THE DAY OF RECKONING 351 



tive in many ways, and one would not have missed 

 the experience; but, " for the good of all," the 

 well-being of the rising generation of the Canadian 

 nation, the farmhouse of adequate accommodation 

 for the average household of the farmer and his 

 wife is a very real necessity, even if the building, as 

 is frequently the case, should cost more than three 

 hundred and twenty acres of land. 



The two years' reverse might have seen the end 

 of my experiment, and I should probably have left 

 the prairies with just a wider experience of life and 

 work at the end of 1907, and content to accept the 

 offer of my predecessor to buy back the greatly 

 improved farm he had sold in 1905 for the same 

 price in 1907, but land had gone up in price and 

 held its own in spite of the frozen harvest. The 

 price of the adjoining section, without an acre of 

 it turned and with its timber-value decreasing 

 steadily, had risen from five to seven dollars an 

 acre. Even the price of my money back offered 

 by my predecessor was something of a compliment, 

 because he sold with a crop harvest-ripe that yielded 

 a thousand dollars, although all the world of Fort 

 Qu'Appelle wondered at the time that even ever- 

 green England could produce anyone green enough 

 to give fifteen dollars an acre for the place. But 

 although things were bad, it was no small thing to 

 have learnt the worst, and if I had very little avail- 

 able capital to draw on for future intention I 

 had a considerable amount of practical knowledge. 

 I had learnt that wheat should stand for net 

 profit, chargeable only with the cost of its seed 

 and threshing ; and that much, even in the season 

 of 1907, the proceeds of the crop at its worst 



