"George,--I saw Margaret and I have fixed her. Poor woman,--she is as nervous as a kitten and as worried as a mother cat, fearing we may hurt Andrew. The old rascal;--he's not so easily hurt, eh, George? "You saw Rita?" "Yes! And she is like Mrs. Clark, but the prize looks too alluring for her to refrain from entering the gamble." "George! Why should we leave this till to-morrow?" "I don't know why." "We could start in to-night, just as easily as to-morrow, and it will be over a day sooner. What do you say?" "I am ready when you are, Mr. Auld." "Right! Now, I am going to leave the conversation to you. You must work it round to fit in. I shall do the rest,--the dirty work, as the villain says in the dime novel." "What do you know about dime novels?" I laughed. "I am a minister of the gospel now, but ... I was a boy once." The Rev. William Auld had dinner with me, then he started out in his launch for Clark's ranch. It was arranged that I follow immediately in a rowing boat, which would take me longer to get there and would thus disarm any suspicion of complicity. When I arrived at Clark's, I could hear the minister talking and Andrew Clark laughing heartily. Mr. Auld was telling some interesting story and he had the old man in the best of humours. I was welcomed with cheerfulness, and the minister shook hands with me as if he had not seen me for a month of Sundays. Rita was a-missing. Mrs. Clark seemed nervous and ill-at-ease. Andrew, however, was in his happiest of moods. "What special brought ye over, George?" he asked. I told him of Rita's anxiety to be able to talk English properly and of my willingness to teach her if it could be arranged conveniently. The minister backed up the project with all his ministerial fluency, but Andrew Clark was not the man to agree to a thing immediately, no matter how well it appealed to him. "Rita's a good lassie," he said, "and she hasna had schoolin' except what Marget and me taught her, and that's little more than being able to read and add up a few lines o' figures. "George Bremner,--you're an honest man and I like ye fine. You'll ha'e my answer by the end o' the week." "Right you are!" I exclaimed. Andrew then started in to tell Mr. Auld of the method he had adopted in regard to the disposition of his output of eggs, and that gave me just the opportunity I wanted. "How do you raise your chicks, Mr. Clark?" I asked. "Do you use an incubator?" "Sure thing! And a grand little incubator I ha'e too," he answered. "She takes two hundred and fifty eggs at a time and gives an average of eighty per cent chicks." I had lit on Andrew Clark's one and only hobby. He got up. "Come and ha'e a look at it. It's called 'The Every-Egg-A-Chick' Incubator, and it nearly lives up to its name. "But it's a pity I ha'e nothin' in her at the minute. "Come on, too, Mr. Auld. It'll do ye good to learn something aboot chickens, even if you are busy enough lookin' after the sheep."