sugar, flour, meal, potatoes, oats and chicken feed; hardware galore,
axes, hammers, wedges, peevies, cant hoops, picks, shovels, nails,
paints, brooms, brushes and a thousand other commodities and
contrivances the like of which I never saw before and hope never to see
again.

Never, in all my humble existence, did I feel so clerky as I did then.

I checked the beastly stuff off as well as I could, taking the
Vancouver wholesalers' word for the names of half the things, for I was
quite sure they knew better than I did about them.

With the assistance of Jake, as "hander-up," I set the goods in a
semblance of order on the shelves and about the store.

We worked and slaved as if it were the last day and our eternal
happiness depended on our finishing the job before the last trump
sounded its blast of dissolution.

By the last stroke of twelve, midnight, we had the front veranda swept
clean of straw, paper and excelsior, and all empty boxes cleared away;
just in time to welcome the advent of my first Sabbath day in the
Canadian West.

Throughout our arduous afternoon and evening, what a surprise old Jake
was to me! Well I knew that he was hard and tough from years of
strenuous battling with the northern elements; but that he, at his age
and with his record for hard drinking, should be able to keep up the
sustained effort against a young man in his prime and that he should do
so cheerfully and without a word of complaint,--save an occasional
grunt when the steel bands around some of the boxes proved
recalcitrant, and an explosive, picturesque oath when the end of a
large case dropped over on his toes,--was, to me, little short of
marvellous.

Already, I was beginning to think that Mr. K. B. Horsfal had erred in
regard to his man and that it was Jake Meaghan who was twenty-four
carat gold.

If any man ever did deserve two breakfast cups brimful of whisky, neat,
before turning in, it was old, walrus-moustached, weather-battered,
baby-eyed, sour-dough Jake, in the small, early hours of that Sabbath
morning.

I slept that night like a dead thing, and the sun was high in the
heavens before I opened my eyes and became conscious again of my
surroundings.

I looked over at the clock. Fifteen minutes past ten! I threw my legs
over the side of the bed, ashamed of my sluggardliness.

Then I remembered,--it was Sunday morning.

Oh! glorious remembering! Sunday,---with nothing to do but attend to
my own bodily com