"Peter! Peter!" Angus McRae tried to speak his name, but his benumbed lips refused to make an articulate sound. He dropped the lantern beside him and tried to raise the prostrate figure. As he did so he felt the light of the lantern grow dim. It faded away, and the Good Samaritan and the man who had fallen among thieves lay side by side in the snow. CHAPTER XIII "THE MASTER WHISPERED" When Roderick stepped on board the night train for Montreal he was surprised and pleased to find Doctor Archie Blair bustling into the opposite compartment. That delightful person, with a suit-case, a pile of medical journals, a copy of Burns, and a new book of poems, had left Algonquin the day before, and was now setting out on a tremendous journey all the way to Halifax, to attend a great medical congress. He welcomed his young fellow-townsman hilariously, pulled him into his seat, jammed him into a corner, and scowling fiercely, with his fists brandished in the young man's face and his eyes flashing, he spent an hour demonstrating to Roderick that he had just discovered a young Canadian singer of the spirit if not the power of his great Scottish bard. The other occupants of the sleeping-car watched the violent big man with the terrible eye, nervously expecting him every moment to spring upon his young victim and throttle him. But to those who were within earshot, the sternest thing he said was, "_Then gently scan thy brother man, Still gentler sister woman, Though they may gang a keenin' wrang, To step aside is human._" The charm of the doctor's conversation, drove away much of Roderick's homesickness and despondency, but it could not make him forget the pain in his arm, which was hourly growing more insistent. "And so you're leaving Algonquin for good," said Archie Blair at last, when the black porter sent them to the smoker while he made up their berths. "Well, there's a great future ahead of you in that firm. Not many young fellows have such a chance as that. I wish Ed could have gone away before you left, though, to Jericho, or Sodom and Gomorrah, or wherever it is he and J. P. Thornton are heading for." Archie Blair, as every one in Algonquin knew, lived as near to the rules of life set forth in the Bible as any man in the town. But he delighted in being known as a wicked and irreligious person, and always made a fine pretence at being at sea when speaking of anything Scriptural. "Yes, sir, it's rather hard on old Ed; and there's J. P. too. He's been waiting for Ed ever since the Holy Land was discovered, as faithfully as Ruth waited for Jacob or whoever it was. I can't remember when those two chaps weren't planning to take that trip, and it looks as if they'd get to the New Jerusalem first. Cracky, now, I believe you were the one that stopped their first trip and here you're interrupting another one!" He laughed delightedly. "I?" inquired Roderick. "How was that?"