"Bad news?" said Edgar sympathetically.
"Yes. I'll have to cut out several plans I'd made for spring; in fact,
I don't quite see how I'm to go on working on a profitable scale.
We'll have to do without the extra bunch of stock I was calculating on;
and I'm not sure I can experiment with that quick-ripening wheat.
There are a number of other things we'll have to dispense with."
"We'll pull through by some means," Edgar rejoined encouragingly, and
George got up.
"I feel rather worn out," he said. "I think I'll go to sleep."
He walked wearily from the room, crumpling up the letters he had risked his life to secure.
CHAPTER XXI
GRANT COMES TO THE RESCUE
The storm had raged for twenty-four hours, but it had now passed, and it was a calm night when a little party sat in George's living-room. Outside, the white prairie lay still and silent under the Arctic frost, but there was no breath of wind stirring and the room was comfortably warm. A big stove glowed in the middle of it, and the atmosphere was permeated with the smell of hot iron, stale tobacco, and the exudations from resinous boards.
Grant and his daughter had called when driving back from a distant farm, and Trooper Flett had returned to the homestead after a futile search for the liquor smugglers. He was not characterized by mental brilliancy, but his persevering patience atoned for that, and his superior officers considered him a sound and useful man. Sitting lazily in an easy chair after a long day's ride in the nipping frost, he discoursed upon the situation.
"Things aren't looking good," he said. "We've had two cases of cattle-killing in the last month, besides some horses missing, and a railroad contractor knocked senseless with an empty bottle; and nobody's locked up yet."