"Oh, you do! Who told you?" "Delia Beaseley." "Is she a widow?" Jamie asked slyly. "Now, no nonsense, Jamie Macleod." I spoke severely. "Nonsense! I was only putting two and two together logically; you said the Doctor trusted her--" "And well he may. No, she is n't a widow," I said shortly. "That settles it; you need n't be so touchy about it." "Has he any children?" I asked, ignoring the admonition. "No; that's his other great sorrow. He lost both his son and daughter. Do you know, I can't help thinking he 's doing all this for them?" "You mean the farm arrangement?" "Yes, and us--he 's been such a friend to mother and me. Oh, he 's great!" He was lost suddenly in one of his silences. I had already learned never to permit myself the liberty of breaking them. We drove into the village, and, while Jamie was with the grocer, "stoking ", as he put it for the coming week, I was wondering what to make of Delia Beaseley's theory about the "conscience money" and its connection with the farm. Was it to aid in carrying out the Doctor's plans for helpfulness? From what Jamie Macleod had told me, I came to the conclusion that neither he nor his mother knew anything of _that_ financial source. How strange it seemed to know of this tangled skein of circumstance, the right thread of which I could not grasp! While thinking of this, I became aware of the noise of a cheap graphophone carrying a melody with its raucous voice; the sounds came from a cabaret just below the steamboat landing-place. I listened closely to catch the words; the melody, even in this cheap reproduction, was a beautiful one. "_O Canada, pays de mon amour_--" I caught those words distinctly, and was amusing myself with this expression of patriotism when Jamie came out of the shop. "What's up?" he asked, noticing my listening attitude. "Hark!" He listened intently. "Oh, that!" he said with a smile of recognition as he stepped into the wagon; "you should hear Ewart sing it. I 've heard him in camp and seen old André fairly weep at hearing it. I see you are discovering Richelieu-en-Bas; but you should make acquaintance with the apple-boat." "What's that?" "It's a month too late now for it; it moors just below the cabaret by the lowest level of the bank. It's a fine old sloop, and the hull is filled with the reddest, roundest, biggest apples that you 've ever seen. I come down here once a day regularly while she is here, just to get the fragrance into my nostrils, to walk the narrow plank to her deck, and touch--and taste to my satisfaction. We put in ten barrels at the manor." I could see that picture in my mind's eye: the old apple-boat, the heaped up apples, the hull glowing with their color, the green river bank, the blue waters of the St. Lawrence, the islands for a background--and the October air spicy with the fragrance of Pomona's blessed gift!