was seen in glimpses through their branches. Behind us the sun's declining rays fell upon an old-fashioned garden of holly-hocks and asters, so that the effect, as one caught it turning sideways, was like light upon a stained-glass window, so rich were the dyes. I saw all this only as one sees the surroundings of some object that interests supremely.

The man who had been walking with me said simply, "This is my wife."

Before me stood a woman who had the power that some few women have of making all those whom they gather round them speak out clearly and freshly the best that is in them.

Ah! we live in a new country. Its streets are not paved with gold, nor is prosperity to be attained without toil; but it gives this one advantage—room for growth; whatever virtue a soul contains may reach its full height and fragrance and colour, if it will.

I did not know then that the beginning of this provincial salon, which Toyner's wife had kept about her for so many years, and to which she gave a genuine brilliance, however raw the material, had been a wooden shanty, in which a small income was made by the sale of home-brewed beer.

I always remember Ann Toyner as I saw her that first time. Her eyes were black and still bright; but when I looked at them I remembered the little children that had died in her arms, and I knew that her hopes had not died with them, but by that suffering had been transformed. As I heard her talk, my own hopes lifted themselves above their ordinary level.

Husband and wife stood together, and I noticed that the white shawl that was crossed Quakerwise over her thin shoulders seemed like a counterpart of his careful dress, that the white tresses that were beginning to show among her black ones were almost like a reflection of his white hair. I felt that in some curious way, although each had so distinct and strong a personality, they were only perfect as a part of the character which in their union formed a perfect whole. They stood erect and looked at us with frank, kindly eyes; we all found to our surprise that we were saying what we thought and felt, and not what we supposed we ought to say.

As I talked and looked at them, the words that I had heard came back to my mind. "His wife is the daughter of a murderer, and he has come up from the lowest, vilest life." Some indistinct thought worked through my mind whose only expression was a disconnected phrase: "I saw a new heaven and a new earth."

In the years since then I have learned to know the story of Toyner and his wife. Now that they are gone away from us, I will tell what I know. His was a life which shows that a man cut off from all contact with his brother-thinkers may still be worked upon by the great over-soul of thought: his is the story of a weak man who lived a strong life in a strength greater than his own.

CHAPTER II.

In the days when there were not many people in Fentown Falls, and when much money was made by the lumber trade, Bartholomew Toyner's father grew rich. He was a Scotchman, not without some education, and was ambitious for his son; but he was a hard, ill-tempered man, and consequently neither his example nor his precepts carried any weight whatever with the son when he was grown. The mother, who had begun life cheerfully and sensibly, showed the weakness of her character in that she became habitually peevish. She had enough to make her so. All her pleasure in life was centred in her son Bart. Bart came out of school to lounge upon the streets, to smoke immoderately, and to drink such large quantities of what went into the country by the name of "Jamaica," that in a few years it came to pass that he was nearly always drunk.

Poor Bart! the rum habit worked its heavy chains upon him before he was well aware that his life had begun in earnest; and when he realised that he was in possession of his full manhood, and that the prime of life was not far off, he found himself chained hand and foot, toiling heavily in the most degrading servitude. A few more years and he realised also that, do what he would, he could not set himself free. No one in the world had any knowledge of the struggle he made. Some—his mother among them—gave him credit for trying now and then, and that was a charitable view of his case. How could any man know? He was not born with the nature that reveals itself in many words, or that gets rid of its intolerable burdens of grief and shame by passing them off upon others. All that any one could see was the inevitable failure.

The failure was the chief of what Bart himself saw. That unquenchable instinct in a man's heart that if he had only tried a little harder he would certainly have attained to righteousness gave the lie to his sense of agonising struggle, with its desperate, rallies of courage and sinkings of discouragement, gleams of self-confidence, and foul suspicion of self, suspicion even as to the reality of his own effort. All this was in the region of unseen spirit, almost as much unseen to those about him as are the spirits of the dead men and angels, often a mere matter of faith to himself, so apart did it seem from the outward realities of life.

Outwardly the years went easily enough. The father railed and stormed, then relapsed into a manner of silent contempt; but he did not drive his son from the plain, comfortable home which he kept. Bart would not work, but he took some interest in reading. Paper-covered infidel books, and popular books on modern science, were his choice rather than fiction. The choice might have been worse, for the fiction to which he had access was more enervating. Outside his father's house he neglected the better class of his neighbours, and fraternised with the men and women that lived by the lowest bank of the river; but his life there was still one into which the fresh air and the sunshine of the Canadian climate entered largely. If he lounged all day, it was on the benches in the open air; if he played cards all night, he was not given much money to waste; and there were few women to lend their companionship to the many drunkards of whom he was only one. Then, also, Bart did not do even all the evil that he might. What was the result of that long struggle of his which always ended in failure? The failure was only apparent; the success was this mighty one—that he did not go lower, he did not leave Fentown Falls for the next town upon the river, a place called The Mills, where his life could have been much worse. He fell in love with Ann Markham; and although she was the daughter of the wickedest man in Fentown, she was—according to the phraseology of the place—"a lady." She kept a small beer-shop that was neat and clean; she lived so that no man dared to say an uncivil word to her or to the sister whom she protected. She did for her father very much what Bart's father did for him: she kept a decent house over his head and decent clothes upon his back, and threw a mantle of thrifty respectability over him.

Ann was no prude, and she certainly was no saint. Twice a week there was the sound of fiddling and dancing feet in a certain wooden hall that stood near the river; and there, with the men and women of the worldly sort, Ann and her sister danced. It was their amusement; they had no other except the idle talking and laughing that went on over the table at which Ann sold her home-brewed beer. Ann's end in life was just the ordinary one—respectability, or a moderate righteousness, first, and