THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND

By Ralph Connor

Contents

THE SKY PILOT IN NO MAN'S LAND

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CHAPTER I

ONLY A MISSIONARY

High upon a rock, poised like a bird for flight, stark naked, his satin skin shining like gold and silver in the rising sun, stood a youth, tall, slim of body, not fully developed but with muscles promising, in their faultless, gently swelling outline, strength and suppleness to an unusual degree. Gazing down into the pool formed by an eddy of the river twenty feet below him, he stood as if calculating the distance, his profile turned toward the man who had just emerged from the bushes and was standing on the sandy strand of the river, paddle in hand, looking up at him with an expression of wonder and delight in his eyes.

“Ye gods, what a picture!” said the man to himself.

Noiselessly, as if fearing to send the youth off in flight, he laid his paddle on the sand, hurriedly felt in his pockets, and swore to himself vigorously when he could find no sketch book there.

“What a pose! What an Apollo!” he muttered.

The sunlight glistening on the beautiful white skin lay like pools of gold in the curving hollows of the perfectly modelled body, and ran like silver over the rounded swellings of the limbs. Instinct with life he seemed, something in his pose suggesting that he had either alighted from the golden, ambient air, or was about to commit himself to it. The man on the sand continued to gaze as if he were beholding a creature of another world.

“Oh, Lord! What lines!” he breathed.

Slowly the youth began to move his arms up to the horizontal, then to the perpendicular, reaching to the utmost of his height upon his toe tips, breathing deep the while. Smoothly, slowly, the muscles in legs and thighs, in back, in abdomen, in chest, responding to the exercise moved under the lustrous skin as if themselves were living things. Over and over again the action was repeated, the muscles and body moving in rhythmic harmony like some perfect mechanism running in a bath of oil.

“Ye gods of Greece!” breathed the man. “What is this thing I see? Flesh or spirit? Man or god?” Again he swore at himself for neglecting to bring his sketch book and pencil.

“Hello, father! Where are you?” A girl's voice rang out, high, clear, and near at hand.

“Good Lord!” said the man to himself, glancing up at the poised figure. “I must stop her.”

One startled glance the youth flung down upon him, another in the direction of the voice, then, like a white, gleaming arrow he shot down, and disappeared in the dark pool below.

With his eyes upon the water the man awaited his reappearing. A half minute, a full minute he waited, but in vain. Swiftly he ran toward the edge of the pool. There was no sign anywhere of the youth.

Ghastly pale and panting, the man ran, as far round the base of the rock as the water would allow him, seeking everywhere signs of the swimmer.

“Hello, father! Oh, there you are!” Breaking through the bushes, a girl ran to him.

“What is it, pater? You are ill. What is the matter?”

“Good heavens! he was there!” gasped the man, pointing to the high rock. “He plunged in there.” He pointed to the pool. “He hasn't come up. He is drowned.”

“Who? What are you saying? Wake up, father. Who was there?”

“A boy! A young man! He disappeared down there.”

“A young man? Was he—was he—dressed?” inquired the girl.

“Dressed? No. No.”

“Did he—did he—hear me—calling?”

“Of course he did. That's what startled him, I imagine. Poor boy! I fear he is gone.”

“Did he fall in, or did he dive?”

“He seemed to dive, but he has not come up. I fear he is gone.”

“Oh, nonsense, father,” said the girl. “I bet you he has swum round the bend. Just go over the rock and see.”

“God grant it!” said her father.

He dropped his paddle, ran up over the rock and down into the little dell on the other side that ran down to the water's edge. There he saw a tent, with all the accompaniments of a well ordered camp, and a man cooking breakfast on a small fire.

“Well, I'll be combusticated!” he said to himself, weakly holding to a little poplar tree.

“I say!” he cried, “where is he? Has he come in? Is he all right?”

“Who?” said the man at the fire.

“The boy on the rock.”

The man gazed at him astonished, then as if suddenly grasping his meaning, replied,

“Yes, he came in. He's dressing in the tent.”

“Well, I'll be condumbusticated!” said the man. “Say! what the devil does he mean by scaring people out of their senses in that way!”

The man at the fire stood gazing at him in an utterly bewildered way.

“If you will tell me exactly what you are after, I may be able to help you.”

The other drew slowly near the fire. He was still pale, and breathing quickly.

“Hello, dad, is breakfast ready?” came a cheery voice from the tent.

“Thank God, he is alive apparently,” said the man, sinking down on a log beside the fire. “You must pardon me, sir,” he said. “You see, I saw him take a header into the pool from that high rock over yonder, and he never came up again. I thought he was drowned.”

The man at the fire smiled.

“The young villain gave you a fright, did he? One of his usual tricks. Well, as his father, and more or less responsible for him, I offer the most humble apology. Have you had breakfast?”

“Yes. But why did he do such a thing?”

“Ask him. Here he comes.”

Out from the tent came the youth in shorts, the warm glow of his body showing through the filmy material.

“Hello!” he cried, backing toward the tent door. “You are the man with the paddle. Is there by any chance a lady with you, or did I hear a lady's voice over there? I assure you I got a deuce of a fright.”

“You gave me the supreme fright of my life, young man, I can tell you that.”

“But I surely heard a lady's voice,” said the youth.

“You did. It was my daughter's voice, and it was she who suggested that you had swum around the bend. And she sent me over here to investigate.”

“Oh, your daughter. Excuse me,” said the youth. “I shall be out in a few minutes.” He slid into the tent, and did not reappear.

The man remained chatting with the youth's father for a few minutes, then rising said,

“Well, I feel better. I confess this thing gave me something of a shock. But come round and see us before we go. We shall be leaving in an hour.”

The man at the fire promised to make the visit, and the other took his departure.

A few minutes later the youth reappeared.

“Is breakfast ready?” he cried. “My, but I'm hungry! But who is he, dad?”

“Sit down,” said his father, “and get your breakfast while it is hot.”

“But who is he, dad?” persisted the youth.

“Who is he?” said his father, dishing up the bacon. “An oil explorer, an artist, a capitalist, an American from Pittsburgh, the father of one child, a girl. Her mother is dead. Nineteen years old, athletic, modern type, college bred, 'boss of the show' (quotation). These are a few of the facts volunteered within the limited space of his visit.”

“What's he like, dad?”

“Like? Like an American.”

“Now, dad, don't allow your old British prejudices to run away with your judgment.”

“On the contrary, I am perfectly charmed. He is one of those Americans who capture you at once, educated, frank, open, with that peculiar charm that Britishers will not be able to develop for many generations. An American, but not of the unspeakable type. Not at all. You will like him.”

“I am sure I shall,” replied the youth. “I liked his voice and his face. I like the Americans. I met such nice chaps at college. So clever, and with such a vocabulary.”

“Vocabulary? Well, I'm not too sure as to the vocabulary part of it.”

“Yes, such bright, pat, expressive slang, so fresh and in such variety. So different from your heavy British slang, in which everything approaching the superlative must be one of three things, 'ripping,' with very distinct articulation on the double p, or 'top hole,' or 'awfully jolly.' More recently, I believe, a fourth variation is allowed in 'priceless.'

“Ah, my boy, you have unconsciously uttered a most searching criticism on your American friends. Don't you know that a vocabulary rich in slang is poverty stricken in forceful and well chosen English? The wealth of the one is the poverty of the other.”

“Where is he going?” enquired the boy.

“Out by way of Edmonton, Calgary, Moose Jaw, Minneapolis, so on to Pittsburgh. Partner with him, young lawyer, expert in mines, unmarried. He is coming back in a couple of months or so for a big hunt. Wants us to join him. Really extraordinary, when you come to think of it, how much information he was able to convey in such a short space of time. Marvellous gift of expression!”

“What did you say, dad?”

“Say? Oh, as to his invitation! Why, I believe I accepted, my boy. It seemed as if I could do nothing else. It's a way he has.”

“Is—is the daughter to be along?”

“Let me see. What did he say? Really, I don't know. But I should judge that it would be entirely as she wished. She is—”

“Boss of the show, eh?”

“Exactly. Most vivid phrase, eh?”

“Very. And no doubt aptly descriptive of the fact.”

In half an hour the breakfast was finished, and the elder man got his pipe a-going.

“Now, dad, you had better go along and make your call, while I get things together here.”

“What! You not going! No, no, that won't do, my boy. It was about you they were concerned. You were the occasion of the acquaintanceship. Besides, meeting in the wilderness this way we can't do that sort of thing, you know.”

“Well, dad, frankly, I am quite terrified of the young lady. Suppose she should start bossing us. We should both be quite helpless.”

“Oh, nonsense, boy! Come along. Get your hat.”

“All right, I'll come. On your head be the consequences, dad. No. I don't need a hat. Fortunately I put on a clean shirt. Will I do, dad? You know I'm 'scairt stiff,' as Harry Hobbs would say.”

His father looked him over, but there was nothing critical in his glance. Pride and love filled his eyes as they ran over his son's face and figure. And small wonder! The youth was good to look upon. A shade under six feet he stood, straight and slim, strength and supple grace in every move of his body. His face was beautiful with the beauty of features, clean cut and strong, but more with the beauty of a clear, candid soul. He seemed to radiate an atmosphere of cheery good nature and unspoiled simplicity. He was two years past his majority, yet he carried the air of a youth of eighteen, in which shyness and fearlessness looked out from his deep blue eyes. It was well that he wore no hat to hide the mass of rich brown hair that waved back from his forehead.

“You'll do, boy,” said his father, in a voice whose rigid evenness of tone revealed the emotion it sought to conceal. “You'll take all the shine from me, you young beggar,” he added in a tone of gruff banter, “but there was a time—”

“WAS a time, dad? IS, and don't tell me you don't know it. I always feel like a school kid in any company when you're about.

'When the sun comes out
All the little stars run in,'”

he sang from a late music hall effusion. “Why, just come here and look at yourself,” and the boy's eyes dwelt with affectionate pride upon his father.

It was easy to see where the boy got his perfect form. Not so tall as his son, he was more firmly knit, and with a kind of dainty neatness in his appearance which suggested the beau in earlier days. But there was nothing of weakness about the erect, trim figure. A second glance discovered a depth of chest, a thickness of shoulder and of thigh, and a general development of muscle such as a ring champion might show; and, indeed, it was his achievements in the ring rather than in the class lists that won for Dick Dunbar in his college days his highest fame. And though his fifty years had slowed somewhat the speed of foot and hand, the eye was as sure as ever, and but little of the natural force was abated which once had made him the glory of the Cambridge sporting youth, and which even yet could test his son's mettle in a fast bout.

On the sandy shore of the river below the eddy, they found the American and his party gathered, with their stuff ranged about them ready for the canoes.

“Ah, here you are, sir,” said the American, advancing hat in hand. “And this is your son, the young rascal who came mighty near giving me heart failure this morning. By the way, I haven't the pleasure of knowing your name.”

“My name is Richard Dunbar, and this is my son Barry.”

“My name is Osborne Howland, of Pittsburgh, and this is my daughter Paula. In bloomers, as you see, but nevertheless my daughter. Meet also my friend and partner, Mr. Cornwall Brand.”

The party exchanged greetings, and spent some moments giving utterance to those platitudes which are so useful in such circumstances, a sort of mental marking time preparatory to further mutual acquaintance.

The girl possessed that striking, dashing kind of brunette beauty that goes with good health, good living, and abundance of outdoor exercise. She carried herself with that air of assured self-confidence that comes as the result of a somewhat wide experience of men, women and things. She quite evidently scorned the conventions, as her garb, being quite masculine, her speech being outspoken and decorated with the newest and most ingenious slang, her whole manner being frankly impulsive, loudly proclaimed.

But Barry liked her at once, and made no pretence of concealing his liking. To her father, also, he was immediately drawn. As to Cornwall Brand, between whom and the girl there seemed to exist a sort of understanding, he was not so sure.

For half an hour or so they stood by the river exchanging their experiences in these northern wilds, and their views upon life in the wilderness and upon things in general. By a little skilful managing the girl got the young man away from the others, and then proceeded to dissect and classify him.

Through the open woods along the river bank they wandered, pausing here and there to admire the view, until they came to an overhanging bank at the entrance to a somewhat deep gorge, through which the river foamed to the boiling rapids below. It was indeed a beautiful scene. The banks of the river were covered with every variety of shrub and tree, except where the black rocks broke through; between the banks the dark river raged and fretted itself into a foam against its rocky barriers; over them arched the sky, a perfect blue.

“What a lovely view!” exclaimed the girl, seating herself upon the edge of the bank. “Now,” she said, “tell me about yourself. You gave my pater a fearful fright this morning. He was quite paralysed when I came on him.”

“I am very sorry,” said the youth, “but I had no intention—”

“I know. I told him not to worry,” replied the girl. “I knew you would be all right.”

“And how, pray?” said the young man, blushing at the memory of his startling appearance upon that rock.

“I knew that any fellow who could take that dive wouldn't likely let himself drown. I guessed, too, that if you heard me hoot—”

“I did,” said the youth.

“You sure would get slippy right away.”

“I did.”

“I guess you were pretty well startled yourself, weren't you?” said the girl, pursuing the subject with cool persistence.

“Rather,” said the young man, blushing more violently, and wishing she would change the subject. “You are going out?” he enquired.

“Yes.”

“To-day?”

“Now—right away.”

“Too bad,” he said, his disappointment evident in his tone.

“When are you going out? But who are you, anyway?” asked the girl. “You have to tell me that.”

“My life story, so to speak?”

She nodded.

“It's very short and simple, like the annals of the poor,” he replied. “From England in infancy, on a ranch in northern Alberta for ten years, a puny little wretch I was, terribly bothered with asthma, then”—the boy hesitated a moment—“my mother died, father moved to Edmonton, lived there for five years, thence to Wapiti, away northwest of Edmonton, our present home, prepared for college by my father, university course in Winnipeg, graduated in theology a year ago, now the missionary in charge of Wapiti and the surrounding district.”

“A preacher!” said the girl, her face and her tone showing her disappointment only too plainly.

“Not much of a preacher, I fear,” said the young man with a smile. “A missionary, rather. That's my story.”

She noticed with some chagrin that he did not ask for hers.

“What are you doing here?” she enquired.

He hesitated a moment or two.

“Dad and I always take a trip into the wilds every summer.” Then he added after a few moments' pause, “But of course we have other business on hand up here.”

“Business? Up here?”

“Yes. Dad has some.” He made as if to continue, but changed his mind and fell into silence, leaving her piqued by his reserve and by his apparent indifference to the things concerning herself. She did not know that he was eagerly hoping that she would supply this information.

At length he ventured, “Must you go away to-day?”

“I don't suppose there's any 'must' about it.”

“Why not stay?”

“Why should I?”

“Oh, it would be jolly,” he cried. “You see, we could—explore about here—and,”—he ended rather lamely,—“it's a lovely country.”

“We've seen a lot of it. It IS lovely,” she said, her eyes upon his face as if appraising him. “I should like to know you better,” she added, with sudden and characteristic frankness, “so I think we will stay. But you will have to be awfully good to me.”

“Why, of course,” he cried. “That's splendid! Perfectly jolly!”

“Then we had better find father and tell him. Come along,” she ordered, and led the way back to the camp.

The young man followed her, wondering at her, and giving slight heed to the chatter she flung over her shoulder at him as she strode along through the bushes.

“What's the matter with you?” she cried, facing round upon him. “You were thinking about me, I know. Confess, now.”

“I was,” he acknowledged, smiling at her.

“What were you thinking? Tell me,” she insisted.

“I was thinking—” He paused.

“Go on!” she cried.

“I was thinking of what your father said about you.”

“My father? About me? What did he say? To you?”

“No. To dad.”

“What was it? Tell me. I must know.” She was very imperious in her manner. The youth only smiled at her.

“Go on!” she said impatiently.

“I think possibly your father was right,” he replied, “when he said you 'boss the show.'”

“Oh, that's what he said, eh? Well, I guess he's about right.”

“But you don't really?”

“Don't what? 'Boss the show'? Well, I boss my own show, at any rate. Don't you?”

“Don't I what, exactly? Boss the show? Well, I don't think we have any 'show,' and I don't believe we have any 'boss.' Dad and I just talk things over, you see.”

“But,” she insisted, “some one in the last analysis must decide. Your menage, no matter how simple, must have a head. It is a law of the universe itself, and it is the law of mankind. You see, I have done some political economy.”

“And yet,” said the young man, “you say you run your own show?”

“Exactly. Every social organism must have a head, but every individual in the organism must live its own free life. That is true democracy. But of course you don't understand democracy, you Canadians.”

“Aha! There you are! You Americans are the most insular of all the great peoples of the world. You know nothing of other people. You know only your own history and not even that correctly, your own geography, and your own political science. You know nothing of Canada. You don't know, for instance, that the purest form of democracy on this American continent lies outside the bounds of the U. S. A.”

“In Canada?” she asked scornfully. “By the way, how many Canadians are there?”

“Yes, I know. We are a small people,” he said quietly, “but no more real democracy exists anywhere in the world than in this country of mine. We are a small people, but,” he said, with a sweep of his hand toward the west and the north, “the future is with us. The day is coming when along this waterway great cities shall be, with factories and humming industries. These plains, these flowing hills will be the home of millions of men, and in my lifetime, too.”

His eyes began to glow, his face to shine with a rare and fascinating beauty.

“Do you know the statistics of your country? Do you know that during the last twenty years the rate of Canada's growth was three times greater than ever in the history of the United States? You are a great commercial nation, but do you know that the per capita rate of Canada's trade to-day is many times that of the United States? You are a great agricultural people, but do you know that three-quarters of the wheat land on this continent is Canadian, and that before many years you will be coming to Canada for your wheat, yes, and for your flour? Do you see that river? Do you know that Canada is the richest country in the world in water power? And more than that, in the things essential to national greatness,—not these things that you can see, these material things,” he said, sweeping his hand contemptuously toward the horizon, “but in such things as educational standards, in administration of justice, in the customs of a liberty loving people, in religious privileges, in everything that goes to make character and morale, Canada has already laid the foundations of a great nation.”

He stopped short, abashed, the glow fading from his face, the light from his eyes.

“Forgive me,” he said, with a little laugh. “I am a first class ass. I fear I was blowing like a fog horn. But when you touch Canada you release something in me.”

While he was speaking her eyes never left his face. “Go on!” she said, in a voice of suppressed emotion, “go on. I love to hear you.”

Her wonted poise was gone; she was obviously stirred with deep emotion.

“Go on!” she commanded, laying her hand upon his arm. “Don't stop. Tell me more about—about Canada, about anything,” she added impatiently.

A warm, eager light filled her eyes. She was biting her lips to still their tremor.

“There's plenty to tell about Canada,” he said, “but not now. What started me? Oh, democracy. Yes, it was you that began it. Democracy? After all, it is worth while that the people who are one day to fill this wide land should be truly democratic, truly free, and truly great.”

Once more the light began to burn in his eyes and in his face.

“Ah, to have a hand in that!”

“And you,” she said in a low voice, “you with all that in you, are only a preacher.”

“A missionary,” he corrected.

“Well, a missionary. Only a missionary.”

Disappointment and scorn were all too evident in her voice.

“ONLY a missionary. Ah, if I could only be one. A missionary! With a mission and a message to my people! If only I had the gift of tongues, of flaming, burning, illuminating speech, of heart-compelling speech! To tell my people how to make this country truly great and truly free, how to keep it free from the sordid things, the cruel things, the unjust, the unclean, the loathsome things that have debased and degraded the older nations, that are debasing and degrading even your young, great nation. Ah, to be a missionary with a tongue of fire, with a message of light! A missionary to my people to help them to high and worthy living, to help them to God! ONLY a missionary! What would you have me? A money-maker?”

He turned swiftly upon her, a magnetic, compelling personality. From the furious scorn in his voice and in his flaming face she visibly shrank, almost as if he had struck her.

“No!” she breathed. “Nothing else. Only a missionary.”

Silent she stood, as if still under the spell of his words, her eyes devouring his face.

“How your mother would have loved you, would have been proud of you,” she said in a low tone. “Is—is there no one else to—to rejoice in you?” she asked shyly, but eagerly.

He laughed aloud. “There's dad, dear old dad.”

“And no one else?” Still with shy, eager eyes she held him.

“Oh, heaps,” he cried, still laughing.

She smiled upon him, a slightly uncertain smile, and yet as if his answer somehow satisfied her.

“Good-bye,” she said impulsively, offering her hand.

“But you are not going! You're staying a few days!” he gasped.

“No, we're going. We're going right away. Goodbye,” she said. “I don't want those others to see. Goodbye. Oh, it's been a wonderful morning! And,—and—a friend is a wonderful discovery.”

Her hand held his in a strong, warm grasp, but her eyes searched his face as if seeking something she greatly desired.

“Good-bye. I am sorry you are going,” he said, simply. “I want to know you better.”

“Do you?” she cried, with a sudden eagerness in her voice and manner. Then, “No. You would be disappointed. I am not of your world. But you shall see me again,” she added, as if taking a new resolve. “We are coming back on a big hunt, and you and your father are to join us. Won't you?”

“Dad said we should,” said the youth, smiling at the remembrance.

“And you?” she said, with a touch of impatience.

“If things can so arrange themselves—my work, I mean, and dad's.”

“But, do you want to? Do you really want to?” she asked. “I wish I knew. I hate not to understand people. You are hard to know. I don't know you. But you will come?”

“I think so,” said the young man. “Of course a fellow's work comes first, you know.”

“Work?” she cried. “Your work? Oh, your missionary work. Oh, yes, yes. I should like to see you at it. Come, let us go.”

Mr. Cornwall Brand they found in a fever of impatience. He had the trip scheduled to a time table, and he hated to be forced to change his plans. His impatience showed itself in snappy commands and inquiries to his Indian guides, who, however, merely grunted replies. They knew their job and did it without command or advice, and with complete indifference to anything the white man might have to say. To Paula the only change in his manner was an excess of politeness.

Her father, however, met her with remonstrances.

“Why, Paula, my dear, you have kept us waiting.”

“What's the rush, pater?” she enquired, coolly.

“Why, my dear, we are already behind our schedule, and you know Cornwall hates that,” he said in a low voice.

“Cornwall!” said Paula, in a loud voice of unmistakable ill temper. “Does Cornwall run this outfit?”

“My dear Paula!” again remonstrated her father.

She turned to him impatiently, with an angry word at her lips, caught upon Barry's face a look of surprise, paused midway in her passion, then moved slowly toward him.

“Well,” she asked, in an even, cold voice, “what do you think about it? And anyway,” she dropped her voice so that none heard but himself, “why should you halt me? Who are you, to give me pause this way?”

“Only a missionary,” he answered, in an equally low tone, but with a smile gentle, almost wistful on his face.

As with a flash the wrathful cloud vanished.

“A missionary,” she replied softly. “God knows I need one.”

“You do,” he said emphatically, and still he smiled.

“Come, Paula,” called Cornwall Brand. “We are all waiting.”

Her face hardened at his words.

“Good-bye,” she said to Barry. “I am coming back again to—to your wonderful Canada.”

“Of course you are,” said Barry, heartily. “They all do.”

He went with her to the canoe, steadied her as she took her place, and stood watching till the bend in the river shut them from view.

“Nice people,” said his father. “Very fine, jolly girl.”

“Yes, isn't she?” replied his son.

“Handsome, too,” said his father, glancing keenly at him.

“Is she? Yes, I think so. Yes, indeed, very,” he added, as if pondering the matter. “When do we move, dad?”

A look of relief crossed the father's face.

“This afternoon, I think. We have only a few days now. We shall run up Buffalo Creek into the Foothills for some trout. It will be a little stiff, but you are fit enough now, aren't you, Barry?” His voice was tinged with anxiety.

“Fit for anything, dad, thanks to you.”

“Not to me, Barry. To yourself largely.”

“No,” said the boy, throwing his arm round his father's shoulder, “thanks to you, dear old dad,—and to God.”

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CHAPTER II

ON THE RED PINE TRAIL

On the Red Pine trail two men were driving in a buckboard drawn by a pair of half-broken pinto bronchos. The outfit was a rather ramshackle affair, and the driver was like his outfit. Stewart Duff was a rancher, once a “remittance man,” but since his marriage three years ago he had learned self-reliance and was disciplining himself in self-restraint. A big, lean man he was, his thick shoulders and large, hairy muscular hands suggesting great physical strength, his swarthy face, heavy features, coarse black hair, keen dark eyes, deepset under shaggy brows, suggesting force of character with a possibility of brutality in passion. Yet when he smiled his heavy face was not unkindly, indeed the smile gave it a kind of rugged attractiveness. He was past his first youth, and on his face were the marks of the stormy way by which he had come.

He drove his jibing bronchos with steady hands. No light touch was his upon the reins, and the bronchos' wild plunging met with a check from those muscular hands of such iron rigidity as to fling them back helpless and amazed upon their hocks.

His companion was his opposite in physical appearance, and in those features and lines that so unmistakably reveal the nature and character within. Short and stout, inclined indeed to fat, to his great distress, his thick-set figure indicated strength without agility, solidity without resilience. He had a pleasant, open face, with a kindly, twinkling blue eye that goes with a merry heart, with a genial, sunny soul. But there was in the blue eye and in the open face, for all the twinkles and the smiles, a certain alert shrewdness that proclaimed the keen man of business, and in the clean cut lips lay the suggestion of resolute strength. A likable man he was, with an infinite capacity for humour, but with a bedrock of unyielding determination in him that always surprised those who judged him lightly.

The men were friends, and had been comrades more or less during those pioneer days that followed their arrival in the country from Scotland some dozen years ago. Often they had fallen out with each other, for Duff was stormy of temper and had a habit of letting himself swing out upon its gusts of passion, reckless of consequences; but he was ever the one to offer amends and to seek renewal of good relations. He had few friends, and so he clung the more closely to those he had. At such times the other would wait in cool, good-tempered but determined aloofness for his friend's return.

“You can chew your cud till you're cool again,” he would say when the outbreak would arise. But invariably their differences were composed and their friendship remained unbroken.

The men sat in the buckboard, leaning forward with hunched shoulders, swaying easily to the pitching of the vehicle as it rattled along the trail which, especially where it passed over the round topped ridges, was thickly strewn with stones. Before them, now on the trail and now ranging wide over the prairie, ran a beautiful black and white English setter.

“Great dog that, Sandy,” said Duff. “I could have had a dozen birds this afternoon. A wonderful nose, and steady as a rock.”

“A good dog, Stewart,” assented Sandy, but with slight interest.

“There ain't another like him in this western country,” said the owner of the dog with emphasis.

“Oh, I don't know about that. There are some very good dogs around here, Stewart,” replied Sandy lightly.

“But I know. And that's why I'm saying there ain't his like in this western country, and that's as true as your name is Sandy Bayne.”

“Well, my name is Sandy Bayne, all right, but how did he come out at the Calgary trials?”

“Aw, those damned gawks! They don't know a good dog from a he-goat! They don't know what a dog is for, or how to use him.”

“Oh, now, Stewart,” said Sandy, “I guess Willocks knows a dog when he sees one.”

“Willocks!” said his friend with scorn. “There's where you're wrong. Do you know why he cut Slipper out of the Blue Ribbon? Because he wouldn't range a mile away. Darned old fool! What's the good of a point a mile away! Keeps you running over the whole creation, makes you lose time, tires yourself and tires your dog; and more than that, in nine cases out of ten you lose your bird. Give me a close ranger. He cleans up as he goes, keeps your game right at your hand, and gets you all the sport there is.”

“Who beat you, Stewart, in the trials?”

“That bitch of Snider's.”

“Man! Stewart, that's a beautiful bitch! I know her well. She's a beautiful bitch!” Sandy began to show enthusiasm.

“Oh, there you go! That's just what those fool judges said. 'Beautiful dog! Beautiful dog!' Suppose she is! Looks ain't everything. They're something, but the question is, does she get the birds? Now, Slipper there got three birds to her one. Got 'em within range, too.”

“Ah, but Stewart, yon's a good bitch,” said Sandy.

“Look here!” cried his friend, “I have bred more dogs in the old country than those men ever saw in their lives.”

“That may be, Stewart, but yon's a good bitch,” persisted Sandy.

For a mile more they discussed the merits of Slipper and of his rivals, Sandy with his semi-humorous chaff extracting quiet amusement from his friend's wrath, and the latter, though suspecting that he was being drawn, unable to restrain his passionate championship of his dog.

At length Sandy, wearying of the discussion, caught sight of a figure far before them on the trail.

“Who is that walking along there?” he enquired.

Together they ran over the names of all who in this horse country were unfortunate enough to be doomed to a pedestrian form of locomotion.

“Guess it's the preacher,” said Duff finally, whose eyes were like a hawk's.

“He's been out at my place Sunday afternoon,” said Sandy, “but I haven't met him myself. What sort is he?”

“Don't ask me. I sometimes go with the madame to church, but generally I fall asleep. He's no alarm clock.”

“Then you can't tell what sort of a preacher he is,” said Sandy with a twinkle in his eye. “You can't hear much when you are asleep.”

“I hear enough to know that he's no good as a preacher. I hear they're going to fire him.”

“I tell you what it is, Stewart,” said Sandy, “I don't believe you would know a good sermon if you heard one.”

“What's that you say? I've heard the best preachers in the country that breeds preachers, in the country where preachers grow like the berries on the bramble bushes. I know preaching, and I like good preaching, too.”

“Oh, come off, Stewart! You may be a good judge of dogs, but I'm blowed if I am going to take you as a judge of preachers.”

“The same qualities in all of them, dogs, horses, preachers,” insisted Duff.

“How do you make that out?”

“Well, take a horse. He must be a good-looker. This preacher is a good-looker, all right, but looks ain't everything. Must be quick at the start, must have good action, good style, staying power, and good at the finish. Most preachers never know when to finish, and that's the way with this man.”

“Are you going to take him up?” inquired Sandy, for they were now close upon the man walking before them.

“Oh, I guess not,” replied Duff. “I haven't much use for him.”

“Say, what's the matter with him? He looks rather puffed out,” said Sandy. “Better take him up.”

“All right,” replied Duff, pulling up his bronchos. “Good day. Will you have a ride? Mr. Barry Dunbar, my friend Mr. Bayne.”

“Glad to meet you, Mr. Bayne,” said Barry, who was pale and panting hard. “Thanks for the lift. The truth—is—I'm rather—done up. A touch of asthma—the first—in five years. An old trouble of mine.”

“Get up here,” said Sandy. “There's room for three in the seat.”

“No—thank you,—I should—crowd you,—all right behind here. Beastly business—this asthma. Worse when—the pollen—from the plants—is floating—about—so they say. I don't know—nobody does—I fancy.” They drove on, bumping over the stones, Barry gradually getting back his wind. The talk of the men in the front seat had fallen again on dogs, Stewart maintaining with ever increasing vehemence his expert knowledge of dogs, of hunting dogs, and very especially of setter hunting dogs; his friend, while granting his knowledge of dogs in general, questioning the unprejudiced nature of his judgment as far as Slipper was concerned.

As Duff's declarations grew in violence they became more and more elaborately decorated with profanity. In the full tide of their conversation a quiet voice broke in:

“Too many 'damns.'”

“What!” exclaimed Duff.

“I beg your pardon!” said Sandy.

“Too many 'damns,'” said Barry, looking quietly at Duff.

“Dams? Where?” said Duff, looking about.

“Beaver dams, do you mean?” enquired Sandy. “I don't see any.”

“Too many 'damns,'” reiterated Barry. “You don't need them. You really don't need them, you know, and besides, they are not right. Profanity is quite useless, and it's wicked.”

“Well, I'll be damned!” said Stewart in a low voice to his friend. “He means us.”

“And quite right, too,” said Sandy solemnly. “You know your English is rotten bad. Yes, sir,” he continued, turning round to Barry, “I quite agree with you. My friend is quite unnecessarily free in his speech.”

“Yes, but you are just the same, you know,” said Barry. “Not quite so many, but then you are not quite so excited.”

“Got you there, old sport,” grunted Duff, highly amused at Sandy's discomfiture. But to Barry he said, “I guess it's our own business how we express ourselves.”

“Yes, it is, but, pardon me, not entirely so. There are others in the world, you know, and you must consider others. The habit is a bad habit, a rotten habit, and quite useless—silly, indeed.”

Duff turned his back upon him. Sandy, giving his friend a nudge, burst into a loud laugh.

“You are right, sir,” he said, turning to Barry. “You are quite right.”

At this point Slipper created a diversion.

“Hello!” said Duff. “Say! Look at him!” He pointed to the dog. “Ain't he a picture!”

A hundred yards away stood Slipper, rigid, every muscle, every hair taut, one foot arrested in air.

“I'll just get those,” said Duff, slipping out of the buckboard and drawing the gun from beneath the seat. “Steady, old boy, steady! Hold the lines, Sandy.”

He moved quickly toward the dog who, quivering with that mysterious instinct found in the hunting dog, still held the point with taut muscles, nose and tail in line.

“Hello!” Barry called out. “It isn't the season yet for chicken. I say, Mr. Duff,” he shouted, “it isn't the chicken season, you know.”

“Better leave him alone,” said Sandy.

“But it isn't the season yet! It is against the law!” protested Barry indignantly.

Meantime Stewart Duff was closing up cautiously behind Slipper.

“Forward, old boy! Ste-e-e-ady! Forward!” The dog refused to move. “Forward, Slipper!”

Still the dog remained rigid, as if nailed to the ground.

“On, Slipper!”

Slowly the dog turned his head with infinite caution half round toward his master, as if in protest.

“Hello, there!” shouted Barry, “you know—”

Just as he called there was on all sides a great whirring of wings. A dozen chicken flew up from under Duff's feet. Bang! Bang! went his gun.

“Missed, as I'm a sinner!” exclaimed Sandy. “I thought he was a better shot than that.”

Back came Duff striding wide toward the buckboard. Fifty yards away he shouted:

“Say! what the devil do you mean calling like that at a man when he's on the point of shooting!” His face was black with anger. He looked ready to strike. Barry looked at him steadily.

“But, I was just reminding you that it was not the season for chicken yet,” he said in the tone of a man prepared to reason the matter.

“What's that got to do with it! And anyway, whose business is it what I do but my own?”

“But it's against the law!”

“Oh, blank the law! Besides—”

“Besides it isn't—well, you know, it isn't quite sporting to shoot out of season.” Barry's manner was as if dealing with a fractious child.

Duff, speechless with his passion, looked at him as if not quite sure what form his vengeance should take.

“He's quite right, Stewart,” said his friend Sandy, who was hugely enjoying himself. “You know well enough you are down on the farmer chaps who go pot hunting before season. It's rotten sport, you know.”

“Oh, hell! Will you shut up! Can't I shoot over my dog when he points? I'm not out shooting. If I want to give my dog a little experience an odd bird or two don't matter. Besides, what the—”

“Oh, come on, Stewart! Get in, and get a move on! You know you are in the wrong. But I thought you were a better shot than that,” added Sandy.

His remark diverted Duff's rage.

“Better shot!” he stormed. “Who could shoot with a—a—a—” he was feeling round helplessly for a properly effective word,—“with a fellow yelling at you?” he concluded lamely. “I'd have had a brace of them if it hadn't been for him.”

“In that case,” said Barry coolly, “I saved you from the law.”

“Saved me from the law! What the devil do you mean, anyway?” said Stewart. “If I want to pick up a bird who's to hinder me? And what's the law got to do with it?”

“Well, you know, I'm not sure but it might have been my duty to report you. I feel that all who break the game laws should be reported. It is the only way to stop the lawless destruction of the game.”

Barry spoke in a voice of quiet deliberation, as if pondering the proper action in the premises.

“Quite right, too,” said Sandy gravely, but with a twinkle in his blue eye. “They ought to be reported. I have no use for those poachers.”

Duff made no reply. His rage and disgust, mingled with the sense of his being in the wrong, held him silent. No man in the whole country was harder upon the game poachers than he, but to be held up in his action and to be threatened with the law by this young preacher, whom he rather despised anyway, seemed to paralyse his mental activities. It did not help his self-control that he was aware that his friend was having his fun of him.

At this moment, fortunately for the harmony of the party, their attention was arrested by the appearance of a motor car driven at a furious rate along the trail, and which almost before they were aware came honking upon them. With a wild lurch the bronchos hurled themselves from the trail, upsetting the buckboard and spilling its load.

Duff, cumbered with his gun, which he had reloaded, allowed one of the reins to drop from his hands and the team went plunging about in a circle, but Barry, the first to get to his feet, rushed to the rescue, snatched the reins and held on till he had dragged the plunging bronchos to a halt.

The rage which had been boiling in Duff, and which with difficulty had been held within bounds, suddenly burst all bonds of control. With a fierce oath he picked up the gun which he had thrown aside in his struggle with the horses, and levelled it at the speeding motor car.

“For God's sake, Stewart, stop!” shouted Bayne, springing toward his friend.

Barry was nearer and quicker. The shot went off, but his hand had knocked up the gun.

“My God, Stewart! Are you clean crazy!” said Bayne, gripping him by the arm. “Do you know what you are doing? You are not fit to carry a gun!”

“I'd have bust his blanked tires for him, anyway!” blustered Duff, though his face and voice showed that he had received a shock.

“Yes, and you might have been a murderer by this time, and heading for the pen, but for Dunbar here. You owe him more than you can ever pay, you blanked fool!”

Duff made no reply, but busied himself with his horses. Nor did he speak again till everything was in readiness for the road.

“Get in,” he then said gruffly, and that was his last word until they drove into the village.

At the store he drew up.

“Thank you for the lift,” said Barry. “I should have had a tough job to get back in time.”

Duff grunted at him, and passed on into the store.

“I am very glad to have met you,” said Bayne, shaking hands warmly with him. “You have done us both a great service. He is my friend, you know.”

“I am afraid I have offended him, all the same. But you see I couldn't help it, could I?”

Bayne looked at his young, earnest face for a moment or two as if studying him, then said with a curious smile, “No, I don't believe you could have helped it.” And with that he passed into the store.

“What sort of a chap is that preacher of yours?” he asked of the storekeeper.

“I don't know; he ain't my church. Ask Innes there. He's a pillar.”

Bayne turned to a long, lean, hard-faced man leaning against the counter.

“My name is Bayne, from Red Pine, Mr. Innes. I am interested in knowing what sort of a chap your preacher is. He comes out to our section, but I never met him till to-day.”

“Oh, he's no that bad,” said Innes cautiously.

“Not worth a cent,” said a little, red headed man standing near. “He can't preach for sour apples.”

“I wadna just say that, Mr. Hayes,” said Innes.

“How do you know, Innes?” retorted Hayes. “You know you fall asleep before he gets rightly started.”

“I aye listen better with ma eyes shut.”

“Yes, and snore better, too, Mac,” said Hayes. “But I don't blame you. Most of them go to sleep anyway. That's the kind of preacher he is.”

“What sort of a chap is he? I mean what sort of man?”

“Well, for one thing, he's always buttin' in,” volunteered a square-built military looking man standing near. “If he'd stick to his gospel it wouldn't be so bad, but he's always pokin' his nose into everything.”

“But he's no that bad,” said Innes again, “and as for buttin' in, McFettridge, and preachin' the gospel, I doubt the country is a good deal the better for the buttin' in that him and his likes have done this past year. And besides, the bairns all like him.”

“Well, that's not a bad sign, Mr. Innes,” said Sandy Bayne, “and I'm not sure that I don't like him myself. But I guess he butts in, all right.”

“Oh, ay! he butts in,” agreed Innes, “but I'm no so sure that that's no a part of his job, too.”

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER III

A QUESTION OF CONSCIENCE

The Dunbars lived in a cottage on a back street, which had the distinction of being the only home on the street which possessed the adornment of a garden. A unique garden it was, too. Indeed, with the single exception of Judge Hepburn's garden, which was quite an elaborate affair, and which was said to have cost the Judge a “pile of money,” there was none to compare with it in the village of Wapiti.

Any garden on that bare, wind-swept prairie meant toil and infinite pains, but a garden like that of the Dunbars represented in addition something of genius. In conception, in design, and in execution the Dunbars' garden was something apart. Visitors were taken 'round to the back street to get a glimpse of the Dunbars' cottage and garden.

The garden was in two sections. That at the back of the cottage, sheltered by a high, close board fence covered with Virginia creeper, was given over to vegetables, and it was quite marvellous how, under Richard Dunbar's care, a quarter of an acre of ground could grow such enormous quantities of vegetables of all kinds. Next to the vegetable garden came the plot for small fruits—strawberries, raspberries, currants, of rare varieties.

The front garden was devoted to flowers. Here were to be found the old fashioned flowers dear to our grandmothers, and more particularly the old fashioned flowers native to English and Scottish soil. Between the two gardens a thick row of tall, splendid sunflowers made a stately hedge. Then came larkspur, peonies, stocks, and sweet-williams, verbenas and mignonette, with borders of lobelia and heliotrope. Along the fence were sweet peas, for which Alberta is famous.

But it was the part of the garden close about the front porch and verandah where the particular genius of Richard Dunbar showed itself. Here the flowers native to the prairie, the coulee, the canyon, were gathered; the early wind flower, the crowfoot and the buffalo bean, wild snowdrops and violets. Over trellises ran the tiny morning-glory, with vetch and trailing arbutus. A bed of wild roses grew to wonderful perfection. Later in the year would be seen the yellow and crimson lilies, daisies white and golden, and when other flowers had faded, golden rod and asters in gorgeous contrast. The approach to the door of the house was by a gravel walk bordered by these prairie flowers.

The house inside fulfilled the promise of the garden. The living room, simple in its plan, plain in its furnishing, revealed everywhere that touch in decorative adornment that spoke of the cultivated mind and refined taste. A group of rare etchings had their place over the mantel above a large, open fireplace. On the walls were to be seen really fine copies of the world's most famous pictures, and on the panels which ran 'round the walls were bits of pottery and china, relics of other days and of other homes.

But what was most likely to strike the eye of a stranger on entering the living room was the array of different kinds of musical instruments. At one end of the room stood a small upright piano, a 'cello held one corner, a guitar another; upon a table a cornet was deposited, and on the piano a violin case could be seen, while a banjo hung from a nail on the wall.

Near the fireplace a curiously carved pipe-rack hung, with some half dozen pipes of weird design, evidently the collection of years, while just under it a small table held the utensils sacred to the smoker.

When Barry entered he found the table set and everything in readiness for tea.

“Awfully sorry I'm too late to help you with tea, dad. I have had a long walk, and quite a deuce of a time getting home.”

“All right, boy. Glad you are here. The toast is ready, tea waiting to be infused. But what happened? No, don't begin telling me till you get yourself ready. But hurry, your meeting hour will be on in no time.”

“Right-o, dad! Shame to make a slavey of you in this way. I'll be out in a jiffy.”

He threw off his coat and vest, shirt and collar, took a pail of water to a big block in the little shed at the back, soused his head and shoulders in it with loud snorting and puffing, and emerged in a few minutes looking refreshed, clean and wholesome, his handsome face shining with vigorous health.

Together they stood at the table while the son said a few words of reverent grace.

“I'm ravenous, dad. What! Fried potatoes! Oh, you are a brick.”

“Tired, boy?”

“No. That reminds me of my thrilling tale, which I shall begin after my third slice of toast, and not before. You can occupy the precious minutes, dad, in telling me of your excitements in the office this afternoon.”

“Don't sniff at me. I had a few, though apparently you think it impossible in my humdrum grey life.”

“Good!” said Barry, his mouth full of toast. “Go on.”

“Young Neil Fraser is buying, or has just bought, the S.Q.R. ranch. Filed the transfer to-day.”

“Neil Fraser? He's in my tale, too. Bought the S.Q.R.? Where did he get the stuff?”

“Stuff?”

“Dough, the dirt, the wherewithal, in short the currency, dad.”

“Barry, you are ruining your English,” said his father.

“Yum-yum. Bully! Did you notice that, dad? I'm coming on, eh? One thing I almost pray about, that I might become expert in slinging the modern jaw hash. I'm appallingly correct in my forms of speech. But go on, dad. I'm throwing too much vocalisation myself. You were telling me about Neil Fraser. Give us the chorus now.”

“I don't like it, boy,” said his father, shaking his head, “and especially in a clergyman.”

“But that's where you are off, dad. The trouble is, when I come within range of any of my flock all my flip vocabulary absolutely vanishes, and I find myself talking like a professor of English or a maiden lady school ma'am of very certain age.”

“I don't like it, boy. Correct English is the only English for a gentleman.”

“I wonder,” said the lad. “But I don't want to worry you, dad.”

“Oh, as for me, that matters nothing at all, but I am thinking of you and of your profession, your standing.”

“I know that, dad. I sometimes wish you would think a little more about yourself. But what of Neil Fraser?”

“He has come into some money. He has bought the ranch.”

Barry's tone expressed doubtful approval. “Neil is a good sort, dad, awfully reckless, but I like him,” said Barry. “He is up and up with it all.”

“Now, what about your afternoon?” said his father.

“Well, to begin with, I had a dose of my old friend, the enemy.”

“Barry, you don't tell me! Your asthma!” His father sat back from the table gazing at him in dismay. “And I thought that was all done with.”

“So did I, dad. But it really didn't amount to much. Probably some stomach derangement, more likely some of that pollen which is floating around now. I passed through a beaver meadow where they were cutting hay, and away I went in a gale of sneezing, forty miles an hour. But I'm all right now, dad. I'm telling you the truth. You know I do.”

“Yes, yes, I know,” said his father, concern and relief mingling in his voice, “but you don't know how to take care of yourself, Barry. But go on with your tale.”

“Well, as I was panting along like a 'heavey horse,' as Harry Hobbs would say,—not really too bad, dad,—along comes that big rancher, Stewart Duff, driving his team of pinto bronchos, and with him a chap named Bayne, from Red Pine Creek. He turned out to be an awfully decent sort. And Duff's dog, Slipper, ranging on ahead, a beautiful setter.”

“Yes, I have seen him.”

They discussed for a few moments the beauties and points of Duff's Slipper, for both were keen sportsmen, and both were devoted to dogs. Then Barry went back to his tale and gave an account of what had happened during the ride home.

“You see Slipper ranging about got 'on point' and beautiful work it was, too. Out jumped Duff with his gun, ready to shoot, though, of course, he knew it was out of season and that he was breaking the law. Well, just as Slipper flushed the birds, I shouted to Duff that he was shooting out of season. He missed.”

“Oh, he was properly wrathful at my spoiling his shot,” cried the young man.

“I don't know that I blame him, Barry,” said his father thoughtfully. “It is an annoying thing to be shouted at with your gun on a bird, you know, extremely annoying.”

“But he was breaking the law, dad!” cried Barry indignantly.

“I know, I know. But after all—”

“But, dad, you can't sit there and tell me that you don't condemn him for shooting out of season. You know nothing makes you more furious than hearing about chaps who pot chicken out of season.”

“I know, I know, my boy.” The father was apparently quite distressed. “You are quite right, but—”

“Now, dad, I won't have it! You are not to tell me that I had no business to stop him if I could. Besides, the law is the law, and sport is sport.”

“I quite agree, Barry. Believe me, I quite agree. Yet all the same, a chap does hate to have his shot spoiled, and to shout at a fellow with his gun on a bird,—well, you'll excuse me, Barry, but it is hardly the sporting thing.”

“Sporting! Sporting!” said Barry. “I know that I hated to do it, but it was right. Besides talk about 'sporting'—what about shooting out of season?”

“Yes, yes. Well, we won't discuss it. Go on, Barry.”

“But I don't like it, dad. I don't like to think that you don't approve of what I do. It was a beastly hard thing to do, anyway. I had to make myself do it. It was my duty.” The young man sat looking anxiously at his father.

“Well, my boy,” said his father, “I may be wrong, but do you think you are always called upon to remonstrate with every law breaker? No, listen to me,” he continued hurriedly. “What I mean is, must you or any of us assume responsibility for every criminal in the land?”

Barry sat silent a moment, considering this proposition.

“I wish I knew, dad. You know, I have often said that to excuse myself after I have funked a thing, and let something go by without speaking up against it.”

“Funked it!”

“Yes. Funked standing up for the right thing, you know.”

“Funked it!” said his father again. “You wouldn't do that, Barry?”

“Oh, wouldn't I, though? I am afraid you don't know me very well, dad. However, I rather think I had started him up before that, you know. You won't like this either. But I may as well go through with it. You know, he was swearing and cursing most awfully, just in his ordinary talk you know, and that is a thing I can't stand, so I up and told him he was using too many 'damns.'”

“You did, eh?” In spite of himself the father could not keep the surprise out of his voice. “Well, that took some nerve, at any rate.”

“There you are again, dad! You think I had no right to speak. But somehow I can't help feeling I was right. For don't you see, it would have seemed a bit like lowering the flag to have kept silent.”

“Then for God's sake speak out, lad! I do not feel quite the same way as you, but it is what you think yourself that must guide you. But go on, go on.”

“Well, I assure you he was in a proper rage, and if it hadn't been for Bayne I believe he would have trimmed me to a peak, administered a fitting castigation, I mean.”

“He would, eh?” said the father with a grim smile. “I should like to see him try.”

“So should I, dad, if you were around. I think I see you—feint with the right, then left, right, left! bing! bang! bung! All over but the shiver, eh, dad? It would be sweet! But,” he added regretfully, “that's the very thing a fellow cannot do.”

“Cannot do? And why not, pray? It is what every fellow is in duty bound to do to a bully of that sort.”

“Yes, but to be quite fair, dad, you could hardly call Duff a bully. At least, he wasn't bullying me. As a matter of fact, I was bullying him. Oh, I think he had reason to be angry. When a chap undertakes to pull another chap up for law breaking, perhaps he should be prepared to take the consequences. But to go on. Bayne stepped in—awfully decent of him, too,—when just at that moment, as novelists say, with startling suddenness occurred an event that averted the impending calamity. Along came Neil Fraser, no less, in that new car of his, in a whirlwind of noise and dust, honking like a flock of wild geese. Well, you should have seen those bronchos. One lurch, and we were on the ground, a beautiful upset, and the bronchos in an incipient runaway, fortunately checked by your humble servant. Duff, in a new and real rage this time, up with his gun and banged off both barrels after the motor car, by this time honking down the trail.”

“By Jove! he deserved it,” said the father. “Those motor fellows make me long to do murder at times.”

“That's because you have no car, Dad, of course.”

“Did he hit him, do you think?”

“No. My arm happened to fly up, the gun banged toward the zenith. Nothing doing!”

“Well, Barry, you do seem to have run foul of Mr. Duff.”

“Three times, dad. But each time prevented him from breaking the law and doing himself and others injury. Would you have let him off this last time, dad?”

“No, no, boy. Human life has the first claim upon our care. You did quite right, quite right. Ungovernable fool he must be! Shouldn't be allowed to carry a gun.”

“So Bayne declared,” said Barry.

“Well, you have had quite an exciting afternoon. But finish your tea and get ready for the meeting. I will wash up.”

“Not if I know it, dad. You take your saw-horse and do me a little Handel or Schubert. Do, please,” entreated his son. “I want that before meeting more than anything else. I want a change of mood. I confess I am slightly rattled. My address is all prepared, but I must have atmosphere before I go into the meeting.”

His father took the 'cello, and after a few moments spent in carefully tuning up, began with Handel's immortal Largo, then he wandered into the Adagio Movement in Haydn's third Sonata, from thence to Schubert's Impromptu in C Minor, after which he began the Serenade, when he was checked by his son.

“No, not that, dad, that's sickening. I consider that the most morally relaxing bit of music that I know. It frays the whole moral fibre. Give us one of Chopin's Ballades, or better still a bit of that posthumous Fantasie Impromptu, the largo movement. Ah! fine! fine!”

He flung his dish-cloth aside, ran to the piano and began an accompaniment to his father's playing.

“Now, dad, the Largo once more before we close.” They did the Largo once and again, then springing from the piano Barry cried: “That Largo is a means of grace to me. There could be no better preparation for a religious meeting than that. If you would only come in and play for them, it would do them much more good than all my preaching.”

“If you would only take your music seriously, Barry,” replied his father, somewhat sadly, “you would become a good player, perhaps even a great player.”

“And then what, dad?”

His father waved him aside, putting up his 'cello.

“No use going into that again, boy.”

“Well, I couldn't have been a great player, at any rate, dad.”

“Perhaps not, boy, perhaps not,” said his father. “Great players are very rare. But it is time for your meeting.”

“So it is, dad. Awfully sorry I didn't finish up those dishes. Let them go till I return. I wish you would, dad, and come along with me.” His voice had a wistful note in it.

“Not to-night, boy, I think. We will have some talk after. You will only be an hour, you know.”

“All right, dad,” said Barry. “Some time you may come.” He could not hide the wistful regret of his tone.

“Perhaps I shall, boy,” replied his father.

It was the one point upon which there was a lack of perfect harmony between father and son. When the boy went to college it was with the intention of entering the profession of law, for which his father had been reading in his young manhood when the lure of Canada and her broad, free acres caught him, and he had abandoned the law and with his wife and baby boy had emigrated to become a land owner in the great Canadian west.

Alas! death, that rude spoiler of so many plans, broke in upon the sanctity and perfect peace of that happy ranch home and ravished it of its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy, orphaned and sickly, to be cared for. The ranch was sold, the rancher moved to the city of Edmonton, thence in a few years to a little village some twenty-five miles nearer to the Foothills, where he became the Registrar and Homestead Inspector for the district.

Here he had lived ever since, training the torn tendrils of his heart about the lad, till peace came back again, though never the perfect joy of the earlier days. Every May Day the two were wont to go upon an expedition many miles into the Foothills, to a little, sunny spot, where a strong, palisaded enclosure held a little grave. So little it looked, and so lonely amid the great hills. There, not in an abandonment of grief, but in loving and grateful remembrance of her whose dust the little grave now held, of what she had been to them, and had done for them, they spent the day, returning to take up again with hearts solemn, tender and chastened, the daily routine of life.

That his son should grow to take up the profession of law had been the father's dream, but during his university course the boy had come under the compelling influence of a spiritual awakening that swept him into a world filled with new impressions and other desires. Obeying what he felt to be an imperative call, the boy chose the church as his profession, and after completing his theological course in the city of Winnipeg, and spending a year in study in Germany, while still a mere youth he had been appointed as missionary to the district of which his own village was the centre.

But though widely separate from each other in the matter of religion, there were many points of contact between them. They were both men of the great out-of-doors, and under his father's inspiration and direction the boy had come to love athletic exercises of all kinds. They were both music-mad, the father having had in early youth a thorough musical education, the boy possessing musical talent of a high order. Such training as was his he had received from his father, but it was confined to one single instrument, the violin. To this instrument, upon which his father had received the tuition of a really excellent master, the son devoted long hours of study and practice during his boyhood years, and his attainments were such as to give promise of something more than an amateur's mastery of his instrument. His college work, however, interfered with his music, and to his father's great disappointment and regret he was forced to lay aside his study of the violin. On the piano, however, the boy developed an extraordinary power of improvisation and of sight reading, and while his technique was faulty his insight, his power of interpretation were far in excess of many artists who were his superiors in musical knowledge and power of execution. Many were the hours the father and son spent together through the long evenings of the western winter, and among the many bonds that held them in close comradeship, none was stronger than their common devotion to music.

Long after his son had departed to his meeting the father sat dreaming over his 'cello, wandering among the familiar bits from the old masters as fancy led him, nor was he aware of the lapse of time till his son returned.

“Hello! Nine-thirty?” he exclaimed, looking at his watch. “You have given them an extra dose to-night.”

“Business meeting afterwards, which didn't come off after all,” said his son. “Postponed till next Sunday.” With this curt announcement, and without further comment he sat down at his desk.

But after a few moments he rose quickly, saying, “Let us do some real work, dad.”

He took up his violin. His father, who was used to his moods, without question or remark proceeded to tune up. An hour's hard practice followed, without word from either except as regarded the work in hand.

“I feel better now, dad,” said the young man when they had finished. “And now for a round with you.”

“But what about your wind, boy? I don't like that asthma of yours this afternoon.”

“I am quite all right. It's quite gone. I feel sure it was the pollen from the beaver meadow.”

They cleared back the table and chairs from the centre of the room, stripped to their shirts, put on the gloves and went at each other with vim. Their style was similar, for the father had taught the son all he knew, except that the father's was the fighting and the son's the sparring style. To-night the roles appeared to be reversed, the son pressing hard at the in-fighting, the father trusting to his foot work and countering with the light touch of a man making points.

“You ARE boring in, aren't you?” said the father, stopping a fierce rally.

“You are not playing up, dad,” said his son. “I don't feel like soft work to-night. Come to me!”

“As you say,” replied the father, and for the next five minutes Barry had no reason to complain of soft work, for his father went after him with all the fight that was in him, so that in spite of a vigorous defence the son was forced to take refuge in a runaway game.

“Now you're going!” shouted the son, making a fierce counter with his right to a hard driven left, which he side-stepped. It was a fatal exposure. Like the dart of a snake the right hand hook got him below the jaw, and he was hurled breathless on the couch at the side of the room.

“Got you now!” said his father.

“Not quite yet,” cried Barry. Like a cat he was on his feet, breathing deep breaths, dodging about, fighting for time.

“Enough!” cried his father, putting down his hands.

“Play up!” shouted Barry, who was rapidly recovering his wind. “No soft work. Watch out!”

Again the father was on guard, while Barry, who seemed to have drawn upon some secret source of strength, came at him with a whirlwind attack, feinting, jabbing, swinging, hooking, till finally he landed a short half arm on the jaw, which staggered his father against the wall.

“Pax!” cried the young man. “I have all I want.”

“Great!” said his father. “I believe you could fight, boy, if you were forced to.”

In the shed they sluiced each other with pails of water, had a rub down and got into their dressing gowns.

“I feel fine, now, dad, and ready for anything,” said Barry, glowing with his exercise and his tub. “I was feeling like a quitter. I guess that asthma got at my nerve. But I believe I will see it through some way.”

“Yes?” said his father, and waited.

“Yes. They were talking blue ruin in there to-night. Finances are behind, congregation is running down, therefore the preacher is a failure.”

“Well, lad, remember this,” said his father, “never let your liver decide any course of action for you. Some good stiff work, a turn with the gloves, for instance, is the best preparation I know for any important decision. A man cannot decide wisely when he feels grubby. Your asthma this afternoon is a symptom of liver.”

“It is humiliating to a creature endowed with conscience and intellect to discover how small a part these play at times in his decisions. The ancients were not far wrong who made the liver the seat of the emotions.”

“Well,” said his father, “it is a good thing to remember that most of our bad hours come from our livers. So the preacher is a failure? Who said so?”

“Oh, a number of them, principally Hayes.”

“Thank God, and go to sleep,” said his father. “If Hayes were pleased with my preaching I should greatly suspect my call to the ministry.”

“But seriously, I am certainly not a great preacher, and perhaps not a preacher at all. They say I have no 'pep,' which with some of them appears to be the distinctive and altogether necessary characteristic of a popular preacher.”

“What said Innes?” enquired his father.

“Did you ever hear Innes say much? From his silence one would judge that he must possess the accumulated wisdom of the ages.”

“When he does talk, however, he generally says something. What was his contribution?”

“'Ah, weel,' said the silent one, 'Ah doot he's no a Spurgeon, not yet a Billy Sunday, but ye'll hardly be expectin' thae fowk at Wapiti for nine hundred dollars a year.' Then, bless his old heart, he added, 'But the bairns tak to him like ducks to water, so you'd better bide a bit.' So they decided to 'bide a bit' till next Sunday. Dad, at first I wanted to throw their job in their faces, only I always know that it is the old Adam in me that feels like that, so I decided to 'bide a bit' too.”

“It is a poor job, after all, my boy,” said his father. “It's no gentleman's job the way it is carried on in this country. To think of your being at the bidding of a creature like Hayes!”

He could have said no better word. The boy's face cleared like the sudden shining of the sun after rain. He lifted his head and said,

“Thank God, not at his bidding, dad. 'One is your Master,'” he quoted. “But after all, Hayes has something good in him. Do you know, I rather like him. He's—”

“Oh, come now, we'll drop it right there,” said his father, in a disgusted tone. “When you come to finding something to like in that rat, I surrender.”

“Who knows?” said the boy, as if to himself. “Poor Hayes. He may be quite a wonderful man, considering all things, his heredity and his environment. What would I have been, dad, but for you?”

His father grunted, pulled hard at his pipe, coughed a bit, then looked his son straight in the face, saying, “God knows what any of us owe to our past.” He fell into silence. His mind was far away, following his heart to the palisaded plot of ground among the Foothills and the little grave there in which he had covered from his sight her that had been the inspiration to his best and finest things, and his defence against the things low and base that had once hounded his soul, howling hard upon his trail.

The son, knowing his mood, sat in silence with him, then rising suddenly he sat himself on the arm of his father's chair, threw his arm around his shoulder and said, “Dear old dad! Good old boy you are, too. Good stuff! What would I have been but for you? A puny, puling, wretched little crock, afraid of anything that could spit at me. Do you remember the old gander? I was near my eternal damnation that day.”

“But you won out, my boy,” said his father in a croaking voice, putting his arm round his son.

“Yes, because you made me stick it, just as you have often made me stick it since. May God forget me if I ever forget what you have done for me. Shall we read now?”

He took the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning the leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It was the parable of the talents.

“Rather hard on the failure,” he said as he closed the book.

“No, not the failure,” said his father, “the slacker, the quitter. It is nature's law. There is no place in God's universe for a quitter.”

“You are right, dad,” said Barry. “Good-night.”

He kissed his father, as he had ever done since his earliest infancy. Their prayers were said in private, the son, clergyman though he was, could never bring himself to offer to lead the devotions of him at whose knee he had kneeled every night of his life, as a boy, for his evening prayer.

“Good-night, boy,” said his father, holding him by the hand for a moment or so. “We do not know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering. That part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never need, and never shall be ours.”

The little man stepped into his bedroom with his shoulders squared and his head erect.

“By Jove! He's no quitter,” said his son to himself, as his eyes followed him. “When he quits he'll be dead. God keep me from shaming him!”

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER IV

REJECTED

The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already a number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and deposited their loads at the church door. The women had passed into the church, where the Sunday School was already in session; the men waited outside, driven by the heat of the July sun and the hotter July wind into the shade of the church building.

Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and then a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the droning.

“That's Hayes,” said a sturdy young chap, brown as an Indian, lolling upon the grass. “He likes to be bossing something.”

“That's so, Ewen,” replied a smaller man, with a fish-like face, his mouth and nose running into a single feature.

“I guess he's doin' his best, Nathan Pilley,” answered another man, stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a rubicund face, out of which stared two prominent blue eyes.

“Oh, I reckon he is, Mr. Boggs. I have no word agin Hayes,” replied Nathan Pilley, a North Ontario man, who, abandoning a rocky farm in Muskoka, had strayed to this far west country in search of better fortune. “I have no word agin Mr. Hayes, Mr. Boggs,” he reiterated. “In fact, I think he ought to be highly commended for his beneficent work.”

“But he does like to hear himself giving out orders, all the same,” persisted the young man addressed as Ewen.

“Yes, he seems to sorter enjoy that, too, Ewen,” agreed Nathan, who was never known to oppose any man's opinion.

“He's doin' his best,” insisted Mr. Boggs, rather sullenly.

“Yes, he is that, Mr. Boggs, he is that,” said Nathan.

“But he likes to be the big toad in the puddle,” said Ewen.

“Well, he certainly seems to, he does indeed, Ewen.”

Clear over the droning there arose at this point another sound, a chorus of childish laughter.

“That's the preacher's class,” said Boggs. “Quare sort o' Sunday School where the kids carry on like that.”

“Seems rather peculiar,” agreed Nathan, “peculiar in Sunday School, it does.”

“What's the matter with young Pickles?” enquired Ewen.

The eyes of the company, following the pointing finger, fell upon young Pickles standing at the window of the little vestry to the church, and looking in. He was apparently convulsed with laughter, with his hand hard upon his mouth and nose as a kind of silencer.

“Do you know what's the matter with him, Pat?” continued Ewen.

Pat McCann, the faithful friend and shadow of young Pickles, after studying the attitude and motions of his friend, gave answer:

“It's the preacher, I guess. He's kiddin' the kids inside. He's some kidder, too,” he said, moving to take his place beside his friend.

“What's he doing anyway?” said Ewen. “I'm going to see.”

Gradually a little company gathered behind young Pickles and Pat McCann. The window commanded a view of the room, yet in such a way that the group were unobserved by the speaker.

“Say, you ought to seen him do the camel a minute ago,” whispered Pickles.

In the little vestry room were packed some twenty children of all ages and sizes, with a number of grownups who had joined the class in charge of some of its younger members. There was, for instance, Mrs. Innes, with the two youngest of her numerous progeny pillowed against her yielding and billowy person; and Mrs. Stewart Duff, an infant of only a few weeks upon her knee accounting sufficiently for the paleness of her sweet face, and two or three other women with their small children filling the bench that ran along the wall.

“Say! look at Harry Hobbs,” said Pat McCann to his friend.

Upon the stove, which in summer was relegated to the corner of the room, sat Harry Hobbs, a man of any age from his appearance, thin and wiry, with keen, darting eyes, which now, however, were fastened upon the preacher. All other eyes were, too. Even the smallest of the children seated on the front bench were gazing with mouths wide open, as if fascinated, upon the preacher who, moving up and down with quick, lithe steps, was telling them a story. A wonderful story, too, it seemed, the wonder of it apparent in the riveted eyes and fixed faces. It was the immortal story, matchless in the language, of Joseph, the Hebrew shepherd boy, who, sold into slavery by his brethren, became prime minister of the mighty empire of Egypt. The voice tone of the minister, now clear and high, now low and soft, vibrating like the deeper notes of the 'cello, was made for story telling. Changing with every changing emotion, it formed an exquisite medium to the hearts of the listeners for the exquisite music of the tale.

The story was approaching its climactic denouement; the rapturous moment of the younger brother's revealing was at hand; Judah, the older brother, was now holding the centre of the stage and making that thrilling appeal, than which nothing more moving is to be found in our English speech. The preacher's voice was throbbing with all the pathos of the tale. Motionless, the little group hung hard upon the story-teller, when the door opened quickly, a red head appeared, a rasping voice broke in:

“Your class report, Mr. Dunbar, please. We're waiting for it.”

A sigh of disappointment and regret swept the room.

“Oh, darn the little woodpecker!” said Ewen from the outside, in a disgusted tone. “That's the way with Hayes. He thinks he's the whole works, and that he never can get in wrong.”

The spell was broken, never to be renewed. The story hurried to its close, but the great climax failed of its proper effect.

“He's a hummer, ain't he?” exclaimed young Pickles to his friend, Pat McCann.

“Some hummer, and then some!” replied Pat.

“I'm goin' in,” said Pickles.

“Aw, what for? He ain't no good preachin' to them folks. By gum! I think he's scared of 'em.”

But Pickles persisted, and followed with the men and boys who lounged lazily into the church, from which the Sunday School had now been dismissed.

It appeared that the judgment of Pat McCann upon the merits of the preacher would be echoed by the majority of the congregation present. While the service was conducted in proper form and in reverent spirit, the sermon was marked by that most unpardonable sin of which sermons can be guilty; it was dull. Solid enough in matter, thoughtful beyond the average, it was delivered in a style appallingly wooden, with an utter absence of that arresting, dramatic power that the preacher had shown in his children's class.

The appearance of the congregation was, as ever, a reflection of the sermon. The heat of the day, the reaction from the long week in the open air, the quiet monotony of the well modulated voice rising and falling in regular cadence in what is supposed by so many preachers to be the tone suitable for any sacred office, produced an overwhelmingly somnolent effect. Many of them slept, some frankly and openly, others under cover of shading hands, bowed heads, or other subterfuges. Others again spent the whole of the period of the sermon, except for some delicious moments of surreptitious sleep, in a painful but altogether commendable struggle against the insidious influence of the god of slumber.

Among the latter was Mrs. Innes, whose loyalty to her minister, which was as much a part of her as her breathing, contended in a vigorous fight against her much too solid flesh. It was a certain aid to wakefulness that her two children, deep in audible slumber, kept her in a state of active concern lest their inert and rotund little masses of slippery flesh should elude her grasp, and wreck the proprieties of the hour by flopping on the floor. There was also a further sleep deterrent in the fact that immediately before her sat Mr. McFettridge, whose usually erect form, yielding to the soporific influences of the environment, showed a tendency gradually to sag into an attitude, relaxed and formless, which suggested sleep. This, to the lady behind him, partook of the nature of an affront to her minister. Consequently she considered it her duty to arouse the snoozing McFettridge with a vigorous poke in the small of the back.

The effect was instantaneously apparent. As if her insistent finger had touched a button and released an electric current, Mr. McFettridge's sagging form shot convulsively into rigidity, and impinging violently upon the peacefully slumbering Mr. Boggs on the extreme end of the bench, toppled him over into the aisle.

The astonished Boggs, finding himself thus deposited upon the floor, and beholding the irate face of Mr. McFettridge glooming down upon him, and fancying him to be the cause of his present humiliating position, sprang to his feet, swung a violent blow upon Mr. Fettridge's ear, exclaiming sotto voce:

“Take that, will you! And mind your own business! You were sleeping yourself, anyway!”

Before the astonished and enraged Mr. McFettridge could gather his wits sufficiently for action, there rang over the astonished congregation a peal of boyish laughter. It was from the minister. A few irrepressible youngsters joined in the laugh; the rest of the congregation, however, were held rigid in the grip of a shocked amazement.

“Oh, I say! do forgive me, Mr. McFettridge!” cried the young man at the desk. “It was quite involuntary, I assure you.” Then, quickly recovering himself, he added, “And now we shall conclude the service by singing the seventy-ninth hymn.”

Before the last verse was sung he reminded the audience of the congregational meeting immediately following, and without further comment the service was brought to a close.

A number of the congregation, among them Barry's father, departed.

“Sit down, Neil,” said Mrs. Innes to Neil Fraser. “You'll be wanted I doot.” And Neil, protesting that he knew nothing about church business, sat down.

At the back of the church were gathered Harry Hobbs, young Pickles, and others of the less important attendants of the church, who had been induced to remain by the rumour of a “scrap.”

By a fatal mischance, the pliant Nathan Pilley was elected chairman. This gentleman was obsessed by the notion that he possessed in a high degree the two qualities which he considered essential to the harmonious and expeditious conduct of a public meeting, namely, an invincible determination to agree with every speaker, and an equally invincible determination to get motions passed.

In a rambling and aimless speech, Mr. Pilley set forth in a somewhat general way the steps leading up to this meeting, and then called upon Mr. Innes, the chairman of the Board of Management, to state more specifically the object for which it was called.

Mr. Innes, who was incurably averse to voluble speech, whether public or private, arose and said, in rolling Doric:

“Weel, Mr. Chair-r-man, there's no much to be done. We're behind a few hundred dollars, but if some one will go about wi' a bit paper, nae doot the ar-rear-rs wad soon be made up, and everything wad be ar-richt.”

“Exactly,” said Mr. Pilley pleasantly. “Now will some one offer a motion?”

Thereupon Mr. Hayes was instantly upon his feet, and in a voice thin and rasping exclaimed:

“Mr. Chairman, there's business to be done, and we are here to do it, and we're not going to be rushed through in this way.”

“Exactly, Mr. Hayes, exactly,” said Mr. Pilley. “We must give these matters the fullest consideration.”

Then followed a silence.

“Perhaps Mr. Hayes—” continued the chairman, looking appealingly at that gentleman.

“Well, Mr. Chairman,” said Mr. Hayes, with an appeased but slightly injured air, “it is not my place to set forth the cause of this meeting being called. If the chairman of the board would do his duty”—here he glared at the unconscious Mr. Innes—“he would set before it the things that have made this meeting necessary, and that call for drastic action.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Boggs.

“Exactly so,” acquiesced the chairman. “Please continue, Mr. Hayes.”

Mr. Hayes continued: “The situation briefly is this: We are almost hopelessly in debt, and—”

“How much?” enquired Neil Fraser, briskly interrupting.

“Seven hundred dollars,” replied Mr. Hayes, “and further—”

“Five hundred dollars,” said Mr. Innes.

“I have examined the treasurer's books,” said Mr. Hayes in the calmly triumphant tone of one sure of his position, “and I find the amount to be seven hundred dollars, and therefore—”

“Five hundred dollars,” repeated Mr. Innes, gazing into space.

“Seven hundred dollars, I say,” snapped Mr. Hayes.

“Five hundred dollars,” reiterated Mr. Innes, without further comment.

“I say I have examined the books. The arrears are seven hundred dollars.”

“Five hundred dollars,” said Mr. Innes calmly.

The youngsters at the back snickered.

“Go to it!” said Harry Hobbs, under his breath.

Even the minister, who was sitting immediately behind Harry, could not restrain a smile.

“Mr. Chairman,” cried Mr. Hayes, indignantly, “I appeal against this interruption. I assert—”

“Where's the treasurer?” said Neil Fraser. “What's the use of this chewin' the rag?”

“Ah! Exactly so,” said the chairman, greatly relieved. “Mr. Boggs—Perhaps Mr. Boggs will enlighten us.”

Mr. Boggs arose with ponderous deliberation.

“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “in one sense Mr. Hayes is right when he states the arrears to be seven hundred dollars—”

“Five hundred dollars A'm tellin' ye,” said Mr. Innes with the first sign of feeling he had shown.

“And Mr. Innes is also right,” continued Mr. Boggs, ignoring the interruption, “when he makes the arrears five hundred dollars, the two hundred dollars difference being the quarterly revenue now due.”

“Next week,” said Mr. Innes, reverting to his wonted calm.

“Exactly so,” said the chairman, rubbing his hands amiably; “so that the seven hundred dollars we now owe—”

This was too much even for the imperturbable Mr. Innes.

He arose in his place, moved out into the aisle, advanced toward the platform, and with arm outstretched, exclaimed in wrathful tones:

“Mon, did ye no hear me tellin' ye? I want nae mon to mak' me a le-ear.”

At this point Mr. Stewart Duff, who had come to convey his wife home, and had got tired waiting for her outside, entered the church.

“Oh, get on with the business,” said Neil Fraser, who, although enjoying the scene, was becoming anxious for his dinner. “The question what's to be done with the five hundred dollars' arrears. I say, let's make it up right here. I am willing to give—”

“No, Mr. Chairman,” shouted Mr. Hayes, who was notoriously averse to parting with his money, and was especially fearful of a public subscription.

“There is something more than mere arrears—much more—”

“Ay, there is,” emphatically declared Mr. McFettridge, rising straight and stiff. “I'm for plain speakin'. The finances is not the worst about this congregation. The congregation has fallen off. Other churches in this village has good congregations. Why shouldn't we? The truth is, Mr. Chairman,”—Mr. McFettridge's voice rolled deep and sonorous over the audience—“we want a popular preacher—a preacher that draws—a preacher with some pep.”

“Hear! hear!” cried Mr. Boggs. “Pep's what we want. That's it—pep.”

“Pep,” echoed the chairman. “Exactly so, pep.”

“More than that,” continued Mr. McFettridge, “we want a minister that's a good mixer—one that stands in with the boys.”

“Hear! Hear!” cried Mr. Boggs again.

“A mixer! Exactly!” agreed the chairman. “A mixer!” nodding pleasantly at Mr. Boggs.

“And another thing I will say,” continued Mr. McFettridge, “now that I am on my feet. We want a preacher that will stick to his job—that will preach the gospel and not go meddlin' with other matters—with politics and such like.”

“Or prohibition,” shouted Harry Hobbs from the rear, to the undiluted joy of the youngsters in his vicinity.

The minister shook his head at him.

“Yes, prohibition,” answered Mr. McFettridge, facing toward the rear of the church defiantly. “Let him stick to his preaching the gospel; I believe the time has come for a change and I'm prepared to make a motion that we ask our minister to resign, and that motion I now make.”

“Second the motion,” cried Mr. Boggs promptly.

“You have heard the motion,” said the chairman, with business-like promptitude. “Are you ready for the question?”

“Question,” said Mr. Hayes, after a few moments' silence, broken by the shuffling of some members in their seats, and by the audible whispering of Mrs. Innes, evidently exhorting her husband to action.

“Then all those in favour of the motion will please—”

Then from behind the organ a little voice piped up, “Does this mean, Mr. Chairman, that we lose our minister?”

It was Miss Quigg, a lady whose years no gallantry could set below forty, for her appearance indicated that she was long past the bloom of her youth. She was thin, almost to the point of frailness, with sharp, delicately cut features; but the little chin was firm, and a flash of the brown eyes revealed a fiery soul within. Miss Quigg was the milliner and dressmaker of the village, and was herself a walking model of her own exquisite taste in clothes and hats. It was only her failing health that had driven her to abandon a much larger sphere than her present position offered, but even here her fame was such as to draw to her little shop customers from the villages round about for many miles.

“Does this mean, sir, that Mr. Dunbar will leave us?” she repeated.

“Well,—yes, madam—that is, Miss, I suppose, in a way—practically it would amount to that.”

“Will you tell me yes or no, please,” Miss Quigg's neat little figure was all a-quiver to the tips of her hat plumes.

“Well,” said the chairman, squirming under the unpleasant experience of being forced to a definite answer, “I suppose,—yes.”

Miss Quigg turned from the squirming and smiling Mr. Pilley in contempt.

“Then,” she said, “I say no. And I believe there are many here who would say no—and men, too.” The wealth of indignation and contemptuous scorn infused into the word by which the difference in sex of the human species was indicated, made those unhappy individuals glance shamefacedly at each other—“only they are too timid, the creatures! or too indifferent.”

Again there was an exchange of furtive glances and smiles and an uneasy shifting of position on the part of “the creatures.”

“But if you give them time, Mr. Chairman, I believe they will perhaps get up courage enough to speak.”

Miss Quigg sat down in her place behind the organ, disappearing quite from view except for the tips of her plumes, whose rapid and rhythmic vibrations were eloquent of the beating of her gallant little heart.

“Exactly so,” said the chairman, in confused but hearty acquiescence. “Perhaps some one will say something.”

Then Mr. Innes, forced to a change of position by the physical discomfort caused by his wife's prodding, rose and said,

“I dinna see the need o' any change. Mr. Dunbar is no a great preacher, but Ah doot he does his best. And the bairns all like him.”

Then the congregation had a thrill. In the back seat rose Harry Hobbs.

“I'm near forty years old,” he cried, in a high nasal tone that indicated a state of extreme nervous tension, “and I never spoke in meetin' before. I ain't had no use for churches and preachers, and I guess they hadn't no use for me. You folks all know me. I've been in this burg for near eight years, and I was a drinkin', swearin', fightin' cuss. This preacher came into the barn one day when I was freezin' to death after a big spree. He tuk me home with him and kep' me there for two weeks, settin' up nights with me, too. Let me be,” he said impatiently to Barry, who was trying to pull him down to his seat. “I'm agoin' to speak this time if it kills me. Many a time I done him dirt sence then, but he stuck to me, and never quit till he got me turned 'round. I was goin' straight to hell; he says I'm goin' to heaven now.” Here he laughed with a touch of scorn. “I dunno. But, by gum! if you fire him and do him dirt, I don't know what'll become of me, but I guess I'll go straight to hell again.”

“No, Harry, no you won't. You'll keep right on, Harry, straight to heaven.” It was the preacher's voice, full of cheery confidence.

Mrs. Innes was audibly sniffling; Mrs. Stewart Duff wiping her eyes. It was doubtless this sight that brought her husband to his feet.

“I don't quite know what the trouble is here,” he said. “I understand there are arrears. I heard some criticism of the minister's preaching. I can't say I care much for it myself, but I want to say right here that there are other things wanted in a minister, and this young fellow has got some of them. If he stays, he gets my money; if he doesn't, no one else does. I'll make you gentlemen who are kicking about finances a sporting proposition. I'm willing to double my subscription, if any other ten men will cover my ante.”

“I'll call you,” said Neil Fraser, “and I'll raise you one.”

“I'm willing to meet Mr. Duff and Mr. Fraser,” said Miss Quigg, rising from behind her organ with a triumphant smile on her face.

“I ain't got much money,” said Harry Hobbs, “but I'll go you just half what I earn if you'll meet me on that proposition.”

“Ah may say,” said Mr. Innes, yielding to his wife's vigorous vocal and physical incitations, “A'm prepair-r-ed to mak' a substantial increase in my subscreeption—that is, if necessary,” he added cautiously.

Then Barry came forward from the back of the church and stood before the platform. After looking them over for a few moments in silence, he said, in a voice clear, quiet, but with a ring in it that made it echo in every heart:

“Had it not been for these last speeches, it would have been unnecessary to allow the motion to go before you. I could not have remained where I am not wanted. But now I am puzzled, I confess, I am really puzzled to know what to do. I am not a great preacher, I know, but then there are worse. I don't, at least I think I don't, talk nonsense. And I am not what Mr. McFettridge calls a 'good mixer.' On the other hand, I think Mr. Innes is right when he says the bairns like me; at least, it would break”—he paused, his lip quivering, then he went on quietly—“it would be very hard to think they didn't.”

“They do that, then,” said Mrs. Innes, emphatically.

“So you see, it is really very difficult to know what to do. I would hate to go away, but it might be right to go away. I suggest you let me have a week to think it over. Can you wait that long?”

His handsome, boyish face, alight with a fine glow of earnestness and sincerity, made irresistible appeal to all but those who for personal reasons were opposed to him.

“You see,” he continued, in a tone of voice deliberative and quite detached, “there are a number of things to think about. Those arrears, for instance, are hardly my fault—at least, not altogether. I was looking over the treasurer's books the other day, and I was surprised to find how many had apparently quite forgotten to pay their church subscription. It is no doubt just an oversight. For instance,” he added, in the confidential tone of one imparting interesting and valuable information, “you will be surprised to learn, Mr. Duff, that you are twenty-five dollars behind in your payments.”

At this Neil Fraser threw back his head with a loud laugh. “Touche!” he said, in a joyous undertone.

The minister looked at him in surprise, and went on, “And while Mr. Innes and Miss Quigg are both paid up in full, Mr. Hayes has apparently neglected to pay his last quarter.”

“Hit him again,” murmured Harry Hobbs, while Mr. Hayes rose in virtuous indignation.

“I protest, Mr. Chairman!” he cried, “against these personalities.”

“Oh, you quite mistake me, Mr. Hayes,” said the preacher, “these are not personalities. I am simply showing how easy it is for arrears to arise, and that it may not be my fault at all. Of course, it may be right for me to resign. I don't know about that yet, but I want to be very sure. It would be easier to resign, but I don't want to be a quitter.”

“I move we adjourn,” said Neil Fraser.

“I second the motion,” said Stewart Duff. The motion was carried, and the meeting adjourned.

At the door the minister stood shaking hands with all as they passed out, making no distinction in the heartiness with which he greeted all his parishioners. To Miss Quigg, however, he said, “Thank you. You were splendidly plucky.”

“Nonsense!” cried the little lady, the colour flaming in her faded cheeks. “But,” she added hastily, “you did that beautifully, and he deserved it, the little beast!”

“Solar plexus!” said Neil Fraser, who was immediately behind Miss Quigg.

The minister glanced from one to the other in perplexity, as they passed out of the door.

“But, you know, I was only—”

“Oh, yes, we know,” cried Miss Quigg. “But if those men would only take hold! Oh, those men!” She turned upon Neil Fraser and shook her head at him violently.

“I know, Miss Quigg. We are a hopeless and helpless lot. But we're going to reform.”

“You need to, badly,” she said. “But you need some one to reform you. Look at Mr. Duff there, how vastly improved he is,” and she waved her hand to that gentleman, who was driving away with his wife in their buckboard.

“He is a perfect dear,” sighed Mrs. Duff, as she bowed to the minister. “And you, too, Stewart,” she added, giving his arm a little squeeze, “you said just the right thing when those horrid people were going to turn him out.”

“Say! Your preacher isn't so bad after all,” said her husband. “Wasn't that a neat one for old Hayes?”

“He rather got you, though, Stewart.”

“Yes, he did, by Jove! Not the first time, either, he's done it. But I must look after that. Say, he's the limit for freshness though. Or is it freshness? I'm not quite sure.”

“Will he stay with us?” said his wife. “I really do hope he will.”

“Guess he'll stay all right. He won't give up his job,” said her husband.

But next week proved Mr. Duff a poor prophet, for the minister after the service informed his people that he had come to the conclusion that another man might get better results as minister of the congregation; he had therefore handed in his resignation to the Presbytery.

It was a shock to them all, but he adhered to his resolution in spite of tearful lamentations from the women, wide-eyed amazement and dismay from the bairns of the congregation, and indignation, loudly expressed, from Neil Fraser and Stewart Duff, and others of their kind.

“Well,” said Miss Quigg, struggling with indignant tears, as she was passing out of the church, “you won't see Harry Hobbs in this church again, nor me, either.”

“Oh, yes, Miss Quigg, Harry has promised me that he will stick by the church, and that he will be there every Sunday. And so will you, dear Miss Quigg. I know you. You will do what is right.”

But that little lady, with her head very erect and a red spot burning in each faded cheek, passed out of the church saying nothing, the plumes on her jaunty little hat quivering defiance and wrath against “those men, who had so little spunk as to allow a little beast like Hayes to run them.”

[ [!-- H2 anchor --] ]

CHAPTER V

THE WAR DRUM CALLS

“Well, dad,” said Barry next evening as they were sitting in the garden after tea, “I feel something like Mohammed's coffin, detached from earth but not yet ascended into heaven. It's unpleasant to be out of a job. I confess I shall always cherish a more intelligent sympathy henceforth for the great unemployed. But cheer up, dad! You are taking this thing much too seriously. The world is wide, and there is something waiting me that I can do better than any one else.”

But the father had little to say. He felt bitterly the humiliation to which his son had been subjected.

Barry refused to see the humiliation.

“Why should I not resign if I decide it is my duty so to do? And why, on the other hand, should not they have the right to terminate my engagement with them when they so desire? That's democratic government.”

“But good Lord, Barry!” burst out his father, with quite an unusual display of feeling; “to think that a gentleman should hold his position at the whim of such whippersnappers as Hayes, Boggs et hoc genus omne. And more than that, that I should have to accept as my minister a man who would be the choice of cattle like that.”

“After all, dad, we are ruled by majorities in this age and in this country. That is at once the glory and the danger of democratic government. There is no better way discovered as yet. And besides, I couldn't go on here, dad, preaching Sunday after Sunday to people who I felt were all the time saying, 'He's no good'; to people, in short, who could not profit by my preaching.”

“Because it had no pep, eh?” said his father with bitter scorn.

“Do you know, dad, I believe that's what is wrong with my preaching: it hasn't got pep. What pep is, only the initiated know. But the long and the short of this thing is, it is the people that must be satisfied. It is they who have to stand your preaching, they who pay the piper. But cheer up, dad, I have no fear for the future.”

“Nor have I, my boy, not the slightest. I hope you did not think for a moment, my son,” he added with some dignity, “that I was in doubt about your future.”

“No, no, dad. We both feel a little sore naturally, but the future is all right.”

“True, my dear boy, true. I was forgetting myself. As you say, the world is wide and your place is waiting.”

“Hello! here comes my friend, Mr. Duff,” said Barry in a low voice. “He was ready to throw Mr. McFettridge out of the meeting yesterday, body and bones. Awfully funny, if it hadn't been in church. Wonder what he wants! Seems in a bit of a hurry.”

But hurry or not, it was a full hour before Mr. Duff introduced his business. As he entered the garden he stood gazing about him in amazed wonder and delight, and that hour was spent in company with Mr. Dunbar, exploring the garden, Barry following behind lost in amazement at the new phase of character displayed by their visitor.

“I have not had such a delightful evening, Mr. Dunbar, for years,” said Duff, when they had finished making the round of the garden. “I have heard about your garden, but I had no idea that it held such a wealth and variety of treasures. I had something of a garden myself in the old country, but here there is no time apparently for anything but cattle and horses and money. But if you would allow me I should greatly like to have the pleasure of bringing Mrs. Duff to see your beautiful garden.”

Mr. Duff was assured that the Dunbars would have the greatest pleasure in receiving Mrs. Duff.

“Do bring her,” said Barry, “and we can have a little music, too. She is musical, I know. I hear her sing in church.”

“Music! Why, she loves it. But she dropped her music when she came here; there seemed to be no time, no time, no time. I wonder sometimes—Well, I must get at my business. It is this letter that brings me. It is from an American whom you know, at least, he knows you, a Mr. Osborne Howland of Pittsburgh.”

Mr. Dunbar nodded.

“He is planning a big trip up the Peace River country prospecting for oil and mines, and later hunting. He says you and your son engaged to accompany him, and he asks me to complete arrangements with you. I am getting Jim Knight to look after the outfit. You know Jim, perhaps. He runs the Lone Pine ranch. Fine chap he is. Knows all about the hunting business. Takes a party into the mountains every year. He'll take Tom Fielding with him. I don't know Fielding, but Knight does. Mr. Howland says there will be three of their party. Far too many, but that's his business. I myself am rather anxious to look after some oil deposits, and this will be a good chance. What do you say?”

Father and son looked at each other.

“It would be fine, if we could manage it,” said Mr. Dunbar, “but my work is so pressing just now. A great many are coming in, and I am alone in the office at present. When does he propose to start?”

“In six weeks' time. I hope you can come, Mr. Dunbar. I couldn't have said so yesterday, but I can now. Any man with a garden like this, the product of his own planning and working, is worth knowing. So I do hope you can both come. By the way, Knight wants a camp hand, a kind of roustabout, who can cook—a handy man, you know.”

“I have him,” said Barry. “Harry Hobbs.”

“Hobbs? Boozes a bit, doesn't he?”

“Not now. Hasn't for six months. He's a new man. I can guarantee him.”

“You can, eh? Well, my experience is once a boozer always a boozer.”

“Oh,” said Barry, “Hobbs is different. He is a member of our church, you know.”

“No, I didn't know. But I don't know that that makes much difference anyway,” said Duff with a laugh. “I don't mean to be offensive,” he added.

“It does to Hobbs, he's a Christian man now. I mean a real Christian, Mr. Duff.”

“Well, I suppose there is such a thing. In fact, I've known one or two, but—well, if you guarantee him I'll take him.”

“I will guarantee him,” said Barry.

“Let me have your answer to-morrow,” said Duff as he bade them good-night.

The Dunbars discussed the matter far into the night. It was clearly impossible for Mr. Dunbar to leave his work, and the only question was whether or not Barry should make one of the party. Barry greatly disliked the idea of leaving his father during the hot summer months, as he said, “to slave away at his desk, and to slop away in his bachelor diggings.” He raised many objections, but one consideration seemed to settle things for the Dunbars. To them a promise was a promise.

“If I remember aright, Barry, we promised that we should join their party on this expedition.”

“Yes,” added Barry quickly, “if our work permitted it.”

“Exactly,” said his father. “My work prevents me, your work does not.”

Hence it came that by the end of August Barry found himself in the far northern wilds of the Peace River country, a hundred miles or so from Edmonton, attached to a prospecting-hunting party of which Mr. Osborne Howland was the nominal head, but of which the “boss” was undoubtedly his handsome, athletic and impetuous daughter Paula. The party had not been on the trail for more than a week before every member was moving at her command, and apparently glad to do so.

The party were camped by a rushing river at the foot of a falls. Below the falls the river made a wide eddy, then swept down in a turbulent rapid for some miles. The landing was a smooth and shelving rock that pitched somewhat steeply into the river.

The unfortunate Harry, who after the day's march had exchanged his heavy marching boots with their clinging hobnails for shoes more comfortable but with less clinging qualities, in making preparation for the evening meal made his way down this shelving rock of water. No sooner had he filled his pail than his foot slipped from under him, and in an instant the pail and himself were in the swiftly flowing river.

His cry startled the camp.

“Hello!” shouted Duff, with a great laugh. “Harry is in the drink! I never knew he was so fond of water as all that. You've got to swim for it now, old boy.”

“Throw him something,” said Knight.

Past them ran Barry, throwing off coat and vest.

“He can't swim,” he cried, tearing at his boots. “Throw him a line, some one.” He ran down to the water's edge, plunged in, and swam toward the unfortunate Harry, who, splashing wildly, was being carried rapidly into the rough water.

“Oh, father, he will be drowned!” cried Paula, rushing toward a canoe which was drawn up on the shore. Before any one could reach her she had pushed it out and was steering over the boiling current in Barry's wake. But after a few strokes of her paddle she found herself driven far out into the current and away from the struggling men. Paula had had sufficient experience with a canoe to handle it with considerable ease in smooth water and under ordinary conditions, but in the swirl of this rough and swift water the canoe took the management of its course out of her hands, and she had all she could do to keep afloat.

“For God's sake, men, get her!” cried Brand. “She will be drowned before our eyes.”

“Come on, Tom,” cried Jim Knight, swinging another canoe into the water. A glance he gave at the girl, another at the struggling men, for by this time Barry could be seen struggling with the drowning Hobbs.

“Get in, Tom,” ordered Knight, taking the stern. “We will get the men first. The girl is all right in the meantime.”

“Get the girl!” commanded Brand. “For God's sake go for the girl,” he entreated in a frenzy of distress.

“No,” said Knight, “the men first. She's all right.”

“Here,” said Duff to Brand, pushing out the remaining canoe, “get into the bow, and stop howling. Those men are in danger of being drowned, but Knight will get them. We'll go for the girl.”

It took but a few minutes for Knight and Fielding, who knew their craft thoroughly and how to get the best out of her in just such an emergency, to draw up upon Harry and his rescuer.

“Say, they are fighting hard,” said Fielding. “That bloody little fool is choking the life out of Dunbar. My God! they are out of sight!”

“Go on,” roared Knight. “Keep your eyes on the spot, and for Heaven's sake, paddle!”

“They are up again! One of them is. It's Barry. The other is gone. No, by Jove! he's got him! Hold on, Barry, we're coming,” yelled Tom. “Stick to it, old boy!”

Swiftly the canoe sped toward the drowning men.

“They are gone this time for sure,” cried Tom, as the canoe shot over the spot where the men had last been seen.

“Not much!” said Knight, as reaching out of the stern he gripped Barry by the hair. “Hold hard, Barry,” he said quietly. “No monkey work now or you'll drown us all.” Immediately Barry ceased struggling.

“Don't try to get in, Barry. We'll have to tow you ashore.”

“All right, Jim,” he said between his sobbing breaths. “Only—hurry up—I've got him—here.”

Knight reached down carefully, lifted Barry till his hand touched the gunwale of the canoe.

“Not too hard, Barry,” he said. “I'll ease you round to the stern. Steady, boy, steady. Don't dump us.”

“All right—Jim—but—he's under the water—here.”

“Oh, never mind him. We'll get him all right. Can you hold on now?” said Knight.

“Yes—I think so.”

“Now, for God's sake, Tom, edge her into the shore. See that little eddy there? Swing into that! You'll do it all right. Good man!”

By this time Knight was able to get Harry's head above water.

In a few minutes they had reached the shore, and were working hard over Harry's unconscious body, leaving Barry lying on the sand to recover his strength. A long fight was necessary to bring the life back into Harry, by which time Barry was sufficiently recovered to sit up.

“Stay where you are, Barry, until we get this man back to camp,” ordered Knight. “We'll light a bit of a fire for you.”

“I'm warm enough,” said Barry.

“Warm enough? You may be, but you will be better with a fire, and you lie beside it till we get you. Don't move now.”

“There's the other canoes coming,” said Fielding. “They'll make shore a little lower down. They're all right. Say, she's handling that canoe like a man!”

“Who?” said Barry.

“Why, Miss Howland,” said Fielding. “She was out after you like a shot. She's a plucky one!”

Barry was on his feet in an instant, watching anxiously the progress of the canoes, which were being slowly edged across the river in a long incline toward the shore.

“They'll make it, all right,” said Knight, after observing them for a time. “Don't you worry. Just lie down by the fire. We'll be back in a jiffy.”

In an hour they were all safely back in camp, and sufficiently recovered to discover the humorous points in the episode. But they were all familiar enough with the treacherous possibilities of rough and rapid water to know that for Hobbs and his deliverer at least, there had been some serious moments during their fierce struggle in the river.

“Another minute would have done,” said Fielding to his friend, as they sat over the fire after supper.

“A half a minute would have been just as good,” said Knight. “I got Barry by the hair under water. He was at his last kick, you bet! And that rat,” he added, smiling good naturedly at Harry, “was dragging him down for the last time.”

“I didn't know nothin' about it,” said poor Harry, who was lying stretched out by the fire, still very weak and miserable. “I didn't know nothin' about it, or you bet I woudn't ha' done it. I didn't know nothin' after he got me.”

“After you got him, you mean,” said Fielding.

“I guess that's right,” said Harry, “but I wouldn't ha' got him if he hadn't ha' got me first.”

They all joined in the discussion of the event except Paula, who sat distrait and silent, gazing into the fire, and Barry, who lay, drowsy and relaxed, on a blanket not far from her side.

“You ought to go to bed,” said Paula at length in a low voice to him. “You need a good night's sleep.”

“I'm too tired to sleep,” said Barry. “I feel rather rotten, in fact. I ought to feel very grateful, but somehow I just feel rotten.”

“Can one be grateful and feel rotten at the same time?” said Paula, making talk.

“Behold me,” replied Barry. “I know I am grateful, but I do feel rotten. I don't think I have even thanked you for risking your life for me,” he added, turning toward her.

“Risking my life? Nonsense! I paddled 'round in the canoe for a bit, till two strong men came to tow me in, and would have, if I had allowed them. Thank the boys, who got you in time.” She shuddered as she spoke.

“I do thank them, and I do feel grateful to them,” said Barry. “It was rather a near thing. You see, I let him grip me. I choked him off my arms, but he slid down to my thigh, and I could not kick him off. Had to practically drown him. Even then he hung on.”

“Oh, don't speak about it,” she said with a shudder, covering her face with her hands. “It was too awful, and it might have been the end of you.” Her voice broke a little.

“No, not an end,” answered Barry, in a quiet voice. “Not the end by a long way, not by a very long way.”

“What do you mean? Oh, you are thinking of immortality, and all that,” said Paula. “It's a chilly, ghostly subject. It makes me shiver. I get little comfort out of it.”

“Ghostly it is, if you mean a thing of spirits,” said Barry, “but chilly! Why chilly?” Then he added to himself in an undertone: “I wonder! I wonder! I wish sometimes I knew more.”

“Sometimes?” cried Paula. “Always!” she added passionately. “It's a dreadful business to me. To be suddenly snatched out of the light and the warmth, away from the touch of warm fingers and the sight of dear faces! Ah, I dread it! I loathe the thought of it. I hate it!”

“And yet,” mused Barry, “somehow I cannot forget that out there somewhere there is One, kindly, genial, true,—like my dad. How good he has been to me—my dad, I mean, and that Other, too, has been good. Somehow I think of them together. Yes, I am grateful to Him.”

“Oh, God, you mean,” said Paula, a little impatiently.

“Yes, to God. He saved me to-day. 'Saved,' I say. It is a queer way to speak, after all. What I really ought to say is that God thought it best that I should camp 'round here for a bit longer before moving in nearer.”

“Nearer?”

“Yes, into the nearer circle. Life moves 'round a centre, in outer and inner circles. This is the outer circle. Nearer in there, it is kindlier, with better light and clearer vision. 'We shall know even as we are known.'” Barry mused on, as if communing with himself.

“But when you move in,” said Paula, and there was no mistaking the earnestness of her tone, “you break touch with those you love here.”

“I don't know about that,” answered Barry quickly.

“Oh, yes you do. You are out of all this,—all this,” she swept her hand at the world around her, “this good old world, all your joy and happiness, all you love. Oh, that's the worst of it; you give up your love. I hate it!” she concluded with vehemence sudden and fierce, as she shook her fist towards the stars.

“Give up your love?” said Barry. “Not I! Not one good, honest affection do I mean to give up, nor shall I.”

“Oh, nonsense! Don't be religious. Just be honest,” said Paula, in a low, intense voice. “Let me speak to you. Suppose I—I love a man with all my soul and body—and body, mind you, and he goes out, or goes in, as you say. No matter, he goes out of my life. I lose him, he is not here. I cannot feel and respond to his love. I cannot feel his strong arms about me. My God!” Her voice came with increasing vehemence. “I want his arms. I want him as he is. I want his body—I cannot love a ghost. No! no!” she added in a low, hopeless voice. “When he goes out I lose him, and lose him as mine forever. Oh, what do I care for your spirit love! The old Greeks were right. They are shades—shades, mere shades beyond the river. I don't want a shade. I want a man, a strong, warm-hearted, brave man. Yes, a good man, a man with a soul. But a MAN, not a SOUL. My God!” she moaned, “how terrible it all is! And it came so near to us to-day. But I should not be saying this to you, played out as you are. I am going to bed. Good-night.”

She put out her hand and gripped his in warm, strong, muscular fingers. “Thank God, yes God, if you like, you are still—still in this outer circle,”—she broke into a laugh, but there was little mirth in her laughter—“this good old outer circle, yet awhile.”

“Yes,” said Barry simply but very earnestly, “thank God. It is a good world. But with all my soul I believe there is a better, and all that is best in love and life we shall take with us. Good-night,” he added, “and thank you, at least for the will and the attempt to save my life.”

“Sleep well,” she said.

“I hope so,” he replied, “but I doubt it.”

His doubts, it turned out, were justified, for soon after midnight Mr. Howland was aroused by Harry Hobbs in a terror of excitement.

“Will you come to Mr. Dunbar, sir?” he cried. “I think he is dying.”

“Dying?” Mr. Howland was out of his cot immediately and at Barry's side. He found him fighting for breath, his eyes starting from his head, a look of infinite distress on his face.

“My dear boy, what is it? Hobbs says you are dying.”

“That con-con-founded—fool—shouldn't have—called you. I forbade—him,” gasped Barry.

“But, my dear boy, what is the matter? Are you in pain?”

“No, no,—it's—nothing—only an old—friend come back—for a call,—a brief one—let us—hope. It's only asthma. Looks bad—feels worse—but really—not at all dangerous.”

“What can be done, my boy?” asked Mr. Howland, greatly relieved, as are most laymen, when the trouble can be named. It is upon the terror inspired by the unknown that the medical profession lives.

“Tell Harry—to make—a hot drink,” said Barry, but Harry had already forestalled the request, and appeared with a steaming bowl. “This will—help. Now—go to—bed, Mr. Howland. Do, please.—You distress—me by remaining—there. Harry will—look after me. Good-night.”

Next morning Barry appeared at breakfast a little washed out in appearance, but quite bright and announcing himself fit for anything.

The incident, however, was a determining factor in changing the party's plans. Already they were behind their time schedule, to Mr. Cornwall Brand's disgust. The party was too large and too heavily encumbered with impedimenta for swift travel. Besides, as Paula said, “Why rush? Are we not doing the Peace River Country? We are out for a good time and we are having it.” Paula was not interested in mines and oil. She did not announce just what special interest was hers. She was “having a good time” and that was reason enough for leisurely travel. In consequence their provisions had run low.

It was decided to send forward a scouting party to the Hudson's Bay Post some thirty miles further on to restock their commissariat. Accordingly Knight and Fielding were despatched on this mission, the rest of the party remaining in camp.

“A lazy day or two in camp is what we all need,” said Mr. Howland. “I confess I am quite used up myself, and therefore I know you must all feel much the same.”

On the fourth day the scouting party appeared.

“There's war!” cried Knight as he touched land. He flung out a bundle of papers for Mr. Howland.

“War!” The word came back in tones as varied as those who uttered it.

“War!” said Mr. Howland. “Between whom?”

“Every one, pretty much,” said Knight. “Germany, France, Russia, Austria, Servia, Belgium, and Britain.”

“Britain!” said Barry and Duff at the same moment.

“Britain,” answered Knight solemnly.

The men stood stock still, looking at each other with awed faces.

“War!” again said Barry. “With Germany!” He turned abruptly away from the group and said, “I am going.”

“Going! Going where?” said Mr. Howland.

“To the war,” said Barry quietly.

“To the war! You? A clergyman?” said Mr. Howland.

“You? You going?” cried Paula. At the pain in her voice her father and Brand turned and looked at her. Disturbed by what he saw, her father began an excited appeal to Barry.

“Why, my dear sir, it would surely be most unusual for a man like you to go to war,” he began, and for quite ten minutes he proceeded to set forth in fluent and excited speech a number of reasons why the idea of Barry's going to war was absurd and preposterous to him. It must be confessed that Barry was the only one of the men who appeared to give much heed to him. They seemed to be dazed by the stupendous fact that had been announced to them, and to be adjusting themselves to that fact.

When he had finished his lengthy and excited speech Brand took up the discourse.

“Of course you don't think of going immediately,” he said. “We have this expedition in hand.”

The men made no reply. Indeed, they hardly seemed to hear him.

“You don't mean to say,” continued Brand with a touch of indignation in his voice, addressing Duff, the recognised leader of the party, “that you would break your engagement with this party, Mr. Duff?”

Duff glanced at him, then looked away in silence, studying the horizon. The world was to him and to them all a new world within the last few minutes.

His silence appeared to enrage Brand. He turned to Barry.

“Do you mean to tell me, sir, that you approve of this? Do you consider it right and fair that these men should break their engagement with us? We have gone to great expense, we have extremely important interests at stake in this exploration.”

Barry stood looking at him in silence, as if trying to take in exactly what he meant, then in a low and awed tone he said:

“It is war! War with Germany!”

“We cannot help that,” cried Brand. “What difference can this war make to you here a hundred miles from civilisation? These men are pledged to us.”

“Their first pledge is to their country, sir,” said Barry gravely.

“But why should you, a Canadian, take part in this war?” argued Mr. Howland. “Surely this is England's war.”

Then Barry appeared to awake as from a dream.

“Yes, it is England's war, it is Britain's war, and when Britain is at war my country is at war, and when my country is at war I ought to be there.”

“God in heaven!” shouted Duff, striking him on the back, “you have said it! My country is at war, and I must be there. As God hears me, I am off to-day—now.”

“Me, too!” said Knight with a shout.

“I'm going with you, sir,” said little Harry Hobbs, ranging himself beside Barry.

“Count me in,” said Tom Fielding quietly. “I have a wife and three kids, but—”

“My God!” gasped Duff. “My wife.” His face went white. He had not yet fully adjusted himself to the fact of war.

“Why, of course,” said Mr. Howland, “you married men won't be called upon. You must be reasonable. For instance you, Mr. Duff, cannot leave your wife.”

But Duff had recovered himself.

“My wife, sir? My wife would despise me if I stayed up here. Sir, my wife will buckle on my belt and spurs and send me off to the war,” cried Duff in a voice that shook as he spoke.

With a single stride Barry was at his side, offering both his hands.

“Thank God for men like you! And in my soul I believe the Empire has millions of them.”

“Does your Empire demand that you desert those you have pledged yourself to?” enquired Brand in a sneering tone.

“Oh, Cornwall!” exclaimed Paula, “how can you?”

“Why, Brand,” said Mr. Howland, “that is unworthy of you.”

“We will see you into safety, sir,” said Duff, swinging round upon Brand, “either to the Hudson's Bay Company's post, where you can get Indians, or back to Edmonton, but not one step further on this expedition do I go.”

“Nor I,” said Knight.

“Nor I,” said Fielding.

“Nor I,” said Barry.

“Nor I,” said Harry Hobbs.

“You are quite right, sir,” said Mr. Howland, turning to Barry. “I apologise to you, sir, to all of you Canadians. I am ashamed to confess that I did not at first get the full meaning of this terrific thing that has befallen your Empire. Were it the U.S.A. that was in a war of this kind, hell itself would not keep me from going to her aid. Nor you either, Brand. Yes, you are right. Go to your war. God go with you.”

He shook hands solemnly with them one by one. “I only wish to God that my country were with you, too, in this thing,” he said when he had performed this function.

“Father,” cried Paula, “do you think for one minute that Uncle Sam won't be in this? You put it down,” she said, swinging 'round upon Barry, “where it will jump at you some day: We will be with you in this scrap for all we are worth.”

“And now for the march,” said Barry, who seemed almost to assume command. Then removing his hat and lifting high his hand, he said in a voice thrilling with solemn reverence, “God grant victory to the right! God save the king!”

Instinctively the men took off their hats and stood with bared and bent heads, as if sharing in a solemn ritual. They stood with millions upon millions of their kin in the old mother lands, and scattered wide upon the seas, stood with many millions more of peoples and nations, pledging to this same cause of right, life and love and all they held dear, and with hearts open to that all-searching eye, praying that same prayer, “God grant victory to the right. Amen and amen. We ask no other.”

Then they faced to their hundred miles' trek en route to the war.

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CHAPTER VI

THE MEN OF THE NORTH

“Fifty miles—not too bad, boy, not too bad for a one day's go. We'll camp right here at the portage. How is it, Knight?”

“Good place, Duff, right on that point. Good wood, good landing. Besides there's a deuce of a portage beyond, which we can do after supper to-night. How do you feel, Barry?” asked Knight. “Hard day, eh?”

“Feeling fit, a little tired, of course, but good for another ten miles,” answered Barry.

“That's the stuff,” replied Knight, looking at him keenly, “but, see here, you must ease up on the carrying. You haven't quite got over that ducking of yours.”

“I'm fit enough,” answered Barry, rather more curtly than his wont.

They brought the canoes up to the landing, and with the speed of long practice unloaded them, and drew them upon the shore.

Knight approached Duff, and, pointing toward Barry, said quietly:

“I guess we'll have to ease him up a bit. That fight, you know, took it out of him, and he always jumps for the biggest pack. We'd better hold him back to-morrow a bit.”

“Can't hold back any one,” said Duff, with an oath. “We've got to make it to-morrow night. There's the devil of a trip before us. That big marsh portage is a heartbreaker, and there must be a dozen or fifteen of them awaiting us, and we're going to get through—at least, I am.”

“All right,” said Knight, with a quick flash of temper. “I'll stay with you, only I thought we might ease him a bit.”

“I'm telling you, we're going to get through,” said Duff, with another oath.

“You needn't tell me, Duff,” said Knight. “Keep your shirt on.”

“On or off, wet or dry, sink or swim, we're going to make that train to-morrow, Knight. That's all about it.”

Then Knight let himself go.

“See here, Duff. Do you want to go on to-night? If you do, hell and blazes, say the word and I'm with you.”

His face was white as he spoke. He seized a tump-line, swung the pack upon his head, and set off across the portage.

“Come on, boys,” he yelled. “We're going through to-night.”

“Oh, hold up, Knight!” said Duff. “What the hell's eating you? We'll grub first anyway.”

“No,” said Knight. “The next rapid is a bad bit of water, and if we're going through to-night, I want that bit behind me, before it gets too dark. So come along!”

“Oh, cut it out, Knight,” said Duff, in a gruff but conciliatory tone. “We'll camp right here.”

“It's all the same to me,” said Knight, flinging his pack down. “When you want to go on, say the word. You won't have to ask me twice.”

Duff looked over the six feet of bone and sinew and muscle of the young rancher, made as if to answer, paused a moment, changed his mind, and said more quietly:

“Don't be an ass, Knight. I'm not trying to hang your shirt on a tree.”

“You know damned well you can't,” said Knight, who was still white with passion.

“Oh, come off,” replied Duff. “Anyway, I don't see what young Dunbar is to you. We must get through to-morrow night. The overseas contingent is camping at Valcartier, according to these papers and whatever happens I am going with that contingent.”

Knight made no reply. He was a little ashamed of his temper. But during the past two days he had chafed under the rasp of Duff's tongue and his overbearing manner. He resented too his total disregard of Barry's weariness, for in spite of his sheer grit, the pace was wearing the boy down.

“We ought to reach the railroad by six to-morrow,” said Duff, renewing the conversation, and anxious to appease his comrade. “There's a late train, but if we catch the six we shall make home in good time. Hello, what's this coming?”

At his words they all turned and looked in the direction in which he pointed.

Down a stream, which at this point came tumbling into theirs in a dangerous looking rapid, came a canoe with a man in the centre guiding it as only an expert could.

“By Jove! He can't make that drop,” said Knight, walking down toward the landing.

They all stood watching the canoe which, at the moment, hung poised upon the brink of the rapid like a bird for flight. Even as Knight spoke the canoe entered the first smooth pitch at the top. Two long, swallow-like sweeps, then she plunged into the foam, to appear a moment later fighting her way through the mass of crowding, crested waves, which, like white-fanged wolves upon a doe, seemed to be hurling themselves upon her, intent upon bearing her down to destruction.

“By the living, jumping Jemima!” said Fielding, in an awe-stricken tone, “she's gone!”

“She's through!” cried Knight.

“Great Jehoshaphat!” said Fielding. “He's a bird!”

With a flip or two of his paddle, the stranger shot his canoe across the stream, and floated quietly to the landing.

Barry ran down to meet him.

“I say, that was beautifully done,” he cried, taking the nose of the canoe while the man stepped ashore and stood a moment looking back at the water.

“A leetle more to the left would have been better, I think. She took some water,” he remarked in a slow voice, as if to himself.

He was a strange-looking creature. He might have stepped out of one of Fenimore Cooper's novels. Indeed, as Barry's eyes travelled up and down his long, bony, stooping, slouching figure, his mind leaped at once to the Pathfinder.

“Come far?” asked Duff, approaching the stranger.

“Quite a bit,” he answered, in a quiet, courteous voice, pausing a moment in his work.

“Going out?” enquired Duff.

“Not yet,” he said. “Going up the country first to The Post.”

“Ah, we have just come down from there,” said Duff. “We started yesterday morning,” he added, evidently hoping to surprise the man.

“Yes,” he answered in a quiet tone of approval. “Nice little run! Nice little run! Bit of a hurry, I guess,” he ventured apologetically.

“You bet your life, we just are. This damned war makes a man feel like as if the devil was after him,” said Duff.

“War!” The man looked blankly at him. “Who's fightin'?”

“Why, haven't you heard? It's been going on for a month. We heard only three days ago as we were going further up the country. It knocked our plans endways, and here we are chasing ourselves to get out.”

“War!” said the man again. “Who's fightin'? Uncle Sam after them Mexicans?”

“No. Mexicans, hell!” exclaimed Duff. “Germany and Britain.”

“Britain!” The slouching shoulders lost their droop. “Britain!” he said, straightening himself up. “What's she been doin' to Germany?”

“What's Germany been doing to her, and to Belgium, and to Servia, and to France?” answered Duff, in a wrathful voice. “She's been raising hell all around. You haven't seen the papers, eh? I have them all here.”

The stranger seemed dazed by the news. He made no reply, but getting out his frying-pan and tea-pail, his only utensils, he set about preparing his evening meal.

“I say,” said Duff, “won't you eat with us? We're just about ready. We'll be glad to have you.”

The man hesitated a perceptible moment. In the wilds men do not always accept invitations to eat. Food is sometimes worth more than its weight in gold.

“I guess I will, if you've lots of stuff,” he said at length.

“We've lots of grub, and we expect to be home by tomorrow night anyway, if things go all right. You are very welcome.”

The man laid down his frying-pan and tea-pail, and walked with Duff toward his camp.

“Are you goin'?” he enquired.

“Going?”

“To the war. Guess some of our Canadian boys will be goin' likely, eh?”

“Going,” cried Duff. “You bet your life I'm going. But, come on. We'll talk as we eat. And we can't stay long, either.”

Duff introduced the party.

“My name's McCuaig,” said the stranger.

“Scotch, I guess?” enquired Duff.

“My father came out with The Company. I was born up north. Never been much out, but I read the papers,” he added quickly, as if to correct any misapprehension as to his knowledge of the world and its affairs. “My father always got the Times and the Spectator, and I've continued the habit.”

“Any one who reads the Times and the Spectator,” said Barry, “can claim to be a fairly well-read man. My father takes the Spectator, too.”

As they sat down to supper, he noticed that McCuaig took off his old grey felt and crossed himself before beginning toast.

As a matter of courtesy, Barry had always been asked to say grace before meals while with the Howland party. This custom, however, had been discontinued upon this trip. They had no time for meals. They had “just grabbed their grub and run,” as Harry Hobbs said.

While they ate, Duff kept a full tide of conversation going in regard to the causes of the war and its progress, as reported in the papers. Barry noticed that McCuaig's comments, though few, revealed a unique knowledge of European political affairs during the last quarter of a century. He noticed too that his manners at the table were those of a gentleman.

After supper they packed their stuff over the long portage, leaving their tent and sleeping gear, with their food, however, to be taken in the morning. For a long time they sat over the fire, Barry reading, for McCuaig's benefit, the newspaper accounts of the Belgian atrocities, the story of the smashing drive of the German hosts, and the retreat of the British army from Mons.

“What,” exclaimed McCuaig, “the British soldiers goin' back! Runnin' away from them Germans!”

“Well, the Germans are only about ten to one, not only in men but in guns, and in this war it's guns that count. Guns can wipe out an army of heroes as easily as an army of cowards,” said Duff.

“And them women and children,” said McCuaig. “Are they killing them still?”

“You're just right, they are,” replied Duff, “and will till we stop them.”

McCuaig's eyes were glowing with a deep inner light. They were wonderful eyes, quick, darting, straight-looking and fearless, the eyes of a man who owes his life to his vigilance and his courage.

Before turning in for the night, Barry went to the river's edge, and stood looking up at the stars holding their steadfast watch over the turbulent and tossing waters below.

“Quiet, ain't they?” said a voice at his shoulder.

“Why, you startled me, Mr. McCuaig; I never heard you step.”

McCuaig laughed his quiet laugh.

“Got to move quietly in this country,” he said, “if you are going to keep alive.”

A moment or so he stood by Barry's side, looking up with him at the stars.

“No fuss, up there,” he said, interpreting Barry's mood and attitude. “Not like that there pitchin', tossin', threatenin' water.”

“No,” said Barry, “but though they look quiet, I suppose if we could really see, there is a most terrific whirling of millions of stars up there, going at the rate of thousands of miles a minute.”

“Millions of 'em, and all whirlin' about,” said McCuaig in an awe-stricken voice. “It's a wonder they don't hit.”

“They don't hit because they each keep their own orbit,” said Barry, “and they obey the laws of their existence.”

“Orbut,” enquired McCuaig. “What's that?”

“The trail that each star follows,” said Barry.

“I see,” said McCuaig, “each one keeps its own trail, its own orbut, and so there's peace up there. And I guess there'd be peace down here if folks did the same thing. It's when a man gets out of his own orbut and into another fellow's that the scrap begins. I guess that's where Germany's got wrong.”

“Something like that,” replied Barry.

“And sometimes,” continued McCuaig, his eyes upon the stars, “when a little one comes up against a big one, he gets busted, eh?”

Barry nodded.

“And a big one, when he comes up against a bigger one gets pretty badly jarred, eh?”

“I suppose so,” said Barry.

“That's what's goin' to happen to Germany,” said McCuaig.

“Germany's a very powerful nation,” said Barry. “The most powerful military nation in the world.”

“What!” said McCuaig. “Bigger than Britain?”

“Britain has two or three hundred thousand men in her army; Germany has seven millions or more, with seventy millions of people behind them, organised for war. Of course, Britain has her navy, but then Germany has the next biggest in the world. Oh, it's going to be a terrific war.”

“I say,” said McCuaig, putting his hand on Barry's shoulder. “You don't think it will bother us any to lick her?”

“It will be the most terrible of all Britain's wars,” replied Barry. “It will take every ounce of Britain's strength.”

“You don't tell me!” exclaimed McCuaig, as if struck by an entirely new idea. “Say, are you really anxious, young man?”

“I am terribly anxious,” replied Barry. “I know Germany a little. I spent a year there. She is a mighty nation, and she is ready for war.”

“She is, eh!” replied McCuaig thoughtfully. He wandered off to the fire without further word, where, rolling himself in his blanket and scorning the place in the tent offered him by Duff, he made himself comfortable for the night.

At the break of day Duff was awakened by the smell of something frying. Over the fire bent McCuaig, busy preparing a breakfast of tea, bacon and bannocks, together with thick slices of fat pork.

Breakfast was eaten in haste. The day's work was before them, and there was no time for talk. In a very few minutes they stood ready for their trip across the portage.

With them stood McCuaig. His blanket roll containing his grub, with frying-pan and tea-pail attached, lay at his feet; his rifle beside it.

For a moment or two he stood looking back up the stream by which, last night, he had come. Then he began tying his paddles to the canoe thwarts in preparation for packing it across the portage.

As he was tying on the second paddle, Duff's eye fell on him.

“What's up, McCuaig?” he said. “Aren't you going up to the Post?”

“No, I guess I ain't goin' up no more,” replied McCuaig slowly.

“What do you mean? You aren't going back home?”

“No. My old shack will do without me for a while, I guess.—Say,” he continued, facing around upon Duff and looking him squarely in the face, “this young chap says”—putting his hand upon Barry's shoulder—“Britain is going to have a hell of a time licking Germany back into her own orbut. Them papers said last night that Canada was going in strong. Do you think she could use a fellow like me?”

A silence fell upon the group of men.

“What! Do you mean it, McCuaig?” said Duff at length.

The man turned his thin, eagle face toward the speaker, a light in his eyes.

“Why, ain't you goin'? Ain't every one goin' that can? If a fellow stood on one side while his country was fightin', where would he live when it's all over? He read out of the papers that them Germans were shootin' women and children. So—” his face began to work, “am I goin' to stand by and ask some one else to make 'em quit? No, by God!”

The men stood watching his face, curiously twisted and quivering. Then without a word Duff seized his pack, and swung into the trail, every man following him in his order. Without pausing, except for a brief half hour at noon, and another later in the day for eating, they pressed the trail, running what rapids they could and portaging the others, until in the early evening they saw, far away, a dirty blur on the skyline.

“Hurrah!” yelled Fielding. “Good old firebus, waiting for us.”

“Somebody run ahead and hold her,” said Duff.

Barry flung his pack down and started away.

“Come back here, Barry,” cried Knight. “You're not fit. You're all in.”

“That's right, too,” said McCuaig. “I guess I'll go.”

And off he set with the long, shuffling, tireless trot with which, for a hundred years, the “runners of the woods” have packed their loads and tracked their game in the wilds of northwestern Canada.

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CHAPTER VII

BARRICADES AND BAYONETS

The city of Edmonton was in an uproar, its streets thronged with excited men, ranchers and cowboys from the ranches, lumberjacks from the foothill camps, men from the mines, trappers with lean, hard faces, in weird garb, from the north.

The news from the front was ominous. Belgium was a smoking waste. Her skies were black with the burning of her towns, villages and homesteads, her soil red with the blood of her old men, her women and children. The French armies, driven back in rout from the Belgian frontier, were being pounded to death by the German hordes. Fortresses hitherto considered impregnable were tumbling like ninepins before the terrible smashing of Austrian and German sixteen-inch guns. Already von Kluck with his four hundred thousand of conquering warriors was at the gates of Paris.

Most ominous of all, the British army, that gallant, little sacrificial army, of a scant seventy-five thousand men, holding like a bulldog to the flank of von Bulow's mighty army, fifty times as strong, threatened by von Kluck on the left flank and by von Housen on the right, was slowing down the German advance, but was itself being slowly ground into the bloody dust of the northern and eastern roads of Northern and Eastern France.

Black days these were for the men of British blood. Was the world to see something new in war? Were Germans to overcome men of the race of Nelson, and Wellington and Colin Campbell?

At home, hundreds of thousands were battering at the recruiting offices. In the Dominions of the Empire overseas it was the same. In Canada a hundred thousand men were demanding a place in the first Canadian contingent of thirty-five thousand, now almost ready to sail. General Sam at Ottawa was being snowed under by entreating, insistent, cajoling, threatening telegrams. Already northern Alberta had sent two thousand men. The rumour in Edmonton ran that there were only a few places left to be filled in the north Alberta quota. For these few places hundreds of men were fighting in the streets.

Alighting from their train, Duff and his men stood amazed, aghast, gazing upon the scene before them. Duff climbed a wagon wheel and surveyed the crowd packing the street in front of the bulletin boards.

“No use, this way, boys. We'll have to go around. Come on.”

They went on. Up side streets and lanes, through back yards and shops they went until at length they emerged within a hundred yards of the recruiting office.

Duff called his men about him.

“Boys, we'll have to bluff them,” he said. “You're a party of recruits that Col. Kavanagh expects. You've been sent for. I'm bringing you in under orders. Look as much like soldiers as you can, and bore in like hell. Come on!”

They began to bore. At once there was an uproar, punctuated with vociferous and varied profanity.

Duff proved himself an effective leader.

“Here, let me pass,” he shouted into the backs of men's heads. “I'm on duty here. I must get through to Colonel Kavanagh. Keep up there, men; keep your line! Stand back, please! Make way!”

His huge bulk, distorted face and his loud and authoritative voice startled men into temporary submission, and before they could recover themselves he and his little company of hard-boring men were through.

Twenty-five yards from the recruiting office a side rush of the crowd caught them.

“They've smashed the barricades,” a boy from a telegraph pole called out.

Duff and his men fought to hold their places, but they became conscious of a steady pressure backwards.

“What's doing now, boy?” shouted Duff to the urchin clinging to the telegraph pole.

“The fusileers—they are sticking their bayonets into them.”

Before the line of bayonets the crowd retreated slowly, but Duff and his company held their ground, allowing the crowd to ebb past them, until they found themselves against the line of bayonets.

“Let me through here, sergeant, with my party,” said Duff. “I'm under orders of Colonel Kavanagh.”

The sergeant, an old British army man, looked them over.

“Have you an order, sir—a written order, I mean?”

“No,” said Duff. “I haven't, but the colonel expects us. He is waiting for me now.”

“Sorry, sir,” replied the sergeant, “my orders are to let no one through without a written pass.”

Duff argued, stormed, threatened, swore; but to no purpose. The N. C. O. knew his job.

“Send a note in,” suggested Barry in Duff's ear.

“Good idea,” replied Duff, and wrote hurriedly.

“Here, take this through to your colonel,” he said, passing the note to the sergeant.

Almost immediately Colonel Kavanagh came out and greeted Duff warmly.