f his grandmother. And when his high spirits
had been in danger of taking him beyond the "borderland dim," Monteith
had come, and there had been no more trouble. Monteith's training had
been quite different from that which he had received at home. The
schoolmaster despised as a fool anyone who did not walk the straight
and narrow path. Wrong-doing was idiotic, he declared; it didn't
"pay." But Monteith's creed did not hold here. It did pay, as far as
Scotty could see. And here he was with no hedging circumstances to
keep him in the right path, standing at the parting of the ways.

And yet he did not for a moment consider the possibility of drawing
back. There was too much at stake. As Monteith had said, everything
depended upon his faithfully filling his post. To lose the favour of
Raye & Hemming meant to lose everything he had set his heart upon,
Captain Herbert's friendship, his education, Isabel herself.

No, he could not dream of giving up. And so he took Monteith's advice
and went forward doggedly. But all the enjoyment in his new work was
soon gone, his happy, sanguine days gradually changed to a season of
worry and humiliation; until he sometimes longed with all his soul to
fling all the unclean business aside, take an axe and go back to the
bush.

He struggled on through the winter, morose and plodding, until the
spring came with scented breezes and the songs of birds calling him to
come away. Barbay was situated picturesquely on an arm of Lake Simcoe.
From the office window he could catch enchanting glimpses of sapphire
lake and emerald hill, and he was seized with an intense longing to
return to his outdoor life. If he could only get back to his old
environment for even a day, he felt he could readjust his ideas and see
things more clearly. The 24th of May, the birthday of the good Queen,
brought him the longed-for holiday. The office claimed him for a few
hours in the morning, but early in the afternoon he hired a canoe, and,
supplied with a gun and rod, a blanket and plenty of bread and meat, he
paddled away into the blue expanse. He would go on until he came to
the forest, he determined, and there he would camp for the night.

His spirits rose like a freed bird as, with long, steady strokes, hour
after hour, he glided smoothly up the low, green shore. He was some
distance from any human habitation when the steady dip, dip of his
paddle echoed farther inland than usual. He paused and pe