's handicapped
life. He put his hands affectionately on the young man's heavy
shoulders. They had been brought up side by side on the shores of Lake
Algonquin, but how different their lots had been!

"Ah, it's all a hard job for you, Pete, old boy!" he cried.

Peter's dull eyes lit up.

"Oh, no, it ain't! It will be a great job, Rod. Your father would be
getting it for me. Your father's been awful good to us, Rod. Say,
tell me about the city. Is it an awful big place?"

Roderick studied the young man's heavy face, as he talked. Here was
one of his father's neighbours of the Jericho Road. For twenty years
or more, he could remember his father struggling to bring Peter Fiddle
to a life of sobriety and righteousness and to bring up his son in the
same. And what had he to show for it all? Old Peter was a worse
drunkard than he had been twenty years ago, and poor Young Peter was
the hopeless result of that drinking. Roderick's kindly heart
sympathised with his father's efforts, but his head pronounced judgment
upon them. He confessed he could see very little use in bothering with
the sort of folk that were forever stumbling on the Jericho Roads of
life.

Peter went back reluctantly to the engine-room, and Roderick ran up on
deck to see the _Inverness_ enter the Gates. He had not been home for
a whole long year, and he was eager as a child to get the first glimpse
of Algonquin and the little cove where the old farm lay.

As he was passing round to the wheel-house, he noticed again the young
stranger who had come on board at Barbay. He had been puzzled then by
the recollection of having seen her before, and he walked slowly,
looking at her and trying to recall where and when it could have been.
As he approached, she turned in his direction, her eyes following the
sweep of a gull's white wing, and he recognised her. He remembered her
quite distinctly, for he could count on his fingers the number of young
ladies he had met in his busy college days, and Miss Murray was not one
that could be easily forgotten. He stood at the railing and recalled
the scene. It had been at the home of Mrs. Carruthers, Billy Parker's
aunt. That kind lady made it a blessed habit to invite hungry students
to her home on Sunday nights. And the suppers she gave! Billy had
taken Roderick that evening, and there were a half-dozen more. And
this Miss Murray had dropped in after church with Richard Wells. Wells
was a medical in