lad to see me. I am of his own kind, and there are so few of his kind
about that his welcome is strong and warm. He is brown and spare and
tough-looking. For six months he has driven along the pitching trails
and corduroy roads, drenched by rains, scorched by suns, and pursued by
the flies. As to the flies there is something to be said. They add
much to the missionary's burden, and furnish unequaled opportunity for
the exercise of the Christian graces of patience and self-control. In
early spring they appear, and throughout the whole summer they continue
in varying forms, but in unvarying persistence and ferocity. There are
marsh flies, the bulldogs, "which take the piece right out," the gray
wings, the blue devils (local name), which doubtless take several
pieces right out, the mosquitoes, unsleeping, unmerciful, unspeakable,
the sand flies, which go right in and disappear, and the black flies.

"When do _they_ go away?" I asked a native.

"Oh, them black fellows go away on snow-shoes."

These each and all have taken a nip and a suck from the missionary as
he pushed on by night and by day through their savage territory. I
glance at him, and sure enough they seem to have got all the juice out
of him, but they have left the sinew and the bone. His nerve, too, is
all there, and his heart is sound and "under his ribs," which one of
his admiring flock considers the right spot.

It is Saturday afternoon, and we are to drive to the farthest of his
three stations to be ready for the Communion Service there, at
half-past ten to-morrow morning.

"Where does it lie?" I ask.

"Oh, away beyond the Marshes," was the answer. Every one evidently
knows where the Great Marshes are.

But first we must drink a delicious cup of tea from a brave young
Scotchwoman, who has learned the trick of making a home for her husband
and babies amid the limitations of Canadian wilds, little like the
Edinburgh home where she herself was a baby, and which she left not so
very long ago.

Then we must take a look at the new manse of which the missionary feels
he has the right to be modestly proud, for it is mostly the work of his
own hand. He, like his great Master, is a carpenter, and day and night
in the pauses of his preaching and visiting and studying, he has
wrought at it, getting such help as he can, till there it stands, among
the trees, the little cottage manse, announcing to all that the mission
has come to stay. The _front ro