76 WHEAT AND WOMAN 



nearness and full measure in the heart, and for a 

 moment one was not homesick, but at home. 



It was at the close of morning service on a Sunday 

 in September that I made the acquaintance of the 

 younger members of a family to whose forsaken 

 bungalow my pony still offers the unfailing homage 

 of a homeward turn. The head of the house, who 

 was also the architect of the bungalow, the gardener 

 of the garden, the father of its mistress, the grand- 

 father of the girls and the breadwinner for all, was 

 one Samuel Brodie, a British pioneer on survey 

 in Canada, and the nephew of Sir Benjamin Brodie, 

 the distinguished surgeon and founder of St. George's 

 Hospital. 



We had encountered him on more than one 

 occasion of our visits to the Fort from the prairie. 

 Already on the far side of his seventieth year he 

 was a small, lithe, active person with the arresting 

 eyes of the pioneer eager, very blue, and quite 

 young, they were the kind of eyes which seem to 

 have the power of seeing what is happening across 

 the rim of the horizon, as though certainty had 

 flashed just one stolen glance through the window 

 of hope. Even as strangers he had always given us 

 pleasant greeting, and we wondered if he had 

 learned that courtesy from the Indians. 



At first we seldom caught sight of him at the 

 bungalow, but one Sunday I had gratefully accepted 

 the hospitality of breakfast, and he came in with 

 a sunbeam from his morning chores. He was a 

 member of the " Church of St. Thomas " himself, 

 and, as a rule, avoided discussion which might 

 lead to argument with members of the Churches of 

 St. Peter or St. Paul ; but platitudes are impossible 



