d he's--well, he's not
exactly President of the B. N. A., but he's the whole thing in it.
Uncle Will's coming home next summer, and I'm going to make him take me
back to New York with him."

Roderick's ambitious heart gave a leap. Of course he knew about
William Graham, the Algonquin man who had gone to the States and made a
million or more.

His head was filled with rosy dreams as he walked out to the farm that
evening to say good-bye. He was leaving for only a short time, but the
old people were loath to see him go. Aunt Kirsty drew him up to the
hot stove, bewailing the misfortune that was taking him away.

"Dear, dear, dear, and you will be going away up north into the bush,"
she said, clapping him on the back, "and you will jist be frozen with
the cold indeed, and your poor arm will be bad again."

"Yes, and the wolves will probably eat me, and a tree will fall on me
and I'll break through the ice and be drowned," wailed Roderick. And
she shoved him away from her for a foolish gomeril, trying not to smile
at him, and declaring it was little he cared that he was leaving her,
indeed.

"I have not heard you say anything about the arm for a long time, Lad,"
said his father, who was watching him, with shining eyes, from his old
rocking-chair.

"Oh, it's all right, Dad," he said lightly. "I haven't time to notice
it."

He always put off the question thus when Aunt Kirsty was within
hearing, but his father's loving eye noticed that the boy's hand
sometimes sought the arm and held it, as though in pain.

"And you will not be here to help start the great fight," his father
said wistfully, when he had heard all the latest news concerning the
temperance campaign, even to the pending disaster. "But you will be
finding a Jericho Road up in the bush, I'll have no doubt."

Roderick looked at the saintly old face and his heart smote him. He
felt for a moment that to please his father would surely be worth more
than all the success a man could attain in a lifetime.

"And did you get a job for poor Billy, Lad?" his father enquired.

"Billy? Oh, the Perkins fellow?" Roderick whistled in dismay. Poor
Billy Perkins had not "kept nicely saved," as his brave little wife had
hoped, but had fallen among thieves in the hotel at the corner once
more. Old Angus had rescued him, put him upon his feet again, and had
commissioned his son to look for work for Billy, and his son had
forgotten about it entirely in the press