Alberta--witched out of him by this delicately eager face, these lovely
listening eyes. And here, in spite of his blunt, simple speech, came out
the deeper notes of feeling, feeling richly steeped in those "mortal
things"--earthy, tender, humorous, or terrible--which make up
human fate.

Had he talked like this to the Catholic girl in Quebec? And yet she had
renounced him? She had never loved him, of course! To love this man
would be to cleave to him.

Once, in a lifting of the shadows of the prairie, Elizabeth saw a group
of antelope standing only a few hundred yards from the train, tranquilly
indifferent, their branching horns clear in a pallid ray of light; and
once a prairie-wolf, solitary and motionless; and once, as the train
moved off after a stoppage, an old badger leisurely shambling off the
line itself. And once, too, amid a driving storm-shower, and what seemed
to her unbroken formless solitudes, suddenly, a tent by the railway
side, and the blaze of a fire; and as the train slowly passed, three
men--lads rather--emerging to laugh and beckon to it. The tent, the
fire, the gay challenge of the young faces and the English voices,
ringed by darkness and wild weather, brought the tears back to
Elizabeth's eyes, she scarcely knew why.

"Settlers, in their first year," said Anderson, smiling, as he waved
back again.

But, to Elizabeth, it seemed a parable of the new Canada.

An hour later, amid a lightening of the clouds over the West, that
spread a watery gold over the prairie, Anderson sprang to his feet.