During the hour he remained in the town, Mazarine searched in vain for
his horses and wagon. He looked everywhere except the shed behind the
Methodist Church. It was there the two wags who had played the trick on
him had carefully hitched the horses, and presently they announced in
town that they did it because they knew Mazarine would want to go to the
prayer-meeting to lay his crimes before the Mercy Seat!

It was quite true that it was prayer-meeting night, and as the merciless
wags left the shed, the voice of brother Rigby the chemist was narrating
for the hundredth time the story of his conversion, when, as he said,
"the pains of hell gat hold of him." Brother Rigby loved to relate the
tortures of the day when he was convicted of sin; but on this night his
ancient story seemed appropriate, as he had dealt with great severity on
the doings of the backslider, Joel Mazarine.

When the two wags returned to the front street of Askatoon, they were
just in time to see the second meeting of Orlando and Mazarine. Mazarine
had not been able to find his horses at any hotel or livery stable, or in
any street. It was at the moment, when, in his distraction, he had
decided to walk back to Tralee, that Orlando, driving up the street, saw
him. Orlando reined in his horses dropped from his buggy and approached
him.

There was a look in Orlando's eyes which was a reflection from a remote
past, from ancestors who had settled their troubles with the first weapon
and the best opportunity to their hands. "The furrin element in him," as
Jonas Billings called it, had been at full flood ever since he had bade
his mother good-bye. A storm of anger had been raised in him. As he
said to himself, he had had enough; he had been filled up to the chin by