n's mother had carried him all the way, and how
he was all Granny had left of her bright lass!

At the sound of grief in his grandmother's voice, the child put up his
hand to stroke her face, and found it wet with tears. Instantly he
forgot his own trouble in sympathy for hers, and clasping his hands
about her neck he soothed her in the best way he knew. He scarcely
understood her grief; was Granny crying because he was only an
Englishman after all? For to him, bereavement and death were but
names, and in the midst of abounding love he had never realised the
lack of parents.

He had often heard of them before, of his beautiful mother, whose eyes
were so dark and whose hair was so curly like his own; and how his
father had been such a fine, big, young man, and a gentleman too,
though Scotty had often vaguely wondered just what that meant. But
that his parents had left him an inheritance of a name and lineage
other than MacDonald he had never dreamed. And now there was no
denying the humiliating truth; his father had been an Englishman, he
himself was English, and that disgraceful name, at which Peter Lauchie
had sneered, was his very own. Henceforth he must be an outcast among
the MacDonalds, and be classed with the English crew that lived over on
the Tenth, and whom, everyone knew, the MacDonalds despised. Yes, and
he belonged to the same class as that stuck-up Captain Herbert, who
lived in that grand house on the north shore of Lake Oro, and whom his
grandfather hated!

He managed to check his tears by the time the boys returned, but during
prayers he crouched miserably in a dark corner behind Hamish, a victim
of despair. He derived very little comfort from the fact that
Grandaddy was reading, "And thou shalt be called by a new name"; it
seemed only an advertisement of his disgrace. He wondered drearily who
else was so unfortunate as to be presented with one, and if it would be
an English name. And afterwards, when they had gone up to the loft to
bed, he crept in behind Hamish, and cried himself to sleep because of
that, which, in after years, he always remembered with pride.

III

WINNING HIS SPURS

The Saxon force, the Celtic fire,
These are thy manhood's heritage!
--C. G. D. ROBERTS.

Old Ian McAllister, schoolmaster of Section Number Nine, Oro, was
calling his flock into the educational fold. It was no clarion ring
that summoned the youths from the forest, for the times we