young and as kindly as ever. The Lad gave a boyish shout and came
bounding towards him. The old man dropped his stick and held out both
his hands. He said not a word, but his eyes spoke very eloquently all
his pride and joy and love. He put his two hands on his son's head and
uttered a low prayer of thanksgiving.

Aunt Kirsty came bustling out as fast as her accumulating flesh would
permit. Poor Aunt Kirsty had grown to a great bulk these later days
and could not hurry, but indeed had she used up all the energy on
moving forward that she mistakenly put into swaying violently from side
to side, she would have made tremendous speed. Roderick ran to meet
her, and she took him into her ample bosom and kissed him and patted
him on the back and poured out a dozen Gaelic synonyms for darling, and
then shoved him away, and burying her face in her apron, began to cry
because he was such a man and not her baby any more!

The father's heart was too full for words; but after supper when they
sat out on the porch in the soft misty twilight, he found many things
to ask, and many questions to answer. Roderick sat on the step facing
the lake, filled with a great content. The sunset gleam of the water
through the darkening trees, the soft plaintive call of the phoebes
from the woods, the sleepy drone of Bossy's bell from the pasture, and
the scents of the garden made up the atmosphere of home.

"Well, well, and you have come to stay," his father said for the tenth
time, rubbing his hands along his knee in ecstasy, "to stay."

"It'll be great to know that I don't have to run away at the end of the
summer, won't it?"

"It'll jist be the answer to all my prayers, Lad. I feel I am no use
in the world at all, now that you have made me give up all work." He
gave his son a glance of loving reproach. For while Roderick had
managed to get his education, he had managed too, to do wonderful
things with the little farm, so that his father had long ago given up
the work he had resumed after his year's illness. And Aunt Kirsty had
a servant-girl in the kitchen now, and devoted all her time to her
garden and her Bible.

"You've jist made your father a useless old body. But I jist can't be
minding, for I see how you can be taking up all my work. There's the
Jericho Road waiting for you, Lad."

The young man smiled indulgently. "And what do you think I can do
there, Father? Unless Mike Cassidy goes to law as usual."

"Ah, but is