e
rose in a shrill cry of anger. "I'd 'ave yeh to know that the 'ead of
this 'ere hinstitution--"

"Aw, whist now, ye blatherin' bletherskite, who's talkin' about the
Head? The Head, is it? An' d'ye think I'd sthand--Howly Moses! here she
comes, an' the angels thimsilves wud luk like last year beside her!"

"Good-morning, Tommy. Why, I do think you are looking remarkably well
to-day," cried the matron, her brisk step, bright face, and cheery voice
eloquent of her splendid vitality and high spirit.

"Och! thin, an' who wudn't luk well in your prisince?" said the gallant
little Irishman, with a touch to his hat. "Sure, it's better than the
sunlight to see the smile av yer pritty face."

"Now, Tommy, Tommy, we'll have to be sending you away if you go on
like that. It's a sure sign of convalescence when an Irishman begins to
blarney."

"Blarney, indade! Bedad, it's God's mercy I don't have to blarney, for I
haven't the strength to do that same."

"Well, Tommy, don't try. Keep your strength for getting well again. Ben,
I think I saw Mr. Boyle riding up. Will you please go and take his horse
and show him up to the office. I am just wanting his help in preparing
my annual report."

"Report!" cried Ben. "A day like this! No, sez I; git out into the woods
an' git a little colour into yer cheeks. It'll do him good, too. This'
ere hinstitution is takin' the life out o' yeh."

And Ben went away grumbling his discontent and wrath at the matron's
inability to take thought for herself.

The tiny office was bare enough of beauty, but from the window there
stretched a scene glorious in its majestic sweep and in its varied
loveliness. Down over the tops of second-growth jack pine and Douglas
fir one looked straight into the roaring gorge of the Goat River filled
with misty light and overhung with an arching rainbow. Up the other side
climbed the hills in soft folds of pine tops and, beyond the pines, to
the sheer, grey, rocky peaks in whose clefts and crags the snow lay
like fretted silver. Far up the valley to the east the line of the new
railway gleamed here and there through the pines, while to the west
the Goat River gorge issued into the splendid expanse of the Kootenay
Valley, forest-clad and lying now in all the sunlit glory of its new
spring dress.

For some moments Dick stood gazing. "Of all views I see, this is the
best," he said. "Day or night I can get it clear as I see it now, and it
always brings me rest and co