We had driven some distance while this conversation was in progress, and coming to cross-roads, I was uncertain of the direction. "Go in to that farmhouse, please," I said to my companion, pointing to a cheerful looking home a short distance from the road, "and inquire the way?" He alighted quickly and went around to the side door out of my sight. I waited, every moment expecting him to return with the desired information, and was growing impatient when he came out to me, his face beaming with the enthusiasm that follows a successful interview. "This is your share," he said, holding out a generous portion of hot apple pie to me. "The lady who lives here is a motherly soul--very proud of her cooking, and the pie did smell most tempting--I could not resist." "Did you use your usual 'blush and stammer' method to solicit this pastry?" I questioned him. "No, she was as hungry for my compliments as I was for her apple pie, so we simply made a fair exchange." "And the directions back to the Colony?" "The direction?" and he felt extremely stupid. "I felt all the time that--in my sub-conscious mind--there was a thought trying to assert itself." "But the strength of a bad habit," I remarked, "held back the thought: habit is a strong force for good or evil, for it perpetuates itself by a form, as it were, of auto-suggestion. You know all suggestions are powerful." "It is good pie, isn't it?" he asked, irrelevantly. [Illustration] FRITZ AND HIS SUN DIAL "The small task--well performed--opens the door to larger opportunity." Fritz and His Sun Dial Years ago, I saw a near-sighted cook peeling onions--a most pathetic scene if one judges entirely from appearances. The incident impressed me deeply at the time, although it had long since passed from my mind, when good old Fritz came to me, with tears running down the dusty furrows of his be-wrinkled and weather-beaten face. Some strange analogy revived the old memory. There is--say what one will--something tremendously ludicrous about honesty when clothed too deeply in rusticity. We smile at it while we give it our love and respect. It can toy with our heart-strings, playing both grave and gay. We laugh at it so that we may not cry and become laughable ourselves. In broken English, he tried to explain that which was self-evident and needed no explanation--his own distress and desperation. His simple earnestness--his frank, honest manner--won every one's immediate sympathy. The boys began to plan to relieve his distress, even while they laughed with scant courtesy in the old man's face. His clothes were many sizes too large, which was not entirely offset by his cap that was several sizes too small. Through his broken shoes, ten toes spoke in most eloquent English--the need of protection and shelter.