ted.

The county authorities had not moved against him. The Provincial
Government had not as yet intervened. A price was not yet set upon
his capture. He was free to go and come as he chose, and yet he moved
amongst those who had seen him take the life of a fellow creature.

Minnie's letter, addressed to his father's care, reached him. It moved
him deeply. Since the tragedy he had frequently tried to write to her,
but never found the courage.

He recognized that all hope of future union with Minnie was now
impossible. He had taken a life. At any moment the officers of the law
might be on his track. His arrest might lead him to the scaffold.

In his reply to Minnie, Donald described the tragic scene with which
the reader is familiar, deplored the occurrence, but, with great
earnestness, asked her to believe that he had acted only in
self-defence. "I started out," he said, in one portion of his letter,
"to go to church last Sunday evening. I had reached the door, when I
thought--'Donald, you have broken a law of God!' and I had not the
courage to go in."

We quote this passage merely in confirmation of our statement that
Donald felt perfectly free to go abroad after the tragedy, and to
participate in the social life of the village.

CHAPTER XXIII. ACTION OF THE PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENT.--FIVE OFFICERS SENT TO MEGANTIC.

To the common mind government is something vast, mysterious, and
powerful. It is associated with armies and navies, and an unlimited
police force. There are a glittering sword, a ponderous mace, and an
argus eye, that reaches to the remotest point of territory like a great
big electric search light, in it.

No man is a hero to his valet, and the nearer you get to the seat of
power, the less does government impose upon the imagination. Those who
read, with infinite respect, "that the Government has decided, after a
protracted meeting of the Cabinet, to levy a tax upon terrier dogs for
purposes of revenue," would be shocked to learn that government meant
a small table, a bottle of wine, a few cigars, and two men not a whit
above the mental or moral level of the ordinary citizen. Government
imposes when you meet it in respectful capitals in the public prints,
but when you get a glimpse of it in its shirt sleeves, _en famille_, or
playing harlequin upon the top of a barrel at the hustings, or tickling
the yokels with bits of cheap millinery and silk stockings, and reflect
that you have paid homage