.

Nor can all the pleasure of that day be told. The little log-house was
like a palace in the eyes of Morely. Indeed, it would have been very
nice in any one's eyes. The beds had been moved into the inner room,
now that no fire was needed; and the large room, which was parlour and
kitchen all in one, was as neat and clean as it could be made. It was
bright, too, with flowers and evergreens and branches of cherry-blossom;
and there were many comfortable and pretty things in it that Morely had
never seen there before.

They did not stay much in the house, however. Mr and Mrs Grattan came
up in the afternoon, and with them one whom John Morely presented to his
wife as the best friend she had in the world, after Grattan and his
wife--his friend Samuel Muir. Knowing a little of what he had been to
her husband all these months past, Mrs Morely welcomed him with
smiles--and tears, too--and many a silent blessing: and if he had been
the head of the firm--Steel and Ironside in one--he could not have been
a more honoured guest.

They sat out on the hill during most of the afternoon. The day was
perfect. It was warm in the sun, but cool in the shadow of the
evergreens. The maples and elms did not throw deep shadows yet, and the
air was sweet and fresh and still.

It was a very happy day to them all. To Samuel Muir it was a day never
to be forgotten. Montreal is not a very great city. An hour's walk
from the heart of it, in any direction, will bring one either to the
river or to fields where wild flowers grow. But his life had been town
life--and a very busy one; and to sit in the mild air, amid the sweet
sounds and sweeter silence of the spring time, among all these happy
children, was something wonderful to him. His constant anxious care for
Morely all the winter had done much to make a man of him. His little
weaknesses and vanities had fallen from him in the midst of his real
work; and seeing the happy mother and her children, his heart filled
with humble thankfulness to God, who had permitted him to help the
husband and father to stand against his enemy.

As for Stephen Grattan, the sight of his face was good that day. He did
not say much, but sat looking out over the river, and the village, and
the hills beyond, as though he was not seeing _them_, but something
infinitely fairer. Now and then, as he gazed, his thoughts overflowed
in words not his own: "As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so
the