ts site had been selected by some
one with the nursery-heart. Spacious and genial was the old homely
house, with its impartial square. Rooms there were, and halls, waiting
to echo back some voice uncoarsened by the clang of time and uncorroded
by the salt of tears. Rich terraces flowed in velvet waves down to the
waiting river, murmuring its trysting joy; a full-robed choir of oak and
elm and maple kept their eternal places in a grander loft than man could
build them, while pine and spruce and cedar, disrobing never, but
snatching their bridal garments from the winter storm, swelled the
sylvan harmony.

Here came the crocuses and the snowdrops, trembling like the waifs of
winter, and hither came the violet and the dandelion to reassure these
daring pioneers; later on, the pansy and the rose utterly convinced them
that they had not lost their way, but had been guided by the pilgrims'
Friend.

But no child's voice had waked these sombre echoes, no child's gentle
feet had pressed this velvet sward; no radiant shadow such as childhood
alone can cast had flitted here and there beneath these lonely trees,
nor had these flowers felt their life's great and only thrill in the
touch of a baby's dimpled hand. But that golden door at last swung
gently open. That hour of ecstasy and anguish brought us life's crown
and joy, and the hills of time, erstwhile green and beautiful, were now
radiant with a light kindled from afar.

St. Cuthbert's rejoiced exceedingly when our little Margaret was given
unto us, but we knew it not at first, for Scotch joy is a deep and
silent thing, a fermentation at the centre rather than an effervescence
at the surface. For our Margaret was as one born out of due time, the
first child whose infant cry had awakened the echoes of their ancient
manse, though seventy long years had flown since their first minister
had come among them. Thus she became the child of the regiment and they
silently exulted. Jubilant, one hour after this new star had swung into
the firmament, I hoisted the Union Jack to the topmost notch of our
towering flag-pole, and never has it flaunted its triumph more
jubilantly since.

The beadle reported to me afterwards that the other churches were
mightily jealous of our late autumn bloom, and one of their devotees, an
Episcopalian, had asked him sneeringly--

"What's that flag doing there?"

"It's blawin' i' the wind," retorted my diplomatic beadle.

"It's nothing to be so joyful