Roderick scarcely noticed that she had gone, he was wondering if the summer holidays were to be spent in Algonquin after all, and then he noticed that the man he had been anxious to meet was shaking his hand. "I'm glad to see Angus McRae's son!" the big man was saying. "Yes, yes, I'd know you by your father. And how is he? I must see him before I leave. Sandy's been telling me about your work here. And Ed too. Do you intend to settle in Algonquin?" "I hope not, sir, not permanently at least." "That's right. Algonquin's a fine place to have in the background of one's life, but it's rather small for any expansion. Did you know I've had an eye on you since you were up north last winter?" "On me?" cried Roderick amazed. "Yes, just on you." The portly figure shook with a good humoured amusement at the young man's modest amazement. "I heard about you from my brother and then from Kent. Let me see, I suppose there will be high doings all day to-day. What about to-morrow? Could I see you for a little talk to-morrow morning?" Roderick set the hour for the appointment, silently wondering. His heart was throbbing with expectation, vague, wonderful. Some great event was surely pending. He went home that night, full of high expectations. When he made a great success of his life and came back to Algonquin, rich and with a name, he would go to her and show her he had been right, and she had been wrong. CHAPTER XII "THE MELODY DEADEN'D" "And you don't mean to tell me you were such a fool as to say he might go?" J. P. Thornton, walking up the hill for the fourth time on the way home from a session meeting with Lawyer Ed, asked the question again in an extremity of indignation. And Lawyer Ed answered as he had done each time before: "I couldn't stand in the boy's way, Jack; I just couldn't." They had argued the question for an hour, up and down the hills between their two homes, and had come to no agreement. That Roderick had had an offer to tempt any young man there was no doubt. A partnership in the firm of Elliot and Kent, solicitors for the British North American Transcontinental Railroad, was such a chance as came the way of few at his age. And yet Mr. Thornton declared that he should have refused it unconditionally. Not so Lawyer Ed; his generous heart condoned the boy. "It's the chance of a life-time, Jack," he declared. "It would be shameful to keep him out of it, and, mind you, he wouldn't say he would go until I urged it." "Oh, blow him!" J. P. was a very dignified gentleman and did not revert to his boyhood's slang except under extreme provocation. "He shouldn't have allowed you to urge him. And what about the brilliant prospect you gave up once just because his father was in need?" "Well, never mind that," said Lawyer Ed, hurriedly. "He doesn't know anything about that and he's not going to either."