"You are going back to Canada?" The quick way the girl looked up, and something in her tone, suggested unpleasant surprise, for she had been taken off her guard.
"I shall have to go when Harding needs me. I haven't heard from him since I arrived, but I'll get my summons sooner or later."
"I thought you had come home for good!" Millicent's color deepened, and she added quickly: "Do you like the life in the Northwest?"
"It has its charm. There are very few restrictions—one feels free. The fences haven't reached us yet; you can ride as far as you can see over miles of grass and through the clumps of bush. There's something attractive in the wide horizon; the riband of trail that seems to run forward forever draws you on."
"But the arctic frost and the snow?"
"After all, they're bracing. Our board shacks with the big stoves in them are fairly warm; and no one can tell what developments may suddenly come about in such a country. A railroad may be run through, wheat-land opened up, minerals found, and wooden cities spring up from the empty plain. Life's rapid and strenuous; one is swept along with the stream."
"But you were in the wilds!"
Blake laughed.
"We were indeed; but not far behind us the tide of population pours across the plain, and if we had stayed a year or two in the timber, it would have caught us up. That flood won't stop until it reaches the Polar Sea."
"But how can people live in a rugged land covered with snow that melts only for a month or two?"