lads they must meet
you. And would you be walking all the way from the station?"

"Oh, no, only it would have been better than driving. I came
scratching along with Mack Fraser. How is mother?"

"Oh, your poor mother will be jist fine indeed, and the lads. Eh, and
you will be getting to be a great man, Donal'; I will be thinking you
will be a boy no more."

Donald laughed. "It's surely time. Why didn't Sandy tell me you were
sick?"

"Hoots, that would be jist foolishness, for there would be nothing
wrong, whatever."

"But there has been," said Donald, looking at him steadily. He hung
his coat and cap in their accustomed place behind the stove, and turned
to the old man again. His heart smote him as he took in the changes on
the beloved face. He wondered if his refusal to enter the ministry had
had anything to do with their cause.

But Duncan was bustling about the room in aimless delight. "Dear,
dear, you must be having your supper, lad!" he cried; "you will be
hungry."

"I should think I am. I felt the Glenoro air and the Glenoro appetite
strike me at the same instant. Here, sit down and let me get it."

"Indeed, perhaps your poor mother will be saying I should not be
keeping you."

"I'll get home all the sooner if I'm fortified inside. Oatmeal
porridge!" he continued joyfully, as he lifted the lid from the pot and
seized the wooden ladle. "I say, Uncle Dunc, this is royal!"

"Indeed it will be jist common fare for such a great city man as you
will be getting to be." Duncan regarded him with tender pride.

Donald laughed derisively as he tumbled the contents of the porridge
pot into a bowl. "And buttermilk, too, by all that's fortunate! And a
festival like this on top of six months' boarding house hash!"

He seated himself at the table and attacked the homely fare with a
country boy's hearty appetite. Duncan forgot his own supper in the joy
of watching him.

"Well, how's things? as Coonie says. You said mother is well, and the
boys?"

"Yes, she will be fine indeed, and Weil and wee Archie, too. They will
be growing up to be fine lads. And Sandy will be at the camp waiting
for you." He looked at Donald yearningly, as though he would fain tell
him more about Sandy, but could not.

"I'm just in time, then. And Wee Andra and--all the rest?"

The old man gave him as full an account as he was able of the doings of
the neighbourhood, but Duncan Polite lived in a world apart, and Do