Duncan Polite had hoped that ere this his nephew and Mr. Egerton would have been firm friends. He wondered sadly over his failure to bring them together at his house. He wondered over other things, too. He regarded the revival of activity in the church with a heart of overflowing joy, but a joy tinged with a puzzled uncertainty. He knew that the young people of the congregation were now taking a greater interest in religious matters than they had ever done, and yet he could not quite understand why it was that, though the boys went regularly to the meetings of the various organisations and were constant in their attendance at the weekly prayer-meeting, which they had formerly eschewed, still they showed no consequent change of conduct. Sandy's fiddling and dancing went on uninterruptedly, parallel with his Christian Endeavour meetings. Wee Andra was even more irreverent than formerly and Donald showed no signs of an added desire to enter the ministry. Donald's case was particularly disappointing. He wanted Donald to sit at his young pastor's feet and learn the lesson of true consecration. He never dreamed that those two whom he desired to be fast friends were in great danger of becoming enemies, and that events were shaping themselves to widen the breach between them. VII A DISASTROUS PICNIC. Dominion Day was approaching, the day upon which Glenoro had held a picnic in Isaac Thompson's maple grove, about half a mile down the river, ever since there was a Dominion Day.