Crop-payments, you know.”

“Well,” Niels hesitated, “so long as I can get a homestead for nothing …”

“Listen,” she interrupted him. “Believe an old homesteader like me. By the time you’re ready to prove up, in the bush, you’ve paid for the place in work three times over. And what with the stumps and stones, everybody is willing to sell out as soon as he gets his patent. Yes, if you could get a homestead out in the open prairie … But there the land’s all settled. And when a man has proved up and owns his quarter of bush, what can he get for it? Two thousand dollars. And that’s for six, seven years of back-breaking work; and sometimes for longer. Take a prairie farm, now, which sells for six thousand dollars, let me say. You work it for six years, and you’ve paid for it in half crops. And you own all your machinery besides. You are worth ten thousand dollars. And meanwhile you haven’t been working so’s to make a cripple out of yourself. Think it over, Mr. Lindstedt. That’s all I say. Think it over. But you want to get married, of course.”

Niels coloured. He was ill at ease … There must be a flaw in these arguments.

Mrs. Lund rose. “Carl,” she called. “Come on. Time we get home.”

“Yes, Anna,” her husband replied; and when he had slowly raised himself, he adjusted with trembling hands smoked glasses before his eyes. His wife helped him into a series of three or four coats, each being singly too light for the season. She herself donned a man’s coat and, over it, a sheep-skin.

Nelson approached. “Came in the bob-sleighs?”

“Yes,” Mrs. Lund replied.

“Going straight home?”

“Immedately.”

“We might come along,” Nelson suggested, “and tramp it back.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Nelson,” Lund said with insincere cordiality. “Certainly, Mr. Nelson. Look the place over.”

“Lots of room in the box,” Mrs.