Chapter XXV. Glengarry Forever

The colonel was an experienced traveler, and believed in making himself comfortable. Ranald looked on with some amusement, and a little wonder, while the colonel arranged his things about the stateroom.

"May as well make things comfortable while we can," said the colonel, "we have the better part of three days before us on this boat, and if it gets rough, it is better to have things neat. Now you go ahead," he added, "and get your things out."

"I think you are right, Colonel. I am not much used to travel, but I shall take your advice on this."

"Well, I have traveled considerable these last twenty years," replied the colonel. "I say, would you mind leaving those out?"

"What?"

"Those photos. They're the two you had up by the glass in your room, aren't they?" Ranald flushed a little.

"Of course it ain't for every one to see, and I would not ask you, but those two ain't like any other two that I have seen, and I have seen a good many in forty years." Ranald said nothing, but set the photographs on a little bracket on the wall.

"There, that makes this room feel better," said the colonel. "That there is the finest, sweetest, truest girl that walks this sphere," he said, pointing at Kate's photograph, "and the other, I guess you know all about her."

"Yes, I know about her," said Ranald, looking at the photograph; "it is to her I owe everything I have that is any good. And Colonel," he added, with an unusual burst of confidence, "when my life was broken off short, that woman put me in the way of getting hold of it again."

"Well, they both think a pile of you," was the colonel's reply.

"Yes, I think they do," said Ranald. "They are not the kind to forget a man when he is out of sight, and it is worth traveling two thousand miles to see them again."

"Ain't it queer, now, how the world is run?" said the colonel. "There's two women, now, the very best; one has been buried all her life in a little hole in the woods, and the other is giving herself to a fellow that ain't fit to carry her boots."

"What!" said Ranald, sharply, "Kate?"

"Yes, they say she is going to throw herself away on young St. Clair. He is all right, I suppose, but he ain't fit for her." Ranald suddenly stooped over his valise and began pulling out his things.

"I didn't hear of that," he said.

"I did," said the colonel; "you see he is always there, and acting as if he owned her. He stuck to her for a long time, and I guess she got tired holding out."

"Harry is a very decent fellow," said Ranald, rising up from his unpacking; "I say, this boat's