"Miss Doane, let's announce it in big type this very week, something like this: 'The _Star_ of Hempfield has arranged a new treat for its readers. We shall soon present a column containing the ripe observations of our esteemed printer, fellow citizen, and spotless Scotchman, Mr. Fergus MacGregor. We shall also have contributions in a philosophical vein by Mr. David Grayson, and a column by that paragon of country journalism'"--here he paused and looked solemnly at the old Captain, and then resumed--"'that paragon of country journalism, Mr. Norton Carr.'" We all thought that Nort was joking, but he wasn't. He was in dead earnest. That afternoon he walked home with me down the wintry road. It was a cold, blustery day with a fine snow sifting through the air, but Nort's head was so hot with his plans that I am sure, if his feet were chilled, he never knew it. He laboured hard with me to write something each week for the _Star_, and the upshot of the matter was that I began to contribute short paragraphs and bits of description and narrative which we headed DAVID GRAYSON'S COLUMN It was made up of the very simplest and commonest elements, mostly little scraps of news from my farm--the description of a calf drinking, the sound of pigeons in the hay loft. I told also about the various country odours in spring, peach leaves, strawberry leaves, and new hay, and of the curious music of the rain in the corn. I inquired what was the finest hour of the day in Hempfield, and tried to answer my own question. I put in a hundred and one inconsequential things that I love to observe and think about, and added here and there, for seasoning, a bit of common country philosophy. It was very enjoyable to do, and a number of people said they liked to read it, because I told them some of the things they often thought about, but had never been able to express. Nort found Fergus far harder to influence than he found me. A curious change had been going on in Fergus which I did not at first understand. At times he was more garrulous than ever I had known him to be, and at times he was a very sphinx for silence. It is a curious thing how people surprise us. In our vanity we begin to think we know them to the uttermost, and then one day, possibly by accident, possibly in a moment of emotion, a little secret door springs open in the smooth panel of their visible lives, and we see within a long, long corridor with other doors and passages opening away from it in every direction--the vast secret chambers of their lives. I had some such experience with that prickly Scotchman, Fergus MacGregor. It began one evening when I found him alone by the office fire. He was sitting smoking his impossible pipe and gazing into the glowing open draft of the corpulent stove. He did not even look around when I came in, but reaching out one foot kicked a chair over toward me. Suddenly he fetched a big sigh, and said in a tone of voice I had not before heard: