The few minutes, however, slipped by as the rest had done, until at last the locomotive bell slowly clanged again, and the hoot of a whistle came up the hillside and was flung back by the pines. Then a puff of white smoke rolled up from the wharf, and Barbara turned away from the window with the crimson in her face as the cars swept through an opening between the clustering roofs. The train had gone, and the man would not know how far she had relented towards him. She could settle to nothing during the rest of the evening, and scarcely slept that night, though she naturally did not mention the fact when she and Mrs. Devine met at breakfast next morning. Instead, she took out a letter she had received a week earlier. "It's from Hetty Hume, and the English mail goes out to-day," she said. "She suggests that I should come over and spend a few months with her. I really think we did what we could for her when she was here with the Major." Mrs. Devine took the letter. "I fancy she wants you to go," she said. "She mentions that she has asked you several times already." Barbara appeared reflective. "So she has," she said. "In fact, I think I'll go. The change will do me good." "Well," said Mrs. Devine, "I suppose you can afford it, but if you indulge in many changes of that kind you're not going to have very much of a dowry." "Do you think I need one?" Mrs. Devine laughed as she glanced at her, but her face grew thoughtful again. "Perhaps in your case it wouldn't be necessary, and though it is a very long way, I fancy that you might do worse than go to England and stay there while Hetty is willing to keep you." A little flush crept into Barbara's cheek, but she said quietly, "I think I'll start on Saturday." She did so, and it came about one night while the big train she travelled by swept across the rolling levels of the Assiniboian prairie that Brooke sat in his shanty at the Dayspring with Jimmy, who had just come down from the range, standing in front of him. The freighter had still now and then a difficulty in bringing them provisions in, and whenever Jimmy found the persistent plying of drill and hammer pall upon him he would go out and look out for a deer, though it was not always that he came back with one. On this occasion he brought a somewhat alarming tale instead. "A big snow-slide must have come along since I was up on that slope before, and gouged out quite a canyon for itself," he said. "Anyway, if it wasn't a snow-slide it was a cloudburst or a waterspout. They happen around when folks don't want them now and then." "Come to the point," said Brooke. "I'm sufficiently acquainted with the meteorological perversities of the country."