boy's name I have to laugh.

GEOFFREY McBIRNEY.

September 17th.

MY DEAR MR. McBIRNEY--

What _is_ the boy's name? It must be queer if you laugh every time you
think of it. Don't forget to tell me.

Your letters leave me breathless with things to say back. I suppose
that's inspiration, to make people feel full of new ideas, and that
you're crammed with it. In the first place I'm in a terrible hurry to
tell you that something really big has touched the edge of my anaemic
life, and that I have recognized it; I'm pleased that I recognized it.
Listen--please--this is it. Robert Halarkenden; I must tell you who he
is. Thirteen years ago my uncle was on a camping trip in Canada and
one of the guides was a silent Scotchman, mixed in with French-Canadian
habitants and half-breed Indians. My uncle was interested in him--he
was picturesque and conspicuous--but he would not talk about himself.
Another guide told Uncle Ted all that anyone has ever known about him,
till yesterday. He was a guardian of the club and lived alone in a
camp in the wildest part of it, and in summer he guided one or two
parties, by special permission of the club secretary. This other guide
had been to his cabin and told my uncle that it was full of books; the
guide found the number astounding--"_effrayant_." Also he had a garden
of forest flowers, and he knew everything about every wild thing that
grew in the woods. Well, Uncle Ted was so taken with the man that he
asked the secretary about him, and the secretary shook his head. All
that he could tell was that he was a remarkable woodsman and a perfect
guide and that he had been recommended to him in the first place by Sir
Archibald Graye of Toronto, who had refused to give reasons but asked
as a personal favor that the man should be given any job he wished.
This is getting rather a long story. Of course you know that the man
was Halarkenden and you are now to know that my uncle brought him to
Forest Gate as his gardener. He thought over it a day when Uncle Ted
asked him and then said that he had lived fifteen years in the forest
and that now he would like to live in a garden; he would come if Uncle
Ted would let him make a garden as beautiful as he wished. Uncle Ted
said yes, and he has done it. You have never seen such a garden--no
one ever has. It is four acres and it lies on the bluff above the
lake; that was a good beginning. If you had seen the rows of lilies
last June, wi