re pure and simple and sweet. I had never been further from
home than the little market town where we sold our sheep. Mother managed
the estate till Garry was old enough, when he took hold with a vigour
and grasp that delighted every one. I think our little Mother stood
rather in awe of my keen, capable, energetic brother. There was in her a
certain dreamy, wistful idealism that made her beautiful in my eyes, and
to look on she was as fair as any picture. Specially do I remember the
delicate colouring of her face and her eyes, blue like deep
corn-flowers. She was not overstrong, and took much comfort from
religion. Her lips, which were fine and sensitive, had a particularly
sweet expression, and I wish to record of her that never once did I see
her cross, always sweet, gentle, smiling.

Thus our home was an ideal one; Garry, tall, fair and winsome; myself,
dark, dreamy, reticent; and between us, linking all three in a perfect
bond of love and sympathy, our gentle, delicate Mother.

CHAPTER II

So in serenity and sunshine the days of my youth went past. I still
maintained my character as a drone and a dreamer. I used my time
tramping the moorland with a gun, whipping the foamy pools of the burn
for trout, or reading voraciously in the library. Mostly I read books of
travel, and especially did I relish the literature of Vagabondia. I had
come under the spell of Stevenson. His name spelled Romance to me, and
my fancy etched him in his lonely exile. Forthright I determined I too
would seek these ultimate islands, and from that moment I was a changed
being. I nursed the thought with joyous enthusiasm. I would be a
frontiersman, a trail-breaker, a treasure-seeker. The virgin prairies
called to me; the susurrus of the giant pines echoed in my heart; but
most of all, I felt the spell of those gentle islands where care is a
stranger, and all is sunshine, song and the glowing bloom of eternal
summer.

About this time Mother must have worried a good deal over my future.
Garry was now the young Laird, and I was but an idler, a burden on the
estate. At last I told her I wanted to go abroad, and then it seemed as
if a great difficulty was solved. We remembered of a cousin who was
sheep-ranching in the Saskatchewan valley and had done well. It was
arranged that I should join him as a pupil, then, when I had learned
enough, buy a place of my own. It may be imagined that while I
apparently acquiesced in this arrangement, I h