into the snow and struggled through it.  We watched them but it was too dark to see what they did on reaching the road.  Our suspense was ended on seeing them returning with a stranger, and leading a horse.  Robbie took the horse to the stable; Allan and the stranger, covered with snow entered.  After brushing him and taking off his wraps the stranger stood before us, a good-looking man past middle life.  He explained he had left home that morning for Toronto, his chief errand to get the supplies and presents the lack of sleighing had hindered his going for sooner.  Overtaken by the unlooked for downfall, he had halted at a tavern undecided what to do.  The barroom was crowded.  A man told him, on hearing where he was going, if he took the first turn to his left, he would find a road that would be passable, for it was sheltered by bush.  Anxious to get home, and the tavern accommodation not inviting, he had, after watering his horse, started anew.  Half an hour or so later, while pushing slowly along, a runner of his cutter had struck some obstacle, the horse plunged forward, tipping the rig.  On getting on his feet, on lifting the cutter, he found a runner had been wrenched off, and there he was helpless.  Seeing the lights of our house, he shouted, and, for a long time, he thought in vain.  While he was speaking, my memory was groping to place a voice that seemed an echo of one I had heard in the past.  I looked at the face, but in the firm-set features that told of wrestling with the world, I found no aid.  It was not until the house-colley went up to sniff at him and he stooped to pat its head that it flashed on me the stranger was the shepherd-lad who had befriended me in my weary tramp across Ayrshire.  Facing him, I said, ‘Is not your name Archie?’ ‘It is,’ he replied, looking surprised.  ’And do you not remember the ragged boy your dog found under a bush, how you shared your bite with him; how we sat under your plaid and read the bible and heard each other the questions?’ As I spoke I could tell by his face his memory too was at work.  ‘Yes, yes,’ he exclaimed, ’it all comes back to me, and you are curly-headed Gordon Sellar.’  Had we been of any other race the right thing to do would have been to have fallen into each other arms, but seeing we were undemonstrative Scots we gripped hands though I could not hold back the tears of gratitude on seeing the man who had been so kind to me.  His coming was no damper to the evening’s joy.  He made himself at home at once, and before he was ten minutes among us the children were clambering over him, for he had joined them in their play.  He was the same free-hearted, easily-pleased lad I had known.  When, late in the evening, I took him to his room, we had a long talk, and the fire of friendship kindled on the Ayrshire braeside burned again.  We had breakfast together long before daylight, for he was anxious to get home.  It had been settled Allan would lend his team and long sleigh, and that I drive.  The sound of sleighbells