il he found it, shining on the forehead
of the blameless King.

CHAPTER IV

SIDE LIGHTS

Roderick was not thinking of that Gleam upon which his father's mind
was set, as he glided silently out upon the golden mirror of Lake
Algonquin. The still wonder of the glowing lake and sky and the
mystery of the darkening shore and islands carried his thoughts somehow
to a new wonder and dream; the light that had shone in the girl's brave
eyes, the colour that had flooded her face at his awkward words. They
were beautiful eyes but sad, and there were tints in her hair like the
gold on the water. Roderick had known scarcely any young women. His
life had been too busy for that--when he was away, books had claimed
all his attention, when he was home, the farm. But in the background
of his consciousness, shadowy and unformed, but none the less present,
dwelt a vague picture of his ideal woman; the woman that was to be his
one day. She was really the picture of his mother, as painted by his
father's hand, and as memory furnished a light here or a detail there.
Roderick had not had time to think of his ideal; his heart was a boy's
heart still--untried and unspoiled, but this evening her shadowy form
seemed to have become more definite, and it wore golden brown hair and
had sad blue-grey eyes.

He swept silently around the end of Wanda Island, and his dreams were
suddenly interrupted by a startling sight; for directly in front of
him, just between the little bay and the lake beyond, bobbed an
upturned canoe and two heads!

To the youthful native of Algonquin an upset into the lake was not a
serious matter; and to the young lady and gentleman swimming about
their capsized craft, the affair, up to a few moments previous, had
been rather a good joke. How it had happened that two such expert
canoeists as Leslie Graham and Fred Hamilton could fall out of anything
that sailed the water, was a question those who knew them could not
have solved. They had been over to Mondamin Island to gather
golden-rod and asters for a party the young lady was to give the next
evening. They had been paddling merrily homeward, the space between
them piled with their purple and golden treasure, and as they paddled
they talked, or rather the young lady did, for where Miss Leslie Graham
was, no one else had much chance to say anything.

"There's the _Inverness_ at the dock," she said, when they came within
view of the town. "Aunt Elinor's bo