“And you don’t mean to tell me you were such a fool as to say he might go?” J. P. Thornton, walking up the hill for the fourth time on the way home from a session meeting with Lawyer Ed, asked the question again in an extremity of indignation.

And Lawyer Ed answered as he had done each time before: 

“I couldn’t stand in the boy’s way, Jack; I just couldn’t.”

They had argued the question for an hour, up and down the hills between their two homes, and had come to no agreement.  That Roderick had had an offer to tempt any young man there was no doubt.  A partnership in the firm of Elliot and Kent, solicitors for the British North American Transcontinental Railroad, was such a chance as came the way of few at his age.

And yet Mr. Thornton declared that he should have refused it unconditionally.  Not so Lawyer Ed; his generous heart condoned the boy.

“It’s the chance of a life-time, Jack,” he declared.  “It would be shameful to keep him out of it, and, mind you, he wouldn’t say he would go until I urged it.”

“Oh, blow him!” J. P. was a very dignified gentleman and did not revert to his boyhood’s slang except under extreme provocation.  “He shouldn’t have allowed you to urge him.  And what about the brilliant prospect you gave up once just because his father was in need?”

“Well, never mind that,” said Lawyer Ed, hurriedly.  “He doesn’t know anything about that and he’s not going to either.”

“And it was Bill Graham who wanted you, and you wouldn’t go.  And now Bill’s taking him away from you.  He ought to be ashamed!”

“Bill thought he was doing me a kindness.  He knew Rod’s success is mine.”

J. P. was silent from sheer exhaustion of all sane argument.  He was grieved and bitterly disappointed for his friend’s sake.  Ed was in imperative need of a rest and just when life was looking a little easier to him, and the long-deferred holiday was within reach, Roderick was deserting.

If they could only have visited the Holy Land before he left, it would not have seemed so bad.  But though Roderick had consented to remain until his chief returned, Lawyer Ed had felt he could not go, for he must busy himself gathering up the threads of his work which he had been dropping with such relief.

Roderick had not come to his final decision without much argument with himself.  His head said Go, but he could not quite convince his heart that he was right in leaving Lawyer Ed so soon.  He had argued the question with himself during many sleepless nights, but the lure of success had proved the stronger.  And he was going late in the autumn to take up his new work.

To Old Angus the news was like the shutting out of the light of day.  Roderick was going away.  At first that was all he could comprehend.  But he did not for one moment lose his sublime faith either in his boy or in his God.  The Lord’s hand was in it all, he told himself.  He was leading the Lad out into larger service and his father must not stand in the way.  He said not one word of his own loss, but was deeply concerned over Lawyer Ed’s.  He was worried lest the Lad’s going might mean business difficulties for his friend.

“If the Father will be wanting the Lad, Edward,” he said one golden autumn afternoon, when Lawyer Ed stopped at the farm gate in passing, “then we must not be putting our little wills in His way.  I would not be minding for myself, oh, no, not at all-” the old man’s smile was more pathetic than tears.  “The dear Lord will be giving me so many children on the Jericho Road, that He feels I can spare Roderick.”

Eddie Perkins was stumbling about the lane trying to rake up the dead leaves into neat piles as Angus had instructed him.  He came whimpering up with a bruised finger which he held up to the old man.  Angus comforted him tenderly, telling him Eddie must be a man and not mind a little scratch.  He looked down at this most helpless of his children and gently stroked the boy’s misshapen head.

“Yes, He would be very kind, giving me so many of His little ones to care for, and He feels I can spare Roderick.  The Lad is strong-” his voice faltered a moment, but he went on bravely.

“But it was you I was thinking of, Edward.  I could not but be fearing that you were making a great sacrifice.  There is your visit to the Holy Land-and the business.  It will be hard for you, Edward?”

Lawyer Ed, seated in his mud-splashed buggy at the gate, turned quickly away, the anxiety in Old Angus’s voice was almost too much for his tender heart.  There was a wistful plea in it that he should vindicate Roderick from a shadow of suspicion.  He jerked his horse’s head violently and demanded angrily what in thunder it meant by trying to eat all the grass off the roadside like a fool of an old cow, and then he rose valiantly to the Lad’s defence.

“Hut, tut, Angus!” he cried blusteringly.  “Such nonsense!  You know as well as I do that the Lad didn’t want to leave.  I fairly drove him away.  Pshaw! never mind the Holy Land.  We’re all journeying to it together, anyway.  And as for my business-somebody else’ll turn up.  I always felt Algonquin would be too small for Rod.  You’ll see he’ll make a name for himself that’ll make us all proud.”

He did it splendidly, and Angus was comforted.  He blamed himself for what he termed his lack of faith in the boy and in his Father.  And many a night, as he sat late by his fire, trying to reason himself into cheerful resignation, he recalled Edward’s words hopefully.  Yes, he surely ought to be proud and glad that the Lad was going out into a wider service.  He was leaving him alone, on his Jericho Road, here, but that was only because the Father needed him for a busier highway, where thieves were crueller and more numerous.

As the autumn passed and the time for leaving approached, the Lad ran out very often to the farm.  His visits were a constantly increasing source of discomfort-both to heart and conscience.  His father’s gallant attempts at cheerfulness, and his sublime assurance that his son was going away to do a greater work for the Master stung Roderick to the quick.  That Master, whom he had long ago left out of his life’s plan, had said, “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”  And from even the little Roderick had seen of the affairs of Elliot and Kent, he knew only too well that to serve that firm and humanity at the same time would be impossible.

There were others who did not possess his father’s faith in his purpose, and they spoke to him plainly on the matter.  J. P. Thornton, remembering indignantly all that Lawyer Ed had once given up for Old Angus’s sake, and further maddened by being forbidden to disclose it, expressed his disapproval of Roderick’s leaving so soon, in strong incisive terms.

His remarks succeeded only in angering the young man, and making him more determined in his course.  Doctor Leslie was the next to speak plainly on the matter, and his kindly, deep-searching words were harder to set aside.  Roderick was passing the Manse one day when Mammy Viney hailed him.

“Honey, de minesta’ want you,” she called, in her soft rich tones.  “An’ you’se gwine away, an’ leavin’ you olé Auntie Kirsty,” she said reproachfully, as he came up the steps and shook hands with her.

“But you wouldn’t want me to stay and bother Aunt Kirsty in the kitchen all my life, now, would you, Mammy Viney?  I thought men were a nuisance there.”

“Men’s jus’ a trouble eberywhar,” she said sternly.  “Dat Mahogany Bill he was jus’ like all de res’, an’ here you doin’ de same, goin’ off an’ leabin’ folks in de lurch, with all de hard work to do.  I’se shame of you-dat I is!”

Roderick laughed good-naturedly, as he followed her into the house, but Mammy Viney tossed her head.  “Eberybody say dat it pretty mean o’ you, anyhow,” she said with the air of one who could tell a great deal if she wished. “‘Deed dey’s sayin’ dat you no business make Lawya Ed stay home!”

Roderick did not wait to hear any more of what Algonquin was saying about him.  Mammy Viney rather enjoyed recounting such remarks, and never took one jot or one tittle from that which she passed along.

Doctor Leslie met him at the study door, with outstretched hands.  “Now tell me all about this going away scheme,” he said; and Roderick told him eagerly, about the brilliant prospects ahead of him, and when he finished there was the implied question in the boy’s eyes.  Would he not be blind to his and every one’s best interests to remain in Algonquin in the face of such inducements?

Doctor Leslie sat and looked out at the orchard trees, with their wealth of red and gold apples falling with soft thuds upon the grass.  How often had that question come to him in his youth, and when he had examined his own heart and his reasons for obeying the call to go away, he had been compelled to remain.

He saw Roderick’s position, and sympathised with the youthful longing to be away and to do great deeds; but he was afraid the way had not yet truly opened up into which Angus McRae’s son could step.  He had learned, in the year Roderick had spent in Algonquin, that the young man was not vitally interested in the things that are eternal.  His outlook on life was not his father’s.  The minister felt impelled to speak plainly.

“I feel sure,” he said slowly, turning his eyes from the garden, and letting them rest kindly upon the boy’s frank face, “I feel sure, Roderick, that no young man who lacks ambition will be of much use to the world.  But ambition is a dangerous guide alone.  If you are anxious to make the best of your life, my boy, the Lord will open the way to great opportunities.  But the time and the way will be plainly shown.  If this is a door of greater opportunity, then enter it, and God give you great and large blessing.  But if you are leaving with any doubts as to its being the right course, if you fear that there are other obligations you must yet fulfil, then I charge you to examine your heart carefully, lest you fight against God.  It is no use trying to do that.  One day or other His love will hedge us about.  If it cannot draw us into the way it meets us on the Damascus Road and blinds us with its light.  But some of us miss the best of life before that happens.  Don’t lose the way, Lad; your father instructed you well in it.”

For days the warning followed Roderick, tormenting him.  He dared not examine his motives carefully, lest he find them false.  He was out on life’s waters, paddling hard for the gleam of gold, and he had no time to stop and consider whither it was leading him.  It might vanish while he lingered.

There was another person whose opinion he was anxious to get on this vexed question.  He wondered every waking hour what she would think of his going.  Perhaps she didn’t think about it at all, he speculated miserably.  He still continued to waylay her in Willow Lane, as he went to and from home, and one evening he ran upon his poor rival, Afternoon Tea Willie, doing the same sentinel duty.

Roderick had been home for supper and was returning to the office early to do some left over work, when he overtook him slowly walking towards Algonquin.

“Good evening, Mr. Roderick,” he said in a melancholy tone.  “May I walk into town with you?”

Roderick slackened his stride to suit the young man.  He was rather impatient at having to endure his company, but he soon changed his mind, for Alfred was in a confidential mood.

“I might as well go home,” he said gloomily.  “She’s gone.”

“Who’s gone?” asked Roderick perversely.

“Why, Miss Murray.  She slipped away somehow, and I don’t know how she did it.  But I’ve waited down here for her for the last time.”  He choked for a moment, then continued firmly.  “She’s showed me plainly she doesn’t want me, and I’m too proud to force my company upon her.”

Roderick did not know what to say; he wanted to laugh, but it was impossible to keep just a little of the fellow-feeling that makes us wondrous kind from creeping into his heart.

“Well, it’s too bad,” he said at last.  “But if she doesn’t want you, of course there is only one thing for you to do.”

“I have been faithful to her for a year,” said the rejected lover.  “I never before was attentive to any lady, no matter how charming, for that length of time, and she needn’t have treated me that way.”

The subject was the most interesting one in the world to Roderick, and he could not resist encouraging the young man to go on.

And poor Afternoon Tea Willie, unaccustomed to a sympathetic hearing, poured out all his long heartache.

“I am telling you this in strict confidence you know, Roderick,” he said.  “It is such a relief to tell some one and it seems right I should tell you the end of this sad romance, for you helped me and were kind to me at its very beginning.”  He paused for a moment, to reflect sadly on his disappointed hopes.

“You may be sure your confidence will never be betrayed,” said Roderick, and murmuring his gratitude the young man went on.

“It was Miss Annabel Armstrong who put her against me from the first, I feel sure, though I must never bear a grudge against a lady.  But you know, Roderick (I know you will never betray a confidence), Miss Annabel hates me.  I proposed to her once, shortly after I came to Algonquin.  It was just a mad infatuation on my part, not love at all.  I did not know then what real love was.  But Miss Annabel-well, she is a lady-but I, I really couldn’t tell you what she said to me when I offered her all a man could, my heart and my hand and all my property.  It was awful!  I really sometimes wake up in the night yet and think about it.  And she never forgave me.  And I don’t know why.”  He paused and drew a deep breath at the remembrance.

“And I know she poisoned Miss Murray’s mind against me-but I shan’t hold a grudge against a lady.  Now, Miss Murray herself was so gentle and kind when she refused me-what?  I-I didn’t mean any harm.”  For his sympathetic listener had turned upon him.

“How dared you do such a thing?” Roderick cried indignantly.

“I just couldn’t help it,” wailed Alfred.  “You couldn’t yourself now, Roderick;” and Roderick was forced to confess inwardly that likely he couldn’t.

“Well, never mind, go on,” he said, all unabashed that he was taking advantage of the poor young man merely to be able to hear something about her.

“I just couldn’t help it.  But I only asked her twice and the first time she refused so nicely, I thought perhaps she’d change her mind.  I never heard any one refuse a-person-so-so sweetly and kindly.  But this last time was unmistakable, and I feel as if it were all over.  I am not going to be trampled upon any more.”

“That’s right,” said Roderick.  “Just brace up and never mind; you’ll soon get over it.”

The young man shook his head.  “I shall never be the same,” he said.  “But I have pride.  I am not going to let her see that she has made a wreck of my life.  But I thought she might have had more sympathy when she had had a sorrow like that herself.”

Roderick felt his resentment rising.  He did not mind listening to poor Alfred’s love stories, but he did not want to hear hers discussed.  But before he could interrupt, Alfred was saying something that held his attention and made him long for more.

“But she is all over that now.  She told me herself.”

“All over what?” Roderick could not hold the question back.

“Caring about the young man she was engaged to.  There was a young man named Richard Wells in Toronto, you know, and they were engaged.  When she was away for her holidays last summer, I was so lonesome I just couldn’t stand it, so I wrote to my cousin Flossy Wilbur and asked her to find out how she was or her address or something.  And Flossy wrote such a comforting letter and said she was staying with her married brother, Norman Murray-he lives on Harrington Street, and Floss lives just a couple of blocks away on a beautiful avenue-”

“What were you saying about Wells?” Roderick interrupted.

“Flossy knows him and told me all about it.  I had a letter just last week.  He met another girl he liked better-no, that couldn’t be true, nobody who once saw her could care for any one else, I am sure.  But this other girl was rich, and so he broke the engagement.  If I ever meet that man!” Afternoon Tea Willie stood on the side-walk, the electric light shining through the autumn leaves making a golden radiance about his white face.  “If I ever meet that man I-I shall certainly treat him with the coldest contempt, Roderick.  I wouldn’t speak to him!”

“But you said she didn’t care,” suggested Roderick impatiently.

“Not now.  But Flossy said her poor little heart must have been broken at first, though she did not show it.  She came up to Algonquin right away.  I saw her on board the Inverness the day she came and I knew then-”

“How do you know she doesn’t care about Wells?”

“Oh, when Flossy wrote me that last week, I went to see her at the school-I don’t dare go to Rosemount-and I asked her to forgive me for proposing to her.  I told her, or at least I hinted at the tragedy in her life, and I said I wanted to beg her pardon on my knees for troubling her as I had done,-and that I couldn’t forgive myself.  Oh, she just acted like an angel-there is no other word to describe her.  She asked me at first how I found out and then she said so sweetly and gently, that she thanked me for my consideration.  And then, just because she was so good-I did it again!  I really didn’t mean it, but before I knew what I was doing, I was asking her again if there was any hope for me.  And, oh dear! oh dear! she said ‘no’ again.  Gave me not the least hope.  I was so overcome-you don’t know how a man feels about such things, Roderick.  I was so overcome I burst out and said I felt just as if I would have given all I possessed to meet that Wells man.  I said I could just treat him with the coldest contempt if I ever met him on the street.  And she answered so sweetly that I must not worry on her account.  She said she had cared once, but that was all over, and that she was glad now that it had been so.  And she added-and I don’t see hew any one with such eyes could be so cruel-she said I must never, never speak of such a subject to her again, and that if I ever did she would not let me even come near her.  So it’s all over with me.  I am not going to follow her about any more.  I have still been coming down to Willow Lane, but I am coming no more after to-night.  This is the end!”

They had reached the office door and paused.  Roderick’s sympathy seemed to have suddenly vanished.  In the very face of the other young man’s despair, he turned upon him ruthlessly.

“That’s a wise resolution, Alf,” he said distinctly.  “And I’m going to advise you strongly to stick to it.  You keep the width of the town between you and Miss Murray from now on, do you understand?”

“What-whatever do you mean?” stammered the boy, aghast at the cruelty of one who had seemed a friend.

“Just what I say.  On your own showing, you’ve been tormenting her; and-I-well, I won’t have it-that’s all.  I feel sure you have the good sense to stick to your resolution,” his tone was a trifle kindlier, “and for your own sake I hope you do.  If not, look out!” He made a significant gesture, that made the other jump out of his way in terror.  “And look here, Alf,” he added.  “If you tell any soul in Algonquin that Miss Murray was engaged to any one I’ll-I’ll murder you.  Do you hear?”

He ran up the steps and into the office.  And the cruellest part of it all to poor Afternoon Tea Willie, as the door slammed in his face leaving him alone in the darkness, was that he could hear his false friend whistling merrily.

Roderick felt like whistling in the days that followed.  He had found out something he had been longing to know for over a year.  He did not have to stay away from her now.  And the very next evening he marched straight up to Rosemount and asked to see Miss Murray.  She was out, much to his disappointment, but the next Sunday he met her as they were leaving the church.  And she expressed her regret so kindly that he was once more filled with hope.  He had stood watching for her while his father paused for a word with Dr. Leslie, but as usual he had been joined by Alexander Graham and his daughter.  There was a subtle air of triumph about the man, ever since Roderick had decided to go to Montreal, an air almost of proprietorship especially noticeable when Lawyer Ed was about.

“Good morning, Rod,” he said genially.  “All packed yet?”

“Not quite,” said Roderick shortly.  He winced, for the thought of the actual parting with his father was a subject upon which he did not care to speak.

“I don’t believe you are a bit sorry you are going,” said Leslie, shaking the heavy plumes of her velvet hat at him, and pouting, for never a regret had he expressed to her.

“I actually believe you’re glad.  And I don’t blame you.  I’d be just jumping for joy if I were going.  It’s a dreadfully dull little place here, in the winter especially.”

He looked at her in surprise.  It was so unlike her to express discontent.  She had always seemed so happy.  “Why, I thought you couldn’t be ever induced to live any other place,” he cried in surprise.

“The idea!  I wish somebody’d try me!” she flashed out the answer, with just the faintest emphasis on a significant word.

Roderick looked down at her again in wonder, to see her eyes droop, her colour deepen.  They passed down the church steps, side by side; her father dropped behind with Dr. Blair, and they were left alone together.  Roderick, always shy in a young woman’s presence, was overcome with a vague feeling of dismay, which he did not at all understand and which rendered him speechless.

He was relieved when Miss Annabel Armstrong, with a girlish skip, came suddenly to her niece’s side.  “Good morning, Mr. Roderick McRae.  Good morning, niecy dear!  Come here a moment and walk with me, Leslie darling.  I want to ask you something.”  She slipped her arm into the girl’s and drew her back.  “Here, Mr. McRae, you walk by Miss Murray, just for a moment, please.”

She shoved Helen forward into Leslie’s place, and pulling her niece close, whispered fiercely.

“You are a young idiot, Leslie Graham!  I heard Mrs. Captain Willoughby and the Baldwin girls laughing and talking about you just this minute as they came out of church.  I am just deadly ashamed.  How can we ever keep our position in society if you act so?  Anna Baldwin said you were simply throwing yourself at that young McRae’s head-and his father a common farmer!  And his Aunt!”

The girl jerked her arm from Miss Annabel’s grasp, her eyes and cheeks blazing.  “Anna Baldwin is crazy about him herself!” she cried violently.  “And she’s made a fool of herself more times than I can tell!  And his father is far better than your father ever was, or mine either!” She stopped as some one looked at her in passing.  “I shall just do exactly as I please, Aunt Annabel Armstrong,” she added determinedly.  “It’s just like an old maid to be always interfering in other people’s affairs!”

Miss Annabel turned white with anger.  She was proud of her niece, and yet she almost disliked her.  Leslie, young and gay and successful, the inheritor of everything for which her aunt had scrimped and striven and hungered all her life and never attained, was a constant source of irritation and discontent to Miss Annabel.  Her heart and hopes were as young as Leslie’s, and she was forced to find herself pushed aside into the place of age, while this radiant girl walked all unheeding into everything that her girlhood should have been.  And this intimation concerning her age and estate was unbearable.  She grew intensely quiet.

“Leslie,” she said, “you may heed me or not as you wish.  But if you had eyes in your head, you would see for yourself that that young man doesn’t care the snap of his finger for you and all your money.  He’s madly in love with Helen Murray.  He’s always hanging about Rosemount!” she added, growing reckless.  “He was there only last night.  Just look at him now!”

The startled eyes of the girl obeyed.  Roderick was walking beside Helen Murray, and looking down at her with the joy of her presence shining in his face.  He was not schooled in hiding his feelings, and his eyes told his secret so plainly that Leslie Graham could not but read.

She said not another word.  They had reached a corner and she suddenly left her aunt and walked swiftly homeward alone.  She had had a revelation.  For a long time she had suspected and feared.  Now she knew.  In all her gay thoughtless life she had never wanted anything very badly that she had not been able to get.  Now, the one thing she wanted most, the thing which had all unconsciously become the supreme desire of her life, she had learned in one flash was already another’s.  She was as certain of it as though Roderick had proclaimed his feelings from the church pulpit.  Her thoughts ran swiftly back over the months of their acquaintance and picked up here and there little items of remembrance that should have shown her earlier the true state of things.  She was forced to confess that not once had he shown her any slightest preference, except as her father’s daughter.  And yet she had refused to look and listen.  And then, upon knowledge, came shame and humiliation and rage at finding she had boldly proffered herself and was found undesirable.  It was the birth of her woman’s heart.  The happy, careless girl’s heart was dying, and the new life did not come without much anguish of soul.

As soon as she could escape from the dinner table she fled to her room to face this dread thing which had come upon her.  All undisciplined and unused to pain, through her mother’s careless indulgence, entirely pagan, too, for her religious experience had been but one of form, the girl met this crisis in her life alone.

At first the smarting sense of her humiliation predominated and her heart cried for recompense.  She would show him what would happen If he dared set her aside.  Well she knew she could injure Roderick’s chances for success if she set her mind to the task; for was it not her influence that had helped to give him those chances?

The force of her anger drove her to action.  She threw on her plumed hat and her velvet coat, and slipping out unseen, walked swiftly out of the town and up the lake shore.  Every little breeze from the waters sent a shower of golden leaves dropping about her.  But the air was still in the woods.  It was a perfect autumn day, a true Sabbath day in Nature’s world, with everything in a beautiful state of rest after labour.  The bronze oaks, the yellow elms and the crimson maples along the shore, now and then dropped a jewel too heavy to be held into the coloured waters beneath.  The tower of the little Indian church across the lake pointed a silver finger up out of a soft blue haze.  The whole world seemed at peace, in contrast to the tumult within the girl’s untrained heart.

She seated herself on a fallen log beside the water, the warm, hazy sunshine falling through the golden branches upon her.  And sitting there, she felt the spirit of the serene day steal over hers.  Wiser and nobler thoughts came to her sorely tried young heart.  Some strong unknown Spirit rose up within her and demanded that she do what was right.  It was her only guide, she could not reason with it, but she blindly obeyed.  There would be long days of pain and hard struggle ahead of her, she well knew, but the Spirit heeded them not at all.  She must do what was right.  She must act the strong, the womanly part, let the future bring what it would.

And she went back from the soft rustling peace of the woods, not a careless, selfishly happy girl any more, but a strong, steady-purposed woman.

Roderick was so busy and happy during the ensuing week that he had almost forgotten the existence of Miss Leslie Graham, when she was brought to his dismayed senses by the sound of her voice over the telephone.

“Tra-la-la-la, Mr. Roderick McRae,” she sang out in her merriest voice.  “Why don’t you come round and say good-bye to your friends?  Are you going to fold your tent like the Arabs and silently steal away?”

Roderick began to stammer out an explanation, but she cut him off gaily.

“Don’t apologise, you are going to be punished for your sins,” she called laughingly.  “For you can’t come now.  I am off to-day to Toronto with Aunt Annabel.  We took a sudden notion we wanted to go to the city.  We’re going to spend a whole month in a riotous purchasing of autumn hats.  So, as I am a good meek and forgiving person and as you’ll be gone before we get back I just thought I’d say ‘Bon Voyage’ to you before I leave.”

She talked so fast that Roderick had scarcely any chance to reply.  He tried to stammer out his thanks to her for her kindness, but she laughingly interrupted him.  It was quite too bad they couldn’t say good-bye, Daddy would do that for her.  But Mamma was coming to Toronto with them.  They were both dreadfully sorry and Mamma sent her best regards.  They all hoped he’d have a lovely time, and come home very rich; and before he could answer, she had called a gay “Good-bye and good-luck,” and had rung off.

Roderick was conscious of a slight feeling of surprise, and a decided feeling of relief.

“She’s a great girl,” he said to himself admiringly.  “She’s just a splendid good friend and a brick, and I’ll write and tell her so!”

And he had no idea of how very much she merited his praise.

As the time for leaving approached, Roderick grew busier every day.  It was hard to get Lawyer Ed in the office long enough to settle things.  He was striving to take up the burden of his old work again cheerfully, but the new civic and social and church duties he had assumed in the year were hard to drop.  Then the Local Option campaign was at its height and demanded his attention.

To Roderick, and to most of the town people, he seemed to be shouldering all his old burdens with his usual energy and light-heartedness, but J. P. missed a familiar note of joyousness in his tone, and Archie Blair noticed that Ed did not go up the steps of his office in one leap now as he had always done, but walked up like other people.  But to the casual observer, Lawyer Ed was the same.  He was here, there and everywhere, making sure that this one and that was going to vote the right way.  And Roderick, watching him, remembered how anxious he had been over the effect the campaign would have upon his business.  And now that he was not required to enter it, he often longed to plunge in and help his friend to victory.

On the whole, the campaign helped Lawyer Ed materially, in the hard days preceding the parting with his boy.  After all, there was nothing so dear to his Irish heart as a fight, and the rounding up of his troops before the battle kept him busy and happy.  And everything was pointing to victory.  Father Tracy had promised to see to it that his flock voted the right way, and Jock McPherson had declared himself on the side of the temperance cause.  Whatever Lawyer Ed may have had to do with influencing his fellow Irishmen, he could take no credit for Jock’s conversion.  He had set out to interview the McPherson one night after a session meeting, but fortunately J. P. Thornton prevented his impetuous friend making the mistake of approaching the elder on that difficult subject.  Jock was still feeling a little dour over the temperance question and the wise Englishman knew that whichever side of the cause was presented first that was the side to which the McPherson was most likely to object.

“Leave him to the other fellows, Ed,” advised his friend.  “They are almost certain to work their own destruction.”

He was right; for not a week later Lawyer Ed came up the steps of the Thornton home, staggering with laughter, to report that Jock was as staunch on the temperance question as Dr. Leslie himself, and to explain how it came about.

As J. P. had prophesied, Jock had come over to their side because a particularly offensive person interested in the liquor business, had claimed him as a friend.  It had happened on the Saturday afternoon before.  Jock was down town, standing on the sidewalk in front of Crofter’s hotel discussing the bad state of the roads with a farmer friend, when Mr. Crofter came forth, and after introducing the subject of Local Option in a friendly fashion, said: 

“Well, sir, I’m glad to see one good Presbyterian who hasn’t gone off his head over this tom-foolery.”  Here he made the fatal mistake of slapping Mr. McPherson on the shoulder.  “It does me good to see a man who isn’t a fanatic, but can take a glass and leave it alone, and give every other fellow the same privilege.”

“Yus.”  Jock drew in his breath with a peculiar snuffing sound that would have warned any one who knew him well that there was danger in the air.  “Yus,” he repeated the word very slowly, “and take another glass, and leave it alone.”

“What did you say?” enquired Mr. Crofter, a little puzzled.  “I don’t think I quite caught you, Mr. McPherson.”

“I would be thinking,” said Jock with dreadful deliberation, “that it must be a grand sight, but I nuffer saw one.”

“Never saw what?”

“A man that could take a glass and leave it alone.  He always took it.”

Mr. Crofter went back into the hotel with something of the feeling of a baseball player who has made a mighty swing with his bat and missed.

And Jock informed Dr. Leslie the next day that he had intended all along to vote for Local Option, but had omitted to say so earlier.  The case of Father Tracy had brought even greater joy.  One day Mike Cassidy came raging into Lawyer Ed’s office with the tale of another fight with his enemies the Duffys, and the information that he was going to court with it this time if he died for it.  Roderick was out, and on the pretence that he must consult his young partner, Lawyer Ed managed to get Mike to consider the matter for an hour, and in the interval he went to see Father Tracy.

The Catholic priest and the Presbyterian elder were good friends, for his reverence was a jolly Irishman, very proud of his title of the “Protestant Priest.”  It was whispered that he was not in favour in ecclesiastical circles, but little cared he, for he was in the highest favour with everybody in Algonquin, especially those in need, and the hero of every boy who could wave a lacrosse stick.

“Good mornin’, Father O’Flynn,” cried Lawyer Ed, as, swinging his cane, he was ushered into the priest’s sanctum.  “Sure and I suppose it’s yer owld job ye’re at-

  “Checkin’ the crazy ones, urgin’ the aisy ones,
  Helpin’ the lazy ones on wid a stick.”

“It is that, then,” said Father Tracy, his blue eyes dancing.  “And here’s wan o’ the crazy ones.  Sit ye down, man, till I finish this note, and I’ll be checkin’ ye all right.  I’ll not be a minute.”

Lawyer Ed of course could not sit down, but wandered about the room examining the pictures on the wall, a few photographs of popes and cardinals.

“Sure this is a terrible place for a heretic like me to be in, Father,” he exclaimed.  “Oi’m getting clane narvous.  If it wasn’t called a Presbytry, I’d niver dare venture.  It’s got a good name.  By the way, I don’t see John Knox here,” he added, anxiously examining the cardinals again.

Father Tracy’s pen signed his name with a flourish.  “You’ll see John Knox soon enough if ye don’t mend your ways, Edward Brians,” he said.  “Now, what do ye want of me this morning?” But the two Irishmen could not let such a good joke pass unnoticed; when they had laughed over it duly, the business was stated.

“He’ll go to no law,” said the shepherd of this wayward sheep.  “I’ll see him to-night, and it’s grateful I am to you, Edward, for your interest.  I hear the boys are getting together to see about a junior league.  Algonquin ought to get the championship this year-”

But Lawyer Ed knew better than to let Father Tracy get off onto the subject of lacrosse.  “I wish Algonquin would take the championship vote for Local Option next January, Father,” he said tentatively.  He waited, but Father Tracy said nothing.  He was not so much noted for his leanings towards teetotalism as towards lacrosse.

“It would keep Mike Cassidy straight,” ventured the visitor again.

“I can keep Mike Cassidy straight without the aid of any such heretic props,” said Father Tracy, looking decidedly grim.

Lawyer Ed burst out laughing. “’Pon me word you’re right,” he exclaimed.  “Man, I wish sometimes that our Protestant priests had the power that you have.  But I’m not here to urge you, mind that.  I’m not such a fool as to go down to the Rainy Rapids and try to turn them back with a pebble.  But I just thought I might as well ask you what your opinion was, when I was here.  A great many people of your flock tell me they will vote just as the Father tells them.”  He glanced back at his host as he moved to the door.

“Yes, and they’d better,” said the Father.  “So you’d like to know what to say to them, eh?”

“I certainly would.”  He waited anxiously.

Father Tracy stood watching him go down the steps, his portly figure filling up the doorway, his good-natured face beaming.  “And if it’s news ye’re after I suppose ye’ll rest neither day nor night till ye get it.”

“Not likely.”

“Well-” Father Tracy was enjoying the other’s anxiety and was as deliberate as Jock McPherson-“well, if you meet any of my stray sheep that look as if they were goin’ to vote for the whiskey, ye can tell them for me that I’d say mass for a dead dog before I’d meddle wid their lost souls.”

Lawyer Ed went down the street, half a block at a stride, in the direction of J. P.’s office.

Archie Blair’s horse and buggy were standing in front of a house next to the Catholic church.  The temptation, combined with his desperate hurry, was too much.  He leaped in and, without so much as “By your leave,” he tore down the street and never drew rein until he fairly fell out of the vehicle in front of J. P.’s office.  He burst in with the glorious news:  “I’ve got four hundred new votes promised me for local option.  Hurrah!  That’s better than going to the Holy Land any day in the year!”

But when the day came at last that was to take Roderick from him, even Lawyer Ed’s love of battle failed him.  It was a dreary day, with Nature in accord with his gloom.  A chill wind had blown all night from the north, lashing Lake Algonquin into foam and making the pines along the Jericho Road moan sadly.  Early in the day the snow began to drive down from the north and by afternoon the roads were drifted.

Roderick was to leave on the afternoon train for Toronto, and there take the night express for Montreal and he came into Algonquin in the morning, to bid his friends good-bye.  The sudden change in the weather had, as usual, been accompanied by the return of the old pain in his arm.  It had been more frequent this autumn, but he had paid little heed to it.  But to-day it added just the last burden required to make him thoroughly miserable.  Lawyer Ed was stamping about, complaining loudly of the cold, blowing his nose, and talking about everything and anything but Roderick’s pending departure.  The Lad’s drooping spirits went lower at the sight of him.

As he went about saying farewell he realised that he had not known how many friends he had made.  Alexander Graham was full of expressions of congratulation and good-will.

“You must make good, Rod, my boy,” he said.  “We’ll be watching you, you know, and of course the blame will fall on me if you don’t.  But I have no fears.”  He laughed in a patronising way that made Roderick feel very small indeed.

“I’m so sorry you couldn’t come up again.  The wife and Leslie took a sudden notion that they must go to Toronto for a month-or Leslie took it rather, and made her mother and aunt go with her.  I’m sorry they are not here-but they are in Toronto and you might-” he paused knowingly,-“I guess I don’t need to tell you where they are staying.  Miss Leslie probably left her address.”  He laughed in such an insinuating way that Roderick’s face grew crimson.

“No, Miss Graham did not give me her address,” he said, so stiffly that the man looked at him in wonder, then laughed again.  This was some of Leslie’s nonsense, as usual, just to tease him.  She had forced a little lover’s quarrel probably and gone without saying good-bye.  But he knew Leslie could make it all right just when she chose.

He parted from Roderick in quite a fatherly manner, but the young man went away feeling more uncomfortable and downhearted than ever.

There was one person who seemed frankly glad to see him go.  Mr. Fred Hamilton did not actually express his joy, but he looked it, and Roderick felt something of the same feeling when they said good-bye.  Dr. Leslie and several other old friends came next.  Archie Blair had gone to the city to a medical congress, and he missed him.  But he had bidden almost every one else in Algonquin farewell when at last he sent his trunk to the station, and taking Lawyer Ed’s horse and cutter, drove out to the farm for the severest ordeal of that hard day.

As he passed the school, the children came storming out to their afternoon recess, pelting each other with snowballs.  Roderick hesitated a moment before the gate, but the wild onslaught of some fifty shrieking youngsters frightened the horse, and it dashed away down the road, so he decided to leave his farewell with her to the last.

The bleak wind was sweeping down from the lake and the old board fence and the frail houses on Willow Lane creaked before it.  The water roared up on the beach as he passed along the Pine Road, and the snow drove into his eyes and half blinded him.  The McDuff home was deserted.  There was no track to the door through the snow, no smoke from the old broken chimney.  Peter Fiddle was either out at the farm or down in the warm tavern on Willow Lane singing and playing.

The dull pain in Roderick’s arm had increased to a steady ache that did not help to make the soreness of his heart any easier.  The bare trees along the way; creaked and moaned, cold grey clouds gathered and spread across the sky.

Hitherto Roderick had felt nothing but impatience at the thought of staying in Algonquin all his life to watch Old Peter and Eddie Perkins and Mike Cassidy and their like, but now that the day had come for him to leave, it seemed as though everything was calling upon him to stay, every finger post pointing towards home.  Doctor Leslie’s farewell, a warning to again consider.  Lawyer Ed’s patient, cheery acceptance of the situation, J. P. Thornton’s open disapproval, Helen Murray’s smile the other evening at the door of Rosemount, his father’s love and confidence in him, all pulled him back with strong hands.  The rainbow gold shone but dimly that day, and he would fain have turned his back upon it for the sure chance of a life like his father’s in Algonquin.

He found Old Angus watching for him at the window.  His brave attempts at cheerfulness made Roderick’s trial doubly hard.  He bustled about, even trying to hum a tune, his old battle song, “My Love, be on thy guard.”

“I’ll be back before you know I’m gone, Auntie,” said the Lad, when Aunt Kirsty appeared and burst into tears at the sight of him.  He tried to laugh as he said it, but he made but a feeble attempt.  They sat by the fire, the Lad trying to talk naturally of his trip, his father making pathetic attempts to help him, and Aunt Kirsty crying silently over her knitting.  At last, as Roderick glanced at the clock.  Old Angus took out the tattered Bible from the cup-board drawer.  It had always been the farewell ceremony in all the Lad’s coming and going, the reading of a few words of comfort and courage and a final prayer.  Old Angus read, as he so often did when his son was leaving, the one hundred and thirty-ninth psalm, the great assurance that no matter how far one might go from home and loved ones, one might never go away from the presence of God.

“If I ascend up into Heaven thou art there.  If I make my bed in hell behold thou art there.  If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand shall uphold me.”

The prayer was simple and direct, as were all Old Angus’s communions with his Father.  He had come to-day to a place where the way was very puzzling, and Roderick, knowing him so well, understood why he prayed for himself, that he might not be troubled with the why of it all, but that he might know that God was guiding them all aright.  But there was an anguished note in his voice new to the Lad, and one that made the pain in his heart grow almost unbearable.  He had heard that sound in his father’s voice once before; and was puzzled to remember when.  And then there came vividly to his heart’s ear, the cry that had rung out over the dark waters to him the night the little boy was lost.  “Roderick, my son, where are you?” The father’s heart was uttering that cry now, and the son’s heart heard it.  There were tears in the eyes of both men when they arose from their knees.

Aunt Kirsty came to him for her farewell with a big bundle in her arms.  It was done up carefully in a newspaper and tied with yarn, and contained a huge lunch, composed of all the good things she had been able to cook in a day’s baking.  Roderick felt as if he could not eat anything between home and Montreal, but he took the bulky parcel gratefully and tenderly.  She put her arms about him, the tears streaming down her face, then fled from the room as fast as her ample size would permit, and gave vent to her grief in loud sobs and wails.  Old Angus followed his son out to the cutter in the shed.  He stumbled a little.  He seemed to have suddenly become aged and decrepit.  It was not the physical parting that was weighing him down so heavily.  Had Roderick been called to go as a missionary to some far-off land, as his father had so often dreamed in his younger days that he might, Old Angus would have sent him away with none of the foreboding which filled his heart to-day when he saw his boy leave to take a high position in the work of the world.

Roderick caught the blanket off the horse, and as he did so his arm gave a sudden, sharp twinge.  His face twisted.

“Is it the old pain in your arm, Roderick, my son?” his father asked anxiously.

“It’s nothing,” said the Lad lightly.  “It’ll be all right to-morrow.”

“You should see a doctor,” admonished his father.  “There will be great doctors in Montreal.”

“Perhaps I shall,” said the boy.  “Now, Father, don’t stand there in the cold!” He caught the old man’s hand in both his.  “Father!” he cried sharply.  “I-oh-I feel I shouldn’t leave you!”

“Hoots, toots, Lad!” The man clapped him upon the back comfortingly.  “You must not be saying that whatever.  Indeed it’s a poor father I would be to want you always by me.  No, no, you must go, but Roderick-”

“Yes, Father.”

The old man’s face was pale and intense.  “You will not be leaving the Heavenly Father.  Oh mind, mind and hold to Him!”

Roderick pressed his hand, and felt for the first time something of the utter bitterness of that road to success.  “I’ll try, Father,” he faltered.  “Oh, I will!”

He sprang into the cutter and took the lines, the old man put his hands for a moment on the Lad’s bowed head praying for a blessing upon him, and then the horse dashed out of the gate and away down the lane.  At the turn Roderick looked back.  His father was standing on the snowy threshold where he had left him, waving his cap.  A yellow gleam of wintry sunlight through ragged clouds lit up his face, the wind fluttered his old coat and his silver hair, and, standing there in his loneliness, he was making a desperate attempt at a smile that had more anguish in it than a rain of tears.

Roderick drove swiftly down the snowy road, his eyes blinded.  For one moment he hated success and money and fame and would have thrown them all away to be able to go back to his father.  Well he knew the parting was more, far more than a temporal leave-taking.  It was a departure from the old paths where his father had taught him to walk.

As he sped along, his head down, he did not see a figure on the road ahead of him.  He was almost upon it when he suddenly jerked his horse out of the way.  It was Old Peter.  Evidently he had drunk just enough to make him tremendously polite.  He stepped to the side of the road and bowed profoundly.

Roderick made an attempt to pull up his horse and say good-bye.  A sudden impulse to take Peter home to his father seized him.  Old Angus would be so comforted to think that his boy’s last act was giving a helping hand on the Jericho Road.  But his horse was impatient, and Peter had already turned in at his own gate and was plunging through the snow to his house.  A bottle was sticking out of his pocket.  Evidently he intended to make a night of it.  The sight of it made the young man change his mind.  There was no use, as he had so often said, bothering with Peter Fiddle.  He was determined to drink himself to death and he would.

Roderick let his horse go and went spinning down the road.  Then he realised that he had given his arm a wrench, when he had pulled his horse out of Peter’s way.  The pain in it grew intense for a few moments.  He resolved that as soon as he was settled at his new work he would have it attended to.  It was the relic of his old rainbow expedition and though it had annoyed him only at intervals it had never ceased to remind him that there was trouble there for him some future day.

He had another hard parting to face, but one with hope in it for the future.  When he tied his horse at the school gate and went in he was wondering how he would tell Helen how much the farewell meant to him.  For he was determined that she must know.  The school was quiet, for the hour for dismissing had not come.  As he entered the hall, Madame came swaying out of Miss Murray’s room with a group of cherubs peeping from behind her.  “Now you, Johnnie Pickett,” she was saying, “you just come and tell me if anybody’s bad and I’ll fix them.”  Then she saw Roderick, and greeted him with a rapturous smile.

“There’s a dear boy,” she cried, “to come and say good-bye to your old teacher.  Now, you Johnnie Pickett, what are you following me out here for?  Aren’t you to watch the room for Miss Murray?  Go on back.  Well, and you are really going this afternoon?” she said, turning to her visitor again.  “And how is your father standing it?  What’s the matter now?”

A small youngster with blazing eyes shot from the room and launched himself upon her.

“Please, teacher,” he cried, his voice shrill with wrath, “them kids, they won’t mind me at all.  Dutchy Scott’s makin’ faces, and the girls is talkin’, an’ Pie-face Hurd he’s calling names.  He said I was a nigger!” His blue eyes and white hair belied the accusation, but his voice rose to a scream at the indignity.  Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby marched the deposed monitor hack to the room to restore order, explaining volubly that it was quite as wicked a crime to call a boy Pie-face as for that boy to call one a nigger.

“I’ve got Miss Murray’s room in charge,” she said, returning to Roderick smiling and breathless.  “Go on back there, now!  I see you looking out there, you, Jimmie Hurd.  Just wait till I catch you!”

“She isn’t sick, is she?” asked Roderick dismayed.

“No.  Oh, no!  She went with a crowd of young folks to a tea-meeting at Arrow Head.  They started early, and I made her run home an hour before the time to bundle up.  Now, Johnnie Pickett, leave that chalk alone!  You don’t need to think I don’t see you-”

Roderick went on his journey miserably disappointed.  She had gone on a sleigh ride and she must have known, indeed she did know, he intended to call and say good-bye to her.  Each farewell had been harder than the last and now this absence of farewell was the hardest of all.  There was one more-Lawyer Ed’s.  Like Old Angus, he was making an attempt at cheerfulness that was heartbreaking.  He tramped about, singing loudly, scolding every one who came near him, and proclaiming his joy over the Lad’s going in a manner that drove poor Roderick’s sore heart to desperation.  He drove with him to the station, carried his bag on board, loaded him with books and magazines and bade him a joyful farewell, with not a word of regret.  But he gave way as the train moved out and Roderick saw him hastily wipe his eyes and as he looked back for one last glimpse of his beloved figure, the Lad saw Lawyer Ed move slowly away, showing for the first time in his life the signs of approaching age.

That night Old Angus sat late over his kitchen fire.  He was mentally following the Lad.  He was in Toronto now; later, on the way to Montreal, lying asleep in his berth probably.  Old Angus’s faith forbade his doubting that God’s hand was in his boy’s departure.  But the remembrance of all his joyous plans on the day the Lad started in Algonquin persisted in coming up to haunt him.  He sat far into the night trying to reason himself back into his former cheerfulness.  The storm had risen anew, and gusts of wind came tearing up from the lake, lashing the trees and shaking the old house.  The snow beat with a soft, quick pad-pad upon the window-pane.  Occasionally the jingle of bells came to him muffled in the snow.  Finally, he heard a new sound, some one singing.  It was probably a sleigh-load of young folk returning from a country tea-meeting, he reflected.  Then he suddenly sat up straight.  Something familiar in the fitful sounds made him slip out to the door and listen.  The wind was lulled for a moment, and he could dimly discern a figure going along the road.  And he could hear a voice raised loud and discordant in the 103rd psalm!  Old Angus came back into the house swiftly.  He caught up his coat and cap.  Peter had fallen among thieves once more!  And he would probably be left by the road-side to freeze were he not rescued.  He hastily lit a lantern and carefully closed up the stove.  Then, softly opening the door, he hurried out into the storm.

He found the lane and the road beyond badly drifted, but he plunged along, his swaying lantern making a faint yellow star in the swirling white mists of the storm.  He reached the road.  Peter’s voice came to him fitfully on the wind.  He had probably started out to come to him and had lost his bearings.  There was nothing to do but follow and bring him back.  He plunged into the road and staggered forward in the direction of the voice.

The snow had stopped falling but the wind that was driving it into drifts was growing bitterly cold.  Old Angus needed all his strength to battle with it, as he forced his way forward, sinking sometimes almost to his waist.  He struggled on.  Peter was somewhere there ahead, perhaps fallen to freeze by the roadside, and the Good Samaritan must not give in till he found him.  But his own strength was going fast.  In his thought for Peter he had forgotten that he was not able to battle with such a wind.  He fell again and again, and each time he rose it was with an added sense of weakness.  He kept calling to Peter, but the roar of the lake on the one hand and the answering roar of the pines on the other drowned his voice.  He was almost exhausted when he stumbled over a dark object half buried in snow in the middle of the road.  He staggered to his feet and turned his lantern upon it.  It was Peter, lain down in a drunken stupor to die of cold.

“Peter!  Peter!” Angus McRae tried to speak his name, but his benumbed lips refused to make an articulate sound.  He dropped the lantern beside him and tried to raise the prostrate figure.  As he did so he felt the light of the lantern grow dim.  It faded away, and the Good Samaritan and the man who had fallen among thieves lay side by side in the snow.