The sun that had no
heat in it struck a silvery glitter from the snow, and the trail swept
back to the horizon a sinuous blue-gray smear, while the keen, dry cold
and sense of swift motion set the girl's blood stirring. After all, it
seemed to her, there were worse lives than those the Western farmers
led on the great levels under the frost and sun.
Colonel Barrington watched her with a little gleam of approval in his
eyes. "You are not sorry to come back to this and Silverdale?" he
said, sweeping his mittened hand vaguely round the horizon.
"No," said the girl, with a little laugh. "At least, I shall not be
sorry to return to Silverdale. It has a charm of its own, for while
one is occasionally glad to get away from it, one is even more pleased
to come home again. It is a somewhat purposeless life our friends are
leading yonder in the cities. I, of course, mean the women."
Barrington nodded. "And some of the men! Well, we have room here for
the many who are going to the devil in the old country for the lack of
something worthwhile to do, though I am afraid there is considerably
less prospect than I once fancied there would be of their making money."
His niece noticed the gravity in his face, and sat thoughtfully silent
for several minutes while with the snow hissing beneath it the sleigh
dipped into and swung out of a hollow.
Colonel Barrington had founded the Silverdale settlement ten years
earlier and gathered about him other men with a grievance who had once
served their nation, and the younger sons of English gentlemen who had
no inclination for commerce, and found that lack of brains and capital
debarred them from either a political or military career.
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