"The curious thing about it," he added, "is that as I watched the boy sitting on his fine blooded horse and heard him speak, I felt as if I'd once lived among high-toned English people and could somehow understand what he was thinking. But of course I never had a horse like his, and we were born in a rough shack on a poor Dakota farm. Can one inherit one's ancestors' feelings and memories?"
"It's very strange," mused Hester.
Harding laughed.
"Well, anyway, I'm a farmer," he said. "I stand upon my own feet – regardless of ancestors. What I am is what I make of myself!"
He moved off toward the tent.
"It's getting late," he called back to her.
But for a long time Hester sat beside the sinking fire. Her brother, whom she loved and admired, differed slightly, but noticeably in one or two respects, from any of the prairie farmers she had known. Though it was hard to procure books, he had read widely and about other subjects than agriculture. Odd tricks of thought and speech also suggested the difference; but she knew that nobody else except her mother had noticed it, for, to all intents, Craig was merely a shrewd, hard-working grower of wheat.
Then the girl's face grew gentle as she thought of Fred Devine. He had proved very constant and had several times made what was then a long and adventurous journey to see her. Now, when his father had given him a few hundred dollars, he had followed Craig, and she was ready to marry him as soon as he could make a home for her. At present he was living in a dug-out in a bank, and must harvest his first crop before he could think about a house.
When the fire had died down to a few smoldering coals, Hester got up and looked about her. The moon hung, large and red, above the prairie's rim; the air was sharp and wonderfully exhilarating. Behind the tent the birch leaves rustled softly in the bluff, and in the distance a coyote howled. There was no other sound; it was all very still and strangely lonely; but the girl felt no shrinking. On her mother's side she sprang from a race of pioneers, and her true work was to help in the breaking of the wilderness.
CHAPTER II
PORTENTS OF CHANGE
The moon was above the horizon when Kenwyne pulled up his horse to a walk opposite Allenwood Grange. The view from this point always appealed to the artist in Kenwyne. The level plain was broken here by steep, sandy rises crowned with jack-pines and clumps of poplar, and a shallow lake reached out into the open from their feet. A short distance back from its shore, the Grange stood on a gentle slope, with a grove of birches that hid the stables and outbuildings straggling up the hill behind.
As Kenwyne saw it in the moonlight across the glittering water, the house was picturesque. In the center rose a square, unpretentious building of notched logs; but from this ship-lap additions, showing architectural taste, stretched out in many wings, so that, from a distance, the homestead with its wooded back-ground had something of the look of an old English manor house. It was this which made the colonists of Allenwood regard it with affection. Now it was well lighted, and the yellow glow from its windows shone cheerfully across the lake.
The foundations of the place had been laid in unsettled times, after the Hudson Bay fur-traders had relinquished their control of the trackless West, but before the Dominion Government had established its authority. The farmers were then spreading cautiously across the Manitoban plain, in some fear of the Metis half-breeds, and it was considered a bold adventure when the builder of the Grange pushed far out into the prairies of the Assiniboine. He had his troubles, but he made his holding good, and sold it to Colonel Mowbray, who founded the Allenwood settlement.
On the whole, the colony had succeeded, but Kenwyne saw that it might become an anachronism in changing times. He had noted the advance of the hard-bitten homesteaders who were settling wherever the soil was good, and who were marked by sternly utilitarian methods and democratic ideas. Before long Allenwood must cast off its aristocratic traditions and compete with these newcomers; but Kenwyne feared that its founder was not the man to change.
As he rode slowly past the lake, a man came toward him with a gun and a brace of prairie-chickens.
"Hello, Ralph!" he said. "Have you forgotten that it's council night?"
"I'm not likely to forget after the rebuke I got for missing the last meeting," Kenwyne replied. "Do you happen to know what kind of temper the Colonel is in, Broadwood?"
"My opinion is that it might be better. Gerald Mowbray has turned up again, and I've noticed that the old man is less serene than usual when his son's about. In fact, as we have to bear the consequences, I wish the fellow would stay away."
While Broadwood and Kenwyne were discussing him on the hillside, Colonel Mowbray sat in his study at the Grange, talking to the elder of his two sons. The room was small and plainly furnished, with a map of the territory on the matchboarded wall, a plain table on which lay a few bundles of neatly docketed papers, and a stove in one corner. Account-books filled a shelf, and beneath there was a row of pigeonholes. The room had an air of austere simplicity with which Colonel Mowbray's appearance harmonized.
He was tall, but spare of flesh, with an erect carriage and an autocratic expression. His hair was gray, his eyes were dark and keen, and his mouth was unusually firm; but the hollowness of his face and the lines on his forehead showed advancing age. He was a man of some ability, with simple tastes, certain unchangeable convictions, and a fiery temper. Leaving the army with a grievance which he never spoke about, and being of too restless a character to stay at home, he had founded Allenwood for the purpose of settling young Englishmen upon the land. He demanded that they be well born, have means enough to make a fair start, and that their character should bear strict investigation. Though the two latter conditions were not invariably complied with, his scheme had prospered. Mowbray was generous, and had taken the sons of several old friends who did not possess the capital required; while the discipline he enforced had curbed the wayward. For the most part, the settlers regarded him with affection as well as respect; but he had failed most signally with his own son, who now stood rather awkwardly before him.
After serving for a year or two in India as an engineer lieutenant, Gerald Mowbray met with an accident which forced him to leave the army. He made an unsuccessful start on another career, and had of late been engaged upon a Government survey of the rugged forest-belt which runs west to the confines of the Manitoban plain. He was a handsome, dark-complexioned man, but looked slacker and less capable than his father.
"I think five hundred pounds would clear me," he said in an apologetic tone. "If I could pay off these fellows, it would be a great relief, and I'd faithfully promise to keep clear of debt in future."
"It seems to me I've heard something of the kind on previous occasions," Mowbray returned dryly. "There's a weak strain in you, Gerald, though I don't know where you got it. I suppose a thousand pounds would be better?"
Gerald's eyes grew eager; but the next moment his face fell, for he knew his father's methods, and saw his ironical smile.
"Well," he said cautiously, "I could straighten things out if I had five hundred."
"With what you got from your mother!"
Gerald winced. His mother never refused him, even though he knew that it often meant sacrifice on her part.
"To save our name," Mowbray said sternly, "and for that reason only, I am going to let you have three hundred pounds. But I warn you, it's the last you'll get. You may as well know that it is hard to spare this."
Gerald looked his surprise.
"I thought – "
Mowbray interrupted him.
"My affairs are not so prosperous as they seem; but I rely on you not to mention the fact. Now you may go. But, remember – there's to be no more money thrown away!"
When Gerald closed the door, Mowbray took down one of his account-books, and sat still for a long time studying it. He had never been rich, but he had had enough, and as the settlement grew up he had felt justified in selling to newcomers, at moderate prices, land which he had got as a free grant. Now, however, the land was nearly