ears had
carried on a semblance of farming. This place he called The Dale, and
here he lived alone, except for an occasional visit from his wife, who
watched his farming operations with disapproving eye from a neighboring
town. The schoolmaster was his only friend, and when he died, while he
left the farm to his wife, he bequeathed to William Gordon his big
stone house and barns, and the four-acre field in which they stood.
Fortune had looked for the first time upon the Gordons, and she deigned
them a second glance. Through the energy of his wife and the influence
of her people, the MacDonalds, who owned half the township of Oro,
William Gordon obtained the position of township clerk. On the modest
salary from this office, supplemented by the four acres where they
pastured their cow and raised garden produce, the family managed to
live; and here the young Gordons grew up, healthy and happy, and quite
unconscious of the fact that they were exceedingly poor.

But someone had suffered in the fight against want, and when the worst
of the struggle was over the brave mother began to droop. William
Gordon had been a kind husband, but he lived with his head in the
clouds. His eyes were so dazzled by distant visions that he had failed
to notice that most beautiful vision at his side, a noble woman wearing
her life away in self-forgetful toil for him and his children. She
never spoke of her trials, for her nature was of the kind that finds
its highest enjoyment in sacrifice. She was always bright and gay.
Her smile and her ready laughter brightened the home in the days of her
husband's deepest spiritual gloom. But one day even the smile failed.
At the birth of their eighth child she went out into a new life, and
the noble sacrifice was complete.

The long-expected aunt from the Old Country sailed a short time before
baby Jamie's birth. So when Miss Gordon arrived, it was to an
unexpected scene--a darkened home, a brother stunned by his loss, and a
family of orphans, the eldest, a frightened-eyed girl of sixteen, the
youngest, a wailing infant of a few days.

Miss Gordon was made of good Scotch granite, with a human heart
beneath. The veneer of gentility had underneath it the pure gold of
character. She seized the helm of the family ship with a heroic hand.
She sailed steadily through a sea of troubles that often threatened to
overwhelm her; the unaccustomed task of motherhood with its hundred
trials, her brother's