"I want you to understand what's behind this movement," he continued gravely. "Your people can't keep Allenwood for a place of amusement much longer, and some of those who see this have asked my help. I've promised and I can't draw back. Besides, to break new soil and raise good wheat where only the wild grasses grow is the work I was meant for; the one thing worth while I'm able to do. I'd feel mean and ashamed if I held off and let the waste go on."
"Of course, it would be too great a sacrifice to make for a prejudiced old man, who has nevertheless always placed the good of Allenwood first, and an inexperienced, sentimental girl!"
Harding flushed at the taunt. It was very hard to displease her, but he would not be justified in giving way, and he thought that later, when she understood better, she would not blame him for being firm. Moreover, his temper was getting short.
"That's neither kind nor fair," he said. "Separate or together, your people and I must move on. We can't stand still, blocking the way, and defying Nature and the ordered procession of things. This land was made for the use of man, and he must pay with hard work for all it gives him."
"I am sorry you take that view; but there seems nothing further to be said." She rose as she spoke. "I'm afraid it's impossible that we should agree."
He left at once, and drove home in a downcast mood. No doubt, he had disappointed her badly. He had not even had the tact to make his refusal graceful; she must think him an iconoclastic boor, driven by a rude hatred of all that she respected. Still, he had tried to be honest; he could not shirk the task he was clearly meant to do. The struggle, however, had tried him hard, and he drove with set lips and knitted brows across the great white waste, oblivious of the biting cold.
CHAPTER X
THE CASTING VOTE
It was a bitter evening. The snow on the crests of the rises glittered like steel; the hollows were sharply picked out in blue. The frost was pitiless, and a strong breeze whipped up clouds of dry snow and drove them in swirls across the plain. A half moon, harshly bright, hung low above the western horizon, and the vast stretch of sky that domed in the prairie was sprinkled with stars.
Harding and Devine were on their way to attend a council meeting at the Grange. Wrapped, as they were, in the thick driving-robe, with their fur caps pulled well down, they could not keep warm. The cold of the icy haze seemed to sear the skin. Harding's woolen-mittened hand was numbed on the reins, and he feared that it was getting frostbitten.