His head was filled with rosy dreams as he walked out to the farm that evening to say good-bye. He was leaving for only a short time, but the old people were loath to see him go. Aunt Kirsty drew him up to the hot stove, bewailing the misfortune that was taking him away.
"Dear, dear, dear, and you will be going away up north into the bush," she said, clapping him on the back, "and you will jist be frozen with the cold indeed, and your poor arm will be bad again."
"Yes, and the wolves will probably eat me, and a tree will fall on me and I'll break through the ice and be drowned," wailed Roderick. And she shoved him away from her for a foolish gomeril, trying not to smile at him, and declaring it was little he cared that he was leaving her, indeed.
"I have not heard you say anything about the arm for a long time, Lad," said his father, who was watching him, with shining eyes, from his old rocking-chair.
"Oh, it's all right, Dad," he said lightly. "I haven't time to notice it."
He always put off the question thus when Aunt Kirsty was within hearing, but his father's loving eye noticed that the boy's hand sometimes sought the arm and held it, as though in pain.
"And you will not be here to help start the great fight," his father said wistfully, when he had heard all the latest news concerning the temperance campaign, even to the pending disaster. "But you will be finding a Jericho Road up in the bush, I'll have no doubt."
Roderick looked at the saintly old face and his heart smote him. He felt for a moment that to please his father would surely be worth more than all the success a man could attain in a lifetime.
"And did you get a job for poor Billy, Lad?" his father enquired.
"Billy? Oh, the Perkins fellow?" Roderick whistled in dismay. Poor Billy Perkins had not "kept nicely saved," as his brave little wife had hoped, but had fallen among thieves in the hotel at the corner once more. Old Angus had rescued him, put him upon his feet again, and had commissioned his son to look for work for Billy, and his son had forgotten about it entirely in the pressure of his work.