“Well,” he said slowly, “you can do a little for me now.  Colonel Barrington was right when he set his face against speculation, and it was only because I saw dollars were badly needed at Silverdale, and the one means of getting them, I made my deal.  Still, if we are to succeed as farmers we must market our wheat as cheaply as our rivals, and we want a new bridge on the level.  Now, I got a drawing of one, and estimates for British Columbia stringers, yesterday, while the birches in the ravine will give us what else we want.  I’ll build the bridge myself, but it will cheapen the wheat-hauling to everybody, and you might like to help me.”

Dane glanced at the drawing laid before him, but Alfreton spoke first.  “One hundred dollars.  I’m only a small man, but I wish it was five,” he said.

“I’ll make it that much, and see the others do their share,” said Dane, and then glanced at the broker with a curious smile.

“How does he do it—­this and other things?  He was never a business man!”

Graham nodded.  “He can’t help it.  It was born in him.  You and I can figure and plan, but Courthorne is different—­the right thing comes to him.  I knew the first night I saw him, you had got the man you wanted at Silverdale.”

Then Winston stood up wineglass in hand.  “I am obliged to you, but I fancy this has gone far enough,” he said.  “There is one man who has done more for you than I could ever do.  Prosperity is a good thing, but you, at least, know what he has aimed at stands high above that.  May you have the Head of the Silverdale community long with you!”

CHAPTER XIX

UNDER TEST

The prairie lay dim and shadowy in the creeping dusk when Winston sat on a redwood stringer near the head of his partly-finished bridge.  There was no sound from the hollow behind him but the faint gurgle of the creek, and the almost imperceptible vibration of countless minute wings.  The birches which climbed the slope to it wound away sinuously, a black wall on either hand, and the prairie lying gray and still stretched back into the silence in front of him.  Here and there a smoldering fire showed dully red on the brink of the ravine, but the tired men who had lighted them were already wrapped in heavy slumber.

The prairie hay was gathered, harvest had not come, and for the last few weeks Winston, with his hired men from the bush of Ontario, had toiled at the bridge with a tireless persistency which had somewhat astonished the gentlemen farmers of Silverdale.  They, however, rode over every now and then, and most cheerfully rendered what assistance they could, until it was time to return for tennis or a shooting sweepstake, and Winston thanked them gravely, even when he and his Ontario axmen found it necessary to do the work again.  He could have told nobody why he had undertaken to build the bridge, which could be of