not notice that Elizabeth looked anxious
and tried to change the talk.

Davie did his part in setting things right by bringing up the question
which Ben and he had been discussing lately, as to the salmon fishing on
the Beaver River, before the building of the saw-mills had kept the fish
away. Then Davie went to his sap-gathering, and after that the talk
fell upon graver matters; and though all took part, it was grannie who
had most to say, and Elizabeth liked to think afterward of the eager,
childlike way in which her father had listened and responded to it all.

He was very fond of telling of his early days, and of his success in
life, poor old man, but to-day he acknowledged that this life, if it
were all, would be but a poor thing.

"I might have done differently in some things, and I wish I had, though
I don't know that it would have amounted to much, anything that I could
do."

"And it is well that it is not our ain doings we have to trust to when
life is wearing over," said Mrs Fleming, gravely. "I doubt the best of
us would find but poor comfort in looking back over our life, when the
end is drawing on; it is to Him who is able and willing to save to the
uttermost that we have, one and all, to look."

"Yes, I know, there is no one else. And my life is most done, but I
haven't never confessed Him, not before men."

"But it's no' too late for that even yet," said Mrs Fleming, gently;
"and you _have_ confessed Him in a way, for you have fed the hungry and
clothed the naked, and all men trust your word, which, God forgive them,
is more than can be said of some who have His name oftenest on their
lips."

"Folks ought to get religion young, as Lizzie did here, and Jacob. I
hope it's all right with Jacob. I've seen the time when I would have
been glad to come forward and confess Him and do my part in the church,
before Lizzie's mother died. But when a man gets on in years it isn't
easy for him to come out before the world and do as he ought. I hope it
will be all right, and as I told Jacob the other day, when the time does
come for me to be judged I'd full as lief be standing on the same
platform with old David Fleming as with most any of the professors in
Gershom."

"Eh, man! It would be but a poor place to stand in," said Mr Fleming,
with a startled movement. Mrs Fleming looked from one to the other a
little startled also.

"It is just this," said she, quickly and softly. "Do we love Him best,
a