together; in truth a change of mental atmosphere from the few decent crofter families of Balneish!

Hector's relative had lived long enough in America to have thoroughly absorbed one of its cardinal doctrinesthat everyone must look for himself. So beyond a word or two of warning now and again, Hector was left to take his own way.

The Widow in the meantime was having some new experiences too, as you may imagine. The first weeks of her stay had been a sort of confused yet happy dream. She had reached her son; she had finished her terrible journey. But then things began to wear another complexion. The heat became overpowering-there was no escape from it day or night; and sometimes in her simple way the old woman would "put up a prayer" that coolness might come. The thunderstorms terrified her when they burst above the little house with a strange crackling sound, and the very earth shook. Then, when evening came, there was sometimes a breath of fresher air, and Charlie would take her to sit out by the door. Away in the distance they could still see the lightning playing, like great swords thrust down out of heaven into the forest, and the Widow was scared by it. In the swamps the frogs kept up a constant chanting that she could not get accustomed to, and, worst of all, an occasional rattlesnake would appear.

"Och, it's the Evil One himself-I will have read it in the Good Book!" she cried, almost beside herself with terror. Mosquitoes, too-who could be doing with the like of them? And nothing would ever reconcile her to the negroes. So what with one thing and another life did not appear in its liveliest colors.

But these outside disagreeables would have mattered not at all if everything had gone smoothly indoors.

Alas! before many weeks had passed, difficulties began to crop up between the Widow and her daughter-in-law. Mrs. Charlie MacLean proved to have "a temper," and along with it a fiercely jealous nature. She could not see her husband's devotion to his mother without resenting it; and when the Widow also won the affections of little Donald it was more than she could bear. Like all jealous people, she tried to conceal her jealousy, and showed it in undeserved outbursts of anger about nothing. But she took good care never to lose her temper in this way before Charlie; it was always when he was out that these horrible scenes occurred. Then the old woman would cower before her, and take refuge in silence, always hoping that things would mend with time. Of course, instead of mending, they got worse and worse. The Widow began to wear a bullied, almost frightened, expression, and Charlie asked her often if she felt quite well. "It will be the heat," she always told him, anxious that he should suspect nothing. Then they would return to that unending converse they held together about the Island-that converse which so provoked and angered Charlie's wife. Why, she asked, why in all the world should her husband be wanting to know all the foolish things he was forever asking his mother about? He seemed to wish to know about every stone on the road, every bush on the hillside; and as for the questions he asked they were purely childish: Had the big boulder on the roadside still got the blasting-hole in it?-he remembered how he (and poor Andrew that's dead and gone) used to play at filling up the hole with mud on wet days; and was there a gate now where the path from the shieling joined the road to Balneish? What sort of gate was it? And was it true the byre needed new thatch? Did old John Matheson do

up in years.

So their talk ran; and Charlie's wife listened with very ill-concealed irritation. He could apparently never hear enough of the Island, and every evening when he came in from work would sit down beside his mother to hear more. It was just extraordinary the silly questions he found to ask. These hours of talk became the only happiness of the Widow's life-for them she lived through the long, hot, weary days, bearing with her daughter's illtemper. One night (but the wife was out then) she drew from her pocket the clumsy old key of the cottage door, and showed it to Charlie.

He held it reverently in his big workmarred hands for a long time, turning it round and round; then he gave it back to his mother without a word, but he drew his hand across his eye as he did so, and the Widow gave a great sob. How well that no one was there to behold their folly!

It was getting on to the month of August, when one day Hector came in very full of excitement, for something had happened. He had been at Cypress Creek, and there at the saloon had met some horse-traders from Mexico. These gentlemen, with their fringed leather gloves, slouched hats and sashes, had completely captivated Hector's imagination-how could it possibly have been otherwise? They had allowed him to mount into their high Mexican saddles, and had even complimented him on his lately acquired accomplishment of sticking on to a horse. Finally, they had proposed that he should return with them to Mexico for a couple of months to try how he liked their style of life. Hector was wildly anxious to go; his answer was to be given next day. But here Charlie was as adamant. Nothing would make him approve of this scheme. The horse-traders from Mex

altogether" for a lad like Hector to go with-he must stay where he was.

The verdict put Hector into something perilously like a bad temper. He would scarcely speak all the evening, and finally marched off to bed in silence.

"The lad's disappointed," Charlie said, with a smile.

"Och, Charlie, he's but young, for all he's SO tall and strong," said the Widow indulgently; "I'm thinking you were liking your own way yourself once."

"To be sure I was, mother, and Hector's a fine lad; I'd have given him his way if I could," said Charlie. Then he forgot all about the boy, and returned to his eternal talk of home.

The next morning, however, Hector did not appear at breakfast.

"He will be sleeping, I'm thinking," said the Widow, always anxious to defend her grandson.

Charlie's wife rose impatiently, and went to rouse the boy, grumbling as she went. But in a minute she returned, holding a bit of paper in her hand.

"Here's for you, grannie," she said, thrusting the paper at the Widow.

"I cannot be seeing it, Charlie," she said; and Charlie took it from her and read out:

I have gone off to Mexico, because I wish to see more of the world. I will be coming back in two months time. Do not be anxious for me. mother; I will be getting on all right. Your dutiful grandson,

Heator.

"Dutiful grandson, indeed!" Mrs. Charlie cried, and even Charlie was roused to indignation by this defiance of his authority. Only the Widow tried to soften down Hector's transgression, and pled with her son to remember the boy's youth and spirit.

But Charlie in stern haste set off there and then in the mule-cart in pursuit of Hector; only to find on inquiry at Cypress Creek that the horse-traders had made a mysterious departure in the small hours of the morning.

It was impossible to catch them up. Hector must be left to look after himself.

August and September went slowly past, October began, and still Hector did not return. He sent a letter once to the Widow, telling that he was well and happy; that was all. Many an anxious thought she had for him during these weary months, you may be

sure.

But at last one morning Hector walked into the house, without a word of warning, as coolly as possible, and quite as if he expected to be made welcome there.

His aunt, however, greeted him but coldly.

"It's you, is it, Hector? You might have sent word that you were coming; but you weren't over-civil when you left, so perhaps we couldn't look for it now," she said.

"Where's mother?" Hector asked, ignoring her words.

Mrs. Charlie put down the dish she was drying on to the table before she replied: "She's in bed: I don't know what's the matter with her, I'm sure."

Hector strode across the kitchen and ran up the little wooden stair that led to his grandmother's room. Opening the door he stood for a moment on the threshold and looked in.

The Widow was propped up in bed and lay with her eyes shut. There was an expression of humble weariness on her old face that was infinitely touching. "I am so tired," it semed to say; "but I must just wait; there is nothing I can do."

Everything round her was clean and comfortable-far more comfortable

than the old box-bed at home-but. still

Hector stepped across the floor softly,. thinking she was asleep. In a moment her eyes opened at the sound of his footstep.

"It'll be yourself, Charlie?" she asked, for her eyes were getting dimmer than ever.

"No, mother, it's Hector," he answered.

She gave her old cry of delight: “Och, Hector, and you're back safe and. sound! Wherever have you been all this long time, my laddie?"

"Just seeing the world," said Hector. "And what's the matter with you, mother? Is it sick you are?"

"I'm not knowing; I'm thinking it's the end coming," she said.

Hector had a sudden flash of intuition at that moment and a stab of conscience. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took her wrinkled hand in his, that was so young and strong.

"Tell me, mother, are you not liking to be here?" he asked in a whisper. She held on hard to his hand, and the long pent-up misery of all these months found speech at last.

"I'm wanting home, Hector; I'm wanting home to die-I couldn't be resting in the strange earth here.

. . Och, och, that I ever left Balneish!" she moaned.

"But then you'd not have been seeing Uncle Charlie again," Hector said, with another stab at the heart. "And would you like to be leaving him now— him that's so good to you, mother?"

The Widow pulled Hector's face down towards her that she might speak low into his ear.

"It's Charlie's wife that's wanting to be rid of me, Hector; she'll be saying things to me every day. She will have said it was a mistake that ever we came they were never wanting us; but, och, dear me! she'll not be troubled long with me now." The old woman

sobbed aloud as she gave this melancholy testimony to the hardness of human nature. Hector sat still, holding the old hand firmly in his. A terrible moment it was to him-the harvesttime of the only lie he had ever told. "I'm to tell you something, mother," he said at last. "It was me made up the message from Uncle Charlie in the letter-he never sent it; I was wearying of the Island, and couldn't get away."

Then, in a perfect agony of self-reproach, poor Hector knelt down by the side of the bed and prayed the Widow's forgiveness for what he had done. He had never thought it would make her unhappy, he had only thought she would like to see Charlie-and now she was miserable, and it was all his fault! In a moment a thousand fond excuses had leapt to her tongue. give him? She would never be thinking about it again! But Hector would listen to none of all this. The Cornhill Magazine.

For

One road

lay before him, and only one; it would be a bitter road, but he determined there and then to tread it.

"I'm to take you home, mother," he said.

She caught at his hand and peered into his face, trying to read there whether this blessed suggestion could be true.

"You'll be joking, Hector," she said sadly. But Hector shook his head. "I'm to take you home whenever you rise from the bed," he said doggedly. "Eh! and what will Charlie be saying?" she asked. "I'll never be telling him about the wife."

They were indeed on the horns of dilemma--how to make Charlie, the best of sons, understand why his mother wished to leave him in her age and frailty.

"I'm thinking you should tell him this, mother," Hector said at last, "that you're wanting to die at home." A moment later he added reflectively, "It's him that'll understand that."

On Sunday evening, the lights of Oxford Street sent a red glare upwards, while from Marble Arch irregular yellow eyes, slung in darkness, led through the shadowed Park. Rain dripped from leafless trees, and the backs of tilted chairs; lamplight flickered upon the curved fronts of other chairs, erect and glimmering, like rows of fleshless ghosts. Lights from Oxford Street flared reddish to the sky; by Marble Arch, they took a tinge of green and wavered on the faces of a great crowd, which, though always moving, never seemed to move away. Restless, yet apathetic, stirred with difficulty to applause or protest, thus, week by week and year by year, the shepherdless sheep of London gather round Marble

Arch, where Church-Army man pits his voice against Freethinker and Humanitarian Deist, while Socialist and Anti-vivisectionist rage from adjacent

groups.

Beyond, in the Park, shadows lay black; wind stirred through leafless boughs, and furtive figures glided to and fro; sound of traffic from Edgware Road swept across with a faint, unmeaning hum. Soon eager faces, staring eyes, were raised above the blackness of the crowd, as one by one the shepherds came, chose their vantageground, and sought to gather in their flocks. Back to the railings they stood-flare of the gas shone on open mouths and glistening eyes, on thin hands gesticulating above a sea of

Two or three men detached themselves from the crowd, and strolled towards a Humanitarian Deist, whose voice boomed across the darkness; at that, the lecturer on "War against War" darted his head forward with a curious snake-like movement, and struck the audience for a moment to something less of apathy. He flung his arms wide; light gleamed on his jagged teeth and wide-open eyes.

"War?" he yelled, "the curse of God upon us! an unending curse! Bred in our bone, deep in our blood-a primal instinct, you say? Primal insanity! For shame, brute beasts that you are! to hanker after war still, in this twentieth century. War! with its nameless horrors, its fields running red with blood of fathers, husbands, lovers. . . War-that turns the land into a butcher's shambles, with Christian souls for victims. beasts!" he spat at the crowd, who stared back listlessly, since enthusiasm. is by rights confined to the shepherds at Marble Arch; the sheep will have none of it.

Ah, you

Pasty-faced and vehement, beneath his crimson banner, the Humanitarian Deist strove to cry down his neighbor; there flanked him a Freethinker, with goat-like beard, and hair dangling over a grimy collar. His bowler hat was pushed far back; with lean yellow hands he flung the doctrines of Chris

tianity away into the blackness of the Park.

"Me friends!" he cried, and showed his teeth, "I tike up me Sunday piper,. and I see a case of a young man-earning good wages, mind you, not bitter 'ungry as some of us are who 'as stolen ten pounds from his master. 'Oo is that young man? A Freethinker, an', therefore, a lorst soul, as some Christians would say? No, me friends, that young man is a member of the Y.M.C.A. 'Ow's that? Y.M.C.A.! What's Christianity done for that young man? Made 'im a thief! A thief!" he repeated, with extraordinary ferocity. His eyes glittered to right and left; he clenched and unclenched his hands, squeezing them as though Christianity, in some corporeal form, were within.

"He who died for us!" came in thin, appealing tones from the darkness.

"Christianity," shouted the Freethinker, "made that young man a thief!"

Like a faint breath of wind remonstrance passed through the crowd; oneor two listeners moved uneasily. Like a breath of wind the remonstrancecame, like a breath it passed; the Freethinker cleared his throat, and proceeded to deal straitly with the Established Church-no one applauded, no one demurred. At last, almost voiceless, and deathly white, he staggered from the platform; there sprang to take his place a pasty-faced boy, whose subject was the wickedness of the clergy.

Under a plane tree, ten yards away, gathered a knot of whispering men, shepherded by the Christian Evidence Society. "Evidence!" murmured the leader, drawing his soft hat further over his eyes, "that's what you wantthat's what I want. Now, here. . . .”

He rustled among green pamphlets, and lowered his voice still more; round him, heads gathered closely, while,