arly a year of dissension, the congregations of Glenoro and the
Tenth concession of Oro at last made choice of a minister, a choice
which won the unanimous approval of both churches and suited everyone
from old Andrew Johnstone to the Hamilton girls. He seemed to possess
every requisite to suit the varied tastes of the varied people of
Glenoro church. The old folk overlooked his youth, and the Oa forgot
his lack of Gaelic in the light of his great achievement, for he
possessed one quality that made it possible for him to bind together in
peace and harmony the different factions of the church. It was not
that he was very handsome, that he had a free, winning manner, it was
not that he had had a brilliant career at college or that his
professors prophesied a great future for him, it was not that he was an
eloquent preacher and was filled with zeal for his Master. All these
were important; but they sank into insignificance before his cardinal
virtue, that which placed him immeasurably above all other probationers
and made Duncan Polite look upon him as the embodiment of all his
hopes, for was he not a grandson of Glenoro's hero, and himself John
McAlpine Egerton?

What more could Glenoro hope for on this earth? What more could be
desired? Mr. McAlpine come back to them! It seemed too good to be
true. He did not even need to preach for a call. In fact, he had had
no intention of doing so, but Peter Farquhar and Donald Fraser had
heard him preach one Sabbath in Toronto when they went to the
Exhibition, and they brought home such a glowing report of this second
John McAlpine that at the close of his college term they all with one
consent invited him to come and be their pastor. Even the Oa went for
him solidly; a Gaelic preacher seemed an impossible luxury in these
degenerate times, anyway, and, as Peter Farquhar said, "Mr. McAlpine's
grandson without the Gaelic was better than any other man with it."

There had not been such a congregation in the Glenoro church since the
days of the first John McAlpine as there was the Sabbath after the
young man's induction. All the old people who had not come out to
church since Mr. Cameron's death were there. Many of them remembered
their young pastor's grandfather, whose fiery zeal and burning
eloquence melted the hearts of those who had gone astray and shook to
the very foundations of their being the most hardened sinners,--and
here was his counterpart raised up to take his