, but he could not help
wondering just how it would be worked out, and if he himself were using
his every faculty for the best ends.

The greatest part of his problem was the Lad. His boy had been the
very centre of all his thoughts since the day She had left him, with
only faith in God and the Lad's baby hands to hold him up from despair.
She had always hoped that the Lad would have an education, and Angus
had planned that he should. But if the little farm was to go, the Lad
would have to work for his father and Aunt Kirsty just as soon as he
was big enough. And She had always hoped he should be a minister some
day, or even, perhaps, a missionary to a heathen land.

And next to the Lad was his ministry to his neighbours. What was to
become of that? Ministry was not the word Angus McRae would have used
in speaking of his humble calling,--the mere working of a little market
garden farm and the selling of what it produced. And yet he had made
it a real and beautiful ministry to both God and his fellow-man. He
considered the selling of sweet turnips and sound cabbage and unspotted
potatoes to his customers as much a religious rite, as did the most
devout Israelite the offering of that which was perfect on the altar of
Jehovah. For indeed everything Angus sent off his little farm, whether
sold for a legitimate price or given away, as it so often was, to a
needy neighbour, was truly an offering to the Most High.

So he was a little puzzled, though not at all saddened, by the thought
that his ministry was to be curtailed, perhaps stopped. He had hoped
to be always able to give a bag of potatoes to a poor neighbour, or to
bring to his home any one who had fallen on the Jericho Road. But
then, if the Father wanted him to stop that, He surely had other work
for him. So he flapped his old horse with the lines and, leaning
forward, hummed the hymn that was his watchword in times of stress:

"_My soul, be on thy guard,
Ten thousand foes arise,
The hosts of sin are pressing hard,
To draw thee from the skies!_"

The Lad interrupted constantly with eager questions about this flower
and that tree, and his old horse demanded much attention, to keep her
from turning off the road and regaling herself on the green grass. He
flapped her at regular intervals with the lines, saying in a tone of
gentle remonstrance, "Tut, tut, Betsy, get up now, get up."

Betsy had had so many years' intimate acquaintance with her