with this resolve he set himself to the business of getting to
sleep; in which, after many attempts, he was at length successful.

CHAPTER V

HOW THEY SAVED THE DAY

There never was such a Dominion Day for weather since the first Dominion
Day was born. Of this "Fatty" Freeman was fully assured. Fatty Freeman
was a young man for whose opinion older men were accustomed to wait. His
person more than justified his praenomen, for Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr.,
was undeniably fat. "Fat, but fine and frisky," was ever his own comment
upon the descriptive adjective by which his friends distinguished him.
And fine and frisky he was; fine in his appreciation of good eating,
fine in his judgment of good cattle and fine in his estimate of men;
frisky, too, and utterly irrepressible. "Harp's just like a young pup,"
his own father, the Reverend Harper Freeman, the old Methodist minister
of the Maplehill circuit, used to say. "If Harp had a tail he would
never do anything but play with it." On this, however, it is difficult
to hold any well based opinion. Ebullient in his spirits, he radiated
cheeriness wherever he went and was at the bottom of most of the
practical jokes that kept the village of Maplehill in a state of
ferment; yet if any man thought to turn a sharp corner in business with
Mr. Harper Freeman, Jr., he invariably found that frisky individual
waiting for him round the corner with a cheery smile of welcome, shrewd
and disconcerting. It was this cheery shrewdness of his that made him
the most successful cattle buyer in the county and at the same time
secretary of the Middlesex Caledonian Society. As secretary of this
society he was made chiefly responsible for the success of the Dominion
Day picnic and, as with everything that he took hold of, Fatty toiled
at the business of preparation for this picnic with conscientious zeal,
giving to it all his spare hours and many of his working hours for the
three months preceding.

It was due solely to his efforts that so many distinguished county
magnates appeared eager to lend their patronage. It needed but a little
persuasion to secure the enthusiastic support of the Honourable J. J.
Patterson, M.P.P., and, incidentally, the handsome challenge cup
for hammer-throwing, for the honourable member of Parliament was a
full-blooded Highlander himself and an ardent supporter of "the games."
But only Fatty Freeman's finesse could have extracted from Dr. Kane, the
Opposition candidat