t true
refinement called for, but one could overlook that, when one remembered
that it probably came to him on dog-sleds over mountains of snow. One
had to surmise much, of course, regarding William's experience in
Canada. His letters were all of his inner life. He said much
regarding his spiritual condition, of his grievous lapses of faith, of
his days on the Delectable Mountains and of his descents into the
Slough of Despond, but very little of the hills and valleys of his
adopted country. Once, shortly after his arrival, he had stated that
he was living in a shanty where the bush came right up to the door.
Margaret had had some misgivings, but Cousin Griselda had explained
that a shanty was in all probability a dear little cottage, and the
bush might be an American rose bush, or more likely a thorn, which in
springtime would be covered with May.

But now William lived in a comfortable stone house, had married, and
had a family growing up around him, who were all anxious to see their
Old Country aunt. And so the unbelievable at last came to pass and his
sister sailed for Quebec.

In the home land William Gordon had entered training for the ministry.
His parents had died, owning their chief regret that they could not see
their son in the pulpit, and his sister received the bitterest
disappointment of her life, when he abandoned the calling. But William
was largely Celt by blood and wholly so by nature and had visions. In
one of them he had seen himself before the Great White Throne,
worthless, sin-stricken. What was he that dared to enter such a holy
calling as the ministry? He who was as the dust of the earth, a priest
of the Most High God! He beat his brow at the blasphemy of the
thought. It was Nadab or Abihu he was or a son of Eli, and the Ark
would depart forever from God's people, did he dare to raise his
profaning hands in its ministry. And so, partly to escape his sister's
reproaches, he had sailed away to Canada. Here he had tried various
occupations, and finally settled down to teaching school away back in
the forests of Lake Simcoe. He married, and when a large family was
growing up around him, and the ever-menacing poverty had at last seized
them, he experienced the first worldly success of his life.

About a mile from the school which had witnessed his latest failure,
there lay a beautiful little valley. Here an eccentric Englishman
named Jarvis had built a big stone house and for a few y