eventy times
seven. We'll wait till young Roderick's grown up and pays us back, and
then we'll go. Indeed, I'm going to refuse positively to go to the New
Jerusalem until I've seen the old!"

He swung away up the street as bright and gay as though he had just
accepted a fine new position instead of refusing one. He was so happy
that he softly sang the hymn that had opened the good work of the
evening. It was very appropriate:

"_Faith and hope and love we see
Joining hands in unity,
But the greatest of the three
And the best is love._"

He was passing near Jock's house so he roared out the "Amen" in the
hope that the elder had not yet gone to sleep. And Mrs. Leslie's Viney
declared the next morning that she done heah dat Lawyah Ed and J. P.
Thornton gwine home straight ahead all de bressed night, and she did
'clar dey was still goin' when she put on de oatmeal mush for de
breakfus!

CHAPTER III

LIFE'S YOUNG MARINER

On a hazy August afternoon the little steamer _Inverness_,--Captain,
James McTavish--came sailing across Lake Simcoe with her long white
bowsprit pointing towards the cedar-fringed gates opening into Lake
Algonquin. She was a trim little craft, painted all blue and white
like the water she sailed. Captain McTavish, who was also her owner,
had named her after his birthplace. He loved the little steamer, and
pronounced her name with a tender lingering on the last syllable, and a
softening of the consonants, that no mere Sassenach tongue could
possibly imitate.

There were not many passengers to-day; the majority were mothers with
their children, the latter chasing each other about the deck or
clambering into all forbidden and dangerous places, the former sitting
in the shade, darning or sewing or embroidering according to their
station in life. A few young ladies sat in groups, and chatted and ate
candies, or read and ate candies while one young man, in white flannels
and a straw hat waited upon them with stools and wraps and drinks of
water, and magazines, fetching and carrying in a most abject manner.
There was always a sad dearth of young men on the _Inverness_, except
on a public holiday; but as the girls said, they could always depend on
Alf. He was Algonquin's one young gentleman of leisure, and beside
having a great deal of money to spend on ice-cream and bon-bons, had
also an unlimited amount of good nature to spend with it.

He seemed to be the only one on board