It was borne in upon him that he had left the old hopeless life behind, and stirred by some impulse he broke into a little song he had sung in England and long forgotten.

He had a clear voice, and the words, which were filled with the hope of youth, rang bravely through the stillness of the frozen wilderness until the horse blundered, and Winston stopped with a little smile.
"It's four long years since I felt as I do to-night," he said.
Then he drew bridle and checked the horse as the lights of the settlement commenced to blink ahead, for the trail was rutted deep and frozen into the likeness of adamant, but when the first frame houses flung tracks of yellow radiance across the whitened grass he dropped his left arm a trifle, and rode in at a canter as he had seen Courthorne do.

Winston did not like Courthorne, but he meant to keep his bargain.
As he passed the hotel more slowly a man who came out called to him.
"Hello, Lance! Taking the trail ?" he said.

"Well, it kind of strikes me it's time you did.

One of Stimson's boys was down here, and he seemed quite anxious about you." Winston knew the man, and was about to urge the horse forward, but in place of it drew bridle, and laughed with a feeling that was wholly new to him as he remembered that his neighbors now and then bantered him about his English, and that Courthorne only used the Western colloquialism when it suited him.
"Sergeant Stimson is an enterprising officer, but there are as keen men as he is," he said.