“Father, did you put that money there?” Tom asked.

“Yes, I did Tom,” he answered.  “I ought to be ashamed of myself for being so careless, too.”

“It just seemed as if it was the devil himself,” Tom said.  “I had no intention of drinking when I took out that money.”

“Well, Tom,” his father said, with a short laugh, “I guess the devil had a hand in it, he was in me quite a bit when I put it there, I kin tell ye.”

The next Sunday morning Samuel Motherwell, his wife and son, went to church.  Sam placed on the plate an envelope containing fifty dollars.

On the following morning Sam had just cut two rounds with the binder when the Reverend Hugh Grantley drove into the field.  Sam stopped his binder and got down.

“Well, Mr. Motherwell,” the minister said, holding out his hand cordially as he walked over to where Sam stood, “how did it happen?”

Sam grasped his hand warmly.

“Ask Tom,” he said, nodding his head toward his son who was stooking the grain a little distance away.  “It is Tom’s story.”

Mr. Grantley did ask Tom, and Tom told him; and there in the sunshine, with the smell of the ripe grain in their nostrils as the minister helped him to carry the sheaves, a new heaven and a new earth were opened to Tom, and a new life was born within him, a life of godliness and of brotherly kindness, whose blessed influence has gone far beyond the narrow limits of that neighbourhood.

It was nearly noon when the minister left him and drove home through the sun-flooded grain fields, with a glorified look on his face as one who had seen the heavens opened.

Just before he turned into the valley of the Souris, he stopped his horse, and looked back over the miles and miles of rippling gold.  The clickety-click-click of many binders came to his ears.  Oh what a day it was! all sunshine and blue sky!  Below him the river glinted through the trees, and the railway track shimmered like a silver ribbon, and as he drove into the winding valley, the Reverend Hugh Grantley sang, despite his Cameronian blood, sang like a Methodist: 

   Praise God from whom all blessings flow,
   Praise Him all creatures here below,
   Praise Him above, ye heavenly host,
   Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.

CHAPTER XXV CUPID’S EMISSARY

Mrs. McGuire did not look like Cupid’s earthly representative as she sat in her chintz-covered rocking-chair and bitterly complained of the weather.  The weather was damp and cloudy, and Mrs. McGuire said her “jints were jumpin’.”

The little Watsons were behaving so well that even with her rheumatism to help her vision she could find no fault with them, “just now”; but she reckoned the mischief “was hatchin’.”

A change was taking place in Mrs. McGuire, although she was unconscious of it; Mary Barner, who was a frequent and welcome visitor, was having an influence even on the flinty heart of the relict of the late McGuire.  Mary “red up” her house for her when her rheumatism was bad.  She cooked for her, she sang and read for her.  Above all things, Mary was her friend, and no one who has a friend can be altogether at war with the world.