ittle old man, with a
wizened face like parchment. His keen blue eyes had a shrewd twinkle in
them, and altogether he gave one the impression that he could see further
into a stone wall than most people. He was the confidential lawyer and
intimate friend of Lady McAllister, of Dunmorton Castle in Fife, and had
served the family for more than forty years.

His companion was a young Londoner, somewhat of the Cockney stamp, by
name Thomas Brown, a youth chiefly celebrated for his immense estimation
of his own capabilities.

The two men had arrived a week before by one of the mail steamers, and
had, in accordance with Lady McAllister's commands, visited nearly every
churchyard in the district to discover the name of McAllister.

Hitherto this had been a thankless task. Now, dispirited and fatigued,
they were leaning upon the rough wooden fence which divided the burying
ground of Father Point church from the road. This church, dedicated to
the Good St. Anne, had been built by the pious efforts of pilots on the
ships plying the River St. Lawrence and the Gulf. It was intended to be a
thankful recognition to their patron saint for their deliverance from the
perils of the deep.

And the church had become a noted place for pilgrimages. Indeed, it was
said that miraculous cures were effected by the agency of a sacred relic
of St. Anne, and many a sufferer was brought here in the hope that, by
performing his devotions at the shrine of St. Anne, he would be cured of
his maladies.

There was something very pathetic about the lonely little churchyard of
Father Point, with its borders of overgrown raspberry bushes straggling
in untidy clusters round the graves. At one end of the ground were five
graves, marked each by plain wooden crosses, painted a dull black, with
the Christian names in white of those who slept beneath. These rough
crosses marked the resting-places of the good nuns, who had spent their
lives working in this part of the country. All that is left to serve as
remembrance of their struggles, their trials, their brief glimpses of
happiness, are these wooden crosses, from which the rain of a few autumn
days effaced even the names of those who labored so long and faithfully.

This evening everything is very calm and still, and the peace of nature
is only disturbed by the tinkling of the bells on the necks of the cattle
as they are driven home by the French Canadian cow-herds. A silence seems
to have settled over the