a-sayin' of yesterday; and it doesn't matter two cents that the rest of the world has changed the subject. They've been a-sayin' a long time that they object to import duties of any sort or kind, and you won't get them to see the business in changing. If they do this it won't be because they want to, it will be because Wallingham wants them to."

66

"I guess that's so," said Williams. "Good cigar this, Lorne! Where'd you get it?"

66

They're Indian cheroots- Planters' they call 'em-made in Madras. I got some through a man named Hesketh, who has friends out there, at a price you wouldn't believe for as decent a smoke. You can't buy 'em in London; but you will all right and here, too, as soon as we've got the sense to favor British-grown tobacco."

"Lorne appreciates his family better than he did before," remarked his youngest sister, "because we're British grown."

"You were saying you noticed two things specially in the way?" said his father.

"Oh, the other's of course the awful povertythe twelve millions that haven't got enough to do with. I expect it's an outside figure and it covers all sorts of qualifying circumstances; but it's the one they quote, and it's the one Wallingham will have to handle.

They've muddled along until they've got twelve million people in that condition, and now they have to carry on with the handicap. We ask them to put a tax on foreign food to develop our wheat areas and cattle ranges. We say, 'Give us a chance and we'll feed you and take your surplus population.' What is to be done with the twelve million while we are growing the wheat? The colonies offer to create prosperity for everybody concerned at a certain outlay-we've got the raw materials—and they can't afford the investment because of the twelve millions, and what may happen meanwhile. They can't face the meanwhile -that's what it comes to."

"Fine old crop of catchwords in that situation," Mr. Williams remarked; and his eye had the spark of the practical politician. "Can't you hear 'em at it, eh?"

"It scares them out of everything but hand-tomouth politics. Any other remedy is too heroic. They go on pointing out and contemplating and grieving, with their percentages of misery and degeneration; and they go on poulticing the cancer with benevolence—there are people over there who want the State to feed the school-children! Oh, they're kind, good, big-hearted people; and they've got the idea that if they can only give enough away everything will come

right. I was talking with a man one day, and I asked him whether the existence of any class justified governing a great country on the principle of an almshouse. He asked me who the alms-givers ought to be, in any country. Of course it was tampering with my figure-in an almshouse there aren't any, but that's the way it presents itself to the best of them. Another fellow was frantic at the idea of a tax on foreign food, but would be very glad to see Government do more to assist emigration to the colonies. I tried to show him it would be better to make it profitable to emigrate first, but I couldn't make him see it. Oh, and there's the old thing against them of course the handling of imperial and domestic affairs by one body. Attending to the Baghdad railway and the town pump in the same room, on the same afternoon, if there's time. Is it any wonder the Germans beat them in their own shops, and Russia walks into Thibet?"

"I see that the demand for a tariff on manufactured goods is growing," Williams remarked, "even the antifood-tax organs are beginning to shout for that."

"If they had put it on twenty years ago," said Lorne, "there would be no twelve million people making a problem for want of work, and it would be a great deal easier to do imperial business to-day."

"You'll find," said John Murchison, removing his pipe, "that protection'll have to come first over there. They'll put up a fence and save their trade, and when they've done that they'll talk to us about our big ideas -not before. And if Wallingham hadn't frightened them with the imperial job, he never would have got them to take up the other. It's just his way of getting both done."

"I hope you're right, father," said Lorne, with a covert glance at his watch. "Horace Mrs. Williams -I'll have to get you to excuse me. I have an engagement at eight.”

He left them with a happy spring in his step, left them looking after him, talking of him, with pride and congratulation. Only Stella, with a severe lip and a disapproving eye, noted the direction he took as he left the house.

CHAPTER XVIII

PETER MACFARLANE had carried the big Bible up the pulpit steps of Knox Church and arranged the glass of water and the notices to be given out beside it, twice every Sunday for twenty years. He was a small, spare man, with thin gray hair that fell back from the narrow dome of his forehead to his coat-collar, decent and severe. He ascended the pulpit exactly three minutes before the minister did; and the dignity with which he put one foot before the other made his appearance a ceremonious feature of the service and a thing quoted. "I was there before Peter" was a triumphant evidence of punctuality. Dr. Drummond would have liked to make it a test. It seemed to him no great thing to expect the people of Knox Church to be there before Peter.

Mr. Macfarlane was also in attendance in the vestry to help the minister off with his gown and hang it up. Dr. Drummond's gown needed neither helping nor hanging; the Doctor was deftness and neatness and impatience itself, and would have it on the hook with his own hands, and never a fold crooked.