She turned a corner and was alarmed by a great churning and noise ahead, as though the Inverness had left her native element and come sailing up Main Street. But it was only Captain Willoughby in his new . It was the first, and as yet the only machine in Algonquin, and its unhappy owner would have sold it to the lowest could he have found any one foolish enough to bid at all. For so far, the captain had had no opportunity to learn to run it. His first excursions abroad had been attended with such disaster, such mad careering of horses, and into ditches, such dismaying of the engine right in the middle of a neighbour's , such excursions onto the sidewalk and through plate glass windows, such harrowing overturning of baby-carriages, that Mrs. Captain Willoughby took an attack of nerves every time he went abroad, and the town fathers finally requested that the captain take out his Juggernaut car only at such hours as the streets were clear. So on quiet evenings such as this one, when there were not likely to be any horses abroad, Mrs. Willoughby telephoned all her friends and told them to take in the children for the captain was coming. And so, , like the Lady Godiva, the trembling motorist went , while the streets immediately became as empty as those of Coventry, with rows of peeping Toms, safe inside their fences, at the unhappy man's progress. He whizzed past Helen at a terrible speed, grazing the side-walk and giving her almost as great a fright as he got himself, and went whirring up the hill.  
She did not want to join the crowds in the park so she followed the familiar street past the school, and out along the Pine Road toward the lake shore. But when she found her way was leading her through Lane, where all the dirty and poor people of Algonquin lived, she turned off into a path that crossed a field and led to the water. Helen had some little pupils from Willow Lane, and their appearance did not invite a closer acquaintance with their homes.
 
She did not know that she was passing near the back of Old Peter McDuff's farm, but she noticed that the fences were conveniently broken down, and left a path clear down to the water's edge.
 
Lake Algonquin lay before her in its evening glory, a glory veiled and by the veil the autumn was weaving. The water was as still and as clear as a mirror. To her left the town nestled in a soft purple mist, the gay voices from the park were softened and sweetened by the distance. Straight ahead of her lay Wawa island, an airy thing floating lightly on the water, and reflected in its depths.
 
At one end of its dark greenery autumn had hung out a banner to her coming—a sumach. A yellowing leaf fell at Helen's feet as she passed. Along the water's edge where the birches grew thick arose a great twittering and . The long southern flight was already being discussed. Away out beyond the island a canoe drifted along on the golden water. Some one seated in it was picking a mandolin and singing, "Good-bye, Summer."
 
Helen slipped down the path where the birches and elms, entwined with the bitter-sweet, hung over the water. A little point out with a big rock on the end of it. She took off her hat, seated herself upon the rock, and drank in the silence and peace of the calm evening.
 
A little launch went rap-rap-rap across the clear glass of the water, leaving a long trail of light behind it like a comet, and the sweet evening odours were with the unsavoury of gasoline. Helen had often sped over the bay at home in just such a noisy little craft, quite unconscious of being to any one else. It was not the first time she had found her view-point was changing. She seemed to have been drifted in a , and to be sitting looking on at the life she had lived with wonder and sometimes with . The launch passed, the evening shadows deepened, but she still sat wrapped in the deeper shadows of her own sad thoughts.
 
She had no idea how long she had sat there when she was roused by the sudden appearance of a canoe right at her side. It had stolen up silently, propelled by the noiseless stroke of a practised paddler, and went past her like a ghost. The young man kneeling in the stern had something of the perfectly balanced play of muscle, and of figure that belonged to the Indian. For in spite of his Anglo-Saxon blood, Roderick McRae was as much a product of this land of lake and forest as the Red Skin. He had almost passed her, when he looked up and saw her for the first time. He gave a start; it seemed too good to be true. But she bowed so distantly that his hesitating paddle dipped again. He went on slowly, too shy to . He had taken but a few strokes when from away behind her on the darkening land, came a loud sound of singing. Peter was drunk again. Feeling very grateful to Peter for the excuse, Roderick turned about, with an twist of his paddle, and back till he was opposite her.
 
"Excuse me, Miss Murray," he , feeling his old shyness return, "but—are you alone here?"
 
"Yes," said the girl a slight wonder in her voice at the question. "I came down for a walk and—" she turned and glanced behind her and gave an at the darkness of the woods. She had forgotten the magic power the water has of and holding the sunset light long after darkness has wrapped the earth. "Oh, I had no idea it was so late!" she cried in dismay.
 
Roderick joyfully ran his canoe up close to the rock. The fear in her voice made him forget his . "I don't wish to trouble you," he said, "but it isn't wise to go home that path through the woods alone." He hesitated. He did not like to tell her that Old Peter might come down there raging drunk, and that at the head of Willow Lane she might meet with another drunken row between Mike Cassidy and his wife. "Oh dear!" she cried, "how could I be so foolish? I never dreamed of its being so dark and I forgot—"
 
"If you will let me I'll take you home," said Roderick eagerly, "in my canoe."
 
He was immeasurably relieved at her answer.
 
"Let you?" she cried gratefully. "Why, I'll be ever so much obliged to you. I am sorry to be such a trouble. I don't see how I was so careless," she added in frank apology.
 
Roderick knew he ought to say it was no trouble, but a pleasure. But he was too shy and too happy. He succeeded only in , "Oh, not at all," or something equally vague.
 
He brought the canoe close to the rock and held out his hand. She stepped in very carefully, and with something the air of one venturing out on a very thin piece of ice.
 
"It's the first time I ever stepped into a canoe," she said a little tremulously. He steadied her with his hand, smiling a little at her awkwardness. Then he showed her how to place herself in the little seat in the centre, with a cushion at her back. He did it clumsily enough for he was embarrassed and nervous in her presence. In all his years of paddling about the lake it was but the second time he had taken a young lady into his canoe, and the first one he had rescued out of the water, and this one off a lonely point of land. So he was not in the proper things to say to a lady when taking her for a paddle.
 
The canoe slipped silently out from the rock and slid along the darkening shore. Only the faintest suggestion of the sunset glow lay on the softly surface of the water. But they had gone only a few yards, when there came a new miracle to remake the scene. From behind the black bulk of the pine clad island peeped a great round harvest moon, and suddenly the whole world of land and water was painted anew in softer golden veiled in silver. The girl sat silent and -struck. Was there never to be an end to the wonders of this place? "Oh," she said in a whisper, "isn't it beautiful?"
 
Roderick looked, and was silent too.
 
Yes, it was very wonderful he thought, more wonderful to him than she dreamed. He felt as if he could paddle on forever over the shining lake with the magic colours of moon-rise and sunset meeting in the golden hair of the girl opposite him. They went on for a long time in silence. They passed into the shadow of the island with silver lances through the trees barring their path. The dewy scent of pine and stole out from the dark shore. The silver light grew brighter, the whole lake was lit up with a soft white radiance.
 
"Have you always lived here?" she asked at last in a whisper, an unspoken fear in her voice lest a sound disturb the fair surroundings and they vanish, leaving them in a common, every day world of material things.
 
"Always," said Roderick in the same hushed tone, though for a different reason. "I was born on the old farm back here."
 
"Then I wonder if you know how lovely it all is?"
 
"Perhaps not. But it is home to me, you know, and that gives an added charm."
 
"Yes," she said and checked a sigh. "And you've always paddled about here I suppose."
 
"I never remember when I learned. But I remember my first excursion alone. I was just six. Old Peter McDuff who lives on the next farm used to tell me fairy tales. And he told me there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, waiting for the man bold enough to go after it. I felt that I was the man, and I paddled off one evening when there was a rainbow in the sky. I got lost in the fog, and my father and a search-party found me drifting away out on the lake. And I didn't bring home the pot of gold."
 
"Nobody ever does," she said . "And every one is hunting it." They were silent for a moment, the girl thinking of how she too had gone after a vanishing rainbow. Then the memory of that vision of the first Sunday morning in Algonquin church came to her. There was a rainbow somewhere, with the treasure at the foot; one that did not vanish either if one persisted in its pursuit.
 
She tried to say something of this to Roderick, fearing her sombre words had set him to recalling her secret.
 
"I suppose it is perfect happiness," he said. "If so, I never met any one who had found it, except—yes, I believe I know one."
 
"Who?" she asked eagerly.
 
"My father," answered Roderick gently.
 
"I have heard of him," she said, smiling at the glow of pride in the son's eyes. "And where did he discover it?"
 
Roderick laughed. "I suppose it's in the heart, after all; but my father is never so happy as when he is in the midst of . His pot of gold seems to lie down on Willow Lane."
 
"On Willow Lane? Why that's where all those dreadfully poor, dirty people live, isn't it?"
 
"Yes. They are an unsavoury bunch down there. That's where Mr. and Mrs. Cassidy throw the household furniture at each other, and Billy Perkins starves his family for drink, and where the Peter McDuff plays the fiddle every night at the . He might have serenaded you, if you had gone back home by the road."
 
She smiled gratefully and her smile was very beautiful. But her thoughts were in Willow Lane. There were worse things there that Roderick did not mention, but she had heard of them. It was a strange and wonderful thing that the saintly-faced old man with the white hair, whom she had seen with Roderick at church, should find his happiness among such people.
 
Roderick had paddled as slowly as it was possible to move, but he could not prolong the little voyage any further. They were at the landing.
 
"I have made you come away back here," she said, "and now you will be so late getting home. I must let you go back at once. Good night, and thank you."
 
Roderick had been hoping that he might walk up to Rosemount with her, but felt he was dismissed. He wanted, too, to ask her if she would not come out on the lake again, but his shyness kept him silent.
 
As he helped her out, the yellow light of the lamp fell upon her light dress and shone on the gold of her hair, and at the same moment a canoe slid silently out of the dimness beyond and glided across the track of the moon. In the stern knelt one of Algonquin's young men a lazy paddle, and in the low seat opposite, with a filmy scarf about her dark hair, reclined Miss Leslie Graham. She sat up straight very suddenly, and stared at the girl who was stepping from the canoe. But she did not speak, and Roderick was too absorbed to notice who had passed. And the young man with the lazy paddle wondered all the way home what had happened to make the lively young lady so silent and absent-minded.
 
Helen Murray thought many times of what Roderick had told her about his father's interest in Willow Lane. She could not help wondering if others could find there the peace that shone in the old man's eyes. She was wondering if she should go down and visit the place, when, one day, Willow Lane came to her. It was a warm October day, a day when all nature seemed at a standstill. Her work was done, she was resting under her soft coverlet of blue , preparing for her long sleep. Helen had had a hard day, for she had not yet learned her new strange task. The room was noisy, fifty little heads were over fifty different schemes for , and fifty sibilant whispers delivered forbidden messages. The teacher was writing on the board, and turned suddenly at the sound of a heavy footstep in the hall. The door was open, letting in the breeze from the lake, and in it stood a big hairy man with a bushy black head and wild blue eyes. Helen stood and stared at him half-frightened.
 
The fifty small heads suddenly whirled about and a hundred eyes stared at the visitor, but there was no fear in them. A whisper ran like fire over the room. "It's Peter Fiddle!" The man shook his fist at them, and the teacher went with some towards the door.
 
"Can I do anything for you, sir?" she , outwardly calm, but inwardly quaking. He took off his big straw hat and made her a profound bow.
 
"I'll be Peter McDuff," he said with a stately air, "an' I'll loss a pig."
 
"I—I don't think it's here," Helen, dismayed at a visit from the notorious McDuff. "You might ask some other place," she suggested hopefully.
 
"I'll be wantin' the bairns to be lookin' for it," he said, making another bow. He turned to the children, now sitting, for the first time since their teacher had set eyes on them, absolutely still and .
 
"If you see a pig wis a curly tail," he announced, "that's me!"
 
The whole school burst into a shout of laughter, and the man's face flamed with anger. He shook his fist at them again, moving a step into the room. "Ye impident young upstarts!" he shouted. "I'll be Peter McDuff!" he cried proudly. "And I'll be having you know they will not be laughing at the McDuff whatefer!"
 
"I—I'm sure they didn't mean to be rude, Mr. McDuff," ventured the frightened teacher.
 
"My name'll be Peter McDuff," he insisted, coming further into the room while she stepped back in terror. "I'll be sixty years of old, and I'll neffer be casting a tory vote! An' if you'll be gifing me a man my own beeg and my own heavy—" he his fists fiercely.
 
"Peter!"
 
The McDuff turned. Behind him stood Angus McRae, his gentle face . He laid his hand on Peter's shoulder with an air of quiet power. "Come away home with me, Peter man," he said . "We'll be finding the pig on the road."
 
Peter stumbled out , and Angus McRae, pausing a moment to deliver an apology to Helen, followed. Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came along the hall rocking with laughter.
 
"You poor child!" she cried. "I heard him, and was coming to the rescue when I saw old Angus. I knew you'd be scared. But Peter wouldn't hurt a hair of a woman's head."
 
"That Mr. McRae seemed to have some strange power over him," whispered Helen, watching, with some apprehension, the two climb into an old .
 
"So he has. And he's the only one that has. He keeps Peter in order when he's drunk and keeps him sober, when he can. Ah, dear me! dear me! There's a clever man all gone wrong. Angus McRae's been working with him for years. He lives out there past what they call Willow Lane. Ever been down there?"
 
"No, but I've heard of it often."
 
"It's that bit of street that runs from the end of the town where that old hotel is. I'm going down there after school to see about Minnie Perkins. Come along for a walk. Now, you children, go right back there, do you hear me?" For the primary grade had and was flooding the halls. And Madame swept them back and slammed her door.
 
When school was dismissed and the last noisy youngster had gone storming forth Helen went down the hall to her friend's room. Madame came swaying out carrying a bunch of gay gladiolus, her draperies floating about her with peeping from their folds, like a saint in an old picture.
 
She dismissed her satellites firmly at the first corner, except those who lived beyond or on Willow Lane, a ceremony that a great deal of shooing and scolding.
 
The first eye-sore on Willow Lane was the old hotel, still there, forlorn and ugly, as though ashamed of all the evil it had .
 
As the years passed there was always a new generation of loungers to sit and smoke and spit on its . From it ran the old high board fence plastered with ugly advertisements of soap or circus or patent medicine. It disfigured the whole street and shut off a possible glimpse of the lake. Away on the other side of it was a meadow where in spring-time the soared and sang, and beyond it the lake and the woods where the mocking bird and the bee made music. But here in Willow Lane was neither sound nor sight that was pleasant.
 
The street consisted of a single sorry-looking row of houses with narrow box-like yards shoved up close to the road, as though there were not acres and acres of open free meadow land behind them. The hills upon which Algonquin was ceased here, and the land spread away in a flat plain along the lake shore. The ground was low and damp, and every house in Willow Lane that had the misfortune to possess a cellar was the of disease. A deep ditch ran parallel to the rickety board side-walk. There had just been a week of unceasing rain and it was full of green water.
 
"Oh dear!" said Helen, in . "I had no idea there was such a place as this in Algonquin."
 
"People have lived here for years and still seem to have no idea," said Madame. She paused and looked back. "Do you see that house 'way up on the hill yonder? The one with the tower sticking up between the trees? That's Alexander Graham's . And he makes a good deal of his money out of the rents of these houses, and nobody seems to care very much. The people of the churches send down turkeys and plum puddings, and everything good at Christmas time, and seem to think that will do for another year. But the only man who tries to do anything all the time is Angus McRae. I suppose you know that Lawyer Ed calls him the Good Samaritan, and this the Jericho Road."
 
The first house in the row was the turbulent home of Mr. Cassidy, the gentleman who commanded so much of Lawyer Ed's attention. Mrs. Cassidy was on the front veranda washing. It was a pastime she seldom indulged in, for there was never much water in the old leaky rain barrel at the corner of the house. For while Willow Lane had water, water everywhere, the inhabitants had not any drop in which to wash themselves. But the r............