"No, not that, dad, that's sickening. I consider that the most morally relaxing bit of music that I know. It frays the whole moral fibre. Give us one of Chopin's Ballades, or better still a bit of that posthumous Fantasie Impromptu, the largo movement. Ah! fine! fine!"

He flung his dish-cloth aside, ran to the piano and began an accompaniment to his father's playing.

"Now, dad, the Largo once more before we close." They did the Largo once and again, then springing from the piano Barry cried: "That Largo is a means of grace to me. There could be no better preparation for a religious meeting than that. If you would only come in and play for them, it would do them much more good than all my preaching."

"If you would only take your music seriously, Barry," replied his father, somewhat sadly, "you would become a good player, perhaps even a great player."

"And then what, dad?"

His father waved him aside, putting up his 'cello.

"No use going into that again, boy."

"Well, I couldn't have been a great player, at any rate, dad."

"Perhaps not, boy, perhaps not," said his father. "Great players are very rare. But it is time for your meeting."

"So it is, dad. Awfully sorry I didn't finish up those dishes. Let them go till I return. I wish you would, dad, and come along with me." His voice had a wistful note in it.

"Not to-night, boy, I think. We will have some talk after. You will only be an hour, you know."

"All right, dad," said Barry. "Some time you may come." He could not hide the wistful regret of his tone.

"Perhaps I shall, boy," replied his father.

It was the one point upon which there was a lack of perfect harmony between father and son. When the boy went to college it was with the intention of entering the profession of law, for which his father had been reading in his young manhood when the lure of Canada and her broad, free acres caught him, and he had abandoned the law and with his wife and baby boy had emigrated to become a land owner in the great Canadian west.

Alas! death, that rude spoiler of so many plans, broke in upon the sanctity and perfect peace of that happy ranch home and ravished it of its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy, orphaned and sickly, to be cared for. The ranch was sold, the rancher moved to the city of Edmonton, thence in a few years to a little village some twenty-five miles nearer to the Foothills, where he became the Registrar and Homestead Inspector for the district.

Here he had lived ever since, training the torn tendrils of his heart about the lad, till peace came back again, though never the perfect joy of the earlier days. Every May Day the two were wont to go upon an expedition many miles into the Foothills, to a little, sunny spot, where a strong, palisaded enclosure held a little grave. So little it looked, and so lonely amid the great hills. There, not in an abandonment of grief, but in loving and grateful remembrance of her whose dust the little grave now held, of what she had been to them, and had done for them, they spent the day, returning to take up again with hearts solemn, tender and chastened, the daily routine of life.

That his son should grow to take up the profession of law had been the father's dream, but during his university course the boy had come under the compelling influence of a spiritual awakening that swept him into a world filled with new impressions and other desires. Obeying what he felt to be an imperative call, the boy chose the church as his profession, and after completing his theological course in the city of Winnipeg, and spending a year in study in Germany, while still a mere youth he had been appointed as missionary to the district of which his own village was the centre.

But though widely separate from each other in the matter of religion, there were many points of contact between them. They were both men of the great out-of-doors, and under his father's inspiration and direction the boy had come to love athletic exercises of all kinds. They were both music-mad, the father having had in early youth a thorough musical education, the boy possessing musical talent of a high order. Such training as was his he had received from his father, but it was confined to one single instrument, the violin. To this instrument, upon which his father had received the tuition of a really excellent master, the son devoted long hours of study and practice during his boyhood years, and his attainments were such as to give promise of something more than an amateur's mastery of his instrument. His college work, however, interfered with his music, and to his father's great disappointment and regret he was forced to lay aside his study of the violin. On the piano, however, the boy developed an extraordinary power of improvisation and of sight reading, and while his technique was faulty his insight, his power of interpretation were far in excess of many artists who were his superiors in musical knowledge and power of execution. Many were the hours the father and son spent together through the long evenings of the western winter, and among the many bonds that held them in close comradeship, none was stronger than their common devotion to music.

Long after his son had departed to his meeting the father sat dreaming over his 'cello, wandering among the familiar bits from the old masters as fancy led him, nor was he aware of the lapse of time till his son returned.

"Hello! Nine-thirty?" he exclaimed, looking at his watch. "You have given them an extra dose to-night."

"Business meeting afterwards, which didn't come off after all," said his son. "Postponed till next Sunday." With this curt announcement, and without further comment he sat down at his desk.

But after a few moments he rose quickly, saying, "Let us do some real work, dad."

He took up his violin. His father, who was used to his moods, without question or remark proceeded to tune up. An hour's hard practice followed, without word from either except as regarded the work in hand.

"I feel better now, dad," said the young man when they had finished.

"And now for a round with you."

"But what about your wind, boy? I don't like that asthma of yours this afternoon."

"I am quite all right. It's quite gone. I feel sure it was the pollen from the beaver meadow."

They cleared back the table and chairs from the centre of the room, stripped to their shirts, put on the gloves and went at each other with vim. Their style was similar, for the father had taught the son all he knew, except that the father's was the fighting and the son's the sparring style. To-night the roles appeared to be reversed, the son pressing hard at the in-fighting, the father trusting to his foot work and countering with the light touch of a man making points.

"You ARE boring in, aren't you?" said the father, stopping a fierce rally.

"You are not playing up, dad," said his son. "I don't feel like soft work to-night. Come to me!"

"As you say," replied the father, and for the next five minutes Barry had no reason to complain of soft work, for his father went after him with all the fight that was in him, so that in spite of a vigorous defence the son was forced to take refuge in a runaway game.

"Now you're going!" shouted the son, making a fierce counter with his right to a hard driven left, which he side-stepped. It was a fatal exposure. Like the dart of a snake the right hand hook got him below the jaw, and he was hurled breathless on the couch at the side of the room.

"Got you now!" said his father.

"Not quite yet," cried Barry. Like a cat he was on his feet, breathing deep breaths, dodging about, fighting for time.

"Enough!" cried his father, putting down his hands.

"Play up!" shouted Barry, who was rapidly recovering his wind. "No soft work. Watch out!"

Again the father was on guard, while Barry, who seemed to have drawn upon some secret source of strength, came at him with a whirlwind attack, feinting, jabbing, swinging, hooking, till finally he landed a short half arm on the jaw, which staggered his father against the wall.

"Pax!" cried the young man. "I have all I want."

"Great!" said his father. "I believe you could fight, boy, if you were forced to."

In the shed they sluiced each other with pails of water, had a rub down and got into their dressing gowns.

"I feel fine, now, dad, and ready for anything," said Barry, glowing with his exercise and his tub. "I was feeling like a quitter. I guess that asthma got at my nerve. But I believe I will see it through some way."

"Yes?" said his father, and waited.

"Yes. They were talking blue ruin in there to-night. Finances are behind, congregation is running down, therefore the preacher is a failure."

"Well, lad, remember this," said his father, "never let your liver decide any course of action for you. Some good stiff work, a turn with the gloves, for instance, is the best preparation I know for any important decision. A man cannot decide wisely when he feels grubby.

Your asthma this afternoon is a symptom of liver."

"It is humiliating to a creature endowed with conscience and intellect to discover how small a part these play at times in his decisions.

The ancients were not far wrong who made the liver the seat of the emotions."

"Well," said his father, "it is a good thing to remember that most of our bad hours come from our livers. So the preacher is a failure? Who said so?"

"Oh, a number of them, principally Hayes."

"Thank God, and go to sleep," said his father. "If Hayes were pleased with my preaching I should greatly suspect my call to the ministry."

"But seriously, I am certainly not a great preacher, and perhaps not a preacher at all. They say I have no 'pep,' which with some of them appears to be the distinctive and altogether necessary characteristic of a popular preacher."