rude and careless, and looked as though the hand of the workman had
trembled. It would sometimes have been hard to distinguish the men
from their evil geniuses but for one fact, the men were always
grave and were either toiling or praying, while the devils were
always smiling and dancing. Several of these boards had been split
for kindling and it was evident that the artist did not value his
work highly.

It was the first day of winter on the Divide. Canute stumbled
into his shanty carrying a basket of. cobs, and after filling the
stove, sat down on a stool and crouched his seven foot frame over
the fire, staring drearily out of the window at the wide gray
sky. He knew by heart every individual clump of bunch grass in the
miles of red shaggy prairie that stretched before his cabin. He
knew it in all the deceitful loveliness of its early summer, in all
the bitter barrenness of its autumn. He had seen it smitten by all
the plagues of Egypt. He had seen it parched by drought, and
sogged by rain, beaten by hail, and swept by fire, and in the
grasshopper years he had seen it eaten as bare and clean as bones
that the vultures have left. After the great fires he had seen it
stretch for miles and miles, black and smoking as the floor of
hell.

He rose slowly and crossed the room, dragging his big feet
heavily as though they were burdens to him. He looked out of the
window into the hog corral and saw the pigs burying themselves in
the straw before the shed. The leaden gray clouds were beginning
to spill themselves, and the snow flakes were settling down over
the white leprous patches of frozen earth where the hogs had gnawed
even the sod away. He shuddered and began to walk, trampling