Now, I am quite aware that you are fancying a speech of this kind does not come well from me." Maud Barrington had seen his gesture, and something in the thought that impelled it, as well as the almost statuesque pose of his thinly-clad figure, appealed to her.

Courthorne as farmer, with the damp of clean effort on his forehead and the stain of the good soil that would faithfully repay it on his garments, had very little in common with the profligate and gambler.

Vaguely she wondered whether he was not working out his own redemption by every wheat furrow torn from the virgin prairie, and then again the doubt crept in.

Could this man have ever found pleasure in the mire?
"You will plow your holding, Lance ?" asked the elder lady, who had not answered his last speech yet, but meant to later.
"Yes," said the man.

"All I can.