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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Corporal Cameron, by Ralph Connor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Corporal Cameron
+
+Author: Ralph Connor
+
+Release Date: February 26, 2001 [eBook #3241]
+[Most recently updated: March 3, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: Donald Lainson and David Widger
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL CAMERON ***
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL CAMERON OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE
+
+A TALE OF THE MACLEOD TRAIL
+
+
+By Ralph Connor
+
+
+
+
+               Contents
+
+BOOK ONE
+CHAPTER I.     THE QUITTER
+CHAPTER II.    THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+CHAPTER III.   THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+CHAPTER IV.    A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+CHAPTER V.     A LADY AND THE LAW
+CHAPTER VI.    THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+CHAPTER VII.   FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+CHAPTER VIII.  WILL HE COME BACK?
+
+BOOK TWO
+CHAPTER I.     HO FOR THE OPEN!
+CHAPTER II.    A MAN'S JOB
+CHAPTER III.   A DAY'S WORK
+CHAPTER IV.    A RAINY DAY
+CHAPTER V.     HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+CHAPTER VI.    A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+CHAPTER VII.   THE CHIVAREE
+CHAPTER VIII.  IN APPLE TIME
+
+BOOK THREE
+CHAPTER I.     THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+CHAPTER II.    ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+CHAPTER III.   THE STONIES
+CHAPTER IV.    THE DULL RED STAIN
+CHAPTER V.     SERGEANT CRISP
+CHAPTER VI.    A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+CHAPTER VII.   THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+CHAPTER VIII.  NURSE HALEY
+CHAPTER IX.    “CORPORAL” CAMERON
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL CAMERON
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE QUITTER
+
+
+“Oh-h-h-h, Cam-er-on!” Agony, reproach, entreaty, vibrated in the clear
+young voice that rang out over the Inverleith grounds. The Scottish
+line was sagging!--that line invincible in two years of International
+conflict, the line upon which Ireland and England had broken their
+pride. Sagging! And because Cameron was weakening! Cameron, the
+brilliant half-back, the fierce-fighting, erratic young Highlander,
+disciplined, steadied by the great Dunn into an instrument of Scotland's
+glory! Cameron going back! A hush fell on the thronged seats and packed
+inner-circle,--a breathless, dreadful hush of foreboding. High over the
+hushed silence that vibrant cry rang; and Cameron heard it. The voice he
+knew. It was young Rob Dunn's, the captain's young brother, whose soul
+knew but two passions, one for the captain and one for the half-back of
+the Scottish International.
+
+And Cameron responded. The enemy's next high punt found him rock-like
+in steadiness. And rock-like he tossed high over his shoulders the
+tow-headed Welshman rushing joyously at him, and delivered his ball far
+down the line safe into touch. But after his kick he was observed to
+limp back into his place. The fierce pace of the Welsh forwards was
+drinking the life of the Scottish backline.
+
+An hour; then a half; then another half, without a score. And now the
+final quarter was searching, searching the weak spots in their line. The
+final quarter it is that finds a man's history and habits; the clean of
+blood and of life defy its pitiless probe, but the rotten fibre yields
+and snaps. That momentary weakness of Cameron's like a subtle poison
+runs through the Scottish line; and like fluid lightning through the
+Welsh. It is the touch upon the trembling balance. With cries exultant
+with triumph, the Welsh forwards fling themselves upon the steady Scots
+now fighting for life rather than for victory. And under their captain's
+directions these fierce, victory-sniffing Welsh are delivering their
+attack upon the spot where he fancies he has found a yielding. In vain
+Cameron rallies his powers; his nerve is failing him, his strength is
+done. Only five minutes to play, but one minute is enough. Down upon
+him through a broken field, dribbling the ball and following hard like
+hounds on a hare, come the Welsh, the tow-head raging in front, bloody
+and fearsome. There is but one thing for Cameron to do; grip that
+tumbling ball, and, committing body and soul to fate, plunge into
+that line. Alas, his doom is upon him! He grips the ball, pauses a
+moment--only a fatal moment,--but it is enough. His plunge is too late.
+He loses the ball. A surge of Welshmen overwhelm him in the mud and
+carry the ball across. The game is won--and lost. What though the Scots,
+like demons suddenly released from hell, the half-back Cameron most
+demon-like of all, rage over the field, driving the Welshmen hither and
+thither at will, the gods deny them victory; it is for Wales that day!
+
+In the retreat of their rubbing-room the gay, gallant humour which the
+Scots have carried with them off the field of their defeat, vanishes
+into gloom. Through the steaming silence a groan breaks now and then. At
+length a voice:
+
+“Oh, wasn't it rotten! The rank quitter that he is!”
+
+“Quitter? Who is? Who says so?” It was the captain's voice, sharp with
+passion.
+
+“I do, Dunn. It was Cameron lost us the game. You know it, too. I know
+it's rotten to say this, but I can't help it. Cameron lost the game, and
+I say he's a rank 'quitter,' as Martin would say.”
+
+“Look here, Nesbitt,” the captain's voice was quiet, but every man
+paused in his rubbing. “I know how sore you are and I forgive you that;
+but I don't want to hear from you or from any man on the team that word
+again. Cameron is no quitter; he made--he made an error,--he wasn't
+fit,--but I say to you Cameron is no quitter.”
+
+While he was speaking the door opened and into the room came a player,
+tall, lanky, with a pale, gaunt face, plastered over the forehead with
+damp wisps of straight, black hair. His deep-set, blue-grey eyes swept
+the room.
+
+“Thanks, Dunn,” he said hoarsely. “Let them curse me! I deserve it all.
+It's tough for them, but God knows I've got the worst of it. I've played
+my last game.” His voice broke huskily.
+
+“Oh, rot it, Cameron,” cried Dunn. “Don't be an ass! Your first big
+game--every fellow makes his mistake--”
+
+“Mistake! Mistake! You can't lie easily, Dunn. I was a fool and worse
+than a fool. I let myself down and I wasn't fit. Anyway, I'm through
+with it.” His voice was wild and punctuated with unaccustomed oaths; his
+breath came in great sobs.
+
+“Oh, rot it, Cameron!” again cried Dunn. “Next year you'll be twice the
+man. You're just getting into your game.”
+
+Right loyally his men rallied to their captain:
+
+“Right you are!”
+
+“Why, certainly; no man gets into the game first year!”
+
+“We'll give 'em beans next year, Cameron, old man!”
+
+They were all eager to atone for the criticism which all had held in
+their hearts and which one of them had spoken. But this business was
+serious. To lose a game was bad enough, but to round on a comrade was
+unpardonable; while to lose from the game a half-back of Cameron's
+calibre was unthinkable.
+
+Meanwhile Cameron was tearing off his football togs and hustling on his
+clothes with fierce haste. Dunn kept his eye on him, hurrying his own
+dressing and chatting quietly the while. But long before he was ready
+for the street, Cameron had crushed his things into a bag and was
+looking for his hat.
+
+“Hold on! I'm with you; I'm with you in a jiffy,” said Dunn.
+
+“My hat,” muttered Cameron, searching wildly among the jumble.
+
+“Oh, hang the hat; let it go! Wait for me, Cameron. Where are you
+going?” cried Dunn.
+
+“To the devil,” cried the lad, slamming the door behind him.
+
+“And, by Jove, he'll go, too!” said Nesbitt. “Say, I'm awfully sorry I
+made that break, Dunn. It was beastly low-down to round on a chap like
+that. I'll go after him.”
+
+“Do, old chap! He's frightfully cut up. And get him for to-night. He
+may fight shy of the dinner. But he's down for the pipes, you know,
+and--well, he's just got to be there. Good-bye, you chaps; I'm off!
+And--I say, men!” When Dunn said “men” they all knew it was their
+captain that was speaking. Everybody stood listening. Dunn hesitated a
+moment or two, as if searching for words. “About the dinner to-night:
+I'd like you to remember--I mean--I don't want any man to--oh, hang it,
+you know what I mean! There will be lots of fellows there who will want
+to fill you up. I'd hate to see any of our team--” The captain paused
+embarrassed.
+
+“We tumble, Captain,” said Martin, a medical student from Canada, who
+played quarter. “I'll keep an eye on 'em, you bet!”
+
+Everybody roared; for not only on the quarter-line but also at the
+dinner table the little quarter-back was a marvel of endurance.
+
+“Hear the blooming Colonist!” said Linklater, Martin's comrade on
+the quarter-line, and his greatest friend. “We know who'll want the
+watching, but we'll see to him, Captain.”
+
+“All right, old chap! Sorry I'll have to cut the van. I'm afraid my
+governor's got the carriage here for me.”
+
+But the men all made outcry. There were other plans for him.
+
+“But, Captain; hold on!”
+
+“Aw, now, Captain! Don't forsake us!”
+
+“But I say, Dunn, see us through; we're shy!”
+
+“Don't leave us, Captain, or you'll be sorry,” sang out Martin. “Come
+on, fellows, let's keep next him! We'll give him 'Old Grimes!'”
+
+Already a mighty roar was heard outside. The green, the drive, the
+gateways, and the street were blocked with the wildest football fanatics
+that Edinburgh, and all Scotland could produce. They were waiting for
+the International players, and were bent on carrying their great captain
+down the street, shoulder high; for the enthusiasm of the Scot reaches
+the point of madness only in the hour of glorious defeat. But before
+they were aware, Dunn had shouldered his mighty form through the
+opposing crowds and had got safely into the carriage beside his father
+and his young brother. But the crowd were bound to have him.
+
+“We want him, Docthor,” said a young giant in a tam-o'-shanter. “In
+fac', Docthor,” he argued with a humourous smile, “we maun hae him.”
+
+“Ye'll no' get him, Jock Murchison,” shouted young Rob, standing in
+front of his big brother. “We want him wi' us.”
+
+The crowd laughed gleefully.
+
+“Go for him, Jock! You can easy lick him,” said a voice encouragingly.
+
+“Pit him oot, Docthor,” said Jock, who was a great friend of the family,
+and who had a profound respect for the doctor.
+
+“It's beyond me, Jock, I fear. See yon bantam cock! I doubt ye'll hae to
+be content,” said the doctor, dropping into Jock's kindly Doric.
+
+“Oh, get on there, Murchison,” said Dunn impatiently. “You're not going
+to make an ass of me; make up your mind to that!”
+
+Jock hesitated, meditating a sudden charge, but checked by his respect
+for Doctor Dunn.
+
+“Here, you fellows!” shouted a voice. “Fall in; the band is going to
+play! Get into line there, you Tam-o'-shanter; you're stopping the
+procesh! Now then, wait for the line, everybody!” It was Little Martin
+on top of the van in which were the Scottish players. “Tune, 'Old
+Grimes'; words as follows. Catch on, everybody!”
+
+          “Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+           Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn.”
+
+With a delighted cheer the crowd formed in line, and, led by the little
+quarter-back on top of the van, they set off down the street, two men at
+the heads of the doctor's carriage horses, holding them in place behind
+the van. On went the swaying crowd and on went the swaying chant, with
+Martin, director of ceremonies and Dunn hurling unavailing objurgations
+and entreaties at Jock's head.
+
+Through the uproar a girl's voice reached the doctor's ear:
+
+“Aren't they lovely, Sir?”
+
+The doctor turned to greet a young lady, tall, strong, and with the
+beauty of perfect health rather than of classic feature in her face.
+There was withal a careless disregard of the feminine niceties of dress.
+
+“Oh, Miss Brodie! Will you not come up? We can easily make room.”
+
+“I'd just love to,” cried the girl, “but I'm only a humble member of the
+procession, following the band and the chariot wheels of the conqueror.”
+ Her strong brown face was all aglow with ardour.
+
+“Conqueror!” growled Dunn. “Not much of a conqueror!”
+
+“Why not? Oh fudge! The game? What matters the game? It's the play we
+care about.”
+
+“Well spoken, lassie,” said the doctor. “That's the true sport.”
+
+“Aren't they awful?” cried Dunn. “Look at that young Canadian idiot up
+there.”
+
+“Well, if you ask me, I think he's a perfect dear,” said Miss Brodie,
+deliberately. “I'm sure I know him; anyway I'm going to encourage him
+with my approval.” And she waved her hand at Martin.
+
+The master of ceremonies responded by taking off his hat and making a
+sweeping bow, still keeping up the beat. The crowd, following his eyes,
+turned their attention to the young lady, much to Dunn's delight.
+
+“Oh,” she gasped, “they'll be chanting me next! Good-bye! I'm off!” And
+she darted back to the company of her friends marching on the pavement.
+
+At this point Martin held up both arms and called for silence.
+
+“Second verse,” he shouted, “second verse! Get the words now!”
+
+          “Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done,
+           Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done.”
+
+But the crowd rejected the Colonial version, and rendered in their own
+good Doric:
+
+          “Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done,
+           Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done.”
+
+And so they sang and swayed, following the van till they neared Queen
+Street, down which lay the doctor's course.
+
+“For heaven's sake, can't they be choked off?” groaned Dunn.
+
+The doctor signalled Jock to him.
+
+“Jock,” he said, “we'll just slip through at Queen Street.”
+
+“We'd like awfully to do Princes Street, Sir,” pleaded Jock.
+
+“Princes Street, you born ass!” cried Dunn wrathfully.
+
+“Oh, yes, let them!” cried young Rob, whose delight in the glory of
+his hero had been beyond all measure. “Let them do Princes Street, just
+once!”
+
+But the doctor would not have it. “Jock,” he said quietly, “just get us
+through at Queen Street.”
+
+“All right, Sir,” replied Jock with great regret. “It will be as you
+say.”
+
+Under Jock's orders, when Queen Street was reached, the men at the
+horses' heads suddenly swung the pair from the crowd, and after some
+struggling, got them safely into the clear space, leaving the procession
+to follow the van, loudly cheering their great International captain,
+whose prowess on the field was equalled only by his modesty and his
+hatred of a demonstration.
+
+“Listen to the idiots,” said Dunn in disgust, as the carriage bore them
+away from the cheering crowd.
+
+“Man, they're just fine! Aren't they, Father?” said young Rob in an
+ecstasy of joy.
+
+“They're generous lads, generous lads, boy,” said Doctor Dunn, his old
+eyes shining, for his son's triumph touched him deeply. “That's the only
+way to take defeat.”
+
+“That's all right, Sir,” said Dunn quickly, “but it's rather
+embarrassing, though it's awfully decent of them.”
+
+The doctor's words suggested fresh thoughts to young Rob. “But it was
+terrible; and you were just on the win, too, I know.”
+
+“I'm not so sure at all,” said his brother.
+
+“Oh, it is terrible,” said Bob again.
+
+“Tut, tut, lad! What's so terrible?” said his father. “One side has to
+lose.”
+
+“Oh, it's not that,” said Rob, his lip trembling. “I don't care a sniff
+for the game.”
+
+“What, then?” said his big brother in a voice sharpened by his own
+thoughts.
+
+“Oh, Jack,” said Rob, nervously wreathing his hands, “he--it looked as
+if he--” the lad could not bring himself to say the awful word. Nor was
+there need to ask who it was the boy had in mind.
+
+“What do you mean, Rob?” the captain's voice was impatient, almost
+angry.
+
+Then Rob lost his control. “Oh, Jack, I can't help it; I saw it. Do
+you think--did he really funk it?” His voice broke. He clutched his
+brother's knee and stood with face white and quivering. He had given
+utterance to the terrible suspicion that was torturing his heroic young
+soul. Of his two household gods one was tottering on its pedestal. That
+a football man should funk--the suspicion was too dreadful.
+
+The captain glanced at his father's face. There was gloom there, too,
+and the same terrible suspicion. “No, Sir,” said Dunn, with impressive
+deliberation, answering the look on his father's face, “Cameron is
+no quitter. He didn't funk. I think,” he continued, while Rob's
+tear-stained face lifted eagerly, “I know he was out of condition; he
+had let himself run down last week, since the last match, indeed, got
+out of hand a bit, you know, and that last quarter--you know, Sir, that
+last quarter was pretty stiff--his nerve gave just for a moment.”
+
+“Oh,” said the doctor in a voice of relief, “that explains it. But,” he
+added quickly in a severe tone, “it was very reprehensible for a man on
+the International to let himself get out of shape, very reprehensible
+indeed. An International, mind you!”
+
+“It was my fault, Sir, I'm afraid,” said Dunn, regretfully. “I ought to
+have--”
+
+“Nonsense! A man must be responsible for himself. Control, to be of any
+value, must be ultroneous, as our old professor used to say.”
+
+“That's true, Sir, but I had kept pretty close to him up to the last
+week, you see, and--”
+
+“Bad training, bad training. A trainer's business is to school his men
+to do without him.”
+
+“That is quite right, Sir. I believe I've been making a mistake,” said
+Dunn thoughtfully. “Poor chap, he's awfully cut up!”
+
+“So he should be,” said the doctor sternly. “He had no business to get
+out of condition. The International, mind you!”
+
+“Oh, Father, perhaps he couldn't help it,” cried Rob, whose loyal,
+tender heart was beating hard against his little ribs, “and he looks
+awful. I saw him come out and when I called to him he never looked at me
+once.”
+
+There is no finer loyalty in this world than that of a boy below his
+teens. It is so without calculation, without qualification, and without
+reserve. Dr. Dunn let his eyes rest kindly upon his little flushed face.
+
+“Perhaps so, perhaps so, my boy,” he said, “and I have no doubt he
+regrets it now more than any of us. Where has he gone?”
+
+“Nesbitt's after him, Sir. He'll get him for to-night.”
+
+But as Dunn, fresh from his bath, but still sore and stiff, was
+indulging in a long-banished pipe, Nesbitt came in to say that Cameron
+could not be found.
+
+“And have you not had your tub yet?” said his captain.
+
+“Oh, that's all right! You know I feel awfully about that beastly remark
+of mine.”
+
+“Oh, let it go,” said Dunn. “That'll be all right. You get right away
+home for your tub and get freshened up for to-night. I'll look after
+Cameron. You know he is down for the pipes. He's simply got to be there
+and I'll get him if I have to bring him in a crate, pipes, kilt and
+all.”
+
+And Nesbitt, knowing that Dunn never promised what he could not fulfil,
+went off to his tub in fair content. He knew his captain.
+
+As Dunn was putting on his coat Rob came in, distress written on his
+face.
+
+“Are you going to get Cameron, Jack?” he asked timidly. “I asked
+Nesbitt, and he said--”
+
+“Now look here, youngster,” said his big brother, then paused. The
+distress in the lad's face checked his words. “Now, Rob,” he said
+kindly, “you needn't fret about this. Cameron is all right.”
+
+The kind tone broke down the lad's control. He caught his brother's
+arm. “Say, Jack, are you sure--he didn't--funk?” His voice dropped to a
+whisper.
+
+Then his big brother sat down and drew the lad to his side, “Now listen,
+Rob; I'm going to tell you the exact truth. CAMERON DID NOT FUNK. The
+truth is, he wasn't fit,--he ought to have been, but he wasn't,--and
+because he wasn't fit he came mighty near quitting--for a moment, I'm
+sure, he felt like it, because his nerve was gone,--but he didn't.
+Remember, he felt like quitting and didn't, And that's the finest thing
+a chap can do,--never to quit, even when he feels like it. Do you see?”
+
+The lad's head went up. “I see,” he said, his eyes glowing. “It was
+fine! I'm awfully glad he didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it.
+You tell him for me.” His idol was firm again on his pedestal.
+
+“All right, old chap,” said his big brother. “You'll never quit, I bet!”
+
+“Not if I'm fit, will I?”
+
+“Right you are! Keep fit--that's the word!”
+
+And with that the big brother passed out to find the man who was
+writhing in an agony of self-contempt; for in the face of all Scotland
+and in the hour of her need he had failed because he wasn't fit.
+
+After an hour Dunn found his man, fixed in the resolve to there and then
+abandon the game with all the appurtenances thereof, and among these the
+dinner. Mightily his captain laboured with him, plying him with varying
+motives,--the honour of the team was at stake; the honour of the country
+was at stake; his own honour, for was he not down on the programme for
+the pipes? It was all in vain. In dogged gloom the half-back listened
+unmoved.
+
+At length Dunn, knowing well the Highlander's tender heart, cunningly
+touched another string and told of Rob's distress and subsequent relief,
+and then gave his half-back the boy's message. “I promised to tell you,
+and I almost forgot. The little beggar was terribly worked up, and as
+I remember it, this is what he said: 'I'm awfully glad he didn't quit,
+'specially when he felt like it.' Those were his very words.”
+
+Then Cameron buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud, while Dunn,
+knowing that he had reached his utmost, stood silent, waiting. Suddenly
+Cameron flung up his head:
+
+“Did he say I didn't quit? Good little soul! I'll go; I'd go through
+hell for that!”
+
+And so it came that not in a crate, but in the gallant garb of a
+Highland gentleman, pipes and all, Cameron was that night in his place,
+fighting out through the long hilarious night the fiercest fight of his
+life, chiefly because of the words that lay like a balm to his lacerated
+heart:
+
+“He didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+
+
+Just over the line of the Grampians, near the head-waters of the Spey, a
+glen, small and secluded, lies bedded deep among the hills,--a glen that
+when filled with sunlight on a summer day lies like a cup of gold; the
+gold all liquid and flowing over the cup's rim. And hence they call the
+glen “The Cuagh Oir,” The Glen of the Cup of Gold.
+
+At the bottom of the Cuagh, far down, a little loch gleams, an oval of
+emerald or of sapphire, according to the sky above that smiles into
+its depths. On dark days the loch can gloom, and in storm it can rage,
+white-lipped, just like the people of the Glen.
+
+Around the emerald or sapphire loch farmlands lie sunny and warm, set
+about their steadings, and are on this spring day vivid with green,
+or rich in their red-browns where the soil lies waiting for the seed.
+Beyond the sunny fields the muirs of brown heather and bracken climb
+abruptly up to the dark-massed firs, and they to the Cuagh's rim. But
+from loch to rim, over field and muir and forest, the golden, liquid
+light ever flows on a sunny day and fills the Cuagh Oir till it runs
+over.
+
+On the east side of the loch, among some ragged firs, a rambling Manor
+House, ivy-covered and ancient, stood; and behind it, some distance
+away, the red tiling of a farm-cottage, with its steading clustering
+near, could be seen. About the old Manor House the lawn and garden
+told of neglect and decay, but at the farmhouse order reigned. The trim
+little garden plot, the trim lawn, the trim walks and hedges, the trim
+thatch of the roof, the trim do'-cote above it, the trim stables, byres,
+barns and yard of the steading, proclaimed the prudent, thrifty care of
+a prudent, thrifty soul.
+
+And there in the steading quadrangle, amidst the feathered creatures,
+hens, cocks and chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys and bubbly-jocks, stood
+the mistress of the Manor and prudent, thrifty manager of the farm,--a
+girl of nineteen, small, well-made, and trim as the farmhouse and its
+surroundings, with sunny locks and sunny face and sunny brown eyes. Her
+shapely hands were tanned and coarsened by the weather; her little feet
+were laced in stout country-made brogues; her dress was a plain brown
+winsey, kilted and belted open at the full round neck; the kerchief that
+had fallen from her sunny, tangled hair was of simple lawn, spotless
+and fresh; among her fowls she stood, a country lass in habit and
+occupation, but in face and form, in look and poise, a lady every inch
+of her. Dainty and daunty, sweet and strong, she stood, “the bonny like
+o' her bonny mither,” as said the South Country nurse, Nannie, who had
+always lived at the Glen Cuagh House from the time that that mother was
+a baby; “but no' sae fine like,” the nurse would add with a sigh. For
+she remembered ever the gentle airs and the high-bred, stately grace of
+Mary Robertson,--for though married to Captain Cameron of Erracht,
+Mary Robertson she continued to be to the Glen folk,--the lady of her
+ancestral manor, now for five years lain under the birch trees yonder by
+the church tower that looked out from its clustering firs and birches
+on the slope beyond the loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed
+from them, but like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of
+the heather and the firs, the aroma of her saintly life still filled the
+Glen.
+
+A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, “the bonny
+like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine,” had somehow slipped
+into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide
+demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift
+which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her
+poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless,
+doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling
+womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable
+returns. And this, too, with so little “clash and claver” that her
+father only knew that somehow things were more comfortable about the
+place, and that there were fewer calls than formerly upon his purse
+for the upkeep of the House and home. Indeed, the less appeared Moira's
+management, both in the routine of the House and in the care of the
+farm, the more peacefully flowed the current of their life. It seriously
+annoyed the Captain at intervals when he came upon his daughter
+directing operations in barnyard or byre. That her directing meant
+anything more than a girlish meddling in matters that were his entire
+concern and about which he had already given or was about to give
+orders, the Captain never dreamed. That things about the House were
+somehow prospering in late years he set down to his own skill and
+management and his own knowledge of scientific farming; a knowledge
+which, moreover, he delighted to display at the annual dinners of the
+Society for the Improvement of Agriculture in the Glen, of which he was
+honourary secretary; a knowledge which he aired in lengthy articles in
+local agricultural and other periodicals; a knowledge which, however,
+at times became the occasion of dismay to his thrifty daughter and her
+Highland farmer, and not seldom the occasion of much useless expenditure
+of guineas hard won from pigs and poultry. True, more serious loss was
+often averted by the facility with which the Captain turned from one
+scheme to another, happily forgetful of orders he had given and which
+were never carried out; and by the invincible fabianism of the Highland
+farmer, who, listening with gravest attention to the Captain's orders
+delivered in the most definite and impressive terms, would make
+reply, “Yess, yess indeed, I know; she will be attending to it
+immediately--tomorrow, or fery soon whateffer.” It cannot be said that
+this capacity for indefinite procrastination rendered the Highlander any
+less valuable to his “tear young leddy.”
+
+The days on which Postie appeared with a large bundle of mail were
+accounted good days by the young mistress, for on these and succeeding
+days her father would be “busy with his correspondence.” And these days
+were not few, for the Captain held many honourary offices in county
+and other associations for the promotion and encouragement of various
+activities, industrial, social, and philanthropic. Of the importance of
+these activities to the county and national welfare, the Captain had no
+manner of doubt, as his voluminous correspondence testified. As to the
+worth of his correspondence his daughter, too, held the highest
+opinion, estimating her father, as do all dutiful daughters, at his own
+valuation. For the Captain held himself in high esteem; not simply for
+his breeding, which was of the Camerons of Erracht; nor for his manners,
+which were of the most courtly, if occasionally marred by fretfulness;
+nor for his dress, which was that of a Highland gentleman, perfect in
+detail and immaculate, but for his many and public services rendered to
+the people, the county, and the nation. Indeed his mere membership dues
+to the various associations, societies and committees with which he
+was connected, and his dining expenses contingent upon their annual
+meetings, together with the amounts expended upon the equipment and
+adornment of his person proper to such festive occasions, cut so deep
+into the slender resources of the family as to give his prudent daughter
+some considerable concern; though it is safe to say that such concern
+her father would have regarded not only as unnecessary but almost as
+impertinent.
+
+The Captain's correspondence, however extensive, was on the whole
+regarded by his daughter as a good rather than an evil, in that it
+secured her domestic and farm activities from disturbing incursions.
+This spring morning Moira's apprehensions awakened by an extremely light
+mail, were realized, as she beheld her father bearing down upon her
+with an open letter in his hand. His handsome face was set in a fretful
+frown.
+
+“Moira, my daughter!” he exclaimed, “how often have I spoke to you about
+this--this--unseemly--ah--mussing and meddling in the servants' duties!”
+
+“But, Papa,” cried his daughter, “look at these dear things! I love them
+and they all know me, and they behave so much better when I feed them
+myself. Do they not, Janet?” she added, turning to the stout and sonsy
+farmer's daughter standing by.
+
+“Indeed, then, they are clever at knowing you,” replied the maid, whose
+particular duty was to hold a reserve supply of food for the fowls that
+clamoured and scrambled about her young mistress.
+
+“Look at that vain bubbly-jock there, Papa,” cried Moira, “he loves to
+have me notice him. Conceited creature! Look out, Papa, he does not like
+your kilts!” The bubbly-jock, drumming and scraping and sidling ever
+nearer to the Captain's naked knees, finally with great outcry flew
+straight at the affronting kilts.
+
+“Get off with you, you beast!” cried the Captain, kicking vainly at the
+wrathful bird, and at the same time beating a wise retreat before his
+onset.
+
+Moira rushed to his rescue. “Hoot, Jock! Shame on ye!” she cried. “There
+now, you proud thing, be off! He's just jealous of your fine appearance,
+Papa.” With her kerchief she flipped into submission the haughty
+bubbly-jock and drew her father out of the steading. “Come away, Papa,
+and see my pigs.”
+
+But the Captain was in no humour for pigs. “Nonsense, child,” he cried,
+“let us get out of this mess! Besides, I wish to speak to you on a
+matter of importance.” They passed through the gate. “It is about
+Allan,” he continued, “and I'm really vexed. Something terrible has
+happened.”
+
+“Allan!” the girl's voice was faint and her sunny cheek grew white.
+“About Allan!” she said again. “And what is wrong with Allan, Papa?”
+
+“That's what I do not know,” replied her father fretfully; “but I
+must away to Edinburgh this very day, so you'll need to hasten with my
+packing. And bid Donald bring round the cart at once.”
+
+But Moira stood dazed. “But, Papa, you have not told me what is wrong
+with Allan.” Her voice was quiet, but with a certain insistence in it
+that at once irritated her father and compelled his attention.
+
+“Tut, tut, Moira, I have just said I do not know.”
+
+“Is he ill, Papa?” Again the girl's voice grew faint.
+
+“No, no, not ill. I wish he were! I mean it is some business matter you
+cannot understand. But it must be serious if Mr. Rae asks my presence
+immediately. So you must hasten, child.”
+
+In less than half an hour Donald and the cart were waiting at the door,
+and Moira stood in the hall with her father's bag ready packed. “Oh, I
+am glad,” she said, as she helped her father with his coat, “that Allan
+is not ill. There can't be much wrong.”
+
+“Wrong! Read that, child!” cried the father impatiently.
+
+She took the letter and read, her face reflecting her changing emotions,
+perplexity, surprise, finally indignation. “'A matter for the police,'”
+ she quoted, scornfully, handing her father the letter. “'A matter for
+the police' indeed! My but that Mr. Rae is the clever man! The police!
+Does he think my brother Allan would cheat?--or steal, perhaps!” she
+panted, in her indignant scorn.
+
+“Mr. Rae is a careful man and a very able lawyer,” replied her father.
+
+“Able! Careful! He's an auld wife, and that's what he is! You can tell
+him so for me.” She was trembling and white with a wrath her father had
+never before seen in her. He stood gazing at her in silent surprise.
+
+“Papa,” cried Moira passionately, answering his look, “do you think what
+he is saying? I know my brother Allan clean through to the heart. He
+is wild at times, and might rage perhaps and--and--break things, but he
+will not lie nor cheat. He will die first, and that I warrant you.”
+
+Still her father stood gazing upon her as she stood proudly erect,
+her pale face alight with lofty faith in her brother and scorn of his
+traducer. “My child, my child,” he said, huskily, “how like you are to
+your mother! Thank God! Indeed it may be you're right! God grant it!” He
+drew her closely to him.
+
+“Papa, Papa,” she whispered, clinging to him, while her voice broke in a
+sob, “you know Allan will not lie. You know it, don't you, Papa?”
+
+“I hope not, dear child, I hope not,” he replied, still holding her to
+him.
+
+“Papa,” she cried wildly, “say you believe me.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I do believe you. Thank God, I do believe you. The boy is
+straight.”
+
+At that word she let him go. That her father should not believe in Allan
+was to her loyal heart an intolerable pain. Now Allan would have someone
+to stand for him against “that lawyer” and all others who might seek to
+do him harm. At the House door she stood watching her father drive down
+through the ragged firs to the highroad, and long after he had passed
+out of sight she still stood gazing. Upon the church tower rising out of
+its birches and its firs her eyes were resting, but her heart was
+with the little mound at the tower's foot, and as she gazed, the tears
+gathered and fell.
+
+“Oh, Mother!” she whispered. “Mother, Mother! You know Allan would not
+lie!”
+
+A sudden storm was gathering. In a brief moment the world and the Glen
+had changed. But half an hour ago and the Cuagh Oir was lying glorious
+with its flowing gold. Now, from the Cuagh as from her world, the
+flowing gold was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+
+
+The senior member of the legal firm of Rae & Macpherson was perplexed
+and annoyed, indeed angry, and angry chiefly because he was perplexed.
+He resented such a condition of mind as reflecting upon his legal and
+other acumen. Angry, too, he was because he had been forced to accept,
+the previous day, a favour from a firm--Mr. Rae would not condescend to
+say a rival firm--with which he for thirty years had maintained only
+the most distant and formal relations, to wit, the firm of Thomlinson &
+Shields. Messrs. Rae & Macpherson were family solicitors and for three
+generations had been such; hence there gathered about the firm a fine
+flavour of assured respectability which only the combination of solid
+integrity and undoubted antiquity can give. Messrs. Rae & Macpherson had
+not yielded in the slightest degree to that commercialising spirit
+which would transform a respectable and self-respecting firm of family
+solicitors into a mere financial agency; a transformation which Mr. Rae
+would consider a degradation of an ancient and honourable profession.
+This uncompromising attitude toward the commercialising spirit of the
+age had doubtless something to do with their losing the solicitorship
+for the Bank of Scotland, which went to the firm of Thomlinson &
+Shields, to Mr. Rae's keen, though unacknowledged, disappointment;
+a disappointment that arose not so much from the loss of the very
+honourable and lucrative appointment, and more from the fact that the
+appointment should go to such a firm as that of Thomlinson & Shields.
+For the firm of Thomlinson & Shields were of recent origin, without
+ancestry, boasting an existence of only some thirty-five years, and, as
+one might expect of a firm of such recent origin, characterised by the
+commercialising modern spirit in its most pronounced and objectionable
+form. Mr. Rae, of course, would never condescend to hostile criticism,
+dismissing Messrs. Thomlinson & Shields from the conversation with the
+single remark, “Pushing, Sir, very pushing, indeed.”
+
+It was, then, no small humiliation for Mr. Rae to be forced to accept
+a favour from Mr. Thomlinson. “Had it been any other than Cameron,” he
+said to himself, as he sat in his somewhat dingy and dusty office,
+“I would let him swither. But Cameron! I must see to it and at once.”
+ Behind the name there rose before Mr. Rae's imagination a long line
+of brave men and fair women for whose name and fame and for whose good
+estate it had been his duty and the duty of those who had preceded him
+in office to assume responsibility.
+
+“Young fool! Much he cares for the honour of his family! I wonder what's
+at the bottom of this business! Looks ugly! Decidedly ugly! The first
+thing is to find him.” A messenger had failed to discover young Cameron
+at his lodgings, and had brought back the word that for a week he
+had not been seen there. “He must be found. They have given me till
+to-morrow. I cannot ask a further stay of proceedings; I cannot and I
+will not.” It made Mr. Rae more deeply angry that he knew quite well
+if necessity arose he would do just that very thing. “Then there's his
+father coming in this evening. We simply must find him. But how and
+where?”
+
+Mr. Rae was not unskilled in such a matter. “Find a man, find his
+friends,” he muttered. “Let's see. What does the young fool do? What
+are his games? Ah! Football! I have it! Young Dunn is my man.” Hence to
+young Dunn forthwith Mr. Rae betook himself.
+
+It was still early in the day when Mr. Rae's mild, round, jolly,
+clean-shaven face beamed in upon Mr. Dunn, who sat with dictionaries,
+texts, and class notebooks piled high about him, burrowing in that
+mound of hidden treasure which it behooves all prudent aspirants for
+university honours to diligently mine as the fateful day approaches.
+With Mr. Dunn time had now come to be measured by moments, and every
+moment golden. But the wrathful impatience that had gathered in his
+face at the approach of an intruder was overwhelmed in astonishment at
+recognising so distinguished a visitor as Mr. Rae the Writer.
+
+“Ah, Mr. Dunn,” said Mr. Rae briskly, “a moment only, one moment, I
+assure you. Well do I know the rage which boils behind that genial smile
+of yours. Don't deny it, Sir. Have I not suffered all the pangs, with
+just a week before the final ordeal? This is your final, I believe?”
+
+“I hope so,” said Mr. Dunn somewhat ruefully.
+
+“Yes, yes, and a very fine career, a career befitting your father's
+son. And I sincerely trust, Sir, that as your career has been marked by
+honour, your exit shall be with distinction; and all the more that I am
+not unaware of your achievements in another department of--ah--shall I
+say endeavour. I have seen your name, Sir, mentioned more than once,
+to the honour of our university, in athletic events.” At this point Mr.
+Rae's face broke into a smile.
+
+An amazing smile was Mr. Rae's; amazing both in the suddenness of
+its appearing and in the suddenness of its vanishing. Upon a face of
+supernatural gravity, without warning, without beginning, the smile,
+broad, full and effulgent, was instantaneously present. Then equally
+without warning and without fading the smile ceased to be. Under its
+effulgence the observer unfamiliar with Mr. Rae's smile was moved, to a
+responsive geniality of expression, but in the full tide of this emotion
+he found himself suddenly regarding a face of such preternatural gravity
+as rebuked the very possibility or suggestion of geniality. Before the
+smile Mr. Rae's face was like a house, with the shutters up and the
+family plunged in gloom. When the smile broke forth every shutter was
+flung wide to the pouring sunlight, and every window full of flowers
+and laughing children. Then instantly and without warning the house
+was blank, lifeless, and shuttered once more, leaving you helplessly
+apologetic that you had ever been guilty of the fatuity of associating
+anything but death and gloom with its appearance.
+
+To young Mr. Dunn it was extremely disconcerting to discover himself
+smiling genially into a face of the severest gravity, and eyes that
+rebuked him for his untimely levity. “Oh, I beg pardon,” exclaimed Mr.
+Dunn hastily, “I thought--”
+
+“Not at all, Sir,” replied Mr. Rae. “As I was saying, I have observed
+from time to time the distinctions you have achieved in the realm of
+athletics. And that reminds me of my business with you to-day,--a sad
+business, a serious business, I fear.” The solemn impressiveness of
+Mr. Rae's manner awakened in Mr. Dunn an awe amounting to dread. “It is
+young Cameron, a friend of yours, I believe, Sir.”
+
+“Cameron, Sir!” echoed Dunn.
+
+“Yes, Cameron. Does he, or did he not have a place on your team?”
+
+Dunn sat upright and alert. “Yes, Sir. What's the matter, Sir?”
+
+“First of all, do you know where he is? I have tried his lodgings. He is
+not there. It is important that I find him to-day, extremely important;
+in fact, it is necessary; in short, Mr. Dunn,--I believe I can confide
+in your discretion,--if I do not find him to-day, the police will
+to-morrow.”
+
+“The police, Sir!” Dunn's face expressed an awful fear. In the heart of
+the respectable Briton the very mention of the police in connection
+with the private life of any of his friends awakens a feeling of gravest
+apprehension. No wonder Mr. Dunn's face went pale! “The police!” he said
+a second time. “What for?”
+
+Mr. Rae remained silent.
+
+“If it is a case of debts, Sir,” suggested Mr. Dunn, “why, I would
+gladly--”
+
+Mr. Rae waved him aside. “It is sufficient to say, Mr. Dunn, that we are
+the family solicitors, as we have been for his father, his grandfather
+and great-grandfather before him.”
+
+“Oh, certainly, Sir. I beg pardon,” said Mr. Dunn hastily.
+
+“Not at all; quite proper; does you credit. But it is not a case of
+debts, though it is a case of money; in fact, Sir,--I feel sure I may
+venture to confide in you,--he is in trouble with his bank, the Bank
+of Scotland. The young man, or someone using his name, has been guilty
+of--ah--well, an irregularity, a decided irregularity, an irregularity
+which the bank seems inclined to--to--follow up; indeed, I may say,
+instructions have been issued through their solicitors to that effect.
+Mr. Thomlinson was good enough to bring this to my attention, and to
+offer a stay of proceedings for a day.”
+
+“Can I do anything, Sir?” said Dunn. “I'm afraid I've neglected him. The
+truth is, I've been in an awful funk about my exams, and I haven't kept
+in touch as I should.”
+
+“Find him, Mr. Dunn, find him. His father is coming to town this
+evening, which makes it doubly imperative. Find him; that is, if you can
+spare the time.”
+
+“Of course I can. I'm awfully sorry I've lost touch with him. He's been
+rather down all this winter; in fact, ever since the International he
+seems to have lost his grip of himself.”
+
+“Ah, indeed!” said Mr. Rae. “I remember that occasion; in fact, I was
+present myself,” he admitted. “I occasionally seek to renew my youth.”
+ Mr. Rae's smile broke forth, but anxiety for his friend saved Mr.
+Dunn from being caught again in any responsive smile. “Bring him to my
+office, if you can, any time to-day. Good-bye, Sir. Your spirit does you
+credit. But it is the spirit which I should expect in a man who plays
+the forward line as you play it.”
+
+Mr. Dunn blushed crimson. “Is there anything else I could do? Anyone I
+could see? I mean, for instance, could my father serve in any way?”
+
+“Ah, a good suggestion!” Mr. Rae seized his right ear,--a characteristic
+action of his when in deep thought,--twisted it into a horn, and pulled
+it quite severely as if to assure himself that that important feature
+of his face was firmly fixed in its place. “A very good suggestion! Your
+father knows Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the bank, I believe.”
+
+“Very well, Sir, I think,” answered Mr. Dunn. “I am sure he would see
+him. Shall I call him in, Sir?”
+
+“Nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort; don't think of it! I mean,
+let there be nothing formal in this matter. If Mr. Dunn should chance to
+meet Mr. Sheratt, that is, casually, so to speak, and if young Cameron's
+name should come up, and if Mr. Dunn should use his influence, his very
+great influence, with Mr. Sheratt, the bank might be induced to take a
+more lenient view of the case. I think I can trust you with this.” Mr.
+Rae shook the young man warmly by the hand, beamed on him for one brief
+moment with his amazing smile, presented to his answering smile a face
+of unspeakable gravity, and left him extremely uncertain as to the
+proper appearance for his face, under the circumstances.
+
+Before Mr. Rae had gained the street Dunn was planning his campaign; for
+no matter what business he had in hand, Dunn always worked by plan. By
+the time he himself had reached the street his plan was formed. “No use
+trying his digs. Shouldn't be surprised if that beast Potts has got
+him. Rotten bounder, Potts, and worse! Better go round his way.” And
+oscillating in his emotions between disgust and rage at Cameron for his
+weakness and his folly, and disgust and rage at himself for his neglect
+of his friend, Dunn took his way to the office of the Insurance Company
+which was honoured by the services of Mr. Potts.
+
+The Insurance Company knew nothing of the whereabouts of Mr. Potts.
+Indeed, the young man who assumed responsibility for the information
+appeared to treat the very existence of Mr. Potts as a matter of slight
+importance to his company; so slight, indeed, that the company had not
+found it necessary either to the stability of its business or to the
+protection of its policy holders--a prime consideration with Insurance
+Companies--to keep in touch with Mr. Potts. That gentleman had left for
+the East coast a week ago, and that was the end of the matter as far as
+the clerk of the Insurance Company was concerned.
+
+At his lodgings Mr. Dunn discovered an even more callous indifference to
+Mr. Potts and his interests. The landlady, under the impression that
+in Mr. Dunn she beheld a prospective lodger, at first received him with
+that deferential reserve which is the characteristic of respectable
+lodging-house keepers in that city of respectable lodgers and
+respectable lodging-house keepers. When, however, she learned the real
+nature of Mr. Dunn's errand, she became immediately transformed. In a
+voice shrill with indignation she repudiated Mr. Potts and his affairs,
+and seemed chiefly concerned to re-establish her own reputation for
+respectability, which she seemed to consider as being somewhat shattered
+by that of her lodger. Mr. Dunn was embarrassed both by her volubility
+and by her obvious determination to fasten upon him a certain amount of
+responsibility for the character and conduct of Mr. Potts.
+
+“Do you know where Mr. Potts is now, and have you any idea when he may
+return?” inquired Mr. Dunn, seizing a fortunate pause.
+
+“Am I no' juist tellin' ye,” cried the landlady, in her excitement
+reverting to her native South Country dialect, “that I keep nae coont o'
+Mr. Potts' stravagins? An' as to his return, I ken naething aboot that
+an' care less. He's paid what he's been owing me these three months an'
+that's all I care aboot him.”
+
+“I am glad to hear that,” said Mr. Dunn heartily.
+
+“An' glad I am tae, for it's feared I was for my pay a month back.”
+
+“When did he pay up?” inquired Mr. Dunn, scenting a clue.
+
+“A week come Saturday,--or was it Friday?--the day he came in with a
+young man, a friend of his. And a night they made of it, I remember,”
+ replied the landlady, recovering command of herself and of her speech
+under the influence of Mr. Dunn's quiet courtesy.
+
+“Did you know the young man that was with him?”
+
+“Yes, it was young Cameron. He had been coming about a good deal.”
+
+“Oh, indeed! And have you seen Mr. Cameron since?”
+
+“No; he never came except in company with Mr. Potts.”
+
+And with this faint clue Mr. Dunn was forced to content himself, and to
+begin a systematic search of Cameron's haunts in the various parts of
+the town. It was Martin, his little quarter-back, that finally put him
+on the right track. He had heard Cameron's pipes not more than an hour
+ago at his lodgings in Morningside Road.
+
+“But what do you want of Cameron these days?” inquired the young
+Canadian. “There's nothing on just now, is there, except this infernal
+grind?”
+
+Dunn hesitated. “Oh, I just want him. In fact, he has got into some
+trouble.”
+
+“There you are!” exclaimed Martin in disgust. “Why in thunder should
+you waste time on him? You've taken enough trouble with him this winter
+already. It's his own funeral, ain't it?”
+
+Dunn looked at him a half moment in surprise. “Well, you can't go back
+on a fellow when he's down, can you?”
+
+“Look here, Dunn, I've often thought I'd give you a little wise advice.
+This sounds bad, I know, but there's a lot of blamed rot going around
+this old town just on this point. When a fellow gets on the bum and gets
+into a hole he knows well that there'll be a lot of people tumbling over
+each other to get him out, hence he deliberately and cheerfully slides
+in. If he knew he'd have to scramble out himself he wouldn't be so
+blamed keen to get in. If he's in a hole let him frog it for awhile, by
+Jingo! He's hitting the pace, let him take his bumps! He's got to take
+'em sooner or later, and better sooner than later, for the sooner he
+takes 'em the quicker he'll learn. Bye-bye! I know you think I'm a
+semi-civilised Colonial. I ain't; I'm giving you some wisdom gained from
+experience. You can't swim by hanging on to a root, you bet!”
+
+Dunn listened in silence, then replied slowly, “I say, old chap, there's
+something in that. My governor said something like that some time ago:
+'A trainer's business is to train his men to do without him.'”
+
+“There you are!” cried Martin. “That's philosophy! Mine's just horse
+sense.”
+
+“Still,” said Dunn thoughtfully, “when a chap's in you've got to lend
+a hand; you simply can't stand and look on.” Dunn's words, tone, and
+manner revealed the great, honest heart of human sympathy which he
+carried in his big frame.
+
+“Oh, hang it,” cried Martin, “I suppose so! Guess I'll go along with
+you. I can't forget you pulled me out, too.”
+
+“Thanks, old chap,” cried Dunn, brightening up, “but you're busy, and--”
+
+“Busy! By Jingo, you'd think so if you'd watch me over night and hear my
+brain sizzle. But come along, I'm going to stay with you!”
+
+But Dunn's business was private, and could be shared with no one. It was
+difficult to check his friend's newly-aroused ardour. “I say, old chap,”
+ he said, “you really don't need to come along. I can do--”
+
+“Oh, go to blazes! I know you too well! Don't you worry about me! You've
+got me going, and I'm in on this thing; so come along!”
+
+Then Dunn grew firm. “Thanks, awfully, old man,” he said, “but it's a
+thing I'd rather do alone, if you don't mind.”
+
+“Oh!” said Martin. “All right! But say, if you need me I'm on. You're a
+great old brick, though! Tra-la!”
+
+As Martin had surmised, Dunn found Cameron in his rooms. He was lying
+upon his bed enjoying the luxury of a cigarette. “Hello! Come right
+in, old chap!” he cried, in gay welcome. “Have a--no, you won't have a
+cigarette--have a pipe?”
+
+Dunn gazed at him, conscious of a rising tide of mingled emotions,
+relief, wrath, pity, disgust. “Well, I'll be hanged!” at last he said
+slowly. “But you've given us a chase! Where in the world have you been?”
+
+“Been? Oh, here and there, enjoying my emancipation from the thralldom
+in which doubtless you are still sweating.”
+
+“And what does that mean exactly?”
+
+“Mean? It means that I've cut the thing,--notebooks, lectures,
+professors, exams, 'the hale hypothick,' as our Nannie would say at
+home.”
+
+“Oh rot, Cameron! You don't mean it?”
+
+“Circumspice. Do you behold any suggestion of knotted towels and the
+midnight oil?”
+
+Dunn gazed about the room. It was in a whirl of confusion. Pipes and
+pouches, a large box of cigarettes, a glass and a half-empty decanter,
+were upon the table; boots, caps, golf-clubs, coats, lay piled in
+various corners. “Pardon the confusion, dear sir,” cried Cameron
+cheerfully, “and lay it not to the charge of my landlady. That estimable
+woman was determined to make entry this afternoon, but was denied.”
+ Cameron's manner one of gay and nervous bravado.
+
+“Come, Cameron,” said Dunn sadly, “what does this mean? You're not
+serious; you're not chucking your year?”
+
+“Just that, dear fellow, and nothing less. Might as well as be
+ploughed.”
+
+“And what then are you going to do?” Dunn's voice was full of a great
+pity. “What about your people? What about your father? And, by Jove,
+that reminds me, he's coming to town this evening. You know they've been
+trying to find you everywhere this last day or two.”
+
+“And who are 'they,' pray?”
+
+“Who? The police,” said Dunn bluntly, determined to shock his friend
+into seriousness.
+
+Cameron sat up quickly. “The police? What do you mean, Dunn?”
+
+“What it means I do not know, Cameron, I assure you. Don't you?”
+
+“The police!” said Cameron again. “It's a joke, Dunn.”
+
+“I wish to Heaven it were, Cameron, old man! But I have it straight from
+Mr. Rae, your family solicitor. They want you.”
+
+“Old Rae?” exclaimed Cameron. “Now what the deuce does this all mean?”
+
+“Don't you really know, old chap?” said Dunn kindly, anxiety and relief
+struggling in his face.
+
+“No more than you. What did the old chap say, anyway?”
+
+“Something about a Bank; an irregularity, he called it, a serious
+irregularity. He's had it staved off for a day.”
+
+“The Bank? What in Heaven's name have I got to do with the Bank? Let's
+see; I was there a week or ten days ago with--” he paused. “Hang it,
+I can't remember!” He ran his hands through his long black locks, and
+began to pace the room.
+
+Dunn sat watching him, hope and fear, doubt and faith filling his heart
+in succession.
+
+Cameron sat down with his face in his hands. “What is it, old man? Can't
+I help you?” said Dunn, putting his hand on his shoulder.
+
+“I can't remember,” muttered Cameron. “I've been going it some, you
+know. I had been falling behind and getting money off Potts. Two weeks
+ago I got my monthly five-pound cheque, and about ten days ago the usual
+fifty-pound cheque to square things up for the year, fees, etc. Seems to
+me I cashed those. Or did Potts? Anyway I paid Potts. The deuce take it,
+I can't remember! You know I can carry a lot of Scotch and never show
+it, but it plays the devil with my memory.” Cameron was growing more and
+more excited.
+
+“Well, old chap, we must go right along to Mr. Rae's office. You don't
+mind?”
+
+“Mind? Not a bit. Old Rae has no love for me,--I get him into too much
+trouble,--but he's a straight old boy. Just wait till I brush up a bit.”
+ He poured out from a decanter half a glass of whiskey.
+
+“I'd cut that out if I were you,” said Dunn.
+
+“Later, perhaps,” replied Cameron, “but not to-day.”
+
+Within twenty minutes they were ushered into Mr. Rae's private office.
+That gentleman received them with a gravity that was portentous in its
+solemnity. “Well, Sir, you have succeeded in your task,” he said to Mr.
+Dunn. “I wish to thank you for this service, a most valuable service to
+me, to this young gentleman, and to his family; though whether much may
+come of it remains to be seen.”
+
+“Oh, thanks,” said Dunn hurriedly. “I hope everything will be all
+right.” He rose to go. Cameron looked at him quickly. There was no
+mistaking the entreaty in his face.
+
+Mr. Rae spoke somewhat more hurriedly than his wont. “If it is not
+asking too much, and if you can still spare time, your presence might be
+helpful, Mr. Dunn.”
+
+“Stay if you can, old chap,” said Cameron. “I don't know what this thing
+is, but I'll do better if you're in the game, too.” It was an appeal to
+his captain, and after that nothing on earth could have driven Dunn from
+his side.
+
+At this point the door opened and the clerk announced, “Captain Cameron,
+Sir.”
+
+Mr. Rae rose hastily. “Tell him,” he said quickly, “to wait--”
+
+He was too late. The Captain had followed close upon the heels of the
+clerk, and came in with a rush. “Now, what does all this mean?”
+ he cried, hardly waiting to shake hands with his solicitor. “What
+mischief--?”
+
+“I beg your pardon, Captain,” said Mr. Rae calmly, “let me present Mr.
+Dunn, Captain Dunn, I might say, of International fame.” The solicitor's
+smile broke forth with its accustomed unexpectedness, but had vanished
+long before Mr. Dunn in his embarrassment had finished shaking hands
+with Captain Cameron.
+
+The Captain then turned to his son. “Well, Sir, and what is this affair
+of yours that calls me to town at a most inconvenient time?” His tone
+was cold, fretful, and suspicious.
+
+Young Cameron's face, which had lighted up with a certain eagerness
+and appeal as he had turned toward his father, as if in expectation of
+sympathy and help, froze at this greeting into sullen reserve. “I don't
+know any more than yourself, Sir,” he answered. “I have just come into
+this office this minute.”
+
+“Well, then, what is it, Mr. Rae?” The Captain's voice and manner were
+distinctly imperious, if not overbearing.
+
+Mr. Rae, however, was king of his own castle. “Will you not be seated,
+Sir?” he said, pointing to a chair. “Sit down, young gentlemen.”
+
+His quiet dignity, his perfect courtesy, recalled the Captain to
+himself. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Rae, but I am really much disturbed.
+Can we begin at once?” He glanced as he spoke at Mr. Dunn, who
+immediately rose.
+
+“Sit down, Mr. Dunn,” said Mr. Rae quietly. “I have asked this young
+gentleman,” he continued, turning to the Captain, “to remain. He has
+already given me valuable assistance. I fancy he may be able to serve us
+still further, if he will be so good.”
+
+Mr. Dunn bowed in silence.
+
+“Now let us proceed with what must be an exceedingly painful matter for
+us all, and out of which nothing but extreme candour on the part of Mr.
+Allan here, and great wisdom on the part of us all, can possibly extract
+us.” Mr. Rae's glance rested upon the Captain, who bowed, and upon his
+son, who made no sign whatever, but remained with his face set in the
+same sullen gloom with which he had greeted his father.
+
+Mr. Rae opened a drawer and brought forth a slip of paper. “Mr. Allan,”
+ he said, with a certain sharpness in his tone, “please look at this.”
+
+Cameron came to the desk, picked up the paper, glanced at it. “It is my
+father's cheque,” he said, “which I received about a week ago.”
+
+“Look at the endorsement, please,” said Mr. Rae.
+
+Cameron turned it over. A slight flush came to his pale face. “It is
+mine to--” he hesitated, “Mr. Potts.”
+
+“Mr. Potts cashed it then?”
+
+“I suppose so. I believe so. I owed him money, and he gave me back
+some.”
+
+“How much did you owe him?”
+
+“A considerable amount. I had been borrowing of him for some time.”
+
+“As much as fifty pounds?”
+
+“I cannot tell. I did not keep count, particularly; Potts did that.”
+
+The Captain snorted contemptuously. “Do you mean to say--?” he began.
+
+“Pardon me, Captain Cameron. Allow me,” said Mr. Rae.
+
+“Now, Mr. Allan, do you think you owed him as much as the amount of that
+cheque?”
+
+“I do not know, but I think so.”
+
+“Had you any other money?”
+
+“No,” said Allan shortly; “at least I may have had a little remaining
+from the five pounds I had received from my father a few days before.”
+
+“You are quite sure you had no other money?”
+
+“Quite certain,” replied Allan.
+
+Again Mr. Rae opened his desk and drew forth a slip and handed it to
+young Cameron. “What is that?” he said.
+
+Cameron glanced at it hurriedly, and turned it over. “That is my
+father's cheque for five pounds, which I cashed.”
+
+Mr. Rae stretched out his hand and took the cheque. “Mr. Allan,” he
+said, “I want you to consider most carefully your answer.” He leaned
+across the desk and for some moments--they seemed like minutes to
+Dunn--his eyes searched young Cameron's face. “Mr. Allan,” he said, with
+a swift change of tone, his voice trembling slightly, “will you look at
+the amount of that cheque again?”
+
+Cameron once more took the cheque, glanced at it. “Good Lord!” he cried.
+“It is fifty!” His face showed blank amazement.
+
+Quick, low, and stern came Mr. Rae's voice. “Yes,” he said, “it is for
+fifty pounds. Do you know that that is a forgery, the punishment for
+which is penal servitude, and that the order for your arrest is already
+given?”
+
+The Captain sprang to his feet. Young Cameron's face became ghastly
+pale. His hand clutched the top of Mr. Rae's desk. Twice or thrice he
+moistened his lips preparing to speak, but uttered not a word. “Good
+God, my boy!” said the Captain hoarsely. “Don't stand like that. Tell
+him you are innocent.”
+
+“One moment, Sir,” said Mr. Rae to the Captain. “Permit me.” Mr. Rae's
+voice, while perfectly courteous, was calmly authoritative.
+
+“Mr. Allan,” he continued, turning to the wretched young man, “what
+money have you at present in your pockets?”
+
+With shaking hands young Cameron emptied upon the desk the contents of
+his pocketbook, from which the lawyer counted out ten one-pound notes,
+a half-sovereign and some silver. “Where did you get this money, Mr.
+Allan?”
+
+The young man, still silent, drew his handkerchief from his pocket,
+touched his lips, and wiped the sweat from his white face.
+
+“Mr. Allan,” continued the lawyer, dropping again into a kindly voice,
+“a frank explanation will help us all.”
+
+“Mr. Rae,” said Cameron, his words coming with painful indistinctness,
+“I don't understand this. I can't think clearly. I can't remember. That
+money I got from Potts; at least I must have--I have had money from no
+one else.”
+
+“My God!” cried the Captain again. “To think that a son of mine
+should--!”
+
+“Pardon me, Captain Cameron,” interrupted Mr. Rae quickly and somewhat
+sharply. “We must not prejudge this case. We must first understand it.”
+
+At this point Dunn stepped swiftly to Cameron's side. “Brace up, old
+chap,” he said in a low tone. Then turning towards the Captain he said,
+“I beg your pardon, Sir, but I do think it's only fair to give a man a
+chance to explain.”
+
+“Allow me, gentlemen,” said Mr. Rae in a firm, quiet voice, as
+the Captain was about to break forth. “Allow me to conduct this
+examination.”
+
+Cameron turned his face toward Dunn. “Thank you, old man,” he said,
+his white lips quivering. “I will do my best, but before God, I don't
+understand this.”
+
+“Now, Mr. Allan,” continued the lawyer, tapping the desk sharply,
+“here are two cheques for fifty pounds, both drawn by your father, both
+endorsed by you, one apparently cashed by Mr. Potts, one by yourself.
+What do you know about this?”
+
+“Mr. Rae,” replied the young man, his voice trembling and husky, “I tell
+you I can't understand this. I ought to say that for the last two weeks
+I haven't been quite myself, and whiskey always makes me forget. I can
+walk around steadily enough, but I don't always know what I am doing--”
+
+“That's so, Sir,” said Dunn quickly, “I've seen him.”
+
+“--And just what happened with these cheques I do not know. This
+cheque,” picking up the one endorsed to Potts, “I remember giving to
+Potts. The only other cheque I remember is a five-pound one.”
+
+“Do you remember cashing that five-pound cheque?” inquired Mr. Rae.
+
+“I carried it about for some days. I remember that, because I once
+offered it to Potts in part payment, and he said--” the white face
+suddenly flushed a deep red.
+
+“Well, Mr. Allan, what did he say?”
+
+“It doesn't matter,” said Cameron.
+
+“It may and it may not,” said Mr. Rae sharply. “It is your duty to tell
+us.”
+
+“Out with it,” said his father angrily. “You surely owe it to me, to us
+all, to let us have every assistance.”
+
+Cameron paid no attention to his father's words. “It has really no
+bearing, Sir, but I remember saying as I offered a five-pound cheque, 'I
+wish it was fifty.'”
+
+“And what reply did Mr. Potts make?” said Mr. Rae, with quiet
+indifference, as if he had lost interest in this particular feature of
+the case.
+
+Again Cameron hesitated.
+
+“Come, out with it!” said his father impatiently.
+
+His son closed his lips as if in a firm resolve. “It really has nothing
+whatever to do with the case.”
+
+“Play the game, old man,” said Dunn quietly.
+
+“Oh, all right!” said Cameron. “It makes no difference anyway. He said
+in a joke, 'You could easily make this fifty; it is such mighty poor
+writing.'”
+
+Still Mr. Rae showed no sign of interest. “He suggested in a joke, I
+understand, that the five-pound cheque could easily be changed into
+fifty pounds. That was a mere pleasantry of Mr. Potts', doubtless. How
+did the suggestion strike you, Mr. Allan?”
+
+Allan looked at him in silence.
+
+“I mean, did the suggestion strike you unpleasantly, or how?”
+
+“I don't think it made any impression, Sir. I knew it was a joke.”
+
+“A joke!” groaned his father. “Good Heavens! What do you think--?”
+
+“Once more permit me,” said Mr. Rae quietly, with a wave of his hand
+toward the Captain. “This cheque of five pounds has evidently been
+altered to fifty pounds. The question is, by whom, Mr. Allan? Can you
+answer that?” Again Mr. Rae's eyes were searching the young man's face.
+
+“I have told you I remember nothing about this cheque.”
+
+“Is it possible, Mr. Allan, that you could have raised this cheque
+yourself without your knowing--?”
+
+“Oh, nonsense!” said his father hotly, “why make the boy lie?”
+
+His son started as if his father had struck him. “I tell you once more,
+Mr. Rae, and I tell you all, I know nothing about this cheque, and that
+is my last word.” And from that position nothing could move him.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Rae, closing the interview, “we have done our best. The
+law must take its course.”
+
+“Great Heavens!” cried the Captain, springing to his feet. “Do you mean
+to tell me, Allan, that you persist in this cursed folly and will give
+us no further light? Have you no regard for my name, if not for your
+own?” He grasped his son fiercely by the arm.
+
+But his son angrily shook off his grasp. “You,” he said, looking his
+father full in the face, “you condemned me before you heard a word from
+me, and now for my name or for yours I care not a tinker's curse.” And
+with this he flung himself from the room.
+
+“Follow him,” said Mr. Rae to Dunn, quietly; “he will need you. And keep
+him in sight; it is important.”
+
+“All right, Sir!” said Dunn. “I'll stay with him.” And he did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+
+
+Mr. Rae in forty years' experience had never been so seriously
+disturbed. To his intense humiliation he found himself abjectly
+appealing to the senior member of the firm of Thomlinson & Shields. Not
+that Mr. Thomlinson was obdurate; in the presence of mere obduracy Mr.
+Rae might have found relief in the conscious possession of more generous
+and humane instincts than those supposed to be characteristic of the
+members of his profession. Mr. Thomlinson, however, was anything but
+obdurate. He was eager to oblige, but he was helpless. The instructions
+he had received were simple but imperative, and he had gone to unusual
+lengths in suggesting to Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the Bank, a course
+of greater leniency. That gentleman's only reply was a brief order to
+proceed with the case.
+
+With Mr. Sheratt, therefore, Mr. Rae proceeded to deal. His first move
+was to invite the Bank manager to lunch, in order to discuss some rather
+important matters relative to one of the great estates of which Mr. Rae
+was supposed to be the guardian. Some fifty years' experience of
+Mr. Sheratt as boy and man had let Mr. Rae into a somewhat intimate
+knowledge of the workings of that gentleman's mind. Under the mollifying
+influences of the finest of old port, Mr. Rae made the discovery that as
+with Mr. Thomlinson, so with Mr. Sheratt there was every disposition to
+oblige, and indeed an eagerness to yield to the lawyer's desires; it was
+not Mr. Sheratt, but the Bank that was immovable. Firm-fixed it stood
+upon its bedrock of tradition that in matters of fraud, crime should be
+punished to the full limit of the law.
+
+“The estate of the criminal, high or low,” said Mr. Sheratt
+impressively, “matters not. The Bank stands upon the principle, and from
+this it cannot be moved.” Mr. Sheratt began to wax eloquent. “Fidelity
+to its constituency, its shareholders, its depositors, indeed to the
+general public, is the corner-stone of its policy. The Bank of Scotland
+is a National Institution, with a certain National obligation.”
+
+Mr. Rae quietly drew from his pocket a pamphlet, opened it slowly,
+and glanced at the page. “Ay, it's as I thought, Mr. Sheratt,” he said
+dryly. “At times I wondered where Sir Archibald got his style.”
+
+Mr. Sheratt blushed like a boy caught copying.
+
+“But now since I know who it is that writes the speech of the Chairman
+of the Board of Directors, tell me, Sheratt, as man to man, is it you or
+is it Sir Archibald that's at the back of this prosecution? For if it is
+you, I've something to say to you; if not, I'll just say it where it's
+most needed. In some way or other I'm bound to see this thing through.
+That boy can't go to prison. Now tell me, Tom? It's for auld sake's
+sake.”
+
+“As sure as death, Rae, it's the Chairman, and it's God's truth I'm
+telling ye, though I should not.” They were back again into the speech
+and spirit of their boyhood days.
+
+“Then I must see Sir Archibald. Give me time to see him, Tom.”
+
+“It's a waste of time, I'm tellin' ye, but two days I'll give ye, Sandy,
+for auld sake's sake, as you say. A friendship of half a hundred years
+should mean something to us. For your sake I'd let the lad go, God
+knows, and there's my han' upon it, but as I said, that lies with Sir
+Archibald.”
+
+The old friends shook hands in silence.
+
+“Thank ye, Tom, thank ye,” said Mr. Rae; “I knew it.”
+
+“But harken to me, ye'll no' move Sir Archibald, for on this particular
+point he's quite mad. He'd prosecute the Duke of Argyll, he would. But
+two days are yours, Sandy. And mind with Sir Archibald ye treat his Bank
+with reverence! It's a National Institution, with National obligations,
+ye ken?” Mr. Sheratt's wink conveyed a volume of meaning. “And mind you,
+Rae,” here Mr. Sheratt grew grave, “I am trusting you to produce that
+lad when wanted.”
+
+“I have him in safe keeping, Tom, and shall produce him, no fear.”
+
+And with that the two old gentlemen parted, loyal to a lifelong
+friendship, but loyal first to the trust of those they stood pledged to
+serve; for the friendship that gives first place to honour is the only
+friendship that honourable men can hold.
+
+Mr. Rae set off for his office through the drizzling rain. “Now then,
+for the Captain,” he said to himself; “and a state he will be in! Why
+did I ever summon him to town? Then for Mr. Dunn, who must keep his eye
+upon the young man.”
+
+In his office he found Captain Cameron in a state of distraction that
+rendered him incapable of either coherent thought or speech. “What now,
+Rae? Where have you been? What news have you? My God, this thing is
+driving me mad! Penal servitude! Think of it, man, for my son! Oh, the
+scandal of it! It will kill me and kill his sister. What's your report?
+Come, out with it! Have you seen Mr. Sheratt?” He was pacing up and down
+the office like a beast in a cage.
+
+“Tut, tut, Captain Cameron,” said Mr. Rae lightly, “this is no way for
+a soldier to face the enemy. Sit down and we will just lay out our
+campaign.”
+
+But the Captain's soldiering, which was of the lightest, had taught him
+little either of the spirit or of the tactics of warfare. “Campaign!” he
+exclaimed. “There's no campaign about it. It's a complete smash, horse,
+foot, and artillery.”
+
+“Nonsense, Captain Cameron!” exclaimed Mr. Rae more briskly than his
+wont, for the Captain irritated him. “We have still fighting to do, and
+hence we must plan our campaign. But first let us get comfortable. Here
+Davie,” he called, opening the office door, “here, mend this fire. It's
+a winter's day this,” he continued to the Captain, “and goes to the
+marrow.”
+
+Davie, a wizened, clean-shaven, dark-visaged little man, appeared with a
+scuttle of coal. “Ay, Davie; that's it! Is that cannel?”
+
+“Ay, Sir, it is. What else? I aye get the cannel.”
+
+“That's right, Davie. It's a gran' coal.”
+
+“Gran' it's no',” said Davie shortly, who was a fierce radical in
+politics, and who strove to preserve his sense of independence of all
+semblance of authority by cultivating a habit of disagreement. “Gran'
+it's no',” he repeated, “but it's the best the Farquhars hae, though
+that's no' saying much. It's no' what I call cannel.”
+
+“Well, well, Davie, it blazes finely at any rate,” said Mr. Rae,
+determined to be cheerful, and rubbing his hands before the blazing
+coal.
+
+“Ay, it bleezes,” grumbled Davie, “when it's no' smootherin'.”
+
+“Come then, Davie, that will do. Clear out,” said Mr. Rae to the old
+servant, who was cleaning up the hearth with great diligence and care.
+
+But Davie was not to be hurried. He had his regular routine in
+fire-mending, from which no power could move him. “Ay, Sir,” he
+muttered, brushing away with his feather besom. “I'll clear oot when I
+clear up. When a thing's no' dune richt it's no dune ava.”
+
+“True, Davie, true enough; that's a noble sentiment. But will that no'
+do now?” Mr. Rae knew himself to be helpless in Davie's hands, and he
+knew also that nothing short of violence would hasten Davie from his
+“usual.”
+
+“Ay, that'll dae, because it's richt dune. But that's no' what I call
+cannel,” grumbled Davie, glowering fiercely at the burning coal, as if
+meditating a fresh attack.
+
+“Well, well,” said Mr. Rae, “tell the Farquhars about it.”
+
+“Ay, Sir, I will that,” said Davie, as he reluctantly took himself off
+with his scuttle and besom.
+
+The Captain was bursting with fretful impatience. “Impudent old rascal!”
+ he exclaimed. “Why don't you dismiss him?”
+
+“Dismiss him!” echoed Mr. Rae in consternation. “Dismiss him!” he
+repeated, as if pondering an entirely new idea. “I doubt if Davie would
+consider that. But now let us to work.” He set two arm-chairs before the
+fire, and placed a box of cigars by the Captain's elbow. “I have seen
+Sheratt,” he began. “I'm quite clear it is not in his hands.”
+
+“In whose then?” burst forth the Captain.
+
+Mr. Rae lit his cigar carefully. “The whole matter, I believe, lies now
+with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sir Archibald Brodie.”
+
+“Brodie!” cried the Captain. “I know him. Pompous little fool!”
+
+“Fool, Captain Cameron! Make no mistake. Sir Archibald may have--ah--the
+self-importance of a self-made man somewhat under the average height,
+but he is, without doubt, the best financier that stands at this moment
+in Scotland, and during the last fifteen years he has brought up the
+Bank of Scotland to its present position. Fool! He's anything but that.
+But he has his weak spots--I wish I knew what they were!--and these we
+must seek to find out. Do you know him well?”
+
+“Oh, yes, quite well,” said the Captain; “that is, I've met him at
+various functions, where he always makes speeches. Very common, I
+call him. I know his father; a mere cottar. I mean,” added the Captain
+hurriedly, for he remembered that Mr. Rae was of the same humble
+origin, “you know, he is thoroughly respectable and all that, but of
+no--ah--social or family standing; that is--oh, you understand.”
+
+“Quite,” said Mr. Rae drily.
+
+“Yes, I shall see him,” continued the Captain briskly. “I shall
+certainly see him. It is a good suggestion. Sir Archibald knows my
+family; indeed, his father was from the Erracht region. I shall see him
+personally. I am glad you thought of that, Mr. Rae. These smaller men,
+Sheratt and the rest, I do not know--in fact, I do not seem to be able
+to manage them,--but with Sir Archibald there will be no difficulty, I
+feel quite confident. When can you arrange the interview?”
+
+Mr. Rae sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire, more and more convinced
+every moment that he had made a false move in suggesting a meeting
+between the Captain and Sir Archibald Brodie. But labour as he might he
+could not turn the Captain from his purpose. He was resolved to see Sir
+Archibald at the earliest moment, and of the result of the meeting he
+had no manner of doubt.
+
+“He knew my family, Sir,” insisted the Captain. “Sir Archibald will
+undoubtedly accede to my suggestion--ah--request to withdraw his action.
+Arrange it, Mr. Rae, arrange it at once.”
+
+And ruefully enough Mr. Rae was compelled to yield against his better
+judgment.
+
+It was discovered upon inquiry that Sir Archibald had gone for a day or
+two to his country estate. “Ah, much better,” said the Captain, “away
+from his office and away from the--ah--commercial surroundings of the
+city. Much better, much better! We shall proceed to his country home.”
+
+Of the wisdom of this proposal Mr. Rae was doubtful. There seemed,
+however, no other way open. Hence, the following morning found them on
+their way to Sir Archibald's country seat. Mr. Rae felt that it was
+an unusual course to pursue, but the time was short, the occasion was
+gravely critical, and demanded extreme measures.
+
+During their railway journey Mr. Rae strove to impress upon the
+Captain's mind the need of diplomacy. “Sir Archibald is a man of strong
+prejudices,” he urged; “for instance, his Bank he regards with an
+affection and respect amounting to veneration. He is a bachelor, you
+understand, and his Bank is to him wife and bairns. On no account must
+you treat his Bank lightly.”
+
+“Oh, certainly not,” replied the Captain, who was inclined to resent Mr.
+Rae's attempts to school him in diplomacy.
+
+“He is a great financier,” continued Mr. Rae, “and with him finance is a
+high art, and financial integrity a sacred obligation.”
+
+“Oh, certainly, certainly,” again replied the Captain, quite unimpressed
+by this aspect of the matter, for while he considered himself distinctly
+a man of affairs, yet his interests lay more in matters of great public
+moment. Commercial enterprises he regarded with a feeling akin to
+contempt. Money was an extremely desirable, and indeed necessary,
+appendage to a gentleman's position, but how any man of fine feeling
+could come to regard a financial institution with affection or
+veneration he was incapable of conceiving. However, he was prepared
+to deal considerately with Sir Archibald's peculiar prejudices in this
+matter.
+
+Mr. Rae's forebodings as to the outcome of the approaching interview
+were of the most gloomy nature as they drove through the finely
+appointed and beautifully kept grounds of Sir Archibald Brodie's estate.
+The interview began inauspiciously. Sir Archibald received them with
+stiff courtesy. He hated to be pursued to his country home with business
+matters. Besides, at this particular moment he was deeply engrossed in
+the inspection of his pigs, for which animals he cherished what might
+almost be called an absorbing affection. Mr. Rae, who was proceeding
+with diplomatic caution and skill to approach the matter in hand by way
+of Sir Archibald's Wiltshires, was somewhat brusquely interrupted by the
+Captain, who, in the firm conviction that he knew much better than did
+the lawyer how to deal with a man of his own class, plunged at once into
+the subject.
+
+“Awfully sorry to introduce business matters, Sir Archibald, to the
+attention of a gentleman in the privacy of his own home, but there is a
+little matter in connection with the Bank in which I am somewhat deeply
+interested.”
+
+Sir Archibald bowed in silence.
+
+“Rather, I should say, it concerns my son, and therefore, Sir Archibald,
+myself and my family.”
+
+Again Sir Archibald bowed.
+
+“It is, after all, a trivial matter, which I have no doubt can be easily
+arranged between us. The truth is, Sir Archibald--,” here the Captain
+hesitated, as if experiencing some difficulty in stating the case.
+
+“Perhaps Captain Cameron will allow me to place the matter before you,
+Sir Archibald,” suggested Mr. Rae, “as it has a legal aspect of some
+gravity, indeed of very considerable gravity. It is the case of young
+Mr. Cameron.”
+
+“Ah,” said Sir Archibald shortly. “Forgery case, I believe.”
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Rae, “we have not been able as yet to get at the
+bottom of it. I confess that the case has certainly very grave features
+connected with it, but it is by no means clear that--”
+
+“There is no need for further statement, Mr. Rae,” said Sir Archibald.
+“I know all about it. It is a clear case of forgery. The facts have all
+been laid before me, and I have given my instructions.”
+
+“And what may these be, may I inquire?” said the Captain somewhat
+haughtily.
+
+“The usual instructions, Sir, where the Bank of Scotland is concerned,
+instructions to prosecute.” Sir Archibald's lips shut in a firm, thin
+line. As far as he was concerned the matter was closed.
+
+“But, Sir,” exclaimed the Captain, “this young man is my son.”
+
+“I deeply regret it,” replied Sir Archibald.
+
+“Yes, Sir, he is my son, and the honour of my family is involved.”
+
+Sir Archibald bowed.
+
+“I am here prepared to offer the fullest reparation, to offer the most
+generous terms of settlement; in short, I am willing to do anything in
+reason to have this matter--this unfortunate matter--hushed up.”
+
+“Hushed up!” exclaimed Sir Archibald. “Captain Cameron, it is
+impossible. I am grieved for you, but I have a duty to the Bank in this
+matter.”
+
+“Do you mean to say, Sir,” cried the Captain, “that you refuse to
+consider any arrangement or compromise or settlement of any kind
+whatever? I am willing to pay the amount ten times over, rather than
+have my name dragged through legal proceedings.”
+
+“It is quite impossible,” said Sir Archibald.
+
+“Come, come, Sir Archibald,” said the Captain, exercising an unusual
+self-control; “let us look at this thing as two gentlemen should who
+respect each other, and who know what is due to our--ah--class.”
+
+It was an unfortunate remark of the Captain's.
+
+“Our class, Sir? I presume you mean the class of gentlemen. All that
+is due to our class or any other class is strict justice, and that you,
+Sir, or any other gentleman, shall receive to the very fullest in this
+matter. The honour of the Bank, which I regard as a great National
+Institution charged with National responsibilities, is involved, as is
+also my own personal honour. I sincerely trust your son may be cleared
+of every charge of crime, but this case must be prosecuted to the very
+fullest degree.”
+
+“And do you mean to tell me, Sir Archibald,” exclaimed the Captain, now
+in a furious passion, “that for the sake of a few paltry pounds you will
+blast my name and my family name in this country?--a name, I venture to
+say, not unknown in the history of this nation. The Camerons, Sir, have
+fought and bled for King and country on many a battlefield. What matters
+the question of a few pounds in comparison with the honour of an
+ancient and honourable name? You cannot persist in this attitude, Sir
+Archibald!”
+
+“Pounds, Sir!” cried Sir Archibald, now thoroughly aroused by the
+contemptuous reference to what to him was dearer than anything in life.
+“Pounds, Sir! It is no question of pounds, but a question of the honour
+of a National Institution, a question of the lives and happiness of
+hundreds of widows and orphans, a question of the honour of a name which
+I hold as dear as you hold yours.”
+
+Mr. Rae was in despair. He laid a restraining hand upon the Captain, and
+with difficulty obtained permission to speak. “Sir Archibald, I crave
+your indulgence while I put this matter to you as to a business man. In
+the first place, there is no evidence that fraud has been committed
+by young Mr. Cameron, absolutely none.--Pardon me a moment, Sir
+Archibald.--The fraud has been committed, I grant, by someone, but by
+whom is as yet unknown. The young man for some weeks has been in a state
+of incapacity; a most blameworthy and indeed shameful condition, it is
+true, but in a state of incapacity to transact business. He declares
+that he has no knowledge of this act of forgery. He will swear this. I
+am prepared to defend him.”
+
+“Very well, Sir,” interrupted Sir Archibald, “and I hope, I sincerely
+hope, successfully.”
+
+“But while it may be difficult to establish innocence, it will be
+equally difficult to establish guilt. Meantime, the young man's life
+is blighted, his name dishonoured, his family plunged into unspeakable
+grief. I venture to say that it is a case in which the young man might
+be given, without injury to the Bank, or without breaking through its
+traditional policy, the benefit of the doubt.”
+
+But Sir Archibald had been too deeply stirred by Captain Cameron's
+unfortunate remarks to calmly weigh Mr. Rae's presentation of the case.
+“It is quite useless, Mr. Rae,” he declared firmly. “The case is out of
+my hands, and must be proceeded with. I sincerely trust you may be able
+to establish the young man's innocence. I have nothing more to say.”
+
+And from this position neither Mr. Rae's arguments nor the Captain's
+passionate pleadings could move him.
+
+Throughout the return journey the Captain raged and swore. “A
+contemptible cad, Sir! a base-born, low-bred cad, Sir! What else could
+you expect from a fellow of his breeding? The insolence of these lower
+orders is becoming insupportable. The idea! the very idea! His bank
+against my family name, my family honour! Preposterous!”
+
+“Honour is honour, Captain Cameron,” replied Mr. Rae firmly, “and
+it might have been better if you had remembered that the honour of a
+cottar's son is as dear to him as yours is to you.”
+
+And such was Mr. Rae's manner that the Captain appeared to consider it
+wise to curb his rage, or at least suppress all reference to questions
+of honour in as far as they might be related to the question of birth
+and breeding.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A LADY AND THE LAW
+
+
+Mr. Rae's first care was to see Mr. Dunn. This case was getting rather
+more trying to Mr. Rae's nerves than he cared to acknowledge. For a
+second time he had been humiliated, and humiliation was an experience to
+which Mr. Rae was not accustomed. It was in a distinctly wrathful frame
+of mind that he called upon Mr. Dunn, and the first quarter of an hour
+of his interview he spent in dilating upon his own folly in having
+allowed Captain Cameron to accompany him on his visit to Sir Archibald.
+
+“In forty years I never remember having made such an error, Sir. This
+was an occasion for diplomacy. We should have taken time. We should have
+discovered his weak spots; every man has them. Now it is too late.
+The only thing left for us is fight, and the best we can hope for is a
+verdict of NOT PROVEN, and that leaves a stigma.”
+
+“It is terrible,” said Mr. Dunn, “and I believe he is innocent. Have you
+thought of Potts, Sir?”
+
+“I have had Potts before me,” said Mr. Rae, “and I may safely say that
+though he strikes me as being a man of unusual cleverness, we can do
+nothing with Mr. Potts. Of course,” added Mr. Rae hastily, “this is not
+to say we shall not make use of Mr. Potts in the trial, but Mr. Potts
+can show from his books debts amounting to nearly sixty pounds. He
+frankly acknowledges the pleasantry in suggesting the raising of the
+five-pound cheque to fifty pounds, but of the act itself he professes
+entire ignorance. I frankly own to you, Sir,” continued Mr. Rae, folding
+his ear into a horn after his manner when in perplexity, “that this case
+puzzles me. I must not take your time,” he said, shaking Mr. Dunn warmly
+by the hand. “One thing more I must ask you, however, and that is, keep
+in touch with young Cameron. I have pledged my honour to produce him
+when wanted. Furthermore, keep him--ah--in good condition; cheer him up;
+nerve him up; much depends upon his manner.”
+
+Gravely Mr. Dunn accepted the trust, though whether he could fulfil it
+he doubted. “Keep him cheerful,” said Mr. Dunn to himself, as the door
+closed upon Mr. Rae. “Nice easy job, too, under the circumstances.
+Let's see, what is there on? By Jove, if I could only bring him!” There
+flashed into Mr. Dunn's mind the fact that he was due that evening at a
+party for students, given by one of the professors, belated beyond the
+period proper to such functions by one of those domestic felicities
+which claim right of way over all other human events. At this party
+Cameron was also due. It was hardly likely, however, that he would
+attend. But to Dunn's amazement he found Cameron, with a desperate
+jollity such as a man might feel the night before his execution, eager
+to go.
+
+“I'm going,” he cried, in answer to Dunn's somewhat timid suggestion.
+“They'll all be there, old man, and I shall make my exit with much
+eclat, with pipe and dance and all the rest of it.”
+
+“Exit, be blowed!” said Dunn impatiently. “Let's cut all this nonsense
+out. We're going into a fight for all there's in us. Why should a fellow
+throw up the sponge after the first round?”
+
+“Fight!” said Cameron gloomily. “Did old Rae say so?”
+
+“Most decidedly.”
+
+“And what defence does he suggest?”
+
+“Defence? Innocence, of course.”
+
+“Would to God I could back him up!” groaned Cameron.
+
+Dunn gazed at him in dismay. “And can you not? You do not mean to tell
+me you are guilty?”
+
+“Oh, I wish to heaven I knew!” cried Cameron wildly. “But there, let it
+go. Let the lawyers and the judge puzzle it out. 'Guilty or not guilty?'
+'Hanged if I know, my lord. Looks like guilty, but don't see very well
+how I can be.' That will bother old Rae some; it would bother Old Nick
+himself. 'Did you forge this note?' 'My lord, my present ego recognizes
+no intent to forge; my alter ego in vino may have done so. Of that,
+however, I know nothing; it lies in that mysterious region of the
+subconscious.' 'Are you, then, guilty?' 'Guilt, my lord, lies in intent.
+Intent is the soul of crime.' It will be an interesting point for Mr.
+Rae and his lordship.”
+
+“Look here, old chap,” asked Dunn suddenly, “what of Potts in this
+business?”
+
+“Potts! Oh, hang it, Dunn, I can't drag Potts into this. It would
+be altogether too low-down to throw suspicion upon a man without the
+slightest ground. Potts is not exactly a lofty-souled creature. In fact,
+he is pronouncedly a bounder, though I confess I did borrow money of
+him; but I'd borrow money of the devil when I'm in certain moods. A man
+may be a bounder, however, without being a criminal. No, I have thought
+this thing out as far as I can, and I've made my mind up that I've got
+to face it myself. I've been a fool, ah, such a fool!” A shudder shook
+his frame. “Oh, Dunn, old man, I don't mind for myself, I can go out
+easily enough, but it's my little sister! It will break her heart, and
+she has no one else; she will have to bear it all alone.”
+
+“What do you mean, Cameron?” asked Dunn sharply.
+
+Cameron sprang to his feet. “Let it go,” he cried. “Let it go for
+to-night, anyway.” He seized a decanter which stood all too ready to his
+hand, but Dunn interposed.
+
+“Listen to me, old man,” he said, in a voice of grave and earnest
+sadness, while he pushed Cameron back into a chair. “We have a
+desperately hard game before us, you and I,--this is my game, too,--and
+we must be fit; so, Cameron, I want your word that you will play up for
+all that's in you; that you will cut this thing out,” pointing to the
+decanter, “and will keep fit to the last fighting minute. I am asking
+you this, Cameron. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to me, you owe it
+to your sister.”
+
+For some moments Cameron sat gazing straight before him, his face
+showing the agony in his soul. “As God's above, I do! I owe it to you,
+Dunn, and to her, and to the memory of my--” But his quivering lips
+could not utter the word; and there was no need, for they both knew that
+his heart was far away in the little mound that lay in the shadow of the
+church tower in the Cuagh Oir. The lad rose to his feet, and stretching
+out his hand to Dunn cried, “There's my hand and my honour as a
+Highlander, and until the last fighting moment I'll be fit.”
+
+At the party that night none was gayer than young Cameron. The shy
+reserve that usually marked him was thrust aside. His fine, lithe
+figure, set off by his Highland costume, drew all eyes in admiration,
+and whether in the proud march of the piper, or in the wild abandon of
+the Highland Fling, he seemed to all the very beau ideal of a gallant
+Highland gentleman.
+
+Dunn stood in the circle gathered to admire, watching Cameron's
+performance of that graceful and intricate Highland dance, all
+unconscious of a pair of bright blue eyes fastened on his face that
+reflected so manifestly the grief and pain in his heart.
+
+“And wherefore this gloom?” said a gay voice at his side. It was Miss
+Bessie Brodie.
+
+Poor Dunn! He was not skilled in the fine art of social deception. He
+could only gaze stupidly and with blinking eyes upon his questioner,
+devoutly hoping meanwhile that the tears would not fall.
+
+“Splendid Highlander, isn't he?” exclaimed Miss Bessie, hastily
+withdrawing her eyes from his face, for she was much too fine a lady to
+let him see her surprise.
+
+“What?” exclaimed Dunn. “I don't know. I mean--yes, awfully--oh,
+confound the thing, it's a beastly shame!”
+
+Thereupon Miss Bessie turned her big blue eyes slowly upon him. “Meaning
+what?” she said quietly.
+
+“Oh, I beg pardon. I'm just a fool. Oh, hang it all!” Dunn could not
+recover his composure. He backed out of the circle of admirers into a
+darker corner.
+
+“Fool?” said Miss Brodie, stepping back with him. “And why, pray? Can
+I know? I suppose it's Cameron again,” she continued. “Oh, I know all
+about you and your mothering of him.”
+
+“Mothering!” said Dunn bitterly. “That is just what he needs, by Jove.
+His mother has been dead these five years, and that's been the ruin of
+him.”
+
+The cheers from Cameron's admirers broke in upon Dunn's speech. “Oh,
+it's too ghastly,” he muttered.
+
+“Is it really so bad? Can't I help?” cried Miss Brodie. “You know I've
+had some experience with boys.”
+
+As Dunn looked into her honest, kindly eyes he hesitated. Should he tell
+her? He was in sore need of counsel, and besides he was at the limit
+of his self-control. “I say,” he said, staring at her, while his lips
+quivered, “I'd like awfully to tell you, but I know if I ever begin I
+shall just burst into tears before this gaping crowd.”
+
+“Tears!” exclaimed Miss Bessie. “Not you! And if you did it wouldn't
+hurt either them or you. An International captain possesses this
+advantage over other mortals: that he may burst into tears or anything
+else without losing caste, whereas if I should do any such thing--But
+come, let's get somewhere and talk it over. Now, then,” said Miss Brodie
+as they found a quiet corner, “first of all, ought I to know?”
+
+“You'll know, all Edinburgh will know time day after to-morrow,” said
+Dunn.
+
+“All right, then, it can't do any harm for me to know to-night. It
+possibly may do good.”
+
+“It will do me good, anyway,” said Dunn, “for I have reached my limit.”
+
+Then Dunn told her, and while she listened she grew grave and anxious.
+“But surely it can be arranged!” she exclaimed, after he had finished.
+
+“No, Mr. Rae has tried everything. The Bank is bound to pursue it to the
+bitter end. It is apparently a part of its policy.”
+
+“What Bank?”
+
+“The Bank of Scotland.”
+
+“Why, that's my uncle's Bank! I mean, he is the Chairman of the Board
+of Directors, and the Bank is the apple of his eye; or one of them, I
+mean--I'm the other.”
+
+“Oh, both, I fancy,” said Dunn, rather pleased with his own courage.
+
+“But come, this is serious,” said Miss Brodie. “The Bank, you know, or
+you don't know, is my uncle's weak spot.”
+
+Mr. Rae's words flashed across Dunn's mind: “We ought to have found his
+weak spots.”
+
+“He says,” continued Miss Brodie with a smile--“you know he's an old
+dear!--I divide his heart with the Bank, that I have the left lobe.
+Isn't that the bigger one? So the Bank and I are his weak spots; unless
+it is his Wiltshires--he is devoted to Wiltshires.”
+
+“Wiltshires?”
+
+“Pigs. There are times when I feel myself distinctly second to them. Are
+you sure my uncle knows all about Cameron?”
+
+“Well, Mr. Rae and Captain Cameron--that's young Cameron's father--went
+out to his place--”
+
+“Ah, that was a mistake,” said Miss Brodie. “He hates people following
+him to the country. Well, what happened?”
+
+“Mr. Rae feels that it was rather a mistake that Captain Cameron went
+along.”
+
+“Why so? He is his father, isn't he?”
+
+“Yes, he is, though I'm bound to say he's rather queer for a father.”
+ Whereupon Dunn gave her an account of his interview in Mr. Rae's office.
+
+Miss Brodie was indignant. “What a shame! And what a fool! Why, he is
+ten times more fool than his son; for mark you, his son is undoubtedly
+a fool, and a selfish fool at that. I can't bear a young fool who
+sacrifices not simply his own life, but the interests of all who care
+for him, for some little pet selfishness of his own. But this father
+of his seems to be even worse than the son. Family name indeed! And I
+venture to say he expatiated upon the glory of his family name to my
+uncle. If there's one thing that my uncle goes quite mad about it is
+this affectation of superiority on the ground of the colour of a man's
+blood! No wonder he refused to withdraw the prosecution! What could Mr.
+Rae have been thinking about? What fools men are!”
+
+“Quite true,” murmured Mr. Dunn.
+
+“Some men, I mean,” cried Miss Brodie hastily. “I wish to heaven I had
+seen my uncle first!”
+
+“I suppose it's too late now,” said Dunn, with a kind of gloomy
+wistfulness.
+
+“Yes, I fear so,” said Miss Brodie. “You see when my uncle makes up his
+mind he appears to have some religious scruples against changing it.”
+
+“It was a ghastly mistake,” said Dunn bitterly.
+
+“Look here, Mr. Dunn,” said Miss Brodie, turning upon him suddenly, “I
+want your straight opinion. Do you think this young man guilty?”
+
+They were both looking at Cameron, at that moment the centre of a group
+of open admirers, his boyish face all aglow with animation. For the
+time being it seemed as if he had forgotten the terrible catastrophe
+overhanging him.
+
+“If I hadn't known Cameron for three years,” replied Dunn slowly, “I
+would say offhand that this thing would be impossible to him; but you
+see you never know what a man in drink will do. Cameron can carry a
+bottle of Scotch without a stagger, but of course it knocks his head
+all to pieces. I mean, he is quite incapable of anything like clear
+thought.”
+
+“It is truly terrible,” said Miss Brodie. “I wish I had known yesterday,
+but those men have spoilt it all. But here's 'Lily' Laughton,” she
+continued hurriedly, “coming for his dance.” As she spoke a youth of
+willowy figure, languishing dark eyes and ladylike manner drew near.
+
+“Well, here you are at last! What a hunt I have had! I am quite
+exhausted, I assure you,” cried the youth, fanning himself with his
+handkerchief. “And though you have quite forgotten it, this is our
+dance. What can you two have been talking about? But why ask? There is
+only one theme upon which you could become so terrifically serious.”
+
+“And what is that, pray? Browning?” inquired Miss Brodie sweetly.
+
+“Dear Miss Brodie, if you only would, but--ugh!--” here “Lily”
+ shuddered, “I can in fancy picture the gory scene in which you have been
+revelling for the last hour!” And “Lily's” handsome face and languid,
+liquid eyes indicated his horror. It was “Lily's” constant declaration
+that he “positively loathed” football, although his persistent
+attendance at all the great matches rather belied this declaration. “It
+is the one thing in you, Miss Bessie, that I deplore, 'the fly in the
+pot--' no, 'the flaw--' ah, that's better--'the flaw in the matchless
+pearl.'”
+
+“How sweet of you,” murmured Miss Brodie.
+
+“Yes, indeed,” continued “Lily,” wreathing his tapering fingers, “it is
+your devotion to those so-called athletic games,--games! ye gods!--the
+chief qualifications for excellence in which appear to be brute strength
+and a blood-thirsty disposition; as witness Dunn there. I was positively
+horrified last International. There he was, our own quiet, domestic,
+gentle Dunn, raging through that howling mob of savages like a
+bloody Bengal tiger.--Rather apt, that!--A truly awful and degrading
+exhibition!”
+
+“Ah, perfectly lovely!” murmured Miss Brodie ecstatically. “I can see
+him yet.”
+
+“Miss Brodie, how can you!” exclaimed “Lily,” casting up his eyes in
+horror towards heaven. “But it was ever thus! In ancient days upon
+the bloody sands of the arena, fair ladies were wont to gaze with
+unrelenting eyes and thumbs turned down--or up, was it--?”
+
+“Excellent! But how clever of them to gaze with their thumbs in that
+way!”
+
+“Please don't interrupt,” said “Lily” severely; “I have just 'struck my
+gait,' as that barbaric young Colonial, Martin, another of your bloody,
+brawny band, would say. And here you sit, unblushing, glorying in their
+disgusting deeds and making love open and unabashed to their captain!”
+
+“Go away, 'Lily' or I'll hurt you,” cried Dunn, his face a brilliant
+crimson. “Come, get out!”
+
+“But don't be uplifted,” continued “Lily,” ignoring him, “you are not
+the first. By no means! It is always the last International captain, and
+has been to my certain knowledge for the last ten years.”
+
+“Ten years!” exclaimed Miss Brodie in horrified accents. “You monster!
+If you have no regard for my character you might at least respect my
+age.”
+
+“Age! Dear Miss Brodie,” ejaculated “Lily,” “who could ever associate
+age with your perennial youth?”
+
+“Perennial! Wretch! If there is anything I am sensitive about, really
+sensitive about, it is my age! Mr. Dunn, I beseech you, save me from
+further insult! Dear 'Lily,' run away now. You are much too tired to
+dance, and besides there is Mrs. Craig-Urquhart waiting to talk your
+beloved Wagner-Tennyson theory; or what is the exact combination?
+Mendelssohn-Browning, is it?”
+
+“Oh, Miss Bessie!” cried “Lily” in a shocked voice, “how can
+you? Mendelssohn-Browning! How awful! Do have some regard for the
+affinities.”
+
+“Mr. Dunn, I implore you, save me! I can bear no more. There! A merciful
+providence has accomplished my deliverance. They are going. Good-night,
+'Lily.' Run away now. I want a word with Mr. Dunn.”
+
+“Oh, heartless cruelty!” exclaimed “Lily,” in an agonised voice. “But
+what can you expect from such associations?” And he hastened away to
+have a last word with Mrs. Craig-Urquhart, who was swimming languidly
+by.
+
+Miss Brodie turned eagerly to Dunn. “I'd like to help you awfully,” she
+said; “indeed I must try. I have very little hope. My uncle is so strong
+when he is once set, and he is so funny about that Bank. But a boy is
+worth more than a Bank, if he IS a fool; besides, there is his sister.
+Good-night. Thanks for letting me help. I have little hope, but
+to-morrow I shall see Sir Archibald, and--and his pigs.”
+
+It was still in the early forenoon of the following day when Miss
+Brodie greeted her uncle as he was about to start upon his round of the
+pastures and pens where the Wiltshires of various ages and sizes and
+sexes were kept. With the utmost enthusiasm Miss Brodie entered into his
+admiration of them all, from the lordly prize tusker to the great mother
+lying broadside on in grunting and supreme content, every grunt eloquent
+of happiness and maternal love and pride, to allow her week-old brood to
+prod and punch her luxuriant dugs for their breakfast.
+
+By the time they had made their rounds Sir Archibald had arrived at his
+most comfortable and complacent mood. He loved his niece. He loved her
+for the sake of his dead brother, and as she grew in years, he came to
+love her for herself. Her sturdy independent fearlessness, her
+sound sense, her honest heart, and chiefly, if it must be told, her
+whole-souled devotion to himself, made for her a great space in his
+heart. And besides all this, they were both interested to the point of
+devotion in pigs. As he watched his niece handling the little sucklings
+with tender care, and listened to her appraising their varying merits
+with a discriminating judgment, his heart filled up with pride in her
+many accomplishments and capabilities.
+
+“Isn't she happy, Uncle?” she exclaimed, lifting her brown, sunny face
+to him.
+
+“Ay, lassie,” replied Sir Archibald, lapsing into the kindly “braid
+Scots,” “I ken fine how she feels.”
+
+“She's just perfectly happy,” said his niece, “and awfully useful and
+good. She is just like you, Uncle.”
+
+“What? Oh, thank you, I'm extremely flattered, I assure you.”
+
+“Uncle, you know what I mean! Useful and good. Here you are in this
+lovely home--how lovely it is on a warm, shiny day like this!--safe from
+cares and worries, where people can't get at you, and making--”
+
+“Ah, I don't know about that,” replied her uncle, shaking his head with
+a frown. “Some people have neither sense nor manners. Only yesterday
+I was pestered by a fellow who annoyed me, seriously annoyed me,
+interfering in affairs which he knew nothing of,--actually the affairs
+of the Bank!--prating about his family name, and all the rest of it.
+Family name!” Here, it must be confessed, Sir Archibald distinctly
+snorted, quite in a manner calculated to excite the envy of any of his
+Wiltshires.
+
+“I know, Uncle. He is a fool, a conceited fool, and a selfish fool.”
+
+“You know him?” inquired her uncle in a tone of surprise.
+
+“No, I have no personal acquaintance with him, I'm glad to say, but I
+know about him, and I know that he came with Mr. Rae, the Writer.”
+
+“Ah, yes! Thoroughly respectable man, Mr. Rae.”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Rae is all right; but Captain Cameron--oh, I can't bear him!
+He came to talk to you about his son, and I venture to say he took most
+of the time in talking about himself.”
+
+“Exactly so! But how--?”
+
+“And, Uncle, I want to talk to you about that matter, about young
+Cameron.” For just a moment Miss Brodie's courage faltered as she
+observed her uncle's figure stiffen. “I want you to know the rights of
+the case.”
+
+“Now, now, my dear, don't you go--ah--”
+
+“I know, Uncle, you were going to say 'interfering,' only you remember
+in time that your niece never interferes. Isn't that true, Sir?”
+
+“Yes, yes! I suppose so; that is, certainly.”
+
+“Now I am interested in this young Cameron, and I want you to get the
+right view of his case, which neither your lawyer nor your manager nor
+that fool father of his can give you. I know that if you see this case
+as I see it you will do--ah--exactly what is right; you always do.”
+
+Miss Brodie's voice had assumed its most reasonable and business-like
+tone. Sir Archibald was impressed, and annoyed because he was impressed.
+
+“Look here, Bessie,” he said, in as impatient a tone as he ever adopted
+with his niece, “you know how I hate being pestered with business
+affairs out here.”
+
+“I know quite well, Uncle, and I regret it awfully, but I know, too,
+that you are a man of honour, and that you stand for fair play. But that
+young man is to be arrested to-day, and you know what that will mean for
+a young fellow with his way to make.”
+
+Her appeal was not without its effect. Sir Archibald set himself to give
+her serious attention. “Let us have it, then,” he said briefly. “What
+do you know of the young man?”
+
+“This first of all: that he has a selfish, conceited prig for a father.”
+
+With which beginning Sir Archibald most heartily agreed. “But how do you
+know?”
+
+“Now, let me tell you about him.” And Miss Brodie proceeded to describe
+the scene between father and son in Mr. Rae's office, with vigorous and
+illuminating comments. “And just think, the man in the company who was
+first to condemn the young chap was his own father. Would you do that?
+You'd stand for him against the whole world, even if he were wrong.”
+
+“Steady, steady, lass!”
+
+“You would,” repeated Miss Bessie, with indignant emphasis. “Would you
+chuck me over if I were disgraced and all the world hounding me? Would
+you?”
+
+“No, by God!” said Sir Archibald in a sudden tempest of emotion, and
+Miss Bessie smiled lovingly upon him.
+
+“Well, that's the kind of a father he has. Now about the young fellow
+himself: He's just a first-class fool, like most young fellows. You know
+how they are, Uncle.”
+
+Sir Archibald held up his hand. “Don't make any such assumptions.”
+
+“Oh, I know you, and when you were a boy you were just as gay and
+foolish as the rest of them.”
+
+Her arch, accusing smile suddenly cast a rich glow of warm colour
+over the long, grey road of Sir Archibald's youth of self-denial
+and struggle. The mild indulgences of his early years, under the
+transforming influence of that same arch and accusing smile, took on for
+Sir Archibald such an aspect of wild and hilarious gaiety as to impart a
+tone of hesitation to his voice while he deprecated his niece's charge.
+
+“What, I? Nonsense! What do you know about it? Well, well, we have all
+had our day, I suppose!”
+
+“Aha! I know you, and I should love to have known you when you were
+young Cameron's age. Though I'm quite sure you were never such a fool as
+he. You always knew how to take care of yourself.”
+
+Her uncle shook his head as if to indicate that the less said about
+those gay young days the better.
+
+“Now what do you think this young fool does? Gets drinking, and gets so
+muddled up in all his money matters--he's a Highlander, you know, and
+Dunn, Mr. Dunn says--”
+
+“Dunn!”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Dunn, the great International captain, you know! Mr. Dunn says
+he can take a whole bottle of Scotch--”
+
+“What, Dunn?”
+
+“No, no; you know perfectly well, Uncle! This young Cameron can take
+a whole bottle of Scotch and walk a crack, but his head gets awfully
+muddled.”
+
+“Shouldn't be surprised!”
+
+“And Mr. Dunn had a terrible time keeping him fit for the International.
+You know he was Dunn's half-back. Yes,” cried his niece with enthusiasm,
+suddenly remembering a tradition that in his youth Sir Archibald had
+been a famous quarter, his one indulgence, “a glorious half-back, too!
+You must remember in the match with England last fall the brilliant work
+of the half-back. Everybody went mad about him. That was young Cameron!”
+
+“You don't tell me! The left-half in the English International last
+fall?”
+
+“Yes, indeed! Oh, he's wonderful! But he has to be watched, you know,
+and the young fool lost us the last--” Miss Bessie abruptly checked
+herself. “But never mind! Well, after the season, you know, he got going
+loose, and this is the result. Owed money everywhere, and with the true
+Highland incapacity for business, and the true Highland capacity for
+trusting people--”
+
+“Huh!” grunted Sir Archibald in disapproval.
+
+“--When his head is in a muddled condition he does something or other to
+a cheque--or doesn't do it, nobody knows--and there he is in this awful
+fix. Personally, I don't believe he is guilty of the crime.”
+
+“And why, pray?”
+
+“Why? Well, Mr. Dunn, his captain, who has known him for years, says it
+is quite impossible; and then the young man himself doesn't deny it.”
+
+“What? Does NOT deny it?”
+
+“Exactly! Like a perfectly straightforward gentleman,--and I think it's
+awfully fine of him,--though he has a perfectly good chance to put the
+thing on a--a fellow Potts, quite a doubtful character, he simply says,
+'I know nothing about it. That looks like my signature. I can't remember
+doing this, don't know how I could have, but don't know a thing about
+it.' There you are, Uncle! And Mr. Dunn says he is quite incapable of
+it.”
+
+“Mr. Dunn, eh? It seems you build somewhat broadly upon Mr. Dunn.”
+
+The brown on Miss Bessie's check deepened slightly. “Well, Mr. Dunn is a
+splendid judge of men.”
+
+“Ah; and of young ladies, also, I imagine,” said Sir Archibald, pinching
+her cheek.
+
+It may have been the pinch, but the flush on her cheek grew distinctly
+brighter. “Don't be ridiculous, Uncle! He's just a boy, a perfectly
+splendid boy, and glorious in his game, but a mere boy, and--well, you
+know, I've arrived at the age of discretion.”
+
+“Quite true!” mused her uncle. “Thirty last birthday, was it? How time
+does--!”
+
+“Oh, you perfectly horrid uncle! Thirty indeed! Are you not ashamed to
+add to the already intolerable burden of my years? Thirty! No, Sir, not
+by five good years at least! There now, you've made me tell my age! You
+ought to blush for shame.”
+
+Her uncle patted her firm, round cheek. “Never a blush, my dear! You
+bear even your advanced age with quite sufficient ease and grace. But
+now about this young Cameron,” he continued, assuming a sternly judicial
+tone.
+
+“All I ask for him is a chance,” said his niece earnestly.
+
+“A chance? Why he will get every chance the law allows to clear
+himself.”
+
+“There you are!” exclaimed Miss Bessie, in a despairing tone. “That's
+the way the lawyers and your manager talk. They coolly and without a
+qualm get him arrested, this young boy who has never in all his life
+shown any sign of criminal tendency. These horrid lawyers display their
+dreadful astuteness and ability in catching a lad who never tries to run
+away, and your manager pleads the rules of the Bank. The rules! Fancy
+rules against a young boy's whole life!”
+
+Her uncle rather winced at this.
+
+“And like a lot of sheep they follow each other in a circle; there is
+absolutely no independence, no initiative. Why, they even went so far as
+to suggest that you could do nothing, that you were bound by rules and
+must follow like the rest of them; but I told them I knew better.”
+
+“Ah!” said Sir Archibald in his most dignified manner. “I trust I have a
+mind of my own, but--”
+
+“Exactly! So I said to Mr. Dunn. 'Rules or no rules,' I said, 'my
+uncle will do the fair thing.' And I know you will,” cried Miss Brodie
+triumphantly. “And if you look at it, there's a very big chance that the
+boy never did the thing, and certainly if he did it at all it was when
+he was quite incapable. Oh, I know quite well what the lawyers say. They
+go by the law,--they've got to,--but you--and--and--I go by the--the
+real facts of the case.” Sir Archibald coughed gently. “I mean to
+say--well you know, Uncle, quite well, you can tell what a man is
+by--well, by his game.”
+
+“His game!”
+
+“And by his eye.”
+
+“His eye! And his eye is--?”
+
+“Now, Uncle, be sensible! I mean to say, if you could only see him. Oh,
+I shall bring him to see you!” she cried, with a sudden inspiration.
+
+Sir Archibald held up a deprecating hand. “Do not, I beg.”
+
+“Well, Uncle, you can trust my judgment, you know you can. You would
+trust me in--in--” For a moment Miss Brodie was at a loss; then her eyes
+fell upon the grunting, comfortable old mother pig with her industrious
+litter. “Well, don't I know good Wiltshires when I see them?”
+
+“Quite true,” replied her uncle solemnly; “and therefore, men.”
+
+“Uncle, you're very nearly rude.”
+
+“I apologise,” replied her uncle hastily. “But now, Bessie, my dear
+girl, seriously, as to this case, you must understand that I cannot
+interfere. The Bank--hem--the Bank is a great National--”
+
+Miss Bessie saw that the Guards were being called upon. She hastened to
+bring up her reserves. “I know, Uncle, I know! I wouldn't for the world
+say a word against the Bank, but you see the case against the lad is at
+least doubtful.”
+
+“I was going on to observe,” resumed her uncle, judicially, “that the
+Bank--”
+
+“Don't misunderstand me, Uncle,” cried his niece, realising that she had
+reached a moment of crisis. “You know I would not for a moment
+presume to interfere with the Bank, but”--here she deployed her whole
+force,--“the lad's youth and folly; his previous good character,
+guaranteed by Dunn, who knows men; his glorious game--no man who wasn't
+straight could play such a game!--the large chance of his innocence, the
+small chance of his guilt; the hide-bound rigidity of lawyers and bank
+managers, dominated by mere rules and routine, in contrast with the
+open-minded independence of her uncle; the boy's utter helplessness; his
+own father having been ready to believe the worst,--just think of it,
+Uncle, his own father thinking of himself and of his family name--much
+he has ever done for his family name!--and not of his own boy,
+and”--here Miss Brodie's voice took a lower key--“and his mother died
+some five or six years ago, when he was thirteen or fourteen, and I
+know, you know, that is hard on a boy.” In spite of herself, and to her
+disgust, a tremor came into her voice and a rush of tears to her eyes.
+
+Her uncle was smitten with dismay. Only on one terrible occasion since
+she had emerged from her teens had he seen his niece in tears. The
+memory of that terrible day swept over his soul. Something desperate
+was doing. Hard as the little man was to the world against which he had
+fought his way to his present position of distinction, to his niece
+he was soft-hearted as a mother. “There, there!” he exclaimed hastily.
+“We'll give the boy a chance. No mother, eh? And a confounded prig for a
+father! No wonder the boy goes all wrong!” Then with a sudden vehemence
+he cried, striking one hand into the other, “No, by--! that is, we
+will certainly give the lad the benefit of the doubt. Cheer up, lassie!
+You've no need to look ashamed,” for his niece was wiping her eyes
+in manifest disgust; “indeed,” he said, with a heavy attempt at
+playfulness, “you are a most excellent diplomat.”
+
+“Diplomat, Uncle!” cried the girl, vehement indignation in her voice and
+face. “Diplomat!” she cried again. “You don't mean that I've not been
+quite sincere?”
+
+“No, no, no; not in the least, my dear! But that you have put your case
+with admirable force.”
+
+“Oh,” said the girl with a breath of relief, “I just put it as I feel
+it. And it is not a bit my putting it, Uncle, but it is just that
+you are a dear and--well, a real sport; you love fair play.” The girl
+suddenly threw her strong, young arms about her uncle's neck, drew him
+close to her, and kissed him almost as if she had been his mother.
+
+The little man was deeply touched, but with true Scotch horror of a
+demonstration he cried, “Tut, tut, lassie, ye're makin' an auld fule o'
+your uncle. Come now, be sensible!”
+
+“Sensible!” echoed his niece, kissing him again. “That's my living
+description among all my acquaintance. It is their gentle way of
+reminding me that the ordinary feminine graces of sweetness and general
+loveliness are denied me.”
+
+“And more fools they!” grunted her uncle. “You're worth the hale
+caboodle o' them.”
+
+That same evening there were others who shared this opinion, and none
+more enthusiastically than did Mr. Dunn, whom Miss Brodie chanced to
+meet just as she turned out of the Waverly Station.
+
+“Oh, Mr. Dunn,” she cried, “how very fortunate!” Her face glowed with
+excitement.
+
+“For me; yes, indeed!” said Mr. Dunn, warmly greeting her.
+
+“For me, for young Cameron, for us all,” said Miss Brodie. “Oh, Rob, is
+that you?” she continued, as her eye fell upon the youngster standing
+with cap off waiting her recognition. “Look at this!” she flashed a
+letter before Dunn's face. “What do you think of that?”
+
+Dunn took the letter. “It's to Sheratt,” he said, with a puzzled air.
+
+“Yes,” cried Miss Brodie, mimicking his tone, “it's to Sheratt, from Sir
+Archibald, and it means that Cameron is safe. The police will never--”
+
+“The police,” cried Dunn, hastily, getting between young Rob and her and
+glancing at his brother, who stood looking from one to the other with a
+startled face.
+
+“How stupid! The police are a truly wonderful body of men,” she went on
+with enthusiasm. “They look so splendid. I saw some of them as I came
+along. But never mind them now. About this letter. What's to do?”
+
+Dunn glanced at his watch. “We need every minute.” He stood a moment or
+two thinking deeply while Miss Brodie chatted eagerly with Rob, whose
+face retained its startled and anxious look. “First to Mr. Rae's office.
+Come!” cried Mr. Dunn.
+
+“But this letter ought to go.”
+
+“Yes, but first Mr. Rae's office.” Mr. Dunn had assumed command. His
+words shot out like bullets.
+
+Miss Brodie glanced at him with a new admiration in her face. As a
+rule she objected to being ordered about, but somehow it seemed good to
+accept commands from this young man, whose usually genial face was now
+set in such resolute lines.
+
+“Here, Rob, you cut home and tell them not to wait dinner for me.”
+
+“All right, Jack!” But instead of tearing off as was his wont whenever
+his brother gave command, Rob lingered. “Can't I wait a bit, Jack, to
+see--to see if anything--?” Rob was striving hard to keep his voice in
+command and his face steady. “It's Cameron, Jack. I know!” He turned his
+back on Miss Brodie, unwilling that she should see his lips quiver.
+
+“What are you talking about?” said his brother sharply.
+
+“Oh, it is all my stupid fault, Mr. Dunn,” said Miss Brodie. “Let him
+come along a bit with us. I say, youngster, you are much too acute,” she
+continued, as they went striding along together toward Mr. Rae's office.
+“But will you believe me if I tell you something? Will you? Straight
+now?”
+
+The boy glanced up into her honest blue eyes, and nodded his head.
+
+“Your friend Cameron is quite all right. He was in some difficulty, but
+now he's quite all right. Do you believe me?”
+
+The boy looked again steadily into her eyes. The anxious fear passed
+out of his face, and once more he nodded; he knew he could not keep his
+voice quite steady. But after a few paces he said to his brother, “I
+think I'll go now, Jack.” His mind was at rest; his idol was safe.
+
+“Oh, come along and protect me,” cried Miss Brodie. “These lawyer people
+terrify me.”
+
+The boy smiled a happy smile. “I'll go,” he said resolutely.
+
+“Thanks, awfully,” said Miss Brodie. “I shall feel so much safer with
+you in the waiting room.”
+
+It was a difficult matter to surprise Mr. Rae, and even more difficult
+to extract from him any sign of surprise, but when Dunn, leaving Miss
+Brodie and his brother in the anteroom, entered Mr. Rae's private office
+and laid the letter for Mr. Sheratt before him, remarking, “This letter
+is from Sir Archibald, and withdraws the prosecution,” Mr. Rae stood
+speechless, gazing now at the letter in his hand, and now at Mr. Dunn's
+face.
+
+“God bless my soul! This is unheard of. How came you by this, Sir?”
+
+“Miss Brodie--” began Dunn.
+
+“Miss Brodie?”
+
+“She is in the waiting room, Sir.”
+
+“Then, for heaven's sake, bring her in! Davie, Davie! Where is that man
+now? Here, Davie, a message to Mr. Thomlinson.”
+
+Davie entered with deliberate composure.
+
+“My compliments to Mr. Thomlinson, and ask if he would step over at
+once. It is a matter of extreme urgency. Be quick!”
+
+But Davie had his own mind as to the fitness of things. “Wad a note no'
+be better, Sir? Wull not--?”
+
+“Go, will you!” almost shouted Mr. Rae.
+
+Davie was so startled at Mr. Rae's unusual vehemence that he seized his
+cap and made for the door. “He'll no' come for the like o' me,” he
+said, pausing with the door-knob in his hand. “It's no' respectable like
+tae--”
+
+“Man, will ye no' be gone?” cried Mr. Rae, rising from his chair.
+
+“I will that!” exclaimed Davie, banging the door after him. “But,” he
+cried furiously, thrusting his head once more into the room, “if he'll
+no' come it's no' faut o' mine.” His voice rose higher and higher, and
+ended in a wrathful scream as Mr. Rae, driven to desperation, hurled a
+law book of some weight at his vanishing head.
+
+“The de'il take ye! Ye'll be my deith yet.”
+
+The book went crashing against the door-frame just as Miss Brodie was
+about to enter. “I say,” she cried, darting back. “Heaven protect me!
+Rob, save me!”
+
+Rob sprang to her side. She stood for a moment gazing aghast at Mr.
+Dunn, who gazed back at her in equal surprise. “Is this his 'usual'?”
+ she inquired.
+
+At that the door opened. “Ah, Mr. Dunn, this is Miss Brodie, I suppose.
+Come in, come in!” Mr. Rae's manner was most bland.
+
+Miss Brodie gave him her hand with some hesitation. “I'm very glad to
+meet you, Mr. Rae, but is this quite the usual method? I mean to say,
+I've heard of having advice hurled at one's head, but I can't say that I
+ever was present at a demonstration of the method.”
+
+“Oh,” said Mr. Rae, with bland and gallant courtesy, “the method, my
+dear young lady, varies with the subject in hand.”
+
+“Ah, the subject!”
+
+“And with the object in view.”
+
+“Oh, I see.”
+
+“But pray be seated. And now explain this most wonderful phenomenon.” He
+tapped the letter.
+
+“Oh, that is quite simple,” said Miss Brodie. “I set the case of young
+Mr. Cameron before my uncle, and of course he at once saw that the only
+thing to do was withdraw the prosecution.”
+
+Mr. Rae stood gazing steadily at her as if striving to take in the
+meaning of her words, the while screwing up his ear most violently till
+it stuck out like a horn upon the side of his shiny, bald head. “Permit
+me to say, Miss Brodie,” he said, with a deliberate and measured
+emphasis, “that you must be a most extraordinary young lady.” At this
+point Mr. Rae's smile broke forth in all its glory.
+
+“Oh, thank you, Mr. Rae,” replied Miss Brodie, smiling responsively at
+him. “You are most--” But Mr. Rae's smile had vanished. “What! I beg
+your pardon!” Miss Brodie's smiling response was abruptly arrested by
+finding herself gazing at a face whose grave solemnity rebuked her smile
+as unwarranted levity.
+
+“Not at all, not at all!” said Mr. Rae. “But now, there are matters
+demanding immediate action. First, Mr. Sheratt must receive and act
+upon this letter without delay.” As he spoke he was scribbling hastily
+a note. “Mr. Dunn, my young men have gone for the day. Might I trouble
+you?”
+
+“Most certainly,” cried Mr. Dunn. “Is an answer wanted?”
+
+“Bring him with you, if possible; indeed, bring him whether it is
+possible or not. But wait, it is past the hour appointed. Already the
+officer has gone for young Cameron. We must save him the humiliation of
+arrest.”
+
+“Oh, could I not warn him?” cried Miss Brodie eagerly. “No,” she added,
+“Rob will go. He is in the waiting room now, poor little chap. It will
+be a joy to him.”
+
+“It is just as well Rob should know nothing. He is awfully fond of
+Cameron. It would break his heart,” said Mr. Dunn.
+
+“Oh, of course! Quite unnecessary that he should know anything. We
+simply wish Cameron here at the earliest possible moment.”
+
+Dunn went with his young brother down the stairs and out to the street.
+“Now, Rob, you are to go to Cameron's lodgings and tell him that Mr. Rae
+wants him, and that I want him. Hold on, youngster!” he cried, grabbing
+Rob by the collar, “do you understand? It is very important that Cameron
+should get here as quick as he possibly can, and--I say, Rob,” the big
+brother's eyes traveled over the darkening streets that led up into the
+old town, “you're not afraid?”
+
+“A wee bit,” said Rob, tugging at the grasp on his collar; “but I don't
+care if I am.”
+
+“Good boy!” cried his brother. “Good little brick! I wouldn't let you
+go, but it's simply got to be done, old chap. Now fly!” He held him just
+a moment longer to slap him on the back, then released his hold. Dunn
+stood watching the little figure tearing up the North Bridge. “Great
+little soul!” he muttered. “Now for old Sheratt!”
+
+He put his head down and began to bore through the crowd toward Mr.
+Sheratt's house. When he had gone but a little distance he was brought
+up short by a bang full in the stomach. “Why, what the deuce!”
+
+“Dod gast ye! Whaur are ye're een?” It was Davie, breathless and furious
+from the impact. “Wad ye walk ower me, dang ye?” cried the little man
+again. Davie was Free Kirk, and therefore limited in the range of his
+vocabulary.
+
+“Oh! That you, Davie? I'm sorry I didn't see you.”
+
+“A'm no' as big as a hoose, but a'm veesible.” And Davie walked
+wrathfully about his business.
+
+“Oh, quite,” acknowledged Dunn cheerfully, hurrying on; “and tangible,
+as well.”
+
+“He's comin',” cried Davie over his shoulder; “but gar it had been
+masel',” he added grudgingly, “catch me!”
+
+But Dunn was too far on his way to make reply. Already his mind was on
+the meeting of the lawyers in Mr. Rae's office, and wondering what would
+come of it. On this subject he meditated until he reached Mr. Sheratt's
+home. Twice he rang the bell, still meditating.
+
+“By Jove, she is stunning! She's a wonder!” he exclaimed to himself as
+he stood in Mr. Sheratt's drawing-room. “She's got 'em all skinned a
+mile, as Martin would say.” It is safe to affirm that Mr. Dunn was not
+referring to the middle-aged and highly respectable maid who had
+opened the door to him. It is equally safe to affirm that this was the
+unanimous verdict of the three men who, half an hour later, brought
+their deliberations to a conclusion, frankly acknowledging to each
+other that what they had one and all failed to achieve, the lady had
+accomplished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+
+
+“I say, you blessed Colonial, what's come over you?” Linklater was
+obviously disturbed. He had just returned from a summer's yachting
+through the Norway fjords, brown and bursting with life. The last
+half-hour he had been pouring forth his experiences to his friend
+Martin. These experiences were some of them exciting, some of them
+of doubtful ethical quality, but all of them to Linklater at least
+interesting. During the recital it was gradually borne in upon him that
+his friend Martin was changed. Linklater, as the consciousness of the
+change in his friend grew upon him, was prepared to resent it. “What the
+deuce is the matter with you?” he enquired. “Are you ill?”
+
+“Never better. I could at this present moment sit upon your fat and
+florid carcass.”
+
+“Well, what then is wrong? I say, you haven't--it isn't a girl, is it?”
+
+“Nothing so lucky for a bloomin' Colonial in this land of wealth and
+culture. If I only dared!”
+
+“There's something,” insisted Linklater; “but I've no doubt it
+will develop. Meantime let us go out, and, in your own picturesque
+vocabulary, let us 'hit the flowing bowl.'”
+
+“No, Sir!” cried Martin emphatically. “No more! I am on the water wagon,
+and have been all summer.”
+
+“I knew it was something,” replied Linklater gloomily, “but I didn't
+think it was quite so bad as that. No wonder you've had a hard summer!”
+
+“Best summer ever!” cried Martin. “I only wish I had started two years
+ago when I came to this bibulous burgh.”
+
+“How came it? Religion?”
+
+“No; just horse sense, and the old chief.”
+
+“Dunn!” exclaimed Linklater. “I always knew he was against that sort of
+thing in training, but I didn't think he would carry it to this length.”
+
+“Yes, Dunn! I say, old boy, I've no doubt you think you know him, I
+thought so, too, but I've learned some this summer. Here's a yarn, and
+it is impressive. Dunn had planned an extensive walking tour in the
+Highlands; you know he came out of his exams awfully fagged. Well, at
+this particular moment it happened that Balfour Murray--you know the
+chap that has been running that settlement joint in the Canongate for
+the last two years--proposes to Dunn that he should spend a few weeks
+in leading the young hopefuls in that interesting and uncleanly
+neighbourhood into paths of virtue and higher citizenship by way of
+soccer and kindred athletic stunts. Dunn in his innocence agrees,
+whereupon Balfour Murray promptly develops a sharp attack of pneumonia,
+necessitating rest and change of air, leaving the poor old chief in the
+deadly breach. Of course, everybody knows what the chief would do in any
+deadly breach affair. He gave up his Highland tour, shouldered the whole
+Canongate business, organised the thing as never before, inveigled all
+his friends into the same deadly breach, among the number your humble
+servant, who at the time was fiercely endeavouring in the last lap of
+the course to atone for a two years' loaf, organised a champion team
+which has licked the spots off everything in sight, and in short, has
+made the whole business a howling success; at the cost, however, of all
+worldly delights, including his Highland tour and the International.”
+
+“Oh, I say!” moaned Linklater. “It makes me quite ill to think of the
+old chief going off this way.”
+
+Martin nodded sympathetically. “Kind of 'Days that are no more,' 'Lost
+leader' feeling, eh?”
+
+“Exactly, exactly! Oh, it's rotten! And you, too! He's got you on this
+same pious line.”
+
+“Look here,” shouted Martin, with menace in his voice, “are you
+classifying me with the old chief? Don't be a derned fool.”
+
+Linklater brightened perceptibly. “Now you're getting a little natural,”
+ he said in a hopeful tone.
+
+“Oh, I suppose you'd like to hear me string out a lot of damns.”
+
+“Well, it might help. I wouldn't feel quite so lonely. But don't
+violate--”
+
+“I'd do it if I thought it would really increase your comfort, though
+I know I'd feel like an infernal ass. I've got new light upon this
+'damning' business. I've come to regard it as the refuge of the mentally
+inert, not to say imbecile, who have lost the capacity for originality
+and force in speech. For me, I am cured.”
+
+“Ah!” said Linklater. “Dunn again, I suppose.”
+
+“Not a bit! Clear case of psychological reaction. After listening to
+the Canongate experts I was immediately conscious of an overwhelming
+and mortifying sense of inadequacy, of amateurishness; hence I quit.
+Besides, of course, the chief is making rather a point of uplifting the
+Canongate forms of speech.”
+
+Linklater gazed steadily at this friend, then said with mournful
+deliberation, “You don't drink, you don't swear, you don't smoke--”
+
+“Oh, that's your grouch, is it?” cried Martin. “Forgive me; here's
+my pouch, old chap; or wait, here's something altogether finer than
+anything you've been accustomed to. I was at old Kingston's last night,
+and the old boy would have me load up with his finest. You know I've
+been working with him this summer. Awfully fine for me! Dunn got me on;
+or rather, his governor. There you are now! Smoke that with reverence.”
+
+“Ah,” sighed Linklater, as he drew in his first whiff, “there is still
+something left to live for. Now tell me, what about Cameron?”
+
+“Oh, Cameron! Cameron's all up a tree. The last time I saw him, by Jove,
+I was glad it was in the open daylight and on a frequented street. His
+face and manner suggested Roderick Dhu, The Black Douglas, and all the
+rest of that interesting gang of cutthroats. I can't bring myself to
+talk of Cameron. He's been the old chief's relaxation during dog-days.
+It makes me hot to see Dunn with that chap.”
+
+“Why, what's the trouble?”
+
+“He tried him out in half a dozen positions, in every one of which he
+proved a dead failure. The last was in Mr. Rae's office, a lawyer, you
+know, Writer, to use your lucid and luminous speech. That experiment
+proved the climax.” At the memory of that experience Martin laughed loud
+and long. “It was funny! Mr. Rae, the cool, dignified, methodical, exact
+man of the law, struggling to lick into shape this haughty Highland
+chieftain, who in his heart scorned the whole silly business. The
+result, the complete disorganisation of Mr. Rae's business, and
+total demoralisation of Mr. Rae's office staff, who one and all swore
+allegiance to the young chief. Finally, when Mr. Rae had reached the
+depths of desperation, Cameron graciously deigned to inform his boss
+that he found the office and its claims quite insupportable.”
+
+“Oh, it must have been funny. What happened?”
+
+“What happened? You bet old Rae fell on his neck with tears of joy, and
+sent him off with a handsome honorarium, as your gentle speech has it.
+That was a fortnight ago. Then Dunn, in despair, took Cameron off to his
+native haunts, and there he is to this day. By the same token, this is
+the very afternoon that Dunn returns. Let us go to meet him with cornets
+and cymbals! The unexpected pleasure of your return made me quite
+forget. But won't he revel in you, old boy!”
+
+“I don't know about that,” said Linklater gloomily. “I've a kind of
+feeling that I've dropped out of this combination.”
+
+“What?” Then Martin fell upon him.
+
+But if Martin's attempts to relieve his friend of melancholy forebodings
+were not wholly successful, Dunn's shout of joy and his double-handed
+shake as he grappled Linklater to him, drove from that young man's heart
+the last lingering shade of doubt as to his standing with his friends.
+
+On his way home Dunn dropped into Martin's diggings for a “crack,” and
+for an hour the three friends reviewed the summer's happenings, each
+finding in the experience of the others as keen a joy as in his own.
+
+Linklater's holiday had been the most fruitful in exciting incident.
+For two months he and his crew had dodged about among quaint Norwegian
+harbours and in and out of fjords of wonderful beauty. Storms they
+had weathered and calms they had endured; lazy days they had spent,
+swimming, fishing, loafing; and wild days in fighting gales and
+high-running seas that threatened to bury them and their crew beneath
+their white-topped mountainous peaks.
+
+“I say, that must have been great,” cried Dunn with enthusiastic delight
+in his friend's experiences.
+
+“It sounds good, even in the telling,” cried Martin, who had been
+listening with envious ears. “Now my experiences are quite other. One
+word describes them, grind, grind, grind, day in and day out, in a
+gallant but futile attempt to justify the wisdom of my late examiners in
+granting me my Triple.”
+
+“Don't listen to him, Linklater,” said Dunn. “I happen to know that he
+came through with banners flying and drums beating; and he has turned
+into no end of a surgeon. I've heard old Kingston on him.”
+
+“But what about you, Dunn?” asked Linklater, with a kind of curious
+uncertainty in his voice, as if dreading a tale of calamity.
+
+“Oh, I've loafed about town a little, golfing a bit and slumming a
+bit for a chap that got ill, and in spare moments looking after Martin
+here.”
+
+“And the International?”
+
+Dunn hesitated.
+
+“Come on, old chap,” said Martin, “take your medicine.”
+
+“Well,” admitted Dunn, “I had to chuck it. But,” he hastened to add,
+“Nesbitt has got the thing in fine shape, though of course lacking the
+two brilliant quarters of last year and the half--for Cameron's out of
+it--it's rather rough on Nesbitt.”
+
+“Oh, I say! It's rotten, it's really ghastly! How could you do it,
+Dunn?” said Linklater. “I could weep tears of blood.”
+
+To this Dunn made no reply. His disappointment was even yet too keen
+for him to treat it lightly. “Anything else seemed quite impossible,” at
+length he said; “I had to chuck it.”
+
+“By the way,” said Martin, “how's Cameron?”
+
+Again Dunn paused. “I wish I could tell you. He's had hard luck this
+summer. He somehow can't get hold of himself. In fact, I'm quite worried
+about Cameron. I can't tell you chaps the whole story, but last spring
+he had a really bad jolt.”
+
+“Well, what's he going to do?” Martin asked, somewhat impatiently.
+
+“I wish I knew,” replied Dunn gloomily. “There seems nothing he can
+get here that's suitable. I'm afraid he will have to try the Colonies;
+Canada for preference.”
+
+“Oh, I say, Dunn,” exclaimed Martin, “it can't really be as bad as all
+that?”
+
+Dunn laughed. “I apologise, old chap. That was rather a bad break,
+wasn't it? But all the same, to a Scotchman, and especially to a
+Highlander, to leave home and friends and all that sort of thing, you
+know--”
+
+“No, he doesn't know,” cried Linklater. “The barbarian! How could he?”
+
+“No, thank God,” replied Martin fervently, “I don't know! To my mind any
+man that has a chance to go to Canada on a good job ought to call in his
+friends and neighbours to rejoice with him.”
+
+“But I say, that reminds me,” said Dunn. “Mr. Rae is coming to have a
+talk with my governor and me about this very thing to-morrow night. I'd
+like awfully if you could drop in, Martin; and you, too, Linklater.”
+
+Linklater declined. “My folks have something on, I fear.”
+
+Martin hesitated, protesting that there was “altogether too much of this
+coddling business” in the matter of Cameron's future. “Besides, my work
+is rather crowding me.”
+
+“Oh, my pious ancestors! Work!” exclaimed Linklater in disgust. “At this
+season of the year! Come, Martin, this pose is unworthy of you.”
+
+“If you could, old man,” said Dunn earnestly, “we won't keep you long.
+It would be a great help to us all.”
+
+“All right, I'll come,” said Martin.
+
+“There'll be no one there but Mr. Rae. We'll just have a smoke and a
+chat.”
+
+But in this expectation Dunn was reckoning without his young brother,
+Rob, who, ever since a certain momentous evening, had entered into
+a covenant of comradeship with the young lady who had figured so
+prominently in the deliverance of his beloved Cameron from pending evil,
+and who during the summer had allowed no week to pass without spending
+at least a part of a day with her. On this particular evening, having
+obtained leave from his mother, the young gentle man had succeeded in
+persuading his friend to accept an invitation to dinner, assuring her
+that no one would be there except Jack, who was to arrive home the day
+before.
+
+The conclave of Cameron's friends found themselves, therefore,
+unexpectedly reinforced by the presence of Miss Brodie, to the unmingled
+joy of all of them, although in Martin's case his joy was tinged with a
+certain fear, for he stood in awe of the young lady, both because of her
+reputation for cleverness, and because of the grand air which, when it
+pleased her, she could assume. Martin, too, stood in wholesome awe
+of Doctor Dunn, whose quiet dignity and old-time courtesy exercised a
+chastening influence upon the young man's somewhat picturesque style of
+language and exuberance of metaphor. But with Mrs. Dunn he felt quite
+at ease, for with that gentle, kindly soul, her boys' friends were her
+friends and without question she took them to her motherly heart.
+
+Immediately upon Mr. Rae's arrival Cameron's future became the subject
+of conversation, and it required only the briefest discussion to arrive
+at the melancholy, inevitable conclusion that, as Mr. Rae put it, “for
+a young man of his peculiar temperament, training, and habits, Scotland
+was clearly impossible.”
+
+“But I have no doubt,” continued that excellent adviser, “that in
+Canada, where the demand for a high standard of efficiency is less
+exacting, and where openings are more plentiful, the young man will do
+very well indeed.”
+
+Martin took the lawyer up somewhat sharply. “In other words, I
+understand you to mean that the man who is a failure in Scotland may
+become a success in Canada.”
+
+“Exactly so. Would you not say so, Mr. Martin?”
+
+“It depends entirely upon the cause of failure. If failure arises from
+unfitness, his chances in Canada are infinitely less than in Scotland.”
+
+“And why?” inquired Miss Brodie somewhat impatiently.
+
+Martin hesitated. It was extremely difficult in the atmosphere of that
+home to criticise one whom he knew to be considered as a friend of the
+family.
+
+“Why, pray?” repeated Miss Brodie.
+
+“Well, of course,” began Martin hesitatingly, “comparisons are always
+odious.”
+
+“Oh, we can bear them.” Miss Brodie's smile was slightly sarcastic.
+
+“Well, then, speaking generally,” said Martin, somewhat nettled by her
+smile, “in this country there are heaps of chaps that simply can't fall
+down because of the supports that surround them, supports of custom,
+tradition, not to speak of their countless friends, sisters, cousins,
+and aunts; if they're anyways half decent they're kept a going; whereas
+if they are in a new country and with few friends, they must stand alone
+or fall. Here the crowd support them; there the crowd, eager to get on,
+shove them aside or trample them down.”
+
+“Rather a ghastly picture that,” said Miss Brodie.
+
+“But true; that is, of the unfit. People haven't time to bother with
+them; the game is too keen.”
+
+“Surely the picture is overdrawn,” said Doctor Dunn.
+
+“It may be, Sir,” replied Martin, “but I have seen so many young fellows
+who had been shipped out to Canada because they were failures at home. I
+have seen them in very hard luck.”
+
+“And what about the fit?” inquired Miss Brodie.
+
+“They get credit for every ounce that's in them.”
+
+“But that is so in Scotland as well.”
+
+“Pardon me, Miss Brodie, hardly. Here even strong men and fit men have
+to wait half a lifetime for the chance that calls for all that's in
+them. They must march in the procession and the pace is leisurely. In
+Canada the chances come every day, and the man that's ready jumps in and
+wins.”
+
+“Ah, I see!” exclaimed Miss Brodie. “There are more ladders by which to
+climb.”
+
+“Yes,” cried Martin, “and fewer men on them.”
+
+“But,” argued Dunn, “there are other causes of failure in this country.
+Many a young fellow, for instance, cannot get a congenial position.”
+
+“Yes,” replied Martin quickly, “because you won't let him; your caste
+law forbids. With us a man can do anything decent and no one thinks the
+less of him.”
+
+“Ah, I see!” again cried Miss Brodie, more eagerly than before. “Not
+only more ladders, but more kinds of ladders.”
+
+“Exactly,” said Martin with an approving glance. “And he must not be too
+long in the choosing.”
+
+“Then, Mr. Martin,” said Mr. Rae, “what would you suggest for our young
+friend?”
+
+But this Martin refused to answer.
+
+“Surely there are openings for a young fellow in Canada,” said Dunn.
+“Take a fellow like myself. What could I do?”
+
+“You?” cried Martin, his eyes shining with loving enthusiasm. “There are
+doors open on every business street in every town and city in Canada for
+you, or for any fellow who has brain or brawn to sell and who will take
+any kind of a job and stay with it.”
+
+“Well, what job, for instance?”
+
+“What job?” cried Martin. “Heaps of them.”
+
+At this point a diversion was created by the entrance of “Lily”
+ Laughton. Both Martin and Dunn envied the easy grace of his manner, his
+perfect self-possession, as he greeted each member of the company.
+For each he had exactly the right word. Miss Brodie he greeted with an
+exaggerated devotion, but when he shook hands with Dunn there was no
+mistaking the genuine warmth of his affection.
+
+“Heard you were home, old chap, so I couldn't help dropping in. Of
+course I knew that Mrs. Dunn would be sure to be here, and I more than
+suspected that my dear Miss Brodie,” here he swept her an elaborate bow,
+“whom I discovered to be away from her own home, might be found in this
+pleasant company.”
+
+“Yes, I fear that my devotion to her youngest boy is leading me to
+overstep the bounds of even Mrs. Dunn's vast and generous hospitality.”
+
+“Not a bit, my dear,” replied Mrs. Dunn kindly. “You bring sunshine with
+you, and you do us all good.”
+
+“Exactly my sentiments!” exclaimed “Lily” with enthusiasm. “But what are
+you all doing? Just having a 'collyshog'?”
+
+For a moment no one replied; then Dunn said, “We were just talking about
+Cameron, who is thinking of going to Canada.”
+
+“To Canada of all places!” exclaimed “Lily” in tones of horrified
+surprise. “How truly dreadful! But why should Cameron of all beings
+exile himself in those remote and barbarous regions?”
+
+“And why should he not?” cried Miss Brodie. “What is there for a young
+man of spirit in Mr. Cameron's position in this country?”
+
+“Why, my dear Miss Brodie, how can you ask? Just think of the heaps of
+things, of perfectly delicious things, Cameron can do,--the Highlands in
+summer, Edinburgh, London, in the season, a run to the Continent! Just
+think of the wild possibility of a life of unalloyed bliss!”
+
+“Don't be silly!” said Miss Brodie. “We are talking seriously.”
+
+“Seriously! Why, my dear Miss Brodie, do you imagine--?”
+
+“But what could he do for a life-work?” said Dunn. “A fellow must have
+something to do.”
+
+“Oh, dear, I suppose so,” said “Lily” with a sigh. “But surely he could
+have some position in an office or something!”
+
+“Exactly!” replied Miss Brodie. “How beautifully you put it! Now Mr.
+Martin was just about to tell us of the things a man could do in Canada
+when you interrupted.”
+
+“Awfully sorry, Martin. I apologise. Please go on. What do the natives
+do in Canada?”
+
+“Please don't pay any attention to him, Mr. Martin. I am extremely
+interested. Now tell me, what are the openings for a young fellow in
+Canada? You said the professions are all wide open.”
+
+It took a little persuasion to get Martin started again, so disgusted
+was he with Laughton's references to his native country. “Yes, Miss
+Brodie, the professions are all wide open, but of course men must enter
+as they do here, but with a difference. Take law, for instance: Knew a
+chap--went into an office at ten dollars a month--didn't know a thing
+about it. In three months he was raised to twenty dollars, and within a
+year to forty dollars. In three or four years he had passed his exams,
+got a junior partnership worth easily two thousand dollars a year. They
+wanted that chap, and wanted him badly. But take business: That chap
+goes into a store and--”
+
+“A store?” inquired “Lily.”
+
+“Yes, a shop you call it here; say a drygoods--”
+
+“Drygoods? What extraordinary terms these Colonials use!”
+
+“Oh, draper's shop,” said Dunn impatiently. “Go on, Martin; don't mind
+him.”
+
+“A draper's clerk!” echoed “Lily.” “To sell tapes and things?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Martin stoutly; “or groceries.”
+
+“Do you by any chance mean that a University man, a gentleman, takes a
+position in a grocer's shop to sell butter and cheese?”
+
+“I mean just that,” said Martin firmly.
+
+“Oh, please!” said “Lily” with a violent shudder. “It is too awful!”
+
+“There you are! You wouldn't demean yourself.”
+
+“Not I!” said “Lily” fervently.
+
+“Or disgrace your friends. You want a gentleman's job. There are not
+enough to go round in Canada.”
+
+“Oh, go on,” said Miss Brodie impatiently. “'Lily,' we must ask you to
+not interrupt. What happens? Does he stay there?”
+
+“Not he!” said Martin. “From the small business he goes to bigger
+business. First thing you know a man wants him for a big job and off he
+goes. Meantime he saves his money, invests wisely. Soon he is his own
+boss.”
+
+“That's fine!” cried Miss Brodie. “Go on, Mr. Martin. Start him lower
+down.”
+
+“All right,” said Martin, directing his attention solely to the young
+lady. “Here's an actual case. A young fellow from Scotland found himself
+strapped--”
+
+“Strapped? What DOES he mean?” said “Lily” in an appealing voice.
+
+“On the rocks.”
+
+“Rocks?”
+
+“Dear me!” cried Miss Brodie impatiently. “You are terribly lacking in
+imagination. Broke, he means.”
+
+“Oh, thanks!”
+
+“Well, finds himself broke,” said Martin; “gets a shovel, jumps into a
+cellar--”
+
+“And why a cellar, pray?” inquires “Lily” mildly. “To hide himself from
+the public?”
+
+“Not at all; they were digging a cellar preparatory to building a
+house.”
+
+“Oh!”
+
+“He jumps in, blisters his hands, breaks his back--but he stays with the
+job. In a week the boss makes him timekeeper; in three months he himself
+is boss of a small gang; the next year he is made foreman at a hundred a
+month or so.”
+
+“A hundred a month?” cries “Lily” in astonishment. “Oh, Martin, please!
+We are green, but a hundred pounds a month--!”
+
+“Dollars,” said Martin shortly. “Don't be an ass! I beg pardon,” he
+added, turning to Mrs. Dunn, who was meantime greatly amused.
+
+“A hundred dollars a month; that is--I am so weak in arithmetic--twenty
+pounds, I understand. Go on, Martin; I'm waiting for the carriage and
+pair.”
+
+“That's where you get left,” said Martin. “No carriage and pair for this
+chap yet awhile; overalls and slouch hat for the next five years for
+him. Then he begins contracting on his own.”
+
+“I beg your pardon,” says “Lily.”
+
+“I mean he begins taking jobs on his own.”
+
+“Great!” cried Miss Brodie.
+
+“Or,” continued Martin, now fairly started on a favourite theme, “there
+are the railroads all shouting for men of experience, whether in the
+construction department or in the operating department.”
+
+“Does anyone here happen to understand him?” inquires “Lily” faintly.
+
+“Certainly,” cried Miss Brodie; “all the intelligent people do. At
+least, I've a kind of notion there are big things doing. I only wish I
+were a man!”
+
+“Oh, Miss Brodie, how can you?” cried “Lily.” “Think of us in such a
+contingency!”
+
+“But,” said Mr. Rae, “all of this is most interesting, extremely
+interesting, Mr. Martin. Still, they cannot all arrive at these exalted
+positions.”
+
+“No, Mr. Rae. I may have given that impression. I confess to a little
+madness when I begin talking Canada.”
+
+“Ah!” exclaimed “Lily.”
+
+“But I said men of brawn and brains, you remember.”
+
+“And bounce, to perfect the alliteration,” murmured “Lily.”
+
+“Yes, bounce, too,” said Martin; “at least, he must never take
+back-water; he must be ready to attempt anything, even the impossible.”
+
+“That's the splendid thing about it!” cried Miss Brodie. “You're
+entirely on your own and you never say die!”
+
+“Oh, my dear Miss Brodie,” moaned “Lily” in piteous accents, “you are so
+fearfully energetic! And then, it's all very splendid, but just think
+of a--of a gentleman having to potter around among butter and cheese,
+or mess about in muddy cellars! Ugh! Positively GHAWSTLY! I would simply
+die.”
+
+“Oh, no, you wouldn't, 'Lily,'” said Martin kindly. “We have afternoon
+teas and Browning Clubs, too, you must remember, and some 'cultchaw' and
+that sort of thing.”
+
+There was a joyous shout from Dunn.
+
+“But, Mr. Martin,” persisted Mr. Rae, whose mind was set in arriving at
+a solution of the problem in hand, “I have understood that agriculture
+was the chief pursuit in Canada.”
+
+“Farming! Yes, it is, but of course that means capital. Good land in
+Ontario means seventy-five to a hundred dollars per acre, and a man
+can't do with less than a hundred acres; besides, farming is getting to
+be a science now-a-days, Sir.”
+
+“Ah, quite true! But to a young man bred on a farm in this country--”
+
+“Excuse me, Mr. Rae,” replied Martin quickly, “there is no such thing in
+Canada as a gentleman farmer. The farmer works with his men.”
+
+“Do you mean that he actually works?” inquired “Lily.” “With the plough
+and hoe, and that sort of thing?”
+
+“Works all day long, as long as any of his men, and indeed longer.”
+
+“And does he actually live--? of course he doesn't eat with his
+servants?” said “Lily” in a tone that deprecated the preposterous
+proposition.
+
+“They all eat together in the big kitchen,” replied Martin.
+
+“How awful!” gasped “Lily.”
+
+“My father does,” replied Martin, a little colour rising in his cheek,
+“and my mother, and my brothers. They all eat with the men; my sister,
+too, except when she waits on table.”
+
+“Fine!” exclaimed Miss Brodie. “And why not? 'Lily,' I'm afraid you're
+horribly snobbish.”
+
+“Thank the Lord,” said “Lily” devoutly, “I live in this beloved
+Scotland!”
+
+“But, Mr. Martin, forgive my persistence, I understand there is cheaper
+land in certain parts of Canada; in, say, ManitoBAW.”
+
+“Ah, yes, Sir, of course, lots of it; square miles of it!” cried Martin
+with enthusiasm. “The very best out of doors, and cheap, but I fancy
+there are some hardships in Manitoba.”
+
+“But I see by the public newspapers,” continued Mr. Rae, “that there is
+a very large movement in the way of emigration toward that country.”
+
+“Yes, there's a great boom on in Manitoba just now.”
+
+“Boom?” said “Lily.” “And what exactly may that be in the vernacular?”
+
+“I take it,” said Mr. Rae, evidently determined not to allow the
+conversation to get out of his hands, “you mean a great excitement
+consequent upon the emigration and the natural rise in land values?”
+
+“Yes, Sir,” cried Martin, “you've hit it exactly.”
+
+“Then would there not be opportunity to secure a considerable amount of
+land at a low figure in that country?”
+
+“Most certainly! But it's fair to say that success there means work and
+hardship and privation. Of course it is always so in a new country; it
+was so in Ontario. Why, the new settlers in Manitoba don't know what
+hardships mean in comparison with those that faced the early settlers in
+Ontario. My father, when a little boy of ten years, went with his father
+into the solid forest; you don't know what that means in this country,
+and no one can who has not seen a solid mass of green reaching from the
+ground a hundred feet high without a break in it except where the trail
+enters. Into that solid forest in single file went my grandfather,
+his two little boys, and one ox carrying a bag of flour, some pork and
+stuff. By a mark on a tree they found the corner of their farm.” Martin
+paused.
+
+“Do go on,” said Miss Brodie. “Tell me the very first thing he did.”
+
+But Martin seemed to hesitate. “Well,” he began slowly, “I've often
+heard my father tell it. When they came to that tree with the mark on
+it, grandfather said, 'Boys, we have reached our home. Let us thank
+God.' He went up to a big spruce tree, drove his ax in to the butt, then
+kneeled down with the two little boys beside him, and I have heard my
+father say that when he looked away up between the big trees and saw the
+bit of blue sky there, he thought God was listening at that blue hole
+between the tree-tops.” Martin paused abruptly, and for a few moments
+silence held the group. Then Doctor Dunn, clearing his throat, said with
+quiet emphasis:
+
+“And he was right, my boy; make no doubt of that.”
+
+“Then?” inquired Miss Brodie softly. “If you don't mind.”
+
+Martin laughed. “Then they had grub, and that afternoon grandfather cut
+the trees and the boys limbed them off, clearing the ground where the
+first house stood. That night they slept in a little brush hut that did
+them for a house until grandmother came two weeks later.”
+
+“What?” said Doctor Dunn. “Your grandmother went into the forest?”
+
+“Yes, Sir,” said Martin; “and two miles of solid black bush stretched
+between her and the next woman.”
+
+“Why, of course, my dear,” said Mrs. Dunn, taking part for the first
+time in the conversation. “What else?”
+
+They all laughed.
+
+“Of course, Mother,” said her eldest son, “that's what you would do.”
+
+“So would I, Mamma, wouldn't I?” whispered Rob, leaning towards her.
+
+“Certainly, my dear,” replied his mother; “I haven't the slightest
+doubt.”
+
+“And so would any woman worth her salt if she loved her husband,” cried
+Miss Brodie with great emphasis.
+
+“Why, why,” cried Doctor Dunn, “it's the same old breed, Mother.”
+
+“But in Manitoba--?” began Mr. Rae, still clinging to the subject.
+
+“Oh, in Manitoba there is no forest to cut. However, there are other
+difficulties. Still, hundreds are crowding in, and any man who has the
+courage and the nerve to stay with it can get on.”
+
+“And what did they do for schools?” said Mrs. Dunn, returning to the
+theme that had so greatly interested her.
+
+“There were no schools until father was too big to be spared to go
+except for a few weeks in the winter.”
+
+“How big do you mean?”
+
+“Say fifteen.”
+
+“Fifteen!” exclaimed Miss Brodie. “A mere infant!”
+
+“Infant!” said Martin. “Not much! At fifteen my father was doing a man's
+full work in the bush and on the farm, and when he grew to be a man he
+cleared most of his own land, too. Why, when I was eleven I drove my
+team all day on the farm.”
+
+“And how did you get your education, Mr. Martin?”
+
+“Oh, they kept me at school pretty steadily, except in harvest and hay
+time, until I was fourteen, and after that in the winter months. When I
+was sixteen I got a teacher's certificate, and then it was easy enough.”
+
+“And did you put yourself through college?” inquired Mr. Rae, both
+interest and admiration in his voice, for now they were on ground
+familiar in his own experience.
+
+“Why, yes, mostly. Father helped, I suspect more than he ought to, but
+he was anxious for me to get through.”
+
+“Rob,” cried Miss Brodie suddenly, “let's go! What do you say? We'll get
+a big bit of that land in the West, and won't it be splendid to build up
+our own estate and all that?”
+
+Rob glanced from her into his mother's face. “I'd like it fine, Mamma,”
+ he said in a low voice, slipping his hand into hers.
+
+“But what about me, Rob?” said his mother, smiling tenderly down into
+the eager face.
+
+“Oh, I'd come back for you, Mamma.”
+
+“Hold on there, youngster,” said his elder brother, “there are others
+that might have something to say about that. But I say, Martin,”
+ continued Dunn, “we hear a lot about the big ranches further West.”
+
+“Yes, in Alberta, but I confess I don't know much about them. The
+railways are just building and people are beginning to go in. But
+ranching needs capital, too. It must be a great life! They practically
+live in the saddle. It's a glorious country!”
+
+“On the whole, then,” said Mr. Rae, as if summing up the discussion, “a
+young man has better opportunities of making his fortune, so to speak,
+in the far West rather than in, say, Ontario.”
+
+“I didn't speak of fortune, Mr. Rae,--fortune is a chance thing, more or
+less,--but what I say is this, that any young man not afraid of work,
+of any kind of work, and willing to stay with his job, can make a living
+and get a home in any part of Canada, with a bigger chance of fortune in
+the West.”
+
+“All I say, Mr. Rae, is this,” said Miss Brodie emphatically, “that I
+only wish I were a man with just such a chance as young Cameron!”
+
+“Ah, my dear young lady, if all the young men were possessed of your
+spirit, it would matter little where they went, for they would achieve
+distinct success.” As he spoke Mr. Rae's smile burst forth in all its
+effulgent glory.
+
+“Dear Mr. Rae, how very clever of you to discover that!” replied Miss
+Brodie, smiling sweetly into Mr. Rae's radiant face. “And how very sweet
+of you--ah, I beg your pardon; that is--” The disconcerting rapidity
+with which Mr. Rae's smile gave place to an appearance of grave, of even
+severe solemnity, threw Miss Brodie quite “out of her stride,” as
+Martin said afterward, and left her floundering in a hopeless attempt to
+complete her compliment.
+
+Her confusion was the occasion of unlimited joy to “Lily,” who was not
+unfamiliar with this facial phenomenon on the part of Mr. Rae. “Oh, I
+say!” he cried to Dunn in a gale of smothered laughter, “how does the
+dear man do it? It is really too lovely! I must learn the trick of that.
+I have never seen anything quite so appallingly flabbergasting.”
+
+Meantime Mr. Rae was blandly assisting Miss Brodie out of her dilemma.
+“Not at all, Miss Brodie, not at all! But,” he continued, throwing
+his smile about the room, “I think, Doctor Dunn, we have reason to
+congratulate ourselves upon not only a pleasant but an extremely
+profitable evening--ah--as far as the matter in hand is concerned. I
+hope to have further speech with our young friend,” bowing to Mr. Martin
+and bringing his smile to bear upon that young gentleman.
+
+“Oh, certainly,” began Martin with ready geniality, “whenever you--eh?
+What did you say, Sir? I didn't quite--”
+
+But Mr. Rae was already bidding Mrs. Dunn goodnight, with a face of
+preternatural gravity.
+
+“What the deuce!” said Martin, turning to his friend Dunn. “Does the old
+boy often go off at half-cock that way? He'll hurt himself some time,
+sure.”
+
+“Isn't it awful?” said Dunn. “He's got me a few times that way, too. But
+I say, old boy, we're awfully grateful to you for coming.”
+
+“I feel like a fool,” said Martin; “as if I'd been delivering a
+lecture.”
+
+“Don't think it,” cried Miss Brodie, who had drawn near. “You've been
+perfectly lovely, and I am so glad to have got to know you better. For
+me, I am quite resolved to go to Canada.”
+
+“But do you think they can really spare us all, Miss Brodie?” exclaimed
+“Lily” in an anxious voice. “For, of course, if you go we must.”
+
+“No, 'Lily,' I'm quite sure they can't spare you. Just think, what could
+the Browning-Wagner circle do? Besides, what could we do with you when
+we were all working, for I can quite see that there is no use going to
+Canada unless you mean to work?”
+
+“You've got it, Miss Brodie,” said Martin. “My lecture is not in vain.
+There is no use going to Canada unless you mean to work and to stay with
+the job till the cows come home.”
+
+“Till the cows come--?” gasped “Lily.”
+
+“Oh, never mind him, Mr. Martin! Come, 'Lily' dear, I'll explain it to
+you on the way home. Good-night, Mr. Dunn; we've had a jolly evening.
+And as for our friend Cameron, I've ceased to pity him; on the contrary,
+I envy him his luck.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+
+
+Once more the golden light of a sunny spring day was shining on the
+sapphire loch at the bottom, and overflowing at the rim of the Cuagh
+Oir. But for all its flowing gold, there was grief in the Glen--grief
+deep and silent, like the quiet waters of the little loch. It was seen
+in the grave faces of the men who gathered at the “smiddy.” It was heard
+in the cadence of the voices of the women as they gathered to “kalie”
+ (Ceilidh) in the little cottages that fringed the loch's side, or dotted
+the heather-clad slopes. It even checked the boisterous play of the
+bairns as they came in from school. It lay like a cloud on the Cuagh,
+and heavy on the hearts that made up the little hill-girt community of
+one hundred souls, or more.
+
+And the grief was this, that on the “morrow's morn” Mary Robertson's son
+was departing from the Glen “neffer to return for effermore,” as Donald
+of the House farm put it, with a face gloomy as the loch on a dark
+winter's day.
+
+“A leaving” was ever an occasion of wailing to the Glen, and many a
+leaving had the Glen known during the last fifty years. For wherever
+the tartan waved, and the bonnie feathers danced for the glory of the
+Empire, sons of the Glen were ever to be found; but not for fifty years
+had the heart of the Glen known the luxury of a single rallying centre
+for their pride and their love till the “young chentleman,” young Mr.
+Allan, began to go in and out among them. And as he grew into manhood so
+grew their pride in him. And as, from time to time, at the Great Games
+he began to win glory for the Glen with his feats of skill and strength,
+and upon the pipes, and in the dances, their pride in him grew until
+it passed all limits. Had he not, the very year before he went to the
+college, cut the comb of the “Cock of the North” from Glen Urquhart,
+in running and jumping; and the very same year had he not wrested
+from Callum Bheg, the pride of Athole, the coveted badge of Special
+Distinction in Highland Dancing? Then later, when the schoolmaster would
+read from the Inverness Courier to one group after another at the post
+office and at the “smiddy” (it was only fear of the elder MacPherson,
+that kept the master from reading it aloud at the kirk door before the
+service) accounts of the “remarkable playing” of Cameron, the brilliant
+young “half-back” of the Academy in Edinburgh, the Glen settled down
+into an assured conviction that it had reached the pinnacle of vicarious
+glory, and that in all Scotland there was none to compare with their
+young “chieftain” as, quite ignoring the Captain, they loved to call
+him.
+
+And there was more than pride in him, for on his holidays he came back
+to the Glen unspoiled by all his honours and achievements, and went
+about among them “jist like ain o' their ain sels,” accepting their
+homage as his right, but giving them in return, according to their
+various stations, due respect and honour, and their love grew greater
+than their pride.
+
+But the “morrow's morn” he was leaving the Glen, and, worse than all, no
+one knew for why. A mystery hung over the cause of his going, a mystery
+deepened by his own bearing during the past twelve months, for all these
+months a heavy gloom had shrouded him, and from all that had once been
+his delight and their glory he had withdrawn. The challenge, indeed,
+from the men of Glen Urquhart which he had accepted long ago, he refused
+not, but even the overwhelming defeat which he had administered to his
+haughty challengers, had apparently brought him no more than a passing
+gleam of joy. The gloom remained unlifted and the cause the Glen knew
+not, and no man of them would seek to know. Hence the grief of the
+Glen was no common grief when the son of Mary Robertson, the son of the
+House, the pride of the Glen, and the comrade and friend of them all,
+was about to depart and never to return.
+
+His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through
+the cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift of
+remembrance. It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe. It was not
+only that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round every stick
+and stone of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving behind him a
+love and loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself. It was that in
+tearing himself from them he could make no response to the dumb appeal
+in the eyes that followed him with adoration and fidelity: “Wherefore
+do you leave us at all?” and “Why do you make no promise of return?” To
+that dumb appeal there was no answer possible from one who carried on
+his heart for himself, and on his life for some few others, and among
+these his own father, the terrible brand of the criminal. It was this
+grim fact that stained black the whole landscape of his consciousness,
+and that hung like a pall of death over every living and delightsome
+thing in the garden of his soul. While none could, without challenge,
+condemn him, yet his own tongue refused to proclaim his innocence.
+Every face he loved drove deeper into his heart his pain. The deathless
+loyalty and unbounded pride of the Glen folk rebuked him, without their
+knowing, for the dishonour he had done them. The Glen itself, the hills,
+the purpling heather, the gleaming loch, how dear to him he had never
+known till now, threw in his face a sad and silent reproach. Small
+wonder that the Glen, that Scotland had become intolerable to him. With
+this bitter burden on his heart it was that young Mr. Allan went his way
+through the Glen making his farewells, not daring to indulge the luxury
+of his grief, and with never a word of return.
+
+His sister, who knew all, and who would have carried--oh! how
+gladly!--on her own heart, and for all her life long, that bitter
+burden, pleaded to be allowed to go with him on what she knew full well
+was a journey of sorrow and sore pain, but this he would not permit.
+This sorrow and pain which were his own, he would share with no one,
+and least of all with her upon whose life he had already cast so dark
+a shadow. Hence she was at the house alone, her father not having yet
+returned from an important meeting at a neighbouring village, when a
+young man came to the door asking for young Mr. Cameron.
+
+“Who is it, Kirsty?” she inquired anxiously, a new fear at her heart for
+her brother.
+
+“I know not, but he has neffer been in this Glen before whateffer,”
+ replied Kirsty, with an ominous shake of the head, her primitive
+instincts leading her to view the stranger with suspicion. “But!” she
+added, with a glance at her young mistress' face, “he iss no man to be
+afraid of, at any rate. He is just a laddie.”
+
+“Oh, he is a YOUNG man, Kirsty?” replied her mistress, glancing at her
+blue serge gown, her second best, and with her hands striving to tuck in
+some of her wayward curls.
+
+“Och, yess, and not much at that!” replied Kirsty, with the idea of
+relieving her young mistress of unnecessary fears.
+
+Then Moira, putting on her grand air, stepped into the parlour, and saw
+standing there and awaiting her, a young man with a thin and somewhat
+hard face, a firm mouth, and extraordinarily keen, grey eyes. Upon her
+appearing the young man stood looking upon her without a word. As a
+matter of fact, he was struggling with a problem; a problem that was
+quite bewildering; the problem, namely, “How could hair ever manage
+to get itself into such an arrangement of waves and curls, and golden
+gleams and twinkles?” Struggling with this problem, he became conscious
+of her voice gravely questioning him. “You were wishing to see my
+brother?” The young man came back part way, and replied, “Oh! how does
+it--? That is--. I beg your pardon.” The surprise in her face brought
+him quite to the ground, and he came at once to his business. “I am Mr.
+Martin,” he said in a quick, sharp voice. “I know your brother and Mr.
+Dunn.” He noted a light dawn in her eyes. “In fact, I played with them
+on the same team--at football, you know.”
+
+“Oh!” cried the girl, relief and welcome in her voice, “I know you,
+Mr. Martin, quite well. I know all about you, and what a splendid
+quarter-back you are.” Here she gave him both her hands, which Mr.
+Martin took in a kind of dream, once more plunged into the mazes of
+another and more perplexing problem, viz., Was it her lips with that
+delicious curve to them? or her eyes so sunny and brown (or were they
+brown?) with that alluring, bewitching twinkle? or was it both lips and
+eyes that gave to the smile with which she welcomed him its subtle power
+to make his heart rise and choke him as it never had been known to do in
+the most strenuous of his matches? “I'm awfully glad,” he heard himself
+say, and her voice replying, “Oh, yes! Allan has often and often spoken
+of you, Mr. Martin.” Mr. Martin immediately became conscious of a
+profound and grateful affection to Allan, still struggling, however,
+with the problem which had been complicated still further by the charm
+of her soft, Highland voice. He was on the point of deciding in favour
+of her voice, when on her face he noted a swift change from glad welcome
+to suspicion and fear, and then into her sunny eyes a sudden leaping of
+fierce wrath, as in those of a lioness defending her young.
+
+“Why do you look so?” she cried in a voice sharp and imperious. “Is it
+my brother--? Is anything wrong?”
+
+The shock of the change in eyes and voice brought Martin quite to
+himself.
+
+“Wrong? Not a bit,” he hastened to say, “but just the finest thing in
+the world. It is all here in this letter. Dunn could not come himself,
+and there was no one else, and he thought Cameron ought to have it
+to-day, so here I am, and here is the letter. Where is he?”
+
+“Oh!” cried the girl, clasping her hands upon her heart, her voice
+growing soft, and her eyes dim with a sudden mist. “I am so thankful!
+I am so glad!” The change in her voice and in her eyes so affected Mr.
+Martin that he put his hands resolutely behind his back lest they should
+play him tricks, and should, without his will, get themselves round her
+and draw her close to his heart.
+
+“So am I,” he said, “awfully glad! Never was so glad in all my life!” He
+was more conscious than ever of bewilderment and perplexity in the midst
+of increasing problems that complicated themselves with mist brown eyes,
+trembling lips, and a voice of such pathetic cadences as aroused in
+him an almost uncontrollable desire to exercise his utmost powers of
+comfort. And all the while there was growing in his heart a desperate
+anxiety as to what would be the final issue of these bewildering desires
+and perplexities; when at the extremity of his self-control he was saved
+by the girl's suggestion.
+
+“Let us go and find my brother.”
+
+“Oh, yes!” cried Martin, “for heaven's sake let us.”
+
+“Wait until I get my hat.”
+
+“Oh! I wouldn't put on a hat,” cried he in dismay.
+
+“Why?” enquired the girl, looking at him with surprised curiosity.
+
+“Oh! because--because you don't need one; it's so beautiful and sunny,
+you know.” In spite of what he could do Mr. Martin's eyes kept wandering
+to her hair.
+
+“Oh, well!” cried Moira, in increasing surprise at this strange young
+man, “the sun won't hurt me, so come, let us go.”
+
+Together they went down the avenue of rugged firs. At the highway
+she paused. Before them lay the Glen in all the splendid sweep of its
+beauty.
+
+“Isn't it lovely!” she breathed.
+
+“Lovely!” echoed Martin, his eyes not on the Glen. “It is so sunny, you
+know.”
+
+“Yes,” she answered quickly, “you notice that?”
+
+“How could I help it?” said Martin, his eyes still resting upon her.
+“How could I?”
+
+“Of course,” she replied, “and so we call it the Glen Cuagh Oir, that
+is the 'Glen of the Cup of Gold.' And to think he has to leave it all
+to-morrow!” she added.
+
+The pathetic cadences in her voice again drove Martin to despair. He
+recovered himself, however, to say, “But he is going to Canada!”
+
+“Yes, to Canada. And we all feel it so dreadfully for him, and,” she
+added in a lower voice, “for ourselves.”
+
+Had it been yesterday Martin would have been ready with scorn for any
+such feeling, and with congratulations to Cameron upon his exceptionally
+good luck in the expectation of going to Canada; but to-day, somehow it
+was different. He found the splendid lure of his native land availed not
+to break the spell of the Glen, and as he followed the girl in and out
+of the little cottages, seeking her brother, and as he noted the perfect
+courtesy and respect which marked her manner with the people, and their
+unstudied and respectful devotion to their “tear young leddy,” this
+spell deepened upon him. Unconsciously and dimly he became aware of a
+mysterious and mighty power somehow and somewhere in the Glen straining
+at the heart-strings of its children. Of the nature and origin of this
+mysterious and mighty power, the young Canadian knew little. His
+country was of too recent an origin for mystery, and its people too
+heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics to furnish a soil for
+tribal instincts and passions. The passionate loves and hatreds of the
+clans, their pride of race, their deathless lealty; and more than all,
+and better than all, their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices;
+these, with the mystic, wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and
+rock-rimmed loch, of roaring torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir
+and sunny pasture nuiks; all these, and ten thousand nameless and
+unnamable things united in the weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the
+hearts of its people. Of how it all came to be, Martin knew nothing,
+but like an atmosphere it stole in upon him, and he came to vaguely
+understand something of what it meant to be a Highlander, and to bid
+farewell to the land into whose grim soil his life roots had struck
+deep, and to tear himself from hearts whose life stream and his had
+flowed as one for a score of generations. So from cot to cot Martin
+followed and observed, until they came to the crossing where the broad
+path led up from the highroad to the kirkyard and the kirk. Here they
+were halted by a young man somewhat older than Martin. Tall and gaunt
+he stood. His face, pale and pock-marked and lit by light blue eyes, and
+crowned by brilliant red hair, was, with all its unloveliness, a face of
+a certain rugged beauty; while his manner and bearing showed the native
+courtesy of a Highland gentleman.
+
+“You are seeking Mr. Allan?” he said, taking off his bonnet to the girl.
+“He is in yonder,” waving his hand towards the kirkyard.
+
+“In yonder? You are sure, Mr. Maclise?” She might well ask, for never
+but on Sabbath days, since the day they had laid his mother away under
+the birch trees, had Allan put foot inside the kirkyard.
+
+“Half an hour ago he went in,” replied the young Highlander, “and he has
+not returned.”
+
+“I will go in, then,” said the girl, and hesitated, unwilling that a
+stranger's eyes should witness what she knew was waiting her there.
+
+“You, Sir, will perhaps abide with me,” suggested Mr. Maclise to Martin,
+with a quick understanding of her hesitation.
+
+“Oh, thank you,” cried Moira. “This is Mr. Martin from Canada, Mr.
+Maclise--my brother's great friend. Mr. Maclise is our schoolmaster
+here,” she added, turning to Martin, “and we are very proud of him.”
+ The Highlander's pale face became the colour of his brilliant hair as he
+remarked, “You are very good indeed, Miss Cameron, and I am glad to make
+the acquaintance of Mr. Martin. It will give me great pleasure to show
+Mr. Martin the little falls at the loch's end, if he cares to step that
+far.” If Mr. Martin was conscious of any great desire to view the little
+falls at the loch's end, his face most successfully dissembled any such
+feeling, but to the little falls he must go as the schoolmaster quietly
+possessed himself of him and led him away, while Miss Cameron, with
+never a thought of either of them, passed up the broad path into the
+kirkyard. There, at the tower's foot, she came upon her brother, prone
+upon the little grassy mound, with arms outspread, as if to hold it in
+embrace. At the sound of his sister's tread upon the gravel, he raised
+himself to his knees swiftly, and with a fierce gesture, as if resenting
+intrusion.
+
+“Oh, it is you, Moira,” he said quietly, sinking down upon the grass. At
+the sight of his tear-stained, haggard face, the girl ran to him with
+a cry, and throwing herself down beside him put her arms about him with
+inarticulate sounds of pity. At length her brother raised himself from
+the ground.
+
+“Oh, it is terrible to leave it all,” he groaned; “yet I am glad to
+leave, for it is more terrible to stay; the very Glen I cannot look at;
+and the people, I cannot bear their eyes. Oh,” he groaned, wringing his
+hands, “if she were here she would understand, but there is nobody.”
+
+“Oh, Allan,” cried his sister in reproach.
+
+“Oh, yes, I know! I know! You believe in me, Moira, but you are just a
+lassie, and you cannot understand.”
+
+“Yes, you know well I believe in you, Allan, and others, too, believe in
+you. There is Mr. Dunn, and--”
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” said her brother bitterly, “he wants to believe it.”
+
+“Yes, and there is Mr. Martin,” she continued, “and--Oh, I forgot! here
+is a letter Mr. Martin brought you.”
+
+“Martin?”
+
+“Yes, your Martin, a strange little man; your quarter-back, you know. He
+brought this, and he says it is good news.” But already Allan was into
+his letter. As he read his face grew white, his hand began to shake, his
+eyes to stare as if they would devour the very paper. The second time he
+read the letter his whole body trembled, and his breath came in gasps,
+as if he were in a physical struggle. Then lifting arms and voice
+towards the sky, he cried in a long, low wail, “Oh God, it is good, it
+is good!”
+
+With that he laid himself down prone upon the mound again, his face in
+the grass, sobbing brokenly, “Oh, mother, mother dear, I have got you
+once more; I have got you once more!”
+
+His sister stood, her hands clasped upon her heart--a manner she
+had--her tears, unnoted, flowing down her cheeks, waiting till her
+brother should let her into his joy, as she had waited for entrance into
+his grief. His griefs and his joys were hers, and though he still
+held her a mere child, it was with a woman's self-forgetting love she
+ministered to him, gladly accepting whatever confidence he would give,
+but content to wait until he should give more. So she stood waiting,
+with her tears flowing quietly, and her face alight with wonder and joy
+for him. But as her brother's sobbing continued, this terrible display
+of emotion amazed her, startled her, for since their mother's death none
+of them had seen Allan weep. At length he raised himself from the ground
+and stood beside her.
+
+“Oh, Moira, lassie, I never knew how terrible it was till now. I had
+lost everything, my friends, you, and,” he added in a low voice, “my
+mother. This cursed thing shut me out from all; it got between me and
+all I ever loved. I have not for these months been able to see her face
+clear, but do you know, Moira,” here his voice fell and the mystic light
+grew in his eyes, “I saw her again just now as clear as clear, and
+I know I have got her again; and you, too, Moira, darling,” here he
+gathered his sister to him, “and the people! and the Glen! Oh! is it not
+terrible what a crime can do? How it separates you from your folk, and
+from all the world, for, mind you, I have felt myself a criminal; but I
+am not! I am not!” His voice rose into an exultant shout, “I am clear of
+it, I am a man again! Oh, it is good! it is good! Here, read the letter,
+it will prove to you.”
+
+“Oh, what does it matter at all, Allan,” she cried, still clinging to
+him, “as if it made any difference to me. I always knew it.”
+
+Her brother lifted her face from his breast and looked into her eyes.
+“Do you tell me you don't want to know the proof of it?” he asked in
+wonder. “No,” she said simply. “Why should I need any proof? I always
+knew it.”
+
+For a moment longer he gazed upon her, then said, “Moira, you are a
+wonder, lassie. No, you are a lassie no longer, you are a woman, and, do
+you know, you are like mother to me now, and I never saw it.”
+
+She smiled up at him through her tears. “I should like to be,” she said
+softly. Then, because she was truly Scotch, she added, “for your sake,
+for I love you terribly much; and I am going to lose you.”
+
+A quiver passed through her frame, and her arms gripped him tight. In
+the self-absorption in his grief and pain he had not thought of hers,
+nor considered how with his going her whole life would be changed.
+
+“I have been a selfish brute,” he muttered. “I have only thought of my
+own suffering; but, listen Moira, it is all past; thank God, it is
+all past. This letter from Mr. Rae holds a confession from Potts (poor
+Potts! I am glad that Rae let him off): it was Potts who committed the
+forgery. Now I feel myself clean again; you can't know what that is; to
+be yourself again, and to be able to look all men in the face without
+fear or shame. Come, we must go; I must see them all again. Let us to
+the burn first, and put my face right.”
+
+A moment he stood looking down upon his mother's grave. The hideous
+thing that had put her far from him, and that had blurred the clear
+vision of her face, was gone. A smile soft and tender as a child's stole
+over his face, and with that smile he turned away. As they were
+coming back from the burn, Martin and the schoolmaster saw them in the
+distance.
+
+“Bless me, man, will you look at him?” said the master in an awestruck
+tone, clutching Martin's arm. “What ever is come to him?”
+
+“What's up,” cried Martin. “By Jove! you're right! the Roderick Dhu and
+Black Douglas business is gone, sure!”
+
+“God bless my soul!” said Maclise in an undertone. “He is himself once
+more.”
+
+He might well exclaim, for it was a new Allan that came striding up
+the high road, with head lifted, and with the proud swing of a Highland
+chieftain.
+
+“Hello, old man!” he shouted, catching sight of Martin and running
+towards him with hands outstretched, “You are welcome”--he grasped
+his hands and held them fast--“you are welcome to this Glen, and to me
+welcome as Heaven to a Hell-bound soul.”
+
+“Maclise,” he cried, turning to the master, “this letter,” waving it in
+his hand, “is like a reprieve to a man on the scaffold.” Maclise stood
+gazing in amazement at him.
+
+“They accused me of crime!”
+
+“Of crime, Mr. Allan?” Maclise stiffened in haughty surprise.
+
+“Yes, of base crime!”
+
+“But this letter completely clears him,” cried Martin eagerly.
+
+Maclise turned upon him with swift scorn, “There was no need, for anyone
+in this Glen whatever.” The Highlander's face was pale, and in his light
+blue eyes gleamed a fierce light.
+
+Martin flashed a look upon the girl standing so proudly erect beside
+her brother, and reflecting in her face and eyes the sentiments of the
+schoolmaster.
+
+“By Jove! I believe you,” cried Martin with conviction, “it is not
+needed here, but--but there are others, you know.”
+
+“Others?” said the Highlander with fine scorn, “and what difference?”
+
+The Glen folk needed no clearing of their chief, and the rest of the
+world mattered not.
+
+“But there was myself,” said Allan. “Now it is gone, Maclise, and I can
+give my hand once more without fear or shame.”
+
+Maclise took the offered hand almost with reverence, and, removing his
+bonnet from his head, said in a voice, deep and vibrating with emotion,
+
+“Neffer will a man of the Glen count it anything but honour to take
+thiss hand.”
+
+“Thank you, Maclise,” cried Allan, keeping his grip of the master's
+hand. “Now you can tell the Glen.”
+
+“You will not be going to leave us now?” said Maclise eagerly.
+
+“Yes, I shall go, Maclise, but,” with a proud lift of his head, “tell
+them I am coming back again.”
+
+And with that message Maclise went to the Glen. From cot to cot and from
+lip to lip the message sped, that Mr. Allan was himself again, and that,
+though on the morrow's morn he was leaving the Glen, he himself had
+promised that he would return.
+
+That evening, as the gloaming deepened, the people of the Glen gathered,
+as was their wont, at their cottage doors to listen to old piper
+Macpherson as he marched up and down the highroad. This night, it was
+observed, he no longer played that most heart-breaking of all
+Scottish laments, “Lochaber No More.” He had passed up to the no less
+heart-thrilling, but less heartbreaking, “Macrimmon's Lament.” In a
+pause in Macpherson's wailing notes there floated down over the Glen the
+sound of the pipes up at the big House.
+
+“Bless my soul! whisht, man!” cried Betsy Macpherson to her spouse.
+“Listen yonder!” For the first time in months they heard the sound of
+Allan's pipes.
+
+“It is himself,” whispered the women to each other, and waited. Down the
+long avenue of ragged firs, and down the highroad, came young Mr. Allan,
+in all the gallant splendour of his piper's garb, and the tune he played
+was no lament, but the blood-stirring “Gathering of the Gordons.” As
+he came opposite to Macpherson's cottage he gave the signal for the old
+piper, and down the highroad stepped the two of them together, till they
+passed beyond the farthest cottage. Then back again they swung, and this
+time it was to the “Cock of the North,” that their tartans swayed and
+their bonnets nodded. Thus, not with woe and lamentation, but with good
+hope and gallant cheer, young Mr. Allan took his leave of the Glen Cuagh
+Oir.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WILL HE COME BACK?
+
+
+It was the custom in Doctor Dunn's household that, immediately after
+dinner, his youngest son would spend half an hour in the study with his
+father. It was a time for confidences. During this half hour father and
+son met as nearly as possible on equal terms, discussing, as friends
+might, the events of the day or the plans for the morrow, school work
+or athletics, the latest book or the newest joke; and sometimes the talk
+turned upon the reading at evening prayers. This night the story had
+been one of rare beauty and of absorbing interest, the story, viz., of
+that idyllic scene on the shore of Tiberias where the erring disciple
+was fully restored to his place in the ranks of the faithful, as he had
+been restored, some weeks before, to his place in the confidence of his
+Master.
+
+“That was a fine story, Rob?” began Doctor Dunn.
+
+“That it was,” said Rob gravely. “It was fine for Peter to get back
+again.”
+
+“Just so,” replied his father. “You see, when a man once turns his back
+on his best Friend, he is never right till he gets back again.”
+
+“Yes, I know,” said Rob gravely. For a time he sat with a shadow of
+sadness and anxiety on his young face. “It is terrible!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Terrible?” inquired the Doctor. “Oh, yes, you mean Peter's fall? Yes,
+that was a terrible thing--to be untrue to our Master and faithless to
+our best Friend.”
+
+“But he did not mean to, Dad,” said Rob quickly, as if springing to
+the fallen disciple's defence. “He forgot, just for a moment, and was
+awfully sorry afterwards.”
+
+“Yes, truly,” said his father, “and that was the first step back.”
+
+For a few moments Rob remained silent, his face sad and troubled.
+
+“Man! It must be terrible!” at length he said, more to himself than
+to his father. The Doctor looked closely at the little lad. The eager,
+sensitive face, usually so radiant, was now clouded and sad.
+
+“What is it, Rob? Is it something you can tell me?” asked his father in
+a tone of friendly kindness.
+
+Rob moved closer to him. The father waited in silence. He knew better
+than to force an unwilling confidence. At length the lad, with an
+obvious effort at self-command, said:
+
+“It is to-morrow, Daddy, that Cameron--that Mr. Cameron is going away.”
+
+“To-morrow? So it is. And you will be very sorry, Rob. But, of course,
+he will come back.”
+
+“Oh, Dad,” cried Rob, coming quite close to his father, “it isn't that!
+It isn't that!”
+
+His father waited. He did not understand his boy's trouble, and so he
+wisely refrained from uttering word that might hinder rather than help.
+At length, with a sudden effort, Rob asked in a low, hurried voice:
+
+“Do you think, Dad, he has--got--back?”
+
+“Got back?” said his father. “Oh, I see. Why, my boy? What do you know
+of it? Did you know there was a letter from a man named Potts, that
+completely clears your friend of all crime?”
+
+“Is there?” asked the boy quickly. “Man! That is fine! But I always knew
+he could not do anything really bad--I mean, anything that the police
+could touch him for. But it is not that, Dad. I have heard Jack say he
+used to be different when he came down first, and now sometimes he--”
+ The lad's voice fell silent. He could not bring himself to accuse his
+hero of any evil. His father drew him close to his side.
+
+“You mean that he has fallen into bad ways--drink, and things like
+that?”
+
+The boy hung his head; he was keenly ashamed for his friend. After a few
+moments' silence he said:
+
+“And he is going away to Canada to-morrow, and I wonder, Dad, if he
+has--got--back? It would be terrible--Oh, Dad, all alone and away
+from--!”
+
+The boy's voice sank to a whisper, and a rush of tears filled his eyes.
+
+“I see what you mean, my boy. You mean it would be terrible for him to
+be in that far land, and away from that Friend we know and love best.”
+
+The lad looked at his father through his tears, and nodded his head, and
+for some moments there was silence between them. If the truth must be
+told, Doctor Dunn felt himself keenly rebuked by his little son's words.
+Amid the multitude of his responsibilities, the responsibility for his
+sons' best friend he had hardly realised.
+
+“I am glad that you spoke of it, Rob; I am glad that you spoke of it.
+Something will be done. It is not, after all, in our hands. Still, we
+must stand ready to help. Good-night, my boy. And remember, it is always
+good to hurry back to our best Friend, if ever we get away from Him.”
+
+The boy put his arms around his father's neck and kissed him good-night;
+then, kissing him again, he whispered: “Thank you, Daddy.”
+
+And from the relief in his tone the father recognised that upon him the
+lad had laid all the burden of his solicitude for his friend.
+
+Later in the evening, when his elder son came home, the father called
+him in, and frankly gave him the substance of the conversation of the
+earlier part of the evening.
+
+Jack laughed somewhat uneasily. “Oh, Rob is an awfully religious little
+beggar; painfully so, I think, sometimes--you know what I mean, Sir,” he
+added, noticing the look on his father's face.
+
+“I am not sure that I do, Jack,” said his father, “but I want to tell
+you, that as far as I am concerned, I felt distinctly rebuked at the
+little chap's anxiety for his friend in a matter of such vital import.
+His is a truly religious little soul, as you say, but I wonder if his
+type is not more nearly like the normal than is ours. Certainly, if
+reality, simplicity, sincerity are the qualities of true religious
+feeling--and these, I believe, are the qualities emphasised by the
+Master Himself--then it may indeed be that the boy's type is nearer the
+ideal than ours.”
+
+At this point Mrs. Dunn entered the room.
+
+“Anything private?” she enquired with a bright smile at her husband.
+
+“Not at all! Come in!” said Doctor Dunn, and he proceeded to repeat the
+conversation with his younger son, and his own recent comment thereupon.
+
+“I am convinced,” he added, “that there is a profundity of meaning in
+those words, 'Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
+child, he shall not enter therein,' that we have not yet fathomed. I
+suspect Wordsworth is not far astray when he suggests that with the
+passing years we grow away from the simplicity of our faith and the
+clearness of our vision. There is no doubt that to Rob, Jesus is as real
+as I am.”
+
+“There is no doubt of that,” said his wife quickly.
+
+“Not only as real, but quite as dear; indeed, dearer. I shall never
+forget the shock I received when I heard him one day, as a wee, wee boy,
+classifying the objects of his affection. I remember the ascending scale
+was: 'I love Jack and Daddy just the same, then mother, then Jesus.' It
+was always in the highest place, Jesus; and I believe that the scale is
+the same to-day, unless Jack,” she added, with a smile at her son, “has
+moved to his mother's place.”
+
+“Not much fear of that, mother,” said Jack, “but I should not be
+surprised if you are quite right about the little chap. He is a queer
+little beggar!”
+
+“There you are again, Jack,” said his father, “and it is upon that point
+I was inclined to take issue with you when your mother entered.”
+
+“I think I shall leave you,” said the mother. “I am rather tired, and so
+I shall bid you good-night.”
+
+“Yes,” said the father, when they had seated themselves again, “the
+very fact that to you, and to me for that matter, Rob's attitude of
+mind should seem peculiar raises the issue. What is the normal type of
+Christian faith? Is it not marked by the simplicity and completeness of
+the child's?”
+
+“And yet, Sir,” replied Jack, “that simplicity and completeness is the
+result of inexperience. Surely the ideal faith is not that which ignores
+the facts and experiences of life?”
+
+“Not exactly,” replied his father, “yet I am not sure but after all,
+'the perfect love which casteth out fear' is one which ignores the
+experiences of life, or, rather, classifies them in a larger category.
+That is, it refuses to be disturbed by life's experiences, because among
+those experiences there is a place for the enlarged horizon, the clearer
+vision. But I am not arguing about this matter; I rather wish to make
+a confession and enlist your aid. Frankly, the boy's words gave me an
+uneasy sense of failure in my duty to this young man; or, perhaps I
+should say, my privilege. And really, it is no wonder! Here is this
+little chap actually carrying every day a load of intense concern for
+our friend, as to whether, as he puts it himself, 'he has come back.'
+And, after all, Jack, I wonder if this should not have been more upon
+our minds? The young man, I take it, since his mother's death has little
+in his home life to inspire him with religious faith and feeling. If she
+had been alive, one would not feel the same responsibility; she was a
+singularly saintly woman.”
+
+“You are quite right, Sir,” said Jack quickly, “and I suspect you rather
+mean that I am the one that should feel condemned.”
+
+“Not at all! Not at all, Jack! I am thinking, as every man must, of my
+own responsibility, though, doubtless, you have yours as well. Of course
+I know quite well you have stuck by him splendidly in his fight for a
+clean and self-controlled life, but one wonders whether there is not
+something more.”
+
+“There is, Sir!” replied his son quickly. “There undoubtedly is! But
+though I have no hesitation in speaking to men down in the Settlement
+about these things, you know, still, somehow, to a man of your own
+class, and to a personal friend, one hesitates. One shrinks from what
+seems like assuming an attitude of superiority.”
+
+“I appreciate that,” said his father, “but yet one wonders to what
+extent this shrinking is due to a real sense of one's own imperfections,
+and to what extent it is due to an unwillingness to risk criticism, even
+from ourselves, in a loyal attempt to serve the Master and His cause.
+And, besides that, one wonders whether from any cause one should
+hesitate to do the truly kind and Christian thing to one's friend. I
+mean, you value your religion; or, to put it personally, as Rob would,
+you would esteem as your chief possession your knowledge of the Christ,
+as Friend and Saviour. Do not loyalty to Him and friendship require that
+you share that possession with your dearest friend?”
+
+“I know what you mean, Sir,” said Jack earnestly. “I shall think it
+over. But don't you think a word from you, Sir--”
+
+His father looked at his son with a curious smile.
+
+“Oh, I know what you are thinking,” said his son, “but I assure you it
+is not quite a case of funk.”
+
+“Do you know, Jack,” said his father earnestly, “we make our religion
+far too unreal; a thing either of forms remote from life, or a thing of
+individualistic emotion divorced from responsibility. One thing
+history reveals, that the early propagandum for the faith was entirely
+unprofessional. It was from friend to friend, from man to man. It was
+horizontal rather than perpendicular.”
+
+“Well, I shall think it over,” said Jack.
+
+“Do you know,” said his father, “that I have the feeling of having
+accepted from Rob responsibility for our utmost endeavour to bring it
+about that, as Rob puts it, 'somehow he shall get back'?”
+
+It was full twenty minutes before train time when Rob, torn with anxiety
+lest they should be late, marched his brother on to the railway platform
+to wait for the Camerons, who were to arrive from the North. Up and
+down they paraded, Dunn turning over in his mind the conversation of the
+night before, Rob breaking away every three minutes to consult the clock
+and the booking clerk at the wicket.
+
+“Will he come to us this afternoon, Jack, do you think?” enquired the
+boy.
+
+“Don't know! He turned down a football lunch! He has his sister and his
+father with him.”
+
+“His sister could come with him!” argued the boy.
+
+“What about his father?”
+
+Rob had been close enough to events to know that the Captain constituted
+something of a difficulty in the situation.
+
+“Well, won't he have business to attend to?”
+
+His brother laughed. “Good idea, Rob, let us hope so! At any rate we
+will do our best to get Cameron and his sister to come to us. We want
+them, don't we?”
+
+“We do that!” said the boy fervently; “only I'm sure something will
+happen! There,” he exclaimed a moment later, in a tone of disappointment
+and disgust, “I just knew it! There is Miss Brodie and some one else;
+they will get after him, I know!”
+
+“So it is,” said Dunn, with a not altogether successful attempt at
+surprise.
+
+“Aw! you knew!” said Rob reproachfully.
+
+“Well! I kind of thought she might turn up!” said his brother, with
+an air of a convicted criminal. “You know she is quite a friend of
+Cameron's. But what is Sir Archibald here for?”
+
+“They will just get him, I know,” said Rob gloomily, as he followed his
+brother to meet Miss Brodie and her uncle.
+
+“We're here!” cried that young lady, “to join in the demonstration to
+the hero! And, my uncle being somewhat conscience-stricken over his
+tardy and unwilling acceptance of our superior judgment in the recent
+famous case, has come to make such reparation as he can.”
+
+“What a piece of impertinence! Don't listen to her, Sir!” cried
+Sir Archibald, greeting Dunn warmly and with the respect due an
+International captain. “The truth is I have a letter here for him to a
+business friend in Montreal, which may be of service. Of course, I may
+say to you that I am more than delighted that this letter of Potts has
+quite cleared the young man, and that he goes to the new country with
+reputation unstained. I am greatly delighted! greatly delighted! and I
+wish the opportunity to say so.”
+
+“Indeed, we are all delighted,” replied Dunn cordially, “though, of
+course, I never could bring myself to believe him guilty of crime.”
+
+“Well, on the strength of the judgment of yourself and, I must confess,
+of this young person here, I made my decision.”
+
+“Well,” cried Miss Brodie, “I gave you my opinion because it was my
+opinion, but I confess at times I had my own doubts--”
+
+Here she paused abruptly, arrested by the look on young Rob's face; it
+was a look of surprise, grief, and horror.
+
+“That is to say,” continued Miss Brodie hastily, answering the look, and
+recognising that her high place in Rob's regard was in peril, “the whole
+thing was a mystery--was impossible to solve--I mean,” she continued,
+stumbling along, “his own attitude was so very uncertain and so
+unsatisfactory--if he had only been able to say clearly 'I am not
+guilty' it would have been different--I mean--of course, I don't believe
+him guilty. Don't look at me like that, Rob! I won't have it! But was it
+not clever of that dear Mr. Rae to extract that letter from the wretched
+Potts?”
+
+“There's the train!” cried Dunn. “Here, Rob, you stay here with me!
+Where has the young rascal gone!”
+
+“Look! Oh, look!” cried Miss Brodie, clutching at Dunn's arm, her eyes
+wide with terror. There before their horrified eyes was young Rob,
+hanging on to the window, out of which his friend Cameron was leaning,
+and racing madly with the swiftly moving train, in momentary danger of
+being dragged under its wheels. With a cry, Dunn rushed forward.
+
+“Merciful heavens!” cried Miss Brodie. “Oh! he is gone!”
+
+A porter, standing with his back towards the racing boy, had knocked
+his feet from under him. But as he fell, a strong hand grabbed him, and
+dragged him to safety through the window.
+
+Pale and shaking, the three friends waited for the car door to be
+opened, and as Rob issued in triumphant possession of his friend, Miss
+Brodie rushed at him and, seizing him in her strong grasp, cried:
+
+“You heartless young rascal! You nearly killed me--not to speak of
+yourself! Here,” she continued, throwing her arms about him, and giving
+him a loud smack, “take that for your punishment! Do you hear, you
+nearly killed me! I had a vision of your mangled form ground up between
+the wheels and the platform. Hold on, you can't get away from me! I have
+a mind to give you another!”
+
+“Oh, Miss Brodie, please,” pleaded Cameron, coming forward to Rob's
+rescue, “I assure you I was partly to blame; it is only fair I should
+share his punishment.”
+
+“Indeed,” cried Miss Brodie, the blood coming back into her cheeks that
+had been white enough a moment before, “if it were not for your size,
+and your--looks, I should treat you exactly the same, though not
+with the same intent, as our friend Mr. Rae would say. You did that
+splendidly!”
+
+“Alas! for my size,” groaned Cameron--he was in great spirits--“and
+alas! for my ugly phiz!”
+
+“Who said 'ugly'?” replied Miss Brodie. “But I won't rise to your bait.
+May I introduce you to my uncle, Sir Archibald Brodie, who has a little
+business with you?”
+
+“Ah! Mr. Cameron,” said that gentleman, “that was extremely well
+done. Indeed, I can hardly get back my nerve--might have been an ugly
+accident. By the way, Sir,” taking Cameron aside, “just a moment. You
+are on your way to Canada? I have a letter which I thought might be
+of service to you. It is to a business friend of mine, a banker, in
+Montreal, Mr. James Ritchie. You will find him a good man to know, and I
+fancy glad to serve any--ah--friend of mine.”
+
+On hearing Sir Archibald's name, Cameron's manner became distinctly
+haughty, and he was on the point of declining the letter, when Sir
+Archibald, who was quick to observe his manner, took him by the arm and
+led him somewhat further away.
+
+“Now, Sir, there is a little matter I wish to speak of, if you will
+permit. Indeed, I came specially to say how delighted I am that
+the--ah--recent little unpleasantness has been removed. Of course you
+understand my responsibility to the Bank rendered a certain course
+of action imperative, however repugnant. But, believe me, I am truly
+delighted to find that my decision to withdraw the--ah--action has been
+entirely justified by events. Delighted, Sir! Delighted! And much more
+since I have seen you.”
+
+Before the overflowing kindliness of Sir Archibald's voice and manner,
+Cameron's hauteur vanished like morning mist before the rising sun.
+
+“I thank you, Sir Archibald,” he said, with dignity, “not only for this
+letter, but especially for your good opinion.”
+
+“Very good! Very good! The letter will, I hope, be useful,” replied Sir
+Archibald, “and as for my opinion, I am glad to find not only that it is
+well founded, but that it appears to be shared by most of this company
+here. Now we must get back to your party. But let me say again, I am
+truly glad to have come to know you.”
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HO FOR THE OPEN!
+
+
+Mr. James Ritchie, manager of the Bank of Montreal, glanced from the
+letter in his hand to the young man who had just given it to him. “Ah!
+you have just arrived from the old land,” he said, a smile of genial
+welcome illuminating his handsome face. “I am pleased to hear from my
+old friend, Sir Archibald Brodie, and pleased to welcome any friend of
+his to Canada.”
+
+So saying, with fine old-time courtesy, the banker rose to his splendid
+height of six feet two, and shook his visitor warmly by the hand.
+
+“Your name is--?”
+
+“Cameron, Sir,” said the young man.
+
+“Yes, I see! Mr. Allan Cameron--um, um,” with his eyes on the letter.
+“Old and distinguished family--exactly so! Now, then, Mr. Cameron, I
+hope we shall be able to do something for you, both for the sake of my
+old friend, Sir Archibald, and, indeed, for your own sake,” said the
+banker, with a glance of approval at Cameron's upright form.
+
+“Sit down, Sir! Sit down! Now, business first is my motto. What can I do
+for you?”
+
+“Well, first of all,” said Cameron with a laugh, “I wish to make a
+deposit. I have a draft of one hundred pounds here which I should like
+to place in your care.”
+
+“Very well, Sir,” said the banker, touching a button, “my young man will
+attend to that.”
+
+“Now, then,” when the business had been transacted, “what are your
+plans, Mr. Cameron? Thirty-five years ago I came to Montreal a young
+man, from Scotland, like yourself, and it was a lonely day for me when
+I reached this city, the loneliest in my life, and so my heart warms
+to the stranger from the old land. Yes,” continued Mr. Ritchie, in a
+reminiscent tone, “I remember well! I hired as errand boy and general
+factotum to a small grocer down near the market. Montreal was a small
+city then, with wretched streets--they're bad enough yet--and poor
+buildings; everything was slow and backward; there have been mighty
+changes since. But here we are! Now, what are your plans?”
+
+“I am afraid they are of the vaguest kind,” said Cameron. “I want
+something to do.”
+
+“What sort of thing? I mean, what has been the line of your training?”
+
+“I am afraid my training has been defective. I have passed through
+Edinburgh Academy, also the University, with the exception of my last
+year. But I am willing to take anything.”
+
+“Ah!” said the banker thoughtfully. “No office training, eh?”
+
+“No, Sir. That is, if you except a brief period of three or four months
+in the law office of our family solicitor.”
+
+“Law, eh?--I have it! Denman's your man! I shall give you a letter to
+Mr. Denman--a lawyer friend of mine. I shall see him personally to-day,
+and if you call to-morrow at ten I hope to have news for you. Meantime,
+I shall be pleased to have you lunch with me to-day at the club. One
+o'clock is the hour. If you would kindly call at the bank, we shall go
+down together.”
+
+Cameron expressed his gratitude.
+
+“By the way!” said Mr. Ritchie, “where have you put up?”
+
+“At the Royal,” said Cameron.
+
+“Ah! That will do for the present,” said Mr. Ritchie. “I am sorry our
+circumstances do not permit of my inviting you to our home. The truth
+is, Mrs. Ritchie is at present out of the city. But we shall find some
+suitable lodging for you. The Royal is far too expensive a place for a
+young man with his fortune to make.”
+
+Cameron spent the day making the acquaintance of the beautiful, quaint,
+if somewhat squalid, old city of Montreal; and next morning, with
+a letter of introduction from Mr. Ritchie, presented himself at Mr.
+Denman's office. Mr. Denman was a man in young middle life, athletic
+of frame, keen of eye, and energetic of manner; his voice was loud
+and sharp. He welcomed Cameron with brisk heartiness, and immediately
+proceeded to business.
+
+“Let me see,” he began, “what is your idea? What kind of a job are you
+after?”
+
+“Indeed,” replied Cameron, “that is just what I hardly know.”
+
+“Well, what has been your experience? You are a University man, I
+believe? But have you had any practical training? Do you know office
+work?”
+
+“No, I've had little training for an office. I was in a law office for
+part of a year.”
+
+“Ah! Familiar with bookkeeping, or accounting? I suppose you can't run
+one of these typewriting machines?”
+
+In regard to each of these lines of effort Cameron was forced to confess
+ignorance.
+
+“I say!” cried Mr. Denman, “those old country people seriously annoy me
+with their inadequate system of education!”
+
+“I am afraid,” replied Cameron, “the fault is more mine than the
+system's.”
+
+“Don't know about that! Don't know about that!” replied Mr. Denman
+quickly; “I have had scores of young men, fine young men, too, come to
+me; public school men, university men, but quite unfit for any practical
+line of work.”
+
+Mr. Denman considered for some moments. “Let us see. You have done some
+work in a law office. Now,” Mr. Denman spoke with some hesitation; “I
+have a place in my own office here--not much in it for the present,
+but--”
+
+“To tell the truth,” interrupted Cameron, “I did not make much of the
+law; in fact, I do not think I am suited for office work. I would prefer
+something in the open. I had thought of the land.”
+
+“Farming,” exclaimed Mr. Denman. “Ah!--you would, I suppose, be able to
+invest something?”
+
+“No,” said Cameron, “nothing.”
+
+Denman shook his head. “Nothing in it! You would not earn enough to buy
+a farm about here in fifteen years.”
+
+“But I understood,” replied Cameron, “that further west was cheaper
+land.”
+
+“Oh! In the far west, yes! But it is a God-forsaken country! I don't
+know much about it, I confess. I know they are booming town lots all
+over the land. I believe they have gone quite mad in the business, but
+from what I hear, the main work in the west just now is jaw work; the
+only thing they raise is corner lots.”
+
+On Cameron's face there fell the gloom of discouragement. One of his
+fondest dreams was being dispelled--his vision of himself as a wealthy
+rancher, ranging over square miles of his estate upon a “bucking
+broncho,” garbed in the picturesque cowboy dress, began to fade.
+
+“But there is ranching, I believe?” he ventured.
+
+“Ranching? Oh yes! There is, up near the Rockies, but that is out of
+civilization; out of reach of everything and everybody.”
+
+“That is what I want, Sir!” exclaimed Cameron, his face once more aglow
+with eager hope. “I want to get away into the open.”
+
+Mr. Denman did not, or could not, recognise this as the instinctive cry
+of the primitive man for a closer fellowship with Mother Nature. He was
+keenly practical, and impatient with everything that appeared to him to
+be purely visionary and unbusiness-like.
+
+“But, my dear fellow,” he said, “a ranch means cattle and horses; and
+cattle and horses means money, unless of course, you mean to be simply a
+cowboy--cowpuncher, I believe, is the correct term--but there is nothing
+in that; no future, I mean. It is all very well for a little fun, if
+you have a bank account to stand it, although some fellows stand it on
+someone's else bank account--not much to their credit, however. There is
+a young friend of mine out there at present, but from what I can gather
+his home correspondence is mainly confined to appeals for remittances
+from his governor, and his chief occupation spending these remittances
+as speedily as possible. All very well, as I have said, for fun, if
+you can pay the shot. But to play the role of gentleman cowboy, while
+somebody else pays for it, is the sort of thing I despise.”
+
+“And so do I, Sir!” said Cameron. “There will be no remittance in my
+case.”
+
+Denman glanced at the firm, closed lips and the stiffening figure.
+
+“That is the talk!” he exclaimed. “No, there is no chance in ranching
+unless you have capital.”
+
+“As far as I can see,” replied Cameron gloomily, “everything seems
+closed up except to the capitalist, and yet from what I heard at home
+situations were open on every hand in this country.”
+
+“Come here!” cried Denman, drawing Cameron to the office window. “See
+those doors!” pointing to a long line of shops. “Every last one is
+opened to a man who knows his business. See those smokestacks! Every
+last wheel in those factories is howling for a man who is on to his job.
+But don't look blue, there is a place for you, too; the thing is to find
+it.”
+
+“What are those long buildings?” inquired Cameron, pointing towards the
+water front.
+
+“Those are railroad sheds; or, rather, Transportation Company's sheds;
+they are practically the same thing. I say! What is the matter with
+trying the Transportation Company? I know the manager well. The very
+thing! Try the Transportation Company!”
+
+“How should I go about it?” said Cameron. “I mean to say just what
+position should I apply for?”
+
+“Position!” shouted Denman. “Why, general manager would be good!”
+
+Then, noting the flush in Cameron's face, he added quickly, “Pardon me!
+The thing is to get your foot in somehow, and then wire in till you are
+general manager, by Jove! It can be done! Fleming has done it! Went in
+as messenger boy, but--” Denman paused. There flashed through his mind
+the story of Fleming's career; a vision of the half-starved ragged waif
+who started as messenger boy in the company's offices, and who, by dint
+of invincible determination and resolute self-denial, fought his way
+step by step to his present position of control. In contrast, he looked
+at the young man, born and bred in circles where work is regarded as
+a calamity, and service wears the badge of social disfranchisement.
+Fleming had done it under compulsion of the inexorable mistress
+“Necessity.” But what of this young man?
+
+“Will we try?” he said at length. “I shall give you a letter to Mr.
+Fleming.”
+
+He sat down to his desk and wrote vigourously.
+
+“Take this, and see what happens.”
+
+Cameron took the letter, and, glancing at the address, read, Wm.
+Fleming, Esquire, General Manager, Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage
+Company.
+
+“Is this a railroad?” asked Cameron.
+
+“No, but next thing to it. The companies are practically one. The
+transition from one to the other is easy enough. Let me know how you get
+on. Good-by! And--I say!” cried Mr. Denman, calling Cameron back again
+from the door, “see Mr. Fleming himself. Remember that! And remember,”
+ he added, with a smile, “the position of manager is not vacant just yet,
+but it will be. I give you my word for it when you are ready to take it.
+Good-by! Buck up! Take what he offers you! Get your teeth in, and never
+let go!”
+
+“By George!” said Denman to himself as the door closed on Cameron,
+“these chaps are the limit. He's got lots of stuff in him, but he has
+been rendered helpless by their fool system--God save us from it! That
+chap has had things done for him ever since he was first bathed;
+they have washed 'em, dressed 'em, fed 'em, schooled 'em, found 'em
+positions, stuck 'em in, and watched that they didn't fall out. And
+yet, by George!” he added, after a pause, “they are running the
+world to-day--that is, some of them.” Facing which somewhat puzzling
+phenomenon, Denman plunged into his work again.
+
+Meantime Cameron was making his way towards the offices of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, oppressed with an
+unacknowledged but none the less real sense of unfitness, and haunted
+by a depressing sense of the deficiency of his own training, and of
+the training afforded the young men of his class at home. As he started
+along he battled with his depression. True enough, he had no skill
+in the various accomplishments that Mr. Denman seemed to consider
+essential; he had no experience in business, he was not fit for office
+work--office work he loathed; but surely there was some position where
+his talents would bring him recognition and fortune at last. After all,
+Mr. Denman was only a Colonial, and with a Colonial's somewhat narrow
+view of life. Who was he to criticise the system of training that for
+generations had been in vogue at home? Had not Wellington said “that
+England's battles were first won on the football fields of Eton and
+Rugby,” or something like that? Of course, the training that might fit
+for a distinguished career in the British army might not necessarily
+insure success on the battle fields of industry and commerce. Yet
+surely, an International player should be able to get somewhere!
+
+At this point in his cogitations Cameron was arrested by a memory
+that stabbed him like a knife-thrust; the awful moment when upon the
+Inverleith grounds, in the face of the Welsh forward-line, he had
+faltered and lost the International. Should he ever be able to forget
+the agony of that moment and of the day that followed? And yet, he need
+not have failed. He knew he could play his position with any man in
+Scotland; he had failed because he was not fit. He set his teeth hard.
+He would show these bally Colonials! He would make good! And with his
+head high, he walked into the somewhat dingy offices of the Metropolitan
+Transportation & Cartage Company, of which William Fleming, Esquire, was
+manager.
+
+Opening the door, Cameron found himself confronted by a short counter
+that blocked the way for the general public into the long room, filled
+with desks and chairs and clicking typewriting machines. Cameron had
+never seen so many of these machines during the whole period of his
+life. The typewriter began to assume an altogether new importance in
+his mind. Hitherto it had appeared to him more or less of a Yankee fad,
+unworthy of the attention of an able-bodied man of average intelligence.
+In Edinburgh a “writing machine” was still something of a new-fangled
+luxury, to be apologised for. Mr. Rae would allow no such finicky
+instrument in his office. Here, however, there were a dozen, more or
+less, manipulated for the most part by young ladies, and some of them
+actually by men; on every side they clicked and banged. It may have
+been the clicking and banging of these machines that gave to Cameron the
+sense of rush and hurry so different from the calm quiet and dignified
+repose of the only office he had ever known. For some moments he stood
+at the counter, waiting attention from one of the many clerks sitting
+before him, but though one and another occasionally glanced in his
+direction, his presence seemed to awaken not even a passing curiosity in
+their minds, much less to suggest the propriety of their inquiring his
+business.
+
+As the moments passed Cameron became conscious of a feeling of affront.
+How differently a gentleman was treated by the clerks in the office
+of Messrs. Rae & Macpherson, where prompt attention and deferential
+courtesy in a clerk were as essential as a suit of clothes. Gradually
+Cameron's head went up, and with it his choler. At length, in his
+haughtiest tone, he hailed a passing youth:
+
+“I say, boy, is this Mr. Fleming's office?”
+
+The clicking and banging of the typewriters, and the hum of voices
+ceased. Everywhere heads were raised and eyes turned curiously upon the
+haughty stranger.
+
+“Eh?” No letters can represent the nasal intonation of this syllabic
+inquiry, and no words the supreme indifference of the boy's tone.
+
+“Is Mr. Fleming in? I wish to see him!” Cameron's voice was loud and
+imperious.
+
+“Say, boys,” said a lanky youth, with a long, cadaverous countenance
+and sallow, unhealthy complexion, illumined, however, and redeemed to
+a certain extent by black eyes of extraordinary brilliance, “it is the
+Prince of Wales!” The drawling, awe-struck tones, in the silence that
+had fallen, were audible to all in the immediate neighbourhood.
+
+The titter that swept over the listeners brought the hot blood to
+Cameron's face. A deliberate insult a Highlander takes with calm. He is
+prepared to deal with it in a manner affording him entire satisfaction.
+Ridicule rouses him to fury, for, while it touches his pride, it leaves
+him no opportunity of vengeance.
+
+“Can you tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?” he enquired again of the boy
+that stood scanning him with calm indifference. The rage that possessed
+him so vibrated in his tone that the lanky lad drawled again in a
+warning voice:
+
+“Slide, Jimmy, slide!”
+
+Jimmy “slid,” but towards the counter.
+
+“Want to see him?” he enquired in a tone of brisk impertinence, as if
+suddenly roused from a reverie.
+
+“I have a letter for him.”
+
+“All right! Hand it over,” said Jimmy, fully conscious that he was the
+hero of more than usual interest.
+
+Cameron hesitated, then passed his letter over to Jimmy, who, reading
+the address with deliberate care, winked at the lanky boy, and with a
+jaunty step made towards a door at the farther end of the room. As he
+passed a desk that stood nearest the door, a man who during the last few
+minutes had remained with his head down, apparently so immersed in
+the papers before him as to be quite unconscious of his surroundings,
+suddenly called out, “Here, boy!”
+
+Jimmy instantly assumed an air of respectful attention.
+
+“A letter for Mr. Fleming,” he said.
+
+“Here!” replied the man, stretching out his hand.
+
+He hurriedly glanced through the letter.
+
+“Tell him there is no vacancy at present,” he said shortly.
+
+The boy came back to Cameron with cheerful politeness. The “old man's”
+ eye was upon him.
+
+“There is no vacancy at present,” he said briefly, and turned away as if
+his attention were immediately demanded elsewhere by pressing business
+of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company.
+
+For answer, Cameron threw back the leaf of the counter that barred his
+way, and started up the long room, past the staring clerks, to the desk
+next the door.
+
+“I wish to see Mr. Fleming, Sir,” he said, his voice trembling slightly,
+his face pale, his blue-gray eyes ablaze.
+
+The man at the desk looked up from his work.
+
+“I have just informed you there is no vacancy at present,” he said
+testily, and turned to his papers again, as if dismissing the incident.
+
+“Will you kindly tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?” said Cameron in a voice
+that had grown quite steady; “I wish to see him personally.”
+
+“Mr. Fleming cannot see you, I tell you!” almost shouted the man, rising
+from his desk and revealing himself a short, pudgy figure, with flabby
+face and shining bald head. “Can't you understand English?--I can't be
+bothered--!”
+
+“What is it, Bates? Someone to see me?”
+
+Cameron turned quickly towards the speaker, who had come from the inner
+room.
+
+“I have brought you a letter, Sir, from Mr. Denman,” he said quietly;
+“it is there,” pointing to Bates' desk.
+
+“A letter? Let me have it! Why was not this brought to me at once, Mr.
+Bates?”
+
+“It was an open letter, Sir,” replied Bates, “and I thought there was
+no need of troubling you, Sir. I told the young man we had no vacancy at
+present.”
+
+“This is a personal letter, Mr. Bates, and should have been brought to
+me at once. Why was Mr.--ah--Mr. Cameron not brought in to me?”
+
+Mr. Bates murmured something about not wishing to disturb the manager on
+trivial business.
+
+“I am the judge of that, Mr. Bates. In future, when any man asks to see
+me, I desire him to be shown in at once.”
+
+Mr. Bates began to apologise.
+
+“That is all that is necessary, Mr. Bates,” said the manager, in a voice
+at once quiet and decisive.
+
+“Come in, Mr. Cameron. I am very sorry this has happened!”
+
+Cameron followed him into his office, noting, as he passed, the red
+patches of rage on Mr. Bates' pudgy face, and catching a look of fierce
+hate from his small piggy eyes. It flashed through his mind that in Mr.
+Bates, at any rate, he had found no friend.
+
+The result of the interview with Mr. Fleming was an intimation to Mr.
+Bates that Mr. Cameron was to have a position in the office of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, and to begin work the
+following morning.
+
+“Very well, Sir,” replied Mr. Bates--he had apparently quite recovered
+his equanimity--“we shall find Mr. Cameron a desk.”
+
+“We begin work at eight o'clock exactly,” he added, turning to Cameron
+with a pleasant smile.
+
+Mr. Fleming accompanied Cameron to the door.
+
+“Now, a word with you, Mr. Cameron. You may find Mr. Bates a little
+difficult--he is something of a driver--but, remember, he is in charge
+of this office; I never interfere with his orders.”
+
+“I understand, Sir,” said Cameron, resolving that, at all costs, he
+should obey Mr. Bates' orders, if only to show the general manager he
+could recognise and appreciate a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+Mr. Fleming was putting it mildly when he described Mr. Bates as
+“something of a driver.” The whole office staff, from Jimmy, the office
+boy, to Jacobs, the gentle, white-haired clerk, whose desk was in the
+farthest corner of the room, felt the drive. He was not only office
+manager, but office master as well. His rule was absolute, and from his
+decisions there was no appeal. The general manager went on the theory
+that it was waste of energy to keep a dog and bark himself. In the
+policy that governed the office there were two rules which Mr. Bates
+enforced with the utmost rigidity--the first, namely, that every member
+of the staff must be in his or her place and ready for work when the
+clock struck eight; the other, that each member of the staff must work
+independently of every other member. A man must know his business, and
+go through with it; if he required instructions, he must apply to the
+office manager. But, as a rule, one experience of such application
+sufficed for the whole period of a clerk's service in the office of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, for Mr. Bates was gifted
+with such an exquisiteness of ironical speech that the whole staff were
+wont to pause in the rush of their work to listen and to admire when
+a new member was unhappy enough to require instructions, their silent
+admiration acting as a spur to Mr. Bates' ingenuity in the invention of
+ironical discourse.
+
+Of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Mr. Bates' system, however,
+Cameron was quite ignorant; nor had his experience in the office of
+Messrs. Rae & Macpherson been such as to impress upon him the necessity
+of a close observation of the flight of time. It did not disturb him,
+therefore, to notice as he strolled into the offices of the Metropolitan
+Transportation & Cartage Company the next morning that the hands of the
+clock showed six minutes past the hour fixed for the beginning of
+the day's work. The office staff shivered in an ecstasy of expectant
+delight. Cameron walked nonchalantly to Mr. Bates' desk, his overcoat on
+his arm, his cap in his hand.
+
+“Good morning, Sir,” he said.
+
+Mr. Bates finished writing a sentence, looked up, and nodded a brief
+good morning.
+
+“We deposit our street attire on the hooks behind the door, yonder!” he
+said with emphatic politeness, pointing across the room.
+
+Cameron flushed, as in passing his desk he observed the pleased smile on
+the lanky boy's sallow face.
+
+“You evidently were not aware of the hours of this office,” continued
+Mr. Bates when Cameron had returned. “We open at eight o'clock.”
+
+“Oh!” said Cameron, carelessly. “Eight? Yes, I thought it was eight! Ah!
+I see! I believe I am five minutes late! But I suppose I shall catch up
+before the day is over!”
+
+“Mr. Cameron,” replied Mr. Bates earnestly, “if you should work for
+twenty years for the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company,
+never will you catch up those five minutes; every minute of your office
+hours is pledged to the company, and every minute has its own proper
+work. Your desk is the one next Mr. Jacobs, yonder. Your work is waiting
+you there. It is quite simple, the entry of freight receipts upon
+the ledger. If you wish further instructions, apply to me here--you
+understand?”
+
+“I think so!” replied Cameron. “I shall do my best to--”
+
+“Very well! That is all!” replied Mr. Bates, plunging his head again
+into his papers.
+
+The office staff sank back to work with every expression of
+disappointment. A moment later, however, their hopes revived.
+
+“Oh! Mr. Cameron!” called out Mr. Bates. Mr. Cameron returned to his
+desk. “If you should chance to be late again, never mind going to your
+desk; just come here for your cheque.”
+
+Mr. Bates' tone was kindly, even considerate, as if he were anxious to
+save his clerk unnecessary inconvenience.
+
+“I beg your pardon!” stammered Cameron, astonished.
+
+“That is all!” replied Mr. Bates, his nose once more in his papers.
+
+Cameron stood hesitating. His eye fell upon the boy, Jimmy, whose face
+expressed keenest joy.
+
+“Do you mean, Sir, that if I am late you dismiss me forthwith?”
+
+“What?” Mr. Bates' tone was so fiercely explosive that it appeared to
+throw up his head with a violent motion.
+
+Cameron repeated his question.
+
+“Mr. Cameron, my time is valuable; so is yours. I thought that I spoke
+quite distinctly. Apparently I did not. Let me repeat: In case you
+should inadvertently be late again, you need not take the trouble to go
+to your desk; just come here. Your cheque will be immediately made out.
+Saves time, you know--your time and mine--and time, you perceive, in
+this office represents money.”
+
+Mr. Bates' voice lost none of its kindly interest, but it had grown
+somewhat in intensity; the last sentence was uttered with his face close
+to his desk.
+
+Cameron stood a moment in uncertainty, gazing at the bald head before
+him; then, finding nothing to reply, he turned about to behold Jimmy
+and his lanky friend executing an animated war pantomime which they
+apparently deemed appropriate to the occasion.
+
+With face ablaze and teeth set Cameron went to his desk, to the extreme
+disappointment of Jimmy and the lanky youth, who fell into each other's
+arms, apparently overcome with grief.
+
+For half an hour the office hummed with the noise of subdued voices and
+clicked with the rapid fire of the typewriters. Suddenly through the hum
+Mr. Bates' voice was heard, clear, calm, and coldly penetrating:
+
+“Mr. Jacobs!”
+
+The old, white-haired clerk started up from Cameron's desk, and began
+in a confused and gentle voice to explain that he was merely giving some
+hints to the new clerk.
+
+“Mr. Jacobs,” said Mr. Bates, “I cannot hear you, and you are wasting my
+time!”
+
+“He was merely showing me how to make these entries!” said Cameron.
+
+“Ah! Indeed! Thank you, Mr. Cameron! Though I believe Mr. Jacobs has not
+yet lost the power of lucid speech. Mr. Jacobs, I believe you know the
+rules of this office; your fine will be one-quarter of a day.”
+
+“Thank you!” said Mr. Jacobs, hurriedly resuming his desk.
+
+“And, Mr. Cameron, if you will kindly bring your work to me, I shall do
+my best to enlighten you in regard to the complex duty of entering your
+freight receipts.”
+
+An audible snicker ran through the delighted staff. Cameron seized his
+ledger and the pile of freight bills, and started for Mr. Bates' desk,
+catching out of the corner of his eye the pantomime of Jimmy and the
+lanky one, which was being rendered with vigor and due caution.
+
+For a few moments Cameron stood at the manager's desk till that
+gentleman should be disengaged, but Mr. Bates was skilled in the
+fine art of reducing to abject humility an employee who might give
+indications of insubordination. Cameron's rage grew with every passing
+moment.
+
+“Here is the ledger, Sir!” he said at length.
+
+But Mr. Bates was so completely absorbed in the business of saving time
+that he made not the slightest pause in his writing, while the redoubled
+vigor and caution of the pantomime seemed to indicate the approach of a
+crisis. At length Mr. Bates raised his head. Jimmy and the lanky clerk
+became at once engrossed in their duties.
+
+“You have had no experience of this kind of work, Mr. Cameron?” inquired
+Mr. Bates kindly.
+
+“No, Sir. But if you will just explain one or two matters, I think I
+can--”
+
+“Exactly! This is not, however, a business college! But we shall do our
+best!”
+
+A rapturous smile pervaded the office. Mr. Bates was in excellent form.
+
+“By the way, Mr. Cameron--pardon my neglect--but may I inquire just what
+department of this work you are familiar with?”
+
+“Oh, general--”
+
+“Ah! The position of general manager, however, is filled at present!”
+ replied Mr. Bates kindly.
+
+Cameron's flush grew deeper, while Jimmy and his friend resigned
+themselves to an ecstasy of delight.
+
+“I was going to say,” said Cameron in a tone loud and deliberate, “that
+I had been employed with the general copying work in a writer's office.”
+
+“Writing? Fancy! Writing, eh? No use here!” said Mr. Bates shortly, for
+time was passing.
+
+“A writer with us means a lawyer!” replied Cameron.
+
+“Why the deuce don't they say so?” answered Mr. Bates impatiently.
+“Well! Well!” getting hold of himself again. “Here we allow our
+solicitors to look after our legal work. Typewrite?” he inquired
+suddenly.
+
+“I beg your pardon!” replied Cameron. “Typewrite? Do you mean, can I use
+a typewriting machine?”
+
+“Yes! Yes! For heaven's sake, yes!”
+
+“No, I cannot!”
+
+“Bookkeep?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Good Lord! What have I got?” inquired Mr. Bates of himself, in a tone,
+however, perfectly audible to those in the immediate neighbourhood.
+
+“Try him licking stamps!” suggested the lanky youth in a voice that,
+while it reached the ears of Jimmy and others near by, including
+Cameron, was inaudible to the manager. Mr. Bates caught the sound,
+however, and glared about him through his spectacles. Time was being
+wasted--the supreme offense in that office--and Mr. Bates was fast
+losing his self-command.
+
+“Here!” he cried suddenly, seizing a sheaf of letters. “File these
+letters. You will be able to do that, I guess! File's in the vault over
+there!”
+
+Cameron took the letters and stood looking helplessly from them to Mr.
+Bates' bald head, that gentleman's face being already in close proximity
+to the papers on his desk.
+
+“Just how do I go about this?--I mean, what system do you--”
+
+“Jim!” roared Mr. Bates, throwing down his pen, “show this con--show
+Mr. Cameron how to file these letters! Just like these blank old-country
+chumps!” added Mr. Bates, in a lower voice, but loud enough to be
+distinctly heard.
+
+Jim came up with a smile of patronising pity on his face. It was the
+smile that touched to life the mass of combustible material that had
+been accumulating for the last hour in Cameron's soul. Instead of
+following the boy, he turned with a swift movement back to the manager's
+desk, laid his sheaf of letters down on Mr. Bates' papers, and, leaning
+over the desk, towards that gentleman, said:
+
+“Did you mean that remark to apply to me?” His voice was very quiet.
+But Mr. Bates started back with a quick movement from the white face and
+burning eyes.
+
+“Here, you get out of this!” he cried.
+
+“Because,” continued Cameron, “if you did, I must ask you to apologise
+at once.”
+
+All smiles vanished from the office staff, even Jimmy's face assumed a
+serious aspect. Mr. Bates pushed back his chair.
+
+“A-po-pologise!” he sputtered. “Get out of this office, d'ye hear?”
+
+“Be quick!” said Cameron, his hands gripping Mr. Bates' desk till it
+shook.
+
+“Jimmy! Call a policeman!” cried Mr. Bates, rising from his chair.
+
+He was too slow. Cameron reached swiftly for his collar, and with one
+fierce wrench swept Mr. Bates clear over the top of his desk, shook him
+till his head wobbled dangerously, and flung him crashing across the
+desk and upon the prostrate form of the lanky youth sitting behind it.
+
+“Call a policeman! Call a policeman!” shouted Mr. Bates, who was
+struggling meantime with the lanky youth to regain an upright position.
+
+Cameron, meanwhile, walked quietly to where his coat and cap hung.
+
+“Hold him, somebody! Hold him!” shouted Mr. Bates, hurrying towards him.
+
+Cameron turned fiercely upon him.
+
+“Did you want me, Sir?” he inquired.
+
+Mr. Bates arrested himself with such violence that his feet slid from
+under him, and once more he came sitting upon the floor.
+
+“Get up!” said Cameron, “and listen to me!”
+
+Mr. Bates rose, and stood, white and trembling.
+
+“I may not know much about your Canadian ways of business, but I believe
+I can teach you some old-country manners. You have treated me this
+morning like the despicable bully that you are. Perhaps you will treat
+the next old-country man with the decency that is coming to him, even if
+he has the misfortune to be your clerk.”
+
+With these words Cameron turned upon his heel and walked deliberately
+towards the door. Immediately Jimmy sprang before him, and, throwing the
+door wide open, bowed him out as if he were indeed the Prince of
+Wales. Thus abruptly ended Cameron's connection with the Metropolitan
+Transportation & Cartage Company. Before the day was done the whole city
+had heard the tale, which lost nothing in the telling.
+
+Next morning Mr. Denman was surprised to have Cameron walk in upon him.
+
+“Hullo, young man!” shouted the lawyer, “this is a pretty business!
+Upon my soul! Your manner of entry into our commercial life is somewhat
+forceful! What the deuce do you mean by all this?”
+
+Cameron stood, much abashed. His passion was all gone; in the calm light
+of after-thought his action of yesterday seemed boyish.
+
+“I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Denman,” he replied, “and I came to apologise to
+you.”
+
+“To me?” cried Denman. “Why to me? I expect, if you wish to get a
+job anywhere in this town, you will need to apologise to the chap you
+knocked down--what's his name?”
+
+“Mr. Bates, I think his name is, Sir; but, of course, I cannot apologise
+to him.”
+
+“By Jove!” roared Mr. Denman, “he ought to have thrown you out of his
+office! That is what I would have done!”
+
+Cameron glanced up and down Mr. Denman's well-knit figure.
+
+“I don't think so, Sir,” he said, with a smile.
+
+“Why not?” said Mr. Denman, grasping the arms of his office chair.
+
+“Because you would not have insulted a stranger in your office who was
+trying his best to understand his work. And then, I should not have
+tried it on you.”
+
+“And why?”
+
+“Well, I think I know a gentleman when I see one.”
+
+Mr. Denman was not to be appeased.
+
+“Well, let me tell you, young man, it would have been a mighty unhealthy
+thing for you to have cut up any such shine in this office. I have done
+some Rugby in my day, my boy, if you know what that means.”
+
+“I have done a little, too,” said Cameron, with slightly heightened
+colour.
+
+“You have, eh! Where?”
+
+“The Scottish International, Sir.”
+
+“By Jove! You don't tell me!” replied Mr. Denman, his tone expressing a
+new admiration and respect. “When? This year?”
+
+“No, last year, Sir--against Wales!”
+
+“By Jove!” cried Mr. Denman again; “give me your hand, boy! Any man who
+has made the Scottish Internationals is not called to stand any cheek
+from a cad like Bates.”
+
+Mr. Denman shook Cameron warmly by the hand.
+
+“Tell us about it!” he cried. “It must have been rare sport. If Bates
+only knew it, he ought to count it an honour to have been knocked down
+by a Scottish International.”
+
+“I didn't knock him down, Sir!” said Cameron, apologetically; “he is
+only a little chap; I just gave him a bit of a shake,” and Cameron
+proceeded to recount the proceedings of the previous morning.
+
+Mr. Denman was hugely delighted.
+
+“Serves the little beast bloody well right!” he cried enthusiastically.
+“But what's to do now? They will be afraid to let you into their offices
+in this city.”
+
+“I think, Sir, I am done with offices; I mean to try the land.”
+
+“Farm, eh?” mused Mr. Denman. “Well, so be it! It will probably be safer
+for you there--possibly for some others as well.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A MAN'S JOB
+
+
+Cameron slept heavily and long into the day, but as he awoke he was
+conscious of a delightful exhilaration possessing him. For the first
+time in his life he was a free man, ungoverned and unguided. For four
+dreary weeks he had waited in Montreal for answers to his enquiries
+concerning positions with farmers, but apparently the Canadian farmers
+were not attracted by the qualifications and experience Cameron had
+to offer. At length he had accepted the advice of Martin's uncle
+in Montreal, who assured him with local pride that, if he desired a
+position on a farm, the district of which the little city of London was
+the centre was the very garden of Canada. He was glad now to remember
+that he had declined a letter of introduction. He was now entirely on
+his own. Neither in this city nor in the country round about was there
+a soul with whom he had the remotest acquaintance. The ways of life led
+out from his feet, all untried, all unknown. Which he should choose
+he knew not, but with a thrill of exultation he thanked his stars the
+choosing was his own concern. A feeling of adventure was upon him, a new
+courage was rising in his heart. The failure that had hitherto dogged
+his past essays in life did not dampen his confidence, for they had
+been made under other auspices than his own. He had not fitted into his
+former positions, but they had not been of his own choosing. He would
+now find a place for himself and if he failed again he was prepared to
+accept the responsibility. One bit of philosophy he carried with him
+from Mr. Denman's farewell interview--“Now, young man, rememer,” that
+gentleman had said after he had bidden him farewell, “this world is
+pretty much made already; success consists in adjustment. Don't try to
+make your world, adjust yourself to it. Don't fight the world, serve it
+till you master it.” Cameron determined he would study adjustments; his
+fighting tendency, which had brought him little success in the past, he
+would control.
+
+At this point the throb of a band broke in upon his meditations and
+summoned him from his bed. He sprang to the window. It was circus day
+and the morning parade, in all its mingled and cosmopolitan glory, was
+slowly evolving its animated length to the strains of bands of music.
+There were bands on horses and bands on chariots, and at the tail of the
+procession a fearful and wonderful instrument bearing the euphonious and
+classic name of the “calliope,” whose chief function seemed to be that
+of terrifying the farmers' horses into frantic and determined attempts
+to escape from these horrid alarms of the city to the peaceful haunts of
+their rural solitudes.
+
+Cameron was still boy enough to hurry through his morning duties in
+order that he might mix with the crowd and share the perennial delights
+which a circus affords. The stable yard attached to his hotel was lined
+three deep with buggies, carriages, and lumber waggons, which had borne
+in the crowds of farmers from the country. The hotel was thronged with
+sturdy red-faced farm lads, looking hot and uncomfortable in their
+unaccustomed Sunday suits, gorgeous in their rainbow ties, and rakish
+with their hats set at all angles upon their elaborately brushed heads.
+Older men, too, bearded and staid, moved with silent and self-respecting
+dignity through the crowds, gazing with quiet and observant eyes upon
+the shifting phantasmagoria that filled the circus grounds and the
+streets nearby. With these, too, there mingled a few of both old and
+young who, with bacchanalian enthusiasm, were swaggering their way
+through the crowds, each followed by a company of friends good-naturedly
+tolerant or solicitously careful.
+
+Cameron's eyes, roving over the multitude, fell upon a little group that
+held his attention, the principal figure of which was a tall middle aged
+man with a good-natured face, adorned with a rugged grey chin whisker,
+who was loudly declaiming to a younger companion with a hard face and
+very wide awake, “My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me.”
+
+“Ye bet yer life they can't. Ye ain't no chicken!” exclaimed his
+hard-faced friend. “Say, let's liquor up once more before we go to see
+the elephant.”
+
+With these two followed a boy of some thirteen years, freckled faced and
+solemn, slim and wiry of body, who was anxiously striving to drag his
+father away from one of the drinking booths that dotted the circus
+grounds, and towards the big tent; but the father had been already a
+too frequent visitor at the booth to be quite amenable to his son's
+pleading. He, in a glorious mood of self-appreciation, kept announcing
+to the public generally and to his hard-faced friend in particular--
+
+“My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me!”
+
+“Come on, father,” pleaded Tim.
+
+“No hurry, Timmy, me boy,” said his father. “The elephants won't run
+away with the monkeys and the clowns can't git out of the ring.”
+
+“Oh, come on, dad, I'm sure the show's begun.”
+
+“Cheese it, young feller,” said the young man, “yer dad's able to take
+care of himself.”
+
+“Aw, you shut yer mouth!” replied Tim fiercely. “I know what you're
+suckin' round for.”
+
+“Good boy, Tim,” laughed his father; “ye giv' 'im one that time. Guess
+we'll go. So long, Sam, if that's yer name. Ye see I've jist got ter
+take in this 'ere show this morning with Tim 'ere, and then we have got
+some groceries to git for the old woman. See there,” he drew a paper
+from his pocket, “wouldn't dare show up without 'em, ye bet, eh, Tim!
+Why, it's her egg and butter money and she wants value fer it, she does.
+Well, so long, Sam, see ye later,” and with the triumphant Tim he made
+for the big tent, leaving a wrathful and disappointed man behind him.
+
+Cameron spent the rest of the day partly in “taking in” the circus
+and partly in conversing with the farmers who seemed to have taken
+possession of the town; but in answer to his most diligent and careful
+enquiries he could hear of no position on a farm for which he could
+honestly offer himself. The farmers wanted mowers, or cradlers, or good
+smart turnip hands, and Cameron sorrowfully had to confess he was none
+of these. There apparently was no single bit of work in the farmer's
+life that Cameron felt himself qualified to perform.
+
+It was wearing towards evening when Cameron once more came across Tim.
+He was standing outside the bar room door, big tears silently coursing
+down his pale and freckled cheeks.
+
+“Hello!” cried Cameron, “what's up old chap? Where's your dad, and has
+he got his groceries yet?”
+
+“No,” said Tim, hastily wiping away his tears and looking up somewhat
+shyly and sullenly into Cameron's face. What he saw there apparently won
+his confidence.
+
+“He's in yonder,” he continued, “and I can't git him out. They won't let
+him come. They're jist making 'im full so he can't do anything, and we
+ought to be startin' fer home right away, too!”
+
+“Well, let's go in anyway and see what they are doing,” said Cameron
+cheerfully, to whom the pale tear-stained face made strong appeal.
+
+“They won't let us,” said Tim. “There's a feller there that chucks me
+out.”
+
+“Won't, eh? We'll see about that! Come along!”
+
+Cameron entered the bar room, with Tim following, and looked about him.
+The room was crowded to the door with noisy excited men, many of whom
+were partially intoxicated. At the bar, two deep, stood a line of men
+with glasses in their hands, or waiting to be served. In the farthest
+corner of the room stood Tim's father, considerably the worse of his
+day's experiences, and lovingly embracing the hard-faced young man, to
+whom he was at intervals announcing, “My name's Tom Haley! Ye can't git
+over me!”
+
+As Cameron began to push through the crowd, a man with a very red face,
+obviously on the watch for Tim, cried out--
+
+“Say, sonny, git out of here! This is no place fer you!”
+
+Tim drew back, but Cameron, turning to him, said,
+
+“Come along, Tim. He's with me,” he added, addressing the man. “He wants
+his father.”
+
+“His father's not here. He left half an hour ago. I told him so.”
+
+“You were evidently mistaken, for I see him just across the room there,”
+ said Cameron quietly.
+
+“Oh! is he a friend of yours?” enquired the red-faced man.
+
+“No, I don't know him at all, but Tim does, and Tim wants him,” said
+Cameron, beginning to push his way through the crowd towards the
+vociferating Haley, who appeared to be on the point of backing up some
+of his statements with money, for he was flourishing a handful of bills
+in the face of the young man Sam, who apparently was quite willing to
+accommodate him with the wager.
+
+Before Cameron could make his way through the swaying, roaring crowd,
+the red-faced man slipped from his side, and in a very few moments
+appeared at a side door near Tom Haley's corner. Almost immediately
+there was a shuffle and Haley and his friends disappeared through the
+side door.
+
+“Hello!” cried Cameron, “there's something doing! We'll just slip around
+there, my boy.” So saying, he drew Tim back from the crowd and out
+of the front door, and, hurrying around the house, came upon Sam, the
+red-faced man, and Haley in a lane leading past the stable yard. The
+red-faced man was affectionately urging a bottle upon Haley.
+
+“There they are!” said Tim in an undertone, clutching Cameron's arm.
+“You get him away and I'll hitch up.”
+
+“All right, Tim,” said Cameron, “I'll get him. They are evidently up to
+no good.”
+
+“What's yer name?” said Tim hurriedly.
+
+“Cameron!”
+
+“Come on, then!” he cried, dragging Cameron at a run towards his father.
+“Here, Dad!” he cried, “this is my friend, Mr. Cameron! Come on home.
+I'm going to hitch up. We'll be awful late for the chores and we got
+them groceries to git. Come on, Dad!”
+
+“Aw, gwan! yer a cheeky kid anyway,” said Sam, giving Tim a shove that
+nearly sent him on his head.
+
+“Hold on there, my man, you leave the boy alone,” said Cameron.
+
+“What's your business in this, young feller?”
+
+“Never mind!” said Cameron. “Tim is a friend of mine and no one is going
+to hurt him. Run along, Tim, and get your horses.”
+
+“Friend o' Tim's, eh!” said Haley, in half drunken good nature. “Friend
+o' Tim's, friend o' mine,” he added, gravely shaking Cameron by the
+hand. “Have a drink, young man. You look a' right!”
+
+Cameron took the bottle, put it to his lips. The liquor burned like
+fire.
+
+“Great Caesar!” he gasped, contriving to let the bottle drop upon a
+stone. “What do you call that?”
+
+“Pretty hot stuff!” cried Haley, with a shout of laughter.
+
+But Sam, unable to see the humour of the situation, exclaimed in a rage,
+“Here, you cursed fool! That is my bottle!”
+
+“Sorry to be so clumsy,” said Cameron apologetically, “but it surely
+wasn't anything to drink, was it?”
+
+“Yes, it jest was something to drink, was it?” mocked Sam, approaching
+Cameron with menace in his eye and attitude. “I have a blanked good
+notion to punch your head, too!”
+
+“Oh! I wouldn't do that if I were you,” said Cameron, smiling
+pleasantly.
+
+“Say, Sam, don't get mad, Sam,” interposed Haley. “This young feller's
+a friend o' Tim's. I'll git another bottle a' right. I've got the stuff
+right here.” He pulled out his roll of bills. “And lots more where this
+comes from.”
+
+“Let me have that, Mr. Haley, I'll get the bottle for you,” said
+Cameron, reaching out for the bills.
+
+“A' right,” said Haley. “Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine.”
+
+“Here, young feller, you're too fresh!” cried the red-faced man,
+“buttin' in here! You make tracks, git out! Come, git out, I tell yeh!”
+
+“Give it to him quick,” said Sam in a low voice.
+
+The red-faced man, without the slightest warning, swiftly stepped
+towards Cameron and, before the latter could defend himself, struck him
+a heavy blow. Cameron staggered, fell, and struggled again to his knees.
+The red-faced man sprang forward to kick him in the face, when Haley
+interposed--
+
+“Hold up there, now! Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine, ye know!”
+
+“Hurry up,” said Sam, closing in on Haley. “Quit fooling. Give 'im the
+billy and let's get away!”
+
+But Haley, though unskilled with his hands, was a man of more than
+ordinary strength, and he swung his long arms about with such vigour
+that neither Sam, who was savagely striking at his head, nor the
+red-faced man, who was dancing about waiting for a chance to get in with
+the “billy,” which he held in his hand, was able to bring the affair to
+a finish. It could be a matter of only a few moments, however, for both
+Sam and his friend were evidently skilled in the arts of the thug, while
+Haley, though powerful enough, was chiefly occupying himself in beating
+the air. A blow from the billy dropped one of Haley's arms helpless. The
+red-faced man, following up his advantage, ran in to finish, but Haley
+gripped him by the wrist and, exerting all his strength, gave a mighty
+heave and threw him heavily against Sam, who was running in upon the
+other side. At the same time Cameron, who was rapidly recovering,
+clutched Sam by a leg and brought him heavily to earth. Reaching down,
+Haley gripped Cameron by the collar and hauled him to his feet just as
+Sam, who had sprung up, ran to the attack. Steadied by Haley, Cameron
+braced himself, and, at exactly the right moment, stiffened his left
+arm with the whole weight of his body behind it. The result was a most
+unhappy one for Sam, who, expecting no such reception, was lifted
+clear off his feet and hurled to the ground some distance away. The
+exhilaration of his achievement brought Cameron's blood back again to
+his brain. Swiftly he turned upon the red-faced man just as that worthy
+had brought Haley to his knees with a cruel blow and was preparing
+to finish off his victim. With a shout Cameron sprang at him, the man
+turned quickly, warded off Cameron's blow, and then, seeing Sam lying
+helpless upon the ground, turned and fled down the lane.
+
+“Say, young feller!” panted Haley, staggering to his feet, “yeh came in
+mighty slick that time. Yeh ain't got a bottle on ye, hev yeh?”
+
+“No!” said Cameron, “but there's a pump near by.”
+
+“Jest as good and a little better,” said Haley, staggering towards the
+pump. “Say,” he continued, with a humourous twinkle in his eye, and
+glancing at the man lying on the ground, “Sam's kinder quiet, ain't he?
+Run agin something hard like, I guess.”
+
+Cameron filled a bucket with water and into its icy depths Haley plunged
+his head.
+
+“Ow! that's good,” he sputtered, plunging his head in again and again.
+“Fill 'er up once more!” he said, wiping off his face with a big red
+handkerchief. “Now, I shouldn't wonder if it would help Sam a bit.”
+
+He picked up the bucket of water and approached Sam, who meantime had
+got to a sitting position and was blinking stupidly around.
+
+“Here, ye blamed hog, hev a wash, ye need it bad!” So saying, Haley
+flung the whole bucket of water over Sam's head and shoulders. “Fill
+'er up again,” he said, but Sam had had enough, and, swearing wildly,
+gasping and sputtering, he made off down the lane.
+
+“I've heard o' them circus toughs,” said Haley in a meditative tone,
+“but never jest seen 'em before. Say, young feller, yeh came in mighty
+handy fer me a' right, and seeing as yer Tim's friend put it there.” He
+gripped Cameron's hand and shook it heartily. “Here's Tim with the team,
+and, say, there's no need to mention anything about them fellers. Tim's
+real tender hearted. Well, I'm glad to hev met yeh. Good-bye! Living
+here?”
+
+“No!”
+
+“Travellin', eh?”
+
+“Not exactly,” replied Cameron. “The truth is I'm looking for a
+position.”
+
+“A position? School teachin', mebbe?”
+
+“No, a position on a farm.”
+
+“On a farm? Ha! ha! good! Position on a farm,” repeated Haley.
+
+“Yes,” replied Cameron. “Do you know of any?”
+
+“Position on a farm!” said Haley again, as if trying to grasp the
+meaning of this extraordinary quest. “There ain't any.”
+
+“No positions?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Nary one! Say, young man, where do you come from?”
+
+“Scotland,” replied Cameron.
+
+“Scotland! yeh don't say, now. Jest out, eh?”
+
+“Yes, about a month or so.”
+
+“Well, well! Yeh don't say so!”
+
+“Yes,” replied Cameron, “and I am surprised to hear that there is no
+work.”
+
+“Oh! hold on there now!” interposed Haley gravely. “If it's work you
+want there are stacks of it lying round, but there ain't no positions.
+Positions!” ejaculated Haley, who seemed to be fascinated by the word,
+“there ain't none on my farm except one and I hold that myself; but
+there's lots o' work, and--why! I want a man right now. What say? Come
+along, stay's long's yeh like. I like yeh fine.”
+
+“All right,” said Cameron. “Wait till I get my bag, but I ought to tell
+you I have had no experience.”
+
+“No experience, eh!” Haley pondered. “Well, we'll give it to you, and
+anyway you saved me some experience to-day and you come home with me.”
+
+When he returned he found Haley sitting on the bottom of the wagon
+rapidly sinking into slumber. The effects of the bucket were passing
+off.
+
+“What about the groceries, Tim?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“We've got to git 'em,” said Tim, “or we'll catch it sure.”
+
+Leaving Cameron to wonder what it might be that they were sure to catch,
+Tim extracted from his father's pocket the paper on which were listed
+the groceries to be purchased, and the roll of bills, and handed both to
+Cameron.
+
+“You best git 'em,” he said, and, mounting to the high spring seat,
+turned the team out of the yard. The groceries secured with Cameron's
+help, they set off for home as the long June evening was darkening into
+night.
+
+“My! it's awful late,” said Tim in a voice full of foreboding. “And
+Perkins ain't no good at chores.”
+
+“How far is it to your home?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Nine miles out this road and three off to the east.”
+
+“And who's Perkins?”
+
+“Perkins! Joe Perkins! He's our hired man. He's a terror to work at
+plowin', cradlin', and bindin', but he ain't no good at chores. I bet
+yeh he'll leave Mandy to do the milkin', ten cows, and some's awful
+bad.”
+
+“And who's Mandy?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Mandy! She's my sister. She's an awful quick milker. She can beat Dad,
+or Perkins, or any of 'em, but ten cows is a lot, and then there's the
+pigs and the calves to feed, and the wood, too. I bet Perkins won't cut
+a stick. He's good enough in the field,” continued Tim, with an obvious
+desire to do Perkins full justice, “but he ain't no good around the
+house. He says he ain't hired to do women's chores, and Ma she won't ask
+'im. She says if he don't do what he sees to be done she'd see 'im far
+enough before she'd ask 'im.” And so Timothy went on with a monologue
+replete with information, his high thin voice rising clear above the
+roar and rattle of the lumber wagon as it rumbled and jolted over the
+rutty gravel road. Those who knew the boy would have been amazed at his
+loquacity, but something in Cameron had won his confidence and opened
+his heart. Hence his monologue, in which the qualities, good and bad, of
+the members of the family, of their own hired man and of other hired
+men were fully discussed. The standard of excellence for work in the
+neighbourhood, however, appeared to be Perkins, whose abilities Tim
+appeared greatly to admire, but for whose person he appeared to have
+little regard.
+
+“He's mighty good at turnip hoeing, too,” he said. “I could pretty near
+keep up to him last year and I believe I could do it this year. Some
+day soon I'm going to git after 'im. My! I'd like to trim 'im to a fine
+point.”
+
+The live stock on the farm in general, and the young colts in
+particular, among which a certain two-year-old was showing signs of
+marvellous speed, these and cognate subjects relating to the farm, its
+dwellers and its activities, Tim passed in review, with his own shrewd
+comments thereon.
+
+“And what do you play, Tim?” asked Cameron, seeking a point of contact
+with the boy.
+
+“Nothin',” said Tim shortly. “No time.”
+
+“Don't you go to school?”
+
+“Yes, in fall and winter. Then we play ball and shinny some, but there
+ain't much time.”
+
+“But you can't work all the time, Tim? What work can you do?”
+
+“Oh!” replied Tim carelessly, “I run a team.”
+
+“Run a team? What do you mean?”
+
+Tim glanced up at him and, perceiving that he was quite serious,
+proceeded to explain that during the spring's work he had taken his
+place in the plowing and harrowing with the “other” men, that he
+expected to drive the mower and reaper in haying and harvest, that, in
+short, in almost all kinds of farm work he was ready to take the place
+of a grown man; and all this without any sign of boasting.
+
+Cameron thought over his own life, in which sport had filled up so large
+a place and work so little, and in which he had developed so little
+power of initiative and such meagre self-dependence, and he envied the
+solemn-faced boy at his side, handling his team and wagon with the skill
+of a grown man.
+
+“I say, Tim!” he exclaimed in admiration, “you're great. I wish I could
+do half as much.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” exclaimed Tim in modest self-disdain, “that ain't nothin',
+but I wish I could git off a bit.”
+
+“Get off? What do you mean?”
+
+The boy was silent for some moments, then asked shyly:
+
+“Say! Is there big cities in Scotland, an' crowds of people, an' trains,
+an' engines, an' factories, an' things? My! I wish I could git away!”
+
+Then Cameron understood dimly something of the wander-lust in the boy's
+soul, of the hunger for adventure, for the colour and movement of life
+in the great world “away” from the farm, that thrilled in the boy's
+voice. So for the next half hour he told Tim tales of his own life, the
+chief glory of which had been his achievements in the realm of sport,
+and, before he was aware, he was describing to the boy the great
+International with Wales, till, remembering the disastrous finish, he
+brought his narrative to an abrupt close.
+
+“And did yeh lick 'em?” demanded Tim in a voice of intense excitement.
+
+“No,” said Cameron shortly.
+
+“Oh, hedges! I wisht ye had!” exclaimed Tim in deep disappointment.
+
+“It was my fault,” replied Cameron bitterly, for the eager wish in the
+boy's heart had stirred a similar yearning in his own and had opened an
+old sore.
+
+“I was a fool,” he said, more to himself than to Tim. “I let myself get
+out of condition and so I lost them the match.”
+
+“Aw, git out!” said Tim, with unbelieving scorn. “I bet yeh didn't! My!
+I wisht I could see them games.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw! Tim, they are not half so worth while as plowing, harrowing,
+and running your team. Why, here you are, a boy of--how old?”
+
+“Thirteen,” said Tim.
+
+“A boy of thirteen able to do a man's work, and here am I, a man of
+twenty-one, only able to do a boy's work, and not even that. But I'm
+going to learn, Tim,” added Cameron. “You hear me, I am going to learn
+to do a man's work. If I can,” he added doubtfully.
+
+“Oh, shucks!” replied Tim, “you bet yeh can, and I'll show yeh,” with
+which mutual determination they turned in at the gate of the Haley farm,
+which was to be the scene of Cameron's first attempt to do a man's work
+and to fill a man's place in the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A DAY'S WORK
+
+
+The Haley farm was a survival of an ambitious past. Once the property of
+a rich English gentleman, it had been laid out with an eye to appearance
+rather than to profit and, though the soil was good enough, it had
+never been worked to profit. Consequently, when its owner had tired
+of Colonial life, he had at first rented the farm, but, finding this
+unsatisfactory, he, in a moment of disgust, advertised it for sale.
+Pretentious in its plan and in its appointments, its neglected and run
+down condition gave it an air of decayed gentility, depressing alike
+to the eye of the beholder and to the selling price of the owner. Haley
+bought it and bought it cheap. From the high road a magnificent avenue
+of maples led to a house of fine proportions, though sadly needing
+repair. The wide verandahs, the ample steps were unpainted and falling
+into ruin; the lawn reaching from the front door to the orchard was
+spacious, but overgrown with burdocks, nettles and other noxious weeds;
+the orchard, which stretched from the lawn to the road on both sides
+of the lane, had been allowed to run sadly to wood. At the side of the
+house the door-yard was littered with abandoned farm implements, piles
+of old fence rails and lumber and other impedimenta, which, though
+kindly Nature, abhorring the unsightly rubbish, was doing her utmost to
+hide it all beneath a luxuriant growth of docks, milkweed, and nettles,
+lent an air of disorder and neglect to the whole surroundings. The
+porch, or “stoop,” about the summer kitchen was set out with an
+assortment of tubs and pails, pots and pans, partially filled with
+various evil looking and more evil smelling messes, which afforded an
+excellent breeding and feeding place for flies, mosquitoes, and other
+unpleasant insects. Adjoining the door yard, and separated from it by a
+fence, was the barn yard, a spacious quadrangle flanked on three sides
+by barns, stables, and sheds, which were large and finely planned, but
+which now shared the general appearance of decrepitude. The fence, which
+separated one yard from the other, was broken down, so that the barn
+yard dwellers, calves, pigs, and poultry, wandered at will in search of
+amusement or fodder to the very door of the kitchen, and so materially
+contributed to the general disorder, discomfort, and dirt.
+
+Away from the house, however, where Nature had her own way, the farm
+stretched field after field on each side of the snake fenced lane to the
+line of woods in the distance, a picture of rich and varied beauty. From
+the rising ground on which the house was situated a lovely vista swept
+right from the kitchen door away to the remnant of the forest primeval
+at the horizon. On every field the signs of coming harvest were
+luxuriantly visible, the hay fields, grey-green with blooming “Timothy”
+ and purple with the deep nestling clover, the fall wheat green and
+yellowing into gold, the spring wheat a lighter green and bursting into
+head, the oats with their graceful tasselated stalks, the turnip field
+ribboned with its lines of delicate green on the dark soil drills, back
+of all, the “slashing” where stumps, blackened with fire, and trunks
+of trees piled here and there in confusion, all overgrown with weeds,
+represented the transition stage between forest and harvest field, and
+beyond the slashing the dark cool masses of maple, birch, and elm; all
+these made a scene of such varied loveliness as to delight the soul
+attuned to nature.
+
+Upon this scene of vivid contrasts, on one side house and barn and yard,
+and on the other the rolling fields and massive forest, Cameron stood
+looking in the early light of his first morning on the farm, with
+mingled feelings of disgust and pleasure. In a few moments, however, the
+loveliness of the far view caught and held his eye and he stood as in a
+dream. The gentle rolling landscape, with its rich variety of greens and
+yellows and greys, that swept away from his feet to the dark masses of
+woods, with their suggestions of cool and shady depth, filled his soul
+with a deep joy and brought him memory of how the “Glen of the Cup of
+Gold” would look that morning in the dear home-land so far away. True,
+there were neither mountains nor moors, neither lochs nor birch-clad
+cliffs here. Nature, in her quieter mood, looked up at him from these
+sloping fields and bosky woods and smiled with kindly face, and that
+smile of hers it was that brought to Cameron's mind the sunny Glen of
+the Cup of Gold. It was the sweetest, kindliest thing his eye had looked
+on since he had left the Glen.
+
+A harsh and fretful voice broke in upon his dreaming.
+
+“Pa-a-w, there ain't a stick of wood for breakfast! There was none last
+night! If you want any breakfast you'd best git some wood!”
+
+“All right, Mother!” called Haley from the barn yard, where he was
+assisting in the milking. “I'm a comin'.”
+
+Cameron walked to meet him.
+
+“Can I help?” he enquired.
+
+“Why, of course!” shouted Haley. “Here, Ma, here's our new hand, the
+very man for you.”
+
+Mrs. Haley, who had retired to the kitchen, appeared at the door. She
+was a woman past middle age, unduly stout, her face deep lined with
+the fret of a multitude of cares, and hung with flabby folds of skin,
+browned with the sun and wind, though it must be confessed its color was
+determined more by the grease and grime than by the tan upon it. Yet,
+in spite of the flabby folds of flesh, in spite of the grime and grease,
+there was still a reminiscence of a one-time comeliness, all the more
+pathetic by reason of its all too obvious desecration. Her voice was
+harsh, her tone fretful, which indeed was hardly to be wondered at,
+for the burden of her life was by no means light, and the cares of the
+household, within and without, were neither few nor trivial.
+
+For a moment or two Mrs. Haley stood in silence studying and appraising
+the new man. The result did not apparently inspire her with hope.
+
+“Come on now, Pa,” she said, “stop yer foolin' and git me that wood. I
+want it right now. You're keepin' me back and there's an awful lot to
+do.”
+
+“But I ain't foolin', Ma. Mr. Cameron is our new hand. He'll knock yeh
+off a few sticks in no time.” So saying, Haley walked off with his pails
+to the milking, leaving his wife and the new hand facing each other,
+each uncertain as to the next move.
+
+“What can I do, Mrs. Haley?” enquired Cameron politely.
+
+“Oh, I don't know,” said Mrs. Haley wearily. “I want a few sticks for
+the breakfast, but perhaps I can get along with chips, but chips don't
+give no steady fire.”
+
+“If you would show me just what to do,” said Cameron with some
+hesitation, “I mean, where is the wood to be got?”
+
+“There,” she said, in a surprised tone, pointing to a pile of long logs
+of ash and maple. “I don't want much.” She gathered her apron full of
+chips and turned away, all too obviously refusing to place her hope of
+wood for the breakfast fire upon the efforts of the new man. Cameron
+stood looking alternately at the long, hard, dry logs and at the axe
+which he had picked up from the bed of chips. The problem of how to
+produce the sticks necessary to breakfast by the application of the one
+to the other was one for which he could see no solution. He lifted his
+axe and brought it down hard upon a maple log. The result was a slight
+indentation upon the log and a sharp jar from the axe handle that ran up
+his arm unpleasantly. A series of heavy blows produced nothing more than
+a corresponding series of indentations in the tough maple log and of
+jars more or less sharp and painful shooting up his arms. The result was
+not encouraging, but it flashed upon him that this was his first attempt
+to make good at his job on the farm. He threw off his coat and went at
+his work with energy; but the probability of breakfast, so far as it
+depended upon the result of his efforts, seemed to be growing more and
+more remote.
+
+“Guess ye ain't got the knack of it,” said a voice, deep, full, and
+mellow, behind him. “That axe ain't no good for choppin', it's a
+splittin' axe.”
+
+Turning, he saw a girl of about seventeen, with little grace and less
+beauty, but strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-natured, if
+somewhat stupid and heavy face. Her hair was dun in colour, coarse
+in texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in two heavy braids,
+arranged about her head in such a manner as to permit stray wisps of
+hair to escape about her face and neck. She was dressed in a loose pink
+wrapper, all too plainly of home manufacture, gathered in at the
+waist, and successfully obliterating any lines that might indicate
+the existence of any grace of form, and sadly spotted and stained with
+grease and dirt. Her red stout arms ended in thick and redder hands,
+decked with an array of black-rimmed nails. At his first glance,
+sweeping her “tout ensemble,” Cameron was conscious of a feeling of
+repulsion, but in a moment this feeling passed and he was surprised to
+find himself looking into two eyes of surprising loveliness, dark blue,
+well shaped, and of such liquid depths as to suggest pools of water
+under forest trees.
+
+“They use the saw mostly,” said the girl.
+
+“The saw?” echoed Cameron.
+
+“Yes,” she said. “They saw 'em through and then split 'em with the axe.”
+
+Cameron picked up the buck-saw which lay against a rickety saw horse.
+Never in his life had he used such an instrument. He gazed helplessly at
+his companion.
+
+“How do you use this thing?” he enquired.
+
+“Say! are you funny,” replied the girl, flashing a keen glance upon him,
+“or don't ye know?”
+
+“Never saw it done in my life,” said Cameron solemnly.
+
+“Here!” she cried, “let me show you.”
+
+She seized the end of a maple log, dragged it forward to the rickety saw
+horse, set it in position, took the saw from his hands, and went at her
+work with such vigour that in less than a minute as it seemed to Cameron
+she had made the cut.
+
+“Give me that axe!” she said impatiently to Cameron, who was preparing
+to split the block.
+
+With a few strong and skillful blows she split the straight-grained
+block of wood into firewood, gathered up the sticks in her arms, and,
+with a giggle, turned toward the house.
+
+“I won't charge you anything for that lesson,” she said, “but you'll
+have to hustle if you git that wood split 'fore breakfast.”
+
+“Thank you,” said Cameron, grateful that none of the men had witnessed
+the instruction, “I shall do my best,” and for the next half hour, with
+little skill, but by main strength, he cut off a number of blocks from
+the maple log and proceeded to split them. But in this he made slow
+progress. From the kitchen came cheerful sounds and scents of cooking,
+and ever and anon from the door waddled, with quite surprising celerity,
+the unwieldy bulk of the mistress of the house.
+
+“Now, that's jest like yer Pa,” Cameron heard her grumbling to her
+daughter, “bringin' a man here jest at the busy season who don't know
+nothin'. He's peckin' away at 'em blocks like a rooster peckin' grain.”
+
+“He's willin' enough, Ma,” replied the girl, “and I guess he'll learn.”
+
+“Learn!” puffed Mrs. Haley contemptuously. “Did ye ever see an
+old-country man learn to handle an axe or a scythe after he was growed
+up? Jest look at 'im. Thank goodness! there's Tim.”
+
+“Here, Tim!” she called from the door, “best split some o' that wood
+'fore breakfast.”
+
+Tim approached Cameron with a look of pity on his face.
+
+“Let me have a try,” he said. Cameron yielded him the axe. The boy set
+on end the block at which Cameron had been laboring and, with a swift
+glancing blow of the axe, knocked off a slab.
+
+“By Jove!” exclaimed Cameron admiringly, “how did you do that?”
+
+For answer the boy struck again the same glancing blow, a slab started
+and, at a second light blow, fell to the ground.
+
+“I say!” exclaimed Cameron again, “I must learn that trick.”
+
+“Oh, that's easy!” said Tim, knocking the slabs off from the outside of
+the block. “This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got a knot in it,”
+ and tough it proved, resisting all his blows.
+
+“You're a tough sucker, now, ain't yeh?” said Tim, through his shut
+teeth, addressing the block. “We'll try yeh this way.” He laid the end
+of the block upon a log and plied the axe with the full strength of
+his slight body, but the block danced upon the log and resisted all his
+blows.
+
+“Say! you're a tough one now!” he said, pausing for breath.
+
+“Let me try that,” said Cameron, and, putting forth his strength, he
+brought the axe down fairly upon the stick with such force that the
+instrument shore clean through the knot and sank into the log below.
+
+“Huh! that's a cracker,” said Tim with ungrudging admiration. “All you
+want is knack. I'll slab it off and you can do the knots,” he added with
+a grin.
+
+As the result of this somewhat unequal division of labor, there lay in
+half an hour a goodly pile of fire wood ready for the cooking. It caught
+Haley's eye as he came in to breakfast.
+
+“I say, Missus, that's a bigger pile than you've had for some time.
+Guess my new man ain't so slow after all.”
+
+“Huh!” puffed his wife, waddling about with great agility, “it was Tim
+that done it.”
+
+“Now, Ma, ye know well enough he helped Tim, and right smart too,” said
+the daughter, but her mother was too busy getting breakfast ready for
+the hungry men who were now performing their morning ablutions with the
+help of a very small basin set upon a block of wood outside the kitchen
+door to answer.
+
+There were two men employed by Haley, one the son of a Scotch-Canadian
+farmer, Webster by name, a stout young fellow, but slow in his
+movements, both physical and mental, and with no further ambition than
+to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. He was employed by the
+month during the busier seasons of the year. The other, Perkins, was
+Haley's “steady” man, which means that he was employed by the year and
+was regarded almost as a member of the family. Perkins was an Englishman
+with fair hair and blue eyes, of fresh complexion, burned to a clear
+red, clean-cut features, and a well knit, athletic frame. He was, as
+Tim declared, a terror to work; indeed, his fame as a worker was well
+established throughout the country side. To these men Cameron was
+introduced as being from Scotland and as being anxious to be initiated
+into the mysteries of Canadian farm life.
+
+“Glad to see you!” said Perkins, shaking him heartily by the hand.
+“We'll make a farmer of you, won't we, Tim? From Scotland, eh? Pretty
+fine country, I hear--to leave,” he added, with a grin at his own
+humour. Though his manner was pleasant enough, Cameron became conscious
+of a feeling of aversion, which he recognised at once as being as
+unreasonable as it was inexplicable. He set it down as a reflection
+of Tim's mental attitude toward the hired man. Perkins seized the
+tin basin, dipped some water from the rain barrel standing near, and,
+setting it down before Cameron, said:
+
+“Here, pile in, Scotty. Do they wash in your country?”
+
+“Yes,” replied Cameron, “they are rather strong on that,” wondering at
+the same time how the operation could be performed successfully with
+such a moderate supply of water. After using a second and third supply,
+however, he turned, with hands and face dripping, and looked about for a
+towel. Perkins handed him a long roller towel, black with dirt and
+stiff with grease. Had his life depended upon it Cameron could not have
+avoided a shuddering hesitation as he took the filthy cloth preparatory
+to applying it to his face.
+
+“'Twon't hurt you,” laughed Perkins. “Wash day ain't till next week, you
+know, and this is only Wednesday.” Suddenly the towel was snatched from
+Cameron's hands.
+
+“Gimme that towel!” It was the girl, with face aflame and eyes emitting
+blue fire. “Here; Mr. Cameron, take this,” she said.
+
+“Great Jerusalem, Mandy! You ain't goin' to bring on a clean towel the
+middle of the week?” said Perkins in mock dismay. “Guess it's for Mr.
+Cameron,” he continued with another laugh.
+
+“We give clean towels to them that knows how to use 'em,” said Mandy,
+whisking wrathfully into the house.
+
+“Say, Scotty!” said Perkins, in a loud bantering tone, “guess you're
+makin' a mash on Mandy all right.”
+
+“I don't know exactly what you mean,” said Cameron with a quick rising
+of wrath, “but I do know that you are making a beastly cad of yourself.”
+
+“Oh, don't get wrathy, Scotty!” laughed Perkins, “we're just having a
+little fun. Here's the comb!” But Cameron declined the article,
+which, from its appearance, seemed to be intended for family use, and,
+proceeding to his room, completed his toilet there.
+
+The breakfast was laid in the kitchen proper, a spacious and comfortable
+room, which served as living room for the household. The table was
+laden with a variety and abundance of food that worthily sustained the
+reputation of the Haleys of being “good feeders.” At one end of the
+table a large plate was heaped high with slices of fat pork, and here
+and there disposed along its length were dishes of fried potatoes, huge
+piles of bread, hot biscuits, plates of butter, pies of different kinds,
+maple syrup, and apple sauce. It was a breakfast fit for a lord, and
+Cameron sat down with a pleasurable anticipation induced by his early
+rising and his half hour's experience in the fresh morning air with the
+wood pile. A closer inspection, however, of the dishes somewhat damped
+the pleasure of his anticipation. The food was good, abundant, and well
+cooked, but everywhere there was an utter absence of cleanliness.
+The plates were greasy, the forks and knives bore the all too evident
+remains of former meals, and everywhere were flies. In hundreds they
+swarmed upon the food, while, drowned in the gravy, cooked in the
+potatoes, overwhelmed in the maple syrup, buried in the butter, their
+ghastly carcasses were to be seen. With apparent unconcern the men
+brushed aside the living and picked out and set aside the remains of the
+dead, the unhappy victims of their own greed or temerity, and went on
+calmly and swiftly with their business. Not a word was spoken except
+by Cameron himself, who, constrained by what he considered to be the
+ordinary decencies of society, made an effort to keep up a conversation
+with Mr. Haley at the head of the table and occasionally ventured a
+remark to his wife, who, with Mandy, was acting as a waiter upon the
+hungry men. But conversation is a social exercise, and Cameron found
+himself compelled to abandon his well meant but solitary efforts at
+maintaining the conventions of the breakfast table. There was neither
+time nor occasion for conversation. The business of the hour was
+something quite other, namely, that of devouring as large a portion
+of the food set before them as was possible within the limits of time
+assigned for the meal. Indeed, the element of time seemed to be one of
+very considerable importance, as Cameron discovered, for he was still
+picking his way gingerly and carefully through his pork and potatoes by
+the time that Perkins, having completed a second course consisting of
+pie and maple syrup, had arrived at the final course of bread and butter
+and apple sauce.
+
+“Circulate the butter!” he demanded of the table in general. He took the
+plate from Cameron's hand, looked at it narrowly for a moment, then with
+thumb and forefinger drew from the butter with great deliberation a long
+dun-coloured hair.
+
+“Say!” he said in a low voice, but perfectly audible, “they forgot to
+comb it this morning.”
+
+Cameron was filled with unspeakable disgust, but, glancing at Mrs.
+Haley's face, he saw to his relief that both the action and the remark
+had been unnoticed by her. But on Mandy's face he saw the red ensign of
+shame and wrath, and in spite of himself he felt his aversion towards
+the ever-smiling hired man deepen into rage.
+
+Finding himself distanced in his progress through the various courses at
+breakfast, Cameron determined to miss the intermediate course of pie
+and maple syrup and, that he might finish on more even terms with the
+others, proceeded with bread and butter and apple sauce.
+
+“Don't yeh hurry,” said Mrs. Haley with hearty hospitality. “Eat plenty,
+there's lots to spare. Here, have some apple sauce.” She caught up the
+bowl which held this most delicious article of food.
+
+“Where's the spoon?” she said, glancing round the table. There was none
+immediately available. “Here!” she cried, “this'll do.” She snatched
+a large spoon from the pitcher of thick cream, held it dripping for
+a moment in obvious uncertainty, then with sudden decision she cried
+“Never mind,” and with swift but effective application of lip and tongue
+she cleansed the spoon of the dripping cream, and, stirring the apple
+sauce vigourously, passed the bowl to Cameron. For a single moment
+Cameron held the bowl, uncertain whether to refuse or not, but before he
+could make up his mind Mandy caught it from his hands.
+
+“Oh, Ma!” she exclaimed in a horrified tone.
+
+“What's the matter?” exclaimed her mother. “A little cream won't hurt.”
+
+But Mandy set the bowl at the far end of the table and passed another to
+Cameron, who accepted it with resolute determination and continued his
+breakfast.
+
+But Perkins, followed by Webster and Tim, rose from the table and passed
+out into the yard, whence his voice could be heard in explosions of
+laughter. Cameron in the meantime was making heroic attempts to cover
+up the sound by loud-voiced conversation with Haley, and, rendered
+desperate by the exigencies of the situation, went so far as to venture
+a word of praise to Mrs. Haley upon the excellence and abundance of her
+cooking.
+
+“She ain't got no chance,” said her husband. “She's got too much to do
+and it's awful hard to get help. Of course, there's Mandy.”
+
+“Of course, there's Mandy,” echoed his wife. “I guess you'd just better
+say, 'There's Mandy.' She's the whole thing is Mandy. What I'd do
+without her goodness only knows.”
+
+But Mandy was no longer present to enjoy her mother's enconiums. Her
+voice could be heard in the yard making fierce response to Perkins'
+jesting remarks. As Cameron was passing out from the kitchen he heard
+her bitter declaration: “I don't care, it was real mean of you, and I'll
+pay you for it yet, Mr. Perkins--before a stranger, too.” Mandy's voice
+suggested tears.
+
+“Oh, pshaw, Mandy!” remonstrated Perkins, “it was all a joke, and who
+cares for him anyway, unless it's yourself?”
+
+But Mandy, catching sight of Cameron, fled with fiery face behind the
+kitchen, leaving Perkins gazing after her with an apologetic grin upon
+his countenance.
+
+“She's rather hot under the collar,” he confided to Cameron, “but she
+needn't get so, I didn't mean nothin'.”
+
+Cameron ignored him. He was conscious mainly of a resolute determination
+that at all costs he must not yield to his almost uncontrollable desire
+to wipe off the apologetic smile with a well directed blow. Mr. Denman's
+parting advice was in his mind and he was devoting all his powers to
+the business of adjusting himself to his present environment. But to
+his fastidious nature the experiences of the morning made it somewhat
+doubtful if he should be able to carry out the policy of adjustment
+to the extreme of schooling himself to bear with equal mind the daily
+contact with the dirt and disorder which held so large a place in
+the domestic economy of the Haley household. One thing he was firmly
+resolved upon, he would henceforth perform his toilet in his own room,
+and thereby save himself the horror of the family roller towel and the
+family comb.
+
+Breakfast over, the men stood waiting orders for the day.
+
+“We'll have to crowd them turnips through, Tim,” said his father, who
+seemed to avoid as far as possible giving direct orders to his men.
+“Next week we'll have to git at the hay.” So to the turnip field they
+went.
+
+It is one of the many limitations of a city-bred boy that he knows
+nothing of the life history and the culture of the things that grow upon
+a farm. Apples and potatoes he recognises when they appear as articles
+of diet upon the table; oats and wheat he vaguely associates in some
+mysterious and remote way with porridge and bread, but whether potatoes
+grow on trees or oats in pods he has no certain knowledge. Blessed is
+the country boy for many reasons, but for none more than this, that the
+world of living and growing things, animate and inanimate, is one which
+he has explored and which he intimately knows; and blessed is the city
+boy for whom his wise parents provide means of acquaintance with this
+wonder workshop of old mother Nature, God's own open country.
+
+Turnip-hoeing is an art, a fine art, demanding all the talents of high
+genius, a true eye, a sure hand, a sensitive conscience, industry,
+courage, endurance, and pride in achievement. These and other gifts
+are necessary to high success. Not to every man is it given to become a
+turnip-hoer in the truest sense of that word. The art is achieved only
+after long and patient devotion, and, indeed, many never attain high
+excellence. Of course, therefore, there are grades of artists in this as
+in other departments. There are turnip-hoers and turnip-hoers, just as
+there are painters and painters. It was Tim's ambition to be the first
+turnip-hoer of his district, and toward this end he had striven both
+last season and this with a devotion that deserved, if it did not
+achieve, success. Quietly he had been patterning himself upon that
+master artist, Perkins, who for some years had easily held the
+championship for the district. Keenly Tim had been observing Perkins'
+excellencies and also his defects; secretly he had been developing a
+style of his own, and, all unnoted, he had tested his speed by that of
+Perkins by adopting the method of lazily loafing along and then catching
+up by a few minutes of whirlwind work. Tim felt in his soul the day of
+battle could not be delayed past this season; indeed, it might come any
+day. The very thought of it made his slight body quiver and his heart
+beat so quickly as almost to choke him.
+
+To the turnip field hied Haley's men, Perkins and Webster leading the
+way, Tim and Cameron bringing up the rear.
+
+“You promised to show me how to do it, Tim,” said Cameron. “Remember I
+shall be very slow.”
+
+“Oh, shucks!” replied Tim, “turnip-hoeing is as easy as rollin' off a
+log if yeh know how to do it.”
+
+“Exactly!” cried Cameron, “but that is what I don't. You might give me
+some pointers.”
+
+“Well, you must be able to hit what yeh aim at.”
+
+“Ah! that means a good eye and steady hand,” said Cameron. “Well, I can
+do billiards some and golf. What else?”
+
+“Well, you mustn't be too careful, slash right in and don't give a rip.”
+
+“Ah! nerve, eh!” said Cameron. “Well, I have done some Rugby in my
+day--I know something of that. What else? This sounds good.”
+
+“Then you've got to leave only one turnip in one place and not a weed;
+and you mustn't leave any blanks. Dad gets hot over that.”
+
+“Indeed, one turnip in each place and not a weed,” echoed Cameron. “Say!
+this business grows interesting. No blanks! Anything else?” he demanded.
+
+“No, I guess not, only if yeh ever git into a race ye've got to keep
+goin' after you're clear tuckered out and never let on. You see the
+other chap may be feelin' worse than you.”
+
+“By Jove, Tim! you're a born general!” exclaimed Cameron. “You will
+go some distance if you keep on in that line. Now as to racing let me
+venture a word, for I have done a little in my time. Don't spurt too
+soon.”
+
+“Eh!” said Tim, all eagerness.
+
+“Don't get into your racing stride too early in the day, especially if
+you are up against a stronger man. Wait till you know you can stay till
+the end and then put your best licks in at the finish.”
+
+Tim pondered.
+
+“By Jimminy! you're right,” he cried, a glad light in his eye, and a
+touch of colour in his pale cheek, and Cameron knew he was studying war.
+
+The turnip field, let it be said for the enlightening of the benighted
+and unfortunate city-bred folk, is laid out in a series of drills, a
+drill being a long ridge of earth some six inches in height, some eight
+inches broad on the top and twelve at the base. Upon each drill the seed
+has been sown in one continuous line from end to end of the field. When
+this seed has grown each drill will discover a line of delicate green,
+this line being nothing less than a compact growth of young turnip
+plants with weeds more or less thickly interspersed. The operation of
+hoeing consists in the eliminating of the weeds and the superfluous
+turnip plants in order that single plants, free from weeds, may be left
+some eight inches apart in unbroken line, extending the whole length
+of the drill. The artistic hoer, however, is not content with this.
+His artistic soul demands not only that single plants should stand in
+unbroken row from end to end along the drill top, but that the drill
+itself should be pared down on each side to the likeness of a house roof
+with a perfectly even ridge.
+
+“Ever hoe turnips?” enquired Perkins.
+
+“Never,” said Cameron, “and I am afraid I won't make much of a fist at
+it.”
+
+“Well, you've come to a good place to learn, eh, Tim! We'll show him,
+won't we?”
+
+Tim made no reply, but simply handed Cameron a hoe and picked up his
+own.
+
+“Now, show me, Tim,” said Cameron in a low voice, as Perkins and Webster
+set off on their drills.
+
+“This is how you do it,” replied Tim. “Click-click,” forward and back
+went Tim's sharp shining instrument, leaving a single plant standing
+shyly alone where had boldly bunched a score or more a moment before.
+“Click-click-click,” and the flat-topped drill stood free of weeds
+and superfluous turnip plants and trimmed to its proper roof-like
+appearance.
+
+“I say!” exclaimed Cameron, “this is high art. I shall never reach your
+class, though, Tim.”
+
+“Oh, shucks!” said Tim, “slash in, don't be afraid.” Cameron slashed in.
+“Click-click,” “Click-click-click,” when lo! a long blank space of drill
+looked up reproachfully at him.
+
+“Oh, Tim! look at this mess,” he said in disgust.
+
+“Never mind!” said Tim, “let her rip. Better stick one in though.
+Blanks look bad at the END of the drill.” So saying, he made a hole in
+Cameron's drill and with his hoe dug up a bunch of plants from
+another drill and patted them firmly into place, and, weeding out the
+unnecessary plants, left a single turnip in its proper place.
+
+“Oh, come, that isn't so bad,” said Cameron. “We can always fill up the
+blanks.”
+
+“Yes, but it takes time,” replied Tim, evidently with the racing fever
+in his blood. Patiently Tim schooled his pupil throughout the forenoon,
+and before the dinner hour had come Cameron was making what to Tim
+appeared satisfactory progress. It was greatly in Cameron's favor that
+he possessed a trained and true eye and a steady hand and that he was
+quick in all his movements.
+
+“You're doin' splendid,” cried Tim, full of admiration.
+
+“I say, Scotty!” said Perkins, coming up and casting a critical eye
+along Cameron's last drill, “you're going to make a turnip-hoer all
+right.”
+
+“I've got a good teacher, you see,” cried Cameron.
+
+“You bet you have,” said Perkins. “I taught Tim myself, and in two or
+three years he'll be almost as good as I am, eh, Tim!”
+
+“Huh!” grunted Tim, contemptuously, but let it go at that.
+
+“Perhaps you think you're that now, eh, Tim?” said Perkins, seizing
+the boy by the back of the neck and rubbing his hand over his hair in a
+manner perfectly maddening. “Don't you get too perky, young feller, or
+I'll hang your shirt on the fence before the day's done.”
+
+Tim wriggled out of his grasp and kept silent. He was not yet ready with
+his challenge. All through the afternoon he stayed behind with Cameron,
+allowing the other two to help them out at the end of each drill, but as
+the day wore on there was less and less need of assistance for Cameron,
+for he was making rapid progress with his work and Tim was able to do,
+not only his own drill, but almost half of Cameron's as well. By supper
+time Cameron was thoroughly done out. Never had a day seemed so long,
+never had he known that he possessed so many muscles in his back. The
+continuous stooping and the steady click-click of the hoe, together with
+the unceasing strain of hand and eye, and all this under the hot burning
+rays of a June sun, so exhausted his vitality that when the cow bell
+rang for supper it seemed to him a sound more delightful than the
+strains of a Richter orchestra in a Beethoven symphony.
+
+On the way back to the field after supper Cameron observed that Tim was
+in a state of suppressed excitement and it dawned upon him that the hour
+of his challenge of Perkins' supremacy as a turnip-hoer was at hand.
+
+“I say, Tim, boy!” he said earnestly, “listen to me. You are going to
+get after Perkins this evening, eh?”
+
+“How did you know?” said Tim, in surprise.
+
+“Never mind! Now listen to me; I have raced myself some and I have
+trained men to race. Are you not too tired with your day's work?”
+
+“Tired! Not a bit,” said the gallant little soul scornfully.
+
+“Well, all right. It's nice and cool and you can't hurt yourself much.
+Now, how many drills do you do after supper as a rule?”
+
+“Down and up twice,” said Tim.
+
+“How many drills can you do at your top speed, your very top speed,
+remember?”
+
+“About two drills, I guess,” replied Tim, after a moment's thought.
+
+“Now, listen to me!” said Cameron impressively. “Go quietly for two and
+a half drills, then let yourself out and go your best. And, listen! I
+have been watching you this afternoon. You have easily done once and
+a half what Perkins has done and you are going to lick him out of his
+boots.”
+
+Tim gulped a moment or two, looked at his friend with glistening eyes,
+but said not a word. For the first two and a half drills Cameron exerted
+to the highest degree his conversational powers with the two-fold
+purpose of holding back Perkins and Webster and also of so occupying
+Tim's mind that he might forget for a time the approaching conflict, the
+strain of waiting for which he knew would be exhausting for the lad.
+But when the middle of the second last drill had been reached, Tim began
+unconsciously to quicken his speed.
+
+“I say, Tim,” called Cameron, “come here! Am I getting these spaces too
+wide?” Tim came over to his side. “Now, Tim,” said Cameron, in a low
+voice, “wait a little longer; you can never wear him out. Your only
+chance is in speed. Wait till the last drill.”
+
+But Tim was not to be held back. Back he went to his place and with a
+rush brought his drill up even with Webster, passed him, and in a few
+moments like a whirlwind passed Perkins and took the lead.
+
+“Hello, Timmy! where are you going?” asked Perkins, in surprise.
+
+“Home,” said Tim proudly, “and I'll tell 'em you're comin'.”
+
+“All right, Timmy, my son!” replied Perkins with a laugh, “tell them you
+won't need no hot bath; I'm after you.”
+
+“Click-click,” “Click-click-click” was Tim's only answer. It was a
+distinct challenge, and, while not openly breaking into racing speed,
+Perkins accepted it.
+
+For some minutes Webster quickened his pace in an attempt to follow the
+leaders, but soon gave it up and fell back to help Cameron up with his
+drill, remarking, “I ain't no blamed fool. I ain't going to bust myself
+for any man. THEY'RE racing, not me.”
+
+“Will Tim win?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Naw! Not this year! Why, Perkins is the best man in the whole country
+at turnips. He took the Agricultural Society's prize two years ago.”
+
+“I believe Tim will beat him,” said Cameron confidently, with his eyes
+upon the two in front.
+
+“Beat nothing!” said Webster. “You just wait a bit, Perkins isn't
+letting himself out yet.”
+
+In a short time Tim finished his drill some distance ahead, and then,
+though it was quitting time, without a pause he swung into the next.
+
+“Hello, Timmy!” cried Perkins good-naturedly, “going to work all night,
+eh? Well, I'll just take a whirl out of you,” and for the first time he
+frankly threw himself into his racing gait.
+
+“Good boy, Tim!” called out Cameron, as Tim bore down upon them, still
+in the lead and going like a small steam engine. “You're all right and
+going easy. Don't worry!”
+
+But Perkins, putting on a great spurt, drew up within a hoe-handle
+length of Tim and there held his place.
+
+“All right, Tim, my boy, you can hold him,” cried Cameron, as the racers
+came down upon him.
+
+“He can, eh?” replied Perkins. “I'll show him and you,” and with an
+accession of speed he drew up on a level with Tim.
+
+“Ah, ha! Timmy, my boy! we've got you where we want you, I guess,” he
+exulted, and, with a whoop and still increasing his speed, he drew past
+the boy.
+
+But Cameron, who was narrowly observing the combatants and their work,
+called out again:
+
+“Don't worry, Tim, you're doing nice clean work and doing it easily.”
+ The inference was obvious, and Perkins, who had been slashing wildly and
+leaving many blanks and weeds behind him where neither blanks nor weeds
+should be, steadied down somewhat, and, taking more pains with his work,
+began to lose ground, while Tim, whose work was without flaw, moved
+again to the front place. There remained half a drill to be done and the
+issue was still uncertain. With half the length of a hoe handle between
+them the two clicked along at a furious pace. Tim's hat had fallen off.
+His face showed white and his breath was coming fast, but there was no
+slackening of speed, and the cleanness and ease with which he was doing
+his work showed that there was still some reserve in him. They were
+approaching the last quarter when, with a yell, Perkins threw himself
+again with a wild recklessness into his work, and again he gained upon
+Tim and passed him.
+
+“Steady, Tim!” cried Cameron, who, with Webster, had given up their own
+work, it being, as the latter remarked, “quitting time anyway,” and
+were following up the racers. “Don't spoil your work, Tim!” continued
+Cameron, “don't worry.”
+
+His words caught the boy at a critical moment, for Perkins' yell and
+his fresh exhibition of speed had shaken the lad's nerve. But Cameron's
+voice steadied him, and, quickly responding, Tim settled down again into
+his old style, while Perkins was still in the lead, but slashing wildly.
+
+“Fine work, Tim,” said Cameron quietly, “and you can do better yet.” For
+a few paces he walked behind the boy, steadying him now and then with
+a quiet word, then, recognising that the crisis of the struggle was at
+hand, and believing that the boy had still some reserve of speed and
+strength, he began to call on him.
+
+“Come on, Tim! Quicker, quicker; come on, boy, you can do better!” His
+words, and his tone more than his words, were like a spur to the boy.
+From some secret source of supply he called up an unsuspected reserve
+of strength and speed and, still keeping up his clean cutting finished
+style, foot by foot he drew away from Perkins, who followed in the rear,
+slashing more wildly than ever. The race was practically won. Tim was
+well in the lead, and apparently gaining speed with every click of his
+hoe.
+
+“Here, you fellers, what are yeh hashin' them turnips for?” It was
+Haley's voice, who, unperceived, had come into the field. Tim's reply
+was a letting out of his last ounce of strength in a perfect fury of
+endeavour.
+
+“There--ain't--no--hashin'--on this--drill--Dad!” he panted.
+
+The sudden demand for careful work, however, at once lowered Perkins'
+rate of speed. He fell rapidly behind and, after a few moments of
+further struggle, threw down his hoe with a whoop and called out,
+“Quitting time, I guess,” and, striding after Tim, he caught him by the
+arms and swung him round clear off the ground.
+
+“Here, let me go!” gasped the boy, kicking, squirming, and trying to
+strike his antagonist with his hoe.
+
+“Let the boy go!” said Cameron. The tone in his voice arrested Perkins'
+attention.
+
+“What's your business?” he cried, with an oath, dropping the boy and
+turning fiercely upon Cameron.
+
+“Oh, nothing very much, except that Tim's my candidate in this race and
+he mustn't be interfered with,” replied Cameron in a voice still quiet
+and with a pleasant smile.
+
+Perkins was white and panting; in a moment more he would have hurled
+himself at the man who stood smiling quietly in his face. At this
+critical moment Haley interposed.
+
+“What's the row, boys?” he enquired, recognising that something serious
+was on.
+
+“We have been having a little excitement, Sir, in the form of a race,”
+ replied Cameron, “and I've been backing Tim.”
+
+“Looks as if you've got him wound up so's he can't stop,” replied Haley,
+pointing to the boy, who was still going at racing pace and was just
+finishing his drill. “Oh, well, a boy's a boy and you've got to humour
+him now and then,” continued Haley, making conversation with diplomatic
+skill. Then turning to Perkins, as if dismissing a trivial subject, he
+added, “Looks to me as if that hay in the lower meadow is pretty nigh
+fit to cut. Guess we'd better not wait till next week. You best start
+Tim on that with the mower in the mornin'.” Then, taking a survey of the
+heavens, he added, “Looks as if it might be a spell of good weather.”
+ His diplomacy was successful and the moment of danger was past. Meantime
+Cameron had sauntered to the end of the drill where Tim stood leaning
+quietly on his hoe.
+
+“Tim, you are a turnip-hoer!” he said, with warm admiration in his
+tone, “and what's more, Tim, you're a sport. I'd like to handle you in
+something big. You will make a man yet.”
+
+Tim's whole face flushed a warm red under the coat of freckles. For a
+time he stood silently contemplating the turnips, then with difficulty
+he found his voice.
+
+“It was you done it,” he said, choking over his words. “I was beat there
+and was just quittin' when you came along and spoke. My!” he continued,
+with a sharp intake of his breath, “I was awful near quittin',” and
+then, looking straight into Cameron's eyes, “It was you done it,
+and--I--won't forget.” His voice choked again, but, reading his eyes,
+Cameron knew that he had gained one of life's greatest treasures, a
+boy's adoring gratitude.
+
+“This has been a great day, Tim,” said Cameron. “I have learned to hoe
+turnips, and,” putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, “I believe I have
+made a friend.” Again the hot blood surged into Tim's face. He stood
+voiceless, but he needed no words. Cameron knew well the passionate
+emotion that thrilled his soul and shook the slight body, trembling
+under his hand. For Tim, too, it had been a notable day. He had achieved
+the greatest ambition of his life in beating the best turnip-hoer on the
+line, and he, too, had found what to a boy is a priceless treasure, a
+man upon whom he could lavish the hero worship of his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A RAINY DAY
+
+
+It was haying time. Over the fields of yellowing fall wheat and barley,
+of grey timothy and purple clover, the heat shimmered in dancing waves.
+Everywhere the growing crops were drinking in the light and heat with
+eager thirst, for the call of the harvest was ringing through the land.
+The air was sweet with scents of the hay fields, and the whole country
+side was humming with the sound of the mowers. It was the crowning time
+of the year; toward this season all the life of the farm moved steadily
+the whole year long; the next two months or three would bring to the
+farmer the fruit of long days of toil and waiting. Every minute of these
+harvest days, from the early grey dawn, when Mandy called the cows in
+for the milking, till the long shadows from the orchard lay quite across
+the wide barley field, when Tim, handling his team with careless pride,
+drove in the last load for the day, every minute was packed full of life
+and action. But though busy were the days and full of hard and at times
+back-breaking and nerve-straining work, what of it? The colour, the
+rush, the eager race with the flying hours, the sense of triumph, the
+promise of wealth, the certainty of comfort, all these helped to carry
+off the heaviest toil with a swing and vim that banished aches from the
+body and weariness from the soul.
+
+To Cameron, all unskilled as he was, the days brought many an hour of
+strenuous toil, but every day his muscles were knitting more firmly, his
+hands were hardening, and his mastery of himself growing more complete.
+
+In haying there is no large place for skill. This operation, unlike that
+of turnip-hoeing, demands chiefly strength, quickness, and endurance,
+and especially endurance. To stand all day in the hay field under the
+burning sun with its rays leaping back from the super-heated ground, and
+roll up the windrows into huge bundles and toss them on to the wagon,
+or to run up a long line of cocks and heave them fork-handle high to the
+top of a load, calls for something of skill, but mainly for strength
+of arm and back. But skill had its place, and once more it was Tim who
+stood close to Cameron and showed him all the tricks of pitching hay. It
+was Tim who showed him how to stand with his back to the wagon so as to
+get the load properly poised with the least expenditure of strength; it
+was Tim who taught him the cunning trick of using his thigh as a fulcrum
+in getting his load up, rather than doing it by “main strength and
+awkwardness”; it was Tim who demonstrated the method of lifting half a
+cock by running the end of the fork handle into the ground so that the
+whole earth might aid in the hoisting of the load. Of course in all
+this Cameron's intelligence and quickness stood him in the place of long
+experience, and before the first day's hauling was done he was able to
+keep his wagon going.
+
+But with all the stimulus of the harvest movement and colour, Cameron
+found himself growing weary of the life on the Haley farm. It was not
+the long days, and to none on the farm were the days longer than to
+Cameron, who had taken upon himself the duty of supplying the kitchen
+with wood and water, no small business, either at the beginning or at
+the end of a long day's work; it was not the heavy toil; it was chiefly
+the continuous contact with the dirt and disorder of his environment
+that wore his body down and his spirit raw. No matter with how keen a
+hunger did he approach the dinner table, the disgusting filth everywhere
+apparent would cause his gorge to rise and, followed by the cheerful
+gibes of Perkins, he would retire often with his strength unrecruited
+and his hunger unappeased, and, though he gradually achieved a certain
+skill in picking his way through a meal, selecting such articles of food
+as could be less affected than others by the unsavoury surroundings,
+the want of appetising and nourishing food told disastrously upon his
+strength. His sleep, too, was broken and disturbed by the necessity of
+sharing a bed with Webster. He had never been accustomed to “doubling
+up,” and under the most favourable circumstances the experience would
+not have been conducive to sound sleep, but Webster's manner of life was
+not such as to render him an altogether desirable bed-fellow. For, while
+the majority of farm lads in the neighbourhood made at least semi-weekly
+pilgrimages to the “dam” for a swim, Webster felt no necessity laid upon
+him for such an expenditure of energy after a hard and sweaty day in the
+field. His ideas of hygiene were of the most elementary nature; hence
+it was his nightly custom, when released from the toils of the day,
+to proceed upstairs to his room and, slipping his braces from his
+shoulders, allow his nether garments to drop to the floor and, without
+further preparation, roll into bed. Of the effeminacy of a night robe
+Webster knew nothing except by somewhat hazy rumour. Once under the
+patchwork quilt he was safe for the night, for, heaving himself into the
+middle of the bed, he sank into solid and stertorous slumber, from which
+all Cameron's prods and kicks failed to arouse him till the grey dawn
+once more summoned him to life, whereupon, resuming the aforesaid
+nether garments, he was once more simply, but in his opinion quite
+sufficiently, equipped for his place among men. Many nights did it
+happen that the stertorous melody of Webster's all too odourous slumbers
+drove Cameron to find a bed upon the floor. Once again Tim was his
+friend, for it was to Tim that Cameron owed the blissful experience of a
+night in the hay loft upon the newly harvested hay. There, buried in
+its fragrant depths and drawing deep breaths of the clean unbreathed air
+that swept in through the great open barn doors, Cameron experienced
+a joy hitherto undreamed of in association with the very commonplace
+exercise of sleep. After his first night in the hay mow, which he shared
+with Tim, he awoke refreshed in body and with a new courage in his
+heart.
+
+“By Jove, Tim! That's the finest thing I ever had in the way of sleep.
+Now if we only had a tub.”
+
+“Tub! What for?”
+
+“A dip, my boy, a splash.”
+
+“To wash in?” enquired Tim, wondering at the exuberance of his friend's
+desires. “I'll get a tub,” he added, and, running to the house, returned
+with wash tub and towel.
+
+“Tim, my boy, you're a jewel!” exclaimed Cameron.
+
+From the stable cistern they filled the vessel full and first Cameron
+and, after persuasion and with rather dubious delight, Tim tasted the
+joy of a morning tub. Henceforth life became distinctly more endurable
+to Cameron.
+
+But, more than all the other irritating elements in his environment
+put together, Cameron chafed under the unceasing rasp of Perkins' wit,
+clever, if somewhat crude and cumbrous. Perkins had never forgotten nor
+forgiven his defeat at the turnip-hoeing, which he attributed chiefly to
+Cameron. His gibes at Cameron's awkwardness in the various operations
+on the farm, his readiness to seize every opportunity for ridicule, his
+skill at creating awkward situations, all these sensibly increased the
+wear on Cameron's spirit. All these, however, Cameron felt he could put
+up with without endangering his self-control, but when Perkins, with
+vulgar innuendo, chaffed the farmer's daughter upon her infatuation
+for the “young Scotty,” as he invariably designated Cameron, or when
+he rallied Cameron upon his supposed triumph in the matter of Mandy's
+youthful affections, then Cameron raged and with difficulty kept his
+hands from his cheerful and ever smiling tormentor. It did not
+help matters much that apparently Mandy took no offense at Perkins'
+insinuations; indeed, it gradually dawned upon Cameron that what to him
+would seem a vulgar impertinence might to this uncultured girl appear no
+more than a harmless pleasantry. At all costs he was resolved that under
+no circumstances would he allow his self-control to be broken through.
+He would finish out his term with the farmer without any violent
+outbreak. It was quite possible that Perkins and others would take him
+for a chicken-hearted fool, but all the same he would maintain this
+attitude of resolute self-control to the very end. After all, what
+mattered the silly gibes of an ignorant boor? And when his term was done
+he would abandon the farm life forever. It took but little calculation
+to make quite clear that there was not much to hope for in the way
+of advancement from farming in this part of Canada. Even Perkins, who
+received the very highest wage in that neighbourhood, made no more than
+$300 a year; and, with land at sixty to seventy-five dollars per acre,
+it seemed to him that he would be an old man before he could become the
+owner of a farm. He was heart sick of the pettiness and sordidness of
+the farm life, whose horizon seemed to be that of the hundred acres or
+so that comprised it. Therefore he resolved that to the great West he
+would go, that great wonderful West with its vast spaces and its vast
+possibilities of achievement. The rumour of it filled the country side.
+Meantime for two months longer he would endure.
+
+A rainy day brought relief. Oh, the blessed Sabbath of a rainy day, when
+the wheels stop and silence falls in the fields; and time tired harvest
+hands recline at ease upon the new cut and sweet smelling hay on the
+barn floor, and through the wide open doors look out upon the falling
+rain that roars upon the shingles, pours down in cataracts from the
+eaves and washes clean the air that wanders in, laden with those subtle
+scents that old mother earth releases only when the rain falls. Oh,
+happy rainy days in harvest time when, undisturbed by conscience, the
+weary toilers stretch and slumber and wake to lark and chaff in careless
+ease the long hours through!
+
+In the Haleys' barn they were all gathered, gazing lazily and with
+undisturbed content at the steady downpour that indicated an all-day
+rest. Even Haley, upon whose crops the rain was teeming down, was
+enjoying the rest from the toil, for most of the hay that had been cut
+was already in cock or in the barn. Besides, Haley worked as hard as the
+best of them and welcomed a day's rest. So let it rain!
+
+While they lay upon the hay on the barn floor, with tired muscles
+all relaxed, drinking in the fragrant airs that stole in from the
+rain-washed skies outside, in the slackening of the rain two neighbours
+dropped in, big “Mack” Murray and his brother Danny, for a “crack” about
+things in general and especially to discuss the Dominion Day picnic
+which was coming off at the end of the following week. This picnic
+was to be something out of the ordinary, for, in addition to the usual
+feasting and frolicking, there was advertised an athletic contest of
+a superior order, the prizes in which were sufficiently attractive
+to draw, not only local athletes, but even some of the best from the
+neighbouring city. A crack runner was expected and perhaps even McGee,
+the big policeman of the London City force, a hammer thrower of fame,
+might be present.
+
+“Let him come, eh, Mack?” said Perkins. “I guess we ain't afraid of no
+city bug beating you with the hammer.”
+
+“Oh! I'm no thrower,” said Mack modestly. “I just take the thing up and
+give it a fling. I haven't got the trick of it at all.”
+
+“Have you practised much?” said Cameron, whose heart warmed at the
+accent that might have been transplanted that very day from his own
+North country.
+
+“Never at all, except now and then at the blacksmith's shop on a rainy
+day,” replied Mack. “Have you done anything at it?”
+
+“Oh, I have seen a good deal of it at the games in the north of
+Scotland,” replied Cameron.
+
+“Man! I wish we had a hammer and you could show me the trick of it,”
+ said Mack fervently, “for they will be looking to me to throw and I do
+not wish to be beaten just too easily.”
+
+“There's a big mason's hammer,” said Tim, “in the tool house, I think.”
+
+“Get it, Tim, then,” said Mack eagerly, “and we will have a little
+practise at it, for throw I must, and I have no wish to bring discredit
+on my country, for it will be a big day. They will be coming from all
+over. The Band of the Seventh is coming out and Piper Sutherland from
+Zorra will be there.”
+
+“A piper!” echoed Cameron. “Is there much pipe playing in this country?”
+
+“Indeed, you may say that!” said Mack, “and good pipers they are too,
+they tell me. Piper Sutherland, I think, was of the old Forty-twa. Are
+you a piper, perhaps?” continued Mack.
+
+“Oh, I play a little,” said Cameron. “I have a set in the house.”
+
+“God bless my soul!” cried Mack, “and we never knew it. Tell Danny where
+they are and he will fetch them out. Go, Danny!”
+
+“Never mind, I will get them myself,” said Cameron, trying to conceal
+his eagerness, for he had long been itching for a chance to play and his
+fingers were now tingling for the chanter.
+
+It was an occasion of great delight, not only to big Mack and his
+brother Danny and the others, but to Cameron himself. Up and down the
+floor he marched, making the rafters of the big barn ring with the
+ancient martial airs of Scotland and then, dropping into a lighter
+strain, he set their feet a-rapping with reels and strathspeys.
+
+“Man, yon's great playing!” cried Mack with fervent enthusiasm to the
+company who had gathered to the summons of the pipes from the house and
+from the high road, “and think of him keeping them in his chest all this
+time! And what else can you do?” went on Mack, with the enthusiasm of a
+discoverer. “You have been in the big games, too, I warrant you.”
+
+Cameron confessed to some experience of these thrilling events.
+
+“Bless my soul! We will put you against the big folk from the city. Come
+and show us the hammer,” said Mack, leading the way out of the barn, for
+the rain had ceased, with a big mason's hammer in his hand. It needed
+but a single throw to make it quite clear to Cameron that Mack was
+greatly in need of coaching. As he said himself he “just took up the
+thing and gave it a fling.” A mighty fling, too, it proved to be.
+
+“Twenty-eight paces!” cried Cameron, and then, to make sure, stepped
+it back again. “Yes,” he said, “twenty-eight paces, nearly twenty-nine.
+Great Caesar! Mack, if you only had the Braemar swing you would be a
+famous thrower.”
+
+“Och, now, you are just joking me!” said Mack modestly.
+
+“You can add twenty feet easily to your throw if you get the swing,”
+ asserted Cameron. “Look here, now, get this swing,” and Cameron
+demonstrated in his best style the famous Braemar swing.
+
+“Thirty-two paces!” said Mack in amazement after he had measured the
+throw. “Man alive! you can beat McGee, let alone myself.”
+
+“Now, Mack, get the throw,” said Cameron, with enthusiasm. “You will be
+a great thrower.” But try though he might Mack failed to get the swing.
+
+“Man, come over to-night and bring your pipes. Danny will fetch out his
+fiddle and we will have a bit of a frolic, and,” he added, as if in an
+afterthought, “I have a big hammer yonder, the regulation size. We might
+have a throw or so.”
+
+“Thanks, I will be sure to come,” said Cameron eagerly.
+
+“Come, all of you,” said Mack, “and you too, Mandy. We will clear out
+the barn floor and have a regular hoe-down.”
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” giggled Mandy, tossing her head. “I can't dance.”
+
+“Oh, come along and watch me, then,” said Mack, in good humour, who,
+with all his two hundred pounds, was lightfooted as a girl.
+
+The Murrays' new big bank barn was considered the finest in the country
+and the new floor was still quite smooth and eminently suited to a
+“hoe-down.” Before the darkness had fallen, however, Mack drew Cameron,
+with Danny, Perkins, and a few of the neighbours who had dropped in, out
+to the lane and, giving him a big hammer, “Try that,” he said, with some
+doubt in his tone.
+
+Cameron took the hammer.
+
+“This is the right thing. The weight of it will make more difference to
+me, however, than to you, Mack.”
+
+“Oh, I'm not so sure,” said Mack. “Show us how you do it.”
+
+The first throw Cameron took easily.
+
+“Twenty-nine paces!” cried Mack, after stepping it off. “Man! that's a
+great throw, and you do it easy.”
+
+“Not much of a throw,” laughed Cameron. “Try it yourself.”
+
+Ignoring the swing, Mack tried the throw in his own style and hurled the
+hammer two paces beyond Cameron's throw.
+
+“You did that with your arms only,” said Cameron. “Now you must put legs
+and shoulders into it.”
+
+“Let's see you beat that throw yourself,” laughed Perkins, who was by no
+means pleased with the sudden distinction that had come to the “Scotty.”
+
+Cameron took the hammer and, with the easy slow grace of the Braemar
+swing, made his throw.
+
+“Hooray!” yelled Danny, who was doing the measuring. “You got it yon
+time for sure. Three paces to the good. You'll have to put your back
+into it, Mack, I guess.”
+
+Once more Mack seized the hammer. Then Cameron took Mack in hand and,
+over and over again, coached him in the poise and swing.
+
+“Now try it, and think of your legs and back. Let the hammer take care
+of itself. Now, nice and easy and slow, not far this time.”
+
+Again and again Mack practised the swing.
+
+“You're getting it!” cried Cameron enthusiastically, “but you are trying
+too hard. Forget the distance this time and think only of the easy slow
+swing. Let your muscles go slack.” So he coached his pupil.
+
+At length, after many attempts, Mack succeeded in delivering his hammer
+according to instructions.
+
+“Man! you are right!” he exclaimed. “That's the trick of it and it is as
+smooth as oil.”
+
+“Keep it up, Mack,” said Cameron, “and always easy.”
+
+Over and over again he put the big man through the swing till he began
+to catch the notion of the rhythmic, harmonious cooperation of the
+various muscles in legs and shoulders and arms so necessary to the
+highest result.
+
+“You've got the swing, Mack,” at length said Cameron. “Now then, this
+time let yourself go. Don't try your best, but let yourself out. Easy,
+now, easy. Get it first in your mind.”
+
+For a moment Mack stood pondering. He was “getting it in his mind.”
+ Then, with a long swing, easy and slow, he gave the great hammer a
+mighty heave. With a shout the company crowded about.
+
+“Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven!
+Hooray! bully for you, Mack. You are the lad!”
+
+“Get the line on it,” said Mack quietly. The measuring line showed
+one hundred and eleven and a half feet. The boys crowded round him,
+exclaiming, cheering, patting him on the back. Mack received the
+congratulations in silence, then, turning to Cameron, said very
+earnestly:
+
+“Man! yon's as easy as eating butter. You have done me a good turn
+to-day.”
+
+“Oh, that's nothing, Mack,” said Cameron, who was more pleased than any
+of them. “You got the swing perfectly that time. You can put twenty
+feet to that throw. One hundred and eleven feet! Why, I can beat that
+myself.”
+
+“Man alive! Do you tell me now!” said Mack in amazement, running his
+eyes over Cameron's lean muscular body.
+
+“I have done it often when I was in shape.”
+
+“Oh, rats!” said Perkins with a laugh. “Where was that?”
+
+Cameron flushed a deep red, then turned pale, but kept silent.
+
+“I believe you, my boy,” said Mack with emphasis and facing sharply upon
+Perkins, “and if ever I do a big throw I will owe it to you.”
+
+“Oh, come off!” said Perkins, again laughing scornfully. “There are
+others that know the swing besides Scotty here. What you have got you
+owe to no one but yourself, Mack.”
+
+“If I beat the man McGee next week,” said Mack quietly, “it will be from
+what I learned to-night, and I know what I am saying. Man! it's a lucky
+thing we found you. But that will do for just now. Come along to the
+barn. Hooray for the pipes and the lassies! They are worth all the
+hammers in the world!” And, putting his arm through Cameron's, he led
+the way to the barn, followed by the others.
+
+“If Scotty could only hoe turnips and tie wheat as well as he can play
+the pipes and throw the hammer,” said Perkins to the others as they
+followed in the rear, “I guess he'd soon have us all leaning against the
+fence to dry.”
+
+“He will, too, some day,” said Tim, whose indignation at Perkins
+overcame the shyness which usually kept him silent in the presence of
+older men.
+
+“Hello, Timmy! What are you chipping in for?” said Perkins, reaching for
+the boy's coat collar. “He thinks this Scotty is the whole works, and he
+is great too--at showing people how to do things.”
+
+“I hear he showed Tim how to hoe turnips,” said one of the boys slyly.
+The laugh that followed showed that the story of Tim's triumph over the
+champion had gone abroad.
+
+“Oh, rot!” said Perkins angrily. “Tim's got a little too perky because I
+let him get ahead of me one night in a drill of turnips.”
+
+“Yeh done yer best, didn't he, Webster?” cried Tim with indignation.
+
+“Well, he certainly was making some pretty big gashes in them drills,”
+ said Webster slowly.
+
+“Oh, get out!” replied Perkins. “Though all the same Tim's quite a
+turnip-hoer,” he conceded. “Hello! There's quite a crowd in the barn,
+Danny. I wish I had my store clothes on.”
+
+At this a girl came running to meet them.
+
+“Come on, Danny! Tune up. I can hardly keep my heels on my boots.”
+
+“Oh, you'll not be wanting my little fiddle after you have heard Cameron
+on the pipes, Isa.”
+
+“Never you fear that, Danny,” replied Isa, catching him by the arm and
+hurrying him onward.
+
+“Wait a minute. I want you to meet Mr. Cameron,” said Danny.
+
+“Come away, then,” replied Isa. “I am dying to get done with it and get
+the fiddle going.”
+
+But Cameron was in the meantime engaged, for Mack was busy introducing
+him to a bevy of girls who stood at one corner of the barn floor.
+
+“My! but he's a braw lad!” said Isa gayly, as she watched Cameron making
+his bows.
+
+“Yes, he is that,” replied Danny with enthusiastic admiration, “and a
+hammer-thrower, too, he is.”
+
+“What! yon stripling?”
+
+“You may say it. He can beat Mack there.”
+
+“Mack!” cried Isa, with scorn. “It's just big lies you are telling me.”
+
+“Indeed, he has beaten Mack's best throw many a time.”
+
+“And how do you know?” exclaimed Isa.
+
+“He said so himself.”
+
+“Ah ha!” said Isa scornfully. “He is good at blowing his own horn
+whatever, and I don't believe he can beat Mack--and I don't like him a
+bit,” she continued, her dark eyes flashing and the red colour glowing
+in her full round cheek.
+
+“Come, Isa!” cried Mack, catching sight of her in the dim light. “Come
+here, I want Mr. Cameron to meet you.”
+
+“How do you do?” said the girl, giving Cameron her hand and glancing
+saucily into his face. “I hear you are a piper and a hammer-thrower and
+altogether a wonderful man.”
+
+“A wonderfully lucky man, to have the pleasure of meeting you,” said
+Cameron, glancing boldly back at her.
+
+“And I am sure you can dance the fling,” continued Isa. “All the
+Highlanders do.”
+
+“Not all,” said Cameron. “But with certain partners all Highlanders
+would love to try.”
+
+“Oh aye,” with a soft Highland accent that warmed Cameron's blood. “I
+see you have the tongue. Come away, Danny, now, strike up, or I will go
+on without you.” And the girl kilted her skirts and began a reel, and
+as Mack's eyes followed her every step there was no mistaking their
+expression. To Mack there was only one girl in the barn, or in all the
+world for that matter, and that was the leal-hearted, light-footed,
+black-eyed Isa MacKenzie. Bonnie she was, and that she well knew, the
+belle of the whole township, driving the men to distraction and for all
+that holding the love of her own sex as well. But her heart was still
+her own, or at least she thought it was, for all big Mack Murray's open
+and simple-hearted adoration, and she was ready for a frolic with any
+man who could give her word for word or dance with her the Highland
+reel.
+
+With the courtesy of a true gentleman, Danny led off with his fiddle
+till they had all got thoroughly into the spirit and swing of the
+frolic, and then, putting his instrument back into its bag, he declared
+that they were all tired of it and were waiting for the pipes.
+
+“Not a bit of it!” cried Isa. “But we will give you a rest, Danny, and
+besides I want to dance a reel with you myself--though Mr. Cameron is
+not bad,” she added, with a little bow to Cameron, with whom she had
+just finished a reel.
+
+Readily enough Cameron tuned his pipes, for he was aching to get at them
+and only too glad to furnish music for the gay company of kindly hearted
+folk who were giving him his first evening's pleasure since he had left
+the Cuagh Oir.
+
+From reel to schottische and from schottische to reel, foursome and
+eightsome, they kept him playing, ever asking for more, till the
+gloaming passed into moonlight and still they were not done. The respite
+came through Mandy, who, solid in weight and heavy of foot, had laboured
+through the reels as often as she could get a partner, and at other
+times had sat gazing in rapt devotion upon the piper.
+
+“Whoop her up again, Scotty!” cried Perkins, when Cameron paused at the
+end of a reel.
+
+“Don't you do it!” said Mandy sharply, her deep voice booming through
+the barn. “He's just tired of it, and I'm tired looking at him.”
+
+There was a shout of laughter which covered poor Mandy with wrathful
+confusion.
+
+“Good for you, Mandy,” cried Perkins with a great guffaw. “You want some
+music now, don't you? So do I. Come on, Danny.”
+
+“No, I don't,” snapped Mandy, who could understand neither the previous
+laugh nor that which greeted Perkins' sally.
+
+“Allan,” she said, sticking a little over the name, “is tired out, and
+besides it's time we were going home.”
+
+“That's right, take him home, Mandy, and put the little dear to bed,”
+ said Perkins.
+
+“You needn't be so smart, Joe Perkins,” said Mandy angrily. “Anyway I'm
+going home. I've got to be up early.”
+
+“Me too, Mandy,” said Cameron, packing up his pipes, for his sympathy
+had been roused for the girl who was championing him so bravely. “I
+have had a great night and I have played you all to death; but you will
+forgive me. I was lonely for the chanter. I have not touched it since I
+left home.”
+
+There was a universal cry of protest as they gathered about him.
+
+“Indeed, Mr. Cameron, you have given us all a rare treat,” cried Isa,
+coming close to him, “and I only wish you could pipe and dance at the
+same time.”
+
+“That's so!” cried Mack, “but what's the matter with the fiddle, Isa?
+Come, Danny, strike up. Let them have a reel together.”
+
+Cameron glanced at Mandy, who was standing impatiently waiting. Perkins
+caught the glance.
+
+“Oh, please let him stay, Mandy,” he pleaded.
+
+“He can stay if he likes,” sniffed Mandy scornfully. “I got no string on
+him; but I'm goin' home. Good-night, everybody.”
+
+“Good-night, Mandy,” called Perkins. “Tell them we're comin'.”
+
+“Just a moment, Mandy!” said Cameron, “and I'm with you. Another time
+I hope to do a reel with you, Miss MacKenzie,” he said, bidding her
+good-night, “and I hope it will be soon.”
+
+“Remember, then,” cried Isa, warmly shaking hands with him. “I will keep
+you to your promise at the picnic.”
+
+“Fine!” said Cameron, and with easy grace he made his farewells and set
+off after Mandy, who by this time was some distance down the lane.
+
+“You needn't come for me,” she said, throwing her voice at him over her
+shoulder.
+
+“What a splendid night we have had!” said Cameron, ignoring her wrath.
+“And what awfully nice people.”
+
+Mandy grunted and in silence continued her way down the lane, picking
+her steps between the muddy spots and pools left by the rain.
+
+After some minutes Cameron, who was truly sorry for the girl, ventured
+to resume the conversation.
+
+“Didn't you enjoy the evening, Mandy?”
+
+“No, I didn't!” she replied shortly. “I can't dance and they all know
+it.”
+
+“Why don't you learn, Mandy? You could dance if you practised.”
+
+“I can't. I ain't like the other girls. I'm too clumsy.”
+
+“Not a bit of it,” said Cameron. “I've watched you stepping about the
+house and you are not a bit clumsy. If you only practised a bit you
+would soon pick up the schottische.”
+
+“Oh, you're just saying that because you know I'm mad,” said Mandy,
+slightly mollified.
+
+“Not at all. I firmly believe it. I saw you try a schottische to-night
+with Perkins and--”
+
+“Oh, shucks!” said Mandy. “He don't give me no show. He gets mad when I
+tramp on him.”
+
+“All you want is practise, Mandy,” replied Cameron.
+
+“Oh, I ain't got no one to show me,” said Mandy. “Perkins he won't be
+bothered, and--and--there's no one else,” she added shyly.
+
+“Why, I--I would show you,” replied Cameron, every instinct of
+chivalry demanding that he should play up to her lead, “if I had any
+opportunity.”
+
+“When?” said Mandy simply.
+
+“When?” echoed Cameron, taken aback. “Why, the first chance we get.”
+
+As he spoke the word they reached the new bridge that crossed the deep
+ditch that separated the lane from the high road.
+
+“Here's a good place right here on this bridge,” said Mandy with a
+giggle.
+
+“But we have no music,” stammered Cameron, aghast at the prospect of a
+dancing lesson by moonlight upon the public highway.
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” said Mandy. “We don't need music. You can just count. I
+seen Isa showin' Mack once and they didn't have no music. But,” she
+added, regarding Cameron with suspicion, “if you don't want to--”
+
+“Oh, I shall be glad to, but wouldn't the porch be better?” he replied
+in desperation.
+
+“The porch! That's so,” assented Mandy eagerly. “Let's hurry before the
+rest come home.” So saying, she set off at a great pace, followed
+by Cameron ruefully wondering to what extent the lesson in the
+Terpsichorean art might be expected to go.
+
+As soon as the porch was reached Mandy cried--
+
+“Now let's at the thing. I'm going to learn that schottische if it costs
+a leg.”
+
+Without stopping to enquire whose leg might be in peril, Cameron
+proceeded with his lesson, and he had not gone through many paces till
+he began to recognise the magnitude of the task laid upon him. The
+girl's sense of time was accurate enough, but she was undeniably awkward
+and clumsy in her movements and there was an almost total absence of
+coordination of muscle and brain. She had, however, suffered too long
+and too keenly from her inability to join with the others in the dance
+to fail to make the best of her opportunity to relieve herself of this
+serious disability.
+
+So, with fierce industry she poised, counted and hopped, according to
+Cameron's instructions and example, with never a sign of weariness, but
+alas with little indication of progress.
+
+“Oh, shucks! I can't do it!” she cried at length, pausing in despair. “I
+think we could do it better together. That's the way Mack and Isa do it.
+I've seen them at it for an hour.”
+
+Cameron's heart sank within him. He had caught an exchange of glances
+between the two young people mentioned and he could quite understand how
+a lesson in the intricacies of the Highland schottische might very well
+be extended over an hour to their mutual satisfaction, but he shrank
+with a feeling of dismay, if not disgust, from a like experience with
+the girl before him.
+
+He was on the point of abruptly postponing the lesson when his eye fell
+upon her face as she stood in the moonlight which streamed in through
+the open door. Was it the mystic alchemy of the moon on her face, or
+was it the glowing passion in her wonderful eyes that transfigured the
+coarse features? A sudden pity for the girl rose in Cameron's heart and
+he said gently, “We will try it together, Mandy.”
+
+He took her hand, put his arm about her waist, but, as he drew her
+towards him, with a startled look in her eyes she shrank back saying
+hurriedly:
+
+“I guess I won't bother you any more to-night. You've been awfully good
+to me. You're tired.”
+
+“Not a bit, Mandy, come along,” replied Cameron briskly.
+
+At that moment a shadow fell upon the square of moonlight on the floor.
+Mandy started back with a cry.
+
+“My! you scairt me. We were--Allan--Mr. Cameron was learnin' me the
+Highland schottische.” Her face and her voice were full of fear.
+
+It was Perkins. White, silent, and rigid, he stood regarding them, for
+minutes, it seemed, then turned away.
+
+“Let's finish,” said Cameron quietly.
+
+“Oh! no, no!” said Mandy in a low voice. “He's awful mad! I'm scairt to
+death! He'll do something! Oh! dear, dear! He's awful when he gets mad.”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Cameron. “He can't hurt you.”
+
+“No, but you!”
+
+“Oh, don't worry about me. He won't hurt me.”
+
+Cameron's tone arrested the girl's attention.
+
+“But promise me--promise me!” she cried, “that you won't touch him.” She
+clutched his arm in a fierce grip.
+
+“Certainly I won't touch him,” said Cameron easily, “if he behaves
+himself.” But in his heart he was conscious of a fierce desire that
+Perkins would give him the opportunity to wipe out a part at least of
+the accumulated burden of insult he had been forced to bear during the
+last three weeks.
+
+“Oh!” wailed Mandy, wringing her hands. “I know you're going to fight
+him. I don't want you to! Do you hear me?” she cried, suddenly gripping
+Cameron again by the arm and shaking him. “I don't want you to! Promise
+me you won't!” She was in a transport of fear.
+
+“Oh, this is nonsense, Mandy,” said Cameron, laughing at her. “There
+won't be any fight. I'll run away.”
+
+“All right,” replied the girl quietly, releasing his arm. “Remember you
+promised.” She turned from him.
+
+“Good night, Mandy. We will finish our lesson another time, eh?” he said
+cheerfully.
+
+“Good night,” replied Mandy, dully, and passed through the kitchen and
+into the house.
+
+Cameron watched her go, then poured for himself a glass of milk from a
+pitcher that always stood upon the table for any who might be returning
+home late at night, and drank it slowly, pondering the situation the
+while.
+
+“What a confounded mess it is!” he said to himself. “I feel like cutting
+the whole thing. By Jove! That girl is getting on my nerves! And that
+infernal bounder! She seems to--Poor girl! I wonder if he has got any
+hold on her. It would be the greatest satisfaction in the world to teach
+HIM a few things too. But I have made up my mind that I am not going to
+end up my time here with any row, and I'll stick to that; unless--” and,
+with a tingling in his fingers, he passed out into the moonlight.
+
+As he stepped out from the door a dark mass hurled itself at him, a hand
+clutched at his throat, missed as he swiftly dodged back, and carried
+away his collar. It was Perkins, his face distorted, his white teeth
+showing in a snarl as of a furious beast. Again with a beast-like growl
+he sprang, and again Cameron avoided him; while Perkins, missing his
+clutch, stumbled over a block of wood and went crashing head first among
+a pile of pots and pans and, still unable to recover himself and wildly
+grasping whatever chanced to be within reach, fell upon the board that
+stood against the corner of the porch to direct the rain into the tub;
+but the unstable board slid slowly down and allowed the unfortunate
+Perkins to come sitting in the tub full of water.
+
+“Very neatly done, Perkins!” cried Cameron, whose anger at the furious
+attack was suddenly transformed into an ecstasy of delight at seeing the
+plight of his enemy.
+
+Like a cat Perkins was on his feet and, without a single moment's pause,
+came on again in silent fury. By an evil chance there lay in his path
+the splitting axe, gleaming in the moonlight. Uttering a low choking
+cry, as of joy, he seized the axe and sprang towards his foe. Quicker
+than thought Cameron picked up a heavy arm chair that stood near the
+porch to use it as a shield against the impending attack.
+
+“Are you mad, Perkins?” he cried, catching the terrific blow that came
+crashing down, upon the chair.
+
+Then, filled with indignant rage at the murderous attack upon him, and
+suddenly comprehending the desperate nature of the situation, he sprang
+at his antagonist, thrusting the remnants of the chair in his face and,
+following hard and fast upon him, pushed him backward and still backward
+till, tripping once more, he fell supine among the pots and pans.
+Seizing the axe that had dropped from his enemy's hand, Cameron hurled
+it far beyond the wood pile and then stood waiting, a cold and deadly
+rage possessing him.
+
+“Come on, you dog!” he said through his shut teeth. “You have been
+needing this for some time and now you'll get it.”
+
+“What is it, Joe?”
+
+Cameron quickly turned and saw behind him Mandy, her face blanched, her
+eyes wide, and her voice faint with terror.
+
+“Oh, nothing much,” said Cameron, struggling to recover himself.
+“Perkins stumbled over the tub among the pots and pans there. He made
+a great row, too,” he continued with a laugh, striving to get his voice
+under control.
+
+“What is it, Joe?” repeated Mandy, approaching Perkins. But Perkins
+stood leaning against the corner of the porch in a kind of dazed
+silence.
+
+“You've been fighting,” she said, turning upon Cameron.
+
+“Not at all,” said Cameron lightly, “but, if you must know, Perkins went
+stumbling among these pots and pans and finally sat down in the tub; and
+naturally he is mad.”
+
+“Is that true, Joe?” said Mandy, moving slowly nearer him.
+
+“Oh, shut up, Mandy! I'm all wet, that's all, and I'm going to bed.”
+
+His voice was faint as though he were speaking with an effort.
+
+“You go into the house,” he said to the girl. “I've got something to say
+to Cameron here.”
+
+“You are quarreling.”
+
+“Oh, give us a rest, Mandy, and get out! No, there's no quarreling, but
+I want to have a talk with Cameron about something. Go on, now!”
+
+For a few moments she hesitated, looking from one to the other.
+
+“It's all right, Mandy,” said Cameron quietly. “You needn't be afraid,
+there won't be any trouble.”
+
+For a moment more she stood, then quietly turned away.
+
+“Wait!” said Perkins to Cameron, and followed Mandy into the house. For
+some minutes Cameron stood waiting.
+
+“Now, you murderous brute!” he said, when Perkins reappeared. “Come down
+to the barn where no girl can interfere.” He turned towards the barn.
+
+“Hold on!” said Perkins, breathing heavily. “Not to-night. I want to say
+something. She's waiting to see me go upstairs.”
+
+Cameron came back.
+
+“What have you got to say, you cur?” he asked in a voice filled with a
+cold and deliberate contempt.
+
+“Don't you call no names,” replied Perkins. “It ain't no use.” His voice
+was low, trembling, but gravely earnest. “Say, I might have killed you
+to-night.” His breath was still coming in quick short gasps.
+
+“You tried your best, you dog!” said Cameron.
+
+“Don't you call no names,” panted Perkins again. “I might--a--killed
+yeh. I'm mighty--glad--I didn't.” He spoke like a man who had had a
+great deliverance. “But don't yeh,” here his teeth snapped like a dog's,
+“don't yeh ever go foolin' with that girl again. Don't yeh--ever--do
+it. I seen yeh huggin' her in there and I tell yeh--I tell yeh--,” his
+breath began to come in sobs, “I won't stand it--I'll kill yeh, sure as
+God's in heaven.”
+
+“Are you mad?” said Cameron, scanning narrowly the white distorted face.
+
+“Mad? Yes, I guess so--I dunno--but don't yeh do it, that's all. She's
+mine! Mine! D'yeh hear?”
+
+He stepped forward and thrust his snarling face into Cameron's.
+
+“No, I ain't goin' to touch yeh,” as Cameron stepped back into a posture
+of defense, “not to-night. Some day, perhaps.” Here again his teeth came
+together with a snap. “But I'm not going to have you or any other
+man cutting in on me with that girl. D'yeh hear me?” and he lifted a
+trembling forefinger and thrust it almost into Cameron's face.
+
+Cameron stood regarding him in silent and contemptuous amazement.
+Neither of them saw a dark form standing back out of the moonlight,
+inside the door. At last Cameron spoke.
+
+“Now what the deuce does all this mean?” he said slowly. “Is this girl
+by any unhappy chance engaged to you?”
+
+“Yes, she is--or was as good as, till you came; but you listen to me. As
+God hears me up there”--he raised his shaking hand and pointed up to
+the moonlit sky, and then went on, chewing on his words like a dog on
+a bone--“I'll cut the heart out of your body if I catch you monkeying
+round that girl again. You've got to get out of here! Everything was all
+right till you came sneaking in. You've got to get out! You've got to
+get out! D'yeh hear me? You've got to get out!”
+
+His voice was rising, mad rage was seizing him again, his fingers were
+opening and shutting like a man in a death agony.
+
+Cameron glanced towards the door.
+
+“I'm done,” said Perkins, noting the glance. “That's my last word. You'd
+better quit this job.” His voice again took on an imploring tone. “You'd
+better go or something will sure happen to you. Nobody will miss you
+much, except perhaps Mandy.” His ghastly face twisted into a snarling
+smile, his eyes appeared glazed in the moonlight, his voice was
+husky--the man seemed truly insane.
+
+Cameron stood observing him quietly when he had ceased speaking.
+
+“Are you finished? Then hear me. First, in regard to this girl, she
+doesn't want me and I don't want her, but make up your mind, I promise
+you to do all I can to prevent her falling into the hands of a brute
+like you. Then as to leaving this place, I shall go just when it suits
+me, no sooner.”
+
+“All right,” said Perkins, his voice low and trembling. “All right, mind
+I warned you! Mind I warned you! But if you go foolin' with that girl,
+I'll kill yeh, so help me God.”
+
+These words he uttered with the solemnity of an oath and turned towards
+the porch. A dark figure flitted across the kitchen and disappeared into
+the house. Cameron walked slowly towards the barn.
+
+“He's mad. He's clean daffy, but none the less dangerous,” he said to
+himself. “What a rotten mess all this is!” he added in disgust. “By
+Jove! The whole thing isn't worth while.”
+
+But as he thought of Mandy's frightened face and imploring eyes and the
+brutal murderous face of the man who claimed her as his own, he said
+between his teeth:
+
+“No, I won't quit now. I'll see this thing through, whatever it costs,”
+ and with this resolve he set himself to the business of getting to
+sleep; in which, after many attempts, he was at length successful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+
+
+There never was such a Dominion Day for weather since the first Dominion
+Day was born. Of this “Fatty” Freeman was fully assured. Fatty Freeman
+was a young man for whose opinion older men were accustomed to wait. His
+person more than justified his praenomen, for Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr.,
+was undeniably fat. “Fat, but fine and frisky,” was ever his own comment
+upon the descriptive adjective by which his friends distinguished him.
+And fine and frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating,
+fine in his judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men;
+frisky, too, and utterly irrepressible. “Harp's just like a young pup,”
+ his own father, the Reverend Harper Freeman, the old Methodist minister
+of the Maplehill circuit, used to say. “If Harp had a tail he would
+never do anything but play with it.” On this, however, it is difficult
+to hold any well based opinion. Ebullient in his spirits, he radiated
+cheeriness wherever he went and was at the bottom of most of the
+practical jokes that kept the village of Maplehill in a state of
+ferment; yet if any man thought to turn a sharp corner in business with
+Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., he invariably found that frisky individual
+waiting for him round the corner with a cheery smile of welcome, shrewd
+and disconcerting. It was this cheery shrewdness of his that made him
+the most successful cattle buyer in the county and at the same time
+secretary of the Middlesex Caledonian Society. As secretary of this
+society he was made chiefly responsible for the success of the Dominion
+Day picnic and, as with everything that he took hold of, Fatty toiled
+at the business of preparation for this picnic with conscientious zeal,
+giving to it all his spare hours and many of his working hours for the
+three months preceding.
+
+It was due solely to his efforts that so many distinguished county
+magnates appeared eager to lend their patronage. It needed but a little
+persuasion to secure the enthusiastic support of the Honourable J. J.
+Patterson, M.P.P., and, incidentally, the handsome challenge cup
+for hammer-throwing, for the honourable member of Parliament was a
+full-blooded Highlander himself and an ardent supporter of “the games.”
+ But only Fatty Freeman's finesse could have extracted from Dr. Kane, the
+Opposition candidate for Provincial Parliamentary honours, the cup for
+the hundred yards race, and other cups from other individuals more or
+less deeply interested in Dominion, Provincial, and Municipal politics.
+The prize list secured, it needed only a skillful manipulation of the
+local press and a judicious but persistent personal correspondence
+to swell the ranks of the competitors in the various events, and
+thus ensure a monster attendance of the people from the neighbouring
+townships and from the city near by.
+
+The weather being assured, Fatty's anxieties were mostly allayed, for he
+had on the file in his office acceptance letters from the distinguished
+men who were to cast the spell of their oratory over the assembled
+multitude, as also from the big men in the athletic world who had
+entered for the various events in the programme of sports. It was
+a master stroke of diplomacy that resulted in the securing for the
+hammer-throwing contest the redoubtable and famous Duncan Ross of
+Zorra, who had at first disdained the bait of the Maplehill Dominion Day
+picnic, but in some mysterious way had at length been hooked and landed.
+For Duncan was a notable man and held the championship of the Zorras;
+and indeed in all Ontario he was second only to the world-famous Rory
+Maclennan of Glengarry, who had been to Braemar itself and was beaten
+there only by a fluke. How he came to agree to be present at the
+Maplehill picnic “Black Duncan” could not quite understand, but had he
+compared notes with McGee, the champion of the London police force and
+of various towns and cities of the western peninsula, he would doubtless
+have received some enlightenment. To the skill of the same master hand
+was due the appearance upon the racing list of the Dominion Day picnic
+of such distinguished names as Cahill of London, Fullerton of Woodstock,
+and especially of Eugene La Belle of nowhere in particular, who held the
+provincial championship for skating and was a runner of provincial fame.
+
+In the racing Fatty was particularly interested because his young
+brother Wilbur, of whom he was uncommonly proud, a handsome lad, swift
+and graceful as a deer, was to make his first essay for more than local
+honours.
+
+The lists for the other events were equally well filled and every
+detail of the arrangements for the day had passed under the secretary's
+personal review. The feeding of the multitude was in charge of the
+Methodist Ladies' Aid, an energetic and exceptionally businesslike
+organization, which fully expected to make sufficient profit from the
+enterprise to clear off the debt from their church at Maplehill, an
+achievement greatly desired not only by the ladies themselves but by
+their minister, the Reverend Harper Freeman, now in the third year of
+his incumbency. The music was to be furnished by the Band of the
+Seventh from London and by no less a distinguished personage than Piper
+Sutherland himself from Zorra, former Pipe Major of “The old Forty-twa.”
+ The discovery of another piper in Cameron brought joy to the secretary's
+heart, who only regretted that an earlier discovery had not rendered
+possible a pipe competition.
+
+Early in the afternoon the crowds began to gather to MacBurney's woods,
+a beautiful maple grove lying midway between the Haleys' farm and
+Maplehill village, about two miles distant from each. The grove of
+noble maple trees overlooking a grassy meadow provided an ideal spot for
+picnicking, furnishing as it did both shade from the sun and a fine open
+space with firm footing for the contestants in the games. High over a
+noble maple in the centre of the grassy meadow floated the Red Ensign of
+the Empire, which, with the Canadian coat of arms on the fly, by common
+usage had become the national flag of Canada. From the great trees the
+swings were hung, and under their noble spreading boughs were placed the
+tables, and the platform for the speech making and the dancing, while at
+the base of the encircling hills surrounding the grassy meadow, hard by
+the grove another platform was placed, from which distinguished
+visitors might view with ease and comfort the contests upon the campus
+immediately adjacent.
+
+Through the fence, let down for the purpose, the people drove in
+from the high road. They came in top buggies and in lumber wagons,
+in democrats and in “three seated rigs,” while from the city came a
+“four-in-hand” with McGee, Cahill, and their backers, as well as other
+carriages filled with good citizens of London drawn thither by the
+promise of a day's sport of more than usual excellence or by the lure
+of a day in the woods and fields of God's open country. A specially
+fine carriage and pair, owned and driven by the honourable member of
+Parliament himself, conveyed Piper Sutherland, with colours streaming
+and pipes playing, to the picnic grounds. Warmly was the old piper
+welcomed, not only by the frisky cheery secretary, but by many old
+friends, and by none more warmly than by the Reverend Alexander Munro,
+the douce old bachelor Presbyterian minister of Maplehill, a great lover
+of the pipes and a special friend of Piper Sutherland. But the welcome
+was hardly over when once more the sound of the pipes was heard far up
+the side line.
+
+“Surely that will be Gunn,” said Mr. Munro.
+
+Sutherland listened for a minute or two.
+
+“No, it iss not Gunn. Iss Ross coming? No, yon iss not Ross. That
+will be a stranger,” he continued, turning to the secretary, but
+the secretary remained silent, enjoying the old man's surprise and
+perplexity.
+
+“Man, that iss not so bad piping! Not so bad at all! Who iss it?” he
+added with some impatience, turning upon the secretary again.
+
+“Oh, that's Haley's team and I guess that's his hired man, a young
+fellow just out from Scotland,” replied the secretary indifferently. “I
+am no great judge of the pipes myself, but he strikes me as a crackajack
+and I shouldn't be surprised if he would make you all sit up.”
+
+But the old piper's ear was closed to his words and open only to the
+strains of music ever drawing nearer.
+
+“Aye, yon's a piper!” he said at length with emphasis. “Yon's a piper!”
+
+“I only wish I had discovered him in time for a competition,” said Fatty
+regretfully.
+
+“Aye,” said Sutherland. “Yon's a piper worth playing against.”
+
+And very brave and gallant young Cameron looked as Tim swung his team
+through the fence and up to the platform under the trees where the
+great ones of the people were standing in groups. They were all there,
+Patterson the M.P.P., and Dr. Kane the Opposition candidate, Reeve
+Robertson, for ten years the Municipal head of his county, Inspector
+Grant, a little man with a massive head and a luminous eye, Patterson's
+understudy and generally regarded as his successor in Provincial
+politics, the Reverend Harper Freeman, Methodist minister, tall
+and lank, with shrewd kindly face and a twinkling eye, the Reverend
+Alexander Munro, the Presbyterian minister, solid and sedate, slow to
+take fire but when kindled a very furnace for heat. These, with their
+various wives and daughters, such as had them, and many others less
+notable but no less important, constituted a sort of informal reception
+committee under Fatty Freeman's general direction and management.
+And here and there and everywhere crowds of young men and maidens,
+conspicuous among the latter Isa MacKenzie and her special friends,
+made merry with each other, as brave and gallant a company of sturdy
+sun-browned youths and bonnie wholesome lassies as any land or age could
+ever show.
+
+“Look at them!” cried the Reverend Harper Freeman, waving his hand
+toward the kaleidoscopic gathering. “There's your Dominion Day oration
+for you, Mr, Patterson.”
+
+“Most of it done in brown, too,” chuckled his son, Harper Freeman, Jr.
+
+“Yes, and set in jewels and gold,” replied his father.
+
+“You hold over me, Dad!” cried his son. “Here!” he called to Cameron,
+who was standing aloof from the others. “Come and meet a brother Scot
+and a brother piper, Mr. Sutherland from Zorra, though to your ignorant
+Scottish ear that means nothing, but to every intelligent Canadian,
+Zorra stands for all that's finest in brain and brawn in Canada.”
+
+“And it takes both to play the pipes, eh, Sutherland?” said the M.P.P.
+
+“Oh aye, but mostly wind,” said the piper.
+
+“Just like politics, eh, Mr. Patterson?” said the Reverend Harper
+Freeman.
+
+“Yes, or like preaching,” replied the M.P.P.
+
+“One on you, Dad!” said the irrepressible Fatty.
+
+Meantime Sutherland was warmly complimenting Cameron on his playing.
+
+“You haf been well taught,” he said.
+
+“No one taught me,” said Cameron. “But we had a famous old piper at home
+in our Glen, Macpherson was his name.”
+
+“Macpherson! Did he effer play at the Braemar gathering?”
+
+“Yes, but Maclennan beat him.”
+
+“Maclennan! I haf heard him.” The tone was quite sufficient to classify
+the unhappy Maclennan. “And I haf heard Macpherson too. You iss a
+player. None of the fal-de-rals of your modern players, but grand and
+mighty.”
+
+“I agree with you entirely,” replied Cameron, his heart warming at
+the praise of his old friend of the Glen Cuagh Oir. “But,” he added,
+“Maclennan is a great player too.”
+
+“A great player? Yes and no. He has the fingers and the notes, but he
+iss not the beeg man. It iss the soul that breathes through the chanter.
+The soul!” Here he gripped Cameron by the arm. “Man! it iss like
+praying. A beeg man will neffer show himself in small things, but when
+he will be in communion with his Maker or when he will be pouring out
+his soul in a pibroch then the beegness of the man will be manifest.
+Aye,” continued the piper, warming to his theme and encouraged by the
+eager sympathy of his listener, “and not only the beegness but the
+quality of the soul. A mean man can play the pipes, but he can neffer
+be a piper. It iss only a beeg man and a fine man and, I will venture to
+say, a good man, and there are not many men can be pipers.”
+
+“Aye, Mr. Sutherland,” broke in the Reverend Alexander Munro, “what you
+say is true, but it is true not only of piping. It is true surely of
+anything great enough to express the deepest emotions of the soul. A
+man is never at his best in anything till he is expressing his noblest
+self.”
+
+“For instance in preaching, eh!” said Dr. Kane.
+
+“Aye, in preaching or in political oratory,” replied the minister.
+
+At this, however, the old piper shook his head doubtfully.
+
+“You do not agree with Mr. Munro in that?” said the M.P.P.
+
+“No,” replied Sutherland, “speaking iss one thing, piping iss another.”
+
+“And that is no lie, and a mighty good thing too it is,” said Dr. Kane
+flippantly.
+
+“It iss no lie,” replied the old piper with dignity. “And if you knew
+much about either of them you would say it deeferently.”
+
+“Why, what is the difference, Mr. Sutherland?” said Dr. Kane, anxious to
+appease the old man. “They both are means of expressing the emotions of
+the soul, you say.”
+
+“The deeference! The deeferenee iss it? The deeference iss here, that
+the pipes will neffer lie.”
+
+There was a shout of laughter.
+
+“One for you, Kane!” cried the Reverend Harper Freeman. “And,” he
+continued when the laughing had ceased, “we will have to take our share
+too, Mr. Munro.”
+
+But the hour for beginning the programme had arrived and the secretary
+climbed to the platform to announce the events for the day.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried, in a high, clear, penetrating voice,
+“the speech of welcome will be delivered toward the close of the day by
+the president of the Middlesex Caledonian Society, the Honourable J. J.
+Patterson, M.P.P. My duty is the very simple one of announcing the order
+of events on the programme and of expressing on behalf of the Middlesex
+Caledonian Society the earnest hope that you all may enjoy the day, and
+that each event on the programme will prove more interesting than the
+last. The programme is long and varied and I must ask your assistance
+to put it through on schedule time. First there are the athletic
+competitions. I shall endeavour to assist Dr. Kane and the judges in
+running these through without unnecessary and annoying delays. Then will
+follow piping, dancing, and feasting in their proper order, after which
+will come the presentation of prizes and speeches from our distinguished
+visitors. On the platform over yonder there are places for the speakers,
+the officials, and the guests of the society, but such is the very
+excellent character of the ground that all can be accommodated with
+grand stand seats. One disappointment, and one only, I must announce,
+the Band of the Seventh, London, cannot be with us to-day.”
+
+“But we will never miss them,” interpolated the Reverend Alexander Munro
+with solemn emphasis.
+
+“Exactly so!” continued Fatty when the laugh had subsided. “And now
+let's all go in for a good old time picnic, 'where even the farmers
+cease from grumbling and the preachers take a rest.' Now take your
+places, ladies and gentlemen, for the grand parade is about to begin.”
+
+The programme opened with the one hundred yard flat race. For this race
+there were four entries, Cahill from London, Fullerton from Woodstock,
+La Belle from nowhere in particular, and Wilbur Freeman from Maplehill.
+But Wilbur was nowhere to be seen. The secretary came breathless to the
+platform.
+
+“Where's Wilbur?” he asked his father.
+
+“Wilbur? Surely he is in the crowd, or in the tent perhaps.”
+
+At the tent the secretary found his brother nursing a twisted ankle,
+heart-sick with disappointment. Early in the day he had injured his foot
+in an attempt to fasten a swing upon a tree. Every minute since that
+time he had spent in rubbing and manipulating the injured member, but
+all to no purpose. While the pain was not great, a race was out of the
+question. The secretary was greatly disturbed and as nearly wrathful as
+ever he allowed himself to become. He was set on his brother making a
+good showing in this race; moreover, without Wilbur there would be no
+competitor to uphold the honour of Maplehill in this contest and this
+would deprive it of much of its interest.
+
+“What the dickens were you climbing trees for?” he began impatiently,
+but a glance at his young brother's pale and woe-stricken face changed
+his wrath to pity. “Never mind, old chap,” he said, “better luck next
+time, and you will be fitter too.”
+
+Back he ran to the platform, for he must report the dismal news to his
+mother, whose chief interest in the programme for the day lay in this
+race in which her latest born was to win his spurs. The cheery secretary
+was nearly desperate. It was an ominous beginning for the day's sports.
+What should he do? He confided his woe to Mack and Cameron, who were
+standing close by the platform.
+
+“It will play the very mischief with the programme. It will spoil the
+whole day, for Wilbur was the sole Maplehill representative in the three
+races; besides, I believe the youngster would have shown up well.”
+
+“He would that!” cried Mack heartily. “He was a bird. But is there no
+one else from the Hill that could enter?”
+
+“No, no one with a chance of winning, and no fellow likes to go in
+simply to be beaten.”
+
+“What difference?” said Cameron. “It's all in a day's sport.”
+
+“That's so,” said Mack. “If I could run myself I would enter. I wonder
+if Danny would--”
+
+“Danny!” said the secretary shortly. “You know better than that.
+Danny's too shy to appear before this crowd even if he were dead sure of
+winning.”
+
+“Say, it is too bad!” continued Mack, as the magnitude of the calamity
+grew upon him. “Surely we can find some one to make an appearance. What
+about yourself, Cameron? Did you ever race?”
+
+“Some,” said Cameron. “I raced last year at the Athole Games.”
+
+Fatty threw himself upon him.
+
+“Cameron, you are my man! Do you want to save your country, and perhaps
+my life, certainly my reputation? Get out of those frills,” touching his
+kilt, “and I'll get a suit from one of the jumpers for you. Go! Bless
+your soul, anything you want that's mine you can have! Only hustle for
+dear life's sake! Go! Go! Go! Take him away, Mack. We'll get something
+else on!”
+
+Fatty actually pushed Cameron clear away from the platform and after him
+big Mack.
+
+“There seems to be no help for it,” said Cameron, as they went to the
+tent together.
+
+“It's awful good of you,” replied Mack, “but you can see how hard Fatty
+takes it, though it is not a bit fair to you.”
+
+“Oh, nobody knows me here,” said Cameron, “and I don't mind being a
+victim.”
+
+But as Mack saw him get into his jersey and shorts he began to wonder a
+bit.
+
+“Man, it would be great if you should beat yon Frenchman!” he exclaimed.
+
+“Frenchman?”
+
+“Yes! La Belle. He is that stuck on himself; he thinks he is a winner
+before he starts.”
+
+“It's a good way to think, Mack. Now let us get down into the woods and
+have a bit of a practise in the 'get away.' How do they start here? With
+a pistol?”
+
+“No,” replied Mack. “We are not so swell. The starter gives the word
+this way, 'All set? Go!'”
+
+“All right, Mack, you give me the word sharp. I am out of practise and I
+must get the idea into my head.”
+
+“You are great on the idea, I see,” replied Mack.
+
+“Right you are, and it is just the same with the hammer, Mack.”
+
+“Aye, I have found that out.”
+
+For twenty minutes or so Cameron practised his start and at every
+attempt Mack's confidence grew, so that when he brought his man back to
+the platform he announced to a group of the girls standing near, “Don't
+say anything, but I have the winner right here for you.”
+
+“Why, Mr. Cameron,” cried Isa, “what a wonder you are! What else can you
+do? You are a piper, a dancer, a hammer-thrower, and now a runner.”
+
+“Jack-of-all-trades,” laughed Perkins, who, with Mandy, was standing
+near.
+
+“Yes, but you can't say 'Master of none,'” replied Isa sharply.
+
+“Better wait,” said Cameron. “I have entered this race only to save Mr.
+Freeman from collapse.”
+
+“Collapse? Fatty? He couldn't,” said Isa with emphasis.
+
+“Lass, I do not know,” said Mack gravely. “He looked more hollow than
+ever I have seen him before.”
+
+“Well, we'll all cheer for you, Mr. Cameron, anyway,” cried Isa. “Won't
+we, girls? Oh, if wishes were wings!”
+
+“Wings?” said Mandy, with a puzzled air. “What for? This is a RACE.”
+
+“Didn't you never see a hen run, Mandy?” laughed Perkins.
+
+“Yes, I have, but I tell you Mr. Cameron ain't no hen,” replied Mandy
+angrily. “And more! He's going to win.”
+
+“Say, Mandy, that is the talk,” said Mack, when the laugh had passed.
+“Did you hear yon?” he added to Cameron.
+
+Cameron nodded.
+
+“It is a good omen,” he said. “I am going to do my best.”
+
+“And, by Jingo! if you only had a chance,” said Mack, “I believe you
+would lick them all.”
+
+At this Fatty bustled up.
+
+“All ready, eh? Cameron, I shall owe you something for this. La Belle
+kicked like a steer against your entering at the last minute. It is
+against the rules, you know. But he's given in.”
+
+Fatty did not explain that he had intimated to La Belle that there
+was no need for anxiety as far as the “chap from the old country” was
+concerned; he was there merely to fill up.
+
+But if La Belle's fears were allayed by the secretary's disparaging
+description of the latest competitor, they sprang full grown into life
+again when he saw Cameron “all set” for the start, and more especially
+so when he heard his protest against the Frenchman's method in the “get
+away.”
+
+“I want you to notice,” he said firmly to Dr. Kane, who was acting as
+starter, “that this man gets away WITH the word 'Go' and not AFTER it.
+It is an old trick, but long ago played out.”
+
+Then the Frenchman fell into a rage.
+
+“Eet ees no treeck!” sputtered La Belle. “Eet ees too queeck for him.”
+
+“All right!” said Dr. Kane. “You are to start after the word 'Go.'
+Remember! Sorry we have no pistol.”
+
+Once more the competitors crouched over the scratch.
+
+“All set? Go!”
+
+Like the releasing of a whirlwind the four runners spring from the
+scratch, La Belle, whose specialty is his “get away,” in front,
+Fullerton and Cameron in second place, Cahill a close third. A blanket
+would cover them all. A tumult of cheers from the friends of the various
+runners follows them along their brief course.
+
+“Who is it? Who is it?” cries Mandy breathlessly, clutching Mack by the
+arm.
+
+“Cameron, I swear!” roars Mack, pushing his way through the crowd to the
+judges.
+
+“No! No! La Belle! La Belle!” cried the Frenchman's backers from the
+city. The judges are apparently in dispute.
+
+“I swear it is Cameron!” roars Mack again in their ears, his eyes aflame
+and his face alight with a fierce and triumphant joy. “It is Cameron I
+am telling you!”
+
+“Oh, get out, you big bluffer!” cries a thin-faced man, pressing close
+upon the judges. “It is La Belle by a mile!”
+
+“By a mile, is it?” shouts Mack. “Then go and hunt your man!” and with
+a swift motion his big hand falls upon the thin face and sweeps it clear
+out of view, the man bearing it coming to his feet in a white fury some
+paces away. A second look at Mack, however, calms his rage, and from a
+distance he continues leaping and yelling “La Belle! La Belle!”
+
+After a few moments' consultation the result is announced.
+
+“A tie for the first place between La Belle and Cameron! Time eleven
+seconds! The tie will be run off in a few minutes.”
+
+In a tumult of triumph big Mack shoulders Cameron through the crowd
+and carries him off to the dressing tent, where he spends the next ten
+minutes rubbing his man's legs and chanting his glory.
+
+“Who is this Cameron?” enquired the M.P.P., leaning over the platform
+railing.
+
+Quick came the answer from the bevy of girls thronging past the
+platform.
+
+“Cameron? He's our man!” It was Mandy's voice, bold and strong.
+
+“Your man?” said the M.P.P., laughing down into the coarse flushed face.
+
+“Yes, OUR man!” cried Isa MacKenzie back at him. “And a winner, you may
+be sure.”
+
+“Ah, happy man!” exclaimed the M.P.P. “Who would not win with such
+backers? Why, I would win myself, Miss Isa, were you to back me so. But
+who is Cameron?” he continued to the Methodist minister at his side.
+
+“He is Haley's hired man, I believe, and that first girl is Haley's
+daughter.”
+
+“Poor thing!” echoed Mrs. Freeman, a kindly smile on her motherly face.
+“But she has a good heart has poor Mandy.”
+
+“But why 'poor'?” enquired the M.P.P.
+
+“Oh, well,” answered Mrs. Freeman with hesitation, “you see she is so
+very plain--and--well, not like other girls. But she is a good worker
+and has a kind heart.”
+
+Once more the runners face the starter, La Belle gay, alert, confident;
+Cameron silent, pale, and grim.
+
+“All set? Go!” La Belle is away ere the word is spoken. The bell,
+however, brings him back, wrathful and less confident.
+
+Once more they stand crouching over the scratch. Once more the word
+releases them like shafts from the bow. A beautiful start, La Belle
+again in the lead, but Cameron hard at his heels and evidently with
+something to spare. Thus for fifty yards, sixty, yes, sixty-five.
+
+“La Belle! La Belle! He wins! He wins!” yell his backers frantically,
+the thin-faced man dancing madly near the finishing tape. Twenty yards
+to go and still La Belle is in the lead. High above the shouting rises
+Mack's roar.
+
+“Now, Cameron! For the life of you!”
+
+It was as if his voice had touched a spring somewhere in Cameron's
+anatomy. A great leap brings him even with La Belle. Another, another,
+and still another, and he breasts the tape a winner by a yard, time ten
+and three fifths seconds. The Maplehill folk go mad, and madder than all
+Isa and her company of girl friends.
+
+“I got--one--bad--start--me! He--pull--me back!” panted La Belle to his
+backers who were holding him up.
+
+“Who pulled you back?” indignantly cried the thin-faced man, looking for
+blood.
+
+“That sacre startair!”
+
+“You ran a fine race, La Belle!” said Cameron, coming up.
+
+“Non! Peste! I mak heem in ten and one feeft,” replied the disgusted La
+Belle.
+
+“I have made it in ten,” said Cameron quietly.
+
+“Aha!” exclaimed La Belle. “You are one black horse, eh? So! I race no
+more to-day!”
+
+“Then no more do I!” said Cameron firmly. “Why, La Belle, you will beat
+me in the next race sure. I have no wind.”
+
+Under pressure La Belle changed his mind, and well for him he did; for
+in the two hundred and twenty yards and in the quarter mile Cameron's
+lack of condition told against him, so that in the one he ran second to
+La Belle and in the other third to La Belle and Fullerton.
+
+The Maplehill folk were gloriously satisfied, and Fatty in an ecstasy of
+delight radiated good cheer everywhere. Throughout the various contests
+the interest continued to deepen, the secretary, with able generalship,
+reserving the hammer-throwing as the most thrilling event to the last
+place. For, more than anything in the world, men, and especially women,
+love strong men and love to see them in conflict. For that fatal love
+cruel wars have been waged, lands have been desolated, kingdoms have
+fallen. There was the promise of a very pretty fight indeed between the
+three entered for the hammer-throwing contest, two of them experienced
+in this warfare and bearing high honours, the third new to the game and
+unskilled, but loved for his modest courage and for the simple, gentle
+heart he carried in his great body. He could not win, of course, for
+McGee, the champion of the city police force, had many scalps at his
+girdle, and Duncan Ross, “Black Duncan,” the pride of the Zorras, the
+unconquered hero of something less than a hundred fights--who could hope
+to win from him? But all the more for this the people loved big Mack and
+wished him well. So down the sloping sides of the encircling hills the
+crowds pressed thick, and on the platform the great men leaned over
+the rail, while they lifted their ladies to places of vantage upon the
+chairs beside them.
+
+“Oh, I cannot see a bit!” cried Isa MacKenzie, vainly pressing upon the
+crowding men who, stolidly unaware of all but what was doing in front of
+them, effectually shut off her view.
+
+“And you want to see?” said the M.P.P., looking down at her.
+
+“Oh, so much!” she cried.
+
+“Come up here, then!” and, giving her a hand, he lifted her, smiling and
+blushing, to a place on the platform whence she with absorbing interest
+followed the movements of big Mack, and incidentally of the others in as
+far as they might bear any relation to those of her hero.
+
+And now they were drawing for place.
+
+“Aha! Mack is going to throw first!” said the Reverend Alexander Munro.
+“That is a pity.”
+
+“It's a shame!” cried Isa, with flashing eyes. “Why don't they put one
+of those older--ah--?”
+
+“Stagers?” suggested the M.P.P.
+
+“Duffers,” concluded Isa.
+
+“The lot determines the place, Miss Isa,” said Mr. Freeman, with a smile
+at her. “But the best man will win.”
+
+“Oh, I am not so sure of that!” cried the girl in a distressed voice.
+“Mack might get nervous.”
+
+“Nervous?” laughed the M.P.P. “That giant?”
+
+“Yes, indeed, I have seen him that nervous--” said Isa, and stopped
+abruptly.
+
+“Ah! That is quite possible,” replied the M.P.P. with a quizzical smile.
+
+“And there is young Cameron yonder. He is not going to throw, is he?”
+ enquired Mr. Munro.
+
+“He is coaching Mack,” explained Isa, “and fine he is at it. Oh, there!
+He is going to throw! Oh, if he only gets the swing! Oh! Oh! Oh! He has
+got it fine!”
+
+A storm of cheers followed Mack's throw, then a deep silence while the
+judges took the measurement.
+
+“One hundred and twenty-one feet!”
+
+“One hundred and twenty-one!” echoed a hundred voices in amazement.
+
+“One hundred and twenty-one! It is a lie!” cried McGee with an oath,
+striding out to personally supervise the measuring.
+
+“One hundred and twenty-one!” said Duncan Ross, shaking his head
+doubtfully, but he was too much of a gentleman to do other than wait for
+the judges' decision.
+
+“One hundred and twenty-one feet and two inches,” was the final verdict,
+and from the crowd there rose a roar that rolled like thunder around the
+hills.
+
+“It's a fluke, and so it is!” said McGee with another oath.
+
+“Give me your hand, lad,” said Duncan Ross, evidently much roused. “It
+iss a noble throw whateffer, and worthy of beeg Rory himself. I haf done
+better, howeffer, but indeed I may not to-day.”
+
+It was indeed a great throw, and one immediate result was that there
+was no holding back in the contest, no playing 'possum. Mack's throw was
+there to be beaten, and neither McGee nor even Black Duncan could afford
+to throw away a single chance. For hammer-throwing is an art requiring
+not only strength but skill as well, and not only strength and skill but
+something else most difficult to secure. With the strength and the skill
+there must go a rhythmic and perfect coordination of all the muscles in
+the body, with exactly the proper contracting and relaxing of each at
+exactly the proper moment of time, and this perfect coordination is a
+result rarely achieved even by the greatest throwers, but when achieved,
+and with the man's full strength behind it, his record throw is the
+result.
+
+Meantime Cameron was hovering about his man in an ecstasy of delight.
+
+“Oh, Mack, old man!” he said. “You got the swing perfectly. It was a
+dream. And if you had put your full strength into it you would have made
+a world record. Why, man, you could add ten feet to it!”
+
+“It is a fluke!” said McGee again, as he took his place.
+
+“Make one like it, then, my lad,” said Black Duncan with a grim smile.
+
+But this McGee failed to do, for his throw measured ninety-seven feet.
+
+“A very fair throw, McGee,” said Black Duncan. “But not your best, and
+nothing but the best will do the day appearingly.”
+
+With that Black Duncan took place for his throw. One--twice--thrice he
+swung the great hammer about his head, then sent it whirling into the
+air. Again a mighty shout announced a great throw and again a dead
+silence waited for the measurement.
+
+“One hundred and fourteen feet!”
+
+“Aha!” said Black Duncan, and stepped back apparently well satisfied.
+
+It was again Mack's turn.
+
+“You have the privilege of allowing your first throw to stand,” said Dr.
+Kane.
+
+“Best let it stand, lad, till it iss beat,” advised Black Duncan kindly.
+“It iss a noble throw.”
+
+“He can do better, though,” said Cameron.
+
+“Very well, very well!” said Duncan. “Let him try.”
+
+But Mack's success had keyed him up to the highest pitch. Every nerve
+was tingling, every muscle taut. His first throw he had taken without
+strain, being mainly anxious, under Cameron's coaching, to get the
+swing, but under the excitement incident to the contest he had put more
+strength into the throw than appeared either to himself or to his coach.
+Now, however, with nerves and muscles taut, he was eager to increase
+his distance, too eager it seemed, for his second throw measured only
+eighty-nine feet.
+
+A silence fell upon his friends and Cameron began to chide him.
+
+“You went right back to your old style, Mack. There wasn't the sign of a
+swing.”
+
+“I will get it yet, or bust!” said big Mack between his teeth.
+
+McGee's second throw went one hundred and seventeen feet. A cheer arose
+from his backers, for it was a great throw and within five feet of
+his record. Undoubtedly McGee was in great form and he might well be
+expected to measure up to his best to-day.
+
+Black Duncan's second throw measured one hundred and nineteen feet
+seven, which was fifteen feet short of his record and showed him to be
+climbing steadily upward.
+
+Once more the turn came to Mack, and once more, with almost savage
+eagerness, he seized the hammer preparatory to his throw.
+
+“Now, Mack, for heaven's sake go easy!” said Cameron. “Take your swing
+easy and slow.”
+
+But Mack heeded him not. “I can beat it!” he muttered between his shut
+teeth, “and I will.” So, with every nerve taut and every muscle strained
+to its limit, he made his third attempt. It was in vain. The measure
+showed ninety-seven feet six. A suppressed groan rose from the Maplehill
+folk.
+
+“A grand throw, lad, for a beginner,” said Black Duncan.
+
+The excitement now became intense. By his first throw of one hundred and
+twenty-one feet two, Mack remained still the winner. But McGee had
+only four feet to gain and Black Duncan less than two to equal him.
+The little secretary went skipping about aglow with satisfaction
+and delight. The day was already famous in the history of Canadian
+athletics.
+
+Again McGee took place for his throw, his third and last. The crowd
+gathered in as near as they dared. But McGee had done his best for that
+day, and his final throw measured only one hundred and five feet.
+
+There remained yet but a single chance to wrest from Mack Murray the
+prize for that day, but that chance lay in the hands of Duncan Ross, the
+cool and experienced champion of many a hard-fought fight. Again Black
+Duncan took the hammer. It was his last throw. He had still fifteen feet
+to go to reach his own record, and he had often beaten the throw that
+challenged him to-day, but, on the other hand, he had passed through
+many a contest where his throw had fallen short of the one he must now
+beat to win. A hush fell upon the people as Black Duncan took his place.
+Once--twice--and, with ever increasing speed, thrice he swung the great
+hammer, then high and far it hurtled through the air.
+
+“Jerusalem!” cried Mack. “What a fling!”
+
+“Too high,” muttered Black Duncan. “You have got it, lad, you have got
+it, and you well deserve it.”
+
+“Tut-tut, nonsense!” said Mack impatiently. “Wait you a minute.”
+
+Silent and expectant the crowd awaited the result. Twice over the judges
+measured the throw, then announced “One hundred and twenty-one feet.”
+ Mack had won by two inches.
+
+A great roar rose from the crowd, round Mack they surged like a flood,
+eager to grip his hands and eager to carry him off shoulder high. But
+he threw them off as a rock throws back the incoming tide and made
+for Duncan Ross, who stood, calm and pale, and with hand outstretched,
+waiting him. It was a new experience for Black Duncan, and a bitter, to
+be second in a contest. Only once in many years had he been forced to
+lower his colours, and to be beaten by a raw and unknown youth added
+to the humiliation of his defeat. But Duncan Ross had in his veins the
+blood of a long line of Highland gentlemen who knew how to take defeat
+with a smile.
+
+“I congratulate you, Mack Murray,” he said in a firm, clear voice. “Your
+fame will be through Canada tomorrow, and well you deserve it.”
+
+But Mack caught the outstretched hand in both of his and, leaning toward
+Black Duncan, he roared at him above the din.
+
+“Mr. Ross, Mr. Ross, it is no win! Listen to me!” he panted. “What are
+two inches in a hundred and twenty feet? A stretching of the tape will
+do it. No, no! Listen to me! You must listen to me as you are a man! I
+will not have it! You can beat me easily in the throw! At best it is a
+tie and nothing else will I have to-day. At least let us throw again!”
+ he pleaded. But to this Ross would not listen for a moment.
+
+“The lad has made his win,” he said to the judges, “and his win he must
+have.”
+
+But Mack declared that nothing under heaven would make him change his
+mind. Finally the judges, too, agreed that in view of the possibility of
+a mistake in measuring with the tape, it would be only right and fair
+to count the result a tie. Black Duncan listened respectfully to the
+judges' decision.
+
+“You are asking me a good deal, Mack,” he said at length, “but you are a
+gallant lad and I am an older man and--”
+
+“Aye! And a better!” shouted Mack.
+
+“And so I will agree.”
+
+Once more the field was cleared. And now there fell upon the crowding
+people a hush as if they stood in the presence of death itself.
+
+“Ladies and gentlemen!” said the M.P.P. “Do you realise that you are
+looking upon a truly great contest, a contest great enough to be of
+national, yes, of international, importance?”
+
+“You bet your sweet life!” cried the irrepressible Fatty. “We're going
+some. 'What's the matter with our Mack?'” he shouted.
+
+“'HE'S--ALL--RIGHT!'” came back the chant from the surrounding hills in
+hundreds of voices.
+
+“And what's the matter with Duncan Ross?” cried Mack, waving a hand
+above his head.
+
+Again the assurance of perfect rightness came back in a mighty roar
+from the hills. But it was hushed into immediate silence, a silence
+breathless and overwhelming, for Black Duncan had taken once more his
+place with the hammer in his hand.
+
+“Oh, I do wish they would hurry!” gasped Isa, her hands pressed hard
+upon her heart.
+
+“My heart is rather weak, too,” said the M.P.P. “I fear I cannot last
+much longer. Ah! There he goes, thank God!”
+
+“Amen!” fervently responds little Mrs. Freeman, who, in the intensity
+of her excitement, is standing on a chair holding tight by her husband's
+coat collar.
+
+Not a sound breaks the silence as Black Duncan takes his swing. It is a
+crucial moment in his career. Only by one man in Canada has he ever been
+beaten, and with the powers of his antagonist all untried and unknown,
+for anyone could see that Mack has not yet thrown his best, he may be
+called upon to surrender within the next few minutes the proud position
+he has held so long in the athletic world. But there is not a sign
+of excitement in his face. With great care, and with almost painful
+deliberation, he balances the hammer for a moment or two, then
+once--twice--and, with a tremendous quickening of speed,--thrice--he
+swings, and his throw is made. A great throw it is, anyone can see, and
+one that beats the winner. In hushed and strained silence the people
+await the result.
+
+“One hundred and twenty-one feet nine.”
+
+Then rises the roar that has been held pent up during the last few
+nerve-racking minutes.
+
+“It iss a good enough throw,” said Black Duncan with a quiet smile, “but
+there iss more in me yet. Now, lad, do your best and there will be no
+hard feeling with thiss man whateffer happens.”
+
+Black Duncan's accent and idioms reveal the intense excitement that lies
+behind his quiet face.
+
+Mack takes the hammer.
+
+“I will not beat it, you may be sure,” he says. “But I will just take a
+fling at it anyway.”
+
+“Now, Mack,” says Cameron, “for the sake of all you love forget the
+distance and show them the Braemar swing. Easy and slow.”
+
+But Mack waves him aside and stands pondering. He is “getting the idea.”
+
+“Man, do you see him?” whispers his brother Danny, who stands near to
+Cameron. “I believe he has got it.”
+
+Cameron nods his head. Mack wears an impressive air of confidence and
+strength.
+
+“It will be a great throw,” says Cameron to Danny.
+
+“Easy and slow” Mack poises the great hammer in his hand, swinging it
+gently backward and forward as if it had been a boy's toy, the great
+muscles in arms and back rippling up and down in firm full waves under
+his white skin, for he is now stripped to the waist for this throw.
+
+Suddenly, as if at command, the muscles seem to spring to their places,
+tense, alert. “Easy.” Yes, truly, but by no means “slow.” “Easy,” the
+great hammer swings about his head in whirling circles, swift and ever
+swifter. Once--and twice--the great muscles in back and arms and back
+and legs knotted in bunches--thrice!
+
+“Ah-h-h!” A long, wailing, horrible sound, half moan, half cry, breaks
+from the people. Mack has missed his direction, and the great hammer,
+weighted with the potentialities of death, is describing a parabola high
+over the heads of the crowding, shrieking, scattering people.
+
+“Oh, my God! My God! Oh, my God! My God!” With his hands covering his
+eyes the big man is swaying from side to side like a mighty tree before
+a tempest. Cameron and Ross both spring to him. On the hillsides men
+stand rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and faint. One ghastly moment
+of suspense, and then a horrid sickening thud; one more agonising second
+of silence, and then from a score of throats rises a cry:
+
+“It's all right! All right! No one hurt!”
+
+From five hundred throats breaks a weird unearthly mingling of strange
+sounds; cheers and cries, shouts and sobs, prayers and oaths. In the
+midst of it all Mack sinks to his knees, with hands outstretched to
+heaven.
+
+“Great God, I thank Thee! I thank Thee!” he cries brokenly, the tears
+streaming down his ghastly face. Then, falling forward upon his hands,
+he steadies himself while great sobs come heaving from his mighty chest.
+Cameron and Ross, still upholding him, through the crowd a man comes
+pushing his way, hurling men and women right and left.
+
+“Back, people! And be still.” It is the minister, Alexander Munro. “Be
+still! It is a great deliverance that God has wrought! Peace, woman! God
+is near! Let us pray.”
+
+Instantly all noises are hushed, hats come off, and all up the sloping
+hills men and women fall to their knees, or remain standing with heads
+bowed, while the minister, upright beside the kneeling man, spreads his
+hands towards heaven and prays in a voice steady, strong, thrilling:
+
+“Almighty God, great and wonderful in Thy ways, merciful and gracious
+in Thy providence, Thou hast wrought a great deliverance before our eyes
+this day. All power is in Thy hands. All forces move at Thy command.
+Thine hand it is that guided this dread hammer harmless to its own
+place, saving the people from death. It is ever thus, Father, for Thou
+art Love. We lift to Thee our hearts' praise. May we walk softly before
+Thee this day and alway. Amen!”
+
+“Amen! Amen!” On every hand and up the hillsides rises the fervent
+solemn attestation.
+
+“Rise, Mr. Murray!” says the minister in a loud and solemn voice, giving
+Mack his hand. “God has been gracious to you this day. See that you do
+not forget.”
+
+“He has that! He has that!” sobs Mack. “And God forgive me if I ever
+forget.” And, suddenly pushing from him the many hands stretched out
+towards him, he stumbles his way through the crowd, led off by his two
+friends towards the tent.
+
+“Hold on there a minute! Let us get this measurement first.” It was the
+matter-of-fact, cheery voice of Fatty Freeman. “If I am not mistaken we
+have a great throw to measure.”
+
+“Quite right, Mr. Freeman,” said the minister. “Let us get the
+measurement and let not the day be spoiled.”
+
+“Here, you people, don't stand there gawking like a lot of dotty
+chumps!” cried the secretary, striving to whip them out of the mood of
+horror into which they had fallen. “Get a move on! Give the judges a
+chance! What is it, doctor?”
+
+The judges were consulting. At length the decision was announced.
+
+“One hundred and twenty-nine seven.”
+
+“Hooray!” yelled Fatty, flinging his straw hat high. “One hundred and
+twenty-nine seven! It is a world throw! Why don't you yell, you people?
+Don't you know that you have a world-beater among you? Yell! Yell!”
+
+“Three cheers for Mack Murray!” called out the Reverend Harper Freeman
+from the platform, swinging his great black beaver hat over his head.
+
+It was what the people wanted. Again, and again, and yet again the crowd
+exhausted its pent-up emotions in frantic cheers. The clouds of gloom
+were rolled back, the sun was shining bright again, and with fresh zest
+the people turned to the enjoyment of the rest of the programme.
+
+“Thank you, Sir!” said Fatty amid the uproar, gripping the hand of Mr.
+Munro. “You have saved the day for us. We were all going to smash, but
+you pulled us out.”
+
+Meantime in the tent Duncan Ross was discoursing to his friends.
+
+“Man, Mack! Yon's a mighty throw! Do you know it iss within five feet
+of my own record and within ten of Big Rory's? Then,” he said solemnly,
+“you are in the world's first class to-day, my boy, and you are just
+beginning.”
+
+“I have just quit!” said Mack.
+
+“Whist, lad! Thiss iss not the day for saying anything about it. We
+will wait a wee and to-day we will just be thankful.” And with that they
+turned to other things.
+
+They were still in the dressing tent when the secretary thrust his
+cheery face under the flap.
+
+“I say, boys! Are you ready? Cameron, we want you on the pipes.”
+
+“Harp!” said Mack. “I am going home. I am quite useless.”
+
+“And me, too,” said Cameron. “I shall go with you, Mack.”
+
+“What?” cried Fatty in consternation. “Look here, boys! Is this a square
+deal? God knows I am nearly all in myself. I've had enough to keep this
+thing from going to pieces. Don't you go back on me now!”
+
+“That is so!” said Mack slowly. “Cameron, you must stay. You are needed.
+I will spoil things more by staying than by going. I would be forever
+seeing that hammer crushing down--” He covered his face with his hands
+and shuddered.
+
+“All right, Mack! I will stay,” said Cameron. “But what about you?”
+
+“Oh,” said Black Duncan, “Mack and I will walk about and have a smoke
+for a little.”
+
+“Thanks, boys, you are the stuff!” said Fatty fervently. “Once more you
+have saved the day. Come then, Cameron! Get your pipes. Old Sutherland
+is waiting for you.”
+
+But before he set off Mack called Cameron to him.
+
+“You will see Isa,” he said, “and tell her why I could not stay. And you
+will take her home.” His face was still pallid, his voice unsteady.
+
+“I will take care of her, Mack, never fear. But could you not remain? It
+might help you.”
+
+But Mack only shook his head. His fervent Highland soul had too recently
+passed through the valley of death and its shadows were still upon him.
+
+Four hours later Fatty looked in upon Mack at his own home. He found him
+sitting in the moonlight in the open door of the big new barn, with his
+new-made friend, Duncan Ross, at one door post and old Piper Sutherland
+at the other, while up and down the floor in the shadow within Cameron
+marched, droning the wild melody of the “Maccrimmon Lament.” Mournful
+and weird it sounded through the gloom, but upon the hearts of these
+Highlanders it fell like a soothing balm. With a wave of his hand Mack
+indicated a seat, which Fatty took without a word. Irrepressible though
+he was, he had all the instincts of a true gentleman. He knew it was the
+time for silence, and silent he stood till the Lament had run through
+its “doubling” and its “trebling,” ending with the simple stately
+movement of its original theme. To Fatty it was a mere mad and
+unmelodious noise, but, reading the faces of the three men before him in
+the moonlight, he had sense enough to recognise his own limitations.
+
+At length the Lament was finished and Cameron came forward into the
+light.
+
+“Ah! That iss good for the soul,” said old piper Sutherland. “Do you
+know what your pipes have been saying to me in yon Lament?
+
+          'Yea, though I walk through Death's dark vale,
+               Yet will I fear none ill;
+           For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
+               And staff me comfort still.'
+
+And we have been in the valley thiss day.”
+
+Mack rose to his feet.
+
+“I could not have said it myself, but, as true as death, that is the
+word for me.”
+
+“Well,” said Fatty, rising briskly, “I guess you are all right, Mack. I
+confess I was a bit anxious about you, but--”
+
+“There is no need,” said Mack gravely. “I can sleep now.”
+
+“Good-night, then,” replied Fatty, turning to go. “Cameron, I owe you a
+whole lot. I won't forget it.” He set his hat upon the back of his head,
+sticking his hands into his pockets and surveying the group before him.
+“Say! You Highlanders are a great bunch. I do not pretend to understand
+you, but I want to say that between you you have saved the day.” And
+with that the cheery, frisky, irrepressible, but kindly little man faded
+into the moonlight and was gone.
+
+For the fourth time the day had been saved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+
+
+It was a Sabbath day in late August, and in no month of the year does
+a Sabbath day so chime with the time. For the Sabbath day is a day for
+rest and holy thought, and the late August is the rest time of the year,
+when the woods and fields are all asleep in a slumberous blue haze; the
+sacred time, too, for in late August old Mother Earth is breathing her
+holiest aspirations heavenward, having made offering of her best in the
+full fruitage of the year. Hence a Sabbath day in late August chimes
+marvellously well with the time.
+
+And this particular Sabbath day was perfect of its kind, a dreamy,
+drowsy day, a day when genial suns and hazy cool airs mingle in
+excellent harmony, and the tired worker, freed from his week's toil,
+basks and stretches, yawns and revels in rest under the orchard trees;
+unless, indeed, he goes to morning church. And to morning church Cameron
+went as a rule, but to-day, owing to a dull ache in his head and a
+general sense of languor pervading his limbs, he had chosen instead, as
+likely to be more healing to his aching head and his languid limbs, the
+genial sun, tempered with cool and lazy airs under the orchard trees.
+And hence he lay watching the democrat down the lane driven off to
+church by Perkins, with Mandy beside him in the front seat, the seat
+of authority and of activity, and Mr. Haley alone in the back seat, the
+seat of honour and of retirement. Mrs. Haley was too overborne by the
+heat and rush of the busy week to adventure the heat and dust of the
+road, and to sustain the somewhat strenuous discourse of the Reverend
+Harper Freeman, to whose flock the Haleys belonged. This, however, was
+not Mrs. Haley's invariable custom. In the cooler weather it was her
+habit to drive on a Sunday morning to church, sitting in the back seat
+beside her husband, with Tim and Mandy occupying the front seat beside
+the hired man, but during the heat and hurry of the harvest time she
+would take advantage of the quietness of the house and of the two or
+three hours' respite from the burden of household duties to make up
+arrears of sleep accumulated during the preceding week, salving her
+conscience, for she had a conscience in the matter, with a promise that
+she might go in the evening when it was cooler and when she was more
+rested. This promise, however, having served its turn, was never
+fulfilled, for by the evening the wheels of household toil began once
+more to turn, and Mrs. Haley found it easier to worship vicariously,
+sending Mandy and Tim to the evening service. And to this service the
+young people were by no means loath to go, for it was held on fair
+evenings in MacBurney's woods, two miles away by the road, one mile by
+the path through the woods. On occasion Perkins would hitch up in the
+single buggy Dexter, the fiery young colt, too fiery for any other to
+drive, and, as a special attention to his employer's daughter, would
+drive her to the service. But since the coming of Cameron, Mandy had
+allowed this custom to fall into disuse, at first somewhat to Perkins'
+relief, for the colt was restless and fretted against the tie rein;
+and, besides, Perkins was not as yet quite prepared to acknowledge any
+special relationship between himself and the young lady in question
+before the assembled congregation, preferring to regard himself and
+to be regarded by others as a free lance. Later, however, as Mandy's
+preference for a walk through the woods became more marked, Perkins,
+much to his disgust, found himself reduced to the attitude of a
+suppliant, urging the superior attraction of a swift drive behind
+Dexter as against a weary walk to the service. Mandy, however, with
+the directness of her simple nature, had no compunction in frankly
+maintaining her preference for a walk with Tim and Cameron through the
+woods; indeed, more than once she allowed Perkins to drive off with his
+fiery colt, alone in his glory.
+
+But this Sabbath morning, as Cameron lay under the orchard trees, he was
+firmly resolved that he would give the whole day to the nursing of the
+ache in his head and the painful languor in his body. And so lying he
+allowed his mind to wander uncontrolled over the happenings of the past
+months, troubled by a lazy consciousness of a sore spot somewhere in his
+life. Gradually there grew into clearness the realisation of the cause
+of this sore spot.
+
+“What is the matter with Perkins?” he asked of Tim, who had declined
+to go to church, and who had strolled into the orchard to be near his
+friend.
+
+“What is the matter with Perkins?” Cameron asked a second time, for Tim
+was apparently too much engaged with a late harvest apple to answer.
+
+“How?” said the boy at length.
+
+“He is so infernally grumpy with me.”
+
+“Grumpy? He's sore, I guess.”
+
+“Sore?”
+
+“You bet! Ever since I beat him in the turnips that day.”
+
+“Ever since YOU beat him?” asked Cameron in amazement. “Why should he be
+sore against me?”
+
+“He knows it was you done it,” said Tim.
+
+“Nonsense, Tim! Besides, Perkins isn't a baby. He surely doesn't hold
+that against me.”
+
+“Huh, huh,” said Tim, “everybody's pokin' fun at him, and he hates that,
+and ever since the picnic, too, he hates you.”
+
+“But why in the world?”
+
+“Oh, shucks!” said Tim, impatient at Cameron's density. “I guess you
+know all right.”
+
+“Know? Not I!”
+
+“Git out?”
+
+“Honor bright, Tim,” replied Cameron, sitting up. “Now, honestly, tell
+me, Tim, why in the world Perkins should hate me.”
+
+“You put his nose out of joint, I guess,” said Tim with a grin.
+
+“Oh, rot, Tim! How?”
+
+“Every how,” said Tim, proceeding to elaborate. “First when you came
+here you were no good--I mean--” Tim checked himself hastily.
+
+“I know what you mean, Tim. Go on. You are quite right. I couldn't do
+anything on the farm.”
+
+“Now,” continued Tim, “you can do anything jist as good as him--except
+bindin', of course. He's a terror at bindin', but at pitchin' and
+shockin' and loadin' you're jist as good.”
+
+“But, Tim, that's all nonsense. Perkins isn't such a fool as to hate me
+because I can keep up my end.”
+
+“He don't like you,” said Tim stubbornly.
+
+“But why? Why in the name of common sense?”
+
+“Well,” said Tim, summing up the situation, “before you come he used to
+be the hull thing. Now he's got to play second fiddle.”
+
+But Cameron remained unenlightened.
+
+“Oh, pshaw!” continued Tim, making further concessions to his
+friend's stupidity. “At the dances, at the raisin's, runnin',
+jumpin'--everythin'--Perkins used to be the King Bee. Now--” Tim's
+silence furnished an impressive close to the contrast. “Why! They all
+think you are just fine!” said Tim, with a sudden burst of confidence.
+
+“They?”
+
+“All the boys. Yes, and the girls, too,” said Tim, allowing his solemn
+face the unusual luxury of a smile.
+
+“The girls?”
+
+“Aw, yeh know well enough--the Murray girls, and the MacKenzies, and the
+hull lot of them. And then--and then--there's Mandy, too.” Here Tim shot
+a keen glance at his friend, who now sat leaning against the trunk of an
+apple tree with his eyes closed.
+
+“Now, Tim, you are a shrewd little chap”--here Cameron sat upright--“but
+how do you know about the girls, and what is this you say about Mandy?
+Mandy is good to me--very kind and all that, but--”
+
+“She used to like Perkins pretty well,” said Tim, with a kind of
+hesitating shyness.
+
+“And Perkins?”
+
+“Oh, he thought he jist owned her. Guess he ain't so sure now,” added
+Tim. “I guess you've changed Mandy all right.”
+
+It was the one thing Cameron hated to hear, but he made light of it.
+
+“Oh, nonsense!” he exclaimed. “But if I did I would be mighty glad of
+it. Mandy is too good for a man like Perkins. Why, he isn't safe.”
+
+“He's a terror,” replied Tim seriously. “They are all scairt of him.
+He's a terror to fight. Why, at MacKenzie's raisin' last year he jist
+went round foamin' like an old boar and nobody dast say a word to him.
+Even Mack Murray was scairt to touch him. When he gets like that he
+ain't afraid of nothin' and he's awful quick and strong.”
+
+Tim proceeded to enlarge upon this theme, which apparently fascinated
+him, with tales of Perkins' prowess in rough-and-tumble fighting. But
+Cameron had lost interest and was lying down again with his eyes closed.
+
+“Well,” he said, when Tim had finished his recital, “if he is that kind
+of a man Mandy should have nothing to do with him.”
+
+But Tim was troubled.
+
+“Dad likes him,” he said gloomily. “He is a good hand. And ma likes him,
+too. He taffies her up.”
+
+“And Mandy?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“I don't know,” said Tim, still more gloomy. “I guess he kind of makes
+her. I'd--I'd jist like to take a lump out of him.” Tim's eyes blazed
+into a sudden fire. “He runs things on this farm altogether too much.”
+
+“Buck up then, Tim, and beat him,” said Cameron, dismissing the subject.
+“And now I must have some sleep. I have got an awful head on.”
+
+Tim was quick enough to understand the hint, but still he hovered about.
+
+“Say, I'm awful sorry,” he said. “Can't I git somethin'? You didn't eat
+no breakfast.”
+
+“Oh, all I want is sleep, Tim. I will be all right tomorrow,” replied
+Cameron, touched by the tone of sympathy in Tim's voice. “You are a fine
+little chap. Trot along and let me sleep.”
+
+But no sleep came to Cameron, partly because of the hammer knocking in
+his head, but chiefly because of the thoughts set going by Tim. Cameron
+was not abnormally egotistical, but he was delightedly aware of the new
+place he held in the community ever since the now famous Dominion Day
+picnic, and, now that the harvest rush had somewhat slackened, social
+engagements had begun to crowd upon him. Dances and frolics, coon hunts
+and raisings were becoming the vogue throughout the community, and no
+social function was complete without the presence of Cameron. But
+this sudden popularity had its embarrassments, and among them, and
+threatening to become annoying, was the hostility of Perkins, veiled as
+yet, but none the less real. Moreover, behind Perkins stood a band of
+young fellows of whom he was the recognised leader and over whom his
+ability in the various arts and crafts of the farm, his physical prowess
+in sports, his gay, cheery manner, and, it must be said, the reputation
+he bore for a certain fierce brute courage in rough-and-tumble fighting,
+gave him a sort of ascendency.
+
+But Perkins' attitude towards him did not after all cause Cameron much
+concern. There was another and more annoying cause of embarrassment, and
+that was Mandy. Tim's words kept reiterating themselves in his brain,
+“You've changed Mandy all right.” Over this declaration of Tim's,
+Cameron proceeded to argue with himself. He sat bolt upright that he
+might face himself on the matter.
+
+“Now, then,” he said to himself, “let's have this thing out.”
+
+“Most willingly. This girl was on the way to engagement to this young
+man Perkins. You come on the scene. Everything is changed.”
+
+“Well! What of it? It's a mighty good thing for her.”
+
+“But you are the cause of it.”
+
+“The occasion, rather.”
+
+“No, the cause. You have attracted her to you.”
+
+“I can't help that. Besides, it is a mere passing whim. She'll get over
+all that?” And Cameron laughed scornfully in his own face.
+
+“Do you know that? And how do you know it? Tim thinks differently.”
+
+“Oh, confound it all! I see that I shall have to get out of here.”
+
+“A wise decision truly, and the sooner the better. Do you propose to go
+at once?”
+
+“At once? Well, I should like to spend the winter here. I have made a
+number of friends and life is beginning to be pleasant.”
+
+“Exactly! It suits your convenience, but how about Mandy?”
+
+“Oh, rubbish! Must I be governed by the fancies of that silly girl?
+Besides, the whole thing is absurdly ridiculous.”
+
+“But facts are stubborn, and anyone can see that the girl is--”
+
+“Hang it all! I'll go at the end of the month.”
+
+“Very well. And in the leave-taking--?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“It is pleasant to be appreciated and to carry away with one memories, I
+will not say tender, but appreciative.”
+
+“I can't act like a boor. I must be decent to the girl. Besides, she
+isn't altogether a fool.”
+
+“No, but very crude, very primitive, very passionate, and therefore very
+defenseless.”
+
+“All right, I shall simply shake hands and go.”
+
+So, with the consequent sense of relief that high resolve always brings,
+Cameron lay down again and fell into slumber and dreams of home.
+
+From these dreams of home Mandy recalled him with a summons to dinner.
+As his eye, still filled with the vision of his dreams, fell upon her
+in all the gorgeous splendour of her Sunday dress, he was conscious of
+a strong sense of repulsion. How coarse, how crude, how vulgar she
+appeared, how horribly out of keeping with those scenes through which he
+had just been wandering in his dreams.
+
+“I want no dinner, Mandy,” he said shortly. “I have a bad head and I am
+not hungry.”
+
+“No dinner?” That a man should not want dinner was to Mandy quite
+inexplicable, unless, indeed, he were ill.
+
+“Are you sick?” she cried in quick alarm.
+
+“No, I have a headache. It will pass away,” said Cameron, turning over
+on his side. Still Mandy lingered.
+
+“Let me bring you a nice piece of pie and a cup of tea.”
+
+Cameron shuddered.
+
+“No,” he said, “bring me nothing. I merely wish to sleep.”
+
+But Mandy refused to be driven away.
+
+“Say, I'm awful sorry. I know you're sick.”
+
+“Nonsense!” said Cameron, impatiently, waiting for her to be gone. Still
+Mandy hesitated.
+
+“I'm awful sorry,” she said again, and her voice, deep, tender,
+full-toned, revealed her emotion.
+
+Cameron turned impatiently towards her.
+
+“Look here, Mandy! There's nothing wrong with me. I only want a little
+sleep. I shall be all right to-morrow.”
+
+But Mandy's fears were not to be allayed.
+
+“Say,” she cried, “you look awful bad.”
+
+“Oh, get out, Mandy! Go and get your dinner. Don't mind me.” Cameron's
+tone was decidedly cross.
+
+Without further remonstrance Mandy turned silently away, but before she
+turned Cameron caught the gleam of tears in the great blue eyes. A swift
+compunction seized him.
+
+“I say, Mandy, I don't want to be rude, but--”
+
+“Rude?” cried the girl. “You? You couldn't be. You are always good--to
+me--and--I--don't--know--” Here her voice broke.
+
+“Oh, come, Mandy, get away to dinner. You are a good girl. Now leave me
+alone.”
+
+The kindness in his voice quite broke down Mandy's all too slight
+control. She turned away, audibly sniffling, with her apron to her eyes,
+leaving Cameron in a state of wrathful perplexity.
+
+“Oh, confound it all!” he groaned to himself. “This is a rotten go. By
+Jove! This means the West for me. The West! After all, that's the place.
+Here there is no chance anyway. Why did I not go sooner?”
+
+He rose from the grass, shivering with a sudden chill, went to his bed
+in the hay mow, and, covering himself with Tim's blankets and his own,
+fell again into sleep. Here, late in the afternoon, Tim found him and
+called him to supper.
+
+With Mandy's watchful eye upon him he went through the form of eating,
+but Mandy was not to be deceived.
+
+“You ain't eatin' nothin',” she said reproachfully as he rose from the
+table.
+
+“Enough for a man who is doing nothing,” replied Cameron. “What I want
+is exercise. I think I shall take a walk.”
+
+“Going to church?” she enquired, an eager light springing into her eye.
+
+“To church? I hadn't thought of it,” replied Cameron, but, catching
+the gleam of a smile on Perkins' face and noting the utterly woebegone
+expression on Mandy's, he added, “Well, I might as well walk to church
+as any place else. You are going, Tim?”
+
+“Huh huh!” replied Tim.
+
+“I am going to hitch up Deck, Mandy,” said Perkins.
+
+“Oh, I'm goin' to walk!” said Mandy, emphatically.
+
+“All right!” said Perkins. “Guess I'll walk too with the crowd.”
+
+“Don't mind me,” said Mandy.
+
+“I don't,” laughed Perkins, “you bet! Nor anybody else.”
+
+“And that's no lie!” sniffed Mandy, with a toss of her head.
+
+“Better drive to church, Mandy,” suggested her mother. “You know you're
+jist tired out and it will be late when you get started.”
+
+“Tired? Late?” cried Mandy, with alacrity. “I'll be through them dishes
+in a jiffy and be ready in no time. I like the walk through the woods.”
+
+“Depends on the company,” laughed Perkins again. “So do I. Guess we'll
+all go together.”
+
+True to her promise, Mandy was ready within half an hour. Cameron
+shuddered as he beheld the bewildering variety of colour in her attire
+and the still more bewildering arrangement of hat and hair.
+
+“You're good and gay, Mandy,” said Perkins. “What's the killing?”
+
+Mandy made no reply save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as she set
+off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim bringing up the
+rear.
+
+The lane was a grassy sward, cut with two wagon-wheel tracks, and with
+a picturesque snake fence on either side. Beyond the fences lay the
+fields, some of them with stubble raked clean, the next year's clover
+showing green above the yellow, some with the grain standing still in
+the shock, and some with the crop, the late oats for instance, still
+uncut, but ready for the reaper. The turnip field was splendidly and
+luxuriantly green with never a sign of the brown earth. The hay meadow,
+too, was green and purple with the second growth of clover.
+
+So down the lane and between the shorn fields, yellow and green, between
+the clover fields and the turnips, they walked in silence, for the
+spell of the Sabbath evening lay upon the sunny fields, barred with the
+shadows from the trees that grew along the fence lines everywhere.
+At the “slashing” the wagon ruts faded out and the road narrowed to a
+single cow path, winding its way between stumps and round log piles,
+half hidden by a luxuriant growth of foxglove and fireweed and asters,
+and everywhere the glorious goldenrod. Then through the bars the path
+led into the woods, a noble remnant of the beech and elm and maple
+forest from which the farm had been cut some sixty years before. Cool
+and shadowy they stood, and shot through with bright shafts of gold from
+the westering sun, full of mysterious silence except for the twittering
+of the sleepy birds or for the remonstrant call of the sentinel crow
+from his watch tower on the dead top of a great elm. Deeper into the
+shade the path ran until in the gloom it faded almost out of sight.
+
+Soothed by the cool shade, Cameron loitered along the path, pausing to
+learn of Tim the names of plants and trees as he went.
+
+“Ain't yeh never comin'?” called Mandy from the gloom far in front.
+
+“What's all the rush?” replied Tim, impatiently, who loved nothing
+better than a quiet walk with Cameron through the woods.
+
+“Rush? We'll be late, and I hate walkin' up before the hull crowd. Come
+on!” cried his sister in impatient tone.
+
+“All right, Mandy, we're nearly through the woods. I begin to see
+the clearing yonder,” said Cameron, pointing to where the light was
+beginning to show through the tree tops before them.
+
+But they were late enough, and Mandy was glad of the cover of the
+opening hymn to allow her to find her way to a group of her girl
+friends, the males of the party taking shelter with a neighbouring group
+of their own sex near by.
+
+Upon the sloping sides of the grassy hills and under the beech and
+maple trees, the vanguard of the retreating woods, sat the congregation,
+facing the preacher, who stood on the grassy level below. Behind them
+was the solid wall of thick woods, over them time spreading boughs, and
+far above the trees the blue summer sky, all the bluer for the little
+white clouds that sailed serene like ships upon a sea. At their feet lay
+the open country, checkered by the snake fences into fields of yellow,
+green, and brown, and rolling away to meet the woods at the horizon.
+
+The Sabbath rest filled the sweet air, breathed from the shady woods,
+rested upon the checkered fields, and lifted with the hymn to the blue
+heaven above. A stately cathedral it was, this place of worship, filled
+with the incense of flowers and fields, arched by the high dome of
+heaven, and lighted by the glory of the setting sun.
+
+Relieved by the walk for a time from the ache in his head, Cameron
+surrendered himself to the mysterious influences of the place and
+the hour. He let his eyes wander over the fields below him to the far
+horizon, and beyond--beyond the woods, beyond the intervening leagues
+of land and sea--and was again gazing upon the sunlit loveliness of the
+Cuagh Oir. The Glen was abrim with golden light this summer evening,
+the purple was on the hills and the little loch gleamed sapphire at the
+bottom.
+
+The preacher was reading his text.
+
+“Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to every
+man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey,”
+ and so on to the end of that marvellously wise tale, wise with the
+wisdom of God, confirmed by the wisdom of human experience.
+
+The Reverend Harper Freeman's voice could hardly, even by courtesy, be
+called musical; in fact, it was harsh and strident; but this evening
+the hills, and the trees, and the wide open spaces, Nature's mighty
+modulator, subdued the harshness, so that the voice rolled up to the
+people clear, full, and sonorous. Nor was the preacher possessed of
+great learning nor endued with the gift of eloquence. He had, however, a
+shrewd knowledge of his people and of their ways and of their needs, and
+he had a kindly heart, and, more than all, he had the preacher's gift,
+the divine capacity for taking fire.
+
+For a time his words fell unheeded upon Cameron's outer ear.
+
+“To every man his own endowments, some great, some small, but, mark you,
+no man left quite poverty-stricken. God gives every man his chance. No
+man can look God in the face, not one of you here can say that you have
+had no chance.”
+
+Cameron's vagrant mind, suddenly recalled, responded with a quick
+assent. Opportunity? Endowment? Yes, surely. His mind flashed back over
+the years of his education at the Academy and the University, long lazy
+years. How little he had made of them! Others had turned them into the
+gold of success. He wondered how old Dunn was getting on, and Linklater,
+and little Martin. How far away seemed those days, and yet only some
+four or five months separated him from them.
+
+“One was a failure, a dead, flat failure,” continued the preacher.
+“Not so much a wicked man, no murderer, no drunkard, no gambler, but a
+miserable failure. Poor fellow! At the end of life a wretched bankrupt,
+losing even his original endowment. How would you like to come home
+after ten, twenty, thirty years of experiment with life and confess to
+your father that you were dead broke and no good?”
+
+Again Cameron's mind came back from its wandering with a start. Go back
+to his father a failure! He drew his lip down hard over his teeth. Not
+while he lived! And yet, what was there in prospect for him? His whole
+soul revolted against the dreary monotony and the narrowness of his
+present life, and yet, what other path lay open? Cameron went straying
+in fancy over the past, or in excursions into the future, while,
+parallel with his rambling, the sermon continued to make its way through
+its various heads and particulars.
+
+“Why?” The voice of the preacher rose clear, dominant, arresting. “Why
+did he fail so abjectly, so meanly, so despicably? For there is no
+excuse for a failure. Listen! No man NEED fail. A man who is a failure
+is a mean, selfish, lazy chump.” Mr. Freeman was colloquial, if
+anything. “Some men pity him. I don't. I have no use for him, and he is
+the one thing in all the world that God himself has no use for.”
+
+Again Cameron's mind was jerked back as a runaway horse by a rein. So
+far his life had been a failure. Was there then no excuse for failure?
+What of his upbringing, his education, his environment? He had been
+indulging the habit during these last weeks of shifting responsibility
+from himself for what he had become.
+
+“What was the cause of this young man's failure?” reiterated the
+preacher. The preacher had a wholesome belief in the value of
+reiteration. He had a habit of rubbing in his points. “He blamed the
+boss. Listen to his impudence! 'I knew thee to be a hard man.' He blamed
+his own temperament and disposition. 'I was afraid.' But the boss brings
+him up sharp and short. 'Quit lying!' he said. 'I'll tell you what's
+wrong with you. You've got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're
+too lazy to live. Here, take that money from him and give it to the man
+that can do most with it, and take this useless loafer out of my sight.'
+And served him right, too, say I, impudent, lazy liar.”
+
+Cameron found his mind rising in wrathful defense of the unhappy
+wretched failure in the story. But the preacher was utterly relentless
+and proceeded to enlarge upon the character of the unhappy wretch.
+
+“Impudent! The way to tell an impudent man is to let him talk. Now
+listen to this man cheek the boss! 'I knew you,' he said. 'You skin
+everybody in sight.' I have always noticed,” remarked the preacher, with
+a twinkle in his eye, “that the hired man who can't keep up his end is
+the kind that cheeks the boss. And so it is with life. Why, some men
+would cheek Almighty God. They turn right round and face the other way
+when God is explaining things to them, when He is persuading them, when
+He is trying to help them. Then they glance back over their shoulders
+and say, 'Aw, gwan! I know better than you.' Think of the impudence of
+them! That's what many a man does with God. With GOD, mind you! GOD!
+Your Father in heaven, your Brother, your Saviour, God as you know him
+in the Man of Galilee, the Man you always see with the sick and the
+outcast and the broken-hearted. It is this God that owns you and all
+you've got--be honest and say so. You must begin by getting right with
+God.”
+
+“God!” Once more Cameron went wandering back into the far away days
+of childhood. God was very near then, and very friendly. How well he
+remembered when his mother had tucked him in at night and had kissed him
+and had put out the light. He never felt alone and afraid, for she left
+him, so she said, with God. It was God who took his mother's place, near
+to his bedside. In those days God seemed very near and very kind. He
+remembered his mother's look one day when he declared to her that he
+could hear God breathing just beside him in the dark. How remote
+God seemed to-day and how shadowy, and, yes, he had to confess it,
+unfriendly. He heard no more of the sermon. With a curious ache in his
+heart he allowed his mind to dwell amid those happy, happy memories when
+his mother and God were the nearest and dearest to him of all he knew.
+It may have been the ache in his head or the oppressive languor that
+seemed to possess his body, but throughout the prayer that followed
+the sermon he was conscious chiefly of a great longing for his mother's
+touch upon his head, and with that a longing for his boyhood's sense of
+the friendly God in his heart.
+
+And so as the preacher led them up to God in prayer, Cameron bowed his
+head with the others, thankful that he could still believe that, though
+clouds and darkness might be about Him, God was not beyond the reach of
+the soul's cry nor quite unmoved by human need. And for the first time
+for years he sent forth as a little child his cry of need, “God help me!
+God help me!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CHIVAREE
+
+
+There was still light enough to see. The last hymn was announced.
+Cameron was conscious of a deep, poignant emotion. He glanced swiftly
+about him. The eyes of all were upon the preacher's face while he read
+in slow sonorous tones the words of the old Methodist hymn:
+
+          “Come, Thou Fount of every blessing!
+             Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;”
+
+all except the group of young men of whom Perkins was the centre, who,
+by means of the saccharine medium known as conversation lozenges, were
+seeking to divert the attention of the band of young girls sitting
+before them. Among these sat Mandy. As his eye rested upon the billowy
+outlines of her figure, struggling with the limitations of her white
+blouse, tricked out with pink ribbons, he was conscious of a wave of
+mingled pity and disgust. Dull, stupid, and vulgar she looked. It was at
+her that Perkins was flipping his conversation lozenges. One fell
+upon her hymn book. With a start she glanced about. Not an eye except
+Cameron's was turned her way. With a smile and a blush that burned deep
+under the dull tan of her neck and cheek she took the lozenge, read its
+inscription, burning a deeper red. The words which she had read she
+took as Cameron's. She turned her eyes full upon his face. The light
+of tremulous joy in their lovely depths startled and thrilled him.
+A snicker from the group of young men behind roused in him a deep
+indignation. They were taking their coarse fun out of this simple-minded
+girl. Cameron's furious glance at them appeared only to increase their
+amusement. It did not lessen Cameron's embarrassment and rage that now
+and then during the reading of the hymn Mandy's eyes were turned upon
+him as if with new understanding. Enraged with himself, and more with
+the group of hoodlums behind him, Cameron stood for the closing hymn
+with his arms folded across his breast. At the second verse a hand
+touched his arm. It was Mandy offering him her book. Once more a snicker
+from the group of delighted observers behind him stirred his indignation
+on behalf of this awkward and untutored girl. He forced himself to
+listen to the words of the third verse, which rose clear and sonorous in
+the preacher's voice:
+
+          “Here I raise my Ebenezer,
+             Hither by Thy help I'm come;
+           And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
+             Safely to arrive at home.”
+
+The serene assurance of the old Methodist hymn rose triumphant in the
+singing, an assurance born of an experience of past conflict ending
+in triumph. That note of high and serene confidence conjured up with
+a flash of memory his mother's face. That was her characteristic, a
+serene, undismayed courage. In the darkest hours that steady flame of
+courage never died down.
+
+But once more he was recalled to the service of the hour by a voice,
+rich, full, low, yet of wonderful power, singing the old words. It took
+him a moment or two to discover that it was Mandy singing beside him.
+Her face was turned from him and upwards towards the trees above her,
+through the network of whose leaves the stars were beginning to shine.
+Amazed, enthralled, he listened to the flowing melody of her voice.
+It was like the song of a brook running deep in the forest shade,
+full-toned yet soft, quiet yet thrilling. She seemed to have forgotten
+her surroundings. Her soul was holding converse with the Eternal. He
+lost sight of the coarse and fleshly habiliments in the glimpse he
+caught of the soul that lived within, pure, it seemed to him, tender,
+and good. His heart went out to the girl in a new pity. Before the hymn
+was done she turned her face towards him, and, whether it was the magic
+of her voice, or the glorious splendour of her eyes, or the mystic touch
+of the fast darkening night, her face seemed to have lost much of its
+coarseness and all of its stupidity.
+
+As the congregation dispersed, Cameron, in silence, and with the spell
+of her voice still upon him, walked quietly beside Mandy towards the gap
+in the fence leading to the high road. Behind him came Perkins with his
+group of friends, chaffing with each other and with the girls walking
+in front of them. As Cameron was stepping over the rails where the
+fence had been let down, one of the young men following stumbled heavily
+against him, nearly throwing him down, and before he could recover
+himself Perkins had taken his place by Mandy's side and seized her arm.
+There was a general laugh at what was considered a perfectly fair and
+not unusual piece of jockeying in the squiring of young damsels. The
+proper procedure in such a case was that the discomfited cavalier should
+bide his time and serve a like turn upon his rival, the young lady
+meanwhile maintaining an attitude purely passive. But Mandy was not so
+minded. Releasing herself from Perkins' grasp, she turned upon the group
+of young men following, exclaiming angrily, “You ought to be ashamed
+of yourself, Sam Sailor!” Then, moving to Cameron's side, she said in a
+clear, distinct voice:
+
+“Mr. Cameron, would you please take my book for me?”
+
+“Come on, boys!” said Perkins, with his never failing laugh. “I guess
+we're not in this.”
+
+“Take your medicine, Perkins,” laughed one of his friends.
+
+“Yes, I'll take it all right,” replied Perkins. But the laugh could not
+conceal the shake of passion in his voice. “It will work, too, you bet!”
+
+So saying, he strode off into the gathering gloom followed by his
+friends.
+
+“Come along, Mr. Cameron,” said Mandy with a silly giggle. “I guess we
+don't need them fellows. They can't fool us, can they?”
+
+Her manner, her speech, her laugh rudely dissipated all Cameron's new
+feeling towards her. The whole episode filled him only with disgust and
+annoyance.
+
+“Come, then,” he said, almost roughly. “We shall need to hurry, for
+there is a storm coming up.”
+
+Mandy glanced at the gathering clouds.
+
+“My goodness!” she cried; “it's comin' up fast. My! I hate to git my
+clothes wet.” And off she set at a rapid pace, keeping abreast of
+her companion and making gay but elephantine attempts at sprightly
+conversation. Before Cameron's unsympathetic silence, however, all her
+sprightly attempts came to abject failure.
+
+“What's the matter with you?” at length she asked. “Don't you want to
+see me home?”
+
+“What?” said Cameron, abruptly, for his thoughts were far away. “Oh,
+nonsense! Of course! Why not? But we shall certainly be caught in the
+storm. Let us hurry. Here, let me take your arm.”
+
+His manner was brusque, almost rude.
+
+“Oh, I guess I can get along,” replied Mandy, catching off her hat and
+gathering up her skirt over her shoulders, “but we'll have to hustle,
+for I'd hate to have you get, wet.” Her imperturbable good humour and
+her solicitude for him rebuked Cameron for his abruptness.
+
+“I hope you will not get wet,” he said.
+
+“Oh, don't you worry about me. I ain't salt nor sugar, but I forgot
+all about your bein' sick.” And with laboured breath poor Mandy hurried
+through the growing darkness with Cameron keeping close by her side.
+“We won't be long now,” she panted, as they turned from the side line
+towards their own gate.
+
+As if in reply to her words there sounded from behind the fence and
+close to their side a long loud howl. Cameron gave a start.
+
+“Great Caesar! What dog is that?” he exclaimed.
+
+“Oh,” said Mandy coolly, “guess it's MacKenzie's Carlo.”
+
+Immediately there rose from the fence on the other side an answering
+howl, followed by a full chorus of howls and yelps mingled with a
+bawling of calves and the ringing of cow bells, as if a dozen curs or
+more were in full cry after a herd of cattle. Cameron stood still in
+bewildered amazement.
+
+“What the deuce are they at?” he cried, peering through the darkness.
+
+“Huh!” grunted Mandy. “Them's curs all right, but they ain't much dog.
+You wait till I see them fellows. They'll pay for this, you bet!”
+
+“Do you mean to say these are not dogs?” cried Cameron, speaking in her
+ear, so great was the din.
+
+“Dogs?” answered Mandy with indignant scorn. “Naw! Just or'nary curs!
+Come along,” she cried, catching his arm, “let's hurry.”
+
+“Here!” he cried, suddenly wrenching himself free, “I am going to see
+into this.”
+
+“No, no!” cried Mandy, gripping his arm once more with her strong hands.
+“They will hurt you. Come on! We're just home. You can see them again.
+No, I won't let you go.”
+
+In vain he struggled. Her strong hands held him fast. Suddenly there was
+a succession of short, sharp barks. Immediately dead silence fell. Not a
+sound could be heard, not a shape seen.
+
+“Come out into the open, you cowardly curs!” shouted Cameron. “Come on!
+One, two, three at a time, if you dare!”
+
+But silence answered him.
+
+“Come,” said Mandy in a low voice, “let's hurry. It's goin' to rain.
+Come on! Come along!”
+
+Cameron stood irresolute. Then arose out of the black darkness a long
+quavering cat call. With a sudden dash Cameron sprang towards the fence.
+Instantly there was a sound of running feet through the plowed field on
+the other side, then silence.
+
+“Come back, you cowards!” raged Cameron. “Isn't there a man among you?”
+
+For answer a clod came hurtling through the dark and struck with a thud
+upon the fence. Immediately, as if at a signal, there fell about Cameron
+a perfect hail of clods and even stones.
+
+“Oh! Oh!” shrieked Mandy, rushing towards him and throwing herself
+between him and the falling missiles. “Come away! Come away! They'll
+just kill you.”
+
+For answer Cameron put his arms about her and drew her behind him,
+shielding her as best he could with his body.
+
+“Do you want to kill a woman?” he called aloud.
+
+At once the hail of clods ceased and, raging as he was, Mandy dragged
+him homeward. At the door of the house he made to turn back.
+
+“Not much, you don't,” said Mandy, stoutly, “or I go with you.”
+
+“Oh, all right,” said Cameron, “let them go. They are only a lot of
+curs, anyway.”
+
+For a few minutes they stood and talked in the kitchen, Cameron making
+light of the incident and making strenuous efforts to dissemble the rage
+that filled his soul. After a few minutes conversation Cameron announced
+his intention of going to bed, while Mandy passed upstairs. He left the
+house and stole down the lane toward the road. The throbbing pain in his
+head was forgotten in the blind rage that possessed him. He had only one
+longing, to stand within striking distance of the cowardly curs, only
+one fear, that they should escape him. Swiftly, silently, he stole down
+the lane, every nerve, every muscle tense as a steel spring. His throat
+was hot, his eyes so dazzled that he could scarcely see; his breath came
+in quick gasps; his hands were trembling as with a nervous chill. The
+storm had partially blown away. It had become so light that he could
+dimly discern a number of figures at the entrance to the lane. Having
+his quarry in sight, Cameron crouched in the fence corner, holding hard
+by the rail till he should become master of himself. He could hear their
+explosions of suppressed laughter. It was some minutes before he had
+himself in hand, then with a swift silent run he stood among them.
+So busy were they in recounting the various incidents in the recent
+“chivaree,” that before they were aware Cameron was upon them. At his
+approach the circle broke and scattered, some flying to the fence. But
+Perkins with some others stood their ground.
+
+“Hello, Cameron!” drawled Perkins. “Did you see our cows? I thought I
+heard some of them down the line.”
+
+For answer Cameron launched himself at him like a bolt from a bow. There
+was a single sharp crack and Perkins was literally lifted clear off his
+feet and hurled back upon the road, where he lay still. Fiercely Cameron
+faced round to the next man, but he gave back quickly. A third sprang
+to throw himself upon Cameron, but once more Cameron's hand shot forward
+and his assailant was hurled back heavily into the arms of his friends.
+Before Cameron could strike again a young giant, known as Sam Sailor,
+flung his arms about him, crying--
+
+“Tut-tut, young fellow, this won't do, you know. Can't you take a bit of
+fun?”
+
+For answer Cameron clinched him savagely, gripping him by the throat and
+planting two heavy blows upon his ribs.
+
+“Here--boys,” gasped the young fellow,
+“he's--chokin'--the--life--out--of me.”
+
+From all sides they threw themselves upon him and, striking, kicking,
+fighting furiously, Cameron went down under the struggling mass, his
+hand still gripping the throat it had seized.
+
+“Say! He's a regular bull-dog,” cried one. “Git hold of his legs and
+yank him off,” which, with shouts and laughter, they proceeded to do and
+piled themselves upon him, chanting the refrain--“More beef! More beef!”
+
+A few minutes more of frantic struggling and a wild agonised scream rose
+from beneath the mass of men.
+
+“Git off, boys! Git off!” roared the young giant. “I'm afraid he's
+hurt.”
+
+Flinging them off on either side, he stood up and waited for their
+victim to rise. But Cameron lay on his face, moaning and writhing, on
+the ground.
+
+“Say, boys,” said Sam, kneeling down beside him, “I'm afraid he's hurted
+bad.”
+
+In his writhing Cameron lifted one leg. It toppled over to one side.
+
+“Jumpin' Jeremiah!” said Sam in an awed voice. “His leg's broke! What in
+Sam Hill can we do?”
+
+As he spoke there was a sound of running feet, coming down the lane.
+The moon, shining through the breaking clouds, revealed a figure with
+floating garments rapidly approaching.
+
+“My cats!” cried Sam in a terrified voice. “It's Mandy.”
+
+Like leaves before a sudden gust of wind the group scattered and only
+Sam was left.
+
+“What--what are you doin'?” panted Mandy. “Where is he? Oh, is that
+him?” She flung herself down in the dust beside Cameron and turned him
+over. His face was white, his eyes glazed. He looked like death. “Oh!
+Oh!” she moaned. “Have they killed you? Have they killed you?” She
+gathered his head upon her knees, moaning like a wounded animal.
+
+“Good Lord, Mandy, don't go on like that!” cried Sam in a horrified
+voice. “It's only his leg broke.”
+
+Mandy laid his head gently down, then sprang to her feet.
+
+“Only his leg broke? Who done it? Who done it, tell me? Who done it?”
+ she panted, her voice rising with her gasping breath. “What coward done
+it? Was it you, Sam Sailor?”
+
+“Guess we're all in it,” said Sam stupidly. “It was jist a bit of fun,
+Mandy.”
+
+For answer she swung her heavy hand hard upon Sam's face.
+
+“Say, Mandy! Hold hard!” cried Sam, surprise and the weight of the blow
+almost knocking him off his feet.
+
+“You cowardly brute!” she gasped. “Get out of my sight. Oh, what shall
+we do?” She dropped on her knees and took Cameron's head once more in
+her arms. “What shall we do?”
+
+“Guess we'll have to git him in somewheres,” said Sam. “How can we carry
+him though? If we had some kind of a stretcher?”
+
+“Wait! I know,” cried Mandy, flying off up the lane.
+
+Before many minutes had passed she had returned, breathing hard.
+
+“It's--the---milkhouse--door,” she said. “I--guess that'll--do.”
+
+“That'll do all right, Mandy. Now I wish some of them fellers would
+come.”
+
+Sam pulled off his coat and made of it a pillow, then stood up looking
+for help. His eye fell upon the prostrate and senseless form of Perkins.
+
+“Say, what'll we do with him?” he said, pointing to the silent figure.
+
+“Who is it?” enquired Mandy. “What's the matter?”
+
+“It's Perkins,” replied Sam. “He hit him a terrible crack.”
+
+“Perkins!” said Mandy with scorn. “Let him lie, the dog. Come on, take
+his head.”
+
+“You can't do it, Mandy, no use trying. You can't do it.”
+
+“Come on, I tell you,” she said fiercely. “Quit your jawin'. He may be
+dyin' for all I know. I'd carry him alone if it wasn't for his broken
+leg.” Slowly, painfully they carried him to the house and to the front
+door.
+
+“Wait a minute!” said Mandy. “I'll have to git things fixed a bit. We
+mustn't wake mother. It would scare her to death.”
+
+She passed quickly into the house and soon Sam saw a light pass from
+room to room. In a few moments Mandy reappeared at the front door.
+
+“Quick!” whispered Sam. “He's comin' to.”
+
+“Oh, thank goodness!” cried Mandy. “Let's git him in before he wakes.”
+
+Once more they lifted their burden and with infinite difficulty and much
+painful manoeuvering they got the injured man through the doors and upon
+the spare room bed.
+
+“And now, Sam Sailor,” cried Mandy, coming close to him, “you jist hitch
+up Deck and hustle for the doctor if ever you did in your life. Don't
+wait for nothin', but go! Go!” She fairly pushed him out of the door,
+running with him towards the stable. “Oh, Sam, hurry!” she pleaded, “for
+if this man should die I will never be the like again.” Her face
+was white, her eyes glowing like great stars; her voice was soft and
+tremulous with tears.
+
+Sam stood for a moment gazing as if upon a vision.
+
+“What are you lookin' at?” she cried, stamping her foot and pushing him
+away.
+
+“Jumpin' Jeremiah!” muttered Sam, as he ran towards the stable. “Is that
+Mandy Haley? Guess we don't know much about her.”
+
+His nimble fingers soon had Dexter hitched to the buggy and speeding
+down the lane at a pace sufficiently rapid to suit the high spirit of
+even that fiery young colt.
+
+At the high road he came upon his friends, some of whom were working
+with Perkins, others conversing in awed and hurried undertones.
+
+“Hello, Sam!” they called. “Hold up!”
+
+“I'm in a hurry, boys, don't stop me. I'm scared to death. And you
+better git home. She'll be down on you again.”
+
+“How is he?” cried a voice.
+
+“Don't know. I'm goin' for the doctor, and the sooner we git that doctor
+the better for everybody around.” And Sam disappeared in a whirl of
+dust.
+
+“Say! Who would a thought it?” he mused. “That Mandy Haley? She's a
+terror. And them eyes! Oh, git on, Deck, what you monkeyin' about?
+Wonder if she's gone on that young feller? I guess she is all right!
+Say, wasn't that a clout he handed Perkins. And didn't she give me one.
+But them eyes! Mandy Haley! By the jumpin' Jeremiah! And the way she
+looks at a feller! Here, Deck, what you foolin' about? Gwan now, or
+you'll git into trouble.”
+
+Deck, who had been indulging himself in a series of leaps and plunges,
+shying at even the most familiar objects by the road side, settled down
+at length to a businesslike trot which brought him to the doctor's door
+in about fifteen minutes from the Haleys' gate. But to Sam's dismay the
+doctor had gone to Cramm's Mill, six or seven miles away, and would
+not be back till the morning. Sam was in a quandary. There was another
+doctor at Brookfield, five miles further on, but there was a possibility
+that he also might be out.
+
+“Say, there ain't no use goin' back without a doctor.
+She'd--she'd--Jumpin' Jeremiah! What would she do? Say, Deck, you've
+got to git down to business. We're goin' to the city. There are doctors
+there thick as hair on a dog. We'll try Dr. Turnbull. Say, it'll be
+great if we could git him! Deck, we'll do it! But you got to git up and
+dust.”
+
+And this Deck proceeded to do to such good purpose that in about an
+hour's time he stood before Dr. Turnbull's door in the city, somewhat
+wet, it is true, but with his fiery spirit still untamed.
+
+Here again adverse fate met the unfortunate Sam.
+
+“Doctor Turnbull's no at home,” said the maid, smart with cap and apron,
+who opened the door.
+
+“How long will he be gone?” enquired Sam, wondering what she had on her
+head, and why.
+
+“There's no tellin'. An hour, or two hours, or three.”
+
+“Three hours?” echoed Sam. “Say, a feller might kick the bucket in that
+time.”
+
+The maid smiled an undisturbed smile.
+
+“Bucket? What bucket, eh? What bucket are ye talkin' aboot?” she
+enquired.
+
+“Say, you're smart, ain't yeh! But I got a young feller that's broke his
+leg and--”
+
+“His leg?” said the maid indifferently. “Well, he's got another?”
+
+“Yes, you bet he has, but one leg ain't much good without the other. How
+would you like to hop around on one leg? And he's hurt inside, too,
+his lights, I guess, and other things.” Sam's anatomical knowledge was
+somewhat vague. “And besides, his girl's takin' on awful.”
+
+“Oh, is she indeed?” replied the maid, this item apparently being to her
+of the very slightest importance.
+
+“Say, if you only saw her,” said Sam.
+
+“Pretty, I suppose,” said the maid with a touch of scorn.
+
+“Pretty? No, ugly as a hedge fence. But say, I wish she was here right
+now. She'd bring you to your--to time, you bet.”
+
+“Would she, now? I'd sort her.” And the little maid's black eyes
+snapped.
+
+“Say, what'll I do? Jist got to have a doctor.”
+
+“Ye'll no git him till to-morrow.”
+
+“To-morrow?”
+
+“How far oot are ye?”
+
+“Twelve miles.”
+
+“Twelve miles? Ye'll no get him a minute afore to-morrow noon.”
+
+“Say, that young feller'll croak, sure. Away from home too. No friends.
+All his folks in Scotland.”
+
+“Scotland, did ye say?” Something appeared to wake up in the little
+maid. “Look here, why don't ye get a doctor instead o' daunderin' your
+time here?”
+
+“Git a doctor?” echoed Sam in vast surprise. “And ain't I tryin' to git
+a doctor? Where'll I git a doctor?”
+
+“Go to the hospital, ye gawk, and ask for Dr. Turnbull, and tell him
+the young lad is a stranger and that his folk are in Scotland. Hoots, ye
+gomeril, be off noo, an' the puir lad wantin' ye. Come, I'll pit ye on
+yer way.” The maid by her speech was obviously excited.
+
+Sam glanced at the clock as he passed out. He had been away an hour and
+a half.
+
+“Jumpin' Jeremiah! I've got to hurry. She'll take my head off.”
+
+“Of course ye have,” said the maid sharply. “Go down two streets there,
+then take the first turn to your left and go straight on for half a
+dozen blocks or so. Mind ye tell the doctor the lad's frae Scotland!”
+ she cried to Sam as he drove off.
+
+At the hospital Sam was fortunate enough to catch Dr. Turnbull in the
+hall with one or two others, just as they were about to pass into the
+consulting room. Such was Sam's desperate state of mind that he went
+straight up to the group.
+
+“I want Dr. Turnbull,” he said.
+
+“There he is before you,” replied a sharp-faced young doctor, pointing
+to a benevolent looking old gentleman.
+
+“Dr. Turnbull, there's a young feller hurt dreadful out our way. His
+leg's broke. Guess he's hurt inside too. And he's a stranger. His folks
+are all in Scotland. Guess he's dyin', and I've got--I've got a horse
+and buggy at the door. I can git you out and back in a jiffy. Say,
+doctor, I'm all ready to start.”
+
+A smile passed over the faces of the group. But Dr. Turnbull had too
+long experience with desperate cases and with desperate men.
+
+“My dear Sir,” he replied, “I cannot go for some hours.”
+
+“Doctor, I want you now. I got to have somebody right now.”
+
+“A broken leg?” mused the doctor.
+
+“Yes, and hurt inside.”
+
+“How did it happen?” said the doctor.
+
+“Eh? I don't know exactly,” replied Sam, taken somewhat aback.
+“Somethin' fell on him. But he needs you bad.”
+
+“I can't go, my man, but we'll find some one. What's his name did you
+say?”
+
+“His name is Cameron, and he's from Scotland.”
+
+“Cameron?” said the sharp-faced young doctor. “What does he look like?”
+
+“Look like?” said Sam in a perplexed voice. “Well, the girls all think
+he looks pretty good. He's dark complected and he's a mighty smart young
+feller. Great on jumpin' and runnin'. Say, he's a crackajack. Why, at
+the Dominion Day picnic! But you must a' heard about him. He's the chap,
+you know, that won the hundred yards. Plays the pipes and--”
+
+“Plays the pipes?” cried Dr. Turnbull and the young doctor together.
+
+“And his name's Cameron?” continued the young doctor. “I wonder now
+if--”
+
+“I say, Martin,” said Dr. Turnbull, “I think you had better go. The case
+may be urgent.”
+
+“Cameron!” cried Martin again. “I bet my bat it's--Here, wait till I get
+my coat. I'll be with you in a jerk. Have you got a good horse?”
+
+“He's all right,” said Sam. “He'll git you there in an hour.”
+
+“An hour? How far is it?”
+
+“Twelve miles.”
+
+“Great heavens! Come, then, get a move on!” And so it came that within
+an hour Cameron, opening his eyes, looked up into the face of his
+friend.
+
+“Martin! By Jove!” he said, and closed his eyes again. “Martin!” he said
+again, looking upon the familiar face. “Say, old boy, is this a dream? I
+seem to be having lots of them.”
+
+“It's no dream, old chap, but what in the mischief is the matter? What
+does all this fever mean? Let's look at you.”
+
+A brief examination was enough to show the doctor that a broken leg was
+the least of Cameron's trouble. A hasty investigation of the resources
+of the farm house determined the doctor's course.
+
+“This man has typhoid fever, a bad case too,” he said to Mandy. “We will
+take him in to the hospital.”
+
+“The hospital?” cried Mandy fiercely. “Will you, then?”
+
+“He will be a lot of trouble to you,” said the doctor.
+
+“Trouble? Trouble? What are you talkin' about?”
+
+“We're awful busy, Mandy,” interposed the mother, who had been roused
+from her bed.
+
+“Oh, shucks, mother! Oh, don't send him away,” she pleaded. “I can nurse
+him, just as easy.” She paused, with quivering lips.
+
+“It will be much better for the patient to be in the hospital. He will
+get constant and systematic care. He will be under my own observation
+every hour. I assure you it will be better for him,” said the doctor.
+
+“Better for him?” echoed Mandy in a faint voice. “Well, let him go.”
+
+In less than an hour's time, such was Dr. Martin's energetic promptness,
+he had his patient comfortably placed in the democrat on an improvised
+stretcher and on his way to the city hospital.
+
+And thus it came about that the problem of his leave-taking, which had
+vexed Cameron for so many days, was solved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN APPLE TIME
+
+
+“Another basket of eggs, Mr. Cameron, and such delicious cream! I am
+deeply grieved to see you so nearly well.”
+
+“Grieved?”
+
+“For you will be leaving us of course.”
+
+“Thanks, that is kind of you.”
+
+“And there will be an end to eggs and cream. Ah! You are a lucky man.”
+ And the trim, neat, bright-faced nurse shook her finger at him.
+
+“So I have often remarked to myself these six weeks.”
+
+“A friend is a great discovery and by these same tokens you have found
+one.”
+
+“Truly, they have been more than kind.”
+
+“This makes the twelfth visit in six weeks,” said the nurse. “In busy
+harvest and threshing time, too. Do you know what that means?”
+
+“To a certain extent. It is awfully good of them.”
+
+“But she is shy, shy--and I think she is afraid of YOU. Her chief
+interest appears to be in the kitchen, which she has never failed to
+visit.”
+
+The blood slowly rose in Cameron's face, from which the summer tan had
+all been bleached by his six weeks' fight with fever, but he made no
+reply to the brisk, sharp-eyed, sharp-minded little nurse.
+
+“And I know she is dying to see you, and, indeed,” she chuckled, “it
+might do you good. She is truly wonderful.” And again the nurse laughed.
+“Don't you think you could bear a visit?” The smile broadened upon her
+face.
+
+But unaware she had touched a sensitive spot in her patient, his
+Highland pride.
+
+“I shall be more than pleased to have an opportunity to thank Miss Haley
+for her great kindness,” he replied with dignity.
+
+“All right,” replied the nurse. “I shall bring her in. Now don't excite
+yourself. That fever is not so far away. And only a few minutes. When we
+farmers go calling--I am a farmer, remember, and know them well--when we
+go calling we take our knitting and spend the afternoon.”
+
+In a few moments she returned with Mandy. The difference between the
+stout, red-faced, coarse-featured, obtrusively healthy country girl,
+heavy of foot and hand, slow of speech and awkward of manner, and
+the neat, quick, deft-fingered, bright-faced nurse was so marked that
+Cameron could hardly control the wave of pity that swept through his
+heart, for he could see that even Mandy herself was vividly aware of the
+contrast. In vain Cameron tried to put her at her ease. She simply sat
+and stared, now at the walls, now at the floor, refusing for a time to
+utter more than monosyllables, punctuated with giggles.
+
+“I want to thank you for the eggs and cream. They are fine,” said
+Cameron heartily.
+
+“Oh, pshaw, that's nothin'! Lots more where they come from,” replied
+Mandy with a giggle.
+
+“But it's a long way for you to drive; and in the busy time too.”
+
+“Oh, we had to come in anyway for things,” replied Mandy, making light
+of her service.
+
+“You are all well?”
+
+“Oh, pretty middlin'. Ma ain't right smart. She's too much to do, and
+that's the truth.”
+
+“And the boys?” Cameron hesitated to be more specific.
+
+“Oh, there's nothin' eatin' them. I don't bother with them much.” Mandy
+was desperately twisting her white cotton gloves.
+
+At this point the nurse, with a final warning to the patient not to talk
+too much and not to excite himself, left the room. In a moment Mandy's
+whole manner changed.
+
+“Say!” she cried in a hurried voice; “Perkins is left.”
+
+“Left?”
+
+“I couldn't jist stand him after--after--that night. Dad wanted him to
+stay, but I couldn't jist stand him, and so he quit.”
+
+“Quit?”
+
+“I jist hate him since--since--that night. When I think of what he done
+I could kill him. My, I was glad to see him lyin' there in the dust!”
+ Mandy's words came hot and fast. “They might 'a killed you.” For the
+first time in the interview she looked fairly into Cameron's eyes. “My,
+you do look awful!” she said, with difficulty commanding her voice.
+
+“Nonsense, Mandy! You see, it wasn't my leg that hurt me. It was the
+fever that pulled me down.”
+
+“Oh, I'll never forget that night!” cried Mandy, struggling to keep her
+lips from quivering.
+
+“Nor will I ever forget what you did for me that night, Mandy. Sam told
+me all about it. I shall always be your friend.”
+
+For a moment longer she held him with her eyes. Then her face grew
+suddenly pale and, with voice and hands trembling, she said:
+
+“I must go. Good-by.”
+
+He took her great red hand in his long thin fingers.
+
+“Good-by, Mandy, and thank you.”
+
+“My!” she said, looking down at the fingers she held in her hand. “Your
+hands is awful thin. Are you sure goin' to git better?”
+
+“Of course I am, and I am coming out to see you before I go.”
+
+She sat down quickly, still holding his hand, as if he had struck her a
+heavy blow.
+
+“Before you go? Where?” Her voice was hardly above a whisper; her face
+was white, her lips beyond her control.
+
+“Out West to seek my fortune.” His voice was jaunty and he feigned not
+to see her distress. “I shall be walking in a couple of weeks or so, eh,
+nurse?”
+
+“A couple of weeks?” replied the nurse, who had just entered. “Yes, if
+you are good.”
+
+Mandy hastily rose.
+
+“But if you are not,” continued the nurse severely, “it may be months.
+Stay, Miss Haley, I am going to bring Mr. Cameron his afternoon tea and
+you can have some with him. Indeed, you look quite done up. I am sure
+all that work you have been telling me about is too much for you.”
+
+Her kindly tones broke the last shred of Mandy's self-control. She sank
+into her chair, covered her face with her great red hands and burst into
+tempestuous weeping. Cameron sat up quickly.
+
+“What in the name of goodness is wrong, Mandy?”
+
+“Lie down at once, Mr. Cameron!” said the nurse sternly. “Hush, hush,
+Miss Haley! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Don't you know that you
+are hurting him?”
+
+She could have chosen no better word. In an instant Mandy was on her
+feet, mopping off her face and choking down her sobs.
+
+“Ain't I a fool?” she cried angrily. “A blamed fool. Well, I won't
+bother you any longer. Guess I'll go now. Good-by all.” Without another
+look at Cameron she was gone.
+
+Cameron lay back upon his pillows, white and nerveless.
+
+“Now can you tell me,” he panted, “what's up?”
+
+“Search me!” said the nurse gaily, “but I forbid you to speak a single
+word for half an hour. Here, drink this right off! Now, not a word! What
+will Dr. Martin say? Not a word! Yes, I shall see her safely off the
+place. Quiet now!” She kept up a continuous stream of sprightly chatter
+to cover her own anxiety and to turn the current of her patient's
+thoughts. By the time she had reached the entrance hall, however, Mandy
+had vanished.
+
+“Great silly goose!” said the indignant nurse. “I'd see myself far
+enough before I'd give myself away like that. Little fool! He'll have
+a temperature sure and I will catch it. Bah! These girls! Next time she
+sees him it will not be here. I hope the doctor will just give me an
+hour to get him quiet again.”
+
+But in this hope she was disappointed, for upon her return to her
+patient she found Dr. Martin in the room. His face was grave.
+
+“What's up, nurse? What is the meaning of this rotten pulse? What has he
+been having to eat?”
+
+“Well, Dr. Martin, I may as well confess my sins,” replied the nurse,
+“for there is no use trying to deceive you anyway. Mr. Cameron has had a
+visitor and she has excited him.”
+
+“Ah!” said the doctor in a relieved tone. “A visitor! A lady visitor! A
+charming, sympathetic, interested, and interesting visitor.”
+
+“Exactly!” said the nurse with a giggle.
+
+“It was Miss Haley, Martin,” said Cameron gravely.
+
+The doctor looked puzzled.
+
+“The daughter of the farmer with whom I was working,” explained Cameron.
+
+“Ah, I remember her,” said the doctor. “And a deuce of a time I had with
+her, too, getting you away from her, if I remember aright. I trust there
+is nothing seriously wrong in that quarter?” said Martin with unusual
+gravity.
+
+“Oh, quit it, Martin!” said Cameron impatiently. “Don't rag. She's an
+awful decent sort. Her looks are not the best of her.”
+
+“Ah! I am relieved to hear that,” said the doctor earnestly.
+
+“She is very kind, indeed,” said the nurse. “For these six weeks she has
+fed us up with eggs and cream so that both my patient and myself have
+fared sumptuously every day. Indeed, if it should continue much longer
+I shall have to ask an additional allowance for a new uniform. I have
+promised that Mr. Cameron shall visit the farm within two weeks if he
+behaves well.”
+
+“Exactly!” replied the doctor. “In two weeks if he is good. The only
+question that troubles me is--is it quite safe? You see in his present
+weak condition his susceptibility is decidedly emphasised, his resisting
+power is low, and who knows what might happen, especially if she should
+insist? I shall not soon forget the look in her eye when she dared me to
+lay a finger upon his person.”
+
+“Oh, cut it out, Martin!” said Cameron. “You make me weary.” He lay back
+on his pillow and closed his eyes.
+
+The nurse threw a signal to the doctor.
+
+“All right, old man, we must stop this chaff. Buck up and in two weeks
+we will let you go where you like. I have something in mind for you, but
+we won't speak of it to-day.”
+
+The harvest was safely stored. The yellow stubble showed the fields
+at rest, but the vivid green of the new fall wheat proclaimed the
+astounding and familiar fact that once more Nature had begun her ancient
+perennial miracle. For in those fields of vivid green the harvest of
+the coming year was already on the way. On these green fields the snowy
+mantle would lie soft and protecting all the long winter through and
+when the spring suns would shine again the fall wheat would be a month
+or more on the way towards maturity.
+
+Somehow the country looked more rested, fresher, cleaner to Cameron than
+when he had last looked upon it in late August. The rain had washed the
+dust from the earth's face and from the green sward that bordered the
+grey ribbon of the high road that led out from the city. The pastures
+and the hay meadows and the turnip fields were all in their freshest
+green, and beyond the fields the forest stood glorious in all its autumn
+splendour, the ash trees bright yellow, the oaks rich brown, and the
+maples all the colours of the rainbow. In the orchard--ah, the wonder
+and the joy of it! even the bare and bony limbs of the apple trees only
+helped to reveal the sumptuous wealth of their luscious fruit. For it
+was apple time in the land! The evanescent harvest apples were long
+since gone, the snows were past their best, the pippins were mellowing
+under the sharp persuasion of the nippy, frosty nights and the brave
+gallantry of the sunny days. In this ancient warfare between the frosty
+nights and the gallant sunny days the apples ripened rapidly; and well
+that they should, for the warfare could not be for long. Already in the
+early morning hours the vanguard of winter's fierce hosts was to be seen
+flaunting its hoary banners even in the very face of the gallant sun
+so bravely making stand against it. But it was the time of the year in
+which men felt it good to be alive, for there was in the air that
+tang that gives speed to the blood, spring to the muscle, edge to the
+appetite, courage to the soul, and zest to life--the apple time of the
+year.
+
+It was in apple time that Cameron came back to the farm. Under
+compulsion of Mandy, Haley had found it necessary to drive into the
+city for some things for the “women folk” and, being in the city, he had
+called for Cameron and had brought him out. Under compulsion, not at all
+because Haley was indifferent to the prospect of a visit from his former
+hired man, not alone because the fall plowing was pressing and the
+threshing gang was in the neighbourhood, but chiefly because, through
+the channel of Dr. Martin, the little nurse, and Mandy, it had come to
+be known in the Haley household and in the country side that the
+hired man was a “great swell in the old country,” and Haley's sturdy
+independence shrank from anything that savoured of “suckin' round a
+swell,” as he graphically put it. But Mandy scouted this idea and waited
+for the coming of the expected guest with no embarrassment from the
+knowledge that he had been in the old country “a great swell.”
+
+Hence when, through a crack beside the window blind, she saw him, a
+poor, pale shadow, descending wearily and painfully from the buggy,
+the great mother heart in the girl welled with pity. She could hardly
+forbear rushing out to carry him bodily in her strong arms to the spare
+room and lay him where she had once helped to lay him the night of the
+tragedy some eight weeks before. But in this matter she had learned her
+lesson. She remembered the little nurse and her indignant scorn of the
+lack of self-control she had shown on the occasion of her last visit to
+the hospital. So, instead of rushing forth, she clutched the curtains
+and forced herself to stand still, whispering to herself the while, “Oh,
+he will die sure! He will die sure!” But when she looked upon him seated
+comfortably in the kitchen with a steaming glass of ginger and whiskey,
+her mother's unfailing remedy for “anything wrong with the insides,” she
+knew he would not die and her joy overflowed in boisterous welcome.
+
+For five days they all, from Haley to Tim, gave him of their very best,
+seeking to hold him among them for the winter, for they had learned that
+his mind was set upon the West, till Cameron was ashamed, knowing that
+he must go.
+
+The last afternoon they all spent in the orchard. The Gravensteins, in
+which species of apple Haley was a specialist, were being picked, and
+picked with the greatest care, Cameron plucking them from the limbs and
+dropping them into a basket held by Mandy below. It was one of those
+sunny days when, after weeks of chilly absence, summer comes again and
+makes the world glow with warmth and kindly life and quickens in the
+heart the blood's flow. Cameron was full of talk and fuller of laughter
+than his wont; indeed he was vexed to find himself struggling to
+maintain unbroken the flow of laughter and of talk. But in Mandy there
+was neither speech nor laughter, only a quiet dignity that disturbed and
+rebuked him.
+
+The last tree of Gravensteins was picked and then there came the time
+of parting. Cameron, with a man's selfish desire for some token of a
+woman's adoration, even although he well knew that he could make no
+return, lingered in the farewell, hoping for some sign in the plain
+quiet face and the wonderful eyes with their new mystery that when
+he had gone he would not be forgotten; but though the lips quivered
+pitifully and the heavy face grew drawn and old and the eyes glowed
+with a deeper fire, the words, when they came, came quietly and the eyes
+looked steadily upon him, except that for one brief moment a fire leaped
+in them and quickly died down. But when the buggy, with Tim driving,
+had passed down the lane, behind the curtain of the spare room the
+girl stood looking through the crack beside the blind, with both
+hands pressed upon her bosom, her breath coming in sobs, her blue lips
+murmuring brokenly, “Good-by, good-by! Oh, why did you come at all? But,
+oh, I'm glad you came! God help me, I'm glad you came!” Then, when the
+buggy had turned down the side lane and out of sight, she knelt beside
+the bed and kissed, again and again, with tender, reverent kisses, the
+pillow where his head had lain.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+
+
+On the foot-hills' side of The Gap, on a grassy plain bounded on three
+sides by the Bow River and on the other by ragged hills and broken
+timber, stood Surveyor McIvor's camp, three white tents, seeming
+wondrously insignificant in the shadow of the mighty Rockies, but cosy
+enough. For on this April day the sun was riding high in the heavens in
+all his new spring glory, where a few days ago and for many months past
+the storm king with relentless rigour had raged, searching with pitiless
+fury these rock-ribbed hills and threatening these white tents and their
+dwellers with dire destruction. But threaten though he might and pin
+them though he did beneath their frail canvas covers, he could not make
+that gang beat retreat. McIvor was of the kind that takes no back trail.
+In the late fall he had set out to run the line through The Gap, and
+after many wanderings through the coulees of the foothills and after
+many vain attempts, he had finally made choice of his route and had
+brought his men, burnt black with chinook and frost and sun, hither to
+The Gap's mouth. Every chain length in those weary marches was a battle
+ground, every pillar, every picket stood a monument of victory. McIvor's
+advance through the foot-hill country to The Gap had been one unbroken
+succession of fierce fights with Nature's most terrifying forces, a
+triumphal march of heroes who bore on their faces and on their bodies
+the scars and laurels of the campaign. But to McIvor and his gang it was
+all in the day's work.
+
+To Cameron the winter had brought an experience of a life hitherto
+undreamed of, but never even in its wildest blizzards did he cherish
+anything but gratitude to his friend Martin, who had got him attached to
+McIvor's survey party. For McIvor was a man to “tie to,” as Martin said,
+and to Cameron he was a continual cause of wonder and admiration. He was
+a big man, with a big man's quiet strength, patient, fearless of men
+and things, reverent toward Nature's forces, which it was his life's
+business to know, to measure, to control, and, if need be, to fight,
+careful of his men, whether amid the perils of the march, or amid
+the more deadly perils of trading post and railway construction camp.
+Cameron never could forget the thrill of admiration that swept his soul
+one night in Taylor's billiard and gambling “joint” down at the post
+where the Elbow joins the Bow, when McIvor, without bluff or bluster,
+took his chainman and his French-Canadian cook, the latter frothing mad
+with “Jamaica Ginger” and “Pain-killer,” out of the hands of the gang
+of bad men from across the line who had marked them as lambs for the
+fleecing. It was not the courage of his big chief so much that
+had filled Cameron with amazed respect and admiration as the calm
+indifference to every consideration but that of getting his men out of
+harm's way, and the cool-headed directness of the method he employed.
+
+“Come along, boys,” McIvor had said, gripping them by their coat
+collars. “I don't pay you good money for this sort of thing.” And so
+saying he had lifted them clear from their seats, upsetting the table,
+ignoring utterly the roaring oaths of the discomfited gamblers. What
+would have been the result none could say, for one of the gamblers had
+whipped out his gun and with sulphurous oaths was conducting a vigourous
+demonstration behind the unconscious back of McIvor, when there strolled
+into the room and through the crowd of men scattering to cover, a tall
+slim youngster in the red jacket and pill-box cap of that world-famous
+body of military guardians of law and order, the North West Mounted
+Police. Not while he lived would Cameron forget the scene that followed.
+With an air of lazy nonchalance the youngster strode quietly up to
+the desperado flourishing his gun and asked in a tone that indicated
+curiosity more than anything else, “What are you doing with that thing?”
+
+“I'll show yeh!” roared the man in his face, continuing to pour forth a
+torrent of oaths.
+
+“Put it down there!” said the youngster in a smooth and silky voice,
+pointing to a table near by. “You don't need that in this country.”
+
+The man paused in his demonstration and for a moment or two stood in
+amazed silence. The audacity of the youngster appeared to paralyse his
+powers of speech and action.
+
+“Put it down there, my man. Do you hear?” The voice was still smooth,
+but through the silky tones there ran a fibre of steel. Still the
+desperado stood gazing at him. “Quick, do you hear?” There was a
+sudden sharp ring of imperious, of overwhelming authority, and, to the
+amazement of the crowd of men who stood breathless and silent about,
+there followed one of those phenomena which experts in psychology
+delight to explain, but which no man can understand. Without a word the
+gambler slowly laid upon the table his gun, upon whose handle were many
+notches, the tally of human lives it had accounted for in the hands of
+this same desperado.
+
+“What is this for?” continued the young man, gently touching the belt of
+cartridges. “Take it off!”
+
+The belt found its place beside the gun.
+
+“Now, listen!” gravely continued the youngster. “I give you twenty-four
+hours to leave this post, and if after twenty-four hours you are found
+here it will be bad for you. Get out!”
+
+The man, still silent, slunk out from the room. Irresistible authority
+seemed to go with the word that sent him forth, and rightly so, for
+behind that word lay the full weight of Great Britain's mighty empire.
+It was Cameron's first experience of the North West Mounted Police, that
+famous corps of frontier riders who for more than a quarter of a century
+have ridden the marches of Great Britain's territories in the far
+northwest land, keeping intact the Pax Britannica amid the wild turmoil
+of pioneer days. To the North West Mounted Police and to the pioneer
+missionary it is due that Canada has never had within her borders what
+is known as a “wild and wicked West.” It was doubtless owing to the
+presence of that slim youngster in his scarlet jacket and pill-box cap
+that McIvor got his men safely away without a hole in his back and that
+his gang were quietly finishing their morning meal this shining April
+day, in their camp by the Bow River in the shadow of the big white peaks
+that guard The Gap.
+
+Breakfast over, McIvor heaved his great form to the perpendicular.
+
+“How is the foot, Cameron?” he asked, filling his pipe preparatory to
+the march.
+
+“Just about fit,” replied Cameron.
+
+“Better take another day,” replied the chief. “You can get up wood and
+get supper ready. Benoit will be glad enough to go out and take your
+place for another day on the line.”
+
+“Sure ting,” cried Benoit, the jolly French-Canadian cook. “Good for
+my healt. He's tak off my front porsch here.” And the cook patted
+affectionately the little round paunch that marred the symmetry of his
+figure.
+
+“You ought to get Cameron to swap jobs with you, Benny,” said one of the
+axemen. “You would be a dandy in about another month.”
+
+Benoit let his eye run critically over the line of his person.
+
+“Bon! Dat's true, for sure. In tree, four mont I mak de beeg spark on de
+girl, me.”
+
+“You bet, Benny!” cried the axeman. “You'll break 'em all up.”
+
+“Sure ting!” cried Benny, catching up a coal for his pipe. “By by,
+Cameron. Au revoir. I go for tak some more slice from my porsch.”
+
+“Good-bye, Benny,” cried Cameron. “It is your last chance, for to-morrow
+I give you back your job. I don't want any 'front porsch' on me.”
+
+“Ho! ho!” laughed Benny scornfully, as he turned to hurry after
+his chief. “Dat's not moch front porsch on you. Dat's one rail
+fence--clabbord.”
+
+And indeed Benoit was right, for there was no “porsch” or sign of one on
+Cameron's lean and muscular frame. The daily battle with winter's fierce
+frosts and blizzards, the strenuous toil, the hard food had done their
+work on him. Strong, firm-knit, clean and sound, hard and fit, he had
+come through his first Canadian winter. No man in the camp, not even
+the chief himself, could “bush” him in a day's work. He had gained
+enormously in strength lately, and though the lines of his frame still
+ran to angles, he had gained in weight as well. Never in the days of his
+finest training was he as fit to get the best out of himself as now.
+An injured foot had held him in camp for a week, but the injury was now
+almost completely repaired and the week's change of work only served to
+replenish his store of snap and vim.
+
+An hour or two sufficed to put the camp in the perfect order that he
+knew Benoit would consider ideal and to get all in readiness for the
+evening meal when the gang should return. He had the day before him
+and what a day it was! Cameron lay upon a buffalo skin in front of the
+cook-tent, content with all the world and for the moment with himself.
+Six months ago he had engaged as an axeman in the surveyors' gang at
+$30 per month and “found,” being regarded more in the light of a
+supernumerary and more or less of a burden than anything else. Now
+he was drawing double the wage as rodman, and, of all the gang, stood
+second to none in McIvor's regard. In this new venture he had come
+nearer to making good than ever before in his life. So in full content
+with himself he allowed his eyes to roam over the brown grassy plain
+that sloped to the Bow in front, and over the Bow to the successive
+lines of hills, rounded except where the black rocks broke jagged
+through the turf, and upward over the rounded hills to the grey sides of
+the mighty masses of the mountains, and still upward to where the white
+peaks lost themselves in the shining blue of the sky. Behind him a
+coulee ran back between hills to a line of timber, and beyond the timber
+more hills and more valleys, and ever growing higher and deeper till
+they ran into the bases of the great Rockies.
+
+As Cameron lay thus luxuriating upon his buffalo skin and lazily
+watching the hills across the river through the curling wreaths that
+gracefully and fragrantly rose from his briar root, there broke from the
+line of timber two jumping deer, buck and doe, the latter slow-footed
+because heavy with young. Behind them in hot pursuit came a pack of
+yelping coyotes. The doe was evidently hard pressed. The buck was
+running easily, but gallantly refusing to abandon his mate to her
+cowardly foes. Straight for the icy river they made, plunged in, and,
+making the crossing, were safe from their pursuing enemy. Cameron,
+intent upon fresh meat, ran for McIvor's Winchester, but ere he could
+buckle round him a cartridge belt and throw on his hunting jacket the
+deer had disappeared over the rounded top of the nearest hill. Up the
+coulee he ran to the timber and there waited, but there was no sign of
+his game. Cautiously he made his way through the timber and dropped
+into the next valley circling westward towards the mountains. The deer,
+however, had completely vanished. Turning back upon his tracks, he once
+more pierced the thin line of timber, when just across the coulee, some
+three hundred yards away, on the sky line, head up and sniffing the
+wind, stood the buck in clear view. Taking hurried aim Cameron fired.
+The buck dropped as if dead. Marking the spot, Cameron hurried forward,
+but to his surprise found only a trail of blood.
+
+“He's badly hit though,” he said to himself. “I must get the poor chap
+now at all costs.” Swiftly he took up the trail, but though the blood
+stains continued clear and fresh he could get no sight of the wounded
+animal. Hour after hour he kept up the chase, forgetful of everything
+but his determination to bring back his game to camp. From the freshness
+of the stains he knew that the buck could not be far ahead and from the
+footprints it was clear that the animal was going on three legs.
+
+“The beggar is hearing me and so keeps out of sight,” said Cameron as
+he paused to listen. He resolved to proceed more slowly and with greater
+caution, but though he followed this plan for another half hour it
+brought him no better success. The day was fast passing and he could
+not much longer continue his pursuit. He became conscious of pain in his
+injured foot. He sat down to rest and to review his situation. For the
+first time he observed that the bright sky of the morning had become
+overcast with a film of hazy cloud and that the temperature was rapidly
+falling. Prudence suggested that he should at once make his way back to
+camp, but with the instinct of the true hunter he was loath to abandon
+the poor wounded beast to its unhappy fate. He resolved to make one
+further attempt. Refreshed by his brief rest, but with an increasing
+sense of pain in his foot, he climbed the slight rising ground before
+him, cautiously pushed his way through some scrub, and there, within
+easy shot, stood the buck, with drooping head and evidently with
+strength nearly done. Cameron took careful aim--there must be no mistake
+this time--and fired. The buck leaped high in the air, dropped and lay
+still. The first shot had broken his leg, the second had pierced his
+heart.
+
+Cameron hurried forward and proceeded to skin the animal. But soon
+he abandoned this operation. “We'll come and get him to-morrow,” he
+muttered, “and he is better with his skin on. Meantime we'll have a
+steak, however.” He hung a bit of skin from a pole to keep off the
+wolves and selected a choice cut for the supper. He worked hurriedly,
+for the sudden drop in the temperature was ominous of a serious
+disturbance in the weather, but before he had finished he was startled
+to observe a large snowflake lazily flutter to the ground beside him.
+He glanced towards the sky and found that the filmy clouds were rapidly
+assuming definite shape and that the sun had almost disappeared.
+Hurriedly he took his bearings and, calculating as best he could the
+direction of the camp, set off, well satisfied with the outcome of his
+expedition and filled with the pleasing anticipation of a venison supper
+for himself and the rest of the gang.
+
+The country was for the most part open except for patches of timber here
+and there, and with a clear sky the difficulty of maintaining direction
+would have been but slight. With the sky overcast, however, this
+difficulty was sensibly increased. He had not kept an accurate reckoning
+of his course, but from the character of the ground he knew that he
+must be a considerable distance westward of the line of the camp. His
+training during the winter in holding a line of march helped him now to
+maintain his course steadily in one direction. The temperature was still
+dropping rapidly. Over the woods hung a dead stillness, except for the
+lonely call of an occasional crow or for the scream of the impudent
+whiskey-jack. But soon even these became silent. As he surmounted each
+hill top Cameron took his bearings afresh and anxiously scanned the sky
+for weather signs. In spite of himself there crept over him a sense of
+foreboding, which he impatiently tried to shake off.
+
+“I can't be so very far from camp now,” he said to himself, looking at
+his watch. “It is just four. There are three good hours till dark.”
+
+A little to the west of his line of march stood a high hill which
+appeared to dominate the surrounding country and on its top a lofty
+pine. “I'll just shin up that tree,” said he. “I ought to get a sight
+of the Bow from the top.” In a few minutes he had reached the top of
+the hill, but even in those minutes the atmosphere had thickened. “Jove,
+it's getting dark!” he exclaimed. “It can't be near sundown yet. Did I
+make a mistake in the time?” He looked at his watch again. It showed a
+quarter after four. “I must get a look at this country.” Hurriedly
+he threw off his jacket and proceeded to climb the big pine, which,
+fortunately, was limbed to the ground. From the lofty top his eye could
+sweep the country for many miles around. Over the great peaks of the
+Rockies to the west dark masses of black cloud shot with purple and
+liver-coloured bars hung like a pall. To the north a line of clear light
+was still visible, but over the foot-hills towards east and south there
+lay almost invisible a shimmering haze, soft and translucent, and above
+the haze a heavy curtain, while over the immediate landscape there shone
+a strange weird light, through which there floated down to earth large
+white snowflakes. Not a breath of air moved across the face of the
+hills, but still as the dead they lay in solemn oppressive silence. Far
+to the north Cameron caught the gleam of water.
+
+“That must be the Bow,” he said to himself. “I am miles too far toward
+the mountains. I don't like the look of that haze and that cloud bank.
+There is a blizzard on the move if this winter's experience teaches me
+anything.”
+
+He had once been caught in a blizzard, but on that occasion he was
+with McIvor. He was conscious now of a little clutch at his heart as
+he remembered that desperate struggle for breath, for life it seemed to
+him, behind McIvor's broad back. The country was full of stories of men
+being overwhelmed by the choking, drifting whirl of snow. He knew how
+swift at times the on-fall of the blizzard could be, how long the storm
+could last, how appalling the cold could become. What should he do? He
+must think and act swiftly. That gleaming water near which his camp
+lay was, at the very best going, two hours distant. The blizzard might
+strike at any moment and once it struck all hope of advance would be
+cut off. He resolved to seek the best cover available and wait till the
+storm should pass. He had his deer meat with him and matches. Could he
+but make shelter he doubted not but he could weather the storm. Swiftly
+he swept the landscape for a spot to camp. Half a mile away he spied a
+little coulee where several valleys appeared to lose themselves in thick
+underbrush. He resolved to make for that spot. Hurriedly he slipped down
+the tree, donned belt and jacket and, picking up gun and venison, set
+off at a run for the spot he had selected. A puff of wind touched his
+cheek. He glanced up and about him. The flakes of snow were no longer
+floating gently down, but were slanting in long straight lines across
+the landscape. His heart took a quicker beat.
+
+“It is coming, sure enough,” he said to himself between his teeth, “and
+a bad one too at that.” He quickened his pace to racing speed. Down the
+hill, across the valley and up the next slope he ran without pause,
+but as he reached the top of the slope a sound arrested him, a deep,
+muffled, hissing roar, and mingled with it the beating of a thousand
+wings. Beyond the top of the next hill there hung from sky to earth
+the curtain, thick, black, portentous, and swiftly making approach,
+devouring the landscape as it came and filling his ears with its
+muffled, hissing roar.
+
+In the coulee beyond that hill was the spot he had marked for his
+shelter. It was still some three hundred yards away. Could he beat that
+roaring, hissing, portentous cloud mass? It was extremely doubtful. Down
+the hill he ran, slipping, skating, pitching, till he struck the bottom,
+then up the opposite slope he struggled, straining every nerve and
+muscle. He glanced upward towards the top of the hill. Merciful heaven!
+There it was, that portentous cloud mass, roaring down upon him. Could
+he ever make that top? He ran a few steps further, then, dropping his
+gun, he clutched a small poplar and hung fast. A driving, blinding,
+choking, whirling mass of whiteness hurled itself at him, buffeting him
+heavily, filling eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, clutching at his arms and
+legs and body with a thousand impalpable insistent claws. For a moment
+or two he lost all sense of direction, all thought of advance. One
+instinct only he obeyed--to hold on for dear life to the swaying
+quivering poplar. The icy cold struck him to the heart, his bare fingers
+were fast freezing. A few moments he hung, hoping for a lull in the fury
+of the blizzard, but lull there was none, only that choking, blinding,
+terrifying Thing that clutched and tore at him. His heart sank within
+him. This, then, was to be the end of him. A vision of his own body,
+stark and stiff, lying under a mound of drifting snow, swiftly passed
+before his mind. He threw it off wrathfully. “Not yet! Not just yet!” he
+shouted in defiance into the face of the howling storm.
+
+Through the tumult and confusion of his thoughts one idea dominated--he
+must make the hill-top. Sliding his hands down the trunk of the little
+poplar he once more found his rifle and, laying it in the hollow of his
+arm, he hugged it close to his side, shoved his freezing hands into his
+pockets and, leaning hard against the driving blizzard, set off towards
+the hill-top. A few paces he made, then turning around leaned back upon
+the solid massive force of the wind till he could get breath. Again a
+few steps upward and again a rest against the wind. His courage began to
+come back.
+
+“Aha!” he shouted at the storm. “Not yet! Not yet!” Gradually, and with
+growing courage, he fought his way to the top. At length he stood upon
+the storm-swept summit. “I say,” he cried, heartening himself with his
+speech, “this is so much to the good anyway. Now for the coulee.” But
+exactly where did it lie? Absolutely nothing could he see before him
+but this blinding, choking mass of whirling snow. He tried to recall the
+direction in relation to the hill as he had taken it from the top of the
+tree. How long ago that seemed! Was it minutes or hours? Downward and
+towards the left lay the coulee. He could hardly fail to strike it.
+Plunging headlong into the blizzard, he fought his way once more, step
+by step.
+
+“It was jolly well like a scrimmage,” he said grimly to the storm
+which began in his imagination to assume a kind of monstrous and savage
+personality. It heartened him much to remember his sensations in many
+a desperate struggle against the straining steaming mass of muscle and
+bone in the old fierce football fights. He recalled, too, a word of his
+old captain, “Never say die! The next minute may be better.”
+
+“Never say die!” he cried aloud in the face of his enemy. “But I wish to
+heaven I could get up some of that heat just now. This cold is going to
+be the death of me.”
+
+As he spoke he bumped into a small bushy spruce tree. “Hello! Here you
+are, eh!” he cried, determined to be cheerful. “Glad to meet you. Hope
+there are lots more of you.” His hope was realised! A few more steps and
+he found himself in the heart of a spruce thicket.
+
+“Thank God!” he exclaimed. Then again--“Yes, thank God it is!” It
+steadied his heart not a little to remember the picture in his mother's
+Bible that had so often stirred his youthful imagination of One standing
+in the fishing boat and bidding the storm be still. In the spruce
+thicket he stood some moments to regain his breath and strength.
+
+“Now what next?” he asked himself. Although the thicket broke the force
+of the wind, something must be done, and quickly. Night was coming on
+and that meant an even intenser cold. His hands were numb. His hunting
+jacket was but slight protection against the driving wind and the
+bitter cold. If he could only light a fire! A difficult business in this
+tumultuous whirlwind and snow. He had learned something of this art,
+however, from his winter's experience. He began breaking from the spruce
+trees the dead dry twigs. Oh for some birch bark! Like a forgotten
+dream it came to him that from the tree top he had seen above the spruce
+thicket the tops of some white birch trees purpling under the touch of
+spring.
+
+“Let's see! Those birches must be further to my left,” he said,
+recalling their position. Painfully he forced his way through the
+scrubby underbrush. His foot struck hard against an obstruction that
+nearly threw him to the ground. It was a jutting rock. Peering through
+the white mass before his eyes, he could make out a great black,
+looming mass. Eagerly he pushed forward. It was a towering slab of rock.
+Following it round on the lee side, he suddenly halted with a shout of
+grateful triumph. A great section had fallen out of the rock, forming a
+little cave, storm-proof and dry.
+
+“Thank God once more!” he said, and this time with even deeper
+reverence. “Now for a fire. If I could only get some birch bark.”
+
+He placed his rifle in a corner of the cave and went out on his hunt.
+“By Jove, I must hurry, or my hands will be gone sure.” Looking upwards
+in the shelter of the rock through the driving snow he saw the bare tops
+of trees. “Birch, too, as I am alive!” he cried, and plunging through
+the bushes came upon a clump of white birches.
+
+With fingers that could hardly hold the curling bark he gathered a few
+bunches and hurried back to the cave. Again he went forth and gathered
+from the standing trees an armful of dead dry limbs. “Good!” he cried
+aloud in triumph. “We're not beaten yet. Now for the fire and supper.”
+ He drew forth his steel matchbox with numb and shaking fingers, opened
+it and stood stricken dumb. There were only three matches in the box.
+Unreasoning terror seized him. Three chances for life! He chose a match,
+struck it, but in his numb and nerveless fingers the match snapped
+near the head. With a new terror seizing him he took a second match and
+struck it. The match flared, sputtering. Eagerly he thrust the birch
+bark at it; too eagerly, alas, for the bark rubbed out the tiny flame.
+He had one match left! One hope of life! He closed his matchbox. His
+hands were trembling with the cold and more with nervous fear that shook
+him in every limb. He could not bring himself to make the last attempt.
+Up and down the cave and out and in he stamped, beating his hands to
+bring back the blood and fighting hard to get back his nerve.
+
+“This is all rotten funk!” he cried aloud, raging at himself. “I shall
+not be beaten.”
+
+Summoning all his powers, he once more pulled out his matchbox, rubbed
+his birch bark fine and, kneeling down, placed it between his knees
+under the shelter of his hunting jacket. Kneeling there with the
+matchbox in his hand, there fell upon his spirit a great calm. “Oh,
+God!” he said quietly and with the conviction in his soul that there
+was One listening, “help me now.” He opened the matchbox, took out the
+match, struck it carefully and laid it among the birch bark. For one
+heart-racking moment it flickered unsteadily, then, catching a resinous
+fibre of the bark, it flared up, shot out a tiny tongue to one of the
+heavier bunches, caught hold, sputtered, smoked, burst into flame. With
+the prayer still going in his heart, “God help me now,” Cameron fed the
+flame with bits of bark and tiny twigs, adding more and more till the
+fire began to leap, dance, and snap, and at length gaining strength it
+roared its triumph over the grim terror so recently threatened.
+
+For the present at least the blizzard was beaten.
+
+“Now God be thanked for that,” said Cameron. “For it was past my doing.”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+
+
+Shivering and hungry and fighting with sleep, Cameron stamped up
+and down his cave, making now and then excursions into the storm to
+replenish his fire. On sharpened sticks slices of venison were cooking
+for his supper. Outside the storm raged with greater violence than ever
+and into the cave the bitter cold penetrated, effectually neutralizing
+the warmth of the little fire, for the wood was hard to get and a larger
+fire he could not afford.
+
+He looked at his watch and was amazed to find it only five o'clock. How
+long could he maintain this fight? His heart sank at the prospect of
+the long night before him. He sat down upon the rock close beside his
+cooking venison and in a few moments was fast asleep.
+
+He awoke with a start and found that the fire had crept along a jutting
+branch and had reached his fingers. He sprang to his feet. The fire lay
+in smouldering embers, for the sticks were mere brushwood. A terrible
+fear seized him. His life depended upon the maintaining of this fire.
+Carefully he assembled the embers and nursed them into bright flame.
+At all costs he must keep awake. A further excursion into the woods for
+fuel thoroughly roused him from his sleep. Soon his fire was blazing
+brightly again.
+
+Consulting his watch, he found that he must have slept half an hour. He
+determined that in order to keep himself awake and to provide against
+the growing cold he would lay in a stock of firewood, and so he began a
+systematic search for fallen trees that he might drag to his shelter.
+
+As he was setting forth upon his search he became aware of a new sound
+mingling with the roaring of the storm about him, a soft, pounding,
+rhythmic sound. With every nerve strained he listened. It was like the
+beating of hoofs. He ran out into the storm and, holding his hands
+to his ears, bent forward to listen. Faintly over the roaring of the
+blizzard, and rising and falling with it, there came the sound of
+singing.
+
+“Am I mad?” he said to himself, beating his head with his hands. He
+rushed into the cave, threw upon the fire all the brushwood he had
+gathered, until it sprang up into a great glare, lighting up the cave
+and its surroundings. Then he rushed forth once more to the turn of the
+rock. The singing could now be plainly heard.
+
+“Three cheers for the red, white--Get on there, you variously coloured
+and multitudinously cursed brutes!--Three cheers for the red--Hie there,
+look out, Little Thunder! They are off to the left.”
+
+“Hello!” yelled Cameron at the top of his voice. “Hello, there!”
+
+“Whoa!” yelled a voice sharply. The sound of hoof beats ceased and only
+the roaring of the blizzard could be heard.
+
+“Hello!” cried Cameron again. “Who are you?” But only the gale answered
+him.
+
+Again and again he called, but no voice replied. Once more he rushed
+into the cave, seized his rifle and fired a shot into the air.
+
+“Crack-crack,” two bullets spat against the rock over his head.
+
+“Hold on there, you fool!” yelled Cameron, dodging back behind the rock.
+“What are you shooting at? Hello there!” Still there was no reply.
+
+Long he waited till, desperate with anxiety lest his unknown visitors
+should abandon him, he ran forward once more beyond the ledge of the
+rock, shouting, “Hello! Hello! Don't shoot! I'm coming out to you.”
+
+At the turn of the rocky ledge he paused, concentrating his powers to
+catch some sound other than the dull boom and hiss of the blizzard.
+Suddenly at his side something moved.
+
+“Put up your hands, quick!”
+
+A dark shape, with arm thrust straight before it, loomed through the
+drift of snow.
+
+“Oh, I say--” began Cameron.
+
+“Quick!” said the voice, with a terrible oath, “or I drop you where you
+stand.”
+
+“All right!” said Cameron, lifting up his hands with his rifle high
+above his head. “But hurry up! I can't stand this long. I am nearly
+frozen as it is.”
+
+The man came forward, still covering him with his pistol. He ran his
+free hand over Cameron's person.
+
+“How many of you?” he asked, in a voice sharp and crisp.
+
+“I am all alone. But hurry up! I am about all in.”
+
+“Lead on to your fire!” said the stranger. “But if you want to live, no
+monkey work. I've got you lined.”
+
+Cameron led the way to the fire. The stranger threw a swift glance
+around the cave, then, with eyes still holding Cameron, he whistled
+shrilly on his fingers. Almost immediately, it seemed to Cameron, there
+came into the light another man who proved to be an Indian, short,
+heavily built, with a face hideously ugly and rendered more repulsive
+by the small, red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes that seemed to Cameron to peer
+like gimlets into his very soul.
+
+At a word of command the Indian possessed himself of Cameron's rifle and
+stood at the entrance.
+
+“Now,” said the stranger, “talk quick. Who are you? How did you come
+here? Quick and to the point.”
+
+“I am a surveyor,” said Cameron briefly. “McIvor's gang. I was left at
+camp to cook, saw a deer, wounded it, followed it up, lost my way, the
+storm caught me, but, thank God, I found this cave, and with my last
+match lit the fire. I was trying to cook my venison when I heard you
+coming.”
+
+The grey-brown eyes of the stranger never left Cameron's face while he
+was speaking.
+
+“You're a liar!” he said with cold insolence when Cameron had finished
+his tale. “You look to me like a blank blank horse thief or whiskey
+trader.”
+
+Faint as he was with cold and hunger, the deliberate insolence of the
+man stirred Cameron to sudden rage. The blood flooded his pale face.
+
+“You coward!” he cried in a choking voice, gathering himself to spring
+at the man's throat.
+
+But the stranger only laughed and, stepping backward, spoke a word
+to the Indian behind him. Before he could move Cameron found himself
+covered by the rifle with the malignant eye of the Indian behind it.
+
+“Hold on, Little Thunder, drop it!” said the stranger with a slight
+laugh.
+
+Reluctantly the rifle came down.
+
+“All right, Mr. Surveyor,” said the stranger with a good-natured laugh.
+“Pardon my abruptness. I was merely testing you. One cannot be too
+careful in these parts nowadays when the woods are full of horse thieves
+and whiskey runners. Oh, come on,” he continued, glancing at Cameron's
+face, “I apologise. So you're lost, eh? Hungry too? Well, so am I, and
+though I was not going to feed just yet we may as well grub together.
+Bring the cattle into shelter here,” he said to Little Thunder. “They
+will stand right enough. And get busy with the grub.”
+
+The Indian grunted a remonstrance.
+
+“Oh, that's all right,” replied the stranger. “Hand it over.” He took
+Cameron's rifle from the Indian and set it in the corner. “Now get a
+move on! We have no time to waste.”
+
+So saying he hurried out himself into the storm. In a few minutes
+Cameron could hear the blows of an axe, and soon the stranger appeared
+with a load of dry wood with which he built up a blazing fire. He
+was followed shortly by the Indian, who from a sack drew out bacon,
+hardtack, and tea, and, with cooking utensils produced from another
+sack, speedily prepared supper.
+
+“Pile in,” said the stranger to Cameron, passing him the pan in which
+the bacon and venison had been fried. “Pass the tea, Little Thunder. No
+time to waste. We've got to hustle.”
+
+Cameron was only too eager to obey these orders, and in the generous
+warmth of the big fire and under the stimulus of the boiling tea his
+strength and nerve began to come back to him.
+
+For some minutes he was too intent on satisfying his ravenous hunger to
+indulge in conversation with his host, but as his hunger became appeased
+he began to give his attention to the man who had so mysteriously blown
+in upon him out of the blizzard. There was something fascinating about
+the lean, clean-cut face with its firm lines about the mouth and chin
+and its deep set brown-grey eyes that glittered like steel or shone
+like limpid pools of light according to the mood of the man. They were
+extraordinary eyes. Cameron remembered them like dagger points behind
+the pistol and then like kindly lights in a dark window when he had
+smiled. Just now as he sat eating with eager haste the eyes were staring
+forward into the fire out of deep sockets, with a far-away, reminiscent,
+kindly look in them. The lumberman's heavy skin-lined jacket and the
+overalls tucked into boots could not hide the athletic lines of the
+lithe muscular figure. Cameron looked at his hands with their long,
+sinewy fingers. “The hands of a gentleman,” thought he. “What is his
+history? And where does he come from?”
+
+“London's my home,” said the stranger, answering Cameron's mental
+queries. “Name, Raven--Richard Colebrooke Raven--Dick for short;
+rancher, horse and cattle trader; East Kootenay; at present running in
+a stock of goods and horses; and caught like yourself in this beastly
+blizzard.”
+
+“My name's Cameron, and I'm from Edinburgh a year ago,” replied Cameron
+briefly.
+
+“Edinburgh? Knew it ten years ago. Quiet old town, quaint folk. Never
+know what they are thinking about you.”
+
+Cameron smiled. How well he remembered the calm, detached, critical but
+uncurious gaze with which the dwellers of the modern Athens were wont to
+regard mere outsiders.
+
+“I know,” he said. “I came from the North myself.”
+
+The stranger had apparently forgotten him and was gazing steadily into
+the fire. Suddenly, with extraordinary energy, he sprang from the ground
+where he had been sitting.
+
+“Now,” he cried, “en avant!”
+
+“Where to?” asked Cameron, rising to his feet.
+
+“East Kootenay, all the way, and hustle's the word.”
+
+“Not me,” said Cameron. “I must get back to my camp. If you will kindly
+leave me some grub and some matches I shall be all right and very much
+obliged. McIvor will be searching for me to-morrow.”
+
+“Ha!” burst forth the stranger in vehement expletive. “Searching for
+you, heh?” He stood for a few moments in deep thought, then spoke to the
+Indian a few words in his own language. That individual, with a fierce
+glance towards Cameron, grunted a gruff reply.
+
+“No, no,” said Raven, also glancing at Cameron. Again the Indian spoke,
+this time with insistent fierceness. “No! no! you cold-blooded devil,”
+ replied the trader. “No! But,” he added with emphasis, “we will take him
+with us. Pack! Here, bring in coat, mitts, socks, Little Thunder. And
+move quick, do you hear?” His voice rang out in imperious command.
+
+Little Thunder, growling though he might, no longer delayed, but dived
+into the storm and in a few moments returned bearing a bag from which he
+drew the articles of clothing desired.
+
+“But I am not going with you,” said Cameron firmly. “I cannot desert
+my chief this way. It would give him no end of trouble. Leave me some
+matches and, if you can spare it, a little grub, and I shall do finely.”
+
+“Get these things on,” replied Raven, “and quit talking. Don't be
+a fool! we simply can't leave you behind. If you only knew the
+alternative, you'd--”
+
+Cameron glanced at the Indian. The eager fierce look on that hideous
+face startled him.
+
+“We will send you back all safe in a few days,” continued the trader
+with a smile. “Come, don't delay! March is the word.”
+
+“I won't go!” said Cameron resolutely. “I'll stay where I am.”
+
+“All right, you fool!” replied Raven with a savage oath. “Take your
+medicine then.”
+
+He nodded to the Indian. With a swift gleam of joy in his red-rimmed
+eyes the Indian reached swiftly for Cameron's rifle.
+
+“No, too much noise,” said Raven, coolly finishing the packing.
+
+A swift flash of a knife in the firelight, and the Indian hurled himself
+upon the unsuspecting Cameron. But quick as was the attack Cameron was
+quicker. Gripping the Indian's uplifted wrist with his left hand, he
+brought his right with terrific force upon the point of his assailant's
+chin. The Indian spun round like a top and pitched out into the dark.
+
+“Neatly done!” cried the trader with a great oath and a laugh. “Hold on,
+Little Thunder!” he continued, as the Indian reappeared, knife in hand,
+“He'll come now. Quiet, you beast! Ah-h-h! Would you?” He seized by the
+throat and wrist the Indian, who, frothing with rage and snarling like
+a wild animal, was struggling to reach Cameron again. “Down, you dog! Do
+you hear me?”
+
+With a twist of his arms he brought the Indian to his knees and held him
+as he might a child. Quite suddenly the Indian grew still.
+
+“Good!” said Raven. “Now, no more of this. Pack up.”
+
+Without a further word or glance at Cameron, Little Thunder gathered up
+the stuff and vanished.
+
+“Now,” continued the trader, “you perhaps see that it would be wise for
+you to come along without further delay.”
+
+“All right,” said Cameron, trembling with indignant rage, “but remember,
+you'll pay for this.”
+
+The trader smiled kindly upon him.
+
+“Better get these things on,” he said, pointing to the articles of
+clothing upon the cave floor. “The blizzard is gathering force and we
+have still some hours to ride. But,” he continued, stepping close to
+Cameron and looking him in the eyes, “there must be no more nonsense.
+You can see my man is somewhat short in temper; and indeed mine is
+rather brittle at times.”
+
+For a single instant a smile curled the firm lips and half closed the
+steely eyes of the speaker, and, noting the smile and the steely gleam
+in the grey-brown eyes, Cameron hastily decided that he would no longer
+resist.
+
+Warmed and fed and protected against the blizzard, but with his heart
+full of indignant wrath, Cameron found himself riding on a wretched
+cayuse before the trader whose horse could but dimly be seen through the
+storm, but which from his antics appeared to be possessed of a thousand
+demons.
+
+“Steady, Nighthawk, old boy! We'll get 'em moving after a bit,” said
+his master, soothing the kicking beast. “Aha, that was just a shade
+violent,” he remonstrated, as the horse with a scream rushed open
+mouthed at a blundering pony and sent him scuttling forward in wild
+terror after the bunch already disappearing down the trail, following
+Little Thunder upon his broncho.
+
+The blizzard was now in their back and, though its force was thereby
+greatly lessened, the black night was still thick with whirling snow and
+the cold grew more intense every moment. Cameron could hardly see his
+pony's ears, but, loping easily along the levels, scrambling wildly up
+the hills, and slithering recklessly down the slopes, the little brute
+followed without pause the cavalcade in front. How they kept the trail
+Cameron could not imagine, but, with the instinct of their breed, the
+ponies never faltered. Far before in the black blinding storm could
+be heard the voice of Little Thunder, rising and falling in a kind of
+singing chant, a chant which Cameron was afterwards to know right well.
+
+     “Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!
+     Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!”
+
+Behind him came the trader, riding easily his demon-spirited broncho,
+and singing in full baritone the patriotic ode dear to Britishers the
+world over:
+
+     “Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+     Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+        The army and navy for ever,
+     Three cheers for the red, white and blue!”
+
+As Cameron went pounding along through the howling blizzard, half
+asleep upon his loping, scrambling, slithering pony, with the “Kai-yai,
+hai-yah” of Little Thunder wailing down the storm from before him and
+the martial notes of the trader behind him demanding cheers for Her
+Majesty's naval and military forces, he seemed to himself to be in the
+grip of some ghastly nightmare which, try as he might, he was unable to
+shake off.
+
+The ghastly unreality of the nightmare was dispelled by the sudden halt
+of the bunch of ponies in front.
+
+“All off!” cried the trader, riding forward upon his broncho, which,
+apparently quite untired by the long night ride, danced forward through
+the bunch gaily biting and slashing as he went. “All off! Get them into
+the 'bunk-house' there, Little Thunder. Come along, Mr. Cameron, we have
+reached our camp. Take off the bridle and blanket and let your pony go.”
+
+Cameron did as he was told, and guided by the sound of the trader's
+voice made his way to a low log building which turned out to be the
+deserted “grub-house” of an old lumber camp.
+
+“Come along,” cried the trader heartily. “Welcome to Fifty Mile Camp.
+Its accommodation is somewhat limited, but we can at least offer you
+a bunk, grub, and fire, and these on a night like this are not to be
+despised.” He fumbled around in the dark for a few moments and found and
+lit a candle stuck in an empty bottle. “There,” he cried in a tone of
+genial hospitality and with a kindly smile, “get a fire on here and make
+yourself at home. Nighthawk demands my attention for the present. Don't
+look so glum, old boy,” he added, slapping Cameron gaily on the back.
+“The worst is over.” So saying, he disappeared into the blizzard,
+singing at the top of his voice in the cheeriest possible tones:
+
+     “The army and navy for ever,
+        Three cheers for the red, white and blue!”
+
+and leaving Cameron sorely perplexed as to what manner of man this might
+be; who one moment could smile with all the malevolence of a fiend and
+again could welcome him with all the generous and genial hospitality he
+might show to a loved and long-lost friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STONIES
+
+
+The icy cold woke Cameron as the grey light came in through the dirty
+windows and the cracks between the logs of the grub-house. Already
+Little Thunder was awake and busy with the fire in the cracked and rusty
+stove. Cameron lay still and watched. Silently, swiftly the Indian moved
+about his work till the fire began to roar and the pot of snow on the
+top to melt. Then the trader awoke. With a single movement he was out
+upon the floor.
+
+“All hands awake!” he shouted. “Aha, Mr. Cameron! Good sleep, eh? Slept
+like a bear myself. Now grub, and off! Still blowing, eh? Well, so
+much the better. There is a spot thirty miles on where we will be snug
+enough. How's breakfast, Little Thunder? This is our only chance to-day,
+so don't spare the grub.”
+
+Cameron made but slight reply. He was stiff and sore with the cold and
+the long ride of the day before. This, however, he minded but little. If
+he could only guess what lay before him. He was torn between anxiety and
+indignation. He could hardly make himself believe that he was alive and
+in his waking senses. Twenty-four hours ago he was breakfasting with
+McIvor and his gang in the camp by The Bow; now he was twenty or thirty
+miles away in the heart of the mountains and practically a prisoner in
+the hands of as blood-thirsty a looking Indian as he had ever seen, and
+a man who remained to him an inexplicable mystery. Who and what was
+this man? He scanned his face in the growing light. Strength, daring,
+alertness, yes, and kindliness, he read in the handsome, brown, lean
+face of this stranger, lit by its grey-brown hazel eyes and set off
+with brown wavy hair which the absence of a cap now for the first time
+revealed.
+
+“He looks all right,” Cameron said to himself. And yet when he recalled
+the smile that had curled these thin lips and half closed these hazel
+eyes in the cave the night before, and when he thought of that murderous
+attack of his Indian companion, he found it difficult wholly to trust
+the man who was at once his rescuer and his captor.
+
+In the days of the early eighties there were weird stories floating
+about through the Western country of outlaw Indian traders whose chief
+stock for barter was a concoction which passed for whiskey, but the
+ingredients of which were principally high wines and tobacco juice, with
+a little molasses to sweeten it and a touch of blue stone to give
+it bite. Men of reckless daring were these traders, resourceful and
+relentless. For a bottle of their “hell-fire fluid” they would buy a
+buffalo hide, a pack of beaver skins, or a cayuse from an Indian without
+hesitation or remorse. With a keg or two of their deadly brew they would
+approach a tribe and strip it bare of a year's catch of furs.
+
+In the fierce fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed and
+half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second best and
+many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon the plains
+or among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail of the whiskey
+runners.
+
+In British territory all this style of barter was of course unlawful.
+The giving, selling, or trading of any sort of intoxicant to the Indians
+was absolutely prohibited. But it was a land of vast and mighty spaces,
+and everywhere were hiding places where armies could be safely disposed,
+and therefore there was small chance for the enforcement of the laws of
+the Dominion. There was little risk to the whiskey runners; and, indeed,
+however great the risk, the immense profits of their trade would have
+made them willing to take it.
+
+Hence all through the Western plains the whiskey runners had their way
+to the degradation and demoralization of the unhappy natives and to
+the rapid decimation of their numbers. Horse thieves, too, and cattle
+“rustlers” operating on both sides of “the line” added to the general
+confusion and lawlessness that prevailed and rendered the lives and
+property of the few pioneer settlers insecure.
+
+It was to deal with this situation that the Dominion Government
+organised and despatched the North West Mounted Police to Western
+Canada. Immediately upon the advent of this famous corps matters began
+to improve. The open ravages of the whiskey runners ceased and these
+daring outlaws were forced to carry on their fiendish business by
+midnight marches and through the secret trails and coulees of the
+foothills. The profits of the trade, however, were still great enough
+to tempt the more reckless and daring of these men. Cattle rustling
+and horse stealing still continued, but on a much smaller scale. To the
+whole country the advent of the police proved an incalculable blessing.
+But to the Indian tribes especially was this the case. The natives soon
+learned to regard the police officers as their friends. In them they
+found protection from the unscrupulous traders who had hitherto cheated
+them without mercy or conscience, as well as from the whiskey runners
+through whose devilish activities their people had suffered irreparable
+loss.
+
+The administration of the law by the officers of the police with firm
+and patient justice put an end also to the frequent and bloody wars that
+had prevailed previously between the various tribes, till, by these wild
+and savage people the red coat came to be regarded with mingled awe and
+confidence, a terror to evil-doers and a protection to those that did
+well.
+
+To which class did this man belong? This Cameron was utterly unable to
+decide.
+
+With this problem vexing his mind he ate his breakfast in almost
+complete silence, making only monosyllabic replies to the trader's
+cheerful attempts at conversation.
+
+Suddenly, with disconcerting accuracy, the trader seemed to read his
+mind.
+
+“Now, Mr. Cameron,” he said, pulling out his pipe, “we will have a smoke
+and a chat. Fill up.” He passed Cameron his little bag of tobacco. “Last
+night things were somewhat strained,” he continued. “Frankly, I confess,
+I took you at first for a whiskey runner and a horse thief, and having
+suffered from these gentlemen considerably I was taking no chances.”
+
+“Why force me to go with you, then?” asked Cameron angrily.
+
+“Why? For your good. There is less danger both to you--and to me--with
+you under my eye,” replied the trader with a smile.
+
+“Yet your man would have murdered me?”
+
+“Well, you see Little Thunder is one of the Blood Tribe and rather swift
+with his knife at times, I confess. Besides, his family has suffered at
+the hands of the whiskey runners. He is a chief and he owes it to these
+devils that he is out of a job just now. You may imagine he is somewhat
+touchy on the point of whiskey traders.
+
+“It was you set him on me,” said Cameron, still wrathful.
+
+“No, no,” said the trader, laughing quietly. “That was merely to startle
+you out of your, pardon me, unreasonable obstinacy. You must believe me
+it was the only thing possible that you should accompany us, for if you
+were a whiskey runner then it was better for us that you should be under
+guard, and if you were a surveyor it was better for you that you should
+be in our care. Why, man, this storm may go for three days, and you
+would be stiff long before anyone could find you. No, no, I confess our
+measures may have seemed somewhat--ah--abrupt, but, believe me, they
+were necessary, and in a day or two you will acknowledge that I am in
+the right of it. Meantime let's trust each other, and there is my hand
+on it, Cameron.”
+
+There was no resisting the frank smile, the open manner of the man, and
+Cameron took the offered hand with a lighter heart than he had known for
+the last twelve hours.
+
+“Now, then, that's settled,” cried the trader, springing to his feet.
+“Cameron, you can pack this stuff together while Little Thunder and I
+dig out our bunch of horses. They will be half frozen and it will be
+hard to knock any life into them.”
+
+It was half an hour before Cameron had his packs ready, and, there being
+no sign of the trader, he put on his heavy coat, mitts, and cap and
+fought his way through the blizzard, which was still raging in full
+force, to the bunk-house, a log building about thirty feet long and half
+as wide, in which were huddled the horses and ponies to the number of
+about twenty. Eight of the ponies carried pack saddles, and so busy were
+Raven and the Indian with the somewhat delicate operation of assembling
+the packs that he was close upon them before they were aware. Boxes and
+bags were strewn about in orderly disorder, and on one side were several
+small kegs. As Cameron drew near, the Indian, who was the first to
+notice him, gave a grunt.
+
+“What the blank blank are you doing here?” cried Raven with a string
+of oaths, flinging a buffalo robe over the kegs. “My word! You startled
+me,” he added with a short laugh. “I haven't got used to you yet. All
+right, Little Thunder, get these boxes together. Bring that grey cayuse
+here, Cameron, the one with the rope on near the door.”
+
+This was easier said than done, for the half-broken brute snorted and
+plunged till Cameron, taking a turn of the rope round his nose, forced
+him up through the trembling, crowding bunch.
+
+“Good!” said the trader. “You are all right. You didn't learn to rope a
+cayuse in Edinburgh, I guess. Here's his saddle. Cinch it on.”
+
+While Cameron was engaged in carrying out these orders Little Thunder
+and the trader were busy roping boxes and kegs into pack loads with a
+skill and dexterity that could only be the result of long practice.
+
+“Now, then, Cameron, we'll load some of this molasses on your pony.”
+
+So saying, Raven picked up one of the kegs.
+
+“Hello, Little Thunder, this keg's leaking. It's lost the plug, as I'm a
+sinner.”
+
+Sure enough, from a small auger hole golden syrup was streaming over the
+edge of the keg.
+
+“I am certain I put that plug in yesterday,” said Raven. “Must have been
+knocked out last night. Fortunately it stood right end up or we should
+have lost the whole keg.”
+
+While he was speaking he was shaping a small stick into a small plug,
+which he drove tight into the keg.
+
+“That will fix it,” he said. “Now then, put these boxes on the other
+side. That will do. Take your pony toward the door and tie him there.
+Little Thunder and I will load the rest and bring them up.”
+
+In a very short time all the remaining goods were packed into neat loads
+and lashed upon the pack ponies in such a careful manner that neither
+box nor keg could be seen outside the cover of blankets and buffalo
+skins.
+
+“Now then,” cried Raven. “Boots and saddles! We will give you a better
+mount to-day,” he continued, selecting a stout built sorrel pony. “There
+you are! And a dandy he is, sure-footed as a goat and easy as a cradle.
+Now then, Nighthawk, we shall just clear out this bunch.”
+
+As he spoke he whipped the blanket off his horse. Cameron could not
+forbear an exclamation of wonder and admiration as his eyes fell
+upon Raven's horse. And not without reason, for Nighthawk was as
+near perfection as anything in horse flesh of his size could be. His
+coal-black satin skin, his fine flat legs, small delicate head, sloping
+hips, round and well ribbed barrel, all showed his breed. Rolling up the
+blanket, Raven strapped it to his saddle and, flinging himself astride
+his horse, gave a yell that galvanised the wretched, shivering,
+dispirited bunch into immediate life and activity.
+
+“Get out the packers there, Little Thunder. Hurry up! Don't be all day.
+Cameron, fall behind with me.”
+
+Little Thunder seized the leading line of the first packer, leaped
+astride his own pony, and pushed out into the storm. But the rest of the
+animals held back and refused to face the blizzard. The traditions of
+the cayuse are unheroic in the matter of blizzards and are all in favor
+of turning tail to every storm that blows. But Nighthawk soon overcame
+their reluctance, whether traditional or otherwise. With a fury nothing
+less than demoniacal he fell upon the animals next him and inspired them
+with such terror that, plunging forward, they carried the bunch crowding
+through the door. It was no small achievement to turn some twenty
+shivering, balky, stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter
+and swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail
+again. But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his
+encouraging refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion
+dynamically bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without
+the straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing,
+shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce
+charge upon the laggards hustling the long straggling line onwards
+through the whirling drifts without pause or falter. Occasionally he
+dropped back beside Cameron, who brought up the rear, bringing a word of
+encouragement or approval.
+
+“How do they ever keep the trail?” asked Cameron on one of these
+occasions.
+
+“Little Thunder does the trick. He is the greatest tracker in this
+country, unless it is his cayuse, which has a nose like a bloodhound and
+will keep the trail through three feet of snow. The rest of the bunch
+follow. They are afraid to do anything else in a blizzard like this.”
+
+So hour after hour, upward along mountainsides, for by this time they
+were far into the Rockies, and down again through thick standing forests
+in the valleys, across ravines and roaring torrents which the warm
+weather of the previous days had released from the glaciers, and over
+benches of open country, where the grass lay buried deep beneath
+the snow, they pounded along. The clouds of snow ever whirling about
+Cameron's head and in front of his eyes hid the distant landscape and
+engulfed the head of the cavalcade before him. Without initiative and
+without volition, but in a dreamy haze, he sat his pony to which he
+entrusted his life and fortune and waited for the will of his mysterious
+companion to develope.
+
+About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and dropped
+in beside Cameron's pony.
+
+“A chinook coming,” said Raven. “Getting warmer, don't you notice?”
+
+“No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do feel a
+little more comfortable,” replied Cameron.
+
+“Sure thing. Rain in an hour.”
+
+“An hour? In six perhaps.”
+
+“In less than an hour,” replied Raven, “the chinook will be here. We're
+riding into it. It blows down through the pass before us and it will
+lick up this snow in no time. You'll see the grass all about you before
+three hours are passed.”
+
+The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction. With incredible
+rapidity the temperature continued to rise. In half an hour Cameron
+discarded his mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket. The wind
+dropped to a gentle breeze, swinging more and more into the southwest,
+and before the hour was gone the sun was shining fitfully again and the
+snow had changed into a drizzling rain.
+
+The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased
+the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling
+during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air
+became sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from
+the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the
+rivulets became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents
+which they had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them
+away.
+
+The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature. He was in
+high glee. It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.
+
+“We will make it all right!” he shouted to Little Thunder as they paused
+for a few moments in a grassy glade. “Can we make the Forks before
+dark?”
+
+Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it
+expressed doubt.
+
+“On then!” he shouted. “We must make these brutes get a move on. They'll
+feed when we camp.”
+
+So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies that
+were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the chinook had
+already melted the snow. Mercilessly and savagely the trader, with whip
+and voice and charging stallion, hustled the wretched animals into the
+trail once more. And through the long afternoon, with unceasing and
+brutal ferocity, he belabored the faltering, stumbling, half-starved
+creatures, till from sheer exhaustion they were like to fall upon the
+trail. It was a weary business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of
+Nighthawk seemed to have passed into his master, and with an insistence
+that knew no mercy together they battered that wretched bunch up and
+down the long slopes till at length the merciful night fell upon the
+straggling, stumbling cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.
+
+At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt, rode
+to the rear and grunted something to his chief.
+
+“What?” cried Raven in a startled voice. “Stonies! Where?”
+
+Little Thunder pointed.
+
+“Did they see you?” This insult Little Thunder disdained to notice.
+“Good!” replied Raven. “Stay here, Cameron, we will take a look at
+them.”
+
+In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an eager
+gleam in his eyes.
+
+“Stonies!” he exclaimed. “And a big camp. On their way back from their
+winter's trapping. Old Macdougall himself in charge, I think. Do you
+know him?”
+
+“I have heard of him,” said Cameron, and his tone indicated his
+reverence for the aged pioneer Methodist missionary who had accomplished
+such marvels during his long years of service with his Indian flock and
+had gained such a wonderful control over them.
+
+“Yes, he is all right,” replied Raven, answering his tone. “He is a
+shrewd old boy, though. Looks mighty close after the trading end. Well,
+we will perhaps do a little trade ourselves. But we won't disturb the
+old man,” he continued, as if to himself. “Come and take a look at
+them.”
+
+Little Thunder had halted at a spot where the trail forked. One part led
+to the right down the long slope of the mountain, the other to the left,
+gradually climbing toward the top. The Stonies had come by the right
+hand trail and were now camped off the trail on a little sheltered bench
+further down the side of the mountain and surrounded by a scattering
+group of tall pines. Through the misty night their camp fires burned
+cheerily, lighting up their lodges. Around the fires could be seen
+groups of men squatted on the ground and here and there among the lodges
+the squaws were busy, evidently preparing the evening meal. At one side
+of the camp could be distinguished a number of tethered ponies and near
+them others quietly grazing.
+
+But though the camp lay only a few hundred yards away and on a lower
+level, not a sound came up from it to Cameron's ears except the
+occasional bark of a dog. The Indians are a silent people and move
+noiselessly through Nature's solitudes as if in reverence for her sacred
+mysteries.
+
+“We won't disturb them,” said Raven in a low tone. “We will slip past
+quietly.”
+
+“They come from Morleyville, don't they?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Why not visit the camp?” exclaimed Cameron eagerly. “I am sure Mr.
+Macdougall would be glad to see us. And why could not I go back with
+him? My camp is right on the trail to Morleyville.”
+
+Raven stood silent, evidently perplexed.
+
+“Well,” he replied hesitatingly, “we shall see later. Meantime let's get
+into camp ourselves. And no noise, please.” His voice was low and stern.
+
+Silently, and as swiftly as was consistent with silence, Little Thunder
+led his band of pack horses along the upper trail, the trader and
+Cameron bringing up the rear with the other ponies. For about half a
+mile they proceeded in this direction, then, turning sharply to the
+right, they cut across through the straggling woods, and so came upon
+the lower trail, beyond the encampment of the Stonies and well out of
+sight of it.
+
+“We camp here,” said Raven briefly. “But remember, no noise.”
+
+“What about visiting their camp?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“There is no immediate hurry.”
+
+He spoke a few words to Little Thunder in Indian.
+
+“Little Thunder thinks they may be Blackfeet. We can't be too careful.
+Now let's get grub.”
+
+Cameron made no reply. The trader's hesitating manner awakened all his
+former suspicions. He was firmly convinced the Indians were Stonies and
+he resolved that come what might he would make his escape to their camp.
+
+Without unloading their packs they built their fire upon a large flat
+rock and there, crouching about it, for the mists were chilly, they had
+their supper.
+
+In undertones Raven and Little Thunder conversed in the Indian speech.
+The gay careless air of the trader had given place to one of keen,
+purposeful determination. There was evidently serious business on foot.
+Immediately after supper Little Thunder vanished into the mist.
+
+“We may as well make ourselves comfortable,” said Raven, pulling a
+couple of buffalo skins from a pack and giving one to Cameron. “Little
+Thunder is gone to reconnoiter.” He threw some sticks upon the fire.
+“Better go to sleep,” he suggested. “We shall probably visit the camp in
+the morning if they should prove to be Stonies.”
+
+Cameron made no reply, but, lying down upon his buffalo skin, pretended
+to sleep, though with the firm resolve to keep awake. But he had passed
+through an exhausting day and before many minutes had passed he fell
+into a doze.
+
+From this he awoke with a start, his ears filled with the sound of
+singing. Beyond the fire lay Raven upon his face, apparently sound
+asleep. The singing came from the direction of the Indian camp.
+Noiselessly he rose and stole up the trail to a point from which the
+camp was plainly visible. A wonderful scene lay before his eyes. A great
+fire burned in the centre of the camp and round the fire the whole band
+of Indians was gathered with their squaws in the background. In the
+centre of the circle stood a tall man with a venerable beard, apparently
+reading. After he had read the sound of singing once more rose upon the
+night air.
+
+“Stonies, all right,” said Cameron exultantly to himself. “And at
+evening prayers, too, by Jove.”
+
+He remembered hearing McIvor tell how the Stonies never went on a
+hunting expedition without their hymn books and never closed a day
+without their evening worship. The voices were high-pitched and thin,
+but from that distance they floated up soft and sweet. He could clearly
+distinguish the music of the old Methodist hymn, the words of which were
+quite familiar to him:
+
+     “There is a fountain filled with blood
+       Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
+     And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
+       Lose all their guilty stains.”
+
+Over and over again, with strange wild cadences of their own invention,
+the worshippers wailed forth the refrain,
+
+     “Lose all their guilty stains.”
+
+Then, all kneeling, they went to prayer. Over all, the misty moon
+struggling through the broken clouds cast a pale and ghostly light. It
+was, to Cameron with his old-world religious conventions and traditions,
+a weirdly fascinating but intensely impressive scene. Afar beyond the
+valley, appeared in dim outline the great mountains, with their heads
+thrust up into the sky. Nearer at their bases gathered the pines, at
+first in solid gloomy masses, then, as they approached, in straggling
+groups, and at last singly, like tall sentinels on guard. On the
+grassy glade, surrounded by the sentinel pines, the circle of dusky
+worshippers, kneeling about their camp fire, lifted their faces
+heavenward and their hearts God-ward in prayer, and as upon those dusky
+faces the firelight fell in fitful gleams, so upon their hearts, dark
+with the superstitions of a hundred generations, there fell the gleams
+of the torch held high by the hands of their dauntless ambassador of the
+blessed Gospel of the Grace of God.
+
+With mingled feelings of reverence and of pity Cameron stood gazing down
+upon this scene, resolved more than ever to attach himself to this camp
+whose days closed with evening prayer.
+
+“Impressive scene!” said a mocking voice in his ear.
+
+Cameron started. A sudden feeling of repulsion seized him.
+
+“Yes,” he said gravely, “an impressive scene, in my eyes at least, and I
+should not wonder if in the eyes of God as well.”
+
+“Who knows?” said Raven gruffly, as they both turned back to the fire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DULL RED STAIN
+
+
+The minutes passed slowly. The scene in the camp of the Stonies that he
+had just witnessed drove all sleep from Cameron. He was firmly resolved
+that at the first opportunity he would make his break for liberty; for
+he was now fully aware that though not confessedly he was none the less
+really a prisoner.
+
+As he lay intently thinking, forming and discarding plans of escape, two
+Indians, followed by Little Thunder, walked quietly within the circle of
+the firelight and with a nod and a grunt towards Raven sat down by
+the fire. Raven passed his tobacco bag, which, without a word, they
+accepted; and, filling their pipes, they gravely began to smoke.
+
+“White Cloud,” grunted Little Thunder, waving his hand to the first
+Indian. “Big Chief. Him,” pointing to the second Indian, “White Cloud
+brother.”
+
+“My brothers had good hunting this year,” said Raven.
+
+The Indians grunted for reply.
+
+“Your packs are heavy?”
+
+Another grunt made answer.
+
+“We have much goods,” continued Raven. “But the time is short. Come and
+see.”
+
+Raven led them out into the dark towards the pack horse, Little Thunder
+remaining by the fire. From the darkness Cameron could hear Raven's
+voice in low tones and the Indians' guttural replies mingled with
+unusual laughter.
+
+When they returned the change in their appearance was plainly visible.
+Their eyes were gleaming with an unnatural excitement, their grave
+and dignified demeanour had given place to an eager, almost childish
+excitement. Cameron did not need the whiff that came to him from their
+breath to explain the cause of this sudden change. The signs were to him
+only too familiar.
+
+“My brothers will need to hurry,” said Raven. “We move when the moon is
+high.”
+
+“Good!” replied White Cloud. “Go, quick.” He waved his hand toward the
+dark. “Come.” He brought it back again. “Heap quick.” Without further
+word they vanished, silent as the shadows that swallowed them up.
+
+“Now, then, Cameron, we have big business on foot. Up and give us a
+hand. Little Thunder, take the bunch down the trail a couple of miles
+and come back.”
+
+Selecting one of the pack ponies, he tied it to a pine tree and the
+others he hurried off with Little Thunder down the trail.
+
+“Going to do some trading, are you?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Yes, if the price is right, though I'm not too keen,” replied Raven,
+throwing himself down beside the fire.
+
+“What are you after? Furs?”
+
+“Yes, furs mostly. Anything they have to offer.”
+
+“What do you give in exchange?”
+
+Raven threw him a sharp glance, but Cameron's face was turned toward the
+fire.
+
+“Oh, various articles. Wearing apparel, tobacco, finery. Molasses too.
+They are very fond of molasses.”
+
+“Molasses?” echoed Cameron, with a touch of scorn. “It was not molasses
+they had to-night. Why did you give them whiskey?” he asked boldly.
+
+Raven started. His eyes narrowed to two piercing points.
+
+“Why? That's my business, my friend. I keep a flask to treat my guests
+occasionally. Have you any objection?”
+
+“It is against the law, I understand, and mighty bad for the Indians.”
+
+“Against the law?” echoed Raven in childlike surprise. “You don't tell
+me!”
+
+“So the Mounted Police declare,” said Cameron, turning his eyes upon
+Raven's face.
+
+“The Mounted Police!” exclaimed Raven, pouring forth a flood of oaths.
+“That! for the Mounted Police!” he said, snapping his fingers.
+
+“But,” replied Cameron, “I understood you very especially to object to
+the operations of the whiskey runners?”
+
+“Whiskey runners? Who's speaking of whiskey runners? I'm talking of
+the approved method of treating our friends in this country, and if the
+police should interfere between me and my friends they would be carrying
+things a little too far. But all the same,” he continued, hastily
+checking himself, “the police are all right. They put down a lot of
+lawlessness in this country. But I may as well say to you here, Mr.
+Cameron,” he continued, “that there are certain things it is best not to
+see, or, having seen, to speedily forget.” As he spoke these words his
+eyes narrowed again to two grey points that seemed to bore right through
+to Cameron's brain.
+
+“This man is a very devil,” thought Cameron to himself. “I was a fool
+not to see it before.” But to the trader he said, “There are some things
+I would rather not see and some things I cannot forget.”
+
+Before another hour had passed the Stonies reappeared, this time on
+ponies. The trader made no move to meet them. He sat quietly smoking by
+the fire. Silently the Indians approached the fire and threw down a pack
+of furs.
+
+“Huh!” said White Cloud. “Good! Ver good!” He opened his pack and spread
+out upon the rock with impressive deliberation its contents. And good
+they were, even to Cameron's uncultured eye. Wolf skins and bear,
+cinnamon and black, beaver, fox, and mink, as well as some magnificent
+specimens of mountain goat and sheep. “Good! Good! Big--fine--heap
+good!” White Cloud continued to exclaim as he displayed his collection.
+
+Raven turned them over carelessly, feeling the furs, examining and
+weighing the pelts. Then going to the pack horse he returned and spread
+out upon the rock beside the furs the goods which he proposed to offer
+in exchange. And a pitiful display it was, gaudy calicoes and flimsy
+flannels, the brilliance of whose colour was only equalled by the
+shoddiness of the material, cheap domestic blankets, half wool half
+cotton, prepared especially for the Indian trade. These, with beads and
+buttons, trinkets, whole strings of brass rings, rolls of tobacco, bags
+of shot and powder, pot metal knives, and other articles, all bearing
+the stamp of glittering fraud, constituted his stock for barter.
+The Indians made strenuous efforts to maintain an air of dignified
+indifference, but the glitter in their eyes betrayed their eagerness.
+White Cloud picked up a goat skin, heavy with its deep silky fur and
+with its rich splendour covered over the glittering mass of Raven's
+cheap and tawdry stuff.
+
+“Good trade,” said White Cloud. “Him,” pointing to the skin, “and,”
+ turning it back, “him,” laying his hand upon the goods beneath.
+
+Raven smiled carelessly, pulled out a flask from his pocket, took a
+drink and passed it to the others. Desperately struggling to suppress
+his eagerness and to maintain his dignified bearing, White Cloud seized
+the flask and, drinking long and deep, passed it to his brother.
+
+“Have a drink, Cameron,” said Raven, as he received his flask again.
+
+“No!” said Cameron shortly. “And I would suggest to your friends that
+they complete the trade before they drink much more.”
+
+“My friend here says this is no good,” said Raven to the Indians,
+tapping the flask with his finger. “He says no more drink.”
+
+White Cloud shot a keen enquiring glance at Cameron, but he made no
+reply other than to stretch out his hand for Raven's flask again. Before
+many minutes the efficacy of Raven's methods of barter began to be
+apparent. The Indians lost their grave and dignified demeanour. They
+became curious, eager, garrulous, and demonstrative. With childish glee
+they began examining more closely Raven's supply of goods, trying on the
+rings, draping themselves in the gaudy calicoes and flannels. At length
+Raven rolled up his articles of barter and set them upon one side.
+
+“How much?” he said.
+
+White Cloud selected the goat skin, laid upon it some half dozen beaver
+and mink, and a couple of foxes, and rolling them up in a pile laid them
+beside Raven's bundle.
+
+The trader smiled and shook his head. “No good. No good.” So saying he
+took from his pack another flask and laid it upon his pile.
+
+Instantly the Indian increased his pile by a bear skin, a grey wolf, and
+a mountain goat. Then, without waiting for Raven's words, he reached for
+the flask.
+
+“No, not yet,” said Raven quietly, laying his hand down upon the flask.
+
+The Indian with gleaming eyes threw on the pile some additional skins.
+
+“Good!” said Raven, surrendering the flask. Swiftly the Indian caught it
+up and, seizing the cork in his teeth, bit it off close to the neck
+of the flask. Snatching his knife from his pocket with almost frantic
+energy, he proceeded to dig out the imbedded cork.
+
+“Here,” said Raven, taking the flask from him. “Let me have it.” From
+his pocket he took a knife containing a corkscrew and with this he drew
+the cork and handed the flask back to the Indian.
+
+With shameless, bestial haste the Indian placed the bottle to his lips
+and after a long pull passed it to his waiting brother.
+
+At this point Raven rose as if to close the negotiations and took out
+his own flask for a final drink, but found it empty.
+
+“Aha!” he exclaimed, turning the empty flask upside down. At once the
+Indian passed him his flask. Raven, however, waved him aside and, going
+to his pack, drew out a tin oil can which would contain about a gallon.
+From this with great deliberation he filled his flask.
+
+“Huh!” exclaimed the Indian, pointing to the can. “How much?”
+
+Raven shook his head. “No sell. For me,” he answered, tapping himself on
+the breast.
+
+“How much?” said the Indian fiercely.
+
+Still Raven declined to sell.
+
+Swiftly the Indian gathered up the remaining half of his pack of furs
+and, throwing them savagely at Raven's feet, seized the can.
+
+Still Raven refused to let it go.
+
+At this point the soft padding of a loping pony was heard coming up the
+trail and in a few minutes Little Thunder silently took his place in
+the circle about the fire. Cameron's heart sank within him, for now it
+seemed as if his chance of escape had slipped from him.
+
+Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who entered into
+conversation with the Stonies. At length White Cloud drew from his
+coat a black fox skin. In spite of himself Raven uttered a slight
+exclamation. It was indeed a superb pelt. With savage hate in every line
+of his face and in every movement of his body, the Indian flung the skin
+upon the pile of furs and without a “By your leave” seized the can and
+passed it to his brother.
+
+At this point Raven, with a sudden display of reckless generosity,
+placed his own flask upon the Indian's pile of goods.
+
+“Ask them if they want molasses,” said Raven to Little Thunder.
+
+“No,” grunted the Indian contemptuously, preparing to depart.
+
+“Ask them, Little Thunder.”
+
+Immediately as Little Thunder began to speak the contemptuous attitude
+of the Stonies gave place to one of keen interest and desire. After some
+further talk Little Thunder went to the pack-pony, returned bearing a
+small keg and set it on the rock beside Raven's pile of furs. Hastily
+the Stonies consulted together, White Cloud apparently reluctant, the
+brother recklessly eager to close the deal. Finally with a gesture White
+Cloud put an end to the conversation, stepped out hastily into the
+dark and returned leading his pony into the light. Cutting asunder the
+lashings with his knife, he released a bundle of furs and threw it down
+at Raven's feet.
+
+“Same ting. Good!” he said.
+
+But Raven would not look at the bundle and proceeded to pack up the
+spoils of his barter. Earnestly the Stonies appealed to Little Thunder,
+but in vain. Angrily they remonstrated, but still without result. At
+length Little Thunder pointed to the pony and without hesitation White
+Cloud placed the bridle rein in his hands.
+
+Cameron could contain himself no longer. Suddenly rising from his place
+he strode to the side of the Indians and cried, “Don't do it! Don't be
+such fools! This no good,” he said, kicking the keg. “What would Mr.
+Macdougall say? Come! I go with you. Take back these furs.”
+
+He stepped forward to seize the second pack. Swiftly Little Thunder
+leaped before him, knife in hand, and crouched to spring. The Stonies
+had no doubt as to his meaning. Their hearts were filled with black
+rage against the unscrupulous trader, but their insane thirst for the
+“fire-water” swept from their minds every other consideration but that
+of determination to gratify this mad lust. Unconsciously they ranged
+themselves beside Cameron, their hands going to their belts. Quietly
+Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who, slowly putting
+up his knife, made a brief but vigourous harangue to the Stonies, the
+result of which was seen in the doubtful glances which they cast upon
+Cameron from time to time.
+
+“Come on!” cried Cameron again, laying his hand upon the nearest Indian.
+“Let's go to your camp. Take your furs. He is a thief, a robber, a
+bad man. All that,” sweeping his hand towards Raven's goods, “no good.
+This,” kicking the keg, “bad. Kill you.”
+
+These words they could not entirely understand, but his gestures were
+sufficiently eloquent and significant. There was an ugly gleam in
+Raven's eyes and an ugly curl to his thin lips, but he only smiled.
+
+“Come,” he said, waving his hand toward the furs, “take them away. Tell
+them we don't want to trade, Little Thunder.” He pulled out his flask,
+slowly took a drink, and passed it to Little Thunder, who greedily
+followed his example. “Tell them we don't want to trade at all,”
+ insisted Raven.
+
+Little Thunder volubly explained the trader's wishes.
+
+“Good-bye,” said Raven, offering his hand to White Cloud. “Good
+friends,” he added, once more passing him his flask.
+
+“Don't!” said Cameron, laying his hand again upon the Indian's arm. For
+a single instant White Cloud paused.
+
+“Huh!” grunted Little Thunder in contempt. “Big chief scared.”
+
+Quickly the Stony shook off Cameron's hand, seized the flask and,
+putting it to his lips, drained it dry.
+
+“Come,” said Cameron to the other Stony. “Come with me.”
+
+Raven uttered a warning word to Little Thunder. The Indians stood for
+some moments uncertain, their heads bowed upon their breasts. Then White
+Cloud, throwing back his head and looking Cameron full in the face,
+said--“Good man. Good man. Me no go.”
+
+“Then I go alone,” cried Cameron, springing off into the darkness.
+
+As he turned his foot caught the pile of wood brought for the fire.
+He tripped and stumbled almost to the ground. Before he could recover
+himself Little Thunder, swift as a wildcat, leaped upon his back with
+his ever-ready knife in his upraised hand, but before he could strike,
+Cameron had turned himself and throwing the Indian off had struggled to
+his feet.
+
+“Hold there!” cried Raven with a terrible oath, flinging himself upon
+the struggling pair.
+
+A moment or two the Stonies hesitated, then they too seized Cameron and
+between them all they bore him fighting to the ground.
+
+“Keep back! Keep back!” cried Raven in a terrible voice to Little
+Thunder, who, knife in hand, was dancing round, seeking an opportunity
+to strike. “Will you lie still, or shall I knock your head in?” said
+Raven to Cameron through his clenched teeth, with one hand on his throat
+and the other poising a revolver over his head. Cameron gave up the
+struggle.
+
+“Speak and quick!” cried Raven, his face working with passion, his voice
+thick and husky, his breath coming in quick gasps from the fury that
+possessed him.
+
+“All right,” said Cameron. “Let me up. You have beaten me this time.”
+
+Raven sprang to his feet.
+
+“Let him up!” he said. “Now, then, Cameron, give me your word you won't
+try to escape.”
+
+“No, I will not! I'll see you hanged first,” said Cameron.
+
+Raven deliberately drew his pistol and said slowly:
+
+“I have saved your life twice already, but the time is past for any more
+trifling. Now you've got to take it.”
+
+At this Little Thunder spoke a word, pointing toward the camp of the
+Stonies. Raven hesitated, then with an oath he strode toward Cameron and
+thrusting his pistol in his face said in tones of cold and concentrated
+rage:
+
+“Listen to me, you fool! Your life is hanging by a hair trigger that
+goes off with a feather touch. I give you one more chance. Move hand or
+foot and the bullet in this gun will pass neatly through your eye. So
+help me God Almighty!”
+
+He spoke to Little Thunder, still keeping Cameron covered with his gun.
+The Indian slipped quietly behind Cameron and swiftly threw a line over
+his shoulders and, drawing it tight, bound his arms to his side. Again
+and again he repeated this operation till Cameron stood swathed in the
+coils of the rope like a mummy, inwardly raging, not so much at his
+captor, but at himself and his stupid bungling of his break for liberty.
+His helpless and absurd appearance seemed to restore Raven's good
+humour.
+
+“Now, then,” he said, turning to the Stonies and resuming his careless
+air, “we will finish our little business. Sit down, Mr. Cameron,” he
+continued, with a pleasant smile. “It may be less dignified, but it is
+much more comfortable.”
+
+Once more he took out his flask and passed it round, forgetting to take
+it back from his Indian visitors, who continued to drink from it in
+turn.
+
+“Listen,” he said. “I give you all you see here for your furs and a pony
+to pack them. That is my last word. Quick, yes or no? Tell them no more
+trifling, Little Thunder. The moon is high. We start in ten minutes.”
+
+There was no further haggling. The Indians seemed to recognise that the
+time for that was past. After a brief consultation they grunted their
+acceptance and proceeded to pack up their goods, but with no good will.
+More vividly than any in the company they realised the immensity of the
+fraud that was being perpetrated upon them. They were being robbed of
+their whole winter's kill and that of some of their friends as well,
+but they were helpless in the grip of their mad passion for the trader's
+fire-water. Disgusted with themselves and filled with black rage against
+the man who had so pitilessly stripped them bare of the profits of a
+year's toil and privation, how gladly would they have put their knives
+into his back, but they knew his sort by only too bitter experience and
+they knew that at his hands they need expect no pity.
+
+“Here,” cried Raven, observing their black looks. “A present for my
+brothers.” He handed them each a roll of tobacco. “And a present for
+their squaws,” adding a scarlet blanket apiece to their pack.
+
+Without a word of thanks they took the gifts and, loading their stuff
+upon their remaining pony, disappeared down the trail.
+
+“Now, Little Thunder, let's get out of this, for once their old man
+finds out he will be hot foot on our trail.”
+
+With furious haste they fell to their packing. Cameron stood aghast at
+the amazing swiftness and dexterity with which the packs were roped and
+loaded. When all was complete the trader turned to Cameron in gay good
+humour.
+
+“Now, Mr. Cameron, will you go passenger or freight?” Cameron made no
+reply. “In other words, shall we pack you on your pony or will you ride
+like a gentleman, giving me your word not to attempt to escape? Time
+presses, so answer quick! Give me twenty-four hours. Give me your word
+for twenty-four hours, after which you can go when you like.”
+
+“I agree,” said Cameron shortly.
+
+“Cut him loose, Little Thunder.” Little Thunder hesitated. “Quick,
+you fool! Cut him loose. I know a gentleman when I see him. He is tied
+tighter than with ropes.”
+
+“It is a great pity,” he continued, addressing Cameron in a pleasant
+conversational tone as they rode down the trail together, “that you
+should have made an ass of yourself for those brutes. Bah! What odds?
+Old Macdougall or some one else would get their stuff sooner or later.
+Why not I? Come, cheer up. You are jolly well out of it, for, God knows,
+you may live to look death in the face many a time, but never while
+you live will you be so near touching the old sport as you were a few
+minutes ago. Why I have interfered to save you these three times blessed
+if I know! Many a man's bones have been picked by the coyotes in these
+hills for a fraction of the provocation you have given me, not to speak
+of Little Thunder, who is properly thirsting for your blood. But take
+advice from me,” here he leaned over towards Cameron and touched him on
+the shoulder, while his voice took a sterner tone, “don't venture on any
+further liberties with him.”
+
+Suddenly Cameron's rage blazed forth.
+
+“Now perhaps you will listen to me,” he said in a voice thrilling with
+passion. “First of all, keep your hands off me. As for your comrade and
+partner in crime, I fear him no more than I would a dog and like a dog
+I shall treat him if he dares to attack me again. As for you, you are a
+coward and a cad. You have me at a disadvantage. But put down your guns
+and fight me on equal terms, and I will make you beg for your life!”
+
+There was a gleam of amused admiration in Raven's eyes.
+
+“By Jove! It would be a pretty fight, I do believe, and one I should
+greatly enjoy. At present, however, time is pressing and therefore that
+pleasure we must postpone. Meantime I promise you that when it comes it
+will be on equal terms.”
+
+“I ask no more,” said Cameron.
+
+There was no further conversation, for Raven appeared intent on putting
+as large a space as possible between himself and the camp of the
+Stonies. The discovery of the fraud he knew would be inevitable and he
+knew, too, that George Macdougall was not the man to allow his flock to
+be fleeced with impunity.
+
+So before the grey light of morning began to steal over the mountaintops
+Raven, with his bunch of ponies and his loot, was many miles forward
+on his journey. But the endurance even of bronchos and cayuses has its
+limit, and their desperate condition from hunger and fatigue rendered
+food and rest imperative.
+
+The sun was fully up when Raven ordered a halt, and in a sunny valley,
+deep with grass, unsaddling the wearied animals, he turned them loose to
+feed and rest. Apparently careless of danger and highly contented
+with their night's achievement, he and his Indian partner abandoned
+themselves to sleep. Cameron, too, though his indignation and chagrin
+prevented sleep for a time, was finally forced to yield to the genial
+influences of the warm sun and the languid airs of the spring day, and,
+firmly resolving to keep awake, he fell into dreamless slumber.
+
+The sun was riding high noon when he was awakened by a hand upon his
+arm. It was Raven.
+
+“Hush!” he said. “Not a word. Mount and quick!”
+
+Looking about Cameron observed that the pack horses were ready loaded
+and Raven standing by his broncho ready to mount. Little Thunder was
+nowhere to be seen.
+
+“What's up?” said Cameron.
+
+For answer Raven pointed up the long sloping trail down which they had
+come. There three horsemen could be seen riding hard, but still distant
+more than half a mile.
+
+“Saw them three miles away, luckily enough,” said Raven.
+
+“Where's Little Thunder?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Oh, rounding up the bunch,” answered Raven carelessly, waving his hand
+toward the valley. “Those men are coming some,” he added, swinging into
+his saddle.
+
+As he spoke a rifle shot shattered the stillness of the valley. The
+first of the riders threw up his hands, clutched wildly at the vacant
+air and pitched headlong out of the saddle. “Good God! What's that?”
+ gasped Cameron. The other two wheeled in their course. Before they could
+turn a second shot rang out and another of the riders fell upon his
+horse's neck, clung there for a moment, then gently slid to the ground.
+The third, throwing himself over the side of his pony, rode back for
+dear life.
+
+A third and a fourth shot were heard, but the fleeing rider escaped
+unhurt.
+
+“What does that mean?” again asked Cameron, weak and sick with horror.
+
+“Mount!” yelled Raven with a terrible oath and flourishing a revolver
+in his hand. “Mount quick!” His face was pale, his eyes burned with a
+fierce glare, while his voice rang with the blast of a bugle.
+
+“Lead those pack horses down that trail!” he yelled, thrusting the line
+into Cameron's hand. “Quick, I tell you!”
+
+“Crack-crack!” Twice a bullet sang savagely past Cameron's ears.
+
+“Quicker!” shouted Raven, circling round the bunch of ponies with wild
+cries and oaths like a man gone mad. Again and again the revolver spat
+wickedly and here and there a pony plunged recklessly forward, nicked
+in the ear by one of those venomous singing pellets. Helpless to
+defend himself and expecting every moment to feel the sting of a bullet
+somewhere in his body, Cameron hurried his pony with all his might down
+the trail, dragging the pack animals after him. In huddled confusion the
+terrified brutes followed after him in a mad rush, for hard upon their
+rear, like a beast devil-possessed, Nighthawk pressed, biting, kicking,
+squealing, to the accompaniment of his rider's oaths and yells and
+pistol shots. Down the long sloping trail to the very end of the valley
+the mad rush continued. There the ascent checked the fury of the speed
+and forced a quieter pace. But through the afternoon there was no
+weakening of the pressure from the rear till the evening shadows and the
+frequent falling of the worn-out beasts forced a slackening of the pace
+and finally a halt.
+
+Sick with horror and loathing, Cameron dismounted and unsaddled his
+broncho. He had hardly finished this operation when Little Thunder
+rode up upon a strange pony, leading a beautiful white broncho behind.
+Cameron could not repress an exclamation of disgust as the Indian drew
+near him.
+
+“Beautiful beast that,” said Raven carelessly, pointing to the white
+pony.
+
+Cameron turned his eyes upon the pony and stood transfixed with horror.
+
+“My God!” he exclaimed. “Look at that!” Across the beautiful white
+shoulders and reaching down clear to the fetlock there ran a broad
+stain, dull red and horrible. Then through his teeth, hard clenched
+together, these words came forth: “Some day, by God's help, I shall wipe
+out that stain.”
+
+The trader shrugged his shoulders carelessly, but made no reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SERGEANT CRISP
+
+
+The horror of the day followed Cameron through the night and awoke with
+him next morning. Every time his eyes found the Indian his teeth came
+together in a grinding rage as he repeated his vow, “Some day I shall
+bring you to justice. So help me God!”
+
+Against Raven somehow he could not maintain the same heat of rage. That
+he was a party to the murder of the Stonies there was little reason
+to doubt, but as all next day they lay in the sunny glade resting the
+ponies, or went loping easily along the winding trails making ever
+towards the Southwest, the trader's cheerful face, his endless tales,
+and his invincible good humour stole from Cameron's heart, in spite of
+his firm resolve, the fierceness of his wrath. But the resolve was none
+the less resolute that one day he would bring this man to justice.
+
+As they journeyed on, the woods became more open and the trees larger.
+Mid-day found them resting by a little lake, from which a stream flowed
+into the upper reaches of the Columbia River.
+
+“We shall make the Crow's Nest trail by to-morrow night,” said Raven,
+“where we shall part; not to your very great sorrow, I fancy, either.”
+
+The evening before Cameron would have said, “No, but to my great joy,”
+ and it vexed him that he could not bring himself to say so to-day with
+any great show of sincerity. There was a charm about this man that he
+could not resist.
+
+“And yet,” continued Raven, allowing his eyes to rest dreamily upon the
+lake, “in other circumstances I might have found in you an excellent
+friend, and a most rare and valuable find that is.”
+
+“That it is!” agreed Cameron, thinking of his old football captain, “but
+one cannot make friends with a--”
+
+“It is an ugly word, I know,” said Raven. “But, after all, what is a
+bunch of furs more or less to those Indians?”
+
+“Furs?” exclaimed Cameron in horror. “What are the lives of these men?”
+
+“Oh,” replied Raven carelessly, “these Indians are always getting killed
+one way or another. It is all in the day's work with them. They pick
+each other off without query or qualm. Besides, Little Thunder has
+a grudge of very old standing against the Stonies, whom he heartily
+despises, and he doubtless enjoys considerable satisfaction from the
+thought that he has partially paid it. It will be his turn next, like
+as not, for they won't let this thing sleep. Or perhaps mine!” he added
+after a pause. “The man is doubtless on the trail at this present minute
+who will finally get me.”
+
+“Then why expose yourself to such a fate?” said Cameron. “Surely in this
+country a man can live an honest life and prosper.”
+
+“Honest life? I doubt it! What is an honest life? Does any Indian trader
+lead an honest life? Do the Hudson Bay traders, or I. G. Baker's people,
+or any of them do the honest thing by the Indian they trade with? In
+the long run it is a question of the police. What escapes the police is
+honest. The crime, after all, is in getting caught.”
+
+“Oh, that is too old!” said Cameron. “You know you are talking rot.”
+
+“Quite right! It is rot,” assented Raven. “The whole business is rot.
+'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher.' Oh, I know the Book, you
+see. I was not born a--a--an outlaw.” The grey-brown eyes had in them
+a wistful look. “Bah!” he exclaimed, springing to his feet and shaking
+himself. “The sight of your Edinburgh face and the sound of your
+Edinburgh speech and your old country ways and manners have got on my
+recollection works, and I believe that accounts for you being alive
+to-day, old man.”
+
+He whistled to his horse. Nighthawk came trotting and whinneying to him.
+
+“I have one friend in the world, old boy,” he said, throwing his arm
+over the black, glossy neck and searching his pocket for a biscuit. “And
+even you,” he added bitterly, “I fear do not love me for naught.”
+
+Saddling his horse, he mounted and calling Little Thunder to him said:
+
+“Take the bunch on as far as the Big Canyon and wait there for me. I am
+going back a bit. It is better to be sure than sorry. Cameron, your
+best route lies with us. Your twenty-four hours' parole is already up.
+To-morrow, perhaps to-night, I shall put you on the Macleod trail. You
+are a free man, but don't try to make any breaks when I am gone. My
+friend here is extremely prompt with his weapons. Farewell! Get a move
+on, Little Thunder! Cameron will bring up the rear.”
+
+He added some further words in the Indian tongue, his voice taking a
+stern tone. Little Thunder grunted a surly and unwilling acquiescence,
+and, waving his hand to Cameron, the trader wheeled his horse up the
+trail.
+
+In spite of himself Cameron could not forbear a feeling of pity and
+admiration as he watched the lithe, upright figure swaying up the
+trail, his every movement in unison with that of the beautiful demon
+he bestrode. But with all his pity and admiration he was none the less
+resolved that he would do what in him lay to bring these two to justice.
+
+“This ugly devil at least shall swing!” he said to himself as he turned
+his eyes upon Little Thunder getting his pack ponies out upon the trail.
+This accomplished, the Indian, pointing onward, said gruffly,
+
+“You go in front--me back.”
+
+“Not much!” cried Cameron. “You heard the orders from your chief. You go
+in front. I bring up the rear. I do not know the trail.”
+
+“Huh! Trail good,” grunted Little Thunder, the red-rimmed eyes gleaming
+malevolently. “You go front--me back.” He waved his hand impatiently
+toward the trail. Following the direction of his hand, Cameron's eyes
+fell upon the stock of his own rifle protruding from a pack upon one of
+the ponies. For a moment the protruding stock held his eyes fascinated.
+
+“Huh!” said the Indian, noting Cameron's glance, and slipping off his
+pony. In an instant both men were racing for the pack and approaching
+each other at a sharp angle. Arrived at striking distance, the Indian
+leaped at Cameron, with his knife, as was his wont, ready to strike.
+
+The appearance of the Indian springing at him seemed to set some of the
+grey matter in Cameron's brain moving along old tracks. Like a flash he
+dropped to his knees in an old football tackle, caught the Indian by
+the legs and tossed him high over his shoulders, then, springing to
+his feet, he jerked the rifle free from the pack and stood waiting for
+Little Thunder's attack.
+
+But the Indian lay without sound or motion. Cameron used his opportunity
+to look for his cartridge belt, which, after a few minutes' anxious
+search, he discovered in the pack. He buckled the belt about him, made
+sure his Winchester held a shell, and stood waiting.
+
+That he should be waiting thus with the deliberate purpose of shooting
+down a fellow human being filled him with a sense of unreality. But
+the events of the last forty-eight hours had created an entirely new
+environment, and with extraordinary facility his mind had adjusted
+itself to this environment, and though two days before he would have
+shrunk in horror from the possibility of taking a human life, he knew
+as he stood there that at the first sign of attack he should shoot the
+Indian down like a wild beast.
+
+Slowly Little Thunder raised himself to a sitting posture and looked
+about in dazed surprise. As his mind regained its normal condition there
+deepened in his eyes a look of cunning hatred. With difficulty he rose
+to his feet and stood facing Cameron. Cameron waited quietly, watching
+his every move.
+
+“You go in front!” at length commanded Cameron. “And no nonsense, mind
+you,” he added, tapping his rifle, “or I shoot quick.”
+
+The Indian might not have understood all Cameron's words, but he was in
+no doubt as to his meaning. It was characteristic of his race that he
+should know when he was beaten and stoically accept defeat for the time
+being. Without further word or look he led off his pack ponies, while
+Cameron took his place at the rear.
+
+But progress was slow. Little Thunder was either incapable of rapid
+motion or sullenly indifferent to any necessity for it. Besides, there
+was no demoniacal dynamic forcing the beasts on from the rear. They had
+not been more than three hours on the trail when Cameron heard behind
+him the thundering of hoofs. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw coming
+down upon him Raven, riding as if pursued by a thousand demons. The
+condition of his horse showed that the race had been long and hard; his
+black satin skin was dripping as if he had come through a river, his
+eyes were bloodshot and starting from his head, his mouth was wide open
+and from it in large clots the foam had fallen upon his neck and chest.
+
+Past Cameron and down upon Little Thunder Raven rushed like a whirlwind,
+yelling with wild oaths the while,
+
+“Get on! Get on! What are you loafing about here for?”
+
+A few vehement directions to the Indian and he came thundering back upon
+Cameron.
+
+“What have you been doing?” he cried with an oath. “Why are you not
+miles on? Get on! Move! Move!! Move!!!” At every yell he hurled his
+frenzied broncho upon the ponies which brought up the rear, and in a few
+minutes had the whole cavalcade madly careering down the sloping trail.
+Wilder and wilder grew the pace. Turning a sharp corner round a jutting
+rock a pack pony stumbled and went crashing fifty feet to the rock
+below. “On! On!” yelled Raven, emptying his gun into the struggling
+animal as he passed. More and more difficult became the road until at
+length it was impossible to keep up the pace.
+
+“We cannot make it! We cannot make it!” muttered Raven with bitter
+oaths. “Oh, the cursed fools! Another two miles would do it!”
+
+At length they came to a spot where the trail touched a level bench.
+
+“Halt!” yelled the trader, as he galloped to the head of the column.
+A few minutes he spent in rapid and fierce consultation with Little
+Thunder and then came raging back. “We are going to get this bunch down
+into the valley there,” he shouted, pointing to the thick timber at the
+bottom. “I do not expect your help, but I ask you to remain where
+you are for the present. And let me assure you this is no moment for
+trifling.”
+
+With extraordinary skill and rapidity Little Thunder managed to lead
+first the pack ponies and then the others, one by one, at intervals,
+off the trail as they went onward, taking infinite pains to cover their
+tracks at the various points of departure. While this was being done the
+trader stood shouting directions and giving assistance with a fury of
+energy that seemed to communicate itself to the very beasts. But the
+work was one of great difficulty and took many minutes to accomplish.
+
+“Half an hour more, just half an hour! Fifteen minutes!” he kept
+muttering. “Just a short fifteen minutes and all would be well.”
+
+As the last pony disappeared into the woods Raven turned to Cameron and
+with a smile said quietly,
+
+“There, that's done. Now you are free. Here we part. This is your trail.
+It will take you to Macleod. I am sorry, however, that owing to a change
+in circumstances for which I am not responsible I must ask you for that
+rifle.” With the swiftness of a flash of light he whipped his gun into
+Cameron's face. “Don't move!” he said, still smiling. “This gun of mine
+never fails. Quick, don't look round. Yes, those hoof beats are our
+friends the police. Quick! It is your life or mine. I'd hate to kill
+you, Cameron. I give you one chance more.”
+
+There was no help for it, and Cameron, with his heart filled with futile
+fury, surrendered his rifle.
+
+“Now ride in front of me a little way. They have just seen us, but they
+don't know that we are aware of their presence. Ride! Ride! A little
+faster!” Nighthawk rushed upon Cameron's lagging pony. “There, that's
+better.”
+
+A shout fell upon their ears.
+
+“Go right along!” said Raven quietly. “Only a few minutes longer, then
+we part. I have greatly enjoyed your company.”
+
+Another shout.
+
+“Aha!” said Raven, glancing round. “It is, I verily believe it is my old
+friend Sergeant Crisp. Only two of them, by Jove! If we had only known
+we need not have hurried.”
+
+Another shout, followed by a bullet that sang over their heads.
+
+“Ah, this is interesting--too interesting by half! Well, here goes for
+you, sergeant!” He wheeled as he spoke. Turning swiftly in his saddle,
+Cameron saw him raise his rifle.
+
+“Hold up, you devil!” he shouted, throwing his pony across the black
+broncho's track.
+
+The rifle rang out, the police horse staggered, swayed, and pitched to
+the earth, bringing his rider down with him.
+
+“Ah, Cameron, that was awkward of you,” said Raven gently. “However, it
+is perhaps as well. Goodbye, old man. Tell the sergeant not to follow.
+Trails hereabout are dangerous and good police sergeants are scarce.
+Again farewell.” He swung his broncho off the trail and, waving his
+hand, with a smile, disappeared into the thick underbrush.
+
+“Hold up your hands!” shouted the police officer, who had struggled
+upright and was now swaying on his feet and covering Cameron with his
+carbine.
+
+“Hurry! Hurry!” cried Cameron, springing from his pony and waving his
+hands wildly in the air. “Come on. You'll get him yet.”
+
+“Stand where you are and hold up your hands!” cried the sergeant.
+
+Cameron obeyed, shouting meanwhile wrathfully, “Oh, come on, you bally
+fool! You are losing him. Come on, I tell you!”
+
+“Keep your hands up or I shoot!” cried the sergeant sternly.
+
+“All right,” said Cameron, holding his hands high, “but for God's sake
+hurry up!” He ran towards the sergeant as he spoke, with his hands still
+above his head.
+
+“Halt!” shouted the sergeant, as Cameron came near. “Constable Burke,
+arrest that man!”
+
+“Oh, come, get it over,” cried Cameron in a fury of passion. “Arrest me,
+of course, but if you want to catch that chap you'll have to hurry. He
+cannot be far away.”
+
+“Ah, indeed, my man,” said the sergeant pleasantly. “He is not far
+away?”
+
+“No, he's a murderer and a thief and you can catch him if you hurry.”
+
+“Ah! Very good, very good! Constable Burke, tie this man up to your
+saddle and we'll take a look round. How many might there be in your
+gang?” enquired the sergeant. “Tell the truth now. It will be the better
+for you.”
+
+“One,” said Cameron impatiently. “A chap calling himself Raven.”
+
+“Raven, eh?” exclaimed Sergeant Crisp with a new interest. “Raven, by
+Jove!”
+
+“Yes, and an Indian. Little Thunder he called him.”
+
+“Little Thunder! Jove, what a find!” exclaimed the sergeant.
+
+“Yes,” continued Cameron eagerly. “Raven is just ahead in the woods
+there alone and the Indian is further back with a bunch of ponies down
+in the river bottom.”
+
+“Oh, indeed! Very interesting! And so Raven is all alone in the scrub
+there, waiting doubtless to give himself up,” said sergeant Crisp with
+fine sarcasm. “Well, we are not yet on to your game, young man, but we
+will not just play up to that lead yet a while.”
+
+In vain Cameron raged and pleaded and stormed and swore, telling his
+story in incoherent snatches, to the intense amusement of Sergeant Crisp
+and his companion. At length Cameron desisted, swallowing his rage as
+best he could.
+
+“Now then, we shall move on. The pass is not more than an hour away. We
+will put this young man in safe keeping and return for Mr. Raven and his
+interesting friend.” For a moment he stood looking down upon his horse.
+“Poor old chap!” he said. “We have gone many a mile together on Her
+Majesty's errands. If I have done my duty as faithfully as you have done
+yours I need not fear my record. Take his saddle and bridle off, Burke.
+We've got one of the gang. Some day we shall come up with Mr. Raven
+himself.”
+
+“Yes,” said Cameron with passionate bitterness. “And that might be
+to-day if you had only listened to me. Why, man,” he shouted with
+reviving rage, “we three could take him even yet!”
+
+“Ah!” said Sergeant Crisp, “so we could.”
+
+“You had him in your hands to-day,” said Cameron, “but like a fool you
+let him go. But some day, so help me God, I shall bring these murderers
+to justice.”
+
+“Ah!” said Sergeant Crisp again. “Good! Very good indeed! Now, my man,
+march!”
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+
+
+“What's this, Sergeant Crisp?” The Commissioner, a tall, slight, and
+soldier-like man, keen-eyed and brisk of speech, rapped out his words
+like a man intent on business.
+
+“One of a whiskey gang, Sir. Dick Raven's, I suspect.”
+
+“And the charge?”
+
+“Whiskey trading, theft, and murder.”
+
+The Commissioner's face grew grave.
+
+“Murder? Where did you find him?”
+
+“Kootenay trail, Sir. Got wind of him at Calgary, followed up the clue
+past Morleyville, then along the Kootenay trail. A blizzard came on and
+we feared we had lost them. We fell in with a band of Stony Indians,
+found that the band had been robbed and two of their number murdered.”
+
+“Two murdered?” The Commissioner's voice was stern.
+
+“Yes, Sir. Shot down in cold blood. We have the testimony of an eye
+witness. We followed the trail and came upon two of them. My horse was
+shot. One of them escaped; this man we captured.”
+
+The Commissioner sat pondering. Then with disconcerting swiftness he
+turned upon the prisoner.
+
+“Your name?”
+
+“Cameron, Sir.”
+
+“Where from?”
+
+“I was working in McIvor's survey camp near Morleyville. I went out
+shooting, lost my way in a blizzard, was captured by a man who called
+himself Raven--”
+
+“Wait!” said the Commissioner sharply. “Bring me that file!”
+
+The orderly brought a file from which the Commissioner selected a
+letter. His keen eyes rapidly scanned the contents and then ran over the
+prisoner from head to foot. Thereupon, without a moment's hesitation, he
+said curtly:
+
+“Release the prisoner!”
+
+“But, Sir--” began Sergeant Crisp, with an expression of utter
+bewilderment and disgust upon his face.
+
+“Release the prisoner!” repeated the Commissioner sharply. “Mr. Cameron,
+I deeply regret this mistake. Under the circumstances it could hardly
+have been avoided. You were in bad company, you see. I am greatly
+pleased that my men have been of service to you. We shall continue to
+do all we can for you. In the meantime I am very pleased to have the
+pleasure of meeting you.” He passed the letter to Sergeant Crisp. “I
+have information about you from Morleyville, you see. Now tell us all
+about it.”
+
+It took Cameron some moments to recover his wits, so dumbfounded was he
+at the sudden change in his condition.
+
+“Well, Sir,” he began, “I hardly know what to say.”
+
+“Sit down, sit down, Mr. Cameron. Take your time,” said the
+Commissioner. “We are somewhat hurried these days, but you must have had
+some trying experiences.”
+
+Then Cameron proceeded with his tale. The Commissioner listened with
+keen attention, now and then arresting him with a question or a comment.
+When Cameron came to tell of the murder of the Stonies his voice shook
+with passion.
+
+“We will get that Indian some day,” said the Commissioner, “never fear.
+What is his name?”
+
+“Little Thunder, Raven called him. And I would like to take a hand in
+that too, Sir,” said Cameron eagerly.
+
+“You would, eh?” said the Commissioner with a sharp look at him. “Well,
+we'll see. Little Thunder,” he repeated to himself. “Bring that Record
+Book!”
+
+The orderly laid a large canvas-covered book before him.
+
+“Little Thunder, eh?” he repeated, turning the leaves of the book.
+“Oh, yes, I thought so! Blood Indian--formerly Chief--supplanted by Red
+Crow--got into trouble with whiskey traders. Yes, I remember. He is at
+his old tricks. This time, however, he has gone too far. We will get
+him. Go on, Mr. Cameron!”
+
+When Cameron had concluded his story the Commissioner said to the
+orderly sharply:
+
+“Send me Inspector Dickson!”
+
+In a few moments Inspector Dickson appeared, a tall, slight man, with a
+gentle face and kindly blue eyes.
+
+“Inspector Dickson, how are we for men? Can you spare two or three to
+round up a gang of whiskey traders and to run down a murderer? We are on
+the track of Raven's bunch, I believe.”
+
+“We are very short-handed at present, Sir. This half-breed trouble in
+the north is keeping our Indians all very restless. We must keep in
+touch with them.”
+
+“Yes, yes, I know. By the way, how are the Bloods just now?”
+
+“They are better, Sir, but the Blackfeet are restless and uneasy. There
+are a lot of runners from the east among them.”
+
+“How is old Crowfoot behaving?”
+
+“Crowfoot himself is apparently all right so far, but of course no man
+can tell what Crowfoot is thinking.”
+
+“That's right enough,” replied the Commissioner.
+
+“By the way, Sir, it was Crowfoot's son that got into that trouble last
+night with that Macleod man. The old Chief is in town, too, in fact is
+outside just now and quite worked up over the arrest.”
+
+“Well, we will settle this Crowfoot business in a few minutes. Now,
+about this Raven gang. You cannot go yourself with a couple of men? He
+is an exceedingly clever rascal.”
+
+The Inspector enumerated the cases immediately pressing.
+
+“Well then, at the earliest possible moment we must get after this
+gang. Keep this in mind, Inspector Dickson. That Indian I consider an
+extremely dangerous man. He is sure to be mixed up with this half-breed
+trouble. He has very considerable influence with a large section of the
+Bloods. I shouldn't be surprised if we should find him on their reserve
+before very long. Now then, bring in young Crowfoot!”
+
+The Inspector saluted and retired, followed by Sergeant Crisp, whose
+face had not yet regained its normal expression.
+
+“Mr. Cameron,” said the Commissioner, “if you care to remain with me for
+the morning I shall be glad to have you. The administration of justice
+by the police may prove interesting to you. Later on we shall discuss
+your return to your camp.”
+
+Cameron expressed his delight at being permitted to remain in the court
+room, not only that he might observe the police methods of administering
+justice, but especially that he might see something of the great
+Blackfeet Chief, Crowfoot, of whom he had heard much since his arrival
+in the West.
+
+In a few minutes Inspector Dickson returned, followed by a constable
+leading a young Indian, handcuffed. With these entered Jerry, the famous
+half-breed interpreter, and last of all the father of the prisoner, old
+Crowfoot, tall, straight, stately. One swift searching glance the old
+Chief flung round the room, and then, acknowledging the Commissioner's
+salute with a slight wave of the hand and a grunt, and declining the
+seat offered him, he stood back against the wall and there viewed the
+proceedings with an air of haughty defiance.
+
+The Commissioner lost no time in preliminaries. The charge was read and
+explained to the prisoner. The constable made his statement. The young
+Indian had got into an altercation with a citizen of Macleod, and on
+being hard pressed had pulled the pistol which was laid upon the
+desk. There was no defense. The interpreter, however, explained, after
+conversation with the prisoner, that drink was the cause. At this point
+the old Chief's face swiftly changed. Defiance gave place to disgust,
+grief, and rage.
+
+The Commissioner, after carefully eliciting all the facts, gave the
+prisoner an opportunity to make a statement. This being declined, the
+Commissioner proceeded gravely to point out the serious nature of the
+offense, to emphasize the sacredness of human life and declare the
+determination of the government to protect all Her Majesty's subjects,
+no matter what their race or the colour of their skin. He then went
+on to point out the serious danger which the young man had so narrowly
+escaped.
+
+“Why, man,” exclaimed the Commissioner, “you might have committed
+murder.”
+
+Here the young fellow said something to the interpreter. There was a
+flicker of a smile on the half-breed's face.
+
+“He say dat pistol he no good. He can't shoot. He not loaded.”
+
+The Commissioner's face never changed a line. He gravely turned the
+pistol over in his hand, and truly enough the rusty weapon appeared to
+be quite innocuous except to the shooter.
+
+“This is an extremely dangerous weapon. Why, it might have killed
+yourself--if it had been loaded. We cannot allow this sort of thing.
+However, since it was not loaded we shall make the sentence light. I
+sentence you to one month's confinement.”
+
+The interpreter explained the sentence to the young Indian, who received
+the explanation without the movement of a muscle or the flicker of an
+eyelid. The constable touched him on the shoulder and said, “Come!”
+
+Before he could move old Crowfoot with two strides stood before the
+constable, and waving him aside with a gesture of indescribable dignity,
+took his son in his arms and kissed him on either cheek. Then, stepping
+back, he addressed him in a voice grave, solemn, and vibrant with
+emotion. Jerry interpreted to the Court.
+
+“I have observed the big Chief. This is good medicine. It is good that
+wrong should suffer. All good men are against wickedness. My son, you
+have done foolishly. You have darkened my eyes. You have covered my face
+before my people. They will ask--where is your son? My voice will be
+silent. My face will be covered with shame. I shall be like a dog kicked
+from the lodge. My son, I told you to go only to the store. I warned you
+against bad men and bad places. Your ears were closed, you were wiser
+than your father. Now we both must suffer, you here shut up from the
+light of the sky, I in my darkened lodge. But,” he continued, turning
+swiftly upon the Commissioner, “I ask my father why these bad men who
+sell whiskey to the poor Indian are not shut up with my son. My son is
+young. He is like the hare in the woods. He falls easily into the trap.
+Why are not these bad men removed?” The old Chief's face trembled with
+indignant appeal.
+
+“They shall be!” said the Commissioner, smiting the desk with his fist.
+“This very day!”
+
+“It is good!” continued the old Chief with great dignity. Then, turning
+again to his son, he said, and his voice was full of grave tenderness:
+
+“Now, go to your punishment. The hours will be none too long if they
+bring you wisdom.” Again he kissed his son on both cheeks and, without a
+look at any other, stalked haughtily from the room.
+
+“Inspector Dickson,” sharply commanded the Commissioner, “find out the
+man that sold that whiskey and arrest him at once!”
+
+Cameron was profoundly impressed with the whole scene. He began to
+realise as never before the tremendous responsibilities that lay upon
+those charged with the administration of justice in this country. He
+began to understand, too, the secret of the extraordinary hold that the
+Police had upon the Indian tribes and how it came that so small a force
+could maintain the “Pax Britannica” over three hundred thousand square
+miles of unsettled country, the home of hundreds of wild adventurers
+and of thousands of savage Indians, utterly strange to any rule or law
+except that of their own sweet will.
+
+“This police business is a big affair,” he ventured to say to the
+Commissioner when the court room was cleared. “You practically run the
+country.”
+
+“Well,” said the Commissioner modestly, “we do something to keep the
+country from going to the devil. We see that every man gets a fair
+show.”
+
+“It is great work!” exclaimed Cameron.
+
+“Yes, I suppose it is,” replied the Commissioner. “We don't talk about
+it, of course. Indeed, we don't think of it. But,” he continued, “that
+blue book there could tell a story that would make the old Empire not
+too ashamed of the men who 'ride the line' and patrol the ranges in this
+far outpost.” He opened the big canvas-bound book as he spoke and turned
+the pages over. “Look at that for a page,” he said, and Cameron glanced
+over the entries. What a tale they told!
+
+“Fire-fighting!”
+
+“Yes,” said the Commissioner, “that saved a settler's wife and child--a
+prairie fire. The house was lost, but the constable pulled them out and
+got rather badly burned in the business.”
+
+Cameron's finger ran down the page.
+
+“Sick man transported to Post.”
+
+“That,” commented the Superintendent, “was a journey of over two hundred
+miles by dog sleighs in winter. Saved the man's life.”
+
+And so the record ran. “Cattle thieves arrested.” “Whiskey smugglers
+captured.” “Stolen horses recovered.” “Insane man brought to Post.”
+
+“That was rather a tough case,” said the Commissioner. “Meant a journey
+of some eight hundred miles with a man, a powerful man too, raving mad.”
+
+“How many of your men on that journey?” enquired Cameron.
+
+“Oh, just one. The fellow got away twice, but was recaptured and finally
+landed. Got better too. But the constable was all broken up for weeks
+afterwards.”
+
+“Man, that was great!” exclaimed Cameron. “What a pity it should not be
+known.”
+
+“Oh,” said the Commissioner lightly, “it's all in the day's duty.”
+
+The words thrilled Cameron to the heart. “All in the day's duty!” The
+sheer heroism of it, the dauntless facing of Nature's grimmest terrors,
+the steady patience, the uncalculated sacrifice, the thought of all that
+lay behind these simple words held him silent for many minutes as he
+kept turning over the leaves.
+
+As he sat thus turning the leaves and allowing his eye to fall upon
+those simple but eloquent entries, a loud and strident voice was heard
+outside.
+
+“Waal, I tell yuh, I want to see him right naow. I ain't come two
+hundred miles for nawthin'. I mean business, I do.”
+
+The orderly's voice was heard in reply.
+
+“I ain't got no time to wait. I want to see yer Chief of Police right
+naow.”
+
+Again the orderly's voice could be distinguished.
+
+“In court, is he? Waal, you hurry up and tell him J. B. Cadwaller of
+Lone Pine, Montana, an American citizen, wants to see him right smart.”
+
+The orderly came in and saluted.
+
+“A man to see you, Sir,” he said. “An American.”
+
+“What business?”
+
+“Horse-stealing case, Sir.”
+
+“Show him in!”
+
+In a moment the orderly returned, followed by, not one, but three
+American citizens.
+
+“Good-day, Jedge! My name's J. B. Cadwaller, Lone Pine, Montana. I--”
+
+“Take your hat off in the court!” said the orderly sharply.
+
+Mr. Cadwaller slowly surveyed the orderly with an expression of
+interested curiosity in his eyes, removing his hat as he did so.
+
+“Say, you're pretty swift, ain't yuh? You might give a feller a show
+to git in his interductions,” said Mr. Cadwaller. “I was jes goin' to
+interdooce to you, Jedge, these gentlemen from my own State, District
+Attorney Hiram S. Sligh and Mr. Rufus Raimes, rancher.”
+
+The Commissioner duly acknowledged the introduction, standing to receive
+the strangers with due courtesy.
+
+“Now, Jedge, I want to see yer Chief of Police. I've got a case for
+him.”
+
+“I have the honor to be the Commissioner. What can I do for you?”
+
+“Waal, Jedge, we don't want to waste no time, neither yours nor ours.
+The fact is some of yer blank blank Indians have been rustlin' hosses
+from us fer some time back. We don't mind a cayuse now and then, but
+when it comes to a hull bunch of vallable hosses there's where we kick
+and we ain't goin' to stand fer it. And we want them hosses re-stored.
+And what's more, we want them blank blank copper snakes strung up.”
+
+“How many horses have you lost?”
+
+“How many? Jeerupiter! Thirty or forty fer all I know, they've been
+rustlin' 'em for a year back.”
+
+“Why didn't you report before?”
+
+“Why we thought we'd git 'em ourselves, and if we had we wouldn't 'a
+troubled yuh--and I guess they wouldn't 'a troubled us much longer. But
+they are so slick--so blank slick!”
+
+“Mr. Cadwaller, we don't allow any profanity in this court room,” said
+the Commissioner in a quiet voice.
+
+“Eh? Who's givin' yuh profanity? I don't mean no profanity. I'm talkin'
+about them blank blank--”
+
+“Stop, Mr. Cadwaller!” said the Commissioner. “We must end this
+interview if you cannot make your statements without profanity. This
+is Her Majesty's court of Justice and we cannot tolerate any unbecoming
+language.
+
+“Waal, I'll be--!”
+
+“Pardon me, Mr. Commissioner,” said Mr. Hiram S. Sligh, interrupting
+his friend and client. “Perhaps I may make a statement. We've lost some
+twenty or thirty horses.”
+
+“Thirty-one” interjected Mr. Raimes quietly.
+
+“Thirty-one!” burst in Mr. Cadwaller indignantly. “That's only one
+little bunch.”
+
+“And,” continued Mr. Sligh, “we have traced them right up to the
+Blood reserve. More than that, Mr. Raimes has seen the horses in the
+possession of the Indians and we want your assistance in recovering our
+property.”
+
+“Yes, by gum!” exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. “And we want
+them--eh--eh--consarned redskin thieves strung up.”
+
+“You say you have seen the stolen horses on the Blood reserve, Mr.
+Raimes?” enquired the Commissioner.
+
+Mr. Raimes, who was industriously chewing a quid of tobacco, ejected,
+with a fine sense of propriety and with great skill and accuracy, a
+stream of tobacco juice out of the door before he answered.
+
+“I seen 'em.”
+
+“When did you lose your horses?”
+
+Mr. Raimes considered the matter for some moments, chewing energetically
+the while, then, having delivered himself with the same delicacy and
+skill as before of his surplus tobacco juice, made laconic reply:
+
+“Seventeen, no, eighteen days ago.”
+
+“Did you follow the trail immediately yourselves?”
+
+“No, Jim Eberts.”
+
+“Jim Eberts?”
+
+“Foreman,” said Mr. Raimes, who seemed to regard conversation in the
+light of an interference with the more important business in which he
+was industriously engaged.
+
+“But you saw the horses yourself on the Blood reserve?”
+
+“Followed up and seen 'em.”
+
+“How long since you saw them there, Mr. Raimes?”
+
+“Two days.”
+
+“You are quite sure about the horses?”
+
+“Sure.”
+
+“Call Inspector Dickson!” ordered the Commissioner.
+
+Inspector Dickson appeared and saluted.
+
+“We have information that a party of Blood Indians have stolen a band of
+horses from these gentlemen from Montana and that these horses are now
+on the Blood reserve. Take a couple of men and investigate, and if you
+find the horses bring them back.”
+
+“Couple of men!” ejaculated Mr. Cadwaller breathlessly. “A couple of
+hundred, you mean, General!”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“Why, to sur--raound them--there--Indians.” The regulations of the court
+room considerably hampered Mr. Cadwaller's fluency of speech.
+
+“It is not necessary at all, Mr. Cadwaller. Besides, we have only some
+eighty men all told at this post. Our whole force in the territories is
+less than five hundred men.”
+
+“Five hundred men! You mean for this State, General--Alberta?”
+
+“No, Sir. For all Western Canada. All west of Manitoba.”
+
+“How much territory do you cover?” enquired the astonished Mr.
+Cadwaller.
+
+“We regularly patrol some three hundred thousand square miles, besides
+taking an occasional expedition into the far north.”
+
+“And how many Indians?”
+
+“About the same number as you have, I imagine, in Montana and Dakota. In
+Alberta, about nine thousand.”
+
+“And less than five hundred police! Say, General, I take off my hat.
+Ten thousand Indians! By the holy poker! And five hundred police! How in
+Cain do you keep down the devils?”
+
+“We don't try to keep them down. We try to take care of them.”
+
+“Guess you've hit it,” said Mr. Raimes, dexterously squirting out of the
+door.
+
+“Jeerupiter! Say, General, some day they'll massacree yuh sure!” said
+Mr. Cadwaller, a note of anxiety in his voice.
+
+“Oh, no, they are a very good lot on the whole.”
+
+“Good! We've got a lot of good Indians too, but they're all under
+graound. Five hundred men! Jeerupiter! Say, Sligh, how many soldiers
+does Uncle Sam have on this job?”
+
+“Well, I can't say altogether, but in Montana and Dakota I happen to
+know we have about four thousand regulars.”
+
+“Say, figger that out, will yuh?” continued Mr. Cadwaller. “Allowed
+four times the territory, about the same number of Indians and about
+one-eighth the number of police. Say, General, I take off my hat again.
+Put it there! You Canucks have got the trick sure!”
+
+“Easier to care for 'em than kill 'em, I guess,” said Mr. Raimes
+casually.
+
+“But, say, General,” continued Mr. Cadwaller, “you ain't goin' to send
+for them hosses with no three men?”
+
+“I'm afraid we cannot spare any more.”
+
+“Jeerupiter, General!” exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. “I'll wait outside the
+reserve till this picnic's over. Say, General, let's have twenty-five
+men at least.”
+
+“What do you say, Inspector Dickson? Will two men be sufficient?”
+
+“We'll try, Sir,” replied the Inspector.
+
+“How soon can you be ready?”
+
+“In a quarter of an hour.”
+
+“Jeerupiter!” muttered Mr. Cadwaller to himself, as he followed the
+Inspector out of the room.
+
+“I say, Commissioner, will you let me in on this thing?” said Cameron.
+
+“Do you mean that you want to join the force?” enquired the
+Commissioner, letting his eye run approvingly up and down Cameron's
+figure.
+
+“There is McIvor, Sir--” began Cameron.
+
+“Oh, I could fix that all right,” replied the Commissioner. “We want
+men, and we want men like you. We have no vacancy among the officers,
+but you could enlist as a constable and there is always opportunity to
+advance.”
+
+“It is a great service!” exclaimed Cameron. “I'd like awfully to join.”
+
+“Very well,” said the Commissioner promptly, “we will take you. You are
+physically sound, wind, limb, eye-sight, and so forth?”
+
+“As far as I know, perfectly fit,” replied Cameron.
+
+Once more Inspector Dickson was summoned.
+
+“Inspector Dickson, Mr. Cameron wishes to join the force. We will have
+his application taken and filled in later, and we will waive examination
+for the present. Will you administer the oath?”
+
+“Cameron, stand up!” commanded the Inspector sharply.
+
+With a little thrill at his heart Cameron stood up, took the Bible in
+his hand and repeated after the Inspector the words of the oath,
+
+“I, Allan Cameron, solemnly swear that I will faithfully, diligently,
+and impartially execute and perform the duties required of me as a
+member of the North West Mounted Police Force, and will well and truly
+obey and perform all lawful orders and instructions which I shall
+receive as such, without fear, favour, or affection of or toward any
+person. So help me, God.”
+
+“Now then, Cameron, I congratulate you upon your new profession.
+The Inspector will see about your outfit and later you will receive
+instructions as to your duties. Meantime, take him along with you,
+Inspector, and get those horses.”
+
+It was a somewhat irregular mode of procedure, but men were sorely
+needed at the Macleod post and the Commissioner had an eye that took in
+not only the lines of a man's figure but the qualities of his soul.
+
+“That chap will make good, or I am greatly mistaken,” he said to the
+Inspector as Cameron went off with the orderly to select his uniform.
+
+“Well set up chap,” said the Inspector. “We'll try him out to-night.”
+
+“Come now, don't kill him. Remember, other men have something else in
+them besides whalebone and steel, if you have not.”
+
+In half an hour the Inspector, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron, with the
+three American citizens, were on their way to the Blood reserve.
+
+Cameron had been given a horse from the stable.
+
+All afternoon and late into the evening they rode, then camped and were
+early upon the trail the following morning. Cameron was half dead with
+the fatigue from his experiences of the past week, but he would have
+died rather than have hinted at weariness. He was not a little comforted
+to notice that Sergeant Crisp, too, was showing signs of distress, while
+District Attorney Sligh was evidently in the last stages of exhaustion.
+Even the steel and whalebone combination that constituted the frame
+of the Inspector appeared to show some slight signs of wear; but all
+feeling of weariness vanished when the Inspector, who was in the lead,
+halted at the edge of a wide sweeping valley and, pointing far ahead,
+said, “The Blood reserve. Their camp lies just beyond that bluff.”
+
+“Say, Inspector, hold up!” cried Mr. Cadwaller as the Inspector set off
+again. “Ain't yuh goin' to sneak up on 'em like?”
+
+“Sneak up on them? No, of course not,” said the Inspector curtly. “We
+shall ride right in.”
+
+“Say, Raimes,” said Mr. Cadwaller, “a hole would be a blame nice thing
+to find just now.”
+
+“Do you think there will be any trouble?” enquired Mr. Hiram Sligh of
+Sergeant Crisp.
+
+“Trouble? Perhaps so,” replied Crisp, as if to him it were a matter of
+perfect indifference.
+
+“We'll never git them hosses,” said Raimes. “But we've got to stay with
+the chief, I guess.”
+
+And so they followed Inspector Dickson down into the valley, where in
+the distance could be seen a number of horses and cattle grazing. They
+had not ridden far along the valley bottom when Mr. Cadwaller spurred up
+upon the Inspector and called out excitedly,
+
+“I say, Inspector, them's our hosses right there. Say, let's run 'em
+off.”
+
+“Can you pick them out?” enquired the Inspector, turning in his saddle.
+
+“Every last one!” said Raimes.
+
+“Very well, cut them out and get them into a bunch,” said the Inspector.
+“I see there are some Indians herding them apparently. Pay no attention
+to them, but go right along with your work.”
+
+“There's one of 'em off to give tongue!” cried Mr. Cadwaller excitedly.
+“Bring him down, Inspector! Bring him down! Quick! Here, let me have
+your rifle!” Hurriedly he snatched at the Inspector's carbine.
+
+“Stop!” cried the Inspector in sharp command. “Now, attention! We are
+on a somewhat delicate business. A mistake might bring disaster. I am in
+command of this party and I must have absolute and prompt obedience. Mr.
+Cadwaller, it will be at your peril that you make any such move again.
+Let no man draw a gun until ordered by me! Now, then, cut out those
+horses and bunch them together!”
+
+“Jeerupiter! He's a hull brigade himself,” said Mr. Cadwaller in an
+undertone, dropping back beside Mr. Sligh. “Waal, here goes for the
+bunch.”
+
+But though both Mr. Cadwaller and Mr. Raimes, as well as Sergeant Crisp
+and the Inspector, were expert cattle men, it took some little time and
+very considerable manoeuvering to get the stolen horses bunched together
+and separated from the rest of the animals grazing in the valley, and by
+the time this was accomplished Indian riders had appeared on every side,
+gradually closing in upon the party. It was clearly impossible to drive
+off the bunch through that gradually narrowing cordon of mounted Indians
+without trouble.
+
+“Now, what's to be done?” said Mr. Cadwaller, nervously addressing the
+Inspector.
+
+“Forward!” cried the Inspector in a loud voice. “Towards the corral
+ahead there!”
+
+This movement nonplussed the Indians and in silence they fell in behind
+the party who, going before, finally succeeded in driving the bunch of
+horses into the corral.
+
+“Sergeant Crisp, you and Constable Cameron remain here on guard. I shall
+go and find the Chief. Here,” he continued, addressing a young Indian
+brave who had ridden up quite close to the gate of the corral, “lead me
+to your Chief, Red Crow!”
+
+The absence alike of all hesitation or fear, and of all bluster in his
+tone and bearing, apparently impressed the young brave, for he wheeled
+his pony and set off immediately at a gallop, followed by the Inspector
+at a more moderate pace.
+
+Quickly the Indians gathered about the corral and the group at its gate.
+With every passing minute their numbers increased, and as their numbers
+increased so did the violence of their demonstration The three Americans
+were placed next the corral, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron being between
+them and the excited Indians. Cameron had seen Indians before about the
+trading posts. A shy, suspicious, and subdued lot of creatures they had
+seemed to him. But these were men of another breed, with their lean,
+lithe, muscular figures, their clean, copper skins, their wild fierce
+eyes, their haughty bearing. Those others were poor beggars seeking
+permission to exist; these were men, proud, fearless, and free.
+
+“Jove, what a team one could pick out of the bunch!” said Cameron to
+himself, as his eye fell upon the clean bare limbs and observed their
+graceful motions. But to the Americans they were a hateful and fearsome
+sight. Indians with them were never anything but a menace to be held in
+check, or a nuisance to be got rid of.
+
+Louder and louder grew the yells and wilder the gesticulations as the
+savages worked themselves up into a fury. Suddenly, through the yelling,
+careering, gesticulating crowd of Indians a young brave came tearing at
+full gallop and, thrusting his pony close up to the Sergeant's, stuck
+his face into the officer's and uttered a terrific war whoop. Not a line
+of the Sergeant's face nor a muscle of his body moved except that the
+near spur slightly touched his horse's flank and the fingers tightened
+almost imperceptibly upon the bridle rein. Like a flash of light the
+Sergeant's horse wheeled and with a fierce squeal let fly two wicked
+heels hard upon the pony's ribs. In sheer terror and surprise the
+little beast bolted, throwing his rider over his neck and finally to the
+ground. Immediately a shout of jeering laughter rose from the crowd, who
+greatly enjoyed their comrade's discomfiture. Except that the Sergeant's
+face wore a look of pleased surprise, he simply maintained his attitude
+of calm indifference. No other Indian, however, appeared ready to repeat
+the performance of the young brave.
+
+At length the Inspector appeared, followed by the Chief, Red Crow.
+
+“Tell your people to go away!” said the Inspector as they reached the
+corral. “They are making too much noise.”
+
+Red Crow addressed his braves at some length.
+
+“Open the corral,” ordered the Inspector, “and get those horses out on
+the trail.”
+
+For a few moments there was silence. Then, as the Indians perceived the
+purpose of the police, on every side there rose wild yells of protest
+and from every side a rush was made toward the corral. But Sergeant
+Crisp kept his horse on the move in a series of kicks and plunges that
+had the effect of keeping clear a wide circle about the corral gate.
+
+“Touch your horse with the spur and hold him up tight,” he said quietly
+to Cameron.
+
+Cameron did so and at once his horse became seemingly as unmanageable as
+the Sergeant's, plunging, biting, kicking. The Indian ponies could not
+be induced to approach. The uproar, however, only increased. Guns began
+to go off, bullets could be heard whistling overhead. Red Crow's voice
+apparently could make no impression upon the maddened crowd of Indians.
+A minor Chief, White Horse by name, having whirled in behind the
+Sergeant, seized hold of Mr. Cadwaller's bridle and began to threaten
+him with excited gesticulations. Mr. Cadwaller drew his gun.
+
+“Let go that line, you blank blank redskin!” he roared, flourishing his
+revolver.
+
+In a moment, with a single plunge, the Inspector was at his side and,
+flinging off the Indian, shouted:
+
+“Put up that gun, Mr. Cadwaller! Quick!” Mr. Cadwaller hesitated.
+“Sergeant Crisp, arrest that man!” The Inspector's voice rang out like a
+trumpet. His gun covered Mr. Cadwaller.
+
+“Give me that gun!” said the Sergeant.
+
+Mr. Cadwaller handed over his gun.
+
+“Let him go,” said the Inspector to Sergeant Crisp. “He will probably
+behave.”
+
+The Indians had gathered close about the group. White Horse, in the
+centre, was talking fast and furious and pointing to Mr. Cadwaller.
+
+“Get the bunch off, Sergeant!” said the Inspector quietly. “I will hold
+them here for a few minutes.”
+
+Quietly the Sergeant backed out of the circle, leaving the Inspector
+and Mr. Cadwaller with White Horse and Red Crow in the midst of the
+crowding, yelling Indians.
+
+“White Horse say this man steal Bull Back's horses last fall!” shouted
+Red Crow in the Inspector's ear.
+
+“Too much noise here,” said the Inspector, moving toward the Indian
+camp and away from the corral and drawing the crowd with him. “Tell your
+people to be quiet, Red Crow. I thought you were the Chief.”
+
+Stung by the taunt, Red Crow raised his rifle and fired into the air.
+Then, standing high in his stirrups, he held up his hand and called out
+a number of names. Instantly ten men rode to his side. Again Red Crow
+spoke. The ten men rode out again among the crowd. Immediately the
+shouting ceased.
+
+“Good!” said the Inspector. “I see my brother is strong. Now, where is
+Bull Back?”
+
+The Chief called out a name. There was no response.
+
+“Bull Back not here,” he said.
+
+“Then listen, my brother,” said the Inspector earnestly. “This man,”
+ pointing to Mr. Cadwaller, “waits with me at the Fort two days to meet
+White Horse, Bull Back, and any Indians who know about this man; and
+what is right will be done. I have spoken. Farewell!” He gave his hand
+to Chief Red Crow. “My brother knows,” he added, “the Police do not
+lie.”
+
+So saying, he wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Cadwaller before him,
+rode off after the others of the party, who had by this time gone some
+distance up the trail.
+
+For a few moments hesitation held the crowd, then with a loud cry White
+Horse galloped up and again seized Mr. Cadwaller's bridle. Instantly the
+Inspector covered him with his gun.
+
+“Hold up your hands quick!” he said.
+
+The Indian dropped the bridle rein. The Inspector handed his gun to Mr.
+Cadwaller.
+
+“Don't shoot till I speak or I shoot you!” he said sternly. Mr.
+Cadwaller took the gun and covered the Indian. In a twinkling White
+Horse found himself with handcuffs on his wrists and his bridle line
+attached to the horn of the Inspector's saddle.
+
+“Now give me that gun, Mr. Cadwaller, and here take your own--but wait
+for the word. Forward!”
+
+He had not gone a pace till he was surrounded by a score of angry
+and determined Indians with levelled rifles. For the first time the
+Inspector hesitated. Through the line of levelled rifles Chief Red Crow
+rode up and in a grave but determined voice said:
+
+“My brother is wrong. White Horse, chief. My young men not let him go.”
+
+“Good!” said the Inspector, promptly making up his mind. “I let him go
+now. In two days I come again and get him. The Police never lie.”
+
+So saying, he released White Horse and without further word, and
+disregarding the angry looks and levelled rifles, rode slowly off after
+his party. On the edge of the crowd he met Sergeant Crisp.
+
+“Thought I'd better come back, Sir. It looked rather ugly for a minute,”
+ said the Sergeant.
+
+“Ride on,” said the Inspector. “We will get our man to-morrow. Steady,
+Mr. Cadwaller, not too fast.” The Inspector slowed his horse down to
+a walk, which he gradually increased to an easy lope and so brought up
+with Cameron and the others.
+
+Through the long evening they pressed forward till they came to the
+Kootenay River, having crossed which they ventured to camp for the
+night.
+
+After supper the Inspector announced his intention of riding on to the
+Fort for reinforcements, and gave his instructions to the Sergeant.
+
+“Sergeant Crisp,” he said, “you will make an early start and bring in
+the bunch to-morrow morning. Mr. Cadwaller, you remember you are to
+remain at the Fort two days so that the charges brought by White Horse
+may be investigated.”
+
+“What?” exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. “Wait for them blank blank devils? Say,
+Inspector, you don't mean that?”
+
+“You heard me promise the Indians,” said the Inspector.
+
+“Why, yes. Mighty smart, too! But say, you were jest joshing, weren't
+you?”
+
+“No, Sir,” replied the Inspector. “The Police never break a promise to
+white man or Indian.”
+
+Then Mr. Cadwaller cut loose for a few moments. He did not object to
+waiting any length of time to oblige a friend, but that he should
+delay his journey to answer the charges of an Indian, variously and
+picturesquely described, was to him an unthinkable proposition.
+
+“Sergeant Crisp, you will see to this,” said the Inspector quietly as he
+rode away.
+
+Then Mr. Cadwaller began to laugh and continued laughing for several
+minutes.
+
+“By the holy poker, Sligh!” at last he exclaimed. “It's a joke. It's a
+regular John Bull joke.”
+
+“Yes,” said Mr. Sligh, while he cut a comfortable chew from his black
+plug. “Good joke, too, but not on John. I guess that's how five hundred
+police hold down--no, take care of--twenty thousand redskins.”
+
+And the latest recruit to Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police
+straightened up till he could feel the collar of his tunic catch him on
+the back of the neck and was conscious of a little thrill running up his
+spine as he remembered that he was a member of that same force.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+
+
+It was to Cameron an extreme satisfaction to ride with some twenty of
+his comrades behind White Horse, who, handcuffed and with bridle reins
+tied to those of two troopers, and accompanied by Chief Red Crow, Bull
+Back, and others of their tribe, made ignominious and crestfallen entry
+into the Fort next day. It was hardly less of a satisfaction to see Mr.
+Cadwaller exercise himself considerably in making defence against the
+charges of Bull Back and his friends. The defence was successful,
+and the American citizens departed to Lone Pine, Montana, with their
+recovered horses and with a new and higher regard for both the executive
+and administrative excellence of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police
+officers and men. Chief Red Crow, too, returned to his band with a
+chastened mind, it having been made clear to him that a chief who could
+not control his young braves was not the kind of a chief the Great White
+Mother desired to have in command of her Indian subjects. White Horse,
+also, after three months sojourn in the cooling solitude of the Police
+guard room, went back to his people a humbler and a wiser brave.
+
+The horse-stealing, however, went merrily on and the summer of 1884
+stands in the records of the Police as the most trying period of their
+history in the Northwest up to that date. The booming upon the eastern
+and southern boundaries of Western Canada of the incoming tide of
+humanity, hungry for land, awakened ominous echoes in the little
+primitive settlements of half-breed people and throughout the
+reservations of the wild Indian tribes as well. Everywhere, without
+warning and without explanation, the surveyors' flags and posts made
+appearance. Wild rumours ran through the land, till every fluttering
+flag became the symbol of dispossession and every gleaming post
+an emblem of tyrannous disregard of a people's rights. The ancient
+aboriginal inhabitants of the western plains and woods, too, had their
+grievances and their fears. With phenomenal rapidity the buffalo had
+vanished from the plains once black with their hundreds of thousands.
+With the buffalo vanished the Indians' chief source of support, their
+food, their clothing, their shelter, their chief article of barter.
+Bereft of these and deprived at the same time of the supreme joy of
+existence, the chase, bitten with cold, starved with hunger, fearful
+of the future, they offered fertile soil for the seeds of rebellion. A
+government more than usually obsessed with stupidity, as all governments
+become at times, remained indifferent to appeals, deaf to remonstrances,
+blind to danger signals, till through the remote and isolated
+settlements of the vast west and among the tribes of Indians,
+hunger-bitten and fearful for their future, a spirit of unrest, of fear,
+of impatience of all authority, spread like a secret plague from Prince
+Albert to the Crow's Nest and from the Cypress Hills to Edmonton.
+A violent recrudescence of whiskey-smuggling, horse-stealing, and
+cattle-rustling made the work of administering the law throughout
+this vast territory one of exceeding difficulty and one calling for
+promptitude, wisdom, patience, and courage, of no ordinary quality.
+Added to all this, the steady advance of the railroad into the new
+country, with its huge construction camps, in whose wake followed
+the lawless hordes of whiskey smugglers, tinhorn gamblers, thugs, and
+harlots, very materially added to the dangers and difficulties of the
+situation for the Police.
+
+For the first month after enlistment Cameron was kept in close touch
+with the Fort and spent his hours under the polishing hands of the drill
+sergeant. From five in the morning till ten at night the day's routine
+kept him on the grind. Hard work it was, but to Cameron a continuous
+delight. For the first time in his life he had a job that seemed worth
+a man's while, and one the mere routine of which delighted his soul. He
+loved his horse and loved to care for him, and, most of all, loved to
+ride him. Among his comrades he found congenial spirits, both among the
+officers and the men. Though discipline was strict, there was an utter
+absence of anything like a spirit of petty bullying which too often is
+found in military service; for in the first place the men were in very
+many cases the equals and sometimes the superiors of the officers both
+in culture and in breeding, and further, and very specially, the nature
+of the work was such as to cultivate the spirit of true comradeship.
+When officer and man ride side by side through rain and shine, through
+burning heat and frost “Forty below,” when they eat out of the same pan
+and sleep in the same “dug-out,” when they stand back to back in the
+midst of a horde of howling savages, rank comes to mean little and
+manhood much.
+
+Between Inspector Dickson and Cameron a genuine friendship sprang
+up; and after his first month was in, Cameron often found himself the
+comrade of the Inspector in expeditions of special difficulty where
+there was a call for intelligence and nerve. The reports of these
+expeditions that stand upon the police record have as little semblance
+of the deeds achieved as have stark and grinning skeletons in the
+medical student's private cupboard to the living moving bodies they
+once were. The records of these deeds are the bare bones. The flesh and
+blood, the life and colour are to be found only in the memories of those
+who were concerned in their achievement.
+
+But even in these bony records there are to be seen frequent entries in
+which the names of Inspector Dickson and Constable Cameron stand side
+by side. For the Inspector was a man upon whom the Commissioner and
+the Superintendent delighted to load their more dangerous and delicate
+cases, and it was upon Cameron when it was possible that the Inspector's
+choice for a comrade fell.
+
+It was such a case as this that held the Commissioner and Superintendent
+Crawford in anxious consultation far into a late September night. When
+the consultation was over, Inspector Dickson was called in and the
+result of this consultation laid before him.
+
+“We have every reason to believe, as you well know, Inspector Dickson,”
+ said the Commissioner, “that there is a secret and wide-spread
+propagandum being carried on among our Indians, especially among the
+Piegans, Bloods, and Blackfeet, with the purpose of organizing rebellion
+in connection with the half-breed discontent in the territories to the
+east of us. Riel, you know, has been back for some time and we believe
+his agents are busy on every reservation at present. This outbreak of
+horse-stealing and whiskey-smuggling in so many parts of the country at
+the same time is a mere blind to a more serious business, the hatching
+of a very wide conspiracy. We know that the Crees and the Assiniboines
+are negotiating with the half-breeds. Big Bear, Beardy, and Little Pine
+are keen for a fight. There is some very powerful and secret influence
+at work among our Indians here. We suspect that the ex-Chief of the
+Bloods, Little Thunder, is the head of this organization. A very
+dangerous and very clever Indian he is, as you know. We have a charge
+of murder against him already, and if we can arrest him and one or two
+others it would do much to break up the gang, or at least to hold in
+check their organization work. We want you to get quietly after this
+business, visit all the reservations, obtain all information possible,
+and when you are ready, strike. You will be quite unhampered in your
+movements and the whole force will co-operate with you if necessary. We
+consider this an extremely critical time and we must be prepared. Take a
+man with you. Make your own choice.”
+
+“I expect we know the man the Inspector will choose,” said
+superintendent Crawford with a smile.
+
+“Who is that?” asked the Commissioner.
+
+“Constable Cameron, of course.”
+
+“Ah, yes, Cameron. You remember I predicted he would make good. He has
+certainly fulfilled my expectation.”
+
+“He is a good man,” said the Inspector quietly.
+
+“Oh come, Inspector, you know you consider him the best all-round man at
+this post,” said the Superintendent.
+
+“Well, you see, Sir, he is enthusiastic for the service, he works hard
+and likes his work.”
+
+“Right you are!” exclaimed the Superintendent. “In the first place, he
+is the strongest man on the force, then he is a dead shot, a good man
+with a horse, and has developed an extraordinary gift in tracking, and
+besides he is perfectly straight.”
+
+“Is that right, Inspector?”
+
+“Yes,” said the Inspector very quietly, though his eyes were gleaming at
+the praise of his friend. “He is a good man, very keen, very reliable,
+and of course afraid of nothing.”
+
+The Superintendent laughed quietly.
+
+“You want him then, I suppose?”
+
+“Yes,” said the Inspector, “if it could be managed.”
+
+“I don't know,” said the Commissioner. “That reminds me.” He took a
+letter from the file. “Read that,” he said, “second page there. It is a
+private letter from Superintendent Strong at Calgary.”
+
+The Inspector took the letter and read at the place indicated--
+
+“Another thing. The handling of these railroad construction gangs is
+no easy matter. We are pestered with whiskey-smugglers, gamblers, and
+prostitutes till we don't know which way to turn. As the work extends
+into the mountains and as the camps grow in numbers the difficulty
+of control is very greatly increased. I ought to have my force
+strengthened. Could you not immediately spare me at least eight or ten
+good men? I would like that chap Cameron, the man, you know, who caught
+the half-breed Louis in the Sarcee camp and carried him out on his
+horse's neck--a very fine bit of work. Inspector Dickson will tell you
+about him. I had it from him. Could you spare Cameron? I would recommend
+him at once as a sergeant.”
+
+The Inspector handed back the letter without comment.
+
+“Well?” said the Commissioner.
+
+“Cameron would do very well for the work,” said the Inspector, “and he
+deserves promotion.”
+
+“What was that Sarcee business, Inspector?” enquired the Commissioner.
+“That must have been when I was down east.”
+
+“Oh,” said the Inspector, “it was a very fine thing indeed of Cameron.
+Louis 'the Breed' had been working the Bloods. We got on his track and
+headed him up in the Sarcee camp. He is rather a dangerous character and
+is related to the Sarcees. We expected trouble in his arrest. We rode
+in and found the Indians, to the number of a hundred and fifty or more,
+very considerably excited. They objected strenuously to the arrest of
+the half-breed. Constable Cameron and I were alone. We had left a
+party of men further back over the hill. The half-breed brought it upon
+himself. He was rash enough to make a sudden attack upon Cameron.
+That is where he made his mistake. Before he knew where he was Cameron
+slipped from his horse, caught him under the chin with a very nice
+left-hander that laid him neatly out, swung him on to his horse, and was
+out of the camp before the Indians knew what had happened.”
+
+“The Inspector does not tell you,” said Superintendent Crawford, “how
+he stood off that bunch of Sarcees and held them where they were till
+Cameron was safe with his man over the hill. But it was a very clever
+bit of work, and, if I may say it, deserves recognition.”
+
+“I should like to give you Cameron if it were possible,” said the
+Commissioner, “but this railroad business is one of great difficulty and
+Superintendent Strong is not the man to ask for assistance unless he is
+in pretty desperate straits. An unintelligent or reckless man would be
+worse than useless.”
+
+“How would it do,” suggested the Superintendent, “to allow Cameron in
+the meantime to accompany the Inspector? Then later we might send him to
+Superintendent Strong.”
+
+Reporting this arrangement to Cameron a little later, the Inspector
+enquired:
+
+“How would you like to have a turn in the mountains? You would find
+Superintendent Strong a fine officer.”
+
+“I desire no change in that regard,” replied Cameron. “But, curiously
+enough, I have a letter this very mail that has a bearing upon this
+matter. Here it is. It is from an old college friend of mine, Dr.
+Martin.”
+
+The Inspector took the letter and read--
+
+“I have got myself used up, too great devotion to scientific research;
+hence I am accepting an offer from the railroad people for work in the
+mountains. I leave in a week. Think of it! The muck and the ruck, the
+execrable grub and worse drink! I shall have to work my passage on hand
+cars and doubtless by tie pass. My hands will lose all their polish.
+However, there may be some fun and likely some good practice. I see
+they are blowing themselves up at a great rate. Then, too, there is
+the prospective joy of seeing you, of whom quite wonderful tales have
+floated east to us. I am told you are in direct line for the position
+of the High Chief Muck-a-muck of the Force. Look me up in Superintendent
+Strong's division. I believe he is the bulwark of the Empire in my
+district.
+
+“A letter from the old burgh across the pond tells me your governor is
+far from well. Awfully sorry to hear it. It is rough on your sister, to
+whom, when you write, remember your humble servant.
+
+“I am bringing out two nurses with me, both your devotees. Look out for
+squalls. If you get shot up see that you select a locality where the
+medical attendance and nursing are 'A 1'.”
+
+“It would be awfully good to see the old boy,” said Cameron as he took
+the letter from the Inspector. “He is a decent chap and quite up-to-date
+in his profession.”
+
+“What about the nurses?” enquired the Inspector gravely.
+
+“Oh, I don't know them. Never knew but one. A good bright little soul
+she was. Saw me through a typhoid trip. Little too clever sometimes,”
+ he added, remembering the day when she had taken her fun out of the
+slow-footed, slow-minded farmer's daughter.
+
+“Well,” said the Inspector, “we shall possibly come across them in
+our round-up. This is rather a big game, a very big game and one worth
+playing.”
+
+A bigger game it turned out than any of the players knew, bigger in its
+immediate sweep and in its nationwide issues.
+
+For three months they swept the plains, haunting the reservations at
+unexpected moments. But though they found not a few horses and cattle
+whose obliterated brands seemed to warrant confiscation, and though
+there were signs for the instructed eye of evil doings in many an Indian
+camp, yet there was nothing connected with the larger game upon which
+the Inspector of Police could lay his hand.
+
+Among the Bloods there were frequent sun-dances where many braves were
+made and much firewater drunk with consequent blood-letting. Red Crow
+deprecated these occurrences, but confessed his powerlessness to prevent
+the flow of either firewater or of blood. A private conversation with
+the Inspector left with the Chief some food for thought, however, and
+resulted in the cropping of the mane of White Horse, of whose comings
+and goings the Inspector was insistently curious.
+
+On the Blackfeet reservation they ran into a great pow-wow of chiefs
+from far and near, to which old Crowfoot invited the representatives
+of the Great White Mother with impressive cordiality, an invitation,
+however, which the Inspector, such was his strenuous hunt for stolen
+horses, was forced regretfully to decline.
+
+“Too smooth, old boy, too smooth!” was the Inspector's comment as they
+rode off. “There are doings there without doubt. Did you see the Cree
+and the Assiniboine?”
+
+“I could not pick them out,” said Cameron, “but I saw Louis the Breed.”
+
+“Ah, you did! He needs another term at the Police sanatarium.”
+
+They looked in upon the Sarcees and were relieved to find them frankly
+hostile. They had not forgotten the last visit of the Inspector and his
+friend.
+
+“That's better,” remarked the Inspector as they left the reservation.
+“Neither the hostile Indian nor the noisy Indian is dangerous. When he
+gets smooth and quiet watch him, like old Crowfoot. Sly old boy he is!
+But he will wait till he sees which way the cat jumps. He is no leader
+of lost causes.”
+
+At Morleyville they breathed a different atmosphere. They felt
+themselves to be among friends. The hand of the missionary here was upon
+the helm of government and the spirit of the missionary was the spirit
+of the tribe.
+
+“Any trouble?” enquired the Inspector.
+
+“We have a great many visitors these days,” said the missionary. “And
+some of our young men don't like hunger, and the offer of a full feast
+makes sweet music in their ears.”
+
+“Any sun-dances?”
+
+“No, no, the sun-dances are all past. Our people are no longer pagans.”
+
+“Good man!” was the Inspector's comment as they took up the trail again
+toward the mountains. “And with quite a sufficient amount of the wisdom
+of the serpent in his guileless heart. We need not watch the Stonies.
+Here's a spot at least where religion pays. And a mighty good thing for
+us just now,” added the inspector. “These Stonies in the old days
+were perfect devils for fighting. They are a mountain people and for
+generations kept the passes against all comers. But Macdougall has
+changed all that.”
+
+Leaving the reservation, they came upon the line of the railway.
+
+“There lies my old trail,” said Cameron. “And my last camp was only
+about two miles west of here.”
+
+“It was somewhere here that Raven fell in with you?”
+
+“No, some ten miles off the line, down the old Kootenay trail.”
+
+“Aha!” said the Inspector. “It might not be a bad idea to beat up that
+same old trail. It is quite possible that we might fall in with your old
+friends.”
+
+“It would certainly be a great pleasure,” replied Cameron, “to conduct
+Mr. Raven and his Indian friend over this same trail as they did me some
+nine months ago.”
+
+“We will take a chance on it,” said the Inspector. “We lose time going
+back the other way.”
+
+Upon the site of McIvor's survey camp they found camped a large
+construction gang. Between the lines of tents, for the camp was ordered
+in streets like a city, they rode till they came to the headquarters of
+the Police, and enquired for the Superintendent. The Superintendent
+had gone up the line, the Sergeant informed them, following the larger
+construction gangs. The Sergeant and two men had some fifty miles of
+line under patrol, with some ten camps of various kinds on the line and
+in the woods, and in addition they had the care of that double stream of
+humanity flowing in and flowing out without ceasing day or night.
+
+As the Inspector stepped inside the Police tent Cameron's attention was
+arrested by the sign “Hospital” upon a large double-roofed tent set on a
+wooden floor and guyed with more than ordinary care.
+
+“Wonder if old Martin is anywhere about,” he said to himself as he rode
+across to the open door.
+
+“Is Dr. Martin in?” he enquired of a Chinaman, who appeared from a tent
+at the rear.
+
+“Doc Matin go 'way 'long tlain.”
+
+“When will he come back?” demanded Cameron.
+
+“Donno. See missy woman.”
+
+So saying, he disappeared into the tent while Cameron waited.
+
+“You wish to see the doctor? He has gone west. Oh! Why, it--”
+
+Cameron was off his horse, standing with his hat in one hand, the other
+outstretched toward the speaker.
+
+“Why! it cannot be!--it is--my patient.” The little nurse had his hand
+in both of hers. “Oh, you great big monster soldier! Do you know how
+fine you look?”
+
+“No,” replied Cameron, “but I do know how perfectly fine you look.”
+
+“Well, don't devour me. You look dangerous.”
+
+“I should truly love one little bite.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Cameron, stop! You terrible man! Right in the open street!” The
+little nurse's cheeks flamed red as she quickly glanced about her. “What
+would Dr. Martin say?”
+
+“Dr. Martin!” Cameron laughed. “Besides, I couldn't help it.”
+
+“Oh, I am so glad!”
+
+“Thank you,” said Cameron.
+
+“I mean I am so glad to see you. They told us you would be coming
+to join us. And now they are gone. What a pity! They will be so
+disappointed.”
+
+“Who, pray, will be thus blighted?”
+
+“Oh, the doctor I mean, and--and”--here her eyes danced
+mischievously--“the other nurse, of course. But you will be going west?”
+
+“No, south, to-day, and in a few minutes. Here comes the Inspector. May
+I present him?”
+
+The little nurse's snapping eyes glowed with pleasure as they ran over
+the tall figure of the Inspector and rested upon his fine clean-cut
+face. The Inspector had just made his farewell to the Sergeant
+preparatory to an immediate departure, but it was a full half hour
+before they rose from the dainty tea table where the little nurse had
+made them afternoon tea from her own dainty tea set.
+
+“It makes me think of home,” said the Inspector with a sigh as he bent
+over the little nurse's hand in gratitude. “My first real afternoon tea
+in ten years.”
+
+“Poor man!” said the nurse. “Come again.”
+
+“Ah, if I could!”
+
+“But YOU are coming?” said the little nurse to Cameron as he held her
+hand in farewell. “I heard the doctor say you were coming and we are
+quite wild with impatience over it.”
+
+Cameron looked at the Inspector.
+
+“I had thought of keeping Cameron at Macleod,” said the latter. “But now
+I can hardly have the heart to do so.”
+
+“Oh, you needn't look at me so,” said the little nurse with a saucy toss
+of her head. “He wouldn't bother himself about me, but--but--there is
+another. No, I won't tell him.” And she laughed gaily.
+
+Cameron stood mystified.
+
+“Another? There is old Martin of course, but there is no other.”
+
+The little nurse laughed, this time scornfully.
+
+“Old Martin indeed! He is making a shameless pretence of ignorance,
+Inspector Dickson.”
+
+“Disgraceful bluff I call it,” cried the Inspector.
+
+“Who can it be?” said Cameron. “I really don't know any nurse. Of course
+it can't be--Mandy--Miss Haley?” He laughed a loud laugh almost of
+derision as he made the suggestion.
+
+“Ah, he's got it!” cried the nurse, clapping her hands. “As if he ever
+doubted.”
+
+“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Cameron. “You don't mean to tell me that
+Mandy--What is poor Mandy doing here? Cooking?”
+
+“Cooking indeed!” exclaimed the nurse. “Cooking indeed! Just let the men
+in this camp, from John here,” indicating the Chinaman at the rear
+of the tent, “to the Sergeant yonder, hear you by the faintest tone
+indicate anything but adoration for Nurse Haley, and you will need the
+whole Police Force to deliver you from their fury.”
+
+“Good Heavens!” said Cameron in an undertone. “A nurse! With those
+hands!” He shuddered. “I mean, of course--you know--she's awfully
+good-hearted and all that, but as a nurse you know she is impossible.”
+
+The little nurse laughed long and joyously.
+
+“Oh, this is fun! I wish Dr. Martin could hear you. You forget, Sir,
+that for a year and a half she has had the benefit of my example and
+tuition.”
+
+“Think of that, Cameron!” murmured the Inspector reproachfully. But
+Cameron only shook his head.
+
+“Good-bye!” he said. “No, I don't think I pine for mountain scenery.
+Remember me to Martin and to Man--to Nurse Haley.”
+
+“Good-bye!” said the little nurse. “I have a good mind to tell them what
+you said. I may. Just wait, though. Some day you will very humbly beg my
+pardon for that slight upon my assistant.”
+
+“Slight? Believe me, I mean none. I would be an awful cad if I did.
+But--well, you know as well as I do that, good soul as Mandy is, she is
+in many ways impossible.”
+
+“Do I?” Again the joyous laugh pealed out. “Well, well, come back and
+see.” And waving her hand she stood to watch them down the trail.
+
+“Jolly little girl,” said the Inspector, as they turned from the railway
+tote road down the coulee into the Kootenay trail. “But who is this
+other?”
+
+“Oh,” said Cameron impatiently, “I feel like a beastly cad. She's
+the daughter of the farmer where I spent a summer in Ontario, a good
+simple-hearted girl, but awfully--well--crude, you know. And yet--”
+ Cameron's speech faded into silence, for his memory played a trick upon
+him, and again he was standing in the orchard on that sunny autumn day
+looking into a pair of wonderful eyes, and, remembering the eyes, he
+forgot his speech.
+
+“Ah, yes,” said the Inspector. “I understand.”
+
+“No, you don't,” said Cameron almost rudely. “You would have to see her
+first. By Jove!” He broke into a laugh. “It is a joke with a vengeance,”
+ and relapsed into silence that lasted for some miles.
+
+That night they slept in the old lumber camp, and the afternoon of the
+second day found them skirting the Crow's Nest.
+
+“We've had no luck this trip,” growled the Inspector, for now they were
+facing toward home.
+
+“Listen!” said Cameron, pulling up his horse sharply. Down the pass the
+faraway beat of a drum was heard. It was the steady throb of the tom-tom
+rising and falling with rhythmic regularity.
+
+“Sun-dance,” said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he generally
+allowed himself. “Piegans.”
+
+“Where?” said Cameron.
+
+“In the sun-dance canyon,” answered the Inspector. “I believe in my soul
+we shall see something now. Must be two miles off. Come on.”
+
+Though late in December the ground was still unfrozen and the new-made
+government trail gave soft footing to their horses. And so without fear
+of detection they loped briskly along till they began to hear
+rising above the throb of the tom-tom the weird chant of the Indian
+sun-dancers.
+
+“They are right down in the canyon,” said the Inspector. “I know the
+spot well. We can see them from the top. This is their most sacred place
+and there is doubtless something big going on.”
+
+They left the main trail and, dismounting, led their horses through
+the scrubby woods, which were thick enough to give them cover without
+impeding very materially their progress. Within a hundred yards of the
+top they tied their horses in the thicket and climbed the slight ascent.
+Crawling on hands and knees to the lip of the canyon, they looked down
+upon a scene seldom witnessed by the eyes of white men. The canyon was
+a long narrow valley, whose rocky sides, covered with underbrush, rose
+some sixty feet from a little plain about fifty yards wide. The little
+plain was filled with the Indian encampment. At one end a huge fire
+blazed. At the other, and some fifty yards away, the lodges were set in
+a semicircle, reaching from side to side of the canyon, and in front of
+the lodges were a mass of Indian warriors, squatting on their hunkers,
+beating time, some with tom-toms, others with their hands, to the
+weirdly monotonous chant, that rose and fell in response to the
+gesticulations of one who appeared to be their leader. In the centre of
+the plain stood a post and round this two circles of dancers leaped
+and swayed. In the outer circle the men, with clubs and rifles in their
+hands, recited with pantomimic gestures their glorious deeds in the
+war or in the chase. The inner circle presented a ghastly and horrid
+spectacle. It was composed of younger men, naked and painted, some of
+whom were held to the top of the post by long thongs of buffalo hide
+attached to skewers thrust through the muscles of the breast or back.
+Upon these thongs they swayed and threw themselves in frantic attempts
+to break free. With others the skewers were attached by thongs to
+buffalo skulls, stones or heavy blocks of wood, which, as they danced
+and leaped, tore at the bleeding flesh. Round and round the post the
+naked painted Indians leaped, lurching and swaying from side to side
+in their desperate efforts to drag themselves free from those tearing
+skewers, while round them from the dancing circle and from the mass of
+Indians squatted on the ground rose the weird, maddening, savage chant
+to the accompaniment of their beating hands and throbbing drums.
+
+“This is a big dance,” said the Inspector, subduing his voice to an
+undertone, though in the din there was little chance of his being heard.
+“See! many braves have been made already,” he added, pointing to a place
+on one side of the fire where a number of forms could be seen, some
+lying flat, some rolling upon the earth, but all apparently more or less
+in a stupor.
+
+Madder and madder grew the drums, higher and higher rose the chant.
+Now and then an older warrior from the squatting circle would fling his
+blanket aside and, waving his rifle high in the air, would join with
+loud cries and wild gesticulations the outer circle of dancers.
+
+“It is a big thing this,” said the Inspector again. “No squaws, you see,
+and all in war paint. They mean business. We must get closer.”
+
+Cameron gripped him by the arm.
+
+“Look!” he said, pointing to a group of Indians standing at a little
+distance beyond the lodges. “Little Thunder and Raven!”
+
+“Yes, by Jove!” said the Inspector. “And White Horse, and Louis the
+Breed and Rainy Cloud of the Blackfeet. A couple of Sarcee chaps, I see,
+too, some Piegans and Bloods; the rest are Crees and Assiniboines. The
+whole bunch are here. Jove, what a killing if we could get them! Let's
+work nearer. Who is that speaking to them?”
+
+“That's Raven,” said Cameron, “and I should like to get my hands on
+him.”
+
+“Steady now,” said the Inspector. “We must make no mistake.”
+
+They worked along the top of the ravine, crawling through the bushes,
+till they were immediately over the little group of which Raven was the
+centre. Raven was still speaking, the half-breed interpreting to the
+Crees and the Assiniboines, and now and then, as the noise from the
+chanting, drumming Indians subsided, the policemen could catch a few
+words. After Raven had finished Little Thunder made reply, apparently
+in strenuous opposition. Again Raven spoke and again Little Thunder made
+reply. The dispute waxed warm. Little Thunder's former attitude towards
+Raven appeared to be entirely changed. The old subservience was gone.
+The Indian stood now as a Chief among his people and as such was
+recognized in that company. He spoke with a haughty pride of conscious
+strength and authority. He was striving to bring Raven to his way of
+thinking. At length Raven appeared to throw down his ultimatum.
+
+“No!” he cried, and his voice rang up clear through the din. “You are
+fools! You are like little partridges trying to frighten the hunter. The
+Great White Mother has soldiers like the leaves of the trees. I know,
+for I have seen them. Do not listen to this man!” pointing to Little
+Thunder. “Anger has made him mad. The Police with their big guns will
+blow you to pieces like this.” He seized a bunch of dead leaves, ground
+them in his hands and puffed the fragments in their faces.
+
+The half-breed and Little Thunder were beside themselves with rage. Long
+and loud they harangued the group about them. Only a little of their
+meaning could the Inspector gather, but enough to let him know that
+they were looking down upon a group of conspirators and that plans for a
+widespread rebellion were being laid before them.
+
+Through the harangues of Little Thunder and Louis the half-breed Raven
+stood calmly regarding them, his hands on his hips. He knew well, as did
+the men watching from above, that all that stood between him and death
+were those same two hands and the revolvers in his belt, whose butts
+were snugly nosing up to his fingers. Little Thunder had too often seen
+those fingers close and do their deadly work while an eyelid might wink
+to venture any hasty move.
+
+“Is that all?” said Raven at last.
+
+Little Thunder made one final appeal, working himself up into a fine
+frenzy of passion. Then Raven made reply.
+
+“Listen to me!” he said. “It is all folly, mad folly! And besides,” and
+here his voice rang out like a trumpet, “I am for the Queen, God bless
+her!” His figure straightened up, his hands dropped on the butts of his
+guns.
+
+“By Jove!” exclaimed Cameron. “Isn't that great?”
+
+“Very fine, indeed,” said the Inspector softly. Both men's guns were
+lined upon the conspirators.
+
+Then the half-breed spoke, shrugging his shoulders in contempt.
+
+“Let heem go. Bah! No good.” He spat upon the ground.
+
+Raven stood as he was for a few moments, smiling.
+
+“Good-bye, all,” he said. “Bon jour, Louis. Let no man move! Let no man
+move! I never need to shoot at a man twice. Little Thunder knows. And
+don't follow!” he added. “I shall be waiting behind the rocks.”
+
+He slowly backed away from the group, turned in behind a sheltering
+rock, then swiftly began to climb the rocky sides of the canyon. The
+moment he was out of sight Little Thunder dodged in behind the ledges,
+found his rifle, and, making a wide detour, began to climb the side of
+the ravine at an angle which would cut off Raven's retreat. All this
+took place in full view of the two watchers above.
+
+“Let's get that devil,” said the Inspector. But Cameron was already
+gone. Swiftly along the lip of the canyon Cameron ran and worked his way
+down the side till he stood just over the sloping ledge upon which the
+Indian was crouched and waiting. Along this lodge came the unconscious
+Raven, softly whistling to himself his favourite air,
+
+     “Three cheers for the red, white and blue.”
+
+There was no way of warning him. Three steps more and he would be within
+range. The Inspector raised his gun and drew a bead upon the crouching
+Indian.
+
+“Wait!” whispered Cameron. “Don't shoot. It will bring them all down on
+us.” Gathering himself together as he spoke, he vaulted clear over
+the edge of the rock and dropped fair upon the shoulders of the Indian
+below, knocking the breath completely out of him and bearing him flat to
+the rock. Like a flash Cameron's hand was on the Indian's throat so that
+he could make no outcry. A moment later Raven came in view. Swifter than
+light his guns were before his face and levelled at Cameron.
+
+“Don't shoot!” said the Inspector quietly from above. “I have you
+covered.”
+
+Perilous as the situation was, Cameron was conscious only of the
+humourous side of it and burst into a laugh.
+
+“Come here, Raven,” he said, “and help me to tie up this fellow.” Slowly
+Raven moved forward.
+
+“Why, by all the gods! If it isn't our long-lost friend, Cameron,”
+ he said softly, putting up his guns. “All right, old man,” he added,
+nodding up at the Inspector. “Now, what's all this? What? Little
+Thunder? So! Then I fancy I owe my life to you, Cameron.”
+
+Cameron pointed to Little Thunder's gun. Raven stood looking down
+upon the Indian, who was recovering his wind and his senses. His face
+suddenly darkened.
+
+“You treacherous dog! Well, we are now nearly quits. Once you saved my
+life, now you would have taken it.”
+
+Meantime Cameron had handcuffed Little Thunder.
+
+“Up!” he said, prodding him with his revolver. “And not a sound!”
+
+Keeping within cover of the bushes, they scrambled up the ravine side.
+As they reached the top the Indian with a mighty wrench tore himself
+from Cameron's grip and plunged into the thicket. Before he had taken a
+second step, however, the Inspector was upon him like a tiger and bore
+him to the ground.
+
+“Will you go quietly,” said the Inspector, “or must we knock you on the
+head?” He raised his pistol over the Indian as he spoke.
+
+“I go,” grunted the Indian solemnly.
+
+“Come, then,” said the Inspector, “we'll give you one chance more.
+Where's your friend?” he added, looking about him. But Raven was gone.
+
+“I am just as glad,” said Cameron, remembering Raven's declaration of
+allegiance a few moments before. “He wasn't too bad a chap after all. We
+have this devil anyhow.”
+
+“Quick, now,” said the Inspector. “We have not a moment to lose. This
+is an important capture. How the deuce we are to get him to the Fort I
+don't know.”
+
+Through the bushes they hurried their prisoner, threatening him with
+their guns. When they came to their horses they were amazed to find
+Little Thunder's pony beside their own and on the Inspector's saddle a
+slip of paper upon which in the fading light they found inscribed “One
+good turn deserves another. With Mr. Raven's compliments.”
+
+“By Jove, he's a trump!” said the Inspector. “I'd like to get him, but
+all the same--”
+
+And so they rode off to the Fort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+NURSE HALEY
+
+
+The railway construction had reached the Beaver, and from Laggan
+westward the construction gangs were strewn along the line in straggling
+camps, straggling because, though the tents of the railway men were set
+in orderly precision, the crowds of camp-followers spread themselves
+hither and thither in disorderly confusion around the outskirts of the
+camp.
+
+To Cameron, who for a month had been attached to Superintendent Strong's
+division, the life was full of movement and colour. The two constables
+and Sergeant Ferry found the duty of keeping order among the navvies,
+but more especially among the outlaw herd that lay in wait to fling
+themselves upon their monthly pay like wolves upon a kill, sufficiently
+arduous to fill to repletion the hours of the day and often of the
+night.
+
+The hospital tent where the little nurse reigned supreme became to
+Cameron and to the Sergeant as well a place of refuge and relief. Nurse
+Haley was in charge further down the line.
+
+The post had just come in and with it a letter for Constable Cameron. It
+was from Inspector Dickson.
+
+“You will be interested to know,” it ran, “that when I returned from
+Stand Off two days ago I found that Little Thunder, who had been waiting
+here for his hanging next month, had escaped. How, was a mystery to
+everybody; but when I learned that a stranger had been at the Fort and
+had called upon the Superintendent with a tale of horse-stealing, had
+asked to see Little Thunder and identified him as undoubtedly the thief,
+and had left that same day riding a particularly fine black broncho,
+I made a guess that we had been honoured by a visit from your friend
+Raven. That guess was confirmed as correct by a little note which I
+found waiting me from this same gentleman explaining Little Thunder's
+absence as being due to Raven's unwillingness to see a man go to the
+gallows who had once saved his life, but conveying the assurance that
+the Indian was leaving the country for good and would trouble us no
+more. The Superintendent, who seems to have been captured by your
+friend's charm of manner, does not appear to be unduly worried and holds
+the opinion that we are well rid of Little Thunder. But I venture to
+hold a different opinion, namely, that we shall yet hear from that
+Indian brave before the winter is over.
+
+“Things are quiet on the reservations--altogether too quiet. The Indians
+are so exceptionally well behaved that there is no excuse for arresting
+any suspects, so White Horse, Rainy Cloud, those Piegan chaps, and the
+rest of them are allowed to wander about at will. The country is full
+of Indian and half-breed runners and nightly pow-wows are the vogue
+everywhere. Old Crowfoot, I am convinced, is playing a deep game and is
+simply waiting the fitting moment to strike.
+
+“How is the little nurse? Present my duty to her and to that other nurse
+over whom hangs so deep a mystery.”
+
+Cameron folded up his letter and imparted some of the news to the
+Sergeant.
+
+“That old Crowfoot is a deep one, sure enough,” said Sergeant Ferry. “It
+takes our Chief here to bring him to time. Superintendent Strong has the
+distinction of being the only man that ever tamed old Crowfoot. Have
+you never heard of it? No? Well, of course, we don't talk about these
+things. I was there though, and for cold iron nerve I never saw anything
+like it. It was a bad half-breed,” continued Sergeant Ferry, who, when
+he found a congenial and safe companion, loved to spin a yarn--“a bad
+half-breed who had been arrested away down the line, jumped off the
+train and got away to the Blackfeet. The Commissioner happened to be in
+Calgary and asked the Superintendent himself to see about the capture
+of this desperado. So with a couple of us mounted and another driving a
+buckboard we made for Chief Crowfoot's encampment. It was a black night
+and raining a steady drizzle. We lay on the edge of the camp for a
+couple of hours in the rain and then at early dawn we rode in. It took
+the Superintendent about two minutes to locate Crowfoot's tent, and,
+leaving us outside, he walked straight in. There was our man, as large
+as life, in the place of honour beside old Crowfoot. The interpreter,
+who was scared to death, afterwards told me all about it.
+
+“'I want this man,' said the Superintendent, hardly waiting to say
+good-day to the old Chief.
+
+“Crowfoot was right up and ready for a fight. The Superintendent,
+without ever letting go the half-breed's shoulder, set out the case.
+Meantime the Indians had gathered in hundreds about the tent outside,
+all armed, and wild for blood, you bet. I could hear the Superintendent
+making his statement. All at once he stopped and out he came with his
+man by the collar, old Crowfoot after him in a fury, but afraid to give
+the signal of attack. The Indians were keen to get at us, but the old
+Chief had his men in hand all right.
+
+“'Don't think you will not get justice,' said the Superintendent. 'You
+come yourself and see. Here's a pass for you on the railroad and for
+any three of your men. But let me warn you that if one hair of my men is
+touched, it will be a bad day for you, Crowfoot, and for your band.'
+
+“He bundled his man into the buckboard and sent him off. The
+Superintendent and I waited on horseback in parley with old Crowfoot
+till the buckboard was over the hill. Such a half hour I never expect to
+see again. I felt like a man standing over an open keg of gunpowder with
+a lighted match. Any moment a spark might fall, and then good-bye. And
+it is this same nerve of his that holds down these camps along this
+line. Here we are with twenty-five men from Laggan to Beaver keeping
+order among twenty-five hundred railroad navvies, not a bad lot, and
+twenty-five hundred others, the scum, the very devil's scum from across
+the line, and not a murder all these months. Whiskey, of course, but all
+under cover. I tell you, he's put the fear of death on all that tinhorn
+bunch that hang around these camps.”
+
+“There doesn't seem to be much trouble just now,” remarked Cameron.
+
+“Trouble? There may be the biggest kind of trouble any day. Some of
+these contractors are slow in their pay. They expect men to wait a
+month or two. That makes them mad and the tinhorn bunch keep stirring
+up trouble. Might be a strike any time, and then look out. But our Chief
+will be ready for them. He won't stand any nonsense, you bet.”
+
+At this point in the Sergeant's rambling yarn the door was flung open
+and a man called breathlessly, “Man killed!”
+
+“How is that?” cried the Sergeant, springing to buckle on his belt.
+
+“An accident--car ran away--down the dump.”
+
+“They are altogether too flip with those cars,” growled the Sergeant.
+“Come on!”
+
+They ran down the road and toward the railroad dump where they saw a
+crowd of men. The Sergeant, followed by Cameron, pushed his way through
+and found a number of navvies frantically tearing at a pile of jagged
+blocks of rock under which could be seen a human body. It took only a
+few minutes to remove the rocks and to discover lying there a young man,
+a mere lad, from whose mangled and bleeding body the life appeared to
+have fled.
+
+As they stood about him, a huge giant of a man came tearing his way
+through the crowd, pushing men to right and left.
+
+“Let me see him,” he cried, dropping on his knees. “Oh Jack, lad, they
+have done for you this time.”
+
+As he spoke the boy opened his eyes, looked upon the face of his friend,
+smiled and lay still. Then the Sergeant took command.
+
+“Is the doctor back, does anyone know?”
+
+“No, he's up the line yet. He is coming in on number seven.”
+
+“Well, we must get this man to the hospital. Here, you,” he said,
+touching a man on the arm, “run and tell the nurse we are bringing a
+wounded man.”
+
+They improvised a stretcher and laid the mangled form upon it the blood
+streaming from wounds in his legs and trickling from his pallid lips.
+
+“Here, two men are better than four. Cameron, you take the head, and
+you,” pointing to Jack's friend, “take his feet. Steady now! I'll just
+go before. This is a ghastly sight.”
+
+At the door of the hospital tent the little nurse met them, pale, but
+ready for service.
+
+“Oh, my poor boy!” she cried, as she saw the white face. “This way,
+Sergeant,” she added, passing into a smaller tent at one side of the
+hospital. “Oh, Mr. Cameron, is that you? I am glad you are here.”
+
+“Has Nurse Haley come?” enquired the Sergeant.
+
+“Yes, she came in last night, thank goodness. Here, on this table,
+Sergeant. Oh I wish the doctor were here! Now we must lift him on to
+this stretcher. Ah, here's Nurse Haley,” she added in a relieved voice,
+and before Cameron was aware, a girl in a nurse's uniform stood by him
+and appeared quietly to take command.
+
+“Here Sergeant,” she said, “two men take his feet.” She put her arms
+under the boy's shoulder and gently and with apparent ease, assisted by
+the others, lifted him to the table. “A little further--there. Now you
+are easier, aren't you?” she said, smiling down into the lad's face. Her
+voice was low and soft and full toned.
+
+“Yes, thank you,” said the boy, biting back his groans and with a
+pitiful attempt at a smile.
+
+“You're fine now, Jack. You'll soon be fixed up now,” said his friend.
+
+“Yes Pete, I'm all right, I know.”
+
+“Oh, I wish the doctor were here!” groaned the little nurse.
+
+“What about a hypo?” enquired Nurse Haley quietly.
+
+“Yes, yes, give him one.”
+
+Cameron's eyes followed the firm, swift-moving fingers as they deftly
+gave the hypodermic.
+
+“Now we must get this bleeding stopped,” she said.
+
+“Get them all out, Sergeant, please,” said the little nurse. “One or two
+will do to help us. You stay, Mr. Cameron.”
+
+At the mention of his name Nurse Haley, who had been busy preparing
+bandages, dropped them, turned, and for the first time looked Cameron in
+the face.
+
+“Is it you?” she said softly, and gave him her hand, and, as more than
+once before, Cameron found himself suddenly forgetting all the world. He
+was looking into her eyes, blue, deep, wonderful.
+
+It was only for a single moment that his eyes held hers, but to him it
+seemed as if he had been in some far away land. Without a single word of
+greeting he allowed her to withdraw her hand. Wonder, and something he
+could not understand, held him dumb.
+
+For the next half hour he obeyed orders, moving as in a dream, assisting
+the nurses in their work; and in a dream he went away to his own
+quarters and thence out and over the dump and along the tote road that
+led through the straggling shacks and across the river into the forest
+beyond. But of neither river nor forest was he aware. Before his eyes
+there floated an illusive vision of masses of fluffy golden hair above
+a face of radiant purity, of deft fingers moving in swift and sure
+precision as they wound the white rolls of bandages round bloody and
+broken flesh, of two round capable arms whose lines suggested strength
+and beauty, of a firm knit, pliant body that moved with easy sinuous
+grace, of eyes--but ever at the eyes he paused, forgetting all else,
+till, recalling himself, he began again, striving to catch and hold that
+radiant, bewildering, illusive vision. That was a sufficiently maddening
+process, but to relate that vision of radiant efficient strength
+and grace to the one he carried of the farmer's daughter with her
+dun-coloured straggling hair, her muddy complexion, her stupid face,
+her clumsy, grimy hands and heavy feet, her sloppy figure, was quite
+impossible. After long and strenuous attempts he gave up the struggle.
+
+“Mandy!” he exclaimed aloud to the forest trees. “That Mandy! What's
+gone wrong with my eyes, or am I clean off my head? I will go back,” he
+said with sudden resolution, “and take another look.”
+
+Straight back he walked to the hospital, but at the door he paused. Why
+was he there? He had no excuse to offer and without excuse he felt he
+could not enter. He was acting like a fool. He turned away and once more
+sought his quarters, disgusted with himself that he should be disturbed
+by the thought of Mandy Haley or that it should cause him a moment's
+embarrassment to walk into her presence with or without excuse,
+determinedly he set himself to regain his one-time attitude of mind
+toward the girl. With little difficulty he recalled his sense of
+superiority, his kindly pity, his desire to protect her crude simplicity
+from those who might do her harm. With a vision of that Mandy before
+him, the drudge of the farm, the butt of Perkins' jokes, the object of
+pity for the neighbourhood, he could readily summon up all the feelings
+he had at one time considered it the correct and rather fine thing to
+cherish for her. But for this young nurse, so thoroughly furnished and
+fit, and so obviously able to care for herself, these feelings would not
+come. Indeed, it made him squirm to remember how in his farewell in the
+orchard he had held her hand in gentle pity for her foolish and all
+too evident infatuation for his exalted and superior self. His groan of
+self-disgust he hastily merged into a cough, for the Sergeant had his
+eyes upon him. Indeed, the Sergeant did not help his state of mind, for
+he persisted in executing a continuous fugue of ecstatic praise of Nurse
+Haley in various keys and tempos, her pluck, her cleverness, her skill,
+her patience, her jolly laugh, her voice, her eyes. To her eyes the
+Sergeant ever kept harking back as to the main motif of his fugue, till
+Cameron would have dearly loved to chuck him and his fugue out of doors.
+
+He was saved from deeds of desperate violence by a voice at the door.
+
+“Letta fo' Mis Camelon!”
+
+“Hello, Cameron!” exclaimed the Sergeant, handing him the note. “You're
+in luck.” There was no mistaking the jealousy in the Sergeant's voice.
+
+“Oh, hang it!” said Cameron as he read the note.
+
+“What's up?”
+
+“Tea!”
+
+“Who?” enquired the Sergeant eagerly.
+
+“Me. I say, you go in my place.”
+
+The Sergeant swore at him frankly and earnestly.
+
+“All right John,” said Cameron rather ungraciously.
+
+“You come?” enquired the Chinaman.
+
+“Yes, I'll come.”
+
+“All lite!” said John, turning away with his message.
+
+“Confound the thing!” growled Cameron.
+
+“Oh come, you needn't put up any bluff with me, you know,” said the
+Sergeant.
+
+But Cameron made no reply. He felt he was not ready for the interview
+before him. He was distinctly conscious of a feeling of nervous
+embarrassment, which to a man of experience is disconcerting and
+annoying. He could not make up his mind as to the attitude which it
+would be wise and proper for him to assume toward--ah--Nurse Haley. Why
+not resume relations at the point at which they were broken off in the
+orchard that September afternoon a year and a half ago? Why not? Mandy
+was apparently greatly changed, greatly improved. Well, he was delighted
+at the improvement, and he would frankly let her see his pleasure and
+approval. There was no need for embarrassment. Pshaw! Embarrassment? He
+felt none.
+
+And yet as he stood at the door of the nurses' tent he was disquieted to
+find himself nervously wondering what in thunder he should talk about.
+As it turned out there was no cause for nervousness on this score. The
+little nurse and the doctor--Nurse Haley being on duty--kept the stream
+of talk rippling and sparkling in an unbroken flow. Whenever a pause did
+occur they began afresh with Cameron and his achievements, of which they
+strove to make him talk. But they ever returned to their own work among
+the sick and wounded of the camps, and as often as they touched this
+theme the pivot of their talk became Nurse Haley, till Cameron began to
+suspect design and became wrathful. They were talking at him and were
+taking a rise out of him. He would show them their error. He at once
+became brilliant.
+
+In the midst of his scintillation he abruptly paused and sat listening.
+Through the tent walls came the sound of singing, low-toned, rich,
+penetrating. He had no need to ask about that voice. In silence they
+looked at him and at each other.
+
+     “We're going home, no more to roam,
+     No more to sin and sorrow,
+     No more to wear the brow of care,
+     We're going home to-morrow.
+
+     “We're going home; we're going home;
+     We're going home to-morrow.”
+
+Softer and softer grew the music. At last the voice fell silent. Then
+Nurse Haley appeared, radiant, fresh, and sweet as a clover field with
+the morning dew upon it, but with a light as of another world upon her
+face.
+
+With the spell of her voice, of her eyes, of her radiant face upon him,
+Cameron's scintillation faded and snuffed out. He felt like a boy at his
+first party and enraged at himself for so feeling. How bright she was,
+how pure her face under the brown gold hair, how dainty the bloom upon
+her cheek, and that voice of hers, and the firm lithe body with curving
+lines of budding womanhood, grace in every curve and movement! The Mandy
+of old faded from his mind. Have I seen you before? And where? And how
+long ago? And what's happening to me? With these questions he vexed
+his soul while he strove to keep track of the conversation between the
+three.
+
+A call from the other tent summoned Nurse Haley.
+
+“Let me go instead,” cried the little nurse eagerly. But, light-footed
+as a deer, Mandy was already gone.
+
+When the tent flap had fallen behind her Cameron pushed back his plate,
+leaned forward upon the table and, looking the little nurse full in the
+face, said:
+
+“Now, it's no use carrying this on. What have you done to her?” And the
+little nurse laughed her brightest and most joyous laugh.
+
+“What has she done to us, you mean.”
+
+“No. Come now, take pity on a fellow. I left her--well--you know what.
+And now--how has this been accomplished?”
+
+“Soul, my boy,” said the doctor emphatically, “and the hairdresser
+and--”
+
+But Cameron ignored him.
+
+“Can you tell me?” he said to the nurse.
+
+“Well, as a nurse, is she quite impossible?”
+
+“Oh, spare me,” pleaded Cameron. “I acknowledge my sin and my folly is
+before me. But tell me, how was this miracle wrought?”
+
+“What do you mean exactly? Specify.”
+
+“Oh, hang it! Well, beginning at the top, there's her hair.”
+
+“Her hair?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Then, her complexion--her grace of form--her style--her manner. Oh,
+confound it! Her hands--everything.”
+
+“Well,” said the little nurse with deliberation, “let's begin at the
+top. Her hair? A hairdresser explains that. Her complexion? A little
+treatment, massage, with some help from the doctor. Her hands? Again
+treatment and release from brutalising work. Her figure? Well, you know,
+that depends, though we don't acknowledge it always, to a certain extent
+on--well--things--and how you put them on.”
+
+“Nurse,” said the doctor gravely, “you're all off. The transformation
+is from within and is explained, as I have said, by one word--soul. The
+soul has been set free, has been allowed to break through. That is all.
+Why, my dear fellow,” continued the doctor with rising enthusiasm, “when
+that girl came to us we were in despair; and for three months she kept
+us there, pursuing us, hounding us with questions. Never saw anything
+like it. One telling was enough though. Her eyes were everywhere, her
+ears open to every hint, but it was her soul, like a bird imprisoned and
+beating for the open air. The explanation is, as I have said just now,
+soul--intense, flaming, unquenchable soul--and, I must say it, the
+dressmaker, the hairdresser, and the rest directed by our young friend
+here,” pointing to the little nurse. “Why, she had us all on the job. We
+all became devotees of the Haley Cult.”
+
+“No,” said the nurse, “it was herself.”
+
+“Isn't that what I have been telling you?” said the doctor impatiently.
+“Soul--soul--soul! A soul somehow on fire.”
+
+And with that Cameron had to be content.
+
+Yes, a soul it was, at one time dormant and enwrapped within its coarse
+integument. Now, touched into life by some divine fire, it had through
+its own subtle power transformed that coarse integument into its own
+pure gold. What was that fire? What divine touch had kindled it? And,
+more important still, was that fire still aglow, or, having done
+its work, had it for lack of food flickered and died out? With these
+questions Cameron vexed himself for many days, nor found an answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+“CORPORAL” CAMERON
+
+
+Jack Green did not die. Every morning for a fortnight Constable
+Cameron felt it to be his duty to make enquiry--the Sergeant, it may be
+added--performing the same duty with equal diligence in the afternoon,
+and every day the balance, which trembled evenly for some time between
+hope and fear, continued to dip more and more decidedly toward the
+former.
+
+“He's going to live, I believe,” said Dr. Martin one day. “And he owes
+it to the nurse.” The doctor's devotion to and admiration for Nurse
+Haley began to appear to Cameron unnecessarily pronounced. “She simply
+would not let him go!” continued the doctor. “She nursed him, sang
+to him her old 'Come all ye' songs and Methodist hymns, she spun him
+barnyard yarns and orchard idyls, and always 'continued in our next,'
+till the chap simply couldn't croak for wanting to hear the next.”
+
+At times Cameron caught through the tent walls snatches of those songs
+and yarns and idyls, at times he caught momentary glimpses of the bright
+young girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into the lad fighting
+for his own, but these snatches and glimpses only exasperated him. There
+was no opportunity for any lengthened and undisturbed converse, for on
+the one hand the hospital service was exacting beyond the strength
+of doctor and nurses, and on the other there was serious trouble for
+Superintendent Strong and his men in the camps along the line, for a
+general strike had been declared in all the camps and no one knew at
+what minute it might flare up into a fierce riot.
+
+It was indeed exasperating to Cameron. The relations between himself and
+Nurse Haley were unsatisfactory, entirely unsatisfactory. It was clearly
+his duty--indeed he owed it to her and to himself--to arrive at some
+understanding, to establish their relations upon a proper and reasonable
+basis. He was at very considerable pains to make it clear, not only
+to the Sergeant, but to the cheerful little nurse and to the doctor as
+well, that as her oldest friend in the country it was incumbent upon him
+to exercise a sort of kindly protectorate over Nurse Haley. In this
+it is to be feared he was only partially successful. The Sergeant was
+obviously and gloomily incredulous of the purity of his motives, the
+little nurse arched her eyebrows and smiled in a most annoying manner,
+while the doctor pendulated between good-humoured tolerance and mild
+sarcasm. It added not a little to Cameron's mental disquiet that he was
+quite unable to understand himself; indeed, through these days he was
+engaged in conducting a bit of psychological research, with his own
+mind as laboratory and his mental phenomena as the materia for his
+investigation. It was a most difficult and delicate study and one
+demanding both leisure and calm--and Cameron had neither. The brief
+minutes he could snatch from Her Majesty's service were necessarily
+given to his friends in the hospital and as to the philosophic calm
+necessary to research work, a glimpse through the door of Nurse Haley's
+golden head bending over a sick man's cot, a snatch of song in the deep
+mellow tones of her voice, a touch of her strong firm hand, a quiet
+steady look from her deep, deep eyes--any one of these was sufficient to
+scatter all his philosophic determinings to the winds and leave his soul
+a chaos of confused emotions.
+
+Small wonder, then, that twenty times a day he cursed the luck that
+had transferred him from the comparatively peaceful environment of
+the Police Post at Fort Macleod to the maddening whirl of conflicting
+desires and duties attendant upon the Service in the railroad
+construction camps. A letter from his friend Inspector Dickson
+accentuated the contrast.
+
+“Great doings, my boy,” wrote the Inspector, evidently under the spell
+of overmastering excitement. “We have Little Thunder again in the toils,
+this time to stay, and we owe this capture to your friend Raven. A
+week ago Mr. Raven coolly walked into the Fort and asked for the
+Superintendent. I was down at stables at the time. As he was coming out
+I ran into him and immediately shouted 'Hands up!'
+
+“'Ah, Mr. Inspector,' said my gentleman, as cool as ice, 'delighted to
+see you again.'
+
+“'Stand where you are!' I said, and knowing my man and determined to
+take no chances, I ordered two constables to arrest him. At this the
+Superintendent appeared.
+
+“'Ah, Inspector,' he said, 'there is evidently some mistake here.'
+
+“'There is no mistake, Superintendent,' I replied. 'I know this man. He
+is wanted on a serious charge.'
+
+“'Kindly step this way, Mr. Raven,' said the Superintendent, 'and you,
+Inspector. I have something of importance to say to you.'
+
+“And, by Jove, it was important. Little Thunder had broken his pledge
+to Raven to quit the rebellion business and had perfected a plan for
+a simultaneous rising of Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, and Sarcees next
+month. Raven had stumbled upon this and had deliberately put himself
+in the power of the Police to bring this information. 'I am not quite
+prepared,' he said, 'to hand over this country to a lot of bally
+half-breeds and bloody savages.' Together the Superintendent and he had
+perfected a plan for the capture of the heads of the conspiracy.
+
+“'As to that little matter of which you were thinking, Inspector
+Dickson,' said my Chief, 'I think if you remember, we have no definite
+charge laid against Mr. Raven, who has given us, by the way, very
+valuable information upon which we must immediately act. We are also to
+have Mr. Raven's assistance.'
+
+“Well, we had a glorious hunt, and by Jove, that man Raven is a wonder.
+He brought us right to the bunch, walked in on them, cool and quiet,
+pulled two guns and held them till we all got in place. There will be no
+rebellion among these tribes this year, I am confident.”
+
+And though it does not appear in the records it is none the less true
+that to the influence of Missionary Macdougall among the Stonies and to
+the vigilance of the North West Mounted Police was it due that during
+the Rebellion of '85 Canada was spared the unspeakable horrors of an
+Indian war.
+
+It was this letter that deepened the shadow upon Cameron's face and
+sharpened the edge on his voice as he looked in upon his hospital
+friends one bright winter morning.
+
+“You are quite unbearable!” said the little nurse after she had listened
+to his grumbling for a few minutes. “And you are spoiling us all.”
+
+“Spoiling you all?”
+
+“Yes, especially me, and--Nurse Haley.”
+
+“Nurse Haley?”
+
+“Yes. You are disturbing her peace of mind.”
+
+“Disturbing her? Me?”
+
+A certain satisfaction crept into Cameron's voice. Nothing is so
+calculated to restore the poise of the male mind as a consciousness of
+power to disturb the equilibrium of one of the imperious sex.
+
+“And you must not do it!” continued the little nurse. “She has far too
+much to bear now.”
+
+“And haven't I been just telling you that?” said Cameron savagely. “She
+never gets off. Night and day she is on the job. I tell you, I won't--it
+should not be allowed.” Cameron was conscious of a fine glow of
+fraternal interest in this young girl. “For instance, a day like this!
+Look at these white mountains, and that glorious sky, and this wonderful
+air, and not a breath of wind! What a day for a walk! It would do
+her--it would do you all a world of good.”
+
+“Wait!” cried the little nurse, who had been on duty all night. “I'll
+tell her what you say.”
+
+Apparently it took some telling, for it was a full precious quarter of
+an hour before they appeared again.
+
+“There, now, you see the effect of your authority. She would not budge
+for me, but--well--there she is! Look at her!”
+
+There was no need for this injunction. Cameron's eyes were already
+fastened upon her. And she was worth any man's while to look at in her
+tramping costume of toque and blanket coat. Tall, she looked, beside
+the little nurse, lithe and strong, her close-fitting Hudson Bay blanket
+coat revealing the swelling lines of her budding womanhood. The dainty
+white toque perched upon the masses of gold-brown hair accentuated the
+girlish freshness of her face. At the nurse's words she turned her eyes
+upon Cameron and upon her face, pale with long night watches, a faint
+red appeared. But her eyes were quiet and steady and kind; too quiet and
+too kind for Cameron, who was looking for other signals. There was no
+sign of disturbance in that face.
+
+“Come on!” he said impatiently. “We have only one hour.”
+
+“Oh, what a glorious day!” cried Nurse Haley, drawing a deep breath and
+striding out like a man to keep pace with Cameron. “And how good of you
+to spare me the time!”
+
+“I have been trying to get you alone for the last two weeks,” said
+Cameron.
+
+“Two weeks?”
+
+“Yes, for a month! I wanted to talk to you.”
+
+“To talk with me? About what?”
+
+“About--well--about everything--about yourself.”
+
+“Me?”
+
+“Yes. I don't understand you. You have changed so tremendously.”
+
+“Oh,” exclaimed the girl, “I am so glad you have noticed that! Have I
+changed much?”
+
+“Much? I should say so! I find myself wondering if you are the Mandy I
+used to know at all.”
+
+“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I am so glad! You see, I needed to change so
+much.”
+
+“But how has it happened?” exclaimed Cameron. “It is a miracle to me.”
+
+“How a miracle?”
+
+For a few moments they walked on in silence, the tote road leading them
+into the forest. After a time the nurse said softly,
+
+“It was you who began it.”
+
+“I?”
+
+“Yes, you--and then the nurse. Oh, I can never repay her! The day that
+you left--that was a dreadful day. The world was all black. I could not
+have lived, I think, many days like that. I had to go into town and I
+couldn't help going to her. Oh, how good she was to me that day! how
+good! She understood, she understood at once. She made me come for a
+week to her, and then for altogether. That was the beginning; then I
+began to see how foolish I had been.”
+
+“Foolish?”
+
+“Yes, wildly foolish! I was like a mad thing, but I did not know then,
+and I could not help it.”
+
+“Help what?”
+
+“Oh, everything! But the nurse showed me--she showed me--”
+
+“Showed you?”
+
+“Showed me how to take care of myself--to take care of my body--of my
+dress--of my hair. Oh, I remember well,” she said with a bright little
+laugh, “I remember that hair-dresser. Then the doctor came and gave me
+books and made me read and study--and then I began to see. Oh, it was
+like a fire--a burning fire within me. And the doctor was good to me,
+so very patient, till I began to love my profession; to love it at first
+for myself, and then for others. How good they all were to me those
+days!--the nurses in the hospital, the doctors, the students--everyone
+seemed to be kind; but above them all my own nurse here and my own
+doctor.”
+
+In hurried eager speech she poured forth her heart as if anxious to
+finish her tale--her voice, her eyes, her face all eloquent of the
+intense emotion that filled her soul.
+
+“It is wonderful!” said Cameron.
+
+“Yes,” she replied, “wonderful indeed! And I wanted to see you and have
+you see me,” she continued, still hurrying her speech, “for I could not
+bear that you should remember me as I was those dreadful days; and I am
+so glad that you--you--are pleased!” The appeal in her voice and in her
+eyes roused in Cameron an overwhelming tide of passion.
+
+“Pleased!” he cried. “Pleased! Great Heavens, Mandy! You are wonderful!
+Don't you know that?”
+
+“No,” she said thoughtfully; “but,” she drew a long breath, “I like to
+hear you say it. That is all I want. You see I owe it all to you.” The
+face she turned to him so innocently happy might have been a child's.
+
+“Mandy,” cried Cameron, stopping short in his walk, “you--I--!” That
+frank childlike look in her eyes checked his hot words. But there was
+no need for words; his eyes spoke for his faltering lips. A look of fear
+leaped to her eyes, a flow of red blood to her cheeks; then she stood,
+white, trembling and silent.
+
+“I am tired, I think,” she said after a moment's silence, “we will go
+back.”
+
+“Yes, you are tired,” said Cameron angrily. “You are tired to death.
+Mandy, you need some one to take care of you. I wish you would let me.”
+ They were now walking back toward the town.
+
+“They are all good to me; they are all kind to me.” Her voice was quiet
+and steady. She had gained control of herself again. “Why, even John the
+Chinaman,” she added with a laugh, “spoils me. Oh, no harm can come to
+me--I have no fear!”
+
+“But,” said Cameron, “I--I want to take care of you, Mandy. I want the
+right to take care of you, always.”
+
+“I know, I know,” she said kindly. “You are so good; you were always so
+good; but I need no one.”
+
+Cameron glanced at the lithe, strong, upright figure striding along
+beside him with easy grace; and the truth came to him in swift and
+painful revelation.
+
+“You are right,” he said as if to himself. “You need no one, and you
+don't need me.”
+
+“But,” she cried eagerly, “it was good of you all the same.”
+
+“Good!” he said impatiently. “Good! Nonsense! I tell you, Mandy, I want
+you, I want you. Do you understand? I want to marry you.”
+
+“Oh, don't say that!” she cried, stopping short, her voice disturbed,
+but kindly, gentle and strong. “Don't say that,” she repeated, “for, of
+course, that is impossible.”
+
+“Impossible!” he exclaimed angrily.
+
+“Yes,” she said, her voice still quiet and steady, “quite impossible.
+But I love you for saying it, oh--,” she suddenly caught her breath.
+“Oh, I love you for saying it.” Then pointing up the road she cried,
+“Look! Some one for you, I am sure.” A horseman was galloping swiftly
+towards them.
+
+“Oh hang it all!” said Cameron. “What the deuce does he want now?”
+
+“We must talk this out again, Mandy,” he said.
+
+“No, no!” she cried, “never again. Please don't, ever again; I could not
+bear it. But I shall always remember, and--I am so glad.” As she spoke,
+her hands, with her old motion, went to her heart.
+
+“Oh the deuce take it!” said Cameron as the Sergeant flung his horse
+back on his heels at their side. “What does he want?”
+
+“Constable Cameron,” said the Sergeant in a voice of sharp command,
+“there's a row on. Constable Scott has been very badly handled in trying
+to make an arrest. You are to report at once for duty.”
+
+“All right, Sir,” said Cameron, “I shall return immediately.”
+
+The Sergeant wheeled and was gone.
+
+“You must go!” cried Mandy, quick fear springing into her eyes.
+
+“Yes,” said Cameron, “at once. Come, I shall take you home.”
+
+“No, never mind me!” she cried. “Go! Go! I can take care of myself. I
+shall follow.” Her voice rang out strong and clear; she was herself once
+more.
+
+“You are the right sort, Mandy,” cried Cameron, taking her hand. “Good
+bye!”
+
+“Good bye!” she replied, her face suddenly pale and her lips beginning
+to quiver. “I shall always remember--I--shall--always be glad for--what
+you said today.”
+
+Cameron stood looking at her for a moment somewhat uncertainly, then,
+
+“Good bye!” he said abruptly, and, turning, went at the double towards
+his quarters.
+
+The strikers had indeed broken loose, supported by the ruffianly horde
+of camp followers who were egging them on to violence and destruction of
+property. At present they were wild with triumph over the fact that they
+had rescued one of their leaders, big Joe Coyle, from Constable Scott.
+It was an exceedingly dangerous situation, for the riot might easily
+spread from camp to camp. Bruised and bloody, Constable Scott reported
+to Superintendent Strong lying upon his sick bed.
+
+“Sergeant,” said the Superintendent, “take Constables Cameron and Scott,
+arrest that man at once and bring him here!”
+
+In the village they found between eight hundred and a thousand men, many
+of them crazed with bad whiskey, some armed with knives and some with
+guns, and all ready for blood. Big Joe Coyle they found in the saloon.
+Pushing his way through, the Sergeant seized his man by the collar.
+
+“Come along, I want you!” he said, dragging him to the open door.
+
+“Shut that there door, Hep!” drawled a man with a goatee and a moustache
+dyed glossy black.
+
+“All right, Bill!” shouted the man called Hep, springing to the door;
+but before he could make it Cameron had him by the collar.
+
+“Hold on, Hep!” he said, “not so fast.”
+
+For answer Hep struck hard at him and the crowd of men threw themselves
+at Cameron and between him and the door. Constable Scott, who also had
+his hand upon the prisoner, drew his revolver and looked towards the
+Sergeant who was struggling in the grasp of three or four ruffians.
+
+“No!” shouted the Sergeant above the uproar. “Don't shoot--we have no
+orders! Let him go!”
+
+“Go on!” he said savagely, giving his prisoner a final shake. “We will
+come back for you.”
+
+There was a loud chorus of derisive cheers. The crowd opened and allowed
+the Sergeant and constables to pass out. Taking his place at the saloon
+door with Constable Scott, the Sergeant sent Cameron to report and ask
+for further orders.
+
+“Ask if we have orders to shoot,” said the Sergeant.
+
+Cameron found the Superintendent hardly able to lift his head and made
+his report.
+
+“The saloon is filled with men who oppose the arrest, Sir. What are your
+orders?”
+
+“My orders are, Bring that man here, and at once!”
+
+“Have we instructions to shoot?”
+
+“Shoot!” cried the Superintendent, lifting himself on his elbow. “Bring
+that man if you have to shoot every man in the saloon!”
+
+“Very well, Sir, we will bring him,” said Cameron, departing on a run.
+
+At the door of the saloon he found the Sergeant and Constable white hot
+under the jeers and taunts of the half drunken gang gathered about them.
+
+“What are the orders, Constable Cameron?” enquired the Sergeant in a
+loud voice.
+
+“The orders are, Shoot every man in the saloon if necessary!” shouted
+Cameron.
+
+“Revolvers!” commanded the Sergeant. “Constable Cameron, hold the door!
+Constable Scott, follow me!”
+
+At the door stood the man named Hep, evidently keeping guard.
+
+“Want in?” he said with a grin.
+
+For answer, Cameron gripped his collar, with one fierce jerk lifted him
+clear out of the door to the platform, and then, putting his body into
+it, heaved him with a mighty swing far into the crowd below, bringing
+two or three men to the ground with the impact of his body.
+
+“Come here, man!” cried Cameron again, seizing a second man who stood
+near the door and flinging him clear off the platform after the unlucky
+Hep.
+
+Speedily the crowd about the door gave back, and before they were aware
+the Sergeant and Constable Scott appeared with big Joe Coyle between
+them.
+
+“Take him!” said the Sergeant to Cameron.
+
+Cameron seized him by the collar.
+
+“Come here!” he said, and, clearing the platform in a spring, he brought
+his prisoner in a heap with him. “Get up!” he roared at him, jerking him
+to his feet as if he had been a child.
+
+“Let him go!” shouted the man with the goatee, named Bill, rushing up.
+
+“Take that, then,” said Cameron, giving him a swift half-arm jab on the
+jaw, “and I'll come back for you again,” he added, as the man fell back
+into the arms of his friends.
+
+“Forward!” said the Sergeant, falling in with Constable Scott behind
+Cameron and facing the crowd with drawn revolvers. The swift fierceness
+of the attack seemed to paralyse the senses of the crowd.
+
+“Come on, boys!” yelled the goatee man, bloody and savage with Cameron's
+blow. “Don't let the blank blank blank rattle you like a lot of blank
+blank chickens. Come on!”
+
+At once rose a roar from eight hundred throats like nothing human in
+its sound, and the crowd began to press close upon the Police. But the
+revolvers had an ugly appearance to those in front looking into their
+little black throats.
+
+“Aw, come on!” yelled a man half drunk, running with a lurch upon the
+Sergeant.
+
+“Crack!” went the Sergeant's revolver, and the man dropped with a bullet
+through his shoulder.
+
+“Next man,” shouted the Sergeant, “I shall kill!”
+
+The crowd gave back and gathered round the wounded man. A stream lay in
+the path of the Police, crossed by a little bridge.
+
+“Hurry!” said the Sergeant, “let's make the bridge before they come
+again.” But before they could make the bridge the crowd had recovered
+from their momentary panic and, with wild oaths and yells and
+brandishing knives and guns, came on with a rush, led by goatee Bill.
+
+Already the prisoner was half way across the bridge, the Sergeant and
+the constable guarding the entrance, when above the din was heard a roar
+as of some animal enraged. Looking beyond the Police the crowd beheld
+a fearsome sight. It was the Superintendent himself, hatless, and with
+uniform in disarray, a sword in one hand, a revolver in the other.
+Across the bridge he came like a tornado and, standing at the entrance,
+roared,
+
+“Listen to me, you dogs! The first man who sets foot on this bridge I
+shall shoot dead, so help me God!”
+
+His towering form, his ferocious appearance and his well-known
+reputation for utter fearlessness made the crowd pause and, before they
+could make up their minds to attack that resolute little company headed
+by their dread commander, the prisoner was safe over the bridge and
+well up the hill toward the guard room. Half way up the hill the
+Superintendent met Cameron returning from the disposition of his
+prisoner.
+
+“There's another man down there, Sir, needs looking after,” he said.
+
+“Better let them cool off, Cameron,” said the Superintendent.
+
+“I promised I'd go for him, Sir,” said Cameron, his face all ablaze for
+battle.
+
+“Then go for him,” said the Superintendent. “Let a couple of you go
+along--but I am done--just now.”
+
+“We will see you up the hill, Sir,” said the Sergeant.
+
+“Come on, Scott!” said Cameron, setting off for the village once more.
+
+The crowd had returned from the bridge and the leaders had already
+sought their favourite resort, the saloon. Straight to the door marched
+Cameron, followed by Scott. Close to the counter stood goatee Bill,
+loudly orating, and violently urging the breaking in of the guard room
+and the release of the prisoner.
+
+“In my country,” he yelled, “we'd have that feller out in about six
+minutes in spite of all the blank blank Police in this blank country.
+THEY ain't no good. They're scairt to death.”
+
+At this point Cameron walked in upon him and laid a compelling grip upon
+his collar. Instantly Bill reached for his gun, but Cameron, swiftly
+shifting his grip to his arm, wrenched him sharply about and struck him
+one blow on the ear. As if held by a hinge, the head fell over on one
+side and the man slithered to the floor.
+
+“Out of the way!” shouted Cameron, dragging his man with him, but just
+as he reached the door a heavy glass came singing through the air and
+caught him on the head. For a moment he staggered, caught hold of the
+lintel and held himself steady.
+
+“Here, Scott,” he cried, “put the bracelets on him.”
+
+With revolver drawn Constable Scott sprang to his side.
+
+“Come out!” he said to the goatee man, slipping the handcuffs over his
+wrists, while Cameron, still clinging to the lintel, was fighting back
+the faintness that was overpowering him. Seeing his plight, Hep sprang
+toward him, eager for revenge, but Cameron covering him with his gun
+held him in check and, with a supreme effort getting command of himself,
+again stepped towards Hep.
+
+“Now, then,” he said between his clenched teeth, “will you come?” So
+terrible were his voice and look that Hep's courage wilted.
+
+“I'll come, Colonel, I'll come,” he said quickly.
+
+“Come then,” said Cameron, reaching for him and bringing him forward
+with a savage jerk.
+
+In three minutes from the time the attack was made both men, thoroughly
+subdued and handcuffed, were marched off in charge of the constables.
+
+“Hurry, Scott,” said Cameron in a low voice to his comrade. “I am nearly
+in.”
+
+With all possible speed they hustled their prisoners along over the
+bridge and up the hill. At the hospital door, as they passed, Dr. Martin
+appeared.
+
+“Hello, Cameron!” he cried. “Got him, eh? Great Caesar, man, what's
+up?” he added as Cameron, turning his head, revealed a face and neck
+bathed in blood. “You are white as a ghost.”
+
+“Get me a drink, old chap. I am nearly in,” said Cameron in a faint
+voice.
+
+“Come into my tent here,” said the doctor.
+
+“Got to see these prisoners safe first,” said Cameron, swaying on his
+feet.
+
+“Come in, you idiot!” cried the doctor.
+
+“Go in, Cameron,” said Constable Scott. “I'll take care of 'em all
+right,” he added, drawing his gun.
+
+“No,” said Cameron, still with his hand on goatee Bill's collar. “I'll
+see them safe first,” saying which he swayed drunkenly about and, but
+for Bill's support, would have fallen.
+
+“Go on!” said Bill good-naturedly. “Don't mind me. I'm good now.”
+
+“Come!” said the doctor, supporting him into the tent.
+
+“Forward!” commanded Constable Scott, and marched his prisoners before
+him up the hill.
+
+The wound on Cameron's head was a ghastly affair, full six inches long,
+and went to the bone.
+
+“Rather ugly,” said the doctor, feeling round the wound. “Nurse!” he
+called. “Nurse!” The little nurse came running in. “Some water and a
+sponge!”
+
+There was a cry behind her--low, long, pitiful.
+
+“Oh, what is this?” With a swift movement Nurse Haley was beside the
+doctor's bed. Cameron, who had been lying with his eyes closed and was
+ghastly white from loss of blood, opened his eyes and smiled up into the
+face above him.
+
+“I feel fine--now,” he said and closed his eyes again.
+
+“Let me do that,” said Nurse Haley with a kind of jealous fierceness,
+taking the sponge and basin from the little nurse.
+
+Examination revealed nothing more serious, however, than a deep scalp
+wound and a slight concussion.
+
+“He will be fit enough in a couple of days,” said the doctor when the
+wound was dressed.
+
+Then, pale and haggard as if with long watching, Nurse Haley went to her
+room there to fight out her lonely fight while Cameron slept.
+
+The day passed in quiet, the little nurse on guard, and the doctor
+looking in every half hour upon his patient. As evening fell Cameron
+woke and demanded Nurse Haley. The doctor felt his pulse.
+
+“Send her in!” he said and left the tent.
+
+The rays of the sun setting far down the Pass shone through the walls
+and filled the tent with a soft radiance. Into this radiance she came,
+her face pale as of one who has come through conflict, and serene as of
+one who has conquered, pale and strong and alight, not with the radiance
+of the setting sun, but with light of a soul that has made the ancient
+sacrifice of self-effacing love.
+
+“You want me?” she said, her voice low and sweet, but for all her brave
+serenity tremulous.
+
+“Yes,” said Cameron, holding out his arms. “I want you; I want YOU,
+Mandy.”
+
+“Oh,” cried the girl, while her hands fluttered to her heart, “don't ask
+me to go through it again. I am so weak.” She stood like a frightened
+bird poised for flight.
+
+“Come,” he said, “I want you.”
+
+“You want me? You said you wanted to take care of me,” she breathed.
+
+“I was a fool, Mandy; a conceited fool! Now I know what I want--I
+want--just YOU. Come.” Again he lifted his arms.
+
+“Oh, it cannot be,” she breathed as if to herself. “Are you sure--sure?
+I could not bear it if you were not sure.”
+
+“Come, dear love,” he cried, “with all my heart and soul and body I want
+you--I want only YOU.”
+
+For a single moment longer she stood, her soul searching his through her
+wonderful eyes. Then with a little sigh she sank into his arms.
+
+“Oh, my darling,” she whispered, wreathing her strong young arms around
+his neck and laying her cheek close to his, “my darling, I thought I had
+given you up, but how could I have done it?”
+
+At the hospital door the doctor was on guard. A massive figure loomed in
+the doorway.
+
+“Hello, Superintendent Strong, what on earth are you doing out of bed?”
+
+“Where is he?” said the Superintendent abruptly.
+
+“Who?”
+
+“Corporal Cameron.”
+
+“CORPORAL Cameron? Constable Cameron is--”
+
+“Corporal Cameron, I said. I have just had Constable Scott's report and
+felt I must see him at once.”
+
+“Come in, Superintendent! Sit down! I shall enquire if he is resting.
+Nurse! Nurse! Enquire if Corporal Cameron can be seen.”
+
+The little nurse tip-toed into the doctor's tent, lifted the curtain,
+took one glance and drew swiftly back. This is what her eyes looked
+upon. A girl's form kneeling by the bed, golden hair mingling with black
+upon the pillow, two strong arms holding her close and hers wreathed in
+answering embrace.
+
+“Mr. Cameron I am afraid,” she reported, “cannot be seen. He is--I
+think--he is--engaged.”
+
+“Ah!” said the doctor.
+
+“Well,” said the Superintendent, “just tell Corporal Cameron for me that
+I am particularly well pleased with his bearing to-day, and that I hope
+he will be very soon fit for duty.”
+
+“Certainly, Superintendent. Now let me help you up the hill.”
+
+“Never mind, here's the Sergeant. Good evening! Very fine thing! Very
+fine thing indeed! I see rapid promotion in his profession for that
+young man.”
+
+“Inspector, eh?” said the doctor.
+
+“Yes, Sir, I should without hesitation recommend him and should be only
+too pleased to have him as Inspector in my command.”
+
+It was not, however, as Inspector that Corporal Cameron served under the
+gallant Superintendent, but in another equally honourable capacity did
+they ride away together one bright April morning a few weeks later, on
+duty for their Queen and country. But that is another story.
+
+“That message ought to be delivered, nurse,” said the doctor
+thoughtfully.
+
+“But not at once,” replied the nurse.
+
+“It is important,” urged the doctor.
+
+“Yes, but--there are other things.”
+
+“Ah! Other things?”
+
+“Yes, equally--pressing,” said the nurse with an undeniably joyous
+laugh. The doctor looked at her a moment.
+
+“Ah, nurse,” he said in a shocked tone, “how often have I deprecated
+your tendency to--”
+
+“I don't care one bit!” laughed the nurse saucily.
+
+“The message ought to be delivered,” insisted the doctor firmly as he
+moved toward the tent door.
+
+“Well, deliver it then. But wait!” The little nurse ran in before him
+and called “Nu-u-u-r-s-e Ha-l-ey!”
+
+“All right!” called Cameron from the inside. “Come in!”
+
+“Go on then,” said the little nurse to the doctor, “you wanted to.”
+
+“A message from the Superintendent,” said the doctor, lifting the
+curtain and passing in.
+
+“Don't move, Mandy,” said Cameron. “Never mind him.”
+
+“No, don't, I beg,” said the doctor, ignoring what he saw. “A message,
+an urgent message for--Corporal Cameron!”
+
+“CORPORAL Cameron?” echoed Nurse Haley.
+
+“He distinctly said and repeated it--Corporal Cameron. And the Corporal
+is to report for duty as speedily as possible.”
+
+“He can't go,” said Mandy, standing up very straight with a light in
+her eyes that the doctor had not seen since that tragic night nearly two
+years before.
+
+“Can't, eh?” said the doctor. “But the Superintendent says Corporal
+Cameron is--”
+
+“Corporal Cameron can't go!”
+
+“You--”
+
+“Yes, I forbid it.”
+
+“The Corporal is--?”
+
+“Yes,” she said proudly, “the Corporal is mine.”
+
+“Then,” said the doctor emphatically, “of all the lucky chaps it has
+been my fortune to meet, by all the gods the luckiest of them is this
+same Corporal Cameron!”
+
+And Cameron, drawing down to him again the girl standing so straight and
+proud beside him, looked up at his friend and said:
+
+“Yes, old chap, the luckiest man in all the world is that same Corporal
+Cameron.”
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL CAMERON ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold;'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Corporal Cameron, by Ralph Connor</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
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+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Corporal Cameron</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Ralph Connor</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 26, 2001 [eBook #3241]<br />
+[Most recently updated: March 3, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block;margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Donald Lainson and David Widger</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em;margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL CAMERON ***</div>
+
+    <h1>
+      CORPORAL CAMERON <br /> OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE
+    </h1>
+    <p>
+      <br />
+    </p>
+    <h2>
+      A TALE OF THE MACLEOD TRAIL <br /> <br /> By Ralph Connor
+    </h2>
+
+    <hr />
+
+<h2>Contents</h2>
+
+<table summary="" style="">
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0003"><b>BOOK ONE</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0001">CHAPTER I. THE QUITTER</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0002">CHAPTER II. THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0003">CHAPTER III. THE FAMILY SOLICITOR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0004">CHAPTER IV. A QUESTION OF HONOUR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0005">CHAPTER V. A LADY AND THE LAW</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0006">CHAPTER VI. THE WASTER'S REFUGE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0007">CHAPTER VII. FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0008">CHAPTER VIII. WILL HE COME BACK?</a><br /><br /></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0012"><b>BOOK TWO</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0009">CHAPTER I. HO FOR THE OPEN!</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0010">CHAPTER II. A MAN'S JOB</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0011">CHAPTER III. A DAY'S WORK</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0012">CHAPTER IV. A RAINY DAY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0013">CHAPTER V. HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0014">CHAPTER VI. A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0015">CHAPTER VII. THE CHIVAREE</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0016">CHAPTER VIII. IN APPLE TIME</a><br /><br /></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2H_4_0021"><b>BOOK THREE</b></a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0017">CHAPTER I. THE CAMP BY THE GAP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0018">CHAPTER II. ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0019">CHAPTER III. THE STONIES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0020">CHAPTER IV. THE DULL RED STAIN</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0021">CHAPTER V. SERGEANT CRISP</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0022">CHAPTER VI. A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0023">CHAPTER VII. THE MAKING OF BRAVES</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0024">CHAPTER VIII. NURSE HALEY</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+<tr>
+<td> <a href="#link2HCH0025">CHAPTER IX. “CORPORAL” CAMERON</a></td>
+</tr>
+
+</table>
+
+    <hr />
+
+    <h2>
+      CORPORAL CAMERON
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK ONE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0001" id="link2HCH0001">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE QUITTER
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh-h-h-h, Cam-er-on!&rdquo; Agony, reproach, entreaty, vibrated in the clear
+      young voice that rang out over the Inverleith grounds. The Scottish line
+      was sagging!&mdash;that line invincible in two years of International
+      conflict, the line upon which Ireland and England had broken their pride.
+      Sagging! And because Cameron was weakening! Cameron, the brilliant
+      half-back, the fierce-fighting, erratic young Highlander, disciplined,
+      steadied by the great Dunn into an instrument of Scotland's glory! Cameron
+      going back! A hush fell on the thronged seats and packed inner-circle,&mdash;a
+      breathless, dreadful hush of foreboding. High over the hushed silence that
+      vibrant cry rang; and Cameron heard it. The voice he knew. It was young
+      Rob Dunn's, the captain's young brother, whose soul knew but two passions,
+      one for the captain and one for the half-back of the Scottish
+      International.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cameron responded. The enemy's next high punt found him rock-like in
+      steadiness. And rock-like he tossed high over his shoulders the tow-headed
+      Welshman rushing joyously at him, and delivered his ball far down the line
+      safe into touch. But after his kick he was observed to limp back into his
+      place. The fierce pace of the Welsh forwards was drinking the life of the
+      Scottish backline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour; then a half; then another half, without a score. And now the
+      final quarter was searching, searching the weak spots in their line. The
+      final quarter it is that finds a man's history and habits; the clean of
+      blood and of life defy its pitiless probe, but the rotten fibre yields and
+      snaps. That momentary weakness of Cameron's like a subtle poison runs
+      through the Scottish line; and like fluid lightning through the Welsh. It
+      is the touch upon the trembling balance. With cries exultant with triumph,
+      the Welsh forwards fling themselves upon the steady Scots now fighting for
+      life rather than for victory. And under their captain's directions these
+      fierce, victory-sniffing Welsh are delivering their attack upon the spot
+      where he fancies he has found a yielding. In vain Cameron rallies his
+      powers; his nerve is failing him, his strength is done. Only five minutes
+      to play, but one minute is enough. Down upon him through a broken field,
+      dribbling the ball and following hard like hounds on a hare, come the
+      Welsh, the tow-head raging in front, bloody and fearsome. There is but one
+      thing for Cameron to do; grip that tumbling ball, and, committing body and
+      soul to fate, plunge into that line. Alas, his doom is upon him! He grips
+      the ball, pauses a moment&mdash;only a fatal moment,&mdash;but it is
+      enough. His plunge is too late. He loses the ball. A surge of Welshmen
+      overwhelm him in the mud and carry the ball across. The game is won&mdash;and
+      lost. What though the Scots, like demons suddenly released from hell, the
+      half-back Cameron most demon-like of all, rage over the field, driving the
+      Welshmen hither and thither at will, the gods deny them victory; it is for
+      Wales that day!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the retreat of their rubbing-room the gay, gallant humour which the
+      Scots have carried with them off the field of their defeat, vanishes into
+      gloom. Through the steaming silence a groan breaks now and then. At length
+      a voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, wasn't it rotten! The rank quitter that he is!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quitter? Who is? Who says so?&rdquo; It was the captain's voice, sharp with
+      passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do, Dunn. It was Cameron lost us the game. You know it, too. I know
+      it's rotten to say this, but I can't help it. Cameron lost the game, and I
+      say he's a rank 'quitter,' as Martin would say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Nesbitt,&rdquo; the captain's voice was quiet, but every man paused
+      in his rubbing. &ldquo;I know how sore you are and I forgive you that; but I
+      don't want to hear from you or from any man on the team that word again.
+      Cameron is no quitter; he made&mdash;he made an error,&mdash;he wasn't
+      fit,&mdash;but I say to you Cameron is no quitter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was speaking the door opened and into the room came a player,
+      tall, lanky, with a pale, gaunt face, plastered over the forehead with
+      damp wisps of straight, black hair. His deep-set, blue-grey eyes swept the
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, Dunn,&rdquo; he said hoarsely. &ldquo;Let them curse me! I deserve it all.
+      It's tough for them, but God knows I've got the worst of it. I've played
+      my last game.&rdquo; His voice broke huskily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rot it, Cameron,&rdquo; cried Dunn. &ldquo;Don't be an ass! Your first big game&mdash;every
+      fellow makes his mistake&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mistake! Mistake! You can't lie easily, Dunn. I was a fool and worse than
+      a fool. I let myself down and I wasn't fit. Anyway, I'm through with it.&rdquo;
+       His voice was wild and punctuated with unaccustomed oaths; his breath came
+      in great sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rot it, Cameron!&rdquo; again cried Dunn. &ldquo;Next year you'll be twice the
+      man. You're just getting into your game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Right loyally his men rallied to their captain:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right you are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, certainly; no man gets into the game first year!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll give 'em beans next year, Cameron, old man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were all eager to atone for the criticism which all had held in their
+      hearts and which one of them had spoken. But this business was serious. To
+      lose a game was bad enough, but to round on a comrade was unpardonable;
+      while to lose from the game a half-back of Cameron's calibre was
+      unthinkable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meanwhile Cameron was tearing off his football togs and hustling on his
+      clothes with fierce haste. Dunn kept his eye on him, hurrying his own
+      dressing and chatting quietly the while. But long before he was ready for
+      the street, Cameron had crushed his things into a bag and was looking for
+      his hat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on! I'm with you; I'm with you in a jiffy,&rdquo; said Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My hat,&rdquo; muttered Cameron, searching wildly among the jumble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang the hat; let it go! Wait for me, Cameron. Where are you going?&rdquo;
+       cried Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To the devil,&rdquo; cried the lad, slamming the door behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, by Jove, he'll go, too!&rdquo; said Nesbitt. &ldquo;Say, I'm awfully sorry I
+      made that break, Dunn. It was beastly low-down to round on a chap like
+      that. I'll go after him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do, old chap! He's frightfully cut up. And get him for to-night. He may
+      fight shy of the dinner. But he's down for the pipes, you know, and&mdash;well,
+      he's just got to be there. Good-bye, you chaps; I'm off! And&mdash;I say,
+      men!&rdquo; When Dunn said &ldquo;men&rdquo; they all knew it was their captain that was
+      speaking. Everybody stood listening. Dunn hesitated a moment or two, as if
+      searching for words. &ldquo;About the dinner to-night: I'd like you to remember&mdash;I
+      mean&mdash;I don't want any man to&mdash;oh, hang it, you know what I
+      mean! There will be lots of fellows there who will want to fill you up.
+      I'd hate to see any of our team&mdash;&rdquo; The captain paused embarrassed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We tumble, Captain,&rdquo; said Martin, a medical student from Canada, who
+      played quarter. &ldquo;I'll keep an eye on 'em, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Everybody roared; for not only on the quarter-line but also at the dinner
+      table the little quarter-back was a marvel of endurance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hear the blooming Colonist!&rdquo; said Linklater, Martin's comrade on the
+      quarter-line, and his greatest friend. &ldquo;We know who'll want the watching,
+      but we'll see to him, Captain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, old chap! Sorry I'll have to cut the van. I'm afraid my
+      governor's got the carriage here for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the men all made outcry. There were other plans for him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Captain; hold on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw, now, Captain! Don't forsake us!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I say, Dunn, see us through; we're shy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't leave us, Captain, or you'll be sorry,&rdquo; sang out Martin. &ldquo;Come on,
+      fellows, let's keep next him! We'll give him 'Old Grimes!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Already a mighty roar was heard outside. The green, the drive, the
+      gateways, and the street were blocked with the wildest football fanatics
+      that Edinburgh, and all Scotland could produce. They were waiting for the
+      International players, and were bent on carrying their great captain down
+      the street, shoulder high; for the enthusiasm of the Scot reaches the
+      point of madness only in the hour of glorious defeat. But before they were
+      aware, Dunn had shouldered his mighty form through the opposing crowds and
+      had got safely into the carriage beside his father and his young brother.
+      But the crowd were bound to have him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We want him, Docthor,&rdquo; said a young giant in a tam-o'-shanter. &ldquo;In fac',
+      Docthor,&rdquo; he argued with a humourous smile, &ldquo;we maun hae him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye'll no' get him, Jock Murchison,&rdquo; shouted young Rob, standing in front
+      of his big brother. &ldquo;We want him wi' us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd laughed gleefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go for him, Jock! You can easy lick him,&rdquo; said a voice encouragingly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pit him oot, Docthor,&rdquo; said Jock, who was a great friend of the family,
+      and who had a profound respect for the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's beyond me, Jock, I fear. See yon bantam cock! I doubt ye'll hae to
+      be content,&rdquo; said the doctor, dropping into Jock's kindly Doric.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, get on there, Murchison,&rdquo; said Dunn impatiently. &ldquo;You're not going to
+      make an ass of me; make up your mind to that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jock hesitated, meditating a sudden charge, but checked by his respect for
+      Doctor Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, you fellows!&rdquo; shouted a voice. &ldquo;Fall in; the band is going to play!
+      Get into line there, you Tam-o'-shanter; you're stopping the procesh! Now
+      then, wait for the line, everybody!&rdquo; It was Little Martin on top of the
+      van in which were the Scottish players. &ldquo;Tune, 'Old Grimes'; words as
+      follows. Catch on, everybody!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+           Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      With a delighted cheer the crowd formed in line, and, led by the little
+      quarter-back on top of the van, they set off down the street, two men at
+      the heads of the doctor's carriage horses, holding them in place behind
+      the van. On went the swaying crowd and on went the swaying chant, with
+      Martin, director of ceremonies and Dunn hurling unavailing objurgations
+      and entreaties at Jock's head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the uproar a girl's voice reached the doctor's ear:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't they lovely, Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor turned to greet a young lady, tall, strong, and with the beauty
+      of perfect health rather than of classic feature in her face. There was
+      withal a careless disregard of the feminine niceties of dress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Brodie! Will you not come up? We can easily make room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd just love to,&rdquo; cried the girl, &ldquo;but I'm only a humble member of the
+      procession, following the band and the chariot wheels of the conqueror.&rdquo;
+       Her strong brown face was all aglow with ardour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Conqueror!&rdquo; growled Dunn. &ldquo;Not much of a conqueror!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not? Oh fudge! The game? What matters the game? It's the play we care
+      about.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well spoken, lassie,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;That's the true sport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aren't they awful?&rdquo; cried Dunn. &ldquo;Look at that young Canadian idiot up
+      there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, if you ask me, I think he's a perfect dear,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie,
+      deliberately. &ldquo;I'm sure I know him; anyway I'm going to encourage him with
+      my approval.&rdquo; And she waved her hand at Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The master of ceremonies responded by taking off his hat and making a
+      sweeping bow, still keeping up the beat. The crowd, following his eyes,
+      turned their attention to the young lady, much to Dunn's delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she gasped, &ldquo;they'll be chanting me next! Good-bye! I'm off!&rdquo; And
+      she darted back to the company of her friends marching on the pavement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Martin held up both arms and called for silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Second verse,&rdquo; he shouted, &ldquo;second verse! Get the words now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done,
+           Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      But the crowd rejected the Colonial version, and rendered in their own
+      good Doric:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done,
+           Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      And so they sang and swayed, following the van till they neared Queen
+      Street, down which lay the doctor's course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For heaven's sake, can't they be choked off?&rdquo; groaned Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor signalled Jock to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jock,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;we'll just slip through at Queen Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'd like awfully to do Princes Street, Sir,&rdquo; pleaded Jock.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Princes Street, you born ass!&rdquo; cried Dunn wrathfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, let them!&rdquo; cried young Rob, whose delight in the glory of his
+      hero had been beyond all measure. &ldquo;Let them do Princes Street, just once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the doctor would not have it. &ldquo;Jock,&rdquo; he said quietly, &ldquo;just get us
+      through at Queen Street.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Sir,&rdquo; replied Jock with great regret. &ldquo;It will be as you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under Jock's orders, when Queen Street was reached, the men at the horses'
+      heads suddenly swung the pair from the crowd, and after some struggling,
+      got them safely into the clear space, leaving the procession to follow the
+      van, loudly cheering their great International captain, whose prowess on
+      the field was equalled only by his modesty and his hatred of a
+      demonstration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to the idiots,&rdquo; said Dunn in disgust, as the carriage bore them
+      away from the cheering crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, they're just fine! Aren't they, Father?&rdquo; said young Rob in an
+      ecstasy of joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They're generous lads, generous lads, boy,&rdquo; said Doctor Dunn, his old
+      eyes shining, for his son's triumph touched him deeply. &ldquo;That's the only
+      way to take defeat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's all right, Sir,&rdquo; said Dunn quickly, &ldquo;but it's rather embarrassing,
+      though it's awfully decent of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor's words suggested fresh thoughts to young Rob. &ldquo;But it was
+      terrible; and you were just on the win, too, I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm not so sure at all,&rdquo; said his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it is terrible,&rdquo; said Bob again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut, tut, lad! What's so terrible?&rdquo; said his father. &ldquo;One side has to
+      lose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it's not that,&rdquo; said Rob, his lip trembling. &ldquo;I don't care a sniff
+      for the game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, then?&rdquo; said his big brother in a voice sharpened by his own
+      thoughts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Jack,&rdquo; said Rob, nervously wreathing his hands, &ldquo;he&mdash;it looked
+      as if he&mdash;&rdquo; the lad could not bring himself to say the awful word.
+      Nor was there need to ask who it was the boy had in mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Rob?&rdquo; the captain's voice was impatient, almost angry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Rob lost his control. &ldquo;Oh, Jack, I can't help it; I saw it. Do you
+      think&mdash;did he really funk it?&rdquo; His voice broke. He clutched his
+      brother's knee and stood with face white and quivering. He had given
+      utterance to the terrible suspicion that was torturing his heroic young
+      soul. Of his two household gods one was tottering on its pedestal. That a
+      football man should funk&mdash;the suspicion was too dreadful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The captain glanced at his father's face. There was gloom there, too, and
+      the same terrible suspicion. &ldquo;No, Sir,&rdquo; said Dunn, with impressive
+      deliberation, answering the look on his father's face, &ldquo;Cameron is no
+      quitter. He didn't funk. I think,&rdquo; he continued, while Rob's tear-stained
+      face lifted eagerly, &ldquo;I know he was out of condition; he had let himself
+      run down last week, since the last match, indeed, got out of hand a bit,
+      you know, and that last quarter&mdash;you know, Sir, that last quarter was
+      pretty stiff&mdash;his nerve gave just for a moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the doctor in a voice of relief, &ldquo;that explains it. But,&rdquo; he
+      added quickly in a severe tone, &ldquo;it was very reprehensible for a man on
+      the International to let himself get out of shape, very reprehensible
+      indeed. An International, mind you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my fault, Sir, I'm afraid,&rdquo; said Dunn, regretfully. &ldquo;I ought to
+      have&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense! A man must be responsible for himself. Control, to be of any
+      value, must be ultroneous, as our old professor used to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's true, Sir, but I had kept pretty close to him up to the last week,
+      you see, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bad training, bad training. A trainer's business is to school his men to
+      do without him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is quite right, Sir. I believe I've been making a mistake,&rdquo; said
+      Dunn thoughtfully. &ldquo;Poor chap, he's awfully cut up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So he should be,&rdquo; said the doctor sternly. &ldquo;He had no business to get out
+      of condition. The International, mind you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Father, perhaps he couldn't help it,&rdquo; cried Rob, whose loyal, tender
+      heart was beating hard against his little ribs, &ldquo;and he looks awful. I saw
+      him come out and when I called to him he never looked at me once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There is no finer loyalty in this world than that of a boy below his
+      teens. It is so without calculation, without qualification, and without
+      reserve. Dr. Dunn let his eyes rest kindly upon his little flushed face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps so, perhaps so, my boy,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and I have no doubt he regrets
+      it now more than any of us. Where has he gone?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nesbitt's after him, Sir. He'll get him for to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as Dunn, fresh from his bath, but still sore and stiff, was indulging
+      in a long-banished pipe, Nesbitt came in to say that Cameron could not be
+      found.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And have you not had your tub yet?&rdquo; said his captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right! You know I feel awfully about that beastly remark
+      of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, let it go,&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;That'll be all right. You get right away home
+      for your tub and get freshened up for to-night. I'll look after Cameron.
+      You know he is down for the pipes. He's simply got to be there and I'll
+      get him if I have to bring him in a crate, pipes, kilt and all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Nesbitt, knowing that Dunn never promised what he could not fulfil,
+      went off to his tub in fair content. He knew his captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Dunn was putting on his coat Rob came in, distress written on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you going to get Cameron, Jack?&rdquo; he asked timidly. &ldquo;I asked Nesbitt,
+      and he said&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now look here, youngster,&rdquo; said his big brother, then paused. The
+      distress in the lad's face checked his words. &ldquo;Now, Rob,&rdquo; he said kindly,
+      &ldquo;you needn't fret about this. Cameron is all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The kind tone broke down the lad's control. He caught his brother's arm.
+      &ldquo;Say, Jack, are you sure&mdash;he didn't&mdash;funk?&rdquo; His voice dropped to
+      a whisper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then his big brother sat down and drew the lad to his side, &ldquo;Now listen,
+      Rob; I'm going to tell you the exact truth. CAMERON DID NOT FUNK. The
+      truth is, he wasn't fit,&mdash;he ought to have been, but he wasn't,&mdash;and
+      because he wasn't fit he came mighty near quitting&mdash;for a moment, I'm
+      sure, he felt like it, because his nerve was gone,&mdash;but he didn't.
+      Remember, he felt like quitting and didn't, And that's the finest thing a
+      chap can do,&mdash;never to quit, even when he feels like it. Do you see?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad's head went up. &ldquo;I see,&rdquo; he said, his eyes glowing. &ldquo;It was fine!
+      I'm awfully glad he didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it. You tell
+      him for me.&rdquo; His idol was firm again on his pedestal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, old chap,&rdquo; said his big brother. &ldquo;You'll never quit, I bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not if I'm fit, will I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right you are! Keep fit&mdash;that's the word!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the big brother passed out to find the man who was writhing
+      in an agony of self-contempt; for in the face of all Scotland and in the
+      hour of her need he had failed because he wasn't fit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After an hour Dunn found his man, fixed in the resolve to there and then
+      abandon the game with all the appurtenances thereof, and among these the
+      dinner. Mightily his captain laboured with him, plying him with varying
+      motives,&mdash;the honour of the team was at stake; the honour of the
+      country was at stake; his own honour, for was he not down on the programme
+      for the pipes? It was all in vain. In dogged gloom the half-back listened
+      unmoved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length Dunn, knowing well the Highlander's tender heart, cunningly
+      touched another string and told of Rob's distress and subsequent relief,
+      and then gave his half-back the boy's message. &ldquo;I promised to tell you,
+      and I almost forgot. The little beggar was terribly worked up, and as I
+      remember it, this is what he said: 'I'm awfully glad he didn't quit,
+      'specially when he felt like it.' Those were his very words.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Cameron buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud, while Dunn,
+      knowing that he had reached his utmost, stood silent, waiting. Suddenly
+      Cameron flung up his head:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did he say I didn't quit? Good little soul! I'll go; I'd go through hell
+      for that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so it came that not in a crate, but in the gallant garb of a Highland
+      gentleman, pipes and all, Cameron was that night in his place, fighting
+      out through the long hilarious night the fiercest fight of his life,
+      chiefly because of the words that lay like a balm to his lacerated heart:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0002" id="link2HCH0002">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Just over the line of the Grampians, near the head-waters of the Spey, a
+      glen, small and secluded, lies bedded deep among the hills,&mdash;a glen
+      that when filled with sunlight on a summer day lies like a cup of gold;
+      the gold all liquid and flowing over the cup's rim. And hence they call
+      the glen &ldquo;The Cuagh Oir,&rdquo; The Glen of the Cup of Gold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the bottom of the Cuagh, far down, a little loch gleams, an oval of
+      emerald or of sapphire, according to the sky above that smiles into its
+      depths. On dark days the loch can gloom, and in storm it can rage,
+      white-lipped, just like the people of the Glen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Around the emerald or sapphire loch farmlands lie sunny and warm, set
+      about their steadings, and are on this spring day vivid with green, or
+      rich in their red-browns where the soil lies waiting for the seed. Beyond
+      the sunny fields the muirs of brown heather and bracken climb abruptly up
+      to the dark-massed firs, and they to the Cuagh's rim. But from loch to
+      rim, over field and muir and forest, the golden, liquid light ever flows
+      on a sunny day and fills the Cuagh Oir till it runs over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the east side of the loch, among some ragged firs, a rambling Manor
+      House, ivy-covered and ancient, stood; and behind it, some distance away,
+      the red tiling of a farm-cottage, with its steading clustering near, could
+      be seen. About the old Manor House the lawn and garden told of neglect and
+      decay, but at the farmhouse order reigned. The trim little garden plot,
+      the trim lawn, the trim walks and hedges, the trim thatch of the roof, the
+      trim do'-cote above it, the trim stables, byres, barns and yard of the
+      steading, proclaimed the prudent, thrifty care of a prudent, thrifty soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there in the steading quadrangle, amidst the feathered creatures,
+      hens, cocks and chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys and bubbly-jocks, stood the
+      mistress of the Manor and prudent, thrifty manager of the farm,&mdash;a
+      girl of nineteen, small, well-made, and trim as the farmhouse and its
+      surroundings, with sunny locks and sunny face and sunny brown eyes. Her
+      shapely hands were tanned and coarsened by the weather; her little feet
+      were laced in stout country-made brogues; her dress was a plain brown
+      winsey, kilted and belted open at the full round neck; the kerchief that
+      had fallen from her sunny, tangled hair was of simple lawn, spotless and
+      fresh; among her fowls she stood, a country lass in habit and occupation,
+      but in face and form, in look and poise, a lady every inch of her. Dainty
+      and daunty, sweet and strong, she stood, &ldquo;the bonny like o' her bonny
+      mither,&rdquo; as said the South Country nurse, Nannie, who had always lived at
+      the Glen Cuagh House from the time that that mother was a baby; &ldquo;but no'
+      sae fine like,&rdquo; the nurse would add with a sigh. For she remembered ever
+      the gentle airs and the high-bred, stately grace of Mary Robertson,&mdash;for
+      though married to Captain Cameron of Erracht, Mary Robertson she continued
+      to be to the Glen folk,&mdash;the lady of her ancestral manor, now for
+      five years lain under the birch trees yonder by the church tower that
+      looked out from its clustering firs and birches on the slope beyond the
+      loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed from them, but like the
+      liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of the heather and the firs,
+      the aroma of her saintly life still filled the Glen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, &ldquo;the bonny
+      like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine,&rdquo; had somehow slipped into
+      command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide demesne
+      of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift which she
+      learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her poultry and her
+      pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless, doddling Highland
+      farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling womenfolk, she brought
+      the farm to order and to a basis of profitable returns. And this, too,
+      with so little &ldquo;clash and claver&rdquo; that her father only knew that somehow
+      things were more comfortable about the place, and that there were fewer
+      calls than formerly upon his purse for the upkeep of the House and home.
+      Indeed, the less appeared Moira's management, both in the routine of the
+      House and in the care of the farm, the more peacefully flowed the current
+      of their life. It seriously annoyed the Captain at intervals when he came
+      upon his daughter directing operations in barnyard or byre. That her
+      directing meant anything more than a girlish meddling in matters that were
+      his entire concern and about which he had already given or was about to
+      give orders, the Captain never dreamed. That things about the House were
+      somehow prospering in late years he set down to his own skill and
+      management and his own knowledge of scientific farming; a knowledge which,
+      moreover, he delighted to display at the annual dinners of the Society for
+      the Improvement of Agriculture in the Glen, of which he was honourary
+      secretary; a knowledge which he aired in lengthy articles in local
+      agricultural and other periodicals; a knowledge which, however, at times
+      became the occasion of dismay to his thrifty daughter and her Highland
+      farmer, and not seldom the occasion of much useless expenditure of guineas
+      hard won from pigs and poultry. True, more serious loss was often averted
+      by the facility with which the Captain turned from one scheme to another,
+      happily forgetful of orders he had given and which were never carried out;
+      and by the invincible fabianism of the Highland farmer, who, listening
+      with gravest attention to the Captain's orders delivered in the most
+      definite and impressive terms, would make reply, &ldquo;Yess, yess indeed, I
+      know; she will be attending to it immediately&mdash;tomorrow, or fery soon
+      whateffer.&rdquo; It cannot be said that this capacity for indefinite
+      procrastination rendered the Highlander any less valuable to his &ldquo;tear
+      young leddy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The days on which Postie appeared with a large bundle of mail were
+      accounted good days by the young mistress, for on these and succeeding
+      days her father would be &ldquo;busy with his correspondence.&rdquo; And these days
+      were not few, for the Captain held many honourary offices in county and
+      other associations for the promotion and encouragement of various
+      activities, industrial, social, and philanthropic. Of the importance of
+      these activities to the county and national welfare, the Captain had no
+      manner of doubt, as his voluminous correspondence testified. As to the
+      worth of his correspondence his daughter, too, held the highest opinion,
+      estimating her father, as do all dutiful daughters, at his own valuation.
+      For the Captain held himself in high esteem; not simply for his breeding,
+      which was of the Camerons of Erracht; nor for his manners, which were of
+      the most courtly, if occasionally marred by fretfulness; nor for his
+      dress, which was that of a Highland gentleman, perfect in detail and
+      immaculate, but for his many and public services rendered to the people,
+      the county, and the nation. Indeed his mere membership dues to the various
+      associations, societies and committees with which he was connected, and
+      his dining expenses contingent upon their annual meetings, together with
+      the amounts expended upon the equipment and adornment of his person proper
+      to such festive occasions, cut so deep into the slender resources of the
+      family as to give his prudent daughter some considerable concern; though
+      it is safe to say that such concern her father would have regarded not
+      only as unnecessary but almost as impertinent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain's correspondence, however extensive, was on the whole regarded
+      by his daughter as a good rather than an evil, in that it secured her
+      domestic and farm activities from disturbing incursions. This spring
+      morning Moira's apprehensions awakened by an extremely light mail, were
+      realized, as she beheld her father bearing down upon her with an open
+      letter in his hand. His handsome face was set in a fretful frown.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Moira, my daughter!&rdquo; he exclaimed, &ldquo;how often have I spoke to you about
+      this&mdash;this&mdash;unseemly&mdash;ah&mdash;mussing and meddling in the
+      servants' duties!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Papa,&rdquo; cried his daughter, &ldquo;look at these dear things! I love them
+      and they all know me, and they behave so much better when I feed them
+      myself. Do they not, Janet?&rdquo; she added, turning to the stout and sonsy
+      farmer's daughter standing by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, then, they are clever at knowing you,&rdquo; replied the maid, whose
+      particular duty was to hold a reserve supply of food for the fowls that
+      clamoured and scrambled about her young mistress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at that vain bubbly-jock there, Papa,&rdquo; cried Moira, &ldquo;he loves to
+      have me notice him. Conceited creature! Look out, Papa, he does not like
+      your kilts!&rdquo; The bubbly-jock, drumming and scraping and sidling ever
+      nearer to the Captain's naked knees, finally with great outcry flew
+      straight at the affronting kilts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get off with you, you beast!&rdquo; cried the Captain, kicking vainly at the
+      wrathful bird, and at the same time beating a wise retreat before his
+      onset.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Moira rushed to his rescue. &ldquo;Hoot, Jock! Shame on ye!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;There
+      now, you proud thing, be off! He's just jealous of your fine appearance,
+      Papa.&rdquo; With her kerchief she flipped into submission the haughty
+      bubbly-jock and drew her father out of the steading. &ldquo;Come away, Papa, and
+      see my pigs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Captain was in no humour for pigs. &ldquo;Nonsense, child,&rdquo; he cried,
+      &ldquo;let us get out of this mess! Besides, I wish to speak to you on a matter
+      of importance.&rdquo; They passed through the gate. &ldquo;It is about Allan,&rdquo; he
+      continued, &ldquo;and I'm really vexed. Something terrible has happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allan!&rdquo; the girl's voice was faint and her sunny cheek grew white. &ldquo;About
+      Allan!&rdquo; she said again. &ldquo;And what is wrong with Allan, Papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's what I do not know,&rdquo; replied her father fretfully; &ldquo;but I must
+      away to Edinburgh this very day, so you'll need to hasten with my packing.
+      And bid Donald bring round the cart at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Moira stood dazed. &ldquo;But, Papa, you have not told me what is wrong with
+      Allan.&rdquo; Her voice was quiet, but with a certain insistence in it that at
+      once irritated her father and compelled his attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut, tut, Moira, I have just said I do not know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is he ill, Papa?&rdquo; Again the girl's voice grew faint.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, not ill. I wish he were! I mean it is some business matter you
+      cannot understand. But it must be serious if Mr. Rae asks my presence
+      immediately. So you must hasten, child.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than half an hour Donald and the cart were waiting at the door,
+      and Moira stood in the hall with her father's bag ready packed. &ldquo;Oh, I am
+      glad,&rdquo; she said, as she helped her father with his coat, &ldquo;that Allan is
+      not ill. There can't be much wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong! Read that, child!&rdquo; cried the father impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      She took the letter and read, her face reflecting her changing emotions,
+      perplexity, surprise, finally indignation. &ldquo;'A matter for the police,'&rdquo;
+       she quoted, scornfully, handing her father the letter. &ldquo;'A matter for the
+      police' indeed! My but that Mr. Rae is the clever man! The police! Does he
+      think my brother Allan would cheat?&mdash;or steal, perhaps!&rdquo; she panted,
+      in her indignant scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rae is a careful man and a very able lawyer,&rdquo; replied her father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Able! Careful! He's an auld wife, and that's what he is! You can tell him
+      so for me.&rdquo; She was trembling and white with a wrath her father had never
+      before seen in her. He stood gazing at her in silent surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; cried Moira passionately, answering his look, &ldquo;do you think what
+      he is saying? I know my brother Allan clean through to the heart. He is
+      wild at times, and might rage perhaps and&mdash;and&mdash;break things,
+      but he will not lie nor cheat. He will die first, and that I warrant you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still her father stood gazing upon her as she stood proudly erect, her
+      pale face alight with lofty faith in her brother and scorn of his
+      traducer. &ldquo;My child, my child,&rdquo; he said, huskily, &ldquo;how like you are to
+      your mother! Thank God! Indeed it may be you're right! God grant it!&rdquo; He
+      drew her closely to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa, Papa,&rdquo; she whispered, clinging to him, while her voice broke in a
+      sob, &ldquo;you know Allan will not lie. You know it, don't you, Papa?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope not, dear child, I hope not,&rdquo; he replied, still holding her to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Papa,&rdquo; she cried wildly, &ldquo;say you believe me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, I do believe you. Thank God, I do believe you. The boy is
+      straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At that word she let him go. That her father should not believe in Allan
+      was to her loyal heart an intolerable pain. Now Allan would have someone
+      to stand for him against &ldquo;that lawyer&rdquo; and all others who might seek to do
+      him harm. At the House door she stood watching her father drive down
+      through the ragged firs to the highroad, and long after he had passed out
+      of sight she still stood gazing. Upon the church tower rising out of its
+      birches and its firs her eyes were resting, but her heart was with the
+      little mound at the tower's foot, and as she gazed, the tears gathered and
+      fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mother!&rdquo; she whispered. &ldquo;Mother, Mother! You know Allan would not
+      lie!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A sudden storm was gathering. In a brief moment the world and the Glen had
+      changed. But half an hour ago and the Cuagh Oir was lying glorious with
+      its flowing gold. Now, from the Cuagh as from her world, the flowing gold
+      was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0003" id="link2HCH0003">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The senior member of the legal firm of Rae &amp; Macpherson was perplexed
+      and annoyed, indeed angry, and angry chiefly because he was perplexed. He
+      resented such a condition of mind as reflecting upon his legal and other
+      acumen. Angry, too, he was because he had been forced to accept, the
+      previous day, a favour from a firm&mdash;Mr. Rae would not condescend to
+      say a rival firm&mdash;with which he for thirty years had maintained only
+      the most distant and formal relations, to wit, the firm of Thomlinson
+      &amp; Shields. Messrs. Rae &amp; Macpherson were family solicitors and for
+      three generations had been such; hence there gathered about the firm a
+      fine flavour of assured respectability which only the combination of solid
+      integrity and undoubted antiquity can give. Messrs. Rae &amp; Macpherson
+      had not yielded in the slightest degree to that commercialising spirit
+      which would transform a respectable and self-respecting firm of family
+      solicitors into a mere financial agency; a transformation which Mr. Rae
+      would consider a degradation of an ancient and honourable profession. This
+      uncompromising attitude toward the commercialising spirit of the age had
+      doubtless something to do with their losing the solicitorship for the Bank
+      of Scotland, which went to the firm of Thomlinson &amp; Shields, to Mr.
+      Rae's keen, though unacknowledged, disappointment; a disappointment that
+      arose not so much from the loss of the very honourable and lucrative
+      appointment, and more from the fact that the appointment should go to such
+      a firm as that of Thomlinson &amp; Shields. For the firm of Thomlinson
+      &amp; Shields were of recent origin, without ancestry, boasting an
+      existence of only some thirty-five years, and, as one might expect of a
+      firm of such recent origin, characterised by the commercialising modern
+      spirit in its most pronounced and objectionable form. Mr. Rae, of course,
+      would never condescend to hostile criticism, dismissing Messrs. Thomlinson
+      &amp; Shields from the conversation with the single remark, &ldquo;Pushing, Sir,
+      very pushing, indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was, then, no small humiliation for Mr. Rae to be forced to accept a
+      favour from Mr. Thomlinson. &ldquo;Had it been any other than Cameron,&rdquo; he said
+      to himself, as he sat in his somewhat dingy and dusty office, &ldquo;I would let
+      him swither. But Cameron! I must see to it and at once.&rdquo; Behind the name
+      there rose before Mr. Rae's imagination a long line of brave men and fair
+      women for whose name and fame and for whose good estate it had been his
+      duty and the duty of those who had preceded him in office to assume
+      responsibility.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Young fool! Much he cares for the honour of his family! I wonder what's
+      at the bottom of this business! Looks ugly! Decidedly ugly! The first
+      thing is to find him.&rdquo; A messenger had failed to discover young Cameron at
+      his lodgings, and had brought back the word that for a week he had not
+      been seen there. &ldquo;He must be found. They have given me till to-morrow. I
+      cannot ask a further stay of proceedings; I cannot and I will not.&rdquo; It
+      made Mr. Rae more deeply angry that he knew quite well if necessity arose
+      he would do just that very thing. &ldquo;Then there's his father coming in this
+      evening. We simply must find him. But how and where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae was not unskilled in such a matter. &ldquo;Find a man, find his
+      friends,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Let's see. What does the young fool do? What are
+      his games? Ah! Football! I have it! Young Dunn is my man.&rdquo; Hence to young
+      Dunn forthwith Mr. Rae betook himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was still early in the day when Mr. Rae's mild, round, jolly,
+      clean-shaven face beamed in upon Mr. Dunn, who sat with dictionaries,
+      texts, and class notebooks piled high about him, burrowing in that mound
+      of hidden treasure which it behooves all prudent aspirants for university
+      honours to diligently mine as the fateful day approaches. With Mr. Dunn
+      time had now come to be measured by moments, and every moment golden. But
+      the wrathful impatience that had gathered in his face at the approach of
+      an intruder was overwhelmed in astonishment at recognising so
+      distinguished a visitor as Mr. Rae the Writer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Dunn,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae briskly, &ldquo;a moment only, one moment, I assure
+      you. Well do I know the rage which boils behind that genial smile of
+      yours. Don't deny it, Sir. Have I not suffered all the pangs, with just a
+      week before the final ordeal? This is your final, I believe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope so,&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn somewhat ruefully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, and a very fine career, a career befitting your father's son.
+      And I sincerely trust, Sir, that as your career has been marked by honour,
+      your exit shall be with distinction; and all the more that I am not
+      unaware of your achievements in another department of&mdash;ah&mdash;shall
+      I say endeavour. I have seen your name, Sir, mentioned more than once, to
+      the honour of our university, in athletic events.&rdquo; At this point Mr. Rae's
+      face broke into a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An amazing smile was Mr. Rae's; amazing both in the suddenness of its
+      appearing and in the suddenness of its vanishing. Upon a face of
+      supernatural gravity, without warning, without beginning, the smile,
+      broad, full and effulgent, was instantaneously present. Then equally
+      without warning and without fading the smile ceased to be. Under its
+      effulgence the observer unfamiliar with Mr. Rae's smile was moved, to a
+      responsive geniality of expression, but in the full tide of this emotion
+      he found himself suddenly regarding a face of such preternatural gravity
+      as rebuked the very possibility or suggestion of geniality. Before the
+      smile Mr. Rae's face was like a house, with the shutters up and the family
+      plunged in gloom. When the smile broke forth every shutter was flung wide
+      to the pouring sunlight, and every window full of flowers and laughing
+      children. Then instantly and without warning the house was blank,
+      lifeless, and shuttered once more, leaving you helplessly apologetic that
+      you had ever been guilty of the fatuity of associating anything but death
+      and gloom with its appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To young Mr. Dunn it was extremely disconcerting to discover himself
+      smiling genially into a face of the severest gravity, and eyes that
+      rebuked him for his untimely levity. &ldquo;Oh, I beg pardon,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr.
+      Dunn hastily, &ldquo;I thought&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, Sir,&rdquo; replied Mr. Rae. &ldquo;As I was saying, I have observed from
+      time to time the distinctions you have achieved in the realm of athletics.
+      And that reminds me of my business with you to-day,&mdash;a sad business,
+      a serious business, I fear.&rdquo; The solemn impressiveness of Mr. Rae's manner
+      awakened in Mr. Dunn an awe amounting to dread. &ldquo;It is young Cameron, a
+      friend of yours, I believe, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron, Sir!&rdquo; echoed Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Cameron. Does he, or did he not have a place on your team?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn sat upright and alert. &ldquo;Yes, Sir. What's the matter, Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;First of all, do you know where he is? I have tried his lodgings. He is
+      not there. It is important that I find him to-day, extremely important; in
+      fact, it is necessary; in short, Mr. Dunn,&mdash;I believe I can confide
+      in your discretion,&mdash;if I do not find him to-day, the police will
+      to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police, Sir!&rdquo; Dunn's face expressed an awful fear. In the heart of
+      the respectable Briton the very mention of the police in connection with
+      the private life of any of his friends awakens a feeling of gravest
+      apprehension. No wonder Mr. Dunn's face went pale! &ldquo;The police!&rdquo; he said a
+      second time. &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae remained silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If it is a case of debts, Sir,&rdquo; suggested Mr. Dunn, &ldquo;why, I would gladly&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae waved him aside. &ldquo;It is sufficient to say, Mr. Dunn, that we are
+      the family solicitors, as we have been for his father, his grandfather and
+      great-grandfather before him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly, Sir. I beg pardon,&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all; quite proper; does you credit. But it is not a case of debts,
+      though it is a case of money; in fact, Sir,&mdash;I feel sure I may
+      venture to confide in you,&mdash;he is in trouble with his bank, the Bank
+      of Scotland. The young man, or someone using his name, has been guilty of&mdash;ah&mdash;well,
+      an irregularity, a decided irregularity, an irregularity which the bank
+      seems inclined to&mdash;to&mdash;follow up; indeed, I may say,
+      instructions have been issued through their solicitors to that effect. Mr.
+      Thomlinson was good enough to bring this to my attention, and to offer a
+      stay of proceedings for a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I do anything, Sir?&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;I'm afraid I've neglected him. The
+      truth is, I've been in an awful funk about my exams, and I haven't kept in
+      touch as I should.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Find him, Mr. Dunn, find him. His father is coming to town this evening,
+      which makes it doubly imperative. Find him; that is, if you can spare the
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I can. I'm awfully sorry I've lost touch with him. He's been
+      rather down all this winter; in fact, ever since the International he
+      seems to have lost his grip of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, indeed!&rdquo; said Mr. Rae. &ldquo;I remember that occasion; in fact, I was
+      present myself,&rdquo; he admitted. &ldquo;I occasionally seek to renew my youth.&rdquo; Mr.
+      Rae's smile broke forth, but anxiety for his friend saved Mr. Dunn from
+      being caught again in any responsive smile. &ldquo;Bring him to my office, if
+      you can, any time to-day. Good-bye, Sir. Your spirit does you credit. But
+      it is the spirit which I should expect in a man who plays the forward line
+      as you play it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Dunn blushed crimson. &ldquo;Is there anything else I could do? Anyone I
+      could see? I mean, for instance, could my father serve in any way?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, a good suggestion!&rdquo; Mr. Rae seized his right ear,&mdash;a
+      characteristic action of his when in deep thought,&mdash;twisted it into a
+      horn, and pulled it quite severely as if to assure himself that that
+      important feature of his face was firmly fixed in its place. &ldquo;A very good
+      suggestion! Your father knows Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the bank, I
+      believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Sir, I think,&rdquo; answered Mr. Dunn. &ldquo;I am sure he would see him.
+      Shall I call him in, Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort; don't think of it! I mean, let
+      there be nothing formal in this matter. If Mr. Dunn should chance to meet
+      Mr. Sheratt, that is, casually, so to speak, and if young Cameron's name
+      should come up, and if Mr. Dunn should use his influence, his very great
+      influence, with Mr. Sheratt, the bank might be induced to take a more
+      lenient view of the case. I think I can trust you with this.&rdquo; Mr. Rae
+      shook the young man warmly by the hand, beamed on him for one brief moment
+      with his amazing smile, presented to his answering smile a face of
+      unspeakable gravity, and left him extremely uncertain as to the proper
+      appearance for his face, under the circumstances.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Mr. Rae had gained the street Dunn was planning his campaign; for
+      no matter what business he had in hand, Dunn always worked by plan. By the
+      time he himself had reached the street his plan was formed. &ldquo;No use trying
+      his digs. Shouldn't be surprised if that beast Potts has got him. Rotten
+      bounder, Potts, and worse! Better go round his way.&rdquo; And oscillating in
+      his emotions between disgust and rage at Cameron for his weakness and his
+      folly, and disgust and rage at himself for his neglect of his friend, Dunn
+      took his way to the office of the Insurance Company which was honoured by
+      the services of Mr. Potts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Insurance Company knew nothing of the whereabouts of Mr. Potts.
+      Indeed, the young man who assumed responsibility for the information
+      appeared to treat the very existence of Mr. Potts as a matter of slight
+      importance to his company; so slight, indeed, that the company had not
+      found it necessary either to the stability of its business or to the
+      protection of its policy holders&mdash;a prime consideration with
+      Insurance Companies&mdash;to keep in touch with Mr. Potts. That gentleman
+      had left for the East coast a week ago, and that was the end of the matter
+      as far as the clerk of the Insurance Company was concerned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At his lodgings Mr. Dunn discovered an even more callous indifference to
+      Mr. Potts and his interests. The landlady, under the impression that in
+      Mr. Dunn she beheld a prospective lodger, at first received him with that
+      deferential reserve which is the characteristic of respectable
+      lodging-house keepers in that city of respectable lodgers and respectable
+      lodging-house keepers. When, however, she learned the real nature of Mr.
+      Dunn's errand, she became immediately transformed. In a voice shrill with
+      indignation she repudiated Mr. Potts and his affairs, and seemed chiefly
+      concerned to re-establish her own reputation for respectability, which she
+      seemed to consider as being somewhat shattered by that of her lodger. Mr.
+      Dunn was embarrassed both by her volubility and by her obvious
+      determination to fasten upon him a certain amount of responsibility for
+      the character and conduct of Mr. Potts.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know where Mr. Potts is now, and have you any idea when he may
+      return?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Dunn, seizing a fortunate pause.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I no' juist tellin' ye,&rdquo; cried the landlady, in her excitement
+      reverting to her native South Country dialect, &ldquo;that I keep nae coont o'
+      Mr. Potts' stravagins? An' as to his return, I ken naething aboot that an'
+      care less. He's paid what he's been owing me these three months an' that's
+      all I care aboot him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad to hear that,&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An' glad I am tae, for it's feared I was for my pay a month back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did he pay up?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Dunn, scenting a clue.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A week come Saturday,&mdash;or was it Friday?&mdash;the day he came in
+      with a young man, a friend of his. And a night they made of it, I
+      remember,&rdquo; replied the landlady, recovering command of herself and of her
+      speech under the influence of Mr. Dunn's quiet courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you know the young man that was with him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it was young Cameron. He had been coming about a good deal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, indeed! And have you seen Mr. Cameron since?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; he never came except in company with Mr. Potts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with this faint clue Mr. Dunn was forced to content himself, and to
+      begin a systematic search of Cameron's haunts in the various parts of the
+      town. It was Martin, his little quarter-back, that finally put him on the
+      right track. He had heard Cameron's pipes not more than an hour ago at his
+      lodgings in Morningside Road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what do you want of Cameron these days?&rdquo; inquired the young Canadian.
+      &ldquo;There's nothing on just now, is there, except this infernal grind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn hesitated. &ldquo;Oh, I just want him. In fact, he has got into some
+      trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are!&rdquo; exclaimed Martin in disgust. &ldquo;Why in thunder should you
+      waste time on him? You've taken enough trouble with him this winter
+      already. It's his own funeral, ain't it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn looked at him a half moment in surprise. &ldquo;Well, you can't go back on
+      a fellow when he's down, can you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Dunn, I've often thought I'd give you a little wise advice.
+      This sounds bad, I know, but there's a lot of blamed rot going around this
+      old town just on this point. When a fellow gets on the bum and gets into a
+      hole he knows well that there'll be a lot of people tumbling over each
+      other to get him out, hence he deliberately and cheerfully slides in. If
+      he knew he'd have to scramble out himself he wouldn't be so blamed keen to
+      get in. If he's in a hole let him frog it for awhile, by Jingo! He's
+      hitting the pace, let him take his bumps! He's got to take 'em sooner or
+      later, and better sooner than later, for the sooner he takes 'em the
+      quicker he'll learn. Bye-bye! I know you think I'm a semi-civilised
+      Colonial. I ain't; I'm giving you some wisdom gained from experience. You
+      can't swim by hanging on to a root, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn listened in silence, then replied slowly, &ldquo;I say, old chap, there's
+      something in that. My governor said something like that some time ago: 'A
+      trainer's business is to train his men to do without him.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are!&rdquo; cried Martin. &ldquo;That's philosophy! Mine's just horse
+      sense.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Still,&rdquo; said Dunn thoughtfully, &ldquo;when a chap's in you've got to lend a
+      hand; you simply can't stand and look on.&rdquo; Dunn's words, tone, and manner
+      revealed the great, honest heart of human sympathy which he carried in his
+      big frame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang it,&rdquo; cried Martin, &ldquo;I suppose so! Guess I'll go along with you.
+      I can't forget you pulled me out, too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, old chap,&rdquo; cried Dunn, brightening up, &ldquo;but you're busy, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Busy! By Jingo, you'd think so if you'd watch me over night and hear my
+      brain sizzle. But come along, I'm going to stay with you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dunn's business was private, and could be shared with no one. It was
+      difficult to check his friend's newly-aroused ardour. &ldquo;I say, old chap,&rdquo;
+       he said, &ldquo;you really don't need to come along. I can do&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go to blazes! I know you too well! Don't you worry about me! You've
+      got me going, and I'm in on this thing; so come along!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Dunn grew firm. &ldquo;Thanks, awfully, old man,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;but it's a
+      thing I'd rather do alone, if you don't mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;All right! But say, if you need me I'm on. You're a
+      great old brick, though! Tra-la!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Martin had surmised, Dunn found Cameron in his rooms. He was lying upon
+      his bed enjoying the luxury of a cigarette. &ldquo;Hello! Come right in, old
+      chap!&rdquo; he cried, in gay welcome. &ldquo;Have a&mdash;no, you won't have a
+      cigarette&mdash;have a pipe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn gazed at him, conscious of a rising tide of mingled emotions, relief,
+      wrath, pity, disgust. &ldquo;Well, I'll be hanged!&rdquo; at last he said slowly. &ldquo;But
+      you've given us a chase! Where in the world have you been?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Been? Oh, here and there, enjoying my emancipation from the thralldom in
+      which doubtless you are still sweating.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what does that mean exactly?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mean? It means that I've cut the thing,&mdash;notebooks, lectures,
+      professors, exams, 'the hale hypothick,' as our Nannie would say at home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh rot, Cameron! You don't mean it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Circumspice. Do you behold any suggestion of knotted towels and the
+      midnight oil?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn gazed about the room. It was in a whirl of confusion. Pipes and
+      pouches, a large box of cigarettes, a glass and a half-empty decanter,
+      were upon the table; boots, caps, golf-clubs, coats, lay piled in various
+      corners. &ldquo;Pardon the confusion, dear sir,&rdquo; cried Cameron cheerfully, &ldquo;and
+      lay it not to the charge of my landlady. That estimable woman was
+      determined to make entry this afternoon, but was denied.&rdquo; Cameron's manner
+      one of gay and nervous bravado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Cameron,&rdquo; said Dunn sadly, &ldquo;what does this mean? You're not
+      serious; you're not chucking your year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just that, dear fellow, and nothing less. Might as well as be ploughed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what then are you going to do?&rdquo; Dunn's voice was full of a great
+      pity. &ldquo;What about your people? What about your father? And, by Jove, that
+      reminds me, he's coming to town this evening. You know they've been trying
+      to find you everywhere this last day or two.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who are 'they,' pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who? The police,&rdquo; said Dunn bluntly, determined to shock his friend into
+      seriousness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron sat up quickly. &ldquo;The police? What do you mean, Dunn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What it means I do not know, Cameron, I assure you. Don't you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police!&rdquo; said Cameron again. &ldquo;It's a joke, Dunn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to Heaven it were, Cameron, old man! But I have it straight from
+      Mr. Rae, your family solicitor. They want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Rae?&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;Now what the deuce does this all mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you really know, old chap?&rdquo; said Dunn kindly, anxiety and relief
+      struggling in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No more than you. What did the old chap say, anyway?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Something about a Bank; an irregularity, he called it, a serious
+      irregularity. He's had it staved off for a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bank? What in Heaven's name have I got to do with the Bank? Let's
+      see; I was there a week or ten days ago with&mdash;&rdquo; he paused. &ldquo;Hang it,
+      I can't remember!&rdquo; He ran his hands through his long black locks, and
+      began to pace the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn sat watching him, hope and fear, doubt and faith filling his heart in
+      succession.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron sat down with his face in his hands. &ldquo;What is it, old man? Can't I
+      help you?&rdquo; said Dunn, putting his hand on his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't remember,&rdquo; muttered Cameron. &ldquo;I've been going it some, you know.
+      I had been falling behind and getting money off Potts. Two weeks ago I got
+      my monthly five-pound cheque, and about ten days ago the usual fifty-pound
+      cheque to square things up for the year, fees, etc. Seems to me I cashed
+      those. Or did Potts? Anyway I paid Potts. The deuce take it, I can't
+      remember! You know I can carry a lot of Scotch and never show it, but it
+      plays the devil with my memory.&rdquo; Cameron was growing more and more
+      excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, old chap, we must go right along to Mr. Rae's office. You don't
+      mind?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mind? Not a bit. Old Rae has no love for me,&mdash;I get him into too
+      much trouble,&mdash;but he's a straight old boy. Just wait till I brush up
+      a bit.&rdquo; He poured out from a decanter half a glass of whiskey.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd cut that out if I were you,&rdquo; said Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Later, perhaps,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;but not to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Within twenty minutes they were ushered into Mr. Rae's private office.
+      That gentleman received them with a gravity that was portentous in its
+      solemnity. &ldquo;Well, Sir, you have succeeded in your task,&rdquo; he said to Mr.
+      Dunn. &ldquo;I wish to thank you for this service, a most valuable service to
+      me, to this young gentleman, and to his family; though whether much may
+      come of it remains to be seen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thanks,&rdquo; said Dunn hurriedly. &ldquo;I hope everything will be all right.&rdquo;
+       He rose to go. Cameron looked at him quickly. There was no mistaking the
+      entreaty in his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae spoke somewhat more hurriedly than his wont. &ldquo;If it is not asking
+      too much, and if you can still spare time, your presence might be helpful,
+      Mr. Dunn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stay if you can, old chap,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I don't know what this thing
+      is, but I'll do better if you're in the game, too.&rdquo; It was an appeal to
+      his captain, and after that nothing on earth could have driven Dunn from
+      his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the door opened and the clerk announced, &ldquo;Captain Cameron,
+      Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae rose hastily. &ldquo;Tell him,&rdquo; he said quickly, &ldquo;to wait&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too late. The Captain had followed close upon the heels of the
+      clerk, and came in with a rush. &ldquo;Now, what does all this mean?&rdquo; he cried,
+      hardly waiting to shake hands with his solicitor. &ldquo;What mischief&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, Captain,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae calmly, &ldquo;let me present Mr.
+      Dunn, Captain Dunn, I might say, of International fame.&rdquo; The solicitor's
+      smile broke forth with its accustomed unexpectedness, but had vanished
+      long before Mr. Dunn in his embarrassment had finished shaking hands with
+      Captain Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain then turned to his son. &ldquo;Well, Sir, and what is this affair of
+      yours that calls me to town at a most inconvenient time?&rdquo; His tone was
+      cold, fretful, and suspicious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Young Cameron's face, which had lighted up with a certain eagerness and
+      appeal as he had turned toward his father, as if in expectation of
+      sympathy and help, froze at this greeting into sullen reserve. &ldquo;I don't
+      know any more than yourself, Sir,&rdquo; he answered. &ldquo;I have just come into
+      this office this minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, what is it, Mr. Rae?&rdquo; The Captain's voice and manner were
+      distinctly imperious, if not overbearing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae, however, was king of his own castle. &ldquo;Will you not be seated,
+      Sir?&rdquo; he said, pointing to a chair. &ldquo;Sit down, young gentlemen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His quiet dignity, his perfect courtesy, recalled the Captain to himself.
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon, Mr. Rae, but I am really much disturbed. Can we begin
+      at once?&rdquo; He glanced as he spoke at Mr. Dunn, who immediately rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, Mr. Dunn,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae quietly. &ldquo;I have asked this young
+      gentleman,&rdquo; he continued, turning to the Captain, &ldquo;to remain. He has
+      already given me valuable assistance. I fancy he may be able to serve us
+      still further, if he will be so good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Dunn bowed in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now let us proceed with what must be an exceedingly painful matter for us
+      all, and out of which nothing but extreme candour on the part of Mr. Allan
+      here, and great wisdom on the part of us all, can possibly extract us.&rdquo;
+       Mr. Rae's glance rested upon the Captain, who bowed, and upon his son, who
+      made no sign whatever, but remained with his face set in the same sullen
+      gloom with which he had greeted his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae opened a drawer and brought forth a slip of paper. &ldquo;Mr. Allan,&rdquo; he
+      said, with a certain sharpness in his tone, &ldquo;please look at this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron came to the desk, picked up the paper, glanced at it. &ldquo;It is my
+      father's cheque,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;which I received about a week ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at the endorsement, please,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron turned it over. A slight flush came to his pale face. &ldquo;It is mine
+      to&mdash;&rdquo; he hesitated, &ldquo;Mr. Potts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Potts cashed it then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose so. I believe so. I owed him money, and he gave me back some.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much did you owe him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A considerable amount. I had been borrowing of him for some time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As much as fifty pounds?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I cannot tell. I did not keep count, particularly; Potts did that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain snorted contemptuously. &ldquo;Do you mean to say&mdash;?&rdquo; he began.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, Captain Cameron. Allow me,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Allan, do you think you owed him as much as the amount of that
+      cheque?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I do not know, but I think so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Had you any other money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Allan shortly; &ldquo;at least I may have had a little remaining from
+      the five pounds I had received from my father a few days before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite sure you had no other money?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite certain,&rdquo; replied Allan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Mr. Rae opened his desk and drew forth a slip and handed it to young
+      Cameron. &ldquo;What is that?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron glanced at it hurriedly, and turned it over. &ldquo;That is my father's
+      cheque for five pounds, which I cashed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae stretched out his hand and took the cheque. &ldquo;Mr. Allan,&rdquo; he said,
+      &ldquo;I want you to consider most carefully your answer.&rdquo; He leaned across the
+      desk and for some moments&mdash;they seemed like minutes to Dunn&mdash;his
+      eyes searched young Cameron's face. &ldquo;Mr. Allan,&rdquo; he said, with a swift
+      change of tone, his voice trembling slightly, &ldquo;will you look at the amount
+      of that cheque again?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron once more took the cheque, glanced at it. &ldquo;Good Lord!&rdquo; he cried.
+      &ldquo;It is fifty!&rdquo; His face showed blank amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quick, low, and stern came Mr. Rae's voice. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;it is for
+      fifty pounds. Do you know that that is a forgery, the punishment for which
+      is penal servitude, and that the order for your arrest is already given?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain sprang to his feet. Young Cameron's face became ghastly pale.
+      His hand clutched the top of Mr. Rae's desk. Twice or thrice he moistened
+      his lips preparing to speak, but uttered not a word. &ldquo;Good God, my boy!&rdquo;
+       said the Captain hoarsely. &ldquo;Don't stand like that. Tell him you are
+      innocent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One moment, Sir,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae to the Captain. &ldquo;Permit me.&rdquo; Mr. Rae's
+      voice, while perfectly courteous, was calmly authoritative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Allan,&rdquo; he continued, turning to the wretched young man, &ldquo;what money
+      have you at present in your pockets?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With shaking hands young Cameron emptied upon the desk the contents of his
+      pocketbook, from which the lawyer counted out ten one-pound notes, a
+      half-sovereign and some silver. &ldquo;Where did you get this money, Mr. Allan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The young man, still silent, drew his handkerchief from his pocket,
+      touched his lips, and wiped the sweat from his white face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Allan,&rdquo; continued the lawyer, dropping again into a kindly voice, &ldquo;a
+      frank explanation will help us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rae,&rdquo; said Cameron, his words coming with painful indistinctness, &ldquo;I
+      don't understand this. I can't think clearly. I can't remember. That money
+      I got from Potts; at least I must have&mdash;I have had money from no one
+      else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; cried the Captain again. &ldquo;To think that a son of mine should&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, Captain Cameron,&rdquo; interrupted Mr. Rae quickly and somewhat
+      sharply. &ldquo;We must not prejudge this case. We must first understand it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Dunn stepped swiftly to Cameron's side. &ldquo;Brace up, old
+      chap,&rdquo; he said in a low tone. Then turning towards the Captain he said, &ldquo;I
+      beg your pardon, Sir, but I do think it's only fair to give a man a chance
+      to explain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allow me, gentlemen,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae in a firm, quiet voice, as the Captain
+      was about to break forth. &ldquo;Allow me to conduct this examination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron turned his face toward Dunn. &ldquo;Thank you, old man,&rdquo; he said, his
+      white lips quivering. &ldquo;I will do my best, but before God, I don't
+      understand this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Allan,&rdquo; continued the lawyer, tapping the desk sharply, &ldquo;here
+      are two cheques for fifty pounds, both drawn by your father, both endorsed
+      by you, one apparently cashed by Mr. Potts, one by yourself. What do you
+      know about this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rae,&rdquo; replied the young man, his voice trembling and husky, &ldquo;I tell
+      you I can't understand this. I ought to say that for the last two weeks I
+      haven't been quite myself, and whiskey always makes me forget. I can walk
+      around steadily enough, but I don't always know what I am doing&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so, Sir,&rdquo; said Dunn quickly, &ldquo;I've seen him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;And just what happened with these cheques I do not know. This
+      cheque,&rdquo; picking up the one endorsed to Potts, &ldquo;I remember giving to
+      Potts. The only other cheque I remember is a five-pound one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you remember cashing that five-pound cheque?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Rae.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I carried it about for some days. I remember that, because I once offered
+      it to Potts in part payment, and he said&mdash;&rdquo; the white face suddenly
+      flushed a deep red.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mr. Allan, what did he say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It doesn't matter,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may and it may not,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae sharply. &ldquo;It is your duty to tell
+      us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out with it,&rdquo; said his father angrily. &ldquo;You surely owe it to me, to us
+      all, to let us have every assistance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron paid no attention to his father's words. &ldquo;It has really no
+      bearing, Sir, but I remember saying as I offered a five-pound cheque, 'I
+      wish it was fifty.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what reply did Mr. Potts make?&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, with quiet
+      indifference, as if he had lost interest in this particular feature of the
+      case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Cameron hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, out with it!&rdquo; said his father impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His son closed his lips as if in a firm resolve. &ldquo;It really has nothing
+      whatever to do with the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Play the game, old man,&rdquo; said Dunn quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all right!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;It makes no difference anyway. He said in
+      a joke, 'You could easily make this fifty; it is such mighty poor
+      writing.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Mr. Rae showed no sign of interest. &ldquo;He suggested in a joke, I
+      understand, that the five-pound cheque could easily be changed into fifty
+      pounds. That was a mere pleasantry of Mr. Potts', doubtless. How did the
+      suggestion strike you, Mr. Allan?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Allan looked at him in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean, did the suggestion strike you unpleasantly, or how?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think it made any impression, Sir. I knew it was a joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A joke!&rdquo; groaned his father. &ldquo;Good Heavens! What do you think&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Once more permit me,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae quietly, with a wave of his hand
+      toward the Captain. &ldquo;This cheque of five pounds has evidently been altered
+      to fifty pounds. The question is, by whom, Mr. Allan? Can you answer
+      that?&rdquo; Again Mr. Rae's eyes were searching the young man's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have told you I remember nothing about this cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it possible, Mr. Allan, that you could have raised this cheque
+      yourself without your knowing&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nonsense!&rdquo; said his father hotly, &ldquo;why make the boy lie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His son started as if his father had struck him. &ldquo;I tell you once more,
+      Mr. Rae, and I tell you all, I know nothing about this cheque, and that is
+      my last word.&rdquo; And from that position nothing could move him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, closing the interview, &ldquo;we have done our best. The
+      law must take its course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great Heavens!&rdquo; cried the Captain, springing to his feet. &ldquo;Do you mean to
+      tell me, Allan, that you persist in this cursed folly and will give us no
+      further light? Have you no regard for my name, if not for your own?&rdquo; He
+      grasped his son fiercely by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But his son angrily shook off his grasp. &ldquo;You,&rdquo; he said, looking his
+      father full in the face, &ldquo;you condemned me before you heard a word from
+      me, and now for my name or for yours I care not a tinker's curse.&rdquo; And
+      with this he flung himself from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Follow him,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae to Dunn, quietly; &ldquo;he will need you. And keep
+      him in sight; it is important.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Sir!&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;I'll stay with him.&rdquo; And he did.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0004" id="link2HCH0004">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae in forty years' experience had never been so seriously disturbed.
+      To his intense humiliation he found himself abjectly appealing to the
+      senior member of the firm of Thomlinson &amp; Shields. Not that Mr.
+      Thomlinson was obdurate; in the presence of mere obduracy Mr. Rae might
+      have found relief in the conscious possession of more generous and humane
+      instincts than those supposed to be characteristic of the members of his
+      profession. Mr. Thomlinson, however, was anything but obdurate. He was
+      eager to oblige, but he was helpless. The instructions he had received
+      were simple but imperative, and he had gone to unusual lengths in
+      suggesting to Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the Bank, a course of greater
+      leniency. That gentleman's only reply was a brief order to proceed with
+      the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Mr. Sheratt, therefore, Mr. Rae proceeded to deal. His first move was
+      to invite the Bank manager to lunch, in order to discuss some rather
+      important matters relative to one of the great estates of which Mr. Rae
+      was supposed to be the guardian. Some fifty years' experience of Mr.
+      Sheratt as boy and man had let Mr. Rae into a somewhat intimate knowledge
+      of the workings of that gentleman's mind. Under the mollifying influences
+      of the finest of old port, Mr. Rae made the discovery that as with Mr.
+      Thomlinson, so with Mr. Sheratt there was every disposition to oblige, and
+      indeed an eagerness to yield to the lawyer's desires; it was not Mr.
+      Sheratt, but the Bank that was immovable. Firm-fixed it stood upon its
+      bedrock of tradition that in matters of fraud, crime should be punished to
+      the full limit of the law.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The estate of the criminal, high or low,&rdquo; said Mr. Sheratt impressively,
+      &ldquo;matters not. The Bank stands upon the principle, and from this it cannot
+      be moved.&rdquo; Mr. Sheratt began to wax eloquent. &ldquo;Fidelity to its
+      constituency, its shareholders, its depositors, indeed to the general
+      public, is the corner-stone of its policy. The Bank of Scotland is a
+      National Institution, with a certain National obligation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae quietly drew from his pocket a pamphlet, opened it slowly, and
+      glanced at the page. &ldquo;Ay, it's as I thought, Mr. Sheratt,&rdquo; he said dryly.
+      &ldquo;At times I wondered where Sir Archibald got his style.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Sheratt blushed like a boy caught copying.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But now since I know who it is that writes the speech of the Chairman of
+      the Board of Directors, tell me, Sheratt, as man to man, is it you or is
+      it Sir Archibald that's at the back of this prosecution? For if it is you,
+      I've something to say to you; if not, I'll just say it where it's most
+      needed. In some way or other I'm bound to see this thing through. That boy
+      can't go to prison. Now tell me, Tom? It's for auld sake's sake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As sure as death, Rae, it's the Chairman, and it's God's truth I'm
+      telling ye, though I should not.&rdquo; They were back again into the speech and
+      spirit of their boyhood days.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I must see Sir Archibald. Give me time to see him, Tom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a waste of time, I'm tellin' ye, but two days I'll give ye, Sandy,
+      for auld sake's sake, as you say. A friendship of half a hundred years
+      should mean something to us. For your sake I'd let the lad go, God knows,
+      and there's my han' upon it, but as I said, that lies with Sir Archibald.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old friends shook hands in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank ye, Tom, thank ye,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae; &ldquo;I knew it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But harken to me, ye'll no' move Sir Archibald, for on this particular
+      point he's quite mad. He'd prosecute the Duke of Argyll, he would. But two
+      days are yours, Sandy. And mind with Sir Archibald ye treat his Bank with
+      reverence! It's a National Institution, with National obligations, ye
+      ken?&rdquo; Mr. Sheratt's wink conveyed a volume of meaning. &ldquo;And mind you,
+      Rae,&rdquo; here Mr. Sheratt grew grave, &ldquo;I am trusting you to produce that lad
+      when wanted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have him in safe keeping, Tom, and shall produce him, no fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that the two old gentlemen parted, loyal to a lifelong
+      friendship, but loyal first to the trust of those they stood pledged to
+      serve; for the friendship that gives first place to honour is the only
+      friendship that honourable men can hold.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae set off for his office through the drizzling rain. &ldquo;Now then, for
+      the Captain,&rdquo; he said to himself; &ldquo;and a state he will be in! Why did I
+      ever summon him to town? Then for Mr. Dunn, who must keep his eye upon the
+      young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his office he found Captain Cameron in a state of distraction that
+      rendered him incapable of either coherent thought or speech. &ldquo;What now,
+      Rae? Where have you been? What news have you? My God, this thing is
+      driving me mad! Penal servitude! Think of it, man, for my son! Oh, the
+      scandal of it! It will kill me and kill his sister. What's your report?
+      Come, out with it! Have you seen Mr. Sheratt?&rdquo; He was pacing up and down
+      the office like a beast in a cage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut, tut, Captain Cameron,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae lightly, &ldquo;this is no way for a
+      soldier to face the enemy. Sit down and we will just lay out our
+      campaign.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Captain's soldiering, which was of the lightest, had taught him
+      little either of the spirit or of the tactics of warfare. &ldquo;Campaign!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;There's no campaign about it. It's a complete smash, horse,
+      foot, and artillery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Captain Cameron!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Rae more briskly than his wont,
+      for the Captain irritated him. &ldquo;We have still fighting to do, and hence we
+      must plan our campaign. But first let us get comfortable. Here Davie,&rdquo; he
+      called, opening the office door, &ldquo;here, mend this fire. It's a winter's
+      day this,&rdquo; he continued to the Captain, &ldquo;and goes to the marrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davie, a wizened, clean-shaven, dark-visaged little man, appeared with a
+      scuttle of coal. &ldquo;Ay, Davie; that's it! Is that cannel?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, Sir, it is. What else? I aye get the cannel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right, Davie. It's a gran' coal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gran' it's no',&rdquo; said Davie shortly, who was a fierce radical in
+      politics, and who strove to preserve his sense of independence of all
+      semblance of authority by cultivating a habit of disagreement. &ldquo;Gran' it's
+      no',&rdquo; he repeated, &ldquo;but it's the best the Farquhars hae, though that's no'
+      saying much. It's no' what I call cannel.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well, Davie, it blazes finely at any rate,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae,
+      determined to be cheerful, and rubbing his hands before the blazing coal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, it bleezes,&rdquo; grumbled Davie, &ldquo;when it's no' smootherin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come then, Davie, that will do. Clear out,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae to the old
+      servant, who was cleaning up the hearth with great diligence and care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Davie was not to be hurried. He had his regular routine in
+      fire-mending, from which no power could move him. &ldquo;Ay, Sir,&rdquo; he muttered,
+      brushing away with his feather besom. &ldquo;I'll clear oot when I clear up.
+      When a thing's no' dune richt it's no dune ava.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;True, Davie, true enough; that's a noble sentiment. But will that no' do
+      now?&rdquo; Mr. Rae knew himself to be helpless in Davie's hands, and he knew
+      also that nothing short of violence would hasten Davie from his &ldquo;usual.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, that'll dae, because it's richt dune. But that's no' what I call
+      cannel,&rdquo; grumbled Davie, glowering fiercely at the burning coal, as if
+      meditating a fresh attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, &ldquo;tell the Farquhars about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, Sir, I will that,&rdquo; said Davie, as he reluctantly took himself off
+      with his scuttle and besom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Captain was bursting with fretful impatience. &ldquo;Impudent old rascal!&rdquo;
+       he exclaimed. &ldquo;Why don't you dismiss him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dismiss him!&rdquo; echoed Mr. Rae in consternation. &ldquo;Dismiss him!&rdquo; he
+      repeated, as if pondering an entirely new idea. &ldquo;I doubt if Davie would
+      consider that. But now let us to work.&rdquo; He set two arm-chairs before the
+      fire, and placed a box of cigars by the Captain's elbow. &ldquo;I have seen
+      Sheratt,&rdquo; he began. &ldquo;I'm quite clear it is not in his hands.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In whose then?&rdquo; burst forth the Captain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae lit his cigar carefully. &ldquo;The whole matter, I believe, lies now
+      with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sir Archibald Brodie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Brodie!&rdquo; cried the Captain. &ldquo;I know him. Pompous little fool!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool, Captain Cameron! Make no mistake. Sir Archibald may have&mdash;ah&mdash;the
+      self-importance of a self-made man somewhat under the average height, but
+      he is, without doubt, the best financier that stands at this moment in
+      Scotland, and during the last fifteen years he has brought up the Bank of
+      Scotland to its present position. Fool! He's anything but that. But he has
+      his weak spots&mdash;I wish I knew what they were!&mdash;and these we must
+      seek to find out. Do you know him well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, quite well,&rdquo; said the Captain; &ldquo;that is, I've met him at various
+      functions, where he always makes speeches. Very common, I call him. I know
+      his father; a mere cottar. I mean,&rdquo; added the Captain hurriedly, for he
+      remembered that Mr. Rae was of the same humble origin, &ldquo;you know, he is
+      thoroughly respectable and all that, but of no&mdash;ah&mdash;social or
+      family standing; that is&mdash;oh, you understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae drily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I shall see him,&rdquo; continued the Captain briskly. &ldquo;I shall certainly
+      see him. It is a good suggestion. Sir Archibald knows my family; indeed,
+      his father was from the Erracht region. I shall see him personally. I am
+      glad you thought of that, Mr. Rae. These smaller men, Sheratt and the
+      rest, I do not know&mdash;in fact, I do not seem to be able to manage
+      them,&mdash;but with Sir Archibald there will be no difficulty, I feel
+      quite confident. When can you arrange the interview?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire, more and more convinced
+      every moment that he had made a false move in suggesting a meeting between
+      the Captain and Sir Archibald Brodie. But labour as he might he could not
+      turn the Captain from his purpose. He was resolved to see Sir Archibald at
+      the earliest moment, and of the result of the meeting he had no manner of
+      doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knew my family, Sir,&rdquo; insisted the Captain. &ldquo;Sir Archibald will
+      undoubtedly accede to my suggestion&mdash;ah&mdash;request to withdraw his
+      action. Arrange it, Mr. Rae, arrange it at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And ruefully enough Mr. Rae was compelled to yield against his better
+      judgment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was discovered upon inquiry that Sir Archibald had gone for a day or
+      two to his country estate. &ldquo;Ah, much better,&rdquo; said the Captain, &ldquo;away from
+      his office and away from the&mdash;ah&mdash;commercial surroundings of the
+      city. Much better, much better! We shall proceed to his country home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the wisdom of this proposal Mr. Rae was doubtful. There seemed,
+      however, no other way open. Hence, the following morning found them on
+      their way to Sir Archibald's country seat. Mr. Rae felt that it was an
+      unusual course to pursue, but the time was short, the occasion was gravely
+      critical, and demanded extreme measures.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      During their railway journey Mr. Rae strove to impress upon the Captain's
+      mind the need of diplomacy. &ldquo;Sir Archibald is a man of strong prejudices,&rdquo;
+       he urged; &ldquo;for instance, his Bank he regards with an affection and respect
+      amounting to veneration. He is a bachelor, you understand, and his Bank is
+      to him wife and bairns. On no account must you treat his Bank lightly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly not,&rdquo; replied the Captain, who was inclined to resent Mr.
+      Rae's attempts to school him in diplomacy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a great financier,&rdquo; continued Mr. Rae, &ldquo;and with him finance is a
+      high art, and financial integrity a sacred obligation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly, certainly,&rdquo; again replied the Captain, quite unimpressed
+      by this aspect of the matter, for while he considered himself distinctly a
+      man of affairs, yet his interests lay more in matters of great public
+      moment. Commercial enterprises he regarded with a feeling akin to
+      contempt. Money was an extremely desirable, and indeed necessary,
+      appendage to a gentleman's position, but how any man of fine feeling could
+      come to regard a financial institution with affection or veneration he was
+      incapable of conceiving. However, he was prepared to deal considerately
+      with Sir Archibald's peculiar prejudices in this matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae's forebodings as to the outcome of the approaching interview were
+      of the most gloomy nature as they drove through the finely appointed and
+      beautifully kept grounds of Sir Archibald Brodie's estate. The interview
+      began inauspiciously. Sir Archibald received them with stiff courtesy. He
+      hated to be pursued to his country home with business matters. Besides, at
+      this particular moment he was deeply engrossed in the inspection of his
+      pigs, for which animals he cherished what might almost be called an
+      absorbing affection. Mr. Rae, who was proceeding with diplomatic caution
+      and skill to approach the matter in hand by way of Sir Archibald's
+      Wiltshires, was somewhat brusquely interrupted by the Captain, who, in the
+      firm conviction that he knew much better than did the lawyer how to deal
+      with a man of his own class, plunged at once into the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully sorry to introduce business matters, Sir Archibald, to the
+      attention of a gentleman in the privacy of his own home, but there is a
+      little matter in connection with the Bank in which I am somewhat deeply
+      interested.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Archibald bowed in silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather, I should say, it concerns my son, and therefore, Sir Archibald,
+      myself and my family.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Sir Archibald bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is, after all, a trivial matter, which I have no doubt can be easily
+      arranged between us. The truth is, Sir Archibald&mdash;,&rdquo; here the Captain
+      hesitated, as if experiencing some difficulty in stating the case.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps Captain Cameron will allow me to place the matter before you, Sir
+      Archibald,&rdquo; suggested Mr. Rae, &ldquo;as it has a legal aspect of some gravity,
+      indeed of very considerable gravity. It is the case of young Mr. Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; said Sir Archibald shortly. &ldquo;Forgery case, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, &ldquo;we have not been able as yet to get at the bottom
+      of it. I confess that the case has certainly very grave features connected
+      with it, but it is by no means clear that&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no need for further statement, Mr. Rae,&rdquo; said Sir Archibald. &ldquo;I
+      know all about it. It is a clear case of forgery. The facts have all been
+      laid before me, and I have given my instructions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what may these be, may I inquire?&rdquo; said the Captain somewhat
+      haughtily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The usual instructions, Sir, where the Bank of Scotland is concerned,
+      instructions to prosecute.&rdquo; Sir Archibald's lips shut in a firm, thin
+      line. As far as he was concerned the matter was closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Sir,&rdquo; exclaimed the Captain, &ldquo;this young man is my son.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I deeply regret it,&rdquo; replied Sir Archibald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sir, he is my son, and the honour of my family is involved.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Archibald bowed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am here prepared to offer the fullest reparation, to offer the most
+      generous terms of settlement; in short, I am willing to do anything in
+      reason to have this matter&mdash;this unfortunate matter&mdash;hushed up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hushed up!&rdquo; exclaimed Sir Archibald. &ldquo;Captain Cameron, it is impossible.
+      I am grieved for you, but I have a duty to the Bank in this matter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say, Sir,&rdquo; cried the Captain, &ldquo;that you refuse to consider
+      any arrangement or compromise or settlement of any kind whatever? I am
+      willing to pay the amount ten times over, rather than have my name dragged
+      through legal proceedings.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is quite impossible,&rdquo; said Sir Archibald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, come, Sir Archibald,&rdquo; said the Captain, exercising an unusual
+      self-control; &ldquo;let us look at this thing as two gentlemen should who
+      respect each other, and who know what is due to our&mdash;ah&mdash;class.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an unfortunate remark of the Captain's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Our class, Sir? I presume you mean the class of gentlemen. All that is
+      due to our class or any other class is strict justice, and that you, Sir,
+      or any other gentleman, shall receive to the very fullest in this matter.
+      The honour of the Bank, which I regard as a great National Institution
+      charged with National responsibilities, is involved, as is also my own
+      personal honour. I sincerely trust your son may be cleared of every charge
+      of crime, but this case must be prosecuted to the very fullest degree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And do you mean to tell me, Sir Archibald,&rdquo; exclaimed the Captain, now in
+      a furious passion, &ldquo;that for the sake of a few paltry pounds you will
+      blast my name and my family name in this country?&mdash;a name, I venture
+      to say, not unknown in the history of this nation. The Camerons, Sir, have
+      fought and bled for King and country on many a battlefield. What matters
+      the question of a few pounds in comparison with the honour of an ancient
+      and honourable name? You cannot persist in this attitude, Sir Archibald!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pounds, Sir!&rdquo; cried Sir Archibald, now thoroughly aroused by the
+      contemptuous reference to what to him was dearer than anything in life.
+      &ldquo;Pounds, Sir! It is no question of pounds, but a question of the honour of
+      a National Institution, a question of the lives and happiness of hundreds
+      of widows and orphans, a question of the honour of a name which I hold as
+      dear as you hold yours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae was in despair. He laid a restraining hand upon the Captain, and
+      with difficulty obtained permission to speak. &ldquo;Sir Archibald, I crave your
+      indulgence while I put this matter to you as to a business man. In the
+      first place, there is no evidence that fraud has been committed by young
+      Mr. Cameron, absolutely none.&mdash;Pardon me a moment, Sir Archibald.&mdash;The
+      fraud has been committed, I grant, by someone, but by whom is as yet
+      unknown. The young man for some weeks has been in a state of incapacity; a
+      most blameworthy and indeed shameful condition, it is true, but in a state
+      of incapacity to transact business. He declares that he has no knowledge
+      of this act of forgery. He will swear this. I am prepared to defend him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Sir,&rdquo; interrupted Sir Archibald, &ldquo;and I hope, I sincerely
+      hope, successfully.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But while it may be difficult to establish innocence, it will be equally
+      difficult to establish guilt. Meantime, the young man's life is blighted,
+      his name dishonoured, his family plunged into unspeakable grief. I venture
+      to say that it is a case in which the young man might be given, without
+      injury to the Bank, or without breaking through its traditional policy,
+      the benefit of the doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sir Archibald had been too deeply stirred by Captain Cameron's
+      unfortunate remarks to calmly weigh Mr. Rae's presentation of the case.
+      &ldquo;It is quite useless, Mr. Rae,&rdquo; he declared firmly. &ldquo;The case is out of my
+      hands, and must be proceeded with. I sincerely trust you may be able to
+      establish the young man's innocence. I have nothing more to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And from this position neither Mr. Rae's arguments nor the Captain's
+      passionate pleadings could move him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Throughout the return journey the Captain raged and swore. &ldquo;A contemptible
+      cad, Sir! a base-born, low-bred cad, Sir! What else could you expect from
+      a fellow of his breeding? The insolence of these lower orders is becoming
+      insupportable. The idea! the very idea! His bank against my family name,
+      my family honour! Preposterous!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honour is honour, Captain Cameron,&rdquo; replied Mr. Rae firmly, &ldquo;and it might
+      have been better if you had remembered that the honour of a cottar's son
+      is as dear to him as yours is to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And such was Mr. Rae's manner that the Captain appeared to consider it
+      wise to curb his rage, or at least suppress all reference to questions of
+      honour in as far as they might be related to the question of birth and
+      breeding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0005" id="link2HCH0005">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A LADY AND THE LAW
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae's first care was to see Mr. Dunn. This case was getting rather
+      more trying to Mr. Rae's nerves than he cared to acknowledge. For a second
+      time he had been humiliated, and humiliation was an experience to which
+      Mr. Rae was not accustomed. It was in a distinctly wrathful frame of mind
+      that he called upon Mr. Dunn, and the first quarter of an hour of his
+      interview he spent in dilating upon his own folly in having allowed
+      Captain Cameron to accompany him on his visit to Sir Archibald.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In forty years I never remember having made such an error, Sir. This was
+      an occasion for diplomacy. We should have taken time. We should have
+      discovered his weak spots; every man has them. Now it is too late. The
+      only thing left for us is fight, and the best we can hope for is a verdict
+      of NOT PROVEN, and that leaves a stigma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is terrible,&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn, &ldquo;and I believe he is innocent. Have you
+      thought of Potts, Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have had Potts before me,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, &ldquo;and I may safely say that
+      though he strikes me as being a man of unusual cleverness, we can do
+      nothing with Mr. Potts. Of course,&rdquo; added Mr. Rae hastily, &ldquo;this is not to
+      say we shall not make use of Mr. Potts in the trial, but Mr. Potts can
+      show from his books debts amounting to nearly sixty pounds. He frankly
+      acknowledges the pleasantry in suggesting the raising of the five-pound
+      cheque to fifty pounds, but of the act itself he professes entire
+      ignorance. I frankly own to you, Sir,&rdquo; continued Mr. Rae, folding his ear
+      into a horn after his manner when in perplexity, &ldquo;that this case puzzles
+      me. I must not take your time,&rdquo; he said, shaking Mr. Dunn warmly by the
+      hand. &ldquo;One thing more I must ask you, however, and that is, keep in touch
+      with young Cameron. I have pledged my honour to produce him when wanted.
+      Furthermore, keep him&mdash;ah&mdash;in good condition; cheer him up;
+      nerve him up; much depends upon his manner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Gravely Mr. Dunn accepted the trust, though whether he could fulfil it he
+      doubted. &ldquo;Keep him cheerful,&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn to himself, as the door closed
+      upon Mr. Rae. &ldquo;Nice easy job, too, under the circumstances. Let's see,
+      what is there on? By Jove, if I could only bring him!&rdquo; There flashed into
+      Mr. Dunn's mind the fact that he was due that evening at a party for
+      students, given by one of the professors, belated beyond the period proper
+      to such functions by one of those domestic felicities which claim right of
+      way over all other human events. At this party Cameron was also due. It
+      was hardly likely, however, that he would attend. But to Dunn's amazement
+      he found Cameron, with a desperate jollity such as a man might feel the
+      night before his execution, eager to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm going,&rdquo; he cried, in answer to Dunn's somewhat timid suggestion. &ldquo;They'll
+      all be there, old man, and I shall make my exit with much eclat, with pipe
+      and dance and all the rest of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exit, be blowed!&rdquo; said Dunn impatiently. &ldquo;Let's cut all this nonsense
+      out. We're going into a fight for all there's in us. Why should a fellow
+      throw up the sponge after the first round?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fight!&rdquo; said Cameron gloomily. &ldquo;Did old Rae say so?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most decidedly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what defence does he suggest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Defence? Innocence, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would to God I could back him up!&rdquo; groaned Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn gazed at him in dismay. &ldquo;And can you not? You do not mean to tell me
+      you are guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I wish to heaven I knew!&rdquo; cried Cameron wildly. &ldquo;But there, let it
+      go. Let the lawyers and the judge puzzle it out. 'Guilty or not guilty?'
+      'Hanged if I know, my lord. Looks like guilty, but don't see very well how
+      I can be.' That will bother old Rae some; it would bother Old Nick
+      himself. 'Did you forge this note?' 'My lord, my present ego recognizes no
+      intent to forge; my alter ego in vino may have done so. Of that, however,
+      I know nothing; it lies in that mysterious region of the subconscious.'
+      'Are you, then, guilty?' 'Guilt, my lord, lies in intent. Intent is the
+      soul of crime.' It will be an interesting point for Mr. Rae and his
+      lordship.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, old chap,&rdquo; asked Dunn suddenly, &ldquo;what of Potts in this
+      business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Potts! Oh, hang it, Dunn, I can't drag Potts into this. It would be
+      altogether too low-down to throw suspicion upon a man without the
+      slightest ground. Potts is not exactly a lofty-souled creature. In fact,
+      he is pronouncedly a bounder, though I confess I did borrow money of him;
+      but I'd borrow money of the devil when I'm in certain moods. A man may be
+      a bounder, however, without being a criminal. No, I have thought this
+      thing out as far as I can, and I've made my mind up that I've got to face
+      it myself. I've been a fool, ah, such a fool!&rdquo; A shudder shook his frame.
+      &ldquo;Oh, Dunn, old man, I don't mind for myself, I can go out easily enough,
+      but it's my little sister! It will break her heart, and she has no one
+      else; she will have to bear it all alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean, Cameron?&rdquo; asked Dunn sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron sprang to his feet. &ldquo;Let it go,&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Let it go for
+      to-night, anyway.&rdquo; He seized a decanter which stood all too ready to his
+      hand, but Dunn interposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to me, old man,&rdquo; he said, in a voice of grave and earnest sadness,
+      while he pushed Cameron back into a chair. &ldquo;We have a desperately hard
+      game before us, you and I,&mdash;this is my game, too,&mdash;and we must
+      be fit; so, Cameron, I want your word that you will play up for all that's
+      in you; that you will cut this thing out,&rdquo; pointing to the decanter, &ldquo;and
+      will keep fit to the last fighting minute. I am asking you this, Cameron.
+      You owe it to yourself, you owe it to me, you owe it to your sister.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For some moments Cameron sat gazing straight before him, his face showing
+      the agony in his soul. &ldquo;As God's above, I do! I owe it to you, Dunn, and
+      to her, and to the memory of my&mdash;&rdquo; But his quivering lips could not
+      utter the word; and there was no need, for they both knew that his heart
+      was far away in the little mound that lay in the shadow of the church
+      tower in the Cuagh Oir. The lad rose to his feet, and stretching out his
+      hand to Dunn cried, &ldquo;There's my hand and my honour as a Highlander, and
+      until the last fighting moment I'll be fit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the party that night none was gayer than young Cameron. The shy reserve
+      that usually marked him was thrust aside. His fine, lithe figure, set off
+      by his Highland costume, drew all eyes in admiration, and whether in the
+      proud march of the piper, or in the wild abandon of the Highland Fling, he
+      seemed to all the very beau ideal of a gallant Highland gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn stood in the circle gathered to admire, watching Cameron's
+      performance of that graceful and intricate Highland dance, all unconscious
+      of a pair of bright blue eyes fastened on his face that reflected so
+      manifestly the grief and pain in his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And wherefore this gloom?&rdquo; said a gay voice at his side. It was Miss
+      Bessie Brodie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Poor Dunn! He was not skilled in the fine art of social deception. He
+      could only gaze stupidly and with blinking eyes upon his questioner,
+      devoutly hoping meanwhile that the tears would not fall.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Splendid Highlander, isn't he?&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Bessie, hastily
+      withdrawing her eyes from his face, for she was much too fine a lady to
+      let him see her surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; exclaimed Dunn. &ldquo;I don't know. I mean&mdash;yes, awfully&mdash;oh,
+      confound the thing, it's a beastly shame!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Thereupon Miss Bessie turned her big blue eyes slowly upon him. &ldquo;Meaning
+      what?&rdquo; she said quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I beg pardon. I'm just a fool. Oh, hang it all!&rdquo; Dunn could not
+      recover his composure. He backed out of the circle of admirers into a
+      darker corner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fool?&rdquo; said Miss Brodie, stepping back with him. &ldquo;And why, pray? Can I
+      know? I suppose it's Cameron again,&rdquo; she continued. &ldquo;Oh, I know all about
+      you and your mothering of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mothering!&rdquo; said Dunn bitterly. &ldquo;That is just what he needs, by Jove. His
+      mother has been dead these five years, and that's been the ruin of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The cheers from Cameron's admirers broke in upon Dunn's speech. &ldquo;Oh, it's
+      too ghastly,&rdquo; he muttered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it really so bad? Can't I help?&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie. &ldquo;You know I've had
+      some experience with boys.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Dunn looked into her honest, kindly eyes he hesitated. Should he tell
+      her? He was in sore need of counsel, and besides he was at the limit of
+      his self-control. &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; he said, staring at her, while his lips
+      quivered, &ldquo;I'd like awfully to tell you, but I know if I ever begin I
+      shall just burst into tears before this gaping crowd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tears!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Bessie. &ldquo;Not you! And if you did it wouldn't hurt
+      either them or you. An International captain possesses this advantage over
+      other mortals: that he may burst into tears or anything else without
+      losing caste, whereas if I should do any such thing&mdash;But come, let's
+      get somewhere and talk it over. Now, then,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie as they found
+      a quiet corner, &ldquo;first of all, ought I to know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You'll know, all Edinburgh will know time day after to-morrow,&rdquo; said
+      Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, then, it can't do any harm for me to know to-night. It
+      possibly may do good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will do me good, anyway,&rdquo; said Dunn, &ldquo;for I have reached my limit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Dunn told her, and while she listened she grew grave and anxious.
+      &ldquo;But surely it can be arranged!&rdquo; she exclaimed, after he had finished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mr. Rae has tried everything. The Bank is bound to pursue it to the
+      bitter end. It is apparently a part of its policy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What Bank?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Bank of Scotland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, that's my uncle's Bank! I mean, he is the Chairman of the Board of
+      Directors, and the Bank is the apple of his eye; or one of them, I mean&mdash;I'm
+      the other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, both, I fancy,&rdquo; said Dunn, rather pleased with his own courage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But come, this is serious,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;The Bank, you know, or you
+      don't know, is my uncle's weak spot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae's words flashed across Dunn's mind: &ldquo;We ought to have found his
+      weak spots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He says,&rdquo; continued Miss Brodie with a smile&mdash;&ldquo;you know he's an old
+      dear!&mdash;I divide his heart with the Bank, that I have the left lobe.
+      Isn't that the bigger one? So the Bank and I are his weak spots; unless it
+      is his Wiltshires&mdash;he is devoted to Wiltshires.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wiltshires?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pigs. There are times when I feel myself distinctly second to them. Are
+      you sure my uncle knows all about Cameron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Mr. Rae and Captain Cameron&mdash;that's young Cameron's father&mdash;went
+      out to his place&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, that was a mistake,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;He hates people following him
+      to the country. Well, what happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Rae feels that it was rather a mistake that Captain Cameron went
+      along.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why so? He is his father, isn't he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is, though I'm bound to say he's rather queer for a father.&rdquo;
+       Whereupon Dunn gave her an account of his interview in Mr. Rae's office.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Brodie was indignant. &ldquo;What a shame! And what a fool! Why, he is ten
+      times more fool than his son; for mark you, his son is undoubtedly a fool,
+      and a selfish fool at that. I can't bear a young fool who sacrifices not
+      simply his own life, but the interests of all who care for him, for some
+      little pet selfishness of his own. But this father of his seems to be even
+      worse than the son. Family name indeed! And I venture to say he expatiated
+      upon the glory of his family name to my uncle. If there's one thing that
+      my uncle goes quite mad about it is this affectation of superiority on the
+      ground of the colour of a man's blood! No wonder he refused to withdraw
+      the prosecution! What could Mr. Rae have been thinking about? What fools
+      men are!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite true,&rdquo; murmured Mr. Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some men, I mean,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie hastily. &ldquo;I wish to heaven I had
+      seen my uncle first!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I suppose it's too late now,&rdquo; said Dunn, with a kind of gloomy
+      wistfulness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I fear so,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;You see when my uncle makes up his
+      mind he appears to have some religious scruples against changing it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was a ghastly mistake,&rdquo; said Dunn bitterly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Mr. Dunn,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie, turning upon him suddenly, &ldquo;I
+      want your straight opinion. Do you think this young man guilty?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They were both looking at Cameron, at that moment the centre of a group of
+      open admirers, his boyish face all aglow with animation. For the time
+      being it seemed as if he had forgotten the terrible catastrophe
+      overhanging him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I hadn't known Cameron for three years,&rdquo; replied Dunn slowly, &ldquo;I would
+      say offhand that this thing would be impossible to him; but you see you
+      never know what a man in drink will do. Cameron can carry a bottle of
+      Scotch without a stagger, but of course it knocks his head all to pieces.
+      I mean, he is quite incapable of anything like clear thought.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is truly terrible,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;I wish I had known yesterday,
+      but those men have spoilt it all. But here's 'Lily' Laughton,&rdquo; she
+      continued hurriedly, &ldquo;coming for his dance.&rdquo; As she spoke a youth of
+      willowy figure, languishing dark eyes and ladylike manner drew near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, here you are at last! What a hunt I have had! I am quite exhausted,
+      I assure you,&rdquo; cried the youth, fanning himself with his handkerchief.
+      &ldquo;And though you have quite forgotten it, this is our dance. What can you
+      two have been talking about? But why ask? There is only one theme upon
+      which you could become so terrifically serious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what is that, pray? Browning?&rdquo; inquired Miss Brodie sweetly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Miss Brodie, if you only would, but&mdash;ugh!&mdash;&rdquo; here &ldquo;Lily&rdquo;
+       shuddered, &ldquo;I can in fancy picture the gory scene in which you have been
+      revelling for the last hour!&rdquo; And &ldquo;Lily's&rdquo; handsome face and languid,
+      liquid eyes indicated his horror. It was &ldquo;Lily's&rdquo; constant declaration
+      that he &ldquo;positively loathed&rdquo; football, although his persistent attendance
+      at all the great matches rather belied this declaration. &ldquo;It is the one
+      thing in you, Miss Bessie, that I deplore, 'the fly in the pot&mdash;' no,
+      'the flaw&mdash;' ah, that's better&mdash;'the flaw in the matchless
+      pearl.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How sweet of you,&rdquo; murmured Miss Brodie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed,&rdquo; continued &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; wreathing his tapering fingers, &ldquo;it is
+      your devotion to those so-called athletic games,&mdash;games! ye gods!&mdash;the
+      chief qualifications for excellence in which appear to be brute strength
+      and a blood-thirsty disposition; as witness Dunn there. I was positively
+      horrified last International. There he was, our own quiet, domestic,
+      gentle Dunn, raging through that howling mob of savages like a bloody
+      Bengal tiger.&mdash;Rather apt, that!&mdash;A truly awful and degrading
+      exhibition!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, perfectly lovely!&rdquo; murmured Miss Brodie ecstatically. &ldquo;I can see him
+      yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Brodie, how can you!&rdquo; exclaimed &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; casting up his eyes in
+      horror towards heaven. &ldquo;But it was ever thus! In ancient days upon the
+      bloody sands of the arena, fair ladies were wont to gaze with unrelenting
+      eyes and thumbs turned down&mdash;or up, was it&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excellent! But how clever of them to gaze with their thumbs in that way!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't interrupt,&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; severely; &ldquo;I have just 'struck my
+      gait,' as that barbaric young Colonial, Martin, another of your bloody,
+      brawny band, would say. And here you sit, unblushing, glorying in their
+      disgusting deeds and making love open and unabashed to their captain!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go away, 'Lily' or I'll hurt you,&rdquo; cried Dunn, his face a brilliant
+      crimson. &ldquo;Come, get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But don't be uplifted,&rdquo; continued &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; ignoring him, &ldquo;you are not the
+      first. By no means! It is always the last International captain, and has
+      been to my certain knowledge for the last ten years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ten years!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Brodie in horrified accents. &ldquo;You monster! If
+      you have no regard for my character you might at least respect my age.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Age! Dear Miss Brodie,&rdquo; ejaculated &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; &ldquo;who could ever associate age
+      with your perennial youth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perennial! Wretch! If there is anything I am sensitive about, really
+      sensitive about, it is my age! Mr. Dunn, I beseech you, save me from
+      further insult! Dear 'Lily,' run away now. You are much too tired to
+      dance, and besides there is Mrs. Craig-Urquhart waiting to talk your
+      beloved Wagner-Tennyson theory; or what is the exact combination?
+      Mendelssohn-Browning, is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Bessie!&rdquo; cried &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in a shocked voice, &ldquo;how can you?
+      Mendelssohn-Browning! How awful! Do have some regard for the affinities.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Dunn, I implore you, save me! I can bear no more. There! A merciful
+      providence has accomplished my deliverance. They are going. Good-night,
+      'Lily.' Run away now. I want a word with Mr. Dunn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, heartless cruelty!&rdquo; exclaimed &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; in an agonised voice. &ldquo;But what
+      can you expect from such associations?&rdquo; And he hastened away to have a
+      last word with Mrs. Craig-Urquhart, who was swimming languidly by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Brodie turned eagerly to Dunn. &ldquo;I'd like to help you awfully,&rdquo; she
+      said; &ldquo;indeed I must try. I have very little hope. My uncle is so strong
+      when he is once set, and he is so funny about that Bank. But a boy is
+      worth more than a Bank, if he IS a fool; besides, there is his sister.
+      Good-night. Thanks for letting me help. I have little hope, but to-morrow
+      I shall see Sir Archibald, and&mdash;and his pigs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was still in the early forenoon of the following day when Miss Brodie
+      greeted her uncle as he was about to start upon his round of the pastures
+      and pens where the Wiltshires of various ages and sizes and sexes were
+      kept. With the utmost enthusiasm Miss Brodie entered into his admiration
+      of them all, from the lordly prize tusker to the great mother lying
+      broadside on in grunting and supreme content, every grunt eloquent of
+      happiness and maternal love and pride, to allow her week-old brood to prod
+      and punch her luxuriant dugs for their breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      By the time they had made their rounds Sir Archibald had arrived at his
+      most comfortable and complacent mood. He loved his niece. He loved her for
+      the sake of his dead brother, and as she grew in years, he came to love
+      her for herself. Her sturdy independent fearlessness, her sound sense, her
+      honest heart, and chiefly, if it must be told, her whole-souled devotion
+      to himself, made for her a great space in his heart. And besides all this,
+      they were both interested to the point of devotion in pigs. As he watched
+      his niece handling the little sucklings with tender care, and listened to
+      her appraising their varying merits with a discriminating judgment, his
+      heart filled up with pride in her many accomplishments and capabilities.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't she happy, Uncle?&rdquo; she exclaimed, lifting her brown, sunny face to
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ay, lassie,&rdquo; replied Sir Archibald, lapsing into the kindly &ldquo;braid
+      Scots,&rdquo; &ldquo;I ken fine how she feels.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's just perfectly happy,&rdquo; said his niece, &ldquo;and awfully useful and
+      good. She is just like you, Uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? Oh, thank you, I'm extremely flattered, I assure you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle, you know what I mean! Useful and good. Here you are in this lovely
+      home&mdash;how lovely it is on a warm, shiny day like this!&mdash;safe
+      from cares and worries, where people can't get at you, and making&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I don't know about that,&rdquo; replied her uncle, shaking his head with a
+      frown. &ldquo;Some people have neither sense nor manners. Only yesterday I was
+      pestered by a fellow who annoyed me, seriously annoyed me, interfering in
+      affairs which he knew nothing of,&mdash;actually the affairs of the Bank!&mdash;prating
+      about his family name, and all the rest of it. Family name!&rdquo; Here, it must
+      be confessed, Sir Archibald distinctly snorted, quite in a manner
+      calculated to excite the envy of any of his Wiltshires.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Uncle. He is a fool, a conceited fool, and a selfish fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You know him?&rdquo; inquired her uncle in a tone of surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have no personal acquaintance with him, I'm glad to say, but I know
+      about him, and I know that he came with Mr. Rae, the Writer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes! Thoroughly respectable man, Mr. Rae.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mr. Rae is all right; but Captain Cameron&mdash;oh, I can't bear
+      him! He came to talk to you about his son, and I venture to say he took
+      most of the time in talking about himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so! But how&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, Uncle, I want to talk to you about that matter, about young
+      Cameron.&rdquo; For just a moment Miss Brodie's courage faltered as she observed
+      her uncle's figure stiffen. &ldquo;I want you to know the rights of the case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, now, my dear, don't you go&mdash;ah&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, Uncle, you were going to say 'interfering,' only you remember in
+      time that your niece never interferes. Isn't that true, Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes! I suppose so; that is, certainly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now I am interested in this young Cameron, and I want you to get the
+      right view of his case, which neither your lawyer nor your manager nor
+      that fool father of his can give you. I know that if you see this case as
+      I see it you will do&mdash;ah&mdash;exactly what is right; you always do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Brodie's voice had assumed its most reasonable and business-like
+      tone. Sir Archibald was impressed, and annoyed because he was impressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Bessie,&rdquo; he said, in as impatient a tone as he ever adopted
+      with his niece, &ldquo;you know how I hate being pestered with business affairs
+      out here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know quite well, Uncle, and I regret it awfully, but I know, too, that
+      you are a man of honour, and that you stand for fair play. But that young
+      man is to be arrested to-day, and you know what that will mean for a young
+      fellow with his way to make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her appeal was not without its effect. Sir Archibald set himself to give
+      her serious attention. &ldquo;Let us have it, then,&rdquo; he said briefly. &ldquo;What do
+      you know of the young man?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This first of all: that he has a selfish, conceited prig for a father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With which beginning Sir Archibald most heartily agreed. &ldquo;But how do you
+      know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, let me tell you about him.&rdquo; And Miss Brodie proceeded to describe
+      the scene between father and son in Mr. Rae's office, with vigorous and
+      illuminating comments. &ldquo;And just think, the man in the company who was
+      first to condemn the young chap was his own father. Would you do that?
+      You'd stand for him against the whole world, even if he were wrong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, steady, lass!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would,&rdquo; repeated Miss Bessie, with indignant emphasis. &ldquo;Would you
+      chuck me over if I were disgraced and all the world hounding me? Would
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, by God!&rdquo; said Sir Archibald in a sudden tempest of emotion, and Miss
+      Bessie smiled lovingly upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, that's the kind of a father he has. Now about the young fellow
+      himself: He's just a first-class fool, like most young fellows. You know
+      how they are, Uncle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Archibald held up his hand. &ldquo;Don't make any such assumptions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know you, and when you were a boy you were just as gay and foolish
+      as the rest of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her arch, accusing smile suddenly cast a rich glow of warm colour over the
+      long, grey road of Sir Archibald's youth of self-denial and struggle. The
+      mild indulgences of his early years, under the transforming influence of
+      that same arch and accusing smile, took on for Sir Archibald such an
+      aspect of wild and hilarious gaiety as to impart a tone of hesitation to
+      his voice while he deprecated his niece's charge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, I? Nonsense! What do you know about it? Well, well, we have all had
+      our day, I suppose!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha! I know you, and I should love to have known you when you were young
+      Cameron's age. Though I'm quite sure you were never such a fool as he. You
+      always knew how to take care of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle shook his head as if to indicate that the less said about those
+      gay young days the better.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now what do you think this young fool does? Gets drinking, and gets so
+      muddled up in all his money matters&mdash;he's a Highlander, you know, and
+      Dunn, Mr. Dunn says&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dunn!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Mr. Dunn, the great International captain, you know! Mr. Dunn says
+      he can take a whole bottle of Scotch&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What, Dunn?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no; you know perfectly well, Uncle! This young Cameron can take a
+      whole bottle of Scotch and walk a crack, but his head gets awfully
+      muddled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shouldn't be surprised!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mr. Dunn had a terrible time keeping him fit for the International.
+      You know he was Dunn's half-back. Yes,&rdquo; cried his niece with enthusiasm,
+      suddenly remembering a tradition that in his youth Sir Archibald had been
+      a famous quarter, his one indulgence, &ldquo;a glorious half-back, too! You must
+      remember in the match with England last fall the brilliant work of the
+      half-back. Everybody went mad about him. That was young Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You don't tell me! The left-half in the English International last fall?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed! Oh, he's wonderful! But he has to be watched, you know, and
+      the young fool lost us the last&mdash;&rdquo; Miss Bessie abruptly checked
+      herself. &ldquo;But never mind! Well, after the season, you know, he got going
+      loose, and this is the result. Owed money everywhere, and with the true
+      Highland incapacity for business, and the true Highland capacity for
+      trusting people&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; grunted Sir Archibald in disapproval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;&mdash;When his head is in a muddled condition he does something or other
+      to a cheque&mdash;or doesn't do it, nobody knows&mdash;and there he is in
+      this awful fix. Personally, I don't believe he is guilty of the crime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why, pray?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? Well, Mr. Dunn, his captain, who has known him for years, says it is
+      quite impossible; and then the young man himself doesn't deny it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What? Does NOT deny it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly! Like a perfectly straightforward gentleman,&mdash;and I think
+      it's awfully fine of him,&mdash;though he has a perfectly good chance to
+      put the thing on a&mdash;a fellow Potts, quite a doubtful character, he
+      simply says, 'I know nothing about it. That looks like my signature. I
+      can't remember doing this, don't know how I could have, but don't know a
+      thing about it.' There you are, Uncle! And Mr. Dunn says he is quite
+      incapable of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Dunn, eh? It seems you build somewhat broadly upon Mr. Dunn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The brown on Miss Bessie's check deepened slightly. &ldquo;Well, Mr. Dunn is a
+      splendid judge of men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah; and of young ladies, also, I imagine,&rdquo; said Sir Archibald, pinching
+      her cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It may have been the pinch, but the flush on her cheek grew distinctly
+      brighter. &ldquo;Don't be ridiculous, Uncle! He's just a boy, a perfectly
+      splendid boy, and glorious in his game, but a mere boy, and&mdash;well,
+      you know, I've arrived at the age of discretion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite true!&rdquo; mused her uncle. &ldquo;Thirty last birthday, was it? How time
+      does&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you perfectly horrid uncle! Thirty indeed! Are you not ashamed to add
+      to the already intolerable burden of my years? Thirty! No, Sir, not by
+      five good years at least! There now, you've made me tell my age! You ought
+      to blush for shame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle patted her firm, round cheek. &ldquo;Never a blush, my dear! You bear
+      even your advanced age with quite sufficient ease and grace. But now about
+      this young Cameron,&rdquo; he continued, assuming a sternly judicial tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I ask for him is a chance,&rdquo; said his niece earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A chance? Why he will get every chance the law allows to clear himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Bessie, in a despairing tone. &ldquo;That's the
+      way the lawyers and your manager talk. They coolly and without a qualm get
+      him arrested, this young boy who has never in all his life shown any sign
+      of criminal tendency. These horrid lawyers display their dreadful
+      astuteness and ability in catching a lad who never tries to run away, and
+      your manager pleads the rules of the Bank. The rules! Fancy rules against
+      a young boy's whole life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle rather winced at this.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And like a lot of sheep they follow each other in a circle; there is
+      absolutely no independence, no initiative. Why, they even went so far as
+      to suggest that you could do nothing, that you were bound by rules and
+      must follow like the rest of them; but I told them I knew better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Sir Archibald in his most dignified manner. &ldquo;I trust I have a
+      mind of my own, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly! So I said to Mr. Dunn. 'Rules or no rules,' I said, 'my uncle
+      will do the fair thing.' And I know you will,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie
+      triumphantly. &ldquo;And if you look at it, there's a very big chance that the
+      boy never did the thing, and certainly if he did it at all it was when he
+      was quite incapable. Oh, I know quite well what the lawyers say. They go
+      by the law,&mdash;they've got to,&mdash;but you&mdash;and&mdash;and&mdash;I
+      go by the&mdash;the real facts of the case.&rdquo; Sir Archibald coughed gently.
+      &ldquo;I mean to say&mdash;well you know, Uncle, quite well, you can tell what a
+      man is by&mdash;well, by his game.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His game!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And by his eye.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His eye! And his eye is&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Uncle, be sensible! I mean to say, if you could only see him. Oh, I
+      shall bring him to see you!&rdquo; she cried, with a sudden inspiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sir Archibald held up a deprecating hand. &ldquo;Do not, I beg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Uncle, you can trust my judgment, you know you can. You would trust
+      me in&mdash;in&mdash;&rdquo; For a moment Miss Brodie was at a loss; then her
+      eyes fell upon the grunting, comfortable old mother pig with her
+      industrious litter. &ldquo;Well, don't I know good Wiltshires when I see them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite true,&rdquo; replied her uncle solemnly; &ldquo;and therefore, men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Uncle, you're very nearly rude.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I apologise,&rdquo; replied her uncle hastily. &ldquo;But now, Bessie, my dear girl,
+      seriously, as to this case, you must understand that I cannot interfere.
+      The Bank&mdash;hem&mdash;the Bank is a great National&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Bessie saw that the Guards were being called upon. She hastened to
+      bring up her reserves. &ldquo;I know, Uncle, I know! I wouldn't for the world
+      say a word against the Bank, but you see the case against the lad is at
+      least doubtful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going on to observe,&rdquo; resumed her uncle, judicially, &ldquo;that the Bank&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't misunderstand me, Uncle,&rdquo; cried his niece, realising that she had
+      reached a moment of crisis. &ldquo;You know I would not for a moment presume to
+      interfere with the Bank, but&rdquo;&mdash;here she deployed her whole force,&mdash;&ldquo;the
+      lad's youth and folly; his previous good character, guaranteed by Dunn,
+      who knows men; his glorious game&mdash;no man who wasn't straight could
+      play such a game!&mdash;the large chance of his innocence, the small
+      chance of his guilt; the hide-bound rigidity of lawyers and bank managers,
+      dominated by mere rules and routine, in contrast with the open-minded
+      independence of her uncle; the boy's utter helplessness; his own father
+      having been ready to believe the worst,&mdash;just think of it, Uncle, his
+      own father thinking of himself and of his family name&mdash;much he has
+      ever done for his family name!&mdash;and not of his own boy, and&rdquo;&mdash;here
+      Miss Brodie's voice took a lower key&mdash;&ldquo;and his mother died some five
+      or six years ago, when he was thirteen or fourteen, and I know, you know,
+      that is hard on a boy.&rdquo; In spite of herself, and to her disgust, a tremor
+      came into her voice and a rush of tears to her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her uncle was smitten with dismay. Only on one terrible occasion since she
+      had emerged from her teens had he seen his niece in tears. The memory of
+      that terrible day swept over his soul. Something desperate was doing. Hard
+      as the little man was to the world against which he had fought his way to
+      his present position of distinction, to his niece he was soft-hearted as a
+      mother. &ldquo;There, there!&rdquo; he exclaimed hastily. &ldquo;We'll give the boy a
+      chance. No mother, eh? And a confounded prig for a father! No wonder the
+      boy goes all wrong!&rdquo; Then with a sudden vehemence he cried, striking one
+      hand into the other, &ldquo;No, by&mdash;! that is, we will certainly give the
+      lad the benefit of the doubt. Cheer up, lassie! You've no need to look
+      ashamed,&rdquo; for his niece was wiping her eyes in manifest disgust; &ldquo;indeed,&rdquo;
+       he said, with a heavy attempt at playfulness, &ldquo;you are a most excellent
+      diplomat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Diplomat, Uncle!&rdquo; cried the girl, vehement indignation in her voice and
+      face. &ldquo;Diplomat!&rdquo; she cried again. &ldquo;You don't mean that I've not been
+      quite sincere?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, no; not in the least, my dear! But that you have put your case
+      with admirable force.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the girl with a breath of relief, &ldquo;I just put it as I feel it.
+      And it is not a bit my putting it, Uncle, but it is just that you are a
+      dear and&mdash;well, a real sport; you love fair play.&rdquo; The girl suddenly
+      threw her strong, young arms about her uncle's neck, drew him close to
+      her, and kissed him almost as if she had been his mother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The little man was deeply touched, but with true Scotch horror of a
+      demonstration he cried, &ldquo;Tut, tut, lassie, ye're makin' an auld fule o'
+      your uncle. Come now, be sensible!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sensible!&rdquo; echoed his niece, kissing him again. &ldquo;That's my living
+      description among all my acquaintance. It is their gentle way of reminding
+      me that the ordinary feminine graces of sweetness and general loveliness
+      are denied me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And more fools they!&rdquo; grunted her uncle. &ldquo;You're worth the hale caboodle
+      o' them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      That same evening there were others who shared this opinion, and none more
+      enthusiastically than did Mr. Dunn, whom Miss Brodie chanced to meet just
+      as she turned out of the Waverly Station.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Dunn,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;how very fortunate!&rdquo; Her face glowed with
+      excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me; yes, indeed!&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn, warmly greeting her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For me, for young Cameron, for us all,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;Oh, Rob, is
+      that you?&rdquo; she continued, as her eye fell upon the youngster standing with
+      cap off waiting her recognition. &ldquo;Look at this!&rdquo; she flashed a letter
+      before Dunn's face. &ldquo;What do you think of that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn took the letter. &ldquo;It's to Sheratt,&rdquo; he said, with a puzzled air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie, mimicking his tone, &ldquo;it's to Sheratt, from Sir
+      Archibald, and it means that Cameron is safe. The police will never&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The police,&rdquo; cried Dunn, hastily, getting between young Rob and her and
+      glancing at his brother, who stood looking from one to the other with a
+      startled face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How stupid! The police are a truly wonderful body of men,&rdquo; she went on
+      with enthusiasm. &ldquo;They look so splendid. I saw some of them as I came
+      along. But never mind them now. About this letter. What's to do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn glanced at his watch. &ldquo;We need every minute.&rdquo; He stood a moment or
+      two thinking deeply while Miss Brodie chatted eagerly with Rob, whose face
+      retained its startled and anxious look. &ldquo;First to Mr. Rae's office. Come!&rdquo;
+       cried Mr. Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this letter ought to go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but first Mr. Rae's office.&rdquo; Mr. Dunn had assumed command. His words
+      shot out like bullets.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Brodie glanced at him with a new admiration in her face. As a rule
+      she objected to being ordered about, but somehow it seemed good to accept
+      commands from this young man, whose usually genial face was now set in
+      such resolute lines.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Rob, you cut home and tell them not to wait dinner for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Jack!&rdquo; But instead of tearing off as was his wont whenever his
+      brother gave command, Rob lingered. &ldquo;Can't I wait a bit, Jack, to see&mdash;to
+      see if anything&mdash;?&rdquo; Rob was striving hard to keep his voice in
+      command and his face steady. &ldquo;It's Cameron, Jack. I know!&rdquo; He turned his
+      back on Miss Brodie, unwilling that she should see his lips quiver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you talking about?&rdquo; said his brother sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it is all my stupid fault, Mr. Dunn,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;Let him come
+      along a bit with us. I say, youngster, you are much too acute,&rdquo; she
+      continued, as they went striding along together toward Mr. Rae's office.
+      &ldquo;But will you believe me if I tell you something? Will you? Straight now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy glanced up into her honest blue eyes, and nodded his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your friend Cameron is quite all right. He was in some difficulty, but
+      now he's quite all right. Do you believe me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy looked again steadily into her eyes. The anxious fear passed out
+      of his face, and once more he nodded; he knew he could not keep his voice
+      quite steady. But after a few paces he said to his brother, &ldquo;I think I'll
+      go now, Jack.&rdquo; His mind was at rest; his idol was safe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come along and protect me,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie. &ldquo;These lawyer people
+      terrify me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy smiled a happy smile. &ldquo;I'll go,&rdquo; he said resolutely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, awfully,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;I shall feel so much safer with you
+      in the waiting room.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a difficult matter to surprise Mr. Rae, and even more difficult to
+      extract from him any sign of surprise, but when Dunn, leaving Miss Brodie
+      and his brother in the anteroom, entered Mr. Rae's private office and laid
+      the letter for Mr. Sheratt before him, remarking, &ldquo;This letter is from Sir
+      Archibald, and withdraws the prosecution,&rdquo; Mr. Rae stood speechless,
+      gazing now at the letter in his hand, and now at Mr. Dunn's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless my soul! This is unheard of. How came you by this, Sir?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Brodie&mdash;&rdquo; began Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Miss Brodie?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is in the waiting room, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, for heaven's sake, bring her in! Davie, Davie! Where is that man
+      now? Here, Davie, a message to Mr. Thomlinson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Davie entered with deliberate composure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My compliments to Mr. Thomlinson, and ask if he would step over at once.
+      It is a matter of extreme urgency. Be quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Davie had his own mind as to the fitness of things. &ldquo;Wad a note no' be
+      better, Sir? Wull not&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go, will you!&rdquo; almost shouted Mr. Rae.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Davie was so startled at Mr. Rae's unusual vehemence that he seized his
+      cap and made for the door. &ldquo;He'll no' come for the like o' me,&rdquo; he said,
+      pausing with the door-knob in his hand. &ldquo;It's no' respectable like tae&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, will ye no' be gone?&rdquo; cried Mr. Rae, rising from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will that!&rdquo; exclaimed Davie, banging the door after him. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he
+      cried furiously, thrusting his head once more into the room, &ldquo;if he'll no'
+      come it's no' faut o' mine.&rdquo; His voice rose higher and higher, and ended
+      in a wrathful scream as Mr. Rae, driven to desperation, hurled a law book
+      of some weight at his vanishing head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The de'il take ye! Ye'll be my deith yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The book went crashing against the door-frame just as Miss Brodie was
+      about to enter. &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; she cried, darting back. &ldquo;Heaven protect me! Rob,
+      save me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rob sprang to her side. She stood for a moment gazing aghast at Mr. Dunn,
+      who gazed back at her in equal surprise. &ldquo;Is this his 'usual'?&rdquo; she
+      inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that the door opened. &ldquo;Ah, Mr. Dunn, this is Miss Brodie, I suppose.
+      Come in, come in!&rdquo; Mr. Rae's manner was most bland.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Miss Brodie gave him her hand with some hesitation. &ldquo;I'm very glad to meet
+      you, Mr. Rae, but is this quite the usual method? I mean to say, I've
+      heard of having advice hurled at one's head, but I can't say that I ever
+      was present at a demonstration of the method.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, with bland and gallant courtesy, &ldquo;the method, my dear
+      young lady, varies with the subject in hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, the subject!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And with the object in view.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But pray be seated. And now explain this most wonderful phenomenon.&rdquo; He
+      tapped the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that is quite simple,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;I set the case of young Mr.
+      Cameron before my uncle, and of course he at once saw that the only thing
+      to do was withdraw the prosecution.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Rae stood gazing steadily at her as if striving to take in the meaning
+      of her words, the while screwing up his ear most violently till it stuck
+      out like a horn upon the side of his shiny, bald head. &ldquo;Permit me to say,
+      Miss Brodie,&rdquo; he said, with a deliberate and measured emphasis, &ldquo;that you
+      must be a most extraordinary young lady.&rdquo; At this point Mr. Rae's smile
+      broke forth in all its glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you, Mr. Rae,&rdquo; replied Miss Brodie, smiling responsively at
+      him. &ldquo;You are most&mdash;&rdquo; But Mr. Rae's smile had vanished. &ldquo;What! I beg
+      your pardon!&rdquo; Miss Brodie's smiling response was abruptly arrested by
+      finding herself gazing at a face whose grave solemnity rebuked her smile
+      as unwarranted levity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all, not at all!&rdquo; said Mr. Rae. &ldquo;But now, there are matters
+      demanding immediate action. First, Mr. Sheratt must receive and act upon
+      this letter without delay.&rdquo; As he spoke he was scribbling hastily a note.
+      &ldquo;Mr. Dunn, my young men have gone for the day. Might I trouble you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most certainly,&rdquo; cried Mr. Dunn. &ldquo;Is an answer wanted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bring him with you, if possible; indeed, bring him whether it is possible
+      or not. But wait, it is past the hour appointed. Already the officer has
+      gone for young Cameron. We must save him the humiliation of arrest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, could I not warn him?&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie eagerly. &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she added,
+      &ldquo;Rob will go. He is in the waiting room now, poor little chap. It will be
+      a joy to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is just as well Rob should know nothing. He is awfully fond of
+      Cameron. It would break his heart,&rdquo; said Mr. Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, of course! Quite unnecessary that he should know anything. We simply
+      wish Cameron here at the earliest possible moment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn went with his young brother down the stairs and out to the street.
+      &ldquo;Now, Rob, you are to go to Cameron's lodgings and tell him that Mr. Rae
+      wants him, and that I want him. Hold on, youngster!&rdquo; he cried, grabbing
+      Rob by the collar, &ldquo;do you understand? It is very important that Cameron
+      should get here as quick as he possibly can, and&mdash;I say, Rob,&rdquo; the
+      big brother's eyes traveled over the darkening streets that led up into
+      the old town, &ldquo;you're not afraid?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A wee bit,&rdquo; said Rob, tugging at the grasp on his collar; &ldquo;but I don't
+      care if I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good boy!&rdquo; cried his brother. &ldquo;Good little brick! I wouldn't let you go,
+      but it's simply got to be done, old chap. Now fly!&rdquo; He held him just a
+      moment longer to slap him on the back, then released his hold. Dunn stood
+      watching the little figure tearing up the North Bridge. &ldquo;Great little
+      soul!&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;Now for old Sheratt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He put his head down and began to bore through the crowd toward Mr.
+      Sheratt's house. When he had gone but a little distance he was brought up
+      short by a bang full in the stomach. &ldquo;Why, what the deuce!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dod gast ye! Whaur are ye're een?&rdquo; It was Davie, breathless and furious
+      from the impact. &ldquo;Wad ye walk ower me, dang ye?&rdquo; cried the little man
+      again. Davie was Free Kirk, and therefore limited in the range of his
+      vocabulary.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! That you, Davie? I'm sorry I didn't see you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A'm no' as big as a hoose, but a'm veesible.&rdquo; And Davie walked wrathfully
+      about his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quite,&rdquo; acknowledged Dunn cheerfully, hurrying on; &ldquo;and tangible, as
+      well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's comin',&rdquo; cried Davie over his shoulder; &ldquo;but gar it had been
+      masel',&rdquo; he added grudgingly, &ldquo;catch me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Dunn was too far on his way to make reply. Already his mind was on the
+      meeting of the lawyers in Mr. Rae's office, and wondering what would come
+      of it. On this subject he meditated until he reached Mr. Sheratt's home.
+      Twice he rang the bell, still meditating.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, she is stunning! She's a wonder!&rdquo; he exclaimed to himself as he
+      stood in Mr. Sheratt's drawing-room. &ldquo;She's got 'em all skinned a mile, as
+      Martin would say.&rdquo; It is safe to affirm that Mr. Dunn was not referring to
+      the middle-aged and highly respectable maid who had opened the door to
+      him. It is equally safe to affirm that this was the unanimous verdict of
+      the three men who, half an hour later, brought their deliberations to a
+      conclusion, frankly acknowledging to each other that what they had one and
+      all failed to achieve, the lady had accomplished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0006" id="link2HCH0006">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, you blessed Colonial, what's come over you?&rdquo; Linklater was
+      obviously disturbed. He had just returned from a summer's yachting through
+      the Norway fjords, brown and bursting with life. The last half-hour he had
+      been pouring forth his experiences to his friend Martin. These experiences
+      were some of them exciting, some of them of doubtful ethical quality, but
+      all of them to Linklater at least interesting. During the recital it was
+      gradually borne in upon him that his friend Martin was changed. Linklater,
+      as the consciousness of the change in his friend grew upon him, was
+      prepared to resent it. &ldquo;What the deuce is the matter with you?&rdquo; he
+      enquired. &ldquo;Are you ill?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never better. I could at this present moment sit upon your fat and florid
+      carcass.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what then is wrong? I say, you haven't&mdash;it isn't a girl, is
+      it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothing so lucky for a bloomin' Colonial in this land of wealth and
+      culture. If I only dared!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's something,&rdquo; insisted Linklater; &ldquo;but I've no doubt it will
+      develop. Meantime let us go out, and, in your own picturesque vocabulary,
+      let us 'hit the flowing bowl.'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Sir!&rdquo; cried Martin emphatically. &ldquo;No more! I am on the water wagon,
+      and have been all summer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I knew it was something,&rdquo; replied Linklater gloomily, &ldquo;but I didn't think
+      it was quite so bad as that. No wonder you've had a hard summer!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Best summer ever!&rdquo; cried Martin. &ldquo;I only wish I had started two years ago
+      when I came to this bibulous burgh.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How came it? Religion?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No; just horse sense, and the old chief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dunn!&rdquo; exclaimed Linklater. &ldquo;I always knew he was against that sort of
+      thing in training, but I didn't think he would carry it to this length.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Dunn! I say, old boy, I've no doubt you think you know him, I
+      thought so, too, but I've learned some this summer. Here's a yarn, and it
+      is impressive. Dunn had planned an extensive walking tour in the
+      Highlands; you know he came out of his exams awfully fagged. Well, at this
+      particular moment it happened that Balfour Murray&mdash;you know the chap
+      that has been running that settlement joint in the Canongate for the last
+      two years&mdash;proposes to Dunn that he should spend a few weeks in
+      leading the young hopefuls in that interesting and uncleanly neighbourhood
+      into paths of virtue and higher citizenship by way of soccer and kindred
+      athletic stunts. Dunn in his innocence agrees, whereupon Balfour Murray
+      promptly develops a sharp attack of pneumonia, necessitating rest and
+      change of air, leaving the poor old chief in the deadly breach. Of course,
+      everybody knows what the chief would do in any deadly breach affair. He
+      gave up his Highland tour, shouldered the whole Canongate business,
+      organised the thing as never before, inveigled all his friends into the
+      same deadly breach, among the number your humble servant, who at the time
+      was fiercely endeavouring in the last lap of the course to atone for a two
+      years' loaf, organised a champion team which has licked the spots off
+      everything in sight, and in short, has made the whole business a howling
+      success; at the cost, however, of all worldly delights, including his
+      Highland tour and the International.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say!&rdquo; moaned Linklater. &ldquo;It makes me quite ill to think of the old
+      chief going off this way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin nodded sympathetically. &ldquo;Kind of 'Days that are no more,' 'Lost
+      leader' feeling, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly, exactly! Oh, it's rotten! And you, too! He's got you on this
+      same pious line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here,&rdquo; shouted Martin, with menace in his voice, &ldquo;are you
+      classifying me with the old chief? Don't be a derned fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linklater brightened perceptibly. &ldquo;Now you're getting a little natural,&rdquo;
+       he said in a hopeful tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I suppose you'd like to hear me string out a lot of damns.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, it might help. I wouldn't feel quite so lonely. But don't violate&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'd do it if I thought it would really increase your comfort, though I
+      know I'd feel like an infernal ass. I've got new light upon this 'damning'
+      business. I've come to regard it as the refuge of the mentally inert, not
+      to say imbecile, who have lost the capacity for originality and force in
+      speech. For me, I am cured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Linklater. &ldquo;Dunn again, I suppose.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit! Clear case of psychological reaction. After listening to the
+      Canongate experts I was immediately conscious of an overwhelming and
+      mortifying sense of inadequacy, of amateurishness; hence I quit. Besides,
+      of course, the chief is making rather a point of uplifting the Canongate
+      forms of speech.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linklater gazed steadily at this friend, then said with mournful
+      deliberation, &ldquo;You don't drink, you don't swear, you don't smoke&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's your grouch, is it?&rdquo; cried Martin. &ldquo;Forgive me; here's my
+      pouch, old chap; or wait, here's something altogether finer than anything
+      you've been accustomed to. I was at old Kingston's last night, and the old
+      boy would have me load up with his finest. You know I've been working with
+      him this summer. Awfully fine for me! Dunn got me on; or rather, his
+      governor. There you are now! Smoke that with reverence.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; sighed Linklater, as he drew in his first whiff, &ldquo;there is still
+      something left to live for. Now tell me, what about Cameron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Cameron! Cameron's all up a tree. The last time I saw him, by Jove, I
+      was glad it was in the open daylight and on a frequented street. His face
+      and manner suggested Roderick Dhu, The Black Douglas, and all the rest of
+      that interesting gang of cutthroats. I can't bring myself to talk of
+      Cameron. He's been the old chief's relaxation during dog-days. It makes me
+      hot to see Dunn with that chap.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what's the trouble?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He tried him out in half a dozen positions, in every one of which he
+      proved a dead failure. The last was in Mr. Rae's office, a lawyer, you
+      know, Writer, to use your lucid and luminous speech. That experiment
+      proved the climax.&rdquo; At the memory of that experience Martin laughed loud
+      and long. &ldquo;It was funny! Mr. Rae, the cool, dignified, methodical, exact
+      man of the law, struggling to lick into shape this haughty Highland
+      chieftain, who in his heart scorned the whole silly business. The result,
+      the complete disorganisation of Mr. Rae's business, and total
+      demoralisation of Mr. Rae's office staff, who one and all swore allegiance
+      to the young chief. Finally, when Mr. Rae had reached the depths of
+      desperation, Cameron graciously deigned to inform his boss that he found
+      the office and its claims quite insupportable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it must have been funny. What happened?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What happened? You bet old Rae fell on his neck with tears of joy, and
+      sent him off with a handsome honorarium, as your gentle speech has it.
+      That was a fortnight ago. Then Dunn, in despair, took Cameron off to his
+      native haunts, and there he is to this day. By the same token, this is the
+      very afternoon that Dunn returns. Let us go to meet him with cornets and
+      cymbals! The unexpected pleasure of your return made me quite forget. But
+      won't he revel in you, old boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know about that,&rdquo; said Linklater gloomily. &ldquo;I've a kind of
+      feeling that I've dropped out of this combination.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Then Martin fell upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if Martin's attempts to relieve his friend of melancholy forebodings
+      were not wholly successful, Dunn's shout of joy and his double-handed
+      shake as he grappled Linklater to him, drove from that young man's heart
+      the last lingering shade of doubt as to his standing with his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On his way home Dunn dropped into Martin's diggings for a &ldquo;crack,&rdquo; and for
+      an hour the three friends reviewed the summer's happenings, each finding
+      in the experience of the others as keen a joy as in his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Linklater's holiday had been the most fruitful in exciting incident. For
+      two months he and his crew had dodged about among quaint Norwegian
+      harbours and in and out of fjords of wonderful beauty. Storms they had
+      weathered and calms they had endured; lazy days they had spent, swimming,
+      fishing, loafing; and wild days in fighting gales and high-running seas
+      that threatened to bury them and their crew beneath their white-topped
+      mountainous peaks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, that must have been great,&rdquo; cried Dunn with enthusiastic delight
+      in his friend's experiences.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It sounds good, even in the telling,&rdquo; cried Martin, who had been
+      listening with envious ears. &ldquo;Now my experiences are quite other. One word
+      describes them, grind, grind, grind, day in and day out, in a gallant but
+      futile attempt to justify the wisdom of my late examiners in granting me
+      my Triple.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't listen to him, Linklater,&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;I happen to know that he
+      came through with banners flying and drums beating; and he has turned into
+      no end of a surgeon. I've heard old Kingston on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what about you, Dunn?&rdquo; asked Linklater, with a kind of curious
+      uncertainty in his voice, as if dreading a tale of calamity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I've loafed about town a little, golfing a bit and slumming a bit for
+      a chap that got ill, and in spare moments looking after Martin here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the International?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, old chap,&rdquo; said Martin, &ldquo;take your medicine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; admitted Dunn, &ldquo;I had to chuck it. But,&rdquo; he hastened to add,
+      &ldquo;Nesbitt has got the thing in fine shape, though of course lacking the two
+      brilliant quarters of last year and the half&mdash;for Cameron's out of it&mdash;it's
+      rather rough on Nesbitt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say! It's rotten, it's really ghastly! How could you do it, Dunn?&rdquo;
+       said Linklater. &ldquo;I could weep tears of blood.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      To this Dunn made no reply. His disappointment was even yet too keen for
+      him to treat it lightly. &ldquo;Anything else seemed quite impossible,&rdquo; at
+      length he said; &ldquo;I had to chuck it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way,&rdquo; said Martin, &ldquo;how's Cameron?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Dunn paused. &ldquo;I wish I could tell you. He's had hard luck this
+      summer. He somehow can't get hold of himself. In fact, I'm quite worried
+      about Cameron. I can't tell you chaps the whole story, but last spring he
+      had a really bad jolt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what's he going to do?&rdquo; Martin asked, somewhat impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish I knew,&rdquo; replied Dunn gloomily. &ldquo;There seems nothing he can get
+      here that's suitable. I'm afraid he will have to try the Colonies; Canada
+      for preference.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say, Dunn,&rdquo; exclaimed Martin, &ldquo;it can't really be as bad as all
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Dunn laughed. &ldquo;I apologise, old chap. That was rather a bad break, wasn't
+      it? But all the same, to a Scotchman, and especially to a Highlander, to
+      leave home and friends and all that sort of thing, you know&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he doesn't know,&rdquo; cried Linklater. &ldquo;The barbarian! How could he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, thank God,&rdquo; replied Martin fervently, &ldquo;I don't know! To my mind any
+      man that has a chance to go to Canada on a good job ought to call in his
+      friends and neighbours to rejoice with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I say, that reminds me,&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;Mr. Rae is coming to have a talk
+      with my governor and me about this very thing to-morrow night. I'd like
+      awfully if you could drop in, Martin; and you, too, Linklater.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Linklater declined. &ldquo;My folks have something on, I fear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin hesitated, protesting that there was &ldquo;altogether too much of this
+      coddling business&rdquo; in the matter of Cameron's future. &ldquo;Besides, my work is
+      rather crowding me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my pious ancestors! Work!&rdquo; exclaimed Linklater in disgust. &ldquo;At this
+      season of the year! Come, Martin, this pose is unworthy of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you could, old man,&rdquo; said Dunn earnestly, &ldquo;we won't keep you long. It
+      would be a great help to us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, I'll come,&rdquo; said Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There'll be no one there but Mr. Rae. We'll just have a smoke and a
+      chat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But in this expectation Dunn was reckoning without his young brother, Rob,
+      who, ever since a certain momentous evening, had entered into a covenant
+      of comradeship with the young lady who had figured so prominently in the
+      deliverance of his beloved Cameron from pending evil, and who during the
+      summer had allowed no week to pass without spending at least a part of a
+      day with her. On this particular evening, having obtained leave from his
+      mother, the young gentle man had succeeded in persuading his friend to
+      accept an invitation to dinner, assuring her that no one would be there
+      except Jack, who was to arrive home the day before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The conclave of Cameron's friends found themselves, therefore,
+      unexpectedly reinforced by the presence of Miss Brodie, to the unmingled
+      joy of all of them, although in Martin's case his joy was tinged with a
+      certain fear, for he stood in awe of the young lady, both because of her
+      reputation for cleverness, and because of the grand air which, when it
+      pleased her, she could assume. Martin, too, stood in wholesome awe of
+      Doctor Dunn, whose quiet dignity and old-time courtesy exercised a
+      chastening influence upon the young man's somewhat picturesque style of
+      language and exuberance of metaphor. But with Mrs. Dunn he felt quite at
+      ease, for with that gentle, kindly soul, her boys' friends were her
+      friends and without question she took them to her motherly heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately upon Mr. Rae's arrival Cameron's future became the subject of
+      conversation, and it required only the briefest discussion to arrive at
+      the melancholy, inevitable conclusion that, as Mr. Rae put it, &ldquo;for a
+      young man of his peculiar temperament, training, and habits, Scotland was
+      clearly impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I have no doubt,&rdquo; continued that excellent adviser, &ldquo;that in Canada,
+      where the demand for a high standard of efficiency is less exacting, and
+      where openings are more plentiful, the young man will do very well
+      indeed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin took the lawyer up somewhat sharply. &ldquo;In other words, I understand
+      you to mean that the man who is a failure in Scotland may become a success
+      in Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so. Would you not say so, Mr. Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It depends entirely upon the cause of failure. If failure arises from
+      unfitness, his chances in Canada are infinitely less than in Scotland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why?&rdquo; inquired Miss Brodie somewhat impatiently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin hesitated. It was extremely difficult in the atmosphere of that
+      home to criticise one whom he knew to be considered as a friend of the
+      family.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, pray?&rdquo; repeated Miss Brodie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, of course,&rdquo; began Martin hesitatingly, &ldquo;comparisons are always
+      odious.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we can bear them.&rdquo; Miss Brodie's smile was slightly sarcastic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, then, speaking generally,&rdquo; said Martin, somewhat nettled by her
+      smile, &ldquo;in this country there are heaps of chaps that simply can't fall
+      down because of the supports that surround them, supports of custom,
+      tradition, not to speak of their countless friends, sisters, cousins, and
+      aunts; if they're anyways half decent they're kept a going; whereas if
+      they are in a new country and with few friends, they must stand alone or
+      fall. Here the crowd support them; there the crowd, eager to get on, shove
+      them aside or trample them down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather a ghastly picture that,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But true; that is, of the unfit. People haven't time to bother with them;
+      the game is too keen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely the picture is overdrawn,&rdquo; said Doctor Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It may be, Sir,&rdquo; replied Martin, &ldquo;but I have seen so many young fellows
+      who had been shipped out to Canada because they were failures at home. I
+      have seen them in very hard luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what about the fit?&rdquo; inquired Miss Brodie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They get credit for every ounce that's in them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But that is so in Scotland as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, Miss Brodie, hardly. Here even strong men and fit men have to
+      wait half a lifetime for the chance that calls for all that's in them.
+      They must march in the procession and the pace is leisurely. In Canada the
+      chances come every day, and the man that's ready jumps in and wins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Brodie. &ldquo;There are more ladders by which to
+      climb.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; cried Martin, &ldquo;and fewer men on them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; argued Dunn, &ldquo;there are other causes of failure in this country.
+      Many a young fellow, for instance, cannot get a congenial position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Martin quickly, &ldquo;because you won't let him; your caste law
+      forbids. With us a man can do anything decent and no one thinks the less
+      of him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I see!&rdquo; again cried Miss Brodie, more eagerly than before. &ldquo;Not only
+      more ladders, but more kinds of ladders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly,&rdquo; said Martin with an approving glance. &ldquo;And he must not be too
+      long in the choosing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, Mr. Martin,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, &ldquo;what would you suggest for our young
+      friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But this Martin refused to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely there are openings for a young fellow in Canada,&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;Take
+      a fellow like myself. What could I do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You?&rdquo; cried Martin, his eyes shining with loving enthusiasm. &ldquo;There are
+      doors open on every business street in every town and city in Canada for
+      you, or for any fellow who has brain or brawn to sell and who will take
+      any kind of a job and stay with it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what job, for instance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What job?&rdquo; cried Martin. &ldquo;Heaps of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point a diversion was created by the entrance of &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; Laughton.
+      Both Martin and Dunn envied the easy grace of his manner, his perfect
+      self-possession, as he greeted each member of the company. For each he had
+      exactly the right word. Miss Brodie he greeted with an exaggerated
+      devotion, but when he shook hands with Dunn there was no mistaking the
+      genuine warmth of his affection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Heard you were home, old chap, so I couldn't help dropping in. Of course
+      I knew that Mrs. Dunn would be sure to be here, and I more than suspected
+      that my dear Miss Brodie,&rdquo; here he swept her an elaborate bow, &ldquo;whom I
+      discovered to be away from her own home, might be found in this pleasant
+      company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I fear that my devotion to her youngest boy is leading me to
+      overstep the bounds of even Mrs. Dunn's vast and generous hospitality.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit, my dear,&rdquo; replied Mrs. Dunn kindly. &ldquo;You bring sunshine with
+      you, and you do us all good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly my sentiments!&rdquo; exclaimed &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; with enthusiasm. &ldquo;But what are
+      you all doing? Just having a 'collyshog'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment no one replied; then Dunn said, &ldquo;We were just talking about
+      Cameron, who is thinking of going to Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To Canada of all places!&rdquo; exclaimed &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in tones of horrified
+      surprise. &ldquo;How truly dreadful! But why should Cameron of all beings exile
+      himself in those remote and barbarous regions?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why should he not?&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie. &ldquo;What is there for a young man
+      of spirit in Mr. Cameron's position in this country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, my dear Miss Brodie, how can you ask? Just think of the heaps of
+      things, of perfectly delicious things, Cameron can do,&mdash;the Highlands
+      in summer, Edinburgh, London, in the season, a run to the Continent! Just
+      think of the wild possibility of a life of unalloyed bliss!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't be silly!&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;We are talking seriously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seriously! Why, my dear Miss Brodie, do you imagine&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what could he do for a life-work?&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;A fellow must have
+      something to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, dear, I suppose so,&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; with a sigh. &ldquo;But surely he could
+      have some position in an office or something!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; replied Miss Brodie. &ldquo;How beautifully you put it! Now Mr.
+      Martin was just about to tell us of the things a man could do in Canada
+      when you interrupted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Awfully sorry, Martin. I apologise. Please go on. What do the natives do
+      in Canada?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Please don't pay any attention to him, Mr. Martin. I am extremely
+      interested. Now tell me, what are the openings for a young fellow in
+      Canada? You said the professions are all wide open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took a little persuasion to get Martin started again, so disgusted was
+      he with Laughton's references to his native country. &ldquo;Yes, Miss Brodie,
+      the professions are all wide open, but of course men must enter as they do
+      here, but with a difference. Take law, for instance: Knew a chap&mdash;went
+      into an office at ten dollars a month&mdash;didn't know a thing about it.
+      In three months he was raised to twenty dollars, and within a year to
+      forty dollars. In three or four years he had passed his exams, got a
+      junior partnership worth easily two thousand dollars a year. They wanted
+      that chap, and wanted him badly. But take business: That chap goes into a
+      store and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A store?&rdquo; inquired &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, a shop you call it here; say a drygoods&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Drygoods? What extraordinary terms these Colonials use!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, draper's shop,&rdquo; said Dunn impatiently. &ldquo;Go on, Martin; don't mind
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A draper's clerk!&rdquo; echoed &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo; &ldquo;To sell tapes and things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Martin stoutly; &ldquo;or groceries.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you by any chance mean that a University man, a gentleman, takes a
+      position in a grocer's shop to sell butter and cheese?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean just that,&rdquo; said Martin firmly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please!&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; with a violent shudder. &ldquo;It is too awful!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are! You wouldn't demean yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not I!&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; fervently.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or disgrace your friends. You want a gentleman's job. There are not
+      enough to go round in Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, go on,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie impatiently. &ldquo;'Lily,' we must ask you to not
+      interrupt. What happens? Does he stay there?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not he!&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;From the small business he goes to bigger
+      business. First thing you know a man wants him for a big job and off he
+      goes. Meantime he saves his money, invests wisely. Soon he is his own
+      boss.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's fine!&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie. &ldquo;Go on, Mr. Martin. Start him lower
+      down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Martin, directing his attention solely to the young
+      lady. &ldquo;Here's an actual case. A young fellow from Scotland found himself
+      strapped&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Strapped? What DOES he mean?&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in an appealing voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the rocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rocks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear me!&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie impatiently. &ldquo;You are terribly lacking in
+      imagination. Broke, he means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thanks!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, finds himself broke,&rdquo; said Martin; &ldquo;gets a shovel, jumps into a
+      cellar&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why a cellar, pray?&rdquo; inquires &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; mildly. &ldquo;To hide himself from
+      the public?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all; they were digging a cellar preparatory to building a house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He jumps in, blisters his hands, breaks his back&mdash;but he stays with
+      the job. In a week the boss makes him timekeeper; in three months he
+      himself is boss of a small gang; the next year he is made foreman at a
+      hundred a month or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred a month?&rdquo; cries &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in astonishment. &ldquo;Oh, Martin, please! We
+      are green, but a hundred pounds a month&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dollars,&rdquo; said Martin shortly. &ldquo;Don't be an ass! I beg pardon,&rdquo; he added,
+      turning to Mrs. Dunn, who was meantime greatly amused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A hundred dollars a month; that is&mdash;I am so weak in arithmetic&mdash;twenty
+      pounds, I understand. Go on, Martin; I'm waiting for the carriage and
+      pair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's where you get left,&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;No carriage and pair for this
+      chap yet awhile; overalls and slouch hat for the next five years for him.
+      Then he begins contracting on his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon,&rdquo; says &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean he begins taking jobs on his own.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great!&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Or,&rdquo; continued Martin, now fairly started on a favourite theme, &ldquo;there
+      are the railroads all shouting for men of experience, whether in the
+      construction department or in the operating department.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Does anyone here happen to understand him?&rdquo; inquires &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; faintly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie; &ldquo;all the intelligent people do. At least,
+      I've a kind of notion there are big things doing. I only wish I were a
+      man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Brodie, how can you?&rdquo; cried &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo; &ldquo;Think of us in such a
+      contingency!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, &ldquo;all of this is most interesting, extremely
+      interesting, Mr. Martin. Still, they cannot all arrive at these exalted
+      positions.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Mr. Rae. I may have given that impression. I confess to a little
+      madness when I begin talking Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; exclaimed &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I said men of brawn and brains, you remember.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And bounce, to perfect the alliteration,&rdquo; murmured &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, bounce, too,&rdquo; said Martin; &ldquo;at least, he must never take back-water;
+      he must be ready to attempt anything, even the impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's the splendid thing about it!&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie. &ldquo;You're entirely
+      on your own and you never say die!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my dear Miss Brodie,&rdquo; moaned &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in piteous accents, &ldquo;you are so
+      fearfully energetic! And then, it's all very splendid, but just think of a&mdash;of
+      a gentleman having to potter around among butter and cheese, or mess about
+      in muddy cellars! Ugh! Positively GHAWSTLY! I would simply die.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, you wouldn't, 'Lily,'&rdquo; said Martin kindly. &ldquo;We have afternoon
+      teas and Browning Clubs, too, you must remember, and some 'cultchaw' and
+      that sort of thing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a joyous shout from Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mr. Martin,&rdquo; persisted Mr. Rae, whose mind was set in arriving at a
+      solution of the problem in hand, &ldquo;I have understood that agriculture was
+      the chief pursuit in Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farming! Yes, it is, but of course that means capital. Good land in
+      Ontario means seventy-five to a hundred dollars per acre, and a man can't
+      do with less than a hundred acres; besides, farming is getting to be a
+      science now-a-days, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, quite true! But to a young man bred on a farm in this country&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Excuse me, Mr. Rae,&rdquo; replied Martin quickly, &ldquo;there is no such thing in
+      Canada as a gentleman farmer. The farmer works with his men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that he actually works?&rdquo; inquired &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo; &ldquo;With the plough
+      and hoe, and that sort of thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Works all day long, as long as any of his men, and indeed longer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And does he actually live&mdash;? of course he doesn't eat with his
+      servants?&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in a tone that deprecated the preposterous
+      proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They all eat together in the big kitchen,&rdquo; replied Martin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How awful!&rdquo; gasped &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My father does,&rdquo; replied Martin, a little colour rising in his cheek,
+      &ldquo;and my mother, and my brothers. They all eat with the men; my sister,
+      too, except when she waits on table.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Brodie. &ldquo;And why not? 'Lily,' I'm afraid you're
+      horribly snobbish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank the Lord,&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; devoutly, &ldquo;I live in this beloved Scotland!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Mr. Martin, forgive my persistence, I understand there is cheaper
+      land in certain parts of Canada; in, say, ManitoBAW.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, Sir, of course, lots of it; square miles of it!&rdquo; cried Martin
+      with enthusiasm. &ldquo;The very best out of doors, and cheap, but I fancy there
+      are some hardships in Manitoba.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I see by the public newspapers,&rdquo; continued Mr. Rae, &ldquo;that there is a
+      very large movement in the way of emigration toward that country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, there's a great boom on in Manitoba just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Boom?&rdquo; said &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo; &ldquo;And what exactly may that be in the vernacular?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I take it,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, evidently determined not to allow the
+      conversation to get out of his hands, &ldquo;you mean a great excitement
+      consequent upon the emigration and the natural rise in land values?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sir,&rdquo; cried Martin, &ldquo;you've hit it exactly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then would there not be opportunity to secure a considerable amount of
+      land at a low figure in that country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most certainly! But it's fair to say that success there means work and
+      hardship and privation. Of course it is always so in a new country; it was
+      so in Ontario. Why, the new settlers in Manitoba don't know what hardships
+      mean in comparison with those that faced the early settlers in Ontario. My
+      father, when a little boy of ten years, went with his father into the
+      solid forest; you don't know what that means in this country, and no one
+      can who has not seen a solid mass of green reaching from the ground a
+      hundred feet high without a break in it except where the trail enters.
+      Into that solid forest in single file went my grandfather, his two little
+      boys, and one ox carrying a bag of flour, some pork and stuff. By a mark
+      on a tree they found the corner of their farm.&rdquo; Martin paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do go on,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie. &ldquo;Tell me the very first thing he did.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Martin seemed to hesitate. &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he began slowly, &ldquo;I've often heard
+      my father tell it. When they came to that tree with the mark on it,
+      grandfather said, 'Boys, we have reached our home. Let us thank God.' He
+      went up to a big spruce tree, drove his ax in to the butt, then kneeled
+      down with the two little boys beside him, and I have heard my father say
+      that when he looked away up between the big trees and saw the bit of blue
+      sky there, he thought God was listening at that blue hole between the
+      tree-tops.&rdquo; Martin paused abruptly, and for a few moments silence held the
+      group. Then Doctor Dunn, clearing his throat, said with quiet emphasis:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he was right, my boy; make no doubt of that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then?&rdquo; inquired Miss Brodie softly. &ldquo;If you don't mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin laughed. &ldquo;Then they had grub, and that afternoon grandfather cut
+      the trees and the boys limbed them off, clearing the ground where the
+      first house stood. That night they slept in a little brush hut that did
+      them for a house until grandmother came two weeks later.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Doctor Dunn. &ldquo;Your grandmother went into the forest?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sir,&rdquo; said Martin; &ldquo;and two miles of solid black bush stretched
+      between her and the next woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course, my dear,&rdquo; said Mrs. Dunn, taking part for the first time
+      in the conversation. &ldquo;What else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They all laughed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, Mother,&rdquo; said her eldest son, &ldquo;that's what you would do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So would I, Mamma, wouldn't I?&rdquo; whispered Rob, leaning towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, my dear,&rdquo; replied his mother; &ldquo;I haven't the slightest doubt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so would any woman worth her salt if she loved her husband,&rdquo; cried
+      Miss Brodie with great emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, why,&rdquo; cried Doctor Dunn, &ldquo;it's the same old breed, Mother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But in Manitoba&mdash;?&rdquo; began Mr. Rae, still clinging to the subject.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, in Manitoba there is no forest to cut. However, there are other
+      difficulties. Still, hundreds are crowding in, and any man who has the
+      courage and the nerve to stay with it can get on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what did they do for schools?&rdquo; said Mrs. Dunn, returning to the theme
+      that had so greatly interested her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There were no schools until father was too big to be spared to go except
+      for a few weeks in the winter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How big do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say fifteen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fifteen!&rdquo; exclaimed Miss Brodie. &ldquo;A mere infant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Infant!&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;Not much! At fifteen my father was doing a man's
+      full work in the bush and on the farm, and when he grew to be a man he
+      cleared most of his own land, too. Why, when I was eleven I drove my team
+      all day on the farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how did you get your education, Mr. Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, they kept me at school pretty steadily, except in harvest and hay
+      time, until I was fourteen, and after that in the winter months. When I
+      was sixteen I got a teacher's certificate, and then it was easy enough.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did you put yourself through college?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Rae, both
+      interest and admiration in his voice, for now they were on ground familiar
+      in his own experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes, mostly. Father helped, I suspect more than he ought to, but he
+      was anxious for me to get through.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rob,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie suddenly, &ldquo;let's go! What do you say? We'll get a
+      big bit of that land in the West, and won't it be splendid to build up our
+      own estate and all that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rob glanced from her into his mother's face. &ldquo;I'd like it fine, Mamma,&rdquo; he
+      said in a low voice, slipping his hand into hers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But what about me, Rob?&rdquo; said his mother, smiling tenderly down into the
+      eager face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'd come back for you, Mamma.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on there, youngster,&rdquo; said his elder brother, &ldquo;there are others that
+      might have something to say about that. But I say, Martin,&rdquo; continued
+      Dunn, &ldquo;we hear a lot about the big ranches further West.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in Alberta, but I confess I don't know much about them. The railways
+      are just building and people are beginning to go in. But ranching needs
+      capital, too. It must be a great life! They practically live in the
+      saddle. It's a glorious country!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On the whole, then,&rdquo; said Mr. Rae, as if summing up the discussion, &ldquo;a
+      young man has better opportunities of making his fortune, so to speak, in
+      the far West rather than in, say, Ontario.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't speak of fortune, Mr. Rae,&mdash;fortune is a chance thing, more
+      or less,&mdash;but what I say is this, that any young man not afraid of
+      work, of any kind of work, and willing to stay with his job, can make a
+      living and get a home in any part of Canada, with a bigger chance of
+      fortune in the West.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All I say, Mr. Rae, is this,&rdquo; said Miss Brodie emphatically, &ldquo;that I only
+      wish I were a man with just such a chance as young Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, my dear young lady, if all the young men were possessed of your
+      spirit, it would matter little where they went, for they would achieve
+      distinct success.&rdquo; As he spoke Mr. Rae's smile burst forth in all its
+      effulgent glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dear Mr. Rae, how very clever of you to discover that!&rdquo; replied Miss
+      Brodie, smiling sweetly into Mr. Rae's radiant face. &ldquo;And how very sweet
+      of you&mdash;ah, I beg your pardon; that is&mdash;&rdquo; The disconcerting
+      rapidity with which Mr. Rae's smile gave place to an appearance of grave,
+      of even severe solemnity, threw Miss Brodie quite &ldquo;out of her stride,&rdquo; as
+      Martin said afterward, and left her floundering in a hopeless attempt to
+      complete her compliment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Her confusion was the occasion of unlimited joy to &ldquo;Lily,&rdquo; who was not
+      unfamiliar with this facial phenomenon on the part of Mr. Rae. &ldquo;Oh, I
+      say!&rdquo; he cried to Dunn in a gale of smothered laughter, &ldquo;how does the dear
+      man do it? It is really too lovely! I must learn the trick of that. I have
+      never seen anything quite so appallingly flabbergasting.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Mr. Rae was blandly assisting Miss Brodie out of her dilemma.
+      &ldquo;Not at all, Miss Brodie, not at all! But,&rdquo; he continued, throwing his
+      smile about the room, &ldquo;I think, Doctor Dunn, we have reason to
+      congratulate ourselves upon not only a pleasant but an extremely
+      profitable evening&mdash;ah&mdash;as far as the matter in hand is
+      concerned. I hope to have further speech with our young friend,&rdquo; bowing to
+      Mr. Martin and bringing his smile to bear upon that young gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, certainly,&rdquo; began Martin with ready geniality, &ldquo;whenever you&mdash;eh?
+      What did you say, Sir? I didn't quite&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Rae was already bidding Mrs. Dunn goodnight, with a face of
+      preternatural gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce!&rdquo; said Martin, turning to his friend Dunn. &ldquo;Does the old
+      boy often go off at half-cock that way? He'll hurt himself some time,
+      sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it awful?&rdquo; said Dunn. &ldquo;He's got me a few times that way, too. But I
+      say, old boy, we're awfully grateful to you for coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel like a fool,&rdquo; said Martin; &ldquo;as if I'd been delivering a lecture.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't think it,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie, who had drawn near. &ldquo;You've been
+      perfectly lovely, and I am so glad to have got to know you better. For me,
+      I am quite resolved to go to Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But do you think they can really spare us all, Miss Brodie?&rdquo; exclaimed
+      &ldquo;Lily&rdquo; in an anxious voice. &ldquo;For, of course, if you go we must.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, 'Lily,' I'm quite sure they can't spare you. Just think, what could
+      the Browning-Wagner circle do? Besides, what could we do with you when we
+      were all working, for I can quite see that there is no use going to Canada
+      unless you mean to work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got it, Miss Brodie,&rdquo; said Martin. &ldquo;My lecture is not in vain.
+      There is no use going to Canada unless you mean to work and to stay with
+      the job till the cows come home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Till the cows come&mdash;?&rdquo; gasped &ldquo;Lily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, never mind him, Mr. Martin! Come, 'Lily' dear, I'll explain it to you
+      on the way home. Good-night, Mr. Dunn; we've had a jolly evening. And as
+      for our friend Cameron, I've ceased to pity him; on the contrary, I envy
+      him his luck.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0007" id="link2HCH0007">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Once more the golden light of a sunny spring day was shining on the
+      sapphire loch at the bottom, and overflowing at the rim of the Cuagh Oir.
+      But for all its flowing gold, there was grief in the Glen&mdash;grief deep
+      and silent, like the quiet waters of the little loch. It was seen in the
+      grave faces of the men who gathered at the &ldquo;smiddy.&rdquo; It was heard in the
+      cadence of the voices of the women as they gathered to &ldquo;kalie&rdquo; (Ceilidh)
+      in the little cottages that fringed the loch's side, or dotted the
+      heather-clad slopes. It even checked the boisterous play of the bairns as
+      they came in from school. It lay like a cloud on the Cuagh, and heavy on
+      the hearts that made up the little hill-girt community of one hundred
+      souls, or more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And the grief was this, that on the &ldquo;morrow's morn&rdquo; Mary Robertson's son
+      was departing from the Glen &ldquo;neffer to return for effermore,&rdquo; as Donald of
+      the House farm put it, with a face gloomy as the loch on a dark winter's
+      day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A leaving&rdquo; was ever an occasion of wailing to the Glen, and many a
+      leaving had the Glen known during the last fifty years. For wherever the
+      tartan waved, and the bonnie feathers danced for the glory of the Empire,
+      sons of the Glen were ever to be found; but not for fifty years had the
+      heart of the Glen known the luxury of a single rallying centre for their
+      pride and their love till the &ldquo;young chentleman,&rdquo; young Mr. Allan, began
+      to go in and out among them. And as he grew into manhood so grew their
+      pride in him. And as, from time to time, at the Great Games he began to
+      win glory for the Glen with his feats of skill and strength, and upon the
+      pipes, and in the dances, their pride in him grew until it passed all
+      limits. Had he not, the very year before he went to the college, cut the
+      comb of the &ldquo;Cock of the North&rdquo; from Glen Urquhart, in running and
+      jumping; and the very same year had he not wrested from Callum Bheg, the
+      pride of Athole, the coveted badge of Special Distinction in Highland
+      Dancing? Then later, when the schoolmaster would read from the Inverness
+      Courier to one group after another at the post office and at the &ldquo;smiddy&rdquo;
+       (it was only fear of the elder MacPherson, that kept the master from
+      reading it aloud at the kirk door before the service) accounts of the
+      &ldquo;remarkable playing&rdquo; of Cameron, the brilliant young &ldquo;half-back&rdquo; of the
+      Academy in Edinburgh, the Glen settled down into an assured conviction
+      that it had reached the pinnacle of vicarious glory, and that in all
+      Scotland there was none to compare with their young &ldquo;chieftain&rdquo; as, quite
+      ignoring the Captain, they loved to call him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And there was more than pride in him, for on his holidays he came back to
+      the Glen unspoiled by all his honours and achievements, and went about
+      among them &ldquo;jist like ain o' their ain sels,&rdquo; accepting their homage as
+      his right, but giving them in return, according to their various stations,
+      due respect and honour, and their love grew greater than their pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the &ldquo;morrow's morn&rdquo; he was leaving the Glen, and, worse than all, no
+      one knew for why. A mystery hung over the cause of his going, a mystery
+      deepened by his own bearing during the past twelve months, for all these
+      months a heavy gloom had shrouded him, and from all that had once been his
+      delight and their glory he had withdrawn. The challenge, indeed, from the
+      men of Glen Urquhart which he had accepted long ago, he refused not, but
+      even the overwhelming defeat which he had administered to his haughty
+      challengers, had apparently brought him no more than a passing gleam of
+      joy. The gloom remained unlifted and the cause the Glen knew not, and no
+      man of them would seek to know. Hence the grief of the Glen was no common
+      grief when the son of Mary Robertson, the son of the House, the pride of
+      the Glen, and the comrade and friend of them all, was about to depart and
+      never to return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through the
+      cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift of
+      remembrance. It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe. It was not only
+      that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round every stick and stone
+      of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving behind him a love and
+      loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself. It was that in tearing himself
+      from them he could make no response to the dumb appeal in the eyes that
+      followed him with adoration and fidelity: &ldquo;Wherefore do you leave us at
+      all?&rdquo; and &ldquo;Why do you make no promise of return?&rdquo; To that dumb appeal
+      there was no answer possible from one who carried on his heart for
+      himself, and on his life for some few others, and among these his own
+      father, the terrible brand of the criminal. It was this grim fact that
+      stained black the whole landscape of his consciousness, and that hung like
+      a pall of death over every living and delightsome thing in the garden of
+      his soul. While none could, without challenge, condemn him, yet his own
+      tongue refused to proclaim his innocence. Every face he loved drove deeper
+      into his heart his pain. The deathless loyalty and unbounded pride of the
+      Glen folk rebuked him, without their knowing, for the dishonour he had
+      done them. The Glen itself, the hills, the purpling heather, the gleaming
+      loch, how dear to him he had never known till now, threw in his face a sad
+      and silent reproach. Small wonder that the Glen, that Scotland had become
+      intolerable to him. With this bitter burden on his heart it was that young
+      Mr. Allan went his way through the Glen making his farewells, not daring
+      to indulge the luxury of his grief, and with never a word of return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      His sister, who knew all, and who would have carried&mdash;oh! how gladly!&mdash;on
+      her own heart, and for all her life long, that bitter burden, pleaded to
+      be allowed to go with him on what she knew full well was a journey of
+      sorrow and sore pain, but this he would not permit. This sorrow and pain
+      which were his own, he would share with no one, and least of all with her
+      upon whose life he had already cast so dark a shadow. Hence she was at the
+      house alone, her father not having yet returned from an important meeting
+      at a neighbouring village, when a young man came to the door asking for
+      young Mr. Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it, Kirsty?&rdquo; she inquired anxiously, a new fear at her heart for
+      her brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know not, but he has neffer been in this Glen before whateffer,&rdquo;
+       replied Kirsty, with an ominous shake of the head, her primitive instincts
+      leading her to view the stranger with suspicion. &ldquo;But!&rdquo; she added, with a
+      glance at her young mistress' face, &ldquo;he iss no man to be afraid of, at any
+      rate. He is just a laddie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he is a YOUNG man, Kirsty?&rdquo; replied her mistress, glancing at her
+      blue serge gown, her second best, and with her hands striving to tuck in
+      some of her wayward curls.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Och, yess, and not much at that!&rdquo; replied Kirsty, with the idea of
+      relieving her young mistress of unnecessary fears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Moira, putting on her grand air, stepped into the parlour, and saw
+      standing there and awaiting her, a young man with a thin and somewhat hard
+      face, a firm mouth, and extraordinarily keen, grey eyes. Upon her
+      appearing the young man stood looking upon her without a word. As a matter
+      of fact, he was struggling with a problem; a problem that was quite
+      bewildering; the problem, namely, &ldquo;How could hair ever manage to get
+      itself into such an arrangement of waves and curls, and golden gleams and
+      twinkles?&rdquo; Struggling with this problem, he became conscious of her voice
+      gravely questioning him. &ldquo;You were wishing to see my brother?&rdquo; The young
+      man came back part way, and replied, &ldquo;Oh! how does it&mdash;? That is&mdash;.
+      I beg your pardon.&rdquo; The surprise in her face brought him quite to the
+      ground, and he came at once to his business. &ldquo;I am Mr. Martin,&rdquo; he said in
+      a quick, sharp voice. &ldquo;I know your brother and Mr. Dunn.&rdquo; He noted a light
+      dawn in her eyes. &ldquo;In fact, I played with them on the same team&mdash;at
+      football, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried the girl, relief and welcome in her voice, &ldquo;I know you, Mr.
+      Martin, quite well. I know all about you, and what a splendid quarter-back
+      you are.&rdquo; Here she gave him both her hands, which Mr. Martin took in a
+      kind of dream, once more plunged into the mazes of another and more
+      perplexing problem, viz., Was it her lips with that delicious curve to
+      them? or her eyes so sunny and brown (or were they brown?) with that
+      alluring, bewitching twinkle? or was it both lips and eyes that gave to
+      the smile with which she welcomed him its subtle power to make his heart
+      rise and choke him as it never had been known to do in the most strenuous
+      of his matches? &ldquo;I'm awfully glad,&rdquo; he heard himself say, and her voice
+      replying, &ldquo;Oh, yes! Allan has often and often spoken of you, Mr. Martin.&rdquo;
+       Mr. Martin immediately became conscious of a profound and grateful
+      affection to Allan, still struggling, however, with the problem which had
+      been complicated still further by the charm of her soft, Highland voice.
+      He was on the point of deciding in favour of her voice, when on her face
+      he noted a swift change from glad welcome to suspicion and fear, and then
+      into her sunny eyes a sudden leaping of fierce wrath, as in those of a
+      lioness defending her young.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why do you look so?&rdquo; she cried in a voice sharp and imperious. &ldquo;Is it my
+      brother&mdash;? Is anything wrong?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The shock of the change in eyes and voice brought Martin quite to himself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wrong? Not a bit,&rdquo; he hastened to say, &ldquo;but just the finest thing in the
+      world. It is all here in this letter. Dunn could not come himself, and
+      there was no one else, and he thought Cameron ought to have it to-day, so
+      here I am, and here is the letter. Where is he?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; cried the girl, clasping her hands upon her heart, her voice growing
+      soft, and her eyes dim with a sudden mist. &ldquo;I am so thankful! I am so
+      glad!&rdquo; The change in her voice and in her eyes so affected Mr. Martin that
+      he put his hands resolutely behind his back lest they should play him
+      tricks, and should, without his will, get themselves round her and draw
+      her close to his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So am I,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;awfully glad! Never was so glad in all my life!&rdquo; He
+      was more conscious than ever of bewilderment and perplexity in the midst
+      of increasing problems that complicated themselves with mist brown eyes,
+      trembling lips, and a voice of such pathetic cadences as aroused in him an
+      almost uncontrollable desire to exercise his utmost powers of comfort. And
+      all the while there was growing in his heart a desperate anxiety as to
+      what would be the final issue of these bewildering desires and
+      perplexities; when at the extremity of his self-control he was saved by
+      the girl's suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let us go and find my brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes!&rdquo; cried Martin, &ldquo;for heaven's sake let us.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait until I get my hat.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I wouldn't put on a hat,&rdquo; cried he in dismay.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; enquired the girl, looking at him with surprised curiosity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! because&mdash;because you don't need one; it's so beautiful and
+      sunny, you know.&rdquo; In spite of what he could do Mr. Martin's eyes kept
+      wandering to her hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well!&rdquo; cried Moira, in increasing surprise at this strange young man,
+      &ldquo;the sun won't hurt me, so come, let us go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Together they went down the avenue of rugged firs. At the highway she
+      paused. Before them lay the Glen in all the splendid sweep of its beauty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't it lovely!&rdquo; she breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lovely!&rdquo; echoed Martin, his eyes not on the Glen. &ldquo;It is so sunny, you
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she answered quickly, &ldquo;you notice that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How could I help it?&rdquo; said Martin, his eyes still resting upon her. &ldquo;How
+      could I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;and so we call it the Glen Cuagh Oir, that is
+      the 'Glen of the Cup of Gold.' And to think he has to leave it all
+      to-morrow!&rdquo; she added.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The pathetic cadences in her voice again drove Martin to despair. He
+      recovered himself, however, to say, &ldquo;But he is going to Canada!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, to Canada. And we all feel it so dreadfully for him, and,&rdquo; she added
+      in a lower voice, &ldquo;for ourselves.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Had it been yesterday Martin would have been ready with scorn for any such
+      feeling, and with congratulations to Cameron upon his exceptionally good
+      luck in the expectation of going to Canada; but to-day, somehow it was
+      different. He found the splendid lure of his native land availed not to
+      break the spell of the Glen, and as he followed the girl in and out of the
+      little cottages, seeking her brother, and as he noted the perfect courtesy
+      and respect which marked her manner with the people, and their unstudied
+      and respectful devotion to their &ldquo;tear young leddy,&rdquo; this spell deepened
+      upon him. Unconsciously and dimly he became aware of a mysterious and
+      mighty power somehow and somewhere in the Glen straining at the
+      heart-strings of its children. Of the nature and origin of this mysterious
+      and mighty power, the young Canadian knew little. His country was of too
+      recent an origin for mystery, and its people too heterogeneous in their
+      ethnic characteristics to furnish a soil for tribal instincts and
+      passions. The passionate loves and hatreds of the clans, their pride of
+      race, their deathless lealty; and more than all, and better than all,
+      their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices; these, with the mystic,
+      wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and rock-rimmed loch, of roaring
+      torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir and sunny pasture nuiks; all
+      these, and ten thousand nameless and unnamable things united in the
+      weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the hearts of its people. Of how it
+      all came to be, Martin knew nothing, but like an atmosphere it stole in
+      upon him, and he came to vaguely understand something of what it meant to
+      be a Highlander, and to bid farewell to the land into whose grim soil his
+      life roots had struck deep, and to tear himself from hearts whose life
+      stream and his had flowed as one for a score of generations. So from cot
+      to cot Martin followed and observed, until they came to the crossing where
+      the broad path led up from the highroad to the kirkyard and the kirk. Here
+      they were halted by a young man somewhat older than Martin. Tall and gaunt
+      he stood. His face, pale and pock-marked and lit by light blue eyes, and
+      crowned by brilliant red hair, was, with all its unloveliness, a face of a
+      certain rugged beauty; while his manner and bearing showed the native
+      courtesy of a Highland gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are seeking Mr. Allan?&rdquo; he said, taking off his bonnet to the girl.
+      &ldquo;He is in yonder,&rdquo; waving his hand towards the kirkyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In yonder? You are sure, Mr. Maclise?&rdquo; She might well ask, for never but
+      on Sabbath days, since the day they had laid his mother away under the
+      birch trees, had Allan put foot inside the kirkyard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half an hour ago he went in,&rdquo; replied the young Highlander, &ldquo;and he has
+      not returned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will go in, then,&rdquo; said the girl, and hesitated, unwilling that a
+      stranger's eyes should witness what she knew was waiting her there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You, Sir, will perhaps abide with me,&rdquo; suggested Mr. Maclise to Martin,
+      with a quick understanding of her hesitation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank you,&rdquo; cried Moira. &ldquo;This is Mr. Martin from Canada, Mr. Maclise&mdash;my
+      brother's great friend. Mr. Maclise is our schoolmaster here,&rdquo; she added,
+      turning to Martin, &ldquo;and we are very proud of him.&rdquo; The Highlander's pale
+      face became the colour of his brilliant hair as he remarked, &ldquo;You are very
+      good indeed, Miss Cameron, and I am glad to make the acquaintance of Mr.
+      Martin. It will give me great pleasure to show Mr. Martin the little falls
+      at the loch's end, if he cares to step that far.&rdquo; If Mr. Martin was
+      conscious of any great desire to view the little falls at the loch's end,
+      his face most successfully dissembled any such feeling, but to the little
+      falls he must go as the schoolmaster quietly possessed himself of him and
+      led him away, while Miss Cameron, with never a thought of either of them,
+      passed up the broad path into the kirkyard. There, at the tower's foot,
+      she came upon her brother, prone upon the little grassy mound, with arms
+      outspread, as if to hold it in embrace. At the sound of his sister's tread
+      upon the gravel, he raised himself to his knees swiftly, and with a fierce
+      gesture, as if resenting intrusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it is you, Moira,&rdquo; he said quietly, sinking down upon the grass. At
+      the sight of his tear-stained, haggard face, the girl ran to him with a
+      cry, and throwing herself down beside him put her arms about him with
+      inarticulate sounds of pity. At length her brother raised himself from the
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it is terrible to leave it all,&rdquo; he groaned; &ldquo;yet I am glad to leave,
+      for it is more terrible to stay; the very Glen I cannot look at; and the
+      people, I cannot bear their eyes. Oh,&rdquo; he groaned, wringing his hands, &ldquo;if
+      she were here she would understand, but there is nobody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Allan,&rdquo; cried his sister in reproach.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, yes, I know! I know! You believe in me, Moira, but you are just a
+      lassie, and you cannot understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you know well I believe in you, Allan, and others, too, believe in
+      you. There is Mr. Dunn, and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; said her brother bitterly, &ldquo;he wants to believe it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and there is Mr. Martin,&rdquo; she continued, &ldquo;and&mdash;Oh, I forgot!
+      here is a letter Mr. Martin brought you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, your Martin, a strange little man; your quarter-back, you know. He
+      brought this, and he says it is good news.&rdquo; But already Allan was into his
+      letter. As he read his face grew white, his hand began to shake, his eyes
+      to stare as if they would devour the very paper. The second time he read
+      the letter his whole body trembled, and his breath came in gasps, as if he
+      were in a physical struggle. Then lifting arms and voice towards the sky,
+      he cried in a long, low wail, &ldquo;Oh God, it is good, it is good!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that he laid himself down prone upon the mound again, his face in the
+      grass, sobbing brokenly, &ldquo;Oh, mother, mother dear, I have got you once
+      more; I have got you once more!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His sister stood, her hands clasped upon her heart&mdash;a manner she had&mdash;her
+      tears, unnoted, flowing down her cheeks, waiting till her brother should
+      let her into his joy, as she had waited for entrance into his grief. His
+      griefs and his joys were hers, and though he still held her a mere child,
+      it was with a woman's self-forgetting love she ministered to him, gladly
+      accepting whatever confidence he would give, but content to wait until he
+      should give more. So she stood waiting, with her tears flowing quietly,
+      and her face alight with wonder and joy for him. But as her brother's
+      sobbing continued, this terrible display of emotion amazed her, startled
+      her, for since their mother's death none of them had seen Allan weep. At
+      length he raised himself from the ground and stood beside her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Moira, lassie, I never knew how terrible it was till now. I had lost
+      everything, my friends, you, and,&rdquo; he added in a low voice, &ldquo;my mother.
+      This cursed thing shut me out from all; it got between me and all I ever
+      loved. I have not for these months been able to see her face clear, but do
+      you know, Moira,&rdquo; here his voice fell and the mystic light grew in his
+      eyes, &ldquo;I saw her again just now as clear as clear, and I know I have got
+      her again; and you, too, Moira, darling,&rdquo; here he gathered his sister to
+      him, &ldquo;and the people! and the Glen! Oh! is it not terrible what a crime
+      can do? How it separates you from your folk, and from all the world, for,
+      mind you, I have felt myself a criminal; but I am not! I am not!&rdquo; His
+      voice rose into an exultant shout, &ldquo;I am clear of it, I am a man again!
+      Oh, it is good! it is good! Here, read the letter, it will prove to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what does it matter at all, Allan,&rdquo; she cried, still clinging to him,
+      &ldquo;as if it made any difference to me. I always knew it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her brother lifted her face from his breast and looked into her eyes. &ldquo;Do
+      you tell me you don't want to know the proof of it?&rdquo; he asked in wonder.
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said simply. &ldquo;Why should I need any proof? I always knew it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment longer he gazed upon her, then said, &ldquo;Moira, you are a
+      wonder, lassie. No, you are a lassie no longer, you are a woman, and, do
+      you know, you are like mother to me now, and I never saw it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She smiled up at him through her tears. &ldquo;I should like to be,&rdquo; she said
+      softly. Then, because she was truly Scotch, she added, &ldquo;for your sake, for
+      I love you terribly much; and I am going to lose you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A quiver passed through her frame, and her arms gripped him tight. In the
+      self-absorption in his grief and pain he had not thought of hers, nor
+      considered how with his going her whole life would be changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been a selfish brute,&rdquo; he muttered. &ldquo;I have only thought of my own
+      suffering; but, listen Moira, it is all past; thank God, it is all past.
+      This letter from Mr. Rae holds a confession from Potts (poor Potts! I am
+      glad that Rae let him off): it was Potts who committed the forgery. Now I
+      feel myself clean again; you can't know what that is; to be yourself
+      again, and to be able to look all men in the face without fear or shame.
+      Come, we must go; I must see them all again. Let us to the burn first, and
+      put my face right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment he stood looking down upon his mother's grave. The hideous thing
+      that had put her far from him, and that had blurred the clear vision of
+      her face, was gone. A smile soft and tender as a child's stole over his
+      face, and with that smile he turned away. As they were coming back from
+      the burn, Martin and the schoolmaster saw them in the distance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless me, man, will you look at him?&rdquo; said the master in an awestruck
+      tone, clutching Martin's arm. &ldquo;What ever is come to him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up,&rdquo; cried Martin. &ldquo;By Jove! you're right! the Roderick Dhu and
+      Black Douglas business is gone, sure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless my soul!&rdquo; said Maclise in an undertone. &ldquo;He is himself once
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He might well exclaim, for it was a new Allan that came striding up the
+      high road, with head lifted, and with the proud swing of a Highland
+      chieftain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, old man!&rdquo; he shouted, catching sight of Martin and running towards
+      him with hands outstretched, &ldquo;You are welcome&rdquo;&mdash;he grasped his hands
+      and held them fast&mdash;&ldquo;you are welcome to this Glen, and to me welcome
+      as Heaven to a Hell-bound soul.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maclise,&rdquo; he cried, turning to the master, &ldquo;this letter,&rdquo; waving it in
+      his hand, &ldquo;is like a reprieve to a man on the scaffold.&rdquo; Maclise stood
+      gazing in amazement at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They accused me of crime!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of crime, Mr. Allan?&rdquo; Maclise stiffened in haughty surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, of base crime!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But this letter completely clears him,&rdquo; cried Martin eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Maclise turned upon him with swift scorn, &ldquo;There was no need, for anyone
+      in this Glen whatever.&rdquo; The Highlander's face was pale, and in his light
+      blue eyes gleamed a fierce light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Martin flashed a look upon the girl standing so proudly erect beside her
+      brother, and reflecting in her face and eyes the sentiments of the
+      schoolmaster.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! I believe you,&rdquo; cried Martin with conviction, &ldquo;it is not needed
+      here, but&mdash;but there are others, you know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Others?&rdquo; said the Highlander with fine scorn, &ldquo;and what difference?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Glen folk needed no clearing of their chief, and the rest of the world
+      mattered not.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there was myself,&rdquo; said Allan. &ldquo;Now it is gone, Maclise, and I can
+      give my hand once more without fear or shame.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Maclise took the offered hand almost with reverence, and, removing his
+      bonnet from his head, said in a voice, deep and vibrating with emotion,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neffer will a man of the Glen count it anything but honour to take thiss
+      hand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Maclise,&rdquo; cried Allan, keeping his grip of the master's hand.
+      &ldquo;Now you can tell the Glen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will not be going to leave us now?&rdquo; said Maclise eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I shall go, Maclise, but,&rdquo; with a proud lift of his head, &ldquo;tell them
+      I am coming back again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that message Maclise went to the Glen. From cot to cot and from
+      lip to lip the message sped, that Mr. Allan was himself again, and that,
+      though on the morrow's morn he was leaving the Glen, he himself had
+      promised that he would return.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That evening, as the gloaming deepened, the people of the Glen gathered,
+      as was their wont, at their cottage doors to listen to old piper
+      Macpherson as he marched up and down the highroad. This night, it was
+      observed, he no longer played that most heart-breaking of all Scottish
+      laments, &ldquo;Lochaber No More.&rdquo; He had passed up to the no less
+      heart-thrilling, but less heartbreaking, &ldquo;Macrimmon's Lament.&rdquo; In a pause
+      in Macpherson's wailing notes there floated down over the Glen the sound
+      of the pipes up at the big House.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless my soul! whisht, man!&rdquo; cried Betsy Macpherson to her spouse.
+      &ldquo;Listen yonder!&rdquo; For the first time in months they heard the sound of
+      Allan's pipes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is himself,&rdquo; whispered the women to each other, and waited. Down the
+      long avenue of ragged firs, and down the highroad, came young Mr. Allan,
+      in all the gallant splendour of his piper's garb, and the tune he played
+      was no lament, but the blood-stirring &ldquo;Gathering of the Gordons.&rdquo; As he
+      came opposite to Macpherson's cottage he gave the signal for the old
+      piper, and down the highroad stepped the two of them together, till they
+      passed beyond the farthest cottage. Then back again they swung, and this
+      time it was to the &ldquo;Cock of the North,&rdquo; that their tartans swayed and
+      their bonnets nodded. Thus, not with woe and lamentation, but with good
+      hope and gallant cheer, young Mr. Allan took his leave of the Glen Cuagh
+      Oir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0008" id="link2HCH0008">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      WILL HE COME BACK?
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was the custom in Doctor Dunn's household that, immediately after
+      dinner, his youngest son would spend half an hour in the study with his
+      father. It was a time for confidences. During this half hour father and
+      son met as nearly as possible on equal terms, discussing, as friends
+      might, the events of the day or the plans for the morrow, school work or
+      athletics, the latest book or the newest joke; and sometimes the talk
+      turned upon the reading at evening prayers. This night the story had been
+      one of rare beauty and of absorbing interest, the story, viz., of that
+      idyllic scene on the shore of Tiberias where the erring disciple was fully
+      restored to his place in the ranks of the faithful, as he had been
+      restored, some weeks before, to his place in the confidence of his Master.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was a fine story, Rob?&rdquo; began Doctor Dunn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it was,&rdquo; said Rob gravely. &ldquo;It was fine for Peter to get back
+      again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just so,&rdquo; replied his father. &ldquo;You see, when a man once turns his back on
+      his best Friend, he is never right till he gets back again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I know,&rdquo; said Rob gravely. For a time he sat with a shadow of
+      sadness and anxiety on his young face. &ldquo;It is terrible!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Terrible?&rdquo; inquired the Doctor. &ldquo;Oh, yes, you mean Peter's fall? Yes,
+      that was a terrible thing&mdash;to be untrue to our Master and faithless
+      to our best Friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But he did not mean to, Dad,&rdquo; said Rob quickly, as if springing to the
+      fallen disciple's defence. &ldquo;He forgot, just for a moment, and was awfully
+      sorry afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, truly,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;and that was the first step back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments Rob remained silent, his face sad and troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man! It must be terrible!&rdquo; at length he said, more to himself than to his
+      father. The Doctor looked closely at the little lad. The eager, sensitive
+      face, usually so radiant, was now clouded and sad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Rob? Is it something you can tell me?&rdquo; asked his father in a
+      tone of friendly kindness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Rob moved closer to him. The father waited in silence. He knew better than
+      to force an unwilling confidence. At length the lad, with an obvious
+      effort at self-command, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is to-morrow, Daddy, that Cameron&mdash;that Mr. Cameron is going
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow? So it is. And you will be very sorry, Rob. But, of course, he
+      will come back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Dad,&rdquo; cried Rob, coming quite close to his father, &ldquo;it isn't that! It
+      isn't that!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His father waited. He did not understand his boy's trouble, and so he
+      wisely refrained from uttering word that might hinder rather than help. At
+      length, with a sudden effort, Rob asked in a low, hurried voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think, Dad, he has&mdash;got&mdash;back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got back?&rdquo; said his father. &ldquo;Oh, I see. Why, my boy? What do you know of
+      it? Did you know there was a letter from a man named Potts, that
+      completely clears your friend of all crime?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is there?&rdquo; asked the boy quickly. &ldquo;Man! That is fine! But I always knew
+      he could not do anything really bad&mdash;I mean, anything that the police
+      could touch him for. But it is not that, Dad. I have heard Jack say he
+      used to be different when he came down first, and now sometimes he&mdash;&rdquo;
+       The lad's voice fell silent. He could not bring himself to accuse his hero
+      of any evil. His father drew him close to his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You mean that he has fallen into bad ways&mdash;drink, and things like
+      that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy hung his head; he was keenly ashamed for his friend. After a few
+      moments' silence he said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And he is going away to Canada to-morrow, and I wonder, Dad, if he has&mdash;got&mdash;back?
+      It would be terrible&mdash;Oh, Dad, all alone and away from&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy's voice sank to a whisper, and a rush of tears filled his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I see what you mean, my boy. You mean it would be terrible for him to be
+      in that far land, and away from that Friend we know and love best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The lad looked at his father through his tears, and nodded his head, and
+      for some moments there was silence between them. If the truth must be
+      told, Doctor Dunn felt himself keenly rebuked by his little son's words.
+      Amid the multitude of his responsibilities, the responsibility for his
+      sons' best friend he had hardly realised.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am glad that you spoke of it, Rob; I am glad that you spoke of it.
+      Something will be done. It is not, after all, in our hands. Still, we must
+      stand ready to help. Good-night, my boy. And remember, it is always good
+      to hurry back to our best Friend, if ever we get away from Him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy put his arms around his father's neck and kissed him good-night;
+      then, kissing him again, he whispered: &ldquo;Thank you, Daddy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And from the relief in his tone the father recognised that upon him the
+      lad had laid all the burden of his solicitude for his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Later in the evening, when his elder son came home, the father called him
+      in, and frankly gave him the substance of the conversation of the earlier
+      part of the evening.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jack laughed somewhat uneasily. &ldquo;Oh, Rob is an awfully religious little
+      beggar; painfully so, I think, sometimes&mdash;you know what I mean, Sir,&rdquo;
+       he added, noticing the look on his father's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am not sure that I do, Jack,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;but I want to tell you,
+      that as far as I am concerned, I felt distinctly rebuked at the little
+      chap's anxiety for his friend in a matter of such vital import. His is a
+      truly religious little soul, as you say, but I wonder if his type is not
+      more nearly like the normal than is ours. Certainly, if reality,
+      simplicity, sincerity are the qualities of true religious feeling&mdash;and
+      these, I believe, are the qualities emphasised by the Master Himself&mdash;then
+      it may indeed be that the boy's type is nearer the ideal than ours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Mrs. Dunn entered the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Anything private?&rdquo; she enquired with a bright smile at her husband.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all! Come in!&rdquo; said Doctor Dunn, and he proceeded to repeat the
+      conversation with his younger son, and his own recent comment thereupon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am convinced,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;that there is a profundity of meaning in
+      those words, 'Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
+      child, he shall not enter therein,' that we have not yet fathomed. I
+      suspect Wordsworth is not far astray when he suggests that with the
+      passing years we grow away from the simplicity of our faith and the
+      clearness of our vision. There is no doubt that to Rob, Jesus is as real
+      as I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no doubt of that,&rdquo; said his wife quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not only as real, but quite as dear; indeed, dearer. I shall never forget
+      the shock I received when I heard him one day, as a wee, wee boy,
+      classifying the objects of his affection. I remember the ascending scale
+      was: 'I love Jack and Daddy just the same, then mother, then Jesus.' It
+      was always in the highest place, Jesus; and I believe that the scale is
+      the same to-day, unless Jack,&rdquo; she added, with a smile at her son, &ldquo;has
+      moved to his mother's place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much fear of that, mother,&rdquo; said Jack, &ldquo;but I should not be surprised
+      if you are quite right about the little chap. He is a queer little
+      beggar!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There you are again, Jack,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;and it is upon that point I
+      was inclined to take issue with you when your mother entered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think I shall leave you,&rdquo; said the mother. &ldquo;I am rather tired, and so I
+      shall bid you good-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the father, when they had seated themselves again, &ldquo;the very
+      fact that to you, and to me for that matter, Rob's attitude of mind should
+      seem peculiar raises the issue. What is the normal type of Christian
+      faith? Is it not marked by the simplicity and completeness of the
+      child's?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet, Sir,&rdquo; replied Jack, &ldquo;that simplicity and completeness is the
+      result of inexperience. Surely the ideal faith is not that which ignores
+      the facts and experiences of life?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly,&rdquo; replied his father, &ldquo;yet I am not sure but after all, 'the
+      perfect love which casteth out fear' is one which ignores the experiences
+      of life, or, rather, classifies them in a larger category. That is, it
+      refuses to be disturbed by life's experiences, because among those
+      experiences there is a place for the enlarged horizon, the clearer vision.
+      But I am not arguing about this matter; I rather wish to make a confession
+      and enlist your aid. Frankly, the boy's words gave me an uneasy sense of
+      failure in my duty to this young man; or, perhaps I should say, my
+      privilege. And really, it is no wonder! Here is this little chap actually
+      carrying every day a load of intense concern for our friend, as to
+      whether, as he puts it himself, 'he has come back.' And, after all, Jack,
+      I wonder if this should not have been more upon our minds? The young man,
+      I take it, since his mother's death has little in his home life to inspire
+      him with religious faith and feeling. If she had been alive, one would not
+      feel the same responsibility; she was a singularly saintly woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite right, Sir,&rdquo; said Jack quickly, &ldquo;and I suspect you rather
+      mean that I am the one that should feel condemned.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all! Not at all, Jack! I am thinking, as every man must, of my own
+      responsibility, though, doubtless, you have yours as well. Of course I
+      know quite well you have stuck by him splendidly in his fight for a clean
+      and self-controlled life, but one wonders whether there is not something
+      more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is, Sir!&rdquo; replied his son quickly. &ldquo;There undoubtedly is! But
+      though I have no hesitation in speaking to men down in the Settlement
+      about these things, you know, still, somehow, to a man of your own class,
+      and to a personal friend, one hesitates. One shrinks from what seems like
+      assuming an attitude of superiority.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I appreciate that,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;but yet one wonders to what extent
+      this shrinking is due to a real sense of one's own imperfections, and to
+      what extent it is due to an unwillingness to risk criticism, even from
+      ourselves, in a loyal attempt to serve the Master and His cause. And,
+      besides that, one wonders whether from any cause one should hesitate to do
+      the truly kind and Christian thing to one's friend. I mean, you value your
+      religion; or, to put it personally, as Rob would, you would esteem as your
+      chief possession your knowledge of the Christ, as Friend and Saviour. Do
+      not loyalty to Him and friendship require that you share that possession
+      with your dearest friend?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean, Sir,&rdquo; said Jack earnestly. &ldquo;I shall think it over.
+      But don't you think a word from you, Sir&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His father looked at his son with a curious smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I know what you are thinking,&rdquo; said his son, &ldquo;but I assure you it is
+      not quite a case of funk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know, Jack,&rdquo; said his father earnestly, &ldquo;we make our religion far
+      too unreal; a thing either of forms remote from life, or a thing of
+      individualistic emotion divorced from responsibility. One thing history
+      reveals, that the early propagandum for the faith was entirely
+      unprofessional. It was from friend to friend, from man to man. It was
+      horizontal rather than perpendicular.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I shall think it over,&rdquo; said Jack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know,&rdquo; said his father, &ldquo;that I have the feeling of having
+      accepted from Rob responsibility for our utmost endeavour to bring it
+      about that, as Rob puts it, 'somehow he shall get back'?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was full twenty minutes before train time when Rob, torn with anxiety
+      lest they should be late, marched his brother on to the railway platform
+      to wait for the Camerons, who were to arrive from the North. Up and down
+      they paraded, Dunn turning over in his mind the conversation of the night
+      before, Rob breaking away every three minutes to consult the clock and the
+      booking clerk at the wicket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will he come to us this afternoon, Jack, do you think?&rdquo; enquired the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know! He turned down a football lunch! He has his sister and his
+      father with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His sister could come with him!&rdquo; argued the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about his father?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Rob had been close enough to events to know that the Captain constituted
+      something of a difficulty in the situation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, won't he have business to attend to?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His brother laughed. &ldquo;Good idea, Rob, let us hope so! At any rate we will
+      do our best to get Cameron and his sister to come to us. We want them,
+      don't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We do that!&rdquo; said the boy fervently; &ldquo;only I'm sure something will
+      happen! There,&rdquo; he exclaimed a moment later, in a tone of disappointment
+      and disgust, &ldquo;I just knew it! There is Miss Brodie and some one else; they
+      will get after him, I know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; said Dunn, with a not altogether successful attempt at
+      surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw! you knew!&rdquo; said Rob reproachfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! I kind of thought she might turn up!&rdquo; said his brother, with an air
+      of a convicted criminal. &ldquo;You know she is quite a friend of Cameron's. But
+      what is Sir Archibald here for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They will just get him, I know,&rdquo; said Rob gloomily, as he followed his
+      brother to meet Miss Brodie and her uncle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're here!&rdquo; cried that young lady, &ldquo;to join in the demonstration to the
+      hero! And, my uncle being somewhat conscience-stricken over his tardy and
+      unwilling acceptance of our superior judgment in the recent famous case,
+      has come to make such reparation as he can.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a piece of impertinence! Don't listen to her, Sir!&rdquo; cried Sir
+      Archibald, greeting Dunn warmly and with the respect due an International
+      captain. &ldquo;The truth is I have a letter here for him to a business friend
+      in Montreal, which may be of service. Of course, I may say to you that I
+      am more than delighted that this letter of Potts has quite cleared the
+      young man, and that he goes to the new country with reputation unstained.
+      I am greatly delighted! greatly delighted! and I wish the opportunity to
+      say so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, we are all delighted,&rdquo; replied Dunn cordially, &ldquo;though, of
+      course, I never could bring myself to believe him guilty of crime.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, on the strength of the judgment of yourself and, I must confess, of
+      this young person here, I made my decision.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie, &ldquo;I gave you my opinion because it was my
+      opinion, but I confess at times I had my own doubts&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here she paused abruptly, arrested by the look on young Rob's face; it was
+      a look of surprise, grief, and horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is to say,&rdquo; continued Miss Brodie hastily, answering the look, and
+      recognising that her high place in Rob's regard was in peril, &ldquo;the whole
+      thing was a mystery&mdash;was impossible to solve&mdash;I mean,&rdquo; she
+      continued, stumbling along, &ldquo;his own attitude was so very uncertain and so
+      unsatisfactory&mdash;if he had only been able to say clearly 'I am not
+      guilty' it would have been different&mdash;I mean&mdash;of course, I don't
+      believe him guilty. Don't look at me like that, Rob! I won't have it! But
+      was it not clever of that dear Mr. Rae to extract that letter from the
+      wretched Potts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's the train!&rdquo; cried Dunn. &ldquo;Here, Rob, you stay here with me! Where
+      has the young rascal gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look! Oh, look!&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie, clutching at Dunn's arm, her eyes
+      wide with terror. There before their horrified eyes was young Rob, hanging
+      on to the window, out of which his friend Cameron was leaning, and racing
+      madly with the swiftly moving train, in momentary danger of being dragged
+      under its wheels. With a cry, Dunn rushed forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Merciful heavens!&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie. &ldquo;Oh! he is gone!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A porter, standing with his back towards the racing boy, had knocked his
+      feet from under him. But as he fell, a strong hand grabbed him, and
+      dragged him to safety through the window.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Pale and shaking, the three friends waited for the car door to be opened,
+      and as Rob issued in triumphant possession of his friend, Miss Brodie
+      rushed at him and, seizing him in her strong grasp, cried:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heartless young rascal! You nearly killed me&mdash;not to speak of
+      yourself! Here,&rdquo; she continued, throwing her arms about him, and giving
+      him a loud smack, &ldquo;take that for your punishment! Do you hear, you nearly
+      killed me! I had a vision of your mangled form ground up between the
+      wheels and the platform. Hold on, you can't get away from me! I have a
+      mind to give you another!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Miss Brodie, please,&rdquo; pleaded Cameron, coming forward to Rob's
+      rescue, &ldquo;I assure you I was partly to blame; it is only fair I should
+      share his punishment.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; cried Miss Brodie, the blood coming back into her cheeks that
+      had been white enough a moment before, &ldquo;if it were not for your size, and
+      your&mdash;looks, I should treat you exactly the same, though not with the
+      same intent, as our friend Mr. Rae would say. You did that splendidly!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Alas! for my size,&rdquo; groaned Cameron&mdash;he was in great spirits&mdash;&ldquo;and
+      alas! for my ugly phiz!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who said 'ugly'?&rdquo; replied Miss Brodie. &ldquo;But I won't rise to your bait.
+      May I introduce you to my uncle, Sir Archibald Brodie, who has a little
+      business with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; said that gentleman, &ldquo;that was extremely well done.
+      Indeed, I can hardly get back my nerve&mdash;might have been an ugly
+      accident. By the way, Sir,&rdquo; taking Cameron aside, &ldquo;just a moment. You are
+      on your way to Canada? I have a letter which I thought might be of service
+      to you. It is to a business friend of mine, a banker, in Montreal, Mr.
+      James Ritchie. You will find him a good man to know, and I fancy glad to
+      serve any&mdash;ah&mdash;friend of mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On hearing Sir Archibald's name, Cameron's manner became distinctly
+      haughty, and he was on the point of declining the letter, when Sir
+      Archibald, who was quick to observe his manner, took him by the arm and
+      led him somewhat further away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Sir, there is a little matter I wish to speak of, if you will
+      permit. Indeed, I came specially to say how delighted I am that the&mdash;ah&mdash;recent
+      little unpleasantness has been removed. Of course you understand my
+      responsibility to the Bank rendered a certain course of action imperative,
+      however repugnant. But, believe me, I am truly delighted to find that my
+      decision to withdraw the&mdash;ah&mdash;action has been entirely justified
+      by events. Delighted, Sir! Delighted! And much more since I have seen
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before the overflowing kindliness of Sir Archibald's voice and manner,
+      Cameron's hauteur vanished like morning mist before the rising sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I thank you, Sir Archibald,&rdquo; he said, with dignity, &ldquo;not only for this
+      letter, but especially for your good opinion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very good! Very good! The letter will, I hope, be useful,&rdquo; replied Sir
+      Archibald, &ldquo;and as for my opinion, I am glad to find not only that it is
+      well founded, but that it appears to be shared by most of this company
+      here. Now we must get back to your party. But let me say again, I am truly
+      glad to have come to know you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0012" id="link2H_4_0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK TWO
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0009" id="link2HCH0009">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HO FOR THE OPEN!
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Mr. James Ritchie, manager of the Bank of Montreal, glanced from the
+      letter in his hand to the young man who had just given it to him. &ldquo;Ah! you
+      have just arrived from the old land,&rdquo; he said, a smile of genial welcome
+      illuminating his handsome face. &ldquo;I am pleased to hear from my old friend,
+      Sir Archibald Brodie, and pleased to welcome any friend of his to Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, with fine old-time courtesy, the banker rose to his splendid
+      height of six feet two, and shook his visitor warmly by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name is&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron, Sir,&rdquo; said the young man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I see! Mr. Allan Cameron&mdash;um, um,&rdquo; with his eyes on the letter.
+      &ldquo;Old and distinguished family&mdash;exactly so! Now, then, Mr. Cameron, I
+      hope we shall be able to do something for you, both for the sake of my old
+      friend, Sir Archibald, and, indeed, for your own sake,&rdquo; said the banker,
+      with a glance of approval at Cameron's upright form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, Sir! Sit down! Now, business first is my motto. What can I do
+      for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, first of all,&rdquo; said Cameron with a laugh, &ldquo;I wish to make a
+      deposit. I have a draft of one hundred pounds here which I should like to
+      place in your care.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Sir,&rdquo; said the banker, touching a button, &ldquo;my young man will
+      attend to that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; when the business had been transacted, &ldquo;what are your plans,
+      Mr. Cameron? Thirty-five years ago I came to Montreal a young man, from
+      Scotland, like yourself, and it was a lonely day for me when I reached
+      this city, the loneliest in my life, and so my heart warms to the stranger
+      from the old land. Yes,&rdquo; continued Mr. Ritchie, in a reminiscent tone, &ldquo;I
+      remember well! I hired as errand boy and general factotum to a small
+      grocer down near the market. Montreal was a small city then, with wretched
+      streets&mdash;they're bad enough yet&mdash;and poor buildings; everything
+      was slow and backward; there have been mighty changes since. But here we
+      are! Now, what are your plans?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid they are of the vaguest kind,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I want
+      something to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What sort of thing? I mean, what has been the line of your training?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid my training has been defective. I have passed through
+      Edinburgh Academy, also the University, with the exception of my last
+      year. But I am willing to take anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the banker thoughtfully. &ldquo;No office training, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Sir. That is, if you except a brief period of three or four months in
+      the law office of our family solicitor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Law, eh?&mdash;I have it! Denman's your man! I shall give you a letter to
+      Mr. Denman&mdash;a lawyer friend of mine. I shall see him personally
+      to-day, and if you call to-morrow at ten I hope to have news for you.
+      Meantime, I shall be pleased to have you lunch with me to-day at the club.
+      One o'clock is the hour. If you would kindly call at the bank, we shall go
+      down together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron expressed his gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way!&rdquo; said Mr. Ritchie, &ldquo;where have you put up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At the Royal,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! That will do for the present,&rdquo; said Mr. Ritchie. &ldquo;I am sorry our
+      circumstances do not permit of my inviting you to our home. The truth is,
+      Mrs. Ritchie is at present out of the city. But we shall find some
+      suitable lodging for you. The Royal is far too expensive a place for a
+      young man with his fortune to make.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron spent the day making the acquaintance of the beautiful, quaint, if
+      somewhat squalid, old city of Montreal; and next morning, with a letter of
+      introduction from Mr. Ritchie, presented himself at Mr. Denman's office.
+      Mr. Denman was a man in young middle life, athletic of frame, keen of eye,
+      and energetic of manner; his voice was loud and sharp. He welcomed Cameron
+      with brisk heartiness, and immediately proceeded to business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;what is your idea? What kind of a job are you
+      after?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;that is just what I hardly know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, what has been your experience? You are a University man, I believe?
+      But have you had any practical training? Do you know office work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I've had little training for an office. I was in a law office for
+      part of a year.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Familiar with bookkeeping, or accounting? I suppose you can't run one
+      of these typewriting machines?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In regard to each of these lines of effort Cameron was forced to confess
+      ignorance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say!&rdquo; cried Mr. Denman, &ldquo;those old country people seriously annoy me
+      with their inadequate system of education!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am afraid,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;the fault is more mine than the
+      system's.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know about that! Don't know about that!&rdquo; replied Mr. Denman
+      quickly; &ldquo;I have had scores of young men, fine young men, too, come to me;
+      public school men, university men, but quite unfit for any practical line
+      of work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Denman considered for some moments. &ldquo;Let us see. You have done some
+      work in a law office. Now,&rdquo; Mr. Denman spoke with some hesitation; &ldquo;I have
+      a place in my own office here&mdash;not much in it for the present, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To tell the truth,&rdquo; interrupted Cameron, &ldquo;I did not make much of the law;
+      in fact, I do not think I am suited for office work. I would prefer
+      something in the open. I had thought of the land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farming,&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Denman. &ldquo;Ah!&mdash;you would, I suppose, be able
+      to invest something?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Denman shook his head. &ldquo;Nothing in it! You would not earn enough to buy a
+      farm about here in fifteen years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I understood,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;that further west was cheaper land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! In the far west, yes! But it is a God-forsaken country! I don't know
+      much about it, I confess. I know they are booming town lots all over the
+      land. I believe they have gone quite mad in the business, but from what I
+      hear, the main work in the west just now is jaw work; the only thing they
+      raise is corner lots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      On Cameron's face there fell the gloom of discouragement. One of his
+      fondest dreams was being dispelled&mdash;his vision of himself as a
+      wealthy rancher, ranging over square miles of his estate upon a &ldquo;bucking
+      broncho,&rdquo; garbed in the picturesque cowboy dress, began to fade.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But there is ranching, I believe?&rdquo; he ventured.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ranching? Oh yes! There is, up near the Rockies, but that is out of
+      civilization; out of reach of everything and everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is what I want, Sir!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron, his face once more aglow
+      with eager hope. &ldquo;I want to get away into the open.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Denman did not, or could not, recognise this as the instinctive cry of
+      the primitive man for a closer fellowship with Mother Nature. He was
+      keenly practical, and impatient with everything that appeared to him to be
+      purely visionary and unbusiness-like.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, my dear fellow,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;a ranch means cattle and horses; and
+      cattle and horses means money, unless of course, you mean to be simply a
+      cowboy&mdash;cowpuncher, I believe, is the correct term&mdash;but there is
+      nothing in that; no future, I mean. It is all very well for a little fun,
+      if you have a bank account to stand it, although some fellows stand it on
+      someone's else bank account&mdash;not much to their credit, however. There
+      is a young friend of mine out there at present, but from what I can gather
+      his home correspondence is mainly confined to appeals for remittances from
+      his governor, and his chief occupation spending these remittances as
+      speedily as possible. All very well, as I have said, for fun, if you can
+      pay the shot. But to play the role of gentleman cowboy, while somebody
+      else pays for it, is the sort of thing I despise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so do I, Sir!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;There will be no remittance in my
+      case.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Denman glanced at the firm, closed lips and the stiffening figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is the talk!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;No, there is no chance in ranching
+      unless you have capital.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I can see,&rdquo; replied Cameron gloomily, &ldquo;everything seems closed
+      up except to the capitalist, and yet from what I heard at home situations
+      were open on every hand in this country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here!&rdquo; cried Denman, drawing Cameron to the office window. &ldquo;See
+      those doors!&rdquo; pointing to a long line of shops. &ldquo;Every last one is opened
+      to a man who knows his business. See those smokestacks! Every last wheel
+      in those factories is howling for a man who is on to his job. But don't
+      look blue, there is a place for you, too; the thing is to find it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are those long buildings?&rdquo; inquired Cameron, pointing towards the
+      water front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Those are railroad sheds; or, rather, Transportation Company's sheds;
+      they are practically the same thing. I say! What is the matter with trying
+      the Transportation Company? I know the manager well. The very thing! Try
+      the Transportation Company!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How should I go about it?&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I mean to say just what
+      position should I apply for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Position!&rdquo; shouted Denman. &ldquo;Why, general manager would be good!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, noting the flush in Cameron's face, he added quickly, &ldquo;Pardon me!
+      The thing is to get your foot in somehow, and then wire in till you are
+      general manager, by Jove! It can be done! Fleming has done it! Went in as
+      messenger boy, but&mdash;&rdquo; Denman paused. There flashed through his mind
+      the story of Fleming's career; a vision of the half-starved ragged waif
+      who started as messenger boy in the company's offices, and who, by dint of
+      invincible determination and resolute self-denial, fought his way step by
+      step to his present position of control. In contrast, he looked at the
+      young man, born and bred in circles where work is regarded as a calamity,
+      and service wears the badge of social disfranchisement. Fleming had done
+      it under compulsion of the inexorable mistress &ldquo;Necessity.&rdquo; But what of
+      this young man?
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will we try?&rdquo; he said at length. &ldquo;I shall give you a letter to Mr.
+      Fleming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He sat down to his desk and wrote vigourously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take this, and see what happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron took the letter, and, glancing at the address, read, Wm. Fleming,
+      Esquire, General Manager, Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage
+      Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is this a railroad?&rdquo; asked Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but next thing to it. The companies are practically one. The
+      transition from one to the other is easy enough. Let me know how you get
+      on. Good-by! And&mdash;I say!&rdquo; cried Mr. Denman, calling Cameron back
+      again from the door, &ldquo;see Mr. Fleming himself. Remember that! And
+      remember,&rdquo; he added, with a smile, &ldquo;the position of manager is not vacant
+      just yet, but it will be. I give you my word for it when you are ready to
+      take it. Good-by! Buck up! Take what he offers you! Get your teeth in, and
+      never let go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By George!&rdquo; said Denman to himself as the door closed on Cameron, &ldquo;these
+      chaps are the limit. He's got lots of stuff in him, but he has been
+      rendered helpless by their fool system&mdash;God save us from it! That
+      chap has had things done for him ever since he was first bathed; they have
+      washed 'em, dressed 'em, fed 'em, schooled 'em, found 'em positions, stuck
+      'em in, and watched that they didn't fall out. And yet, by George!&rdquo; he
+      added, after a pause, &ldquo;they are running the world to-day&mdash;that is,
+      some of them.&rdquo; Facing which somewhat puzzling phenomenon, Denman plunged
+      into his work again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Cameron was making his way towards the offices of the
+      Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage Company, oppressed with an
+      unacknowledged but none the less real sense of unfitness, and haunted by a
+      depressing sense of the deficiency of his own training, and of the
+      training afforded the young men of his class at home. As he started along
+      he battled with his depression. True enough, he had no skill in the
+      various accomplishments that Mr. Denman seemed to consider essential; he
+      had no experience in business, he was not fit for office work&mdash;office
+      work he loathed; but surely there was some position where his talents
+      would bring him recognition and fortune at last. After all, Mr. Denman was
+      only a Colonial, and with a Colonial's somewhat narrow view of life. Who
+      was he to criticise the system of training that for generations had been
+      in vogue at home? Had not Wellington said &ldquo;that England's battles were
+      first won on the football fields of Eton and Rugby,&rdquo; or something like
+      that? Of course, the training that might fit for a distinguished career in
+      the British army might not necessarily insure success on the battle fields
+      of industry and commerce. Yet surely, an International player should be
+      able to get somewhere!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point in his cogitations Cameron was arrested by a memory that
+      stabbed him like a knife-thrust; the awful moment when upon the Inverleith
+      grounds, in the face of the Welsh forward-line, he had faltered and lost
+      the International. Should he ever be able to forget the agony of that
+      moment and of the day that followed? And yet, he need not have failed. He
+      knew he could play his position with any man in Scotland; he had failed
+      because he was not fit. He set his teeth hard. He would show these bally
+      Colonials! He would make good! And with his head high, he walked into the
+      somewhat dingy offices of the Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage
+      Company, of which William Fleming, Esquire, was manager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Opening the door, Cameron found himself confronted by a short counter that
+      blocked the way for the general public into the long room, filled with
+      desks and chairs and clicking typewriting machines. Cameron had never seen
+      so many of these machines during the whole period of his life. The
+      typewriter began to assume an altogether new importance in his mind.
+      Hitherto it had appeared to him more or less of a Yankee fad, unworthy of
+      the attention of an able-bodied man of average intelligence. In Edinburgh
+      a &ldquo;writing machine&rdquo; was still something of a new-fangled luxury, to be
+      apologised for. Mr. Rae would allow no such finicky instrument in his
+      office. Here, however, there were a dozen, more or less, manipulated for
+      the most part by young ladies, and some of them actually by men; on every
+      side they clicked and banged. It may have been the clicking and banging of
+      these machines that gave to Cameron the sense of rush and hurry so
+      different from the calm quiet and dignified repose of the only office he
+      had ever known. For some moments he stood at the counter, waiting
+      attention from one of the many clerks sitting before him, but though one
+      and another occasionally glanced in his direction, his presence seemed to
+      awaken not even a passing curiosity in their minds, much less to suggest
+      the propriety of their inquiring his business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the moments passed Cameron became conscious of a feeling of affront.
+      How differently a gentleman was treated by the clerks in the office of
+      Messrs. Rae &amp; Macpherson, where prompt attention and deferential
+      courtesy in a clerk were as essential as a suit of clothes. Gradually
+      Cameron's head went up, and with it his choler. At length, in his
+      haughtiest tone, he hailed a passing youth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, boy, is this Mr. Fleming's office?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The clicking and banging of the typewriters, and the hum of voices ceased.
+      Everywhere heads were raised and eyes turned curiously upon the haughty
+      stranger.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh?&rdquo; No letters can represent the nasal intonation of this syllabic
+      inquiry, and no words the supreme indifference of the boy's tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Mr. Fleming in? I wish to see him!&rdquo; Cameron's voice was loud and
+      imperious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, boys,&rdquo; said a lanky youth, with a long, cadaverous countenance and
+      sallow, unhealthy complexion, illumined, however, and redeemed to a
+      certain extent by black eyes of extraordinary brilliance, &ldquo;it is the
+      Prince of Wales!&rdquo; The drawling, awe-struck tones, in the silence that had
+      fallen, were audible to all in the immediate neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The titter that swept over the listeners brought the hot blood to
+      Cameron's face. A deliberate insult a Highlander takes with calm. He is
+      prepared to deal with it in a manner affording him entire satisfaction.
+      Ridicule rouses him to fury, for, while it touches his pride, it leaves
+      him no opportunity of vengeance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?&rdquo; he enquired again of the boy that
+      stood scanning him with calm indifference. The rage that possessed him so
+      vibrated in his tone that the lanky lad drawled again in a warning voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slide, Jimmy, slide!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy &ldquo;slid,&rdquo; but towards the counter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want to see him?&rdquo; he enquired in a tone of brisk impertinence, as if
+      suddenly roused from a reverie.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have a letter for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right! Hand it over,&rdquo; said Jimmy, fully conscious that he was the
+      hero of more than usual interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron hesitated, then passed his letter over to Jimmy, who, reading the
+      address with deliberate care, winked at the lanky boy, and with a jaunty
+      step made towards a door at the farther end of the room. As he passed a
+      desk that stood nearest the door, a man who during the last few minutes
+      had remained with his head down, apparently so immersed in the papers
+      before him as to be quite unconscious of his surroundings, suddenly called
+      out, &ldquo;Here, boy!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Jimmy instantly assumed an air of respectful attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A letter for Mr. Fleming,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; replied the man, stretching out his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He hurriedly glanced through the letter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell him there is no vacancy at present,&rdquo; he said shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy came back to Cameron with cheerful politeness. The &ldquo;old man's&rdquo; eye
+      was upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no vacancy at present,&rdquo; he said briefly, and turned away as if
+      his attention were immediately demanded elsewhere by pressing business of
+      the Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage Company.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer, Cameron threw back the leaf of the counter that barred his
+      way, and started up the long room, past the staring clerks, to the desk
+      next the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I wish to see Mr. Fleming, Sir,&rdquo; he said, his voice trembling slightly,
+      his face pale, his blue-gray eyes ablaze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The man at the desk looked up from his work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just informed you there is no vacancy at present,&rdquo; he said
+      testily, and turned to his papers again, as if dismissing the incident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you kindly tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?&rdquo; said Cameron in a voice
+      that had grown quite steady; &ldquo;I wish to see him personally.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Fleming cannot see you, I tell you!&rdquo; almost shouted the man, rising
+      from his desk and revealing himself a short, pudgy figure, with flabby
+      face and shining bald head. &ldquo;Can't you understand English?&mdash;I can't
+      be bothered&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Bates? Someone to see me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron turned quickly towards the speaker, who had come from the inner
+      room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have brought you a letter, Sir, from Mr. Denman,&rdquo; he said quietly; &ldquo;it
+      is there,&rdquo; pointing to Bates' desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A letter? Let me have it! Why was not this brought to me at once, Mr.
+      Bates?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was an open letter, Sir,&rdquo; replied Bates, &ldquo;and I thought there was no
+      need of troubling you, Sir. I told the young man we had no vacancy at
+      present.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a personal letter, Mr. Bates, and should have been brought to me
+      at once. Why was Mr.&mdash;ah&mdash;Mr. Cameron not brought in to me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates murmured something about not wishing to disturb the manager on
+      trivial business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am the judge of that, Mr. Bates. In future, when any man asks to see
+      me, I desire him to be shown in at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates began to apologise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all that is necessary, Mr. Bates,&rdquo; said the manager, in a voice
+      at once quiet and decisive.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Mr. Cameron. I am very sorry this has happened!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron followed him into his office, noting, as he passed, the red
+      patches of rage on Mr. Bates' pudgy face, and catching a look of fierce
+      hate from his small piggy eyes. It flashed through his mind that in Mr.
+      Bates, at any rate, he had found no friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The result of the interview with Mr. Fleming was an intimation to Mr.
+      Bates that Mr. Cameron was to have a position in the office of the
+      Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage Company, and to begin work the
+      following morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Sir,&rdquo; replied Mr. Bates&mdash;he had apparently quite
+      recovered his equanimity&mdash;&ldquo;we shall find Mr. Cameron a desk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We begin work at eight o'clock exactly,&rdquo; he added, turning to Cameron
+      with a pleasant smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fleming accompanied Cameron to the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, a word with you, Mr. Cameron. You may find Mr. Bates a little
+      difficult&mdash;he is something of a driver&mdash;but, remember, he is in
+      charge of this office; I never interfere with his orders.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I understand, Sir,&rdquo; said Cameron, resolving that, at all costs, he should
+      obey Mr. Bates' orders, if only to show the general manager he could
+      recognise and appreciate a gentleman when he saw one.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Fleming was putting it mildly when he described Mr. Bates as
+      &ldquo;something of a driver.&rdquo; The whole office staff, from Jimmy, the office
+      boy, to Jacobs, the gentle, white-haired clerk, whose desk was in the
+      farthest corner of the room, felt the drive. He was not only office
+      manager, but office master as well. His rule was absolute, and from his
+      decisions there was no appeal. The general manager went on the theory that
+      it was waste of energy to keep a dog and bark himself. In the policy that
+      governed the office there were two rules which Mr. Bates enforced with the
+      utmost rigidity&mdash;the first, namely, that every member of the staff
+      must be in his or her place and ready for work when the clock struck
+      eight; the other, that each member of the staff must work independently of
+      every other member. A man must know his business, and go through with it;
+      if he required instructions, he must apply to the office manager. But, as
+      a rule, one experience of such application sufficed for the whole period
+      of a clerk's service in the office of the Metropolitan Transportation
+      &amp; Cartage Company, for Mr. Bates was gifted with such an exquisiteness
+      of ironical speech that the whole staff were wont to pause in the rush of
+      their work to listen and to admire when a new member was unhappy enough to
+      require instructions, their silent admiration acting as a spur to Mr.
+      Bates' ingenuity in the invention of ironical discourse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Mr. Bates' system, however,
+      Cameron was quite ignorant; nor had his experience in the office of
+      Messrs. Rae &amp; Macpherson been such as to impress upon him the
+      necessity of a close observation of the flight of time. It did not disturb
+      him, therefore, to notice as he strolled into the offices of the
+      Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage Company the next morning that
+      the hands of the clock showed six minutes past the hour fixed for the
+      beginning of the day's work. The office staff shivered in an ecstasy of
+      expectant delight. Cameron walked nonchalantly to Mr. Bates' desk, his
+      overcoat on his arm, his cap in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good morning, Sir,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates finished writing a sentence, looked up, and nodded a brief good
+      morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We deposit our street attire on the hooks behind the door, yonder!&rdquo; he
+      said with emphatic politeness, pointing across the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron flushed, as in passing his desk he observed the pleased smile on
+      the lanky boy's sallow face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You evidently were not aware of the hours of this office,&rdquo; continued Mr.
+      Bates when Cameron had returned. &ldquo;We open at eight o'clock.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; said Cameron, carelessly. &ldquo;Eight? Yes, I thought it was eight! Ah! I
+      see! I believe I am five minutes late! But I suppose I shall catch up
+      before the day is over!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; replied Mr. Bates earnestly, &ldquo;if you should work for twenty
+      years for the Metropolitan Transportation &amp; Cartage Company, never
+      will you catch up those five minutes; every minute of your office hours is
+      pledged to the company, and every minute has its own proper work. Your
+      desk is the one next Mr. Jacobs, yonder. Your work is waiting you there.
+      It is quite simple, the entry of freight receipts upon the ledger. If you
+      wish further instructions, apply to me here&mdash;you understand?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think so!&rdquo; replied Cameron. &ldquo;I shall do my best to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well! That is all!&rdquo; replied Mr. Bates, plunging his head again into
+      his papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The office staff sank back to work with every expression of
+      disappointment. A moment later, however, their hopes revived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Mr. Cameron!&rdquo; called out Mr. Bates. Mr. Cameron returned to his desk.
+      &ldquo;If you should chance to be late again, never mind going to your desk;
+      just come here for your cheque.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates' tone was kindly, even considerate, as if he were anxious to
+      save his clerk unnecessary inconvenience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon!&rdquo; stammered Cameron, astonished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is all!&rdquo; replied Mr. Bates, his nose once more in his papers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood hesitating. His eye fell upon the boy, Jimmy, whose face
+      expressed keenest joy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean, Sir, that if I am late you dismiss me forthwith?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; Mr. Bates' tone was so fiercely explosive that it appeared to
+      throw up his head with a violent motion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron repeated his question.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cameron, my time is valuable; so is yours. I thought that I spoke
+      quite distinctly. Apparently I did not. Let me repeat: In case you should
+      inadvertently be late again, you need not take the trouble to go to your
+      desk; just come here. Your cheque will be immediately made out. Saves
+      time, you know&mdash;your time and mine&mdash;and time, you perceive, in
+      this office represents money.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates' voice lost none of its kindly interest, but it had grown
+      somewhat in intensity; the last sentence was uttered with his face close
+      to his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood a moment in uncertainty, gazing at the bald head before him;
+      then, finding nothing to reply, he turned about to behold Jimmy and his
+      lanky friend executing an animated war pantomime which they apparently
+      deemed appropriate to the occasion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With face ablaze and teeth set Cameron went to his desk, to the extreme
+      disappointment of Jimmy and the lanky youth, who fell into each other's
+      arms, apparently overcome with grief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For half an hour the office hummed with the noise of subdued voices and
+      clicked with the rapid fire of the typewriters. Suddenly through the hum
+      Mr. Bates' voice was heard, clear, calm, and coldly penetrating:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Jacobs!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The old, white-haired clerk started up from Cameron's desk, and began in a
+      confused and gentle voice to explain that he was merely giving some hints
+      to the new clerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Jacobs,&rdquo; said Mr. Bates, &ldquo;I cannot hear you, and you are wasting my
+      time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He was merely showing me how to make these entries!&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Indeed! Thank you, Mr. Cameron! Though I believe Mr. Jacobs has not
+      yet lost the power of lucid speech. Mr. Jacobs, I believe you know the
+      rules of this office; your fine will be one-quarter of a day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you!&rdquo; said Mr. Jacobs, hurriedly resuming his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, Mr. Cameron, if you will kindly bring your work to me, I shall do my
+      best to enlighten you in regard to the complex duty of entering your
+      freight receipts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      An audible snicker ran through the delighted staff. Cameron seized his
+      ledger and the pile of freight bills, and started for Mr. Bates' desk,
+      catching out of the corner of his eye the pantomime of Jimmy and the lanky
+      one, which was being rendered with vigor and due caution.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments Cameron stood at the manager's desk till that gentleman
+      should be disengaged, but Mr. Bates was skilled in the fine art of
+      reducing to abject humility an employee who might give indications of
+      insubordination. Cameron's rage grew with every passing moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here is the ledger, Sir!&rdquo; he said at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mr. Bates was so completely absorbed in the business of saving time
+      that he made not the slightest pause in his writing, while the redoubled
+      vigor and caution of the pantomime seemed to indicate the approach of a
+      crisis. At length Mr. Bates raised his head. Jimmy and the lanky clerk
+      became at once engrossed in their duties.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have had no experience of this kind of work, Mr. Cameron?&rdquo; inquired
+      Mr. Bates kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Sir. But if you will just explain one or two matters, I think I can&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly! This is not, however, a business college! But we shall do our
+      best!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A rapturous smile pervaded the office. Mr. Bates was in excellent form.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way, Mr. Cameron&mdash;pardon my neglect&mdash;but may I inquire
+      just what department of this work you are familiar with?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, general&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! The position of general manager, however, is filled at present!&rdquo;
+       replied Mr. Bates kindly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's flush grew deeper, while Jimmy and his friend resigned
+      themselves to an ecstasy of delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was going to say,&rdquo; said Cameron in a tone loud and deliberate, &ldquo;that I
+      had been employed with the general copying work in a writer's office.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Writing? Fancy! Writing, eh? No use here!&rdquo; said Mr. Bates shortly, for
+      time was passing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A writer with us means a lawyer!&rdquo; replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why the deuce don't they say so?&rdquo; answered Mr. Bates impatiently. &ldquo;Well!
+      Well!&rdquo; getting hold of himself again. &ldquo;Here we allow our solicitors to
+      look after our legal work. Typewrite?&rdquo; he inquired suddenly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I beg your pardon!&rdquo; replied Cameron. &ldquo;Typewrite? Do you mean, can I use a
+      typewriting machine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! Yes! For heaven's sake, yes!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I cannot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bookkeep?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord! What have I got?&rdquo; inquired Mr. Bates of himself, in a tone,
+      however, perfectly audible to those in the immediate neighbourhood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Try him licking stamps!&rdquo; suggested the lanky youth in a voice that, while
+      it reached the ears of Jimmy and others near by, including Cameron, was
+      inaudible to the manager. Mr. Bates caught the sound, however, and glared
+      about him through his spectacles. Time was being wasted&mdash;the supreme
+      offense in that office&mdash;and Mr. Bates was fast losing his
+      self-command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he cried suddenly, seizing a sheaf of letters. &ldquo;File these
+      letters. You will be able to do that, I guess! File's in the vault over
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron took the letters and stood looking helplessly from them to Mr.
+      Bates' bald head, that gentleman's face being already in close proximity
+      to the papers on his desk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just how do I go about this?&mdash;I mean, what system do you&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jim!&rdquo; roared Mr. Bates, throwing down his pen, &ldquo;show this con&mdash;show
+      Mr. Cameron how to file these letters! Just like these blank old-country
+      chumps!&rdquo; added Mr. Bates, in a lower voice, but loud enough to be
+      distinctly heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Jim came up with a smile of patronising pity on his face. It was the smile
+      that touched to life the mass of combustible material that had been
+      accumulating for the last hour in Cameron's soul. Instead of following the
+      boy, he turned with a swift movement back to the manager's desk, laid his
+      sheaf of letters down on Mr. Bates' papers, and, leaning over the desk,
+      towards that gentleman, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you mean that remark to apply to me?&rdquo; His voice was very quiet. But
+      Mr. Bates started back with a quick movement from the white face and
+      burning eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, you get out of this!&rdquo; he cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because,&rdquo; continued Cameron, &ldquo;if you did, I must ask you to apologise at
+      once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      All smiles vanished from the office staff, even Jimmy's face assumed a
+      serious aspect. Mr. Bates pushed back his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A-po-pologise!&rdquo; he sputtered. &ldquo;Get out of this office, d'ye hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Be quick!&rdquo; said Cameron, his hands gripping Mr. Bates' desk till it
+      shook.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jimmy! Call a policeman!&rdquo; cried Mr. Bates, rising from his chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was too slow. Cameron reached swiftly for his collar, and with one
+      fierce wrench swept Mr. Bates clear over the top of his desk, shook him
+      till his head wobbled dangerously, and flung him crashing across the desk
+      and upon the prostrate form of the lanky youth sitting behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call a policeman! Call a policeman!&rdquo; shouted Mr. Bates, who was
+      struggling meantime with the lanky youth to regain an upright position.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron, meanwhile, walked quietly to where his coat and cap hung.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold him, somebody! Hold him!&rdquo; shouted Mr. Bates, hurrying towards him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron turned fiercely upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you want me, Sir?&rdquo; he inquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates arrested himself with such violence that his feet slid from
+      under him, and once more he came sitting upon the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get up!&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;and listen to me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Bates rose, and stood, white and trembling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I may not know much about your Canadian ways of business, but I believe I
+      can teach you some old-country manners. You have treated me this morning
+      like the despicable bully that you are. Perhaps you will treat the next
+      old-country man with the decency that is coming to him, even if he has the
+      misfortune to be your clerk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these words Cameron turned upon his heel and walked deliberately
+      towards the door. Immediately Jimmy sprang before him, and, throwing the
+      door wide open, bowed him out as if he were indeed the Prince of Wales.
+      Thus abruptly ended Cameron's connection with the Metropolitan
+      Transportation &amp; Cartage Company. Before the day was done the whole
+      city had heard the tale, which lost nothing in the telling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Next morning Mr. Denman was surprised to have Cameron walk in upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hullo, young man!&rdquo; shouted the lawyer, &ldquo;this is a pretty business! Upon
+      my soul! Your manner of entry into our commercial life is somewhat
+      forceful! What the deuce do you mean by all this?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood, much abashed. His passion was all gone; in the calm light
+      of after-thought his action of yesterday seemed boyish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Denman,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;and I came to apologise to
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To me?&rdquo; cried Denman. &ldquo;Why to me? I expect, if you wish to get a job
+      anywhere in this town, you will need to apologise to the chap you knocked
+      down&mdash;what's his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Bates, I think his name is, Sir; but, of course, I cannot apologise
+      to him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; roared Mr. Denman, &ldquo;he ought to have thrown you out of his
+      office! That is what I would have done!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron glanced up and down Mr. Denman's well-knit figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't think so, Sir,&rdquo; he said, with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; said Mr. Denman, grasping the arms of his office chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Because you would not have insulted a stranger in your office who was
+      trying his best to understand his work. And then, I should not have tried
+      it on you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And why?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I think I know a gentleman when I see one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Denman was not to be appeased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let me tell you, young man, it would have been a mighty unhealthy
+      thing for you to have cut up any such shine in this office. I have done
+      some Rugby in my day, my boy, if you know what that means.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done a little, too,&rdquo; said Cameron, with slightly heightened
+      colour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have, eh! Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Scottish International, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! You don't tell me!&rdquo; replied Mr. Denman, his tone expressing a
+      new admiration and respect. &ldquo;When? This year?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, last year, Sir&mdash;against Wales!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; cried Mr. Denman again; &ldquo;give me your hand, boy! Any man who
+      has made the Scottish Internationals is not called to stand any cheek from
+      a cad like Bates.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Denman shook Cameron warmly by the hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell us about it!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;It must have been rare sport. If Bates only
+      knew it, he ought to count it an honour to have been knocked down by a
+      Scottish International.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I didn't knock him down, Sir!&rdquo; said Cameron, apologetically; &ldquo;he is only
+      a little chap; I just gave him a bit of a shake,&rdquo; and Cameron proceeded to
+      recount the proceedings of the previous morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Denman was hugely delighted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Serves the little beast bloody well right!&rdquo; he cried enthusiastically.
+      &ldquo;But what's to do now? They will be afraid to let you into their offices
+      in this city.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I think, Sir, I am done with offices; I mean to try the land.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Farm, eh?&rdquo; mused Mr. Denman. &ldquo;Well, so be it! It will probably be safer
+      for you there&mdash;possibly for some others as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0010" id="link2HCH0010">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A MAN'S JOB
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Cameron slept heavily and long into the day, but as he awoke he was
+      conscious of a delightful exhilaration possessing him. For the first time
+      in his life he was a free man, ungoverned and unguided. For four dreary
+      weeks he had waited in Montreal for answers to his enquiries concerning
+      positions with farmers, but apparently the Canadian farmers were not
+      attracted by the qualifications and experience Cameron had to offer. At
+      length he had accepted the advice of Martin's uncle in Montreal, who
+      assured him with local pride that, if he desired a position on a farm, the
+      district of which the little city of London was the centre was the very
+      garden of Canada. He was glad now to remember that he had declined a
+      letter of introduction. He was now entirely on his own. Neither in this
+      city nor in the country round about was there a soul with whom he had the
+      remotest acquaintance. The ways of life led out from his feet, all
+      untried, all unknown. Which he should choose he knew not, but with a
+      thrill of exultation he thanked his stars the choosing was his own
+      concern. A feeling of adventure was upon him, a new courage was rising in
+      his heart. The failure that had hitherto dogged his past essays in life
+      did not dampen his confidence, for they had been made under other auspices
+      than his own. He had not fitted into his former positions, but they had
+      not been of his own choosing. He would now find a place for himself and if
+      he failed again he was prepared to accept the responsibility. One bit of
+      philosophy he carried with him from Mr. Denman's farewell interview&mdash;&ldquo;Now,
+      young man, rememer,&rdquo; that gentleman had said after he had bidden him
+      farewell, &ldquo;this world is pretty much made already; success consists in
+      adjustment. Don't try to make your world, adjust yourself to it. Don't
+      fight the world, serve it till you master it.&rdquo; Cameron determined he would
+      study adjustments; his fighting tendency, which had brought him little
+      success in the past, he would control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the throb of a band broke in upon his meditations and
+      summoned him from his bed. He sprang to the window. It was circus day and
+      the morning parade, in all its mingled and cosmopolitan glory, was slowly
+      evolving its animated length to the strains of bands of music. There were
+      bands on horses and bands on chariots, and at the tail of the procession a
+      fearful and wonderful instrument bearing the euphonious and classic name
+      of the &ldquo;calliope,&rdquo; whose chief function seemed to be that of terrifying
+      the farmers' horses into frantic and determined attempts to escape from
+      these horrid alarms of the city to the peaceful haunts of their rural
+      solitudes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron was still boy enough to hurry through his morning duties in order
+      that he might mix with the crowd and share the perennial delights which a
+      circus affords. The stable yard attached to his hotel was lined three deep
+      with buggies, carriages, and lumber waggons, which had borne in the crowds
+      of farmers from the country. The hotel was thronged with sturdy red-faced
+      farm lads, looking hot and uncomfortable in their unaccustomed Sunday
+      suits, gorgeous in their rainbow ties, and rakish with their hats set at
+      all angles upon their elaborately brushed heads. Older men, too, bearded
+      and staid, moved with silent and self-respecting dignity through the
+      crowds, gazing with quiet and observant eyes upon the shifting
+      phantasmagoria that filled the circus grounds and the streets nearby. With
+      these, too, there mingled a few of both old and young who, with
+      bacchanalian enthusiasm, were swaggering their way through the crowds,
+      each followed by a company of friends good-naturedly tolerant or
+      solicitously careful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's eyes, roving over the multitude, fell upon a little group that
+      held his attention, the principal figure of which was a tall middle aged
+      man with a good-natured face, adorned with a rugged grey chin whisker, who
+      was loudly declaiming to a younger companion with a hard face and very
+      wide awake, &ldquo;My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye bet yer life they can't. Ye ain't no chicken!&rdquo; exclaimed his
+      hard-faced friend. &ldquo;Say, let's liquor up once more before we go to see the
+      elephant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With these two followed a boy of some thirteen years, freckled faced and
+      solemn, slim and wiry of body, who was anxiously striving to drag his
+      father away from one of the drinking booths that dotted the circus
+      grounds, and towards the big tent; but the father had been already a too
+      frequent visitor at the booth to be quite amenable to his son's pleading.
+      He, in a glorious mood of self-appreciation, kept announcing to the public
+      generally and to his hard-faced friend in particular&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, father,&rdquo; pleaded Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No hurry, Timmy, me boy,&rdquo; said his father. &ldquo;The elephants won't run away
+      with the monkeys and the clowns can't git out of the ring.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come on, dad, I'm sure the show's begun.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cheese it, young feller,&rdquo; said the young man, &ldquo;yer dad's able to take
+      care of himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw, you shut yer mouth!&rdquo; replied Tim fiercely. &ldquo;I know what you're
+      suckin' round for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good boy, Tim,&rdquo; laughed his father; &ldquo;ye giv' 'im one that time. Guess
+      we'll go. So long, Sam, if that's yer name. Ye see I've jist got ter take
+      in this 'ere show this morning with Tim 'ere, and then we have got some
+      groceries to git for the old woman. See there,&rdquo; he drew a paper from his
+      pocket, &ldquo;wouldn't dare show up without 'em, ye bet, eh, Tim! Why, it's her
+      egg and butter money and she wants value fer it, she does. Well, so long,
+      Sam, see ye later,&rdquo; and with the triumphant Tim he made for the big tent,
+      leaving a wrathful and disappointed man behind him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron spent the rest of the day partly in &ldquo;taking in&rdquo; the circus and
+      partly in conversing with the farmers who seemed to have taken possession
+      of the town; but in answer to his most diligent and careful enquiries he
+      could hear of no position on a farm for which he could honestly offer
+      himself. The farmers wanted mowers, or cradlers, or good smart turnip
+      hands, and Cameron sorrowfully had to confess he was none of these. There
+      apparently was no single bit of work in the farmer's life that Cameron
+      felt himself qualified to perform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was wearing towards evening when Cameron once more came across Tim. He
+      was standing outside the bar room door, big tears silently coursing down
+      his pale and freckled cheeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; cried Cameron, &ldquo;what's up old chap? Where's your dad, and has he
+      got his groceries yet?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Tim, hastily wiping away his tears and looking up somewhat
+      shyly and sullenly into Cameron's face. What he saw there apparently won
+      his confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's in yonder,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;and I can't git him out. They won't let
+      him come. They're jist making 'im full so he can't do anything, and we
+      ought to be startin' fer home right away, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, let's go in anyway and see what they are doing,&rdquo; said Cameron
+      cheerfully, to whom the pale tear-stained face made strong appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They won't let us,&rdquo; said Tim. &ldquo;There's a feller there that chucks me
+      out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Won't, eh? We'll see about that! Come along!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron entered the bar room, with Tim following, and looked about him.
+      The room was crowded to the door with noisy excited men, many of whom were
+      partially intoxicated. At the bar, two deep, stood a line of men with
+      glasses in their hands, or waiting to be served. In the farthest corner of
+      the room stood Tim's father, considerably the worse of his day's
+      experiences, and lovingly embracing the hard-faced young man, to whom he
+      was at intervals announcing, &ldquo;My name's Tom Haley! Ye can't git over me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As Cameron began to push through the crowd, a man with a very red face,
+      obviously on the watch for Tim, cried out&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, sonny, git out of here! This is no place fer you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim drew back, but Cameron, turning to him, said,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, Tim. He's with me,&rdquo; he added, addressing the man. &ldquo;He wants
+      his father.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His father's not here. He left half an hour ago. I told him so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You were evidently mistaken, for I see him just across the room there,&rdquo;
+       said Cameron quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! is he a friend of yours?&rdquo; enquired the red-faced man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't know him at all, but Tim does, and Tim wants him,&rdquo; said
+      Cameron, beginning to push his way through the crowd towards the
+      vociferating Haley, who appeared to be on the point of backing up some of
+      his statements with money, for he was flourishing a handful of bills in
+      the face of the young man Sam, who apparently was quite willing to
+      accommodate him with the wager.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before Cameron could make his way through the swaying, roaring crowd, the
+      red-faced man slipped from his side, and in a very few moments appeared at
+      a side door near Tom Haley's corner. Almost immediately there was a
+      shuffle and Haley and his friends disappeared through the side door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; cried Cameron, &ldquo;there's something doing! We'll just slip around
+      there, my boy.&rdquo; So saying, he drew Tim back from the crowd and out of the
+      front door, and, hurrying around the house, came upon Sam, the red-faced
+      man, and Haley in a lane leading past the stable yard. The red-faced man
+      was affectionately urging a bottle upon Haley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There they are!&rdquo; said Tim in an undertone, clutching Cameron's arm. &ldquo;You
+      get him away and I'll hitch up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Tim,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;I'll get him. They are evidently up to no
+      good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's yer name?&rdquo; said Tim hurriedly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, then!&rdquo; he cried, dragging Cameron at a run towards his father.
+      &ldquo;Here, Dad!&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;this is my friend, Mr. Cameron! Come on home. I'm
+      going to hitch up. We'll be awful late for the chores and we got them
+      groceries to git. Come on, Dad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw, gwan! yer a cheeky kid anyway,&rdquo; said Sam, giving Tim a shove that
+      nearly sent him on his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on there, my man, you leave the boy alone,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your business in this, young feller?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Tim is a friend of mine and no one is going
+      to hurt him. Run along, Tim, and get your horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Friend o' Tim's, eh!&rdquo; said Haley, in half drunken good nature. &ldquo;Friend o'
+      Tim's, friend o' mine,&rdquo; he added, gravely shaking Cameron by the hand.
+      &ldquo;Have a drink, young man. You look a' right!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron took the bottle, put it to his lips. The liquor burned like fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great Caesar!&rdquo; he gasped, contriving to let the bottle drop upon a stone.
+      &ldquo;What do you call that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty hot stuff!&rdquo; cried Haley, with a shout of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Sam, unable to see the humour of the situation, exclaimed in a rage,
+      &ldquo;Here, you cursed fool! That is my bottle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sorry to be so clumsy,&rdquo; said Cameron apologetically, &ldquo;but it surely
+      wasn't anything to drink, was it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, it jest was something to drink, was it?&rdquo; mocked Sam, approaching
+      Cameron with menace in his eye and attitude. &ldquo;I have a blanked good notion
+      to punch your head, too!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I wouldn't do that if I were you,&rdquo; said Cameron, smiling pleasantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Sam, don't get mad, Sam,&rdquo; interposed Haley. &ldquo;This young feller's a
+      friend o' Tim's. I'll git another bottle a' right. I've got the stuff
+      right here.&rdquo; He pulled out his roll of bills. &ldquo;And lots more where this
+      comes from.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me have that, Mr. Haley, I'll get the bottle for you,&rdquo; said Cameron,
+      reaching out for the bills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A' right,&rdquo; said Haley. &ldquo;Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, young feller, you're too fresh!&rdquo; cried the red-faced man, &ldquo;buttin'
+      in here! You make tracks, git out! Come, git out, I tell yeh!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give it to him quick,&rdquo; said Sam in a low voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The red-faced man, without the slightest warning, swiftly stepped towards
+      Cameron and, before the latter could defend himself, struck him a heavy
+      blow. Cameron staggered, fell, and struggled again to his knees. The
+      red-faced man sprang forward to kick him in the face, when Haley
+      interposed&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up there, now! Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine, ye know!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry up,&rdquo; said Sam, closing in on Haley. &ldquo;Quit fooling. Give 'im the
+      billy and let's get away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Haley, though unskilled with his hands, was a man of more than
+      ordinary strength, and he swung his long arms about with such vigour that
+      neither Sam, who was savagely striking at his head, nor the red-faced man,
+      who was dancing about waiting for a chance to get in with the &ldquo;billy,&rdquo;
+       which he held in his hand, was able to bring the affair to a finish. It
+      could be a matter of only a few moments, however, for both Sam and his
+      friend were evidently skilled in the arts of the thug, while Haley, though
+      powerful enough, was chiefly occupying himself in beating the air. A blow
+      from the billy dropped one of Haley's arms helpless. The red-faced man,
+      following up his advantage, ran in to finish, but Haley gripped him by the
+      wrist and, exerting all his strength, gave a mighty heave and threw him
+      heavily against Sam, who was running in upon the other side. At the same
+      time Cameron, who was rapidly recovering, clutched Sam by a leg and
+      brought him heavily to earth. Reaching down, Haley gripped Cameron by the
+      collar and hauled him to his feet just as Sam, who had sprung up, ran to
+      the attack. Steadied by Haley, Cameron braced himself, and, at exactly the
+      right moment, stiffened his left arm with the whole weight of his body
+      behind it. The result was a most unhappy one for Sam, who, expecting no
+      such reception, was lifted clear off his feet and hurled to the ground
+      some distance away. The exhilaration of his achievement brought Cameron's
+      blood back again to his brain. Swiftly he turned upon the red-faced man
+      just as that worthy had brought Haley to his knees with a cruel blow and
+      was preparing to finish off his victim. With a shout Cameron sprang at
+      him, the man turned quickly, warded off Cameron's blow, and then, seeing
+      Sam lying helpless upon the ground, turned and fled down the lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, young feller!&rdquo; panted Haley, staggering to his feet, &ldquo;yeh came in
+      mighty slick that time. Yeh ain't got a bottle on ye, hev yeh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;but there's a pump near by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jest as good and a little better,&rdquo; said Haley, staggering towards the
+      pump. &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; he continued, with a humourous twinkle in his eye, and
+      glancing at the man lying on the ground, &ldquo;Sam's kinder quiet, ain't he?
+      Run agin something hard like, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron filled a bucket with water and into its icy depths Haley plunged
+      his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ow! that's good,&rdquo; he sputtered, plunging his head in again and again.
+      &ldquo;Fill 'er up once more!&rdquo; he said, wiping off his face with a big red
+      handkerchief. &ldquo;Now, I shouldn't wonder if it would help Sam a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He picked up the bucket of water and approached Sam, who meantime had got
+      to a sitting position and was blinking stupidly around.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, ye blamed hog, hev a wash, ye need it bad!&rdquo; So saying, Haley flung
+      the whole bucket of water over Sam's head and shoulders. &ldquo;Fill 'er up
+      again,&rdquo; he said, but Sam had had enough, and, swearing wildly, gasping and
+      sputtering, he made off down the lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've heard o' them circus toughs,&rdquo; said Haley in a meditative tone, &ldquo;but
+      never jest seen 'em before. Say, young feller, yeh came in mighty handy
+      fer me a' right, and seeing as yer Tim's friend put it there.&rdquo; He gripped
+      Cameron's hand and shook it heartily. &ldquo;Here's Tim with the team, and, say,
+      there's no need to mention anything about them fellers. Tim's real tender
+      hearted. Well, I'm glad to hev met yeh. Good-bye! Living here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Travellin', eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not exactly,&rdquo; replied Cameron. &ldquo;The truth is I'm looking for a position.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A position? School teachin', mebbe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, a position on a farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On a farm? Ha! ha! good! Position on a farm,&rdquo; repeated Haley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Cameron. &ldquo;Do you know of any?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Position on a farm!&rdquo; said Haley again, as if trying to grasp the meaning
+      of this extraordinary quest. &ldquo;There ain't any.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No positions?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nary one! Say, young man, where do you come from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotland,&rdquo; replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotland! yeh don't say, now. Jest out, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, about a month or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, well! Yeh don't say so!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;and I am surprised to hear that there is no
+      work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! hold on there now!&rdquo; interposed Haley gravely. &ldquo;If it's work you want
+      there are stacks of it lying round, but there ain't no positions.
+      Positions!&rdquo; ejaculated Haley, who seemed to be fascinated by the word,
+      &ldquo;there ain't none on my farm except one and I hold that myself; but
+      there's lots o' work, and&mdash;why! I want a man right now. What say?
+      Come along, stay's long's yeh like. I like yeh fine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Wait till I get my bag, but I ought to tell
+      you I have had no experience.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No experience, eh!&rdquo; Haley pondered. &ldquo;Well, we'll give it to you, and
+      anyway you saved me some experience to-day and you come home with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When he returned he found Haley sitting on the bottom of the wagon rapidly
+      sinking into slumber. The effects of the bucket were passing off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the groceries, Tim?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've got to git 'em,&rdquo; said Tim, &ldquo;or we'll catch it sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving Cameron to wonder what it might be that they were sure to catch,
+      Tim extracted from his father's pocket the paper on which were listed the
+      groceries to be purchased, and the roll of bills, and handed both to
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You best git 'em,&rdquo; he said, and, mounting to the high spring seat, turned
+      the team out of the yard. The groceries secured with Cameron's help, they
+      set off for home as the long June evening was darkening into night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! it's awful late,&rdquo; said Tim in a voice full of foreboding. &ldquo;And
+      Perkins ain't no good at chores.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How far is it to your home?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nine miles out this road and three off to the east.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who's Perkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perkins! Joe Perkins! He's our hired man. He's a terror to work at
+      plowin', cradlin', and bindin', but he ain't no good at chores. I bet yeh
+      he'll leave Mandy to do the milkin', ten cows, and some's awful bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And who's Mandy?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mandy! She's my sister. She's an awful quick milker. She can beat Dad, or
+      Perkins, or any of 'em, but ten cows is a lot, and then there's the pigs
+      and the calves to feed, and the wood, too. I bet Perkins won't cut a
+      stick. He's good enough in the field,&rdquo; continued Tim, with an obvious
+      desire to do Perkins full justice, &ldquo;but he ain't no good around the house.
+      He says he ain't hired to do women's chores, and Ma she won't ask 'im. She
+      says if he don't do what he sees to be done she'd see 'im far enough
+      before she'd ask 'im.&rdquo; And so Timothy went on with a monologue replete
+      with information, his high thin voice rising clear above the roar and
+      rattle of the lumber wagon as it rumbled and jolted over the rutty gravel
+      road. Those who knew the boy would have been amazed at his loquacity, but
+      something in Cameron had won his confidence and opened his heart. Hence
+      his monologue, in which the qualities, good and bad, of the members of the
+      family, of their own hired man and of other hired men were fully
+      discussed. The standard of excellence for work in the neighbourhood,
+      however, appeared to be Perkins, whose abilities Tim appeared greatly to
+      admire, but for whose person he appeared to have little regard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mighty good at turnip hoeing, too,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I could pretty near
+      keep up to him last year and I believe I could do it this year. Some day
+      soon I'm going to git after 'im. My! I'd like to trim 'im to a fine
+      point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The live stock on the farm in general, and the young colts in particular,
+      among which a certain two-year-old was showing signs of marvellous speed,
+      these and cognate subjects relating to the farm, its dwellers and its
+      activities, Tim passed in review, with his own shrewd comments thereon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what do you play, Tim?&rdquo; asked Cameron, seeking a point of contact
+      with the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nothin',&rdquo; said Tim shortly. &ldquo;No time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you go to school?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, in fall and winter. Then we play ball and shinny some, but there
+      ain't much time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you can't work all the time, Tim? What work can you do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; replied Tim carelessly, &ldquo;I run a team.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Run a team? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim glanced up at him and, perceiving that he was quite serious, proceeded
+      to explain that during the spring's work he had taken his place in the
+      plowing and harrowing with the &ldquo;other&rdquo; men, that he expected to drive the
+      mower and reaper in haying and harvest, that, in short, in almost all
+      kinds of farm work he was ready to take the place of a grown man; and all
+      this without any sign of boasting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron thought over his own life, in which sport had filled up so large a
+      place and work so little, and in which he had developed so little power of
+      initiative and such meagre self-dependence, and he envied the solemn-faced
+      boy at his side, handling his team and wagon with the skill of a grown
+      man.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Tim!&rdquo; he exclaimed in admiration, &ldquo;you're great. I wish I could do
+      half as much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw!&rdquo; exclaimed Tim in modest self-disdain, &ldquo;that ain't nothin',
+      but I wish I could git off a bit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get off? What do you mean?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The boy was silent for some moments, then asked shyly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! Is there big cities in Scotland, an' crowds of people, an' trains,
+      an' engines, an' factories, an' things? My! I wish I could git away!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Cameron understood dimly something of the wander-lust in the boy's
+      soul, of the hunger for adventure, for the colour and movement of life in
+      the great world &ldquo;away&rdquo; from the farm, that thrilled in the boy's voice. So
+      for the next half hour he told Tim tales of his own life, the chief glory
+      of which had been his achievements in the realm of sport, and, before he
+      was aware, he was describing to the boy the great International with
+      Wales, till, remembering the disastrous finish, he brought his narrative
+      to an abrupt close.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And did yeh lick 'em?&rdquo; demanded Tim in a voice of intense excitement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Cameron shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hedges! I wisht ye had!&rdquo; exclaimed Tim in deep disappointment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was my fault,&rdquo; replied Cameron bitterly, for the eager wish in the
+      boy's heart had stirred a similar yearning in his own and had opened an
+      old sore.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was a fool,&rdquo; he said, more to himself than to Tim. &ldquo;I let myself get
+      out of condition and so I lost them the match.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw, git out!&rdquo; said Tim, with unbelieving scorn. &ldquo;I bet yeh didn't! My! I
+      wisht I could see them games.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw! Tim, they are not half so worth while as plowing, harrowing,
+      and running your team. Why, here you are, a boy of&mdash;how old?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirteen,&rdquo; said Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A boy of thirteen able to do a man's work, and here am I, a man of
+      twenty-one, only able to do a boy's work, and not even that. But I'm going
+      to learn, Tim,&rdquo; added Cameron. &ldquo;You hear me, I am going to learn to do a
+      man's work. If I can,&rdquo; he added doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks!&rdquo; replied Tim, &ldquo;you bet yeh can, and I'll show yeh,&rdquo; with
+      which mutual determination they turned in at the gate of the Haley farm,
+      which was to be the scene of Cameron's first attempt to do a man's work
+      and to fill a man's place in the world.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0011" id="link2HCH0011">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A DAY'S WORK
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The Haley farm was a survival of an ambitious past. Once the property of a
+      rich English gentleman, it had been laid out with an eye to appearance
+      rather than to profit and, though the soil was good enough, it had never
+      been worked to profit. Consequently, when its owner had tired of Colonial
+      life, he had at first rented the farm, but, finding this unsatisfactory,
+      he, in a moment of disgust, advertised it for sale. Pretentious in its
+      plan and in its appointments, its neglected and run down condition gave it
+      an air of decayed gentility, depressing alike to the eye of the beholder
+      and to the selling price of the owner. Haley bought it and bought it
+      cheap. From the high road a magnificent avenue of maples led to a house of
+      fine proportions, though sadly needing repair. The wide verandahs, the
+      ample steps were unpainted and falling into ruin; the lawn reaching from
+      the front door to the orchard was spacious, but overgrown with burdocks,
+      nettles and other noxious weeds; the orchard, which stretched from the
+      lawn to the road on both sides of the lane, had been allowed to run sadly
+      to wood. At the side of the house the door-yard was littered with
+      abandoned farm implements, piles of old fence rails and lumber and other
+      impedimenta, which, though kindly Nature, abhorring the unsightly rubbish,
+      was doing her utmost to hide it all beneath a luxuriant growth of docks,
+      milkweed, and nettles, lent an air of disorder and neglect to the whole
+      surroundings. The porch, or &ldquo;stoop,&rdquo; about the summer kitchen was set out
+      with an assortment of tubs and pails, pots and pans, partially filled with
+      various evil looking and more evil smelling messes, which afforded an
+      excellent breeding and feeding place for flies, mosquitoes, and other
+      unpleasant insects. Adjoining the door yard, and separated from it by a
+      fence, was the barn yard, a spacious quadrangle flanked on three sides by
+      barns, stables, and sheds, which were large and finely planned, but which
+      now shared the general appearance of decrepitude. The fence, which
+      separated one yard from the other, was broken down, so that the barn yard
+      dwellers, calves, pigs, and poultry, wandered at will in search of
+      amusement or fodder to the very door of the kitchen, and so materially
+      contributed to the general disorder, discomfort, and dirt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Away from the house, however, where Nature had her own way, the farm
+      stretched field after field on each side of the snake fenced lane to the
+      line of woods in the distance, a picture of rich and varied beauty. From
+      the rising ground on which the house was situated a lovely vista swept
+      right from the kitchen door away to the remnant of the forest primeval at
+      the horizon. On every field the signs of coming harvest were luxuriantly
+      visible, the hay fields, grey-green with blooming &ldquo;Timothy&rdquo; and purple
+      with the deep nestling clover, the fall wheat green and yellowing into
+      gold, the spring wheat a lighter green and bursting into head, the oats
+      with their graceful tasselated stalks, the turnip field ribboned with its
+      lines of delicate green on the dark soil drills, back of all, the
+      &ldquo;slashing&rdquo; where stumps, blackened with fire, and trunks of trees piled
+      here and there in confusion, all overgrown with weeds, represented the
+      transition stage between forest and harvest field, and beyond the slashing
+      the dark cool masses of maple, birch, and elm; all these made a scene of
+      such varied loveliness as to delight the soul attuned to nature.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon this scene of vivid contrasts, on one side house and barn and yard,
+      and on the other the rolling fields and massive forest, Cameron stood
+      looking in the early light of his first morning on the farm, with mingled
+      feelings of disgust and pleasure. In a few moments, however, the
+      loveliness of the far view caught and held his eye and he stood as in a
+      dream. The gentle rolling landscape, with its rich variety of greens and
+      yellows and greys, that swept away from his feet to the dark masses of
+      woods, with their suggestions of cool and shady depth, filled his soul
+      with a deep joy and brought him memory of how the &ldquo;Glen of the Cup of
+      Gold&rdquo; would look that morning in the dear home-land so far away. True,
+      there were neither mountains nor moors, neither lochs nor birch-clad
+      cliffs here. Nature, in her quieter mood, looked up at him from these
+      sloping fields and bosky woods and smiled with kindly face, and that smile
+      of hers it was that brought to Cameron's mind the sunny Glen of the Cup of
+      Gold. It was the sweetest, kindliest thing his eye had looked on since he
+      had left the Glen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A harsh and fretful voice broke in upon his dreaming.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pa-a-w, there ain't a stick of wood for breakfast! There was none last
+      night! If you want any breakfast you'd best git some wood!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Mother!&rdquo; called Haley from the barn yard, where he was
+      assisting in the milking. &ldquo;I'm a comin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron walked to meet him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can I help?&rdquo; he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, of course!&rdquo; shouted Haley. &ldquo;Here, Ma, here's our new hand, the very
+      man for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mrs. Haley, who had retired to the kitchen, appeared at the door. She was
+      a woman past middle age, unduly stout, her face deep lined with the fret
+      of a multitude of cares, and hung with flabby folds of skin, browned with
+      the sun and wind, though it must be confessed its color was determined
+      more by the grease and grime than by the tan upon it. Yet, in spite of the
+      flabby folds of flesh, in spite of the grime and grease, there was still a
+      reminiscence of a one-time comeliness, all the more pathetic by reason of
+      its all too obvious desecration. Her voice was harsh, her tone fretful,
+      which indeed was hardly to be wondered at, for the burden of her life was
+      by no means light, and the cares of the household, within and without,
+      were neither few nor trivial.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment or two Mrs. Haley stood in silence studying and appraising
+      the new man. The result did not apparently inspire her with hope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on now, Pa,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;stop yer foolin' and git me that wood. I
+      want it right now. You're keepin' me back and there's an awful lot to do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I ain't foolin', Ma. Mr. Cameron is our new hand. He'll knock yeh off
+      a few sticks in no time.&rdquo; So saying, Haley walked off with his pails to
+      the milking, leaving his wife and the new hand facing each other, each
+      uncertain as to the next move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What can I do, Mrs. Haley?&rdquo; enquired Cameron politely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know,&rdquo; said Mrs. Haley wearily. &ldquo;I want a few sticks for the
+      breakfast, but perhaps I can get along with chips, but chips don't give no
+      steady fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If you would show me just what to do,&rdquo; said Cameron with some hesitation,
+      &ldquo;I mean, where is the wood to be got?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There,&rdquo; she said, in a surprised tone, pointing to a pile of long logs of
+      ash and maple. &ldquo;I don't want much.&rdquo; She gathered her apron full of chips
+      and turned away, all too obviously refusing to place her hope of wood for
+      the breakfast fire upon the efforts of the new man. Cameron stood looking
+      alternately at the long, hard, dry logs and at the axe which he had picked
+      up from the bed of chips. The problem of how to produce the sticks
+      necessary to breakfast by the application of the one to the other was one
+      for which he could see no solution. He lifted his axe and brought it down
+      hard upon a maple log. The result was a slight indentation upon the log
+      and a sharp jar from the axe handle that ran up his arm unpleasantly. A
+      series of heavy blows produced nothing more than a corresponding series of
+      indentations in the tough maple log and of jars more or less sharp and
+      painful shooting up his arms. The result was not encouraging, but it
+      flashed upon him that this was his first attempt to make good at his job
+      on the farm. He threw off his coat and went at his work with energy; but
+      the probability of breakfast, so far as it depended upon the result of his
+      efforts, seemed to be growing more and more remote.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess ye ain't got the knack of it,&rdquo; said a voice, deep, full, and
+      mellow, behind him. &ldquo;That axe ain't no good for choppin', it's a splittin'
+      axe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Turning, he saw a girl of about seventeen, with little grace and less
+      beauty, but strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-natured, if
+      somewhat stupid and heavy face. Her hair was dun in colour, coarse in
+      texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in two heavy braids, arranged
+      about her head in such a manner as to permit stray wisps of hair to escape
+      about her face and neck. She was dressed in a loose pink wrapper, all too
+      plainly of home manufacture, gathered in at the waist, and successfully
+      obliterating any lines that might indicate the existence of any grace of
+      form, and sadly spotted and stained with grease and dirt. Her red stout
+      arms ended in thick and redder hands, decked with an array of black-rimmed
+      nails. At his first glance, sweeping her &ldquo;tout ensemble,&rdquo; Cameron was
+      conscious of a feeling of repulsion, but in a moment this feeling passed
+      and he was surprised to find himself looking into two eyes of surprising
+      loveliness, dark blue, well shaped, and of such liquid depths as to
+      suggest pools of water under forest trees.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They use the saw mostly,&rdquo; said the girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The saw?&rdquo; echoed Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;They saw 'em through and then split 'em with the axe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron picked up the buck-saw which lay against a rickety saw horse.
+      Never in his life had he used such an instrument. He gazed helplessly at
+      his companion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you use this thing?&rdquo; he enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! are you funny,&rdquo; replied the girl, flashing a keen glance upon him,
+      &ldquo;or don't ye know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never saw it done in my life,&rdquo; said Cameron solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;let me show you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She seized the end of a maple log, dragged it forward to the rickety saw
+      horse, set it in position, took the saw from his hands, and went at her
+      work with such vigour that in less than a minute as it seemed to Cameron
+      she had made the cut.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me that axe!&rdquo; she said impatiently to Cameron, who was preparing to
+      split the block.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a few strong and skillful blows she split the straight-grained block
+      of wood into firewood, gathered up the sticks in her arms, and, with a
+      giggle, turned toward the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't charge you anything for that lesson,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;but you'll have
+      to hustle if you git that wood split 'fore breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Cameron, grateful that none of the men had witnessed the
+      instruction, &ldquo;I shall do my best,&rdquo; and for the next half hour, with little
+      skill, but by main strength, he cut off a number of blocks from the maple
+      log and proceeded to split them. But in this he made slow progress. From
+      the kitchen came cheerful sounds and scents of cooking, and ever and anon
+      from the door waddled, with quite surprising celerity, the unwieldy bulk
+      of the mistress of the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, that's jest like yer Pa,&rdquo; Cameron heard her grumbling to her
+      daughter, &ldquo;bringin' a man here jest at the busy season who don't know
+      nothin'. He's peckin' away at 'em blocks like a rooster peckin' grain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's willin' enough, Ma,&rdquo; replied the girl, &ldquo;and I guess he'll learn.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Learn!&rdquo; puffed Mrs. Haley contemptuously. &ldquo;Did ye ever see an old-country
+      man learn to handle an axe or a scythe after he was growed up? Jest look
+      at 'im. Thank goodness! there's Tim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Tim!&rdquo; she called from the door, &ldquo;best split some o' that wood 'fore
+      breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim approached Cameron with a look of pity on his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me have a try,&rdquo; he said. Cameron yielded him the axe. The boy set on
+      end the block at which Cameron had been laboring and, with a swift
+      glancing blow of the axe, knocked off a slab.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron admiringly, &ldquo;how did you do that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer the boy struck again the same glancing blow, a slab started
+      and, at a second light blow, fell to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron again, &ldquo;I must learn that trick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's easy!&rdquo; said Tim, knocking the slabs off from the outside of
+      the block. &ldquo;This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got a knot in it,&rdquo; and
+      tough it proved, resisting all his blows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a tough sucker, now, ain't yeh?&rdquo; said Tim, through his shut teeth,
+      addressing the block. &ldquo;We'll try yeh this way.&rdquo; He laid the end of the
+      block upon a log and plied the axe with the full strength of his slight
+      body, but the block danced upon the log and resisted all his blows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! you're a tough one now!&rdquo; he said, pausing for breath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me try that,&rdquo; said Cameron, and, putting forth his strength, he
+      brought the axe down fairly upon the stick with such force that the
+      instrument shore clean through the knot and sank into the log below.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh! that's a cracker,&rdquo; said Tim with ungrudging admiration. &ldquo;All you
+      want is knack. I'll slab it off and you can do the knots,&rdquo; he added with a
+      grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the result of this somewhat unequal division of labor, there lay in
+      half an hour a goodly pile of fire wood ready for the cooking. It caught
+      Haley's eye as he came in to breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Missus, that's a bigger pile than you've had for some time. Guess
+      my new man ain't so slow after all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; puffed his wife, waddling about with great agility, &ldquo;it was Tim
+      that done it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Ma, ye know well enough he helped Tim, and right smart too,&rdquo; said
+      the daughter, but her mother was too busy getting breakfast ready for the
+      hungry men who were now performing their morning ablutions with the help
+      of a very small basin set upon a block of wood outside the kitchen door to
+      answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There were two men employed by Haley, one the son of a Scotch-Canadian
+      farmer, Webster by name, a stout young fellow, but slow in his movements,
+      both physical and mental, and with no further ambition than to do a fair
+      day's work for a fair day's pay. He was employed by the month during the
+      busier seasons of the year. The other, Perkins, was Haley's &ldquo;steady&rdquo; man,
+      which means that he was employed by the year and was regarded almost as a
+      member of the family. Perkins was an Englishman with fair hair and blue
+      eyes, of fresh complexion, burned to a clear red, clean-cut features, and
+      a well knit, athletic frame. He was, as Tim declared, a terror to work;
+      indeed, his fame as a worker was well established throughout the country
+      side. To these men Cameron was introduced as being from Scotland and as
+      being anxious to be initiated into the mysteries of Canadian farm life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Glad to see you!&rdquo; said Perkins, shaking him heartily by the hand. &ldquo;We'll
+      make a farmer of you, won't we, Tim? From Scotland, eh? Pretty fine
+      country, I hear&mdash;to leave,&rdquo; he added, with a grin at his own humour.
+      Though his manner was pleasant enough, Cameron became conscious of a
+      feeling of aversion, which he recognised at once as being as unreasonable
+      as it was inexplicable. He set it down as a reflection of Tim's mental
+      attitude toward the hired man. Perkins seized the tin basin, dipped some
+      water from the rain barrel standing near, and, setting it down before
+      Cameron, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, pile in, Scotty. Do they wash in your country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;they are rather strong on that,&rdquo; wondering at the
+      same time how the operation could be performed successfully with such a
+      moderate supply of water. After using a second and third supply, however,
+      he turned, with hands and face dripping, and looked about for a towel.
+      Perkins handed him a long roller towel, black with dirt and stiff with
+      grease. Had his life depended upon it Cameron could not have avoided a
+      shuddering hesitation as he took the filthy cloth preparatory to applying
+      it to his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Twon't hurt you,&rdquo; laughed Perkins. &ldquo;Wash day ain't till next week, you
+      know, and this is only Wednesday.&rdquo; Suddenly the towel was snatched from
+      Cameron's hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Gimme that towel!&rdquo; It was the girl, with face aflame and eyes emitting
+      blue fire. &ldquo;Here; Mr. Cameron, take this,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great Jerusalem, Mandy! You ain't goin' to bring on a clean towel the
+      middle of the week?&rdquo; said Perkins in mock dismay. &ldquo;Guess it's for Mr.
+      Cameron,&rdquo; he continued with another laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We give clean towels to them that knows how to use 'em,&rdquo; said Mandy,
+      whisking wrathfully into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Scotty!&rdquo; said Perkins, in a loud bantering tone, &ldquo;guess you're
+      makin' a mash on Mandy all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know exactly what you mean,&rdquo; said Cameron with a quick rising of
+      wrath, &ldquo;but I do know that you are making a beastly cad of yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't get wrathy, Scotty!&rdquo; laughed Perkins, &ldquo;we're just having a
+      little fun. Here's the comb!&rdquo; But Cameron declined the article, which,
+      from its appearance, seemed to be intended for family use, and, proceeding
+      to his room, completed his toilet there.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The breakfast was laid in the kitchen proper, a spacious and comfortable
+      room, which served as living room for the household. The table was laden
+      with a variety and abundance of food that worthily sustained the
+      reputation of the Haleys of being &ldquo;good feeders.&rdquo; At one end of the table
+      a large plate was heaped high with slices of fat pork, and here and there
+      disposed along its length were dishes of fried potatoes, huge piles of
+      bread, hot biscuits, plates of butter, pies of different kinds, maple
+      syrup, and apple sauce. It was a breakfast fit for a lord, and Cameron sat
+      down with a pleasurable anticipation induced by his early rising and his
+      half hour's experience in the fresh morning air with the wood pile. A
+      closer inspection, however, of the dishes somewhat damped the pleasure of
+      his anticipation. The food was good, abundant, and well cooked, but
+      everywhere there was an utter absence of cleanliness. The plates were
+      greasy, the forks and knives bore the all too evident remains of former
+      meals, and everywhere were flies. In hundreds they swarmed upon the food,
+      while, drowned in the gravy, cooked in the potatoes, overwhelmed in the
+      maple syrup, buried in the butter, their ghastly carcasses were to be
+      seen. With apparent unconcern the men brushed aside the living and picked
+      out and set aside the remains of the dead, the unhappy victims of their
+      own greed or temerity, and went on calmly and swiftly with their business.
+      Not a word was spoken except by Cameron himself, who, constrained by what
+      he considered to be the ordinary decencies of society, made an effort to
+      keep up a conversation with Mr. Haley at the head of the table and
+      occasionally ventured a remark to his wife, who, with Mandy, was acting as
+      a waiter upon the hungry men. But conversation is a social exercise, and
+      Cameron found himself compelled to abandon his well meant but solitary
+      efforts at maintaining the conventions of the breakfast table. There was
+      neither time nor occasion for conversation. The business of the hour was
+      something quite other, namely, that of devouring as large a portion of the
+      food set before them as was possible within the limits of time assigned
+      for the meal. Indeed, the element of time seemed to be one of very
+      considerable importance, as Cameron discovered, for he was still picking
+      his way gingerly and carefully through his pork and potatoes by the time
+      that Perkins, having completed a second course consisting of pie and maple
+      syrup, had arrived at the final course of bread and butter and apple
+      sauce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Circulate the butter!&rdquo; he demanded of the table in general. He took the
+      plate from Cameron's hand, looked at it narrowly for a moment, then with
+      thumb and forefinger drew from the butter with great deliberation a long
+      dun-coloured hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; he said in a low voice, but perfectly audible, &ldquo;they forgot to comb
+      it this morning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron was filled with unspeakable disgust, but, glancing at Mrs. Haley's
+      face, he saw to his relief that both the action and the remark had been
+      unnoticed by her. But on Mandy's face he saw the red ensign of shame and
+      wrath, and in spite of himself he felt his aversion towards the
+      ever-smiling hired man deepen into rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Finding himself distanced in his progress through the various courses at
+      breakfast, Cameron determined to miss the intermediate course of pie and
+      maple syrup and, that he might finish on more even terms with the others,
+      proceeded with bread and butter and apple sauce.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't yeh hurry,&rdquo; said Mrs. Haley with hearty hospitality. &ldquo;Eat plenty,
+      there's lots to spare. Here, have some apple sauce.&rdquo; She caught up the
+      bowl which held this most delicious article of food.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's the spoon?&rdquo; she said, glancing round the table. There was none
+      immediately available. &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;this'll do.&rdquo; She snatched a
+      large spoon from the pitcher of thick cream, held it dripping for a moment
+      in obvious uncertainty, then with sudden decision she cried &ldquo;Never mind,&rdquo;
+       and with swift but effective application of lip and tongue she cleansed
+      the spoon of the dripping cream, and, stirring the apple sauce
+      vigourously, passed the bowl to Cameron. For a single moment Cameron held
+      the bowl, uncertain whether to refuse or not, but before he could make up
+      his mind Mandy caught it from his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Ma!&rdquo; she exclaimed in a horrified tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo; exclaimed her mother. &ldquo;A little cream won't hurt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mandy set the bowl at the far end of the table and passed another to
+      Cameron, who accepted it with resolute determination and continued his
+      breakfast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Perkins, followed by Webster and Tim, rose from the table and passed
+      out into the yard, whence his voice could be heard in explosions of
+      laughter. Cameron in the meantime was making heroic attempts to cover up
+      the sound by loud-voiced conversation with Haley, and, rendered desperate
+      by the exigencies of the situation, went so far as to venture a word of
+      praise to Mrs. Haley upon the excellence and abundance of her cooking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She ain't got no chance,&rdquo; said her husband. &ldquo;She's got too much to do and
+      it's awful hard to get help. Of course, there's Mandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course, there's Mandy,&rdquo; echoed his wife. &ldquo;I guess you'd just better
+      say, 'There's Mandy.' She's the whole thing is Mandy. What I'd do without
+      her goodness only knows.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mandy was no longer present to enjoy her mother's enconiums. Her voice
+      could be heard in the yard making fierce response to Perkins' jesting
+      remarks. As Cameron was passing out from the kitchen he heard her bitter
+      declaration: &ldquo;I don't care, it was real mean of you, and I'll pay you for
+      it yet, Mr. Perkins&mdash;before a stranger, too.&rdquo; Mandy's voice suggested
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw, Mandy!&rdquo; remonstrated Perkins, &ldquo;it was all a joke, and who
+      cares for him anyway, unless it's yourself?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mandy, catching sight of Cameron, fled with fiery face behind the
+      kitchen, leaving Perkins gazing after her with an apologetic grin upon his
+      countenance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She's rather hot under the collar,&rdquo; he confided to Cameron, &ldquo;but she
+      needn't get so, I didn't mean nothin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron ignored him. He was conscious mainly of a resolute determination
+      that at all costs he must not yield to his almost uncontrollable desire to
+      wipe off the apologetic smile with a well directed blow. Mr. Denman's
+      parting advice was in his mind and he was devoting all his powers to the
+      business of adjusting himself to his present environment. But to his
+      fastidious nature the experiences of the morning made it somewhat doubtful
+      if he should be able to carry out the policy of adjustment to the extreme
+      of schooling himself to bear with equal mind the daily contact with the
+      dirt and disorder which held so large a place in the domestic economy of
+      the Haley household. One thing he was firmly resolved upon, he would
+      henceforth perform his toilet in his own room, and thereby save himself
+      the horror of the family roller towel and the family comb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast over, the men stood waiting orders for the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll have to crowd them turnips through, Tim,&rdquo; said his father, who
+      seemed to avoid as far as possible giving direct orders to his men. &ldquo;Next
+      week we'll have to git at the hay.&rdquo; So to the turnip field they went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It is one of the many limitations of a city-bred boy that he knows nothing
+      of the life history and the culture of the things that grow upon a farm.
+      Apples and potatoes he recognises when they appear as articles of diet
+      upon the table; oats and wheat he vaguely associates in some mysterious
+      and remote way with porridge and bread, but whether potatoes grow on trees
+      or oats in pods he has no certain knowledge. Blessed is the country boy
+      for many reasons, but for none more than this, that the world of living
+      and growing things, animate and inanimate, is one which he has explored
+      and which he intimately knows; and blessed is the city boy for whom his
+      wise parents provide means of acquaintance with this wonder workshop of
+      old mother Nature, God's own open country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Turnip-hoeing is an art, a fine art, demanding all the talents of high
+      genius, a true eye, a sure hand, a sensitive conscience, industry,
+      courage, endurance, and pride in achievement. These and other gifts are
+      necessary to high success. Not to every man is it given to become a
+      turnip-hoer in the truest sense of that word. The art is achieved only
+      after long and patient devotion, and, indeed, many never attain high
+      excellence. Of course, therefore, there are grades of artists in this as
+      in other departments. There are turnip-hoers and turnip-hoers, just as
+      there are painters and painters. It was Tim's ambition to be the first
+      turnip-hoer of his district, and toward this end he had striven both last
+      season and this with a devotion that deserved, if it did not achieve,
+      success. Quietly he had been patterning himself upon that master artist,
+      Perkins, who for some years had easily held the championship for the
+      district. Keenly Tim had been observing Perkins' excellencies and also his
+      defects; secretly he had been developing a style of his own, and, all
+      unnoted, he had tested his speed by that of Perkins by adopting the method
+      of lazily loafing along and then catching up by a few minutes of whirlwind
+      work. Tim felt in his soul the day of battle could not be delayed past
+      this season; indeed, it might come any day. The very thought of it made
+      his slight body quiver and his heart beat so quickly as almost to choke
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To the turnip field hied Haley's men, Perkins and Webster leading the way,
+      Tim and Cameron bringing up the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You promised to show me how to do it, Tim,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Remember I
+      shall be very slow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks!&rdquo; replied Tim, &ldquo;turnip-hoeing is as easy as rollin' off a log
+      if yeh know how to do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; cried Cameron, &ldquo;but that is what I don't. You might give me
+      some pointers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you must be able to hit what yeh aim at.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! that means a good eye and steady hand,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Well, I can do
+      billiards some and golf. What else?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you mustn't be too careful, slash right in and don't give a rip.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! nerve, eh!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Well, I have done some Rugby in my day&mdash;I
+      know something of that. What else? This sounds good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then you've got to leave only one turnip in one place and not a weed; and
+      you mustn't leave any blanks. Dad gets hot over that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, one turnip in each place and not a weed,&rdquo; echoed Cameron. &ldquo;Say!
+      this business grows interesting. No blanks! Anything else?&rdquo; he demanded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I guess not, only if yeh ever git into a race ye've got to keep goin'
+      after you're clear tuckered out and never let on. You see the other chap
+      may be feelin' worse than you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, Tim! you're a born general!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;You will go
+      some distance if you keep on in that line. Now as to racing let me venture
+      a word, for I have done a little in my time. Don't spurt too soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh!&rdquo; said Tim, all eagerness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't get into your racing stride too early in the day, especially if you
+      are up against a stronger man. Wait till you know you can stay till the
+      end and then put your best licks in at the finish.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim pondered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jimminy! you're right,&rdquo; he cried, a glad light in his eye, and a touch
+      of colour in his pale cheek, and Cameron knew he was studying war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The turnip field, let it be said for the enlightening of the benighted and
+      unfortunate city-bred folk, is laid out in a series of drills, a drill
+      being a long ridge of earth some six inches in height, some eight inches
+      broad on the top and twelve at the base. Upon each drill the seed has been
+      sown in one continuous line from end to end of the field. When this seed
+      has grown each drill will discover a line of delicate green, this line
+      being nothing less than a compact growth of young turnip plants with weeds
+      more or less thickly interspersed. The operation of hoeing consists in the
+      eliminating of the weeds and the superfluous turnip plants in order that
+      single plants, free from weeds, may be left some eight inches apart in
+      unbroken line, extending the whole length of the drill. The artistic hoer,
+      however, is not content with this. His artistic soul demands not only that
+      single plants should stand in unbroken row from end to end along the drill
+      top, but that the drill itself should be pared down on each side to the
+      likeness of a house roof with a perfectly even ridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever hoe turnips?&rdquo; enquired Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;and I am afraid I won't make much of a fist at
+      it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you've come to a good place to learn, eh, Tim! We'll show him,
+      won't we?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim made no reply, but simply handed Cameron a hoe and picked up his own.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, show me, Tim,&rdquo; said Cameron in a low voice, as Perkins and Webster
+      set off on their drills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is how you do it,&rdquo; replied Tim. &ldquo;Click-click,&rdquo; forward and back went
+      Tim's sharp shining instrument, leaving a single plant standing shyly
+      alone where had boldly bunched a score or more a moment before.
+      &ldquo;Click-click-click,&rdquo; and the flat-topped drill stood free of weeds and
+      superfluous turnip plants and trimmed to its proper roof-like appearance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron, &ldquo;this is high art. I shall never reach your
+      class, though, Tim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks!&rdquo; said Tim, &ldquo;slash in, don't be afraid.&rdquo; Cameron slashed in.
+      &ldquo;Click-click,&rdquo; &ldquo;Click-click-click,&rdquo; when lo! a long blank space of drill
+      looked up reproachfully at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Tim! look at this mess,&rdquo; he said in disgust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind!&rdquo; said Tim, &ldquo;let her rip. Better stick one in though. Blanks
+      look bad at the END of the drill.&rdquo; So saying, he made a hole in Cameron's
+      drill and with his hoe dug up a bunch of plants from another drill and
+      patted them firmly into place, and, weeding out the unnecessary plants,
+      left a single turnip in its proper place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come, that isn't so bad,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;We can always fill up the
+      blanks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but it takes time,&rdquo; replied Tim, evidently with the racing fever in
+      his blood. Patiently Tim schooled his pupil throughout the forenoon, and
+      before the dinner hour had come Cameron was making what to Tim appeared
+      satisfactory progress. It was greatly in Cameron's favor that he possessed
+      a trained and true eye and a steady hand and that he was quick in all his
+      movements.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're doin' splendid,&rdquo; cried Tim, full of admiration.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Scotty!&rdquo; said Perkins, coming up and casting a critical eye along
+      Cameron's last drill, &ldquo;you're going to make a turnip-hoer all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I've got a good teacher, you see,&rdquo; cried Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet you have,&rdquo; said Perkins. &ldquo;I taught Tim myself, and in two or
+      three years he'll be almost as good as I am, eh, Tim!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; grunted Tim, contemptuously, but let it go at that.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perhaps you think you're that now, eh, Tim?&rdquo; said Perkins, seizing the
+      boy by the back of the neck and rubbing his hand over his hair in a manner
+      perfectly maddening. &ldquo;Don't you get too perky, young feller, or I'll hang
+      your shirt on the fence before the day's done.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim wriggled out of his grasp and kept silent. He was not yet ready with
+      his challenge. All through the afternoon he stayed behind with Cameron,
+      allowing the other two to help them out at the end of each drill, but as
+      the day wore on there was less and less need of assistance for Cameron,
+      for he was making rapid progress with his work and Tim was able to do, not
+      only his own drill, but almost half of Cameron's as well. By supper time
+      Cameron was thoroughly done out. Never had a day seemed so long, never had
+      he known that he possessed so many muscles in his back. The continuous
+      stooping and the steady click-click of the hoe, together with the
+      unceasing strain of hand and eye, and all this under the hot burning rays
+      of a June sun, so exhausted his vitality that when the cow bell rang for
+      supper it seemed to him a sound more delightful than the strains of a
+      Richter orchestra in a Beethoven symphony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the way back to the field after supper Cameron observed that Tim was in
+      a state of suppressed excitement and it dawned upon him that the hour of
+      his challenge of Perkins' supremacy as a turnip-hoer was at hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Tim, boy!&rdquo; he said earnestly, &ldquo;listen to me. You are going to get
+      after Perkins this evening, eh?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did you know?&rdquo; said Tim, in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind! Now listen to me; I have raced myself some and I have trained
+      men to race. Are you not too tired with your day's work?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tired! Not a bit,&rdquo; said the gallant little soul scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, all right. It's nice and cool and you can't hurt yourself much.
+      Now, how many drills do you do after supper as a rule?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Down and up twice,&rdquo; said Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many drills can you do at your top speed, your very top speed,
+      remember?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About two drills, I guess,&rdquo; replied Tim, after a moment's thought.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, listen to me!&rdquo; said Cameron impressively. &ldquo;Go quietly for two and a
+      half drills, then let yourself out and go your best. And, listen! I have
+      been watching you this afternoon. You have easily done once and a half
+      what Perkins has done and you are going to lick him out of his boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim gulped a moment or two, looked at his friend with glistening eyes, but
+      said not a word. For the first two and a half drills Cameron exerted to
+      the highest degree his conversational powers with the two-fold purpose of
+      holding back Perkins and Webster and also of so occupying Tim's mind that
+      he might forget for a time the approaching conflict, the strain of waiting
+      for which he knew would be exhausting for the lad. But when the middle of
+      the second last drill had been reached, Tim began unconsciously to quicken
+      his speed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Tim,&rdquo; called Cameron, &ldquo;come here! Am I getting these spaces too
+      wide?&rdquo; Tim came over to his side. &ldquo;Now, Tim,&rdquo; said Cameron, in a low
+      voice, &ldquo;wait a little longer; you can never wear him out. Your only chance
+      is in speed. Wait till the last drill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tim was not to be held back. Back he went to his place and with a rush
+      brought his drill up even with Webster, passed him, and in a few moments
+      like a whirlwind passed Perkins and took the lead.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Timmy! where are you going?&rdquo; asked Perkins, in surprise.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Home,&rdquo; said Tim proudly, &ldquo;and I'll tell 'em you're comin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Timmy, my son!&rdquo; replied Perkins with a laugh, &ldquo;tell them you
+      won't need no hot bath; I'm after you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Click-click,&rdquo; &ldquo;Click-click-click&rdquo; was Tim's only answer. It was a
+      distinct challenge, and, while not openly breaking into racing speed,
+      Perkins accepted it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some minutes Webster quickened his pace in an attempt to follow the
+      leaders, but soon gave it up and fell back to help Cameron up with his
+      drill, remarking, &ldquo;I ain't no blamed fool. I ain't going to bust myself
+      for any man. THEY'RE racing, not me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will Tim win?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Naw! Not this year! Why, Perkins is the best man in the whole country at
+      turnips. He took the Agricultural Society's prize two years ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe Tim will beat him,&rdquo; said Cameron confidently, with his eyes
+      upon the two in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beat nothing!&rdquo; said Webster. &ldquo;You just wait a bit, Perkins isn't letting
+      himself out yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a short time Tim finished his drill some distance ahead, and then,
+      though it was quitting time, without a pause he swung into the next.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Timmy!&rdquo; cried Perkins good-naturedly, &ldquo;going to work all night,
+      eh? Well, I'll just take a whirl out of you,&rdquo; and for the first time he
+      frankly threw himself into his racing gait.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good boy, Tim!&rdquo; called out Cameron, as Tim bore down upon them, still in
+      the lead and going like a small steam engine. &ldquo;You're all right and going
+      easy. Don't worry!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Perkins, putting on a great spurt, drew up within a hoe-handle length
+      of Tim and there held his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Tim, my boy, you can hold him,&rdquo; cried Cameron, as the racers
+      came down upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can, eh?&rdquo; replied Perkins. &ldquo;I'll show him and you,&rdquo; and with an
+      accession of speed he drew up on a level with Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, ha! Timmy, my boy! we've got you where we want you, I guess,&rdquo; he
+      exulted, and, with a whoop and still increasing his speed, he drew past
+      the boy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cameron, who was narrowly observing the combatants and their work,
+      called out again:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't worry, Tim, you're doing nice clean work and doing it easily.&rdquo; The
+      inference was obvious, and Perkins, who had been slashing wildly and
+      leaving many blanks and weeds behind him where neither blanks nor weeds
+      should be, steadied down somewhat, and, taking more pains with his work,
+      began to lose ground, while Tim, whose work was without flaw, moved again
+      to the front place. There remained half a drill to be done and the issue
+      was still uncertain. With half the length of a hoe handle between them the
+      two clicked along at a furious pace. Tim's hat had fallen off. His face
+      showed white and his breath was coming fast, but there was no slackening
+      of speed, and the cleanness and ease with which he was doing his work
+      showed that there was still some reserve in him. They were approaching the
+      last quarter when, with a yell, Perkins threw himself again with a wild
+      recklessness into his work, and again he gained upon Tim and passed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, Tim!&rdquo; cried Cameron, who, with Webster, had given up their own
+      work, it being, as the latter remarked, &ldquo;quitting time anyway,&rdquo; and were
+      following up the racers. &ldquo;Don't spoil your work, Tim!&rdquo; continued Cameron,
+      &ldquo;don't worry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His words caught the boy at a critical moment, for Perkins' yell and his
+      fresh exhibition of speed had shaken the lad's nerve. But Cameron's voice
+      steadied him, and, quickly responding, Tim settled down again into his old
+      style, while Perkins was still in the lead, but slashing wildly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine work, Tim,&rdquo; said Cameron quietly, &ldquo;and you can do better yet.&rdquo; For a
+      few paces he walked behind the boy, steadying him now and then with a
+      quiet word, then, recognising that the crisis of the struggle was at hand,
+      and believing that the boy had still some reserve of speed and strength,
+      he began to call on him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, Tim! Quicker, quicker; come on, boy, you can do better!&rdquo; His
+      words, and his tone more than his words, were like a spur to the boy. From
+      some secret source of supply he called up an unsuspected reserve of
+      strength and speed and, still keeping up his clean cutting finished style,
+      foot by foot he drew away from Perkins, who followed in the rear, slashing
+      more wildly than ever. The race was practically won. Tim was well in the
+      lead, and apparently gaining speed with every click of his hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, you fellers, what are yeh hashin' them turnips for?&rdquo; It was Haley's
+      voice, who, unperceived, had come into the field. Tim's reply was a
+      letting out of his last ounce of strength in a perfect fury of endeavour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There&mdash;ain't&mdash;no&mdash;hashin'&mdash;on this&mdash;drill&mdash;Dad!&rdquo;
+       he panted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sudden demand for careful work, however, at once lowered Perkins' rate
+      of speed. He fell rapidly behind and, after a few moments of further
+      struggle, threw down his hoe with a whoop and called out, &ldquo;Quitting time,
+      I guess,&rdquo; and, striding after Tim, he caught him by the arms and swung him
+      round clear off the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, let me go!&rdquo; gasped the boy, kicking, squirming, and trying to
+      strike his antagonist with his hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let the boy go!&rdquo; said Cameron. The tone in his voice arrested Perkins'
+      attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's your business?&rdquo; he cried, with an oath, dropping the boy and
+      turning fiercely upon Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing very much, except that Tim's my candidate in this race and he
+      mustn't be interfered with,&rdquo; replied Cameron in a voice still quiet and
+      with a pleasant smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Perkins was white and panting; in a moment more he would have hurled
+      himself at the man who stood smiling quietly in his face. At this critical
+      moment Haley interposed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the row, boys?&rdquo; he enquired, recognising that something serious
+      was on.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have been having a little excitement, Sir, in the form of a race,&rdquo;
+       replied Cameron, &ldquo;and I've been backing Tim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Looks as if you've got him wound up so's he can't stop,&rdquo; replied Haley,
+      pointing to the boy, who was still going at racing pace and was just
+      finishing his drill. &ldquo;Oh, well, a boy's a boy and you've got to humour him
+      now and then,&rdquo; continued Haley, making conversation with diplomatic skill.
+      Then turning to Perkins, as if dismissing a trivial subject, he added,
+      &ldquo;Looks to me as if that hay in the lower meadow is pretty nigh fit to cut.
+      Guess we'd better not wait till next week. You best start Tim on that with
+      the mower in the mornin'.&rdquo; Then, taking a survey of the heavens, he added,
+      &ldquo;Looks as if it might be a spell of good weather.&rdquo; His diplomacy was
+      successful and the moment of danger was past. Meantime Cameron had
+      sauntered to the end of the drill where Tim stood leaning quietly on his
+      hoe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tim, you are a turnip-hoer!&rdquo; he said, with warm admiration in his tone,
+      &ldquo;and what's more, Tim, you're a sport. I'd like to handle you in something
+      big. You will make a man yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim's whole face flushed a warm red under the coat of freckles. For a time
+      he stood silently contemplating the turnips, then with difficulty he found
+      his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was you done it,&rdquo; he said, choking over his words. &ldquo;I was beat there
+      and was just quittin' when you came along and spoke. My!&rdquo; he continued,
+      with a sharp intake of his breath, &ldquo;I was awful near quittin',&rdquo; and then,
+      looking straight into Cameron's eyes, &ldquo;It was you done it, and&mdash;I&mdash;won't
+      forget.&rdquo; His voice choked again, but, reading his eyes, Cameron knew that
+      he had gained one of life's greatest treasures, a boy's adoring gratitude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This has been a great day, Tim,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I have learned to hoe
+      turnips, and,&rdquo; putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, &ldquo;I believe I have
+      made a friend.&rdquo; Again the hot blood surged into Tim's face. He stood
+      voiceless, but he needed no words. Cameron knew well the passionate
+      emotion that thrilled his soul and shook the slight body, trembling under
+      his hand. For Tim, too, it had been a notable day. He had achieved the
+      greatest ambition of his life in beating the best turnip-hoer on the line,
+      and he, too, had found what to a boy is a priceless treasure, a man upon
+      whom he could lavish the hero worship of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0012" id="link2HCH0012">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A RAINY DAY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was haying time. Over the fields of yellowing fall wheat and barley, of
+      grey timothy and purple clover, the heat shimmered in dancing waves.
+      Everywhere the growing crops were drinking in the light and heat with
+      eager thirst, for the call of the harvest was ringing through the land.
+      The air was sweet with scents of the hay fields, and the whole country
+      side was humming with the sound of the mowers. It was the crowning time of
+      the year; toward this season all the life of the farm moved steadily the
+      whole year long; the next two months or three would bring to the farmer
+      the fruit of long days of toil and waiting. Every minute of these harvest
+      days, from the early grey dawn, when Mandy called the cows in for the
+      milking, till the long shadows from the orchard lay quite across the wide
+      barley field, when Tim, handling his team with careless pride, drove in
+      the last load for the day, every minute was packed full of life and
+      action. But though busy were the days and full of hard and at times
+      back-breaking and nerve-straining work, what of it? The colour, the rush,
+      the eager race with the flying hours, the sense of triumph, the promise of
+      wealth, the certainty of comfort, all these helped to carry off the
+      heaviest toil with a swing and vim that banished aches from the body and
+      weariness from the soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Cameron, all unskilled as he was, the days brought many an hour of
+      strenuous toil, but every day his muscles were knitting more firmly, his
+      hands were hardening, and his mastery of himself growing more complete.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In haying there is no large place for skill. This operation, unlike that
+      of turnip-hoeing, demands chiefly strength, quickness, and endurance, and
+      especially endurance. To stand all day in the hay field under the burning
+      sun with its rays leaping back from the super-heated ground, and roll up
+      the windrows into huge bundles and toss them on to the wagon, or to run up
+      a long line of cocks and heave them fork-handle high to the top of a load,
+      calls for something of skill, but mainly for strength of arm and back. But
+      skill had its place, and once more it was Tim who stood close to Cameron
+      and showed him all the tricks of pitching hay. It was Tim who showed him
+      how to stand with his back to the wagon so as to get the load properly
+      poised with the least expenditure of strength; it was Tim who taught him
+      the cunning trick of using his thigh as a fulcrum in getting his load up,
+      rather than doing it by &ldquo;main strength and awkwardness&rdquo;; it was Tim who
+      demonstrated the method of lifting half a cock by running the end of the
+      fork handle into the ground so that the whole earth might aid in the
+      hoisting of the load. Of course in all this Cameron's intelligence and
+      quickness stood him in the place of long experience, and before the first
+      day's hauling was done he was able to keep his wagon going.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But with all the stimulus of the harvest movement and colour, Cameron
+      found himself growing weary of the life on the Haley farm. It was not the
+      long days, and to none on the farm were the days longer than to Cameron,
+      who had taken upon himself the duty of supplying the kitchen with wood and
+      water, no small business, either at the beginning or at the end of a long
+      day's work; it was not the heavy toil; it was chiefly the continuous
+      contact with the dirt and disorder of his environment that wore his body
+      down and his spirit raw. No matter with how keen a hunger did he approach
+      the dinner table, the disgusting filth everywhere apparent would cause his
+      gorge to rise and, followed by the cheerful gibes of Perkins, he would
+      retire often with his strength unrecruited and his hunger unappeased, and,
+      though he gradually achieved a certain skill in picking his way through a
+      meal, selecting such articles of food as could be less affected than
+      others by the unsavoury surroundings, the want of appetising and
+      nourishing food told disastrously upon his strength. His sleep, too, was
+      broken and disturbed by the necessity of sharing a bed with Webster. He
+      had never been accustomed to &ldquo;doubling up,&rdquo; and under the most favourable
+      circumstances the experience would not have been conducive to sound sleep,
+      but Webster's manner of life was not such as to render him an altogether
+      desirable bed-fellow. For, while the majority of farm lads in the
+      neighbourhood made at least semi-weekly pilgrimages to the &ldquo;dam&rdquo; for a
+      swim, Webster felt no necessity laid upon him for such an expenditure of
+      energy after a hard and sweaty day in the field. His ideas of hygiene were
+      of the most elementary nature; hence it was his nightly custom, when
+      released from the toils of the day, to proceed upstairs to his room and,
+      slipping his braces from his shoulders, allow his nether garments to drop
+      to the floor and, without further preparation, roll into bed. Of the
+      effeminacy of a night robe Webster knew nothing except by somewhat hazy
+      rumour. Once under the patchwork quilt he was safe for the night, for,
+      heaving himself into the middle of the bed, he sank into solid and
+      stertorous slumber, from which all Cameron's prods and kicks failed to
+      arouse him till the grey dawn once more summoned him to life, whereupon,
+      resuming the aforesaid nether garments, he was once more simply, but in
+      his opinion quite sufficiently, equipped for his place among men. Many
+      nights did it happen that the stertorous melody of Webster's all too
+      odourous slumbers drove Cameron to find a bed upon the floor. Once again
+      Tim was his friend, for it was to Tim that Cameron owed the blissful
+      experience of a night in the hay loft upon the newly harvested hay. There,
+      buried in its fragrant depths and drawing deep breaths of the clean
+      unbreathed air that swept in through the great open barn doors, Cameron
+      experienced a joy hitherto undreamed of in association with the very
+      commonplace exercise of sleep. After his first night in the hay mow, which
+      he shared with Tim, he awoke refreshed in body and with a new courage in
+      his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, Tim! That's the finest thing I ever had in the way of sleep. Now
+      if we only had a tub.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tub! What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A dip, my boy, a splash.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To wash in?&rdquo; enquired Tim, wondering at the exuberance of his friend's
+      desires. &ldquo;I'll get a tub,&rdquo; he added, and, running to the house, returned
+      with wash tub and towel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tim, my boy, you're a jewel!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From the stable cistern they filled the vessel full and first Cameron and,
+      after persuasion and with rather dubious delight, Tim tasted the joy of a
+      morning tub. Henceforth life became distinctly more endurable to Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But, more than all the other irritating elements in his environment put
+      together, Cameron chafed under the unceasing rasp of Perkins' wit, clever,
+      if somewhat crude and cumbrous. Perkins had never forgotten nor forgiven
+      his defeat at the turnip-hoeing, which he attributed chiefly to Cameron.
+      His gibes at Cameron's awkwardness in the various operations on the farm,
+      his readiness to seize every opportunity for ridicule, his skill at
+      creating awkward situations, all these sensibly increased the wear on
+      Cameron's spirit. All these, however, Cameron felt he could put up with
+      without endangering his self-control, but when Perkins, with vulgar
+      innuendo, chaffed the farmer's daughter upon her infatuation for the
+      &ldquo;young Scotty,&rdquo; as he invariably designated Cameron, or when he rallied
+      Cameron upon his supposed triumph in the matter of Mandy's youthful
+      affections, then Cameron raged and with difficulty kept his hands from his
+      cheerful and ever smiling tormentor. It did not help matters much that
+      apparently Mandy took no offense at Perkins' insinuations; indeed, it
+      gradually dawned upon Cameron that what to him would seem a vulgar
+      impertinence might to this uncultured girl appear no more than a harmless
+      pleasantry. At all costs he was resolved that under no circumstances would
+      he allow his self-control to be broken through. He would finish out his
+      term with the farmer without any violent outbreak. It was quite possible
+      that Perkins and others would take him for a chicken-hearted fool, but all
+      the same he would maintain this attitude of resolute self-control to the
+      very end. After all, what mattered the silly gibes of an ignorant boor?
+      And when his term was done he would abandon the farm life forever. It took
+      but little calculation to make quite clear that there was not much to hope
+      for in the way of advancement from farming in this part of Canada. Even
+      Perkins, who received the very highest wage in that neighbourhood, made no
+      more than $300 a year; and, with land at sixty to seventy-five dollars per
+      acre, it seemed to him that he would be an old man before he could become
+      the owner of a farm. He was heart sick of the pettiness and sordidness of
+      the farm life, whose horizon seemed to be that of the hundred acres or so
+      that comprised it. Therefore he resolved that to the great West he would
+      go, that great wonderful West with its vast spaces and its vast
+      possibilities of achievement. The rumour of it filled the country side.
+      Meantime for two months longer he would endure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A rainy day brought relief. Oh, the blessed Sabbath of a rainy day, when
+      the wheels stop and silence falls in the fields; and time tired harvest
+      hands recline at ease upon the new cut and sweet smelling hay on the barn
+      floor, and through the wide open doors look out upon the falling rain that
+      roars upon the shingles, pours down in cataracts from the eaves and washes
+      clean the air that wanders in, laden with those subtle scents that old
+      mother earth releases only when the rain falls. Oh, happy rainy days in
+      harvest time when, undisturbed by conscience, the weary toilers stretch
+      and slumber and wake to lark and chaff in careless ease the long hours
+      through!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the Haleys' barn they were all gathered, gazing lazily and with
+      undisturbed content at the steady downpour that indicated an all-day rest.
+      Even Haley, upon whose crops the rain was teeming down, was enjoying the
+      rest from the toil, for most of the hay that had been cut was already in
+      cock or in the barn. Besides, Haley worked as hard as the best of them and
+      welcomed a day's rest. So let it rain!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      While they lay upon the hay on the barn floor, with tired muscles all
+      relaxed, drinking in the fragrant airs that stole in from the rain-washed
+      skies outside, in the slackening of the rain two neighbours dropped in,
+      big &ldquo;Mack&rdquo; Murray and his brother Danny, for a &ldquo;crack&rdquo; about things in
+      general and especially to discuss the Dominion Day picnic which was coming
+      off at the end of the following week. This picnic was to be something out
+      of the ordinary, for, in addition to the usual feasting and frolicking,
+      there was advertised an athletic contest of a superior order, the prizes
+      in which were sufficiently attractive to draw, not only local athletes,
+      but even some of the best from the neighbouring city. A crack runner was
+      expected and perhaps even McGee, the big policeman of the London City
+      force, a hammer thrower of fame, might be present.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him come, eh, Mack?&rdquo; said Perkins. &ldquo;I guess we ain't afraid of no
+      city bug beating you with the hammer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! I'm no thrower,&rdquo; said Mack modestly. &ldquo;I just take the thing up and
+      give it a fling. I haven't got the trick of it at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have you practised much?&rdquo; said Cameron, whose heart warmed at the accent
+      that might have been transplanted that very day from his own North
+      country.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never at all, except now and then at the blacksmith's shop on a rainy
+      day,&rdquo; replied Mack. &ldquo;Have you done anything at it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I have seen a good deal of it at the games in the north of Scotland,&rdquo;
+       replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man! I wish we had a hammer and you could show me the trick of it,&rdquo; said
+      Mack fervently, &ldquo;for they will be looking to me to throw and I do not wish
+      to be beaten just too easily.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's a big mason's hammer,&rdquo; said Tim, &ldquo;in the tool house, I think.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get it, Tim, then,&rdquo; said Mack eagerly, &ldquo;and we will have a little
+      practise at it, for throw I must, and I have no wish to bring discredit on
+      my country, for it will be a big day. They will be coming from all over.
+      The Band of the Seventh is coming out and Piper Sutherland from Zorra will
+      be there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A piper!&rdquo; echoed Cameron. &ldquo;Is there much pipe playing in this country?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, you may say that!&rdquo; said Mack, &ldquo;and good pipers they are too, they
+      tell me. Piper Sutherland, I think, was of the old Forty-twa. Are you a
+      piper, perhaps?&rdquo; continued Mack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I play a little,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I have a set in the house.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God bless my soul!&rdquo; cried Mack, &ldquo;and we never knew it. Tell Danny where
+      they are and he will fetch them out. Go, Danny!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, I will get them myself,&rdquo; said Cameron, trying to conceal his
+      eagerness, for he had long been itching for a chance to play and his
+      fingers were now tingling for the chanter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was an occasion of great delight, not only to big Mack and his brother
+      Danny and the others, but to Cameron himself. Up and down the floor he
+      marched, making the rafters of the big barn ring with the ancient martial
+      airs of Scotland and then, dropping into a lighter strain, he set their
+      feet a-rapping with reels and strathspeys.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, yon's great playing!&rdquo; cried Mack with fervent enthusiasm to the
+      company who had gathered to the summons of the pipes from the house and
+      from the high road, &ldquo;and think of him keeping them in his chest all this
+      time! And what else can you do?&rdquo; went on Mack, with the enthusiasm of a
+      discoverer. &ldquo;You have been in the big games, too, I warrant you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron confessed to some experience of these thrilling events.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bless my soul! We will put you against the big folk from the city. Come
+      and show us the hammer,&rdquo; said Mack, leading the way out of the barn, for
+      the rain had ceased, with a big mason's hammer in his hand. It needed but
+      a single throw to make it quite clear to Cameron that Mack was greatly in
+      need of coaching. As he said himself he &ldquo;just took up the thing and gave
+      it a fling.&rdquo; A mighty fling, too, it proved to be.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-eight paces!&rdquo; cried Cameron, and then, to make sure, stepped it
+      back again. &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;twenty-eight paces, nearly twenty-nine. Great
+      Caesar! Mack, if you only had the Braemar swing you would be a famous
+      thrower.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Och, now, you are just joking me!&rdquo; said Mack modestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can add twenty feet easily to your throw if you get the swing,&rdquo;
+       asserted Cameron. &ldquo;Look here, now, get this swing,&rdquo; and Cameron
+      demonstrated in his best style the famous Braemar swing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty-two paces!&rdquo; said Mack in amazement after he had measured the
+      throw. &ldquo;Man alive! you can beat McGee, let alone myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mack, get the throw,&rdquo; said Cameron, with enthusiasm. &ldquo;You will be a
+      great thrower.&rdquo; But try though he might Mack failed to get the swing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, come over to-night and bring your pipes. Danny will fetch out his
+      fiddle and we will have a bit of a frolic, and,&rdquo; he added, as if in an
+      afterthought, &ldquo;I have a big hammer yonder, the regulation size. We might
+      have a throw or so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, I will be sure to come,&rdquo; said Cameron eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, all of you,&rdquo; said Mack, &ldquo;and you too, Mandy. We will clear out the
+      barn floor and have a regular hoe-down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw!&rdquo; giggled Mandy, tossing her head. &ldquo;I can't dance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come along and watch me, then,&rdquo; said Mack, in good humour, who, with
+      all his two hundred pounds, was lightfooted as a girl.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Murrays' new big bank barn was considered the finest in the country
+      and the new floor was still quite smooth and eminently suited to a
+      &ldquo;hoe-down.&rdquo; Before the darkness had fallen, however, Mack drew Cameron,
+      with Danny, Perkins, and a few of the neighbours who had dropped in, out
+      to the lane and, giving him a big hammer, &ldquo;Try that,&rdquo; he said, with some
+      doubt in his tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron took the hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is the right thing. The weight of it will make more difference to
+      me, however, than to you, Mack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm not so sure,&rdquo; said Mack. &ldquo;Show us how you do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The first throw Cameron took easily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twenty-nine paces!&rdquo; cried Mack, after stepping it off. &ldquo;Man! that's a
+      great throw, and you do it easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much of a throw,&rdquo; laughed Cameron. &ldquo;Try it yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Ignoring the swing, Mack tried the throw in his own style and hurled the
+      hammer two paces beyond Cameron's throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You did that with your arms only,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Now you must put legs
+      and shoulders into it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see you beat that throw yourself,&rdquo; laughed Perkins, who was by no
+      means pleased with the sudden distinction that had come to the &ldquo;Scotty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron took the hammer and, with the easy slow grace of the Braemar
+      swing, made his throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hooray!&rdquo; yelled Danny, who was doing the measuring. &ldquo;You got it yon time
+      for sure. Three paces to the good. You'll have to put your back into it,
+      Mack, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Mack seized the hammer. Then Cameron took Mack in hand and, over
+      and over again, coached him in the poise and swing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now try it, and think of your legs and back. Let the hammer take care of
+      itself. Now, nice and easy and slow, not far this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again Mack practised the swing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're getting it!&rdquo; cried Cameron enthusiastically, &ldquo;but you are trying
+      too hard. Forget the distance this time and think only of the easy slow
+      swing. Let your muscles go slack.&rdquo; So he coached his pupil.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length, after many attempts, Mack succeeded in delivering his hammer
+      according to instructions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man! you are right!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;That's the trick of it and it is as
+      smooth as oil.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep it up, Mack,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;and always easy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Over and over again he put the big man through the swing till he began to
+      catch the notion of the rhythmic, harmonious cooperation of the various
+      muscles in legs and shoulders and arms so necessary to the highest result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've got the swing, Mack,&rdquo; at length said Cameron. &ldquo;Now then, this time
+      let yourself go. Don't try your best, but let yourself out. Easy, now,
+      easy. Get it first in your mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment Mack stood pondering. He was &ldquo;getting it in his mind.&rdquo; Then,
+      with a long swing, easy and slow, he gave the great hammer a mighty heave.
+      With a shout the company crowded about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven! Hooray!
+      bully for you, Mack. You are the lad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get the line on it,&rdquo; said Mack quietly. The measuring line showed one
+      hundred and eleven and a half feet. The boys crowded round him,
+      exclaiming, cheering, patting him on the back. Mack received the
+      congratulations in silence, then, turning to Cameron, said very earnestly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man! yon's as easy as eating butter. You have done me a good turn
+      to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's nothing, Mack,&rdquo; said Cameron, who was more pleased than any of
+      them. &ldquo;You got the swing perfectly that time. You can put twenty feet to
+      that throw. One hundred and eleven feet! Why, I can beat that myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man alive! Do you tell me now!&rdquo; said Mack in amazement, running his eyes
+      over Cameron's lean muscular body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have done it often when I was in shape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rats!&rdquo; said Perkins with a laugh. &ldquo;Where was that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron flushed a deep red, then turned pale, but kept silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I believe you, my boy,&rdquo; said Mack with emphasis and facing sharply upon
+      Perkins, &ldquo;and if ever I do a big throw I will owe it to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come off!&rdquo; said Perkins, again laughing scornfully. &ldquo;There are others
+      that know the swing besides Scotty here. What you have got you owe to no
+      one but yourself, Mack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If I beat the man McGee next week,&rdquo; said Mack quietly, &ldquo;it will be from
+      what I learned to-night, and I know what I am saying. Man! it's a lucky
+      thing we found you. But that will do for just now. Come along to the barn.
+      Hooray for the pipes and the lassies! They are worth all the hammers in
+      the world!&rdquo; And, putting his arm through Cameron's, he led the way to the
+      barn, followed by the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;If Scotty could only hoe turnips and tie wheat as well as he can play the
+      pipes and throw the hammer,&rdquo; said Perkins to the others as they followed
+      in the rear, &ldquo;I guess he'd soon have us all leaning against the fence to
+      dry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will, too, some day,&rdquo; said Tim, whose indignation at Perkins overcame
+      the shyness which usually kept him silent in the presence of older men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Timmy! What are you chipping in for?&rdquo; said Perkins, reaching for
+      the boy's coat collar. &ldquo;He thinks this Scotty is the whole works, and he
+      is great too&mdash;at showing people how to do things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hear he showed Tim how to hoe turnips,&rdquo; said one of the boys slyly. The
+      laugh that followed showed that the story of Tim's triumph over the
+      champion had gone abroad.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rot!&rdquo; said Perkins angrily. &ldquo;Tim's got a little too perky because I
+      let him get ahead of me one night in a drill of turnips.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yeh done yer best, didn't he, Webster?&rdquo; cried Tim with indignation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, he certainly was making some pretty big gashes in them drills,&rdquo;
+       said Webster slowly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, get out!&rdquo; replied Perkins. &ldquo;Though all the same Tim's quite a
+      turnip-hoer,&rdquo; he conceded. &ldquo;Hello! There's quite a crowd in the barn,
+      Danny. I wish I had my store clothes on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this a girl came running to meet them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, Danny! Tune up. I can hardly keep my heels on my boots.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you'll not be wanting my little fiddle after you have heard Cameron
+      on the pipes, Isa.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never you fear that, Danny,&rdquo; replied Isa, catching him by the arm and
+      hurrying him onward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute. I want you to meet Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; said Danny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come away, then,&rdquo; replied Isa. &ldquo;I am dying to get done with it and get
+      the fiddle going.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cameron was in the meantime engaged, for Mack was busy introducing him
+      to a bevy of girls who stood at one corner of the barn floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! but he's a braw lad!&rdquo; said Isa gayly, as she watched Cameron making
+      his bows.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is that,&rdquo; replied Danny with enthusiastic admiration, &ldquo;and a
+      hammer-thrower, too, he is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What! yon stripling?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You may say it. He can beat Mack there.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mack!&rdquo; cried Isa, with scorn. &ldquo;It's just big lies you are telling me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, he has beaten Mack's best throw many a time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how do you know?&rdquo; exclaimed Isa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He said so himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah ha!&rdquo; said Isa scornfully. &ldquo;He is good at blowing his own horn
+      whatever, and I don't believe he can beat Mack&mdash;and I don't like him
+      a bit,&rdquo; she continued, her dark eyes flashing and the red colour glowing
+      in her full round cheek.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, Isa!&rdquo; cried Mack, catching sight of her in the dim light. &ldquo;Come
+      here, I want Mr. Cameron to meet you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do you do?&rdquo; said the girl, giving Cameron her hand and glancing
+      saucily into his face. &ldquo;I hear you are a piper and a hammer-thrower and
+      altogether a wonderful man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A wonderfully lucky man, to have the pleasure of meeting you,&rdquo; said
+      Cameron, glancing boldly back at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I am sure you can dance the fling,&rdquo; continued Isa. &ldquo;All the
+      Highlanders do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not all,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;But with certain partners all Highlanders would
+      love to try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh aye,&rdquo; with a soft Highland accent that warmed Cameron's blood. &ldquo;I see
+      you have the tongue. Come away, Danny, now, strike up, or I will go on
+      without you.&rdquo; And the girl kilted her skirts and began a reel, and as
+      Mack's eyes followed her every step there was no mistaking their
+      expression. To Mack there was only one girl in the barn, or in all the
+      world for that matter, and that was the leal-hearted, light-footed,
+      black-eyed Isa MacKenzie. Bonnie she was, and that she well knew, the
+      belle of the whole township, driving the men to distraction and for all
+      that holding the love of her own sex as well. But her heart was still her
+      own, or at least she thought it was, for all big Mack Murray's open and
+      simple-hearted adoration, and she was ready for a frolic with any man who
+      could give her word for word or dance with her the Highland reel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the courtesy of a true gentleman, Danny led off with his fiddle till
+      they had all got thoroughly into the spirit and swing of the frolic, and
+      then, putting his instrument back into its bag, he declared that they were
+      all tired of it and were waiting for the pipes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it!&rdquo; cried Isa. &ldquo;But we will give you a rest, Danny, and
+      besides I want to dance a reel with you myself&mdash;though Mr. Cameron is
+      not bad,&rdquo; she added, with a little bow to Cameron, with whom she had just
+      finished a reel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Readily enough Cameron tuned his pipes, for he was aching to get at them
+      and only too glad to furnish music for the gay company of kindly hearted
+      folk who were giving him his first evening's pleasure since he had left
+      the Cuagh Oir.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From reel to schottische and from schottische to reel, foursome and
+      eightsome, they kept him playing, ever asking for more, till the gloaming
+      passed into moonlight and still they were not done. The respite came
+      through Mandy, who, solid in weight and heavy of foot, had laboured
+      through the reels as often as she could get a partner, and at other times
+      had sat gazing in rapt devotion upon the piper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoop her up again, Scotty!&rdquo; cried Perkins, when Cameron paused at the
+      end of a reel.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you do it!&rdquo; said Mandy sharply, her deep voice booming through the
+      barn. &ldquo;He's just tired of it, and I'm tired looking at him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shout of laughter which covered poor Mandy with wrathful
+      confusion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good for you, Mandy,&rdquo; cried Perkins with a great guffaw. &ldquo;You want some
+      music now, don't you? So do I. Come on, Danny.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I don't,&rdquo; snapped Mandy, who could understand neither the previous
+      laugh nor that which greeted Perkins' sally.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Allan,&rdquo; she said, sticking a little over the name, &ldquo;is tired out, and
+      besides it's time we were going home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right, take him home, Mandy, and put the little dear to bed,&rdquo; said
+      Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't be so smart, Joe Perkins,&rdquo; said Mandy angrily. &ldquo;Anyway I'm
+      going home. I've got to be up early.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me too, Mandy,&rdquo; said Cameron, packing up his pipes, for his sympathy had
+      been roused for the girl who was championing him so bravely. &ldquo;I have had a
+      great night and I have played you all to death; but you will forgive me. I
+      was lonely for the chanter. I have not touched it since I left home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a universal cry of protest as they gathered about him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Indeed, Mr. Cameron, you have given us all a rare treat,&rdquo; cried Isa,
+      coming close to him, &ldquo;and I only wish you could pipe and dance at the same
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so!&rdquo; cried Mack, &ldquo;but what's the matter with the fiddle, Isa?
+      Come, Danny, strike up. Let them have a reel together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron glanced at Mandy, who was standing impatiently waiting. Perkins
+      caught the glance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, please let him stay, Mandy,&rdquo; he pleaded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can stay if he likes,&rdquo; sniffed Mandy scornfully. &ldquo;I got no string on
+      him; but I'm goin' home. Good-night, everybody.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, Mandy,&rdquo; called Perkins. &ldquo;Tell them we're comin'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just a moment, Mandy!&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;and I'm with you. Another time I
+      hope to do a reel with you, Miss MacKenzie,&rdquo; he said, bidding her
+      good-night, &ldquo;and I hope it will be soon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Remember, then,&rdquo; cried Isa, warmly shaking hands with him. &ldquo;I will keep
+      you to your promise at the picnic.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fine!&rdquo; said Cameron, and with easy grace he made his farewells and set
+      off after Mandy, who by this time was some distance down the lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You needn't come for me,&rdquo; she said, throwing her voice at him over her
+      shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a splendid night we have had!&rdquo; said Cameron, ignoring her wrath.
+      &ldquo;And what awfully nice people.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mandy grunted and in silence continued her way down the lane, picking her
+      steps between the muddy spots and pools left by the rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After some minutes Cameron, who was truly sorry for the girl, ventured to
+      resume the conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you enjoy the evening, Mandy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn't!&rdquo; she replied shortly. &ldquo;I can't dance and they all know it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why don't you learn, Mandy? You could dance if you practised.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't. I ain't like the other girls. I'm too clumsy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit of it,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I've watched you stepping about the
+      house and you are not a bit clumsy. If you only practised a bit you would
+      soon pick up the schottische.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you're just saying that because you know I'm mad,&rdquo; said Mandy,
+      slightly mollified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all. I firmly believe it. I saw you try a schottische to-night
+      with Perkins and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks!&rdquo; said Mandy. &ldquo;He don't give me no show. He gets mad when I
+      tramp on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All you want is practise, Mandy,&rdquo; replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I ain't got no one to show me,&rdquo; said Mandy. &ldquo;Perkins he won't be
+      bothered, and&mdash;and&mdash;there's no one else,&rdquo; she added shyly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, I&mdash;I would show you,&rdquo; replied Cameron, every instinct of
+      chivalry demanding that he should play up to her lead, &ldquo;if I had any
+      opportunity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When?&rdquo; said Mandy simply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When?&rdquo; echoed Cameron, taken aback. &ldquo;Why, the first chance we get.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke the word they reached the new bridge that crossed the deep
+      ditch that separated the lane from the high road.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here's a good place right here on this bridge,&rdquo; said Mandy with a giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we have no music,&rdquo; stammered Cameron, aghast at the prospect of a
+      dancing lesson by moonlight upon the public highway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw!&rdquo; said Mandy. &ldquo;We don't need music. You can just count. I seen
+      Isa showin' Mack once and they didn't have no music. But,&rdquo; she added,
+      regarding Cameron with suspicion, &ldquo;if you don't want to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I shall be glad to, but wouldn't the porch be better?&rdquo; he replied in
+      desperation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The porch! That's so,&rdquo; assented Mandy eagerly. &ldquo;Let's hurry before the
+      rest come home.&rdquo; So saying, she set off at a great pace, followed by
+      Cameron ruefully wondering to what extent the lesson in the Terpsichorean
+      art might be expected to go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As soon as the porch was reached Mandy cried&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now let's at the thing. I'm going to learn that schottische if it costs a
+      leg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without stopping to enquire whose leg might be in peril, Cameron proceeded
+      with his lesson, and he had not gone through many paces till he began to
+      recognise the magnitude of the task laid upon him. The girl's sense of
+      time was accurate enough, but she was undeniably awkward and clumsy in her
+      movements and there was an almost total absence of coordination of muscle
+      and brain. She had, however, suffered too long and too keenly from her
+      inability to join with the others in the dance to fail to make the best of
+      her opportunity to relieve herself of this serious disability.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with fierce industry she poised, counted and hopped, according to
+      Cameron's instructions and example, with never a sign of weariness, but
+      alas with little indication of progress.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks! I can't do it!&rdquo; she cried at length, pausing in despair. &ldquo;I
+      think we could do it better together. That's the way Mack and Isa do it.
+      I've seen them at it for an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's heart sank within him. He had caught an exchange of glances
+      between the two young people mentioned and he could quite understand how a
+      lesson in the intricacies of the Highland schottische might very well be
+      extended over an hour to their mutual satisfaction, but he shrank with a
+      feeling of dismay, if not disgust, from a like experience with the girl
+      before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was on the point of abruptly postponing the lesson when his eye fell
+      upon her face as she stood in the moonlight which streamed in through the
+      open door. Was it the mystic alchemy of the moon on her face, or was it
+      the glowing passion in her wonderful eyes that transfigured the coarse
+      features? A sudden pity for the girl rose in Cameron's heart and he said
+      gently, &ldquo;We will try it together, Mandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her hand, put his arm about her waist, but, as he drew her towards
+      him, with a startled look in her eyes she shrank back saying hurriedly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I guess I won't bother you any more to-night. You've been awfully good to
+      me. You're tired.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not a bit, Mandy, come along,&rdquo; replied Cameron briskly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At that moment a shadow fell upon the square of moonlight on the floor.
+      Mandy started back with a cry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My! you scairt me. We were&mdash;Allan&mdash;Mr. Cameron was learnin' me
+      the Highland schottische.&rdquo; Her face and her voice were full of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was Perkins. White, silent, and rigid, he stood regarding them, for
+      minutes, it seemed, then turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's finish,&rdquo; said Cameron quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! no, no!&rdquo; said Mandy in a low voice. &ldquo;He's awful mad! I'm scairt to
+      death! He'll do something! Oh! dear, dear! He's awful when he gets mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;He can't hurt you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't worry about me. He won't hurt me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's tone arrested the girl's attention.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But promise me&mdash;promise me!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;that you won't touch him.&rdquo;
+       She clutched his arm in a fierce grip.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly I won't touch him,&rdquo; said Cameron easily, &ldquo;if he behaves
+      himself.&rdquo; But in his heart he was conscious of a fierce desire that
+      Perkins would give him the opportunity to wipe out a part at least of the
+      accumulated burden of insult he had been forced to bear during the last
+      three weeks.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; wailed Mandy, wringing her hands. &ldquo;I know you're going to fight him.
+      I don't want you to! Do you hear me?&rdquo; she cried, suddenly gripping Cameron
+      again by the arm and shaking him. &ldquo;I don't want you to! Promise me you
+      won't!&rdquo; She was in a transport of fear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this is nonsense, Mandy,&rdquo; said Cameron, laughing at her. &ldquo;There won't
+      be any fight. I'll run away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; replied the girl quietly, releasing his arm. &ldquo;Remember you
+      promised.&rdquo; She turned from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night, Mandy. We will finish our lesson another time, eh?&rdquo; he said
+      cheerfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good night,&rdquo; replied Mandy, dully, and passed through the kitchen and
+      into the house.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron watched her go, then poured for himself a glass of milk from a
+      pitcher that always stood upon the table for any who might be returning
+      home late at night, and drank it slowly, pondering the situation the
+      while.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What a confounded mess it is!&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;I feel like cutting
+      the whole thing. By Jove! That girl is getting on my nerves! And that
+      infernal bounder! She seems to&mdash;Poor girl! I wonder if he has got any
+      hold on her. It would be the greatest satisfaction in the world to teach
+      HIM a few things too. But I have made up my mind that I am not going to
+      end up my time here with any row, and I'll stick to that; unless&mdash;&rdquo;
+       and, with a tingling in his fingers, he passed out into the moonlight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he stepped out from the door a dark mass hurled itself at him, a hand
+      clutched at his throat, missed as he swiftly dodged back, and carried away
+      his collar. It was Perkins, his face distorted, his white teeth showing in
+      a snarl as of a furious beast. Again with a beast-like growl he sprang,
+      and again Cameron avoided him; while Perkins, missing his clutch, stumbled
+      over a block of wood and went crashing head first among a pile of pots and
+      pans and, still unable to recover himself and wildly grasping whatever
+      chanced to be within reach, fell upon the board that stood against the
+      corner of the porch to direct the rain into the tub; but the unstable
+      board slid slowly down and allowed the unfortunate Perkins to come sitting
+      in the tub full of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very neatly done, Perkins!&rdquo; cried Cameron, whose anger at the furious
+      attack was suddenly transformed into an ecstasy of delight at seeing the
+      plight of his enemy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Like a cat Perkins was on his feet and, without a single moment's pause,
+      came on again in silent fury. By an evil chance there lay in his path the
+      splitting axe, gleaming in the moonlight. Uttering a low choking cry, as
+      of joy, he seized the axe and sprang towards his foe. Quicker than thought
+      Cameron picked up a heavy arm chair that stood near the porch to use it as
+      a shield against the impending attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad, Perkins?&rdquo; he cried, catching the terrific blow that came
+      crashing down, upon the chair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, filled with indignant rage at the murderous attack upon him, and
+      suddenly comprehending the desperate nature of the situation, he sprang at
+      his antagonist, thrusting the remnants of the chair in his face and,
+      following hard and fast upon him, pushed him backward and still backward
+      till, tripping once more, he fell supine among the pots and pans. Seizing
+      the axe that had dropped from his enemy's hand, Cameron hurled it far
+      beyond the wood pile and then stood waiting, a cold and deadly rage
+      possessing him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, you dog!&rdquo; he said through his shut teeth. &ldquo;You have been needing
+      this for some time and now you'll get it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Joe?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron quickly turned and saw behind him Mandy, her face blanched, her
+      eyes wide, and her voice faint with terror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nothing much,&rdquo; said Cameron, struggling to recover himself. &ldquo;Perkins
+      stumbled over the tub among the pots and pans there. He made a great row,
+      too,&rdquo; he continued with a laugh, striving to get his voice under control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is it, Joe?&rdquo; repeated Mandy, approaching Perkins. But Perkins stood
+      leaning against the corner of the porch in a kind of dazed silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You've been fighting,&rdquo; she said, turning upon Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not at all,&rdquo; said Cameron lightly, &ldquo;but, if you must know, Perkins went
+      stumbling among these pots and pans and finally sat down in the tub; and
+      naturally he is mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that true, Joe?&rdquo; said Mandy, moving slowly nearer him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shut up, Mandy! I'm all wet, that's all, and I'm going to bed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was faint as though he were speaking with an effort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go into the house,&rdquo; he said to the girl. &ldquo;I've got something to say
+      to Cameron here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quarreling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, give us a rest, Mandy, and get out! No, there's no quarreling, but I
+      want to have a talk with Cameron about something. Go on, now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments she hesitated, looking from one to the other.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right, Mandy,&rdquo; said Cameron quietly. &ldquo;You needn't be afraid,
+      there won't be any trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment more she stood, then quietly turned away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; said Perkins to Cameron, and followed Mandy into the house. For
+      some minutes Cameron stood waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, you murderous brute!&rdquo; he said, when Perkins reappeared. &ldquo;Come down
+      to the barn where no girl can interfere.&rdquo; He turned towards the barn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on!&rdquo; said Perkins, breathing heavily. &ldquo;Not to-night. I want to say
+      something. She's waiting to see me go upstairs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron came back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you got to say, you cur?&rdquo; he asked in a voice filled with a
+      cold and deliberate contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you call no names,&rdquo; replied Perkins. &ldquo;It ain't no use.&rdquo; His voice
+      was low, trembling, but gravely earnest. &ldquo;Say, I might have killed you
+      to-night.&rdquo; His breath was still coming in quick short gasps.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You tried your best, you dog!&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't you call no names,&rdquo; panted Perkins again. &ldquo;I might&mdash;a&mdash;killed
+      yeh. I'm mighty&mdash;glad&mdash;I didn't.&rdquo; He spoke like a man who had
+      had a great deliverance. &ldquo;But don't yeh,&rdquo; here his teeth snapped like a
+      dog's, &ldquo;don't yeh ever go foolin' with that girl again. Don't yeh&mdash;ever&mdash;do
+      it. I seen yeh huggin' her in there and I tell yeh&mdash;I tell yeh&mdash;,&rdquo;
+       his breath began to come in sobs, &ldquo;I won't stand it&mdash;I'll kill yeh,
+      sure as God's in heaven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you mad?&rdquo; said Cameron, scanning narrowly the white distorted face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mad? Yes, I guess so&mdash;I dunno&mdash;but don't yeh do it, that's all.
+      She's mine! Mine! D'yeh hear?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped forward and thrust his snarling face into Cameron's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I ain't goin' to touch yeh,&rdquo; as Cameron stepped back into a posture
+      of defense, &ldquo;not to-night. Some day, perhaps.&rdquo; Here again his teeth came
+      together with a snap. &ldquo;But I'm not going to have you or any other man
+      cutting in on me with that girl. D'yeh hear me?&rdquo; and he lifted a trembling
+      forefinger and thrust it almost into Cameron's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood regarding him in silent and contemptuous amazement. Neither
+      of them saw a dark form standing back out of the moonlight, inside the
+      door. At last Cameron spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now what the deuce does all this mean?&rdquo; he said slowly. &ldquo;Is this girl by
+      any unhappy chance engaged to you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she is&mdash;or was as good as, till you came; but you listen to me.
+      As God hears me up there&rdquo;&mdash;he raised his shaking hand and pointed up
+      to the moonlit sky, and then went on, chewing on his words like a dog on a
+      bone&mdash;&ldquo;I'll cut the heart out of your body if I catch you monkeying
+      round that girl again. You've got to get out of here! Everything was all
+      right till you came sneaking in. You've got to get out! You've got to get
+      out! D'yeh hear me? You've got to get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His voice was rising, mad rage was seizing him again, his fingers were
+      opening and shutting like a man in a death agony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron glanced towards the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm done,&rdquo; said Perkins, noting the glance. &ldquo;That's my last word. You'd
+      better quit this job.&rdquo; His voice again took on an imploring tone. &ldquo;You'd
+      better go or something will sure happen to you. Nobody will miss you much,
+      except perhaps Mandy.&rdquo; His ghastly face twisted into a snarling smile, his
+      eyes appeared glazed in the moonlight, his voice was husky&mdash;the man
+      seemed truly insane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood observing him quietly when he had ceased speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you finished? Then hear me. First, in regard to this girl, she
+      doesn't want me and I don't want her, but make up your mind, I promise you
+      to do all I can to prevent her falling into the hands of a brute like you.
+      Then as to leaving this place, I shall go just when it suits me, no
+      sooner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Perkins, his voice low and trembling. &ldquo;All right, mind I
+      warned you! Mind I warned you! But if you go foolin' with that girl, I'll
+      kill yeh, so help me God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words he uttered with the solemnity of an oath and turned towards
+      the porch. A dark figure flitted across the kitchen and disappeared into
+      the house. Cameron walked slowly towards the barn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's mad. He's clean daffy, but none the less dangerous,&rdquo; he said to
+      himself. &ldquo;What a rotten mess all this is!&rdquo; he added in disgust. &ldquo;By Jove!
+      The whole thing isn't worth while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as he thought of Mandy's frightened face and imploring eyes and the
+      brutal murderous face of the man who claimed her as his own, he said
+      between his teeth:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I won't quit now. I'll see this thing through, whatever it costs,&rdquo;
+       and with this resolve he set himself to the business of getting to sleep;
+      in which, after many attempts, he was at length successful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0013" id="link2HCH0013">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There never was such a Dominion Day for weather since the first Dominion
+      Day was born. Of this &ldquo;Fatty&rdquo; Freeman was fully assured. Fatty Freeman was
+      a young man for whose opinion older men were accustomed to wait. His
+      person more than justified his praenomen, for Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., was
+      undeniably fat. &ldquo;Fat, but fine and frisky,&rdquo; was ever his own comment upon
+      the descriptive adjective by which his friends distinguished him. And fine
+      and frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating, fine in his
+      judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men; frisky, too, and
+      utterly irrepressible. &ldquo;Harp's just like a young pup,&rdquo; his own father, the
+      Reverend Harper Freeman, the old Methodist minister of the Maplehill
+      circuit, used to say. &ldquo;If Harp had a tail he would never do anything but
+      play with it.&rdquo; On this, however, it is difficult to hold any well based
+      opinion. Ebullient in his spirits, he radiated cheeriness wherever he went
+      and was at the bottom of most of the practical jokes that kept the village
+      of Maplehill in a state of ferment; yet if any man thought to turn a sharp
+      corner in business with Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., he invariably found that
+      frisky individual waiting for him round the corner with a cheery smile of
+      welcome, shrewd and disconcerting. It was this cheery shrewdness of his
+      that made him the most successful cattle buyer in the county and at the
+      same time secretary of the Middlesex Caledonian Society. As secretary of
+      this society he was made chiefly responsible for the success of the
+      Dominion Day picnic and, as with everything that he took hold of, Fatty
+      toiled at the business of preparation for this picnic with conscientious
+      zeal, giving to it all his spare hours and many of his working hours for
+      the three months preceding.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was due solely to his efforts that so many distinguished county
+      magnates appeared eager to lend their patronage. It needed but a little
+      persuasion to secure the enthusiastic support of the Honourable J. J.
+      Patterson, M.P.P., and, incidentally, the handsome challenge cup for
+      hammer-throwing, for the honourable member of Parliament was a
+      full-blooded Highlander himself and an ardent supporter of &ldquo;the games.&rdquo;
+       But only Fatty Freeman's finesse could have extracted from Dr. Kane, the
+      Opposition candidate for Provincial Parliamentary honours, the cup for the
+      hundred yards race, and other cups from other individuals more or less
+      deeply interested in Dominion, Provincial, and Municipal politics. The
+      prize list secured, it needed only a skillful manipulation of the local
+      press and a judicious but persistent personal correspondence to swell the
+      ranks of the competitors in the various events, and thus ensure a monster
+      attendance of the people from the neighbouring townships and from the city
+      near by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The weather being assured, Fatty's anxieties were mostly allayed, for he
+      had on the file in his office acceptance letters from the distinguished
+      men who were to cast the spell of their oratory over the assembled
+      multitude, as also from the big men in the athletic world who had entered
+      for the various events in the programme of sports. It was a master stroke
+      of diplomacy that resulted in the securing for the hammer-throwing contest
+      the redoubtable and famous Duncan Ross of Zorra, who had at first
+      disdained the bait of the Maplehill Dominion Day picnic, but in some
+      mysterious way had at length been hooked and landed. For Duncan was a
+      notable man and held the championship of the Zorras; and indeed in all
+      Ontario he was second only to the world-famous Rory Maclennan of
+      Glengarry, who had been to Braemar itself and was beaten there only by a
+      fluke. How he came to agree to be present at the Maplehill picnic &ldquo;Black
+      Duncan&rdquo; could not quite understand, but had he compared notes with McGee,
+      the champion of the London police force and of various towns and cities of
+      the western peninsula, he would doubtless have received some
+      enlightenment. To the skill of the same master hand was due the appearance
+      upon the racing list of the Dominion Day picnic of such distinguished
+      names as Cahill of London, Fullerton of Woodstock, and especially of
+      Eugene La Belle of nowhere in particular, who held the provincial
+      championship for skating and was a runner of provincial fame.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the racing Fatty was particularly interested because his young brother
+      Wilbur, of whom he was uncommonly proud, a handsome lad, swift and
+      graceful as a deer, was to make his first essay for more than local
+      honours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lists for the other events were equally well filled and every detail
+      of the arrangements for the day had passed under the secretary's personal
+      review. The feeding of the multitude was in charge of the Methodist
+      Ladies' Aid, an energetic and exceptionally businesslike organization,
+      which fully expected to make sufficient profit from the enterprise to
+      clear off the debt from their church at Maplehill, an achievement greatly
+      desired not only by the ladies themselves but by their minister, the
+      Reverend Harper Freeman, now in the third year of his incumbency. The
+      music was to be furnished by the Band of the Seventh from London and by no
+      less a distinguished personage than Piper Sutherland himself from Zorra,
+      former Pipe Major of &ldquo;The old Forty-twa.&rdquo; The discovery of another piper
+      in Cameron brought joy to the secretary's heart, who only regretted that
+      an earlier discovery had not rendered possible a pipe competition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Early in the afternoon the crowds began to gather to MacBurney's woods, a
+      beautiful maple grove lying midway between the Haleys' farm and Maplehill
+      village, about two miles distant from each. The grove of noble maple trees
+      overlooking a grassy meadow provided an ideal spot for picnicking,
+      furnishing as it did both shade from the sun and a fine open space with
+      firm footing for the contestants in the games. High over a noble maple in
+      the centre of the grassy meadow floated the Red Ensign of the Empire,
+      which, with the Canadian coat of arms on the fly, by common usage had
+      become the national flag of Canada. From the great trees the swings were
+      hung, and under their noble spreading boughs were placed the tables, and
+      the platform for the speech making and the dancing, while at the base of
+      the encircling hills surrounding the grassy meadow, hard by the grove
+      another platform was placed, from which distinguished visitors might view
+      with ease and comfort the contests upon the campus immediately adjacent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the fence, let down for the purpose, the people drove in from the
+      high road. They came in top buggies and in lumber wagons, in democrats and
+      in &ldquo;three seated rigs,&rdquo; while from the city came a &ldquo;four-in-hand&rdquo; with
+      McGee, Cahill, and their backers, as well as other carriages filled with
+      good citizens of London drawn thither by the promise of a day's sport of
+      more than usual excellence or by the lure of a day in the woods and fields
+      of God's open country. A specially fine carriage and pair, owned and
+      driven by the honourable member of Parliament himself, conveyed Piper
+      Sutherland, with colours streaming and pipes playing, to the picnic
+      grounds. Warmly was the old piper welcomed, not only by the frisky cheery
+      secretary, but by many old friends, and by none more warmly than by the
+      Reverend Alexander Munro, the douce old bachelor Presbyterian minister of
+      Maplehill, a great lover of the pipes and a special friend of Piper
+      Sutherland. But the welcome was hardly over when once more the sound of
+      the pipes was heard far up the side line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Surely that will be Gunn,&rdquo; said Mr. Munro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sutherland listened for a minute or two.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, it iss not Gunn. Iss Ross coming? No, yon iss not Ross. That will be
+      a stranger,&rdquo; he continued, turning to the secretary, but the secretary
+      remained silent, enjoying the old man's surprise and perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, that iss not so bad piping! Not so bad at all! Who iss it?&rdquo; he added
+      with some impatience, turning upon the secretary again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's Haley's team and I guess that's his hired man, a young fellow
+      just out from Scotland,&rdquo; replied the secretary indifferently. &ldquo;I am no
+      great judge of the pipes myself, but he strikes me as a crackajack and I
+      shouldn't be surprised if he would make you all sit up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the old piper's ear was closed to his words and open only to the
+      strains of music ever drawing nearer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, yon's a piper!&rdquo; he said at length with emphasis. &ldquo;Yon's a piper!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I only wish I had discovered him in time for a competition,&rdquo; said Fatty
+      regretfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye,&rdquo; said Sutherland. &ldquo;Yon's a piper worth playing against.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And very brave and gallant young Cameron looked as Tim swung his team
+      through the fence and up to the platform under the trees where the great
+      ones of the people were standing in groups. They were all there, Patterson
+      the M.P.P., and Dr. Kane the Opposition candidate, Reeve Robertson, for
+      ten years the Municipal head of his county, Inspector Grant, a little man
+      with a massive head and a luminous eye, Patterson's understudy and
+      generally regarded as his successor in Provincial politics, the Reverend
+      Harper Freeman, Methodist minister, tall and lank, with shrewd kindly face
+      and a twinkling eye, the Reverend Alexander Munro, the Presbyterian
+      minister, solid and sedate, slow to take fire but when kindled a very
+      furnace for heat. These, with their various wives and daughters, such as
+      had them, and many others less notable but no less important, constituted
+      a sort of informal reception committee under Fatty Freeman's general
+      direction and management. And here and there and everywhere crowds of
+      young men and maidens, conspicuous among the latter Isa MacKenzie and her
+      special friends, made merry with each other, as brave and gallant a
+      company of sturdy sun-browned youths and bonnie wholesome lassies as any
+      land or age could ever show.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look at them!&rdquo; cried the Reverend Harper Freeman, waving his hand toward
+      the kaleidoscopic gathering. &ldquo;There's your Dominion Day oration for you,
+      Mr, Patterson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most of it done in brown, too,&rdquo; chuckled his son, Harper Freeman, Jr.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and set in jewels and gold,&rdquo; replied his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You hold over me, Dad!&rdquo; cried his son. &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he called to Cameron, who
+      was standing aloof from the others. &ldquo;Come and meet a brother Scot and a
+      brother piper, Mr. Sutherland from Zorra, though to your ignorant Scottish
+      ear that means nothing, but to every intelligent Canadian, Zorra stands
+      for all that's finest in brain and brawn in Canada.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And it takes both to play the pipes, eh, Sutherland?&rdquo; said the M.P.P.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh aye, but mostly wind,&rdquo; said the piper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just like politics, eh, Mr. Patterson?&rdquo; said the Reverend Harper Freeman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, or like preaching,&rdquo; replied the M.P.P.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One on you, Dad!&rdquo; said the irrepressible Fatty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Sutherland was warmly complimenting Cameron on his playing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You haf been well taught,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No one taught me,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;But we had a famous old piper at home
+      in our Glen, Macpherson was his name.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Macpherson! Did he effer play at the Braemar gathering?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but Maclennan beat him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Maclennan! I haf heard him.&rdquo; The tone was quite sufficient to classify
+      the unhappy Maclennan. &ldquo;And I haf heard Macpherson too. You iss a player.
+      None of the fal-de-rals of your modern players, but grand and mighty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I agree with you entirely,&rdquo; replied Cameron, his heart warming at the
+      praise of his old friend of the Glen Cuagh Oir. &ldquo;But,&rdquo; he added,
+      &ldquo;Maclennan is a great player too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A great player? Yes and no. He has the fingers and the notes, but he iss
+      not the beeg man. It iss the soul that breathes through the chanter. The
+      soul!&rdquo; Here he gripped Cameron by the arm. &ldquo;Man! it iss like praying. A
+      beeg man will neffer show himself in small things, but when he will be in
+      communion with his Maker or when he will be pouring out his soul in a
+      pibroch then the beegness of the man will be manifest. Aye,&rdquo; continued the
+      piper, warming to his theme and encouraged by the eager sympathy of his
+      listener, &ldquo;and not only the beegness but the quality of the soul. A mean
+      man can play the pipes, but he can neffer be a piper. It iss only a beeg
+      man and a fine man and, I will venture to say, a good man, and there are
+      not many men can be pipers.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, Mr. Sutherland,&rdquo; broke in the Reverend Alexander Munro, &ldquo;what you
+      say is true, but it is true not only of piping. It is true surely of
+      anything great enough to express the deepest emotions of the soul. A man
+      is never at his best in anything till he is expressing his noblest self.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For instance in preaching, eh!&rdquo; said Dr. Kane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, in preaching or in political oratory,&rdquo; replied the minister.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this, however, the old piper shook his head doubtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You do not agree with Mr. Munro in that?&rdquo; said the M.P.P.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Sutherland, &ldquo;speaking iss one thing, piping iss another.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that is no lie, and a mighty good thing too it is,&rdquo; said Dr. Kane
+      flippantly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It iss no lie,&rdquo; replied the old piper with dignity. &ldquo;And if you knew much
+      about either of them you would say it deeferently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, what is the difference, Mr. Sutherland?&rdquo; said Dr. Kane, anxious to
+      appease the old man. &ldquo;They both are means of expressing the emotions of
+      the soul, you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The deeference! The deeferenee iss it? The deeference iss here, that the
+      pipes will neffer lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a shout of laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One for you, Kane!&rdquo; cried the Reverend Harper Freeman. &ldquo;And,&rdquo; he
+      continued when the laughing had ceased, &ldquo;we will have to take our share
+      too, Mr. Munro.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But the hour for beginning the programme had arrived and the secretary
+      climbed to the platform to announce the events for the day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen!&rdquo; he cried, in a high, clear, penetrating voice,
+      &ldquo;the speech of welcome will be delivered toward the close of the day by
+      the president of the Middlesex Caledonian Society, the Honourable J. J.
+      Patterson, M.P.P. My duty is the very simple one of announcing the order
+      of events on the programme and of expressing on behalf of the Middlesex
+      Caledonian Society the earnest hope that you all may enjoy the day, and
+      that each event on the programme will prove more interesting than the
+      last. The programme is long and varied and I must ask your assistance to
+      put it through on schedule time. First there are the athletic
+      competitions. I shall endeavour to assist Dr. Kane and the judges in
+      running these through without unnecessary and annoying delays. Then will
+      follow piping, dancing, and feasting in their proper order, after which
+      will come the presentation of prizes and speeches from our distinguished
+      visitors. On the platform over yonder there are places for the speakers,
+      the officials, and the guests of the society, but such is the very
+      excellent character of the ground that all can be accommodated with grand
+      stand seats. One disappointment, and one only, I must announce, the Band
+      of the Seventh, London, cannot be with us to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But we will never miss them,&rdquo; interpolated the Reverend Alexander Munro
+      with solemn emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly so!&rdquo; continued Fatty when the laugh had subsided. &ldquo;And now let's
+      all go in for a good old time picnic, 'where even the farmers cease from
+      grumbling and the preachers take a rest.' Now take your places, ladies and
+      gentlemen, for the grand parade is about to begin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The programme opened with the one hundred yard flat race. For this race
+      there were four entries, Cahill from London, Fullerton from Woodstock, La
+      Belle from nowhere in particular, and Wilbur Freeman from Maplehill. But
+      Wilbur was nowhere to be seen. The secretary came breathless to the
+      platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Wilbur?&rdquo; he asked his father.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wilbur? Surely he is in the crowd, or in the tent perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the tent the secretary found his brother nursing a twisted ankle,
+      heart-sick with disappointment. Early in the day he had injured his foot
+      in an attempt to fasten a swing upon a tree. Every minute since that time
+      he had spent in rubbing and manipulating the injured member, but all to no
+      purpose. While the pain was not great, a race was out of the question. The
+      secretary was greatly disturbed and as nearly wrathful as ever he allowed
+      himself to become. He was set on his brother making a good showing in this
+      race; moreover, without Wilbur there would be no competitor to uphold the
+      honour of Maplehill in this contest and this would deprive it of much of
+      its interest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the dickens were you climbing trees for?&rdquo; he began impatiently, but
+      a glance at his young brother's pale and woe-stricken face changed his
+      wrath to pity. &ldquo;Never mind, old chap,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;better luck next time,
+      and you will be fitter too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Back he ran to the platform, for he must report the dismal news to his
+      mother, whose chief interest in the programme for the day lay in this race
+      in which her latest born was to win his spurs. The cheery secretary was
+      nearly desperate. It was an ominous beginning for the day's sports. What
+      should he do? He confided his woe to Mack and Cameron, who were standing
+      close by the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will play the very mischief with the programme. It will spoil the
+      whole day, for Wilbur was the sole Maplehill representative in the three
+      races; besides, I believe the youngster would have shown up well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He would that!&rdquo; cried Mack heartily. &ldquo;He was a bird. But is there no one
+      else from the Hill that could enter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no one with a chance of winning, and no fellow likes to go in simply
+      to be beaten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What difference?&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;It's all in a day's sport.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's so,&rdquo; said Mack. &ldquo;If I could run myself I would enter. I wonder if
+      Danny would&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Danny!&rdquo; said the secretary shortly. &ldquo;You know better than that. Danny's
+      too shy to appear before this crowd even if he were dead sure of winning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, it is too bad!&rdquo; continued Mack, as the magnitude of the calamity
+      grew upon him. &ldquo;Surely we can find some one to make an appearance. What
+      about yourself, Cameron? Did you ever race?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Some,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I raced last year at the Athole Games.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatty threw himself upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron, you are my man! Do you want to save your country, and perhaps my
+      life, certainly my reputation? Get out of those frills,&rdquo; touching his
+      kilt, &ldquo;and I'll get a suit from one of the jumpers for you. Go! Bless your
+      soul, anything you want that's mine you can have! Only hustle for dear
+      life's sake! Go! Go! Go! Take him away, Mack. We'll get something else
+      on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatty actually pushed Cameron clear away from the platform and after him
+      big Mack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There seems to be no help for it,&rdquo; said Cameron, as they went to the tent
+      together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's awful good of you,&rdquo; replied Mack, &ldquo;but you can see how hard Fatty
+      takes it, though it is not a bit fair to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nobody knows me here,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;and I don't mind being a
+      victim.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But as Mack saw him get into his jersey and shorts he began to wonder a
+      bit.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, it would be great if you should beat yon Frenchman!&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Frenchman?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes! La Belle. He is that stuck on himself; he thinks he is a winner
+      before he starts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a good way to think, Mack. Now let us get down into the woods and
+      have a bit of a practise in the 'get away.' How do they start here? With a
+      pistol?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Mack. &ldquo;We are not so swell. The starter gives the word this
+      way, 'All set? Go!'&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Mack, you give me the word sharp. I am out of practise and I
+      must get the idea into my head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are great on the idea, I see,&rdquo; replied Mack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right you are, and it is just the same with the hammer, Mack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye, I have found that out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For twenty minutes or so Cameron practised his start and at every attempt
+      Mack's confidence grew, so that when he brought his man back to the
+      platform he announced to a group of the girls standing near, &ldquo;Don't say
+      anything, but I have the winner right here for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; cried Isa, &ldquo;what a wonder you are! What else can you
+      do? You are a piper, a dancer, a hammer-thrower, and now a runner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jack-of-all-trades,&rdquo; laughed Perkins, who, with Mandy, was standing near.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but you can't say 'Master of none,'&rdquo; replied Isa sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better wait,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I have entered this race only to save Mr.
+      Freeman from collapse.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Collapse? Fatty? He couldn't,&rdquo; said Isa with emphasis.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lass, I do not know,&rdquo; said Mack gravely. &ldquo;He looked more hollow than ever
+      I have seen him before.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we'll all cheer for you, Mr. Cameron, anyway,&rdquo; cried Isa. &ldquo;Won't
+      we, girls? Oh, if wishes were wings!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wings?&rdquo; said Mandy, with a puzzled air. &ldquo;What for? This is a RACE.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Didn't you never see a hen run, Mandy?&rdquo; laughed Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I have, but I tell you Mr. Cameron ain't no hen,&rdquo; replied Mandy
+      angrily. &ldquo;And more! He's going to win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Mandy, that is the talk,&rdquo; said Mack, when the laugh had passed. &ldquo;Did
+      you hear yon?&rdquo; he added to Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron nodded.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a good omen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I am going to do my best.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, by Jingo! if you only had a chance,&rdquo; said Mack, &ldquo;I believe you would
+      lick them all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Fatty bustled up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All ready, eh? Cameron, I shall owe you something for this. La Belle
+      kicked like a steer against your entering at the last minute. It is
+      against the rules, you know. But he's given in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Fatty did not explain that he had intimated to La Belle that there was no
+      need for anxiety as far as the &ldquo;chap from the old country&rdquo; was concerned;
+      he was there merely to fill up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But if La Belle's fears were allayed by the secretary's disparaging
+      description of the latest competitor, they sprang full grown into life
+      again when he saw Cameron &ldquo;all set&rdquo; for the start, and more especially so
+      when he heard his protest against the Frenchman's method in the &ldquo;get
+      away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want you to notice,&rdquo; he said firmly to Dr. Kane, who was acting as
+      starter, &ldquo;that this man gets away WITH the word 'Go' and not AFTER it. It
+      is an old trick, but long ago played out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the Frenchman fell into a rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eet ees no treeck!&rdquo; sputtered La Belle. &ldquo;Eet ees too queeck for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right!&rdquo; said Dr. Kane. &ldquo;You are to start after the word 'Go.'
+      Remember! Sorry we have no pistol.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the competitors crouched over the scratch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All set? Go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like the releasing of a whirlwind the four runners spring from the
+      scratch, La Belle, whose specialty is his &ldquo;get away,&rdquo; in front, Fullerton
+      and Cameron in second place, Cahill a close third. A blanket would cover
+      them all. A tumult of cheers from the friends of the various runners
+      follows them along their brief course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it? Who is it?&rdquo; cries Mandy breathlessly, clutching Mack by the
+      arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron, I swear!&rdquo; roars Mack, pushing his way through the crowd to the
+      judges.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No! No! La Belle! La Belle!&rdquo; cried the Frenchman's backers from the city.
+      The judges are apparently in dispute.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I swear it is Cameron!&rdquo; roars Mack again in their ears, his eyes aflame
+      and his face alight with a fierce and triumphant joy. &ldquo;It is Cameron I am
+      telling you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, get out, you big bluffer!&rdquo; cries a thin-faced man, pressing close
+      upon the judges. &ldquo;It is La Belle by a mile!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By a mile, is it?&rdquo; shouts Mack. &ldquo;Then go and hunt your man!&rdquo; and with a
+      swift motion his big hand falls upon the thin face and sweeps it clear out
+      of view, the man bearing it coming to his feet in a white fury some paces
+      away. A second look at Mack, however, calms his rage, and from a distance
+      he continues leaping and yelling &ldquo;La Belle! La Belle!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      After a few moments' consultation the result is announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A tie for the first place between La Belle and Cameron! Time eleven
+      seconds! The tie will be run off in a few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a tumult of triumph big Mack shoulders Cameron through the crowd and
+      carries him off to the dressing tent, where he spends the next ten minutes
+      rubbing his man's legs and chanting his glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is this Cameron?&rdquo; enquired the M.P.P., leaning over the platform
+      railing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quick came the answer from the bevy of girls thronging past the platform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron? He's our man!&rdquo; It was Mandy's voice, bold and strong.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your man?&rdquo; said the M.P.P., laughing down into the coarse flushed face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, OUR man!&rdquo; cried Isa MacKenzie back at him. &ldquo;And a winner, you may be
+      sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, happy man!&rdquo; exclaimed the M.P.P. &ldquo;Who would not win with such
+      backers? Why, I would win myself, Miss Isa, were you to back me so. But
+      who is Cameron?&rdquo; he continued to the Methodist minister at his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is Haley's hired man, I believe, and that first girl is Haley's
+      daughter.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor thing!&rdquo; echoed Mrs. Freeman, a kindly smile on her motherly face.
+      &ldquo;But she has a good heart has poor Mandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why 'poor'?&rdquo; enquired the M.P.P.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, well,&rdquo; answered Mrs. Freeman with hesitation, &ldquo;you see she is so very
+      plain&mdash;and&mdash;well, not like other girls. But she is a good worker
+      and has a kind heart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the runners face the starter, La Belle gay, alert, confident;
+      Cameron silent, pale, and grim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All set? Go!&rdquo; La Belle is away ere the word is spoken. The bell, however,
+      brings him back, wrathful and less confident.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more they stand crouching over the scratch. Once more the word
+      releases them like shafts from the bow. A beautiful start, La Belle again
+      in the lead, but Cameron hard at his heels and evidently with something to
+      spare. Thus for fifty yards, sixty, yes, sixty-five.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;La Belle! La Belle! He wins! He wins!&rdquo; yell his backers frantically, the
+      thin-faced man dancing madly near the finishing tape. Twenty yards to go
+      and still La Belle is in the lead. High above the shouting rises Mack's
+      roar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Cameron! For the life of you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was as if his voice had touched a spring somewhere in Cameron's
+      anatomy. A great leap brings him even with La Belle. Another, another, and
+      still another, and he breasts the tape a winner by a yard, time ten and
+      three fifths seconds. The Maplehill folk go mad, and madder than all Isa
+      and her company of girl friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I got&mdash;one&mdash;bad&mdash;start&mdash;me! He&mdash;pull&mdash;me
+      back!&rdquo; panted La Belle to his backers who were holding him up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who pulled you back?&rdquo; indignantly cried the thin-faced man, looking for
+      blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That sacre startair!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ran a fine race, La Belle!&rdquo; said Cameron, coming up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Non! Peste! I mak heem in ten and one feeft,&rdquo; replied the disgusted La
+      Belle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have made it in ten,&rdquo; said Cameron quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; exclaimed La Belle. &ldquo;You are one black horse, eh? So! I race no
+      more to-day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then no more do I!&rdquo; said Cameron firmly. &ldquo;Why, La Belle, you will beat me
+      in the next race sure. I have no wind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Under pressure La Belle changed his mind, and well for him he did; for in
+      the two hundred and twenty yards and in the quarter mile Cameron's lack of
+      condition told against him, so that in the one he ran second to La Belle
+      and in the other third to La Belle and Fullerton.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Maplehill folk were gloriously satisfied, and Fatty in an ecstasy of
+      delight radiated good cheer everywhere. Throughout the various contests
+      the interest continued to deepen, the secretary, with able generalship,
+      reserving the hammer-throwing as the most thrilling event to the last
+      place. For, more than anything in the world, men, and especially women,
+      love strong men and love to see them in conflict. For that fatal love
+      cruel wars have been waged, lands have been desolated, kingdoms have
+      fallen. There was the promise of a very pretty fight indeed between the
+      three entered for the hammer-throwing contest, two of them experienced in
+      this warfare and bearing high honours, the third new to the game and
+      unskilled, but loved for his modest courage and for the simple, gentle
+      heart he carried in his great body. He could not win, of course, for
+      McGee, the champion of the city police force, had many scalps at his
+      girdle, and Duncan Ross, &ldquo;Black Duncan,&rdquo; the pride of the Zorras, the
+      unconquered hero of something less than a hundred fights&mdash;who could
+      hope to win from him? But all the more for this the people loved big Mack
+      and wished him well. So down the sloping sides of the encircling hills the
+      crowds pressed thick, and on the platform the great men leaned over the
+      rail, while they lifted their ladies to places of vantage upon the chairs
+      beside them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I cannot see a bit!&rdquo; cried Isa MacKenzie, vainly pressing upon the
+      crowding men who, stolidly unaware of all but what was doing in front of
+      them, effectually shut off her view.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you want to see?&rdquo; said the M.P.P., looking down at her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, so much!&rdquo; she cried.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come up here, then!&rdquo; and, giving her a hand, he lifted her, smiling and
+      blushing, to a place on the platform whence she with absorbing interest
+      followed the movements of big Mack, and incidentally of the others in as
+      far as they might bear any relation to those of her hero.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And now they were drawing for place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha! Mack is going to throw first!&rdquo; said the Reverend Alexander Munro.
+      &ldquo;That is a pity.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a shame!&rdquo; cried Isa, with flashing eyes. &ldquo;Why don't they put one of
+      those older&mdash;ah&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stagers?&rdquo; suggested the M.P.P.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Duffers,&rdquo; concluded Isa.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lot determines the place, Miss Isa,&rdquo; said Mr. Freeman, with a smile
+      at her. &ldquo;But the best man will win.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am not so sure of that!&rdquo; cried the girl in a distressed voice.
+      &ldquo;Mack might get nervous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nervous?&rdquo; laughed the M.P.P. &ldquo;That giant?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, indeed, I have seen him that nervous&mdash;&rdquo; said Isa, and stopped
+      abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! That is quite possible,&rdquo; replied the M.P.P. with a quizzical smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there is young Cameron yonder. He is not going to throw, is he?&rdquo;
+       enquired Mr. Munro.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is coaching Mack,&rdquo; explained Isa, &ldquo;and fine he is at it. Oh, there! He
+      is going to throw! Oh, if he only gets the swing! Oh! Oh! Oh! He has got
+      it fine!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A storm of cheers followed Mack's throw, then a deep silence while the
+      judges took the measurement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one feet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one!&rdquo; echoed a hundred voices in amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one! It is a lie!&rdquo; cried McGee with an oath,
+      striding out to personally supervise the measuring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one!&rdquo; said Duncan Ross, shaking his head
+      doubtfully, but he was too much of a gentleman to do other than wait for
+      the judges' decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one feet and two inches,&rdquo; was the final verdict,
+      and from the crowd there rose a roar that rolled like thunder around the
+      hills.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's a fluke, and so it is!&rdquo; said McGee with another oath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me your hand, lad,&rdquo; said Duncan Ross, evidently much roused. &ldquo;It iss
+      a noble throw whateffer, and worthy of beeg Rory himself. I haf done
+      better, howeffer, but indeed I may not to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was indeed a great throw, and one immediate result was that there was
+      no holding back in the contest, no playing 'possum. Mack's throw was there
+      to be beaten, and neither McGee nor even Black Duncan could afford to
+      throw away a single chance. For hammer-throwing is an art requiring not
+      only strength but skill as well, and not only strength and skill but
+      something else most difficult to secure. With the strength and the skill
+      there must go a rhythmic and perfect coordination of all the muscles in
+      the body, with exactly the proper contracting and relaxing of each at
+      exactly the proper moment of time, and this perfect coordination is a
+      result rarely achieved even by the greatest throwers, but when achieved,
+      and with the man's full strength behind it, his record throw is the
+      result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Cameron was hovering about his man in an ecstasy of delight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mack, old man!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;You got the swing perfectly. It was a
+      dream. And if you had put your full strength into it you would have made a
+      world record. Why, man, you could add ten feet to it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a fluke!&rdquo; said McGee again, as he took his place.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Make one like it, then, my lad,&rdquo; said Black Duncan with a grim smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this McGee failed to do, for his throw measured ninety-seven feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A very fair throw, McGee,&rdquo; said Black Duncan. &ldquo;But not your best, and
+      nothing but the best will do the day appearingly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With that Black Duncan took place for his throw. One&mdash;twice&mdash;thrice
+      he swung the great hammer about his head, then sent it whirling into the
+      air. Again a mighty shout announced a great throw and again a dead silence
+      waited for the measurement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and fourteen feet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; said Black Duncan, and stepped back apparently well satisfied.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was again Mack's turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You have the privilege of allowing your first throw to stand,&rdquo; said Dr.
+      Kane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Best let it stand, lad, till it iss beat,&rdquo; advised Black Duncan kindly.
+      &ldquo;It iss a noble throw.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can do better, though,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, very well!&rdquo; said Duncan. &ldquo;Let him try.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mack's success had keyed him up to the highest pitch. Every nerve was
+      tingling, every muscle taut. His first throw he had taken without strain,
+      being mainly anxious, under Cameron's coaching, to get the swing, but
+      under the excitement incident to the contest he had put more strength into
+      the throw than appeared either to himself or to his coach. Now, however,
+      with nerves and muscles taut, he was eager to increase his distance, too
+      eager it seemed, for his second throw measured only eighty-nine feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A silence fell upon his friends and Cameron began to chide him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You went right back to your old style, Mack. There wasn't the sign of a
+      swing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will get it yet, or bust!&rdquo; said big Mack between his teeth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      McGee's second throw went one hundred and seventeen feet. A cheer arose
+      from his backers, for it was a great throw and within five feet of his
+      record. Undoubtedly McGee was in great form and he might well be expected
+      to measure up to his best to-day.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Black Duncan's second throw measured one hundred and nineteen feet seven,
+      which was fifteen feet short of his record and showed him to be climbing
+      steadily upward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the turn came to Mack, and once more, with almost savage
+      eagerness, he seized the hammer preparatory to his throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mack, for heaven's sake go easy!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Take your swing
+      easy and slow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mack heeded him not. &ldquo;I can beat it!&rdquo; he muttered between his shut
+      teeth, &ldquo;and I will.&rdquo; So, with every nerve taut and every muscle strained
+      to its limit, he made his third attempt. It was in vain. The measure
+      showed ninety-seven feet six. A suppressed groan rose from the Maplehill
+      folk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A grand throw, lad, for a beginner,&rdquo; said Black Duncan.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The excitement now became intense. By his first throw of one hundred and
+      twenty-one feet two, Mack remained still the winner. But McGee had only
+      four feet to gain and Black Duncan less than two to equal him. The little
+      secretary went skipping about aglow with satisfaction and delight. The day
+      was already famous in the history of Canadian athletics.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again McGee took place for his throw, his third and last. The crowd
+      gathered in as near as they dared. But McGee had done his best for that
+      day, and his final throw measured only one hundred and five feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There remained yet but a single chance to wrest from Mack Murray the prize
+      for that day, but that chance lay in the hands of Duncan Ross, the cool
+      and experienced champion of many a hard-fought fight. Again Black Duncan
+      took the hammer. It was his last throw. He had still fifteen feet to go to
+      reach his own record, and he had often beaten the throw that challenged
+      him to-day, but, on the other hand, he had passed through many a contest
+      where his throw had fallen short of the one he must now beat to win. A
+      hush fell upon the people as Black Duncan took his place. Once&mdash;twice&mdash;and,
+      with ever increasing speed, thrice he swung the great hammer, then high
+      and far it hurtled through the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jerusalem!&rdquo; cried Mack. &ldquo;What a fling!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too high,&rdquo; muttered Black Duncan. &ldquo;You have got it, lad, you have got it,
+      and you well deserve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut-tut, nonsense!&rdquo; said Mack impatiently. &ldquo;Wait you a minute.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Silent and expectant the crowd awaited the result. Twice over the judges
+      measured the throw, then announced &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one feet.&rdquo; Mack
+      had won by two inches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A great roar rose from the crowd, round Mack they surged like a flood,
+      eager to grip his hands and eager to carry him off shoulder high. But he
+      threw them off as a rock throws back the incoming tide and made for Duncan
+      Ross, who stood, calm and pale, and with hand outstretched, waiting him.
+      It was a new experience for Black Duncan, and a bitter, to be second in a
+      contest. Only once in many years had he been forced to lower his colours,
+      and to be beaten by a raw and unknown youth added to the humiliation of
+      his defeat. But Duncan Ross had in his veins the blood of a long line of
+      Highland gentlemen who knew how to take defeat with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I congratulate you, Mack Murray,&rdquo; he said in a firm, clear voice. &ldquo;Your
+      fame will be through Canada tomorrow, and well you deserve it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mack caught the outstretched hand in both of his and, leaning toward
+      Black Duncan, he roared at him above the din.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Ross, Mr. Ross, it is no win! Listen to me!&rdquo; he panted. &ldquo;What are two
+      inches in a hundred and twenty feet? A stretching of the tape will do it.
+      No, no! Listen to me! You must listen to me as you are a man! I will not
+      have it! You can beat me easily in the throw! At best it is a tie and
+      nothing else will I have to-day. At least let us throw again!&rdquo; he pleaded.
+      But to this Ross would not listen for a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The lad has made his win,&rdquo; he said to the judges, &ldquo;and his win he must
+      have.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mack declared that nothing under heaven would make him change his
+      mind. Finally the judges, too, agreed that in view of the possibility of a
+      mistake in measuring with the tape, it would be only right and fair to
+      count the result a tie. Black Duncan listened respectfully to the judges'
+      decision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are asking me a good deal, Mack,&rdquo; he said at length, &ldquo;but you are a
+      gallant lad and I am an older man and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aye! And a better!&rdquo; shouted Mack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And so I will agree.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more the field was cleared. And now there fell upon the crowding
+      people a hush as if they stood in the presence of death itself.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ladies and gentlemen!&rdquo; said the M.P.P. &ldquo;Do you realise that you are
+      looking upon a truly great contest, a contest great enough to be of
+      national, yes, of international, importance?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet your sweet life!&rdquo; cried the irrepressible Fatty. &ldquo;We're going
+      some. 'What's the matter with our Mack?'&rdquo; he shouted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'HE'S&mdash;ALL&mdash;RIGHT!'&rdquo; came back the chant from the surrounding
+      hills in hundreds of voices.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And what's the matter with Duncan Ross?&rdquo; cried Mack, waving a hand above
+      his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the assurance of perfect rightness came back in a mighty roar from
+      the hills. But it was hushed into immediate silence, a silence breathless
+      and overwhelming, for Black Duncan had taken once more his place with the
+      hammer in his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I do wish they would hurry!&rdquo; gasped Isa, her hands pressed hard upon
+      her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My heart is rather weak, too,&rdquo; said the M.P.P. &ldquo;I fear I cannot last much
+      longer. Ah! There he goes, thank God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen!&rdquo; fervently responds little Mrs. Freeman, who, in the intensity of
+      her excitement, is standing on a chair holding tight by her husband's coat
+      collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Not a sound breaks the silence as Black Duncan takes his swing. It is a
+      crucial moment in his career. Only by one man in Canada has he ever been
+      beaten, and with the powers of his antagonist all untried and unknown, for
+      anyone could see that Mack has not yet thrown his best, he may be called
+      upon to surrender within the next few minutes the proud position he has
+      held so long in the athletic world. But there is not a sign of excitement
+      in his face. With great care, and with almost painful deliberation, he
+      balances the hammer for a moment or two, then once&mdash;twice&mdash;and,
+      with a tremendous quickening of speed,&mdash;thrice&mdash;he swings, and
+      his throw is made. A great throw it is, anyone can see, and one that beats
+      the winner. In hushed and strained silence the people await the result.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-one feet nine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then rises the roar that has been held pent up during the last few
+      nerve-racking minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It iss a good enough throw,&rdquo; said Black Duncan with a quiet smile, &ldquo;but
+      there iss more in me yet. Now, lad, do your best and there will be no hard
+      feeling with thiss man whateffer happens.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Black Duncan's accent and idioms reveal the intense excitement that lies
+      behind his quiet face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mack takes the hammer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will not beat it, you may be sure,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But I will just take a
+      fling at it anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mack,&rdquo; says Cameron, &ldquo;for the sake of all you love forget the
+      distance and show them the Braemar swing. Easy and slow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mack waves him aside and stands pondering. He is &ldquo;getting the idea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, do you see him?&rdquo; whispers his brother Danny, who stands near to
+      Cameron. &ldquo;I believe he has got it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron nods his head. Mack wears an impressive air of confidence and
+      strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be a great throw,&rdquo; says Cameron to Danny.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easy and slow&rdquo; Mack poises the great hammer in his hand, swinging it
+      gently backward and forward as if it had been a boy's toy, the great
+      muscles in arms and back rippling up and down in firm full waves under his
+      white skin, for he is now stripped to the waist for this throw.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, as if at command, the muscles seem to spring to their places,
+      tense, alert. &ldquo;Easy.&rdquo; Yes, truly, but by no means &ldquo;slow.&rdquo; &ldquo;Easy,&rdquo; the
+      great hammer swings about his head in whirling circles, swift and ever
+      swifter. Once&mdash;and twice&mdash;the great muscles in back and arms and
+      back and legs knotted in bunches&mdash;thrice!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah-h-h!&rdquo; A long, wailing, horrible sound, half moan, half cry, breaks
+      from the people. Mack has missed his direction, and the great hammer,
+      weighted with the potentialities of death, is describing a parabola high
+      over the heads of the crowding, shrieking, scattering people.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my God! My God! Oh, my God! My God!&rdquo; With his hands covering his eyes
+      the big man is swaying from side to side like a mighty tree before a
+      tempest. Cameron and Ross both spring to him. On the hillsides men stand
+      rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and faint. One ghastly moment of
+      suspense, and then a horrid sickening thud; one more agonising second of
+      silence, and then from a score of throats rises a cry:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's all right! All right! No one hurt!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From five hundred throats breaks a weird unearthly mingling of strange
+      sounds; cheers and cries, shouts and sobs, prayers and oaths. In the midst
+      of it all Mack sinks to his knees, with hands outstretched to heaven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great God, I thank Thee! I thank Thee!&rdquo; he cries brokenly, the tears
+      streaming down his ghastly face. Then, falling forward upon his hands, he
+      steadies himself while great sobs come heaving from his mighty chest.
+      Cameron and Ross, still upholding him, through the crowd a man comes
+      pushing his way, hurling men and women right and left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Back, people! And be still.&rdquo; It is the minister, Alexander Munro. &ldquo;Be
+      still! It is a great deliverance that God has wrought! Peace, woman! God
+      is near! Let us pray.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly all noises are hushed, hats come off, and all up the sloping
+      hills men and women fall to their knees, or remain standing with heads
+      bowed, while the minister, upright beside the kneeling man, spreads his
+      hands towards heaven and prays in a voice steady, strong, thrilling:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Almighty God, great and wonderful in Thy ways, merciful and gracious in
+      Thy providence, Thou hast wrought a great deliverance before our eyes this
+      day. All power is in Thy hands. All forces move at Thy command. Thine hand
+      it is that guided this dread hammer harmless to its own place, saving the
+      people from death. It is ever thus, Father, for Thou art Love. We lift to
+      Thee our hearts' praise. May we walk softly before Thee this day and
+      alway. Amen!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Amen! Amen!&rdquo; On every hand and up the hillsides rises the fervent solemn
+      attestation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rise, Mr. Murray!&rdquo; says the minister in a loud and solemn voice, giving
+      Mack his hand. &ldquo;God has been gracious to you this day. See that you do not
+      forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He has that! He has that!&rdquo; sobs Mack. &ldquo;And God forgive me if I ever
+      forget.&rdquo; And, suddenly pushing from him the many hands stretched out
+      towards him, he stumbles his way through the crowd, led off by his two
+      friends towards the tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on there a minute! Let us get this measurement first.&rdquo; It was the
+      matter-of-fact, cheery voice of Fatty Freeman. &ldquo;If I am not mistaken we
+      have a great throw to measure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite right, Mr. Freeman,&rdquo; said the minister. &ldquo;Let us get the measurement
+      and let not the day be spoiled.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, you people, don't stand there gawking like a lot of dotty chumps!&rdquo;
+       cried the secretary, striving to whip them out of the mood of horror into
+      which they had fallen. &ldquo;Get a move on! Give the judges a chance! What is
+      it, doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The judges were consulting. At length the decision was announced.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One hundred and twenty-nine seven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hooray!&rdquo; yelled Fatty, flinging his straw hat high. &ldquo;One hundred and
+      twenty-nine seven! It is a world throw! Why don't you yell, you people?
+      Don't you know that you have a world-beater among you? Yell! Yell!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for Mack Murray!&rdquo; called out the Reverend Harper Freeman
+      from the platform, swinging his great black beaver hat over his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was what the people wanted. Again, and again, and yet again the crowd
+      exhausted its pent-up emotions in frantic cheers. The clouds of gloom were
+      rolled back, the sun was shining bright again, and with fresh zest the
+      people turned to the enjoyment of the rest of the programme.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you, Sir!&rdquo; said Fatty amid the uproar, gripping the hand of Mr.
+      Munro. &ldquo;You have saved the day for us. We were all going to smash, but you
+      pulled us out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime in the tent Duncan Ross was discoursing to his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, Mack! Yon's a mighty throw! Do you know it iss within five feet of
+      my own record and within ten of Big Rory's? Then,&rdquo; he said solemnly, &ldquo;you
+      are in the world's first class to-day, my boy, and you are just
+      beginning.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have just quit!&rdquo; said Mack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whist, lad! Thiss iss not the day for saying anything about it. We will
+      wait a wee and to-day we will just be thankful.&rdquo; And with that they turned
+      to other things.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      They were still in the dressing tent when the secretary thrust his cheery
+      face under the flap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, boys! Are you ready? Cameron, we want you on the pipes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Harp!&rdquo; said Mack. &ldquo;I am going home. I am quite useless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And me, too,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I shall go with you, Mack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried Fatty in consternation. &ldquo;Look here, boys! Is this a square
+      deal? God knows I am nearly all in myself. I've had enough to keep this
+      thing from going to pieces. Don't you go back on me now!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That is so!&rdquo; said Mack slowly. &ldquo;Cameron, you must stay. You are needed. I
+      will spoil things more by staying than by going. I would be forever seeing
+      that hammer crushing down&mdash;&rdquo; He covered his face with his hands and
+      shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Mack! I will stay,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;But what about you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Black Duncan, &ldquo;Mack and I will walk about and have a smoke for
+      a little.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, boys, you are the stuff!&rdquo; said Fatty fervently. &ldquo;Once more you
+      have saved the day. Come then, Cameron! Get your pipes. Old Sutherland is
+      waiting for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But before he set off Mack called Cameron to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will see Isa,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and tell her why I could not stay. And you
+      will take her home.&rdquo; His face was still pallid, his voice unsteady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I will take care of her, Mack, never fear. But could you not remain? It
+      might help you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mack only shook his head. His fervent Highland soul had too recently
+      passed through the valley of death and its shadows were still upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Four hours later Fatty looked in upon Mack at his own home. He found him
+      sitting in the moonlight in the open door of the big new barn, with his
+      new-made friend, Duncan Ross, at one door post and old Piper Sutherland at
+      the other, while up and down the floor in the shadow within Cameron
+      marched, droning the wild melody of the &ldquo;Maccrimmon Lament.&rdquo; Mournful and
+      weird it sounded through the gloom, but upon the hearts of these
+      Highlanders it fell like a soothing balm. With a wave of his hand Mack
+      indicated a seat, which Fatty took without a word. Irrepressible though he
+      was, he had all the instincts of a true gentleman. He knew it was the time
+      for silence, and silent he stood till the Lament had run through its
+      &ldquo;doubling&rdquo; and its &ldquo;trebling,&rdquo; ending with the simple stately movement of
+      its original theme. To Fatty it was a mere mad and unmelodious noise, but,
+      reading the faces of the three men before him in the moonlight, he had
+      sense enough to recognise his own limitations.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the Lament was finished and Cameron came forward into the light.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! That iss good for the soul,&rdquo; said old piper Sutherland. &ldquo;Do you know
+      what your pipes have been saying to me in yon Lament?
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          'Yea, though I walk through Death's dark vale,
+               Yet will I fear none ill;
+           For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
+               And staff me comfort still.'
+</pre>
+    <p>
+      And we have been in the valley thiss day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mack rose to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not have said it myself, but, as true as death, that is the word
+      for me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Fatty, rising briskly, &ldquo;I guess you are all right, Mack. I
+      confess I was a bit anxious about you, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no need,&rdquo; said Mack gravely. &ldquo;I can sleep now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-night, then,&rdquo; replied Fatty, turning to go. &ldquo;Cameron, I owe you a
+      whole lot. I won't forget it.&rdquo; He set his hat upon the back of his head,
+      sticking his hands into his pockets and surveying the group before him.
+      &ldquo;Say! You Highlanders are a great bunch. I do not pretend to understand
+      you, but I want to say that between you you have saved the day.&rdquo; And with
+      that the cheery, frisky, irrepressible, but kindly little man faded into
+      the moonlight and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the fourth time the day had been saved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0014" id="link2HCH0014">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was a Sabbath day in late August, and in no month of the year does a
+      Sabbath day so chime with the time. For the Sabbath day is a day for rest
+      and holy thought, and the late August is the rest time of the year, when
+      the woods and fields are all asleep in a slumberous blue haze; the sacred
+      time, too, for in late August old Mother Earth is breathing her holiest
+      aspirations heavenward, having made offering of her best in the full
+      fruitage of the year. Hence a Sabbath day in late August chimes
+      marvellously well with the time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And this particular Sabbath day was perfect of its kind, a dreamy, drowsy
+      day, a day when genial suns and hazy cool airs mingle in excellent
+      harmony, and the tired worker, freed from his week's toil, basks and
+      stretches, yawns and revels in rest under the orchard trees; unless,
+      indeed, he goes to morning church. And to morning church Cameron went as a
+      rule, but to-day, owing to a dull ache in his head and a general sense of
+      languor pervading his limbs, he had chosen instead, as likely to be more
+      healing to his aching head and his languid limbs, the genial sun, tempered
+      with cool and lazy airs under the orchard trees. And hence he lay watching
+      the democrat down the lane driven off to church by Perkins, with Mandy
+      beside him in the front seat, the seat of authority and of activity, and
+      Mr. Haley alone in the back seat, the seat of honour and of retirement.
+      Mrs. Haley was too overborne by the heat and rush of the busy week to
+      adventure the heat and dust of the road, and to sustain the somewhat
+      strenuous discourse of the Reverend Harper Freeman, to whose flock the
+      Haleys belonged. This, however, was not Mrs. Haley's invariable custom. In
+      the cooler weather it was her habit to drive on a Sunday morning to
+      church, sitting in the back seat beside her husband, with Tim and Mandy
+      occupying the front seat beside the hired man, but during the heat and
+      hurry of the harvest time she would take advantage of the quietness of the
+      house and of the two or three hours' respite from the burden of household
+      duties to make up arrears of sleep accumulated during the preceding week,
+      salving her conscience, for she had a conscience in the matter, with a
+      promise that she might go in the evening when it was cooler and when she
+      was more rested. This promise, however, having served its turn, was never
+      fulfilled, for by the evening the wheels of household toil began once more
+      to turn, and Mrs. Haley found it easier to worship vicariously, sending
+      Mandy and Tim to the evening service. And to this service the young people
+      were by no means loath to go, for it was held on fair evenings in
+      MacBurney's woods, two miles away by the road, one mile by the path
+      through the woods. On occasion Perkins would hitch up in the single buggy
+      Dexter, the fiery young colt, too fiery for any other to drive, and, as a
+      special attention to his employer's daughter, would drive her to the
+      service. But since the coming of Cameron, Mandy had allowed this custom to
+      fall into disuse, at first somewhat to Perkins' relief, for the colt was
+      restless and fretted against the tie rein; and, besides, Perkins was not
+      as yet quite prepared to acknowledge any special relationship between
+      himself and the young lady in question before the assembled congregation,
+      preferring to regard himself and to be regarded by others as a free lance.
+      Later, however, as Mandy's preference for a walk through the woods became
+      more marked, Perkins, much to his disgust, found himself reduced to the
+      attitude of a suppliant, urging the superior attraction of a swift drive
+      behind Dexter as against a weary walk to the service. Mandy, however, with
+      the directness of her simple nature, had no compunction in frankly
+      maintaining her preference for a walk with Tim and Cameron through the
+      woods; indeed, more than once she allowed Perkins to drive off with his
+      fiery colt, alone in his glory.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But this Sabbath morning, as Cameron lay under the orchard trees, he was
+      firmly resolved that he would give the whole day to the nursing of the
+      ache in his head and the painful languor in his body. And so lying he
+      allowed his mind to wander uncontrolled over the happenings of the past
+      months, troubled by a lazy consciousness of a sore spot somewhere in his
+      life. Gradually there grew into clearness the realisation of the cause of
+      this sore spot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with Perkins?&rdquo; he asked of Tim, who had declined to go
+      to church, and who had strolled into the orchard to be near his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is the matter with Perkins?&rdquo; Cameron asked a second time, for Tim
+      was apparently too much engaged with a late harvest apple to answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How?&rdquo; said the boy at length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is so infernally grumpy with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grumpy? He's sore, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sore?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet! Ever since I beat him in the turnips that day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ever since YOU beat him?&rdquo; asked Cameron in amazement. &ldquo;Why should he be
+      sore against me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He knows it was you done it,&rdquo; said Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Tim! Besides, Perkins isn't a baby. He surely doesn't hold that
+      against me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh, huh,&rdquo; said Tim, &ldquo;everybody's pokin' fun at him, and he hates that,
+      and ever since the picnic, too, he hates you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why in the world?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks!&rdquo; said Tim, impatient at Cameron's density. &ldquo;I guess you know
+      all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Know? Not I!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Git out?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honor bright, Tim,&rdquo; replied Cameron, sitting up. &ldquo;Now, honestly, tell me,
+      Tim, why in the world Perkins should hate me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You put his nose out of joint, I guess,&rdquo; said Tim with a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rot, Tim! How?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every how,&rdquo; said Tim, proceeding to elaborate. &ldquo;First when you came here
+      you were no good&mdash;I mean&mdash;&rdquo; Tim checked himself hastily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know what you mean, Tim. Go on. You are quite right. I couldn't do
+      anything on the farm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; continued Tim, &ldquo;you can do anything jist as good as him&mdash;except
+      bindin', of course. He's a terror at bindin', but at pitchin' and shockin'
+      and loadin' you're jist as good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Tim, that's all nonsense. Perkins isn't such a fool as to hate me
+      because I can keep up my end.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He don't like you,&rdquo; said Tim stubbornly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But why? Why in the name of common sense?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Tim, summing up the situation, &ldquo;before you come he used to be
+      the hull thing. Now he's got to play second fiddle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cameron remained unenlightened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw!&rdquo; continued Tim, making further concessions to his friend's
+      stupidity. &ldquo;At the dances, at the raisin's, runnin', jumpin'&mdash;everythin'&mdash;Perkins
+      used to be the King Bee. Now&mdash;&rdquo; Tim's silence furnished an impressive
+      close to the contrast. &ldquo;Why! They all think you are just fine!&rdquo; said Tim,
+      with a sudden burst of confidence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All the boys. Yes, and the girls, too,&rdquo; said Tim, allowing his solemn
+      face the unusual luxury of a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The girls?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw, yeh know well enough&mdash;the Murray girls, and the MacKenzies, and
+      the hull lot of them. And then&mdash;and then&mdash;there's Mandy, too.&rdquo;
+       Here Tim shot a keen glance at his friend, who now sat leaning against the
+      trunk of an apple tree with his eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Tim, you are a shrewd little chap&rdquo;&mdash;here Cameron sat upright&mdash;&ldquo;but
+      how do you know about the girls, and what is this you say about Mandy?
+      Mandy is good to me&mdash;very kind and all that, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She used to like Perkins pretty well,&rdquo; said Tim, with a kind of
+      hesitating shyness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Perkins?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, he thought he jist owned her. Guess he ain't so sure now,&rdquo; added Tim.
+      &ldquo;I guess you've changed Mandy all right.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was the one thing Cameron hated to hear, but he made light of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, nonsense!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;But if I did I would be mighty glad of it.
+      Mandy is too good for a man like Perkins. Why, he isn't safe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's a terror,&rdquo; replied Tim seriously. &ldquo;They are all scairt of him. He's
+      a terror to fight. Why, at MacKenzie's raisin' last year he jist went
+      round foamin' like an old boar and nobody dast say a word to him. Even
+      Mack Murray was scairt to touch him. When he gets like that he ain't
+      afraid of nothin' and he's awful quick and strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim proceeded to enlarge upon this theme, which apparently fascinated him,
+      with tales of Perkins' prowess in rough-and-tumble fighting. But Cameron
+      had lost interest and was lying down again with his eyes closed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, when Tim had finished his recital, &ldquo;if he is that kind of
+      a man Mandy should have nothing to do with him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Tim was troubled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dad likes him,&rdquo; he said gloomily. &ldquo;He is a good hand. And ma likes him,
+      too. He taffies her up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And Mandy?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said Tim, still more gloomy. &ldquo;I guess he kind of makes
+      her. I'd&mdash;I'd jist like to take a lump out of him.&rdquo; Tim's eyes blazed
+      into a sudden fire. &ldquo;He runs things on this farm altogether too much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Buck up then, Tim, and beat him,&rdquo; said Cameron, dismissing the subject.
+      &ldquo;And now I must have some sleep. I have got an awful head on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Tim was quick enough to understand the hint, but still he hovered about.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I'm awful sorry,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Can't I git somethin'? You didn't eat no
+      breakfast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all I want is sleep, Tim. I will be all right tomorrow,&rdquo; replied
+      Cameron, touched by the tone of sympathy in Tim's voice. &ldquo;You are a fine
+      little chap. Trot along and let me sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But no sleep came to Cameron, partly because of the hammer knocking in his
+      head, but chiefly because of the thoughts set going by Tim. Cameron was
+      not abnormally egotistical, but he was delightedly aware of the new place
+      he held in the community ever since the now famous Dominion Day picnic,
+      and, now that the harvest rush had somewhat slackened, social engagements
+      had begun to crowd upon him. Dances and frolics, coon hunts and raisings
+      were becoming the vogue throughout the community, and no social function
+      was complete without the presence of Cameron. But this sudden popularity
+      had its embarrassments, and among them, and threatening to become
+      annoying, was the hostility of Perkins, veiled as yet, but none the less
+      real. Moreover, behind Perkins stood a band of young fellows of whom he
+      was the recognised leader and over whom his ability in the various arts
+      and crafts of the farm, his physical prowess in sports, his gay, cheery
+      manner, and, it must be said, the reputation he bore for a certain fierce
+      brute courage in rough-and-tumble fighting, gave him a sort of ascendency.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Perkins' attitude towards him did not after all cause Cameron much
+      concern. There was another and more annoying cause of embarrassment, and
+      that was Mandy. Tim's words kept reiterating themselves in his brain,
+      &ldquo;You've changed Mandy all right.&rdquo; Over this declaration of Tim's, Cameron
+      proceeded to argue with himself. He sat bolt upright that he might face
+      himself on the matter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; he said to himself, &ldquo;let's have this thing out.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Most willingly. This girl was on the way to engagement to this young man
+      Perkins. You come on the scene. Everything is changed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well! What of it? It's a mighty good thing for her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you are the cause of it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The occasion, rather.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, the cause. You have attracted her to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't help that. Besides, it is a mere passing whim. She'll get over
+      all that?&rdquo; And Cameron laughed scornfully in his own face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you know that? And how do you know it? Tim thinks differently.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, confound it all! I see that I shall have to get out of here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A wise decision truly, and the sooner the better. Do you propose to go at
+      once?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;At once? Well, I should like to spend the winter here. I have made a
+      number of friends and life is beginning to be pleasant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly! It suits your convenience, but how about Mandy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rubbish! Must I be governed by the fancies of that silly girl?
+      Besides, the whole thing is absurdly ridiculous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But facts are stubborn, and anyone can see that the girl is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hang it all! I'll go at the end of the month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well. And in the leave-taking&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is pleasant to be appreciated and to carry away with one memories, I
+      will not say tender, but appreciative.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't act like a boor. I must be decent to the girl. Besides, she isn't
+      altogether a fool.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, but very crude, very primitive, very passionate, and therefore very
+      defenseless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, I shall simply shake hands and go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So, with the consequent sense of relief that high resolve always brings,
+      Cameron lay down again and fell into slumber and dreams of home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From these dreams of home Mandy recalled him with a summons to dinner. As
+      his eye, still filled with the vision of his dreams, fell upon her in all
+      the gorgeous splendour of her Sunday dress, he was conscious of a strong
+      sense of repulsion. How coarse, how crude, how vulgar she appeared, how
+      horribly out of keeping with those scenes through which he had just been
+      wandering in his dreams.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want no dinner, Mandy,&rdquo; he said shortly. &ldquo;I have a bad head and I am
+      not hungry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No dinner?&rdquo; That a man should not want dinner was to Mandy quite
+      inexplicable, unless, indeed, he were ill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Are you sick?&rdquo; she cried in quick alarm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I have a headache. It will pass away,&rdquo; said Cameron, turning over on
+      his side. Still Mandy lingered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me bring you a nice piece of pie and a cup of tea.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron shuddered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;bring me nothing. I merely wish to sleep.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mandy refused to be driven away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, I'm awful sorry. I know you're sick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense!&rdquo; said Cameron, impatiently, waiting for her to be gone. Still
+      Mandy hesitated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm awful sorry,&rdquo; she said again, and her voice, deep, tender,
+      full-toned, revealed her emotion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron turned impatiently towards her.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look here, Mandy! There's nothing wrong with me. I only want a little
+      sleep. I shall be all right to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Mandy's fears were not to be allayed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;you look awful bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, get out, Mandy! Go and get your dinner. Don't mind me.&rdquo; Cameron's
+      tone was decidedly cross.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without further remonstrance Mandy turned silently away, but before she
+      turned Cameron caught the gleam of tears in the great blue eyes. A swift
+      compunction seized him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Mandy, I don't want to be rude, but&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rude?&rdquo; cried the girl. &ldquo;You? You couldn't be. You are always good&mdash;to
+      me&mdash;and&mdash;I&mdash;don't&mdash;know&mdash;&rdquo; Here her voice broke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come, Mandy, get away to dinner. You are a good girl. Now leave me
+      alone.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The kindness in his voice quite broke down Mandy's all too slight control.
+      She turned away, audibly sniffling, with her apron to her eyes, leaving
+      Cameron in a state of wrathful perplexity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, confound it all!&rdquo; he groaned to himself. &ldquo;This is a rotten go. By
+      Jove! This means the West for me. The West! After all, that's the place.
+      Here there is no chance anyway. Why did I not go sooner?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He rose from the grass, shivering with a sudden chill, went to his bed in
+      the hay mow, and, covering himself with Tim's blankets and his own, fell
+      again into sleep. Here, late in the afternoon, Tim found him and called
+      him to supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With Mandy's watchful eye upon him he went through the form of eating, but
+      Mandy was not to be deceived.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ain't eatin' nothin',&rdquo; she said reproachfully as he rose from the
+      table.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Enough for a man who is doing nothing,&rdquo; replied Cameron. &ldquo;What I want is
+      exercise. I think I shall take a walk.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to church?&rdquo; she enquired, an eager light springing into her eye.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To church? I hadn't thought of it,&rdquo; replied Cameron, but, catching the
+      gleam of a smile on Perkins' face and noting the utterly woebegone
+      expression on Mandy's, he added, &ldquo;Well, I might as well walk to church as
+      any place else. You are going, Tim?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh huh!&rdquo; replied Tim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am going to hitch up Deck, Mandy,&rdquo; said Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'm goin' to walk!&rdquo; said Mandy, emphatically.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right!&rdquo; said Perkins. &ldquo;Guess I'll walk too with the crowd.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't mind me,&rdquo; said Mandy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't,&rdquo; laughed Perkins, &ldquo;you bet! Nor anybody else.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And that's no lie!&rdquo; sniffed Mandy, with a toss of her head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better drive to church, Mandy,&rdquo; suggested her mother. &ldquo;You know you're
+      jist tired out and it will be late when you get started.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tired? Late?&rdquo; cried Mandy, with alacrity. &ldquo;I'll be through them dishes in
+      a jiffy and be ready in no time. I like the walk through the woods.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Depends on the company,&rdquo; laughed Perkins again. &ldquo;So do I. Guess we'll all
+      go together.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      True to her promise, Mandy was ready within half an hour. Cameron
+      shuddered as he beheld the bewildering variety of colour in her attire and
+      the still more bewildering arrangement of hat and hair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're good and gay, Mandy,&rdquo; said Perkins. &ldquo;What's the killing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mandy made no reply save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as she set
+      off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim bringing up the
+      rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The lane was a grassy sward, cut with two wagon-wheel tracks, and with a
+      picturesque snake fence on either side. Beyond the fences lay the fields,
+      some of them with stubble raked clean, the next year's clover showing
+      green above the yellow, some with the grain standing still in the shock,
+      and some with the crop, the late oats for instance, still uncut, but ready
+      for the reaper. The turnip field was splendidly and luxuriantly green with
+      never a sign of the brown earth. The hay meadow, too, was green and purple
+      with the second growth of clover.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So down the lane and between the shorn fields, yellow and green, between
+      the clover fields and the turnips, they walked in silence, for the spell
+      of the Sabbath evening lay upon the sunny fields, barred with the shadows
+      from the trees that grew along the fence lines everywhere. At the
+      &ldquo;slashing&rdquo; the wagon ruts faded out and the road narrowed to a single cow
+      path, winding its way between stumps and round log piles, half hidden by a
+      luxuriant growth of foxglove and fireweed and asters, and everywhere the
+      glorious goldenrod. Then through the bars the path led into the woods, a
+      noble remnant of the beech and elm and maple forest from which the farm
+      had been cut some sixty years before. Cool and shadowy they stood, and
+      shot through with bright shafts of gold from the westering sun, full of
+      mysterious silence except for the twittering of the sleepy birds or for
+      the remonstrant call of the sentinel crow from his watch tower on the dead
+      top of a great elm. Deeper into the shade the path ran until in the gloom
+      it faded almost out of sight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Soothed by the cool shade, Cameron loitered along the path, pausing to
+      learn of Tim the names of plants and trees as he went.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't yeh never comin'?&rdquo; called Mandy from the gloom far in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's all the rush?&rdquo; replied Tim, impatiently, who loved nothing better
+      than a quiet walk with Cameron through the woods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rush? We'll be late, and I hate walkin' up before the hull crowd. Come
+      on!&rdquo; cried his sister in impatient tone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Mandy, we're nearly through the woods. I begin to see the
+      clearing yonder,&rdquo; said Cameron, pointing to where the light was beginning
+      to show through the tree tops before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But they were late enough, and Mandy was glad of the cover of the opening
+      hymn to allow her to find her way to a group of her girl friends, the
+      males of the party taking shelter with a neighbouring group of their own
+      sex near by.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the sloping sides of the grassy hills and under the beech and maple
+      trees, the vanguard of the retreating woods, sat the congregation, facing
+      the preacher, who stood on the grassy level below. Behind them was the
+      solid wall of thick woods, over them time spreading boughs, and far above
+      the trees the blue summer sky, all the bluer for the little white clouds
+      that sailed serene like ships upon a sea. At their feet lay the open
+      country, checkered by the snake fences into fields of yellow, green, and
+      brown, and rolling away to meet the woods at the horizon.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sabbath rest filled the sweet air, breathed from the shady woods,
+      rested upon the checkered fields, and lifted with the hymn to the blue
+      heaven above. A stately cathedral it was, this place of worship, filled
+      with the incense of flowers and fields, arched by the high dome of heaven,
+      and lighted by the glory of the setting sun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Relieved by the walk for a time from the ache in his head, Cameron
+      surrendered himself to the mysterious influences of the place and the
+      hour. He let his eyes wander over the fields below him to the far horizon,
+      and beyond&mdash;beyond the woods, beyond the intervening leagues of land
+      and sea&mdash;and was again gazing upon the sunlit loveliness of the Cuagh
+      Oir. The Glen was abrim with golden light this summer evening, the purple
+      was on the hills and the little loch gleamed sapphire at the bottom.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The preacher was reading his text.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to every
+      man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey,&rdquo;
+       and so on to the end of that marvellously wise tale, wise with the wisdom
+      of God, confirmed by the wisdom of human experience.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Reverend Harper Freeman's voice could hardly, even by courtesy, be
+      called musical; in fact, it was harsh and strident; but this evening the
+      hills, and the trees, and the wide open spaces, Nature's mighty modulator,
+      subdued the harshness, so that the voice rolled up to the people clear,
+      full, and sonorous. Nor was the preacher possessed of great learning nor
+      endued with the gift of eloquence. He had, however, a shrewd knowledge of
+      his people and of their ways and of their needs, and he had a kindly
+      heart, and, more than all, he had the preacher's gift, the divine capacity
+      for taking fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a time his words fell unheeded upon Cameron's outer ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To every man his own endowments, some great, some small, but, mark you,
+      no man left quite poverty-stricken. God gives every man his chance. No man
+      can look God in the face, not one of you here can say that you have had no
+      chance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's vagrant mind, suddenly recalled, responded with a quick assent.
+      Opportunity? Endowment? Yes, surely. His mind flashed back over the years
+      of his education at the Academy and the University, long lazy years. How
+      little he had made of them! Others had turned them into the gold of
+      success. He wondered how old Dunn was getting on, and Linklater, and
+      little Martin. How far away seemed those days, and yet only some four or
+      five months separated him from them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One was a failure, a dead, flat failure,&rdquo; continued the preacher. &ldquo;Not so
+      much a wicked man, no murderer, no drunkard, no gambler, but a miserable
+      failure. Poor fellow! At the end of life a wretched bankrupt, losing even
+      his original endowment. How would you like to come home after ten, twenty,
+      thirty years of experiment with life and confess to your father that you
+      were dead broke and no good?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Cameron's mind came back from its wandering with a start. Go back to
+      his father a failure! He drew his lip down hard over his teeth. Not while
+      he lived! And yet, what was there in prospect for him? His whole soul
+      revolted against the dreary monotony and the narrowness of his present
+      life, and yet, what other path lay open? Cameron went straying in fancy
+      over the past, or in excursions into the future, while, parallel with his
+      rambling, the sermon continued to make its way through its various heads
+      and particulars.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why?&rdquo; The voice of the preacher rose clear, dominant, arresting. &ldquo;Why did
+      he fail so abjectly, so meanly, so despicably? For there is no excuse for
+      a failure. Listen! No man NEED fail. A man who is a failure is a mean,
+      selfish, lazy chump.&rdquo; Mr. Freeman was colloquial, if anything. &ldquo;Some men
+      pity him. I don't. I have no use for him, and he is the one thing in all
+      the world that God himself has no use for.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again Cameron's mind was jerked back as a runaway horse by a rein. So far
+      his life had been a failure. Was there then no excuse for failure? What of
+      his upbringing, his education, his environment? He had been indulging the
+      habit during these last weeks of shifting responsibility from himself for
+      what he had become.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was the cause of this young man's failure?&rdquo; reiterated the preacher.
+      The preacher had a wholesome belief in the value of reiteration. He had a
+      habit of rubbing in his points. &ldquo;He blamed the boss. Listen to his
+      impudence! 'I knew thee to be a hard man.' He blamed his own temperament
+      and disposition. 'I was afraid.' But the boss brings him up sharp and
+      short. 'Quit lying!' he said. 'I'll tell you what's wrong with you. You've
+      got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're too lazy to live. Here,
+      take that money from him and give it to the man that can do most with it,
+      and take this useless loafer out of my sight.' And served him right, too,
+      say I, impudent, lazy liar.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron found his mind rising in wrathful defense of the unhappy wretched
+      failure in the story. But the preacher was utterly relentless and
+      proceeded to enlarge upon the character of the unhappy wretch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impudent! The way to tell an impudent man is to let him talk. Now listen
+      to this man cheek the boss! 'I knew you,' he said. 'You skin everybody in
+      sight.' I have always noticed,&rdquo; remarked the preacher, with a twinkle in
+      his eye, &ldquo;that the hired man who can't keep up his end is the kind that
+      cheeks the boss. And so it is with life. Why, some men would cheek
+      Almighty God. They turn right round and face the other way when God is
+      explaining things to them, when He is persuading them, when He is trying
+      to help them. Then they glance back over their shoulders and say, 'Aw,
+      gwan! I know better than you.' Think of the impudence of them! That's what
+      many a man does with God. With GOD, mind you! GOD! Your Father in heaven,
+      your Brother, your Saviour, God as you know him in the Man of Galilee, the
+      Man you always see with the sick and the outcast and the broken-hearted.
+      It is this God that owns you and all you've got&mdash;be honest and say
+      so. You must begin by getting right with God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;God!&rdquo; Once more Cameron went wandering back into the far away days of
+      childhood. God was very near then, and very friendly. How well he
+      remembered when his mother had tucked him in at night and had kissed him
+      and had put out the light. He never felt alone and afraid, for she left
+      him, so she said, with God. It was God who took his mother's place, near
+      to his bedside. In those days God seemed very near and very kind. He
+      remembered his mother's look one day when he declared to her that he could
+      hear God breathing just beside him in the dark. How remote God seemed
+      to-day and how shadowy, and, yes, he had to confess it, unfriendly. He
+      heard no more of the sermon. With a curious ache in his heart he allowed
+      his mind to dwell amid those happy, happy memories when his mother and God
+      were the nearest and dearest to him of all he knew. It may have been the
+      ache in his head or the oppressive languor that seemed to possess his
+      body, but throughout the prayer that followed the sermon he was conscious
+      chiefly of a great longing for his mother's touch upon his head, and with
+      that a longing for his boyhood's sense of the friendly God in his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And so as the preacher led them up to God in prayer, Cameron bowed his
+      head with the others, thankful that he could still believe that, though
+      clouds and darkness might be about Him, God was not beyond the reach of
+      the soul's cry nor quite unmoved by human need. And for the first time for
+      years he sent forth as a little child his cry of need, &ldquo;God help me! God
+      help me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0015" id="link2HCH0015">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CHIVAREE
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      There was still light enough to see. The last hymn was announced. Cameron
+      was conscious of a deep, poignant emotion. He glanced swiftly about him.
+      The eyes of all were upon the preacher's face while he read in slow
+      sonorous tones the words of the old Methodist hymn:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;Come, Thou Fount of every blessing!
+             Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      all except the group of young men of whom Perkins was the centre, who, by
+      means of the saccharine medium known as conversation lozenges, were
+      seeking to divert the attention of the band of young girls sitting before
+      them. Among these sat Mandy. As his eye rested upon the billowy outlines
+      of her figure, struggling with the limitations of her white blouse,
+      tricked out with pink ribbons, he was conscious of a wave of mingled pity
+      and disgust. Dull, stupid, and vulgar she looked. It was at her that
+      Perkins was flipping his conversation lozenges. One fell upon her hymn
+      book. With a start she glanced about. Not an eye except Cameron's was
+      turned her way. With a smile and a blush that burned deep under the dull
+      tan of her neck and cheek she took the lozenge, read its inscription,
+      burning a deeper red. The words which she had read she took as Cameron's.
+      She turned her eyes full upon his face. The light of tremulous joy in
+      their lovely depths startled and thrilled him. A snicker from the group of
+      young men behind roused in him a deep indignation. They were taking their
+      coarse fun out of this simple-minded girl. Cameron's furious glance at
+      them appeared only to increase their amusement. It did not lessen
+      Cameron's embarrassment and rage that now and then during the reading of
+      the hymn Mandy's eyes were turned upon him as if with new understanding.
+      Enraged with himself, and more with the group of hoodlums behind him,
+      Cameron stood for the closing hymn with his arms folded across his breast.
+      At the second verse a hand touched his arm. It was Mandy offering him her
+      book. Once more a snicker from the group of delighted observers behind him
+      stirred his indignation on behalf of this awkward and untutored girl. He
+      forced himself to listen to the words of the third verse, which rose clear
+      and sonorous in the preacher's voice:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+          &ldquo;Here I raise my Ebenezer,
+             Hither by Thy help I'm come;
+           And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
+             Safely to arrive at home.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      The serene assurance of the old Methodist hymn rose triumphant in the
+      singing, an assurance born of an experience of past conflict ending in
+      triumph. That note of high and serene confidence conjured up with a flash
+      of memory his mother's face. That was her characteristic, a serene,
+      undismayed courage. In the darkest hours that steady flame of courage
+      never died down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But once more he was recalled to the service of the hour by a voice, rich,
+      full, low, yet of wonderful power, singing the old words. It took him a
+      moment or two to discover that it was Mandy singing beside him. Her face
+      was turned from him and upwards towards the trees above her, through the
+      network of whose leaves the stars were beginning to shine. Amazed,
+      enthralled, he listened to the flowing melody of her voice. It was like
+      the song of a brook running deep in the forest shade, full-toned yet soft,
+      quiet yet thrilling. She seemed to have forgotten her surroundings. Her
+      soul was holding converse with the Eternal. He lost sight of the coarse
+      and fleshly habiliments in the glimpse he caught of the soul that lived
+      within, pure, it seemed to him, tender, and good. His heart went out to
+      the girl in a new pity. Before the hymn was done she turned her face
+      towards him, and, whether it was the magic of her voice, or the glorious
+      splendour of her eyes, or the mystic touch of the fast darkening night,
+      her face seemed to have lost much of its coarseness and all of its
+      stupidity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the congregation dispersed, Cameron, in silence, and with the spell of
+      her voice still upon him, walked quietly beside Mandy towards the gap in
+      the fence leading to the high road. Behind him came Perkins with his group
+      of friends, chaffing with each other and with the girls walking in front
+      of them. As Cameron was stepping over the rails where the fence had been
+      let down, one of the young men following stumbled heavily against him,
+      nearly throwing him down, and before he could recover himself Perkins had
+      taken his place by Mandy's side and seized her arm. There was a general
+      laugh at what was considered a perfectly fair and not unusual piece of
+      jockeying in the squiring of young damsels. The proper procedure in such a
+      case was that the discomfited cavalier should bide his time and serve a
+      like turn upon his rival, the young lady meanwhile maintaining an attitude
+      purely passive. But Mandy was not so minded. Releasing herself from
+      Perkins' grasp, she turned upon the group of young men following,
+      exclaiming angrily, &ldquo;You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sam Sailor!&rdquo;
+       Then, moving to Cameron's side, she said in a clear, distinct voice:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cameron, would you please take my book for me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, boys!&rdquo; said Perkins, with his never failing laugh. &ldquo;I guess
+      we're not in this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your medicine, Perkins,&rdquo; laughed one of his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll take it all right,&rdquo; replied Perkins. But the laugh could not
+      conceal the shake of passion in his voice. &ldquo;It will work, too, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he strode off into the gathering gloom followed by his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; said Mandy with a silly giggle. &ldquo;I guess we
+      don't need them fellows. They can't fool us, can they?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her manner, her speech, her laugh rudely dissipated all Cameron's new
+      feeling towards her. The whole episode filled him only with disgust and
+      annoyance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, then,&rdquo; he said, almost roughly. &ldquo;We shall need to hurry, for there
+      is a storm coming up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mandy glanced at the gathering clouds.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My goodness!&rdquo; she cried; &ldquo;it's comin' up fast. My! I hate to git my
+      clothes wet.&rdquo; And off she set at a rapid pace, keeping abreast of her
+      companion and making gay but elephantine attempts at sprightly
+      conversation. Before Cameron's unsympathetic silence, however, all her
+      sprightly attempts came to abject failure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's the matter with you?&rdquo; at length she asked. &ldquo;Don't you want to see
+      me home?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; said Cameron, abruptly, for his thoughts were far away. &ldquo;Oh,
+      nonsense! Of course! Why not? But we shall certainly be caught in the
+      storm. Let us hurry. Here, let me take your arm.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His manner was brusque, almost rude.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I guess I can get along,&rdquo; replied Mandy, catching off her hat and
+      gathering up her skirt over her shoulders, &ldquo;but we'll have to hustle, for
+      I'd hate to have you get, wet.&rdquo; Her imperturbable good humour and her
+      solicitude for him rebuked Cameron for his abruptness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I hope you will not get wet,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't you worry about me. I ain't salt nor sugar, but I forgot all
+      about your bein' sick.&rdquo; And with laboured breath poor Mandy hurried
+      through the growing darkness with Cameron keeping close by her side. &ldquo;We
+      won't be long now,&rdquo; she panted, as they turned from the side line towards
+      their own gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As if in reply to her words there sounded from behind the fence and close
+      to their side a long loud howl. Cameron gave a start.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great Caesar! What dog is that?&rdquo; he exclaimed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Mandy coolly, &ldquo;guess it's MacKenzie's Carlo.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately there rose from the fence on the other side an answering howl,
+      followed by a full chorus of howls and yelps mingled with a bawling of
+      calves and the ringing of cow bells, as if a dozen curs or more were in
+      full cry after a herd of cattle. Cameron stood still in bewildered
+      amazement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the deuce are they at?&rdquo; he cried, peering through the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; grunted Mandy. &ldquo;Them's curs all right, but they ain't much dog. You
+      wait till I see them fellows. They'll pay for this, you bet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean to say these are not dogs?&rdquo; cried Cameron, speaking in her
+      ear, so great was the din.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dogs?&rdquo; answered Mandy with indignant scorn. &ldquo;Naw! Just or'nary curs! Come
+      along,&rdquo; she cried, catching his arm, &ldquo;let's hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here!&rdquo; he cried, suddenly wrenching himself free, &ldquo;I am going to see into
+      this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; cried Mandy, gripping his arm once more with her strong hands.
+      &ldquo;They will hurt you. Come on! We're just home. You can see them again. No,
+      I won't let you go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain he struggled. Her strong hands held him fast. Suddenly there was a
+      succession of short, sharp barks. Immediately dead silence fell. Not a
+      sound could be heard, not a shape seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out into the open, you cowardly curs!&rdquo; shouted Cameron. &ldquo;Come on!
+      One, two, three at a time, if you dare!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But silence answered him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Mandy in a low voice, &ldquo;let's hurry. It's goin' to rain. Come
+      on! Come along!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood irresolute. Then arose out of the black darkness a long
+      quavering cat call. With a sudden dash Cameron sprang towards the fence.
+      Instantly there was a sound of running feet through the plowed field on
+      the other side, then silence.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come back, you cowards!&rdquo; raged Cameron. &ldquo;Isn't there a man among you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer a clod came hurtling through the dark and struck with a thud
+      upon the fence. Immediately, as if at a signal, there fell about Cameron a
+      perfect hail of clods and even stones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh! Oh!&rdquo; shrieked Mandy, rushing towards him and throwing herself between
+      him and the falling missiles. &ldquo;Come away! Come away! They'll just kill
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Cameron put his arms about her and drew her behind him,
+      shielding her as best he could with his body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you want to kill a woman?&rdquo; he called aloud.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At once the hail of clods ceased and, raging as he was, Mandy dragged him
+      homeward. At the door of the house he made to turn back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much, you don't,&rdquo; said Mandy, stoutly, &ldquo;or I go with you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, all right,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;let them go. They are only a lot of curs,
+      anyway.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few minutes they stood and talked in the kitchen, Cameron making
+      light of the incident and making strenuous efforts to dissemble the rage
+      that filled his soul. After a few minutes conversation Cameron announced
+      his intention of going to bed, while Mandy passed upstairs. He left the
+      house and stole down the lane toward the road. The throbbing pain in his
+      head was forgotten in the blind rage that possessed him. He had only one
+      longing, to stand within striking distance of the cowardly curs, only one
+      fear, that they should escape him. Swiftly, silently, he stole down the
+      lane, every nerve, every muscle tense as a steel spring. His throat was
+      hot, his eyes so dazzled that he could scarcely see; his breath came in
+      quick gasps; his hands were trembling as with a nervous chill. The storm
+      had partially blown away. It had become so light that he could dimly
+      discern a number of figures at the entrance to the lane. Having his quarry
+      in sight, Cameron crouched in the fence corner, holding hard by the rail
+      till he should become master of himself. He could hear their explosions of
+      suppressed laughter. It was some minutes before he had himself in hand,
+      then with a swift silent run he stood among them. So busy were they in
+      recounting the various incidents in the recent &ldquo;chivaree,&rdquo; that before
+      they were aware Cameron was upon them. At his approach the circle broke
+      and scattered, some flying to the fence. But Perkins with some others
+      stood their ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Cameron!&rdquo; drawled Perkins. &ldquo;Did you see our cows? I thought I
+      heard some of them down the line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Cameron launched himself at him like a bolt from a bow. There
+      was a single sharp crack and Perkins was literally lifted clear off his
+      feet and hurled back upon the road, where he lay still. Fiercely Cameron
+      faced round to the next man, but he gave back quickly. A third sprang to
+      throw himself upon Cameron, but once more Cameron's hand shot forward and
+      his assailant was hurled back heavily into the arms of his friends. Before
+      Cameron could strike again a young giant, known as Sam Sailor, flung his
+      arms about him, crying&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tut-tut, young fellow, this won't do, you know. Can't you take a bit of
+      fun?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Cameron clinched him savagely, gripping him by the throat and
+      planting two heavy blows upon his ribs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here&mdash;boys,&rdquo; gasped the young fellow, &ldquo;he's&mdash;chokin'&mdash;the&mdash;life&mdash;out&mdash;of
+      me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      From all sides they threw themselves upon him and, striking, kicking,
+      fighting furiously, Cameron went down under the struggling mass, his hand
+      still gripping the throat it had seized.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! He's a regular bull-dog,&rdquo; cried one. &ldquo;Git hold of his legs and yank
+      him off,&rdquo; which, with shouts and laughter, they proceeded to do and piled
+      themselves upon him, chanting the refrain&mdash;&ldquo;More beef! More beef!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few minutes more of frantic struggling and a wild agonised scream rose
+      from beneath the mass of men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Git off, boys! Git off!&rdquo; roared the young giant. &ldquo;I'm afraid he's hurt.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Flinging them off on either side, he stood up and waited for their victim
+      to rise. But Cameron lay on his face, moaning and writhing, on the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, boys,&rdquo; said Sam, kneeling down beside him, &ldquo;I'm afraid he's hurted
+      bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In his writhing Cameron lifted one leg. It toppled over to one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jumpin' Jeremiah!&rdquo; said Sam in an awed voice. &ldquo;His leg's broke! What in
+      Sam Hill can we do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke there was a sound of running feet, coming down the lane. The
+      moon, shining through the breaking clouds, revealed a figure with floating
+      garments rapidly approaching.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My cats!&rdquo; cried Sam in a terrified voice. &ldquo;It's Mandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Like leaves before a sudden gust of wind the group scattered and only Sam
+      was left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What&mdash;what are you doin'?&rdquo; panted Mandy. &ldquo;Where is he? Oh, is that
+      him?&rdquo; She flung herself down in the dust beside Cameron and turned him
+      over. His face was white, his eyes glazed. He looked like death. &ldquo;Oh! Oh!&rdquo;
+       she moaned. &ldquo;Have they killed you? Have they killed you?&rdquo; She gathered his
+      head upon her knees, moaning like a wounded animal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Lord, Mandy, don't go on like that!&rdquo; cried Sam in a horrified voice.
+      &ldquo;It's only his leg broke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mandy laid his head gently down, then sprang to her feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Only his leg broke? Who done it? Who done it, tell me? Who done it?&rdquo; she
+      panted, her voice rising with her gasping breath. &ldquo;What coward done it?
+      Was it you, Sam Sailor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess we're all in it,&rdquo; said Sam stupidly. &ldquo;It was jist a bit of fun,
+      Mandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer she swung her heavy hand hard upon Sam's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Mandy! Hold hard!&rdquo; cried Sam, surprise and the weight of the blow
+      almost knocking him off his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You cowardly brute!&rdquo; she gasped. &ldquo;Get out of my sight. Oh, what shall we
+      do?&rdquo; She dropped on her knees and took Cameron's head once more in her
+      arms. &ldquo;What shall we do?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess we'll have to git him in somewheres,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;How can we carry
+      him though? If we had some kind of a stretcher?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait! I know,&rdquo; cried Mandy, flying off up the lane.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Before many minutes had passed she had returned, breathing hard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's&mdash;the&mdash;-milkhouse&mdash;door,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;I&mdash;guess
+      that'll&mdash;do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That'll do all right, Mandy. Now I wish some of them fellers would come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam pulled off his coat and made of it a pillow, then stood up looking for
+      help. His eye fell upon the prostrate and senseless form of Perkins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, what'll we do with him?&rdquo; he said, pointing to the silent figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is it?&rdquo; enquired Mandy. &ldquo;What's the matter?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's Perkins,&rdquo; replied Sam. &ldquo;He hit him a terrible crack.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Perkins!&rdquo; said Mandy with scorn. &ldquo;Let him lie, the dog. Come on, take his
+      head.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You can't do it, Mandy, no use trying. You can't do it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, I tell you,&rdquo; she said fiercely. &ldquo;Quit your jawin'. He may be
+      dyin' for all I know. I'd carry him alone if it wasn't for his broken
+      leg.&rdquo; Slowly, painfully they carried him to the house and to the front
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait a minute!&rdquo; said Mandy. &ldquo;I'll have to git things fixed a bit. We
+      mustn't wake mother. It would scare her to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She passed quickly into the house and soon Sam saw a light pass from room
+      to room. In a few moments Mandy reappeared at the front door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo; whispered Sam. &ldquo;He's comin' to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, thank goodness!&rdquo; cried Mandy. &ldquo;Let's git him in before he wakes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more they lifted their burden and with infinite difficulty and much
+      painful manoeuvering they got the injured man through the doors and upon
+      the spare room bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And now, Sam Sailor,&rdquo; cried Mandy, coming close to him, &ldquo;you jist hitch
+      up Deck and hustle for the doctor if ever you did in your life. Don't wait
+      for nothin', but go! Go!&rdquo; She fairly pushed him out of the door, running
+      with him towards the stable. &ldquo;Oh, Sam, hurry!&rdquo; she pleaded, &ldquo;for if this
+      man should die I will never be the like again.&rdquo; Her face was white, her
+      eyes glowing like great stars; her voice was soft and tremulous with
+      tears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam stood for a moment gazing as if upon a vision.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you lookin' at?&rdquo; she cried, stamping her foot and pushing him
+      away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jumpin' Jeremiah!&rdquo; muttered Sam, as he ran towards the stable. &ldquo;Is that
+      Mandy Haley? Guess we don't know much about her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His nimble fingers soon had Dexter hitched to the buggy and speeding down
+      the lane at a pace sufficiently rapid to suit the high spirit of even that
+      fiery young colt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the high road he came upon his friends, some of whom were working with
+      Perkins, others conversing in awed and hurried undertones.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Sam!&rdquo; they called. &ldquo;Hold up!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm in a hurry, boys, don't stop me. I'm scared to death. And you better
+      git home. She'll be down on you again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is he?&rdquo; cried a voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't know. I'm goin' for the doctor, and the sooner we git that doctor
+      the better for everybody around.&rdquo; And Sam disappeared in a whirl of dust.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say! Who would a thought it?&rdquo; he mused. &ldquo;That Mandy Haley? She's a
+      terror. And them eyes! Oh, git on, Deck, what you monkeyin' about? Wonder
+      if she's gone on that young feller? I guess she is all right! Say, wasn't
+      that a clout he handed Perkins. And didn't she give me one. But them eyes!
+      Mandy Haley! By the jumpin' Jeremiah! And the way she looks at a feller!
+      Here, Deck, what you foolin' about? Gwan now, or you'll git into trouble.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Deck, who had been indulging himself in a series of leaps and plunges,
+      shying at even the most familiar objects by the road side, settled down at
+      length to a businesslike trot which brought him to the doctor's door in
+      about fifteen minutes from the Haleys' gate. But to Sam's dismay the
+      doctor had gone to Cramm's Mill, six or seven miles away, and would not be
+      back till the morning. Sam was in a quandary. There was another doctor at
+      Brookfield, five miles further on, but there was a possibility that he
+      also might be out.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, there ain't no use goin' back without a doctor. She'd&mdash;she'd&mdash;Jumpin'
+      Jeremiah! What would she do? Say, Deck, you've got to git down to
+      business. We're goin' to the city. There are doctors there thick as hair
+      on a dog. We'll try Dr. Turnbull. Say, it'll be great if we could git him!
+      Deck, we'll do it! But you got to git up and dust.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And this Deck proceeded to do to such good purpose that in about an hour's
+      time he stood before Dr. Turnbull's door in the city, somewhat wet, it is
+      true, but with his fiery spirit still untamed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Here again adverse fate met the unfortunate Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor Turnbull's no at home,&rdquo; said the maid, smart with cap and apron,
+      who opened the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long will he be gone?&rdquo; enquired Sam, wondering what she had on her
+      head, and why.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's no tellin'. An hour, or two hours, or three.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three hours?&rdquo; echoed Sam. &ldquo;Say, a feller might kick the bucket in that
+      time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The maid smiled an undisturbed smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bucket? What bucket, eh? What bucket are ye talkin' aboot?&rdquo; she enquired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, you're smart, ain't yeh! But I got a young feller that's broke his
+      leg and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His leg?&rdquo; said the maid indifferently. &ldquo;Well, he's got another?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you bet he has, but one leg ain't much good without the other. How
+      would you like to hop around on one leg? And he's hurt inside, too, his
+      lights, I guess, and other things.&rdquo; Sam's anatomical knowledge was
+      somewhat vague. &ldquo;And besides, his girl's takin' on awful.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, is she indeed?&rdquo; replied the maid, this item apparently being to her
+      of the very slightest importance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, if you only saw her,&rdquo; said Sam.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty, I suppose,&rdquo; said the maid with a touch of scorn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pretty? No, ugly as a hedge fence. But say, I wish she was here right
+      now. She'd bring you to your&mdash;to time, you bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Would she, now? I'd sort her.&rdquo; And the little maid's black eyes snapped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, what'll I do? Jist got to have a doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ye'll no git him till to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To-morrow?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How far oot are ye?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve miles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve miles? Ye'll no get him a minute afore to-morrow noon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, that young feller'll croak, sure. Away from home too. No friends.
+      All his folks in Scotland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Scotland, did ye say?&rdquo; Something appeared to wake up in the little maid.
+      &ldquo;Look here, why don't ye get a doctor instead o' daunderin' your time
+      here?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Git a doctor?&rdquo; echoed Sam in vast surprise. &ldquo;And ain't I tryin' to git a
+      doctor? Where'll I git a doctor?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go to the hospital, ye gawk, and ask for Dr. Turnbull, and tell him the
+      young lad is a stranger and that his folk are in Scotland. Hoots, ye
+      gomeril, be off noo, an' the puir lad wantin' ye. Come, I'll pit ye on yer
+      way.&rdquo; The maid by her speech was obviously excited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sam glanced at the clock as he passed out. He had been away an hour and a
+      half.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jumpin' Jeremiah! I've got to hurry. She'll take my head off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course ye have,&rdquo; said the maid sharply. &ldquo;Go down two streets there,
+      then take the first turn to your left and go straight on for half a dozen
+      blocks or so. Mind ye tell the doctor the lad's frae Scotland!&rdquo; she cried
+      to Sam as he drove off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hospital Sam was fortunate enough to catch Dr. Turnbull in the hall
+      with one or two others, just as they were about to pass into the
+      consulting room. Such was Sam's desperate state of mind that he went
+      straight up to the group.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want Dr. Turnbull,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There he is before you,&rdquo; replied a sharp-faced young doctor, pointing to
+      a benevolent looking old gentleman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Turnbull, there's a young feller hurt dreadful out our way. His leg's
+      broke. Guess he's hurt inside too. And he's a stranger. His folks are all
+      in Scotland. Guess he's dyin', and I've got&mdash;I've got a horse and
+      buggy at the door. I can git you out and back in a jiffy. Say, doctor, I'm
+      all ready to start.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A smile passed over the faces of the group. But Dr. Turnbull had too long
+      experience with desperate cases and with desperate men.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My dear Sir,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I cannot go for some hours.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doctor, I want you now. I got to have somebody right now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A broken leg?&rdquo; mused the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and hurt inside.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How did it happen?&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh? I don't know exactly,&rdquo; replied Sam, taken somewhat aback. &ldquo;Somethin'
+      fell on him. But he needs you bad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't go, my man, but we'll find some one. What's his name did you
+      say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;His name is Cameron, and he's from Scotland.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron?&rdquo; said the sharp-faced young doctor. &ldquo;What does he look like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look like?&rdquo; said Sam in a perplexed voice. &ldquo;Well, the girls all think he
+      looks pretty good. He's dark complected and he's a mighty smart young
+      feller. Great on jumpin' and runnin'. Say, he's a crackajack. Why, at the
+      Dominion Day picnic! But you must a' heard about him. He's the chap, you
+      know, that won the hundred yards. Plays the pipes and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Plays the pipes?&rdquo; cried Dr. Turnbull and the young doctor together.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And his name's Cameron?&rdquo; continued the young doctor. &ldquo;I wonder now if&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Martin,&rdquo; said Dr. Turnbull, &ldquo;I think you had better go. The case
+      may be urgent.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron!&rdquo; cried Martin again. &ldquo;I bet my bat it's&mdash;Here, wait till I
+      get my coat. I'll be with you in a jerk. Have you got a good horse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's all right,&rdquo; said Sam. &ldquo;He'll git you there in an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An hour? How far is it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Twelve miles.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great heavens! Come, then, get a move on!&rdquo; And so it came that within an
+      hour Cameron, opening his eyes, looked up into the face of his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Martin! By Jove!&rdquo; he said, and closed his eyes again. &ldquo;Martin!&rdquo; he said
+      again, looking upon the familiar face. &ldquo;Say, old boy, is this a dream? I
+      seem to be having lots of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It's no dream, old chap, but what in the mischief is the matter? What
+      does all this fever mean? Let's look at you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A brief examination was enough to show the doctor that a broken leg was
+      the least of Cameron's trouble. A hasty investigation of the resources of
+      the farm house determined the doctor's course.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man has typhoid fever, a bad case too,&rdquo; he said to Mandy. &ldquo;We will
+      take him in to the hospital.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The hospital?&rdquo; cried Mandy fiercely. &ldquo;Will you, then?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will be a lot of trouble to you,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble? Trouble? What are you talkin' about?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We're awful busy, Mandy,&rdquo; interposed the mother, who had been roused from
+      her bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, shucks, mother! Oh, don't send him away,&rdquo; she pleaded. &ldquo;I can nurse
+      him, just as easy.&rdquo; She paused, with quivering lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It will be much better for the patient to be in the hospital. He will get
+      constant and systematic care. He will be under my own observation every
+      hour. I assure you it will be better for him,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better for him?&rdquo; echoed Mandy in a faint voice. &ldquo;Well, let him go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In less than an hour's time, such was Dr. Martin's energetic promptness,
+      he had his patient comfortably placed in the democrat on an improvised
+      stretcher and on his way to the city hospital.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And thus it came about that the problem of his leave-taking, which had
+      vexed Cameron for so many days, was solved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0016" id="link2HCH0016">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      IN APPLE TIME
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another basket of eggs, Mr. Cameron, and such delicious cream! I am
+      deeply grieved to see you so nearly well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Grieved?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;For you will be leaving us of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thanks, that is kind of you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And there will be an end to eggs and cream. Ah! You are a lucky man.&rdquo; And
+      the trim, neat, bright-faced nurse shook her finger at him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So I have often remarked to myself these six weeks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A friend is a great discovery and by these same tokens you have found
+      one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Truly, they have been more than kind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This makes the twelfth visit in six weeks,&rdquo; said the nurse. &ldquo;In busy
+      harvest and threshing time, too. Do you know what that means?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To a certain extent. It is awfully good of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But she is shy, shy&mdash;and I think she is afraid of YOU. Her chief
+      interest appears to be in the kitchen, which she has never failed to
+      visit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The blood slowly rose in Cameron's face, from which the summer tan had all
+      been bleached by his six weeks' fight with fever, but he made no reply to
+      the brisk, sharp-eyed, sharp-minded little nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And I know she is dying to see you, and, indeed,&rdquo; she chuckled, &ldquo;it might
+      do you good. She is truly wonderful.&rdquo; And again the nurse laughed. &ldquo;Don't
+      you think you could bear a visit?&rdquo; The smile broadened upon her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But unaware she had touched a sensitive spot in her patient, his Highland
+      pride.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I shall be more than pleased to have an opportunity to thank Miss Haley
+      for her great kindness,&rdquo; he replied with dignity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; replied the nurse. &ldquo;I shall bring her in. Now don't excite
+      yourself. That fever is not so far away. And only a few minutes. When we
+      farmers go calling&mdash;I am a farmer, remember, and know them well&mdash;when
+      we go calling we take our knitting and spend the afternoon.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments she returned with Mandy. The difference between the
+      stout, red-faced, coarse-featured, obtrusively healthy country girl, heavy
+      of foot and hand, slow of speech and awkward of manner, and the neat,
+      quick, deft-fingered, bright-faced nurse was so marked that Cameron could
+      hardly control the wave of pity that swept through his heart, for he could
+      see that even Mandy herself was vividly aware of the contrast. In vain
+      Cameron tried to put her at her ease. She simply sat and stared, now at
+      the walls, now at the floor, refusing for a time to utter more than
+      monosyllables, punctuated with giggles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I want to thank you for the eggs and cream. They are fine,&rdquo; said Cameron
+      heartily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pshaw, that's nothin'! Lots more where they come from,&rdquo; replied Mandy
+      with a giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But it's a long way for you to drive; and in the busy time too.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, we had to come in anyway for things,&rdquo; replied Mandy, making light of
+      her service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are all well?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, pretty middlin'. Ma ain't right smart. She's too much to do, and
+      that's the truth.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the boys?&rdquo; Cameron hesitated to be more specific.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, there's nothin' eatin' them. I don't bother with them much.&rdquo; Mandy
+      was desperately twisting her white cotton gloves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the nurse, with a final warning to the patient not to talk
+      too much and not to excite himself, left the room. In a moment Mandy's
+      whole manner changed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say!&rdquo; she cried in a hurried voice; &ldquo;Perkins is left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Left?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I couldn't jist stand him after&mdash;after&mdash;that night. Dad wanted
+      him to stay, but I couldn't jist stand him, and so he quit.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quit?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I jist hate him since&mdash;since&mdash;that night. When I think of what
+      he done I could kill him. My, I was glad to see him lyin' there in the
+      dust!&rdquo; Mandy's words came hot and fast. &ldquo;They might 'a killed you.&rdquo; For
+      the first time in the interview she looked fairly into Cameron's eyes.
+      &ldquo;My, you do look awful!&rdquo; she said, with difficulty commanding her voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nonsense, Mandy! You see, it wasn't my leg that hurt me. It was the fever
+      that pulled me down.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I'll never forget that night!&rdquo; cried Mandy, struggling to keep her
+      lips from quivering.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nor will I ever forget what you did for me that night, Mandy. Sam told me
+      all about it. I shall always be your friend.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a moment longer she held him with her eyes. Then her face grew
+      suddenly pale and, with voice and hands trembling, she said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I must go. Good-by.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He took her great red hand in his long thin fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-by, Mandy, and thank you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My!&rdquo; she said, looking down at the fingers she held in her hand. &ldquo;Your
+      hands is awful thin. Are you sure goin' to git better?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Of course I am, and I am coming out to see you before I go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She sat down quickly, still holding his hand, as if he had struck her a
+      heavy blow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Before you go? Where?&rdquo; Her voice was hardly above a whisper; her face was
+      white, her lips beyond her control.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out West to seek my fortune.&rdquo; His voice was jaunty and he feigned not to
+      see her distress. &ldquo;I shall be walking in a couple of weeks or so, eh,
+      nurse?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A couple of weeks?&rdquo; replied the nurse, who had just entered. &ldquo;Yes, if you
+      are good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mandy hastily rose.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But if you are not,&rdquo; continued the nurse severely, &ldquo;it may be months.
+      Stay, Miss Haley, I am going to bring Mr. Cameron his afternoon tea and
+      you can have some with him. Indeed, you look quite done up. I am sure all
+      that work you have been telling me about is too much for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Her kindly tones broke the last shred of Mandy's self-control. She sank
+      into her chair, covered her face with her great red hands and burst into
+      tempestuous weeping. Cameron sat up quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What in the name of goodness is wrong, Mandy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lie down at once, Mr. Cameron!&rdquo; said the nurse sternly. &ldquo;Hush, hush, Miss
+      Haley! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Don't you know that you are
+      hurting him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      She could have chosen no better word. In an instant Mandy was on her feet,
+      mopping off her face and choking down her sobs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ain't I a fool?&rdquo; she cried angrily. &ldquo;A blamed fool. Well, I won't bother
+      you any longer. Guess I'll go now. Good-by all.&rdquo; Without another look at
+      Cameron she was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron lay back upon his pillows, white and nerveless.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now can you tell me,&rdquo; he panted, &ldquo;what's up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Search me!&rdquo; said the nurse gaily, &ldquo;but I forbid you to speak a single
+      word for half an hour. Here, drink this right off! Now, not a word! What
+      will Dr. Martin say? Not a word! Yes, I shall see her safely off the
+      place. Quiet now!&rdquo; She kept up a continuous stream of sprightly chatter to
+      cover her own anxiety and to turn the current of her patient's thoughts.
+      By the time she had reached the entrance hall, however, Mandy had
+      vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great silly goose!&rdquo; said the indignant nurse. &ldquo;I'd see myself far enough
+      before I'd give myself away like that. Little fool! He'll have a
+      temperature sure and I will catch it. Bah! These girls! Next time she sees
+      him it will not be here. I hope the doctor will just give me an hour to
+      get him quiet again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But in this hope she was disappointed, for upon her return to her patient
+      she found Dr. Martin in the room. His face was grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up, nurse? What is the meaning of this rotten pulse? What has he
+      been having to eat?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Dr. Martin, I may as well confess my sins,&rdquo; replied the nurse, &ldquo;for
+      there is no use trying to deceive you anyway. Mr. Cameron has had a
+      visitor and she has excited him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the doctor in a relieved tone. &ldquo;A visitor! A lady visitor! A
+      charming, sympathetic, interested, and interesting visitor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; said the nurse with a giggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was Miss Haley, Martin,&rdquo; said Cameron gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The doctor looked puzzled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The daughter of the farmer with whom I was working,&rdquo; explained Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, I remember her,&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;And a deuce of a time I had with
+      her, too, getting you away from her, if I remember aright. I trust there
+      is nothing seriously wrong in that quarter?&rdquo; said Martin with unusual
+      gravity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, quit it, Martin!&rdquo; said Cameron impatiently. &ldquo;Don't rag. She's an
+      awful decent sort. Her looks are not the best of her.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! I am relieved to hear that,&rdquo; said the doctor earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;She is very kind, indeed,&rdquo; said the nurse. &ldquo;For these six weeks she has
+      fed us up with eggs and cream so that both my patient and myself have
+      fared sumptuously every day. Indeed, if it should continue much longer I
+      shall have to ask an additional allowance for a new uniform. I have
+      promised that Mr. Cameron shall visit the farm within two weeks if he
+      behaves well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Exactly!&rdquo; replied the doctor. &ldquo;In two weeks if he is good. The only
+      question that troubles me is&mdash;is it quite safe? You see in his
+      present weak condition his susceptibility is decidedly emphasised, his
+      resisting power is low, and who knows what might happen, especially if she
+      should insist? I shall not soon forget the look in her eye when she dared
+      me to lay a finger upon his person.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, cut it out, Martin!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;You make me weary.&rdquo; He lay back
+      on his pillow and closed his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The nurse threw a signal to the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, old man, we must stop this chaff. Buck up and in two weeks we
+      will let you go where you like. I have something in mind for you, but we
+      won't speak of it to-day.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The harvest was safely stored. The yellow stubble showed the fields at
+      rest, but the vivid green of the new fall wheat proclaimed the astounding
+      and familiar fact that once more Nature had begun her ancient perennial
+      miracle. For in those fields of vivid green the harvest of the coming year
+      was already on the way. On these green fields the snowy mantle would lie
+      soft and protecting all the long winter through and when the spring suns
+      would shine again the fall wheat would be a month or more on the way
+      towards maturity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Somehow the country looked more rested, fresher, cleaner to Cameron than
+      when he had last looked upon it in late August. The rain had washed the
+      dust from the earth's face and from the green sward that bordered the grey
+      ribbon of the high road that led out from the city. The pastures and the
+      hay meadows and the turnip fields were all in their freshest green, and
+      beyond the fields the forest stood glorious in all its autumn splendour,
+      the ash trees bright yellow, the oaks rich brown, and the maples all the
+      colours of the rainbow. In the orchard&mdash;ah, the wonder and the joy of
+      it! even the bare and bony limbs of the apple trees only helped to reveal
+      the sumptuous wealth of their luscious fruit. For it was apple time in the
+      land! The evanescent harvest apples were long since gone, the snows were
+      past their best, the pippins were mellowing under the sharp persuasion of
+      the nippy, frosty nights and the brave gallantry of the sunny days. In
+      this ancient warfare between the frosty nights and the gallant sunny days
+      the apples ripened rapidly; and well that they should, for the warfare
+      could not be for long. Already in the early morning hours the vanguard of
+      winter's fierce hosts was to be seen flaunting its hoary banners even in
+      the very face of the gallant sun so bravely making stand against it. But
+      it was the time of the year in which men felt it good to be alive, for
+      there was in the air that tang that gives speed to the blood, spring to
+      the muscle, edge to the appetite, courage to the soul, and zest to life&mdash;the
+      apple time of the year.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was in apple time that Cameron came back to the farm. Under compulsion
+      of Mandy, Haley had found it necessary to drive into the city for some
+      things for the &ldquo;women folk&rdquo; and, being in the city, he had called for
+      Cameron and had brought him out. Under compulsion, not at all because
+      Haley was indifferent to the prospect of a visit from his former hired
+      man, not alone because the fall plowing was pressing and the threshing
+      gang was in the neighbourhood, but chiefly because, through the channel of
+      Dr. Martin, the little nurse, and Mandy, it had come to be known in the
+      Haley household and in the country side that the hired man was a &ldquo;great
+      swell in the old country,&rdquo; and Haley's sturdy independence shrank from
+      anything that savoured of &ldquo;suckin' round a swell,&rdquo; as he graphically put
+      it. But Mandy scouted this idea and waited for the coming of the expected
+      guest with no embarrassment from the knowledge that he had been in the old
+      country &ldquo;a great swell.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence when, through a crack beside the window blind, she saw him, a poor,
+      pale shadow, descending wearily and painfully from the buggy, the great
+      mother heart in the girl welled with pity. She could hardly forbear
+      rushing out to carry him bodily in her strong arms to the spare room and
+      lay him where she had once helped to lay him the night of the tragedy some
+      eight weeks before. But in this matter she had learned her lesson. She
+      remembered the little nurse and her indignant scorn of the lack of
+      self-control she had shown on the occasion of her last visit to the
+      hospital. So, instead of rushing forth, she clutched the curtains and
+      forced herself to stand still, whispering to herself the while, &ldquo;Oh, he
+      will die sure! He will die sure!&rdquo; But when she looked upon him seated
+      comfortably in the kitchen with a steaming glass of ginger and whiskey,
+      her mother's unfailing remedy for &ldquo;anything wrong with the insides,&rdquo; she
+      knew he would not die and her joy overflowed in boisterous welcome.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For five days they all, from Haley to Tim, gave him of their very best,
+      seeking to hold him among them for the winter, for they had learned that
+      his mind was set upon the West, till Cameron was ashamed, knowing that he
+      must go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last afternoon they all spent in the orchard. The Gravensteins, in
+      which species of apple Haley was a specialist, were being picked, and
+      picked with the greatest care, Cameron plucking them from the limbs and
+      dropping them into a basket held by Mandy below. It was one of those sunny
+      days when, after weeks of chilly absence, summer comes again and makes the
+      world glow with warmth and kindly life and quickens in the heart the
+      blood's flow. Cameron was full of talk and fuller of laughter than his
+      wont; indeed he was vexed to find himself struggling to maintain unbroken
+      the flow of laughter and of talk. But in Mandy there was neither speech
+      nor laughter, only a quiet dignity that disturbed and rebuked him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The last tree of Gravensteins was picked and then there came the time of
+      parting. Cameron, with a man's selfish desire for some token of a woman's
+      adoration, even although he well knew that he could make no return,
+      lingered in the farewell, hoping for some sign in the plain quiet face and
+      the wonderful eyes with their new mystery that when he had gone he would
+      not be forgotten; but though the lips quivered pitifully and the heavy
+      face grew drawn and old and the eyes glowed with a deeper fire, the words,
+      when they came, came quietly and the eyes looked steadily upon him, except
+      that for one brief moment a fire leaped in them and quickly died down. But
+      when the buggy, with Tim driving, had passed down the lane, behind the
+      curtain of the spare room the girl stood looking through the crack beside
+      the blind, with both hands pressed upon her bosom, her breath coming in
+      sobs, her blue lips murmuring brokenly, &ldquo;Good-by, good-by! Oh, why did you
+      come at all? But, oh, I'm glad you came! God help me, I'm glad you came!&rdquo;
+       Then, when the buggy had turned down the side lane and out of sight, she
+      knelt beside the bed and kissed, again and again, with tender, reverent
+      kisses, the pillow where his head had lain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2H_4_0021" id="link2H_4_0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      BOOK THREE
+    </h2>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0017" id="link2HCH0017">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER I
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      On the foot-hills' side of The Gap, on a grassy plain bounded on three
+      sides by the Bow River and on the other by ragged hills and broken timber,
+      stood Surveyor McIvor's camp, three white tents, seeming wondrously
+      insignificant in the shadow of the mighty Rockies, but cosy enough. For on
+      this April day the sun was riding high in the heavens in all his new
+      spring glory, where a few days ago and for many months past the storm king
+      with relentless rigour had raged, searching with pitiless fury these
+      rock-ribbed hills and threatening these white tents and their dwellers
+      with dire destruction. But threaten though he might and pin them though he
+      did beneath their frail canvas covers, he could not make that gang beat
+      retreat. McIvor was of the kind that takes no back trail. In the late fall
+      he had set out to run the line through The Gap, and after many wanderings
+      through the coulees of the foothills and after many vain attempts, he had
+      finally made choice of his route and had brought his men, burnt black with
+      chinook and frost and sun, hither to The Gap's mouth. Every chain length
+      in those weary marches was a battle ground, every pillar, every picket
+      stood a monument of victory. McIvor's advance through the foot-hill
+      country to The Gap had been one unbroken succession of fierce fights with
+      Nature's most terrifying forces, a triumphal march of heroes who bore on
+      their faces and on their bodies the scars and laurels of the campaign. But
+      to McIvor and his gang it was all in the day's work.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Cameron the winter had brought an experience of a life hitherto
+      undreamed of, but never even in its wildest blizzards did he cherish
+      anything but gratitude to his friend Martin, who had got him attached to
+      McIvor's survey party. For McIvor was a man to &ldquo;tie to,&rdquo; as Martin said,
+      and to Cameron he was a continual cause of wonder and admiration. He was a
+      big man, with a big man's quiet strength, patient, fearless of men and
+      things, reverent toward Nature's forces, which it was his life's business
+      to know, to measure, to control, and, if need be, to fight, careful of his
+      men, whether amid the perils of the march, or amid the more deadly perils
+      of trading post and railway construction camp. Cameron never could forget
+      the thrill of admiration that swept his soul one night in Taylor's
+      billiard and gambling &ldquo;joint&rdquo; down at the post where the Elbow joins the
+      Bow, when McIvor, without bluff or bluster, took his chainman and his
+      French-Canadian cook, the latter frothing mad with &ldquo;Jamaica Ginger&rdquo; and
+      &ldquo;Pain-killer,&rdquo; out of the hands of the gang of bad men from across the
+      line who had marked them as lambs for the fleecing. It was not the courage
+      of his big chief so much that had filled Cameron with amazed respect and
+      admiration as the calm indifference to every consideration but that of
+      getting his men out of harm's way, and the cool-headed directness of the
+      method he employed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, boys,&rdquo; McIvor had said, gripping them by their coat collars.
+      &ldquo;I don't pay you good money for this sort of thing.&rdquo; And so saying he had
+      lifted them clear from their seats, upsetting the table, ignoring utterly
+      the roaring oaths of the discomfited gamblers. What would have been the
+      result none could say, for one of the gamblers had whipped out his gun and
+      with sulphurous oaths was conducting a vigourous demonstration behind the
+      unconscious back of McIvor, when there strolled into the room and through
+      the crowd of men scattering to cover, a tall slim youngster in the red
+      jacket and pill-box cap of that world-famous body of military guardians of
+      law and order, the North West Mounted Police. Not while he lived would
+      Cameron forget the scene that followed. With an air of lazy nonchalance
+      the youngster strode quietly up to the desperado flourishing his gun and
+      asked in a tone that indicated curiosity more than anything else, &ldquo;What
+      are you doing with that thing?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll show yeh!&rdquo; roared the man in his face, continuing to pour forth a
+      torrent of oaths.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put it down there!&rdquo; said the youngster in a smooth and silky voice,
+      pointing to a table near by. &ldquo;You don't need that in this country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man paused in his demonstration and for a moment or two stood in
+      amazed silence. The audacity of the youngster appeared to paralyse his
+      powers of speech and action.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put it down there, my man. Do you hear?&rdquo; The voice was still smooth, but
+      through the silky tones there ran a fibre of steel. Still the desperado
+      stood gazing at him. &ldquo;Quick, do you hear?&rdquo; There was a sudden sharp ring
+      of imperious, of overwhelming authority, and, to the amazement of the
+      crowd of men who stood breathless and silent about, there followed one of
+      those phenomena which experts in psychology delight to explain, but which
+      no man can understand. Without a word the gambler slowly laid upon the
+      table his gun, upon whose handle were many notches, the tally of human
+      lives it had accounted for in the hands of this same desperado.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What is this for?&rdquo; continued the young man, gently touching the belt of
+      cartridges. &ldquo;Take it off!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The belt found its place beside the gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, listen!&rdquo; gravely continued the youngster. &ldquo;I give you twenty-four
+      hours to leave this post, and if after twenty-four hours you are found
+      here it will be bad for you. Get out!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man, still silent, slunk out from the room. Irresistible authority
+      seemed to go with the word that sent him forth, and rightly so, for behind
+      that word lay the full weight of Great Britain's mighty empire. It was
+      Cameron's first experience of the North West Mounted Police, that famous
+      corps of frontier riders who for more than a quarter of a century have
+      ridden the marches of Great Britain's territories in the far northwest
+      land, keeping intact the Pax Britannica amid the wild turmoil of pioneer
+      days. To the North West Mounted Police and to the pioneer missionary it is
+      due that Canada has never had within her borders what is known as a &ldquo;wild
+      and wicked West.&rdquo; It was doubtless owing to the presence of that slim
+      youngster in his scarlet jacket and pill-box cap that McIvor got his men
+      safely away without a hole in his back and that his gang were quietly
+      finishing their morning meal this shining April day, in their camp by the
+      Bow River in the shadow of the big white peaks that guard The Gap.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Breakfast over, McIvor heaved his great form to the perpendicular.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is the foot, Cameron?&rdquo; he asked, filling his pipe preparatory to the
+      march.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Just about fit,&rdquo; replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better take another day,&rdquo; replied the chief. &ldquo;You can get up wood and get
+      supper ready. Benoit will be glad enough to go out and take your place for
+      another day on the line.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure ting,&rdquo; cried Benoit, the jolly French-Canadian cook. &ldquo;Good for my
+      healt. He's tak off my front porsch here.&rdquo; And the cook patted
+      affectionately the little round paunch that marred the symmetry of his
+      figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You ought to get Cameron to swap jobs with you, Benny,&rdquo; said one of the
+      axemen. &ldquo;You would be a dandy in about another month.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Benoit let his eye run critically over the line of his person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bon! Dat's true, for sure. In tree, four mont I mak de beeg spark on de
+      girl, me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You bet, Benny!&rdquo; cried the axeman. &ldquo;You'll break 'em all up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure ting!&rdquo; cried Benny, catching up a coal for his pipe. &ldquo;By by,
+      Cameron. Au revoir. I go for tak some more slice from my porsch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, Benny,&rdquo; cried Cameron. &ldquo;It is your last chance, for to-morrow I
+      give you back your job. I don't want any 'front porsch' on me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ho! ho!&rdquo; laughed Benny scornfully, as he turned to hurry after his chief.
+      &ldquo;Dat's not moch front porsch on you. Dat's one rail fence&mdash;clabbord.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And indeed Benoit was right, for there was no &ldquo;porsch&rdquo; or sign of one on
+      Cameron's lean and muscular frame. The daily battle with winter's fierce
+      frosts and blizzards, the strenuous toil, the hard food had done their
+      work on him. Strong, firm-knit, clean and sound, hard and fit, he had come
+      through his first Canadian winter. No man in the camp, not even the chief
+      himself, could &ldquo;bush&rdquo; him in a day's work. He had gained enormously in
+      strength lately, and though the lines of his frame still ran to angles, he
+      had gained in weight as well. Never in the days of his finest training was
+      he as fit to get the best out of himself as now. An injured foot had held
+      him in camp for a week, but the injury was now almost completely repaired
+      and the week's change of work only served to replenish his store of snap
+      and vim.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      An hour or two sufficed to put the camp in the perfect order that he knew
+      Benoit would consider ideal and to get all in readiness for the evening
+      meal when the gang should return. He had the day before him and what a day
+      it was! Cameron lay upon a buffalo skin in front of the cook-tent, content
+      with all the world and for the moment with himself. Six months ago he had
+      engaged as an axeman in the surveyors' gang at $30 per month and &ldquo;found,&rdquo;
+       being regarded more in the light of a supernumerary and more or less of a
+      burden than anything else. Now he was drawing double the wage as rodman,
+      and, of all the gang, stood second to none in McIvor's regard. In this new
+      venture he had come nearer to making good than ever before in his life. So
+      in full content with himself he allowed his eyes to roam over the brown
+      grassy plain that sloped to the Bow in front, and over the Bow to the
+      successive lines of hills, rounded except where the black rocks broke
+      jagged through the turf, and upward over the rounded hills to the grey
+      sides of the mighty masses of the mountains, and still upward to where the
+      white peaks lost themselves in the shining blue of the sky. Behind him a
+      coulee ran back between hills to a line of timber, and beyond the timber
+      more hills and more valleys, and ever growing higher and deeper till they
+      ran into the bases of the great Rockies.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As Cameron lay thus luxuriating upon his buffalo skin and lazily watching
+      the hills across the river through the curling wreaths that gracefully and
+      fragrantly rose from his briar root, there broke from the line of timber
+      two jumping deer, buck and doe, the latter slow-footed because heavy with
+      young. Behind them in hot pursuit came a pack of yelping coyotes. The doe
+      was evidently hard pressed. The buck was running easily, but gallantly
+      refusing to abandon his mate to her cowardly foes. Straight for the icy
+      river they made, plunged in, and, making the crossing, were safe from
+      their pursuing enemy. Cameron, intent upon fresh meat, ran for McIvor's
+      Winchester, but ere he could buckle round him a cartridge belt and throw
+      on his hunting jacket the deer had disappeared over the rounded top of the
+      nearest hill. Up the coulee he ran to the timber and there waited, but
+      there was no sign of his game. Cautiously he made his way through the
+      timber and dropped into the next valley circling westward towards the
+      mountains. The deer, however, had completely vanished. Turning back upon
+      his tracks, he once more pierced the thin line of timber, when just across
+      the coulee, some three hundred yards away, on the sky line, head up and
+      sniffing the wind, stood the buck in clear view. Taking hurried aim
+      Cameron fired. The buck dropped as if dead. Marking the spot, Cameron
+      hurried forward, but to his surprise found only a trail of blood.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's badly hit though,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;I must get the poor chap now
+      at all costs.&rdquo; Swiftly he took up the trail, but though the blood stains
+      continued clear and fresh he could get no sight of the wounded animal.
+      Hour after hour he kept up the chase, forgetful of everything but his
+      determination to bring back his game to camp. From the freshness of the
+      stains he knew that the buck could not be far ahead and from the
+      footprints it was clear that the animal was going on three legs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The beggar is hearing me and so keeps out of sight,&rdquo; said Cameron as he
+      paused to listen. He resolved to proceed more slowly and with greater
+      caution, but though he followed this plan for another half hour it brought
+      him no better success. The day was fast passing and he could not much
+      longer continue his pursuit. He became conscious of pain in his injured
+      foot. He sat down to rest and to review his situation. For the first time
+      he observed that the bright sky of the morning had become overcast with a
+      film of hazy cloud and that the temperature was rapidly falling. Prudence
+      suggested that he should at once make his way back to camp, but with the
+      instinct of the true hunter he was loath to abandon the poor wounded beast
+      to its unhappy fate. He resolved to make one further attempt. Refreshed by
+      his brief rest, but with an increasing sense of pain in his foot, he
+      climbed the slight rising ground before him, cautiously pushed his way
+      through some scrub, and there, within easy shot, stood the buck, with
+      drooping head and evidently with strength nearly done. Cameron took
+      careful aim&mdash;there must be no mistake this time&mdash;and fired. The
+      buck leaped high in the air, dropped and lay still. The first shot had
+      broken his leg, the second had pierced his heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron hurried forward and proceeded to skin the animal. But soon he
+      abandoned this operation. &ldquo;We'll come and get him to-morrow,&rdquo; he muttered,
+      &ldquo;and he is better with his skin on. Meantime we'll have a steak, however.&rdquo;
+       He hung a bit of skin from a pole to keep off the wolves and selected a
+      choice cut for the supper. He worked hurriedly, for the sudden drop in the
+      temperature was ominous of a serious disturbance in the weather, but
+      before he had finished he was startled to observe a large snowflake lazily
+      flutter to the ground beside him. He glanced towards the sky and found
+      that the filmy clouds were rapidly assuming definite shape and that the
+      sun had almost disappeared. Hurriedly he took his bearings and,
+      calculating as best he could the direction of the camp, set off, well
+      satisfied with the outcome of his expedition and filled with the pleasing
+      anticipation of a venison supper for himself and the rest of the gang.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The country was for the most part open except for patches of timber here
+      and there, and with a clear sky the difficulty of maintaining direction
+      would have been but slight. With the sky overcast, however, this
+      difficulty was sensibly increased. He had not kept an accurate reckoning
+      of his course, but from the character of the ground he knew that he must
+      be a considerable distance westward of the line of the camp. His training
+      during the winter in holding a line of march helped him now to maintain
+      his course steadily in one direction. The temperature was still dropping
+      rapidly. Over the woods hung a dead stillness, except for the lonely call
+      of an occasional crow or for the scream of the impudent whiskey-jack. But
+      soon even these became silent. As he surmounted each hill top Cameron took
+      his bearings afresh and anxiously scanned the sky for weather signs. In
+      spite of himself there crept over him a sense of foreboding, which he
+      impatiently tried to shake off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I can't be so very far from camp now,&rdquo; he said to himself, looking at his
+      watch. &ldquo;It is just four. There are three good hours till dark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A little to the west of his line of march stood a high hill which appeared
+      to dominate the surrounding country and on its top a lofty pine. &ldquo;I'll
+      just shin up that tree,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;I ought to get a sight of the Bow from
+      the top.&rdquo; In a few minutes he had reached the top of the hill, but even in
+      those minutes the atmosphere had thickened. &ldquo;Jove, it's getting dark!&rdquo; he
+      exclaimed. &ldquo;It can't be near sundown yet. Did I make a mistake in the
+      time?&rdquo; He looked at his watch again. It showed a quarter after four. &ldquo;I
+      must get a look at this country.&rdquo; Hurriedly he threw off his jacket and
+      proceeded to climb the big pine, which, fortunately, was limbed to the
+      ground. From the lofty top his eye could sweep the country for many miles
+      around. Over the great peaks of the Rockies to the west dark masses of
+      black cloud shot with purple and liver-coloured bars hung like a pall. To
+      the north a line of clear light was still visible, but over the foot-hills
+      towards east and south there lay almost invisible a shimmering haze, soft
+      and translucent, and above the haze a heavy curtain, while over the
+      immediate landscape there shone a strange weird light, through which there
+      floated down to earth large white snowflakes. Not a breath of air moved
+      across the face of the hills, but still as the dead they lay in solemn
+      oppressive silence. Far to the north Cameron caught the gleam of water.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That must be the Bow,&rdquo; he said to himself. &ldquo;I am miles too far toward the
+      mountains. I don't like the look of that haze and that cloud bank. There
+      is a blizzard on the move if this winter's experience teaches me
+      anything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had once been caught in a blizzard, but on that occasion he was with
+      McIvor. He was conscious now of a little clutch at his heart as he
+      remembered that desperate struggle for breath, for life it seemed to him,
+      behind McIvor's broad back. The country was full of stories of men being
+      overwhelmed by the choking, drifting whirl of snow. He knew how swift at
+      times the on-fall of the blizzard could be, how long the storm could last,
+      how appalling the cold could become. What should he do? He must think and
+      act swiftly. That gleaming water near which his camp lay was, at the very
+      best going, two hours distant. The blizzard might strike at any moment and
+      once it struck all hope of advance would be cut off. He resolved to seek
+      the best cover available and wait till the storm should pass. He had his
+      deer meat with him and matches. Could he but make shelter he doubted not
+      but he could weather the storm. Swiftly he swept the landscape for a spot
+      to camp. Half a mile away he spied a little coulee where several valleys
+      appeared to lose themselves in thick underbrush. He resolved to make for
+      that spot. Hurriedly he slipped down the tree, donned belt and jacket and,
+      picking up gun and venison, set off at a run for the spot he had selected.
+      A puff of wind touched his cheek. He glanced up and about him. The flakes
+      of snow were no longer floating gently down, but were slanting in long
+      straight lines across the landscape. His heart took a quicker beat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is coming, sure enough,&rdquo; he said to himself between his teeth, &ldquo;and a
+      bad one too at that.&rdquo; He quickened his pace to racing speed. Down the
+      hill, across the valley and up the next slope he ran without pause, but as
+      he reached the top of the slope a sound arrested him, a deep, muffled,
+      hissing roar, and mingled with it the beating of a thousand wings. Beyond
+      the top of the next hill there hung from sky to earth the curtain, thick,
+      black, portentous, and swiftly making approach, devouring the landscape as
+      it came and filling his ears with its muffled, hissing roar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the coulee beyond that hill was the spot he had marked for his shelter.
+      It was still some three hundred yards away. Could he beat that roaring,
+      hissing, portentous cloud mass? It was extremely doubtful. Down the hill
+      he ran, slipping, skating, pitching, till he struck the bottom, then up
+      the opposite slope he struggled, straining every nerve and muscle. He
+      glanced upward towards the top of the hill. Merciful heaven! There it was,
+      that portentous cloud mass, roaring down upon him. Could he ever make that
+      top? He ran a few steps further, then, dropping his gun, he clutched a
+      small poplar and hung fast. A driving, blinding, choking, whirling mass of
+      whiteness hurled itself at him, buffeting him heavily, filling eyes, ears,
+      nose, and mouth, clutching at his arms and legs and body with a thousand
+      impalpable insistent claws. For a moment or two he lost all sense of
+      direction, all thought of advance. One instinct only he obeyed&mdash;to
+      hold on for dear life to the swaying quivering poplar. The icy cold struck
+      him to the heart, his bare fingers were fast freezing. A few moments he
+      hung, hoping for a lull in the fury of the blizzard, but lull there was
+      none, only that choking, blinding, terrifying Thing that clutched and tore
+      at him. His heart sank within him. This, then, was to be the end of him. A
+      vision of his own body, stark and stiff, lying under a mound of drifting
+      snow, swiftly passed before his mind. He threw it off wrathfully. &ldquo;Not
+      yet! Not just yet!&rdquo; he shouted in defiance into the face of the howling
+      storm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the tumult and confusion of his thoughts one idea dominated&mdash;he
+      must make the hill-top. Sliding his hands down the trunk of the little
+      poplar he once more found his rifle and, laying it in the hollow of his
+      arm, he hugged it close to his side, shoved his freezing hands into his
+      pockets and, leaning hard against the driving blizzard, set off towards
+      the hill-top. A few paces he made, then turning around leaned back upon
+      the solid massive force of the wind till he could get breath. Again a few
+      steps upward and again a rest against the wind. His courage began to come
+      back.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; he shouted at the storm. &ldquo;Not yet! Not yet!&rdquo; Gradually, and with
+      growing courage, he fought his way to the top. At length he stood upon the
+      storm-swept summit. &ldquo;I say,&rdquo; he cried, heartening himself with his speech,
+      &ldquo;this is so much to the good anyway. Now for the coulee.&rdquo; But exactly
+      where did it lie? Absolutely nothing could he see before him but this
+      blinding, choking mass of whirling snow. He tried to recall the direction
+      in relation to the hill as he had taken it from the top of the tree. How
+      long ago that seemed! Was it minutes or hours? Downward and towards the
+      left lay the coulee. He could hardly fail to strike it. Plunging headlong
+      into the blizzard, he fought his way once more, step by step.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was jolly well like a scrimmage,&rdquo; he said grimly to the storm which
+      began in his imagination to assume a kind of monstrous and savage
+      personality. It heartened him much to remember his sensations in many a
+      desperate struggle against the straining steaming mass of muscle and bone
+      in the old fierce football fights. He recalled, too, a word of his old
+      captain, &ldquo;Never say die! The next minute may be better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never say die!&rdquo; he cried aloud in the face of his enemy. &ldquo;But I wish to
+      heaven I could get up some of that heat just now. This cold is going to be
+      the death of me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he bumped into a small bushy spruce tree. &ldquo;Hello! Here you
+      are, eh!&rdquo; he cried, determined to be cheerful. &ldquo;Glad to meet you. Hope
+      there are lots more of you.&rdquo; His hope was realised! A few more steps and
+      he found himself in the heart of a spruce thicket.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God!&rdquo; he exclaimed. Then again&mdash;&ldquo;Yes, thank God it is!&rdquo; It
+      steadied his heart not a little to remember the picture in his mother's
+      Bible that had so often stirred his youthful imagination of One standing
+      in the fishing boat and bidding the storm be still. In the spruce thicket
+      he stood some moments to regain his breath and strength.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now what next?&rdquo; he asked himself. Although the thicket broke the force of
+      the wind, something must be done, and quickly. Night was coming on and
+      that meant an even intenser cold. His hands were numb. His hunting jacket
+      was but slight protection against the driving wind and the bitter cold. If
+      he could only light a fire! A difficult business in this tumultuous
+      whirlwind and snow. He had learned something of this art, however, from
+      his winter's experience. He began breaking from the spruce trees the dead
+      dry twigs. Oh for some birch bark! Like a forgotten dream it came to him
+      that from the tree top he had seen above the spruce thicket the tops of
+      some white birch trees purpling under the touch of spring.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's see! Those birches must be further to my left,&rdquo; he said, recalling
+      their position. Painfully he forced his way through the scrubby
+      underbrush. His foot struck hard against an obstruction that nearly threw
+      him to the ground. It was a jutting rock. Peering through the white mass
+      before his eyes, he could make out a great black, looming mass. Eagerly he
+      pushed forward. It was a towering slab of rock. Following it round on the
+      lee side, he suddenly halted with a shout of grateful triumph. A great
+      section had fallen out of the rock, forming a little cave, storm-proof and
+      dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank God once more!&rdquo; he said, and this time with even deeper reverence.
+      &ldquo;Now for a fire. If I could only get some birch bark.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He placed his rifle in a corner of the cave and went out on his hunt. &ldquo;By
+      Jove, I must hurry, or my hands will be gone sure.&rdquo; Looking upwards in the
+      shelter of the rock through the driving snow he saw the bare tops of
+      trees. &ldquo;Birch, too, as I am alive!&rdquo; he cried, and plunging through the
+      bushes came upon a clump of white birches.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With fingers that could hardly hold the curling bark he gathered a few
+      bunches and hurried back to the cave. Again he went forth and gathered
+      from the standing trees an armful of dead dry limbs. &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; he cried
+      aloud in triumph. &ldquo;We're not beaten yet. Now for the fire and supper.&rdquo; He
+      drew forth his steel matchbox with numb and shaking fingers, opened it and
+      stood stricken dumb. There were only three matches in the box. Unreasoning
+      terror seized him. Three chances for life! He chose a match, struck it,
+      but in his numb and nerveless fingers the match snapped near the head.
+      With a new terror seizing him he took a second match and struck it. The
+      match flared, sputtering. Eagerly he thrust the birch bark at it; too
+      eagerly, alas, for the bark rubbed out the tiny flame. He had one match
+      left! One hope of life! He closed his matchbox. His hands were trembling
+      with the cold and more with nervous fear that shook him in every limb. He
+      could not bring himself to make the last attempt. Up and down the cave and
+      out and in he stamped, beating his hands to bring back the blood and
+      fighting hard to get back his nerve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is all rotten funk!&rdquo; he cried aloud, raging at himself. &ldquo;I shall not
+      be beaten.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Summoning all his powers, he once more pulled out his matchbox, rubbed his
+      birch bark fine and, kneeling down, placed it between his knees under the
+      shelter of his hunting jacket. Kneeling there with the matchbox in his
+      hand, there fell upon his spirit a great calm. &ldquo;Oh, God!&rdquo; he said quietly
+      and with the conviction in his soul that there was One listening, &ldquo;help me
+      now.&rdquo; He opened the matchbox, took out the match, struck it carefully and
+      laid it among the birch bark. For one heart-racking moment it flickered
+      unsteadily, then, catching a resinous fibre of the bark, it flared up,
+      shot out a tiny tongue to one of the heavier bunches, caught hold,
+      sputtered, smoked, burst into flame. With the prayer still going in his
+      heart, &ldquo;God help me now,&rdquo; Cameron fed the flame with bits of bark and tiny
+      twigs, adding more and more till the fire began to leap, dance, and snap,
+      and at length gaining strength it roared its triumph over the grim terror
+      so recently threatened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the present at least the blizzard was beaten.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now God be thanked for that,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;For it was past my doing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0018" id="link2HCH0018">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER II
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Shivering and hungry and fighting with sleep, Cameron stamped up and down
+      his cave, making now and then excursions into the storm to replenish his
+      fire. On sharpened sticks slices of venison were cooking for his supper.
+      Outside the storm raged with greater violence than ever and into the cave
+      the bitter cold penetrated, effectually neutralizing the warmth of the
+      little fire, for the wood was hard to get and a larger fire he could not
+      afford.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He looked at his watch and was amazed to find it only five o'clock. How
+      long could he maintain this fight? His heart sank at the prospect of the
+      long night before him. He sat down upon the rock close beside his cooking
+      venison and in a few moments was fast asleep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He awoke with a start and found that the fire had crept along a jutting
+      branch and had reached his fingers. He sprang to his feet. The fire lay in
+      smouldering embers, for the sticks were mere brushwood. A terrible fear
+      seized him. His life depended upon the maintaining of this fire. Carefully
+      he assembled the embers and nursed them into bright flame. At all costs he
+      must keep awake. A further excursion into the woods for fuel thoroughly
+      roused him from his sleep. Soon his fire was blazing brightly again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Consulting his watch, he found that he must have slept half an hour. He
+      determined that in order to keep himself awake and to provide against the
+      growing cold he would lay in a stock of firewood, and so he began a
+      systematic search for fallen trees that he might drag to his shelter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he was setting forth upon his search he became aware of a new sound
+      mingling with the roaring of the storm about him, a soft, pounding,
+      rhythmic sound. With every nerve strained he listened. It was like the
+      beating of hoofs. He ran out into the storm and, holding his hands to his
+      ears, bent forward to listen. Faintly over the roaring of the blizzard,
+      and rising and falling with it, there came the sound of singing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Am I mad?&rdquo; he said to himself, beating his head with his hands. He rushed
+      into the cave, threw upon the fire all the brushwood he had gathered,
+      until it sprang up into a great glare, lighting up the cave and its
+      surroundings. Then he rushed forth once more to the turn of the rock. The
+      singing could now be plainly heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Three cheers for the red, white&mdash;Get on there, you variously
+      coloured and multitudinously cursed brutes!&mdash;Three cheers for the red&mdash;Hie
+      there, look out, Little Thunder! They are off to the left.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; yelled Cameron at the top of his voice. &ldquo;Hello, there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whoa!&rdquo; yelled a voice sharply. The sound of hoof beats ceased and only
+      the roaring of the blizzard could be heard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello!&rdquo; cried Cameron again. &ldquo;Who are you?&rdquo; But only the gale answered
+      him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Again and again he called, but no voice replied. Once more he rushed into
+      the cave, seized his rifle and fired a shot into the air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crack-crack,&rdquo; two bullets spat against the rock over his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on there, you fool!&rdquo; yelled Cameron, dodging back behind the rock.
+      &ldquo;What are you shooting at? Hello there!&rdquo; Still there was no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Long he waited till, desperate with anxiety lest his unknown visitors
+      should abandon him, he ran forward once more beyond the ledge of the rock,
+      shouting, &ldquo;Hello! Hello! Don't shoot! I'm coming out to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the turn of the rocky ledge he paused, concentrating his powers to
+      catch some sound other than the dull boom and hiss of the blizzard.
+      Suddenly at his side something moved.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put up your hands, quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A dark shape, with arm thrust straight before it, loomed through the drift
+      of snow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I say&mdash;&rdquo; began Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick!&rdquo; said the voice, with a terrible oath, &ldquo;or I drop you where you
+      stand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right!&rdquo; said Cameron, lifting up his hands with his rifle high above
+      his head. &ldquo;But hurry up! I can't stand this long. I am nearly frozen as it
+      is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The man came forward, still covering him with his pistol. He ran his free
+      hand over Cameron's person.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many of you?&rdquo; he asked, in a voice sharp and crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am all alone. But hurry up! I am about all in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lead on to your fire!&rdquo; said the stranger. &ldquo;But if you want to live, no
+      monkey work. I've got you lined.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron led the way to the fire. The stranger threw a swift glance around
+      the cave, then, with eyes still holding Cameron, he whistled shrilly on
+      his fingers. Almost immediately, it seemed to Cameron, there came into the
+      light another man who proved to be an Indian, short, heavily built, with a
+      face hideously ugly and rendered more repulsive by the small, red-rimmed,
+      blood-shot eyes that seemed to Cameron to peer like gimlets into his very
+      soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At a word of command the Indian possessed himself of Cameron's rifle and
+      stood at the entrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; said the stranger, &ldquo;talk quick. Who are you? How did you come here?
+      Quick and to the point.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am a surveyor,&rdquo; said Cameron briefly. &ldquo;McIvor's gang. I was left at
+      camp to cook, saw a deer, wounded it, followed it up, lost my way, the
+      storm caught me, but, thank God, I found this cave, and with my last match
+      lit the fire. I was trying to cook my venison when I heard you coming.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The grey-brown eyes of the stranger never left Cameron's face while he was
+      speaking.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're a liar!&rdquo; he said with cold insolence when Cameron had finished his
+      tale. &ldquo;You look to me like a blank blank horse thief or whiskey trader.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Faint as he was with cold and hunger, the deliberate insolence of the man
+      stirred Cameron to sudden rage. The blood flooded his pale face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You coward!&rdquo; he cried in a choking voice, gathering himself to spring at
+      the man's throat.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the stranger only laughed and, stepping backward, spoke a word to the
+      Indian behind him. Before he could move Cameron found himself covered by
+      the rifle with the malignant eye of the Indian behind it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on, Little Thunder, drop it!&rdquo; said the stranger with a slight laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Reluctantly the rifle came down.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Mr. Surveyor,&rdquo; said the stranger with a good-natured laugh.
+      &ldquo;Pardon my abruptness. I was merely testing you. One cannot be too careful
+      in these parts nowadays when the woods are full of horse thieves and
+      whiskey runners. Oh, come on,&rdquo; he continued, glancing at Cameron's face,
+      &ldquo;I apologise. So you're lost, eh? Hungry too? Well, so am I, and though I
+      was not going to feed just yet we may as well grub together. Bring the
+      cattle into shelter here,&rdquo; he said to Little Thunder. &ldquo;They will stand
+      right enough. And get busy with the grub.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian grunted a remonstrance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that's all right,&rdquo; replied the stranger. &ldquo;Hand it over.&rdquo; He took
+      Cameron's rifle from the Indian and set it in the corner. &ldquo;Now get a move
+      on! We have no time to waste.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying he hurried out himself into the storm. In a few minutes Cameron
+      could hear the blows of an axe, and soon the stranger appeared with a load
+      of dry wood with which he built up a blazing fire. He was followed shortly
+      by the Indian, who from a sack drew out bacon, hardtack, and tea, and,
+      with cooking utensils produced from another sack, speedily prepared
+      supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pile in,&rdquo; said the stranger to Cameron, passing him the pan in which the
+      bacon and venison had been fried. &ldquo;Pass the tea, Little Thunder. No time
+      to waste. We've got to hustle.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron was only too eager to obey these orders, and in the generous
+      warmth of the big fire and under the stimulus of the boiling tea his
+      strength and nerve began to come back to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For some minutes he was too intent on satisfying his ravenous hunger to
+      indulge in conversation with his host, but as his hunger became appeased
+      he began to give his attention to the man who had so mysteriously blown in
+      upon him out of the blizzard. There was something fascinating about the
+      lean, clean-cut face with its firm lines about the mouth and chin and its
+      deep set brown-grey eyes that glittered like steel or shone like limpid
+      pools of light according to the mood of the man. They were extraordinary
+      eyes. Cameron remembered them like dagger points behind the pistol and
+      then like kindly lights in a dark window when he had smiled. Just now as
+      he sat eating with eager haste the eyes were staring forward into the fire
+      out of deep sockets, with a far-away, reminiscent, kindly look in them.
+      The lumberman's heavy skin-lined jacket and the overalls tucked into boots
+      could not hide the athletic lines of the lithe muscular figure. Cameron
+      looked at his hands with their long, sinewy fingers. &ldquo;The hands of a
+      gentleman,&rdquo; thought he. &ldquo;What is his history? And where does he come
+      from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;London's my home,&rdquo; said the stranger, answering Cameron's mental queries.
+      &ldquo;Name, Raven&mdash;Richard Colebrooke Raven&mdash;Dick for short; rancher,
+      horse and cattle trader; East Kootenay; at present running in a stock of
+      goods and horses; and caught like yourself in this beastly blizzard.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My name's Cameron, and I'm from Edinburgh a year ago,&rdquo; replied Cameron
+      briefly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Edinburgh? Knew it ten years ago. Quiet old town, quaint folk. Never know
+      what they are thinking about you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron smiled. How well he remembered the calm, detached, critical but
+      uncurious gaze with which the dwellers of the modern Athens were wont to
+      regard mere outsiders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I came from the North myself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The stranger had apparently forgotten him and was gazing steadily into the
+      fire. Suddenly, with extraordinary energy, he sprang from the ground where
+      he had been sitting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;en avant!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where to?&rdquo; asked Cameron, rising to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;East Kootenay, all the way, and hustle's the word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not me,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I must get back to my camp. If you will kindly
+      leave me some grub and some matches I shall be all right and very much
+      obliged. McIvor will be searching for me to-morrow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ha!&rdquo; burst forth the stranger in vehement expletive. &ldquo;Searching for you,
+      heh?&rdquo; He stood for a few moments in deep thought, then spoke to the Indian
+      a few words in his own language. That individual, with a fierce glance
+      towards Cameron, grunted a gruff reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said Raven, also glancing at Cameron. Again the Indian spoke,
+      this time with insistent fierceness. &ldquo;No! no! you cold-blooded devil,&rdquo;
+       replied the trader. &ldquo;No! But,&rdquo; he added with emphasis, &ldquo;we will take him
+      with us. Pack! Here, bring in coat, mitts, socks, Little Thunder. And move
+      quick, do you hear?&rdquo; His voice rang out in imperious command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder, growling though he might, no longer delayed, but dived
+      into the storm and in a few moments returned bearing a bag from which he
+      drew the articles of clothing desired.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But I am not going with you,&rdquo; said Cameron firmly. &ldquo;I cannot desert my
+      chief this way. It would give him no end of trouble. Leave me some matches
+      and, if you can spare it, a little grub, and I shall do finely.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get these things on,&rdquo; replied Raven, &ldquo;and quit talking. Don't be a fool!
+      we simply can't leave you behind. If you only knew the alternative, you'd&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron glanced at the Indian. The eager fierce look on that hideous face
+      startled him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will send you back all safe in a few days,&rdquo; continued the trader with
+      a smile. &ldquo;Come, don't delay! March is the word.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I won't go!&rdquo; said Cameron resolutely. &ldquo;I'll stay where I am.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, you fool!&rdquo; replied Raven with a savage oath. &ldquo;Take your
+      medicine then.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He nodded to the Indian. With a swift gleam of joy in his red-rimmed eyes
+      the Indian reached swiftly for Cameron's rifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, too much noise,&rdquo; said Raven, coolly finishing the packing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A swift flash of a knife in the firelight, and the Indian hurled himself
+      upon the unsuspecting Cameron. But quick as was the attack Cameron was
+      quicker. Gripping the Indian's uplifted wrist with his left hand, he
+      brought his right with terrific force upon the point of his assailant's
+      chin. The Indian spun round like a top and pitched out into the dark.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Neatly done!&rdquo; cried the trader with a great oath and a laugh. &ldquo;Hold on,
+      Little Thunder!&rdquo; he continued, as the Indian reappeared, knife in hand,
+      &ldquo;He'll come now. Quiet, you beast! Ah-h-h! Would you?&rdquo; He seized by the
+      throat and wrist the Indian, who, frothing with rage and snarling like a
+      wild animal, was struggling to reach Cameron again. &ldquo;Down, you dog! Do you
+      hear me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With a twist of his arms he brought the Indian to his knees and held him
+      as he might a child. Quite suddenly the Indian grew still.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said Raven. &ldquo;Now, no more of this. Pack up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Without a further word or glance at Cameron, Little Thunder gathered up
+      the stuff and vanished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now,&rdquo; continued the trader, &ldquo;you perhaps see that it would be wise for
+      you to come along without further delay.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cameron, trembling with indignant rage, &ldquo;but remember,
+      you'll pay for this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The trader smiled kindly upon him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better get these things on,&rdquo; he said, pointing to the articles of
+      clothing upon the cave floor. &ldquo;The blizzard is gathering force and we have
+      still some hours to ride. But,&rdquo; he continued, stepping close to Cameron
+      and looking him in the eyes, &ldquo;there must be no more nonsense. You can see
+      my man is somewhat short in temper; and indeed mine is rather brittle at
+      times.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a single instant a smile curled the firm lips and half closed the
+      steely eyes of the speaker, and, noting the smile and the steely gleam in
+      the grey-brown eyes, Cameron hastily decided that he would no longer
+      resist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Warmed and fed and protected against the blizzard, but with his heart full
+      of indignant wrath, Cameron found himself riding on a wretched cayuse
+      before the trader whose horse could but dimly be seen through the storm,
+      but which from his antics appeared to be possessed of a thousand demons.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady, Nighthawk, old boy! We'll get 'em moving after a bit,&rdquo; said his
+      master, soothing the kicking beast. &ldquo;Aha, that was just a shade violent,&rdquo;
+       he remonstrated, as the horse with a scream rushed open mouthed at a
+      blundering pony and sent him scuttling forward in wild terror after the
+      bunch already disappearing down the trail, following Little Thunder upon
+      his broncho.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The blizzard was now in their back and, though its force was thereby
+      greatly lessened, the black night was still thick with whirling snow and
+      the cold grew more intense every moment. Cameron could hardly see his
+      pony's ears, but, loping easily along the levels, scrambling wildly up the
+      hills, and slithering recklessly down the slopes, the little brute
+      followed without pause the cavalcade in front. How they kept the trail
+      Cameron could not imagine, but, with the instinct of their breed, the
+      ponies never faltered. Far before in the black blinding storm could be
+      heard the voice of Little Thunder, rising and falling in a kind of singing
+      chant, a chant which Cameron was afterwards to know right well.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!
+     Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Behind him came the trader, riding easily his demon-spirited broncho, and
+      singing in full baritone the patriotic ode dear to Britishers the world
+      over:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+     Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+        The army and navy for ever,
+     Three cheers for the red, white and blue!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      As Cameron went pounding along through the howling blizzard, half asleep
+      upon his loping, scrambling, slithering pony, with the &ldquo;Kai-yai, hai-yah&rdquo;
+       of Little Thunder wailing down the storm from before him and the martial
+      notes of the trader behind him demanding cheers for Her Majesty's naval
+      and military forces, he seemed to himself to be in the grip of some
+      ghastly nightmare which, try as he might, he was unable to shake off.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The ghastly unreality of the nightmare was dispelled by the sudden halt of
+      the bunch of ponies in front.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All off!&rdquo; cried the trader, riding forward upon his broncho, which,
+      apparently quite untired by the long night ride, danced forward through
+      the bunch gaily biting and slashing as he went. &ldquo;All off! Get them into
+      the 'bunk-house' there, Little Thunder. Come along, Mr. Cameron, we have
+      reached our camp. Take off the bridle and blanket and let your pony go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron did as he was told, and guided by the sound of the trader's voice
+      made his way to a low log building which turned out to be the deserted
+      &ldquo;grub-house&rdquo; of an old lumber camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along,&rdquo; cried the trader heartily. &ldquo;Welcome to Fifty Mile Camp. Its
+      accommodation is somewhat limited, but we can at least offer you a bunk,
+      grub, and fire, and these on a night like this are not to be despised.&rdquo; He
+      fumbled around in the dark for a few moments and found and lit a candle
+      stuck in an empty bottle. &ldquo;There,&rdquo; he cried in a tone of genial
+      hospitality and with a kindly smile, &ldquo;get a fire on here and make yourself
+      at home. Nighthawk demands my attention for the present. Don't look so
+      glum, old boy,&rdquo; he added, slapping Cameron gaily on the back. &ldquo;The worst
+      is over.&rdquo; So saying, he disappeared into the blizzard, singing at the top
+      of his voice in the cheeriest possible tones:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;The army and navy for ever,
+        Three cheers for the red, white and blue!&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      and leaving Cameron sorely perplexed as to what manner of man this might
+      be; who one moment could smile with all the malevolence of a fiend and
+      again could welcome him with all the generous and genial hospitality he
+      might show to a loved and long-lost friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0019" id="link2HCH0019">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER III
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE STONIES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The icy cold woke Cameron as the grey light came in through the dirty
+      windows and the cracks between the logs of the grub-house. Already Little
+      Thunder was awake and busy with the fire in the cracked and rusty stove.
+      Cameron lay still and watched. Silently, swiftly the Indian moved about
+      his work till the fire began to roar and the pot of snow on the top to
+      melt. Then the trader awoke. With a single movement he was out upon the
+      floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All hands awake!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;Aha, Mr. Cameron! Good sleep, eh? Slept
+      like a bear myself. Now grub, and off! Still blowing, eh? Well, so much
+      the better. There is a spot thirty miles on where we will be snug enough.
+      How's breakfast, Little Thunder? This is our only chance to-day, so don't
+      spare the grub.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron made but slight reply. He was stiff and sore with the cold and the
+      long ride of the day before. This, however, he minded but little. If he
+      could only guess what lay before him. He was torn between anxiety and
+      indignation. He could hardly make himself believe that he was alive and in
+      his waking senses. Twenty-four hours ago he was breakfasting with McIvor
+      and his gang in the camp by The Bow; now he was twenty or thirty miles
+      away in the heart of the mountains and practically a prisoner in the hands
+      of as blood-thirsty a looking Indian as he had ever seen, and a man who
+      remained to him an inexplicable mystery. Who and what was this man? He
+      scanned his face in the growing light. Strength, daring, alertness, yes,
+      and kindliness, he read in the handsome, brown, lean face of this
+      stranger, lit by its grey-brown hazel eyes and set off with brown wavy
+      hair which the absence of a cap now for the first time revealed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He looks all right,&rdquo; Cameron said to himself. And yet when he recalled
+      the smile that had curled these thin lips and half closed these hazel eyes
+      in the cave the night before, and when he thought of that murderous attack
+      of his Indian companion, he found it difficult wholly to trust the man who
+      was at once his rescuer and his captor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the days of the early eighties there were weird stories floating about
+      through the Western country of outlaw Indian traders whose chief stock for
+      barter was a concoction which passed for whiskey, but the ingredients of
+      which were principally high wines and tobacco juice, with a little
+      molasses to sweeten it and a touch of blue stone to give it bite. Men of
+      reckless daring were these traders, resourceful and relentless. For a
+      bottle of their &ldquo;hell-fire fluid&rdquo; they would buy a buffalo hide, a pack of
+      beaver skins, or a cayuse from an Indian without hesitation or remorse.
+      With a keg or two of their deadly brew they would approach a tribe and
+      strip it bare of a year's catch of furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the fierce fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed and
+      half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second best and
+      many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon the plains or
+      among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail of the whiskey
+      runners.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In British territory all this style of barter was of course unlawful. The
+      giving, selling, or trading of any sort of intoxicant to the Indians was
+      absolutely prohibited. But it was a land of vast and mighty spaces, and
+      everywhere were hiding places where armies could be safely disposed, and
+      therefore there was small chance for the enforcement of the laws of the
+      Dominion. There was little risk to the whiskey runners; and, indeed,
+      however great the risk, the immense profits of their trade would have made
+      them willing to take it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Hence all through the Western plains the whiskey runners had their way to
+      the degradation and demoralization of the unhappy natives and to the rapid
+      decimation of their numbers. Horse thieves, too, and cattle &ldquo;rustlers&rdquo;
+       operating on both sides of &ldquo;the line&rdquo; added to the general confusion and
+      lawlessness that prevailed and rendered the lives and property of the few
+      pioneer settlers insecure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was to deal with this situation that the Dominion Government organised
+      and despatched the North West Mounted Police to Western Canada.
+      Immediately upon the advent of this famous corps matters began to improve.
+      The open ravages of the whiskey runners ceased and these daring outlaws
+      were forced to carry on their fiendish business by midnight marches and
+      through the secret trails and coulees of the foothills. The profits of the
+      trade, however, were still great enough to tempt the more reckless and
+      daring of these men. Cattle rustling and horse stealing still continued,
+      but on a much smaller scale. To the whole country the advent of the police
+      proved an incalculable blessing. But to the Indian tribes especially was
+      this the case. The natives soon learned to regard the police officers as
+      their friends. In them they found protection from the unscrupulous traders
+      who had hitherto cheated them without mercy or conscience, as well as from
+      the whiskey runners through whose devilish activities their people had
+      suffered irreparable loss.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The administration of the law by the officers of the police with firm and
+      patient justice put an end also to the frequent and bloody wars that had
+      prevailed previously between the various tribes, till, by these wild and
+      savage people the red coat came to be regarded with mingled awe and
+      confidence, a terror to evil-doers and a protection to those that did
+      well.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To which class did this man belong? This Cameron was utterly unable to
+      decide.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With this problem vexing his mind he ate his breakfast in almost complete
+      silence, making only monosyllabic replies to the trader's cheerful
+      attempts at conversation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly, with disconcerting accuracy, the trader seemed to read his mind.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; he said, pulling out his pipe, &ldquo;we will have a smoke
+      and a chat. Fill up.&rdquo; He passed Cameron his little bag of tobacco. &ldquo;Last
+      night things were somewhat strained,&rdquo; he continued. &ldquo;Frankly, I confess, I
+      took you at first for a whiskey runner and a horse thief, and having
+      suffered from these gentlemen considerably I was taking no chances.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why force me to go with you, then?&rdquo; asked Cameron angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? For your good. There is less danger both to you&mdash;and to me&mdash;with
+      you under my eye,&rdquo; replied the trader with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yet your man would have murdered me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see Little Thunder is one of the Blood Tribe and rather swift
+      with his knife at times, I confess. Besides, his family has suffered at
+      the hands of the whiskey runners. He is a chief and he owes it to these
+      devils that he is out of a job just now. You may imagine he is somewhat
+      touchy on the point of whiskey traders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was you set him on me,&rdquo; said Cameron, still wrathful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; said the trader, laughing quietly. &ldquo;That was merely to startle
+      you out of your, pardon me, unreasonable obstinacy. You must believe me it
+      was the only thing possible that you should accompany us, for if you were
+      a whiskey runner then it was better for us that you should be under guard,
+      and if you were a surveyor it was better for you that you should be in our
+      care. Why, man, this storm may go for three days, and you would be stiff
+      long before anyone could find you. No, no, I confess our measures may have
+      seemed somewhat&mdash;ah&mdash;abrupt, but, believe me, they were
+      necessary, and in a day or two you will acknowledge that I am in the right
+      of it. Meantime let's trust each other, and there is my hand on it,
+      Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no resisting the frank smile, the open manner of the man, and
+      Cameron took the offered hand with a lighter heart than he had known for
+      the last twelve hours.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, that's settled,&rdquo; cried the trader, springing to his feet.
+      &ldquo;Cameron, you can pack this stuff together while Little Thunder and I dig
+      out our bunch of horses. They will be half frozen and it will be hard to
+      knock any life into them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was half an hour before Cameron had his packs ready, and, there being
+      no sign of the trader, he put on his heavy coat, mitts, and cap and fought
+      his way through the blizzard, which was still raging in full force, to the
+      bunk-house, a log building about thirty feet long and half as wide, in
+      which were huddled the horses and ponies to the number of about twenty.
+      Eight of the ponies carried pack saddles, and so busy were Raven and the
+      Indian with the somewhat delicate operation of assembling the packs that
+      he was close upon them before they were aware. Boxes and bags were strewn
+      about in orderly disorder, and on one side were several small kegs. As
+      Cameron drew near, the Indian, who was the first to notice him, gave a
+      grunt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What the blank blank are you doing here?&rdquo; cried Raven with a string of
+      oaths, flinging a buffalo robe over the kegs. &ldquo;My word! You startled me,&rdquo;
+       he added with a short laugh. &ldquo;I haven't got used to you yet. All right,
+      Little Thunder, get these boxes together. Bring that grey cayuse here,
+      Cameron, the one with the rope on near the door.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This was easier said than done, for the half-broken brute snorted and
+      plunged till Cameron, taking a turn of the rope round his nose, forced him
+      up through the trembling, crowding bunch.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said the trader. &ldquo;You are all right. You didn't learn to rope a
+      cayuse in Edinburgh, I guess. Here's his saddle. Cinch it on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While Cameron was engaged in carrying out these orders Little Thunder and
+      the trader were busy roping boxes and kegs into pack loads with a skill
+      and dexterity that could only be the result of long practice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, Cameron, we'll load some of this molasses on your pony.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, Raven picked up one of the kegs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Little Thunder, this keg's leaking. It's lost the plug, as I'm a
+      sinner.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Sure enough, from a small auger hole golden syrup was streaming over the
+      edge of the keg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am certain I put that plug in yesterday,&rdquo; said Raven. &ldquo;Must have been
+      knocked out last night. Fortunately it stood right end up or we should
+      have lost the whole keg.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      While he was speaking he was shaping a small stick into a small plug,
+      which he drove tight into the keg.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That will fix it,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now then, put these boxes on the other side.
+      That will do. Take your pony toward the door and tie him there. Little
+      Thunder and I will load the rest and bring them up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a very short time all the remaining goods were packed into neat loads
+      and lashed upon the pack ponies in such a careful manner that neither box
+      nor keg could be seen outside the cover of blankets and buffalo skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then,&rdquo; cried Raven. &ldquo;Boots and saddles! We will give you a better
+      mount to-day,&rdquo; he continued, selecting a stout built sorrel pony. &ldquo;There
+      you are! And a dandy he is, sure-footed as a goat and easy as a cradle.
+      Now then, Nighthawk, we shall just clear out this bunch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke he whipped the blanket off his horse. Cameron could not
+      forbear an exclamation of wonder and admiration as his eyes fell upon
+      Raven's horse. And not without reason, for Nighthawk was as near
+      perfection as anything in horse flesh of his size could be. His coal-black
+      satin skin, his fine flat legs, small delicate head, sloping hips, round
+      and well ribbed barrel, all showed his breed. Rolling up the blanket,
+      Raven strapped it to his saddle and, flinging himself astride his horse,
+      gave a yell that galvanised the wretched, shivering, dispirited bunch into
+      immediate life and activity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get out the packers there, Little Thunder. Hurry up! Don't be all day.
+      Cameron, fall behind with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder seized the leading line of the first packer, leaped astride
+      his own pony, and pushed out into the storm. But the rest of the animals
+      held back and refused to face the blizzard. The traditions of the cayuse
+      are unheroic in the matter of blizzards and are all in favor of turning
+      tail to every storm that blows. But Nighthawk soon overcame their
+      reluctance, whether traditional or otherwise. With a fury nothing less
+      than demoniacal he fell upon the animals next him and inspired them with
+      such terror that, plunging forward, they carried the bunch crowding
+      through the door. It was no small achievement to turn some twenty
+      shivering, balky, stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter and
+      swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail again.
+      But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his encouraging
+      refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion dynamically
+      bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without the straying
+      of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing, shouting, and
+      occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce charge upon the
+      laggards hustling the long straggling line onwards through the whirling
+      drifts without pause or falter. Occasionally he dropped back beside
+      Cameron, who brought up the rear, bringing a word of encouragement or
+      approval.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How do they ever keep the trail?&rdquo; asked Cameron on one of these
+      occasions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Thunder does the trick. He is the greatest tracker in this
+      country, unless it is his cayuse, which has a nose like a bloodhound and
+      will keep the trail through three feet of snow. The rest of the bunch
+      follow. They are afraid to do anything else in a blizzard like this.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So hour after hour, upward along mountainsides, for by this time they were
+      far into the Rockies, and down again through thick standing forests in the
+      valleys, across ravines and roaring torrents which the warm weather of the
+      previous days had released from the glaciers, and over benches of open
+      country, where the grass lay buried deep beneath the snow, they pounded
+      along. The clouds of snow ever whirling about Cameron's head and in front
+      of his eyes hid the distant landscape and engulfed the head of the
+      cavalcade before him. Without initiative and without volition, but in a
+      dreamy haze, he sat his pony to which he entrusted his life and fortune
+      and waited for the will of his mysterious companion to develope.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and dropped in
+      beside Cameron's pony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A chinook coming,&rdquo; said Raven. &ldquo;Getting warmer, don't you notice?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do feel a
+      little more comfortable,&rdquo; replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure thing. Rain in an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An hour? In six perhaps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In less than an hour,&rdquo; replied Raven, &ldquo;the chinook will be here. We're
+      riding into it. It blows down through the pass before us and it will lick
+      up this snow in no time. You'll see the grass all about you before three
+      hours are passed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction. With incredible rapidity
+      the temperature continued to rise. In half an hour Cameron discarded his
+      mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket. The wind dropped to a gentle
+      breeze, swinging more and more into the southwest, and before the hour was
+      gone the sun was shining fitfully again and the snow had changed into a
+      drizzling rain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased
+      the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling
+      during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air became
+      sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from the
+      mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the rivulets
+      became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents which they
+      had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature. He was in high
+      glee. It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will make it all right!&rdquo; he shouted to Little Thunder as they paused
+      for a few moments in a grassy glade. &ldquo;Can we make the Forks before dark?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it expressed
+      doubt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;On then!&rdquo; he shouted. &ldquo;We must make these brutes get a move on. They'll
+      feed when we camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies that
+      were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the chinook had
+      already melted the snow. Mercilessly and savagely the trader, with whip
+      and voice and charging stallion, hustled the wretched animals into the
+      trail once more. And through the long afternoon, with unceasing and brutal
+      ferocity, he belabored the faltering, stumbling, half-starved creatures,
+      till from sheer exhaustion they were like to fall upon the trail. It was a
+      weary business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of Nighthawk seemed to
+      have passed into his master, and with an insistence that knew no mercy
+      together they battered that wretched bunch up and down the long slopes
+      till at length the merciful night fell upon the straggling, stumbling
+      cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt, rode to
+      the rear and grunted something to his chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; cried Raven in a startled voice. &ldquo;Stonies! Where?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder pointed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did they see you?&rdquo; This insult Little Thunder disdained to notice.
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; replied Raven. &ldquo;Stay here, Cameron, we will take a look at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an eager
+      gleam in his eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stonies!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;And a big camp. On their way back from their
+      winter's trapping. Old Macdougall himself in charge, I think. Do you know
+      him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have heard of him,&rdquo; said Cameron, and his tone indicated his reverence
+      for the aged pioneer Methodist missionary who had accomplished such
+      marvels during his long years of service with his Indian flock and had
+      gained such a wonderful control over them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, he is all right,&rdquo; replied Raven, answering his tone. &ldquo;He is a shrewd
+      old boy, though. Looks mighty close after the trading end. Well, we will
+      perhaps do a little trade ourselves. But we won't disturb the old man,&rdquo; he
+      continued, as if to himself. &ldquo;Come and take a look at them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder had halted at a spot where the trail forked. One part led
+      to the right down the long slope of the mountain, the other to the left,
+      gradually climbing toward the top. The Stonies had come by the right hand
+      trail and were now camped off the trail on a little sheltered bench
+      further down the side of the mountain and surrounded by a scattering group
+      of tall pines. Through the misty night their camp fires burned cheerily,
+      lighting up their lodges. Around the fires could be seen groups of men
+      squatted on the ground and here and there among the lodges the squaws were
+      busy, evidently preparing the evening meal. At one side of the camp could
+      be distinguished a number of tethered ponies and near them others quietly
+      grazing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But though the camp lay only a few hundred yards away and on a lower
+      level, not a sound came up from it to Cameron's ears except the occasional
+      bark of a dog. The Indians are a silent people and move noiselessly
+      through Nature's solitudes as if in reverence for her sacred mysteries.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We won't disturb them,&rdquo; said Raven in a low tone. &ldquo;We will slip past
+      quietly.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They come from Morleyville, don't they?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why not visit the camp?&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron eagerly. &ldquo;I am sure Mr.
+      Macdougall would be glad to see us. And why could not I go back with him?
+      My camp is right on the trail to Morleyville.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven stood silent, evidently perplexed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he replied hesitatingly, &ldquo;we shall see later. Meantime let's get
+      into camp ourselves. And no noise, please.&rdquo; His voice was low and stern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Silently, and as swiftly as was consistent with silence, Little Thunder
+      led his band of pack horses along the upper trail, the trader and Cameron
+      bringing up the rear with the other ponies. For about half a mile they
+      proceeded in this direction, then, turning sharply to the right, they cut
+      across through the straggling woods, and so came upon the lower trail,
+      beyond the encampment of the Stonies and well out of sight of it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We camp here,&rdquo; said Raven briefly. &ldquo;But remember, no noise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about visiting their camp?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is no immediate hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke a few words to Little Thunder in Indian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Thunder thinks they may be Blackfeet. We can't be too careful. Now
+      let's get grub.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron made no reply. The trader's hesitating manner awakened all his
+      former suspicions. He was firmly convinced the Indians were Stonies and he
+      resolved that come what might he would make his escape to their camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without unloading their packs they built their fire upon a large flat rock
+      and there, crouching about it, for the mists were chilly, they had their
+      supper.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In undertones Raven and Little Thunder conversed in the Indian speech. The
+      gay careless air of the trader had given place to one of keen, purposeful
+      determination. There was evidently serious business on foot. Immediately
+      after supper Little Thunder vanished into the mist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We may as well make ourselves comfortable,&rdquo; said Raven, pulling a couple
+      of buffalo skins from a pack and giving one to Cameron. &ldquo;Little Thunder is
+      gone to reconnoiter.&rdquo; He threw some sticks upon the fire. &ldquo;Better go to
+      sleep,&rdquo; he suggested. &ldquo;We shall probably visit the camp in the morning if
+      they should prove to be Stonies.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron made no reply, but, lying down upon his buffalo skin, pretended to
+      sleep, though with the firm resolve to keep awake. But he had passed
+      through an exhausting day and before many minutes had passed he fell into
+      a doze.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      From this he awoke with a start, his ears filled with the sound of
+      singing. Beyond the fire lay Raven upon his face, apparently sound asleep.
+      The singing came from the direction of the Indian camp. Noiselessly he
+      rose and stole up the trail to a point from which the camp was plainly
+      visible. A wonderful scene lay before his eyes. A great fire burned in the
+      centre of the camp and round the fire the whole band of Indians was
+      gathered with their squaws in the background. In the centre of the circle
+      stood a tall man with a venerable beard, apparently reading. After he had
+      read the sound of singing once more rose upon the night air.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stonies, all right,&rdquo; said Cameron exultantly to himself. &ldquo;And at evening
+      prayers, too, by Jove.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He remembered hearing McIvor tell how the Stonies never went on a hunting
+      expedition without their hymn books and never closed a day without their
+      evening worship. The voices were high-pitched and thin, but from that
+      distance they floated up soft and sweet. He could clearly distinguish the
+      music of the old Methodist hymn, the words of which were quite familiar to
+      him:
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;There is a fountain filled with blood
+       Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
+     And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
+       Lose all their guilty stains.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Over and over again, with strange wild cadences of their own invention,
+      the worshippers wailed forth the refrain,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Lose all their guilty stains.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Then, all kneeling, they went to prayer. Over all, the misty moon
+      struggling through the broken clouds cast a pale and ghostly light. It
+      was, to Cameron with his old-world religious conventions and traditions, a
+      weirdly fascinating but intensely impressive scene. Afar beyond the
+      valley, appeared in dim outline the great mountains, with their heads
+      thrust up into the sky. Nearer at their bases gathered the pines, at first
+      in solid gloomy masses, then, as they approached, in straggling groups,
+      and at last singly, like tall sentinels on guard. On the grassy glade,
+      surrounded by the sentinel pines, the circle of dusky worshippers,
+      kneeling about their camp fire, lifted their faces heavenward and their
+      hearts God-ward in prayer, and as upon those dusky faces the firelight
+      fell in fitful gleams, so upon their hearts, dark with the superstitions
+      of a hundred generations, there fell the gleams of the torch held high by
+      the hands of their dauntless ambassador of the blessed Gospel of the Grace
+      of God.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With mingled feelings of reverence and of pity Cameron stood gazing down
+      upon this scene, resolved more than ever to attach himself to this camp
+      whose days closed with evening prayer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impressive scene!&rdquo; said a mocking voice in his ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron started. A sudden feeling of repulsion seized him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; he said gravely, &ldquo;an impressive scene, in my eyes at least, and I
+      should not wonder if in the eyes of God as well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who knows?&rdquo; said Raven gruffly, as they both turned back to the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0020" id="link2HCH0020">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IV
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE DULL RED STAIN
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The minutes passed slowly. The scene in the camp of the Stonies that he
+      had just witnessed drove all sleep from Cameron. He was firmly resolved
+      that at the first opportunity he would make his break for liberty; for he
+      was now fully aware that though not confessedly he was none the less
+      really a prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he lay intently thinking, forming and discarding plans of escape, two
+      Indians, followed by Little Thunder, walked quietly within the circle of
+      the firelight and with a nod and a grunt towards Raven sat down by the
+      fire. Raven passed his tobacco bag, which, without a word, they accepted;
+      and, filling their pipes, they gravely began to smoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White Cloud,&rdquo; grunted Little Thunder, waving his hand to the first
+      Indian. &ldquo;Big Chief. Him,&rdquo; pointing to the second Indian, &ldquo;White Cloud
+      brother.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brothers had good hunting this year,&rdquo; said Raven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indians grunted for reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your packs are heavy?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another grunt made answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have much goods,&rdquo; continued Raven. &ldquo;But the time is short. Come and
+      see.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven led them out into the dark towards the pack horse, Little Thunder
+      remaining by the fire. From the darkness Cameron could hear Raven's voice
+      in low tones and the Indians' guttural replies mingled with unusual
+      laughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When they returned the change in their appearance was plainly visible.
+      Their eyes were gleaming with an unnatural excitement, their grave and
+      dignified demeanour had given place to an eager, almost childish
+      excitement. Cameron did not need the whiff that came to him from their
+      breath to explain the cause of this sudden change. The signs were to him
+      only too familiar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brothers will need to hurry,&rdquo; said Raven. &ldquo;We move when the moon is
+      high.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; replied White Cloud. &ldquo;Go, quick.&rdquo; He waved his hand toward the
+      dark. &ldquo;Come.&rdquo; He brought it back again. &ldquo;Heap quick.&rdquo; Without further word
+      they vanished, silent as the shadows that swallowed them up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then, Cameron, we have big business on foot. Up and give us a hand.
+      Little Thunder, take the bunch down the trail a couple of miles and come
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Selecting one of the pack ponies, he tied it to a pine tree and the others
+      he hurried off with Little Thunder down the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Going to do some trading, are you?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, if the price is right, though I'm not too keen,&rdquo; replied Raven,
+      throwing himself down beside the fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are you after? Furs?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, furs mostly. Anything they have to offer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you give in exchange?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven threw him a sharp glance, but Cameron's face was turned toward the
+      fire.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, various articles. Wearing apparel, tobacco, finery. Molasses too.
+      They are very fond of molasses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Molasses?&rdquo; echoed Cameron, with a touch of scorn. &ldquo;It was not molasses
+      they had to-night. Why did you give them whiskey?&rdquo; he asked boldly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven started. His eyes narrowed to two piercing points.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why? That's my business, my friend. I keep a flask to treat my guests
+      occasionally. Have you any objection?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is against the law, I understand, and mighty bad for the Indians.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Against the law?&rdquo; echoed Raven in childlike surprise. &ldquo;You don't tell
+      me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;So the Mounted Police declare,&rdquo; said Cameron, turning his eyes upon
+      Raven's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Mounted Police!&rdquo; exclaimed Raven, pouring forth a flood of oaths.
+      &ldquo;That! for the Mounted Police!&rdquo; he said, snapping his fingers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;I understood you very especially to object to the
+      operations of the whiskey runners?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whiskey runners? Who's speaking of whiskey runners? I'm talking of the
+      approved method of treating our friends in this country, and if the police
+      should interfere between me and my friends they would be carrying things a
+      little too far. But all the same,&rdquo; he continued, hastily checking himself,
+      &ldquo;the police are all right. They put down a lot of lawlessness in this
+      country. But I may as well say to you here, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; he continued,
+      &ldquo;that there are certain things it is best not to see, or, having seen, to
+      speedily forget.&rdquo; As he spoke these words his eyes narrowed again to two
+      grey points that seemed to bore right through to Cameron's brain.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This man is a very devil,&rdquo; thought Cameron to himself. &ldquo;I was a fool not
+      to see it before.&rdquo; But to the trader he said, &ldquo;There are some things I
+      would rather not see and some things I cannot forget.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before another hour had passed the Stonies reappeared, this time on
+      ponies. The trader made no move to meet them. He sat quietly smoking by
+      the fire. Silently the Indians approached the fire and threw down a pack
+      of furs.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; said White Cloud. &ldquo;Good! Ver good!&rdquo; He opened his pack and spread
+      out upon the rock with impressive deliberation its contents. And good they
+      were, even to Cameron's uncultured eye. Wolf skins and bear, cinnamon and
+      black, beaver, fox, and mink, as well as some magnificent specimens of
+      mountain goat and sheep. &ldquo;Good! Good! Big&mdash;fine&mdash;heap good!&rdquo;
+       White Cloud continued to exclaim as he displayed his collection.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven turned them over carelessly, feeling the furs, examining and
+      weighing the pelts. Then going to the pack horse he returned and spread
+      out upon the rock beside the furs the goods which he proposed to offer in
+      exchange. And a pitiful display it was, gaudy calicoes and flimsy
+      flannels, the brilliance of whose colour was only equalled by the
+      shoddiness of the material, cheap domestic blankets, half wool half
+      cotton, prepared especially for the Indian trade. These, with beads and
+      buttons, trinkets, whole strings of brass rings, rolls of tobacco, bags of
+      shot and powder, pot metal knives, and other articles, all bearing the
+      stamp of glittering fraud, constituted his stock for barter. The Indians
+      made strenuous efforts to maintain an air of dignified indifference, but
+      the glitter in their eyes betrayed their eagerness. White Cloud picked up
+      a goat skin, heavy with its deep silky fur and with its rich splendour
+      covered over the glittering mass of Raven's cheap and tawdry stuff.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good trade,&rdquo; said White Cloud. &ldquo;Him,&rdquo; pointing to the skin, &ldquo;and,&rdquo;
+       turning it back, &ldquo;him,&rdquo; laying his hand upon the goods beneath.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven smiled carelessly, pulled out a flask from his pocket, took a drink
+      and passed it to the others. Desperately struggling to suppress his
+      eagerness and to maintain his dignified bearing, White Cloud seized the
+      flask and, drinking long and deep, passed it to his brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have a drink, Cameron,&rdquo; said Raven, as he received his flask again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; said Cameron shortly. &ldquo;And I would suggest to your friends that they
+      complete the trade before they drink much more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My friend here says this is no good,&rdquo; said Raven to the Indians, tapping
+      the flask with his finger. &ldquo;He says no more drink.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      White Cloud shot a keen enquiring glance at Cameron, but he made no reply
+      other than to stretch out his hand for Raven's flask again. Before many
+      minutes the efficacy of Raven's methods of barter began to be apparent.
+      The Indians lost their grave and dignified demeanour. They became curious,
+      eager, garrulous, and demonstrative. With childish glee they began
+      examining more closely Raven's supply of goods, trying on the rings,
+      draping themselves in the gaudy calicoes and flannels. At length Raven
+      rolled up his articles of barter and set them upon one side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much?&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      White Cloud selected the goat skin, laid upon it some half dozen beaver
+      and mink, and a couple of foxes, and rolling them up in a pile laid them
+      beside Raven's bundle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The trader smiled and shook his head. &ldquo;No good. No good.&rdquo; So saying he
+      took from his pack another flask and laid it upon his pile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Instantly the Indian increased his pile by a bear skin, a grey wolf, and a
+      mountain goat. Then, without waiting for Raven's words, he reached for the
+      flask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, not yet,&rdquo; said Raven quietly, laying his hand down upon the flask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian with gleaming eyes threw on the pile some additional skins.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said Raven, surrendering the flask. Swiftly the Indian caught it
+      up and, seizing the cork in his teeth, bit it off close to the neck of the
+      flask. Snatching his knife from his pocket with almost frantic energy, he
+      proceeded to dig out the imbedded cork.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; said Raven, taking the flask from him. &ldquo;Let me have it.&rdquo; From his
+      pocket he took a knife containing a corkscrew and with this he drew the
+      cork and handed the flask back to the Indian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With shameless, bestial haste the Indian placed the bottle to his lips and
+      after a long pull passed it to his waiting brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Raven rose as if to close the negotiations and took out his
+      own flask for a final drink, but found it empty.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; he exclaimed, turning the empty flask upside down. At once the
+      Indian passed him his flask. Raven, however, waved him aside and, going to
+      his pack, drew out a tin oil can which would contain about a gallon. From
+      this with great deliberation he filled his flask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; exclaimed the Indian, pointing to the can. &ldquo;How much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven shook his head. &ldquo;No sell. For me,&rdquo; he answered, tapping himself on
+      the breast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much?&rdquo; said the Indian fiercely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Raven declined to sell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Swiftly the Indian gathered up the remaining half of his pack of furs and,
+      throwing them savagely at Raven's feet, seized the can.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Still Raven refused to let it go.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point the soft padding of a loping pony was heard coming up the
+      trail and in a few minutes Little Thunder silently took his place in the
+      circle about the fire. Cameron's heart sank within him, for now it seemed
+      as if his chance of escape had slipped from him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who entered into
+      conversation with the Stonies. At length White Cloud drew from his coat a
+      black fox skin. In spite of himself Raven uttered a slight exclamation. It
+      was indeed a superb pelt. With savage hate in every line of his face and
+      in every movement of his body, the Indian flung the skin upon the pile of
+      furs and without a &ldquo;By your leave&rdquo; seized the can and passed it to his
+      brother.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Raven, with a sudden display of reckless generosity, placed
+      his own flask upon the Indian's pile of goods.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask them if they want molasses,&rdquo; said Raven to Little Thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; grunted the Indian contemptuously, preparing to depart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask them, Little Thunder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Immediately as Little Thunder began to speak the contemptuous attitude of
+      the Stonies gave place to one of keen interest and desire. After some
+      further talk Little Thunder went to the pack-pony, returned bearing a
+      small keg and set it on the rock beside Raven's pile of furs. Hastily the
+      Stonies consulted together, White Cloud apparently reluctant, the brother
+      recklessly eager to close the deal. Finally with a gesture White Cloud put
+      an end to the conversation, stepped out hastily into the dark and returned
+      leading his pony into the light. Cutting asunder the lashings with his
+      knife, he released a bundle of furs and threw it down at Raven's feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Same ting. Good!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Raven would not look at the bundle and proceeded to pack up the spoils
+      of his barter. Earnestly the Stonies appealed to Little Thunder, but in
+      vain. Angrily they remonstrated, but still without result. At length
+      Little Thunder pointed to the pony and without hesitation White Cloud
+      placed the bridle rein in his hands.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron could contain himself no longer. Suddenly rising from his place he
+      strode to the side of the Indians and cried, &ldquo;Don't do it! Don't be such
+      fools! This no good,&rdquo; he said, kicking the keg. &ldquo;What would Mr. Macdougall
+      say? Come! I go with you. Take back these furs.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He stepped forward to seize the second pack. Swiftly Little Thunder leaped
+      before him, knife in hand, and crouched to spring. The Stonies had no
+      doubt as to his meaning. Their hearts were filled with black rage against
+      the unscrupulous trader, but their insane thirst for the &ldquo;fire-water&rdquo;
+       swept from their minds every other consideration but that of determination
+      to gratify this mad lust. Unconsciously they ranged themselves beside
+      Cameron, their hands going to their belts. Quietly Raven spoke a few rapid
+      words to Little Thunder, who, slowly putting up his knife, made a brief
+      but vigourous harangue to the Stonies, the result of which was seen in the
+      doubtful glances which they cast upon Cameron from time to time.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; cried Cameron again, laying his hand upon the nearest Indian.
+      &ldquo;Let's go to your camp. Take your furs. He is a thief, a robber, a bad
+      man. All that,&rdquo; sweeping his hand towards Raven's goods, &ldquo;no good. This,&rdquo;
+       kicking the keg, &ldquo;bad. Kill you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      These words they could not entirely understand, but his gestures were
+      sufficiently eloquent and significant. There was an ugly gleam in Raven's
+      eyes and an ugly curl to his thin lips, but he only smiled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, waving his hand toward the furs, &ldquo;take them away. Tell
+      them we don't want to trade, Little Thunder.&rdquo; He pulled out his flask,
+      slowly took a drink, and passed it to Little Thunder, who greedily
+      followed his example. &ldquo;Tell them we don't want to trade at all,&rdquo; insisted
+      Raven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder volubly explained the trader's wishes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye,&rdquo; said Raven, offering his hand to White Cloud. &ldquo;Good friends,&rdquo;
+       he added, once more passing him his flask.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't!&rdquo; said Cameron, laying his hand again upon the Indian's arm. For a
+      single instant White Cloud paused.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; grunted Little Thunder in contempt. &ldquo;Big chief scared.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quickly the Stony shook off Cameron's hand, seized the flask and, putting
+      it to his lips, drained it dry.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said Cameron to the other Stony. &ldquo;Come with me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven uttered a warning word to Little Thunder. The Indians stood for some
+      moments uncertain, their heads bowed upon their breasts. Then White Cloud,
+      throwing back his head and looking Cameron full in the face, said&mdash;&ldquo;Good
+      man. Good man. Me no go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then I go alone,&rdquo; cried Cameron, springing off into the darkness.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he turned his foot caught the pile of wood brought for the fire. He
+      tripped and stumbled almost to the ground. Before he could recover himself
+      Little Thunder, swift as a wildcat, leaped upon his back with his
+      ever-ready knife in his upraised hand, but before he could strike, Cameron
+      had turned himself and throwing the Indian off had struggled to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold there!&rdquo; cried Raven with a terrible oath, flinging himself upon the
+      struggling pair.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A moment or two the Stonies hesitated, then they too seized Cameron and
+      between them all they bore him fighting to the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep back! Keep back!&rdquo; cried Raven in a terrible voice to Little Thunder,
+      who, knife in hand, was dancing round, seeking an opportunity to strike.
+      &ldquo;Will you lie still, or shall I knock your head in?&rdquo; said Raven to Cameron
+      through his clenched teeth, with one hand on his throat and the other
+      poising a revolver over his head. Cameron gave up the struggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Speak and quick!&rdquo; cried Raven, his face working with passion, his voice
+      thick and husky, his breath coming in quick gasps from the fury that
+      possessed him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Let me up. You have beaten me this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven sprang to his feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him up!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Now, then, Cameron, give me your word you won't
+      try to escape.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, I will not! I'll see you hanged first,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven deliberately drew his pistol and said slowly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have saved your life twice already, but the time is past for any more
+      trifling. Now you've got to take it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this Little Thunder spoke a word, pointing toward the camp of the
+      Stonies. Raven hesitated, then with an oath he strode toward Cameron and
+      thrusting his pistol in his face said in tones of cold and concentrated
+      rage:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to me, you fool! Your life is hanging by a hair trigger that goes
+      off with a feather touch. I give you one more chance. Move hand or foot
+      and the bullet in this gun will pass neatly through your eye. So help me
+      God Almighty!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He spoke to Little Thunder, still keeping Cameron covered with his gun.
+      The Indian slipped quietly behind Cameron and swiftly threw a line over
+      his shoulders and, drawing it tight, bound his arms to his side. Again and
+      again he repeated this operation till Cameron stood swathed in the coils
+      of the rope like a mummy, inwardly raging, not so much at his captor, but
+      at himself and his stupid bungling of his break for liberty. His helpless
+      and absurd appearance seemed to restore Raven's good humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; he said, turning to the Stonies and resuming his careless
+      air, &ldquo;we will finish our little business. Sit down, Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; he
+      continued, with a pleasant smile. &ldquo;It may be less dignified, but it is
+      much more comfortable.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more he took out his flask and passed it round, forgetting to take it
+      back from his Indian visitors, who continued to drink from it in turn.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;I give you all you see here for your furs and a pony
+      to pack them. That is my last word. Quick, yes or no? Tell them no more
+      trifling, Little Thunder. The moon is high. We start in ten minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no further haggling. The Indians seemed to recognise that the
+      time for that was past. After a brief consultation they grunted their
+      acceptance and proceeded to pack up their goods, but with no good will.
+      More vividly than any in the company they realised the immensity of the
+      fraud that was being perpetrated upon them. They were being robbed of
+      their whole winter's kill and that of some of their friends as well, but
+      they were helpless in the grip of their mad passion for the trader's
+      fire-water. Disgusted with themselves and filled with black rage against
+      the man who had so pitilessly stripped them bare of the profits of a
+      year's toil and privation, how gladly would they have put their knives
+      into his back, but they knew his sort by only too bitter experience and
+      they knew that at his hands they need expect no pity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here,&rdquo; cried Raven, observing their black looks. &ldquo;A present for my
+      brothers.&rdquo; He handed them each a roll of tobacco. &ldquo;And a present for their
+      squaws,&rdquo; adding a scarlet blanket apiece to their pack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Without a word of thanks they took the gifts and, loading their stuff upon
+      their remaining pony, disappeared down the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Little Thunder, let's get out of this, for once their old man finds
+      out he will be hot foot on our trail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With furious haste they fell to their packing. Cameron stood aghast at the
+      amazing swiftness and dexterity with which the packs were roped and
+      loaded. When all was complete the trader turned to Cameron in gay good
+      humour.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Mr. Cameron, will you go passenger or freight?&rdquo; Cameron made no
+      reply. &ldquo;In other words, shall we pack you on your pony or will you ride
+      like a gentleman, giving me your word not to attempt to escape? Time
+      presses, so answer quick! Give me twenty-four hours. Give me your word for
+      twenty-four hours, after which you can go when you like.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I agree,&rdquo; said Cameron shortly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cut him loose, Little Thunder.&rdquo; Little Thunder hesitated. &ldquo;Quick, you
+      fool! Cut him loose. I know a gentleman when I see him. He is tied tighter
+      than with ropes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great pity,&rdquo; he continued, addressing Cameron in a pleasant
+      conversational tone as they rode down the trail together, &ldquo;that you should
+      have made an ass of yourself for those brutes. Bah! What odds? Old
+      Macdougall or some one else would get their stuff sooner or later. Why not
+      I? Come, cheer up. You are jolly well out of it, for, God knows, you may
+      live to look death in the face many a time, but never while you live will
+      you be so near touching the old sport as you were a few minutes ago. Why I
+      have interfered to save you these three times blessed if I know! Many a
+      man's bones have been picked by the coyotes in these hills for a fraction
+      of the provocation you have given me, not to speak of Little Thunder, who
+      is properly thirsting for your blood. But take advice from me,&rdquo; here he
+      leaned over towards Cameron and touched him on the shoulder, while his
+      voice took a sterner tone, &ldquo;don't venture on any further liberties with
+      him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Suddenly Cameron's rage blazed forth.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now perhaps you will listen to me,&rdquo; he said in a voice thrilling with
+      passion. &ldquo;First of all, keep your hands off me. As for your comrade and
+      partner in crime, I fear him no more than I would a dog and like a dog I
+      shall treat him if he dares to attack me again. As for you, you are a
+      coward and a cad. You have me at a disadvantage. But put down your guns
+      and fight me on equal terms, and I will make you beg for your life!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a gleam of amused admiration in Raven's eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove! It would be a pretty fight, I do believe, and one I should
+      greatly enjoy. At present, however, time is pressing and therefore that
+      pleasure we must postpone. Meantime I promise you that when it comes it
+      will be on equal terms.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ask no more,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no further conversation, for Raven appeared intent on putting as
+      large a space as possible between himself and the camp of the Stonies. The
+      discovery of the fraud he knew would be inevitable and he knew, too, that
+      George Macdougall was not the man to allow his flock to be fleeced with
+      impunity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      So before the grey light of morning began to steal over the mountaintops
+      Raven, with his bunch of ponies and his loot, was many miles forward on
+      his journey. But the endurance even of bronchos and cayuses has its limit,
+      and their desperate condition from hunger and fatigue rendered food and
+      rest imperative.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was fully up when Raven ordered a halt, and in a sunny valley,
+      deep with grass, unsaddling the wearied animals, he turned them loose to
+      feed and rest. Apparently careless of danger and highly contented with
+      their night's achievement, he and his Indian partner abandoned themselves
+      to sleep. Cameron, too, though his indignation and chagrin prevented sleep
+      for a time, was finally forced to yield to the genial influences of the
+      warm sun and the languid airs of the spring day, and, firmly resolving to
+      keep awake, he fell into dreamless slumber.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The sun was riding high noon when he was awakened by a hand upon his arm.
+      It was Raven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hush!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Not a word. Mount and quick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Looking about Cameron observed that the pack horses were ready loaded and
+      Raven standing by his broncho ready to mount. Little Thunder was nowhere
+      to be seen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Raven pointed up the long sloping trail down which they had
+      come. There three horsemen could be seen riding hard, but still distant
+      more than half a mile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Saw them three miles away, luckily enough,&rdquo; said Raven.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where's Little Thunder?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, rounding up the bunch,&rdquo; answered Raven carelessly, waving his hand
+      toward the valley. &ldquo;Those men are coming some,&rdquo; he added, swinging into
+      his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke a rifle shot shattered the stillness of the valley. The first
+      of the riders threw up his hands, clutched wildly at the vacant air and
+      pitched headlong out of the saddle. &ldquo;Good God! What's that?&rdquo; gasped
+      Cameron. The other two wheeled in their course. Before they could turn a
+      second shot rang out and another of the riders fell upon his horse's neck,
+      clung there for a moment, then gently slid to the ground. The third,
+      throwing himself over the side of his pony, rode back for dear life.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A third and a fourth shot were heard, but the fleeing rider escaped
+      unhurt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What does that mean?&rdquo; again asked Cameron, weak and sick with horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mount!&rdquo; yelled Raven with a terrible oath and flourishing a revolver in
+      his hand. &ldquo;Mount quick!&rdquo; His face was pale, his eyes burned with a fierce
+      glare, while his voice rang with the blast of a bugle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Lead those pack horses down that trail!&rdquo; he yelled, thrusting the line
+      into Cameron's hand. &ldquo;Quick, I tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crack-crack!&rdquo; Twice a bullet sang savagely past Cameron's ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quicker!&rdquo; shouted Raven, circling round the bunch of ponies with wild
+      cries and oaths like a man gone mad. Again and again the revolver spat
+      wickedly and here and there a pony plunged recklessly forward, nicked in
+      the ear by one of those venomous singing pellets. Helpless to defend
+      himself and expecting every moment to feel the sting of a bullet somewhere
+      in his body, Cameron hurried his pony with all his might down the trail,
+      dragging the pack animals after him. In huddled confusion the terrified
+      brutes followed after him in a mad rush, for hard upon their rear, like a
+      beast devil-possessed, Nighthawk pressed, biting, kicking, squealing, to
+      the accompaniment of his rider's oaths and yells and pistol shots. Down
+      the long sloping trail to the very end of the valley the mad rush
+      continued. There the ascent checked the fury of the speed and forced a
+      quieter pace. But through the afternoon there was no weakening of the
+      pressure from the rear till the evening shadows and the frequent falling
+      of the worn-out beasts forced a slackening of the pace and finally a halt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Sick with horror and loathing, Cameron dismounted and unsaddled his
+      broncho. He had hardly finished this operation when Little Thunder rode up
+      upon a strange pony, leading a beautiful white broncho behind. Cameron
+      could not repress an exclamation of disgust as the Indian drew near him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Beautiful beast that,&rdquo; said Raven carelessly, pointing to the white pony.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron turned his eyes upon the pony and stood transfixed with horror.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My God!&rdquo; he exclaimed. &ldquo;Look at that!&rdquo; Across the beautiful white
+      shoulders and reaching down clear to the fetlock there ran a broad stain,
+      dull red and horrible. Then through his teeth, hard clenched together,
+      these words came forth: &ldquo;Some day, by God's help, I shall wipe out that
+      stain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The trader shrugged his shoulders carelessly, but made no reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0021" id="link2HCH0021">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER V
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      SERGEANT CRISP
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The horror of the day followed Cameron through the night and awoke with
+      him next morning. Every time his eyes found the Indian his teeth came
+      together in a grinding rage as he repeated his vow, &ldquo;Some day I shall
+      bring you to justice. So help me God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Against Raven somehow he could not maintain the same heat of rage. That he
+      was a party to the murder of the Stonies there was little reason to doubt,
+      but as all next day they lay in the sunny glade resting the ponies, or
+      went loping easily along the winding trails making ever towards the
+      Southwest, the trader's cheerful face, his endless tales, and his
+      invincible good humour stole from Cameron's heart, in spite of his firm
+      resolve, the fierceness of his wrath. But the resolve was none the less
+      resolute that one day he would bring this man to justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they journeyed on, the woods became more open and the trees larger.
+      Mid-day found them resting by a little lake, from which a stream flowed
+      into the upper reaches of the Columbia River.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We shall make the Crow's Nest trail by to-morrow night,&rdquo; said Raven,
+      &ldquo;where we shall part; not to your very great sorrow, I fancy, either.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The evening before Cameron would have said, &ldquo;No, but to my great joy,&rdquo; and
+      it vexed him that he could not bring himself to say so to-day with any
+      great show of sincerity. There was a charm about this man that he could
+      not resist.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And yet,&rdquo; continued Raven, allowing his eyes to rest dreamily upon the
+      lake, &ldquo;in other circumstances I might have found in you an excellent
+      friend, and a most rare and valuable find that is.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That it is!&rdquo; agreed Cameron, thinking of his old football captain, &ldquo;but
+      one cannot make friends with a&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is an ugly word, I know,&rdquo; said Raven. &ldquo;But, after all, what is a bunch
+      of furs more or less to those Indians?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Furs?&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron in horror. &ldquo;What are the lives of these men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; replied Raven carelessly, &ldquo;these Indians are always getting killed
+      one way or another. It is all in the day's work with them. They pick each
+      other off without query or qualm. Besides, Little Thunder has a grudge of
+      very old standing against the Stonies, whom he heartily despises, and he
+      doubtless enjoys considerable satisfaction from the thought that he has
+      partially paid it. It will be his turn next, like as not, for they won't
+      let this thing sleep. Or perhaps mine!&rdquo; he added after a pause. &ldquo;The man
+      is doubtless on the trail at this present minute who will finally get me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then why expose yourself to such a fate?&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Surely in this
+      country a man can live an honest life and prosper.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Honest life? I doubt it! What is an honest life? Does any Indian trader
+      lead an honest life? Do the Hudson Bay traders, or I. G. Baker's people,
+      or any of them do the honest thing by the Indian they trade with? In the
+      long run it is a question of the police. What escapes the police is
+      honest. The crime, after all, is in getting caught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, that is too old!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;You know you are talking rot.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quite right! It is rot,&rdquo; assented Raven. &ldquo;The whole business is rot.
+      'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher.' Oh, I know the Book, you see. I
+      was not born a&mdash;a&mdash;an outlaw.&rdquo; The grey-brown eyes had in them a
+      wistful look. &ldquo;Bah!&rdquo; he exclaimed, springing to his feet and shaking
+      himself. &ldquo;The sight of your Edinburgh face and the sound of your Edinburgh
+      speech and your old country ways and manners have got on my recollection
+      works, and I believe that accounts for you being alive to-day, old man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He whistled to his horse. Nighthawk came trotting and whinneying to him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have one friend in the world, old boy,&rdquo; he said, throwing his arm over
+      the black, glossy neck and searching his pocket for a biscuit. &ldquo;And even
+      you,&rdquo; he added bitterly, &ldquo;I fear do not love me for naught.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Saddling his horse, he mounted and calling Little Thunder to him said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take the bunch on as far as the Big Canyon and wait there for me. I am
+      going back a bit. It is better to be sure than sorry. Cameron, your best
+      route lies with us. Your twenty-four hours' parole is already up.
+      To-morrow, perhaps to-night, I shall put you on the Macleod trail. You are
+      a free man, but don't try to make any breaks when I am gone. My friend
+      here is extremely prompt with his weapons. Farewell! Get a move on, Little
+      Thunder! Cameron will bring up the rear.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He added some further words in the Indian tongue, his voice taking a stern
+      tone. Little Thunder grunted a surly and unwilling acquiescence, and,
+      waving his hand to Cameron, the trader wheeled his horse up the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In spite of himself Cameron could not forbear a feeling of pity and
+      admiration as he watched the lithe, upright figure swaying up the trail,
+      his every movement in unison with that of the beautiful demon he bestrode.
+      But with all his pity and admiration he was none the less resolved that he
+      would do what in him lay to bring these two to justice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This ugly devil at least shall swing!&rdquo; he said to himself as he turned
+      his eyes upon Little Thunder getting his pack ponies out upon the trail.
+      This accomplished, the Indian, pointing onward, said gruffly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go in front&mdash;me back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Not much!&rdquo; cried Cameron. &ldquo;You heard the orders from your chief. You go
+      in front. I bring up the rear. I do not know the trail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh! Trail good,&rdquo; grunted Little Thunder, the red-rimmed eyes gleaming
+      malevolently. &ldquo;You go front&mdash;me back.&rdquo; He waved his hand impatiently
+      toward the trail. Following the direction of his hand, Cameron's eyes fell
+      upon the stock of his own rifle protruding from a pack upon one of the
+      ponies. For a moment the protruding stock held his eyes fascinated.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Huh!&rdquo; said the Indian, noting Cameron's glance, and slipping off his
+      pony. In an instant both men were racing for the pack and approaching each
+      other at a sharp angle. Arrived at striking distance, the Indian leaped at
+      Cameron, with his knife, as was his wont, ready to strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The appearance of the Indian springing at him seemed to set some of the
+      grey matter in Cameron's brain moving along old tracks. Like a flash he
+      dropped to his knees in an old football tackle, caught the Indian by the
+      legs and tossed him high over his shoulders, then, springing to his feet,
+      he jerked the rifle free from the pack and stood waiting for Little
+      Thunder's attack.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But the Indian lay without sound or motion. Cameron used his opportunity
+      to look for his cartridge belt, which, after a few minutes' anxious
+      search, he discovered in the pack. He buckled the belt about him, made
+      sure his Winchester held a shell, and stood waiting.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That he should be waiting thus with the deliberate purpose of shooting
+      down a fellow human being filled him with a sense of unreality. But the
+      events of the last forty-eight hours had created an entirely new
+      environment, and with extraordinary facility his mind had adjusted itself
+      to this environment, and though two days before he would have shrunk in
+      horror from the possibility of taking a human life, he knew as he stood
+      there that at the first sign of attack he should shoot the Indian down
+      like a wild beast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Slowly Little Thunder raised himself to a sitting posture and looked about
+      in dazed surprise. As his mind regained its normal condition there
+      deepened in his eyes a look of cunning hatred. With difficulty he rose to
+      his feet and stood facing Cameron. Cameron waited quietly, watching his
+      every move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You go in front!&rdquo; at length commanded Cameron. &ldquo;And no nonsense, mind
+      you,&rdquo; he added, tapping his rifle, &ldquo;or I shoot quick.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian might not have understood all Cameron's words, but he was in no
+      doubt as to his meaning. It was characteristic of his race that he should
+      know when he was beaten and stoically accept defeat for the time being.
+      Without further word or look he led off his pack ponies, while Cameron
+      took his place at the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But progress was slow. Little Thunder was either incapable of rapid motion
+      or sullenly indifferent to any necessity for it. Besides, there was no
+      demoniacal dynamic forcing the beasts on from the rear. They had not been
+      more than three hours on the trail when Cameron heard behind him the
+      thundering of hoofs. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw coming down upon
+      him Raven, riding as if pursued by a thousand demons. The condition of his
+      horse showed that the race had been long and hard; his black satin skin
+      was dripping as if he had come through a river, his eyes were bloodshot
+      and starting from his head, his mouth was wide open and from it in large
+      clots the foam had fallen upon his neck and chest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Past Cameron and down upon Little Thunder Raven rushed like a whirlwind,
+      yelling with wild oaths the while,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get on! Get on! What are you loafing about here for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A few vehement directions to the Indian and he came thundering back upon
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What have you been doing?&rdquo; he cried with an oath. &ldquo;Why are you not miles
+      on? Get on! Move! Move!! Move!!!&rdquo; At every yell he hurled his frenzied
+      broncho upon the ponies which brought up the rear, and in a few minutes
+      had the whole cavalcade madly careering down the sloping trail. Wilder and
+      wilder grew the pace. Turning a sharp corner round a jutting rock a pack
+      pony stumbled and went crashing fifty feet to the rock below. &ldquo;On! On!&rdquo;
+       yelled Raven, emptying his gun into the struggling animal as he passed.
+      More and more difficult became the road until at length it was impossible
+      to keep up the pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We cannot make it! We cannot make it!&rdquo; muttered Raven with bitter oaths.
+      &ldquo;Oh, the cursed fools! Another two miles would do it!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At length they came to a spot where the trail touched a level bench.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; yelled the trader, as he galloped to the head of the column. A few
+      minutes he spent in rapid and fierce consultation with Little Thunder and
+      then came raging back. &ldquo;We are going to get this bunch down into the
+      valley there,&rdquo; he shouted, pointing to the thick timber at the bottom. &ldquo;I
+      do not expect your help, but I ask you to remain where you are for the
+      present. And let me assure you this is no moment for trifling.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With extraordinary skill and rapidity Little Thunder managed to lead first
+      the pack ponies and then the others, one by one, at intervals, off the
+      trail as they went onward, taking infinite pains to cover their tracks at
+      the various points of departure. While this was being done the trader
+      stood shouting directions and giving assistance with a fury of energy that
+      seemed to communicate itself to the very beasts. But the work was one of
+      great difficulty and took many minutes to accomplish.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Half an hour more, just half an hour! Fifteen minutes!&rdquo; he kept
+      muttering. &ldquo;Just a short fifteen minutes and all would be well.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As the last pony disappeared into the woods Raven turned to Cameron and
+      with a smile said quietly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, that's done. Now you are free. Here we part. This is your trail.
+      It will take you to Macleod. I am sorry, however, that owing to a change
+      in circumstances for which I am not responsible I must ask you for that
+      rifle.&rdquo; With the swiftness of a flash of light he whipped his gun into
+      Cameron's face. &ldquo;Don't move!&rdquo; he said, still smiling. &ldquo;This gun of mine
+      never fails. Quick, don't look round. Yes, those hoof beats are our
+      friends the police. Quick! It is your life or mine. I'd hate to kill you,
+      Cameron. I give you one chance more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no help for it, and Cameron, with his heart filled with futile
+      fury, surrendered his rifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now ride in front of me a little way. They have just seen us, but they
+      don't know that we are aware of their presence. Ride! Ride! A little
+      faster!&rdquo; Nighthawk rushed upon Cameron's lagging pony. &ldquo;There, that's
+      better.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A shout fell upon their ears.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go right along!&rdquo; said Raven quietly. &ldquo;Only a few minutes longer, then we
+      part. I have greatly enjoyed your company.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another shout.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; said Raven, glancing round. &ldquo;It is, I verily believe it is my old
+      friend Sergeant Crisp. Only two of them, by Jove! If we had only known we
+      need not have hurried.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Another shout, followed by a bullet that sang over their heads.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, this is interesting&mdash;too interesting by half! Well, here goes
+      for you, sergeant!&rdquo; He wheeled as he spoke. Turning swiftly in his saddle,
+      Cameron saw him raise his rifle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up, you devil!&rdquo; he shouted, throwing his pony across the black
+      broncho's track.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rifle rang out, the police horse staggered, swayed, and pitched to the
+      earth, bringing his rider down with him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, Cameron, that was awkward of you,&rdquo; said Raven gently. &ldquo;However, it is
+      perhaps as well. Goodbye, old man. Tell the sergeant not to follow. Trails
+      hereabout are dangerous and good police sergeants are scarce. Again
+      farewell.&rdquo; He swung his broncho off the trail and, waving his hand, with a
+      smile, disappeared into the thick underbrush.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up your hands!&rdquo; shouted the police officer, who had struggled
+      upright and was now swaying on his feet and covering Cameron with his
+      carbine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry! Hurry!&rdquo; cried Cameron, springing from his pony and waving his
+      hands wildly in the air. &ldquo;Come on. You'll get him yet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stand where you are and hold up your hands!&rdquo; cried the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron obeyed, shouting meanwhile wrathfully, &ldquo;Oh, come on, you bally
+      fool! You are losing him. Come on, I tell you!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Keep your hands up or I shoot!&rdquo; cried the sergeant sternly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right,&rdquo; said Cameron, holding his hands high, &ldquo;but for God's sake
+      hurry up!&rdquo; He ran towards the sergeant as he spoke, with his hands still
+      above his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Halt!&rdquo; shouted the sergeant, as Cameron came near. &ldquo;Constable Burke,
+      arrest that man!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, come, get it over,&rdquo; cried Cameron in a fury of passion. &ldquo;Arrest me,
+      of course, but if you want to catch that chap you'll have to hurry. He
+      cannot be far away.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, indeed, my man,&rdquo; said the sergeant pleasantly. &ldquo;He is not far away?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he's a murderer and a thief and you can catch him if you hurry.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Very good, very good! Constable Burke, tie this man up to your saddle
+      and we'll take a look round. How many might there be in your gang?&rdquo;
+       enquired the sergeant. &ldquo;Tell the truth now. It will be the better for
+      you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One,&rdquo; said Cameron impatiently. &ldquo;A chap calling himself Raven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Raven, eh?&rdquo; exclaimed Sergeant Crisp with a new interest. &ldquo;Raven, by
+      Jove!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, and an Indian. Little Thunder he called him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Thunder! Jove, what a find!&rdquo; exclaimed the sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; continued Cameron eagerly. &ldquo;Raven is just ahead in the woods there
+      alone and the Indian is further back with a bunch of ponies down in the
+      river bottom.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, indeed! Very interesting! And so Raven is all alone in the scrub
+      there, waiting doubtless to give himself up,&rdquo; said sergeant Crisp with
+      fine sarcasm. &ldquo;Well, we are not yet on to your game, young man, but we
+      will not just play up to that lead yet a while.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In vain Cameron raged and pleaded and stormed and swore, telling his story
+      in incoherent snatches, to the intense amusement of Sergeant Crisp and his
+      companion. At length Cameron desisted, swallowing his rage as best he
+      could.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, we shall move on. The pass is not more than an hour away. We
+      will put this young man in safe keeping and return for Mr. Raven and his
+      interesting friend.&rdquo; For a moment he stood looking down upon his horse.
+      &ldquo;Poor old chap!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;We have gone many a mile together on Her
+      Majesty's errands. If I have done my duty as faithfully as you have done
+      yours I need not fear my record. Take his saddle and bridle off, Burke.
+      We've got one of the gang. Some day we shall come up with Mr. Raven
+      himself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cameron with passionate bitterness. &ldquo;And that might be to-day
+      if you had only listened to me. Why, man,&rdquo; he shouted with reviving rage,
+      &ldquo;we three could take him even yet!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Sergeant Crisp, &ldquo;so we could.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You had him in your hands to-day,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;but like a fool you let
+      him go. But some day, so help me God, I shall bring these murderers to
+      justice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said Sergeant Crisp again. &ldquo;Good! Very good indeed! Now, my man,
+      march!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0022" id="link2HCH0022">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VI
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's this, Sergeant Crisp?&rdquo; The Commissioner, a tall, slight, and
+      soldier-like man, keen-eyed and brisk of speech, rapped out his words like
+      a man intent on business.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;One of a whiskey gang, Sir. Dick Raven's, I suspect.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And the charge?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Whiskey trading, theft, and murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commissioner's face grew grave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Murder? Where did you find him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Kootenay trail, Sir. Got wind of him at Calgary, followed up the clue
+      past Morleyville, then along the Kootenay trail. A blizzard came on and we
+      feared we had lost them. We fell in with a band of Stony Indians, found
+      that the band had been robbed and two of their number murdered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two murdered?&rdquo; The Commissioner's voice was stern.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sir. Shot down in cold blood. We have the testimony of an eye
+      witness. We followed the trail and came upon two of them. My horse was
+      shot. One of them escaped; this man we captured.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commissioner sat pondering. Then with disconcerting swiftness he
+      turned upon the prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Your name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where from?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was working in McIvor's survey camp near Morleyville. I went out
+      shooting, lost my way in a blizzard, was captured by a man who called
+      himself Raven&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; said the Commissioner sharply. &ldquo;Bring me that file!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The orderly brought a file from which the Commissioner selected a letter.
+      His keen eyes rapidly scanned the contents and then ran over the prisoner
+      from head to foot. Thereupon, without a moment's hesitation, he said
+      curtly:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Release the prisoner!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, Sir&mdash;&rdquo; began Sergeant Crisp, with an expression of utter
+      bewilderment and disgust upon his face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Release the prisoner!&rdquo; repeated the Commissioner sharply. &ldquo;Mr. Cameron, I
+      deeply regret this mistake. Under the circumstances it could hardly have
+      been avoided. You were in bad company, you see. I am greatly pleased that
+      my men have been of service to you. We shall continue to do all we can for
+      you. In the meantime I am very pleased to have the pleasure of meeting
+      you.&rdquo; He passed the letter to Sergeant Crisp. &ldquo;I have information about
+      you from Morleyville, you see. Now tell us all about it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It took Cameron some moments to recover his wits, so dumbfounded was he at
+      the sudden change in his condition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, Sir,&rdquo; he began, &ldquo;I hardly know what to say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sit down, sit down, Mr. Cameron. Take your time,&rdquo; said the Commissioner.
+      &ldquo;We are somewhat hurried these days, but you must have had some trying
+      experiences.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Cameron proceeded with his tale. The Commissioner listened with keen
+      attention, now and then arresting him with a question or a comment. When
+      Cameron came to tell of the murder of the Stonies his voice shook with
+      passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will get that Indian some day,&rdquo; said the Commissioner, &ldquo;never fear.
+      What is his name?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Thunder, Raven called him. And I would like to take a hand in that
+      too, Sir,&rdquo; said Cameron eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You would, eh?&rdquo; said the Commissioner with a sharp look at him. &ldquo;Well,
+      we'll see. Little Thunder,&rdquo; he repeated to himself. &ldquo;Bring that Record
+      Book!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The orderly laid a large canvas-covered book before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Little Thunder, eh?&rdquo; he repeated, turning the leaves of the book. &ldquo;Oh,
+      yes, I thought so! Blood Indian&mdash;formerly Chief&mdash;supplanted by
+      Red Crow&mdash;got into trouble with whiskey traders. Yes, I remember. He
+      is at his old tricks. This time, however, he has gone too far. We will get
+      him. Go on, Mr. Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      When Cameron had concluded his story the Commissioner said to the orderly
+      sharply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send me Inspector Dickson!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few moments Inspector Dickson appeared, a tall, slight man, with a
+      gentle face and kindly blue eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inspector Dickson, how are we for men? Can you spare two or three to
+      round up a gang of whiskey traders and to run down a murderer? We are on
+      the track of Raven's bunch, I believe.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We are very short-handed at present, Sir. This half-breed trouble in the
+      north is keeping our Indians all very restless. We must keep in touch with
+      them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, I know. By the way, how are the Bloods just now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are better, Sir, but the Blackfeet are restless and uneasy. There
+      are a lot of runners from the east among them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is old Crowfoot behaving?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crowfoot himself is apparently all right so far, but of course no man can
+      tell what Crowfoot is thinking.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's right enough,&rdquo; replied the Commissioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the way, Sir, it was Crowfoot's son that got into that trouble last
+      night with that Macleod man. The old Chief is in town, too, in fact is
+      outside just now and quite worked up over the arrest.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we will settle this Crowfoot business in a few minutes. Now, about
+      this Raven gang. You cannot go yourself with a couple of men? He is an
+      exceedingly clever rascal.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Inspector enumerated the cases immediately pressing.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well then, at the earliest possible moment we must get after this gang.
+      Keep this in mind, Inspector Dickson. That Indian I consider an extremely
+      dangerous man. He is sure to be mixed up with this half-breed trouble. He
+      has very considerable influence with a large section of the Bloods. I
+      shouldn't be surprised if we should find him on their reserve before very
+      long. Now then, bring in young Crowfoot!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Inspector saluted and retired, followed by Sergeant Crisp, whose face
+      had not yet regained its normal expression.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cameron,&rdquo; said the Commissioner, &ldquo;if you care to remain with me for
+      the morning I shall be glad to have you. The administration of justice by
+      the police may prove interesting to you. Later on we shall discuss your
+      return to your camp.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron expressed his delight at being permitted to remain in the court
+      room, not only that he might observe the police methods of administering
+      justice, but especially that he might see something of the great Blackfeet
+      Chief, Crowfoot, of whom he had heard much since his arrival in the West.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a few minutes Inspector Dickson returned, followed by a constable
+      leading a young Indian, handcuffed. With these entered Jerry, the famous
+      half-breed interpreter, and last of all the father of the prisoner, old
+      Crowfoot, tall, straight, stately. One swift searching glance the old
+      Chief flung round the room, and then, acknowledging the Commissioner's
+      salute with a slight wave of the hand and a grunt, and declining the seat
+      offered him, he stood back against the wall and there viewed the
+      proceedings with an air of haughty defiance.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commissioner lost no time in preliminaries. The charge was read and
+      explained to the prisoner. The constable made his statement. The young
+      Indian had got into an altercation with a citizen of Macleod, and on being
+      hard pressed had pulled the pistol which was laid upon the desk. There was
+      no defense. The interpreter, however, explained, after conversation with
+      the prisoner, that drink was the cause. At this point the old Chief's face
+      swiftly changed. Defiance gave place to disgust, grief, and rage.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commissioner, after carefully eliciting all the facts, gave the
+      prisoner an opportunity to make a statement. This being declined, the
+      Commissioner proceeded gravely to point out the serious nature of the
+      offense, to emphasize the sacredness of human life and declare the
+      determination of the government to protect all Her Majesty's subjects, no
+      matter what their race or the colour of their skin. He then went on to
+      point out the serious danger which the young man had so narrowly escaped.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, man,&rdquo; exclaimed the Commissioner, &ldquo;you might have committed murder.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Here the young fellow said something to the interpreter. There was a
+      flicker of a smile on the half-breed's face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He say dat pistol he no good. He can't shoot. He not loaded.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commissioner's face never changed a line. He gravely turned the pistol
+      over in his hand, and truly enough the rusty weapon appeared to be quite
+      innocuous except to the shooter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is an extremely dangerous weapon. Why, it might have killed yourself&mdash;if
+      it had been loaded. We cannot allow this sort of thing. However, since it
+      was not loaded we shall make the sentence light. I sentence you to one
+      month's confinement.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The interpreter explained the sentence to the young Indian, who received
+      the explanation without the movement of a muscle or the flicker of an
+      eyelid. The constable touched him on the shoulder and said, &ldquo;Come!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Before he could move old Crowfoot with two strides stood before the
+      constable, and waving him aside with a gesture of indescribable dignity,
+      took his son in his arms and kissed him on either cheek. Then, stepping
+      back, he addressed him in a voice grave, solemn, and vibrant with emotion.
+      Jerry interpreted to the Court.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have observed the big Chief. This is good medicine. It is good that
+      wrong should suffer. All good men are against wickedness. My son, you have
+      done foolishly. You have darkened my eyes. You have covered my face before
+      my people. They will ask&mdash;where is your son? My voice will be silent.
+      My face will be covered with shame. I shall be like a dog kicked from the
+      lodge. My son, I told you to go only to the store. I warned you against
+      bad men and bad places. Your ears were closed, you were wiser than your
+      father. Now we both must suffer, you here shut up from the light of the
+      sky, I in my darkened lodge. But,&rdquo; he continued, turning swiftly upon the
+      Commissioner, &ldquo;I ask my father why these bad men who sell whiskey to the
+      poor Indian are not shut up with my son. My son is young. He is like the
+      hare in the woods. He falls easily into the trap. Why are not these bad
+      men removed?&rdquo; The old Chief's face trembled with indignant appeal.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They shall be!&rdquo; said the Commissioner, smiting the desk with his fist.
+      &ldquo;This very day!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is good!&rdquo; continued the old Chief with great dignity. Then, turning
+      again to his son, he said, and his voice was full of grave tenderness:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, go to your punishment. The hours will be none too long if they bring
+      you wisdom.&rdquo; Again he kissed his son on both cheeks and, without a look at
+      any other, stalked haughtily from the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inspector Dickson,&rdquo; sharply commanded the Commissioner, &ldquo;find out the man
+      that sold that whiskey and arrest him at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron was profoundly impressed with the whole scene. He began to realise
+      as never before the tremendous responsibilities that lay upon those
+      charged with the administration of justice in this country. He began to
+      understand, too, the secret of the extraordinary hold that the Police had
+      upon the Indian tribes and how it came that so small a force could
+      maintain the &ldquo;Pax Britannica&rdquo; over three hundred thousand square miles of
+      unsettled country, the home of hundreds of wild adventurers and of
+      thousands of savage Indians, utterly strange to any rule or law except
+      that of their own sweet will.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This police business is a big affair,&rdquo; he ventured to say to the
+      Commissioner when the court room was cleared. &ldquo;You practically run the
+      country.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Commissioner modestly, &ldquo;we do something to keep the
+      country from going to the devil. We see that every man gets a fair show.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is great work!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I suppose it is,&rdquo; replied the Commissioner. &ldquo;We don't talk about it,
+      of course. Indeed, we don't think of it. But,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;that blue
+      book there could tell a story that would make the old Empire not too
+      ashamed of the men who 'ride the line' and patrol the ranges in this far
+      outpost.&rdquo; He opened the big canvas-bound book as he spoke and turned the
+      pages over. &ldquo;Look at that for a page,&rdquo; he said, and Cameron glanced over
+      the entries. What a tale they told!
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Fire-fighting!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Commissioner, &ldquo;that saved a settler's wife and child&mdash;a
+      prairie fire. The house was lost, but the constable pulled them out and
+      got rather badly burned in the business.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's finger ran down the page.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sick man transported to Post.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That,&rdquo; commented the Superintendent, &ldquo;was a journey of over two hundred
+      miles by dog sleighs in winter. Saved the man's life.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so the record ran. &ldquo;Cattle thieves arrested.&rdquo; &ldquo;Whiskey smugglers
+      captured.&rdquo; &ldquo;Stolen horses recovered.&rdquo; &ldquo;Insane man brought to Post.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That was rather a tough case,&rdquo; said the Commissioner. &ldquo;Meant a journey of
+      some eight hundred miles with a man, a powerful man too, raving mad.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many of your men on that journey?&rdquo; enquired Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, just one. The fellow got away twice, but was recaptured and finally
+      landed. Got better too. But the constable was all broken up for weeks
+      afterwards.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Man, that was great!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;What a pity it should not be
+      known.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the Commissioner lightly, &ldquo;it's all in the day's duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The words thrilled Cameron to the heart. &ldquo;All in the day's duty!&rdquo; The
+      sheer heroism of it, the dauntless facing of Nature's grimmest terrors,
+      the steady patience, the uncalculated sacrifice, the thought of all that
+      lay behind these simple words held him silent for many minutes as he kept
+      turning over the leaves.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As he sat thus turning the leaves and allowing his eye to fall upon those
+      simple but eloquent entries, a loud and strident voice was heard outside.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, I tell yuh, I want to see him right naow. I ain't come two hundred
+      miles for nawthin'. I mean business, I do.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The orderly's voice was heard in reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I ain't got no time to wait. I want to see yer Chief of Police right
+      naow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Again the orderly's voice could be distinguished.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In court, is he? Waal, you hurry up and tell him J. B. Cadwaller of Lone
+      Pine, Montana, an American citizen, wants to see him right smart.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The orderly came in and saluted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A man to see you, Sir,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;An American.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What business?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Horse-stealing case, Sir.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Show him in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment the orderly returned, followed by, not one, but three American
+      citizens.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-day, Jedge! My name's J. B. Cadwaller, Lone Pine, Montana. I&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take your hat off in the court!&rdquo; said the orderly sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cadwaller slowly surveyed the orderly with an expression of interested
+      curiosity in his eyes, removing his hat as he did so.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, you're pretty swift, ain't yuh? You might give a feller a show to
+      git in his interductions,&rdquo; said Mr. Cadwaller. &ldquo;I was jes goin' to
+      interdooce to you, Jedge, these gentlemen from my own State, District
+      Attorney Hiram S. Sligh and Mr. Rufus Raimes, rancher.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Commissioner duly acknowledged the introduction, standing to receive
+      the strangers with due courtesy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, Jedge, I want to see yer Chief of Police. I've got a case for him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have the honor to be the Commissioner. What can I do for you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, Jedge, we don't want to waste no time, neither yours nor ours. The
+      fact is some of yer blank blank Indians have been rustlin' hosses from us
+      fer some time back. We don't mind a cayuse now and then, but when it comes
+      to a hull bunch of vallable hosses there's where we kick and we ain't
+      goin' to stand fer it. And we want them hosses re-stored. And what's more,
+      we want them blank blank copper snakes strung up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many horses have you lost?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How many? Jeerupiter! Thirty or forty fer all I know, they've been
+      rustlin' 'em for a year back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why didn't you report before?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why we thought we'd git 'em ourselves, and if we had we wouldn't 'a
+      troubled yuh&mdash;and I guess they wouldn't 'a troubled us much longer.
+      But they are so slick&mdash;so blank slick!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cadwaller, we don't allow any profanity in this court room,&rdquo; said the
+      Commissioner in a quiet voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Eh? Who's givin' yuh profanity? I don't mean no profanity. I'm talkin'
+      about them blank blank&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop, Mr. Cadwaller!&rdquo; said the Commissioner. &ldquo;We must end this interview
+      if you cannot make your statements without profanity. This is Her
+      Majesty's court of Justice and we cannot tolerate any unbecoming language.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Waal, I'll be&mdash;!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pardon me, Mr. Commissioner,&rdquo; said Mr. Hiram S. Sligh, interrupting his
+      friend and client. &ldquo;Perhaps I may make a statement. We've lost some twenty
+      or thirty horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty-one&rdquo; interjected Mr. Raimes quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thirty-one!&rdquo; burst in Mr. Cadwaller indignantly. &ldquo;That's only one little
+      bunch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And,&rdquo; continued Mr. Sligh, &ldquo;we have traced them right up to the Blood
+      reserve. More than that, Mr. Raimes has seen the horses in the possession
+      of the Indians and we want your assistance in recovering our property.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, by gum!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. &ldquo;And we want them&mdash;eh&mdash;eh&mdash;consarned
+      redskin thieves strung up.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You say you have seen the stolen horses on the Blood reserve, Mr.
+      Raimes?&rdquo; enquired the Commissioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Raimes, who was industriously chewing a quid of tobacco, ejected, with
+      a fine sense of propriety and with great skill and accuracy, a stream of
+      tobacco juice out of the door before he answered.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I seen 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When did you lose your horses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Raimes considered the matter for some moments, chewing energetically
+      the while, then, having delivered himself with the same delicacy and skill
+      as before of his surplus tobacco juice, made laconic reply:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Seventeen, no, eighteen days ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Did you follow the trail immediately yourselves?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Jim Eberts.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jim Eberts?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Foreman,&rdquo; said Mr. Raimes, who seemed to regard conversation in the light
+      of an interference with the more important business in which he was
+      industriously engaged.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But you saw the horses yourself on the Blood reserve?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Followed up and seen 'em.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How long since you saw them there, Mr. Raimes?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two days.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite sure about the horses?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Call Inspector Dickson!&rdquo; ordered the Commissioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Inspector Dickson appeared and saluted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have information that a party of Blood Indians have stolen a band of
+      horses from these gentlemen from Montana and that these horses are now on
+      the Blood reserve. Take a couple of men and investigate, and if you find
+      the horses bring them back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Couple of men!&rdquo; ejaculated Mr. Cadwaller breathlessly. &ldquo;A couple of
+      hundred, you mean, General!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What for?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, to sur&mdash;raound them&mdash;there&mdash;Indians.&rdquo; The regulations
+      of the court room considerably hampered Mr. Cadwaller's fluency of speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is not necessary at all, Mr. Cadwaller. Besides, we have only some
+      eighty men all told at this post. Our whole force in the territories is
+      less than five hundred men.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Five hundred men! You mean for this State, General&mdash;Alberta?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Sir. For all Western Canada. All west of Manitoba.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How much territory do you cover?&rdquo; enquired the astonished Mr. Cadwaller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We regularly patrol some three hundred thousand square miles, besides
+      taking an occasional expedition into the far north.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And how many Indians?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About the same number as you have, I imagine, in Montana and Dakota. In
+      Alberta, about nine thousand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And less than five hundred police! Say, General, I take off my hat. Ten
+      thousand Indians! By the holy poker! And five hundred police! How in Cain
+      do you keep down the devils?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We don't try to keep them down. We try to take care of them.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Guess you've hit it,&rdquo; said Mr. Raimes, dexterously squirting out of the
+      door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeerupiter! Say, General, some day they'll massacree yuh sure!&rdquo; said Mr.
+      Cadwaller, a note of anxiety in his voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, no, they are a very good lot on the whole.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good! We've got a lot of good Indians too, but they're all under graound.
+      Five hundred men! Jeerupiter! Say, Sligh, how many soldiers does Uncle Sam
+      have on this job?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, I can't say altogether, but in Montana and Dakota I happen to know
+      we have about four thousand regulars.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, figger that out, will yuh?&rdquo; continued Mr. Cadwaller. &ldquo;Allowed four
+      times the territory, about the same number of Indians and about one-eighth
+      the number of police. Say, General, I take off my hat again. Put it there!
+      You Canucks have got the trick sure!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Easier to care for 'em than kill 'em, I guess,&rdquo; said Mr. Raimes casually.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But, say, General,&rdquo; continued Mr. Cadwaller, &ldquo;you ain't goin' to send for
+      them hosses with no three men?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'm afraid we cannot spare any more.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeerupiter, General!&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. &ldquo;I'll wait outside the
+      reserve till this picnic's over. Say, General, let's have twenty-five men
+      at least.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you say, Inspector Dickson? Will two men be sufficient?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll try, Sir,&rdquo; replied the Inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How soon can you be ready?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In a quarter of an hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeerupiter!&rdquo; muttered Mr. Cadwaller to himself, as he followed the
+      Inspector out of the room.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Commissioner, will you let me in on this thing?&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you mean that you want to join the force?&rdquo; enquired the Commissioner,
+      letting his eye run approvingly up and down Cameron's figure.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There is McIvor, Sir&mdash;&rdquo; began Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I could fix that all right,&rdquo; replied the Commissioner. &ldquo;We want men,
+      and we want men like you. We have no vacancy among the officers, but you
+      could enlist as a constable and there is always opportunity to advance.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a great service!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;I'd like awfully to join.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the Commissioner promptly, &ldquo;we will take you. You are
+      physically sound, wind, limb, eye-sight, and so forth?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;As far as I know, perfectly fit,&rdquo; replied Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Once more Inspector Dickson was summoned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inspector Dickson, Mr. Cameron wishes to join the force. We will have his
+      application taken and filled in later, and we will waive examination for
+      the present. Will you administer the oath?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron, stand up!&rdquo; commanded the Inspector sharply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With a little thrill at his heart Cameron stood up, took the Bible in his
+      hand and repeated after the Inspector the words of the oath,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I, Allan Cameron, solemnly swear that I will faithfully, diligently, and
+      impartially execute and perform the duties required of me as a member of
+      the North West Mounted Police Force, and will well and truly obey and
+      perform all lawful orders and instructions which I shall receive as such,
+      without fear, favour, or affection of or toward any person. So help me,
+      God.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now then, Cameron, I congratulate you upon your new profession. The
+      Inspector will see about your outfit and later you will receive
+      instructions as to your duties. Meantime, take him along with you,
+      Inspector, and get those horses.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was a somewhat irregular mode of procedure, but men were sorely needed
+      at the Macleod post and the Commissioner had an eye that took in not only
+      the lines of a man's figure but the qualities of his soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That chap will make good, or I am greatly mistaken,&rdquo; he said to the
+      Inspector as Cameron went off with the orderly to select his uniform.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well set up chap,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;We'll try him out to-night.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come now, don't kill him. Remember, other men have something else in them
+      besides whalebone and steel, if you have not.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In half an hour the Inspector, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron, with the three
+      American citizens, were on their way to the Blood reserve.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron had been given a horse from the stable.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      All afternoon and late into the evening they rode, then camped and were
+      early upon the trail the following morning. Cameron was half dead with the
+      fatigue from his experiences of the past week, but he would have died
+      rather than have hinted at weariness. He was not a little comforted to
+      notice that Sergeant Crisp, too, was showing signs of distress, while
+      District Attorney Sligh was evidently in the last stages of exhaustion.
+      Even the steel and whalebone combination that constituted the frame of the
+      Inspector appeared to show some slight signs of wear; but all feeling of
+      weariness vanished when the Inspector, who was in the lead, halted at the
+      edge of a wide sweeping valley and, pointing far ahead, said, &ldquo;The Blood
+      reserve. Their camp lies just beyond that bluff.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Inspector, hold up!&rdquo; cried Mr. Cadwaller as the Inspector set off
+      again. &ldquo;Ain't yuh goin' to sneak up on 'em like?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sneak up on them? No, of course not,&rdquo; said the Inspector curtly. &ldquo;We
+      shall ride right in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Say, Raimes,&rdquo; said Mr. Cadwaller, &ldquo;a hole would be a blame nice thing to
+      find just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do you think there will be any trouble?&rdquo; enquired Mr. Hiram Sligh of
+      Sergeant Crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble? Perhaps so,&rdquo; replied Crisp, as if to him it were a matter of
+      perfect indifference.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We'll never git them hosses,&rdquo; said Raimes. &ldquo;But we've got to stay with
+      the chief, I guess.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they followed Inspector Dickson down into the valley, where in the
+      distance could be seen a number of horses and cattle grazing. They had not
+      ridden far along the valley bottom when Mr. Cadwaller spurred up upon the
+      Inspector and called out excitedly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I say, Inspector, them's our hosses right there. Say, let's run 'em off.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you pick them out?&rdquo; enquired the Inspector, turning in his saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Every last one!&rdquo; said Raimes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, cut them out and get them into a bunch,&rdquo; said the Inspector.
+      &ldquo;I see there are some Indians herding them apparently. Pay no attention to
+      them, but go right along with your work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's one of 'em off to give tongue!&rdquo; cried Mr. Cadwaller excitedly.
+      &ldquo;Bring him down, Inspector! Bring him down! Quick! Here, let me have your
+      rifle!&rdquo; Hurriedly he snatched at the Inspector's carbine.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Stop!&rdquo; cried the Inspector in sharp command. &ldquo;Now, attention! We are on a
+      somewhat delicate business. A mistake might bring disaster. I am in
+      command of this party and I must have absolute and prompt obedience. Mr.
+      Cadwaller, it will be at your peril that you make any such move again. Let
+      no man draw a gun until ordered by me! Now, then, cut out those horses and
+      bunch them together!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jeerupiter! He's a hull brigade himself,&rdquo; said Mr. Cadwaller in an
+      undertone, dropping back beside Mr. Sligh. &ldquo;Waal, here goes for the
+      bunch.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But though both Mr. Cadwaller and Mr. Raimes, as well as Sergeant Crisp
+      and the Inspector, were expert cattle men, it took some little time and
+      very considerable manoeuvering to get the stolen horses bunched together
+      and separated from the rest of the animals grazing in the valley, and by
+      the time this was accomplished Indian riders had appeared on every side,
+      gradually closing in upon the party. It was clearly impossible to drive
+      off the bunch through that gradually narrowing cordon of mounted Indians
+      without trouble.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, what's to be done?&rdquo; said Mr. Cadwaller, nervously addressing the
+      Inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forward!&rdquo; cried the Inspector in a loud voice. &ldquo;Towards the corral ahead
+      there!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      This movement nonplussed the Indians and in silence they fell in behind
+      the party who, going before, finally succeeded in driving the bunch of
+      horses into the corral.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sergeant Crisp, you and Constable Cameron remain here on guard. I shall
+      go and find the Chief. Here,&rdquo; he continued, addressing a young Indian
+      brave who had ridden up quite close to the gate of the corral, &ldquo;lead me to
+      your Chief, Red Crow!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The absence alike of all hesitation or fear, and of all bluster in his
+      tone and bearing, apparently impressed the young brave, for he wheeled his
+      pony and set off immediately at a gallop, followed by the Inspector at a
+      more moderate pace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Quickly the Indians gathered about the corral and the group at its gate.
+      With every passing minute their numbers increased, and as their numbers
+      increased so did the violence of their demonstration The three Americans
+      were placed next the corral, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron being between them
+      and the excited Indians. Cameron had seen Indians before about the trading
+      posts. A shy, suspicious, and subdued lot of creatures they had seemed to
+      him. But these were men of another breed, with their lean, lithe, muscular
+      figures, their clean, copper skins, their wild fierce eyes, their haughty
+      bearing. Those others were poor beggars seeking permission to exist; these
+      were men, proud, fearless, and free.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jove, what a team one could pick out of the bunch!&rdquo; said Cameron to
+      himself, as his eye fell upon the clean bare limbs and observed their
+      graceful motions. But to the Americans they were a hateful and fearsome
+      sight. Indians with them were never anything but a menace to be held in
+      check, or a nuisance to be got rid of.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Louder and louder grew the yells and wilder the gesticulations as the
+      savages worked themselves up into a fury. Suddenly, through the yelling,
+      careering, gesticulating crowd of Indians a young brave came tearing at
+      full gallop and, thrusting his pony close up to the Sergeant's, stuck his
+      face into the officer's and uttered a terrific war whoop. Not a line of
+      the Sergeant's face nor a muscle of his body moved except that the near
+      spur slightly touched his horse's flank and the fingers tightened almost
+      imperceptibly upon the bridle rein. Like a flash of light the Sergeant's
+      horse wheeled and with a fierce squeal let fly two wicked heels hard upon
+      the pony's ribs. In sheer terror and surprise the little beast bolted,
+      throwing his rider over his neck and finally to the ground. Immediately a
+      shout of jeering laughter rose from the crowd, who greatly enjoyed their
+      comrade's discomfiture. Except that the Sergeant's face wore a look of
+      pleased surprise, he simply maintained his attitude of calm indifference.
+      No other Indian, however, appeared ready to repeat the performance of the
+      young brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At length the Inspector appeared, followed by the Chief, Red Crow.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tell your people to go away!&rdquo; said the Inspector as they reached the
+      corral. &ldquo;They are making too much noise.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Red Crow addressed his braves at some length.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Open the corral,&rdquo; ordered the Inspector, &ldquo;and get those horses out on the
+      trail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments there was silence. Then, as the Indians perceived the
+      purpose of the police, on every side there rose wild yells of protest and
+      from every side a rush was made toward the corral. But Sergeant Crisp kept
+      his horse on the move in a series of kicks and plunges that had the effect
+      of keeping clear a wide circle about the corral gate.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Touch your horse with the spur and hold him up tight,&rdquo; he said quietly to
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron did so and at once his horse became seemingly as unmanageable as
+      the Sergeant's, plunging, biting, kicking. The Indian ponies could not be
+      induced to approach. The uproar, however, only increased. Guns began to go
+      off, bullets could be heard whistling overhead. Red Crow's voice
+      apparently could make no impression upon the maddened crowd of Indians. A
+      minor Chief, White Horse by name, having whirled in behind the Sergeant,
+      seized hold of Mr. Cadwaller's bridle and began to threaten him with
+      excited gesticulations. Mr. Cadwaller drew his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let go that line, you blank blank redskin!&rdquo; he roared, flourishing his
+      revolver.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In a moment, with a single plunge, the Inspector was at his side and,
+      flinging off the Indian, shouted:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Put up that gun, Mr. Cadwaller! Quick!&rdquo; Mr. Cadwaller hesitated.
+      &ldquo;Sergeant Crisp, arrest that man!&rdquo; The Inspector's voice rang out like a
+      trumpet. His gun covered Mr. Cadwaller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Give me that gun!&rdquo; said the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Mr. Cadwaller handed over his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him go,&rdquo; said the Inspector to Sergeant Crisp. &ldquo;He will probably
+      behave.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indians had gathered close about the group. White Horse, in the
+      centre, was talking fast and furious and pointing to Mr. Cadwaller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get the bunch off, Sergeant!&rdquo; said the Inspector quietly. &ldquo;I will hold
+      them here for a few minutes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Quietly the Sergeant backed out of the circle, leaving the Inspector and
+      Mr. Cadwaller with White Horse and Red Crow in the midst of the crowding,
+      yelling Indians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;White Horse say this man steal Bull Back's horses last fall!&rdquo; shouted Red
+      Crow in the Inspector's ear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too much noise here,&rdquo; said the Inspector, moving toward the Indian camp
+      and away from the corral and drawing the crowd with him. &ldquo;Tell your people
+      to be quiet, Red Crow. I thought you were the Chief.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Stung by the taunt, Red Crow raised his rifle and fired into the air.
+      Then, standing high in his stirrups, he held up his hand and called out a
+      number of names. Instantly ten men rode to his side. Again Red Crow spoke.
+      The ten men rode out again among the crowd. Immediately the shouting
+      ceased.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;I see my brother is strong. Now, where is
+      Bull Back?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Chief called out a name. There was no response.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Bull Back not here,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then listen, my brother,&rdquo; said the Inspector earnestly. &ldquo;This man,&rdquo;
+       pointing to Mr. Cadwaller, &ldquo;waits with me at the Fort two days to meet
+      White Horse, Bull Back, and any Indians who know about this man; and what
+      is right will be done. I have spoken. Farewell!&rdquo; He gave his hand to Chief
+      Red Crow. &ldquo;My brother knows,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;the Police do not lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Cadwaller before him, rode
+      off after the others of the party, who had by this time gone some distance
+      up the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments hesitation held the crowd, then with a loud cry White
+      Horse galloped up and again seized Mr. Cadwaller's bridle. Instantly the
+      Inspector covered him with his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold up your hands quick!&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The Indian dropped the bridle rein. The Inspector handed his gun to Mr.
+      Cadwaller.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't shoot till I speak or I shoot you!&rdquo; he said sternly. Mr. Cadwaller
+      took the gun and covered the Indian. In a twinkling White Horse found
+      himself with handcuffs on his wrists and his bridle line attached to the
+      horn of the Inspector's saddle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now give me that gun, Mr. Cadwaller, and here take your own&mdash;but
+      wait for the word. Forward!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He had not gone a pace till he was surrounded by a score of angry and
+      determined Indians with levelled rifles. For the first time the Inspector
+      hesitated. Through the line of levelled rifles Chief Red Crow rode up and
+      in a grave but determined voice said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My brother is wrong. White Horse, chief. My young men not let him go.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; said the Inspector, promptly making up his mind. &ldquo;I let him go
+      now. In two days I come again and get him. The Police never lie.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he released White Horse and without further word, and
+      disregarding the angry looks and levelled rifles, rode slowly off after
+      his party. On the edge of the crowd he met Sergeant Crisp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thought I'd better come back, Sir. It looked rather ugly for a minute,&rdquo;
+       said the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ride on,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;We will get our man to-morrow. Steady, Mr.
+      Cadwaller, not too fast.&rdquo; The Inspector slowed his horse down to a walk,
+      which he gradually increased to an easy lope and so brought up with
+      Cameron and the others.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the long evening they pressed forward till they came to the
+      Kootenay River, having crossed which they ventured to camp for the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      After supper the Inspector announced his intention of riding on to the
+      Fort for reinforcements, and gave his instructions to the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sergeant Crisp,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you will make an early start and bring in the
+      bunch to-morrow morning. Mr. Cadwaller, you remember you are to remain at
+      the Fort two days so that the charges brought by White Horse may be
+      investigated.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What?&rdquo; exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. &ldquo;Wait for them blank blank devils? Say,
+      Inspector, you don't mean that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You heard me promise the Indians,&rdquo; said the Inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, yes. Mighty smart, too! But say, you were jest joshing, weren't
+      you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, Sir,&rdquo; replied the Inspector. &ldquo;The Police never break a promise to
+      white man or Indian.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. Cadwaller cut loose for a few moments. He did not object to
+      waiting any length of time to oblige a friend, but that he should delay
+      his journey to answer the charges of an Indian, variously and
+      picturesquely described, was to him an unthinkable proposition.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sergeant Crisp, you will see to this,&rdquo; said the Inspector quietly as he
+      rode away.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then Mr. Cadwaller began to laugh and continued laughing for several
+      minutes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By the holy poker, Sligh!&rdquo; at last he exclaimed. &ldquo;It's a joke. It's a
+      regular John Bull joke.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Mr. Sligh, while he cut a comfortable chew from his black
+      plug. &ldquo;Good joke, too, but not on John. I guess that's how five hundred
+      police hold down&mdash;no, take care of&mdash;twenty thousand redskins.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And the latest recruit to Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police
+      straightened up till he could feel the collar of his tunic catch him on
+      the back of the neck and was conscious of a little thrill running up his
+      spine as he remembered that he was a member of that same force.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0023" id="link2HCH0023">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      It was to Cameron an extreme satisfaction to ride with some twenty of his
+      comrades behind White Horse, who, handcuffed and with bridle reins tied to
+      those of two troopers, and accompanied by Chief Red Crow, Bull Back, and
+      others of their tribe, made ignominious and crestfallen entry into the
+      Fort next day. It was hardly less of a satisfaction to see Mr. Cadwaller
+      exercise himself considerably in making defence against the charges of
+      Bull Back and his friends. The defence was successful, and the American
+      citizens departed to Lone Pine, Montana, with their recovered horses and
+      with a new and higher regard for both the executive and administrative
+      excellence of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police officers and men.
+      Chief Red Crow, too, returned to his band with a chastened mind, it having
+      been made clear to him that a chief who could not control his young braves
+      was not the kind of a chief the Great White Mother desired to have in
+      command of her Indian subjects. White Horse, also, after three months
+      sojourn in the cooling solitude of the Police guard room, went back to his
+      people a humbler and a wiser brave.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The horse-stealing, however, went merrily on and the summer of 1884 stands
+      in the records of the Police as the most trying period of their history in
+      the Northwest up to that date. The booming upon the eastern and southern
+      boundaries of Western Canada of the incoming tide of humanity, hungry for
+      land, awakened ominous echoes in the little primitive settlements of
+      half-breed people and throughout the reservations of the wild Indian
+      tribes as well. Everywhere, without warning and without explanation, the
+      surveyors' flags and posts made appearance. Wild rumours ran through the
+      land, till every fluttering flag became the symbol of dispossession and
+      every gleaming post an emblem of tyrannous disregard of a people's rights.
+      The ancient aboriginal inhabitants of the western plains and woods, too,
+      had their grievances and their fears. With phenomenal rapidity the buffalo
+      had vanished from the plains once black with their hundreds of thousands.
+      With the buffalo vanished the Indians' chief source of support, their
+      food, their clothing, their shelter, their chief article of barter. Bereft
+      of these and deprived at the same time of the supreme joy of existence,
+      the chase, bitten with cold, starved with hunger, fearful of the future,
+      they offered fertile soil for the seeds of rebellion. A government more
+      than usually obsessed with stupidity, as all governments become at times,
+      remained indifferent to appeals, deaf to remonstrances, blind to danger
+      signals, till through the remote and isolated settlements of the vast west
+      and among the tribes of Indians, hunger-bitten and fearful for their
+      future, a spirit of unrest, of fear, of impatience of all authority,
+      spread like a secret plague from Prince Albert to the Crow's Nest and from
+      the Cypress Hills to Edmonton. A violent recrudescence of
+      whiskey-smuggling, horse-stealing, and cattle-rustling made the work of
+      administering the law throughout this vast territory one of exceeding
+      difficulty and one calling for promptitude, wisdom, patience, and courage,
+      of no ordinary quality. Added to all this, the steady advance of the
+      railroad into the new country, with its huge construction camps, in whose
+      wake followed the lawless hordes of whiskey smugglers, tinhorn gamblers,
+      thugs, and harlots, very materially added to the dangers and difficulties
+      of the situation for the Police.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the first month after enlistment Cameron was kept in close touch with
+      the Fort and spent his hours under the polishing hands of the drill
+      sergeant. From five in the morning till ten at night the day's routine
+      kept him on the grind. Hard work it was, but to Cameron a continuous
+      delight. For the first time in his life he had a job that seemed worth a
+      man's while, and one the mere routine of which delighted his soul. He
+      loved his horse and loved to care for him, and, most of all, loved to ride
+      him. Among his comrades he found congenial spirits, both among the
+      officers and the men. Though discipline was strict, there was an utter
+      absence of anything like a spirit of petty bullying which too often is
+      found in military service; for in the first place the men were in very
+      many cases the equals and sometimes the superiors of the officers both in
+      culture and in breeding, and further, and very specially, the nature of
+      the work was such as to cultivate the spirit of true comradeship. When
+      officer and man ride side by side through rain and shine, through burning
+      heat and frost &ldquo;Forty below,&rdquo; when they eat out of the same pan and sleep
+      in the same &ldquo;dug-out,&rdquo; when they stand back to back in the midst of a
+      horde of howling savages, rank comes to mean little and manhood much.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Between Inspector Dickson and Cameron a genuine friendship sprang up; and
+      after his first month was in, Cameron often found himself the comrade of
+      the Inspector in expeditions of special difficulty where there was a call
+      for intelligence and nerve. The reports of these expeditions that stand
+      upon the police record have as little semblance of the deeds achieved as
+      have stark and grinning skeletons in the medical student's private
+      cupboard to the living moving bodies they once were. The records of these
+      deeds are the bare bones. The flesh and blood, the life and colour are to
+      be found only in the memories of those who were concerned in their
+      achievement.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But even in these bony records there are to be seen frequent entries in
+      which the names of Inspector Dickson and Constable Cameron stand side by
+      side. For the Inspector was a man upon whom the Commissioner and the
+      Superintendent delighted to load their more dangerous and delicate cases,
+      and it was upon Cameron when it was possible that the Inspector's choice
+      for a comrade fell.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was such a case as this that held the Commissioner and Superintendent
+      Crawford in anxious consultation far into a late September night. When the
+      consultation was over, Inspector Dickson was called in and the result of
+      this consultation laid before him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have every reason to believe, as you well know, Inspector Dickson,&rdquo;
+       said the Commissioner, &ldquo;that there is a secret and wide-spread propagandum
+      being carried on among our Indians, especially among the Piegans, Bloods,
+      and Blackfeet, with the purpose of organizing rebellion in connection with
+      the half-breed discontent in the territories to the east of us. Riel, you
+      know, has been back for some time and we believe his agents are busy on
+      every reservation at present. This outbreak of horse-stealing and
+      whiskey-smuggling in so many parts of the country at the same time is a
+      mere blind to a more serious business, the hatching of a very wide
+      conspiracy. We know that the Crees and the Assiniboines are negotiating
+      with the half-breeds. Big Bear, Beardy, and Little Pine are keen for a
+      fight. There is some very powerful and secret influence at work among our
+      Indians here. We suspect that the ex-Chief of the Bloods, Little Thunder,
+      is the head of this organization. A very dangerous and very clever Indian
+      he is, as you know. We have a charge of murder against him already, and if
+      we can arrest him and one or two others it would do much to break up the
+      gang, or at least to hold in check their organization work. We want you to
+      get quietly after this business, visit all the reservations, obtain all
+      information possible, and when you are ready, strike. You will be quite
+      unhampered in your movements and the whole force will co-operate with you
+      if necessary. We consider this an extremely critical time and we must be
+      prepared. Take a man with you. Make your own choice.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I expect we know the man the Inspector will choose,&rdquo; said superintendent
+      Crawford with a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who is that?&rdquo; asked the Commissioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constable Cameron, of course.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes, Cameron. You remember I predicted he would make good. He has
+      certainly fulfilled my expectation.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He is a good man,&rdquo; said the Inspector quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh come, Inspector, you know you consider him the best all-round man at
+      this post,&rdquo; said the Superintendent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, you see, Sir, he is enthusiastic for the service, he works hard and
+      likes his work.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Right you are!&rdquo; exclaimed the Superintendent. &ldquo;In the first place, he is
+      the strongest man on the force, then he is a dead shot, a good man with a
+      horse, and has developed an extraordinary gift in tracking, and besides he
+      is perfectly straight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that right, Inspector?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Inspector very quietly, though his eyes were gleaming at
+      the praise of his friend. &ldquo;He is a good man, very keen, very reliable, and
+      of course afraid of nothing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Superintendent laughed quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want him then, I suppose?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said the Inspector, &ldquo;if it could be managed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't know,&rdquo; said the Commissioner. &ldquo;That reminds me.&rdquo; He took a letter
+      from the file. &ldquo;Read that,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;second page there. It is a private
+      letter from Superintendent Strong at Calgary.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Inspector took the letter and read at the place indicated&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another thing. The handling of these railroad construction gangs is no
+      easy matter. We are pestered with whiskey-smugglers, gamblers, and
+      prostitutes till we don't know which way to turn. As the work extends into
+      the mountains and as the camps grow in numbers the difficulty of control
+      is very greatly increased. I ought to have my force strengthened. Could
+      you not immediately spare me at least eight or ten good men? I would like
+      that chap Cameron, the man, you know, who caught the half-breed Louis in
+      the Sarcee camp and carried him out on his horse's neck&mdash;a very fine
+      bit of work. Inspector Dickson will tell you about him. I had it from him.
+      Could you spare Cameron? I would recommend him at once as a sergeant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Inspector handed back the letter without comment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well?&rdquo; said the Commissioner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cameron would do very well for the work,&rdquo; said the Inspector, &ldquo;and he
+      deserves promotion.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What was that Sarcee business, Inspector?&rdquo; enquired the Commissioner.
+      &ldquo;That must have been when I was down east.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said the Inspector, &ldquo;it was a very fine thing indeed of Cameron.
+      Louis 'the Breed' had been working the Bloods. We got on his track and
+      headed him up in the Sarcee camp. He is rather a dangerous character and
+      is related to the Sarcees. We expected trouble in his arrest. We rode in
+      and found the Indians, to the number of a hundred and fifty or more, very
+      considerably excited. They objected strenuously to the arrest of the
+      half-breed. Constable Cameron and I were alone. We had left a party of men
+      further back over the hill. The half-breed brought it upon himself. He was
+      rash enough to make a sudden attack upon Cameron. That is where he made
+      his mistake. Before he knew where he was Cameron slipped from his horse,
+      caught him under the chin with a very nice left-hander that laid him
+      neatly out, swung him on to his horse, and was out of the camp before the
+      Indians knew what had happened.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Inspector does not tell you,&rdquo; said Superintendent Crawford, &ldquo;how he
+      stood off that bunch of Sarcees and held them where they were till Cameron
+      was safe with his man over the hill. But it was a very clever bit of work,
+      and, if I may say it, deserves recognition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should like to give you Cameron if it were possible,&rdquo; said the
+      Commissioner, &ldquo;but this railroad business is one of great difficulty and
+      Superintendent Strong is not the man to ask for assistance unless he is in
+      pretty desperate straits. An unintelligent or reckless man would be worse
+      than useless.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would it do,&rdquo; suggested the Superintendent, &ldquo;to allow Cameron in the
+      meantime to accompany the Inspector? Then later we might send him to
+      Superintendent Strong.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Reporting this arrangement to Cameron a little later, the Inspector
+      enquired:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How would you like to have a turn in the mountains? You would find
+      Superintendent Strong a fine officer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I desire no change in that regard,&rdquo; replied Cameron. &ldquo;But, curiously
+      enough, I have a letter this very mail that has a bearing upon this
+      matter. Here it is. It is from an old college friend of mine, Dr. Martin.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Inspector took the letter and read&mdash;
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have got myself used up, too great devotion to scientific research;
+      hence I am accepting an offer from the railroad people for work in the
+      mountains. I leave in a week. Think of it! The muck and the ruck, the
+      execrable grub and worse drink! I shall have to work my passage on hand
+      cars and doubtless by tie pass. My hands will lose all their polish.
+      However, there may be some fun and likely some good practice. I see they
+      are blowing themselves up at a great rate. Then, too, there is the
+      prospective joy of seeing you, of whom quite wonderful tales have floated
+      east to us. I am told you are in direct line for the position of the High
+      Chief Muck-a-muck of the Force. Look me up in Superintendent Strong's
+      division. I believe he is the bulwark of the Empire in my district.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A letter from the old burgh across the pond tells me your governor is far
+      from well. Awfully sorry to hear it. It is rough on your sister, to whom,
+      when you write, remember your humble servant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am bringing out two nurses with me, both your devotees. Look out for
+      squalls. If you get shot up see that you select a locality where the
+      medical attendance and nursing are 'A 1'.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would be awfully good to see the old boy,&rdquo; said Cameron as he took the
+      letter from the Inspector. &ldquo;He is a decent chap and quite up-to-date in
+      his profession.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about the nurses?&rdquo; enquired the Inspector gravely.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I don't know them. Never knew but one. A good bright little soul she
+      was. Saw me through a typhoid trip. Little too clever sometimes,&rdquo; he
+      added, remembering the day when she had taken her fun out of the
+      slow-footed, slow-minded farmer's daughter.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Inspector, &ldquo;we shall possibly come across them in our
+      round-up. This is rather a big game, a very big game and one worth
+      playing.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A bigger game it turned out than any of the players knew, bigger in its
+      immediate sweep and in its nationwide issues.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For three months they swept the plains, haunting the reservations at
+      unexpected moments. But though they found not a few horses and cattle
+      whose obliterated brands seemed to warrant confiscation, and though there
+      were signs for the instructed eye of evil doings in many an Indian camp,
+      yet there was nothing connected with the larger game upon which the
+      Inspector of Police could lay his hand.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Among the Bloods there were frequent sun-dances where many braves were
+      made and much firewater drunk with consequent blood-letting. Red Crow
+      deprecated these occurrences, but confessed his powerlessness to prevent
+      the flow of either firewater or of blood. A private conversation with the
+      Inspector left with the Chief some food for thought, however, and resulted
+      in the cropping of the mane of White Horse, of whose comings and goings
+      the Inspector was insistently curious.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      On the Blackfeet reservation they ran into a great pow-wow of chiefs from
+      far and near, to which old Crowfoot invited the representatives of the
+      Great White Mother with impressive cordiality, an invitation, however,
+      which the Inspector, such was his strenuous hunt for stolen horses, was
+      forced regretfully to decline.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Too smooth, old boy, too smooth!&rdquo; was the Inspector's comment as they
+      rode off. &ldquo;There are doings there without doubt. Did you see the Cree and
+      the Assiniboine?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I could not pick them out,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;but I saw Louis the Breed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, you did! He needs another term at the Police sanatarium.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They looked in upon the Sarcees and were relieved to find them frankly
+      hostile. They had not forgotten the last visit of the Inspector and his
+      friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's better,&rdquo; remarked the Inspector as they left the reservation.
+      &ldquo;Neither the hostile Indian nor the noisy Indian is dangerous. When he
+      gets smooth and quiet watch him, like old Crowfoot. Sly old boy he is! But
+      he will wait till he sees which way the cat jumps. He is no leader of lost
+      causes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At Morleyville they breathed a different atmosphere. They felt themselves
+      to be among friends. The hand of the missionary here was upon the helm of
+      government and the spirit of the missionary was the spirit of the tribe.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any trouble?&rdquo; enquired the Inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We have a great many visitors these days,&rdquo; said the missionary. &ldquo;And some
+      of our young men don't like hunger, and the offer of a full feast makes
+      sweet music in their ears.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Any sun-dances?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no, the sun-dances are all past. Our people are no longer pagans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good man!&rdquo; was the Inspector's comment as they took up the trail again
+      toward the mountains. &ldquo;And with quite a sufficient amount of the wisdom of
+      the serpent in his guileless heart. We need not watch the Stonies. Here's
+      a spot at least where religion pays. And a mighty good thing for us just
+      now,&rdquo; added the inspector. &ldquo;These Stonies in the old days were perfect
+      devils for fighting. They are a mountain people and for generations kept
+      the passes against all comers. But Macdougall has changed all that.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Leaving the reservation, they came upon the line of the railway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There lies my old trail,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;And my last camp was only about
+      two miles west of here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was somewhere here that Raven fell in with you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, some ten miles off the line, down the old Kootenay trail.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aha!&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;It might not be a bad idea to beat up that
+      same old trail. It is quite possible that we might fall in with your old
+      friends.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It would certainly be a great pleasure,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;to conduct Mr.
+      Raven and his Indian friend over this same trail as they did me some nine
+      months ago.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will take a chance on it,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;We lose time going
+      back the other way.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Upon the site of McIvor's survey camp they found camped a large
+      construction gang. Between the lines of tents, for the camp was ordered in
+      streets like a city, they rode till they came to the headquarters of the
+      Police, and enquired for the Superintendent. The Superintendent had gone
+      up the line, the Sergeant informed them, following the larger construction
+      gangs. The Sergeant and two men had some fifty miles of line under patrol,
+      with some ten camps of various kinds on the line and in the woods, and in
+      addition they had the care of that double stream of humanity flowing in
+      and flowing out without ceasing day or night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As the Inspector stepped inside the Police tent Cameron's attention was
+      arrested by the sign &ldquo;Hospital&rdquo; upon a large double-roofed tent set on a
+      wooden floor and guyed with more than ordinary care.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wonder if old Martin is anywhere about,&rdquo; he said to himself as he rode
+      across to the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is Dr. Martin in?&rdquo; he enquired of a Chinaman, who appeared from a tent at
+      the rear.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Doc Matin go 'way 'long tlain.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;When will he come back?&rdquo; demanded Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Donno. See missy woman.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      So saying, he disappeared into the tent while Cameron waited.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You wish to see the doctor? He has gone west. Oh! Why, it&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron was off his horse, standing with his hat in one hand, the other
+      outstretched toward the speaker.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why! it cannot be!&mdash;it is&mdash;my patient.&rdquo; The little nurse had
+      his hand in both of hers. &ldquo;Oh, you great big monster soldier! Do you know
+      how fine you look?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; replied Cameron, &ldquo;but I do know how perfectly fine you look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, don't devour me. You look dangerous.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I should truly love one little bite.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Cameron, stop! You terrible man! Right in the open street!&rdquo; The
+      little nurse's cheeks flamed red as she quickly glanced about her. &ldquo;What
+      would Dr. Martin say?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Dr. Martin!&rdquo; Cameron laughed. &ldquo;Besides, I couldn't help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I am so glad!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Thank you,&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I mean I am so glad to see you. They told us you would be coming to join
+      us. And now they are gone. What a pity! They will be so disappointed.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who, pray, will be thus blighted?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, the doctor I mean, and&mdash;and&rdquo;&mdash;here her eyes danced
+      mischievously&mdash;&ldquo;the other nurse, of course. But you will be going
+      west?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, south, to-day, and in a few minutes. Here comes the Inspector. May I
+      present him?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little nurse's snapping eyes glowed with pleasure as they ran over the
+      tall figure of the Inspector and rested upon his fine clean-cut face. The
+      Inspector had just made his farewell to the Sergeant preparatory to an
+      immediate departure, but it was a full half hour before they rose from the
+      dainty tea table where the little nurse had made them afternoon tea from
+      her own dainty tea set.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It makes me think of home,&rdquo; said the Inspector with a sigh as he bent
+      over the little nurse's hand in gratitude. &ldquo;My first real afternoon tea in
+      ten years.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Poor man!&rdquo; said the nurse. &ldquo;Come again.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, if I could!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But YOU are coming?&rdquo; said the little nurse to Cameron as he held her hand
+      in farewell. &ldquo;I heard the doctor say you were coming and we are quite wild
+      with impatience over it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron looked at the Inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I had thought of keeping Cameron at Macleod,&rdquo; said the latter. &ldquo;But now I
+      can hardly have the heart to do so.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, you needn't look at me so,&rdquo; said the little nurse with a saucy toss
+      of her head. &ldquo;He wouldn't bother himself about me, but&mdash;but&mdash;there
+      is another. No, I won't tell him.&rdquo; And she laughed gaily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood mystified.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Another? There is old Martin of course, but there is no other.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little nurse laughed, this time scornfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Old Martin indeed! He is making a shameless pretence of ignorance,
+      Inspector Dickson.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disgraceful bluff I call it,&rdquo; cried the Inspector.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who can it be?&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;I really don't know any nurse. Of course
+      it can't be&mdash;Mandy&mdash;Miss Haley?&rdquo; He laughed a loud laugh almost
+      of derision as he made the suggestion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, he's got it!&rdquo; cried the nurse, clapping her hands. &ldquo;As if he ever
+      doubted.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Heavens!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;You don't mean to tell me that Mandy&mdash;What
+      is poor Mandy doing here? Cooking?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Cooking indeed!&rdquo; exclaimed the nurse. &ldquo;Cooking indeed! Just let the men
+      in this camp, from John here,&rdquo; indicating the Chinaman at the rear of the
+      tent, &ldquo;to the Sergeant yonder, hear you by the faintest tone indicate
+      anything but adoration for Nurse Haley, and you will need the whole Police
+      Force to deliver you from their fury.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good Heavens!&rdquo; said Cameron in an undertone. &ldquo;A nurse! With those hands!&rdquo;
+       He shuddered. &ldquo;I mean, of course&mdash;you know&mdash;she's awfully
+      good-hearted and all that, but as a nurse you know she is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little nurse laughed long and joyously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, this is fun! I wish Dr. Martin could hear you. You forget, Sir, that
+      for a year and a half she has had the benefit of my example and tuition.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Think of that, Cameron!&rdquo; murmured the Inspector reproachfully. But
+      Cameron only shook his head.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;No, I don't think I pine for mountain scenery.
+      Remember me to Martin and to Man&mdash;to Nurse Haley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye!&rdquo; said the little nurse. &ldquo;I have a good mind to tell them what
+      you said. I may. Just wait, though. Some day you will very humbly beg my
+      pardon for that slight upon my assistant.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Slight? Believe me, I mean none. I would be an awful cad if I did. But&mdash;well,
+      you know as well as I do that, good soul as Mandy is, she is in many ways
+      impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Do I?&rdquo; Again the joyous laugh pealed out. &ldquo;Well, well, come back and
+      see.&rdquo; And waving her hand she stood to watch them down the trail.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Jolly little girl,&rdquo; said the Inspector, as they turned from the railway
+      tote road down the coulee into the Kootenay trail. &ldquo;But who is this
+      other?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; said Cameron impatiently, &ldquo;I feel like a beastly cad. She's the
+      daughter of the farmer where I spent a summer in Ontario, a good
+      simple-hearted girl, but awfully&mdash;well&mdash;crude, you know. And yet&mdash;&rdquo;
+       Cameron's speech faded into silence, for his memory played a trick upon
+      him, and again he was standing in the orchard on that sunny autumn day
+      looking into a pair of wonderful eyes, and, remembering the eyes, he
+      forgot his speech.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, yes,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;I understand.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, you don't,&rdquo; said Cameron almost rudely. &ldquo;You would have to see her
+      first. By Jove!&rdquo; He broke into a laugh. &ldquo;It is a joke with a vengeance,&rdquo;
+       and relapsed into silence that lasted for some miles.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      That night they slept in the old lumber camp, and the afternoon of the
+      second day found them skirting the Crow's Nest.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We've had no luck this trip,&rdquo; growled the Inspector, for now they were
+      facing toward home.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen!&rdquo; said Cameron, pulling up his horse sharply. Down the pass the
+      faraway beat of a drum was heard. It was the steady throb of the tom-tom
+      rising and falling with rhythmic regularity.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sun-dance,&rdquo; said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he generally
+      allowed himself. &ldquo;Piegans.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where?&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In the sun-dance canyon,&rdquo; answered the Inspector. &ldquo;I believe in my soul
+      we shall see something now. Must be two miles off. Come on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Though late in December the ground was still unfrozen and the new-made
+      government trail gave soft footing to their horses. And so without fear of
+      detection they loped briskly along till they began to hear rising above
+      the throb of the tom-tom the weird chant of the Indian sun-dancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are right down in the canyon,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;I know the spot
+      well. We can see them from the top. This is their most sacred place and
+      there is doubtless something big going on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They left the main trail and, dismounting, led their horses through the
+      scrubby woods, which were thick enough to give them cover without impeding
+      very materially their progress. Within a hundred yards of the top they
+      tied their horses in the thicket and climbed the slight ascent. Crawling
+      on hands and knees to the lip of the canyon, they looked down upon a scene
+      seldom witnessed by the eyes of white men. The canyon was a long narrow
+      valley, whose rocky sides, covered with underbrush, rose some sixty feet
+      from a little plain about fifty yards wide. The little plain was filled
+      with the Indian encampment. At one end a huge fire blazed. At the other,
+      and some fifty yards away, the lodges were set in a semicircle, reaching
+      from side to side of the canyon, and in front of the lodges were a mass of
+      Indian warriors, squatting on their hunkers, beating time, some with
+      tom-toms, others with their hands, to the weirdly monotonous chant, that
+      rose and fell in response to the gesticulations of one who appeared to be
+      their leader. In the centre of the plain stood a post and round this two
+      circles of dancers leaped and swayed. In the outer circle the men, with
+      clubs and rifles in their hands, recited with pantomimic gestures their
+      glorious deeds in the war or in the chase. The inner circle presented a
+      ghastly and horrid spectacle. It was composed of younger men, naked and
+      painted, some of whom were held to the top of the post by long thongs of
+      buffalo hide attached to skewers thrust through the muscles of the breast
+      or back. Upon these thongs they swayed and threw themselves in frantic
+      attempts to break free. With others the skewers were attached by thongs to
+      buffalo skulls, stones or heavy blocks of wood, which, as they danced and
+      leaped, tore at the bleeding flesh. Round and round the post the naked
+      painted Indians leaped, lurching and swaying from side to side in their
+      desperate efforts to drag themselves free from those tearing skewers,
+      while round them from the dancing circle and from the mass of Indians
+      squatted on the ground rose the weird, maddening, savage chant to the
+      accompaniment of their beating hands and throbbing drums.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;This is a big dance,&rdquo; said the Inspector, subduing his voice to an
+      undertone, though in the din there was little chance of his being heard.
+      &ldquo;See! many braves have been made already,&rdquo; he added, pointing to a place
+      on one side of the fire where a number of forms could be seen, some lying
+      flat, some rolling upon the earth, but all apparently more or less in a
+      stupor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Madder and madder grew the drums, higher and higher rose the chant. Now
+      and then an older warrior from the squatting circle would fling his
+      blanket aside and, waving his rifle high in the air, would join with loud
+      cries and wild gesticulations the outer circle of dancers.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is a big thing this,&rdquo; said the Inspector again. &ldquo;No squaws, you see,
+      and all in war paint. They mean business. We must get closer.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron gripped him by the arm.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said, pointing to a group of Indians standing at a little
+      distance beyond the lodges. &ldquo;Little Thunder and Raven!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, by Jove!&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;And White Horse, and Louis the Breed
+      and Rainy Cloud of the Blackfeet. A couple of Sarcee chaps, I see, too,
+      some Piegans and Bloods; the rest are Crees and Assiniboines. The whole
+      bunch are here. Jove, what a killing if we could get them! Let's work
+      nearer. Who is that speaking to them?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That's Raven,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;and I should like to get my hands on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Steady now,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;We must make no mistake.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They worked along the top of the ravine, crawling through the bushes, till
+      they were immediately over the little group of which Raven was the centre.
+      Raven was still speaking, the half-breed interpreting to the Crees and the
+      Assiniboines, and now and then, as the noise from the chanting, drumming
+      Indians subsided, the policemen could catch a few words. After Raven had
+      finished Little Thunder made reply, apparently in strenuous opposition.
+      Again Raven spoke and again Little Thunder made reply. The dispute waxed
+      warm. Little Thunder's former attitude towards Raven appeared to be
+      entirely changed. The old subservience was gone. The Indian stood now as a
+      Chief among his people and as such was recognized in that company. He
+      spoke with a haughty pride of conscious strength and authority. He was
+      striving to bring Raven to his way of thinking. At length Raven appeared
+      to throw down his ultimatum.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; he cried, and his voice rang up clear through the din. &ldquo;You are
+      fools! You are like little partridges trying to frighten the hunter. The
+      Great White Mother has soldiers like the leaves of the trees. I know, for
+      I have seen them. Do not listen to this man!&rdquo; pointing to Little Thunder.
+      &ldquo;Anger has made him mad. The Police with their big guns will blow you to
+      pieces like this.&rdquo; He seized a bunch of dead leaves, ground them in his
+      hands and puffed the fragments in their faces.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The half-breed and Little Thunder were beside themselves with rage. Long
+      and loud they harangued the group about them. Only a little of their
+      meaning could the Inspector gather, but enough to let him know that they
+      were looking down upon a group of conspirators and that plans for a
+      widespread rebellion were being laid before them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the harangues of Little Thunder and Louis the half-breed Raven
+      stood calmly regarding them, his hands on his hips. He knew well, as did
+      the men watching from above, that all that stood between him and death
+      were those same two hands and the revolvers in his belt, whose butts were
+      snugly nosing up to his fingers. Little Thunder had too often seen those
+      fingers close and do their deadly work while an eyelid might wink to
+      venture any hasty move.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is that all?&rdquo; said Raven at last.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Little Thunder made one final appeal, working himself up into a fine
+      frenzy of passion. Then Raven made reply.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to me!&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;It is all folly, mad folly! And besides,&rdquo; and
+      here his voice rang out like a trumpet, &ldquo;I am for the Queen, God bless
+      her!&rdquo; His figure straightened up, his hands dropped on the butts of his
+      guns.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove!&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;Isn't that great?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very fine, indeed,&rdquo; said the Inspector softly. Both men's guns were lined
+      upon the conspirators.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then the half-breed spoke, shrugging his shoulders in contempt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let heem go. Bah! No good.&rdquo; He spat upon the ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Raven stood as he was for a few moments, smiling.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good-bye, all,&rdquo; he said. &ldquo;Bon jour, Louis. Let no man move! Let no man
+      move! I never need to shoot at a man twice. Little Thunder knows. And
+      don't follow!&rdquo; he added. &ldquo;I shall be waiting behind the rocks.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      He slowly backed away from the group, turned in behind a sheltering rock,
+      then swiftly began to climb the rocky sides of the canyon. The moment he
+      was out of sight Little Thunder dodged in behind the ledges, found his
+      rifle, and, making a wide detour, began to climb the side of the ravine at
+      an angle which would cut off Raven's retreat. All this took place in full
+      view of the two watchers above.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let's get that devil,&rdquo; said the Inspector. But Cameron was already gone.
+      Swiftly along the lip of the canyon Cameron ran and worked his way down
+      the side till he stood just over the sloping ledge upon which the Indian
+      was crouched and waiting. Along this lodge came the unconscious Raven,
+      softly whistling to himself his favourite air,
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;Three cheers for the red, white and blue.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      There was no way of warning him. Three steps more and he would be within
+      range. The Inspector raised his gun and drew a bead upon the crouching
+      Indian.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; whispered Cameron. &ldquo;Don't shoot. It will bring them all down on
+      us.&rdquo; Gathering himself together as he spoke, he vaulted clear over the
+      edge of the rock and dropped fair upon the shoulders of the Indian below,
+      knocking the breath completely out of him and bearing him flat to the
+      rock. Like a flash Cameron's hand was on the Indian's throat so that he
+      could make no outcry. A moment later Raven came in view. Swifter than
+      light his guns were before his face and levelled at Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't shoot!&rdquo; said the Inspector quietly from above. &ldquo;I have you
+      covered.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Perilous as the situation was, Cameron was conscious only of the humourous
+      side of it and burst into a laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here, Raven,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;and help me to tie up this fellow.&rdquo; Slowly
+      Raven moved forward.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Why, by all the gods! If it isn't our long-lost friend, Cameron,&rdquo; he said
+      softly, putting up his guns. &ldquo;All right, old man,&rdquo; he added, nodding up at
+      the Inspector. &ldquo;Now, what's all this? What? Little Thunder? So! Then I
+      fancy I owe my life to you, Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron pointed to Little Thunder's gun. Raven stood looking down upon the
+      Indian, who was recovering his wind and his senses. His face suddenly
+      darkened.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You treacherous dog! Well, we are now nearly quits. Once you saved my
+      life, now you would have taken it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Meantime Cameron had handcuffed Little Thunder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Up!&rdquo; he said, prodding him with his revolver. &ldquo;And not a sound!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Keeping within cover of the bushes, they scrambled up the ravine side. As
+      they reached the top the Indian with a mighty wrench tore himself from
+      Cameron's grip and plunged into the thicket. Before he had taken a second
+      step, however, the Inspector was upon him like a tiger and bore him to the
+      ground.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Will you go quietly,&rdquo; said the Inspector, &ldquo;or must we knock you on the
+      head?&rdquo; He raised his pistol over the Indian as he spoke.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I go,&rdquo; grunted the Indian solemnly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, then,&rdquo; said the Inspector, &ldquo;we'll give you one chance more. Where's
+      your friend?&rdquo; he added, looking about him. But Raven was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am just as glad,&rdquo; said Cameron, remembering Raven's declaration of
+      allegiance a few moments before. &ldquo;He wasn't too bad a chap after all. We
+      have this devil anyhow.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Quick, now,&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;We have not a moment to lose. This is
+      an important capture. How the deuce we are to get him to the Fort I don't
+      know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Through the bushes they hurried their prisoner, threatening him with their
+      guns. When they came to their horses they were amazed to find Little
+      Thunder's pony beside their own and on the Inspector's saddle a slip of
+      paper upon which in the fading light they found inscribed &ldquo;One good turn
+      deserves another. With Mr. Raven's compliments.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;By Jove, he's a trump!&rdquo; said the Inspector. &ldquo;I'd like to get him, but all
+      the same&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And so they rode off to the Fort.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0024" id="link2HCH0024">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER VIII
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      NURSE HALEY
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      The railway construction had reached the Beaver, and from Laggan westward
+      the construction gangs were strewn along the line in straggling camps,
+      straggling because, though the tents of the railway men were set in
+      orderly precision, the crowds of camp-followers spread themselves hither
+      and thither in disorderly confusion around the outskirts of the camp.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      To Cameron, who for a month had been attached to Superintendent Strong's
+      division, the life was full of movement and colour. The two constables and
+      Sergeant Ferry found the duty of keeping order among the navvies, but more
+      especially among the outlaw herd that lay in wait to fling themselves upon
+      their monthly pay like wolves upon a kill, sufficiently arduous to fill to
+      repletion the hours of the day and often of the night.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The hospital tent where the little nurse reigned supreme became to Cameron
+      and to the Sergeant as well a place of refuge and relief. Nurse Haley was
+      in charge further down the line.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The post had just come in and with it a letter for Constable Cameron. It
+      was from Inspector Dickson.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You will be interested to know,&rdquo; it ran, &ldquo;that when I returned from Stand
+      Off two days ago I found that Little Thunder, who had been waiting here
+      for his hanging next month, had escaped. How, was a mystery to everybody;
+      but when I learned that a stranger had been at the Fort and had called
+      upon the Superintendent with a tale of horse-stealing, had asked to see
+      Little Thunder and identified him as undoubtedly the thief, and had left
+      that same day riding a particularly fine black broncho, I made a guess
+      that we had been honoured by a visit from your friend Raven. That guess
+      was confirmed as correct by a little note which I found waiting me from
+      this same gentleman explaining Little Thunder's absence as being due to
+      Raven's unwillingness to see a man go to the gallows who had once saved
+      his life, but conveying the assurance that the Indian was leaving the
+      country for good and would trouble us no more. The Superintendent, who
+      seems to have been captured by your friend's charm of manner, does not
+      appear to be unduly worried and holds the opinion that we are well rid of
+      Little Thunder. But I venture to hold a different opinion, namely, that we
+      shall yet hear from that Indian brave before the winter is over.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Things are quiet on the reservations&mdash;altogether too quiet. The
+      Indians are so exceptionally well behaved that there is no excuse for
+      arresting any suspects, so White Horse, Rainy Cloud, those Piegan chaps,
+      and the rest of them are allowed to wander about at will. The country is
+      full of Indian and half-breed runners and nightly pow-wows are the vogue
+      everywhere. Old Crowfoot, I am convinced, is playing a deep game and is
+      simply waiting the fitting moment to strike.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is the little nurse? Present my duty to her and to that other nurse
+      over whom hangs so deep a mystery.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron folded up his letter and imparted some of the news to the
+      Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That old Crowfoot is a deep one, sure enough,&rdquo; said Sergeant Ferry. &ldquo;It
+      takes our Chief here to bring him to time. Superintendent Strong has the
+      distinction of being the only man that ever tamed old Crowfoot. Have you
+      never heard of it? No? Well, of course, we don't talk about these things.
+      I was there though, and for cold iron nerve I never saw anything like it.
+      It was a bad half-breed,&rdquo; continued Sergeant Ferry, who, when he found a
+      congenial and safe companion, loved to spin a yarn&mdash;&ldquo;a bad half-breed
+      who had been arrested away down the line, jumped off the train and got
+      away to the Blackfeet. The Commissioner happened to be in Calgary and
+      asked the Superintendent himself to see about the capture of this
+      desperado. So with a couple of us mounted and another driving a buckboard
+      we made for Chief Crowfoot's encampment. It was a black night and raining
+      a steady drizzle. We lay on the edge of the camp for a couple of hours in
+      the rain and then at early dawn we rode in. It took the Superintendent
+      about two minutes to locate Crowfoot's tent, and, leaving us outside, he
+      walked straight in. There was our man, as large as life, in the place of
+      honour beside old Crowfoot. The interpreter, who was scared to death,
+      afterwards told me all about it.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'I want this man,' said the Superintendent, hardly waiting to say
+      good-day to the old Chief.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crowfoot was right up and ready for a fight. The Superintendent, without
+      ever letting go the half-breed's shoulder, set out the case. Meantime the
+      Indians had gathered in hundreds about the tent outside, all armed, and
+      wild for blood, you bet. I could hear the Superintendent making his
+      statement. All at once he stopped and out he came with his man by the
+      collar, old Crowfoot after him in a fury, but afraid to give the signal of
+      attack. The Indians were keen to get at us, but the old Chief had his men
+      in hand all right.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Don't think you will not get justice,' said the Superintendent. 'You
+      come yourself and see. Here's a pass for you on the railroad and for any
+      three of your men. But let me warn you that if one hair of my men is
+      touched, it will be a bad day for you, Crowfoot, and for your band.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He bundled his man into the buckboard and sent him off. The
+      Superintendent and I waited on horseback in parley with old Crowfoot till
+      the buckboard was over the hill. Such a half hour I never expect to see
+      again. I felt like a man standing over an open keg of gunpowder with a
+      lighted match. Any moment a spark might fall, and then good-bye. And it is
+      this same nerve of his that holds down these camps along this line. Here
+      we are with twenty-five men from Laggan to Beaver keeping order among
+      twenty-five hundred railroad navvies, not a bad lot, and twenty-five
+      hundred others, the scum, the very devil's scum from across the line, and
+      not a murder all these months. Whiskey, of course, but all under cover. I
+      tell you, he's put the fear of death on all that tinhorn bunch that hang
+      around these camps.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There doesn't seem to be much trouble just now,&rdquo; remarked Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Trouble? There may be the biggest kind of trouble any day. Some of these
+      contractors are slow in their pay. They expect men to wait a month or two.
+      That makes them mad and the tinhorn bunch keep stirring up trouble. Might
+      be a strike any time, and then look out. But our Chief will be ready for
+      them. He won't stand any nonsense, you bet.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point in the Sergeant's rambling yarn the door was flung open and
+      a man called breathlessly, &ldquo;Man killed!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How is that?&rdquo; cried the Sergeant, springing to buckle on his belt.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;An accident&mdash;car ran away&mdash;down the dump.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are altogether too flip with those cars,&rdquo; growled the Sergeant.
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They ran down the road and toward the railroad dump where they saw a crowd
+      of men. The Sergeant, followed by Cameron, pushed his way through and
+      found a number of navvies frantically tearing at a pile of jagged blocks
+      of rock under which could be seen a human body. It took only a few minutes
+      to remove the rocks and to discover lying there a young man, a mere lad,
+      from whose mangled and bleeding body the life appeared to have fled.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      As they stood about him, a huge giant of a man came tearing his way
+      through the crowd, pushing men to right and left.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me see him,&rdquo; he cried, dropping on his knees. &ldquo;Oh Jack, lad, they
+      have done for you this time.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      As he spoke the boy opened his eyes, looked upon the face of his friend,
+      smiled and lay still. Then the Sergeant took command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is the doctor back, does anyone know?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, he's up the line yet. He is coming in on number seven.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we must get this man to the hospital. Here, you,&rdquo; he said, touching
+      a man on the arm, &ldquo;run and tell the nurse we are bringing a wounded man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      They improvised a stretcher and laid the mangled form upon it the blood
+      streaming from wounds in his legs and trickling from his pallid lips.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, two men are better than four. Cameron, you take the head, and you,&rdquo;
+       pointing to Jack's friend, &ldquo;take his feet. Steady now! I'll just go
+      before. This is a ghastly sight.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the hospital tent the little nurse met them, pale, but
+      ready for service.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my poor boy!&rdquo; she cried, as she saw the white face. &ldquo;This way,
+      Sergeant,&rdquo; she added, passing into a smaller tent at one side of the
+      hospital. &ldquo;Oh, Mr. Cameron, is that you? I am glad you are here.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Has Nurse Haley come?&rdquo; enquired the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, she came in last night, thank goodness. Here, on this table,
+      Sergeant. Oh I wish the doctor were here! Now we must lift him on to this
+      stretcher. Ah, here's Nurse Haley,&rdquo; she added in a relieved voice, and
+      before Cameron was aware, a girl in a nurse's uniform stood by him and
+      appeared quietly to take command.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here Sergeant,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;two men take his feet.&rdquo; She put her arms under
+      the boy's shoulder and gently and with apparent ease, assisted by the
+      others, lifted him to the table. &ldquo;A little further&mdash;there. Now you
+      are easier, aren't you?&rdquo; she said, smiling down into the lad's face. Her
+      voice was low and soft and full toned.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, thank you,&rdquo; said the boy, biting back his groans and with a pitiful
+      attempt at a smile.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You're fine now, Jack. You'll soon be fixed up now,&rdquo; said his friend.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes Pete, I'm all right, I know.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, I wish the doctor were here!&rdquo; groaned the little nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What about a hypo?&rdquo; enquired Nurse Haley quietly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, yes, give him one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron's eyes followed the firm, swift-moving fingers as they deftly gave
+      the hypodermic.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now we must get this bleeding stopped,&rdquo; she said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get them all out, Sergeant, please,&rdquo; said the little nurse. &ldquo;One or two
+      will do to help us. You stay, Mr. Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the mention of his name Nurse Haley, who had been busy preparing
+      bandages, dropped them, turned, and for the first time looked Cameron in
+      the face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Is it you?&rdquo; she said softly, and gave him her hand, and, as more than
+      once before, Cameron found himself suddenly forgetting all the world. He
+      was looking into her eyes, blue, deep, wonderful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was only for a single moment that his eyes held hers, but to him it
+      seemed as if he had been in some far away land. Without a single word of
+      greeting he allowed her to withdraw her hand. Wonder, and something he
+      could not understand, held him dumb.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For the next half hour he obeyed orders, moving as in a dream, assisting
+      the nurses in their work; and in a dream he went away to his own quarters
+      and thence out and over the dump and along the tote road that led through
+      the straggling shacks and across the river into the forest beyond. But of
+      neither river nor forest was he aware. Before his eyes there floated an
+      illusive vision of masses of fluffy golden hair above a face of radiant
+      purity, of deft fingers moving in swift and sure precision as they wound
+      the white rolls of bandages round bloody and broken flesh, of two round
+      capable arms whose lines suggested strength and beauty, of a firm knit,
+      pliant body that moved with easy sinuous grace, of eyes&mdash;but ever at
+      the eyes he paused, forgetting all else, till, recalling himself, he began
+      again, striving to catch and hold that radiant, bewildering, illusive
+      vision. That was a sufficiently maddening process, but to relate that
+      vision of radiant efficient strength and grace to the one he carried of
+      the farmer's daughter with her dun-coloured straggling hair, her muddy
+      complexion, her stupid face, her clumsy, grimy hands and heavy feet, her
+      sloppy figure, was quite impossible. After long and strenuous attempts he
+      gave up the struggle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mandy!&rdquo; he exclaimed aloud to the forest trees. &ldquo;That Mandy! What's gone
+      wrong with my eyes, or am I clean off my head? I will go back,&rdquo; he said
+      with sudden resolution, &ldquo;and take another look.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Straight back he walked to the hospital, but at the door he paused. Why
+      was he there? He had no excuse to offer and without excuse he felt he
+      could not enter. He was acting like a fool. He turned away and once more
+      sought his quarters, disgusted with himself that he should be disturbed by
+      the thought of Mandy Haley or that it should cause him a moment's
+      embarrassment to walk into her presence with or without excuse,
+      determinedly he set himself to regain his one-time attitude of mind toward
+      the girl. With little difficulty he recalled his sense of superiority, his
+      kindly pity, his desire to protect her crude simplicity from those who
+      might do her harm. With a vision of that Mandy before him, the drudge of
+      the farm, the butt of Perkins' jokes, the object of pity for the
+      neighbourhood, he could readily summon up all the feelings he had at one
+      time considered it the correct and rather fine thing to cherish for her.
+      But for this young nurse, so thoroughly furnished and fit, and so
+      obviously able to care for herself, these feelings would not come. Indeed,
+      it made him squirm to remember how in his farewell in the orchard he had
+      held her hand in gentle pity for her foolish and all too evident
+      infatuation for his exalted and superior self. His groan of self-disgust
+      he hastily merged into a cough, for the Sergeant had his eyes upon him.
+      Indeed, the Sergeant did not help his state of mind, for he persisted in
+      executing a continuous fugue of ecstatic praise of Nurse Haley in various
+      keys and tempos, her pluck, her cleverness, her skill, her patience, her
+      jolly laugh, her voice, her eyes. To her eyes the Sergeant ever kept
+      harking back as to the main motif of his fugue, till Cameron would have
+      dearly loved to chuck him and his fugue out of doors.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      He was saved from deeds of desperate violence by a voice at the door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Letta fo' Mis Camelon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Cameron!&rdquo; exclaimed the Sergeant, handing him the note. &ldquo;You're in
+      luck.&rdquo; There was no mistaking the jealousy in the Sergeant's voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang it!&rdquo; said Cameron as he read the note.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What's up?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Tea!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo; enquired the Sergeant eagerly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me. I say, you go in my place.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant swore at him frankly and earnestly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right John,&rdquo; said Cameron rather ungraciously.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You come?&rdquo; enquired the Chinaman.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I'll come.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All lite!&rdquo; said John, turning away with his message.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Confound the thing!&rdquo; growled Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh come, you needn't put up any bluff with me, you know,&rdquo; said the
+      Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cameron made no reply. He felt he was not ready for the interview
+      before him. He was distinctly conscious of a feeling of nervous
+      embarrassment, which to a man of experience is disconcerting and annoying.
+      He could not make up his mind as to the attitude which it would be wise
+      and proper for him to assume toward&mdash;ah&mdash;Nurse Haley. Why not
+      resume relations at the point at which they were broken off in the orchard
+      that September afternoon a year and a half ago? Why not? Mandy was
+      apparently greatly changed, greatly improved. Well, he was delighted at
+      the improvement, and he would frankly let her see his pleasure and
+      approval. There was no need for embarrassment. Pshaw! Embarrassment? He
+      felt none.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      And yet as he stood at the door of the nurses' tent he was disquieted to
+      find himself nervously wondering what in thunder he should talk about. As
+      it turned out there was no cause for nervousness on this score. The little
+      nurse and the doctor&mdash;Nurse Haley being on duty&mdash;kept the stream
+      of talk rippling and sparkling in an unbroken flow. Whenever a pause did
+      occur they began afresh with Cameron and his achievements, of which they
+      strove to make him talk. But they ever returned to their own work among
+      the sick and wounded of the camps, and as often as they touched this theme
+      the pivot of their talk became Nurse Haley, till Cameron began to suspect
+      design and became wrathful. They were talking at him and were taking a
+      rise out of him. He would show them their error. He at once became
+      brilliant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In the midst of his scintillation he abruptly paused and sat listening.
+      Through the tent walls came the sound of singing, low-toned, rich,
+      penetrating. He had no need to ask about that voice. In silence they
+      looked at him and at each other.
+    </p>
+<pre xml:space="preserve">
+     &ldquo;We're going home, no more to roam,
+     No more to sin and sorrow,
+     No more to wear the brow of care,
+     We're going home to-morrow.
+
+     &ldquo;We're going home; we're going home;
+     We're going home to-morrow.&rdquo;
+ </pre>
+    <p>
+      Softer and softer grew the music. At last the voice fell silent. Then
+      Nurse Haley appeared, radiant, fresh, and sweet as a clover field with the
+      morning dew upon it, but with a light as of another world upon her face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      With the spell of her voice, of her eyes, of her radiant face upon him,
+      Cameron's scintillation faded and snuffed out. He felt like a boy at his
+      first party and enraged at himself for so feeling. How bright she was, how
+      pure her face under the brown gold hair, how dainty the bloom upon her
+      cheek, and that voice of hers, and the firm lithe body with curving lines
+      of budding womanhood, grace in every curve and movement! The Mandy of old
+      faded from his mind. Have I seen you before? And where? And how long ago?
+      And what's happening to me? With these questions he vexed his soul while
+      he strove to keep track of the conversation between the three.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      A call from the other tent summoned Nurse Haley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me go instead,&rdquo; cried the little nurse eagerly. But, light-footed as
+      a deer, Mandy was already gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      When the tent flap had fallen behind her Cameron pushed back his plate,
+      leaned forward upon the table and, looking the little nurse full in the
+      face, said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, it's no use carrying this on. What have you done to her?&rdquo; And the
+      little nurse laughed her brightest and most joyous laugh.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What has she done to us, you mean.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No. Come now, take pity on a fellow. I left her&mdash;well&mdash;you know
+      what. And now&mdash;how has this been accomplished?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Soul, my boy,&rdquo; said the doctor emphatically, &ldquo;and the hairdresser and&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      But Cameron ignored him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can you tell me?&rdquo; he said to the nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, as a nurse, is she quite impossible?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, spare me,&rdquo; pleaded Cameron. &ldquo;I acknowledge my sin and my folly is
+      before me. But tell me, how was this miracle wrought?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What do you mean exactly? Specify.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, hang it! Well, beginning at the top, there's her hair.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Her hair?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then, her complexion&mdash;her grace of form&mdash;her style&mdash;her
+      manner. Oh, confound it! Her hands&mdash;everything.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the little nurse with deliberation, &ldquo;let's begin at the top.
+      Her hair? A hairdresser explains that. Her complexion? A little treatment,
+      massage, with some help from the doctor. Her hands? Again treatment and
+      release from brutalising work. Her figure? Well, you know, that depends,
+      though we don't acknowledge it always, to a certain extent on&mdash;well&mdash;things&mdash;and
+      how you put them on.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nurse,&rdquo; said the doctor gravely, &ldquo;you're all off. The transformation is
+      from within and is explained, as I have said, by one word&mdash;soul. The
+      soul has been set free, has been allowed to break through. That is all.
+      Why, my dear fellow,&rdquo; continued the doctor with rising enthusiasm, &ldquo;when
+      that girl came to us we were in despair; and for three months she kept us
+      there, pursuing us, hounding us with questions. Never saw anything like
+      it. One telling was enough though. Her eyes were everywhere, her ears open
+      to every hint, but it was her soul, like a bird imprisoned and beating for
+      the open air. The explanation is, as I have said just now, soul&mdash;intense,
+      flaming, unquenchable soul&mdash;and, I must say it, the dressmaker, the
+      hairdresser, and the rest directed by our young friend here,&rdquo; pointing to
+      the little nurse. &ldquo;Why, she had us all on the job. We all became devotees
+      of the Haley Cult.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said the nurse, &ldquo;it was herself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Isn't that what I have been telling you?&rdquo; said the doctor impatiently.
+      &ldquo;Soul&mdash;soul&mdash;soul! A soul somehow on fire.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And with that Cameron had to be content.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Yes, a soul it was, at one time dormant and enwrapped within its coarse
+      integument. Now, touched into life by some divine fire, it had through its
+      own subtle power transformed that coarse integument into its own pure
+      gold. What was that fire? What divine touch had kindled it? And, more
+      important still, was that fire still aglow, or, having done its work, had
+      it for lack of food flickered and died out? With these questions Cameron
+      vexed himself for many days, nor found an answer.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      <a name="link2HCH0025" id="link2HCH0025">
+      <!--  H2 anchor --> </a>
+    </p>
+    <div style="height: 4em;">
+      <br /><br /><br /><br />
+    </div>
+    <h2>
+      CHAPTER IX
+    </h2>
+    <h3>
+      &ldquo;CORPORAL&rdquo; CAMERON
+    </h3>
+    <p>
+      Jack Green did not die. Every morning for a fortnight Constable Cameron
+      felt it to be his duty to make enquiry&mdash;the Sergeant, it may be added&mdash;performing
+      the same duty with equal diligence in the afternoon, and every day the
+      balance, which trembled evenly for some time between hope and fear,
+      continued to dip more and more decidedly toward the former.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He's going to live, I believe,&rdquo; said Dr. Martin one day. &ldquo;And he owes it
+      to the nurse.&rdquo; The doctor's devotion to and admiration for Nurse Haley
+      began to appear to Cameron unnecessarily pronounced. &ldquo;She simply would not
+      let him go!&rdquo; continued the doctor. &ldquo;She nursed him, sang to him her old
+      'Come all ye' songs and Methodist hymns, she spun him barnyard yarns and
+      orchard idyls, and always 'continued in our next,' till the chap simply
+      couldn't croak for wanting to hear the next.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At times Cameron caught through the tent walls snatches of those songs and
+      yarns and idyls, at times he caught momentary glimpses of the bright young
+      girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into the lad fighting for his
+      own, but these snatches and glimpses only exasperated him. There was no
+      opportunity for any lengthened and undisturbed converse, for on the one
+      hand the hospital service was exacting beyond the strength of doctor and
+      nurses, and on the other there was serious trouble for Superintendent
+      Strong and his men in the camps along the line, for a general strike had
+      been declared in all the camps and no one knew at what minute it might
+      flare up into a fierce riot.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was indeed exasperating to Cameron. The relations between himself and
+      Nurse Haley were unsatisfactory, entirely unsatisfactory. It was clearly
+      his duty&mdash;indeed he owed it to her and to himself&mdash;to arrive at
+      some understanding, to establish their relations upon a proper and
+      reasonable basis. He was at very considerable pains to make it clear, not
+      only to the Sergeant, but to the cheerful little nurse and to the doctor
+      as well, that as her oldest friend in the country it was incumbent upon
+      him to exercise a sort of kindly protectorate over Nurse Haley. In this it
+      is to be feared he was only partially successful. The Sergeant was
+      obviously and gloomily incredulous of the purity of his motives, the
+      little nurse arched her eyebrows and smiled in a most annoying manner,
+      while the doctor pendulated between good-humoured tolerance and mild
+      sarcasm. It added not a little to Cameron's mental disquiet that he was
+      quite unable to understand himself; indeed, through these days he was
+      engaged in conducting a bit of psychological research, with his own mind
+      as laboratory and his mental phenomena as the materia for his
+      investigation. It was a most difficult and delicate study and one
+      demanding both leisure and calm&mdash;and Cameron had neither. The brief
+      minutes he could snatch from Her Majesty's service were necessarily given
+      to his friends in the hospital and as to the philosophic calm necessary to
+      research work, a glimpse through the door of Nurse Haley's golden head
+      bending over a sick man's cot, a snatch of song in the deep mellow tones
+      of her voice, a touch of her strong firm hand, a quiet steady look from
+      her deep, deep eyes&mdash;any one of these was sufficient to scatter all
+      his philosophic determinings to the winds and leave his soul a chaos of
+      confused emotions.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Small wonder, then, that twenty times a day he cursed the luck that had
+      transferred him from the comparatively peaceful environment of the Police
+      Post at Fort Macleod to the maddening whirl of conflicting desires and
+      duties attendant upon the Service in the railroad construction camps. A
+      letter from his friend Inspector Dickson accentuated the contrast.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Great doings, my boy,&rdquo; wrote the Inspector, evidently under the spell of
+      overmastering excitement. &ldquo;We have Little Thunder again in the toils, this
+      time to stay, and we owe this capture to your friend Raven. A week ago Mr.
+      Raven coolly walked into the Fort and asked for the Superintendent. I was
+      down at stables at the time. As he was coming out I ran into him and
+      immediately shouted 'Hands up!'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ah, Mr. Inspector,' said my gentleman, as cool as ice, 'delighted to see
+      you again.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Stand where you are!' I said, and knowing my man and determined to take
+      no chances, I ordered two constables to arrest him. At this the
+      Superintendent appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Ah, Inspector,' he said, 'there is evidently some mistake here.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'There is no mistake, Superintendent,' I replied. 'I know this man. He is
+      wanted on a serious charge.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'Kindly step this way, Mr. Raven,' said the Superintendent, 'and you,
+      Inspector. I have something of importance to say to you.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And, by Jove, it was important. Little Thunder had broken his pledge to
+      Raven to quit the rebellion business and had perfected a plan for a
+      simultaneous rising of Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, and Sarcees next month.
+      Raven had stumbled upon this and had deliberately put himself in the power
+      of the Police to bring this information. 'I am not quite prepared,' he
+      said, 'to hand over this country to a lot of bally half-breeds and bloody
+      savages.' Together the Superintendent and he had perfected a plan for the
+      capture of the heads of the conspiracy.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;'As to that little matter of which you were thinking, Inspector Dickson,'
+      said my Chief, 'I think if you remember, we have no definite charge laid
+      against Mr. Raven, who has given us, by the way, very valuable information
+      upon which we must immediately act. We are also to have Mr. Raven's
+      assistance.'
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, we had a glorious hunt, and by Jove, that man Raven is a wonder. He
+      brought us right to the bunch, walked in on them, cool and quiet, pulled
+      two guns and held them till we all got in place. There will be no
+      rebellion among these tribes this year, I am confident.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And though it does not appear in the records it is none the less true that
+      to the influence of Missionary Macdougall among the Stonies and to the
+      vigilance of the North West Mounted Police was it due that during the
+      Rebellion of '85 Canada was spared the unspeakable horrors of an Indian
+      war.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      It was this letter that deepened the shadow upon Cameron's face and
+      sharpened the edge on his voice as he looked in upon his hospital friends
+      one bright winter morning.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are quite unbearable!&rdquo; said the little nurse after she had listened
+      to his grumbling for a few minutes. &ldquo;And you are spoiling us all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Spoiling you all?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, especially me, and&mdash;Nurse Haley.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Nurse Haley?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. You are disturbing her peace of mind.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Disturbing her? Me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      A certain satisfaction crept into Cameron's voice. Nothing is so
+      calculated to restore the poise of the male mind as a consciousness of
+      power to disturb the equilibrium of one of the imperious sex.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And you must not do it!&rdquo; continued the little nurse. &ldquo;She has far too
+      much to bear now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;And haven't I been just telling you that?&rdquo; said Cameron savagely. &ldquo;She
+      never gets off. Night and day she is on the job. I tell you, I won't&mdash;it
+      should not be allowed.&rdquo; Cameron was conscious of a fine glow of fraternal
+      interest in this young girl. &ldquo;For instance, a day like this! Look at these
+      white mountains, and that glorious sky, and this wonderful air, and not a
+      breath of wind! What a day for a walk! It would do her&mdash;it would do
+      you all a world of good.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Wait!&rdquo; cried the little nurse, who had been on duty all night. &ldquo;I'll tell
+      her what you say.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Apparently it took some telling, for it was a full precious quarter of an
+      hour before they appeared again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There, now, you see the effect of your authority. She would not budge for
+      me, but&mdash;well&mdash;there she is! Look at her!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was no need for this injunction. Cameron's eyes were already
+      fastened upon her. And she was worth any man's while to look at in her
+      tramping costume of toque and blanket coat. Tall, she looked, beside the
+      little nurse, lithe and strong, her close-fitting Hudson Bay blanket coat
+      revealing the swelling lines of her budding womanhood. The dainty white
+      toque perched upon the masses of gold-brown hair accentuated the girlish
+      freshness of her face. At the nurse's words she turned her eyes upon
+      Cameron and upon her face, pale with long night watches, a faint red
+      appeared. But her eyes were quiet and steady and kind; too quiet and too
+      kind for Cameron, who was looking for other signals. There was no sign of
+      disturbance in that face.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on!&rdquo; he said impatiently. &ldquo;We have only one hour.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what a glorious day!&rdquo; cried Nurse Haley, drawing a deep breath and
+      striding out like a man to keep pace with Cameron. &ldquo;And how good of you to
+      spare me the time!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I have been trying to get you alone for the last two weeks,&rdquo; said
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Two weeks?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, for a month! I wanted to talk to you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;To talk with me? About what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;About&mdash;well&mdash;about everything&mdash;about yourself.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Me?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes. I don't understand you. You have changed so tremendously.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; exclaimed the girl, &ldquo;I am so glad you have noticed that! Have I
+      changed much?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Much? I should say so! I find myself wondering if you are the Mandy I
+      used to know at all.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; she exclaimed, &ldquo;I am so glad! You see, I needed to change so much.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But how has it happened?&rdquo; exclaimed Cameron. &ldquo;It is a miracle to me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;How a miracle?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a few moments they walked on in silence, the tote road leading them
+      into the forest. After a time the nurse said softly,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It was you who began it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you&mdash;and then the nurse. Oh, I can never repay her! The day
+      that you left&mdash;that was a dreadful day. The world was all black. I
+      could not have lived, I think, many days like that. I had to go into town
+      and I couldn't help going to her. Oh, how good she was to me that day! how
+      good! She understood, she understood at once. She made me come for a week
+      to her, and then for altogether. That was the beginning; then I began to
+      see how foolish I had been.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Foolish?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, wildly foolish! I was like a mad thing, but I did not know then, and
+      I could not help it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Help what?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, everything! But the nurse showed me&mdash;she showed me&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showed you?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Showed me how to take care of myself&mdash;to take care of my body&mdash;of
+      my dress&mdash;of my hair. Oh, I remember well,&rdquo; she said with a bright
+      little laugh, &ldquo;I remember that hair-dresser. Then the doctor came and gave
+      me books and made me read and study&mdash;and then I began to see. Oh, it
+      was like a fire&mdash;a burning fire within me. And the doctor was good to
+      me, so very patient, till I began to love my profession; to love it at
+      first for myself, and then for others. How good they all were to me those
+      days!&mdash;the nurses in the hospital, the doctors, the students&mdash;everyone
+      seemed to be kind; but above them all my own nurse here and my own
+      doctor.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In hurried eager speech she poured forth her heart as if anxious to finish
+      her tale&mdash;her voice, her eyes, her face all eloquent of the intense
+      emotion that filled her soul.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is wonderful!&rdquo; said Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she replied, &ldquo;wonderful indeed! And I wanted to see you and have
+      you see me,&rdquo; she continued, still hurrying her speech, &ldquo;for I could not
+      bear that you should remember me as I was those dreadful days; and I am so
+      glad that you&mdash;you&mdash;are pleased!&rdquo; The appeal in her voice and in
+      her eyes roused in Cameron an overwhelming tide of passion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Pleased!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Pleased! Great Heavens, Mandy! You are wonderful!
+      Don't you know that?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; she said thoughtfully; &ldquo;but,&rdquo; she drew a long breath, &ldquo;I like to
+      hear you say it. That is all I want. You see I owe it all to you.&rdquo; The
+      face she turned to him so innocently happy might have been a child's.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mandy,&rdquo; cried Cameron, stopping short in his walk, &ldquo;you&mdash;I&mdash;!&rdquo;
+       That frank childlike look in her eyes checked his hot words. But there was
+      no need for words; his eyes spoke for his faltering lips. A look of fear
+      leaped to her eyes, a flow of red blood to her cheeks; then she stood,
+      white, trembling and silent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I am tired, I think,&rdquo; she said after a moment's silence, &ldquo;we will go
+      back.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, you are tired,&rdquo; said Cameron angrily. &ldquo;You are tired to death.
+      Mandy, you need some one to take care of you. I wish you would let me.&rdquo;
+       They were now walking back toward the town.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;They are all good to me; they are all kind to me.&rdquo; Her voice was quiet
+      and steady. She had gained control of herself again. &ldquo;Why, even John the
+      Chinaman,&rdquo; she added with a laugh, &ldquo;spoils me. Oh, no harm can come to me&mdash;I
+      have no fear!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;I&mdash;I want to take care of you, Mandy. I want
+      the right to take care of you, always.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I know, I know,&rdquo; she said kindly. &ldquo;You are so good; you were always so
+      good; but I need no one.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron glanced at the lithe, strong, upright figure striding along beside
+      him with easy grace; and the truth came to him in swift and painful
+      revelation.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; he said as if to himself. &ldquo;You need no one, and you don't
+      need me.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But,&rdquo; she cried eagerly, &ldquo;it was good of you all the same.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good!&rdquo; he said impatiently. &ldquo;Good! Nonsense! I tell you, Mandy, I want
+      you, I want you. Do you understand? I want to marry you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, don't say that!&rdquo; she cried, stopping short, her voice disturbed, but
+      kindly, gentle and strong. &ldquo;Don't say that,&rdquo; she repeated, &ldquo;for, of
+      course, that is impossible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Impossible!&rdquo; he exclaimed angrily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said, her voice still quiet and steady, &ldquo;quite impossible. But
+      I love you for saying it, oh&mdash;,&rdquo; she suddenly caught her breath. &ldquo;Oh,
+      I love you for saying it.&rdquo; Then pointing up the road she cried, &ldquo;Look!
+      Some one for you, I am sure.&rdquo; A horseman was galloping swiftly towards
+      them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh hang it all!&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;What the deuce does he want now?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We must talk this out again, Mandy,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, no!&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;never again. Please don't, ever again; I could not
+      bear it. But I shall always remember, and&mdash;I am so glad.&rdquo; As she
+      spoke, her hands, with her old motion, went to her heart.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh the deuce take it!&rdquo; said Cameron as the Sergeant flung his horse back
+      on his heels at their side. &ldquo;What does he want?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Constable Cameron,&rdquo; said the Sergeant in a voice of sharp command,
+      &ldquo;there's a row on. Constable Scott has been very badly handled in trying
+      to make an arrest. You are to report at once for duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Sir,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;I shall return immediately.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The Sergeant wheeled and was gone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You must go!&rdquo; cried Mandy, quick fear springing into her eyes.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cameron, &ldquo;at once. Come, I shall take you home.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, never mind me!&rdquo; she cried. &ldquo;Go! Go! I can take care of myself. I
+      shall follow.&rdquo; Her voice rang out strong and clear; she was herself once
+      more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You are the right sort, Mandy,&rdquo; cried Cameron, taking her hand. &ldquo;Good
+      bye!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good bye!&rdquo; she replied, her face suddenly pale and her lips beginning to
+      quiver. &ldquo;I shall always remember&mdash;I&mdash;shall&mdash;always be glad
+      for&mdash;what you said today.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron stood looking at her for a moment somewhat uncertainly, then,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Good bye!&rdquo; he said abruptly, and, turning, went at the double towards his
+      quarters.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The strikers had indeed broken loose, supported by the ruffianly horde of
+      camp followers who were egging them on to violence and destruction of
+      property. At present they were wild with triumph over the fact that they
+      had rescued one of their leaders, big Joe Coyle, from Constable Scott. It
+      was an exceedingly dangerous situation, for the riot might easily spread
+      from camp to camp. Bruised and bloody, Constable Scott reported to
+      Superintendent Strong lying upon his sick bed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Sergeant,&rdquo; said the Superintendent, &ldquo;take Constables Cameron and Scott,
+      arrest that man at once and bring him here!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      In the village they found between eight hundred and a thousand men, many
+      of them crazed with bad whiskey, some armed with knives and some with
+      guns, and all ready for blood. Big Joe Coyle they found in the saloon.
+      Pushing his way through, the Sergeant seized his man by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come along, I want you!&rdquo; he said, dragging him to the open door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shut that there door, Hep!&rdquo; drawled a man with a goatee and a moustache
+      dyed glossy black.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right, Bill!&rdquo; shouted the man called Hep, springing to the door; but
+      before he could make it Cameron had him by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hold on, Hep!&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;not so fast.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer Hep struck hard at him and the crowd of men threw themselves at
+      Cameron and between him and the door. Constable Scott, who also had his
+      hand upon the prisoner, drew his revolver and looked towards the Sergeant
+      who was struggling in the grasp of three or four ruffians.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No!&rdquo; shouted the Sergeant above the uproar. &ldquo;Don't shoot&mdash;we have no
+      orders! Let him go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; he said savagely, giving his prisoner a final shake. &ldquo;We will
+      come back for you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a loud chorus of derisive cheers. The crowd opened and allowed
+      the Sergeant and constables to pass out. Taking his place at the saloon
+      door with Constable Scott, the Sergeant sent Cameron to report and ask for
+      further orders.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ask if we have orders to shoot,&rdquo; said the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron found the Superintendent hardly able to lift his head and made his
+      report.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The saloon is filled with men who oppose the arrest, Sir. What are your
+      orders?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;My orders are, Bring that man here, and at once!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Have we instructions to shoot?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Shoot!&rdquo; cried the Superintendent, lifting himself on his elbow. &ldquo;Bring
+      that man if you have to shoot every man in the saloon!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Very well, Sir, we will bring him,&rdquo; said Cameron, departing on a run.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door of the saloon he found the Sergeant and Constable white hot
+      under the jeers and taunts of the half drunken gang gathered about them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;What are the orders, Constable Cameron?&rdquo; enquired the Sergeant in a loud
+      voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The orders are, Shoot every man in the saloon if necessary!&rdquo; shouted
+      Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Revolvers!&rdquo; commanded the Sergeant. &ldquo;Constable Cameron, hold the door!
+      Constable Scott, follow me!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the door stood the man named Hep, evidently keeping guard.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Want in?&rdquo; he said with a grin.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      For answer, Cameron gripped his collar, with one fierce jerk lifted him
+      clear out of the door to the platform, and then, putting his body into it,
+      heaved him with a mighty swing far into the crowd below, bringing two or
+      three men to the ground with the impact of his body.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here, man!&rdquo; cried Cameron again, seizing a second man who stood near
+      the door and flinging him clear off the platform after the unlucky Hep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Speedily the crowd about the door gave back, and before they were aware
+      the Sergeant and Constable Scott appeared with big Joe Coyle between them.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take him!&rdquo; said the Sergeant to Cameron.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Cameron seized him by the collar.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come here!&rdquo; he said, and, clearing the platform in a spring, he brought
+      his prisoner in a heap with him. &ldquo;Get up!&rdquo; he roared at him, jerking him
+      to his feet as if he had been a child.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let him go!&rdquo; shouted the man with the goatee, named Bill, rushing up.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Take that, then,&rdquo; said Cameron, giving him a swift half-arm jab on the
+      jaw, &ldquo;and I'll come back for you again,&rdquo; he added, as the man fell back
+      into the arms of his friends.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forward!&rdquo; said the Sergeant, falling in with Constable Scott behind
+      Cameron and facing the crowd with drawn revolvers. The swift fierceness of
+      the attack seemed to paralyse the senses of the crowd.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, boys!&rdquo; yelled the goatee man, bloody and savage with Cameron's
+      blow. &ldquo;Don't let the blank blank blank rattle you like a lot of blank
+      blank chickens. Come on!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At once rose a roar from eight hundred throats like nothing human in its
+      sound, and the crowd began to press close upon the Police. But the
+      revolvers had an ugly appearance to those in front looking into their
+      little black throats.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Aw, come on!&rdquo; yelled a man half drunk, running with a lurch upon the
+      Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Crack!&rdquo; went the Sergeant's revolver, and the man dropped with a bullet
+      through his shoulder.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Next man,&rdquo; shouted the Sergeant, &ldquo;I shall kill!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd gave back and gathered round the wounded man. A stream lay in
+      the path of the Police, crossed by a little bridge.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry!&rdquo; said the Sergeant, &ldquo;let's make the bridge before they come
+      again.&rdquo; But before they could make the bridge the crowd had recovered from
+      their momentary panic and, with wild oaths and yells and brandishing
+      knives and guns, came on with a rush, led by goatee Bill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Already the prisoner was half way across the bridge, the Sergeant and the
+      constable guarding the entrance, when above the din was heard a roar as of
+      some animal enraged. Looking beyond the Police the crowd beheld a fearsome
+      sight. It was the Superintendent himself, hatless, and with uniform in
+      disarray, a sword in one hand, a revolver in the other. Across the bridge
+      he came like a tornado and, standing at the entrance, roared,
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Listen to me, you dogs! The first man who sets foot on this bridge I
+      shall shoot dead, so help me God!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      His towering form, his ferocious appearance and his well-known reputation
+      for utter fearlessness made the crowd pause and, before they could make up
+      their minds to attack that resolute little company headed by their dread
+      commander, the prisoner was safe over the bridge and well up the hill
+      toward the guard room. Half way up the hill the Superintendent met Cameron
+      returning from the disposition of his prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;There's another man down there, Sir, needs looking after,&rdquo; he said.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Better let them cool off, Cameron,&rdquo; said the Superintendent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I promised I'd go for him, Sir,&rdquo; said Cameron, his face all ablaze for
+      battle.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then go for him,&rdquo; said the Superintendent. &ldquo;Let a couple of you go along&mdash;but
+      I am done&mdash;just now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;We will see you up the hill, Sir,&rdquo; said the Sergeant.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come on, Scott!&rdquo; said Cameron, setting off for the village once more.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The crowd had returned from the bridge and the leaders had already sought
+      their favourite resort, the saloon. Straight to the door marched Cameron,
+      followed by Scott. Close to the counter stood goatee Bill, loudly orating,
+      and violently urging the breaking in of the guard room and the release of
+      the prisoner.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;In my country,&rdquo; he yelled, &ldquo;we'd have that feller out in about six
+      minutes in spite of all the blank blank Police in this blank country. THEY
+      ain't no good. They're scairt to death.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At this point Cameron walked in upon him and laid a compelling grip upon
+      his collar. Instantly Bill reached for his gun, but Cameron, swiftly
+      shifting his grip to his arm, wrenched him sharply about and struck him
+      one blow on the ear. As if held by a hinge, the head fell over on one side
+      and the man slithered to the floor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Out of the way!&rdquo; shouted Cameron, dragging his man with him, but just as
+      he reached the door a heavy glass came singing through the air and caught
+      him on the head. For a moment he staggered, caught hold of the lintel and
+      held himself steady.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Here, Scott,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;put the bracelets on him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With revolver drawn Constable Scott sprang to his side.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come out!&rdquo; he said to the goatee man, slipping the handcuffs over his
+      wrists, while Cameron, still clinging to the lintel, was fighting back the
+      faintness that was overpowering him. Seeing his plight, Hep sprang toward
+      him, eager for revenge, but Cameron covering him with his gun held him in
+      check and, with a supreme effort getting command of himself, again stepped
+      towards Hep.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Now, then,&rdquo; he said between his clenched teeth, &ldquo;will you come?&rdquo; So
+      terrible were his voice and look that Hep's courage wilted.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I'll come, Colonel, I'll come,&rdquo; he said quickly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come then,&rdquo; said Cameron, reaching for him and bringing him forward with
+      a savage jerk.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      In three minutes from the time the attack was made both men, thoroughly
+      subdued and handcuffed, were marched off in charge of the constables.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hurry, Scott,&rdquo; said Cameron in a low voice to his comrade. &ldquo;I am nearly
+      in.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      With all possible speed they hustled their prisoners along over the bridge
+      and up the hill. At the hospital door, as they passed, Dr. Martin
+      appeared.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Cameron!&rdquo; he cried. &ldquo;Got him, eh? Great Caesar, man, what's up?&rdquo;
+       he added as Cameron, turning his head, revealed a face and neck bathed in
+      blood. &ldquo;You are white as a ghost.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Get me a drink, old chap. I am nearly in,&rdquo; said Cameron in a faint voice.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come into my tent here,&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Got to see these prisoners safe first,&rdquo; said Cameron, swaying on his
+      feet.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, you idiot!&rdquo; cried the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go in, Cameron,&rdquo; said Constable Scott. &ldquo;I'll take care of 'em all right,&rdquo;
+       he added, drawing his gun.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Cameron, still with his hand on goatee Bill's collar. &ldquo;I'll see
+      them safe first,&rdquo; saying which he swayed drunkenly about and, but for
+      Bill's support, would have fallen.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on!&rdquo; said Bill good-naturedly. &ldquo;Don't mind me. I'm good now.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come!&rdquo; said the doctor, supporting him into the tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Forward!&rdquo; commanded Constable Scott, and marched his prisoners before him
+      up the hill.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The wound on Cameron's head was a ghastly affair, full six inches long,
+      and went to the bone.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Rather ugly,&rdquo; said the doctor, feeling round the wound. &ldquo;Nurse!&rdquo; he
+      called. &ldquo;Nurse!&rdquo; The little nurse came running in. &ldquo;Some water and a
+      sponge!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      There was a cry behind her&mdash;low, long, pitiful.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, what is this?&rdquo; With a swift movement Nurse Haley was beside the
+      doctor's bed. Cameron, who had been lying with his eyes closed and was
+      ghastly white from loss of blood, opened his eyes and smiled up into the
+      face above him.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I feel fine&mdash;now,&rdquo; he said and closed his eyes again.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Let me do that,&rdquo; said Nurse Haley with a kind of jealous fierceness,
+      taking the sponge and basin from the little nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Examination revealed nothing more serious, however, than a deep scalp
+      wound and a slight concussion.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He will be fit enough in a couple of days,&rdquo; said the doctor when the
+      wound was dressed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      Then, pale and haggard as if with long watching, Nurse Haley went to her
+      room there to fight out her lonely fight while Cameron slept.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The day passed in quiet, the little nurse on guard, and the doctor looking
+      in every half hour upon his patient. As evening fell Cameron woke and
+      demanded Nurse Haley. The doctor felt his pulse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Send her in!&rdquo; he said and left the tent.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      The rays of the sun setting far down the Pass shone through the walls and
+      filled the tent with a soft radiance. Into this radiance she came, her
+      face pale as of one who has come through conflict, and serene as of one
+      who has conquered, pale and strong and alight, not with the radiance of
+      the setting sun, but with light of a soul that has made the ancient
+      sacrifice of self-effacing love.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want me?&rdquo; she said, her voice low and sweet, but for all her brave
+      serenity tremulous.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; said Cameron, holding out his arms. &ldquo;I want you; I want YOU,
+      Mandy.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; cried the girl, while her hands fluttered to her heart, &ldquo;don't ask
+      me to go through it again. I am so weak.&rdquo; She stood like a frightened bird
+      poised for flight.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;I want you.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You want me? You said you wanted to take care of me,&rdquo; she breathed.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I was a fool, Mandy; a conceited fool! Now I know what I want&mdash;I
+      want&mdash;just YOU. Come.&rdquo; Again he lifted his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, it cannot be,&rdquo; she breathed as if to herself. &ldquo;Are you sure&mdash;sure?
+      I could not bear it if you were not sure.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come, dear love,&rdquo; he cried, &ldquo;with all my heart and soul and body I want
+      you&mdash;I want only YOU.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      For a single moment longer she stood, her soul searching his through her
+      wonderful eyes. Then with a little sigh she sank into his arms.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Oh, my darling,&rdquo; she whispered, wreathing her strong young arms around
+      his neck and laying her cheek close to his, &ldquo;my darling, I thought I had
+      given you up, but how could I have done it?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      At the hospital door the doctor was on guard. A massive figure loomed in
+      the doorway.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Hello, Superintendent Strong, what on earth are you doing out of bed?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Where is he?&rdquo; said the Superintendent abruptly.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Who?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corporal Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;CORPORAL Cameron? Constable Cameron is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corporal Cameron, I said. I have just had Constable Scott's report and
+      felt I must see him at once.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Come in, Superintendent! Sit down! I shall enquire if he is resting.
+      Nurse! Nurse! Enquire if Corporal Cameron can be seen.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      The little nurse tip-toed into the doctor's tent, lifted the curtain, took
+      one glance and drew swiftly back. This is what her eyes looked upon. A
+      girl's form kneeling by the bed, golden hair mingling with black upon the
+      pillow, two strong arms holding her close and hers wreathed in answering
+      embrace.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Mr. Cameron I am afraid,&rdquo; she reported, &ldquo;cannot be seen. He is&mdash;I
+      think&mdash;he is&mdash;engaged.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah!&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said the Superintendent, &ldquo;just tell Corporal Cameron for me that I
+      am particularly well pleased with his bearing to-day, and that I hope he
+      will be very soon fit for duty.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Certainly, Superintendent. Now let me help you up the hill.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Never mind, here's the Sergeant. Good evening! Very fine thing! Very fine
+      thing indeed! I see rapid promotion in his profession for that young man.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Inspector, eh?&rdquo; said the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, Sir, I should without hesitation recommend him and should be only
+      too pleased to have him as Inspector in my command.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      It was not, however, as Inspector that Corporal Cameron served under the
+      gallant Superintendent, but in another equally honourable capacity did
+      they ride away together one bright April morning a few weeks later, on
+      duty for their Queen and country. But that is another story.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;That message ought to be delivered, nurse,&rdquo; said the doctor thoughtfully.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;But not at once,&rdquo; replied the nurse.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;It is important,&rdquo; urged the doctor.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, but&mdash;there are other things.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah! Other things?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, equally&mdash;pressing,&rdquo; said the nurse with an undeniably joyous
+      laugh. The doctor looked at her a moment.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Ah, nurse,&rdquo; he said in a shocked tone, &ldquo;how often have I deprecated your
+      tendency to&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;I don't care one bit!&rdquo; laughed the nurse saucily.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The message ought to be delivered,&rdquo; insisted the doctor firmly as he
+      moved toward the tent door.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Well, deliver it then. But wait!&rdquo; The little nurse ran in before him and
+      called &ldquo;Nu-u-u-r-s-e Ha-l-ey!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;All right!&rdquo; called Cameron from the inside. &ldquo;Come in!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Go on then,&rdquo; said the little nurse to the doctor, &ldquo;you wanted to.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;A message from the Superintendent,&rdquo; said the doctor, lifting the curtain
+      and passing in.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Don't move, Mandy,&rdquo; said Cameron. &ldquo;Never mind him.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;No, don't, I beg,&rdquo; said the doctor, ignoring what he saw. &ldquo;A message, an
+      urgent message for&mdash;Corporal Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;CORPORAL Cameron?&rdquo; echoed Nurse Haley.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He distinctly said and repeated it&mdash;Corporal Cameron. And the
+      Corporal is to report for duty as speedily as possible.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;He can't go,&rdquo; said Mandy, standing up very straight with a light in her
+      eyes that the doctor had not seen since that tragic night nearly two years
+      before.
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Can't, eh?&rdquo; said the doctor. &ldquo;But the Superintendent says Corporal
+      Cameron is&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Corporal Cameron can't go!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;You&mdash;&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, I forbid it.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;The Corporal is&mdash;?&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; she said proudly, &ldquo;the Corporal is mine.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Then,&rdquo; said the doctor emphatically, &ldquo;of all the lucky chaps it has been
+      my fortune to meet, by all the gods the luckiest of them is this same
+      Corporal Cameron!&rdquo;
+     </p>
+    <p>
+      And Cameron, drawing down to him again the girl standing so straight and
+      proud beside him, looked up at his friend and said:
+    </p>
+    <p>
+      &ldquo;Yes, old chap, the luckiest man in all the world is that same Corporal
+      Cameron.&rdquo;
+     </p>
+
+<div style='display:block;margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL CAMERON ***</div>
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #3241 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3241)
diff --git a/old/3241.txt b/old/3241.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Corporal Cameron, by Ralph Connor
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Corporal Cameron
+
+Author: Ralph Connor
+
+Release Date: May 30, 2006 [EBook #3241]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CORPORAL CAMERON ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Donald Lainson
+
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL CAMERON OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE
+
+A TALE OF THE MACLEOD TRAIL
+
+
+By Ralph Connor
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+I     THE QUITTER
+
+II    THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+
+III   THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+
+IV    A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+
+V     A LADY AND THE LAW
+
+VI    THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+
+VII   FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+
+VIII  WILL HE COME BACK?
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+I     HO FOR THE OPEN!
+
+II    A MAN'S JOB
+
+III   A DAY'S WORK
+
+IV    A RAINY DAY
+
+V     HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+
+VI    A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+
+VII   THE CHIVAREE
+
+VIII  IN APPLE TIME
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+I     THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+
+II    ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+
+III   THE STONIES
+
+IV    THE DULL RED STAIN
+
+V     SERGEANT CRISP
+
+VI    A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+
+VII   THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+
+VIII  NURSE HALEY
+
+IX    "CORPORAL" CAMERON
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL CAMERON
+
+
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE QUITTER
+
+
+"Oh-h-h-h, Cam-er-on!" Agony, reproach, entreaty, vibrated in the clear
+young voice that rang out over the Inverleith grounds. The Scottish
+line was sagging!--that line invincible in two years of International
+conflict, the line upon which Ireland and England had broken their
+pride. Sagging! And because Cameron was weakening! Cameron, the
+brilliant half-back, the fierce-fighting, erratic young Highlander,
+disciplined, steadied by the great Dunn into an instrument of Scotland's
+glory! Cameron going back! A hush fell on the thronged seats and packed
+inner-circle,--a breathless, dreadful hush of foreboding. High over the
+hushed silence that vibrant cry rang; and Cameron heard it. The voice he
+knew. It was young Rob Dunn's, the captain's young brother, whose soul
+knew but two passions, one for the captain and one for the half-back of
+the Scottish International.
+
+And Cameron responded. The enemy's next high punt found him rock-like
+in steadiness. And rock-like he tossed high over his shoulders the
+tow-headed Welshman rushing joyously at him, and delivered his ball far
+down the line safe into touch. But after his kick he was observed to
+limp back into his place. The fierce pace of the Welsh forwards was
+drinking the life of the Scottish backline.
+
+An hour; then a half; then another half, without a score. And now the
+final quarter was searching, searching the weak spots in their line. The
+final quarter it is that finds a man's history and habits; the clean of
+blood and of life defy its pitiless probe, but the rotten fibre yields
+and snaps. That momentary weakness of Cameron's like a subtle poison
+runs through the Scottish line; and like fluid lightning through the
+Welsh. It is the touch upon the trembling balance. With cries exultant
+with triumph, the Welsh forwards fling themselves upon the steady Scots
+now fighting for life rather than for victory. And under their captain's
+directions these fierce, victory-sniffing Welsh are delivering their
+attack upon the spot where he fancies he has found a yielding. In vain
+Cameron rallies his powers; his nerve is failing him, his strength is
+done. Only five minutes to play, but one minute is enough. Down upon
+him through a broken field, dribbling the ball and following hard like
+hounds on a hare, come the Welsh, the tow-head raging in front, bloody
+and fearsome. There is but one thing for Cameron to do; grip that
+tumbling ball, and, committing body and soul to fate, plunge into
+that line. Alas, his doom is upon him! He grips the ball, pauses a
+moment--only a fatal moment,--but it is enough. His plunge is too late.
+He loses the ball. A surge of Welshmen overwhelm him in the mud and
+carry the ball across. The game is won--and lost. What though the Scots,
+like demons suddenly released from hell, the half-back Cameron most
+demon-like of all, rage over the field, driving the Welshmen hither and
+thither at will, the gods deny them victory; it is for Wales that day!
+
+In the retreat of their rubbing-room the gay, gallant humour which the
+Scots have carried with them off the field of their defeat, vanishes
+into gloom. Through the steaming silence a groan breaks now and then. At
+length a voice:
+
+"Oh, wasn't it rotten! The rank quitter that he is!"
+
+"Quitter? Who is? Who says so?" It was the captain's voice, sharp with
+passion.
+
+"I do, Dunn. It was Cameron lost us the game. You know it, too. I know
+it's rotten to say this, but I can't help it. Cameron lost the game, and
+I say he's a rank 'quitter,' as Martin would say."
+
+"Look here, Nesbitt," the captain's voice was quiet, but every man
+paused in his rubbing. "I know how sore you are and I forgive you that;
+but I don't want to hear from you or from any man on the team that word
+again. Cameron is no quitter; he made--he made an error,--he wasn't
+fit,--but I say to you Cameron is no quitter."
+
+While he was speaking the door opened and into the room came a player,
+tall, lanky, with a pale, gaunt face, plastered over the forehead with
+damp wisps of straight, black hair. His deep-set, blue-grey eyes swept
+the room.
+
+"Thanks, Dunn," he said hoarsely. "Let them curse me! I deserve it all.
+It's tough for them, but God knows I've got the worst of it. I've played
+my last game." His voice broke huskily.
+
+"Oh, rot it, Cameron," cried Dunn. "Don't be an ass! Your first big
+game--every fellow makes his mistake--"
+
+"Mistake! Mistake! You can't lie easily, Dunn. I was a fool and worse
+than a fool. I let myself down and I wasn't fit. Anyway, I'm through
+with it." His voice was wild and punctuated with unaccustomed oaths; his
+breath came in great sobs.
+
+"Oh, rot it, Cameron!" again cried Dunn. "Next year you'll be twice the
+man. You're just getting into your game."
+
+Right loyally his men rallied to their captain:
+
+"Right you are!"
+
+"Why, certainly; no man gets into the game first year!"
+
+"We'll give 'em beans next year, Cameron, old man!"
+
+They were all eager to atone for the criticism which all had held in
+their hearts and which one of them had spoken. But this business was
+serious. To lose a game was bad enough, but to round on a comrade was
+unpardonable; while to lose from the game a half-back of Cameron's
+calibre was unthinkable.
+
+Meanwhile Cameron was tearing off his football togs and hustling on his
+clothes with fierce haste. Dunn kept his eye on him, hurrying his own
+dressing and chatting quietly the while. But long before he was ready
+for the street, Cameron had crushed his things into a bag and was
+looking for his hat.
+
+"Hold on! I'm with you; I'm with you in a jiffy," said Dunn.
+
+"My hat," muttered Cameron, searching wildly among the jumble.
+
+"Oh, hang the hat; let it go! Wait for me, Cameron. Where are you
+going?" cried Dunn.
+
+"To the devil," cried the lad, slamming the door behind him.
+
+"And, by Jove, he'll go, too!" said Nesbitt. "Say, I'm awfully sorry I
+made that break, Dunn. It was beastly low-down to round on a chap like
+that. I'll go after him."
+
+"Do, old chap! He's frightfully cut up. And get him for to-night. He
+may fight shy of the dinner. But he's down for the pipes, you know,
+and--well, he's just got to be there. Good-bye, you chaps; I'm off!
+And--I say, men!" When Dunn said "men" they all knew it was their
+captain that was speaking. Everybody stood listening. Dunn hesitated a
+moment or two, as if searching for words. "About the dinner to-night:
+I'd like you to remember--I mean--I don't want any man to--oh, hang it,
+you know what I mean! There will be lots of fellows there who will want
+to fill you up. I'd hate to see any of our team--" The captain paused
+embarrassed.
+
+"We tumble, Captain," said Martin, a medical student from Canada, who
+played quarter. "I'll keep an eye on 'em, you bet!"
+
+Everybody roared; for not only on the quarter-line but also at the
+dinner table the little quarter-back was a marvel of endurance.
+
+"Hear the blooming Colonist!" said Linklater, Martin's comrade on
+the quarter-line, and his greatest friend. "We know who'll want the
+watching, but we'll see to him, Captain."
+
+"All right, old chap! Sorry I'll have to cut the van. I'm afraid my
+governor's got the carriage here for me."
+
+But the men all made outcry. There were other plans for him.
+
+"But, Captain; hold on!"
+
+"Aw, now, Captain! Don't forsake us!"
+
+"But I say, Dunn, see us through; we're shy!"
+
+"Don't leave us, Captain, or you'll be sorry," sang out Martin. "Come
+on, fellows, let's keep next him! We'll give him 'Old Grimes!'"
+
+Already a mighty roar was heard outside. The green, the drive, the
+gateways, and the street were blocked with the wildest football fanatics
+that Edinburgh, and all Scotland could produce. They were waiting for
+the International players, and were bent on carrying their great captain
+down the street, shoulder high; for the enthusiasm of the Scot reaches
+the point of madness only in the hour of glorious defeat. But before
+they were aware, Dunn had shouldered his mighty form through the
+opposing crowds and had got safely into the carriage beside his father
+and his young brother. But the crowd were bound to have him.
+
+"We want him, Docthor," said a young giant in a tam-o'-shanter. "In
+fac', Docthor," he argued with a humourous smile, "we maun hae him."
+
+"Ye'll no' get him, Jock Murchison," shouted young Rob, standing in
+front of his big brother. "We want him wi' us."
+
+The crowd laughed gleefully.
+
+"Go for him, Jock! You can easy lick him," said a voice encouragingly.
+
+"Pit him oot, Docthor," said Jock, who was a great friend of the family,
+and who had a profound respect for the doctor.
+
+"It's beyond me, Jock, I fear. See yon bantam cock! I doubt ye'll hae to
+be content," said the doctor, dropping into Jock's kindly Doric.
+
+"Oh, get on there, Murchison," said Dunn impatiently. "You're not going
+to make an ass of me; make up your mind to that!"
+
+Jock hesitated, meditating a sudden charge, but checked by his respect
+for Doctor Dunn.
+
+"Here, you fellows!" shouted a voice. "Fall in; the band is going to
+play! Get into line there, you Tam-o'-shanter; you're stopping the
+procesh! Now then, wait for the line, everybody!" It was Little Martin
+on top of the van in which were the Scottish players. "Tune, 'Old
+Grimes'; words as follows. Catch on, everybody!"
+
+          "Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+           Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn."
+
+With a delighted cheer the crowd formed in line, and, led by the little
+quarter-back on top of the van, they set off down the street, two men at
+the heads of the doctor's carriage horses, holding them in place behind
+the van. On went the swaying crowd and on went the swaying chant, with
+Martin, director of ceremonies and Dunn hurling unavailing objurgations
+and entreaties at Jock's head.
+
+Through the uproar a girl's voice reached the doctor's ear:
+
+"Aren't they lovely, Sir?"
+
+The doctor turned to greet a young lady, tall, strong, and with the
+beauty of perfect health rather than of classic feature in her face.
+There was withal a careless disregard of the feminine niceties of dress.
+
+"Oh, Miss Brodie! Will you not come up? We can easily make room."
+
+"I'd just love to," cried the girl, "but I'm only a humble member of the
+procession, following the band and the chariot wheels of the conqueror."
+Her strong brown face was all aglow with ardour.
+
+"Conqueror!" growled Dunn. "Not much of a conqueror!"
+
+"Why not? Oh fudge! The game? What matters the game? It's the play we
+care about."
+
+"Well spoken, lassie," said the doctor. "That's the true sport."
+
+"Aren't they awful?" cried Dunn. "Look at that young Canadian idiot up
+there."
+
+"Well, if you ask me, I think he's a perfect dear," said Miss Brodie,
+deliberately. "I'm sure I know him; anyway I'm going to encourage him
+with my approval." And she waved her hand at Martin.
+
+The master of ceremonies responded by taking off his hat and making a
+sweeping bow, still keeping up the beat. The crowd, following his eyes,
+turned their attention to the young lady, much to Dunn's delight.
+
+"Oh," she gasped, "they'll be chanting me next! Good-bye! I'm off!" And
+she darted back to the company of her friends marching on the pavement.
+
+At this point Martin held up both arms and called for silence.
+
+"Second verse," he shouted, "second verse! Get the words now!"
+
+          "Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done,
+           Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done."
+
+But the crowd rejected the Colonial version, and rendered in their own
+good Doric:
+
+          "Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done,
+           Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+             Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done."
+
+And so they sang and swayed, following the van till they neared Queen
+Street, down which lay the doctor's course.
+
+"For heaven's sake, can't they be choked off?" groaned Dunn.
+
+The doctor signalled Jock to him.
+
+"Jock," he said, "we'll just slip through at Queen Street."
+
+"We'd like awfully to do Princes Street, Sir," pleaded Jock.
+
+"Princes Street, you born ass!" cried Dunn wrathfully.
+
+"Oh, yes, let them!" cried young Rob, whose delight in the glory of
+his hero had been beyond all measure. "Let them do Princes Street, just
+once!"
+
+But the doctor would not have it. "Jock," he said quietly, "just get us
+through at Queen Street."
+
+"All right, Sir," replied Jock with great regret. "It will be as you
+say."
+
+Under Jock's orders, when Queen Street was reached, the men at the
+horses' heads suddenly swung the pair from the crowd, and after some
+struggling, got them safely into the clear space, leaving the procession
+to follow the van, loudly cheering their great International captain,
+whose prowess on the field was equalled only by his modesty and his
+hatred of a demonstration.
+
+"Listen to the idiots," said Dunn in disgust, as the carriage bore them
+away from the cheering crowd.
+
+"Man, they're just fine! Aren't they, Father?" said young Rob in an
+ecstasy of joy.
+
+"They're generous lads, generous lads, boy," said Doctor Dunn, his old
+eyes shining, for his son's triumph touched him deeply. "That's the only
+way to take defeat."
+
+"That's all right, Sir," said Dunn quickly, "but it's rather
+embarrassing, though it's awfully decent of them."
+
+The doctor's words suggested fresh thoughts to young Rob. "But it was
+terrible; and you were just on the win, too, I know."
+
+"I'm not so sure at all," said his brother.
+
+"Oh, it is terrible," said Bob again.
+
+"Tut, tut, lad! What's so terrible?" said his father. "One side has to
+lose."
+
+"Oh, it's not that," said Rob, his lip trembling. "I don't care a sniff
+for the game."
+
+"What, then?" said his big brother in a voice sharpened by his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Oh, Jack," said Rob, nervously wreathing his hands, "he--it looked as
+if he--" the lad could not bring himself to say the awful word. Nor was
+there need to ask who it was the boy had in mind.
+
+"What do you mean, Rob?" the captain's voice was impatient, almost
+angry.
+
+Then Rob lost his control. "Oh, Jack, I can't help it; I saw it. Do
+you think--did he really funk it?" His voice broke. He clutched his
+brother's knee and stood with face white and quivering. He had given
+utterance to the terrible suspicion that was torturing his heroic young
+soul. Of his two household gods one was tottering on its pedestal. That
+a football man should funk--the suspicion was too dreadful.
+
+The captain glanced at his father's face. There was gloom there, too,
+and the same terrible suspicion. "No, Sir," said Dunn, with impressive
+deliberation, answering the look on his father's face, "Cameron is
+no quitter. He didn't funk. I think," he continued, while Rob's
+tear-stained face lifted eagerly, "I know he was out of condition; he
+had let himself run down last week, since the last match, indeed, got
+out of hand a bit, you know, and that last quarter--you know, Sir, that
+last quarter was pretty stiff--his nerve gave just for a moment."
+
+"Oh," said the doctor in a voice of relief, "that explains it. But," he
+added quickly in a severe tone, "it was very reprehensible for a man on
+the International to let himself get out of shape, very reprehensible
+indeed. An International, mind you!"
+
+"It was my fault, Sir, I'm afraid," said Dunn, regretfully. "I ought to
+have--"
+
+"Nonsense! A man must be responsible for himself. Control, to be of any
+value, must be ultroneous, as our old professor used to say."
+
+"That's true, Sir, but I had kept pretty close to him up to the last
+week, you see, and--"
+
+"Bad training, bad training. A trainer's business is to school his men
+to do without him."
+
+"That is quite right, Sir. I believe I've been making a mistake," said
+Dunn thoughtfully. "Poor chap, he's awfully cut up!"
+
+"So he should be," said the doctor sternly. "He had no business to get
+out of condition. The International, mind you!"
+
+"Oh, Father, perhaps he couldn't help it," cried Rob, whose loyal,
+tender heart was beating hard against his little ribs, "and he looks
+awful. I saw him come out and when I called to him he never looked at me
+once."
+
+There is no finer loyalty in this world than that of a boy below his
+teens. It is so without calculation, without qualification, and without
+reserve. Dr. Dunn let his eyes rest kindly upon his little flushed face.
+
+"Perhaps so, perhaps so, my boy," he said, "and I have no doubt he
+regrets it now more than any of us. Where has he gone?"
+
+"Nesbitt's after him, Sir. He'll get him for to-night."
+
+But as Dunn, fresh from his bath, but still sore and stiff, was
+indulging in a long-banished pipe, Nesbitt came in to say that Cameron
+could not be found.
+
+"And have you not had your tub yet?" said his captain.
+
+"Oh, that's all right! You know I feel awfully about that beastly remark
+of mine."
+
+"Oh, let it go," said Dunn. "That'll be all right. You get right away
+home for your tub and get freshened up for to-night. I'll look after
+Cameron. You know he is down for the pipes. He's simply got to be there
+and I'll get him if I have to bring him in a crate, pipes, kilt and
+all."
+
+And Nesbitt, knowing that Dunn never promised what he could not fulfil,
+went off to his tub in fair content. He knew his captain.
+
+As Dunn was putting on his coat Rob came in, distress written on his
+face.
+
+"Are you going to get Cameron, Jack?" he asked timidly. "I asked
+Nesbitt, and he said--"
+
+"Now look here, youngster," said his big brother, then paused. The
+distress in the lad's face checked his words. "Now, Rob," he said
+kindly, "you needn't fret about this. Cameron is all right."
+
+The kind tone broke down the lad's control. He caught his brother's
+arm. "Say, Jack, are you sure--he didn't--funk?" His voice dropped to a
+whisper.
+
+Then his big brother sat down and drew the lad to his side, "Now listen,
+Rob; I'm going to tell you the exact truth. CAMERON DID NOT FUNK. The
+truth is, he wasn't fit,--he ought to have been, but he wasn't,--and
+because he wasn't fit he came mighty near quitting--for a moment, I'm
+sure, he felt like it, because his nerve was gone,--but he didn't.
+Remember, he felt like quitting and didn't, And that's the finest thing
+a chap can do,--never to quit, even when he feels like it. Do you see?"
+
+The lad's head went up. "I see," he said, his eyes glowing. "It was
+fine! I'm awfully glad he didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it.
+You tell him for me." His idol was firm again on his pedestal.
+
+"All right, old chap," said his big brother. "You'll never quit, I bet!"
+
+"Not if I'm fit, will I?"
+
+"Right you are! Keep fit--that's the word!"
+
+And with that the big brother passed out to find the man who was
+writhing in an agony of self-contempt; for in the face of all Scotland
+and in the hour of her need he had failed because he wasn't fit.
+
+After an hour Dunn found his man, fixed in the resolve to there and then
+abandon the game with all the appurtenances thereof, and among these the
+dinner. Mightily his captain laboured with him, plying him with varying
+motives,--the honour of the team was at stake; the honour of the country
+was at stake; his own honour, for was he not down on the programme for
+the pipes? It was all in vain. In dogged gloom the half-back listened
+unmoved.
+
+At length Dunn, knowing well the Highlander's tender heart, cunningly
+touched another string and told of Rob's distress and subsequent relief,
+and then gave his half-back the boy's message. "I promised to tell you,
+and I almost forgot. The little beggar was terribly worked up, and as
+I remember it, this is what he said: 'I'm awfully glad he didn't quit,
+'specially when he felt like it.' Those were his very words."
+
+Then Cameron buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud, while Dunn,
+knowing that he had reached his utmost, stood silent, waiting. Suddenly
+Cameron flung up his head:
+
+"Did he say I didn't quit? Good little soul! I'll go; I'd go through
+hell for that!"
+
+And so it came that not in a crate, but in the gallant garb of a
+Highland gentleman, pipes and all, Cameron was that night in his place,
+fighting out through the long hilarious night the fiercest fight of his
+life, chiefly because of the words that lay like a balm to his lacerated
+heart:
+
+"He didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+
+
+Just over the line of the Grampians, near the head-waters of the Spey, a
+glen, small and secluded, lies bedded deep among the hills,--a glen that
+when filled with sunlight on a summer day lies like a cup of gold; the
+gold all liquid and flowing over the cup's rim. And hence they call the
+glen "The Cuagh Oir," The Glen of the Cup of Gold.
+
+At the bottom of the Cuagh, far down, a little loch gleams, an oval of
+emerald or of sapphire, according to the sky above that smiles into
+its depths. On dark days the loch can gloom, and in storm it can rage,
+white-lipped, just like the people of the Glen.
+
+Around the emerald or sapphire loch farmlands lie sunny and warm, set
+about their steadings, and are on this spring day vivid with green,
+or rich in their red-browns where the soil lies waiting for the seed.
+Beyond the sunny fields the muirs of brown heather and bracken climb
+abruptly up to the dark-massed firs, and they to the Cuagh's rim. But
+from loch to rim, over field and muir and forest, the golden, liquid
+light ever flows on a sunny day and fills the Cuagh Oir till it runs
+over.
+
+On the east side of the loch, among some ragged firs, a rambling Manor
+House, ivy-covered and ancient, stood; and behind it, some distance
+away, the red tiling of a farm-cottage, with its steading clustering
+near, could be seen. About the old Manor House the lawn and garden
+told of neglect and decay, but at the farmhouse order reigned. The trim
+little garden plot, the trim lawn, the trim walks and hedges, the trim
+thatch of the roof, the trim do'-cote above it, the trim stables, byres,
+barns and yard of the steading, proclaimed the prudent, thrifty care of
+a prudent, thrifty soul.
+
+And there in the steading quadrangle, amidst the feathered creatures,
+hens, cocks and chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys and bubbly-jocks, stood
+the mistress of the Manor and prudent, thrifty manager of the farm,--a
+girl of nineteen, small, well-made, and trim as the farmhouse and its
+surroundings, with sunny locks and sunny face and sunny brown eyes. Her
+shapely hands were tanned and coarsened by the weather; her little feet
+were laced in stout country-made brogues; her dress was a plain brown
+winsey, kilted and belted open at the full round neck; the kerchief that
+had fallen from her sunny, tangled hair was of simple lawn, spotless
+and fresh; among her fowls she stood, a country lass in habit and
+occupation, but in face and form, in look and poise, a lady every inch
+of her. Dainty and daunty, sweet and strong, she stood, "the bonny like
+o' her bonny mither," as said the South Country nurse, Nannie, who had
+always lived at the Glen Cuagh House from the time that that mother was
+a baby; "but no' sae fine like," the nurse would add with a sigh. For
+she remembered ever the gentle airs and the high-bred, stately grace of
+Mary Robertson,--for though married to Captain Cameron of Erracht,
+Mary Robertson she continued to be to the Glen folk,--the lady of her
+ancestral manor, now for five years lain under the birch trees yonder by
+the church tower that looked out from its clustering firs and birches
+on the slope beyond the loch. Five years ago the gentle lady had passed
+from them, but like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of
+the heather and the firs, the aroma of her saintly life still filled the
+Glen.
+
+A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, "the bonny
+like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine," had somehow slipped
+into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion of the wide
+demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House. And by the thrift
+which she learned from her South Country nurse in the care of her
+poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of the thriftless,
+doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless and more doddling
+womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a basis of profitable
+returns. And this, too, with so little "clash and claver" that her
+father only knew that somehow things were more comfortable about the
+place, and that there were fewer calls than formerly upon his purse
+for the upkeep of the House and home. Indeed, the less appeared Moira's
+management, both in the routine of the House and in the care of the
+farm, the more peacefully flowed the current of their life. It seriously
+annoyed the Captain at intervals when he came upon his daughter
+directing operations in barnyard or byre. That her directing meant
+anything more than a girlish meddling in matters that were his entire
+concern and about which he had already given or was about to give
+orders, the Captain never dreamed. That things about the House were
+somehow prospering in late years he set down to his own skill and
+management and his own knowledge of scientific farming; a knowledge
+which, moreover, he delighted to display at the annual dinners of the
+Society for the Improvement of Agriculture in the Glen, of which he was
+honourary secretary; a knowledge which he aired in lengthy articles in
+local agricultural and other periodicals; a knowledge which, however,
+at times became the occasion of dismay to his thrifty daughter and her
+Highland farmer, and not seldom the occasion of much useless expenditure
+of guineas hard won from pigs and poultry. True, more serious loss was
+often averted by the facility with which the Captain turned from one
+scheme to another, happily forgetful of orders he had given and which
+were never carried out; and by the invincible fabianism of the Highland
+farmer, who, listening with gravest attention to the Captain's orders
+delivered in the most definite and impressive terms, would make
+reply, "Yess, yess indeed, I know; she will be attending to it
+immediately--tomorrow, or fery soon whateffer." It cannot be said that
+this capacity for indefinite procrastination rendered the Highlander any
+less valuable to his "tear young leddy."
+
+The days on which Postie appeared with a large bundle of mail were
+accounted good days by the young mistress, for on these and succeeding
+days her father would be "busy with his correspondence." And these days
+were not few, for the Captain held many honourary offices in county
+and other associations for the promotion and encouragement of various
+activities, industrial, social, and philanthropic. Of the importance of
+these activities to the county and national welfare, the Captain had no
+manner of doubt, as his voluminous correspondence testified. As to the
+worth of his correspondence his daughter, too, held the highest
+opinion, estimating her father, as do all dutiful daughters, at his own
+valuation. For the Captain held himself in high esteem; not simply for
+his breeding, which was of the Camerons of Erracht; nor for his manners,
+which were of the most courtly, if occasionally marred by fretfulness;
+nor for his dress, which was that of a Highland gentleman, perfect in
+detail and immaculate, but for his many and public services rendered to
+the people, the county, and the nation. Indeed his mere membership dues
+to the various associations, societies and committees with which he
+was connected, and his dining expenses contingent upon their annual
+meetings, together with the amounts expended upon the equipment and
+adornment of his person proper to such festive occasions, cut so deep
+into the slender resources of the family as to give his prudent daughter
+some considerable concern; though it is safe to say that such concern
+her father would have regarded not only as unnecessary but almost as
+impertinent.
+
+The Captain's correspondence, however extensive, was on the whole
+regarded by his daughter as a good rather than an evil, in that it
+secured her domestic and farm activities from disturbing incursions.
+This spring morning Moira's apprehensions awakened by an extremely light
+mail, were realized, as she beheld her father bearing down upon her
+with an open letter in his hand. His handsome face was set in a fretful
+frown.
+
+"Moira, my daughter!" he exclaimed, "how often have I spoke to you about
+this--this--unseemly--ah--mussing and meddling in the servants' duties!"
+
+"But, Papa," cried his daughter, "look at these dear things! I love them
+and they all know me, and they behave so much better when I feed them
+myself. Do they not, Janet?" she added, turning to the stout and sonsy
+farmer's daughter standing by.
+
+"Indeed, then, they are clever at knowing you," replied the maid, whose
+particular duty was to hold a reserve supply of food for the fowls that
+clamoured and scrambled about her young mistress.
+
+"Look at that vain bubbly-jock there, Papa," cried Moira, "he loves to
+have me notice him. Conceited creature! Look out, Papa, he does not like
+your kilts!" The bubbly-jock, drumming and scraping and sidling ever
+nearer to the Captain's naked knees, finally with great outcry flew
+straight at the affronting kilts.
+
+"Get off with you, you beast!" cried the Captain, kicking vainly at the
+wrathful bird, and at the same time beating a wise retreat before his
+onset.
+
+Moira rushed to his rescue. "Hoot, Jock! Shame on ye!" she cried. "There
+now, you proud thing, be off! He's just jealous of your fine appearance,
+Papa." With her kerchief she flipped into submission the haughty
+bubbly-jock and drew her father out of the steading. "Come away, Papa,
+and see my pigs."
+
+But the Captain was in no humour for pigs. "Nonsense, child," he cried,
+"let us get out of this mess! Besides, I wish to speak to you on a
+matter of importance." They passed through the gate. "It is about
+Allan," he continued, "and I'm really vexed. Something terrible has
+happened."
+
+"Allan!" the girl's voice was faint and her sunny cheek grew white.
+"About Allan!" she said again. "And what is wrong with Allan, Papa?"
+
+"That's what I do not know," replied her father fretfully; "but I
+must away to Edinburgh this very day, so you'll need to hasten with my
+packing. And bid Donald bring round the cart at once."
+
+But Moira stood dazed. "But, Papa, you have not told me what is wrong
+with Allan." Her voice was quiet, but with a certain insistence in it
+that at once irritated her father and compelled his attention.
+
+"Tut, tut, Moira, I have just said I do not know."
+
+"Is he ill, Papa?" Again the girl's voice grew faint.
+
+"No, no, not ill. I wish he were! I mean it is some business matter you
+cannot understand. But it must be serious if Mr. Rae asks my presence
+immediately. So you must hasten, child."
+
+In less than half an hour Donald and the cart were waiting at the door,
+and Moira stood in the hall with her father's bag ready packed. "Oh, I
+am glad," she said, as she helped her father with his coat, "that Allan
+is not ill. There can't be much wrong."
+
+"Wrong! Read that, child!" cried the father impatiently.
+
+She took the letter and read, her face reflecting her changing emotions,
+perplexity, surprise, finally indignation. "'A matter for the police,'"
+she quoted, scornfully, handing her father the letter. "'A matter for
+the police' indeed! My but that Mr. Rae is the clever man! The police!
+Does he think my brother Allan would cheat?--or steal, perhaps!" she
+panted, in her indignant scorn.
+
+"Mr. Rae is a careful man and a very able lawyer," replied her father.
+
+"Able! Careful! He's an auld wife, and that's what he is! You can tell
+him so for me." She was trembling and white with a wrath her father had
+never before seen in her. He stood gazing at her in silent surprise.
+
+"Papa," cried Moira passionately, answering his look, "do you think what
+he is saying? I know my brother Allan clean through to the heart. He
+is wild at times, and might rage perhaps and--and--break things, but he
+will not lie nor cheat. He will die first, and that I warrant you."
+
+Still her father stood gazing upon her as she stood proudly erect,
+her pale face alight with lofty faith in her brother and scorn of his
+traducer. "My child, my child," he said, huskily, "how like you are to
+your mother! Thank God! Indeed it may be you're right! God grant it!" He
+drew her closely to him.
+
+"Papa, Papa," she whispered, clinging to him, while her voice broke in a
+sob, "you know Allan will not lie. You know it, don't you, Papa?"
+
+"I hope not, dear child, I hope not," he replied, still holding her to
+him.
+
+"Papa," she cried wildly, "say you believe me."
+
+"Yes, yes, I do believe you. Thank God, I do believe you. The boy is
+straight."
+
+At that word she let him go. That her father should not believe in Allan
+was to her loyal heart an intolerable pain. Now Allan would have someone
+to stand for him against "that lawyer" and all others who might seek to
+do him harm. At the House door she stood watching her father drive down
+through the ragged firs to the highroad, and long after he had passed
+out of sight she still stood gazing. Upon the church tower rising out of
+its birches and its firs her eyes were resting, but her heart was
+with the little mound at the tower's foot, and as she gazed, the tears
+gathered and fell.
+
+"Oh, Mother!" she whispered. "Mother, Mother! You know Allan would not
+lie!"
+
+A sudden storm was gathering. In a brief moment the world and the Glen
+had changed. But half an hour ago and the Cuagh Oir was lying glorious
+with its flowing gold. Now, from the Cuagh as from her world, the
+flowing gold was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+
+
+The senior member of the legal firm of Rae & Macpherson was perplexed
+and annoyed, indeed angry, and angry chiefly because he was perplexed.
+He resented such a condition of mind as reflecting upon his legal and
+other acumen. Angry, too, he was because he had been forced to accept,
+the previous day, a favour from a firm--Mr. Rae would not condescend to
+say a rival firm--with which he for thirty years had maintained only
+the most distant and formal relations, to wit, the firm of Thomlinson &
+Shields. Messrs. Rae & Macpherson were family solicitors and for three
+generations had been such; hence there gathered about the firm a fine
+flavour of assured respectability which only the combination of solid
+integrity and undoubted antiquity can give. Messrs. Rae & Macpherson had
+not yielded in the slightest degree to that commercialising spirit
+which would transform a respectable and self-respecting firm of family
+solicitors into a mere financial agency; a transformation which Mr. Rae
+would consider a degradation of an ancient and honourable profession.
+This uncompromising attitude toward the commercialising spirit of the
+age had doubtless something to do with their losing the solicitorship
+for the Bank of Scotland, which went to the firm of Thomlinson &
+Shields, to Mr. Rae's keen, though unacknowledged, disappointment;
+a disappointment that arose not so much from the loss of the very
+honourable and lucrative appointment, and more from the fact that the
+appointment should go to such a firm as that of Thomlinson & Shields.
+For the firm of Thomlinson & Shields were of recent origin, without
+ancestry, boasting an existence of only some thirty-five years, and, as
+one might expect of a firm of such recent origin, characterised by the
+commercialising modern spirit in its most pronounced and objectionable
+form. Mr. Rae, of course, would never condescend to hostile criticism,
+dismissing Messrs. Thomlinson & Shields from the conversation with the
+single remark, "Pushing, Sir, very pushing, indeed."
+
+It was, then, no small humiliation for Mr. Rae to be forced to accept
+a favour from Mr. Thomlinson. "Had it been any other than Cameron," he
+said to himself, as he sat in his somewhat dingy and dusty office,
+"I would let him swither. But Cameron! I must see to it and at once."
+Behind the name there rose before Mr. Rae's imagination a long line
+of brave men and fair women for whose name and fame and for whose good
+estate it had been his duty and the duty of those who had preceded him
+in office to assume responsibility.
+
+"Young fool! Much he cares for the honour of his family! I wonder what's
+at the bottom of this business! Looks ugly! Decidedly ugly! The first
+thing is to find him." A messenger had failed to discover young Cameron
+at his lodgings, and had brought back the word that for a week he
+had not been seen there. "He must be found. They have given me till
+to-morrow. I cannot ask a further stay of proceedings; I cannot and I
+will not." It made Mr. Rae more deeply angry that he knew quite well
+if necessity arose he would do just that very thing. "Then there's his
+father coming in this evening. We simply must find him. But how and
+where?"
+
+Mr. Rae was not unskilled in such a matter. "Find a man, find his
+friends," he muttered. "Let's see. What does the young fool do? What
+are his games? Ah! Football! I have it! Young Dunn is my man." Hence to
+young Dunn forthwith Mr. Rae betook himself.
+
+It was still early in the day when Mr. Rae's mild, round, jolly,
+clean-shaven face beamed in upon Mr. Dunn, who sat with dictionaries,
+texts, and class notebooks piled high about him, burrowing in that
+mound of hidden treasure which it behooves all prudent aspirants for
+university honours to diligently mine as the fateful day approaches.
+With Mr. Dunn time had now come to be measured by moments, and every
+moment golden. But the wrathful impatience that had gathered in his
+face at the approach of an intruder was overwhelmed in astonishment at
+recognising so distinguished a visitor as Mr. Rae the Writer.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Dunn," said Mr. Rae briskly, "a moment only, one moment, I
+assure you. Well do I know the rage which boils behind that genial smile
+of yours. Don't deny it, Sir. Have I not suffered all the pangs, with
+just a week before the final ordeal? This is your final, I believe?"
+
+"I hope so," said Mr. Dunn somewhat ruefully.
+
+"Yes, yes, and a very fine career, a career befitting your father's
+son. And I sincerely trust, Sir, that as your career has been marked by
+honour, your exit shall be with distinction; and all the more that I am
+not unaware of your achievements in another department of--ah--shall I
+say endeavour. I have seen your name, Sir, mentioned more than once,
+to the honour of our university, in athletic events." At this point Mr.
+Rae's face broke into a smile.
+
+An amazing smile was Mr. Rae's; amazing both in the suddenness of
+its appearing and in the suddenness of its vanishing. Upon a face of
+supernatural gravity, without warning, without beginning, the smile,
+broad, full and effulgent, was instantaneously present. Then equally
+without warning and without fading the smile ceased to be. Under its
+effulgence the observer unfamiliar with Mr. Rae's smile was moved, to a
+responsive geniality of expression, but in the full tide of this emotion
+he found himself suddenly regarding a face of such preternatural gravity
+as rebuked the very possibility or suggestion of geniality. Before the
+smile Mr. Rae's face was like a house, with the shutters up and the
+family plunged in gloom. When the smile broke forth every shutter was
+flung wide to the pouring sunlight, and every window full of flowers
+and laughing children. Then instantly and without warning the house
+was blank, lifeless, and shuttered once more, leaving you helplessly
+apologetic that you had ever been guilty of the fatuity of associating
+anything but death and gloom with its appearance.
+
+To young Mr. Dunn it was extremely disconcerting to discover himself
+smiling genially into a face of the severest gravity, and eyes that
+rebuked him for his untimely levity. "Oh, I beg pardon," exclaimed Mr.
+Dunn hastily, "I thought--"
+
+"Not at all, Sir," replied Mr. Rae. "As I was saying, I have observed
+from time to time the distinctions you have achieved in the realm of
+athletics. And that reminds me of my business with you to-day,--a sad
+business, a serious business, I fear." The solemn impressiveness of
+Mr. Rae's manner awakened in Mr. Dunn an awe amounting to dread. "It is
+young Cameron, a friend of yours, I believe, Sir."
+
+"Cameron, Sir!" echoed Dunn.
+
+"Yes, Cameron. Does he, or did he not have a place on your team?"
+
+Dunn sat upright and alert. "Yes, Sir. What's the matter, Sir?"
+
+"First of all, do you know where he is? I have tried his lodgings. He is
+not there. It is important that I find him to-day, extremely important;
+in fact, it is necessary; in short, Mr. Dunn,--I believe I can confide
+in your discretion,--if I do not find him to-day, the police will
+to-morrow."
+
+"The police, Sir!" Dunn's face expressed an awful fear. In the heart of
+the respectable Briton the very mention of the police in connection
+with the private life of any of his friends awakens a feeling of gravest
+apprehension. No wonder Mr. Dunn's face went pale! "The police!" he said
+a second time. "What for?"
+
+Mr. Rae remained silent.
+
+"If it is a case of debts, Sir," suggested Mr. Dunn, "why, I would
+gladly--"
+
+Mr. Rae waved him aside. "It is sufficient to say, Mr. Dunn, that we are
+the family solicitors, as we have been for his father, his grandfather
+and great-grandfather before him."
+
+"Oh, certainly, Sir. I beg pardon," said Mr. Dunn hastily.
+
+"Not at all; quite proper; does you credit. But it is not a case of
+debts, though it is a case of money; in fact, Sir,--I feel sure I may
+venture to confide in you,--he is in trouble with his bank, the Bank
+of Scotland. The young man, or someone using his name, has been guilty
+of--ah--well, an irregularity, a decided irregularity, an irregularity
+which the bank seems inclined to--to--follow up; indeed, I may say,
+instructions have been issued through their solicitors to that effect.
+Mr. Thomlinson was good enough to bring this to my attention, and to
+offer a stay of proceedings for a day."
+
+"Can I do anything, Sir?" said Dunn. "I'm afraid I've neglected him. The
+truth is, I've been in an awful funk about my exams, and I haven't kept
+in touch as I should."
+
+"Find him, Mr. Dunn, find him. His father is coming to town this
+evening, which makes it doubly imperative. Find him; that is, if you can
+spare the time."
+
+"Of course I can. I'm awfully sorry I've lost touch with him. He's been
+rather down all this winter; in fact, ever since the International he
+seems to have lost his grip of himself."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Rae. "I remember that occasion; in fact, I was
+present myself," he admitted. "I occasionally seek to renew my youth."
+Mr. Rae's smile broke forth, but anxiety for his friend saved Mr.
+Dunn from being caught again in any responsive smile. "Bring him to my
+office, if you can, any time to-day. Good-bye, Sir. Your spirit does you
+credit. But it is the spirit which I should expect in a man who plays
+the forward line as you play it."
+
+Mr. Dunn blushed crimson. "Is there anything else I could do? Anyone I
+could see? I mean, for instance, could my father serve in any way?"
+
+"Ah, a good suggestion!" Mr. Rae seized his right ear,--a characteristic
+action of his when in deep thought,--twisted it into a horn, and pulled
+it quite severely as if to assure himself that that important feature
+of his face was firmly fixed in its place. "A very good suggestion! Your
+father knows Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the bank, I believe."
+
+"Very well, Sir, I think," answered Mr. Dunn. "I am sure he would see
+him. Shall I call him in, Sir?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort; don't think of it! I mean,
+let there be nothing formal in this matter. If Mr. Dunn should chance to
+meet Mr. Sheratt, that is, casually, so to speak, and if young Cameron's
+name should come up, and if Mr. Dunn should use his influence, his very
+great influence, with Mr. Sheratt, the bank might be induced to take a
+more lenient view of the case. I think I can trust you with this." Mr.
+Rae shook the young man warmly by the hand, beamed on him for one brief
+moment with his amazing smile, presented to his answering smile a face
+of unspeakable gravity, and left him extremely uncertain as to the
+proper appearance for his face, under the circumstances.
+
+Before Mr. Rae had gained the street Dunn was planning his campaign; for
+no matter what business he had in hand, Dunn always worked by plan. By
+the time he himself had reached the street his plan was formed. "No use
+trying his digs. Shouldn't be surprised if that beast Potts has got
+him. Rotten bounder, Potts, and worse! Better go round his way." And
+oscillating in his emotions between disgust and rage at Cameron for his
+weakness and his folly, and disgust and rage at himself for his neglect
+of his friend, Dunn took his way to the office of the Insurance Company
+which was honoured by the services of Mr. Potts.
+
+The Insurance Company knew nothing of the whereabouts of Mr. Potts.
+Indeed, the young man who assumed responsibility for the information
+appeared to treat the very existence of Mr. Potts as a matter of slight
+importance to his company; so slight, indeed, that the company had not
+found it necessary either to the stability of its business or to the
+protection of its policy holders--a prime consideration with Insurance
+Companies--to keep in touch with Mr. Potts. That gentleman had left for
+the East coast a week ago, and that was the end of the matter as far as
+the clerk of the Insurance Company was concerned.
+
+At his lodgings Mr. Dunn discovered an even more callous indifference to
+Mr. Potts and his interests. The landlady, under the impression that
+in Mr. Dunn she beheld a prospective lodger, at first received him with
+that deferential reserve which is the characteristic of respectable
+lodging-house keepers in that city of respectable lodgers and
+respectable lodging-house keepers. When, however, she learned the real
+nature of Mr. Dunn's errand, she became immediately transformed. In a
+voice shrill with indignation she repudiated Mr. Potts and his affairs,
+and seemed chiefly concerned to re-establish her own reputation for
+respectability, which she seemed to consider as being somewhat shattered
+by that of her lodger. Mr. Dunn was embarrassed both by her volubility
+and by her obvious determination to fasten upon him a certain amount of
+responsibility for the character and conduct of Mr. Potts.
+
+"Do you know where Mr. Potts is now, and have you any idea when he may
+return?" inquired Mr. Dunn, seizing a fortunate pause.
+
+"Am I no' juist tellin' ye," cried the landlady, in her excitement
+reverting to her native South Country dialect, "that I keep nae coont o'
+Mr. Potts' stravagins? An' as to his return, I ken naething aboot that
+an' care less. He's paid what he's been owing me these three months an'
+that's all I care aboot him."
+
+"I am glad to hear that," said Mr. Dunn heartily.
+
+"An' glad I am tae, for it's feared I was for my pay a month back."
+
+"When did he pay up?" inquired Mr. Dunn, scenting a clue.
+
+"A week come Saturday,--or was it Friday?--the day he came in with a
+young man, a friend of his. And a night they made of it, I remember,"
+replied the landlady, recovering command of herself and of her speech
+under the influence of Mr. Dunn's quiet courtesy.
+
+"Did you know the young man that was with him?"
+
+"Yes, it was young Cameron. He had been coming about a good deal."
+
+"Oh, indeed! And have you seen Mr. Cameron since?"
+
+"No; he never came except in company with Mr. Potts."
+
+And with this faint clue Mr. Dunn was forced to content himself, and to
+begin a systematic search of Cameron's haunts in the various parts of
+the town. It was Martin, his little quarter-back, that finally put him
+on the right track. He had heard Cameron's pipes not more than an hour
+ago at his lodgings in Morningside Road.
+
+"But what do you want of Cameron these days?" inquired the young
+Canadian. "There's nothing on just now, is there, except this infernal
+grind?"
+
+Dunn hesitated. "Oh, I just want him. In fact, he has got into some
+trouble."
+
+"There you are!" exclaimed Martin in disgust. "Why in thunder should
+you waste time on him? You've taken enough trouble with him this winter
+already. It's his own funeral, ain't it?"
+
+Dunn looked at him a half moment in surprise. "Well, you can't go back
+on a fellow when he's down, can you?"
+
+"Look here, Dunn, I've often thought I'd give you a little wise advice.
+This sounds bad, I know, but there's a lot of blamed rot going around
+this old town just on this point. When a fellow gets on the bum and gets
+into a hole he knows well that there'll be a lot of people tumbling over
+each other to get him out, hence he deliberately and cheerfully slides
+in. If he knew he'd have to scramble out himself he wouldn't be so
+blamed keen to get in. If he's in a hole let him frog it for awhile, by
+Jingo! He's hitting the pace, let him take his bumps! He's got to take
+'em sooner or later, and better sooner than later, for the sooner he
+takes 'em the quicker he'll learn. Bye-bye! I know you think I'm a
+semi-civilised Colonial. I ain't; I'm giving you some wisdom gained from
+experience. You can't swim by hanging on to a root, you bet!"
+
+Dunn listened in silence, then replied slowly, "I say, old chap, there's
+something in that. My governor said something like that some time ago:
+'A trainer's business is to train his men to do without him.'"
+
+"There you are!" cried Martin. "That's philosophy! Mine's just horse
+sense."
+
+"Still," said Dunn thoughtfully, "when a chap's in you've got to lend
+a hand; you simply can't stand and look on." Dunn's words, tone, and
+manner revealed the great, honest heart of human sympathy which he
+carried in his big frame.
+
+"Oh, hang it," cried Martin, "I suppose so! Guess I'll go along with
+you. I can't forget you pulled me out, too."
+
+"Thanks, old chap," cried Dunn, brightening up, "but you're busy, and--"
+
+"Busy! By Jingo, you'd think so if you'd watch me over night and hear my
+brain sizzle. But come along, I'm going to stay with you!"
+
+But Dunn's business was private, and could be shared with no one. It was
+difficult to check his friend's newly-aroused ardour. "I say, old chap,"
+he said, "you really don't need to come along. I can do--"
+
+"Oh, go to blazes! I know you too well! Don't you worry about me! You've
+got me going, and I'm in on this thing; so come along!"
+
+Then Dunn grew firm. "Thanks, awfully, old man," he said, "but it's a
+thing I'd rather do alone, if you don't mind."
+
+"Oh!" said Martin. "All right! But say, if you need me I'm on. You're a
+great old brick, though! Tra-la!"
+
+As Martin had surmised, Dunn found Cameron in his rooms. He was lying
+upon his bed enjoying the luxury of a cigarette. "Hello! Come right
+in, old chap!" he cried, in gay welcome. "Have a--no, you won't have a
+cigarette--have a pipe?"
+
+Dunn gazed at him, conscious of a rising tide of mingled emotions,
+relief, wrath, pity, disgust. "Well, I'll be hanged!" at last he said
+slowly. "But you've given us a chase! Where in the world have you been?"
+
+"Been? Oh, here and there, enjoying my emancipation from the thralldom
+in which doubtless you are still sweating."
+
+"And what does that mean exactly?"
+
+"Mean? It means that I've cut the thing,--notebooks, lectures,
+professors, exams, 'the hale hypothick,' as our Nannie would say at
+home."
+
+"Oh rot, Cameron! You don't mean it?"
+
+"Circumspice. Do you behold any suggestion of knotted towels and the
+midnight oil?"
+
+Dunn gazed about the room. It was in a whirl of confusion. Pipes and
+pouches, a large box of cigarettes, a glass and a half-empty decanter,
+were upon the table; boots, caps, golf-clubs, coats, lay piled in
+various corners. "Pardon the confusion, dear sir," cried Cameron
+cheerfully, "and lay it not to the charge of my landlady. That estimable
+woman was determined to make entry this afternoon, but was denied."
+Cameron's manner one of gay and nervous bravado.
+
+"Come, Cameron," said Dunn sadly, "what does this mean? You're not
+serious; you're not chucking your year?"
+
+"Just that, dear fellow, and nothing less. Might as well as be
+ploughed."
+
+"And what then are you going to do?" Dunn's voice was full of a great
+pity. "What about your people? What about your father? And, by Jove,
+that reminds me, he's coming to town this evening. You know they've been
+trying to find you everywhere this last day or two."
+
+"And who are 'they,' pray?"
+
+"Who? The police," said Dunn bluntly, determined to shock his friend
+into seriousness.
+
+Cameron sat up quickly. "The police? What do you mean, Dunn?"
+
+"What it means I do not know, Cameron, I assure you. Don't you?"
+
+"The police!" said Cameron again. "It's a joke, Dunn."
+
+"I wish to Heaven it were, Cameron, old man! But I have it straight from
+Mr. Rae, your family solicitor. They want you."
+
+"Old Rae?" exclaimed Cameron. "Now what the deuce does this all mean?"
+
+"Don't you really know, old chap?" said Dunn kindly, anxiety and relief
+struggling in his face.
+
+"No more than you. What did the old chap say, anyway?"
+
+"Something about a Bank; an irregularity, he called it, a serious
+irregularity. He's had it staved off for a day."
+
+"The Bank? What in Heaven's name have I got to do with the Bank? Let's
+see; I was there a week or ten days ago with--" he paused. "Hang it,
+I can't remember!" He ran his hands through his long black locks, and
+began to pace the room.
+
+Dunn sat watching him, hope and fear, doubt and faith filling his heart
+in succession.
+
+Cameron sat down with his face in his hands. "What is it, old man? Can't
+I help you?" said Dunn, putting his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"I can't remember," muttered Cameron. "I've been going it some, you
+know. I had been falling behind and getting money off Potts. Two weeks
+ago I got my monthly five-pound cheque, and about ten days ago the usual
+fifty-pound cheque to square things up for the year, fees, etc. Seems to
+me I cashed those. Or did Potts? Anyway I paid Potts. The deuce take it,
+I can't remember! You know I can carry a lot of Scotch and never show
+it, but it plays the devil with my memory." Cameron was growing more and
+more excited.
+
+"Well, old chap, we must go right along to Mr. Rae's office. You don't
+mind?"
+
+"Mind? Not a bit. Old Rae has no love for me,--I get him into too much
+trouble,--but he's a straight old boy. Just wait till I brush up a bit."
+He poured out from a decanter half a glass of whiskey.
+
+"I'd cut that out if I were you," said Dunn.
+
+"Later, perhaps," replied Cameron, "but not to-day."
+
+Within twenty minutes they were ushered into Mr. Rae's private office.
+That gentleman received them with a gravity that was portentous in its
+solemnity. "Well, Sir, you have succeeded in your task," he said to Mr.
+Dunn. "I wish to thank you for this service, a most valuable service to
+me, to this young gentleman, and to his family; though whether much may
+come of it remains to be seen."
+
+"Oh, thanks," said Dunn hurriedly. "I hope everything will be all
+right." He rose to go. Cameron looked at him quickly. There was no
+mistaking the entreaty in his face.
+
+Mr. Rae spoke somewhat more hurriedly than his wont. "If it is not
+asking too much, and if you can still spare time, your presence might be
+helpful, Mr. Dunn."
+
+"Stay if you can, old chap," said Cameron. "I don't know what this thing
+is, but I'll do better if you're in the game, too." It was an appeal to
+his captain, and after that nothing on earth could have driven Dunn from
+his side.
+
+At this point the door opened and the clerk announced, "Captain Cameron,
+Sir."
+
+Mr. Rae rose hastily. "Tell him," he said quickly, "to wait--"
+
+He was too late. The Captain had followed close upon the heels of the
+clerk, and came in with a rush. "Now, what does all this mean?"
+he cried, hardly waiting to shake hands with his solicitor. "What
+mischief--?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Captain," said Mr. Rae calmly, "let me present Mr.
+Dunn, Captain Dunn, I might say, of International fame." The solicitor's
+smile broke forth with its accustomed unexpectedness, but had vanished
+long before Mr. Dunn in his embarrassment had finished shaking hands
+with Captain Cameron.
+
+The Captain then turned to his son. "Well, Sir, and what is this affair
+of yours that calls me to town at a most inconvenient time?" His tone
+was cold, fretful, and suspicious.
+
+Young Cameron's face, which had lighted up with a certain eagerness
+and appeal as he had turned toward his father, as if in expectation of
+sympathy and help, froze at this greeting into sullen reserve. "I don't
+know any more than yourself, Sir," he answered. "I have just come into
+this office this minute."
+
+"Well, then, what is it, Mr. Rae?" The Captain's voice and manner were
+distinctly imperious, if not overbearing.
+
+Mr. Rae, however, was king of his own castle. "Will you not be seated,
+Sir?" he said, pointing to a chair. "Sit down, young gentlemen."
+
+His quiet dignity, his perfect courtesy, recalled the Captain to
+himself. "I beg your pardon, Mr. Rae, but I am really much disturbed.
+Can we begin at once?" He glanced as he spoke at Mr. Dunn, who
+immediately rose.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Dunn," said Mr. Rae quietly. "I have asked this young
+gentleman," he continued, turning to the Captain, "to remain. He has
+already given me valuable assistance. I fancy he may be able to serve us
+still further, if he will be so good."
+
+Mr. Dunn bowed in silence.
+
+"Now let us proceed with what must be an exceedingly painful matter for
+us all, and out of which nothing but extreme candour on the part of Mr.
+Allan here, and great wisdom on the part of us all, can possibly extract
+us." Mr. Rae's glance rested upon the Captain, who bowed, and upon his
+son, who made no sign whatever, but remained with his face set in the
+same sullen gloom with which he had greeted his father.
+
+Mr. Rae opened a drawer and brought forth a slip of paper. "Mr. Allan,"
+he said, with a certain sharpness in his tone, "please look at this."
+
+Cameron came to the desk, picked up the paper, glanced at it. "It is my
+father's cheque," he said, "which I received about a week ago."
+
+"Look at the endorsement, please," said Mr. Rae.
+
+Cameron turned it over. A slight flush came to his pale face. "It is
+mine to--" he hesitated, "Mr. Potts."
+
+"Mr. Potts cashed it then?"
+
+"I suppose so. I believe so. I owed him money, and he gave me back
+some."
+
+"How much did you owe him?"
+
+"A considerable amount. I had been borrowing of him for some time."
+
+"As much as fifty pounds?"
+
+"I cannot tell. I did not keep count, particularly; Potts did that."
+
+The Captain snorted contemptuously. "Do you mean to say--?" he began.
+
+"Pardon me, Captain Cameron. Allow me," said Mr. Rae.
+
+"Now, Mr. Allan, do you think you owed him as much as the amount of that
+cheque?"
+
+"I do not know, but I think so."
+
+"Had you any other money?"
+
+"No," said Allan shortly; "at least I may have had a little remaining
+from the five pounds I had received from my father a few days before."
+
+"You are quite sure you had no other money?"
+
+"Quite certain," replied Allan.
+
+Again Mr. Rae opened his desk and drew forth a slip and handed it to
+young Cameron. "What is that?" he said.
+
+Cameron glanced at it hurriedly, and turned it over. "That is my
+father's cheque for five pounds, which I cashed."
+
+Mr. Rae stretched out his hand and took the cheque. "Mr. Allan," he
+said, "I want you to consider most carefully your answer." He leaned
+across the desk and for some moments--they seemed like minutes to
+Dunn--his eyes searched young Cameron's face. "Mr. Allan," he said, with
+a swift change of tone, his voice trembling slightly, "will you look at
+the amount of that cheque again?"
+
+Cameron once more took the cheque, glanced at it. "Good Lord!" he cried.
+"It is fifty!" His face showed blank amazement.
+
+Quick, low, and stern came Mr. Rae's voice. "Yes," he said, "it is for
+fifty pounds. Do you know that that is a forgery, the punishment for
+which is penal servitude, and that the order for your arrest is already
+given?"
+
+The Captain sprang to his feet. Young Cameron's face became ghastly
+pale. His hand clutched the top of Mr. Rae's desk. Twice or thrice he
+moistened his lips preparing to speak, but uttered not a word. "Good
+God, my boy!" said the Captain hoarsely. "Don't stand like that. Tell
+him you are innocent."
+
+"One moment, Sir," said Mr. Rae to the Captain. "Permit me." Mr. Rae's
+voice, while perfectly courteous, was calmly authoritative.
+
+"Mr. Allan," he continued, turning to the wretched young man, "what
+money have you at present in your pockets?"
+
+With shaking hands young Cameron emptied upon the desk the contents of
+his pocketbook, from which the lawyer counted out ten one-pound notes,
+a half-sovereign and some silver. "Where did you get this money, Mr.
+Allan?"
+
+The young man, still silent, drew his handkerchief from his pocket,
+touched his lips, and wiped the sweat from his white face.
+
+"Mr. Allan," continued the lawyer, dropping again into a kindly voice,
+"a frank explanation will help us all."
+
+"Mr. Rae," said Cameron, his words coming with painful indistinctness,
+"I don't understand this. I can't think clearly. I can't remember. That
+money I got from Potts; at least I must have--I have had money from no
+one else."
+
+"My God!" cried the Captain again. "To think that a son of mine
+should--!"
+
+"Pardon me, Captain Cameron," interrupted Mr. Rae quickly and somewhat
+sharply. "We must not prejudge this case. We must first understand it."
+
+At this point Dunn stepped swiftly to Cameron's side. "Brace up, old
+chap," he said in a low tone. Then turning towards the Captain he said,
+"I beg your pardon, Sir, but I do think it's only fair to give a man a
+chance to explain."
+
+"Allow me, gentlemen," said Mr. Rae in a firm, quiet voice, as
+the Captain was about to break forth. "Allow me to conduct this
+examination."
+
+Cameron turned his face toward Dunn. "Thank you, old man," he said,
+his white lips quivering. "I will do my best, but before God, I don't
+understand this."
+
+"Now, Mr. Allan," continued the lawyer, tapping the desk sharply,
+"here are two cheques for fifty pounds, both drawn by your father, both
+endorsed by you, one apparently cashed by Mr. Potts, one by yourself.
+What do you know about this?"
+
+"Mr. Rae," replied the young man, his voice trembling and husky, "I tell
+you I can't understand this. I ought to say that for the last two weeks
+I haven't been quite myself, and whiskey always makes me forget. I can
+walk around steadily enough, but I don't always know what I am doing--"
+
+"That's so, Sir," said Dunn quickly, "I've seen him."
+
+"--And just what happened with these cheques I do not know. This
+cheque," picking up the one endorsed to Potts, "I remember giving to
+Potts. The only other cheque I remember is a five-pound one."
+
+"Do you remember cashing that five-pound cheque?" inquired Mr. Rae.
+
+"I carried it about for some days. I remember that, because I once
+offered it to Potts in part payment, and he said--" the white face
+suddenly flushed a deep red.
+
+"Well, Mr. Allan, what did he say?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Cameron.
+
+"It may and it may not," said Mr. Rae sharply. "It is your duty to tell
+us."
+
+"Out with it," said his father angrily. "You surely owe it to me, to us
+all, to let us have every assistance."
+
+Cameron paid no attention to his father's words. "It has really no
+bearing, Sir, but I remember saying as I offered a five-pound cheque, 'I
+wish it was fifty.'"
+
+"And what reply did Mr. Potts make?" said Mr. Rae, with quiet
+indifference, as if he had lost interest in this particular feature of
+the case.
+
+Again Cameron hesitated.
+
+"Come, out with it!" said his father impatiently.
+
+His son closed his lips as if in a firm resolve. "It really has nothing
+whatever to do with the case."
+
+"Play the game, old man," said Dunn quietly.
+
+"Oh, all right!" said Cameron. "It makes no difference anyway. He said
+in a joke, 'You could easily make this fifty; it is such mighty poor
+writing.'"
+
+Still Mr. Rae showed no sign of interest. "He suggested in a joke, I
+understand, that the five-pound cheque could easily be changed into
+fifty pounds. That was a mere pleasantry of Mr. Potts', doubtless. How
+did the suggestion strike you, Mr. Allan?"
+
+Allan looked at him in silence.
+
+"I mean, did the suggestion strike you unpleasantly, or how?"
+
+"I don't think it made any impression, Sir. I knew it was a joke."
+
+"A joke!" groaned his father. "Good Heavens! What do you think--?"
+
+"Once more permit me," said Mr. Rae quietly, with a wave of his hand
+toward the Captain. "This cheque of five pounds has evidently been
+altered to fifty pounds. The question is, by whom, Mr. Allan? Can you
+answer that?" Again Mr. Rae's eyes were searching the young man's face.
+
+"I have told you I remember nothing about this cheque."
+
+"Is it possible, Mr. Allan, that you could have raised this cheque
+yourself without your knowing--?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" said his father hotly, "why make the boy lie?"
+
+His son started as if his father had struck him. "I tell you once more,
+Mr. Rae, and I tell you all, I know nothing about this cheque, and that
+is my last word." And from that position nothing could move him.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Rae, closing the interview, "we have done our best. The
+law must take its course."
+
+"Great Heavens!" cried the Captain, springing to his feet. "Do you mean
+to tell me, Allan, that you persist in this cursed folly and will give
+us no further light? Have you no regard for my name, if not for your
+own?" He grasped his son fiercely by the arm.
+
+But his son angrily shook off his grasp. "You," he said, looking his
+father full in the face, "you condemned me before you heard a word from
+me, and now for my name or for yours I care not a tinker's curse." And
+with this he flung himself from the room.
+
+"Follow him," said Mr. Rae to Dunn, quietly; "he will need you. And keep
+him in sight; it is important."
+
+"All right, Sir!" said Dunn. "I'll stay with him." And he did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+
+
+Mr. Rae in forty years' experience had never been so seriously
+disturbed. To his intense humiliation he found himself abjectly
+appealing to the senior member of the firm of Thomlinson & Shields. Not
+that Mr. Thomlinson was obdurate; in the presence of mere obduracy Mr.
+Rae might have found relief in the conscious possession of more generous
+and humane instincts than those supposed to be characteristic of the
+members of his profession. Mr. Thomlinson, however, was anything but
+obdurate. He was eager to oblige, but he was helpless. The instructions
+he had received were simple but imperative, and he had gone to unusual
+lengths in suggesting to Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the Bank, a course
+of greater leniency. That gentleman's only reply was a brief order to
+proceed with the case.
+
+With Mr. Sheratt, therefore, Mr. Rae proceeded to deal. His first move
+was to invite the Bank manager to lunch, in order to discuss some rather
+important matters relative to one of the great estates of which Mr. Rae
+was supposed to be the guardian. Some fifty years' experience of
+Mr. Sheratt as boy and man had let Mr. Rae into a somewhat intimate
+knowledge of the workings of that gentleman's mind. Under the mollifying
+influences of the finest of old port, Mr. Rae made the discovery that as
+with Mr. Thomlinson, so with Mr. Sheratt there was every disposition to
+oblige, and indeed an eagerness to yield to the lawyer's desires; it was
+not Mr. Sheratt, but the Bank that was immovable. Firm-fixed it stood
+upon its bedrock of tradition that in matters of fraud, crime should be
+punished to the full limit of the law.
+
+"The estate of the criminal, high or low," said Mr. Sheratt
+impressively, "matters not. The Bank stands upon the principle, and from
+this it cannot be moved." Mr. Sheratt began to wax eloquent. "Fidelity
+to its constituency, its shareholders, its depositors, indeed to the
+general public, is the corner-stone of its policy. The Bank of Scotland
+is a National Institution, with a certain National obligation."
+
+Mr. Rae quietly drew from his pocket a pamphlet, opened it slowly,
+and glanced at the page. "Ay, it's as I thought, Mr. Sheratt," he said
+dryly. "At times I wondered where Sir Archibald got his style."
+
+Mr. Sheratt blushed like a boy caught copying.
+
+"But now since I know who it is that writes the speech of the Chairman
+of the Board of Directors, tell me, Sheratt, as man to man, is it you or
+is it Sir Archibald that's at the back of this prosecution? For if it is
+you, I've something to say to you; if not, I'll just say it where it's
+most needed. In some way or other I'm bound to see this thing through.
+That boy can't go to prison. Now tell me, Tom? It's for auld sake's
+sake."
+
+"As sure as death, Rae, it's the Chairman, and it's God's truth I'm
+telling ye, though I should not." They were back again into the speech
+and spirit of their boyhood days.
+
+"Then I must see Sir Archibald. Give me time to see him, Tom."
+
+"It's a waste of time, I'm tellin' ye, but two days I'll give ye, Sandy,
+for auld sake's sake, as you say. A friendship of half a hundred years
+should mean something to us. For your sake I'd let the lad go, God
+knows, and there's my han' upon it, but as I said, that lies with Sir
+Archibald."
+
+The old friends shook hands in silence.
+
+"Thank ye, Tom, thank ye," said Mr. Rae; "I knew it."
+
+"But harken to me, ye'll no' move Sir Archibald, for on this particular
+point he's quite mad. He'd prosecute the Duke of Argyll, he would. But
+two days are yours, Sandy. And mind with Sir Archibald ye treat his Bank
+with reverence! It's a National Institution, with National obligations,
+ye ken?" Mr. Sheratt's wink conveyed a volume of meaning. "And mind you,
+Rae," here Mr. Sheratt grew grave, "I am trusting you to produce that
+lad when wanted."
+
+"I have him in safe keeping, Tom, and shall produce him, no fear."
+
+And with that the two old gentlemen parted, loyal to a lifelong
+friendship, but loyal first to the trust of those they stood pledged to
+serve; for the friendship that gives first place to honour is the only
+friendship that honourable men can hold.
+
+Mr. Rae set off for his office through the drizzling rain. "Now then,
+for the Captain," he said to himself; "and a state he will be in! Why
+did I ever summon him to town? Then for Mr. Dunn, who must keep his eye
+upon the young man."
+
+In his office he found Captain Cameron in a state of distraction that
+rendered him incapable of either coherent thought or speech. "What now,
+Rae? Where have you been? What news have you? My God, this thing is
+driving me mad! Penal servitude! Think of it, man, for my son! Oh, the
+scandal of it! It will kill me and kill his sister. What's your report?
+Come, out with it! Have you seen Mr. Sheratt?" He was pacing up and down
+the office like a beast in a cage.
+
+"Tut, tut, Captain Cameron," said Mr. Rae lightly, "this is no way for
+a soldier to face the enemy. Sit down and we will just lay out our
+campaign."
+
+But the Captain's soldiering, which was of the lightest, had taught him
+little either of the spirit or of the tactics of warfare. "Campaign!" he
+exclaimed. "There's no campaign about it. It's a complete smash, horse,
+foot, and artillery."
+
+"Nonsense, Captain Cameron!" exclaimed Mr. Rae more briskly than his
+wont, for the Captain irritated him. "We have still fighting to do, and
+hence we must plan our campaign. But first let us get comfortable. Here
+Davie," he called, opening the office door, "here, mend this fire. It's
+a winter's day this," he continued to the Captain, "and goes to the
+marrow."
+
+Davie, a wizened, clean-shaven, dark-visaged little man, appeared with a
+scuttle of coal. "Ay, Davie; that's it! Is that cannel?"
+
+"Ay, Sir, it is. What else? I aye get the cannel."
+
+"That's right, Davie. It's a gran' coal."
+
+"Gran' it's no'," said Davie shortly, who was a fierce radical in
+politics, and who strove to preserve his sense of independence of all
+semblance of authority by cultivating a habit of disagreement. "Gran'
+it's no'," he repeated, "but it's the best the Farquhars hae, though
+that's no' saying much. It's no' what I call cannel."
+
+"Well, well, Davie, it blazes finely at any rate," said Mr. Rae,
+determined to be cheerful, and rubbing his hands before the blazing
+coal.
+
+"Ay, it bleezes," grumbled Davie, "when it's no' smootherin'."
+
+"Come then, Davie, that will do. Clear out," said Mr. Rae to the old
+servant, who was cleaning up the hearth with great diligence and care.
+
+But Davie was not to be hurried. He had his regular routine in
+fire-mending, from which no power could move him. "Ay, Sir," he
+muttered, brushing away with his feather besom. "I'll clear oot when I
+clear up. When a thing's no' dune richt it's no dune ava."
+
+"True, Davie, true enough; that's a noble sentiment. But will that no'
+do now?" Mr. Rae knew himself to be helpless in Davie's hands, and he
+knew also that nothing short of violence would hasten Davie from his
+"usual."
+
+"Ay, that'll dae, because it's richt dune. But that's no' what I call
+cannel," grumbled Davie, glowering fiercely at the burning coal, as if
+meditating a fresh attack.
+
+"Well, well," said Mr. Rae, "tell the Farquhars about it."
+
+"Ay, Sir, I will that," said Davie, as he reluctantly took himself off
+with his scuttle and besom.
+
+The Captain was bursting with fretful impatience. "Impudent old rascal!"
+he exclaimed. "Why don't you dismiss him?"
+
+"Dismiss him!" echoed Mr. Rae in consternation. "Dismiss him!" he
+repeated, as if pondering an entirely new idea. "I doubt if Davie would
+consider that. But now let us to work." He set two arm-chairs before the
+fire, and placed a box of cigars by the Captain's elbow. "I have seen
+Sheratt," he began. "I'm quite clear it is not in his hands."
+
+"In whose then?" burst forth the Captain.
+
+Mr. Rae lit his cigar carefully. "The whole matter, I believe, lies now
+with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sir Archibald Brodie."
+
+"Brodie!" cried the Captain. "I know him. Pompous little fool!"
+
+"Fool, Captain Cameron! Make no mistake. Sir Archibald may have--ah--the
+self-importance of a self-made man somewhat under the average height,
+but he is, without doubt, the best financier that stands at this moment
+in Scotland, and during the last fifteen years he has brought up the
+Bank of Scotland to its present position. Fool! He's anything but that.
+But he has his weak spots--I wish I knew what they were!--and these we
+must seek to find out. Do you know him well?"
+
+"Oh, yes, quite well," said the Captain; "that is, I've met him at
+various functions, where he always makes speeches. Very common, I
+call him. I know his father; a mere cottar. I mean," added the Captain
+hurriedly, for he remembered that Mr. Rae was of the same humble
+origin, "you know, he is thoroughly respectable and all that, but of
+no--ah--social or family standing; that is--oh, you understand."
+
+"Quite," said Mr. Rae drily.
+
+"Yes, I shall see him," continued the Captain briskly. "I shall
+certainly see him. It is a good suggestion. Sir Archibald knows my
+family; indeed, his father was from the Erracht region. I shall see him
+personally. I am glad you thought of that, Mr. Rae. These smaller men,
+Sheratt and the rest, I do not know--in fact, I do not seem to be able
+to manage them,--but with Sir Archibald there will be no difficulty, I
+feel quite confident. When can you arrange the interview?"
+
+Mr. Rae sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire, more and more convinced
+every moment that he had made a false move in suggesting a meeting
+between the Captain and Sir Archibald Brodie. But labour as he might he
+could not turn the Captain from his purpose. He was resolved to see Sir
+Archibald at the earliest moment, and of the result of the meeting he
+had no manner of doubt.
+
+"He knew my family, Sir," insisted the Captain. "Sir Archibald will
+undoubtedly accede to my suggestion--ah--request to withdraw his action.
+Arrange it, Mr. Rae, arrange it at once."
+
+And ruefully enough Mr. Rae was compelled to yield against his better
+judgment.
+
+It was discovered upon inquiry that Sir Archibald had gone for a day or
+two to his country estate. "Ah, much better," said the Captain, "away
+from his office and away from the--ah--commercial surroundings of the
+city. Much better, much better! We shall proceed to his country home."
+
+Of the wisdom of this proposal Mr. Rae was doubtful. There seemed,
+however, no other way open. Hence, the following morning found them on
+their way to Sir Archibald's country seat. Mr. Rae felt that it was
+an unusual course to pursue, but the time was short, the occasion was
+gravely critical, and demanded extreme measures.
+
+During their railway journey Mr. Rae strove to impress upon the
+Captain's mind the need of diplomacy. "Sir Archibald is a man of strong
+prejudices," he urged; "for instance, his Bank he regards with an
+affection and respect amounting to veneration. He is a bachelor, you
+understand, and his Bank is to him wife and bairns. On no account must
+you treat his Bank lightly."
+
+"Oh, certainly not," replied the Captain, who was inclined to resent Mr.
+Rae's attempts to school him in diplomacy.
+
+"He is a great financier," continued Mr. Rae, "and with him finance is a
+high art, and financial integrity a sacred obligation."
+
+"Oh, certainly, certainly," again replied the Captain, quite unimpressed
+by this aspect of the matter, for while he considered himself distinctly
+a man of affairs, yet his interests lay more in matters of great public
+moment. Commercial enterprises he regarded with a feeling akin to
+contempt. Money was an extremely desirable, and indeed necessary,
+appendage to a gentleman's position, but how any man of fine feeling
+could come to regard a financial institution with affection or
+veneration he was incapable of conceiving. However, he was prepared
+to deal considerately with Sir Archibald's peculiar prejudices in this
+matter.
+
+Mr. Rae's forebodings as to the outcome of the approaching interview
+were of the most gloomy nature as they drove through the finely
+appointed and beautifully kept grounds of Sir Archibald Brodie's estate.
+The interview began inauspiciously. Sir Archibald received them with
+stiff courtesy. He hated to be pursued to his country home with business
+matters. Besides, at this particular moment he was deeply engrossed in
+the inspection of his pigs, for which animals he cherished what might
+almost be called an absorbing affection. Mr. Rae, who was proceeding
+with diplomatic caution and skill to approach the matter in hand by way
+of Sir Archibald's Wiltshires, was somewhat brusquely interrupted by the
+Captain, who, in the firm conviction that he knew much better than did
+the lawyer how to deal with a man of his own class, plunged at once into
+the subject.
+
+"Awfully sorry to introduce business matters, Sir Archibald, to the
+attention of a gentleman in the privacy of his own home, but there is a
+little matter in connection with the Bank in which I am somewhat deeply
+interested."
+
+Sir Archibald bowed in silence.
+
+"Rather, I should say, it concerns my son, and therefore, Sir Archibald,
+myself and my family."
+
+Again Sir Archibald bowed.
+
+"It is, after all, a trivial matter, which I have no doubt can be easily
+arranged between us. The truth is, Sir Archibald--," here the Captain
+hesitated, as if experiencing some difficulty in stating the case.
+
+"Perhaps Captain Cameron will allow me to place the matter before you,
+Sir Archibald," suggested Mr. Rae, "as it has a legal aspect of some
+gravity, indeed of very considerable gravity. It is the case of young
+Mr. Cameron."
+
+"Ah," said Sir Archibald shortly. "Forgery case, I believe."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Rae, "we have not been able as yet to get at the
+bottom of it. I confess that the case has certainly very grave features
+connected with it, but it is by no means clear that--"
+
+"There is no need for further statement, Mr. Rae," said Sir Archibald.
+"I know all about it. It is a clear case of forgery. The facts have all
+been laid before me, and I have given my instructions."
+
+"And what may these be, may I inquire?" said the Captain somewhat
+haughtily.
+
+"The usual instructions, Sir, where the Bank of Scotland is concerned,
+instructions to prosecute." Sir Archibald's lips shut in a firm, thin
+line. As far as he was concerned the matter was closed.
+
+"But, Sir," exclaimed the Captain, "this young man is my son."
+
+"I deeply regret it," replied Sir Archibald.
+
+"Yes, Sir, he is my son, and the honour of my family is involved."
+
+Sir Archibald bowed.
+
+"I am here prepared to offer the fullest reparation, to offer the most
+generous terms of settlement; in short, I am willing to do anything in
+reason to have this matter--this unfortunate matter--hushed up."
+
+"Hushed up!" exclaimed Sir Archibald. "Captain Cameron, it is
+impossible. I am grieved for you, but I have a duty to the Bank in this
+matter."
+
+"Do you mean to say, Sir," cried the Captain, "that you refuse to
+consider any arrangement or compromise or settlement of any kind
+whatever? I am willing to pay the amount ten times over, rather than
+have my name dragged through legal proceedings."
+
+"It is quite impossible," said Sir Archibald.
+
+"Come, come, Sir Archibald," said the Captain, exercising an unusual
+self-control; "let us look at this thing as two gentlemen should who
+respect each other, and who know what is due to our--ah--class."
+
+It was an unfortunate remark of the Captain's.
+
+"Our class, Sir? I presume you mean the class of gentlemen. All that
+is due to our class or any other class is strict justice, and that you,
+Sir, or any other gentleman, shall receive to the very fullest in this
+matter. The honour of the Bank, which I regard as a great National
+Institution charged with National responsibilities, is involved, as is
+also my own personal honour. I sincerely trust your son may be cleared
+of every charge of crime, but this case must be prosecuted to the very
+fullest degree."
+
+"And do you mean to tell me, Sir Archibald," exclaimed the Captain, now
+in a furious passion, "that for the sake of a few paltry pounds you will
+blast my name and my family name in this country?--a name, I venture to
+say, not unknown in the history of this nation. The Camerons, Sir, have
+fought and bled for King and country on many a battlefield. What matters
+the question of a few pounds in comparison with the honour of an
+ancient and honourable name? You cannot persist in this attitude, Sir
+Archibald!"
+
+"Pounds, Sir!" cried Sir Archibald, now thoroughly aroused by the
+contemptuous reference to what to him was dearer than anything in life.
+"Pounds, Sir! It is no question of pounds, but a question of the honour
+of a National Institution, a question of the lives and happiness of
+hundreds of widows and orphans, a question of the honour of a name which
+I hold as dear as you hold yours."
+
+Mr. Rae was in despair. He laid a restraining hand upon the Captain, and
+with difficulty obtained permission to speak. "Sir Archibald, I crave
+your indulgence while I put this matter to you as to a business man. In
+the first place, there is no evidence that fraud has been committed
+by young Mr. Cameron, absolutely none.--Pardon me a moment, Sir
+Archibald.--The fraud has been committed, I grant, by someone, but by
+whom is as yet unknown. The young man for some weeks has been in a state
+of incapacity; a most blameworthy and indeed shameful condition, it is
+true, but in a state of incapacity to transact business. He declares
+that he has no knowledge of this act of forgery. He will swear this. I
+am prepared to defend him."
+
+"Very well, Sir," interrupted Sir Archibald, "and I hope, I sincerely
+hope, successfully."
+
+"But while it may be difficult to establish innocence, it will be
+equally difficult to establish guilt. Meantime, the young man's life
+is blighted, his name dishonoured, his family plunged into unspeakable
+grief. I venture to say that it is a case in which the young man might
+be given, without injury to the Bank, or without breaking through its
+traditional policy, the benefit of the doubt."
+
+But Sir Archibald had been too deeply stirred by Captain Cameron's
+unfortunate remarks to calmly weigh Mr. Rae's presentation of the case.
+"It is quite useless, Mr. Rae," he declared firmly. "The case is out of
+my hands, and must be proceeded with. I sincerely trust you may be able
+to establish the young man's innocence. I have nothing more to say."
+
+And from this position neither Mr. Rae's arguments nor the Captain's
+passionate pleadings could move him.
+
+Throughout the return journey the Captain raged and swore. "A
+contemptible cad, Sir! a base-born, low-bred cad, Sir! What else could
+you expect from a fellow of his breeding? The insolence of these lower
+orders is becoming insupportable. The idea! the very idea! His bank
+against my family name, my family honour! Preposterous!"
+
+"Honour is honour, Captain Cameron," replied Mr. Rae firmly, "and
+it might have been better if you had remembered that the honour of a
+cottar's son is as dear to him as yours is to you."
+
+And such was Mr. Rae's manner that the Captain appeared to consider it
+wise to curb his rage, or at least suppress all reference to questions
+of honour in as far as they might be related to the question of birth
+and breeding.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A LADY AND THE LAW
+
+
+Mr. Rae's first care was to see Mr. Dunn. This case was getting rather
+more trying to Mr. Rae's nerves than he cared to acknowledge. For a
+second time he had been humiliated, and humiliation was an experience to
+which Mr. Rae was not accustomed. It was in a distinctly wrathful frame
+of mind that he called upon Mr. Dunn, and the first quarter of an hour
+of his interview he spent in dilating upon his own folly in having
+allowed Captain Cameron to accompany him on his visit to Sir Archibald.
+
+"In forty years I never remember having made such an error, Sir. This
+was an occasion for diplomacy. We should have taken time. We should have
+discovered his weak spots; every man has them. Now it is too late.
+The only thing left for us is fight, and the best we can hope for is a
+verdict of NOT PROVEN, and that leaves a stigma."
+
+"It is terrible," said Mr. Dunn, "and I believe he is innocent. Have you
+thought of Potts, Sir?"
+
+"I have had Potts before me," said Mr. Rae, "and I may safely say that
+though he strikes me as being a man of unusual cleverness, we can do
+nothing with Mr. Potts. Of course," added Mr. Rae hastily, "this is not
+to say we shall not make use of Mr. Potts in the trial, but Mr. Potts
+can show from his books debts amounting to nearly sixty pounds. He
+frankly acknowledges the pleasantry in suggesting the raising of the
+five-pound cheque to fifty pounds, but of the act itself he professes
+entire ignorance. I frankly own to you, Sir," continued Mr. Rae, folding
+his ear into a horn after his manner when in perplexity, "that this case
+puzzles me. I must not take your time," he said, shaking Mr. Dunn warmly
+by the hand. "One thing more I must ask you, however, and that is, keep
+in touch with young Cameron. I have pledged my honour to produce him
+when wanted. Furthermore, keep him--ah--in good condition; cheer him up;
+nerve him up; much depends upon his manner."
+
+Gravely Mr. Dunn accepted the trust, though whether he could fulfil it
+he doubted. "Keep him cheerful," said Mr. Dunn to himself, as the door
+closed upon Mr. Rae. "Nice easy job, too, under the circumstances.
+Let's see, what is there on? By Jove, if I could only bring him!" There
+flashed into Mr. Dunn's mind the fact that he was due that evening at a
+party for students, given by one of the professors, belated beyond the
+period proper to such functions by one of those domestic felicities
+which claim right of way over all other human events. At this party
+Cameron was also due. It was hardly likely, however, that he would
+attend. But to Dunn's amazement he found Cameron, with a desperate
+jollity such as a man might feel the night before his execution, eager
+to go.
+
+"I'm going," he cried, in answer to Dunn's somewhat timid suggestion.
+"They'll all be there, old man, and I shall make my exit with much
+eclat, with pipe and dance and all the rest of it."
+
+"Exit, be blowed!" said Dunn impatiently. "Let's cut all this nonsense
+out. We're going into a fight for all there's in us. Why should a fellow
+throw up the sponge after the first round?"
+
+"Fight!" said Cameron gloomily. "Did old Rae say so?"
+
+"Most decidedly."
+
+"And what defence does he suggest?"
+
+"Defence? Innocence, of course."
+
+"Would to God I could back him up!" groaned Cameron.
+
+Dunn gazed at him in dismay. "And can you not? You do not mean to tell
+me you are guilty?"
+
+"Oh, I wish to heaven I knew!" cried Cameron wildly. "But there, let it
+go. Let the lawyers and the judge puzzle it out. 'Guilty or not guilty?'
+'Hanged if I know, my lord. Looks like guilty, but don't see very well
+how I can be.' That will bother old Rae some; it would bother Old Nick
+himself. 'Did you forge this note?' 'My lord, my present ego recognizes
+no intent to forge; my alter ego in vino may have done so. Of that,
+however, I know nothing; it lies in that mysterious region of the
+subconscious.' 'Are you, then, guilty?' 'Guilt, my lord, lies in intent.
+Intent is the soul of crime.' It will be an interesting point for Mr.
+Rae and his lordship."
+
+"Look here, old chap," asked Dunn suddenly, "what of Potts in this
+business?"
+
+"Potts! Oh, hang it, Dunn, I can't drag Potts into this. It would
+be altogether too low-down to throw suspicion upon a man without the
+slightest ground. Potts is not exactly a lofty-souled creature. In fact,
+he is pronouncedly a bounder, though I confess I did borrow money of
+him; but I'd borrow money of the devil when I'm in certain moods. A man
+may be a bounder, however, without being a criminal. No, I have thought
+this thing out as far as I can, and I've made my mind up that I've got
+to face it myself. I've been a fool, ah, such a fool!" A shudder shook
+his frame. "Oh, Dunn, old man, I don't mind for myself, I can go out
+easily enough, but it's my little sister! It will break her heart, and
+she has no one else; she will have to bear it all alone."
+
+"What do you mean, Cameron?" asked Dunn sharply.
+
+Cameron sprang to his feet. "Let it go," he cried. "Let it go for
+to-night, anyway." He seized a decanter which stood all too ready to his
+hand, but Dunn interposed.
+
+"Listen to me, old man," he said, in a voice of grave and earnest
+sadness, while he pushed Cameron back into a chair. "We have a
+desperately hard game before us, you and I,--this is my game, too,--and
+we must be fit; so, Cameron, I want your word that you will play up for
+all that's in you; that you will cut this thing out," pointing to the
+decanter, "and will keep fit to the last fighting minute. I am asking
+you this, Cameron. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to me, you owe it
+to your sister."
+
+For some moments Cameron sat gazing straight before him, his face
+showing the agony in his soul. "As God's above, I do! I owe it to you,
+Dunn, and to her, and to the memory of my--" But his quivering lips
+could not utter the word; and there was no need, for they both knew that
+his heart was far away in the little mound that lay in the shadow of the
+church tower in the Cuagh Oir. The lad rose to his feet, and stretching
+out his hand to Dunn cried, "There's my hand and my honour as a
+Highlander, and until the last fighting moment I'll be fit."
+
+At the party that night none was gayer than young Cameron. The shy
+reserve that usually marked him was thrust aside. His fine, lithe
+figure, set off by his Highland costume, drew all eyes in admiration,
+and whether in the proud march of the piper, or in the wild abandon of
+the Highland Fling, he seemed to all the very beau ideal of a gallant
+Highland gentleman.
+
+Dunn stood in the circle gathered to admire, watching Cameron's
+performance of that graceful and intricate Highland dance, all
+unconscious of a pair of bright blue eyes fastened on his face that
+reflected so manifestly the grief and pain in his heart.
+
+"And wherefore this gloom?" said a gay voice at his side. It was Miss
+Bessie Brodie.
+
+Poor Dunn! He was not skilled in the fine art of social deception. He
+could only gaze stupidly and with blinking eyes upon his questioner,
+devoutly hoping meanwhile that the tears would not fall.
+
+"Splendid Highlander, isn't he?" exclaimed Miss Bessie, hastily
+withdrawing her eyes from his face, for she was much too fine a lady to
+let him see her surprise.
+
+"What?" exclaimed Dunn. "I don't know. I mean--yes, awfully--oh,
+confound the thing, it's a beastly shame!"
+
+Thereupon Miss Bessie turned her big blue eyes slowly upon him. "Meaning
+what?" she said quietly.
+
+"Oh, I beg pardon. I'm just a fool. Oh, hang it all!" Dunn could not
+recover his composure. He backed out of the circle of admirers into a
+darker corner.
+
+"Fool?" said Miss Brodie, stepping back with him. "And why, pray? Can
+I know? I suppose it's Cameron again," she continued. "Oh, I know all
+about you and your mothering of him."
+
+"Mothering!" said Dunn bitterly. "That is just what he needs, by Jove.
+His mother has been dead these five years, and that's been the ruin of
+him."
+
+The cheers from Cameron's admirers broke in upon Dunn's speech. "Oh,
+it's too ghastly," he muttered.
+
+"Is it really so bad? Can't I help?" cried Miss Brodie. "You know I've
+had some experience with boys."
+
+As Dunn looked into her honest, kindly eyes he hesitated. Should he tell
+her? He was in sore need of counsel, and besides he was at the limit
+of his self-control. "I say," he said, staring at her, while his lips
+quivered, "I'd like awfully to tell you, but I know if I ever begin I
+shall just burst into tears before this gaping crowd."
+
+"Tears!" exclaimed Miss Bessie. "Not you! And if you did it wouldn't
+hurt either them or you. An International captain possesses this
+advantage over other mortals: that he may burst into tears or anything
+else without losing caste, whereas if I should do any such thing--But
+come, let's get somewhere and talk it over. Now, then," said Miss Brodie
+as they found a quiet corner, "first of all, ought I to know?"
+
+"You'll know, all Edinburgh will know time day after to-morrow," said
+Dunn.
+
+"All right, then, it can't do any harm for me to know to-night. It
+possibly may do good."
+
+"It will do me good, anyway," said Dunn, "for I have reached my limit."
+
+Then Dunn told her, and while she listened she grew grave and anxious.
+"But surely it can be arranged!" she exclaimed, after he had finished.
+
+"No, Mr. Rae has tried everything. The Bank is bound to pursue it to the
+bitter end. It is apparently a part of its policy."
+
+"What Bank?"
+
+"The Bank of Scotland."
+
+"Why, that's my uncle's Bank! I mean, he is the Chairman of the Board
+of Directors, and the Bank is the apple of his eye; or one of them, I
+mean--I'm the other."
+
+"Oh, both, I fancy," said Dunn, rather pleased with his own courage.
+
+"But come, this is serious," said Miss Brodie. "The Bank, you know, or
+you don't know, is my uncle's weak spot."
+
+Mr. Rae's words flashed across Dunn's mind: "We ought to have found his
+weak spots."
+
+"He says," continued Miss Brodie with a smile--"you know he's an old
+dear!--I divide his heart with the Bank, that I have the left lobe.
+Isn't that the bigger one? So the Bank and I are his weak spots; unless
+it is his Wiltshires--he is devoted to Wiltshires."
+
+"Wiltshires?"
+
+"Pigs. There are times when I feel myself distinctly second to them. Are
+you sure my uncle knows all about Cameron?"
+
+"Well, Mr. Rae and Captain Cameron--that's young Cameron's father--went
+out to his place--"
+
+"Ah, that was a mistake," said Miss Brodie. "He hates people following
+him to the country. Well, what happened?"
+
+"Mr. Rae feels that it was rather a mistake that Captain Cameron went
+along."
+
+"Why so? He is his father, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, he is, though I'm bound to say he's rather queer for a father."
+Whereupon Dunn gave her an account of his interview in Mr. Rae's office.
+
+Miss Brodie was indignant. "What a shame! And what a fool! Why, he is
+ten times more fool than his son; for mark you, his son is undoubtedly
+a fool, and a selfish fool at that. I can't bear a young fool who
+sacrifices not simply his own life, but the interests of all who care
+for him, for some little pet selfishness of his own. But this father
+of his seems to be even worse than the son. Family name indeed! And I
+venture to say he expatiated upon the glory of his family name to my
+uncle. If there's one thing that my uncle goes quite mad about it is
+this affectation of superiority on the ground of the colour of a man's
+blood! No wonder he refused to withdraw the prosecution! What could Mr.
+Rae have been thinking about? What fools men are!"
+
+"Quite true," murmured Mr. Dunn.
+
+"Some men, I mean," cried Miss Brodie hastily. "I wish to heaven I had
+seen my uncle first!"
+
+"I suppose it's too late now," said Dunn, with a kind of gloomy
+wistfulness.
+
+"Yes, I fear so," said Miss Brodie. "You see when my uncle makes up his
+mind he appears to have some religious scruples against changing it."
+
+"It was a ghastly mistake," said Dunn bitterly.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Dunn," said Miss Brodie, turning upon him suddenly, "I
+want your straight opinion. Do you think this young man guilty?"
+
+They were both looking at Cameron, at that moment the centre of a group
+of open admirers, his boyish face all aglow with animation. For the
+time being it seemed as if he had forgotten the terrible catastrophe
+overhanging him.
+
+"If I hadn't known Cameron for three years," replied Dunn slowly, "I
+would say offhand that this thing would be impossible to him; but you
+see you never know what a man in drink will do. Cameron can carry a
+bottle of Scotch without a stagger, but of course it knocks his head
+all to pieces. I mean, he is quite incapable of anything like clear
+thought."
+
+"It is truly terrible," said Miss Brodie. "I wish I had known yesterday,
+but those men have spoilt it all. But here's 'Lily' Laughton," she
+continued hurriedly, "coming for his dance." As she spoke a youth of
+willowy figure, languishing dark eyes and ladylike manner drew near.
+
+"Well, here you are at last! What a hunt I have had! I am quite
+exhausted, I assure you," cried the youth, fanning himself with his
+handkerchief. "And though you have quite forgotten it, this is our
+dance. What can you two have been talking about? But why ask? There is
+only one theme upon which you could become so terrifically serious."
+
+"And what is that, pray? Browning?" inquired Miss Brodie sweetly.
+
+"Dear Miss Brodie, if you only would, but--ugh!--" here "Lily"
+shuddered, "I can in fancy picture the gory scene in which you have been
+revelling for the last hour!" And "Lily's" handsome face and languid,
+liquid eyes indicated his horror. It was "Lily's" constant declaration
+that he "positively loathed" football, although his persistent
+attendance at all the great matches rather belied this declaration. "It
+is the one thing in you, Miss Bessie, that I deplore, 'the fly in the
+pot--' no, 'the flaw--' ah, that's better--'the flaw in the matchless
+pearl.'"
+
+"How sweet of you," murmured Miss Brodie.
+
+"Yes, indeed," continued "Lily," wreathing his tapering fingers, "it is
+your devotion to those so-called athletic games,--games! ye gods!--the
+chief qualifications for excellence in which appear to be brute strength
+and a blood-thirsty disposition; as witness Dunn there. I was positively
+horrified last International. There he was, our own quiet, domestic,
+gentle Dunn, raging through that howling mob of savages like a
+bloody Bengal tiger.--Rather apt, that!--A truly awful and degrading
+exhibition!"
+
+"Ah, perfectly lovely!" murmured Miss Brodie ecstatically. "I can see
+him yet."
+
+"Miss Brodie, how can you!" exclaimed "Lily," casting up his eyes in
+horror towards heaven. "But it was ever thus! In ancient days upon
+the bloody sands of the arena, fair ladies were wont to gaze with
+unrelenting eyes and thumbs turned down--or up, was it--?"
+
+"Excellent! But how clever of them to gaze with their thumbs in that
+way!"
+
+"Please don't interrupt," said "Lily" severely; "I have just 'struck my
+gait,' as that barbaric young Colonial, Martin, another of your bloody,
+brawny band, would say. And here you sit, unblushing, glorying in their
+disgusting deeds and making love open and unabashed to their captain!"
+
+"Go away, 'Lily' or I'll hurt you," cried Dunn, his face a brilliant
+crimson. "Come, get out!"
+
+"But don't be uplifted," continued "Lily," ignoring him, "you are not
+the first. By no means! It is always the last International captain, and
+has been to my certain knowledge for the last ten years."
+
+"Ten years!" exclaimed Miss Brodie in horrified accents. "You monster!
+If you have no regard for my character you might at least respect my
+age."
+
+"Age! Dear Miss Brodie," ejaculated "Lily," "who could ever associate
+age with your perennial youth?"
+
+"Perennial! Wretch! If there is anything I am sensitive about, really
+sensitive about, it is my age! Mr. Dunn, I beseech you, save me from
+further insult! Dear 'Lily,' run away now. You are much too tired to
+dance, and besides there is Mrs. Craig-Urquhart waiting to talk your
+beloved Wagner-Tennyson theory; or what is the exact combination?
+Mendelssohn-Browning, is it?"
+
+"Oh, Miss Bessie!" cried "Lily" in a shocked voice, "how can
+you? Mendelssohn-Browning! How awful! Do have some regard for the
+affinities."
+
+"Mr. Dunn, I implore you, save me! I can bear no more. There! A merciful
+providence has accomplished my deliverance. They are going. Good-night,
+'Lily.' Run away now. I want a word with Mr. Dunn."
+
+"Oh, heartless cruelty!" exclaimed "Lily," in an agonised voice. "But
+what can you expect from such associations?" And he hastened away to
+have a last word with Mrs. Craig-Urquhart, who was swimming languidly
+by.
+
+Miss Brodie turned eagerly to Dunn. "I'd like to help you awfully," she
+said; "indeed I must try. I have very little hope. My uncle is so strong
+when he is once set, and he is so funny about that Bank. But a boy is
+worth more than a Bank, if he IS a fool; besides, there is his sister.
+Good-night. Thanks for letting me help. I have little hope, but
+to-morrow I shall see Sir Archibald, and--and his pigs."
+
+It was still in the early forenoon of the following day when Miss
+Brodie greeted her uncle as he was about to start upon his round of the
+pastures and pens where the Wiltshires of various ages and sizes and
+sexes were kept. With the utmost enthusiasm Miss Brodie entered into his
+admiration of them all, from the lordly prize tusker to the great mother
+lying broadside on in grunting and supreme content, every grunt eloquent
+of happiness and maternal love and pride, to allow her week-old brood to
+prod and punch her luxuriant dugs for their breakfast.
+
+By the time they had made their rounds Sir Archibald had arrived at his
+most comfortable and complacent mood. He loved his niece. He loved her
+for the sake of his dead brother, and as she grew in years, he came to
+love her for herself. Her sturdy independent fearlessness, her
+sound sense, her honest heart, and chiefly, if it must be told, her
+whole-souled devotion to himself, made for her a great space in his
+heart. And besides all this, they were both interested to the point of
+devotion in pigs. As he watched his niece handling the little sucklings
+with tender care, and listened to her appraising their varying merits
+with a discriminating judgment, his heart filled up with pride in her
+many accomplishments and capabilities.
+
+"Isn't she happy, Uncle?" she exclaimed, lifting her brown, sunny face
+to him.
+
+"Ay, lassie," replied Sir Archibald, lapsing into the kindly "braid
+Scots," "I ken fine how she feels."
+
+"She's just perfectly happy," said his niece, "and awfully useful and
+good. She is just like you, Uncle."
+
+"What? Oh, thank you, I'm extremely flattered, I assure you."
+
+"Uncle, you know what I mean! Useful and good. Here you are in this
+lovely home--how lovely it is on a warm, shiny day like this!--safe from
+cares and worries, where people can't get at you, and making--"
+
+"Ah, I don't know about that," replied her uncle, shaking his head with
+a frown. "Some people have neither sense nor manners. Only yesterday
+I was pestered by a fellow who annoyed me, seriously annoyed me,
+interfering in affairs which he knew nothing of,--actually the affairs
+of the Bank!--prating about his family name, and all the rest of it.
+Family name!" Here, it must be confessed, Sir Archibald distinctly
+snorted, quite in a manner calculated to excite the envy of any of his
+Wiltshires.
+
+"I know, Uncle. He is a fool, a conceited fool, and a selfish fool."
+
+"You know him?" inquired her uncle in a tone of surprise.
+
+"No, I have no personal acquaintance with him, I'm glad to say, but I
+know about him, and I know that he came with Mr. Rae, the Writer."
+
+"Ah, yes! Thoroughly respectable man, Mr. Rae."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rae is all right; but Captain Cameron--oh, I can't bear him!
+He came to talk to you about his son, and I venture to say he took most
+of the time in talking about himself."
+
+"Exactly so! But how--?"
+
+"And, Uncle, I want to talk to you about that matter, about young
+Cameron." For just a moment Miss Brodie's courage faltered as she
+observed her uncle's figure stiffen. "I want you to know the rights of
+the case."
+
+"Now, now, my dear, don't you go--ah--"
+
+"I know, Uncle, you were going to say 'interfering,' only you remember
+in time that your niece never interferes. Isn't that true, Sir?"
+
+"Yes, yes! I suppose so; that is, certainly."
+
+"Now I am interested in this young Cameron, and I want you to get the
+right view of his case, which neither your lawyer nor your manager nor
+that fool father of his can give you. I know that if you see this case
+as I see it you will do--ah--exactly what is right; you always do."
+
+Miss Brodie's voice had assumed its most reasonable and business-like
+tone. Sir Archibald was impressed, and annoyed because he was impressed.
+
+"Look here, Bessie," he said, in as impatient a tone as he ever adopted
+with his niece, "you know how I hate being pestered with business
+affairs out here."
+
+"I know quite well, Uncle, and I regret it awfully, but I know, too,
+that you are a man of honour, and that you stand for fair play. But that
+young man is to be arrested to-day, and you know what that will mean for
+a young fellow with his way to make."
+
+Her appeal was not without its effect. Sir Archibald set himself to give
+her serious attention. "Let us have it, then," he said briefly. "What
+do you know of the young man?"
+
+"This first of all: that he has a selfish, conceited prig for a father."
+
+With which beginning Sir Archibald most heartily agreed. "But how do you
+know?"
+
+"Now, let me tell you about him." And Miss Brodie proceeded to describe
+the scene between father and son in Mr. Rae's office, with vigorous and
+illuminating comments. "And just think, the man in the company who was
+first to condemn the young chap was his own father. Would you do that?
+You'd stand for him against the whole world, even if he were wrong."
+
+"Steady, steady, lass!"
+
+"You would," repeated Miss Bessie, with indignant emphasis. "Would you
+chuck me over if I were disgraced and all the world hounding me? Would
+you?"
+
+"No, by God!" said Sir Archibald in a sudden tempest of emotion, and
+Miss Bessie smiled lovingly upon him.
+
+"Well, that's the kind of a father he has. Now about the young fellow
+himself: He's just a first-class fool, like most young fellows. You know
+how they are, Uncle."
+
+Sir Archibald held up his hand. "Don't make any such assumptions."
+
+"Oh, I know you, and when you were a boy you were just as gay and
+foolish as the rest of them."
+
+Her arch, accusing smile suddenly cast a rich glow of warm colour
+over the long, grey road of Sir Archibald's youth of self-denial
+and struggle. The mild indulgences of his early years, under the
+transforming influence of that same arch and accusing smile, took on for
+Sir Archibald such an aspect of wild and hilarious gaiety as to impart a
+tone of hesitation to his voice while he deprecated his niece's charge.
+
+"What, I? Nonsense! What do you know about it? Well, well, we have all
+had our day, I suppose!"
+
+"Aha! I know you, and I should love to have known you when you were
+young Cameron's age. Though I'm quite sure you were never such a fool as
+he. You always knew how to take care of yourself."
+
+Her uncle shook his head as if to indicate that the less said about
+those gay young days the better.
+
+"Now what do you think this young fool does? Gets drinking, and gets so
+muddled up in all his money matters--he's a Highlander, you know, and
+Dunn, Mr. Dunn says--"
+
+"Dunn!"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Dunn, the great International captain, you know! Mr. Dunn says
+he can take a whole bottle of Scotch--"
+
+"What, Dunn?"
+
+"No, no; you know perfectly well, Uncle! This young Cameron can take
+a whole bottle of Scotch and walk a crack, but his head gets awfully
+muddled."
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised!"
+
+"And Mr. Dunn had a terrible time keeping him fit for the International.
+You know he was Dunn's half-back. Yes," cried his niece with enthusiasm,
+suddenly remembering a tradition that in his youth Sir Archibald had
+been a famous quarter, his one indulgence, "a glorious half-back, too!
+You must remember in the match with England last fall the brilliant work
+of the half-back. Everybody went mad about him. That was young Cameron!"
+
+"You don't tell me! The left-half in the English International last
+fall?"
+
+"Yes, indeed! Oh, he's wonderful! But he has to be watched, you know,
+and the young fool lost us the last--" Miss Bessie abruptly checked
+herself. "But never mind! Well, after the season, you know, he got going
+loose, and this is the result. Owed money everywhere, and with the true
+Highland incapacity for business, and the true Highland capacity for
+trusting people--"
+
+"Huh!" grunted Sir Archibald in disapproval.
+
+"--When his head is in a muddled condition he does something or other to
+a cheque--or doesn't do it, nobody knows--and there he is in this awful
+fix. Personally, I don't believe he is guilty of the crime."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"Why? Well, Mr. Dunn, his captain, who has known him for years, says it
+is quite impossible; and then the young man himself doesn't deny it."
+
+"What? Does NOT deny it?"
+
+"Exactly! Like a perfectly straightforward gentleman,--and I think it's
+awfully fine of him,--though he has a perfectly good chance to put the
+thing on a--a fellow Potts, quite a doubtful character, he simply says,
+'I know nothing about it. That looks like my signature. I can't remember
+doing this, don't know how I could have, but don't know a thing about
+it.' There you are, Uncle! And Mr. Dunn says he is quite incapable of
+it."
+
+"Mr. Dunn, eh? It seems you build somewhat broadly upon Mr. Dunn."
+
+The brown on Miss Bessie's check deepened slightly. "Well, Mr. Dunn is a
+splendid judge of men."
+
+"Ah; and of young ladies, also, I imagine," said Sir Archibald, pinching
+her cheek.
+
+It may have been the pinch, but the flush on her cheek grew distinctly
+brighter. "Don't be ridiculous, Uncle! He's just a boy, a perfectly
+splendid boy, and glorious in his game, but a mere boy, and--well, you
+know, I've arrived at the age of discretion."
+
+"Quite true!" mused her uncle. "Thirty last birthday, was it? How time
+does--!"
+
+"Oh, you perfectly horrid uncle! Thirty indeed! Are you not ashamed to
+add to the already intolerable burden of my years? Thirty! No, Sir, not
+by five good years at least! There now, you've made me tell my age! You
+ought to blush for shame."
+
+Her uncle patted her firm, round cheek. "Never a blush, my dear! You
+bear even your advanced age with quite sufficient ease and grace. But
+now about this young Cameron," he continued, assuming a sternly judicial
+tone.
+
+"All I ask for him is a chance," said his niece earnestly.
+
+"A chance? Why he will get every chance the law allows to clear
+himself."
+
+"There you are!" exclaimed Miss Bessie, in a despairing tone. "That's
+the way the lawyers and your manager talk. They coolly and without a
+qualm get him arrested, this young boy who has never in all his life
+shown any sign of criminal tendency. These horrid lawyers display their
+dreadful astuteness and ability in catching a lad who never tries to run
+away, and your manager pleads the rules of the Bank. The rules! Fancy
+rules against a young boy's whole life!"
+
+Her uncle rather winced at this.
+
+"And like a lot of sheep they follow each other in a circle; there is
+absolutely no independence, no initiative. Why, they even went so far as
+to suggest that you could do nothing, that you were bound by rules and
+must follow like the rest of them; but I told them I knew better."
+
+"Ah!" said Sir Archibald in his most dignified manner. "I trust I have a
+mind of my own, but--"
+
+"Exactly! So I said to Mr. Dunn. 'Rules or no rules,' I said, 'my
+uncle will do the fair thing.' And I know you will," cried Miss Brodie
+triumphantly. "And if you look at it, there's a very big chance that the
+boy never did the thing, and certainly if he did it at all it was when
+he was quite incapable. Oh, I know quite well what the lawyers say. They
+go by the law,--they've got to,--but you--and--and--I go by the--the
+real facts of the case." Sir Archibald coughed gently. "I mean to
+say--well you know, Uncle, quite well, you can tell what a man is
+by--well, by his game."
+
+"His game!"
+
+"And by his eye."
+
+"His eye! And his eye is--?"
+
+"Now, Uncle, be sensible! I mean to say, if you could only see him. Oh,
+I shall bring him to see you!" she cried, with a sudden inspiration.
+
+Sir Archibald held up a deprecating hand. "Do not, I beg."
+
+"Well, Uncle, you can trust my judgment, you know you can. You would
+trust me in--in--" For a moment Miss Brodie was at a loss; then her eyes
+fell upon the grunting, comfortable old mother pig with her industrious
+litter. "Well, don't I know good Wiltshires when I see them?"
+
+"Quite true," replied her uncle solemnly; "and therefore, men."
+
+"Uncle, you're very nearly rude."
+
+"I apologise," replied her uncle hastily. "But now, Bessie, my dear
+girl, seriously, as to this case, you must understand that I cannot
+interfere. The Bank--hem--the Bank is a great National--"
+
+Miss Bessie saw that the Guards were being called upon. She hastened to
+bring up her reserves. "I know, Uncle, I know! I wouldn't for the world
+say a word against the Bank, but you see the case against the lad is at
+least doubtful."
+
+"I was going on to observe," resumed her uncle, judicially, "that the
+Bank--"
+
+"Don't misunderstand me, Uncle," cried his niece, realising that she had
+reached a moment of crisis. "You know I would not for a moment
+presume to interfere with the Bank, but"--here she deployed her whole
+force,--"the lad's youth and folly; his previous good character,
+guaranteed by Dunn, who knows men; his glorious game--no man who wasn't
+straight could play such a game!--the large chance of his innocence, the
+small chance of his guilt; the hide-bound rigidity of lawyers and bank
+managers, dominated by mere rules and routine, in contrast with the
+open-minded independence of her uncle; the boy's utter helplessness; his
+own father having been ready to believe the worst,--just think of it,
+Uncle, his own father thinking of himself and of his family name--much
+he has ever done for his family name!--and not of his own boy,
+and"--here Miss Brodie's voice took a lower key--"and his mother died
+some five or six years ago, when he was thirteen or fourteen, and I
+know, you know, that is hard on a boy." In spite of herself, and to her
+disgust, a tremor came into her voice and a rush of tears to her eyes.
+
+Her uncle was smitten with dismay. Only on one terrible occasion since
+she had emerged from her teens had he seen his niece in tears. The
+memory of that terrible day swept over his soul. Something desperate
+was doing. Hard as the little man was to the world against which he had
+fought his way to his present position of distinction, to his niece
+he was soft-hearted as a mother. "There, there!" he exclaimed hastily.
+"We'll give the boy a chance. No mother, eh? And a confounded prig for a
+father! No wonder the boy goes all wrong!" Then with a sudden vehemence
+he cried, striking one hand into the other, "No, by--! that is, we
+will certainly give the lad the benefit of the doubt. Cheer up, lassie!
+You've no need to look ashamed," for his niece was wiping her eyes
+in manifest disgust; "indeed," he said, with a heavy attempt at
+playfulness, "you are a most excellent diplomat."
+
+"Diplomat, Uncle!" cried the girl, vehement indignation in her voice and
+face. "Diplomat!" she cried again. "You don't mean that I've not been
+quite sincere?"
+
+"No, no, no; not in the least, my dear! But that you have put your case
+with admirable force."
+
+"Oh," said the girl with a breath of relief, "I just put it as I feel
+it. And it is not a bit my putting it, Uncle, but it is just that
+you are a dear and--well, a real sport; you love fair play." The girl
+suddenly threw her strong, young arms about her uncle's neck, drew him
+close to her, and kissed him almost as if she had been his mother.
+
+The little man was deeply touched, but with true Scotch horror of a
+demonstration he cried, "Tut, tut, lassie, ye're makin' an auld fule o'
+your uncle. Come now, be sensible!"
+
+"Sensible!" echoed his niece, kissing him again. "That's my living
+description among all my acquaintance. It is their gentle way of
+reminding me that the ordinary feminine graces of sweetness and general
+loveliness are denied me."
+
+"And more fools they!" grunted her uncle. "You're worth the hale
+caboodle o' them."
+
+That same evening there were others who shared this opinion, and none
+more enthusiastically than did Mr. Dunn, whom Miss Brodie chanced to
+meet just as she turned out of the Waverly Station.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Dunn," she cried, "how very fortunate!" Her face glowed with
+excitement.
+
+"For me; yes, indeed!" said Mr. Dunn, warmly greeting her.
+
+"For me, for young Cameron, for us all," said Miss Brodie. "Oh, Rob, is
+that you?" she continued, as her eye fell upon the youngster standing
+with cap off waiting her recognition. "Look at this!" she flashed a
+letter before Dunn's face. "What do you think of that?"
+
+Dunn took the letter. "It's to Sheratt," he said, with a puzzled air.
+
+"Yes," cried Miss Brodie, mimicking his tone, "it's to Sheratt, from Sir
+Archibald, and it means that Cameron is safe. The police will never--"
+
+"The police," cried Dunn, hastily, getting between young Rob and her and
+glancing at his brother, who stood looking from one to the other with a
+startled face.
+
+"How stupid! The police are a truly wonderful body of men," she went on
+with enthusiasm. "They look so splendid. I saw some of them as I came
+along. But never mind them now. About this letter. What's to do?"
+
+Dunn glanced at his watch. "We need every minute." He stood a moment or
+two thinking deeply while Miss Brodie chatted eagerly with Rob, whose
+face retained its startled and anxious look. "First to Mr. Rae's office.
+Come!" cried Mr. Dunn.
+
+"But this letter ought to go."
+
+"Yes, but first Mr. Rae's office." Mr. Dunn had assumed command. His
+words shot out like bullets.
+
+Miss Brodie glanced at him with a new admiration in her face. As a
+rule she objected to being ordered about, but somehow it seemed good to
+accept commands from this young man, whose usually genial face was now
+set in such resolute lines.
+
+"Here, Rob, you cut home and tell them not to wait dinner for me."
+
+"All right, Jack!" But instead of tearing off as was his wont whenever
+his brother gave command, Rob lingered. "Can't I wait a bit, Jack, to
+see--to see if anything--?" Rob was striving hard to keep his voice in
+command and his face steady. "It's Cameron, Jack. I know!" He turned his
+back on Miss Brodie, unwilling that she should see his lips quiver.
+
+"What are you talking about?" said his brother sharply.
+
+"Oh, it is all my stupid fault, Mr. Dunn," said Miss Brodie. "Let him
+come along a bit with us. I say, youngster, you are much too acute," she
+continued, as they went striding along together toward Mr. Rae's office.
+"But will you believe me if I tell you something? Will you? Straight
+now?"
+
+The boy glanced up into her honest blue eyes, and nodded his head.
+
+"Your friend Cameron is quite all right. He was in some difficulty, but
+now he's quite all right. Do you believe me?"
+
+The boy looked again steadily into her eyes. The anxious fear passed
+out of his face, and once more he nodded; he knew he could not keep his
+voice quite steady. But after a few paces he said to his brother, "I
+think I'll go now, Jack." His mind was at rest; his idol was safe.
+
+"Oh, come along and protect me," cried Miss Brodie. "These lawyer people
+terrify me."
+
+The boy smiled a happy smile. "I'll go," he said resolutely.
+
+"Thanks, awfully," said Miss Brodie. "I shall feel so much safer with
+you in the waiting room."
+
+It was a difficult matter to surprise Mr. Rae, and even more difficult
+to extract from him any sign of surprise, but when Dunn, leaving Miss
+Brodie and his brother in the anteroom, entered Mr. Rae's private office
+and laid the letter for Mr. Sheratt before him, remarking, "This letter
+is from Sir Archibald, and withdraws the prosecution," Mr. Rae stood
+speechless, gazing now at the letter in his hand, and now at Mr. Dunn's
+face.
+
+"God bless my soul! This is unheard of. How came you by this, Sir?"
+
+"Miss Brodie--" began Dunn.
+
+"Miss Brodie?"
+
+"She is in the waiting room, Sir."
+
+"Then, for heaven's sake, bring her in! Davie, Davie! Where is that man
+now? Here, Davie, a message to Mr. Thomlinson."
+
+Davie entered with deliberate composure.
+
+"My compliments to Mr. Thomlinson, and ask if he would step over at
+once. It is a matter of extreme urgency. Be quick!"
+
+But Davie had his own mind as to the fitness of things. "Wad a note no'
+be better, Sir? Wull not--?"
+
+"Go, will you!" almost shouted Mr. Rae.
+
+Davie was so startled at Mr. Rae's unusual vehemence that he seized his
+cap and made for the door. "He'll no' come for the like o' me," he
+said, pausing with the door-knob in his hand. "It's no' respectable like
+tae--"
+
+"Man, will ye no' be gone?" cried Mr. Rae, rising from his chair.
+
+"I will that!" exclaimed Davie, banging the door after him. "But," he
+cried furiously, thrusting his head once more into the room, "if he'll
+no' come it's no' faut o' mine." His voice rose higher and higher, and
+ended in a wrathful scream as Mr. Rae, driven to desperation, hurled a
+law book of some weight at his vanishing head.
+
+"The de'il take ye! Ye'll be my deith yet."
+
+The book went crashing against the door-frame just as Miss Brodie was
+about to enter. "I say," she cried, darting back. "Heaven protect me!
+Rob, save me!"
+
+Rob sprang to her side. She stood for a moment gazing aghast at Mr.
+Dunn, who gazed back at her in equal surprise. "Is this his 'usual'?"
+she inquired.
+
+At that the door opened. "Ah, Mr. Dunn, this is Miss Brodie, I suppose.
+Come in, come in!" Mr. Rae's manner was most bland.
+
+Miss Brodie gave him her hand with some hesitation. "I'm very glad to
+meet you, Mr. Rae, but is this quite the usual method? I mean to say,
+I've heard of having advice hurled at one's head, but I can't say that I
+ever was present at a demonstration of the method."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Rae, with bland and gallant courtesy, "the method, my
+dear young lady, varies with the subject in hand."
+
+"Ah, the subject!"
+
+"And with the object in view."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+"But pray be seated. And now explain this most wonderful phenomenon." He
+tapped the letter.
+
+"Oh, that is quite simple," said Miss Brodie. "I set the case of young
+Mr. Cameron before my uncle, and of course he at once saw that the only
+thing to do was withdraw the prosecution."
+
+Mr. Rae stood gazing steadily at her as if striving to take in the
+meaning of her words, the while screwing up his ear most violently till
+it stuck out like a horn upon the side of his shiny, bald head. "Permit
+me to say, Miss Brodie," he said, with a deliberate and measured
+emphasis, "that you must be a most extraordinary young lady." At this
+point Mr. Rae's smile broke forth in all its glory.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mr. Rae," replied Miss Brodie, smiling responsively at
+him. "You are most--" But Mr. Rae's smile had vanished. "What! I beg
+your pardon!" Miss Brodie's smiling response was abruptly arrested by
+finding herself gazing at a face whose grave solemnity rebuked her smile
+as unwarranted levity.
+
+"Not at all, not at all!" said Mr. Rae. "But now, there are matters
+demanding immediate action. First, Mr. Sheratt must receive and act
+upon this letter without delay." As he spoke he was scribbling hastily
+a note. "Mr. Dunn, my young men have gone for the day. Might I trouble
+you?"
+
+"Most certainly," cried Mr. Dunn. "Is an answer wanted?"
+
+"Bring him with you, if possible; indeed, bring him whether it is
+possible or not. But wait, it is past the hour appointed. Already the
+officer has gone for young Cameron. We must save him the humiliation of
+arrest."
+
+"Oh, could I not warn him?" cried Miss Brodie eagerly. "No," she added,
+"Rob will go. He is in the waiting room now, poor little chap. It will
+be a joy to him."
+
+"It is just as well Rob should know nothing. He is awfully fond of
+Cameron. It would break his heart," said Mr. Dunn.
+
+"Oh, of course! Quite unnecessary that he should know anything. We
+simply wish Cameron here at the earliest possible moment."
+
+Dunn went with his young brother down the stairs and out to the street.
+"Now, Rob, you are to go to Cameron's lodgings and tell him that Mr. Rae
+wants him, and that I want him. Hold on, youngster!" he cried, grabbing
+Rob by the collar, "do you understand? It is very important that Cameron
+should get here as quick as he possibly can, and--I say, Rob," the big
+brother's eyes traveled over the darkening streets that led up into the
+old town, "you're not afraid?"
+
+"A wee bit," said Rob, tugging at the grasp on his collar; "but I don't
+care if I am."
+
+"Good boy!" cried his brother. "Good little brick! I wouldn't let you
+go, but it's simply got to be done, old chap. Now fly!" He held him just
+a moment longer to slap him on the back, then released his hold. Dunn
+stood watching the little figure tearing up the North Bridge. "Great
+little soul!" he muttered. "Now for old Sheratt!"
+
+He put his head down and began to bore through the crowd toward Mr.
+Sheratt's house. When he had gone but a little distance he was brought
+up short by a bang full in the stomach. "Why, what the deuce!"
+
+"Dod gast ye! Whaur are ye're een?" It was Davie, breathless and furious
+from the impact. "Wad ye walk ower me, dang ye?" cried the little man
+again. Davie was Free Kirk, and therefore limited in the range of his
+vocabulary.
+
+"Oh! That you, Davie? I'm sorry I didn't see you."
+
+"A'm no' as big as a hoose, but a'm veesible." And Davie walked
+wrathfully about his business.
+
+"Oh, quite," acknowledged Dunn cheerfully, hurrying on; "and tangible,
+as well."
+
+"He's comin'," cried Davie over his shoulder; "but gar it had been
+masel'," he added grudgingly, "catch me!"
+
+But Dunn was too far on his way to make reply. Already his mind was on
+the meeting of the lawyers in Mr. Rae's office, and wondering what would
+come of it. On this subject he meditated until he reached Mr. Sheratt's
+home. Twice he rang the bell, still meditating.
+
+"By Jove, she is stunning! She's a wonder!" he exclaimed to himself as
+he stood in Mr. Sheratt's drawing-room. "She's got 'em all skinned a
+mile, as Martin would say." It is safe to affirm that Mr. Dunn was not
+referring to the middle-aged and highly respectable maid who had
+opened the door to him. It is equally safe to affirm that this was the
+unanimous verdict of the three men who, half an hour later, brought
+their deliberations to a conclusion, frankly acknowledging to each
+other that what they had one and all failed to achieve, the lady had
+accomplished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+
+
+"I say, you blessed Colonial, what's come over you?" Linklater was
+obviously disturbed. He had just returned from a summer's yachting
+through the Norway fjords, brown and bursting with life. The last
+half-hour he had been pouring forth his experiences to his friend
+Martin. These experiences were some of them exciting, some of them
+of doubtful ethical quality, but all of them to Linklater at least
+interesting. During the recital it was gradually borne in upon him that
+his friend Martin was changed. Linklater, as the consciousness of the
+change in his friend grew upon him, was prepared to resent it. "What the
+deuce is the matter with you?" he enquired. "Are you ill?"
+
+"Never better. I could at this present moment sit upon your fat and
+florid carcass."
+
+"Well, what then is wrong? I say, you haven't--it isn't a girl, is it?"
+
+"Nothing so lucky for a bloomin' Colonial in this land of wealth and
+culture. If I only dared!"
+
+"There's something," insisted Linklater; "but I've no doubt it
+will develop. Meantime let us go out, and, in your own picturesque
+vocabulary, let us 'hit the flowing bowl.'"
+
+"No, Sir!" cried Martin emphatically. "No more! I am on the water wagon,
+and have been all summer."
+
+"I knew it was something," replied Linklater gloomily, "but I didn't
+think it was quite so bad as that. No wonder you've had a hard summer!"
+
+"Best summer ever!" cried Martin. "I only wish I had started two years
+ago when I came to this bibulous burgh."
+
+"How came it? Religion?"
+
+"No; just horse sense, and the old chief."
+
+"Dunn!" exclaimed Linklater. "I always knew he was against that sort of
+thing in training, but I didn't think he would carry it to this length."
+
+"Yes, Dunn! I say, old boy, I've no doubt you think you know him, I
+thought so, too, but I've learned some this summer. Here's a yarn, and
+it is impressive. Dunn had planned an extensive walking tour in the
+Highlands; you know he came out of his exams awfully fagged. Well, at
+this particular moment it happened that Balfour Murray--you know the
+chap that has been running that settlement joint in the Canongate for
+the last two years--proposes to Dunn that he should spend a few weeks
+in leading the young hopefuls in that interesting and uncleanly
+neighbourhood into paths of virtue and higher citizenship by way of
+soccer and kindred athletic stunts. Dunn in his innocence agrees,
+whereupon Balfour Murray promptly develops a sharp attack of pneumonia,
+necessitating rest and change of air, leaving the poor old chief in the
+deadly breach. Of course, everybody knows what the chief would do in any
+deadly breach affair. He gave up his Highland tour, shouldered the whole
+Canongate business, organised the thing as never before, inveigled all
+his friends into the same deadly breach, among the number your humble
+servant, who at the time was fiercely endeavouring in the last lap of
+the course to atone for a two years' loaf, organised a champion team
+which has licked the spots off everything in sight, and in short, has
+made the whole business a howling success; at the cost, however, of all
+worldly delights, including his Highland tour and the International."
+
+"Oh, I say!" moaned Linklater. "It makes me quite ill to think of the
+old chief going off this way."
+
+Martin nodded sympathetically. "Kind of 'Days that are no more,' 'Lost
+leader' feeling, eh?"
+
+"Exactly, exactly! Oh, it's rotten! And you, too! He's got you on this
+same pious line."
+
+"Look here," shouted Martin, with menace in his voice, "are you
+classifying me with the old chief? Don't be a derned fool."
+
+Linklater brightened perceptibly. "Now you're getting a little natural,"
+he said in a hopeful tone.
+
+"Oh, I suppose you'd like to hear me string out a lot of damns."
+
+"Well, it might help. I wouldn't feel quite so lonely. But don't
+violate--"
+
+"I'd do it if I thought it would really increase your comfort, though
+I know I'd feel like an infernal ass. I've got new light upon this
+'damning' business. I've come to regard it as the refuge of the mentally
+inert, not to say imbecile, who have lost the capacity for originality
+and force in speech. For me, I am cured."
+
+"Ah!" said Linklater. "Dunn again, I suppose."
+
+"Not a bit! Clear case of psychological reaction. After listening to
+the Canongate experts I was immediately conscious of an overwhelming
+and mortifying sense of inadequacy, of amateurishness; hence I quit.
+Besides, of course, the chief is making rather a point of uplifting the
+Canongate forms of speech."
+
+Linklater gazed steadily at this friend, then said with mournful
+deliberation, "You don't drink, you don't swear, you don't smoke--"
+
+"Oh, that's your grouch, is it?" cried Martin. "Forgive me; here's
+my pouch, old chap; or wait, here's something altogether finer than
+anything you've been accustomed to. I was at old Kingston's last night,
+and the old boy would have me load up with his finest. You know I've
+been working with him this summer. Awfully fine for me! Dunn got me on;
+or rather, his governor. There you are now! Smoke that with reverence."
+
+"Ah," sighed Linklater, as he drew in his first whiff, "there is still
+something left to live for. Now tell me, what about Cameron?"
+
+"Oh, Cameron! Cameron's all up a tree. The last time I saw him, by Jove,
+I was glad it was in the open daylight and on a frequented street. His
+face and manner suggested Roderick Dhu, The Black Douglas, and all the
+rest of that interesting gang of cutthroats. I can't bring myself to
+talk of Cameron. He's been the old chief's relaxation during dog-days.
+It makes me hot to see Dunn with that chap."
+
+"Why, what's the trouble?"
+
+"He tried him out in half a dozen positions, in every one of which he
+proved a dead failure. The last was in Mr. Rae's office, a lawyer, you
+know, Writer, to use your lucid and luminous speech. That experiment
+proved the climax." At the memory of that experience Martin laughed loud
+and long. "It was funny! Mr. Rae, the cool, dignified, methodical, exact
+man of the law, struggling to lick into shape this haughty Highland
+chieftain, who in his heart scorned the whole silly business. The
+result, the complete disorganisation of Mr. Rae's business, and
+total demoralisation of Mr. Rae's office staff, who one and all swore
+allegiance to the young chief. Finally, when Mr. Rae had reached the
+depths of desperation, Cameron graciously deigned to inform his boss
+that he found the office and its claims quite insupportable."
+
+"Oh, it must have been funny. What happened?"
+
+"What happened? You bet old Rae fell on his neck with tears of joy, and
+sent him off with a handsome honorarium, as your gentle speech has it.
+That was a fortnight ago. Then Dunn, in despair, took Cameron off to his
+native haunts, and there he is to this day. By the same token, this is
+the very afternoon that Dunn returns. Let us go to meet him with cornets
+and cymbals! The unexpected pleasure of your return made me quite
+forget. But won't he revel in you, old boy!"
+
+"I don't know about that," said Linklater gloomily. "I've a kind of
+feeling that I've dropped out of this combination."
+
+"What?" Then Martin fell upon him.
+
+But if Martin's attempts to relieve his friend of melancholy forebodings
+were not wholly successful, Dunn's shout of joy and his double-handed
+shake as he grappled Linklater to him, drove from that young man's heart
+the last lingering shade of doubt as to his standing with his friends.
+
+On his way home Dunn dropped into Martin's diggings for a "crack," and
+for an hour the three friends reviewed the summer's happenings, each
+finding in the experience of the others as keen a joy as in his own.
+
+Linklater's holiday had been the most fruitful in exciting incident.
+For two months he and his crew had dodged about among quaint Norwegian
+harbours and in and out of fjords of wonderful beauty. Storms they
+had weathered and calms they had endured; lazy days they had spent,
+swimming, fishing, loafing; and wild days in fighting gales and
+high-running seas that threatened to bury them and their crew beneath
+their white-topped mountainous peaks.
+
+"I say, that must have been great," cried Dunn with enthusiastic delight
+in his friend's experiences.
+
+"It sounds good, even in the telling," cried Martin, who had been
+listening with envious ears. "Now my experiences are quite other. One
+word describes them, grind, grind, grind, day in and day out, in a
+gallant but futile attempt to justify the wisdom of my late examiners in
+granting me my Triple."
+
+"Don't listen to him, Linklater," said Dunn. "I happen to know that he
+came through with banners flying and drums beating; and he has turned
+into no end of a surgeon. I've heard old Kingston on him."
+
+"But what about you, Dunn?" asked Linklater, with a kind of curious
+uncertainty in his voice, as if dreading a tale of calamity.
+
+"Oh, I've loafed about town a little, golfing a bit and slumming a
+bit for a chap that got ill, and in spare moments looking after Martin
+here."
+
+"And the International?"
+
+Dunn hesitated.
+
+"Come on, old chap," said Martin, "take your medicine."
+
+"Well," admitted Dunn, "I had to chuck it. But," he hastened to add,
+"Nesbitt has got the thing in fine shape, though of course lacking the
+two brilliant quarters of last year and the half--for Cameron's out of
+it--it's rather rough on Nesbitt."
+
+"Oh, I say! It's rotten, it's really ghastly! How could you do it,
+Dunn?" said Linklater. "I could weep tears of blood."
+
+To this Dunn made no reply. His disappointment was even yet too keen
+for him to treat it lightly. "Anything else seemed quite impossible," at
+length he said; "I had to chuck it."
+
+"By the way," said Martin, "how's Cameron?"
+
+Again Dunn paused. "I wish I could tell you. He's had hard luck this
+summer. He somehow can't get hold of himself. In fact, I'm quite worried
+about Cameron. I can't tell you chaps the whole story, but last spring
+he had a really bad jolt."
+
+"Well, what's he going to do?" Martin asked, somewhat impatiently.
+
+"I wish I knew," replied Dunn gloomily. "There seems nothing he can
+get here that's suitable. I'm afraid he will have to try the Colonies;
+Canada for preference."
+
+"Oh, I say, Dunn," exclaimed Martin, "it can't really be as bad as all
+that?"
+
+Dunn laughed. "I apologise, old chap. That was rather a bad break,
+wasn't it? But all the same, to a Scotchman, and especially to a
+Highlander, to leave home and friends and all that sort of thing, you
+know--"
+
+"No, he doesn't know," cried Linklater. "The barbarian! How could he?"
+
+"No, thank God," replied Martin fervently, "I don't know! To my mind any
+man that has a chance to go to Canada on a good job ought to call in his
+friends and neighbours to rejoice with him."
+
+"But I say, that reminds me," said Dunn. "Mr. Rae is coming to have a
+talk with my governor and me about this very thing to-morrow night. I'd
+like awfully if you could drop in, Martin; and you, too, Linklater."
+
+Linklater declined. "My folks have something on, I fear."
+
+Martin hesitated, protesting that there was "altogether too much of this
+coddling business" in the matter of Cameron's future. "Besides, my work
+is rather crowding me."
+
+"Oh, my pious ancestors! Work!" exclaimed Linklater in disgust. "At this
+season of the year! Come, Martin, this pose is unworthy of you."
+
+"If you could, old man," said Dunn earnestly, "we won't keep you long.
+It would be a great help to us all."
+
+"All right, I'll come," said Martin.
+
+"There'll be no one there but Mr. Rae. We'll just have a smoke and a
+chat."
+
+But in this expectation Dunn was reckoning without his young brother,
+Rob, who, ever since a certain momentous evening, had entered into
+a covenant of comradeship with the young lady who had figured so
+prominently in the deliverance of his beloved Cameron from pending evil,
+and who during the summer had allowed no week to pass without spending
+at least a part of a day with her. On this particular evening, having
+obtained leave from his mother, the young gentle man had succeeded in
+persuading his friend to accept an invitation to dinner, assuring her
+that no one would be there except Jack, who was to arrive home the day
+before.
+
+The conclave of Cameron's friends found themselves, therefore,
+unexpectedly reinforced by the presence of Miss Brodie, to the unmingled
+joy of all of them, although in Martin's case his joy was tinged with a
+certain fear, for he stood in awe of the young lady, both because of her
+reputation for cleverness, and because of the grand air which, when it
+pleased her, she could assume. Martin, too, stood in wholesome awe
+of Doctor Dunn, whose quiet dignity and old-time courtesy exercised a
+chastening influence upon the young man's somewhat picturesque style of
+language and exuberance of metaphor. But with Mrs. Dunn he felt quite
+at ease, for with that gentle, kindly soul, her boys' friends were her
+friends and without question she took them to her motherly heart.
+
+Immediately upon Mr. Rae's arrival Cameron's future became the subject
+of conversation, and it required only the briefest discussion to arrive
+at the melancholy, inevitable conclusion that, as Mr. Rae put it, "for
+a young man of his peculiar temperament, training, and habits, Scotland
+was clearly impossible."
+
+"But I have no doubt," continued that excellent adviser, "that in
+Canada, where the demand for a high standard of efficiency is less
+exacting, and where openings are more plentiful, the young man will do
+very well indeed."
+
+Martin took the lawyer up somewhat sharply. "In other words, I
+understand you to mean that the man who is a failure in Scotland may
+become a success in Canada."
+
+"Exactly so. Would you not say so, Mr. Martin?"
+
+"It depends entirely upon the cause of failure. If failure arises from
+unfitness, his chances in Canada are infinitely less than in Scotland."
+
+"And why?" inquired Miss Brodie somewhat impatiently.
+
+Martin hesitated. It was extremely difficult in the atmosphere of that
+home to criticise one whom he knew to be considered as a friend of the
+family.
+
+"Why, pray?" repeated Miss Brodie.
+
+"Well, of course," began Martin hesitatingly, "comparisons are always
+odious."
+
+"Oh, we can bear them." Miss Brodie's smile was slightly sarcastic.
+
+"Well, then, speaking generally," said Martin, somewhat nettled by her
+smile, "in this country there are heaps of chaps that simply can't fall
+down because of the supports that surround them, supports of custom,
+tradition, not to speak of their countless friends, sisters, cousins,
+and aunts; if they're anyways half decent they're kept a going; whereas
+if they are in a new country and with few friends, they must stand alone
+or fall. Here the crowd support them; there the crowd, eager to get on,
+shove them aside or trample them down."
+
+"Rather a ghastly picture that," said Miss Brodie.
+
+"But true; that is, of the unfit. People haven't time to bother with
+them; the game is too keen."
+
+"Surely the picture is overdrawn," said Doctor Dunn.
+
+"It may be, Sir," replied Martin, "but I have seen so many young fellows
+who had been shipped out to Canada because they were failures at home. I
+have seen them in very hard luck."
+
+"And what about the fit?" inquired Miss Brodie.
+
+"They get credit for every ounce that's in them."
+
+"But that is so in Scotland as well."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Brodie, hardly. Here even strong men and fit men have
+to wait half a lifetime for the chance that calls for all that's in
+them. They must march in the procession and the pace is leisurely. In
+Canada the chances come every day, and the man that's ready jumps in and
+wins."
+
+"Ah, I see!" exclaimed Miss Brodie. "There are more ladders by which to
+climb."
+
+"Yes," cried Martin, "and fewer men on them."
+
+"But," argued Dunn, "there are other causes of failure in this country.
+Many a young fellow, for instance, cannot get a congenial position."
+
+"Yes," replied Martin quickly, "because you won't let him; your caste
+law forbids. With us a man can do anything decent and no one thinks the
+less of him."
+
+"Ah, I see!" again cried Miss Brodie, more eagerly than before. "Not
+only more ladders, but more kinds of ladders."
+
+"Exactly," said Martin with an approving glance. "And he must not be too
+long in the choosing."
+
+"Then, Mr. Martin," said Mr. Rae, "what would you suggest for our young
+friend?"
+
+But this Martin refused to answer.
+
+"Surely there are openings for a young fellow in Canada," said Dunn.
+"Take a fellow like myself. What could I do?"
+
+"You?" cried Martin, his eyes shining with loving enthusiasm. "There are
+doors open on every business street in every town and city in Canada for
+you, or for any fellow who has brain or brawn to sell and who will take
+any kind of a job and stay with it."
+
+"Well, what job, for instance?"
+
+"What job?" cried Martin. "Heaps of them."
+
+At this point a diversion was created by the entrance of "Lily"
+Laughton. Both Martin and Dunn envied the easy grace of his manner, his
+perfect self-possession, as he greeted each member of the company.
+For each he had exactly the right word. Miss Brodie he greeted with an
+exaggerated devotion, but when he shook hands with Dunn there was no
+mistaking the genuine warmth of his affection.
+
+"Heard you were home, old chap, so I couldn't help dropping in. Of
+course I knew that Mrs. Dunn would be sure to be here, and I more than
+suspected that my dear Miss Brodie," here he swept her an elaborate bow,
+"whom I discovered to be away from her own home, might be found in this
+pleasant company."
+
+"Yes, I fear that my devotion to her youngest boy is leading me to
+overstep the bounds of even Mrs. Dunn's vast and generous hospitality."
+
+"Not a bit, my dear," replied Mrs. Dunn kindly. "You bring sunshine with
+you, and you do us all good."
+
+"Exactly my sentiments!" exclaimed "Lily" with enthusiasm. "But what are
+you all doing? Just having a 'collyshog'?"
+
+For a moment no one replied; then Dunn said, "We were just talking about
+Cameron, who is thinking of going to Canada."
+
+"To Canada of all places!" exclaimed "Lily" in tones of horrified
+surprise. "How truly dreadful! But why should Cameron of all beings
+exile himself in those remote and barbarous regions?"
+
+"And why should he not?" cried Miss Brodie. "What is there for a young
+man of spirit in Mr. Cameron's position in this country?"
+
+"Why, my dear Miss Brodie, how can you ask? Just think of the heaps of
+things, of perfectly delicious things, Cameron can do,--the Highlands in
+summer, Edinburgh, London, in the season, a run to the Continent! Just
+think of the wild possibility of a life of unalloyed bliss!"
+
+"Don't be silly!" said Miss Brodie. "We are talking seriously."
+
+"Seriously! Why, my dear Miss Brodie, do you imagine--?"
+
+"But what could he do for a life-work?" said Dunn. "A fellow must have
+something to do."
+
+"Oh, dear, I suppose so," said "Lily" with a sigh. "But surely he could
+have some position in an office or something!"
+
+"Exactly!" replied Miss Brodie. "How beautifully you put it! Now Mr.
+Martin was just about to tell us of the things a man could do in Canada
+when you interrupted."
+
+"Awfully sorry, Martin. I apologise. Please go on. What do the natives
+do in Canada?"
+
+"Please don't pay any attention to him, Mr. Martin. I am extremely
+interested. Now tell me, what are the openings for a young fellow in
+Canada? You said the professions are all wide open."
+
+It took a little persuasion to get Martin started again, so disgusted
+was he with Laughton's references to his native country. "Yes, Miss
+Brodie, the professions are all wide open, but of course men must enter
+as they do here, but with a difference. Take law, for instance: Knew a
+chap--went into an office at ten dollars a month--didn't know a thing
+about it. In three months he was raised to twenty dollars, and within a
+year to forty dollars. In three or four years he had passed his exams,
+got a junior partnership worth easily two thousand dollars a year. They
+wanted that chap, and wanted him badly. But take business: That chap
+goes into a store and--"
+
+"A store?" inquired "Lily."
+
+"Yes, a shop you call it here; say a drygoods--"
+
+"Drygoods? What extraordinary terms these Colonials use!"
+
+"Oh, draper's shop," said Dunn impatiently. "Go on, Martin; don't mind
+him."
+
+"A draper's clerk!" echoed "Lily." "To sell tapes and things?"
+
+"Yes," replied Martin stoutly; "or groceries."
+
+"Do you by any chance mean that a University man, a gentleman, takes a
+position in a grocer's shop to sell butter and cheese?"
+
+"I mean just that," said Martin firmly.
+
+"Oh, please!" said "Lily" with a violent shudder. "It is too awful!"
+
+"There you are! You wouldn't demean yourself."
+
+"Not I!" said "Lily" fervently.
+
+"Or disgrace your friends. You want a gentleman's job. There are not
+enough to go round in Canada."
+
+"Oh, go on," said Miss Brodie impatiently. "'Lily,' we must ask you to
+not interrupt. What happens? Does he stay there?"
+
+"Not he!" said Martin. "From the small business he goes to bigger
+business. First thing you know a man wants him for a big job and off he
+goes. Meantime he saves his money, invests wisely. Soon he is his own
+boss."
+
+"That's fine!" cried Miss Brodie. "Go on, Mr. Martin. Start him lower
+down."
+
+"All right," said Martin, directing his attention solely to the young
+lady. "Here's an actual case. A young fellow from Scotland found himself
+strapped--"
+
+"Strapped? What DOES he mean?" said "Lily" in an appealing voice.
+
+"On the rocks."
+
+"Rocks?"
+
+"Dear me!" cried Miss Brodie impatiently. "You are terribly lacking in
+imagination. Broke, he means."
+
+"Oh, thanks!"
+
+"Well, finds himself broke," said Martin; "gets a shovel, jumps into a
+cellar--"
+
+"And why a cellar, pray?" inquires "Lily" mildly. "To hide himself from
+the public?"
+
+"Not at all; they were digging a cellar preparatory to building a
+house."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"He jumps in, blisters his hands, breaks his back--but he stays with the
+job. In a week the boss makes him timekeeper; in three months he himself
+is boss of a small gang; the next year he is made foreman at a hundred a
+month or so."
+
+"A hundred a month?" cries "Lily" in astonishment. "Oh, Martin, please!
+We are green, but a hundred pounds a month--!"
+
+"Dollars," said Martin shortly. "Don't be an ass! I beg pardon," he
+added, turning to Mrs. Dunn, who was meantime greatly amused.
+
+"A hundred dollars a month; that is--I am so weak in arithmetic--twenty
+pounds, I understand. Go on, Martin; I'm waiting for the carriage and
+pair."
+
+"That's where you get left," said Martin. "No carriage and pair for this
+chap yet awhile; overalls and slouch hat for the next five years for
+him. Then he begins contracting on his own."
+
+"I beg your pardon," says "Lily."
+
+"I mean he begins taking jobs on his own."
+
+"Great!" cried Miss Brodie.
+
+"Or," continued Martin, now fairly started on a favourite theme, "there
+are the railroads all shouting for men of experience, whether in the
+construction department or in the operating department."
+
+"Does anyone here happen to understand him?" inquires "Lily" faintly.
+
+"Certainly," cried Miss Brodie; "all the intelligent people do. At
+least, I've a kind of notion there are big things doing. I only wish I
+were a man!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Brodie, how can you?" cried "Lily." "Think of us in such a
+contingency!"
+
+"But," said Mr. Rae, "all of this is most interesting, extremely
+interesting, Mr. Martin. Still, they cannot all arrive at these exalted
+positions."
+
+"No, Mr. Rae. I may have given that impression. I confess to a little
+madness when I begin talking Canada."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed "Lily."
+
+"But I said men of brawn and brains, you remember."
+
+"And bounce, to perfect the alliteration," murmured "Lily."
+
+"Yes, bounce, too," said Martin; "at least, he must never take
+back-water; he must be ready to attempt anything, even the impossible."
+
+"That's the splendid thing about it!" cried Miss Brodie. "You're
+entirely on your own and you never say die!"
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Brodie," moaned "Lily" in piteous accents, "you are so
+fearfully energetic! And then, it's all very splendid, but just think
+of a--of a gentleman having to potter around among butter and cheese,
+or mess about in muddy cellars! Ugh! Positively GHAWSTLY! I would simply
+die."
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't, 'Lily,'" said Martin kindly. "We have afternoon
+teas and Browning Clubs, too, you must remember, and some 'cultchaw' and
+that sort of thing."
+
+There was a joyous shout from Dunn.
+
+"But, Mr. Martin," persisted Mr. Rae, whose mind was set in arriving at
+a solution of the problem in hand, "I have understood that agriculture
+was the chief pursuit in Canada."
+
+"Farming! Yes, it is, but of course that means capital. Good land in
+Ontario means seventy-five to a hundred dollars per acre, and a man
+can't do with less than a hundred acres; besides, farming is getting to
+be a science now-a-days, Sir."
+
+"Ah, quite true! But to a young man bred on a farm in this country--"
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Rae," replied Martin quickly, "there is no such thing in
+Canada as a gentleman farmer. The farmer works with his men."
+
+"Do you mean that he actually works?" inquired "Lily." "With the plough
+and hoe, and that sort of thing?"
+
+"Works all day long, as long as any of his men, and indeed longer."
+
+"And does he actually live--? of course he doesn't eat with his
+servants?" said "Lily" in a tone that deprecated the preposterous
+proposition.
+
+"They all eat together in the big kitchen," replied Martin.
+
+"How awful!" gasped "Lily."
+
+"My father does," replied Martin, a little colour rising in his cheek,
+"and my mother, and my brothers. They all eat with the men; my sister,
+too, except when she waits on table."
+
+"Fine!" exclaimed Miss Brodie. "And why not? 'Lily,' I'm afraid you're
+horribly snobbish."
+
+"Thank the Lord," said "Lily" devoutly, "I live in this beloved
+Scotland!"
+
+"But, Mr. Martin, forgive my persistence, I understand there is cheaper
+land in certain parts of Canada; in, say, ManitoBAW."
+
+"Ah, yes, Sir, of course, lots of it; square miles of it!" cried Martin
+with enthusiasm. "The very best out of doors, and cheap, but I fancy
+there are some hardships in Manitoba."
+
+"But I see by the public newspapers," continued Mr. Rae, "that there is
+a very large movement in the way of emigration toward that country."
+
+"Yes, there's a great boom on in Manitoba just now."
+
+"Boom?" said "Lily." "And what exactly may that be in the vernacular?"
+
+"I take it," said Mr. Rae, evidently determined not to allow the
+conversation to get out of his hands, "you mean a great excitement
+consequent upon the emigration and the natural rise in land values?"
+
+"Yes, Sir," cried Martin, "you've hit it exactly."
+
+"Then would there not be opportunity to secure a considerable amount of
+land at a low figure in that country?"
+
+"Most certainly! But it's fair to say that success there means work and
+hardship and privation. Of course it is always so in a new country; it
+was so in Ontario. Why, the new settlers in Manitoba don't know what
+hardships mean in comparison with those that faced the early settlers in
+Ontario. My father, when a little boy of ten years, went with his father
+into the solid forest; you don't know what that means in this country,
+and no one can who has not seen a solid mass of green reaching from the
+ground a hundred feet high without a break in it except where the trail
+enters. Into that solid forest in single file went my grandfather,
+his two little boys, and one ox carrying a bag of flour, some pork and
+stuff. By a mark on a tree they found the corner of their farm." Martin
+paused.
+
+"Do go on," said Miss Brodie. "Tell me the very first thing he did."
+
+But Martin seemed to hesitate. "Well," he began slowly, "I've often
+heard my father tell it. When they came to that tree with the mark on
+it, grandfather said, 'Boys, we have reached our home. Let us thank
+God.' He went up to a big spruce tree, drove his ax in to the butt, then
+kneeled down with the two little boys beside him, and I have heard my
+father say that when he looked away up between the big trees and saw the
+bit of blue sky there, he thought God was listening at that blue hole
+between the tree-tops." Martin paused abruptly, and for a few moments
+silence held the group. Then Doctor Dunn, clearing his throat, said with
+quiet emphasis:
+
+"And he was right, my boy; make no doubt of that."
+
+"Then?" inquired Miss Brodie softly. "If you don't mind."
+
+Martin laughed. "Then they had grub, and that afternoon grandfather cut
+the trees and the boys limbed them off, clearing the ground where the
+first house stood. That night they slept in a little brush hut that did
+them for a house until grandmother came two weeks later."
+
+"What?" said Doctor Dunn. "Your grandmother went into the forest?"
+
+"Yes, Sir," said Martin; "and two miles of solid black bush stretched
+between her and the next woman."
+
+"Why, of course, my dear," said Mrs. Dunn, taking part for the first
+time in the conversation. "What else?"
+
+They all laughed.
+
+"Of course, Mother," said her eldest son, "that's what you would do."
+
+"So would I, Mamma, wouldn't I?" whispered Rob, leaning towards her.
+
+"Certainly, my dear," replied his mother; "I haven't the slightest
+doubt."
+
+"And so would any woman worth her salt if she loved her husband," cried
+Miss Brodie with great emphasis.
+
+"Why, why," cried Doctor Dunn, "it's the same old breed, Mother."
+
+"But in Manitoba--?" began Mr. Rae, still clinging to the subject.
+
+"Oh, in Manitoba there is no forest to cut. However, there are other
+difficulties. Still, hundreds are crowding in, and any man who has the
+courage and the nerve to stay with it can get on."
+
+"And what did they do for schools?" said Mrs. Dunn, returning to the
+theme that had so greatly interested her.
+
+"There were no schools until father was too big to be spared to go
+except for a few weeks in the winter."
+
+"How big do you mean?"
+
+"Say fifteen."
+
+"Fifteen!" exclaimed Miss Brodie. "A mere infant!"
+
+"Infant!" said Martin. "Not much! At fifteen my father was doing a man's
+full work in the bush and on the farm, and when he grew to be a man he
+cleared most of his own land, too. Why, when I was eleven I drove my
+team all day on the farm."
+
+"And how did you get your education, Mr. Martin?"
+
+"Oh, they kept me at school pretty steadily, except in harvest and hay
+time, until I was fourteen, and after that in the winter months. When I
+was sixteen I got a teacher's certificate, and then it was easy enough."
+
+"And did you put yourself through college?" inquired Mr. Rae, both
+interest and admiration in his voice, for now they were on ground
+familiar in his own experience.
+
+"Why, yes, mostly. Father helped, I suspect more than he ought to, but
+he was anxious for me to get through."
+
+"Rob," cried Miss Brodie suddenly, "let's go! What do you say? We'll get
+a big bit of that land in the West, and won't it be splendid to build up
+our own estate and all that?"
+
+Rob glanced from her into his mother's face. "I'd like it fine, Mamma,"
+he said in a low voice, slipping his hand into hers.
+
+"But what about me, Rob?" said his mother, smiling tenderly down into
+the eager face.
+
+"Oh, I'd come back for you, Mamma."
+
+"Hold on there, youngster," said his elder brother, "there are others
+that might have something to say about that. But I say, Martin,"
+continued Dunn, "we hear a lot about the big ranches further West."
+
+"Yes, in Alberta, but I confess I don't know much about them. The
+railways are just building and people are beginning to go in. But
+ranching needs capital, too. It must be a great life! They practically
+live in the saddle. It's a glorious country!"
+
+"On the whole, then," said Mr. Rae, as if summing up the discussion, "a
+young man has better opportunities of making his fortune, so to speak,
+in the far West rather than in, say, Ontario."
+
+"I didn't speak of fortune, Mr. Rae,--fortune is a chance thing, more or
+less,--but what I say is this, that any young man not afraid of work,
+of any kind of work, and willing to stay with his job, can make a living
+and get a home in any part of Canada, with a bigger chance of fortune in
+the West."
+
+"All I say, Mr. Rae, is this," said Miss Brodie emphatically, "that I
+only wish I were a man with just such a chance as young Cameron!"
+
+"Ah, my dear young lady, if all the young men were possessed of your
+spirit, it would matter little where they went, for they would achieve
+distinct success." As he spoke Mr. Rae's smile burst forth in all its
+effulgent glory.
+
+"Dear Mr. Rae, how very clever of you to discover that!" replied Miss
+Brodie, smiling sweetly into Mr. Rae's radiant face. "And how very sweet
+of you--ah, I beg your pardon; that is--" The disconcerting rapidity
+with which Mr. Rae's smile gave place to an appearance of grave, of even
+severe solemnity, threw Miss Brodie quite "out of her stride," as
+Martin said afterward, and left her floundering in a hopeless attempt to
+complete her compliment.
+
+Her confusion was the occasion of unlimited joy to "Lily," who was not
+unfamiliar with this facial phenomenon on the part of Mr. Rae. "Oh, I
+say!" he cried to Dunn in a gale of smothered laughter, "how does the
+dear man do it? It is really too lovely! I must learn the trick of that.
+I have never seen anything quite so appallingly flabbergasting."
+
+Meantime Mr. Rae was blandly assisting Miss Brodie out of her dilemma.
+"Not at all, Miss Brodie, not at all! But," he continued, throwing
+his smile about the room, "I think, Doctor Dunn, we have reason to
+congratulate ourselves upon not only a pleasant but an extremely
+profitable evening--ah--as far as the matter in hand is concerned. I
+hope to have further speech with our young friend," bowing to Mr. Martin
+and bringing his smile to bear upon that young gentleman.
+
+"Oh, certainly," began Martin with ready geniality, "whenever you--eh?
+What did you say, Sir? I didn't quite--"
+
+But Mr. Rae was already bidding Mrs. Dunn goodnight, with a face of
+preternatural gravity.
+
+"What the deuce!" said Martin, turning to his friend Dunn. "Does the old
+boy often go off at half-cock that way? He'll hurt himself some time,
+sure."
+
+"Isn't it awful?" said Dunn. "He's got me a few times that way, too. But
+I say, old boy, we're awfully grateful to you for coming."
+
+"I feel like a fool," said Martin; "as if I'd been delivering a
+lecture."
+
+"Don't think it," cried Miss Brodie, who had drawn near. "You've been
+perfectly lovely, and I am so glad to have got to know you better. For
+me, I am quite resolved to go to Canada."
+
+"But do you think they can really spare us all, Miss Brodie?" exclaimed
+"Lily" in an anxious voice. "For, of course, if you go we must."
+
+"No, 'Lily,' I'm quite sure they can't spare you. Just think, what could
+the Browning-Wagner circle do? Besides, what could we do with you when
+we were all working, for I can quite see that there is no use going to
+Canada unless you mean to work?"
+
+"You've got it, Miss Brodie," said Martin. "My lecture is not in vain.
+There is no use going to Canada unless you mean to work and to stay with
+the job till the cows come home."
+
+"Till the cows come--?" gasped "Lily."
+
+"Oh, never mind him, Mr. Martin! Come, 'Lily' dear, I'll explain it to
+you on the way home. Good-night, Mr. Dunn; we've had a jolly evening.
+And as for our friend Cameron, I've ceased to pity him; on the contrary,
+I envy him his luck."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+
+
+Once more the golden light of a sunny spring day was shining on the
+sapphire loch at the bottom, and overflowing at the rim of the Cuagh
+Oir. But for all its flowing gold, there was grief in the Glen--grief
+deep and silent, like the quiet waters of the little loch. It was seen
+in the grave faces of the men who gathered at the "smiddy." It was heard
+in the cadence of the voices of the women as they gathered to "kalie"
+(Ceilidh) in the little cottages that fringed the loch's side, or dotted
+the heather-clad slopes. It even checked the boisterous play of the
+bairns as they came in from school. It lay like a cloud on the Cuagh,
+and heavy on the hearts that made up the little hill-girt community of
+one hundred souls, or more.
+
+And the grief was this, that on the "morrow's morn" Mary Robertson's son
+was departing from the Glen "neffer to return for effermore," as Donald
+of the House farm put it, with a face gloomy as the loch on a dark
+winter's day.
+
+"A leaving" was ever an occasion of wailing to the Glen, and many a
+leaving had the Glen known during the last fifty years. For wherever
+the tartan waved, and the bonnie feathers danced for the glory of the
+Empire, sons of the Glen were ever to be found; but not for fifty years
+had the heart of the Glen known the luxury of a single rallying centre
+for their pride and their love till the "young chentleman," young Mr.
+Allan, began to go in and out among them. And as he grew into manhood so
+grew their pride in him. And as, from time to time, at the Great Games
+he began to win glory for the Glen with his feats of skill and strength,
+and upon the pipes, and in the dances, their pride in him grew until
+it passed all limits. Had he not, the very year before he went to the
+college, cut the comb of the "Cock of the North" from Glen Urquhart,
+in running and jumping; and the very same year had he not wrested
+from Callum Bheg, the pride of Athole, the coveted badge of Special
+Distinction in Highland Dancing? Then later, when the schoolmaster would
+read from the Inverness Courier to one group after another at the post
+office and at the "smiddy" (it was only fear of the elder MacPherson,
+that kept the master from reading it aloud at the kirk door before the
+service) accounts of the "remarkable playing" of Cameron, the brilliant
+young "half-back" of the Academy in Edinburgh, the Glen settled down
+into an assured conviction that it had reached the pinnacle of vicarious
+glory, and that in all Scotland there was none to compare with their
+young "chieftain" as, quite ignoring the Captain, they loved to call
+him.
+
+And there was more than pride in him, for on his holidays he came back
+to the Glen unspoiled by all his honours and achievements, and went
+about among them "jist like ain o' their ain sels," accepting their
+homage as his right, but giving them in return, according to their
+various stations, due respect and honour, and their love grew greater
+than their pride.
+
+But the "morrow's morn" he was leaving the Glen, and, worse than all, no
+one knew for why. A mystery hung over the cause of his going, a mystery
+deepened by his own bearing during the past twelve months, for all these
+months a heavy gloom had shrouded him, and from all that had once been
+his delight and their glory he had withdrawn. The challenge, indeed,
+from the men of Glen Urquhart which he had accepted long ago, he refused
+not, but even the overwhelming defeat which he had administered to his
+haughty challengers, had apparently brought him no more than a passing
+gleam of joy. The gloom remained unlifted and the cause the Glen knew
+not, and no man of them would seek to know. Hence the grief of the
+Glen was no common grief when the son of Mary Robertson, the son of the
+House, the pride of the Glen, and the comrade and friend of them all,
+was about to depart and never to return.
+
+His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through
+the cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift of
+remembrance. It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe. It was not
+only that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round every stick
+and stone of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving behind him a
+love and loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself. It was that in
+tearing himself from them he could make no response to the dumb appeal
+in the eyes that followed him with adoration and fidelity: "Wherefore
+do you leave us at all?" and "Why do you make no promise of return?" To
+that dumb appeal there was no answer possible from one who carried on
+his heart for himself, and on his life for some few others, and among
+these his own father, the terrible brand of the criminal. It was this
+grim fact that stained black the whole landscape of his consciousness,
+and that hung like a pall of death over every living and delightsome
+thing in the garden of his soul. While none could, without challenge,
+condemn him, yet his own tongue refused to proclaim his innocence.
+Every face he loved drove deeper into his heart his pain. The deathless
+loyalty and unbounded pride of the Glen folk rebuked him, without their
+knowing, for the dishonour he had done them. The Glen itself, the hills,
+the purpling heather, the gleaming loch, how dear to him he had never
+known till now, threw in his face a sad and silent reproach. Small
+wonder that the Glen, that Scotland had become intolerable to him. With
+this bitter burden on his heart it was that young Mr. Allan went his way
+through the Glen making his farewells, not daring to indulge the luxury
+of his grief, and with never a word of return.
+
+His sister, who knew all, and who would have carried--oh! how
+gladly!--on her own heart, and for all her life long, that bitter
+burden, pleaded to be allowed to go with him on what she knew full well
+was a journey of sorrow and sore pain, but this he would not permit.
+This sorrow and pain which were his own, he would share with no one,
+and least of all with her upon whose life he had already cast so dark
+a shadow. Hence she was at the house alone, her father not having yet
+returned from an important meeting at a neighbouring village, when a
+young man came to the door asking for young Mr. Cameron.
+
+"Who is it, Kirsty?" she inquired anxiously, a new fear at her heart for
+her brother.
+
+"I know not, but he has neffer been in this Glen before whateffer,"
+replied Kirsty, with an ominous shake of the head, her primitive
+instincts leading her to view the stranger with suspicion. "But!" she
+added, with a glance at her young mistress' face, "he iss no man to be
+afraid of, at any rate. He is just a laddie."
+
+"Oh, he is a YOUNG man, Kirsty?" replied her mistress, glancing at her
+blue serge gown, her second best, and with her hands striving to tuck in
+some of her wayward curls.
+
+"Och, yess, and not much at that!" replied Kirsty, with the idea of
+relieving her young mistress of unnecessary fears.
+
+Then Moira, putting on her grand air, stepped into the parlour, and saw
+standing there and awaiting her, a young man with a thin and somewhat
+hard face, a firm mouth, and extraordinarily keen, grey eyes. Upon her
+appearing the young man stood looking upon her without a word. As a
+matter of fact, he was struggling with a problem; a problem that was
+quite bewildering; the problem, namely, "How could hair ever manage
+to get itself into such an arrangement of waves and curls, and golden
+gleams and twinkles?" Struggling with this problem, he became conscious
+of her voice gravely questioning him. "You were wishing to see my
+brother?" The young man came back part way, and replied, "Oh! how does
+it--? That is--. I beg your pardon." The surprise in her face brought
+him quite to the ground, and he came at once to his business. "I am Mr.
+Martin," he said in a quick, sharp voice. "I know your brother and Mr.
+Dunn." He noted a light dawn in her eyes. "In fact, I played with them
+on the same team--at football, you know."
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, relief and welcome in her voice, "I know you,
+Mr. Martin, quite well. I know all about you, and what a splendid
+quarter-back you are." Here she gave him both her hands, which Mr.
+Martin took in a kind of dream, once more plunged into the mazes of
+another and more perplexing problem, viz., Was it her lips with that
+delicious curve to them? or her eyes so sunny and brown (or were they
+brown?) with that alluring, bewitching twinkle? or was it both lips and
+eyes that gave to the smile with which she welcomed him its subtle power
+to make his heart rise and choke him as it never had been known to do in
+the most strenuous of his matches? "I'm awfully glad," he heard himself
+say, and her voice replying, "Oh, yes! Allan has often and often spoken
+of you, Mr. Martin." Mr. Martin immediately became conscious of a
+profound and grateful affection to Allan, still struggling, however,
+with the problem which had been complicated still further by the charm
+of her soft, Highland voice. He was on the point of deciding in favour
+of her voice, when on her face he noted a swift change from glad welcome
+to suspicion and fear, and then into her sunny eyes a sudden leaping of
+fierce wrath, as in those of a lioness defending her young.
+
+"Why do you look so?" she cried in a voice sharp and imperious. "Is it
+my brother--? Is anything wrong?"
+
+The shock of the change in eyes and voice brought Martin quite to
+himself.
+
+"Wrong? Not a bit," he hastened to say, "but just the finest thing in
+the world. It is all here in this letter. Dunn could not come himself,
+and there was no one else, and he thought Cameron ought to have it
+to-day, so here I am, and here is the letter. Where is he?"
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, clasping her hands upon her heart, her voice
+growing soft, and her eyes dim with a sudden mist. "I am so thankful!
+I am so glad!" The change in her voice and in her eyes so affected Mr.
+Martin that he put his hands resolutely behind his back lest they should
+play him tricks, and should, without his will, get themselves round her
+and draw her close to his heart.
+
+"So am I," he said, "awfully glad! Never was so glad in all my life!" He
+was more conscious than ever of bewilderment and perplexity in the midst
+of increasing problems that complicated themselves with mist brown eyes,
+trembling lips, and a voice of such pathetic cadences as aroused in
+him an almost uncontrollable desire to exercise his utmost powers of
+comfort. And all the while there was growing in his heart a desperate
+anxiety as to what would be the final issue of these bewildering desires
+and perplexities; when at the extremity of his self-control he was saved
+by the girl's suggestion.
+
+"Let us go and find my brother."
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Martin, "for heaven's sake let us."
+
+"Wait until I get my hat."
+
+"Oh! I wouldn't put on a hat," cried he in dismay.
+
+"Why?" enquired the girl, looking at him with surprised curiosity.
+
+"Oh! because--because you don't need one; it's so beautiful and sunny,
+you know." In spite of what he could do Mr. Martin's eyes kept wandering
+to her hair.
+
+"Oh, well!" cried Moira, in increasing surprise at this strange young
+man, "the sun won't hurt me, so come, let us go."
+
+Together they went down the avenue of rugged firs. At the highway
+she paused. Before them lay the Glen in all the splendid sweep of its
+beauty.
+
+"Isn't it lovely!" she breathed.
+
+"Lovely!" echoed Martin, his eyes not on the Glen. "It is so sunny, you
+know."
+
+"Yes," she answered quickly, "you notice that?"
+
+"How could I help it?" said Martin, his eyes still resting upon her.
+"How could I?"
+
+"Of course," she replied, "and so we call it the Glen Cuagh Oir, that
+is the 'Glen of the Cup of Gold.' And to think he has to leave it all
+to-morrow!" she added.
+
+The pathetic cadences in her voice again drove Martin to despair. He
+recovered himself, however, to say, "But he is going to Canada!"
+
+"Yes, to Canada. And we all feel it so dreadfully for him, and," she
+added in a lower voice, "for ourselves."
+
+Had it been yesterday Martin would have been ready with scorn for any
+such feeling, and with congratulations to Cameron upon his exceptionally
+good luck in the expectation of going to Canada; but to-day, somehow it
+was different. He found the splendid lure of his native land availed not
+to break the spell of the Glen, and as he followed the girl in and out
+of the little cottages, seeking her brother, and as he noted the perfect
+courtesy and respect which marked her manner with the people, and their
+unstudied and respectful devotion to their "tear young leddy," this
+spell deepened upon him. Unconsciously and dimly he became aware of a
+mysterious and mighty power somehow and somewhere in the Glen straining
+at the heart-strings of its children. Of the nature and origin of this
+mysterious and mighty power, the young Canadian knew little. His
+country was of too recent an origin for mystery, and its people too
+heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics to furnish a soil for
+tribal instincts and passions. The passionate loves and hatreds of the
+clans, their pride of race, their deathless lealty; and more than all,
+and better than all, their religious instincts, faiths and prejudices;
+these, with the mystic, wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and
+rock-rimmed loch, of roaring torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir
+and sunny pasture nuiks; all these, and ten thousand nameless and
+unnamable things united in the weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the
+hearts of its people. Of how it all came to be, Martin knew nothing,
+but like an atmosphere it stole in upon him, and he came to vaguely
+understand something of what it meant to be a Highlander, and to bid
+farewell to the land into whose grim soil his life roots had struck
+deep, and to tear himself from hearts whose life stream and his had
+flowed as one for a score of generations. So from cot to cot Martin
+followed and observed, until they came to the crossing where the broad
+path led up from the highroad to the kirkyard and the kirk. Here they
+were halted by a young man somewhat older than Martin. Tall and gaunt
+he stood. His face, pale and pock-marked and lit by light blue eyes, and
+crowned by brilliant red hair, was, with all its unloveliness, a face of
+a certain rugged beauty; while his manner and bearing showed the native
+courtesy of a Highland gentleman.
+
+"You are seeking Mr. Allan?" he said, taking off his bonnet to the girl.
+"He is in yonder," waving his hand towards the kirkyard.
+
+"In yonder? You are sure, Mr. Maclise?" She might well ask, for never
+but on Sabbath days, since the day they had laid his mother away under
+the birch trees, had Allan put foot inside the kirkyard.
+
+"Half an hour ago he went in," replied the young Highlander, "and he has
+not returned."
+
+"I will go in, then," said the girl, and hesitated, unwilling that a
+stranger's eyes should witness what she knew was waiting her there.
+
+"You, Sir, will perhaps abide with me," suggested Mr. Maclise to Martin,
+with a quick understanding of her hesitation.
+
+"Oh, thank you," cried Moira. "This is Mr. Martin from Canada, Mr.
+Maclise--my brother's great friend. Mr. Maclise is our schoolmaster
+here," she added, turning to Martin, "and we are very proud of him."
+The Highlander's pale face became the colour of his brilliant hair as he
+remarked, "You are very good indeed, Miss Cameron, and I am glad to make
+the acquaintance of Mr. Martin. It will give me great pleasure to show
+Mr. Martin the little falls at the loch's end, if he cares to step that
+far." If Mr. Martin was conscious of any great desire to view the little
+falls at the loch's end, his face most successfully dissembled any such
+feeling, but to the little falls he must go as the schoolmaster quietly
+possessed himself of him and led him away, while Miss Cameron, with
+never a thought of either of them, passed up the broad path into the
+kirkyard. There, at the tower's foot, she came upon her brother, prone
+upon the little grassy mound, with arms outspread, as if to hold it in
+embrace. At the sound of his sister's tread upon the gravel, he raised
+himself to his knees swiftly, and with a fierce gesture, as if resenting
+intrusion.
+
+"Oh, it is you, Moira," he said quietly, sinking down upon the grass. At
+the sight of his tear-stained, haggard face, the girl ran to him with
+a cry, and throwing herself down beside him put her arms about him with
+inarticulate sounds of pity. At length her brother raised himself from
+the ground.
+
+"Oh, it is terrible to leave it all," he groaned; "yet I am glad to
+leave, for it is more terrible to stay; the very Glen I cannot look at;
+and the people, I cannot bear their eyes. Oh," he groaned, wringing his
+hands, "if she were here she would understand, but there is nobody."
+
+"Oh, Allan," cried his sister in reproach.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know! I know! You believe in me, Moira, but you are just a
+lassie, and you cannot understand."
+
+"Yes, you know well I believe in you, Allan, and others, too, believe in
+you. There is Mr. Dunn, and--"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said her brother bitterly, "he wants to believe it."
+
+"Yes, and there is Mr. Martin," she continued, "and--Oh, I forgot! here
+is a letter Mr. Martin brought you."
+
+"Martin?"
+
+"Yes, your Martin, a strange little man; your quarter-back, you know. He
+brought this, and he says it is good news." But already Allan was into
+his letter. As he read his face grew white, his hand began to shake, his
+eyes to stare as if they would devour the very paper. The second time he
+read the letter his whole body trembled, and his breath came in gasps,
+as if he were in a physical struggle. Then lifting arms and voice
+towards the sky, he cried in a long, low wail, "Oh God, it is good, it
+is good!"
+
+With that he laid himself down prone upon the mound again, his face in
+the grass, sobbing brokenly, "Oh, mother, mother dear, I have got you
+once more; I have got you once more!"
+
+His sister stood, her hands clasped upon her heart--a manner she
+had--her tears, unnoted, flowing down her cheeks, waiting till her
+brother should let her into his joy, as she had waited for entrance into
+his grief. His griefs and his joys were hers, and though he still
+held her a mere child, it was with a woman's self-forgetting love she
+ministered to him, gladly accepting whatever confidence he would give,
+but content to wait until he should give more. So she stood waiting,
+with her tears flowing quietly, and her face alight with wonder and joy
+for him. But as her brother's sobbing continued, this terrible display
+of emotion amazed her, startled her, for since their mother's death none
+of them had seen Allan weep. At length he raised himself from the ground
+and stood beside her.
+
+"Oh, Moira, lassie, I never knew how terrible it was till now. I had
+lost everything, my friends, you, and," he added in a low voice, "my
+mother. This cursed thing shut me out from all; it got between me and
+all I ever loved. I have not for these months been able to see her face
+clear, but do you know, Moira," here his voice fell and the mystic light
+grew in his eyes, "I saw her again just now as clear as clear, and
+I know I have got her again; and you, too, Moira, darling," here he
+gathered his sister to him, "and the people! and the Glen! Oh! is it not
+terrible what a crime can do? How it separates you from your folk, and
+from all the world, for, mind you, I have felt myself a criminal; but I
+am not! I am not!" His voice rose into an exultant shout, "I am clear of
+it, I am a man again! Oh, it is good! it is good! Here, read the letter,
+it will prove to you."
+
+"Oh, what does it matter at all, Allan," she cried, still clinging to
+him, "as if it made any difference to me. I always knew it."
+
+Her brother lifted her face from his breast and looked into her eyes.
+"Do you tell me you don't want to know the proof of it?" he asked in
+wonder. "No," she said simply. "Why should I need any proof? I always
+knew it."
+
+For a moment longer he gazed upon her, then said, "Moira, you are a
+wonder, lassie. No, you are a lassie no longer, you are a woman, and, do
+you know, you are like mother to me now, and I never saw it."
+
+She smiled up at him through her tears. "I should like to be," she said
+softly. Then, because she was truly Scotch, she added, "for your sake,
+for I love you terribly much; and I am going to lose you."
+
+A quiver passed through her frame, and her arms gripped him tight. In
+the self-absorption in his grief and pain he had not thought of hers,
+nor considered how with his going her whole life would be changed.
+
+"I have been a selfish brute," he muttered. "I have only thought of my
+own suffering; but, listen Moira, it is all past; thank God, it is
+all past. This letter from Mr. Rae holds a confession from Potts (poor
+Potts! I am glad that Rae let him off): it was Potts who committed the
+forgery. Now I feel myself clean again; you can't know what that is; to
+be yourself again, and to be able to look all men in the face without
+fear or shame. Come, we must go; I must see them all again. Let us to
+the burn first, and put my face right."
+
+A moment he stood looking down upon his mother's grave. The hideous
+thing that had put her far from him, and that had blurred the clear
+vision of her face, was gone. A smile soft and tender as a child's stole
+over his face, and with that smile he turned away. As they were
+coming back from the burn, Martin and the schoolmaster saw them in the
+distance.
+
+"Bless me, man, will you look at him?" said the master in an awestruck
+tone, clutching Martin's arm. "What ever is come to him?"
+
+"What's up," cried Martin. "By Jove! you're right! the Roderick Dhu and
+Black Douglas business is gone, sure!"
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Maclise in an undertone. "He is himself once
+more."
+
+He might well exclaim, for it was a new Allan that came striding up
+the high road, with head lifted, and with the proud swing of a Highland
+chieftain.
+
+"Hello, old man!" he shouted, catching sight of Martin and running
+towards him with hands outstretched, "You are welcome"--he grasped
+his hands and held them fast--"you are welcome to this Glen, and to me
+welcome as Heaven to a Hell-bound soul."
+
+"Maclise," he cried, turning to the master, "this letter," waving it in
+his hand, "is like a reprieve to a man on the scaffold." Maclise stood
+gazing in amazement at him.
+
+"They accused me of crime!"
+
+"Of crime, Mr. Allan?" Maclise stiffened in haughty surprise.
+
+"Yes, of base crime!"
+
+"But this letter completely clears him," cried Martin eagerly.
+
+Maclise turned upon him with swift scorn, "There was no need, for anyone
+in this Glen whatever." The Highlander's face was pale, and in his light
+blue eyes gleamed a fierce light.
+
+Martin flashed a look upon the girl standing so proudly erect beside
+her brother, and reflecting in her face and eyes the sentiments of the
+schoolmaster.
+
+"By Jove! I believe you," cried Martin with conviction, "it is not
+needed here, but--but there are others, you know."
+
+"Others?" said the Highlander with fine scorn, "and what difference?"
+
+The Glen folk needed no clearing of their chief, and the rest of the
+world mattered not.
+
+"But there was myself," said Allan. "Now it is gone, Maclise, and I can
+give my hand once more without fear or shame."
+
+Maclise took the offered hand almost with reverence, and, removing his
+bonnet from his head, said in a voice, deep and vibrating with emotion,
+
+"Neffer will a man of the Glen count it anything but honour to take
+thiss hand."
+
+"Thank you, Maclise," cried Allan, keeping his grip of the master's
+hand. "Now you can tell the Glen."
+
+"You will not be going to leave us now?" said Maclise eagerly.
+
+"Yes, I shall go, Maclise, but," with a proud lift of his head, "tell
+them I am coming back again."
+
+And with that message Maclise went to the Glen. From cot to cot and from
+lip to lip the message sped, that Mr. Allan was himself again, and that,
+though on the morrow's morn he was leaving the Glen, he himself had
+promised that he would return.
+
+That evening, as the gloaming deepened, the people of the Glen gathered,
+as was their wont, at their cottage doors to listen to old piper
+Macpherson as he marched up and down the highroad. This night, it was
+observed, he no longer played that most heart-breaking of all
+Scottish laments, "Lochaber No More." He had passed up to the no less
+heart-thrilling, but less heartbreaking, "Macrimmon's Lament." In a
+pause in Macpherson's wailing notes there floated down over the Glen the
+sound of the pipes up at the big House.
+
+"Bless my soul! whisht, man!" cried Betsy Macpherson to her spouse.
+"Listen yonder!" For the first time in months they heard the sound of
+Allan's pipes.
+
+"It is himself," whispered the women to each other, and waited. Down the
+long avenue of ragged firs, and down the highroad, came young Mr. Allan,
+in all the gallant splendour of his piper's garb, and the tune he played
+was no lament, but the blood-stirring "Gathering of the Gordons." As
+he came opposite to Macpherson's cottage he gave the signal for the old
+piper, and down the highroad stepped the two of them together, till they
+passed beyond the farthest cottage. Then back again they swung, and this
+time it was to the "Cock of the North," that their tartans swayed and
+their bonnets nodded. Thus, not with woe and lamentation, but with good
+hope and gallant cheer, young Mr. Allan took his leave of the Glen Cuagh
+Oir.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WILL HE COME BACK?
+
+
+It was the custom in Doctor Dunn's household that, immediately after
+dinner, his youngest son would spend half an hour in the study with his
+father. It was a time for confidences. During this half hour father and
+son met as nearly as possible on equal terms, discussing, as friends
+might, the events of the day or the plans for the morrow, school work
+or athletics, the latest book or the newest joke; and sometimes the talk
+turned upon the reading at evening prayers. This night the story had
+been one of rare beauty and of absorbing interest, the story, viz., of
+that idyllic scene on the shore of Tiberias where the erring disciple
+was fully restored to his place in the ranks of the faithful, as he had
+been restored, some weeks before, to his place in the confidence of his
+Master.
+
+"That was a fine story, Rob?" began Doctor Dunn.
+
+"That it was," said Rob gravely. "It was fine for Peter to get back
+again."
+
+"Just so," replied his father. "You see, when a man once turns his back
+on his best Friend, he is never right till he gets back again."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Rob gravely. For a time he sat with a shadow of
+sadness and anxiety on his young face. "It is terrible!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Terrible?" inquired the Doctor. "Oh, yes, you mean Peter's fall? Yes,
+that was a terrible thing--to be untrue to our Master and faithless to
+our best Friend."
+
+"But he did not mean to, Dad," said Rob quickly, as if springing to
+the fallen disciple's defence. "He forgot, just for a moment, and was
+awfully sorry afterwards."
+
+"Yes, truly," said his father, "and that was the first step back."
+
+For a few moments Rob remained silent, his face sad and troubled.
+
+"Man! It must be terrible!" at length he said, more to himself than
+to his father. The Doctor looked closely at the little lad. The eager,
+sensitive face, usually so radiant, was now clouded and sad.
+
+"What is it, Rob? Is it something you can tell me?" asked his father in
+a tone of friendly kindness.
+
+Rob moved closer to him. The father waited in silence. He knew better
+than to force an unwilling confidence. At length the lad, with an
+obvious effort at self-command, said:
+
+"It is to-morrow, Daddy, that Cameron--that Mr. Cameron is going away."
+
+"To-morrow? So it is. And you will be very sorry, Rob. But, of course,
+he will come back."
+
+"Oh, Dad," cried Rob, coming quite close to his father, "it isn't that!
+It isn't that!"
+
+His father waited. He did not understand his boy's trouble, and so he
+wisely refrained from uttering word that might hinder rather than help.
+At length, with a sudden effort, Rob asked in a low, hurried voice:
+
+"Do you think, Dad, he has--got--back?"
+
+"Got back?" said his father. "Oh, I see. Why, my boy? What do you know
+of it? Did you know there was a letter from a man named Potts, that
+completely clears your friend of all crime?"
+
+"Is there?" asked the boy quickly. "Man! That is fine! But I always knew
+he could not do anything really bad--I mean, anything that the police
+could touch him for. But it is not that, Dad. I have heard Jack say he
+used to be different when he came down first, and now sometimes he--"
+The lad's voice fell silent. He could not bring himself to accuse his
+hero of any evil. His father drew him close to his side.
+
+"You mean that he has fallen into bad ways--drink, and things like
+that?"
+
+The boy hung his head; he was keenly ashamed for his friend. After a few
+moments' silence he said:
+
+"And he is going away to Canada to-morrow, and I wonder, Dad, if he
+has--got--back? It would be terrible--Oh, Dad, all alone and away
+from--!"
+
+The boy's voice sank to a whisper, and a rush of tears filled his eyes.
+
+"I see what you mean, my boy. You mean it would be terrible for him to
+be in that far land, and away from that Friend we know and love best."
+
+The lad looked at his father through his tears, and nodded his head, and
+for some moments there was silence between them. If the truth must be
+told, Doctor Dunn felt himself keenly rebuked by his little son's words.
+Amid the multitude of his responsibilities, the responsibility for his
+sons' best friend he had hardly realised.
+
+"I am glad that you spoke of it, Rob; I am glad that you spoke of it.
+Something will be done. It is not, after all, in our hands. Still, we
+must stand ready to help. Good-night, my boy. And remember, it is always
+good to hurry back to our best Friend, if ever we get away from Him."
+
+The boy put his arms around his father's neck and kissed him good-night;
+then, kissing him again, he whispered: "Thank you, Daddy."
+
+And from the relief in his tone the father recognised that upon him the
+lad had laid all the burden of his solicitude for his friend.
+
+Later in the evening, when his elder son came home, the father called
+him in, and frankly gave him the substance of the conversation of the
+earlier part of the evening.
+
+Jack laughed somewhat uneasily. "Oh, Rob is an awfully religious little
+beggar; painfully so, I think, sometimes--you know what I mean, Sir," he
+added, noticing the look on his father's face.
+
+"I am not sure that I do, Jack," said his father, "but I want to tell
+you, that as far as I am concerned, I felt distinctly rebuked at the
+little chap's anxiety for his friend in a matter of such vital import.
+His is a truly religious little soul, as you say, but I wonder if his
+type is not more nearly like the normal than is ours. Certainly, if
+reality, simplicity, sincerity are the qualities of true religious
+feeling--and these, I believe, are the qualities emphasised by the
+Master Himself--then it may indeed be that the boy's type is nearer the
+ideal than ours."
+
+At this point Mrs. Dunn entered the room.
+
+"Anything private?" she enquired with a bright smile at her husband.
+
+"Not at all! Come in!" said Doctor Dunn, and he proceeded to repeat the
+conversation with his younger son, and his own recent comment thereupon.
+
+"I am convinced," he added, "that there is a profundity of meaning in
+those words, 'Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little
+child, he shall not enter therein,' that we have not yet fathomed. I
+suspect Wordsworth is not far astray when he suggests that with the
+passing years we grow away from the simplicity of our faith and the
+clearness of our vision. There is no doubt that to Rob, Jesus is as real
+as I am."
+
+"There is no doubt of that," said his wife quickly.
+
+"Not only as real, but quite as dear; indeed, dearer. I shall never
+forget the shock I received when I heard him one day, as a wee, wee boy,
+classifying the objects of his affection. I remember the ascending scale
+was: 'I love Jack and Daddy just the same, then mother, then Jesus.' It
+was always in the highest place, Jesus; and I believe that the scale is
+the same to-day, unless Jack," she added, with a smile at her son, "has
+moved to his mother's place."
+
+"Not much fear of that, mother," said Jack, "but I should not be
+surprised if you are quite right about the little chap. He is a queer
+little beggar!"
+
+"There you are again, Jack," said his father, "and it is upon that point
+I was inclined to take issue with you when your mother entered."
+
+"I think I shall leave you," said the mother. "I am rather tired, and so
+I shall bid you good-night."
+
+"Yes," said the father, when they had seated themselves again, "the
+very fact that to you, and to me for that matter, Rob's attitude of
+mind should seem peculiar raises the issue. What is the normal type of
+Christian faith? Is it not marked by the simplicity and completeness of
+the child's?"
+
+"And yet, Sir," replied Jack, "that simplicity and completeness is the
+result of inexperience. Surely the ideal faith is not that which ignores
+the facts and experiences of life?"
+
+"Not exactly," replied his father, "yet I am not sure but after all,
+'the perfect love which casteth out fear' is one which ignores the
+experiences of life, or, rather, classifies them in a larger category.
+That is, it refuses to be disturbed by life's experiences, because among
+those experiences there is a place for the enlarged horizon, the clearer
+vision. But I am not arguing about this matter; I rather wish to make
+a confession and enlist your aid. Frankly, the boy's words gave me an
+uneasy sense of failure in my duty to this young man; or, perhaps I
+should say, my privilege. And really, it is no wonder! Here is this
+little chap actually carrying every day a load of intense concern for
+our friend, as to whether, as he puts it himself, 'he has come back.'
+And, after all, Jack, I wonder if this should not have been more upon
+our minds? The young man, I take it, since his mother's death has little
+in his home life to inspire him with religious faith and feeling. If she
+had been alive, one would not feel the same responsibility; she was a
+singularly saintly woman."
+
+"You are quite right, Sir," said Jack quickly, "and I suspect you rather
+mean that I am the one that should feel condemned."
+
+"Not at all! Not at all, Jack! I am thinking, as every man must, of my
+own responsibility, though, doubtless, you have yours as well. Of course
+I know quite well you have stuck by him splendidly in his fight for a
+clean and self-controlled life, but one wonders whether there is not
+something more."
+
+"There is, Sir!" replied his son quickly. "There undoubtedly is! But
+though I have no hesitation in speaking to men down in the Settlement
+about these things, you know, still, somehow, to a man of your own
+class, and to a personal friend, one hesitates. One shrinks from what
+seems like assuming an attitude of superiority."
+
+"I appreciate that," said his father, "but yet one wonders to what
+extent this shrinking is due to a real sense of one's own imperfections,
+and to what extent it is due to an unwillingness to risk criticism, even
+from ourselves, in a loyal attempt to serve the Master and His cause.
+And, besides that, one wonders whether from any cause one should
+hesitate to do the truly kind and Christian thing to one's friend. I
+mean, you value your religion; or, to put it personally, as Rob would,
+you would esteem as your chief possession your knowledge of the Christ,
+as Friend and Saviour. Do not loyalty to Him and friendship require that
+you share that possession with your dearest friend?"
+
+"I know what you mean, Sir," said Jack earnestly. "I shall think it
+over. But don't you think a word from you, Sir--"
+
+His father looked at his son with a curious smile.
+
+"Oh, I know what you are thinking," said his son, "but I assure you it
+is not quite a case of funk."
+
+"Do you know, Jack," said his father earnestly, "we make our religion
+far too unreal; a thing either of forms remote from life, or a thing of
+individualistic emotion divorced from responsibility. One thing
+history reveals, that the early propagandum for the faith was entirely
+unprofessional. It was from friend to friend, from man to man. It was
+horizontal rather than perpendicular."
+
+"Well, I shall think it over," said Jack.
+
+"Do you know," said his father, "that I have the feeling of having
+accepted from Rob responsibility for our utmost endeavour to bring it
+about that, as Rob puts it, 'somehow he shall get back'?"
+
+It was full twenty minutes before train time when Rob, torn with anxiety
+lest they should be late, marched his brother on to the railway platform
+to wait for the Camerons, who were to arrive from the North. Up and
+down they paraded, Dunn turning over in his mind the conversation of the
+night before, Rob breaking away every three minutes to consult the clock
+and the booking clerk at the wicket.
+
+"Will he come to us this afternoon, Jack, do you think?" enquired the
+boy.
+
+"Don't know! He turned down a football lunch! He has his sister and his
+father with him."
+
+"His sister could come with him!" argued the boy.
+
+"What about his father?"
+
+Rob had been close enough to events to know that the Captain constituted
+something of a difficulty in the situation.
+
+"Well, won't he have business to attend to?"
+
+His brother laughed. "Good idea, Rob, let us hope so! At any rate we
+will do our best to get Cameron and his sister to come to us. We want
+them, don't we?"
+
+"We do that!" said the boy fervently; "only I'm sure something will
+happen! There," he exclaimed a moment later, in a tone of disappointment
+and disgust, "I just knew it! There is Miss Brodie and some one else;
+they will get after him, I know!"
+
+"So it is," said Dunn, with a not altogether successful attempt at
+surprise.
+
+"Aw! you knew!" said Rob reproachfully.
+
+"Well! I kind of thought she might turn up!" said his brother, with
+an air of a convicted criminal. "You know she is quite a friend of
+Cameron's. But what is Sir Archibald here for?"
+
+"They will just get him, I know," said Rob gloomily, as he followed his
+brother to meet Miss Brodie and her uncle.
+
+"We're here!" cried that young lady, "to join in the demonstration to
+the hero! And, my uncle being somewhat conscience-stricken over his
+tardy and unwilling acceptance of our superior judgment in the recent
+famous case, has come to make such reparation as he can."
+
+"What a piece of impertinence! Don't listen to her, Sir!" cried
+Sir Archibald, greeting Dunn warmly and with the respect due an
+International captain. "The truth is I have a letter here for him to a
+business friend in Montreal, which may be of service. Of course, I may
+say to you that I am more than delighted that this letter of Potts has
+quite cleared the young man, and that he goes to the new country with
+reputation unstained. I am greatly delighted! greatly delighted! and I
+wish the opportunity to say so."
+
+"Indeed, we are all delighted," replied Dunn cordially, "though, of
+course, I never could bring myself to believe him guilty of crime."
+
+"Well, on the strength of the judgment of yourself and, I must confess,
+of this young person here, I made my decision."
+
+"Well," cried Miss Brodie, "I gave you my opinion because it was my
+opinion, but I confess at times I had my own doubts--"
+
+Here she paused abruptly, arrested by the look on young Rob's face; it
+was a look of surprise, grief, and horror.
+
+"That is to say," continued Miss Brodie hastily, answering the look, and
+recognising that her high place in Rob's regard was in peril, "the whole
+thing was a mystery--was impossible to solve--I mean," she continued,
+stumbling along, "his own attitude was so very uncertain and so
+unsatisfactory--if he had only been able to say clearly 'I am not
+guilty' it would have been different--I mean--of course, I don't believe
+him guilty. Don't look at me like that, Rob! I won't have it! But was it
+not clever of that dear Mr. Rae to extract that letter from the wretched
+Potts?"
+
+"There's the train!" cried Dunn. "Here, Rob, you stay here with me!
+Where has the young rascal gone!"
+
+"Look! Oh, look!" cried Miss Brodie, clutching at Dunn's arm, her eyes
+wide with terror. There before their horrified eyes was young Rob,
+hanging on to the window, out of which his friend Cameron was leaning,
+and racing madly with the swiftly moving train, in momentary danger of
+being dragged under its wheels. With a cry, Dunn rushed forward.
+
+"Merciful heavens!" cried Miss Brodie. "Oh! he is gone!"
+
+A porter, standing with his back towards the racing boy, had knocked
+his feet from under him. But as he fell, a strong hand grabbed him, and
+dragged him to safety through the window.
+
+Pale and shaking, the three friends waited for the car door to be
+opened, and as Rob issued in triumphant possession of his friend, Miss
+Brodie rushed at him and, seizing him in her strong grasp, cried:
+
+"You heartless young rascal! You nearly killed me--not to speak of
+yourself! Here," she continued, throwing her arms about him, and giving
+him a loud smack, "take that for your punishment! Do you hear, you
+nearly killed me! I had a vision of your mangled form ground up between
+the wheels and the platform. Hold on, you can't get away from me! I have
+a mind to give you another!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Brodie, please," pleaded Cameron, coming forward to Rob's
+rescue, "I assure you I was partly to blame; it is only fair I should
+share his punishment."
+
+"Indeed," cried Miss Brodie, the blood coming back into her cheeks that
+had been white enough a moment before, "if it were not for your size,
+and your--looks, I should treat you exactly the same, though not
+with the same intent, as our friend Mr. Rae would say. You did that
+splendidly!"
+
+"Alas! for my size," groaned Cameron--he was in great spirits--"and
+alas! for my ugly phiz!"
+
+"Who said 'ugly'?" replied Miss Brodie. "But I won't rise to your bait.
+May I introduce you to my uncle, Sir Archibald Brodie, who has a little
+business with you?"
+
+"Ah! Mr. Cameron," said that gentleman, "that was extremely well
+done. Indeed, I can hardly get back my nerve--might have been an ugly
+accident. By the way, Sir," taking Cameron aside, "just a moment. You
+are on your way to Canada? I have a letter which I thought might be
+of service to you. It is to a business friend of mine, a banker, in
+Montreal, Mr. James Ritchie. You will find him a good man to know, and I
+fancy glad to serve any--ah--friend of mine."
+
+On hearing Sir Archibald's name, Cameron's manner became distinctly
+haughty, and he was on the point of declining the letter, when Sir
+Archibald, who was quick to observe his manner, took him by the arm and
+led him somewhat further away.
+
+"Now, Sir, there is a little matter I wish to speak of, if you will
+permit. Indeed, I came specially to say how delighted I am that
+the--ah--recent little unpleasantness has been removed. Of course you
+understand my responsibility to the Bank rendered a certain course
+of action imperative, however repugnant. But, believe me, I am truly
+delighted to find that my decision to withdraw the--ah--action has been
+entirely justified by events. Delighted, Sir! Delighted! And much more
+since I have seen you."
+
+Before the overflowing kindliness of Sir Archibald's voice and manner,
+Cameron's hauteur vanished like morning mist before the rising sun.
+
+"I thank you, Sir Archibald," he said, with dignity, "not only for this
+letter, but especially for your good opinion."
+
+"Very good! Very good! The letter will, I hope, be useful," replied Sir
+Archibald, "and as for my opinion, I am glad to find not only that it is
+well founded, but that it appears to be shared by most of this company
+here. Now we must get back to your party. But let me say again, I am
+truly glad to have come to know you."
+
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HO FOR THE OPEN!
+
+
+Mr. James Ritchie, manager of the Bank of Montreal, glanced from the
+letter in his hand to the young man who had just given it to him. "Ah!
+you have just arrived from the old land," he said, a smile of genial
+welcome illuminating his handsome face. "I am pleased to hear from my
+old friend, Sir Archibald Brodie, and pleased to welcome any friend of
+his to Canada."
+
+So saying, with fine old-time courtesy, the banker rose to his splendid
+height of six feet two, and shook his visitor warmly by the hand.
+
+"Your name is--?"
+
+"Cameron, Sir," said the young man.
+
+"Yes, I see! Mr. Allan Cameron--um, um," with his eyes on the letter.
+"Old and distinguished family--exactly so! Now, then, Mr. Cameron, I
+hope we shall be able to do something for you, both for the sake of my
+old friend, Sir Archibald, and, indeed, for your own sake," said the
+banker, with a glance of approval at Cameron's upright form.
+
+"Sit down, Sir! Sit down! Now, business first is my motto. What can I do
+for you?"
+
+"Well, first of all," said Cameron with a laugh, "I wish to make a
+deposit. I have a draft of one hundred pounds here which I should like
+to place in your care."
+
+"Very well, Sir," said the banker, touching a button, "my young man will
+attend to that."
+
+"Now, then," when the business had been transacted, "what are your
+plans, Mr. Cameron? Thirty-five years ago I came to Montreal a young
+man, from Scotland, like yourself, and it was a lonely day for me when
+I reached this city, the loneliest in my life, and so my heart warms
+to the stranger from the old land. Yes," continued Mr. Ritchie, in a
+reminiscent tone, "I remember well! I hired as errand boy and general
+factotum to a small grocer down near the market. Montreal was a small
+city then, with wretched streets--they're bad enough yet--and poor
+buildings; everything was slow and backward; there have been mighty
+changes since. But here we are! Now, what are your plans?"
+
+"I am afraid they are of the vaguest kind," said Cameron. "I want
+something to do."
+
+"What sort of thing? I mean, what has been the line of your training?"
+
+"I am afraid my training has been defective. I have passed through
+Edinburgh Academy, also the University, with the exception of my last
+year. But I am willing to take anything."
+
+"Ah!" said the banker thoughtfully. "No office training, eh?"
+
+"No, Sir. That is, if you except a brief period of three or four months
+in the law office of our family solicitor."
+
+"Law, eh?--I have it! Denman's your man! I shall give you a letter to
+Mr. Denman--a lawyer friend of mine. I shall see him personally to-day,
+and if you call to-morrow at ten I hope to have news for you. Meantime,
+I shall be pleased to have you lunch with me to-day at the club. One
+o'clock is the hour. If you would kindly call at the bank, we shall go
+down together."
+
+Cameron expressed his gratitude.
+
+"By the way!" said Mr. Ritchie, "where have you put up?"
+
+"At the Royal," said Cameron.
+
+"Ah! That will do for the present," said Mr. Ritchie. "I am sorry our
+circumstances do not permit of my inviting you to our home. The truth
+is, Mrs. Ritchie is at present out of the city. But we shall find some
+suitable lodging for you. The Royal is far too expensive a place for a
+young man with his fortune to make."
+
+Cameron spent the day making the acquaintance of the beautiful, quaint,
+if somewhat squalid, old city of Montreal; and next morning, with
+a letter of introduction from Mr. Ritchie, presented himself at Mr.
+Denman's office. Mr. Denman was a man in young middle life, athletic
+of frame, keen of eye, and energetic of manner; his voice was loud
+and sharp. He welcomed Cameron with brisk heartiness, and immediately
+proceeded to business.
+
+"Let me see," he began, "what is your idea? What kind of a job are you
+after?"
+
+"Indeed," replied Cameron, "that is just what I hardly know."
+
+"Well, what has been your experience? You are a University man, I
+believe? But have you had any practical training? Do you know office
+work?"
+
+"No, I've had little training for an office. I was in a law office for
+part of a year."
+
+"Ah! Familiar with bookkeeping, or accounting? I suppose you can't run
+one of these typewriting machines?"
+
+In regard to each of these lines of effort Cameron was forced to confess
+ignorance.
+
+"I say!" cried Mr. Denman, "those old country people seriously annoy me
+with their inadequate system of education!"
+
+"I am afraid," replied Cameron, "the fault is more mine than the
+system's."
+
+"Don't know about that! Don't know about that!" replied Mr. Denman
+quickly; "I have had scores of young men, fine young men, too, come to
+me; public school men, university men, but quite unfit for any practical
+line of work."
+
+Mr. Denman considered for some moments. "Let us see. You have done some
+work in a law office. Now," Mr. Denman spoke with some hesitation; "I
+have a place in my own office here--not much in it for the present,
+but--"
+
+"To tell the truth," interrupted Cameron, "I did not make much of the
+law; in fact, I do not think I am suited for office work. I would prefer
+something in the open. I had thought of the land."
+
+"Farming," exclaimed Mr. Denman. "Ah!--you would, I suppose, be able to
+invest something?"
+
+"No," said Cameron, "nothing."
+
+Denman shook his head. "Nothing in it! You would not earn enough to buy
+a farm about here in fifteen years."
+
+"But I understood," replied Cameron, "that further west was cheaper
+land."
+
+"Oh! In the far west, yes! But it is a God-forsaken country! I don't
+know much about it, I confess. I know they are booming town lots all
+over the land. I believe they have gone quite mad in the business, but
+from what I hear, the main work in the west just now is jaw work; the
+only thing they raise is corner lots."
+
+On Cameron's face there fell the gloom of discouragement. One of his
+fondest dreams was being dispelled--his vision of himself as a wealthy
+rancher, ranging over square miles of his estate upon a "bucking
+broncho," garbed in the picturesque cowboy dress, began to fade.
+
+"But there is ranching, I believe?" he ventured.
+
+"Ranching? Oh yes! There is, up near the Rockies, but that is out of
+civilization; out of reach of everything and everybody."
+
+"That is what I want, Sir!" exclaimed Cameron, his face once more aglow
+with eager hope. "I want to get away into the open."
+
+Mr. Denman did not, or could not, recognise this as the instinctive cry
+of the primitive man for a closer fellowship with Mother Nature. He was
+keenly practical, and impatient with everything that appeared to him to
+be purely visionary and unbusiness-like.
+
+"But, my dear fellow," he said, "a ranch means cattle and horses; and
+cattle and horses means money, unless of course, you mean to be simply a
+cowboy--cowpuncher, I believe, is the correct term--but there is nothing
+in that; no future, I mean. It is all very well for a little fun, if
+you have a bank account to stand it, although some fellows stand it on
+someone's else bank account--not much to their credit, however. There is
+a young friend of mine out there at present, but from what I can gather
+his home correspondence is mainly confined to appeals for remittances
+from his governor, and his chief occupation spending these remittances
+as speedily as possible. All very well, as I have said, for fun, if
+you can pay the shot. But to play the role of gentleman cowboy, while
+somebody else pays for it, is the sort of thing I despise."
+
+"And so do I, Sir!" said Cameron. "There will be no remittance in my
+case."
+
+Denman glanced at the firm, closed lips and the stiffening figure.
+
+"That is the talk!" he exclaimed. "No, there is no chance in ranching
+unless you have capital."
+
+"As far as I can see," replied Cameron gloomily, "everything seems
+closed up except to the capitalist, and yet from what I heard at home
+situations were open on every hand in this country."
+
+"Come here!" cried Denman, drawing Cameron to the office window. "See
+those doors!" pointing to a long line of shops. "Every last one is
+opened to a man who knows his business. See those smokestacks! Every
+last wheel in those factories is howling for a man who is on to his job.
+But don't look blue, there is a place for you, too; the thing is to find
+it."
+
+"What are those long buildings?" inquired Cameron, pointing towards the
+water front.
+
+"Those are railroad sheds; or, rather, Transportation Company's sheds;
+they are practically the same thing. I say! What is the matter with
+trying the Transportation Company? I know the manager well. The very
+thing! Try the Transportation Company!"
+
+"How should I go about it?" said Cameron. "I mean to say just what
+position should I apply for?"
+
+"Position!" shouted Denman. "Why, general manager would be good!"
+
+Then, noting the flush in Cameron's face, he added quickly, "Pardon me!
+The thing is to get your foot in somehow, and then wire in till you are
+general manager, by Jove! It can be done! Fleming has done it! Went in
+as messenger boy, but--" Denman paused. There flashed through his mind
+the story of Fleming's career; a vision of the half-starved ragged waif
+who started as messenger boy in the company's offices, and who, by dint
+of invincible determination and resolute self-denial, fought his way
+step by step to his present position of control. In contrast, he looked
+at the young man, born and bred in circles where work is regarded as
+a calamity, and service wears the badge of social disfranchisement.
+Fleming had done it under compulsion of the inexorable mistress
+"Necessity." But what of this young man?
+
+"Will we try?" he said at length. "I shall give you a letter to Mr.
+Fleming."
+
+He sat down to his desk and wrote vigourously.
+
+"Take this, and see what happens."
+
+Cameron took the letter, and, glancing at the address, read, Wm.
+Fleming, Esquire, General Manager, Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage
+Company.
+
+"Is this a railroad?" asked Cameron.
+
+"No, but next thing to it. The companies are practically one. The
+transition from one to the other is easy enough. Let me know how you get
+on. Good-by! And--I say!" cried Mr. Denman, calling Cameron back again
+from the door, "see Mr. Fleming himself. Remember that! And remember,"
+he added, with a smile, "the position of manager is not vacant just yet,
+but it will be. I give you my word for it when you are ready to take it.
+Good-by! Buck up! Take what he offers you! Get your teeth in, and never
+let go!"
+
+"By George!" said Denman to himself as the door closed on Cameron,
+"these chaps are the limit. He's got lots of stuff in him, but he has
+been rendered helpless by their fool system--God save us from it! That
+chap has had things done for him ever since he was first bathed;
+they have washed 'em, dressed 'em, fed 'em, schooled 'em, found 'em
+positions, stuck 'em in, and watched that they didn't fall out. And
+yet, by George!" he added, after a pause, "they are running the
+world to-day--that is, some of them." Facing which somewhat puzzling
+phenomenon, Denman plunged into his work again.
+
+Meantime Cameron was making his way towards the offices of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, oppressed with an
+unacknowledged but none the less real sense of unfitness, and haunted
+by a depressing sense of the deficiency of his own training, and of
+the training afforded the young men of his class at home. As he started
+along he battled with his depression. True enough, he had no skill
+in the various accomplishments that Mr. Denman seemed to consider
+essential; he had no experience in business, he was not fit for office
+work--office work he loathed; but surely there was some position where
+his talents would bring him recognition and fortune at last. After all,
+Mr. Denman was only a Colonial, and with a Colonial's somewhat narrow
+view of life. Who was he to criticise the system of training that for
+generations had been in vogue at home? Had not Wellington said "that
+England's battles were first won on the football fields of Eton and
+Rugby," or something like that? Of course, the training that might fit
+for a distinguished career in the British army might not necessarily
+insure success on the battle fields of industry and commerce. Yet
+surely, an International player should be able to get somewhere!
+
+At this point in his cogitations Cameron was arrested by a memory
+that stabbed him like a knife-thrust; the awful moment when upon the
+Inverleith grounds, in the face of the Welsh forward-line, he had
+faltered and lost the International. Should he ever be able to forget
+the agony of that moment and of the day that followed? And yet, he need
+not have failed. He knew he could play his position with any man in
+Scotland; he had failed because he was not fit. He set his teeth hard.
+He would show these bally Colonials! He would make good! And with his
+head high, he walked into the somewhat dingy offices of the Metropolitan
+Transportation & Cartage Company, of which William Fleming, Esquire, was
+manager.
+
+Opening the door, Cameron found himself confronted by a short counter
+that blocked the way for the general public into the long room, filled
+with desks and chairs and clicking typewriting machines. Cameron had
+never seen so many of these machines during the whole period of his
+life. The typewriter began to assume an altogether new importance in
+his mind. Hitherto it had appeared to him more or less of a Yankee fad,
+unworthy of the attention of an able-bodied man of average intelligence.
+In Edinburgh a "writing machine" was still something of a new-fangled
+luxury, to be apologised for. Mr. Rae would allow no such finicky
+instrument in his office. Here, however, there were a dozen, more or
+less, manipulated for the most part by young ladies, and some of them
+actually by men; on every side they clicked and banged. It may have
+been the clicking and banging of these machines that gave to Cameron the
+sense of rush and hurry so different from the calm quiet and dignified
+repose of the only office he had ever known. For some moments he stood
+at the counter, waiting attention from one of the many clerks sitting
+before him, but though one and another occasionally glanced in his
+direction, his presence seemed to awaken not even a passing curiosity in
+their minds, much less to suggest the propriety of their inquiring his
+business.
+
+As the moments passed Cameron became conscious of a feeling of affront.
+How differently a gentleman was treated by the clerks in the office
+of Messrs. Rae & Macpherson, where prompt attention and deferential
+courtesy in a clerk were as essential as a suit of clothes. Gradually
+Cameron's head went up, and with it his choler. At length, in his
+haughtiest tone, he hailed a passing youth:
+
+"I say, boy, is this Mr. Fleming's office?"
+
+The clicking and banging of the typewriters, and the hum of voices
+ceased. Everywhere heads were raised and eyes turned curiously upon the
+haughty stranger.
+
+"Eh?" No letters can represent the nasal intonation of this syllabic
+inquiry, and no words the supreme indifference of the boy's tone.
+
+"Is Mr. Fleming in? I wish to see him!" Cameron's voice was loud and
+imperious.
+
+"Say, boys," said a lanky youth, with a long, cadaverous countenance
+and sallow, unhealthy complexion, illumined, however, and redeemed to
+a certain extent by black eyes of extraordinary brilliance, "it is the
+Prince of Wales!" The drawling, awe-struck tones, in the silence that
+had fallen, were audible to all in the immediate neighbourhood.
+
+The titter that swept over the listeners brought the hot blood to
+Cameron's face. A deliberate insult a Highlander takes with calm. He is
+prepared to deal with it in a manner affording him entire satisfaction.
+Ridicule rouses him to fury, for, while it touches his pride, it leaves
+him no opportunity of vengeance.
+
+"Can you tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?" he enquired again of the boy
+that stood scanning him with calm indifference. The rage that possessed
+him so vibrated in his tone that the lanky lad drawled again in a
+warning voice:
+
+"Slide, Jimmy, slide!"
+
+Jimmy "slid," but towards the counter.
+
+"Want to see him?" he enquired in a tone of brisk impertinence, as if
+suddenly roused from a reverie.
+
+"I have a letter for him."
+
+"All right! Hand it over," said Jimmy, fully conscious that he was the
+hero of more than usual interest.
+
+Cameron hesitated, then passed his letter over to Jimmy, who, reading
+the address with deliberate care, winked at the lanky boy, and with a
+jaunty step made towards a door at the farther end of the room. As he
+passed a desk that stood nearest the door, a man who during the last few
+minutes had remained with his head down, apparently so immersed in
+the papers before him as to be quite unconscious of his surroundings,
+suddenly called out, "Here, boy!"
+
+Jimmy instantly assumed an air of respectful attention.
+
+"A letter for Mr. Fleming," he said.
+
+"Here!" replied the man, stretching out his hand.
+
+He hurriedly glanced through the letter.
+
+"Tell him there is no vacancy at present," he said shortly.
+
+The boy came back to Cameron with cheerful politeness. The "old man's"
+eye was upon him.
+
+"There is no vacancy at present," he said briefly, and turned away as if
+his attention were immediately demanded elsewhere by pressing business
+of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company.
+
+For answer, Cameron threw back the leaf of the counter that barred his
+way, and started up the long room, past the staring clerks, to the desk
+next the door.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Fleming, Sir," he said, his voice trembling slightly,
+his face pale, his blue-gray eyes ablaze.
+
+The man at the desk looked up from his work.
+
+"I have just informed you there is no vacancy at present," he said
+testily, and turned to his papers again, as if dismissing the incident.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?" said Cameron in a voice
+that had grown quite steady; "I wish to see him personally."
+
+"Mr. Fleming cannot see you, I tell you!" almost shouted the man, rising
+from his desk and revealing himself a short, pudgy figure, with flabby
+face and shining bald head. "Can't you understand English?--I can't be
+bothered--!"
+
+"What is it, Bates? Someone to see me?"
+
+Cameron turned quickly towards the speaker, who had come from the inner
+room.
+
+"I have brought you a letter, Sir, from Mr. Denman," he said quietly;
+"it is there," pointing to Bates' desk.
+
+"A letter? Let me have it! Why was not this brought to me at once, Mr.
+Bates?"
+
+"It was an open letter, Sir," replied Bates, "and I thought there was
+no need of troubling you, Sir. I told the young man we had no vacancy at
+present."
+
+"This is a personal letter, Mr. Bates, and should have been brought to
+me at once. Why was Mr.--ah--Mr. Cameron not brought in to me?"
+
+Mr. Bates murmured something about not wishing to disturb the manager on
+trivial business.
+
+"I am the judge of that, Mr. Bates. In future, when any man asks to see
+me, I desire him to be shown in at once."
+
+Mr. Bates began to apologise.
+
+"That is all that is necessary, Mr. Bates," said the manager, in a voice
+at once quiet and decisive.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Cameron. I am very sorry this has happened!"
+
+Cameron followed him into his office, noting, as he passed, the red
+patches of rage on Mr. Bates' pudgy face, and catching a look of fierce
+hate from his small piggy eyes. It flashed through his mind that in Mr.
+Bates, at any rate, he had found no friend.
+
+The result of the interview with Mr. Fleming was an intimation to Mr.
+Bates that Mr. Cameron was to have a position in the office of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, and to begin work the
+following morning.
+
+"Very well, Sir," replied Mr. Bates--he had apparently quite recovered
+his equanimity--"we shall find Mr. Cameron a desk."
+
+"We begin work at eight o'clock exactly," he added, turning to Cameron
+with a pleasant smile.
+
+Mr. Fleming accompanied Cameron to the door.
+
+"Now, a word with you, Mr. Cameron. You may find Mr. Bates a little
+difficult--he is something of a driver--but, remember, he is in charge
+of this office; I never interfere with his orders."
+
+"I understand, Sir," said Cameron, resolving that, at all costs, he
+should obey Mr. Bates' orders, if only to show the general manager he
+could recognise and appreciate a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+Mr. Fleming was putting it mildly when he described Mr. Bates as
+"something of a driver." The whole office staff, from Jimmy, the office
+boy, to Jacobs, the gentle, white-haired clerk, whose desk was in the
+farthest corner of the room, felt the drive. He was not only office
+manager, but office master as well. His rule was absolute, and from his
+decisions there was no appeal. The general manager went on the theory
+that it was waste of energy to keep a dog and bark himself. In the
+policy that governed the office there were two rules which Mr. Bates
+enforced with the utmost rigidity--the first, namely, that every member
+of the staff must be in his or her place and ready for work when the
+clock struck eight; the other, that each member of the staff must work
+independently of every other member. A man must know his business, and
+go through with it; if he required instructions, he must apply to the
+office manager. But, as a rule, one experience of such application
+sufficed for the whole period of a clerk's service in the office of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, for Mr. Bates was gifted
+with such an exquisiteness of ironical speech that the whole staff were
+wont to pause in the rush of their work to listen and to admire when
+a new member was unhappy enough to require instructions, their silent
+admiration acting as a spur to Mr. Bates' ingenuity in the invention of
+ironical discourse.
+
+Of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Mr. Bates' system, however,
+Cameron was quite ignorant; nor had his experience in the office of
+Messrs. Rae & Macpherson been such as to impress upon him the necessity
+of a close observation of the flight of time. It did not disturb him,
+therefore, to notice as he strolled into the offices of the Metropolitan
+Transportation & Cartage Company the next morning that the hands of the
+clock showed six minutes past the hour fixed for the beginning of
+the day's work. The office staff shivered in an ecstasy of expectant
+delight. Cameron walked nonchalantly to Mr. Bates' desk, his overcoat on
+his arm, his cap in his hand.
+
+"Good morning, Sir," he said.
+
+Mr. Bates finished writing a sentence, looked up, and nodded a brief
+good morning.
+
+"We deposit our street attire on the hooks behind the door, yonder!" he
+said with emphatic politeness, pointing across the room.
+
+Cameron flushed, as in passing his desk he observed the pleased smile on
+the lanky boy's sallow face.
+
+"You evidently were not aware of the hours of this office," continued
+Mr. Bates when Cameron had returned. "We open at eight o'clock."
+
+"Oh!" said Cameron, carelessly. "Eight? Yes, I thought it was eight! Ah!
+I see! I believe I am five minutes late! But I suppose I shall catch up
+before the day is over!"
+
+"Mr. Cameron," replied Mr. Bates earnestly, "if you should work for
+twenty years for the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company,
+never will you catch up those five minutes; every minute of your office
+hours is pledged to the company, and every minute has its own proper
+work. Your desk is the one next Mr. Jacobs, yonder. Your work is waiting
+you there. It is quite simple, the entry of freight receipts upon
+the ledger. If you wish further instructions, apply to me here--you
+understand?"
+
+"I think so!" replied Cameron. "I shall do my best to--"
+
+"Very well! That is all!" replied Mr. Bates, plunging his head again
+into his papers.
+
+The office staff sank back to work with every expression of
+disappointment. A moment later, however, their hopes revived.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Cameron!" called out Mr. Bates. Mr. Cameron returned to his
+desk. "If you should chance to be late again, never mind going to your
+desk; just come here for your cheque."
+
+Mr. Bates' tone was kindly, even considerate, as if he were anxious to
+save his clerk unnecessary inconvenience.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" stammered Cameron, astonished.
+
+"That is all!" replied Mr. Bates, his nose once more in his papers.
+
+Cameron stood hesitating. His eye fell upon the boy, Jimmy, whose face
+expressed keenest joy.
+
+"Do you mean, Sir, that if I am late you dismiss me forthwith?"
+
+"What?" Mr. Bates' tone was so fiercely explosive that it appeared to
+throw up his head with a violent motion.
+
+Cameron repeated his question.
+
+"Mr. Cameron, my time is valuable; so is yours. I thought that I spoke
+quite distinctly. Apparently I did not. Let me repeat: In case you
+should inadvertently be late again, you need not take the trouble to go
+to your desk; just come here. Your cheque will be immediately made out.
+Saves time, you know--your time and mine--and time, you perceive, in
+this office represents money."
+
+Mr. Bates' voice lost none of its kindly interest, but it had grown
+somewhat in intensity; the last sentence was uttered with his face close
+to his desk.
+
+Cameron stood a moment in uncertainty, gazing at the bald head before
+him; then, finding nothing to reply, he turned about to behold Jimmy
+and his lanky friend executing an animated war pantomime which they
+apparently deemed appropriate to the occasion.
+
+With face ablaze and teeth set Cameron went to his desk, to the extreme
+disappointment of Jimmy and the lanky youth, who fell into each other's
+arms, apparently overcome with grief.
+
+For half an hour the office hummed with the noise of subdued voices and
+clicked with the rapid fire of the typewriters. Suddenly through the hum
+Mr. Bates' voice was heard, clear, calm, and coldly penetrating:
+
+"Mr. Jacobs!"
+
+The old, white-haired clerk started up from Cameron's desk, and began
+in a confused and gentle voice to explain that he was merely giving some
+hints to the new clerk.
+
+"Mr. Jacobs," said Mr. Bates, "I cannot hear you, and you are wasting my
+time!"
+
+"He was merely showing me how to make these entries!" said Cameron.
+
+"Ah! Indeed! Thank you, Mr. Cameron! Though I believe Mr. Jacobs has not
+yet lost the power of lucid speech. Mr. Jacobs, I believe you know the
+rules of this office; your fine will be one-quarter of a day."
+
+"Thank you!" said Mr. Jacobs, hurriedly resuming his desk.
+
+"And, Mr. Cameron, if you will kindly bring your work to me, I shall do
+my best to enlighten you in regard to the complex duty of entering your
+freight receipts."
+
+An audible snicker ran through the delighted staff. Cameron seized his
+ledger and the pile of freight bills, and started for Mr. Bates' desk,
+catching out of the corner of his eye the pantomime of Jimmy and the
+lanky one, which was being rendered with vigor and due caution.
+
+For a few moments Cameron stood at the manager's desk till that
+gentleman should be disengaged, but Mr. Bates was skilled in the
+fine art of reducing to abject humility an employee who might give
+indications of insubordination. Cameron's rage grew with every passing
+moment.
+
+"Here is the ledger, Sir!" he said at length.
+
+But Mr. Bates was so completely absorbed in the business of saving time
+that he made not the slightest pause in his writing, while the redoubled
+vigor and caution of the pantomime seemed to indicate the approach of a
+crisis. At length Mr. Bates raised his head. Jimmy and the lanky clerk
+became at once engrossed in their duties.
+
+"You have had no experience of this kind of work, Mr. Cameron?" inquired
+Mr. Bates kindly.
+
+"No, Sir. But if you will just explain one or two matters, I think I
+can--"
+
+"Exactly! This is not, however, a business college! But we shall do our
+best!"
+
+A rapturous smile pervaded the office. Mr. Bates was in excellent form.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Cameron--pardon my neglect--but may I inquire just what
+department of this work you are familiar with?"
+
+"Oh, general--"
+
+"Ah! The position of general manager, however, is filled at present!"
+replied Mr. Bates kindly.
+
+Cameron's flush grew deeper, while Jimmy and his friend resigned
+themselves to an ecstasy of delight.
+
+"I was going to say," said Cameron in a tone loud and deliberate, "that
+I had been employed with the general copying work in a writer's office."
+
+"Writing? Fancy! Writing, eh? No use here!" said Mr. Bates shortly, for
+time was passing.
+
+"A writer with us means a lawyer!" replied Cameron.
+
+"Why the deuce don't they say so?" answered Mr. Bates impatiently.
+"Well! Well!" getting hold of himself again. "Here we allow our
+solicitors to look after our legal work. Typewrite?" he inquired
+suddenly.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" replied Cameron. "Typewrite? Do you mean, can I use
+a typewriting machine?"
+
+"Yes! Yes! For heaven's sake, yes!"
+
+"No, I cannot!"
+
+"Bookkeep?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Good Lord! What have I got?" inquired Mr. Bates of himself, in a tone,
+however, perfectly audible to those in the immediate neighbourhood.
+
+"Try him licking stamps!" suggested the lanky youth in a voice that,
+while it reached the ears of Jimmy and others near by, including
+Cameron, was inaudible to the manager. Mr. Bates caught the sound,
+however, and glared about him through his spectacles. Time was being
+wasted--the supreme offense in that office--and Mr. Bates was fast
+losing his self-command.
+
+"Here!" he cried suddenly, seizing a sheaf of letters. "File these
+letters. You will be able to do that, I guess! File's in the vault over
+there!"
+
+Cameron took the letters and stood looking helplessly from them to Mr.
+Bates' bald head, that gentleman's face being already in close proximity
+to the papers on his desk.
+
+"Just how do I go about this?--I mean, what system do you--"
+
+"Jim!" roared Mr. Bates, throwing down his pen, "show this con--show
+Mr. Cameron how to file these letters! Just like these blank old-country
+chumps!" added Mr. Bates, in a lower voice, but loud enough to be
+distinctly heard.
+
+Jim came up with a smile of patronising pity on his face. It was the
+smile that touched to life the mass of combustible material that had
+been accumulating for the last hour in Cameron's soul. Instead of
+following the boy, he turned with a swift movement back to the manager's
+desk, laid his sheaf of letters down on Mr. Bates' papers, and, leaning
+over the desk, towards that gentleman, said:
+
+"Did you mean that remark to apply to me?" His voice was very quiet.
+But Mr. Bates started back with a quick movement from the white face and
+burning eyes.
+
+"Here, you get out of this!" he cried.
+
+"Because," continued Cameron, "if you did, I must ask you to apologise
+at once."
+
+All smiles vanished from the office staff, even Jimmy's face assumed a
+serious aspect. Mr. Bates pushed back his chair.
+
+"A-po-pologise!" he sputtered. "Get out of this office, d'ye hear?"
+
+"Be quick!" said Cameron, his hands gripping Mr. Bates' desk till it
+shook.
+
+"Jimmy! Call a policeman!" cried Mr. Bates, rising from his chair.
+
+He was too slow. Cameron reached swiftly for his collar, and with one
+fierce wrench swept Mr. Bates clear over the top of his desk, shook him
+till his head wobbled dangerously, and flung him crashing across the
+desk and upon the prostrate form of the lanky youth sitting behind it.
+
+"Call a policeman! Call a policeman!" shouted Mr. Bates, who was
+struggling meantime with the lanky youth to regain an upright position.
+
+Cameron, meanwhile, walked quietly to where his coat and cap hung.
+
+"Hold him, somebody! Hold him!" shouted Mr. Bates, hurrying towards him.
+
+Cameron turned fiercely upon him.
+
+"Did you want me, Sir?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Bates arrested himself with such violence that his feet slid from
+under him, and once more he came sitting upon the floor.
+
+"Get up!" said Cameron, "and listen to me!"
+
+Mr. Bates rose, and stood, white and trembling.
+
+"I may not know much about your Canadian ways of business, but I believe
+I can teach you some old-country manners. You have treated me this
+morning like the despicable bully that you are. Perhaps you will treat
+the next old-country man with the decency that is coming to him, even if
+he has the misfortune to be your clerk."
+
+With these words Cameron turned upon his heel and walked deliberately
+towards the door. Immediately Jimmy sprang before him, and, throwing the
+door wide open, bowed him out as if he were indeed the Prince of
+Wales. Thus abruptly ended Cameron's connection with the Metropolitan
+Transportation & Cartage Company. Before the day was done the whole city
+had heard the tale, which lost nothing in the telling.
+
+Next morning Mr. Denman was surprised to have Cameron walk in upon him.
+
+"Hullo, young man!" shouted the lawyer, "this is a pretty business!
+Upon my soul! Your manner of entry into our commercial life is somewhat
+forceful! What the deuce do you mean by all this?"
+
+Cameron stood, much abashed. His passion was all gone; in the calm light
+of after-thought his action of yesterday seemed boyish.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Denman," he replied, "and I came to apologise to
+you."
+
+"To me?" cried Denman. "Why to me? I expect, if you wish to get a
+job anywhere in this town, you will need to apologise to the chap you
+knocked down--what's his name?"
+
+"Mr. Bates, I think his name is, Sir; but, of course, I cannot apologise
+to him."
+
+"By Jove!" roared Mr. Denman, "he ought to have thrown you out of his
+office! That is what I would have done!"
+
+Cameron glanced up and down Mr. Denman's well-knit figure.
+
+"I don't think so, Sir," he said, with a smile.
+
+"Why not?" said Mr. Denman, grasping the arms of his office chair.
+
+"Because you would not have insulted a stranger in your office who was
+trying his best to understand his work. And then, I should not have
+tried it on you."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Well, I think I know a gentleman when I see one."
+
+Mr. Denman was not to be appeased.
+
+"Well, let me tell you, young man, it would have been a mighty unhealthy
+thing for you to have cut up any such shine in this office. I have done
+some Rugby in my day, my boy, if you know what that means."
+
+"I have done a little, too," said Cameron, with slightly heightened
+colour.
+
+"You have, eh! Where?"
+
+"The Scottish International, Sir."
+
+"By Jove! You don't tell me!" replied Mr. Denman, his tone expressing a
+new admiration and respect. "When? This year?"
+
+"No, last year, Sir--against Wales!"
+
+"By Jove!" cried Mr. Denman again; "give me your hand, boy! Any man who
+has made the Scottish Internationals is not called to stand any cheek
+from a cad like Bates."
+
+Mr. Denman shook Cameron warmly by the hand.
+
+"Tell us about it!" he cried. "It must have been rare sport. If Bates
+only knew it, he ought to count it an honour to have been knocked down
+by a Scottish International."
+
+"I didn't knock him down, Sir!" said Cameron, apologetically; "he is
+only a little chap; I just gave him a bit of a shake," and Cameron
+proceeded to recount the proceedings of the previous morning.
+
+Mr. Denman was hugely delighted.
+
+"Serves the little beast bloody well right!" he cried enthusiastically.
+"But what's to do now? They will be afraid to let you into their offices
+in this city."
+
+"I think, Sir, I am done with offices; I mean to try the land."
+
+"Farm, eh?" mused Mr. Denman. "Well, so be it! It will probably be safer
+for you there--possibly for some others as well."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A MAN'S JOB
+
+
+Cameron slept heavily and long into the day, but as he awoke he was
+conscious of a delightful exhilaration possessing him. For the first
+time in his life he was a free man, ungoverned and unguided. For four
+dreary weeks he had waited in Montreal for answers to his enquiries
+concerning positions with farmers, but apparently the Canadian farmers
+were not attracted by the qualifications and experience Cameron had
+to offer. At length he had accepted the advice of Martin's uncle
+in Montreal, who assured him with local pride that, if he desired a
+position on a farm, the district of which the little city of London was
+the centre was the very garden of Canada. He was glad now to remember
+that he had declined a letter of introduction. He was now entirely on
+his own. Neither in this city nor in the country round about was there
+a soul with whom he had the remotest acquaintance. The ways of life led
+out from his feet, all untried, all unknown. Which he should choose
+he knew not, but with a thrill of exultation he thanked his stars the
+choosing was his own concern. A feeling of adventure was upon him, a new
+courage was rising in his heart. The failure that had hitherto dogged
+his past essays in life did not dampen his confidence, for they had
+been made under other auspices than his own. He had not fitted into his
+former positions, but they had not been of his own choosing. He would
+now find a place for himself and if he failed again he was prepared to
+accept the responsibility. One bit of philosophy he carried with him
+from Mr. Denman's farewell interview--"Now, young man, rememer," that
+gentleman had said after he had bidden him farewell, "this world is
+pretty much made already; success consists in adjustment. Don't try to
+make your world, adjust yourself to it. Don't fight the world, serve it
+till you master it." Cameron determined he would study adjustments; his
+fighting tendency, which had brought him little success in the past, he
+would control.
+
+At this point the throb of a band broke in upon his meditations and
+summoned him from his bed. He sprang to the window. It was circus day
+and the morning parade, in all its mingled and cosmopolitan glory, was
+slowly evolving its animated length to the strains of bands of music.
+There were bands on horses and bands on chariots, and at the tail of the
+procession a fearful and wonderful instrument bearing the euphonious and
+classic name of the "calliope," whose chief function seemed to be that
+of terrifying the farmers' horses into frantic and determined attempts
+to escape from these horrid alarms of the city to the peaceful haunts of
+their rural solitudes.
+
+Cameron was still boy enough to hurry through his morning duties in
+order that he might mix with the crowd and share the perennial delights
+which a circus affords. The stable yard attached to his hotel was lined
+three deep with buggies, carriages, and lumber waggons, which had borne
+in the crowds of farmers from the country. The hotel was thronged with
+sturdy red-faced farm lads, looking hot and uncomfortable in their
+unaccustomed Sunday suits, gorgeous in their rainbow ties, and rakish
+with their hats set at all angles upon their elaborately brushed heads.
+Older men, too, bearded and staid, moved with silent and self-respecting
+dignity through the crowds, gazing with quiet and observant eyes upon
+the shifting phantasmagoria that filled the circus grounds and the
+streets nearby. With these, too, there mingled a few of both old and
+young who, with bacchanalian enthusiasm, were swaggering their way
+through the crowds, each followed by a company of friends good-naturedly
+tolerant or solicitously careful.
+
+Cameron's eyes, roving over the multitude, fell upon a little group that
+held his attention, the principal figure of which was a tall middle aged
+man with a good-natured face, adorned with a rugged grey chin whisker,
+who was loudly declaiming to a younger companion with a hard face and
+very wide awake, "My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me."
+
+"Ye bet yer life they can't. Ye ain't no chicken!" exclaimed his
+hard-faced friend. "Say, let's liquor up once more before we go to see
+the elephant."
+
+With these two followed a boy of some thirteen years, freckled faced and
+solemn, slim and wiry of body, who was anxiously striving to drag his
+father away from one of the drinking booths that dotted the circus
+grounds, and towards the big tent; but the father had been already a
+too frequent visitor at the booth to be quite amenable to his son's
+pleading. He, in a glorious mood of self-appreciation, kept announcing
+to the public generally and to his hard-faced friend in particular--
+
+"My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me!"
+
+"Come on, father," pleaded Tim.
+
+"No hurry, Timmy, me boy," said his father. "The elephants won't run
+away with the monkeys and the clowns can't git out of the ring."
+
+"Oh, come on, dad, I'm sure the show's begun."
+
+"Cheese it, young feller," said the young man, "yer dad's able to take
+care of himself."
+
+"Aw, you shut yer mouth!" replied Tim fiercely. "I know what you're
+suckin' round for."
+
+"Good boy, Tim," laughed his father; "ye giv' 'im one that time. Guess
+we'll go. So long, Sam, if that's yer name. Ye see I've jist got ter
+take in this 'ere show this morning with Tim 'ere, and then we have got
+some groceries to git for the old woman. See there," he drew a paper
+from his pocket, "wouldn't dare show up without 'em, ye bet, eh, Tim!
+Why, it's her egg and butter money and she wants value fer it, she does.
+Well, so long, Sam, see ye later," and with the triumphant Tim he made
+for the big tent, leaving a wrathful and disappointed man behind him.
+
+Cameron spent the rest of the day partly in "taking in" the circus
+and partly in conversing with the farmers who seemed to have taken
+possession of the town; but in answer to his most diligent and careful
+enquiries he could hear of no position on a farm for which he could
+honestly offer himself. The farmers wanted mowers, or cradlers, or good
+smart turnip hands, and Cameron sorrowfully had to confess he was none
+of these. There apparently was no single bit of work in the farmer's
+life that Cameron felt himself qualified to perform.
+
+It was wearing towards evening when Cameron once more came across Tim.
+He was standing outside the bar room door, big tears silently coursing
+down his pale and freckled cheeks.
+
+"Hello!" cried Cameron, "what's up old chap? Where's your dad, and has
+he got his groceries yet?"
+
+"No," said Tim, hastily wiping away his tears and looking up somewhat
+shyly and sullenly into Cameron's face. What he saw there apparently won
+his confidence.
+
+"He's in yonder," he continued, "and I can't git him out. They won't let
+him come. They're jist making 'im full so he can't do anything, and we
+ought to be startin' fer home right away, too!"
+
+"Well, let's go in anyway and see what they are doing," said Cameron
+cheerfully, to whom the pale tear-stained face made strong appeal.
+
+"They won't let us," said Tim. "There's a feller there that chucks me
+out."
+
+"Won't, eh? We'll see about that! Come along!"
+
+Cameron entered the bar room, with Tim following, and looked about him.
+The room was crowded to the door with noisy excited men, many of whom
+were partially intoxicated. At the bar, two deep, stood a line of men
+with glasses in their hands, or waiting to be served. In the farthest
+corner of the room stood Tim's father, considerably the worse of his
+day's experiences, and lovingly embracing the hard-faced young man, to
+whom he was at intervals announcing, "My name's Tom Haley! Ye can't git
+over me!"
+
+As Cameron began to push through the crowd, a man with a very red face,
+obviously on the watch for Tim, cried out--
+
+"Say, sonny, git out of here! This is no place fer you!"
+
+Tim drew back, but Cameron, turning to him, said,
+
+"Come along, Tim. He's with me," he added, addressing the man. "He wants
+his father."
+
+"His father's not here. He left half an hour ago. I told him so."
+
+"You were evidently mistaken, for I see him just across the room there,"
+said Cameron quietly.
+
+"Oh! is he a friend of yours?" enquired the red-faced man.
+
+"No, I don't know him at all, but Tim does, and Tim wants him," said
+Cameron, beginning to push his way through the crowd towards the
+vociferating Haley, who appeared to be on the point of backing up some
+of his statements with money, for he was flourishing a handful of bills
+in the face of the young man Sam, who apparently was quite willing to
+accommodate him with the wager.
+
+Before Cameron could make his way through the swaying, roaring crowd,
+the red-faced man slipped from his side, and in a very few moments
+appeared at a side door near Tom Haley's corner. Almost immediately
+there was a shuffle and Haley and his friends disappeared through the
+side door.
+
+"Hello!" cried Cameron, "there's something doing! We'll just slip around
+there, my boy." So saying, he drew Tim back from the crowd and out
+of the front door, and, hurrying around the house, came upon Sam, the
+red-faced man, and Haley in a lane leading past the stable yard. The
+red-faced man was affectionately urging a bottle upon Haley.
+
+"There they are!" said Tim in an undertone, clutching Cameron's arm.
+"You get him away and I'll hitch up."
+
+"All right, Tim," said Cameron, "I'll get him. They are evidently up to
+no good."
+
+"What's yer name?" said Tim hurriedly.
+
+"Cameron!"
+
+"Come on, then!" he cried, dragging Cameron at a run towards his father.
+"Here, Dad!" he cried, "this is my friend, Mr. Cameron! Come on home.
+I'm going to hitch up. We'll be awful late for the chores and we got
+them groceries to git. Come on, Dad!"
+
+"Aw, gwan! yer a cheeky kid anyway," said Sam, giving Tim a shove that
+nearly sent him on his head.
+
+"Hold on there, my man, you leave the boy alone," said Cameron.
+
+"What's your business in this, young feller?"
+
+"Never mind!" said Cameron. "Tim is a friend of mine and no one is going
+to hurt him. Run along, Tim, and get your horses."
+
+"Friend o' Tim's, eh!" said Haley, in half drunken good nature. "Friend
+o' Tim's, friend o' mine," he added, gravely shaking Cameron by the
+hand. "Have a drink, young man. You look a' right!"
+
+Cameron took the bottle, put it to his lips. The liquor burned like
+fire.
+
+"Great Caesar!" he gasped, contriving to let the bottle drop upon a
+stone. "What do you call that?"
+
+"Pretty hot stuff!" cried Haley, with a shout of laughter.
+
+But Sam, unable to see the humour of the situation, exclaimed in a rage,
+"Here, you cursed fool! That is my bottle!"
+
+"Sorry to be so clumsy," said Cameron apologetically, "but it surely
+wasn't anything to drink, was it?"
+
+"Yes, it jest was something to drink, was it?" mocked Sam, approaching
+Cameron with menace in his eye and attitude. "I have a blanked good
+notion to punch your head, too!"
+
+"Oh! I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Cameron, smiling
+pleasantly.
+
+"Say, Sam, don't get mad, Sam," interposed Haley. "This young feller's
+a friend o' Tim's. I'll git another bottle a' right. I've got the stuff
+right here." He pulled out his roll of bills. "And lots more where this
+comes from."
+
+"Let me have that, Mr. Haley, I'll get the bottle for you," said
+Cameron, reaching out for the bills.
+
+"A' right," said Haley. "Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine."
+
+"Here, young feller, you're too fresh!" cried the red-faced man,
+"buttin' in here! You make tracks, git out! Come, git out, I tell yeh!"
+
+"Give it to him quick," said Sam in a low voice.
+
+The red-faced man, without the slightest warning, swiftly stepped
+towards Cameron and, before the latter could defend himself, struck him
+a heavy blow. Cameron staggered, fell, and struggled again to his knees.
+The red-faced man sprang forward to kick him in the face, when Haley
+interposed--
+
+"Hold up there, now! Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine, ye know!"
+
+"Hurry up," said Sam, closing in on Haley. "Quit fooling. Give 'im the
+billy and let's get away!"
+
+But Haley, though unskilled with his hands, was a man of more than
+ordinary strength, and he swung his long arms about with such vigour
+that neither Sam, who was savagely striking at his head, nor the
+red-faced man, who was dancing about waiting for a chance to get in with
+the "billy," which he held in his hand, was able to bring the affair to
+a finish. It could be a matter of only a few moments, however, for both
+Sam and his friend were evidently skilled in the arts of the thug, while
+Haley, though powerful enough, was chiefly occupying himself in beating
+the air. A blow from the billy dropped one of Haley's arms helpless. The
+red-faced man, following up his advantage, ran in to finish, but Haley
+gripped him by the wrist and, exerting all his strength, gave a mighty
+heave and threw him heavily against Sam, who was running in upon the
+other side. At the same time Cameron, who was rapidly recovering,
+clutched Sam by a leg and brought him heavily to earth. Reaching down,
+Haley gripped Cameron by the collar and hauled him to his feet just as
+Sam, who had sprung up, ran to the attack. Steadied by Haley, Cameron
+braced himself, and, at exactly the right moment, stiffened his left
+arm with the whole weight of his body behind it. The result was a most
+unhappy one for Sam, who, expecting no such reception, was lifted
+clear off his feet and hurled to the ground some distance away. The
+exhilaration of his achievement brought Cameron's blood back again to
+his brain. Swiftly he turned upon the red-faced man just as that worthy
+had brought Haley to his knees with a cruel blow and was preparing
+to finish off his victim. With a shout Cameron sprang at him, the man
+turned quickly, warded off Cameron's blow, and then, seeing Sam lying
+helpless upon the ground, turned and fled down the lane.
+
+"Say, young feller!" panted Haley, staggering to his feet, "yeh came in
+mighty slick that time. Yeh ain't got a bottle on ye, hev yeh?"
+
+"No!" said Cameron, "but there's a pump near by."
+
+"Jest as good and a little better," said Haley, staggering towards the
+pump. "Say," he continued, with a humourous twinkle in his eye, and
+glancing at the man lying on the ground, "Sam's kinder quiet, ain't he?
+Run agin something hard like, I guess."
+
+Cameron filled a bucket with water and into its icy depths Haley plunged
+his head.
+
+"Ow! that's good," he sputtered, plunging his head in again and again.
+"Fill 'er up once more!" he said, wiping off his face with a big red
+handkerchief. "Now, I shouldn't wonder if it would help Sam a bit."
+
+He picked up the bucket of water and approached Sam, who meantime had
+got to a sitting position and was blinking stupidly around.
+
+"Here, ye blamed hog, hev a wash, ye need it bad!" So saying, Haley
+flung the whole bucket of water over Sam's head and shoulders. "Fill
+'er up again," he said, but Sam had had enough, and, swearing wildly,
+gasping and sputtering, he made off down the lane.
+
+"I've heard o' them circus toughs," said Haley in a meditative tone,
+"but never jest seen 'em before. Say, young feller, yeh came in mighty
+handy fer me a' right, and seeing as yer Tim's friend put it there." He
+gripped Cameron's hand and shook it heartily. "Here's Tim with the team,
+and, say, there's no need to mention anything about them fellers. Tim's
+real tender hearted. Well, I'm glad to hev met yeh. Good-bye! Living
+here?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Travellin', eh?"
+
+"Not exactly," replied Cameron. "The truth is I'm looking for a
+position."
+
+"A position? School teachin', mebbe?"
+
+"No, a position on a farm."
+
+"On a farm? Ha! ha! good! Position on a farm," repeated Haley.
+
+"Yes," replied Cameron. "Do you know of any?"
+
+"Position on a farm!" said Haley again, as if trying to grasp the
+meaning of this extraordinary quest. "There ain't any."
+
+"No positions?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Nary one! Say, young man, where do you come from?"
+
+"Scotland," replied Cameron.
+
+"Scotland! yeh don't say, now. Jest out, eh?"
+
+"Yes, about a month or so."
+
+"Well, well! Yeh don't say so!"
+
+"Yes," replied Cameron, "and I am surprised to hear that there is no
+work."
+
+"Oh! hold on there now!" interposed Haley gravely. "If it's work you
+want there are stacks of it lying round, but there ain't no positions.
+Positions!" ejaculated Haley, who seemed to be fascinated by the word,
+"there ain't none on my farm except one and I hold that myself; but
+there's lots o' work, and--why! I want a man right now. What say? Come
+along, stay's long's yeh like. I like yeh fine."
+
+"All right," said Cameron. "Wait till I get my bag, but I ought to tell
+you I have had no experience."
+
+"No experience, eh!" Haley pondered. "Well, we'll give it to you, and
+anyway you saved me some experience to-day and you come home with me."
+
+When he returned he found Haley sitting on the bottom of the wagon
+rapidly sinking into slumber. The effects of the bucket were passing
+off.
+
+"What about the groceries, Tim?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"We've got to git 'em," said Tim, "or we'll catch it sure."
+
+Leaving Cameron to wonder what it might be that they were sure to catch,
+Tim extracted from his father's pocket the paper on which were listed
+the groceries to be purchased, and the roll of bills, and handed both to
+Cameron.
+
+"You best git 'em," he said, and, mounting to the high spring seat,
+turned the team out of the yard. The groceries secured with Cameron's
+help, they set off for home as the long June evening was darkening into
+night.
+
+"My! it's awful late," said Tim in a voice full of foreboding. "And
+Perkins ain't no good at chores."
+
+"How far is it to your home?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Nine miles out this road and three off to the east."
+
+"And who's Perkins?"
+
+"Perkins! Joe Perkins! He's our hired man. He's a terror to work at
+plowin', cradlin', and bindin', but he ain't no good at chores. I bet
+yeh he'll leave Mandy to do the milkin', ten cows, and some's awful
+bad."
+
+"And who's Mandy?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Mandy! She's my sister. She's an awful quick milker. She can beat Dad,
+or Perkins, or any of 'em, but ten cows is a lot, and then there's the
+pigs and the calves to feed, and the wood, too. I bet Perkins won't cut
+a stick. He's good enough in the field," continued Tim, with an obvious
+desire to do Perkins full justice, "but he ain't no good around the
+house. He says he ain't hired to do women's chores, and Ma she won't ask
+'im. She says if he don't do what he sees to be done she'd see 'im far
+enough before she'd ask 'im." And so Timothy went on with a monologue
+replete with information, his high thin voice rising clear above the
+roar and rattle of the lumber wagon as it rumbled and jolted over the
+rutty gravel road. Those who knew the boy would have been amazed at his
+loquacity, but something in Cameron had won his confidence and opened
+his heart. Hence his monologue, in which the qualities, good and bad, of
+the members of the family, of their own hired man and of other hired
+men were fully discussed. The standard of excellence for work in the
+neighbourhood, however, appeared to be Perkins, whose abilities Tim
+appeared greatly to admire, but for whose person he appeared to have
+little regard.
+
+"He's mighty good at turnip hoeing, too," he said. "I could pretty near
+keep up to him last year and I believe I could do it this year. Some
+day soon I'm going to git after 'im. My! I'd like to trim 'im to a fine
+point."
+
+The live stock on the farm in general, and the young colts in
+particular, among which a certain two-year-old was showing signs of
+marvellous speed, these and cognate subjects relating to the farm, its
+dwellers and its activities, Tim passed in review, with his own shrewd
+comments thereon.
+
+"And what do you play, Tim?" asked Cameron, seeking a point of contact
+with the boy.
+
+"Nothin'," said Tim shortly. "No time."
+
+"Don't you go to school?"
+
+"Yes, in fall and winter. Then we play ball and shinny some, but there
+ain't much time."
+
+"But you can't work all the time, Tim? What work can you do?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Tim carelessly, "I run a team."
+
+"Run a team? What do you mean?"
+
+Tim glanced up at him and, perceiving that he was quite serious,
+proceeded to explain that during the spring's work he had taken his
+place in the plowing and harrowing with the "other" men, that he
+expected to drive the mower and reaper in haying and harvest, that, in
+short, in almost all kinds of farm work he was ready to take the place
+of a grown man; and all this without any sign of boasting.
+
+Cameron thought over his own life, in which sport had filled up so large
+a place and work so little, and in which he had developed so little
+power of initiative and such meagre self-dependence, and he envied the
+solemn-faced boy at his side, handling his team and wagon with the skill
+of a grown man.
+
+"I say, Tim!" he exclaimed in admiration, "you're great. I wish I could
+do half as much."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Tim in modest self-disdain, "that ain't nothin',
+but I wish I could git off a bit."
+
+"Get off? What do you mean?"
+
+The boy was silent for some moments, then asked shyly:
+
+"Say! Is there big cities in Scotland, an' crowds of people, an' trains,
+an' engines, an' factories, an' things? My! I wish I could git away!"
+
+Then Cameron understood dimly something of the wander-lust in the boy's
+soul, of the hunger for adventure, for the colour and movement of life
+in the great world "away" from the farm, that thrilled in the boy's
+voice. So for the next half hour he told Tim tales of his own life, the
+chief glory of which had been his achievements in the realm of sport,
+and, before he was aware, he was describing to the boy the great
+International with Wales, till, remembering the disastrous finish, he
+brought his narrative to an abrupt close.
+
+"And did yeh lick 'em?" demanded Tim in a voice of intense excitement.
+
+"No," said Cameron shortly.
+
+"Oh, hedges! I wisht ye had!" exclaimed Tim in deep disappointment.
+
+"It was my fault," replied Cameron bitterly, for the eager wish in the
+boy's heart had stirred a similar yearning in his own and had opened an
+old sore.
+
+"I was a fool," he said, more to himself than to Tim. "I let myself get
+out of condition and so I lost them the match."
+
+"Aw, git out!" said Tim, with unbelieving scorn. "I bet yeh didn't! My!
+I wisht I could see them games."
+
+"Oh, pshaw! Tim, they are not half so worth while as plowing, harrowing,
+and running your team. Why, here you are, a boy of--how old?"
+
+"Thirteen," said Tim.
+
+"A boy of thirteen able to do a man's work, and here am I, a man of
+twenty-one, only able to do a boy's work, and not even that. But I'm
+going to learn, Tim," added Cameron. "You hear me, I am going to learn
+to do a man's work. If I can," he added doubtfully.
+
+"Oh, shucks!" replied Tim, "you bet yeh can, and I'll show yeh," with
+which mutual determination they turned in at the gate of the Haley farm,
+which was to be the scene of Cameron's first attempt to do a man's work
+and to fill a man's place in the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A DAY'S WORK
+
+
+The Haley farm was a survival of an ambitious past. Once the property of
+a rich English gentleman, it had been laid out with an eye to appearance
+rather than to profit and, though the soil was good enough, it had
+never been worked to profit. Consequently, when its owner had tired
+of Colonial life, he had at first rented the farm, but, finding this
+unsatisfactory, he, in a moment of disgust, advertised it for sale.
+Pretentious in its plan and in its appointments, its neglected and run
+down condition gave it an air of decayed gentility, depressing alike
+to the eye of the beholder and to the selling price of the owner. Haley
+bought it and bought it cheap. From the high road a magnificent avenue
+of maples led to a house of fine proportions, though sadly needing
+repair. The wide verandahs, the ample steps were unpainted and falling
+into ruin; the lawn reaching from the front door to the orchard was
+spacious, but overgrown with burdocks, nettles and other noxious weeds;
+the orchard, which stretched from the lawn to the road on both sides
+of the lane, had been allowed to run sadly to wood. At the side of the
+house the door-yard was littered with abandoned farm implements, piles
+of old fence rails and lumber and other impedimenta, which, though
+kindly Nature, abhorring the unsightly rubbish, was doing her utmost to
+hide it all beneath a luxuriant growth of docks, milkweed, and nettles,
+lent an air of disorder and neglect to the whole surroundings. The
+porch, or "stoop," about the summer kitchen was set out with an
+assortment of tubs and pails, pots and pans, partially filled with
+various evil looking and more evil smelling messes, which afforded an
+excellent breeding and feeding place for flies, mosquitoes, and other
+unpleasant insects. Adjoining the door yard, and separated from it by a
+fence, was the barn yard, a spacious quadrangle flanked on three sides
+by barns, stables, and sheds, which were large and finely planned, but
+which now shared the general appearance of decrepitude. The fence, which
+separated one yard from the other, was broken down, so that the barn
+yard dwellers, calves, pigs, and poultry, wandered at will in search of
+amusement or fodder to the very door of the kitchen, and so materially
+contributed to the general disorder, discomfort, and dirt.
+
+Away from the house, however, where Nature had her own way, the farm
+stretched field after field on each side of the snake fenced lane to the
+line of woods in the distance, a picture of rich and varied beauty. From
+the rising ground on which the house was situated a lovely vista swept
+right from the kitchen door away to the remnant of the forest primeval
+at the horizon. On every field the signs of coming harvest were
+luxuriantly visible, the hay fields, grey-green with blooming "Timothy"
+and purple with the deep nestling clover, the fall wheat green and
+yellowing into gold, the spring wheat a lighter green and bursting into
+head, the oats with their graceful tasselated stalks, the turnip field
+ribboned with its lines of delicate green on the dark soil drills, back
+of all, the "slashing" where stumps, blackened with fire, and trunks
+of trees piled here and there in confusion, all overgrown with weeds,
+represented the transition stage between forest and harvest field, and
+beyond the slashing the dark cool masses of maple, birch, and elm; all
+these made a scene of such varied loveliness as to delight the soul
+attuned to nature.
+
+Upon this scene of vivid contrasts, on one side house and barn and yard,
+and on the other the rolling fields and massive forest, Cameron stood
+looking in the early light of his first morning on the farm, with
+mingled feelings of disgust and pleasure. In a few moments, however, the
+loveliness of the far view caught and held his eye and he stood as in a
+dream. The gentle rolling landscape, with its rich variety of greens and
+yellows and greys, that swept away from his feet to the dark masses of
+woods, with their suggestions of cool and shady depth, filled his soul
+with a deep joy and brought him memory of how the "Glen of the Cup of
+Gold" would look that morning in the dear home-land so far away. True,
+there were neither mountains nor moors, neither lochs nor birch-clad
+cliffs here. Nature, in her quieter mood, looked up at him from these
+sloping fields and bosky woods and smiled with kindly face, and that
+smile of hers it was that brought to Cameron's mind the sunny Glen of
+the Cup of Gold. It was the sweetest, kindliest thing his eye had looked
+on since he had left the Glen.
+
+A harsh and fretful voice broke in upon his dreaming.
+
+"Pa-a-w, there ain't a stick of wood for breakfast! There was none last
+night! If you want any breakfast you'd best git some wood!"
+
+"All right, Mother!" called Haley from the barn yard, where he was
+assisting in the milking. "I'm a comin'."
+
+Cameron walked to meet him.
+
+"Can I help?" he enquired.
+
+"Why, of course!" shouted Haley. "Here, Ma, here's our new hand, the
+very man for you."
+
+Mrs. Haley, who had retired to the kitchen, appeared at the door. She
+was a woman past middle age, unduly stout, her face deep lined with
+the fret of a multitude of cares, and hung with flabby folds of skin,
+browned with the sun and wind, though it must be confessed its color was
+determined more by the grease and grime than by the tan upon it. Yet,
+in spite of the flabby folds of flesh, in spite of the grime and grease,
+there was still a reminiscence of a one-time comeliness, all the more
+pathetic by reason of its all too obvious desecration. Her voice was
+harsh, her tone fretful, which indeed was hardly to be wondered at,
+for the burden of her life was by no means light, and the cares of the
+household, within and without, were neither few nor trivial.
+
+For a moment or two Mrs. Haley stood in silence studying and appraising
+the new man. The result did not apparently inspire her with hope.
+
+"Come on now, Pa," she said, "stop yer foolin' and git me that wood. I
+want it right now. You're keepin' me back and there's an awful lot to
+do."
+
+"But I ain't foolin', Ma. Mr. Cameron is our new hand. He'll knock yeh
+off a few sticks in no time." So saying, Haley walked off with his pails
+to the milking, leaving his wife and the new hand facing each other,
+each uncertain as to the next move.
+
+"What can I do, Mrs. Haley?" enquired Cameron politely.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Haley wearily. "I want a few sticks for
+the breakfast, but perhaps I can get along with chips, but chips don't
+give no steady fire."
+
+"If you would show me just what to do," said Cameron with some
+hesitation, "I mean, where is the wood to be got?"
+
+"There," she said, in a surprised tone, pointing to a pile of long logs
+of ash and maple. "I don't want much." She gathered her apron full of
+chips and turned away, all too obviously refusing to place her hope of
+wood for the breakfast fire upon the efforts of the new man. Cameron
+stood looking alternately at the long, hard, dry logs and at the axe
+which he had picked up from the bed of chips. The problem of how to
+produce the sticks necessary to breakfast by the application of the one
+to the other was one for which he could see no solution. He lifted his
+axe and brought it down hard upon a maple log. The result was a slight
+indentation upon the log and a sharp jar from the axe handle that ran up
+his arm unpleasantly. A series of heavy blows produced nothing more than
+a corresponding series of indentations in the tough maple log and of
+jars more or less sharp and painful shooting up his arms. The result was
+not encouraging, but it flashed upon him that this was his first attempt
+to make good at his job on the farm. He threw off his coat and went at
+his work with energy; but the probability of breakfast, so far as it
+depended upon the result of his efforts, seemed to be growing more and
+more remote.
+
+"Guess ye ain't got the knack of it," said a voice, deep, full, and
+mellow, behind him. "That axe ain't no good for choppin', it's a
+splittin' axe."
+
+Turning, he saw a girl of about seventeen, with little grace and less
+beauty, but strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-natured, if
+somewhat stupid and heavy face. Her hair was dun in colour, coarse
+in texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in two heavy braids,
+arranged about her head in such a manner as to permit stray wisps of
+hair to escape about her face and neck. She was dressed in a loose pink
+wrapper, all too plainly of home manufacture, gathered in at the
+waist, and successfully obliterating any lines that might indicate
+the existence of any grace of form, and sadly spotted and stained with
+grease and dirt. Her red stout arms ended in thick and redder hands,
+decked with an array of black-rimmed nails. At his first glance,
+sweeping her "tout ensemble," Cameron was conscious of a feeling of
+repulsion, but in a moment this feeling passed and he was surprised to
+find himself looking into two eyes of surprising loveliness, dark blue,
+well shaped, and of such liquid depths as to suggest pools of water
+under forest trees.
+
+"They use the saw mostly," said the girl.
+
+"The saw?" echoed Cameron.
+
+"Yes," she said. "They saw 'em through and then split 'em with the axe."
+
+Cameron picked up the buck-saw which lay against a rickety saw horse.
+Never in his life had he used such an instrument. He gazed helplessly at
+his companion.
+
+"How do you use this thing?" he enquired.
+
+"Say! are you funny," replied the girl, flashing a keen glance upon him,
+"or don't ye know?"
+
+"Never saw it done in my life," said Cameron solemnly.
+
+"Here!" she cried, "let me show you."
+
+She seized the end of a maple log, dragged it forward to the rickety saw
+horse, set it in position, took the saw from his hands, and went at her
+work with such vigour that in less than a minute as it seemed to Cameron
+she had made the cut.
+
+"Give me that axe!" she said impatiently to Cameron, who was preparing
+to split the block.
+
+With a few strong and skillful blows she split the straight-grained
+block of wood into firewood, gathered up the sticks in her arms, and,
+with a giggle, turned toward the house.
+
+"I won't charge you anything for that lesson," she said, "but you'll
+have to hustle if you git that wood split 'fore breakfast."
+
+"Thank you," said Cameron, grateful that none of the men had witnessed
+the instruction, "I shall do my best," and for the next half hour, with
+little skill, but by main strength, he cut off a number of blocks from
+the maple log and proceeded to split them. But in this he made slow
+progress. From the kitchen came cheerful sounds and scents of cooking,
+and ever and anon from the door waddled, with quite surprising celerity,
+the unwieldy bulk of the mistress of the house.
+
+"Now, that's jest like yer Pa," Cameron heard her grumbling to her
+daughter, "bringin' a man here jest at the busy season who don't know
+nothin'. He's peckin' away at 'em blocks like a rooster peckin' grain."
+
+"He's willin' enough, Ma," replied the girl, "and I guess he'll learn."
+
+"Learn!" puffed Mrs. Haley contemptuously. "Did ye ever see an
+old-country man learn to handle an axe or a scythe after he was growed
+up? Jest look at 'im. Thank goodness! there's Tim."
+
+"Here, Tim!" she called from the door, "best split some o' that wood
+'fore breakfast."
+
+Tim approached Cameron with a look of pity on his face.
+
+"Let me have a try," he said. Cameron yielded him the axe. The boy set
+on end the block at which Cameron had been laboring and, with a swift
+glancing blow of the axe, knocked off a slab.
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed Cameron admiringly, "how did you do that?"
+
+For answer the boy struck again the same glancing blow, a slab started
+and, at a second light blow, fell to the ground.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Cameron again, "I must learn that trick."
+
+"Oh, that's easy!" said Tim, knocking the slabs off from the outside of
+the block. "This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got a knot in it,"
+and tough it proved, resisting all his blows.
+
+"You're a tough sucker, now, ain't yeh?" said Tim, through his shut
+teeth, addressing the block. "We'll try yeh this way." He laid the end
+of the block upon a log and plied the axe with the full strength of
+his slight body, but the block danced upon the log and resisted all his
+blows.
+
+"Say! you're a tough one now!" he said, pausing for breath.
+
+"Let me try that," said Cameron, and, putting forth his strength, he
+brought the axe down fairly upon the stick with such force that the
+instrument shore clean through the knot and sank into the log below.
+
+"Huh! that's a cracker," said Tim with ungrudging admiration. "All you
+want is knack. I'll slab it off and you can do the knots," he added with
+a grin.
+
+As the result of this somewhat unequal division of labor, there lay in
+half an hour a goodly pile of fire wood ready for the cooking. It caught
+Haley's eye as he came in to breakfast.
+
+"I say, Missus, that's a bigger pile than you've had for some time.
+Guess my new man ain't so slow after all."
+
+"Huh!" puffed his wife, waddling about with great agility, "it was Tim
+that done it."
+
+"Now, Ma, ye know well enough he helped Tim, and right smart too," said
+the daughter, but her mother was too busy getting breakfast ready for
+the hungry men who were now performing their morning ablutions with the
+help of a very small basin set upon a block of wood outside the kitchen
+door to answer.
+
+There were two men employed by Haley, one the son of a Scotch-Canadian
+farmer, Webster by name, a stout young fellow, but slow in his
+movements, both physical and mental, and with no further ambition than
+to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. He was employed by the
+month during the busier seasons of the year. The other, Perkins, was
+Haley's "steady" man, which means that he was employed by the year and
+was regarded almost as a member of the family. Perkins was an Englishman
+with fair hair and blue eyes, of fresh complexion, burned to a clear
+red, clean-cut features, and a well knit, athletic frame. He was, as
+Tim declared, a terror to work; indeed, his fame as a worker was well
+established throughout the country side. To these men Cameron was
+introduced as being from Scotland and as being anxious to be initiated
+into the mysteries of Canadian farm life.
+
+"Glad to see you!" said Perkins, shaking him heartily by the hand.
+"We'll make a farmer of you, won't we, Tim? From Scotland, eh? Pretty
+fine country, I hear--to leave," he added, with a grin at his own
+humour. Though his manner was pleasant enough, Cameron became conscious
+of a feeling of aversion, which he recognised at once as being as
+unreasonable as it was inexplicable. He set it down as a reflection
+of Tim's mental attitude toward the hired man. Perkins seized the
+tin basin, dipped some water from the rain barrel standing near, and,
+setting it down before Cameron, said:
+
+"Here, pile in, Scotty. Do they wash in your country?"
+
+"Yes," replied Cameron, "they are rather strong on that," wondering at
+the same time how the operation could be performed successfully with
+such a moderate supply of water. After using a second and third supply,
+however, he turned, with hands and face dripping, and looked about for a
+towel. Perkins handed him a long roller towel, black with dirt and
+stiff with grease. Had his life depended upon it Cameron could not have
+avoided a shuddering hesitation as he took the filthy cloth preparatory
+to applying it to his face.
+
+"'Twon't hurt you," laughed Perkins. "Wash day ain't till next week, you
+know, and this is only Wednesday." Suddenly the towel was snatched from
+Cameron's hands.
+
+"Gimme that towel!" It was the girl, with face aflame and eyes emitting
+blue fire. "Here; Mr. Cameron, take this," she said.
+
+"Great Jerusalem, Mandy! You ain't goin' to bring on a clean towel the
+middle of the week?" said Perkins in mock dismay. "Guess it's for Mr.
+Cameron," he continued with another laugh.
+
+"We give clean towels to them that knows how to use 'em," said Mandy,
+whisking wrathfully into the house.
+
+"Say, Scotty!" said Perkins, in a loud bantering tone, "guess you're
+makin' a mash on Mandy all right."
+
+"I don't know exactly what you mean," said Cameron with a quick rising
+of wrath, "but I do know that you are making a beastly cad of yourself."
+
+"Oh, don't get wrathy, Scotty!" laughed Perkins, "we're just having a
+little fun. Here's the comb!" But Cameron declined the article,
+which, from its appearance, seemed to be intended for family use, and,
+proceeding to his room, completed his toilet there.
+
+The breakfast was laid in the kitchen proper, a spacious and comfortable
+room, which served as living room for the household. The table was
+laden with a variety and abundance of food that worthily sustained the
+reputation of the Haleys of being "good feeders." At one end of the
+table a large plate was heaped high with slices of fat pork, and here
+and there disposed along its length were dishes of fried potatoes, huge
+piles of bread, hot biscuits, plates of butter, pies of different kinds,
+maple syrup, and apple sauce. It was a breakfast fit for a lord, and
+Cameron sat down with a pleasurable anticipation induced by his early
+rising and his half hour's experience in the fresh morning air with the
+wood pile. A closer inspection, however, of the dishes somewhat damped
+the pleasure of his anticipation. The food was good, abundant, and well
+cooked, but everywhere there was an utter absence of cleanliness.
+The plates were greasy, the forks and knives bore the all too evident
+remains of former meals, and everywhere were flies. In hundreds they
+swarmed upon the food, while, drowned in the gravy, cooked in the
+potatoes, overwhelmed in the maple syrup, buried in the butter, their
+ghastly carcasses were to be seen. With apparent unconcern the men
+brushed aside the living and picked out and set aside the remains of the
+dead, the unhappy victims of their own greed or temerity, and went on
+calmly and swiftly with their business. Not a word was spoken except
+by Cameron himself, who, constrained by what he considered to be the
+ordinary decencies of society, made an effort to keep up a conversation
+with Mr. Haley at the head of the table and occasionally ventured a
+remark to his wife, who, with Mandy, was acting as a waiter upon the
+hungry men. But conversation is a social exercise, and Cameron found
+himself compelled to abandon his well meant but solitary efforts at
+maintaining the conventions of the breakfast table. There was neither
+time nor occasion for conversation. The business of the hour was
+something quite other, namely, that of devouring as large a portion
+of the food set before them as was possible within the limits of time
+assigned for the meal. Indeed, the element of time seemed to be one of
+very considerable importance, as Cameron discovered, for he was still
+picking his way gingerly and carefully through his pork and potatoes by
+the time that Perkins, having completed a second course consisting of
+pie and maple syrup, had arrived at the final course of bread and butter
+and apple sauce.
+
+"Circulate the butter!" he demanded of the table in general. He took the
+plate from Cameron's hand, looked at it narrowly for a moment, then with
+thumb and forefinger drew from the butter with great deliberation a long
+dun-coloured hair.
+
+"Say!" he said in a low voice, but perfectly audible, "they forgot to
+comb it this morning."
+
+Cameron was filled with unspeakable disgust, but, glancing at Mrs.
+Haley's face, he saw to his relief that both the action and the remark
+had been unnoticed by her. But on Mandy's face he saw the red ensign of
+shame and wrath, and in spite of himself he felt his aversion towards
+the ever-smiling hired man deepen into rage.
+
+Finding himself distanced in his progress through the various courses at
+breakfast, Cameron determined to miss the intermediate course of pie
+and maple syrup and, that he might finish on more even terms with the
+others, proceeded with bread and butter and apple sauce.
+
+"Don't yeh hurry," said Mrs. Haley with hearty hospitality. "Eat plenty,
+there's lots to spare. Here, have some apple sauce." She caught up the
+bowl which held this most delicious article of food.
+
+"Where's the spoon?" she said, glancing round the table. There was none
+immediately available. "Here!" she cried, "this'll do." She snatched
+a large spoon from the pitcher of thick cream, held it dripping for
+a moment in obvious uncertainty, then with sudden decision she cried
+"Never mind," and with swift but effective application of lip and tongue
+she cleansed the spoon of the dripping cream, and, stirring the apple
+sauce vigourously, passed the bowl to Cameron. For a single moment
+Cameron held the bowl, uncertain whether to refuse or not, but before he
+could make up his mind Mandy caught it from his hands.
+
+"Oh, Ma!" she exclaimed in a horrified tone.
+
+"What's the matter?" exclaimed her mother. "A little cream won't hurt."
+
+But Mandy set the bowl at the far end of the table and passed another to
+Cameron, who accepted it with resolute determination and continued his
+breakfast.
+
+But Perkins, followed by Webster and Tim, rose from the table and passed
+out into the yard, whence his voice could be heard in explosions of
+laughter. Cameron in the meantime was making heroic attempts to cover
+up the sound by loud-voiced conversation with Haley, and, rendered
+desperate by the exigencies of the situation, went so far as to venture
+a word of praise to Mrs. Haley upon the excellence and abundance of her
+cooking.
+
+"She ain't got no chance," said her husband. "She's got too much to do
+and it's awful hard to get help. Of course, there's Mandy."
+
+"Of course, there's Mandy," echoed his wife. "I guess you'd just better
+say, 'There's Mandy.' She's the whole thing is Mandy. What I'd do
+without her goodness only knows."
+
+But Mandy was no longer present to enjoy her mother's enconiums. Her
+voice could be heard in the yard making fierce response to Perkins'
+jesting remarks. As Cameron was passing out from the kitchen he heard
+her bitter declaration: "I don't care, it was real mean of you, and I'll
+pay you for it yet, Mr. Perkins--before a stranger, too." Mandy's voice
+suggested tears.
+
+"Oh, pshaw, Mandy!" remonstrated Perkins, "it was all a joke, and who
+cares for him anyway, unless it's yourself?"
+
+But Mandy, catching sight of Cameron, fled with fiery face behind the
+kitchen, leaving Perkins gazing after her with an apologetic grin upon
+his countenance.
+
+"She's rather hot under the collar," he confided to Cameron, "but she
+needn't get so, I didn't mean nothin'."
+
+Cameron ignored him. He was conscious mainly of a resolute determination
+that at all costs he must not yield to his almost uncontrollable desire
+to wipe off the apologetic smile with a well directed blow. Mr. Denman's
+parting advice was in his mind and he was devoting all his powers to
+the business of adjusting himself to his present environment. But to
+his fastidious nature the experiences of the morning made it somewhat
+doubtful if he should be able to carry out the policy of adjustment
+to the extreme of schooling himself to bear with equal mind the daily
+contact with the dirt and disorder which held so large a place in
+the domestic economy of the Haley household. One thing he was firmly
+resolved upon, he would henceforth perform his toilet in his own room,
+and thereby save himself the horror of the family roller towel and the
+family comb.
+
+Breakfast over, the men stood waiting orders for the day.
+
+"We'll have to crowd them turnips through, Tim," said his father, who
+seemed to avoid as far as possible giving direct orders to his men.
+"Next week we'll have to git at the hay." So to the turnip field they
+went.
+
+It is one of the many limitations of a city-bred boy that he knows
+nothing of the life history and the culture of the things that grow upon
+a farm. Apples and potatoes he recognises when they appear as articles
+of diet upon the table; oats and wheat he vaguely associates in some
+mysterious and remote way with porridge and bread, but whether potatoes
+grow on trees or oats in pods he has no certain knowledge. Blessed is
+the country boy for many reasons, but for none more than this, that the
+world of living and growing things, animate and inanimate, is one which
+he has explored and which he intimately knows; and blessed is the city
+boy for whom his wise parents provide means of acquaintance with this
+wonder workshop of old mother Nature, God's own open country.
+
+Turnip-hoeing is an art, a fine art, demanding all the talents of high
+genius, a true eye, a sure hand, a sensitive conscience, industry,
+courage, endurance, and pride in achievement. These and other gifts
+are necessary to high success. Not to every man is it given to become a
+turnip-hoer in the truest sense of that word. The art is achieved only
+after long and patient devotion, and, indeed, many never attain high
+excellence. Of course, therefore, there are grades of artists in this as
+in other departments. There are turnip-hoers and turnip-hoers, just as
+there are painters and painters. It was Tim's ambition to be the first
+turnip-hoer of his district, and toward this end he had striven both
+last season and this with a devotion that deserved, if it did not
+achieve, success. Quietly he had been patterning himself upon that
+master artist, Perkins, who for some years had easily held the
+championship for the district. Keenly Tim had been observing Perkins'
+excellencies and also his defects; secretly he had been developing a
+style of his own, and, all unnoted, he had tested his speed by that of
+Perkins by adopting the method of lazily loafing along and then catching
+up by a few minutes of whirlwind work. Tim felt in his soul the day of
+battle could not be delayed past this season; indeed, it might come any
+day. The very thought of it made his slight body quiver and his heart
+beat so quickly as almost to choke him.
+
+To the turnip field hied Haley's men, Perkins and Webster leading the
+way, Tim and Cameron bringing up the rear.
+
+"You promised to show me how to do it, Tim," said Cameron. "Remember I
+shall be very slow."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" replied Tim, "turnip-hoeing is as easy as rollin' off a
+log if yeh know how to do it."
+
+"Exactly!" cried Cameron, "but that is what I don't. You might give me
+some pointers."
+
+"Well, you must be able to hit what yeh aim at."
+
+"Ah! that means a good eye and steady hand," said Cameron. "Well, I can
+do billiards some and golf. What else?"
+
+"Well, you mustn't be too careful, slash right in and don't give a rip."
+
+"Ah! nerve, eh!" said Cameron. "Well, I have done some Rugby in my
+day--I know something of that. What else? This sounds good."
+
+"Then you've got to leave only one turnip in one place and not a weed;
+and you mustn't leave any blanks. Dad gets hot over that."
+
+"Indeed, one turnip in each place and not a weed," echoed Cameron. "Say!
+this business grows interesting. No blanks! Anything else?" he demanded.
+
+"No, I guess not, only if yeh ever git into a race ye've got to keep
+goin' after you're clear tuckered out and never let on. You see the
+other chap may be feelin' worse than you."
+
+"By Jove, Tim! you're a born general!" exclaimed Cameron. "You will
+go some distance if you keep on in that line. Now as to racing let me
+venture a word, for I have done a little in my time. Don't spurt too
+soon."
+
+"Eh!" said Tim, all eagerness.
+
+"Don't get into your racing stride too early in the day, especially if
+you are up against a stronger man. Wait till you know you can stay till
+the end and then put your best licks in at the finish."
+
+Tim pondered.
+
+"By Jimminy! you're right," he cried, a glad light in his eye, and a
+touch of colour in his pale cheek, and Cameron knew he was studying war.
+
+The turnip field, let it be said for the enlightening of the benighted
+and unfortunate city-bred folk, is laid out in a series of drills, a
+drill being a long ridge of earth some six inches in height, some eight
+inches broad on the top and twelve at the base. Upon each drill the seed
+has been sown in one continuous line from end to end of the field. When
+this seed has grown each drill will discover a line of delicate green,
+this line being nothing less than a compact growth of young turnip
+plants with weeds more or less thickly interspersed. The operation of
+hoeing consists in the eliminating of the weeds and the superfluous
+turnip plants in order that single plants, free from weeds, may be left
+some eight inches apart in unbroken line, extending the whole length
+of the drill. The artistic hoer, however, is not content with this.
+His artistic soul demands not only that single plants should stand in
+unbroken row from end to end along the drill top, but that the drill
+itself should be pared down on each side to the likeness of a house roof
+with a perfectly even ridge.
+
+"Ever hoe turnips?" enquired Perkins.
+
+"Never," said Cameron, "and I am afraid I won't make much of a fist at
+it."
+
+"Well, you've come to a good place to learn, eh, Tim! We'll show him,
+won't we?"
+
+Tim made no reply, but simply handed Cameron a hoe and picked up his
+own.
+
+"Now, show me, Tim," said Cameron in a low voice, as Perkins and Webster
+set off on their drills.
+
+"This is how you do it," replied Tim. "Click-click," forward and back
+went Tim's sharp shining instrument, leaving a single plant standing
+shyly alone where had boldly bunched a score or more a moment before.
+"Click-click-click," and the flat-topped drill stood free of weeds
+and superfluous turnip plants and trimmed to its proper roof-like
+appearance.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Cameron, "this is high art. I shall never reach your
+class, though, Tim."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said Tim, "slash in, don't be afraid." Cameron slashed in.
+"Click-click," "Click-click-click," when lo! a long blank space of drill
+looked up reproachfully at him.
+
+"Oh, Tim! look at this mess," he said in disgust.
+
+"Never mind!" said Tim, "let her rip. Better stick one in though.
+Blanks look bad at the END of the drill." So saying, he made a hole in
+Cameron's drill and with his hoe dug up a bunch of plants from
+another drill and patted them firmly into place, and, weeding out the
+unnecessary plants, left a single turnip in its proper place.
+
+"Oh, come, that isn't so bad," said Cameron. "We can always fill up the
+blanks."
+
+"Yes, but it takes time," replied Tim, evidently with the racing fever
+in his blood. Patiently Tim schooled his pupil throughout the forenoon,
+and before the dinner hour had come Cameron was making what to Tim
+appeared satisfactory progress. It was greatly in Cameron's favor that
+he possessed a trained and true eye and a steady hand and that he was
+quick in all his movements.
+
+"You're doin' splendid," cried Tim, full of admiration.
+
+"I say, Scotty!" said Perkins, coming up and casting a critical eye
+along Cameron's last drill, "you're going to make a turnip-hoer all
+right."
+
+"I've got a good teacher, you see," cried Cameron.
+
+"You bet you have," said Perkins. "I taught Tim myself, and in two or
+three years he'll be almost as good as I am, eh, Tim!"
+
+"Huh!" grunted Tim, contemptuously, but let it go at that.
+
+"Perhaps you think you're that now, eh, Tim?" said Perkins, seizing
+the boy by the back of the neck and rubbing his hand over his hair in a
+manner perfectly maddening. "Don't you get too perky, young feller, or
+I'll hang your shirt on the fence before the day's done."
+
+Tim wriggled out of his grasp and kept silent. He was not yet ready with
+his challenge. All through the afternoon he stayed behind with Cameron,
+allowing the other two to help them out at the end of each drill, but as
+the day wore on there was less and less need of assistance for Cameron,
+for he was making rapid progress with his work and Tim was able to do,
+not only his own drill, but almost half of Cameron's as well. By supper
+time Cameron was thoroughly done out. Never had a day seemed so long,
+never had he known that he possessed so many muscles in his back. The
+continuous stooping and the steady click-click of the hoe, together with
+the unceasing strain of hand and eye, and all this under the hot burning
+rays of a June sun, so exhausted his vitality that when the cow bell
+rang for supper it seemed to him a sound more delightful than the
+strains of a Richter orchestra in a Beethoven symphony.
+
+On the way back to the field after supper Cameron observed that Tim was
+in a state of suppressed excitement and it dawned upon him that the hour
+of his challenge of Perkins' supremacy as a turnip-hoer was at hand.
+
+"I say, Tim, boy!" he said earnestly, "listen to me. You are going to
+get after Perkins this evening, eh?"
+
+"How did you know?" said Tim, in surprise.
+
+"Never mind! Now listen to me; I have raced myself some and I have
+trained men to race. Are you not too tired with your day's work?"
+
+"Tired! Not a bit," said the gallant little soul scornfully.
+
+"Well, all right. It's nice and cool and you can't hurt yourself much.
+Now, how many drills do you do after supper as a rule?"
+
+"Down and up twice," said Tim.
+
+"How many drills can you do at your top speed, your very top speed,
+remember?"
+
+"About two drills, I guess," replied Tim, after a moment's thought.
+
+"Now, listen to me!" said Cameron impressively. "Go quietly for two and
+a half drills, then let yourself out and go your best. And, listen! I
+have been watching you this afternoon. You have easily done once and
+a half what Perkins has done and you are going to lick him out of his
+boots."
+
+Tim gulped a moment or two, looked at his friend with glistening eyes,
+but said not a word. For the first two and a half drills Cameron exerted
+to the highest degree his conversational powers with the two-fold
+purpose of holding back Perkins and Webster and also of so occupying
+Tim's mind that he might forget for a time the approaching conflict, the
+strain of waiting for which he knew would be exhausting for the lad.
+But when the middle of the second last drill had been reached, Tim began
+unconsciously to quicken his speed.
+
+"I say, Tim," called Cameron, "come here! Am I getting these spaces too
+wide?" Tim came over to his side. "Now, Tim," said Cameron, in a low
+voice, "wait a little longer; you can never wear him out. Your only
+chance is in speed. Wait till the last drill."
+
+But Tim was not to be held back. Back he went to his place and with a
+rush brought his drill up even with Webster, passed him, and in a few
+moments like a whirlwind passed Perkins and took the lead.
+
+"Hello, Timmy! where are you going?" asked Perkins, in surprise.
+
+"Home," said Tim proudly, "and I'll tell 'em you're comin'."
+
+"All right, Timmy, my son!" replied Perkins with a laugh, "tell them you
+won't need no hot bath; I'm after you."
+
+"Click-click," "Click-click-click" was Tim's only answer. It was a
+distinct challenge, and, while not openly breaking into racing speed,
+Perkins accepted it.
+
+For some minutes Webster quickened his pace in an attempt to follow the
+leaders, but soon gave it up and fell back to help Cameron up with his
+drill, remarking, "I ain't no blamed fool. I ain't going to bust myself
+for any man. THEY'RE racing, not me."
+
+"Will Tim win?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Naw! Not this year! Why, Perkins is the best man in the whole country
+at turnips. He took the Agricultural Society's prize two years ago."
+
+"I believe Tim will beat him," said Cameron confidently, with his eyes
+upon the two in front.
+
+"Beat nothing!" said Webster. "You just wait a bit, Perkins isn't
+letting himself out yet."
+
+In a short time Tim finished his drill some distance ahead, and then,
+though it was quitting time, without a pause he swung into the next.
+
+"Hello, Timmy!" cried Perkins good-naturedly, "going to work all night,
+eh? Well, I'll just take a whirl out of you," and for the first time he
+frankly threw himself into his racing gait.
+
+"Good boy, Tim!" called out Cameron, as Tim bore down upon them, still
+in the lead and going like a small steam engine. "You're all right and
+going easy. Don't worry!"
+
+But Perkins, putting on a great spurt, drew up within a hoe-handle
+length of Tim and there held his place.
+
+"All right, Tim, my boy, you can hold him," cried Cameron, as the racers
+came down upon him.
+
+"He can, eh?" replied Perkins. "I'll show him and you," and with an
+accession of speed he drew up on a level with Tim.
+
+"Ah, ha! Timmy, my boy! we've got you where we want you, I guess," he
+exulted, and, with a whoop and still increasing his speed, he drew past
+the boy.
+
+But Cameron, who was narrowly observing the combatants and their work,
+called out again:
+
+"Don't worry, Tim, you're doing nice clean work and doing it easily."
+The inference was obvious, and Perkins, who had been slashing wildly and
+leaving many blanks and weeds behind him where neither blanks nor weeds
+should be, steadied down somewhat, and, taking more pains with his work,
+began to lose ground, while Tim, whose work was without flaw, moved
+again to the front place. There remained half a drill to be done and the
+issue was still uncertain. With half the length of a hoe handle between
+them the two clicked along at a furious pace. Tim's hat had fallen off.
+His face showed white and his breath was coming fast, but there was no
+slackening of speed, and the cleanness and ease with which he was doing
+his work showed that there was still some reserve in him. They were
+approaching the last quarter when, with a yell, Perkins threw himself
+again with a wild recklessness into his work, and again he gained upon
+Tim and passed him.
+
+"Steady, Tim!" cried Cameron, who, with Webster, had given up their own
+work, it being, as the latter remarked, "quitting time anyway," and
+were following up the racers. "Don't spoil your work, Tim!" continued
+Cameron, "don't worry."
+
+His words caught the boy at a critical moment, for Perkins' yell and
+his fresh exhibition of speed had shaken the lad's nerve. But Cameron's
+voice steadied him, and, quickly responding, Tim settled down again into
+his old style, while Perkins was still in the lead, but slashing wildly.
+
+"Fine work, Tim," said Cameron quietly, "and you can do better yet." For
+a few paces he walked behind the boy, steadying him now and then with
+a quiet word, then, recognising that the crisis of the struggle was at
+hand, and believing that the boy had still some reserve of speed and
+strength, he began to call on him.
+
+"Come on, Tim! Quicker, quicker; come on, boy, you can do better!" His
+words, and his tone more than his words, were like a spur to the boy.
+From some secret source of supply he called up an unsuspected reserve
+of strength and speed and, still keeping up his clean cutting finished
+style, foot by foot he drew away from Perkins, who followed in the rear,
+slashing more wildly than ever. The race was practically won. Tim was
+well in the lead, and apparently gaining speed with every click of his
+hoe.
+
+"Here, you fellers, what are yeh hashin' them turnips for?" It was
+Haley's voice, who, unperceived, had come into the field. Tim's reply
+was a letting out of his last ounce of strength in a perfect fury of
+endeavour.
+
+"There--ain't--no--hashin'--on this--drill--Dad!" he panted.
+
+The sudden demand for careful work, however, at once lowered Perkins'
+rate of speed. He fell rapidly behind and, after a few moments of
+further struggle, threw down his hoe with a whoop and called out,
+"Quitting time, I guess," and, striding after Tim, he caught him by the
+arms and swung him round clear off the ground.
+
+"Here, let me go!" gasped the boy, kicking, squirming, and trying to
+strike his antagonist with his hoe.
+
+"Let the boy go!" said Cameron. The tone in his voice arrested Perkins'
+attention.
+
+"What's your business?" he cried, with an oath, dropping the boy and
+turning fiercely upon Cameron.
+
+"Oh, nothing very much, except that Tim's my candidate in this race and
+he mustn't be interfered with," replied Cameron in a voice still quiet
+and with a pleasant smile.
+
+Perkins was white and panting; in a moment more he would have hurled
+himself at the man who stood smiling quietly in his face. At this
+critical moment Haley interposed.
+
+"What's the row, boys?" he enquired, recognising that something serious
+was on.
+
+"We have been having a little excitement, Sir, in the form of a race,"
+replied Cameron, "and I've been backing Tim."
+
+"Looks as if you've got him wound up so's he can't stop," replied Haley,
+pointing to the boy, who was still going at racing pace and was just
+finishing his drill. "Oh, well, a boy's a boy and you've got to humour
+him now and then," continued Haley, making conversation with diplomatic
+skill. Then turning to Perkins, as if dismissing a trivial subject, he
+added, "Looks to me as if that hay in the lower meadow is pretty nigh
+fit to cut. Guess we'd better not wait till next week. You best start
+Tim on that with the mower in the mornin'." Then, taking a survey of the
+heavens, he added, "Looks as if it might be a spell of good weather."
+His diplomacy was successful and the moment of danger was past. Meantime
+Cameron had sauntered to the end of the drill where Tim stood leaning
+quietly on his hoe.
+
+"Tim, you are a turnip-hoer!" he said, with warm admiration in his
+tone, "and what's more, Tim, you're a sport. I'd like to handle you in
+something big. You will make a man yet."
+
+Tim's whole face flushed a warm red under the coat of freckles. For a
+time he stood silently contemplating the turnips, then with difficulty
+he found his voice.
+
+"It was you done it," he said, choking over his words. "I was beat there
+and was just quittin' when you came along and spoke. My!" he continued,
+with a sharp intake of his breath, "I was awful near quittin'," and
+then, looking straight into Cameron's eyes, "It was you done it,
+and--I--won't forget." His voice choked again, but, reading his eyes,
+Cameron knew that he had gained one of life's greatest treasures, a
+boy's adoring gratitude.
+
+"This has been a great day, Tim," said Cameron. "I have learned to hoe
+turnips, and," putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, "I believe I have
+made a friend." Again the hot blood surged into Tim's face. He stood
+voiceless, but he needed no words. Cameron knew well the passionate
+emotion that thrilled his soul and shook the slight body, trembling
+under his hand. For Tim, too, it had been a notable day. He had achieved
+the greatest ambition of his life in beating the best turnip-hoer on the
+line, and he, too, had found what to a boy is a priceless treasure, a
+man upon whom he could lavish the hero worship of his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A RAINY DAY
+
+
+It was haying time. Over the fields of yellowing fall wheat and barley,
+of grey timothy and purple clover, the heat shimmered in dancing waves.
+Everywhere the growing crops were drinking in the light and heat with
+eager thirst, for the call of the harvest was ringing through the land.
+The air was sweet with scents of the hay fields, and the whole country
+side was humming with the sound of the mowers. It was the crowning time
+of the year; toward this season all the life of the farm moved steadily
+the whole year long; the next two months or three would bring to the
+farmer the fruit of long days of toil and waiting. Every minute of these
+harvest days, from the early grey dawn, when Mandy called the cows in
+for the milking, till the long shadows from the orchard lay quite across
+the wide barley field, when Tim, handling his team with careless pride,
+drove in the last load for the day, every minute was packed full of life
+and action. But though busy were the days and full of hard and at times
+back-breaking and nerve-straining work, what of it? The colour, the
+rush, the eager race with the flying hours, the sense of triumph, the
+promise of wealth, the certainty of comfort, all these helped to carry
+off the heaviest toil with a swing and vim that banished aches from the
+body and weariness from the soul.
+
+To Cameron, all unskilled as he was, the days brought many an hour of
+strenuous toil, but every day his muscles were knitting more firmly, his
+hands were hardening, and his mastery of himself growing more complete.
+
+In haying there is no large place for skill. This operation, unlike that
+of turnip-hoeing, demands chiefly strength, quickness, and endurance,
+and especially endurance. To stand all day in the hay field under the
+burning sun with its rays leaping back from the super-heated ground, and
+roll up the windrows into huge bundles and toss them on to the wagon,
+or to run up a long line of cocks and heave them fork-handle high to the
+top of a load, calls for something of skill, but mainly for strength
+of arm and back. But skill had its place, and once more it was Tim who
+stood close to Cameron and showed him all the tricks of pitching hay. It
+was Tim who showed him how to stand with his back to the wagon so as to
+get the load properly poised with the least expenditure of strength; it
+was Tim who taught him the cunning trick of using his thigh as a fulcrum
+in getting his load up, rather than doing it by "main strength and
+awkwardness"; it was Tim who demonstrated the method of lifting half a
+cock by running the end of the fork handle into the ground so that the
+whole earth might aid in the hoisting of the load. Of course in all
+this Cameron's intelligence and quickness stood him in the place of long
+experience, and before the first day's hauling was done he was able to
+keep his wagon going.
+
+But with all the stimulus of the harvest movement and colour, Cameron
+found himself growing weary of the life on the Haley farm. It was not
+the long days, and to none on the farm were the days longer than to
+Cameron, who had taken upon himself the duty of supplying the kitchen
+with wood and water, no small business, either at the beginning or at
+the end of a long day's work; it was not the heavy toil; it was chiefly
+the continuous contact with the dirt and disorder of his environment
+that wore his body down and his spirit raw. No matter with how keen a
+hunger did he approach the dinner table, the disgusting filth everywhere
+apparent would cause his gorge to rise and, followed by the cheerful
+gibes of Perkins, he would retire often with his strength unrecruited
+and his hunger unappeased, and, though he gradually achieved a certain
+skill in picking his way through a meal, selecting such articles of food
+as could be less affected than others by the unsavoury surroundings,
+the want of appetising and nourishing food told disastrously upon his
+strength. His sleep, too, was broken and disturbed by the necessity of
+sharing a bed with Webster. He had never been accustomed to "doubling
+up," and under the most favourable circumstances the experience would
+not have been conducive to sound sleep, but Webster's manner of life was
+not such as to render him an altogether desirable bed-fellow. For, while
+the majority of farm lads in the neighbourhood made at least semi-weekly
+pilgrimages to the "dam" for a swim, Webster felt no necessity laid upon
+him for such an expenditure of energy after a hard and sweaty day in the
+field. His ideas of hygiene were of the most elementary nature; hence
+it was his nightly custom, when released from the toils of the day,
+to proceed upstairs to his room and, slipping his braces from his
+shoulders, allow his nether garments to drop to the floor and, without
+further preparation, roll into bed. Of the effeminacy of a night robe
+Webster knew nothing except by somewhat hazy rumour. Once under the
+patchwork quilt he was safe for the night, for, heaving himself into the
+middle of the bed, he sank into solid and stertorous slumber, from which
+all Cameron's prods and kicks failed to arouse him till the grey dawn
+once more summoned him to life, whereupon, resuming the aforesaid
+nether garments, he was once more simply, but in his opinion quite
+sufficiently, equipped for his place among men. Many nights did it
+happen that the stertorous melody of Webster's all too odourous slumbers
+drove Cameron to find a bed upon the floor. Once again Tim was his
+friend, for it was to Tim that Cameron owed the blissful experience of a
+night in the hay loft upon the newly harvested hay. There, buried in
+its fragrant depths and drawing deep breaths of the clean unbreathed air
+that swept in through the great open barn doors, Cameron experienced
+a joy hitherto undreamed of in association with the very commonplace
+exercise of sleep. After his first night in the hay mow, which he shared
+with Tim, he awoke refreshed in body and with a new courage in his
+heart.
+
+"By Jove, Tim! That's the finest thing I ever had in the way of sleep.
+Now if we only had a tub."
+
+"Tub! What for?"
+
+"A dip, my boy, a splash."
+
+"To wash in?" enquired Tim, wondering at the exuberance of his friend's
+desires. "I'll get a tub," he added, and, running to the house, returned
+with wash tub and towel.
+
+"Tim, my boy, you're a jewel!" exclaimed Cameron.
+
+From the stable cistern they filled the vessel full and first Cameron
+and, after persuasion and with rather dubious delight, Tim tasted the
+joy of a morning tub. Henceforth life became distinctly more endurable
+to Cameron.
+
+But, more than all the other irritating elements in his environment
+put together, Cameron chafed under the unceasing rasp of Perkins' wit,
+clever, if somewhat crude and cumbrous. Perkins had never forgotten nor
+forgiven his defeat at the turnip-hoeing, which he attributed chiefly to
+Cameron. His gibes at Cameron's awkwardness in the various operations
+on the farm, his readiness to seize every opportunity for ridicule, his
+skill at creating awkward situations, all these sensibly increased the
+wear on Cameron's spirit. All these, however, Cameron felt he could put
+up with without endangering his self-control, but when Perkins, with
+vulgar innuendo, chaffed the farmer's daughter upon her infatuation
+for the "young Scotty," as he invariably designated Cameron, or when
+he rallied Cameron upon his supposed triumph in the matter of Mandy's
+youthful affections, then Cameron raged and with difficulty kept his
+hands from his cheerful and ever smiling tormentor. It did not
+help matters much that apparently Mandy took no offense at Perkins'
+insinuations; indeed, it gradually dawned upon Cameron that what to him
+would seem a vulgar impertinence might to this uncultured girl appear no
+more than a harmless pleasantry. At all costs he was resolved that under
+no circumstances would he allow his self-control to be broken through.
+He would finish out his term with the farmer without any violent
+outbreak. It was quite possible that Perkins and others would take him
+for a chicken-hearted fool, but all the same he would maintain this
+attitude of resolute self-control to the very end. After all, what
+mattered the silly gibes of an ignorant boor? And when his term was done
+he would abandon the farm life forever. It took but little calculation
+to make quite clear that there was not much to hope for in the way
+of advancement from farming in this part of Canada. Even Perkins, who
+received the very highest wage in that neighbourhood, made no more than
+$300 a year; and, with land at sixty to seventy-five dollars per acre,
+it seemed to him that he would be an old man before he could become the
+owner of a farm. He was heart sick of the pettiness and sordidness of
+the farm life, whose horizon seemed to be that of the hundred acres or
+so that comprised it. Therefore he resolved that to the great West he
+would go, that great wonderful West with its vast spaces and its vast
+possibilities of achievement. The rumour of it filled the country side.
+Meantime for two months longer he would endure.
+
+A rainy day brought relief. Oh, the blessed Sabbath of a rainy day, when
+the wheels stop and silence falls in the fields; and time tired harvest
+hands recline at ease upon the new cut and sweet smelling hay on the
+barn floor, and through the wide open doors look out upon the falling
+rain that roars upon the shingles, pours down in cataracts from the
+eaves and washes clean the air that wanders in, laden with those subtle
+scents that old mother earth releases only when the rain falls. Oh,
+happy rainy days in harvest time when, undisturbed by conscience, the
+weary toilers stretch and slumber and wake to lark and chaff in careless
+ease the long hours through!
+
+In the Haleys' barn they were all gathered, gazing lazily and with
+undisturbed content at the steady downpour that indicated an all-day
+rest. Even Haley, upon whose crops the rain was teeming down, was
+enjoying the rest from the toil, for most of the hay that had been cut
+was already in cock or in the barn. Besides, Haley worked as hard as the
+best of them and welcomed a day's rest. So let it rain!
+
+While they lay upon the hay on the barn floor, with tired muscles
+all relaxed, drinking in the fragrant airs that stole in from the
+rain-washed skies outside, in the slackening of the rain two neighbours
+dropped in, big "Mack" Murray and his brother Danny, for a "crack" about
+things in general and especially to discuss the Dominion Day picnic
+which was coming off at the end of the following week. This picnic
+was to be something out of the ordinary, for, in addition to the usual
+feasting and frolicking, there was advertised an athletic contest of
+a superior order, the prizes in which were sufficiently attractive
+to draw, not only local athletes, but even some of the best from the
+neighbouring city. A crack runner was expected and perhaps even McGee,
+the big policeman of the London City force, a hammer thrower of fame,
+might be present.
+
+"Let him come, eh, Mack?" said Perkins. "I guess we ain't afraid of no
+city bug beating you with the hammer."
+
+"Oh! I'm no thrower," said Mack modestly. "I just take the thing up and
+give it a fling. I haven't got the trick of it at all."
+
+"Have you practised much?" said Cameron, whose heart warmed at the
+accent that might have been transplanted that very day from his own
+North country.
+
+"Never at all, except now and then at the blacksmith's shop on a rainy
+day," replied Mack. "Have you done anything at it?"
+
+"Oh, I have seen a good deal of it at the games in the north of
+Scotland," replied Cameron.
+
+"Man! I wish we had a hammer and you could show me the trick of it,"
+said Mack fervently, "for they will be looking to me to throw and I do
+not wish to be beaten just too easily."
+
+"There's a big mason's hammer," said Tim, "in the tool house, I think."
+
+"Get it, Tim, then," said Mack eagerly, "and we will have a little
+practise at it, for throw I must, and I have no wish to bring discredit
+on my country, for it will be a big day. They will be coming from all
+over. The Band of the Seventh is coming out and Piper Sutherland from
+Zorra will be there."
+
+"A piper!" echoed Cameron. "Is there much pipe playing in this country?"
+
+"Indeed, you may say that!" said Mack, "and good pipers they are too,
+they tell me. Piper Sutherland, I think, was of the old Forty-twa. Are
+you a piper, perhaps?" continued Mack.
+
+"Oh, I play a little," said Cameron. "I have a set in the house."
+
+"God bless my soul!" cried Mack, "and we never knew it. Tell Danny where
+they are and he will fetch them out. Go, Danny!"
+
+"Never mind, I will get them myself," said Cameron, trying to conceal
+his eagerness, for he had long been itching for a chance to play and his
+fingers were now tingling for the chanter.
+
+It was an occasion of great delight, not only to big Mack and his
+brother Danny and the others, but to Cameron himself. Up and down the
+floor he marched, making the rafters of the big barn ring with the
+ancient martial airs of Scotland and then, dropping into a lighter
+strain, he set their feet a-rapping with reels and strathspeys.
+
+"Man, yon's great playing!" cried Mack with fervent enthusiasm to the
+company who had gathered to the summons of the pipes from the house and
+from the high road, "and think of him keeping them in his chest all this
+time! And what else can you do?" went on Mack, with the enthusiasm of a
+discoverer. "You have been in the big games, too, I warrant you."
+
+Cameron confessed to some experience of these thrilling events.
+
+"Bless my soul! We will put you against the big folk from the city. Come
+and show us the hammer," said Mack, leading the way out of the barn, for
+the rain had ceased, with a big mason's hammer in his hand. It needed
+but a single throw to make it quite clear to Cameron that Mack was
+greatly in need of coaching. As he said himself he "just took up the
+thing and gave it a fling." A mighty fling, too, it proved to be.
+
+"Twenty-eight paces!" cried Cameron, and then, to make sure, stepped
+it back again. "Yes," he said, "twenty-eight paces, nearly twenty-nine.
+Great Caesar! Mack, if you only had the Braemar swing you would be a
+famous thrower."
+
+"Och, now, you are just joking me!" said Mack modestly.
+
+"You can add twenty feet easily to your throw if you get the swing,"
+asserted Cameron. "Look here, now, get this swing," and Cameron
+demonstrated in his best style the famous Braemar swing.
+
+"Thirty-two paces!" said Mack in amazement after he had measured the
+throw. "Man alive! you can beat McGee, let alone myself."
+
+"Now, Mack, get the throw," said Cameron, with enthusiasm. "You will be
+a great thrower." But try though he might Mack failed to get the swing.
+
+"Man, come over to-night and bring your pipes. Danny will fetch out his
+fiddle and we will have a bit of a frolic, and," he added, as if in an
+afterthought, "I have a big hammer yonder, the regulation size. We might
+have a throw or so."
+
+"Thanks, I will be sure to come," said Cameron eagerly.
+
+"Come, all of you," said Mack, "and you too, Mandy. We will clear out
+the barn floor and have a regular hoe-down."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" giggled Mandy, tossing her head. "I can't dance."
+
+"Oh, come along and watch me, then," said Mack, in good humour, who,
+with all his two hundred pounds, was lightfooted as a girl.
+
+The Murrays' new big bank barn was considered the finest in the country
+and the new floor was still quite smooth and eminently suited to a
+"hoe-down." Before the darkness had fallen, however, Mack drew Cameron,
+with Danny, Perkins, and a few of the neighbours who had dropped in, out
+to the lane and, giving him a big hammer, "Try that," he said, with some
+doubt in his tone.
+
+Cameron took the hammer.
+
+"This is the right thing. The weight of it will make more difference to
+me, however, than to you, Mack."
+
+"Oh, I'm not so sure," said Mack. "Show us how you do it."
+
+The first throw Cameron took easily.
+
+"Twenty-nine paces!" cried Mack, after stepping it off. "Man! that's a
+great throw, and you do it easy."
+
+"Not much of a throw," laughed Cameron. "Try it yourself."
+
+Ignoring the swing, Mack tried the throw in his own style and hurled the
+hammer two paces beyond Cameron's throw.
+
+"You did that with your arms only," said Cameron. "Now you must put legs
+and shoulders into it."
+
+"Let's see you beat that throw yourself," laughed Perkins, who was by no
+means pleased with the sudden distinction that had come to the "Scotty."
+
+Cameron took the hammer and, with the easy slow grace of the Braemar
+swing, made his throw.
+
+"Hooray!" yelled Danny, who was doing the measuring. "You got it yon
+time for sure. Three paces to the good. You'll have to put your back
+into it, Mack, I guess."
+
+Once more Mack seized the hammer. Then Cameron took Mack in hand and,
+over and over again, coached him in the poise and swing.
+
+"Now try it, and think of your legs and back. Let the hammer take care
+of itself. Now, nice and easy and slow, not far this time."
+
+Again and again Mack practised the swing.
+
+"You're getting it!" cried Cameron enthusiastically, "but you are trying
+too hard. Forget the distance this time and think only of the easy slow
+swing. Let your muscles go slack." So he coached his pupil.
+
+At length, after many attempts, Mack succeeded in delivering his hammer
+according to instructions.
+
+"Man! you are right!" he exclaimed. "That's the trick of it and it is as
+smooth as oil."
+
+"Keep it up, Mack," said Cameron, "and always easy."
+
+Over and over again he put the big man through the swing till he began
+to catch the notion of the rhythmic, harmonious cooperation of the
+various muscles in legs and shoulders and arms so necessary to the
+highest result.
+
+"You've got the swing, Mack," at length said Cameron. "Now then, this
+time let yourself go. Don't try your best, but let yourself out. Easy,
+now, easy. Get it first in your mind."
+
+For a moment Mack stood pondering. He was "getting it in his mind."
+Then, with a long swing, easy and slow, he gave the great hammer a
+mighty heave. With a shout the company crowded about.
+
+"Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven!
+Hooray! bully for you, Mack. You are the lad!"
+
+"Get the line on it," said Mack quietly. The measuring line showed
+one hundred and eleven and a half feet. The boys crowded round him,
+exclaiming, cheering, patting him on the back. Mack received the
+congratulations in silence, then, turning to Cameron, said very
+earnestly:
+
+"Man! yon's as easy as eating butter. You have done me a good turn
+to-day."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing, Mack," said Cameron, who was more pleased than any
+of them. "You got the swing perfectly that time. You can put twenty
+feet to that throw. One hundred and eleven feet! Why, I can beat that
+myself."
+
+"Man alive! Do you tell me now!" said Mack in amazement, running his
+eyes over Cameron's lean muscular body.
+
+"I have done it often when I was in shape."
+
+"Oh, rats!" said Perkins with a laugh. "Where was that?"
+
+Cameron flushed a deep red, then turned pale, but kept silent.
+
+"I believe you, my boy," said Mack with emphasis and facing sharply upon
+Perkins, "and if ever I do a big throw I will owe it to you."
+
+"Oh, come off!" said Perkins, again laughing scornfully. "There are
+others that know the swing besides Scotty here. What you have got you
+owe to no one but yourself, Mack."
+
+"If I beat the man McGee next week," said Mack quietly, "it will be from
+what I learned to-night, and I know what I am saying. Man! it's a lucky
+thing we found you. But that will do for just now. Come along to the
+barn. Hooray for the pipes and the lassies! They are worth all the
+hammers in the world!" And, putting his arm through Cameron's, he led
+the way to the barn, followed by the others.
+
+"If Scotty could only hoe turnips and tie wheat as well as he can play
+the pipes and throw the hammer," said Perkins to the others as they
+followed in the rear, "I guess he'd soon have us all leaning against the
+fence to dry."
+
+"He will, too, some day," said Tim, whose indignation at Perkins
+overcame the shyness which usually kept him silent in the presence of
+older men.
+
+"Hello, Timmy! What are you chipping in for?" said Perkins, reaching for
+the boy's coat collar. "He thinks this Scotty is the whole works, and he
+is great too--at showing people how to do things."
+
+"I hear he showed Tim how to hoe turnips," said one of the boys slyly.
+The laugh that followed showed that the story of Tim's triumph over the
+champion had gone abroad.
+
+"Oh, rot!" said Perkins angrily. "Tim's got a little too perky because I
+let him get ahead of me one night in a drill of turnips."
+
+"Yeh done yer best, didn't he, Webster?" cried Tim with indignation.
+
+"Well, he certainly was making some pretty big gashes in them drills,"
+said Webster slowly.
+
+"Oh, get out!" replied Perkins. "Though all the same Tim's quite a
+turnip-hoer," he conceded. "Hello! There's quite a crowd in the barn,
+Danny. I wish I had my store clothes on."
+
+At this a girl came running to meet them.
+
+"Come on, Danny! Tune up. I can hardly keep my heels on my boots."
+
+"Oh, you'll not be wanting my little fiddle after you have heard Cameron
+on the pipes, Isa."
+
+"Never you fear that, Danny," replied Isa, catching him by the arm and
+hurrying him onward.
+
+"Wait a minute. I want you to meet Mr. Cameron," said Danny.
+
+"Come away, then," replied Isa. "I am dying to get done with it and get
+the fiddle going."
+
+But Cameron was in the meantime engaged, for Mack was busy introducing
+him to a bevy of girls who stood at one corner of the barn floor.
+
+"My! but he's a braw lad!" said Isa gayly, as she watched Cameron making
+his bows.
+
+"Yes, he is that," replied Danny with enthusiastic admiration, "and a
+hammer-thrower, too, he is."
+
+"What! yon stripling?"
+
+"You may say it. He can beat Mack there."
+
+"Mack!" cried Isa, with scorn. "It's just big lies you are telling me."
+
+"Indeed, he has beaten Mack's best throw many a time."
+
+"And how do you know?" exclaimed Isa.
+
+"He said so himself."
+
+"Ah ha!" said Isa scornfully. "He is good at blowing his own horn
+whatever, and I don't believe he can beat Mack--and I don't like him a
+bit," she continued, her dark eyes flashing and the red colour glowing
+in her full round cheek.
+
+"Come, Isa!" cried Mack, catching sight of her in the dim light. "Come
+here, I want Mr. Cameron to meet you."
+
+"How do you do?" said the girl, giving Cameron her hand and glancing
+saucily into his face. "I hear you are a piper and a hammer-thrower and
+altogether a wonderful man."
+
+"A wonderfully lucky man, to have the pleasure of meeting you," said
+Cameron, glancing boldly back at her.
+
+"And I am sure you can dance the fling," continued Isa. "All the
+Highlanders do."
+
+"Not all," said Cameron. "But with certain partners all Highlanders
+would love to try."
+
+"Oh aye," with a soft Highland accent that warmed Cameron's blood. "I
+see you have the tongue. Come away, Danny, now, strike up, or I will go
+on without you." And the girl kilted her skirts and began a reel, and
+as Mack's eyes followed her every step there was no mistaking their
+expression. To Mack there was only one girl in the barn, or in all the
+world for that matter, and that was the leal-hearted, light-footed,
+black-eyed Isa MacKenzie. Bonnie she was, and that she well knew, the
+belle of the whole township, driving the men to distraction and for all
+that holding the love of her own sex as well. But her heart was still
+her own, or at least she thought it was, for all big Mack Murray's open
+and simple-hearted adoration, and she was ready for a frolic with any
+man who could give her word for word or dance with her the Highland
+reel.
+
+With the courtesy of a true gentleman, Danny led off with his fiddle
+till they had all got thoroughly into the spirit and swing of the
+frolic, and then, putting his instrument back into its bag, he declared
+that they were all tired of it and were waiting for the pipes.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" cried Isa. "But we will give you a rest, Danny, and
+besides I want to dance a reel with you myself--though Mr. Cameron is
+not bad," she added, with a little bow to Cameron, with whom she had
+just finished a reel.
+
+Readily enough Cameron tuned his pipes, for he was aching to get at them
+and only too glad to furnish music for the gay company of kindly hearted
+folk who were giving him his first evening's pleasure since he had left
+the Cuagh Oir.
+
+From reel to schottische and from schottische to reel, foursome and
+eightsome, they kept him playing, ever asking for more, till the
+gloaming passed into moonlight and still they were not done. The respite
+came through Mandy, who, solid in weight and heavy of foot, had laboured
+through the reels as often as she could get a partner, and at other
+times had sat gazing in rapt devotion upon the piper.
+
+"Whoop her up again, Scotty!" cried Perkins, when Cameron paused at the
+end of a reel.
+
+"Don't you do it!" said Mandy sharply, her deep voice booming through
+the barn. "He's just tired of it, and I'm tired looking at him."
+
+There was a shout of laughter which covered poor Mandy with wrathful
+confusion.
+
+"Good for you, Mandy," cried Perkins with a great guffaw. "You want some
+music now, don't you? So do I. Come on, Danny."
+
+"No, I don't," snapped Mandy, who could understand neither the previous
+laugh nor that which greeted Perkins' sally.
+
+"Allan," she said, sticking a little over the name, "is tired out, and
+besides it's time we were going home."
+
+"That's right, take him home, Mandy, and put the little dear to bed,"
+said Perkins.
+
+"You needn't be so smart, Joe Perkins," said Mandy angrily. "Anyway I'm
+going home. I've got to be up early."
+
+"Me too, Mandy," said Cameron, packing up his pipes, for his sympathy
+had been roused for the girl who was championing him so bravely. "I
+have had a great night and I have played you all to death; but you will
+forgive me. I was lonely for the chanter. I have not touched it since I
+left home."
+
+There was a universal cry of protest as they gathered about him.
+
+"Indeed, Mr. Cameron, you have given us all a rare treat," cried Isa,
+coming close to him, "and I only wish you could pipe and dance at the
+same time."
+
+"That's so!" cried Mack, "but what's the matter with the fiddle, Isa?
+Come, Danny, strike up. Let them have a reel together."
+
+Cameron glanced at Mandy, who was standing impatiently waiting. Perkins
+caught the glance.
+
+"Oh, please let him stay, Mandy," he pleaded.
+
+"He can stay if he likes," sniffed Mandy scornfully. "I got no string on
+him; but I'm goin' home. Good-night, everybody."
+
+"Good-night, Mandy," called Perkins. "Tell them we're comin'."
+
+"Just a moment, Mandy!" said Cameron, "and I'm with you. Another time
+I hope to do a reel with you, Miss MacKenzie," he said, bidding her
+good-night, "and I hope it will be soon."
+
+"Remember, then," cried Isa, warmly shaking hands with him. "I will keep
+you to your promise at the picnic."
+
+"Fine!" said Cameron, and with easy grace he made his farewells and set
+off after Mandy, who by this time was some distance down the lane.
+
+"You needn't come for me," she said, throwing her voice at him over her
+shoulder.
+
+"What a splendid night we have had!" said Cameron, ignoring her wrath.
+"And what awfully nice people."
+
+Mandy grunted and in silence continued her way down the lane, picking
+her steps between the muddy spots and pools left by the rain.
+
+After some minutes Cameron, who was truly sorry for the girl, ventured
+to resume the conversation.
+
+"Didn't you enjoy the evening, Mandy?"
+
+"No, I didn't!" she replied shortly. "I can't dance and they all know
+it."
+
+"Why don't you learn, Mandy? You could dance if you practised."
+
+"I can't. I ain't like the other girls. I'm too clumsy."
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Cameron. "I've watched you stepping about the
+house and you are not a bit clumsy. If you only practised a bit you
+would soon pick up the schottische."
+
+"Oh, you're just saying that because you know I'm mad," said Mandy,
+slightly mollified.
+
+"Not at all. I firmly believe it. I saw you try a schottische to-night
+with Perkins and--"
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said Mandy. "He don't give me no show. He gets mad when I
+tramp on him."
+
+"All you want is practise, Mandy," replied Cameron.
+
+"Oh, I ain't got no one to show me," said Mandy. "Perkins he won't be
+bothered, and--and--there's no one else," she added shyly.
+
+"Why, I--I would show you," replied Cameron, every instinct of
+chivalry demanding that he should play up to her lead, "if I had any
+opportunity."
+
+"When?" said Mandy simply.
+
+"When?" echoed Cameron, taken aback. "Why, the first chance we get."
+
+As he spoke the word they reached the new bridge that crossed the deep
+ditch that separated the lane from the high road.
+
+"Here's a good place right here on this bridge," said Mandy with a
+giggle.
+
+"But we have no music," stammered Cameron, aghast at the prospect of a
+dancing lesson by moonlight upon the public highway.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said Mandy. "We don't need music. You can just count. I
+seen Isa showin' Mack once and they didn't have no music. But," she
+added, regarding Cameron with suspicion, "if you don't want to--"
+
+"Oh, I shall be glad to, but wouldn't the porch be better?" he replied
+in desperation.
+
+"The porch! That's so," assented Mandy eagerly. "Let's hurry before the
+rest come home." So saying, she set off at a great pace, followed
+by Cameron ruefully wondering to what extent the lesson in the
+Terpsichorean art might be expected to go.
+
+As soon as the porch was reached Mandy cried--
+
+"Now let's at the thing. I'm going to learn that schottische if it costs
+a leg."
+
+Without stopping to enquire whose leg might be in peril, Cameron
+proceeded with his lesson, and he had not gone through many paces till
+he began to recognise the magnitude of the task laid upon him. The
+girl's sense of time was accurate enough, but she was undeniably awkward
+and clumsy in her movements and there was an almost total absence of
+coordination of muscle and brain. She had, however, suffered too long
+and too keenly from her inability to join with the others in the dance
+to fail to make the best of her opportunity to relieve herself of this
+serious disability.
+
+So, with fierce industry she poised, counted and hopped, according to
+Cameron's instructions and example, with never a sign of weariness, but
+alas with little indication of progress.
+
+"Oh, shucks! I can't do it!" she cried at length, pausing in despair. "I
+think we could do it better together. That's the way Mack and Isa do it.
+I've seen them at it for an hour."
+
+Cameron's heart sank within him. He had caught an exchange of glances
+between the two young people mentioned and he could quite understand how
+a lesson in the intricacies of the Highland schottische might very well
+be extended over an hour to their mutual satisfaction, but he shrank
+with a feeling of dismay, if not disgust, from a like experience with
+the girl before him.
+
+He was on the point of abruptly postponing the lesson when his eye fell
+upon her face as she stood in the moonlight which streamed in through
+the open door. Was it the mystic alchemy of the moon on her face, or
+was it the glowing passion in her wonderful eyes that transfigured the
+coarse features? A sudden pity for the girl rose in Cameron's heart and
+he said gently, "We will try it together, Mandy."
+
+He took her hand, put his arm about her waist, but, as he drew her
+towards him, with a startled look in her eyes she shrank back saying
+hurriedly:
+
+"I guess I won't bother you any more to-night. You've been awfully good
+to me. You're tired."
+
+"Not a bit, Mandy, come along," replied Cameron briskly.
+
+At that moment a shadow fell upon the square of moonlight on the floor.
+Mandy started back with a cry.
+
+"My! you scairt me. We were--Allan--Mr. Cameron was learnin' me the
+Highland schottische." Her face and her voice were full of fear.
+
+It was Perkins. White, silent, and rigid, he stood regarding them, for
+minutes, it seemed, then turned away.
+
+"Let's finish," said Cameron quietly.
+
+"Oh! no, no!" said Mandy in a low voice. "He's awful mad! I'm scairt to
+death! He'll do something! Oh! dear, dear! He's awful when he gets mad."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Cameron. "He can't hurt you."
+
+"No, but you!"
+
+"Oh, don't worry about me. He won't hurt me."
+
+Cameron's tone arrested the girl's attention.
+
+"But promise me--promise me!" she cried, "that you won't touch him." She
+clutched his arm in a fierce grip.
+
+"Certainly I won't touch him," said Cameron easily, "if he behaves
+himself." But in his heart he was conscious of a fierce desire that
+Perkins would give him the opportunity to wipe out a part at least of
+the accumulated burden of insult he had been forced to bear during the
+last three weeks.
+
+"Oh!" wailed Mandy, wringing her hands. "I know you're going to fight
+him. I don't want you to! Do you hear me?" she cried, suddenly gripping
+Cameron again by the arm and shaking him. "I don't want you to! Promise
+me you won't!" She was in a transport of fear.
+
+"Oh, this is nonsense, Mandy," said Cameron, laughing at her. "There
+won't be any fight. I'll run away."
+
+"All right," replied the girl quietly, releasing his arm. "Remember you
+promised." She turned from him.
+
+"Good night, Mandy. We will finish our lesson another time, eh?" he said
+cheerfully.
+
+"Good night," replied Mandy, dully, and passed through the kitchen and
+into the house.
+
+Cameron watched her go, then poured for himself a glass of milk from a
+pitcher that always stood upon the table for any who might be returning
+home late at night, and drank it slowly, pondering the situation the
+while.
+
+"What a confounded mess it is!" he said to himself. "I feel like cutting
+the whole thing. By Jove! That girl is getting on my nerves! And that
+infernal bounder! She seems to--Poor girl! I wonder if he has got any
+hold on her. It would be the greatest satisfaction in the world to teach
+HIM a few things too. But I have made up my mind that I am not going to
+end up my time here with any row, and I'll stick to that; unless--" and,
+with a tingling in his fingers, he passed out into the moonlight.
+
+As he stepped out from the door a dark mass hurled itself at him, a hand
+clutched at his throat, missed as he swiftly dodged back, and carried
+away his collar. It was Perkins, his face distorted, his white teeth
+showing in a snarl as of a furious beast. Again with a beast-like growl
+he sprang, and again Cameron avoided him; while Perkins, missing his
+clutch, stumbled over a block of wood and went crashing head first among
+a pile of pots and pans and, still unable to recover himself and wildly
+grasping whatever chanced to be within reach, fell upon the board that
+stood against the corner of the porch to direct the rain into the tub;
+but the unstable board slid slowly down and allowed the unfortunate
+Perkins to come sitting in the tub full of water.
+
+"Very neatly done, Perkins!" cried Cameron, whose anger at the furious
+attack was suddenly transformed into an ecstasy of delight at seeing the
+plight of his enemy.
+
+Like a cat Perkins was on his feet and, without a single moment's pause,
+came on again in silent fury. By an evil chance there lay in his path
+the splitting axe, gleaming in the moonlight. Uttering a low choking
+cry, as of joy, he seized the axe and sprang towards his foe. Quicker
+than thought Cameron picked up a heavy arm chair that stood near the
+porch to use it as a shield against the impending attack.
+
+"Are you mad, Perkins?" he cried, catching the terrific blow that came
+crashing down, upon the chair.
+
+Then, filled with indignant rage at the murderous attack upon him, and
+suddenly comprehending the desperate nature of the situation, he sprang
+at his antagonist, thrusting the remnants of the chair in his face and,
+following hard and fast upon him, pushed him backward and still backward
+till, tripping once more, he fell supine among the pots and pans.
+Seizing the axe that had dropped from his enemy's hand, Cameron hurled
+it far beyond the wood pile and then stood waiting, a cold and deadly
+rage possessing him.
+
+"Come on, you dog!" he said through his shut teeth. "You have been
+needing this for some time and now you'll get it."
+
+"What is it, Joe?"
+
+Cameron quickly turned and saw behind him Mandy, her face blanched, her
+eyes wide, and her voice faint with terror.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," said Cameron, struggling to recover himself.
+"Perkins stumbled over the tub among the pots and pans there. He made
+a great row, too," he continued with a laugh, striving to get his voice
+under control.
+
+"What is it, Joe?" repeated Mandy, approaching Perkins. But Perkins
+stood leaning against the corner of the porch in a kind of dazed
+silence.
+
+"You've been fighting," she said, turning upon Cameron.
+
+"Not at all," said Cameron lightly, "but, if you must know, Perkins went
+stumbling among these pots and pans and finally sat down in the tub; and
+naturally he is mad."
+
+"Is that true, Joe?" said Mandy, moving slowly nearer him.
+
+"Oh, shut up, Mandy! I'm all wet, that's all, and I'm going to bed."
+
+His voice was faint as though he were speaking with an effort.
+
+"You go into the house," he said to the girl. "I've got something to say
+to Cameron here."
+
+"You are quarreling."
+
+"Oh, give us a rest, Mandy, and get out! No, there's no quarreling, but
+I want to have a talk with Cameron about something. Go on, now!"
+
+For a few moments she hesitated, looking from one to the other.
+
+"It's all right, Mandy," said Cameron quietly. "You needn't be afraid,
+there won't be any trouble."
+
+For a moment more she stood, then quietly turned away.
+
+"Wait!" said Perkins to Cameron, and followed Mandy into the house. For
+some minutes Cameron stood waiting.
+
+"Now, you murderous brute!" he said, when Perkins reappeared. "Come down
+to the barn where no girl can interfere." He turned towards the barn.
+
+"Hold on!" said Perkins, breathing heavily. "Not to-night. I want to say
+something. She's waiting to see me go upstairs."
+
+Cameron came back.
+
+"What have you got to say, you cur?" he asked in a voice filled with a
+cold and deliberate contempt.
+
+"Don't you call no names," replied Perkins. "It ain't no use." His voice
+was low, trembling, but gravely earnest. "Say, I might have killed you
+to-night." His breath was still coming in quick short gasps.
+
+"You tried your best, you dog!" said Cameron.
+
+"Don't you call no names," panted Perkins again. "I might--a--killed
+yeh. I'm mighty--glad--I didn't." He spoke like a man who had had a
+great deliverance. "But don't yeh," here his teeth snapped like a dog's,
+"don't yeh ever go foolin' with that girl again. Don't yeh--ever--do
+it. I seen yeh huggin' her in there and I tell yeh--I tell yeh--," his
+breath began to come in sobs, "I won't stand it--I'll kill yeh, sure as
+God's in heaven."
+
+"Are you mad?" said Cameron, scanning narrowly the white distorted face.
+
+"Mad? Yes, I guess so--I dunno--but don't yeh do it, that's all. She's
+mine! Mine! D'yeh hear?"
+
+He stepped forward and thrust his snarling face into Cameron's.
+
+"No, I ain't goin' to touch yeh," as Cameron stepped back into a posture
+of defense, "not to-night. Some day, perhaps." Here again his teeth came
+together with a snap. "But I'm not going to have you or any other
+man cutting in on me with that girl. D'yeh hear me?" and he lifted a
+trembling forefinger and thrust it almost into Cameron's face.
+
+Cameron stood regarding him in silent and contemptuous amazement.
+Neither of them saw a dark form standing back out of the moonlight,
+inside the door. At last Cameron spoke.
+
+"Now what the deuce does all this mean?" he said slowly. "Is this girl
+by any unhappy chance engaged to you?"
+
+"Yes, she is--or was as good as, till you came; but you listen to me. As
+God hears me up there"--he raised his shaking hand and pointed up to
+the moonlit sky, and then went on, chewing on his words like a dog on
+a bone--"I'll cut the heart out of your body if I catch you monkeying
+round that girl again. You've got to get out of here! Everything was all
+right till you came sneaking in. You've got to get out! You've got to
+get out! D'yeh hear me? You've got to get out!"
+
+His voice was rising, mad rage was seizing him again, his fingers were
+opening and shutting like a man in a death agony.
+
+Cameron glanced towards the door.
+
+"I'm done," said Perkins, noting the glance. "That's my last word. You'd
+better quit this job." His voice again took on an imploring tone. "You'd
+better go or something will sure happen to you. Nobody will miss you
+much, except perhaps Mandy." His ghastly face twisted into a snarling
+smile, his eyes appeared glazed in the moonlight, his voice was
+husky--the man seemed truly insane.
+
+Cameron stood observing him quietly when he had ceased speaking.
+
+"Are you finished? Then hear me. First, in regard to this girl, she
+doesn't want me and I don't want her, but make up your mind, I promise
+you to do all I can to prevent her falling into the hands of a brute
+like you. Then as to leaving this place, I shall go just when it suits
+me, no sooner."
+
+"All right," said Perkins, his voice low and trembling. "All right, mind
+I warned you! Mind I warned you! But if you go foolin' with that girl,
+I'll kill yeh, so help me God."
+
+These words he uttered with the solemnity of an oath and turned towards
+the porch. A dark figure flitted across the kitchen and disappeared into
+the house. Cameron walked slowly towards the barn.
+
+"He's mad. He's clean daffy, but none the less dangerous," he said to
+himself. "What a rotten mess all this is!" he added in disgust. "By
+Jove! The whole thing isn't worth while."
+
+But as he thought of Mandy's frightened face and imploring eyes and the
+brutal murderous face of the man who claimed her as his own, he said
+between his teeth:
+
+"No, I won't quit now. I'll see this thing through, whatever it costs,"
+and with this resolve he set himself to the business of getting to
+sleep; in which, after many attempts, he was at length successful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+
+
+There never was such a Dominion Day for weather since the first Dominion
+Day was born. Of this "Fatty" Freeman was fully assured. Fatty Freeman
+was a young man for whose opinion older men were accustomed to wait. His
+person more than justified his praenomen, for Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr.,
+was undeniably fat. "Fat, but fine and frisky," was ever his own comment
+upon the descriptive adjective by which his friends distinguished him.
+And fine and frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating,
+fine in his judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men;
+frisky, too, and utterly irrepressible. "Harp's just like a young pup,"
+his own father, the Reverend Harper Freeman, the old Methodist minister
+of the Maplehill circuit, used to say. "If Harp had a tail he would
+never do anything but play with it." On this, however, it is difficult
+to hold any well based opinion. Ebullient in his spirits, he radiated
+cheeriness wherever he went and was at the bottom of most of the
+practical jokes that kept the village of Maplehill in a state of
+ferment; yet if any man thought to turn a sharp corner in business with
+Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., he invariably found that frisky individual
+waiting for him round the corner with a cheery smile of welcome, shrewd
+and disconcerting. It was this cheery shrewdness of his that made him
+the most successful cattle buyer in the county and at the same time
+secretary of the Middlesex Caledonian Society. As secretary of this
+society he was made chiefly responsible for the success of the Dominion
+Day picnic and, as with everything that he took hold of, Fatty toiled
+at the business of preparation for this picnic with conscientious zeal,
+giving to it all his spare hours and many of his working hours for the
+three months preceding.
+
+It was due solely to his efforts that so many distinguished county
+magnates appeared eager to lend their patronage. It needed but a little
+persuasion to secure the enthusiastic support of the Honourable J. J.
+Patterson, M.P.P., and, incidentally, the handsome challenge cup
+for hammer-throwing, for the honourable member of Parliament was a
+full-blooded Highlander himself and an ardent supporter of "the games."
+But only Fatty Freeman's finesse could have extracted from Dr. Kane, the
+Opposition candidate for Provincial Parliamentary honours, the cup for
+the hundred yards race, and other cups from other individuals more or
+less deeply interested in Dominion, Provincial, and Municipal politics.
+The prize list secured, it needed only a skillful manipulation of the
+local press and a judicious but persistent personal correspondence
+to swell the ranks of the competitors in the various events, and
+thus ensure a monster attendance of the people from the neighbouring
+townships and from the city near by.
+
+The weather being assured, Fatty's anxieties were mostly allayed, for he
+had on the file in his office acceptance letters from the distinguished
+men who were to cast the spell of their oratory over the assembled
+multitude, as also from the big men in the athletic world who had
+entered for the various events in the programme of sports. It was
+a master stroke of diplomacy that resulted in the securing for the
+hammer-throwing contest the redoubtable and famous Duncan Ross of
+Zorra, who had at first disdained the bait of the Maplehill Dominion Day
+picnic, but in some mysterious way had at length been hooked and landed.
+For Duncan was a notable man and held the championship of the Zorras;
+and indeed in all Ontario he was second only to the world-famous Rory
+Maclennan of Glengarry, who had been to Braemar itself and was beaten
+there only by a fluke. How he came to agree to be present at the
+Maplehill picnic "Black Duncan" could not quite understand, but had he
+compared notes with McGee, the champion of the London police force and
+of various towns and cities of the western peninsula, he would doubtless
+have received some enlightenment. To the skill of the same master hand
+was due the appearance upon the racing list of the Dominion Day picnic
+of such distinguished names as Cahill of London, Fullerton of Woodstock,
+and especially of Eugene La Belle of nowhere in particular, who held the
+provincial championship for skating and was a runner of provincial fame.
+
+In the racing Fatty was particularly interested because his young
+brother Wilbur, of whom he was uncommonly proud, a handsome lad, swift
+and graceful as a deer, was to make his first essay for more than local
+honours.
+
+The lists for the other events were equally well filled and every
+detail of the arrangements for the day had passed under the secretary's
+personal review. The feeding of the multitude was in charge of the
+Methodist Ladies' Aid, an energetic and exceptionally businesslike
+organization, which fully expected to make sufficient profit from the
+enterprise to clear off the debt from their church at Maplehill, an
+achievement greatly desired not only by the ladies themselves but by
+their minister, the Reverend Harper Freeman, now in the third year of
+his incumbency. The music was to be furnished by the Band of the
+Seventh from London and by no less a distinguished personage than Piper
+Sutherland himself from Zorra, former Pipe Major of "The old Forty-twa."
+The discovery of another piper in Cameron brought joy to the secretary's
+heart, who only regretted that an earlier discovery had not rendered
+possible a pipe competition.
+
+Early in the afternoon the crowds began to gather to MacBurney's woods,
+a beautiful maple grove lying midway between the Haleys' farm and
+Maplehill village, about two miles distant from each. The grove of
+noble maple trees overlooking a grassy meadow provided an ideal spot for
+picnicking, furnishing as it did both shade from the sun and a fine open
+space with firm footing for the contestants in the games. High over a
+noble maple in the centre of the grassy meadow floated the Red Ensign of
+the Empire, which, with the Canadian coat of arms on the fly, by common
+usage had become the national flag of Canada. From the great trees the
+swings were hung, and under their noble spreading boughs were placed the
+tables, and the platform for the speech making and the dancing, while at
+the base of the encircling hills surrounding the grassy meadow, hard by
+the grove another platform was placed, from which distinguished
+visitors might view with ease and comfort the contests upon the campus
+immediately adjacent.
+
+Through the fence, let down for the purpose, the people drove in
+from the high road. They came in top buggies and in lumber wagons,
+in democrats and in "three seated rigs," while from the city came a
+"four-in-hand" with McGee, Cahill, and their backers, as well as other
+carriages filled with good citizens of London drawn thither by the
+promise of a day's sport of more than usual excellence or by the lure
+of a day in the woods and fields of God's open country. A specially
+fine carriage and pair, owned and driven by the honourable member of
+Parliament himself, conveyed Piper Sutherland, with colours streaming
+and pipes playing, to the picnic grounds. Warmly was the old piper
+welcomed, not only by the frisky cheery secretary, but by many old
+friends, and by none more warmly than by the Reverend Alexander Munro,
+the douce old bachelor Presbyterian minister of Maplehill, a great lover
+of the pipes and a special friend of Piper Sutherland. But the welcome
+was hardly over when once more the sound of the pipes was heard far up
+the side line.
+
+"Surely that will be Gunn," said Mr. Munro.
+
+Sutherland listened for a minute or two.
+
+"No, it iss not Gunn. Iss Ross coming? No, yon iss not Ross. That
+will be a stranger," he continued, turning to the secretary, but
+the secretary remained silent, enjoying the old man's surprise and
+perplexity.
+
+"Man, that iss not so bad piping! Not so bad at all! Who iss it?" he
+added with some impatience, turning upon the secretary again.
+
+"Oh, that's Haley's team and I guess that's his hired man, a young
+fellow just out from Scotland," replied the secretary indifferently. "I
+am no great judge of the pipes myself, but he strikes me as a crackajack
+and I shouldn't be surprised if he would make you all sit up."
+
+But the old piper's ear was closed to his words and open only to the
+strains of music ever drawing nearer.
+
+"Aye, yon's a piper!" he said at length with emphasis. "Yon's a piper!"
+
+"I only wish I had discovered him in time for a competition," said Fatty
+regretfully.
+
+"Aye," said Sutherland. "Yon's a piper worth playing against."
+
+And very brave and gallant young Cameron looked as Tim swung his team
+through the fence and up to the platform under the trees where the
+great ones of the people were standing in groups. They were all there,
+Patterson the M.P.P., and Dr. Kane the Opposition candidate, Reeve
+Robertson, for ten years the Municipal head of his county, Inspector
+Grant, a little man with a massive head and a luminous eye, Patterson's
+understudy and generally regarded as his successor in Provincial
+politics, the Reverend Harper Freeman, Methodist minister, tall
+and lank, with shrewd kindly face and a twinkling eye, the Reverend
+Alexander Munro, the Presbyterian minister, solid and sedate, slow to
+take fire but when kindled a very furnace for heat. These, with their
+various wives and daughters, such as had them, and many others less
+notable but no less important, constituted a sort of informal reception
+committee under Fatty Freeman's general direction and management.
+And here and there and everywhere crowds of young men and maidens,
+conspicuous among the latter Isa MacKenzie and her special friends,
+made merry with each other, as brave and gallant a company of sturdy
+sun-browned youths and bonnie wholesome lassies as any land or age could
+ever show.
+
+"Look at them!" cried the Reverend Harper Freeman, waving his hand
+toward the kaleidoscopic gathering. "There's your Dominion Day oration
+for you, Mr, Patterson."
+
+"Most of it done in brown, too," chuckled his son, Harper Freeman, Jr.
+
+"Yes, and set in jewels and gold," replied his father.
+
+"You hold over me, Dad!" cried his son. "Here!" he called to Cameron,
+who was standing aloof from the others. "Come and meet a brother Scot
+and a brother piper, Mr. Sutherland from Zorra, though to your ignorant
+Scottish ear that means nothing, but to every intelligent Canadian,
+Zorra stands for all that's finest in brain and brawn in Canada."
+
+"And it takes both to play the pipes, eh, Sutherland?" said the M.P.P.
+
+"Oh aye, but mostly wind," said the piper.
+
+"Just like politics, eh, Mr. Patterson?" said the Reverend Harper
+Freeman.
+
+"Yes, or like preaching," replied the M.P.P.
+
+"One on you, Dad!" said the irrepressible Fatty.
+
+Meantime Sutherland was warmly complimenting Cameron on his playing.
+
+"You haf been well taught," he said.
+
+"No one taught me," said Cameron. "But we had a famous old piper at home
+in our Glen, Macpherson was his name."
+
+"Macpherson! Did he effer play at the Braemar gathering?"
+
+"Yes, but Maclennan beat him."
+
+"Maclennan! I haf heard him." The tone was quite sufficient to classify
+the unhappy Maclennan. "And I haf heard Macpherson too. You iss a
+player. None of the fal-de-rals of your modern players, but grand and
+mighty."
+
+"I agree with you entirely," replied Cameron, his heart warming at
+the praise of his old friend of the Glen Cuagh Oir. "But," he added,
+"Maclennan is a great player too."
+
+"A great player? Yes and no. He has the fingers and the notes, but he
+iss not the beeg man. It iss the soul that breathes through the chanter.
+The soul!" Here he gripped Cameron by the arm. "Man! it iss like
+praying. A beeg man will neffer show himself in small things, but when
+he will be in communion with his Maker or when he will be pouring out
+his soul in a pibroch then the beegness of the man will be manifest.
+Aye," continued the piper, warming to his theme and encouraged by the
+eager sympathy of his listener, "and not only the beegness but the
+quality of the soul. A mean man can play the pipes, but he can neffer
+be a piper. It iss only a beeg man and a fine man and, I will venture to
+say, a good man, and there are not many men can be pipers."
+
+"Aye, Mr. Sutherland," broke in the Reverend Alexander Munro, "what you
+say is true, but it is true not only of piping. It is true surely of
+anything great enough to express the deepest emotions of the soul. A
+man is never at his best in anything till he is expressing his noblest
+self."
+
+"For instance in preaching, eh!" said Dr. Kane.
+
+"Aye, in preaching or in political oratory," replied the minister.
+
+At this, however, the old piper shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"You do not agree with Mr. Munro in that?" said the M.P.P.
+
+"No," replied Sutherland, "speaking iss one thing, piping iss another."
+
+"And that is no lie, and a mighty good thing too it is," said Dr. Kane
+flippantly.
+
+"It iss no lie," replied the old piper with dignity. "And if you knew
+much about either of them you would say it deeferently."
+
+"Why, what is the difference, Mr. Sutherland?" said Dr. Kane, anxious to
+appease the old man. "They both are means of expressing the emotions of
+the soul, you say."
+
+"The deeference! The deeferenee iss it? The deeference iss here, that
+the pipes will neffer lie."
+
+There was a shout of laughter.
+
+"One for you, Kane!" cried the Reverend Harper Freeman. "And," he
+continued when the laughing had ceased, "we will have to take our share
+too, Mr. Munro."
+
+But the hour for beginning the programme had arrived and the secretary
+climbed to the platform to announce the events for the day.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, in a high, clear, penetrating voice,
+"the speech of welcome will be delivered toward the close of the day by
+the president of the Middlesex Caledonian Society, the Honourable J. J.
+Patterson, M.P.P. My duty is the very simple one of announcing the order
+of events on the programme and of expressing on behalf of the Middlesex
+Caledonian Society the earnest hope that you all may enjoy the day, and
+that each event on the programme will prove more interesting than the
+last. The programme is long and varied and I must ask your assistance
+to put it through on schedule time. First there are the athletic
+competitions. I shall endeavour to assist Dr. Kane and the judges in
+running these through without unnecessary and annoying delays. Then will
+follow piping, dancing, and feasting in their proper order, after which
+will come the presentation of prizes and speeches from our distinguished
+visitors. On the platform over yonder there are places for the speakers,
+the officials, and the guests of the society, but such is the very
+excellent character of the ground that all can be accommodated with
+grand stand seats. One disappointment, and one only, I must announce,
+the Band of the Seventh, London, cannot be with us to-day."
+
+"But we will never miss them," interpolated the Reverend Alexander Munro
+with solemn emphasis.
+
+"Exactly so!" continued Fatty when the laugh had subsided. "And now
+let's all go in for a good old time picnic, 'where even the farmers
+cease from grumbling and the preachers take a rest.' Now take your
+places, ladies and gentlemen, for the grand parade is about to begin."
+
+The programme opened with the one hundred yard flat race. For this race
+there were four entries, Cahill from London, Fullerton from Woodstock,
+La Belle from nowhere in particular, and Wilbur Freeman from Maplehill.
+But Wilbur was nowhere to be seen. The secretary came breathless to the
+platform.
+
+"Where's Wilbur?" he asked his father.
+
+"Wilbur? Surely he is in the crowd, or in the tent perhaps."
+
+At the tent the secretary found his brother nursing a twisted ankle,
+heart-sick with disappointment. Early in the day he had injured his foot
+in an attempt to fasten a swing upon a tree. Every minute since that
+time he had spent in rubbing and manipulating the injured member, but
+all to no purpose. While the pain was not great, a race was out of the
+question. The secretary was greatly disturbed and as nearly wrathful as
+ever he allowed himself to become. He was set on his brother making a
+good showing in this race; moreover, without Wilbur there would be no
+competitor to uphold the honour of Maplehill in this contest and this
+would deprive it of much of its interest.
+
+"What the dickens were you climbing trees for?" he began impatiently,
+but a glance at his young brother's pale and woe-stricken face changed
+his wrath to pity. "Never mind, old chap," he said, "better luck next
+time, and you will be fitter too."
+
+Back he ran to the platform, for he must report the dismal news to his
+mother, whose chief interest in the programme for the day lay in this
+race in which her latest born was to win his spurs. The cheery secretary
+was nearly desperate. It was an ominous beginning for the day's sports.
+What should he do? He confided his woe to Mack and Cameron, who were
+standing close by the platform.
+
+"It will play the very mischief with the programme. It will spoil the
+whole day, for Wilbur was the sole Maplehill representative in the three
+races; besides, I believe the youngster would have shown up well."
+
+"He would that!" cried Mack heartily. "He was a bird. But is there no
+one else from the Hill that could enter?"
+
+"No, no one with a chance of winning, and no fellow likes to go in
+simply to be beaten."
+
+"What difference?" said Cameron. "It's all in a day's sport."
+
+"That's so," said Mack. "If I could run myself I would enter. I wonder
+if Danny would--"
+
+"Danny!" said the secretary shortly. "You know better than that.
+Danny's too shy to appear before this crowd even if he were dead sure of
+winning."
+
+"Say, it is too bad!" continued Mack, as the magnitude of the calamity
+grew upon him. "Surely we can find some one to make an appearance. What
+about yourself, Cameron? Did you ever race?"
+
+"Some," said Cameron. "I raced last year at the Athole Games."
+
+Fatty threw himself upon him.
+
+"Cameron, you are my man! Do you want to save your country, and perhaps
+my life, certainly my reputation? Get out of those frills," touching his
+kilt, "and I'll get a suit from one of the jumpers for you. Go! Bless
+your soul, anything you want that's mine you can have! Only hustle for
+dear life's sake! Go! Go! Go! Take him away, Mack. We'll get something
+else on!"
+
+Fatty actually pushed Cameron clear away from the platform and after him
+big Mack.
+
+"There seems to be no help for it," said Cameron, as they went to the
+tent together.
+
+"It's awful good of you," replied Mack, "but you can see how hard Fatty
+takes it, though it is not a bit fair to you."
+
+"Oh, nobody knows me here," said Cameron, "and I don't mind being a
+victim."
+
+But as Mack saw him get into his jersey and shorts he began to wonder a
+bit.
+
+"Man, it would be great if you should beat yon Frenchman!" he exclaimed.
+
+"Frenchman?"
+
+"Yes! La Belle. He is that stuck on himself; he thinks he is a winner
+before he starts."
+
+"It's a good way to think, Mack. Now let us get down into the woods and
+have a bit of a practise in the 'get away.' How do they start here? With
+a pistol?"
+
+"No," replied Mack. "We are not so swell. The starter gives the word
+this way, 'All set? Go!'"
+
+"All right, Mack, you give me the word sharp. I am out of practise and I
+must get the idea into my head."
+
+"You are great on the idea, I see," replied Mack.
+
+"Right you are, and it is just the same with the hammer, Mack."
+
+"Aye, I have found that out."
+
+For twenty minutes or so Cameron practised his start and at every
+attempt Mack's confidence grew, so that when he brought his man back to
+the platform he announced to a group of the girls standing near, "Don't
+say anything, but I have the winner right here for you."
+
+"Why, Mr. Cameron," cried Isa, "what a wonder you are! What else can you
+do? You are a piper, a dancer, a hammer-thrower, and now a runner."
+
+"Jack-of-all-trades," laughed Perkins, who, with Mandy, was standing
+near.
+
+"Yes, but you can't say 'Master of none,'" replied Isa sharply.
+
+"Better wait," said Cameron. "I have entered this race only to save Mr.
+Freeman from collapse."
+
+"Collapse? Fatty? He couldn't," said Isa with emphasis.
+
+"Lass, I do not know," said Mack gravely. "He looked more hollow than
+ever I have seen him before."
+
+"Well, we'll all cheer for you, Mr. Cameron, anyway," cried Isa. "Won't
+we, girls? Oh, if wishes were wings!"
+
+"Wings?" said Mandy, with a puzzled air. "What for? This is a RACE."
+
+"Didn't you never see a hen run, Mandy?" laughed Perkins.
+
+"Yes, I have, but I tell you Mr. Cameron ain't no hen," replied Mandy
+angrily. "And more! He's going to win."
+
+"Say, Mandy, that is the talk," said Mack, when the laugh had passed.
+"Did you hear yon?" he added to Cameron.
+
+Cameron nodded.
+
+"It is a good omen," he said. "I am going to do my best."
+
+"And, by Jingo! if you only had a chance," said Mack, "I believe you
+would lick them all."
+
+At this Fatty bustled up.
+
+"All ready, eh? Cameron, I shall owe you something for this. La Belle
+kicked like a steer against your entering at the last minute. It is
+against the rules, you know. But he's given in."
+
+Fatty did not explain that he had intimated to La Belle that there
+was no need for anxiety as far as the "chap from the old country" was
+concerned; he was there merely to fill up.
+
+But if La Belle's fears were allayed by the secretary's disparaging
+description of the latest competitor, they sprang full grown into life
+again when he saw Cameron "all set" for the start, and more especially
+so when he heard his protest against the Frenchman's method in the "get
+away."
+
+"I want you to notice," he said firmly to Dr. Kane, who was acting as
+starter, "that this man gets away WITH the word 'Go' and not AFTER it.
+It is an old trick, but long ago played out."
+
+Then the Frenchman fell into a rage.
+
+"Eet ees no treeck!" sputtered La Belle. "Eet ees too queeck for him."
+
+"All right!" said Dr. Kane. "You are to start after the word 'Go.'
+Remember! Sorry we have no pistol."
+
+Once more the competitors crouched over the scratch.
+
+"All set? Go!"
+
+Like the releasing of a whirlwind the four runners spring from the
+scratch, La Belle, whose specialty is his "get away," in front,
+Fullerton and Cameron in second place, Cahill a close third. A blanket
+would cover them all. A tumult of cheers from the friends of the various
+runners follows them along their brief course.
+
+"Who is it? Who is it?" cries Mandy breathlessly, clutching Mack by the
+arm.
+
+"Cameron, I swear!" roars Mack, pushing his way through the crowd to the
+judges.
+
+"No! No! La Belle! La Belle!" cried the Frenchman's backers from the
+city. The judges are apparently in dispute.
+
+"I swear it is Cameron!" roars Mack again in their ears, his eyes aflame
+and his face alight with a fierce and triumphant joy. "It is Cameron I
+am telling you!"
+
+"Oh, get out, you big bluffer!" cries a thin-faced man, pressing close
+upon the judges. "It is La Belle by a mile!"
+
+"By a mile, is it?" shouts Mack. "Then go and hunt your man!" and with
+a swift motion his big hand falls upon the thin face and sweeps it clear
+out of view, the man bearing it coming to his feet in a white fury some
+paces away. A second look at Mack, however, calms his rage, and from a
+distance he continues leaping and yelling "La Belle! La Belle!"
+
+After a few moments' consultation the result is announced.
+
+"A tie for the first place between La Belle and Cameron! Time eleven
+seconds! The tie will be run off in a few minutes."
+
+In a tumult of triumph big Mack shoulders Cameron through the crowd
+and carries him off to the dressing tent, where he spends the next ten
+minutes rubbing his man's legs and chanting his glory.
+
+"Who is this Cameron?" enquired the M.P.P., leaning over the platform
+railing.
+
+Quick came the answer from the bevy of girls thronging past the
+platform.
+
+"Cameron? He's our man!" It was Mandy's voice, bold and strong.
+
+"Your man?" said the M.P.P., laughing down into the coarse flushed face.
+
+"Yes, OUR man!" cried Isa MacKenzie back at him. "And a winner, you may
+be sure."
+
+"Ah, happy man!" exclaimed the M.P.P. "Who would not win with such
+backers? Why, I would win myself, Miss Isa, were you to back me so. But
+who is Cameron?" he continued to the Methodist minister at his side.
+
+"He is Haley's hired man, I believe, and that first girl is Haley's
+daughter."
+
+"Poor thing!" echoed Mrs. Freeman, a kindly smile on her motherly face.
+"But she has a good heart has poor Mandy."
+
+"But why 'poor'?" enquired the M.P.P.
+
+"Oh, well," answered Mrs. Freeman with hesitation, "you see she is so
+very plain--and--well, not like other girls. But she is a good worker
+and has a kind heart."
+
+Once more the runners face the starter, La Belle gay, alert, confident;
+Cameron silent, pale, and grim.
+
+"All set? Go!" La Belle is away ere the word is spoken. The bell,
+however, brings him back, wrathful and less confident.
+
+Once more they stand crouching over the scratch. Once more the word
+releases them like shafts from the bow. A beautiful start, La Belle
+again in the lead, but Cameron hard at his heels and evidently with
+something to spare. Thus for fifty yards, sixty, yes, sixty-five.
+
+"La Belle! La Belle! He wins! He wins!" yell his backers frantically,
+the thin-faced man dancing madly near the finishing tape. Twenty yards
+to go and still La Belle is in the lead. High above the shouting rises
+Mack's roar.
+
+"Now, Cameron! For the life of you!"
+
+It was as if his voice had touched a spring somewhere in Cameron's
+anatomy. A great leap brings him even with La Belle. Another, another,
+and still another, and he breasts the tape a winner by a yard, time ten
+and three fifths seconds. The Maplehill folk go mad, and madder than all
+Isa and her company of girl friends.
+
+"I got--one--bad--start--me! He--pull--me back!" panted La Belle to his
+backers who were holding him up.
+
+"Who pulled you back?" indignantly cried the thin-faced man, looking for
+blood.
+
+"That sacre startair!"
+
+"You ran a fine race, La Belle!" said Cameron, coming up.
+
+"Non! Peste! I mak heem in ten and one feeft," replied the disgusted La
+Belle.
+
+"I have made it in ten," said Cameron quietly.
+
+"Aha!" exclaimed La Belle. "You are one black horse, eh? So! I race no
+more to-day!"
+
+"Then no more do I!" said Cameron firmly. "Why, La Belle, you will beat
+me in the next race sure. I have no wind."
+
+Under pressure La Belle changed his mind, and well for him he did; for
+in the two hundred and twenty yards and in the quarter mile Cameron's
+lack of condition told against him, so that in the one he ran second to
+La Belle and in the other third to La Belle and Fullerton.
+
+The Maplehill folk were gloriously satisfied, and Fatty in an ecstasy of
+delight radiated good cheer everywhere. Throughout the various contests
+the interest continued to deepen, the secretary, with able generalship,
+reserving the hammer-throwing as the most thrilling event to the last
+place. For, more than anything in the world, men, and especially women,
+love strong men and love to see them in conflict. For that fatal love
+cruel wars have been waged, lands have been desolated, kingdoms have
+fallen. There was the promise of a very pretty fight indeed between the
+three entered for the hammer-throwing contest, two of them experienced
+in this warfare and bearing high honours, the third new to the game and
+unskilled, but loved for his modest courage and for the simple, gentle
+heart he carried in his great body. He could not win, of course, for
+McGee, the champion of the city police force, had many scalps at his
+girdle, and Duncan Ross, "Black Duncan," the pride of the Zorras, the
+unconquered hero of something less than a hundred fights--who could hope
+to win from him? But all the more for this the people loved big Mack and
+wished him well. So down the sloping sides of the encircling hills the
+crowds pressed thick, and on the platform the great men leaned over
+the rail, while they lifted their ladies to places of vantage upon the
+chairs beside them.
+
+"Oh, I cannot see a bit!" cried Isa MacKenzie, vainly pressing upon the
+crowding men who, stolidly unaware of all but what was doing in front of
+them, effectually shut off her view.
+
+"And you want to see?" said the M.P.P., looking down at her.
+
+"Oh, so much!" she cried.
+
+"Come up here, then!" and, giving her a hand, he lifted her, smiling and
+blushing, to a place on the platform whence she with absorbing interest
+followed the movements of big Mack, and incidentally of the others in as
+far as they might bear any relation to those of her hero.
+
+And now they were drawing for place.
+
+"Aha! Mack is going to throw first!" said the Reverend Alexander Munro.
+"That is a pity."
+
+"It's a shame!" cried Isa, with flashing eyes. "Why don't they put one
+of those older--ah--?"
+
+"Stagers?" suggested the M.P.P.
+
+"Duffers," concluded Isa.
+
+"The lot determines the place, Miss Isa," said Mr. Freeman, with a smile
+at her. "But the best man will win."
+
+"Oh, I am not so sure of that!" cried the girl in a distressed voice.
+"Mack might get nervous."
+
+"Nervous?" laughed the M.P.P. "That giant?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, I have seen him that nervous--" said Isa, and stopped
+abruptly.
+
+"Ah! That is quite possible," replied the M.P.P. with a quizzical smile.
+
+"And there is young Cameron yonder. He is not going to throw, is he?"
+enquired Mr. Munro.
+
+"He is coaching Mack," explained Isa, "and fine he is at it. Oh, there!
+He is going to throw! Oh, if he only gets the swing! Oh! Oh! Oh! He has
+got it fine!"
+
+A storm of cheers followed Mack's throw, then a deep silence while the
+judges took the measurement.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one feet!"
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one!" echoed a hundred voices in amazement.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one! It is a lie!" cried McGee with an oath,
+striding out to personally supervise the measuring.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one!" said Duncan Ross, shaking his head
+doubtfully, but he was too much of a gentleman to do other than wait for
+the judges' decision.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one feet and two inches," was the final verdict,
+and from the crowd there rose a roar that rolled like thunder around the
+hills.
+
+"It's a fluke, and so it is!" said McGee with another oath.
+
+"Give me your hand, lad," said Duncan Ross, evidently much roused. "It
+iss a noble throw whateffer, and worthy of beeg Rory himself. I haf done
+better, howeffer, but indeed I may not to-day."
+
+It was indeed a great throw, and one immediate result was that there
+was no holding back in the contest, no playing 'possum. Mack's throw was
+there to be beaten, and neither McGee nor even Black Duncan could afford
+to throw away a single chance. For hammer-throwing is an art requiring
+not only strength but skill as well, and not only strength and skill but
+something else most difficult to secure. With the strength and the skill
+there must go a rhythmic and perfect coordination of all the muscles in
+the body, with exactly the proper contracting and relaxing of each at
+exactly the proper moment of time, and this perfect coordination is a
+result rarely achieved even by the greatest throwers, but when achieved,
+and with the man's full strength behind it, his record throw is the
+result.
+
+Meantime Cameron was hovering about his man in an ecstasy of delight.
+
+"Oh, Mack, old man!" he said. "You got the swing perfectly. It was a
+dream. And if you had put your full strength into it you would have made
+a world record. Why, man, you could add ten feet to it!"
+
+"It is a fluke!" said McGee again, as he took his place.
+
+"Make one like it, then, my lad," said Black Duncan with a grim smile.
+
+But this McGee failed to do, for his throw measured ninety-seven feet.
+
+"A very fair throw, McGee," said Black Duncan. "But not your best, and
+nothing but the best will do the day appearingly."
+
+With that Black Duncan took place for his throw. One--twice--thrice he
+swung the great hammer about his head, then sent it whirling into the
+air. Again a mighty shout announced a great throw and again a dead
+silence waited for the measurement.
+
+"One hundred and fourteen feet!"
+
+"Aha!" said Black Duncan, and stepped back apparently well satisfied.
+
+It was again Mack's turn.
+
+"You have the privilege of allowing your first throw to stand," said Dr.
+Kane.
+
+"Best let it stand, lad, till it iss beat," advised Black Duncan kindly.
+"It iss a noble throw."
+
+"He can do better, though," said Cameron.
+
+"Very well, very well!" said Duncan. "Let him try."
+
+But Mack's success had keyed him up to the highest pitch. Every nerve
+was tingling, every muscle taut. His first throw he had taken without
+strain, being mainly anxious, under Cameron's coaching, to get the
+swing, but under the excitement incident to the contest he had put more
+strength into the throw than appeared either to himself or to his coach.
+Now, however, with nerves and muscles taut, he was eager to increase
+his distance, too eager it seemed, for his second throw measured only
+eighty-nine feet.
+
+A silence fell upon his friends and Cameron began to chide him.
+
+"You went right back to your old style, Mack. There wasn't the sign of a
+swing."
+
+"I will get it yet, or bust!" said big Mack between his teeth.
+
+McGee's second throw went one hundred and seventeen feet. A cheer arose
+from his backers, for it was a great throw and within five feet of
+his record. Undoubtedly McGee was in great form and he might well be
+expected to measure up to his best to-day.
+
+Black Duncan's second throw measured one hundred and nineteen feet
+seven, which was fifteen feet short of his record and showed him to be
+climbing steadily upward.
+
+Once more the turn came to Mack, and once more, with almost savage
+eagerness, he seized the hammer preparatory to his throw.
+
+"Now, Mack, for heaven's sake go easy!" said Cameron. "Take your swing
+easy and slow."
+
+But Mack heeded him not. "I can beat it!" he muttered between his shut
+teeth, "and I will." So, with every nerve taut and every muscle strained
+to its limit, he made his third attempt. It was in vain. The measure
+showed ninety-seven feet six. A suppressed groan rose from the Maplehill
+folk.
+
+"A grand throw, lad, for a beginner," said Black Duncan.
+
+The excitement now became intense. By his first throw of one hundred and
+twenty-one feet two, Mack remained still the winner. But McGee had
+only four feet to gain and Black Duncan less than two to equal him.
+The little secretary went skipping about aglow with satisfaction
+and delight. The day was already famous in the history of Canadian
+athletics.
+
+Again McGee took place for his throw, his third and last. The crowd
+gathered in as near as they dared. But McGee had done his best for that
+day, and his final throw measured only one hundred and five feet.
+
+There remained yet but a single chance to wrest from Mack Murray the
+prize for that day, but that chance lay in the hands of Duncan Ross, the
+cool and experienced champion of many a hard-fought fight. Again Black
+Duncan took the hammer. It was his last throw. He had still fifteen feet
+to go to reach his own record, and he had often beaten the throw that
+challenged him to-day, but, on the other hand, he had passed through
+many a contest where his throw had fallen short of the one he must now
+beat to win. A hush fell upon the people as Black Duncan took his place.
+Once--twice--and, with ever increasing speed, thrice he swung the great
+hammer, then high and far it hurtled through the air.
+
+"Jerusalem!" cried Mack. "What a fling!"
+
+"Too high," muttered Black Duncan. "You have got it, lad, you have got
+it, and you well deserve it."
+
+"Tut-tut, nonsense!" said Mack impatiently. "Wait you a minute."
+
+Silent and expectant the crowd awaited the result. Twice over the judges
+measured the throw, then announced "One hundred and twenty-one feet."
+Mack had won by two inches.
+
+A great roar rose from the crowd, round Mack they surged like a flood,
+eager to grip his hands and eager to carry him off shoulder high. But
+he threw them off as a rock throws back the incoming tide and made
+for Duncan Ross, who stood, calm and pale, and with hand outstretched,
+waiting him. It was a new experience for Black Duncan, and a bitter, to
+be second in a contest. Only once in many years had he been forced to
+lower his colours, and to be beaten by a raw and unknown youth added
+to the humiliation of his defeat. But Duncan Ross had in his veins the
+blood of a long line of Highland gentlemen who knew how to take defeat
+with a smile.
+
+"I congratulate you, Mack Murray," he said in a firm, clear voice. "Your
+fame will be through Canada tomorrow, and well you deserve it."
+
+But Mack caught the outstretched hand in both of his and, leaning toward
+Black Duncan, he roared at him above the din.
+
+"Mr. Ross, Mr. Ross, it is no win! Listen to me!" he panted. "What are
+two inches in a hundred and twenty feet? A stretching of the tape will
+do it. No, no! Listen to me! You must listen to me as you are a man! I
+will not have it! You can beat me easily in the throw! At best it is a
+tie and nothing else will I have to-day. At least let us throw again!"
+he pleaded. But to this Ross would not listen for a moment.
+
+"The lad has made his win," he said to the judges, "and his win he must
+have."
+
+But Mack declared that nothing under heaven would make him change his
+mind. Finally the judges, too, agreed that in view of the possibility of
+a mistake in measuring with the tape, it would be only right and fair
+to count the result a tie. Black Duncan listened respectfully to the
+judges' decision.
+
+"You are asking me a good deal, Mack," he said at length, "but you are a
+gallant lad and I am an older man and--"
+
+"Aye! And a better!" shouted Mack.
+
+"And so I will agree."
+
+Once more the field was cleared. And now there fell upon the crowding
+people a hush as if they stood in the presence of death itself.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" said the M.P.P. "Do you realise that you are
+looking upon a truly great contest, a contest great enough to be of
+national, yes, of international, importance?"
+
+"You bet your sweet life!" cried the irrepressible Fatty. "We're going
+some. 'What's the matter with our Mack?'" he shouted.
+
+"'HE'S--ALL--RIGHT!'" came back the chant from the surrounding hills in
+hundreds of voices.
+
+"And what's the matter with Duncan Ross?" cried Mack, waving a hand
+above his head.
+
+Again the assurance of perfect rightness came back in a mighty roar
+from the hills. But it was hushed into immediate silence, a silence
+breathless and overwhelming, for Black Duncan had taken once more his
+place with the hammer in his hand.
+
+"Oh, I do wish they would hurry!" gasped Isa, her hands pressed hard
+upon her heart.
+
+"My heart is rather weak, too," said the M.P.P. "I fear I cannot last
+much longer. Ah! There he goes, thank God!"
+
+"Amen!" fervently responds little Mrs. Freeman, who, in the intensity
+of her excitement, is standing on a chair holding tight by her husband's
+coat collar.
+
+Not a sound breaks the silence as Black Duncan takes his swing. It is a
+crucial moment in his career. Only by one man in Canada has he ever been
+beaten, and with the powers of his antagonist all untried and unknown,
+for anyone could see that Mack has not yet thrown his best, he may be
+called upon to surrender within the next few minutes the proud position
+he has held so long in the athletic world. But there is not a sign
+of excitement in his face. With great care, and with almost painful
+deliberation, he balances the hammer for a moment or two, then
+once--twice--and, with a tremendous quickening of speed,--thrice--he
+swings, and his throw is made. A great throw it is, anyone can see, and
+one that beats the winner. In hushed and strained silence the people
+await the result.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one feet nine."
+
+Then rises the roar that has been held pent up during the last few
+nerve-racking minutes.
+
+"It iss a good enough throw," said Black Duncan with a quiet smile, "but
+there iss more in me yet. Now, lad, do your best and there will be no
+hard feeling with thiss man whateffer happens."
+
+Black Duncan's accent and idioms reveal the intense excitement that lies
+behind his quiet face.
+
+Mack takes the hammer.
+
+"I will not beat it, you may be sure," he says. "But I will just take a
+fling at it anyway."
+
+"Now, Mack," says Cameron, "for the sake of all you love forget the
+distance and show them the Braemar swing. Easy and slow."
+
+But Mack waves him aside and stands pondering. He is "getting the idea."
+
+"Man, do you see him?" whispers his brother Danny, who stands near to
+Cameron. "I believe he has got it."
+
+Cameron nods his head. Mack wears an impressive air of confidence and
+strength.
+
+"It will be a great throw," says Cameron to Danny.
+
+"Easy and slow" Mack poises the great hammer in his hand, swinging it
+gently backward and forward as if it had been a boy's toy, the great
+muscles in arms and back rippling up and down in firm full waves under
+his white skin, for he is now stripped to the waist for this throw.
+
+Suddenly, as if at command, the muscles seem to spring to their places,
+tense, alert. "Easy." Yes, truly, but by no means "slow." "Easy," the
+great hammer swings about his head in whirling circles, swift and ever
+swifter. Once--and twice--the great muscles in back and arms and back
+and legs knotted in bunches--thrice!
+
+"Ah-h-h!" A long, wailing, horrible sound, half moan, half cry, breaks
+from the people. Mack has missed his direction, and the great hammer,
+weighted with the potentialities of death, is describing a parabola high
+over the heads of the crowding, shrieking, scattering people.
+
+"Oh, my God! My God! Oh, my God! My God!" With his hands covering his
+eyes the big man is swaying from side to side like a mighty tree before
+a tempest. Cameron and Ross both spring to him. On the hillsides men
+stand rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and faint. One ghastly moment
+of suspense, and then a horrid sickening thud; one more agonising second
+of silence, and then from a score of throats rises a cry:
+
+"It's all right! All right! No one hurt!"
+
+From five hundred throats breaks a weird unearthly mingling of strange
+sounds; cheers and cries, shouts and sobs, prayers and oaths. In the
+midst of it all Mack sinks to his knees, with hands outstretched to
+heaven.
+
+"Great God, I thank Thee! I thank Thee!" he cries brokenly, the tears
+streaming down his ghastly face. Then, falling forward upon his hands,
+he steadies himself while great sobs come heaving from his mighty chest.
+Cameron and Ross, still upholding him, through the crowd a man comes
+pushing his way, hurling men and women right and left.
+
+"Back, people! And be still." It is the minister, Alexander Munro. "Be
+still! It is a great deliverance that God has wrought! Peace, woman! God
+is near! Let us pray."
+
+Instantly all noises are hushed, hats come off, and all up the sloping
+hills men and women fall to their knees, or remain standing with heads
+bowed, while the minister, upright beside the kneeling man, spreads his
+hands towards heaven and prays in a voice steady, strong, thrilling:
+
+"Almighty God, great and wonderful in Thy ways, merciful and gracious
+in Thy providence, Thou hast wrought a great deliverance before our eyes
+this day. All power is in Thy hands. All forces move at Thy command.
+Thine hand it is that guided this dread hammer harmless to its own
+place, saving the people from death. It is ever thus, Father, for Thou
+art Love. We lift to Thee our hearts' praise. May we walk softly before
+Thee this day and alway. Amen!"
+
+"Amen! Amen!" On every hand and up the hillsides rises the fervent
+solemn attestation.
+
+"Rise, Mr. Murray!" says the minister in a loud and solemn voice, giving
+Mack his hand. "God has been gracious to you this day. See that you do
+not forget."
+
+"He has that! He has that!" sobs Mack. "And God forgive me if I ever
+forget." And, suddenly pushing from him the many hands stretched out
+towards him, he stumbles his way through the crowd, led off by his two
+friends towards the tent.
+
+"Hold on there a minute! Let us get this measurement first." It was the
+matter-of-fact, cheery voice of Fatty Freeman. "If I am not mistaken we
+have a great throw to measure."
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Freeman," said the minister. "Let us get the
+measurement and let not the day be spoiled."
+
+"Here, you people, don't stand there gawking like a lot of dotty
+chumps!" cried the secretary, striving to whip them out of the mood of
+horror into which they had fallen. "Get a move on! Give the judges a
+chance! What is it, doctor?"
+
+The judges were consulting. At length the decision was announced.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-nine seven."
+
+"Hooray!" yelled Fatty, flinging his straw hat high. "One hundred and
+twenty-nine seven! It is a world throw! Why don't you yell, you people?
+Don't you know that you have a world-beater among you? Yell! Yell!"
+
+"Three cheers for Mack Murray!" called out the Reverend Harper Freeman
+from the platform, swinging his great black beaver hat over his head.
+
+It was what the people wanted. Again, and again, and yet again the crowd
+exhausted its pent-up emotions in frantic cheers. The clouds of gloom
+were rolled back, the sun was shining bright again, and with fresh zest
+the people turned to the enjoyment of the rest of the programme.
+
+"Thank you, Sir!" said Fatty amid the uproar, gripping the hand of Mr.
+Munro. "You have saved the day for us. We were all going to smash, but
+you pulled us out."
+
+Meantime in the tent Duncan Ross was discoursing to his friends.
+
+"Man, Mack! Yon's a mighty throw! Do you know it iss within five feet
+of my own record and within ten of Big Rory's? Then," he said solemnly,
+"you are in the world's first class to-day, my boy, and you are just
+beginning."
+
+"I have just quit!" said Mack.
+
+"Whist, lad! Thiss iss not the day for saying anything about it. We
+will wait a wee and to-day we will just be thankful." And with that they
+turned to other things.
+
+They were still in the dressing tent when the secretary thrust his
+cheery face under the flap.
+
+"I say, boys! Are you ready? Cameron, we want you on the pipes."
+
+"Harp!" said Mack. "I am going home. I am quite useless."
+
+"And me, too," said Cameron. "I shall go with you, Mack."
+
+"What?" cried Fatty in consternation. "Look here, boys! Is this a square
+deal? God knows I am nearly all in myself. I've had enough to keep this
+thing from going to pieces. Don't you go back on me now!"
+
+"That is so!" said Mack slowly. "Cameron, you must stay. You are needed.
+I will spoil things more by staying than by going. I would be forever
+seeing that hammer crushing down--" He covered his face with his hands
+and shuddered.
+
+"All right, Mack! I will stay," said Cameron. "But what about you?"
+
+"Oh," said Black Duncan, "Mack and I will walk about and have a smoke
+for a little."
+
+"Thanks, boys, you are the stuff!" said Fatty fervently. "Once more you
+have saved the day. Come then, Cameron! Get your pipes. Old Sutherland
+is waiting for you."
+
+But before he set off Mack called Cameron to him.
+
+"You will see Isa," he said, "and tell her why I could not stay. And you
+will take her home." His face was still pallid, his voice unsteady.
+
+"I will take care of her, Mack, never fear. But could you not remain? It
+might help you."
+
+But Mack only shook his head. His fervent Highland soul had too recently
+passed through the valley of death and its shadows were still upon him.
+
+Four hours later Fatty looked in upon Mack at his own home. He found him
+sitting in the moonlight in the open door of the big new barn, with his
+new-made friend, Duncan Ross, at one door post and old Piper Sutherland
+at the other, while up and down the floor in the shadow within Cameron
+marched, droning the wild melody of the "Maccrimmon Lament." Mournful
+and weird it sounded through the gloom, but upon the hearts of these
+Highlanders it fell like a soothing balm. With a wave of his hand Mack
+indicated a seat, which Fatty took without a word. Irrepressible though
+he was, he had all the instincts of a true gentleman. He knew it was the
+time for silence, and silent he stood till the Lament had run through
+its "doubling" and its "trebling," ending with the simple stately
+movement of its original theme. To Fatty it was a mere mad and
+unmelodious noise, but, reading the faces of the three men before him in
+the moonlight, he had sense enough to recognise his own limitations.
+
+At length the Lament was finished and Cameron came forward into the
+light.
+
+"Ah! That iss good for the soul," said old piper Sutherland. "Do you
+know what your pipes have been saying to me in yon Lament?
+
+          'Yea, though I walk through Death's dark vale,
+               Yet will I fear none ill;
+           For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
+               And staff me comfort still.'
+
+And we have been in the valley thiss day."
+
+Mack rose to his feet.
+
+"I could not have said it myself, but, as true as death, that is the
+word for me."
+
+"Well," said Fatty, rising briskly, "I guess you are all right, Mack. I
+confess I was a bit anxious about you, but--"
+
+"There is no need," said Mack gravely. "I can sleep now."
+
+"Good-night, then," replied Fatty, turning to go. "Cameron, I owe you a
+whole lot. I won't forget it." He set his hat upon the back of his head,
+sticking his hands into his pockets and surveying the group before him.
+"Say! You Highlanders are a great bunch. I do not pretend to understand
+you, but I want to say that between you you have saved the day." And
+with that the cheery, frisky, irrepressible, but kindly little man faded
+into the moonlight and was gone.
+
+For the fourth time the day had been saved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+
+
+It was a Sabbath day in late August, and in no month of the year does
+a Sabbath day so chime with the time. For the Sabbath day is a day for
+rest and holy thought, and the late August is the rest time of the year,
+when the woods and fields are all asleep in a slumberous blue haze; the
+sacred time, too, for in late August old Mother Earth is breathing her
+holiest aspirations heavenward, having made offering of her best in the
+full fruitage of the year. Hence a Sabbath day in late August chimes
+marvellously well with the time.
+
+And this particular Sabbath day was perfect of its kind, a dreamy,
+drowsy day, a day when genial suns and hazy cool airs mingle in
+excellent harmony, and the tired worker, freed from his week's toil,
+basks and stretches, yawns and revels in rest under the orchard trees;
+unless, indeed, he goes to morning church. And to morning church Cameron
+went as a rule, but to-day, owing to a dull ache in his head and a
+general sense of languor pervading his limbs, he had chosen instead, as
+likely to be more healing to his aching head and his languid limbs, the
+genial sun, tempered with cool and lazy airs under the orchard trees.
+And hence he lay watching the democrat down the lane driven off to
+church by Perkins, with Mandy beside him in the front seat, the seat
+of authority and of activity, and Mr. Haley alone in the back seat, the
+seat of honour and of retirement. Mrs. Haley was too overborne by the
+heat and rush of the busy week to adventure the heat and dust of the
+road, and to sustain the somewhat strenuous discourse of the Reverend
+Harper Freeman, to whose flock the Haleys belonged. This, however, was
+not Mrs. Haley's invariable custom. In the cooler weather it was her
+habit to drive on a Sunday morning to church, sitting in the back seat
+beside her husband, with Tim and Mandy occupying the front seat beside
+the hired man, but during the heat and hurry of the harvest time she
+would take advantage of the quietness of the house and of the two or
+three hours' respite from the burden of household duties to make up
+arrears of sleep accumulated during the preceding week, salving her
+conscience, for she had a conscience in the matter, with a promise that
+she might go in the evening when it was cooler and when she was more
+rested. This promise, however, having served its turn, was never
+fulfilled, for by the evening the wheels of household toil began once
+more to turn, and Mrs. Haley found it easier to worship vicariously,
+sending Mandy and Tim to the evening service. And to this service the
+young people were by no means loath to go, for it was held on fair
+evenings in MacBurney's woods, two miles away by the road, one mile by
+the path through the woods. On occasion Perkins would hitch up in the
+single buggy Dexter, the fiery young colt, too fiery for any other to
+drive, and, as a special attention to his employer's daughter, would
+drive her to the service. But since the coming of Cameron, Mandy had
+allowed this custom to fall into disuse, at first somewhat to Perkins'
+relief, for the colt was restless and fretted against the tie rein;
+and, besides, Perkins was not as yet quite prepared to acknowledge any
+special relationship between himself and the young lady in question
+before the assembled congregation, preferring to regard himself and
+to be regarded by others as a free lance. Later, however, as Mandy's
+preference for a walk through the woods became more marked, Perkins,
+much to his disgust, found himself reduced to the attitude of a
+suppliant, urging the superior attraction of a swift drive behind
+Dexter as against a weary walk to the service. Mandy, however, with
+the directness of her simple nature, had no compunction in frankly
+maintaining her preference for a walk with Tim and Cameron through the
+woods; indeed, more than once she allowed Perkins to drive off with his
+fiery colt, alone in his glory.
+
+But this Sabbath morning, as Cameron lay under the orchard trees, he was
+firmly resolved that he would give the whole day to the nursing of the
+ache in his head and the painful languor in his body. And so lying he
+allowed his mind to wander uncontrolled over the happenings of the past
+months, troubled by a lazy consciousness of a sore spot somewhere in his
+life. Gradually there grew into clearness the realisation of the cause
+of this sore spot.
+
+"What is the matter with Perkins?" he asked of Tim, who had declined
+to go to church, and who had strolled into the orchard to be near his
+friend.
+
+"What is the matter with Perkins?" Cameron asked a second time, for Tim
+was apparently too much engaged with a late harvest apple to answer.
+
+"How?" said the boy at length.
+
+"He is so infernally grumpy with me."
+
+"Grumpy? He's sore, I guess."
+
+"Sore?"
+
+"You bet! Ever since I beat him in the turnips that day."
+
+"Ever since YOU beat him?" asked Cameron in amazement. "Why should he be
+sore against me?"
+
+"He knows it was you done it," said Tim.
+
+"Nonsense, Tim! Besides, Perkins isn't a baby. He surely doesn't hold
+that against me."
+
+"Huh, huh," said Tim, "everybody's pokin' fun at him, and he hates that,
+and ever since the picnic, too, he hates you."
+
+"But why in the world?"
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said Tim, impatient at Cameron's density. "I guess you
+know all right."
+
+"Know? Not I!"
+
+"Git out?"
+
+"Honor bright, Tim," replied Cameron, sitting up. "Now, honestly, tell
+me, Tim, why in the world Perkins should hate me."
+
+"You put his nose out of joint, I guess," said Tim with a grin.
+
+"Oh, rot, Tim! How?"
+
+"Every how," said Tim, proceeding to elaborate. "First when you came
+here you were no good--I mean--" Tim checked himself hastily.
+
+"I know what you mean, Tim. Go on. You are quite right. I couldn't do
+anything on the farm."
+
+"Now," continued Tim, "you can do anything jist as good as him--except
+bindin', of course. He's a terror at bindin', but at pitchin' and
+shockin' and loadin' you're jist as good."
+
+"But, Tim, that's all nonsense. Perkins isn't such a fool as to hate me
+because I can keep up my end."
+
+"He don't like you," said Tim stubbornly.
+
+"But why? Why in the name of common sense?"
+
+"Well," said Tim, summing up the situation, "before you come he used to
+be the hull thing. Now he's got to play second fiddle."
+
+But Cameron remained unenlightened.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" continued Tim, making further concessions to his
+friend's stupidity. "At the dances, at the raisin's, runnin',
+jumpin'--everythin'--Perkins used to be the King Bee. Now--" Tim's
+silence furnished an impressive close to the contrast. "Why! They all
+think you are just fine!" said Tim, with a sudden burst of confidence.
+
+"They?"
+
+"All the boys. Yes, and the girls, too," said Tim, allowing his solemn
+face the unusual luxury of a smile.
+
+"The girls?"
+
+"Aw, yeh know well enough--the Murray girls, and the MacKenzies, and the
+hull lot of them. And then--and then--there's Mandy, too." Here Tim shot
+a keen glance at his friend, who now sat leaning against the trunk of an
+apple tree with his eyes closed.
+
+"Now, Tim, you are a shrewd little chap"--here Cameron sat upright--"but
+how do you know about the girls, and what is this you say about Mandy?
+Mandy is good to me--very kind and all that, but--"
+
+"She used to like Perkins pretty well," said Tim, with a kind of
+hesitating shyness.
+
+"And Perkins?"
+
+"Oh, he thought he jist owned her. Guess he ain't so sure now," added
+Tim. "I guess you've changed Mandy all right."
+
+It was the one thing Cameron hated to hear, but he made light of it.
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" he exclaimed. "But if I did I would be mighty glad of
+it. Mandy is too good for a man like Perkins. Why, he isn't safe."
+
+"He's a terror," replied Tim seriously. "They are all scairt of him.
+He's a terror to fight. Why, at MacKenzie's raisin' last year he jist
+went round foamin' like an old boar and nobody dast say a word to him.
+Even Mack Murray was scairt to touch him. When he gets like that he
+ain't afraid of nothin' and he's awful quick and strong."
+
+Tim proceeded to enlarge upon this theme, which apparently fascinated
+him, with tales of Perkins' prowess in rough-and-tumble fighting. But
+Cameron had lost interest and was lying down again with his eyes closed.
+
+"Well," he said, when Tim had finished his recital, "if he is that kind
+of a man Mandy should have nothing to do with him."
+
+But Tim was troubled.
+
+"Dad likes him," he said gloomily. "He is a good hand. And ma likes him,
+too. He taffies her up."
+
+"And Mandy?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"I don't know," said Tim, still more gloomy. "I guess he kind of makes
+her. I'd--I'd jist like to take a lump out of him." Tim's eyes blazed
+into a sudden fire. "He runs things on this farm altogether too much."
+
+"Buck up then, Tim, and beat him," said Cameron, dismissing the subject.
+"And now I must have some sleep. I have got an awful head on."
+
+Tim was quick enough to understand the hint, but still he hovered about.
+
+"Say, I'm awful sorry," he said. "Can't I git somethin'? You didn't eat
+no breakfast."
+
+"Oh, all I want is sleep, Tim. I will be all right tomorrow," replied
+Cameron, touched by the tone of sympathy in Tim's voice. "You are a fine
+little chap. Trot along and let me sleep."
+
+But no sleep came to Cameron, partly because of the hammer knocking in
+his head, but chiefly because of the thoughts set going by Tim. Cameron
+was not abnormally egotistical, but he was delightedly aware of the new
+place he held in the community ever since the now famous Dominion Day
+picnic, and, now that the harvest rush had somewhat slackened, social
+engagements had begun to crowd upon him. Dances and frolics, coon hunts
+and raisings were becoming the vogue throughout the community, and no
+social function was complete without the presence of Cameron. But
+this sudden popularity had its embarrassments, and among them, and
+threatening to become annoying, was the hostility of Perkins, veiled as
+yet, but none the less real. Moreover, behind Perkins stood a band of
+young fellows of whom he was the recognised leader and over whom his
+ability in the various arts and crafts of the farm, his physical prowess
+in sports, his gay, cheery manner, and, it must be said, the reputation
+he bore for a certain fierce brute courage in rough-and-tumble fighting,
+gave him a sort of ascendency.
+
+But Perkins' attitude towards him did not after all cause Cameron much
+concern. There was another and more annoying cause of embarrassment, and
+that was Mandy. Tim's words kept reiterating themselves in his brain,
+"You've changed Mandy all right." Over this declaration of Tim's,
+Cameron proceeded to argue with himself. He sat bolt upright that he
+might face himself on the matter.
+
+"Now, then," he said to himself, "let's have this thing out."
+
+"Most willingly. This girl was on the way to engagement to this young
+man Perkins. You come on the scene. Everything is changed."
+
+"Well! What of it? It's a mighty good thing for her."
+
+"But you are the cause of it."
+
+"The occasion, rather."
+
+"No, the cause. You have attracted her to you."
+
+"I can't help that. Besides, it is a mere passing whim. She'll get over
+all that?" And Cameron laughed scornfully in his own face.
+
+"Do you know that? And how do you know it? Tim thinks differently."
+
+"Oh, confound it all! I see that I shall have to get out of here."
+
+"A wise decision truly, and the sooner the better. Do you propose to go
+at once?"
+
+"At once? Well, I should like to spend the winter here. I have made a
+number of friends and life is beginning to be pleasant."
+
+"Exactly! It suits your convenience, but how about Mandy?"
+
+"Oh, rubbish! Must I be governed by the fancies of that silly girl?
+Besides, the whole thing is absurdly ridiculous."
+
+"But facts are stubborn, and anyone can see that the girl is--"
+
+"Hang it all! I'll go at the end of the month."
+
+"Very well. And in the leave-taking--?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"It is pleasant to be appreciated and to carry away with one memories, I
+will not say tender, but appreciative."
+
+"I can't act like a boor. I must be decent to the girl. Besides, she
+isn't altogether a fool."
+
+"No, but very crude, very primitive, very passionate, and therefore very
+defenseless."
+
+"All right, I shall simply shake hands and go."
+
+So, with the consequent sense of relief that high resolve always brings,
+Cameron lay down again and fell into slumber and dreams of home.
+
+From these dreams of home Mandy recalled him with a summons to dinner.
+As his eye, still filled with the vision of his dreams, fell upon her
+in all the gorgeous splendour of her Sunday dress, he was conscious of
+a strong sense of repulsion. How coarse, how crude, how vulgar she
+appeared, how horribly out of keeping with those scenes through which he
+had just been wandering in his dreams.
+
+"I want no dinner, Mandy," he said shortly. "I have a bad head and I am
+not hungry."
+
+"No dinner?" That a man should not want dinner was to Mandy quite
+inexplicable, unless, indeed, he were ill.
+
+"Are you sick?" she cried in quick alarm.
+
+"No, I have a headache. It will pass away," said Cameron, turning over
+on his side. Still Mandy lingered.
+
+"Let me bring you a nice piece of pie and a cup of tea."
+
+Cameron shuddered.
+
+"No," he said, "bring me nothing. I merely wish to sleep."
+
+But Mandy refused to be driven away.
+
+"Say, I'm awful sorry. I know you're sick."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Cameron, impatiently, waiting for her to be gone. Still
+Mandy hesitated.
+
+"I'm awful sorry," she said again, and her voice, deep, tender,
+full-toned, revealed her emotion.
+
+Cameron turned impatiently towards her.
+
+"Look here, Mandy! There's nothing wrong with me. I only want a little
+sleep. I shall be all right to-morrow."
+
+But Mandy's fears were not to be allayed.
+
+"Say," she cried, "you look awful bad."
+
+"Oh, get out, Mandy! Go and get your dinner. Don't mind me." Cameron's
+tone was decidedly cross.
+
+Without further remonstrance Mandy turned silently away, but before she
+turned Cameron caught the gleam of tears in the great blue eyes. A swift
+compunction seized him.
+
+"I say, Mandy, I don't want to be rude, but--"
+
+"Rude?" cried the girl. "You? You couldn't be. You are always good--to
+me--and--I--don't--know--" Here her voice broke.
+
+"Oh, come, Mandy, get away to dinner. You are a good girl. Now leave me
+alone."
+
+The kindness in his voice quite broke down Mandy's all too slight
+control. She turned away, audibly sniffling, with her apron to her eyes,
+leaving Cameron in a state of wrathful perplexity.
+
+"Oh, confound it all!" he groaned to himself. "This is a rotten go. By
+Jove! This means the West for me. The West! After all, that's the place.
+Here there is no chance anyway. Why did I not go sooner?"
+
+He rose from the grass, shivering with a sudden chill, went to his bed
+in the hay mow, and, covering himself with Tim's blankets and his own,
+fell again into sleep. Here, late in the afternoon, Tim found him and
+called him to supper.
+
+With Mandy's watchful eye upon him he went through the form of eating,
+but Mandy was not to be deceived.
+
+"You ain't eatin' nothin'," she said reproachfully as he rose from the
+table.
+
+"Enough for a man who is doing nothing," replied Cameron. "What I want
+is exercise. I think I shall take a walk."
+
+"Going to church?" she enquired, an eager light springing into her eye.
+
+"To church? I hadn't thought of it," replied Cameron, but, catching
+the gleam of a smile on Perkins' face and noting the utterly woebegone
+expression on Mandy's, he added, "Well, I might as well walk to church
+as any place else. You are going, Tim?"
+
+"Huh huh!" replied Tim.
+
+"I am going to hitch up Deck, Mandy," said Perkins.
+
+"Oh, I'm goin' to walk!" said Mandy, emphatically.
+
+"All right!" said Perkins. "Guess I'll walk too with the crowd."
+
+"Don't mind me," said Mandy.
+
+"I don't," laughed Perkins, "you bet! Nor anybody else."
+
+"And that's no lie!" sniffed Mandy, with a toss of her head.
+
+"Better drive to church, Mandy," suggested her mother. "You know you're
+jist tired out and it will be late when you get started."
+
+"Tired? Late?" cried Mandy, with alacrity. "I'll be through them dishes
+in a jiffy and be ready in no time. I like the walk through the woods."
+
+"Depends on the company," laughed Perkins again. "So do I. Guess we'll
+all go together."
+
+True to her promise, Mandy was ready within half an hour. Cameron
+shuddered as he beheld the bewildering variety of colour in her attire
+and the still more bewildering arrangement of hat and hair.
+
+"You're good and gay, Mandy," said Perkins. "What's the killing?"
+
+Mandy made no reply save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as she set
+off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim bringing up the
+rear.
+
+The lane was a grassy sward, cut with two wagon-wheel tracks, and with
+a picturesque snake fence on either side. Beyond the fences lay the
+fields, some of them with stubble raked clean, the next year's clover
+showing green above the yellow, some with the grain standing still in
+the shock, and some with the crop, the late oats for instance, still
+uncut, but ready for the reaper. The turnip field was splendidly and
+luxuriantly green with never a sign of the brown earth. The hay meadow,
+too, was green and purple with the second growth of clover.
+
+So down the lane and between the shorn fields, yellow and green, between
+the clover fields and the turnips, they walked in silence, for the
+spell of the Sabbath evening lay upon the sunny fields, barred with the
+shadows from the trees that grew along the fence lines everywhere.
+At the "slashing" the wagon ruts faded out and the road narrowed to a
+single cow path, winding its way between stumps and round log piles,
+half hidden by a luxuriant growth of foxglove and fireweed and asters,
+and everywhere the glorious goldenrod. Then through the bars the path
+led into the woods, a noble remnant of the beech and elm and maple
+forest from which the farm had been cut some sixty years before. Cool
+and shadowy they stood, and shot through with bright shafts of gold from
+the westering sun, full of mysterious silence except for the twittering
+of the sleepy birds or for the remonstrant call of the sentinel crow
+from his watch tower on the dead top of a great elm. Deeper into the
+shade the path ran until in the gloom it faded almost out of sight.
+
+Soothed by the cool shade, Cameron loitered along the path, pausing to
+learn of Tim the names of plants and trees as he went.
+
+"Ain't yeh never comin'?" called Mandy from the gloom far in front.
+
+"What's all the rush?" replied Tim, impatiently, who loved nothing
+better than a quiet walk with Cameron through the woods.
+
+"Rush? We'll be late, and I hate walkin' up before the hull crowd. Come
+on!" cried his sister in impatient tone.
+
+"All right, Mandy, we're nearly through the woods. I begin to see
+the clearing yonder," said Cameron, pointing to where the light was
+beginning to show through the tree tops before them.
+
+But they were late enough, and Mandy was glad of the cover of the
+opening hymn to allow her to find her way to a group of her girl
+friends, the males of the party taking shelter with a neighbouring group
+of their own sex near by.
+
+Upon the sloping sides of the grassy hills and under the beech and
+maple trees, the vanguard of the retreating woods, sat the congregation,
+facing the preacher, who stood on the grassy level below. Behind them
+was the solid wall of thick woods, over them time spreading boughs, and
+far above the trees the blue summer sky, all the bluer for the little
+white clouds that sailed serene like ships upon a sea. At their feet lay
+the open country, checkered by the snake fences into fields of yellow,
+green, and brown, and rolling away to meet the woods at the horizon.
+
+The Sabbath rest filled the sweet air, breathed from the shady woods,
+rested upon the checkered fields, and lifted with the hymn to the blue
+heaven above. A stately cathedral it was, this place of worship, filled
+with the incense of flowers and fields, arched by the high dome of
+heaven, and lighted by the glory of the setting sun.
+
+Relieved by the walk for a time from the ache in his head, Cameron
+surrendered himself to the mysterious influences of the place and
+the hour. He let his eyes wander over the fields below him to the far
+horizon, and beyond--beyond the woods, beyond the intervening leagues
+of land and sea--and was again gazing upon the sunlit loveliness of the
+Cuagh Oir. The Glen was abrim with golden light this summer evening,
+the purple was on the hills and the little loch gleamed sapphire at the
+bottom.
+
+The preacher was reading his text.
+
+"Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to every
+man according to his several ability, and straightway took his journey,"
+and so on to the end of that marvellously wise tale, wise with the
+wisdom of God, confirmed by the wisdom of human experience.
+
+The Reverend Harper Freeman's voice could hardly, even by courtesy, be
+called musical; in fact, it was harsh and strident; but this evening
+the hills, and the trees, and the wide open spaces, Nature's mighty
+modulator, subdued the harshness, so that the voice rolled up to the
+people clear, full, and sonorous. Nor was the preacher possessed of
+great learning nor endued with the gift of eloquence. He had, however, a
+shrewd knowledge of his people and of their ways and of their needs, and
+he had a kindly heart, and, more than all, he had the preacher's gift,
+the divine capacity for taking fire.
+
+For a time his words fell unheeded upon Cameron's outer ear.
+
+"To every man his own endowments, some great, some small, but, mark you,
+no man left quite poverty-stricken. God gives every man his chance. No
+man can look God in the face, not one of you here can say that you have
+had no chance."
+
+Cameron's vagrant mind, suddenly recalled, responded with a quick
+assent. Opportunity? Endowment? Yes, surely. His mind flashed back over
+the years of his education at the Academy and the University, long lazy
+years. How little he had made of them! Others had turned them into the
+gold of success. He wondered how old Dunn was getting on, and Linklater,
+and little Martin. How far away seemed those days, and yet only some
+four or five months separated him from them.
+
+"One was a failure, a dead, flat failure," continued the preacher.
+"Not so much a wicked man, no murderer, no drunkard, no gambler, but a
+miserable failure. Poor fellow! At the end of life a wretched bankrupt,
+losing even his original endowment. How would you like to come home
+after ten, twenty, thirty years of experiment with life and confess to
+your father that you were dead broke and no good?"
+
+Again Cameron's mind came back from its wandering with a start. Go back
+to his father a failure! He drew his lip down hard over his teeth. Not
+while he lived! And yet, what was there in prospect for him? His whole
+soul revolted against the dreary monotony and the narrowness of his
+present life, and yet, what other path lay open? Cameron went straying
+in fancy over the past, or in excursions into the future, while,
+parallel with his rambling, the sermon continued to make its way through
+its various heads and particulars.
+
+"Why?" The voice of the preacher rose clear, dominant, arresting. "Why
+did he fail so abjectly, so meanly, so despicably? For there is no
+excuse for a failure. Listen! No man NEED fail. A man who is a failure
+is a mean, selfish, lazy chump." Mr. Freeman was colloquial, if
+anything. "Some men pity him. I don't. I have no use for him, and he is
+the one thing in all the world that God himself has no use for."
+
+Again Cameron's mind was jerked back as a runaway horse by a rein. So
+far his life had been a failure. Was there then no excuse for failure?
+What of his upbringing, his education, his environment? He had been
+indulging the habit during these last weeks of shifting responsibility
+from himself for what he had become.
+
+"What was the cause of this young man's failure?" reiterated the
+preacher. The preacher had a wholesome belief in the value of
+reiteration. He had a habit of rubbing in his points. "He blamed the
+boss. Listen to his impudence! 'I knew thee to be a hard man.' He blamed
+his own temperament and disposition. 'I was afraid.' But the boss brings
+him up sharp and short. 'Quit lying!' he said. 'I'll tell you what's
+wrong with you. You've got a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're
+too lazy to live. Here, take that money from him and give it to the man
+that can do most with it, and take this useless loafer out of my sight.'
+And served him right, too, say I, impudent, lazy liar."
+
+Cameron found his mind rising in wrathful defense of the unhappy
+wretched failure in the story. But the preacher was utterly relentless
+and proceeded to enlarge upon the character of the unhappy wretch.
+
+"Impudent! The way to tell an impudent man is to let him talk. Now
+listen to this man cheek the boss! 'I knew you,' he said. 'You skin
+everybody in sight.' I have always noticed," remarked the preacher, with
+a twinkle in his eye, "that the hired man who can't keep up his end is
+the kind that cheeks the boss. And so it is with life. Why, some men
+would cheek Almighty God. They turn right round and face the other way
+when God is explaining things to them, when He is persuading them, when
+He is trying to help them. Then they glance back over their shoulders
+and say, 'Aw, gwan! I know better than you.' Think of the impudence of
+them! That's what many a man does with God. With GOD, mind you! GOD!
+Your Father in heaven, your Brother, your Saviour, God as you know him
+in the Man of Galilee, the Man you always see with the sick and the
+outcast and the broken-hearted. It is this God that owns you and all
+you've got--be honest and say so. You must begin by getting right with
+God."
+
+"God!" Once more Cameron went wandering back into the far away days
+of childhood. God was very near then, and very friendly. How well he
+remembered when his mother had tucked him in at night and had kissed him
+and had put out the light. He never felt alone and afraid, for she left
+him, so she said, with God. It was God who took his mother's place, near
+to his bedside. In those days God seemed very near and very kind. He
+remembered his mother's look one day when he declared to her that he
+could hear God breathing just beside him in the dark. How remote
+God seemed to-day and how shadowy, and, yes, he had to confess it,
+unfriendly. He heard no more of the sermon. With a curious ache in his
+heart he allowed his mind to dwell amid those happy, happy memories when
+his mother and God were the nearest and dearest to him of all he knew.
+It may have been the ache in his head or the oppressive languor that
+seemed to possess his body, but throughout the prayer that followed
+the sermon he was conscious chiefly of a great longing for his mother's
+touch upon his head, and with that a longing for his boyhood's sense of
+the friendly God in his heart.
+
+And so as the preacher led them up to God in prayer, Cameron bowed his
+head with the others, thankful that he could still believe that, though
+clouds and darkness might be about Him, God was not beyond the reach of
+the soul's cry nor quite unmoved by human need. And for the first time
+for years he sent forth as a little child his cry of need, "God help me!
+God help me!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CHIVAREE
+
+
+There was still light enough to see. The last hymn was announced.
+Cameron was conscious of a deep, poignant emotion. He glanced swiftly
+about him. The eyes of all were upon the preacher's face while he read
+in slow sonorous tones the words of the old Methodist hymn:
+
+          "Come, Thou Fount of every blessing!
+             Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;"
+
+all except the group of young men of whom Perkins was the centre, who,
+by means of the saccharine medium known as conversation lozenges, were
+seeking to divert the attention of the band of young girls sitting
+before them. Among these sat Mandy. As his eye rested upon the billowy
+outlines of her figure, struggling with the limitations of her white
+blouse, tricked out with pink ribbons, he was conscious of a wave of
+mingled pity and disgust. Dull, stupid, and vulgar she looked. It was at
+her that Perkins was flipping his conversation lozenges. One fell
+upon her hymn book. With a start she glanced about. Not an eye except
+Cameron's was turned her way. With a smile and a blush that burned deep
+under the dull tan of her neck and cheek she took the lozenge, read its
+inscription, burning a deeper red. The words which she had read she
+took as Cameron's. She turned her eyes full upon his face. The light
+of tremulous joy in their lovely depths startled and thrilled him.
+A snicker from the group of young men behind roused in him a deep
+indignation. They were taking their coarse fun out of this simple-minded
+girl. Cameron's furious glance at them appeared only to increase their
+amusement. It did not lessen Cameron's embarrassment and rage that now
+and then during the reading of the hymn Mandy's eyes were turned upon
+him as if with new understanding. Enraged with himself, and more with
+the group of hoodlums behind him, Cameron stood for the closing hymn
+with his arms folded across his breast. At the second verse a hand
+touched his arm. It was Mandy offering him her book. Once more a snicker
+from the group of delighted observers behind him stirred his indignation
+on behalf of this awkward and untutored girl. He forced himself to
+listen to the words of the third verse, which rose clear and sonorous in
+the preacher's voice:
+
+          "Here I raise my Ebenezer,
+             Hither by Thy help I'm come;
+           And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
+             Safely to arrive at home."
+
+The serene assurance of the old Methodist hymn rose triumphant in the
+singing, an assurance born of an experience of past conflict ending
+in triumph. That note of high and serene confidence conjured up with
+a flash of memory his mother's face. That was her characteristic, a
+serene, undismayed courage. In the darkest hours that steady flame of
+courage never died down.
+
+But once more he was recalled to the service of the hour by a voice,
+rich, full, low, yet of wonderful power, singing the old words. It took
+him a moment or two to discover that it was Mandy singing beside him.
+Her face was turned from him and upwards towards the trees above her,
+through the network of whose leaves the stars were beginning to shine.
+Amazed, enthralled, he listened to the flowing melody of her voice.
+It was like the song of a brook running deep in the forest shade,
+full-toned yet soft, quiet yet thrilling. She seemed to have forgotten
+her surroundings. Her soul was holding converse with the Eternal. He
+lost sight of the coarse and fleshly habiliments in the glimpse he
+caught of the soul that lived within, pure, it seemed to him, tender,
+and good. His heart went out to the girl in a new pity. Before the hymn
+was done she turned her face towards him, and, whether it was the magic
+of her voice, or the glorious splendour of her eyes, or the mystic touch
+of the fast darkening night, her face seemed to have lost much of its
+coarseness and all of its stupidity.
+
+As the congregation dispersed, Cameron, in silence, and with the spell
+of her voice still upon him, walked quietly beside Mandy towards the gap
+in the fence leading to the high road. Behind him came Perkins with his
+group of friends, chaffing with each other and with the girls walking
+in front of them. As Cameron was stepping over the rails where the
+fence had been let down, one of the young men following stumbled heavily
+against him, nearly throwing him down, and before he could recover
+himself Perkins had taken his place by Mandy's side and seized her arm.
+There was a general laugh at what was considered a perfectly fair and
+not unusual piece of jockeying in the squiring of young damsels. The
+proper procedure in such a case was that the discomfited cavalier should
+bide his time and serve a like turn upon his rival, the young lady
+meanwhile maintaining an attitude purely passive. But Mandy was not so
+minded. Releasing herself from Perkins' grasp, she turned upon the group
+of young men following, exclaiming angrily, "You ought to be ashamed
+of yourself, Sam Sailor!" Then, moving to Cameron's side, she said in a
+clear, distinct voice:
+
+"Mr. Cameron, would you please take my book for me?"
+
+"Come on, boys!" said Perkins, with his never failing laugh. "I guess
+we're not in this."
+
+"Take your medicine, Perkins," laughed one of his friends.
+
+"Yes, I'll take it all right," replied Perkins. But the laugh could not
+conceal the shake of passion in his voice. "It will work, too, you bet!"
+
+So saying, he strode off into the gathering gloom followed by his
+friends.
+
+"Come along, Mr. Cameron," said Mandy with a silly giggle. "I guess we
+don't need them fellows. They can't fool us, can they?"
+
+Her manner, her speech, her laugh rudely dissipated all Cameron's new
+feeling towards her. The whole episode filled him only with disgust and
+annoyance.
+
+"Come, then," he said, almost roughly. "We shall need to hurry, for
+there is a storm coming up."
+
+Mandy glanced at the gathering clouds.
+
+"My goodness!" she cried; "it's comin' up fast. My! I hate to git my
+clothes wet." And off she set at a rapid pace, keeping abreast of
+her companion and making gay but elephantine attempts at sprightly
+conversation. Before Cameron's unsympathetic silence, however, all her
+sprightly attempts came to abject failure.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" at length she asked. "Don't you want to
+see me home?"
+
+"What?" said Cameron, abruptly, for his thoughts were far away. "Oh,
+nonsense! Of course! Why not? But we shall certainly be caught in the
+storm. Let us hurry. Here, let me take your arm."
+
+His manner was brusque, almost rude.
+
+"Oh, I guess I can get along," replied Mandy, catching off her hat and
+gathering up her skirt over her shoulders, "but we'll have to hustle,
+for I'd hate to have you get, wet." Her imperturbable good humour and
+her solicitude for him rebuked Cameron for his abruptness.
+
+"I hope you will not get wet," he said.
+
+"Oh, don't you worry about me. I ain't salt nor sugar, but I forgot
+all about your bein' sick." And with laboured breath poor Mandy hurried
+through the growing darkness with Cameron keeping close by her side.
+"We won't be long now," she panted, as they turned from the side line
+towards their own gate.
+
+As if in reply to her words there sounded from behind the fence and
+close to their side a long loud howl. Cameron gave a start.
+
+"Great Caesar! What dog is that?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh," said Mandy coolly, "guess it's MacKenzie's Carlo."
+
+Immediately there rose from the fence on the other side an answering
+howl, followed by a full chorus of howls and yelps mingled with a
+bawling of calves and the ringing of cow bells, as if a dozen curs or
+more were in full cry after a herd of cattle. Cameron stood still in
+bewildered amazement.
+
+"What the deuce are they at?" he cried, peering through the darkness.
+
+"Huh!" grunted Mandy. "Them's curs all right, but they ain't much dog.
+You wait till I see them fellows. They'll pay for this, you bet!"
+
+"Do you mean to say these are not dogs?" cried Cameron, speaking in her
+ear, so great was the din.
+
+"Dogs?" answered Mandy with indignant scorn. "Naw! Just or'nary curs!
+Come along," she cried, catching his arm, "let's hurry."
+
+"Here!" he cried, suddenly wrenching himself free, "I am going to see
+into this."
+
+"No, no!" cried Mandy, gripping his arm once more with her strong hands.
+"They will hurt you. Come on! We're just home. You can see them again.
+No, I won't let you go."
+
+In vain he struggled. Her strong hands held him fast. Suddenly there was
+a succession of short, sharp barks. Immediately dead silence fell. Not a
+sound could be heard, not a shape seen.
+
+"Come out into the open, you cowardly curs!" shouted Cameron. "Come on!
+One, two, three at a time, if you dare!"
+
+But silence answered him.
+
+"Come," said Mandy in a low voice, "let's hurry. It's goin' to rain.
+Come on! Come along!"
+
+Cameron stood irresolute. Then arose out of the black darkness a long
+quavering cat call. With a sudden dash Cameron sprang towards the fence.
+Instantly there was a sound of running feet through the plowed field on
+the other side, then silence.
+
+"Come back, you cowards!" raged Cameron. "Isn't there a man among you?"
+
+For answer a clod came hurtling through the dark and struck with a thud
+upon the fence. Immediately, as if at a signal, there fell about Cameron
+a perfect hail of clods and even stones.
+
+"Oh! Oh!" shrieked Mandy, rushing towards him and throwing herself
+between him and the falling missiles. "Come away! Come away! They'll
+just kill you."
+
+For answer Cameron put his arms about her and drew her behind him,
+shielding her as best he could with his body.
+
+"Do you want to kill a woman?" he called aloud.
+
+At once the hail of clods ceased and, raging as he was, Mandy dragged
+him homeward. At the door of the house he made to turn back.
+
+"Not much, you don't," said Mandy, stoutly, "or I go with you."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Cameron, "let them go. They are only a lot of
+curs, anyway."
+
+For a few minutes they stood and talked in the kitchen, Cameron making
+light of the incident and making strenuous efforts to dissemble the rage
+that filled his soul. After a few minutes conversation Cameron announced
+his intention of going to bed, while Mandy passed upstairs. He left the
+house and stole down the lane toward the road. The throbbing pain in his
+head was forgotten in the blind rage that possessed him. He had only one
+longing, to stand within striking distance of the cowardly curs, only
+one fear, that they should escape him. Swiftly, silently, he stole down
+the lane, every nerve, every muscle tense as a steel spring. His throat
+was hot, his eyes so dazzled that he could scarcely see; his breath came
+in quick gasps; his hands were trembling as with a nervous chill. The
+storm had partially blown away. It had become so light that he could
+dimly discern a number of figures at the entrance to the lane. Having
+his quarry in sight, Cameron crouched in the fence corner, holding hard
+by the rail till he should become master of himself. He could hear their
+explosions of suppressed laughter. It was some minutes before he had
+himself in hand, then with a swift silent run he stood among them.
+So busy were they in recounting the various incidents in the recent
+"chivaree," that before they were aware Cameron was upon them. At his
+approach the circle broke and scattered, some flying to the fence. But
+Perkins with some others stood their ground.
+
+"Hello, Cameron!" drawled Perkins. "Did you see our cows? I thought I
+heard some of them down the line."
+
+For answer Cameron launched himself at him like a bolt from a bow. There
+was a single sharp crack and Perkins was literally lifted clear off his
+feet and hurled back upon the road, where he lay still. Fiercely Cameron
+faced round to the next man, but he gave back quickly. A third sprang
+to throw himself upon Cameron, but once more Cameron's hand shot forward
+and his assailant was hurled back heavily into the arms of his friends.
+Before Cameron could strike again a young giant, known as Sam Sailor,
+flung his arms about him, crying--
+
+"Tut-tut, young fellow, this won't do, you know. Can't you take a bit of
+fun?"
+
+For answer Cameron clinched him savagely, gripping him by the throat and
+planting two heavy blows upon his ribs.
+
+"Here--boys," gasped the young fellow,
+"he's--chokin'--the--life--out--of me."
+
+From all sides they threw themselves upon him and, striking, kicking,
+fighting furiously, Cameron went down under the struggling mass, his
+hand still gripping the throat it had seized.
+
+"Say! He's a regular bull-dog," cried one. "Git hold of his legs and
+yank him off," which, with shouts and laughter, they proceeded to do and
+piled themselves upon him, chanting the refrain--"More beef! More beef!"
+
+A few minutes more of frantic struggling and a wild agonised scream rose
+from beneath the mass of men.
+
+"Git off, boys! Git off!" roared the young giant. "I'm afraid he's
+hurt."
+
+Flinging them off on either side, he stood up and waited for their
+victim to rise. But Cameron lay on his face, moaning and writhing, on
+the ground.
+
+"Say, boys," said Sam, kneeling down beside him, "I'm afraid he's hurted
+bad."
+
+In his writhing Cameron lifted one leg. It toppled over to one side.
+
+"Jumpin' Jeremiah!" said Sam in an awed voice. "His leg's broke! What in
+Sam Hill can we do?"
+
+As he spoke there was a sound of running feet, coming down the lane.
+The moon, shining through the breaking clouds, revealed a figure with
+floating garments rapidly approaching.
+
+"My cats!" cried Sam in a terrified voice. "It's Mandy."
+
+Like leaves before a sudden gust of wind the group scattered and only
+Sam was left.
+
+"What--what are you doin'?" panted Mandy. "Where is he? Oh, is that
+him?" She flung herself down in the dust beside Cameron and turned him
+over. His face was white, his eyes glazed. He looked like death. "Oh!
+Oh!" she moaned. "Have they killed you? Have they killed you?" She
+gathered his head upon her knees, moaning like a wounded animal.
+
+"Good Lord, Mandy, don't go on like that!" cried Sam in a horrified
+voice. "It's only his leg broke."
+
+Mandy laid his head gently down, then sprang to her feet.
+
+"Only his leg broke? Who done it? Who done it, tell me? Who done it?"
+she panted, her voice rising with her gasping breath. "What coward done
+it? Was it you, Sam Sailor?"
+
+"Guess we're all in it," said Sam stupidly. "It was jist a bit of fun,
+Mandy."
+
+For answer she swung her heavy hand hard upon Sam's face.
+
+"Say, Mandy! Hold hard!" cried Sam, surprise and the weight of the blow
+almost knocking him off his feet.
+
+"You cowardly brute!" she gasped. "Get out of my sight. Oh, what shall
+we do?" She dropped on her knees and took Cameron's head once more in
+her arms. "What shall we do?"
+
+"Guess we'll have to git him in somewheres," said Sam. "How can we carry
+him though? If we had some kind of a stretcher?"
+
+"Wait! I know," cried Mandy, flying off up the lane.
+
+Before many minutes had passed she had returned, breathing hard.
+
+"It's--the---milkhouse--door," she said. "I--guess that'll--do."
+
+"That'll do all right, Mandy. Now I wish some of them fellers would
+come."
+
+Sam pulled off his coat and made of it a pillow, then stood up looking
+for help. His eye fell upon the prostrate and senseless form of Perkins.
+
+"Say, what'll we do with him?" he said, pointing to the silent figure.
+
+"Who is it?" enquired Mandy. "What's the matter?"
+
+"It's Perkins," replied Sam. "He hit him a terrible crack."
+
+"Perkins!" said Mandy with scorn. "Let him lie, the dog. Come on, take
+his head."
+
+"You can't do it, Mandy, no use trying. You can't do it."
+
+"Come on, I tell you," she said fiercely. "Quit your jawin'. He may be
+dyin' for all I know. I'd carry him alone if it wasn't for his broken
+leg." Slowly, painfully they carried him to the house and to the front
+door.
+
+"Wait a minute!" said Mandy. "I'll have to git things fixed a bit. We
+mustn't wake mother. It would scare her to death."
+
+She passed quickly into the house and soon Sam saw a light pass from
+room to room. In a few moments Mandy reappeared at the front door.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Sam. "He's comin' to."
+
+"Oh, thank goodness!" cried Mandy. "Let's git him in before he wakes."
+
+Once more they lifted their burden and with infinite difficulty and much
+painful manoeuvering they got the injured man through the doors and upon
+the spare room bed.
+
+"And now, Sam Sailor," cried Mandy, coming close to him, "you jist hitch
+up Deck and hustle for the doctor if ever you did in your life. Don't
+wait for nothin', but go! Go!" She fairly pushed him out of the door,
+running with him towards the stable. "Oh, Sam, hurry!" she pleaded, "for
+if this man should die I will never be the like again." Her face
+was white, her eyes glowing like great stars; her voice was soft and
+tremulous with tears.
+
+Sam stood for a moment gazing as if upon a vision.
+
+"What are you lookin' at?" she cried, stamping her foot and pushing him
+away.
+
+"Jumpin' Jeremiah!" muttered Sam, as he ran towards the stable. "Is that
+Mandy Haley? Guess we don't know much about her."
+
+His nimble fingers soon had Dexter hitched to the buggy and speeding
+down the lane at a pace sufficiently rapid to suit the high spirit of
+even that fiery young colt.
+
+At the high road he came upon his friends, some of whom were working
+with Perkins, others conversing in awed and hurried undertones.
+
+"Hello, Sam!" they called. "Hold up!"
+
+"I'm in a hurry, boys, don't stop me. I'm scared to death. And you
+better git home. She'll be down on you again."
+
+"How is he?" cried a voice.
+
+"Don't know. I'm goin' for the doctor, and the sooner we git that doctor
+the better for everybody around." And Sam disappeared in a whirl of
+dust.
+
+"Say! Who would a thought it?" he mused. "That Mandy Haley? She's a
+terror. And them eyes! Oh, git on, Deck, what you monkeyin' about?
+Wonder if she's gone on that young feller? I guess she is all right!
+Say, wasn't that a clout he handed Perkins. And didn't she give me one.
+But them eyes! Mandy Haley! By the jumpin' Jeremiah! And the way she
+looks at a feller! Here, Deck, what you foolin' about? Gwan now, or
+you'll git into trouble."
+
+Deck, who had been indulging himself in a series of leaps and plunges,
+shying at even the most familiar objects by the road side, settled down
+at length to a businesslike trot which brought him to the doctor's door
+in about fifteen minutes from the Haleys' gate. But to Sam's dismay the
+doctor had gone to Cramm's Mill, six or seven miles away, and would
+not be back till the morning. Sam was in a quandary. There was another
+doctor at Brookfield, five miles further on, but there was a possibility
+that he also might be out.
+
+"Say, there ain't no use goin' back without a doctor.
+She'd--she'd--Jumpin' Jeremiah! What would she do? Say, Deck, you've
+got to git down to business. We're goin' to the city. There are doctors
+there thick as hair on a dog. We'll try Dr. Turnbull. Say, it'll be
+great if we could git him! Deck, we'll do it! But you got to git up and
+dust."
+
+And this Deck proceeded to do to such good purpose that in about an
+hour's time he stood before Dr. Turnbull's door in the city, somewhat
+wet, it is true, but with his fiery spirit still untamed.
+
+Here again adverse fate met the unfortunate Sam.
+
+"Doctor Turnbull's no at home," said the maid, smart with cap and apron,
+who opened the door.
+
+"How long will he be gone?" enquired Sam, wondering what she had on her
+head, and why.
+
+"There's no tellin'. An hour, or two hours, or three."
+
+"Three hours?" echoed Sam. "Say, a feller might kick the bucket in that
+time."
+
+The maid smiled an undisturbed smile.
+
+"Bucket? What bucket, eh? What bucket are ye talkin' aboot?" she
+enquired.
+
+"Say, you're smart, ain't yeh! But I got a young feller that's broke his
+leg and--"
+
+"His leg?" said the maid indifferently. "Well, he's got another?"
+
+"Yes, you bet he has, but one leg ain't much good without the other. How
+would you like to hop around on one leg? And he's hurt inside, too,
+his lights, I guess, and other things." Sam's anatomical knowledge was
+somewhat vague. "And besides, his girl's takin' on awful."
+
+"Oh, is she indeed?" replied the maid, this item apparently being to her
+of the very slightest importance.
+
+"Say, if you only saw her," said Sam.
+
+"Pretty, I suppose," said the maid with a touch of scorn.
+
+"Pretty? No, ugly as a hedge fence. But say, I wish she was here right
+now. She'd bring you to your--to time, you bet."
+
+"Would she, now? I'd sort her." And the little maid's black eyes
+snapped.
+
+"Say, what'll I do? Jist got to have a doctor."
+
+"Ye'll no git him till to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"How far oot are ye?"
+
+"Twelve miles."
+
+"Twelve miles? Ye'll no get him a minute afore to-morrow noon."
+
+"Say, that young feller'll croak, sure. Away from home too. No friends.
+All his folks in Scotland."
+
+"Scotland, did ye say?" Something appeared to wake up in the little
+maid. "Look here, why don't ye get a doctor instead o' daunderin' your
+time here?"
+
+"Git a doctor?" echoed Sam in vast surprise. "And ain't I tryin' to git
+a doctor? Where'll I git a doctor?"
+
+"Go to the hospital, ye gawk, and ask for Dr. Turnbull, and tell him
+the young lad is a stranger and that his folk are in Scotland. Hoots, ye
+gomeril, be off noo, an' the puir lad wantin' ye. Come, I'll pit ye on
+yer way." The maid by her speech was obviously excited.
+
+Sam glanced at the clock as he passed out. He had been away an hour and
+a half.
+
+"Jumpin' Jeremiah! I've got to hurry. She'll take my head off."
+
+"Of course ye have," said the maid sharply. "Go down two streets there,
+then take the first turn to your left and go straight on for half a
+dozen blocks or so. Mind ye tell the doctor the lad's frae Scotland!"
+she cried to Sam as he drove off.
+
+At the hospital Sam was fortunate enough to catch Dr. Turnbull in the
+hall with one or two others, just as they were about to pass into the
+consulting room. Such was Sam's desperate state of mind that he went
+straight up to the group.
+
+"I want Dr. Turnbull," he said.
+
+"There he is before you," replied a sharp-faced young doctor, pointing
+to a benevolent looking old gentleman.
+
+"Dr. Turnbull, there's a young feller hurt dreadful out our way. His
+leg's broke. Guess he's hurt inside too. And he's a stranger. His folks
+are all in Scotland. Guess he's dyin', and I've got--I've got a horse
+and buggy at the door. I can git you out and back in a jiffy. Say,
+doctor, I'm all ready to start."
+
+A smile passed over the faces of the group. But Dr. Turnbull had too
+long experience with desperate cases and with desperate men.
+
+"My dear Sir," he replied, "I cannot go for some hours."
+
+"Doctor, I want you now. I got to have somebody right now."
+
+"A broken leg?" mused the doctor.
+
+"Yes, and hurt inside."
+
+"How did it happen?" said the doctor.
+
+"Eh? I don't know exactly," replied Sam, taken somewhat aback.
+"Somethin' fell on him. But he needs you bad."
+
+"I can't go, my man, but we'll find some one. What's his name did you
+say?"
+
+"His name is Cameron, and he's from Scotland."
+
+"Cameron?" said the sharp-faced young doctor. "What does he look like?"
+
+"Look like?" said Sam in a perplexed voice. "Well, the girls all think
+he looks pretty good. He's dark complected and he's a mighty smart young
+feller. Great on jumpin' and runnin'. Say, he's a crackajack. Why, at
+the Dominion Day picnic! But you must a' heard about him. He's the chap,
+you know, that won the hundred yards. Plays the pipes and--"
+
+"Plays the pipes?" cried Dr. Turnbull and the young doctor together.
+
+"And his name's Cameron?" continued the young doctor. "I wonder now
+if--"
+
+"I say, Martin," said Dr. Turnbull, "I think you had better go. The case
+may be urgent."
+
+"Cameron!" cried Martin again. "I bet my bat it's--Here, wait till I get
+my coat. I'll be with you in a jerk. Have you got a good horse?"
+
+"He's all right," said Sam. "He'll git you there in an hour."
+
+"An hour? How far is it?"
+
+"Twelve miles."
+
+"Great heavens! Come, then, get a move on!" And so it came that within
+an hour Cameron, opening his eyes, looked up into the face of his
+friend.
+
+"Martin! By Jove!" he said, and closed his eyes again. "Martin!" he said
+again, looking upon the familiar face. "Say, old boy, is this a dream? I
+seem to be having lots of them."
+
+"It's no dream, old chap, but what in the mischief is the matter? What
+does all this fever mean? Let's look at you."
+
+A brief examination was enough to show the doctor that a broken leg was
+the least of Cameron's trouble. A hasty investigation of the resources
+of the farm house determined the doctor's course.
+
+"This man has typhoid fever, a bad case too," he said to Mandy. "We will
+take him in to the hospital."
+
+"The hospital?" cried Mandy fiercely. "Will you, then?"
+
+"He will be a lot of trouble to you," said the doctor.
+
+"Trouble? Trouble? What are you talkin' about?"
+
+"We're awful busy, Mandy," interposed the mother, who had been roused
+from her bed.
+
+"Oh, shucks, mother! Oh, don't send him away," she pleaded. "I can nurse
+him, just as easy." She paused, with quivering lips.
+
+"It will be much better for the patient to be in the hospital. He will
+get constant and systematic care. He will be under my own observation
+every hour. I assure you it will be better for him," said the doctor.
+
+"Better for him?" echoed Mandy in a faint voice. "Well, let him go."
+
+In less than an hour's time, such was Dr. Martin's energetic promptness,
+he had his patient comfortably placed in the democrat on an improvised
+stretcher and on his way to the city hospital.
+
+And thus it came about that the problem of his leave-taking, which had
+vexed Cameron for so many days, was solved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN APPLE TIME
+
+
+"Another basket of eggs, Mr. Cameron, and such delicious cream! I am
+deeply grieved to see you so nearly well."
+
+"Grieved?"
+
+"For you will be leaving us of course."
+
+"Thanks, that is kind of you."
+
+"And there will be an end to eggs and cream. Ah! You are a lucky man."
+And the trim, neat, bright-faced nurse shook her finger at him.
+
+"So I have often remarked to myself these six weeks."
+
+"A friend is a great discovery and by these same tokens you have found
+one."
+
+"Truly, they have been more than kind."
+
+"This makes the twelfth visit in six weeks," said the nurse. "In busy
+harvest and threshing time, too. Do you know what that means?"
+
+"To a certain extent. It is awfully good of them."
+
+"But she is shy, shy--and I think she is afraid of YOU. Her chief
+interest appears to be in the kitchen, which she has never failed to
+visit."
+
+The blood slowly rose in Cameron's face, from which the summer tan had
+all been bleached by his six weeks' fight with fever, but he made no
+reply to the brisk, sharp-eyed, sharp-minded little nurse.
+
+"And I know she is dying to see you, and, indeed," she chuckled, "it
+might do you good. She is truly wonderful." And again the nurse laughed.
+"Don't you think you could bear a visit?" The smile broadened upon her
+face.
+
+But unaware she had touched a sensitive spot in her patient, his
+Highland pride.
+
+"I shall be more than pleased to have an opportunity to thank Miss Haley
+for her great kindness," he replied with dignity.
+
+"All right," replied the nurse. "I shall bring her in. Now don't excite
+yourself. That fever is not so far away. And only a few minutes. When we
+farmers go calling--I am a farmer, remember, and know them well--when we
+go calling we take our knitting and spend the afternoon."
+
+In a few moments she returned with Mandy. The difference between the
+stout, red-faced, coarse-featured, obtrusively healthy country girl,
+heavy of foot and hand, slow of speech and awkward of manner, and
+the neat, quick, deft-fingered, bright-faced nurse was so marked that
+Cameron could hardly control the wave of pity that swept through his
+heart, for he could see that even Mandy herself was vividly aware of the
+contrast. In vain Cameron tried to put her at her ease. She simply sat
+and stared, now at the walls, now at the floor, refusing for a time to
+utter more than monosyllables, punctuated with giggles.
+
+"I want to thank you for the eggs and cream. They are fine," said
+Cameron heartily.
+
+"Oh, pshaw, that's nothin'! Lots more where they come from," replied
+Mandy with a giggle.
+
+"But it's a long way for you to drive; and in the busy time too."
+
+"Oh, we had to come in anyway for things," replied Mandy, making light
+of her service.
+
+"You are all well?"
+
+"Oh, pretty middlin'. Ma ain't right smart. She's too much to do, and
+that's the truth."
+
+"And the boys?" Cameron hesitated to be more specific.
+
+"Oh, there's nothin' eatin' them. I don't bother with them much." Mandy
+was desperately twisting her white cotton gloves.
+
+At this point the nurse, with a final warning to the patient not to talk
+too much and not to excite himself, left the room. In a moment Mandy's
+whole manner changed.
+
+"Say!" she cried in a hurried voice; "Perkins is left."
+
+"Left?"
+
+"I couldn't jist stand him after--after--that night. Dad wanted him to
+stay, but I couldn't jist stand him, and so he quit."
+
+"Quit?"
+
+"I jist hate him since--since--that night. When I think of what he done
+I could kill him. My, I was glad to see him lyin' there in the dust!"
+Mandy's words came hot and fast. "They might 'a killed you." For the
+first time in the interview she looked fairly into Cameron's eyes. "My,
+you do look awful!" she said, with difficulty commanding her voice.
+
+"Nonsense, Mandy! You see, it wasn't my leg that hurt me. It was the
+fever that pulled me down."
+
+"Oh, I'll never forget that night!" cried Mandy, struggling to keep her
+lips from quivering.
+
+"Nor will I ever forget what you did for me that night, Mandy. Sam told
+me all about it. I shall always be your friend."
+
+For a moment longer she held him with her eyes. Then her face grew
+suddenly pale and, with voice and hands trembling, she said:
+
+"I must go. Good-by."
+
+He took her great red hand in his long thin fingers.
+
+"Good-by, Mandy, and thank you."
+
+"My!" she said, looking down at the fingers she held in her hand. "Your
+hands is awful thin. Are you sure goin' to git better?"
+
+"Of course I am, and I am coming out to see you before I go."
+
+She sat down quickly, still holding his hand, as if he had struck her a
+heavy blow.
+
+"Before you go? Where?" Her voice was hardly above a whisper; her face
+was white, her lips beyond her control.
+
+"Out West to seek my fortune." His voice was jaunty and he feigned not
+to see her distress. "I shall be walking in a couple of weeks or so, eh,
+nurse?"
+
+"A couple of weeks?" replied the nurse, who had just entered. "Yes, if
+you are good."
+
+Mandy hastily rose.
+
+"But if you are not," continued the nurse severely, "it may be months.
+Stay, Miss Haley, I am going to bring Mr. Cameron his afternoon tea and
+you can have some with him. Indeed, you look quite done up. I am sure
+all that work you have been telling me about is too much for you."
+
+Her kindly tones broke the last shred of Mandy's self-control. She sank
+into her chair, covered her face with her great red hands and burst into
+tempestuous weeping. Cameron sat up quickly.
+
+"What in the name of goodness is wrong, Mandy?"
+
+"Lie down at once, Mr. Cameron!" said the nurse sternly. "Hush, hush,
+Miss Haley! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! Don't you know that you
+are hurting him?"
+
+She could have chosen no better word. In an instant Mandy was on her
+feet, mopping off her face and choking down her sobs.
+
+"Ain't I a fool?" she cried angrily. "A blamed fool. Well, I won't
+bother you any longer. Guess I'll go now. Good-by all." Without another
+look at Cameron she was gone.
+
+Cameron lay back upon his pillows, white and nerveless.
+
+"Now can you tell me," he panted, "what's up?"
+
+"Search me!" said the nurse gaily, "but I forbid you to speak a single
+word for half an hour. Here, drink this right off! Now, not a word! What
+will Dr. Martin say? Not a word! Yes, I shall see her safely off the
+place. Quiet now!" She kept up a continuous stream of sprightly chatter
+to cover her own anxiety and to turn the current of her patient's
+thoughts. By the time she had reached the entrance hall, however, Mandy
+had vanished.
+
+"Great silly goose!" said the indignant nurse. "I'd see myself far
+enough before I'd give myself away like that. Little fool! He'll have
+a temperature sure and I will catch it. Bah! These girls! Next time she
+sees him it will not be here. I hope the doctor will just give me an
+hour to get him quiet again."
+
+But in this hope she was disappointed, for upon her return to her
+patient she found Dr. Martin in the room. His face was grave.
+
+"What's up, nurse? What is the meaning of this rotten pulse? What has he
+been having to eat?"
+
+"Well, Dr. Martin, I may as well confess my sins," replied the nurse,
+"for there is no use trying to deceive you anyway. Mr. Cameron has had a
+visitor and she has excited him."
+
+"Ah!" said the doctor in a relieved tone. "A visitor! A lady visitor! A
+charming, sympathetic, interested, and interesting visitor."
+
+"Exactly!" said the nurse with a giggle.
+
+"It was Miss Haley, Martin," said Cameron gravely.
+
+The doctor looked puzzled.
+
+"The daughter of the farmer with whom I was working," explained Cameron.
+
+"Ah, I remember her," said the doctor. "And a deuce of a time I had with
+her, too, getting you away from her, if I remember aright. I trust there
+is nothing seriously wrong in that quarter?" said Martin with unusual
+gravity.
+
+"Oh, quit it, Martin!" said Cameron impatiently. "Don't rag. She's an
+awful decent sort. Her looks are not the best of her."
+
+"Ah! I am relieved to hear that," said the doctor earnestly.
+
+"She is very kind, indeed," said the nurse. "For these six weeks she has
+fed us up with eggs and cream so that both my patient and myself have
+fared sumptuously every day. Indeed, if it should continue much longer
+I shall have to ask an additional allowance for a new uniform. I have
+promised that Mr. Cameron shall visit the farm within two weeks if he
+behaves well."
+
+"Exactly!" replied the doctor. "In two weeks if he is good. The only
+question that troubles me is--is it quite safe? You see in his present
+weak condition his susceptibility is decidedly emphasised, his resisting
+power is low, and who knows what might happen, especially if she should
+insist? I shall not soon forget the look in her eye when she dared me to
+lay a finger upon his person."
+
+"Oh, cut it out, Martin!" said Cameron. "You make me weary." He lay back
+on his pillow and closed his eyes.
+
+The nurse threw a signal to the doctor.
+
+"All right, old man, we must stop this chaff. Buck up and in two weeks
+we will let you go where you like. I have something in mind for you, but
+we won't speak of it to-day."
+
+The harvest was safely stored. The yellow stubble showed the fields
+at rest, but the vivid green of the new fall wheat proclaimed the
+astounding and familiar fact that once more Nature had begun her ancient
+perennial miracle. For in those fields of vivid green the harvest of
+the coming year was already on the way. On these green fields the snowy
+mantle would lie soft and protecting all the long winter through and
+when the spring suns would shine again the fall wheat would be a month
+or more on the way towards maturity.
+
+Somehow the country looked more rested, fresher, cleaner to Cameron than
+when he had last looked upon it in late August. The rain had washed the
+dust from the earth's face and from the green sward that bordered the
+grey ribbon of the high road that led out from the city. The pastures
+and the hay meadows and the turnip fields were all in their freshest
+green, and beyond the fields the forest stood glorious in all its autumn
+splendour, the ash trees bright yellow, the oaks rich brown, and the
+maples all the colours of the rainbow. In the orchard--ah, the wonder
+and the joy of it! even the bare and bony limbs of the apple trees only
+helped to reveal the sumptuous wealth of their luscious fruit. For it
+was apple time in the land! The evanescent harvest apples were long
+since gone, the snows were past their best, the pippins were mellowing
+under the sharp persuasion of the nippy, frosty nights and the brave
+gallantry of the sunny days. In this ancient warfare between the frosty
+nights and the gallant sunny days the apples ripened rapidly; and well
+that they should, for the warfare could not be for long. Already in the
+early morning hours the vanguard of winter's fierce hosts was to be seen
+flaunting its hoary banners even in the very face of the gallant sun
+so bravely making stand against it. But it was the time of the year in
+which men felt it good to be alive, for there was in the air that
+tang that gives speed to the blood, spring to the muscle, edge to the
+appetite, courage to the soul, and zest to life--the apple time of the
+year.
+
+It was in apple time that Cameron came back to the farm. Under
+compulsion of Mandy, Haley had found it necessary to drive into the
+city for some things for the "women folk" and, being in the city, he had
+called for Cameron and had brought him out. Under compulsion, not at all
+because Haley was indifferent to the prospect of a visit from his former
+hired man, not alone because the fall plowing was pressing and the
+threshing gang was in the neighbourhood, but chiefly because, through
+the channel of Dr. Martin, the little nurse, and Mandy, it had come to
+be known in the Haley household and in the country side that the
+hired man was a "great swell in the old country," and Haley's sturdy
+independence shrank from anything that savoured of "suckin' round a
+swell," as he graphically put it. But Mandy scouted this idea and waited
+for the coming of the expected guest with no embarrassment from the
+knowledge that he had been in the old country "a great swell."
+
+Hence when, through a crack beside the window blind, she saw him, a
+poor, pale shadow, descending wearily and painfully from the buggy,
+the great mother heart in the girl welled with pity. She could hardly
+forbear rushing out to carry him bodily in her strong arms to the spare
+room and lay him where she had once helped to lay him the night of the
+tragedy some eight weeks before. But in this matter she had learned her
+lesson. She remembered the little nurse and her indignant scorn of the
+lack of self-control she had shown on the occasion of her last visit to
+the hospital. So, instead of rushing forth, she clutched the curtains
+and forced herself to stand still, whispering to herself the while, "Oh,
+he will die sure! He will die sure!" But when she looked upon him seated
+comfortably in the kitchen with a steaming glass of ginger and whiskey,
+her mother's unfailing remedy for "anything wrong with the insides," she
+knew he would not die and her joy overflowed in boisterous welcome.
+
+For five days they all, from Haley to Tim, gave him of their very best,
+seeking to hold him among them for the winter, for they had learned that
+his mind was set upon the West, till Cameron was ashamed, knowing that
+he must go.
+
+The last afternoon they all spent in the orchard. The Gravensteins, in
+which species of apple Haley was a specialist, were being picked, and
+picked with the greatest care, Cameron plucking them from the limbs and
+dropping them into a basket held by Mandy below. It was one of those
+sunny days when, after weeks of chilly absence, summer comes again and
+makes the world glow with warmth and kindly life and quickens in the
+heart the blood's flow. Cameron was full of talk and fuller of laughter
+than his wont; indeed he was vexed to find himself struggling to
+maintain unbroken the flow of laughter and of talk. But in Mandy there
+was neither speech nor laughter, only a quiet dignity that disturbed and
+rebuked him.
+
+The last tree of Gravensteins was picked and then there came the time
+of parting. Cameron, with a man's selfish desire for some token of a
+woman's adoration, even although he well knew that he could make no
+return, lingered in the farewell, hoping for some sign in the plain
+quiet face and the wonderful eyes with their new mystery that when
+he had gone he would not be forgotten; but though the lips quivered
+pitifully and the heavy face grew drawn and old and the eyes glowed
+with a deeper fire, the words, when they came, came quietly and the eyes
+looked steadily upon him, except that for one brief moment a fire leaped
+in them and quickly died down. But when the buggy, with Tim driving,
+had passed down the lane, behind the curtain of the spare room the
+girl stood looking through the crack beside the blind, with both
+hands pressed upon her bosom, her breath coming in sobs, her blue lips
+murmuring brokenly, "Good-by, good-by! Oh, why did you come at all? But,
+oh, I'm glad you came! God help me, I'm glad you came!" Then, when the
+buggy had turned down the side lane and out of sight, she knelt beside
+the bed and kissed, again and again, with tender, reverent kisses, the
+pillow where his head had lain.
+
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+
+
+On the foot-hills' side of The Gap, on a grassy plain bounded on three
+sides by the Bow River and on the other by ragged hills and broken
+timber, stood Surveyor McIvor's camp, three white tents, seeming
+wondrously insignificant in the shadow of the mighty Rockies, but cosy
+enough. For on this April day the sun was riding high in the heavens in
+all his new spring glory, where a few days ago and for many months past
+the storm king with relentless rigour had raged, searching with pitiless
+fury these rock-ribbed hills and threatening these white tents and their
+dwellers with dire destruction. But threaten though he might and pin
+them though he did beneath their frail canvas covers, he could not make
+that gang beat retreat. McIvor was of the kind that takes no back trail.
+In the late fall he had set out to run the line through The Gap, and
+after many wanderings through the coulees of the foothills and after
+many vain attempts, he had finally made choice of his route and had
+brought his men, burnt black with chinook and frost and sun, hither to
+The Gap's mouth. Every chain length in those weary marches was a battle
+ground, every pillar, every picket stood a monument of victory. McIvor's
+advance through the foot-hill country to The Gap had been one unbroken
+succession of fierce fights with Nature's most terrifying forces, a
+triumphal march of heroes who bore on their faces and on their bodies
+the scars and laurels of the campaign. But to McIvor and his gang it was
+all in the day's work.
+
+To Cameron the winter had brought an experience of a life hitherto
+undreamed of, but never even in its wildest blizzards did he cherish
+anything but gratitude to his friend Martin, who had got him attached to
+McIvor's survey party. For McIvor was a man to "tie to," as Martin said,
+and to Cameron he was a continual cause of wonder and admiration. He was
+a big man, with a big man's quiet strength, patient, fearless of men
+and things, reverent toward Nature's forces, which it was his life's
+business to know, to measure, to control, and, if need be, to fight,
+careful of his men, whether amid the perils of the march, or amid
+the more deadly perils of trading post and railway construction camp.
+Cameron never could forget the thrill of admiration that swept his soul
+one night in Taylor's billiard and gambling "joint" down at the post
+where the Elbow joins the Bow, when McIvor, without bluff or bluster,
+took his chainman and his French-Canadian cook, the latter frothing mad
+with "Jamaica Ginger" and "Pain-killer," out of the hands of the gang
+of bad men from across the line who had marked them as lambs for the
+fleecing. It was not the courage of his big chief so much that
+had filled Cameron with amazed respect and admiration as the calm
+indifference to every consideration but that of getting his men out of
+harm's way, and the cool-headed directness of the method he employed.
+
+"Come along, boys," McIvor had said, gripping them by their coat
+collars. "I don't pay you good money for this sort of thing." And so
+saying he had lifted them clear from their seats, upsetting the table,
+ignoring utterly the roaring oaths of the discomfited gamblers. What
+would have been the result none could say, for one of the gamblers had
+whipped out his gun and with sulphurous oaths was conducting a vigourous
+demonstration behind the unconscious back of McIvor, when there strolled
+into the room and through the crowd of men scattering to cover, a tall
+slim youngster in the red jacket and pill-box cap of that world-famous
+body of military guardians of law and order, the North West Mounted
+Police. Not while he lived would Cameron forget the scene that followed.
+With an air of lazy nonchalance the youngster strode quietly up to
+the desperado flourishing his gun and asked in a tone that indicated
+curiosity more than anything else, "What are you doing with that thing?"
+
+"I'll show yeh!" roared the man in his face, continuing to pour forth a
+torrent of oaths.
+
+"Put it down there!" said the youngster in a smooth and silky voice,
+pointing to a table near by. "You don't need that in this country."
+
+The man paused in his demonstration and for a moment or two stood in
+amazed silence. The audacity of the youngster appeared to paralyse his
+powers of speech and action.
+
+"Put it down there, my man. Do you hear?" The voice was still smooth,
+but through the silky tones there ran a fibre of steel. Still the
+desperado stood gazing at him. "Quick, do you hear?" There was a
+sudden sharp ring of imperious, of overwhelming authority, and, to the
+amazement of the crowd of men who stood breathless and silent about,
+there followed one of those phenomena which experts in psychology
+delight to explain, but which no man can understand. Without a word the
+gambler slowly laid upon the table his gun, upon whose handle were many
+notches, the tally of human lives it had accounted for in the hands of
+this same desperado.
+
+"What is this for?" continued the young man, gently touching the belt of
+cartridges. "Take it off!"
+
+The belt found its place beside the gun.
+
+"Now, listen!" gravely continued the youngster. "I give you twenty-four
+hours to leave this post, and if after twenty-four hours you are found
+here it will be bad for you. Get out!"
+
+The man, still silent, slunk out from the room. Irresistible authority
+seemed to go with the word that sent him forth, and rightly so, for
+behind that word lay the full weight of Great Britain's mighty empire.
+It was Cameron's first experience of the North West Mounted Police, that
+famous corps of frontier riders who for more than a quarter of a century
+have ridden the marches of Great Britain's territories in the far
+northwest land, keeping intact the Pax Britannica amid the wild turmoil
+of pioneer days. To the North West Mounted Police and to the pioneer
+missionary it is due that Canada has never had within her borders what
+is known as a "wild and wicked West." It was doubtless owing to the
+presence of that slim youngster in his scarlet jacket and pill-box cap
+that McIvor got his men safely away without a hole in his back and that
+his gang were quietly finishing their morning meal this shining April
+day, in their camp by the Bow River in the shadow of the big white peaks
+that guard The Gap.
+
+Breakfast over, McIvor heaved his great form to the perpendicular.
+
+"How is the foot, Cameron?" he asked, filling his pipe preparatory to
+the march.
+
+"Just about fit," replied Cameron.
+
+"Better take another day," replied the chief. "You can get up wood and
+get supper ready. Benoit will be glad enough to go out and take your
+place for another day on the line."
+
+"Sure ting," cried Benoit, the jolly French-Canadian cook. "Good for
+my healt. He's tak off my front porsch here." And the cook patted
+affectionately the little round paunch that marred the symmetry of his
+figure.
+
+"You ought to get Cameron to swap jobs with you, Benny," said one of the
+axemen. "You would be a dandy in about another month."
+
+Benoit let his eye run critically over the line of his person.
+
+"Bon! Dat's true, for sure. In tree, four mont I mak de beeg spark on de
+girl, me."
+
+"You bet, Benny!" cried the axeman. "You'll break 'em all up."
+
+"Sure ting!" cried Benny, catching up a coal for his pipe. "By by,
+Cameron. Au revoir. I go for tak some more slice from my porsch."
+
+"Good-bye, Benny," cried Cameron. "It is your last chance, for to-morrow
+I give you back your job. I don't want any 'front porsch' on me."
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Benny scornfully, as he turned to hurry after
+his chief. "Dat's not moch front porsch on you. Dat's one rail
+fence--clabbord."
+
+And indeed Benoit was right, for there was no "porsch" or sign of one on
+Cameron's lean and muscular frame. The daily battle with winter's fierce
+frosts and blizzards, the strenuous toil, the hard food had done their
+work on him. Strong, firm-knit, clean and sound, hard and fit, he had
+come through his first Canadian winter. No man in the camp, not even
+the chief himself, could "bush" him in a day's work. He had gained
+enormously in strength lately, and though the lines of his frame still
+ran to angles, he had gained in weight as well. Never in the days of his
+finest training was he as fit to get the best out of himself as now.
+An injured foot had held him in camp for a week, but the injury was now
+almost completely repaired and the week's change of work only served to
+replenish his store of snap and vim.
+
+An hour or two sufficed to put the camp in the perfect order that he
+knew Benoit would consider ideal and to get all in readiness for the
+evening meal when the gang should return. He had the day before him
+and what a day it was! Cameron lay upon a buffalo skin in front of the
+cook-tent, content with all the world and for the moment with himself.
+Six months ago he had engaged as an axeman in the surveyors' gang at
+$30 per month and "found," being regarded more in the light of a
+supernumerary and more or less of a burden than anything else. Now
+he was drawing double the wage as rodman, and, of all the gang, stood
+second to none in McIvor's regard. In this new venture he had come
+nearer to making good than ever before in his life. So in full content
+with himself he allowed his eyes to roam over the brown grassy plain
+that sloped to the Bow in front, and over the Bow to the successive
+lines of hills, rounded except where the black rocks broke jagged
+through the turf, and upward over the rounded hills to the grey sides of
+the mighty masses of the mountains, and still upward to where the white
+peaks lost themselves in the shining blue of the sky. Behind him a
+coulee ran back between hills to a line of timber, and beyond the timber
+more hills and more valleys, and ever growing higher and deeper till
+they ran into the bases of the great Rockies.
+
+As Cameron lay thus luxuriating upon his buffalo skin and lazily
+watching the hills across the river through the curling wreaths that
+gracefully and fragrantly rose from his briar root, there broke from the
+line of timber two jumping deer, buck and doe, the latter slow-footed
+because heavy with young. Behind them in hot pursuit came a pack of
+yelping coyotes. The doe was evidently hard pressed. The buck was
+running easily, but gallantly refusing to abandon his mate to her
+cowardly foes. Straight for the icy river they made, plunged in, and,
+making the crossing, were safe from their pursuing enemy. Cameron,
+intent upon fresh meat, ran for McIvor's Winchester, but ere he could
+buckle round him a cartridge belt and throw on his hunting jacket the
+deer had disappeared over the rounded top of the nearest hill. Up the
+coulee he ran to the timber and there waited, but there was no sign of
+his game. Cautiously he made his way through the timber and dropped
+into the next valley circling westward towards the mountains. The deer,
+however, had completely vanished. Turning back upon his tracks, he once
+more pierced the thin line of timber, when just across the coulee, some
+three hundred yards away, on the sky line, head up and sniffing the
+wind, stood the buck in clear view. Taking hurried aim Cameron fired.
+The buck dropped as if dead. Marking the spot, Cameron hurried forward,
+but to his surprise found only a trail of blood.
+
+"He's badly hit though," he said to himself. "I must get the poor chap
+now at all costs." Swiftly he took up the trail, but though the blood
+stains continued clear and fresh he could get no sight of the wounded
+animal. Hour after hour he kept up the chase, forgetful of everything
+but his determination to bring back his game to camp. From the freshness
+of the stains he knew that the buck could not be far ahead and from the
+footprints it was clear that the animal was going on three legs.
+
+"The beggar is hearing me and so keeps out of sight," said Cameron as
+he paused to listen. He resolved to proceed more slowly and with greater
+caution, but though he followed this plan for another half hour it
+brought him no better success. The day was fast passing and he could
+not much longer continue his pursuit. He became conscious of pain in his
+injured foot. He sat down to rest and to review his situation. For the
+first time he observed that the bright sky of the morning had become
+overcast with a film of hazy cloud and that the temperature was rapidly
+falling. Prudence suggested that he should at once make his way back to
+camp, but with the instinct of the true hunter he was loath to abandon
+the poor wounded beast to its unhappy fate. He resolved to make one
+further attempt. Refreshed by his brief rest, but with an increasing
+sense of pain in his foot, he climbed the slight rising ground before
+him, cautiously pushed his way through some scrub, and there, within
+easy shot, stood the buck, with drooping head and evidently with
+strength nearly done. Cameron took careful aim--there must be no mistake
+this time--and fired. The buck leaped high in the air, dropped and lay
+still. The first shot had broken his leg, the second had pierced his
+heart.
+
+Cameron hurried forward and proceeded to skin the animal. But soon
+he abandoned this operation. "We'll come and get him to-morrow," he
+muttered, "and he is better with his skin on. Meantime we'll have a
+steak, however." He hung a bit of skin from a pole to keep off the
+wolves and selected a choice cut for the supper. He worked hurriedly,
+for the sudden drop in the temperature was ominous of a serious
+disturbance in the weather, but before he had finished he was startled
+to observe a large snowflake lazily flutter to the ground beside him.
+He glanced towards the sky and found that the filmy clouds were rapidly
+assuming definite shape and that the sun had almost disappeared.
+Hurriedly he took his bearings and, calculating as best he could the
+direction of the camp, set off, well satisfied with the outcome of his
+expedition and filled with the pleasing anticipation of a venison supper
+for himself and the rest of the gang.
+
+The country was for the most part open except for patches of timber here
+and there, and with a clear sky the difficulty of maintaining direction
+would have been but slight. With the sky overcast, however, this
+difficulty was sensibly increased. He had not kept an accurate reckoning
+of his course, but from the character of the ground he knew that he
+must be a considerable distance westward of the line of the camp. His
+training during the winter in holding a line of march helped him now to
+maintain his course steadily in one direction. The temperature was still
+dropping rapidly. Over the woods hung a dead stillness, except for the
+lonely call of an occasional crow or for the scream of the impudent
+whiskey-jack. But soon even these became silent. As he surmounted each
+hill top Cameron took his bearings afresh and anxiously scanned the sky
+for weather signs. In spite of himself there crept over him a sense of
+foreboding, which he impatiently tried to shake off.
+
+"I can't be so very far from camp now," he said to himself, looking at
+his watch. "It is just four. There are three good hours till dark."
+
+A little to the west of his line of march stood a high hill which
+appeared to dominate the surrounding country and on its top a lofty
+pine. "I'll just shin up that tree," said he. "I ought to get a sight
+of the Bow from the top." In a few minutes he had reached the top of
+the hill, but even in those minutes the atmosphere had thickened. "Jove,
+it's getting dark!" he exclaimed. "It can't be near sundown yet. Did I
+make a mistake in the time?" He looked at his watch again. It showed a
+quarter after four. "I must get a look at this country." Hurriedly
+he threw off his jacket and proceeded to climb the big pine, which,
+fortunately, was limbed to the ground. From the lofty top his eye could
+sweep the country for many miles around. Over the great peaks of the
+Rockies to the west dark masses of black cloud shot with purple and
+liver-coloured bars hung like a pall. To the north a line of clear light
+was still visible, but over the foot-hills towards east and south there
+lay almost invisible a shimmering haze, soft and translucent, and above
+the haze a heavy curtain, while over the immediate landscape there shone
+a strange weird light, through which there floated down to earth large
+white snowflakes. Not a breath of air moved across the face of the
+hills, but still as the dead they lay in solemn oppressive silence. Far
+to the north Cameron caught the gleam of water.
+
+"That must be the Bow," he said to himself. "I am miles too far toward
+the mountains. I don't like the look of that haze and that cloud bank.
+There is a blizzard on the move if this winter's experience teaches me
+anything."
+
+He had once been caught in a blizzard, but on that occasion he was
+with McIvor. He was conscious now of a little clutch at his heart as
+he remembered that desperate struggle for breath, for life it seemed to
+him, behind McIvor's broad back. The country was full of stories of men
+being overwhelmed by the choking, drifting whirl of snow. He knew how
+swift at times the on-fall of the blizzard could be, how long the storm
+could last, how appalling the cold could become. What should he do? He
+must think and act swiftly. That gleaming water near which his camp
+lay was, at the very best going, two hours distant. The blizzard might
+strike at any moment and once it struck all hope of advance would be
+cut off. He resolved to seek the best cover available and wait till the
+storm should pass. He had his deer meat with him and matches. Could he
+but make shelter he doubted not but he could weather the storm. Swiftly
+he swept the landscape for a spot to camp. Half a mile away he spied a
+little coulee where several valleys appeared to lose themselves in thick
+underbrush. He resolved to make for that spot. Hurriedly he slipped down
+the tree, donned belt and jacket and, picking up gun and venison, set
+off at a run for the spot he had selected. A puff of wind touched his
+cheek. He glanced up and about him. The flakes of snow were no longer
+floating gently down, but were slanting in long straight lines across
+the landscape. His heart took a quicker beat.
+
+"It is coming, sure enough," he said to himself between his teeth, "and
+a bad one too at that." He quickened his pace to racing speed. Down the
+hill, across the valley and up the next slope he ran without pause,
+but as he reached the top of the slope a sound arrested him, a deep,
+muffled, hissing roar, and mingled with it the beating of a thousand
+wings. Beyond the top of the next hill there hung from sky to earth
+the curtain, thick, black, portentous, and swiftly making approach,
+devouring the landscape as it came and filling his ears with its
+muffled, hissing roar.
+
+In the coulee beyond that hill was the spot he had marked for his
+shelter. It was still some three hundred yards away. Could he beat that
+roaring, hissing, portentous cloud mass? It was extremely doubtful. Down
+the hill he ran, slipping, skating, pitching, till he struck the bottom,
+then up the opposite slope he struggled, straining every nerve and
+muscle. He glanced upward towards the top of the hill. Merciful heaven!
+There it was, that portentous cloud mass, roaring down upon him. Could
+he ever make that top? He ran a few steps further, then, dropping his
+gun, he clutched a small poplar and hung fast. A driving, blinding,
+choking, whirling mass of whiteness hurled itself at him, buffeting him
+heavily, filling eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, clutching at his arms and
+legs and body with a thousand impalpable insistent claws. For a moment
+or two he lost all sense of direction, all thought of advance. One
+instinct only he obeyed--to hold on for dear life to the swaying
+quivering poplar. The icy cold struck him to the heart, his bare fingers
+were fast freezing. A few moments he hung, hoping for a lull in the fury
+of the blizzard, but lull there was none, only that choking, blinding,
+terrifying Thing that clutched and tore at him. His heart sank within
+him. This, then, was to be the end of him. A vision of his own body,
+stark and stiff, lying under a mound of drifting snow, swiftly passed
+before his mind. He threw it off wrathfully. "Not yet! Not just yet!" he
+shouted in defiance into the face of the howling storm.
+
+Through the tumult and confusion of his thoughts one idea dominated--he
+must make the hill-top. Sliding his hands down the trunk of the little
+poplar he once more found his rifle and, laying it in the hollow of his
+arm, he hugged it close to his side, shoved his freezing hands into his
+pockets and, leaning hard against the driving blizzard, set off towards
+the hill-top. A few paces he made, then turning around leaned back upon
+the solid massive force of the wind till he could get breath. Again a
+few steps upward and again a rest against the wind. His courage began to
+come back.
+
+"Aha!" he shouted at the storm. "Not yet! Not yet!" Gradually, and with
+growing courage, he fought his way to the top. At length he stood upon
+the storm-swept summit. "I say," he cried, heartening himself with his
+speech, "this is so much to the good anyway. Now for the coulee." But
+exactly where did it lie? Absolutely nothing could he see before him
+but this blinding, choking mass of whirling snow. He tried to recall the
+direction in relation to the hill as he had taken it from the top of the
+tree. How long ago that seemed! Was it minutes or hours? Downward and
+towards the left lay the coulee. He could hardly fail to strike it.
+Plunging headlong into the blizzard, he fought his way once more, step
+by step.
+
+"It was jolly well like a scrimmage," he said grimly to the storm
+which began in his imagination to assume a kind of monstrous and savage
+personality. It heartened him much to remember his sensations in many
+a desperate struggle against the straining steaming mass of muscle and
+bone in the old fierce football fights. He recalled, too, a word of his
+old captain, "Never say die! The next minute may be better."
+
+"Never say die!" he cried aloud in the face of his enemy. "But I wish to
+heaven I could get up some of that heat just now. This cold is going to
+be the death of me."
+
+As he spoke he bumped into a small bushy spruce tree. "Hello! Here you
+are, eh!" he cried, determined to be cheerful. "Glad to meet you. Hope
+there are lots more of you." His hope was realised! A few more steps and
+he found himself in the heart of a spruce thicket.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed. Then again--"Yes, thank God it is!" It
+steadied his heart not a little to remember the picture in his mother's
+Bible that had so often stirred his youthful imagination of One standing
+in the fishing boat and bidding the storm be still. In the spruce
+thicket he stood some moments to regain his breath and strength.
+
+"Now what next?" he asked himself. Although the thicket broke the force
+of the wind, something must be done, and quickly. Night was coming on
+and that meant an even intenser cold. His hands were numb. His hunting
+jacket was but slight protection against the driving wind and the
+bitter cold. If he could only light a fire! A difficult business in this
+tumultuous whirlwind and snow. He had learned something of this art,
+however, from his winter's experience. He began breaking from the spruce
+trees the dead dry twigs. Oh for some birch bark! Like a forgotten
+dream it came to him that from the tree top he had seen above the spruce
+thicket the tops of some white birch trees purpling under the touch of
+spring.
+
+"Let's see! Those birches must be further to my left," he said,
+recalling their position. Painfully he forced his way through the
+scrubby underbrush. His foot struck hard against an obstruction that
+nearly threw him to the ground. It was a jutting rock. Peering through
+the white mass before his eyes, he could make out a great black,
+looming mass. Eagerly he pushed forward. It was a towering slab of rock.
+Following it round on the lee side, he suddenly halted with a shout of
+grateful triumph. A great section had fallen out of the rock, forming a
+little cave, storm-proof and dry.
+
+"Thank God once more!" he said, and this time with even deeper
+reverence. "Now for a fire. If I could only get some birch bark."
+
+He placed his rifle in a corner of the cave and went out on his hunt.
+"By Jove, I must hurry, or my hands will be gone sure." Looking upwards
+in the shelter of the rock through the driving snow he saw the bare tops
+of trees. "Birch, too, as I am alive!" he cried, and plunging through
+the bushes came upon a clump of white birches.
+
+With fingers that could hardly hold the curling bark he gathered a few
+bunches and hurried back to the cave. Again he went forth and gathered
+from the standing trees an armful of dead dry limbs. "Good!" he cried
+aloud in triumph. "We're not beaten yet. Now for the fire and supper."
+He drew forth his steel matchbox with numb and shaking fingers, opened
+it and stood stricken dumb. There were only three matches in the box.
+Unreasoning terror seized him. Three chances for life! He chose a match,
+struck it, but in his numb and nerveless fingers the match snapped
+near the head. With a new terror seizing him he took a second match and
+struck it. The match flared, sputtering. Eagerly he thrust the birch
+bark at it; too eagerly, alas, for the bark rubbed out the tiny flame.
+He had one match left! One hope of life! He closed his matchbox. His
+hands were trembling with the cold and more with nervous fear that shook
+him in every limb. He could not bring himself to make the last attempt.
+Up and down the cave and out and in he stamped, beating his hands to
+bring back the blood and fighting hard to get back his nerve.
+
+"This is all rotten funk!" he cried aloud, raging at himself. "I shall
+not be beaten."
+
+Summoning all his powers, he once more pulled out his matchbox, rubbed
+his birch bark fine and, kneeling down, placed it between his knees
+under the shelter of his hunting jacket. Kneeling there with the
+matchbox in his hand, there fell upon his spirit a great calm. "Oh,
+God!" he said quietly and with the conviction in his soul that there
+was One listening, "help me now." He opened the matchbox, took out the
+match, struck it carefully and laid it among the birch bark. For one
+heart-racking moment it flickered unsteadily, then, catching a resinous
+fibre of the bark, it flared up, shot out a tiny tongue to one of the
+heavier bunches, caught hold, sputtered, smoked, burst into flame. With
+the prayer still going in his heart, "God help me now," Cameron fed the
+flame with bits of bark and tiny twigs, adding more and more till the
+fire began to leap, dance, and snap, and at length gaining strength it
+roared its triumph over the grim terror so recently threatened.
+
+For the present at least the blizzard was beaten.
+
+"Now God be thanked for that," said Cameron. "For it was past my doing."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+
+
+Shivering and hungry and fighting with sleep, Cameron stamped up
+and down his cave, making now and then excursions into the storm to
+replenish his fire. On sharpened sticks slices of venison were cooking
+for his supper. Outside the storm raged with greater violence than ever
+and into the cave the bitter cold penetrated, effectually neutralizing
+the warmth of the little fire, for the wood was hard to get and a larger
+fire he could not afford.
+
+He looked at his watch and was amazed to find it only five o'clock. How
+long could he maintain this fight? His heart sank at the prospect of
+the long night before him. He sat down upon the rock close beside his
+cooking venison and in a few moments was fast asleep.
+
+He awoke with a start and found that the fire had crept along a jutting
+branch and had reached his fingers. He sprang to his feet. The fire lay
+in smouldering embers, for the sticks were mere brushwood. A terrible
+fear seized him. His life depended upon the maintaining of this fire.
+Carefully he assembled the embers and nursed them into bright flame.
+At all costs he must keep awake. A further excursion into the woods for
+fuel thoroughly roused him from his sleep. Soon his fire was blazing
+brightly again.
+
+Consulting his watch, he found that he must have slept half an hour. He
+determined that in order to keep himself awake and to provide against
+the growing cold he would lay in a stock of firewood, and so he began a
+systematic search for fallen trees that he might drag to his shelter.
+
+As he was setting forth upon his search he became aware of a new sound
+mingling with the roaring of the storm about him, a soft, pounding,
+rhythmic sound. With every nerve strained he listened. It was like the
+beating of hoofs. He ran out into the storm and, holding his hands
+to his ears, bent forward to listen. Faintly over the roaring of the
+blizzard, and rising and falling with it, there came the sound of
+singing.
+
+"Am I mad?" he said to himself, beating his head with his hands. He
+rushed into the cave, threw upon the fire all the brushwood he had
+gathered, until it sprang up into a great glare, lighting up the cave
+and its surroundings. Then he rushed forth once more to the turn of the
+rock. The singing could now be plainly heard.
+
+"Three cheers for the red, white--Get on there, you variously coloured
+and multitudinously cursed brutes!--Three cheers for the red--Hie there,
+look out, Little Thunder! They are off to the left."
+
+"Hello!" yelled Cameron at the top of his voice. "Hello, there!"
+
+"Whoa!" yelled a voice sharply. The sound of hoof beats ceased and only
+the roaring of the blizzard could be heard.
+
+"Hello!" cried Cameron again. "Who are you?" But only the gale answered
+him.
+
+Again and again he called, but no voice replied. Once more he rushed
+into the cave, seized his rifle and fired a shot into the air.
+
+"Crack-crack," two bullets spat against the rock over his head.
+
+"Hold on there, you fool!" yelled Cameron, dodging back behind the rock.
+"What are you shooting at? Hello there!" Still there was no reply.
+
+Long he waited till, desperate with anxiety lest his unknown visitors
+should abandon him, he ran forward once more beyond the ledge of the
+rock, shouting, "Hello! Hello! Don't shoot! I'm coming out to you."
+
+At the turn of the rocky ledge he paused, concentrating his powers to
+catch some sound other than the dull boom and hiss of the blizzard.
+Suddenly at his side something moved.
+
+"Put up your hands, quick!"
+
+A dark shape, with arm thrust straight before it, loomed through the
+drift of snow.
+
+"Oh, I say--" began Cameron.
+
+"Quick!" said the voice, with a terrible oath, "or I drop you where you
+stand."
+
+"All right!" said Cameron, lifting up his hands with his rifle high
+above his head. "But hurry up! I can't stand this long. I am nearly
+frozen as it is."
+
+The man came forward, still covering him with his pistol. He ran his
+free hand over Cameron's person.
+
+"How many of you?" he asked, in a voice sharp and crisp.
+
+"I am all alone. But hurry up! I am about all in."
+
+"Lead on to your fire!" said the stranger. "But if you want to live, no
+monkey work. I've got you lined."
+
+Cameron led the way to the fire. The stranger threw a swift glance
+around the cave, then, with eyes still holding Cameron, he whistled
+shrilly on his fingers. Almost immediately, it seemed to Cameron, there
+came into the light another man who proved to be an Indian, short,
+heavily built, with a face hideously ugly and rendered more repulsive
+by the small, red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes that seemed to Cameron to peer
+like gimlets into his very soul.
+
+At a word of command the Indian possessed himself of Cameron's rifle and
+stood at the entrance.
+
+"Now," said the stranger, "talk quick. Who are you? How did you come
+here? Quick and to the point."
+
+"I am a surveyor," said Cameron briefly. "McIvor's gang. I was left at
+camp to cook, saw a deer, wounded it, followed it up, lost my way, the
+storm caught me, but, thank God, I found this cave, and with my last
+match lit the fire. I was trying to cook my venison when I heard you
+coming."
+
+The grey-brown eyes of the stranger never left Cameron's face while he
+was speaking.
+
+"You're a liar!" he said with cold insolence when Cameron had finished
+his tale. "You look to me like a blank blank horse thief or whiskey
+trader."
+
+Faint as he was with cold and hunger, the deliberate insolence of the
+man stirred Cameron to sudden rage. The blood flooded his pale face.
+
+"You coward!" he cried in a choking voice, gathering himself to spring
+at the man's throat.
+
+But the stranger only laughed and, stepping backward, spoke a word
+to the Indian behind him. Before he could move Cameron found himself
+covered by the rifle with the malignant eye of the Indian behind it.
+
+"Hold on, Little Thunder, drop it!" said the stranger with a slight
+laugh.
+
+Reluctantly the rifle came down.
+
+"All right, Mr. Surveyor," said the stranger with a good-natured laugh.
+"Pardon my abruptness. I was merely testing you. One cannot be too
+careful in these parts nowadays when the woods are full of horse thieves
+and whiskey runners. Oh, come on," he continued, glancing at Cameron's
+face, "I apologise. So you're lost, eh? Hungry too? Well, so am I, and
+though I was not going to feed just yet we may as well grub together.
+Bring the cattle into shelter here," he said to Little Thunder. "They
+will stand right enough. And get busy with the grub."
+
+The Indian grunted a remonstrance.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied the stranger. "Hand it over." He took
+Cameron's rifle from the Indian and set it in the corner. "Now get a
+move on! We have no time to waste."
+
+So saying he hurried out himself into the storm. In a few minutes
+Cameron could hear the blows of an axe, and soon the stranger appeared
+with a load of dry wood with which he built up a blazing fire. He
+was followed shortly by the Indian, who from a sack drew out bacon,
+hardtack, and tea, and, with cooking utensils produced from another
+sack, speedily prepared supper.
+
+"Pile in," said the stranger to Cameron, passing him the pan in which
+the bacon and venison had been fried. "Pass the tea, Little Thunder. No
+time to waste. We've got to hustle."
+
+Cameron was only too eager to obey these orders, and in the generous
+warmth of the big fire and under the stimulus of the boiling tea his
+strength and nerve began to come back to him.
+
+For some minutes he was too intent on satisfying his ravenous hunger to
+indulge in conversation with his host, but as his hunger became appeased
+he began to give his attention to the man who had so mysteriously blown
+in upon him out of the blizzard. There was something fascinating about
+the lean, clean-cut face with its firm lines about the mouth and chin
+and its deep set brown-grey eyes that glittered like steel or shone
+like limpid pools of light according to the mood of the man. They were
+extraordinary eyes. Cameron remembered them like dagger points behind
+the pistol and then like kindly lights in a dark window when he had
+smiled. Just now as he sat eating with eager haste the eyes were staring
+forward into the fire out of deep sockets, with a far-away, reminiscent,
+kindly look in them. The lumberman's heavy skin-lined jacket and the
+overalls tucked into boots could not hide the athletic lines of the
+lithe muscular figure. Cameron looked at his hands with their long,
+sinewy fingers. "The hands of a gentleman," thought he. "What is his
+history? And where does he come from?"
+
+"London's my home," said the stranger, answering Cameron's mental
+queries. "Name, Raven--Richard Colebrooke Raven--Dick for short;
+rancher, horse and cattle trader; East Kootenay; at present running in
+a stock of goods and horses; and caught like yourself in this beastly
+blizzard."
+
+"My name's Cameron, and I'm from Edinburgh a year ago," replied Cameron
+briefly.
+
+"Edinburgh? Knew it ten years ago. Quiet old town, quaint folk. Never
+know what they are thinking about you."
+
+Cameron smiled. How well he remembered the calm, detached, critical but
+uncurious gaze with which the dwellers of the modern Athens were wont to
+regard mere outsiders.
+
+"I know," he said. "I came from the North myself."
+
+The stranger had apparently forgotten him and was gazing steadily into
+the fire. Suddenly, with extraordinary energy, he sprang from the ground
+where he had been sitting.
+
+"Now," he cried, "en avant!"
+
+"Where to?" asked Cameron, rising to his feet.
+
+"East Kootenay, all the way, and hustle's the word."
+
+"Not me," said Cameron. "I must get back to my camp. If you will kindly
+leave me some grub and some matches I shall be all right and very much
+obliged. McIvor will be searching for me to-morrow."
+
+"Ha!" burst forth the stranger in vehement expletive. "Searching for
+you, heh?" He stood for a few moments in deep thought, then spoke to the
+Indian a few words in his own language. That individual, with a fierce
+glance towards Cameron, grunted a gruff reply.
+
+"No, no," said Raven, also glancing at Cameron. Again the Indian spoke,
+this time with insistent fierceness. "No! no! you cold-blooded devil,"
+replied the trader. "No! But," he added with emphasis, "we will take him
+with us. Pack! Here, bring in coat, mitts, socks, Little Thunder. And
+move quick, do you hear?" His voice rang out in imperious command.
+
+Little Thunder, growling though he might, no longer delayed, but dived
+into the storm and in a few moments returned bearing a bag from which he
+drew the articles of clothing desired.
+
+"But I am not going with you," said Cameron firmly. "I cannot desert
+my chief this way. It would give him no end of trouble. Leave me some
+matches and, if you can spare it, a little grub, and I shall do finely."
+
+"Get these things on," replied Raven, "and quit talking. Don't be
+a fool! we simply can't leave you behind. If you only knew the
+alternative, you'd--"
+
+Cameron glanced at the Indian. The eager fierce look on that hideous
+face startled him.
+
+"We will send you back all safe in a few days," continued the trader
+with a smile. "Come, don't delay! March is the word."
+
+"I won't go!" said Cameron resolutely. "I'll stay where I am."
+
+"All right, you fool!" replied Raven with a savage oath. "Take your
+medicine then."
+
+He nodded to the Indian. With a swift gleam of joy in his red-rimmed
+eyes the Indian reached swiftly for Cameron's rifle.
+
+"No, too much noise," said Raven, coolly finishing the packing.
+
+A swift flash of a knife in the firelight, and the Indian hurled himself
+upon the unsuspecting Cameron. But quick as was the attack Cameron was
+quicker. Gripping the Indian's uplifted wrist with his left hand, he
+brought his right with terrific force upon the point of his assailant's
+chin. The Indian spun round like a top and pitched out into the dark.
+
+"Neatly done!" cried the trader with a great oath and a laugh. "Hold on,
+Little Thunder!" he continued, as the Indian reappeared, knife in hand,
+"He'll come now. Quiet, you beast! Ah-h-h! Would you?" He seized by the
+throat and wrist the Indian, who, frothing with rage and snarling like
+a wild animal, was struggling to reach Cameron again. "Down, you dog! Do
+you hear me?"
+
+With a twist of his arms he brought the Indian to his knees and held him
+as he might a child. Quite suddenly the Indian grew still.
+
+"Good!" said Raven. "Now, no more of this. Pack up."
+
+Without a further word or glance at Cameron, Little Thunder gathered up
+the stuff and vanished.
+
+"Now," continued the trader, "you perhaps see that it would be wise for
+you to come along without further delay."
+
+"All right," said Cameron, trembling with indignant rage, "but remember,
+you'll pay for this."
+
+The trader smiled kindly upon him.
+
+"Better get these things on," he said, pointing to the articles of
+clothing upon the cave floor. "The blizzard is gathering force and we
+have still some hours to ride. But," he continued, stepping close to
+Cameron and looking him in the eyes, "there must be no more nonsense.
+You can see my man is somewhat short in temper; and indeed mine is
+rather brittle at times."
+
+For a single instant a smile curled the firm lips and half closed the
+steely eyes of the speaker, and, noting the smile and the steely gleam
+in the grey-brown eyes, Cameron hastily decided that he would no longer
+resist.
+
+Warmed and fed and protected against the blizzard, but with his heart
+full of indignant wrath, Cameron found himself riding on a wretched
+cayuse before the trader whose horse could but dimly be seen through the
+storm, but which from his antics appeared to be possessed of a thousand
+demons.
+
+"Steady, Nighthawk, old boy! We'll get 'em moving after a bit," said
+his master, soothing the kicking beast. "Aha, that was just a shade
+violent," he remonstrated, as the horse with a scream rushed open
+mouthed at a blundering pony and sent him scuttling forward in wild
+terror after the bunch already disappearing down the trail, following
+Little Thunder upon his broncho.
+
+The blizzard was now in their back and, though its force was thereby
+greatly lessened, the black night was still thick with whirling snow and
+the cold grew more intense every moment. Cameron could hardly see his
+pony's ears, but, loping easily along the levels, scrambling wildly up
+the hills, and slithering recklessly down the slopes, the little brute
+followed without pause the cavalcade in front. How they kept the trail
+Cameron could not imagine, but, with the instinct of their breed, the
+ponies never faltered. Far before in the black blinding storm could
+be heard the voice of Little Thunder, rising and falling in a kind of
+singing chant, a chant which Cameron was afterwards to know right well.
+
+     "Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!
+     Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!"
+
+Behind him came the trader, riding easily his demon-spirited broncho,
+and singing in full baritone the patriotic ode dear to Britishers the
+world over:
+
+     "Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+     Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+        The army and navy for ever,
+     Three cheers for the red, white and blue!"
+
+As Cameron went pounding along through the howling blizzard, half
+asleep upon his loping, scrambling, slithering pony, with the "Kai-yai,
+hai-yah" of Little Thunder wailing down the storm from before him and
+the martial notes of the trader behind him demanding cheers for Her
+Majesty's naval and military forces, he seemed to himself to be in the
+grip of some ghastly nightmare which, try as he might, he was unable to
+shake off.
+
+The ghastly unreality of the nightmare was dispelled by the sudden halt
+of the bunch of ponies in front.
+
+"All off!" cried the trader, riding forward upon his broncho, which,
+apparently quite untired by the long night ride, danced forward through
+the bunch gaily biting and slashing as he went. "All off! Get them into
+the 'bunk-house' there, Little Thunder. Come along, Mr. Cameron, we have
+reached our camp. Take off the bridle and blanket and let your pony go."
+
+Cameron did as he was told, and guided by the sound of the trader's
+voice made his way to a low log building which turned out to be the
+deserted "grub-house" of an old lumber camp.
+
+"Come along," cried the trader heartily. "Welcome to Fifty Mile Camp.
+Its accommodation is somewhat limited, but we can at least offer you
+a bunk, grub, and fire, and these on a night like this are not to be
+despised." He fumbled around in the dark for a few moments and found and
+lit a candle stuck in an empty bottle. "There," he cried in a tone of
+genial hospitality and with a kindly smile, "get a fire on here and make
+yourself at home. Nighthawk demands my attention for the present. Don't
+look so glum, old boy," he added, slapping Cameron gaily on the back.
+"The worst is over." So saying, he disappeared into the blizzard,
+singing at the top of his voice in the cheeriest possible tones:
+
+     "The army and navy for ever,
+        Three cheers for the red, white and blue!"
+
+and leaving Cameron sorely perplexed as to what manner of man this might
+be; who one moment could smile with all the malevolence of a fiend and
+again could welcome him with all the generous and genial hospitality he
+might show to a loved and long-lost friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STONIES
+
+
+The icy cold woke Cameron as the grey light came in through the dirty
+windows and the cracks between the logs of the grub-house. Already
+Little Thunder was awake and busy with the fire in the cracked and rusty
+stove. Cameron lay still and watched. Silently, swiftly the Indian moved
+about his work till the fire began to roar and the pot of snow on the
+top to melt. Then the trader awoke. With a single movement he was out
+upon the floor.
+
+"All hands awake!" he shouted. "Aha, Mr. Cameron! Good sleep, eh? Slept
+like a bear myself. Now grub, and off! Still blowing, eh? Well, so
+much the better. There is a spot thirty miles on where we will be snug
+enough. How's breakfast, Little Thunder? This is our only chance to-day,
+so don't spare the grub."
+
+Cameron made but slight reply. He was stiff and sore with the cold and
+the long ride of the day before. This, however, he minded but little. If
+he could only guess what lay before him. He was torn between anxiety and
+indignation. He could hardly make himself believe that he was alive and
+in his waking senses. Twenty-four hours ago he was breakfasting with
+McIvor and his gang in the camp by The Bow; now he was twenty or thirty
+miles away in the heart of the mountains and practically a prisoner in
+the hands of as blood-thirsty a looking Indian as he had ever seen, and
+a man who remained to him an inexplicable mystery. Who and what was
+this man? He scanned his face in the growing light. Strength, daring,
+alertness, yes, and kindliness, he read in the handsome, brown, lean
+face of this stranger, lit by its grey-brown hazel eyes and set off
+with brown wavy hair which the absence of a cap now for the first time
+revealed.
+
+"He looks all right," Cameron said to himself. And yet when he recalled
+the smile that had curled these thin lips and half closed these hazel
+eyes in the cave the night before, and when he thought of that murderous
+attack of his Indian companion, he found it difficult wholly to trust
+the man who was at once his rescuer and his captor.
+
+In the days of the early eighties there were weird stories floating
+about through the Western country of outlaw Indian traders whose chief
+stock for barter was a concoction which passed for whiskey, but the
+ingredients of which were principally high wines and tobacco juice, with
+a little molasses to sweeten it and a touch of blue stone to give
+it bite. Men of reckless daring were these traders, resourceful and
+relentless. For a bottle of their "hell-fire fluid" they would buy a
+buffalo hide, a pack of beaver skins, or a cayuse from an Indian without
+hesitation or remorse. With a keg or two of their deadly brew they would
+approach a tribe and strip it bare of a year's catch of furs.
+
+In the fierce fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed and
+half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second best and
+many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon the plains
+or among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail of the whiskey
+runners.
+
+In British territory all this style of barter was of course unlawful.
+The giving, selling, or trading of any sort of intoxicant to the Indians
+was absolutely prohibited. But it was a land of vast and mighty spaces,
+and everywhere were hiding places where armies could be safely disposed,
+and therefore there was small chance for the enforcement of the laws of
+the Dominion. There was little risk to the whiskey runners; and, indeed,
+however great the risk, the immense profits of their trade would have
+made them willing to take it.
+
+Hence all through the Western plains the whiskey runners had their way
+to the degradation and demoralization of the unhappy natives and to
+the rapid decimation of their numbers. Horse thieves, too, and cattle
+"rustlers" operating on both sides of "the line" added to the general
+confusion and lawlessness that prevailed and rendered the lives and
+property of the few pioneer settlers insecure.
+
+It was to deal with this situation that the Dominion Government
+organised and despatched the North West Mounted Police to Western
+Canada. Immediately upon the advent of this famous corps matters began
+to improve. The open ravages of the whiskey runners ceased and these
+daring outlaws were forced to carry on their fiendish business by
+midnight marches and through the secret trails and coulees of the
+foothills. The profits of the trade, however, were still great enough
+to tempt the more reckless and daring of these men. Cattle rustling
+and horse stealing still continued, but on a much smaller scale. To the
+whole country the advent of the police proved an incalculable blessing.
+But to the Indian tribes especially was this the case. The natives soon
+learned to regard the police officers as their friends. In them they
+found protection from the unscrupulous traders who had hitherto cheated
+them without mercy or conscience, as well as from the whiskey runners
+through whose devilish activities their people had suffered irreparable
+loss.
+
+The administration of the law by the officers of the police with firm
+and patient justice put an end also to the frequent and bloody wars that
+had prevailed previously between the various tribes, till, by these wild
+and savage people the red coat came to be regarded with mingled awe and
+confidence, a terror to evil-doers and a protection to those that did
+well.
+
+To which class did this man belong? This Cameron was utterly unable to
+decide.
+
+With this problem vexing his mind he ate his breakfast in almost
+complete silence, making only monosyllabic replies to the trader's
+cheerful attempts at conversation.
+
+Suddenly, with disconcerting accuracy, the trader seemed to read his
+mind.
+
+"Now, Mr. Cameron," he said, pulling out his pipe, "we will have a smoke
+and a chat. Fill up." He passed Cameron his little bag of tobacco. "Last
+night things were somewhat strained," he continued. "Frankly, I confess,
+I took you at first for a whiskey runner and a horse thief, and having
+suffered from these gentlemen considerably I was taking no chances."
+
+"Why force me to go with you, then?" asked Cameron angrily.
+
+"Why? For your good. There is less danger both to you--and to me--with
+you under my eye," replied the trader with a smile.
+
+"Yet your man would have murdered me?"
+
+"Well, you see Little Thunder is one of the Blood Tribe and rather swift
+with his knife at times, I confess. Besides, his family has suffered at
+the hands of the whiskey runners. He is a chief and he owes it to these
+devils that he is out of a job just now. You may imagine he is somewhat
+touchy on the point of whiskey traders.
+
+"It was you set him on me," said Cameron, still wrathful.
+
+"No, no," said the trader, laughing quietly. "That was merely to startle
+you out of your, pardon me, unreasonable obstinacy. You must believe me
+it was the only thing possible that you should accompany us, for if you
+were a whiskey runner then it was better for us that you should be under
+guard, and if you were a surveyor it was better for you that you should
+be in our care. Why, man, this storm may go for three days, and you
+would be stiff long before anyone could find you. No, no, I confess our
+measures may have seemed somewhat--ah--abrupt, but, believe me, they
+were necessary, and in a day or two you will acknowledge that I am in
+the right of it. Meantime let's trust each other, and there is my hand
+on it, Cameron."
+
+There was no resisting the frank smile, the open manner of the man, and
+Cameron took the offered hand with a lighter heart than he had known for
+the last twelve hours.
+
+"Now, then, that's settled," cried the trader, springing to his feet.
+"Cameron, you can pack this stuff together while Little Thunder and I
+dig out our bunch of horses. They will be half frozen and it will be
+hard to knock any life into them."
+
+It was half an hour before Cameron had his packs ready, and, there being
+no sign of the trader, he put on his heavy coat, mitts, and cap and
+fought his way through the blizzard, which was still raging in full
+force, to the bunk-house, a log building about thirty feet long and half
+as wide, in which were huddled the horses and ponies to the number of
+about twenty. Eight of the ponies carried pack saddles, and so busy were
+Raven and the Indian with the somewhat delicate operation of assembling
+the packs that he was close upon them before they were aware. Boxes and
+bags were strewn about in orderly disorder, and on one side were several
+small kegs. As Cameron drew near, the Indian, who was the first to
+notice him, gave a grunt.
+
+"What the blank blank are you doing here?" cried Raven with a string
+of oaths, flinging a buffalo robe over the kegs. "My word! You startled
+me," he added with a short laugh. "I haven't got used to you yet. All
+right, Little Thunder, get these boxes together. Bring that grey cayuse
+here, Cameron, the one with the rope on near the door."
+
+This was easier said than done, for the half-broken brute snorted and
+plunged till Cameron, taking a turn of the rope round his nose, forced
+him up through the trembling, crowding bunch.
+
+"Good!" said the trader. "You are all right. You didn't learn to rope a
+cayuse in Edinburgh, I guess. Here's his saddle. Cinch it on."
+
+While Cameron was engaged in carrying out these orders Little Thunder
+and the trader were busy roping boxes and kegs into pack loads with a
+skill and dexterity that could only be the result of long practice.
+
+"Now, then, Cameron, we'll load some of this molasses on your pony."
+
+So saying, Raven picked up one of the kegs.
+
+"Hello, Little Thunder, this keg's leaking. It's lost the plug, as I'm a
+sinner."
+
+Sure enough, from a small auger hole golden syrup was streaming over the
+edge of the keg.
+
+"I am certain I put that plug in yesterday," said Raven. "Must have been
+knocked out last night. Fortunately it stood right end up or we should
+have lost the whole keg."
+
+While he was speaking he was shaping a small stick into a small plug,
+which he drove tight into the keg.
+
+"That will fix it," he said. "Now then, put these boxes on the other
+side. That will do. Take your pony toward the door and tie him there.
+Little Thunder and I will load the rest and bring them up."
+
+In a very short time all the remaining goods were packed into neat loads
+and lashed upon the pack ponies in such a careful manner that neither
+box nor keg could be seen outside the cover of blankets and buffalo
+skins.
+
+"Now then," cried Raven. "Boots and saddles! We will give you a better
+mount to-day," he continued, selecting a stout built sorrel pony. "There
+you are! And a dandy he is, sure-footed as a goat and easy as a cradle.
+Now then, Nighthawk, we shall just clear out this bunch."
+
+As he spoke he whipped the blanket off his horse. Cameron could not
+forbear an exclamation of wonder and admiration as his eyes fell
+upon Raven's horse. And not without reason, for Nighthawk was as
+near perfection as anything in horse flesh of his size could be. His
+coal-black satin skin, his fine flat legs, small delicate head, sloping
+hips, round and well ribbed barrel, all showed his breed. Rolling up the
+blanket, Raven strapped it to his saddle and, flinging himself astride
+his horse, gave a yell that galvanised the wretched, shivering,
+dispirited bunch into immediate life and activity.
+
+"Get out the packers there, Little Thunder. Hurry up! Don't be all day.
+Cameron, fall behind with me."
+
+Little Thunder seized the leading line of the first packer, leaped
+astride his own pony, and pushed out into the storm. But the rest of the
+animals held back and refused to face the blizzard. The traditions of
+the cayuse are unheroic in the matter of blizzards and are all in favor
+of turning tail to every storm that blows. But Nighthawk soon overcame
+their reluctance, whether traditional or otherwise. With a fury nothing
+less than demoniacal he fell upon the animals next him and inspired them
+with such terror that, plunging forward, they carried the bunch crowding
+through the door. It was no small achievement to turn some twenty
+shivering, balky, stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter
+and swing them through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail
+again. But with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his
+encouraging refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion
+dynamically bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without
+the straying of a single animal. Raven was in great spirits, singing,
+shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a fierce
+charge upon the laggards hustling the long straggling line onwards
+through the whirling drifts without pause or falter. Occasionally he
+dropped back beside Cameron, who brought up the rear, bringing a word of
+encouragement or approval.
+
+"How do they ever keep the trail?" asked Cameron on one of these
+occasions.
+
+"Little Thunder does the trick. He is the greatest tracker in this
+country, unless it is his cayuse, which has a nose like a bloodhound and
+will keep the trail through three feet of snow. The rest of the bunch
+follow. They are afraid to do anything else in a blizzard like this."
+
+So hour after hour, upward along mountainsides, for by this time they
+were far into the Rockies, and down again through thick standing forests
+in the valleys, across ravines and roaring torrents which the warm
+weather of the previous days had released from the glaciers, and over
+benches of open country, where the grass lay buried deep beneath
+the snow, they pounded along. The clouds of snow ever whirling about
+Cameron's head and in front of his eyes hid the distant landscape and
+engulfed the head of the cavalcade before him. Without initiative and
+without volition, but in a dreamy haze, he sat his pony to which he
+entrusted his life and fortune and waited for the will of his mysterious
+companion to develope.
+
+About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and dropped
+in beside Cameron's pony.
+
+"A chinook coming," said Raven. "Getting warmer, don't you notice?"
+
+"No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do feel a
+little more comfortable," replied Cameron.
+
+"Sure thing. Rain in an hour."
+
+"An hour? In six perhaps."
+
+"In less than an hour," replied Raven, "the chinook will be here. We're
+riding into it. It blows down through the pass before us and it will
+lick up this snow in no time. You'll see the grass all about you before
+three hours are passed."
+
+The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction. With incredible
+rapidity the temperature continued to rise. In half an hour Cameron
+discarded his mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket. The wind
+dropped to a gentle breeze, swinging more and more into the southwest,
+and before the hour was gone the sun was shining fitfully again and the
+snow had changed into a drizzling rain.
+
+The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only increased
+the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had been struggling
+during the past thirty-six hours. As the afternoon wore on the air
+became sensibly warmer. The moisture rose in steaming clouds from
+the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in gurgling rivulets, the
+rivulets became streams, the streams rivers, and the mountain torrents
+which they had easily forded earlier in the day threatened to sweep them
+away.
+
+The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature. He was in
+high glee. It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.
+
+"We will make it all right!" he shouted to Little Thunder as they paused
+for a few moments in a grassy glade. "Can we make the Forks before
+dark?"
+
+Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it
+expressed doubt.
+
+"On then!" he shouted. "We must make these brutes get a move on. They'll
+feed when we camp."
+
+So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies that
+were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the chinook had
+already melted the snow. Mercilessly and savagely the trader, with whip
+and voice and charging stallion, hustled the wretched animals into the
+trail once more. And through the long afternoon, with unceasing and
+brutal ferocity, he belabored the faltering, stumbling, half-starved
+creatures, till from sheer exhaustion they were like to fall upon the
+trail. It was a weary business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of
+Nighthawk seemed to have passed into his master, and with an insistence
+that knew no mercy together they battered that wretched bunch up and
+down the long slopes till at length the merciful night fell upon the
+straggling, stumbling cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.
+
+At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt, rode
+to the rear and grunted something to his chief.
+
+"What?" cried Raven in a startled voice. "Stonies! Where?"
+
+Little Thunder pointed.
+
+"Did they see you?" This insult Little Thunder disdained to notice.
+"Good!" replied Raven. "Stay here, Cameron, we will take a look at
+them."
+
+In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an eager
+gleam in his eyes.
+
+"Stonies!" he exclaimed. "And a big camp. On their way back from their
+winter's trapping. Old Macdougall himself in charge, I think. Do you
+know him?"
+
+"I have heard of him," said Cameron, and his tone indicated his
+reverence for the aged pioneer Methodist missionary who had accomplished
+such marvels during his long years of service with his Indian flock and
+had gained such a wonderful control over them.
+
+"Yes, he is all right," replied Raven, answering his tone. "He is a
+shrewd old boy, though. Looks mighty close after the trading end. Well,
+we will perhaps do a little trade ourselves. But we won't disturb the
+old man," he continued, as if to himself. "Come and take a look at
+them."
+
+Little Thunder had halted at a spot where the trail forked. One part led
+to the right down the long slope of the mountain, the other to the left,
+gradually climbing toward the top. The Stonies had come by the right
+hand trail and were now camped off the trail on a little sheltered bench
+further down the side of the mountain and surrounded by a scattering
+group of tall pines. Through the misty night their camp fires burned
+cheerily, lighting up their lodges. Around the fires could be seen
+groups of men squatted on the ground and here and there among the lodges
+the squaws were busy, evidently preparing the evening meal. At one side
+of the camp could be distinguished a number of tethered ponies and near
+them others quietly grazing.
+
+But though the camp lay only a few hundred yards away and on a lower
+level, not a sound came up from it to Cameron's ears except the
+occasional bark of a dog. The Indians are a silent people and move
+noiselessly through Nature's solitudes as if in reverence for her sacred
+mysteries.
+
+"We won't disturb them," said Raven in a low tone. "We will slip past
+quietly."
+
+"They come from Morleyville, don't they?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why not visit the camp?" exclaimed Cameron eagerly. "I am sure Mr.
+Macdougall would be glad to see us. And why could not I go back with
+him? My camp is right on the trail to Morleyville."
+
+Raven stood silent, evidently perplexed.
+
+"Well," he replied hesitatingly, "we shall see later. Meantime let's get
+into camp ourselves. And no noise, please." His voice was low and stern.
+
+Silently, and as swiftly as was consistent with silence, Little Thunder
+led his band of pack horses along the upper trail, the trader and
+Cameron bringing up the rear with the other ponies. For about half a
+mile they proceeded in this direction, then, turning sharply to the
+right, they cut across through the straggling woods, and so came upon
+the lower trail, beyond the encampment of the Stonies and well out of
+sight of it.
+
+"We camp here," said Raven briefly. "But remember, no noise."
+
+"What about visiting their camp?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"There is no immediate hurry."
+
+He spoke a few words to Little Thunder in Indian.
+
+"Little Thunder thinks they may be Blackfeet. We can't be too careful.
+Now let's get grub."
+
+Cameron made no reply. The trader's hesitating manner awakened all his
+former suspicions. He was firmly convinced the Indians were Stonies and
+he resolved that come what might he would make his escape to their camp.
+
+Without unloading their packs they built their fire upon a large flat
+rock and there, crouching about it, for the mists were chilly, they had
+their supper.
+
+In undertones Raven and Little Thunder conversed in the Indian speech.
+The gay careless air of the trader had given place to one of keen,
+purposeful determination. There was evidently serious business on foot.
+Immediately after supper Little Thunder vanished into the mist.
+
+"We may as well make ourselves comfortable," said Raven, pulling a
+couple of buffalo skins from a pack and giving one to Cameron. "Little
+Thunder is gone to reconnoiter." He threw some sticks upon the fire.
+"Better go to sleep," he suggested. "We shall probably visit the camp in
+the morning if they should prove to be Stonies."
+
+Cameron made no reply, but, lying down upon his buffalo skin, pretended
+to sleep, though with the firm resolve to keep awake. But he had passed
+through an exhausting day and before many minutes had passed he fell
+into a doze.
+
+From this he awoke with a start, his ears filled with the sound of
+singing. Beyond the fire lay Raven upon his face, apparently sound
+asleep. The singing came from the direction of the Indian camp.
+Noiselessly he rose and stole up the trail to a point from which the
+camp was plainly visible. A wonderful scene lay before his eyes. A great
+fire burned in the centre of the camp and round the fire the whole band
+of Indians was gathered with their squaws in the background. In the
+centre of the circle stood a tall man with a venerable beard, apparently
+reading. After he had read the sound of singing once more rose upon the
+night air.
+
+"Stonies, all right," said Cameron exultantly to himself. "And at
+evening prayers, too, by Jove."
+
+He remembered hearing McIvor tell how the Stonies never went on a
+hunting expedition without their hymn books and never closed a day
+without their evening worship. The voices were high-pitched and thin,
+but from that distance they floated up soft and sweet. He could clearly
+distinguish the music of the old Methodist hymn, the words of which were
+quite familiar to him:
+
+     "There is a fountain filled with blood
+       Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
+     And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
+       Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+Over and over again, with strange wild cadences of their own invention,
+the worshippers wailed forth the refrain,
+
+     "Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+Then, all kneeling, they went to prayer. Over all, the misty moon
+struggling through the broken clouds cast a pale and ghostly light. It
+was, to Cameron with his old-world religious conventions and traditions,
+a weirdly fascinating but intensely impressive scene. Afar beyond the
+valley, appeared in dim outline the great mountains, with their heads
+thrust up into the sky. Nearer at their bases gathered the pines, at
+first in solid gloomy masses, then, as they approached, in straggling
+groups, and at last singly, like tall sentinels on guard. On the
+grassy glade, surrounded by the sentinel pines, the circle of dusky
+worshippers, kneeling about their camp fire, lifted their faces
+heavenward and their hearts God-ward in prayer, and as upon those dusky
+faces the firelight fell in fitful gleams, so upon their hearts, dark
+with the superstitions of a hundred generations, there fell the gleams
+of the torch held high by the hands of their dauntless ambassador of the
+blessed Gospel of the Grace of God.
+
+With mingled feelings of reverence and of pity Cameron stood gazing down
+upon this scene, resolved more than ever to attach himself to this camp
+whose days closed with evening prayer.
+
+"Impressive scene!" said a mocking voice in his ear.
+
+Cameron started. A sudden feeling of repulsion seized him.
+
+"Yes," he said gravely, "an impressive scene, in my eyes at least, and I
+should not wonder if in the eyes of God as well."
+
+"Who knows?" said Raven gruffly, as they both turned back to the fire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DULL RED STAIN
+
+
+The minutes passed slowly. The scene in the camp of the Stonies that he
+had just witnessed drove all sleep from Cameron. He was firmly resolved
+that at the first opportunity he would make his break for liberty; for
+he was now fully aware that though not confessedly he was none the less
+really a prisoner.
+
+As he lay intently thinking, forming and discarding plans of escape, two
+Indians, followed by Little Thunder, walked quietly within the circle of
+the firelight and with a nod and a grunt towards Raven sat down by
+the fire. Raven passed his tobacco bag, which, without a word, they
+accepted; and, filling their pipes, they gravely began to smoke.
+
+"White Cloud," grunted Little Thunder, waving his hand to the first
+Indian. "Big Chief. Him," pointing to the second Indian, "White Cloud
+brother."
+
+"My brothers had good hunting this year," said Raven.
+
+The Indians grunted for reply.
+
+"Your packs are heavy?"
+
+Another grunt made answer.
+
+"We have much goods," continued Raven. "But the time is short. Come and
+see."
+
+Raven led them out into the dark towards the pack horse, Little Thunder
+remaining by the fire. From the darkness Cameron could hear Raven's
+voice in low tones and the Indians' guttural replies mingled with
+unusual laughter.
+
+When they returned the change in their appearance was plainly visible.
+Their eyes were gleaming with an unnatural excitement, their grave
+and dignified demeanour had given place to an eager, almost childish
+excitement. Cameron did not need the whiff that came to him from their
+breath to explain the cause of this sudden change. The signs were to him
+only too familiar.
+
+"My brothers will need to hurry," said Raven. "We move when the moon is
+high."
+
+"Good!" replied White Cloud. "Go, quick." He waved his hand toward the
+dark. "Come." He brought it back again. "Heap quick." Without further
+word they vanished, silent as the shadows that swallowed them up.
+
+"Now, then, Cameron, we have big business on foot. Up and give us a
+hand. Little Thunder, take the bunch down the trail a couple of miles
+and come back."
+
+Selecting one of the pack ponies, he tied it to a pine tree and the
+others he hurried off with Little Thunder down the trail.
+
+"Going to do some trading, are you?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Yes, if the price is right, though I'm not too keen," replied Raven,
+throwing himself down beside the fire.
+
+"What are you after? Furs?"
+
+"Yes, furs mostly. Anything they have to offer."
+
+"What do you give in exchange?"
+
+Raven threw him a sharp glance, but Cameron's face was turned toward the
+fire.
+
+"Oh, various articles. Wearing apparel, tobacco, finery. Molasses too.
+They are very fond of molasses."
+
+"Molasses?" echoed Cameron, with a touch of scorn. "It was not molasses
+they had to-night. Why did you give them whiskey?" he asked boldly.
+
+Raven started. His eyes narrowed to two piercing points.
+
+"Why? That's my business, my friend. I keep a flask to treat my guests
+occasionally. Have you any objection?"
+
+"It is against the law, I understand, and mighty bad for the Indians."
+
+"Against the law?" echoed Raven in childlike surprise. "You don't tell
+me!"
+
+"So the Mounted Police declare," said Cameron, turning his eyes upon
+Raven's face.
+
+"The Mounted Police!" exclaimed Raven, pouring forth a flood of oaths.
+"That! for the Mounted Police!" he said, snapping his fingers.
+
+"But," replied Cameron, "I understood you very especially to object to
+the operations of the whiskey runners?"
+
+"Whiskey runners? Who's speaking of whiskey runners? I'm talking of
+the approved method of treating our friends in this country, and if the
+police should interfere between me and my friends they would be carrying
+things a little too far. But all the same," he continued, hastily
+checking himself, "the police are all right. They put down a lot of
+lawlessness in this country. But I may as well say to you here, Mr.
+Cameron," he continued, "that there are certain things it is best not to
+see, or, having seen, to speedily forget." As he spoke these words his
+eyes narrowed again to two grey points that seemed to bore right through
+to Cameron's brain.
+
+"This man is a very devil," thought Cameron to himself. "I was a fool
+not to see it before." But to the trader he said, "There are some things
+I would rather not see and some things I cannot forget."
+
+Before another hour had passed the Stonies reappeared, this time on
+ponies. The trader made no move to meet them. He sat quietly smoking by
+the fire. Silently the Indians approached the fire and threw down a pack
+of furs.
+
+"Huh!" said White Cloud. "Good! Ver good!" He opened his pack and spread
+out upon the rock with impressive deliberation its contents. And good
+they were, even to Cameron's uncultured eye. Wolf skins and bear,
+cinnamon and black, beaver, fox, and mink, as well as some magnificent
+specimens of mountain goat and sheep. "Good! Good! Big--fine--heap
+good!" White Cloud continued to exclaim as he displayed his collection.
+
+Raven turned them over carelessly, feeling the furs, examining and
+weighing the pelts. Then going to the pack horse he returned and spread
+out upon the rock beside the furs the goods which he proposed to offer
+in exchange. And a pitiful display it was, gaudy calicoes and flimsy
+flannels, the brilliance of whose colour was only equalled by the
+shoddiness of the material, cheap domestic blankets, half wool half
+cotton, prepared especially for the Indian trade. These, with beads and
+buttons, trinkets, whole strings of brass rings, rolls of tobacco, bags
+of shot and powder, pot metal knives, and other articles, all bearing
+the stamp of glittering fraud, constituted his stock for barter.
+The Indians made strenuous efforts to maintain an air of dignified
+indifference, but the glitter in their eyes betrayed their eagerness.
+White Cloud picked up a goat skin, heavy with its deep silky fur and
+with its rich splendour covered over the glittering mass of Raven's
+cheap and tawdry stuff.
+
+"Good trade," said White Cloud. "Him," pointing to the skin, "and,"
+turning it back, "him," laying his hand upon the goods beneath.
+
+Raven smiled carelessly, pulled out a flask from his pocket, took a
+drink and passed it to the others. Desperately struggling to suppress
+his eagerness and to maintain his dignified bearing, White Cloud seized
+the flask and, drinking long and deep, passed it to his brother.
+
+"Have a drink, Cameron," said Raven, as he received his flask again.
+
+"No!" said Cameron shortly. "And I would suggest to your friends that
+they complete the trade before they drink much more."
+
+"My friend here says this is no good," said Raven to the Indians,
+tapping the flask with his finger. "He says no more drink."
+
+White Cloud shot a keen enquiring glance at Cameron, but he made no
+reply other than to stretch out his hand for Raven's flask again. Before
+many minutes the efficacy of Raven's methods of barter began to be
+apparent. The Indians lost their grave and dignified demeanour. They
+became curious, eager, garrulous, and demonstrative. With childish glee
+they began examining more closely Raven's supply of goods, trying on the
+rings, draping themselves in the gaudy calicoes and flannels. At length
+Raven rolled up his articles of barter and set them upon one side.
+
+"How much?" he said.
+
+White Cloud selected the goat skin, laid upon it some half dozen beaver
+and mink, and a couple of foxes, and rolling them up in a pile laid them
+beside Raven's bundle.
+
+The trader smiled and shook his head. "No good. No good." So saying he
+took from his pack another flask and laid it upon his pile.
+
+Instantly the Indian increased his pile by a bear skin, a grey wolf, and
+a mountain goat. Then, without waiting for Raven's words, he reached for
+the flask.
+
+"No, not yet," said Raven quietly, laying his hand down upon the flask.
+
+The Indian with gleaming eyes threw on the pile some additional skins.
+
+"Good!" said Raven, surrendering the flask. Swiftly the Indian caught it
+up and, seizing the cork in his teeth, bit it off close to the neck
+of the flask. Snatching his knife from his pocket with almost frantic
+energy, he proceeded to dig out the imbedded cork.
+
+"Here," said Raven, taking the flask from him. "Let me have it." From
+his pocket he took a knife containing a corkscrew and with this he drew
+the cork and handed the flask back to the Indian.
+
+With shameless, bestial haste the Indian placed the bottle to his lips
+and after a long pull passed it to his waiting brother.
+
+At this point Raven rose as if to close the negotiations and took out
+his own flask for a final drink, but found it empty.
+
+"Aha!" he exclaimed, turning the empty flask upside down. At once the
+Indian passed him his flask. Raven, however, waved him aside and, going
+to his pack, drew out a tin oil can which would contain about a gallon.
+From this with great deliberation he filled his flask.
+
+"Huh!" exclaimed the Indian, pointing to the can. "How much?"
+
+Raven shook his head. "No sell. For me," he answered, tapping himself on
+the breast.
+
+"How much?" said the Indian fiercely.
+
+Still Raven declined to sell.
+
+Swiftly the Indian gathered up the remaining half of his pack of furs
+and, throwing them savagely at Raven's feet, seized the can.
+
+Still Raven refused to let it go.
+
+At this point the soft padding of a loping pony was heard coming up the
+trail and in a few minutes Little Thunder silently took his place in
+the circle about the fire. Cameron's heart sank within him, for now it
+seemed as if his chance of escape had slipped from him.
+
+Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who entered into
+conversation with the Stonies. At length White Cloud drew from his
+coat a black fox skin. In spite of himself Raven uttered a slight
+exclamation. It was indeed a superb pelt. With savage hate in every line
+of his face and in every movement of his body, the Indian flung the skin
+upon the pile of furs and without a "By your leave" seized the can and
+passed it to his brother.
+
+At this point Raven, with a sudden display of reckless generosity,
+placed his own flask upon the Indian's pile of goods.
+
+"Ask them if they want molasses," said Raven to Little Thunder.
+
+"No," grunted the Indian contemptuously, preparing to depart.
+
+"Ask them, Little Thunder."
+
+Immediately as Little Thunder began to speak the contemptuous attitude
+of the Stonies gave place to one of keen interest and desire. After some
+further talk Little Thunder went to the pack-pony, returned bearing a
+small keg and set it on the rock beside Raven's pile of furs. Hastily
+the Stonies consulted together, White Cloud apparently reluctant, the
+brother recklessly eager to close the deal. Finally with a gesture White
+Cloud put an end to the conversation, stepped out hastily into the
+dark and returned leading his pony into the light. Cutting asunder the
+lashings with his knife, he released a bundle of furs and threw it down
+at Raven's feet.
+
+"Same ting. Good!" he said.
+
+But Raven would not look at the bundle and proceeded to pack up the
+spoils of his barter. Earnestly the Stonies appealed to Little Thunder,
+but in vain. Angrily they remonstrated, but still without result. At
+length Little Thunder pointed to the pony and without hesitation White
+Cloud placed the bridle rein in his hands.
+
+Cameron could contain himself no longer. Suddenly rising from his place
+he strode to the side of the Indians and cried, "Don't do it! Don't be
+such fools! This no good," he said, kicking the keg. "What would Mr.
+Macdougall say? Come! I go with you. Take back these furs."
+
+He stepped forward to seize the second pack. Swiftly Little Thunder
+leaped before him, knife in hand, and crouched to spring. The Stonies
+had no doubt as to his meaning. Their hearts were filled with black
+rage against the unscrupulous trader, but their insane thirst for the
+"fire-water" swept from their minds every other consideration but that
+of determination to gratify this mad lust. Unconsciously they ranged
+themselves beside Cameron, their hands going to their belts. Quietly
+Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who, slowly putting
+up his knife, made a brief but vigourous harangue to the Stonies, the
+result of which was seen in the doubtful glances which they cast upon
+Cameron from time to time.
+
+"Come on!" cried Cameron again, laying his hand upon the nearest Indian.
+"Let's go to your camp. Take your furs. He is a thief, a robber, a
+bad man. All that," sweeping his hand towards Raven's goods, "no good.
+This," kicking the keg, "bad. Kill you."
+
+These words they could not entirely understand, but his gestures were
+sufficiently eloquent and significant. There was an ugly gleam in
+Raven's eyes and an ugly curl to his thin lips, but he only smiled.
+
+"Come," he said, waving his hand toward the furs, "take them away. Tell
+them we don't want to trade, Little Thunder." He pulled out his flask,
+slowly took a drink, and passed it to Little Thunder, who greedily
+followed his example. "Tell them we don't want to trade at all,"
+insisted Raven.
+
+Little Thunder volubly explained the trader's wishes.
+
+"Good-bye," said Raven, offering his hand to White Cloud. "Good
+friends," he added, once more passing him his flask.
+
+"Don't!" said Cameron, laying his hand again upon the Indian's arm. For
+a single instant White Cloud paused.
+
+"Huh!" grunted Little Thunder in contempt. "Big chief scared."
+
+Quickly the Stony shook off Cameron's hand, seized the flask and,
+putting it to his lips, drained it dry.
+
+"Come," said Cameron to the other Stony. "Come with me."
+
+Raven uttered a warning word to Little Thunder. The Indians stood for
+some moments uncertain, their heads bowed upon their breasts. Then White
+Cloud, throwing back his head and looking Cameron full in the face,
+said--"Good man. Good man. Me no go."
+
+"Then I go alone," cried Cameron, springing off into the darkness.
+
+As he turned his foot caught the pile of wood brought for the fire.
+He tripped and stumbled almost to the ground. Before he could recover
+himself Little Thunder, swift as a wildcat, leaped upon his back with
+his ever-ready knife in his upraised hand, but before he could strike,
+Cameron had turned himself and throwing the Indian off had struggled to
+his feet.
+
+"Hold there!" cried Raven with a terrible oath, flinging himself upon
+the struggling pair.
+
+A moment or two the Stonies hesitated, then they too seized Cameron and
+between them all they bore him fighting to the ground.
+
+"Keep back! Keep back!" cried Raven in a terrible voice to Little
+Thunder, who, knife in hand, was dancing round, seeking an opportunity
+to strike. "Will you lie still, or shall I knock your head in?" said
+Raven to Cameron through his clenched teeth, with one hand on his throat
+and the other poising a revolver over his head. Cameron gave up the
+struggle.
+
+"Speak and quick!" cried Raven, his face working with passion, his voice
+thick and husky, his breath coming in quick gasps from the fury that
+possessed him.
+
+"All right," said Cameron. "Let me up. You have beaten me this time."
+
+Raven sprang to his feet.
+
+"Let him up!" he said. "Now, then, Cameron, give me your word you won't
+try to escape."
+
+"No, I will not! I'll see you hanged first," said Cameron.
+
+Raven deliberately drew his pistol and said slowly:
+
+"I have saved your life twice already, but the time is past for any more
+trifling. Now you've got to take it."
+
+At this Little Thunder spoke a word, pointing toward the camp of the
+Stonies. Raven hesitated, then with an oath he strode toward Cameron and
+thrusting his pistol in his face said in tones of cold and concentrated
+rage:
+
+"Listen to me, you fool! Your life is hanging by a hair trigger that
+goes off with a feather touch. I give you one more chance. Move hand or
+foot and the bullet in this gun will pass neatly through your eye. So
+help me God Almighty!"
+
+He spoke to Little Thunder, still keeping Cameron covered with his gun.
+The Indian slipped quietly behind Cameron and swiftly threw a line over
+his shoulders and, drawing it tight, bound his arms to his side. Again
+and again he repeated this operation till Cameron stood swathed in the
+coils of the rope like a mummy, inwardly raging, not so much at his
+captor, but at himself and his stupid bungling of his break for liberty.
+His helpless and absurd appearance seemed to restore Raven's good
+humour.
+
+"Now, then," he said, turning to the Stonies and resuming his careless
+air, "we will finish our little business. Sit down, Mr. Cameron," he
+continued, with a pleasant smile. "It may be less dignified, but it is
+much more comfortable."
+
+Once more he took out his flask and passed it round, forgetting to take
+it back from his Indian visitors, who continued to drink from it in
+turn.
+
+"Listen," he said. "I give you all you see here for your furs and a pony
+to pack them. That is my last word. Quick, yes or no? Tell them no more
+trifling, Little Thunder. The moon is high. We start in ten minutes."
+
+There was no further haggling. The Indians seemed to recognise that the
+time for that was past. After a brief consultation they grunted their
+acceptance and proceeded to pack up their goods, but with no good will.
+More vividly than any in the company they realised the immensity of the
+fraud that was being perpetrated upon them. They were being robbed of
+their whole winter's kill and that of some of their friends as well,
+but they were helpless in the grip of their mad passion for the trader's
+fire-water. Disgusted with themselves and filled with black rage against
+the man who had so pitilessly stripped them bare of the profits of a
+year's toil and privation, how gladly would they have put their knives
+into his back, but they knew his sort by only too bitter experience and
+they knew that at his hands they need expect no pity.
+
+"Here," cried Raven, observing their black looks. "A present for my
+brothers." He handed them each a roll of tobacco. "And a present for
+their squaws," adding a scarlet blanket apiece to their pack.
+
+Without a word of thanks they took the gifts and, loading their stuff
+upon their remaining pony, disappeared down the trail.
+
+"Now, Little Thunder, let's get out of this, for once their old man
+finds out he will be hot foot on our trail."
+
+With furious haste they fell to their packing. Cameron stood aghast at
+the amazing swiftness and dexterity with which the packs were roped and
+loaded. When all was complete the trader turned to Cameron in gay good
+humour.
+
+"Now, Mr. Cameron, will you go passenger or freight?" Cameron made no
+reply. "In other words, shall we pack you on your pony or will you ride
+like a gentleman, giving me your word not to attempt to escape? Time
+presses, so answer quick! Give me twenty-four hours. Give me your word
+for twenty-four hours, after which you can go when you like."
+
+"I agree," said Cameron shortly.
+
+"Cut him loose, Little Thunder." Little Thunder hesitated. "Quick,
+you fool! Cut him loose. I know a gentleman when I see him. He is tied
+tighter than with ropes."
+
+"It is a great pity," he continued, addressing Cameron in a pleasant
+conversational tone as they rode down the trail together, "that you
+should have made an ass of yourself for those brutes. Bah! What odds?
+Old Macdougall or some one else would get their stuff sooner or later.
+Why not I? Come, cheer up. You are jolly well out of it, for, God knows,
+you may live to look death in the face many a time, but never while
+you live will you be so near touching the old sport as you were a few
+minutes ago. Why I have interfered to save you these three times blessed
+if I know! Many a man's bones have been picked by the coyotes in these
+hills for a fraction of the provocation you have given me, not to speak
+of Little Thunder, who is properly thirsting for your blood. But take
+advice from me," here he leaned over towards Cameron and touched him on
+the shoulder, while his voice took a sterner tone, "don't venture on any
+further liberties with him."
+
+Suddenly Cameron's rage blazed forth.
+
+"Now perhaps you will listen to me," he said in a voice thrilling with
+passion. "First of all, keep your hands off me. As for your comrade and
+partner in crime, I fear him no more than I would a dog and like a dog
+I shall treat him if he dares to attack me again. As for you, you are a
+coward and a cad. You have me at a disadvantage. But put down your guns
+and fight me on equal terms, and I will make you beg for your life!"
+
+There was a gleam of amused admiration in Raven's eyes.
+
+"By Jove! It would be a pretty fight, I do believe, and one I should
+greatly enjoy. At present, however, time is pressing and therefore that
+pleasure we must postpone. Meantime I promise you that when it comes it
+will be on equal terms."
+
+"I ask no more," said Cameron.
+
+There was no further conversation, for Raven appeared intent on putting
+as large a space as possible between himself and the camp of the
+Stonies. The discovery of the fraud he knew would be inevitable and he
+knew, too, that George Macdougall was not the man to allow his flock to
+be fleeced with impunity.
+
+So before the grey light of morning began to steal over the mountaintops
+Raven, with his bunch of ponies and his loot, was many miles forward
+on his journey. But the endurance even of bronchos and cayuses has its
+limit, and their desperate condition from hunger and fatigue rendered
+food and rest imperative.
+
+The sun was fully up when Raven ordered a halt, and in a sunny valley,
+deep with grass, unsaddling the wearied animals, he turned them loose to
+feed and rest. Apparently careless of danger and highly contented
+with their night's achievement, he and his Indian partner abandoned
+themselves to sleep. Cameron, too, though his indignation and chagrin
+prevented sleep for a time, was finally forced to yield to the genial
+influences of the warm sun and the languid airs of the spring day, and,
+firmly resolving to keep awake, he fell into dreamless slumber.
+
+The sun was riding high noon when he was awakened by a hand upon his
+arm. It was Raven.
+
+"Hush!" he said. "Not a word. Mount and quick!"
+
+Looking about Cameron observed that the pack horses were ready loaded
+and Raven standing by his broncho ready to mount. Little Thunder was
+nowhere to be seen.
+
+"What's up?" said Cameron.
+
+For answer Raven pointed up the long sloping trail down which they had
+come. There three horsemen could be seen riding hard, but still distant
+more than half a mile.
+
+"Saw them three miles away, luckily enough," said Raven.
+
+"Where's Little Thunder?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Oh, rounding up the bunch," answered Raven carelessly, waving his hand
+toward the valley. "Those men are coming some," he added, swinging into
+his saddle.
+
+As he spoke a rifle shot shattered the stillness of the valley. The
+first of the riders threw up his hands, clutched wildly at the vacant
+air and pitched headlong out of the saddle. "Good God! What's that?"
+gasped Cameron. The other two wheeled in their course. Before they could
+turn a second shot rang out and another of the riders fell upon his
+horse's neck, clung there for a moment, then gently slid to the ground.
+The third, throwing himself over the side of his pony, rode back for
+dear life.
+
+A third and a fourth shot were heard, but the fleeing rider escaped
+unhurt.
+
+"What does that mean?" again asked Cameron, weak and sick with horror.
+
+"Mount!" yelled Raven with a terrible oath and flourishing a revolver
+in his hand. "Mount quick!" His face was pale, his eyes burned with a
+fierce glare, while his voice rang with the blast of a bugle.
+
+"Lead those pack horses down that trail!" he yelled, thrusting the line
+into Cameron's hand. "Quick, I tell you!"
+
+"Crack-crack!" Twice a bullet sang savagely past Cameron's ears.
+
+"Quicker!" shouted Raven, circling round the bunch of ponies with wild
+cries and oaths like a man gone mad. Again and again the revolver spat
+wickedly and here and there a pony plunged recklessly forward, nicked
+in the ear by one of those venomous singing pellets. Helpless to
+defend himself and expecting every moment to feel the sting of a bullet
+somewhere in his body, Cameron hurried his pony with all his might down
+the trail, dragging the pack animals after him. In huddled confusion the
+terrified brutes followed after him in a mad rush, for hard upon their
+rear, like a beast devil-possessed, Nighthawk pressed, biting, kicking,
+squealing, to the accompaniment of his rider's oaths and yells and
+pistol shots. Down the long sloping trail to the very end of the valley
+the mad rush continued. There the ascent checked the fury of the speed
+and forced a quieter pace. But through the afternoon there was no
+weakening of the pressure from the rear till the evening shadows and the
+frequent falling of the worn-out beasts forced a slackening of the pace
+and finally a halt.
+
+Sick with horror and loathing, Cameron dismounted and unsaddled his
+broncho. He had hardly finished this operation when Little Thunder
+rode up upon a strange pony, leading a beautiful white broncho behind.
+Cameron could not repress an exclamation of disgust as the Indian drew
+near him.
+
+"Beautiful beast that," said Raven carelessly, pointing to the white
+pony.
+
+Cameron turned his eyes upon the pony and stood transfixed with horror.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed. "Look at that!" Across the beautiful white
+shoulders and reaching down clear to the fetlock there ran a broad
+stain, dull red and horrible. Then through his teeth, hard clenched
+together, these words came forth: "Some day, by God's help, I shall wipe
+out that stain."
+
+The trader shrugged his shoulders carelessly, but made no reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SERGEANT CRISP
+
+
+The horror of the day followed Cameron through the night and awoke with
+him next morning. Every time his eyes found the Indian his teeth came
+together in a grinding rage as he repeated his vow, "Some day I shall
+bring you to justice. So help me God!"
+
+Against Raven somehow he could not maintain the same heat of rage. That
+he was a party to the murder of the Stonies there was little reason
+to doubt, but as all next day they lay in the sunny glade resting the
+ponies, or went loping easily along the winding trails making ever
+towards the Southwest, the trader's cheerful face, his endless tales,
+and his invincible good humour stole from Cameron's heart, in spite of
+his firm resolve, the fierceness of his wrath. But the resolve was none
+the less resolute that one day he would bring this man to justice.
+
+As they journeyed on, the woods became more open and the trees larger.
+Mid-day found them resting by a little lake, from which a stream flowed
+into the upper reaches of the Columbia River.
+
+"We shall make the Crow's Nest trail by to-morrow night," said Raven,
+"where we shall part; not to your very great sorrow, I fancy, either."
+
+The evening before Cameron would have said, "No, but to my great joy,"
+and it vexed him that he could not bring himself to say so to-day with
+any great show of sincerity. There was a charm about this man that he
+could not resist.
+
+"And yet," continued Raven, allowing his eyes to rest dreamily upon the
+lake, "in other circumstances I might have found in you an excellent
+friend, and a most rare and valuable find that is."
+
+"That it is!" agreed Cameron, thinking of his old football captain, "but
+one cannot make friends with a--"
+
+"It is an ugly word, I know," said Raven. "But, after all, what is a
+bunch of furs more or less to those Indians?"
+
+"Furs?" exclaimed Cameron in horror. "What are the lives of these men?"
+
+"Oh," replied Raven carelessly, "these Indians are always getting killed
+one way or another. It is all in the day's work with them. They pick
+each other off without query or qualm. Besides, Little Thunder has
+a grudge of very old standing against the Stonies, whom he heartily
+despises, and he doubtless enjoys considerable satisfaction from the
+thought that he has partially paid it. It will be his turn next, like
+as not, for they won't let this thing sleep. Or perhaps mine!" he added
+after a pause. "The man is doubtless on the trail at this present minute
+who will finally get me."
+
+"Then why expose yourself to such a fate?" said Cameron. "Surely in this
+country a man can live an honest life and prosper."
+
+"Honest life? I doubt it! What is an honest life? Does any Indian trader
+lead an honest life? Do the Hudson Bay traders, or I. G. Baker's people,
+or any of them do the honest thing by the Indian they trade with? In
+the long run it is a question of the police. What escapes the police is
+honest. The crime, after all, is in getting caught."
+
+"Oh, that is too old!" said Cameron. "You know you are talking rot."
+
+"Quite right! It is rot," assented Raven. "The whole business is rot.
+'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher.' Oh, I know the Book, you
+see. I was not born a--a--an outlaw." The grey-brown eyes had in them
+a wistful look. "Bah!" he exclaimed, springing to his feet and shaking
+himself. "The sight of your Edinburgh face and the sound of your
+Edinburgh speech and your old country ways and manners have got on my
+recollection works, and I believe that accounts for you being alive
+to-day, old man."
+
+He whistled to his horse. Nighthawk came trotting and whinneying to him.
+
+"I have one friend in the world, old boy," he said, throwing his arm
+over the black, glossy neck and searching his pocket for a biscuit. "And
+even you," he added bitterly, "I fear do not love me for naught."
+
+Saddling his horse, he mounted and calling Little Thunder to him said:
+
+"Take the bunch on as far as the Big Canyon and wait there for me. I am
+going back a bit. It is better to be sure than sorry. Cameron, your
+best route lies with us. Your twenty-four hours' parole is already up.
+To-morrow, perhaps to-night, I shall put you on the Macleod trail. You
+are a free man, but don't try to make any breaks when I am gone. My
+friend here is extremely prompt with his weapons. Farewell! Get a move
+on, Little Thunder! Cameron will bring up the rear."
+
+He added some further words in the Indian tongue, his voice taking a
+stern tone. Little Thunder grunted a surly and unwilling acquiescence,
+and, waving his hand to Cameron, the trader wheeled his horse up the
+trail.
+
+In spite of himself Cameron could not forbear a feeling of pity and
+admiration as he watched the lithe, upright figure swaying up the
+trail, his every movement in unison with that of the beautiful demon
+he bestrode. But with all his pity and admiration he was none the less
+resolved that he would do what in him lay to bring these two to justice.
+
+"This ugly devil at least shall swing!" he said to himself as he turned
+his eyes upon Little Thunder getting his pack ponies out upon the trail.
+This accomplished, the Indian, pointing onward, said gruffly,
+
+"You go in front--me back."
+
+"Not much!" cried Cameron. "You heard the orders from your chief. You go
+in front. I bring up the rear. I do not know the trail."
+
+"Huh! Trail good," grunted Little Thunder, the red-rimmed eyes gleaming
+malevolently. "You go front--me back." He waved his hand impatiently
+toward the trail. Following the direction of his hand, Cameron's eyes
+fell upon the stock of his own rifle protruding from a pack upon one of
+the ponies. For a moment the protruding stock held his eyes fascinated.
+
+"Huh!" said the Indian, noting Cameron's glance, and slipping off his
+pony. In an instant both men were racing for the pack and approaching
+each other at a sharp angle. Arrived at striking distance, the Indian
+leaped at Cameron, with his knife, as was his wont, ready to strike.
+
+The appearance of the Indian springing at him seemed to set some of the
+grey matter in Cameron's brain moving along old tracks. Like a flash he
+dropped to his knees in an old football tackle, caught the Indian by
+the legs and tossed him high over his shoulders, then, springing to
+his feet, he jerked the rifle free from the pack and stood waiting for
+Little Thunder's attack.
+
+But the Indian lay without sound or motion. Cameron used his opportunity
+to look for his cartridge belt, which, after a few minutes' anxious
+search, he discovered in the pack. He buckled the belt about him, made
+sure his Winchester held a shell, and stood waiting.
+
+That he should be waiting thus with the deliberate purpose of shooting
+down a fellow human being filled him with a sense of unreality. But
+the events of the last forty-eight hours had created an entirely new
+environment, and with extraordinary facility his mind had adjusted
+itself to this environment, and though two days before he would have
+shrunk in horror from the possibility of taking a human life, he knew
+as he stood there that at the first sign of attack he should shoot the
+Indian down like a wild beast.
+
+Slowly Little Thunder raised himself to a sitting posture and looked
+about in dazed surprise. As his mind regained its normal condition there
+deepened in his eyes a look of cunning hatred. With difficulty he rose
+to his feet and stood facing Cameron. Cameron waited quietly, watching
+his every move.
+
+"You go in front!" at length commanded Cameron. "And no nonsense, mind
+you," he added, tapping his rifle, "or I shoot quick."
+
+The Indian might not have understood all Cameron's words, but he was in
+no doubt as to his meaning. It was characteristic of his race that he
+should know when he was beaten and stoically accept defeat for the time
+being. Without further word or look he led off his pack ponies, while
+Cameron took his place at the rear.
+
+But progress was slow. Little Thunder was either incapable of rapid
+motion or sullenly indifferent to any necessity for it. Besides, there
+was no demoniacal dynamic forcing the beasts on from the rear. They had
+not been more than three hours on the trail when Cameron heard behind
+him the thundering of hoofs. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw coming
+down upon him Raven, riding as if pursued by a thousand demons. The
+condition of his horse showed that the race had been long and hard; his
+black satin skin was dripping as if he had come through a river, his
+eyes were bloodshot and starting from his head, his mouth was wide open
+and from it in large clots the foam had fallen upon his neck and chest.
+
+Past Cameron and down upon Little Thunder Raven rushed like a whirlwind,
+yelling with wild oaths the while,
+
+"Get on! Get on! What are you loafing about here for?"
+
+A few vehement directions to the Indian and he came thundering back upon
+Cameron.
+
+"What have you been doing?" he cried with an oath. "Why are you not
+miles on? Get on! Move! Move!! Move!!!" At every yell he hurled his
+frenzied broncho upon the ponies which brought up the rear, and in a few
+minutes had the whole cavalcade madly careering down the sloping trail.
+Wilder and wilder grew the pace. Turning a sharp corner round a jutting
+rock a pack pony stumbled and went crashing fifty feet to the rock
+below. "On! On!" yelled Raven, emptying his gun into the struggling
+animal as he passed. More and more difficult became the road until at
+length it was impossible to keep up the pace.
+
+"We cannot make it! We cannot make it!" muttered Raven with bitter
+oaths. "Oh, the cursed fools! Another two miles would do it!"
+
+At length they came to a spot where the trail touched a level bench.
+
+"Halt!" yelled the trader, as he galloped to the head of the column.
+A few minutes he spent in rapid and fierce consultation with Little
+Thunder and then came raging back. "We are going to get this bunch down
+into the valley there," he shouted, pointing to the thick timber at the
+bottom. "I do not expect your help, but I ask you to remain where
+you are for the present. And let me assure you this is no moment for
+trifling."
+
+With extraordinary skill and rapidity Little Thunder managed to lead
+first the pack ponies and then the others, one by one, at intervals,
+off the trail as they went onward, taking infinite pains to cover their
+tracks at the various points of departure. While this was being done the
+trader stood shouting directions and giving assistance with a fury of
+energy that seemed to communicate itself to the very beasts. But the
+work was one of great difficulty and took many minutes to accomplish.
+
+"Half an hour more, just half an hour! Fifteen minutes!" he kept
+muttering. "Just a short fifteen minutes and all would be well."
+
+As the last pony disappeared into the woods Raven turned to Cameron and
+with a smile said quietly,
+
+"There, that's done. Now you are free. Here we part. This is your trail.
+It will take you to Macleod. I am sorry, however, that owing to a change
+in circumstances for which I am not responsible I must ask you for that
+rifle." With the swiftness of a flash of light he whipped his gun into
+Cameron's face. "Don't move!" he said, still smiling. "This gun of mine
+never fails. Quick, don't look round. Yes, those hoof beats are our
+friends the police. Quick! It is your life or mine. I'd hate to kill
+you, Cameron. I give you one chance more."
+
+There was no help for it, and Cameron, with his heart filled with futile
+fury, surrendered his rifle.
+
+"Now ride in front of me a little way. They have just seen us, but they
+don't know that we are aware of their presence. Ride! Ride! A little
+faster!" Nighthawk rushed upon Cameron's lagging pony. "There, that's
+better."
+
+A shout fell upon their ears.
+
+"Go right along!" said Raven quietly. "Only a few minutes longer, then
+we part. I have greatly enjoyed your company."
+
+Another shout.
+
+"Aha!" said Raven, glancing round. "It is, I verily believe it is my old
+friend Sergeant Crisp. Only two of them, by Jove! If we had only known
+we need not have hurried."
+
+Another shout, followed by a bullet that sang over their heads.
+
+"Ah, this is interesting--too interesting by half! Well, here goes for
+you, sergeant!" He wheeled as he spoke. Turning swiftly in his saddle,
+Cameron saw him raise his rifle.
+
+"Hold up, you devil!" he shouted, throwing his pony across the black
+broncho's track.
+
+The rifle rang out, the police horse staggered, swayed, and pitched to
+the earth, bringing his rider down with him.
+
+"Ah, Cameron, that was awkward of you," said Raven gently. "However, it
+is perhaps as well. Goodbye, old man. Tell the sergeant not to follow.
+Trails hereabout are dangerous and good police sergeants are scarce.
+Again farewell." He swung his broncho off the trail and, waving his
+hand, with a smile, disappeared into the thick underbrush.
+
+"Hold up your hands!" shouted the police officer, who had struggled
+upright and was now swaying on his feet and covering Cameron with his
+carbine.
+
+"Hurry! Hurry!" cried Cameron, springing from his pony and waving his
+hands wildly in the air. "Come on. You'll get him yet."
+
+"Stand where you are and hold up your hands!" cried the sergeant.
+
+Cameron obeyed, shouting meanwhile wrathfully, "Oh, come on, you bally
+fool! You are losing him. Come on, I tell you!"
+
+"Keep your hands up or I shoot!" cried the sergeant sternly.
+
+"All right," said Cameron, holding his hands high, "but for God's sake
+hurry up!" He ran towards the sergeant as he spoke, with his hands still
+above his head.
+
+"Halt!" shouted the sergeant, as Cameron came near. "Constable Burke,
+arrest that man!"
+
+"Oh, come, get it over," cried Cameron in a fury of passion. "Arrest me,
+of course, but if you want to catch that chap you'll have to hurry. He
+cannot be far away."
+
+"Ah, indeed, my man," said the sergeant pleasantly. "He is not far
+away?"
+
+"No, he's a murderer and a thief and you can catch him if you hurry."
+
+"Ah! Very good, very good! Constable Burke, tie this man up to your
+saddle and we'll take a look round. How many might there be in your
+gang?" enquired the sergeant. "Tell the truth now. It will be the better
+for you."
+
+"One," said Cameron impatiently. "A chap calling himself Raven."
+
+"Raven, eh?" exclaimed Sergeant Crisp with a new interest. "Raven, by
+Jove!"
+
+"Yes, and an Indian. Little Thunder he called him."
+
+"Little Thunder! Jove, what a find!" exclaimed the sergeant.
+
+"Yes," continued Cameron eagerly. "Raven is just ahead in the woods
+there alone and the Indian is further back with a bunch of ponies down
+in the river bottom."
+
+"Oh, indeed! Very interesting! And so Raven is all alone in the scrub
+there, waiting doubtless to give himself up," said sergeant Crisp with
+fine sarcasm. "Well, we are not yet on to your game, young man, but we
+will not just play up to that lead yet a while."
+
+In vain Cameron raged and pleaded and stormed and swore, telling his
+story in incoherent snatches, to the intense amusement of Sergeant Crisp
+and his companion. At length Cameron desisted, swallowing his rage as
+best he could.
+
+"Now then, we shall move on. The pass is not more than an hour away. We
+will put this young man in safe keeping and return for Mr. Raven and his
+interesting friend." For a moment he stood looking down upon his horse.
+"Poor old chap!" he said. "We have gone many a mile together on Her
+Majesty's errands. If I have done my duty as faithfully as you have done
+yours I need not fear my record. Take his saddle and bridle off, Burke.
+We've got one of the gang. Some day we shall come up with Mr. Raven
+himself."
+
+"Yes," said Cameron with passionate bitterness. "And that might be
+to-day if you had only listened to me. Why, man," he shouted with
+reviving rage, "we three could take him even yet!"
+
+"Ah!" said Sergeant Crisp, "so we could."
+
+"You had him in your hands to-day," said Cameron, "but like a fool you
+let him go. But some day, so help me God, I shall bring these murderers
+to justice."
+
+"Ah!" said Sergeant Crisp again. "Good! Very good indeed! Now, my man,
+march!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+
+
+"What's this, Sergeant Crisp?" The Commissioner, a tall, slight, and
+soldier-like man, keen-eyed and brisk of speech, rapped out his words
+like a man intent on business.
+
+"One of a whiskey gang, Sir. Dick Raven's, I suspect."
+
+"And the charge?"
+
+"Whiskey trading, theft, and murder."
+
+The Commissioner's face grew grave.
+
+"Murder? Where did you find him?"
+
+"Kootenay trail, Sir. Got wind of him at Calgary, followed up the clue
+past Morleyville, then along the Kootenay trail. A blizzard came on and
+we feared we had lost them. We fell in with a band of Stony Indians,
+found that the band had been robbed and two of their number murdered."
+
+"Two murdered?" The Commissioner's voice was stern.
+
+"Yes, Sir. Shot down in cold blood. We have the testimony of an eye
+witness. We followed the trail and came upon two of them. My horse was
+shot. One of them escaped; this man we captured."
+
+The Commissioner sat pondering. Then with disconcerting swiftness he
+turned upon the prisoner.
+
+"Your name?"
+
+"Cameron, Sir."
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"I was working in McIvor's survey camp near Morleyville. I went out
+shooting, lost my way in a blizzard, was captured by a man who called
+himself Raven--"
+
+"Wait!" said the Commissioner sharply. "Bring me that file!"
+
+The orderly brought a file from which the Commissioner selected a
+letter. His keen eyes rapidly scanned the contents and then ran over the
+prisoner from head to foot. Thereupon, without a moment's hesitation, he
+said curtly:
+
+"Release the prisoner!"
+
+"But, Sir--" began Sergeant Crisp, with an expression of utter
+bewilderment and disgust upon his face.
+
+"Release the prisoner!" repeated the Commissioner sharply. "Mr. Cameron,
+I deeply regret this mistake. Under the circumstances it could hardly
+have been avoided. You were in bad company, you see. I am greatly
+pleased that my men have been of service to you. We shall continue to
+do all we can for you. In the meantime I am very pleased to have the
+pleasure of meeting you." He passed the letter to Sergeant Crisp. "I
+have information about you from Morleyville, you see. Now tell us all
+about it."
+
+It took Cameron some moments to recover his wits, so dumbfounded was he
+at the sudden change in his condition.
+
+"Well, Sir," he began, "I hardly know what to say."
+
+"Sit down, sit down, Mr. Cameron. Take your time," said the
+Commissioner. "We are somewhat hurried these days, but you must have had
+some trying experiences."
+
+Then Cameron proceeded with his tale. The Commissioner listened with
+keen attention, now and then arresting him with a question or a comment.
+When Cameron came to tell of the murder of the Stonies his voice shook
+with passion.
+
+"We will get that Indian some day," said the Commissioner, "never fear.
+What is his name?"
+
+"Little Thunder, Raven called him. And I would like to take a hand in
+that too, Sir," said Cameron eagerly.
+
+"You would, eh?" said the Commissioner with a sharp look at him. "Well,
+we'll see. Little Thunder," he repeated to himself. "Bring that Record
+Book!"
+
+The orderly laid a large canvas-covered book before him.
+
+"Little Thunder, eh?" he repeated, turning the leaves of the book.
+"Oh, yes, I thought so! Blood Indian--formerly Chief--supplanted by Red
+Crow--got into trouble with whiskey traders. Yes, I remember. He is at
+his old tricks. This time, however, he has gone too far. We will get
+him. Go on, Mr. Cameron!"
+
+When Cameron had concluded his story the Commissioner said to the
+orderly sharply:
+
+"Send me Inspector Dickson!"
+
+In a few moments Inspector Dickson appeared, a tall, slight man, with a
+gentle face and kindly blue eyes.
+
+"Inspector Dickson, how are we for men? Can you spare two or three to
+round up a gang of whiskey traders and to run down a murderer? We are on
+the track of Raven's bunch, I believe."
+
+"We are very short-handed at present, Sir. This half-breed trouble in
+the north is keeping our Indians all very restless. We must keep in
+touch with them."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. By the way, how are the Bloods just now?"
+
+"They are better, Sir, but the Blackfeet are restless and uneasy. There
+are a lot of runners from the east among them."
+
+"How is old Crowfoot behaving?"
+
+"Crowfoot himself is apparently all right so far, but of course no man
+can tell what Crowfoot is thinking."
+
+"That's right enough," replied the Commissioner.
+
+"By the way, Sir, it was Crowfoot's son that got into that trouble last
+night with that Macleod man. The old Chief is in town, too, in fact is
+outside just now and quite worked up over the arrest."
+
+"Well, we will settle this Crowfoot business in a few minutes. Now,
+about this Raven gang. You cannot go yourself with a couple of men? He
+is an exceedingly clever rascal."
+
+The Inspector enumerated the cases immediately pressing.
+
+"Well then, at the earliest possible moment we must get after this
+gang. Keep this in mind, Inspector Dickson. That Indian I consider an
+extremely dangerous man. He is sure to be mixed up with this half-breed
+trouble. He has very considerable influence with a large section of the
+Bloods. I shouldn't be surprised if we should find him on their reserve
+before very long. Now then, bring in young Crowfoot!"
+
+The Inspector saluted and retired, followed by Sergeant Crisp, whose
+face had not yet regained its normal expression.
+
+"Mr. Cameron," said the Commissioner, "if you care to remain with me for
+the morning I shall be glad to have you. The administration of justice
+by the police may prove interesting to you. Later on we shall discuss
+your return to your camp."
+
+Cameron expressed his delight at being permitted to remain in the court
+room, not only that he might observe the police methods of administering
+justice, but especially that he might see something of the great
+Blackfeet Chief, Crowfoot, of whom he had heard much since his arrival
+in the West.
+
+In a few minutes Inspector Dickson returned, followed by a constable
+leading a young Indian, handcuffed. With these entered Jerry, the famous
+half-breed interpreter, and last of all the father of the prisoner, old
+Crowfoot, tall, straight, stately. One swift searching glance the old
+Chief flung round the room, and then, acknowledging the Commissioner's
+salute with a slight wave of the hand and a grunt, and declining the
+seat offered him, he stood back against the wall and there viewed the
+proceedings with an air of haughty defiance.
+
+The Commissioner lost no time in preliminaries. The charge was read and
+explained to the prisoner. The constable made his statement. The young
+Indian had got into an altercation with a citizen of Macleod, and on
+being hard pressed had pulled the pistol which was laid upon the
+desk. There was no defense. The interpreter, however, explained, after
+conversation with the prisoner, that drink was the cause. At this point
+the old Chief's face swiftly changed. Defiance gave place to disgust,
+grief, and rage.
+
+The Commissioner, after carefully eliciting all the facts, gave the
+prisoner an opportunity to make a statement. This being declined, the
+Commissioner proceeded gravely to point out the serious nature of the
+offense, to emphasize the sacredness of human life and declare the
+determination of the government to protect all Her Majesty's subjects,
+no matter what their race or the colour of their skin. He then went
+on to point out the serious danger which the young man had so narrowly
+escaped.
+
+"Why, man," exclaimed the Commissioner, "you might have committed
+murder."
+
+Here the young fellow said something to the interpreter. There was a
+flicker of a smile on the half-breed's face.
+
+"He say dat pistol he no good. He can't shoot. He not loaded."
+
+The Commissioner's face never changed a line. He gravely turned the
+pistol over in his hand, and truly enough the rusty weapon appeared to
+be quite innocuous except to the shooter.
+
+"This is an extremely dangerous weapon. Why, it might have killed
+yourself--if it had been loaded. We cannot allow this sort of thing.
+However, since it was not loaded we shall make the sentence light. I
+sentence you to one month's confinement."
+
+The interpreter explained the sentence to the young Indian, who received
+the explanation without the movement of a muscle or the flicker of an
+eyelid. The constable touched him on the shoulder and said, "Come!"
+
+Before he could move old Crowfoot with two strides stood before the
+constable, and waving him aside with a gesture of indescribable dignity,
+took his son in his arms and kissed him on either cheek. Then, stepping
+back, he addressed him in a voice grave, solemn, and vibrant with
+emotion. Jerry interpreted to the Court.
+
+"I have observed the big Chief. This is good medicine. It is good that
+wrong should suffer. All good men are against wickedness. My son, you
+have done foolishly. You have darkened my eyes. You have covered my face
+before my people. They will ask--where is your son? My voice will be
+silent. My face will be covered with shame. I shall be like a dog kicked
+from the lodge. My son, I told you to go only to the store. I warned you
+against bad men and bad places. Your ears were closed, you were wiser
+than your father. Now we both must suffer, you here shut up from the
+light of the sky, I in my darkened lodge. But," he continued, turning
+swiftly upon the Commissioner, "I ask my father why these bad men who
+sell whiskey to the poor Indian are not shut up with my son. My son is
+young. He is like the hare in the woods. He falls easily into the trap.
+Why are not these bad men removed?" The old Chief's face trembled with
+indignant appeal.
+
+"They shall be!" said the Commissioner, smiting the desk with his fist.
+"This very day!"
+
+"It is good!" continued the old Chief with great dignity. Then, turning
+again to his son, he said, and his voice was full of grave tenderness:
+
+"Now, go to your punishment. The hours will be none too long if they
+bring you wisdom." Again he kissed his son on both cheeks and, without a
+look at any other, stalked haughtily from the room.
+
+"Inspector Dickson," sharply commanded the Commissioner, "find out the
+man that sold that whiskey and arrest him at once!"
+
+Cameron was profoundly impressed with the whole scene. He began to
+realise as never before the tremendous responsibilities that lay upon
+those charged with the administration of justice in this country. He
+began to understand, too, the secret of the extraordinary hold that the
+Police had upon the Indian tribes and how it came that so small a force
+could maintain the "Pax Britannica" over three hundred thousand square
+miles of unsettled country, the home of hundreds of wild adventurers
+and of thousands of savage Indians, utterly strange to any rule or law
+except that of their own sweet will.
+
+"This police business is a big affair," he ventured to say to the
+Commissioner when the court room was cleared. "You practically run the
+country."
+
+"Well," said the Commissioner modestly, "we do something to keep the
+country from going to the devil. We see that every man gets a fair
+show."
+
+"It is great work!" exclaimed Cameron.
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is," replied the Commissioner. "We don't talk about
+it, of course. Indeed, we don't think of it. But," he continued, "that
+blue book there could tell a story that would make the old Empire not
+too ashamed of the men who 'ride the line' and patrol the ranges in this
+far outpost." He opened the big canvas-bound book as he spoke and turned
+the pages over. "Look at that for a page," he said, and Cameron glanced
+over the entries. What a tale they told!
+
+"Fire-fighting!"
+
+"Yes," said the Commissioner, "that saved a settler's wife and child--a
+prairie fire. The house was lost, but the constable pulled them out and
+got rather badly burned in the business."
+
+Cameron's finger ran down the page.
+
+"Sick man transported to Post."
+
+"That," commented the Superintendent, "was a journey of over two hundred
+miles by dog sleighs in winter. Saved the man's life."
+
+And so the record ran. "Cattle thieves arrested." "Whiskey smugglers
+captured." "Stolen horses recovered." "Insane man brought to Post."
+
+"That was rather a tough case," said the Commissioner. "Meant a journey
+of some eight hundred miles with a man, a powerful man too, raving mad."
+
+"How many of your men on that journey?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Oh, just one. The fellow got away twice, but was recaptured and finally
+landed. Got better too. But the constable was all broken up for weeks
+afterwards."
+
+"Man, that was great!" exclaimed Cameron. "What a pity it should not be
+known."
+
+"Oh," said the Commissioner lightly, "it's all in the day's duty."
+
+The words thrilled Cameron to the heart. "All in the day's duty!" The
+sheer heroism of it, the dauntless facing of Nature's grimmest terrors,
+the steady patience, the uncalculated sacrifice, the thought of all that
+lay behind these simple words held him silent for many minutes as he
+kept turning over the leaves.
+
+As he sat thus turning the leaves and allowing his eye to fall upon
+those simple but eloquent entries, a loud and strident voice was heard
+outside.
+
+"Waal, I tell yuh, I want to see him right naow. I ain't come two
+hundred miles for nawthin'. I mean business, I do."
+
+The orderly's voice was heard in reply.
+
+"I ain't got no time to wait. I want to see yer Chief of Police right
+naow."
+
+Again the orderly's voice could be distinguished.
+
+"In court, is he? Waal, you hurry up and tell him J. B. Cadwaller of
+Lone Pine, Montana, an American citizen, wants to see him right smart."
+
+The orderly came in and saluted.
+
+"A man to see you, Sir," he said. "An American."
+
+"What business?"
+
+"Horse-stealing case, Sir."
+
+"Show him in!"
+
+In a moment the orderly returned, followed by, not one, but three
+American citizens.
+
+"Good-day, Jedge! My name's J. B. Cadwaller, Lone Pine, Montana. I--"
+
+"Take your hat off in the court!" said the orderly sharply.
+
+Mr. Cadwaller slowly surveyed the orderly with an expression of
+interested curiosity in his eyes, removing his hat as he did so.
+
+"Say, you're pretty swift, ain't yuh? You might give a feller a show
+to git in his interductions," said Mr. Cadwaller. "I was jes goin' to
+interdooce to you, Jedge, these gentlemen from my own State, District
+Attorney Hiram S. Sligh and Mr. Rufus Raimes, rancher."
+
+The Commissioner duly acknowledged the introduction, standing to receive
+the strangers with due courtesy.
+
+"Now, Jedge, I want to see yer Chief of Police. I've got a case for
+him."
+
+"I have the honor to be the Commissioner. What can I do for you?"
+
+"Waal, Jedge, we don't want to waste no time, neither yours nor ours.
+The fact is some of yer blank blank Indians have been rustlin' hosses
+from us fer some time back. We don't mind a cayuse now and then, but
+when it comes to a hull bunch of vallable hosses there's where we kick
+and we ain't goin' to stand fer it. And we want them hosses re-stored.
+And what's more, we want them blank blank copper snakes strung up."
+
+"How many horses have you lost?"
+
+"How many? Jeerupiter! Thirty or forty fer all I know, they've been
+rustlin' 'em for a year back."
+
+"Why didn't you report before?"
+
+"Why we thought we'd git 'em ourselves, and if we had we wouldn't 'a
+troubled yuh--and I guess they wouldn't 'a troubled us much longer. But
+they are so slick--so blank slick!"
+
+"Mr. Cadwaller, we don't allow any profanity in this court room," said
+the Commissioner in a quiet voice.
+
+"Eh? Who's givin' yuh profanity? I don't mean no profanity. I'm talkin'
+about them blank blank--"
+
+"Stop, Mr. Cadwaller!" said the Commissioner. "We must end this
+interview if you cannot make your statements without profanity. This
+is Her Majesty's court of Justice and we cannot tolerate any unbecoming
+language.
+
+"Waal, I'll be--!"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Commissioner," said Mr. Hiram S. Sligh, interrupting
+his friend and client. "Perhaps I may make a statement. We've lost some
+twenty or thirty horses."
+
+"Thirty-one" interjected Mr. Raimes quietly.
+
+"Thirty-one!" burst in Mr. Cadwaller indignantly. "That's only one
+little bunch."
+
+"And," continued Mr. Sligh, "we have traced them right up to the
+Blood reserve. More than that, Mr. Raimes has seen the horses in the
+possession of the Indians and we want your assistance in recovering our
+property."
+
+"Yes, by gum!" exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. "And we want
+them--eh--eh--consarned redskin thieves strung up."
+
+"You say you have seen the stolen horses on the Blood reserve, Mr.
+Raimes?" enquired the Commissioner.
+
+Mr. Raimes, who was industriously chewing a quid of tobacco, ejected,
+with a fine sense of propriety and with great skill and accuracy, a
+stream of tobacco juice out of the door before he answered.
+
+"I seen 'em."
+
+"When did you lose your horses?"
+
+Mr. Raimes considered the matter for some moments, chewing energetically
+the while, then, having delivered himself with the same delicacy and
+skill as before of his surplus tobacco juice, made laconic reply:
+
+"Seventeen, no, eighteen days ago."
+
+"Did you follow the trail immediately yourselves?"
+
+"No, Jim Eberts."
+
+"Jim Eberts?"
+
+"Foreman," said Mr. Raimes, who seemed to regard conversation in the
+light of an interference with the more important business in which he
+was industriously engaged.
+
+"But you saw the horses yourself on the Blood reserve?"
+
+"Followed up and seen 'em."
+
+"How long since you saw them there, Mr. Raimes?"
+
+"Two days."
+
+"You are quite sure about the horses?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Call Inspector Dickson!" ordered the Commissioner.
+
+Inspector Dickson appeared and saluted.
+
+"We have information that a party of Blood Indians have stolen a band of
+horses from these gentlemen from Montana and that these horses are now
+on the Blood reserve. Take a couple of men and investigate, and if you
+find the horses bring them back."
+
+"Couple of men!" ejaculated Mr. Cadwaller breathlessly. "A couple of
+hundred, you mean, General!"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, to sur--raound them--there--Indians." The regulations of the court
+room considerably hampered Mr. Cadwaller's fluency of speech.
+
+"It is not necessary at all, Mr. Cadwaller. Besides, we have only some
+eighty men all told at this post. Our whole force in the territories is
+less than five hundred men."
+
+"Five hundred men! You mean for this State, General--Alberta?"
+
+"No, Sir. For all Western Canada. All west of Manitoba."
+
+"How much territory do you cover?" enquired the astonished Mr.
+Cadwaller.
+
+"We regularly patrol some three hundred thousand square miles, besides
+taking an occasional expedition into the far north."
+
+"And how many Indians?"
+
+"About the same number as you have, I imagine, in Montana and Dakota. In
+Alberta, about nine thousand."
+
+"And less than five hundred police! Say, General, I take off my hat.
+Ten thousand Indians! By the holy poker! And five hundred police! How in
+Cain do you keep down the devils?"
+
+"We don't try to keep them down. We try to take care of them."
+
+"Guess you've hit it," said Mr. Raimes, dexterously squirting out of the
+door.
+
+"Jeerupiter! Say, General, some day they'll massacree yuh sure!" said
+Mr. Cadwaller, a note of anxiety in his voice.
+
+"Oh, no, they are a very good lot on the whole."
+
+"Good! We've got a lot of good Indians too, but they're all under
+graound. Five hundred men! Jeerupiter! Say, Sligh, how many soldiers
+does Uncle Sam have on this job?"
+
+"Well, I can't say altogether, but in Montana and Dakota I happen to
+know we have about four thousand regulars."
+
+"Say, figger that out, will yuh?" continued Mr. Cadwaller. "Allowed
+four times the territory, about the same number of Indians and about
+one-eighth the number of police. Say, General, I take off my hat again.
+Put it there! You Canucks have got the trick sure!"
+
+"Easier to care for 'em than kill 'em, I guess," said Mr. Raimes
+casually.
+
+"But, say, General," continued Mr. Cadwaller, "you ain't goin' to send
+for them hosses with no three men?"
+
+"I'm afraid we cannot spare any more."
+
+"Jeerupiter, General!" exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. "I'll wait outside the
+reserve till this picnic's over. Say, General, let's have twenty-five
+men at least."
+
+"What do you say, Inspector Dickson? Will two men be sufficient?"
+
+"We'll try, Sir," replied the Inspector.
+
+"How soon can you be ready?"
+
+"In a quarter of an hour."
+
+"Jeerupiter!" muttered Mr. Cadwaller to himself, as he followed the
+Inspector out of the room.
+
+"I say, Commissioner, will you let me in on this thing?" said Cameron.
+
+"Do you mean that you want to join the force?" enquired the
+Commissioner, letting his eye run approvingly up and down Cameron's
+figure.
+
+"There is McIvor, Sir--" began Cameron.
+
+"Oh, I could fix that all right," replied the Commissioner. "We want
+men, and we want men like you. We have no vacancy among the officers,
+but you could enlist as a constable and there is always opportunity to
+advance."
+
+"It is a great service!" exclaimed Cameron. "I'd like awfully to join."
+
+"Very well," said the Commissioner promptly, "we will take you. You are
+physically sound, wind, limb, eye-sight, and so forth?"
+
+"As far as I know, perfectly fit," replied Cameron.
+
+Once more Inspector Dickson was summoned.
+
+"Inspector Dickson, Mr. Cameron wishes to join the force. We will have
+his application taken and filled in later, and we will waive examination
+for the present. Will you administer the oath?"
+
+"Cameron, stand up!" commanded the Inspector sharply.
+
+With a little thrill at his heart Cameron stood up, took the Bible in
+his hand and repeated after the Inspector the words of the oath,
+
+"I, Allan Cameron, solemnly swear that I will faithfully, diligently,
+and impartially execute and perform the duties required of me as a
+member of the North West Mounted Police Force, and will well and truly
+obey and perform all lawful orders and instructions which I shall
+receive as such, without fear, favour, or affection of or toward any
+person. So help me, God."
+
+"Now then, Cameron, I congratulate you upon your new profession.
+The Inspector will see about your outfit and later you will receive
+instructions as to your duties. Meantime, take him along with you,
+Inspector, and get those horses."
+
+It was a somewhat irregular mode of procedure, but men were sorely
+needed at the Macleod post and the Commissioner had an eye that took in
+not only the lines of a man's figure but the qualities of his soul.
+
+"That chap will make good, or I am greatly mistaken," he said to the
+Inspector as Cameron went off with the orderly to select his uniform.
+
+"Well set up chap," said the Inspector. "We'll try him out to-night."
+
+"Come now, don't kill him. Remember, other men have something else in
+them besides whalebone and steel, if you have not."
+
+In half an hour the Inspector, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron, with the
+three American citizens, were on their way to the Blood reserve.
+
+Cameron had been given a horse from the stable.
+
+All afternoon and late into the evening they rode, then camped and were
+early upon the trail the following morning. Cameron was half dead with
+the fatigue from his experiences of the past week, but he would have
+died rather than have hinted at weariness. He was not a little comforted
+to notice that Sergeant Crisp, too, was showing signs of distress, while
+District Attorney Sligh was evidently in the last stages of exhaustion.
+Even the steel and whalebone combination that constituted the frame
+of the Inspector appeared to show some slight signs of wear; but all
+feeling of weariness vanished when the Inspector, who was in the lead,
+halted at the edge of a wide sweeping valley and, pointing far ahead,
+said, "The Blood reserve. Their camp lies just beyond that bluff."
+
+"Say, Inspector, hold up!" cried Mr. Cadwaller as the Inspector set off
+again. "Ain't yuh goin' to sneak up on 'em like?"
+
+"Sneak up on them? No, of course not," said the Inspector curtly. "We
+shall ride right in."
+
+"Say, Raimes," said Mr. Cadwaller, "a hole would be a blame nice thing
+to find just now."
+
+"Do you think there will be any trouble?" enquired Mr. Hiram Sligh of
+Sergeant Crisp.
+
+"Trouble? Perhaps so," replied Crisp, as if to him it were a matter of
+perfect indifference.
+
+"We'll never git them hosses," said Raimes. "But we've got to stay with
+the chief, I guess."
+
+And so they followed Inspector Dickson down into the valley, where in
+the distance could be seen a number of horses and cattle grazing. They
+had not ridden far along the valley bottom when Mr. Cadwaller spurred up
+upon the Inspector and called out excitedly,
+
+"I say, Inspector, them's our hosses right there. Say, let's run 'em
+off."
+
+"Can you pick them out?" enquired the Inspector, turning in his saddle.
+
+"Every last one!" said Raimes.
+
+"Very well, cut them out and get them into a bunch," said the Inspector.
+"I see there are some Indians herding them apparently. Pay no attention
+to them, but go right along with your work."
+
+"There's one of 'em off to give tongue!" cried Mr. Cadwaller excitedly.
+"Bring him down, Inspector! Bring him down! Quick! Here, let me have
+your rifle!" Hurriedly he snatched at the Inspector's carbine.
+
+"Stop!" cried the Inspector in sharp command. "Now, attention! We are
+on a somewhat delicate business. A mistake might bring disaster. I am in
+command of this party and I must have absolute and prompt obedience. Mr.
+Cadwaller, it will be at your peril that you make any such move again.
+Let no man draw a gun until ordered by me! Now, then, cut out those
+horses and bunch them together!"
+
+"Jeerupiter! He's a hull brigade himself," said Mr. Cadwaller in an
+undertone, dropping back beside Mr. Sligh. "Waal, here goes for the
+bunch."
+
+But though both Mr. Cadwaller and Mr. Raimes, as well as Sergeant Crisp
+and the Inspector, were expert cattle men, it took some little time and
+very considerable manoeuvering to get the stolen horses bunched together
+and separated from the rest of the animals grazing in the valley, and by
+the time this was accomplished Indian riders had appeared on every side,
+gradually closing in upon the party. It was clearly impossible to drive
+off the bunch through that gradually narrowing cordon of mounted Indians
+without trouble.
+
+"Now, what's to be done?" said Mr. Cadwaller, nervously addressing the
+Inspector.
+
+"Forward!" cried the Inspector in a loud voice. "Towards the corral
+ahead there!"
+
+This movement nonplussed the Indians and in silence they fell in behind
+the party who, going before, finally succeeded in driving the bunch of
+horses into the corral.
+
+"Sergeant Crisp, you and Constable Cameron remain here on guard. I shall
+go and find the Chief. Here," he continued, addressing a young Indian
+brave who had ridden up quite close to the gate of the corral, "lead me
+to your Chief, Red Crow!"
+
+The absence alike of all hesitation or fear, and of all bluster in his
+tone and bearing, apparently impressed the young brave, for he wheeled
+his pony and set off immediately at a gallop, followed by the Inspector
+at a more moderate pace.
+
+Quickly the Indians gathered about the corral and the group at its gate.
+With every passing minute their numbers increased, and as their numbers
+increased so did the violence of their demonstration The three Americans
+were placed next the corral, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron being between
+them and the excited Indians. Cameron had seen Indians before about the
+trading posts. A shy, suspicious, and subdued lot of creatures they had
+seemed to him. But these were men of another breed, with their lean,
+lithe, muscular figures, their clean, copper skins, their wild fierce
+eyes, their haughty bearing. Those others were poor beggars seeking
+permission to exist; these were men, proud, fearless, and free.
+
+"Jove, what a team one could pick out of the bunch!" said Cameron to
+himself, as his eye fell upon the clean bare limbs and observed their
+graceful motions. But to the Americans they were a hateful and fearsome
+sight. Indians with them were never anything but a menace to be held in
+check, or a nuisance to be got rid of.
+
+Louder and louder grew the yells and wilder the gesticulations as the
+savages worked themselves up into a fury. Suddenly, through the yelling,
+careering, gesticulating crowd of Indians a young brave came tearing at
+full gallop and, thrusting his pony close up to the Sergeant's, stuck
+his face into the officer's and uttered a terrific war whoop. Not a line
+of the Sergeant's face nor a muscle of his body moved except that the
+near spur slightly touched his horse's flank and the fingers tightened
+almost imperceptibly upon the bridle rein. Like a flash of light the
+Sergeant's horse wheeled and with a fierce squeal let fly two wicked
+heels hard upon the pony's ribs. In sheer terror and surprise the
+little beast bolted, throwing his rider over his neck and finally to the
+ground. Immediately a shout of jeering laughter rose from the crowd, who
+greatly enjoyed their comrade's discomfiture. Except that the Sergeant's
+face wore a look of pleased surprise, he simply maintained his attitude
+of calm indifference. No other Indian, however, appeared ready to repeat
+the performance of the young brave.
+
+At length the Inspector appeared, followed by the Chief, Red Crow.
+
+"Tell your people to go away!" said the Inspector as they reached the
+corral. "They are making too much noise."
+
+Red Crow addressed his braves at some length.
+
+"Open the corral," ordered the Inspector, "and get those horses out on
+the trail."
+
+For a few moments there was silence. Then, as the Indians perceived the
+purpose of the police, on every side there rose wild yells of protest
+and from every side a rush was made toward the corral. But Sergeant
+Crisp kept his horse on the move in a series of kicks and plunges that
+had the effect of keeping clear a wide circle about the corral gate.
+
+"Touch your horse with the spur and hold him up tight," he said quietly
+to Cameron.
+
+Cameron did so and at once his horse became seemingly as unmanageable as
+the Sergeant's, plunging, biting, kicking. The Indian ponies could not
+be induced to approach. The uproar, however, only increased. Guns began
+to go off, bullets could be heard whistling overhead. Red Crow's voice
+apparently could make no impression upon the maddened crowd of Indians.
+A minor Chief, White Horse by name, having whirled in behind the
+Sergeant, seized hold of Mr. Cadwaller's bridle and began to threaten
+him with excited gesticulations. Mr. Cadwaller drew his gun.
+
+"Let go that line, you blank blank redskin!" he roared, flourishing his
+revolver.
+
+In a moment, with a single plunge, the Inspector was at his side and,
+flinging off the Indian, shouted:
+
+"Put up that gun, Mr. Cadwaller! Quick!" Mr. Cadwaller hesitated.
+"Sergeant Crisp, arrest that man!" The Inspector's voice rang out like a
+trumpet. His gun covered Mr. Cadwaller.
+
+"Give me that gun!" said the Sergeant.
+
+Mr. Cadwaller handed over his gun.
+
+"Let him go," said the Inspector to Sergeant Crisp. "He will probably
+behave."
+
+The Indians had gathered close about the group. White Horse, in the
+centre, was talking fast and furious and pointing to Mr. Cadwaller.
+
+"Get the bunch off, Sergeant!" said the Inspector quietly. "I will hold
+them here for a few minutes."
+
+Quietly the Sergeant backed out of the circle, leaving the Inspector
+and Mr. Cadwaller with White Horse and Red Crow in the midst of the
+crowding, yelling Indians.
+
+"White Horse say this man steal Bull Back's horses last fall!" shouted
+Red Crow in the Inspector's ear.
+
+"Too much noise here," said the Inspector, moving toward the Indian
+camp and away from the corral and drawing the crowd with him. "Tell your
+people to be quiet, Red Crow. I thought you were the Chief."
+
+Stung by the taunt, Red Crow raised his rifle and fired into the air.
+Then, standing high in his stirrups, he held up his hand and called out
+a number of names. Instantly ten men rode to his side. Again Red Crow
+spoke. The ten men rode out again among the crowd. Immediately the
+shouting ceased.
+
+"Good!" said the Inspector. "I see my brother is strong. Now, where is
+Bull Back?"
+
+The Chief called out a name. There was no response.
+
+"Bull Back not here," he said.
+
+"Then listen, my brother," said the Inspector earnestly. "This man,"
+pointing to Mr. Cadwaller, "waits with me at the Fort two days to meet
+White Horse, Bull Back, and any Indians who know about this man; and
+what is right will be done. I have spoken. Farewell!" He gave his hand
+to Chief Red Crow. "My brother knows," he added, "the Police do not
+lie."
+
+So saying, he wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Cadwaller before him,
+rode off after the others of the party, who had by this time gone some
+distance up the trail.
+
+For a few moments hesitation held the crowd, then with a loud cry White
+Horse galloped up and again seized Mr. Cadwaller's bridle. Instantly the
+Inspector covered him with his gun.
+
+"Hold up your hands quick!" he said.
+
+The Indian dropped the bridle rein. The Inspector handed his gun to Mr.
+Cadwaller.
+
+"Don't shoot till I speak or I shoot you!" he said sternly. Mr.
+Cadwaller took the gun and covered the Indian. In a twinkling White
+Horse found himself with handcuffs on his wrists and his bridle line
+attached to the horn of the Inspector's saddle.
+
+"Now give me that gun, Mr. Cadwaller, and here take your own--but wait
+for the word. Forward!"
+
+He had not gone a pace till he was surrounded by a score of angry
+and determined Indians with levelled rifles. For the first time the
+Inspector hesitated. Through the line of levelled rifles Chief Red Crow
+rode up and in a grave but determined voice said:
+
+"My brother is wrong. White Horse, chief. My young men not let him go."
+
+"Good!" said the Inspector, promptly making up his mind. "I let him go
+now. In two days I come again and get him. The Police never lie."
+
+So saying, he released White Horse and without further word, and
+disregarding the angry looks and levelled rifles, rode slowly off after
+his party. On the edge of the crowd he met Sergeant Crisp.
+
+"Thought I'd better come back, Sir. It looked rather ugly for a minute,"
+said the Sergeant.
+
+"Ride on," said the Inspector. "We will get our man to-morrow. Steady,
+Mr. Cadwaller, not too fast." The Inspector slowed his horse down to
+a walk, which he gradually increased to an easy lope and so brought up
+with Cameron and the others.
+
+Through the long evening they pressed forward till they came to the
+Kootenay River, having crossed which they ventured to camp for the
+night.
+
+After supper the Inspector announced his intention of riding on to the
+Fort for reinforcements, and gave his instructions to the Sergeant.
+
+"Sergeant Crisp," he said, "you will make an early start and bring in
+the bunch to-morrow morning. Mr. Cadwaller, you remember you are to
+remain at the Fort two days so that the charges brought by White Horse
+may be investigated."
+
+"What?" exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller. "Wait for them blank blank devils? Say,
+Inspector, you don't mean that?"
+
+"You heard me promise the Indians," said the Inspector.
+
+"Why, yes. Mighty smart, too! But say, you were jest joshing, weren't
+you?"
+
+"No, Sir," replied the Inspector. "The Police never break a promise to
+white man or Indian."
+
+Then Mr. Cadwaller cut loose for a few moments. He did not object to
+waiting any length of time to oblige a friend, but that he should
+delay his journey to answer the charges of an Indian, variously and
+picturesquely described, was to him an unthinkable proposition.
+
+"Sergeant Crisp, you will see to this," said the Inspector quietly as he
+rode away.
+
+Then Mr. Cadwaller began to laugh and continued laughing for several
+minutes.
+
+"By the holy poker, Sligh!" at last he exclaimed. "It's a joke. It's a
+regular John Bull joke."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Sligh, while he cut a comfortable chew from his black
+plug. "Good joke, too, but not on John. I guess that's how five hundred
+police hold down--no, take care of--twenty thousand redskins."
+
+And the latest recruit to Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police
+straightened up till he could feel the collar of his tunic catch him on
+the back of the neck and was conscious of a little thrill running up his
+spine as he remembered that he was a member of that same force.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+
+
+It was to Cameron an extreme satisfaction to ride with some twenty of
+his comrades behind White Horse, who, handcuffed and with bridle reins
+tied to those of two troopers, and accompanied by Chief Red Crow, Bull
+Back, and others of their tribe, made ignominious and crestfallen entry
+into the Fort next day. It was hardly less of a satisfaction to see Mr.
+Cadwaller exercise himself considerably in making defence against the
+charges of Bull Back and his friends. The defence was successful,
+and the American citizens departed to Lone Pine, Montana, with their
+recovered horses and with a new and higher regard for both the executive
+and administrative excellence of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police
+officers and men. Chief Red Crow, too, returned to his band with a
+chastened mind, it having been made clear to him that a chief who could
+not control his young braves was not the kind of a chief the Great White
+Mother desired to have in command of her Indian subjects. White Horse,
+also, after three months sojourn in the cooling solitude of the Police
+guard room, went back to his people a humbler and a wiser brave.
+
+The horse-stealing, however, went merrily on and the summer of 1884
+stands in the records of the Police as the most trying period of their
+history in the Northwest up to that date. The booming upon the eastern
+and southern boundaries of Western Canada of the incoming tide of
+humanity, hungry for land, awakened ominous echoes in the little
+primitive settlements of half-breed people and throughout the
+reservations of the wild Indian tribes as well. Everywhere, without
+warning and without explanation, the surveyors' flags and posts made
+appearance. Wild rumours ran through the land, till every fluttering
+flag became the symbol of dispossession and every gleaming post
+an emblem of tyrannous disregard of a people's rights. The ancient
+aboriginal inhabitants of the western plains and woods, too, had their
+grievances and their fears. With phenomenal rapidity the buffalo had
+vanished from the plains once black with their hundreds of thousands.
+With the buffalo vanished the Indians' chief source of support, their
+food, their clothing, their shelter, their chief article of barter.
+Bereft of these and deprived at the same time of the supreme joy of
+existence, the chase, bitten with cold, starved with hunger, fearful
+of the future, they offered fertile soil for the seeds of rebellion. A
+government more than usually obsessed with stupidity, as all governments
+become at times, remained indifferent to appeals, deaf to remonstrances,
+blind to danger signals, till through the remote and isolated
+settlements of the vast west and among the tribes of Indians,
+hunger-bitten and fearful for their future, a spirit of unrest, of fear,
+of impatience of all authority, spread like a secret plague from Prince
+Albert to the Crow's Nest and from the Cypress Hills to Edmonton.
+A violent recrudescence of whiskey-smuggling, horse-stealing, and
+cattle-rustling made the work of administering the law throughout
+this vast territory one of exceeding difficulty and one calling for
+promptitude, wisdom, patience, and courage, of no ordinary quality.
+Added to all this, the steady advance of the railroad into the new
+country, with its huge construction camps, in whose wake followed
+the lawless hordes of whiskey smugglers, tinhorn gamblers, thugs, and
+harlots, very materially added to the dangers and difficulties of the
+situation for the Police.
+
+For the first month after enlistment Cameron was kept in close touch
+with the Fort and spent his hours under the polishing hands of the drill
+sergeant. From five in the morning till ten at night the day's routine
+kept him on the grind. Hard work it was, but to Cameron a continuous
+delight. For the first time in his life he had a job that seemed worth
+a man's while, and one the mere routine of which delighted his soul. He
+loved his horse and loved to care for him, and, most of all, loved to
+ride him. Among his comrades he found congenial spirits, both among the
+officers and the men. Though discipline was strict, there was an utter
+absence of anything like a spirit of petty bullying which too often is
+found in military service; for in the first place the men were in very
+many cases the equals and sometimes the superiors of the officers both
+in culture and in breeding, and further, and very specially, the nature
+of the work was such as to cultivate the spirit of true comradeship.
+When officer and man ride side by side through rain and shine, through
+burning heat and frost "Forty below," when they eat out of the same pan
+and sleep in the same "dug-out," when they stand back to back in the
+midst of a horde of howling savages, rank comes to mean little and
+manhood much.
+
+Between Inspector Dickson and Cameron a genuine friendship sprang
+up; and after his first month was in, Cameron often found himself the
+comrade of the Inspector in expeditions of special difficulty where
+there was a call for intelligence and nerve. The reports of these
+expeditions that stand upon the police record have as little semblance
+of the deeds achieved as have stark and grinning skeletons in the
+medical student's private cupboard to the living moving bodies they
+once were. The records of these deeds are the bare bones. The flesh and
+blood, the life and colour are to be found only in the memories of those
+who were concerned in their achievement.
+
+But even in these bony records there are to be seen frequent entries in
+which the names of Inspector Dickson and Constable Cameron stand side
+by side. For the Inspector was a man upon whom the Commissioner and
+the Superintendent delighted to load their more dangerous and delicate
+cases, and it was upon Cameron when it was possible that the Inspector's
+choice for a comrade fell.
+
+It was such a case as this that held the Commissioner and Superintendent
+Crawford in anxious consultation far into a late September night. When
+the consultation was over, Inspector Dickson was called in and the
+result of this consultation laid before him.
+
+"We have every reason to believe, as you well know, Inspector Dickson,"
+said the Commissioner, "that there is a secret and wide-spread
+propagandum being carried on among our Indians, especially among the
+Piegans, Bloods, and Blackfeet, with the purpose of organizing rebellion
+in connection with the half-breed discontent in the territories to the
+east of us. Riel, you know, has been back for some time and we believe
+his agents are busy on every reservation at present. This outbreak of
+horse-stealing and whiskey-smuggling in so many parts of the country at
+the same time is a mere blind to a more serious business, the hatching
+of a very wide conspiracy. We know that the Crees and the Assiniboines
+are negotiating with the half-breeds. Big Bear, Beardy, and Little Pine
+are keen for a fight. There is some very powerful and secret influence
+at work among our Indians here. We suspect that the ex-Chief of the
+Bloods, Little Thunder, is the head of this organization. A very
+dangerous and very clever Indian he is, as you know. We have a charge
+of murder against him already, and if we can arrest him and one or two
+others it would do much to break up the gang, or at least to hold in
+check their organization work. We want you to get quietly after this
+business, visit all the reservations, obtain all information possible,
+and when you are ready, strike. You will be quite unhampered in your
+movements and the whole force will co-operate with you if necessary. We
+consider this an extremely critical time and we must be prepared. Take a
+man with you. Make your own choice."
+
+"I expect we know the man the Inspector will choose," said
+superintendent Crawford with a smile.
+
+"Who is that?" asked the Commissioner.
+
+"Constable Cameron, of course."
+
+"Ah, yes, Cameron. You remember I predicted he would make good. He has
+certainly fulfilled my expectation."
+
+"He is a good man," said the Inspector quietly.
+
+"Oh come, Inspector, you know you consider him the best all-round man at
+this post," said the Superintendent.
+
+"Well, you see, Sir, he is enthusiastic for the service, he works hard
+and likes his work."
+
+"Right you are!" exclaimed the Superintendent. "In the first place, he
+is the strongest man on the force, then he is a dead shot, a good man
+with a horse, and has developed an extraordinary gift in tracking, and
+besides he is perfectly straight."
+
+"Is that right, Inspector?"
+
+"Yes," said the Inspector very quietly, though his eyes were gleaming at
+the praise of his friend. "He is a good man, very keen, very reliable,
+and of course afraid of nothing."
+
+The Superintendent laughed quietly.
+
+"You want him then, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," said the Inspector, "if it could be managed."
+
+"I don't know," said the Commissioner. "That reminds me." He took a
+letter from the file. "Read that," he said, "second page there. It is a
+private letter from Superintendent Strong at Calgary."
+
+The Inspector took the letter and read at the place indicated--
+
+"Another thing. The handling of these railroad construction gangs is
+no easy matter. We are pestered with whiskey-smugglers, gamblers, and
+prostitutes till we don't know which way to turn. As the work extends
+into the mountains and as the camps grow in numbers the difficulty
+of control is very greatly increased. I ought to have my force
+strengthened. Could you not immediately spare me at least eight or ten
+good men? I would like that chap Cameron, the man, you know, who caught
+the half-breed Louis in the Sarcee camp and carried him out on his
+horse's neck--a very fine bit of work. Inspector Dickson will tell you
+about him. I had it from him. Could you spare Cameron? I would recommend
+him at once as a sergeant."
+
+The Inspector handed back the letter without comment.
+
+"Well?" said the Commissioner.
+
+"Cameron would do very well for the work," said the Inspector, "and he
+deserves promotion."
+
+"What was that Sarcee business, Inspector?" enquired the Commissioner.
+"That must have been when I was down east."
+
+"Oh," said the Inspector, "it was a very fine thing indeed of Cameron.
+Louis 'the Breed' had been working the Bloods. We got on his track and
+headed him up in the Sarcee camp. He is rather a dangerous character and
+is related to the Sarcees. We expected trouble in his arrest. We rode
+in and found the Indians, to the number of a hundred and fifty or more,
+very considerably excited. They objected strenuously to the arrest of
+the half-breed. Constable Cameron and I were alone. We had left a
+party of men further back over the hill. The half-breed brought it upon
+himself. He was rash enough to make a sudden attack upon Cameron.
+That is where he made his mistake. Before he knew where he was Cameron
+slipped from his horse, caught him under the chin with a very nice
+left-hander that laid him neatly out, swung him on to his horse, and was
+out of the camp before the Indians knew what had happened."
+
+"The Inspector does not tell you," said Superintendent Crawford, "how
+he stood off that bunch of Sarcees and held them where they were till
+Cameron was safe with his man over the hill. But it was a very clever
+bit of work, and, if I may say it, deserves recognition."
+
+"I should like to give you Cameron if it were possible," said the
+Commissioner, "but this railroad business is one of great difficulty and
+Superintendent Strong is not the man to ask for assistance unless he is
+in pretty desperate straits. An unintelligent or reckless man would be
+worse than useless."
+
+"How would it do," suggested the Superintendent, "to allow Cameron in
+the meantime to accompany the Inspector? Then later we might send him to
+Superintendent Strong."
+
+Reporting this arrangement to Cameron a little later, the Inspector
+enquired:
+
+"How would you like to have a turn in the mountains? You would find
+Superintendent Strong a fine officer."
+
+"I desire no change in that regard," replied Cameron. "But, curiously
+enough, I have a letter this very mail that has a bearing upon this
+matter. Here it is. It is from an old college friend of mine, Dr.
+Martin."
+
+The Inspector took the letter and read--
+
+"I have got myself used up, too great devotion to scientific research;
+hence I am accepting an offer from the railroad people for work in the
+mountains. I leave in a week. Think of it! The muck and the ruck, the
+execrable grub and worse drink! I shall have to work my passage on hand
+cars and doubtless by tie pass. My hands will lose all their polish.
+However, there may be some fun and likely some good practice. I see
+they are blowing themselves up at a great rate. Then, too, there is
+the prospective joy of seeing you, of whom quite wonderful tales have
+floated east to us. I am told you are in direct line for the position
+of the High Chief Muck-a-muck of the Force. Look me up in Superintendent
+Strong's division. I believe he is the bulwark of the Empire in my
+district.
+
+"A letter from the old burgh across the pond tells me your governor is
+far from well. Awfully sorry to hear it. It is rough on your sister, to
+whom, when you write, remember your humble servant.
+
+"I am bringing out two nurses with me, both your devotees. Look out for
+squalls. If you get shot up see that you select a locality where the
+medical attendance and nursing are 'A 1'."
+
+"It would be awfully good to see the old boy," said Cameron as he took
+the letter from the Inspector. "He is a decent chap and quite up-to-date
+in his profession."
+
+"What about the nurses?" enquired the Inspector gravely.
+
+"Oh, I don't know them. Never knew but one. A good bright little soul
+she was. Saw me through a typhoid trip. Little too clever sometimes,"
+he added, remembering the day when she had taken her fun out of the
+slow-footed, slow-minded farmer's daughter.
+
+"Well," said the Inspector, "we shall possibly come across them in
+our round-up. This is rather a big game, a very big game and one worth
+playing."
+
+A bigger game it turned out than any of the players knew, bigger in its
+immediate sweep and in its nationwide issues.
+
+For three months they swept the plains, haunting the reservations at
+unexpected moments. But though they found not a few horses and cattle
+whose obliterated brands seemed to warrant confiscation, and though
+there were signs for the instructed eye of evil doings in many an Indian
+camp, yet there was nothing connected with the larger game upon which
+the Inspector of Police could lay his hand.
+
+Among the Bloods there were frequent sun-dances where many braves were
+made and much firewater drunk with consequent blood-letting. Red Crow
+deprecated these occurrences, but confessed his powerlessness to prevent
+the flow of either firewater or of blood. A private conversation with
+the Inspector left with the Chief some food for thought, however, and
+resulted in the cropping of the mane of White Horse, of whose comings
+and goings the Inspector was insistently curious.
+
+On the Blackfeet reservation they ran into a great pow-wow of chiefs
+from far and near, to which old Crowfoot invited the representatives
+of the Great White Mother with impressive cordiality, an invitation,
+however, which the Inspector, such was his strenuous hunt for stolen
+horses, was forced regretfully to decline.
+
+"Too smooth, old boy, too smooth!" was the Inspector's comment as they
+rode off. "There are doings there without doubt. Did you see the Cree
+and the Assiniboine?"
+
+"I could not pick them out," said Cameron, "but I saw Louis the Breed."
+
+"Ah, you did! He needs another term at the Police sanatarium."
+
+They looked in upon the Sarcees and were relieved to find them frankly
+hostile. They had not forgotten the last visit of the Inspector and his
+friend.
+
+"That's better," remarked the Inspector as they left the reservation.
+"Neither the hostile Indian nor the noisy Indian is dangerous. When he
+gets smooth and quiet watch him, like old Crowfoot. Sly old boy he is!
+But he will wait till he sees which way the cat jumps. He is no leader
+of lost causes."
+
+At Morleyville they breathed a different atmosphere. They felt
+themselves to be among friends. The hand of the missionary here was upon
+the helm of government and the spirit of the missionary was the spirit
+of the tribe.
+
+"Any trouble?" enquired the Inspector.
+
+"We have a great many visitors these days," said the missionary. "And
+some of our young men don't like hunger, and the offer of a full feast
+makes sweet music in their ears."
+
+"Any sun-dances?"
+
+"No, no, the sun-dances are all past. Our people are no longer pagans."
+
+"Good man!" was the Inspector's comment as they took up the trail again
+toward the mountains. "And with quite a sufficient amount of the wisdom
+of the serpent in his guileless heart. We need not watch the Stonies.
+Here's a spot at least where religion pays. And a mighty good thing for
+us just now," added the inspector. "These Stonies in the old days
+were perfect devils for fighting. They are a mountain people and for
+generations kept the passes against all comers. But Macdougall has
+changed all that."
+
+Leaving the reservation, they came upon the line of the railway.
+
+"There lies my old trail," said Cameron. "And my last camp was only
+about two miles west of here."
+
+"It was somewhere here that Raven fell in with you?"
+
+"No, some ten miles off the line, down the old Kootenay trail."
+
+"Aha!" said the Inspector. "It might not be a bad idea to beat up that
+same old trail. It is quite possible that we might fall in with your old
+friends."
+
+"It would certainly be a great pleasure," replied Cameron, "to conduct
+Mr. Raven and his Indian friend over this same trail as they did me some
+nine months ago."
+
+"We will take a chance on it," said the Inspector. "We lose time going
+back the other way."
+
+Upon the site of McIvor's survey camp they found camped a large
+construction gang. Between the lines of tents, for the camp was ordered
+in streets like a city, they rode till they came to the headquarters of
+the Police, and enquired for the Superintendent. The Superintendent
+had gone up the line, the Sergeant informed them, following the larger
+construction gangs. The Sergeant and two men had some fifty miles of
+line under patrol, with some ten camps of various kinds on the line and
+in the woods, and in addition they had the care of that double stream of
+humanity flowing in and flowing out without ceasing day or night.
+
+As the Inspector stepped inside the Police tent Cameron's attention was
+arrested by the sign "Hospital" upon a large double-roofed tent set on a
+wooden floor and guyed with more than ordinary care.
+
+"Wonder if old Martin is anywhere about," he said to himself as he rode
+across to the open door.
+
+"Is Dr. Martin in?" he enquired of a Chinaman, who appeared from a tent
+at the rear.
+
+"Doc Matin go 'way 'long tlain."
+
+"When will he come back?" demanded Cameron.
+
+"Donno. See missy woman."
+
+So saying, he disappeared into the tent while Cameron waited.
+
+"You wish to see the doctor? He has gone west. Oh! Why, it--"
+
+Cameron was off his horse, standing with his hat in one hand, the other
+outstretched toward the speaker.
+
+"Why! it cannot be!--it is--my patient." The little nurse had his hand
+in both of hers. "Oh, you great big monster soldier! Do you know how
+fine you look?"
+
+"No," replied Cameron, "but I do know how perfectly fine you look."
+
+"Well, don't devour me. You look dangerous."
+
+"I should truly love one little bite."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cameron, stop! You terrible man! Right in the open street!" The
+little nurse's cheeks flamed red as she quickly glanced about her. "What
+would Dr. Martin say?"
+
+"Dr. Martin!" Cameron laughed. "Besides, I couldn't help it."
+
+"Oh, I am so glad!"
+
+"Thank you," said Cameron.
+
+"I mean I am so glad to see you. They told us you would be coming
+to join us. And now they are gone. What a pity! They will be so
+disappointed."
+
+"Who, pray, will be thus blighted?"
+
+"Oh, the doctor I mean, and--and"--here her eyes danced
+mischievously--"the other nurse, of course. But you will be going west?"
+
+"No, south, to-day, and in a few minutes. Here comes the Inspector. May
+I present him?"
+
+The little nurse's snapping eyes glowed with pleasure as they ran over
+the tall figure of the Inspector and rested upon his fine clean-cut
+face. The Inspector had just made his farewell to the Sergeant
+preparatory to an immediate departure, but it was a full half hour
+before they rose from the dainty tea table where the little nurse had
+made them afternoon tea from her own dainty tea set.
+
+"It makes me think of home," said the Inspector with a sigh as he bent
+over the little nurse's hand in gratitude. "My first real afternoon tea
+in ten years."
+
+"Poor man!" said the nurse. "Come again."
+
+"Ah, if I could!"
+
+"But YOU are coming?" said the little nurse to Cameron as he held her
+hand in farewell. "I heard the doctor say you were coming and we are
+quite wild with impatience over it."
+
+Cameron looked at the Inspector.
+
+"I had thought of keeping Cameron at Macleod," said the latter. "But now
+I can hardly have the heart to do so."
+
+"Oh, you needn't look at me so," said the little nurse with a saucy toss
+of her head. "He wouldn't bother himself about me, but--but--there is
+another. No, I won't tell him." And she laughed gaily.
+
+Cameron stood mystified.
+
+"Another? There is old Martin of course, but there is no other."
+
+The little nurse laughed, this time scornfully.
+
+"Old Martin indeed! He is making a shameless pretence of ignorance,
+Inspector Dickson."
+
+"Disgraceful bluff I call it," cried the Inspector.
+
+"Who can it be?" said Cameron. "I really don't know any nurse. Of course
+it can't be--Mandy--Miss Haley?" He laughed a loud laugh almost of
+derision as he made the suggestion.
+
+"Ah, he's got it!" cried the nurse, clapping her hands. "As if he ever
+doubted."
+
+"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Cameron. "You don't mean to tell me that
+Mandy--What is poor Mandy doing here? Cooking?"
+
+"Cooking indeed!" exclaimed the nurse. "Cooking indeed! Just let the men
+in this camp, from John here," indicating the Chinaman at the rear
+of the tent, "to the Sergeant yonder, hear you by the faintest tone
+indicate anything but adoration for Nurse Haley, and you will need the
+whole Police Force to deliver you from their fury."
+
+"Good Heavens!" said Cameron in an undertone. "A nurse! With those
+hands!" He shuddered. "I mean, of course--you know--she's awfully
+good-hearted and all that, but as a nurse you know she is impossible."
+
+The little nurse laughed long and joyously.
+
+"Oh, this is fun! I wish Dr. Martin could hear you. You forget, Sir,
+that for a year and a half she has had the benefit of my example and
+tuition."
+
+"Think of that, Cameron!" murmured the Inspector reproachfully. But
+Cameron only shook his head.
+
+"Good-bye!" he said. "No, I don't think I pine for mountain scenery.
+Remember me to Martin and to Man--to Nurse Haley."
+
+"Good-bye!" said the little nurse. "I have a good mind to tell them what
+you said. I may. Just wait, though. Some day you will very humbly beg my
+pardon for that slight upon my assistant."
+
+"Slight? Believe me, I mean none. I would be an awful cad if I did.
+But--well, you know as well as I do that, good soul as Mandy is, she is
+in many ways impossible."
+
+"Do I?" Again the joyous laugh pealed out. "Well, well, come back and
+see." And waving her hand she stood to watch them down the trail.
+
+"Jolly little girl," said the Inspector, as they turned from the railway
+tote road down the coulee into the Kootenay trail. "But who is this
+other?"
+
+"Oh," said Cameron impatiently, "I feel like a beastly cad. She's
+the daughter of the farmer where I spent a summer in Ontario, a good
+simple-hearted girl, but awfully--well--crude, you know. And yet--"
+Cameron's speech faded into silence, for his memory played a trick upon
+him, and again he was standing in the orchard on that sunny autumn day
+looking into a pair of wonderful eyes, and, remembering the eyes, he
+forgot his speech.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the Inspector. "I understand."
+
+"No, you don't," said Cameron almost rudely. "You would have to see her
+first. By Jove!" He broke into a laugh. "It is a joke with a vengeance,"
+and relapsed into silence that lasted for some miles.
+
+That night they slept in the old lumber camp, and the afternoon of the
+second day found them skirting the Crow's Nest.
+
+"We've had no luck this trip," growled the Inspector, for now they were
+facing toward home.
+
+"Listen!" said Cameron, pulling up his horse sharply. Down the pass the
+faraway beat of a drum was heard. It was the steady throb of the tom-tom
+rising and falling with rhythmic regularity.
+
+"Sun-dance," said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he generally
+allowed himself. "Piegans."
+
+"Where?" said Cameron.
+
+"In the sun-dance canyon," answered the Inspector. "I believe in my soul
+we shall see something now. Must be two miles off. Come on."
+
+Though late in December the ground was still unfrozen and the new-made
+government trail gave soft footing to their horses. And so without fear
+of detection they loped briskly along till they began to hear
+rising above the throb of the tom-tom the weird chant of the Indian
+sun-dancers.
+
+"They are right down in the canyon," said the Inspector. "I know the
+spot well. We can see them from the top. This is their most sacred place
+and there is doubtless something big going on."
+
+They left the main trail and, dismounting, led their horses through
+the scrubby woods, which were thick enough to give them cover without
+impeding very materially their progress. Within a hundred yards of the
+top they tied their horses in the thicket and climbed the slight ascent.
+Crawling on hands and knees to the lip of the canyon, they looked down
+upon a scene seldom witnessed by the eyes of white men. The canyon was
+a long narrow valley, whose rocky sides, covered with underbrush, rose
+some sixty feet from a little plain about fifty yards wide. The little
+plain was filled with the Indian encampment. At one end a huge fire
+blazed. At the other, and some fifty yards away, the lodges were set in
+a semicircle, reaching from side to side of the canyon, and in front of
+the lodges were a mass of Indian warriors, squatting on their hunkers,
+beating time, some with tom-toms, others with their hands, to the
+weirdly monotonous chant, that rose and fell in response to the
+gesticulations of one who appeared to be their leader. In the centre of
+the plain stood a post and round this two circles of dancers leaped
+and swayed. In the outer circle the men, with clubs and rifles in their
+hands, recited with pantomimic gestures their glorious deeds in the
+war or in the chase. The inner circle presented a ghastly and horrid
+spectacle. It was composed of younger men, naked and painted, some of
+whom were held to the top of the post by long thongs of buffalo hide
+attached to skewers thrust through the muscles of the breast or back.
+Upon these thongs they swayed and threw themselves in frantic attempts
+to break free. With others the skewers were attached by thongs to
+buffalo skulls, stones or heavy blocks of wood, which, as they danced
+and leaped, tore at the bleeding flesh. Round and round the post the
+naked painted Indians leaped, lurching and swaying from side to side
+in their desperate efforts to drag themselves free from those tearing
+skewers, while round them from the dancing circle and from the mass of
+Indians squatted on the ground rose the weird, maddening, savage chant
+to the accompaniment of their beating hands and throbbing drums.
+
+"This is a big dance," said the Inspector, subduing his voice to an
+undertone, though in the din there was little chance of his being heard.
+"See! many braves have been made already," he added, pointing to a place
+on one side of the fire where a number of forms could be seen, some
+lying flat, some rolling upon the earth, but all apparently more or less
+in a stupor.
+
+Madder and madder grew the drums, higher and higher rose the chant.
+Now and then an older warrior from the squatting circle would fling his
+blanket aside and, waving his rifle high in the air, would join with
+loud cries and wild gesticulations the outer circle of dancers.
+
+"It is a big thing this," said the Inspector again. "No squaws, you see,
+and all in war paint. They mean business. We must get closer."
+
+Cameron gripped him by the arm.
+
+"Look!" he said, pointing to a group of Indians standing at a little
+distance beyond the lodges. "Little Thunder and Raven!"
+
+"Yes, by Jove!" said the Inspector. "And White Horse, and Louis the
+Breed and Rainy Cloud of the Blackfeet. A couple of Sarcee chaps, I see,
+too, some Piegans and Bloods; the rest are Crees and Assiniboines. The
+whole bunch are here. Jove, what a killing if we could get them! Let's
+work nearer. Who is that speaking to them?"
+
+"That's Raven," said Cameron, "and I should like to get my hands on
+him."
+
+"Steady now," said the Inspector. "We must make no mistake."
+
+They worked along the top of the ravine, crawling through the bushes,
+till they were immediately over the little group of which Raven was the
+centre. Raven was still speaking, the half-breed interpreting to the
+Crees and the Assiniboines, and now and then, as the noise from the
+chanting, drumming Indians subsided, the policemen could catch a few
+words. After Raven had finished Little Thunder made reply, apparently
+in strenuous opposition. Again Raven spoke and again Little Thunder made
+reply. The dispute waxed warm. Little Thunder's former attitude towards
+Raven appeared to be entirely changed. The old subservience was gone.
+The Indian stood now as a Chief among his people and as such was
+recognized in that company. He spoke with a haughty pride of conscious
+strength and authority. He was striving to bring Raven to his way of
+thinking. At length Raven appeared to throw down his ultimatum.
+
+"No!" he cried, and his voice rang up clear through the din. "You are
+fools! You are like little partridges trying to frighten the hunter. The
+Great White Mother has soldiers like the leaves of the trees. I know,
+for I have seen them. Do not listen to this man!" pointing to Little
+Thunder. "Anger has made him mad. The Police with their big guns will
+blow you to pieces like this." He seized a bunch of dead leaves, ground
+them in his hands and puffed the fragments in their faces.
+
+The half-breed and Little Thunder were beside themselves with rage. Long
+and loud they harangued the group about them. Only a little of their
+meaning could the Inspector gather, but enough to let him know that
+they were looking down upon a group of conspirators and that plans for a
+widespread rebellion were being laid before them.
+
+Through the harangues of Little Thunder and Louis the half-breed Raven
+stood calmly regarding them, his hands on his hips. He knew well, as did
+the men watching from above, that all that stood between him and death
+were those same two hands and the revolvers in his belt, whose butts
+were snugly nosing up to his fingers. Little Thunder had too often seen
+those fingers close and do their deadly work while an eyelid might wink
+to venture any hasty move.
+
+"Is that all?" said Raven at last.
+
+Little Thunder made one final appeal, working himself up into a fine
+frenzy of passion. Then Raven made reply.
+
+"Listen to me!" he said. "It is all folly, mad folly! And besides," and
+here his voice rang out like a trumpet, "I am for the Queen, God bless
+her!" His figure straightened up, his hands dropped on the butts of his
+guns.
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed Cameron. "Isn't that great?"
+
+"Very fine, indeed," said the Inspector softly. Both men's guns were
+lined upon the conspirators.
+
+Then the half-breed spoke, shrugging his shoulders in contempt.
+
+"Let heem go. Bah! No good." He spat upon the ground.
+
+Raven stood as he was for a few moments, smiling.
+
+"Good-bye, all," he said. "Bon jour, Louis. Let no man move! Let no man
+move! I never need to shoot at a man twice. Little Thunder knows. And
+don't follow!" he added. "I shall be waiting behind the rocks."
+
+He slowly backed away from the group, turned in behind a sheltering
+rock, then swiftly began to climb the rocky sides of the canyon. The
+moment he was out of sight Little Thunder dodged in behind the ledges,
+found his rifle, and, making a wide detour, began to climb the side of
+the ravine at an angle which would cut off Raven's retreat. All this
+took place in full view of the two watchers above.
+
+"Let's get that devil," said the Inspector. But Cameron was already
+gone. Swiftly along the lip of the canyon Cameron ran and worked his way
+down the side till he stood just over the sloping ledge upon which the
+Indian was crouched and waiting. Along this lodge came the unconscious
+Raven, softly whistling to himself his favourite air,
+
+     "Three cheers for the red, white and blue."
+
+There was no way of warning him. Three steps more and he would be within
+range. The Inspector raised his gun and drew a bead upon the crouching
+Indian.
+
+"Wait!" whispered Cameron. "Don't shoot. It will bring them all down on
+us." Gathering himself together as he spoke, he vaulted clear over
+the edge of the rock and dropped fair upon the shoulders of the Indian
+below, knocking the breath completely out of him and bearing him flat to
+the rock. Like a flash Cameron's hand was on the Indian's throat so that
+he could make no outcry. A moment later Raven came in view. Swifter than
+light his guns were before his face and levelled at Cameron.
+
+"Don't shoot!" said the Inspector quietly from above. "I have you
+covered."
+
+Perilous as the situation was, Cameron was conscious only of the
+humourous side of it and burst into a laugh.
+
+"Come here, Raven," he said, "and help me to tie up this fellow." Slowly
+Raven moved forward.
+
+"Why, by all the gods! If it isn't our long-lost friend, Cameron,"
+he said softly, putting up his guns. "All right, old man," he added,
+nodding up at the Inspector. "Now, what's all this? What? Little
+Thunder? So! Then I fancy I owe my life to you, Cameron."
+
+Cameron pointed to Little Thunder's gun. Raven stood looking down
+upon the Indian, who was recovering his wind and his senses. His face
+suddenly darkened.
+
+"You treacherous dog! Well, we are now nearly quits. Once you saved my
+life, now you would have taken it."
+
+Meantime Cameron had handcuffed Little Thunder.
+
+"Up!" he said, prodding him with his revolver. "And not a sound!"
+
+Keeping within cover of the bushes, they scrambled up the ravine side.
+As they reached the top the Indian with a mighty wrench tore himself
+from Cameron's grip and plunged into the thicket. Before he had taken a
+second step, however, the Inspector was upon him like a tiger and bore
+him to the ground.
+
+"Will you go quietly," said the Inspector, "or must we knock you on the
+head?" He raised his pistol over the Indian as he spoke.
+
+"I go," grunted the Indian solemnly.
+
+"Come, then," said the Inspector, "we'll give you one chance more.
+Where's your friend?" he added, looking about him. But Raven was gone.
+
+"I am just as glad," said Cameron, remembering Raven's declaration of
+allegiance a few moments before. "He wasn't too bad a chap after all. We
+have this devil anyhow."
+
+"Quick, now," said the Inspector. "We have not a moment to lose. This
+is an important capture. How the deuce we are to get him to the Fort I
+don't know."
+
+Through the bushes they hurried their prisoner, threatening him with
+their guns. When they came to their horses they were amazed to find
+Little Thunder's pony beside their own and on the Inspector's saddle a
+slip of paper upon which in the fading light they found inscribed "One
+good turn deserves another. With Mr. Raven's compliments."
+
+"By Jove, he's a trump!" said the Inspector. "I'd like to get him, but
+all the same--"
+
+And so they rode off to the Fort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+NURSE HALEY
+
+
+The railway construction had reached the Beaver, and from Laggan
+westward the construction gangs were strewn along the line in straggling
+camps, straggling because, though the tents of the railway men were set
+in orderly precision, the crowds of camp-followers spread themselves
+hither and thither in disorderly confusion around the outskirts of the
+camp.
+
+To Cameron, who for a month had been attached to Superintendent Strong's
+division, the life was full of movement and colour. The two constables
+and Sergeant Ferry found the duty of keeping order among the navvies,
+but more especially among the outlaw herd that lay in wait to fling
+themselves upon their monthly pay like wolves upon a kill, sufficiently
+arduous to fill to repletion the hours of the day and often of the
+night.
+
+The hospital tent where the little nurse reigned supreme became to
+Cameron and to the Sergeant as well a place of refuge and relief. Nurse
+Haley was in charge further down the line.
+
+The post had just come in and with it a letter for Constable Cameron. It
+was from Inspector Dickson.
+
+"You will be interested to know," it ran, "that when I returned from
+Stand Off two days ago I found that Little Thunder, who had been waiting
+here for his hanging next month, had escaped. How, was a mystery to
+everybody; but when I learned that a stranger had been at the Fort and
+had called upon the Superintendent with a tale of horse-stealing, had
+asked to see Little Thunder and identified him as undoubtedly the thief,
+and had left that same day riding a particularly fine black broncho,
+I made a guess that we had been honoured by a visit from your friend
+Raven. That guess was confirmed as correct by a little note which I
+found waiting me from this same gentleman explaining Little Thunder's
+absence as being due to Raven's unwillingness to see a man go to the
+gallows who had once saved his life, but conveying the assurance that
+the Indian was leaving the country for good and would trouble us no
+more. The Superintendent, who seems to have been captured by your
+friend's charm of manner, does not appear to be unduly worried and holds
+the opinion that we are well rid of Little Thunder. But I venture to
+hold a different opinion, namely, that we shall yet hear from that
+Indian brave before the winter is over.
+
+"Things are quiet on the reservations--altogether too quiet. The Indians
+are so exceptionally well behaved that there is no excuse for arresting
+any suspects, so White Horse, Rainy Cloud, those Piegan chaps, and the
+rest of them are allowed to wander about at will. The country is full
+of Indian and half-breed runners and nightly pow-wows are the vogue
+everywhere. Old Crowfoot, I am convinced, is playing a deep game and is
+simply waiting the fitting moment to strike.
+
+"How is the little nurse? Present my duty to her and to that other nurse
+over whom hangs so deep a mystery."
+
+Cameron folded up his letter and imparted some of the news to the
+Sergeant.
+
+"That old Crowfoot is a deep one, sure enough," said Sergeant Ferry. "It
+takes our Chief here to bring him to time. Superintendent Strong has the
+distinction of being the only man that ever tamed old Crowfoot. Have
+you never heard of it? No? Well, of course, we don't talk about these
+things. I was there though, and for cold iron nerve I never saw anything
+like it. It was a bad half-breed," continued Sergeant Ferry, who, when
+he found a congenial and safe companion, loved to spin a yarn--"a bad
+half-breed who had been arrested away down the line, jumped off the
+train and got away to the Blackfeet. The Commissioner happened to be in
+Calgary and asked the Superintendent himself to see about the capture
+of this desperado. So with a couple of us mounted and another driving a
+buckboard we made for Chief Crowfoot's encampment. It was a black night
+and raining a steady drizzle. We lay on the edge of the camp for a
+couple of hours in the rain and then at early dawn we rode in. It took
+the Superintendent about two minutes to locate Crowfoot's tent, and,
+leaving us outside, he walked straight in. There was our man, as large
+as life, in the place of honour beside old Crowfoot. The interpreter,
+who was scared to death, afterwards told me all about it.
+
+"'I want this man,' said the Superintendent, hardly waiting to say
+good-day to the old Chief.
+
+"Crowfoot was right up and ready for a fight. The Superintendent,
+without ever letting go the half-breed's shoulder, set out the case.
+Meantime the Indians had gathered in hundreds about the tent outside,
+all armed, and wild for blood, you bet. I could hear the Superintendent
+making his statement. All at once he stopped and out he came with his
+man by the collar, old Crowfoot after him in a fury, but afraid to give
+the signal of attack. The Indians were keen to get at us, but the old
+Chief had his men in hand all right.
+
+"'Don't think you will not get justice,' said the Superintendent. 'You
+come yourself and see. Here's a pass for you on the railroad and for
+any three of your men. But let me warn you that if one hair of my men is
+touched, it will be a bad day for you, Crowfoot, and for your band.'
+
+"He bundled his man into the buckboard and sent him off. The
+Superintendent and I waited on horseback in parley with old Crowfoot
+till the buckboard was over the hill. Such a half hour I never expect to
+see again. I felt like a man standing over an open keg of gunpowder with
+a lighted match. Any moment a spark might fall, and then good-bye. And
+it is this same nerve of his that holds down these camps along this
+line. Here we are with twenty-five men from Laggan to Beaver keeping
+order among twenty-five hundred railroad navvies, not a bad lot, and
+twenty-five hundred others, the scum, the very devil's scum from across
+the line, and not a murder all these months. Whiskey, of course, but all
+under cover. I tell you, he's put the fear of death on all that tinhorn
+bunch that hang around these camps."
+
+"There doesn't seem to be much trouble just now," remarked Cameron.
+
+"Trouble? There may be the biggest kind of trouble any day. Some of
+these contractors are slow in their pay. They expect men to wait a
+month or two. That makes them mad and the tinhorn bunch keep stirring
+up trouble. Might be a strike any time, and then look out. But our Chief
+will be ready for them. He won't stand any nonsense, you bet."
+
+At this point in the Sergeant's rambling yarn the door was flung open
+and a man called breathlessly, "Man killed!"
+
+"How is that?" cried the Sergeant, springing to buckle on his belt.
+
+"An accident--car ran away--down the dump."
+
+"They are altogether too flip with those cars," growled the Sergeant.
+"Come on!"
+
+They ran down the road and toward the railroad dump where they saw a
+crowd of men. The Sergeant, followed by Cameron, pushed his way through
+and found a number of navvies frantically tearing at a pile of jagged
+blocks of rock under which could be seen a human body. It took only a
+few minutes to remove the rocks and to discover lying there a young man,
+a mere lad, from whose mangled and bleeding body the life appeared to
+have fled.
+
+As they stood about him, a huge giant of a man came tearing his way
+through the crowd, pushing men to right and left.
+
+"Let me see him," he cried, dropping on his knees. "Oh Jack, lad, they
+have done for you this time."
+
+As he spoke the boy opened his eyes, looked upon the face of his friend,
+smiled and lay still. Then the Sergeant took command.
+
+"Is the doctor back, does anyone know?"
+
+"No, he's up the line yet. He is coming in on number seven."
+
+"Well, we must get this man to the hospital. Here, you," he said,
+touching a man on the arm, "run and tell the nurse we are bringing a
+wounded man."
+
+They improvised a stretcher and laid the mangled form upon it the blood
+streaming from wounds in his legs and trickling from his pallid lips.
+
+"Here, two men are better than four. Cameron, you take the head, and
+you," pointing to Jack's friend, "take his feet. Steady now! I'll just
+go before. This is a ghastly sight."
+
+At the door of the hospital tent the little nurse met them, pale, but
+ready for service.
+
+"Oh, my poor boy!" she cried, as she saw the white face. "This way,
+Sergeant," she added, passing into a smaller tent at one side of the
+hospital. "Oh, Mr. Cameron, is that you? I am glad you are here."
+
+"Has Nurse Haley come?" enquired the Sergeant.
+
+"Yes, she came in last night, thank goodness. Here, on this table,
+Sergeant. Oh I wish the doctor were here! Now we must lift him on to
+this stretcher. Ah, here's Nurse Haley," she added in a relieved voice,
+and before Cameron was aware, a girl in a nurse's uniform stood by him
+and appeared quietly to take command.
+
+"Here Sergeant," she said, "two men take his feet." She put her arms
+under the boy's shoulder and gently and with apparent ease, assisted by
+the others, lifted him to the table. "A little further--there. Now you
+are easier, aren't you?" she said, smiling down into the lad's face. Her
+voice was low and soft and full toned.
+
+"Yes, thank you," said the boy, biting back his groans and with a
+pitiful attempt at a smile.
+
+"You're fine now, Jack. You'll soon be fixed up now," said his friend.
+
+"Yes Pete, I'm all right, I know."
+
+"Oh, I wish the doctor were here!" groaned the little nurse.
+
+"What about a hypo?" enquired Nurse Haley quietly.
+
+"Yes, yes, give him one."
+
+Cameron's eyes followed the firm, swift-moving fingers as they deftly
+gave the hypodermic.
+
+"Now we must get this bleeding stopped," she said.
+
+"Get them all out, Sergeant, please," said the little nurse. "One or two
+will do to help us. You stay, Mr. Cameron."
+
+At the mention of his name Nurse Haley, who had been busy preparing
+bandages, dropped them, turned, and for the first time looked Cameron in
+the face.
+
+"Is it you?" she said softly, and gave him her hand, and, as more than
+once before, Cameron found himself suddenly forgetting all the world. He
+was looking into her eyes, blue, deep, wonderful.
+
+It was only for a single moment that his eyes held hers, but to him it
+seemed as if he had been in some far away land. Without a single word of
+greeting he allowed her to withdraw her hand. Wonder, and something he
+could not understand, held him dumb.
+
+For the next half hour he obeyed orders, moving as in a dream, assisting
+the nurses in their work; and in a dream he went away to his own
+quarters and thence out and over the dump and along the tote road that
+led through the straggling shacks and across the river into the forest
+beyond. But of neither river nor forest was he aware. Before his eyes
+there floated an illusive vision of masses of fluffy golden hair above
+a face of radiant purity, of deft fingers moving in swift and sure
+precision as they wound the white rolls of bandages round bloody and
+broken flesh, of two round capable arms whose lines suggested strength
+and beauty, of a firm knit, pliant body that moved with easy sinuous
+grace, of eyes--but ever at the eyes he paused, forgetting all else,
+till, recalling himself, he began again, striving to catch and hold that
+radiant, bewildering, illusive vision. That was a sufficiently maddening
+process, but to relate that vision of radiant efficient strength
+and grace to the one he carried of the farmer's daughter with her
+dun-coloured straggling hair, her muddy complexion, her stupid face,
+her clumsy, grimy hands and heavy feet, her sloppy figure, was quite
+impossible. After long and strenuous attempts he gave up the struggle.
+
+"Mandy!" he exclaimed aloud to the forest trees. "That Mandy! What's
+gone wrong with my eyes, or am I clean off my head? I will go back," he
+said with sudden resolution, "and take another look."
+
+Straight back he walked to the hospital, but at the door he paused. Why
+was he there? He had no excuse to offer and without excuse he felt he
+could not enter. He was acting like a fool. He turned away and once more
+sought his quarters, disgusted with himself that he should be disturbed
+by the thought of Mandy Haley or that it should cause him a moment's
+embarrassment to walk into her presence with or without excuse,
+determinedly he set himself to regain his one-time attitude of mind
+toward the girl. With little difficulty he recalled his sense of
+superiority, his kindly pity, his desire to protect her crude simplicity
+from those who might do her harm. With a vision of that Mandy before
+him, the drudge of the farm, the butt of Perkins' jokes, the object of
+pity for the neighbourhood, he could readily summon up all the feelings
+he had at one time considered it the correct and rather fine thing to
+cherish for her. But for this young nurse, so thoroughly furnished and
+fit, and so obviously able to care for herself, these feelings would not
+come. Indeed, it made him squirm to remember how in his farewell in the
+orchard he had held her hand in gentle pity for her foolish and all
+too evident infatuation for his exalted and superior self. His groan of
+self-disgust he hastily merged into a cough, for the Sergeant had his
+eyes upon him. Indeed, the Sergeant did not help his state of mind, for
+he persisted in executing a continuous fugue of ecstatic praise of Nurse
+Haley in various keys and tempos, her pluck, her cleverness, her skill,
+her patience, her jolly laugh, her voice, her eyes. To her eyes the
+Sergeant ever kept harking back as to the main motif of his fugue, till
+Cameron would have dearly loved to chuck him and his fugue out of doors.
+
+He was saved from deeds of desperate violence by a voice at the door.
+
+"Letta fo' Mis Camelon!"
+
+"Hello, Cameron!" exclaimed the Sergeant, handing him the note. "You're
+in luck." There was no mistaking the jealousy in the Sergeant's voice.
+
+"Oh, hang it!" said Cameron as he read the note.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"Tea!"
+
+"Who?" enquired the Sergeant eagerly.
+
+"Me. I say, you go in my place."
+
+The Sergeant swore at him frankly and earnestly.
+
+"All right John," said Cameron rather ungraciously.
+
+"You come?" enquired the Chinaman.
+
+"Yes, I'll come."
+
+"All lite!" said John, turning away with his message.
+
+"Confound the thing!" growled Cameron.
+
+"Oh come, you needn't put up any bluff with me, you know," said the
+Sergeant.
+
+But Cameron made no reply. He felt he was not ready for the interview
+before him. He was distinctly conscious of a feeling of nervous
+embarrassment, which to a man of experience is disconcerting and
+annoying. He could not make up his mind as to the attitude which it
+would be wise and proper for him to assume toward--ah--Nurse Haley. Why
+not resume relations at the point at which they were broken off in the
+orchard that September afternoon a year and a half ago? Why not? Mandy
+was apparently greatly changed, greatly improved. Well, he was delighted
+at the improvement, and he would frankly let her see his pleasure and
+approval. There was no need for embarrassment. Pshaw! Embarrassment? He
+felt none.
+
+And yet as he stood at the door of the nurses' tent he was disquieted to
+find himself nervously wondering what in thunder he should talk about.
+As it turned out there was no cause for nervousness on this score. The
+little nurse and the doctor--Nurse Haley being on duty--kept the stream
+of talk rippling and sparkling in an unbroken flow. Whenever a pause did
+occur they began afresh with Cameron and his achievements, of which they
+strove to make him talk. But they ever returned to their own work among
+the sick and wounded of the camps, and as often as they touched this
+theme the pivot of their talk became Nurse Haley, till Cameron began to
+suspect design and became wrathful. They were talking at him and were
+taking a rise out of him. He would show them their error. He at once
+became brilliant.
+
+In the midst of his scintillation he abruptly paused and sat listening.
+Through the tent walls came the sound of singing, low-toned, rich,
+penetrating. He had no need to ask about that voice. In silence they
+looked at him and at each other.
+
+     "We're going home, no more to roam,
+     No more to sin and sorrow,
+     No more to wear the brow of care,
+     We're going home to-morrow.
+
+     "We're going home; we're going home;
+     We're going home to-morrow."
+
+Softer and softer grew the music. At last the voice fell silent. Then
+Nurse Haley appeared, radiant, fresh, and sweet as a clover field with
+the morning dew upon it, but with a light as of another world upon her
+face.
+
+With the spell of her voice, of her eyes, of her radiant face upon him,
+Cameron's scintillation faded and snuffed out. He felt like a boy at his
+first party and enraged at himself for so feeling. How bright she was,
+how pure her face under the brown gold hair, how dainty the bloom upon
+her cheek, and that voice of hers, and the firm lithe body with curving
+lines of budding womanhood, grace in every curve and movement! The Mandy
+of old faded from his mind. Have I seen you before? And where? And how
+long ago? And what's happening to me? With these questions he vexed
+his soul while he strove to keep track of the conversation between the
+three.
+
+A call from the other tent summoned Nurse Haley.
+
+"Let me go instead," cried the little nurse eagerly. But, light-footed
+as a deer, Mandy was already gone.
+
+When the tent flap had fallen behind her Cameron pushed back his plate,
+leaned forward upon the table and, looking the little nurse full in the
+face, said:
+
+"Now, it's no use carrying this on. What have you done to her?" And the
+little nurse laughed her brightest and most joyous laugh.
+
+"What has she done to us, you mean."
+
+"No. Come now, take pity on a fellow. I left her--well--you know what.
+And now--how has this been accomplished?"
+
+"Soul, my boy," said the doctor emphatically, "and the hairdresser
+and--"
+
+But Cameron ignored him.
+
+"Can you tell me?" he said to the nurse.
+
+"Well, as a nurse, is she quite impossible?"
+
+"Oh, spare me," pleaded Cameron. "I acknowledge my sin and my folly is
+before me. But tell me, how was this miracle wrought?"
+
+"What do you mean exactly? Specify."
+
+"Oh, hang it! Well, beginning at the top, there's her hair."
+
+"Her hair?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, her complexion--her grace of form--her style--her manner. Oh,
+confound it! Her hands--everything."
+
+"Well," said the little nurse with deliberation, "let's begin at the
+top. Her hair? A hairdresser explains that. Her complexion? A little
+treatment, massage, with some help from the doctor. Her hands? Again
+treatment and release from brutalising work. Her figure? Well, you know,
+that depends, though we don't acknowledge it always, to a certain extent
+on--well--things--and how you put them on."
+
+"Nurse," said the doctor gravely, "you're all off. The transformation
+is from within and is explained, as I have said, by one word--soul. The
+soul has been set free, has been allowed to break through. That is all.
+Why, my dear fellow," continued the doctor with rising enthusiasm, "when
+that girl came to us we were in despair; and for three months she kept
+us there, pursuing us, hounding us with questions. Never saw anything
+like it. One telling was enough though. Her eyes were everywhere, her
+ears open to every hint, but it was her soul, like a bird imprisoned and
+beating for the open air. The explanation is, as I have said just now,
+soul--intense, flaming, unquenchable soul--and, I must say it, the
+dressmaker, the hairdresser, and the rest directed by our young friend
+here," pointing to the little nurse. "Why, she had us all on the job. We
+all became devotees of the Haley Cult."
+
+"No," said the nurse, "it was herself."
+
+"Isn't that what I have been telling you?" said the doctor impatiently.
+"Soul--soul--soul! A soul somehow on fire."
+
+And with that Cameron had to be content.
+
+Yes, a soul it was, at one time dormant and enwrapped within its coarse
+integument. Now, touched into life by some divine fire, it had through
+its own subtle power transformed that coarse integument into its own
+pure gold. What was that fire? What divine touch had kindled it? And,
+more important still, was that fire still aglow, or, having done
+its work, had it for lack of food flickered and died out? With these
+questions Cameron vexed himself for many days, nor found an answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"CORPORAL" CAMERON
+
+
+Jack Green did not die. Every morning for a fortnight Constable
+Cameron felt it to be his duty to make enquiry--the Sergeant, it may be
+added--performing the same duty with equal diligence in the afternoon,
+and every day the balance, which trembled evenly for some time between
+hope and fear, continued to dip more and more decidedly toward the
+former.
+
+"He's going to live, I believe," said Dr. Martin one day. "And he owes
+it to the nurse." The doctor's devotion to and admiration for Nurse
+Haley began to appear to Cameron unnecessarily pronounced. "She simply
+would not let him go!" continued the doctor. "She nursed him, sang
+to him her old 'Come all ye' songs and Methodist hymns, she spun him
+barnyard yarns and orchard idyls, and always 'continued in our next,'
+till the chap simply couldn't croak for wanting to hear the next."
+
+At times Cameron caught through the tent walls snatches of those songs
+and yarns and idyls, at times he caught momentary glimpses of the bright
+young girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into the lad fighting
+for his own, but these snatches and glimpses only exasperated him. There
+was no opportunity for any lengthened and undisturbed converse, for on
+the one hand the hospital service was exacting beyond the strength
+of doctor and nurses, and on the other there was serious trouble for
+Superintendent Strong and his men in the camps along the line, for a
+general strike had been declared in all the camps and no one knew at
+what minute it might flare up into a fierce riot.
+
+It was indeed exasperating to Cameron. The relations between himself and
+Nurse Haley were unsatisfactory, entirely unsatisfactory. It was clearly
+his duty--indeed he owed it to her and to himself--to arrive at some
+understanding, to establish their relations upon a proper and reasonable
+basis. He was at very considerable pains to make it clear, not only
+to the Sergeant, but to the cheerful little nurse and to the doctor as
+well, that as her oldest friend in the country it was incumbent upon him
+to exercise a sort of kindly protectorate over Nurse Haley. In this
+it is to be feared he was only partially successful. The Sergeant was
+obviously and gloomily incredulous of the purity of his motives, the
+little nurse arched her eyebrows and smiled in a most annoying manner,
+while the doctor pendulated between good-humoured tolerance and mild
+sarcasm. It added not a little to Cameron's mental disquiet that he was
+quite unable to understand himself; indeed, through these days he was
+engaged in conducting a bit of psychological research, with his own
+mind as laboratory and his mental phenomena as the materia for his
+investigation. It was a most difficult and delicate study and one
+demanding both leisure and calm--and Cameron had neither. The brief
+minutes he could snatch from Her Majesty's service were necessarily
+given to his friends in the hospital and as to the philosophic calm
+necessary to research work, a glimpse through the door of Nurse Haley's
+golden head bending over a sick man's cot, a snatch of song in the deep
+mellow tones of her voice, a touch of her strong firm hand, a quiet
+steady look from her deep, deep eyes--any one of these was sufficient to
+scatter all his philosophic determinings to the winds and leave his soul
+a chaos of confused emotions.
+
+Small wonder, then, that twenty times a day he cursed the luck that
+had transferred him from the comparatively peaceful environment of
+the Police Post at Fort Macleod to the maddening whirl of conflicting
+desires and duties attendant upon the Service in the railroad
+construction camps. A letter from his friend Inspector Dickson
+accentuated the contrast.
+
+"Great doings, my boy," wrote the Inspector, evidently under the spell
+of overmastering excitement. "We have Little Thunder again in the toils,
+this time to stay, and we owe this capture to your friend Raven. A
+week ago Mr. Raven coolly walked into the Fort and asked for the
+Superintendent. I was down at stables at the time. As he was coming out
+I ran into him and immediately shouted 'Hands up!'
+
+"'Ah, Mr. Inspector,' said my gentleman, as cool as ice, 'delighted to
+see you again.'
+
+"'Stand where you are!' I said, and knowing my man and determined to
+take no chances, I ordered two constables to arrest him. At this the
+Superintendent appeared.
+
+"'Ah, Inspector,' he said, 'there is evidently some mistake here.'
+
+"'There is no mistake, Superintendent,' I replied. 'I know this man. He
+is wanted on a serious charge.'
+
+"'Kindly step this way, Mr. Raven,' said the Superintendent, 'and you,
+Inspector. I have something of importance to say to you.'
+
+"And, by Jove, it was important. Little Thunder had broken his pledge
+to Raven to quit the rebellion business and had perfected a plan for
+a simultaneous rising of Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, and Sarcees next
+month. Raven had stumbled upon this and had deliberately put himself
+in the power of the Police to bring this information. 'I am not quite
+prepared,' he said, 'to hand over this country to a lot of bally
+half-breeds and bloody savages.' Together the Superintendent and he had
+perfected a plan for the capture of the heads of the conspiracy.
+
+"'As to that little matter of which you were thinking, Inspector
+Dickson,' said my Chief, 'I think if you remember, we have no definite
+charge laid against Mr. Raven, who has given us, by the way, very
+valuable information upon which we must immediately act. We are also to
+have Mr. Raven's assistance.'
+
+"Well, we had a glorious hunt, and by Jove, that man Raven is a wonder.
+He brought us right to the bunch, walked in on them, cool and quiet,
+pulled two guns and held them till we all got in place. There will be no
+rebellion among these tribes this year, I am confident."
+
+And though it does not appear in the records it is none the less true
+that to the influence of Missionary Macdougall among the Stonies and to
+the vigilance of the North West Mounted Police was it due that during
+the Rebellion of '85 Canada was spared the unspeakable horrors of an
+Indian war.
+
+It was this letter that deepened the shadow upon Cameron's face and
+sharpened the edge on his voice as he looked in upon his hospital
+friends one bright winter morning.
+
+"You are quite unbearable!" said the little nurse after she had listened
+to his grumbling for a few minutes. "And you are spoiling us all."
+
+"Spoiling you all?"
+
+"Yes, especially me, and--Nurse Haley."
+
+"Nurse Haley?"
+
+"Yes. You are disturbing her peace of mind."
+
+"Disturbing her? Me?"
+
+A certain satisfaction crept into Cameron's voice. Nothing is so
+calculated to restore the poise of the male mind as a consciousness of
+power to disturb the equilibrium of one of the imperious sex.
+
+"And you must not do it!" continued the little nurse. "She has far too
+much to bear now."
+
+"And haven't I been just telling you that?" said Cameron savagely. "She
+never gets off. Night and day she is on the job. I tell you, I won't--it
+should not be allowed." Cameron was conscious of a fine glow of
+fraternal interest in this young girl. "For instance, a day like this!
+Look at these white mountains, and that glorious sky, and this wonderful
+air, and not a breath of wind! What a day for a walk! It would do
+her--it would do you all a world of good."
+
+"Wait!" cried the little nurse, who had been on duty all night. "I'll
+tell her what you say."
+
+Apparently it took some telling, for it was a full precious quarter of
+an hour before they appeared again.
+
+"There, now, you see the effect of your authority. She would not budge
+for me, but--well--there she is! Look at her!"
+
+There was no need for this injunction. Cameron's eyes were already
+fastened upon her. And she was worth any man's while to look at in her
+tramping costume of toque and blanket coat. Tall, she looked, beside
+the little nurse, lithe and strong, her close-fitting Hudson Bay blanket
+coat revealing the swelling lines of her budding womanhood. The dainty
+white toque perched upon the masses of gold-brown hair accentuated the
+girlish freshness of her face. At the nurse's words she turned her eyes
+upon Cameron and upon her face, pale with long night watches, a faint
+red appeared. But her eyes were quiet and steady and kind; too quiet and
+too kind for Cameron, who was looking for other signals. There was no
+sign of disturbance in that face.
+
+"Come on!" he said impatiently. "We have only one hour."
+
+"Oh, what a glorious day!" cried Nurse Haley, drawing a deep breath and
+striding out like a man to keep pace with Cameron. "And how good of you
+to spare me the time!"
+
+"I have been trying to get you alone for the last two weeks," said
+Cameron.
+
+"Two weeks?"
+
+"Yes, for a month! I wanted to talk to you."
+
+"To talk with me? About what?"
+
+"About--well--about everything--about yourself."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes. I don't understand you. You have changed so tremendously."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed the girl, "I am so glad you have noticed that! Have I
+changed much?"
+
+"Much? I should say so! I find myself wondering if you are the Mandy I
+used to know at all."
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, "I am so glad! You see, I needed to change so
+much."
+
+"But how has it happened?" exclaimed Cameron. "It is a miracle to me."
+
+"How a miracle?"
+
+For a few moments they walked on in silence, the tote road leading them
+into the forest. After a time the nurse said softly,
+
+"It was you who began it."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you--and then the nurse. Oh, I can never repay her! The day that
+you left--that was a dreadful day. The world was all black. I could not
+have lived, I think, many days like that. I had to go into town and I
+couldn't help going to her. Oh, how good she was to me that day! how
+good! She understood, she understood at once. She made me come for a
+week to her, and then for altogether. That was the beginning; then I
+began to see how foolish I had been."
+
+"Foolish?"
+
+"Yes, wildly foolish! I was like a mad thing, but I did not know then,
+and I could not help it."
+
+"Help what?"
+
+"Oh, everything! But the nurse showed me--she showed me--"
+
+"Showed you?"
+
+"Showed me how to take care of myself--to take care of my body--of my
+dress--of my hair. Oh, I remember well," she said with a bright little
+laugh, "I remember that hair-dresser. Then the doctor came and gave me
+books and made me read and study--and then I began to see. Oh, it was
+like a fire--a burning fire within me. And the doctor was good to me,
+so very patient, till I began to love my profession; to love it at first
+for myself, and then for others. How good they all were to me those
+days!--the nurses in the hospital, the doctors, the students--everyone
+seemed to be kind; but above them all my own nurse here and my own
+doctor."
+
+In hurried eager speech she poured forth her heart as if anxious to
+finish her tale--her voice, her eyes, her face all eloquent of the
+intense emotion that filled her soul.
+
+"It is wonderful!" said Cameron.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "wonderful indeed! And I wanted to see you and have
+you see me," she continued, still hurrying her speech, "for I could not
+bear that you should remember me as I was those dreadful days; and I am
+so glad that you--you--are pleased!" The appeal in her voice and in her
+eyes roused in Cameron an overwhelming tide of passion.
+
+"Pleased!" he cried. "Pleased! Great Heavens, Mandy! You are wonderful!
+Don't you know that?"
+
+"No," she said thoughtfully; "but," she drew a long breath, "I like to
+hear you say it. That is all I want. You see I owe it all to you." The
+face she turned to him so innocently happy might have been a child's.
+
+"Mandy," cried Cameron, stopping short in his walk, "you--I--!" That
+frank childlike look in her eyes checked his hot words. But there was
+no need for words; his eyes spoke for his faltering lips. A look of fear
+leaped to her eyes, a flow of red blood to her cheeks; then she stood,
+white, trembling and silent.
+
+"I am tired, I think," she said after a moment's silence, "we will go
+back."
+
+"Yes, you are tired," said Cameron angrily. "You are tired to death.
+Mandy, you need some one to take care of you. I wish you would let me."
+They were now walking back toward the town.
+
+"They are all good to me; they are all kind to me." Her voice was quiet
+and steady. She had gained control of herself again. "Why, even John the
+Chinaman," she added with a laugh, "spoils me. Oh, no harm can come to
+me--I have no fear!"
+
+"But," said Cameron, "I--I want to take care of you, Mandy. I want the
+right to take care of you, always."
+
+"I know, I know," she said kindly. "You are so good; you were always so
+good; but I need no one."
+
+Cameron glanced at the lithe, strong, upright figure striding along
+beside him with easy grace; and the truth came to him in swift and
+painful revelation.
+
+"You are right," he said as if to himself. "You need no one, and you
+don't need me."
+
+"But," she cried eagerly, "it was good of you all the same."
+
+"Good!" he said impatiently. "Good! Nonsense! I tell you, Mandy, I want
+you, I want you. Do you understand? I want to marry you."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" she cried, stopping short, her voice disturbed,
+but kindly, gentle and strong. "Don't say that," she repeated, "for, of
+course, that is impossible."
+
+"Impossible!" he exclaimed angrily.
+
+"Yes," she said, her voice still quiet and steady, "quite impossible.
+But I love you for saying it, oh--," she suddenly caught her breath.
+"Oh, I love you for saying it." Then pointing up the road she cried,
+"Look! Some one for you, I am sure." A horseman was galloping swiftly
+towards them.
+
+"Oh hang it all!" said Cameron. "What the deuce does he want now?"
+
+"We must talk this out again, Mandy," he said.
+
+"No, no!" she cried, "never again. Please don't, ever again; I could not
+bear it. But I shall always remember, and--I am so glad." As she spoke,
+her hands, with her old motion, went to her heart.
+
+"Oh the deuce take it!" said Cameron as the Sergeant flung his horse
+back on his heels at their side. "What does he want?"
+
+"Constable Cameron," said the Sergeant in a voice of sharp command,
+"there's a row on. Constable Scott has been very badly handled in trying
+to make an arrest. You are to report at once for duty."
+
+"All right, Sir," said Cameron, "I shall return immediately."
+
+The Sergeant wheeled and was gone.
+
+"You must go!" cried Mandy, quick fear springing into her eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Cameron, "at once. Come, I shall take you home."
+
+"No, never mind me!" she cried. "Go! Go! I can take care of myself. I
+shall follow." Her voice rang out strong and clear; she was herself once
+more.
+
+"You are the right sort, Mandy," cried Cameron, taking her hand. "Good
+bye!"
+
+"Good bye!" she replied, her face suddenly pale and her lips beginning
+to quiver. "I shall always remember--I--shall--always be glad for--what
+you said today."
+
+Cameron stood looking at her for a moment somewhat uncertainly, then,
+
+"Good bye!" he said abruptly, and, turning, went at the double towards
+his quarters.
+
+The strikers had indeed broken loose, supported by the ruffianly horde
+of camp followers who were egging them on to violence and destruction of
+property. At present they were wild with triumph over the fact that they
+had rescued one of their leaders, big Joe Coyle, from Constable Scott.
+It was an exceedingly dangerous situation, for the riot might easily
+spread from camp to camp. Bruised and bloody, Constable Scott reported
+to Superintendent Strong lying upon his sick bed.
+
+"Sergeant," said the Superintendent, "take Constables Cameron and Scott,
+arrest that man at once and bring him here!"
+
+In the village they found between eight hundred and a thousand men, many
+of them crazed with bad whiskey, some armed with knives and some with
+guns, and all ready for blood. Big Joe Coyle they found in the saloon.
+Pushing his way through, the Sergeant seized his man by the collar.
+
+"Come along, I want you!" he said, dragging him to the open door.
+
+"Shut that there door, Hep!" drawled a man with a goatee and a moustache
+dyed glossy black.
+
+"All right, Bill!" shouted the man called Hep, springing to the door;
+but before he could make it Cameron had him by the collar.
+
+"Hold on, Hep!" he said, "not so fast."
+
+For answer Hep struck hard at him and the crowd of men threw themselves
+at Cameron and between him and the door. Constable Scott, who also had
+his hand upon the prisoner, drew his revolver and looked towards the
+Sergeant who was struggling in the grasp of three or four ruffians.
+
+"No!" shouted the Sergeant above the uproar. "Don't shoot--we have no
+orders! Let him go!"
+
+"Go on!" he said savagely, giving his prisoner a final shake. "We will
+come back for you."
+
+There was a loud chorus of derisive cheers. The crowd opened and allowed
+the Sergeant and constables to pass out. Taking his place at the saloon
+door with Constable Scott, the Sergeant sent Cameron to report and ask
+for further orders.
+
+"Ask if we have orders to shoot," said the Sergeant.
+
+Cameron found the Superintendent hardly able to lift his head and made
+his report.
+
+"The saloon is filled with men who oppose the arrest, Sir. What are your
+orders?"
+
+"My orders are, Bring that man here, and at once!"
+
+"Have we instructions to shoot?"
+
+"Shoot!" cried the Superintendent, lifting himself on his elbow. "Bring
+that man if you have to shoot every man in the saloon!"
+
+"Very well, Sir, we will bring him," said Cameron, departing on a run.
+
+At the door of the saloon he found the Sergeant and Constable white hot
+under the jeers and taunts of the half drunken gang gathered about them.
+
+"What are the orders, Constable Cameron?" enquired the Sergeant in a
+loud voice.
+
+"The orders are, Shoot every man in the saloon if necessary!" shouted
+Cameron.
+
+"Revolvers!" commanded the Sergeant. "Constable Cameron, hold the door!
+Constable Scott, follow me!"
+
+At the door stood the man named Hep, evidently keeping guard.
+
+"Want in?" he said with a grin.
+
+For answer, Cameron gripped his collar, with one fierce jerk lifted him
+clear out of the door to the platform, and then, putting his body into
+it, heaved him with a mighty swing far into the crowd below, bringing
+two or three men to the ground with the impact of his body.
+
+"Come here, man!" cried Cameron again, seizing a second man who stood
+near the door and flinging him clear off the platform after the unlucky
+Hep.
+
+Speedily the crowd about the door gave back, and before they were aware
+the Sergeant and Constable Scott appeared with big Joe Coyle between
+them.
+
+"Take him!" said the Sergeant to Cameron.
+
+Cameron seized him by the collar.
+
+"Come here!" he said, and, clearing the platform in a spring, he brought
+his prisoner in a heap with him. "Get up!" he roared at him, jerking him
+to his feet as if he had been a child.
+
+"Let him go!" shouted the man with the goatee, named Bill, rushing up.
+
+"Take that, then," said Cameron, giving him a swift half-arm jab on the
+jaw, "and I'll come back for you again," he added, as the man fell back
+into the arms of his friends.
+
+"Forward!" said the Sergeant, falling in with Constable Scott behind
+Cameron and facing the crowd with drawn revolvers. The swift fierceness
+of the attack seemed to paralyse the senses of the crowd.
+
+"Come on, boys!" yelled the goatee man, bloody and savage with Cameron's
+blow. "Don't let the blank blank blank rattle you like a lot of blank
+blank chickens. Come on!"
+
+At once rose a roar from eight hundred throats like nothing human in
+its sound, and the crowd began to press close upon the Police. But the
+revolvers had an ugly appearance to those in front looking into their
+little black throats.
+
+"Aw, come on!" yelled a man half drunk, running with a lurch upon the
+Sergeant.
+
+"Crack!" went the Sergeant's revolver, and the man dropped with a bullet
+through his shoulder.
+
+"Next man," shouted the Sergeant, "I shall kill!"
+
+The crowd gave back and gathered round the wounded man. A stream lay in
+the path of the Police, crossed by a little bridge.
+
+"Hurry!" said the Sergeant, "let's make the bridge before they come
+again." But before they could make the bridge the crowd had recovered
+from their momentary panic and, with wild oaths and yells and
+brandishing knives and guns, came on with a rush, led by goatee Bill.
+
+Already the prisoner was half way across the bridge, the Sergeant and
+the constable guarding the entrance, when above the din was heard a roar
+as of some animal enraged. Looking beyond the Police the crowd beheld
+a fearsome sight. It was the Superintendent himself, hatless, and with
+uniform in disarray, a sword in one hand, a revolver in the other.
+Across the bridge he came like a tornado and, standing at the entrance,
+roared,
+
+"Listen to me, you dogs! The first man who sets foot on this bridge I
+shall shoot dead, so help me God!"
+
+His towering form, his ferocious appearance and his well-known
+reputation for utter fearlessness made the crowd pause and, before they
+could make up their minds to attack that resolute little company headed
+by their dread commander, the prisoner was safe over the bridge and
+well up the hill toward the guard room. Half way up the hill the
+Superintendent met Cameron returning from the disposition of his
+prisoner.
+
+"There's another man down there, Sir, needs looking after," he said.
+
+"Better let them cool off, Cameron," said the Superintendent.
+
+"I promised I'd go for him, Sir," said Cameron, his face all ablaze for
+battle.
+
+"Then go for him," said the Superintendent. "Let a couple of you go
+along--but I am done--just now."
+
+"We will see you up the hill, Sir," said the Sergeant.
+
+"Come on, Scott!" said Cameron, setting off for the village once more.
+
+The crowd had returned from the bridge and the leaders had already
+sought their favourite resort, the saloon. Straight to the door marched
+Cameron, followed by Scott. Close to the counter stood goatee Bill,
+loudly orating, and violently urging the breaking in of the guard room
+and the release of the prisoner.
+
+"In my country," he yelled, "we'd have that feller out in about six
+minutes in spite of all the blank blank Police in this blank country.
+THEY ain't no good. They're scairt to death."
+
+At this point Cameron walked in upon him and laid a compelling grip upon
+his collar. Instantly Bill reached for his gun, but Cameron, swiftly
+shifting his grip to his arm, wrenched him sharply about and struck him
+one blow on the ear. As if held by a hinge, the head fell over on one
+side and the man slithered to the floor.
+
+"Out of the way!" shouted Cameron, dragging his man with him, but just
+as he reached the door a heavy glass came singing through the air and
+caught him on the head. For a moment he staggered, caught hold of the
+lintel and held himself steady.
+
+"Here, Scott," he cried, "put the bracelets on him."
+
+With revolver drawn Constable Scott sprang to his side.
+
+"Come out!" he said to the goatee man, slipping the handcuffs over his
+wrists, while Cameron, still clinging to the lintel, was fighting back
+the faintness that was overpowering him. Seeing his plight, Hep sprang
+toward him, eager for revenge, but Cameron covering him with his gun
+held him in check and, with a supreme effort getting command of himself,
+again stepped towards Hep.
+
+"Now, then," he said between his clenched teeth, "will you come?" So
+terrible were his voice and look that Hep's courage wilted.
+
+"I'll come, Colonel, I'll come," he said quickly.
+
+"Come then," said Cameron, reaching for him and bringing him forward
+with a savage jerk.
+
+In three minutes from the time the attack was made both men, thoroughly
+subdued and handcuffed, were marched off in charge of the constables.
+
+"Hurry, Scott," said Cameron in a low voice to his comrade. "I am nearly
+in."
+
+With all possible speed they hustled their prisoners along over the
+bridge and up the hill. At the hospital door, as they passed, Dr. Martin
+appeared.
+
+"Hello, Cameron!" he cried. "Got him, eh? Great Caesar, man, what's
+up?" he added as Cameron, turning his head, revealed a face and neck
+bathed in blood. "You are white as a ghost."
+
+"Get me a drink, old chap. I am nearly in," said Cameron in a faint
+voice.
+
+"Come into my tent here," said the doctor.
+
+"Got to see these prisoners safe first," said Cameron, swaying on his
+feet.
+
+"Come in, you idiot!" cried the doctor.
+
+"Go in, Cameron," said Constable Scott. "I'll take care of 'em all
+right," he added, drawing his gun.
+
+"No," said Cameron, still with his hand on goatee Bill's collar. "I'll
+see them safe first," saying which he swayed drunkenly about and, but
+for Bill's support, would have fallen.
+
+"Go on!" said Bill good-naturedly. "Don't mind me. I'm good now."
+
+"Come!" said the doctor, supporting him into the tent.
+
+"Forward!" commanded Constable Scott, and marched his prisoners before
+him up the hill.
+
+The wound on Cameron's head was a ghastly affair, full six inches long,
+and went to the bone.
+
+"Rather ugly," said the doctor, feeling round the wound. "Nurse!" he
+called. "Nurse!" The little nurse came running in. "Some water and a
+sponge!"
+
+There was a cry behind her--low, long, pitiful.
+
+"Oh, what is this?" With a swift movement Nurse Haley was beside the
+doctor's bed. Cameron, who had been lying with his eyes closed and was
+ghastly white from loss of blood, opened his eyes and smiled up into the
+face above him.
+
+"I feel fine--now," he said and closed his eyes again.
+
+"Let me do that," said Nurse Haley with a kind of jealous fierceness,
+taking the sponge and basin from the little nurse.
+
+Examination revealed nothing more serious, however, than a deep scalp
+wound and a slight concussion.
+
+"He will be fit enough in a couple of days," said the doctor when the
+wound was dressed.
+
+Then, pale and haggard as if with long watching, Nurse Haley went to her
+room there to fight out her lonely fight while Cameron slept.
+
+The day passed in quiet, the little nurse on guard, and the doctor
+looking in every half hour upon his patient. As evening fell Cameron
+woke and demanded Nurse Haley. The doctor felt his pulse.
+
+"Send her in!" he said and left the tent.
+
+The rays of the sun setting far down the Pass shone through the walls
+and filled the tent with a soft radiance. Into this radiance she came,
+her face pale as of one who has come through conflict, and serene as of
+one who has conquered, pale and strong and alight, not with the radiance
+of the setting sun, but with light of a soul that has made the ancient
+sacrifice of self-effacing love.
+
+"You want me?" she said, her voice low and sweet, but for all her brave
+serenity tremulous.
+
+"Yes," said Cameron, holding out his arms. "I want you; I want YOU,
+Mandy."
+
+"Oh," cried the girl, while her hands fluttered to her heart, "don't ask
+me to go through it again. I am so weak." She stood like a frightened
+bird poised for flight.
+
+"Come," he said, "I want you."
+
+"You want me? You said you wanted to take care of me," she breathed.
+
+"I was a fool, Mandy; a conceited fool! Now I know what I want--I
+want--just YOU. Come." Again he lifted his arms.
+
+"Oh, it cannot be," she breathed as if to herself. "Are you sure--sure?
+I could not bear it if you were not sure."
+
+"Come, dear love," he cried, "with all my heart and soul and body I want
+you--I want only YOU."
+
+For a single moment longer she stood, her soul searching his through her
+wonderful eyes. Then with a little sigh she sank into his arms.
+
+"Oh, my darling," she whispered, wreathing her strong young arms around
+his neck and laying her cheek close to his, "my darling, I thought I had
+given you up, but how could I have done it?"
+
+At the hospital door the doctor was on guard. A massive figure loomed in
+the doorway.
+
+"Hello, Superintendent Strong, what on earth are you doing out of bed?"
+
+"Where is he?" said the Superintendent abruptly.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Corporal Cameron."
+
+"CORPORAL Cameron? Constable Cameron is--"
+
+"Corporal Cameron, I said. I have just had Constable Scott's report and
+felt I must see him at once."
+
+"Come in, Superintendent! Sit down! I shall enquire if he is resting.
+Nurse! Nurse! Enquire if Corporal Cameron can be seen."
+
+The little nurse tip-toed into the doctor's tent, lifted the curtain,
+took one glance and drew swiftly back. This is what her eyes looked
+upon. A girl's form kneeling by the bed, golden hair mingling with black
+upon the pillow, two strong arms holding her close and hers wreathed in
+answering embrace.
+
+"Mr. Cameron I am afraid," she reported, "cannot be seen. He is--I
+think--he is--engaged."
+
+"Ah!" said the doctor.
+
+"Well," said the Superintendent, "just tell Corporal Cameron for me that
+I am particularly well pleased with his bearing to-day, and that I hope
+he will be very soon fit for duty."
+
+"Certainly, Superintendent. Now let me help you up the hill."
+
+"Never mind, here's the Sergeant. Good evening! Very fine thing! Very
+fine thing indeed! I see rapid promotion in his profession for that
+young man."
+
+"Inspector, eh?" said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, Sir, I should without hesitation recommend him and should be only
+too pleased to have him as Inspector in my command."
+
+It was not, however, as Inspector that Corporal Cameron served under the
+gallant Superintendent, but in another equally honourable capacity did
+they ride away together one bright April morning a few weeks later, on
+duty for their Queen and country. But that is another story.
+
+"That message ought to be delivered, nurse," said the doctor
+thoughtfully.
+
+"But not at once," replied the nurse.
+
+"It is important," urged the doctor.
+
+"Yes, but--there are other things."
+
+"Ah! Other things?"
+
+"Yes, equally--pressing," said the nurse with an undeniably joyous
+laugh. The doctor looked at her a moment.
+
+"Ah, nurse," he said in a shocked tone, "how often have I deprecated
+your tendency to--"
+
+"I don't care one bit!" laughed the nurse saucily.
+
+"The message ought to be delivered," insisted the doctor firmly as he
+moved toward the tent door.
+
+"Well, deliver it then. But wait!" The little nurse ran in before him
+and called "Nu-u-u-r-s-e Ha-l-ey!"
+
+"All right!" called Cameron from the inside. "Come in!"
+
+"Go on then," said the little nurse to the doctor, "you wanted to."
+
+"A message from the Superintendent," said the doctor, lifting the
+curtain and passing in.
+
+"Don't move, Mandy," said Cameron. "Never mind him."
+
+"No, don't, I beg," said the doctor, ignoring what he saw. "A message,
+an urgent message for--Corporal Cameron!"
+
+"CORPORAL Cameron?" echoed Nurse Haley.
+
+"He distinctly said and repeated it--Corporal Cameron. And the Corporal
+is to report for duty as speedily as possible."
+
+"He can't go," said Mandy, standing up very straight with a light in
+her eyes that the doctor had not seen since that tragic night nearly two
+years before.
+
+"Can't, eh?" said the doctor. "But the Superintendent says Corporal
+Cameron is--"
+
+"Corporal Cameron can't go!"
+
+"You--"
+
+"Yes, I forbid it."
+
+"The Corporal is--?"
+
+"Yes," she said proudly, "the Corporal is mine."
+
+"Then," said the doctor emphatically, "of all the lucky chaps it has
+been my fortune to meet, by all the gods the luckiest of them is this
+same Corporal Cameron!"
+
+And Cameron, drawing down to him again the girl standing so straight and
+proud beside him, looked up at his friend and said:
+
+"Yes, old chap, the luckiest man in all the world is that same Corporal
+Cameron."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Corporal Cameron, by Ralph Connor
+
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diff --git a/old/3241.zip b/old/3241.zip
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+**Project Gutenberg Etext of Corporal Cameron, by Ralph Connor**
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+
+CORPORAL CAMERON OF THE NORTH WEST MOUNTED POLICE
+
+A TALE OF THE MACLEOD TRAIL
+
+by RALPH CONNOR
+
+
+
+
+BOOK I
+
+
+I  THE QUITTER
+
+II  THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+
+III  THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+
+IV  A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+
+V  A LADY AND THE LAW
+
+VI  THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+
+VII  FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+
+VIII  WILL HE COME BACK?
+
+
+BOOK II
+
+
+I  HO FOR THE OPEN!
+
+II  A MAN'S JOB
+
+III  A DAY'S WORK
+
+IV  A RAINY DAY
+
+V  HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+
+VI  A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+
+VII  THE CHIVAREE
+
+VIII  IN APPLE TIME
+
+
+BOOK III
+
+
+I  THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+
+II  ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+
+III  THE STONIES
+
+IV  THE DULL RED STAIN
+
+V  SERGEANT CRISP
+
+VI  A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+
+VII  THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+
+VIII  NURSE HALEY
+
+IX  "CORPORAL" CAMERON
+
+
+
+
+CORPORAL CAMERON
+
+
+BOOK ONE
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE QUITTER
+
+
+"Oh-h-h-h, Cam-er-on!"  Agony, reproach, entreaty, vibrated in the
+clear young voice that rang out over the Inverleith grounds.  The
+Scottish line was sagging!--that line invincible in two years of
+International conflict, the line upon which Ireland and England had
+broken their pride.  Sagging!  And because Cameron was weakening!
+Cameron, the brilliant half-back, the fierce-fighting, erratic
+young Highlander, disciplined, steadied by the great Dunn into an
+instrument of Scotland's glory!  Cameron going back!  A hush fell
+on the thronged seats and packed inner-circle,--a breathless,
+dreadful hush of foreboding.  High over the hushed silence that
+vibrant cry rang; and Cameron heard it.  The voice he knew.  It was
+young Rob Dunn's, the captain's young brother, whose soul knew but
+two passions, one for the captain and one for the half-back of the
+Scottish International.
+
+And Cameron responded.  The enemy's next high punt found him
+rock-like in steadiness.  And rock-like he tossed high over his
+shoulders the tow-headed Welshman rushing joyously at him, and
+delivered his ball far down the line safe into touch.  But after
+his kick he was observed to limp back into his place.  The fierce
+pace of the Welsh forwards was drinking the life of the Scottish
+backline.
+
+An hour; then a half; then another half, without a score.  And now
+the final quarter was searching, searching the weak spots in their
+line.  The final quarter it is that finds a man's history and
+habits; the clean of blood and of life defy its pitiless probe, but
+the rotten fibre yields and snaps.  That momentary weakness of
+Cameron's like a subtle poison runs through the Scottish line; and
+like fluid lightning through the Welsh.  It is the touch upon the
+trembling balance.  With cries exultant with triumph, the Welsh
+forwards fling themselves upon the steady Scots now fighting for
+life rather than for victory.  And under their captain's directions
+these fierce, victory-sniffing Welsh are delivering their attack
+upon the spot where he fancies he has found a yielding.  In vain
+Cameron rallies his powers; his nerve is failing him, his strength
+is done.  Only five minutes to play, but one minute is enough.
+Down upon him through a broken field, dribbling the ball and
+following hard like hounds on a hare, come the Welsh, the tow-head
+raging in front, bloody and fearsome.  There is but one thing for
+Cameron to do; grip that tumbling ball, and, committing body and
+soul to fate, plunge into that line.  Alas, his doom is upon him!
+He grips the ball, pauses a moment--only a fatal moment,--but it is
+enough.  His plunge is too late.  He loses the ball.  A surge of
+Welshmen overwhelm him in the mud and carry the ball across.  The
+game is won--and lost.  What though the Scots, like demons suddenly
+released from hell, the half-back Cameron most demon-like of all,
+rage over the field, driving the Welshmen hither and thither at
+will, the gods deny them victory; it is for Wales that day!
+
+In the retreat of their rubbing-room the gay, gallant humour which
+the Scots have carried with them off the field of their defeat,
+vanishes into gloom.  Through the steaming silence a groan breaks
+now and then.  At length a voice:
+
+"Oh, wasn't it rotten!  The rank quitter that he is!"
+
+"Quitter?  Who is?  Who says so?"  It was the captain's voice,
+sharp with passion.
+
+"I do, Dunn.  It was Cameron lost us the game.  You know it, too.
+I know it's rotten to say this, but I can't help it.  Cameron lost
+the game, and I say he's a rank 'quitter,' as Martin would say."
+
+"Look here, Nesbitt," the captain's voice was quiet, but every man
+paused in his rubbing.  "I know how sore you are and I forgive you
+that; but I don't want to hear from you or from any man on the team
+that word again.  Cameron is no quitter; he made--he made an
+error,--he wasn't fit,--but I say to you Cameron is no quitter."
+
+While he was speaking the door opened and into the room came a
+player, tall, lanky, with a pale, gaunt face, plastered over the
+forehead with damp wisps of straight, black hair.  His deep-set,
+blue-grey eyes swept the room.
+
+"Thanks, Dunn," he said hoarsely.  "Let them curse me!  I deserve
+it all.  It's tough for them, but God knows I've got the worst of
+it.  I've played my last game."  His voice broke huskily.
+
+"Oh, rot it, Cameron," cried Dunn.  "Don't be an ass!  Your first
+big game--every fellow makes his mistake--"
+
+"Mistake!  Mistake!  You can't lie easily, Dunn.  I was a fool and
+worse than a fool.  I let myself down and I wasn't fit.  Anyway,
+I'm through with it."  His voice was wild and punctuated with
+unaccustomed oaths; his breath came in great sobs.
+
+"Oh, rot it, Cameron!" again cried Dunn.  "Next year you'll be
+twice the man.  You're just getting into your game."
+
+Right loyally his men rallied to their captain:
+
+"Right you are!"
+
+"Why, certainly; no man gets into the game first year!"
+
+"We'll give 'em beans next year, Cameron, old man!"
+
+They were all eager to atone for the criticism which all had held
+in their hearts and which one of them had spoken.  But this
+business was serious.  To lose a game was bad enough, but to round
+on a comrade was unpardonable; while to lose from the game a half-
+back of Cameron's calibre was unthinkable.
+
+Meanwhile Cameron was tearing off his football togs and hustling on
+his clothes with fierce haste.  Dunn kept his eye on him, hurrying
+his own dressing and chatting quietly the while.  But long before
+he was ready for the street, Cameron had crushed his things into a
+bag and was looking for his hat.
+
+"Hold on!  I'm with you; I'm with you in a jiffy," said Dunn.
+
+"My hat," muttered Cameron, searching wildly among the jumble.
+
+"Oh, hang the hat; let it go!  Wait for me, Cameron.  Where are you
+going?" cried Dunn.
+
+"To the devil," cried the lad, slamming the door behind him.
+
+"And, by Jove, he'll go, too!" said Nesbitt.  "Say, I'm awfully
+sorry I made that break, Dunn.  It was beastly low-down to round on
+a chap like that.  I'll go after him."
+
+"Do, old chap!  He's frightfully cut up.  And get him for to-night.
+He may fight shy of the dinner.  But he's down for the pipes, you
+know, and--well, he's just got to be there.  Good-bye, you chaps;
+I'm off!  And--I say, men!"  When Dunn said "men" they all knew it
+was their captain that was speaking.  Everybody stood listening.
+Dunn hesitated a moment or two, as if searching for words.  "About
+the dinner to-night: I'd like you to remember--I mean--I don't want
+any man to--oh, hang it, you know what I mean!  There will be lots
+of fellows there who will want to fill you up.  I'd hate to see any
+of our team--"  The captain paused embarrassed.
+
+"We tumble, Captain," said Martin, a medical student from Canada,
+who played quarter.  "I'll keep an eye on 'em, you bet!"
+
+Everybody roared; for not only on the quarter-line but also at the
+dinner table the little quarter-back was a marvel of endurance.
+
+"Hear the blooming Colonist!" said Linklater, Martin's comrade on
+the quarter-line, and his greatest friend.  "We know who'll want
+the watching, but we'll see to him, Captain."
+
+"All right, old chap!  Sorry I'll have to cut the van.  I'm afraid
+my governor's got the carriage here for me."
+
+But the men all made outcry.  There were other plans for him.
+
+"But, Captain; hold on!"
+
+"Aw, now, Captain!  Don't forsake us!"
+
+"But I say, Dunn, see us through; we're shy!"
+
+"Don't leave us, Captain, or you'll be sorry," sang out Martin.
+"Come on, fellows, let's keep next him!  We'll give him 'Old
+Grimes!'"
+
+Already a mighty roar was heard outside.  The green, the drive, the
+gateways, and the street were blocked with the wildest football
+fanatics that Edinburgh, and all Scotland could produce.  They were
+waiting for the International players, and were bent on carrying
+their great captain down the street, shoulder high; for the
+enthusiasm of the Scot reaches the point of madness only in the
+hour of glorious defeat.  But before they were aware, Dunn had
+shouldered his mighty form through the opposing crowds and had got
+safely into the carriage beside his father and his young brother.
+But the crowd were bound to have him.
+
+"We want him, Docthor," said a young giant in a tam-o'-shanter.
+"In fac', Docthor," he argued with a humourous smile, "we maun hae
+him."
+
+"Ye'll no' get him, Jock Murchison," shouted young Rob, standing in
+front of his big brother.  "We want him wi' us."
+
+The crowd laughed gleefully.
+
+"Go for him, Jock!  You can easy lick him," said a voice
+encouragingly.
+
+"Pit him oot, Docthor," said Jock, who was a great friend of the
+family, and who had a profound respect for the doctor.
+
+"It's beyond me, Jock, I fear.  See yon bantam cock!  I doubt ye'll
+hae to be content," said the doctor, dropping into Jock's kindly
+Doric.
+
+"Oh, get on there, Murchison," said Dunn impatiently.  "You're not
+going to make an ass of me; make up your mind to that!"
+
+Jock hesitated, meditating a sudden charge, but checked by his
+respect for Doctor Dunn.
+
+"Here, you fellows!" shouted a voice.  "Fall in; the band is going
+to play!  Get into line there, you Tam-o'-shanter; you're stopping
+the procesh!  Now then, wait for the line, everybody!"  It was
+Little Martin on top of the van in which were the Scottish players.
+"Tune, 'Old Grimes'; words as follows.  Catch on, everybody!"
+
+
+     "Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+        Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+      Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn,
+        Old Dunn, old Dunn, old Dunn."
+
+
+With a delighted cheer the crowd formed in line, and, led by the
+little quarter-back on top of the van, they set off down the
+street, two men at the heads of the doctor's carriage horses,
+holding them in place behind the van.  On went the swaying crowd
+and on went the swaying chant, with Martin, director of ceremonies
+and Dunn hurling unavailing objurgations and entreaties at Jock's
+head.
+
+Through the uproar a girl's voice reached the doctor's ear:
+
+"Aren't they lovely, Sir?"
+
+The doctor turned to greet a young lady, tall, strong, and with the
+beauty of perfect health rather than of classic feature in her
+face.  There was withal a careless disregard of the feminine
+niceties of dress.
+
+"Oh, Miss Brodie!  Will you not come up?  We can easily make room."
+
+"I'd just love to," cried the girl, "but I'm only a humble member
+of the procession, following the band and the chariot wheels of the
+conqueror."  Her strong brown face was all aglow with ardour.
+
+"Conqueror!" growled Dunn.  "Not much of a conqueror!"
+
+"Why not?  Oh fudge!  The game?  What matters the game?  It's the
+play we care about."
+
+"Well spoken, lassie," said the doctor.  "That's the true sport."
+
+"Aren't they awful?" cried Dunn.  "Look at that young Canadian
+idiot up there."
+
+"Well, if you ask me, I think he's a perfect dear," said Miss
+Brodie, deliberately.  "I'm sure I know him; anyway I'm going to
+encourage him with my approval."  And she waved her hand at Martin.
+
+The master of ceremonies responded by taking off his hat and making
+a sweeping bow, still keeping up the beat.  The crowd, following
+his eyes, turned their attention to the young lady, much to Dunn's
+delight.
+
+"Oh," she gasped, "they'll be chanting me next!  Good-bye!  I'm
+off!"  And she darted back to the company of her friends marching
+on the pavement.
+
+At this point Martin held up both arms and called for silence.
+
+"Second verse," he shouted, "second verse!  Get the words now!"
+
+
+     "Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+        Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done,
+      Old Dunn ain't done, old Dunn ain't done,
+        Old Dunn, old Dunn ain't done."
+
+
+But the crowd rejected the Colonial version, and rendered in their
+own good Doric:
+
+
+     "Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+        Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done,
+      Old Dunn's no' done, old Dunn's no' done,
+        Old Dunn, old Dunn's no' done."
+
+
+And so they sang and swayed, following the van till they neared
+Queen Street, down which lay the doctor's course.
+
+"For heaven's sake, can't they be choked off?" groaned Dunn.
+
+The doctor signalled Jock to him.
+
+"Jock," he said, "we'll just slip through at Queen Street."
+
+"We'd like awfully to do Princes Street, Sir," pleaded Jock.
+
+"Princes Street, you born ass!" cried Dunn wrathfully.
+
+"Oh, yes, let them!" cried young Rob, whose delight in the glory of
+his hero had been beyond all measure.  "Let them do Princes Street,
+just once!"
+
+But the doctor would not have it.  "Jock," he said quietly, "just
+get us through at Queen Street."
+
+"All right, Sir," replied Jock with great regret.  "It will be as
+you say."
+
+Under Jock's orders, when Queen Street was reached, the men at the
+horses' heads suddenly swung the pair from the crowd, and after
+some struggling, got them safely into the clear space, leaving the
+procession to follow the van, loudly cheering their great
+International captain, whose prowess on the field was equalled only
+by his modesty and his hatred of a demonstration.
+
+"Listen to the idiots," said Dunn in disgust, as the carriage bore
+them away from the cheering crowd.
+
+"Man, they're just fine!  Aren't they, Father?" said young Rob in
+an ecstasy of joy.
+
+"They're generous lads, generous lads, boy," said Doctor Dunn, his
+old eyes shining, for his son's triumph touched him deeply.
+"That's the only way to take defeat."
+
+"That's all right, Sir," said Dunn quickly, "but it's rather
+embarrassing, though it's awfully decent of them."
+
+The doctor's words suggested fresh thoughts to young Rob.  "But it
+was terrible; and you were just on the win, too, I know."
+
+"I'm not so sure at all," said his brother.
+
+"Oh, it is terrible," said Bob again.
+
+"Tut, tut, lad!  What's so terrible?" said his father.  "One side
+has to lose."
+
+"Oh, it's not that," said Rob, his lip trembling.  "I don't care a
+sniff for the game."
+
+"What, then?" said his big brother in a voice sharpened by his own
+thoughts.
+
+"Oh, Jack," said Rob, nervously wreathing his hands, "he--it looked
+as if he--" the lad could not bring himself to say the awful word.
+Nor was there need to ask who it was the boy had in mind.
+
+"What do you mean, Rob?" the captain's voice was impatient, almost
+angry.
+
+Then Rob lost his control.  "Oh, Jack, I can't help it; I saw it.
+Do you think--did he really funk it?"  His voice broke.  He
+clutched his brother's knee and stood with face white and
+quivering.  He had given utterance to the terrible suspicion that
+was torturing his heroic young soul.  Of his two household gods one
+was tottering on its pedestal.  That a football man should funk--
+the suspicion was too dreadful.
+
+The captain glanced at his father's face.  There was gloom there,
+too, and the same terrible suspicion.  "No, Sir," said Dunn, with
+impressive deliberation, answering the look on his father's face,
+"Cameron is no quitter.  He didn't funk.  I think," he continued,
+while Rob's tear-stained face lifted eagerly, "I know he was out of
+condition; he had let himself run down last week, since the last
+match, indeed, got out of hand a bit, you know, and that last
+quarter--you know, Sir, that last quarter was pretty stiff--his
+nerve gave just for a moment."
+
+"Oh," said the doctor in a voice of relief, "that explains it.
+But," he added quickly in a severe tone, "it was very reprehensible
+for a man on the International to let himself get out of shape,
+very reprehensible indeed.  An International, mind you!"
+
+"It was my fault, Sir, I'm afraid," said Dunn, regretfully.  "I
+ought to have--"
+
+"Nonsense!  A man must be responsible for himself.  Control, to be
+of any value, must be ultroneous, as our old professor used to
+say."
+
+"That's true, Sir, but I had kept pretty close to him up to the
+last week, you see, and--"
+
+"Bad training, bad training.  A trainer's business is to school his
+men to do without him."
+
+"That is quite right, Sir.  I believe I've been making a mistake,"
+said Dunn thoughtfully.  "Poor chap, he's awfully cut up!"
+
+"So he should be," said the doctor sternly.  "He had no business to
+get out of condition.  The International, mind you!"
+
+"Oh, Father, perhaps he couldn't help it," cried Rob, whose loyal,
+tender heart was beating hard against his little ribs, "and he
+looks awful.  I saw him come out and when I called to him he never
+looked at me once."
+
+There is no finer loyalty in this world than that of a boy below
+his teens.  It is so without calculation, without qualification,
+and without reserve.  Dr. Dunn let his eyes rest kindly upon his
+little flushed face.
+
+"Perhaps so, perhaps so, my boy," he said, "and I have no doubt he
+regrets it now more than any of us.  Where has he gone?"
+
+"Nesbitt's after him, Sir.  He'll get him for to-night."
+
+But as Dunn, fresh from his bath, but still sore and stiff, was
+indulging in a long-banished pipe, Nesbitt came in to say that
+Cameron could not be found.
+
+"And have you not had your tub yet?" said his captain.
+
+"Oh, that's all right!  You know I feel awfully about that beastly
+remark of mine."
+
+"Oh, let it go," said Dunn.  "That'll be all right.  You get right
+away home for your tub and get freshened up for to-night.  I'll
+look after Cameron.  You know he is down for the pipes.  He's
+simply got to be there and I'll get him if I have to bring him in a
+crate, pipes, kilt and all."
+
+And Nesbitt, knowing that Dunn never promised what he could not
+fulfil, went off to his tub in fair content.  He knew his captain.
+
+As Dunn was putting on his coat Rob came in, distress written on
+his face.
+
+"Are you going to get Cameron, Jack?" he asked timidly.  "I asked
+Nesbitt, and he said--"
+
+"Now look here, youngster," said his big brother, then paused.  The
+distress in the lad's face checked his words.  "Now, Rob," he said
+kindly, "you needn't fret about this.  Cameron is all right."
+
+The kind tone broke down the lad's control.  He caught his
+brother's arm.  "Say, Jack, are you sure--he didn't--funk?"  His
+voice dropped to a whisper.
+
+Then his big brother sat down and drew the lad to his side, "Now
+listen, Rob; I'm going to tell you the exact truth.  CAMERON DID
+NOT FUNK.  The truth is, he wasn't fit,--he ought to have been, but
+he wasn't,--and because he wasn't fit he came mighty near quitting--
+for a moment, I'm sure, he felt like it, because his nerve was
+gone,--but he didn't.  Remember, he felt like quitting and didn't,
+And that's the finest thing a chap can do,--never to quit, even
+when he feels like it.  Do you see?"
+
+The lad's head went up.  "I see," he said, his eyes glowing.  "It
+was fine!  I'm awfully glad he didn't quit, 'specially when he felt
+like it.  You tell him for me."  His idol was firm again on his
+pedestal.
+
+"All right, old chap," said his big brother.  "You'll never quit, I
+bet!"
+
+"Not if I'm fit, will I?"
+
+"Right you are!  Keep fit--that's the word!"
+
+And with that the big brother passed out to find the man who was
+writhing in an agony of self-contempt; for in the face of all
+Scotland and in the hour of her need he had failed because he
+wasn't fit.
+
+After an hour Dunn found his man, fixed in the resolve to there and
+then abandon the game with all the appurtenances thereof, and among
+these the dinner.  Mightily his captain laboured with him, plying
+him with varying motives,--the honour of the team was at stake; the
+honour of the country was at stake; his own honour, for was he not
+down on the programme for the pipes?  It was all in vain.  In
+dogged gloom the half-back listened unmoved.
+
+At length Dunn, knowing well the Highlander's tender heart,
+cunningly touched another string and told of Rob's distress and
+subsequent relief, and then gave his half-back the boy's message.
+"I promised to tell you, and I almost forgot.  The little beggar
+was terribly worked up, and as I remember it, this is what he said:
+'I'm awfully glad he didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it.'
+Those were his very words."
+
+Then Cameron buried his face in his hands and groaned aloud, while
+Dunn, knowing that he had reached his utmost, stood silent,
+waiting.  Suddenly Cameron flung up his head:
+
+"Did he say I didn't quit?  Good little soul!  I'll go; I'd go
+through hell for that!"
+
+And so it came that not in a crate, but in the gallant garb of a
+Highland gentleman, pipes and all, Cameron was that night in his
+place, fighting out through the long hilarious night the fiercest
+fight of his life, chiefly because of the words that lay like a
+balm to his lacerated heart:
+
+"He didn't quit, 'specially when he felt like it."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE GLEN OF THE CUP OF GOLD
+
+
+Just over the line of the Grampians, near the head-waters of the
+Spey, a glen, small and secluded, lies bedded deep among the
+hills,--a glen that when filled with sunlight on a summer day lies
+like a cup of gold; the gold all liquid and flowing over the cup's
+rim.  And hence they call the glen "The Cuagh Oir," The Glen of the
+Cup of Gold.
+
+At the bottom of the Cuagh, far down, a little loch gleams, an oval
+of emerald or of sapphire, according to the sky above that smiles
+into its depths.  On dark days the loch can gloom, and in storm it
+can rage, white-lipped, just like the people of the Glen.
+
+Around the emerald or sapphire loch farmlands lie sunny and warm,
+set about their steadings, and are on this spring day vivid with
+green, or rich in their red-browns where the soil lies waiting for
+the seed.  Beyond the sunny fields the muirs of brown heather and
+bracken climb abruptly up to the dark-massed firs, and they to the
+Cuagh's rim.  But from loch to rim, over field and muir and forest,
+the golden, liquid light ever flows on a sunny day and fills the
+Cuagh Oir till it runs over.
+
+On the east side of the loch, among some ragged firs, a rambling
+Manor House, ivy-covered and ancient, stood; and behind it, some
+distance away, the red tiling of a farm-cottage, with its steading
+clustering near, could be seen.  About the old Manor House the lawn
+and garden told of neglect and decay, but at the farmhouse order
+reigned.  The trim little garden plot, the trim lawn, the trim
+walks and hedges, the trim thatch of the roof, the trim do'-cote
+above it, the trim stables, byres, barns and yard of the steading,
+proclaimed the prudent, thrifty care of a prudent, thrifty soul.
+
+And there in the steading quadrangle, amidst the feathered
+creatures, hens, cocks and chicks, ducks, geese, turkeys and
+bubbly-jocks, stood the mistress of the Manor and prudent, thrifty
+manager of the farm,--a girl of nineteen, small, well-made, and
+trim as the farmhouse and its surroundings, with sunny locks and
+sunny face and sunny brown eyes.  Her shapely hands were tanned and
+coarsened by the weather; her little feet were laced in stout
+country-made brogues; her dress was a plain brown winsey, kilted
+and belted open at the full round neck; the kerchief that had
+fallen from her sunny, tangled hair was of simple lawn, spotless
+and fresh; among her fowls she stood, a country lass in habit and
+occupation, but in face and form, in look and poise, a lady every
+inch of her.  Dainty and daunty, sweet and strong, she stood, "the
+bonny like o' her bonny mither," as said the South Country nurse,
+Nannie, who had always lived at the Glen Cuagh House from the time
+that that mother was a baby; "but no' sae fine like," the nurse
+would add with a sigh.  For she remembered ever the gentle airs and
+the high-bred, stately grace of Mary Robertson,--for though married
+to Captain Cameron of Erracht, Mary Robertson she continued to be
+to the Glen folk,--the lady of her ancestral manor, now for five
+years lain under the birch trees yonder by the church tower that
+looked out from its clustering firs and birches on the slope beyond
+the loch.  Five years ago the gentle lady had passed from them, but
+like the liquid, golden sunlight, and like the perfume of the
+heather and the firs, the aroma of her saintly life still filled
+the Glen.
+
+A year after that grief had fallen, Moira, her one daughter, "the
+bonny like o' her bonny mither, though no' sae fine," had somehow
+slipped into command of the House Farm, the only remaining portion
+of the wide demesne of farmlands once tributary to the House.  And
+by the thrift which she learned from her South Country nurse in the
+care of her poultry and her pigs, and by her shrewd oversight of
+the thriftless, doddling Highland farmer and his more thriftless
+and more doddling womenfolk, she brought the farm to order and to a
+basis of profitable returns.  And this, too, with so little "clash
+and claver" that her father only knew that somehow things were more
+comfortable about the place, and that there were fewer calls than
+formerly upon his purse for the upkeep of the House and home.
+Indeed, the less appeared Moira's management, both in the routine
+of the House and in the care of the farm, the more peacefully
+flowed the current of their life.  It seriously annoyed the Captain
+at intervals when he came upon his daughter directing operations in
+barnyard or byre.  That her directing meant anything more than a
+girlish meddling in matters that were his entire concern and about
+which he had already given or was about to give orders, the Captain
+never dreamed.  That things about the House were somehow prospering
+in late years he set down to his own skill and management and his
+own knowledge of scientific farming; a knowledge which, moreover,
+he delighted to display at the annual dinners of the Society for
+the Improvement of Agriculture in the Glen, of which he was
+honourary secretary; a knowledge which he aired in lengthy articles
+in local agricultural and other periodicals; a knowledge which,
+however, at times became the occasion of dismay to his thrifty
+daughter and her Highland farmer, and not seldom the occasion of
+much useless expenditure of guineas hard won from pigs and poultry.
+True, more serious loss was often averted by the facility with
+which the Captain turned from one scheme to another, happily
+forgetful of orders he had given and which were never carried out;
+and by the invincible fabianism of the Highland farmer, who,
+listening with gravest attention to the Captain's orders delivered
+in the most definite and impressive terms, would make reply, "Yess,
+yess indeed, I know; she will be attending to it immediately--
+tomorrow, or fery soon whateffer."  It cannot be said that this
+capacity for indefinite procrastination rendered the Highlander any
+less valuable to his "tear young leddy."
+
+The days on which Postie appeared with a large bundle of mail were
+accounted good days by the young mistress, for on these and
+succeeding days her father would be "busy with his correspondence."
+And these days were not few, for the Captain held many honourary
+offices in county and other associations for the promotion and
+encouragement of various activities, industrial, social, and
+philanthropic.  Of the importance of these activities to the county
+and national welfare, the Captain had no manner of doubt, as his
+voluminous correspondence testified.  As to the worth of his
+correspondence his daughter, too, held the highest opinion,
+estimating her father, as do all dutiful daughters, at his own
+valuation.  For the Captain held himself in high esteem; not simply
+for his breeding, which was of the Camerons of Erracht; nor for his
+manners, which were of the most courtly, if occasionally marred by
+fretfulness; nor for his dress, which was that of a Highland
+gentleman, perfect in detail and immaculate, but for his many and
+public services rendered to the people, the county, and the nation.
+Indeed his mere membership dues to the various associations,
+societies and committees with which he was connected, and his
+dining expenses contingent upon their annual meetings, together
+with the amounts expended upon the equipment and adornment of his
+person proper to such festive occasions, cut so deep into the
+slender resources of the family as to give his prudent daughter
+some considerable concern; though it is safe to say that such
+concern her father would have regarded not only as unnecessary but
+almost as impertinent.
+
+The Captain's correspondence, however extensive, was on the whole
+regarded by his daughter as a good rather than an evil, in that it
+secured her domestic and farm activities from disturbing incursions.
+This spring morning Moira's apprehensions awakened by an extremely
+light mail, were realized, as she beheld her father bearing down
+upon her with an open letter in his hand.  His handsome face was set
+in a fretful frown.
+
+"Moira, my daughter!" he exclaimed, "how often have I spoke to you
+about this--this--unseemly--ah--mussing and meddling in the
+servants' duties!"
+
+"But, Papa," cried his daughter, "look at these dear things!  I
+love them and they all know me, and they behave so much better when
+I feed them myself.  Do they not, Janet?" she added, turning to the
+stout and sonsy farmer's daughter standing by.
+
+"Indeed, then, they are clever at knowing you," replied the maid,
+whose particular duty was to hold a reserve supply of food for the
+fowls that clamoured and scrambled about her young mistress.
+
+"Look at that vain bubbly-jock there, Papa," cried Moira, "he loves
+to have me notice him.  Conceited creature!  Look out, Papa, he
+does not like your kilts!"  The bubbly-jock, drumming and scraping
+and sidling ever nearer to the Captain's naked knees, finally with
+great outcry flew straight at the affronting kilts.
+
+"Get off with you, you beast!" cried the Captain, kicking vainly at
+the wrathful bird, and at the same time beating a wise retreat
+before his onset.
+
+Moira rushed to his rescue.  "Hoot, Jock!  Shame on ye!" she cried.
+"There now, you proud thing, be off!  He's just jealous of your
+fine appearance, Papa."  With her kerchief she flipped into
+submission the haughty bubbly-jock and drew her father out of the
+steading.  "Come away, Papa, and see my pigs."
+
+But the Captain was in no humour for pigs.  "Nonsense, child," he
+cried, "let us get out of this mess!  Besides, I wish to speak to
+you on a matter of importance."  They passed through the gate.  "It
+is about Allan," he continued, "and I'm really vexed.  Something
+terrible has happened."
+
+"Allan!" the girl's voice was faint and her sunny cheek grew white.
+"About Allan!" she said again.  "And what is wrong with Allan,
+Papa?"
+
+"That's what I do not know," replied her father fretfully; "but I
+must away to Edinburgh this very day, so you'll need to hasten with
+my packing.  And bid Donald bring round the cart at once."
+
+But Moira stood dazed.  "But, Papa, you have not told me what is
+wrong with Allan."  Her voice was quiet, but with a certain
+insistence in it that at once irritated her father and compelled
+his attention.
+
+"Tut, tut, Moira, I have just said I do not know."
+
+"Is he ill, Papa?"  Again the girl's voice grew faint.
+
+"No, no, not ill.  I wish he were!  I mean it is some business
+matter you cannot understand.  But it must be serious if Mr. Rae
+asks my presence immediately.  So you must hasten, child."
+
+In less than half an hour Donald and the cart were waiting at the
+door, and Moira stood in the hall with her father's bag ready
+packed.  "Oh, I am glad," she said, as she helped her father with
+his coat, "that Allan is not ill.  There can't be much wrong."
+
+"Wrong!  Read that, child!" cried the father impatiently.
+
+She took the letter and read, her face reflecting her changing
+emotions, perplexity, surprise, finally indignation.  "'A matter
+for the police,'" she quoted, scornfully, handing her father the
+letter.  "'A matter for the police' indeed!  My but that Mr. Rae is
+the clever man!  The police!  Does he think my brother Allan would
+cheat?--or steal, perhaps!" she panted, in her indignant scorn.
+
+"Mr. Rae is a careful man and a very able lawyer," replied her
+father.
+
+"Able!  Careful!  He's an auld wife, and that's what he is!  You
+can tell him so for me."  She was trembling and white with a wrath
+her father had never before seen in her.  He stood gazing at her in
+silent surprise.
+
+"Papa," cried Moira passionately, answering his look, "do you think
+what he is saying?  I know my brother Allan clean through to the
+heart.  He is wild at times, and might rage perhaps and--and--break
+things, but he will not lie nor cheat.  He will die first, and that
+I warrant you."
+
+Still her father stood gazing upon her as she stood proudly erect,
+her pale face alight with lofty faith in her brother and scorn of
+his traducer.  "My child, my child," he said, huskily, "how like
+you are to your mother!  Thank God!  Indeed it may be you're right!
+God grant it!"  He drew her closely to him.
+
+"Papa, Papa," she whispered, clinging to him, while her voice broke
+in a sob, "you know Allan will not lie.  You know it, don't you,
+Papa?"
+
+"I hope not, dear child, I hope not," he replied, still holding her
+to him.
+
+"Papa," she cried wildly, "say you believe me."
+
+"Yes, yes, I do believe you.  Thank God, I do believe you.  The boy
+is straight."
+
+At that word she let him go.  That her father should not believe in
+Allan was to her loyal heart an intolerable pain.  Now Allan would
+have someone to stand for him against "that lawyer" and all others
+who might seek to do him harm.  At the House door she stood
+watching her father drive down through the ragged firs to the
+highroad, and long after he had passed out of sight she still stood
+gazing.  Upon the church tower rising out of its birches and its
+firs her eyes were resting, but her heart was with the little mound
+at the tower's foot, and as she gazed, the tears gathered and fell.
+
+"Oh, Mother!" she whispered.  "Mother, Mother!  You know Allan
+would not lie!"
+
+A sudden storm was gathering.  In a brief moment the world and the
+Glen had changed.  But half an hour ago and the Cuagh Oir was lying
+glorious with its flowing gold.  Now, from the Cuagh as from her
+world, the flowing gold was gone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE FAMILY SOLICITOR
+
+
+The senior member of the legal firm of Rae & Macpherson was
+perplexed and annoyed, indeed angry, and angry chiefly because he
+was perplexed.  He resented such a condition of mind as reflecting
+upon his legal and other acumen.  Angry, too, he was because he had
+been forced to accept, the previous day, a favour from a firm--Mr.
+Rae would not condescend to say a rival firm--with which he for
+thirty years had maintained only the most distant and formal
+relations, to wit, the firm of Thomlinson & Shields.  Messrs. Rae &
+Macpherson were family solicitors and for three generations had
+been such; hence there gathered about the firm a fine flavour of
+assured respectability which only the combination of solid
+integrity and undoubted antiquity can give.  Messrs. Rae &
+Macpherson had not yielded in the slightest degree to that
+commercialising spirit which would transform a respectable and
+self-respecting firm of family solicitors into a mere financial
+agency; a transformation which Mr. Rae would consider a degradation
+of an ancient and honourable profession.  This uncompromising
+attitude toward the commercialising spirit of the age had doubtless
+something to do with their losing the solicitorship for the Bank of
+Scotland, which went to the firm of Thomlinson & Shields, to Mr.
+Rae's keen, though unacknowledged, disappointment; a disappointment
+that arose not so much from the loss of the very honourable and
+lucrative appointment, and more from the fact that the appointment
+should go to such a firm as that of Thomlinson & Shields.  For the
+firm of Thomlinson & Shields were of recent origin, without
+ancestry, boasting an existence of only some thirty-five years,
+and, as one might expect of a firm of such recent origin,
+characterised by the commercialising modern spirit in its most
+pronounced and objectionable form.  Mr. Rae, of course, would never
+condescend to hostile criticism, dismissing Messrs. Thomlinson &
+Shields from the conversation with the single remark, "Pushing, Sir,
+very pushing, indeed."
+
+It was, then, no small humiliation for Mr. Rae to be forced to
+accept a favour from Mr. Thomlinson.  "Had it been any other than
+Cameron," he said to himself, as he sat in his somewhat dingy and
+dusty office, "I would let him swither.  But Cameron!  I must see
+to it and at once."  Behind the name there rose before Mr. Rae's
+imagination a long line of brave men and fair women for whose name
+and fame and for whose good estate it had been his duty and the
+duty of those who had preceded him in office to assume
+responsibility.
+
+"Young fool!  Much he cares for the honour of his family!  I wonder
+what's at the bottom of this business!  Looks ugly!  Decidedly
+ugly!  The first thing is to find him."  A messenger had failed to
+discover young Cameron at his lodgings, and had brought back the
+word that for a week he had not been seen there.  "He must be
+found.  They have given me till to-morrow.  I cannot ask a further
+stay of proceedings; I cannot and I will not."  It made Mr. Rae
+more deeply angry that he knew quite well if necessity arose he
+would do just that very thing.  "Then there's his father coming in
+this evening.  We simply must find him.  But how and where?"
+
+Mr. Rae was not unskilled in such a matter.  "Find a man, find his
+friends," he muttered.  "Let's see.  What does the young fool do?
+What are his games?  Ah!  Football!  I have it!  Young Dunn is my
+man."  Hence to young Dunn forthwith Mr. Rae betook himself.
+
+It was still early in the day when Mr. Rae's mild, round, jolly,
+clean-shaven face beamed in upon Mr. Dunn, who sat with
+dictionaries, texts, and class notebooks piled high about him,
+burrowing in that mound of hidden treasure which it behooves all
+prudent aspirants for university honours to diligently mine as the
+fateful day approaches.  With Mr. Dunn time had now come to be
+measured by moments, and every moment golden.  But the wrathful
+impatience that had gathered in his face at the approach of an
+intruder was overwhelmed in astonishment at recognising so
+distinguished a visitor as Mr. Rae the Writer.
+
+"Ah, Mr. Dunn," said Mr. Rae briskly, "a moment only, one moment, I
+assure you.  Well do I know the rage which boils behind that genial
+smile of yours.  Don't deny it, Sir.  Have I not suffered all the
+pangs, with just a week before the final ordeal?  This is your
+final, I believe?"
+
+"I hope so," said Mr. Dunn somewhat ruefully.
+
+"Yes, yes, and a very fine career, a career befitting your father's
+son.  And I sincerely trust, Sir, that as your career has been
+marked by honour, your exit shall be with distinction; and all the
+more that I am not unaware of your achievements in another
+department of--ah--shall I say endeavour.  I have seen your name,
+Sir, mentioned more than once, to the honour of our university, in
+athletic events."  At this point Mr. Rae's face broke into a smile.
+
+An amazing smile was Mr. Rae's; amazing both in the suddenness of
+its appearing and in the suddenness of its vanishing.  Upon a face
+of supernatural gravity, without warning, without beginning, the
+smile, broad, full and effulgent, was instantaneously present.
+Then equally without warning and without fading the smile ceased to
+be.  Under its effulgence the observer unfamiliar with Mr. Rae's
+smile was moved, to a responsive geniality of expression, but in
+the full tide of this emotion he found himself suddenly regarding a
+face of such preternatural gravity as rebuked the very possibility
+or suggestion of geniality.  Before the smile Mr. Rae's face was
+like a house, with the shutters up and the family plunged in gloom.
+When the smile broke forth every shutter was flung wide to the
+pouring sunlight, and every window full of flowers and laughing
+children.  Then instantly and without warning the house was blank,
+lifeless, and shuttered once more, leaving you helplessly
+apologetic that you had ever been guilty of the fatuity of
+associating anything but death and gloom with its appearance.
+
+To young Mr. Dunn it was extremely disconcerting to discover
+himself smiling genially into a face of the severest gravity, and
+eyes that rebuked him for his untimely levity.  "Oh, I beg pardon,"
+exclaimed Mr. Dunn hastily, "I thought--"
+
+"Not at all, Sir," replied Mr. Rae.  "As I was saying, I have
+observed from time to time the distinctions you have achieved in
+the realm of athletics.  And that reminds me of my business with
+you to-day,--a sad business, a serious business, I fear."  The
+solemn impressiveness of Mr. Rae's manner awakened in Mr. Dunn an
+awe amounting to dread.  "It is young Cameron, a friend of yours, I
+believe, Sir."
+
+"Cameron, Sir!" echoed Dunn.
+
+"Yes, Cameron.  Does he, or did he not have a place on your team?"
+
+Dunn sat upright and alert.  "Yes, Sir.  What's the matter, Sir?"
+
+"First of all, do you know where he is?  I have tried his lodgings.
+He is not there.  It is important that I find him to-day, extremely
+important; in fact, it is necessary; in short, Mr. Dunn,--I believe
+I can confide in your discretion,--if I do not find him to-day, the
+police will to-morrow."
+
+"The police, Sir!"  Dunn's face expressed an awful fear.  In the
+heart of the respectable Briton the very mention of the police in
+connection with the private life of any of his friends awakens a
+feeling of gravest apprehension.  No wonder Mr. Dunn's face went
+pale!  "The police!" he said a second time.  "What for?"
+
+Mr. Rae remained silent.
+
+"If it is a case of debts, Sir," suggested Mr. Dunn, "why, I would
+gladly--"
+
+Mr. Rae waved him aside.  "It is sufficient to say, Mr. Dunn, that
+we are the family solicitors, as we have been for his father, his
+grandfather and great-grandfather before him."
+
+"Oh, certainly, Sir.  I beg pardon," said Mr. Dunn hastily.
+
+"Not at all; quite proper; does you credit.  But it is not a case
+of debts, though it is a case of money; in fact, Sir,--I feel sure
+I may venture to confide in you,--he is in trouble with his bank,
+the Bank of Scotland.  The young man, or someone using his name,
+has been guilty of--ah--well, an irregularity, a decided
+irregularity, an irregularity which the bank seems inclined to--
+to--follow up; indeed, I may say, instructions have been issued
+through their solicitors to that effect.  Mr. Thomlinson was good
+enough to bring this to my attention, and to offer a stay of
+proceedings for a day."
+
+"Can I do anything, Sir?" said Dunn.  "I'm afraid I've neglected
+him.  The truth is, I've been in an awful funk about my exams, and
+I haven't kept in touch as I should."
+
+"Find him, Mr. Dunn, find him.  His father is coming to town this
+evening, which makes it doubly imperative.  Find him; that is, if
+you can spare the time."
+
+"Of course I can.  I'm awfully sorry I've lost touch with him.
+He's been rather down all this winter; in fact, ever since the
+International he seems to have lost his grip of himself."
+
+"Ah, indeed!" said Mr. Rae.  "I remember that occasion; in fact, I
+was present myself," he admitted.  "I occasionally seek to renew my
+youth."  Mr. Rae's smile broke forth, but anxiety for his friend
+saved Mr. Dunn from being caught again in any responsive smile.
+"Bring him to my office, if you can, any time to-day.  Good-bye,
+Sir.  Your spirit does you credit.  But it is the spirit which I
+should expect in a man who plays the forward line as you play it."
+
+Mr. Dunn blushed crimson.  "Is there anything else I could do?
+Anyone I could see?  I mean, for instance, could my father serve in
+any way?"
+
+"Ah, a good suggestion!"  Mr. Rae seized his right ear,--a
+characteristic action of his when in deep thought,--twisted it into
+a horn, and pulled it quite severely as if to assure himself that
+that important feature of his face was firmly fixed in its place.
+"A very good suggestion!  Your father knows Mr. Sheratt, the
+manager of the bank, I believe."
+
+"Very well, Sir, I think," answered Mr. Dunn.  "I am sure he would
+see him.  Shall I call him in, Sir?"
+
+"Nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort; don't think of it!  I
+mean, let there be nothing formal in this matter.  If Mr. Dunn
+should chance to meet Mr. Sheratt, that is, casually, so to speak,
+and if young Cameron's name should come up, and if Mr. Dunn should
+use his influence, his very great influence, with Mr. Sheratt, the
+bank might be induced to take a more lenient view of the case.  I
+think I can trust you with this."  Mr. Rae shook the young man
+warmly by the hand, beamed on him for one brief moment with his
+amazing smile, presented to his answering smile a face of
+unspeakable gravity, and left him extremely uncertain as to the
+proper appearance for his face, under the circumstances.
+
+Before Mr. Rae had gained the street Dunn was planning his
+campaign; for no matter what business he had in hand, Dunn always
+worked by plan.  By the time he himself had reached the street his
+plan was formed.  "No use trying his digs.  Shouldn't be surprised
+if that beast Potts has got him.  Rotten bounder, Potts, and worse!
+Better go round his way."  And oscillating in his emotions between
+disgust and rage at Cameron for his weakness and his folly, and
+disgust and rage at himself for his neglect of his friend, Dunn
+took his way to the office of the Insurance Company which was
+honoured by the services of Mr. Potts.
+
+The Insurance Company knew nothing of the whereabouts of Mr. Potts.
+Indeed, the young man who assumed responsibility for the information
+appeared to treat the very existence of Mr. Potts as a matter of
+slight importance to his company; so slight, indeed, that the
+company had not found it necessary either to the stability of its
+business or to the protection of its policy holders--a prime
+consideration with Insurance Companies--to keep in touch with Mr.
+Potts.  That gentleman had left for the East coast a week ago, and
+that was the end of the matter as far as the clerk of the Insurance
+Company was concerned.
+
+At his lodgings Mr. Dunn discovered an even more callous indifference
+to Mr. Potts and his interests.  The landlady, under the impression
+that in Mr. Dunn she beheld a prospective lodger, at first received
+him with that deferential reserve which is the characteristic of
+respectable lodging-house keepers in that city of respectable
+lodgers and respectable lodging-house keepers.  When, however, she
+learned the real nature of Mr. Dunn's errand, she became immediately
+transformed.  In a voice shrill with indignation she repudiated Mr.
+Potts and his affairs, and seemed chiefly concerned to re-establish
+her own reputation for respectability, which she seemed to consider
+as being somewhat shattered by that of her lodger.  Mr. Dunn was
+embarrassed both by her volubility and by her obvious determination
+to fasten upon him a certain amount of responsibility for the
+character and conduct of Mr. Potts.
+
+"Do you know where Mr. Potts is now, and have you any idea when he
+may return?" inquired Mr. Dunn, seizing a fortunate pause.
+
+"Am I no' juist tellin' ye," cried the landlady, in her excitement
+reverting to her native South Country dialect, "that I keep nae
+coont o' Mr. Potts' stravagins?  An' as to his return, I ken
+naething aboot that an' care less.  He's paid what he's been owing
+me these three months an' that's all I care aboot him."
+
+"I am glad to hear that," said Mr. Dunn heartily.
+
+"An' glad I am tae, for it's feared I was for my pay a month back."
+
+"When did he pay up?" inquired Mr. Dunn, scenting a clue.
+
+"A week come Saturday,--or was it Friday?--the day he came in with
+a young man, a friend of his.  And a night they made of it, I
+remember," replied the landlady, recovering command of herself and
+of her speech under the influence of Mr. Dunn's quiet courtesy.
+
+"Did you know the young man that was with him?"
+
+"Yes, it was young Cameron.  He had been coming about a good deal."
+
+"Oh, indeed!  And have you seen Mr. Cameron since?"
+
+"No; he never came except in company with Mr. Potts."
+
+And with this faint clue Mr. Dunn was forced to content himself,
+and to begin a systematic search of Cameron's haunts in the various
+parts of the town.  It was Martin, his little quarter-back, that
+finally put him on the right track.  He had heard Cameron's pipes
+not more than an hour ago at his lodgings in Morningside Road.
+
+"But what do you want of Cameron these days?" inquired the young
+Canadian.  "There's nothing on just now, is there, except this
+infernal grind?"
+
+Dunn hesitated.  "Oh, I just want him.  In fact, he has got into
+some trouble."
+
+"There you are!" exclaimed Martin in disgust.  "Why in thunder
+should you waste time on him?  You've taken enough trouble with him
+this winter already.  It's his own funeral, ain't it?"
+
+Dunn looked at him a half moment in surprise.  "Well, you can't go
+back on a fellow when he's down, can you?"
+
+"Look here, Dunn, I've often thought I'd give you a little wise
+advice.  This sounds bad, I know, but there's a lot of blamed rot
+going around this old town just on this point.  When a fellow gets
+on the bum and gets into a hole he knows well that there'll be a
+lot of people tumbling over each other to get him out, hence he
+deliberately and cheerfully slides in.  If he knew he'd have to
+scramble out himself he wouldn't be so blamed keen to get in.  If
+he's in a hole let him frog it for awhile, by Jingo!  He's hitting
+the pace, let him take his bumps!  He's got to take 'em sooner or
+later, and better sooner than later, for the sooner he takes 'em
+the quicker he'll learn.  Bye-bye!  I know you think I'm a semi-
+civilised Colonial.  I ain't; I'm giving you some wisdom gained
+from experience.  You can't swim by hanging on to a root, you bet!"
+
+Dunn listened in silence, then replied slowly, "I say, old chap,
+there's something in that.  My governor said something like that
+some time ago:  'A trainer's business is to train his men to do
+without him.'"
+
+"There you are!" cried Martin.  "That's philosophy!  Mine's just
+horse sense."
+
+"Still," said Dunn thoughtfully, "when a chap's in you've got to
+lend a hand; you simply can't stand and look on."  Dunn's words,
+tone, and manner revealed the great, honest heart of human sympathy
+which he carried in his big frame.
+
+"Oh, hang it," cried Martin, "I suppose so!  Guess I'll go along
+with you.  I can't forget you pulled me out, too."
+
+"Thanks, old chap," cried Dunn, brightening up, "but you're busy,
+and--"
+
+"Busy!  By Jingo, you'd think so if you'd watch me over night and
+hear my brain sizzle.  But come along, I'm going to stay with you!"
+
+But Dunn's business was private, and could be shared with no one.
+It was difficult to check his friend's newly-aroused ardour.  "I
+say, old chap," he said, "you really don't need to come along.  I
+can do--"
+
+"Oh, go to blazes!  I know you too well!  Don't you worry about me!
+You've got me going, and I'm in on this thing; so come along!"
+
+Then Dunn grew firm.  "Thanks, awfully, old man," he said, "but
+it's a thing I'd rather do alone, if you don't mind."
+
+"Oh!" said Martin.  "All right!  But say, if you need me I'm on.
+You're a great old brick, though!  Tra-la!"
+
+As Martin had surmised, Dunn found Cameron in his rooms.  He was
+lying upon his bed enjoying the luxury of a cigarette.  "Hello!
+Come right in, old chap!" he cried, in gay welcome.  "Have a--no,
+you won't have a cigarette--have a pipe?"
+
+Dunn gazed at him, conscious of a rising tide of mingled emotions,
+relief, wrath, pity, disgust.  "Well, I'll be hanged!" at last he
+said slowly.  "But you've given us a chase!  Where in the world
+have you been?"
+
+"Been?  Oh, here and there, enjoying my emancipation from the
+thralldom in which doubtless you are still sweating."
+
+"And what does that mean exactly?"
+
+"Mean?  It means that I've cut the thing,--notebooks, lectures,
+professors, exams, 'the hale hypothick,' as our Nannie would say at
+home."
+
+"Oh rot, Cameron!  You don't mean it?"
+
+"Circumspice.  Do you behold any suggestion of knotted towels and
+the midnight oil?"
+
+Dunn gazed about the room.  It was in a whirl of confusion.  Pipes
+and pouches, a large box of cigarettes, a glass and a half-empty
+decanter, were upon the table; boots, caps, golf-clubs, coats, lay
+piled in various corners.  "Pardon the confusion, dear sir," cried
+Cameron cheerfully, "and lay it not to the charge of my landlady.
+That estimable woman was determined to make entry this afternoon,
+but was denied."  Cameron's manner one of gay and nervous bravado.
+
+"Come, Cameron," said Dunn sadly, "what does this mean?  You're not
+serious; you're not chucking your year?"
+
+"Just that, dear fellow, and nothing less.  Might as well as be
+ploughed."
+
+"And what then are you going to do?"  Dunn's voice was full of a
+great pity.  "What about your people?  What about your father?
+And, by Jove, that reminds me, he's coming to town this evening.
+You know they've been trying to find you everywhere this last day
+or two."
+
+"And who are 'they,' pray?"
+
+"Who?  The police," said Dunn bluntly, determined to shock his
+friend into seriousness.
+
+Cameron sat up quickly.  "The police?  What do you mean, Dunn?"
+
+"What it means I do not know, Cameron, I assure you.  Don't you?"
+
+"The police!" said Cameron again.  "It's a joke, Dunn."
+
+"I wish to Heaven it were, Cameron, old man!  But I have it
+straight from Mr. Rae, your family solicitor.  They want you."
+
+"Old Rae?" exclaimed Cameron.  "Now what the deuce does this all
+mean?"
+
+"Don't you really know, old chap?" said Dunn kindly, anxiety and
+relief struggling in his face.
+
+"No more than you.  What did the old chap say, anyway?"
+
+"Something about a Bank; an irregularity, he called it, a serious
+irregularity.  He's had it staved off for a day."
+
+"The Bank?  What in Heaven's name have I got to do with the Bank?
+Let's see; I was there a week or ten days ago with--" he paused.
+"Hang it, I can't remember!"  He ran his hands through his long
+black locks, and began to pace the room.
+
+Dunn sat watching him, hope and fear, doubt and faith filling his
+heart in succession.
+
+Cameron sat down with his face in his hands.  "What is it, old man?
+Can't I help you?" said Dunn, putting his hand on his shoulder.
+
+"I can't remember," muttered Cameron.  "I've been going it some,
+you know.  I had been falling behind and getting money off Potts.
+Two weeks ago I got my monthly five-pound cheque, and about ten
+days ago the usual fifty-pound cheque to square things up for the
+year, fees, etc.  Seems to me I cashed those.  Or did Potts?
+Anyway I paid Potts.  The deuce take it, I can't remember!  You
+know I can carry a lot of Scotch and never show it, but it plays
+the devil with my memory."  Cameron was growing more and more
+excited.
+
+"Well, old chap, we must go right along to Mr. Rae's office.  You
+don't mind?"
+
+"Mind?  Not a bit.  Old Rae has no love for me,--I get him into too
+much trouble,--but he's a straight old boy.  Just wait till I brush
+up a bit."  He poured out from a decanter half a glass of whiskey.
+
+"I'd cut that out if I were you," said Dunn.
+
+"Later, perhaps," replied Cameron, "but not to-day."
+
+Within twenty minutes they were ushered into Mr. Rae's private
+office.  That gentleman received them with a gravity that was
+portentous in its solemnity.  "Well, Sir, you have succeeded in
+your task," he said to Mr. Dunn.  "I wish to thank you for this
+service, a most valuable service to me, to this young gentleman,
+and to his family; though whether much may come of it remains to be
+seen."
+
+"Oh, thanks," said Dunn hurriedly.  "I hope everything will be all
+right."  He rose to go.  Cameron looked at him quickly.  There was
+no mistaking the entreaty in his face.
+
+Mr. Rae spoke somewhat more hurriedly than his wont.  "If it is not
+asking too much, and if you can still spare time, your presence
+might be helpful, Mr. Dunn."
+
+"Stay if you can, old chap," said Cameron.  "I don't know what this
+thing is, but I'll do better if you're in the game, too."  It was
+an appeal to his captain, and after that nothing on earth could
+have driven Dunn from his side.
+
+At this point the door opened and the clerk announced, "Captain
+Cameron, Sir."
+
+Mr. Rae rose hastily.  "Tell him," he said quickly, "to wait--"
+
+He was too late.  The Captain had followed close upon the heels of
+the clerk, and came in with a rush.  "Now, what does all this
+mean?" he cried, hardly waiting to shake hands with his solicitor.
+"What mischief--?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, Captain," said Mr. Rae calmly, "let me present
+Mr. Dunn, Captain Dunn, I might say, of International fame."  The
+solicitor's smile broke forth with its accustomed unexpectedness,
+but had vanished long before Mr. Dunn in his embarrassment had
+finished shaking hands with Captain Cameron.
+
+The Captain then turned to his son.  "Well, Sir, and what is this
+affair of yours that calls me to town at a most inconvenient time?"
+His tone was cold, fretful, and suspicious.
+
+Young Cameron's face, which had lighted up with a certain eagerness
+and appeal as he had turned toward his father, as if in expectation
+of sympathy and help, froze at this greeting into sullen reserve.
+"I don't know any more than yourself, Sir," he answered.  "I have
+just come into this office this minute."
+
+"Well, then, what is it, Mr. Rae?"  The Captain's voice and manner
+were distinctly imperious, if not overbearing.
+
+Mr. Rae, however, was king of his own castle.  "Will you not be
+seated, Sir?" he said, pointing to a chair.  "Sit down, young
+gentlemen."
+
+His quiet dignity, his perfect courtesy, recalled the Captain to
+himself.  "I beg your pardon, Mr. Rae, but I am really much
+disturbed.  Can we begin at once?"  He glanced as he spoke at Mr.
+Dunn, who immediately rose.
+
+"Sit down, Mr. Dunn," said Mr. Rae quietly.  "I have asked this
+young gentleman," he continued, turning to the Captain, "to remain.
+He has already given me valuable assistance.  I fancy he may be
+able to serve us still further, if he will be so good."
+
+Mr. Dunn bowed in silence.
+
+"Now let us proceed with what must be an exceedingly painful matter
+for us all, and out of which nothing but extreme candour on the
+part of Mr. Allan here, and great wisdom on the part of us all, can
+possibly extract us."  Mr. Rae's glance rested upon the Captain,
+who bowed, and upon his son, who made no sign whatever, but
+remained with his face set in the same sullen gloom with which he
+had greeted his father.
+
+Mr. Rae opened a drawer and brought forth a slip of paper.  "Mr.
+Allan," he said, with a certain sharpness in his tone, "please look
+at this."
+
+Cameron came to the desk, picked up the paper, glanced at it.  "It
+is my father's cheque," he said, "which I received about a week
+ago."
+
+"Look at the endorsement, please," said Mr. Rae.
+
+Cameron turned it over.  A slight flush came to his pale face.  "It
+is mine to--" he hesitated, "Mr. Potts."
+
+"Mr. Potts cashed it then?"
+
+"I suppose so.  I believe so.  I owed him money, and he gave me
+back some."
+
+"How much did you owe him?"
+
+"A considerable amount.  I had been borrowing of him for some
+time."
+
+"As much as fifty pounds?"
+
+"I cannot tell.  I did not keep count, particularly; Potts did
+that."
+
+The Captain snorted contemptuously.  "Do you mean to say--?" he
+began.
+
+"Pardon me, Captain Cameron.  Allow me," said Mr. Rae.
+
+"Now, Mr. Allan, do you think you owed him as much as the amount of
+that cheque?"
+
+"I do not know, but I think so."
+
+"Had you any other money?"
+
+"No," said Allan shortly; "at least I may have had a little
+remaining from the five pounds I had received from my father a few
+days before."
+
+"You are quite sure you had no other money?"
+
+"Quite certain," replied Allan.
+
+Again Mr. Rae opened his desk and drew forth a slip and handed it
+to young Cameron.  "What is that?" he said.
+
+Cameron glanced at it hurriedly, and turned it over.  "That is my
+father's cheque for five pounds, which I cashed."
+
+Mr. Rae stretched out his hand and took the cheque.  "Mr. Allan,"
+he said, "I want you to consider most carefully your answer."  He
+leaned across the desk and for some moments--they seemed like
+minutes to Dunn--his eyes searched young Cameron's face.  "Mr.
+Allan," he said, with a swift change of tone, his voice trembling
+slightly, "will you look at the amount of that cheque again?"
+
+Cameron once more took the cheque, glanced at it.  "Good Lord!" he
+cried.  "It is fifty!"  His face showed blank amazement.
+
+Quick, low, and stern came Mr. Rae's voice.  "Yes," he said, "it is
+for fifty pounds.  Do you know that that is a forgery, the
+punishment for which is penal servitude, and that the order for
+your arrest is already given?"
+
+The Captain sprang to his feet.  Young Cameron's face became
+ghastly pale.  His hand clutched the top of Mr. Rae's desk.  Twice
+or thrice he moistened his lips preparing to speak, but uttered not
+a word.  "Good God, my boy!" said the Captain hoarsely.  "Don't
+stand like that.  Tell him you are innocent."
+
+"One moment, Sir," said Mr. Rae to the Captain.  "Permit me."  Mr.
+Rae's voice, while perfectly courteous, was calmly authoritative.
+
+"Mr. Allan," he continued, turning to the wretched young man, "what
+money have you at present in your pockets?"
+
+With shaking hands young Cameron emptied upon the desk the contents
+of his pocketbook, from which the lawyer counted out ten one-pound
+notes, a half-sovereign and some silver.  "Where did you get this
+money, Mr. Allan?"
+
+The young man, still silent, drew his handkerchief from his pocket,
+touched his lips, and wiped the sweat from his white face.
+
+"Mr. Allan," continued the lawyer, dropping again into a kindly
+voice, "a frank explanation will help us all."
+
+"Mr. Rae," said Cameron, his words coming with painful
+indistinctness, "I don't understand this.  I can't think clearly.
+I can't remember.  That money I got from Potts; at least I must
+have--I have had money from no one else."
+
+"My God!" cried the Captain again.  "To think that a son of mine
+should--!"
+
+"Pardon me, Captain Cameron," interrupted Mr. Rae quickly and
+somewhat sharply.  "We must not prejudge this case.  We must first
+understand it."
+
+At this point Dunn stepped swiftly to Cameron's side.  "Brace up,
+old chap," he said in a low tone.  Then turning towards the Captain
+he said, "I beg your pardon, Sir, but I do think it's only fair to
+give a man a chance to explain."
+
+"Allow me, gentlemen," said Mr. Rae in a firm, quiet voice, as the
+Captain was about to break forth.  "Allow me to conduct this
+examination."
+
+Cameron turned his face toward Dunn.  "Thank you, old man," he
+said, his white lips quivering.  "I will do my best, but before
+God, I don't understand this."
+
+"Now, Mr. Allan," continued the lawyer, tapping the desk sharply,
+"here are two cheques for fifty pounds, both drawn by your father,
+both endorsed by you, one apparently cashed by Mr. Potts, one by
+yourself.  What do you know about this?"
+
+"Mr. Rae," replied the young man, his voice trembling and husky, "I
+tell you I can't understand this.  I ought to say that for the last
+two weeks I haven't been quite myself, and whiskey always makes me
+forget.  I can walk around steadily enough, but I don't always know
+what I am doing--"
+
+"That's so, Sir," said Dunn quickly, "I've seen him."
+
+"--And just what happened with these cheques I do not know.  This
+cheque," picking up the one endorsed to Potts, "I remember giving
+to Potts.  The only other cheque I remember is a five-pound one."
+
+"Do you remember cashing that five-pound cheque?" inquired Mr. Rae.
+
+"I carried it about for some days.  I remember that, because I once
+offered it to Potts in part payment, and he said--" the white face
+suddenly flushed a deep red.
+
+"Well, Mr. Allan, what did he say?"
+
+"It doesn't matter," said Cameron.
+
+"It may and it may not," said Mr. Rae sharply.  "It is your duty to
+tell us."
+
+"Out with it," said his father angrily.  "You surely owe it to me,
+to us all, to let us have every assistance."
+
+Cameron paid no attention to his father's words.  "It has really
+no bearing, Sir, but I remember saying as I offered a five-pound
+cheque, 'I wish it was fifty.'"
+
+"And what reply did Mr. Potts make?" said Mr. Rae, with quiet
+indifference, as if he had lost interest in this particular feature
+of the case.
+
+Again Cameron hesitated.
+
+"Come, out with it!" said his father impatiently.
+
+His son closed his lips as if in a firm resolve.  "It really has
+nothing whatever to do with the case."
+
+"Play the game, old man," said Dunn quietly.
+
+"Oh, all right!" said Cameron.  "It makes no difference anyway.  He
+said in a joke, 'You could easily make this fifty; it is such
+mighty poor writing.'"
+
+Still Mr. Rae showed no sign of interest.  "He suggested in a joke,
+I understand, that the five-pound cheque could easily be changed
+into fifty pounds.  That was a mere pleasantry of Mr. Potts',
+doubtless.  How did the suggestion strike you, Mr. Allan?"
+
+Allan looked at him in silence.
+
+"I mean, did the suggestion strike you unpleasantly, or how?"
+
+"I don't think it made any impression, Sir.  I knew it was a joke."
+
+"A joke!" groaned his father.  "Good Heavens!  What do you think--?"
+
+"Once more permit me," said Mr. Rae quietly, with a wave of his
+hand toward the Captain.  "This cheque of five pounds has evidently
+been altered to fifty pounds.  The question is, by whom, Mr. Allan?
+Can you answer that?"  Again Mr. Rae's eyes were searching the
+young man's face.
+
+"I have told you I remember nothing about this cheque."
+
+"Is it possible, Mr. Allan, that you could have raised this cheque
+yourself without your knowing--?"
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" said his father hotly, "why make the boy lie?"
+
+His son started as if his father had struck him.  "I tell you once
+more, Mr. Rae, and I tell you all, I know nothing about this
+cheque, and that is my last word."  And from that position nothing
+could move him.
+
+"Well," said Mr. Rae, closing the interview, "we have done our
+best.  The law must take its course."
+
+"Great Heavens!" cried the Captain, springing to his feet.  "Do you
+mean to tell me, Allan, that you persist in this cursed folly and
+will give us no further light?  Have you no regard for my name, if
+not for your own?"  He grasped his son fiercely by the arm.
+
+But his son angrily shook off his grasp.  "You," he said, looking
+his father full in the face, "you condemned me before you heard a
+word from me, and now for my name or for yours I care not a
+tinker's curse."  And with this he flung himself from the room.
+
+"Follow him," said Mr. Rae to Dunn, quietly; "he will need you.
+And keep him in sight; it is important."
+
+"All right, Sir!" said Dunn.  "I'll stay with him."  And he did.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A QUESTION OF HONOUR
+
+
+Mr. Rae in forty years' experience had never been so seriously
+disturbed.  To his intense humiliation he found himself abjectly
+appealing to the senior member of the firm of Thomlinson & Shields.
+Not that Mr. Thomlinson was obdurate; in the presence of mere
+obduracy Mr. Rae might have found relief in the conscious
+possession of more generous and humane instincts than those
+supposed to be characteristic of the members of his profession.
+Mr. Thomlinson, however, was anything but obdurate.  He was eager
+to oblige, but he was helpless.  The instructions he had received
+were simple but imperative, and he had gone to unusual lengths in
+suggesting to Mr. Sheratt, the manager of the Bank, a course of
+greater leniency.  That gentleman's only reply was a brief order to
+proceed with the case.
+
+With Mr. Sheratt, therefore, Mr. Rae proceeded to deal.  His first
+move was to invite the Bank manager to lunch, in order to discuss
+some rather important matters relative to one of the great estates
+of which Mr. Rae was supposed to be the guardian.  Some fifty
+years' experience of Mr. Sheratt as boy and man had let Mr. Rae
+into a somewhat intimate knowledge of the workings of that
+gentleman's mind.  Under the mollifying influences of the finest of
+old port, Mr. Rae made the discovery that as with Mr. Thomlinson,
+so with Mr. Sheratt there was every disposition to oblige, and
+indeed an eagerness to yield to the lawyer's desires; it was not
+Mr. Sheratt, but the Bank that was immovable.  Firm-fixed it stood
+upon its bedrock of tradition that in matters of fraud, crime
+should be punished to the full limit of the law.
+
+"The estate of the criminal, high or low," said Mr. Sheratt
+impressively, "matters not.  The Bank stands upon the principle,
+and from this it cannot be moved."  Mr. Sheratt began to wax
+eloquent.  "Fidelity to its constituency, its shareholders, its
+depositors, indeed to the general public, is the corner-stone of
+its policy.  The Bank of Scotland is a National Institution, with a
+certain National obligation."
+
+Mr. Rae quietly drew from his pocket a pamphlet, opened it slowly,
+and glanced at the page.  "Ay, it's as I thought, Mr. Sheratt," he
+said dryly.  "At times I wondered where Sir Archibald got his
+style."
+
+Mr. Sheratt blushed like a boy caught copying.
+
+"But now since I know who it is that writes the speech of the
+Chairman of the Board of Directors, tell me, Sheratt, as man to
+man, is it you or is it Sir Archibald that's at the back of this
+prosecution?  For if it is you, I've something to say to you; if
+not, I'll just say it where it's most needed.  In some way or other
+I'm bound to see this thing through.  That boy can't go to prison.
+Now tell me, Tom?  It's for auld sake's sake."
+
+"As sure as death, Rae, it's the Chairman, and it's God's truth I'm
+telling ye, though I should not."  They were back again into the
+speech and spirit of their boyhood days.
+
+"Then I must see Sir Archibald.  Give me time to see him, Tom."
+
+"It's a waste of time, I'm tellin' ye, but two days I'll give ye,
+Sandy, for auld sake's sake, as you say.  A friendship of half a
+hundred years should mean something to us.  For your sake I'd let
+the lad go, God knows, and there's my han' upon it, but as I said,
+that lies with Sir Archibald."
+
+The old friends shook hands in silence.
+
+"Thank ye, Tom, thank ye," said Mr. Rae; "I knew it."
+
+"But harken to me, ye'll no' move Sir Archibald, for on this
+particular point he's quite mad.  He'd prosecute the Duke of
+Argyll, he would.  But two days are yours, Sandy.  And mind with
+Sir Archibald ye treat his Bank with reverence!  It's a National
+Institution, with National obligations, ye ken?"  Mr. Sheratt's
+wink conveyed a volume of meaning.  "And mind you, Rae," here Mr.
+Sheratt grew grave, "I am trusting you to produce that lad when
+wanted."
+
+"I have him in safe keeping, Tom, and shall produce him, no fear."
+
+And with that the two old gentlemen parted, loyal to a lifelong
+friendship, but loyal first to the trust of those they stood
+pledged to serve; for the friendship that gives first place to
+honour is the only friendship that honourable men can hold.
+
+Mr. Rae set off for his office through the drizzling rain.  "Now
+then, for the Captain," he said to himself; "and a state he will be
+in!  Why did I ever summon him to town?  Then for Mr. Dunn, who
+must keep his eye upon the young man."
+
+In his office he found Captain Cameron in a state of distraction
+that rendered him incapable of either coherent thought or speech.
+"What now, Rae?  Where have you been?  What news have you?  My God,
+this thing is driving me mad!  Penal servitude!  Think of it, man,
+for my son!  Oh, the scandal of it!  It will kill me and kill his
+sister.  What's your report?  Come, out with it!  Have you seen Mr.
+Sheratt?"  He was pacing up and down the office like a beast in a
+cage.
+
+"Tut, tut, Captain Cameron," said Mr. Rae lightly, "this is no way
+for a soldier to face the enemy.  Sit down and we will just lay out
+our campaign."
+
+But the Captain's soldiering, which was of the lightest, had taught
+him little either of the spirit or of the tactics of warfare.
+"Campaign!" he exclaimed.  "There's no campaign about it.  It's a
+complete smash, horse, foot, and artillery."
+
+"Nonsense, Captain Cameron!" exclaimed Mr. Rae more briskly than
+his wont, for the Captain irritated him.  "We have still fighting
+to do, and hence we must plan our campaign.  But first let us get
+comfortable.  Here Davie," he called, opening the office door,
+"here, mend this fire.  It's a winter's day this," he continued to
+the Captain, "and goes to the marrow."
+
+Davie, a wizened, clean-shaven, dark-visaged little man, appeared
+with a scuttle of coal.  "Ay, Davie; that's it!  Is that cannel?"
+
+"Ay, Sir, it is.  What else?  I aye get the cannel."
+
+"That's right, Davie.  It's a gran' coal."
+
+"Gran' it's no'," said Davie shortly, who was a fierce radical in
+politics, and who strove to preserve his sense of independence of
+all semblance of authority by cultivating a habit of disagreement.
+"Gran' it's no'," he repeated, "but it's the best the Farquhars
+hae, though that's no' saying much.  It's no' what I call cannel."
+
+"Well, well, Davie, it blazes finely at any rate," said Mr. Rae,
+determined to be cheerful, and rubbing his hands before the blazing
+coal.
+
+"Ay, it bleezes," grumbled Davie, "when it's no' smootherin'."
+
+"Come then, Davie, that will do.  Clear out," said Mr. Rae to the
+old servant, who was cleaning up the hearth with great diligence
+and care.
+
+But Davie was not to be hurried.  He had his regular routine in
+fire-mending, from which no power could move him.  "Ay, Sir," he
+muttered, brushing away with his feather besom.  "I'll clear oot
+when I clear up.  When a thing's no' dune richt it's no dune ava."
+
+"True, Davie, true enough; that's a noble sentiment.  But will that
+no' do now?"  Mr. Rae knew himself to be helpless in Davie's hands,
+and he knew also that nothing short of violence would hasten Davie
+from his "usual."
+
+"Ay, that'll dae, because it's richt dune.  But that's no' what I
+call cannel," grumbled Davie, glowering fiercely at the burning
+coal, as if meditating a fresh attack.
+
+"Well, well," said Mr. Rae, "tell the Farquhars about it."
+
+"Ay, Sir, I will that," said Davie, as he reluctantly took himself
+off with his scuttle and besom.
+
+The Captain was bursting with fretful impatience.  "Impudent old
+rascal!" he exclaimed.  "Why don't you dismiss him?"
+
+"Dismiss him!" echoed Mr. Rae in consternation.  "Dismiss him!" he
+repeated, as if pondering an entirely new idea.  "I doubt if Davie
+would consider that.  But now let us to work."  He set two arm-
+chairs before the fire, and placed a box of cigars by the Captain's
+elbow.  "I have seen Sheratt," he began.  "I'm quite clear it is
+not in his hands."
+
+"In whose then?" burst forth the Captain.
+
+Mr. Rae lit his cigar carefully.  "The whole matter, I believe,
+lies now with the Chairman of the Board of Directors, Sir Archibald
+Brodie."
+
+"Brodie!" cried the Captain.  "I know him.  Pompous little fool!"
+
+"Fool, Captain Cameron!  Make no mistake.  Sir Archibald may have--
+ah--the self-importance of a self-made man somewhat under the
+average height, but he is, without doubt, the best financier that
+stands at this moment in Scotland, and during the last fifteen
+years he has brought up the Bank of Scotland to its present
+position.  Fool!  He's anything but that.  But he has his weak
+spots--I wish I knew what they were!--and these we must seek to
+find out.  Do you know him well?"
+
+"Oh, yes, quite well," said the Captain; "that is, I've met him at
+various functions, where he always makes speeches.  Very common, I
+call him.  I know his father; a mere cottar.  I mean," added the
+Captain hurriedly, for he remembered that Mr. Rae was of the same
+humble origin, "you know, he is thoroughly respectable and all
+that, but of no--ah--social or family standing; that is--oh, you
+understand."
+
+"Quite," said Mr. Rae drily.
+
+"Yes, I shall see him," continued the Captain briskly.  "I shall
+certainly see him.  It is a good suggestion.  Sir Archibald knows
+my family; indeed, his father was from the Erracht region.  I shall
+see him personally.  I am glad you thought of that, Mr. Rae.  These
+smaller men, Sheratt and the rest, I do not know--in fact, I do not
+seem to be able to manage them,--but with Sir Archibald there will
+be no difficulty, I feel quite confident.  When can you arrange the
+interview?"
+
+Mr. Rae sat gazing thoughtfully into the fire, more and more
+convinced every moment that he had made a false move in suggesting
+a meeting between the Captain and Sir Archibald Brodie.  But labour
+as he might he could not turn the Captain from his purpose.  He was
+resolved to see Sir Archibald at the earliest moment, and of the
+result of the meeting he had no manner of doubt.
+
+"He knew my family, Sir," insisted the Captain.  "Sir Archibald
+will undoubtedly accede to my suggestion--ah--request to withdraw
+his action.  Arrange it, Mr. Rae, arrange it at once."
+
+And ruefully enough Mr. Rae was compelled to yield against his
+better judgment.
+
+It was discovered upon inquiry that Sir Archibald had gone for a
+day or two to his country estate.  "Ah, much better," said the
+Captain, "away from his office and away from the--ah--commercial
+surroundings of the city.  Much better, much better!  We shall
+proceed to his country home."
+
+Of the wisdom of this proposal Mr. Rae was doubtful.  There seemed,
+however, no other way open.  Hence, the following morning found
+them on their way to Sir Archibald's country seat.  Mr. Rae felt
+that it was an unusual course to pursue, but the time was short,
+the occasion was gravely critical, and demanded extreme measures.
+
+During their railway journey Mr. Rae strove to impress upon the
+Captain's mind the need of diplomacy.  "Sir Archibald is a man of
+strong prejudices," he urged; "for instance, his Bank he regards
+with an affection and respect amounting to veneration.  He is a
+bachelor, you understand, and his Bank is to him wife and bairns.
+On no account must you treat his Bank lightly."
+
+"Oh, certainly not," replied the Captain, who was inclined to
+resent Mr. Rae's attempts to school him in diplomacy.
+
+"He is a great financier," continued Mr. Rae, "and with him finance
+is a high art, and financial integrity a sacred obligation."
+
+"Oh, certainly, certainly," again replied the Captain, quite
+unimpressed by this aspect of the matter, for while he considered
+himself distinctly a man of affairs, yet his interests lay more in
+matters of great public moment.  Commercial enterprises he regarded
+with a feeling akin to contempt.  Money was an extremely desirable,
+and indeed necessary, appendage to a gentleman's position, but how
+any man of fine feeling could come to regard a financial institution
+with affection or veneration he was incapable of conceiving.
+However, he was prepared to deal considerately with Sir Archibald's
+peculiar prejudices in this matter.
+
+Mr. Rae's forebodings as to the outcome of the approaching
+interview were of the most gloomy nature as they drove through the
+finely appointed and beautifully kept grounds of Sir Archibald
+Brodie's estate.  The interview began inauspiciously.  Sir
+Archibald received them with stiff courtesy.  He hated to be
+pursued to his country home with business matters.  Besides, at
+this particular moment he was deeply engrossed in the inspection of
+his pigs, for which animals he cherished what might almost be
+called an absorbing affection.  Mr. Rae, who was proceeding with
+diplomatic caution and skill to approach the matter in hand by way
+of Sir Archibald's Wiltshires, was somewhat brusquely interrupted
+by the Captain, who, in the firm conviction that he knew much
+better than did the lawyer how to deal with a man of his own class,
+plunged at once into the subject.
+
+"Awfully sorry to introduce business matters, Sir Archibald, to the
+attention of a gentleman in the privacy of his own home, but there
+is a little matter in connection with the Bank in which I am
+somewhat deeply interested."
+
+Sir Archibald bowed in silence.
+
+"Rather, I should say, it concerns my son, and therefore, Sir
+Archibald, myself and my family."
+
+Again Sir Archibald bowed.
+
+"It is, after all, a trivial matter, which I have no doubt can be
+easily arranged between us.  The truth is, Sir Archibald--," here
+the Captain hesitated, as if experiencing some difficulty in
+stating the case.
+
+"Perhaps Captain Cameron will allow me to place the matter before
+you, Sir Archibald," suggested Mr. Rae, "as it has a legal aspect
+of some gravity, indeed of very considerable gravity.  It is the
+case of young Mr. Cameron."
+
+"Ah," said Sir Archibald shortly.  "Forgery case, I believe."
+
+"Well," said Mr. Rae, "we have not been able as yet to get at the
+bottom of it.  I confess that the case has certainly very grave
+features connected with it, but it is by no means clear that--"
+
+"There is no need for further statement, Mr. Rae," said Sir
+Archibald.  "I know all about it.  It is a clear case of forgery.
+The facts have all been laid before me, and I have given my
+instructions."
+
+"And what may these be, may I inquire?" said the Captain somewhat
+haughtily.
+
+"The usual instructions, Sir, where the Bank of Scotland is
+concerned, instructions to prosecute."  Sir Archibald's lips shut
+in a firm, thin line.  As far as he was concerned the matter was
+closed.
+
+"But, Sir," exclaimed.  the Captain, "this young man is my son."
+
+"I deeply regret it," replied Sir Archibald.
+
+"Yes, Sir, he is my son, and the honour of my family is involved."
+
+Sir Archibald bowed.
+
+"I am here prepared to offer the fullest reparation, to offer the
+most generous terms of settlement; in short, I am willing to do
+anything in reason to have this matter--this unfortunate matter--
+hushed up."
+
+"Hushed up!" exclaimed Sir Archibald.  "Captain Cameron, it is
+impossible.  I am grieved for you, but I have a duty to the Bank in
+this matter."
+
+"Do you mean to say, Sir," cried the Captain, "that you refuse to
+consider any arrangement or compromise or settlement of any kind
+whatever?  I am willing to pay the amount ten times over, rather
+than have my name dragged through legal proceedings."
+
+"It is quite impossible," said Sir Archibald.
+
+"Come, come, Sir Archibald," said the Captain, exercising an
+unusual self-control; "let us look at this thing as two gentlemen
+should who respect each other, and who know what is due to our--
+ah--class."
+
+It was an unfortunate remark of the Captain's.
+
+"Our class, Sir?  I presume you mean the class of gentlemen.  All
+that is due to our class or any other class is strict justice, and
+that you, Sir, or any other gentleman, shall receive to the very
+fullest in this matter.  The honour of the Bank, which I regard as
+a great National Institution charged with National responsibilities,
+is involved, as is also my own personal honour.  I sincerely trust
+your son may be cleared of every charge of crime, but this case must
+be prosecuted to the very fullest degree."
+
+"And do you mean to tell me, Sir Archibald," exclaimed the Captain,
+now in a furious passion, "that for the sake of a few paltry pounds
+you will blast my name and my family name in this country?--a name,
+I venture to say, not unknown in the history of this nation.  The
+Camerons, Sir, have fought and bled for King and country on many a
+battlefield.  What matters the question of a few pounds in
+comparison with the honour of an ancient and honourable name?  You
+cannot persist in this attitude, Sir Archibald!"
+
+"Pounds, Sir!" cried Sir Archibald, now thoroughly aroused by the
+contemptuous reference to what to him was dearer than anything in
+life.  "Pounds, Sir!  It is no question of pounds, but a question
+of the honour of a National Institution, a question of the lives
+and happiness of hundreds of widows and orphans, a question of the
+honour of a name which I hold as dear as you hold yours."
+
+Mr. Rae was in despair.  He laid a restraining hand upon the
+Captain, and with difficulty obtained permission to speak.  "Sir
+Archibald, I crave your indulgence while I put this matter to you
+as to a business man.  In the first place, there is no evidence
+that fraud has been committed by young Mr. Cameron, absolutely
+none.--Pardon me a moment, Sir Archibald.--The fraud has been
+committed, I grant, by someone, but by whom is as yet unknown.  The
+young man for some weeks has been in a state of incapacity; a most
+blameworthy and indeed shameful condition, it is true, but in a
+state of incapacity to transact business.  He declares that he has
+no knowledge of this act of forgery.  He will swear this.  I am
+prepared to defend him."
+
+"Very well, Sir," interrupted Sir Archibald, "and I hope, I
+sincerely hope, successfully."
+
+"But while it may be difficult to establish innocence, it will be
+equally difficult to establish guilt.  Meantime, the young man's
+life is blighted, his name dishonoured, his family plunged into
+unspeakable grief.  I venture to say that it is a case in which the
+young man might be given, without injury to the Bank, or without
+breaking through its traditional policy, the benefit of the doubt."
+
+But Sir Archibald had been too deeply stirred by Captain Cameron's
+unfortunate remarks to calmly weigh Mr. Rae's presentation of the
+case.  "It is quite useless, Mr. Rae," he declared firmly.  "The
+case is out of my hands, and must be proceeded with.  I sincerely
+trust you may be able to establish the young man's innocence.  I
+have nothing more to say."
+
+And from this position neither Mr. Rae's arguments nor the
+Captain's passionate pleadings could move him.
+
+Throughout the return journey the Captain raged and swore.  "A
+contemptible cad, Sir! a base-born, low-bred cad, Sir!  What else
+could you expect from a fellow of his breeding?  The insolence of
+these lower orders is becoming insupportable.  The idea! the very
+idea!  His bank against my family name, my family honour!
+Preposterous!"
+
+"Honour is honour, Captain Cameron," replied Mr. Rae firmly, "and
+it might have been better if you had remembered that the honour of
+a cottar's son is as dear to him as yours is to you."
+
+And such was Mr. Rae's manner that the Captain appeared to consider
+it wise to curb his rage, or at least suppress all reference to
+questions of honour in as far as they might be related to the
+question of birth and breeding.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+A LADY AND THE LAW
+
+
+Mr. Rae's first care was to see Mr. Dunn.  This case was getting
+rather more trying to Mr. Rae's nerves than he cared to acknowledge.
+For a second time he had been humiliated, and humiliation was an
+experience to which Mr. Rae was not accustomed.  It was in a
+distinctly wrathful frame of mind that he called upon Mr. Dunn, and
+the first quarter of an hour of his interview he spent in dilating
+upon his own folly in having allowed Captain Cameron to accompany
+him on his visit to Sir Archibald.
+
+"In forty years I never remember having made such an error, Sir.
+This was an occasion for diplomacy.  We should have taken time.  We
+should have discovered his weak spots; every man has them.  Now it
+is too late.  The only thing left for us is fight, and the best we
+can hope for is a verdict of NOT PROVEN, and that leaves a stigma."
+
+"It is terrible," said Mr. Dunn, "and I believe he is innocent.
+Have you thought of Potts, Sir?"
+
+"I have had Potts before me," said Mr. Rae, "and I may safely say
+that though he strikes me as being a man of unusual cleverness, we
+can do nothing with Mr. Potts.  Of course," added Mr. Rae hastily,
+"this is not to say we shall not make use of Mr. Potts in the
+trial, but Mr. Potts can show from his books debts amounting to
+nearly sixty pounds.  He frankly acknowledges the pleasantry in
+suggesting the raising of the five-pound cheque to fifty pounds,
+but of the act itself he professes entire ignorance.  I frankly own
+to you, Sir," continued Mr. Rae, folding his ear into a horn after
+his manner when in perplexity, "that this case puzzles me.  I must
+not take your time," he said, shaking Mr. Dunn warmly by the hand.
+"One thing more I must ask you, however, and that is, keep in touch
+with young Cameron.  I have pledged my honour to produce him when
+wanted.  Furthermore, keep him--ah--in good condition; cheer him
+up; nerve him up; much depends upon his manner."
+
+Gravely Mr. Dunn accepted the trust, though whether he could fulfil
+it he doubted.  "Keep him cheerful," said Mr. Dunn to himself, as
+the door closed upon Mr. Rae.  "Nice easy job, too, under the
+circumstances.  Let's see, what is there on?  By Jove, if I could
+only bring him!"  There flashed into Mr. Dunn's mind the fact that
+he was due that evening at a party for students, given by one of
+the professors, belated beyond the period proper to such functions
+by one of those domestic felicities which claim right of way over
+all other human events.  At this party Cameron was also due.  It
+was hardly likely, however, that he would attend.  But to Dunn's
+amazement he found Cameron, with a desperate jollity such as a man
+might feel the night before his execution, eager to go.
+
+"I'm going," he cried, in answer to Dunn's somewhat timid
+suggestion.  "They'll all be there, old man, and I shall make my
+exit with much eclat, with pipe and dance and all the rest of it."
+
+"Exit, be blowed!" said Dunn impatiently.  "Let's cut all this
+nonsense out.  We're going into a fight for all there's in us.  Why
+should a fellow throw up the sponge after the first round?"
+
+"Fight!" said Cameron gloomily.  "Did old Rae say so?"
+
+"Most decidedly."
+
+"And what defence does he suggest?"
+
+"Defence?  Innocence, of course."
+
+"Would to God I could back him up!" groaned Cameron.
+
+Dunn gazed at him in dismay.  "And can you not?  You do not mean to
+tell me you are guilty?"
+
+"Oh, I wish to heaven I knew!" cried Cameron wildly.  "But there,
+let it go.  Let the lawyers and the judge puzzle it out.  'Guilty
+or not guilty?'  'Hanged if I know, my lord.  Looks like guilty,
+but don't see very well how I can be.'  That will bother old Rae
+some; it would bother Old Nick himself.  'Did you forge this note?'
+'My lord, my present ego recognizes no intent to forge; my alter
+ego in vino may have done so.  Of that, however, I know nothing; it
+lies in that mysterious region of the subconscious.'  'Are you,
+then, guilty?'  'Guilt, my lord, lies in intent.  Intent is the
+soul of crime.'  It will be an interesting point for Mr. Rae and
+his lordship."
+
+"Look here, old chap," asked Dunn suddenly, "what of Potts in this
+business?"
+
+"Potts!  Oh, hang it, Dunn, I can't drag Potts into this.  It would
+be altogether too low-down to throw suspicion upon a man without
+the slightest ground.  Potts is not exactly a lofty-souled
+creature.  In fact, he is pronouncedly a bounder, though I confess
+I did borrow money of him; but I'd borrow money of the devil when
+I'm in certain moods.  A man may be a bounder, however, without
+being a criminal.  No, I have thought this thing out as far as I
+can, and I've made my mind up that I've got to face it myself.
+I've been a fool, ah, such a fool!"  A shudder shook his frame.
+"Oh, Dunn, old man, I don't mind for myself, I can go out easily
+enough, but it's my little sister!  It will break her heart, and
+she has no one else; she will have to bear it all alone."
+
+"What do you mean, Cameron?" asked Dunn sharply.
+
+Cameron sprang to his feet.  "Let it go," he cried.  "Let it go for
+to-night, anyway."  He seized a decanter which stood all too ready
+to his hand, but Dunn interposed.
+
+"Listen to me, old man," he said, in a voice of grave and earnest
+sadness, while he pushed Cameron back into a chair.  "We have a
+desperately hard game before us, you and I,--this is my game, too,--
+and we must be fit; so, Cameron, I want your word that you will
+play up for all that's in you; that you will cut this thing out,"
+pointing to the decanter, "and will keep fit to the last fighting
+minute.  I am asking you this, Cameron.  You owe it to yourself,
+you owe it to me, you owe it to your sister."
+
+For some moments Cameron sat gazing straight before him, his face
+showing the agony in his soul.  "As God's above, I do!  I owe it
+to you, Dunn, and to her, and to the memory of my--"  But his
+quivering lips could not utter the word; and there was no need, for
+they both knew that his heart was far away in the little mound that
+lay in the shadow of the church tower in the Cuagh Oir.  The lad
+rose to his feet, and stretching out his hand to Dunn cried,
+"There's my hand and my honour as a Highlander, and until the last
+fighting moment I'll be fit."
+
+At the party that night none was gayer than young Cameron.  The shy
+reserve that usually marked him was thrust aside.  His fine, lithe
+figure, set off by his Highland costume, drew all eyes in admiration,
+and whether in the proud march of the piper, or in the wild abandon
+of the Highland Fling, he seemed to all the very beau ideal of a
+gallant Highland gentleman.
+
+Dunn stood in the circle gathered to admire, watching Cameron's
+performance of that graceful and intricate Highland dance, all
+unconscious of a pair of bright blue eyes fastened on his face that
+reflected so manifestly the grief and pain in his heart.
+
+"And wherefore this gloom?" said a gay voice at his side.  It was
+Miss Bessie Brodie.
+
+Poor Dunn!  He was not skilled in the fine art of social deception.
+He could only gaze stupidly and with blinking eyes upon his
+questioner, devoutly hoping meanwhile that the tears would not
+fall.
+
+"Splendid Highlander, isn't he?" exclaimed Miss Bessie, hastily
+withdrawing her eyes from his face, for she was much too fine a
+lady to let him see her surprise.
+
+"What?" exclaimed Dunn.  "I don't know.  I mean--yes, awfully--oh,
+confound the thing, it's a beastly shame!"
+
+Thereupon Miss Bessie turned her big blue eyes slowly upon him.
+"Meaning what?" she said quietly.
+
+"Oh, I beg pardon.  I'm just a fool.  Oh, hang it all!"  Dunn could
+not recover his composure.  He backed out of the circle of admirers
+into a darker corner.
+
+"Fool?" said Miss Brodie, stepping back with him.  "And why, pray?
+Can I know?  I suppose it's Cameron again," she continued.  "Oh, I
+know all about you and your mothering of him."
+
+"Mothering!" said Dunn bitterly.  "That is just what he needs, by
+Jove.  His mother has been dead these five years, and that's been
+the ruin of him."
+
+The cheers from Cameron's admirers broke in upon Dunn's speech.
+"Oh, it's too ghastly," he muttered.
+
+"Is it really so bad?  Can't I help?" cried Miss Brodie.  "You know
+I've had some experience with boys."
+
+As Dunn looked into her honest, kindly eyes he hesitated.  Should
+he tell her?  He was in sore need of counsel, and besides he was at
+the limit of his self-control.  "I say," he said, staring at her,
+while his lips quivered, "I'd like awfully to tell you, but I know
+if I ever begin I shall just burst into tears before this gaping
+crowd."
+
+"Tears!" exclaimed Miss Bessie.  "Not you!  And if you did it
+wouldn't hurt either them or you.  An International captain
+possesses this advantage over other mortals: that he may burst into
+tears or anything else without losing caste, whereas if I should do
+any such thing--  But come, let's get somewhere and talk it over.
+Now, then," said Miss Brodie as they found a quiet corner, "first
+of all, ought I to know?"
+
+"You'll know, all Edinburgh will know time day after to-morrow,"
+said Dunn.
+
+"All right, then, it can't do any harm for me to know to-night.  It
+possibly may do good."
+
+"It will do me good, anyway," said Dunn, "for I have reached my
+limit."
+
+Then Dunn told her, and while she listened she grew grave and
+anxious.  "But surely it can be arranged!" she exclaimed, after he
+had finished.
+
+"No, Mr. Rae has tried everything.  The Bank is bound to pursue it
+to the bitter end.  It is apparently a part of its policy."
+
+"What Bank?"
+
+"The Bank of Scotland."
+
+"Why, that's my uncle's Bank!  I mean, he is the Chairman of the
+Board of Directors, and the Bank is the apple of his eye; or one of
+them, I mean--I'm the other."
+
+"Oh, both, I fancy," said Dunn, rather pleased with his own
+courage.
+
+"But come, this is serious," said Miss Brodie.  "The Bank, you
+know, or you don't know, is my uncle's weak spot."
+
+Mr. Rae's words flashed across Dunn's mind:  "We ought to have
+found his weak spots."
+
+"He says," continued Miss Brodie with a smile--"you know he's an
+old dear!--I divide his heart with the Bank, that I have the left
+lobe.  Isn't that the bigger one?  So the Bank and I are his weak
+spots; unless it is his Wiltshires--he is devoted to Wiltshires."
+
+"Wiltshires?"
+
+"Pigs.  There are times when I feel myself distinctly second to
+them.  Are you sure my uncle knows all about Cameron?"
+
+"Well, Mr. Rae and Captain Cameron--that's young Cameron's father--
+went out to his place--"
+
+"Ah, that was a mistake," said Miss Brodie.  "He hates people
+following him to the country.  Well, what happened?"
+
+"Mr. Rae feels that it was rather a mistake that Captain Cameron
+went along."
+
+"Why so?  He is his father, isn't he?"
+
+"Yes, he is, though I'm bound to say he's rather queer for a
+father."  Whereupon Dunn gave her an account of his interview in
+Mr. Rae's office.
+
+Miss Brodie was indignant.  "What a shame!  And what a fool!  Why,
+he is ten times more fool than his son; for mark you, his son is
+undoubtedly a fool, and a selfish fool at that.  I can't bear a
+young fool who sacrifices not simply his own life, but the
+interests of all who care for him, for some little pet selfishness
+of his own.  But this father of his seems to be even worse than the
+son.  Family name indeed!  And I venture to say he expatiated upon
+the glory of his family name to my uncle.  If there's one thing
+that my uncle goes quite mad about it is this affectation of
+superiority on the ground of the colour of a man's blood!  No
+wonder he refused to withdraw the prosecution!  What could Mr. Rae
+have been thinking about?  What fools men are!"
+
+"Quite true," murmured Mr. Dunn.
+
+"Some men, I mean," cried Miss Brodie hastily.  "I wish to heaven I
+had seen my uncle first!"
+
+"I suppose it's too late now," said Dunn, with a kind of gloomy
+wistfulness.
+
+"Yes, I fear so," said Miss Brodie.  "You see when my uncle makes
+up his mind he appears to have some religious scruples against
+changing it."
+
+"It was a ghastly mistake," said Dunn bitterly.
+
+"Look here, Mr. Dunn," said Miss Brodie, turning upon him suddenly,
+"I want your straight opinion.  Do you think this young man
+guilty?"
+
+They were both looking at Cameron, at that moment the centre of a
+group of open admirers, his boyish face all aglow with animation.
+For the time being it seemed as if he had forgotten the terrible
+catastrophe overhanging him.
+
+"If I hadn't known Cameron for three years," replied Dunn slowly,
+"I would say offhand that this thing would be impossible to him;
+but you see you never know what a man in drink will do.  Cameron
+can carry a bottle of Scotch without a stagger, but of course it
+knocks his head all to pieces.  I mean, he is quite incapable of
+anything like clear thought."
+
+"It is truly terrible," said Miss Brodie.  "I wish I had known
+yesterday, but those men have spoilt it all.  But here's 'Lily'
+Laughton," she continued hurriedly, "coming for his dance."  As she
+spoke a youth of willowy figure, languishing dark eyes and ladylike
+manner drew near.
+
+"Well, here you are at last!  What a hunt I have had!  I am quite
+exhausted, I assure you," cried the youth, fanning himself with his
+handkerchief.  "And though you have quite forgotten it, this is our
+dance.  What can you two have been talking about?  But why ask?
+There is only one theme upon which you could become so terrifically
+serious."
+
+"And what is that, pray?  Browning?" inquired Miss Brodie sweetly.
+
+"Dear Miss Brodie, if you only would, but--ugh!--" here "Lily"
+shuddered, "I can in fancy picture the gory scene in which you have
+been revelling for the last hour!"  And "Lily's" handsome face and
+languid, liquid eyes indicated his horror.  It was "Lily's"
+constant declaration that he "positively loathed" football,
+although his persistent attendance at all the great matches rather
+belied this declaration.  "It is the one thing in you, Miss Bessie,
+that I deplore, 'the fly in the pot--' no, 'the flaw--' ah, that's
+better--'the flaw in the matchless pearl.'"
+
+"How sweet of you," murmured Miss Brodie.
+
+"Yes, indeed," continued "Lily," wreathing his tapering fingers,
+"it is your devotion to those so-called athletic games,--games! ye
+gods!--the chief qualifications for excellence in which appear to
+be brute strength and a blood-thirsty disposition; as witness Dunn
+there.  I was positively horrified last International.  There he
+was, our own quiet, domestic, gentle Dunn, raging through that
+howling mob of savages like a bloody Bengal tiger.--Rather apt,
+that!--A truly awful and degrading exhibition!"
+
+"Ah, perfectly lovely!" murmured Miss Brodie ecstatically.  "I can
+see him yet."
+
+"Miss Brodie, how can you!" exclaimed "Lily," casting up his eyes
+in horror towards heaven.  "But it was ever thus!  In ancient days
+upon the bloody sands of the arena, fair ladies were wont to gaze
+with unrelenting eyes and thumbs turned down--or up, was it--?"
+
+"Excellent!  But how clever of them to gaze with their thumbs in
+that way!"
+
+"Please don't interrupt," said "Lily" severely; "I have just
+'struck my gait,' as that barbaric young Colonial, Martin, another
+of your bloody, brawny band, would say.  And here you sit,
+unblushing, glorying in their disgusting deeds and making love open
+and unabashed to their captain!"
+
+"Go away, 'Lily' or I'll hurt you," cried Dunn, his face a
+brilliant crimson.  "Come, get out!"
+
+"But don't be uplifted," continued "Lily," ignoring him, "you are
+not the first.  By no means!  It is always the last International
+captain, and has been to my certain knowledge for the last ten
+years."
+
+"Ten years!" exclaimed Miss Brodie in horrified accents.  "You
+monster!  If you have no regard for my character you might at least
+respect my age."
+
+"Age!  Dear Miss Brodie," ejaculated "Lily," "who could ever
+associate age with your perennial youth?"
+
+"Perennial!  Wretch!  If there is anything I am sensitive about,
+really sensitive about, it is my age!  Mr. Dunn, I beseech you,
+save me from further insult!  Dear 'Lily,' run away now.  You are
+much too tired to dance, and besides there is Mrs. Craig-Urquhart
+waiting to talk your beloved Wagner-Tennyson theory; or what is the
+exact combination?  Mendelssohn-Browning, is it?"
+
+"Oh, Miss Bessie!" cried "Lily" in a shocked voice.  "how can you?
+Mendelssohn-Browning!  How awful!  Do have some regard for the
+affinities."
+
+"Mr. Dunn, I implore you, save me!  I can bear no more.  There!  A
+merciful providence has accomplished my deliverance.  They are
+going.  Good-night, 'Lily.'  Run away now.  I want a word with Mr.
+Dunn."
+
+"Oh, heartless cruelty!" exclaimed "Lily," in an agonised voice.
+"But what can you expect from such associations?"  And he hastened
+away to have a last word with Mrs. Craig-Urquhart, who was swimming
+languidly by.
+
+Miss Brodie turned eagerly to Dunn.  "I'd like to help you
+awfully," she said; "indeed I must try.  I have very little hope.
+My uncle is so strong when he is once set, and he is so funny about
+that Bank.  But a boy is worth more than a Bank, if he IS a fool;
+besides, there is his sister.  Good-night.  Thanks for letting me
+help.  I have little hope, but to-morrow I shall see Sir Archibald,
+and--and his pigs."
+
+It was still in the early forenoon of the following day when Miss
+Brodie greeted her uncle as he was about to start upon his round of
+the pastures and pens where the Wiltshires of various ages and
+sizes and sexes were kept.  With the utmost enthusiasm Miss Brodie
+entered into his admiration of them all, from the lordly prize
+tusker to the great mother lying broadside on in grunting and
+supreme content, every grunt eloquent of happiness and maternal
+love and pride, to allow her week-old brood to prod and punch her
+luxuriant dugs for their breakfast.
+
+By the time they had made their rounds Sir Archibald had arrived at
+his most comfortable and complacent mood.  He loved his niece.  He
+loved her for the sake of his dead brother, and as she grew in
+years, he came to love her for herself.  Her sturdy independent
+fearlessness, her sound sense, her honest heart, and chiefly, if it
+must be told, her whole-souled devotion to himself, made for her a
+great space in his heart.  And besides all this, they were both
+interested to the point of devotion in pigs.  As he watched his
+niece handling the little sucklings with tender care, and listened
+to her appraising their varying merits with a discriminating
+judgment, his heart filled up with pride in her many accomplishments
+and capabilities.
+
+"Isn't she happy, Uncle?" she exclaimed, lifting her brown, sunny
+face to him.
+
+"Ay, lassie," replied Sir Archibald, lapsing into the kindly "braid
+Scots," "I ken fine how she feels."
+
+"She's just perfectly happy," said his niece, "and awfully useful
+and good.  She is just like you, Uncle."
+
+"What?  Oh, thank you, I'm extremely flattered, I assure you."
+
+"Uncle, you know what I mean!  Useful and good.  Here you are in
+this lovely home--how lovely it is on a warm, shiny day like this!--
+safe from cares and worries, where people can't get at you, and
+making--"
+
+"Ah, I don't know about that," replied her uncle, shaking his head
+with a frown.  "Some people have neither sense nor manners.  Only
+yesterday I was pestered by a fellow who annoyed me, seriously
+annoyed me, interfering in affairs which he knew nothing of,--
+actually the affairs of the Bank!--prating about his family name,
+and all the rest of it.  Family name!"  Here, it must be confessed,
+Sir Archibald distinctly snorted, quite in a manner calculated to
+excite the envy of any of his Wiltshires.
+
+"I know, Uncle.  He is a fool, a conceited fool, and a selfish
+fool."
+
+"You know him?" inquired her uncle in a tone of surprise.
+
+"No, I have no personal acquaintance with him, I'm glad to say, but
+I know about him, and I know that he came with Mr. Rae, the
+Writer."
+
+"Ah, yes!  Thoroughly respectable man, Mr. Rae."
+
+"Yes, Mr. Rae is all right; but Captain Cameron--oh, I can't bear
+him!  He came to talk to you about his son, and I venture to say he
+took most of the time in talking about himself."
+
+"Exactly so!  But how--?"
+
+"And, Uncle, I want to talk to you about that matter, about young
+Cameron."  For just a moment Miss Brodie's courage faltered as she
+observed her uncle's figure stiffen.  "I want you to know the
+rights of the case."
+
+"Now, now, my dear, don't you go--ah--"
+
+"I know, Uncle, you were going to say 'interfering,' only you
+remember in time that your niece never interferes.  Isn't that
+true, Sir?"
+
+"Yes, yes!  I suppose so; that is, certainly."
+
+"Now I am interested in this young Cameron, and I want you to get
+the right view of his case, which neither your lawyer nor your
+manager nor that fool father of his can give you.  I know that if
+you see this case as I see it you will do--ah--exactly what is
+right; you always do."
+
+Miss Brodie's voice had assumed its most reasonable and business-
+like tone.  Sir Archibald was impressed, and annoyed because he was
+impressed.
+
+"Look here, Bessie," he said, in as impatient a tone as he ever
+adopted with his niece, "you know how I hate being pestered with
+business affairs out here."
+
+"I know quite well, Uncle, and I regret it awfully, but I know,
+too, that you are a man of honour, and that you stand for fair
+play.  But that young man is to be arrested to-day, and you know
+what that will mean for a young fellow with his way to make."
+
+Her appeal was not without its effect.  Sir Archibald set himself
+to give her serious attention.  "Let us have it, then," he said.
+briefly.  "What do you know of the young man?"
+
+"This first of all: that he has a selfish, conceited prig for a
+father."
+
+With which beginning Sir Archibald most heartily agreed.  "But how
+do you know?"
+
+"Now, let me tell you about him."  And Miss Brodie proceeded to
+describe the scene between father and son in Mr. Rae's office, with
+vigorous and illuminating comments.  "And just think, the man in
+the company who was first to condemn the young chap was his own
+father.  Would you do that?  You'd stand for him against the whole
+world, even if he were wrong."
+
+"Steady, steady, lass!"
+
+"You would," repeated Miss Bessie, with indignant emphasis.  "Would
+you chuck me over if I were disgraced and all the world hounding
+me?  Would you?"
+
+"No, by God!" said Sir Archibald in a sudden tempest of emotion,
+and Miss Bessie smiled lovingly upon him.
+
+"Well, that's the kind of a father he has.  Now about the young
+fellow himself:  He's just a first-class fool, like most young
+fellows.  You know how they are, Uncle."
+
+Sir Archibald held up his hand.  "Don't make any such assumptions."
+
+"Oh, I know you, and when you were a boy you were just as gay and
+foolish as the rest of them."
+
+Her arch, accusing smile suddenly cast a rich glow of warm colour
+over the long, grey road of Sir Archibald's youth of self-denial
+and struggle.  The mild indulgences of his early years, under the
+transforming influence of that same arch and accusing smile, took
+on for Sir Archibald such an aspect of wild and hilarious gaiety as
+to impart a tone of hesitation to his voice while he deprecated his
+niece's charge.
+
+"What, I?  Nonsense!  What do you know about it?  Well, well, we
+have all had our day, I suppose!"
+
+"Aha! I know you, and I should love to have known you when you were
+young Cameron's age.  Though I'm quite sure you were never such a
+fool as he.  You always knew how to take care of yourself."
+
+Her uncle shook his head as if to indicate that the less said about
+those gay young days the better.
+
+"Now what do you think this young fool does?  Gets drinking, and
+gets so muddled up in all his money matters--he's a Highlander, you
+know, and Dunn, Mr. Dunn says--"
+
+"Dunn!"
+
+"Yes, Mr. Dunn, the great International captain, you know!  Mr.
+Dunn says he can take a whole bottle of Scotch--"
+
+"What, Dunn?"
+
+"No, no; you know perfectly well, Uncle!  This young Cameron can
+take a whole bottle of Scotch and walk a crack, but his head gets
+awfully muddled."
+
+"Shouldn't be surprised!"
+
+"And Mr. Dunn had a terrible time keeping him fit for the
+International.  You know he was Dunn's half-back.  Yes," cried his
+niece with enthusiasm, suddenly remembering a tradition that in his
+youth Sir Archibald had been a famous quarter, his one indulgence,
+"a glorious half-back, too!  You must remember in the match with
+England last fall the brilliant work of the half-back.  Everybody
+went mad about him.  That was young Cameron!"
+
+"You don't tell me!  The left-half in the English International
+last fall?"
+
+"Yes, indeed!  Oh, he's wonderful!  But he has to be watched, you
+know, and the young fool lost us the last--"  Miss Bessie abruptly
+checked herself.  "But never mind!  Well, after the season, you
+know, he got going loose, and this is the result.  Owed money
+everywhere, and with the true Highland incapacity for business, and
+the true Highland capacity for trusting people--"
+
+"Huh!" grunted Sir Archibald in disapproval.
+
+"--When his head is in a muddled condition he does something or
+other to a cheque--or doesn't do it, nobody knows--and there he is
+in this awful fix.  Personally, I don't believe he is guilty of the
+crime."
+
+"And why, pray?"
+
+"Why?  Well, Mr. Dunn, his captain, who has known him for years,
+says it is quite impossible; and then the young man himself doesn't
+deny it."
+
+"What?  Does NOT deny it?"
+
+"Exactly!  Like a perfectly straightforward gentleman,--and I think
+it's awfully fine of him,--though he has a perfectly good chance to
+put the thing on a--a fellow Potts, quite a doubtful character, he
+simply says, 'I know nothing about it.  That looks like my
+signature.  I can't remember doing this, don't know how I could
+have, but don't know a thing about it.'  There you are, Uncle!  And
+Mr. Dunn says he is quite incapable of it."
+
+"Mr. Dunn, eh?  It seems you build somewhat broadly upon Mr. Dunn."
+
+The brown on Miss Bessie's check deepened slightly.  "Well, Mr.
+Dunn is a splendid judge of men."
+
+"Ah; and of young ladies, also, I imagine," said Sir Archibald,
+pinching her cheek.
+
+It may have been the pinch, but the flush on her cheek grew
+distinctly brighter.  "Don't be ridiculous, Uncle!  He's just a
+boy, a perfectly splendid boy, and glorious in his game, but a mere
+boy, and--well, you know, I've arrived at the age of discretion."
+
+"Quite true!" mused her uncle.  "Thirty last birthday, was it?  How
+time does--!"
+
+"Oh, you perfectly horrid uncle!  Thirty indeed!  Are you not
+ashamed to add to the already intolerable burden of my years?
+Thirty!  No, Sir, not by five good years at least!  There now,
+you've made me tell my age!  You ought to blush for shame."
+
+Her uncle patted her firm, round cheek.  "Never a blush, my dear!
+You bear even your advanced age with quite sufficient ease and
+grace.  But now about this young Cameron," he continued, assuming a
+sternly judicial tone.
+
+"All I ask for him is a chance," said his niece earnestly.
+
+"A chance?  Why he will get every chance the law allows to clear
+himself."
+
+"There you are!" exclaimed Miss Bessie, in a despairing tone.
+"That's the way the lawyers and your manager talk.  They coolly and
+without a qualm get him arrested, this young boy who has never in
+all his life shown any sign of criminal tendency.  These horrid
+lawyers display their dreadful astuteness and ability in catching a
+lad who never tries to run away, and your manager pleads the rules
+of the Bank.  The rules!  Fancy rules against a young boy's whole
+life!"
+
+Her uncle rather winced at this.
+
+"And like a lot of sheep they follow each other in a circle; there
+is absolutely no independence, no initiative.  Why, they even went
+so far as to suggest that you could do nothing, that you were bound
+by rules and must follow like the rest of them; but I told them I
+knew better."
+
+"Ah!" said Sir Archibald in his most dignified manner.  "I trust I
+have a mind of my own, but--"
+
+"Exactly!  So I said to Mr. Dunn.  'Rules or no rules,' I said, 'my
+uncle will do the fair thing.'  And I know you will," cried Miss
+Brodie triumphantly.  "And if you look at it, there's a very big
+chance that the boy never did the thing, and certainly if he did it
+at all it was when he was quite incapable.  Oh, I know quite well
+what the lawyers say.  They go by the law,--they've got to,--but
+you--and--and--I go by the--the real facts of the case."  Sir
+Archibald coughed gently.  "I mean to say--well you know, Uncle,
+quite well, you can tell what a man is by--well, by his game."
+
+"His game!"
+
+"And by his eye."
+
+"His eye!  And his eye is--?"
+
+"Now, Uncle, be sensible!  I mean to say, if you could only see
+him.  Oh, I shall bring him to see you!" she cried, with a sudden
+inspiration.
+
+Sir Archibald held up a deprecating hand.  "Do not, I beg."
+
+"Well, Uncle, you can trust my judgment, you know you can.  You
+would trust me in--in--"  For a moment Miss Brodie was at a loss;
+then her eyes fell upon the grunting, comfortable old mother pig
+with her industrious litter.  "Well, don't I know good Wiltshires
+when I see them?"
+
+"Quite true," replied her uncle solemnly; "and therefore, men."
+
+"Uncle, you're very nearly rude."
+
+"I apologise," replied her uncle hastily.  "But now, Bessie, my
+dear girl, seriously, as to this case, you must understand that I
+cannot interfere.  The Bank--hem--the Bank is a great National--"
+
+Miss Bessie saw that the Guards were being called upon.  She
+hastened to bring up her reserves.  "I know, Uncle, I know!  I
+wouldn't for the world say a word against the Bank, but you see the
+case against the lad is at least doubtful."
+
+"I was going on to observe," resumed her uncle, judicially, "that
+the Bank--"
+
+"Don't misunderstand me, Uncle," cried his niece, realising that
+she had reached a moment of crisis.  "You know I would not for a
+moment presume to interfere with the Bank, but"--here she deployed
+her whole force,--"the lad's youth and folly; his previous good
+character, guaranteed by Dunn, who knows men; his glorious game--no
+man who wasn't straight could play such a game!--the large chance
+of his innocence, the small chance of his guilt; the hide-bound
+rigidity of lawyers and bank managers, dominated by mere rules and
+routine, in contrast with the open-minded independence of her
+uncle; the boy's utter helplessness; his own father having been
+ready to believe the worst,--just think of it, Uncle, his own
+father thinking of himself and of his family name--much he has ever
+done for his family name!--and not of his own boy, and"--here Miss
+Brodie's voice took a lower key--"and his mother died some five or
+six years ago, when he was thirteen or fourteen, and I know, you
+know, that is hard on a boy."  In spite of herself, and to her
+disgust, a tremor came into her voice and a rush of tears to her
+eyes.
+
+Her uncle was smitten with dismay.  Only on one terrible occasion
+since she had emerged from her teens had he seen his niece in
+tears.  The memory of that terrible day swept over his soul.
+Something desperate was doing.  Hard as the little man was to the
+world against which he had fought his way to his present position
+of distinction, to his niece he was soft-hearted as a mother.
+"There, there!" he exclaimed hastily.  "We'll give the boy a
+chance.  No mother, eh?  And a confounded prig for a father!  No
+wonder the boy goes all wrong!"  Then with a sudden vehemence he
+cried, striking one hand into the other, "No, by--! that is, we
+will certainly give the lad the benefit of the doubt.  Cheer up,
+lassie!  You've no need to look ashamed," for his niece was wiping
+her eyes in manifest disgust; "indeed," he said, with a heavy
+attempt at playfulness, "you are a most excellent diplomat."
+
+"Diplomat, Uncle!" cried the girl, vehement indignation in her
+voice and face.  "Diplomat!" she cried again.  "You don't mean that
+I've not been quite sincere?"
+
+"No, no, no; not in the least, my dear!  But that you have put your
+case with admirable force."
+
+"Oh," said the girl with a breath of relief, "I just put it as I
+feel it.  And it is not a bit my putting it, Uncle, but it is just
+that you are a dear and--well, a real sport; you love fair play."
+The girl suddenly threw her strong, young arms about her uncle's
+neck, drew him close to her, and kissed him almost as if she had
+been his mother.
+
+The little man was deeply touched, but with true Scotch horror of a
+demonstration he cried, "Tut, tut, lassie, ye're makin' an auld
+fule o' your uncle.  Come now, be sensible!"
+
+"Sensible!" echoed his niece, kissing him again.  "That's my living
+description among all my acquaintance.  It is their gentle way of
+reminding me that the ordinary feminine graces of sweetness and
+general loveliness are denied me."
+
+"And more fools they!" grunted her uncle.  "You're worth the hale
+caboodle o' them."
+
+That same evening there were others who shared this opinion, and
+none more enthusiastically than did Mr. Dunn, whom Miss Brodie
+chanced to meet just as she turned out of the Waverly Station.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Dunn," she cried, "how very fortunate!"  Her face glowed
+with excitement.
+
+"For me; yes, indeed!" said Mr. Dunn, warmly greeting her.
+
+"For me, for young Cameron, for us all," said Miss Brodie.  "Oh,
+Rob, is that you?" she continued, as her eye fell upon the
+youngster standing with cap off waiting her recognition.  "Look at
+this!" she flashed a letter before Dunn's face.  "What do you think
+of that?"
+
+Dunn took the letter.  "It's to Sheratt," he said, with a puzzled
+air.
+
+"Yes," cried Miss Brodie, mimicking his tone, "it's to Sheratt,
+from Sir Archibald, and it means that Cameron is safe.  The police
+will never--"
+
+"The police," cried Dunn, hastily, getting between young Rob and
+her and glancing at his brother, who stood looking from one to the
+other with a startled face.
+
+"How stupid!  The police are a truly wonderful body of men," she
+went on with enthusiasm.  "They look so splendid.  I saw some of
+them as I came along.  But never mind them now.  About this letter.
+What's to do?"
+
+Dunn glanced at his watch.  "We need every minute."  He stood a
+moment or two thinking deeply while Miss Brodie chatted eagerly
+with Rob, whose face retained its startled and anxious look.
+"First to Mr. Rae's office.  Come!" cried Mr. Dunn.
+
+"But this letter ought to go."
+
+"Yes, but first Mr. Rae's office."  Mr. Dunn had assumed command.
+His words shot out like bullets.
+
+Miss Brodie glanced at him with a new admiration in her face.  As a
+rule she objected to being ordered about, but somehow it seemed
+good to accept commands from this young man, whose usually genial
+face was now set in such resolute lines.
+
+"Here, Rob, you cut home and tell them not to wait dinner for me."
+
+"All right, Jack!"  But instead of tearing off as was his wont
+whenever his brother gave command, Rob lingered.  "Can't I wait a
+bit, Jack, to see--to see if anything--?"  Rob was striving hard to
+keep his voice in command and his face steady.  "It's Cameron,
+Jack.  I know!"  He turned his back on Miss Brodie, unwilling that
+she should see his lips quiver.
+
+"What are you talking about?" said his brother sharply.
+
+"Oh, it is all my stupid fault, Mr. Dunn," said Miss Brodie.  "Let
+him come along a bit with us.  I say, youngster, you are much too
+acute," she continued, as they went striding along together toward
+Mr. Rae's office.  "But will you believe me if I tell you something?
+Will you?  Straight now?"
+
+The boy glanced up into her honest blue eyes, and nodded his head.
+
+"Your friend Cameron is quite all right.  He was in some
+difficulty, but now he's quite all right.  Do you believe me?"
+
+The boy looked again steadily into her eyes.  The anxious fear
+passed out of his face, and once more he nodded; he knew he could
+not keep his voice quite steady.  But after a few paces he said to
+his brother, "I think I'll go now, Jack."  His mind was at rest;
+his idol was safe.
+
+"Oh, come along and protect me," cried Miss Brodie.  "These lawyer
+people terrify me."
+
+The boy smiled a happy smile.  "I'll go," he said resolutely.
+
+"Thanks, awfully," said Miss Brodie.  "I shall feel so much safer
+with you in the waiting room."
+
+It was a difficult matter to surprise Mr. Rae, and even more
+difficult to extract from him any sign of surprise, but when Dunn,
+leaving Miss Brodie and his brother in the anteroom, entered Mr.
+Rae's private office and laid the letter for Mr. Sheratt before
+him, remarking, "This letter is from Sir Archibald, and withdraws
+the prosecution," Mr. Rae stood speechless, gazing now at the
+letter in his hand, and now at Mr. Dunn's face.
+
+"God bless my soul!  This is unheard of.  How came you by this,
+Sir?"
+
+"Miss Brodie--" began Dunn.
+
+"Miss Brodie?"
+
+"She is in the waiting room, Sir."
+
+"Then, for heaven's sake, bring her in!  Davie, Davie!  Where is
+that man now?  Here, Davie, a message to Mr. Thomlinson."
+
+Davie entered with deliberate composure.
+
+"My compliments to Mr. Thomlinson, and ask if he would step over at
+once.  It is a matter of extreme urgency.  Be quick!"
+
+But Davie had his own mind as to the fitness of things.  "Wad a
+note no' be better, Sir?  Wull not--?"
+
+"Go, will you!" almost shouted Mr. Rae.
+
+Davie was so startled at Mr. Rae's unusual vehemence that he seized
+his cap and made for the door.  "He'll no' come for the like o'
+me," he said, pausing with the door-knob in his hand.  "It's no'
+respectable like tae--"
+
+"Man, will ye no' be gone?" cried Mr. Rae, rising from his chair.
+
+"I will that!" exclaimed Davie, banging the door after him.  "But,"
+he cried furiously, thrusting his head once more into the room, "if
+he'll no' come it's no' faut o' mine."  His voice rose higher and
+higher, and ended in a wrathful scream as Mr. Rae, driven to
+desperation, hurled a law book of some weight at his vanishing
+head.
+
+"The de'il take ye!  Ye'll be my deith yet."
+
+The book went crashing against the door-frame just as Miss Brodie
+was about to enter.  "I say," she cried, darting back.  "Heaven
+protect me!  Rob, save me!"
+
+Rob sprang to her side.  She stood for a moment gazing aghast at
+Mr. Dunn, who gazed back at her in equal surprise.  "Is this his
+'usual'?" she inquired.
+
+At that the door opened.  "Ah, Mr. Dunn, this is Miss Brodie, I
+suppose.  Come in, come in!"  Mr. Rae's manner was most bland.
+
+Miss Brodie gave him her hand with some hesitation.  "I'm very glad
+to meet you, Mr. Rae, but is this quite the usual method?  I mean
+to say, I've heard of having advice hurled at one's head, but I
+can't say that I ever was present at a demonstration of the
+method."
+
+"Oh," said Mr. Rae, with bland and gallant courtesy, "the method,
+my dear young lady, varies with the subject in hand."
+
+"Ah, the subject!"
+
+"And with the object in view."
+
+"Oh, I see."
+
+"But pray be seated.  And now explain this most wonderful
+phenomenon."  He tapped the letter.
+
+"Oh, that is quite simple," said Miss Brodie.  "I set the case of
+young Mr. Cameron before my uncle, and of course he at once saw
+that the only thing to do was withdraw the prosecution."
+
+Mr. Rae stood gazing steadily at her as if striving to take in the
+meaning of her words, the while screwing up his ear most violently
+till it stuck out like a horn upon the side of his shiny, bald
+head.  "Permit me to say, Miss Brodie," he said, with a deliberate
+and measured emphasis, "that you must be a most extraordinary young
+lady."  At this point Mr. Rae's smile broke forth in all its glory.
+
+"Oh, thank you, Mr. Rae," replied Miss Brodie, smiling responsively
+at him.  "You are most--"  But Mr. Rae's smile had vanished.
+"What!  I beg your pardon!"  Miss Brodie's smiling response was
+abruptly arrested by finding herself gazing at a face whose grave
+solemnity rebuked her smile as unwarranted levity.
+
+"Not at all, not at all!" said Mr. Rae.  "But now, there are
+matters demanding immediate action.  First, Mr. Sheratt must
+receive and act upon this letter without delay."  As he spoke he
+was scribbling hastily a note.  "Mr. Dunn, my young men have gone
+for the day.  Might I trouble you?"
+
+"Most certainly," cried Mr. Dunn.  "Is an answer wanted?"
+
+"Bring him with you, if possible; indeed, bring him whether it is
+possible or not.  But wait, it is past the hour appointed.  Already
+the officer has gone for young Cameron.  We must save him the
+humiliation of arrest."
+
+"Oh, could I not warn him?" cried Miss Brodie eagerly.  "No," she
+added, "Rob will go.  He is in the waiting room now, poor little
+chap.  It will be a joy to him."
+
+"It is just as well Rob should know nothing.  He is awfully fond of
+Cameron.  It would break his heart," said Mr. Dunn.
+
+"Oh, of course!  Quite unnecessary that he should know anything.
+We simply wish Cameron here at the earliest possible moment."
+
+Dunn went with his young brother down the stairs and out to the
+street.  "Now, Rob, you are to go to Cameron's lodgings and tell
+him that Mr. Rae wants him, and that I want him.  Hold on,
+youngster!" he cried, grabbing Rob by the collar, "do you
+understand?  It is very important that Cameron should get here as
+quick as he possibly can, and--I say, Rob," the big brother's eyes
+traveled over the darkening streets that led up into the old town,
+"you're not afraid?"
+
+"A wee bit," said Rob, tugging at the grasp on his collar; "but I
+don't care if I am."
+
+"Good boy!" cried his brother.  "Good little brick!  I wouldn't let
+you go, but it's simply got to be done, old chap.  Now fly!"  He
+held him just a moment longer to slap him on the back, then
+released his hold.  Dunn stood watching the little figure tearing
+up the North Bridge.  "Great little soul!" he muttered.  "Now for
+old Sheratt!"
+
+He put his head down and began to bore through the crowd toward Mr.
+Sheratt's house.  When he had gone but a little distance he was
+brought up short by a bang full in the stomach.  "Why, what the
+deuce!"
+
+"Dod gast ye!  Whaur are ye're een?"  It was Davie, breathless and
+furious from the impact.  "Wad ye walk ower me, dang ye?" cried the
+little man again.  Davie was Free Kirk, and therefore limited in
+the range of his vocabulary.
+
+"Oh!  That you, Davie?  I'm sorry I didn't see you."
+
+"A'm no' as big as a hoose, but a'm veesible."  And Davie walked
+wrathfully about his business.
+
+"Oh, quite," acknowledged Dunn cheerfully, hurrying on; "and
+tangible, as well."
+
+"He's comin'," cried Davie over his shoulder; "but gar it had been
+masel'," he added grudgingly, "catch me!"
+
+But Dunn was too far on his way to make reply.  Already his mind
+was on the meeting of the lawyers in Mr. Rae's office, and
+wondering what would come of it.  On this subject he meditated
+until he reached Mr. Sheratt's home.  Twice he rang the bell, still
+meditating.
+
+"By Jove, she is stunning!  She's a wonder!" he exclaimed to
+himself as he stood in Mr. Sheratt's drawing-room.  "She's got 'em
+all skinned a mile, as Martin would say."  It is safe to affirm
+that Mr. Dunn was not referring to the middle-aged and highly
+respectable maid who had opened the door to him.  It is equally
+safe to affirm that this was the unanimous verdict of the three
+men who, half an hour later, brought their deliberations to a
+conclusion, frankly acknowledging to each other that what they had
+one and all failed to achieve, the lady had accomplished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE WASTER'S REFUGE
+
+
+"I say, you blessed Colonial, what's come over you?"  Linklater was
+obviously disturbed.  He had just returned from a summer's yachting
+through the Norway fjords, brown and bursting with life.  The last
+half-hour he had been pouring forth his experiences to his friend
+Martin.  These experiences were some of them exciting, some of them
+of doubtful ethical quality, but all of them to Linklater at least
+interesting.  During the recital it was gradually borne in upon him
+that his friend Martin was changed.  Linklater, as the consciousness
+of the change in his friend grew upon him, was prepared to resent
+it.  "What the deuce is the matter with you?" he enquired.  "Are you
+ill?"
+
+"Never better.  I could at this present moment sit upon your fat
+and florid carcass."
+
+"Well, what then is wrong?  I say, you haven't--it isn't a girl, is
+it?"
+
+"Nothing so lucky for a bloomin' Colonial in this land of wealth
+and culture.  If I only dared!"
+
+"There's something," insisted Linklater; "but I've no doubt it will
+develop.  Meantime let us go out, and, in your own picturesque
+vocabulary, let us 'hit the flowing bowl.'"
+
+"No, Sir!" cried Martin emphatically.  "No more!  I am on the water
+wagon, and have been all summer."
+
+"I knew it was something," replied Linklater gloomily, "but I
+didn't think it was quite so bad as that.  No wonder you've had a
+hard summer!"
+
+"Best summer ever!" cried Martin.  "I only wish I had started two
+years ago when I came to this bibulous burgh."
+
+"How came it?  Religion?"
+
+"No; just horse sense, and the old chief."
+
+"Dunn!" exclaimed Linklater.  "I always knew he was against that
+sort of thing in training, but I didn't think he would carry it to
+this length."
+
+"Yes, Dunn!  I say, old boy, I've no doubt you think you know him,
+I thought so, too, but I've learned some this summer.  Here's a
+yarn, and it is impressive.  Dunn had planned an extensive walking
+tour in the Highlands; you know he came out of his exams awfully
+fagged.  Well, at this particular moment it happened that Balfour
+Murray--you know the chap that has been running that settlement
+joint in the Canongate for the last two years--proposes to Dunn
+that he should spend a few weeks in leading the young hopefuls in
+that interesting and uncleanly neighbourhood into paths of virtue
+and higher citizenship by way of soccer and kindred athletic
+stunts.  Dunn in his innocence agrees, whereupon Balfour Murray
+promptly develops a sharp attack of pneumonia, necessitating rest
+and change of air, leaving the poor old chief in the deadly breach.
+Of course, everybody knows what the chief would do in any deadly
+breach affair.  He gave up his Highland tour, shouldered the whole
+Canongate business, organised the thing as never before, inveigled
+all his friends into the same deadly breach, among the number your
+humble servant, who at the time was fiercely endeavouring in the
+last lap of the course to atone for a two years' loaf, organised a
+champion team which has licked the spots off everything in sight,
+and in short, has made the whole business a howling success; at the
+cost, however, of all worldly delights, including his Highland tour
+and the International."
+
+"Oh, I say!" moaned Linklater.  "It makes me quite ill to think of
+the old chief going off this way."
+
+Martin nodded sympathetically.  "Kind of 'Days that are no more,'
+'Lost leader' feeling, eh?"
+
+"Exactly, exactly!  Oh, it's rotten!  And you, too!  He's got you
+on this same pious line."
+
+"Look here," shouted Martin, with menace in his voice, "are you
+classifying me with the old chief?  Don't be a derned fool."
+
+Linklater brightened perceptibly.  "Now you're getting a little
+natural," he said in a hopeful tone.
+
+"Oh, I suppose you'd like to hear me string out a lot of damns."
+
+"Well, it might help.  I wouldn't feel quite so lonely.  But don't
+violate--"
+
+"I'd do it if I thought it would really increase your comfort,
+though I know I'd feel like an infernal ass.  I've got new light
+upon this 'damning' business.  I've come to regard it as the refuge
+of the mentally inert, not to say imbecile, who have lost the
+capacity for originality and force in speech.  For me, I am cured."
+
+"Ah!" said Linklater.  "Dunn again, I suppose."
+
+"Not a bit!  Clear case of psychological reaction.  After listening
+to the Canongate experts I was immediately conscious of an
+overwhelming and mortifying sense of inadequacy, of amateurishness;
+hence I quit.  Besides, of course, the chief is making rather a
+point of uplifting the Canongate forms of speech."
+
+Linklater gazed steadily at this friend, then said with mournful
+deliberation, "You don't drink, you don't swear, you don't smoke--"
+
+"Oh, that's your grouch, is it?" cried Martin.  "Forgive me; here's
+my pouch, old chap; or wait, here's something altogether finer than
+anything you've been accustomed to.  I was at old Kingston's last
+night, and the old boy would have me load up with his finest.  You
+know I've been working with him this summer.  Awfully fine for me!
+Dunn got me on; or rather, his governor.  There you are now!  Smoke
+that with reverence."
+
+"Ah," sighed Linklater, as he drew in his first whiff, "there is
+still something left to live for.  Now tell me, what about
+Cameron?"
+
+"Oh, Cameron!  Cameron's all up a tree.  The last time I saw him,
+by Jove, I was glad it was in the open daylight and on a frequented
+street.  His face and manner suggested Roderick Dhu, The Black
+Douglas, and all the rest of that interesting gang of cutthroats.
+I can't bring myself to talk of Cameron.  He's been the old chief's
+relaxation during dog-days.  It makes me hot to see Dunn with that
+chap."
+
+"Why, what's the trouble?"
+
+"He tried him out in half a dozen positions, in every one of which
+he proved a dead failure.  The last was in Mr. Rae's office, a
+lawyer, you know, Writer, to use your lucid and luminous speech.
+That experiment proved the climax."  At the memory of that
+experience Martin laughed loud and long.  "It was funny!  Mr. Rae,
+the cool, dignified, methodical, exact man of the law, struggling
+to lick into shape this haughty Highland chieftain, who in his
+heart scorned the whole silly business.  The result, the complete
+disorganisation of Mr. Rae's business, and total demoralisation of
+Mr. Rae's office staff, who one and all swore allegiance to the
+young chief.  Finally, when Mr. Rae had reached the depths of
+desperation, Cameron graciously deigned to inform his boss that he
+found the office and its claims quite insupportable."
+
+"Oh, it must have been funny.  What happened?"
+
+"What happened?  You bet old Rae fell on his neck with tears of
+joy, and sent him off with a handsome honorarium, as your gentle
+speech has it.  That was a fortnight ago.  Then Dunn, in despair,
+took Cameron off to his native haunts, and there he is to this day.
+By the same token, this is the very afternoon that Dunn returns.
+Let us go to meet him with cornets and cymbals!  The unexpected
+pleasure of your return made me quite forget.  But won't he revel
+in you, old boy!"
+
+"I don't know about that," said Linklater gloomily.  "I've a kind
+of feeling that I've dropped out of this combination."
+
+"What?"  Then Martin fell upon him.
+
+But if Martin's attempts to relieve his friend of melancholy
+forebodings were not wholly successful, Dunn's shout of joy and his
+double-handed shake as he grappled Linklater to him, drove from
+that young man's heart the last lingering shade of doubt as to his
+standing with his friends.
+
+On his way home Dunn dropped into Martin's diggings for a "crack,"
+and for an hour the three friends reviewed the summer's happenings,
+each finding in the experience of the others as keen a joy as in
+his own.
+
+Linklater's holiday had been the most fruitful in exciting
+incident.  For two months he and his crew had dodged about among
+quaint Norwegian harbours and in and out of fjords of wonderful
+beauty.  Storms they had weathered and calms they had endured; lazy
+days they had spent, swimming, fishing, loafing; and wild days in
+fighting gales and high-running seas that threatened to bury them
+and their crew beneath their white-topped mountainous peaks.
+
+"I say, that must have been great," cried Dunn with enthusiastic
+delight in his friend's experiences.
+
+"It sounds good, even in the telling," cried Martin, who had been
+listening with envious ears.  "Now my experiences are quite other.
+One word describes them, grind, grind, grind, day in and day out,
+in a gallant but futile attempt to justify the wisdom of my late
+examiners in granting me my Triple."
+
+"Don't listen to him, Linklater," said Dunn.  "I happen to know
+that he came through with banners flying and drums beating; and he
+has turned into no end of a surgeon.  I've heard old Kingston on
+him."
+
+"But what about you, Dunn?" asked Linklater, with a kind of curious
+uncertainty in his voice, as if dreading a tale of calamity.
+
+"Oh, I've loafed about town a little, golfing a bit and slumming a
+bit for a chap that got ill, and in spare moments looking after
+Martin here."
+
+"And the International?"
+
+Dunn hesitated.
+
+"Come on, old chap," said Martin, "take your medicine."
+
+"Well," admitted Dunn, "I had to chuck it.  But," he hastened to
+add, "Nesbitt has got the thing in fine shape, though of course
+lacking the two brilliant quarters of last year and the half--for
+Cameron's out of it--it's rather rough on Nesbitt."
+
+"Oh, I say!  It's rotten, it's really ghastly!  How could you do
+it, Dunn?" said Linklater.  "I could weep tears of blood."
+
+To this Dunn made no reply.  His disappointment was even yet too
+keen for him to treat it lightly.  "Anything else seemed quite
+impossible," at length he said; "I had to chuck it."
+
+"By the way," said Martin, "how's Cameron?"
+
+Again Dunn paused.  "I wish I could tell you.  He's had hard luck
+this summer.  He somehow can't get hold of himself.  In fact, I'm
+quite worried about Cameron.  I can't tell you chaps the whole
+story, but last spring he had a really bad jolt."
+
+"Well, what's he going to do?" Martin asked, somewhat impatiently.
+
+"I wish I knew," replied Dunn gloomily.  "There seems nothing he
+can get here that's suitable.  I'm afraid he will have to try the
+Colonies; Canada for preference."
+
+"Oh, I say, Dunn," exclaimed Martin, "it can't really be as bad as
+all that?"
+
+Dunn laughed.  "I apologise, old chap.  That was rather a bad
+break, wasn't it?  But all the same, to a Scotchman, and especially
+to a Highlander, to leave home and friends and all that sort of
+thing, you know--"
+
+"No, he doesn't know," cried Linklater.  "The barbarian!  How could
+he?"
+
+"No, thank God," replied Martin fervently, "I don't know!  To my
+mind any man that has a chance to go to Canada on a good job ought
+to call in his friends and neighbours to rejoice with him."
+
+"But I say, that reminds me," said Dunn.  "Mr. Rae is coming to
+have a talk with my governor and me about this very thing to-morrow
+night.  I'd like awfully if you could drop in, Martin; and you,
+too, Linklater."
+
+Linklater declined.  "My folks have something on, I fear."
+
+Martin hesitated, protesting that there was "altogether too much
+of this coddling business" in the matter of Cameron's future.
+"Besides, my work is rather crowding me."
+
+"Oh, my pious ancestors!  Work!" exclaimed Linklater in disgust.
+"At this season of the year!  Come, Martin, this pose is unworthy
+of you."
+
+"If you could, old man," said Dunn earnestly, "we won't keep you
+long.  It would be a great help to us all."
+
+"All right, I'll come," said Martin.
+
+"There'll be no one there but Mr. Rae.  We'll just have a smoke and
+a chat."
+
+But in this expectation Dunn was reckoning without his young
+brother, Rob, who, ever since a certain momentous evening, had
+entered into a covenant of comradeship with the young lady who had
+figured so prominently in the deliverance of his beloved Cameron
+from pending evil, and who during the summer had allowed no week to
+pass without spending at least a part of a day with her.  On this
+particular evening, having obtained leave from his mother, the
+young gentle man had succeeded in persuading his friend to accept
+an invitation to dinner, assuring her that no one would be there
+except Jack, who was to arrive home the day before.
+
+The conclave of Cameron's friends found themselves, therefore,
+unexpectedly reinforced by the presence of Miss Brodie, to the
+unmingled joy of all of them, although in Martin's case his joy was
+tinged with a certain fear, for he stood in awe of the young lady,
+both because of her reputation for cleverness, and because of the
+grand air which, when it pleased her, she could assume.  Martin,
+too, stood in wholesome awe of Doctor Dunn, whose quiet dignity and
+old-time courtesy exercised a chastening influence upon the young
+man's somewhat picturesque style of language and exuberance of
+metaphor.  But with Mrs. Dunn he felt quite at ease, for with that
+gentle, kindly soul, her boys' friends were her friends and without
+question she took them to her motherly heart.
+
+Immediately upon Mr. Rae's arrival Cameron's future became the
+subject of conversation, and it required only the briefest
+discussion to arrive at the melancholy, inevitable conclusion that,
+as Mr. Rae put it, "for a young man of his peculiar temperament,
+training, and habits, Scotland was clearly impossible."
+
+"But I have no doubt," continued that excellent adviser, "that in
+Canada, where the demand for a high standard of efficiency is less
+exacting, and where openings are more plentiful, the young man will
+do very well indeed."
+
+Martin took the lawyer up somewhat sharply.  "In other words, I
+understand you to mean that the man who is a failure in Scotland
+may become a success in Canada."
+
+"Exactly so.  Would you not say so, Mr. Martin?"
+
+"It depends entirely upon the cause of failure.  If failure arises
+from unfitness, his chances in Canada are infinitely less than in
+Scotland."
+
+"And why?" inquired Miss Brodie somewhat impatiently.
+
+Martin hesitated.  It was extremely difficult in the atmosphere of
+that home to criticise one whom he knew to be considered as a
+friend of the family.
+
+"Why, pray?" repeated Miss Brodie.
+
+"Well, of course," began Martin hesitatingly, "comparisons are
+always odious."
+
+"Oh, we can bear them."  Miss Brodie's smile was slightly
+sarcastic.
+
+"Well, then, speaking generally," said Martin, somewhat nettled by
+her smile, "in this country there are heaps of chaps that simply
+can't fall down because of the supports that surround them,
+supports of custom, tradition, not to speak of their countless
+friends, sisters, cousins, and aunts; if they're anyways half
+decent they're kept a going; whereas if they are in a new country
+and with few friends, they must stand alone or fall.  Here the
+crowd support them; there the crowd, eager to get on, shove them
+aside or trample them down."
+
+"Rather a ghastly picture that," said Miss Brodie.
+
+"But true; that is, of the unfit.  People haven't time to bother
+with them; the game is too keen."
+
+"Surely the picture is overdrawn," said Doctor Dunn.
+
+"It may be, Sir," replied Martin, "but I have seen so many young
+fellows who had been shipped out to Canada because they were
+failures at home.  I have seen them in very hard luck."
+
+"And what about the fit?" inquired Miss Brodie.
+
+"They get credit for every ounce that's in them."
+
+"But that is so in Scotland as well."
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Brodie, hardly.  Here even strong men and fit men
+have to wait half a lifetime for the chance that calls for all
+that's in them.  They must march in the procession and the pace is
+leisurely.  In Canada the chances come every day, and the man
+that's ready jumps in and wins."
+
+"Ah, I see!" exclaimed Miss Brodie.  "There are more ladders by
+which to climb."
+
+"Yes," cried Martin, "and fewer men on them."
+
+"But," argued Dunn, "there are other causes of failure in this
+country.  Many a young fellow, for instance, cannot get a congenial
+position."
+
+"Yes," replied Martin quickly, "because you won't let him; your
+caste law forbids.  With us a man can do anything decent and no one
+thinks the less of him."
+
+"Ah, I see!" again cried Miss Brodie, more eagerly than before.
+"Not only more ladders, but more kinds of ladders."
+
+"Exactly," said Martin with an approving glance.  "And he must not
+be too long in the choosing."
+
+"Then, Mr. Martin," said Mr. Rae, "what would you suggest for our
+young friend?"
+
+But this Martin refused to answer.
+
+"Surely there are openings for a young fellow in Canada," said
+Dunn.  "Take a fellow like myself.  What could I do?"
+
+"You?" cried Martin, his eyes shining with loving enthusiasm.
+"There are doors open on every business street in every town and
+city in Canada for you, or for any fellow who has brain or brawn to
+sell and who will take any kind of a job and stay with it."
+
+"Well, what job, for instance?"
+
+"What job?" cried Martin.  "Heaps of them."
+
+At this point a diversion was created by the entrance of "Lily"
+Laughton.  Both Martin and Dunn envied the easy grace of his
+manner, his perfect self-possession, as he greeted each member of
+the company.  For each he had exactly the right word.  Miss Brodie
+he greeted with an exaggerated devotion, but when he shook hands
+with Dunn there was no mistaking the genuine warmth of his
+affection.
+
+"Heard you were home, old chap, so I couldn't help dropping in.  Of
+course I knew that Mrs. Dunn would be sure to be here, and I more
+than suspected that my dear Miss Brodie," here he swept her an
+elaborate bow, "whom I discovered to be away from her own home,
+might be found in this pleasant company."
+
+"Yes, I fear that my devotion to her youngest boy is leading me
+to overstep the bounds of even Mrs. Dunn's vast and generous
+hospitality."
+
+"Not a bit, my dear," replied Mrs. Dunn kindly.  "You bring
+sunshine with you, and you do us all good."
+
+"Exactly my sentiments!" exclaimed "Lily" with enthusiasm.  "But
+what are you all doing?  Just having a 'collyshog'?"
+
+For a moment no one replied; then Dunn said, "We were just talking
+about Cameron, who is thinking of going to Canada."
+
+"To Canada of all places!" exclaimed "Lily" in tones of horrified
+surprise.  "How truly dreadful!  But why should Cameron of all
+beings exile himself in those remote and barbarous regions?"
+
+"And why should he not?" cried Miss Brodie.  "What is there for a
+young man of spirit in Mr. Cameron's position in this country?"
+
+"Why, my dear Miss Brodie, how can you ask?  Just think of the
+heaps of things, of perfectly delicious things, Cameron can do,--
+the Highlands in summer, Edinburgh, London, in the season, a run to
+the Continent!  Just think of the wild possibility of a life of
+unalloyed bliss!"
+
+"Don't be silly!" said Miss Brodie.  "We are talking seriously."
+
+"Seriously!  Why, my dear Miss Brodie, do you imagine--?"
+
+"But what could he do for a life-work?" said Dunn.  "A fellow must
+have something to do."
+
+"Oh, dear, I suppose so," said "Lily" with a sigh.  "But surely he
+could have some position in an office or something!"
+
+"Exactly!" replied Miss Brodie.  "How beautifully you put it!  Now
+Mr. Martin was just about to tell us of the things a man could do
+in Canada when you interrupted."
+
+"Awfully sorry, Martin.  I apologise.  Please go on.  What do the
+natives do in Canada?"
+
+"Please don't pay any attention to him, Mr. Martin.  I am extremely
+interested.  Now tell me, what are the openings for a young fellow
+in Canada?  You said the professions are all wide open."
+
+It took a little persuasion to get Martin started again, so
+disgusted was he with Laughton's references to his native country.
+"Yes, Miss Brodie, the professions are all wide open, but of course
+men must enter as they do here, but with a difference.  Take law,
+for instance:  Knew a chap--went into an office at ten dollars a
+month--didn't know a thing about it.  In three months he was raised
+to twenty dollars, and within a year to forty dollars.  In three or
+four years he had passed his exams, got a junior partnership worth
+easily two thousand dollars a year.  They wanted that chap, and
+wanted him badly.  But take business:  That chap goes into a store
+and--"
+
+"A store?" inquired "Lily."
+
+"Yes, a shop you call it here; say a drygoods--"
+
+"Drygoods?  What extraordinary terms these Colonials use!"
+
+"Oh, draper's shop," said Dunn impatiently.  "Go on, Martin; don't
+mind him."
+
+"A draper's clerk!" echoed "Lily."  "To sell tapes and things?"
+
+"Yes," replied Martin stoutly; "or groceries."
+
+"Do you by any chance mean that a University man, a gentleman,
+takes a position in a grocer's shop to sell butter and cheese?"
+
+"I mean just that," said Martin firmly.
+
+"Oh, please!" said "Lily" with a violent shudder.  "It is too
+awful!"
+
+"There you are!  You wouldn't demean yourself."
+
+"Not I!" said "Lily" fervently.
+
+"Or disgrace your friends.  You want a gentleman's job.  There are
+not enough to go round in Canada."
+
+"Oh, go on," said Miss Brodie impatiently.  "'Lily,' we must ask
+you to not interrupt.  What happens?  Does he stay there?"
+
+"Not he!" said Martin.  "From the small business he goes to bigger
+business.  First thing you know a man wants him for a big job and
+off he goes.  Meantime he saves his money, invests wisely.  Soon he
+is his own boss."
+
+"That's fine!" cried Miss Brodie.  "Go on, Mr. Martin.  Start him
+lower down."
+
+"All right," said Martin, directing his attention solely to the
+young lady.  "Here's an actual case.  A young fellow from Scotland
+found himself strapped--"
+
+"Strapped?  What DOES he mean?" said "Lily" in an appealing voice.
+
+"On the rocks."
+
+"Rocks?"
+
+"Dear me!" cried Miss Brodie impatiently.  "You are terribly
+lacking in imagination.  Broke, he means."
+
+"Oh, thanks!"
+
+"Well, finds himself broke," said Martin; "gets a shovel, jumps
+into a cellar--"
+
+"And why a cellar, pray?" inquires "Lily" mildly.  "To hide himself
+from the public?"
+
+"Not at all; they were digging a cellar preparatory to building a
+house."
+
+"Oh!"
+
+"He jumps in, blisters his hands, breaks his back--but he stays
+with the job.  In a week the boss makes him timekeeper; in three
+months he himself is boss of a small gang; the next year he is made
+foreman at a hundred a month or so."
+
+"A hundred a month?" cries "Lily" in astonishment.  "Oh, Martin,
+please!  We are green, but a hundred pounds a month--!"
+
+"Dollars," said Martin shortly.  "Don't be an ass!  I beg pardon,"
+he added, turning to Mrs. Dunn, who was meantime greatly amused.
+
+"A hundred dollars a month; that is--I am so weak in arithmetic--
+twenty pounds, I understand.  Go on, Martin; I'm waiting for the
+carriage and pair."
+
+"That's where you get left," said Martin.  "No carriage and pair
+for this chap yet awhile; overalls and slouch hat for the next five
+years for him.  Then he begins contracting on his own."
+
+"I beg your pardon," says "Lily."
+
+"I mean he begins taking jobs on his own."
+
+"Great!" cried Miss Brodie.
+
+"Or," continued Martin, now fairly started on a favourite theme,
+"there are the railroads all shouting for men of experience,
+whether in the construction department or in the operating
+department."
+
+"Does anyone here happen to understand him?" inquires "Lily"
+faintly.
+
+"Certainly," cried Miss Brodie; "all the intelligent people do.  At
+least, I've a kind of notion there are big things doing.  I only
+wish I were a man!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Brodie, how can you?" cried "Lily."  "Think of us in such
+a contingency!"
+
+"But," said Mr. Rae, "all of this is most interesting, extremely
+interesting, Mr. Martin.  Still, they cannot all arrive at these
+exalted positions."
+
+"No, Mr. Rae.  I may have given that impression.  I confess to a
+little madness when I begin talking Canada."
+
+"Ah!" exclaimed "Lily."
+
+"But I said men of brawn and brains, you remember."
+
+"And bounce, to perfect the alliteration," murmured "Lily."
+
+"Yes, bounce, too," said Martin; "at least, he must never take
+back-water; he must be ready to attempt anything, even the
+impossible."
+
+"That's the splendid thing about it!" cried Miss Brodie.  "You're
+entirely on your own and you never say die!"
+
+"Oh, my dear Miss Brodie," moaned "Lily" in piteous accents, "you
+are so fearfully energetic!  And then, it's all very splendid, but
+just think of a--of a gentleman having to potter around among
+butter and cheese, or mess about in muddy cellars!  Ugh!
+Positively GHAWSTLY!  I would simply die."
+
+"Oh, no, you wouldn't, 'Lily,'" said Martin kindly.  "We have
+afternoon teas and Browning Clubs, too, you must remember, and some
+'cultchaw' and that sort of thing."
+
+There was a joyous shout from Dunn.
+
+"But, Mr. Martin," persisted Mr. Rae, whose mind was set in
+arriving at a solution of the problem in hand, "I have understood
+that agriculture was the chief pursuit in Canada."
+
+"Farming!  Yes, it is, but of course that means capital.  Good land
+in Ontario means seventy-five to a hundred dollars per acre, and a
+man can't do with less than a hundred acres; besides, farming is
+getting to be a science now-a-days, Sir."
+
+"Ah, quite true!  But to a young man bred on a farm in this
+country--"
+
+"Excuse me, Mr. Rae," replied Martin quickly, "there is no such
+thing in Canada as a gentleman farmer.  The farmer works with his
+men."
+
+"Do you mean that he actually works?" inquired "Lily."  "With the
+plough and hoe, and that sort of thing?"
+
+"Works all day long, as long as any of his men, and indeed longer."
+
+"And does he actually live--? of course he doesn't eat with his
+servants?" said "Lily" in a tone that deprecated the preposterous
+proposition.
+
+"They all eat together in the big kitchen," replied Martin.
+
+"How awful!" gasped "Lily."
+
+"My father does," replied Martin, a little colour rising in his
+cheek, "and my mother, and my brothers.  They all eat with the men;
+my sister, too, except when she waits on table."
+
+"Fine!" exclaimed Miss Brodie.  "And why not?  'Lily,' I'm afraid
+you're horribly snobbish."
+
+"Thank the Lord," said "Lily" devoutly, "I live in this beloved
+Scotland!"
+
+"But, Mr. Martin, forgive my persistence, I understand there is
+cheaper land in certain parts of Canada; in, say, ManitoBAW."
+
+"Ah, yes, Sir, of course, lots of it; square miles of it!" cried
+Martin with enthusiasm.  "The very best out of doors, and cheap,
+but I fancy there are some hardships in Manitoba."
+
+"But I see by the public newspapers," continued Mr. Rae, "that
+there is a very large movement in the way of emigration toward that
+country."
+
+"Yes, there's a great boom on in Manitoba just now."
+
+"Boom?" said "Lily."  "And what exactly may that be in the
+vernacular?"
+
+"I take it," said Mr. Rae, evidently determined not to allow the
+conversation to get out of his hands, "you mean a great excitement
+consequent upon the emigration and the natural rise in land
+values?"
+
+"Yes, Sir," cried Martin, "you've hit it exactly."
+
+"Then would there not be opportunity to secure a considerable
+amount of land at a low figure in that country?"
+
+"Most certainly!  But it's fair to say that success there means
+work and hardship and privation.  Of course it is always so in a
+new country; it was so in Ontario.  Why, the new settlers in
+Manitoba don't know what hardships mean in comparison with those
+that faced the early settlers in Ontario.  My father, when a little
+boy of ten years, went with his father into the solid forest; you
+don't know what that means in this country, and no one can who has
+not seen a solid mass of green reaching from the ground a hundred
+feet high without a break in it except where the trail enters.
+Into that solid forest in single file went my grandfather, his two
+little boys, and one ox carrying a bag of flour, some pork and
+stuff.  By a mark on a tree they found the corner of their farm."
+Martin paused.
+
+"Do go on," said Miss Brodie.  "Tell me the very first thing he
+did."
+
+But Martin seemed to hesitate.  "Well," he began slowly, "I've
+often heard my father tell it.  When they came to that tree with
+the mark on it, grandfather said, 'Boys, we have reached our home.
+Let us thank God.'  He went up to a big spruce tree, drove his ax
+in to the butt, then kneeled down with the two little boys beside
+him, and I have heard my father say that when he looked away up
+between the big trees and saw the bit of blue sky there, he thought
+God was listening at that blue hole between the tree-tops."  Martin
+paused abruptly, and for a few moments silence held the group.
+Then Doctor Dunn, clearing his throat, said with quiet emphasis:
+
+"And he was right, my boy; make no doubt of that."
+
+"Then?" inquired Miss Brodie softly.  "If you don't mind."
+
+Martin laughed.  "Then they had grub, and that afternoon grandfather
+cut the trees and the boys limbed them off, clearing the ground
+where the first house stood.  That night they slept in a little
+brush hut that did them for a house until grandmother came two weeks
+later."
+
+"What?" said Doctor Dunn.  "Your grandmother went into the forest?"
+
+"Yes, Sir," said Martin; "and two miles of solid black bush
+stretched between her and the next woman."
+
+"Why, of course, my dear," said Mrs. Dunn, taking part for the
+first time in the conversation.  "What else?"
+
+They all laughed.
+
+"Of course, Mother," said her eldest son, "that's what you would
+do."
+
+"So would I, Mamma, wouldn't I?" whispered Rob, leaning towards
+her.
+
+"Certainly, my dear," replied his mother; "I haven't the slightest
+doubt."
+
+"And so would any woman worth her salt if she loved her husband,"
+cried Miss Brodie with great emphasis.
+
+"Why, why," cried Doctor Dunn, "it's the same old breed, Mother."
+
+"But in Manitoba--?" began Mr. Rae, still clinging to the subject.
+
+"Oh, in Manitoba there is no forest to cut.  However, there are
+other difficulties.  Still, hundreds are crowding in, and any man
+who has the courage and the nerve to stay with it can get on."
+
+"And what did they do for schools?" said Mrs. Dunn, returning to
+the theme that had so greatly interested her.
+
+"There were no schools until father was too big to be spared to go
+except for a few weeks in the winter."
+
+"How big do you mean?"
+
+"Say fifteen."
+
+"Fifteen!" exclaimed Miss Brodie.  "A mere infant!"
+
+"Infant!" said Martin.  "Not much!  At fifteen my father was doing
+a man's full work in the bush and on the farm, and when he grew to
+be a man he cleared most of his own land, too.  Why, when I was
+eleven I drove my team all day on the farm."
+
+"And how did you get your education, Mr. Martin?"
+
+"Oh, they kept me at school pretty steadily, except in harvest and
+hay time, until I was fourteen, and after that in the winter
+months.  When I was sixteen I got a teacher's certificate, and then
+it was easy enough."
+
+"And did you put yourself through college?" inquired Mr. Rae, both
+interest and admiration in his voice, for now they were on ground
+familiar in his own experience.
+
+"Why, yes, mostly.  Father helped, I suspect more than he ought to,
+but he was anxious for me to get through."
+
+"Rob," cried Miss Brodie suddenly, "let's go!  What do you say?
+We'll get a big bit of that land in the West, and won't it be
+splendid to build up our own estate and all that?"
+
+Rob glanced from her into his mother's face.  "I'd like it fine,
+Mamma," he said in a low voice, slipping his hand into hers.
+
+"But what about me, Rob?" said his mother, smiling tenderly down
+into the eager face.
+
+"Oh, I'd come back for you, Mamma."
+
+"Hold on there, youngster," said his elder brother, "there are
+others that might have something to say about that.  But I say,
+Martin," continued Dunn, "we hear a lot about the big ranches
+further West."
+
+"Yes, in Alberta, but I confess I don't know much about them.  The
+railways are just building and people are beginning to go in.  But
+ranching needs capital, too.  It must be a great life!  They
+practically live in the saddle.  It's a glorious country!"
+
+"On the whole, then," said Mr. Rae, as if summing up the
+discussion, "a young man has better opportunities of making his
+fortune, so to speak, in the far West rather than in, say,
+Ontario."
+
+"I didn't speak of fortune, Mr. Rae,--fortune is a chance thing,
+more or less,--but what I say is this, that any young man not
+afraid of work, of any kind of work, and willing to stay with his
+job, can make a living and get a home in any part of Canada, with a
+bigger chance of fortune in the West."
+
+"All I say, Mr. Rae, is this," said Miss Brodie emphatically, "that
+I only wish I were a man with just such a chance as young Cameron!"
+
+"Ah, my dear young lady, if all the young men were possessed of
+your spirit, it would matter little where they went, for they would
+achieve distinct success."  As he spoke Mr. Rae's smile burst forth
+in all its effulgent glory.
+
+"Dear Mr. Rae, how very clever of you to discover that!" replied
+Miss Brodie, smiling sweetly into Mr. Rae's radiant face.  "And how
+very sweet of you--ah, I beg your pardon; that is--"  The
+disconcerting rapidity with which Mr. Rae's smile gave place to an
+appearance of grave, of even severe solemnity, threw Miss Brodie
+quite "out of her stride," as Martin said afterward, and left her
+floundering in a hopeless attempt to complete her compliment.
+
+Her confusion was the occasion of unlimited joy to "Lily," who was
+not unfamiliar with this facial phenomenon on the part of Mr. Rae.
+"Oh, I say!" he cried to Dunn in a gale of smothered laughter, "how
+does the dear man do it?  It is really too lovely!  I must learn
+the trick of that.  I have never seen anything quite so appallingly
+flabbergasting."
+
+Meantime Mr. Rae was blandly assisting Miss Brodie out of her
+dilemma.  "Not at all, Miss Brodie, not at all!  But," he
+continued, throwing his smile about the room, "I think, Doctor
+Dunn, we have reason to congratulate ourselves upon not only a
+pleasant but an extremely profitable evening--ah--as far as the
+matter in hand is concerned.  I hope to have further speech with
+our young friend," bowing to Mr. Martin and bringing his smile to
+bear upon that young gentleman.
+
+"Oh, certainly," began Martin with ready geniality, "whenever you--
+eh?  What did you say, Sir?  I didn't quite--"
+
+But Mr. Rae was already bidding Mrs. Dunn goodnight, with a face of
+preternatural gravity.
+
+"What the deuce!" said Martin, turning to his friend Dunn.  "Does
+the old boy often go off at half-cock that way?  He'll hurt himself
+some time, sure."
+
+"Isn't it awful?" said Dunn.  "He's got me a few times that way,
+too.  But I say, old boy, we're awfully grateful to you for
+coming."
+
+"I feel like a fool," said Martin; "as if I'd been delivering a
+lecture."
+
+"Don't think it," cried Miss Brodie, who had drawn near.  "You've
+been perfectly lovely, and I am so glad to have got to know you
+better.  For me, I am quite resolved to go to Canada."
+
+"But do you think they can really spare us all, Miss Brodie?"
+exclaimed "Lily" in an anxious voice.  "For, of course, if you go
+we must."
+
+"No, 'Lily,' I'm quite sure they can't spare you.  Just think, what
+could the Browning-Wagner circle do?  Besides, what could we do
+with you when we were all working, for I can quite see that there
+is no use going to Canada unless you mean to work?"
+
+"You've got it, Miss Brodie," said Martin.  "My lecture is not in
+vain.  There is no use going to Canada unless you mean to work and
+to stay with the job till the cows come home."
+
+"Till the cows come--?" gasped "Lily."
+
+"Oh, never mind him, Mr. Martin!  Come, 'Lily' dear, I'll explain
+it to you on the way home.  Good-night, Mr. Dunn; we've had a jolly
+evening.  And as for our friend Cameron, I've ceased to pity him;
+on the contrary, I envy him his luck."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+FAREWELL TO CUAGH OIR
+
+
+Once more the golden light of a sunny spring day was shining on the
+sapphire loch at the bottom, and overflowing at the rim of the
+Cuagh Oir.  But for all its flowing gold, there was grief in the
+Glen--grief deep and silent, like the quiet waters of the little
+loch.  It was seen in the grave faces of the men who gathered at
+the "smiddy."  It was heard in the cadence of the voices of the
+women as they gathered to "kalie" (Ceilidh) in the little cottages
+that fringed the loch's side, or dotted the heather-clad slopes.
+It even checked the boisterous play of the bairns as they came in
+from school.  It lay like a cloud on the Cuagh, and heavy on the
+hearts that made up the little hill-girt community of one hundred
+souls, or more.
+
+And the grief was this, that on the "morrow's morn" Mary Robertson's
+son was departing from the Glen "neffer to return for effermore," as
+Donald of the House farm put it, with a face gloomy as the loch on a
+dark winter's day.
+
+"A leaving" was ever an occasion of wailing to the Glen, and many
+a leaving had the Glen known during the last fifty years.  For
+wherever the tartan waved, and the bonnie feathers danced for the
+glory of the Empire, sons of the Glen were ever to be found; but
+not for fifty years had the heart of the Glen known the luxury of a
+single rallying centre for their pride and their love till the
+"young chentleman," young Mr. Allan, began to go in and out among
+them.  And as he grew into manhood so grew their pride in him.  And
+as, from time to time, at the Great Games he began to win glory for
+the Glen with his feats of skill and strength, and upon the pipes,
+and in the dances, their pride in him grew until it passed all
+limits.  Had he not, the very year before he went to the college,
+cut the comb of the "Cock of the North" from Glen Urquhart, in
+running and jumping; and the very same year had he not wrested from
+Callum Bheg, the pride of Athole, the coveted badge of Special
+Distinction in Highland Dancing?  Then later, when the schoolmaster
+would read from the Inverness Courier to one group after another at
+the post office and at the "smiddy" (it was only fear of the elder
+MacPherson, that kept the master from reading it aloud at the kirk
+door before the service) accounts of the "remarkable playing" of
+Cameron, the brilliant young "half-back" of the Academy in
+Edinburgh, the Glen settled down into an assured conviction that it
+had reached the pinnacle of vicarious glory, and that in all
+Scotland there was none to compare with their young "chieftain" as,
+quite ignoring the Captain, they loved to call him.
+
+And there was more than pride in him, for on his holidays he came
+back to the Glen unspoiled by all his honours and achievements, and
+went about among them "jist like ain o' their ain sels," accepting
+their homage as his right, but giving them in return, according to
+their various stations, due respect and honour, and their love grew
+greater than their pride.
+
+But the "morrow's morn" he was leaving the Glen, and, worse than
+all, no one knew for why.  A mystery hung over the cause of his
+going, a mystery deepened by his own bearing during the past twelve
+months, for all these months a heavy gloom had shrouded him, and
+from all that had once been his delight and their glory he had
+withdrawn.  The challenge, indeed, from the men of Glen Urquhart
+which he had accepted long ago, he refused not, but even the
+overwhelming defeat which he had administered to his haughty
+challengers, had apparently brought him no more than a passing
+gleam of joy.  The gloom remained unlifted and the cause the Glen
+knew not, and no man of them would seek to know.  Hence the grief
+of the Glen was no common grief when the son of Mary Robertson, the
+son of the House, the pride of the Glen, and the comrade and friend
+of them all, was about to depart and never to return.
+
+His last day in the Glen Allan spent making his painful way through
+the cottages, leaving his farewell, and with each some slight gift
+of remembrance.  It was for him, indeed, a pilgrimage of woe.  It
+was not only that his heart roots were in the Glen and knit round
+every stick and stone of it; it was not that he felt he was leaving
+behind him a love and loyalty as deep and lasting as life itself.
+It was that in tearing himself from them he could make no response
+to the dumb appeal in the eyes that followed him with adoration and
+fidelity:  "Wherefore do you leave us at all?" and "Why do you make
+no promise of return?"  To that dumb appeal there was no answer
+possible from one who carried on his heart for himself, and on his
+life for some few others, and among these his own father, the
+terrible brand of the criminal.  It was this grim fact that stained
+black the whole landscape of his consciousness, and that hung like
+a pall of death over every living and delightsome thing in the
+garden of his soul.  While none could, without challenge, condemn
+him, yet his own tongue refused to proclaim his innocence.  Every
+face he loved drove deeper into his heart his pain.  The deathless
+loyalty and unbounded pride of the Glen folk rebuked him, without
+their knowing, for the dishonour he had done them.  The Glen
+itself, the hills, the purpling heather, the gleaming loch, how
+dear to him he had never known till now, threw in his face a sad
+and silent reproach.  Small wonder that the Glen, that Scotland had
+become intolerable to him.  With this bitter burden on his heart it
+was that young Mr. Allan went his way through the Glen making his
+farewells, not daring to indulge the luxury of his grief, and with
+never a word of return.
+
+His sister, who knew all, and who would have carried--oh! how
+gladly!--on her own heart, and for all her life long, that bitter
+burden, pleaded to be allowed to go with him on what she knew full
+well was a journey of sorrow and sore pain, but this he would not
+permit.  This sorrow and pain which were his own, he would share
+with no one, and least of all with her upon whose life he had
+already cast so dark a shadow.  Hence she was at the house alone,
+her father not having yet returned from an important meeting at a
+neighbouring village, when a young man came to the door asking for
+young Mr. Cameron.
+
+"Who is it, Kirsty?" she inquired anxiously, a new fear at her
+heart for her brother.
+
+"I know not, but he has neffer been in this Glen before whateffer,"
+replied Kirsty, with an ominous shake of the head, her primitive
+instincts leading her to view the stranger with suspicion.  "But!"
+she added, with a glance at her young mistress' face, "he iss no
+man to be afraid of, at any rate.  He is just a laddie."
+
+"Oh, he is a YOUNG man, Kirsty?" replied her mistress, glancing at
+her blue serge gown, her second best, and with her hands striving
+to tuck in some of her wayward curls.
+
+"Och, yess, and not much at that!" replied Kirsty, with the idea of
+relieving her young mistress of unnecessary fears.
+
+Then Moira, putting on her grand air, stepped into the parlour, and
+saw standing there and awaiting her, a young man with a thin and
+somewhat hard face, a firm mouth, and extraordinarily keen, grey
+eyes.  Upon her appearing the young man stood looking upon her
+without a word.  As a matter of fact, he was struggling with a
+problem; a problem that was quite bewildering; the problem, namely,
+"How could hair ever manage to get itself into such an arrangement
+of waves and curls, and golden gleams and twinkles?"  Struggling
+with this problem, he became conscious of her voice gravely
+questioning him.  "You were wishing to see my brother?"  The young
+man came back part way, and replied, "Oh! how does it--?  That is--.
+I beg your pardon."  The surprise in her face brought him quite
+to the ground, and he came at once to his business.  "I am Mr.
+Martin," he said in a quick, sharp voice.  "I know your brother and
+Mr. Dunn."  He noted a light dawn in her eyes.  "In fact, I played
+with them on the same team--at football, you know."
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, relief and welcome in her voice, "I know you,
+Mr. Martin, quite well.  I know all about you, and what a splendid
+quarter-back you are."  Here she gave him both her hands, which Mr.
+Martin took in a kind of dream, once more plunged into the mazes of
+another and more perplexing problem, viz., Was it her lips with
+that delicious curve to them? or her eyes so sunny and brown (or
+were they brown?) with that alluring, bewitching twinkle? or was it
+both lips and eyes that gave to the smile with which she welcomed
+him its subtle power to make his heart rise and choke him as it
+never had been known to do in the most strenuous of his matches?
+"I'm awfully glad," he heard himself say, and her voice replying,
+"Oh, yes!  Allan has often and often spoken of you, Mr. Martin."
+Mr. Martin immediately became conscious of a profound and grateful
+affection to Allan, still struggling, however, with the problem
+which had been complicated still further by the charm of her soft,
+Highland voice.  He was on the point of deciding in favour of her
+voice, when on her face he noted a swift change from glad welcome
+to suspicion and fear, and then into her sunny eyes a sudden
+leaping of fierce wrath, as in those of a lioness defending her
+young.
+
+"Why do you look so?" she cried in a voice sharp and imperious.
+"Is it my brother--?  Is anything wrong?"
+
+The shock of the change in eyes and voice brought Martin quite to
+himself.
+
+"Wrong?  Not a bit," he hastened to say, "but just the finest thing
+in the world.  It is all here in this letter.  Dunn could not come
+himself, and there was no one else, and he thought Cameron ought to
+have it to-day, so here I am, and here is the letter.  Where is
+he?"
+
+"Oh!" cried the girl, clasping her hands upon her heart, her voice
+growing soft, and her eyes dim with a sudden mist.  "I am so
+thankful!  I am so glad!"  The change in her voice and in her eyes
+so affected Mr. Martin that he put his hands resolutely behind his
+back lest they should play him tricks, and should, without his
+will, get themselves round her and draw her close to his heart.
+
+"So am I," he said, "awfully glad!  Never was so glad in all my
+life!"  He was more conscious than ever of bewilderment and
+perplexity in the midst of increasing problems that complicated
+themselves with mist brown eyes, trembling lips, and a voice of
+such pathetic cadences as aroused in him an almost uncontrollable
+desire to exercise his utmost powers of comfort.  And all the while
+there was growing in his heart a desperate anxiety as to what would
+be the final issue of these bewildering desires and perplexities;
+when at the extremity of his self-control he was saved by the
+girl's suggestion.
+
+"Let us go and find my brother."
+
+"Oh, yes!" cried Martin, "for heaven's sake let us."
+
+"Wait until I get my hat."
+
+"Oh!  I wouldn't put on a hat," cried he in dismay.
+
+"Why?" enquired the girl, looking at him with surprised curiosity.
+
+"Oh! because--because you don't need one; it's so beautiful and
+sunny, you know."  In spite of what he could do Mr. Martin's eyes
+kept wandering to her hair.
+
+"Oh, well!" cried Moira, in increasing surprise at this strange
+young man, "the sun won't hurt me, so come, let us go."
+
+Together they went down the avenue of rugged firs.  At the highway
+she paused.  Before them lay the Glen in all the splendid sweep of
+its beauty.
+
+"Isn't it lovely!" she breathed.
+
+"Lovely!" echoed Martin, his eyes not on the Glen.  "It is so
+sunny, you know."
+
+"Yes," she answered quickly, "you notice that?"
+
+"How could I help it?" said Martin, his eyes still resting upon
+her.  "How could I?"
+
+"Of course," she replied, "and so we call it the Glen Cuagh Oir,
+that is the 'Glen of the Cup of Gold.'  And to think he has to
+leave it all to-morrow!" she added.
+
+The pathetic cadences in her voice again drove Martin to despair.
+He recovered himself, however, to say, "But he is going to Canada!"
+
+"Yes, to Canada.  And we all feel it so dreadfully for him, and,"
+she added in a lower voice, "for ourselves."
+
+Had it been yesterday Martin would have been ready with scorn for
+any such feeling, and with congratulations to Cameron upon his
+exceptionally good luck in the expectation of going to Canada; but
+to-day, somehow it was different.  He found the splendid lure of
+his native land availed not to break the spell of the Glen, and as
+he followed the girl in and out of the little cottages, seeking her
+brother, and as he noted the perfect courtesy and respect which
+marked her manner with the people, and their unstudied and
+respectful devotion to their "tear young leddy," this spell
+deepened upon him.  Unconsciously and dimly he became aware of a
+mysterious and mighty power somehow and somewhere in the Glen
+straining at the heart-strings of its children.  Of the nature and
+origin of this mysterious and mighty power, the young Canadian knew
+little.  His country was of too recent an origin for mystery, and
+its people too heterogeneous in their ethnic characteristics to
+furnish a soil for tribal instincts and passions.  The passionate
+loves and hatreds of the clans, their pride of race, their
+deathless lealty; and more than all, and better than all, their
+religious instincts, faiths and prejudices; these, with the mystic,
+wild loveliness of heather-clad hill and rock-rimmed loch, of
+roaring torrent and jagged crags, of lonely muir and sunny pasture
+nuiks; all these, and ten thousand nameless and unnamable things
+united in the weaving of the spell of the Glen upon the hearts of
+its people.  Of how it all came to be, Martin knew nothing, but
+like an atmosphere it stole in upon him, and he came to vaguely
+understand something of what it meant to be a Highlander, and to
+bid farewell to the land into whose grim soil his life roots had
+struck deep, and to tear himself from hearts whose life stream and
+his had flowed as one for a score of generations.  So from cot to
+cot Martin followed and observed, until they came to the crossing
+where the broad path led up from the highroad to the kirkyard and
+the kirk.  Here they were halted by a young man somewhat older than
+Martin.  Tall and gaunt he stood.  His face, pale and pock-marked
+and lit by light blue eyes, and crowned by brilliant red hair, was,
+with all its unloveliness, a face of a certain rugged beauty; while
+his manner and bearing showed the native courtesy of a Highland
+gentleman.
+
+"You are seeking Mr. Allan?" he said, taking off his bonnet to the
+girl.  "He is in yonder," waving his hand towards the kirkyard.
+
+"In yonder?  You are sure, Mr. Maclise?"  She might well ask, for
+never but on Sabbath days, since the day they had laid his mother
+away under the birch trees, had Allan put foot inside the kirkyard.
+
+"Half an hour ago he went in," replied the young Highlander, "and
+he has not returned."
+
+"I will go in, then," said the girl, and hesitated, unwilling that
+a stranger's eyes should witness what she knew was waiting her
+there.
+
+"You, Sir, will perhaps abide with me," suggested Mr. Maclise to
+Martin, with a quick understanding of her hesitation.
+
+"Oh, thank you," cried Moira.  "This is Mr. Martin from Canada, Mr.
+Maclise--my brother's great friend.  Mr. Maclise is our schoolmaster
+here," she added, turning to Martin, "and we are very proud of him."
+The Highlander's pale face became the colour of his brilliant hair
+as he remarked, "You are very good indeed, Miss Cameron, and I am
+glad to make the acquaintance of Mr. Martin.  It will give me great
+pleasure to show Mr. Martin the little falls at the loch's end, if
+he cares to step that far."  If Mr. Martin was conscious of any
+great desire to view the little falls at the loch's end, his face
+most successfully dissembled any such feeling, but to the little
+falls he must go as the schoolmaster quietly possessed himself of
+him and led him away, while Miss Cameron, with never a thought of
+either of them, passed up the broad path into the kirkyard.  There,
+at the tower's foot, she came upon her brother, prone upon the
+little grassy mound, with arms outspread, as if to hold it in
+embrace.  At the sound of his sister's tread upon the gravel, he
+raised himself to his knees swiftly, and with a fierce gesture, as
+if resenting intrusion.
+
+"Oh, it is you, Moira," he said quietly, sinking down upon the
+grass.  At the sight of his tear-stained, haggard face, the girl
+ran to him with a cry, and throwing herself down beside him put her
+arms about him with inarticulate sounds of pity.  At length her
+brother raised himself from the ground.
+
+"Oh, it is terrible to leave it all," he groaned; "yet I am glad to
+leave, for it is more terrible to stay; the very Glen I cannot look
+at; and the people, I cannot bear their eyes.  Oh," he groaned,
+wringing his hands, "if she were here she would understand, but
+there is nobody."
+
+"Oh, Allan," cried his sister in reproach.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know!  I know!  You believe in me, Moira, but you are
+just a lassie, and you cannot understand."
+
+"Yes, you know well I believe in you, Allan, and others, too,
+believe in you.  There is Mr. Dunn, and--"
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said her brother bitterly, "he wants to believe
+it."
+
+"Yes, and there is Mr. Martin," she continued, "and--Oh, I forgot!
+here is a letter Mr. Martin brought you."
+
+"Martin?"
+
+"Yes, your Martin, a strange little man; your quarter-back, you
+know.  He brought this, and he says it is good news."  But already
+Allan was into his letter.  As he read his face grew white, his
+hand began to shake, his eyes to stare as if they would devour the
+very paper.  The second time he read the letter his whole body
+trembled, and his breath came in gasps, as if he were in a physical
+struggle.  Then lifting arms and voice towards the sky, he cried in
+a long, low wail, "Oh God, it is good, it is good!"
+
+With that he laid himself down prone upon the mound again, his face
+in the grass, sobbing brokenly, "Oh, mother, mother dear, I have
+got you once more; I have got you once more!"
+
+His sister stood, her hands clasped upon her heart--a manner she
+had--her tears, unnoted, flowing down her cheeks, waiting till her
+brother should let her into his joy, as she had waited for entrance
+into his grief.  His griefs and his joys were hers, and though he
+still held her a mere child, it was with a woman's self-forgetting
+love she ministered to him, gladly accepting whatever confidence he
+would give, but content to wait until he should give more.  So she
+stood waiting, with her tears flowing quietly, and her face alight
+with wonder and joy for him.  But as her brother's sobbing continued,
+this terrible display of emotion amazed her, startled her, for since
+their mother's death none of them had seen Allan weep.  At length he
+raised himself from the ground and stood beside her.
+
+"Oh, Moira, lassie, I never knew how terrible it was till now.  I
+had lost everything, my friends, you, and," he added in a low
+voice, "my mother.  This cursed thing shut me out from all; it got
+between me and all I ever loved.  I have not for these months been
+able to see her face clear, but do you know, Moira," here his voice
+fell and the mystic light grew in his eyes, "I saw her again just
+now as clear as clear, and I know I have got her again; and you,
+too, Moira, darling," here he gathered his sister to him, "and the
+people! and the Glen!  Oh! is it not terrible what a crime can do?
+How it separates you from your folk, and from all the world, for,
+mind you, I have felt myself a criminal; but I am not!  I am not!"
+His voice rose into an exultant shout, "I am clear of it, I am a
+man again!  Oh, it is good! it is good!  Here, read the letter, it
+will prove to you."
+
+"Oh, what does it matter at all, Allan," she cried, still clinging
+to him, "as if it made any difference to me.  I always knew it."
+
+Her brother lifted her face from his breast and looked into her
+eyes.  "Do you tell me you don't want to know the proof of it?" he
+asked in wonder.  "No," she said simply.  "Why should I need any
+proof?  I always knew it."
+
+For a moment longer he gazed upon her, then said, "Moira, you are a
+wonder, lassie.  No, you are a lassie no longer, you are a woman,
+and, do you know, you are like mother to me now, and I never saw
+it."
+
+She smiled up at him through her tears.  "I should like to be," she
+said softly.  Then, because she was truly Scotch, she added, "for
+your sake, for I love you terribly much; and I am going to lose
+you."
+
+A quiver passed through her frame, and her arms gripped him tight.
+In the self-absorption in his grief and pain he had not thought of
+hers, nor considered how with his going her whole life would be
+changed.
+
+"I have been a selfish brute," he muttered.  "I have only thought
+of my own suffering; but, listen Moira, it is all past; thank God,
+it is all past.  This letter from Mr. Rae holds a confession from
+Potts (poor Potts!  I am glad that Rae let him off): it was Potts
+who committed the forgery.  Now I feel myself clean again; you
+can't know what that is; to be yourself again, and to be able to
+look all men in the face without fear or shame.  Come, we must go;
+I must see them all again.  Let us to the burn first, and put my
+face right."
+
+A moment he stood looking down upon his mother's grave.  The
+hideous thing that had put her far from him, and that had blurred
+the clear vision of her face, was gone.  A smile soft and tender as
+a child's stole over his face, and with that smile he turned away.
+As they were coming back from the burn, Martin and the schoolmaster
+saw them in the distance.
+
+"Bless me, man, will you look at him?" said the master in an
+awestruck tone, clutching Martin's arm.  "What ever is come to
+him?"
+
+"What's up," cried Martin.  "By Jove! you're right! the Roderick
+Dhu and Black Douglas business is gone, sure!"
+
+"God bless my soul!" said Maclise in an undertone.  "He is himself
+once more."
+
+He might well exclaim, for it was a new Allan that came striding up
+the high road, with head lifted, and with the proud swing of a
+Highland chieftain.
+
+"Hello, old man!" he shouted, catching sight of Martin and running
+towards him with hands outstretched, "You are welcome"--he grasped
+his hands and held them fast--"you are welcome to this Glen, and to
+me welcome as Heaven to a Hell-bound soul."
+
+"Maclise," he cried, turning to the master, "this letter," waving
+it in his hand, "is like a reprieve to a man on the scaffold."
+Maclise stood gazing in amazement at him.
+
+"They accused me of crime!"
+
+"Of crime, Mr. Allan?"  Maclise stiffened in haughty surprise.
+
+"Yes, of base crime!"
+
+"But this letter completely clears him," cried Martin eagerly.
+
+Maclise turned upon him with swift scorn, "There was no need, for
+anyone in this Glen whatever."  The Highlander's face was pale, and
+in his light blue eyes gleamed a fierce light.
+
+Martin flashed a look upon the girl standing so proudly erect
+beside her brother, and reflecting in her face and eyes the
+sentiments of the schoolmaster.
+
+"By Jove!  I believe you," cried Martin with conviction, "it is not
+needed here, but--but there are others, you know."
+
+"Others?" said the Highlander with fine scorn, "and what difference?"
+
+The Glen folk needed no clearing of their chief, and the rest of
+the world mattered not.
+
+"But there was myself," said Allan.  "Now it is gone, Maclise, and
+I can give my hand once more without fear or shame."
+
+Maclise took the offered hand almost with reverence, and, removing
+his bonnet from his head, said in a voice, deep and vibrating with
+emotion,
+
+"Neffer will a man of the Glen count it anything but honour to take
+thiss hand."
+
+"Thank you, Maclise," cried Allan, keeping his grip of the master's
+hand.  "Now you can tell the Glen."
+
+"You will not be going to leave us now?" said Maclise eagerly.
+
+"Yes, I shall go, Maclise, but," with a proud lift of his head,
+"tell them I am coming back again."
+
+And with that message Maclise went to the Glen.  From cot to cot
+and from lip to lip the message sped, that Mr. Allan was himself
+again, and that, though on the morrow's morn he was leaving the
+Glen, he himself had promised that he would return.
+
+That evening, as the gloaming deepened, the people of the Glen
+gathered, as was their wont, at their cottage doors to listen to
+old piper Macpherson as he marched up and down the highroad.  This
+night, it was observed, he no longer played that most heart-
+breaking of all Scottish laments, "Lochaber No More."  He had
+passed up to the no less heart-thrilling, but less heartbreaking,
+"Macrimmon's Lament."  In a pause in Macpherson's wailing notes
+there floated down over the Glen the sound of the pipes up at the
+big House.
+
+"Bless my soul! whisht, man!" cried Betsy Macpherson to her spouse.
+"Listen yonder!"  For the first time in months they heard the sound
+of Allan's pipes.
+
+"It is himself," whispered the women to each other, and waited.
+Down the long avenue of ragged firs, and down the highroad, came
+young Mr. Allan, in all the gallant splendour of his piper's garb,
+and the tune he played was no lament, but the blood-stirring
+"Gathering of the Gordons."  As he came opposite to Macpherson's
+cottage he gave the signal for the old piper, and down the highroad
+stepped the two of them together, till they passed beyond the
+farthest cottage.  Then back again they swung, and this time it was
+to the "Cock of the North," that their tartans swayed and their
+bonnets nodded.  Thus, not with woe and lamentation, but with good
+hope and gallant cheer, young Mr. Allan took his leave of the Glen
+Cuagh Oir.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+WILL HE COME BACK?
+
+
+It was the custom in Doctor Dunn's household that, immediately
+after dinner, his youngest son would spend half an hour in the
+study with his father.  It was a time for confidences.  During this
+half hour father and son met as nearly as possible on equal terms,
+discussing, as friends might, the events of the day or the plans
+for the morrow, school work or athletics, the latest book or the
+newest joke; and sometimes the talk turned upon the reading at
+evening prayers.  This night the story had been one of rare beauty
+and of absorbing interest, the story, viz., of that idyllic scene
+on the shore of Tiberias where the erring disciple was fully
+restored to his place in the ranks of the faithful, as he had been
+restored, some weeks before, to his place in the confidence of his
+Master.
+
+"That was a fine story, Rob?" began Doctor Dunn.
+
+"That it was," said Rob gravely.  "It was fine for Peter to get
+back again."
+
+"Just so," replied his father.  "You see, when a man once turns his
+back on his best Friend, he is never right till he gets back
+again."
+
+"Yes, I know," said Rob gravely.  For a time he sat with a shadow
+of sadness and anxiety on his young face.  "It is terrible!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+"Terrible?" inquired the Doctor.  "Oh, yes, you mean Peter's fall?
+Yes, that was a terrible thing--to be untrue to our Master and
+faithless to our best Friend."
+
+"But he did not mean to, Dad," said Rob quickly, as if springing to
+the fallen disciple's defence.  "He forgot, just for a moment, and
+was awfully sorry afterwards."
+
+"Yes, truly," said his father, "and that was the first step back."
+
+For a few moments Rob remained silent, his face sad and troubled.
+
+"Man!  It must be terrible!" at length he said, more to himself
+than to his father.  The Doctor looked closely at the little lad.
+The eager, sensitive face, usually so radiant, was now clouded and
+sad.
+
+"What is it, Rob?  Is it something you can tell me?" asked his
+father in a tone of friendly kindness.
+
+Rob moved closer to him.  The father waited in silence.  He knew
+better than to force an unwilling confidence.  At length the lad,
+with an obvious effort at self-command, said:
+
+"It is to-morrow, Daddy, that Cameron--that Mr. Cameron is going
+away."
+
+"To-morrow?  So it is.  And you will be very sorry, Rob.  But, of
+course, he will come back."
+
+"Oh, Dad," cried Rob, coming quite close to his father, "it isn't
+that!  It isn't that!"
+
+His father waited.  He did not understand his boy's trouble, and so
+he wisely refrained from uttering word that might hinder rather
+than help.  At length, with a sudden effort, Rob asked in a low,
+hurried voice:
+
+"Do you think, Dad, he has--got--back?"
+
+"Got back?" said his father.  "Oh, I see.  Why, my boy?  What do
+you know of it?  Did you know there was a letter from a man named
+Potts, that completely clears your friend of all crime?"
+
+"Is there?" asked the boy quickly.  "Man!  That is fine!  But I
+always knew he could not do anything really bad--I mean, anything
+that the police could touch him for.  But it is not that, Dad.
+I have heard Jack say he used to be different when he came down
+first, and now sometimes he--"  The lad's voice fell silent.  He
+could not bring himself to accuse his hero of any evil.  His father
+drew him close to his side.
+
+"You mean that he has fallen into bad ways--drink, and things like
+that?"
+
+The boy hung his head; he was keenly ashamed for his friend.  After
+a few moments' silence he said:
+
+"And he is going away to Canada to-morrow, and I wonder, Dad, if he
+has--got--back?  It would be terrible--  Oh, Dad, all alone and
+away from--!"
+
+The boy's voice sank to a whisper, and a rush of tears filled his
+eyes.
+
+"I see what you mean, my boy.  You mean it would be terrible for
+him to be in that far land, and away from that Friend we know and
+love best."
+
+The lad looked at his father through his tears, and nodded his
+head, and for some moments there was silence between them.  If the
+truth must be told, Doctor Dunn felt himself keenly rebuked by his
+little son's words.  Amid the multitude of his responsibilities,
+the responsibility for his sons' best friend he had hardly
+realised.
+
+"I am glad that you spoke of it, Rob; I am glad that you spoke of
+it.  Something will be done.  It is not, after all, in our hands.
+Still, we must stand ready to help.  Good-night, my boy.  And
+remember, it is always good to hurry back to our best Friend, if
+ever we get away from Him."
+
+The boy put his arms around his father's neck and kissed him good-
+night; then, kissing him again, he whispered:  "Thank you, Daddy."
+
+And from the relief in his tone the father recognised that upon him
+the lad had laid all the burden of his solicitude for his friend.
+
+Later in the evening, when his elder son came home, the father
+called him in, and frankly gave him the substance of the
+conversation of the earlier part of the evening.
+
+Jack laughed somewhat uneasily.  "Oh, Rob is an awfully religious
+little beggar; painfully so, I think, sometimes--you know what I
+mean, Sir," he added, noticing the look on his father's face.
+
+"I am not sure that I do, Jack," said his father, "but I want to
+tell you, that as far as I am concerned, I felt distinctly rebuked
+at the little chap's anxiety for his friend in a matter of such
+vital import.  His is a truly religious little soul, as you say,
+but I wonder if his type is not more nearly like the normal than
+is ours.  Certainly, if reality, simplicity, sincerity are the
+qualities of true religious feeling--and these, I believe, are the
+qualities emphasised by the Master Himself--then it may indeed be
+that the boy's type is nearer the ideal than ours."
+
+At this point Mrs. Dunn entered the room.
+
+"Anything private?" she enquired with a bright smile at her
+husband.
+
+"Not at all!  Come in!" said Doctor Dunn, and he proceeded to
+repeat the conversation with his younger son, and his own recent
+comment thereupon.
+
+"I am convinced," he added, "that there is a profundity of meaning
+in those words, 'Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as
+a little child, he shall not enter therein,' that we have not yet
+fathomed.  I suspect Wordsworth is not far astray when he suggests
+that with the passing years we grow away from the simplicity of our
+faith and the clearness of our vision.  There is no doubt that to
+Rob, Jesus is as real as I am."
+
+"There is no doubt of that," said his wife quickly.
+
+"Not only as real, but quite as dear; indeed, dearer.  I shall
+never forget the shock I received when I heard him one day, as a
+wee, wee boy, classifying the objects of his affection.  I remember
+the ascending scale was:  'I love Jack and Daddy just the same,
+then mother, then Jesus.'  It was always in the highest place,
+Jesus; and I believe that the scale is the same to-day, unless
+Jack," she added, with a smile at her son, "has moved to his
+mother's place."
+
+"Not much fear of that, mother," said Jack, "but I should not be
+surprised if you are quite right about the little chap.  He is a
+queer little beggar!"
+
+"There you are again, Jack," said his father, "and it is upon that
+point I was inclined to take issue with you when your mother
+entered."
+
+"I think I shall leave you," said the mother.  "I am rather tired,
+and so I shall bid you good-night."
+
+"Yes," said the father, when they had seated themselves again, "the
+very fact that to you, and to me for that matter, Rob's attitude of
+mind should seem peculiar raises the issue.  What is the normal
+type of Christian faith?  Is it not marked by the simplicity and
+completeness of the child's?"
+
+"And yet, Sir," replied Jack, "that simplicity and completeness is
+the result of inexperience.  Surely the ideal faith is not that
+which ignores the facts and experiences of life?"
+
+"Not exactly," replied his father, "yet I am not sure but after
+all, 'the perfect love which casteth out fear' is one which ignores
+the experiences of life, or, rather, classifies them in a larger
+category.  That is, it refuses to be disturbed by life's experiences,
+because among those experiences there is a place for the enlarged
+horizon, the clearer vision.  But I am not arguing about this
+matter; I rather wish to make a confession and enlist your aid.
+Frankly, the boy's words gave me an uneasy sense of failure in my
+duty to this young man; or, perhaps I should say, my privilege.  And
+really, it is no wonder!  Here is this little chap actually carrying
+every day a load of intense concern for our friend, as to whether,
+as he puts it himself, 'he has come back.'  And, after all, Jack, I
+wonder if this should not have been more upon our minds?  The young
+man, I take it, since his mother's death has little in his home life
+to inspire him with religious faith and feeling.  If she had been
+alive, one would not feel the same responsibility; she was a
+singularly saintly woman."
+
+"You are quite right, Sir," said Jack quickly, "and I suspect you
+rather mean that I am the one that should feel condemned."
+
+"Not at all!  Not at all, Jack!  I am thinking, as every man must,
+of my own responsibility, though, doubtless, you have yours as
+well.  Of course I know quite well you have stuck by him splendidly
+in his fight for a clean and self-controlled life, but one wonders
+whether there is not something more."
+
+"There is, Sir!" replied his son quickly.  "There undoubtedly is!
+But though I have no hesitation in speaking to men down in the
+Settlement about these things, you know, still, somehow, to a man
+of your own class, and to a personal friend, one hesitates.  One
+shrinks from what seems like assuming an attitude of superiority."
+
+"I appreciate that," said his father, "but yet one wonders to what
+extent this shrinking is due to a real sense of one's own
+imperfections, and to what extent it is due to an unwillingness to
+risk criticism, even from ourselves, in a loyal attempt to serve
+the Master and His cause.  And, besides that, one wonders whether
+from any cause one should hesitate to do the truly kind and
+Christian thing to one's friend.  I mean, you value your religion;
+or, to put it personally, as Rob would, you would esteem as your
+chief possession your knowledge of the Christ, as Friend and
+Saviour.  Do not loyalty to Him and friendship require that you
+share that possession with your dearest friend?"
+
+"I know what you mean, Sir," said Jack earnestly.  "I shall think
+it over.  But don't you think a word from you, Sir--"
+
+His father looked at his son with a curious smile.
+
+"Oh, I know what you are thinking," said his son, "but I assure you
+it is not quite a case of funk."
+
+"Do you know, Jack," said his father earnestly, "we make our
+religion far too unreal; a thing either of forms remote from life,
+or a thing of individualistic emotion divorced from responsibility.
+One thing history reveals, that the early propagandum for the faith
+was entirely unprofessional.  It was from friend to friend, from
+man to man.  It was horizontal rather than perpendicular."
+
+"Well, I shall think it over," said Jack.
+
+"Do you know," said his father, "that I have the feeling of having
+accepted from Rob responsibility for our utmost endeavour to bring
+it about that, as Rob puts it, 'somehow he shall get back'?"
+
+It was full twenty minutes before train time when Rob, torn with
+anxiety lest they should be late, marched his brother on to the
+railway platform to wait for the Camerons, who were to arrive from
+the North.  Up and down they paraded, Dunn turning over in his mind
+the conversation of the night before, Rob breaking away every three
+minutes to consult the clock and the booking clerk at the wicket.
+
+"Will he come to us this afternoon, Jack, do you think?" enquired
+the boy.
+
+"Don't know!  He turned down a football lunch!  He has his sister
+and his father with him."
+
+"His sister could come with him!" argued the boy.
+
+"What about his father?"
+
+Rob had been close enough to events to know that the Captain
+constituted something of a difficulty in the situation.
+
+"Well, won't he have business to attend to?"
+
+His brother laughed.  "Good idea, Rob, let us hope so!  At any rate
+we will do our best to get Cameron and his sister to come to us.
+We want them, don't we?"
+
+"We do that!" said the boy fervently; "only I'm sure something will
+happen!  There," he exclaimed a moment later, in a tone of
+disappointment and disgust, "I just knew it!  There is Miss Brodie
+and some one else; they will get after him, I know!"
+
+"So it is," said Dunn, with a not altogether successful attempt at
+surprise.
+
+"Aw! you knew!" said Rob reproachfully.
+
+"Well!  I kind of thought she might turn up!" said his brother,
+with an air of a convicted criminal.  "You know she is quite a
+friend of Cameron's.  But what is Sir Archibald here for?"
+
+"They will just get him, I know," said Rob gloomily, as he followed
+his brother to meet Miss Brodie and her uncle.
+
+"We're here!" cried that young lady, "to join in the demonstration
+to the hero!  And, my uncle being somewhat conscience-stricken over
+his tardy and unwilling acceptance of our superior judgment in the
+recent famous case, has come to make such reparation as he can."
+
+"What a piece of impertinence!  Don't listen to her, Sir!" cried
+Sir Archibald, greeting Dunn warmly and with the respect due an
+International captain.  "The truth is I have a letter here for him
+to a business friend in Montreal, which may be of service.  Of
+course, I may say to you that I am more than delighted that this
+letter of Potts has quite cleared the young man, and that he goes
+to the new country with reputation unstained.  I am greatly
+delighted! greatly delighted! and I wish the opportunity to say
+so."
+
+"Indeed, we are all delighted," replied Dunn cordially, "though, of
+course, I never could bring myself to believe him guilty of crime."
+
+"Well, on the strength of the judgment of yourself and, I must
+confess, of this young person here, I made my decision."
+
+"Well," cried Miss Brodie, "I gave you my opinion because it was my
+opinion, but I confess at times I had my own doubts--"
+
+Here she paused abruptly, arrested by the look on young Rob's face;
+it was a look of surprise, grief, and horror.
+
+"That is to say," continued Miss Brodie hastily, answering the
+look, and recognising that her high place in Rob's regard was in
+peril, "the whole thing was a mystery--was impossible to solve--I
+mean," she continued, stumbling along, "his own attitude was so
+very uncertain and so unsatisfactory--if he had only been able to
+say clearly 'I am not guilty' it would have been different--I mean--
+of course, I don't believe him guilty.  Don't look at me like
+that, Rob!  I won't have it!  But was it not clever of that dear
+Mr. Rae to extract that letter from the wretched Potts?"
+
+"There's the train!" cried Dunn.  "Here, Rob, you stay here with
+me!  Where has the young rascal gone!"
+
+"Look!  Oh, look!" cried Miss Brodie, clutching at Dunn's arm, her
+eyes wide with terror.  There before their horrified eyes was young
+Rob, hanging on to the window, out of which his friend Cameron was
+leaning, and racing madly with the swiftly moving train, in
+momentary danger of being dragged under its wheels.  With a cry,
+Dunn rushed forward.
+
+"Merciful heavens!" cried Miss Brodie.  "Oh! he is gone!"
+
+A porter, standing with his back towards the racing boy, had
+knocked his feet from under him.  But as he fell, a strong hand
+grabbed him, and dragged him to safety through the window.
+
+Pale and shaking, the three friends waited for the car door to be
+opened, and as Rob issued in triumphant possession of his friend,
+Miss Brodie rushed at him and, seizing him in her strong grasp,
+cried:
+
+"You heartless young rascal!  You nearly killed me--not to speak of
+yourself!  Here," she continued, throwing her arms about him, and
+giving him a loud smack, "take that for your punishment!  Do you
+hear, you nearly killed me!  I had a vision of your mangled form
+ground up between the wheels and the platform.  Hold on, you can't
+get away from me!  I have a mind to give you another!"
+
+"Oh, Miss Brodie, please," pleaded Cameron, coming forward to Rob's
+rescue, "I assure you I was partly to blame; it is only fair I
+should share his punishment."
+
+"Indeed," cried Miss Brodie, the blood coming back into her cheeks
+that had been white enough a moment before, "if it were not for
+your size, and your--looks, I should treat you exactly the same,
+though not with the same intent, as our friend Mr. Rae would say.
+You did that splendidly!"
+
+"Alas! for my size," groaned Cameron--he was in great spirits--"and
+alas! for my ugly phiz!"
+
+"Who said 'ugly'?" replied Miss Brodie.  "But I won't rise to your
+bait.  May I introduce you to my uncle, Sir Archibald Brodie, who
+has a little business with you?"
+
+"Ah! Mr. Cameron," said that gentleman, "that was extremely well
+done.  Indeed, I can hardly get back my nerve--might have been an
+ugly accident.  By the way, Sir," taking Cameron aside, "just a
+moment.  You are on your way to Canada?  I have a letter which I
+thought might be of service to you.  It is to a business friend of
+mine, a banker, in Montreal, Mr. James Ritchie.  You will find him
+a good man to know, and I fancy glad to serve any--ah--friend of
+mine."
+
+On hearing Sir Archibald's name, Cameron's manner became distinctly
+haughty, and he was on the point of declining the letter, when Sir
+Archibald, who was quick to observe his manner, took him by the arm
+and led him somewhat further away.
+
+"Now, Sir, there is a little matter I wish to speak of, if you will
+permit.  Indeed, I came specially to say how delighted I am that
+the--ah--recent little unpleasantness has been removed.  Of course
+you understand my responsibility to the Bank rendered a certain
+course of action imperative, however repugnant.  But, believe me, I
+am truly delighted to find that my decision to withdraw the--ah--
+action has been entirely justified by events.  Delighted, Sir!
+Delighted!  And much more since I have seen you."
+
+Before the overflowing kindliness of Sir Archibald's voice and
+manner, Cameron's hauteur vanished like morning mist before the
+rising sun.
+
+"I thank you, Sir Archibald," he said, with dignity, "not only for
+this letter, but especially for your good opinion."
+
+"Very good!  Very good!  The letter will, I hope, be useful,"
+replied Sir Archibald, "and as for my opinion, I am glad to find
+not only that it is well founded, but that it appears to be shared
+by most of this company here.  Now we must get back to your party.
+But let me say again, I am truly glad to have come to know you."
+
+
+
+BOOK TWO
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HO FOR THE OPEN!
+
+
+Mr. James Ritchie, manager of the Bank of Montreal, glanced from
+the letter in his hand to the young man who had just given it to
+him.  "Ah! you have just arrived from the old land," he said, a
+smile of genial welcome illuminating his handsome face.  "I am
+pleased to hear from my old friend, Sir Archibald Brodie, and
+pleased to welcome any friend of his to Canada."
+
+So saying, with fine old-time courtesy, the banker rose to his
+splendid height of six feet two, and shook his visitor warmly by
+the hand.
+
+"Your name is--?"
+
+"Cameron, Sir," said the young man.
+
+"Yes, I see!  Mr. Allan Cameron--um, um," with his eyes on the
+letter.  "Old and distinguished family--exactly so!  Now, then, Mr.
+Cameron, I hope we shall be able to do something for you, both for
+the sake of my old friend, Sir Archibald, and, indeed, for your own
+sake," said the banker, with a glance of approval at Cameron's
+upright form.
+
+"Sit down, Sir!  Sit down!  Now, business first is my motto.  What
+can I do for you?"
+
+"Well, first of all," said Cameron with a laugh, "I wish to make a
+deposit.  I have a draft of one hundred pounds here which I should
+like to place in your care."
+
+"Very well, Sir," said the banker, touching a button, "my young man
+will attend to that."
+
+"Now, then," when the business had been transacted, "what are your
+plans, Mr. Cameron?  Thirty-five years ago I came to Montreal a
+young man, from Scotland, like yourself, and it was a lonely day
+for me when I reached this city, the loneliest in my life, and so
+my heart warms to the stranger from the old land.  Yes," continued
+Mr. Ritchie, in a reminiscent tone, "I remember well!  I hired as
+errand boy and general factotum to a small grocer down near the
+market.  Montreal was a small city then, with wretched streets--
+they're bad enough yet--and poor buildings; everything was slow and
+backward; there have been mighty changes since.  But here we are!
+Now, what are your plans?"
+
+"I am afraid they are of the vaguest kind," said Cameron.  "I want
+something to do."
+
+"What sort of thing?  I mean, what has been the line of your
+training?"
+
+"I am afraid my training has been defective.  I have passed through
+Edinburgh Academy, also the University, with the exception of my
+last year.  But I am willing to take anything."
+
+"Ah!" said the banker thoughtfully.  "No office training, eh?"
+
+"No, Sir.  That is, if you except a brief period of three or four
+months in the law office of our family solicitor."
+
+"Law, eh?--I have it!  Denman's your man!  I shall give you a
+letter to Mr. Denman--a lawyer friend of mine.  I shall see him
+personally to-day, and if you call to-morrow at ten I hope to have
+news for you.  Meantime, I shall be pleased to have you lunch with
+me to-day at the club.  One o'clock is the hour.  If you would
+kindly call at the bank, we shall go down together."
+
+Cameron expressed his gratitude.
+
+"By the way!" said Mr. Ritchie, "where have you put up?"
+
+"At the Royal," said Cameron.
+
+"Ah!  That will do for the present," said Mr. Ritchie.  "I am sorry
+our circumstances do not permit of my inviting you to our home.
+The truth is, Mrs. Ritchie is at present out of the city.  But we
+shall find some suitable lodging for you.  The Royal is far too
+expensive a place for a young man with his fortune to make."
+
+Cameron spent the day making the acquaintance of the beautiful,
+quaint, if somewhat squalid, old city of Montreal; and next
+morning, with a letter of introduction from Mr. Ritchie, presented
+himself at Mr. Denman's office.  Mr. Denman was a man in young
+middle life, athletic of frame, keen of eye, and energetic of
+manner; his voice was loud and sharp.  He welcomed Cameron with
+brisk heartiness, and immediately proceeded to business.
+
+"Let me see," he began, "what is your idea?  What kind of a job are
+you after?"
+
+"Indeed," replied Cameron, "that is just what I hardly know."
+
+"Well, what has been your experience?  You are a University man, I
+believe?  But have you had any practical training?  Do you know
+office work?"
+
+"No, I've had little training for an office.  I was in a law office
+for part of a year."
+
+"Ah!  Familiar with bookkeeping, or accounting?  I suppose you
+can't run one of these typewriting machines?"
+
+In regard to each of these lines of effort Cameron was forced to
+confess ignorance.
+
+"I say!" cried Mr. Denman, "those old country people seriously
+annoy me with their inadequate system of education!"
+
+"I am afraid," replied Cameron, "the fault is more mine than the
+system's."
+
+"Don't know about that!  Don't know about that!" replied Mr. Denman
+quickly; "I have had scores of young men, fine young men, too, come
+to me; public school men, university men, but quite unfit for any
+practical line of work."
+
+Mr. Denman considered for some moments.  "Let us see.  You have
+done some work in a law office.  Now," Mr. Denman spoke with some
+hesitation; "I have a place in my own office here--not much in it
+for the present, but--"
+
+"To tell the truth," interrupted Cameron, "I did not make much of
+the law; in fact, I do not think I am suited for office work.  I
+would prefer something in the open.  I had thought of the land."
+
+"Farming," exclaimed Mr. Denman.  "Ah!--you would, I suppose, be
+able to invest something?"
+
+"No," said Cameron, "nothing."
+
+Denman shook his head.  "Nothing in it!  You would not earn enough
+to buy a farm about here in fifteen years."
+
+"But I understood," replied Cameron, "that further west was cheaper
+land."
+
+"Oh!  In the far west, yes!  But it is a God-forsaken country!  I
+don't know much about it, I confess.  I know they are booming town
+lots all over the land.  I believe they have gone quite mad in the
+business, but from what I hear, the main work in the west just now
+is jaw work; the only thing they raise is corner lots."
+
+On Cameron's face there fell the gloom of discouragement.  One of
+his fondest dreams was being dispelled--his vision of himself as a
+wealthy rancher, ranging over square miles of his estate upon a
+"bucking broncho," garbed in the picturesque cowboy dress, began to
+fade.
+
+"But there is ranching, I believe?" he ventured.
+
+"Ranching?  Oh yes!  There is, up near the Rockies, but that is out
+of civilization; out of reach of everything and everybody."
+
+"That is what I want, Sir!" exclaimed Cameron, his face once more
+aglow with eager hope.  "I want to get away into the open."
+
+Mr. Denman did not, or could not, recognise this as the instinctive
+cry of the primitive man for a closer fellowship with Mother
+Nature.  He was keenly practical, and impatient with everything
+that appeared to him to be purely visionary and unbusiness-like.
+
+"But, my dear fellow," he said, "a ranch means cattle and horses;
+and cattle and horses means money, unless of course, you mean to be
+simply a cowboy--cowpuncher, I believe, is the correct term--but
+there is nothing in that; no future, I mean.  It is all very well
+for a little fun, if you have a bank account to stand it, although
+some fellows stand it on someone's else bank account--not much to
+their credit, however.  There is a young friend of mine out there
+at present, but from what I can gather his home correspondence is
+mainly confined to appeals for remittances from his governor, and
+his chief occupation spending these remittances as speedily as
+possible.  All very well, as I have said, for fun, if you can pay
+the shot.  But to play the role of gentleman cowboy, while somebody
+else pays for it, is the sort of thing I despise."
+
+"And so do I, Sir!" said Cameron.  "There will be no remittance in
+my case."
+
+Denman glanced at the firm, closed lips and the stiffening figure.
+
+"That is the talk!" he exclaimed.  "No, there is no chance in
+ranching unless you have capital."
+
+"As far as I can see," replied Cameron gloomily, "everything seems
+closed up except to the capitalist, and yet from what I heard at
+home situations were open on every hand in this country."
+
+"Come here!" cried Denman, drawing Cameron to the office window.
+"See those doors!" pointing to a long line of shops.  "Every last
+one is opened to a man who knows his business.  See those
+smokestacks!  Every last wheel in those factories is howling for a
+man who is on to his job.  But don't look blue, there is a place
+for you, too; the thing is to find it."
+
+"What are those long buildings?" inquired Cameron, pointing towards
+the water front.
+
+"Those are railroad sheds; or, rather, Transportation Company's
+sheds; they are practically the same thing.  I say!  What is the
+matter with trying the Transportation Company?  I know the manager
+well.  The very thing!  Try the Transportation Company!"
+
+"How should I go about it?" said Cameron.  "I mean to say just what
+position should I apply for?"
+
+"Position!" shouted Denman.  "Why, general manager would be good!"
+
+Then, noting the flush in Cameron's face, he added quickly, "Pardon
+me!  The thing is to get your foot in somehow, and then wire in
+till you are general manager, by Jove!  It can be done!  Fleming
+has done it!  Went in as messenger boy, but--" Denman paused.
+There flashed through his mind the story of Fleming's career; a
+vision of the half-starved ragged waif who started as messenger
+boy in the company's offices, and who, by dint of invincible
+determination and resolute self-denial, fought his way step by step
+to his present position of control.  In contrast, he looked at the
+young man, born and bred in circles where work is regarded as a
+calamity, and service wears the badge of social disfranchisement.
+Fleming had done it under compulsion of the inexorable mistress
+"Necessity."  But what of this young man?
+
+"Will we try?" he said at length.  "I shall give you a letter to
+Mr. Fleming."
+
+He sat down to his desk and wrote vigourously.
+
+"Take this, and see what happens."
+
+Cameron took the letter, and, glancing at the address, read, Wm.
+Fleming, Esquire, General Manager, Metropolitan Transportation &
+Cartage Company.
+
+"Is this a railroad?" asked Cameron.
+
+"No, but next thing to it.  The companies are practically one.  The
+transition from one to the other is easy enough.  Let me know how
+you get on.  Good-by!  And--I say!" cried Mr. Denman, calling
+Cameron back again from the door, "see Mr. Fleming himself.
+Remember that!  And remember," he added, with a smile, "the
+position of manager is not vacant just yet, but it will be.  I give
+you my word for it when you are ready to take it.  Good-by!  Buck
+up!  Take what he offers you!  Get your teeth in, and never let
+go!"
+
+"By George!" said Denman to himself as the door closed on Cameron,
+"these chaps are the limit.  He's got lots of stuff in him, but he
+has been rendered helpless by their fool system--God save us from
+it!  That chap has had things done for him ever since he was first
+bathed; they have washed 'em, dressed 'em, fed 'em, schooled 'em,
+found 'em positions, stuck 'em in, and watched that they didn't
+fall out.  And yet, by George!" he added, after a pause, "they are
+running the world to-day--that is, some of them."  Facing which
+somewhat puzzling phenomenon, Denman plunged into his work again.
+
+Meantime Cameron was making his way towards the offices of the
+Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, oppressed with an
+unacknowledged but none the less real sense of unfitness, and
+haunted by a depressing sense of the deficiency of his own training,
+and of the training afforded the young men of his class at home.  As
+he started along he battled with his depression.  True enough, he
+had no skill in the various accomplishments that Mr. Denman seemed
+to consider essential; he had no experience in business, he was not
+fit for office work--office work he loathed; but surely there was
+some position where his talents would bring him recognition and
+fortune at last.  After all, Mr. Denman was only a Colonial, and
+with a Colonial's somewhat narrow view of life.  Who was he to
+criticise the system of training that for generations had been in
+vogue at home?  Had not Wellington said "that England's battles were
+first won on the football fields of Eton and Rugby," or something
+like that?  Of course, the training that might fit for a
+distinguished career in the British army might not necessarily
+insure success on the battle fields of industry and commerce.  Yet
+surely, an International player should be able to get somewhere!
+
+At this point in his cogitations Cameron was arrested by a memory
+that stabbed him like a knife-thrust; the awful moment when upon
+the Inverleith grounds, in the face of the Welsh forward-line, he
+had faltered and lost the International.  Should he ever be able to
+forget the agony of that moment and of the day that followed?  And
+yet, he need not have failed.  He knew he could play his position
+with any man in Scotland; he had failed because he was not fit.  He
+set his teeth hard.  He would show these bally Colonials!  He would
+make good!  And with his head high, he walked into the somewhat
+dingy offices of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company,
+of which William Fleming, Esquire, was manager.
+
+Opening the door, Cameron found himself confronted by a short
+counter that blocked the way for the general public into the long
+room, filled with desks and chairs and clicking typewriting
+machines.  Cameron had never seen so many of these machines during
+the whole period of his life.  The typewriter began to assume an
+altogether new importance in his mind.  Hitherto it had appeared to
+him more or less of a Yankee fad, unworthy of the attention of an
+able-bodied man of average intelligence.  In Edinburgh a "writing
+machine" was still something of a new-fangled luxury, to be
+apologised for.  Mr. Rae would allow no such finicky instrument in
+his office.  Here, however, there were a dozen, more or less,
+manipulated for the most part by young ladies, and some of them
+actually by men; on every side they clicked and banged.  It may
+have been the clicking and banging of these machines that gave to
+Cameron the sense of rush and hurry so different from the calm
+quiet and dignified repose of the only office he had ever known.
+For some moments he stood at the counter, waiting attention from
+one of the many clerks sitting before him, but though one and
+another occasionally glanced in his direction, his presence seemed
+to awaken not even a passing curiosity in their minds, much less to
+suggest the propriety of their inquiring his business.
+
+As the moments passed Cameron became conscious of a feeling of
+affront.  How differently a gentleman was treated by the clerks in
+the office of Messrs. Rae & Macpherson, where prompt attention and
+deferential courtesy in a clerk were as essential as a suit of
+clothes.  Gradually Cameron's head went up, and with it his choler.
+At length, in his haughtiest tone, he hailed a passing youth:
+
+"I say, boy, is this Mr. Fleming's office?"
+
+The clicking and banging of the typewriters, and the hum of voices
+ceased.  Everywhere heads were raised and eyes turned curiously
+upon the haughty stranger.
+
+"Eh?"  No letters can represent the nasal intonation of this
+syllabic inquiry, and no words the supreme indifference of the
+boy's tone.
+
+"Is Mr. Fleming in?  I wish to see him!"  Cameron's voice was loud
+and imperious.
+
+"Say, boys," said a lanky youth, with a long, cadaverous
+countenance and sallow, unhealthy complexion, illumined, however,
+and redeemed to a certain extent by black eyes of extraordinary
+brilliance, "it is the Prince of Wales!"  The drawling, awe-struck
+tones, in the silence that had fallen, were audible to all in the
+immediate neighbourhood.
+
+The titter that swept over the listeners brought the hot blood to
+Cameron's face.  A deliberate insult a Highlander takes with calm.
+He is prepared to deal with it in a manner affording him entire
+satisfaction.  Ridicule rouses him to fury, for, while it touches
+his pride, it leaves him no opportunity of vengeance.
+
+"Can you tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?" he enquired again of the
+boy that stood scanning him with calm indifference.  The rage that
+possessed him so vibrated in his tone that the lanky lad drawled
+again in a warning voice:
+
+"Slide, Jimmy, slide!"
+
+Jimmy "slid," but towards the counter.
+
+"Want to see him?" he enquired in a tone of brisk impertinence, as
+if suddenly roused from a reverie.
+
+"I have a letter for him."
+
+"All right!  Hand it over," said Jimmy, fully conscious that he was
+the hero of more than usual interest.
+
+Cameron hesitated, then passed his letter over to Jimmy, who,
+reading the address with deliberate care, winked at the lanky boy,
+and with a jaunty step made towards a door at the farther end of
+the room.  As he passed a desk that stood nearest the door, a man
+who during the last few minutes had remained with his head down,
+apparently so immersed in the papers before him as to be quite
+unconscious of his surroundings, suddenly called out, "Here, boy!"
+
+Jimmy instantly assumed an air of respectful attention.
+
+"A letter for Mr. Fleming," he said.
+
+"Here!" replied the man, stretching out his hand.
+
+He hurriedly glanced through the letter.
+
+"Tell him there is no vacancy at present," he said shortly.
+
+The boy came back to Cameron with cheerful politeness.  The "old
+man's" eye was upon him.
+
+"There is no vacancy at present," he said briefly, and turned away
+as if his attention were immediately demanded elsewhere by pressing
+business of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company.
+
+For answer, Cameron threw back the leaf of the counter that barred
+his way, and started up the long room, past the staring clerks, to
+the desk next the door.
+
+"I wish to see Mr. Fleming, Sir," he said, his voice trembling
+slightly, his face pale, his blue-gray eyes ablaze.
+
+The man at the desk looked up from his work.
+
+"I have just informed you there is no vacancy at present," he said
+testily, and turned to his papers again, as if dismissing the
+incident.
+
+"Will you kindly tell me if Mr. Fleming is in?" said Cameron in a
+voice that had grown quite steady; "I wish to see him personally."
+
+"Mr. Fleming cannot see you, I tell you!" almost shouted the man,
+rising from his desk and revealing himself a short, pudgy figure,
+with flabby face and shining bald head.  "Can't you understand
+English?--I can't be bothered--!"
+
+"What is it, Bates?  Someone to see me?"
+
+Cameron turned quickly towards the speaker, who had come from the
+inner room.
+
+"I have brought you a letter, Sir, from Mr. Denman," he said
+quietly; "it is there," pointing to Bates' desk.
+
+"A letter?  Let me have it!  Why was not this brought to me at
+once, Mr. Bates?"
+
+"It was an open letter, Sir," replied Bates, "and I thought there
+was no need of troubling you, Sir.  I told the young man we had no
+vacancy at present."
+
+"This is a personal letter, Mr. Bates, and should have been brought
+to me at once.  Why was Mr.--ah--Mr. Cameron not brought in to me?"
+
+Mr. Bates murmured something about not wishing to disturb the
+manager on trivial business.
+
+"I am the judge of that, Mr. Bates.  In future, when any man asks
+to see me, I desire him to be shown in at once."
+
+Mr. Bates began to apologise.
+
+"That is all that is necessary, Mr. Bates," said the manager, in a
+voice at once quiet and decisive.
+
+"Come in, Mr. Cameron.  I am very sorry this has happened!"
+
+Cameron followed him into his office, noting, as he passed, the red
+patches of rage on Mr. Bates' pudgy face, and catching a look of
+fierce hate from his small piggy eyes.  It flashed through his mind
+that in Mr. Bates, at any rate, he had found no friend.
+
+The result of the interview with Mr. Fleming was an intimation to
+Mr. Bates that Mr. Cameron was to have a position in the office of
+the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, and to begin
+work the following morning.
+
+"Very well, Sir," replied Mr. Bates--he had apparently quite
+recovered his equanimity--"we shall find Mr. Cameron a desk."
+
+"We begin work at eight o'clock exactly," he added, turning to
+Cameron with a pleasant smile.
+
+Mr. Fleming accompanied Cameron to the door.
+
+"Now, a word with you, Mr. Cameron.  You may find Mr. Bates a
+little difficult--he is something of a driver--but, remember, he is
+in charge of this office; I never interfere with his orders."
+
+"I understand, Sir," said Cameron, resolving that, at all costs, he
+should obey Mr. Bates' orders, if only to show the general manager
+he could recognise and appreciate a gentleman when he saw one.
+
+Mr. Fleming was putting it mildly when he described Mr. Bates as
+"something of a driver."  The whole office staff, from Jimmy, the
+office boy, to Jacobs, the gentle, white-haired clerk, whose desk
+was in the farthest corner of the room, felt the drive.  He was not
+only office manager, but office master as well.  His rule was
+absolute, and from his decisions there was no appeal.  The general
+manager went on the theory that it was waste of energy to keep a
+dog and bark himself.  In the policy that governed the office there
+were two rules which Mr. Bates enforced with the utmost rigidity--
+the first, namely, that every member of the staff must be in his or
+her place and ready for work when the clock struck eight; the
+other, that each member of the staff must work independently of
+every other member.  A man must know his business, and go through
+with it; if he required instructions, he must apply to the office
+manager.  But, as a rule, one experience of such application
+sufficed for the whole period of a clerk's service in the office of
+the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company, for Mr. Bates
+was gifted with such an exquisiteness of ironical speech that the
+whole staff were wont to pause in the rush of their work to listen
+and to admire when a new member was unhappy enough to require
+instructions, their silent admiration acting as a spur to Mr.
+Bates' ingenuity in the invention of ironical discourse.
+
+Of the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of Mr. Bates' system,
+however, Cameron was quite ignorant; nor had his experience in the
+office of Messrs. Rae & Macpherson been such as to impress upon him
+the necessity of a close observation of the flight of time.  It did
+not disturb him, therefore, to notice as he strolled into the
+offices of the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company the
+next morning that the hands of the clock showed six minutes past
+the hour fixed for the beginning of the day's work.  The office
+staff shivered in an ecstasy of expectant delight.  Cameron walked
+nonchalantly to Mr. Bates' desk, his overcoat on his arm, his cap
+in his hand.
+
+"Good morning, Sir," he said.
+
+Mr. Bates finished writing a sentence, looked up, and nodded a
+brief good morning.
+
+"We deposit our street attire on the hooks behind the door,
+yonder!" he said with emphatic politeness, pointing across the
+room.
+
+Cameron flushed, as in passing his desk he observed the pleased
+smile on the lanky boy's sallow face.
+
+"You evidently were not aware of the hours of this office,"
+continued Mr. Bates when Cameron had returned.  "We open at eight
+o'clock."
+
+"Oh!" said Cameron, carelessly.  "Eight?  Yes, I thought it was
+eight!  Ah! I see!  I believe I am five minutes late!  But I
+suppose I shall catch up before the day is over!"
+
+"Mr. Cameron," replied Mr. Bates earnestly, "if you should work for
+twenty years for the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company,
+never will you catch up those five minutes; every minute of your
+office hours is pledged to the company, and every minute has its
+own proper work.  Your desk is the one next Mr. Jacobs, yonder.
+Your work is waiting you there.  It is quite simple, the entry of
+freight receipts upon the ledger.  If you wish further instructions,
+apply to me here--you understand?"
+
+"I think so!" replied Cameron.  "I shall do my best to--"
+
+"Very well!  That is all!" replied Mr. Bates, plunging his head
+again into his papers.
+
+The office staff sank back to work with every expression of
+disappointment.  A moment later, however, their hopes revived.
+
+"Oh! Mr. Cameron!" called out Mr. Bates.  Mr. Cameron returned to
+his desk.  "If you should chance to be late again, never mind going
+to your desk; just come here for your cheque."
+
+Mr. Bates' tone was kindly, even considerate, as if he were anxious
+to save his clerk unnecessary inconvenience.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" stammered Cameron, astonished.
+
+"That is all!" replied Mr. Bates, his nose once more in his papers.
+
+Cameron stood hesitating.  His eye fell upon the boy, Jimmy, whose
+face expressed keenest joy.
+
+"Do you mean, Sir, that if I am late you dismiss me forthwith?"
+
+"What?"  Mr. Bates' tone was so fiercely explosive that it appeared
+to throw up his head with a violent motion.
+
+Cameron repeated his question.
+
+"Mr. Cameron, my time is valuable; so is yours.  I thought that I
+spoke quite distinctly.  Apparently I did not.  Let me repeat:  In
+case you should inadvertently be late again, you need not take the
+trouble to go to your desk; just come here.  Your cheque will be
+immediately made out.  Saves time, you know--your time and mine--
+and time, you perceive, in this office represents money."
+
+Mr. Bates' voice lost none of its kindly interest, but it had grown
+somewhat in intensity; the last sentence was uttered with his face
+close to his desk.
+
+Cameron stood a moment in uncertainty, gazing at the bald head
+before him; then, finding nothing to reply, he turned about to
+behold Jimmy and his lanky friend executing an animated war
+pantomime which they apparently deemed appropriate to the occasion.
+
+With face ablaze and teeth set Cameron went to his desk, to the
+extreme disappointment of Jimmy and the lanky youth, who fell into
+each other's arms, apparently overcome with grief.
+
+For half an hour the office hummed with the noise of subdued voices
+and clicked with the rapid fire of the typewriters.  Suddenly
+through the hum Mr. Bates' voice was heard, clear, calm, and coldly
+penetrating:
+
+"Mr. Jacobs!"
+
+The old, white-haired clerk started up from Cameron's desk, and
+began in a confused and gentle voice to explain that he was merely
+giving some hints to the new clerk.
+
+"Mr. Jacobs," said Mr. Bates, "I cannot hear you, and you are
+wasting my time!"
+
+"He was merely showing me how to make these entries!" said Cameron.
+
+"Ah!  Indeed!  Thank you, Mr. Cameron!  Though I believe Mr. Jacobs
+has not yet lost the power of lucid speech.  Mr. Jacobs, I believe
+you know the rules of this office; your fine will be one-quarter of
+a day."
+
+"Thank you!" said Mr. Jacobs, hurriedly resuming his desk.
+
+"And, Mr. Cameron, if you will kindly bring your work to me, I
+shall do my best to enlighten you in regard to the complex duty of
+entering your freight receipts."
+
+An audible snicker ran through the delighted staff.  Cameron seized
+his ledger and the pile of freight bills, and started for Mr.
+Bates' desk, catching out of the corner of his eye the pantomime of
+Jimmy and the lanky one, which was being rendered with vigor and
+due caution.
+
+For a few moments Cameron stood at the manager's desk till that
+gentleman should be disengaged, but Mr. Bates was skilled in the
+fine art of reducing to abject humility an employee who might give
+indications of insubordination.  Cameron's rage grew with every
+passing moment.
+
+"Here is the ledger, Sir!" he said at length.
+
+But Mr. Bates was so completely absorbed in the business of saving
+time that he made not the slightest pause in his writing, while the
+redoubled vigor and caution of the pantomime seemed to indicate the
+approach of a crisis.  At length Mr. Bates raised his head.  Jimmy
+and the lanky clerk became at once engrossed in their duties.
+
+"You have had no experience of this kind of work, Mr. Cameron?"
+inquired Mr. Bates kindly.
+
+"No, Sir.  But if you will just explain one or two matters, I think
+I can--"
+
+"Exactly!  This is not, however, a business college!  But we shall
+do our best!"
+
+A rapturous smile pervaded the office.  Mr. Bates was in excellent
+form.
+
+"By the way, Mr. Cameron--pardon my neglect--but may I inquire just
+what department of this work you are familiar with?"
+
+"Oh, general--"
+
+"Ah!  The position of general manager, however, is filled at
+present!" replied Mr. Bates kindly.
+
+Cameron's flush grew deeper, while Jimmy and his friend resigned
+themselves to an ecstasy of delight.
+
+"I was going to say," said Cameron in a tone loud and deliberate,
+"that I had been employed with the general copying work in a
+writer's office."
+
+"Writing?  Fancy!  Writing, eh?  No use here!" said Mr. Bates
+shortly, for time was passing.
+
+"A writer with us means a lawyer!" replied Cameron.
+
+"Why the deuce don't they say so?" answered Mr. Bates impatiently.
+"Well! Well!" getting hold of himself again.  "Here we allow our
+solicitors to look after our legal work.  Typewrite?" he inquired
+suddenly.
+
+"I beg your pardon!" replied Cameron.  "Typewrite?  Do you mean,
+can I use a typewriting machine?"
+
+"Yes!  Yes!  For heaven's sake, yes!"
+
+"No, I cannot!"
+
+"Bookkeep?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Good Lord!  What have I got?" inquired Mr. Bates of himself,
+in a tone, however, perfectly audible to those in the immediate
+neighbourhood.
+
+"Try him licking stamps!" suggested the lanky youth in a voice
+that, while it reached the ears of Jimmy and others near by,
+including Cameron, was inaudible to the manager.  Mr. Bates caught
+the sound, however, and glared about him through his spectacles.
+Time was being wasted--the supreme offense in that office--and Mr.
+Bates was fast losing his self-command.
+
+"Here!" he cried suddenly, seizing a sheaf of letters.  "File these
+letters.  You will be able to do that, I guess!  File's in the
+vault over there!"
+
+Cameron took the letters and stood looking helplessly from them to
+Mr. Bates' bald head, that gentleman's face being already in close
+proximity to the papers on his desk.
+
+"Just how do I go about this?--I mean, what system do you--"
+
+"Jim!" roared Mr. Bates, throwing down his pen, "show this con--
+show Mr. Cameron how to file these letters!  Just like these blank
+old-country chumps!" added Mr. Bates, in a lower voice, but loud
+enough to be distinctly heard.
+
+Jim came up with a smile of patronising pity on his face.  It was
+the smile that touched to life the mass of combustible material
+that had been accumulating for the last hour in Cameron's soul.
+Instead of following the boy, he turned with a swift movement back
+to the manager's desk, laid his sheaf of letters down on Mr. Bates'
+papers, and, leaning over the desk, towards that gentleman, said:
+
+"Did you mean that remark to apply to me?"  His voice was very
+quiet.  But Mr. Bates started back with a quick movement from the
+white face and burning eyes.
+
+"Here, you get out of this!" he cried.
+
+"Because," continued Cameron, "if you did, I must ask you to
+apologise at once."
+
+All smiles vanished from the office staff, even Jimmy's face
+assumed a serious aspect.  Mr. Bates pushed back his chair.
+
+"A-po-pologise!" he sputtered.  "Get out of this office, d'ye
+hear?"
+
+"Be quick!" said Cameron, his hands gripping Mr. Bates' desk till
+it shook.
+
+"Jimmy!  Call a policeman!" cried Mr. Bates, rising from his chair.
+
+He was too slow.  Cameron reached swiftly for his collar, and with
+one fierce wrench swept Mr. Bates clear over the top of his desk,
+shook him till his head wobbled dangerously, and flung him crashing
+across the desk and upon the prostrate form of the lanky youth
+sitting behind it.
+
+"Call a policeman!  Call a policeman!" shouted Mr. Bates, who was
+struggling meantime with the lanky youth to regain an upright
+position.
+
+Cameron, meanwhile, walked quietly to where his coat and cap hung.
+
+"Hold him, somebody!  Hold him!" shouted Mr. Bates, hurrying
+towards him.
+
+Cameron turned fiercely upon him.
+
+"Did you want me, Sir?" he inquired.
+
+Mr. Bates arrested himself with such violence that his feet slid
+from under him, and once more he came sitting upon the floor.
+
+"Get up!" said Cameron, "and listen to me!"
+
+Mr. Bates rose, and stood, white and trembling.
+
+"I may not know much about your Canadian ways of business, but I
+believe I can teach you some old-country manners.  You have treated
+me this morning like the despicable bully that you are.  Perhaps
+you will treat the next old-country man with the decency that is
+coming to him, even if he has the misfortune to be your clerk."
+
+With these words Cameron turned upon his heel and walked
+deliberately towards the door.  Immediately Jimmy sprang before
+him, and, throwing the door wide open, bowed him out as if he were
+indeed the Prince of Wales.  Thus abruptly ended Cameron's
+connection with the Metropolitan Transportation & Cartage Company.
+Before the day was done the whole city had heard the tale, which
+lost nothing in the telling.
+
+Next morning Mr. Denman was surprised to have Cameron walk in upon
+him.
+
+"Hullo, young man!" shouted the lawyer, "this is a pretty business!
+Upon my soul!  Your manner of entry into our commercial life is
+somewhat forceful!  What the deuce do you mean by all this?"
+
+Cameron stood, much abashed.  His passion was all gone; in the calm
+light of after-thought his action of yesterday seemed boyish.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry, Mr. Denman," he replied, "and I came to
+apologise to you."
+
+"To me?" cried Denman.  "Why to me?  I expect, if you wish to get a
+job anywhere in this town, you will need to apologise to the chap
+you knocked down--what's his name?"
+
+"Mr. Bates, I think his name is, Sir; but, of course, I cannot
+apologise to him."
+
+"By Jove!" roared Mr. Denman, "he ought to have thrown you out of
+his office!  That is what I would have done!"
+
+Cameron glanced up and down Mr. Denman's well-knit figure.
+
+"I don't think so, Sir," he said, with a smile.
+
+"Why not?" said Mr. Denman, grasping the arms of his office chair.
+
+"Because you would not have insulted a stranger in your office who
+was trying his best to understand his work.  And then, I should not
+have tried it on you."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Well, I think I know a gentleman when I see one."
+
+Mr. Denman was not to be appeased.
+
+"Well, let me tell you, young man, it would have been a mighty
+unhealthy thing for you to have cut up any such shine in this
+office.  I have done some Rugby in my day, my boy, if you know what
+that means."
+
+"I have done a little, too," said Cameron, with slightly heightened
+colour.
+
+"You have, eh!  Where?"
+
+"The Scottish International, Sir."
+
+"By Jove!  You don't tell me!" replied Mr. Denman, his tone
+expressing a new admiration and respect.  "When?  This year?"
+
+"No, last year, Sir--against Wales!"
+
+"By Jove!" cried Mr. Denman again; "give me your hand, boy!  Any
+man who has made the Scottish Internationals is not called to stand
+any cheek from a cad like Bates."
+
+Mr. Denman shook Cameron warmly by the hand.
+
+"Tell us about it!" he cried.  "It must have been rare sport.  If
+Bates only knew it, he ought to count it an honour to have been
+knocked down by a Scottish International."
+
+"I didn't knock him down, Sir!" said Cameron, apologetically; "he
+is only a little chap; I just gave him a bit of a shake," and
+Cameron proceeded to recount the proceedings of the previous
+morning.
+
+Mr. Denman was hugely delighted.
+
+"Serves the little beast bloody well right!" he cried enthusiastically.
+"But what's to do now?  They will be afraid to let you into their
+offices in this city."
+
+"I think, Sir, I am done with offices; I mean to try the land."
+
+"Farm, eh?" mused Mr. Denman.  "Well, so be it!  It will probably
+be safer for you there--possibly for some others as well."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+A MAN'S JOB
+
+
+Cameron slept heavily and long into the day, but as he awoke he was
+conscious of a delightful exhilaration possessing him.  For the
+first time in his life he was a free man, ungoverned and unguided.
+For four dreary weeks he had waited in Montreal for answers to his
+enquiries concerning positions with farmers, but apparently the
+Canadian farmers were not attracted by the qualifications and
+experience Cameron had to offer.  At length he had accepted the
+advice of Martin's uncle in Montreal, who assured him with local
+pride that, if he desired a position on a farm, the district of
+which the little city of London was the centre was the very garden
+of Canada.  He was glad now to remember that he had declined a
+letter of introduction.  He was now entirely on his own.  Neither
+in this city nor in the country round about was there a soul with
+whom he had the remotest acquaintance.  The ways of life led out
+from his feet, all untried, all unknown.  Which he should choose he
+knew not, but with a thrill of exultation he thanked his stars the
+choosing was his own concern.  A feeling of adventure was upon him,
+a new courage was rising in his heart.  The failure that had
+hitherto dogged his past essays in life did not dampen his
+confidence, for they had been made under other auspices than his
+own.  He had not fitted into his former positions, but they had not
+been of his own choosing.  He would now find a place for himself
+and if he failed again he was prepared to accept the responsibility.
+One bit of philosophy he carried with him from Mr. Denman's farewell
+interview--"Now, young man, rememer," that gentleman had said after
+he had bidden him farewell, "this world is pretty much made already;
+success consists in adjustment.  Don't try to make your world,
+adjust yourself to it.  Don't fight the world, serve it till you
+master it."  Cameron determined he would study adjustments; his
+fighting tendency, which had brought him little success in the past,
+he would control.
+
+At this point the throb of a band broke in upon his meditations and
+summoned him from his bed.  He sprang to the window.  It was circus
+day and the morning parade, in all its mingled and cosmopolitan
+glory, was slowly evolving its animated length to the strains of
+bands of music.  There were bands on horses and bands on chariots,
+and at the tail of the procession a fearful and wonderful instrument
+bearing the euphonious and classic name of the "calliope," whose
+chief function seemed to be that of terrifying the farmers' horses
+into frantic and determined attempts to escape from these horrid
+alarms of the city to the peaceful haunts of their rural solitudes.
+
+Cameron was still boy enough to hurry through his morning duties in
+order that he might mix with the crowd and share the perennial
+delights which a circus affords.  The stable yard attached to his
+hotel was lined three deep with buggies, carriages, and lumber
+waggons, which had borne in the crowds of farmers from the country.
+The hotel was thronged with sturdy red-faced farm lads, looking hot
+and uncomfortable in their unaccustomed Sunday suits, gorgeous in
+their rainbow ties, and rakish with their hats set at all angles
+upon their elaborately brushed heads.  Older men, too, bearded and
+staid, moved with silent and self-respecting dignity through the
+crowds, gazing with quiet and observant eyes upon the shifting
+phantasmagoria that filled the circus grounds and the streets
+nearby.  With these, too, there mingled a few of both old and young
+who, with bacchanalian enthusiasm, were swaggering their way
+through the crowds, each followed by a company of friends good-
+naturedly tolerant or solicitously careful.
+
+Cameron's eyes, roving over the multitude, fell upon a little group
+that held his attention, the principal figure of which was a tall
+middle aged man with a good-natured face, adorned with a rugged
+grey chin whisker, who was loudly declaiming to a younger companion
+with a hard face and very wide awake, "My name's Tom Haley; ye
+can't come over me."
+
+"Ye bet yer life they can't.  Ye ain't no chicken!" exclaimed his
+hard-faced friend.  "Say, let's liquor up once more before we go to
+see the elephant."
+
+With these two followed a boy of some thirteen years, freckled
+faced and solemn, slim and wiry of body, who was anxiously striving
+to drag his father away from one of the drinking booths that dotted
+the circus grounds, and towards the big tent; but the father had
+been already a too frequent visitor at the booth to be quite
+amenable to his son's pleading.  He, in a glorious mood of self-
+appreciation, kept announcing to the public generally and to his
+hard-faced friend in particular--
+
+"My name's Tom Haley; ye can't come over me!"
+
+"Come on, father," pleaded Tim.
+
+"No hurry, Timmy, me boy," said his father.  "The elephants won't
+run away with the monkeys and the clowns can't git out of the
+ring."
+
+"Oh, come on, dad, I'm sure the show's begun."
+
+"Cheese it, young feller," said the young man, "yer dad's able to
+take care of himself."
+
+"Aw, you shut yer mouth!" replied Tim fiercely.  "I know what
+you're suckin' round for."
+
+"Good boy, Tim," laughed his father; "ye giv' 'im one that time.
+Guess we'll go.  So long, Sam, if that's yer name.  Ye see I've
+jist got ter take in this 'ere show this morning with Tim 'ere, and
+then we have got some groceries to git for the old woman.  See
+there," he drew a paper from his pocket, "wouldn't dare show up
+without 'em, ye bet, eh, Tim!  Why, it's her egg and butter money
+and she wants value fer it, she does.  Well, so long, Sam, see ye
+later," and with the triumphant Tim he made for the big tent,
+leaving a wrathful and disappointed man behind him.
+
+Cameron spent the rest of the day partly in "taking in" the circus
+and partly in conversing with the farmers who seemed to have taken
+possession of the town; but in answer to his most diligent and
+careful enquiries he could hear of no position on a farm for which
+he could honestly offer himself.  The farmers wanted mowers, or
+cradlers, or good smart turnip hands, and Cameron sorrowfully had
+to confess he was none of these.  There apparently was no single
+bit of work in the farmer's life that Cameron felt himself
+qualified to perform.
+
+It was wearing towards evening when Cameron once more came across
+Tim.  He was standing outside the bar room door, big tears silently
+coursing down his pale and freckled cheeks.
+
+"Hello!" cried Cameron, "what's up old chap?  Where's your dad, and
+has he got his groceries yet?"
+
+"No," said Tim, hastily wiping away his tears and looking up
+somewhat shyly and sullenly into Cameron's face.  What he saw there
+apparently won his confidence.
+
+"He's in yonder," he continued, "and I can't git him out.  They
+won't let him come.  They're jist making 'im full so he can't do
+anything, and we ought to be startin' fer home right away, too!"
+
+"Well, let's go in anyway and see what they are doing," said
+Cameron cheerfully, to whom the pale tear-stained face made strong
+appeal.
+
+"They won't let us," said Tim.  "There's a feller there that chucks
+me out."
+
+"Won't, eh?  We'll see about that!  Come along!"
+
+Cameron entered the bar room, with Tim following, and looked about
+him.  The room was crowded to the door with noisy excited men, many
+of whom were partially intoxicated.  At the bar, two deep, stood a
+line of men with glasses in their hands, or waiting to be served.
+In the farthest corner of the room stood Tim's father, considerably
+the worse of his day's experiences, and lovingly embracing the
+hard-faced young man, to whom he was at intervals announcing, "My
+name's Tom Haley!  Ye can't git over me!"
+
+As Cameron began to push through the crowd, a man with a very red
+face, obviously on the watch for Tim, cried out--
+
+"Say, sonny, git out of here!  This is no place fer you!"
+
+Tim drew back, but Cameron, turning to him, said,
+
+"Come along, Tim.  He's with me," he added, addressing the man.
+"He wants his father."
+
+"His father's not here.  He left half an hour ago.  I told him so."
+
+"You were evidently mistaken, for I see him just across the room
+there," said Cameron quietly.
+
+"Oh! is he a friend of yours?" enquired the red-faced man.
+
+"No, I don't know him at all, but Tim does, and Tim wants him,"
+said Cameron, beginning to push his way through the crowd towards
+the vociferating Haley, who appeared to be on the point of backing
+up some of his statements with money, for he was flourishing a
+handful of bills in the face of the young man Sam, who apparently
+was quite willing to accommodate him with the wager.
+
+Before Cameron could make his way through the swaying, roaring
+crowd, the red-faced man slipped from his side, and in a very few
+moments appeared at a side door near Tom Haley's corner.  Almost
+immediately there was a shuffle and Haley and his friends
+disappeared through the side door.
+
+"Hello!" cried Cameron, "there's something doing!  We'll just slip
+around there, my boy."  So saying, he drew Tim back from the crowd
+and out of the front door, and, hurrying around the house, came
+upon Sam, the red-faced man, and Haley in a lane leading past the
+stable yard.  The red-faced man was affectionately urging a bottle
+upon Haley.
+
+"There they are!" said Tim in an undertone, clutching Cameron's
+arm.  "You get him away and I'll hitch up."
+
+"All right, Tim," said Cameron, "I'll get him.  They are evidently
+up to no good."
+
+"What's yer name?" said Tim hurriedly.
+
+"Cameron!"
+
+"Come on, then!" he cried, dragging Cameron at a run towards his
+father.  "Here, Dad!" he cried, "this is my friend, Mr. Cameron!
+Come on home.  I'm going to hitch up.  We'll be awful late for the
+chores and we got them groceries to git.  Come on, Dad!"
+
+"Aw, gwan! yer a cheeky kid anyway," said Sam, giving Tim a shove
+that nearly sent him on his head.
+
+"Hold on there, my man, you leave the boy alone," said Cameron.
+
+"What's your business in this, young feller?"
+
+"Never mind!" said Cameron.  "Tim is a friend of mine and no one is
+going to hurt him.  Run along, Tim, and get your horses."
+
+"Friend o' Tim's, eh!" said Haley, in half drunken good nature.
+"Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine," he added, gravely shaking
+Cameron by the hand.  "Have a drink, young man.  You look a'
+right!"
+
+Cameron took the bottle, put it to his lips.  The liquor burned
+like fire.
+
+"Great Caesar!" he gasped, contriving to let the bottle drop upon a
+stone.  "What do you call that?"
+
+"Pretty hot stuff!" cried Haley, with a shout of laughter.
+
+But Sam, unable to see the humour of the situation, exclaimed in a
+rage, "Here, you cursed fool!  That is my bottle!"
+
+"Sorry to be so clumsy," said Cameron apologetically, "but it
+surely wasn't anything to drink, was it?"
+
+"Yes, it jest was something to drink, was it?" mocked Sam,
+approaching Cameron with menace in his eye and attitude.  "I have a
+blanked good notion to punch your head, too!"
+
+"Oh!  I wouldn't do that if I were you," said Cameron, smiling
+pleasantly.
+
+"Say, Sam, don't get mad, Sam," interposed Haley.  "This young
+feller's a friend o' Tim's.  I'll git another bottle a' right.
+I've got the stuff right here."  He pulled out his roll of bills.
+"And lots more where this comes from."
+
+"Let me have that, Mr. Haley, I'll get the bottle for you," said
+Cameron, reaching out for the bills.
+
+"A' right," said Haley.  "Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine."
+
+"Here, young feller, you're too fresh!" cried the red-faced man,
+"buttin' in here!  You make tracks, git out!  Come, git out, I tell
+yeh!"
+
+"Give it to him quick," said Sam in a low voice.
+
+The red-faced man, without the slightest warning, swiftly stepped
+towards Cameron and, before the latter could defend himself, struck
+him a heavy blow.  Cameron staggered, fell, and struggled again to
+his knees.  The red-faced man sprang forward to kick him in the
+face, when Haley interposed--
+
+"Hold up there, now!  Friend o' Tim's, friend o' mine, ye know!"
+
+"Hurry up," said Sam, closing in on Haley.  "Quit fooling.  Give
+'im the billy and let's get away!"
+
+But Haley, though unskilled with his hands, was a man of more than
+ordinary strength, and he swung his long arms about with such
+vigour that neither Sam, who was savagely striking at his head, nor
+the red-faced man, who was dancing about waiting for a chance to
+get in with the "billy," which he held in his hand, was able to
+bring the affair to a finish.  It could be a matter of only a few
+moments, however, for both Sam and his friend were evidently
+skilled in the arts of the thug, while Haley, though powerful
+enough, was chiefly occupying himself in beating the air.  A blow
+from the billy dropped one of Haley's arms helpless.  The red-faced
+man, following up his advantage, ran in to finish, but Haley
+gripped him by the wrist and, exerting all his strength, gave a
+mighty heave and threw him heavily against Sam, who was running in
+upon the other side.  At the same time Cameron, who was rapidly
+recovering, clutched Sam by a leg and brought him heavily to earth.
+Reaching down, Haley gripped Cameron by the collar and hauled him
+to his feet just as Sam, who had sprung up, ran to the attack.
+Steadied by Haley, Cameron braced himself, and, at exactly the
+right moment, stiffened his left arm with the whole weight of his
+body behind it.  The result was a most unhappy one for Sam, who,
+expecting no such reception, was lifted clear off his feet and
+hurled to the ground some distance away.  The exhilaration of his
+achievement brought Cameron's blood back again to his brain.
+Swiftly he turned upon the red-faced man just as that worthy had
+brought Haley to his knees with a cruel blow and was preparing to
+finish off his victim.  With a shout Cameron sprang at him, the man
+turned quickly, warded off Cameron's blow, and then, seeing Sam
+lying helpless upon the ground, turned and fled down the lane.
+
+"Say, young feller!" panted Haley, staggering to his feet, "yeh
+came in mighty slick that time.  Yeh ain't got a bottle on ye, hev
+yeh?"
+
+"No!" said Cameron, "but there's a pump near by."
+
+"Jest as good and a little better," said Haley, staggering towards
+the pump.  "Say," he continued, with a humourous twinkle in his
+eye, and glancing at the man lying on the ground, "Sam's kinder
+quiet, ain't he?  Run agin something hard like, I guess."
+
+Cameron filled a bucket with water and into its icy depths Haley
+plunged his head.
+
+"Ow! that's good," he sputtered, plunging his head in again and
+again.  "Fill 'er up once more!" he said, wiping off his face with
+a big red handkerchief.  "Now, I shouldn't wonder if it would help
+Sam a bit."
+
+He picked up the bucket of water and approached Sam, who meantime
+had got to a sitting position and was blinking stupidly around.
+
+"Here, ye blamed hog, hev a wash, ye need it bad!"  So saying,
+Haley flung the whole bucket of water over Sam's head and
+shoulders.  "Fill 'er up again," he said, but Sam had had enough,
+and, swearing wildly, gasping and sputtering, he made off down the
+lane.
+
+"I've heard o' them circus toughs," said Haley in a meditative
+tone, "but never jest seen 'em before.  Say, young feller, yeh came
+in mighty handy fer me a' right, and seeing as yer Tim's friend put
+it there."  He gripped Cameron's hand and shook it heartily.
+"Here's Tim with the team, and, say, there's no need to mention
+anything about them fellers.  Tim's real tender hearted.  Well, I'm
+glad to hev met yeh.  Good-bye!  Living here?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"Travellin', eh?"
+
+"Not exactly," replied Cameron.  "The truth is I'm looking for a
+position."
+
+"A position?  School teachin', mebbe?"
+
+"No, a position on a farm."
+
+"On a farm?  Ha! ha! good!  Position on a farm," repeated Haley.
+
+"Yes," replied Cameron.  "Do you know of any?"
+
+"Position on a farm!" said Haley again, as if trying to grasp the
+meaning of this extraordinary quest.  "There ain't any."
+
+"No positions?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Nary one!  Say, young man, where do you come from?"
+
+"Scotland," replied Cameron.
+
+"Scotland! yeh don't say, now.  Jest out, eh?"
+
+"Yes, about a month or so."
+
+"Well, well!  Yeh don't say so!"
+
+"Yes," replied Cameron, "and I am surprised to hear that there is
+no work."
+
+"Oh! hold on there now!" interposed Haley gravely.  "If it's work
+you want there are stacks of it lying round, but there ain't no
+positions.  Positions!" ejaculated Haley, who seemed to be
+fascinated by the word, "there ain't none on my farm except one and
+I hold that myself; but there's lots o' work, and--why! I want a
+man right now.  What say?  Come along, stay's long's yeh like.  I
+like yeh fine."
+
+"All right," said Cameron.  "Wait till I get my bag, but I ought to
+tell you I have had no experience."
+
+"No experience, eh!"  Haley pondered.  "Well, we'll give it to you,
+and anyway you saved me some experience to-day and you come home
+with me."
+
+When he returned he found Haley sitting on the bottom of the wagon
+rapidly sinking into slumber.  The effects of the bucket were
+passing off.
+
+"What about the groceries, Tim?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"We've got to git 'em," said Tim, "or we'll catch it sure."
+
+Leaving Cameron to wonder what it might be that they were sure to
+catch, Tim extracted from his father's pocket the paper on which
+were listed the groceries to be purchased, and the roll of bills,
+and handed both to Cameron.
+
+"You best git 'em," he said, and, mounting to the high spring seat,
+turned the team out of the yard.  The groceries secured with
+Cameron's help, they set off for home as the long June evening was
+darkening into night.
+
+"My! it's awful late," said Tim in a voice full of foreboding.
+"And Perkins ain't no good at chores."
+
+"How far is it to your home?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Nine miles out this road and three off to the east."
+
+"And who's Perkins?"
+
+"Perkins!  Joe Perkins!  He's our hired man.  He's a terror to work
+at plowin', cradlin', and bindin', but he ain't no good at chores.
+I bet yeh he'll leave Mandy to do the milkin', ten cows, and some's
+awful bad."
+
+"And who's Mandy?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Mandy!  She's my sister.  She's an awful quick milker.  She can
+beat Dad, or Perkins, or any of 'em, but ten cows is a lot, and
+then there's the pigs and the calves to feed, and the wood, too.
+I bet Perkins won't cut a stick.  He's good enough in the field,"
+continued Tim, with an obvious desire to do Perkins full justice,
+"but he ain't no good around the house.  He says he ain't hired to
+do women's chores, and Ma she won't ask 'im.  She says if he don't
+do what he sees to be done she'd see 'im far enough before she'd
+ask 'im."  And so Timothy went on with a monologue replete with
+information, his high thin voice rising clear above the roar and
+rattle of the lumber wagon as it rumbled and jolted over the rutty
+gravel road.  Those who knew the boy would have been amazed at his
+loquacity, but something in Cameron had won his confidence and
+opened his heart.  Hence his monologue, in which the qualities,
+good and bad, of the members of the family, of their own hired man
+and of other hired men were fully discussed.  The standard of
+excellence for work in the neighbourhood, however, appeared to be
+Perkins, whose abilities Tim appeared greatly to admire, but for
+whose person he appeared to have little regard.
+
+"He's mighty good at turnip hoeing, too," he said.  "I could pretty
+near keep up to him last year and I believe I could do it this
+year.  Some day soon I'm going to git after 'im.  My!  I'd like to
+trim 'im to a fine point."
+
+The live stock on the farm in general, and the young colts in
+particular, among which a certain two-year-old was showing signs of
+marvellous speed, these and cognate subjects relating to the farm,
+its dwellers and its activities, Tim passed in review, with his own
+shrewd comments thereon.
+
+"And what do you play, Tim?" asked Cameron, seeking a point of
+contact with the boy.
+
+"Nothin'," said Tim shortly.  "No time."
+
+"Don't you go to school?"
+
+"Yes, in fall and winter.  Then we play ball and shinny some, but
+there ain't much time."
+
+"But you can't work all the time, Tim?  What work can you do?"
+
+"Oh!" replied Tim carelessly, "I run a team."
+
+"Run a team?  What do you mean?"
+
+Tim glanced up at him and, perceiving that he was quite serious,
+proceeded to explain that during the spring's work he had taken his
+place in the plowing and harrowing with the "other" men, that he
+expected to drive the mower and reaper in haying and harvest, that,
+in short, in almost all kinds of farm work he was ready to take the
+place of a grown man; and all this without any sign of boasting.
+
+Cameron thought over his own life, in which sport had filled up so
+large a place and work so little, and in which he had developed so
+little power of initiative and such meagre self-dependence, and he
+envied the solemn-faced boy at his side, handling his team and
+wagon with the skill of a grown man.
+
+"I say, Tim!" he exclaimed in admiration, "you're great.  I wish I
+could do half as much."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" exclaimed Tim in modest self-disdain, "that ain't
+nothin', but I wish I could git off a bit."
+
+"Get off?  What do you mean?"
+
+The boy was silent for some moments, then asked shyly:
+
+"Say!  Is there big cities in Scotland, an' crowds of people, an'
+trains, an' engines, an' factories, an' things?  My!  I wish I
+could git away!"
+
+Then Cameron understood dimly something of the wander-lust in the
+boy's soul, of the hunger for adventure, for the colour and
+movement of life in the great world "away" from the farm, that
+thrilled in the boy's voice.  So for the next half hour he told Tim
+tales of his own life, the chief glory of which had been his
+achievements in the realm of sport, and, before he was aware, he
+was describing to the boy the great International with Wales, till,
+remembering the disastrous finish, he brought his narrative to an
+abrupt close.
+
+"And did yeh lick 'em?" demanded Tim in a voice of intense
+excitement.
+
+"No," said Cameron shortly.
+
+"Oh, hedges!  I wisht ye had!" exclaimed Tim in deep disappointment.
+
+"It was my fault," replied Cameron bitterly, for the eager wish in
+the boy's heart had stirred a similar yearning in his own and had
+opened an old sore.
+
+"I was a fool," he said, more to himself than to Tim.  "I let
+myself get out of condition and so I lost them the match."
+
+"Aw, git out!" said Tim, with unbelieving scorn.  "I bet yeh
+didn't!  My!  I wisht I could see them games "
+
+"Oh, pshaw!  Tim, they are not half so worth while as plowing,
+harrowing, and running your team.  Why, here you are, a boy of--
+how old?"
+
+"Thirteen," said Tim.
+
+"A boy of thirteen able to do a man's work, and here am I, a man of
+twenty-one, only able to do a boy's work, and not even that.  But
+I'm going to learn, Tim," added Cameron.  "You hear me, I am going
+to learn to do a man's work.  If I can," he added doubtfully.
+
+"Oh, shucks!" replied Tim, "you bet yeh can, and I'll show yeh,"
+with which mutual determination they turned in at the gate of the
+Haley farm, which was to be the scene of Cameron's first attempt to
+do a man's work and to fill a man's place in the world.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+A DAY'S WORK
+
+
+The Haley farm was a survival of an ambitious past.  Once the
+property of a rich English gentleman, it had been laid out with an
+eye to appearance rather than to profit and, though the soil was
+good enough, it had never been worked to profit.  Consequently,
+when its owner had tired of Colonial life, he had at first rented
+the farm, but, finding this unsatisfactory, he, in a moment of
+disgust, advertised it for sale.  Pretentious in its plan and in
+its appointments, its neglected and run down condition gave it an
+air of decayed gentility, depressing alike to the eye of the
+beholder and to the selling price of the owner.  Haley bought it
+and bought it cheap.  From the high road a magnificent avenue of
+maples led to a house of fine proportions, though sadly needing
+repair.  The wide verandahs, the ample steps were unpainted and
+falling into ruin; the lawn reaching from the front door to the
+orchard was spacious, but overgrown with burdocks, nettles and
+other noxious weeds; the orchard, which stretched from the lawn to
+the road on both sides of the lane, had been allowed to run sadly
+to wood.  At the side of the house the door-yard was littered with
+abandoned farm implements, piles of old fence rails and lumber and
+other impedimenta, which, though kindly Nature, abhorring the
+unsightly rubbish, was doing her utmost to hide it all beneath a
+luxuriant growth of docks, milkweed, and nettles, lent an air of
+disorder and neglect to the whole surroundings.  The porch, or
+"stoop," about the summer kitchen was set out with an assortment of
+tubs and pails, pots and pans, partially filled with various evil
+looking and more evil smelling messes, which afforded an excellent
+breeding and feeding place for flies, mosquitoes, and other
+unpleasant insects.  Adjoining the door yard, and separated from it
+by a fence, was the barn yard, a spacious quadrangle flanked on
+three sides by barns, stables, and sheds, which were large and
+finely planned, but which now shared the general appearance of
+decrepitude.  The fence, which separated one yard from the other,
+was broken down, so that the barn yard dwellers, calves, pigs, and
+poultry, wandered at will in search of amusement or fodder to the
+very door of the kitchen, and so materially contributed to the
+general disorder, discomfort, and dirt.
+
+Away from the house, however, where Nature had her own way, the
+farm stretched field after field on each side of the snake fenced
+lane to the line of woods in the distance, a picture of rich and
+varied beauty.  From the rising ground on which the house was
+situated a lovely vista swept right from the kitchen door away to
+the remnant of the forest primeval at the horizon.  On every field
+the signs of coming harvest were luxuriantly visible, the hay
+fields, grey-green with blooming "Timothy" and purple with the deep
+nestling clover, the fall wheat green and yellowing into gold, the
+spring wheat a lighter green and bursting into head, the oats with
+their graceful tasselated stalks, the turnip field ribboned with
+its lines of delicate green on the dark soil drills, back of all,
+the "slashing" where stumps, blackened with fire, and trunks of
+trees piled here and there in confusion, all overgrown with weeds,
+represented the transition stage between forest and harvest field,
+and beyond the slashing the dark cool masses of maple, birch, and
+elm; all these made a scene of such varied loveliness as to delight
+the soul attuned to nature.
+
+Upon this scene of vivid contrasts, on one side house and barn and
+yard, and on the other the rolling fields and massive forest,
+Cameron stood looking in the early light of his first morning on
+the farm, with mingled feelings of disgust and pleasure.  In a few
+moments, however, the loveliness of the far view caught and held
+his eye and he stood as in a dream.  The gentle rolling landscape,
+with its rich variety of greens and yellows and greys, that swept
+away from his feet to the dark masses of woods, with their
+suggestions of cool and shady depth, filled his soul with a deep
+joy and brought him memory of how the "Glen of the Cup of Gold"
+would look that morning in the dear home-land so far away.  True,
+there were neither mountains nor moors, neither lochs nor birch-
+clad cliffs here.  Nature, in her quieter mood, looked up at him
+from these sloping fields and bosky woods and smiled with kindly
+face, and that smile of hers it was that brought to Cameron's mind
+the sunny Glen of the Cup of Gold.  It was the sweetest, kindliest
+thing his eye had looked on since he had left the Glen.
+
+A harsh and fretful voice broke in upon his dreaming.
+
+"Pa-a-w, there ain't a stick of wood for breakfast!  There was none
+last night!  If you want any breakfast you'd best git some wood!"
+
+"All right, Mother!" called Haley from the barn yard, where he was
+assisting in the milking.  "I'm a comin'."
+
+Cameron walked to meet him.
+
+"Can I help?" he enquired.
+
+"Why, of course!" shouted Haley.  "Here, Ma, here's our new hand,
+the very man for you."
+
+Mrs. Haley, who had retired to the kitchen, appeared at the door.
+She was a woman past middle age, unduly stout, her face deep lined
+with the fret of a multitude of cares, and hung with flabby folds
+of skin, browned with the sun and wind, though it must be confessed
+its color was determined more by the grease and grime than by the
+tan upon it.  Yet, in spite of the flabby folds of flesh, in spite
+of the grime and grease, there was still a reminiscence of a one-
+time comeliness, all the more pathetic by reason of its all too
+obvious desecration.  Her voice was harsh, her tone fretful, which
+indeed was hardly to be wondered at, for the burden of her life was
+by no means light, and the cares of the household, within and
+without, were neither few nor trivial.
+
+For a moment or two Mrs. Haley stood in silence studying and
+appraising the new man.  The result did not apparently inspire her
+with hope.
+
+"Come on now, Pa," she said, "stop yer foolin' and git me that
+wood.  I want it right now.  You're keepin' me back and there's an
+awful lot to do."
+
+"But I ain't foolin', Ma.  Mr. Cameron is our new hand.  He'll
+knock yeh off a few sticks in no time."  So saying, Haley walked
+off with his pails to the milking, leaving his wife and the new
+hand facing each other, each uncertain as to the next move.
+
+"What can I do, Mrs. Haley?" enquired Cameron politely.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said Mrs. Haley wearily.  "I want a few sticks
+for the breakfast, but perhaps I can get along with chips, but
+chips don't give no steady fire."
+
+"If you would show me just what to do," said Cameron with some
+hesitation, "I mean, where is the wood to be got?"
+
+"There," she said, in a surprised tone, pointing to a pile of long
+logs of ash and maple.  "I don't want much."  She gathered her
+apron full of chips and turned away, all too obviously refusing to
+place her hope of wood for the breakfast fire upon the efforts of
+the new man.  Cameron stood looking alternately at the long, hard,
+dry logs and at the axe which he had picked up from the bed of
+chips.  The problem of how to produce the sticks necessary to
+breakfast by the application of the one to the other was one for
+which he could see no solution.  He lifted his axe and brought it
+down hard upon a maple log.  The result was a slight indentation
+upon the log and a sharp jar from the axe handle that ran up his
+arm unpleasantly.  A series of heavy blows produced nothing more
+than a corresponding series of indentations in the tough maple log
+and of jars more or less sharp and painful shooting up his arms.
+The result was not encouraging, but it flashed upon him that this
+was his first attempt to make good at his job on the farm.  He
+threw off his coat and went at his work with energy; but the
+probability of breakfast, so far as it depended upon the result of
+his efforts, seemed to be growing more and more remote.
+
+"Guess ye ain't got the knack of it," said a voice, deep, full, and
+mellow, behind him.  "That axe ain't no good for choppin', it's a
+splittin' axe."
+
+Turning, he saw a girl of about seventeen, with little grace and
+less beauty, but strongly and stoutly built, and with a good-
+natured, if somewhat stupid and heavy face.  Her hair was dun in
+colour, coarse in texture, and done up loosely and carelessly in
+two heavy braids, arranged about her head in such a manner as to
+permit stray wisps of hair to escape about her face and neck.
+She was dressed in a loose pink wrapper, all too plainly of home
+manufacture, gathered in at the waist, and successfully obliterating
+any lines that might indicate the existence of any grace of form,
+and sadly spotted and stained with grease and dirt. Her red stout
+arms ended in thick and redder hands, decked with an array of
+black-rimmed nails.  At his first glance, sweeping her "tout
+ensemble," Cameron was conscious of a feeling of repulsion, but in a
+moment this feeling passed and he was surprised to find himself
+looking into two eyes of surprising loveliness, dark blue, well
+shaped, and of such liquid depths as to suggest pools of water under
+forest trees.
+
+"They use the saw mostly," said the girl.
+
+"The saw?" echoed Cameron.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "They saw 'em through and then split 'em with the
+axe."
+
+Cameron picked up the buck-saw which lay against a rickety saw
+horse.  Never in his life had he used such an instrument.  He gazed
+helplessly at his companion.
+
+"How do you use this thing?" he enquired.
+
+"Say! are you funny," replied the girl, flashing a keen glance upon
+him, "or don't ye know?"
+
+"Never saw it done in my life," said Cameron solemnly.
+
+"Here!" she cried, "let me show you."
+
+She seized the end of a maple log, dragged it forward to the
+rickety saw horse, set it in position, took the saw from his hands,
+and went at her work with such vigour that in less than a minute as
+it seemed to Cameron she had made the cut.
+
+"Give me that axe!" she said impatiently to Cameron, who was
+preparing to split the block.
+
+With a few strong and skillful blows she split the straight-grained
+block of wood into firewood, gathered up the sticks in her arms,
+and, with a giggle, turned toward the house.
+
+"I won't charge you anything for that lesson," she said, "but
+you'll have to hustle if you git that wood split 'fore breakfast."
+
+"Thank you," said Cameron, grateful that none of the men had
+witnessed the instruction, "I shall do my best," and for the next
+half hour, with little skill, but by main strength, he cut off a
+number of blocks from the maple log and proceeded to split them.
+But in this he made slow progress.  From the kitchen came cheerful
+sounds and scents of cooking, and ever and anon from the door
+waddled, with quite surprising celerity, the unwieldy bulk of the
+mistress of the house.
+
+"Now, that's jest like yer Pa," Cameron heard her grumbling to her
+daughter, "bringin' a man here jest at the busy season who don't
+know nothin'.  He's peckin' away at 'em blocks like a rooster
+peckin' grain."
+
+"He's willin' enough, Ma," replied the girl, "and I guess he'll
+learn."
+
+"Learn!" puffed Mrs. Haley contemptuously.  "Did ye ever see an
+old-country man learn to handle an axe or a scythe after he was
+growed up?  Jest look at 'im.  Thank goodness! there's Tim."
+
+"Here, Tim!" she called from the door, "best split some o' that
+wood 'fore breakfast."
+
+Tim approached Cameron with a look of pity on his face.
+
+"Let me have a try," he said.  Cameron yielded him the axe.  The
+boy set on end the block at which Cameron had been laboring and,
+with a swift glancing blow of the axe, knocked off a slab.
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed Cameron admiringly, "how did you do that?"
+
+For answer the boy struck again the same glancing blow, a slab
+started and, at a second light blow, fell to the ground.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Cameron again, "I must learn that trick."
+
+"Oh, that's easy!" said Tim, knocking the slabs off from the
+outside of the block.  "This heart's goin' to be tough, though; got
+a knot in it," and tough it proved, resisting all his blows.
+
+"You're a tough sucker, now, ain't yeh?" said Tim, through his shut
+teeth, addressing the block.  We'll try yeh this way."  He laid the
+end of the block upon a log and plied the axe with the full
+strength of his slight body, but the block danced upon the log and
+resisted all his blows.
+
+"Say! you're a tough one now!" he said, pausing for breath.
+
+"Let me try that," said Cameron, and, putting forth his strength,
+he brought the axe down fairly upon the stick with such force that
+the instrument shore clean through the knot and sank into the log
+below.
+
+"Huh! that's a cracker," said Tim with ungrudging admiration.  "All
+you want is knack.  I'll slab it off and you can do the knots," he
+added with a grin.
+
+As the result of this somewhat unequal division of labor, there lay
+in half an hour a goodly pile of fire wood ready for the cooking.
+It caught Haley's eye as he came in to breakfast.
+
+"I say, Missus, that's a bigger pile than you've had for some time.
+Guess my new man ain't so slow after all."
+
+"Huh!" puffed his wife, waddling about with great agility, "it was
+Tim that done it."
+
+"Now, Ma, ye know well enough he helped Tim, and right smart too,"
+said the daughter, but her mother was too busy getting breakfast
+ready for the hungry men who were now performing their morning
+ablutions with the help of a very small basin set upon a block of
+wood outside the kitchen door to answer.
+
+There were two men employed by Haley, one the son of a Scotch-
+Canadian farmer, Webster by name, a stout young fellow, but slow in
+his movements, both physical and mental, and with no further
+ambition than to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay.  He was
+employed by the month during the busier seasons of the year.  The
+other, Perkins, was Haley's "steady" man, which means that he was
+employed by the year and was regarded almost as a member of the
+family.  Perkins was an Englishman with fair hair and blue eyes, of
+fresh complexion, burned to a clear red, clean-cut features, and a
+well knit, athletic frame.  He was, as Tim declared, a terror to
+work; indeed, his fame as a worker was well established throughout
+the country side.  To these men Cameron was introduced as being
+from Scotland and as being anxious to be initiated into the
+mysteries of Canadian farm life.
+
+"Glad to see you!" said Perkins, shaking him heartily by the hand.
+"We'll make a farmer of you, won't we, Tim?  From Scotland, eh?
+Pretty fine country, I hear--to leave," he added, with a grin at
+his own humour.  Though his manner was pleasant enough, Cameron
+became conscious of a feeling of aversion, which he recognised at
+once as being as unreasonable as it was inexplicable.  He set it
+down as a reflection of Tim's mental attitude toward the hired man.
+Perkins seized the tin basin, dipped some water from the rain
+barrel standing near, and, setting it down before Cameron, said:
+
+"Here, pile in, Scotty.  Do they wash in your country?"
+
+"Yes," replied Cameron, "they are rather strong on that," wondering
+at the same time how the operation could be performed successfully
+with such a moderate supply of water.  After using a second and
+third supply, however, he turned, with hands and face dripping, and
+looked about for a towel.  Perkins handed him a long roller towel,
+black with dirt and stiff with grease.  Had his life depended upon
+it Cameron could not have avoided a shuddering hesitation as he
+took the filthy cloth preparatory to applying it to his face.
+
+"'Twon't hurt you," laughed Perkins.  "Wash day ain't till next
+week, you know, and this is only Wednesday."  Suddenly the towel
+was snatched from Cameron's hands.
+
+"Gimme that towel!"  It was the girl, with face aflame and eyes
+emitting blue fire.  "Here; Mr. Cameron, take this," she said.
+
+"Great Jerusalem, Mandy!  You ain't goin' to bring on a clean towel
+the middle of the week?" said Perkins in mock dismay.  "Guess it's
+for Mr. Cameron," he continued with another laugh.
+
+"We give clean towels to them that knows how to use 'em," said
+Mandy, whisking wrathfully into the house.
+
+"Say, Scotty!" said Perkins, in a loud bantering tone, "guess
+you're makin' a mash on Mandy all right."
+
+"I don't know exactly what you mean," said Cameron with a quick
+rising of wrath, "but I do know that you are making a beastly cad
+of yourself."
+
+"Oh, don't get wrathy, Scotty!" laughed Perkins, "we're just having
+a little fun.  Here's the comb!"  But Cameron declined the article,
+which, from its appearance, seemed to be intended for family use,
+and, proceeding to his room, completed his toilet there.
+
+The breakfast was laid in the kitchen proper, a spacious and
+comfortable room, which served as living room for the household.
+The table was laden with a variety and abundance of food that
+worthily sustained the reputation of the Haleys of being "good
+feeders."  At one end of the table a large plate was heaped high
+with slices of fat pork, and here and there disposed along its
+length were dishes of fried potatoes, huge piles of bread, hot
+biscuits, plates of butter, pies of different kinds, maple syrup,
+and apple sauce.  It was a breakfast fit for a lord, and Cameron
+sat down with a pleasurable anticipation induced by his early
+rising and his half hour's experience in the fresh morning air with
+the wood pile.  A closer inspection, however, of the dishes
+somewhat damped the pleasure of his anticipation.  The food was
+good, abundant, and well cooked, but everywhere there was an utter
+absence of cleanliness.  The plates were greasy, the forks and
+knives bore the all too evident remains of former meals, and
+everywhere were flies.  In hundreds they swarmed upon the food,
+while, drowned in the gravy, cooked in the potatoes, overwhelmed in
+the maple syrup, buried in the butter, their ghastly carcasses were
+to be seen.  With apparent unconcern the men brushed aside the
+living and picked out and set aside the remains of the dead, the
+unhappy victims of their own greed or temerity, and went on calmly
+and swiftly with their business.  Not a word was spoken except by
+Cameron himself, who, constrained by what he considered to be the
+ordinary decencies of society, made an effort to keep up a
+conversation with Mr. Haley at the head of the table and
+occasionally ventured a remark to his wife, who, with Mandy, was
+acting as a waiter upon the hungry men.  But conversation is a
+social exercise, and Cameron found himself compelled to abandon his
+well meant but solitary efforts at maintaining the conventions of
+the breakfast table.  There was neither time nor occasion for
+conversation.  The business of the hour was something quite other,
+namely, that of devouring as large a portion of the food set before
+them as was possible within the limits of time assigned for the
+meal.  Indeed, the element of time seemed to be one of very
+considerable importance, as Cameron discovered, for he was still
+picking his way gingerly and carefully through his pork and potatoes
+by the time that Perkins, having completed a second course
+consisting of pie and maple syrup, had arrived at the final course
+of bread and butter and apple sauce.
+
+"Circulate the butter!" he demanded of the table in general.  He
+took the plate from Cameron's hand, looked at it narrowly for a
+moment, then with thumb and forefinger drew from the butter with
+great deliberation a long dun-coloured hair.
+
+"Say!" he said in a low voice, but perfectly audible, "they forgot
+to comb it this morning."
+
+Cameron was filled with unspeakable disgust, but, glancing at Mrs.
+Haley's face, he saw to his relief that both the action and the
+remark had been unnoticed by her.  But on Mandy's face he saw the
+red ensign of shame and wrath, and in spite of himself he felt his
+aversion towards the ever-smiling hired man deepen into rage.
+
+Finding himself distanced in his progress through the various
+courses at breakfast, Cameron determined to miss the intermediate
+course of pie and maple syrup and, that he might finish on more
+even terms with the others, proceeded with bread and butter and
+apple sauce.
+
+"Don't yeh hurry," said Mrs. Haley with hearty hospitality.  "Eat
+plenty, there's lots to spare.  Here, have some apple sauce."  She
+caught up the bowl which held this most delicious article of food.
+
+"Where's the spoon?" she said, glancing round the table.  There was
+none immediately available.  "Here!" she cried, "this'll do."  She
+snatched a large spoon from the pitcher of thick cream, held it
+dripping for a moment in obvious uncertainty, then with sudden
+decision she cried "Never mind," and with swift but effective
+application of lip and tongue she cleansed the spoon of the
+dripping cream, and, stirring the apple sauce vigourously, passed
+the bowl to Cameron.  For a single moment Cameron held the bowl,
+uncertain whether to refuse or not, but before he could make up his
+mind Mandy caught it from his hands.
+
+"Oh, Ma!" she exclaimed in a horrified tone.
+
+"What's the matter?" exclaimed her mother.  "A little cream won't
+hurt."
+
+But Mandy set the bowl at the far end of the table and passed
+another to Cameron, who accepted it with resolute determination and
+continued his breakfast.
+
+But Perkins, followed by Webster and Tim, rose from the table and
+passed out into the yard, whence his voice could be heard in
+explosions of laughter.  Cameron in the meantime was making heroic
+attempts to cover up the sound by loud-voiced conversation with
+Haley, and, rendered desperate by the exigencies of the situation,
+went so far as to venture a word of praise to Mrs. Haley upon the
+excellence and abundance of her cooking.
+
+"She ain't got no chance," said her husband.  "She's got too much
+to do and it's awful hard to get help.  Of course, there's Mandy."
+
+"Of course, there's Mandy," echoed his wife.  "I guess you'd just
+better say, 'There's Mandy.'  She's the whole thing is Mandy.  What
+I'd do without her goodness only knows."
+
+But Mandy was no longer present to enjoy her mother's enconiums.
+Her voice could be heard in the yard making fierce response to
+Perkins' jesting remarks.  As Cameron was passing out from the
+kitchen he heard her bitter declaration:  "I don't care, it was
+real mean of you, and I'll pay you for it yet, Mr. Perkins--before
+a stranger, too."  Mandy's voice suggested tears.
+
+"Oh, pshaw, Mandy!" remonstrated Perkins, "it was all a joke, and
+who cares for him anyway, unless it's yourself?"
+
+But Mandy, catching sight of Cameron, fled with fiery face behind
+the kitchen, leaving Perkins gazing after her with an apologetic
+grin upon his countenance.
+
+"She's rather hot under the collar," he confided to Cameron, "but
+she needn't get so, I didn't mean nothin'."
+
+Cameron ignored him.  He was conscious mainly of a resolute
+determination that at all costs he must not yield to his almost
+uncontrollable desire to wipe off the apologetic smile with a well
+directed blow.  Mr. Denman's parting advice was in his mind and he
+was devoting all his powers to the business of adjusting himself to
+his present environment.  But to his fastidious nature the
+experiences of the morning made it somewhat doubtful if he should
+be able to carry out the policy of adjustment to the extreme of
+schooling himself to bear with equal mind the daily contact with
+the dirt and disorder which held so large a place in the domestic
+economy of the Haley household.  One thing he was firmly resolved
+upon, he would henceforth perform his toilet in his own room, and
+thereby save himself the horror of the family roller towel and the
+family comb.
+
+Breakfast over, the men stood waiting orders for the day.
+
+"We'll have to crowd them turnips through, Tim," said his father,
+who seemed to avoid as far as possible giving direct orders to his
+men.  "Next week we'll have to git at the hay."  So to the turnip
+field they went.
+
+It is one of the many limitations of a city-bred boy that he knows
+nothing of the life history and the culture of the things that grow
+upon a farm.  Apples and potatoes he recognises when they appear as
+articles of diet upon the table; oats and wheat he vaguely
+associates in some mysterious and remote way with porridge and
+bread, but whether potatoes grow on trees or oats in pods he has no
+certain knowledge.  Blessed is the country boy for many reasons,
+but for none more than this, that the world of living and growing
+things, animate and inanimate, is one which he has explored and
+which he intimately knows; and blessed is the city boy for whom his
+wise parents provide means of acquaintance with this wonder
+workshop of old mother Nature, God's own open country.
+
+Turnip-hoeing is an art, a fine art, demanding all the talents of
+high genius, a true eye, a sure hand, a sensitive conscience,
+industry, courage, endurance, and pride in achievement.  These and
+other gifts are necessary to high success.  Not to every man is it
+given to become a turnip-hoer in the truest sense of that word.
+The art is achieved only after long and patient devotion, and,
+indeed, many never attain high excellence.  Of course, therefore,
+there are grades of artists in this as in other departments.  There
+are turnip-hoers and turnip-hoers, just as there are painters and
+painters.  It was Tim's ambition to be the first turnip-hoer of his
+district, and toward this end he had striven both last season and
+this with a devotion that deserved, if it did not achieve, success.
+Quietly he had been patterning himself upon that master artist,
+Perkins, who for some years had easily held the championship for
+the district.  Keenly Tim had been observing Perkins' excellencies
+and also his defects; secretly he had been developing a style of
+his own, and, all unnoted, he had tested his speed by that of
+Perkins by adopting the method of lazily loafing along and then
+catching up by a few minutes of whirlwind work.  Tim felt in his
+soul the day of battle could not be delayed past this season;
+indeed, it might come any day.  The very thought of it made his
+slight body quiver and his heart beat so quickly as almost to choke
+him.
+
+To the turnip field hied Haley's men, Perkins and Webster leading
+the way, Tim and Cameron bringing up the rear.
+
+"You promised to show me how to do it, Tim," said Cameron.
+"Remember I shall be very slow."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" replied Tim, "turnip-hoeing is as easy as rollin' off
+a log if yeh know how to do it."
+
+"Exactly!" cried Cameron, "but that is what I don't.  You might
+give me some pointers."
+
+"Well, you must be able to hit what yeh aim at."
+
+"Ah! that means a good eye and steady hand," said Cameron.  "Well,
+I can do billiards some and golf.  What else?"
+
+"Well, you mustn't be too careful, slash right in and don't give a
+rip."
+
+"Ah! nerve, eh!" said Cameron.  "Well, I have done some Rugby in my
+day--I know something of that.  What else?  This sounds good."
+
+"Then you've got to leave only one turnip in one place and not a
+weed; and you mustn't leave any blanks.  Dad gets hot over that."
+
+"Indeed, one turnip in each place and not a weed," echoed Cameron.
+"Say! this business grows interesting.  No blanks!  Anything else?"
+he demanded.
+
+"No, I guess not, only if yeh ever git into a race ye've got to
+keep goin' after you're clear tuckered out and never let on.  You
+see the other chap may be feelin' worse than you."
+
+"By Jove, Tim! you're a born general!" exclaimed Cameron.  "You
+will go some distance if you keep on in that line.  Now as to
+racing let me venture a word, for I have done a little in my time.
+Don't spurt too soon."
+
+"Eh!" said Tim, all eagerness.
+
+"Don't get into your racing stride too early in the day, especially
+if you are up against a stronger man.  Wait till you know you can
+stay till the end and then put your best licks in at the finish."
+
+Tim pondered.
+
+"By Jimminy! you're right," he cried, a glad light in his eye, and
+a touch of colour in his pale cheek, and Cameron knew he was
+studying war.
+
+The turnip field, let it be said for the enlightening of the
+benighted and unfortunate city-bred folk, is laid out in a series
+of drills, a drill being a long ridge of earth some six inches in
+height, some eight inches broad on the top and twelve at the base.
+Upon each drill the seed has been sown in one continuous line from
+end to end of the field.  When this seed has grown each drill will
+discover a line of delicate green, this line being nothing less
+than a compact growth of young turnip plants with weeds more or
+less thickly interspersed.  The operation of hoeing consists in the
+eliminating of the weeds and the superfluous turnip plants in order
+that single plants, free from weeds, may be left some eight inches
+apart in unbroken line, extending the whole length of the drill.
+The artistic hoer, however, is not content with this.  His artistic
+soul demands not only that single plants should stand in unbroken
+row from end to end along the drill top, but that the drill itself
+should be pared down on each side to the likeness of a house roof
+with a perfectly even ridge.
+
+"Ever hoe turnips?" enquired Perkins.
+
+"Never," said Cameron, "and I am afraid I won't make much of a fist
+at it."
+
+"Well, you've come to a good place to learn, eh, Tim!  We'll show
+him, won't we?"
+
+Tim made no reply, but simply handed Cameron a hoe and picked up
+his own.
+
+"Now, show me, Tim," said Cameron in a low voice, as Perkins and
+Webster set off on their drills.
+
+"This is how you do it," replied Tim.  "Click-click," forward and
+back went Tim's sharp shining instrument, leaving a single plant
+standing shyly alone where had boldly bunched a score or more a
+moment before.  "Click-click-click," and the flat-topped drill
+stood free of weeds and superfluous turnip plants and trimmed to
+its proper roof-like appearance.
+
+"I say!" exclaimed Cameron, "this is high art.  I shall never reach
+your class, though, Tim."
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said Tim, "slash in, don't be afraid."  Cameron
+slashed in.  "Click-click," "Click-click-click," when lo! a long
+blank space of drill looked up reproachfully at him.
+
+"Oh, Tim! look at this mess," he said in disgust.
+
+"Never mind!" said Tim, "let her rip.  Better stick one in though.
+Blanks look bad at the END of the drill."  So saying, he made a
+hole in Cameron's drill and with his hoe dug up a bunch of plants
+from another drill and patted them firmly into place, and, weeding
+out the unnecessary plants, left a single turnip in its proper
+place.
+
+"Oh, come, that isn't so bad," said Cameron.  "We can always fill
+up the blanks."
+
+"Yes, but it takes time," replied Tim, evidently with the racing
+fever in his blood.  Patiently Tim schooled his pupil throughout
+the forenoon, and before the dinner hour had come Cameron was
+making what to Tim appeared satisfactory progress.  It was greatly
+in Cameron's favor that he possessed a trained and true eye and a
+steady hand and that he was quick in all his movements.
+
+"You're doin' splendid," cried Tim, full of admiration.
+
+"I say, Scotty!" said Perkins, coming up and casting a critical eye
+along Cameron's last drill, "you're going to make a turnip-hoer all
+right."
+
+"I've got a good teacher, you see," cried Cameron.
+
+"You bet you have," said Perkins.  "I taught Tim myself, and in two
+or three years he'll be almost as good as I am, eh, Tim!"
+
+"Huh!" grunted Tim, contemptuously, but let it go at that.
+
+"Perhaps you think you're that now, eh, Tim?" said Perkins, seizing
+the boy by the back of the neck and rubbing his hand over his hair
+in a manner perfectly maddening.  "Don't you get too perky, young
+feller, or I'll hang your shirt on the fence before the day's
+done."
+
+Tim wriggled out of his grasp and kept silent.  He was not yet
+ready with his challenge.  All through the afternoon he stayed
+behind with Cameron, allowing the other two to help them out at the
+end of each drill, but as the day wore on there was less and less
+need of assistance for Cameron, for he was making rapid progress
+with his work and Tim was able to do, not only his own drill, but
+almost half of Cameron's as well.  By supper time Cameron was
+thoroughly done out.  Never had a day seemed so long, never had he
+known that he possessed so many muscles in his back.  The continuous
+stooping and the steady click-click of the hoe, together with the
+unceasing strain of hand and eye, and all this under the hot burning
+rays of a June sun, so exhausted his vitality that when the cow bell
+rang for supper it seemed to him a sound more delightful than the
+strains of a Richter orchestra in a Beethoven symphony.
+
+On the way back to the field after supper Cameron observed that Tim
+was in a state of suppressed excitement and it dawned upon him that
+the hour of his challenge of Perkins' supremacy as a turnip-hoer
+was at hand.
+
+"I say, Tim, boy!" he said earnestly, "listen to me.  You are going
+to get after Perkins this evening, eh?"
+
+"How did you know?" said Tim, in surprise.
+
+"Never mind!  Now listen to me; I have raced myself some and I have
+trained men to race.  Are you not too tired with your day's work?"
+
+"Tired!  Not a bit," said the gallant little soul scornfully.
+
+"Well, all right.  It's nice and cool and you can't hurt yourself
+much.  Now, how many drills do you do after supper as a rule?"
+
+"Down and up twice," said Tim.
+
+"How many drills can you do at your top speed, your very top speed,
+remember?"
+
+"About two drills, I guess," replied Tim, after a moment's thought.
+
+"Now, listen to me!" said Cameron impressively.  "Go quietly for
+two and a half drills, then let yourself out and go your best.
+And, listen!  I have been watching you this afternoon.  You have
+easily done once and a half what Perkins has done and you are going
+to lick him out of his boots."
+
+Tim gulped a moment or two, looked at his friend with glistening
+eyes, but said not a word.  For the first two and a half drills
+Cameron exerted to the highest degree his conversational powers
+with the two-fold purpose of holding back Perkins and Webster and
+also of so occupying Tim's mind that he might forget for a time the
+approaching conflict, the strain of waiting for which he knew would
+be exhausting for the lad.  But when the middle of the second last
+drill had been reached, Tim began unconsciously to quicken his
+speed.
+
+"I say, Tim," called Cameron, "come here!  Am I getting these
+spaces too wide?"  Tim came over to his side.  "Now, Tim," said
+Cameron, in a low voice, "wait a little longer; you can never wear
+him out.  Your only chance is in speed.  Wait till the last drill."
+
+But Tim was not to be held back.  Back he went to his place and
+with a rush brought his drill up even with Webster, passed him, and
+in a few moments like a whirlwind passed Perkins and took the lead.
+
+"Hello, Timmy! where are you going?" asked Perkins, in surprise.
+
+"Home," said Tim proudly, "and I'll tell 'em you're comin'."
+
+"All right, Timmy, my son!" replied Perkins with a laugh, "tell
+them you won't need no hot bath; I'm after you."
+
+"Click-click," "Click-click-click" was Tim's only answer.  It was a
+distinct challenge, and, while not openly breaking into racing
+speed, Perkins accepted it.
+
+For some minutes Webster quickened his pace in an attempt to follow
+the leaders, but soon gave it up and fell back to help Cameron up
+with his drill, remarking, "I ain't no blamed fool.  I ain't going
+to bust myself for any man.  THEY'RE racing, not me."
+
+"Will Tim win?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Naw!  Not this year!  Why, Perkins is the best man in the whole
+country at turnips.  He took the Agricultural Society's prize two
+years ago."
+
+"I believe Tim will beat him," said Cameron confidently, with his
+eyes upon the two in front.
+
+"Beat nothing!" said Webster.  "You just wait a bit, Perkins isn't
+letting himself out yet."
+
+In a short time Tim finished his drill some distance ahead, and
+then, though it was quitting time, without a pause he swung into
+the next.
+
+"Hello, Timmy!" cried Perkins good-naturedly, "going to work all
+night, eh?  Well, I'll just take a whirl out of you," and for the
+first time he frankly threw himself into his racing gait.
+
+"Good boy, Tim!" called out Cameron, as Tim bore down upon them,
+still in the lead and going like a small steam engine.  "You're all
+right and going easy.  Don't worry!"
+
+But Perkins, putting on a great spurt, drew up within a hoe-handle
+length of Tim and there held his place.
+
+"All right, Tim, my boy, you can hold him," cried Cameron, as the
+racers came down upon him.
+
+"He can, eh?" replied Perkins.  "I'll show him and you," and with
+an accession of speed he drew up on a level with Tim.
+
+"Ah, ha! Timmy, my boy! we've got you where we want you, I guess,"
+he exulted, and, with a whoop and still increasing his speed, he
+drew past the boy.
+
+But Cameron, who was narrowly observing the combatants and their
+work, called out again:
+
+"Don't worry, Tim, you're doing nice clean work and doing it
+easily."  The inference was obvious, and Perkins, who had been
+slashing wildly and leaving many blanks and weeds behind him where
+neither blanks nor weeds should be, steadied down somewhat, and,
+taking more pains with his work, began to lose ground, while Tim,
+whose work was without flaw, moved again to the front place.  There
+remained half a drill to be done and the issue was still uncertain.
+With half the length of a hoe handle between them the two clicked
+along at a furious pace.  Tim's hat had fallen off.  His face
+showed white and his breath was coming fast, but there was no
+slackening of speed, and the cleanness and ease with which he was
+doing his work showed that there was still some reserve in him.
+They were approaching the last quarter when, with a yell, Perkins
+threw himself again with a wild recklessness into his work, and
+again he gained upon Tim and passed him.
+
+"Steady, Tim!" cried Cameron, who, with Webster, had given up their
+own work, it being, as the latter remarked, "quitting time anyway,"
+and were following up the racers.  "Don't spoil your work, Tim!"
+continued Cameron, "don't worry."
+
+His words caught the boy at a critical moment, for Perkins' yell
+and his fresh exhibition of speed had shaken the lad's nerve.  But
+Cameron's voice steadied him, and, quickly responding, Tim settled
+down again into his old style, while Perkins was still in the lead,
+but slashing wildly.
+
+"Fine work, Tim," said Cameron quietly, "and you can do better
+yet."  For a few paces he walked behind the boy, steadying him now
+and then with a quiet word, then, recognising that the crisis of
+the struggle was at hand, and believing that the boy had still some
+reserve of speed and strength, he began to call on him.
+
+"Come on, Tim!  Quicker, quicker; come on, boy, you can do better!"
+His words, and his tone more than his words, were like a spur to
+the boy.  From some secret source of supply he called up an
+unsuspected reserve of strength and speed and, still keeping up his
+clean cutting finished style, foot by foot he drew away from
+Perkins, who followed in the rear, slashing more wildly than ever.
+The race was practically won.  Tim was well in the lead, and
+apparently gaining speed with every click of his hoe.
+
+"Here, you fellers, what are yeh hashin' them turnips for?"  It was
+Haley's voice, who, unperceived, had come into the field.  Tim's
+reply was a letting out of his last ounce of strength in a perfect
+fury of endeavour.
+
+"There--ain't--no--hashin'--on this--drill--Dad!" he panted.
+
+The sudden demand for careful work, however, at once lowered
+Perkins' rate of speed.  He fell rapidly behind and, after a few
+moments of further struggle, threw down his hoe with a whoop and
+called out, "Quitting time, I guess," and, striding after Tim, he
+caught him by the arms and swung him round clear off the ground.
+
+"Here, let me go!" gasped the boy, kicking, squirming, and trying
+to strike his antagonist with his hoe.
+
+"Let the boy go!" said Cameron.  The tone in his voice arrested
+Perkins' attention.
+
+"What's your business?" he cried, with an oath, dropping the boy
+and turning fiercely upon Cameron.
+
+"Oh, nothing very much, except that Tim's my candidate in this race
+and he mustn't be interfered with," replied Cameron in a voice
+still quiet and with a pleasant smile.
+
+Perkins was white and panting; in a moment more he would have
+hurled himself at the man who stood smiling quietly in his face.
+At this critical moment Haley interposed.
+
+"What's the row, boys?" he enquired, recognising that something
+serious was on.
+
+"We have been having a little excitement, Sir, in the form of a
+race," replied Cameron, "and I've been backing Tim."
+
+"Looks as if you've got him wound up so's he can't stop," replied
+Haley, pointing to the boy, who was still going at racing pace and
+was just finishing his drill.  "Oh, well, a boy's a boy and you've
+got to humour him now and then," continued Haley, making conversation
+with diplomatic skill.  Then turning to Perkins, as if dismissing a
+trivial subject, he added, "Looks to me as if that hay in the lower
+meadow is pretty nigh fit to cut.  Guess we'd better not wait till
+next week.  You best start Tim on that with the mower in the
+mornin'."  Then, taking a survey of the heavens, he added, "Looks
+as if it might be a spell of good weather."  His diplomacy was
+successful and the moment of danger was past.  Meantime Cameron had
+sauntered to the end of the drill where Tim stood leaning quietly on
+his hoe.
+
+"Tim, you are a turnip-hoer!" he said, with warm admiration in his
+tone, "and what's more, Tim, you're a sport.  I'd like to handle
+you in something big.  You will make a man yet."
+
+Tim's whole face flushed a warm red under the coat of freckles.
+For a time he stood silently contemplating the turnips, then with
+difficulty he found his voice.
+
+"It was you done it," he said, choking over his words.  "I was beat
+there and was just quittin' when you came along and spoke.  My!" he
+continued, with a sharp intake of his breath, "I was awful near
+quittin'," and then, looking straight into Cameron's eyes, "It was
+you done it, and--I--won't forget."  His voice choked again, but,
+reading his eyes, Cameron knew that he had gained one of life's
+greatest treasures, a boy's adoring gratitude.
+
+"This has been a great day, Tim," said Cameron.  "I have learned
+to hoe turnips, and," putting his hand on the boy's shoulder, "I
+believe I have made a friend."  Again the hot blood surged into
+Tim's face.  He stood voiceless, but he needed no words.  Cameron
+knew well the passionate emotion that thrilled his soul and shook
+the slight body, trembling under his hand.  For Tim, too, it had
+been a notable day.  He had achieved the greatest ambition of his
+life in beating the best turnip-hoer on the line, and he, too, had
+found what to a boy is a priceless treasure, a man upon whom he
+could lavish the hero worship of his soul.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+A RAINY DAY
+
+
+It was haying time.  Over the fields of yellowing fall wheat and
+barley, of grey timothy and purple clover, the heat shimmered in
+dancing waves.  Everywhere the growing crops were drinking in the
+light and heat with eager thirst, for the call of the harvest was
+ringing through the land.  The air was sweet with scents of the hay
+fields, and the whole country side was humming with the sound of
+the mowers.  It was the crowning time of the year; toward this
+season all the life of the farm moved steadily the whole year long;
+the next two months or three would bring to the farmer the fruit of
+long days of toil and waiting.  Every minute of these harvest days,
+from the early grey dawn, when Mandy called the cows in for the
+milking, till the long shadows from the orchard lay quite across
+the wide barley field, when Tim, handling his team with careless
+pride, drove in the last load for the day, every minute was packed
+full of life and action.  But though busy were the days and full of
+hard and at times back-breaking and nerve-straining work, what of
+it?  The colour, the rush, the eager race with the flying hours,
+the sense of triumph, the promise of wealth, the certainty of
+comfort, all these helped to carry off the heaviest toil with a
+swing and vim that banished aches from the body and weariness from
+the soul.
+
+To Cameron, all unskilled as he was, the days brought many an hour
+of strenuous toil, but every day his muscles were knitting more
+firmly, his hands were hardening, and his mastery of himself
+growing more complete.
+
+In haying there is no large place for skill.  This operation,
+unlike that of turnip-hoeing, demands chiefly strength, quickness,
+and endurance, and especially endurance.  To stand all day in the
+hay field under the burning sun with its rays leaping back from the
+super-heated ground, and roll up the windrows into huge bundles and
+toss them on to the wagon, or to run up a long line of cocks and
+heave them fork-handle high to the top of a load, calls for
+something of skill, but mainly for strength of arm and back.  But
+skill had its place, and once more it was Tim who stood close to
+Cameron and showed him all the tricks of pitching hay.  It was Tim
+who showed him how to stand with his back to the wagon so as to get
+the load properly poised with the least expenditure of strength; it
+was Tim who taught him the cunning trick of using his thigh as a
+fulcrum in getting his load up, rather than doing it by "main
+strength and awkwardness"; it was Tim who demonstrated the method
+of lifting half a cock by running the end of the fork handle into
+the ground so that the whole earth might aid in the hoisting of the
+load.  Of course in all this Cameron's intelligence and quickness
+stood him in the place of long experience, and before the first
+day's hauling was done he was able to keep his wagon going.
+
+But with all the stimulus of the harvest movement and colour,
+Cameron found himself growing weary of the life on the Haley farm.
+It was not the long days, and to none on the farm were the days
+longer than to Cameron, who had taken upon himself the duty of
+supplying the kitchen with wood and water, no small business,
+either at the beginning or at the end of a long day's work; it was
+not the heavy toil; it was chiefly the continuous contact with the
+dirt and disorder of his environment that wore his body down and
+his spirit raw.  No matter with how keen a hunger did he approach
+the dinner table, the disgusting filth everywhere apparent would
+cause his gorge to rise and, followed by the cheerful gibes of
+Perkins, he would retire often with his strength unrecruited and
+his hunger unappeased, and, though he gradually achieved a certain
+skill in picking his way through a meal, selecting such articles of
+food as could be less affected than others by the unsavoury
+surroundings, the want of appetising and nourishing food told
+disastrously upon his strength.  His sleep, too, was broken and
+disturbed by the necessity of sharing a bed with Webster.  He had
+never been accustomed to "doubling up," and under the most
+favourable circumstances the experience would not have been
+conducive to sound sleep, but Webster's manner of life was not such
+as to render him an altogether desirable bed-fellow.  For, while
+the majority of farm lads in the neighbourhood made at least semi-
+weekly pilgrimages to the "dam" for a swim, Webster felt no
+necessity laid upon him for such an expenditure of energy after a
+hard and sweaty day in the field.  His ideas of hygiene were of the
+most elementary nature; hence it was his nightly custom, when
+released from the toils of the day, to proceed upstairs to his room
+and, slipping his braces from his shoulders, allow his nether
+garments to drop to the floor and, without further preparation,
+roll into bed.  Of the effeminacy of a night robe Webster knew
+nothing except by somewhat hazy rumour.  Once under the patchwork
+quilt he was safe for the night, for, heaving himself into the
+middle of the bed, he sank into solid and stertorous slumber, from
+which all Cameron's prods and kicks failed to arouse him till the
+grey dawn once more summoned him to life, whereupon, resuming the
+aforesaid nether garments, he was once more simply, but in his
+opinion quite sufficiently, equipped for his place among men.  Many
+nights did it happen that the stertorous melody of Webster's all
+too odourous slumbers drove Cameron to find a bed upon the floor.
+Once again Tim was his friend, for it was to Tim that Cameron owed
+the blissful experience of a night in the hay loft upon the newly
+harvested hay.  There, buried in its fragrant depths and drawing
+deep breaths of the clean unbreathed air that swept in through the
+great open barn doors, Cameron experienced a joy hitherto undreamed
+of in association with the very commonplace exercise of sleep.
+After his first night in the hay mow, which he shared with Tim, he
+awoke refreshed in body and with a new courage in his heart.
+
+"By Jove, Tim!  That's the finest thing I ever had in the way of
+sleep.  Now if we only had a tub."
+
+"Tub!  What for?"
+
+"A dip, my boy, a splash."
+
+"To wash in?" enquired Tim, wondering at the exuberance of his
+friend's desires.  "I'll get a tub," he added, and, running to the
+house, returned with wash tub and towel.
+
+"Tim, my boy, you're a jewel!" exclaimed Cameron.
+
+From the stable cistern they filled the vessel full and first
+Cameron and, after persuasion and with rather dubious delight, Tim
+tasted the joy of a morning tub.  Henceforth life became distinctly
+more endurable to Cameron.
+
+But, more than all the other irritating elements in his environment
+put together, Cameron chafed under the unceasing rasp of Perkins'
+wit, clever, if somewhat crude and cumbrous.  Perkins had never
+forgotten nor forgiven his defeat at the turnip-hoeing, which he
+attributed chiefly to Cameron.  His gibes at Cameron's awkwardness
+in the various operations on the farm, his readiness to seize every
+opportunity for ridicule, his skill at creating awkward situations,
+all these sensibly increased the wear on Cameron's spirit.  All
+these, however, Cameron felt he could put up with without endangering
+his self-control, but when Perkins, with vulgar innuendo, chaffed
+the farmer's daughter upon her infatuation for the "young Scotty,"
+as he invariably designated Cameron, or when he rallied Cameron upon
+his supposed triumph in the matter of Mandy's youthful affections,
+then Cameron raged and with difficulty kept his hands from his
+cheerful and ever smiling tormentor.  It did not help matters much
+that apparently Mandy took no offense at Perkins' insinuations;
+indeed, it gradually dawned upon Cameron that what to him would seem
+a vulgar impertinence might to this uncultured girl appear no more
+than a harmless pleasantry.  At all costs he was resolved that under
+no circumstances would he allow his self-control to be broken
+through.  He would finish out his term with the farmer without any
+violent outbreak.  It was quite possible that Perkins and others
+would take him for a chicken-hearted fool, but all the same he would
+maintain this attitude of resolute self-control to the very end.
+After all, what mattered the silly gibes of an ignorant boor?  And
+when his term was done he would abandon the farm life forever.  It
+took but little calculation to make quite clear that there was not
+much to hope for in the way of advancement from farming in this part
+of Canada.  Even Perkins, who received the very highest wage in that
+neighbourhood, made no more than $300 a year; and, with land at
+sixty to seventy-five dollars per acre, it seemed to him that he
+would be an old man before he could become the owner of a farm.  He
+was heart sick of the pettiness and sordidness of the farm life,
+whose horizon seemed to be that of the hundred acres or so that
+comprised it.  Therefore he resolved that to the great West he would
+go, that great wonderful West with its vast spaces and its vast
+possibilities of achievement.  The rumour of it filled the country
+side.  Meantime for two months longer he would endure.
+
+A rainy day brought relief.  Oh, the blessed Sabbath of a rainy
+day, when the wheels stop and silence falls in the fields; and time
+tired harvest hands recline at ease upon the new cut and sweet
+smelling hay on the barn floor, and through the wide open doors
+look out upon the falling rain that roars upon the shingles, pours
+down in cataracts from the eaves and washes clean the air that
+wanders in, laden with those subtle scents that old mother earth
+releases only when the rain falls.  Oh, happy rainy days in harvest
+time when, undisturbed by conscience, the weary toilers stretch and
+slumber and wake to lark and chaff in careless ease the long hours
+through!
+
+In the Haleys' barn they were all gathered, gazing lazily and with
+undisturbed content at the steady downpour that indicated an all-
+day rest.  Even Haley, upon whose crops the rain was teeming down,
+was enjoying the rest from the toil, for most of the hay that had
+been cut was already in cock or in the barn.  Besides, Haley worked
+as hard as the best of them and welcomed a day's rest.  So let it
+rain!
+
+While they lay upon the hay on the barn floor, with tired muscles
+all relaxed, drinking in the fragrant airs that stole in from the
+rain-washed skies outside, in the slackening of the rain two
+neighbours dropped in, big "Mack" Murray and his brother Danny, for
+a "crack" about things in general and especially to discuss the
+Dominion Day picnic which was coming off at the end of the following
+week.  This picnic was to be something out of the ordinary, for, in
+addition to the usual feasting and frolicking, there was advertised
+an athletic contest of a superior order, the prizes in which were
+sufficiently attractive to draw, not only local athletes, but even
+some of the best from the neighbouring city.  A crack runner was
+expected and perhaps even McGee, the big policeman of the London
+City force, a hammer thrower of fame, might be present.
+
+"Let him come, eh, Mack?" said Perkins.  "I guess we ain't afraid
+of no city bug beating you with the hammer."
+
+"Oh! I'm no thrower," said Mack modestly.  "I just take the thing
+up and give it a fling.  I haven't got the trick of it at all."
+
+"Have you practised much?" said Cameron, whose heart warmed at the
+accent that might have been transplanted that very day from his own
+North country.
+
+"Never at all, except now and then at the blacksmith's shop on a
+rainy day," replied Mack.  "Have you done anything at it?"
+
+"Oh, I have seen a good deal of it at the games in the north of
+Scotland," replied Cameron.
+
+"Man!  I wish we had a hammer and you could show me the trick of
+it," said Mack fervently, "for they will be looking to me to throw
+and I do not wish to be beaten just too easily."
+
+"There's a big mason's hammer," said Tim, "in the tool house, I
+think."
+
+"Get it, Tim, then," said Mack eagerly, "and we will have a little
+practise at it, for throw I must, and I have no wish to bring
+discredit on my country, for it will be a big day.  They will be
+coming from all over.  The Band of the Seventh is coming out and
+Piper Sutherland from Zorra will be there."
+
+"A piper!" echoed Cameron.  "Is there much pipe playing in this
+country?"
+
+"Indeed, you may say that!" said Mack, "and good pipers they are
+too, they tell me.  Piper Sutherland, I think, was of the old
+Forty-twa.  Are you a piper, perhaps?" continued Mack.
+
+"Oh, I play a little," said Cameron.  "I have a set in the house."
+
+"God bless my soul!" cried Mack, "and we never knew it.  Tell Danny
+where they are and he will fetch them out.  Go, Danny!"
+
+"Never mind, I will get them myself," said Cameron, trying to
+conceal his eagerness, for he had long been itching for a chance to
+play and his fingers were now tingling for the chanter.
+
+It was an occasion of great delight, not only to big Mack and his
+brother Danny and the others, but to Cameron himself.  Up and down
+the floor he marched, making the rafters of the big barn ring with
+the ancient martial airs of Scotland and then, dropping into a
+lighter strain, he set their feet a-rapping with reels and
+strathspeys.
+
+"Man, yon's great playing!" cried Mack with fervent enthusiasm to
+the company who had gathered to the summons of the pipes from the
+house and from the high road, "and think of him keeping them in his
+chest all this time!  And what else can you do?" went on Mack, with
+the enthusiasm of a discoverer.  "You have been in the big games,
+too, I warrant you."
+
+Cameron confessed to some experience of these thrilling events.
+
+"Bless my soul!  We will put you against the big folk from the
+city.  Come and show us the hammer," said Mack, leading the way out
+of the barn, for the rain had ceased, with a big mason's hammer in
+his hand.  It needed but a single throw to make it quite clear to
+Cameron that Mack was greatly in need of coaching.  As he said
+himself he "just took up the thing and gave it a fling."  A mighty
+fling, too, it proved to be.
+
+"Twenty-eight paces!" cried Cameron, and then, to make sure,
+stepped it back again.  "Yes," he said, "twenty-eight paces, nearly
+twenty-nine.  Great Caesar!  Mack, if you only had the Braemar
+swing you would be a famous thrower."
+
+"Och, now, you are just joking me!" said Mack modestly.
+
+"You can add twenty feet easily to your throw if you get the
+swing," asserted Cameron.  "Look here, now, get this swing," and
+Cameron demonstrated in his best style the famous Braemar swing.
+
+"Thirty-two paces!" said Mack in amazement after he had measured
+the throw.  "Man alive! you can beat McGee, let alone myself."
+
+"Now, Mack, get the throw," said Cameron, with enthusiasm.  "You
+will be a great thrower."  But try though he might Mack failed to
+get the swing.
+
+"Man, come over to-night and bring your pipes.  Danny will fetch
+out his fiddle and we will have a bit of a frolic, and," he added,
+as if in an afterthought, "I have a big hammer yonder, the
+regulation size.  We might have a throw or so."
+
+"Thanks, I will be sure to come," said Cameron eagerly.
+
+"Come, all of you," said Mack, "and you too, Mandy.  We will clear
+out the barn floor and have a regular hoe-down."
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" giggled Mandy, tossing her head.  "I can't dance."
+
+"Oh, come along and watch me, then," said Mack, in good humour,
+who, with all his two hundred pounds, was lightfooted as a girl.
+
+The Murrays' new big bank barn was considered the finest in the
+country and the new floor was still quite smooth and eminently
+suited to a "hoe-down."  Before the darkness had fallen, however,
+Mack drew Cameron, with Danny, Perkins, and a few of the neighbours
+who had dropped in, out to the lane and, giving him a big hammer,
+"Try that," he said, with some doubt in his tone.
+
+Cameron took the hammer.
+
+"This is the right thing.  The weight of it will make more
+difference to me, however, than to you, Mack."
+
+"Oh, I'm not so sure," said Mack.  "Show us how you do it."
+
+The first throw Cameron took easily.
+
+"Twenty-nine paces!" cried Mack, after stepping it off.  "Man!
+that's a great throw, and you do it easy."
+
+"Not much of a throw," laughed Cameron.  "Try it yourself."
+
+Ignoring the swing, Mack tried the throw in his own style and
+hurled the hammer two paces beyond Cameron's throw.
+
+"You did that with your arms only," said Cameron.  "Now you must
+put legs and shoulders into it."
+
+"Let's see you beat that throw yourself," laughed Perkins, who was
+by no means pleased with the sudden distinction that had come to
+the "Scotty."
+
+Cameron took the hammer and, with the easy slow grace of the
+Braemar swing, made his throw.
+
+"Hooray!" yelled Danny, who was doing the measuring.  "You got it
+yon time for sure.  Three paces to the good.  You'll have to put
+your back into it, Mack, I guess."
+
+Once more Mack seized the hammer.  Then Cameron took Mack in hand
+and, over and over again, coached him in the poise and swing.
+
+"Now try it, and think of your legs and back.  Let the hammer take
+care of itself.  Now, nice and easy and slow, not far this time."
+
+Again and again Mack practised the swing.
+
+"You're getting it!" cried Cameron enthusiastically, "but you are
+trying too hard.  Forget the distance this time and think only of
+the easy slow swing.  Let your muscles go slack."  So he coached
+his pupil.
+
+At length, after many attempts, Mack succeeded in delivering his
+hammer according to instructions.
+
+"Man! you are right!" he exclaimed.  "That's the trick of it and it
+is as smooth as oil."
+
+"Keep it up, Mack," said Cameron, "and always easy."
+
+Over and over again he put the big man through the swing till he
+began to catch the notion of the rhythmic, harmonious cooperation
+of the various muscles in legs and shoulders and arms so necessary
+to the highest result.
+
+"You've got the swing, Mack," at length said Cameron.  "Now then,
+this time let yourself go.  Don't try your best, but let yourself
+out.  Easy, now, easy.  Get it first in your mind."
+
+For a moment Mack stood pondering.  He was "getting it in his
+mind."  Then, with a long swing, easy and slow, he gave the great
+hammer a mighty heave.  With a shout the company crowded about.
+
+"Thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven!
+Hooray! bully for you, Mack.  You are the lad!"
+
+"Get the line on it," said Mack quietly.  The measuring line showed
+one hundred and eleven and a half feet.  The boys crowded round
+him, exclaiming, cheering, patting him on the back.  Mack received
+the congratulations in silence, then, turning to Cameron, said very
+earnestly:
+
+"Man! yon's as easy as eating butter.  You have done me a good turn
+to-day."
+
+"Oh, that's nothing, Mack," said Cameron, who was more pleased than
+any of them.  "You got the swing perfectly that time.  You can put
+twenty feet to that throw.  One hundred and eleven feet!  Why, I
+can beat that myself."
+
+"Man alive!  Do you tell me now!" said Mack in amazement, running
+his eyes over Cameron's lean muscular body.
+
+"I have done it often when I was in shape."
+
+"Oh, rats!" said Perkins with a laugh.  "Where was that?"
+
+Cameron flushed a deep red, then turned pale, but kept silent.
+
+"I believe you, my boy," said Mack with emphasis and facing sharply
+upon Perkins, "and if ever I do a big throw I will owe it to you."
+
+"Oh, come off!" said Perkins, again laughing scornfully.  "There
+are others that know the swing besides Scotty here.  What you have
+got you owe to no one but yourself, Mack."
+
+"If I beat the man McGee next week," said Mack quietly, "it will be
+from what I learned to-night, and I know what I am saying.  Man!
+it's a lucky thing we found you.  But that will do for just now.
+Come along to the barn.  Hooray for the pipes and the lassies!
+They are worth all the hammers in the world!"  And, putting his arm
+through Cameron's, he led the way to the barn, followed by the
+others.
+
+"If Scotty could only hoe turnips and tie wheat as well as he can
+play the pipes and throw the hammer," said Perkins to the others as
+they followed in the rear, "I guess he'd soon have us all leaning
+against the fence to dry."
+
+"He will, too, some day," said Tim, whose indignation at Perkins
+overcame the shyness which usually kept him silent in the presence
+of older men.
+
+"Hello, Timmy!  What are you chipping in for?" said Perkins,
+reaching for the boy's coat collar.  "He thinks this Scotty is the
+whole works, and he is great too--at showing people how to do
+things."
+
+"I hear he showed Tim how to hoe turnips," said one of the boys
+slyly.  The laugh that followed showed that the story of Tim's
+triumph over the champion had gone abroad.
+
+"Oh, rot!" said Perkins angrily.  "Tim's got a little too perky
+because I let him get ahead of me one night in a drill of turnips."
+
+"Yeh done yer best, didn't he, Webster?" cried Tim with indignation.
+
+"Well, he certainly was making some pretty big gashes in them
+drills," said Webster slowly.
+
+"Oh, get out!" replied Perkins.  "Though all the same Tim's quite a
+turnip-hoer," he conceded.  "Hello!  There's quite a crowd in the
+barn, Danny.  I wish I had my store clothes on."
+
+At this a girl came running to meet them.
+
+"Come on, Danny!  Tune up.  I can hardly keep my heels on my
+boots."
+
+"Oh, you'll not be wanting my little fiddle after you have heard
+Cameron on the pipes, Isa."
+
+"Never you fear that, Danny," replied Isa, catching him by the arm
+and hurrying him onward.
+
+"Wait a minute.  I want you to meet Mr. Cameron," said Danny.
+
+"Come away, then," replied Isa.  "I am dying to get done with it
+and get the fiddle going."
+
+But Cameron was in the meantime engaged, for Mack was busy
+introducing him to a bevy of girls who stood at one corner of the
+barn floor.
+
+"My! but he's a braw lad!" said Isa gayly, as she watched Cameron
+making his bows.
+
+"Yes, he is that," replied Danny with enthusiastic admiration, "and
+a hammer-thrower, too, he is."
+
+"What! yon stripling?"
+
+"You may say it.  He can beat Mack there."
+
+"Mack!" cried Isa, with scorn.  "It's just big lies you are telling
+me."
+
+"Indeed, he has beaten Mack's best throw many a time."
+
+"And how do you know?" exclaimed Isa.
+
+"He said so himself."
+
+"Ah ha!" said Isa scornfully.  "He is good at blowing his own horn
+whatever, and I don't believe he can beat Mack--and I don't like
+him a bit," she continued, her dark eyes flashing and the red
+colour glowing in her full round cheek.
+
+"Come, Isa!" cried Mack, catching sight of her in the dim light.
+"Come here, I want Mr. Cameron to meet you."
+
+"How do you do?" said the girl, giving Cameron her hand and
+glancing saucily into his face.  "I hear you are a piper and a
+hammer-thrower and altogether a wonderful man."
+
+"A wonderfully lucky man, to have the pleasure of meeting you,"
+said Cameron, glancing boldly back at her.
+
+"And I am sure you can dance the fling," continued Isa.  "All the
+Highlanders do."
+
+"Not all," said Cameron.  "But with certain partners all Highlanders
+would love to try."
+
+"Oh aye," with a soft Highland accent that warmed Cameron's blood.
+"I see you have the tongue.  Come away, Danny, now, strike up, or I
+will go on without you."  And the girl kilted her skirts and began
+a reel, and as Mack's eyes followed her every step there was no
+mistaking their expression.  To Mack there was only one girl in the
+barn, or in all the world for that matter, and that was the leal-
+hearted, light-footed, black-eyed Isa MacKenzie.  Bonnie she was,
+and that she well knew, the belle of the whole township, driving
+the men to distraction and for all that holding the love of her own
+sex as well.  But her heart was still her own, or at least she
+thought it was, for all big Mack Murray's open and simple-hearted
+adoration, and she was ready for a frolic with any man who could
+give her word for word or dance with her the Highland reel.
+
+With the courtesy of a true gentleman, Danny led off with his
+fiddle till they had all got thoroughly into the spirit and swing
+of the frolic, and then, putting his instrument back into its bag,
+he declared that they were all tired of it and were waiting for the
+pipes.
+
+"Not a bit of it!" cried Isa.  "But we will give you a rest, Danny,
+and besides I want to dance a reel with you myself--though Mr.
+Cameron is not bad," she added, with a little bow to Cameron, with
+whom she had just finished a reel.
+
+Readily enough Cameron tuned his pipes, for he was aching to get
+at them and only too glad to furnish music for the gay company of
+kindly hearted folk who were giving him his first evening's
+pleasure since he had left the Cuagh Oir.
+
+From reel to schottische and from schottische to reel, foursome and
+eightsome, they kept him playing, ever asking for more, till the
+gloaming passed into moonlight and still they were not done.  The
+respite came through Mandy, who, solid in weight and heavy of foot,
+had laboured through the reels as often as she could get a partner,
+and at other times had sat gazing in rapt devotion upon the piper.
+
+"Whoop her up again, Scotty!" cried Perkins, when Cameron paused at
+the end of a reel.
+
+"Don't you do it!" said Mandy sharply, her deep voice booming
+through the barn.  "He's just tired of it, and I'm tired looking at
+him."
+
+There was a shout of laughter which covered poor Mandy with
+wrathful confusion.
+
+"Good for you, Mandy," cried Perkins with a great guffaw.  "You
+want some music now, don't you?  So do I.  Come on, Danny."
+
+"No, I don't," snapped Mandy, who could understand neither the
+previous laugh nor that which greeted Perkins' sally.
+
+"Allan," she said, sticking a little over the name, "is tired out,
+and besides it's time we were going home."
+
+"That's right, take him home, Mandy, and put the little dear to
+bed," said Perkins.
+
+"You needn't be so smart, Joe Perkins," said Mandy angrily.
+"Anyway I'm going home.  I've got to be up early."
+
+"Me too, Mandy," said Cameron, packing up his pipes, for his
+sympathy had been roused for the girl who was championing him so
+bravely.  "I have had a great night and I have played you all to
+death; but you will forgive me.  I was lonely for the chanter.  I
+have not touched it since I left home."
+
+There was a universal cry of protest as they gathered about him.
+
+"Indeed, Mr. Cameron, you have given us all a rare treat," cried
+Isa, coming close to him, "and I only wish you could pipe and dance
+at the same time."
+
+"That's so!" cried Mack, "but what's the matter with the fiddle,
+Isa?  Come, Danny, strike up.  Let them have a reel together."
+
+Cameron glanced at Mandy, who was standing impatiently waiting.
+Perkins caught the glance.
+
+"Oh, please let him stay, Mandy," he pleaded.
+
+"He can stay if he likes," sniffed Mandy scornfully.  "I got no
+string on him; but I'm goin' home.  Good-night, everybody."
+
+"Good-night, Mandy," called Perkins.  "Tell them we're comin'."
+
+"Just a moment, Mandy!" said Cameron, "and I'm with you.  Another
+time I hope to do a reel with you, Miss MacKenzie," he said,
+bidding her good-night, "and I hope it will be soon."
+
+"Remember, then," cried Isa, warmly shaking hands with him.  "I
+will keep you to your promise at the picnic."
+
+"Fine!" said Cameron, and with easy grace he made his farewells and
+set off after Mandy, who by this time was some distance down the
+lane.
+
+"You needn't come for me," she said, throwing her voice at him over
+her shoulder.
+
+"What a splendid night we have had!" said Cameron, ignoring her
+wrath.  "And what awfully nice people."
+
+Mandy grunted and in silence continued her way down the lane,
+picking her steps between the muddy spots and pools left by the
+rain.
+
+After some minutes Cameron, who was truly sorry for the girl,
+ventured to resume the conversation.
+
+"Didn't you enjoy the evening, Mandy?"
+
+"No, I didn't!" she replied shortly.  "I can't dance and they all
+know it."
+
+"Why don't you learn, Mandy?  You could dance if you practised."
+
+"I can't.  I ain't like the other girls.  I'm too clumsy."
+
+"Not a bit of it," said Cameron.  "I've watched you stepping about
+the house and you are not a bit clumsy.  If you only practised a
+bit you would soon pick up the schottische."
+
+"Oh, you're just saying that because you know I'm mad," said Mandy,
+slightly mollified.
+
+"Not at all.  I firmly believe it.  I saw you try a schottische
+to-night with Perkins and--"
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said Mandy.  "He don't give me no show.  He gets mad
+when I tramp on him."
+
+"All you want is practise, Mandy," replied Cameron.
+
+"Oh, I ain't got no one to show me," said Mandy.  "Perkins he won't
+be bothered, and--and--there's no one else," she added shyly.
+
+"Why, I--I would show you," replied Cameron, every instinct of
+chivalry demanding that he should play up to her lead, "if I had
+any opportunity."
+
+"When?" said Mandy simply.
+
+"When?" echoed Cameron, taken aback.  "Why, the first chance we
+get."
+
+As he spoke the word they reached the new bridge that crossed the
+deep ditch that separated the lane from the high road.
+
+"Here's a good place right here on this bridge," said Mandy with a
+giggle.
+
+"But we have no music," stammered Cameron, aghast at the prospect
+of a dancing lesson by moonlight upon the public highway.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" said Mandy.  "We don't need music.  You can just
+count.  I seen Isa showin' Mack once and they didn't have no music.
+But," she added, regarding Cameron with suspicion, "if you don't
+want to--"
+
+"Oh, I shall be glad to, but wouldn't the porch be better?" he
+replied in desperation.
+
+"The porch!  That's so," assented Mandy eagerly.  "Let's hurry
+before the rest come home."  So saying, she set off at a great
+pace, followed by Cameron ruefully wondering to what extent the
+lesson in the Terpsichorean art might be expected to go.
+
+As soon as the porch was reached Mandy cried--
+
+"Now let's at the thing.  I'm going to learn that schottische if it
+costs a leg."
+
+Without stopping to enquire whose leg might be in peril, Cameron
+proceeded with his lesson, and he had not gone through many paces
+till he began to recognise the magnitude of the task laid upon him.
+The girl's sense of time was accurate enough, but she was
+undeniably awkward and clumsy in her movements and there was an
+almost total absence of coordination of muscle and brain.  She had,
+however, suffered too long and too keenly from her inability to
+join with the others in the dance to fail to make the best of her
+opportunity to relieve herself of this serious disability.
+
+So, with fierce industry she poised, counted and hopped, according
+to Cameron's instructions and example, with never a sign of
+weariness, but alas with little indication of progress.
+
+"Oh, shucks!  I can't do it!" she cried at length, pausing in
+despair.  "I think we could do it better together.  That's the way
+Mack and Isa do it.  I've seen them at it for an hour."
+
+Cameron's heart sank within him.  He had caught an exchange of
+glances between the two young people mentioned and he could quite
+understand how a lesson in the intricacies of the Highland
+schottische might very well be extended over an hour to their
+mutual satisfaction, but he shrank with a feeling of dismay, if not
+disgust, from a like experience with the girl before him.
+
+He was on the point of abruptly postponing the lesson when his eye
+fell upon her face as she stood in the moonlight which streamed in
+through the open door.  Was it the mystic alchemy of the moon on
+her face, or was it the glowing passion in her wonderful eyes that
+transfigured the coarse features?  A sudden pity for the girl rose
+in Cameron's heart and he said gently, "We will try it together,
+Mandy."
+
+He took her hand, put his arm about her waist, but, as he drew her
+towards him, with a startled look in her eyes she shrank back
+saying hurriedly:
+
+"I guess I won't bother you any more to-night.  You've been awfully
+good to me.  You're tired."
+
+"Not a bit, Mandy, come along," replied Cameron briskly.
+
+At that moment a shadow fell upon the square of moonlight on the
+floor.  Mandy started back with a cry.
+
+"My! you scairt me.  We were--Allan--Mr. Cameron was learnin' me
+the Highland schottische."  Her face and her voice were full of
+fear.
+
+It was Perkins.  White, silent, and rigid, he stood regarding them,
+for minutes, it seemed, then turned away.
+
+"Let's finish," said Cameron quietly.
+
+"Oh! no, no!" said Mandy in a low voice.  "He's awful mad!  I'm
+scairt to death!  He'll do something!  Oh! dear, dear!  He's awful
+when he gets mad."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Cameron.  "He can't hurt you."
+
+"No, but you!"
+
+"Oh, don't worry about me.  He won't hurt me."
+
+Cameron's tone arrested the girl's attention.
+
+"But promise me--promise me!" she cried, "that you won't touch
+him."  She clutched his arm in a fierce grip.
+
+"Certainly I won't touch him," said Cameron easily, "if he behaves
+himself."  But in his heart he was conscious of a fierce desire
+that Perkins would give him the opportunity to wipe out a part at
+least of the accumulated burden of insult he had been forced to
+bear during the last three weeks.
+
+"Oh!" wailed Mandy, wringing her hands.  "I know you're going to
+fight him.  I don't want you to!  Do you hear me?" she cried,
+suddenly gripping Cameron again by the arm and shaking him.  "I
+don't want you to!  Promise me you won't!"  She was in a transport
+of fear.
+
+"Oh, this is nonsense, Mandy," said Cameron, laughing at her.
+"There won't be any fight.  I'll run away."
+
+"All right," replied the girl quietly, releasing his arm.
+"Remember you promised."  She turned from him.
+
+"Good night, Mandy.  We will finish our lesson another time, eh?"
+he said cheerfully.
+
+"Good night," replied Mandy, dully, and passed through the kitchen
+and into the house.
+
+Cameron watched her go, then poured for himself a glass of milk
+from a pitcher that always stood upon the table for any who might
+be returning home late at night, and drank it slowly, pondering the
+situation the while.
+
+"What a confounded mess it is!" he said to himself.  "I feel like
+cutting the whole thing.  By Jove!  That girl is getting on my
+nerves!  And that infernal bounder!  She seems to--  Poor girl!  I
+wonder if he has got any hold on her.  It would be the greatest
+satisfaction in the world to teach HIM a few things too.  But I
+have made up my mind that I am not going to end up my time here
+with any row, and I'll stick to that; unless--" and, with a
+tingling in his fingers, he passed out into the moonlight.
+
+As he stepped out from the door a dark mass hurled itself at him, a
+hand clutched at his throat, missed as he swiftly dodged back, and
+carried away his collar.  It was Perkins, his face distorted, his
+white teeth showing in a snarl as of a furious beast.  Again with a
+beast-like growl he sprang, and again Cameron avoided him; while
+Perkins, missing his clutch, stumbled over a block of wood and went
+crashing head first among a pile of pots and pans and, still unable
+to recover himself and wildly grasping whatever chanced to be
+within reach, fell upon the board that stood against the corner of
+the porch to direct the rain into the tub; but the unstable board
+slid slowly down and allowed the unfortunate Perkins to come
+sitting in the tub full of water.
+
+"Very neatly done, Perkins!" cried Cameron, whose anger at the
+furious attack was suddenly transformed into an ecstasy of delight
+at seeing the plight of his enemy.
+
+Like a cat Perkins was on his feet and, without a single moment's
+pause, came on again in silent fury.  By an evil chance there lay
+in his path the splitting axe, gleaming in the moonlight.  Uttering
+a low choking cry, as of joy, he seized the axe and sprang towards
+his foe.  Quicker than thought Cameron picked up a heavy arm chair
+that stood near the porch to use it as a shield against the
+impending attack.
+
+"Are you mad, Perkins?" he cried, catching the terrific blow that
+came crashing down, upon the chair.
+
+Then, filled with indignant rage at the murderous attack upon him,
+and suddenly comprehending the desperate nature of the situation,
+he sprang at his antagonist, thrusting the remnants of the chair in
+his face and, following hard and fast upon him, pushed him backward
+and still backward till, tripping once more, he fell supine among
+the pots and pans.  Seizing the axe that had dropped from his
+enemy's hand, Cameron hurled it far beyond the wood pile and then
+stood waiting, a cold and deadly rage possessing him.
+
+"Come on, you dog!" he said through his shut teeth.  "You have been
+needing this for some time and now you'll get it."
+
+"What is it, Joe?"
+
+Cameron quickly turned and saw behind him Mandy, her face blanched,
+her eyes wide, and her voice faint with terror.
+
+"Oh, nothing much," said Cameron, struggling to recover himself.
+"Perkins stumbled over the tub among the pots and pans there.  He
+made a great row, too," he continued with a laugh, striving to get
+his voice under control.
+
+"What is it, Joe?" repeated Mandy, approaching Perkins.  But
+Perkins stood leaning against the corner of the porch in a kind of
+dazed silence.
+
+"You've been fighting," she said, turning upon Cameron.
+
+"Not at all," said Cameron lightly, "but, if you must know, Perkins
+went stumbling among these pots and pans and finally sat down in
+the tub; and naturally he is mad."
+
+"Is that true, Joe?" said Mandy, moving slowly nearer him.
+
+"Oh, shut up, Mandy!  I'm all wet, that's all, and I'm going to
+bed."
+
+His voice was faint as though he were speaking with an effort.
+
+"You go into the house," he said to the girl.  "I've got something
+to say to Cameron here."
+
+"You are quarreling."
+
+"Oh, give us a rest, Mandy, and get out!  No, there's no quarreling,
+but I want to have a talk with Cameron about something.  Go on,
+now!"
+
+For a few moments she hesitated, looking from one to the other.
+
+"It's all right, Mandy," said Cameron quietly.  "You needn't be
+afraid, there won't be any trouble."
+
+For a moment more she stood, then quietly turned away.
+
+"Wait!" said Perkins to Cameron, and followed Mandy into the house.
+For some minutes Cameron stood waiting.
+
+"Now, you murderous brute!" he said, when Perkins reappeared.
+"Come down to the barn where no girl can interfere."  He turned
+towards the barn.
+
+"Hold on!" said Perkins, breathing heavily.  "Not to-night.  I want
+to say something.  She's waiting to see me go upstairs."
+
+Cameron came back.
+
+"What have you got to say, you cur?" he asked in a voice filled
+with a cold and deliberate contempt.
+
+"Don't you call no names," replied Perkins.  "It ain't no use."
+His voice was low, trembling, but gravely earnest.  "Say, I might
+have killed you to-night."  His breath was still coming in quick
+short gasps.
+
+"You tried your best, you dog!" said Cameron.
+
+"Don't you call no names," panted Perkins again.  "I might--a--
+killed yeh.  I'm mighty--glad--I didn't."  He spoke like a man who
+had had a great deliverance.  "But don't yeh," here his teeth
+snapped like a dog's, "don't yeh ever go foolin' with that girl
+again.  Don't yeh--ever--do it.  I seen yeh huggin' her in there
+and I tell yeh--I tell yeh--," his breath began to come in sobs, "I
+won't stand it--I'll kill yeh, sure as God's in heaven
+
+"Are you mad?" said Cameron, scanning narrowly the white distorted
+face.
+
+"Mad?  Yes, I guess so--I dunno--but don't yeh do it, that's all.
+She's mine!  Mine!  D'yeh hear?"
+
+He stepped forward and thrust his snarling face into Cameron's.
+
+"No, I ain't goin' to touch yeh," as Cameron stepped back into a
+posture of defense, "not to-night.  Some day, perhaps."  Here again
+his teeth came together with a snap.  "But I'm not going to have
+you or any other man cutting in on me with that girl.  D'yeh hear
+me?" and he lifted a trembling forefinger and thrust it almost into
+Cameron's face.
+
+Cameron stood regarding him in silent and contemptuous amazement.
+Neither of them saw a dark form standing back out of the moonlight,
+inside the door.  At last Cameron spoke.
+
+"Now what the deuce does all this mean?" he said slowly.  "Is this
+girl by any unhappy chance engaged to you?"
+
+"Yes, she is--or was as good as, till you came; but you listen to
+me.  As God hears me up there"--he raised his shaking hand and
+pointed up to the moonlit sky, and then went on, chewing on his
+words like a dog on a bone--"I'll cut the heart out of your body if
+I catch you monkeying round that girl again.  You've got to get out
+of here!  Everything was all right till you came sneaking in.
+You've got to get out!  You've got to get out!  D'yeh hear me?
+You've got to get out!"
+
+His voice was rising, mad rage was seizing him again, his fingers
+were opening and shutting like a man in a death agony.
+
+Cameron glanced towards the door.
+
+"I'm done," said Perkins, noting the glance.  "That's my last word.
+You'd better quit this job."  His voice again took on an imploring
+tone.  "You'd better go or something will sure happen to you.
+Nobody will miss you much, except perhaps Mandy."  His ghastly face
+twisted into a snarling smile, his eyes appeared glazed in the
+moonlight, his voice was husky--the man seemed truly insane.
+
+Cameron stood observing him quietly when he had ceased speaking.
+
+"Are you finished?  Then hear me.  First, in regard to this girl,
+she doesn't want me and I don't want her, but make up your mind, I
+promise you to do all I can to prevent her falling into the hands
+of a brute like you.  Then as to leaving this place, I shall go
+just when it suits me, no sooner."
+
+"All right," said Perkins, his voice low and trembling.  "All
+right, mind I warned you!  Mind I warned you!  But if you go
+foolin' with that girl, I'll kill yeh, so help me God."
+
+These words he uttered with the solemnity of an oath and turned
+towards the porch.  A dark figure flitted across the kitchen and
+disappeared into the house.  Cameron walked slowly towards the
+barn.
+
+"He's mad.  He's clean daffy, but none the less dangerous," he said
+to himself.  "What a rotten mess all this is!" he added in disgust.
+"By Jove!  The whole thing isn't worth while."
+
+But as he thought of Mandy's frightened face and imploring eyes and
+the brutal murderous face of the man who claimed her as his own, he
+said between his teeth:
+
+"No, I won't quit now.  I'll see this thing through, whatever it
+costs," and with this resolve he set himself to the business of
+getting to sleep; in which, after many attempts, he was at length
+successful.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY
+
+
+There never was such a Dominion Day for weather since the first
+Dominion Day was born.  Of this "Fatty" Freeman was fully assured.
+Fatty Freeman was a young man for whose opinion older men were
+accustomed to wait.  His person more than justified his praenomen,
+for Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., was undeniably fat.  "Fat, but fine
+and frisky," was ever his own comment upon the descriptive
+adjective by which his friends distinguished him.  And fine and
+frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating, fine in his
+judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men; frisky,
+too, and utterly irrepressible.  "Harp's just like a young pup,"
+his own father, the Reverend Harper Freeman, the old Methodist
+minister of the Maplehill circuit, used to say.  "If Harp had a
+tail he would never do anything but play with it."  On this,
+however, it is difficult to hold any well based opinion.  Ebullient
+in his spirits, he radiated cheeriness wherever he went and was at
+the bottom of most of the practical jokes that kept the village of
+Maplehill in a state of ferment; yet if any man thought to turn a
+sharp corner in business with Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., he invariably
+found that frisky individual waiting for him round the corner with a
+cheery smile of welcome, shrewd and disconcerting.  It was this
+cheery shrewdness of his that made him the most successful cattle
+buyer in the county and at the same time secretary of the Middlesex
+Caledonian Society.  As secretary of this society he was made
+chiefly responsible for the success of the Dominion Day picnic and,
+as with everything that he took hold of, Fatty toiled at the
+business of preparation for this picnic with conscientious zeal,
+giving to it all his spare hours and many of his working hours for
+the three months preceding.
+
+It was due solely to his efforts that so many distinguished county
+magnates appeared eager to lend their patronage.  It needed but a
+little persuasion to secure the enthusiastic support of the
+Honourable J. J. Patterson, M.P.P., and, incidentally, the handsome
+challenge cup for hammer-throwing, for the honourable member of
+Parliament was a full-blooded Highlander himself and an ardent
+supporter of "the games."  But only Fatty Freeman's finesse could
+have extracted from Dr. Kane, the Opposition candidate for
+Provincial Parliamentary honours, the cup for the hundred yards
+race, and other cups from other individuals more or less deeply
+interested in Dominion, Provincial, and Municipal politics.  The
+prize list secured, it needed only a skillful manipulation of the
+local press and a judicious but persistent personal correspondence
+to swell the ranks of the competitors in the various events, and
+thus ensure a monster attendance of the people from the
+neighbouring townships and from the city near by.
+
+The weather being assured, Fatty's anxieties were mostly allayed,
+for he had on the file in his office acceptance letters from the
+distinguished men who were to cast the spell of their oratory over
+the assembled multitude, as also from the big men in the athletic
+world who had entered for the various events in the programme of
+sports.  It was a master stroke of diplomacy that resulted in the
+securing for the hammer-throwing contest the redoubtable and famous
+Duncan Ross of Zorra, who had at first disdained the bait of the
+Maplehill Dominion Day picnic, but in some mysterious way had at
+length been hooked and landed.  For Duncan was a notable man and
+held the championship of the Zorras; and indeed in all Ontario he
+was second only to the world-famous Rory Maclennan of Glengarry,
+who had been to Braemar itself and was beaten there only by a
+fluke.  How he came to agree to be present at the Maplehill picnic
+"Black Duncan" could not quite understand, but had he compared
+notes with McGee, the champion of the London police force and of
+various towns and cities of the western peninsula, he would
+doubtless have received some enlightenment.  To the skill of the
+same master hand was due the appearance upon the racing list of the
+Dominion Day picnic of such distinguished names as Cahill of
+London, Fullerton of Woodstock, and especially of Eugene La Belle
+of nowhere in particular, who held the provincial championship for
+skating and was a runner of provincial fame.
+
+In the racing Fatty was particularly interested because his young
+brother Wilbur, of whom he was uncommonly proud, a handsome lad,
+swift and graceful as a deer, was to make his first essay for more
+than local honours.
+
+The lists for the other events were equally well filled and every
+detail of the arrangements for the day had passed under the
+secretary's personal review.  The feeding of the multitude was in
+charge of the Methodist Ladies' Aid, an energetic and exceptionally
+businesslike organization, which fully expected to make sufficient
+profit from the enterprise to clear off the debt from their church
+at Maplehill, an achievement greatly desired not only by the ladies
+themselves but by their minister, the Reverend Harper Freeman, now
+in the third year of his incumbency.  The music was to be furnished
+by the Band of the Seventh from London and by no less a distinguished
+personage than Piper Sutherland himself from Zorra, former Pipe
+Major of "The old Forty-twa."  The discovery of another piper in
+Cameron brought joy to the secretary's heart, who only regretted
+that an earlier discovery had not rendered possible a pipe
+competition.
+
+Early in the afternoon the crowds began to gather to MacBurney's
+woods, a beautiful maple grove lying midway between the Haleys'
+farm and Maplehill village, about two miles distant from each.  The
+grove of noble maple trees overlooking a grassy meadow provided an
+ideal spot for picnicking, furnishing as it did both shade from the
+sun and a fine open space with firm footing for the contestants in
+the games.  High over a noble maple in the centre of the grassy
+meadow floated the Red Ensign of the Empire, which, with the
+Canadian coat of arms on the fly, by common usage had become the
+national flag of Canada.  From the great trees the swings were
+hung, and under their noble spreading boughs were placed the
+tables, and the platform for the speech making and the dancing,
+while at the base of the encircling hills surrounding the grassy
+meadow, hard by the grove another platform was placed, from which
+distinguished visitors might view with ease and comfort the
+contests upon the campus immediately adjacent.
+
+Through the fence, let down for the purpose, the people drove in
+from the high road.  They came in top buggies and in lumber wagons,
+in democrats and in "three seated rigs," while from the city came a
+"four-in-hand" with McGee, Cahill, and their backers, as well as
+other carriages filled with good citizens of London drawn thither
+by the promise of a day's sport of more than usual excellence or by
+the lure of a day in the woods and fields of God's open country.  A
+specially fine carriage and pair, owned and driven by the honourable
+member of Parliament himself, conveyed Piper Sutherland, with
+colours streaming and pipes playing, to the picnic grounds. Warmly
+was the old piper welcomed, not only by the frisky cheery secretary,
+but by many old friends, and by none more warmly than by the
+Reverend Alexander Munro, the douce old bachelor Presbyterian
+minister of Maplehill, a great lover of the pipes and a special
+friend of Piper Sutherland.  But the welcome was hardly over when
+once more the sound of the pipes was heard far up the side line.
+
+"Surely that will be Gunn," said Mr. Munro.
+
+Sutherland listened for a minute or two.
+
+"No, it iss not Gunn.  Iss Ross coming?  No, yon iss not Ross.
+That will be a stranger," he continued, turning to the secretary,
+but the secretary remained silent, enjoying the old man's surprise
+and perplexity.
+
+"Man, that iss not so bad piping!  Not so bad at all!  Who iss it?"
+he added with some impatience, turning upon the secretary again.
+
+"Oh, that's Haley's team and I guess that's his hired man, a young
+fellow just out from Scotland," replied the secretary indifferently.
+"I am no great judge of the pipes myself, but he strikes me as a
+crackajack and I shouldn't be surprised if he would make you all sit
+up."
+
+But the old piper's ear was closed to his words and open only to
+the strains of music ever drawing nearer.
+
+"Aye, yon's a piper!" he said at length with emphasis.  "Yon's a
+piper!"
+
+"I only wish I had discovered him in time for a competition," said
+Fatty regretfully.
+
+"Aye," said Sutherland.  "Yon's a piper worth playing against."
+
+And very brave and gallant young Cameron looked as Tim swung his
+team through the fence and up to the platform under the trees where
+the great ones of the people were standing in groups.  They were
+all there, Patterson the M.P.P., and Dr. Kane the Opposition
+candidate, Reeve Robertson, for ten years the Municipal head of his
+county, Inspector Grant, a little man with a massive head and a
+luminous eye, Patterson's understudy and generally regarded as his
+successor in Provincial politics, the Reverend Harper Freeman,
+Methodist minister, tall and lank, with shrewd kindly face and a
+twinkling eye, the Reverend Alexander Munro, the Presbyterian
+minister, solid and sedate, slow to take fire but when kindled a
+very furnace for heat.  These, with their various wives and
+daughters, such as had them, and many others less notable but no
+less important, constituted a sort of informal reception committee
+under Fatty Freeman's general direction and management.  And here
+and there and everywhere crowds of young men and maidens,
+conspicuous among the latter Isa MacKenzie and her special friends,
+made merry with each other, as brave and gallant a company of
+sturdy sun-browned youths and bonnie wholesome lassies as any land
+or age could ever show.
+
+"Look at them!" cried the Reverend Harper Freeman, waving his hand
+toward the kaleidoscopic gathering.  "There's your Dominion Day
+oration for you, Mr, Patterson."
+
+"Most of it done in brown, too," chuckled his son, Harper Freeman,
+Jr.
+
+"Yes, and set in jewels and gold," replied his father.
+
+"You hold over me, Dad!" cried his son.  "Here!" he called to
+Cameron, who was standing aloof from the others.  "Come and meet a
+brother Scot and a brother piper, Mr. Sutherland from Zorra, though
+to your ignorant Scottish ear that means nothing, but to every
+intelligent Canadian, Zorra stands for all that's finest in brain
+and brawn in Canada."
+
+"And it takes both to play the pipes, eh, Sutherland?" said the
+M.P.P.
+
+"Oh aye, but mostly wind," said the piper.
+
+"Just like politics, eh, Mr. Patterson?" said the Reverend Harper
+Freeman.
+
+"Yes, or like preaching," replied the M.P.P.
+
+"One on you, Dad!" said the irrepressible Fatty.
+
+Meantime Sutherland was warmly complimenting Cameron on his
+playing.
+
+"You haf been well taught," he said.
+
+"No one taught me," said Cameron.  "But we had a famous old piper
+at home in our Glen, Macpherson was his name."
+
+"Macpherson!  Did he effer play at the Braemar gathering?"
+
+"Yes, but Maclennan beat him."
+
+"Maclennan!  I haf heard him."  The tone was quite sufficient to
+classify the unhappy Maclennan.  "And I haf heard Macpherson too.
+You iss a player.  None of the fal-de-rals of your modern players,
+but grand and mighty."
+
+"I agree with you entirely," replied Cameron, his heart warming at
+the praise of his old friend of the Glen Cuagh Oir.  "But," he
+added, "Maclennan is a great player too."
+
+"A great player?  Yes and no.  He has the fingers and the notes,
+but he iss not the beeg man.  It iss the soul that breathes through
+the chanter.  The soul!"  Here he gripped Cameron by the arm.
+"Man! it iss like praying.  A beeg man will neffer show himself in
+small things, but when he will be in communion with his Maker or
+when he will be pouring out his soul in a pibroch then the beegness
+of the man will be manifest.  Aye," continued the piper, warming to
+his theme and encouraged by the eager sympathy of his listener,
+"and not only the beegness but the quality of the soul.  A mean man
+can play the pipes, but he can neffer be a piper.  It iss only a
+beeg man and a fine man and, I will venture to say, a good man, and
+there are not many men can be pipers."
+
+"Aye, Mr. Sutherland," broke in the Reverend Alexander Munro, "what
+you say is true, but it is true not only of piping.  It is true
+surely of anything great enough to express the deepest emotions of
+the soul.  A man is never at his best in anything till he is
+expressing his noblest self."
+
+"For instance in preaching, eh!" said Dr. Kane.
+
+"Aye, in preaching or in political oratory," replied the minister.
+
+At this, however, the old piper shook his head doubtfully.
+
+"You do not agree with Mr. Munro in that?" said the M.P.P.
+
+"No," replied Sutherland, "speaking iss one thing, piping iss
+another."
+
+"And that is no lie, and a mighty good thing too it is," said Dr.
+Kane flippantly.
+
+"It iss no lie," replied the old piper with dignity.  "And if you
+knew much about either of them you would say it deeferently."
+
+"Why, what is the difference, Mr. Sutherland?" said Dr. Kane,
+anxious to appease the old man.  "They both are means of expressing
+the emotions of the soul, you say."
+
+"The deeference!  The deeferenee iss it?  The deeference iss here,
+that the pipes will neffer lie."
+
+There was a shout of laughter.
+
+"One for you, Kane!" cried the Reverend Harper Freeman.  "And," he
+continued when the laughing had ceased, "we will have to take our
+share too, Mr. Munro."
+
+But the hour for beginning the programme had arrived and the
+secretary climbed to the platform to announce the events for the
+day.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" he cried, in a high, clear, penetrating
+voice, "the speech of welcome will be delivered toward the close of
+the day by the president of the Middlesex Caledonian Society, the
+Honourable J. J. Patterson, M.P.P.  My duty is the very simple one
+of announcing the order of events on the programme and of expressing
+on behalf of the Middlesex Caledonian Society the earnest hope that
+you all may enjoy the day, and that each event on the programme will
+prove more interesting than the last.  The programme is long and
+varied and I must ask your assistance to put it through on schedule
+time.  First there are the athletic competitions.  I shall endeavour
+to assist Dr. Kane and the judges in running these through without
+unnecessary and annoying delays. Then will follow piping, dancing,
+and feasting in their proper order, after which will come the
+presentation of prizes and speeches from our distinguished visitors.
+On the platform over yonder there are places for the speakers, the
+officials, and the guests of the society, but such is the very
+excellent character of the ground that all can be accommodated with
+grand stand seats. One disappointment, and one only, I must
+announce, the Band of the Seventh, London, cannot be with us
+to-day."
+
+"But we will never miss them," interpolated the Reverend Alexander
+Munro with solemn emphasis.
+
+"Exactly so!" continued Fatty when the laugh had subsided.  "And
+now let's all go in for a good old time picnic, 'where even the
+farmers cease from grumbling and the preachers take a rest.'  Now
+take your places, ladies and gentlemen, for the grand parade is
+about to begin."
+
+The programme opened with the one hundred yard flat race.  For this
+race there were four entries, Cahill from London, Fullerton from
+Woodstock, La Belle from nowhere in particular, and Wilbur Freeman
+from Maplehill.  But Wilbur was nowhere to be seen.  The secretary
+came breathless to the platform.
+
+"Where's Wilbur?" he asked his father.
+
+"Wilbur?  Surely he is in the crowd, or in the tent perhaps."
+
+At the tent the secretary found his brother nursing a twisted ankle,
+heart-sick with disappointment.  Early in the day he had injured his
+foot in an attempt to fasten a swing upon a tree.  Every minute
+since that time he had spent in rubbing and manipulating the injured
+member, but all to no purpose.  While the pain was not great, a race
+was out of the question.  The secretary was greatly disturbed and as
+nearly wrathful as ever he allowed himself to become.  He was set on
+his brother making a good showing in this race; moreover, without
+Wilbur there would be no competitor to uphold the honour of
+Maplehill in this contest and this would deprive it of much of its
+interest.
+
+"What the dickens were you climbing trees for?" he began
+impatiently, but a glance at his young brother's pale and woe-
+stricken face changed his wrath to pity.  "Never mind, old chap,"
+he said, "better luck next time, and you will be fitter too."
+
+Back he ran to the platform, for he must report the dismal news to
+his mother, whose chief interest in the programme for the day lay
+in this race in which her latest born was to win his spurs.  The
+cheery secretary was nearly desperate.  It was an ominous beginning
+for the day's sports.  What should he do?  He confided his woe to
+Mack and Cameron, who were standing close by the platform.
+
+"It will play the very mischief with the programme.  It will spoil
+the whole day, for Wilbur was the sole Maplehill representative in
+the three races; besides, I believe the youngster would have shown
+up well."
+
+"He would that!" cried Mack heartily.  "He was a bird.  But is
+there no one else from the Hill that could enter?"
+
+"No, no one with a chance of winning, and no fellow likes to go in
+simply to be beaten."
+
+"What difference?" said Cameron.  "It's all in a day's sport."
+
+"That's so," said Mack.  "If I could run myself I would enter.  I
+wonder if Danny would--"
+
+"Danny!" said the secretary shortly.  "You know better than that.
+Danny's too shy to appear before this crowd even if he were dead
+sure of winning."
+
+"Say, it is too bad!" continued Mack, as the magnitude of the
+calamity grew upon him.  "Surely we can find some one to make an
+appearance.  What about yourself, Cameron?  Did you ever race?"
+
+"Some," said Cameron.  "I raced last year at the Athole Games."
+
+Fatty threw himself upon him.
+
+"Cameron, you are my man!  Do you want to save your country, and
+perhaps my life, certainly my reputation?  Get out of those
+frills," touching his kilt, "and I'll get a suit from one of the
+jumpers for you.  Go!  Bless your soul, anything you want that's
+mine you can have!  Only hustle for dear life's sake!  Go! Go! Go!
+Take him away, Mack.  We'll get something else on!"
+
+Fatty actually pushed Cameron clear away from the platform and
+after him big Mack.
+
+"There seems to be no help for it," said Cameron, as they went to
+the tent together.
+
+"It's awful good of you," replied Mack, "but you can see how hard
+Fatty takes it, though it is not a bit fair to you."
+
+"Oh, nobody knows me here," said Cameron, "and I don't mind being a
+victim."
+
+But as Mack saw him get into his jersey and shorts he began to
+wonder a bit.
+
+"Man, it would be great if you should beat yon Frenchman!" he
+exclaimed.
+
+"Frenchman?"
+
+"Yes!  La Belle.  He is that stuck on himself; he thinks he is a
+winner before he starts."
+
+"It's a good way to think, Mack.  Now let us get down into the
+woods and have a bit of a practise in the 'get away.'  How do they
+start here?  With a pistol?"
+
+"No," replied Mack.  "We are not so swell.  The starter gives the
+word this way, 'All set?  Go!'"
+
+"All right, Mack, you give me the word sharp.  I am out of practise
+and I must get the idea into my head."
+
+"You are great on the idea, I see," replied Mack.
+
+"Right you are, and it is just the same with the hammer, Mack."
+
+"Aye, I have found that out."
+
+For twenty minutes or so Cameron practised his start and at every
+attempt Mack's confidence grew, so that when he brought his man
+back to the platform he announced to a group of the girls standing
+near, "Don't say anything, but I have the winner right here for
+you."
+
+"Why, Mr. Cameron," cried Isa, "what a wonder you are!  What else
+can you do?  You are a piper, a dancer, a hammer-thrower, and now a
+runner."
+
+"Jack-of-all-trades," laughed Perkins, who, with Mandy, was
+standing near.
+
+"Yes, but you can't say 'Master of none,'" replied Isa sharply.
+
+"Better wait," said Cameron.  "I have entered this race only to
+save Mr. Freeman from collapse."
+
+"Collapse?  Fatty?  He couldn't," said Isa with emphasis.
+
+"Lass, I do not know," said Mack gravely.  "He looked more hollow
+than ever I have seen him before."
+
+"Well, we'll all cheer for you, Mr. Cameron, anyway," cried Isa.
+"Won't we, girls?  Oh, if wishes were wings!"
+
+"Wings?" said Mandy, with a puzzled air.  "What for?  This is a
+RACE."
+
+"Didn't you never see a hen run, Mandy?" laughed Perkins.
+
+"Yes, I have, but I tell you Mr. Cameron ain't no hen," replied
+Mandy angrily.  "And more!  He's going to win."
+
+"Say, Mandy, that is the talk," said Mack, when the laugh had
+passed.  "Did you hear yon?" he added to Cameron.
+
+Cameron nodded.
+
+"It is a good omen," he said.  "I am going to do my best."
+
+"And, by Jingo! if you only had a chance," said Mack, "I believe
+you would lick them all."
+
+At this Fatty bustled up.
+
+"All ready, eh?  Cameron, I shall owe you something for this.  La
+Belle kicked like a steer against your entering at the last minute.
+It is against the rules, you know.  But he's given in."
+
+Fatty did not explain that he had intimated to La Belle that there
+was no need for anxiety as far as the "chap from the old country"
+was concerned; he was there merely to fill up.
+
+But if La Belle's fears were allayed by the secretary's disparaging
+description of the latest competitor, they sprang full grown into
+life again when he saw Cameron "all set" for the start, and more
+especially so when he heard his protest against the Frenchman's
+method in the "get away."
+
+"I want you to notice," he said firmly to Dr. Kane, who was acting
+as starter, "that this man gets away WITH the word 'Go' and not
+AFTER it.  It is an old trick, but long ago played out."
+
+Then the Frenchman fell into a rage.
+
+"Eet ees no treeck!" sputtered La Belle.  "Eet ees too queeck for
+him."
+
+"All right!" said Dr. Kane.  "You are to start after the word 'Go.'
+Remember!  Sorry we have no pistol."
+
+Once more the competitors crouched over the scratch.
+
+"All set?  Go!"
+
+Like the releasing of a whirlwind the four runners spring from the
+scratch, La Belle, whose specialty is his "get away," in front,
+Fullerton and Cameron in second place, Cahill a close third.  A
+blanket would cover them all.  A tumult of cheers from the friends
+of the various runners follows them along their brief course.
+
+"Who is it?  Who is it?" cries Mandy breathlessly, clutching Mack
+by the arm.
+
+"Cameron, I swear!" roars Mack, pushing his way through the crowd
+to the judges.
+
+"No!  No!  La Belle!  La Belle!" cried the Frenchman's backers from
+the city.  The judges are apparently in dispute.
+
+"I swear it is Cameron!" roars Mack again in their ears, his eyes
+aflame and his face alight with a fierce and triumphant joy.  "It
+is Cameron I am telling you!"
+
+"Oh, get out, you big bluffer!" cries a thin-faced man, pressing
+close upon the judges.  "It is La Belle by a mile!"
+
+"By a mile, is it?" shouts Mack.  "Then go and hunt your man!" and
+with a swift motion his big hand falls upon the thin face and
+sweeps it clear out of view, the man bearing it coming to his feet
+in a white fury some paces away.  A second look at Mack, however,
+calms his rage, and from a distance he continues leaping and
+yelling "La Belle!  La Belle!"
+
+After a few moments' consultation the result is announced.
+
+"A tie for the first place between La Belle and Cameron!  Time
+eleven seconds!  The tie will be run off in a few minutes."
+
+In a tumult of triumph big Mack shoulders Cameron through the crowd
+and carries him off to the dressing tent, where he spends the next
+ten minutes rubbing his man's legs and chanting his glory.
+
+"Who is this Cameron?" enquired the M.P.P., leaning over the
+platform railing.
+
+Quick came the answer from the bevy of girls thronging past the
+platform.
+
+"Cameron?  He's our man!"  It was Mandy's voice, bold and strong.
+
+"Your man?" said the M.P.P., laughing down into the coarse flushed
+face.
+
+"Yes, OUR man!" cried Isa MacKenzie back at him.  "And a winner,
+you may be sure."
+
+"Ah, happy man!" exclaimed the M.P.P.  "Who would not win with such
+backers?  Why, I would win myself, Miss Isa, were you to back me
+so.  But who is Cameron?" he continued to the Methodist minister at
+his side.
+
+"He is Haley's hired man, I believe, and that first girl is Haley's
+daughter."
+
+"Poor thing!" echoed Mrs. Freeman, a kindly smile on her motherly
+face.  "But she has a good heart has poor Mandy."
+
+"But why 'poor'?" enquired the M.P.P.
+
+"Oh, well," answered Mrs. Freeman with hesitation, "you see she is
+so very plain--and--well, not like other girls.  But she is a good
+worker and has a kind heart."
+
+Once more the runners face the starter, La Belle gay, alert,
+confident; Cameron silent, pale, and grim.
+
+"All set?  Go!"  La Belle is away ere the word is spoken.  The
+bell, however, brings him back, wrathful and less confident.
+
+Once more they stand crouching over the scratch.  Once more the
+word releases them like shafts from the bow.  A beautiful start,
+La Belle again in the lead, but Cameron hard at his heels and
+evidently with something to spare.  Thus for fifty yards, sixty,
+yes, sixty-five.
+
+"La Belle!  La Belle!  He wins!  He wins!" yell his backers
+frantically, the thin-faced man dancing madly near the finishing
+tape.  Twenty yards to go and still La Belle is in the lead.  High
+above the shouting rises Mack's roar.
+
+"Now, Cameron!  For the life of you!"
+
+It was as if his voice had touched a spring somewhere in Cameron's
+anatomy.  A great leap brings him even with La Belle.  Another,
+another, and still another, and he breasts the tape a winner by a
+yard, time ten and three fifths seconds.  The Maplehill folk go
+mad, and madder than all Isa and her company of girl friends.
+
+"I got--one--bad--start--me!  He--pull--me back!" panted La Belle
+to his backers who were holding him up.
+
+"Who pulled you back?" indignantly cried the thin-faced man,
+looking for blood.
+
+"That sacre startair!"
+
+"You ran a fine race, La Belle!" said Cameron, coming up.
+
+"Non!  Peste!  I mak heem in ten and one feeft," replied the
+disgusted La Belle.
+
+"I have made it in ten," said Cameron quietly.
+
+"Aha!" exclaimed La Belle.  "You are one black horse, eh?  So!  I
+race no more to-day!"
+
+"Then no more do I!" said Cameron firmly.  "Why, La Belle, you will
+beat me in the next race sure.  I have no wind."
+
+Under pressure La Belle changed his mind, and well for him he did;
+for in the two hundred and twenty yards and in the quarter mile
+Cameron's lack of condition told against him, so that in the one
+he ran second to La Belle and in the other third to La Belle and
+Fullerton.
+
+The Maplehill folk were gloriously satisfied, and Fatty in an
+ecstasy of delight radiated good cheer everywhere.  Throughout the
+various contests the interest continued to deepen, the secretary,
+with able generalship, reserving the hammer-throwing as the most
+thrilling event to the last place.  For, more than anything in the
+world, men, and especially women, love strong men and love to see
+them in conflict.  For that fatal love cruel wars have been waged,
+lands have been desolated, kingdoms have fallen.  There was the
+promise of a very pretty fight indeed between the three entered for
+the hammer-throwing contest, two of them experienced in this
+warfare and bearing high honours, the third new to the game and
+unskilled, but loved for his modest courage and for the simple,
+gentle heart he carried in his great body.  He could not win, of
+course, for McGee, the champion of the city police force, had many
+scalps at his girdle, and Duncan Ross, "Black Duncan," the pride of
+the Zorras, the unconquered hero of something less than a hundred
+fights--who could hope to win from him?  But all the more for this
+the people loved big Mack and wished him well.  So down the sloping
+sides of the encircling hills the crowds pressed thick, and on the
+platform the great men leaned over the rail, while they lifted
+their ladies to places of vantage upon the chairs beside them.
+
+"Oh, I cannot see a bit!" cried Isa MacKenzie, vainly pressing upon
+the crowding men who, stolidly unaware of all but what was doing in
+front of them, effectually shut off her view.
+
+"And you want to see?" said the M.P.P., looking down at her.
+
+"Oh, so much!" she cried.
+
+"Come up here, then!" and, giving her a hand, he lifted her,
+smiling and blushing, to a place on the platform whence she with
+absorbing interest followed the movements of big Mack, and
+incidentally of the others in as far as they might bear any
+relation to those of her hero.
+
+And now they were drawing for place.
+
+"Aha!  Mack is going to throw first!" said the Reverend Alexander
+Munro.  "That is a pity."
+
+"It's a shame!" cried Isa, with flashing eyes.  "Why don't they put
+one of those older--ah--?"
+
+"Stagers?" suggested the M.P.P.
+
+"Duffers," concluded Isa.
+
+"The lot determines the place, Miss Isa," said Mr. Freeman, with a
+smile at her.  "But the best man will win."
+
+"Oh, I am not so sure of that!" cried the girl in a distressed
+voice.  "Mack might get nervous."
+
+"Nervous?" laughed the M.P.P.  "That giant?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, I have seen him that nervous--" said Isa, and stopped
+abruptly.
+
+"Ah!  That is quite possible," replied the M.P.P. with a quizzical
+smile.
+
+"And there is young Cameron yonder.  He is not going to throw, is
+he?" enquired Mr. Munro.
+
+"He is coaching Mack," explained Isa, "and fine he is at it.  Oh,
+there!  He is going to throw!  Oh, if he only gets the swing!  Oh!
+Oh! Oh!  He has got it fine!"
+
+A storm of cheers followed Mack's throw, then a deep silence while
+the judges took the measurement.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one feet!"
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one!" echoed a hundred voices in amazement.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one!  It is a lie!" cried McGee with an
+oath, striding out to personally supervise the measuring.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one!" said Duncan Ross, shaking his head
+doubtfully, but he was too much of a gentleman to do other than
+wait for the judges' decision.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one feet and two inches," was the final
+verdict, and from the crowd there rose a roar that rolled like
+thunder around the hills.
+
+"It's a fluke, and so it is!" said McGee with another oath.
+
+"Give me your hand, lad," said Duncan Ross, evidently much roused.
+"It iss a noble throw whateffer, and worthy of beeg Rory himself.
+I haf done better, howeffer, but indeed I may not to-day."
+
+It was indeed a great throw, and one immediate result was that
+there was no holding back in the contest, no playing 'possum.
+Mack's throw was there to be beaten, and neither McGee nor even
+Black Duncan could afford to throw away a single chance.  For
+hammer-throwing is an art requiring not only strength but skill as
+well, and not only strength and skill but something else most
+difficult to secure.  With the strength and the skill there must go
+a rhythmic and perfect coordination of all the muscles in the body,
+with exactly the proper contracting and relaxing of each at exactly
+the proper moment of time, and this perfect coordination is a
+result rarely achieved even by the greatest throwers, but when
+achieved, and with the man's full strength behind it, his record
+throw is the result.
+
+Meantime Cameron was hovering about his man in an ecstasy of
+delight.
+
+"Oh, Mack, old man!" he said.  "You got the swing perfectly.  It
+was a dream.  And if you had put your full strength into it you
+would have made a world record.  Why, man, you could add ten feet
+to it!"
+
+"It is a fluke!" said McGee again, as he took his place.
+
+"Make one like it, then, my lad," said Black Duncan with a grim
+smile.
+
+But this McGee failed to do, for his throw measured ninety-seven
+feet.
+
+"A very fair throw, McGee," said Black Duncan.  "But not your best,
+and nothing but the best will do the day appearingly."
+
+With that Black Duncan took place for his throw.  One--twice--
+thrice he swung the great hammer about his head, then sent it
+whirling into the air.  Again a mighty shout announced a great
+throw and again a dead silence waited for the measurement.
+
+"One hundred and fourteen feet!"
+
+"Aha!" said Black Duncan, and stepped back apparently well
+satisfied.
+
+It was again Mack's turn.
+
+"You have the privilege of allowing your first throw to stand,"
+said Dr. Kane.
+
+"Best let it stand, lad, till it iss beat," advised Black Duncan
+kindly.  "It iss a noble throw."
+
+"He can do better, though," said Cameron.
+
+"Very well, very well!" said Duncan.  "Let him try."
+
+But Mack's success had keyed him up to the highest pitch.  Every
+nerve was tingling, every muscle taut.  His first throw he had
+taken without strain, being mainly anxious, under Cameron's
+coaching, to get the swing, but under the excitement incident to
+the contest he had put more strength into the throw than appeared
+either to himself or to his coach.  Now, however, with nerves and
+muscles taut, he was eager to increase his distance, too eager it
+seemed, for his second throw measured only eighty-nine feet.
+
+A silence fell upon his friends and Cameron began to chide him.
+
+"You went right back to your old style, Mack.  There wasn't the
+sign of a swing."
+
+"I will get it yet, or bust!" said big Mack between his teeth.
+
+McGee's second throw went one hundred and seventeen feet.  A cheer
+arose from his backers, for it was a great throw and within five
+feet of his record.  Undoubtedly McGee was in great form and he
+might well be expected to measure up to his best to-day.
+
+Black Duncan's second throw measured one hundred and nineteen feet
+seven, which was fifteen feet short of his record and showed him to
+be climbing steadily upward.
+
+Once more the turn came to Mack, and once more, with almost savage
+eagerness, he seized the hammer preparatory to his throw.
+
+"Now, Mack, for heaven's sake go easy!" said Cameron.  "Take your
+swing easy and slow."
+
+But Mack heeded him not.  "I can beat it!" he muttered between his
+shut teeth, "and I will."  So, with every nerve taut and every
+muscle strained to its limit, he made his third attempt.  It was in
+vain.  The measure showed ninety-seven feet six.  A suppressed
+groan rose from the Maplehill folk.
+
+"A grand throw, lad, for a beginner," said Black Duncan.
+
+The excitement now became intense.  By his first throw of one
+hundred and twenty-one feet two, Mack remained still the winner.
+But McGee had only four feet to gain and Black Duncan less than two
+to equal him.  The little secretary went skipping about aglow with
+satisfaction and delight.  The day was already famous in the
+history of Canadian athletics.
+
+Again McGee took place for his throw, his third and last.  The
+crowd gathered in as near as they dared.  But McGee had done his
+best for that day, and his final throw measured only one hundred
+and five feet.
+
+There remained yet but a single chance to wrest from Mack Murray
+the prize for that day, but that chance lay in the hands of Duncan
+Ross, the cool and experienced champion of many a hard-fought
+fight.  Again Black Duncan took the hammer.  It was his last throw.
+He had still fifteen feet to go to reach his own record, and he had
+often beaten the throw that challenged him to-day, but, on the
+other hand, he had passed through many a contest where his throw
+had fallen short of the one he must now beat to win.  A hush fell
+upon the people as Black Duncan took his place.  Once--twice--and,
+with ever increasing speed, thrice he swung the great hammer, then
+high and far it hurtled through the air.
+
+"Jerusalem!" cried Mack.  "What a fling!"
+
+"Too high," muttered Black Duncan.  "You have got it, lad, you have
+got it, and you well deserve it."
+
+"Tut-tut, nonsense!" said Mack impatiently.  "Wait you a minute."
+
+Silent and expectant the crowd awaited the result.  Twice over the
+judges measured the throw, then announced "One hundred and twenty-
+one feet."  Mack had won by two inches.
+
+A great roar rose from the crowd, round Mack they surged like a
+flood, eager to grip his hands and eager to carry him off shoulder
+high.  But he threw them off as a rock throws back the incoming
+tide and made for Duncan Ross, who stood, calm and pale, and with
+hand outstretched, waiting him.  It was a new experience for Black
+Duncan, and a bitter, to be second in a contest.  Only once in many
+years had he been forced to lower his colours, and to be beaten by
+a raw and unknown youth added to the humiliation of his defeat.
+But Duncan Ross had in his veins the blood of a long line of
+Highland gentlemen who knew how to take defeat with a smile.
+
+"I congratulate you, Mack Murray," he said in a firm, clear voice.
+"Your fame will be through Canada tomorrow, and well you deserve
+it."
+
+But Mack caught the outstretched hand in both of his and, leaning
+toward Black Duncan, he roared at him above the din.
+
+"Mr. Ross, Mr. Ross, it is no win!  Listen to me!" he panted.
+"What are two inches in a hundred and twenty feet?  A stretching of
+the tape will do it.  No, no!  Listen to me!  You must listen to me
+as you are a man!  I will not have it!  You can beat me easily in
+the throw!  At best it is a tie and nothing else will I have
+to-day.  At least let us throw again!" he pleaded.  But to this
+Ross would not listen for a moment.
+
+"The lad has made his win," he said to the judges, "and his win he
+must have."
+
+But Mack declared that nothing under heaven would make him change
+his mind.  Finally the judges, too, agreed that in view of the
+possibility of a mistake in measuring with the tape, it would be
+only right and fair to count the result a tie.  Black Duncan
+listened respectfully to the judges' decision.
+
+"You are asking me a good deal, Mack," he said at length, "but you
+are a gallant lad and I am an older man and--"
+
+"Aye!  And a better!" shouted Mack.
+
+"And so I will agree."
+
+Once more the field was cleared.  And now there fell upon the
+crowding people a hush as if they stood in the presence of death
+itself.
+
+"Ladies and gentlemen!" said the M.P.P.  "Do you realise that you
+are looking upon a truly great contest, a contest great enough to
+be of national, yes, of international, importance?"
+
+"You bet your sweet life!" cried the irrepressible Fatty.  "We're
+going some.  'What's the matter with our Mack?'" he shouted.
+
+"'HE'S--ALL--RIGHT!'" came back the chant from the surrounding
+hills in hundreds of voices.
+
+"And what's the matter with Duncan Ross?" cried Mack, waving a hand
+above his head.
+
+Again the assurance of perfect rightness came back in a mighty roar
+from the hills.  But it was hushed into immediate silence, a
+silence breathless and overwhelming, for Black Duncan had taken
+once more his place with the hammer in his hand.
+
+"Oh, I do wish they would hurry!" gasped Isa, her hands pressed
+hard upon her heart.
+
+"My heart is rather weak, too," said the M.P.P.  "I fear I cannot
+last much longer.  Ah!  There he goes, thank God!"
+
+"Amen!" fervently responds little Mrs. Freeman, who, in the
+intensity of her excitement, is standing on a chair holding tight
+by her husband's coat collar.
+
+Not a sound breaks the silence as Black Duncan takes his swing.
+It is a crucial moment in his career.  Only by one man in Canada
+has he ever been beaten, and with the powers of his antagonist all
+untried and unknown, for anyone could see that Mack has not yet
+thrown his best, he may be called upon to surrender within the next
+few minutes the proud position he has held so long in the athletic
+world.  But there is not a sign of excitement in his face.  With
+great care, and with almost painful deliberation, he balances the
+hammer for a moment or two, then once--twice--and, with a tremendous
+quickening of speed,--thrice--he swings, and his throw is made.  A
+great throw it is, anyone can see, and one that beats the winner.
+In hushed and strained silence the people await the result.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-one feet nine."
+
+Then rises the roar that has been held pent up during the last few
+nerve-racking minutes.
+
+"It iss a good enough throw," said Black Duncan with a quiet smile,
+"but there iss more in me yet.  Now, lad, do your best and there
+will be no hard feeling with thiss man whateffer happens."
+
+Black Duncan's accent and idioms reveal the intense excitement that
+lies behind his quiet face.
+
+Mack takes the hammer.
+
+"I will not beat it, you may be sure," he says.  "But I will just
+take a fling at it anyway."
+
+"Now, Mack," says Cameron, "for the sake of all you love forget the
+distance and show them the Braemar swing.  Easy and slow."
+
+But Mack waves him aside and stands pondering.  He is "getting the
+idea."
+
+"Man, do you see him?" whispers his brother Danny, who stands near
+to Cameron.  "I believe he has got it."
+
+Cameron nods his head.  Mack wears an impressive air of confidence
+and strength.
+
+"It will be a great throw," says Cameron to Danny.
+
+"Easy and slow" Mack poises the great hammer in his hand, swinging
+it gently backward and forward as if it had been a boy's toy, the
+great muscles in arms and back rippling up and down in firm full
+waves under his white skin, for he is now stripped to the waist for
+this throw.
+
+Suddenly, as if at command, the muscles seem to spring to their
+places, tense, alert.  "Easy."  Yes, truly, but by no means "slow."
+"Easy," the great hammer swings about his head in whirling circles,
+swift and ever swifter.  Once--and twice--the great muscles in back
+and arms and back and legs knotted in bunches--thrice!
+
+"Ah-h-h!"  A long, wailing, horrible sound, half moan, half cry,
+breaks from the people.  Mack has missed his direction, and the
+great hammer, weighted with the potentialities of death, is
+describing a parabola high over the heads of the crowding,
+shrieking, scattering people.
+
+"Oh, my God!  My God!  Oh, my God!  My God!"  With his hands
+covering his eyes the big man is swaying from side to side like a
+mighty tree before a tempest.  Cameron and Ross both spring to him.
+On the hillsides men stand rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and
+faint.  One ghastly moment of suspense, and then a horrid sickening
+thud; one more agonising second of silence, and then from a score
+of throats rises a cry:
+
+"It's all right!  All right!  No one hurt!"
+
+From five hundred throats breaks a weird unearthly mingling of
+strange sounds; cheers and cries, shouts and sobs, prayers and
+oaths.  In the midst of it all Mack sinks to his knees, with hands
+outstretched to heaven.
+
+"Great God, I thank Thee!  I thank Thee!" he cries brokenly, the
+tears streaming down his ghastly face.  Then, falling forward upon
+his hands, he steadies himself while great sobs come heaving from
+his mighty chest.  Cameron and Ross, still upholding him, through
+the crowd a man comes pushing his way, hurling men and women right
+and left.
+
+"Back, people!  And be still."  It is the minister, Alexander
+Munro.  "Be still!  It is a great deliverance that God has wrought!
+Peace, woman!  God is near!  Let us pray."
+
+Instantly all noises are hushed, hats come off, and all up the
+sloping hills men and women fall to their knees, or remain standing
+with heads bowed, while the minister, upright beside the kneeling
+man, spreads his hands towards heaven and prays in a voice steady,
+strong, thrilling:
+
+"Almighty God, great and wonderful in Thy ways, merciful and
+gracious in Thy providence, Thou hast wrought a great deliverance
+before our eyes this day.  All power is in Thy hands.  All forces
+move at Thy command.  Thine hand it is that guided this dread
+hammer harmless to its own place, saving the people from death.
+It is ever thus, Father, for Thou art Love.  We lift to Thee our
+hearts' praise.  May we walk softly before Thee this day and alway.
+Amen!"
+
+"Amen!  Amen!"  On every hand and up the hillsides rises the
+fervent solemn attestation.
+
+"Rise, Mr. Murray!" says the minister in a loud and solemn voice,
+giving Mack his hand.  "God has been gracious to you this day.  See
+that you do not forget."
+
+"He has that!  He has that!" sobs Mack.  "And God forgive me if
+I ever forget."  And, suddenly pushing from him the many hands
+stretched out towards him, he stumbles his way through the crowd,
+led off by his two friends towards the tent.
+
+"Hold on there a minute!  Let us get this measurement first."  It
+was the matter-of-fact, cheery voice of Fatty Freeman.  "If I am
+not mistaken we have a great throw to measure."
+
+"Quite right, Mr. Freeman," said the minister.  "Let us get the
+measurement and let not the day be spoiled."
+
+"Here, you people, don't stand there gawking like a lot of dotty
+chumps!" cried the secretary, striving to whip them out of the mood
+of horror into which they had fallen.  "Get a move on!  Give the
+judges a chance!  What is it, doctor?"
+
+The judges were consulting.  At length the decision was announced.
+
+"One hundred and twenty-nine seven."
+
+"Hooray!" yelled Fatty, flinging his straw hat high.  "One hundred
+and twenty-nine seven!  It is a world throw!  Why don't you yell,
+you people?  Don't you know that you have a world-beater among you?
+Yell!  Yell!"
+
+"Three cheers for Mack Murray!" called out the Reverend Harper
+Freeman from the platform, swinging his great black beaver hat over
+his head.
+
+It was what the people wanted.  Again, and again, and yet again the
+crowd exhausted its pent-up emotions in frantic cheers.  The clouds
+of gloom were rolled back, the sun was shining bright again, and
+with fresh zest the people turned to the enjoyment of the rest of
+the programme.
+
+"Thank you, Sir!" said Fatty amid the uproar, gripping the hand of
+Mr. Munro.  "You have saved the day for us.  We were all going to
+smash, but you pulled us out."
+
+Meantime in the tent Duncan Ross was discoursing to his friends.
+
+"Man, Mack!  Yon's a mighty throw!  Do you know it iss within five
+feet of my own record and within ten of Big Rory's?  Then," he said
+solemnly, "you are in the world's first class to-day, my boy, and
+you are just beginning."
+
+"I have just quit!" said Mack.
+
+"Whist, lad!  Thiss iss not the day for saying anything about it.
+We will wait a wee and to-day we will just be thankful."  And with
+that they turned to other things.
+
+They were still in the dressing tent when the secretary thrust his
+cheery face under the flap.
+
+"I say, boys!  Are you ready?  Cameron, we want you on the pipes."
+
+"Harp!" said Mack.  "I am going home.  I am quite useless."
+
+"And me, too," said Cameron.  "I shall go with you, Mack."
+
+"What?" cried Fatty in consternation.  "Look here, boys!  Is this a
+square deal?  God knows I am nearly all in myself.  I've had enough
+to keep this thing from going to pieces.  Don't you go back on me
+now!"
+
+"That is so!" said Mack slowly.  "Cameron, you must stay.  You are
+needed.  I will spoil things more by staying than by going.  I
+would be forever seeing that hammer crushing down--"  He covered
+his face with his hands and shuddered.
+
+"All right, Mack!  I will stay," said Cameron.  "But what about
+you?"
+
+"Oh," said Black Duncan, "Mack and I will walk about and have a
+smoke for a little."
+
+"Thanks, boys, you are the stuff!" said Fatty fervently.  "Once
+more you have saved the day.  Come then, Cameron!  Get your pipes.
+Old Sutherland is waiting for you."
+
+But before he set off Mack called Cameron to him.
+
+"You will see Isa," he said, "and tell her why I could not stay.
+And you will take her home."  His face was still pallid, his voice
+unsteady.
+
+"I will take care of her, Mack, never fear.  But could you not
+remain?  It might help you."
+
+But Mack only shook his head.  His fervent Highland soul had too
+recently passed through the valley of death and its shadows were
+still upon him.
+
+Four hours later Fatty looked in upon Mack at his own home.  He
+found him sitting in the moonlight in the open door of the big new
+barn, with his new-made friend, Duncan Ross, at one door post and
+old Piper Sutherland at the other, while up and down the floor in
+the shadow within Cameron marched, droning the wild melody of the
+"Maccrimmon Lament."  Mournful and weird it sounded through the
+gloom, but upon the hearts of these Highlanders it fell like a
+soothing balm.  With a wave of his hand Mack indicated a seat,
+which Fatty took without a word.  Irrepressible though he was, he
+had all the instincts of a true gentleman.  He knew it was the time
+for silence, and silent he stood till the Lament had run through
+its "doubling" and its "trebling," ending with the simple stately
+movement of its original theme.  To Fatty it was a mere mad and
+unmelodious noise, but, reading the faces of the three men before
+him in the moonlight, he had sense enough to recognise his own
+limitations.
+
+At length the Lament was finished and Cameron came forward into the
+light.
+
+"Ah!  That iss good for the soul," said old piper Sutherland.  "Do
+you know what your pipes have been saying to me in yon Lament?
+
+
+     'Yea, though I walk through Death's dark vale,
+          Yet will I fear none ill;
+      For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
+          And staff me comfort still.'
+
+
+And we have been in the valley thiss day."
+
+Mack rose to his feet.
+
+"I could not have said it myself, but, as true as death, that is
+the word for me."
+
+"Well," said Fatty, rising briskly, "I guess you are all right,
+Mack.  I confess I was a bit anxious about you, but--"
+
+"There is no need," said Mack gravely.  "I can sleep now."
+
+"Good-night, then," replied Fatty, turning to go.  "Cameron, I owe
+you a whole lot.  I won't forget it."  He set his hat upon the back
+of his head, sticking his hands into his pockets and surveying the
+group before him.  "Say!  You Highlanders are a great bunch.  I do
+not pretend to understand you, but I want to say that between you
+you have saved the day."  And with that the cheery, frisky,
+irrepressible, but kindly little man faded into the moonlight and
+was gone.
+
+For the fourth time the day had been saved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A SABBATH DAY IN LATE AUGUST
+
+
+It was a Sabbath day in late August, and in no month of the year
+does a Sabbath day so chime with the time.  For the Sabbath day is
+a day for rest and holy thought, and the late August is the rest
+time of the year, when the woods and fields are all asleep in a
+slumberous blue haze; the sacred time, too, for in late August old
+Mother Earth is breathing her holiest aspirations heavenward,
+having made offering of her best in the full fruitage of the year.
+Hence a Sabbath day in late August chimes marvellously well with
+the time.
+
+And this particular Sabbath day was perfect of its kind, a dreamy,
+drowsy day, a day when genial suns and hazy cool airs mingle in
+excellent harmony, and the tired worker, freed from his week's
+toil, basks and stretches, yawns and revels in rest under the
+orchard trees; unless, indeed, he goes to morning church.  And to
+morning church Cameron went as a rule, but to-day, owing to a dull
+ache in his head and a general sense of languor pervading his
+limbs, he had chosen instead, as likely to be more healing to his
+aching head and his languid limbs, the genial sun, tempered with
+cool and lazy airs under the orchard trees.  And hence he lay
+watching the democrat down the lane driven off to church by
+Perkins, with Mandy beside him in the front seat, the seat of
+authority and of activity, and Mr. Haley alone in the back seat,
+the seat of honour and of retirement.  Mrs. Haley was too overborne
+by the heat and rush of the busy week to adventure the heat and
+dust of the road, and to sustain the somewhat strenuous discourse
+of the Reverend Harper Freeman, to whose flock the Haleys belonged.
+This, however, was not Mrs. Haley's invariable custom.  In the
+cooler weather it was her habit to drive on a Sunday morning to
+church, sitting in the back seat beside her husband, with Tim and
+Mandy occupying the front seat beside the hired man, but during the
+heat and hurry of the harvest time she would take advantage of the
+quietness of the house and of the two or three hours' respite from
+the burden of household duties to make up arrears of sleep
+accumulated during the preceding week, salving her conscience, for
+she had a conscience in the matter, with a promise that she might
+go in the evening when it was cooler and when she was more rested.
+This promise, however, having served its turn, was never fulfilled,
+for by the evening the wheels of household toil began once more to
+turn, and Mrs. Haley found it easier to worship vicariously,
+sending Mandy and Tim to the evening service.  And to this service
+the young people were by no means loath to go, for it was held on
+fair evenings in MacBurney's woods, two miles away by the road, one
+mile by the path through the woods.  On occasion Perkins would
+hitch up in the single buggy Dexter, the fiery young colt, too
+fiery for any other to drive, and, as a special attention to his
+employer's daughter, would drive her to the service.  But since the
+coming of Cameron, Mandy had allowed this custom to fall into
+disuse, at first somewhat to Perkins' relief, for the colt was
+restless and fretted against the tie rein; and, besides, Perkins
+was not as yet quite prepared to acknowledge any special relationship
+between himself and the young lady in question before the assembled
+congregation, preferring to regard himself and to be regarded by
+others as a free lance.  Later, however, as Mandy's preference for
+a walk through the woods became more marked, Perkins, much to his
+disgust, found himself reduced to the attitude of a suppliant,
+urging the superior attraction of a swift drive behind Dexter as
+against a weary walk to the service.  Mandy, however, with the
+directness of her simple nature, had no compunction in frankly
+maintaining her preference for a walk with Tim and Cameron through
+the woods; indeed, more than once she allowed Perkins to drive off
+with his fiery colt, alone in his glory.
+
+But this Sabbath morning, as Cameron lay under the orchard trees,
+he was firmly resolved that he would give the whole day to the
+nursing of the ache in his head and the painful languor in his
+body.  And so lying he allowed his mind to wander uncontrolled over
+the happenings of the past months, troubled by a lazy consciousness
+of a sore spot somewhere in his life.  Gradually there grew into
+clearness the realisation of the cause of this sore spot.
+
+"What is the matter with Perkins?" he asked of Tim, who had
+declined to go to church, and who had strolled into the orchard to
+be near his friend.
+
+"What is the matter with Perkins?" Cameron asked a second time, for
+Tim was apparently too much engaged with a late harvest apple to
+answer.
+
+"How?" said the boy at length.
+
+"He is so infernally grumpy with me."
+
+"Grumpy?  He's sore, I guess."
+
+"Sore?"
+
+"You bet!  Ever since I beat him in the turnips that day."
+
+"Ever since YOU beat him?" asked Cameron in amazement.  "Why should
+he be sore against me?"
+
+"He knows it was you done it," said Tim.
+
+"Nonsense, Tim!  Besides, Perkins isn't a baby.  He surely doesn't
+hold that against me."
+
+"Huh, huh," said Tim, "everybody's pokin' fun at him, and he hates
+that, and ever since the picnic, too, he hates you."
+
+"But why in the world?"
+
+"Oh, shucks!" said Tim, impatient at Cameron's density.  "I guess
+you know all right."
+
+"Know?  Not I!"
+
+"Git out?"
+
+"Honor bright, Tim," replied Cameron, sitting up.  "Now, honestly,
+tell me, Tim, why in the world Perkins should hate me."
+
+"You put his nose out of joint, I guess," said Tim with a grin.
+
+"Oh, rot, Tim!  How?"
+
+"Every how," said Tim, proceeding to elaborate.  "First when you
+came here you were no good--I mean--"  Tim checked himself hastily.
+
+"I know what you mean, Tim.  Go on.  You are quite right.  I
+couldn't do anything on the farm."
+
+"Now," continued Tim, "you can do anything jist as good as him--
+except bindin', of course.  He's a terror at bindin', but at
+pitchin' and shockin' and loadin' you're jist as good."
+
+"But, Tim, that's all nonsense.  Perkins isn't such a fool as to
+hate me because I can keep up my end."
+
+"He don't like you," said Tim stubbornly.
+
+"But why?  Why in the name of common sense?"
+
+"Well," said Tim, summing up the situation, "before you come he
+used to be the hull thing.  Now he's got to play second fiddle."
+
+But Cameron remained unenlightened.
+
+"Oh, pshaw!" continued Tim, making further concessions to his
+friend's stupidity.  "At the dances, at the raisin's, runnin',
+jumpin'--everythin'--Perkins used to be the King Bee.  Now--"
+Tim's silence furnished an impressive close to the contrast.  "Why!
+They all think you are just fine!" said Tim, with a sudden burst of
+confidence.
+
+"They?"
+
+"All the boys.  Yes, and the girls, too," said Tim, allowing his
+solemn face the unusual luxury of a smile.
+
+"The girls?"
+
+"Aw, yeh know well enough--the Murray girls, and the MacKenzies,
+and the hull lot of them.  And then--and then--there's Mandy, too."
+Here Tim shot a keen glance at his friend, who now sat leaning
+against the trunk of an apple tree with his eyes closed.
+
+"Now, Tim, you are a shrewd little chap"--here Cameron sat upright--
+"but how do you know about the girls, and what is this you say
+about Mandy?  Mandy is good to me--very kind and all that, but--"
+
+"She used to like Perkins pretty well," said Tim, with a kind of
+hesitating shyness.
+
+"And Perkins?"
+
+"Oh, he thought he jist owned her.  Guess he ain't so sure now,"
+added Tim.  "I guess you've changed Mandy all right."
+
+It was the one thing Cameron hated to hear, but he made light of
+it.
+
+"Oh, nonsense!" he exclaimed.  "But if I did I would be mighty glad
+of it.  Mandy is too good for a man like Perkins.  Why, he isn't
+safe."
+
+"He's a terror," replied Tim seriously.  "They are all scairt of
+him.  He's a terror to fight.  Why, at MacKenzie's raisin' last
+year he jist went round foamin' like an old boar and nobody dast
+say a word to him.  Even Mack Murray was scairt to touch him.  When
+he gets like that he ain't afraid of nothin' and he's awful quick
+and strong."
+
+Tim proceeded to enlarge upon this theme, which apparently
+fascinated him, with tales of Perkins' prowess in rough-and-tumble
+fighting.  But Cameron had lost interest and was lying down again
+with his eyes closed.
+
+"Well," he said, when Tim had finished his recital, "if he is that
+kind of a man Mandy should have nothing to do with him."
+
+But Tim was troubled.
+
+"Dad likes him," he said gloomily.  "He is a good hand.  And ma
+likes him, too.  He taffies her up."
+
+"And Mandy?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"I don't know," said Tim, still more gloomy.  "I guess he kind of
+makes her.  I'd--I'd jist like to take a lump out of him."  Tim's
+eyes blazed into a sudden fire.  "He runs things on this farm
+altogether too much."
+
+"Buck up then, Tim, and beat him," said Cameron, dismissing the
+subject.  "And now I must have some sleep.  I have got an awful
+head on."
+
+Tim was quick enough to understand the hint, but still he hovered
+about.
+
+"Say, I'm awful sorry," he said.  "Can't I git somethin'?  You
+didn't eat no breakfast."
+
+"Oh, all I want is sleep, Tim.  I will be all right tomorrow,"
+replied Cameron, touched by the tone of sympathy in Tim's voice.
+"You are a fine little chap.  Trot along and let me sleep."
+
+But no sleep came to Cameron, partly because of the hammer knocking
+in his head, but chiefly because of the thoughts set going by Tim.
+Cameron was not abnormally egotistical, but he was delightedly
+aware of the new place he held in the community ever since the now
+famous Dominion Day picnic, and, now that the harvest rush had
+somewhat slackened, social engagements had begun to crowd upon him.
+Dances and frolics, coon hunts and raisings were becoming the vogue
+throughout the community, and no social function was complete
+without the presence of Cameron.  But this sudden popularity had
+its embarrassments, and among them, and threatening to become
+annoying, was the hostility of Perkins, veiled as yet, but none the
+less real.  Moreover, behind Perkins stood a band of young fellows
+of whom he was the recognised leader and over whom his ability in
+the various arts and crafts of the farm, his physical prowess in
+sports, his gay, cheery manner, and, it must be said, the
+reputation he bore for a certain fierce brute courage in rough-and-
+tumble fighting, gave him a sort of ascendency.
+
+But Perkins' attitude towards him did not after all cause Cameron
+much concern.  There was another and more annoying cause of
+embarrassment, and that was Mandy.  Tim's words kept reiterating
+themselves in his brain, "You've changed Mandy all right."  Over
+this declaration of Tim's, Cameron proceeded to argue with himself.
+He sat bolt upright that he might face himself on the matter.
+
+"Now, then," he said to himself, "let's have this thing out."
+
+"Most willingly.  This girl was on the way to engagement to this
+young man Perkins.  You come on the scene.  Everything is changed."
+
+"Well!  What of it?  It's a mighty good thing for her."
+
+"But you are the cause of it."
+
+"The occasion, rather."
+
+"No, the cause.  You have attracted her to you."
+
+"I can't help that.  Besides, it is a mere passing whim.  She'll
+get over all that?"  And Cameron laughed scornfully in his own
+face.
+
+"Do you know that?  And how do you know it?  Tim thinks differently."
+
+"Oh, confound it all!  I see that I shall have to get out of here."
+
+"A wise decision truly, and the sooner the better.  Do you propose
+to go at once?"
+
+"At once?  Well, I should like to spend the winter here.  I have
+made a number of friends and life is beginning to be pleasant."
+
+"Exactly!  It suits your convenience, but how about Mandy?"
+
+"Oh, rubbish!  Must I be governed by the fancies of that silly
+girl?  Besides, the whole thing is absurdly ridiculous."
+
+"But facts are stubborn, and anyone can see that the girl is--"
+
+"Hang it all!  I'll go at the end of the month."
+
+"Very well.  And in the leave-taking--?"
+
+"What?"
+
+"It is pleasant to be appreciated and to carry away with one
+memories, I will not say tender, but appreciative."
+
+"I can't act like a boor.  I must be decent to the girl.  Besides,
+she isn't altogether a fool."
+
+"No, but very crude, very primitive, very passionate, and therefore
+very defenseless."
+
+"All right, I shall simply shake hands and go."
+
+So, with the consequent sense of relief that high resolve always
+brings, Cameron lay down again and fell into slumber and dreams of
+home.
+
+From these dreams of home Mandy recalled him with a summons to
+dinner.  As his eye, still filled with the vision of his dreams,
+fell upon her in all the gorgeous splendour of her Sunday dress, he
+was conscious of a strong sense of repulsion.  How coarse, how
+crude, how vulgar she appeared, how horribly out of keeping with
+those scenes through which he had just been wandering in his
+dreams.
+
+"I want no dinner, Mandy," he said shortly.  "I have a bad head and
+I am not hungry."
+
+"No dinner?"  That a man should not want dinner was to Mandy quite
+inexplicable, unless, indeed, he were ill.
+
+"Are you sick?" she cried in quick alarm.
+
+"No, I have a headache.  It will pass away," said Cameron, turning
+over on his side.  Still Mandy lingered.
+
+"Let me bring you a nice piece of pie and a cup of tea."
+
+Cameron shuddered.
+
+"No," he said, "bring me nothing.  I merely wish to sleep."
+
+But Mandy refused to be driven away.
+
+"Say, I'm awful sorry.  I know you're sick."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Cameron, impatiently, waiting for her to be gone.
+Still Mandy hesitated.
+
+"I'm awful sorry," she said again, and her voice, deep, tender,
+full-toned, revealed her emotion.
+
+Cameron turned impatiently towards her.
+
+"Look here, Mandy!  There's nothing wrong with me.  I only want a
+little sleep.  I shall be all right to-morrow."
+
+But Mandy's fears were not to be allayed.
+
+"Say," she cried, "you look awful bad."
+
+"Oh, get out, Mandy!  Go and get your dinner.  Don't mind me."
+Cameron's tone was decidedly cross.
+
+Without further remonstrance Mandy turned silently away, but before
+she turned Cameron caught the gleam of tears in the great blue
+eyes.  A swift compunction seized him.
+
+"I say, Mandy, I don't want to be rude, but--"
+
+"Rude?" cried the girl.  "You?  You couldn't be.  You are always
+good--to me--and--I--don't--know--"  Here her voice broke.
+
+"Oh, come, Mandy, get away to dinner.  You are a good girl.  Now
+leave me alone."
+
+The kindness in his voice quite broke down Mandy's all too slight
+control.  She turned away, audibly sniffling, with her apron to her
+eyes, leaving Cameron in a state of wrathful perplexity.
+
+"Oh, confound it all!" he groaned to himself.  "This is a rotten
+go.  By Jove!  This means the West for me.  The West!  After all,
+that's the place.  Here there is no chance anyway.  Why did I not
+go sooner?"
+
+He rose from the grass, shivering with a sudden chill, went to his
+bed in the hay mow, and, covering himself with Tim's blankets and
+his own, fell again into sleep.  Here, late in the afternoon, Tim
+found him and called him to supper.
+
+With Mandy's watchful eye upon him he went through the form of
+eating, but Mandy was not to be deceived.
+
+"You ain't eatin' nothin'," she said reproachfully as he rose from
+the table.
+
+"Enough for a man who is doing nothing," replied Cameron.  "What I
+want is exercise.  I think I shall take a walk."
+
+"Going to church?" she enquired, an eager light springing into her
+eye.
+
+"To church?  I hadn't thought of it," replied Cameron, but,
+catching the gleam of a smile on Perkins' face and noting the
+utterly woebegone expression on Mandy's, he added, "Well, I might
+as well walk to church as any place else.  You are going, Tim?"
+
+"Huh huh!" replied Tim.
+
+"I am going to hitch up Deck, Mandy," said Perkins.
+
+"Oh, I'm goin' to walk!" said Mandy, emphatically.
+
+"All right!" said Perkins.  "Guess I'll walk too with the crowd."
+
+"Don't mind me," said Mandy.
+
+"I don't," laughed Perkins, "you bet!  Nor anybody else."
+
+"And that's no lie!" sniffed Mandy, with a toss of her head.
+
+"Better drive to church, Mandy," suggested her mother.  "You know
+you're jist tired out and it will be late when you get started."
+
+"Tired?  Late?" cried Mandy, with alacrity.  "I'll be through them
+dishes in a jiffy and be ready in no time.  I like the walk through
+the woods."
+
+"Depends on the company," laughed Perkins again.  "So do I.  Guess
+we'll all go together."
+
+True to her promise, Mandy was ready within half an hour.  Cameron
+shuddered as he beheld the bewildering variety of colour in her
+attire and the still more bewildering arrangement of hat and hair.
+
+"You're good and gay, Mandy," said Perkins.  "What's the killing?"
+
+Mandy made no reply save by a disdainful flirt of her skirts as
+she set off down the lane, followed by Perkins, Cameron and Tim
+bringing up the rear.
+
+The lane was a grassy sward, cut with two wagon-wheel tracks, and
+with a picturesque snake fence on either side.  Beyond the fences
+lay the fields, some of them with stubble raked clean, the next
+year's clover showing green above the yellow, some with the grain
+standing still in the shock, and some with the crop, the late oats
+for instance, still uncut, but ready for the reaper.  The turnip
+field was splendidly and luxuriantly green with never a sign of the
+brown earth.  The hay meadow, too, was green and purple with the
+second growth of clover.
+
+So down the lane and between the shorn fields, yellow and green,
+between the clover fields and the turnips, they walked in silence,
+for the spell of the Sabbath evening lay upon the sunny fields,
+barred with the shadows from the trees that grew along the fence
+lines everywhere.  At the "slashing" the wagon ruts faded out and
+the road narrowed to a single cow path, winding its way between
+stumps and round log piles, half hidden by a luxuriant growth of
+foxglove and fireweed and asters, and everywhere the glorious
+goldenrod.  Then through the bars the path led into the woods, a
+noble remnant of the beech and elm and maple forest from which the
+farm had been cut some sixty years before.  Cool and shadowy they
+stood, and shot through with bright shafts of gold from the
+westering sun, full of mysterious silence except for the twittering
+of the sleepy birds or for the remonstrant call of the sentinel
+crow from his watch tower on the dead top of a great elm.  Deeper
+into the shade the path ran until in the gloom it faded almost out
+of sight.
+
+Soothed by the cool shade, Cameron loitered along the path, pausing
+to learn of Tim the names of plants and trees as he went.
+
+"Ain't yeh never comin'?" called Mandy from the gloom far in front.
+
+"What's all the rush?" replied Tim, impatiently, who loved nothing
+better than a quiet walk with Cameron through the woods.
+
+"Rush?  We'll be late, and I hate walkin' up before the hull crowd.
+Come on!" cried his sister in impatient tone.
+
+"All right, Mandy, we're nearly through the woods.  I begin to see
+the clearing yonder," said Cameron, pointing to where the light was
+beginning to show through the tree tops before them.
+
+But they were late enough, and Mandy was glad of the cover of the
+opening hymn to allow her to find her way to a group of her girl
+friends, the males of the party taking shelter with a neighbouring
+group of their own sex near by.
+
+Upon the sloping sides of the grassy hills and under the beech
+and maple trees, the vanguard of the retreating woods, sat the
+congregation, facing the preacher, who stood on the grassy level
+below.  Behind them was the solid wall of thick woods, over them
+time spreading boughs, and far above the trees the blue summer sky,
+all the bluer for the little white clouds that sailed serene like
+ships upon a sea.  At their feet lay the open country, checkered by
+the snake fences into fields of yellow, green, and brown, and
+rolling away to meet the woods at the horizon.
+
+The Sabbath rest filled the sweet air, breathed from the shady
+woods, rested upon the checkered fields, and lifted with the hymn
+to the blue heaven above.  A stately cathedral it was, this place
+of worship, filled with the incense of flowers and fields, arched
+by the high dome of heaven, and lighted by the glory of the setting
+sun.
+
+Relieved by the walk for a time from the ache in his head, Cameron
+surrendered himself to the mysterious influences of the place and
+the hour.  He let his eyes wander over the fields below him to the
+far horizon, and beyond--beyond the woods, beyond the intervening
+leagues of land and sea--and was again gazing upon the sunlit
+loveliness of the Cuagh Oir.  The Glen was abrim with golden light
+this summer evening, the purple was on the hills and the little
+loch gleamed sapphire at the bottom.
+
+The preacher was reading his text.
+
+"Unto one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to
+every man according to his several ability, and straightway took
+his journey," and so on to the end of that marvellously wise tale,
+wise with the wisdom of God, confirmed by the wisdom of human
+experience.
+
+The Reverend Harper Freeman's voice could hardly, even by courtesy,
+be called musical; in fact, it was harsh and strident; but this
+evening the hills, and the trees, and the wide open spaces,
+Nature's mighty modulator, subdued the harshness, so that the voice
+rolled up to the people clear, full, and sonorous.  Nor was the
+preacher possessed of great learning nor endued with the gift of
+eloquence.  He had, however, a shrewd knowledge of his people and
+of their ways and of their needs, and he had a kindly heart, and,
+more than all, he had the preacher's gift, the divine capacity for
+taking fire.
+
+For a time his words fell unheeded upon Cameron's outer ear.
+
+"To every man his own endowments, some great, some small, but, mark
+you, no man left quite poverty-stricken.  God gives every man his
+chance.  No man can look God in the face, not one of you here can
+say that you have had no chance."
+
+Cameron's vagrant mind, suddenly recalled, responded with a quick
+assent.  Opportunity?  Endowment?  Yes, surely.  His mind flashed
+back over the years of his education at the Academy and the
+University, long lazy years.  How little he had made of them!
+Others had turned them into the gold of success.  He wondered how
+old Dunn was getting on, and Linklater, and little Martin.  How far
+away seemed those days, and yet only some four or five months
+separated him from them.
+
+"One was a failure, a dead, flat failure," continued the preacher.
+"Not so much a wicked man, no murderer, no drunkard, no gambler,
+but a miserable failure.  Poor fellow!  At the end of life a
+wretched bankrupt, losing even his original endowment.  How would
+you like to come home after ten, twenty, thirty years of experiment
+with life and confess to your father that you were dead broke and
+no good?"
+
+Again Cameron's mind came back from its wandering with a start.  Go
+back to his father a failure!  He drew his lip down hard over his
+teeth.  Not while he lived!  And yet, what was there in prospect
+for him?  His whole soul revolted against the dreary monotony and
+the narrowness of his present life, and yet, what other path lay
+open?  Cameron went straying in fancy over the past, or in
+excursions into the future, while, parallel with his rambling, the
+sermon continued to make its way through its various heads and
+particulars.
+
+"Why?"  The voice of the preacher rose clear, dominant, arresting.
+"Why did he fail so abjectly, so meanly, so despicably?  For there
+is no excuse for a failure.  Listen!  No man NEED fail.  A man who
+is a failure is a mean, selfish, lazy chump."  Mr. Freeman was
+colloquial, if anything.  "Some men pity him.  I don't.  I have no
+use for him, and he is the one thing in all the world that God
+himself has no use for."
+
+Again Cameron's mind was jerked back as a runaway horse by a rein.
+So far his life had been a failure.  Was there then no excuse for
+failure?  What of his upbringing, his education, his environment?
+He had been indulging the habit during these last weeks of shifting
+responsibility from himself for what he had become.
+
+"What was the cause of this young man's failure?" reiterated the
+preacher.  The preacher had a wholesome belief in the value of
+reiteration.  He had a habit of rubbing in his points.  "He blamed
+the boss.  Listen to his impudence!  'I knew thee to be a hard
+man.'  He blamed his own temperament and disposition.  'I was
+afraid.'  But the boss brings him up sharp and short.  'Quit
+lying!' he said.  'I'll tell you what's wrong with you.  You've got
+a mean heart, you ain't honest, and you're too lazy to live.  Here,
+take that money from him and give it to the man that can do most
+with it, and take this useless loafer out of my sight.'  And served
+him right, too, say I, impudent, lazy liar."
+
+Cameron found his mind rising in wrathful defense of the unhappy
+wretched failure in the story.  But the preacher was utterly
+relentless and proceeded to enlarge upon the character of the
+unhappy wretch.
+
+"Impudent!  The way to tell an impudent man is to let him talk.
+Now listen to this man cheek the boss!  'I knew you,' he said.
+'You skin everybody in sight.'  I have always noticed," remarked
+the preacher, with a twinkle in his eye, "that the hired man who
+can't keep up his end is the kind that cheeks the boss.  And so it
+is with life.  Why, some men would cheek Almighty God.  They turn
+right round and face the other way when God is explaining things to
+them, when He is persuading them, when He is trying to help them.
+Then they glance back over their shoulders and say, 'Aw, gwan!  I
+know better than you.'  Think of the impudence of them!  That's
+what many a man does with God.  With GOD, mind you!  GOD!  Your
+Father in heaven, your Brother, your Saviour, God as you know him
+in the Man of Galilee, the Man you always see with the sick and the
+outcast and the broken-hearted.  It is this God that owns you and
+all you've got--be honest and say so.  You must begin by getting
+right with God."
+
+"God!"  Once more Cameron went wandering back into the far away
+days of childhood.  God was very near then, and very friendly.  How
+well he remembered when his mother had tucked him in at night and
+had kissed him and had put out the light.  He never felt alone and
+afraid, for she left him, so she said, with God.  It was God who
+took his mother's place, near to his bedside.  In those days God
+seemed very near and very kind.  He remembered his mother's look
+one day when he declared to her that he could hear God breathing
+just beside him in the dark.  How remote God seemed to-day and how
+shadowy, and, yes, he had to confess it, unfriendly.  He heard no
+more of the sermon.  With a curious ache in his heart he allowed
+his mind to dwell amid those happy, happy memories when his mother
+and God were the nearest and dearest to him of all he knew.  It may
+have been the ache in his head or the oppressive languor that
+seemed to possess his body, but throughout the prayer that followed
+the sermon he was conscious chiefly of a great longing for his
+mother's touch upon his head, and with that a longing for his
+boyhood's sense of the friendly God in his heart.
+
+And so as the preacher led them up to God in prayer, Cameron bowed
+his head with the others, thankful that he could still believe
+that, though clouds and darkness might be about Him, God was not
+beyond the reach of the soul's cry nor quite unmoved by human need.
+And for the first time for years he sent forth as a little child
+his cry of need, "God help me!  God help me!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE CHIVAREE
+
+
+There was still light enough to see.  The last hymn was announced.
+Cameron was conscious of a deep, poignant emotion.  He glanced
+swiftly about him.  The eyes of all were upon the preacher's face
+while he read in slow sonorous tones the words of the old Methodist
+hymn:
+
+
+     "Come, Thou Fount of every blessing!
+        Tune my heart to sing Thy grace;"
+
+
+all except the group of young men of whom Perkins was the centre,
+who, by means of the saccharine medium known as conversation
+lozenges, were seeking to divert the attention of the band of young
+girls sitting before them.  Among these sat Mandy.  As his eye
+rested upon the billowy outlines of her figure, struggling with the
+limitations of her white blouse, tricked out with pink ribbons, he
+was conscious of a wave of mingled pity and disgust.  Dull, stupid,
+and vulgar she looked.  It was at her that Perkins was flipping his
+conversation lozenges.  One fell upon her hymn book.  With a start
+she glanced about.  Not an eye except Cameron's was turned her way.
+With a smile and a blush that burned deep under the dull tan of her
+neck and cheek she took the lozenge, read its inscription, burning
+a deeper red.  The words which she had read she took as Cameron's.
+She turned her eyes full upon his face.  The light of tremulous joy
+in their lovely depths startled and thrilled him.  A snicker from
+the group of young men behind roused in him a deep indignation.
+They were taking their coarse fun out of this simple-minded girl.
+Cameron's furious glance at them appeared only to increase their
+amusement.  It did not lessen Cameron's embarrassment and rage that
+now and then during the reading of the hymn Mandy's eyes were
+turned upon him as if with new understanding.  Enraged with
+himself, and more with the group of hoodlums behind him, Cameron
+stood for the closing hymn with his arms folded across his breast.
+At the second verse a hand touched his arm.  It was Mandy offering
+him her book.  Once more a snicker from the group of delighted
+observers behind him stirred his indignation on behalf of this
+awkward and untutored girl.  He forced himself to listen to the
+words of the third verse, which rose clear and sonorous in the
+preacher's voice:
+
+
+     "Here I raise my Ebenezer,
+        Hither by Thy help I'm come;
+      And I hope, by Thy good pleasure,
+        Safely to arrive at home."
+
+
+The serene assurance of the old Methodist hymn rose triumphant in
+the singing, an assurance born of an experience of past conflict
+ending in triumph.  That note of high and serene confidence
+conjured up with a flash of memory his mother's face.  That was her
+characteristic, a serene, undismayed courage.  In the darkest hours
+that steady flame of courage never died down.
+
+But once more he was recalled to the service of the hour by a
+voice, rich, full, low, yet of wonderful power, singing the old
+words.  It took him a moment or two to discover that it was Mandy
+singing beside him.  Her face was turned from him and upwards
+towards the trees above her, through the network of whose leaves
+the stars were beginning to shine.  Amazed, enthralled, he listened
+to the flowing melody of her voice.  It was like the song of a
+brook running deep in the forest shade, full-toned yet soft, quiet
+yet thrilling.  She seemed to have forgotten her surroundings.  Her
+soul was holding converse with the Eternal.  He lost sight of the
+coarse and fleshly habiliments in the glimpse he caught of the soul
+that lived within, pure, it seemed to him, tender, and good.  His
+heart went out to the girl in a new pity.  Before the hymn was done
+she turned her face towards him, and, whether it was the magic of
+her voice, or the glorious splendour of her eyes, or the mystic
+touch of the fast darkening night, her face seemed to have lost
+much of its coarseness and all of its stupidity.
+
+As the congregation dispersed, Cameron, in silence, and with the
+spell of her voice still upon him, walked quietly beside Mandy
+towards the gap in the fence leading to the high road.  Behind him
+came Perkins with his group of friends, chaffing with each other
+and with the girls walking in front of them.  As Cameron was
+stepping over the rails where the fence had been let down, one of
+the young men following stumbled heavily against him, nearly
+throwing him down, and before he could recover himself Perkins had
+taken his place by Mandy's side and seized her arm.  There was a
+general laugh at what was considered a perfectly fair and not
+unusual piece of jockeying in the squiring of young damsels.  The
+proper procedure in such a case was that the discomfited cavalier
+should bide his time and serve a like turn upon his rival, the
+young lady meanwhile maintaining an attitude purely passive.  But
+Mandy was not so minded.  Releasing herself from Perkins' grasp,
+she turned upon the group of young men following, exclaiming
+angrily, "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sam Sailor!"  Then,
+moving to Cameron's side, she said in a clear, distinct voice:
+
+"Mr. Cameron, would you please take my book for me?"
+
+"Come on, boys!" said Perkins, with his never failing laugh.  "I
+guess we're not in this."
+
+"Take your medicine, Perkins," laughed one of his friends.
+
+"Yes, I'll take it all right," replied Perkins.  But the laugh
+could not conceal the shake of passion in his voice.  "It will
+work, too, you bet!"
+
+So saying, he strode off into the gathering gloom followed by his
+friends.
+
+"Come along, Mr. Cameron," said Mandy with a silly giggle.  "I
+guess we don't need them fellows.  They can't fool us, can they?"
+
+Her manner, her speech, her laugh rudely dissipated all Cameron's
+new feeling towards her.  The whole episode filled him only with
+disgust and annoyance.
+
+"Come, then," he said, almost roughly.  "We shall need to hurry,
+for there is a storm coming up."
+
+Mandy glanced at the gathering clouds.
+
+"My goodness!" she cried; "it's comin' up fast.  My!  I hate to git
+my clothes wet."  And off she set at a rapid pace, keeping abreast
+of her companion and making gay but elephantine attempts at
+sprightly conversation.  Before Cameron's unsympathetic silence,
+however, all her sprightly attempts came to abject failure.
+
+"What's the matter with you?" at length she asked.  "Don't you want
+to see me home?"
+
+"What?" said Cameron, abruptly, for his thoughts were far away.
+"Oh, nonsense!  Of course!  Why not?  But we shall certainly be
+caught in the storm.  Let us hurry.  Here, let me take your arm."
+
+His manner was brusque, almost rude.
+
+"Oh, I guess I can get along," replied Mandy, catching off her hat
+and gathering up her skirt over her shoulders, "but we'll have to
+hustle, for I'd hate to have you get, wet."  Her imperturbable good
+humour and her solicitude for him rebuked Cameron for his abruptness.
+
+"I hope you will not get wet," he said.
+
+"Oh, don't you worry about me.  I ain't salt nor sugar, but I
+forgot all about your bein' sick."  And with laboured breath poor
+Mandy hurried through the growing darkness with Cameron keeping
+close by her side.  "We won't be long now," she panted, as they
+turned from the side line towards their own gate.
+
+As if in reply to her words there sounded from behind the fence and
+close to their side a long loud howl.  Cameron gave a start.
+
+"Great Caesar!  What dog is that?" he exclaimed.
+
+"Oh," said Mandy coolly, "guess it's MacKenzie's Carlo."
+
+Immediately there rose from the fence on the other side an
+answering howl, followed by a full chorus of howls and yelps
+mingled with a bawling of calves and the ringing of cow bells, as
+if a dozen curs or more were in full cry after a herd of cattle.
+Cameron stood still in bewildered amazement.
+
+"What the deuce are they at?" he cried, peering through the
+darkness.
+
+"Huh!" grunted Mandy.  "Them's curs all right, but they ain't much
+dog.  You wait till I see them fellows.  They'll pay for this, you
+bet!"
+
+"Do you mean to say these are not dogs?" cried Cameron, speaking in
+her ear, so great was the din.
+
+"Dogs?" answered Mandy with indignant scorn.  "Naw!  Just or'nary
+curs!  Come along," she cried, catching his arm, "let's hurry."
+
+"Here!" he cried, suddenly wrenching himself free, "I am going to
+see into this."
+
+"No, no!" cried Mandy, gripping his arm once more with her strong
+hands.  "They will hurt you.  Come on!  We're just home.  You can
+see them again.  No, I won't let you go."
+
+In vain he struggled.  Her strong hands held him fast.  Suddenly
+there was a succession of short, sharp barks.  Immediately dead
+silence fell.  Not a sound could be heard, not a shape seen.
+
+"Come out into the open, you cowardly curs!" shouted Cameron.
+"Come on!  One, two, three at a time, if you dare!"
+
+But silence answered him.
+
+"Come," said Mandy in a low voice, "let's hurry.  It's goin' to
+rain.  Come on!  Come along!"
+
+Cameron stood irresolute.  Then arose out of the black darkness a
+long quavering cat call.  With a sudden dash Cameron sprang towards
+the fence.  Instantly there was a sound of running feet through the
+plowed field on the other side, then silence.
+
+"Come back, you cowards!" raged Cameron.  "Isn't there a man among
+you?"
+
+For answer a clod came hurtling through the dark and struck with a
+thud upon the fence.  Immediately, as if at a signal, there fell
+about Cameron a perfect hail of clods and even stones.
+
+"Oh!  Oh!" shrieked Mandy, rushing towards him and throwing herself
+between him and the falling missiles.  "Come away!  Come away!
+They'll just kill you."
+
+For answer Cameron put his arms about her and drew her behind him,
+shielding her as best he could with his body.
+
+"Do you want to kill a woman?" he called aloud.
+
+At once the hail of clods ceased and, raging as he was, Mandy
+dragged him homeward.  At the door of the house he made to turn
+back.
+
+"Not much, you don't," said Mandy, stoutly, "or I go with you."
+
+"Oh, all right," said Cameron, "let them go.  They are only a lot
+of curs, anyway."
+
+For a few minutes they stood and talked in the kitchen, Cameron
+making light of the incident and making strenuous efforts to
+dissemble the rage that filled his soul.  After a few minutes
+conversation Cameron announced his intention of going to bed, while
+Mandy passed upstairs.  He left the house and stole down the lane
+toward the road.  The throbbing pain in his head was forgotten in
+the blind rage that possessed him.  He had only one longing, to
+stand within striking distance of the cowardly curs, only one fear,
+that they should escape him.  Swiftly, silently, he stole down the
+lane, every nerve, every muscle tense as a steel spring.  His
+throat was hot, his eyes so dazzled that he could scarcely see; his
+breath came in quick gasps; his hands were trembling as with a
+nervous chill.  The storm had partially blown away.  It had become
+so light that he could dimly discern a number of figures at the
+entrance to the lane.  Having his quarry in sight, Cameron crouched
+in the fence corner, holding hard by the rail till he should become
+master of himself.  He could hear their explosions of suppressed
+laughter.  It was some minutes before he had himself in hand, then
+with a swift silent run he stood among them.  So busy were they in
+recounting the various incidents in the recent "chivaree," that
+before they were aware Cameron was upon them.  At his approach the
+circle broke and scattered, some flying to the fence.  But Perkins
+with some others stood their ground.
+
+"Hello, Cameron!" drawled Perkins.  "Did you see our cows?  I
+thought I heard some of them down the line."
+
+For answer Cameron launched himself at him like a bolt from a bow.
+There was a single sharp crack and Perkins was literally lifted
+clear off his feet and hurled back upon the road, where he lay
+still.  Fiercely Cameron faced round to the next man, but he gave
+back quickly.  A third sprang to throw himself upon Cameron, but
+once more Cameron's hand shot forward and his assailant was hurled
+back heavily into the arms of his friends.  Before Cameron could
+strike again a young giant, known as Sam Sailor, flung his arms
+about him, crying--
+
+"Tut-tut, young fellow, this won't do, you know.  Can't you take a
+bit of fun?"
+
+For answer Cameron clinched him savagely, gripping him by the
+throat and planting two heavy blows upon his ribs.
+
+"Here--boys," gasped the young fellow, "he's--chokin'--the--life--
+out--of me."
+
+From all sides they threw themselves upon him and, striking,
+kicking, fighting furiously, Cameron went down under the struggling
+mass, his hand still gripping the throat it had seized.
+
+"Say!  He's a regular bull-dog," cried one.  "Git hold of his legs
+and yank him off," which, with shouts and laughter, they proceeded
+to do and piled themselves upon him, chanting the refrain--"More
+beef!  More beef!"
+
+A few minutes more of frantic struggling and a wild agonised scream
+rose from beneath the mass of men.
+
+"Git off, boys!  Git off!" roared the young giant.  "I'm afraid
+he's hurt."
+
+Flinging them off on either side, he stood up and waited for their
+victim to rise.  But Cameron lay on his face, moaning and writhing,
+on the ground.
+
+"Say, boys," said Sam, kneeling down beside him, "I'm afraid he's
+hurted bad."
+
+In his writhing Cameron lifted one leg.  It toppled over to one
+side.
+
+"Jumpin' Jeremiah!" said Sam in an awed voice.  "His leg's broke!
+What in Sam Hill can we do?"
+
+As he spoke there was a sound of running feet, coming down the
+lane.  The moon, shining through the breaking clouds, revealed a
+figure with floating garments rapidly approaching.
+
+"My cats!" cried Sam in a terrified voice.  "It's Mandy."
+
+Like leaves before a sudden gust of wind the group scattered and
+only Sam was left.
+
+"What--what are you doin'?" panted Mandy.  "Where is he?  Oh, is
+that him?"  She flung herself down in the dust beside Cameron and
+turned him over.  His face was white, his eyes glazed.  He looked
+like death.  "Oh!  Oh!" she moaned.  "Have they killed you?  Have
+they killed you?"  She gathered his head upon her knees, moaning
+like a wounded animal.
+
+"Good Lord, Mandy, don't go on like that!" cried Sam in a horrified
+voice.  "It's only his leg broke."
+
+Mandy laid his head gently down, then sprang to her feet.
+
+"Only his leg broke?  Who done it?  Who done it, tell me?  Who done
+it?" she panted, her voice rising with her gasping breath.  "What
+coward done it?  Was it you, Sam Sailor?"
+
+"Guess we're all in it," said Sam stupidly.  "It was jist a bit of
+fun, Mandy."
+
+For answer she swung her heavy hand hard upon Sam's face.
+
+"Say, Mandy!  Hold hard!" cried Sam, surprise and the weight of the
+blow almost knocking him off his feet.
+
+"You cowardly brute!" she gasped.  "Get out of my sight.  Oh, what
+shall we do?"  She dropped on her knees and took Cameron's head
+once more in her arms.  "What shall we do?"
+
+"Guess we'll have to git him in somewheres," said Sam.  "How can we
+carry him though?  If we had some kind of a stretcher?"
+
+"Wait!  I know," cried Mandy, flying off up the lane.
+
+Before many minutes had passed she had returned, breathing hard.
+
+"It's--the---milkhouse--door," she said.  "I--guess that'll--do."
+
+"That'll do all right, Mandy.  Now I wish some of them fellers
+would come."
+
+Sam pulled off his coat and made of it a pillow, then stood up
+looking for help.  His eye fell upon the prostrate and senseless
+form of Perkins.
+
+"Say, what'll we do with him?" he said, pointing to the silent
+figure.
+
+"Who is it?" enquired Mandy.  "What's the matter?"
+
+"It's Perkins," replied Sam.  "He hit him a terrible crack."
+
+"Perkins!" said Mandy with scorn.  "Let him lie, the dog.  Come on,
+take his head."
+
+"You can't do it, Mandy, no use trying.  You can't do it."
+
+"Come on, I tell you," she said fiercely.  "Quit your jawin'.  He
+may be dyin' for all I know.  I'd carry him alone if it wasn't for
+his broken leg."  Slowly, painfully they carried him to the house
+and to the front door.
+
+"Wait a minute!" said Mandy.  "I'll have to git things fixed a bit.
+We mustn't wake mother.  It would scare her to death."
+
+She passed quickly into the house and soon Sam saw a light pass
+from room to room.  In a few moments Mandy reappeared at the front
+door.
+
+"Quick!" whispered Sam.  "He's comin' to."
+
+"Oh, thank goodness!" cried Mandy.  "Let's git him in before he
+wakes."
+
+Once more they lifted their burden and with infinite difficulty and
+much painful manoeuvering they got the injured man through the
+doors and upon the spare room bed.
+
+"And now, Sam Sailor," cried Mandy, coming close to him, "you jist
+hitch up Deck and hustle for the doctor if ever you did in your
+life.  Don't wait for nothin', but go!  Go!"  She fairly pushed him
+out of the door, running with him towards the stable.  "Oh, Sam,
+hurry!" she pleaded, "for if this man should die I will never be
+the like again."  Her face was white, her eyes glowing like great
+stars; her voice was soft and tremulous with tears.
+
+Sam stood for a moment gazing as if upon a vision.
+
+"What are you lookin' at?" she cried, stamping her foot and pushing
+him away.
+
+"Jumpin' Jeremiah!" muttered Sam, as he ran towards the stable.
+"Is that Mandy Haley?  Guess we don't know much about her."
+
+His nimble fingers soon had Dexter hitched to the buggy and
+speeding down the lane at a pace sufficiently rapid to suit the
+high spirit of even that fiery young colt.
+
+At the high road he came upon his friends, some of whom were
+working with Perkins, others conversing in awed and hurried
+undertones.
+
+"Hello, Sam!" they called.  "Hold up!"
+
+"I'm in a hurry, boys, don't stop me.  I'm scared to death.  And
+you better git home.  She'll be down on you again."
+
+"How is he?" cried a voice.
+
+"Don't know.  I'm goin' for the doctor, and the sooner we git that
+doctor the better for everybody around."  And Sam disappeared in a
+whirl of dust.
+
+"Say!  Who would a thought it?" he mused.  "That Mandy Haley?
+She's a terror.  And them eyes!  Oh, git on, Deck, what you
+monkeyin' about?  Wonder if she's gone on that young feller?  I
+guess she is all right!  Say, wasn't that a clout he handed
+Perkins.  And didn't she give me one.  But them eyes!  Mandy Haley!
+By the jumpin' Jeremiah!  And the way she looks at a feller!  Here,
+Deck, what you foolin' about?  Gwan now, or you'll git into
+trouble."
+
+Deck, who had been indulging himself in a series of leaps and
+plunges, shying at even the most familiar objects by the road side,
+settled down at length to a businesslike trot which brought him to
+the doctor's door in about fifteen minutes from the Haleys' gate.
+But to Sam's dismay the doctor had gone to Cramm's Mill, six or
+seven miles away, and would not be back till the morning.  Sam was
+in a quandary.  There was another doctor at Brookfield, five miles
+further on, but there was a possibility that he also might be out.
+
+"Say, there ain't no use goin' back without a doctor.  She'd--
+she'd--Jumpin' Jeremiah!  What would she do?  Say, Deck, you've got
+to git down to business.  We're goin' to the city.  There are
+doctors there thick as hair on a dog.  We'll try Dr. Turnbull.
+Say, it'll be great if we could git him!  Deck, we'll do it!  But
+you got to git up and dust."
+
+And this Deck proceeded to do to such good purpose that in about
+an hour's time he stood before Dr. Turnbull's door in the city,
+somewhat wet, it is true, but with his fiery spirit still untamed.
+
+Here again adverse fate met the unfortunate Sam.
+
+"Doctor Turnbull's no at home," said the maid, smart with cap and
+apron, who opened the door.
+
+"How long will he be gone?" enquired Sam, wondering what she had on
+her head, and why.
+
+"There's no tellin'.  An hour, or two hours, or three."
+
+"Three hours?" echoed Sam.  "Say, a feller might kick the bucket in
+that time."
+
+The maid smiled an undisturbed smile.
+
+"Bucket?  What bucket, eh?  What bucket are ye talkin' aboot?" she
+enquired.
+
+"Say, you're smart, ain't yeh!  But I got a young feller that's
+broke his leg and--"
+
+"His leg?" said the maid indifferently.  "Well, he's got another?"
+
+"Yes, you bet he has, but one leg ain't much good without the
+other.  How would you like to hop around on one leg?  And he's hurt
+inside, too, his lights, I guess, and other things."  Sam's
+anatomical knowledge was somewhat vague.  "And besides, his girl's
+takin' on awful."
+
+"Oh, is she indeed?" replied the maid, this item apparently being
+to her of the very slightest importance.
+
+"Say, if you only saw her," said Sam.
+
+"Pretty, I suppose," said the maid with a touch of scorn.
+
+"Pretty?  No, ugly as a hedge fence.  But say, I wish she was here
+right now.  She'd bring you to your--to time, you bet."
+
+"Would she, now?  I'd sort her."  And the little maid's black eyes
+snapped.
+
+"Say, what'll I do?  Jist got to have a doctor."
+
+"Ye'll no git him till to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow?"
+
+"How far oot are ye?"
+
+"Twelve miles."
+
+"Twelve miles?  Ye'll no get him a minute afore to-morrow noon."
+
+"Say, that young feller'll croak, sure.  Away from home too.  No
+friends.  All his folks in Scotland."
+
+"Scotland, did ye say?"  Something appeared to wake up in the
+little maid.  "Look here, why don't ye get a doctor instead o'
+daunderin' your time here?"
+
+"Git a doctor?" echoed Sam in vast surprise.  "And ain't I tryin'
+to git a doctor?  Where'll I git a doctor?"
+
+"Go to the hospital, ye gawk, and ask for Dr. Turnbull, and tell
+him the young lad is a stranger and that his folk are in Scotland.
+Hoots, ye gomeril, be off noo, an' the puir lad wantin' ye.  Come,
+I'll pit ye on yer way."  The maid by her speech was obviously
+excited.
+
+Sam glanced at the clock as he passed out.  He had been away an
+hour and a half.
+
+"Jumpin' Jeremiah!  I've got to hurry.  She'll take my head off."
+
+"Of course ye have," said the maid sharply.  "Go down two streets
+there, then take the first turn to your left and go straight on for
+half a dozen blocks or so.  Mind ye tell the doctor the lad's frae
+Scotland!" she cried to Sam as he drove off.
+
+At the hospital Sam was fortunate enough to catch Dr. Turnbull in
+the hall with one or two others, just as they were about to pass
+into the consulting room.  Such was Sam's desperate state of mind
+that he went straight up to the group.
+
+"I want Dr. Turnbull," he said.
+
+"There he is before you," replied a sharp-faced young doctor,
+pointing to a benevolent looking old gentleman.
+
+"Dr. Turnbull, there's a young feller hurt dreadful out our way.
+His leg's broke.  Guess he's hurt inside too.  And he's a stranger.
+His folks are all in Scotland.  Guess he's dyin', and I've got--
+I've got a horse and buggy at the door.  I can git you out and back
+in a jiffy.  Say, doctor, I'm all ready to start."
+
+A smile passed over the faces of the group.  But Dr. Turnbull had
+too long experience with desperate cases and with desperate men.
+
+"My dear Sir," he replied, "I cannot go for some hours."
+
+"Doctor, I want you now.  I got to have somebody right now."
+
+"A broken leg?" mused the doctor.
+
+"Yes, and hurt inside."
+
+"How did it happen?" said the doctor.
+
+"Eh?  I don't know exactly," replied Sam, taken somewhat aback.
+"Somethin' fell on him.  But he needs you bad."
+
+"I can't go, my man, but we'll find some one.  What's his name did
+you say?"
+
+"His name is Cameron, and he's from Scotland."
+
+"Cameron?" said the sharp-faced young doctor.  "What does he look
+like?"
+
+"Look like?" said Sam in a perplexed voice.  "Well, the girls all
+think he looks pretty good.  He's dark complected and he's a mighty
+smart young feller.  Great on jumpin' and runnin'.  Say, he's a
+crackajack.  Why, at the Dominion Day picnic!  But you must a'
+heard about him.  He's the chap, you know, that won the hundred
+yards.  Plays the pipes and--"
+
+"Plays the pipes?" cried Dr. Turnbull and the young doctor
+together.
+
+"And his name's Cameron?" continued the young doctor.  "I wonder
+now if--"
+
+"I say, Martin," said Dr. Turnbull, "I think you had better go.
+The case may be urgent."
+
+"Cameron!" cried Martin again.  "I bet my bat it's--  Here, wait
+till I get my coat.  I'll be with you in a jerk.  Have you got a
+good horse?"
+
+"He's all right," said Sam.  "He'll git you there in an hour."
+
+"An hour?  How far is it?"
+
+"Twelve miles."
+
+"Great heavens!  Come, then, get a move on!"  And so it came that
+within an hour Cameron, opening his eyes, looked up into the face
+of his friend.
+
+"Martin!  By Jove!" he said, and closed his eyes again.  "Martin!"
+he said again, looking upon the familiar face.  "Say, old boy, is
+this a dream?  I seem to be having lots of them."
+
+"It's no dream, old chap, but what in the mischief is the matter?
+What does all this fever mean?  Let's look at you."
+
+A brief examination was enough to show the doctor that a broken leg
+was the least of Cameron's trouble.  A hasty investigation of the
+resources of the farm house determined the doctor's course.
+
+"This man has typhoid fever, a bad case too," he said to Mandy.
+"We will take him in to the hospital."
+
+"The hospital?" cried Mandy fiercely.  "Will you, then?"
+
+"He will be a lot of trouble to you," said the doctor.
+
+"Trouble?  Trouble?  What are you talkin' about?"
+
+"We're awful busy, Mandy," interposed the mother, who had been
+roused from her bed.
+
+"Oh, shucks, mother!  Oh, don't send him away," she pleaded.  "I
+can nurse him, just as easy."  She paused, with quivering lips.
+
+"It will be much better for the patient to be in the hospital.  He
+will get constant and systematic care.  He will be under my own
+observation every hour.  I assure you it will be better for him,"
+said the doctor.
+
+"Better for him?" echoed Mandy in a faint voice.  "Well, let him
+go."
+
+In less than an hour's time, such was Dr. Martin's energetic
+promptness, he had his patient comfortably placed in the democrat
+on an improvised stretcher and on his way to the city hospital.
+
+And thus it came about that the problem of his leave-taking, which
+had vexed Cameron for so many days, was solved.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IN APPLE TIME
+
+
+"Another basket of eggs, Mr. Cameron, and such delicious cream!  I
+am deeply grieved to see you so nearly well."
+
+"Grieved?"
+
+"For you will be leaving us of course."
+
+"Thanks, that is kind of you."
+
+"And there will be an end to eggs and cream.  Ah!  You are a lucky
+man."  And the trim, neat, bright-faced nurse shook her finger at
+him.
+
+"So I have often remarked to myself these six weeks."
+
+"A friend is a great discovery and by these same tokens you have
+found one."
+
+"Truly, they have been more than kind."
+
+"This makes the twelfth visit in six weeks," said the nurse.  "In
+busy harvest and threshing time, too.  Do you know what that
+means?"
+
+"To a certain extent.  It is awfully good of them."
+
+"But she is shy, shy--and I think she is afraid of YOU.  Her chief
+interest appears to be in the kitchen, which she has never failed
+to visit."
+
+The blood slowly rose in Cameron's face, from which the summer tan
+had all been bleached by his six weeks' fight with fever, but he
+made no reply to the brisk, sharp-eyed, sharp-minded little nurse.
+
+"And I know she is dying to see you, and, indeed," she chuckled,
+"it might do you good.  She is truly wonderful."  And again the
+nurse laughed.  "Don't you think you could bear a visit?"  The
+smile broadened upon her face.
+
+But unaware she had touched a sensitive spot in her patient, his
+Highland pride.
+
+"I shall be more than pleased to have an opportunity to thank Miss
+Haley for her great kindness," he replied with dignity.
+
+"All right," replied the nurse.  "I shall bring her in.  Now don't
+excite yourself.  That fever is not so far away.  And only a few
+minutes.  When we farmers go calling--I am a farmer, remember, and
+know them well--when we go calling we take our knitting and spend
+the afternoon."
+
+In a few moments she returned with Mandy.  The difference between
+the stout, red-faced, coarse-featured, obtrusively healthy country
+girl, heavy of foot and hand, slow of speech and awkward of manner,
+and the neat, quick, deft-fingered, bright-faced nurse was so
+marked that Cameron could hardly control the wave of pity that
+swept through his heart, for he could see that even Mandy herself
+was vividly aware of the contrast.  In vain Cameron tried to put
+her at her ease.  She simply sat and stared, now at the walls, now
+at the floor, refusing for a time to utter more than monosyllables,
+punctuated with giggles.
+
+"I want to thank you for the eggs and cream.  They are fine," said
+Cameron heartily.
+
+"Oh, pshaw, that's nothin'!  Lots more where they come from,"
+replied Mandy with a giggle.
+
+"But it's a long way for you to drive; and in the busy time too."
+
+"Oh, we had to come in anyway for things," replied Mandy, making
+light of her service.
+
+"You are all well?"
+
+"Oh, pretty middlin'.  Ma ain't right smart.  She's too much to do,
+and that's the truth."
+
+"And the boys?"  Cameron hesitated to be more specific.
+
+"Oh, there's nothin' eatin' them.  I don't bother with them much."
+Mandy was desperately twisting her white cotton gloves.
+
+At this point the nurse, with a final warning to the patient not
+to talk too much and not to excite himself, left the room.  In a
+moment Mandy's whole manner changed.
+
+"Say!" she cried in a hurried voice; "Perkins is left."
+
+"Left?"
+
+"I couldn't jist stand him after--after--that night.  Dad wanted
+him to stay, but I couldn't jist stand him, and so he quit."
+
+"Quit?"
+
+"I jist hate him since--since--that night.  When I think of what he
+done I could kill him.  My, I was glad to see him lyin' there in
+the dust!"  Mandy's words came hot and fast.  "They might 'a killed
+you."  For the first time in the interview she looked fairly into
+Cameron's eyes.  "My, you do look awful!" she said, with difficulty
+commanding her voice.
+
+"Nonsense, Mandy!  You see, it wasn't my leg that hurt me.  It was
+the fever that pulled me down."
+
+"Oh, I'll never forget that night!" cried Mandy, struggling to keep
+her lips from quivering.
+
+"Nor will I ever forget what you did for me that night, Mandy.  Sam
+told me all about it.  I shall always be your friend."
+
+For a moment longer she held him with her eyes.  Then her face grew
+suddenly pale and, with voice and hands trembling, she said:
+
+"I must go.  Good-by."
+
+He took her great red hand in his long thin fingers.
+
+"Good-by, Mandy, and thank you."
+
+"My!" she said, looking down at the fingers she held in her hand.
+"Your hands is awful thin.  Are you sure goin' to git better?"
+
+"Of course I am, and I am coming out to see you before I go."
+
+She sat down quickly, still holding his hand, as if he had struck
+her a heavy blow.
+
+"Before you go?  Where?"  Her voice was hardly above a whisper; her
+face was white, her lips beyond her control.
+
+"Out West to seek my fortune."  His voice was jaunty and he feigned
+not to see her distress.  "I shall be walking in a couple of weeks
+or so, eh, nurse?"
+
+"A couple of weeks?" replied the nurse, who had just entered.
+"Yes, if you are good."
+
+Mandy hastily rose.
+
+"But if you are not," continued the nurse severely, "it may be
+months.  Stay, Miss Haley, I am going to bring Mr. Cameron his
+afternoon tea and you can have some with him.  Indeed, you look
+quite done up.  I am sure all that work you have been telling me
+about is too much for you."
+
+Her kindly tones broke the last shred of Mandy's self-control.  She
+sank into her chair, covered her face with her great red hands and
+burst into tempestuous weeping.  Cameron sat up quickly.
+
+"What in the name of goodness is wrong, Mandy?"
+
+"Lie down at once, Mr. Cameron!" said the nurse sternly.  "Hush,
+hush, Miss Haley!  You ought to be ashamed of yourself!  Don't you
+know that you are hurting him?"
+
+She could have chosen no better word.  In an instant Mandy was on
+her feet, mopping off her face and choking down her sobs.
+
+"Ain't I a fool?" she cried angrily.  "A blamed fool.  Well, I
+won't bother you any longer.  Guess I'll go now.  Good-by all."
+Without another look at Cameron she was gone.
+
+Cameron lay back upon his pillows, white and nerveless.
+
+"Now can you tell me," he panted, "what's up?"
+
+"Search me!" said the nurse gaily, "but I forbid you to speak a
+single word for half an hour.  Here, drink this right off!  Now,
+not a word!  What will Dr. Martin say?  Not a word!  Yes, I shall
+see her safely off the place.  Quiet now!"  She kept up a
+continuous stream of sprightly chatter to cover her own anxiety and
+to turn the current of her patient's thoughts.  By the time she had
+reached the entrance hall, however, Mandy had vanished.
+
+"Great silly goose!" said the indignant nurse.  "I'd see myself far
+enough before I'd give myself away like that.  Little fool!  He'll
+have a temperature sure and I will catch it.  Bah!  These girls!
+Next time she sees him it will not be here.  I hope the doctor will
+just give me an hour to get him quiet again."
+
+But in this hope she was disappointed, for upon her return to her
+patient she found Dr. Martin in the room.  His face was grave.
+
+"What's up, nurse?  What is the meaning of this rotten pulse?  What
+has he been having to eat?"
+
+"Well, Dr. Martin, I may as well confess my sins," replied the
+nurse, "for there is no use trying to deceive you anyway.  Mr.
+Cameron has had a visitor and she has excited him."
+
+"Ah!" said the doctor in a relieved tone.  "A visitor!  A lady
+visitor!  A charming, sympathetic, interested, and interesting
+visitor."
+
+"Exactly!" said the nurse with a giggle.
+
+"It was Miss Haley, Martin," said Cameron gravely.
+
+The doctor looked puzzled.
+
+"The daughter of the farmer with whom I was working," explained
+Cameron.
+
+"Ah, I remember her," said the doctor.  "And a deuce of a time I
+had with her, too, getting you away from her, if I remember aright.
+I trust there is nothing seriously wrong in that quarter?" said
+Martin with unusual gravity.
+
+"Oh, quit it, Martin!" said Cameron impatiently.  "Don't rag.
+She's an awful decent sort.  Her looks are not the best of her."
+
+"Ah!  I am relieved to hear that," said the doctor earnestly.
+
+"She is very kind, indeed," said the nurse.  "For these six weeks
+she has fed us up with eggs and cream so that both my patient and
+myself have fared sumptuously every day.  Indeed, if it should
+continue much longer I shall have to ask an additional allowance
+for a new uniform.  I have promised that Mr. Cameron shall visit
+the farm within two weeks if he behaves well."
+
+"Exactly!" replied the doctor.  "In two weeks if he is good.  The
+only question that troubles me is--is it quite safe?  You see in
+his present weak condition his susceptibility is decidedly
+emphasised, his resisting power is low, and who knows what might
+happen, especially if she should insist?  I shall not soon forget
+the look in her eye when she dared me to lay a finger upon his
+person."
+
+"Oh, cut it out, Martin!" said Cameron.  "You make me weary."  He
+lay back on his pillow and closed his eyes.
+
+The nurse threw a signal to the doctor.
+
+"All right, old man, we must stop this chaff.  Buck up and in two
+weeks we will let you go where you like.  I have something in mind
+for you, but we won't speak of it to-day."
+
+The harvest was safely stored.  The yellow stubble showed the fields
+at rest, but the vivid green of the new fall wheat proclaimed the
+astounding and familiar fact that once more Nature had begun her
+ancient perennial miracle.  For in those fields of vivid green the
+harvest of the coming year was already on the way. On these green
+fields the snowy mantle would lie soft and protecting all the long
+winter through and when the spring suns would shine again the fall
+wheat would be a month or more on the way towards maturity.
+
+Somehow the country looked more rested, fresher, cleaner to Cameron
+than when he had last looked upon it in late August.  The rain had
+washed the dust from the earth's face and from the green sward that
+bordered the grey ribbon of the high road that led out from the
+city.  The pastures and the hay meadows and the turnip fields were
+all in their freshest green, and beyond the fields the forest stood
+glorious in all its autumn splendour, the ash trees bright yellow,
+the oaks rich brown, and the maples all the colours of the rainbow.
+In the orchard--ah, the wonder and the joy of it! even the bare and
+bony limbs of the apple trees only helped to reveal the sumptuous
+wealth of their luscious fruit.  For it was apple time in the land!
+The evanescent harvest apples were long since gone, the snows were
+past their best, the pippins were mellowing under the sharp
+persuasion of the nippy, frosty nights and the brave gallantry of
+the sunny days.  In this ancient warfare between the frosty nights
+and the gallant sunny days the apples ripened rapidly; and well
+that they should, for the warfare could not be for long.  Already
+in the early morning hours the vanguard of winter's fierce hosts
+was to be seen flaunting its hoary banners even in the very face of
+the gallant sun so bravely making stand against it.  But it was the
+time of the year in which men felt it good to be alive, for there
+was in the air that tang that gives speed to the blood, spring to
+the muscle, edge to the appetite, courage to the soul, and zest to
+life--the apple time of the year.
+
+It was in apple time that Cameron came back to the farm.  Under
+compulsion of Mandy, Haley had found it necessary to drive into the
+city for some things for the "women folk" and, being in the city,
+he had called for Cameron and had brought him out.  Under
+compulsion, not at all because Haley was indifferent to the
+prospect of a visit from his former hired man, not alone because
+the fall plowing was pressing and the threshing gang was in the
+neighbourhood, but chiefly because, through the channel of Dr.
+Martin, the little nurse, and Mandy, it had come to be known in the
+Haley household and in the country side that the hired man was a
+"great swell in the old country," and Haley's sturdy independence
+shrank from anything that savoured of "suckin' round a swell," as
+he graphically put it.  But Mandy scouted this idea and waited for
+the coming of the expected guest with no embarrassment from the
+knowledge that he had been in the old country "a great swell."
+
+Hence when, through a crack beside the window blind, she saw him, a
+poor, pale shadow, descending wearily and painfully from the buggy,
+the great mother heart in the girl welled with pity.  She could
+hardly forbear rushing out to carry him bodily in her strong arms
+to the spare room and lay him where she had once helped to lay him
+the night of the tragedy some eight weeks before.  But in this
+matter she had learned her lesson.  She remembered the little nurse
+and her indignant scorn of the lack of self-control she had shown
+on the occasion of her last visit to the hospital.  So, instead of
+rushing forth, she clutched the curtains and forced herself to
+stand still, whispering to herself the while, "Oh, he will die
+sure!  He will die sure!"  But when she looked upon him seated
+comfortably in the kitchen with a steaming glass of ginger and
+whiskey, her mother's unfailing remedy for "anything wrong with the
+insides," she knew he would not die and her joy overflowed in
+boisterous welcome.
+
+For five days they all, from Haley to Tim, gave him of their very
+best, seeking to hold him among them for the winter, for they had
+learned that his mind was set upon the West, till Cameron was
+ashamed, knowing that he must go.
+
+The last afternoon they all spent in the orchard.  The Gravensteins,
+in which species of apple Haley was a specialist, were being picked,
+and picked with the greatest care, Cameron plucking them from the
+limbs and dropping them into a basket held by Mandy below.  It was
+one of those sunny days when, after weeks of chilly absence, summer
+comes again and makes the world glow with warmth and kindly life and
+quickens in the heart the blood's flow.  Cameron was full of talk
+and fuller of laughter than his wont; indeed he was vexed to find
+himself struggling to maintain unbroken the flow of laughter and of
+talk.  But in Mandy there was neither speech nor laughter, only a
+quiet dignity that disturbed and rebuked him.
+
+The last tree of Gravensteins was picked and then there came the
+time of parting.  Cameron, with a man's selfish desire for some
+token of a woman's adoration, even although he well knew that he
+could make no return, lingered in the farewell, hoping for some
+sign in the plain quiet face and the wonderful eyes with their new
+mystery that when he had gone he would not be forgotten; but though
+the lips quivered pitifully and the heavy face grew drawn and old
+and the eyes glowed with a deeper fire, the words, when they came,
+came quietly and the eyes looked steadily upon him, except that for
+one brief moment a fire leaped in them and quickly died down.  But
+when the buggy, with Tim driving, had passed down the lane, behind
+the curtain of the spare room the girl stood looking through the
+crack beside the blind, with both hands pressed upon her bosom, her
+breath coming in sobs, her blue lips murmuring brokenly, "Good-by,
+good-by!  Oh, why did you come at all?  But, oh, I'm glad you came!
+God help me, I'm glad you came!"  Then, when the buggy had turned
+down the side lane and out of sight, she knelt beside the bed and
+kissed, again and again, with tender, reverent kisses, the pillow
+where his head had lain.
+
+
+
+BOOK THREE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE CAMP BY THE GAP
+
+
+On the foot-hills' side of The Gap, on a grassy plain bounded on
+three sides by the Bow River and on the other by ragged hills and
+broken timber, stood Surveyor McIvor's camp, three white tents,
+seeming wondrously insignificant in the shadow of the mighty
+Rockies, but cosy enough.  For on this April day the sun was riding
+high in the heavens in all his new spring glory, where a few days
+ago and for many months past the storm king with relentless rigour
+had raged, searching with pitiless fury these rock-ribbed hills and
+threatening these white tents and their dwellers with dire
+destruction.  But threaten though he might and pin them though he
+did beneath their frail canvas covers, he could not make that gang
+beat retreat.  McIvor was of the kind that takes no back trail.  In
+the late fall he had set out to run the line through The Gap, and
+after many wanderings through the coulees of the foothills and
+after many vain attempts, he had finally made choice of his route
+and had brought his men, burnt black with chinook and frost and
+sun, hither to The Gap's mouth.  Every chain length in those weary
+marches was a battle ground, every pillar, every picket stood a
+monument of victory.  McIvor's advance through the foot-hill
+country to The Gap had been one unbroken succession of fierce
+fights with Nature's most terrifying forces, a triumphal march of
+heroes who bore on their faces and on their bodies the scars and
+laurels of the campaign.  But to McIvor and his gang it was all in
+the day's work.
+
+To Cameron the winter had brought an experience of a life hitherto
+undreamed of, but never even in its wildest blizzards did he
+cherish anything but gratitude to his friend Martin, who had got
+him attached to McIvor's survey party.  For McIvor was a man to
+"tie to," as Martin said, and to Cameron he was a continual cause
+of wonder and admiration.  He was a big man, with a big man's quiet
+strength, patient, fearless of men and things, reverent toward
+Nature's forces, which it was his life's business to know, to
+measure, to control, and, if need be, to fight, careful of his men,
+whether amid the perils of the march, or amid the more deadly
+perils of trading post and railway construction camp.  Cameron
+never could forget the thrill of admiration that swept his soul one
+night in Taylor's billiard and gambling "joint" down at the post
+where the Elbow joins the Bow, when McIvor, without bluff or
+bluster, took his chainman and his French-Canadian cook, the
+latter frothing mad with "Jamaica Ginger" and "Pain-killer," out
+of the hands of the gang of bad men from across the line who had
+marked them as lambs for the fleecing.  It was not the courage of
+his big chief so much that had filled Cameron with amazed respect
+and admiration as the calm indifference to every consideration but
+that of getting his men out of harm's way, and the cool-headed
+directness of the method he employed.
+
+"Come along, boys," McIvor had said, gripping them by their coat
+collars.  "I don't pay you good money for this sort of thing."  And
+so saying he had lifted them clear from their seats, upsetting the
+table, ignoring utterly the roaring oaths of the discomfited
+gamblers.  What would have been the result none could say, for one
+of the gamblers had whipped out his gun and with sulphurous oaths
+was conducting a vigourous demonstration behind the unconscious
+back of McIvor, when there strolled into the room and through the
+crowd of men scattering to cover, a tall slim youngster in the red
+jacket and pill-box cap of that world-famous body of military
+guardians of law and order, the North West Mounted Police.  Not
+while he lived would Cameron forget the scene that followed.  With
+an air of lazy nonchalance the youngster strode quietly up to the
+desperado flourishing his gun and asked in a tone that indicated
+curiosity more than anything else, "What are you doing with that
+thing?"
+
+"I'll show yeh!" roared the man in his face, continuing to pour
+forth a torrent of oaths.
+
+"Put it down there!" said the youngster in a smooth and silky
+voice, pointing to a table near by.  "You don't need that in this
+country."
+
+The man paused in his demonstration and for a moment or two stood
+in amazed silence.  The audacity of the youngster appeared to
+paralyse his powers of speech and action.
+
+"Put it down there, my man.  Do you hear?"  The voice was still
+smooth, but through the silky tones there ran a fibre of steel.
+Still the desperado stood gazing at him.  "Quick, do you hear?"
+There was a sudden sharp ring of imperious, of overwhelming
+authority, and, to the amazement of the crowd of men who stood
+breathless and silent about, there followed one of those phenomena
+which experts in psychology delight to explain, but which no man
+can understand.  Without a word the gambler slowly laid upon the
+table his gun, upon whose handle were many notches, the tally of
+human lives it had accounted for in the hands of this same
+desperado.
+
+"What is this for?" continued the young man, gently touching the
+belt of cartridges.  "Take it off!"
+
+The belt found its place beside the gun.
+
+"Now, listen!" gravely continued the youngster.  "I give you
+twenty-four hours to leave this post, and if after twenty-four
+hours you are found here it will be bad for you.  Get out!"
+
+The man, still silent, slunk out from the room.  Irresistible
+authority seemed to go with the word that sent him forth, and
+rightly so, for behind that word lay the full weight of Great
+Britain's mighty empire.  It was Cameron's first experience of the
+North West Mounted Police, that famous corps of frontier riders who
+for more than a quarter of a century have ridden the marches of
+Great Britain's territories in the far northwest land, keeping
+intact the Pax Britannica amid the wild turmoil of pioneer days.
+To the North West Mounted Police and to the pioneer missionary it
+is due that Canada has never had within her borders what is known
+as a "wild and wicked West."  It was doubtless owing to the
+presence of that slim youngster in his scarlet jacket and pill-box
+cap that McIvor got his men safely away without a hole in his back
+and that his gang were quietly finishing their morning meal this
+shining April day, in their camp by the Bow River in the shadow of
+the big white peaks that guard The Gap.
+
+Breakfast over, McIvor heaved his great form to the perpendicular.
+
+"How is the foot, Cameron?" he asked, filling his pipe preparatory
+to the march.
+
+"Just about fit," replied Cameron.
+
+"Better take another day," replied the chief.  "You can get up wood
+and get supper ready.  Benoit will be glad enough to go out and
+take your place for another day on the line."
+
+"Sure ting," cried Benoit, the jolly French-Canadian cook.  "Good
+for my healt.  He's tak off my front porsch here."  And the cook
+patted affectionately the little round paunch that marred the
+symmetry of his figure.
+
+"You ought to get Cameron to swap jobs with you, Benny," said one
+of the axemen.  "You would be a dandy in about another month."
+
+Benoit let his eye run critically over the line of his person.
+
+"Bon!  Dat's true, for sure.  In tree, four mont I mak de beeg
+spark on de girl, me."
+
+"You bet, Benny!" cried the axeman.  "You'll break 'em all up."
+
+"Sure ting!" cried Benny, catching up a coal for his pipe.  "By by,
+Cameron.  Au revoir.  I go for tak some more slice from my porsch."
+
+"Good-bye, Benny," cried Cameron.  "It is your last chance, for
+to-morrow I give you back your job.  I don't want any 'front porsch'
+on me."
+
+"Ho! ho!" laughed Benny scornfully, as he turned to hurry after his
+chief.  "Dat's not moch front porsch on you.  Dat's one rail fence--
+clabbord."
+
+And indeed Benoit was right, for there was no "porsch" or sign of
+one on Cameron's lean and muscular frame.  The daily battle with
+winter's fierce frosts and blizzards, the strenuous toil, the hard
+food had done their work on him.  Strong, firm-knit, clean and
+sound, hard and fit, he had come through his first Canadian winter.
+No man in the camp, not even the chief himself, could "bush" him in
+a day's work.  He had gained enormously in strength lately, and
+though the lines of his frame still ran to angles, he had gained in
+weight as well.  Never in the days of his finest training was he as
+fit to get the best out of himself as now.  An injured foot had
+held him in camp for a week, but the injury was now almost
+completely repaired and the week's change of work only served to
+replenish his store of snap and vim.
+
+An hour or two sufficed to put the camp in the perfect order that
+he knew Benoit would consider ideal and to get all in readiness for
+the evening meal when the gang should return.  He had the day
+before him and what a day it was!  Cameron lay upon a buffalo skin
+in front of the cook-tent, content with all the world and for the
+moment with himself.  Six months ago he had engaged as an axeman in
+the surveyors' gang at $30 per month and "found," being regarded
+more in the light of a supernumerary and more or less of a burden
+than anything else.  Now he was drawing double the wage as rodman,
+and, of all the gang, stood second to none in McIvor's regard.  In
+this new venture he had come nearer to making good than ever before
+in his life.  So in full content with himself he allowed his eyes
+to roam over the brown grassy plain that sloped to the Bow in
+front, and over the Bow to the successive lines of hills, rounded
+except where the black rocks broke jagged through the turf, and
+upward over the rounded hills to the grey sides of the mighty
+masses of the mountains, and still upward to where the white peaks
+lost themselves in the shining blue of the sky.  Behind him a
+coulee ran back between hills to a line of timber, and beyond the
+timber more hills and more valleys, and ever growing higher and
+deeper till they ran into the bases of the great Rockies.
+
+As Cameron lay thus luxuriating upon his buffalo skin and lazily
+watching the hills across the river through the curling wreaths
+that gracefully and fragrantly rose from his briar root, there
+broke from the line of timber two jumping deer, buck and doe, the
+latter slow-footed because heavy with young.  Behind them in hot
+pursuit came a pack of yelping coyotes.  The doe was evidently hard
+pressed.  The buck was running easily, but gallantly refusing to
+abandon his mate to her cowardly foes.  Straight for the icy river
+they made, plunged in, and, making the crossing, were safe from
+their pursuing enemy.  Cameron, intent upon fresh meat, ran for
+McIvor's Winchester, but ere he could buckle round him a cartridge
+belt and throw on his hunting jacket the deer had disappeared over
+the rounded top of the nearest hill.  Up the coulee he ran to the
+timber and there waited, but there was no sign of his game.
+Cautiously he made his way through the timber and dropped into the
+next valley circling westward towards the mountains.  The deer,
+however, had completely vanished.  Turning back upon his tracks, he
+once more pierced the thin line of timber, when just across the
+coulee, some three hundred yards away, on the sky line, head up and
+sniffing the wind, stood the buck in clear view.  Taking hurried
+aim Cameron fired.  The buck dropped as if dead.  Marking the spot,
+Cameron hurried forward, but to his surprise found only a trail of
+blood.
+
+"He's badly hit though," he said to himself.  "I must get the poor
+chap now at all costs."  Swiftly he took up the trail, but though
+the blood stains continued clear and fresh he could get no sight
+of the wounded animal.  Hour after hour he kept up the chase,
+forgetful of everything but his determination to bring back his
+game to camp.  From the freshness of the stains he knew that the
+buck could not be far ahead and from the footprints it was clear
+that the animal was going on three legs.
+
+"The beggar is hearing me and so keeps out of sight," said Cameron
+as he paused to listen.  He resolved to proceed more slowly and
+with greater caution, but though he followed this plan for another
+half hour it brought him no better success.  The day was fast
+passing and he could not much longer continue his pursuit.  He
+became conscious of pain in his injured foot.  He sat down to rest
+and to review his situation.  For the first time he observed that
+the bright sky of the morning had become overcast with a film of
+hazy cloud and that the temperature was rapidly falling.  Prudence
+suggested that he should at once make his way back to camp, but
+with the instinct of the true hunter he was loath to abandon the
+poor wounded beast to its unhappy fate.  He resolved to make one
+further attempt.  Refreshed by his brief rest, but with an
+increasing sense of pain in his foot, he climbed the slight rising
+ground before him, cautiously pushed his way through some scrub,
+and there, within easy shot, stood the buck, with drooping head and
+evidently with strength nearly done.  Cameron took careful aim--
+there must be no mistake this time--and fired.  The buck leaped
+high in the air, dropped and lay still.  The first shot had broken
+his leg, the second had pierced his heart.
+
+Cameron hurried forward and proceeded to skin the animal.  But soon
+he abandoned this operation.  "We'll come and get him to-morrow,"
+he muttered, "and he is better with his skin on.  Meantime we'll
+have a steak, however."  He hung a bit of skin from a pole to keep
+off the wolves and selected a choice cut for the supper.  He worked
+hurriedly, for the sudden drop in the temperature was ominous of a
+serious disturbance in the weather, but before he had finished he
+was startled to observe a large snowflake lazily flutter to the
+ground beside him.  He glanced towards the sky and found that the
+filmy clouds were rapidly assuming definite shape and that the sun
+had almost disappeared.  Hurriedly he took his bearings and,
+calculating as best he could the direction of the camp, set off,
+well satisfied with the outcome of his expedition and filled with
+the pleasing anticipation of a venison supper for himself and the
+rest of the gang.
+
+The country was for the most part open except for patches of timber
+here and there, and with a clear sky the difficulty of maintaining
+direction would have been but slight.  With the sky overcast,
+however, this difficulty was sensibly increased.  He had not kept
+an accurate reckoning of his course, but from the character of the
+ground he knew that he must be a considerable distance westward of
+the line of the camp.  His training during the winter in holding a
+line of march helped him now to maintain his course steadily in one
+direction.  The temperature was still dropping rapidly.  Over the
+woods hung a dead stillness, except for the lonely call of an
+occasional crow or for the scream of the impudent whiskey-jack.
+But soon even these became silent.  As he surmounted each hill top
+Cameron took his bearings afresh and anxiously scanned the sky for
+weather signs.  In spite of himself there crept over him a sense of
+foreboding, which he impatiently tried to shake off.
+
+"I can't be so very far from camp now," he said to himself, looking
+at his watch.  "It is just four.  There are three good hours till
+dark."
+
+A little to the west of his line of march stood a high hill which
+appeared to dominate the surrounding country and on its top a lofty
+pine.  "I'll just shin up that tree," said he.  "I ought to get a
+sight of the Bow from the top."  In a few minutes he had reached
+the top of the hill, but even in those minutes the atmosphere had
+thickened.  "Jove, it's getting dark!" he exclaimed.  "It can't be
+near sundown yet.  Did I make a mistake in the time?"  He looked at
+his watch again.  It showed a quarter after four.  "I must get a
+look at this country."  Hurriedly he threw off his jacket and
+proceeded to climb the big pine, which, fortunately, was limbed to
+the ground.  From the lofty top his eye could sweep the country for
+many miles around.  Over the great peaks of the Rockies to the west
+dark masses of black cloud shot with purple and liver-coloured bars
+hung like a pall.  To the north a line of clear light was still
+visible, but over the foot-hills towards east and south there lay
+almost invisible a shimmering haze, soft and translucent, and above
+the haze a heavy curtain, while over the immediate landscape there
+shone a strange weird light, through which there floated down to
+earth large white snowflakes.  Not a breath of air moved across
+the face of the hills, but still as the dead they lay in solemn
+oppressive silence.  Far to the north Cameron caught the gleam of
+water.
+
+"That must be the Bow," he said to himself.  "I am miles too far
+toward the mountains.  I don't like the look of that haze and that
+cloud bank.  There is a blizzard on the move if this winter's
+experience teaches me anything."
+
+He had once been caught in a blizzard, but on that occasion he was
+with McIvor.  He was conscious now of a little clutch at his heart
+as he remembered that desperate struggle for breath, for life it
+seemed to him, behind McIvor's broad back.  The country was full of
+stories of men being overwhelmed by the choking, drifting whirl of
+snow.  He knew how swift at times the on-fall of the blizzard could
+be, how long the storm could last, how appalling the cold could
+become.  What should he do?  He must think and act swiftly.  That
+gleaming water near which his camp lay was, at the very best going,
+two hours distant.  The blizzard might strike at any moment and
+once it struck all hope of advance would be cut off.  He resolved
+to seek the best cover available and wait till the storm should
+pass.  He had his deer meat with him and matches.  Could he but
+make shelter he doubted not but he could weather the storm.
+Swiftly he swept the landscape for a spot to camp.  Half a mile
+away he spied a little coulee where several valleys appeared to
+lose themselves in thick underbrush.  He resolved to make for that
+spot.  Hurriedly he slipped down the tree, donned belt and jacket
+and, picking up gun and venison, set off at a run for the spot he
+had selected.  A puff of wind touched his cheek.  He glanced up and
+about him.  The flakes of snow were no longer floating gently down,
+but were slanting in long straight lines across the landscape.  His
+heart took a quicker beat.
+
+"It is coming, sure enough," he said to himself between his teeth,
+"and a bad one too at that."  He quickened his pace to racing
+speed.  Down the hill, across the valley and up the next slope he
+ran without pause, but as he reached the top of the slope a sound
+arrested him, a deep, muffled, hissing roar, and mingled with it
+the beating of a thousand wings.  Beyond the top of the next hill
+there hung from sky to earth the curtain, thick, black, portentous,
+and swiftly making approach, devouring the landscape as it came and
+filling his ears with its muffled, hissing roar.
+
+In the coulee beyond that hill was the spot he had marked for his
+shelter.  It was still some three hundred yards away.  Could he
+beat that roaring, hissing, portentous cloud mass?  It was
+extremely doubtful.  Down the hill he ran, slipping, skating,
+pitching, till he struck the bottom, then up the opposite slope he
+struggled, straining every nerve and muscle.  He glanced upward
+towards the top of the hill.  Merciful heaven!  There it was, that
+portentous cloud mass, roaring down upon him.  Could he ever make
+that top?  He ran a few steps further, then, dropping his gun, he
+clutched a small poplar and hung fast.  A driving, blinding,
+choking, whirling mass of whiteness hurled itself at him, buffeting
+him heavily, filling eyes, ears, nose, and mouth, clutching at his
+arms and legs and body with a thousand impalpable insistent claws.
+For a moment or two he lost all sense of direction, all thought of
+advance.  One instinct only he obeyed--to hold on for dear life to
+the swaying quivering poplar.  The icy cold struck him to the
+heart, his bare fingers were fast freezing.  A few moments he hung,
+hoping for a lull in the fury of the blizzard, but lull there was
+none, only that choking, blinding, terrifying Thing that clutched
+and tore at him.  His heart sank within him.  This, then, was to be
+the end of him.  A vision of his own body, stark and stiff, lying
+under a mound of drifting snow, swiftly passed before his mind.  He
+threw it off wrathfully.  "Not yet!  Not just yet!" he shouted in
+defiance into the face of the howling storm.
+
+Through the tumult and confusion of his thoughts one idea dominated--
+he must make the hill-top.  Sliding his hands down the trunk of the
+little poplar he once more found his rifle and, laying it in the
+hollow of his arm, he hugged it close to his side, shoved his
+freezing hands into his pockets and, leaning hard against the
+driving blizzard, set off towards the hill-top.  A few paces he
+made, then turning around leaned back upon the solid massive force
+of the wind till he could get breath.  Again a few steps upward and
+again a rest against the wind.  His courage began to come back.
+
+"Aha!" he shouted at the storm.  "Not yet!  Not yet!"  Gradually,
+and with growing courage, he fought his way to the top.  At length
+he stood upon the storm-swept summit.  "I say," he cried,
+heartening himself with his speech, "this is so much to the good
+anyway.  Now for the coulee."  But exactly where did it lie?
+Absolutely nothing could he see before him but this blinding,
+choking mass of whirling snow.  He tried to recall the direction in
+relation to the hill as he had taken it from the top of the tree.
+How long ago that seemed!  Was it minutes or hours?  Downward and
+towards the left lay the coulee.  He could hardly fail to strike
+it.  Plunging headlong into the blizzard, he fought his way once
+more, step by step.
+
+"It was jolly well like a scrimmage," he said grimly to the storm
+which began in his imagination to assume a kind of monstrous and
+savage personality.  It heartened him much to remember his
+sensations in many a desperate struggle against the straining
+steaming mass of muscle and bone in the old fierce football fights.
+He recalled, too, a word of his old captain, "Never say die!  The
+next minute may be better."
+
+"Never say die!" he cried aloud in the face of his enemy.  "But I
+wish to heaven I could get up some of that heat just now.  This
+cold is going to be the death of me."
+
+As he spoke he bumped into a small bushy spruce tree.  "Hello!
+Here you are, eh!" he cried, determined to be cheerful.  "Glad to
+meet you.  Hope there are lots more of you."  His hope was
+realised!  A few more steps and he found himself in the heart of a
+spruce thicket.
+
+"Thank God!" he exclaimed.  Then again--"Yes, thank God it is!"
+It steadied his heart not a little to remember the picture in his
+mother's Bible that had so often stirred his youthful imagination
+of One standing in the fishing boat and bidding the storm be still.
+In the spruce thicket he stood some moments to regain his breath
+and strength.
+
+"Now what next?" he asked himself.  Although the thicket broke the
+force of the wind, something must be done, and quickly.  Night was
+coming on and that meant an even intenser cold.  His hands were
+numb.  His hunting jacket was but slight protection against the
+driving wind and the bitter cold.  If he could only light a fire!
+A difficult business in this tumultuous whirlwind and snow.  He had
+learned something of this art, however, from his winter's experience.
+He began breaking from the spruce trees the dead dry twigs.  Oh for
+some birch bark!  Like a forgotten dream it came to him that from
+the tree top he had seen above the spruce thicket the tops of some
+white birch trees purpling under the touch of spring.
+
+"Let's see!  Those birches must be further to my left," he said,
+recalling their position.  Painfully he forced his way through the
+scrubby underbrush.  His foot struck hard against an obstruction
+that nearly threw him to the ground.  It was a jutting rock.
+Peering through the white mass before his eyes, he could make out a
+great black, looming mass.  Eagerly he pushed forward.  It was a
+towering slab of rock.  Following it round on the lee side, he
+suddenly halted with a shout of grateful triumph.  A great section
+had fallen out of the rock, forming a little cave, storm-proof and
+dry.
+
+"Thank God once more!" he said, and this time with even deeper
+reverence.  "Now for a fire.  If I could only get some birch bark."
+
+He placed his rifle in a corner of the cave and went out on his
+hunt.  "By Jove, I must hurry, or my hands will be gone sure."
+Looking upwards in the shelter of the rock through the driving snow
+he saw the bare tops of trees.  "Birch, too, as I am alive!" he
+cried, and plunging through the bushes came upon a clump of white
+birches.
+
+With fingers that could hardly hold the curling bark he gathered a
+few bunches and hurried back to the cave.  Again he went forth and
+gathered from the standing trees an armful of dead dry limbs.
+"Good!" he cried aloud in triumph.  "We're not beaten yet.  Now for
+the fire and supper."  He drew forth his steel matchbox with numb
+and shaking fingers, opened it and stood stricken dumb.  There were
+only three matches in the box.  Unreasoning terror seized him.
+Three chances for life!  He chose a match, struck it, but in his
+numb and nerveless fingers the match snapped near the head.  With a
+new terror seizing him he took a second match and struck it.  The
+match flared, sputtering.  Eagerly he thrust the birch bark at it;
+too eagerly, alas, for the bark rubbed out the tiny flame.  He had
+one match left!  One hope of life!  He closed his matchbox.  His
+hands were trembling with the cold and more with nervous fear that
+shook him in every limb.  He could not bring himself to make the
+last attempt.  Up and down the cave and out and in he stamped,
+beating his hands to bring back the blood and fighting hard to get
+back his nerve.
+
+"This is all rotten funk!" he cried aloud, raging at himself.  "I
+shall not be beaten."
+
+Summoning all his powers, he once more pulled out his matchbox,
+rubbed his birch bark fine and, kneeling down, placed it between
+his knees under the shelter of his hunting jacket.  Kneeling there
+with the matchbox in his hand, there fell upon his spirit a great
+calm.  "Oh, God!" he said quietly and with the conviction in his
+soul that there was One listening, "help me now."  He opened the
+matchbox, took out the match, struck it carefully and laid it among
+the birch bark.  For one heart-racking moment it flickered
+unsteadily, then, catching a resinous fibre of the bark, it flared
+up, shot out a tiny tongue to one of the heavier bunches, caught
+hold, sputtered, smoked, burst into flame.  With the prayer still
+going in his heart, "God help me now," Cameron fed the flame with
+bits of bark and tiny twigs, adding more and more till the fire
+began to leap, dance, and snap, and at length gaining strength it
+roared its triumph over the grim terror so recently threatened.
+
+For the present at least the blizzard was beaten.
+
+"Now God be thanked for that," said Cameron.  "For it was past my
+doing."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+ON THE WINGS OF THE STORM
+
+
+Shivering and hungry and fighting with sleep, Cameron stamped up
+and down his cave, making now and then excursions into the storm to
+replenish his fire.  On sharpened sticks slices of venison were
+cooking for his supper.  Outside the storm raged with greater
+violence than ever and into the cave the bitter cold penetrated,
+effectually neutralizing the warmth of the little fire, for the
+wood was hard to get and a larger fire he could not afford.
+
+He looked at his watch and was amazed to find it only five o'clock.
+How long could he maintain this fight?  His heart sank at the
+prospect of the long night before him.  He sat down upon the rock
+close beside his cooking venison and in a few moments was fast
+asleep.
+
+He awoke with a start and found that the fire had crept along a
+jutting branch and had reached his fingers.  He sprang to his feet.
+The fire lay in smouldering embers, for the sticks were mere
+brushwood.  A terrible fear seized him.  His life depended upon the
+maintaining of this fire.  Carefully he assembled the embers and
+nursed them into bright flame.  At all costs he must keep awake.
+A further excursion into the woods for fuel thoroughly roused him
+from his sleep.  Soon his fire was blazing brightly again.
+
+Consulting his watch, he found that he must have slept half an
+hour.  He determined that in order to keep himself awake and to
+provide against the growing cold he would lay in a stock of
+firewood, and so he began a systematic search for fallen trees
+that he might drag to his shelter.
+
+As he was setting forth upon his search he became aware of a new
+sound mingling with the roaring of the storm about him, a soft,
+pounding, rhythmic sound.  With every nerve strained he listened.
+It was like the beating of hoofs.  He ran out into the storm and,
+holding his hands to his ears, bent forward to listen.  Faintly
+over the roaring of the blizzard, and rising and falling with it,
+there came the sound of singing.
+
+"Am I mad?" he said to himself, beating his head with his hands.
+He rushed into the cave, threw upon the fire all the brushwood he
+had gathered, until it sprang up into a great glare, lighting up
+the cave and its surroundings.  Then he rushed forth once more to
+the turn of the rock.  The singing could now be plainly heard.
+
+"Three cheers for the red, white--  Get on there, you variously
+coloured and multitudinously cursed brutes!--  Three cheers for the
+red--  Hie there, look out, Little Thunder!  They are off to the
+left."
+
+"Hello!" yelled Cameron at the top of his voice.  "Hello, there!"
+
+"Whoa!" yelled a voice sharply.  The sound of hoof beats ceased and
+only the roaring of the blizzard could be heard.
+
+"Hello!" cried Cameron again.  "Who are you?"  But only the gale
+answered him.
+
+Again and again he called, but no voice replied.  Once more he
+rushed into the cave, seized his rifle and fired a shot into the
+air.
+
+"Crack-crack," two bullets spat against the rock over his head.
+
+"Hold on there, you fool!" yelled Cameron, dodging back behind the
+rock.  "What are you shooting at?  Hello there!"  Still there was
+no reply.
+
+Long he waited till, desperate with anxiety lest his unknown
+visitors should abandon him, he ran forward once more beyond the
+ledge of the rock, shouting, "Hello!  Hello!  Don't shoot!  I'm
+coming out to you."
+
+At the turn of the rocky ledge he paused, concentrating his powers
+to catch some sound other than the dull boom and hiss of the
+blizzard.  Suddenly at his side something moved.
+
+"Put up your hands, quick!"
+
+A dark shape, with arm thrust straight before it, loomed through
+the drift of snow.
+
+"Oh, I say--" began Cameron.
+
+"Quick!" said the voice, with a terrible oath, "or I drop you where
+you stand."
+
+"All right!" said Cameron, lifting up his hands with his rifle high
+above his head.  "But hurry up!  I can't stand this long.  I am
+nearly frozen as it is."
+
+The man came forward, still covering him with his pistol.  He ran
+his free hand over Cameron's person.
+
+"How many of you?" he asked, in a voice sharp and crisp.
+
+"I am all alone.  But hurry up!  I am about all in."
+
+"Lead on to your fire!" said the stranger.  "But if you want to
+live, no monkey work.  I've got you lined."
+
+Cameron led the way to the fire.  The stranger threw a swift glance
+around the cave, then, with eyes still holding Cameron, he whistled
+shrilly on his fingers.  Almost immediately, it seemed to Cameron,
+there came into the light another man who proved to be an Indian,
+short, heavily built, with a face hideously ugly and rendered more
+repulsive by the small, red-rimmed, blood-shot eyes that seemed to
+Cameron to peer like gimlets into his very soul.
+
+At a word of command the Indian possessed himself of Cameron's
+rifle and stood at the entrance.
+
+"Now," said the stranger, "talk quick.  Who are you?  How did you
+come here?  Quick and to the point."
+
+"I am a surveyor," said Cameron briefly.  "McIvor's gang.  I was
+left at camp to cook, saw a deer, wounded it, followed it up, lost
+my way, the storm caught me, but, thank God, I found this cave, and
+with my last match lit the fire.  I was trying to cook my venison
+when I heard you coming."
+
+The grey-brown eyes of the stranger never left Cameron's face while
+he was speaking.
+
+"You're a liar!" he said with cold insolence when Cameron had
+finished his tale.  "You look to me like a blank blank horse thief
+or whiskey trader."
+
+Faint as he was with cold and hunger, the deliberate insolence of
+the man stirred Cameron to sudden rage.  The blood flooded his pale
+face.
+
+"You coward!" he cried in a choking voice, gathering himself to
+spring at the man's throat.
+
+But the stranger only laughed and, stepping backward, spoke a word
+to the Indian behind him.  Before he could move Cameron found
+himself covered by the rifle with the malignant eye of the Indian
+behind it.
+
+"Hold on, Little Thunder, drop it!" said the stranger with a slight
+laugh.
+
+Reluctantly the rifle came down.
+
+"All right, Mr. Surveyor," said the stranger with a good-natured
+laugh.  "Pardon my abruptness.  I was merely testing you.  One
+cannot be too careful in these parts nowadays when the woods are
+full of horse thieves and whiskey runners.  Oh, come on," he
+continued, glancing at Cameron's face, "I apologise.  So you're
+lost, eh?  Hungry too?  Well, so am I, and though I was not going
+to feed just yet we may as well grub together.  Bring the cattle
+into shelter here," he said to Little Thunder.  "They will stand
+right enough.  And get busy with the grub."
+
+The Indian grunted a remonstrance.
+
+"Oh, that's all right," replied the stranger.  "Hand it over."  He
+took Cameron's rifle from the Indian and set it in the corner.
+"Now get a move on!  We have no time to waste."
+
+So saying he hurried out himself into the storm.  In a few minutes
+Cameron could hear the blows of an axe, and soon the stranger
+appeared with a load of dry wood with which he built up a blazing
+fire.  He was followed shortly by the Indian, who from a sack drew
+out bacon, hardtack, and tea, and, with cooking utensils produced
+from another sack, speedily prepared supper.
+
+"Pile in," said the stranger to Cameron, passing him the pan in
+which the bacon and venison had been fried.  "Pass the tea, Little
+Thunder.  No time to waste.  We've got to hustle."
+
+Cameron was only too eager to obey these orders, and in the
+generous warmth of the big fire and under the stimulus of the
+boiling tea his strength and nerve began to come back to him.
+
+For some minutes he was too intent on satisfying his ravenous
+hunger to indulge in conversation with his host, but as his hunger
+became appeased he began to give his attention to the man who had
+so mysteriously blown in upon him out of the blizzard.  There was
+something fascinating about the lean, clean-cut face with its firm
+lines about the mouth and chin and its deep set brown-grey eyes
+that glittered like steel or shone like limpid pools of light
+according to the mood of the man.  They were extraordinary eyes.
+Cameron remembered them like dagger points behind the pistol and
+then like kindly lights in a dark window when he had smiled.  Just
+now as he sat eating with eager haste the eyes were staring forward
+into the fire out of deep sockets, with a far-away, reminiscent,
+kindly look in them.  The lumberman's heavy skin-lined jacket and
+the overalls tucked into boots could not hide the athletic lines of
+the lithe muscular figure.  Cameron looked at his hands with their
+long, sinewy fingers.  "The hands of a gentleman," thought he.
+"What is his history?  And where does he come from?"
+
+"London's my home," said the stranger, answering Cameron's mental
+queries.  "Name, Raven--Richard Colebrooke Raven--Dick for short;
+rancher, horse and cattle trader; East Kootenay; at present running
+in a stock of goods and horses; and caught like yourself in this
+beastly blizzard."
+
+"My name's Cameron, and I'm from Edinburgh a year ago," replied
+Cameron briefly.
+
+"Edinburgh?  Knew it ten years ago.  Quiet old town, quaint folk.
+Never know what they are thinking about you."
+
+Cameron smiled.  How well he remembered the calm, detached,
+critical but uncurious gaze with which the dwellers of the modern
+Athens were wont to regard mere outsiders.
+
+"I know," he said.  "I came from the North myself."
+
+The stranger had apparently forgotten him and was gazing steadily
+into the fire.  Suddenly, with extraordinary energy, he sprang from
+the ground where he had been sitting.
+
+"Now," he cried, "en avant!"
+
+"Where to?" asked Cameron, rising to his feet.
+
+"East Kootenay, all the way, and hustle's the word."
+
+"Not me," said Cameron.  "I must get back to my camp.  If you will
+kindly leave me some grub and some matches I shall be all right and
+very much obliged.  McIvor will be searching for me to-morrow."
+
+"Ha!" burst forth the stranger in vehement expletive.  "Searching
+for you, heh?"  He stood for a few moments in deep thought, then
+spoke to the Indian a few words in his own language.  That
+individual, with a fierce glance towards Cameron, grunted a gruff
+reply.
+
+"No, no," said Raven, also glancing at Cameron.  Again the Indian
+spoke, this time with insistent fierceness.  "No! no! you cold-
+blooded devil," replied the trader.  "No!  But," he added with
+emphasis, "we will take him with us.  Pack!  Here, bring in coat,
+mitts, socks, Little Thunder.  And move quick, do you hear?"  His
+voice rang out in imperious command.
+
+Little Thunder, growling though he might, no longer delayed, but
+dived into the storm and in a few moments returned bearing a bag
+from which he drew the articles of clothing desired.
+
+"But I am not going with you," said Cameron firmly.  "I cannot
+desert my chief this way.  It would give him no end of trouble.
+Leave me some matches and, if you can spare it, a little grub, and
+I shall do finely."
+
+"Get these things on," replied Raven, "and quit talking.  Don't be
+a fool! we simply can't leave you behind.  If you only knew the
+alternative, you'd--"
+
+Cameron glanced at the Indian.  The eager fierce look on that
+hideous face startled him.
+
+"We will send you back all safe in a few days," continued the
+trader with a smile.  "Come, don't delay!  March is the word."
+
+"I won't go!" said Cameron resolutely.  "I'll stay where I am."
+
+"All right, you fool!" replied Raven with a savage oath.  "Take
+your medicine then."
+
+He nodded to the Indian.  With a swift gleam of joy in his red-
+rimmed eyes the Indian reached swiftly for Cameron's rifle.
+
+"No, too much noise," said Raven, coolly finishing the packing.
+
+A swift flash of a knife in the firelight, and the Indian hurled
+himself upon the unsuspecting Cameron.  But quick as was the attack
+Cameron was quicker.  Gripping the Indian's uplifted wrist with his
+left hand, he brought his right with terrific force upon the point
+of his assailant's chin.  The Indian spun round like a top and
+pitched out into the dark.
+
+"Neatly done!" cried the trader with a great oath and a laugh.
+"Hold on, Little Thunder!" he continued, as the Indian reappeared,
+knife in hand, "He'll come now.  Quiet, you beast!  Ah-h-h!  Would
+you?"  He seized by the throat and wrist the Indian, who, frothing
+with rage and snarling like a wild animal, was struggling to reach
+Cameron again.  "Down, you dog!  Do you hear me?"
+
+With a twist of his arms he brought the Indian to his knees and
+held him as he might a child.  Quite suddenly the Indian grew
+still.
+
+"Good!" said Raven.  "Now, no more of this.  Pack up."
+
+Without a further word or glance at Cameron, Little Thunder
+gathered up the stuff and vanished.
+
+"Now," continued the trader, "you perhaps see that it would be wise
+for you to come along without further delay."
+
+"All right," said Cameron, trembling with indignant rage, "but
+remember, you'll pay for this."
+
+The trader smiled kindly upon him.
+
+"Better get these things on," he said, pointing to the articles of
+clothing upon the cave floor.  "The blizzard is gathering force and
+we have still some hours to ride.  But," he continued, stepping
+close to Cameron and looking him in the eyes, "there must be no
+more nonsense.  You can see my man is somewhat short in temper; and
+indeed mine is rather brittle at times."
+
+For a single instant a smile curled the firm lips and half closed
+the steely eyes of the speaker, and, noting the smile and the
+steely gleam in the grey-brown eyes, Cameron hastily decided that
+he would no longer resist.
+
+Warmed and fed and protected against the blizzard, but with his
+heart full of indignant wrath, Cameron found himself riding on a
+wretched cayuse before the trader whose horse could but dimly be
+seen through the storm, but which from his antics appeared to be
+possessed of a thousand demons.
+
+"Steady, Nighthawk, old boy!  We'll get 'em moving after a bit,"
+said his master, soothing the kicking beast.  "Aha, that was just a
+shade violent," he remonstrated, as the horse with a scream rushed
+open mouthed at a blundering pony and sent him scuttling forward in
+wild terror after the bunch already disappearing down the trail,
+following Little Thunder upon his broncho.
+
+The blizzard was now in their back and, though its force was
+thereby greatly lessened, the black night was still thick with
+whirling snow and the cold grew more intense every moment.  Cameron
+could hardly see his pony's ears, but, loping easily along the
+levels, scrambling wildly up the hills, and slithering recklessly
+down the slopes, the little brute followed without pause the
+cavalcade in front.  How they kept the trail Cameron could not
+imagine, but, with the instinct of their breed, the ponies never
+faltered.  Far before in the black blinding storm could be heard
+the voice of Little Thunder, rising and falling in a kind of
+singing chant, a chant which Cameron was afterwards to know right
+well.
+
+
+     "Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!
+      Kai-yai, hai-yah!  Hai!  Hai!!  Hai!!!"
+
+
+Behind him came the trader, riding easily his demon-spirited
+broncho, and singing in full baritone the patriotic ode dear to
+Britishers the world over:
+
+
+     "Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+      Three cheers for the red, white and blue!
+         The army and navy for ever,
+      Three cheers for the red, white and blue!"
+
+
+As Cameron went pounding along through the howling blizzard, half
+asleep upon his loping, scrambling, slithering pony, with the "Kai-
+yai, hai-yah" of Little Thunder wailing down the storm from before
+him and the martial notes of the trader behind him demanding cheers
+for Her Majesty's naval and military forces, he seemed to himself
+to be in the grip of some ghastly nightmare which, try as he might,
+he was unable to shake off.
+
+The ghastly unreality of the nightmare was dispelled by the sudden
+halt of the bunch of ponies in front.
+
+"All off!" cried the trader, riding forward upon his broncho,
+which, apparently quite untired by the long night ride, danced
+forward through the bunch gaily biting and slashing as he went.
+"All off!  Get them into the 'bunk-house' there, Little Thunder.
+Come along, Mr. Cameron, we have reached our camp.  Take off the
+bridle and blanket and let your pony go."
+
+Cameron did as he was told, and guided by the sound of the trader's
+voice made his way to a low log building which turned out to be the
+deserted "grub-house" of an old lumber camp.
+
+"Come along," cried the trader heartily.  "Welcome to Fifty Mile
+Camp.  Its accommodation is somewhat limited, but we can at least
+offer you a bunk, grub, and fire, and these on a night like this
+are not to be despised."  He fumbled around in the dark for a few
+moments and found and lit a candle stuck in an empty bottle.
+"There," he cried in a tone of genial hospitality and with a kindly
+smile, "get a fire on here and make yourself at home.  Nighthawk
+demands my attention for the present.  Don't look so glum, old
+boy," he added, slapping Cameron gaily on the back.  "The worst is
+over."  So saying, he disappeared into the blizzard, singing at the
+top of his voice in the cheeriest possible tones:
+
+
+     "The army and navy for ever,
+        Three cheers for the red, white and blue!"
+
+
+and leaving Cameron sorely perplexed as to what manner of man this
+might be; who one moment could smile with all the malevolence of a
+fiend and again could welcome him with all the generous and genial
+hospitality he might show to a loved and long-lost friend.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE STONIES
+
+
+The icy cold woke Cameron as the grey light came in through the
+dirty windows and the cracks between the logs of the grub-house.
+Already Little Thunder was awake and busy with the fire in the
+cracked and rusty stove.  Cameron lay still and watched.  Silently,
+swiftly the Indian moved about his work till the fire began to roar
+and the pot of snow on the top to melt.  Then the trader awoke.
+With a single movement he was out upon the floor.
+
+"All hands awake!" he shouted.  "Aha, Mr. Cameron!  Good sleep, eh?
+Slept like a bear myself.  Now grub, and off!  Still blowing, eh?
+Well, so much the better.  There is a spot thirty miles on where we
+will be snug enough.  How's breakfast, Little Thunder?  This is our
+only chance to-day, so don't spare the grub."
+
+Cameron made but slight reply.  He was stiff and sore with the cold
+and the long ride of the day before.  This, however, he minded but
+little.  If he could only guess what lay before him.  He was torn
+between anxiety and indignation.  He could hardly make himself
+believe that he was alive and in his waking senses.  Twenty-four
+hours ago he was breakfasting with McIvor and his gang in the camp
+by The Bow; now he was twenty or thirty miles away in the heart of
+the mountains and practically a prisoner in the hands of as blood-
+thirsty a looking Indian as he had ever seen, and a man who
+remained to him an inexplicable mystery.  Who and what was this
+man?  He scanned his face in the growing light.  Strength, daring,
+alertness, yes, and kindliness, he read in the handsome, brown,
+lean face of this stranger, lit by its grey-brown hazel eyes and
+set off with brown wavy hair which the absence of a cap now for the
+first time revealed.
+
+"He looks all right," Cameron said to himself.  And yet when he
+recalled the smile that had curled these thin lips and half closed
+these hazel eyes in the cave the night before, and when he thought
+of that murderous attack of his Indian companion, he found it
+difficult wholly to trust the man who was at once his rescuer and
+his captor.
+
+In the days of the early eighties there were weird stories floating
+about through the Western country of outlaw Indian traders whose
+chief stock for barter was a concoction which passed for whiskey,
+but the ingredients of which were principally high wines and
+tobacco juice, with a little molasses to sweeten it and a touch of
+blue stone to give it bite.  Men of reckless daring were these
+traders, resourceful and relentless.  For a bottle of their "hell-
+fire fluid" they would buy a buffalo hide, a pack of beaver skins,
+or a cayuse from an Indian without hesitation or remorse.  With a
+keg or two of their deadly brew they would approach a tribe and
+strip it bare of a year's catch of furs.
+
+In the fierce fights that often followed, the Indian, poorly armed
+and half dead with the poison he had drunk, would come off second
+best and many a wretched native was left to burn and blister upon
+the plains or among the coulees at the foothills to mark the trail
+of the whiskey runners.
+
+In British territory all this style of barter was of course unlawful.
+The giving, selling, or trading of any sort of intoxicant to the
+Indians was absolutely prohibited.  But it was a land of vast and
+mighty spaces, and everywhere were hiding places where armies could
+be safely disposed, and therefore there was small chance for the
+enforcement of the laws of the Dominion. There was little risk to
+the whiskey runners; and, indeed, however great the risk, the
+immense profits of their trade would have made them willing to
+take it.
+
+Hence all through the Western plains the whiskey runners had their
+way to the degradation and demoralization of the unhappy natives
+and to the rapid decimation of their numbers.  Horse thieves, too,
+and cattle "rustlers" operating on both sides of "the line" added
+to the general confusion and lawlessness that prevailed and
+rendered the lives and property of the few pioneer settlers
+insecure.
+
+It was to deal with this situation that the Dominion Government
+organised and despatched the North West Mounted Police to Western
+Canada.  Immediately upon the advent of this famous corps matters
+began to improve.  The open ravages of the whiskey runners ceased
+and these daring outlaws were forced to carry on their fiendish
+business by midnight marches and through the secret trails and
+coulees of the foothills.  The profits of the trade, however, were
+still great enough to tempt the more reckless and daring of these
+men.  Cattle rustling and horse stealing still continued, but on a
+much smaller scale.  To the whole country the advent of the police
+proved an incalculable blessing.  But to the Indian tribes especially
+was this the case.  The natives soon learned to regard the police
+officers as their friends.  In them they found protection from the
+unscrupulous traders who had hitherto cheated them without mercy or
+conscience, as well as from the whiskey runners through whose
+devilish activities their people had suffered irreparable loss.
+
+The administration of the law by the officers of the police with
+firm and patient justice put an end also to the frequent and bloody
+wars that had prevailed previously between the various tribes,
+till, by these wild and savage people the red coat came to be
+regarded with mingled awe and confidence, a terror to evil-doers
+and a protection to those that did well.
+
+To which class did this man belong?  This Cameron was utterly
+unable to decide.
+
+With this problem vexing his mind he ate his breakfast in almost
+complete silence, making only monosyllabic replies to the trader's
+cheerful attempts at conversation.
+
+Suddenly, with disconcerting accuracy, the trader seemed to read
+his mind.
+
+"Now, Mr. Cameron," he said, pulling out his pipe, "we will have a
+smoke and a chat.  Fill up."  He passed Cameron his little bag of
+tobacco.  "Last night things were somewhat strained," he continued.
+"Frankly, I confess, I took you at first for a whiskey runner and a
+horse thief, and having suffered from these gentlemen considerably
+I was taking no chances."
+
+"Why force me to go with you, then?" asked Cameron angrily.
+
+"Why?  For your good.  There is less danger both to you--and to me--
+with you under my eye," replied the trader with a smile.
+
+"Yet your man would have murdered me?"
+
+"Well, you see Little Thunder is one of the Blood Tribe and rather
+swift with his knife at times, I confess.  Besides, his family has
+suffered at the hands of the whiskey runners.  He is a chief and he
+owes it to these devils that he is out of a job just now.  You may
+imagine he is somewhat touchy on the point of whiskey traders.
+
+"It was you set him on me," said Cameron, still wrathful.
+
+"No, no," said the trader, laughing quietly.  "That was merely to
+startle you out of your, pardon me, unreasonable obstinacy.  You
+must believe me it was the only thing possible that you should
+accompany us, for if you were a whiskey runner then it was better
+for us that you should be under guard, and if you were a surveyor
+it was better for you that you should be in our care.  Why, man,
+this storm may go for three days, and you would be stiff long
+before anyone could find you.  No, no, I confess our measures may
+have seemed somewhat--ah--abrupt, but, believe me, they were
+necessary, and in a day or two you will acknowledge that I am in
+the right of it.  Meantime let's trust each other, and there is my
+hand on it, Cameron."
+
+There was no resisting the frank smile, the open manner of the man,
+and Cameron took the offered hand with a lighter heart than he had
+known for the last twelve hours.
+
+"Now, then, that's settled," cried the trader, springing to his
+feet.  "Cameron, you can pack this stuff together while Little
+Thunder and I dig out our bunch of horses.  They will be half
+frozen and it will be hard to knock any life into them."
+
+It was half an hour before Cameron had his packs ready, and, there
+being no sign of the trader, he put on his heavy coat, mitts, and
+cap and fought his way through the blizzard, which was still raging
+in full force, to the bunk-house, a log building about thirty feet
+long and half as wide, in which were huddled the horses and ponies
+to the number of about twenty.  Eight of the ponies carried pack
+saddles, and so busy were Raven and the Indian with the somewhat
+delicate operation of assembling the packs that he was close upon
+them before they were aware.  Boxes and bags were strewn about in
+orderly disorder, and on one side were several small kegs.  As
+Cameron drew near, the Indian, who was the first to notice him,
+gave a grunt.
+
+"What the blank blank are you doing here?" cried Raven with a
+string of oaths, flinging a buffalo robe over the kegs.  "My word!
+You startled me," he added with a short laugh.  "I haven't got used
+to you yet.  All right, Little Thunder, get these boxes together.
+Bring that grey cayuse here, Cameron, the one with the rope on near
+the door."
+
+This was easier said than done, for the half-broken brute snorted
+and plunged till Cameron, taking a turn of the rope round his nose,
+forced him up through the trembling, crowding bunch.
+
+"Good!" said the trader.  "You are all right.  You didn't learn to
+rope a cayuse in Edinburgh, I guess.  Here's his saddle.  Cinch it
+on."
+
+While Cameron was engaged in carrying out these orders Little
+Thunder and the trader were busy roping boxes and kegs into pack
+loads with a skill and dexterity that could only be the result of
+long practice.
+
+"Now, then, Cameron, we'll load some of this molasses on your
+pony."
+
+So saying, Raven picked up one of the kegs.
+
+"Hello, Little Thunder, this keg's leaking.  It's lost the plug, as
+I'm a sinner."
+
+Sure enough, from a small auger hole golden syrup was streaming
+over the edge of the keg.
+
+"I am certain I put that plug in yesterday," said Raven.  "Must
+have been knocked out last night.  Fortunately it stood right end
+up or we should have lost the whole keg."
+
+While he was speaking he was shaping a small stick into a small
+plug, which he drove tight into the keg.
+
+"That will fix it," he said.  "Now then, put these boxes on the
+other side.  That will do.  Take your pony toward the door and tie
+him there.  Little Thunder and I will load the rest and bring them
+up."
+
+In a very short time all the remaining goods were packed into neat
+loads and lashed upon the pack ponies in such a careful manner that
+neither box nor keg could be seen outside the cover of blankets and
+buffalo skins.
+
+"Now then," cried Raven.  "Boots and saddles!  We will give you a
+better mount to-day," he continued, selecting a stout built sorrel
+pony.  "There you are!  And a dandy he is, sure-footed as a goat
+and easy as a cradle.  Now then, Nighthawk, we shall just clear out
+this bunch."
+
+As he spoke he whipped the blanket off his horse.  Cameron could
+not forbear an exclamation of wonder and admiration as his eyes
+fell upon Raven's horse.  And not without reason, for Nighthawk was
+as near perfection as anything in horse flesh of his size could be.
+His coal-black satin skin, his fine flat legs, small delicate head,
+sloping hips, round and well ribbed barrel, all showed his breed.
+Rolling up the blanket, Raven strapped it to his saddle and,
+flinging himself astride his horse, gave a yell that galvanised the
+wretched, shivering, dispirited bunch into immediate life and
+activity.
+
+"Get out the packers there, Little Thunder.  Hurry up!  Don't be
+all day.  Cameron, fall behind with me."
+
+Little Thunder seized the leading line of the first packer, leaped
+astride his own pony, and pushed out into the storm.  But the rest
+of the animals held back and refused to face the blizzard.  The
+traditions of the cayuse are unheroic in the matter of blizzards
+and are all in favor of turning tail to every storm that blows.
+But Nighthawk soon overcame their reluctance, whether traditional
+or otherwise.  With a fury nothing less than demoniacal he fell
+upon the animals next him and inspired them with such terror that,
+plunging forward, they carried the bunch crowding through the door.
+It was no small achievement to turn some twenty shivering, balky,
+stubborn cayuses and bronchos out of their shelter and swing them
+through the mazes of the old lumber camp into the trail again.  But
+with Little Thunder breaking the trail and chanting his encouraging
+refrain in front and the trader and his demoniac stallion dynamically
+bringing up the rear, this achievement was effected without the
+straying of a single animal.  Raven was in great spirits, singing,
+shouting, and occasionally sending Nighthawk open-mouthed in a
+fierce charge upon the laggards hustling the long straggling line
+onwards through the whirling drifts without pause or falter.
+Occasionally he dropped back beside Cameron, who brought up the
+rear, bringing a word of encouragement or approval.
+
+"How do they ever keep the trail?" asked Cameron on one of these
+occasions.
+
+"Little Thunder does the trick.  He is the greatest tracker in this
+country, unless it is his cayuse, which has a nose like a bloodhound
+and will keep the trail through three feet of snow.  The rest of the
+bunch follow.  They are afraid to do anything else in a blizzard
+like this."
+
+So hour after hour, upward along mountainsides, for by this time
+they were far into the Rockies, and down again through thick
+standing forests in the valleys, across ravines and roaring
+torrents which the warm weather of the previous days had released
+from the glaciers, and over benches of open country, where the
+grass lay buried deep beneath the snow, they pounded along.  The
+clouds of snow ever whirling about Cameron's head and in front of
+his eyes hid the distant landscape and engulfed the head of the
+cavalcade before him.  Without initiative and without volition, but
+in a dreamy haze, he sat his pony to which he entrusted his life
+and fortune and waited for the will of his mysterious companion to
+develope.
+
+About mid-day Nighthawk danced back out of the storm ahead and
+dropped in beside Cameron's pony.
+
+"A chinook coming," said Raven.  "Getting warmer, don't you
+notice?"
+
+"No, I didn't notice, but now that you call attention to it I do
+feel a little more comfortable," replied Cameron.
+
+"Sure thing.  Rain in an hour."
+
+"An hour?  In six perhaps."
+
+"In less than an hour," replied Raven, "the chinook will be here.
+We're riding into it.  It blows down through the pass before us and
+it will lick up this snow in no time.  You'll see the grass all
+about you before three hours are passed."
+
+The event proved the truth of Raven's prediction.  With incredible
+rapidity the temperature continued to rise.  In half an hour
+Cameron discarded his mitts and unbuttoned his skin-lined jacket.
+The wind dropped to a gentle breeze, swinging more and more into
+the southwest, and before the hour was gone the sun was shining
+fitfully again and the snow had changed into a drizzling rain.
+
+The extraordinary suddenness of these atmospheric changes only
+increased the sense of phantasmic unreality with which Cameron had
+been struggling during the past thirty-six hours.  As the afternoon
+wore on the air became sensibly warmer.  The moisture rose in
+steaming clouds from the mountainsides, the snow ran everywhere in
+gurgling rivulets, the rivulets became streams, the streams rivers,
+and the mountain torrents which they had easily forded earlier in
+the day threatened to sweep them away.
+
+The trader's spirits appeared to rise with the temperature.  He was
+in high glee.  It was as if he had escaped some imminent peril.
+
+"We will make it all right!" he shouted to Little Thunder as they
+paused for a few moments in a grassy glade.  "Can we make the Forks
+before dark?"
+
+Little Thunder's grunt might mean anything, but to the trader it
+expressed doubt.
+
+"On then!" he shouted.  "We must make these brutes get a move on.
+They'll feed when we camp."
+
+So saying he hurled his horse upon the straggling bunch of ponies
+that were eagerly snatching mouthfuls of grass from which the
+chinook had already melted the snow.  Mercilessly and savagely the
+trader, with whip and voice and charging stallion, hustled the
+wretched animals into the trail once more.  And through the long
+afternoon, with unceasing and brutal ferocity, he belabored the
+faltering, stumbling, half-starved creatures, till from sheer
+exhaustion they were like to fall upon the trail.  It was a weary
+business and disgusting, but the demon spirit of Nighthawk seemed
+to have passed into his master, and with an insistence that knew no
+mercy together they battered that wretched bunch up and down the
+long slopes till at length the merciful night fell upon the
+straggling, stumbling cavalcade and made a rapid pace impossible.
+
+At the head of a long slope Little Thunder came to an abrupt halt,
+rode to the rear and grunted something to his chief.
+
+"What?" cried Raven in a startled voice.  "Stonies!  Where?"
+
+Little Thunder pointed.
+
+"Did they see you?"  This insult Little Thunder disdained to
+notice.  "Good!" replied Raven.  "Stay here, Cameron, we will take
+a look at them."
+
+In a very few minutes he returned, an eager tone in his voice, an
+eager gleam in his eyes.
+
+"Stonies!" he exclaimed.  "And a big camp.  On their way back from
+their winter's trapping.  Old Macdougall himself in charge, I
+think.  Do you know him?"
+
+"I have heard of him," said Cameron, and his tone indicated his
+reverence for the aged pioneer Methodist missionary who had
+accomplished such marvels during his long years of service with his
+Indian flock and had gained such a wonderful control over them.
+
+"Yes, he is all right," replied Raven, answering his tone.  "He is
+a shrewd old boy, though.  Looks mighty close after the trading
+end.  Well, we will perhaps do a little trade ourselves.  But we
+won't disturb the old man," he continued, as if to himself.  "Come
+and take a look at them."
+
+Little Thunder had halted at a spot where the trail forked.  One
+part led to the right down the long slope of the mountain, the
+other to the left, gradually climbing toward the top.  The Stonies
+had come by the right hand trail and were now camped off the trail
+on a little sheltered bench further down the side of the mountain
+and surrounded by a scattering group of tall pines.  Through the
+misty night their camp fires burned cheerily, lighting up their
+lodges.  Around the fires could be seen groups of men squatted on
+the ground and here and there among the lodges the squaws were
+busy, evidently preparing the evening meal.  At one side of the
+camp could be distinguished a number of tethered ponies and near
+them others quietly grazing.
+
+But though the camp lay only a few hundred yards away and on a
+lower level, not a sound came up from it to Cameron's ears except
+the occasional bark of a dog.  The Indians are a silent people and
+move noiselessly through Nature's solitudes as if in reverence for
+her sacred mysteries.
+
+"We won't disturb them," said Raven in a low tone.  "We will slip
+past quietly."
+
+"They come from Morleyville, don't they?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Why not visit the camp?" exclaimed Cameron eagerly.  "I am sure
+Mr. Macdougall would be glad to see us.  And why could not I go
+back with him?  My camp is right on the trail to Morleyville."
+
+Raven stood silent, evidently perplexed.
+
+"Well," he replied hesitatingly, "we shall see later.  Meantime
+let's get into camp ourselves.  And no noise, please."  His voice
+was low and stern.
+
+Silently, and as swiftly as was consistent with silence, Little
+Thunder led his band of pack horses along the upper trail, the
+trader and Cameron bringing up the rear with the other ponies.  For
+about half a mile they proceeded in this direction, then, turning
+sharply to the right, they cut across through the straggling woods,
+and so came upon the lower trail, beyond the encampment of the
+Stonies and well out of sight of it.
+
+"We camp here," said Raven briefly.  "But remember, no noise."
+
+"What about visiting their camp?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"There is no immediate hurry."
+
+He spoke a few words to Little Thunder in Indian.
+
+"Little Thunder thinks they may be Blackfeet.  We can't be too
+careful.  Now let's get grub."
+
+Cameron made no reply.  The trader's hesitating manner awakened all
+his former suspicions.  He was firmly convinced the Indians were
+Stonies and he resolved that come what might he would make his
+escape to their camp.
+
+Without unloading their packs they built their fire upon a large
+flat rock and there, crouching about it, for the mists were chilly,
+they had their supper.
+
+In undertones Raven and Little Thunder conversed in the Indian
+speech.  The gay careless air of the trader had given place to one
+of keen, purposeful determination.  There was evidently serious
+business on foot.  Immediately after supper Little Thunder vanished
+into the mist.
+
+"We may as well make ourselves comfortable," said Raven, pulling a
+couple of buffalo skins from a pack and giving one to Cameron.
+"Little Thunder is gone to reconnoiter."  He threw some sticks upon
+the fire.  "Better go to sleep," he suggested.  "We shall probably
+visit the camp in the morning if they should prove to be Stonies."
+
+Cameron made no reply, but, lying down upon his buffalo skin,
+pretended to sleep, though with the firm resolve to keep awake.
+But he had passed through an exhausting day and before many minutes
+had passed he fell into a doze.
+
+From this he awoke with a start, his ears filled with the sound of
+singing.  Beyond the fire lay Raven upon his face, apparently sound
+asleep.  The singing came from the direction of the Indian camp.
+Noiselessly he rose and stole up the trail to a point from which
+the camp was plainly visible.  A wonderful scene lay before his
+eyes.  A great fire burned in the centre of the camp and round the
+fire the whole band of Indians was gathered with their squaws in
+the background.  In the centre of the circle stood a tall man with
+a venerable beard, apparently reading.  After he had read the sound
+of singing once more rose upon the night air.
+
+"Stonies, all right," said Cameron exultantly to himself.  "And at
+evening prayers, too, by Jove."
+
+He remembered hearing McIvor tell how the Stonies never went on a
+hunting expedition without their hymn books and never closed a day
+without their evening worship.  The voices were high-pitched and
+thin, but from that distance they floated up soft and sweet.  He
+could clearly distinguish the music of the old Methodist hymn, the
+words of which were quite familiar to him:
+
+
+     "There is a fountain filled with blood
+        Drawn from Immanuel's veins;
+      And sinners plunged beneath that flood.
+        Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+
+Over and over again, with strange wild cadences of their own
+invention, the worshippers wailed forth the refrain,
+
+
+     "Lose all their guilty stains."
+
+
+Then, all kneeling, they went to prayer.  Over all, the misty moon
+struggling through the broken clouds cast a pale and ghostly light.
+It was, to Cameron with his old-world religious conventions and
+traditions, a weirdly fascinating but intensely impressive scene.
+Afar beyond the valley, appeared in dim outline the great
+mountains, with their heads thrust up into the sky.  Nearer at
+their bases gathered the pines, at first in solid gloomy masses,
+then, as they approached, in straggling groups, and at last singly,
+like tall sentinels on guard.  On the grassy glade, surrounded by
+the sentinel pines, the circle of dusky worshippers, kneeling about
+their camp fire, lifted their faces heavenward and their hearts
+God-ward in prayer, and as upon those dusky faces the firelight
+fell in fitful gleams, so upon their hearts, dark with the
+superstitions of a hundred generations, there fell the gleams of
+the torch held high by the hands of their dauntless ambassador of
+the blessed Gospel of the Grace of God.
+
+With mingled feelings of reverence and of pity Cameron stood gazing
+down upon this scene, resolved more than ever to attach himself to
+this camp whose days closed with evening prayer.
+
+"Impressive scene!" said a mocking voice in his ear.
+
+Cameron started.  A sudden feeling of repulsion seized him.
+
+"Yes," he said gravely, "an impressive scene, in my eyes at least,
+and I should not wonder if in the eyes of God as well."
+
+"Who knows?" said Raven gruffly, as they both turned back to the
+fire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE DULL RED STAIN
+
+
+The minutes passed slowly.  The scene in the camp of the Stonies
+that he had just witnessed drove all sleep from Cameron.  He was
+firmly resolved that at the first opportunity he would make his
+break for liberty; for he was now fully aware that though not
+confessedly he was none the less really a prisoner.
+
+As he lay intently thinking, forming and discarding plans of
+escape, two Indians, followed by Little Thunder, walked quietly
+within the circle of the firelight and with a nod and a grunt
+towards Raven sat down by the fire.  Raven passed his tobacco bag,
+which, without a word, they accepted; and, filling their pipes,
+they gravely began to smoke.
+
+"White Cloud," grunted Little Thunder, waving his hand to the first
+Indian.  "Big Chief.  Him," pointing to the second Indian, "White
+Cloud brother."
+
+"My brothers had good hunting this year," said Raven.
+
+The Indians grunted for reply.
+
+"Your packs are heavy?"
+
+Another grunt made answer.
+
+"We have much goods," continued Raven.  "But the time is short.
+Come and see."
+
+Raven led them out into the dark towards the pack horse, Little
+Thunder remaining by the fire.  From the darkness Cameron could
+hear Raven's voice in low tones and the Indians' guttural replies
+mingled with unusual laughter.
+
+When they returned the change in their appearance was plainly
+visible.  Their eyes were gleaming with an unnatural excitement,
+their grave and dignified demeanour had given place to an eager,
+almost childish excitement.  Cameron did not need the whiff that
+came to him from their breath to explain the cause of this sudden
+change.  The signs were to him only too familiar.
+
+"My brothers will need to hurry," said Raven.  "We move when the
+moon is high."
+
+"Good!" replied White Cloud.  "Go, quick."  He waved his hand
+toward the dark.  "Come."  He brought it back again.  "Heap quick."
+Without further word they vanished, silent as the shadows that
+swallowed them up.
+
+"Now, then, Cameron, we have big business on foot.  Up and give us
+a hand.  Little Thunder, take the bunch down the trail a couple of
+miles and come back."
+
+Selecting one of the pack ponies, he tied it to a pine tree and the
+others he hurried off with Little Thunder down the trail.
+
+"Going to do some trading, are you?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Yes, if the price is right, though I'm not too keen," replied
+Raven, throwing himself down beside the fire.
+
+"What are you after?  Furs?"
+
+"Yes, furs mostly.  Anything they have to offer."
+
+"What do you give in exchange?"
+
+Raven threw him a sharp glance, but Cameron's face was turned
+toward the fire.
+
+"Oh, various articles.  Wearing apparel, tobacco, finery.  Molasses
+too.  They are very fond of molasses."
+
+"Molasses?" echoed Cameron, with a touch of scorn.  "It was not
+molasses they had to-night.  Why did you give them whiskey?" he
+asked boldly.
+
+Raven started.  His eyes narrowed to two piercing points.
+
+"Why?  That's my business, my friend.  I keep a flask to treat my
+guests occasionally.  Have you any objection?"
+
+"It is against the law, I understand, and mighty bad for the
+Indians."
+
+"Against the law?" echoed Raven in childlike surprise.  "You don't
+tell me!"
+
+"So the Mounted Police declare," said Cameron, turning his eyes
+upon Raven's face.
+
+"The Mounted Police!" exclaimed Raven, pouring forth a flood of
+oaths.  "That! for the Mounted Police!" he said, snapping his
+fingers.
+
+"But," replied Cameron, "I understood you very especially to object
+to the operations of the whiskey runners?"
+
+"Whiskey runners?  Who's speaking of whiskey runners?  I'm talking
+of the approved method of treating our friends in this country, and
+if the police should interfere between me and my friends they would
+be carrying things a little too far.  But all the same," he
+continued, hastily checking himself, "the police are all right.
+They put down a lot of lawlessness in this country.  But I may as
+well say to you here, Mr. Cameron," he continued, "that there are
+certain things it is best not to see, or, having seen, to speedily
+forget."  As he spoke these words his eyes narrowed again to two
+grey points that seemed to bore right through to Cameron's brain.
+
+"This man is a very devil," thought Cameron to himself.  "I was a
+fool not to see it before."  But to the trader he said, "There are
+some things I would rather not see and some things I cannot
+forget."
+
+Before another hour had passed the Stonies reappeared, this time on
+ponies.  The trader made no move to meet them.  He sat quietly
+smoking by the fire.  Silently the Indians approached the fire and
+threw down a pack of furs.
+
+"Huh!" said White Cloud.  "Good!  Ver good!"  He opened his pack
+and spread out upon the rock with impressive deliberation its
+contents.  And good they were, even to Cameron's uncultured eye.
+Wolf skins and bear, cinnamon and black, beaver, fox, and mink, as
+well as some magnificent specimens of mountain goat and sheep.
+"Good!  Good!  Big--fine--heap good!"  White Cloud continued to
+exclaim as he displayed his collection.
+
+Raven turned them over carelessly, feeling the furs, examining and
+weighing the pelts.  Then going to the pack horse he returned and
+spread out upon the rock beside the furs the goods which he
+proposed to offer in exchange.  And a pitiful display it was, gaudy
+calicoes and flimsy flannels, the brilliance of whose colour was
+only equalled by the shoddiness of the material, cheap domestic
+blankets, half wool half cotton, prepared especially for the Indian
+trade.  These, with beads and buttons, trinkets, whole strings of
+brass rings, rolls of tobacco, bags of shot and powder, pot metal
+knives, and other articles, all bearing the stamp of glittering
+fraud, constituted his stock for barter.  The Indians made
+strenuous efforts to maintain an air of dignified indifference, but
+the glitter in their eyes betrayed their eagerness.  White Cloud
+picked up a goat skin, heavy with its deep silky fur and with its
+rich splendour covered over the glittering mass of Raven's cheap
+and tawdry stuff.
+
+"Good trade," said White Cloud.  "Him," pointing to the skin,
+"and," turning it back, "him," laying his hand upon the goods
+beneath.
+
+Raven smiled carelessly, pulled out a flask from his pocket, took a
+drink and passed it to the others.  Desperately struggling to
+suppress his eagerness and to maintain his dignified bearing, White
+Cloud seized the flask and, drinking long and deep, passed it to
+his brother.
+
+"Have a drink, Cameron," said Raven, as he received his flask
+again.
+
+"No!" said Cameron shortly.  "And I would suggest to your friends
+that they complete the trade before they drink much more."
+
+"My friend here says this is no good," said Raven to the Indians,
+tapping the flask with his finger.  "He says no more drink."
+
+White Cloud shot a keen enquiring glance at Cameron, but he made no
+reply other than to stretch out his hand for Raven's flask again.
+Before many minutes the efficacy of Raven's methods of barter began
+to be apparent.  The Indians lost their grave and dignified
+demeanour.  They became curious, eager, garrulous, and demonstrative.
+With childish glee they began examining more closely Raven's supply
+of goods, trying on the rings, draping themselves in the gaudy
+calicoes and flannels.  At length Raven rolled up his articles of
+barter and set them upon one side.
+
+"How much?" he said.
+
+White Cloud selected the goat skin, laid upon it some half dozen
+beaver and mink, and a couple of foxes, and rolling them up in a
+pile laid them beside Raven's bundle.
+
+The trader smiled and shook his head.  "No good.  No good."  So
+saying he took from his pack another flask and laid it upon his
+pile.
+
+Instantly the Indian increased his pile by a bear skin, a grey
+wolf, and a mountain goat.  Then, without waiting for Raven's
+words, he reached for the flask.
+
+"No, not yet," said Raven quietly, laying his hand down upon the
+flask.
+
+The Indian with gleaming eyes threw on the pile some additional
+skins.
+
+"Good!" said Raven, surrendering the flask.  Swiftly the Indian
+caught it up and, seizing the cork in his teeth, bit it off close
+to the neck of the flask.  Snatching his knife from his pocket with
+almost frantic energy, he proceeded to dig out the imbedded cork.
+
+"Here," said Raven, taking the flask from him.  "Let me have it."
+From his pocket he took a knife containing a corkscrew and with
+this he drew the cork and handed the flask back to the Indian.
+
+With shameless, bestial haste the Indian placed the bottle to his
+lips and after a long pull passed it to his waiting brother.
+
+At this point Raven rose as if to close the negotiations and took
+out his own flask for a final drink, but found it empty.
+
+"Aha!" he exclaimed, turning the empty flask upside down.  At once
+the Indian passed him his flask.  Raven, however, waved him aside
+and, going to his pack, drew out a tin oil can which would contain
+about a gallon.  From this with great deliberation he filled his
+flask.
+
+"Huh!" exclaimed the Indian, pointing to the can.  "How much?"
+
+Raven shook his head.  "No sell.  For me," he answered, tapping
+himself on the breast.
+
+"How much?" said the Indian fiercely.
+
+Still Raven declined to sell.
+
+Swiftly the Indian gathered up the remaining half of his pack of
+furs and, throwing them savagely at Raven's feet, seized the can.
+
+Still Raven refused to let it go.
+
+At this point the soft padding of a loping pony was heard coming up
+the trail and in a few minutes Little Thunder silently took his
+place in the circle about the fire.  Cameron's heart sank within
+him, for now it seemed as if his chance of escape had slipped from
+him.
+
+Raven spoke a few rapid words to Little Thunder, who entered into
+conversation with the Stonies.  At length White Cloud drew from his
+coat a black fox skin.  In spite of himself Raven uttered a slight
+exclamation.  It was indeed a superb pelt.  With savage hate in
+every line of his face and in every movement of his body, the
+Indian flung the skin upon the pile of furs and without a "By your
+leave" seized the can and passed it to his brother.
+
+At this point Raven, with a sudden display of reckless generosity,
+placed his own flask upon the Indian's pile of goods.
+
+"Ask them if they want molasses," said Raven to Little Thunder.
+
+"No," grunted the Indian contemptuously, preparing to depart.
+
+"Ask them, Little Thunder."
+
+Immediately as Little Thunder began to speak the contemptuous
+attitude of the Stonies gave place to one of keen interest and
+desire.  After some further talk Little Thunder went to the pack-
+pony, returned bearing a small keg and set it on the rock beside
+Raven's pile of furs.  Hastily the Stonies consulted together,
+White Cloud apparently reluctant, the brother recklessly eager to
+close the deal.  Finally with a gesture White Cloud put an end to
+the conversation, stepped out hastily into the dark and returned
+leading his pony into the light.  Cutting asunder the lashings
+with his knife, he released a bundle of furs and threw it down at
+Raven's feet.
+
+"Same ting.  Good!" he said.
+
+But Raven would not look at the bundle and proceeded to pack up the
+spoils of his barter.  Earnestly the Stonies appealed to Little
+Thunder, but in vain.  Angrily they remonstrated, but still without
+result.  At length Little Thunder pointed to the pony and without
+hesitation White Cloud placed the bridle rein in his hands.
+
+Cameron could contain himself no longer.  Suddenly rising from his
+place he strode to the side of the Indians and cried, "Don't do it!
+Don't be such fools!  This no good," he said, kicking the keg.
+"What would Mr. Macdougall say?  Come!  I go with you.  Take back
+these furs."
+
+He stepped forward to seize the second pack.  Swiftly Little
+Thunder leaped before him, knife in hand, and crouched to spring.
+The Stonies had no doubt as to his meaning.  Their hearts were
+filled with black rage against the unscrupulous trader, but their
+insane thirst for the "fire-water" swept from their minds every
+other consideration but that of determination to gratify this mad
+lust.  Unconsciously they ranged themselves beside Cameron, their
+hands going to their belts.  Quietly Raven spoke a few rapid words
+to Little Thunder, who, slowly putting up his knife, made a brief
+but vigourous harangue to the Stonies, the result of which was seen
+in the doubtful glances which they cast upon Cameron from time to
+time.
+
+"Come on!" cried Cameron again, laying his hand upon the nearest
+Indian.  "Let's go to your camp.  Take your furs.  He is a thief, a
+robber, a bad man.  All that," sweeping his hand towards Raven's
+goods, "no good.  This," kicking the keg, "bad.  Kill you."
+
+These words they could not entirely understand, but his gestures
+were sufficiently eloquent and significant.  There was an ugly
+gleam in Raven's eyes and an ugly curl to his thin lips, but he
+only smiled.
+
+"Come," he said, waving his hand toward the furs, "take them away.
+Tell them we don't want to trade, Little Thunder."  He pulled out
+his flask, slowly took a drink, and passed it to Little Thunder,
+who greedily followed his example.  "Tell them we don't want to
+trade at all," insisted Raven.
+
+Little Thunder volubly explained the trader's wishes.
+
+"Good-bye," said Raven, offering his hand to White Cloud.  "Good
+friends," he added, once more passing him his flask.
+
+"Don't!" said Cameron, laying his hand again upon the Indian's arm.
+For a single instant White Cloud paused.
+
+"Huh!" grunted Little Thunder in contempt.  "Big chief scared."
+
+Quickly the Stony shook off Cameron's hand, seized the flask and,
+putting it to his lips, drained it dry.
+
+"Come," said Cameron to the other Stony.  "Come with me."
+
+Raven uttered a warning word to Little Thunder.  The Indians stood
+for some moments uncertain, their heads bowed upon their breasts.
+Then White Cloud, throwing back his head and looking Cameron full
+in the face, said--"Good man.  Good man.  Me no go."
+
+"Then I go alone," cried Cameron, springing off into the darkness.
+
+As he turned his foot caught the pile of wood brought for the fire.
+He tripped and stumbled almost to the ground.  Before he could
+recover himself Little Thunder, swift as a wildcat, leaped upon his
+back with his ever-ready knife in his upraised hand, but before he
+could strike, Cameron had turned himself and throwing the Indian
+off had struggled to his feet.
+
+"Hold there!" cried Raven with a terrible oath, flinging himself
+upon the struggling pair.
+
+A moment or two the Stonies hesitated, then they too seized Cameron
+and between them all they bore him fighting to the ground.
+
+"Keep back!  Keep back!" cried Raven in a terrible voice to Little
+Thunder, who, knife in hand, was dancing round, seeking an
+opportunity to strike.  "Will you lie still, or shall I knock your
+head in?" said Raven to Cameron through his clenched teeth, with
+one hand on his throat and the other poising a revolver over his
+head.  Cameron gave up the struggle.
+
+"Speak and quick!" cried Raven, his face working with passion, his
+voice thick and husky, his breath coming in quick gasps from the
+fury that possessed him.
+
+"All right," said Cameron.  "Let me up.  You have beaten me this
+time."
+
+Raven sprang to his feet.
+
+"Let him up!" he said.  "Now, then, Cameron, give me your word you
+won't try to escape."
+
+"No, I will not!  I'll see you hanged first," said Cameron.
+
+Raven deliberately drew his pistol and said slowly:
+
+"I have saved your life twice already, but the time is past for any
+more trifling.  Now you've got to take it."
+
+At this Little Thunder spoke a word, pointing toward the camp of
+the Stonies.  Raven hesitated, then with an oath he strode toward
+Cameron and thrusting his pistol in his face said in tones of cold
+and concentrated rage:
+
+"Listen to me, you fool!  Your life is hanging by a hair trigger
+that goes off with a feather touch.  I give you one more chance.
+Move hand or foot and the bullet in this gun will pass neatly
+through your eye.  So help me God Almighty!"
+
+He spoke to Little Thunder, still keeping Cameron covered with his
+gun.  The Indian slipped quietly behind Cameron and swiftly threw a
+line over his shoulders and, drawing it tight, bound his arms to
+his side.  Again and again he repeated this operation till Cameron
+stood swathed in the coils of the rope like a mummy, inwardly
+raging, not so much at his captor, but at himself and his stupid
+bungling of his break for liberty.  His helpless and absurd
+appearance seemed to restore Raven's good humour.
+
+"Now, then," he said, turning to the Stonies and resuming his
+careless air, "we will finish our little business.  Sit down, Mr.
+Cameron," he continued, with a pleasant smile.  "It may be less
+dignified, but it is much more comfortable."
+
+Once more he took out his flask and passed it round, forgetting to
+take it back from his Indian visitors, who continued to drink from
+it in turn.
+
+"Listen," he said.  "I give you all you see here for your furs and
+a pony to pack them.  That is my last word.  Quick, yes or no?
+Tell them no more trifling, Little Thunder.  The moon is high.  We
+start in ten minutes."
+
+There was no further haggling.  The Indians seemed to recognise
+that the time for that was past.  After a brief consultation they
+grunted their acceptance and proceeded to pack up their goods, but
+with no good will.  More vividly than any in the company they
+realised the immensity of the fraud that was being perpetrated upon
+them.  They were being robbed of their whole winter's kill and that
+of some of their friends as well, but they were helpless in the
+grip of their mad passion for the trader's fire-water.  Disgusted
+with themselves and filled with black rage against the man who had
+so pitilessly stripped them bare of the profits of a year's toil
+and privation, how gladly would they have put their knives into his
+back, but they knew his sort by only too bitter experience and they
+knew that at his hands they need expect no pity.
+
+"Here," cried Raven, observing their black looks.  "A present for
+my brothers."  He handed them each a roll of tobacco.  "And a
+present for their squaws," adding a scarlet blanket apiece to their
+pack.
+
+Without a word of thanks they took the gifts and, loading their
+stuff upon their remaining pony, disappeared down the trail.
+
+"Now, Little Thunder, let's get out of this, for once their old man
+finds out he will be hot foot on our trail."
+
+With furious haste they fell to their packing.  Cameron stood
+aghast at the amazing swiftness and dexterity with which the packs
+were roped and loaded.  When all was complete the trader turned to
+Cameron in gay good humour.
+
+"Now, Mr. Cameron, will you go passenger or freight?"  Cameron made
+no reply.  "In other words, shall we pack you on your pony or will
+you ride like a gentleman, giving me your word not to attempt to
+escape?  Time presses, so answer quick!  Give me twenty-four hours.
+Give me your word for twenty-four hours, after which you can go
+when you like."
+
+"I agree," said Cameron shortly.
+
+"Cut him loose, Little Thunder."  Little Thunder hesitated.
+"Quick, you fool!  Cut him loose.  I know a gentleman when I see
+him.  He is tied tighter than with ropes."
+
+"It is a great pity," he continued, addressing Cameron in a
+pleasant conversational tone as they rode down the trail together,
+"that you should have made an ass of yourself for those brutes.
+Bah!  What odds?  Old Macdougall or some one else would get their
+stuff sooner or later.  Why not I?  Come, cheer up.  You are jolly
+well out of it, for, God knows, you may live to look death in the
+face many a time, but never while you live will you be so near
+touching the old sport as you were a few minutes ago.  Why I have
+interfered to save you these three times blessed if I know!  Many a
+man's bones have been picked by the coyotes in these hills for a
+fraction of the provocation you have given me, not to speak of
+Little Thunder, who is properly thirsting for your blood.  But take
+advice from me," here he leaned over towards Cameron and touched
+him on the shoulder, while his voice took a sterner tone, "don't
+venture on any further liberties with him."
+
+Suddenly Cameron's rage blazed forth.
+
+"Now perhaps you will listen to me," he said in a voice thrilling
+with passion.  "First of all, keep your hands off me.  As for your
+comrade and partner in crime, I fear him no more than I would a dog
+and like a dog I shall treat him if he dares to attack me again.
+As for you, you are a coward and a cad.  You have me at a
+disadvantage.  But put down your guns and fight me on equal terms,
+and I will make you beg for your life!"
+
+There was a gleam of amused admiration in Raven's eyes.
+
+"By Jove!  It would be a pretty fight, I do believe, and one I
+should greatly enjoy.  At present, however, time is pressing and
+therefore that pleasure we must postpone.  Meantime I promise you
+that when it comes it will be on equal terms."
+
+"I ask no more," said Cameron.
+
+There was no further conversation, for Raven appeared intent on
+putting as large a space as possible between himself and the camp
+of the Stonies.  The discovery of the fraud he knew would be
+inevitable and he knew, too, that George Macdougall was not the man
+to allow his flock to be fleeced with impunity.
+
+So before the grey light of morning began to steal over the
+mountaintops Raven, with his bunch of ponies and his loot, was many
+miles forward on his journey.  But the endurance even of bronchos
+and cayuses has its limit, and their desperate condition from
+hunger and fatigue rendered food and rest imperative.
+
+The sun was fully up when Raven ordered a halt, and in a sunny
+valley, deep with grass, unsaddling the wearied animals, he turned
+them loose to feed and rest.  Apparently careless of danger and
+highly contented with their night's achievement, he and his Indian
+partner abandoned themselves to sleep.  Cameron, too, though his
+indignation and chagrin prevented sleep for a time, was finally
+forced to yield to the genial influences of the warm sun and the
+languid airs of the spring day, and, firmly resolving to keep
+awake, he fell into dreamless slumber.
+
+The sun was riding high noon when he was awakened by a hand upon
+his arm.  It was Raven.
+
+"Hush!" he said.  "Not a word.  Mount and quick!"
+
+Looking about Cameron observed that the pack horses were ready
+loaded and Raven standing by his broncho ready to mount.  Little
+Thunder was nowhere to be seen.
+
+"What's up?" said Cameron.
+
+For answer Raven pointed up the long sloping trail down which they
+had come.  There three horsemen could be seen riding hard, but
+still distant more than half a mile.
+
+"Saw them three miles away, luckily enough," said Raven.
+
+"Where's Little Thunder?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Oh, rounding up the bunch," answered Raven carelessly, waving his
+hand toward the valley.  "Those men are coming some," he added,
+swinging into his saddle.
+
+As he spoke a rifle shot shattered the stillness of the valley.
+The first of the riders threw up his hands, clutched wildly at the
+vacant air and pitched headlong out of the saddle.  "Good God!
+What's that?" gasped Cameron.  The other two wheeled in their
+course.  Before they could turn a second shot rang out and another
+of the riders fell upon his horse's neck, clung there for a moment,
+then gently slid to the ground.  The third, throwing himself over
+the side of his pony, rode back for dear life.
+
+A third and a fourth shot were heard, but the fleeing rider escaped
+unhurt.
+
+"What does that mean?" again asked Cameron, weak and sick with
+horror.
+
+"Mount!" yelled Raven with a terrible oath and flourishing a
+revolver in his hand.  "Mount quick!"  His face was pale, his eyes
+burned with a fierce glare, while his voice rang with the blast of
+a bugle.
+
+"Lead those pack horses down that trail!" he yelled, thrusting the
+line into Cameron's hand.  "Quick, I tell you!"
+
+"Crack-crack!"  Twice a bullet sang savagely past Cameron's ears.
+
+"Quicker!" shouted Raven, circling round the bunch of ponies with
+wild cries and oaths like a man gone mad.  Again and again the
+revolver spat wickedly and here and there a pony plunged recklessly
+forward, nicked in the ear by one of those venomous singing
+pellets.  Helpless to defend himself and expecting every moment to
+feel the sting of a bullet somewhere in his body, Cameron hurried
+his pony with all his might down the trail, dragging the pack
+animals after him.  In huddled confusion the terrified brutes
+followed after him in a mad rush, for hard upon their rear, like a
+beast devil-possessed, Nighthawk pressed, biting, kicking,
+squealing, to the accompaniment of his rider's oaths and yells and
+pistol shots.  Down the long sloping trail to the very end of the
+valley the mad rush continued.  There the ascent checked the fury
+of the speed and forced a quieter pace.  But through the afternoon
+there was no weakening of the pressure from the rear till the
+evening shadows and the frequent falling of the worn-out beasts
+forced a slackening of the pace and finally a halt.
+
+Sick with horror and loathing, Cameron dismounted and unsaddled his
+broncho.  He had hardly finished this operation when Little Thunder
+rode up upon a strange pony, leading a beautiful white broncho
+behind.  Cameron could not repress an exclamation of disgust as the
+Indian drew near him.
+
+"Beautiful beast that," said Raven carelessly, pointing to the
+white pony.
+
+Cameron turned his eyes upon the pony and stood transfixed with
+horror.
+
+"My God!" he exclaimed.  "Look at that!"  Across the beautiful
+white shoulders and reaching down clear to the fetlock there ran a
+broad stain, dull red and horrible.  Then through his teeth, hard
+clenched together, these words came forth:  "Some day, by God's
+help, I shall wipe out that stain."
+
+The trader shrugged his shoulders carelessly, but made no reply.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+SERGEANT CRISP
+
+
+The horror of the day followed Cameron through the night and awoke
+with him next morning.  Every time his eyes found the Indian his
+teeth came together in a grinding rage as he repeated his vow,
+"Some day I shall bring you to justice.  So help me God!"
+
+Against Raven somehow he could not maintain the same heat of rage.
+That he was a party to the murder of the Stonies there was little
+reason to doubt, but as all next day they lay in the sunny glade
+resting the ponies, or went loping easily along the winding trails
+making ever towards the Southwest, the trader's cheerful face, his
+endless tales, and his invincible good humour stole from Cameron's
+heart, in spite of his firm resolve, the fierceness of his wrath.
+But the resolve was none the less resolute that one day he would
+bring this man to justice.
+
+As they journeyed on, the woods became more open and the trees
+larger.  Mid-day found them resting by a little lake, from which
+a stream flowed into the upper reaches of the Columbia River.
+
+"We shall make the Crow's Nest trail by to-morrow night," said
+Raven, "where we shall part; not to your very great sorrow, I
+fancy, either."
+
+The evening before Cameron would have said, "No, but to my great
+joy," and it vexed him that he could not bring himself to say so
+to-day with any great show of sincerity.  There was a charm about
+this man that he could not resist.
+
+"And yet," continued Raven, allowing his eyes to rest dreamily upon
+the lake, "in other circumstances I might have found in you an
+excellent friend, and a most rare and valuable find that is."
+
+"That it is!" agreed Cameron, thinking of his old football captain,
+"but one cannot make friends with a--"
+
+"It is an ugly word, I know," said Raven.  "But, after all, what is
+a bunch of furs more or less to those Indians?"
+
+"Furs?" exclaimed Cameron in horror.  "What are the lives of these
+men?"
+
+"Oh," replied Raven carelessly, "these Indians are always getting
+killed one way or another.  It is all in the day's work with them.
+They pick each other off without query or qualm.  Besides, Little
+Thunder has a grudge of very old standing against the Stonies,
+whom he heartily despises, and he doubtless enjoys considerable
+satisfaction from the thought that he has partially paid it.  It
+will be his turn next, like as not, for they won't let this thing
+sleep.  Or perhaps mine!" he added after a pause.  "The man is
+doubtless on the trail at this present minute who will finally get
+me."
+
+"Then why expose yourself to such a fate?" said Cameron.  "Surely
+in this country a man can live an honest life and prosper."
+
+"Honest life?  I doubt it!  What is an honest life?  Does any
+Indian trader lead an honest life?  Do the Hudson Bay traders, or
+I. G. Baker's people, or any of them do the honest thing by the
+Indian they trade with?  In the long run it is a question of the
+police.  What escapes the police is honest.  The crime, after all,
+is in getting caught."
+
+"Oh, that is too old!" said Cameron.  "You know you are talking
+rot."
+
+"Quite right!  It is rot," assented Raven.  "The whole business is
+rot.  'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher.'  Oh, I know the
+Book, you see.  I was not born a--a--an outlaw."  The grey-brown
+eyes had in them a wistful look.  "Bah!" he exclaimed, springing to
+his feet and shaking himself.  "The sight of your Edinburgh face
+and the sound of your Edinburgh speech and your old country ways
+and manners have got on my recollection works, and I believe that
+accounts for you being alive to-day, old man."
+
+He whistled to his horse.  Nighthawk came trotting and whinneying
+to him.
+
+"I have one friend in the world, old boy," he said, throwing his
+arm over the black, glossy neck and searching his pocket for a
+biscuit.  "And even you," he added bitterly, "I fear do not love me
+for naught."
+
+Saddling his horse, he mounted and calling Little Thunder to him
+said:
+
+"Take the bunch on as far as the Big Canyon and wait there for me.
+I am going back a bit.  It is better to be sure than sorry.
+Cameron, your best route lies with us.  Your twenty-four hours'
+parole is already up.  To-morrow, perhaps to-night, I shall put you
+on the Macleod trail.  You are a free man, but don't try to make
+any breaks when I am gone.  My friend here is extremely prompt with
+his weapons.  Farewell!  Get a move on, Little Thunder!  Cameron
+will bring up the rear."
+
+He added some further words in the Indian tongue, his voice taking
+a stern tone.  Little Thunder grunted a surly and unwilling
+acquiescence, and, waving his hand to Cameron, the trader wheeled
+his horse up the trail.
+
+In spite of himself Cameron could not forbear a feeling of pity and
+admiration as he watched the lithe, upright figure swaying up the
+trail, his every movement in unison with that of the beautiful
+demon he bestrode.  But with all his pity and admiration he was
+none the less resolved that he would do what in him lay to bring
+these two to justice.
+
+"This ugly devil at least shall swing!" he said to himself as he
+turned his eyes upon Little Thunder getting his pack ponies out
+upon the trail.  This accomplished, the Indian, pointing onward,
+said gruffly,
+
+"You go in front--me back."
+
+"Not much!" cried Cameron.  "You heard the orders from your chief.
+You go in front.  I bring up the rear.  I do not know the trail."
+
+"Huh!  Trail good," grunted Little Thunder, the red-rimmed eyes
+gleaming malevolently.  "You go front--me back."  He waved his hand
+impatiently toward the trail.  Following the direction of his hand,
+Cameron's eyes fell upon the stock of his own rifle protruding from
+a pack upon one of the ponies.  For a moment the protruding stock
+held his eyes fascinated.
+
+"Huh!" said the Indian, noting Cameron's glance, and slipping off
+his pony.  In an instant both men were racing for the pack and
+approaching each other at a sharp angle.  Arrived at striking
+distance, the Indian leaped at Cameron, with his knife, as was his
+wont, ready to strike.
+
+The appearance of the Indian springing at him seemed to set some of
+the grey matter in Cameron's brain moving along old tracks.  Like a
+flash he dropped to his knees in an old football tackle, caught the
+Indian by the legs and tossed him high over his shoulders, then,
+springing to his feet, he jerked the rifle free from the pack and
+stood waiting for Little Thunder's attack.
+
+But the Indian lay without sound or motion.  Cameron used his
+opportunity to look for his cartridge belt, which, after a few
+minutes' anxious search, he discovered in the pack.  He buckled the
+belt about him, made sure his Winchester held a shell, and stood
+waiting.
+
+That he should be waiting thus with the deliberate purpose of
+shooting down a fellow human being filled him with a sense of
+unreality.  But the events of the last forty-eight hours had
+created an entirely new environment, and with extraordinary
+facility his mind had adjusted itself to this environment, and
+though two days before he would have shrunk in horror from the
+possibility of taking a human life, he knew as he stood there that
+at the first sign of attack he should shoot the Indian down like a
+wild beast.
+
+Slowly Little Thunder raised himself to a sitting posture and
+looked about in dazed surprise.  As his mind regained its normal
+condition there deepened in his eyes a look of cunning hatred.
+With difficulty he rose to his feet and stood facing Cameron.
+Cameron waited quietly, watching his every move.
+
+"You go in front!" at length commanded Cameron.  "And no nonsense,
+mind you," he added, tapping his rifle, "or I shoot quick."
+
+The Indian might not have understood all Cameron's words, but he
+was in no doubt as to his meaning.  It was characteristic of his
+race that he should know when he was beaten and stoically accept
+defeat for the time being.  Without further word or look he led off
+his pack ponies, while Cameron took his place at the rear.
+
+But progress was slow.  Little Thunder was either incapable of
+rapid motion or sullenly indifferent to any necessity for it.
+Besides, there was no demoniacal dynamic forcing the beasts on from
+the rear.  They had not been more than three hours on the trail
+when Cameron heard behind him the thundering of hoofs.  Glancing
+over his shoulder, he saw coming down upon him Raven, riding as if
+pursued by a thousand demons.  The condition of his horse showed
+that the race had been long and hard; his black satin skin was
+dripping as if he had come through a river, his eyes were bloodshot
+and starting from his head, his mouth was wide open and from it in
+large clots the foam had fallen upon his neck and chest.
+
+Past Cameron and down upon Little Thunder Raven rushed like a
+whirlwind, yelling with wild oaths the while,
+
+"Get on! Get on!  What are you loafing about here for?"
+
+A few vehement directions to the Indian and he came thundering back
+upon Cameron.
+
+"What have you been doing?" he cried with an oath.  "Why are you
+not miles on?  Get on!  Move!  Move!!  Move!!!"  At every yell he
+hurled his frenzied broncho upon the ponies which brought up the
+rear, and in a few minutes had the whole cavalcade madly careering
+down the sloping trail.  Wilder and wilder grew the pace.  Turning
+a sharp corner round a jutting rock a pack pony stumbled and went
+crashing fifty feet to the rock below.  "On!  On!" yelled Raven,
+emptying his gun into the struggling animal as he passed.  More and
+more difficult became the road until at length it was impossible to
+keep up the pace.
+
+"We cannot make it!  We cannot make it!" muttered Raven with bitter
+oaths.  "Oh, the cursed fools!  Another two miles would do it!"
+
+At length they came to a spot where the trail touched a level
+bench.
+
+"Halt!" yelled the trader, as he galloped to the head of the
+column.  A few minutes he spent in rapid and fierce consultation
+with Little Thunder and then came raging back.  "We are going to
+get this bunch down into the valley there," he shouted, pointing to
+the thick timber at the bottom.  "I do not expect your help, but I
+ask you to remain where you are for the present.  And let me assure
+you this is no moment for trifling."
+
+With extraordinary skill and rapidity Little Thunder managed to
+lead first the pack ponies and then the others, one by one, at
+intervals, off the trail as they went onward, taking infinite pains
+to cover their tracks at the various points of departure.  While
+this was being done the trader stood shouting directions and giving
+assistance with a fury of energy that seemed to communicate itself
+to the very beasts.  But the work was one of great difficulty and
+took many minutes to accomplish.
+
+"Half an hour more, just half an hour!  Fifteen minutes!" he kept
+muttering.  "Just a short fifteen minutes and all would be well."
+
+As the last pony disappeared into the woods Raven turned to Cameron
+and with a smile said quietly,
+
+"There, that's done.  Now you are free.  Here we part.  This is
+your trail.  It will take you to Macleod.  I am sorry, however,
+that owing to a change in circumstances for which I am not
+responsible I must ask you for that rifle."  With the swiftness of
+a flash of light he whipped his gun into Cameron's face.  "Don't
+move!" he said, still smiling.  "This gun of mine never fails.
+Quick, don't look round.  Yes, those hoof beats are our friends the
+police.  Quick!  It is your life or mine.  I'd hate to kill you,
+Cameron.  I give you one chance more."
+
+There was no help for it, and Cameron, with his heart filled with
+futile fury, surrendered his rifle.
+
+"Now ride in front of me a little way.  They have just seen us, but
+they don't know that we are aware of their presence.  Ride!  Ride!
+A little faster!"  Nighthawk rushed upon Cameron's lagging pony.
+"There, that's better."
+
+A shout fell upon their ears.
+
+"Go right along!" said Raven quietly.  "Only a few minutes longer,
+then we part.  I have greatly enjoyed your company."
+
+Another shout.
+
+"Aha!" said Raven, glancing round.  "It is, I verily believe it is
+my old friend Sergeant Crisp.  Only two of them, by Jove!  If we
+had only known we need not have hurried."
+
+Another shout, followed by a bullet that sang over their heads.
+
+"Ah, this is interesting--too interesting by half!  Well, here goes
+for you, sergeant!"  He wheeled as he spoke.  Turning swiftly in
+his saddle, Cameron saw him raise his rifle.
+
+"Hold up, you devil!" he shouted, throwing his pony across the
+black broncho's track.
+
+The rifle rang out, the police horse staggered, swayed, and pitched
+to the earth, bringing his rider down with him.
+
+"Ah, Cameron, that was awkward of you," said Raven gently.
+"However, it is perhaps as well.  Goodbye, old man.  Tell the
+sergeant not to follow.  Trails hereabout are dangerous and good
+police sergeants are scarce.  Again farewell."  He swung his
+broncho off the trail and, waving his hand, with a smile,
+disappeared into the thick underbrush.
+
+"Hold up your hands!" shouted the police officer, who had struggled
+upright and was now swaying on his feet and covering Cameron with
+his carbine.
+
+"Hurry!  Hurry!" cried Cameron, springing from his pony and waving
+his hands wildly in the air.  "Come on.  You'll get him yet."
+
+"Stand where you are and hold up your hands!" cried the sergeant.
+
+Cameron obeyed, shouting meanwhile wrathfully, "Oh, come on, you
+bally fool!  You are losing him.  Come on, I tell you!"
+
+"Keep your hands up or I shoot!" cried the sergeant sternly.
+
+"All right," said Cameron, holding his hands high, "but for God's
+sake hurry up!"  He ran towards the sergeant as he spoke, with his
+hands still above his head.
+
+"Halt!" shouted the sergeant, as Cameron came near.  "Constable
+Burke, arrest that man!"
+
+"Oh, come, get it over," cried Cameron in a fury of passion.
+"Arrest me, of course, but if you want to catch that chap you'll
+have to hurry.  He cannot be far away."
+
+"Ah, indeed, my man," said the sergeant pleasantly.  "He is not far
+away?"
+
+"No, he's a murderer and a thief and you can catch him if you
+hurry."
+
+"Ah!  Very good, very good!  Constable Burke, tie this man up to
+your saddle and we'll take a look round.  How many might there be
+in your gang?" enquired the sergeant.  "Tell the truth now.  It
+will be the better for you."
+
+"One," said Cameron impatiently.  "A chap calling himself Raven."
+
+"Raven, eh?" exclaimed Sergeant Crisp with a new interest.  "Raven,
+by Jove!"
+
+"Yes, and an Indian.  Little Thunder he called him."
+
+"Little Thunder!  Jove, what a find!" exclaimed the sergeant.
+
+"Yes," continued Cameron eagerly.  "Raven is just ahead in the
+woods there alone and the Indian is further back with a bunch of
+ponies down in the river bottom."
+
+"Oh, indeed!  Very interesting!  And so Raven is all alone in the
+scrub there, waiting doubtless to give himself up," said sergeant
+Crisp with fine sarcasm.  "Well, we are not yet on to your game,
+young man, but we will not just play up to that lead yet a while."
+
+In vain Cameron raged and pleaded and stormed and swore, telling
+his story in incoherent snatches, to the intense amusement of
+Sergeant Crisp and his companion.  At length Cameron desisted,
+swallowing his rage as best he could.
+
+"Now then, we shall move on.  The pass is not more than an hour
+away.  We will put this young man in safe keeping and return for
+Mr. Raven and his interesting friend."  For a moment he stood
+looking down upon his horse.  "Poor old chap!" he said.  "We have
+gone many a mile together on Her Majesty's errands.  If I have done
+my duty as faithfully as you have done yours I need not fear my
+record.  Take his saddle and bridle off, Burke.  We've got one of
+the gang.  Some day we shall come up with Mr. Raven himself."
+
+"Yes," said Cameron with passionate bitterness.  "And that might be
+to-day if you had only listened to me.  Why, man," he shouted with
+reviving rage, "we three could take him even yet!"
+
+"Ah!" said Sergeant Crisp, "so we could."
+
+"You had him in your hands to-day," said Cameron, "but like a fool
+you let him go.  But some day, so help me God, I shall bring these
+murderers to justice."
+
+"Ah!" said Sergeant Crisp again.  "Good!  Very good indeed!  Now,
+my man, march!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A DAY IN THE MACLEOD BARRACKS
+
+
+"What's this, Sergeant Crisp?"  The Commissioner, a tall, slight,
+and soldier-like man, keen-eyed and brisk of speech, rapped out his
+words like a man intent on business.
+
+"One of a whiskey gang, Sir.  Dick Raven's, I suspect."
+
+"And the charge?"
+
+"Whiskey trading, theft, and murder."
+
+The Commissioner's face grew grave.
+
+"Murder?  Where did you find him?"
+
+"Kootenay trail, Sir.  Got wind of him at Calgary, followed up the
+clue past Morleyville, then along the Kootenay trail.  A blizzard
+came on and we feared we had lost them.  We fell in with a band of
+Stony Indians, found that the band had been robbed and two of their
+number murdered."
+
+"Two murdered?"  The Commissioner's voice was stern.
+
+"Yes, Sir.  Shot down in cold blood.  We have the testimony of an
+eye witness.  We followed the trail and came upon two of them.  My
+horse was shot.  One of them escaped; this man we captured."
+
+The Commissioner sat pondering.  Then with disconcerting swiftness
+he turned upon the prisoner.
+
+"Your name?"
+
+"Cameron, Sir."
+
+"Where from?"
+
+"I was working in McIvor's survey camp near Morleyville.  I went
+out shooting, lost my way in a blizzard, was captured by a man who
+called himself Raven--"
+
+"Wait!" said the Commissioner sharply.  "Bring me that file!"
+
+The orderly brought a file from which the Commissioner selected a
+letter.  His keen eyes rapidly scanned the contents and then ran
+over the prisoner from head to foot.  Thereupon, without a moment's
+hesitation, he said curtly:
+
+"Release the prisoner!"
+
+"But, Sir--" began Sergeant Crisp, with an expression of utter
+bewilderment and disgust upon his face.
+
+"Release the prisoner!" repeated the Commissioner sharply.  "Mr.
+Cameron, I deeply regret this mistake.  Under the circumstances it
+could hardly have been avoided.  You were in bad company, you see.
+I am greatly pleased that my men have been of service to you.  We
+shall continue to do all we can for you.  In the meantime I am very
+pleased to have the pleasure of meeting you."  He passed the letter
+to Sergeant Crisp.  "I have information about you from Morleyville,
+you see.  Now tell us all about it."
+
+It took Cameron some moments to recover his wits, so dumbfounded
+was he at the sudden change in his condition.
+
+"Well, Sir," he began, "I hardly know what to say."
+
+"Sit down, sit down, Mr. Cameron.  Take your time," said the
+Commissioner.  "We are somewhat hurried these days, but you must
+have had some trying experiences."
+
+Then Cameron proceeded with his tale.  The Commissioner listened
+with keen attention, now and then arresting him with a question or
+a comment.  When Cameron came to tell of the murder of the Stonies
+his voice shook with passion.
+
+"We will get that Indian some day," said the Commissioner, "never
+fear.  What is his name?"
+
+"Little Thunder, Raven called him.  And I would like to take a hand
+in that too, Sir," said Cameron eagerly.
+
+"You would, eh?" said the Commissioner with a sharp look at him.
+"Well, we'll see.  Little Thunder," he repeated to himself.  "Bring
+that Record Book!"
+
+The orderly laid a large canvas-covered book before him.
+
+"Little Thunder, eh?" he repeated, turning the leaves of the book.
+"Oh, yes, I thought so!  Blood Indian--formerly Chief--supplanted
+by Red Crow--got into trouble with whiskey traders.  Yes, I
+remember.  He is at his old tricks.  This time, however, he has
+gone too far.  We will get him.  Go on, Mr. Cameron!"
+
+When Cameron had concluded his story the Commissioner said to the
+orderly sharply:
+
+"Send me Inspector Dickson!"
+
+In a few moments Inspector Dickson appeared, a tall, slight man,
+with a gentle face and kindly blue eyes.
+
+"Inspector Dickson, how are we for men?  Can you spare two or three
+to round up a gang of whiskey traders and to run down a murderer?
+We are on the track of Raven's bunch, I believe."
+
+"We are very short-handed at present, Sir.  This half-breed trouble
+in the north is keeping our Indians all very restless.  We must
+keep in touch with them."
+
+"Yes, yes, I know.  By the way, how are the Bloods just now?"
+
+"They are better, Sir, but the Blackfeet are restless and uneasy.
+There are a lot of runners from the east among them."
+
+"How is old Crowfoot behaving?"
+
+"Crowfoot himself is apparently all right so far, but of course no
+man can tell what Crowfoot is thinking."
+
+"That's right enough," replied the Commissioner.
+
+"By the way, Sir, it was Crowfoot's son that got into that trouble
+last night with that Macleod man.  The old Chief is in town, too,
+in fact is outside just now and quite worked up over the arrest."
+
+"Well, we will settle this Crowfoot business in a few minutes.
+Now, about this Raven gang.  You cannot go yourself with a couple
+of men?  He is an exceedingly clever rascal."
+
+The Inspector enumerated the cases immediately pressing.
+
+"Well then, at the earliest possible moment we must get after this
+gang.  Keep this in mind, Inspector Dickson.  That Indian I
+consider an extremely dangerous man.  He is sure to be mixed up
+with this half-breed trouble.  He has very considerable influence
+with a large section of the Bloods.  I shouldn't be surprised if we
+should find him on their reserve before very long.  Now then, bring
+in young Crowfoot!"
+
+The Inspector saluted and retired, followed by Sergeant Crisp,
+whose face had not yet regained its normal expression.
+
+"Mr. Cameron," said the Commissioner, "if you care to remain with
+me for the morning I shall be glad to have you.  The administration
+of justice by the police may prove interesting to you.  Later on we
+shall discuss your return to your camp."
+
+Cameron expressed his delight at being permitted to remain in the
+court room, not only that he might observe the police methods of
+administering justice, but especially that he might see something
+of the great Blackfeet Chief, Crowfoot, of whom he had heard much
+since his arrival in the West.
+
+In a few minutes Inspector Dickson returned, followed by a
+constable leading a young Indian, handcuffed.  With these entered
+Jerry, the famous half-breed interpreter, and last of all the
+father of the prisoner, old Crowfoot, tall, straight, stately.  One
+swift searching glance the old Chief flung round the room, and
+then, acknowledging the Commissioner's salute with a slight wave
+of the hand and a grunt, and declining the seat offered him, he
+stood back against the wall and there viewed the proceedings with
+an air of haughty defiance.
+
+The Commissioner lost no time in preliminaries.  The charge was
+read and explained to the prisoner.  The constable made his
+statement.  The young Indian had got into an altercation with a
+citizen of Macleod, and on being hard pressed had pulled the pistol
+which was laid upon the desk.  There was no defense.  The
+interpreter, however, explained, after conversation with the
+prisoner, that drink was the cause.  At this point the old Chief's
+face swiftly changed.  Defiance gave place to disgust, grief, and
+rage.
+
+The Commissioner, after carefully eliciting all the facts, gave the
+prisoner an opportunity to make a statement.  This being declined,
+the Commissioner proceeded gravely to point out the serious nature
+of the offense, to emphasize the sacredness of human life and
+declare the determination of the government to protect all Her
+Majesty's subjects, no matter what their race or the colour of
+their skin.  He then went on to point out the serious danger which
+the young man had so narrowly escaped.
+
+"Why, man," exclaimed the Commissioner, "you might have committed
+murder."
+
+Here the young fellow said something to the interpreter.  There was
+a flicker of a smile on the half-breed's face.
+
+"He say dat pistol he no good.  He can't shoot.  He not loaded."
+
+The Commissioner's face never changed a line.  He gravely turned
+the pistol over in his hand, and truly enough the rusty weapon
+appeared to be quite innocuous except to the shooter.
+
+"This is an extremely dangerous weapon.  Why, it might have killed
+yourself--if it had been loaded.  We cannot allow this sort of
+thing.  However, since it was not loaded we shall make the sentence
+light.  I sentence you to one month's confinement."
+
+The interpreter explained the sentence to the young Indian, who
+received the explanation without the movement of a muscle or the
+flicker of an eyelid.  The constable touched him on the shoulder
+and said, "Come!"
+
+Before he could move old Crowfoot with two strides stood before the
+constable, and waving him aside with a gesture of indescribable
+dignity, took his son in his arms and kissed him on either cheek.
+Then, stepping back, he addressed him in a voice grave, solemn, and
+vibrant with emotion.  Jerry interpreted to the Court.
+
+"I have observed the big Chief.  This is good medicine.  It is good
+that wrong should suffer.  All good men are against wickedness.  My
+son, you have done foolishly.  You have darkened my eyes.  You have
+covered my face before my people.  They will ask--where is your
+son?  My voice will be silent.  My face will be covered with shame.
+I shall be like a dog kicked from the lodge.  My son, I told you to
+go only to the store.  I warned you against bad men and bad places.
+Your ears were closed, you were wiser than your father.  Now we
+both must suffer, you here shut up from the light of the sky, I in
+my darkened lodge.  But," he continued, turning swiftly upon the
+Commissioner, "I ask my father why these bad men who sell whiskey
+to the poor Indian are not shut up with my son.  My son is young.
+He is like the hare in the woods.  He falls easily into the trap.
+Why are not these bad men removed?"  The old Chief's face trembled
+with indignant appeal.
+
+"They shall be!" said the Commissioner, smiting the desk with his
+fist.  "This very day!"
+
+"It is good!" continued the old Chief with great dignity.  Then,
+turning again to his son, he said, and his voice was full of grave
+tenderness:
+
+"Now, go to your punishment.  The hours will be none too long if
+they bring you wisdom."  Again he kissed his son on both cheeks
+and, without a look at any other, stalked haughtily from the room.
+
+"Inspector Dickson," sharply commanded the Commissioner, "find out
+the man that sold that whiskey and arrest him at once!"
+
+Cameron was profoundly impressed with the whole scene.  He began
+to realise as never before the tremendous responsibilities that
+lay upon those charged with the administration of justice in this
+country.  He began to understand, too, the secret of the
+extraordinary hold that the Police had upon the Indian tribes and
+how it came that so small a force could maintain the "Pax
+Britannica" over three hundred thousand square miles of unsettled
+country, the home of hundreds of wild adventurers and of thousands
+of savage Indians, utterly strange to any rule or law except that
+of their own sweet will.
+
+"This police business is a big affair," he ventured to say to the
+Commissioner when the court room was cleared.  "You practically run
+the country."
+
+"Well," said the Commissioner modestly, "we do something to keep
+the country from going to the devil.  We see that every man gets a
+fair show."
+
+"It is great work!" exclaimed Cameron.
+
+"Yes, I suppose it is," replied the Commissioner.  "We don't talk
+about it, of course.  Indeed, we don't think of it.  But," he
+continued, "that blue book there could tell a story that would make
+the old Empire not too ashamed of the men who 'ride the line' and
+patrol the ranges in this far outpost."  He opened the big canvas-
+bound book as he spoke and turned the pages over.  "Look at that
+for a page," he said, and Cameron glanced over the entries.  What a
+tale they told!
+
+"Fire-fighting!"
+
+"Yes," said the Commissioner, "that saved a settler's wife and
+child--a prairie fire.  The house was lost, but the constable
+pulled them out and got rather badly burned in the business."
+
+Cameron's finger ran down the page.
+
+"Sick man transported to Post."
+
+"That," commented the Superintendent, "was a journey of over two
+hundred miles by dog sleighs in winter.  Saved the man's life."
+
+And so the record ran.  "Cattle thieves arrested."  "Whiskey
+smugglers captured."  "Stolen horses recovered."  "Insane man
+brought to Post."
+
+"That was rather a tough case," said the Commissioner.  "Meant a
+journey of some eight hundred miles with a man, a powerful man too,
+raving mad."
+
+"How many of your men on that journey?" enquired Cameron.
+
+"Oh, just one.  The fellow got away twice, but was recaptured and
+finally landed.  Got better too.  But the constable was all broken
+up for weeks afterwards."
+
+"Man, that was great!" exclaimed Cameron.  "What a pity it should
+not be known."
+
+"Oh," said the Commissioner lightly, "it's all in the day's duty."
+
+The words thrilled Cameron to the heart.  "All in the day's duty!"
+The sheer heroism of it, the dauntless facing of Nature's grimmest
+terrors, the steady patience, the uncalculated sacrifice, the
+thought of all that lay behind these simple words held him silent
+for many minutes as he kept turning over the leaves.
+
+As he sat thus turning the leaves and allowing his eye to fall upon
+those simple but eloquent entries, a loud and strident voice was
+heard outside.
+
+"Waal, I tell yuh, I want to see him right naow.  I ain't come two
+hundred miles for nawthin'.  I mean business, I do."
+
+The orderly's voice was heard in reply.
+
+"I ain't got no time to wait.  I want to see yer Chief of Police
+right naow."
+
+Again the orderly's voice could be distinguished.
+
+"In court, is he?  Waal, you hurry up and tell him J. B. Cadwaller
+of Lone Pine, Montana, an American citizen, wants to see him right
+smart."
+
+The orderly came in and saluted.
+
+"A man to see you, Sir," he said.  "An American."
+
+"What business?"
+
+"Horse-stealing case, Sir."
+
+"Show him in!"
+
+In a moment the orderly returned, followed by, not one, but three
+American citizens.
+
+"Good-day, Jedge!  My name's J. B. Cadwaller, Lone Pine, Montana.
+I--"
+
+"Take your hat off in the court!" said the orderly sharply.
+
+Mr. Cadwaller slowly surveyed the orderly with an expression of
+interested curiosity in his eyes, removing his hat as he did so.
+
+"Say, you're pretty swift, ain't yuh?  You might give a feller a
+show to git in his interductions," said Mr. Cadwaller.  "I was jes
+goin' to interdooce to you, Jedge, these gentlemen from my own
+State, District Attorney Hiram S. Sligh and Mr. Rufus Raimes,
+rancher."
+
+The Commissioner duly acknowledged the introduction, standing to
+receive the strangers with due courtesy.
+
+"Now, Jedge, I want to see yer Chief of Police.  I've got a case
+for him."
+
+"I have the honor to be the Commissioner.  What can I do for you?"
+
+"Waal, Jedge, we don't want to waste no time, neither yours nor
+ours.  The fact is some of yer blank blank Indians have been
+rustlin' hosses from us fer some time back.  We don't mind a cayuse
+now and then, but when it comes to a hull bunch of vallable hosses
+there's where we kick and we ain't goin' to stand fer it.  And we
+want them hosses re-stored.  And what's more, we want them blank
+blank copper snakes strung up."
+
+"How many horses have you lost?"
+
+"How many?  Jeerupiter!  Thirty or forty fer all I know, they've
+been rustlin' 'em for a year back."
+
+"Why didn't you report before?"
+
+"Why we thought we'd git 'em ourselves, and if we had we wouldn't
+'a troubled yuh--and I guess they wouldn't 'a troubled us much
+longer.  But they are so slick--so blank slick!"
+
+"Mr. Cadwaller, we don't allow any profanity in this court room,"
+said the Commissioner in a quiet voice.
+
+"Eh?  Who's givin' yuh profanity?  I don't mean no profanity.  I'm
+talkin' about them blank blank--"
+
+"Stop, Mr. Cadwaller!" said the Commissioner.  "We must end this
+interview if you cannot make your statements without profanity.
+This is Her Majesty's court of Justice and we cannot tolerate any
+unbecoming language.
+
+"Waal, I'll be--!"
+
+"Pardon me, Mr. Commissioner," said Mr. Hiram S. Sligh, interrupting
+his friend and client.  "Perhaps I may make a statement.  We've
+lost some twenty or thirty horses."
+
+"Thirty-one" interjected Mr. Raimes quietly.
+
+"Thirty-one!" burst in Mr. Cadwaller indignantly.  "That's only one
+little bunch."
+
+"And," continued Mr. Sligh, "we have traced them right up to the
+Blood reserve.  More than that, Mr. Raimes has seen the horses in
+the possession of the Indians and we want your assistance in
+recovering our property."
+
+"Yes, by gum!" exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller.  "And we want them--eh--
+eh--consarned redskin thieves strung up."
+
+"You say you have seen the stolen horses on the Blood reserve, Mr.
+Raimes?" enquired the Commissioner.
+
+Mr. Raimes, who was industriously chewing a quid of tobacco,
+ejected, with a fine sense of propriety and with great skill and
+accuracy, a stream of tobacco juice out of the door before he
+answered.
+
+"I seen 'em."
+
+"When did you lose your horses?"
+
+Mr. Raimes considered the matter for some moments, chewing
+energetically the while, then, having delivered himself with the
+same delicacy and skill as before of his surplus tobacco juice,
+made laconic reply:
+
+"Seventeen, no, eighteen days ago."
+
+"Did you follow the trail immediately yourselves?"
+
+"No, Jim Eberts."
+
+"Jim Eberts?"
+
+"Foreman," said Mr. Raimes, who seemed to regard conversation in
+the light of an interference with the more important business in
+which he was industriously engaged.
+
+"But you saw the horses yourself on the Blood reserve?"
+
+"Followed up and seen 'em."
+
+"How long since you saw them there, Mr. Raimes?"
+
+"Two days."
+
+"You are quite sure about the horses?"
+
+"Sure."
+
+"Call Inspector Dickson!" ordered the Commissioner.
+
+Inspector Dickson appeared and saluted.
+
+"We have information that a party of Blood Indians have stolen a
+band of horses from these gentlemen from Montana and that these
+horses are now on the Blood reserve.  Take a couple of men and
+investigate, and if you find the horses bring them back."
+
+"Couple of men!" ejaculated Mr. Cadwaller breathlessly.  "A couple
+of hundred, you mean, General!"
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Why, to sur--raound them--there--Indians."  The regulations of the
+court room considerably hampered Mr. Cadwaller's fluency of speech.
+
+"It is not necessary at all, Mr. Cadwaller.  Besides, we have only
+some eighty men all told at this post.  Our whole force in the
+territories is less than five hundred men."
+
+"Five hundred men!  You mean for this State, General--Alberta?"
+
+"No, Sir.  For all Western Canada.  All west of Manitoba."
+
+"How much territory do you cover?" enquired the astonished Mr.
+Cadwaller.
+
+"We regularly patrol some three hundred thousand square miles,
+besides taking an occasional expedition into the far north."
+
+"And how many Indians?"
+
+"About the same number as you have, I imagine, in Montana and
+Dakota.  In Alberta, about nine thousand."
+
+"And less than five hundred police!  Say, General, I take off my
+hat.  Ten thousand Indians!  By the holy poker!  And five hundred
+police!  How in Cain do you keep down the devils?"
+
+"We don't try to keep them down.  We try to take care of them."
+
+"Guess you've hit it," said Mr. Raimes, dexterously squirting out
+of the door.
+
+"Jeerupiter!  Say, General, some day they'll massacree yuh sure!"
+said Mr. Cadwaller, a note of anxiety in his voice.
+
+"Oh, no, they are a very good lot on the whole."
+
+"Good!  We've got a lot of good Indians too, but they're all under
+graound.  Five hundred men!  Jeerupiter!  Say, Sligh, how many
+soldiers does Uncle Sam have on this job?"
+
+"Well, I can't say altogether, but in Montana and Dakota I happen
+to know we have about four thousand regulars."
+
+"Say, figger that out, will yuh?" continued Mr. Cadwaller.
+"Allowed four times the territory, about the same number of Indians
+and about one-eighth the number of police.  Say, General, I take
+off my hat again.  Put it there!  You Canucks have got the trick
+sure!"
+
+"Easier to care for 'em than kill 'em, I guess," said Mr. Raimes
+casually.
+
+"But, say, General," continued Mr. Cadwaller, "you ain't goin' to
+send for them hosses with no three men?"
+
+"I'm afraid we cannot spare any more."
+
+"Jeerupiter, General!" exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller.  "I'll wait outside
+the reserve till this picnic's over.  Say, General, let's have
+twenty-five men at least."
+
+"What do you say, Inspector Dickson?  Will two men be sufficient?"
+
+"We'll try, Sir," replied the Inspector.
+
+"How soon can you be ready?"
+
+"In a quarter of an hour."
+
+"Jeerupiter!" muttered Mr. Cadwaller to himself, as he followed the
+Inspector out of the room.
+
+"I say, Commissioner, will you let me in on this thing?" said
+Cameron.
+
+"Do you mean that you want to join the force?" enquired the
+Commissioner, letting his eye run approvingly up and down Cameron's
+figure.
+
+"There is McIvor, Sir--" began Cameron.
+
+"Oh, I could fix that all right," replied the Commissioner.  "We
+want men, and we want men like you.  We have no vacancy among the
+officers, but you could enlist as a constable and there is always
+opportunity to advance."
+
+"It is a great service!" exclaimed Cameron.  "I'd like awfully to
+join."
+
+"Very well," said the Commissioner promptly, "we will take you.
+You are physically sound, wind, limb, eye-sight, and so forth?"
+
+"As far as I know, perfectly fit," replied Cameron.
+
+Once more Inspector Dickson was summoned.
+
+"Inspector Dickson, Mr. Cameron wishes to join the force.  We will
+have his application taken and filled in later, and we will waive
+examination for the present.  Will you administer the oath?"
+
+"Cameron, stand up!" commanded the Inspector sharply.
+
+With a little thrill at his heart Cameron stood up, took the Bible
+in his hand and repeated after the Inspector the words of the oath,
+
+"I, Allan Cameron, solemnly swear that I will faithfully, diligently,
+and impartially execute and perform the duties required of me as a
+member of the North West Mounted Police Force, and will well and
+truly obey and perform all lawful orders and instructions which I
+shall receive as such, without fear, favour, or affection of or
+toward any person.  So help me, God."
+
+"Now then, Cameron, I congratulate you upon your new profession.
+The Inspector will see about your outfit and later you will receive
+instructions as to your duties.  Meantime, take him along with you,
+Inspector, and get those horses."
+
+It was a somewhat irregular mode of procedure, but men were sorely
+needed at the Macleod post and the Commissioner had an eye that
+took in not only the lines of a man's figure but the qualities of
+his soul.
+
+"That chap will make good, or I am greatly mistaken," he said to
+the Inspector as Cameron went off with the orderly to select his
+uniform.
+
+"Well set up chap," said the Inspector.  "We'll try him out to-
+night."
+
+"Come now, don't kill him.  Remember, other men have something else
+in them besides whalebone and steel, if you have not."
+
+In half an hour the Inspector, Sergeant Crisp and Cameron, with the
+three American citizens, were on their way to the Blood reserve.
+
+Cameron had been given a horse from the stable.
+
+All afternoon and late into the evening they rode, then camped and
+were early upon the trail the following morning.  Cameron was half
+dead with the fatigue from his experiences of the past week, but he
+would have died rather than have hinted at weariness.  He was not a
+little comforted to notice that Sergeant Crisp, too, was showing
+signs of distress, while District Attorney Sligh was evidently in
+the last stages of exhaustion.  Even the steel and whalebone
+combination that constituted the frame of the Inspector appeared to
+show some slight signs of wear; but all feeling of weariness
+vanished when the Inspector, who was in the lead, halted at the
+edge of a wide sweeping valley and, pointing far ahead, said, "The
+Blood reserve.  Their camp lies just beyond that bluff."
+
+"Say, Inspector, hold up!" cried Mr. Cadwaller as the Inspector set
+off again.  "Ain't yuh goin' to sneak up on 'em like?"
+
+"Sneak up on them?  No, of course not," said the Inspector curtly.
+"We shall ride right in."
+
+"Say, Raimes," said Mr. Cadwaller, "a hole would be a blame nice
+thing to find just now."
+
+"Do you think there will be any trouble?" enquired Mr. Hiram Sligh
+of Sergeant Crisp.
+
+"Trouble?  Perhaps so," replied Crisp, as if to him it were a
+matter of perfect indifference.
+
+"We'll never git them hosses," said Raimes.  "But we've got to stay
+with the chief, I guess."
+
+And so they followed Inspector Dickson down into the valley, where
+in the distance could be seen a number of horses and cattle
+grazing.  They had not ridden far along the valley bottom when Mr.
+Cadwaller spurred up upon the Inspector and called out excitedly,
+
+"I say, Inspector, them's our hosses right there.  Say, let's run
+'em off."
+
+"Can you pick them out?" enquired the Inspector, turning in his
+saddle.
+
+"Every last one!" said Raimes.
+
+"Very well, cut them out and get them into a bunch," said the
+Inspector.  "I see there are some Indians herding them apparently.
+Pay no attention to them, but go right along with your work."
+
+"There's one of 'em off to give tongue!" cried Mr. Cadwaller
+excitedly.  "Bring him down, Inspector!  Bring him down!  Quick!
+Here, let me have your rifle!"  Hurriedly he snatched at the
+Inspector's carbine.
+
+"Stop!" cried the Inspector in sharp command.  "Now, attention!  We
+are on a somewhat delicate business.  A mistake might bring
+disaster.  I am in command of this party and I must have absolute
+and prompt obedience.  Mr. Cadwaller, it will be at your peril that
+you make any such move again.  Let no man draw a gun until ordered
+by me!  Now, then, cut out those horses and bunch them together!"
+
+"Jeerupiter!  He's a hull brigade himself," said Mr. Cadwaller in
+an undertone, dropping back beside Mr. Sligh.  "Waal, here goes for
+the bunch."
+
+But though both Mr. Cadwaller and Mr. Raimes, as well as Sergeant
+Crisp and the Inspector, were expert cattle men, it took some
+little time and very considerable manoeuvering to get the stolen
+horses bunched together and separated from the rest of the animals
+grazing in the valley, and by the time this was accomplished Indian
+riders had appeared on every side, gradually closing in upon the
+party.  It was clearly impossible to drive off the bunch through
+that gradually narrowing cordon of mounted Indians without trouble.
+
+"Now, what's to be done?" said Mr. Cadwaller, nervously addressing
+the Inspector.
+
+"Forward!" cried the Inspector in a loud voice.  "Towards the
+corral ahead there!"
+
+This movement nonplussed the Indians and in silence they fell in
+behind the party who, going before, finally succeeded in driving
+the bunch of horses into the corral.
+
+"Sergeant Crisp, you and Constable Cameron remain here on guard.  I
+shall go and find the Chief.  Here," he continued, addressing a
+young Indian brave who had ridden up quite close to the gate of the
+corral, "lead me to your Chief, Red Crow!"
+
+The absence alike of all hesitation or fear, and of all bluster in
+his tone and bearing, apparently impressed the young brave, for he
+wheeled his pony and set off immediately at a gallop, followed by
+the Inspector at a more moderate pace.
+
+Quickly the Indians gathered about the corral and the group at its
+gate.  With every passing minute their numbers increased, and as
+their numbers increased so did the violence of their demonstration
+The three Americans were placed next the corral, Sergeant Crisp and
+Cameron being between them and the excited Indians.  Cameron had
+seen Indians before about the trading posts.  A shy, suspicious,
+and subdued lot of creatures they had seemed to him.  But these
+were men of another breed, with their lean, lithe, muscular
+figures, their clean, copper skins, their wild fierce eyes, their
+haughty bearing.  Those others were poor beggars seeking permission
+to exist; these were men, proud, fearless, and free.
+
+"Jove, what a team one could pick out of the bunch!" said Cameron
+to himself, as his eye fell upon the clean bare limbs and observed
+their graceful motions.  But to the Americans they were a hateful
+and fearsome sight.  Indians with them were never anything but a
+menace to be held in check, or a nuisance to be got rid of.
+
+Louder and louder grew the yells and wilder the gesticulations as
+the savages worked themselves up into a fury.  Suddenly, through
+the yelling, careering, gesticulating crowd of Indians a young
+brave came tearing at full gallop and, thrusting his pony close up
+to the Sergeant's, stuck his face into the officer's and uttered a
+terrific war whoop.  Not a line of the Sergeant's face nor a muscle
+of his body moved except that the near spur slightly touched his
+horse's flank and the fingers tightened almost imperceptibly upon
+the bridle rein.  Like a flash of light the Sergeant's horse
+wheeled and with a fierce squeal let fly two wicked heels hard upon
+the pony's ribs.  In sheer terror and surprise the little beast
+bolted, throwing his rider over his neck and finally to the ground.
+Immediately a shout of jeering laughter rose from the crowd, who
+greatly enjoyed their comrade's discomfiture.  Except that the
+Sergeant's face wore a look of pleased surprise, he simply
+maintained his attitude of calm indifference.  No other Indian,
+however, appeared ready to repeat the performance of the young
+brave.
+
+At length the Inspector appeared, followed by the Chief, Red Crow.
+
+"Tell your people to go away!" said the Inspector as they reached
+the corral.  "They are making too much noise."
+
+Red Crow addressed his braves at some length.
+
+"Open the corral," ordered the Inspector, "and get those horses out
+on the trail."
+
+For a few moments there was silence.  Then, as the Indians perceived
+the purpose of the police, on every side there rose wild yells of
+protest and from every side a rush was made toward the corral.  But
+Sergeant Crisp kept his horse on the move in a series of kicks and
+plunges that had the effect of keeping clear a wide circle about the
+corral gate.
+
+"Touch your horse with the spur and hold him up tight," he said
+quietly to Cameron.
+
+Cameron did so and at once his horse became seemingly as unmanageable
+as the Sergeant's, plunging, biting, kicking.  The Indian ponies
+could not be induced to approach.  The uproar, however, only
+increased.  Guns began to go off, bullets could be heard whistling
+overhead.  Red Crow's voice apparently could make no impression upon
+the maddened crowd of Indians.  A minor Chief, White Horse by name,
+having whirled in behind the Sergeant, seized hold of Mr.
+Cadwaller's bridle and began to threaten him with excited
+gesticulations.  Mr. Cadwaller drew his gun.
+
+"Let go that line, you blank blank redskin!" he roared, flourishing
+his revolver.
+
+In a moment, with a single plunge, the Inspector was at his side
+and, flinging off the Indian, shouted:
+
+"Put up that gun, Mr. Cadwaller!  Quick!"  Mr. Cadwaller hesitated.
+"Sergeant Crisp, arrest that man!"  The Inspector's voice rang out
+like a trumpet.  His gun covered Mr. Cadwaller.
+
+"Give me that gun!" said the Sergeant.
+
+Mr. Cadwaller handed over his gun.
+
+"Let him go," said the Inspector to Sergeant Crisp.  "He will
+probably behave."
+
+The Indians had gathered close about the group.  White Horse, in
+the centre, was talking fast and furious and pointing to Mr.
+Cadwaller.
+
+"Get the bunch off, Sergeant!" said the Inspector quietly.  "I will
+hold them here for a few minutes."
+
+Quietly the Sergeant backed out of the circle, leaving the
+Inspector and Mr. Cadwaller with White Horse and Red Crow in the
+midst of the crowding, yelling Indians.
+
+"White Horse say this man steal Bull Back's horses last fall!"
+shouted Red Crow in the Inspector's ear.
+
+"Too much noise here," said the Inspector, moving toward the Indian
+camp and away from the corral and drawing the crowd with him.
+"Tell your people to be quiet, Red Crow.  I thought you were the
+Chief."
+
+Stung by the taunt, Red Crow raised his rifle and fired into the
+air.  Then, standing high in his stirrups, he held up his hand and
+called out a number of names.  Instantly ten men rode to his side.
+Again Red Crow spoke.  The ten men rode out again among the crowd.
+Immediately the shouting ceased.
+
+"Good!" said the Inspector.  "I see my brother is strong.  Now,
+where is Bull Back?"
+
+The Chief called out a name.  There was no response.
+
+"Bull Back not here," he said.
+
+"Then listen, my brother," said the Inspector earnestly.  "This
+man," pointing to Mr. Cadwaller, "waits with me at the Fort two
+days to meet White Horse, Bull Back, and any Indians who know about
+this man; and what is right will be done.  I have spoken.
+Farewell!"  He gave his hand to Chief Red Crow.  "My brother
+knows," he added, "the Police do not lie."
+
+So saying, he wheeled his horse and, with Mr. Cadwaller before him,
+rode off after the others of the party, who had by this time gone
+some distance up the trail.
+
+For a few moments hesitation held the crowd, then with a loud cry
+White Horse galloped up and again seized Mr. Cadwaller's bridle.
+Instantly the Inspector covered him with his gun.
+
+"Hold up your hands quick!" he said.
+
+The Indian dropped the bridle rein.  The Inspector handed his gun
+to Mr. Cadwaller.
+
+"Don't shoot till I speak or I shoot you!" he said sternly.  Mr.
+Cadwaller took the gun and covered the Indian.  In a twinkling
+White Horse found himself with handcuffs on his wrists and his
+bridle line attached to the horn of the Inspector's saddle.
+
+"Now give me that gun, Mr. Cadwaller, and here take your own--but
+wait for the word.  Forward!"
+
+He had not gone a pace till he was surrounded by a score of angry
+and determined Indians with levelled rifles.  For the first time
+the Inspector hesitated.  Through the line of levelled rifles Chief
+Red Crow rode up and in a grave but determined voice said:
+
+"My brother is wrong.  White Horse, chief.  My young men not let
+him go."
+
+"Good!" said the Inspector, promptly making up his mind.  "I let
+him go now.  In two days I come again and get him.  The Police
+never lie."
+
+So saying, he released White Horse and without further word, and
+disregarding the angry looks and levelled rifles, rode slowly off
+after his party.  On the edge of the crowd he met Sergeant Crisp.
+
+"Thought I'd better come back, Sir.  It looked rather ugly for a
+minute," said the Sergeant.
+
+"Ride on," said the Inspector.  "We will get our man to-morrow.
+Steady, Mr. Cadwaller, not too fast."  The Inspector slowed his
+horse down to a walk, which he gradually increased to an easy lope
+and so brought up with Cameron and the others.
+
+Through the long evening they pressed forward till they came to the
+Kootenay River, having crossed which they ventured to camp for the
+night.
+
+After supper the Inspector announced his intention of riding on
+to the Fort for reinforcements, and gave his instructions to the
+Sergeant.
+
+"Sergeant Crisp," he said, "you will make an early start and bring
+in the bunch to-morrow morning.  Mr. Cadwaller, you remember you
+are to remain at the Fort two days so that the charges brought by
+White Horse may be investigated."
+
+"What?" exclaimed Mr. Cadwaller.  "Wait for them blank blank
+devils?  Say, Inspector, you don't mean that?"
+
+"You heard me promise the Indians," said the Inspector.
+
+"Why, yes.  Mighty smart, too!  But say, you were jest joshing,
+weren't you?"
+
+"No, Sir," replied the Inspector.  "The Police never break a
+promise to white man or Indian."
+
+Then Mr. Cadwaller cut loose for a few moments.  He did not object
+to waiting any length of time to oblige a friend, but that he
+should delay his journey to answer the charges of an Indian,
+variously and picturesquely described, was to him an unthinkable
+proposition.
+
+"Sergeant Crisp, you will see to this," said the Inspector quietly
+as he rode away.
+
+Then Mr. Cadwaller began to laugh and continued laughing for
+several minutes.
+
+"By the holy poker, Sligh!" at last he exclaimed.  "It's a joke.
+It's a regular John Bull joke."
+
+"Yes," said Mr. Sligh, while he cut a comfortable chew from his
+black plug.  "Good joke, too, but not on John.  I guess that's how
+five hundred police hold down--no, take care of--twenty thousand
+redskins."
+
+And the latest recruit to Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police
+straightened up till he could feel the collar of his tunic catch
+him on the back of the neck and was conscious of a little thrill
+running up his spine as he remembered that he was a member of that
+same force.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE MAKING OF BRAVES
+
+
+It was to Cameron an extreme satisfaction to ride with some twenty
+of his comrades behind White Horse, who, handcuffed and with bridle
+reins tied to those of two troopers, and accompanied by Chief Red
+Crow, Bull Back, and others of their tribe, made ignominious and
+crestfallen entry into the Fort next day.  It was hardly less of a
+satisfaction to see Mr. Cadwaller exercise himself considerably in
+making defence against the charges of Bull Back and his friends.
+The defence was successful, and the American citizens departed to
+Lone Pine, Montana, with their recovered horses and with a new and
+higher regard for both the executive and administrative excellence
+of Her Majesty's North West Mounted Police officers and men.  Chief
+Red Crow, too, returned to his band with a chastened mind, it
+having been made clear to him that a chief who could not control
+his young braves was not the kind of a chief the Great White Mother
+desired to have in command of her Indian subjects.  White Horse,
+also, after three months sojourn in the cooling solitude of the
+Police guard room, went back to his people a humbler and a wiser
+brave.
+
+The horse-stealing, however, went merrily on and the summer of 1884
+stands in the records of the Police as the most trying period of
+their history in the Northwest up to that date.  The booming upon
+the eastern and southern boundaries of Western Canada of the
+incoming tide of humanity, hungry for land, awakened ominous echoes
+in the little primitive settlements of half-breed people and
+throughout the reservations of the wild Indian tribes as well.
+Everywhere, without warning and without explanation, the surveyors'
+flags and posts made appearance.  Wild rumours ran through the
+land, till every fluttering flag became the symbol of dispossession
+and every gleaming post an emblem of tyrannous disregard of a
+people's rights.  The ancient aboriginal inhabitants of the western
+plains and woods, too, had their grievances and their fears.  With
+phenomenal rapidity the buffalo had vanished from the plains once
+black with their hundreds of thousands.  With the buffalo vanished
+the Indians' chief source of support, their food, their clothing,
+their shelter, their chief article of barter.  Bereft of these and
+deprived at the same time of the supreme joy of existence, the
+chase, bitten with cold, starved with hunger, fearful of the
+future, they offered fertile soil for the seeds of rebellion.
+A government more than usually obsessed with stupidity, as all
+governments become at times, remained indifferent to appeals, deaf
+to remonstrances, blind to danger signals, till through the remote
+and isolated settlements of the vast west and among the tribes of
+Indians, hunger-bitten and fearful for their future, a spirit of
+unrest, of fear, of impatience of all authority, spread like a
+secret plague from Prince Albert to the Crow's Nest and from the
+Cypress Hills to Edmonton.  A violent recrudescence of whiskey-
+smuggling, horse-stealing, and cattle-rustling made the work of
+administering the law throughout this vast territory one of
+exceeding difficulty and one calling for promptitude, wisdom,
+patience, and courage, of no ordinary quality.  Added to all this,
+the steady advance of the railroad into the new country, with its
+huge construction camps, in whose wake followed the lawless hordes
+of whiskey smugglers, tinhorn gamblers, thugs, and harlots, very
+materially added to the dangers and difficulties of the situation
+for the Police.
+
+For the first month after enlistment Cameron was kept in close
+touch with the Fort and spent his hours under the polishing hands
+of the drill sergeant.  From five in the morning till ten at night
+the day's routine kept him on the grind.  Hard work it was, but to
+Cameron a continuous delight.  For the first time in his life he
+had a job that seemed worth a man's while, and one the mere routine
+of which delighted his soul.  He loved his horse and loved to care
+for him, and, most of all, loved to ride him.  Among his comrades
+he found congenial spirits, both among the officers and the men.
+Though discipline was strict, there was an utter absence of
+anything like a spirit of petty bullying which too often is found
+in military service; for in the first place the men were in very
+many cases the equals and sometimes the superiors of the officers
+both in culture and in breeding, and further, and very specially,
+the nature of the work was such as to cultivate the spirit of true
+comradeship.  When officer and man ride side by side through rain
+and shine, through burning heat and frost "Forty below," when they
+eat out of the same pan and sleep in the same "dug-out," when they
+stand back to back in the midst of a horde of howling savages, rank
+comes to mean little and manhood much.
+
+Between Inspector Dickson and Cameron a genuine friendship sprang
+up; and after his first month was in, Cameron often found himself
+the comrade of the Inspector in expeditions of special difficulty
+where there was a call for intelligence and nerve.  The reports of
+these expeditions that stand upon the police record have as little
+semblance of the deeds achieved as have stark and grinning
+skeletons in the medical student's private cupboard to the living
+moving bodies they once were.  The records of these deeds are the
+bare bones.  The flesh and blood, the life and colour are to be
+found only in the memories of those who were concerned in their
+achievement.
+
+But even in these bony records there are to be seen frequent
+entries in which the names of Inspector Dickson and Constable
+Cameron stand side by side.  For the Inspector was a man upon whom
+the Commissioner and the Superintendent delighted to load their
+more dangerous and delicate cases, and it was upon Cameron when it
+was possible that the Inspector's choice for a comrade fell.
+
+It was such a case as this that held the Commissioner and
+Superintendent Crawford in anxious consultation far into a late
+September night.  When the consultation was over, Inspector Dickson
+was called in and the result of this consultation laid before him.
+
+"We have every reason to believe, as you well know, Inspector
+Dickson," said the Commissioner, "that there is a secret and wide-
+spread propagandum being carried on among our Indians, especially
+among the Piegans, Bloods, and Blackfeet, with the purpose of
+organizing rebellion in connection with the half-breed discontent
+in the territories to the east of us.  Riel, you know, has been
+back for some time and we believe his agents are busy on every
+reservation at present.  This outbreak of horse-stealing and
+whiskey-smuggling in so many parts of the country at the same time
+is a mere blind to a more serious business, the hatching of a very
+wide conspiracy.  We know that the Crees and the Assiniboines are
+negotiating with the half-breeds.  Big Bear, Beardy, and Little
+Pine are keen for a fight.  There is some very powerful and secret
+influence at work among our Indians here.  We suspect that the
+ex-Chief of the Bloods, Little Thunder, is the head of this
+organization.  A very dangerous and very clever Indian he is, as
+you know.  We have a charge of murder against him already, and if
+we can arrest him and one or two others it would do much to break
+up the gang, or at least to hold in check their organization work.
+We want you to get quietly after this business, visit all the
+reservations, obtain all information possible, and when you are
+ready, strike.  You will be quite unhampered in your movements and
+the whole force will co-operate with you if necessary.  We consider
+this an extremely critical time and we must be prepared.  Take a
+man with you.  Make your own choice."
+
+"I expect we know the man the Inspector will choose," said
+superintendent Crawford with a smile.
+
+"Who is that?" asked the Commissioner.
+
+"Constable Cameron, of course."
+
+"Ah, yes, Cameron.  You remember I predicted he would make good.
+He has certainly fulfilled my expectation."
+
+"He is a good man," said the Inspector quietly.
+
+"Oh come, Inspector, you know you consider him the best all-round
+man at this post," said the Superintendent.
+
+"Well, you see, Sir, he is enthusiastic for the service, he works
+hard and likes his work."
+
+"Right you are!" exclaimed the Superintendent.  "In the first
+place, he is the strongest man on the force, then he is a dead
+shot, a good man with a horse, and has developed an extraordinary
+gift in tracking, and besides he is perfectly straight."
+
+"Is that right, Inspector?"
+
+"Yes," said the Inspector very quietly, though his eyes were
+gleaming at the praise of his friend.  "He is a good man, very
+keen, very reliable, and of course afraid of nothing."
+
+The Superintendent laughed quietly.
+
+"You want him then, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes," said the Inspector, "if it could be managed."
+
+"I don't know," said the Commissioner.  "That reminds me."  He took
+a letter from the file.  "Read that," he said, "second page there.
+it is a private letter from Superintendent Strong at Calgary."
+
+The Inspector took the letter and read at the place indicated--
+
+"Another thing.  The handling of these railroad construction gangs
+is no easy matter.  We are pestered with whiskey-smugglers,
+gamblers, and prostitutes till we don't know which way to turn.
+As the work extends into the mountains and as the camps grow in
+numbers the difficulty of control is very greatly increased.  I
+ought to have my force strengthened.  Could you not immediately
+spare me at least eight or ten good men?  I would like that chap
+Cameron, the man, you know, who caught the half-breed Louis in the
+Sarcee camp and carried him out on his horse's neck--a very fine
+bit of work.  Inspector Dickson will tell you about him.  I had it
+from him.  Could you spare Cameron?  I would recommend him at once
+as a sergeant."
+
+The Inspector handed back the letter without comment.
+
+"Well?" said the Commissioner.
+
+"Cameron would do very well for the work," said the Inspector, "and
+he deserves promotion."
+
+"What was that Sarcee business, Inspector?" enquired the
+Commissioner.  "That must have been when I was down east."
+
+"Oh," said the Inspector, "it was a very fine thing indeed of
+Cameron.  Louis 'the Breed' had been working the Bloods.  We got on
+his track and headed him up in the Sarcee camp.  He is rather a
+dangerous character and is related to the Sarcees.  We expected
+trouble in his arrest.  We rode in and found the Indians, to the
+number of a hundred and fifty or more, very considerably excited.
+They objected strenuously to the arrest of the half-breed.
+Constable Cameron and I were alone.  We had left a party of men
+further back over the hill.  The half-breed brought it upon
+himself.  He was rash enough to make a sudden attack upon Cameron.
+That is where he made his mistake.  Before he knew where he was
+Cameron slipped from his horse, caught him under the chin with a
+very nice left-hander that laid him neatly out, swung him on to his
+horse, and was out of the camp before the Indians knew what had
+happened."
+
+"The Inspector does not tell you," said Superintendent Crawford,
+"how he stood off that bunch of Sarcees and held them where they
+were till Cameron was safe with his man over the hill.  But it
+was a very clever bit of work, and, if I may say it, deserves
+recognition."
+
+"I should like to give you Cameron if it were possible," said
+the Commissioner, "but this railroad business is one of great
+difficulty and Superintendent Strong is not the man to ask for
+assistance unless he is in pretty desperate straits.  An
+unintelligent or reckless man would be worse than useless."
+
+"How would it do," suggested the Superintendent, "to allow Cameron
+in the meantime to accompany the Inspector?  Then later we might
+send him to Superintendent Strong."
+
+Reporting this arrangement to Cameron a little later, the Inspector
+enquired:
+
+"How would you like to have a turn in the mountains?  You would
+find Superintendent Strong a fine officer."
+
+"I desire no change in that regard," replied Cameron.  "But,
+curiously enough, I have a letter this very mail that has a bearing
+upon this matter.  Here it is.  It is from an old college friend of
+mine, Dr. Martin."
+
+The Inspector took the letter and read--
+
+"I have got myself used up, too great devotion to scientific
+research; hence I am accepting an offer from the railroad people
+for work in the mountains.  I leave in a week.  Think of it!  The
+muck and the ruck, the execrable grub and worse drink!  I shall
+have to work my passage on hand cars and doubtless by tie pass.  My
+hands will lose all their polish.  However, there may be some fun
+and likely some good practice.  I see they are blowing themselves
+up at a great rate.  Then, too, there is the prospective joy of
+seeing you, of whom quite wonderful tales have floated east to us.
+I am told you are in direct line for the position of the High Chief
+Muck-a-muck of the Force.  Look me up in Superintendent Strong's
+division.  I believe he is the bulwark of the Empire in my
+district.
+
+"A letter from the old burgh across the pond tells me your governor
+is far from well.  Awfully sorry to hear it.  It is rough on your
+sister, to whom, when you write, remember your humble servant.
+
+"I am bringing out two nurses with me, both your devotees.  Look
+out for squalls.  If you get shot up see that you select a locality
+where the medical attendance and nursing are 'A 1'."
+
+"It would be awfully good to see the old boy," said Cameron as he
+took the letter from the Inspector.  "He is a decent chap and quite
+up-to-date in his profession."
+
+"What about the nurses?" enquired the Inspector gravely.
+
+"Oh, I don't know them.  Never knew but one.  A good bright little
+soul she was.  Saw me through a typhoid trip.  Little too clever
+sometimes," he added, remembering the day when she had taken her
+fun out of the slow-footed, slow-minded farmer's daughter.
+
+"Well," said the Inspector, "we shall possibly come across them in
+our round-up.  This is rather a big game, a very big game and one
+worth playing."
+
+A bigger game it turned out than any of the players knew, bigger in
+its immediate sweep and in its nationwide issues.
+
+For three months they swept the plains, haunting the reservations
+at unexpected moments.  But though they found not a few horses and
+cattle whose obliterated brands seemed to warrant confiscation, and
+though there were signs for the instructed eye of evil doings in
+many an Indian camp, yet there was nothing connected with the
+larger game upon which the Inspector of Police could lay his hand.
+
+Among the Bloods there were frequent sun-dances where many braves
+were made and much firewater drunk with consequent blood-letting.
+Red Crow deprecated these occurrences, but confessed his
+powerlessness to prevent the flow of either firewater or of blood.
+A private conversation with the Inspector left with the Chief some
+food for thought, however, and resulted in the cropping of the mane
+of White Horse, of whose comings and goings the Inspector was
+insistently curious.
+
+On the Blackfeet reservation they ran into a great pow-wow of
+chiefs from far and near, to which old Crowfoot invited the
+representatives of the Great White Mother with impressive
+cordiality, an invitation, however, which the Inspector, such was
+his strenuous hunt for stolen horses, was forced regretfully to
+decline.
+
+"Too smooth, old boy, too smooth!" was the Inspector's comment as
+they rode off.  "There are doings there without doubt.  Did you see
+the Cree and the Assiniboine?"
+
+"I could not pick them out," said Cameron, "but I saw Louis the
+Breed."
+
+"Ah, you did!  He needs another term at the Police sanatarium."
+
+They looked in upon the Sarcees and were relieved to find them
+frankly hostile.  They had not forgotten the last visit of the
+Inspector and his friend.
+
+"That's better," remarked the Inspector as they left the
+reservation.  "Neither the hostile Indian nor the noisy Indian is
+dangerous.  When he gets smooth and quiet watch him, like old
+Crowfoot.  Sly old boy he is!  But he will wait till he sees which
+way the cat jumps.  He is no leader of lost causes."
+
+At Morleyville they breathed a different atmosphere.  They felt
+themselves to be among friends.  The hand of the missionary here
+was upon the helm of government and the spirit of the missionary
+was the spirit of the tribe.
+
+"Any trouble?" enquired the Inspector.
+
+"We have a great many visitors these days," said the missionary.
+"And some of our young men don't like hunger, and the offer of a
+full feast makes sweet music in their ears."
+
+"Any sun-dances?"
+
+"No, no, the sun-dances are all past.  Our people are no longer
+pagans."
+
+"Good man!" was the Inspector's comment as they took up the trail
+again toward the mountains.  "And with quite a sufficient amount
+of the wisdom of the serpent in his guileless heart.  We need not
+watch the Stonies.  Here's a spot at least where religion pays.
+And a mighty good thing for us just now," added the inspector.
+"These Stonies in the old days were perfect devils for fighting.
+They are a mountain people and for generations kept the passes
+against all comers.  But Macdougall has changed all that."
+
+Leaving the reservation, they came upon the line of the railway.
+
+"There lies my old trail," said Cameron.  "And my last camp was
+only about two miles west of here."
+
+"It was somewhere here that Raven fell in with you?"
+
+"No, some ten miles off the line, down the old Kootenay trail."
+
+"Aha!" said the Inspector.  "It might not be a bad idea to beat up
+that same old trail.  It is quite possible that we might fall in
+with your old friends."
+
+"It would certainly be a great pleasure," replied Cameron, "to
+conduct Mr. Raven and his Indian friend over this same trail as
+they did me some nine months ago."
+
+"We will take a chance on it," said the Inspector.  "We lose time
+going back the other way."
+
+Upon the site of McIvor's survey camp they found camped a large
+construction gang.  Between the lines of tents, for the camp was
+ordered in streets like a city, they rode till they came to the
+headquarters of the Police, and enquired for the Superintendent.
+The Superintendent had gone up the line, the Sergeant informed
+them, following the larger construction gangs.  The Sergeant and
+two men had some fifty miles of line under patrol, with some ten
+camps of various kinds on the line and in the woods, and in
+addition they had the care of that double stream of humanity
+flowing in and flowing out without ceasing day or night.
+
+As the Inspector stepped inside the Police tent Cameron's attention
+was arrested by the sign "Hospital" upon a large double-roofed tent
+set on a wooden floor and guyed with more than ordinary care.
+
+"Wonder if old Martin is anywhere about," he said to himself as he
+rode across to the open door.
+
+"Is Dr. Martin in?" he enquired of a Chinaman, who appeared from a
+tent at the rear.
+
+"Doc Matin go 'way 'long tlain."
+
+"When will he come back?" demanded Cameron.
+
+"Donno.  See missy woman."
+
+So saying, he disappeared into the tent while Cameron waited.
+
+"You wish to see the doctor?  He has gone west.  Oh!  Why, it--"
+
+Cameron was off his horse, standing with his hat in one hand, the
+other outstretched toward the speaker.
+
+"Why! it cannot be!--it is--my patient."  The little nurse had his
+hand in both of hers.  "Oh, you great big monster soldier!  Do you
+know how fine you look?"
+
+"No," replied Cameron, "but I do know how perfectly fine you look."
+
+"Well, don't devour me.  You look dangerous."
+
+"I should truly love one little bite."
+
+"Oh, Mr. Cameron, stop!  You terrible man!  Right in the open
+street!"  The little nurse's cheeks flamed red as she quickly
+glanced about her.  "What would Dr. Martin say?"
+
+"Dr. Martin!" Cameron laughed.  "Besides, I couldn't help it."
+
+"Oh, I am so glad!"
+
+"Thank you," said Cameron.
+
+"I mean I am so glad to see you.  They told us you would be coming
+to join us.  And now they are gone.  What a pity!  They will be so
+disappointed."
+
+"Who, pray, will be thus blighted?"
+
+"Oh, the doctor I mean, and--and"--here her eyes danced
+mischievously--"the other nurse, of course.  But you will be going
+west?"
+
+"No, south, to-day, and in a few minutes.  Here comes the Inspector.
+May I present him?"
+
+The little nurse's snapping eyes glowed with pleasure as they ran
+over the tall figure of the Inspector and rested upon his fine
+clean-cut face.  The Inspector had just made his farewell to the
+Sergeant preparatory to an immediate departure, but it was a full
+half hour before they rose from the dainty tea table where the
+little nurse had made them afternoon tea from her own dainty tea
+set.
+
+"It makes me think of home," said the Inspector with a sigh as he
+bent over the little nurse's hand in gratitude.  "My first real
+afternoon tea in ten years."
+
+"Poor man!" said the nurse.  "Come again."
+
+"Ah, if I could!"
+
+"But YOU are coming?" said the little nurse to Cameron as he held
+her hand in farewell.  "I heard the doctor say you were coming and
+we are quite wild with impatience over it."
+
+Cameron looked at the Inspector.
+
+"I had thought of keeping Cameron at Macleod," said the latter.
+"But now I can hardly have the heart to do so."
+
+"Oh, you needn't look at me so," said the little nurse with a saucy
+toss of her head.  "He wouldn't bother himself about me, but--but--
+there is another.  No, I won't tell him."  And she laughed gaily.
+
+Cameron stood mystified.
+
+"Another?  There is old Martin of course, but there is no other."
+
+The little nurse laughed, this time scornfully.
+
+"Old Martin indeed!  He is making a shameless pretence of ignorance,
+Inspector Dickson."
+
+"Disgraceful bluff I call it," cried the Inspector.
+
+"Who can it be?" said Cameron.  "I really don't know any nurse.  Of
+course it can't be--Mandy--Miss Haley?"  He laughed a loud laugh
+almost of derision as he made the suggestion.
+
+"Ah, he's got it!" cried the nurse, clapping her hands.  "As if he
+ever doubted."
+
+"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Cameron.  "You don't mean to tell me that
+Mandy--  What is poor Mandy doing here?  Cooking?"
+
+"Cooking indeed!" exclaimed the nurse.  "Cooking indeed!  Just let
+the men in this camp, from John here," indicating the Chinaman at
+the rear of the tent, "to the Sergeant yonder, hear you by the
+faintest tone indicate anything but adoration for Nurse Haley, and
+you will need the whole Police Force to deliver you from their
+fury."
+
+"Good Heavens!" said Cameron in an undertone.  "A nurse!  With
+those hands!"  He shuddered.  "I mean, of course--you know--she's
+awfully good-hearted and all that, but as a nurse you know she is
+impossible."
+
+The little nurse laughed long and joyously.
+
+"Oh, this is fun!  I wish Dr. Martin could hear you.  You forget,
+Sir, that for a year and a half she has had the benefit of my
+example and tuition."
+
+"Think of that, Cameron!" murmured the Inspector reproachfully.
+But Cameron only shook his head.
+
+"Good-bye!" he said.  "No, I don't think I pine for mountain
+scenery.  Remember me to Martin and to Man--to Nurse Haley."
+
+"Good-bye!" said the little nurse.  "I have a good mind to tell
+them what you said.  I may.  Just wait, though.  Some day you will
+very humbly beg my pardon for that slight upon my assistant."
+
+"Slight?  Believe me, I mean none.  I would be an awful cad if I
+did.  But--well, you know as well as I do that, good soul as Mandy
+is, she is in many ways impossible."
+
+"Do I?"  Again the joyous laugh pealed out.  "Well, well, come back
+and see."  And waving her hand she stood to watch them down the
+trail.
+
+"Jolly little girl," said the Inspector, as they turned from the
+railway tote road down the coulee into the Kootenay trail.  "But
+who is this other?"
+
+"Oh," said Cameron impatiently, "I feel like a beastly cad.  She's
+the daughter of the farmer where I spent a summer in Ontario, a
+good simple-hearted girl, but awfully--well--crude, you know.  And
+yet--"  Cameron's speech faded into silence, for his memory played
+a trick upon him, and again he was standing in the orchard on that
+sunny autumn day looking into a pair of wonderful eyes, and,
+remembering the eyes, he forgot his speech.
+
+"Ah, yes," said the Inspector.  "I understand."
+
+"No, you don't," said Cameron almost rudely.  "You would have to
+see her first.  By Jove!"  He broke into a laugh.  "It is a joke
+with a vengeance," and relapsed into silence that lasted for some
+miles.
+
+That night they slept in the old lumber camp, and the afternoon of
+the second day found them skirting the Crow's Nest.
+
+"We've had no luck this trip," growled the Inspector, for now they
+were facing toward home.
+
+"Listen!" said Cameron, pulling up his horse sharply.  Down the
+pass the faraway beat of a drum was heard.  It was the steady throb
+of the tom-tom rising and falling with rhythmic regularity.
+
+"Sun-dance," said the Inspector, as near to excitement as he
+generally allowed himself.  "Piegans."
+
+"Where?" said Cameron.
+
+"In the sun-dance canyon," answered the Inspector.  "I believe in
+my soul we shall see something now.  Must be two miles off.  Come
+on."
+
+Though late in December the ground was still unfrozen and the new-
+made government trail gave soft footing to their horses.  And so
+without fear of detection they loped briskly along till they began
+to hear rising above the throb of the tom-tom the weird chant of
+the Indian sun-dancers.
+
+"They are right down in the canyon," said the Inspector.  "I know
+the spot well.  We can see them from the top.  This is their most
+sacred place and there is doubtless something big going on."
+
+They left the main trail and, dismounting, led their horses through
+the scrubby woods, which were thick enough to give them cover
+without impeding very materially their progress.  Within a hundred
+yards of the top they tied their horses in the thicket and climbed
+the slight ascent.  Crawling on hands and knees to the lip of the
+canyon, they looked down upon a scene seldom witnessed by the eyes
+of white men.  The canyon was a long narrow valley, whose rocky
+sides, covered with underbrush, rose some sixty feet from a little
+plain about fifty yards wide.  The little plain was filled with the
+Indian encampment.  At one end a huge fire blazed.  At the other,
+and some fifty yards away, the lodges were set in a semicircle,
+reaching from side to side of the canyon, and in front of the
+lodges were a mass of Indian warriors, squatting on their hunkers,
+beating time, some with tom-toms, others with their hands, to the
+weirdly monotonous chant, that rose and fell in response to the
+gesticulations of one who appeared to be their leader.  In the
+centre of the plain stood a post and round this two circles of
+dancers leaped and swayed.  In the outer circle the men, with clubs
+and rifles in their hands, recited with pantomimic gestures their
+glorious deeds in the war or in the chase.  The inner circle
+presented a ghastly and horrid spectacle.  It was composed of
+younger men, naked and painted, some of whom were held to the top
+of the post by long thongs of buffalo hide attached to skewers
+thrust through the muscles of the breast or back.  Upon these
+thongs they swayed and threw themselves in frantic attempts to
+break free.  With others the skewers were attached by thongs to
+buffalo skulls, stones or heavy blocks of wood, which, as they
+danced and leaped, tore at the bleeding flesh.  Round and round the
+post the naked painted Indians leaped, lurching and swaying from
+side to side in their desperate efforts to drag themselves free
+from those tearing skewers, while round them from the dancing
+circle and from the mass of Indians squatted on the ground rose
+the weird, maddening, savage chant to the accompaniment of their
+beating hands and throbbing drums.
+
+"This is a big dance," said the Inspector, subduing his voice to an
+undertone, though in the din there was little chance of his being
+heard.  "See! many braves have been made already," he added,
+pointing to a place on one side of the fire where a number of forms
+could be seen, some lying flat, some rolling upon the earth, but
+all apparently more or less in a stupor.
+
+Madder and madder grew the drums, higher and higher rose the chant.
+Now and then an older warrior from the squatting circle would fling
+his blanket aside and, waving his rifle high in the air, would join
+with loud cries and wild gesticulations the outer circle of
+dancers.
+
+"It is a big thing this," said the Inspector again.  "No squaws,
+you see, and all in war paint.  They mean business.  We must get
+closer."
+
+Cameron gripped him by the arm.
+
+"Look!" he said, pointing to a group of Indians standing at a
+little distance beyond the lodges.  "Little Thunder and Raven!"
+
+"Yes, by Jove!" said the Inspector.  "And White Horse, and Louis
+the Breed and Rainy Cloud of the Blackfeet.  A couple of Sarcee
+chaps, I see, too, some Piegans and Bloods; the rest are Crees and
+Assiniboines.  The whole bunch are here.  Jove, what a killing if
+we could get them!  Let's work nearer.  Who is that speaking to
+them?"
+
+"That's Raven," said Cameron, "and I should like to get my hands on
+him."
+
+"Steady now," said the Inspector.  "We must make no mistake."
+
+They worked along the top of the ravine, crawling through the
+bushes, till they were immediately over the little group of which
+Raven was the centre.  Raven was still speaking, the half-breed
+interpreting to the Crees and the Assiniboines, and now and then,
+as the noise from the chanting, drumming Indians subsided, the
+policemen could catch a few words.  After Raven had finished Little
+Thunder made reply, apparently in strenuous opposition.  Again
+Raven spoke and again Little Thunder made reply.  The dispute waxed
+warm.  Little Thunder's former attitude towards Raven appeared to
+be entirely changed.  The old subservience was gone.  The Indian
+stood now as a Chief among his people and as such was recognized in
+that company.  He spoke with a haughty pride of conscious strength
+and authority.  He was striving to bring Raven to his way of
+thinking.  At length Raven appeared to throw down his ultimatum.
+
+"No!" he cried, and his voice rang up clear through the din.  "You
+are fools!  You are like little partridges trying to frighten the
+hunter.  The Great White Mother has soldiers like the leaves of the
+trees.  I know, for I have seen them.  Do not listen to this man!"
+pointing to Little Thunder.  "Anger has made him mad.  The Police
+with their big guns will blow you to pieces like this."  He seized
+a bunch of dead leaves, ground them in his hands and puffed the
+fragments in their faces.
+
+The half-breed and Little Thunder were beside themselves with rage.
+Long and loud they harangued the group about them.  Only a little
+of their meaning could the Inspector gather, but enough to let him
+know that they were looking down upon a group of conspirators and
+that plans for a widespread rebellion were being laid before them.
+
+Through the harangues of Little Thunder and Louis the half-breed
+Raven stood calmly regarding them, his hands on his hips.  He knew
+well, as did the men watching from above, that all that stood
+between him and death were those same two hands and the revolvers
+in his belt, whose butts were snugly nosing up to his fingers.
+Little Thunder had too often seen those fingers close and do their
+deadly work while an eyelid might wink to venture any hasty move.
+
+"Is that all?" said Raven at last.
+
+Little Thunder made one final appeal, working himself up into a
+fine frenzy of passion.  Then Raven made reply.
+
+"Listen to me!" he said.  "It is all folly, mad folly!  And
+besides," and here his voice rang out like a trumpet, "I am for
+the Queen, God bless her!"  His figure straightened up, his hands
+dropped on the butts of his guns.
+
+"By Jove!" exclaimed Cameron.  "Isn't that great?"
+
+"Very fine, indeed," said the Inspector softly.  Both men's guns
+were lined upon the conspirators.
+
+Then the half-breed spoke, shrugging his shoulders in contempt.
+
+"Let heem go.  Bah!  No good."  He spat upon the ground.
+
+Raven stood as he was for a few moments, smiling.
+
+"Good-bye, all," he said.  "Bon jour, Louis.  Let no man move!  Let
+no man move!  I never need to shoot at a man twice.  Little Thunder
+knows.  And don't follow!" he added.  "I shall be waiting behind
+the rocks."
+
+He slowly backed away from the group, turned in behind a sheltering
+rock, then swiftly began to climb the rocky sides of the canyon.
+The moment he was out of sight Little Thunder dodged in behind the
+ledges, found his rifle, and, making a wide detour, began to climb
+the side of the ravine at an angle which would cut off Raven's
+retreat.  All this took place in full view of the two watchers
+above.
+
+"Let's get that devil," said the Inspector.  But Cameron was
+already gone.  Swiftly along the lip of the canyon Cameron ran and
+worked his way down the side till he stood just over the sloping
+ledge upon which the Indian was crouched and waiting.  Along this
+lodge came the unconscious Raven, softly whistling to himself his
+favourite air,
+
+
+     "Three cheers for the red, white and blue."
+
+
+There was no way of warning him.  Three steps more and he would be
+within range.  The Inspector raised his gun and drew a bead upon
+the crouching Indian.
+
+"Wait!" whispered Cameron.  "Don't shoot.  It will bring them all
+down on us."  Gathering himself together as he spoke, he vaulted
+clear over the edge of the rock and dropped fair upon the shoulders
+of the Indian below, knocking the breath completely out of him and
+bearing him flat to the rock.  Like a flash Cameron's hand was on
+the Indian's throat so that he could make no outcry.  A moment
+later Raven came in view.  Swifter than light his guns were before
+his face and levelled at Cameron.
+
+"Don't shoot!" said the Inspector quietly from above.  "I have you
+covered."
+
+Perilous as the situation was, Cameron was conscious only of the
+humourous side of it and burst into a laugh.
+
+"Come here, Raven," he said, "and help me to tie up this fellow."
+Slowly Raven moved forward.
+
+"Why, by all the gods!  If it isn't our long-lost friend, Cameron,"
+he said softly, putting up his guns.  "All right, old man," he
+added, nodding up at the Inspector.  "Now, what's all this?  What?
+Little Thunder?  So!  Then I fancy I owe my life to you, Cameron."
+
+Cameron pointed to Little Thunder's gun.  Raven stood looking down
+upon the Indian, who was recovering his wind and his senses.  His
+face suddenly darkened.
+
+"You treacherous dog!  Well, we are now nearly quits.  Once you
+saved my life, now you would have taken it."
+
+Meantime Cameron had handcuffed Little Thunder.
+
+"Up!" he said, prodding him with his revolver.  "And not a sound!"
+
+Keeping within cover of the bushes, they scrambled up the ravine
+side.  As they reached the top the Indian with a mighty wrench tore
+himself from Cameron's grip and plunged into the thicket.  Before
+he had taken a second step, however, the Inspector was upon him
+like a tiger and bore him to the ground.
+
+"Will you go quietly," said the Inspector, "or must we knock you on
+the head?"  He raised his pistol over the Indian as he spoke.
+
+"I go," grunted the Indian solemnly.
+
+"Come, then," said the Inspector, "we'll give you one chance more.
+Where's your friend?" he added, looking about him.  But Raven was
+gone.
+
+"I am just as glad," said Cameron, remembering Raven's declaration
+of allegiance a few moments before.  "He wasn't too bad a chap
+after all.  We have this devil anyhow."
+
+"Quick, now," said the Inspector.  "We have not a moment to lose.
+This is an important capture.  How the deuce we are to get him to
+the Fort I don't know."
+
+Through the bushes they hurried their prisoner, threatening him
+with their guns.  When they came to their horses they were amazed
+to find Little Thunder's pony beside their own and on the
+Inspector's saddle a slip of paper upon which in the fading light
+they found inscribed "One good turn deserves another.  With Mr.
+Raven's compliments."
+
+"By Jove, he's a trump!" said the Inspector.  "I'd like to get him,
+but all the same--"
+
+And so they rode off to the Fort.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+NURSE HALEY
+
+
+The railway construction had reached the Beaver, and from Laggan
+westward the construction gangs were strewn along the line in
+straggling camps, straggling because, though the tents of the
+railway men were set in orderly precision, the crowds of camp-
+followers spread themselves hither and thither in disorderly
+confusion around the outskirts of the camp.
+
+To Cameron, who for a month had been attached to Superintendent
+Strong's division, the life was full of movement and colour.  The
+two constables and Sergeant Ferry found the duty of keeping order
+among the navvies, but more especially among the outlaw herd that
+lay in wait to fling themselves upon their monthly pay like wolves
+upon a kill, sufficiently arduous to fill to repletion the hours of
+the day and often of the night.
+
+The hospital tent where the little nurse reigned supreme became to
+Cameron and to the Sergeant as well a place of refuge and relief.
+Nurse Haley was in charge further down the line.
+
+The post had just come in and with it a letter for Constable
+Cameron.  It was from Inspector Dickson.
+
+"You will be interested to know," it ran, "that when I returned
+from Stand Off two days ago I found that Little Thunder, who had
+been waiting here for his hanging next month, had escaped.  How,
+was a mystery to everybody; but when I learned that a stranger had
+been at the Fort and had called upon the Superintendent with a tale
+of horse-stealing, had asked to see Little Thunder and identified
+him as undoubtedly the thief, and had left that same day riding a
+particularly fine black broncho, I made a guess that we had been
+honoured by a visit from your friend Raven.  That guess was
+confirmed as correct by a little note which I found waiting me from
+this same gentleman explaining Little Thunder's absence as being
+due to Raven's unwillingness to see a man go to the gallows who had
+once saved his life, but conveying the assurance that the Indian
+was leaving the country for good and would trouble us no more.  The
+Superintendent, who seems to have been captured by your friend's
+charm of manner, does not appear to be unduly worried and holds the
+opinion that we are well rid of Little Thunder.  But I venture to
+hold a different opinion, namely, that we shall yet hear from that
+Indian brave before the winter is over.
+
+"Things are quiet on the reservations--altogether too quiet.  The
+Indians are so exceptionally well behaved that there is no excuse
+for arresting any suspects, so White Horse, Rainy Cloud, those
+Piegan chaps, and the rest of them are allowed to wander about at
+will.  The country is full of Indian and half-breed runners and
+nightly pow-wows are the vogue everywhere.  Old Crowfoot, I am
+convinced, is playing a deep game and is simply waiting the fitting
+moment to strike.
+
+"How is the little nurse?  Present my duty to her and to that other
+nurse over whom hangs so deep a mystery."
+
+Cameron folded up his letter and imparted some of the news to the
+Sergeant.
+
+"That old Crowfoot is a deep one, sure enough," said Sergeant Ferry.
+"It takes our Chief here to bring him to time.  Superintendent
+Strong has the distinction of being the only man that ever tamed old
+Crowfoot.  Have you never heard of it?  No? Well, of course, we
+don't talk about these things.  I was there though, and for cold
+iron nerve I never saw anything like it.  It was a bad half-breed,"
+continued Sergeant Ferry, who, when he found a congenial and safe
+companion, loved to spin a yarn--"a bad half-breed who had been
+arrested away down the line, jumped off the train and got away to
+the Blackfeet.  The Commissioner happened to be in Calgary and
+asked the Superintendent himself to see about the capture of this
+desperado.  So with a couple of us mounted and another driving a
+buckboard we made for Chief Crowfoot's encampment.  It was a black
+night and raining a steady drizzle.  We lay on the edge of the camp
+for a couple of hours in the rain and then at early dawn we rode in.
+It took the Superintendent about two minutes to locate Crowfoot's
+tent, and, leaving us outside, he walked straight in.  There was our
+man, as large as life, in the place of honour beside old Crowfoot.
+The interpreter, who was scared to death, afterwards told me all
+about it.
+
+"'I want this man,' said the Superintendent, hardly waiting to say
+good-day to the old Chief.
+
+"Crowfoot was right up and ready for a fight.  The Superintendent,
+without ever letting go the half-breed's shoulder, set out the
+case.  Meantime the Indians had gathered in hundreds about the tent
+outside, all armed, and wild for blood, you bet.  I could hear the
+Superintendent making his statement.  All at once he stopped and
+out he came with his man by the collar, old Crowfoot after him in a
+fury, but afraid to give the signal of attack.  The Indians were
+keen to get at us, but the old Chief had his men in hand all right.
+
+"'Don't think you will not get justice,' said the Superintendent.
+'You come yourself and see.  Here's a pass for you on the railroad
+and for any three of your men.  But let me warn you that if one
+hair of my men is touched, it will be a bad day for you, Crowfoot,
+and for your band.'
+
+"He bundled his man into the buckboard and sent him off.  The
+Superintendent and I waited on horseback in parley with old
+Crowfoot till the buckboard was over the hill.  Such a half hour I
+never expect to see again.  I felt like a man standing over an open
+keg of gunpowder with a lighted match.  Any moment a spark might
+fall, and then good-bye.  And it is this same nerve of his that
+holds down these camps along this line.  Here we are with twenty-
+five men from Laggan to Beaver keeping order among twenty-five
+hundred railroad navvies, not a bad lot, and twenty-five hundred
+others, the scum, the very devil's scum from across the line, and
+not a murder all these months.  Whiskey, of course, but all under
+cover.  I tell you, he's put the fear of death on all that tinhorn
+bunch that hang around these camps."
+
+"There doesn't seem to be much trouble just now," remarked Cameron.
+
+"Trouble?  There may be the biggest kind of trouble any day.  Some
+of these contractors are slow in their pay.  They expect men to
+wait a month or two.  That makes them mad and the tinhorn bunch
+keep stirring up trouble.  Might be a strike any time, and then
+look out.  But our Chief will be ready for them.  He won't stand
+any nonsense, you bet."
+
+At this point in the Sergeant's rambling yarn the door was flung
+open and a man called breathlessly, "Man killed!"
+
+"How is that?" cried the Sergeant, springing to buckle on his belt.
+
+"An accident--car ran away--down the dump."
+
+"They are altogether too flip with those cars," growled the
+Sergeant.  "Come on!"
+
+They ran down the road and toward the railroad dump where they saw
+a crowd of men.  The Sergeant, followed by Cameron, pushed his way
+through and found a number of navvies frantically tearing at a pile
+of jagged blocks of rock under which could be seen a human body.
+It took only a few minutes to remove the rocks and to discover
+lying there a young man, a mere lad, from whose mangled and
+bleeding body the life appeared to have fled.
+
+As they stood about him, a huge giant of a man came tearing his way
+through the crowd, pushing men to right and left.
+
+"Let me see him," he cried, dropping on his knees.  "Oh Jack, lad,
+they have done for you this time."
+
+As he spoke the boy opened his eyes, looked upon the face of his
+friend, smiled and lay still.  Then the Sergeant took command.
+
+"Is the doctor back, does anyone know?"
+
+"No, he's up the line yet.  He is coming in on number seven."
+
+"Well, we must get this man to the hospital.  Here, you," he said,
+touching a man on the arm, "run and tell the nurse we are bringing
+a wounded man."
+
+They improvised a stretcher and laid the mangled form upon it the
+blood streaming from wounds in his legs and trickling from his
+pallid lips.
+
+"Here, two men are better than four.  Cameron, you take the head,
+and you," pointing to Jack's friend, "take his feet.  Steady now!
+I'll just go before.  This is a ghastly sight."
+
+At the door of the hospital tent the little nurse met them, pale,
+but ready for service.
+
+"Oh, my poor boy!" she cried, as she saw the white face.  "This
+way, Sergeant," she added, passing into a smaller tent at one side
+of the hospital.  "Oh, Mr. Cameron, is that you?  I am glad you are
+here."
+
+"Has Nurse Haley come?" enquired the Sergeant.
+
+"Yes, she came in last night, thank goodness.  Here, on this table,
+Sergeant.  Oh I wish the doctor were here!  Now we must lift him
+on to this stretcher.  Ah, here's Nurse Haley," she added in a
+relieved voice, and before Cameron was aware, a girl in a nurse's
+uniform stood by him and appeared quietly to take command.
+
+"Here Sergeant," she said, "two men take his feet."  She put her
+arms under the boy's shoulder and gently and with apparent ease,
+assisted by the others, lifted him to the table.  "A little
+further--there.  Now you are easier, aren't you?" she said, smiling
+down into the lad's face.  Her voice was low and soft and full
+toned.
+
+"Yes, thank you," said the boy, biting back his groans and with a
+pitiful attempt at a smile.
+
+"You're fine now, Jack.  You'll soon be fixed up now," said his
+friend.
+
+"Yes Pete, I'm all right, I know."
+
+"Oh, I wish the doctor were here!" groaned the little nurse.
+
+"What about a hypo?" enquired Nurse Haley quietly.
+
+"Yes, yes, give him one."
+
+Cameron's eyes followed the firm, swift-moving fingers as they
+deftly gave the hypodermic.
+
+"Now we must get this bleeding stopped," she said.
+
+"Get them all out, Sergeant, please," said the little nurse.  "One
+or two will do to help us.  You stay, Mr. Cameron."
+
+At the mention of his name Nurse Haley, who had been busy preparing
+bandages, dropped them, turned, and for the first time looked
+Cameron in the face.
+
+"Is it you?" she said softly, and gave him her hand, and, as more
+than once before, Cameron found himself suddenly forgetting all the
+world.  He was looking into her eyes, blue, deep, wonderful.
+
+It was only for a single moment that his eyes held hers, but to him
+it seemed as if he had been in some far away land.  Without a
+single word of greeting he allowed her to withdraw her hand.
+Wonder, and something he could not understand, held him dumb.
+
+For the next half hour he obeyed orders, moving as in a dream,
+assisting the nurses in their work; and in a dream he went away to
+his own quarters and thence out and over the dump and along the
+tote road that led through the straggling shacks and across the
+river into the forest beyond.  But of neither river nor forest was
+he aware.  Before his eyes there floated an illusive vision of
+masses of fluffy golden hair above a face of radiant purity, of
+deft fingers moving in swift and sure precision as they wound the
+white rolls of bandages round bloody and broken flesh, of two round
+capable arms whose lines suggested strength and beauty, of a firm
+knit, pliant body that moved with easy sinuous grace, of eyes--but
+ever at the eyes he paused, forgetting all else, till, recalling
+himself, he began again, striving to catch and hold that radiant,
+bewildering, illusive vision.  That was a sufficiently maddening
+process, but to relate that vision of radiant efficient strength
+and grace to the one he carried of the farmer's daughter with her
+dun-coloured straggling hair, her muddy complexion, her stupid
+face, her clumsy, grimy hands and heavy feet, her sloppy figure,
+was quite impossible.  After long and strenuous attempts he gave up
+the struggle.
+
+"Mandy!" he exclaimed aloud to the forest trees.  "That Mandy!
+What's gone wrong with my eyes, or am I clean off my head?  I will
+go back," he said with sudden resolution, "and take another look."
+
+Straight back he walked to the hospital, but at the door he paused.
+Why was he there?  He had no excuse to offer and without excuse he
+felt he could not enter.  He was acting like a fool.  He turned
+away and once more sought his quarters, disgusted with himself that
+he should be disturbed by the thought of Mandy Haley or that it
+should cause him a moment's embarrassment to walk into her presence
+with or without excuse, determinedly he set himself to regain his
+one-time attitude of mind toward the girl.  With little difficulty
+he recalled his sense of superiority, his kindly pity, his desire
+to protect her crude simplicity from those who might do her harm.
+With a vision of that Mandy before him, the drudge of the farm, the
+butt of Perkins' jokes, the object of pity for the neighbourhood,
+he could readily summon up all the feelings he had at one time
+considered it the correct and rather fine thing to cherish for her.
+But for this young nurse, so thoroughly furnished and fit, and so
+obviously able to care for herself, these feelings would not come.
+Indeed, it made him squirm to remember how in his farewell in the
+orchard he had held her hand in gentle pity for her foolish and all
+too evident infatuation for his exalted and superior self.  His
+groan of self-disgust he hastily merged into a cough, for the
+Sergeant had his eyes upon him.  Indeed, the Sergeant did not help
+his state of mind, for he persisted in executing a continuous fugue
+of ecstatic praise of Nurse Haley in various keys and tempos, her
+pluck, her cleverness, her skill, her patience, her jolly laugh,
+her voice, her eyes.  To her eyes the Sergeant ever kept harking
+back as to the main motif of his fugue, till Cameron would have
+dearly loved to chuck him and his fugue out of doors.
+
+He was saved from deeds of desperate violence by a voice at the
+door.
+
+"Letta fo' Mis Camelon!"
+
+"Hello, Cameron!" exclaimed the Sergeant, handing him the note.
+"You're in luck."  There was no mistaking the jealousy in the
+Sergeant's voice.
+
+"Oh, hang it!" said Cameron as he read the note.
+
+"What's up?"
+
+"Tea!"
+
+"Who?" enquired the Sergeant eagerly.
+
+"Me.  I say, you go in my place."
+
+The Sergeant swore at him frankly and earnestly.
+
+"All right John," said Cameron rather ungraciously.
+
+"You come?" enquired the Chinaman.
+
+"Yes, I'll come."
+
+"All lite!" said John, turning away with his message.
+
+"Confound the thing!" growled Cameron.
+
+"Oh come, you needn't put up any bluff with me, you know," said the
+Sergeant.
+
+But Cameron made no reply.  He felt he was not ready for the
+interview before him.  He was distinctly conscious of a feeling of
+nervous embarrassment, which to a man of experience is disconcerting
+and annoying.  He could not make up his mind as to the attitude
+which it would be wise and proper for him to assume toward--ah--
+Nurse Haley.  Why not resume relations at the point at which they
+were broken off in the orchard that September afternoon a year and a
+half ago?  Why not?  Mandy was apparently greatly changed, greatly
+improved.  Well, he was delighted at the improvement, and he would
+frankly let her see his pleasure and approval.  There was no need
+for embarrassment.  Pshaw!  Embarrassment?  He felt none.
+
+And yet as he stood at the door of the nurses' tent he was
+disquieted to find himself nervously wondering what in thunder he
+should talk about.  As it turned out there was no cause for
+nervousness on this score.  The little nurse and the doctor--Nurse
+Haley being on duty--kept the stream of talk rippling and sparkling
+in an unbroken flow.  Whenever a pause did occur they began afresh
+with Cameron and his achievements, of which they strove to make him
+talk.  But they ever returned to their own work among the sick and
+wounded of the camps, and as often as they touched this theme the
+pivot of their talk became Nurse Haley, till Cameron began to
+suspect design and became wrathful.  They were talking at him and
+were taking a rise out of him.  He would show them their error.
+He at once became brilliant.
+
+In the midst of his scintillation he abruptly paused and sat
+listening.  Through the tent walls came the sound of singing, low-
+toned, rich, penetrating.  He had no need to ask about that voice.
+In silence they looked at him and at each other.
+
+
+     "We're going home, no more to roam,
+        No more to sin and sorrow,
+      No more to wear the brow of care,
+        We're going home to-morrow.
+
+     "We're going home; we're going home;
+        We're going home to-morrow."
+
+
+Softer and softer grew the music.  At last the voice fell silent.
+Then Nurse Haley appeared, radiant, fresh, and sweet as a clover
+field with the morning dew upon it, but with a light as of another
+world upon her face.
+
+With the spell of her voice, of her eyes, of her radiant face upon
+him, Cameron's scintillation faded and snuffed out.  He felt like a
+boy at his first party and enraged at himself for so feeling.  How
+bright she was, how pure her face under the brown gold hair, how
+dainty the bloom upon her cheek, and that voice of hers, and the
+firm lithe body with curving lines of budding womanhood, grace in
+every curve and movement!  The Mandy of old faded from his mind.
+Have I seen you before?  And where?  And how long ago?  And what's
+happening to me?  With these questions he vexed his soul while he
+strove to keep track of the conversation between the three.
+
+A call from the other tent summoned Nurse Haley.
+
+"Let me go instead," cried the little nurse eagerly.  But, light-
+footed as a deer, Mandy was already gone.
+
+When the tent flap had fallen behind her Cameron pushed back his
+plate, leaned forward upon the table and, looking the little nurse
+full in the face, said:
+
+"Now, it's no use carrying this on.  What have you done to her?"
+And the little nurse laughed her brightest and most joyous laugh.
+
+"What has she done to us, you mean."
+
+"No.  Come now, take pity on a fellow.  I left her--well--you know
+what.  And now--how has this been accomplished?"
+
+"Soul, my boy," said the doctor emphatically, "and the hairdresser
+and--"
+
+But Cameron ignored him.
+
+"Can you tell me?" he said to the nurse.
+
+"Well, as a nurse, is she quite impossible?"
+
+"Oh, spare me," pleaded Cameron.  "I acknowledge my sin and my
+folly is before me.  But tell me, how was this miracle wrought?"
+
+"What do you mean exactly?  Specify."
+
+"Oh, hang it!  Well, beginning at the top, there's her hair."
+
+"Her hair?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Then, her complexion--her grace of form--her style--her manner.
+Oh, confound it!  Her hands--everything."
+
+"Well," said the little nurse with deliberation, "let's begin at
+the top.  Her hair?  A hairdresser explains that.  Her complexion?
+A little treatment, massage, with some help from the doctor.  Her
+hands?  Again treatment and release from brutalising work.  Her
+figure?  Well, you know, that depends, though we don't acknowledge
+it always, to a certain extent on--well--things--and how you put
+them on."
+
+"Nurse," said the doctor gravely, "you're all off.  The
+transformation is from within and is explained, as I have said, by
+one word--soul.  The soul has been set free, has been allowed to
+break through.  That is all.  Why, my dear fellow," continued the
+doctor with rising enthusiasm, "when that girl came to us we were
+in despair; and for three months she kept us there, pursuing us,
+hounding us with questions.  Never saw anything like it.  One
+telling was enough though.  Her eyes were everywhere, her ears open
+to every hint, but it was her soul, like a bird imprisoned and
+beating for the open air.  The explanation is, as I have said just
+now, soul--intense, flaming, unquenchable soul--and, I must say it,
+the dressmaker, the hairdresser, and the rest directed by our young
+friend here," pointing to the little nurse.  "Why, she had us all
+on the job.  We all became devotees of the Haley Cult."
+
+"No," said the nurse, "it was herself."
+
+"Isn't that what I have been telling you?" said the doctor
+impatiently.  "Soul--soul--soul!  A soul somehow on fire."
+
+And with that Cameron had to be content.
+
+Yes, a soul it was, at one time dormant and enwrapped within its
+coarse integument.  Now, touched into life by some divine fire, it
+had through its own subtle power transformed that coarse integument
+into its own pure gold.  What was that fire?  What divine touch had
+kindled it?  And, more important still, was that fire still aglow,
+or, having done its work, had it for lack of food flickered and
+died out?  With these questions Cameron vexed himself for many
+days, nor found an answer.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+"CORPORAL" CAMERON
+
+
+Jack Green did not die.  Every morning for a fortnight Constable
+Cameron felt it to be his duty to make enquiry--the Sergeant, it
+may be added--performing the same duty with equal diligence in the
+afternoon, and every day the balance, which trembled evenly for
+some time between hope and fear, continued to dip more and more
+decidedly toward the former.
+
+"He's going to live, I believe," said Dr. Martin one day.  "And he
+owes it to the nurse."  The doctor's devotion to and admiration for
+Nurse Haley began to appear to Cameron unnecessarily pronounced.
+"She simply would not let him go!" continued the doctor.  "She
+nursed him, sang to him her old 'Come all ye' songs and Methodist
+hymns, she spun him barnyard yarns and orchard idyls, and always
+'continued in our next,' till the chap simply couldn't croak for
+wanting to hear the next."
+
+At times Cameron caught through the tent walls snatches of those
+songs and yarns and idyls, at times he caught momentary glimpses of
+the bright young girl who was pouring the vigour of her life into
+the lad fighting for his own, but these snatches and glimpses only
+exasperated him.  There was no opportunity for any lengthened and
+undisturbed converse, for on the one hand the hospital service was
+exacting beyond the strength of doctor and nurses, and on the other
+there was serious trouble for Superintendent Strong and his men in
+the camps along the line, for a general strike had been declared in
+all the camps and no one knew at what minute it might flare up into
+a fierce riot.
+
+It was indeed exasperating to Cameron.  The relations between
+himself and Nurse Haley were unsatisfactory, entirely unsatisfactory.
+It was clearly his duty--indeed he owed it to her and to himself--
+to arrive at some understanding, to establish their relations upon a
+proper and reasonable basis.  He was at very considerable pains to
+make it clear, not only to the Sergeant, but to the cheerful little
+nurse and to the doctor as well, that as her oldest friend in the
+country it was incumbent upon him to exercise a sort of kindly
+protectorate over Nurse Haley.  In this it is to be feared he was
+only partially successful.  The Sergeant was obviously and gloomily
+incredulous of the purity of his motives, the little nurse arched
+her eyebrows and smiled in a most annoying manner, while the doctor
+pendulated between good-humoured tolerance and mild sarcasm.  It
+added not a little to Cameron's mental disquiet that he was quite
+unable to understand himself; indeed, through these days he was
+engaged in conducting a bit of psychological research, with his own
+mind as laboratory and his mental phenomena as the materia for his
+investigation.  It was a most difficult and delicate study and one
+demanding both leisure and calm--and Cameron had neither.  The brief
+minutes he could snatch from Her Majesty's service were necessarily
+given to his friends in the hospital and as to the philosophic calm
+necessary to research work, a glimpse through the door of Nurse
+Haley's golden head bending over a sick man's cot, a snatch of song
+in the deep mellow tones of her voice, a touch of her strong firm
+hand, a quiet steady look from her deep, deep eyes--any one of these
+was sufficient to scatter all his philosophic determinings to the
+winds and leave his soul a chaos of confused emotions.
+
+Small wonder, then, that twenty times a day he cursed the luck that
+had transferred him from the comparatively peaceful environment of
+the Police Post at Fort Macleod to the maddening whirl of
+conflicting desires and duties attendant upon the Service in the
+railroad construction camps.  A letter from his friend Inspector
+Dickson accentuated the contrast.
+
+"Great doings, my boy," wrote the Inspector, evidently under the
+spell of overmastering excitement.  "We have Little Thunder again
+in the toils, this time to stay, and we owe this capture to your
+friend Raven.  A week ago Mr. Raven coolly walked into the Fort and
+asked for the Superintendent.  I was down at stables at the time.
+As he was coming out I ran into him and immediately shouted 'Hands
+up!'
+
+"'Ah, Mr. Inspector,' said my gentleman, as cool as ice, 'delighted
+to see you again.'
+
+"'Stand where you are!' I said, and knowing my man and determined
+to take no chances, I ordered two constables to arrest him.  At
+this the Superintendent appeared.
+
+"'Ah, Inspector,' he said, 'there is evidently some mistake here.'
+
+"'There is no mistake, Superintendent,' I replied.  'I know this
+man.  He is wanted on a serious charge.'
+
+"'Kindly step this way, Mr. Raven,' said the Superintendent, 'and
+you, Inspector.  I have something of importance to say to you.'
+
+"And, by Jove, it was important.  Little Thunder had broken his
+pledge to Raven to quit the rebellion business and had perfected a
+plan for a simultaneous rising of Blackfeet, Bloods, Piegans, and
+Sarcees next month.  Raven had stumbled upon this and had
+deliberately put himself in the power of the Police to bring this
+information.  'I am not quite prepared,' he said, 'to hand over
+this country to a lot of bally half-breeds and bloody savages.'
+Together the Superintendent and he had perfected a plan for the
+capture of the heads of the conspiracy.
+
+"'As to that little matter of which you were thinking, Inspector
+Dickson,' said my Chief, 'I think if you remember, we have no
+definite charge laid against Mr. Raven, who has given us, by the
+way, very valuable information upon which we must immediately act.
+We are also to have Mr. Raven's assistance.'
+
+"Well, we had a glorious hunt, and by Jove, that man Raven is a
+wonder.  He brought us right to the bunch, walked in on them, cool
+and quiet, pulled two guns and held them till we all got in place.
+There will be no rebellion among these tribes this year, I am
+confident."
+
+And though it does not appear in the records it is none the less
+true that to the influence of Missionary Macdougall among the
+Stonies and to the vigilance of the North West Mounted Police was
+it due that during the Rebellion of '85 Canada was spared the
+unspeakable horrors of an Indian war.
+
+It was this letter that deepened the shadow upon Cameron's face and
+sharpened the edge on his voice as he looked in upon his hospital
+friends one bright winter morning.
+
+"You are quite unbearable!" said the little nurse after she had
+listened to his grumbling for a few minutes.  "And you are spoiling
+us all."
+
+"Spoiling you all?"
+
+"Yes, especially me, and--Nurse Haley."
+
+"Nurse Haley?"
+
+"Yes.  You are disturbing her peace of mind."
+
+"Disturbing her?  Me?"
+
+A certain satisfaction crept into Cameron's voice.  Nothing is so
+calculated to restore the poise of the male mind as a consciousness
+of power to disturb the equilibrium of one of the imperious sex.
+
+"And you must not do it!" continued the little nurse.  "She has far
+too much to bear now."
+
+"And haven't I been just telling you that?" said Cameron savagely.
+"She never gets off.  Night and day she is on the job.  I tell you,
+I won't--it should not be allowed."  Cameron was conscious of a
+fine glow of fraternal interest in this young girl.  "For instance,
+a day like this!  Look at these white mountains, and that glorious
+sky, and this wonderful air, and not a breath of wind!  What a day
+for a walk!  It would do her--it would do you all a world of good."
+
+"Wait!" cried the little nurse, who had been on duty all night.
+"I'll tell her what you say."
+
+Apparently it took some telling, for it was a full precious quarter
+of an hour before they appeared again.
+
+"There, now, you see the effect of your authority.  She would not
+budge for me, but--well--there she is!  Look at her!"
+
+There was no need for this injunction.  Cameron's eyes were already
+fastened upon her.  And she was worth any man's while to look at in
+her tramping costume of toque and blanket coat.  Tall, she looked,
+beside the little nurse, lithe and strong, her close-fitting Hudson
+Bay blanket coat revealing the swelling lines of her budding
+womanhood.  The dainty white toque perched upon the masses of gold-
+brown hair accentuated the girlish freshness of her face.  At the
+nurse's words she turned her eyes upon Cameron and upon her face,
+pale with long night watches, a faint red appeared.  But her eyes
+were quiet and steady and kind; too quiet and too kind for Cameron,
+who was looking for other signals.  There was no sign of disturbance
+in that face.
+
+"Come on!" he said impatiently.  "We have only one hour."
+
+"Oh, what a glorious day!" cried Nurse Haley, drawing a deep breath
+and striding out like a man to keep pace with Cameron.  "And how
+good of you to spare me the time!"
+
+"I have been trying to get you alone for the last two weeks," said
+Cameron.
+
+"Two weeks?"
+
+"Yes, for a month!  I wanted to talk to you."
+
+"To talk with me?  About what?"
+
+"About--well--about everything--about yourself."
+
+"Me?"
+
+"Yes.  I don't understand you.  You have changed so tremendously."
+
+"Oh," exclaimed the girl, "I am so glad you have noticed that!
+Have I changed much?"
+
+"Much?  I should say so!  I find myself wondering if you are the
+Mandy I used to know at all."
+
+"Oh," she exclaimed, "I am so glad!  You see, I needed to change so
+much."
+
+"But how has it happened?" exclaimed Cameron.  "It is a miracle to
+me."
+
+"How a miracle?"
+
+For a few moments they walked on in silence, the tote road leading
+them into the forest.  After a time the nurse said softly,
+
+"It was you who began it."
+
+"I?"
+
+"Yes, you--and then the nurse.  Oh, I can never repay her!  The day
+that you left--that was a dreadful day.  The world was all black.
+I could not have lived, I think, many days like that.  I had to go
+into town and I couldn't help going to her.  Oh, how good she was
+to me that day! how good!  She understood, she understood at once.
+She made me come for a week to her, and then for altogether.  That
+was the beginning; then I began to see how foolish I had been."
+
+"Foolish?"
+
+"Yes, wildly foolish!  I was like a mad thing, but I did not know
+then, and I could not help it."
+
+"Help what?"
+
+"Oh, everything!  But the nurse showed me--she showed me--"
+
+"Showed you?"
+
+"Showed me how to take care of myself--to take care of my body--of
+my dress--of my hair.  Oh, I remember well," she said with a bright
+little laugh, "I remember that hair-dresser.  Then the doctor came
+and gave me books and made me read and study--and then I began to
+see.  Oh, it was like a fire--a burning fire within me.  And the
+doctor was good to me, so very patient, till I began to love my
+profession; to love it at first for myself, and then for others.
+How good they all were to me those days!--the nurses in the
+hospital, the doctors, the students--everyone seemed to be kind;
+but above them all my own nurse here and my own doctor."
+
+In hurried eager speech she poured forth her heart as if anxious to
+finish her tale--her voice, her eyes, her face all eloquent of the
+intense emotion that filled her soul.
+
+"It is wonderful!" said Cameron.
+
+"Yes," she replied, "wonderful indeed!  And I wanted to see you and
+have you see me," she continued, still hurrying her speech, "for I
+could not bear that you should remember me as I was those dreadful
+days; and I am so glad that you--you--are pleased!"  The appeal in
+her voice and in her eyes roused in Cameron an overwhelming tide of
+passion.
+
+"Pleased!" he cried.  "Pleased!  Great Heavens, Mandy!  You are
+wonderful!  Don't you know that?"
+
+"No," she said thoughtfully; "but," she drew a long breath, "I like
+to hear you say it.  That is all I want.  You see I owe it all to
+you."  The face she turned to him so innocently happy might have
+been a child's.
+
+"Mandy," cried Cameron, stopping short in his walk, "you--I--!"
+That frank childlike look in her eyes checked his hot words.  But
+there was no need for words; his eyes spoke for his faltering lips.
+A look of fear leaped to her eyes, a flow of red blood to her
+cheeks; then she stood, white, trembling and silent.
+
+"I am tired, I think," she said after a moment's silence, "we will
+go back."
+
+"Yes, you are tired," said Cameron angrily.  "You are tired to
+death.  Mandy, you need some one to take care of you.  I wish you
+would let me."  They were now walking back toward the town.
+
+"They are all good to me; they are all kind to me."  Her voice was
+quiet and steady.  She had gained control of herself again.  "Why,
+even John the Chinaman," she added with a laugh, "spoils me.  Oh,
+no harm can come to me--I have no fear!"
+
+"But," said Cameron, "I--I want to take care of you, Mandy.  I want
+the right to take care of you, always."
+
+"I know, I know," she said kindly.  "You are so good; you were
+always so good; but I need no one."
+
+Cameron glanced at the lithe, strong, upright figure striding along
+beside him with easy grace; and the truth came to him in swift and
+painful revelation.
+
+"You are right," he said as if to himself.  "You need no one, and
+you don't need me."
+
+"But," she cried eagerly, "it was good of you all the same."
+
+"Good!" he said impatiently.  "Good!  Nonsense!  I tell you, Mandy,
+I want you, I want you.  Do you understand?  I want to marry you."
+
+"Oh, don't say that!" she cried, stopping short, her voice
+disturbed, but kindly, gentle and strong.  "Don't say that," she
+repeated, "for, of course, that is impossible."
+
+"Impossible!" he exclaimed angrily.
+
+"Yes," she said, her voice still quiet and steady, "quite
+impossible.  But I love you for saying it, oh--," she suddenly
+caught her breath.  "Oh, I love you for saying it."  Then pointing
+up the road she cried, "Look!  Some one for you, I am sure."  A
+horseman was galloping swiftly towards them.
+
+"Oh hang it all!" said Cameron.  "What the deuce does he want now?"
+
+"We must talk this out again, Mandy," he said.
+
+"No, no!" she cried, "never again.  Please don't, ever again; I
+could not bear it.  But I shall always remember, and--I am so
+glad."  As she spoke, her hands, with her old motion, went to her
+heart.
+
+"Oh the deuce take it!" said Cameron as the Sergeant flung his
+horse back on his heels at their side.  "What does he want?"
+
+"Constable Cameron," said the Sergeant in a voice of sharp command,
+"there's a row on.  Constable Scott has been very badly handled in
+trying to make an arrest.  You are to report at once for duty."
+
+"All right, Sir," said Cameron, "I shall return immediately."
+
+The Sergeant wheeled and was gone.
+
+"You must go!" cried Mandy, quick fear springing into her eyes.
+
+"Yes," said Cameron, "at once.  Come, I shall take you home."
+
+"No, never mind me!" she cried.  "Go!  Go!  I can take care of
+myself.  I shall follow."  Her voice rang out strong and clear; she
+was herself once more.
+
+"You are the right sort, Mandy," cried Cameron, taking her hand.
+"Good bye!"
+
+"Good bye!" she replied, her face suddenly pale and her lips
+beginning to quiver.  "I shall always remember--I--shall--always
+be glad for--what you said today."
+
+Cameron stood looking at her for a moment somewhat uncertainly,
+then,
+
+"Good bye!" he said abruptly, and, turning, went at the double
+towards his quarters.
+
+The strikers had indeed broken loose, supported by the ruffianly
+horde of camp followers who were egging them on to violence and
+destruction of property.  At present they were wild with triumph
+over the fact that they had rescued one of their leaders, big Joe
+Coyle, from Constable Scott.  It was an exceedingly dangerous
+situation, for the riot might easily spread from camp to camp.
+Bruised and bloody, Constable Scott reported to Superintendent
+Strong lying upon his sick bed.
+
+"Sergeant," said the Superintendent, "take Constables Cameron and
+Scott, arrest that man at once and bring him here!"
+
+In the village they found between eight hundred and a thousand men,
+many of them crazed with bad whiskey, some armed with knives and
+some with guns, and all ready for blood.  Big Joe Coyle they found
+in the saloon.  Pushing his way through, the Sergeant seized his
+man by the collar.
+
+"Come along, I want you!" he said, dragging him to the open door.
+
+"Shut that there door, Hep!" drawled a man with a goatee and a
+moustache dyed glossy black.
+
+"All right, Bill!" shouted the man called Hep, springing to the
+door; but before he could make it Cameron had him by the collar.
+
+"Hold on, Hep!" he said, "not so fast."
+
+For answer Hep struck hard at him and the crowd of men threw
+themselves at Cameron and between him and the door.  Constable
+Scott, who also had his hand upon the prisoner, drew his revolver
+and looked towards the Sergeant who was struggling in the grasp of
+three or four ruffians.
+
+"No!" shouted the Sergeant above the uproar.  "Don't shoot--we have
+no orders!  Let him go!"
+
+"Go on!" he said savagely, giving his prisoner a final shake.  "We
+will come back for you."
+
+There was a loud chorus of derisive cheers.  The crowd opened and
+allowed the Sergeant and constables to pass out.  Taking his place
+at the saloon door with Constable Scott, the Sergeant sent Cameron
+to report and ask for further orders.
+
+"Ask if we have orders to shoot," said the Sergeant.
+
+Cameron found the Superintendent hardly able to lift his head and
+made his report.
+
+"The saloon is filled with men who oppose the arrest, Sir.  What
+are your orders?"
+
+"My orders are, Bring that man here, and at once!"
+
+"Have we instructions to shoot?"
+
+"Shoot!" cried the Superintendent, lifting himself on his elbow.
+"Bring that man if you have to shoot every man in the saloon!"
+
+"Very well, Sir, we will bring him," said Cameron, departing on a
+run.
+
+At the door of the saloon he found the Sergeant and Constable white
+hot under the jeers and taunts of the half drunken gang gathered
+about them.
+
+"What are the orders, Constable Cameron?" enquired the Sergeant in
+a loud voice.
+
+"The orders are, Shoot every man in the saloon if necessary!"
+shouted Cameron.
+
+"Revolvers!" commanded the Sergeant.  "Constable Cameron, hold the
+door!  Constable Scott, follow me!"
+
+At the door stood the man named Hep, evidently keeping guard.
+
+"Want in?" he said with a grin.
+
+For answer, Cameron gripped his collar, with one fierce jerk lifted
+him clear out of the door to the platform, and then, putting his
+body into it, heaved him with a mighty swing far into the crowd
+below, bringing two or three men to the ground with the impact of
+his body.
+
+"Come here, man!" cried Cameron again, seizing a second man who
+stood near the door and flinging him clear off the platform after
+the unlucky Hep.
+
+Speedily the crowd about the door gave back, and before they were
+aware the Sergeant and Constable Scott appeared with big Joe Coyle
+between them.
+
+"Take him!" said the Sergeant to Cameron.
+
+Cameron seized him by the collar.
+
+"Come here!" he said, and, clearing the platform in a spring, he
+brought his prisoner in a heap with him.  "Get up!" he roared at
+him, jerking him to his feet as if he had been a child.
+
+"Let him go!" shouted the man with the goatee, named Bill, rushing
+up.
+
+"Take that, then," said Cameron, giving him a swift half-arm jab on
+the jaw, "and I'll come back for you again," he added, as the man
+fell back into the arms of his friends.
+
+"Forward!" said the Sergeant, falling in with Constable Scott
+behind Cameron and facing the crowd with drawn revolvers.  The
+swift fierceness of the attack seemed to paralyse the senses of the
+crowd.
+
+"Come on, boys!" yelled the goatee man, bloody and savage with
+Cameron's blow.  "Don't let the blank blank blank rattle you like a
+lot of blank blank chickens.  Come on!"
+
+At once rose a roar from eight hundred throats like nothing human
+in its sound, and the crowd began to press close upon the Police.
+But the revolvers had an ugly appearance to those in front looking
+into their little black throats.
+
+"Aw, come on!" yelled a man half drunk, running with a lurch upon
+the Sergeant.
+
+"Crack!" went the Sergeant's revolver, and the man dropped with a
+bullet through his shoulder.
+
+"Next man," shouted the Sergeant, "I shall kill!"
+
+The crowd gave back and gathered round the wounded man.  A stream
+lay in the path of the Police, crossed by a little bridge.
+
+"Hurry!" said the Sergeant, "let's make the bridge before they come
+again."  But before they could make the bridge the crowd had
+recovered from their momentary panic and, with wild oaths and yells
+and brandishing knives and guns, came on with a rush, led by
+goatee Bill.
+
+Already the prisoner was half way across the bridge, the Sergeant
+and the constable guarding the entrance, when above the din was
+heard a roar as of some animal enraged.  Looking beyond the Police
+the crowd beheld a fearsome sight.  It was the Superintendent
+himself, hatless, and with uniform in disarray, a sword in one
+hand, a revolver in the other.  Across the bridge he came like a
+tornado and, standing at the entrance, roared,
+
+"Listen to me, you dogs!  The first man who sets foot on this
+bridge I shall shoot dead, so help me God!"
+
+His towering form, his ferocious appearance and his well-known
+reputation for utter fearlessness made the crowd pause and, before
+they could make up their minds to attack that resolute little
+company headed by their dread commander, the prisoner was safe over
+the bridge and well up the hill toward the guard room.  Half way
+up the hill the Superintendent met Cameron returning from the
+disposition of his prisoner.
+
+"There's another man down there, Sir, needs looking after," he
+said.
+
+"Better let them cool off, Cameron," said the Superintendent.
+
+"I promised I'd go for him, Sir," said Cameron, his face all ablaze
+for battle.
+
+"Then go for him," said the Superintendent.  "Let a couple of you
+go along--but I am done--just now."
+
+"We will see you up the hill, Sir," said the Sergeant.
+
+"Come on, Scott!" said Cameron, setting off for the village once
+more.
+
+The crowd had returned from the bridge and the leaders had already
+sought their favourite resort, the saloon.  Straight to the door
+marched Cameron, followed by Scott.  Close to the counter stood
+goatee Bill, loudly orating, and violently urging the breaking in
+of the guard room and the release of the prisoner.
+
+"In my country," he yelled, "we'd have that feller out in about six
+minutes in spite of all the blank blank Police in this blank
+country.  THEY ain't no good.  They're scairt to death."
+
+At this point Cameron walked in upon him and laid a compelling grip
+upon his collar.  Instantly Bill reached for his gun, but Cameron,
+swiftly shifting his grip to his arm, wrenched him sharply about
+and struck him one blow on the ear.  As if held by a hinge, the
+head fell over on one side and the man slithered to the floor.
+
+"Out of the way!" shouted Cameron, dragging his man with him, but
+just as he reached the door a heavy glass came singing through the
+air and caught him on the head.  For a moment he staggered, caught
+hold of the lintel and held himself steady.
+
+"Here, Scott," he cried, "put the bracelets on him."
+
+With revolver drawn Constable Scott sprang to his side.
+
+"Come out!" he said to the goatee man, slipping the handcuffs over
+his wrists, while Cameron, still clinging to the lintel, was
+fighting back the faintness that was overpowering him.  Seeing his
+plight, Hep sprang toward him, eager for revenge, but Cameron
+covering him with his gun held him in check and, with a supreme
+effort getting command of himself, again stepped towards Hep.
+
+"Now, then," he said between his clenched teeth, "will you come?"
+So terrible were his voice and look that Hep's courage wilted.
+
+"I'll come, Colonel, I'll come," he said quickly.
+
+"Come then," said Cameron, reaching for him and bringing him
+forward with a savage jerk.
+
+In three minutes from the time the attack was made both men,
+thoroughly subdued and handcuffed, were marched off in charge of
+the constables.
+
+"Hurry, Scott," said Cameron in a low voice to his comrade.  "I am
+nearly in."
+
+With all possible speed they hustled their prisoners along over the
+bridge and up the hill.  At the hospital door, as they passed, Dr.
+Martin appeared.
+
+"Hello, Cameron!" he cried.  "Got him, eh?"  Great Caesar, man,
+what's up?" he added as Cameron, turning his head, revealed a face
+and neck bathed in blood.  "You are white as a ghost."
+
+"Get me a drink, old chap.  I am nearly in," said Cameron in a
+faint voice.
+
+"Come into my tent here," said the doctor.
+
+"Got to see these prisoners safe first," said Cameron, swaying on
+his feet.
+
+"Come in, you idiot!" cried the doctor.
+
+"Go in, Cameron," said Constable Scott.  "I'll take care of 'em all
+right," he added, drawing his gun.
+
+"No," said Cameron, still with his hand on goatee Bill's collar.
+"I'll see them safe first," saying which he swayed drunkenly about
+and, but for Bill's support, would have fallen.
+
+"Go on!" said Bill good-naturedly.  "Don't mind me.  I'm good now."
+
+"Come!" said the doctor, supporting him into the tent.
+
+"Forward!" commanded Constable Scott, and marched his prisoners
+before him up the hill.
+
+The wound on Cameron's head was a ghastly affair, full six inches
+long, and went to the bone.
+
+"Rather ugly," said the doctor, feeling round the wound.  "Nurse!"
+he called.  "Nurse!"  The little nurse came running in.  "Some
+water and a sponge!"
+
+There was a cry behind her--low, long, pitiful.
+
+"Oh, what is this?"  With a swift movement Nurse Haley was beside
+the doctor's bed.  Cameron, who had been lying with his eyes closed
+and was ghastly white from loss of blood, opened his eyes and
+smiled up into the face above him.
+
+"I feel fine--now," he said and closed his eyes again.
+
+"Let me do that," said Nurse Haley with a kind of jealous
+fierceness, taking the sponge and basin from the little nurse.
+
+Examination revealed nothing more serious, however, than a deep
+scalp wound and a slight concussion.
+
+"He will be fit enough in a couple of days," said the doctor when
+the wound was dressed.
+
+Then, pale and haggard as if with long watching, Nurse Haley went
+to her room there to fight out her lonely fight while Cameron
+slept.
+
+The day passed in quiet, the little nurse on guard, and the doctor
+looking in every half hour upon his patient.  As evening fell
+Cameron woke and demanded Nurse Haley.  The doctor felt his pulse.
+
+"Send her in!" he said and left the tent.
+
+The rays of the sun setting far down the Pass shone through the
+walls and filled the tent with a soft radiance.  Into this radiance
+she came, her face pale as of one who has come through conflict,
+and serene as of one who has conquered, pale and strong and alight,
+not with the radiance of the setting sun, but with light of a soul
+that has made the ancient sacrifice of self-effacing love.
+
+"You want me?" she said, her voice low and sweet, but for all her
+brave serenity tremulous.
+
+"Yes," said Cameron, holding out his arms.  "I want you; I want
+YOU, Mandy."
+
+"Oh," cried the girl, while her hands fluttered to her heart,
+"don't ask me to go through it again.  I am so weak."  She stood
+like a frightened bird poised for flight.
+
+"Come," he said, "I want you."
+
+"You want me?  You said you wanted to take care of me," she breathed.
+
+"I was a fool, Mandy; a conceited fool!  Now I know what I want--I
+want--just YOU.  Come."  Again he lifted his arms.
+
+"Oh, it cannot be," she breathed as if to herself.  "Are you sure--
+sure?  I could not bear it if you were not sure."
+
+"Come, dear love," he cried, "with all my heart and soul and body I
+want you--I want only YOU."
+
+For a single moment longer she stood, her soul searching his
+through her wonderful eyes.  Then with a little sigh she sank into
+his arms.
+
+"Oh, my darling," she whispered, wreathing her strong young arms
+around his neck and laying her cheek close to his, "my darling, I
+thought I had given you up, but how could I have done it?"
+
+At the hospital door the doctor was on guard.  A massive figure
+loomed in the doorway.
+
+"Hello, Superintendent Strong, what on earth are you doing out of
+bed?"
+
+"Where is he?" said the Superintendent abruptly.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Corporal Cameron."
+
+"CORPORAL Cameron?  Constable Cameron is--"
+
+"Corporal Cameron, I said.  I have just had Constable Scott's
+report and felt I must see him at once."
+
+"Come in, Superintendent!  Sit down!  I shall enquire if he is
+resting.  Nurse!  Nurse!  Enquire if Corporal Cameron can be seen."
+
+The little nurse tip-toed into the doctor's tent, lifted the
+curtain, took one glance and drew swiftly back.  This is what her
+eyes looked upon.  A girl's form kneeling by the bed, golden hair
+mingling with black upon the pillow, two strong arms holding her
+close and hers wreathed in answering embrace.
+
+"Mr. Cameron I am afraid," she reported, "cannot be seen.  He is--I
+think--he is--engaged."
+
+"Ah!" said the doctor.
+
+"Well," said the Superintendent, "just tell Corporal Cameron for me
+that I am particularly well pleased with his bearing to-day, and
+that I hope he will be very soon fit for duty."
+
+"Certainly, Superintendent.  Now let me help you up the hill."
+
+"Never mind, here's the Sergeant.  Good evening!  Very fine thing!
+Very fine thing indeed!  I see rapid promotion in his profession
+for that young man."
+
+"Inspector, eh?" said the doctor.
+
+"Yes, Sir, I should without hesitation recommend him and should be
+only too pleased to have him as Inspector in my command."
+
+It was not, however, as Inspector that Corporal Cameron served
+under the gallant Superintendent, but in another equally honourable
+capacity did they ride away together one bright April morning a few
+weeks later, on duty for their Queen and country.  But that is
+another story.
+
+"That message ought to be delivered, nurse," said the doctor
+thoughtfully.
+
+"But not at once," replied the nurse.
+
+"It is important," urged the doctor.
+
+"Yes, but--there are other things."
+
+"Ah!  Other things?"
+
+"Yes, equally--pressing," said the nurse with an undeniably joyous
+laugh.  The doctor looked at her a moment.
+
+"Ah, nurse," he said in a shocked tone, "how often have I deprecated
+your tendency to--"
+
+"I don't care one bit!" laughed the nurse saucily.
+
+"The message ought to be delivered," insisted the doctor firmly as
+he moved toward the tent door.
+
+"Well, deliver it then.  But wait!"  The little nurse ran in before
+him and called "Nu-u-u-r-s-e Ha-l-ey!"
+
+"All right!" called Cameron from the inside.  "Come in!"
+
+"Go on then," said the little nurse to the doctor, "you wanted to."
+
+"A message from the Superintendent," said the doctor, lifting the
+curtain and passing in.
+
+"Don't move, Mandy," said Cameron.  "Never mind him."
+
+"No, don't, I beg," said the doctor, ignoring what he saw.  "A
+message, an urgent message for--Corporal Cameron!"
+
+"CORPORAL Cameron?" echoed Nurse Haley.
+
+"He distinctly said and repeated it--Corporal Cameron.  And the
+Corporal is to report for duty as speedily as possible."
+
+"He can't go," said Mandy, standing up very straight with a light
+in her eyes that the doctor had not seen since that tragic night
+nearly two years before.
+
+"Can't, eh?" said the doctor.  "But the Superintendent says
+Corporal Cameron is--"
+
+"Corporal Cameron can't go!"
+
+"You--"
+
+"Yes, I forbid it."
+
+"The Corporal is--?"
+
+"Yes," she said proudly, "the Corporal is mine."
+
+"Then," said the doctor emphatically, "of all the lucky chaps it
+has been my fortune to meet, by all the gods the luckiest of them
+is this same Corporal Cameron!"
+
+And Cameron, drawing down to him again the girl standing so
+straight and proud beside him, looked up at his friend and said:
+
+"Yes, old chap, the luckiest man in all the world is that same
+Corporal Cameron."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Corporal Cameron, by Ralph Connor
+
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+++ b/old/cplcn10.zip