age, but he was stooped and worn with a life of heavy toil.

"Well, Angus," Lawyer Ed was saying, his deep musical voice thrilling with sympathy, "that'll make you comfortable for a while now, until you're better, anyway. And there's no need for me, or any one, to tell you not to worry over it."

The older man smiled. "No, no. Tut, tut! Worry! That would be but a poor way to treat the Father's care, indeed." His dark eyes shone with an inner light. "If He needs my farm, He'll show me how to lift the mortgage. And if He needs me to do any more work for Him here, He'll give me back my health. But if not—" he paused and his hand went instinctively to the shoulder of the little boy looking up at him with big wondering eyes—"if not—well, well, never fear, He knows the way. He knows."

An old light wagon and a horse with hanging head were standing by the sidewalk. The man clambered slowly to the seat and gathered up the lines. Lawyer Ed picked up the little boy and swung him up beside his father. He shook him well before he set him down, boxed his ears, pulled his hair, and finally, diving into his pockets, brought out a big handful of pink "bull's-eyes" and showered them into his hat. The little fellow shouted with delight, and having crammed his mouth full, he doubled up his small fists and challenged his friend to another scuffle.

But Lawyer Ed shook his head.

"No! That's enough nonsense to-day, you young rascal! Good-bye, Angus, and—" his musical voice became low and soft—"and God bless you."

Angus McRae's smile, as he drove away, was like the sun breaking out over Lake Algonquin, and the lawyer felt as if their positions were reversed, and he had just put a mortgage on his farm and Angus were trying to comfort him.

He stood for a moment on the sidewalk, his bright eyes grown misty, and watched the pair drive down the hill. Then he looked across the street and saw Doctor Archibald Blair climbing into his mud-splashed buggy, satchel in hand. Lawyer Ed walked across to him, his shining boots sinking in the soft mud.

By descent Lawyer Ed was partly Scotch, by nature he was entirely Irish. He possessed a glib tongue of the latter order and his habit was to address every one he met, be he Indian, Highland Scot, or French Canadian, in the dialect which the person was supposed to favour. So he roared out in his magnificent baritone, as he picked his way among the puddles:

"Hoot! Losh! Is yon yersel', Aerchie mon?"

Doctor Blair glared down at him from under lowering brows.

"Dear me, Ed, you're an object of pity, when you try to get that clumsy tongue of yours, hampered as it is by a brogue from Cork, around the most musical sounds of the most musical language under heaven. Give it up, man! Give it up!"

"Haud yer whisht! Or whisht yer blethers!—whichever way that outlandish, heathenish gibberish your forebears jabbered, would have it. You see, Archie, one great advantage of being Irish—and it's not your fault that you're not, man, I don't blame you—one great advantage is that you can speak all languages with equal ease. Now a Scotchman's tongue is like his sense of humour and his brains—a bit hard to wiggle."

"'Beware a tongue that's smoothly hung,
A heart that warmly seems to feel'"——

quoted Doctor Blair, who was always ready with his Burns. He shoved his black satchel under the seat, and hauled the muddy lap-robe over his knees.

"Do you want anything in the line of common sense, or did you just come over here to blather?"

"I came to see what you thought of Angus. Is he very sick?"

"Angus McRae? Yes he is, Ed, I'm sorry to say. I felt I ought to tell him to quit work altogether, but he can't afford it."

"Is it anything dangerous?"

"Well, if anything should happen—a shock or strain of any kind on his heart—he'd be laid up—maybe put out of business altogether."

"And to-day he put a mortgage on his place, to help pay the debts of Peter McDuff and a dozen other old leeches that live on him."

The two friends looked at each other and nodded silently.

"He's a wonderful man, that Angus McRae," said Dr. Blair.

"He's the finest man living!" cried Lawyer Ed, always enthusiastic. "I owe that man more than I can ever pay—not money, something more valuable—nearly everything I have that's worth while."

His friend nodded. There were few men in Algonquin who were not indebted to Angus McRae for something of value.

"Angus is rich in that sort of wealth," said Archie Blair.

"It's no in titles nor in rank;
It's no in wealth like Lon'on bank,
To purchase peace and rest.
It's no in makin' muckle mair;
It's no in books; it's no in lear;
To make us truly blest.'"

"But Angus knows where it is, and he's not like most people who go to church and sing and pray one day in the week and cheat their neighbours the other six!"

The doctor cracked his whip and drove off in high good humour, for he had made a smart slap at the church, as he always loved to do in Lawyer Ed's presence, and had escaped before that glib Irishman could answer. He could catch something roared out behind him, about a man who could stay home from church so that he might be a hypocrite seven days in the week and half the nights too, but he pretended not to hear.

Meanwhile Angus McRae and his little son rattled away down one street and along another and out upon the country road. Just where the town and country met stretched a row of ragged, tumble-down buildings. There was an ill-smelling hotel, with two or three loungers smoking on the sagging veranda, a long fence covered with tattered and glaring circus posters, a half-dozen patched and weather-beaten houses and a row of abandoned sheds and barns.

Algonquin proper was a pretty little town, all orchards and gardens and winding hilly streets smothered in trees. And the dreary wretchedness of its back entrance, as it might be called, was all the more painful in contrast. Willow Lane, this miserable little street was named; but Angus McRae had long termed it, in his secret heart, the Jericho Road. For the old tavern at the end of it had proved the downfall of many a traveller on that highway, and many a man had Angus picked up, who had fallen there among thieves.

Every one on the Jericho Road knew him well, and went to him for help in time of trouble and, though they did not realise it, he was indeed their neighbour in precisely the way his Master meant him to be.

The lane turned into the country road, and once more all was fragrance and beauty. It curved around the southern shore of Lake Algonquin; on one side the forest, dark and cool, its dim floor splashed with golden light, its arches ringing with the call of the Canada bird, on the other side the blue and white of the lake, laughing and tumbling beneath the blue and white of the sky.

When the gleam of the water came into view, the little boy clapped his hands and churned up and down in delight. The fresh, damp wind fanned his face, and he shouted to the white-winged gulls dipping and soaring out there in their free ocean of air. He looked up laughingly into his father's face, but quickly became grave. His father's eyes were wistful; he had not spoken for a long time. The child remembered vague hints of trouble that afternoon in Lawyer Ed's office.

"You won't have to work when I get a big man, Daddy," he said comfortingly. "I'll work for you. An' I'll get rich, an' you'll have lots an' lots of money."

His father smiled down at him lovingly. "Och, indeed, it's your father will be the happy man when Roderick grows up. He'll have nothing to do at all at all."

"What was Lawyer Ed doing?" queried the child, after a moment's thought. "Is he goin' to let Jock McPherson take away our house?"

"No, no, child. You must not be troubling your head with such thoughts. It was just some business