ld man accepted the hospitality gratefully. He appeared worn and
exhausted, and seemed to have suddenly lost his restless energy, as
though the spur which had driven him forth in the night had been
removed.

Scotty made a comfortable seat for him of cedar boughs placed against a
large tree trunk, and stirred up the fire to a blaze. Its rays danced
forth, lighting up the worn face and white hair of the old man seated
before it, and the strong frame of the young one standing erect in
splendid contrast. The light made the log walls of the old shanty
stand forth, touched here and there the fantastic heaps of dead
brushwood and misshapen stumps, illumined the underside of the adjacent
trees and danced away down the dim avenues to be lost among the ghostly
shadows.

And while his host prepared supper, the minister beguiled the time by
asking after all his friends in the Oa and the Glen, especially the
Highlanders, for Mr. McAlpine was not above possessing a little
weakness for anyone who spoke the Gaelic. And then he must know what
the young man was doing, and how he came to be there.

Scotty answered his questions in the distantly respectful manner that
all the Glenoro youth had been wont to show this man. He explained his
sudden excursion to the woods as merely a natural desire to be out of
doors. He told something too of his life with Raye & Hemming in
Barbay, but he had all the reticence of his class and kin, and the
minister learned little from what he said.

And while they conversed the elder man was watching the younger with
the keen eye of a detective. For to old John McAlpine every soul with
whom he came in contact was a burden to be carried until it was laid
safely at the foot of the cross, and he was yearning to know if this
young man, so respectful and kindly of manner, had yet had his heart
touched by Divine love.

He tried to read the dark, young face in the light of the dancing
flames, noting every feature--the intellectual brow, the kind, bright
eyes, the mouth, still boyish, and showing some wilfulness and
impatience of rule; the resolute chin. A good face, the man concluded,
with rare possibilities. But he was convinced before the conversation
closed that its owner was not a follower of the meek and lowly One.

For the minister was a marvellous reader of character, and in spite of
Scotty's reserve, before the evening was gone he had allowed his guest
to discover that he intended to carve out