g with the dazzling brightness of
new-fallen snow. Dark, rich soil where the plough had been, renewed
with the richness of velvet. Sullen, colourless veldt, radiant in a
few short hours with the first outposts of its coming spring glory.
Far, blue hills, bluer and intenser than ever in the rain-washed
atmosphere. Little cock birds and male insects away off soon after
sunrise about those courting affairs that had been delayed. A whole
world rejoicing; a whole world singing Te Deums of praise and
thanksgiving in its own dear, happy, overflowing way.

No wonder the big fellow in the well-worn khaki, with his vigorous
enthusiasms and wide sympathies, thought a little regretfully of the
hide-bound, clause-bound, doctrine-bound, sober-minded black cloth he
had felt himself obliged to put off. Would humanity ever sing again
as the sons of the morning? Ever burst into Te Deums of overflowing
thanksgiving to the Giver of all good, such as echoed and re-echoed
from a long-parched earth on its first rain-washed morning.

Well, he could but try to keep the long face and depressing atmosphere
and thin air of superiority safely out of his own little sphere, and
while he taught the natives to be active, useful members of society,
try to help all the settlers about him, hard cases or otherwise, to be
honest, fearless, clean-living men, whether they achieved it to the
accompaniment of good round oaths and a Sunday morning spent in bed,
or on their knees between consecrated walls in the accepted way. Of
course, he liked them to come to his little stone tabernacle with its
thatched roof, and he made his service just as attractive as ever he
could on their behalf; but if they were too lazy or too busy to
come--well, it didn't follow they couldn't be honest, clean-living
fellows without it; so then he went to them, and sat over their camp
fire, and told them a good story or two, and in the end there wasn't a
camp within twelve miles where the "bloomin' sky pilot" wasn't one of
the most welcome guests.

But to do them justice, they mostly liked going to his little
tabernacle, for it was always a pleasant meeting-place, and men in
exile, even "hard cases," like to sing a good old-fashioned hymn just
once in a way; to say nothing of the big home-made cake, full of
plums, which was usually ready to be handed round afterwards on the
"sky pilot's" verandah, and which he teasingly informed Ailsa was her
way of bribing his congregation to come t