The sun had set, and now and then a heavy shower beat upon the shingled roof, but the western sky was clear and flushed with vivid crimson, toward which the prairie rolled away in varying tones of blue.

Lights shone in the windows behind the veranda, and from one which stood open a hoarse voice drifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of an old music-hall ditty.
"It's that fool Benson--Clarke's Englishman," Gardner explained.
"Found he'd got into my bed with his boots on, after falling down in a muskeg.

It's not the first time he's played that trick; when he gets worse than usual he makes straight for my room." "Why do you give him the liquor ?" Harding inquired.
"I don't.

He's a pretty regular customer, but he never gets too much at this hotel." "And there isn't another." "That's so," Gardner assented, but he offered no explanation and Blake changed the subject.
"Unless you're fond of farming, life in these remote districts is trying," he remarked.

"The loneliness and monotony are apt to break down men who are not used to it." "Turns some of them crazy and kills off a few," said a farmer, who appeared to be well educated.