apprehension. She had carefully counted the days that it would take her
letter to reach its destination, and although there had been time for a
reply, none came.



CHAPTER VIII.

_SHADOWS OF THE NIGHT_.

It was a wind-swept, chilly morning in late November, and Evelyn
Brydon, alone in the silent little house, stood at the window looking
listlessly at the dull gray monochrome which stretched before her.

The unaccustomed housework had roughened and chapped her hands, and the
many failures in her cooking experiments, in spite of Mrs, Corbett's
instructions, had left her tired and depressed, for a failure is always
depressing, even if it is only in the construction of the things which
perish.

This dark morning it seemed to her that her life was as gray and
colorless as the bleached-out prairie--the glamor had gone from
everything.

She and Fred had had their first quarrel, and Fred had gone away dazed
and hurt by the things she had said under the stress of her anger. He
was at a loss to know what had gone wrong with Evelyn, for she had
seemed quite contented all the time. He did not know how the many
little annoyances had piled up on her; how the utter loneliness of the
prairie, with its monotonous sweep of frost-killed grass, the deadly