ine
influence inspiring youth to noble deeds and patriotic devotion. He was
of course the very man to get into a muddle when he had anything to do
with the administration of a new settlement. If the muddle had not lain
in his way, he would assuredly have found it.

He had so much to do now on his further way home in helping elderly
ladies on that side who could not speak French, and on this side who
could not speak English; in seeing that persons whom he had never set
eyes on before were not neglected at buffets, left behind by trains, or
overcharged by waiters; in giving and asking information about
everything, that he had not much time to think about the St. Xavier's
settlements and his personal grievance. When the suburbs of London came
in sight, with their trim rows of stucco-fronted villas and cottages,
and their front gardens ornamented with the inevitable evergreens, a
thrill of enthusiasm came up in Heron's breast, and he became feverish
with anxiety to be in the heart of the great capital once again. Now he
began to see familiar spires, and domes, and towers, and then again
huge, unfamiliar roofs and buildings that were not there when he was in
London last, and that puzzled him with their presence. Then the train
crossed the river, and he had glimpses of the Thames, and Westminster
Palace, and the embankment with its bright garden patches and its little
trees, and he wondered at the ungenial creatures who see in London
nothing but ugliness. To him everything looked smiling, beautiful, alive
with hope and good omen.

Certainly a railway station, an arrival, a hurried transaction, however
slight and formal, with a customs officer, are a damper on enthusiasm of
any kind. Heron began to feel dispirited. London looked hard and
prosaic. His grievance began to show signs of breaking out again amid
the hustling, the crowd, the luggage, and the exertion, as an old wound
might under similar circumstances, if one in his haste and eagerness
were to strain its hardly closed edges.

It was when he was in a hansom driving to his hotel that Heron, putting
his hand in his waistcoat pocket, drew out a crumpled card which he had
thrust in there hastily and forgotten. The card bore the name of

"MR. CROWDER E. MONEY,
Victoria street,
Westminster."

Heron remembered his friend of Paris. "An odd name," he thought. "I have
heard it before somewhere. I like him. He seems a manly sort of fellow."

Then he found hims