Winter had fled back beyond the barrens to the lonely North at last, and though here and there a little slushy snow still lay soaking the black loam¹ in a hollow, a warm wind swept the vast levels, when one morning Colonel Barrington rode with his niece and sister across the prairie. Spring comes suddenly in that region, and the frost-bleached sod was steaming under an effulgent² sun, while in places a hardy³ flower peeped through. It was six hundred miles to the forests on the Rockies' eastern slope, and as far to the Athabascan pines, but it seemed to Maud Barrington that their resinous⁴ sweetness was in the glorious western wind, which awoke a musical sighing from the sea of rippling⁵ grass. It rolled away before her in billows of lustrous⁶ silver-gray, and had for sole boundary the first upward spring of the arch of cloudless blue, across which the vanguard of the feathered host pressed on, company by company, towards the Pole.  
The freshness of it all stirred her blood like wine, and the brightness that flooded the prairie had crept into her eyes, for those who bear the iron winter of that lonely land realize the wonder of the reawakening, which in a little space of days dresses the waste, that has lain for long months white and silent as the dead, in living green. It also has its subtle significance that the grimmest toiler⁷ feels, and the essence of it is hope eternal and triumphant⁹ life. The girl felt the thrill of it, and gave thanks by an answering brightness, as the murmuring grasses and peeping flowerets did, but there was behind her instinctive¹⁰ gladness a vague wonder and expectancy¹¹. She had read widely, and seen the life of the cities with understanding eyes, and now she was to be provided with the edifying¹³ spectacle of the gambler and outcast turned farmer.
 
Had she been asked a few months earlier whether the man who had, as Courthorne had done, cast away his honor and wallowed in the mire¹⁴, could come forth¹⁵ again and purge¹⁶ himself from the stain, her answer would have been coldly skeptical¹⁷, but now with the old familiar miracle and what it symbolized¹⁸ before her eyes, the thing looked less improbable. Why this should give her pleasure she did not know, or would not admit that she did, but the fact remained that it was so.
 
Trotting¹⁹ down the slope of the next rise, they came upon him, as he stood by a great breaker plow²⁰ with very little sign of dissolute living upon him. In front of him, the quarter-mile furrow²¹ led on beyond the tall sighting poles on the crest²² of the next rise, and four splendid horses, of a kind not very usual on the prairie, were stamping the steaming clods at his side. Bronzed by frost and sun, with his brick-red neck and arch of chest revealed by the coarse blue shirt that, belted at the waist, enhanced his slenderness, the repentant²³ prodigal²⁴ was at least a passable specimen²⁵ of the animal man, but it was the strength and patience in his face that struck the girl, as he turned towards her, bareheaded, with a little smile in his eyes. She also noticed the difference he presented with his ingrained hands and the stain of the soil upon him, to her uncle, who sat his horse, immaculate as usual, with gloved hand on the bridle²⁶, for the Englishmen at Silverdale usually hired other men to do their coarser work for them.
 
"So you are commencing in earnest in face of my opinion?" said Barrington. "Of course, I wish you success, but that consummation appears distinctly doubtful."
 
Winston laughed as he pointed²⁷ to a great machine which, hauled by four horses, rolled towards them, scattering²⁸ the black clods in its wake. "I'm doing what I can to achieve it, sir," he said. "In fact, I'm staking somewhat heavily. That team with the gang plows²⁹ and cultivators cost me more dollars than I care to remember."
 
"No doubt," said Barrington dryly. "Still, we have always considered oxen good enough for breaking prairie at Silverdale."
 
Winston nodded. "I used to do so, sir, when I could get nothing better, but after driving oxen for eight years one finds out their disadvantages."
 
Barrington's face grew a trifle stern. "There are times when you tax our patience, Lance," he said. "Still, there is nothing to be gained by questioning your assertion. What I fail to see, is where your reward for all this will come from, because I am still convinced that the soil will, so to speak, give you back eighty cents for every dollar you put into it. I would, however, like to look at those implements³⁰. I have never seen better ones."
 
He dismounted and helped his companion down, for Winston made no answer. The farmer was never sure what actuated him, but, save in an occasional fit of irony³¹, he had not attempted by any reference to make his past fall into line with Courthorne's since he had first been accepted as the latter at Silverdale. He had taken the dead man's inheritance for a while, but he would stoop no further, and to speak the truth, which he saw was not credited, brought him a grim amusement and also flung a sop³² to his pride. Presently, however, Miss Barrington turned to him, and there was a kindly³³ gleam in her eyes as she glanced at the splendid horses and widening strip of plowing³⁴.
 
"You have the hope of youth, Lance, to make this venture when all looks black--and it pleases me," she said. "Sometimes I fancy that men had braver hearts than they have now, when I was young."
 
Winston flushed a trifle, and stretching out an arm swept his hand round the horizon. "All that looked dead a very little while ago, and now you can see the creeping greenness in the sod," he said. "The lean years cannot last forever, and, even if one is beaten again, there is a consolation³⁵ in knowing that one has made a struggle. Now, I am quite aware that you are fancying a speech of this kind does not come well from me."
 
Maud Barrington had seen his gesture, and something in the thought that impelled³⁶ it, as well as the almost statuesque pose of his thinly-clad figure, appealed to her. Courthorne as farmer, with the damp of clean effort on his forehead and the stain of the good soil that would faithfully repay it on his garments, had very little in common with the profligate³⁷ and gambler. Vaguely³⁸ she wondered whether he was not working out his own redemption by every wheat furrow torn from the virgin³⁹ prairie, and then again the doubt crept in. Could this man have ever found pleasure in the mire?
 
"You will plow your holding, Lance?" asked the elder lady, who had not answered his last speech yet, but meant to later.
 
"Yes," said the man. "All I can. It's a big venture, and, if it fails, will cripple me, but I seem to feel, apart from any reason I can discern, that wheat is going up again, and I must go through with this plowing. Of course, it does not sound very sensible."
 
Miss Barrington looked at him gravely, for there was a curious and steadily⁴⁰-tightening bond between the two. "It depends upon what you mean by sense. Can we reason out all we feel, and is there nothing, intangible but real, behind the impulses which may be sent to us?"
 
"Well," said Winston, with a little smile, "that is a trifle too deep for me, and it's difficult to think of anything but the work I have to do. But you were the first at Silverdale to hold out a hand to me--and I have a feeling that your good wishes would go a long way now. Is it altogether fantastic to believe that the good-will of my first friend would help to bring me prosperity?"
 
The white-haired lady's eyes grew momentarily soft, and, with a gravity that did not seem out of place, she moved forward and laid her hand on a big horse's neck, and smiled when the dumb beast responded to her gentle touch.
 
"It is a good work," she said. "Lance, there is more than dollars, or the bread that somebody is needing, behind what you are doing, and because I loved your mother I know how her approval would have followed you. And now sow in hope, and God speed your plow!"
 
She turned away almost abruptly⁴¹, and Winston stood still with one hand closed tightly and a little deeper tint⁴² in the bronze of his face, sensible at once of an unchanged resolution and a horrible degradation⁴³. Then he saw that the Colonel had helped Miss Barrington into the saddle and her niece was speaking.
 
"I have something to ask Mr. Courthorne and will overtake you," she said.
 
The others rode on, and the girl turned to Winston. "I made you a promise and did my best to keep it, but I find it harder than I fancied it would be," she said. "I want you to release me."
 
"I should like to hear your reasons," said Winston.
 
The girl made a faint gesture of impatience⁴⁴. "Of course, if you insist."
 
"I do," said Winston quietly.
 
"Then I promised you to have my holding sown this year, an............