te politeness.

"I hope you can take a stranger in for a week or two," he said. "I
heard that the Lindsays are noted for their hospitality."

"I'm afraid we can't, but I'll ask mother," said Christina, coming down
off the fence to a more formal position. She spoke rather stiffly, for
the stranger's air of easy familiarity rather put her on her dignity.

Mrs. Johnnie Dunn still sat in her churning car and looked on with
laughing eyes. "Take him along up home and show him to your Ma, and
see if she likes him," she shouted "'cause if youse folks won't keep
him, I'll have to cart him back to town."

The stranger burst into a laugh. It was a big, hearty, noisy laugh,
with something in it that arrested Christina's attention. He shut up
his eyes just the way Sandy did, and he showed his two rows of teeth
just like Neil, and he threw back his head exactly like John, and it
surely couldn't be, and yet it really was,----

"Allister!" screamed Christina, and the next moment she was over the
fence, with her arms tight round the stranger's neck, and was saying
over and over, "Oh, Allister, Allister, I just knew something awfully
good was going to happen, and it's you!"

And The Woman, who could carry through a business deal with a high hand
and was a terror in a bargain, sat in her car and watched the brother
and sister, with the tears blurring her vision.

It was not until the day's work was done and the reunited family were
gathered round the supper table that the Lindsays had time to realise
the wonderful fact that Allister had come home.

He sat in the centre of an admiring circle and told all his experiences
of the past ten years, shouting occasional bits of the history to
Grandpa, who was sitting devouring him with his eyes.

There were the first hard years when everything went wrong; the year he
was hailed out, and the year the frost got everything, and the year of
the great prairie fires when he was on the verge of throwing everything
up and coming back to Ontario. But there had been good years in
between and finally he had begun to move up the hill. Everything in
the West moved in the same direction, and now he had a big ranch and
some coal mine shares, and building lots in Prairie Park where real
estate was going up like a sky rocket.

And the truth of the matter was that if everything went all right he
would be a rich man some day not far distant. And he was planning that
when he sold out and got from u