forest
fall under the peaceful weapons of the pale face; then wondered westward
to die the dreary death of the last of a stricken race. Then his
thoughts come down to the present, and on into the future, in a vague
dream, which was half a prayer, for the hastening of the time when the
lovely valley should smile in moral and spiritual beauty too. And
coming back to actual life, with an effort--a sense of pain, he said to
himself, that the enjoyment of his friend had been not so high and pure
as his.

But Will was mistaken. In the thoughts of his friend, that summer
afternoon, patent machines, remunerative labour, plans of supply and
demand, of profit and loss, found no place. He passed the pleasant hour
on that green hill-side, seeing in that lovely valley, stretched out
before them, a very land of Beulah. Looking over the blue line of the
Ottawa, as over the river of Death, into a land visible and clear to the
eye of faith, he saw sights, and heard sounds, and enjoyed communion,
which, as yet, lay far in the future, as to the experience of the lad by
his side; and coming back to actual life, gave no sign of the Divine
Companionship, save that which afterward, was to be seen in a life,
growing liker every day to the Divine Exemplar.

Will thought, as they went home together, that a new light beamed, now
and then, over the keen but kindly face, and that the grave eyes of his
friend had the look of one who saw something beyond the beauty of the
pleasant fields, growing dim now in the gathering darkness; and the
lad's heart grew full and tender as it dawned upon him, how this was a
token of the shining of God's face upon his servant, and he longed for a
glimpse of that which his friend's eyes saw. A word might have won for
him a glimpse of the happiness; but Will was shy, and the word was not
spoken; and, all unconscious of his longing, his friend sat with the
smile on his lips, and the light in his eye, no thought further from him
than that any experience of his should be of value to another. And so
they fell quite into silence, till they neared the streets where the
lighted lamps were burning dim in the fading daylight.

That night, in the course of his wanderings up and down, Mr Snow,
paused, as he often did, before a portrait of the minister. It was a
portrait taken when the minister had been a much younger man than Mr
Snow had ever known him. It had belonged to a friend in Scotland, and
had been sent to Ar