urning from a country tea-meeting, he reflected. Then he suddenly
sat up straight. Something familiar in the fitful sounds made him slip
out to the door and listen. The wind was lulled for a moment, and he
could dimly discern a figure going along the road. And he could hear a
voice raised loud and discordant in the 103rd psalm! Old Angus came
back into the house swiftly. He caught up his coat and cap. Peter had
fallen among thieves once more! And he would probably be left by the
road-side to freeze were he not rescued. He hastily lit a lantern and
carefully closed up the stove. Then, softly opening the door, he
hurried out into the storm.

He found the lane and the road beyond badly drifted, but he plunged
along, his swaying lantern making a faint yellow star in the swirling
white mists of the storm. He reached the road. Peter's voice came to
him fitfully on the wind. He had probably started out to come to him
and had lost his bearings. There was nothing to do but follow and
bring him back. He plunged into the road and staggered forward in the
direction of the voice.

The snow had stopped falling but the wind that was driving it into
drifts was growing bitterly cold. Old Angus needed all his strength to
battle with it, as he forced his way forward, sinking sometimes almost
to his waist. He struggled on. Peter was somewhere there ahead,
perhaps fallen to freeze by the roadside, and the Good Samaritan must
not give in till he found him. But his own strength was going fast.
In his thought for Peter he had forgotten that he was not able to
battle with such a wind. He fell again and again, and each time he
rose it was with an added sense of weakness. He kept calling to Peter,
but the roar of the lake on the one hand and the answering roar of the
pines on the other drowned his voice. He was almost exhausted when he
stumbled over a dark object half buried in snow in the middle of the
road. He staggered to his feet and turned his lantern upon it. It was
Peter, lain down in a drunken stupor to die of cold.

"Peter! Peter!" Angus McRae tried to speak his name, but his benumbed
lips refused to make an articulate sound. He dropped the lantern
beside him and tried to raise the prostrate figure. As he did so he
felt the light of the lantern grow dim. It faded away, and the Good
Samaritan and the man who had fallen among thieves lay side by side in
the snow.

CHAPTER XIII

"THE MASTER WHISPERED