IN the spring of 1926, the publication of Settlers of the Marsh had proved an unmitigated disaster, and Abe Spalding had been disposed of.
     A series of disasters were to overtake us. If we had ever needed a holiday, we needed it now.
     In the previous year we had, in the car, gone to the Rocky Mountains; and that trip had opened our eyes to the possibilities of motor travel.
     This year we went to British Columbia and California.

     We were ready for the further disasters.
     In the fall - to be quite precise, on September 13, soon after we had returned to Rapid City, having spent eighty-eight days on the road without ever sleeping under a roof, at a total cost of less than two hundred and fifty dollars - there was a general election. My wife cast her vote at noon, on her way to school; I followed her shortly to the polling room.
     In our back yard there happened to be a pile of winter fire wood. This pile I had to pass as I returned home in order to reach the back door which I had left open. Behind the pile there was a window; and on the sill, outside, there lay a key. I stopped, looking at it; for its presence puzzled me. If that key had not been there, the whole story of my life for the next few years might have run a different course, who can tell? I half climbed up on the wood-pile and reached for it; the wood slipped under my feet and my movements, no doubt, were awkward; things happened in my spine; a second later I lay on the pile, inert.
     I twisted myself on to my back; and on my back I was to remain for sixteen months.
     For this attack refused to yield to rest and such treatment as we had found effective in the past; it had all the appearance of a permanent paralysis.
     I was sent to the hospital at Brandon, on a stretcher, in the baggage van of the train. Again X-rays were taken; again without result. The Brandon physicians asserted that, apart from an attack of lumbago, there was nothing wrong with me. However, tentatively, they were going to remove my tonsils. Now my tonsils had served me well for fifty-four years; and I hated to part with them. I had myself shipped back to Rapid City.

     The run of disasters was now broken by two encouraging things.
     Hearing of my plight, Phelps and Kirkconnell came to pay me a week-end visit; and they brought word from Graphic Publishers at Ottawa that they were willing to print any book I cared to give them. Both Phelps and Kirkconnell insisted that it should be A Search for America. I was reluctant to let that book go out; and it took a deal of persuasion; for by this time I had convinced myself that it needed a ninth rewriting which it was most unlikely to receive. However, Phelps and Kirkconnell insisted, and at last I gave in.
     Graphic Publishers at once accepted the book.
     The second thing that happened consisted in the arrival of an invitation from a Winnipeg Daily to fill a page of their magazine section once a week. I was promised a fee of twenty dollars for each contribution. I gave them a total of twenty-six short stories which netted me five hundred and twenty dollars.
     Throughout that winter I lay in bed, in what, had we had the furniture for it, would have been the parlour of the house. Every morning, I rolled myself painfully over on my side, with my left hand supporting a point in my anatomy just above the hip, for, without that support, the pains soon became unbearable. My head rested on high pillows, so as to enable me to see at a downward angle; in front of my bed the typewriter stood on a chair. Behind my back a supply of paper lay ready to hand, on the bed; and thus, in the course of twenty-six weeks, I ground out twenty-six stories of five thousand words each.
     Meanwhile, every night, one or two worthy citizens of the town dropped in to help me to stand up for a min-

ute or two; for I was determined to take myself in hand. I refused to accept the verdict that, for the rest of my life, I was to be confined to my bed.
     My wife learned to drive the car.
     By the time the summer holidays of 1927 came around, I was once more able to crawl about, on crutches. I had not yet left house or yard. But slowly I was reaching the point where, by careful manoeuvres, I could hoist myself into the right-hand front seat of the car; and I had a few tentative rides, with my wife at the wheel.
     On the last day of June we set out to spend a week or so with a brother of hers in southern Manitoba. After that, we were to visit with the Phelpses in Winnipeg.
     It was at Winnipeg that the first shadow, unrecognized, of course, of the third and most stunning of the disasters fell across our path.
     Our little girl, now nearly twelve years old, said a strange thing. "I wish," she said, "we were going home."
     This was a most unusual thing for her to say; for she liked travelling. For us, it settled the matter; we started for Rapid City on the following day, July 18.
     On July 19 May was gaily playing about in our yard with a playmate, her laughter and merriment echoing into my open windows. I was in bed again; it looked as if, after all, I had overdone it by making that trip.
     On the morning of July 20, the little girl complained of an abdominal pain; and since her mother found that she was running a temperature, she called the doctor in who diagnosed acute appendicitis. We insisted on a consultation. An immediate operation was advised.
     In the afternoon, my wife and the two doctors took May to the nearest hospital, at Minnedosa.

     Before midnight she was dead.
     Even today we dare not mention her when the anniversaries of her birth or her death come around.