“I believe I said something of the kind.  What has that to do with it?”

“It isn’t very obvious.  Perhaps she felt tired or moody; it has been a blazing hot day.  There’s every sign of its being the same to-morrow.  I suppose you’ll make a start after breakfast?”

“I’ll make a start as soon as it’s daylight,” George told him.

He kept his word, and for the next few weeks toiled with determined energy among the tall white oats and the coppery ears of wheat.  It was fiercely hot, but from sunrise until the light failed, the plodding teams and clinking binders moved round the lessening squares of grain, and ranks of splendid sheaves lengthened fast behind them.  The nights were getting sharp, the dawns were cold and clear, and George rose each morning, aching in every limb, but with a keen sense of satisfaction.  Each day’s work added to the store of money he would shortly hand to Sylvia.  He saw little of Flora, but when they met by chance, as happened once or twice, he was still conscious of something subtly unfamiliar in her manner.  He felt they were no longer on the old confidential footing; a stronger barrier of reserve had risen between them.

Before the last sheaves were stacked, the days were growing cool.  The fresh western breezes had died away, and a faint ethereal haze and a deep stillness had fallen upon the prairie.  It was rudely broken when the thrashers arrived and from early morning the clatter of the engine filled the air with sound.  Loaded wagons crashed through the stubble, the voices of dusty men mingled with the rustle of the sheaves, and a long trail of sooty smoke stained the soft blue of the sky.

This work was finished in turn, and day by day the wagons, loaded high with bags of grain, rolled slowly across the broad white levels toward the elevators.  Many a tense effort was needed to get them to their destination, for the trails were dry and loose; but markets were strong, and George had decided to haul in all the big crop.  Sometimes, though the nights were frosty, he slept beside his jaded team in the shelter of a bluff; sometimes he spent a day he grudged laying straw on a road; rest for more than three or four hours was unknown to him, and meals were snatched at irregular intervals when matters of more importance were less pressing.  For all that, he was uniformly cheerful; the work brought him the greatest pleasure he had known, and he had grown fond of the wide, open land, in which he had once looked forward to dwelling with misgivings.  The freedom of its vast spaces, its clear air and its bright sunshine, appealed to him, and he began to realize that he would be sorry to leave it, which he must shortly do.  Sylvia, it was a pity, could not live in western Canada.