the world?" the old
man asked. His caution was wavering a little. "It is not impossible I
may be with you," he added.

The Ontarian, in fact, did not object in a spirit of cavil. He did so
apparently neither to doubt nor to believe, but simply to enquire, for
in life he was a business man. His father had left him large lumber
interests to preserve, and the responsibility had framed his prudence.
He took the same kind of care in examining the joints of Haviland's
scheme as he would have exacted about the pegging or chains of a timber
crib which was going to run a rapid.

"Why, here for instance," answered Haviland, "are great problems at our
threshold:--Independence, Imperial Federation, both of them bearing on
all advance in civilized organizations,--Unification of
Races--development of our vast and peculiar areas. Education, too,
Foreign Trade, Land, the Classes--press upon our attention."

"You would have us awake to some such new sense of our situation as
Germany did in Goethe's day?"

"I pray for no long-haired enthusiasts. We have business different from
altering the names of the Latin divinities into Teutonic gutturals."

"The country itself will see to that. We have the fear of the nations
round about in our eyes," grimly said Chrysler; then he added: "I have
never known you as well as I wish, Haviland. You speak of this work as
if you had some definite system of it, while all the notions I have ever
met or formed of such a thing have been partial or vague."

Chamilly stood up and the firelight shone brightly and softly upon his
flushed cheek; the dark portraits on the walls seemed to look out upon
him as if they lived, and the statue of Apollo to rise and associate its
dignity with his.

"I _have_ a system," he said. "I almost feel like saying a commission of
revelation. The reason, sir, why I asked you here was that you, my
venerated friend, might understand my ideas and sympathize with them,
and help me."

He hesitated.

"I will ask you to read a manuscript, of which you will find the first
half in your room. The remainder is not written yet"

Pierre, the butler, brought in coffee and they talked more quietly of
other subjects.

CHAPTER IV.

THE MANUSCRIPT.

"When yellow-locked and crystal-eyed,
I dreamed green woods among
* * * * *
O, then the earth was young"

--ISABELLA VALANCEY CRAWFORD.

When Chrysler went up to his