shall do the rest,--the dirty work, as the
villain says in the dime novel."

"What do you know about dime novels?" I laughed.

"I am a minister of the gospel now, but ... I was a boy once."

The Rev. William Auld had dinner with me, then he started out in his
launch for Clark's ranch. It was arranged that I follow immediately in
a rowing boat, which would take me longer to get there and would thus
disarm any suspicion of complicity.

When I arrived at Clark's, I could hear the minister talking and Andrew
Clark laughing heartily. Mr. Auld was telling some interesting story
and he had the old man in the best of humours.

I was welcomed with cheerfulness, and the minister shook hands with me
as if he had not seen me for a month of Sundays.

Rita was a-missing. Mrs. Clark seemed nervous and ill-at-ease.
Andrew, however, was in his happiest of moods.

"What special brought ye over, George?" he asked.

I told him of Rita's anxiety to be able to talk English properly and of
my willingness to teach her if it could be arranged conveniently. The
minister backed up the project with all his ministerial fluency, but
Andrew Clark was not the man to agree to a thing immediately, no matter
how well it appealed to him.

"Rita's a good lassie," he said, "and she hasna had schoolin' except
what Marget and me taught her, and that's little more than being able
to read and add up a few lines o' figures.

"George Bremner,--you're an honest man and I like ye fine. You'll ha'e
my answer by the end o' the week."

"Right you are!" I exclaimed.

Andrew then started in to tell Mr. Auld of the method he had adopted in
regard to the disposition of his output of eggs, and that gave me just
the opportunity I wanted.

"How do you raise your chicks, Mr. Clark?" I asked. "Do you use an
incubator?"

"Sure thing! And a grand little incubator I ha'e too," he answered.
"She takes two hundred and fifty eggs at a time and gives an average of
eighty per cent chicks."

I had lit on Andrew Clark's one and only hobby.

He got up. "Come and ha'e a look at it. It's called 'The
Every-Egg-A-Chick' Incubator, and it nearly lives up to its name.

"But it's a pity I ha'e nothin' in her at the minute.

"Come on, too, Mr. Auld. It'll do ye good to learn something aboot
chickens, even if you are busy enough lookin' after the sheep."

Andrew took a huge key from a nail in the wall and we followed him out
to the log cabin, both of us full of f