When he had finished his work the next evening he drove over to the Grange, feeling depressed and tired, for he had begun at four o'clock that morning. It was very hot: a fiery wind still blew across the plain, although the sun had set, and Beatrice was sitting on the veranda with her mother and Mowbray. They had a languid air, and the prairie, which had turned a lifeless gray, looked strangely dreary as it ran back into the gathering dark.
"Not much hope of a change!" Mowbray remarked.
Beatrice gave Harding a sympathetic glance, and unconsciously he set his lips tight. She looked cool and somehow ethereal in her thin white dress and her eyes were gentle. It was horrible to think that he might have to give her up; but he knew it might come to this.
"You're tired; I'm afraid you have been working too hard," Beatrice said gently.
"The weather accounts for it, not the work," he answered. "It's depressing to feel that all you've done may lead to nothing."
"Very true," Mowbray assented. "You're fortunate if this is the first time you have been troubled by the feeling. Many of us have got used to it; but one must go on."
"It's hard to fight a losing battle, sir."
"It is," said Mowbray grimly. "That it really does not matter in the end whether you lose or not, so long as you're on the right side, doesn't seem to give one much consolation. But your crop strikes me as looking better than ours."
"I plowed deep; the sub-soil holds the moisture. Of course, with horse-traction——"
Harding hesitated, but Mowbray smiled.