216 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



over the pail of milk which had taken me forty- 

 five minutes to extract from the hard cow." 



From the twenty-first of September through 

 three whole days the rains descended, and as usual 

 miniature floods came down the chimney, and in 

 through the cellar shaft, to which one of my newly 

 made flower beds had discovered an entrance for all 

 things that should not be found in cellars flies 

 and gophers, and rain and dust, and on one occasion 

 I found there a family of lizards. Guy Mazey 

 passed through one day on his way to the Fort, 

 and he prophesied that when the rain cleared the 

 wind would blow the stooks " good and dry," but 

 he added that the rain was most penetrating, and 

 that he feared it would both discolour and soften 

 the grain, and maybe lower it a grade. It is 

 marvellous how its tiny leaf envelope protects the 

 wheat-kernel ; but it is in the season when the 

 grain doesn't need protection, when it is caught 

 dead ripe by the reaper-binder under the top-note 

 of the harvest sun, and stands for twenty-one days 

 at ease in stook, sun-drying through the day, and 

 hardening to the kiss of the early frost by night, 

 and finally passes through the threshing process into 

 a sound granary without having once known the 

 contact of moisture since harvest, that Canadian 

 prairie provinces send into the world's market 

 wheat for which the world can find no match, red- 

 gold and hard as bone. 



Tempest followed the heavy rain. The wind- 

 storm is the one mood to which Nature is subject 

 on the prairie in which I found it hard to find a 

 part. The very power of thought as well as action 

 seems to desert one, and even when you remain 



