uld
likely see the minister, but Sarah gave it as her opinion that she went
to get the latest news of Donald.

Jessie paid no heed to their raillery beyond smiling enigmatically.
They little guessed her real motive. She looked forward to her visits
eagerly as the winter progressed. Gradually her heart was opening to
the old man's teaching. He said very little, but every word he uttered
the girl carried away in her heart. The visit always ended by their
reading a few verses of the Bible together, and one day, before she
left, Duncan laid his hand gently upon her curls and said softly, "The
Lord bless thee, and keep thee!" and she went away feeling that a
benediction had fallen upon her.

At the time of these visits to Duncan Polite, Jessie was studying, with
the other members of the Christian Endeavour Society, the life of
Christ. The meetings were well attended, and Mr. Egerton gave them a
most graphic and interesting account of the historical and picturesque
aspect of the wondrous season upon earth of the Son of the Most High.
But Jessie went up to the little shanty on the hilltop for the
spiritual side. Under Duncan's gentle, humble dealing with the divine
mystery, the girl gradually came to comprehend, in a measure, what
Duncan had termed "the vision." She understood, at last, the meaning
of the Great Sacrifice, beside which all possible human sacrifice
stands poor and mean. She caught a gleam of the light from Calvary,
and in its searching effulgent blaze all the faint glitter of worldly
achievement grew dim and disappeared.

Among other things which she saw for the first time in their proper
light was her association with the young minister. She knew now that
only her poor pride in the envy she excited had made her desire his
attentions. She looked at the man himself with new eyes, and though
slow to blame another in her new-found humility, she could not help
thinking how different it might have been with her and Donald had their
pastor had more of the spirit of Duncan Polite.

But she did not criticise him; her own idle, careless life she found
too full of faults to censure another. That life was gradually being
turned to higher aims, for a new Jessie Hamilton had been born that
winter, and one who was destined to help fulfil the old watchman's
great desire.

XIII

THE CANADIAN PATRIOTIC SOCIETY

The winter passed swiftly and merrily in Glenoro. Since the accident
on the river skating h