He had settled them on the land, and taught them to farm, while, for the community had prospered at first when Western wheat was dear, it had taken ten years to bring home to him the fact that men who dined ceremoniously each evening and spent at least a third of their time in games and sport, could not well compete with the grim bushmen from Ontario, or the lean Dakota plowmen who ate their meals in ten minutes and toiled at least twelve hours every day.
Colonel Barrington was slow to believe that the race he sprang from could be equaled and much less beaten at anything, while his respect for and scrupulous observance of insular traditions had cost him a good deal, and left him a poorer man than he had been when he founded Silverdale.

Maud Barrington had been his ward, and he still directed the farming of a good many acres of wheat land which she now held in her own right.

The soil was excellent, and would in all probability have provided one of the Ontario men with a very desirable revenue, but Colonel Barrington had no taste for small economies.
"I want to hear all the news," said the girl.

"You can begin at the beginning--the price of wheat.

I fancied, when I saw you, it had been declining." Barrington sighed a little.