“Of course I will, if I have to do her work as well as my own.”

“I knew it, Wilks, I knew it.  You’re as soft hearted as a girl, for all your adamant exterior.  God bless you, my dear boy!”

“Corry, Corry, what allowances must be made for your exaggerated Irish language!  What is there like adamant about me, I should like to know?”

“Good mawnin, gentlemen,” said the soft voice of the colonel, “I am delighted to see you looking so well.  I envy you Canadian gentlemen yoah fine fyesh complexions and yoah musical voices.  We have sawft voices in the south, but it is a soht of niggro sawftness, gained by contact I pehsume.  My sehvant and I byeakfasted some time ago.”

“I trust he is to your liking, Colonel?” enquired Coristine.

“Suh, you have found me a jewel in Maguffin, and he has found me two splendid roadsters that are now being fitted with saddles.  We staht for To-hon-to in an houah, gentlemen.”

“By the bye, Colonel, I have a telegram from my firm that concerns you.  It says ’Look up Colonel Morton, Madame Du Plessis, 315 Bluebird Avenue, Parkdale.”

“But wheah is Pahkdale?”

“It is a suburb of Toronto.  You had better keep the telegram.”

“So, Mr. Cohistine, you are a lawyeh?”

“Yes; of the firm of Tylor, Woodruff, and White, but I’m not that now, I’m a gentleman out on a grand stravague.”

“You may be a lawyeh, suh, but you are a gentleman as well, and I hope to meet you befoah many days are past.  Good mawnin, my kind friends!”

The knapsacks were put on boldly, in the very parlour of the hotel, and their bearers strode along the lake road into the west, as coolly as if they were doing Snowden or Windermere.  It was a glorious morning, and they exulted in it, rejoicing in the joy of living.  The dominie had written his letter to the vulgar school-trustees, and felt good, with the approbation of a generous conscience.  He recited with feeling:—­

“What, you are stepping westward?” “Yea”—­ ’Twould be a wildish destiny, If we, who thus together roam In a strange land, and far from home, Were in this place the guests of chance; Yet who would stop, or fear t’ advance, Though home or shelter he had none, With such a sky to lead him on.

     The dewy ground was dark and cold;

“Faith, ’tis nothing of the kind, Wilks,” interrupted Coristine; but the dominie went on unheeding.

     Behind, all gloomy to behold,
     And stepping westward seemed to be
     A kind of heavenly destiny: 
     I liked the greeting; ’twas a sound
     Of something without place or bound
     And seemed to give me spiritual right
     To travel through that region bright.