helter. But now, the stern young stepmother was
yielding to those whom she recognised as worthy to be her sons, and was
rewarding them with wider pasture-lands and waving fields of grain.
Now the pioneer found time to draw breath and look about him. All
through the years of weary hardship, homesickness for the old land had
been heavy on his heart and his love for it had grown. And now, with
some time for sentiment and reflection, he found his thoughts turning
thither; old loves were re-awakened, old traditions revived, old
enmities fanned into flame. The still wild stretches of forest called
on all sides for wild, free action; the wind swept down over the Oro
hills, straight from the vast expanse of the Great Lakes, setting the
blood leaping for vigorous action. Little wonder, then, that in their
first days of leisure men should go a few steps farther back towards
the savage stage from which we are all such a short distance removed.
And little wonder, too, that the wiser ones trembled lest their new
land of promise, now so smiling, so prodigal of her favours, might be
scarred with the marks of evil.

And so, these simple seers, these men, ignorant in the world's wisdom,
but many of them secure in the knowledge of One, whom to know is life
eternal, turned in their fear and perplexity to the fountain-head of
righteousness.

"We must be having a prayer meeting, lads," said Praying Donald at
length. "We could be having them all this winter, once a week, and
maybe the good Lord will be sending us a minister."

"Eh, if we could get a meenister like auld Angus McGregor!" said Store
Thompson. "Ah jist heerd him once, but it was a veesitation, aye, jist
a veesitation, like. D'ye mind yon sermon, Lauchie, on 'Simon Peter,
lovest thou me'?"

Long Lauchie awoke from his reverie with a start. The mention of the
great Scottish preacher set going a train of tender memories. "Eh, Mr.
McGregor!" he cried, "Mr. McGregor,--eh, there will not be such men
nowadays I will be fearing. He was the man of God, indeed--yes--oh,
yes----"

And as he faded away into the distance, the others made the necessary
arrangements. They would hold a series of prayer meetings in the Oa
and the Glen to last during the winter. Store Thompson made a feeble
suggestion that they might join the Methodists, Tom Caldwell's faction
in the Flats. For Tom, who was as active at wrestling in prayer as in
any other sphere, in company with the population