By Right of Purchase (Paperback)

Excerpt: ... and the clean scents of the soil in their nostrils. The gladness that was in all things reacted upon them both. Half an hour later, Leland set about his work again, and, as he had leagues to ride to visit one or two farms, and to see where there was likely to be any wild hay in the sloos, dusk was closing down before he came back again. In his absence, something had happened that left Carrie confused and startled. The men were trooping in for the six o'clock supper, when a light waggon swung into sight over the crest of the rise. As it reached the door of the homestead, one of the two men in it sprang down. Carrie was standing in the entrance hall when Jake showed him in, and she caught her breath with a little gasp when she saw who it was. The man who stood smiling at her with the sunlight on his face was the one she had parted from on the path above the ravine at Barrock-holme. "Reggie " she said. Urmston laughed. "Yes," he said. "In the flesh. I have ridden most of two hundred miles on horseback and in a waggon to get here, in the expectation that you would be pleased to see me." Carrie stood still, thankful that she was in the shadow, though for the moment she could not tell whether she was pleased or not. For one thing, the man's assurance that she would feel so somewhat jarred upon her, and the advantage was with him, for he had come there knowing that he would see her, and she had not expected him. "Of course I am," she said. "But the waggon?" "I hired the man to drive me. I suppose he can Pg 176 put up here, and go back to-morrow. Your husband will no doubt set me on my way to the railroad, when I go." Carrie Leland was not, as a rule, readily shaken out of her serenity, but she was almost disconcerted now. Urmston evidently meant to stay, and even the stranger has only to ask for shelter upon the prairie. The man before her had once considered himself much more to her than a stranger. "Yes," she said. "He will be glad to see you. Sit down...