THE MIRAGE OF SPRING 137 



nose was in front at the finish. We saw the huge 

 barns and the prim houses which mark the prosperity 

 of the prosperous farmers who grow wheat by the 

 mile from Wideawake to Indian Head. Mabel 

 commented freely on all we saw, and especially the 

 direct relation of the size and number of the 

 granaries which dotted the fields, to the income, 

 expenditure, and peculiar characteristics of the 

 owners of the same ; but her cheerful tongue fell 

 silent at the bleached bones of more than one dead 

 horse in the neighbourhood of these coffers of 

 wealth. 



" Many's the horse that's killed by getting at the 

 wheat," she explained. " The land is all open like 

 in the winter, and sometimes they get at a whole 

 lot spilled under the straw piles, and sometimes they 

 get it out of a leaking granary. My, it's a cruel 

 death ! " 



We ambled back to our bluff-clad neighbourhood 

 and congratulated ourselves that, although there 

 might be more profit for the farmers on the plains, 

 the picturesque element of our own immediate 

 environment was worth much. 



The lovely sunset of that day recurs so often in 

 one's memory ! Beyond and above and all around 

 the purple bluffs and shining sloughs, and violet 

 hue of distance, the pale clear tints of the evening 

 sky, aquamarine, shell-pink, and palest blue, lay 

 resting on a sea of opal set in pure gold ; and the 

 prairie, which through all that glorious day had 

 been yearning to sound the spring song and to 

 burst into leaf, bowed to the hush of evensong and 

 seemed for a moment to kneel at the altar of the 

 setting sun. In face of the sky at sunset hour on 



