arately. If the arrangement is satisfactory I can give you half now and the other half the day after election. I'll make out a memorandum which you can sign."

Darcy's brilliant eyes flashed as they saw the figures. His black brows met, however, when he read the "memorandum," passed first to McGinnis, and receiving a glance of heartfelt admiration from that astute practical politician; but he affixed his signature in silence; and the gleam returned to his eye as the national man offered a roll of bank-notes. "Will you count it?" said the national man; one makes mistakes occasionally. Thanks.' He repeated the sum in his crisp, Eastern accent. Do you know, Mr. Darcy, I fancy you are going to set the prairies afire. You should hear our friend McGinnis talk about you!

"Well, you've got me hard and fast, gentlemen," said Darcy, with a dry glance at the receipt which the national man was stowing away in a silver-rimmed lizard-skin pocketbook, but I believe your cause is right; and it will have the best efforts of my heart and mind. I'll get out on the road as soon as we can get the other things in shape."

“A cigar, Mr. Darcy?" said the national man, politely; and again Mr. McGinnis inwardly grinned; it was the box and not the cigar-case that was offered. "Won't you come in some time to-morrow? We are to have a little conference of the workers. They will all be glad to see you." He shook Darcy's proffered hand, or, it would be exact to say, he allowed Darcy to shake his hand, and bade him farewell with much politeness.

"Don't he carry it off well!" said McGinnis, the instant the door closed behind the orator's figure; "well, that's one kind of a labor leader, let's see the other."

"Yes, you get him, and we'll get out the buckets," said the national man. And his greeting to Leroy and the talk which followed not only made Leroy wonder in his modest soul, but further convinced McGinnis that the great politician understood human nature without a key. "Talked right out before Harry and me, both of them, like we was on the ground floor. Hully gee, Michael, but you are just there, and don't you forget it."

He felt, somehow, a sensation of gratitude to Leroy, a new respect as he heard his own opinion asked. He had used the same device in smaller matters, many a time; but he experienced a simple kind of pleasure now that it was used toward him; he felt at the same time the flattery of the subtle distinction between the politician's manner to Darcy and to his present auditors. He treated them like political equals. Verily, it was a proud and happy evening to Michael McGinnis. Leroy barely lifted his glass to his lips; he never drank; but Michael did the champagne full justice. Michael's head was strong, he was not in the least dizzy when they shook hands warmly with the great men and went out of the hotel together; but perhaps before those-Heaven forbid I should betray confidence, I being an unseen spectator, and give the definite, cruel number of glasses! before the champagne, let us say, he might not have hummed so cheerily,

Then Ireland shall be free,
From the centre to the sea,
Says the Shan van Voght,

or encircled Harry Leroy's neck so fraternally with his arm as they sauntered down the lonely, lighted street.

In

Harry smiled; but in a second the vulture's claws that had been at his heart all the evening, and that had relaxed their grip for the hour under the stress of higher interests, tore him anew. voluntarily he sighed. McGinnis's eyes flashed. "Say, Harry," said he, looking amiably at the electric lights, "I had a mighty funny thing happen to me to-day; I was down your way, and I saw a little special-delivery boy-I got him the place, he lives in the Eighth Ward-and he was scorching along to your house and nearly ran into me. I asked him where he was going, after I had said what was proper for his conduct-we've got to have a bike law in this place, that's sure as death! He told me your house, and showed me the letter. I recognized Jay's hand. Fact is, I had news of Jay this very day, and I suspected that he would be writing you; that's why I questioned the boy. I-I guess "- McGinnis dropped his arm and linked it in Harry's "I guess Jay told you about that note."

"How-❞ began Harry and stopped, uncertain what he should say.

"How'd I know?" said McGinnis. "Well, fact is, Harry, I met Meecham, and I bought that note."

"It's endorsed by me," said Harry, huskily; "I'll pay you, Mac."

46

He

Naw, you won't. Jay Sibley will pay that note. He'll pay every last cent. Not jest this minnit, but as the money comes in. I'll handle that young man without gloves for his soul's good. ain't my brother-in-law! Don't you lose a mite of sleep, Harry. I'll fix him and there won't be no scandal or bad times. It'll all come right in the wash. You just say you've seen me, or, better still, you don't say nothing at all. I'll write him; and when he comes up here, you'll see a very much reformed and penitent young man. Here's your street-car, Harry—that's all right."

He had pushed Harry and his broken thanks onto the platform as he spoke.

A month later Leroy met Darcy, both being on their wheels. "Well, Darcy, how goes it?" called Harry, with a cordiality that he had not felt for years; "I hear you are doing grand work."

Darcy's wheel was shining and beautiful; Harry's was a second-hand rattling machine of a make unknown to fame ; but probably not a man in town had had more pleasure in riding than he. He looked tanned and happy.

"That you, Harry? how well you ride!

I

Why, things seem to be coming our way all the time. But I feel as if I wanted to tell them all—I have told a good many, that I'm one of your converts, a brand snatched from the burning, as it were. was switching off on the other tack when you set me thinking-that evening at the club, you remember-about old Fanning. I began to look things up, and I was appalled, simply appalled at what I found out."

"I've read your speeches," interrupted Harry, "they are full of argument, facts

"Yes, when I came to look things up, I found there was only one ground for me to take, and I took it. I want to be right, and this talk of consistency doesn't cut any ice with me. I hope you get the Hammer all right. Say, I hear you're doing a lot of work right along."

The best thing I ever did was to convert you," said Harry, laughing; "I never could quite take that story into camp until now, and felt I was getting credit under false colors; but now I shall 'point with pride'- Well, good luck to you, and let me know if I can help you any time."

As he rode along, he thought, half wistfully, but without a grain of envy, "I wish I had that man's talent!"

Darcy smiled to himself, watching him. "He's dead easy," he muttered; then all of a sudden, with the swift transitions of his temperament, he bit down a sigh.

"D it!" he almost groaned, "I wish I had that man's conscience!"

I

N whatever murky American city one's lot may be cast, the earthly paradise of a perfect summer day is never very far off, as the wild duck flies. When the walls and pavements of New York are blistering under the August sun, it is but a night's journey to the cool green May which, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, lasts until the beginning of autumn. During the worst of the heated term of 1896, when people died of sunstroke by the hundred in every great city of the United States, the boy and I, in ulsters and mittens, joyously trod the deck of a gulf schooner, while the Saguenay sailors worked her against head-winds blowing fresh from the innumerable icecold lakes of Labrador and the primeval solitudes of the Laurentian Mountains.

The vast country north of the Gulf of St. Lawrence is, to the uncommercial explorer, the most interesting region on this continent, if not in the world. For nearly four centuries the ships of civilization have sailed by it, yet, except at the very water's edge, there has been no intrusion upon it. The rivers which pour forth from every opening in the hills bear witness that the back country is a net-work of lakes and water-courses. Ask the Commissioner of Crown Lands of the great Province of Quebec to-day what his department knows of that region, and he will tell you that it is the least known portion of North America; that only a few of the lakes have been surveyed; that two exploring parties have

VOL. XXII.-34

But

recently crossed the peninsula; that a handful of fishermen's houses fringe the gulf; that for the rest of it, the wandering Montagnais Indians are the only tourists who traverse half a million square miles of territory. Steamers go up the Saguenay. Lake St. John is reached by rail. away to the northeast is a tremendous tract of country, from whence issue streams greater than the Hudson, the headwaters of which no white man has ever seen. How many Americans, if asked to mention the beautiful rivers of the continent, could give even the names of the Bersimis, the Outardes, the Manicouagan, the Misticapin, the Moisie, the Mingan, the Romaine, the Natashquan, the Olomonosheeboo, the Meccatina, the Esquimaux ? Only a few salmon fisherman, who are the most indefatigable of sportsmen, would recognize them.

It was to view this neglected summer seacoast that the boy and I left Quebec last summer, to go to Tadousac by a steamer as fine as any floating hotel of the Sound, and to proceed beyond Tadousac by such means as could thereafter be devised. We went for a lazy cruise, and to see some of the wonderful salmon streams of that country.

Before leaving Quebec we had secured a permit from the Crown Land Office "to fish in the waters not presently under lease, or in which the fishing rights belong to the province, on the north shore of the Gulf of

St. Lawrence, from Pointe de Monts up to Blanc Sablon. Said permit shall be good for two months."

"And if you fish in all those rivers," said the smiling Deputy Commissioner, "you will not come back this summer, or the next, either." We found this to be true, because only a small part of the fishing rivers of that shore were under private lease in 1896, and a beautiful stream breaks through the mountains about every ten miles.

It was evening and low tide when we clambered up the slanting gang-plank at

it being midsummer and a dull season, we soon chartered the ship, her cook, her captain bold, her mate and her crew, for $180 a month. That was enough for one evening. The missing Robitois, sailor at $8 a month, went ashore to postpone weddingbells, which now would not ring for him until our return. Besides, the tide must be waited for, and we slept at the hotel, the last one this side of the north pole along that coast.

The six hours of northern summer night soon passed, and then we swung out with

Tadousac, and stood on the dock, as high as a cottage roof above the water. Just around the point, in the deep little bay, two or three schooner-lights blinked and nodded in a sleepy way, as the vessels swung at anchor on the gentle swells. Tadousac is somewhere near three centuries old, and it has fully twenty houses already. The mountains rise in grandeur behind the place, and the Saguenay, six hundred feet deep, pours copiously at its feet.

The owner of one of the schooners was at home, for his vessel had just returned, after a highly successful delivery of lumber from St. Anne des Monts to Quebec, and,

the tide, and sailed away through the morning mist to Rivière du Loup, on the South Shore, where Henry Braithwaite, guide extraordinary, all the way from New Brunswick, with provisions and birch-bark canoes, and silent Malicete Indians, waited to be taken aboard. On the way across the wide St. Lawrence a summer thunderstorm broke, but the forty-foot sails were not reefed; the yacht-like freighter heeled till her deck was like the roof of a house, and she made the twenty-four miles in two hours, while the porpoises puffed and blew, and arched their sinuous white backs all around us.

If you want to go to heaven before you