ghing so violently that he could at
first scarcely salute me. He followed me into the study, and assured
me as he sank into a chair that it was the fun of the world. I asked
him to explain the cause of his boisterous merriment.

'Had to give it up!' he gasped. 'The doctors told me that I should die
in a week if I remained in the shop any longer. So I've left it to
look after itself, and come away. No fun in dying in a week, you know!'

I admitted that there was something in that, and inquired what he was
going to do now.

'That's the joke!' he roared, between laughter and coughing. 'I've
come to stay with you.'

There was nothing for it but to let him take his time, so I patiently
awaited further explanation. At length it came.

'Just as I was locking up the shop,' he said, presently, 'I heard that
the temperance people wanted a lecturer and organizer to work this
district. Except the lecturing, it will be all open-air work, so I
applied for it, and got it!'

'But, my dear fellow,' I remonstrated, 'I never knew that you could
lecture. Why, outside the church meeting, you never made a speech in
your life!'

'That's part of the joke!' he cried, going off again into a paroxysm of
laughter. 'But I told them that you would help me at the first, and
they appointed me on that condition. So this is to be my head
quarters!'

His duties were to commence the following week, and we arranged that he
should make his debut as a lecturer at a place called Outram, about
eight miles across country from Mosgiel. I promised to accompany him,
and to fill up such time as he found it impossible or inconvenient to
occupy. In the meantime he got to work with his visiting and
organizing. The open air suited him, his health improved amazingly,
and the Mosgiel Manse simply rocked under the storms of his boisterous
gaiety. Sometimes the shadow of the coming ordeal spread itself
heavily over his spirit, and he came to the study with unwonted gravity
to ask how this or that point in his maiden effort had better be
approached. To prevent his anxiety under this head from becoming too
much for his fragile frame, I lent him a book, and sent him out on to
the sunlit verandah to read it. It chanced to be _The Old Curiosity
Shop_. He had never read anything of Dickens, and it opened a new
world to him. I have never seen anybody fall more completely under the
spell of the magician. From the study I would hear him suddenly yell