"No, you'd better stay and get your dinner with me. It will take you pretty much all day to bury Brian. You probably never buried a bear before," she added, as patronizingly as if she herself had been a professional grave-digger, "and you don't know what a piece of work it's going to be." They started to push their way through the scrub-oaks. "Shall I lead your horse for you?" Sir Bryan asked. [Illustration: "THE VAST SEA OF THE PRAIRIE."] "No, thank you. Comrag will follow, all right;" and Comrag did follow, so close upon their heels, that Sir Bryan was in momentary expectation of being trampled upon. Comrag was an unbeautiful beast, and he permitted himself startling liberties; crowding himself in between his mistress and her companion, helping himself without ceremony to a bunch of asters which Sir Bryan had in his hand, and neighing straight into the young baronet's ear as they came in sight of the house. The "house" was a mere hut, painted red, entirely dwarfed by an ungainly chimney of rough stone. The little hut was built against a huge boulder, which towered above the chimney itself, and looked as though it had stood there since the foundation of the earth. There was a rustic veranda along the front of this diminutive dwelling, which stood on a slight eminence; and, as Sir Bryan stepped upon the veranda, he drew a long breath of amazement and delight. Looking down over the broad, oak-clad slope of the mountain, he beheld the vast sea of the prairie, stretching for leagues upon leagues away to the low horizon. From that height the view seemed limitless, and the illusion of the sea, which always hovers over the prairies, was complete. As his hostess came out with a long-handled spade in her hand, he cried, "That is the most magnificent thing I ever saw!" She did not answer immediately, but stood leaning upon the spade, and gazing forth as intently as if it had been to her too a revelation. Then she drew a long breath and said, in a rapt tone, as though the words came to her one by one: "Yes, it makes you feel sometimes as if your soul would get away from you." They stood there for a while, watching the cloud-shadows swimming upon that mystic sea. The smoke of an express train on the horizon seemed fairly to crawl, so great was the distance. "That looks like the smoke of a steamer," Sir Bryan observed. "Then you think it seems like the sea, as everybody else does," she answered. "I never saw the sea, myself, but I don't believe it can be finer than this." There was another pause, and then, with a sudden change of mood, to which she seemed subject, the rapt worshipper turned her thoughts to practical things, saying briskly: "Here's your spade, Mr. Bryan. You had better go and begin, while I get the dinner. I'll fire a shot when it's ready." Sir Bryan obediently took the spade. "How am I to find my way to the bear?" he asked. All about the little clearing was an unbroken wilderness of scrub-oaks, gorgeous but bewildering.