The nights were growing longer, dusk was creeping up from the eastward across the leagues of whitened grass an hour earlier than it had done when they cut the hay. Leland stood outside the homestead door with a few newly opened letters in his hand. The waggon of the man who had brought them was just then lurching over the crest of the rise, and Carrie stood watching it, near her husband's side. His face was a trifle sombre, but he smiled when she glanced at him inquiringly.

"From my broker in Winnipeg," he said. "He doesn't know what to make of the market, and I can't blame him. Wheat's lower than I ever remember it, but the bears are still working their hardest to hammer prices down. In a month or so they'll have the whole wheat of the West flung into the market to make it easier for them; but they don't seem to have it quite so much their own way as I had expected. One could almost fancy that somebody was buying quietly. Anyway, there's a man willing to take most of my crop off me, when it's ready, at a little under to-day's nominal figure. You see, the Prospect hard red's first-grade for milling.""If you sold, how would you stand?" asked Carrie.

"Very close to ruin. The cattle run would certainly have to go, but that wouldn't count so much. It's less than half stocked now."

"Why can't you hold?"

"The trouble is that all accounts must be met at harvest, and I've got to have at least five thousand dollars to wipe out the most pressing ones. The rest might be carried over at a stiff interest. Then there are wages, harvesting and threshing. Besides, if I held the grain up, I'd be taking a big risk. It may go down another two or three cents or even more, when every man west of Winnipeg rushes his crop in, and that would turn me out upon the prairie."

"Still, you mean to hold?" Carrie looked at him steadily, with a little gleam in her eyes.

"I almost think I do."

Carrie laid her hand upon his arm. The faint flush in her cheeks was born of pride. "Well," she said, "that pleases me. It is like you, Charley. Hold it, dear, every bushel, and, before you yield an inch, let them break you if they can."

She turned abruptly and glanced at the tall wheat which rolled back, dusky green with faint opal gleams in it, across the great level and over the swell of rise into the smoky crimson that lingered in the western' sky.

"It's yours," she said proudly. "You made it grow, and do you think I don't know what it has cost you? You have gone without sleep for it, and worn yourself to skin and bone. Perhaps you have always worked hard, but, I think, never quite so cruelly hard as you have done this year."She stopped and gazed fondly on him. Then she went on.

"Oh," she said, "I understand—everything. Charley, dear, it isn't without a reason you are so thin and gaunt and brown, and your hands—the hands that have done so much for me—are hard and scarred. Still, I want them to hold on to what is yours. You have made the splendid wheat grow, and you won't let anybody rob you of it now."

Leland smiled, though it was evident that he was stirred.

"Well," he said, "it would be a little easier to stop them doing it if I knew where to get five thousand dollars, which is one thousand pounds. Of course, I owe a great deal more, but with that in hand to settle the odd accounts that must be met, I needn't force my wheat on the market for a month or so."

"Oh," said Carrie with a little laugh, "there will not be the least difficulty about the money. I am going to give it to you—two thousand pounds if you want it."

Leland stared at her in evident astonishment. "My dear, I never knew you had so much, and, if you have, it must be every penny that belongs to you. I couldn't let you strip yourself of everything for me."

"What have you been doing ever since I came to Prospect? Still, that doesn't matter. You must humour me. Do you think, after all you have done, I could stand by and see you ruined when there was anything that belonged to me? Charley, you must use this money. Can't you see that you must, if it's only to show that you have forgiven me?"

She turned swiftly, and threw an arm about his shoulder. "If you don't, you will almost make me hate you again. You don't want that? Then you will make no more silly objections. We are going into this fight together."

Leland made a little gesture of surrender. "Well," he said slowly, "since you have made your mind up, I can't say no. I don't think it would be much use, anyway. But it will be a big risk, my dear."

"But," said Carrie, "that is one of the things that appeal to me. Still, it's all decided. You shall have a cheque for ten thousand dollars. That's right, isn't it? Now tell me what is in the rest of the letters."

She drew back from him a little. When Leland looked at her smilingly, a faint flush crept into her cheek again.

"Oh," she said, "I know what you are thinking. I always do. Still, you see, it isn't entirely my fault that I'm different from the girl you married. And now tell me about the other letters."

Leland handed her one of them with an illuminated device at the top of it. "It's an annual function, one of the biggest in Winnipeg, and women attend it. Everybody with a stake in the country will be there, and they want to make me a steward. My broker's on the committee, and Prospect is rather a big farm, you see. I am requested to bring Mrs. Leland along with me."

Carrie's eyes brightened. After all, it was lonely at Prospect, and she had played her part in two London seasons. Now and then she felt a longing to move among people of her own station again, and the prospect of attending the function was undeniably attractive. Her dresses would not be out of fashion yet, and, after the long months on the dusty prairie, it would be delightful to appear for once attired becomingly at a brilliant assembly. There were also eminent names upon the invitation, and she felt that, apart from any pleasure she might derive, it would be a source of satisfaction to see her husband among the notables of the land.

"You would like to go?" he asked.

"I would like it better than anything."

Leland appeared thoughtful. "I would like to see you there. You could put on the bracelet I saw you with and the crescent in your hair."

"No," said Carrie, who looked away from him, "I think I would sooner go very plainly—that is, if I could go at all."

The trace of eagerness in her voice was not lost upon the man, and he stood silent a moment before he made a little resolute gesture.

"Well," he said, "we'll go. It's the first little pleasure of that kind I have been able to offer you, and I daresay Gallwey will see the guards ploughed just as well as I could."

"There is some reason why you shouldn't go, after all?" and Carrie glanced at him sharply. "You are too busy."

"I'm not quite sure there is. I expect it's mostly fancy, but a man gets into the way of thinking that when there's anything of consequence to be done he should see it done himself. Now those fire-guards"—and he pointed to a belt of furrows that cut off the homestead from the prairie—"are the regulation width, but I was thinking of doubling them. The grass is tinder-dry, and the oats will soon be ripe enough to burn."

"Ah," said Carrie, "you think the rustlers might try again?"

Leland smiled drily. "Well," he said, "grass-fires are in no way unusual at this season."

Carrie guessed what he was thinking as he looked in silence out across the ripening wheat. As she gazed at the vast sweep of grain, she, too, was stirred with the pride of possession and accomplishment. She longed now for the glitter of the assembly, for conversation as one of them with men and women of culture and station, with a fervour which in all probability any one who had lived, as she had, on the lonely prairie levels would quite understand. But, with a little sigh, she crushed the longing down.

"Then," she said quietly, "we will stay here, Charley."

Leland appeared irresolute. "After all, we wouldn't be so very long away."

"No," said Carrie, firmly. "There is a lot against you, and you mustn't leave a single advantage to the enemy."

Leland stooped and kissed her. "Well, I guess you're right—still, I think I know what you're going to do without for me."

Nothing more was said, but it was not needed, for there was perfect understanding between them as they went into the house together.

It was early next morning when Leland harnessed four horses to the big gang-plough, and, as there was moonlight that night, he still sat behind another four until long after the red sun went down. There were other men he could have bidden to do the work for him, but he knew the odds against him, and meant to do it himself thoroughly. It was also careful ploughing, and not done in haste, as is most usual in the West, for throughout most of it the clods ran dead smooth and level, without a break to let the grass tussocks through. Their sides, gleaming from contact with the polished steel, were laid towards the prairie, presenting to it a serried phalanx of good, black loam; but where the sod was unusually friable, Leland got down to toil with the spade.

A grass-fire needs very little to help it. A tuft or two of dry grass projecting from a half-turned clod will suffice, and the flame will sometimes creep in and out between and across the ridges, wherever a few withered stalks may lie. Leland knew he had not done with the rustlers yet, and it was advisable to take due precautions. The standard guard-furrows were considered quite enough by most of his neighbours, who, indeed, now and then neglected to plough them. But he had a good deal at stake, and meant, in so far as it was permitted him, to make quite sure.

He went round the wheat and oats, and then spent several days ripping odd strips here and there across the prairie in the track of the prevalent winds. It was fiercely hot weather, but he was busy every hour from dawn to dusk, and at nights his men grinned as they mentioned it. Charley Leland was getting very afraid of fire, they said. When he was satisfied with the ploughing, he had the axes and grub-hoes ground, and set the men to work cutting out the smaller growth of willows of underbrush in the strip of birches that stretched close up to the homestead from the bluff. When Gallwey, who had other duties, found him busy at it the first morning, he smiled a little.

"I suppose it's really necessary. If not, it would be a considerable waste of time," he said.

"Well," said Leland, drily, "I almost think it is. A good deal of this stuff is tinder-dry, and you can't plough through the bluff. I don't know if you have ever seen a bad fire in the underbrush? You can't beat it out, as you can now and then when it's in the grass."

Gallwey looked thoughtful. "All this points to one thing. You feel tolerably satisfied that the rustlers will make another attempt?"

"It's a sure thing." Leland straightened himself a little, with a lean, brown hand clenched on the haft of the big axe. "Before the snow is on the ground, I or the whisky boys will have had to quit this prairie. I don't want it to be me."

Then he turned away abruptly, and, whirling the great blade high, buried it at a stroke in a dry and partly rotten birch. His comrade smiled. He had seen Leland's face, and there was something vaguely portentous in the flash of whirling steel and the crash of the blow. Charley Leland, he knew, could wait and take precautions, but it was also evident that when the time came, he could strike in a somewhat impressive fashion.

Leland worked on for several more days, and then one night Carrie and he stood outside of the door of the homestead, watching a great pile of underbrush blazing furiously. The man smiled as he turned to his companion. His hands were blackened, and his old blue-jean garments singed.

"Well," he said, "I guess I've done what I can. I had to do it, anyway, since you lent me that two thousand pounds. If the market would only stiffen, you'd get your money back with an interest that would astonish people in England."

He broke off for a moment with a curious little laugh. "My dear," he said, "you and I should have been in Winnipeg to-night."

Carrie said nothing, but the firelight was on her face when she looked up at her husband, and once more he was satisfied.