Sadie was pretty, capable, and amusing, but he was not sure he would like to see her every day, in his house and at his table.  Besides, the house would really be hers, and Sadie would not forget this.  She was determined and liked her own way.  He had promised to marry another girl, of a very different stamp, but his conscience was clear on that point.  It was better for Helen’s sake that he should give her up, because he was on the edge of ruin and she was much too good for him.  Irresolution, however, was perhaps his greatest failing, and now he must decide, he wavered and thought about what he had lost.

There were days when he would not admit that all was lost, and harnessing his team in the early morning, drove the gang-plow through the soil until the red sunset faded off the plain.  In his heart, he knew the fight was hopeless; Festing, for example, in his place, might perhaps make good, but he had not the stamina for the long struggle.  All the same, he worked with savage energy until his mood changed and he went off to hunt sandhill cranes.  He would sooner have gone to the poolroom, but there was a risk of his meeting Sadie at the settlement.

In the meantime the days got warmer and a flush of vivid green spread across the grass.  The roaring wind that swept the tableland drove clouds that never broke across the dazzling sky, and where there were belts of plowed land the harrows clanked across the furrows amidst a haze of blowing dust.  The ducks and geese had gone, and red lilies began to sway above the rolling waves of grass.  Farmer and hired man worked with tense activity, but Charnock’s efforts were spasmodic and often slack.

In the meantime, trade was brisk at the settlement, and Keller found his business made demands on him that he could hardly meet.  It was rapidly growing, and his strength got less.  Indeed, he would have sold out but for Sadie.  The girl was clever and had tone; he wanted her to find life smooth and taste pleasure her mother had not enjoyed.  The latter had helped him in a hard fight when dollars were very scarce, and died, worn out, just before the tide turned.  Since then he had schemed and sweated to make her child’s future safe.

Now he thought he had done so, but it had been a struggle, and he knew he had held on too long.  Keeping store in a wheat-growing district was not a simple matter of selling groceries; one was in reality a banker.  Bills were not often paid until the crop was harvested, farmers began without much money, and one must know whom to trust.  Indeed, one often financed a hustler who had no capital, and kept an honest man who had lost a crop on his feet; but the risk was great, and one felt the strain when there was rust and autumn frost.