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I can't promise that Colonel Mowbray will avail himself of your permission. I wish you good afternoon."
He rode away with his companion, and an hour later Harding and Devine threw their axes on their shoulders and struck out across the prairie. The sun had dipped, the air was getting cool, and on the clean-cut western horizon a soft red flush faded beneath a band of vivid green.
At the foot of a low rise the men stopped.
"I'll be around the first thing in the morning," Devine said.
"Then you're not coming to supper?"
"No," Devine answered reluctantly; "I guess not. I've been over twice this week, and Hester has enough to do without extra cooking for me."
"As you wish," said Harding, and they separated in a friendly manner.
When he was alone Harding went on briskly, walking with an elastic step and looking far ahead across the shadowy plain. It was a rich land that stretched away before him, and a compact block of it belonged to him. It was virgin soil, his to do with as he liked. He thought that he could make good use of it; but he had no illusions; he knew all about prairie farming, and was prepared for a hard struggle.
Crossing the rise, he headed for a glow of light that flickered in the gloom of a small birch bluff, and presently stopped at a tent pitched among the trees. Two big red oxen were grazing by the edge of the bluff, a row of birch logs lay among the grass beside a pile of ship-lap boards, and some more of the boards had been roughly built into a pointed shack. In front of this a young girl bent over a fire that burned between two logs. All round, except where the wood broke the view, the wilderness rolled away, dim and silent.
Hester Harding looked up with a smile when her brother stopped. She resembled him, for she had his direct, thoughtful glance and fine proportions. Her face and hands were browned by sun and wind, but, although she had worked hard from childhood, she wore no coarsening stamp of toil. Her features were good, and the plain print dress she had made in her scanty spare time became her.
"Tired, Craig?" she asked in a pleasant voice.
"Not quite as fresh as I was at sun-up," Harding smiled. "We got through a good deal of work to-day and I'll soon be able to make a start with the house. We'll have to rush the framing to get finished before the frost."
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