“Is that exciting?”
“Yes,” returned Wyllard, “if you do it in one way. The gold’s there—that you’re sure of—piled up by nature during I don’t know how many thousand years, but you have to stake high, if you want to get much of it out. One needs costly labor,—teams—no end of them—breakers, and big gang-plows. The farmer who has nerve enough drills his last dollar into the soil in spring, but if he means to succeed it costs him more than that. He must give the sweat of his tensest effort, the uttermost toil of his body—all, in fact, that has been given him. Then he must shut his eyes tight to the hazards against him, or look at them without wavering—the drought, the hail, the harvest frost, I mean. If his teams fall sick, or the season goes against him, he must work double tides. Still, it now and then happens that things go right, and the red wheat rolls ripe right back across the prairie. I don’t know that any man could want a keener thrill than the one he feels when he drives in the binders!”
Agatha had imagination, and she could realize something of the toil, the hazard, and the exultation of that victory.
“You have felt it often?” she inquired.
“Twice we helped to fill a big elevator,” Wyllard answered. “But I’ve been very near defeat.”
The girl looked at him thoughtfully. It seemed that he possessed the power of acquisition, as well as a wide generosity that came into play when by strenuous effort success had been attained. So far as her experience went, these were things that did not invariably accompany each other.
“And when the harvest comes up to your expectations, you give your money away?” she asked with a lifting of her brows.
Wyllard laughed. “You shouldn’t deduce too much from a single instance. Besides, that Pole’s case hasn’t cost me anything yet.”
Mrs. Hastings joined them, and when Wyllard strolled away the women passed some time leaning on the rails, and looking at the groups of shadowy figures on the forward deck. The attitude of the steerage passengers was dejected and melancholy, but one cluster had gathered around a man who stood upon the hatch.
“Oh,” he declared, “you’ll have no trouble. Canada’s a great country for a poor man. He can sleep beneath a bush all summer, if he can’t strike anything he likes.”