6 WHO KILLED JOHN BURBANKT

much swifter and longer-winded runner than I.
And what an eye he had for the heaviest-laden
apple-boughs along the slopes of the “Mountain, "
beyond the head of Durocher Street. Gerald's
father, a cooper, was a man cast in a large mold,
with a face rugged and somber in the extreme.
When he looked cross he might at once have been
a condemning j‘udge and an instant executioner.
I can see him now as he would stride through St.
James Streets-with bushy eyebrows, half rusty
and half gray, beneath which shone his spectacles
in round brass rims. I used to wonder if Gerald.
in any long lapse of years, would ever grow up to
be as big and grim as his father—a man, I feel sure,
to whom no boy, however bold, ever told a fib.
»]ohn Gray throve so well in his cooperagc
that he gathered, What we were then wont to
deem, a goodly surplus from his income. This
he invested in a block of buildings a milc
beyond the Bonaventure Station of the Grand
Trunk Road. As he built honestly. he did
not build cheaply; his outlays came to more
than he had counted upon, and by a considerable
sum. just then a wave of depression swept over
Canada, and John Gray's block stood idle. xvith
interest and taxes running on. At such a time
assets shrink, but debts remain as before. Gray's
creditors grew impatient, pressed their claims,
and began suits at law. His heart failed him, he