In Orchard Glen

CHAPTER IV

CRAIG-ELLACHIE

In spite of the high rapture of her sacrifice Christina found life distinctly dull when Sandy and Neil went off to Toronto leaving her behind. She felt as if she had been away on a long romantic journey since Allister's return; a journey that gave glimpses of wonderful countries still to be travelled, and then she had suddenly been dropped back into Orchard Glen and forbidden to travel any more.

And here she was milking and churning and feeding the hens and companying with Uncle in the barn yard. Of course Uncle Neil was the excellent company he had always been, full of song and story, and Christina could not find an opportunity to mourn over her lot even if she had been so minded. She was not the sort to wear a martyr's robe. She would play the part, but she refused to make up for it. So she went about her daily tasks, singing as blithely as that Spring morning when Allister opened the gate into a larger life for her, the gate which she had voluntarily shut, with herself inside. She bore her disappointment jauntily, walking erect as Eastern girls carry their burdens on their heads, growing straight and graceful in the effort.

And then she was too busy to fret. There was Grandpa who needed more help every morning with his dressing, and every evening with the Hindmost Hymn. There was her mother, whose tasks must now grow lighter each year, there was Jimmie to be helped with his lessons on Saturdays, there was a Sunday school class with two of the bad Martin children in it, and there was Mary's trousseau to help prepare against the wedding at Christmastime. For the courtship of MacGillivray's man had proceeded at a furious pace and through Ellen had been engaged for five years, Mary was to be the first to marry. And so, Christina's hands were very full, and John would often say to her, after an unusually busy day, or when a letter came from Sandy bewailing her lot:

"Just wait, Christine. In another year who knows what will happen?" And Christina's heart was content.

As Mary had to keep up her teaching until the Christmas holidays, and her evenings were mostly spent with the young man who drove over from Port Stewart quite a remarkable number of times a week, there was much to do in the preparation of her clothes. Ellen had stopped her own embroidering, to wait until Bruce was through college, and she took to doing towels and table-napkins and doilies for Mary.

"I can't help thinking that it's a dreadful waste for you to get married," declared Christina, one Saturday afternoon as they all sewed furiously in the big roomy kitchen. "You're just throwing away a teacher's certificate. My! If I had Greenwood school I'd never get married!" And Mary and Ellen laughed and looked at each other knowingly from their respective heights far above Christina's head.

She tried to keep up her studies by following Jimmie's course, and stayed home on Friday nights from the Temperance meeting to help him with his lessons.

One evening they had a long hunt through "The Lady of the Lake" for a line about the Harebell which Jimmie must quote in an essay. They were sitting around the long kitchen table, all except Mary who was out driving in the moonlight. Ellen was at one end writing to Bruce as usual, John at the other, reading the daily paper, Mrs. Lindsay was knitting, and Uncle Neil was strumming out fragments of old songs on his violin, his stockinged feet comfortable on the damper of the stove.

Even Uncle Neil's memory could not produce the Harebell, and Jimmie went rummaging through the book impatiently.

"Gavin Grant would tell me if he was here," Jimmie said. "He knows all this stuff off by heart."

"And plenty more," put in Uncle Neil to the tune of "Oh wert thou in the cauld blast?" "Gavin's mind is well stored. Mr. Sinclair says he reads Carlyle in the evenings with the Grant girls. I wonder if you could match that anywhere in this country?"

Christina felt self-accusing, remembering her superior feeling in Gavin's awkward presence. He had been very busy with the harvest and she had not seen him except at church for a long time. He had never attempted to walk home with her again, and she could not help wondering whether it was because he was shy, or because he did not care. Womanlike she would have given a good deal to know.

"I wish you would run over to Craig-Ellachie with that jar of black currants I promised the Grant Girls, Christina," said her mother.

"That's the seventeenth time you've been reminded of that," said Jimmie chidingly.

"I think John'll have to hitch up the team and take that jar over in the hay wagon," said Uncle Neil, "Christine doesn't seem to be able to manage it."

"She's shy about going to see Gavin," said John, looking at her with twinkling eyes over his paper. For John alone knew her guilty secret. She hastily promised to take the jar the very next day, and managed to get the conversation back to the Harebell, which in time showed its shy self and was set down in the essay.

It was nearly a week before Christina managed to get away on her difficult errand. She did not want to go, certainly, but she was afraid of attracting more comment from John and Uncle Neil by staying.

It was a golden September day when she went up over the hills with a basket of apples from their best tree, and the special jar of her mother's black currant jelly. The air was motionless, the sky a perfect soft unclouded blue, the hills were amber, the hollows amethyst. The branches of the orchard trees behind the village houses sagged, heavy with their harvest, and gay as orchards gotten up for a garden party, all hung with fairy lantern globes of yellow and red. The gardens were filled with ripened corn and great golden pumpkins. The wild asters along the fences glowed softly purple.

Christina stepped over the warm yellow stubble singing, and climbed the hill to the old berry patch, where the briars grew more riotously every year. Gavin's cows were straying through the green and yellow tangle on his side of the fence and a bell rang musically through the still aisles. The Wizard of Autumn had been up here on the hills with his paints and had touched the sumachs along the fences till they looked like trees of flame. And he had been working on a bit of woodbine that now draped the old rail fence as with a scarlet curtain. A blue jay flashed through the golden silence waking the echoes with his noisy laughter and the flickers high up in the dead stumps called jeeringly to each other.

Christina came out of the Slash into the yellow sunshine of Gavin's fields, and as she did so, she suddenly dropped down behind the raspberry bushes that fringed the fence, quite in a panic. For a loud musical voice arose from the field just beyond the brow of the hill, Gavin was ploughing the back meadow and singing, and the song made Christina's heart heat hotly:

"Will ye gang to the Hielan's, Leezie Lindsay?
Will ye gang to the Hielan's wi' me?"

Hidden by the hill, and the screening bushes, she slipped away and took a devious course down the valley. But there was a lump in her throat as she went.

She ran past a clump of cedars and came out into view of Craig-Ellachie. The Grant Girls had given their home this name because of its association with their clan's history, but Nature had encouraged them, for behind the house, set back against the dark pine woods, rose a hill crowned by a towering rock. The cosy old white-washed house was set in the centre of a saucer-like valley. It was the original log house in which their parents had lived and had been added to here and there till it was beautifully picturesque just as the home of the Grant Girls should be.

But visitors to Craig-Ellachie never saw anything else after their first glimpse of the garden.

Every one wondered how it was that the Grant Girls' garden should outbloom all others, and that nobody else ever had any hope of first prize at the Fall fairs. One said it was the sheltered location of the place, others the low elevation, still others that it was the southern slope that made the Craig-Ellachie garden unfold the earliest crocus in Spring and hold safely the latest aster in Autumn. But wise folk, like Christina's mother, always held that it was the tender care of the three gardeners and the sunlight of their presence that made their flowers the wonder of the countryside.

Christina drew a breath of delight as it came into view. Dahlias and asters, rows and rows of them, clumps of feathery cosmos, hedges of flaming gladioli, dazzling golden glow and a dozen others she did not recognise made a glorious array. And the blooms were not confined to the garden proper that was spread out on the south side of the house. They overflowed into the vegetable garden at the back, and spread around the lawn at the front. They strayed away along the fences and completely hedged the orchard. They even encroached upon the barnyard; the manure heap was screened from view by a wall of sunflowers and golden glow and a rainbow avenue of late phlox led down to the pig-pens.

Christina entered by the barnyard and came up through the kitchen garden where rows of cauliflower and cabbage and tomatoes alternated with pansies and mignonette and scarlet salvia. Every bed of onions was fringed with sweet alyssum, and rows of beets were flanked with rosemary and lavender. She opened the little wire gate that led into the garden proper and walked up under a long arched canopy of climbing roses and sweet peas that seemed, like the Grant Girls, to take no heed of the passing of time but bloomed on as though it were June. As she disappeared into its green shade her eye caught a movement in one of the brown fields behind the barn. The two younger sisters were there digging potatoes.

There had been a day when the Grant Girls did all the work of field and farmyard, and their hands were hard and their backs bent. But since Gavin had grown to man's estate their lives had been easier. Indeed they were never done telling tales of how Gavie had forbidden their going into the fields. They boasted of his high handed airs, for hadn't he even chased Janet out of the barnyard, with the pitchfork, mind you, when she was determined to help him in with the hay. Eh indeed he was a thrawn lad, and nobody could manage oor Gavie!

And now that they had fallen upon easier days and Gavin's strong arms had taken up the heavier work, they had resumed many of the older tasks that long ago most farm women had gladly handed over to factory or mill. No cheese factory or creamery received a drop of milk or cream from Craig-Ellachie; and the Grant Girls still spun their own wool from their own sheep, and knit it into good stout socks for themselves and Gavin, and cousin Hughie Reid, and his big family of boys.

So this afternoon, Auntie Elspie, the eldest of the three, was sitting at the open kitchen door in the sunshine spinning. The soft September breeze swayed her white apron and pink-dotted calico dress. Behind her the wide, low-ceiled old kitchen fairly glittered in its cleanliness. The high dresser with its blue plates, and the old chairs and table were varnished till they shone like mirrors. And the kitchen stove, used only in winter, for the wood-shed was the summer kitchen, blazed as it never had on a winter night, for on it stood a great blue pitcher filled with flaming gladioli.

Around Auntie Elspie were arranged the household pets, all sleeping in the sunshine; Auntie Flora's cat and two kittens, Auntie Janet's spaniel, and Gavin's fox terrier and two collies. The four dogs set up a loud clamour at the sight of the visitor, and went gambolling down the walk to meet her. At the sound the two workers in the field paused to look, and stood gazing until Christina disappeared indoors.

Auntie Elspie dropped her thread and came hurrying down the steps, saying in mild reproach, "Hoots, toots, what a noise!" And then in glad welcome, "Eh, eh, and it's little Christina! Eh, now, and wasn't it jist grand o' ye to come away over here—well—well—well—well!"

Mrs. Lindsay was the Grant Girls' oldest and dearest friend, and a visit from any of her family was an occasion of great rejoicing.

"Eh, well, well!" Auntie Elspie was patting Christina on the back, and taking off her hat in exuberant hospitality, mingling her words of welcome with admonitions to the riotous dogs which were bounding about making a joyous din.

"Eh, well, now, and your poor mother, she would be well! Hut, tut, Wallace! Bruce! Yon's no way to act. And wee Mary'll be getting married—Princie! Did ye ever see the like o' that? They're jist that glad to see ye. Wallace! Down, sir, down! Jist wait till Gavie gits home, Bruce, then ye'll mind! And Sandy's away to the college too. Well, well, you Lindsays were all great for the books—come away in, hinny, come away. Down with ye, down!"

They went into the house, the dogs still bounding joyously about, for they knew that a guest at Craig-Ellachie was a great and glad event and that they must express their joy in a fitting manner.

Auntie Elspie was tall and thin and stooped. Her thin fair hair, almost white, was combed up in the fashion that had obtained when she was a girl. She wore a voluminous old dress of some ancient pattern of "print," that had been quite fashionable some twenty years earlier, but she was also clothed in the gay garment of youth which the Grant Girls always wore.

She managed to eject the joyous, scrambling quartette from the kitchen and led the visitor through the dusk of the parlour where Auntie Flora's organ stood with Gavin's fiddle on top of it, on into the gloom of the spare room, heaping welcomes upon her all the way, and asking after everything on the Lindsay farm from Grandpa's rheumatism to Christina's black kitten.

When Christina's hat was laid upon the high white crest of the billowing feather bed, and her hair smoothed before the little mirror on the dresser, Auntie Elspie led her away beyond the parlour into a close, hushed room, where the mother had lain an invalid for many years, and which was kept sacred to her memory. Here the Grant Girls hoarded all their mother's treasures: the photographs in oval frames on the wall, the high old dresser and the big sea chest filled with keepsakes, tenderly associated with her life; the Paisley shawl she wore to church, the sea shells she had brought from the old country, even the old china tea set that had been her one wedding gift.

Christina was placed in an old rocker, while Auntie Elspie displayed all the treasures as a girl shows her jewels to a companion, and Christina knew she was being shown a great honour, for only special friends were ever taken into Mother's Room.

The last jewel to be exhibited was the mother's photograph in an old leather case, velvet lined.

"Folks say that after a person dies, the picture begins to fade," Auntie Elspie said, wiping the shining surface tenderly. "But mother's picture is as bright as the day it was taken."

Christina looked at the strong, kindly face, with the white cap and the little knitted shawl and felt her heart contract at the yearning in the older woman's voice. Elspie was still a girl, longing for the touch of her mother's hand, though that mother had been gone twenty-five years.

"Perhaps it's because you keep her memory so bright, that the picture never fades," said Christina gently, and Auntie Elspie kissed her for sheer gratitude.

When they came out into the sunshine of the kitchen again the other two sisters were there to add their welcome. They had hurried in to see who their visitor was and were overwhelmed with joy to find it was Mary Lindsay's girl.

"I told you it was little Christina, Flora," cried Auntie Janet triumphantly; "Flora said it was one o' the McKenzie girls!" And Flora admitted herself beaten.

The two were in their farming costumes, old bits of past grandeur, a purple velvet skirt for Janet and a sacque of ancient brocaded silk on Flora, both accompanied by Gavin's cast off boots and wide straw hats. But the wearers received Christina in her trim blue skirt and white blouse, of the latest Algonquin style, with a high bred unconsciousness of clothes.

"Oh, I'm that glad you've come," cried Janet, shaking her fifteen-year-old ringlets from her big hat, "you've given us an excuse for a rest. We were jist doin' a bit of gardenin'. Weren't we, Flora?" she asked.

Auntie Flora's eyes twinkled, "Oh, yes, yes, jist gardenin'!" she declared, and the three Aunties burst out laughing, and Auntie Janet spread out her earth soiled hands with a comical gesture.

"We've been diggin' the potaties!" she whispered, her eyes dancing. "But if Gavie caught us at it, we'd catch it! So we jist keep tellin' him we've been gardenin' an' he never suspects, an' he can't see us from where he's ploughin'!"

"An' we'll be finished in another day if he doesn't find out!" cried Auntie Flora exultingly.

"Aye, but jist wait, you'll get yer pay for yer pranks when he does find out," admonished Auntie Elspie, like an indulgent mother threatening her mischievous children with a father's punishment. "Gavie jist won't let us put foot into the fields!" she added proudly. But the two younger ones laughed recklessly. They would be up sides with Gavie yet, for all his high-handed, bossy ways!

They washed their hands, changed their shoes and put away their big hats, and all three bustled about getting tea. Christina would have preferred to slip away before Gavin came in, but she well knew that no human being had ever come to Craig-Ellachie and left again without sitting down to eat, and knew it was no use to protest.

So she went out into the garden to help Flora gather a bouquet for the table, and her hostess broke off armfuls of every sort of flowers she admired, making a great sheaf to carry home to her mother. They put the glorious mass into a shining tin pail to await her departure. Then Christina ran about the kitchen and pantry, helping set the best blue dishes on the table, and they all laughed and joked and had such a time, as though all four had just turned nineteen last May.

"Did ye hear that Elspie has a fellow, Christina?" called Auntie Flora from the cellar whither she had gone to fetch the cream.

"No," cried Christina, overcome with laughter, "she didn't tell me."

"She's just a wee bit shy about it yet," said Auntie Janet. "But when she gets over it, you'll see them together in church."

"It's Piper Lauchie McDonald!" cried Auntie Flora, coming up to the surface again; "he's been comin' here pretendin' he wanted to teach Gavie the pipes, but we can see it's Elspie he's got in his eye."

Auntie Elspie's eyes were dancing. "They're both that jealous o' me, there's no livin' with them," she confided.

They all joined Christina in a gale of laughter, none gayer than Elspie herself.

Tea was all ready now, a perfect banquet set out with the blue dishes, on the best white and blue tablecloth, with a tremendous glory of asters and dahlias in a bronze jug in the middle of the table.

When everything was ready, Auntie Janet ran to the foot of the front lawn and called a long clear "Hoo-hoo!" and from far away in the fields a faint halloo answered.

"Gavie's coming," the three cried together joyously, and Auntie Elspie hurried out to the wood-shed to place the blue china teapot on the stove to warm.

"He won't be long, he always knows there's company when the dogs bark and he'll hurry in."

While they waited Auntie Flora took Christina into the parlour to show her a new song-book Gavin had brought home the Saturday previous.

Christina's fascinated gaze went around the wonderful framed wreaths on the wall, one made of cotton-batting flowers, another of coloured feathers and the most interesting one fashioned of flowers made from hair. Auntie Flora went over each blossom tenderly. This rose at the top was made of mother's hair. Wasn't her hair beautiful and soft and shining? Nobody in the family had hair like mother's. And the one just beside it of darker grey, was father's. Father's hair was rich and beautiful too. The dark brown one was Janet's and the fair one Elspie's.

"And ye can tell whose is the mouse-coloured one," said Auntie Janet teasingly.

"Aye," said Auntie Flora. "They're never done talkin' about my mouse-coloured hair; but they'll soon have to stop because it's gettin' white!" she added gaily.

And the next flower that beautiful brown, was made from Duncan's, the only brother who died when he was in his first year in college. He was to have been a minister. Mother had saved his curls from the time he was just a wee laddie. Duncan had died twenty years ago but his sisters could not yet speak of him without tears.

Then they brightened when Flora pointed out the next and the last—that shiny black bit, it couldn't be anybody's but Gavie's; hair as black as that. Did Christina mind what beautiful curly hair he had when they got him first? And such a time as they had getting him to let it grow long enough to get a piece for the wreath. It was just getting nice once, but the boys teased him about it at school, and what did he do but get the shears one night and cut it all off that close that he nearly cut the skin, and a sight the rascal was, with bare white patches all over his black head!

But Janet saved what was cut and they managed to make this little flower and put it in the wreath next to Duncan's. Gavie was just such another boy as Duncan was, and the Lord had been good indeed to give him to them in their old age.

Gavin did not appear quite so soon as expected. He came up slowly from the barn, and spent a very long time over the little wash-bench at the wood-shed door. At last he came in, fondling the dogs that kept circling about him, and shook hands with Christina very hurriedly, as though he had been in great haste all the time.

They sat down to the table immediately, and for a while the rapture of having Christina sitting at his right hand almost overcame him and he had very little to say. But he shared the Aunties' spirit of hospitality, Christina was his guest and he soon found courage to wait on her and see she was well served. Auntie Elspie, sitting opposite him with the tea-pot and the cups and saucers, understood, and did all she could to make things easy for him. Though the three Aunties loved Gavin with equal devotion, Auntie Elspie had been more of a mother to him. She read her boy and had long ago guessed at his devotion to Christina. She was sure of it now and was very happy. With the optimism of youth she saw nothing but success ahead for Gavin and was overjoyed that he had chosen so wisely and well—one of Mary Lindsay's girls. What better could happen?

As for Christina, she was feeling strangely at home and yet in entirely new surroundings. Gavin Grant at the head of his own table dispensing hospitality to his guest was a different person from the shy boy she knew. Here he was a man with an air of authority, strong and yet kind and gentle.

He soon forgot his embarrassment in the joy of her presence. They grew very merry over Auntie Elspie's beau again, Gavin taking great credit to himself for having arranged the match.

"She'll be goin' off with him one o' these days," prophesied Auntie Janet, "and indeed, we'll all leave ye, if you don't mind and let us work out in the field when we like," she threatened.

"Indeed you ought to let the girls help you with that field of potatoes, Gavie," said Auntie Elspie. "He won't let one of us do a hand's turn beyond the house, Christina," she complained, turning to her guest. "Did ye ever hear the like?"

A telegraphic message flashed across the table between Auntie Flora and Auntie Janet which Gavin did not see.

"We jist have no life with him at all," said Auntie Flora, "he's that thrawn."

"I think I'll jist have to take him in hand, myself," said the lively Auntie Janet.

"I can manage them all but Auntie Janet," Gavin said brazenly. "I didn't start early enough with her. I brought up the other two better. But I'll get her broken in, in time."

The three Aunties went off into loud gay laughter that echoed far out over the bright garden. They declared he was quite beyond them, and how did Christina suppose they ever put up with such a rascal?

They lingered long at the table and after the gay supper was over Christina was loath to go; she was having such a good time. So she did not need much coaxing to prevail upon her to stay till the cows were milked. They could surely do without her for once. It was Friday night and Jimmie would help Uncle Neil and the girls, she admitted. So she ran out to the barn with a pail, though Gavin was determined she should not milk, and she helped with the separator, doing everything with her usual swiftness, and the Aunties looked on in amazement and admiration.

The short Autumn evening had descended in a soft purple haze and a great round golden moon was riding up over Craig-Ellachie when Christina put on her hat and declared reluctantly that she must leave. She was ladened with gifts: a jar of tomato relish, a huge cake of maple sugar, a bottle of a new kind of liniment for Grandpa, and such an armful of dahlias and phlox and asters and gladioli as Christina had never seen in her life.

The Aunties and Gavin all came with her as far as the pasture bars where the tall ghosts of the corn stood whispering in the twilight. The two younger sisters were for going all the way with her over the hills, but Auntie Elspie, with her deeper insight, interfered.

"Gavie'll go and carry the flowers for you, Christina," she said. "We'll have to be gettin' away back, girls." And the girls, being young themselves, understood, and bade Christina good-night, with many admonitions to come back again and warnings to Gavie to take good care of her. Gavin put the bottle of liniment in one pocket and the catsup in another, the relish and the maple sugar in a third and bundling the bouquet under his arm in a fashion that made Auntie Flora scream with dismay, walked by Christina's side across the dim pasture field, with the golden and purple sunset ahead of them and the silver moonlight behind coming down over Craig-Ellachie. The night was warm and still and the endless song of the grass, the swan song of all that was left of Summer, filled the air.

Christina felt perfectly happy and care-free. A career seemed a far-off, nebulous thing that one need not fret over. It was very pleasant to be walking up over the hills in the moonlight and sunset with Gavin at her side carrying flowers for her. She felt it would be beautiful to be able to always stroll around this way with the scent of rosemary heavy in the air, and never to bother to look forward to a college course. They chatted away happily and she told him about their search for the Harebell, telling him that Uncle Neil said he would know, and he quoted long stanzas from "The Lady of the Lake," and "Marmion." And they discussed the new song-book he had bought and quarrelled over their favourite Scotch song. And he did not confess that his was the one she had heard him singing that afternoon as he ploughed the back field.

They crossed the end of the Slash, where Gavin had to help her through the tangle of bushes. And did she remember how she had given him her berries that day, he asked.

Christina laughed, but Gavin was sober. "It was a beautiful thing to do," he said, "and now you have done it again for Sandy."

"No, no," said Christina, "it was nothing; I could not be happy to go and let Sandy stay."

"But you will go some day?" added Gavin, his voice sunk to a tremulous whisper.

"Yes, perhaps next Fall, Allister and John both say, if the crops turn out well next summer. But it's a long way to look ahead."

They had come down to the level again, along the back lane and up to the little gate that led in from the barnyard.

Gavin put the flowers into her arms and handed her the many gifts.

"Won't you come in, Gavin?" she asked. "There might be a letter from Sandy."

"Thank you," he said gratefully. "No, I must not be going in to-night, Christine. Thank you for your visit. You made my Aunties very happy. And you have made me very happy, too," he added in a whisper. He saw the look of embarrassment on her face and instantly stopped. Gavin was a true gentleman at heart and guessed when he was bordering on forbidden ground. He walked away and Christina went slowly up the path.

Perhaps, after all, there was something in the saying that homekeeping hearts are happiest, she reflected. It did not seem quite so dreary to look forward to always living in Orchard Glen.

CHAPTER V

"HEY! JOHNNIE COPE"

After that visit to Craig-Ellachie Gavin was a new person to Christina. She was humiliated to remember that she had ever presumed to make fun of him. He was good and kind and chivalrous, and Sandy was right when he declared that Gavin knew far more than half the fellows around the village who thought themselves so much smarter. Christina thought about him often these soft slumbrous Autumn days and said to herself that, should he ever ask to walk home with her again, she would surely be much kinder than she had been. And she could not help wondering just a little why he did not try.

Indeed, had Gavin only known, he was very near gaining his heart's desire, when an unfortunate event snatched away his chance and tore him down from the heights to which he had unconsciously risen.

All the previous Winter and Summer the Temperance Society, which was the Presbyterian Choir, which was the Methodist Choir, had been practising strenuously for a concert. This weekly choir practice was really a community singing. Young and old, Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists went to it, and Tremendous K. led them. There was an inner circle that sang on Sundays, in the Presbyterian Church in the morning and the Methodist Church in the evening. And they sang in the Baptist Church, too, on each alternate Sunday afternoon. For the Baptist minister lived in Avondell, and gave Orchard Glen only two services a month.

So this Union Choir decided to give a grand concert under the auspices of the Temperance Society to raise money to buy new chairs for the hall, and perhaps a new table if there was money enough. As the date of the concert approached the practices were twice a week, and every Tuesday and Thursday, from eight o'clock till half-past nine, Tremendous K.'s big voice might be heard booming:

"Watch your time, there! Sing up, can't you? Give her a lift! Don't pull as if you was haulin' a stun boat up the hill!"

It was just such drilling that had made the Orchard Glen choir famous over the whole countryside, and caused them to be in demand for tea meetings all through the Winter.

But the drilling was becoming wearisome, for the choir had been practising for a very long time indeed. The date of the concert had been set again and again, and on every occasion some other affair interfered.

After many vicissitudes the date had been finally settled for the evening of the first of October, and no sooner was it set, and set for the twentieth time, too, than the Methodist minister announced a week of special meetings at his church as there was an Evangelist available at that date!

This was a serious affair and the Methodists in the choir were for having another postponement.

"When's the concert to be?" asked Willie Brown one evening, as they took a rest, and a paper bag of candy was passed round from Marmaduke.

"Haven't you been told straight ahead for a month that it's the first of October!" cried Tremendous K. in his most tremendous voice, "and it's not goin' to be a minute later, neither!"

"That's the first night of the special meetings in our church," put in Minnie Brown, sharply, "and father wouldn't think of letting us come."

Tremendous K. scowled. "Looky here," he declared, "we've been putting off this here concert for some dog fight or another for about two years, and I don't care if King George the Third was goin' to have special meetin's right in the hall that night, we're goin' to have that concert!"

Tremendous K. was exceedingly loyal to both King and country, but he could never remember which George it was that occupied the throne, and had no notion of suggesting that one should rise from the dead.

"You don't call special services in a church a dogfight, I hope," put in Tilly Holmes's father, his eyebrows bristling. Mr. Holmes was a Baptist and had no intention of attending the Methodist meetings, but he felt he ought to stand for the principle of the thing, especially as Tremendous K. was a Presbyterian.

"I never said nothing of the sort!" denied the choir leader hotly, being himself a bit troubled in his conscience. "But what I do say is that we've put off this thing so that it can't be put off no longer if it's to be sung before the crack o' doom! The concert's on the first of October, or not at all. Here! all turn to page thirty-four, the opening chorus, 'All's Well.' Everybody, whoop her up, now!"

That was the beginning of the trouble; the next evening the Browns and several other good Methodists were not at practice and neither were the Holmeses. Mr. Wylie, the Methodist minister, went to Mr. Sinclair about it and Mr. Sinclair said it was no more a Presbyterian affair than a Methodist. And the Baptist minister stood aloof and said he always knew these union affairs would never bring anything but trouble.

The thinned ranks of the choir closed up, though the loss of the Browns, who were all musical, was a staggering blow. Tilly Holmes cried so hard that her father had to let her come back, and two or three of the less faithful Methodists returned, pending the final decision in regard to the date. And Tremendous K. went on, stubbornly waving his baton in the face of the whole Methodist congregation.

No serious trouble might have arisen, however, had not the two who were always a source of dissension in the village, put their wicked heads together. To be quite fair, for once in their lives, Trooper Tom and Marmaduke were without guile when they decided to invite old Piper Lauchie McDonald from Glenoro to come and play at the concert. They were merely actuated by the pure motive of making the entertainment more attractive than the Methodist gathering, with, perhaps, the subconscious thought that it was a question if Old Tory Brown, who was Scotch, even if he were a Methodist, could resist leaving a mere preaching to hear a real Piper. The two were willing to bet almost anything on the superior attractions of the music, Duke offering to put up his wooden leg against Trooper's Mounted Police Medal.

Tremendous K. was not very enthusiastic when, with great diplomacy, Marmaduke suggested the bagpipes as an addition to the programme. The Hendersons were very rigid concerning certain worldly amusements, and a Piper was always associated with dancing and kindred foolishness. When it was made clear that Lauchie would draw a crowd, which a Piper always did, he yielded, and Marmaduke and Trooper borrowed The Woman's car, and whirled away up over the hills to Glenoro one evening and invited Lauchie to play in Orchard Glen on the night of the big concert.

Christina had been faithfully attending all the practices. She was not a real choir member, but Tremendous K. said he couldn't get up a concert without at least one Lindsay in it, and she was the only one available. For John could not sing, Mary had lost interest in everything outside Port Stewart, and Ellen was too busy with the trousseau to attend to anything else.

On the evening of the last rehearsal, as Christina went down the hill with a crowd of her girl friends, Tilly met them in great excitement.

"Wallace Sutherland's come home," she announced, breathlessly. "The Doctor met him in town with his car, and he's going to stay a week before he goes back to college. Mrs. Sutherland told Mrs. Sinclair and she told ma."

This was surely interesting news. Wallace Sutherland had not been in Orchard Glen for any length of time, since he was a little boy and went to the public school. He was attending a University over in the great United States, and spent his holidays with the wealthy uncle who was paying his college bills. Mrs. Sutherland often went to Boston to visit him and her rich brother, but Wallace had spent very little time in the old home. Folks said that his mother was afraid of his becoming familiar with the country folk and so kept him out of the way.

Christina laughed at Tilly and her news. The storekeeper's daughter was always in a high state of excitement over some wonderful happening in Orchard Glen, while Christina was prepared to testify that nothing at all ever happened within the ring of its sleepy green hills, and she immediately forgot all about Mr. Wallace Sutherland.

The next evening was the date of the concert, and excitement ran high. When Trooper and Marmaduke had visited the Piper they had made elaborate arrangements for his entry into Orchard Glen. He was to stay with old Peter McNabb, a relative who lived about half-a-mile above the village, until the hour for the concert had almost arrived, then he was to come sweeping down the hill, when the crowds were gathering, and march playing into the hall where he would open the proceedings. And if he did not sweep all the folks around the Methodist church back into the hall with him, then Trooper had missed his guess. Piper Lauchie was a true Highlander, with a love of the dramatic, and he fell in with the arrangements with all his heart. The Dunn farm was just next to Old Peter's house, so early in the afternoon Trooper went over and ascertained to his satisfaction that Lauchie was there, with his pipes in fine tune. The two old men were smoking and telling tales of pioneer days on the shores of Lake Simcoe, with as much zest as if they were relating them for the first time instead of the forty-first. So, with everything so well arranged, there was seemingly no cause for anxiety, and not the most pessimistic Methodist could have prophesied disaster.

The evening of October first was bright and warm, and at an early hour the rival crowds began to gather; the worshippers and the revellers, Mr. Wylie designated them in a remark made afterwards to Mr. Sinclair, a remark the Presbyterian minister did not forget in a few weeks. The Methodist church, which was up on the slope of the hill, began to fill slowly and the Temperance hall, down near the store corner, rapidly. A group of young men lingered at the door of the hall with their usual inability to enter a meeting until a few minutes after the hour of starting. There was also a small group at the door of the Methodist church farther up the hill. They were not the customary loungers, but a small self-appointed committee of the Methodist fathers on the outlook for any of the flock who might stumble into the pitfall of the Temperance hall on their way to church.

The visiting minister drove into the village, passed the hall in a whirl of dust, and hurried into the church. Dusk was falling, the lamps were lit in both gathering places and the light shone from the windows.

It was now on the eve of eight o'clock, in another moment the meeting on the hill would open, and the Piper had not yet appeared. Marmaduke and Trooper, consulting in the middle of the street where there was a view of the hill up as far as the Lindsay gate, were growing anxious. It would be quite too bad if, after all their plans, the Piper should fail them. Trooper was for going after the missing musician, but Duke counselled patience. He fancied he saw a figure on the hill now and any moment they might hear the pipes.

But eight o'clock came, the group of watchers on the hill moved inside, and the strains of a hymn came through the open door and windows of the Methodist church. There was no hope of catching any stray sheep in the Piper's net now!

Tremendous K. came rushing out of the hall declaring that they could not wait any longer, the boys were beginning to stamp and yell for the programme, and Dr. McGarry was as mad as a wet hen. Then Dr. McGarry, who was chairman, came right on his heels, his watch in his hand, demanding what in common sense and thunder they meant by holding up the meeting this way. That confounded piper of theirs could play for an hour after he got here if he wanted to, but were they going to sit up all night waiting for him? He had been called to go and see old Granny Anderson just as soon as this show was over, and she wouldn't be likely to put off dying until that Piper appeared as if he was Gabriel with his trump!

The Doctor was a hard man to argue with when he was angry, inasmuch as he did not stop talking at all, and so there was no chance to state your case. So it was decided that the Choir had better sing the opening chorus, while Trooper would go up the hill and hasten the Piper's tune if possible, Duke remaining on guard at the door to see that he did not enter during the rendering of some other selection.

So Tremendous K. and the Doctor dashed back into the hall and Trooper ran up the village street. But before he had come to the bridge across the stream, he discerned a figure appearing out of the dusk on the hillside and the next moment, high, clear and thrilling sounded the opening skirl of the pipes! Trooper gave a whoop of joy, and ran back waving the good news which had already arrived on the evening breeze. Marmaduke sent one of the boys flying into the Hall to see if the programme would not wait another moment, but he was just a second too late. The opening chorus, "All's Well," was started, and already they could hear Joanna's voice on the high notes.

"Never mind," cried Marmaduke as Trooper ran up breathless, "he'll come in as neat as a tack right after this piece, and we couldn't a' got any more into the Hall anyway," he added gloatingly, "even if he'd been playin' all day."

He was certainly playing now, and most enticingly. It was that teasing, alluring lilt, "Tullochgorum," and Trooper went out into the middle of the road and danced the Highland Fling to it, while Marmaduke took his place opposite, hopping about in a cloud of dust, on his one foot and holding up his peg leg in a very elegant fashion as a dainty young lady might hold her train.

"Say, he'll bust the church windows when he's passin'!" cried Trooper, stopping to listen to the music soaring louder and clearer. The night was warm, and the doors and windows of the church were all wide open and Piper Lauchie was making as much noise as a company of massed bands marching past.

"It's turned out better than we intended," said Marmaduke in improper glee. "Why didn't we think of it?"

Now, Piper Lauchie had not been in Orchard Glen that summer, and the last occasion upon which he had visited the village had been on his way home from a picnic, under rather merry circumstances which left his memory of the place pleasantly hazy. Trooper had cautioned him to march right into the hall on his arrival, explaining that the building was on his left hand side after he crossed the bridge, and that he could not miss it for it would be all lit up and he and Marmaduke would be at the door to see him march triumphantly inside. So far he had followed his instructions to the letter. He tuned up half way down the hill and came marching across the bridge, and then the Dreadful Thing happened.

It was almost dark by this time and surely neither the Piper nor Trooper nor Marmaduke was to blame that the Methodist church should be placed on the left hand side after you crossed the bridge, and that it should be all lit up so that the Piper could not miss it! And he did not miss it, either. The sight of the rows of heads against the windows, all in the attitude of waiting, inspired the musician to greater effort. He shifted his chanter a bit, put more wind into it, and burst into a gayer and faster tune, and when he reached the bit of sidewalk opposite the door of the Methodist church, he whirled about, with a flirt of his kilt and a flip of his plaid, swept up the steps, through the open door and went screaming up the church aisle right to the pulpit steps, fairly raising the roof to the tune of "Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet?"

And all the while this terrible mishap was occurring, the Choir in the hall farther down the street, just at the moment when all was going as ill as human affairs could go, was singing in false security, "All's Well!"

When Trooper and Duke, waiting admiringly in the middle of the road, saw their charge suddenly disappear into the pitfall of the Methodist church, they stood paralysed for one dreadful moment, like men who had seen the earth open and swallow everything upon which they had set their hearts. Then Trooper gave a terrific yell, the war whoop he had learned on the prairie, and turned and looked at his companion in disaster. Duke was beyond uttering even a yell. He collapsed silently upon the grass by the roadside, and rolled back and forth in a kind of convulsion, while Trooper staggered to the fence and hung limply over it like a wet sack. And all the while inside the hall higher and stronger and more confident, swelled the words of the chorus in dreadful irony, "All's Well, All's Well!"

Nobody could ever quite explain how the Piper got ejected from the church and transferred to the hall where he belonged. There were so many conflicting reports.

Some said that Mr. Wylie gave him a solemn talking to upon the error of his position, and the visiting minister upon the error of his ways, being under the impression that he and old Peter had been drinking, which, strange to say, was really not the case. Others declared that the Piper did not stop playing long enough for any one to speak, but went roaring up one aisle to come screeching down the other. No one seemed quite clear on the subject, for the Methodists were too angry to speak of the affair coherently and for a long time it was not safe to ask them about it.

But upon one part of the history all eye-witnesses, except the Piper himself, were agreed, and that was that Mrs. Johnnie Dunn left her seat and chased the Piper down the church aisle with her umbrella. The Woman would have preferred to attend the concert, though she was a Methodist, but Trooper's lively interest in it had decided her to adhere to her church, and she was not slow to take this opportunity of showing her disapproval of his choice.

Whatever happened, Piper Lauchie did finally reach the hall, but he was too angry to either play or speak. There was no sign of the committee that was to meet him, for Trooper and Marmaduke had fled down the dark alley between the hall and the blacksmith shop and were lying in an old shed, trying to keep from shouting.

Gavin Grant had arrived late, after a very busy day, and with a little group of boys had also witnessed the catastrophe. Gavin stepped up to the old man to apologise and explain, but Lauchie shoved him aside and marched noisily into the hall, ready to murder any one who stood in his way.

He burst in just as Dr. McGarry arose and announced:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the next item on this programme is——"

And Piper Lauchie shouted from the back of the building in a high thin yell:

"The next item will be that some one will be hafing his brains knocked out, whatefer!"

And he tramped straight up the aisle to the platform, his old plaid streaming from his shoulders, his pipes held like a drawn claymore.

The Chairman, like the rest of the crowd, had been listening to "All's Well" and did not dream that things had been going otherwise. He stood for a moment staring at the enraged Piper and then Gavin, who had just slipped into his seat in the choir, leaned forward, and touching the Chairman's elbow, strove to explain.

"Mr. McDonald went to the wrong meeting," he whispered, but he got no farther.

Old Lauchie slammed his pipes down on the Chairman's table, upsetting a glass of water and a big bouquet of flowers from Craig-Ellachie, and turned upon Gavin, his fists clenched.

"I would be going to the wrong meeting, would I?" he shouted, and Gavin backed away hastily. The old man pursued him hotly.

"It would be you and your fell tribe that would be sending me to the Messodis meeting house!" he shouted. "Ta Messodis," he repeated in withering scorn, "I'll Messodis you——"

Gavin was continuing to back away in a most ungallant fashion, till he got to the wall and there was no means of escape, when rescue came from an unexpected quarter.

Just at the end of the front row of seats, where the pursuit came to a halt, Wallace Sutherland was sitting with his mother. He had been the centre of many admiring glances, especially from the girls. And indeed he was a fine-looking young fellow and it was no wonder that his uncle was so proud of him and his mother so afraid. He was hugely enjoying the Piper's tumultuous entry, and his black eyes were dancing with delight, when the old man, his red blazing eyes fixed upon his supposed enemy, was backing Gavin into a corner.

But Mrs. Sutherland, for all that Orchard Glen pronounced her proud and cold, was a timid, gentle woman, and Lauchie's appearance filled her with panic.

"Oh, Wallace, my dear," she whispered in alarm. "Oh, how dreadful. He's going to strike him——"

Wallace was very loath to put an end to the fun, but he rose and touched the enraged Piper on the arm.

"Mr. McDonald," he whispered tactfully, "my uncle, Dr. McGarry, is the Chairman and he,—he's just a little bit nervous. Won't you get your pipes and play for us? He doesn't know what to do next, and we've been waiting anxiously to hear you."

Wallace Sutherland's charming manner seldom failed him and it did not now. The Piper looked at him and the fierce rage died from his eyes. The clenched fists dropped to his side and Gavin slipped into a seat. Wallace nodded to his uncle and Dr. McGarry hastily announced, without any embarrassing explanations, that the Piper had been unavoidably delayed but that he was now ready to favour them with a selection for which they were all so anxiously waiting.

So Lauchie shouldered his instrument and took his place on the platform. The storm was abating but there were still thunderings and occasional flashes of lightning concerning the crass ignorance and stupidity of the people of Orchard Glen and Methodists the world over.

"Come up to Glenoro and we'll be learning you manners," came rumbling out of the thunder cloud. "We'll be showing you how they treat a Piper there."

But by this time the pipes were beginning to scream their opening note, and Lauchie was blowing his anger into the chanter. The tune rose on a shrill spiral and high and clear it poured forth the challenging notes of a fierce pibroch, the war song of the Clan McDonald. The player marched back and forth across the platform keeping quick step to the mad tune, that rose louder and faster and shriller at each step.

The audience began to clap, to stamp, to cheer, and still the war cry of the McDonalds went screaming to the roof; and finally when the walls were beginning to rock, and the women were becoming terrified, the Piper whirled down the aisle and swept out of the building on the high tide of his song. The young men in the back of the hall followed him in noisy hilarity, but he stopped for nobody. He went marching straight up the village street towards home, the defiant notes rising in a wild crescendo. And oh, how he blew with lungs of leather like fifty pipers together, when he was passing the Methodist church!

Dr. McGarry called the audience to order with some difficulty, and the rest of the performance went on quite decorously. And when the last notes of the pipes died away in the hills, Marmaduke and Trooper crawled from their hiding place and sat on the hall steps till the programme was over, holding each other up.

"Gosh," whispered Marmaduke, wiping his eyes weakly. "Who'd 'a' thought that a McDonald from Glenoro wouldn't know a Methodist church when he saw one?"

"It was the sight o' the Temperance hall that turned his stomach," lamented Trooper. "We might 'a' known he'd shy at it."

The Piper played himself away up and out of Orchard Glen, vowing solemnly, like the Minstrel Boy, that he would tear the cords of his instrument asunder ere they should sound again within the hearing of that traitorous community, a vow that old Lauchie was to live to see broken, under very stirring circumstances.

But there were other cords torn asunder in Orchard Glen by the unfortunate contingency of that fatal evening. The Hendersons and the Browns, who had been lifelong friends, stopped speaking to each other; Mr. Sinclair and Mr. Wylie met on the most frigidly polite terms; the union choir, which was the pride of Tremendous K.'s heart and the glory of Orchard Glen, fell to pieces, and a line of demarkation was drawn carefully between the two denominations where so recently every one had talked about church union.

Mrs. Johnnie Dunn did not allow whatever part her nephew and his chum had in the affair to go unnoticed. She advertised it, and hinted that perhaps the Piper was not so much to blame after all. Indeed the past record of Trooper and Marmaduke afforded little weight in proving their innocence, and public suspicion fastened upon them. Neither of them took any pains to establish their innocence; indeed, Trooper secretly wondered why they had never thought of planning the affair, and was rather ashamed of his lack of enterprise.

But both he and Marmaduke felt that The Woman pressed the case against them just a little too strongly.

"We'll have to do something to make The Woman mind her own business, Troop," Marmaduke declared, as they sat by the roaring fire in the store one chilly afternoon. "She'll ruin our innocent and harmless reputations if we don't."

So the two put their heads together to plan a just retribution, but before it could be made to fall, The Woman astonished every one by an entirely new enterprise. She packed her trunk, and leaving Marthy and Trooper to take care of themselves, she went away to spend the Winter on a visit to a sister in California.

But to no one was the night of the concert such a great occasion as it was to Christina. Wallace Sutherland went back to his studies the next week, but the vision of his handsome smiling face and his gallant behaviour remained vividly with her. She was filled with dismay at the contrast Gavin Grant had presented to him that night. It did not dawn upon Christina's mind that Gavin would as soon have raised his hand to Auntie Elspie as to defend himself against poor old Piper Lauchie. Tilly had whispered that Gavin was scared, and the other girls, with Joanna's able assistance, emphasised the shameful fact. So when she saw him after the concert, standing on the edge of the bar of light that streamed from the hall door, she slipped away as he turned towards her and escaped with John in the darkness. But Gavin noticed her haste and interpreted it aright.

The Aunties sent a gay message by John, when he was over at the Craig-Ellachie threshing, to the effect that Elspie had broken off her engagement. She had heard that Piper Lauchie had taken to going to the Methodist church, and they had warned her that they would not abide a Methodist body in the family. But Christina could not joke about the Piper with Gavin, she felt he really must be humiliated, when, in fact, Gavin felt no more at fault than if he had backed out of the way of an enraged child and dodged his blows.

But indeed Christina was giving him and his affairs very little thought. Her Dream Knight had taken form, she even knew his name and his station in life. And though he still rode gaily beyond the horizon she could not but think of him and wonder when she might see him again.