Page:Ralph Connor - The Sky Pilot.djvu/40

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36
The Sky Pilot

to the ranchers' disgust, for they foresaw ploughed fields and barbed-wire fences cramping their unlimited ranges. A school became necessary. A little log building was erected and I was appointed schoolmaster. It was as schoolmaster that I first came to touch The Pilot, for the letter which the Hudson Bay freighters brought me early one summer evening bore the inscription:


The Schoolmaster,
Public School,
Swan Creek,
Alberta.


There was altogether a fine air about the letter; the writing was in fine, small hand, the tone was fine, and there was something fine in the signature—"Arthur Wellington Moore." He was glad to know that there was a school and a teacher in Swan Creek, for a school meant children, in whom his soul delighted; and in the teacher he would find a friend, and without a friend he could not live. He took me into his confidence, telling me that though he had volunteered for this far-away mission field he was not much of a preacher and he was not at all