me of it; and, usually after years of "attention," a
young man of Elgin found himself mated to a young woman, but never under
circumstances that could be called precipitate or rash. The cautious
blood and far sight of the early settlers, who had much to reckon with,
were still preponderant social characteristics of the town they cleared
the site for. Meanwhile, however, flowers were gathered, and all sorts
of evanescent idylls came and went in the relations of young men and
maidens. Alec and Oliver Murchison were already in the full tide of
them.

From this point of view they did not know what to make of Lorne. It was
not as if their brother were in any way ill calculated to attract that
interest which gave to youthful existence in Elgin almost the only
flavour that it had. Looks are looks, and Lorne had plenty of them;
taller by an inch than Alec, broader by two than Oliver, with a fine
square head and blue eyes in it, and features which conveyed purpose and
humour, lighted by a certain simplicity of soul that pleased even when
it was not understood. "Open," people said he was, and "frank"--so he
was, frank and open, with horizons and intentions; you could see them in
his face. Perhaps it was more conscious of them than he was. Ambition,
definitely shining goals, adorn the perspectives of young men in new
countries less often than is commonly supposed. Lorne meant to be a good
lawyer, squarely proposed to himself that the country should hold no
better; and as to more selective usefulness, he hoped to do a little
stumping for the right side when Frank Jennings ran for the Ontario
House in the fall. It wouldn't be his first electioneering: from the day
he became chairman of the Young Liberals the party had an eye on him,
and when occasion arose, winter or summer, by bobsleigh or buggy,
weatherbeaten local bosses would convey him to country schoolhouses for
miles about to keep a district sound on railway policy, or education,
or tariff reform. He came home smiling with the triumphs of these
occasions, and offered them, with the slow, good-humoured, capable drawl
that inspired such confidence in him, to his family at breakfast, who
said "Great!" or "Good for you, Lorne!" John Murchison oftenest said
nothing, but would glance significantly at his wife, frowning and
pursing his lips when she, who had most spirit of them all, would
exclaim, "You'll be Premier yet, Lorne!" It was no part of the Murchison
policy to draw against