s head, drove rapidly back to the village.

At the foot of the hill they came again to the church, and his
passengers wanted to get out and look into it. "O certainly," said he,
"it isn't finished yet, but you can say as many prayers as you like in
it."

The church was decent and clean, like most Canadian churches, and at
this early hour there was a good number of the villagers at their
devotions. The lithographic pictures of the stations to Calvary were, of
course, on its walls, and there was the ordinary tawdriness of paint and
carving about the high altar.

"I don't like to see these things," said Mrs. Ellison. "It really seems
to savor of idolatry. Don't you think so, Mr. Arbuton?"

"Well, I don't know. I doubt if they're the sort of people to be hurt by
it."

"They need a good stout faith in cold climates, I can tell you," said
the colonel. "It helps to keep them warm. The broad church would be too
full of draughts up here. They want something snug and tight. Just
imagine one of these poor devils listening to a liberal sermon about
birds and fruits and flowers and beautiful sentiments, and then driving
home over the hills with the mercury thirty degrees below zero! He
couldn't stand it."

"Yes, yes, certainly," said Mr. Arbuton, and looked about him with an
eye of cold, uncompassionate inspection, as if he were trying it by a
standard of taste, and, on the whole, finding the poor little church
vulgar.

When they mounted to their places again, the talk fell entirely to the
colonel, who, as his wont was, got what information he could out of the
driver. It appeared, in spite of his theory, that they were not all good
Catholics at Ha-Ha Bay. "This chap, for example," said the Frenchman,
touching himself on the breast and using the slang he must have picked
up from American travellers, "is no Catholic,--not much! He has made too
many studies to care for religion. There's a large French party, sir, in
Canada, that's opposed to the priests and in favor of annexation."

He satisfied the colonel's utmost curiosity, discoursing, as he drove by
the log-built cottages which were now and then sheathed in birch-bark,
upon the local affairs, and the character and history of such of his
fellow-villagers as they met. He knew the pretty girls upon the street
and saluted them by name, interrupting himself with these courtesies in
the lecture he was giving the colonel on life at Ha-Ha Bay. There was
only one brick house (whi