een him?"

Coonie spat disapprovingly. "Yes, you bet. Seen him this mornin'
showin' off the soles o' his boots on Peter McNabb's veranda an'
readin' novels. Soft snap them preacher fellows have. Nothin' in the
world to do but run after the girls. Don't wonder that you're headin'
that way yourself; guess Mr. Egerton thinks you're tryin' to get up to
him in the religion business, so he'll race you in the sparkin' line.
Haw! Haw!"

Donald looked down at him calmly. "Go on," he said quietly, "you've
got something on your mind, Coonie, and you'll never be easy till it's
off. I saw you were loaded when I was half a mile back; what's the
trouble?"

Coonie did not enjoy this; Donald Neil was not the right sort of person
to torment. He took that sort of thing too indifferently and one was
always left in the tantalising doubt as to whether he cared or not.
Coonie did not believe in casting his pearls before swine, so he
cracked his long whip with the usual admonitory inquiry, "Gedap there!
What're ye doin'?"

Bella gave her preliminary scramble, stopped, tried again and slowly
shambled off. But her driver could not resist turning in his teetering
seat, as the dust began to rise, to shout back, "If I'd a girl I was as
spooney over as you are, I'd keep an eye skinned for chaps as good
lookin' as the parson. Haw! Haw!--_Gedap_!"

Donald rode off with a laugh, but his face became grave as he climbed
the hill. A dark suspicion that the minister might some day be his
rival had long been forming in his mind. Perhaps jealousy was the
cause of his unforgiving spirit. He went to Wee Andra for an
explanation of just what Coonie meant and his mind was not eased by it.
He had never had a dangerous rival before and he was forced to confess
that the minister was certainly a very captivating young man.

Duncan Polite had hoped that ere this his nephew and Mr. Egerton would
have been firm friends. He wondered sadly over his failure to bring
them together at his house. He wondered over other things, too. He
regarded the revival of activity in the church with a heart of
overflowing joy, but a joy tinged with a puzzled uncertainty. He knew
that the young people of the congregation were now taking a greater
interest in religious matters than they had ever done, and yet he could
not quite understand why it was that, though the boys went regularly to
the meetings of the various organisations and were constant in their
attenda