"No use going into that again, boy."

"Well, I couldn't have been a great player, at any rate, dad."

"Perhaps not, boy, perhaps not," said his father. "Great players are
very rare. But it is time for your meeting."

"So it is, dad. Awfully sorry I didn't finish up those dishes. Let them
go till I return. I wish you would, dad, and come along with me." His
voice had a wistful note in it.

"Not to-night, boy, I think. We will have some talk after. You will only
be an hour, you know."

"All right, dad," said Barry. "Some time you may come." He could not
hide the wistful regret of his tone.

"Perhaps I shall, boy," replied his father.

It was the one point upon which there was a lack of perfect harmony
between father and son. When the boy went to college it was with the
intention of entering the profession of law, for which his father had
been reading in his young manhood when the lure of Canada and her broad,
free acres caught him, and he had abandoned the law and with his wife
and baby boy had emigrated to become a land owner in the great Canadian
west.

Alas! death, that rude spoiler of so many plans, broke in upon the
sanctity and perfect peace of that happy ranch home and ravished it of
its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy, orphaned