heavy jewellery as accessories.

Gavin carefully helped each of them alight, for the Aunties had given
much time to their boy's manners and had seen to it that he did not
fail in little acts of courtesy. And though the women declared that
they had "babied" him beyond belief, and the girls said he was as much
an old maid as any one of them, their kindness had not spoiled him for
he was as generous and unselfish as they were.

Christina felt the blood mount to her cheeks as she caught Gavin's
glance. She had never mentioned her flowers to him, and always felt
ashamed when she saw him.

The three Grant Girls were immediately surrounded by friends.
Everybody loved them, and their arrival at church always caused a
pleasant stir.

Gavin came back from putting his horses into the shed and showed them
to their seats, where he sat with them until it was time for him to go
into the choir.

Christina always went to choir practice, but like many another, she did
not sing in the choir on Sundays, so she went to the family pew with
her mother while Mary and Ellen joined the singers in the vestibule.

The congregation were almost all seated, when the choir, with
Tremendous K. at their head, came hurrying down the aisle, and took
their places in seats beside the pulpit. Joanna Falls was leading
soprano, by virtue of a voice of peculiar strength and carrying power,
Gavin Grant, who had the best baritone voice in the countryside, led
the boys, and Minnie McKenzie, whose father was an elder, and Martha
Henderson, Tremendous K.'s sister, played the organ on alternate
Sundays--an arrangement necessary to prevent a split in the church.

Mr. Sinclair had been in Orchard Glen for twenty-five years, and knew
his people better than they knew themselves. He realised that the
week's toil was absorbing, and on Sundays he tried hard to turn his
people's eyes away from the things that are passing to those that are
eternal. And on this morning it seemed to Christina that he had chosen
his sermon entirely for her benefit.

"For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it;" the divine paradox
was his text, and he told Christina plainly that by saving for herself
this life of wider experience and greater opportunity, she was missing
the one great opportunity that comes to all souls. She was losing her
life.

When church was over and Mr. Sinclair was moving about among the
people, he came down the aisle and gave one hand to Sandy and the