I have skipped about a good deal, but I have only left out two, the boys who came between Abby and Stella.

In their names the contemporary observer need not be too acute to discover both an avowal and to some extent an enforcement of Mr Murchison's political views; neither an Alexander Mackenzie nor an Oliver Mowat could very well grow up into anything but a sound Liberal in that part of the world without feeling himself an unendurable paradox.

To christen a baby like that was, in a manner, a challenge to public attention; the faint relaxation about the lips of Dr Drummond--the best of the Liberals himself, though he made a great show of keeping it out of the pulpit--recognized this, and the just perceptible stir of the congregation proved it.

Sonorously he said it.

"Oliver Mowat, I baptize thee in the Name of the Father--" The compliment should have all the impressiveness the rite could give it, while the Murchison brothers and sisters, a-row in the family pew, stood on one foot with excitement as to how Oliver Mowat would take the drops that defined him.