The Sky Pilot in No Man's Land by Pseudonym Ralph Connor
page 54 of 445 (12%)
page 54 of 445 (12%)
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and sickly, to be cared for. The ranch was sold, the rancher moved to
the city of Edmonton, thence in a few years to a little village some twenty-five miles nearer to the Foothills, where he became the Registrar and Homestead Inspector for the district. Here he had lived ever since, training the torn tendrils of his heart about the lad, till peace came back again, though never the perfect joy of the earlier days. Every May Day the two were wont to go upon an expedition many miles into the Foothills, to a little, sunny spot, where a strong, palisaded enclosure held a little grave. So little it looked, and so lonely amid the great hills. There, not in an abandonment of grief, but in loving and grateful remembrance of her whose dust the little grave now held, of what she had been to them, and had done for them, they spent the day, returning to take up again with hearts solemn, tender and chastened, the daily routine of life. That his son should grow to take up the profession of law had been the father's dream, but during his university course the boy had come under the compelling influence of a spiritual awakening that swept him into a world filled with new impressions and other desires. Obeying what he felt to be an imperative call, the boy chose the church as his profession, and after completing his theological course in the city of Winnipeg, and spending a year in study in Germany, while still a mere youth he had been appointed as missionary to the district of which his own village was the centre. But though widely separate from each other in the matter of religion, there were many points of contact between them. They were both men of the great out-of-doors, and under his father's inspiration and direction the boy had come to love athletic exercises of all kinds. They were |
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