Page:Ralph Connor - The Sky Pilot.djvu/135

Rh "It's her mother's," he said, in a voice deep with emotion. "I put it in her trunk the day I laid her out yonder under the pines." The Pilot, without looking at him, rose and reverently took the book in both his hands and said gently:

"It was a sad day for you, but for her" He paused. "You did not grudge it to her?"

"Not now, but then, yes! I wanted her, we needed her." The Old Timer's tears were flowing.

The Pilot put his hand caressingly upon the old man's shoulder as if he had been his father, and said in his clear, sweet voice, "Some day you will go to her."

Upon this scene poor Gwen gazed with eyes wide open with amazement and a kind of fear. She had never seen her father weep since the awful day that she could never forget, when he had knelt in dumb agony beside the bed on which her mother lay white and still; nor would he heed her till, climbing up, she tried to make her mother waken and hear her cries. Then he had caught her up in his arms, pressing her with tears and great sobs to his heart. To-night she seemed to feel that something was wrong. She went and stood by her father, and, stroking his gray hair kindly, she said: