ch. A very clever
fellow, but the old story--whisky. Too bad. He's a brother of Rev. Dr.
Macfarren."

"What? Dr. Macfarren of Toronto?"

"Yes. And he might be almost anything in this country. I'll give you a
letter to him. He will show you about and give you all information."

"And is he in the Church?" Shock's face was a study. McIntyre laughed
long and loud.

"Why, my dear fellow, we're glad to get hold of any kind of half-decent
chap that is willing to help in any way. We use him as usher, manager,
choir-master, sexton. In short, we put him any place where he will
stick."

Shock drew a long breath. The situation was becoming complicated to him.

"About Loon Lake," continued McIntyre, "I can't tell you much. By all
odds the most interesting figure there is the old Prospector, as he is
called. You have heard about him?"

Shock bowed.

"No one knows him, though he has been there for many years. His
daughter, I understand, has just come out from England to him. Then,
there's Andy Hepburn, who runs a store, a shrewd, canny little Scot. I
have no doubt he will help you. But you'll know more about the place in
a week than I could tell you if I talked all night, and that I must not
do, for you must be tired."

When he finished Shock sat silent with his eyes upon the map. He was
once more conscious of a kind of terror of these unknown places and
people. How could he get at them? What place was there for him and his
mission in that wild, reckless life of theirs? What had he to bring
them. Only a Tale? In the face of that vigorous, strenuous life it
seemed at that moment to Shock almost ridiculous in its inadequacy.
Against him and his Story were arraigned the great human
passions--greed of gold, lust of pleasure in its most sensuous forms,
and that wild spirit of independence of all restraint by law of Good or
man. He was still looking at the map when Mr. McIntyre said:

"We will take the books, as they say in my country."

"Ay, and in mine," said Shock, coming out of his dream with a start.

Mrs. McIntyre laid the Bible on the table. Her husband opened the Book
and read that great Psalm of the wilderness, "Lord, thou hast been our
dwelling place," and so on to the last cry of frail and fading humanity
after the enduring and imperishable, "Let the beauty of the Lord our
God be upon us; and establish thou the work of our hands upon us: yea,
the work of our hands establish thou it."

As he listened to the vivid