led
the room; "Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He
bringeth them out of their distresses," he was saying, but Scotty did
not listen; he followed Weaver Jimmie out to the barn full of
awe-stricken questionings. And Jimmie, his kindly face quivering with
sympathy, told him all. Yes, that still, dark form he had seen in the
corner was Callum; they had brought him home last night, and had taken
Nancy to her home. But Hamish had said Callum was gone, Scotty argued,
and Nancy with him; had they come back then? No, they had not come
back. They had run away and tried to cross Lake Simcoe in a canoe. A
storm had come up suddenly, and though the Caldwells and the
MacDonalds, who had tracked them to the shore, tried to rescue them,
they were too late. And Callum was gone, gone never to come back, and
Nancy was with him; and if Store Thompson could get the great preacher
who had lately come to Barbay, they would bury them both in the Glen
to-morrow. Scotty did not hear any more; Callum to be buried, and
Nancy, too, to be put away in the ground as they had put Kirsty's
father! He crept off into a corner of the haymow as soon as Jimmie had
left him, and lay there, his curly head hidden deep in the hay, his
small body shaken with long convulsive sobs. Callum, his Callum,
Granny's hero, as well as his own, gone never to come back!

Voices reached him once, and lest he should be discovered, he pressed
his small hands over his quivering face and manfully strove to hold
down his grief. Praying Donald and Long Lauchie were walking slowly
with bent heads past the open barn door.

"It will be the will of the Almighty to be visiting us through this
calamity," Praying Donald was saying, "but the Father will never be
leaving His children comfortless, for the man of God himself will be
coming to the funeral."

"McAlpine?" asked Long Lauchie in an eager whisper.

"Aye, John McAlpine himself; the Lord will be very merciful to us.
But, eh, eh, that the man that poor Malcolm would be praying for all
these years should be coming to us over his dead! Eh, it will be a
mystery, a mystery!"

IX

RALPH STANWELL AGAIN

Johnnie Courteau of de mountain,
Johnnie Courteau of de hill;
Dat was de boy can shoot de gun,
Dat was de boy can jomp an' run,
An' it's not very offen you ketch heem still,
Johnnie Courteau!
--WILLIAM HENRY DRUMMOND.

Scotty was setting out for what he hoped was hi