while in places a hardy flower peeped through. It was six hundred miles to the forests of the Rockies' eastern slope, and as far to the Athabascan pines, but it seemed to Maud Barrington that their resinous sweetness was in the glorious western wind, which awoke a musical sighing from the sea of rippling gra.s.s. It rolled away before her in billows of l.u.s.trous silver-grey, and had for sole boundary the first upward spring of the arch of cloudless blue, across which the vanguard of the feathered host pressed on, company by company towards the Pole.

The freshness of it all stirred her blood like wine, and the brightness that flooded the prairie had crept into her eyes; for those who bear the iron winter of that lonely land realize the wonder of the reawakening, which in a little s.p.a.ce of day, dresses the waste which has lain for long months white and silent as the dead, in living green. It also has its subtle significance that the grimmest toiler feels, and the essence of it is hope eternal and triumphant life. The girl felt the thrill of it, and gave thanks by an answering brightness, as the murmuring gra.s.ses and peeping flowerets did; but there was behind her instinctive gladness a vague wonder and expectancy. She had read widely, and seen the life of the cities with understanding eyes, and now she was to be provided with the edifying spectacle of the gambler and outcast turned farmer.

Had she been asked a few months earlier whether the man who had, as Courthorne had done, cast away his honour and wallowed in the mire, could come forth again and purge himself from the stain, her answer would have been coldly sceptical; but now, with the old familiar miracle and what it symbolized before her eyes, the thing looked less improbable. Why this should give pleasure she did not know, or would not admit that she did, but the fact remained that it was so.

Trotting down the slope of the next rise, they came upon him, and he stood with very little sign of dissolute living upon him by a great breaker plough. In front of him, the quarter-mile furrow led on beyond the tall sighting poles on the crest of the next rise, and four splendid horses, of a kind not very usual on the prairie, were stamping the steaming clods at his side. Bronzed by frost and sun, with his brick-red neck and arch of chest revealed by the coa.r.s.e blue shirt that, belted at the waist, enhanced his slenderness of flank, the repentant prodigal was at least a pa.s.sable specimen of the animal man, but it was the strength and patience in his face that struck the girl, as he turned towards her, bareheaded, with a little smile in his eyes. She also noticed the difference he presented with his ingrained hands and the stain of the soil upon him to her uncle, who sat his horse, immaculate as usual with gloved hand on the bridle, for the Englishmen at Silverdale usually hired other men to do their coa.r.s.er work for them.

"So you are commencing in earnest in face of my opinion?" said Barrington. "Of course, I wish you success, but that consummation appears distinctly doubtful."

Witham laughed as he pointed to a great machine which, hauled by four horses, rolled towards them, scattering the black clods in its wake.

"I'm doing what I can to achieve it, sir," he said. "In fact, I'm staking somewhat heavily. That team with the gang ploughs and cultivators cost me more dollars than I care to remember."

"No doubt," said Barrington dryly. "Still, we have always considered oxen good enough for breaking prairie at Silverdale."

Witham nodded. "I used to do so, sir, when I could get nothing better, but after driving oxen for eight years one finds out their disadvantages."

Barrington's face grew a trifle stern. "There are times when you tax our patience, Lance," he said. "Still, there is nothing to be gained by questioning your a.s.sertion. What I fail to see is where your reward for all this will come from, because I am still convinced that the soil will, so to speak, give you back eighty cents for every dollar you put into it. I would, however, like to look at those implements. I have never seen better ones."

He dismounted and helped his companion down, for Witham made no answer. The farmer was never sure what actuated him, but, save in an occasional fit of irony, he had not attempted by any reference to make his past fall into line with Courthorne's since he had first been accepted as the latter at Silverdale. He had taken the dead man's inheritance, for a while, but he would stoop no further, and to speak the truth, which he saw was not credited, brought him a grim amus.e.m.e.nt as well as flung a sop to his pride. Presently, however, Miss Barrington turned to him, and there was a kindly gleam in her eyes as she glanced at the splendid horses and widening strip of ploughing.

"You have the hope of youth, Lance, to make this venture when all looks black--and it pleases me," she said. "Sometimes I fancy that men had braver hearts than they have now when I was young."

Witham flushed a trifle, and stretching out an arm swept his hand round the horizon. "All that looked dead a very little while ago, and now you can see the creeping greenness in the sod," he said. "The lean years cannot last for ever, and, even if one is beaten again, there is a consolation in knowing that one has made a struggle. Now, I am quite aware that you are fancying a speech of this kind does not come well from me."

Maud Barrington had seen his gesture, and something in the thought that impelled it, as well as the almost statuesque pose of his thinly-clad figure, appealed to her. Courthorne as farmer, with the damp of clean effort on his forehead and the stain of the good soil that would faithfully repay it on his garments, had very little in common with the profligate and gambler. Vaguely she wondered whether he was not working out his own redemption by every wheat furrow torn from the virgin prairie, and then again the doubt crept in. Could this man have ever found pleasure in the mire?

"You will plough all your holding, Lance?" asked the elder lady, who had not answered his last speech yet, but meant to do.

"Yes," said the man. "All I can. It's a big venture, and if it fails will cripple me; but I seem to feel, apart from any reason I can discern, that wheat is going up again, and I must go through with this ploughing. Of course, it does not sound very sensible."

Miss Barrington looked at him gravely, for there was a curious and steadily-tightening bond between the two. "It depends upon what you mean by sense. Can we reason out all we feel, and is there nothing intangible but real behind the impulses which may be sent to us?"

"Well," said Witham, with a little smile, "that is a trifle too deep for me, and it's difficult to think of anything but the work I have to do. But you were the first at Silverdale to hold out a hand to me--and I have a feeling that your good wishes would go a long way now. Is it altogether fantastic to believe that the good-will of my first friend would help to bring me prosperity?"

The white-haired lady's eyes grew momentarily soft, and, with a gravity that did not seem out of place, she moved forward and laid her hand on a big horse's neck, and smiled when the dumb beast responded to her gentle touch.

"It is a good work," she said. "Lance, there is more than dollars, or the bread that somebody is needing, behind what you are doing, and because I loved your mother I know how her approval would have followed you. And now sow in hope, and G.o.d speed your plough!"

She turned away almost abruptly, and Witham stood still, with one hand closed tightly and a little deeper tint in the bronze of his face, sensible at once of an unchanged resolution and a horrible degradation. Then he saw that the Colonel had helped Miss Barrington into the saddle and her niece was speaking.

"I have something to ask Mr. Courthorne, and will overtake you," she said.

The others rode on, and the girl turned to Witham, "I made you a promise and did my best to keep it but I find it harder than I fancied it would be," she said. "I want you to release me."

"I should like to hear your reasons," said Witham.

The girl made a faint gesture of impatience. "Of course, if you insist!"

"I do," said Witham quietly.

"Then I promised you to have all my holding sown this year, and I am still willing to do so; but, though my uncle makes no protests I know he feels my opposition very keenly, and it hurts me horribly. Unspoken reproaches are the worst to bear, you know, and now Dane and some of the others are following your lead, it is painful to feel that I am taking part with them against the man who has always been kind to me."