when I got on with you this morning I was eighty years old, every day of
it. What do you think my age is now?"

"Eighty years, sir."

"Not a bit of it. I'm eighteen. The sun did it. And yet they claim there
is no fountain of youth. What fools people are, my boy!"

The young man looked at his fare slyly, and cordially agreed with him.

"You certainly _have_ a concealed sense of humour," said the artist.

They wound down a deep cut in the hill, and got a view of the lumber
village--their destination. The roar of the waters tumbling over the
granite rocks--the rocks from which the village takes its name--came up
the ravine. The broad river swept in a great semicircle to their right,
and its dark waters were flecked with the foam of the small falls near
the village, and the great cataract miles up the river. It promised to
be a perfect autumn day. The sky, which had seemed to Trenton overcast
when they started, was now one deep dome of blue without even the
suggestion of a cloud.

The buckboard drew up at the gate of the house in which Mr. Mason lived
when he was in the lumber village, although his home was at Three
Rivers. The old Frenchwoman, Mason's housekeeper, opened the door for
Trenton, and he remembered as he went in how the exquisite cleanliness
of everything had impressed him during his former visit. She smiled
as she recognised the genial Englishman. She had not forgotten his
compliments in her own language on her housekeeping some months before,
and perhaps she also remembered his liberality. Mr. Mason, she said, had