came other wagons filled with jolly
picnickers, who soon had their pots boiling over quickly-constructed
tripods.

Thomas, who went over to welcome them, found that nearly all of them
were the very Americans whose unholy zeal for their own national
holiday had so embittered his heart eight days before.

They were full of enquiries as to the meaning of an Orange walk. Thomas
tried to explain, but, having only inflamed Twelfth of July oratory for
the source of his information, he found himself rather at a loss. But
the Americans gathered that it was something he used to do "down East,"
and they were sympathetic at once.

"That's right, you bet," one gray-haired man with a young face
exclaimed, getting rid of a bulky chew of tobacco that had slightly
impeded his utterance. "There's nothin' like keepin' up old
institootions."

By two o'clock fully one hundred people had gathered.

Thomas was radiant. "Every wan is here now except that old Papist,
O'Flynn," he whispered to the drummer. "I hope he'll come, too, so I
do. It'll be a bitter pill for him to swallow."

The drummer did not share the wish. He was thinking, uneasily, of the
time two years ago--the winter of the deep snow--when he and his family
had been quarantined with smallpox, and of how Father O'Flynn had come
miles out of his way every week on his snowshoes to hand in a roll of
newspapers he had gathered up, no one knows where, and a bag of candies
for the little ones. He was thinking of how welcome the priest's little
round face had been to them all those long, tedious six weeks, and how
cheery his voice sounded as he shouted, "Are ye needin' anything,
Jimmy, avick? All right, I'll be back on Thursda', God willin'. Don't
be frettin', now, man alive! Everybody has to have the smallpox. Sure,
yer shaming the Catholics this year, Jimmy, keeping Lent so well." The
drummer was decidedly uneasy.

There is an old saying about speaking of angels in which some people
still believe. Just at this moment Father O'Flynn came slowly over the
hill.

Father O'Flynn was a typical little Irish priest, good-natured, witty,
emotional. Nearly every family north of the river had some cause for
loving the little man. He was a tireless walker, making the round of
his parish every week, no matter what the weather. He had a little
house built for him the year before at the Forks of the Assiniboine,
where he had planted a garden, set out plants and flowers, and made it
a littl