t
him who was now the Reverend Galt Roscoe. After the 'Fulvia' reached
London I had only seen him a few times, he having gone at once into the
country to prepare for ordination. Mrs. Falchion and Justine Caron I had
met several times, but Mrs. Falchion forbore inquiring for Galt Roscoe:
from which, and from other slight but significant matters, I gathered
that she knew of his doings and whereabouts. Before I started for
Toronto she said that she might see me there some day, for she was going
to San Francisco to inspect the property her uncle had left her, and in
all probability would make a sojourn in Canada. I gave her my address,
and she then said she understood that Mr. Roscoe intended taking a
missionary parish in the wilds. In his occasional letters to me while we
all were in England Roscoe seldom spoke of her, but, when he did, showed
that he knew of her movements. This did not strike me at the time as
anything more than natural. It did later.

Within a couple of weeks I reached Viking, a lumbering town with great
saw-mills, by way of San Francisco and Vancouver. Roscoe met me at the
coach, and I was taken at once to the house among the hills. It stood on
the edge of a ravine, and the end of the verandah looked over a verdant
precipice, beautiful but terrible too. It was uniquely situated; a nest
among the hills, suitable either for work or play. In one's ears was
the low, continuous din of the rapids, with the music of a neighbouring
waterfall.

On the way up the hills I had a chance to observe Roscoe closely. His
face had not that sturdy buoyancy which his letter suggested. Still, if
it was pale, it had a glow which it did not possess before, and even
a stronger humanity than of old. A new look had come into his eyes,
a certain absorbing earnestness, refining the past asceticism. A more
amiable and unselfish comrade man never had.

The second day I was there he took me to call upon a family at Viking,
the town with a great saw-mill and two smaller ones, owned by James
Devlin, an enterprising man who had grown rich at lumbering, and who
lived here in the mountains many months in each year.

Mr. James Devlin had a daughter who had had some advantages in the East
after her father had become rich, though her earlier life was spent
altogether in the mountains. I soon saw where Roscoe's secret was to
be found. Ruth Devlin was a tall girl of sensitive features, beautiful
eyes, and rare personality. Her life, as I c