ng. In happier days Helen had found laughter very easy. Her
sense of humour had not been deadened by sorrow, it was only in
abeyance, and now she felt it stirring into life. The little incident
made her look around with interest. Certainly the Algonquin church was
not a place calculated to make one indulge in melancholy. The
Presbyterian congregation was a virile one, bright and friendly and
full of energy, and with very few exceptions, every one was at least
fairly well off. With the aid of a generous expenditure of money they
had expressed their congregational life in the decoration of the
church; so the place was comfortable and well lighted, and exceedingly
bright in colouring. Around three sides ran a gallery with an
ornamental railing, tinted pink. The walls were the same colour,
except for a bright green dado beneath the gallery, and the vaulted
ceiling was decorated with big bouquets of flowers in a shade of pink
and green slightly deeper than the walls and the dado. The carpet and
the cushions--every inch of the floor was carpeted and every pew
cushioned--were a warm bright crimson to match the organ pipes. The
high Gothic windows were of brilliant stained glass, which, when the
morning sun shone, threw a riot of colour over the worshippers. And
indeed everything was warm and bright and shining, from the glittering
new electroliers suspended from the pink ceiling, to the crimson baize
doors which swung inward so hospitably at one's approach.

The church had been slowly filling, the choir filed into their places,
the organ stopped playing Cavalleria Rusticana, a hush fell over the
place and Doctor Leslie, his white hair and black gown passing through
the changing lights of the windows, came slowly out of the vestry and
up to the pulpit. He was an old man now, but a vigorous one, and his
sermons were still strong and full of the fire of his earlier years.
He had never walked quite so smartly, nor spoken with quite his old vim
since the day he had been left alone in the Manse. But through his
bereavement his eye had grown a little kindlier, his handshake a little
more sympathetic, his voice a little more tender.

As he stood up and opened the Book of Praise to announce the first
hymn, his glance involuntarily travelled, as it always did at the
beginning of the service, to where old Angus's white head shone in the
amber light of the window, as though a halo of glory were about it.
Old Angus had long a