effort was a ridiculous failure, practiced so clumsily on an object so small, and the only effect was to cause the baby to achieve a tremendous wriggle and a loud scream of laughter. These experiments were variously repeated, but all with the same cherubic result; the baby conducted itself with admirable self-possession and courage, as though, indeed, it had been used, every hour of its life, to the company of riotous lumber-jacks in town. The inevitable happened, of course: Billy the Beast, whose pocket was smoking with his wages, proposed the baby's health, and there was an uproarious rush for the bar. "Just a minute, boys!" John Fairmeadow drawled. It was an awkward moment: but the jacks were by this time used to being bidden by this man who was a man, and the rush was forthwith halted. "Just a minute, boys," John Fairmeadow repeated, "for your minister!" The baby was then held aloft in John Fairmeadow's big, kind, sensitive hands, and from this safe perch softly smiled upon the crowd of flushed and bearded faces all roundabout. "Boys," John Fairmeadow drawled, significantly, "this is the only sort of church we have in these woods." There was a laughing stir and shuffling: but presently a tolerant silence fell, in obedience to the custom John Fairmeadow had established; and caps came off, and pipes were smothered. "A little away from the bar, please," the big preacher suggested. Pale Peter nodded to Charlie the Infidel; and the clink of glasses ceased--and the bottles were left in peace--and the hands of the bartender rested.