n stitches, that his house was a sight
to behold, and no mistake.

"Did you see into it with the spyglass?" inquired Mrs. Winters, from
the other end of the quilt, glad to get a slap at the mischievous
instrument.

"No, I didn't!" said Miss Long indignantly. "It was when Arabella and
me were down there, pickin' strawberries in the old clearin'. You can
ask Arabella, there, if you don't believe me."

Miss Arabella, with an apologetic glance at her sister-in-law,
corroborated the statement. They had seen inside the door that day
quite by accident, and the place was a dreary sight: a broken-down old
table, and only a piece of a log for a seat, and a heap of rags and
straw in an old bunk for a bed.

"Eh, poor man! poor buddy!" cried old lady Cameron pityingly. "An' him
with such a fine Hielan' name, too!"

Mrs. Winters suggested that they make a raid upon the place some
evening after he had left for the mill, and scrub and clean up. It was
a disgrace to the village to have such conditions not a mile from your
very door!

But old lady Cameron did not quite sanction such extreme measures. A
man's home was his castle, her brother Hughie always said, and no one
had any right to enter without his permission. So the quilting-bee
ended in a great deal of talk, and John McIntyre's condition remained
unbettered.

The Elmbrook Temperance League next took him up. Spectacle John Cross
was president of the society, and was assured that it was drink that
ailed John McIntyre. No one had ever seen him overcome with liquor,
neither had he ever been known to go to Lakeview, where was the nearest
point at which it could be obtained. But Spectacle John said you could
never tell. He might run a private still in that old place away back
in the swamp, and he just looked like the kind that could carry a
gallon and yet walk steady. Spectacle John had met that sort often on
his temperance campaigns.

So they sent invitations to John McIntyre to join their ranks, all of
which he emphatically refused. Spectacle John received little
encouragement from the milkstand. Old Hughie Cameron was of the
opinion, having rastled it out one evening to the tune of "The Cameron
Men," that to ask that poor buddy to join his bit of a society was like
asking the folks at a funeral to come and play hop-scotch. Likely, the
man never touched liquor; and, anyway, his trouble was a sad one,
whatever it was, and needed a remedy that would go deeper