it there, I kin
tell ye."

The next Sunday morning Samuel Motherwell, his wife and son, went to
church. Sam placed on the plate an envelope containing fifty dollars.

On the following morning Sam had just cut two rounds with the binder
when the Reverend Hugh Grantley drove into the field. Sam stopped his
binder and got down.

"Well, Mr. Motherwell," the minister said, holding out his hand
cordially as he walked over to where Sam stood, "how did it happen?"

Sam grasped his hand warmly.

"Ask Tom," he said, nodding his head toward his son who was stooking
the grain a little distance away. "It is Tom's story."

Mr. Grantley did ask Tom, and Tom told him; and there in the sunshine,
with the smell of the ripe grain in their nostrils as the minister
helped him to carry the sheaves, a new heaven and a new earth were
opened to Tom, and a new life was born within him, a life of godliness
and of brotherly kindness, whose blessed influence has gone far beyond
the narrow limits of that neighbourhood.

It was nearly noon when the minister left him and drove home through
the sun-flooded grain fields, with a glorified look on his face as one
who had seen the heavens opened.

Just before he turned into the valley of the Souris, he stopped his
horse, and looked back over the miles and miles of rippling gold. The
clickety-click-click of many binders came to his ears. Oh what a day it
was! all sunshine and blue sky! Below him the river glinted through the
trees, and the railway track shimmered like a silver ribbon, and as he
drove into the winding valley, the Reverend Hugh Grantley sang, despite
his Cameronian blood, sang like a Methodist:

Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
Praise Him all creatures here below,
Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

CHAPTER XXV

CUPID'S EMISSARY

Mrs. McGuire did not look like Cupid's earthly representative as she
sat in her chintz-covered rocking-chair and bitterly complained of the
weather. The weather was damp and cloudy, and Mrs. McGuire said her
"jints were jumpin'."

The little Watsons were behaving so well that even with her rheumatism
to help her vision she could find no fault with them, "just now"; but
she reckoned the mischief "was hatchin'."

A change was taking place in Mrs. McGuire, although she was unconscious
of it; Mary Barner, who was a frequent and welcome visitor, was having
an influence even on the flinty hea