"Eh yes, yes, there is a great ministry for you here, Lad. I have sometimes been sorry that you did not feel called to the preaching, but I was jist thinking the last time Edward and I talked the work over, that I was glad now you hadn't. For you will be able to help the poor folk that need you jist as well here, though I would be far from putting anything above the preaching of the Gospel. But there will be many ways of preaching the Gospel, Lad, and the lawyer has a great chance. It will be by jist being neighbour to the folk in want. Folk go more often to the lawyer or the doctor, Archie Blair says, when they are in trouble, than they do to their minister, and I am afraid it's true. And a great many of the folk that will come to you to get you to do their business, Lad, will be folk in trouble, many who have fallen among thieves on the Jericho Road, and you will be pouring in the oil and the wine that the dear Lord has given you, and you will be doing it all in His name." He sighed happily. "Oh, yes, indeed and indeed, it will be a great ministry, Roderick, my son." Roderick was silent. His heart was touched. He resolved he would do the best he could for any friend of his father who was in trouble. But his eye was set on far prospects of great achievement, where Algonquin and the Jericho Road had no place. Their talk was interrupted by Aunt Kirsty, who came to the door to demand of him what he had done with his clothes. Had he come home, the rascal, with nothing but what was on his back after the six pairs of new socks she had sent him only last spring? Roderick sprang up. "My trunk! It will be on the wharf. I yelled at Peter to put it off there, just as we were driving away, and said I'd paddle over and get it. I forgot all about it, Aunt Kirsty." The father and son looked at each other and smiled. It was easy to forget when they were together. "I'll go after it right now. It's mostly old books and soiled clothes, Auntie, but there's one nice thing in it. You ought to see the peach of a shawl I got you." He ran in for his cap, and she followed him to the door, scolding him for his foolish extravagance, but not deceiving any one into thinking that she was not highly pleased. Angus stood long at the water's edge watching the Lad's canoe slip away out on the mirror of the lake. The shore was growing dark, but the water still reflected the rose of the sunset. The soft dip of his paddle disturbed its stillness and a long golden track marked the road he was taking out into the light. Away ahead of him, beyond the network of islands, shone the glory of the departing day. The Lad was paddling straight for the Gleam. The father's mind went back to that evening of stormy radiance, when the little fellow had paddled away to find the rainbow gold.