JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 195 



pleasantest way with him, and must have poached 

 on the preserve of the Irishman's blarney-stone. 

 He had the deplorable misfortune to lose both legs 

 in a fifty-below-zero night out on the prairie. I 

 always admired him for the pluck and resource 

 with which he endured the blight of such a mis- 

 fortune, but I think even still more because he was 

 such a fine shot. He sat up in his old buggy, which 

 had a very vagabond air even beside my own, and 

 with the lines gripped between his stumps he 

 brought down duck or rabbit and everything that 

 flew or ran as though by magic. He often talked 

 to me about the days of his youth in Scotland, and 

 his aunts, who must have been gentle-mannered, 

 kindly women of the well-to-do order, and he was 

 always regretting he should never see the old land 

 again. 



" Oh, but you will some day," I told him. " If 

 you want a thing so very badly, you can always get 

 it ; only of course you have always to pay, and 

 sometimes to wait." In my heart I didn't feel 

 quite so sure about it, because I knew his land was 

 mortgaged right up to the margin of its loan valua- 

 tion, and only that day he had been entreating me 

 to find some one who would give him nine hundred 

 dollars for it. But I don't think he had ever been 

 a very careful farmer, and his entire quarter section 

 was dirtier than the dirtiest bit of my bad field. 



" But if I sold it for five thousand dollars I should 

 never go back home again," he said with a sigh. 

 " I was a fine brae lad when I left. I would never 

 have my aunties see me without my legs." 



I was in bitter trouble that day about the loss 

 of a calf, and it was harder to bear because I felt 



