llows," he said; "it is a great thing to be
grounded in the Scriptures in youth. Do you know why I stopped?"

"No," said Scotty, in a whisper.

"Because the next is a verse I hardly dare to read. It is a fearful
thing to ask the Almighty God to search the heart, for there are wicked
ways in us, many and deep." He began slowly turning over the leaves
again, and Scotty waited with a strange dread of what was coming.

The passage was from the challenging words that came to Job out of the
whirlwind, and like a whirlwind they swept over the young man's soul.

"Who is this that darkeneth counsel, by words without knowledge? Gird
up now thy loins, like a man, for I will demand of thee, and answer
thou me."

He paused a moment and his listener held his breath. To him the words
did not seem to be spoken by man, but seemed to come out of the
whispering darkness of the great forest.

"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if
thou hast understanding.... Whereupon are the foundations thereof
fastened? or who laid the cornerstone thereof; when the morning stars
sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?"

Scotty's heart suddenly swelled. This great Jehovah was speaking
directly to him; the Jehovah whose inexorable laws were written in
man's very being, as well as in His Book. And he, His creature, was
about to set them aside, declaring that he would walk as seemed right
in his own eyes.

But the minister was still reading. "Hast thou commanded the morning
since thy days; and caused the day-spring to know his place?... Have
the gates of death been opened unto thee? or hast thou seen the doors
of the shadow of death?... Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the
Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?"

Scotty listened with heart and ears, and when the minister came at last
to Job's confession, he felt he could echo the words, "I have heard of
thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore
I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes."

The amber column of smoke rising straight to the circle of sky was
suddenly touched with a silver radiance. Up from behind the dark
island the moon had arisen, radiant and burnished, and was sending a
long shimmering pathway across the deep blue of Lake Simcoe. Scotty's
eyes followed its glint between the tree trunks and the words came over
him again, "Now mine eye seeth thee." But when the minister paused he
came