premises may be seen in the agricultural journals,
machinery catalogues, advertisements for woven wire,
etc.--"the home of one of Manitoba's prosperous farmers."

The farm buildings were in good repair; a large red barn
with white trimmings surmounted by a creaking windmill;
a long, low machine shed filled with binders, seeders,
disc-harrows--everything that is needed for the seed-time
and harvest and all that lies between; a large stone
house, square and gray, lonely and bare, without a tree
or a shrub around it. Mr. Motherwell did not like vines
or trees around a house. They were apt to attract lightning
and bring vermin.

Potatoes grew from the road to the house; and around the
front door, as high as the veranda, weeds flourished in
abundance, undisturbed and unnoticed.

Behind the cookhouse a bed of poppies flamed scarlet
against the general sombreness, and gave a strange touch
of colour to the common grayness. They seemed out of
place in the busy farmyard. Everything else was there
for use. Everybody hurried but the poppies; idlers of
precious time, suggestive of slothful sleep, they held
up their brazen faces in careless indifference.

Sam had not planted them--you may be sure of that. Mrs.
Motherwell would tell you of an English girl she had had
to work for her that summer who had brought the seed with
her from England, and of how one day when she sent the