"Oh, black and brown and all the loveliest shades of scarlet--with cruel, little, white teeth, sharp and strong as a squirrel's teeth." "But it didn't bite you," said Rose, with a puzzled glance at the white brow, whose delicate fairness made the discolouration more conspicuous. "No, but it looked fully capable of biting--enchanting little brute!" "Why on earth didn't you shoot it?" questioned the Commodore, rousing himself to the exploration of this new mystery. The young man laughed a little guiltily. "To tell the truth the idea never once entered my head. You have no idea what beautiful eyes it had." "Oh--sentimentalist!" "Yes, I was sentimental enough yesterday, but it will be long before I am troubled that way again." "At any rate," said Herbert, as they drifted back to the shadowing veranda, whose flowery screen the sun had not yet penetrated, "you can't go to church." "I wish I could take you all over in my sail-boat," said his elder brother, wistfully surveying the blue waters of Kempenfeldt Bay. "Ed., you are a heathen," declared Miss Eva, whose usual adoring advocacy of her brother's opinions was paralized by this assault upon the proprieties; "it's wicked to ride in a boat on Sunday." "But it's perfectly right to ride in a carriage," added Herbert, with a view to giving information, and not with any satirical intention. There was no reply. If it is a crime to possess a too great susceptibility to the ever-deepening charm of woods and waters then Edward Macleod was the chief of sinners. In his father he had a secret sympathizer, for the old gentleman himself was not without strong leanings toward a free and careless, if not semi-savage, life. But no hint of this escaped him in the presence of the younger children, whose air of severe morality, born of renewed attacks and final triumph over the difficulties of the Sunday School lesson, he considered it unwise to disturb. Church service was not a painfully long or tedious affair. The little wooden structure, erected for that purpose in Barrie, had the air of trying to be in sweet accord with the outlying wilderness, from the dark green drapery of ivy which charitably strove to hide its raw newness. The town itself (for in a new country everything in excess of