They rested at Battleford three days, during which time they were agreeably impressed with the little town's picturesqueness. The genuineness of the inhabitants was very noticeable. The come-into-my-web, God-bless-you-brother look of the hang-you-I'm-all-right, scheming salesman was here practically not to be found. The change was very welcome. That indefinable something which makes the real old-time Western spirit such an admirable trait of character, was in the Battleford country seen at its very best. The total indifference to pretence; the unbounded, unabated hospitality; the almost complete absence of the sinking of individuality in the pursuit of wealth; the unrehearsed naturalness of the people's generosity--(not offers of it)--were all qualities which delighted the more observant of the colonists, who had but recently sailed away from an environment where the Golden Rule is admired--like a king's coronation--for the rareness of its performance. Trailey and Bert spent money lavishly. They stocked up with every imaginable thing, regardless of transportation problems. With an astonishing display of diplomacy in one so young, Bert presented Mrs. Trailey with a pair of weighty, handsome, vividly-scarlet Hudson's Bay blankets. "Oh, you shouldn't, Mr. Tressider," the good lady remonstrated. "A pretty penny they've cost, I'll be bound. They'll come in useful, though, if we get any more snowstorms," and she fingered their soft, fleecy surface admiringly. "Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed, as she lifted the blankets up, "what a weight they are! My husband will never stop sleeping when he gets these over him." William Trailey happened to be dozing in a folding camp-chair just outside the tent, in which position he was soaking up sunshine like an equatorial lizard on a rock. Every now and then he emitted a subdued grunt of perfect content. Esther was learning how to darn a woollen sweater, with her mother as an acrimonious tutor. "Dad doesn't need anything to induce him to sleep," she laughed. "Sleep! H'm!" snorted her mother. "Your father doesn't sleep; he goes into trances. Look at him--he's in one now. It's my opinion this isn't a country for lazy people. We're rushing into trouble," she continued reflectively, as she pursued her train of thought. She was busy peeling some potatoes which that morning she had attempted to refuse at the hands of a generous matron of the town. "I can feel it in my bones. Poverty, and worse, is staring us in the face all the time. Besides, I dropped my mirror this morning, and broke it; and that's a sure sign of trouble. One of your grandma's pictures fell off the wall the night your Uncle Tom was born. You remember him, Esther, don't you? He was the one who turned out to be a journalist, y'know, and tried to write poetry. I've heard your grandma say many a time it was a wonder she herself wasn't taken. The midwife..."