ings in this world beyond human
remedy."

Two evenings later I was surprised to see the Scotch Preacher drive up
to my gate and hastily tie his horse.

"David," said he, "there's bad business afoot. A lot of the young
fellows in Swan Hill are planning a raid on Old Toombs's hedge. They are
coming down to-night."

I got my hat and jumped in with him. We drove up the hilly road and out
around Old Toombs's farm and thus came, near to the settlement. I had no
conception of the bitterness that the lawsuit had engendered.

"Where once you start men hating one another," said the Scotch Preacher,
"there's utterly no end of it."

I have seen our Scotch Preacher in many difficult places, but never have
I seen him rise to greater heights than he did that night. It is not in
his preaching that Doctor McAlway excels, but what a power he is among
men! He was like some stern old giant, standing there and holding up the
portals of civilization. I saw men melt under his words like wax; I saw
wild young fellows subdued into quietude; I saw unwise old men set to
thinking.

"Man, man," he'd say, lapsing in his earnestness into the broad Scotch
accent of his youth, "you canna' mean plunder, and destruction, and
riot! You canna! Not in this neighbourhood!"

"What about Old Toombs?" shouted one of the boys.

I never shall forget how Doctor McAlway drew himself up nor the majesty
that looked from his eye.

"Old Toombs!" he said in a voice that thrilled one to the bone, "Old
Toombs! Have you no faith, that you stand in the place of Almighty God
and measure punishments?"

Before we left it was past midnight and we drove home, almost silent, in
the darkness.

"Doctor McAlway," I said, "if Old Toombs could know the history of this
night it might change his point of view."

"I doot it," said the Scotch Preacher. "I doot it."

The night passed serenely; the morning saw Old Toombs's hedge standing
as gorgeous as ever. The community had again stepped aside and let Old
Toombs have his way: they had let him alone, with all his great barns,
his wide acres and his wonderful hedge. He probably never even knew what
had threatened him that night, nor how the forces of religion, of social
order, of neighbourliness in the community which he despised had, after
all, held him safe. There is a supreme faith among common people--it is,
indeed, the very taproot of democracy--that although the unfriendly one
may persist long in his power and arrogan