cup of self-denial,"
Crozier continued, "though Bradley and his gang have closed every door
against me here, and I've come back without what I went for at Aspen
Vale, for my men were away. I've come back without what I went for,
but I must just grin and bear it." He shrugged his shoulders and gave a
great sigh.

"Perhaps you'll find what you went for here," returned the Young Doctor
meaningly.

"There's a lot here--enough to make a man think life worth
while"--inside the room the wife shrank at the words, for she could hear
all--"but just the same I'm not thinking the thing I went to look for is
hereabouts."

"You never know your luck," was the reply. "'Ask and you shall find,
knock and it shall be opened unto you.'"

The long face blazed up with humour again. "Do you mean that I haven't
asked you yet?" Crozier remarked, with a quizzical look, which had still
that faint hope against hope which is a painful thing for a good man's
eyes to see.

The Young Doctor laid a hand on Crozier's arm. "No, I didn't mean that,
patient. I'm in that state when every penny I have is out to keep me
from getting a fall. I'm in that Starwhon coal-mine down at Bethbridge,
and it's like a suction-pump. I couldn't borrow a thousand dollars
myself now. I can't do it, or I'd stand in with you, Crozier. No, I
can't help you a bit; but step inside. There's a room in this house
where you got back your life by the help of a knife. There's another
room in there where you may get back your fortune by the help of a
wife."

Stepping aside he gave the wondering Crozier a slight push forward into
the doorway, then left him and hurried round to the back of the house,
where he hoped he might see Kitty.

The Young Doctor found Kitty pumping water on a pail of potatoes and
stirring them with a broom-handle.

"A most unscientific way of cleaning potatoes," he said, as Kitty did
not look at him. "If you put them in a trough where the water could run
off, the dirt would go with the water, and you would'nt waste time and
intelligence, and your fingers would be cleaner in the end."

The only reply Kitty made was to flick the broomhead at him. It had been
dipped in water, and the spray from it slightly spattered his face.

"Will you never grow up?" he exclaimed as he applied a handkerchief to
his ruddy face.

"I'd like you so much better if you were younger--will you never be
young?" she asked.

"It makes a man old before his time to have to meet