"She is looking sweet," said Annie. "You should have seen her as a girl; she was lovely."

"There's something very ladylike about her," the husband replied. "I wonder if she would ever think of marrying Leach."

Hester took no one into her confidence. When she became engaged to Gabriel, she told the news quite simply, and waited to hear what her friends thought of it. Annie could only thank all the Fates that move in these matters that she and her friend were going to be neighbors-not near neighbors of course; nothing was near in Canada, as it was in England (oh, how small everything would look when they got back!), but near, as prairie farms go. The Spenses' new house would only be twenty short miles from Gabriel's farm. In summertime they could drive over and see each other. Neither of them need ever fear the solitude of the prairies or the loneliness of which some people had spoken.-And when the C.P.R. came along

Gabriel wanted the marriage to be at once, and those who knew all the circumstances of the case agreed with him. He had lost his first wife before harvest, and it was only fair that he should have a new one before harvest began again.

Hester was willing that it should be so. She must learn cooking, she said, and Annie must help her in a thousand ways. She looked forward to her marriage, and wrote home to tell the people of Mawer-St.-Mary about it. Later she would have her own furniture packed and sent out to Canada-her books and her piano. She would make the farm very homelike and comfortable. Never should Gabriel have a neglected home again: perhaps he would forget his sad life and the silent woman who had shared it with him. He himself would learn to talk more. Talking was a matter of habit.

"I have no doubts," she said to Annie, who had invited her confidence.

"I am sure it is the happiest state," said Annie.

Neither of them said that the chief happiness of marriage would depend on having children; but both had the same thought.

"I like to see them toddling to the gate in their little checked pinafores, even if it's only to see the train coming," Donald said. "There's a nice little girl of Fletcher's brings a post-bag to the station in the mornings, and I do believe it does one good to see her."

He was a clean-hearted man-one to whom the simple joys of life appealed strongly. He could hardly have believed that anyone was sincere who did not enjoy a good supper, and love children, and grieve over deaths and rejoice over marriages. He asked a guard, who was a friend of his, to bring him up a bundle of flags to decorate the porch of his house for the wedding. Annie made a little feast, and the Presbyterian minister came up from Kippin and read the marriage-service in the sitting-room of the Spenses' house. Some one even lent a white satin slipper for the occasion, and tied it to a wheel of Leach's wagon when it started on its long journey across the prairie.

Gabriel drove her himself, and smoked as he drove. At the back of the little wagon was strapped Hester's luggage.

After they had traveled some miles he said to her, "This will be all townlots some day."

"I like it better as it is,” she answered; "all the time we've been driving I have been watching the shadows of the clouds on the waving wheat, and thinking how beautiful it is. In England, you know, we only see little bits of things at a time: even a sunset may only look like the end of a village street."

"You'll see plenty of sunsets here, but I don't know that I ever took any particular notice of them."

All round them the prairie lay like a quiet sea under the sun. The wind among the wheat rustled it softly together. Did it but blow a little harder, almost one might have believed that the bell-like grain would tinkle. On every side the horizon was bounded by blue sky which seemed to fit down closely on the waving grain. Save for some gentle undulations in the ground it was all one level sweep. The sky seemed immanent: one gazed into the blue depth of it whichever way one looked.

"I think I can understand what poets mean," she said, "when they say that they draw inspiration by merely looking upwards into the sky. At home one hardly knows what it means; the clouds are low, and in our towns the smoke hangs heavily. But here one seems to know almost what the infinite means, and what is meant by very far away."

"I don't know that I ever saw a poet," said Gabriel.

"When my books come out from England, we will read much together," she thought, and would have spoken the suggestion aloud had it not been that something in Gabriel's face prevented it. She must know him better before suggesting that they should read poetry together.

"We don't often see a newspaper out here," he said.

That was one of the things she must put right; she must have newspapers sent to them from England, and magazines and books. Her own small fortune would enable her to pay for these things, and it was part of her scheme for her home that all the small luxuries of it should be provided by herself.

"We don't get much time for reading," he said, "except in the winter time, and

then the snow makes the rooms pretty dark."

"I am longing to see the first fall of snow," said her voice beside him.

A long silence fell between them before Gabriel pointed with his whip and said, "That's the house." She had said to herself many times that she would not submit to silence. It was one of the things from which her husband was to be delivered. But the silence conquered her: she was unable to break it. Each remark that she thought of seemed too trivial for the immensities of the voiceless prairie and the quiet man beside her.

Annie had told her that tears were unlucky at a wedding-besides, what was there to cry about? . . . "That's the house," said Gabriel, and she strove to tell him all that her home would mean to her and him; but the prairie took the words before they were uttered, and swallowed them up.

Gabriel got down off the seat actively, as became his long, thin figure, and he took a big door-key from his pocket and began to fumble with the latch. There was a little porch to the house, with black wire netting nailed over it, and a tiny raised veranda. All the woodwork of the house was unpainted, and it had been bleached white with the sun. The prairie grass came up to the very door: there was no path visible except between two out-buildings, one of which appeared to be a stable, and the other a little lodge. Between them were scattered untidy piles of old iron and the like, a wagon-wheel long since out of use, and one or two rusty coils of wire fencing.

"I will have it all put in order," Hester thought; "some day I will even get flowers to grow." She got down on the off-side of the wagon and followed her husband into their house.

There was a stopped clock on the chimney-piece above the stove, a table of bleached wood, like that of which the

house was built, some half-dozen wooden chairs, and a little varnished cupboard which looked as if it had been bought second-hand. The room appeared to be a general sitting-room, and three smaller rooms opened off it. One was a kitchen, the other a bedroom, and the third room was empty. She entered the bedroom, and Gabriel brought her dressing-case there. Half mechanically she drew from it her pretty tortoiseshell brushes and the little knick-knacks of her toilet table. Then, as there was no linen cover visible, she fetched a clean rough towel which hung on a rail, spread it out, and laid the brushes on it. A looking-glass hung from a nail on the wall; there were some woman's shoes underneath the table, and in a cupboard hung two or three women's dresses.

Gabriel watched her with interest and a little curiosity as she unpacked, and then went outside and fetched some wood and lighted a fire in the stove. Hester found her voice and began to ask questions-"Where would she find this or that?" They must have tea together it was to be as homelike as possible.

"I reckon I'll have to get the hired man to help me with your box," Leach said, and together he and a foreigner with long hair went and took the trunk from the wagon and brought it indoors.

Hester found it easier to ask the hired man rather than her husband where were the sheets for the beds, and where the table-cloths.

He said in a lisping, foreign way that he didn't know, and then reckoned that Mrs. Leach never had any linen as far as he knew on bed or board-there were plenty of blankets in the chest.

"After all, we are pioneers," Hester thought, "and I will get it all right in time." She found some more rough towels and made what shift with them she could, and from her trunk she drew forth one of the aprons which Annie LIVING AGE, VOL. II, No. 56.

had given her and set to work to dust and to lay tea. She found her husband looking curiously at her again as she worked, and once he said to her, "I'll get you fixed when the C.P.R. comes."

She knew he liked to talk about it, and together they imagined the days when rows of shops and streets and houses might stand where this house now stood.

"I'll be able to sell it in town-lots before even the roads are graded," he said, "and if the town jumps this way— well! In Winnipeg they're getting a thousand dollars a foot for a frontage on Portage Avenue."

"We shall be too rich!" said Hester. "What will you do with the money, Gabriel?"

"I'll buy more land," he said.

Everyone bought land; most people did a turnover. They bought and sold rapidly, and when prices rose they quoted the fortunes which they might have made if they had held on. It would have seemed like a scandalous waste of capital to buy anything else but land.

"This house may be a corner lot some day," he said, "with a steam tram running in front of it."

"Perhaps I shall love it too well by then to want to have it touched," she said.

"Nothing pays like land," he answered. Hester wished that she lived nearer Annie, and could ask her many things. Had Annie known, she would certainly have lent her house-linen and all sorts of little comforts. She unpacked, and thought how incongruous the contents of her box looked in the bare little house. The tortoiseshell brushes looked almost jewel-like on the humble table; her pretty portfolio and writing things, her dresses and neat shoes hadan absurd air of detachment about them. Once she had seen a picture of a Christpantomime fairy-a thing all tinsel and silver and gold-in an humble

mas

garret, and she thought the fairy had a less incongruous look than the silver trifles and boxes on rough wooden shelves. She spread a little table with devotional books, and placed a candle, which Gabriel found for her, in a metal candlestick. After he had gone out she washed the tea-things and tidied up the hearth, and in the evening she lighted a lamp and placed it between them, and spoke to him of her old life at home and of her father and of the villagers. It was essential that she should talk of her old home tonight. She wanted Gabriel to know her from the very beginning of her life, and to love her from some far-away time. She had never told anyone of her inmost thoughts, but she wanted to tell them to her husband, and it puzzled her almost to the point of tears to know why she could not speak to him. Perhaps it was the silence. The silence of the prairie crept in at the window and wrapped them round and came between them. In a passionate resentment of its presence she talked. deliberately of Mawer-St.-Mary and of the people who lived there, almost in the form of a recital which required nothing but the ear of the other to help her. Speaking more rapidly than was her wont, she tried to give little sketches of village life. Dim forms began to people the room as she called them up, and gave her a comforting sense of companionship. The penetrating silence of the prairie was vanquished. Her husband's rare speeches and the almost unbroken quiet of the house would be dissipated some day by her. Some day she would learn to know him better, and he would require no other companion than herself to people the bare room. They would have much in common with each other, and Gabriel would learn to love his evenings with her. Presently there would be no long silences between them. Tonight she must not

mind if things felt a little strange.

Harvest time followed quickly after Hester's marriage, and with harvest the arrival of extra hands. The uncarpeted boards of the room echoed with the unwonted sound of feet. Breakfasts for hungry men had to be prepared, dinners for hungry men, suppers for hungry men. There were always hungry men to cook for and dishes to wash up, and there was but little leisure for thinking or for doing anything else than work. She saw the black threshing-machine standing like a little toy on the prairie, and watched its long funnel send out its spray of threshed maize. No one stopped his work to speak to her. It was harvest time, and men come to Canada to work, not to loiter.

She walked home and got supper ready.

The routine of the days filled them. Breakfast was ready at six o'clock, and when it was nearly noon she used to watch for the men bringing in their teams to water them in the yard, and by the time they had stabled them it was the moment to get the steaming pot off the fire, and to serve the great pieces of pork in the dishes set ready.

The men slept in the lodge, and went to bed early: on Sundays they lay in bed nearly all day; if they had an old newspaper to read they were happy. None of them removed their clothes at night; they used to roll out of bed and comb their hair, and come and have dinner in the living-room on Sundays. Some of them washed now and then, but there was not a razor between them. One does not come to Canada to shave, but to work.

She used to ask the men who sat next to her at table what they intended to do in the winter time, and heard that they were going to lumber camps or to pulp manufactories. Some of them only worked through the harvest time, and then two or three, as the case

might be, would seek some little deserted shack somewhere and make it as weather tight as possible, gather wood and buy canned food for the winter, and so live till the spring came again. None of them wanted to talk about themselves. None of them wanted to talk about their homes. None of them wanted to talk about anything. They worked hard all day, sometimes all night too. People do not come to Canada to talk.

After harvest they disappeared, all but the hired man-the Galician with the long hair. He stayed on through the winters.

There was still the arrival of the furniture to look forward to. It had

Some say that American sympathy with the Allies is stronger than it was; others say that it is weaker. For ourselves, we do not much mind what people say, for so long as the Allies do nothing to forfeit esteem in their conduct of the war the sympathy of the great majority of Americans is bound to be with us. It can fail us only if we estrange those who are naturally and instinctively on our side. There is an unseen bond between us and all Americans who derive racially from Britain. This bond holds the majority of white Americans. It even holds many of those who, though not of British descent, are conscious of practising a scheme of life which is mainly Puritan in its motive and has been passed on from the earliest settlers. It is strange that so little, comparatively, has been said of this racial union between Americans and Englishmen-a union that transcends mere intellectual appreciation, and would probably survive even a certain degree of political condemnation-because we have heard

much of racial sympathy with the Germans. "Once a German always a German," is said in extenuation of Americans who have behaved as archtraitors to their adopted country. We have not hitherto heard anyone say in this war: "Once an Englishman always an Englishman." Yet that would be as true fundamentally of BritishAmericans as it is of German-Americans, though of course sympathy would not be displayed in blowing up bridges and factories in the United States. But now a brilliant band of Americans of British descent have said outright that the unseen bond of race does exist, that it is a powerful reality, that it is a thing to be recognized, and that it must necessarily govern the feelings of the majority of Americans.

The confession appears in a "John' Bull Number" of Life that very popular illustrated satirical journal, enjoying a very large circulation among what we might call the intellectual rich and the well-to-do professional classes throughout