CHAPTER VII.
THE GIRL OF THE WOOD LOT June, and the sun flooding with a golden shimmer a land of tawny prairie, billowy hills, wooded valleys and mountain peaks white with eternal snows, touching with silver a stream which, glacier-born, hurled itself down mountain sides in fairy films of mist, rushed through canyons in a mad torrent, hurried between hills in a swollen flood, meandered along wide valleys in a full-lipped tide, lingered in a placid lake in a bit of lowland banked with poplar bluffs, and so onward past ranch-stead and homestead to the great Saskatchewan and Father Ocean, prairie and hills, valleys and mountains, river and lake, making a wonder world of light and warmth and colour and joyous life.
Two riders on rangey bronchos, followed by two Russian boarhounds, climbed the trail that went winding up among the hills towards a height which broke abruptly into a ridge of bare rock.

Upon the ridge they paused.
"There! Can you beat that?
If so, where ?" The lady swept her gauntletted hand toward the scene below.

Mrs.Waring-Gaunt was tall, strongly made, handsome with that comeliness which perfect health and out-of-doors life combine to give, her dark hair, dark flashing eyes, straight nose, wide, full-lipped curving mouth, and a chin whose chiselled firmness was softened but not weakened by a dimple, making a picture good to look upon.
"There!" she cried again, "tell me, can you beat it ?" "Glorious! Sybil, utterly and splendidly glorious!" said her brother, his eyes sweeping the picture below.

"And you too, Sybil," he said, turning his eyes upon her.

"This country has done you well.