A smile of pleasure at the open face and fine physique of his unexpected host flashed over the old man's face. "Big Malcolm MacDonald's grandson!" he cried, when Scotty had introduced himself. "Oh, yes, indeed, I know Big Malcolm well,"--he shook the young man's hand once more: "Ah yes, it was his eldest son's funeral that first took me to the Oa. God moves in a mysterious way, indeed. And you were but a child then, and now you are a man. And it is a good thing to be standing upon the threshold of life, is it not?" A good thing? Scotty would have given a most emphatic affirmative in response some months before, but now he was doubtful. "Yes," he said hesitatingly, "in some ways. But how do you happen to be away back here alone, Mr. McAlpine?" The minister explained his presence. He had been asked to go to Barbay to assist with the sacrament on the following Sabbath, and had intended to spend the night with a friend and take the stage out in the morning. "But I could not wait," he concluded, "I was constrained to come on." There was that strange gleam in his eye which had always so filled Scotty with awe in his childhood. The young man understood. Mr. McAlpine's burning restlessness, his erratic way of making arrangements to be driven to certain places, and then suddenly setting out in the dead of night to walk prodigious distances had been the wondering talk of the Oa since he was a child. For this man carried a burden of souls that gave him no rest day or night, and that even now, when he was broken and aged, sometimes drove him to stupendous labour. "But you will surely stay here to-night!" cried Scotty, feeling in the capacity of host even in this wild tangle of forest growth. "I am camping, but there is plenty of room in the shanty, and I can cook you some supper." The old man accepted the hospitality gratefully. He appeared worn and exhausted, and seemed to have suddenly lost his restless energy, as though the spur which had driven him forth in the night had been removed. Scotty made a comfortable seat for him of cedar boughs placed against a large tree trunk, and stirred up the fire to a blaze. Its rays danced forth, lighting up the worn face and white hair of the old man seated before it, and the strong frame of the young one standing erect in splendid contrast. The light made the log walls of the old shanty stand forth, touched here and there the fantastic heaps of dead brushwood and misshapen stumps, illumined the underside of the adjacent trees and danced away down the dim avenues to be lost among the ghostly shadows. And while his host prepared supper, the minister beguiled the time by asking after all his friends in the Oa and the Glen, especially the Highlanders, for Mr. McAlpine was not above possessing a little weakness for anyone who spoke the Gaelic. And then he must know what the young man was doing, and how he came to be there.