Mounting his best horse, Mr. M’Leod hastened to the village, and sent this despatch to the professor: "Have a splendid live moose in my barn. Do you want him?"
Before many hours the reply came: "Am coming for him by first train."
The following evening Professor Owen appeared. When he saw the moose he fairly shouted with delight.
"A perfect specimen, and in the very prime of life," he cried. "I’ll give you a hundred pounds for him on the spot. Will that be right?"
The offer was gladly accepted; and as soon as the necessary arrangements could be made, the moose was taken away to become the chief attraction in a famous zoological garden.
On the day before the sheriff’s sale Mr. M’Leod, greatly to the money-lender’s chagrin, paid his claim in full, and cleared his property from all encumbrance.
That night they had a praise-meeting at the mill; for when Mr. M’Leod was told about Rob and Jessie praying together for his deliverance from the grasp of Moses Shearer his heart was deeply stirred, and he joined in thanking God who had thus signally answered the children’s petitions. Not only so, but both he and his wife were moved to withhold no longer from God’s service, and they became active, happy members of the church.
As for Rob and Jessie, their faith was wonderfully strengthened, and often afterwards the recollection of this incident helped them to be trustful in the midst of many difficulties.
The Canadian Pacific train, speeding swiftly on toward Winnipeg, had just dashed over an iron bridge which threw its audacious spider-web across a foaming torrent. Pointing down at the tumbling water beneath, one of the men in the smoking compartment of a palace car exclaimed,—
"I’d like to try that rapid in my _Rice Lake_."
"Are you so fond of a wetting as all that?" asked Charlie Hall with a smile.
"Oh, I’d risk the wetting. I’ve been through worse rapids than that without so much as being sprinkled." He proceeded to support his assertion by relating some of his adventures.
When Jack Fleming came to the end of his tether, the others had their say, for they had not been without experiences of a similar nature. Meanwhile, the fourth member of the group had been listening with interested attention, as if their stories were so novel that he did not wish to lose a word of them. He was merely a chance acquaintance, who had fallen into conversation with his fellow-travellers through the freemasonry of the pipe. They knew his name; Ronald Cameron, but they knew nothing more about him.