ig Malcolm's fire one evening. He glanced at
Scotty, and that young man arose and began to cram the red-hot stove
with wood, until his grandfather shouted to him that he must be gone
daft, for was he wanting to roast them all out?

"Oh, indeed," said Mrs. MacDonald, suspending her knitting with a look
of pleased interest. "And you will be seeing the little lady. Eh, it
is herself will be the fine girl, not a bit o' pride, with all her
beautiful manners and her learning, indeed."

"She will be jist the same as when she used to run round this house in
her bare feet with Scotty," declared Big Malcolm enthusiastically. "It
is a great peety indeed that she will belong to that English upstart!"

Scotty had settled down in deep absorption to whittle a stick and was
apparently taking no notice of the conversation.

Monteith regarded Big Malcolm curiously. He had been long enough in
the settlement to understand that the ordinary pioneer had no love for
the more privileged class that had settled along the waterfronts.
Socially the latter belonged to a different sphere from the farmers;
and having often been able, in the early days, to secure from the
Government concessions not granted to all, they were regarded by the
common folk with some resentment. But the difference between the two
classes, like all other differences, was fast dying out, and the
schoolmaster well knew that Big Malcolm had other and deeper reasons
for his dislike of a man so popular as Captain Herbert. He longed to
know, before he visited the Grange, just how much his friend had sinned
against the old man.

"Oh, I suppose he's no worse than many of his kind," he said
tentatively.

"Aye, but that is jist where you will be mistaken," said Big Malcolm, a
dangerous light beginning to leap up in his eye. "If this place would
be knowing the kind of a man he is, indeed it would not be Parliament
he would be thinking about next fall, but----" He stopped suddenly.
"Och, hoch, the Lord forgive me, and he will be your friend, too, Mr.
Monteith," he added hastily, with a return of his natural courtesy.
"Indeed I would be forgetting myself."

"Why does your grandfather hate the Captain so?" inquired Monteith, as
Scotty walked with him to the gate.

"I'll not know," said Scotty morosely. "I think they had some quarrel
long ago, about land or something, when they came here first."

"And did he never give any hint of what the trouble was?"

"Not to us bo