"What said Innes?" enquired his father.

"Did you ever hear Innes say much? From his silence one would judge that he must possess the accumulated wisdom of the ages."

"When he does talk, however, he generally says something. What was his contribution?"

"'Ah, weel,' said the silent one, 'Ah doot he's no a Spurgeon, not yet a Billy Sunday, but ye'll hardly be expectin' thae fowk at Wapiti for nine hundred dollars a year.' Then, bless his old heart, he added, 'But the bairns tak to him like ducks to water, so you'd better bide a bit.' So they decided to 'bide a bit' till next Sunday. Dad, at first I wanted to throw their job in their faces, only I always know that it is the old Adam in me that feels like that, so I decided to 'bide a bit' too."

"It is a poor job, after all, my boy," said his father. "It's no gentleman's job the way it is carried on in this country. To think of your being at the bidding of a creature like Hayes!"

He could have said no better word. The boy's face cleared like the sudden shining of the sun after rain. He lifted his head and said,

"Thank God, not at his bidding, dad. 'One is your Master,'" he quoted.

"But after all, Hayes has something good in him. Do you know, I rather like him. He's--"

"Oh, come now, we'll drop it right there," said his father, in a disgusted tone. "When you come to finding something to like in that rat, I surrender."

"Who knows?" said the boy, as if to himself. "Poor Hayes. He may be quite a wonderful man, considering all things, his heredity and his environment. What would I have been, dad, but for you?"

His father grunted, pulled hard at his pipe, coughed a bit, then looked his son straight in the face, saying, "God knows what any of us owe to our past." He fell into silence. His mind was far away, following his heart to the palisaded plot of ground among the Foothills and the little grave there in which he had covered from his sight her that had been the inspiration to his best and finest things, and his defence against the things low and base that had once hounded his soul, howling hard upon his trail.

The son, knowing his mood, sat in silence with him, then rising suddenly he sat himself on the arm of his father's chair, threw his arm around his shoulder and said, "Dear old dad! Good old boy you are, too. Good stuff! What would I have been but for you? A puny, puling, wretched little crock, afraid of anything that could spit at me. Do you remember the old gander? I was near my eternal damnation that day."

"But you won out, my boy," said his father in a croaking voice, putting his arm round his son.

"Yes, because you made me stick it, just as you have often made me stick it since. May God forget me if I ever forget what you have done for me.

Shall we read now?"

He took the big Bible from its place upon the table, and turning the leaves read aloud from the teachings of the world's greatest Master. It was the parable of the talents.

"Rather hard on the failure," he said as he closed the book.

"No, not the failure," said his father, "the slacker, the quitter. It is nature's law. There is no place in God's universe for a quitter."

"You are right, dad," said Barry. "Good-night."

He kissed his father, as he had ever done since his earliest infancy.

Their prayers were said in private, the son, clergyman though he was, could never bring himself to offer to lead the devotions of him at whose knee he had kneeled every night of his life, as a boy, for his evening prayer.

"Good-night, boy," said his father, holding him by the hand for a moment or so. "We do not know what is before us, defeat, loss, suffering. That part is not in our hands altogether, but the shame of the quitter never need, and never shall be ours."

The little man stepped into his bedroom with his shoulders squared and his head erect.

"By Jove! He's no quitter," said his son to himself, as his eyes followed him. "When he quits he'll be dead. God keep me from shaming him!"

CHAPTER IV

REJECTED

The hour for the church service had not quite arrived, but already a number of wagons, buckboards and buggies had driven up and deposited their loads at the church door. The women had passed into the church, where the Sunday School was already in session; the men waited outside, driven by the heat of the July sun and the hotter July wind into the shade of the church building.

Through the church windows came the droning of voices, with now and then a staccato rapping out of commands heard above the droning.

"That's Hayes," said a sturdy young chap, brown as an Indian, lolling upon the grass. "He likes to be bossing something."

"That's so, Ewen," replied a smaller man, with a fish-like face, his mouth and nose running into a single feature.

"I guess he's doin' his best, Nathan Pilley," answered another man, stout and stocky, with bushy side whiskers flanking around a rubicund face, out of which stared two prominent blue eyes.

"Oh, I reckon he is, Mr. Boggs. I have no word agin Hayes," replied Nathan Pilley, a North Ontario man, who, abandoning a rocky farm in Muskoka, had strayed to this far west country in search of better fortune. "I have no word agin Mr. Hayes, Mr. Boggs," he reiterated. "In fact, I think he ought to be highly commended for his beneficent work."

"But he does like to hear himself giving out orders, all the same,"

persisted the young man addressed as Ewen.

"Yes, he seems to sorter enjoy that, too, Ewen," agreed Nathan, who was never known to oppose any man's opinion.

"He's doin' his best," insisted Mr. Boggs, rather sullenly.

"Yes, he is that, Mr. Boggs, he is that," said Nathan.

"But he likes to be the big toad in the puddle," said Ewen.

"Well, he certainly seems to, he does indeed, Ewen."

Clear over the droning there arose at this point another sound, a chorus of childish laughter.

"That's the preacher's class," said Boggs. "Quare sort o' Sunday School where the kids carry on like that."

"Seems rather peculiar," agreed Nathan, "peculiar in Sunday School, it does."

"What's the matter with young Pickles?" enquired Ewen.

The eyes of the company, following the pointing finger, fell upon young Pickles standing at the window of the little vestry to the church, and looking in. He was apparently convulsed with laughter, with his hand hard upon his mouth and nose as a kind of silencer.

"Do you know what's the matter with him, Pat?" continued Ewen.

Pat McCann, the faithful friend and shadow of young Pickles, after studying the attitude and motions of his friend, gave answer:

"It's the preacher, I guess. He's kiddin' the kids inside. He's some kidder, too," he said, moving to take his place beside his friend.

"What's he doing anyway?" said Ewen. "I'm going to see."

Gradually a little company gathered behind young Pickles and Pat McCann.

The window commanded a view of the room, yet in such a way that the group were unobserved by the speaker.

"Say, you ought to seen him do the camel a minute ago," whispered Pickles.