It was late in the afternoon when Colonel Barrington drove up to Winston's homestead. He had his niece and sister with him, and when he pulled up his team, all three were glad of the little breeze that came down from the blueness of the north and rippled¹ the whitened grass. It had blown over leagues of sun-bleached prairie, and the great desolation beyond the pines of the Saskatchewan, but had not wholly lost the faint, wholesome² chill it brought from the Pole.  
There was no cloud in the vault³ of ether, and slanting⁴ sun-rays beat fiercely down upon the prairie, until the fibrous dust grew fiery⁵ and the eyes ached from the glare of the vast stretch of silvery gray. The latter was, however, relieved by stronger color in front of the party, for blazing gold on the dazzling stubble, the oat sheaves rolled away in long rows that diminished and melted into each other, until they cut the blue of the sky in a delicate filigree⁶. Oats had moved up in value in sympathy with wheat, and the good soil had most abundantly redeemed⁷ its promise that year. Colonel Barrington, however, sighed a little as he looked at them, and remembered that such a harvest might have been his.
 
"We will get down and walk towards the wheat," he said. "It is a good crop and Lance is to be envied."
 
"Still," said Miss Barrington, "he deserved it, and those sheaves stand for more than the toil⁸ that brought them there."
 
"Of course!" said the Colonel, with a curious little smile. "For rashness, I fancied, when they showed the first blade above the clod, but I am less sure of it now. Well, the wheat is even finer."
 
A man who came up took charge of the horses, and the party walked in silence towards the wheat. It stretched before them in a vast parallelogram, and while the oats were the pale gold of the austral, there was the tint⁹ of the ruddier metal of their own Northwest in this. It stood tall and stately, murmuring as the sea does, until it rolled before a stronger puff¹¹ of breeze in waves of ochre, through which the warm bronze gleamed when its rhythmic¹² patter swelled¹³ into deeper-toned harmonies. There was that in the elfin music and blaze of color which appealed to the sensual ear and eye, and something which struck deeper still, as it did in the days men poured libations on the fruitful soil, and white-robed priests blessed it, when the world was young.
 
Maud Barrington felt it vaguely¹⁴, but she recognized more clearly, as her aunt had done, the faith and daring of the sower. The earth was very bountiful, but that wheat had not come there of itself; and she knew the man who had called it up and had done more than bear his share of the primeval curse which, however, was apparently¹⁵ more or less evaded¹⁶ at Silverdale. Even when the issue appeared hopeless, the courage that held him resolute¹⁷ in the face of others' fears, and the greatness of his projects, had appealed to her, and it almost counted for less that he had achieved success. Then glancing further across the billowing grain she saw him--still, as it seemed it had always been with him, amid the stress and dust of strenuous¹⁸ endeavor.
 
Once more, as she had seen them when the furrows¹⁹ were bare at seed time, and there was apparently only ruin in store for those who raised the Eastern people's bread, lines of dusty teams came plodding²⁰ down the rise. They advanced in echelon²¹, keeping their time and distance with a military precision, but in place of the harrows, the tossing arms of the binders²³ flashed and swung. The wheat went down before them, their wake was strewn with gleaming sheaves, and one man came foremost swaying in the driving-seat of a rattling²⁴ machine. His face was the color of a Blackfeet's, and she could see the darkness of his neck above the loose-fronted shirt, and a bare blackened arm that was raised to hold the tired beasts to their task. Their trampling²⁵, and the crash and rattle²⁶ that swelled in slow crescendo²⁷, drowned the murmur¹⁰ of the wheat, until one of the machines stood still, and the leader, turning a moment in his saddle, held up a hand. Then those that came behind swung into changed formation, passed, and fell into indented²⁸ line again, while Colonel Barrington nodded with grim approval.
 
"It is very well done," he said. "The best of harvesters! No newcomers yonder. They're capable Manitoba men. I don't know where he got them, and, in any other year, one would have wondered where he would find the means of paying them. We have never seen farming of this kind at Silverdale."
 
He seemed to sigh a little while his hand closed on the bridle²⁹, and Maud Barrington fancied she understood his thoughts just then.
 
"Nobody can be always right, and the good years do not come alone," she said. "You will plow³⁰ every acre next one."
 
Barrington smiled dryly. "I'm afraid that will be a little late, my dear. Any one can follow, but since, when everybody's crop is good, the price comes down, the man who gets the prize is the one who shows the way."
 
"He was content to face the risk," said Miss Barrington.
 
"Of course," said the Colonel quietly. "I should be the last to make light of his foresight³¹ and courage. Indeed, I am glad I can acknowledge it, in more ways than one, for I have felt lately that I am getting an old man. Still, there is one with greater capacities ready to step into my shoes, and though it was long before I could overcome my prejudice against him, I think I should now be content to let him have them. Whatever Lance may have been, he was born a gentleman, and blood is bound to tell."
 
Maud Barrington, who was of patrician³² parentage, and would not at one time have questioned this assertion, wondered why she felt less sure of it just then.
 
"But if he had not been, would not what he has done be sufficient to vouch³³ for him?" she said.
 
Barrington smiled a little, and the girl felt that her question was useless as she glanced at him. He sat very straight in his saddle, immaculate in dress, with a gloved hand on his hip³⁴, and a stamp which he had inherited, with the thinly-covered pride that usually accompanies it from generations of a similar type, on his clean-cut face. It was evidently needless to look for any sympathy with that view from him.
 
"My dear," he said, "there are things at which the others can beat us; but, after all, I do not think they are worth the most, and while Lance has occasionally exhibited a few undesirable³⁵ characteristics, no doubt acquired in this country, and has not been always blameless, the fact that he is a Courthorne at once covers and accounts for a good deal."
 
Then Winston recognized them, and made a sign to one of the men behind him as he hauled his binder²² clear of the wheat. He had dismounted in another minute, and came towards them, with the jacket he had not wholly succeeded in struggling into, loose about his shoulders.
 
"It is almost time I gave my team a rest," he said, "Will you come with me to the house?"
 
"No," said Colonel Barrington. "We only stopped in passing. The crop will harvest well."
 
"Yes," said Winston, turning with a little smile to Miss Barrington. "Better than I expected, and prices are still moving up. You will remember, madam, who it was wished me good fortune. It has undeniably come!"
 
"Then," said the white-haired lady, "next year I will do as much again, though it will be a little unnecessary, because you have my good wishes all the time. Still, you are too prosaic³⁶ to fancy they can have anything to do with--this."
 
She pointed³⁷ to the wheat, but, though Winston smiled again, there was a curious expression in his face as he glanced at her niece.
 
"I certainly do, and your good-will has made a greater difference than you realize to me," he said.
 
Miss Barrington looked at him steadily³⁸. "Lance," she said, "there is something about you and your speeches that occasionally puzzles me. Now, of course, that was the only rejoinder you could make, but I fancied you meant it." "I did," said Winston, with a trace of grimness in his smile. "Still, isn't it better to tell any one too little rather than too much?"
 
"Well," said Miss Barrington, "you are going to be franker with me by and by. Now, my brother has been endeavoring to convince us that you owe your success to qualities inherited from bygone Courthornes."
 
Winston did not answer for a moment, and then he laughed. "I fancy Colonel Barrington is wrong," he said. "Don't you think there are latent capabilities³⁹ in every man, though only one here and there gets an opportunity of using them? In any case, wouldn't it be pleasanter for any one to feel that his virtues⁴⁰ were his own and not those of his family?"
 
Miss Barrington's eyes twinkled, but she shook her head. "That," she said, "would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were getting on."
 
In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins⁴¹, and as they drove slowly past the wheat, his niece had another view of the toiling⁴² teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample⁴³ of hoofs⁴⁴, and clash of the binders' wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard thos............