"England is not very far off; and I'm a wanderer, you know."
"Well," she said with faint confusion, "unless you hurry you will miss your train. Good-by, and good fortune!"
He took the hand she gave him and held it a moment.
"If your last wish is ever realized, I shall come to thank you, even in
England."
He turned and went out with hurried steps, wondering what had led him to break through the reserve he had prudently determined to maintain. What he had said might mean nothing, but it might mean much. He had seen Millicent Graham for a few minutes in her father's house, and afterward met her every day during the week spent in Montreal; but, brief as their friendship had been, he had yielded to her charm. Had he been free to seek her love, he would eagerly have done so; but he was not free. He was an outcast, engaged in a desperate attempt to repair his fortune. Miss Graham knew this. Perhaps she had taken his remarks as a piece of sentimental gallantry; but something in her manner suggested a doubt. Anyway, he had promised to show her the flowers again some day, and he carefully placed them in his pocketbook.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRAIRIE
A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about and adding to Blake's discomfort as he plodded beside a jaded Indian pony and a small cart. The cart was loaded with preserved provisions, camp stores, and winter clothes; he had bought it and the pony because that seemed cheaper than paying for transport. The settlement for which he and Harding were bound stands near the northern edge of the great sweep of grass which stretches across central Canada. Since leaving the railroad they had spent four days upon the trail, which sometimes ran plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among the wiry grass, and sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a wilderness of sand and short poplar scrub.
It was now late in the afternoon and the men were tired of battling with the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp sand. They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie toward the belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens of the North. The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous wooden towns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of them, and the arid tract through which they journeyed had so far no attraction for even the adventurous homestead pre-emptor.
They found it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places, stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for the most part, there was only a rolling waste of dingy grass. The trail was heavy, the wheels sank deep in sand as they climbed a low rise, and, to make things worse, the rounded, white-edged clouds which had scudded across the sky since morning were gathering in threatening masses. This had happened every afternoon, but now and then the cloud ranks had broken, to pour out a furious deluge and a blaze of lightning. Harding anxiously studied the sky.