l mellow them down into harmony.

Peter had walked for nearly half an hour. The ditch was north of the
grade. I had passed, without seeing it, a newly cut-out road to the
north which led to a lonesome schoolhouse in the bush. As always when
I passed or thought of it, I had wondered where through this
wilderness-tangle of bush and brush the children came from to fill
it--walking through winter-snows, through summer-muds, for two,
three, four miles or more to get their meagre share of the accumulated
knowledge of the world. And the teacher! Was it the money? Could it
be when there were plenty of schools in the thickly settled districts
waiting for them? I knew of one who had come to this very school in a
car and turned right back when she saw that she was expected to live as
a boarder on a comfortless homestead and walk quite a distance and
teach mostly foreign-born children. It had been the money with her!
Unfortunately it is not the woman--nor the man either, for that
matter--who drives around in a car, that will buckle down and do this
nation's work! I also knew there were others like myself who think this
backwoods bushland God's own earth and second only to Paradise--but few!
And these young girls that quake at their loneliness and yet go for a
pittance and fill a mission! But was not my wife of their very number?

I started up. Peter was walking along. But here, somewhere, there led a
trail off the grade, down through the ditch, and to the northeast into
the bush which swallows it up and closes behind it. This trail needs
to be looked for even in daytime, and I was to find it at night! But by
this time starlight began to aid. Vega stood nearly straight overhead,
and Deneb and Altair, the great autumnal triangle in our skies. The
Bear, too, stood out boldly, and Cassiopeia opposite.

I drew in and got out of the buggy; and walking up to the horse's head,
got ahold of the bridle and led him, meanwhile scrutinizing the ground
over which I stepped. At that I came near missing the trail. It was just
a darkening of the ground, a suggestion of black on the brown of the
grade, at the point where poles and logs had been pulled across with the
logging chain. I sprang down into the ditch and climbed up beyond and
felt with my foot for the dent worn into the edge of the slope, to make
sure that I was where I should be. It was right, so I led the horse
across. At once he stood on three legs again, left hindleg drawn up, and
re