Category: Novels
My earliest recollection links back to a grey stone house by a road entering a little Ontario town. Across the road was a mill-pond, and across the mill-pond was a mill; an old-fashioned woolen mill which was the occasion and support of the little town. Beside the mill was a w...
After the first blank moment of surprise I turned, not to Spoof or "Mrs. Alton" or the boy, but to Jean. There was a momentary tremulousness, but almost instantly Jean had herse...
20. CHAPTER XX.I resolved to have it out with Jean. There was no sense in letting things go on like this. Jean had happiness within her grasp, for the taking, but she persisted in writing moon...
7. CHAPTER VII.The morning was another gorgeous burst of sunshine. There had been an early dew, and as the sunlight swept along the prairies every blade of grass was hung with diamonds. When I...
9. CHAPTER IX.The day after Spoof's visit I was plowing with the oxen, followed by an Indian file of expectant blackbirds trailing along in my fresh-turned furrow, when I suddenly became awar...
15. CHAPTER XV.I awakened with a consciousness that the shack was very, very cold. Under the blankets I was warm enough, but the breath with which I filled my lungs was the breath of the Arcti...
6. CHAPTER VI.If we thought we had finished with Jake it was evidence that we still had much to learn about our guide's business qualities. Jake had a follow-up peculiarly his own, and that a...
21. CHAPTER XXI.Next morning I was stirring my oatmeal and water when the door opened and in burst Jack. His attire gave evidence of haste; he had thrown a pea-jacket about a somewhat incomplet...
10. CHAPTER X.It was the first day of August of that first year on the prairies that Jack and I hitched the oxen to the wagon, threw on board a kit consisting mainly of a change of clothes an...
18. CHAPTER XVIII.The scene inside was an animated and amazing one. In the principal room a table had been built and now groaned beneath a load such as I had not thought the country-side could su...
4. CHAPTER IV.Jack and I were early about in the morning, intent upon making our prospecting arrangements. We asked a casual question of an early morning lounger at a livery stable--some of t...
16. CHAPTER XVI.That gaunt phantom of doubt gradually closed in upon me. I resolved to fight it, but its very intangibility baffled my efforts to throw it off. When I struck, it was not there....
14. CHAPTER XIV.Days wore by; sometimes days of unbroken sunshine; sometimes days of gently sifted whiteness fluttering out of a grey sky. In a week all the prairie was blanketed deep with snow.
17. CHAPTER XVII.Breaking the news to Jack and Marjorie was no easy task, but we got through it some way. Jack and his sister had an unhappy hour over it, but Jean was adamant in her decision. T...
5. CHAPTER V.When daylight came we had breakfast and started on our journey again in rather sheepish silence. The strain lasted for perhaps half an hour; then Jake gave a great guffaw, smoth...
11. CHAPTER XI.We worked for Mr. Keefer until the last sheaf of his six hundred acre crop was in stook. Not all of the time were we speeded up as on that first day in the barley field; we had...
12. CHAPTER XII.That was a busy night on Fourteen. The girls confessed that they had been on the lookout for us since the first of the month. They had even borrowed Spoof's field glass so that...
2. CHAPTER II.That same summer I began going to school. Perhaps I should say that John Lane and I began going to school, as it was something of a joint adventure. We talked of it together for...
13. CHAPTER XIII.We did as Spoof suggested. Early the next afternoon we hitched Buck and Bright to the wagon and wended our slow way south-westward, Jack and I taking turns in the exclamatory ex...
19. CHAPTER XIX.The gulf of loneliness into which I fell on the night of Marjorie's marriage was but the shallow waters of an ocean of despair in which I floundered through the dreary days that...
8. CHAPTER VIII.Spoof was as good as his word. The following Sunday we saw his ox-team as a slowly-growing speck on section Eleven, and a mile away we heard remarks to the "bally bullocks" whic...
22. CHAPTER XXII.Spoof set his little table with a linen cloth and napkins and amazingly good dishes. The meal was to consist of stewed rabbit, with potatoes and carrots; bread and cheese and te...
3. CHAPTER III.It was Sunday afternoon before I had an opportunity to speak to Jean. We were strolling in secluded paths by the river, with bursts of autumn sunshine falling through a gently r...
1. CHAPTER I.My earliest recollection links back to a grey stone house by a road entering a little Ontario town. Across the road was a mill-pond, and across the mill-pond was a mill; an old-...