ght?" inquired Ranald, eagerly. "We could get out
ten miles or so."

"Yes," replied Yankee. "There's a good place to stop, about ten miles
out. I think we had better go along the river road, and then take down
through the Russell Hills to the Nation Crossing."

In half an hour they were off on their two days' trip to the Indian
Lands. And two glorious days they were. The open air with the suggestion
of the coming fall, the great forests with their varying hues of green
and brown, yellow and bright red, and all bathed in the smoky purple
light of the September sun, these all combined to bring to Ranald's
heart the rest and comfort and peace that he so sorely needed. And when
he drove into his uncle's yard in the late afternoon of the second day,
he felt himself more content to live the life appointed him; and if
anything more were needed to strengthen him in this resolution, and
to fit him for the fight lying before him, his brief visit to his home
brought it to him. It did him good to look into the face of the great
Macdonald Bhain once more, and to hear his deep, steady voice welcome
him home. It was the face and the voice of a man who had passed through
many a sore battle, and not without honor to himself. And it was good,
too, to receive the welcome greetings of his old friends and to feel
their pride in him and their high expectation of him. More than ever, he
resolved that he would be a man worthy of his race.

His visit to the manse brought him mingled feelings of delight and
perplexity and pain. The minister's welcome was kind, but there was a
tinge of self-complacent pride in it. Ranald was one of "his lads," and
he evidently took credit to himself for the young man's success. Hughie
regarded him with reserved approval. He was now a man and teaching
school, and before committing himself to his old-time devotion, he had
to adjust his mind to the new conditions. But before the evening was
half done Ranald had won him once more. His tales of the West, and of
how it was making and marring men, of the nation that was being built
up, and his picture of the future that he saw for the great Dominion,
unconsciously revealed the strong manhood and the high ideals in the
speaker, and Hughie found himself slipping into the old attitude of
devotion to his friend.

But it struck Ranald to the heart to see the marks of many a long day's
work upon the face of the woman who had done more for him than all the
rest of the worl