g up in his old style, slow but sure,
'let's all go in, say for five years.' And so we did. We didn't sign
anything, but every man shook hands with Graeme.

And as I told Craig about this a year later, when he was on his way back
from his Old Land trip to join Graeme in the mountains, he threw up his
head in the old way and said, 'It was well done. It must have been worth
seeing. Old man Nelson's work is not done yet. Tell me again,' and he
made me go over the whole scene with all the details put in.

But when I told Mrs. Mavor, after two years had gone, she only said,
'Old things are passed away, all things are become new'; but the light
glowed in her eyes till I could not see their colour. But all that, too,
is another story.

CHAPTER XV

COMING TO THEIR OWN

A man with a conscience is often provoking, sometimes impossible.
Persuasion is lost upon him. He will not get angry, and he looks at one
with such a far-away expression in his face that in striving to persuade
him one feels earthly and even fiendish. At least this was my experience
with Craig. He spent a week with me just before he sailed for the Old
Land, for the purpose, as he said, of getting some of the coal dust and
other grime out of him.

He made me angry the last night of his stay, and all the more that he
remained quite sweetly unmoved. It was a strategic mistake of mine to
tell him how Nelson came home to us, and how Graeme stood up before
the 'Varsity chaps at my supper and made his confession and confused
Rattray's easy-stepping profanity, and started his own five-year league.
For all this stirred in Craig the hero, and he was ready for all sorts
of heroic nonsense, as I called it. We talked of everything but the one
thing, and about that we said not a word till, bending low to poke my
fire and to hide my face, I plunged--

'You will see her, of course?'

He made no pretence of not understanding but answered--

'Of course.'

'There's really no sense in her staying over there,' I suggested.

'And yet she is a wise woman,' he said, as if carefully considering the
question.

'Heaps of landlords never see their tenants, and they are none the
worse.'

'The landlords?'

'No, the tenants.'

'Probably, having such landlords.'

'And as for the old lady, there must be some one in the connection to
whom it would be a Godsend to care for her.'

'Now, Connor,' he said quietly, 'don't. We have gone over all there is
to be said. Nothing