mong the Elmbrook
sentinels, and might have done so to the end of her life had not one
family taken an unfair advantage by calling in the aid of machinery.
Silas Long, the postmaster, was a great student of astronomy, and could
talk like a book on comets and northern lights, and all other
incomprehensible things that sailed the heavens. So no one objected
when he bought a telescope--in fact, the minister had advised it; but
before long every one knew that while Si studied the celestial bodies
at night the female portion of his family kept the instrument turned on
objects terrestrial during the day. Old Granny Long, Silas' mother,
was the one who put Mrs. Winters in the background. She was a poor,
bedridden body, but lay there, day after day, happy as a queen, with
her bed pulled up to the window, and the telescope trained on the
surrounding country; and there was little went on between Lake Simcoe
and the northern boundary of the township that she did not see. She
knew the precise hour of a Monday morning at which the family washings
were hung out, and which was the cleanest. It was she who made truancy
an impossible risk, for no matter in what out-of-the-way place one
might go nutting or swimming, Granny Long was sure to see, and report
to the schoolmistress. It was from her, also, that her grandson
received the heart-breaking intelligence that young Malcolm Cameron had
kissed Marjorie Scott, the minister's oldest girl, at the jog in the
road, on the way to prayer-meeting one evening, and if it had not been
for her vigilance probably no one would have discovered that Sawed-off
Wilmott, who managed the cheese factory down on the Lake Simcoe road,
allowed his pigs to run in and out of the factory at will. Indeed, as
the deposed and indignant Mrs. Winters often declared, a body didn't
dast blow their nose inside the township without Granny Long hearing it
through that everlasting spyglass.

But on this particular early May morning a hostile army might have
marched up and seized Elmbrook unobserved. For there were great doings
inside the village that demanded concentrated attention. All the
bustle and activity of the place seemed to be gathered at one small
house. In the lane, by the side door, stood a team of farm horses
hitched to a large double buggy. A big, lumbering lad of about
fifteen, half asleep, on the front seat, was holding the reins in his
limp hands. But he was the only creature on the premises, e