THE BLADE 381 



Nor was the affliction confined to the outskirts 

 of the field ; one couldn't walk a hundred feet 

 anywhere without coming across yards and even 

 roods of them. A good way out of the problem 

 would have been to make hay of the whole field, 

 bar the margin ; but the best way would have been 

 to have waited until the sap had dried right out, and, 

 like Mr. George Robb, of Springbrook, to have 

 ploughed a good fire-guard, and made a cleansing 

 bonfire of the lot. But I was in the place where one 

 cannot choose, the place of a great responsibility. 

 I was bound on one side of the Atlantic with another's 

 capital, and on the other with a big land payment 

 still to make in the future, of which at least a 

 thousand dollars plus the interest of the whole 

 would certainly have to be met in the fall ; there 

 was still a much overdrawn banking account ; 

 wages and the housekeeping account were being 

 kept down, but in time the threshing bill would have 

 to be met. On the other hand stock was growing 

 into money. The two steers I had bought of my 

 predecessor were ready for prompt sale in emergency, 

 or, if harvest turned out well, we could afford to 

 reserve one-half for household use, and sell the other 

 to a neighbour at a cent or so above the price one 

 would obtain from the butcher. I had hoped to 

 make at least three hundred dollars in pigs, but I 

 saw that little more than a hundred could be anti- 

 cipated owing to the bad luck in the birthday month. 

 For years I had argued loftily that poverty should 

 never be permitted to matter ; it threw down 

 the glove to me again and again in fighting my way 

 through the proposition of farming three hundred 

 and twenty acres of land on the Canadian prairie 



