l of intercourse with his old friends, and in the new
acquaintance he made with his brother Charlie, he came to know himself
that he had changed greatly. He remembered sadly enough, the
aspirations that had died out of his heart since his youth, the
temptations that he had struggled against always, but which, alas! he
had not always withstood. He knew now that his faith had grown weak,
that thoughts of the unseen and heavenly had been put far-away from him.

Yes; he was greatly changed since the night he had stood with the rest
an the deck of the "Steadfast," watching the gleaming lights of a
strange city. Standing now face to face with the awakened remembrance
of his own ideal, he knew that he had fallen far short of its
attainment; and reading in Graeme's truthful eye "the same, the very
same," his own often fell with a sense of shame as though he were
deceiving her.

He was changed, and yet the wonder was, that the influences of these ten
years had not changed him more. The lonely life he had pictured to his
friends, that last night on the "Steadfast," fell far short of the
reality that awaited him. Removed from the kindly associations of home,
and the tranquil pursuits and pleasures of a country village, to the
turmoil of a Western city, and the annoyance of a subordinate in a
merchant's office, he shrunk, at first, in disgust from the life that
seemed opening before him. His native place, humble as it was, had
lived in song and story for many centuries; and in this city which had
sprung up in a day, nothing seemed stable or secure. A few months ago
the turf of the prairie had been undisturbed, where to-day its broad
streets are trodden by the feet of thousands. Between gigantic blocks
of buildings rising everywhere, strips of the prairie turf lay
undisturbed still. The air of newness, of incompleteness, of insecurity
that seemed to surround all things impressed him painfully; the sadden
prosperity seemed unreal and unnatural, as well it might, to one brought
up in a country where the first thought awakened by change or innovation
is one of mistrust and doubt.

All his preconceived ideas of business and a business-life, availed him
nothing in the new circumstances in which he found himself. If business
men were guided in their mutual relations by any principle of faith or
honour, he failed in the first bitterness of his disgust to see it.
Business-life seemed but a scramble, in which the most alert seize