The day his notice expired a cheque arrived, which the manager handed him, with expressions of regret that such a course had been found necessary. The cheque was equivalent to two months’ salary. Thus at the age of fifty, after spending the best years of his life in the service of the firm, Roberts found himself thrown upon the world, with no stain upon his reputation, compelled to commence again the battle of life, and to join the ranks of the large army of the unemployed. Such treatment is an evil of long standing, and is a tyranny which the poor and defenceless have to suffer from the wealthy. "In the interest of the firm" was the only plea which could be urged for the course pursued. But the happiness, the future, the health, nay the very life, of the man concerned, were all nothing, and might well be sacrificed to the grasping capitalist "_in the interest of the firm_." *CHAPTER VII.* *FAR WEST.* "To the West, to the West, to the land of the free."—HENRY RUSSELL. Some thirty miles or more from the banks of the Qu’Appelle River, the scenery is wild and romantic. Winding creeks abound, into which are projected rocky promontories; deep ravines, formed by enormous boulders of red and grey granite, the beds bestrewn with the bones and relics of the former inhabitants of this vast country; stunted poplars, or weedy willows, with a varied undergrowth of wild fruit-bushes, contribute to form an impenetrable undergrowth and an almost pathless bush. Still farther inland, the "rolling prairie" meets the traveller’s view—a waving grassy expanse, which, when set in motion by the wind, is like nothing so much as the boundless ocean, of which nearly all writers agree it most vividly reminds them. Towards the close of a Canadian summer’s day, a solitary horseman might have been seen pursuing his weary way along the banks of a winding creek some few miles from the Qu’Appelle. An Englishman, not more than thirty years of age, well mounted; his cord breeches and hunting-boots, and a rifle slung across the shoulder, gave him an appearance of having some acquaintance with a settler’s wild life. Human habitations were only to be met with at long intervals, when occasionally a hunter’s shanty made itself visible amongst the trees. Out on the prairie were to be seen log-houses and shanties here and there; and some twenty or thirty miles distant, eastward, the indications of a little town, only just faintly visible on the far horizon. The jaded condition of both man and steed were unmistakable signs of the many weary miles which had been passed in the saddle, and it was with a feeling of relief that he espied a substantial-looking range of log buildings, marking out their owner as a man of some means, who must have made his way, and succeeded in overcoming the initial difficulties of a settler’s life.