CHAPTER XIX.
UNDER TEST The prairie lay dim and shadowy in the creeping dusk when Winston sat on a redwood stringer near the head of his partly-finished bridge.
There was no sound from the hollow behind him but the faint gurgle of the creek, and the almost imperceptible vibration of countless minute wings.

The birches which climbed the slope to it wound away sinuously, a black wall on either hand, and the prairie lying gray and still stretched back into the silence in front of him.

Here and there a smoldering fire showed dully red on the brink of the ravine, but the tired men who had lighted them were already wrapped in heavy slumber.
The prairie hay was gathered, harvest had not come, and for the last few weeks Winston, with his hired men from the bush of Ontario, had toiled at the bridge with a tireless persistency which had somewhat astonished the gentlemen farmers of Silverdale.

They, however, rode over every now and then, and most cheerfully rendered what assistance they could, until it was time to return for tennis or a shooting sweepstake, and Winston thanked them gravely, even when he and his Ontario axmen found it necessary to do the work again.

He could have told nobody why he had undertaken to build the bridge, which could be of no use to him, but he was in a measure prompted by instincts born in him, for he was one of the Englishmen who, with a dim recognition of the primeval charge to subdue the earth and render it fruitful, gravitate to the newer lands, and usually leave their mark upon them.
He had also a half-defined notion that it would be something he could leave behind in reparation, that the men of Silverdale might remember more leniently the stranger who had imposed on them while in the strain of the mental struggle strenuous occupation was a necessity to him.
A bundle of papers it was now too dim to see lay beside him clammy with the dew, and he sat bare-headed, a pipe which had gone out in his hand, staring across the prairie with an ironical smile in his eyes.