country, haven’t they?”
“Well,” said Lockhart, cautiously, “I don’t just like to pass
judgment on any Christian sect, but if you’re to know the chosen by
their works, the Gospellers can’t make a very proud showin’, an’
that’s a fact. They’re responsible for a few suicides, and they’ve
sent a good-sized delegation to the state insane asylum, an’ I don’t
see as they’ve made the rest of us much better than we were before.
I had a little herdboy last spring, as square a little Dane as I
want to work for me, but after the Gospellers got hold of him and
sanctified him, the little beggar used to get down on his knees out
on the prairie and pray by the hour and let the cattle get into the
corn, an’ I had to fire him. That’s about the way it goes. Now
there’s Eric; that chap used to be a hustler and the spryest dancer
in all this section—called all the dances. Now he’s got no ambition
and he’s glum as a preacher. I don’t suppose we can even get him to
come in to-morrow night.”
“Eric? Why, he must dance, we can’t let him off,” said Margaret,
quickly. “Why, I intend to dance with him myself!”
“I’m afraid he won’t dance. I asked him this morning if he’d help us
out and he said, ‘I don’t dance now, any more,’” said Lockhart,
imitating the labored English of the Norwegian.
“‘The Miller of Hoffbau, the Miller of Hoffbau, O my Princess!’”
chirped Wyllis, cheerfully, from his hammock.
The red on his sister’s cheek deepened a little, and she laughed
mischievously. “We’ll see about that, sir. I’ll not admit that I am
beaten until I have asked him myself.”
Every night Eric rode over to St. Anne, a little village in the
heart of the French settlement, for the mail. As the road lay
through the most attractive part of the Divide country, on several
occasions Margaret Elliot and her brother had accompanied him.
To-night Wyllis had business with Lockhart, and Margaret rode with
Eric, mounted on a frisky little mustang that Mrs. Lockhart had
broken to the side-saddle. Margaret regarded her escort very much as
she did the servant who always accompanied her on long rides at
home, and the ride to the village was a silent one. She was occupied
with thoughts of another world, and Eric was wrestling with more
thoughts than had ever been crowded into his head before. He rode
with his eyes riveted on that slight figure before him, as though he
wished to absorb it through the optic nerves and hold it in his
brain forever. He understood the situation perfectly. His brain
worked slowly, but he had a keen sense of the values of things. This
girl represented an entirely new species of humanity to him, but he
knew where to place her. The prophets of old, when an angel first
appeared unto them, never doubted its high origin.
Eric was patient under the adverse conditions of his life, but he
was not servile. The Norse blood in him had not entirely lost its
self-reliance. He came of a proud fisher line, men who were not
afraid of anything but the ice and the devil, and he had prospects
before him when his father went down off the North Cape in the long
