instead of utilising our native forest growth. Not often
have I seen, for instance, our high-bush cranberry planted,
although it certainly is one of the most beautiful shrubs
to grow in copses.

These two farms proved to be pretty much the last sign
of comfort that I was to meet on my drives to the north.
Though later I learned the names of their owners and even
made their acquaintance, for me they remained the "halfway
farms," for, after I had passed them, at the very next
corner, I was seventeen miles from my starting point,
seventeen miles from "home."

Beyond, stretches of the real wilderness began, the
pioneer country, where farms, except along occasional
highroads, were still three, four miles apart, where the
breaking on few homesteads had reached the thirty-acre
mark, and where a real, "honest-to-goodness" cash dollar
bill was often as scarce as a well-to-do teacher in the
prairie country.

The sun went down, a ball of molten gold--two hours from
"town," as I called it. It was past six o'clock. There
were no rosy-fingered clouds; just a paling of the blue
into white; then a greying of the western sky; and lastly
the blue again, only this time dark. A friendly crescent
still showed trail and landmarks after even the dusk had
died away. Four miles, or a little more, and I should be
in familiar land again. Four miles, that I longed to
make, before the last light failed...