"
The girl was astonished. This, she knew, was splendid audacity, for
the man had already staked very heavily on the crop he had sown, and
while the daring of it stirred her she sat silent a moment.
"I could lose nothing, but you will have to bring out a host of men,
and have risked so much," she said. "Nobody but you and me and three
or four others in all the province is plowing more than half his
holdings."
The suggestion of comradeship set Winston's blood tingling, but it was
with a little laugh he turned over the pile of papers on the table, and
then took them up in turn.
"'Very little plowing has been done in the tracts of Minnesota
previously alluded to. Farmers find wheat cannot be grown at present
prices, and there is apparently no prospect of a rise,'" he read.
"'The Dakota wheat-growers are mostly fallowing. They can't quite
figure how they would get eighty cents for the dollar's worth of
seeding this year. Milling very quiet in Winnipeg. No inquiries from
Europe coming in, and Manitoba dealers, generally, find little demand
for harrows or seeders this year. Reports from Assiniboia seem to show
that the one hope this season will be mixed farming and the neglect of
cereals.'"
"There is only one inference," he said. "When the demand comes, there
will be nothing to meet it with."
"When it comes," said Maud Barrington quietly. "But you who believe it
will stand alone."
"Almost," said Winston. "Still, there are a few much cleverer men who
feel as I do.
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