future balances: they might believe everything,
they would express nothing; and I doubt whether Lorne himself had any
map of the country he meant to travel over in that vague future, already
defining in local approbation, and law business coming freely in with
a special eye on the junior partner. But the tract was there,
subconscious, plain in the wider glance, the alerter manner; plain even
in the grasp and stride which marked him in a crowd; plain, too, in the
preoccupation with other issues, were it only turning over a leader
in the morning's Dominion, that carried him along indifferent to the
allurements I have described. The family had a bond of union in their
respect for Lorne, and this absence of nugatory inclinations in him
was among its elements. Even Stella who, being just fourteen, was the
natural mouthpiece of family sentiment, would declare that Lorne had
something better to do than go hanging about after girls, and for her
part she thought all the more of him for it.

CHAPTER IV

"I am requested to announce," said Dr Drummond after the singing of the
last hymn, "the death, yesterday morning, of James Archibald Ramsay,
for fifteen years an adherent and for twenty-five years a member of this
church. The funeral will take place from the residence of the deceased,
on Court House Street, tomorrow afternoon at four o'clock. Friends and
acquaintances are respectfully--invited--to attend."

The minister's voice changed with the character of its affairs. Still
vibrating with the delivery of his sermon, it was now charged with the
official business of the interment. In its inflections it expressed both
elegy and eulogy; and in the brief pause before and after "invited" and
the fall of "attend" there was the last word of comment upon the mortal
term. A crispation of interest passed over the congregation; every chin
was raised. Dr Drummond's voice had a wonderful claiming power, but he
often said he wished his congregation would pay as undivided attention
to the sermon as they did to the announcements.

"The usual weekly prayer meeting will be held in the basement of the
church on Wednesday evening." Then almost in a tone of colloquy, and
with just a hint of satire about his long upper lip--

"I should be glad to see a better attendance of the young people at
these gatherings. Time was when the prayer meeting counted among our
young men and women as an occasion not to be lightly passed over. In
these days