.

"'Look here,' ses the mate. 'If I kill any one o' these men, I'll give
you twenty pound. Honor bright, I will.'

"'Make it twenty-five,' ses the skipper, considering.

"'Very good,' ses the mate. 'Twenty-five; I can't say no fairer than
that, can I? It's about time for another dose now.'

"He gave 'em another tablespoonful all round as the skipper left, an'
the chaps what wasn't invalids nearly bust with joy. He wouldn't let
'em have anything to take the taste out, 'cos he said it didn't give
the medicine a chance, an' he told us other chaps to remove the
temptation, an' you bet we did.

"After the fifth dose, the invalids began to get desperate, an' when
they heard they'd got to be woke up every twenty minutes through the
night to take the stuff, they sort o' give up. Old Dan said he felt a
gentle glow stealing over him and strengthening him, and Harry said
that it felt like a healing balm to his lungs. All of 'em agreed it
was a wonderful sort o' medicine, an' arter the sixth dose the man with
paralysis dashed up on deck, and ran up the rigging like a cat. He sat
there for hours spitting, an' swore he'd brain anybody who interrupted
him, an' arter a little while Mike Rafferty went up and j'ined him, an'
if the fust mate's ears didn't burn by reason of the things them two
pore sufferers said about 'im, they ought to.

"They was all doing full work next day, an' though, o' course, the
skipper saw how he'd been done, he didn't allude to it. Not in words,
that is; but when a man tries to make four chaps do the work of eight,
an' hits 'em when they don't, it's a easy job to see where the shoe
pinches."

THE STICKIT MINISTER

By S. R. CROCKETT

THE RENUNCIATION OP ROBERT FRASER, FORMERLY STUDENT IN DIVINITY

The crows were wheeling behind the plough in scattering clusters, and
plumping singly upon the soft, thick grubs which the ploughshare was
turning out upon an unkindly world. It was a bask blowy day in the end
of March, and there was a hint of storm in the air--a hint emphasised
for those skilled in weather lore by the presence of half a dozen
sea-gulls, white vagrants among the black coats, blown by the south
wind up from the Solway--a snell, Scotch, but not unfriendly day
altogether. Robert Fraser bent to the plough handles, and cast a keen
and wary eye towards his guide posts on the ridge. His face was
colourless, even when a dash of rain came swirling across from the
crest of Ben