Stimson’s answer was guarded.  “As a curious affair.  You see, it was quite easy to get at Winston’s character from anybody down there, and he wasn’t the kind of man to do the thing.  There were one or two other trifles I couldn’t quite figure out the meaning of.”

“Winston was drowned?” said the officer.

“Well,” said Stimson, “the trooper who rode after him heard him break through the ice, but nobody ever found him, though a farmer came upon his horse.”

The officer nodded.  “I fancy you are right, and the point is this.  There were two men, who apparently bore some resemblance to each other, engaged in an unlawful venture, and one of them commits a crime nobody believed him capable of, but which would have been less out of keeping with the other’s character.  Then the second man comes into an inheritance, and leads a life which seems to have astonished everybody who knows him.  Now, have you ever seen these two men side by side?”

“No, sir,” said Stimson.  “Courthorne kept out of our sight when he could, in Alberta, and I don’t think I or any of the boys, except Shannon, ever saw him for more than a minute or two.  Now and then we passed Winston on the prairie or saw him from the trail, but I think I only once spoke to him.”

“Well,” said the officer, “it seems to me I had better get you sent back to your old station, where you can quietly pick up the threads again.  Would the trooper you mentioned be fit to keep an eye on things at Silverdale?”

“No one better, sir,” said Stimson.

“Then it shall be done,” said the officer.  “The quieter you keep the affair the better.”

It was a week or two later when Winston returned to his homestead from the bridge, which was almost completed.  Dusk was closing in, but as he rode down the rise he could see the wheat roll in slow ripples back into the distance.  The steady beat of its rhythmic murmur told of heavy ears, and where the stalks stood waist-high on the rise, the last flush of saffron in the northwest was flung back in a dull bronze gleam.  The rest swayed athwart the shadowy hollow, dusky indigo and green, but that flash of gold and red told that harvest was nigh again.

Winston had seen no crop to compare with it during the eight years he had spent in the dominion.  There had been neither drought nor hail that year, and now, when the warm western breezes kept sweet and wholesome the splendid ears they fanned, there was removed from him the terror of the harvest frost, which not infrequently blights the fairest prospects in one bitter night.  Fate, which had tried him hardly hitherto, denying the seed its due share of fertilizing rain, sweeping his stock from existence with icy blizzard, and mowing down the tall green corn with devastating hail, was now showering favors on him when it was too late.  Still, though he felt the irony of it, he was glad, for others had followed his lead, and while the lean years had left a lamentable scarcity of dollars at Silverdale, wealth would now pour in to every man who had had the faith to sow.