Barrie--Next of Kin--Nightmare--On the Road--Strawberries and Botany--Poetry and Sentiment--The Virago--Luncheon and Wordsworth--Waterplants, Leeches and Verse--Cutting Sticks--Rain, Muggins and Rawdon.
The travellers carried their knapsacks in their hands by the straps, to the nearest hotel, where, after brief delay, a special supper was set for them. Having discussed the frugal meal, they repaired to the combined reading and smoking room, separate from the roughish crowd at the bar. Wilkinson glanced over a Toronto paper, while his companion, professing an interest in local news, picked up an organ of the town and read it through, advertisements and all, in which painstaking effort he was helped by his pipe. Suddenly he grasped the paper, and, holding it away from his face, exclaimed, "Is it possible that they are the same?"
"Who, who?" ejaculated Wilkinson; "do not tell me that the captain was mistaken, that they are really here."
"Do you know old Carmichael's initials, the doctor's, that was member for Vaughan?" his friend asked, paying no attention to the schoolmaster's question.
"James D.," replied that authority; "I remember, because I once made the boys get up the members' names along with their constituencies, so as to give the latter a living interest."
"Now, listen to this: 'Next of kin; information wanted concerning the whereabouts of James Douglas Carmichael, or his heirs at law. He left the University of Edinburgh, where he was in attendance on the Faculty of Medicine, in the spring of 1848, being at the time twenty-one years of age. The only trace of his farther life is a fragment of a letter written by him to a friend two years later, when he was serving as a soldier in the military station of Barrief, Upper Canada. Reward offered for the same by P.R. MacSmaill, W.S., 19 Clavers Row, Edinburgh.' If James Douglas Carmichael, ex-medical student, wasn't the member and the father of that girl of yours, I'm a Dutchman."
"Mr. Coristine, I insist, sir, before another word passes between us, that you withdraw and apologize for the deeply offensive expression, which must surely have escaped your lips unperceived, 'that girl of yours.'"
"Oh, there, now, I'm always putting my foot in it. I meant the girl you are interested in--no, it isn't that other--the girl that's interested in you--oh, wirra wisha! it's not that at all--it's the girl the captain was joking you about."
