r, Father," he would say. "I owe a big debt to
the justice of the Almighty!"

As he had lived, so he died, I had noticed that my brother had shown no
surprise, as I did, at the sight of the dying figure of the old man
stretched on the bare earth with a stone for his pillow; Val had become
familiar with the idea.

"My Saviour died on a Cross for me, and shall I, a vile sinner, be
content to die in my bed?" Thus he would always answer the
remonstrances of the priest.

Whenever I read the Gospel narrative of Lazarus--the wretchedly
clothed, ill-fed, diseased mendicant--who inspired loathing in the eyes
and nostrils of the delicately nurtured, sensual men who flocked past
his unlovely form to the banquets of the rich glutton at whose palace
gate he lay, my thoughts fly at once to my old friend, Archie the
penitent, and my prayers rise to Heaven on his behalf in the Church's
touching petition for the departed:

"Cum Lazaro, quondam paupere, eternam habeas requiem!"

"With Lazarus, once poor, now blest
May'st thou enjoy eternal rest!"

IV

GOLDEN DREAMS

"All the world is turning golden, turning golden
In the spring."
(_Nora Hopper--"April."_)

On a day when May was growing old, everything up at Ardmuirland was
green and gold except the sky, and that was mostly blue and gold.
Gorse and broom were in full blossom, so that on all sides the outlook
was glorious!

Looking through my field-glasses to discover the meaning of a column of
dense smoke, which seemed to be rising from a hill in the distance, I
found myself gazing at a forest in flames! Fire--a very wall of
fire--seemed to extend for miles along a dense tract of woodland! So
seemingly fierce the blaze that it lighted up with golden gleams the
tower of a distant church beyond the wood! Yet, as I looked steadily,
it became evident that the flames neither diminished nor increased;
presently I discovered that the column of smoke rose from a spot
entirely different--more to the foreground. In the end I had to
confess with reluctance that my eyes had been deceived; there was no
sensational forest fire at all! What I had seen was but the sunshine
on an expanse of yellow bloom on some rising ground beyond the belt of
woodland, and on the old church tower, while a rare cloud shaded the
nearer prospect.

What a silly goat I called myself! Looking nearer home I saw the same
red-gold glow, which needed but the sunshine to wa