ace of that happy ranch home and ravished it of
its treasure, leaving a broken hearted man and a little boy, orphaned
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
both music-mad, the father having had in early youth a thorough musical
education, the boy possessing musical talent of a high order. Such
training as was his he had received from his father, but it was confined
to one single instrument, the violin. To this instrument, upon which his
father had received the tuition of a really excellent master, the son
devoted long hours of study and practice during his boyhood years, and
his attainments were such as to give promise of something more than
an amateur's mastery of his instrument. Hi