fell on former days and were wonderful company.

"It's not really about the road I wish to talk to you," and the Doctor closed the door of the General's den, "but about . . . a terrible calamity that has befallen you and me, Jack, and I am to blame."

"What is it?" and Carnegie sat erect; does it touch our name or Kate?"

"Neither, thank God," said David

son.

"Then it cannot be so very bad. Let us have it at once," and the General lighted a cheroot.

"Our bank has failed, and we shall have to give up everything to pay the debt, and... Jack, it was I advised you to buy the shares." The Doctor rose and went to the window.

"For God's sake don't do that, Sandie. Why, man, you gave me the best advice you knew, and there's an end of it. It's the fortune of war, and we must take it without whining. I know whom you are thinking about, and I am... a bit sorry for Kate, for she ought to have lots of things-more dresses and trinkets, you know. But, Davidson, she 'll be the bravest of the three."

"You are right there, Jack. Kate is of the true grit, but......Tochty Lodge?"

"

Yes, it will hit us pretty hard to see the old place sold, if it comes to that, when I hoped to end my days here.........but, man, it's our fate. Bit by bit we've lost Drumtochty, till there was just the woods and the two farms left, and soon we 'ill be out of the place -nothing left but our graves."

"Sandie, this is bad form, and..... you 'ill not hear this talk again; we 'ill get a billet somewhere and wherever it be, the'ill be a bed and a crust for old man;" you, and at the door the two held one another's hands for a second; that was all.

"So this was what you two conspirators were talking about down

stairs, as if I could not be trusted. Did you think that I would faint, or perhaps weep? The Padre deserves a good scolding, and as for youThen Kate went over and cast an arm round her father's neck, whose face was quivering.

"It is rather a disappointment to leave the Lodge, when we were getting it to our mind; but we'll have a jolly little home somewhere; and I'll get a chance of earning something. Dancing, now-I think that I might be able to teach some girls how to waltz. Then, my French is really intelligible, and most colloquial; besides revolver shooting. Dad, we are on our way to a fortune, and at the worst you 'ill have your curry and cheroots, and I'll have a well-fitting dress. Voila, mon père."

When the two Drumtochty men arrived next forenoon at the hall in Glasgow, where the shareholders had been summoned to receive particulars of their ruin, the dreary place was filled with a crowd representative of every class in the community except the highest, whose wealth is in land, and the lowest, whose possessions are on their backs. There were city merchants, who could not conceal their chagrin that they had been befooled; countrymen, who seemed utterly dazed, as if the course of the seasons had been reversed; prosperous tradesmen, who were aggressive in appearance and wanted to take it out of somebody; widows, who could hardly restrain their tears, seeing before them nothing but starvation; clergymen, who were thinking of their boys taken from school and college. For a while the victims were silent, and watched with hungry eyes the platform door, and there was an eager rustle when some clerk came out and laid a bundle of papers on the table. This incident seemed to excite the meeting and set tongues loose. People began to talk to their neighbours, explaining how they came to be connected with the bank, as if this were now a crime. One had

inherited the shares and had never had resolution to sell them; another had been deceived by a friend and bought them; a third had taken over two shares for a bad debt. A minister thought that he must have been summoned by mistake, for he was simply a trustee on an estate which had shares, but he was plainly nervous about his position. An Ayrshire Bailie had only had his shares for six months, and he put it, with municipal eloquence, to his circle, whether he could be held responsible for frauds of years' standing No one argued with him, and indeed you might say anything you pleased, for each was so much taken up with his own case that he only listened to you that he might establish a claim in turn on your attention. Here and there a noisy and confident personage got a larger audience by professing to have private information. A second-rate stockbroker assured quite a congregation that the assets of the bank included an estate in Australia, which would more than pay the whole debt, and advised them to see that it was not flung away; and a Government pensioner mentioned casually in his neighbourhood, on the authority of one of the managers, that there was not that day a solvent bank in Scotland. The different conversations rise to a babel, various speakers enforce their views on the floor with umbrellas, one enthusiast exhorts his brother unfortunates from a chair, when suddenly there is a hush, and then in a painful silence the shareholders hang on the lips of the accountant, from whom they learn that things could not be worse, that the richest shareholder may be ruined, and ordinary people will lose their last penny. Speech again breaks forth, but now it is despairing, fierce, vindictive. One speaker storms against Government which allows public institutions to defraud the public, and refers to himself as the widow and orphan, and another assails the directorate with bitter invective as liars and thieves, and insists

on knowing whether they are to be punished. The game having now been unearthed, the pack follow in full cry. The tradesman tells with much gusto how one director asked the detectives for leave to have family prayers before he was removed, and then declares his conviction that when a man takes to praying you had better look after your watch. Ayrshire wished to inform the accountant and the authorities that the directors had conveyed to their wives and friends enormous sums which ought to be seized without delay. The air grew thick with upbraidings, complaints, cries for vengeance, till the place reeked with sordid passions. Through all this ignoble storm the Drumtochty men sat silent, amazed, disgusted, till at last the Doctor rose, and such authority was in his very appearance that with his first words he obtained a hearing.

"Mr. Accountant," he said, "and gentleman, it appears to me as if under a natural provocation and suffering we are in danger of forgetting our due dignity and self-respect. We have been, as is supposed, the subjects of fraud on the part of those whom we trusted; that is a matter which the law will decide, and, if necessary, punish. If we have been betrayed, then the directors are in worse case than the shareholders, for we are not disgraced The duty before us is plain, and must be discharged to our utmost ability. It is to go home and gather together the last penny for the payment of our debts, in order that, at any rate, those who have trusted us may not be disappointed. Gentlemen, it is evident that we have lost our means; let us show to Scotland that there is something that cannot be taken from us by fraud, and that we have retained our courage and our honour."

It was the General who led the applause so that the roof of the hall rang, but it is just unto Ayrshire and the rest to say that they came unto themselves-all men of the old Scots

The sounds of that speech went through Scotland and awoke the spirit of honest men in many places, so that the Doctor, travelling to Muirtown, third class, with the General, and wedged in among a set of cattle dealers, was so abashed by their remarks as they read the Caledonian that the General let out the secret.

"Yir hand, sir," said the chief among them, a mighty man at the Falkirk Tryst; "gin it bena a leeberty, ilka ane o's hes a sair fecht tae keep straicht in oor wy o' business, but ye've gien's a lift the day," and so they must needs all have a grip of the Doctor's hand, who took snuff with prodigality, while the General complained of the smoke from the engine.

Nor were their trials over, for on Muirtown platform-it being Friday -all kinds of Perthshire men were gathered, and were so proud of our Doctor that before he got shelter in the Dunleith train his hand was sore, and the men that grasped it were of all kinds, from Lord Kilspindie-who, having missed him at the manse, had come to catch him at the stationBest sermon you ever preached,

It was a fine instance of the unfailing tact of Peter Bruce that, seeing the carriage out of which the two came, and taking in the situation, he made no offer of the first class, but straightway dusted out a third with his handkerchief, and escorted them to it cap in hand. Drumtochty restrained itself with an effort in foreign parts-for Kildrummie was exceptionally strong at the Junction-but it waited at the terminus till the outer world had gone up the road. Then their own folk took the two in hand, and these were the body-guard that escorted the Minister and the General to where our Kate was waiting with the dogcart, each carrying some morsel of luggage-Drumsheugh, Burnbrae, Hillocks, Netherton, Jamie Soutar, and Archie Moncur. Kate drove gloriously through Kildrummie as if it had been a triumph, and let it be said to its credit that, the news having come, every hat was lifted, but that which lasted till they got home, and long afterward, was the hand-shake of the Drumtochty men.

ΟΝ

the 17th of February last, the Senate Chamber of the Parliament of Canada presented a pageant happily conceived and admirably directed by Her Excellency the Countess of Aberdeen. That termed a Fancy Ball was, in reality, a significant object lesson, illustrative of various epochs in Canadian history, eminently calculated to awaken interest in personages who, during successive periods, had been prominent in the discovery, settlement and progress of the Dominion. It was history in the concrete, from days when, in 982, Eirek, or Leif Eirekson, and his Norsemen penetrated the Polar regions, discovering Iceland and Greenland, to modern times, with Canada, a branch of the Empire, her people industrious, contented and prosperous, enjoying all the blessings of constitutional rule, and having, as the representative of Her Majesty, a GovernorGeneral who closely identifies himself with the material interests of the commonwealth.

Past and present were happily blended: John Cabot, surrounded by his Venetian friends; Jacques Cartier, Champlain; the early French and English in Acadia-de Monts, Sir William Alexander and Charles de la Tour; the days of Maisonneuve; New France under de Tracy, Frontenac and other courtiers of the "Grande Monarque" period; English Acadia in the days of Evangeline," and Montcalm and Wolfe; the coming of the United Empire Loyalists-God bless them!and the regime of Murray and Haldimand and Simcoe; and then the modern or "up-to-date" statesman-a type we always have with us! It was, indeed, a beautiful conception, a patri

otic idea, an event worthy of being perpetuated, greatly assisting those who had for many months striven to direct pubic attention to, and win sympathy for, a national design-the Cabot Revival. It remains to be seen what Ontario and Nova Scotia will accomplish, particularly if the other Provinces throughout the Dominion co-operate in this prospective jubilee.

When Henry VII., emerging from an atmosphere of apathy and grab, tickled the palm of "him who founde the new Isle," with a gift of £10 Os. 0d., he doubtlessly premised that "John Kabotto, Venecian," would not be sole beneficiary. This sudden freak of munificence must have astounded all conversant with the avaricious instincts of their sovereign. On the other hand, he may have been impelled by considerations altogether foreign to issues affecting Britain's geographical boundaries. Roasting Lollard martyrs, variegated branding, unartistic ear-slitting, extortions and quelling, resultant revolutions, were becoming monotonous as well as exceedingly dangerous operations. Added to this, there existed a widespread conviction that treasure passing within Royalty's abnormally lengthy reach seldom escaped absorption. This startling manifestation of prodigality was, therefore, a masterpiece of diplomacy, albeit a severe wrench to majestic pursestrings. Cabot may have been satisfied, although, on a second occasion, when "given and graunten" permission to re-visit "the londe and isles of late founde by the seid John," he stayed at home, deputing his son, Sebastian, to command the expedition.

Republics have flourished, empires decayed, since then, and the year 1897,