Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/272

  From the very first of the great movement his father threw himself into it with all the earnest intensity of his nature, but at the same time with a humility that gave token that the memory of the wild days of his youth and early manhood were never far away from him. He was eager to serve in the work, and was a constant source of wonder to all who had known him in his youth and early manhood. At all the different meetings he was present. Nothing could keep him away. "Night cometh," he said to his brother, who was remonstrating with him. His day's work was drawing to its close.

But Ranald would not let himself see the failing of his father's health, and when, in the harvest, the slightest work in the fields would send his father panting to the shade, Ranald would say, "It is the hot weather, father. When the cool days come you will be better. And why should you be bothering yourself with the work, anyway? Surely Yankee and I can look after that." And indeed they seemed to be quite fit to take off the harvest.

Day by day Ranald swung his cradle after Yankee with all a man's steadiness till all the grain was cut; and by the time the harvest was over, Ranald had developed a strength of muscle and a skill in the harvest work that made him equal of almost any man in the country. He was all the more eager to have the harvest work done in time, that his father might not fret over his own inability to help. For Ranald could not bear to see the look of disappointment that sometimes showed itself in his father's face when weakness