matter of this kind, and,
before Mrs. Kinnaird left her, all had been arranged. Still, it was
not Montreal and its winter amusements that Ida thought of then, but
the shadowy bush, and the green river that stole out from among the
somber pines.

CHAPTER XX

IDA CLAIMS AN ACQUAINTANCE

It was early on a fine spring evening when Clarence Weston lay
somewhat moodily on the wooded slope of the mountain that rises behind
Montreal. It is not very much of a mountain, though it forms a
remarkably fine natural park, and from where Weston lay he could look
down upon a vast sweep of country and the city clustering round the
towers of Notre Dame. It is, from almost any point of view, a
beautiful city, for its merchants and financiers of English and
Scottish extraction have emulated the love of artistic symmetry
displayed by the old French Canadian religious orders, as well as
their lavish expenditure, in the buildings they have raised. Churches,
hospitals, banks and offices delight the eye, and no pall of
coal-smoke floats over Montreal. It lies clean and sightly between its
mountain and the river under the clear Canadian sky.

On the evening in question the faintest trace of thin blue vapor
etherealized its clustering roofs and stately towers, and the great
river, spanned by its famous bridge, gleamed athwart the flat
champaign, a wide silver highway to the distant sea. Beyond it,
stretches of rolling country ran back league after league into the
vast blue distance where Vermont lay. Still, Weston, who was jaded and
cast down, frowned at the city and felt that he had a grievance
against it. During the last week or two he had, for the most part
vainly, endeavored to interview men of importance connected with
finance and company promoting. Very few of them would see him at all,
and those with whom he gained audience listened to what he had to say
with open impatience, or with a half-amused toleration that was almost
as difficult to bear. Perhaps this was not astonishing, as most of
them already had had somewhat costly experiences with what they called
wild-cat mining schemes.

There was, however, a certain vein of dogged persistency in Clarence
Weston; and, almost intolerably galling as he-found it, he would still
have continued to obtrude his presence on gentlemen who had no desire
whatever to be favored with it, and to waylay them in the hotels, but
for the fact that the little money he had brought with him was rapi