ent his knees till he squatted low on the balls of his feet. "Now
sit on my shoulder and put your right arm around my neck. Give me your
left hand. All set?"

"All set."

Angus watched with interest, doubtful if he could do it. But slowly,
steadily, without shake or tremor the knees of the big man began to
straighten, and his shoulders topped by girl and trunk to rise, until he
stood upright. Upright he hitched to get a better balance, and strode
off for the house as easily as Angus himself would have carried a sack
of oats. Kathleen looked back at him and laughed.

"Good-by, Angus. Thank you ever so much--and come and see me."

The last thing Angus saw as he wheeled the colts for home, was the
burdened bulk of Gavin French stooping for the doorway.

CHAPTER VIII

OLD SAM PAUL MAKES A PROPOSITION

Jean arrived on the next boat three days later, with a tragic tale of
missed connections. It seemed to Angus that the few months of absence
had made quite a difference. She seemed, in fact, almost a young lady,
even to his brotherly eye.

But however she had changed she had not lost her grip on practical
things, and when she began to look around the house Angus and Turkey
found that their trouble in cleaning up had been wasted. For Jean dug
into corners, and under and behind things where, as Turkey said, nobody
but a girl would ever think of looking; and in such obscure and
out-of-the-way places she found some dirt, some articles discarded or
lost, and the more or less permanent abode of Tom and Matilda.

Tom and Matilda were mice, which had become thoroughly tame and
domesticated. In the evenings Rennie fed them oatmeal and scraps of
cheese, chuckling to see them sit up on their hunkers and polish their
whiskers and wink their beady, little eyes, and all hands had united in
keeping the cats out. Everybody had regarded Tom and Matilda as good
citizens; and they had developed a simple and touching trust in mankind.
But Jean broke up their home ruthlessly, with exclamations of disgust;
and commandeering all the men for a day, turned the house inside out,
beat, swept, washed and scrubbed; and then put everything back again.
She professed to see a great difference, but nobody else agreed with
her.

"The only difference I see," said Turkey, "is that I don't know where to
find a darn thing."

"Well, you won't find it on the floor, or under a heap of rubbish six
months old," Jean told him.

"Oh, all right," Tu