Ronald’s friendship with the hospitable widow and his acquaintanceship with those three boon-companions of hers grew apace; and many a merry evening they all of them had together in the brilliant little parlour, Ronald singing his own or any other songs without stint, the big skipper telling elaborately facetious Highland stories, the widow bountiful with her cigars and her whisky-toddy. And yet he was ill, ill at ease. He would not admit to himself, of course, that he rather despised these new acquaintances—for were they not most generous and kind towards him?—nor yet that the loud hilarity he joined in was on his part at times a trifle forced. Indeed, he could not very well have defined the cause of this disquietude and restlessness and almost despair that was present to his consciousness even when the laugh was at its loudest and the glasses going round most merrily. But the truth was he had begun to lose heart in his work. The first glow of determination that had enabled him to withstand the depression of the dull days and the monotonous labour had subsided now. The brilliant future the Americans had painted for him did not seem so attractive. Meenie was away; perhaps never to be met with more; and the old glad days that were filled with the light of her presence were all gone now and growing ever more and more distant. And in the solitude of the little room up there in the Port Dundas Road—with the gray atmosphere ever present at the windows, and the dull rumble of the carts and waggons without—he was now getting into a habit of pushing aside his books for a while, and letting his fancies go far afield; insomuch that his heart seemed to grow more and more sick within him, and more and more he grew to think that somehow life had gone all wrong with him.