THE MAN FROM
GLENGARRY
A TALE OF THE OTTAWA
BY
RALPH CONNOR
Author of "The Sky Pilot,"
and "Black Rock"
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
CHICAGO, NEW YORK, TORONTO
MCMI
Copyright 1901
BY
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.
DEDICATION TO THE MEN OF GLENGARRY
WHO IN PATIENCE, IN COURAGE
AND
IN THE FEAR OF GOD
ARE HELPING TO BUILD THE EMPIRE OF
THE CANADIAN WEST
THIS BOOK IS HUMBLY DEDICATED
PREFACE
The solid forests of Glengarry have vanished, and with the forests the men who conquered them. The manner of life and the type of character to be seen in those early days have gone too, and forever. It is part of the purpose of this book to so picture these men and their times that they may not drop quite out of mind. The men are worth remembering. They carried the marks of their blood in their fierce passions, their courage, their loyalty; and of the forest in their patience, their resourcefulness, their self-reliance. But deeper than all, the mark that reached down to their hearts' core was that of their faith, for in them dwelt the fear of God. Their religion may have been narrow, but no narrower than the moulds of their lives. It was the biggest thing in them. It may have taken a somber hue from their gloomy forests, but by reason of a sweet, gracious presence dwelling among them it grew in grace and sweetness day by day.
In the Canada beyond the Lakes, where men are making empire, the sons of these Glengarry men are found. And there such men are needed. For not wealth, not enterprise, not energy, can build a nation into sure greatness, but men, and only men with the fear of God in their hearts, and with no other. And to make this clear is also a part of the purpose of this book.THE MAN FROM
GLENGARRY
CHAPTER I
THE OPEN RIVER
The winter had broken early and the Scotch River was running ice-free and full from bank to bank. There was still snow in the woods, and with good sleighing and open rivers every day was golden to the lumbermen who had stuff to get down to the big water. A day gained now might save weeks at a chute farther down, where the rafts would crowd one another and strive for right of way.
Dan Murphy was mightily pleased with himself and with the bit of the world about him, for there lay his winter's cut of logs in the river below him snug and secure and held tight by a boom across the mouth, just where it flowed into the Nation. In a few days he would have his crib made, and his outfit ready to start for the Ottawa mills. He was sure to be ahead of the big timber rafts that took up so much space, and whose crews with unbearable effrontery considered themselves the aristocrats of the river.
Yes, it was a pleasant and satisfying sight, some three solid miles of logs boomed at the head of the big water. Suddenly Murphy turned his face up the river.
"What's that now, d'ye think, LeNware?" he asked.
LeNoir, or "LeNware," as they all called it in that country, was Dan Murphy's foreman, and as he himself said, "for haxe, for hit (eat), for fight de boss on de reever Hottawa! by Gar!" Louis LeNoir was a French-Canadian, handsome, active, hardy, and powerfully built. He had come from the New Brunswick woods some three years ago, and had wrought and fought his way, as he thought, against all rivals to the proud position of "boss on de reever," the topmost pinnacle of a lumberman's ambition. It was something to see LeNoir "run a log" across the river and back; that is, he would balance himself upon a floating log, and by spinning it round, would send it whither he would. At Murphy's question LeNoir stood listening with bent head and open mouth. Down the river came the sound of singing. "Don-no me! Ah oui! be dam! Das Macdonald gang for sure! De men from Glengarrie, les diables! Dey not hout de reever yet." His boss went off into a volley of oaths—
"They'll be wanting the river now, an' they're divils to fight."
"We give em de full belly, heh? Bon!" said LeNoir, throwing back his head. His only unconquered rival on the river was the boss of the Macdonald gang.
Ho ro, mo nighean donn bhoidheach,
Hi-ri, mo nighean donn bhoidheach,
Mo chaileag, laghach, bhoidheach,
Cha phosainn ach thu.
Down the river came the strong, clear chorus of men's voices, and soon a "pointer" pulled by six stalwart men with a lad in the stern 'swung round the bend into view. A single voice took up the song—
'S ann tha mo run's na beanntaibh,
Far bheil mo ribhinn ghreannar,
Mar ros am fasach shamhraidh
An gleann fad o shuil.
After the verse the full chorus broke forth again—
Swiftly the pointer shot down the current, the swaying bodies and swinging oars in perfect rhythm with the song that rose and fell with melancholy but musical cadence. The men on the high bank stood looking down upon the approaching singers. "You know dem fellers?" said LeNoir. Murphy nodded. "Ivery divil iv thim—Big Mack Cameron, Dannie Ross, Finlay Campbell—the redheaded one—the next I don't know, and yes! be dad! there's that blanked Yankee, Yankee Jim, they call him, an' bad luck till him. The divil will have to take the poker till him, for he'll bate him wid his fists, and so he will—and that big black divil is Black Hugh, the brother iv the boss Macdonald. He'll be up in the camp beyant, and a mighty lucky thing for you, LeNoir, he is."
"Bah!" spat LeNoir, "Dat beeg Macdonald I mak heem run like one leetle sheep, one tarn at de long Sault, bah! No good!" LeNoir's contempt for Macdonald was genuine and complete. For two years he had tried to meet the boss Macdonald, but his rival had always avoided him.
Meantime, the pointer came swinging along. As it turned the point the boy uttered an exclamation—"Look there!" The song and the rowing stopped abruptly; the big, dark man stood up and gazed down the river, packed from bank to bank with the brown saw-logs; deep curses broke from him. Then he caught sight of the men on the bank. A word of command and the pointer shot into the shore, and the next moment Macdonald Dubh, or Black Hugh, as he was sometimes called, followed by his men, was climbing up the steep bank.
"What the blank, blank, do these logs mean, Murphy?" he demanded, without pause for salutation.
"Tis a foine avenin' Misther Macdonald," said Murphy, blandly offering his hand, "an' Hiven bliss ye."
Macdonald checked himself with an effort and reluctantly shook hands with Murphy and LeNoir, whom he slightly knew. "It is a fery goot evening, indeed," he said, in as quiet a voice as he could command, "but I am inquiring about these logs."
"Shure, an' it is a dhry night, and onpolite to kape yez talking here. Come in wid yez," and much against his will Black Hugh followed Murphy to the tavern, the most pretentious of a group of log buildings—once a lumber camp—which stood back a little distance from the river, and about which Murphy's men, some sixty of them, were now camped.
The tavern was full of Murphy's gang, a motley crew, mostly French Canadians and Irish, just out of the woods and ready for any devilment that promised excitement. Most of them knew by sight, and all by reputation, Macdonald and his gang, for from the farthest reaches of the Ottawa down the St. Lawrence to Quebec the Macdonald gang of Glengarry men was famous. They came, most of them, from that strip of country running back from the St. Lawrence through Glengarry County, known as the Indian Lands—once an Indian reservation. They were sons of the men who had come from the highlands and islands of Scotland in the early years of the last century. Driven from homes in the land of their fathers, they had set themselves with indomitable faith and courage to hew from the solid forest, homes for themselves and their children that none might take from them. These pioneers were bound together by ties of blood, but also by bonds stronger than those of blood. Their loneliness, their triumphs, their sorrows, born of their common life-long conflict with the forest and its fierce beasts, knit them in bonds close and enduring. The sons born to them and reared in the heart of the pine forests grew up to witness that heroic struggle with stern nature and to take their part in it. And mighty men they were. Their life bred in them hardiness of frame, alertness of sense, readiness of resource, endurance, superb self-reliance, a courage that grew with peril, and withal a certain wildness which at times deepened into ferocity. By their fathers the forest was dreaded and hated, but the sons, with rifles in hand, trod its pathless stretches without fear, and with their broad-axes they took toll of their ancient foe. For while in spring and summer they farmed their narrow fields, and rescued new lands from the brûlé; in winter they sought the forest, and back on their own farms or in "the shanties" they cut sawlogs, or made square timber, their only source of wealth. The shanty life of the early fifties of last century was not the luxurious thing of to-day. It was full of privation, for the men were poorly housed and fed, and of peril, for the making of the timber and the getting it down the smaller rivers to the big water was a work of hardship and danger. Remote from the restraints of law and of society, and living in wild surroundings and in hourly touch with danger, small wonder that often the shanty-men were wild and reckless. So that many a poor fellow in a single wild carouse in Quebec, or more frequently in some river town, would fling into the hands of sharks and harlots and tavern-keepers, with whom the bosses were sometimes in league, the earnings of his long winter's work, and would wake to find himself sick and penniless, far from home and broken in spirit.
Of all the shanty-men of the Ottawa the men of Glengarry, and of Glengarry men Macdonald's gang were easily first, and of the gang Donald Bhain Macdonald, or Macdonald More, or the Big Macdonald, for he was variously known, was not only the "boss" but best and chief. There was none like him. A giant in size and strength, a prince of broad-axe men, at home in the woods, sure-footed and daring on the water, free with his wages, and always ready to drink with friend or fight with foe, the whole river admired, feared, or hated him, while his own men followed him into the woods, on to a jam, or into a fight with equal joyousness and devotion. Fighting was like wine to him, when the fight was worth while, and he went into the fights his admirers were always arranging for him with the easiest good humor and with a smile on his face. But Macdonald Bhain's carousing, fighting days came to an abrupt stop about three years before the opening of this tale, for on one of his summer visits to his home, "The word of the Lord in the mouth of his servant Alexander Murray," as he was wont to say, "found him and he was a new man." He went into his new life with the same whole-souled joyousness as had marked the old, and he announced that with the shanty and the river he was "done for ever more." But after the summer's work was done, and the logging over, and when the snap of the first frost nipped the leaves from the trees, Macdonald became restless. He took down his broad-axe and spent hours polishing it and bringing it to an edge, then he put it in its wooden sheath and laid it away. But the fever was upon him, ten thousand voices from the forest were shouting for him. He went away troubled to his minister. In an hour he came back with the old good humor in his face, took down the broad-axe again, and retouched it, lovingly, humming the while the old river song of the Glengarry men—
He was going back to the bush and to the biggest fight of his life. No wonder he was glad. Then his good little wife began to get ready his long, heavy stockings, his thick mits, his homespun smock, and other gear, for she knew well that soon she would be alone for another winter. Before long the word went round that Macdonald Bhain was for the shanties again, and his men came to him for their orders.
But it was not to the old life that Macdonald was going, and he gravely told those that came to him that he would take no man who could not handle his axe and hand-spike, and who could not behave himself. "Behaving himself" meant taking no more whiskey than a man could carry, and refusing all invitations to fight unless "necessity was laid upon him." The only man to object was his own brother, Macdonald Dubh, whose temper was swift to blaze, and with whom the blow was quicker than the word. But after the second year of the new order even Black Hugh fell into line. Macdonald soon became famous on the Ottawa. He picked only the best men, he fed them well, paid them the highest wages, and cared for their comfort, but held them in strictest discipline. They would drink but kept sober, they would spend money but knew how much was coming to them. They feared no men even of "twice their own heavy and big," but would never fight except under necessity. Contracts began to come their way. They made money, and what was better, they brought it home. The best men sought to join them, but by rival gangs and by men rejected from their ranks they were hated with deepest heart hatred. But the men from Glengarry knew no fear and sought no favor. They asked only a good belt of pine and an open river. As a rule they got both, and it was peculiarly maddening to Black Hugh to find two or three miles of solid logs between his timber and the open water of the Nation. Black Hugh had a temper fierce and quick, and when in full flame he was a man to avoid, for from neither man nor devil would he turn. The only man who could hold him was his brother Macdonald Bhain, for strong man as he was, Black Hugh knew well that his brother could with a single swift grip bring him to his knees.
It was unfortunate that the command of the party this day should have been Macdonald Dubh's. Unfortunate, too, that it was Dan Murphy and his men that happened to be blocking the river mouth. For the Glengarry men, who handled only square timber, despised the Murphy gang as sawlog-men; "log-rollers" or "mushrats" they called them, and hated them as Irish "Papishes" and French "Crapeaux, " while between Dan Murphy and Macdonald Dubh there was an ancient personal grudge, and to-day Murphy thought he had found his time. There were only six of the enemy, he had ten times the number with him, many of them eager to pay off old scores; and besides there was Louis LeNoir as the "Boss Bully" of the river. The Frenchman was not only a powerful man, active with hands and feet, but he was an adept in all kinds of fighting tricks. Since coming to the Ottawa he had heard of the big Macdonald, and he sought to meet him. But Macdonald avoided him once and again till LeNoir, having never known any one avoiding a fight for any reason other than fear, proclaimed Macdonald a coward, and himself "de boss on de reever." Now there was a chance of meeting his rival and of forcing a fight, for the Glengarry camp could not be far away where the big Macdonald himself would be. So Dan Murphy, backed up with numbers, and the boss bully LeNoir, determined that for these Macdonald men the day of settlement had come. But they were dangerous men, and it would be well to take all precautions, and hence his friendly invitation to the tavern for drinks.
Macdonald Dubh, scorning to show hesitation, though he suspected treachery, strode after Murphy to the tavern door and through the crowd of shanty-men filling the room. They were as ferocious looking a lot of men as could well be got together, even in that country and in those days—shaggy of hair and beard, dressed out in red and blue and green jerseys, with knitted sashes about their waists, and red and blue and green tuques on their heads. Drunken rows were their delight, and fights so fierce that many a man came out battered and bruised to death or to life-long decrepitude. They were sitting on the benches that ran round the room, or lounging against the bar singing, talking, blaspheming. At the sight of Macdonald Dubh and his men there fell a dead silence, and then growls of recognition, but Murphy was not yet ready, and roaring out "Dh-r-r-i-n-k-s," he seized a couple of his men leaning against the bar, and hurling them to right and left, cried, "Ma-a-ke room for yer betthers, be the powers! Sthand up, bhoys, and fill yirsilves!"
Black Hugh and his men lined up gravely to the bar and were straightway surrounded by the crowd yelling hideously. But if Murphy and his gang thought to intimidate those grave Highlanders with noise, they were greatly mistaken, for they stood quietly waiting for their glasses to be filled, alert, but with an air of perfect indifference. Some eight or ten glasses were set down and filled, when Murphy, snatching a couple of bottles from the shelf behind the bar, handed them out to his men, crying, "Here, ye bluddy thaves, lave the glasses to the gintlemen!"
There was no mistaking the insolence in his tone, and the chorus of derisive yells that answered him showed that his remark had gone to the spot.
Yankee Jim, who had kept close to Black Hugh, saw the veins in his neck beginning to swell, and face to grow dark. He was longing to be at Murphy's throat. "Speak him fair," he said, in a low tone, "there's rather a good string of 'em raound." Macdonald Dubh glanced about him. His eye fell on his boy, and for the first time his face became anxious. "Ranald," he said, angrily, "take yourself out of this. It is no place for you whatever." The boy, a slight lad of seventeen, but tall and well-knit, and with his father's fierce, wild, dark face, hesitated.
"Go," said his father, giving him a slight cuff.
"Here, boy!" yelled LeNoir, catching him by the arm and holding the bottle to his mouth, "drink." The boy took a gulp, choked, and spat it out. LeNoir and his men roared. "Dat good whiskey," he cried, still holding the boy. "You not lak dat, hey?"
"No," said the boy, "it is not good at all."
"Try heem some more," said LeNoir, thrusting the bottle at him again.
"I will not," said Ranald, looking at LeNoir straight and fearless.
"Ho-ho! mon brave enfant! But you have not de good mannere. Come, drink!" He caught the boy by the back of the neck, and made as if to pour the whiskey down his throat. Black Hugh, who had been kept back by Yankee Jim all this time, started forward, but before he could take a second step Ranald, squirming round like a cat, had sunk his teeth into LeNoir's wrist. With a cry of rage and pain LeNoir raised the bottle and was bringing it down on Ranald's head, when Black Hugh, with one hand, caught the falling blow, and with the other seized Ranald, and crying, "Get out of this!" he flung him towards the door. Then turning to LeNoir, he said, with surprising self-control, "It is myself that is sorry that a boy of mine should be guilty of biting like a dog."
"Sa-c-r-ré le chien!" yelled LeNoir, shaking off Macdonald Dubh; "he is one dog, and the son of a dog!" He turned and started for the boy. But Yankee Jim had got Ranald to the door and was whispering to him. "Run!" cried Yankee Jim, pushing him out of the door, and the boy was off like the wind. LeNoir pursued him a short way and returned raging.
Yankee Jim, or Yankee, as he was called for short, came back to Macdonald Dubh's side, and whispering to the other Highlanders, "Keep your backs clear," sat up coolly on the counter. The fight was sure to come and there were seven to one against them in the room. If he could only gain time. Every minute was precious. It would take the boy fifteen minutes to run the two miles to camp. It would be half an hour before the rest of the Glengarry men could arrive, and much fighting may be done in that time. He must avert attention from Macdonald Dubh, who was waiting to cram LeNoir's insult down his throat. Yankee Jim had not only all the cool courage but also the shrewd, calculating spirit of his race. He was ready to fight, and if need be against odds, but he preferred to fight on as even terms as possible.
Soon LeNoir came back, wild with fury, and yelling curses at the top of his voice. He hurled himself into the room, the crowd falling back from him on either hand.
"Hola!" he yelled, "Sacré bleu!" He took two quick steps, and springing up into the air he kicked the stovepipe that ran along some seven feet above the floor.
"Purty good kicking," called out Yankee, sliding down from his seat. "Used to kick some myself. Excuse me." He stood for a moment looking up at the stovepipe, then without apparent effort he sprang into the air, shot up his long legs, and knocked the stovepipe with a bang against the ceiling. There was a shout of admiration.
"My damages," he said to Pat Murphy, who stood behind the counter. "Good thing there ain't no fire. Thought it was higher. Wouldn't care to kick for the drinks, would ye?" he added to LeNoir.
LeNoir was too furious to enter into any contest so peaceful, but as he specially prided himself on his high kick, he paused a moment and was about to agree when Black Hugh broke in, harshly, spoiling all Yankee's plans.
"There is no time for such foolishness," he said, turning to Dan Murphy. "I want to know when we can get our timber out."
"Depinds intoirly on yirsilf," said Murphy.
"When will your logs be out of the way?"
"Indade an' that's a ha-r-r-d one," laughed Murphy.
"And will you tell me what right hev you to close up the river?" Black Hugh's wrath was rising.
"You wud think now it wuz yirsilf that owned the river. An' bedad it's the thought of yir mind, it is. An' it's not the river only, but the whole creation ye an' yir brother think is yours." Dan Murphy was close up to Macdonald Dubh by this time. "Yis, blank, blank, yir faces, an' ye'd like to turn better than yirsilves from aff the river, so ye wud, ye black-hearted thaves that ye are."
This, of course, was beyond all endurance. For answer Black Hugh smote him sudden and fierce on the mouth, and Murphy went down.
"Purty one," sang out Yankee, cheerily. "Now, boys, back to the wall."
Before Murphy could rise, LeNoir sprang over him and lit upon Macdonald like a cat, but Macdonald shook himself free and sprang back to the Glengarry line at the wall.
"Mac an' Diabhoil," he roared, "Glengarry forever!"
"Glengarry!" yelled the four Highlanders beside him, wild with the delight of battle. It was a plain necessity, and they went into it with free consciences and happy hearts.
"Let me at him," cried Murphy, struggling past LeNoir towards Macdonald.
"Non! He is to me!" yelled LeNoir, dancing in front of Macdonald.
"Here, Murphy," called out Yankee, obligingly, "help yourself this way." Murphy dashed at him, but Yankee's long arm shot out to meet him, and Murphy again found the floor.
"Come on, boys," cried Pat Murphy, Dan's brother, and followed by half a dozen others, he flung himself at Yankee and the line of men standing up against the wall. But Yankee's arms flashed out once, twice, thrice, and Pat Murphy fell back over his brother; two others staggered across and checked the oncoming rush, while Dannie Ross and big Mack Cameron had each beaten back their man, and the Glengarry line stood unbroken. Man for man they were far more than a match for their opponents, and standing shoulder to shoulder, with their backs to the wall, they taunted Murphy and his gang with all the wealth of gibes and oaths at their command.
"Where's the rest of your outfit, Murphy?" drawled Yankee. "Don't seem's if you'd counted right."
"It is a cold day for the parley voos," laughed Big Mack Cameron. "Come up, lads, and take a taste of something hot."
Then the Murphy men, clearing away the fallen, rushed again. They strove to bring the Highlanders to a clinch, but Yankee's voice was high and clear in command.
"Keep the line, boys! Don't let 'em draw you!" And the Glengarry men waited till they could strike, and when they struck men went down and were pulled back by their friends.
"Intil them, bhoys!" yelled Dan Murphy, keeping out of range himself. "Intil the divils!" And again and again his men crowded down upon the line against the wall, but again and again they were beaten down or hurled back bruised and bleeding.
Meantime LeNoir was devoting himself to Black Hugh at one end of the line, dancing in upon him and away again, but without much result. Black Hugh refused to be drawn out, and fought warily on defense, knowing the odds were great and waiting his chance to deliver one good blow, which was all he asked.
The Glengarry men were enjoying themselves hugely, and when not shouting their battle-cry, "Glengarry forever!" or taunting their foes, they were joking each other on the fortunes of war. Big Mack Cameron, who held the center, drew most of the sallies. He was easy-tempered and good-natured, and took his knocks with the utmost good humor.
"That was a good one, Mack," said Dannie Ross, his special chum, as a sounding whack came in on Big Mack's face. "As true as death I will be telling it to Bella Peter. Bella, the daughter of Peter McGregor, was supposed to be dear to Big Mack's heart.
"What a peety she could not see him the now," said Finlay Campbell. "Man alive, she would say the word queeck!"
"'Tis more than she will do to you whatever, if you cannot keep off that crapeau yonder a little better," said Big Mack, reaching for a Frenchman who kept dodging in upon him with annoying persistence. Then Mack began to swear Gaelic oaths.
"'Tain't fair, Mack!" called out Yankee from his end of the line, "bad language in English is bad enough, but in Gaelic it must be uncommon rough." So they gibed each other. But the tactics of the enemy were exceedingly irritating, and were beginning to tell upon the tempers of the Highlanders.
"Come to me, ye cowardly little devil," roared Mack to his persisting assailant. "No one will hurt you! Come away, man! A-a-ah-ouch!" His cry of satisfaction at having grabbed his man ended in a howl of pain, for the Frenchman had got Mack's thumb between his teeth, and was chewing it vigorously.
"Ye would, would you, ye dog?" roared Big Mack. He closed his fingers into the Frenchman's gullet, and drew him up to strike, but on every side hands reached for him and stayed his blow. Then he lost himself. With a yell of rage he jambed his man back into the crowd, sinking his fingers deeper and deeper into his enemy's throat till his face grew black and his head fell over on one side. But it was a fatal move for Mack, and overcome by numbers that crowded upon him, he went down fighting wildly and bearing the Frenchman beneath him. The Glengarry line was broken. Black Hugh saw Mack's peril, and knew that it meant destruction to all. With a wilder cry than usual, "Glengarry! Glengarry!" he dashed straight into LeNoir, who gave back swiftly, caught two men who were beating Big Mack's life out, and hurled them aside, and grasping his friend's collar, hauled him to his feet, and threw him back against the wall and into the line again with his grip still upon his Frenchman's throat.
"Let dead men go, Mack," he cried, but even as he spoke LeNoir, seeing his opportunity, sprang at him and with a backward kick caught Macdonald fair in the face and lashed him hard against the wall. It was the terrible French lash and was one of LeNoir's special tricks. Black Hugh, stunned and dazed, leaned back against the wall, spreading out his hands weakly before his face. LeNoir, seeing victory within his grasp, rushed in to finish off his special foe. But Yankee Jim, who, while engaged in cheerfully knocking back the two Murphys and others who took their turn at him, had been keeping an eye on the line of battle, saw Macdonald's danger, and knowing that the crisis had come, dashed across the line, crying "Follow me, boys." His long arms swung round his head like the sails of a wind-mill, and men fell back from him as if they had been made of wood. As LeNoir sprang, Yankee shot fiercely at him, but the Frenchman, too quick for him, ducked and leaped upon Black Hugh, who was still swaying against the wall, bore him down and jumped with his heavy "corked" boots on his breast and face. Again the Glengarry line was broken. At once the crowd surged about the Glengarry men, who now stood back to back, beating off the men leaping at them from every side, as a stag beats off dogs, and still chanting high their dauntless cry, "Glengarry forever," to which Big Mack added at intervals, "To hell with the Papishes!" Yankee, failing to check LeNoir's attack upon Black Hugh, fought off the men crowding upon him, and made his way to the corner where the Frenchman was still engaged in kicking the prostrate Highlander to death.
"Take that, you blamed cuss," he said, catching LeNoir in the jaw and knocking his head with a thud against the wall. Before he could strike again he was thrown against his enemy, who clutched him and held like a vice.
CHAPTER II
VENGEANCE IS MINE
The Glengarry men had fought their fight, and it only remained for their foes to wreak their vengeance upon them and wipe out old scores. One minute more would have done for them, but in that minute the door came crashing in. There was a mighty roar, "Glengarry! Glengarry!" and the great Macdonald himself, with the boy Ranald and some half-dozen of his men behind him, stood among them. On all hands the fight stopped. A moment he stood, his great head and shoulders towering above the crowd, his tawny hair and beard falling around his face like a great mane, his blue eyes gleaming from under his shaggy eyebrows like livid lightning. A single glance around the room, and again raising his battle-cry, "Glengarry!" he seized the nearest shrinking Frenchman, lifted him high, and hurled him smashing into the bottles behind the counter. His men, following him, bounded like tigers on their prey. A few minutes of fierce, eager fighting, and the Glengarry men were all freed and on their feet, all except Black Hugh, who lay groaning in his corner. "Hold, lads!" Macdonald Bhain cried, in his mighty voice. "Stop, I'm telling you." The fighting ceased.
"Dan Murphy!" he cried, casting his eye round the room, "where are you, ye son of Belial?"
Murphy, crouching at the back of the crowd near the door, sought to escape.
"Ah! there you are!" cried Macdonald, and reaching through the crowd with his great, long arm, he caught Murphy by the hair of the head and dragged him forward.
"R-r-r-a-a-t! R-r-r-a-a-t! R-r-r-a-a-t!" he snarled, shaking him till his teeth rattled. "It is yourself that is the cause of this wickedness. Now, may the Lord have mercy on your soul." With one hand he gripped Murphy by the throat, holding him at arm's length, and raised his huge fist to strike. But before the blow fell he paused.
"No!" he muttered, in a disappointed tone, "it is not good enough. I will not be demeaning myself. Hence, you r-r-a-a-t!" As he spoke he lifted the shaking wretch as if he had been a bundle of clothes, swung him half round and hurled him crashing through the window.
"Is there no goot man here at all who will stand before me?" he raged in a wild, joyous fury. "Will not two of you come forth, then?" No one moved "Come to me!" he suddenly cried, and snatching two of the enemy, he dashed their heads together, and threw them insensible on the floor.
Then he caught sight of his brother for the first time lying in the corner with Big Mack supporting his head, and LeNoir standing near.
"What is this? What is this?" he cried, striding toward LeNoir. "And is it you that has done this work?" he asked, in a voice of subdued rage.
"Oui!" cried LeNoir, stepping back and putting up his hands, "das me; Louis LeNoir! by Gar!" He struck himself on the breast as he spoke.
"Out of my way!" cried Macdonald, swinging his open hand on the Frenchman's ear. With a swift sweep he brushed LeNoir aside from his place, and ignoring him stooped over his brother. But LeNoir was no coward, and besides his boasted reputation was at stake. He thought he saw his chance, and rushing at Macdonald as he was bending over his brother, delivered his terrible lash. But Macdonald had not lived with and fought with Frenchmen all these years without knowing their tricks and ways. He saw LeNoir's lash coming, and quickly turning his head, avoided the blow.
"Ah! would ye? Take that, then, and be quate!" and so saying, he caught LeNoir on the side of the head and sent him to the floor.
"Keep him off a while, Yankee!" said Macdonald, for LeNoir was up again, and coming at him.
Then kneeling beside his brother he wiped the bloody froth that was oozing from his lips, and said in a low, anxious tone:
"Hugh, bhodaich (old man), are ye hurted? Can ye not speak to me, Hugh?"
"Oich-oh," Black Hugh groaned. "It was a necessity—Donald man—and—he took me—unawares—with his—keeck."
"Indeed, and I'll warrant you!" agreed his brother, "but I will be attending to him, never you fear."
Macdonald was about to rise, when his brother caught his arm.
"You will—not be—killing him," he urged, between his painful gasps, "because I will be doing that myself some day, by God's help."
His words and the eager hate in his face seemed to quiet Macdonald.
"Alas! alas!" he said, sadly, "it is not allowed me to smite him as he deserves—'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord,' and I have solemnly promised the minister not to smite for glory or for revenge! Alas! alas!"
Then turning to LeNoir, he said, gravely: "It is not given me to punish you for your coward's blow. Go from me!" But LeNoir misjudged him.
"Bah!" he cried, contemptuously, "you tink me one baby, you strike me on de head side like one little boy. Bon! Louis LeNware, de bes bully on de Hottawa, he's not 'fraid for hany man, by Gar!" He pranced up and down before Macdonald, working himself into a great rage, as Macdonald grew more and more controlled.
Macdonald turned to his men with a kind of appeal—"I hev given my promise, and Macdonald will not break his word."
"Bah!" cried LeNoir, spitting at him.
"Now may the Lord give me grace to withstand the enemy," said Macdonald, gravely, "for I am greatly moved to take vengeance upon you."
"Bah!" cried LeNoir again, mistaking Macdonald's quietness and self-control for fear. "You no good! Your brother is no good! Beeg sheep! Beeg sheep! Bah!"
"God help me," said Macdonald as if to himself. "I am a man of grace! But must this dog go unpunished?"
LeNoir continued striding up and down, now and then springing high in the air and knocking his heels together with blood-curdling yells. He seemed to feel that Macdonald would not fight, and his courage and desire for blood grew accordingly.
"Will you not be quate?" said Macdonald, rising after a few moments from his brother's side, where he had been wiping his lips and giving him water to drink. "You will be better outside."
"Oui! you strike me on the head side. Bon! I strike you de same way! By Gar!" so saying he approached Macdonald lightly, and struck him a slight blow on the cheek.
"Ay," said Macdonald, growing white and rigid. "I struck you twice, LeNoir. Here!" he offered the other side of his face. LeNoir danced up carefully, made a slight pass, and struck the offered cheek.
"Now, that is done, will it please you to do it again?" said Macdonald, with earnest entreaty in his voice. LeNoir must have been mad with his rage and vanity, else he had caught the glitter in the blue eyes looking through the shaggy hair. Again LeNoir approached, this time with greater confidence, and dealt Macdonald a stinging blow on the side of the head.
"Now the Lord be praised," he cried, joy breaking out in his face. "He has delivered my enemy into my hand. For it is the third time he has smitten me, and that is beyond the limit appointed by Himself." With this he advanced upon LeNoir with a glad heart. His conscience was clear at last.
LeNoir stood up against his antagonist. He well knew he was about to make the fight of his life. He had beaten men as big as Macdonald, but he knew that his hope lay in keeping out of the enemy's reach. So he danced around warily. Macdonald followed him slowly. LeNoir opened with a swift and savage reach for Macdonald's neck, but failed to break the guard and danced out again, Macdonald still pressing on him. Again and again LeNoir rushed, but the guard was impregnable, and steadily Macdonald advanced. That steady, relentless advance began to tell on the Frenchman's nerves. The sweat gathered in big drops on his forehead and ran down his face. He prepared for a supreme effort. Swiftly retreating, he lured Macdonald to a more rapid advance, then with a yell he doubled himself into a ball and delivered himself head, hands, and feet into Macdonald's stomach. It is a trick that sometimes avails to break an unsteady guard and to secure a clinch with an unwary opponent. But Macdonald had been waiting for that trick. Stopping short, he leaned over to one side, and stooping slightly, caught LeNoir low and tossed him clear over his head. LeNoir fell with a terrible thud on his back, but was on his feet again like a cat and ready for the ever-advancing Macdonald. But though he had not been struck a single blow he knew that he had met his master. That unbreakable guard, the smiling face with the gleaming, unsmiling eyes, that awful unwavering advance, were too much for him. He was pale, his breath came in quick gasps, and his eyes showed the fear of a hunted beast. He prepared for a final effort. Feigning a greater distress than he felt, he yielded weakly to Macdonald's advance, then suddenly gathering his full strength he sprang into the air and lashed out backward at that hated, smiling face. His boot found its mark, not on Macdonald's face, but fair on his neck. The effect was terrific. Macdonald staggered back two or three paces, but before LeNoir could be at him, he had recovered sufficiently to maintain his guard, and shake off his foe. At the yell that went up from Murphy's men, the big Highlander's face lost its smile and became keen and cruel, his eyes glittered with the flash of steel and he came forward once more with a quick, light tread. His great body seemed to lose both size and weight, so lightly did he step on tiptoe. There was no more pause, but lightly, swiftly, and eagerly he glided upon LeNoir. There was something terrifying in that swift, cat-like movement. In vain the Frenchman backed and dodged and tried to guard. Once, twice, Macdonald's fists fell. LeNoir's right arm hung limp by his side and he staggered back to the wall helpless. Without an instant's delay, Macdonald had him by the throat, and gripping him fiercely, began to slowly bend him backward over his knee. Then for the first time Macdonald spoke:
"LeNoir, " he said, solemnly, "the days of your boasting are over. You will no longer glory in your strength, for now I will break your back to you."
LeNoir tried to speak, but his voice came in horrible gurgles. His face was a ghastly greenish hue, lined with purple and swollen veins, his eyes were standing out of his head, and his breath sobbing in raucous gasps. Slowly the head went back. The crowd stood in horror-stricken silence waiting for the sickening snap. Yankee, unable to stand it any longer, stepped up to his chief, and in a most matter of fact voice drawled out, "About an inch more that way I guess 'll do the trick, if he ain't double-jointed."
"Aye," said Macdonald, holding grimly on.
"Tonald,"—Black Hugh's voice sounded faint but clear in the awful silence—"Tonald—you will not—be killing—him. Remember that now. I will—never—forgive you—if you will—take that—from my hands."
The cry for vengeance smote Macdonald to the heart, and recalled him to himself. He paused, threw back his locks from his eyes, then relaxing his grip, stood up.
"God preserve me!" he groaned, "what am I about?"
For some time he remained standing silent, with head down as if not quite sure of himself. He was recalled by a grip of his arm. He turned and saw his nephew, Ranald, at his side. The boy's dark face was pale with passion.
"And is that all you are going to do to him?" he demanded. Macdonald gazed at him.
"Do you not see what he has done?" he continued, pointing to his father, who was still lying propped up on some coats. "Why did you not break his back? You said you would! The brute, beast!"
He hurled out the words in hot hate. His voice pierced the noise of the room. Macdonald stood still, gazing at the fierce, dark face in solemn silence. Then he sadly shook his head.
"My lad, 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord.' It would have pleased me well, but the hand of the Lord was laid upon me and I could not kill him."
"Then it is myself will kill him," he shrieked, springing like a wildcat at LeNoir. But his uncle wound his arms around him and held him fast. For a minute and more he struggled fiercely, crying to be set free, till recognizing the uselessness of his efforts he grew calm, and said quietly, "Let me loose, uncle; I will be quiet." And his uncle set him free. The boy shook himself, and then standing up before LeNoir said, in a high, clear voice:
"Will you hear me, LeNoir? The day will come when I will do to you what you have done to my father, and if my father will die, then by the life of God [a common oath among the shanty-men] I will have your life for it." His voice had an unearthly shrillness in it, and LeNoir shrank back.
"Whist, whist, lad! be quate!" said his uncle; "these are not goot words." The lad heeded him not, but sank down beside his father on the floor. Black Hugh raised himself on his elbow with a grim smile on his face.
"It is a goot lad whatever, but please God he will not need to keep his word." He laid his hand in a momentary caress upon his boy's shoulder, and sank back again, saying, "Take me out of this."
Then Macdonald Bhain turned to Dan Murphy and gravely addressed him:
"Dan Murphy, it is an ungodly and cowardly work you have done this day, and the curse of God will be on you if you will not repent." Then he turned away, and with Big Mack's help bore his brother to the pointer, followed by his men, bloody, bruised, but unconquered. But before he left the room LeNoir stepped forward, and offering his hand, said, "You mak friends wit' me. You de boss bully on de reever Hottawa."
Macdonald neither answered nor looked his way, but passed out in grave silence.
Then Yankee Jim remarked to Dan Murphy, "I guess you'd better git them logs out purty mighty quick. We'll want the river in about two days." Dan Murphy said not a word, but when the Glengarry men wanted the river they found it open.
But for Macdonald the fight was not yet over, for as he sat beside his brother, listening to his groans, his men could see him wreathing his hands and chant- ing in an undertone the words, "Vengeance is mine saith the Lord." And as he sat by the camp-fire that night listening to Yankee's account of the beginning of the trouble, and heard how his brother had kept himself in hand, and how at last he had been foully smitten, Macdonald's conflict deepened, and he rose up and cried aloud:
"God help me! Is this to go unpunished? I will seek him to-morrow." And he passed out into the dark woods.
After a few moments the boy Ranald slipped away after him to beg that he might be allowed to go with him to-morrow. Stealing silently through the bushes he came to where he could see the kneeling figure of his uncle swaying up and down, and caught the sounds of words broken with groans:
"Let me go, O Lord! Let me go!" He pled now in Gaelic and again in English. "Let not the man be escaping his just punishment. Grant me this, O, Lord ! Let me smite but once !" Then after a pause came the words, "'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord!' Vengeance is mine! Ay, it is the true word! But, Lord, let not this man of Belial, this Papish, escape!" Then again, like a refrain would come the words, "Vengeance is mine. Vengeance is mine," in ever-deeper agony, till throwing himself on his face, he lay silent a long time.
Suddenly he rose to his knees and so remained, looking steadfastly before him into the woods. The wind came sighing through the pines with a wail and a sob. Macdonald shuddered and then fell on his face again. The Vision was upon him. "Ah, Lord, it is the bloody hands and feet I see. It is enough." At this Ranald slipped back awe-stricken to the camp. When, after an hour, Macdonald came back into the firelight, his face was pale and wet, but calm, and there was an exalted look in his eyes. His men gazed at him with wonder and awe in their faces.
"Mercy on us! He will be seeing something," said Big Mack to Yankee Jim.
"Seein' somethin'? What? A bar?" inquired Yankee.
"Whist now!" said Big Mack, in a low voice. "He has the sight. Be quate now, will you? He will be speaking."
For a short time Macdonald sat gazing into the fire in silence, then turning his face toward the men who were waiting, he said: "There will be no more of this. 'Vengeance is mine saith the Lord!' It is not for me. The Lord will do His own work. It is the will of the Lord." And the men knew that the last word had been said on that subject, and that LeNoir was safe.
CHAPTER III
THE MANSE IN THE BUSH
Straight north from the St. Lawrence runs the road through the Indian Lands. At first its way lies through open country, from which the forest has been driven far back to the horizon on either side, for along the great river these many years villages have clustered, with open fields about them stretching far away. But when once the road leaves the Front, with its towns and villages and open fields, and passes beyond Martintown and over the North Branch, it reaches a country where the forest is more a feature of the landscape. And when some dozen or more of the crossroads marking the concessions which lead off to east and west have been passed, the road seems to strike into a different world. The forest loses its conquered appearance, and dominates everything. There is forest everywhere. It lines up close and thick along the road, and here and there quite overshadows it. It crowds in upon the little farms and shuts them off from one another and from the world outside, and peers in through the little windows of the log houses looking so small and lonely, but so beautiful in their forest frames. At the nineteenth cross-road the forest gives ground a little, for here the road runs right past the new brick church, which is almost finished, and which will be opened in a few weeks. Beyond the cross, the road leads along the glebe, and about a quarter of a mile beyond the corner there opens upon it the big, heavy gate that the members of the Rev. Alexander Murray's congregation must swing when they wish to visit the manse. The opening of this gate, made of upright poles held by auger-holes in a frame of bigger poles, was almost too great a task for the minister's seven-year-old son Hughie, who always rode down, standing on the hind axle of the buggy, to open it for his father. It was a great relief to him when Long John Cameron, who had the knack of doing things for people's comfort, brought his ax and big auger one day and made a kind of cradle on the projecting end of the top bar, which he then weighted with heavy stones, so that the gate, when once the pin was pulled out of the post, would swing back itself with Hughie straddled on the top of it.
It was his favorite post of observation when waiting for his mother to come home from one of her many meetings. And on this particular March evening he had been waiting long and impatiently.
Suddenly he shouted: "Horo, mamma! Horo!" He had caught sight of the little black pony away up at the church hill, and had become so wildly excited that he was now standing on the top bar frantically waving his Scotch bonnet by the tails. Down the slope came the pony on the gallop, for she knew well that soon Lambert would have her saddle off, and that her nose would be deep into bran mash within five minutes more. But her rider sat her firmly and brought her down to a gentle trot by the time the gate was reached.
"Horo, mamma!" shouted Hughie, clambering down to open the gate.
"Well, my darling! have you been a good boy all afternoon?"
"Huh-huh! Guess who's come back from the shanties!"
"I'm sure I can't guess. Who is it?" It was a very bright and very sweet face, with large, serious, gray-brown eyes that looked down on the little boy.
"Guess, mamma!"
"Why, who can it be? Big Mack?"
"No!" Hughie danced delightedly. "Try again.
He's not big."
"I am sure I can never guess. Whoa, Pony!" Pony was most unwilling to get in close enough to the gate-post to let Hughie spring on behind his mother.
"You'll have to be quick, Hughie, when I get near again. There now! Whoa, Pony! Take care, child!"
Hughie had sprung clean off the post, and lighting on Pony's back just behind the saddle, had clutched his mother round the waist, while the pony started off full gallop for the stable.
"Now, mother, who is it?" insisted Hughie, as Lambert, the French-Canadian man-of-all-work, lifted him from his place.
"You'll have to tell me, Hughie!"
"Ranald!"
"Ranald?"
"Yes, Ranald and his father, Macdonald Dubh, and he's hurted awful bad, and—"
"Hurt, Hughie," interposed the mother, gently.
"Huh-huh! Ranald said he was hurted."
"Hurt, you mean, Hughie. Who was hurt? Ranald?"
"No; his father was hurted—hurt—awful bad. He was lying down in the sleigh, and Yankee Jim—"
"Mr. Latham, you mean, Hughie."
"Huh-huh," went on Hughie, breathlessly, "and Yankee—Mr. Latham asked if the minister was home, and I said 'No,' and then they went away."
"What was the matter? Did you see them, Lambert?"
"Oui" ("Way," Lambert pronounced it), "but dey not tell me what he's hurt."
The minister's wife went toward the house, with a shadow on her face. She shared with her husband his people's sorrows. She knew even better than he the life-history of every family in the congregation. Macdonald Dubh had long been classed among the wild and careless in the community, and it weighed upon her heart that his life might be in danger.
"I shall see him to-morrow," she said to herself.
For a few moments she stood on the doorstep looking at the glow in the sky over the dark forest, which on the west side came quite up to the house and barn.
"Look, Hughie, at the beautiful tints in the clouds, and see the dark shadows pointing out toward us from the bush." Hughie glanced a moment.
"Mamma," he said, "I am just dead for supper."
"Oh, not quite, I hope, Hughie. But look, I want you to notice those clouds and the sky behind them. How lovely! Oh, how wonderful!"
Her enthusiasm caught the boy, and for a few moment she forgot even his hunger, and holding his mother's hand, gazed up at the western sky. It was a picture of rare beauty that lay stretched out from the manse back door. Close to the barn came the pasture-field dotted with huge stumps, then the brûle where the trees lay fallen across one another, over which the fire had run, and then the solid wall of forest here and there overtopped by the lofty crest of a white pine. Into the forest in the west the sun was descending in gorgeous robes of glory. The treetops caught the yellow light, and gleamed like the golden spires of some great and fabled city.
"Oh, mamma, see that big pine top! Doesn't it look like windows?" cried Hughie, pointing to one of the lofty pine crests through which the sky quivered like molten gold.
"And the streets of the city are pure gold," said the mother, softly.
"Yes, I know," said Hughie, confidently, for to him all the scenes and stories of the Bible had long been familiar. "Is it like that, mamma?"
"Much better, ever so much better than you can think."
"Oh, mamma, I'm just awful hungry!"
"Come away, then; so am I. What have you got, Jessie, for two very hungry people?"
"Porridge and pancakes," said Jessie, the minister's "girl," who not only ruled in the kitchen, but, using the kitchen as a base, controlled the interior economy of the manse.
"Oh, goody!" yelled Hughie; "just what I like." And from the plates of porridge and the piles of pancakes that vanished from his plate no one could doubt his word.
Their reading that night was about the city whose streets were of pure gold, and after a little talk, Hughie and his baby brother were tucked away safely for the night, and the mother sat down to her never-ending task of making and mending.
The minister was away at Presbytery meeting in Montreal, and for ten days his wife would stand in the breach. Of course the elders would take the meeting on the Sabbath day and on the Wednesday evening, but for all other ministerial duties when the minister was absent the congregation looked to the minister's wife. And soon it came that the sick and the sorrowing and the sin-burdened found in the minister's wife such help and comfort and guidance as made the absence of the minister seem no great trial after all. Eight years ago the minister had brought his wife from a home of gentle culture, from a life of intellectual and artistic pursuits, and from a circle of loving friends of which she was the pride and joy, to this home in the forest. There, isolated from all congenial companionship with her own kind, deprived of all the luxuries and of many of the comforts of her young days, and of the mental stimulus of that conflict of minds without which few can maintain intellectual life, she gave herself without stint to her husband's people, with never a thought of self-pity or self-praise. By day and by night she labored for her husband and family and for her people, for she thought them hers. She taught the women how to adorn their rude homes, gathered them into Bible classes and sewing circles, where she read and talked and wrought and prayed with them till they grew to adore her as a saint, and to trust her as a leader and friend, and to be a little like her. And not the women only, but the men, too, loved and trusted her, and the big boys found it easier to talk to the minister's wife than to the minister or to any of his session. She made her own and her children's clothes, collars, hats, and caps, her husband's shirts and neckties, toiling late into the morning hours, and all without frown or shadow of complaint, and indeed without suspicion that any but the happiest lot was hers, or that she was, as her sisters said, "just buried alive in the backwoods." Not she! She lived to serve, and the where and how were not hers to determine. So, with bright face and brave heart, she met her days and faced the battle. And scores of women and men are living better and braver lives because they had her for their minister's wife.
But the day had been long, and the struggle with the March wind pulls hard upon the strength, and outside the pines were crooning softly, and gradually the brave head drooped till between the stitches she fell asleep. But not for many minutes, for a knock at the kitchen door startled her, and before long she heard Jessie's voice rise wrathful.
"Indeed, I'll do no such thing. This is no time to come to the minister's house."
For answer there was a mumble of words.
"Well, then, you can just wait until morning. She can go in the morning."
"What is it, Jessie?" The minister's wife came into the kitchen.
"Oh, Ranald, I'm glad to see you back. Hughie told me you had come. But your father is ill, he said. How is he?"
Ranald shook hands shyly, feeling much ashamed under Jessie's sharp reproof.
"Indeed, it was Aunt Kirsty that sent me," said Ranald, apologetically.
"Then she ought to have known better," said Jessie, sharply.
"Never mind, Jessie. Ranald, tell me about your father."
"He is very bad indeed, and my aunt is afraid that—" The boy's lip trembled. Then he went on: "And she thought perhaps you might have some medicine, and—"
"But what is the matter, Ranald?"
"He was hurted bad—and he is not right wise in his head."
"But how was he hurt?"
Ranald hesitated.
"I was not there—I am thinking it was something that struck him."
"Ah, a tree! But where did the tree strike him?"
"Here," pointing to his breast; "and it is sore in his breathing.
"Well, Ranald, if you put the saddle on Pony, I shall be ready in a minute."
Jessie was indignant.
"You will not stir a foot this night. You will send some medicine, and then you can go in the morning."
But the minister's wife heeded her not.
"You are not walking, Ranald?"
"No, I have the colt."
"Oh, that's splendid. We'll have a fine gallop—that is, if the moon is up."
"Yes, it is just coming up," said Ranald, hurrying away to the stable that he might escape Jessie's wrath and get the pony ready.
It was no unusual thing for the minister and his wife to be called upon to do duty for doctor and nurse. The doctor was twenty miles away. So Mrs. Murray got into her riding-habit, threw her knitted hood over her head, put some simple medicines into her hand-bag, and in ten minutes was waiting for Ranald at the door.
CHAPTER IV
THE RIDE FOR LIFE
The night was clear, with a touch of frost in the air, yet with the feeling in it of approaching spring. A dim light fell over the forest from the half-moon and the stars, and seemed to fill up the little clearing in which the manse stood, with a weird and mysterious radiance. Far away in the forest the long-drawn howl of a wolf rose and fell, and in a moment sharp and clear came an answer from the bush just at hand. Mrs. Murray dreaded the wolves, but she was no coward and scorned to show fear.
"The wolves are out, Ranald," she said, carelessly, as Ranald came up with the pony.
"They are not many, I think," answered the boy as carelessly; "but—are you—do you think—perhaps I could just take the medicine—and you will come—"
"Nonsense, Ranald! bring up the pony. Do you think I have lived all this time in Indian Lands to be afraid of a wolf?"
"Indeed, you are not afraid, I know that well!" Ranald shrank from laying the crime of being afraid at the door of the minister's wife, whose fearlessness was proverbial in the community; "but maybe—" The truth was, Ranald would rather be alone if the wolves came out.
But Mrs. Murray was in the saddle, and the pony was impatient to be off.
"We will go by the Camerons' clearing, and then take their wood track. It is a better road," said Ranald, after they had got through the big gate.
"Now, Ranald, you think I am afraid of the swamp, and by the Camerons' is much longer."
"Indeed, I hear them say that you are not afraid of the—of anything," said Ranald, quickly, "but this road is better for the horses."
"Come on, then, with your colt"; and the pony darted away on her quick-springing gallop, followed by the colt going with a long, easy, loping stride. For a mile they kept side by side till they reached the Camerons' lane, when Ranald held in the colt and allowed the pony to lead. As they passed through the Camerons' yard the big black dogs, famous bear-hunters, came baying at them. The pony regarded them with indifference, but the colt shied and plunged.
"Whoa, Liz!" Liz was Ranald's contraction for Lizette, the name of the French horse-trainer and breeder, Jules La Rocque, gave to her mother, who in her day was queen of the ice at L'Original Christmas races.
"Be quate, Nigger, will you!" The dogs, who knew Ranald well, ceased their clamor, but not before the kitchen door opened and Don Cameron came out.
Don was about a year older than Ranald and was his friend and comrade.
"It's me, Don—and Mrs. Murray there."
Don gazed speechless.
"And what—" he began.
"Father is not well. He is hurted, and Mrs. Murray is going to see him, and we must go."
Ranald hurried through his story, impatient to get on.
"But are you going up through the bush?" asked Don.
"Yes, what else, Don?" asked Mrs. Murray. "It is a good road, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose it is good enough," said Don, doubtfully, "but I heard—"
"We will come out at our own clearing at the back, you know," Ranald hurried to say, giving Don a kick. "Whist, man! She is set upon going." At that moment away off toward the swamp, which they were avoiding, the long, heart-chilling cry of a mother wolf quavered on the still night air. In spite of herself, Mrs. Murray shivered, and the boys looked at each other.
"There is only one," said Ranald in a low voice to Don, but they both knew that where the she wolf is there is a pack not far off. "And we will be through the bush in five minutes."
"Come, Ranald! Come away, you can talk to Don any time. Good night, Don." And so saying she headed her pony toward the clearing and was off at a gallop, and Ranald, shaking his head at his friend, ejaculated:
"Man alive! what do you think of that?" and was off after the pony.
Together they entered the bush. The road was well beaten and the horses were keen to go, so that before many minutes were over they were half through the bush. Ranald's spirits rose and he began to take some interest in his companion's observations upon the beauty of the lights and shadows falling across their path.
"Look at that very dark shadow from the spruce there, Ranald," she cried, pointing to a deep, black turn in the road. For answer there came from behind them the long, mournful hunting-cry of the wolf. He was on their track. Immediately it was answered by a chorus of howls from the bush on the swamp side, but still far away. There was no need of command; the pony sprang forward with a snort and the colt followed, and after a few minutes' running, passed her.
"Whow-oo-oo-oo-ow" rose the long cry of the pursuer, summoning help, and drawing nearer.
"Wow-ee-wow," came the shorter, sharper answer from the swamp, but much nearer than before and more in front. They were trying to head off their prey.
Ranald tugged at his colt till he got him back with the pony.
"It is a good road," he said, quietly; "you can let the pony go. I will follow you." Lie swung in behind the pony, who was now running for dear life and snorting with terror at every jump.
"God preserve us!" said Ranald to himself. He had caught sight of a dark form as it darted through the gleam of light in front.
"What did you say, Ranald?" The voice was quiet and clear.
"It is a great pony to run whatever," said Ranald, ashamed of himself.
"Is she not?"
Ranald glanced over his shoulder. Down the road, running with silent, awful swiftness, he saw the long, low body of the leading wolf flashing through the bars of moonlight across the road, and the pack following hard.
"Let her go, Mrs. Murray," cried Ranald. "Whip her and never stop." But there was no need; the pony was wild with fear, and was doing her best running.
Ranald meantime was gradually holding in the colt, and the pony drew away rapidly. But as rapidly the wolves were closing in behind him. They were not more than a hundred yards away, and gaining every second. Ranald, remembering the suspicious nature of the brutes, loosened his coat and dropped it on the road; with a chorus of yelps they paused, then threw themselves upon it, and in another minute took up the chase.
But now the clearing was in sight. The pony was far ahead, and Ranald shook out his colt with a yell. He was none too soon, for the pursuing pack, now uttering short, shrill yelps, were close at the colt's heels. Lizette, fleet as the wind, could not shake them off. Closer and ever closer they came, snapping and snarling. Ranald could see them over his shoulder. A hundred yards more and he would reach his own back lane. The leader of the pack seemed to feel that his chances were slipping swiftly away. With a spurt he gained upon Lizette, reached the saddle-girths, gathered himself in two short jumps, and sprang for the colt's throat. Instinctively Ranald stood up in his stirrups, and kicking his foot free, caught the wolf under the jaw. The brute fell with a howl under the colt's feet, and next moment they were in the lane and safe.
The savage brutes, discouraged by their leader's fall, slowed down their fierce pursuit, and hearing the deep bay of the Macdonalds' great deerhound, Bugle, up at the house, they paused, sniffed the air a few minutes, then turned and swiftly and silently slid into the dark shadows. Ranald, knowing that they would hardly dare enter the lane, checked the colt, and wheeling, watched them disappear.
"I'll have some of your hides some day," he cried, shaking his fist after them. He hated to be made to run.
He had hardly set the colt's face homeward when he heard something tearing down the lane to meet him. The colt snorted, swerved, and then dropping his ears, stood still. It was Bugle, and after him came Mrs. Murray on the pony.
"Oh, Ranald!" she panted, "thank God you are safe. I was afraid you—you—" Her voice broke in sobs. Her hood had fallen back from her white face, and her eyes were shining like two stars. She laid her hand on Ranald's arm, and her voice grew steady as she said: "Thank God, my boy, and thank you with all my heart. You risked your life for mine. You are a brave fellow! I can never forget this!"
"Oh, pshaw!" said Ranald, awkwardly. "You are better stuff than I am. You came back with Bugle. And I knew Liz could beat the pony whatever." Then they walked their horses quietly to the stable, and nothing more was said by either of them; but from that hour Ranald had a friend ready to offer life for him, though he did not know it then nor till years afterward.
CHAPTER V
FORGIVE US OUR DEBTS
Macdonald Dubh's farm lay about three miles north and west from the manse, and the house stood far back from the cross-road in a small clearing encircled by thick bush. It was a hard farm to clear, the timber was heavy, the land lay low, and Macdonald Dubh did not make as much progress as his neighbors in his conflict with the forest. Not but that he was a hard worker and a good man with the ax, but somehow he did not succeed as a farmer. It may have been that his heart was more in the forest than in the farm. He was a famous hunter, and in the deer season was never to be found at home, but was ever ranging the woods with his rifle and his great deerhound, Bugle.
He made money at the shanties, but money would not stick to his fingers, and by the time the summer was over most of his money would be gone, with the government mortgage on his farm still unlifted. His habits of life wrought a kind of wildness in him which set him apart from the thrifty, steady-going people among whom he lived. True, the shanty-men were his stanch friends and admirers, but then the shanty-men, though well-doing, could hardly be called steady, except the boss of the Macdonald gang, Macdonald Bhain, who was a regular attendant and stanch supporter of the church, and indeed had been spoken of for an elder. But from the church Macdonald Dubh held aloof. He belonged distinctly to the "careless," though he could not be called irreligious. He had all the reverence for "the Word of God, and the Sabbath day, and the church" that characterized his people. All these held a high place in his esteem; and though he would not presume to "take the books," not being a member of the church, yet on the Sabbath day when he was at home it was the custom of the household to gather for the reading of the Word before breakfast. He would never take his rifle with him through the woods on the Sabbath, and even when absent from home on a hunting expedition, when the Sabbath day came round, he religiously kept camp. It is true, he did not often go to church, and when the minister spoke to him about this, he always agreed that it was a good thing to go to church. When he had no better excuse, he would apologize for his absence upon the ground "that he had not the clothes." The greater part of the trouble was that he was shy and proud, and felt himself to be different from the church-going people of the community, and shrank from the surprised looks of members, and even from the words of approving welcome that often greeted his presence in church.
It was not according to his desire that Ranald was sent to the manse. That was the doing of his sister, Kirsty, who for the last ten years had kept house for him. Not that there was much housekeeping skill about Kirsty, as indeed any one might see even without entering Macdonald Dubh's house. Kirsty was big and strong and willing, but she had not the most elemental ideas of tidiness. Her red, bushy hair hung in wisps about her face, after the greater part of it had been gathered into a tight knob at the back of her head. She was a martyr to the "neuralagy," and suffered from a perennial cold in the head, which made it necessary for her to wear a cloud, which was only removed when it could be replaced by her nightcap. Her face always bore the marks of her labors, and from it one could gather whether she was among the pots or busy with the baking. But she was kind-hearted, and, up to her light, sought to fill the place left empty by the death of the wife and mother in that home, ten years before.
When the minister's wife opened the door, a hot, close, foul smell rushed forth to meet her. Upon the kitchen stove a large pot of pig's food was boiling, and the steam and smell from the pot made the atmosphere of the room overpoweringly fetid. Off the kitchen or living-room were two small bedrooms, in one of which lay Macdonald Dubh.
Kirsty met the minister's wife with a warm welcome. She helped her off with her hood and coat, patting her on the shoulder the while, and murmuring words of endearment.
"Ah, M'eudail! M'eudail bheg! and did you come through the night all the way, and it is ashamed that I am to have sent for you, but he was very bad and I was afraid. Come away! come away! I will make you a cup of tea." But the minister's wife assured Kirsty that she was glad to come, and declining the cup of tea, went to the room where Macdonald Dubh lay tossing and moaning with the delirium of fever upon him. It was not long before she knew what was required.
With hot fomentations she proceeded to allay the pain, and in half an hour Macdonald Dubh grew quiet. His tossings and mutterings ceased and he fell into a sleep.
Kirsty stood by admiring.
"Mercy me! Look at that now; and it is yourself that is the great doctor!"
"Now, Kirsty," said Mrs. Murray, in a very matter-of-fact tone, "we will just make him a little more comfortable."
"Yes," said Kirsty, not quite sure how the feat was to be achieved. "A little hot something for his inside will be good, but indeed, many's the drink I have given him," she suggested.
"What have you been giving him, Kirsty?"
"Senny and dandylion, and a little whisky. They will be telling me it is ferry good whatever for the stomach and bow'ls."
"I don't think I would give him any more of that; but we will try and make him feel a little more comfortable."
Mrs. Murray knew she was treading on delicate ground. The Highland pride is quick to take offense.
"Sick people, you see," she proceeded carefully, "need very frequent changes—sheets and clothing, you understand."
"Aye," said Kirsty, suspiciously.
"I am sure you have plenty of beautiful sheets, and we will change these when he wakes from his sleep."
"Indeed, they are very clean, for there is no one but myself has slept in them since he went away last fall to the shanties."
Mrs. Murray felt the delicacy of the position to be sensibly increased.
"Indeed, that is right, Kirsty; one can never tell just what sort of people are traveling about nowadays."
"Indeed, and it's true, " said Kirsty, heartily, "but I never let them in here. I just keep them to the bunk."
"But," pursued Mrs. Murray, returning to the subject in hand, "it is very important that for sick people the sheets should be thoroughly aired and warmed. Why, in the hospital in Montreal they take the very greatest care to air and change the sheets every day. You see so much poison comes through the pores of the skin."
"Do you hear that now?" said Kirsty, amazed. "Indeed, I would be often hearing that those French people are just full of poison and such, and indeed, it is no wonder, for the food they put inside of them."
"O, no," said Mrs. Murray, "it is the same with all people, but especially so with sick people."
Kirsty looked as doubtful as was consistent with her respect for the minister's wife, and Mrs. Murray went on.
"So you will just get the sheets ready to change, and, Kirsty, a clean night-shirt."
"Night-shirt! and indeed, he has not such a thing to his name." Kirsty's tone betrayed her thankfulness that her brother was free from the effeminacy of a night-shirt; but noting the dismay and confusion on Mrs. Murray's face, she suggested, hesitatingly, "He might have one of my own, but I am thinking it will be small for him across the back."
"I am afraid so, Kirsty," said the minister's wife, struggling hard with a smile. "We will just use one of his own white shirts." But this scandalized Kirsty as an unnecessary and wasteful luxury.
"Indeed, there is plenty of them in the chist, but he will be keeping them for the communion season, and the funerals, and such. He will not be wearing them in his bed, for no one will be seeing him there at all."
But he will feel so much better," said Mrs. Murray, and her smile was so sweet and winning that Kirsty's opposition collapsed, and without more words both sheets and shirt were produced.
As Kirsty laid them out she observed with a sigh: "Aye, aye, she was the clever woman—the wife, I mean. She was good with the needle, and indeed, at anything she tried to do."
"I did not know her," said Mrs. Murray, softly, "but every one tells me she was a good housekeeper and a good woman."
"She was that," said Kirsty, emphatically, "and she was the light of his eyes, and it was a bad day for Hugh when she went away."
"Now, Kirsty," said Mrs. Murray, after a pause, "before we put on these clean things, we will just give him a sponge bath.
Kirsty gasped.
"Mercy sakes! He will not be needing that in the winter, and he will be getting a cold from it. In the summer-time he will be going to the river himself. And how will you be giving him a bath whatever?"
Mrs. Murray carefully explained the process, again fortifying her position by referring to the practices of the Montreal hospital, till, as a result of her persuasions and instructions, in an hour after Macdonald had awakened from his sleep he was lying in his Sabbath white shirt and between fresh sheets, and feeling cleaner and more comfortable than he had for many a day. The fever was much reduced, and he fell again into a deep sleep.
The two women watched beside him, for neither would leave the other to watch alone. And Ranald, who could not be persuaded to go up to his loft, lay on the bunk in the kitchen and dozed. After an hour had passed, Mrs. Murray inquired as to the nourishment Kirsty had given her brother.
"Indeed, he will not be taking anything whatever, said Kirsty, in a vexed tone. "And it is no matter what I will be giving him."
"And what does he like, Kirsty?"
"Indeed, he will be taking anything when he is not seek, and he is that fond of buckwheat pancakes and pork gravy with maple syrup over them, but would he look at it! And I made him new porridge to-night, but he would not touch them."
"Did you try him with gruel, Kirsty?"
"Mercy me, and is it Macdonald Dubh and gruel? He would be flinging the feushionless stuff out of the window."
"But I am sure it would be good for him if he could be persuaded to try it. I should like to try him."
"Indeed, and you may try. It will be easy enough, for the porridge are still in the pot."
Kirsty took the pot from the bench, with the remains of the porridge that had been made for supper still in it, set it on the fire, and pouring some water in it, began to stir it vigorously. It was thick and slimy, and altogether a most repulsive-looking mixture, and Mrs. Murray no longer wondered at Macdonald Dubh's distaste for gruel.
"I think I will make some fresh, if you will let me, Kirsty—in the way I make it for the minister, you know."
Kirsty, by this time, had completely surrendered to Mrs. Murray's guidance, and producing the oatmeal, allowed her to have her way; so that when Macdonald awoke he found Mrs. Murray standing beside him with a bowl of the nicest gruel and a slice of thin dry toast.
He greeted the minister's wife with grave courtesy, drank the gruel, and then lay down again to sleep.
"Will you look at that now?" said Kirsty, amazed at Macdonald Dubh's forbearance. "He would not like to be offending you."
Then Mrs. Murray besought Kirsty to go and lie down for an hour, which Kirsty very unwillingly agreed to do.
It was not long before Macdonald began to toss and mutter in his sleep, breaking forth now and then into wild cries and curses. He was fighting once more his great fight in the Glengarry line, and beating back LeNoir.
"Back, ye devil! Would ye? Take that, then. Come back, Mack!" Then followed a cry so wild that Ranald awoke and came into the room.
"Bring in some snow, Ranald," said the minister's wife; "we will lay some on his head."
She bathed the hot face and hands with ice-cold water, and then laid a snow compress on the sick man's head, speaking to him in quiet, gentle tones, till he was soothed again to sleep.
When the gray light of the morning came in through the little window, Macdonald woke sane and quiet.
"You are better," said Mrs. Murray to him.
"Yes," he said, "I am very well, thank you, except for the pain here." He pointed to his chest.
"You have been badly hurt, Ranald tells me. How did it happen?"
"Well," said Macdonald, slowly, "it is very hard to say."
"Did the tree fall on you?" asked Mrs. Murray.
Macdonald glanced at her quickly, and then answered: "It is very dangerous work with the trees. It is wonderful how quick they will fall."
"Your face and breast seem very badly bruised and cut."
"Aye, yes," said Macdonald. "The breast is bad whatever.
"I think you had better send for Doctor Grant," Mrs. Murray said. "There may be some internal injury."
"No, no," said Macdonald, decidedly. "I will have no doctor at me, and I will soon be round again, if the Lord will. When will the minister be home?"
But Mrs. Murray, ignoring his attempt to escape the subject, went on: "Yes, but, Mr. Macdonald, I am anxious to have Doctor Grant see you, and I wish you would send for him to-morrow."
"Ah, well," said Macdonald, not committing himself, "we will be seeing about that. But the doctor has not been in this house for many a day." Then, after a pause, he added, in a low voice, "Not since the day she was taken from me."
"Was she ill long?"
"Indeed, no. It was just one night. There was no doctor, and the women could not help her, and she was very bad—and when it came it was a girl—and it was dead—and then the doctor arrived, but he was too late." Macdonald Dubh finished with a great sigh, and the minister's wife said gently to him:
"That was a very sad day, and a great loss to you and Ranald."
"Aye, you may say it; she was a bonnie woman whatever, and grand at the spinning and the butter. And, oich-hone, it was a sad day for us."
The minister's wife sat silent, knowing that such grief cannot be comforted, and pitying from her heart the lonely man. After a time she said gently, "She is better off."
A look of doubt and pain and fear came into Macdonald's eyes.
"She never came forward," he said, hesitatingly. "She was afraid to come."
"I have heard of her often, Mr. Macdonald, and I have heard that she was a good and gentle woman."
"Aye, she was that."
"And kind to the sick."
"You may believe it."
"And she loved the house of God."
"Aye, and neither rain nor snow nor mud would be keeping her from it, but she would be going every Sabbath day, bringing her stockings with her."
"Her stockings?"
"Aye, to change her feet in the church. What else? Her stockings would be wet with the snow and water."
Mrs. Murray nodded. "And she loved her Saviour, Mr. Macdonald."
"Indeed, I believe it well, but she was afraid she would not be having 'the marks.'"
"Never you fear, Mr. Macdonald," said Mrs. Murray. "If she loved her Saviour she is with him now."
He turned around to her and lifted himself eagerly on his elbow. "And do you really think that?" he said, in a voice subdued and anxious.
"Indeed I do," said Mrs. Murray, in a tone of certain conviction.
Macdonald sank back on his pillow, and after a moment's silence, said, in a voice of pain: "Oh, but it is a peety she did not know! It is a peety she did not know. For many's the time before—before—her hour came on her, she would be afraid."
"But she was not afraid at the last, Mr. Macdonald?"
"Indeed, no. I wondered at her. She was like a babe in its mother's arms. There was a light on her face, and I mind well what she said." Macdonald paused. There was a stir in the kitchen, and Mrs. Murray, glancing behind her, saw Ranald standing near the door intently listening. Then Macdonald went on. "I mind well the words, as if it was yesterday. 'Hugh, my man,' she said, 'am no feared' (she was from the Lowlands, but she was a fine woman); 'I haena the marks, but 'm no feared but He'll ken me. Ye'll tak' care o' Ranald, for, oh, Hugh! I ha' gi'en him to the Lord. The Lord help you to mak' a guid man o' him.'" Macdonald's voice faltered into silence, then, after a few moments, he cried, "And oh! Mistress Murra', I cannot tell you the often these words do keep coming to me; and it is myself that has not kept the promise I made to her, and may the Lord forgive me."
The look of misery in the dark eyes touched Mrs. Murray to the heart. She laid her hand on Macdonald's arm, but she could not find words to speak. Suddenly Macdonald recalled himself.
"You will forgive me," he said; "and you will not be telling any one."
By this time the tears were streaming down her face, and Mrs. Murray could only say, brokenly, "You know I will not."
"Aye, I do," said Macdonald, with a sigh of content, and he turned his face away from her to the wall.
"And now you let me read to you," she said, softly, and taking from her bag the Gaelic Bible, which with much toil she had learned to read since coming to this Highland congregation, she read to him from the old Psalm those words, brave, tender, and beautiful, that have so often comforted the weary and wandering children of men, "The Lord is my Shepherd," and so on to the end. Then from psalm to psalm she passed, selecting such parts as suited her purpose, until Macdonald turned to her again and said, admiringly:
"It is yourself that has the bonnie Gaelic."
"I am afraid," she said, with a smile, "it is not really good, but it is the best a south country woman can do."
"Indeed, it is very pretty," he said, earnestly.
Then the minister's wife said, timidly, "I cannot pray in the Gaelic."
"Oh, the English will be very good," said Macdonald, and she knelt down and in simple words poured out her heart in prayer. Before she rose from her knees she opened the Gaelic Bible, and turned to the words of the Lord's Prayer.
"We will say this prayer together," she said, gently.
Macdonald, bowing his head gravely, answered: "It is what she would often be doing with me."
There was still only one woman to this lonely hearted man, and with a sudden rush of pity that showed itself in her breaking voice, the minister's wife began in Gaelic, "Our Father which art in heaven."
Macdonald followed her in a whisper through the petitions until they came to the words, "And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors," when he paused and would say no more. Mrs. Murray repeated the words of the petition, but still there was no response. Then the minister's wife knew that she had her finger upon a sore spot, and she finished the prayer alone.
For a time she sat silent, unwilling to probe the wound, and yet too brave to flinch from what she felt to be duty.
"We have much to be forgiven," she said, gently. "More than we can ever forgive." Still there was silence.
"And the heart that cannot forgive an injury is closed to the forgiveness of God."
The morning sun was gleaming through the tree-tops, and Mrs. Murray was worn with her night's vigil, and anxious to get home. She rose, and offering Macdonald her hand, smiled down into his face, and said: "Good by! We must try to forgive."
As he took her hand, Macdonald's dark face began to work, and he broke forth into a bitter cry.
"He took me unawares! And it was a coward's blow! and I will not forgive him until I have given him what he deserves, if the Lord spares me!" And then he poured forth, in hot and bitter words, the story of the great fight. By the time he had finished his tale Ranald had come in from the kitchen, and was standing with clenched fists and face pale with passion at the foot of the bed.
As Mrs. Murray listened to this story her eyes began to burn, and when it was over, she burst forth: "Oh, it was a cruel and cowardly and brutal thing for men to do! And did you beat them off?" she asked.
"Aye, and that we did," burst in Ranald. And in breathless haste and with flashing eye he told them of Macdonald Bhain's part in the fight.
"Splendid!" cried the minister's wife, forgetting herself for the moment.
"But he let him go," said Ranald, sadly. "He would not strike him, but just let him go."
Then the minister's wife cried again: "Ah, he is a great man, your uncle! And a great Christian. Greater than I could have been, for I would have slain him then and there." Her eyes flashed, and the color flamed in her face as she uttered these words.
"Aye," said Macdonald Dubh, regarding her with deep satisfaction. His tone and look recalled the minister's wife, and turning to Ranald, she added, sadly:
"But your uncle was right, Ranald, and we must forgive even as he did."
"That," cried Ranald, with fierce emphasis, "I will never do, until once I will be having my hands on his throat."
"Hush, Ranald!" said the minister's wife. "I know it is hard, but we must forgive. You see we must forgive. And we must ask Him to help us, who has more to forgive than any other."
But she said no more to Macdonald Dubh on that subject that morning. The fire of the battle was in her heart, and she felt she could more easily sympathize with his desire for vengeance than with the Christian grace of forgiveness. But as they rode home together through the bush, where death had trailed them so closely the night before, the sweet sunlight and the crisp, fresh air, and all the still beauty of the morning, working with the memory of their saving, rebuked and soothed and comforted her, and when Ranald turned back from the manse door, she said softly: "Our Father in heaven was very good to us, Ranald, and we should be like him. He forgives and loves, and we should, too."
And Ranald, looking into the sweet face, pale with the long night's trials, but tinged now with the faintest touch of color from the morning, felt somehow that it might be possible to forgive.
But many days had to come and go, and many waters flow over the souls of Macdonald Dubh and his son Ranald, before they were able to say, "Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors."
CHAPTER VI
A NEW FRIEND
The night race with the wolves began a new phase of life for Ranald, for in that hour he gained a friend such as it falls to few lads to have. Mrs. Murray's high courage in the bush, her skill in the sick-room, and that fine spiritual air she carried with her made for her a place in his imagination where men set their divinities. The hero and the saint in her stirred his poetic and fervent soul and set it aglow with a feeling near to adoration. To Mrs. Murray also the events of that night set forth Ranald in a new light. In the shy, awkward, almost sullen lad there had suddenly been revealed in those moments of peril the cool, daring man, full of resource and capable of self-sacrifice. Her heart went out toward him, and she set herself to win his confidence and to establish a firm friendship with him; but this was no easy matter.
Macdonald Dubh and his son, living a half-savage life in their lonely back clearing, were regarded by their neighbors with a certain degree of distrust and fear. They were not like other people. They seldom mingled in the social festivities of the community, and consequently were more or less excluded from friendship and free intercourse with their neighbors. Ranald, shy, proud, and sensitive, felt this exclusion, and in return kept himself aloof even from the boys, and especially from the girls, of his own age. His attendance at school was of a fragmentary and spasmodic nature, and he never really came to be on friendly terms with his fellow-pupils. His one friend was Don Cameron, whom the boys called "Wobbles," from his gait in running, whose father's farm backed that of Macdonald Dubh. And though Don was a year older, he gave to Ranald a homage almost amounting to worship, for in all those qualities that go to establish leadership among boys, Ranald was easily first. In the sport that called for speed, courage, and endurance Ranald was chief of all. Fleet of foot, there was no runner from the Twelfth to the Twentieth that could keep him in sight, and when he stood up to fight, the mere blaze of his eyes often won him victory before a blow was struck. To Don, Ranald opened his heart more than to any one else; all others he kept at a distance.
It was in vain that Mrs. Murray, in her daily visits to Macdonald Dubh, sought to find out Ranald and to come to speech with him. Aunt Kirsty never knew where he was, and to her calls, long and loud, from the back door and from the front, no response ever came. It was Hughie Murray who finally brought Ranald once more into touch with the minister's wife.
They had come one early morning, Hughie with Fido "hitched" in a sled driving over the "crust" on the snow banks by the roadside, and his mother on the pony, to make their call upon the sick man. As they drew near the house they heard a sound of hammering.
"That's Ranald, mother!" exclaimed Hughie. "Let me go and find him. I don't want to go in."
"Be sure you don't go far away, then, Hughie; you know we must hurry home to-day"; and Hughie faithfully promised. But alas for Hughie's promises! when his mother came out of the house with Kirsty, he was within neither sight nor hearing.
"They will just be at the camp," said Kirsty.
"The camp?"
"Aye, the sugaring camp down yonder in the sugar bush. It is not far off from the wood road. I will be going with you."
"Not at all, Kirsty," said the minister's wife. "I think I know where it is, and I can go home that way quite well. Besides, I want to see Ranald." She did not say she would rather see him alone.
"Indeed, he is the quare lad, and he is worse since coming back from the shanties." Kirsty was evidently much worried about Ranald.
"Never mind," said the minister's wife, kindly; "we must just be patient. Ranald is going on fast toward manhood, and he can be held only by the heart."
"Aye," said Kirsty, with a sigh, "I doubt his father will never be able any more to take a strap to him."
"Yes," said Mrs. Murray, smiling, "I'm afraid he is far beyond that."
"Beyond it!" exclaimed Kirsty, astonished at such a doctrine. "Indeed, and his father and his uncle would be getting it then, when they were as beeg as they will ever be, and much the better were they for it."
"I don't think it would do for Ranald," said the minister's wife, smiling again as she said good by to Kirsty. Then she took her way down the wood road into the bush. She found the camp road easily, and after a quarter of an hour's ride, she heard the sound of an ax, and soon came upon the sugar camp. Ranald was putting the finishing touches to a little shanty of cedar poles and interwoven balsam brush, and Hughie was looking on in admiration and blissful delight.
"Why, that's beautiful," said Mrs. Murray; "I should like to live in a house like that myself."
"Oh, mother!" shouted Hughie, isn't it splendid? Ranald and Don are going to live in it all the sugaring time, and Ranald wants me to come, too. Mayn't I, mother? Aw, do let me."
The mother looked down upon the eager face, smiled, and shook her head. "What about the night, Hughie?" she said. "It will be very dark in the woods here, and very cold, too. Ranald and Don are big boys and strong, but I'm afraid my little boy would not be very comfortable sleeping outside."
"Oh, mother, we'll be inside, and it'll be awful warm—and oh, you might let me!" Hughie's tears were restrained only by the shame of weeping before his hero, Ranald.
"Well, we will see what your father says when he comes home."
"Oh, mother, he will just say 'no' right off, and—"
A shadow crossed his mother's face, but she only answered quietly, "Never mind jest now, Hughie; we will think of it. Besides," she added, "I don't know how much Ranald wants to be bothered with a wee boy like you."
Ranald gave her a quick, shy glance and answered: "He will be no trouble, Mrs. Murray"; and then, noticing Hughie's imploring face, he ventured to add, "and indeed, I hope you will let him come. I will take good care of him."
Mrs. Murray hesitated.
"Oh, mother!" cried Hughie, seeing her hesitation, "just one night; I won't be a bit afraid."
"No, I don't believe you would," looking down into the brave young face. "But what about your mother, Hughie?"
"Oh, pshaw! you wouldn't be afraid." Hughie's confidence in his mother's courage was unbounded.
"I don't know about that," she replied; and then turning to Ranald, "How about our friends of the other night?" she said. "Will they not be about?" Hughie had not heard about the wolves.
"Oh, there is no fear of them. We will keep a big fire all night, and besides, we will have our guns and the dogs."
"Guns!" cried Mrs. Murray. This was a new terror for her boy. "I'm afraid I cannot trust Hughie where there are guns. He might—"
"Indeed, let me catch him touching a gun!" said Ranald, quickly, and from his tone and the look in his face, Mrs. Murray felt sure that Hughie would be safe from self-destruction by the guns.
"Well, well, come away, Hughie, and we will see," said Mrs. Murray; but Hughie hung back sulking, unwilling to move till he had got his mother's promise.
"Come, Hughie. Get Fido ready. We must hurry," said his mother again.
Still Hughie hesitated. Then Ranald turned swiftly on him. "Did ye hear your mother? Come, get out of this." His manner was so fierce that Hughie started immediately for his dog, and without another word of entreaty made ready to go. The mother noted his quick obedience, and smiling at Ranald, said: "I think I might trust him with you for a night or two, Ranald. When do you think you could come for him?"
"We will finish the tapping to-morrow, and I could come the day after with the jumper," said Ranald, pointing to the stout, home-made sleigh used for gathering the sap and the wood for the fire.
"Oh, I see you have begun tapping," said Mrs. Murray; "and do you do it yourself?"
"Why, yes, mother; don't you see all those trees?" cried Hughie, pointing to a number of maples that stood behind the shanty. "Ranald and Don did all those, and made the spiles, too. See!" He caught up a spile from a heap lying near the door. "Ranald made all these."
"Why, that's fine, Ranald. How do you make them? I have never seen one made."
"Oh, mother!" Hughie's voice was full of pity for her ignorance. He had seen his first that afternoon.
"And I have never seen the tapping of a tree. I believe I shall learn just now, if Ranald will only show me, from the very beginning."
Her eager interest in his work won Ranald from his reserve. "There is not much to see," he said, apologetically. "You just cut a natch in the tree, and drive in the spile, and—"
"Oh, but wait," she cried. "That's just what I wanted to see. How do you make the spile?"
"Oh, that is easy," said Ranald. He took up a slightly concave chisel or gouge, and slit a slim slab from off a block of cedar about a foot long.
"This is a spile," he exclaimed. "We drive it into the tree, and the sap runs down into the trough, you see."
"No, I don't see," said the minister's wife. She was too thoroughgoing to do things by halves. "How do you drive this into the tree, and how do you get the sap to run down it?"
"I will show you," he said, and taking with him a gouge and ax, he approached a maple still untapped. "You first make a gash like this." So saying, with two or three blows of his ax, he made a slanting gouge in the tree. "And then you make a place for the spile this way." With the back of his ax he drove his gouge into the corner of the notch, and then fitted his spile into the incision so made.
"Ah, now I see. And you put the trough under the drip from the spile. But how do you make the troughs?"
"I did not make them," said Ranald. "Some of them father made, and some of them belong to the Camerons. But it is easy enough. You just take a thick slab of basswood and hollow it out with the adze."
Mrs. Murray was greatly pleased. "I'm very much obliged to you, Ranald," she said, "and I am glad I came down to see your camp. Now, if you will ask me, I should like to see you make the sugar." Had her request been made before the night of their famous ride, Ranald would have found some polite reason for refusal, but now he was rather surprised to find himself urging her to come to a sugaring-off at the close of the season.
"I shall be delighted to come," cried Mrs. Murray, "and it is very good of you to ask me, and I shall bring my niece, who is coming with Mr. Murray from town to spend some weeks with me."
Ranald's face fell, but his Highland courtesy forbade retreat. "If she would care," he said, doubtfully.
"Oh, I am sure she would be very glad! She has never been outside of the city, and I want her to learn all she can of the country and the woods. It is positively painful to see the ignorance of these city children in regard to all living things—beasts and birds and plants. Why, many of them couldn't tell a beech from a basswood.
"Oh, mother!" protested Hughie, aghast at such ignorance.
"Yes, indeed, it is dreadful, I assure you," said his mother, smiling. "Why, I know a grown-up woman who didn't know till after she was married the difference between a spruce and a pine."
"But you know them all now," said Hughie, a little anxious for his mother's reputation.
"Yes, indeed," said his mother, proudly; "every one, I think, at least when the leaves are out. So I want Maimie to learn all she can."
Ranald did not like the idea any too well, but after they had gone his thoughts kept turning to the proposed visit of Mrs. Murray and her niece.
"Maimie," said Ranald to himself. "So that is her name." It had a musical sound, and was different from the names of the girls he knew—Betsy and Kirsty and Jessie and Marget and Jinny. It was finer somehow than these, and seemed to suit better a city girl. He wondered if she would be nice, but he decided that doubtless she would be "proud." To be "proud" was the unpardonable sin with the Glengarry boy. The boy or girl convicted of this crime earned the contempt of all self-respecting people. On the whole, Ranald was sorry she was coming. Even in school he was shy with the girls, and kept away from them. They were always giggling and blushing and making one feel queer, and they never meant what they said. He had no doubt Maimie would be like the rest, and perhaps a little worse. Of course, being Mrs. Murray's niece, she might be something like her. Still, that could hardly be. No girl could ever be like the minister's wife. He resolved he would turn Maimie over to Don. He remembered, with great relief, that Don did not mind girls; indeed, he suspected Don rather enjoyed playing the "forfeit" games at school with them, in which the penalties were paid in kisses. How often had he shuddered and admired from a distance, while Don and the others played those daring games! Yes, Don would do the honors for Maimie. Perhaps Don would even venture to play "forfeits" with her. Ranald felt his face grow hot at this thought. Then, with sudden self-detection, he cried, angrily, aloud: "I don't care; let him; he may for all I care."
"Who may what?" cried a voice behind him. It was Don himself.
"Nothing," said Ranald, blushing shamefacedly.
"Why, what are you mad about?" asked Don, noticing his flushed face.
"Who is mad?" said Ranald. "I am not mad whatever."
"Well, you look mighty like it," said Don. "You look mad enough to fight."
But Ranald, ignoring him, simply said, "We will need to be gathering the sap this evening, for the troughs will be full."
"Huh-huh," said Don. "I guess we can carry all there is to-day, but we will have to get the colt to-morrow. Got the spiles ready?"
"Enough for to-day," said Ranald, wondering how he could tell Don of the proposed visit of Mrs. Murray and her niece. Taking each a bundle of spiles and an ax, the boys set out for the part of the sugar bush as yet untapped, and began their work.
"The minister's wife and Hughie were here just now," began Ranald.
"Huh-huh, I met them down the road. Hughie said he was coming day after to-morrow."
"Did Mrs. Murray tell you—"
"Tell me what?"
"Did she tell you she would like to see a sugaring-off?"
"No; they didn't stop long enough to tell me anything. Hughie shouted at me as they passed."
"Well," said Ranald, speaking slowly and with difficulty, "she wanted bad to see the sugar-making, and I asked her to come."
"You did, eh? I wonder at you."
"And she wanted to bring her niece, and—and—I let her," said Ranald.
"Her niece! Jee-roo-sa-lem!" cried Don. Do you know who her niece is?"
"Not I," said Ranald, looking rather alarmed.
"Well, she is the daughter of the big lumberman, St. Clair, and she is a great swell."
Ranald stood speechless.
"That does beat all," pursued Don; "and you asked her to our camp?"
Then Ranald grew angry. "And why not?" he said, defiantly. "What is wrong about that?"
"O, nothing much," laughed Don, "if I had done it, but for you, Ranald! Why, what will you do with that swell young lady from the city?"
"I will just do nothing," said Ranald. "There will be you and Mrs. Murray, and—"
"Oh, I say," burst in Don, "that's bully! Let's ask some of the boys, and—your aunt, and—my mother, and—some of the girls."
"Oh, shucks!" said Ranald, angrily. "You just want Marget Aird."
"You get out!" cried Don, indignantly; "Marget Aird!" Then, after a pause, he added, "All right, I don't want anybody else. I'll look after Mrs. Murray, and you and Maimie can do what you like."
This combination sounded so terrible to Ranald that he surrendered at once; and it was arranged that there should be a grand sugaring-off, and that others besides the minister's wife and her niece should be invited.
But Mrs. Murray had noticed the falling of Ranald's face at the mention of Maimie's visit to the camp, and feeling that she had taken him at a disadvantage, she determined that she would the very next day put herself right with him. She was eager to follow up the advantage she had gained the day before in establishing terms of friendship with Ranald, for her heart went out to the boy, in whose deep, passionate nature she saw vast possibilities for good or ill. On her return from her daily visit to Macdonald Dubh, she took the camp road, and had the good fortune to find Ranald alone, "rigging up" his kettles preparatory to the boiling. But she had no time for kettles to-day, and she went straight to her business.
"I came to see you, Ranald," she said, after she had shaken hands with him, "about our sugaring-off. I've been thinking that it would perhaps be better to have no strangers, but just old friends, you and Don and Hughie and me."
Ranald at once caught her meaning, but found himself strangely unwilling to be extricated from his predicament.
"I mean," said Mrs. Murray, frankly, "we might enjoy it better without my niece; and so, perhaps, we could have the sugaring when I come to bring Hughie home on Friday. Maimie does not come till Saturday."
Her frankness disarmed Ranald of his reserve. "I know well what you mean," he said, without his usual awkwardness, "but I do not mind now at all having your niece come; and Don is going to have a party." The quiet, grave tone was that of a man, and Mrs. Murray looked at the boy with new eyes. She did not know that it was her own frank confidence that had won like confidence from him.
"How old are you, Ranald?" she said, in her wonder.
"I will be going on eighteen."
"You will soon be a man, Ranald." Ranald remained silent, and she went on earnestly: "A strong, good, brave man, Ranald."
The blood rushed to the boy's face with a sudden flood, but still he stood silent.
"I'm going to give you Hughie for two days," she continued, in the same earnest voice; and leaning down over her pony's neck toward him: "I want him to know strong and manly boys. He is very fond of you, Ranald. He thinks you are better than any man in the world." She paused, her lips parting in a smile that made Ranald's heart beat quick. Then she went on with a shy hesitancy: "Ranald, I know the boys sometimes drop words they should not and tell stories unfit to hear"; the blood was beginning to show in her cheek; "and I would not like my little boy—" Her voice broke suddenly, but recovering quickly she went on in grave, sweet tones: "I trust him to you, Ranald, for this time and afterward. He looks up to you. I want him to be a good, brave man, and to keep his heart pure." Ranald could not speak, but he looked steadily into Mrs. Murray's eyes as he took the hand she offered, and she knew he was pledging himself to her.
"You'll come for him to-morrow," she said, as she turned away. By this time Ranald had found his voice.
"Yes, ma'am," he replied. "And I will take good care of him."
Once more Mrs. Murray found herself looking at Ranald as if seeing him for the first time. He had the solemn voice and manner of a man making oath of allegiance, and she rode away with her heart at rest concerning her little boy. With Ranald, at least, he would be safe.
*****
Those two days had been for Hughie long and weary, but at last the great day came for him, as all great days will come for those who can wait. Ranald appeared at the manse before the breakfast was well begun, and Hughie, with the unconscious egoism of childhood, was for rushing off without thought of preparation for himself or of farewell for those left behind. Indeed, he was for leaving his porridge untasted, declaring he "wasn't a bit hungry," but his mother brought him to his senses.
"No breakfast, no sugar bush to-day, Hughie," she said; "we cannot send men out to the woods that cannot eat breakfast, can we, Ranald?"
Hughie at once fell upon his porridge with vigor, while Ranald, who was much too shy to eat at the minister's table, sat and waited.
After breakfast was over, Jessie was called in for the morning worship, without which no day was ever begun in the manse. At worship in the minister's house every one present took part. It was Hughie's special joy to lead the singing of the psalm. His voice rose high and clear, even above his mother's, for he loved to sing, and Ranald's presence inspired him to do his best. Ranald had often heard the psalm sung in the church—
I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid;
and the tune was the old, familiar "French," but somehow it was all new to him that day. The fresh voices and the crisp, prompt movement of the tune made Ranald feel as if he had never heard the psalm sung before. In the reading he took his verse with the others, stumbling a little, not because the words were too big for him, but because they seemed to run into one another. The chapter for the day contained Paul's injunction to Timothy, urging him to fidelity and courage as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
When the reading was done, Mrs. Murray told them a story of a young man who had shed his blood upon a Scottish moor because he was too brave to be untrue to his lord, and then, in a few words, made them all see that still some conflict was being waged, and that there was still opportunity for each to display loyal courage and fidelity.
In the prayer that followed, the first thing that surprised Ranald was the absence of the set forms and tones of prayer, with which he was familiar. It was all so simple and real. The mother was telling the great Father in heaven her cares and anxieties, and the day's needs for them all, sure that he would understand and answer. Every one was remembered—the absent head of the family and those present; the young man worshiping with them, that he might be a true man and a good soldier of Jesus Christ; and at the close, the little lad going away this morning, that he might be kept from all harm and from all evil thoughts and deeds. The simple beauty of the words, the music in the voice, and the tender, trustful feeling that breathed through the prayer awakened in Ranald's heart emotions and longings he had never known before, and he rose from his knees feeling how wicked and how cruel a thing it would be to cause one of these little ones to stumble.
After the worship was over, Hughie seized his Scotch bonnet and rushed for the jumper, and in a few minutes his mother had all the space not taken up by him and Ranald packed with blankets and baskets.
"Jessie thinks that even great shanty-men like you and Don and Hughie will not object to something better than bread and pork."
"Indeed, we will not," said Ranald, heartily.
Then Hughie suddenly remembered that he was actually leaving home, and climbing out of the jumper, he rushed at his mother.
"Oh, mother, good by!" he cried.
His mother stooped and put her arms about him. "Good by, my darling," she said, in a low voice; "I trust you to be a good boy, and, Hughie, don't forget your prayers."
Then came to Hughie, for the first time, the thought that had been in the mother's heart all the morning, that when night came he would lie down to sleep, for the first time in his life, without the nightly story and her good-night kiss.
"Mother," whispered the little lad, holding her tight about the neck, "won't you come, too? I don't think I like to go away."
He could have said no more comforting word, and the mother, whose heart had been sore enough with her first parting from her boy, was more than glad to find that the pain was not all on her side; so she kissed him again, and said, in a cheery voice: "Now have a good time. Don't trouble Ranald too much, and bring me back some sugar." Her last word braced the lad as nothing else could.
"Oh, mother, I'll bring you heaps!" he cried, and with the vision of what he would bring home again shining vividly before his eyes, he got through the parting without tears, and was soon speeding down the lane beside Ranald, in the jumper.
The mother stood and watched the little figure holding tight to Ranald with one hand, and with the other waving frantically his bonnet by the tails, till at last the bush hid him from her sight. Then she turned back again to the house that seemed so empty, with her hand pressed hard against her side and her lip quivering as with sharp pain.
"How foolish!" she said, impatiently to herself; "he will be home in two days." But in spite of herself she went again to the door, and looked long at the spot where the bush swallowed up the road. Then she went upstairs and shut her door, and when she came down again there was that in her face that told that her heart had had its first touch of the sword that, sooner or later, must pierce all mothers' hearts.
CHAPTER VII
MAIMIE
Before Hughie came back from the sugar camp, the minister had returned from the presbytery, bringing with him his wife's niece, Maimie St. Clair, who had come from her home in a Western city to meet him. Her father, Eugene St. Clair, was president of Raymond and St. Clair Lumber Company. Nineteen years before this time he had married Mrs. Murray's eldest sister, and established his home with every prospect of a prosperous and happy life, but after three short, bright years of almost perfect joy, his young wife, his heart's idol, after two days' illness, fluttered out from her beautiful home, leaving with her broken-hearted husband her little boy and a baby girl two weeks old. Then Eugene St. Clair besought his sister to come out from England and preside over his home and care for his children; and that he might forget his grief, he gave himself, heart and mind, to his business. Wealth came to him, and under his sister's rule his home became a place of cultured elegance and a center of fashionable pleasure.
Miss Frances St. Clair was a woman of the world, proud of her family-tree, whose root disappeared in the depths of past centuries, and devoted to the pursuit and cultivation of those graces and manners that are supposed to distinguish people of birth and breeding from the common sort. Indeed, from common men and things she shrank almost with horror. The entrance of "trade" into the social sphere of her life she would regard as an impertinent intrusion. It was as much as she could bear to allow the approach of "commerce," which her brother represented. She supposed, of course, there must be people to carry on the trades and industries of the country—very worthy people, too—but these were people one could not be expected to know. Miss St. Clair thanked heaven that she had had the advantages of an English education and up-bringing, and she lamented the stubborn democratic opinions of her brother, who insisted that Harry should attend the public school. She was not surprised, therefore, though greatly grieved, that Harry chose his friends in school with a fine disregard of "their people." It was with surprise amounting to pain that she found herself one day introduced by her nephew to Billie Barclay, who turned out to be the son of Harry's favorite confectioner. To his aunt's remonstrance it seemed to Harry a sufficient reply that Billy was a "brick" and a shining "quarter" on the school Rugby team.
"But, Harry, think of his people!" urged his aunt.
"Oh, rot!" replied her irreverent nephew; "I don't play with his people."
"Yes, but Harry, you don't expect to make him your friend?"
"But he is my friend, and I don't care what his people are. Besides, I think his governor is a fine old boy, and I know he gives us jolly good taffy."
"But, Harry," answered his aunt, in despair, "you are positively dreadful. Why can't you make friends in your own set? There is Hubert Evans and the Langford boys."
"Evans!" snorted Harry, with contempt; "beastly snob, and the Langfords are regular Mollies!" Whereupon Miss St. Clair gave up her nephew as impossible. But Billie did not repeat his visit to his friend Harry's home. Miss Frances St. Clair had a way of looking through her pince-nez that even a boy could understand and would seek to avoid.
With Maimie, Miss St. Clair achieved better results. She was a gentle girl, with an affectionate, yielding disposition, tending towards indolence and self-indulgence. Her aunt's chief concern about her was that she should be frocked and mannered as became her position. Her education was committed to a very select young ladies' school, where only the daughters of the first families ever entered. What or how they were taught, her aunt never inquired. She felt quite sure that the lady principal would resent, as indeed she ought, any such inquiry. Hence Maimie came to have a smattering of the English poets, could talk in conversation-book French, and could dash off most of the notes of a few waltzes and marches from the best composers, her pièce de résistance, however, being "La Prière d'une Vierge." She carried with her from school a portfolio of crayons of apparently very ancient and very battered castles; and water-colors of landscapes, where the water was quite as solid as the land. True, she was quite unable to keep her own small accounts, and when her father chanced to ask her one day to do for him a simple addition, he was amazed to find that only after the third attempt did she get it right; but, in the eyes of her aunt, these were quite unimportant deficiencies, and for young ladies she was not sure but that the keeping of accounts and the adding of figures were almost vulgar accomplishments. Her father thought otherwise, but he was a busy man, and besides, he shrank from entering into a region strange to him, but where his sister moved with assured tread. He contented himself with gratifying his daughter's fancies and indulging her in every way allowed him by her system of training and education. The main marvel in the result was that the girl did not grow more selfish, superficial, and ignorant than she did. Something in her blood helped her, but more, it was her aunt's touch upon her life. For every week a letter came from the country manse, bringing with it some of the sweet simplicity of the country and something like a breath of heaven.
She was nearing her fifteenth birthday, and though almost every letter brought an invitation to visit the manse in the backwoods, it was only when the girl's pale cheek and languid air awakened her father's anxiety that she was allowed to accept the invitation to spend some weeks in the country.
*****
When Ranald and Hughie drove up to the manse on Saturday evening in the jumper the whole household rushed forth to see them. They were worth seeing. Burned black with the sun and the March winds, they would have easily passed for young Indians. Hughie's clothes were a melancholy and fluttering ruin; and while Ranald's stout homespun smock and trousers had successfully defied the bush, his dark face and unkempt hair, his rough dress and heavy shanty boots, made him appear, to Maimie's eyes, an uncouth, if not pitiable, object.
"Oh, mother!" cried Hughie, throwing himself upon her, "I'm home again, and we've had a splendid time, and we made heaps of sugar, and I've brought you a whole lot." He drew out of his pockets three or four cakes of maple sugar. "There is one for each," he said, handing them to his mother.
"Here, Hughie," she replied, "speak to your cousin Maimie."
Hughie went up shyly to his cousin and offered a grimy hand. Maimie, looking at the ragged little figure, could hardly hide her disgust as she took the dirty, sticky little hand very gingerly in her fingers. But Hughie was determined to do his duty to the full, even though Ranald was present, and shaking his cousin's hand with great heartiness, he held up his face to be kissed. He was much surprised, and not a little relieved, when Maimie refused to notice his offer and turned to look at Ranald.
She found him scanning her with a straight, searching look, as if seeking to discover of what sort she was. She felt he had noticed her shrinking from Hughie, and was annoyed to find herself blushing under his keen gaze. But when Mrs. Murray presented Ranald to her niece, it was his turn to blush and feel awkward, as he came forward with a triangular sort of movement and offered his hand, saying, with an access of his Highland accent, "It is a fine day, ma'am." It required all Maimie's good manners to keep back the laugh that fluttered upon her lips.
Slight as it was, Ranald noticed the smile, and turning from her abruptly to Mrs. Murray, said: "We were thinking that Friday would be a good day for the sugaring-off, if that will do you."
"Quite well, Ranald," said the minister's wife; "and it is very good of you to have us."
She, too, had noted Maimie's smile, and seeing the dark flush on Ranald's cheek, she knew well what it meant.
"Come and sit down a little, Ranald," she said, kindly; "I have got some books here for you and Don to read."
But Ranald would not sit, nor would he wait a moment. "Thank you, ma'am," he said, "but I will need to be going."
"Wait, Ranald, a moment," cried Mrs. Murray. She ran into the next room, and in a few moments returned with two or three books and some magazines. "These," she said, handing him the books, "are some of Walter Scott's. They will be good for week-days; and these," giving him the magazines, "you can read after church on Sabbath."
The boy's eyes lighted up as he thanked Mrs. Murray, and he shook hands with her very warmly. Then, with a bow to the company, and without looking at Maimie again, he left the room, with Hughie following at his heels. In a short time Hughie came back full of enthusiastic praise of his hero.
"Oh, mother!" he cried, "he is awful smart. He can just do anything. He can make a splendid bed of balsam brush, and porridge, and pancakes, and—and—and—everything."
"A bed of balsam brush and porridge! What a wonderful boy he must be, Hughie," said Maimie, teasing him. "But isn't he just a little queer?"
"He's not a bit queer," said Hughie, stoutly. "He is the best, best, best boy in all the world."
"Indeed! how extraordinary!" said Maimie; "you wouldn't think so to look at him."
"I think he is just splendid," said Hughie; "don't you, mother?"
"Indeed, he is fery brown whatever," mocked Maimie, mimicking Ranald's Highland tongue, a trick at which she was very clever, "and—not just fery clean."
"You're just a mean, mean, red-headed snip!" cried Hughie, in a rage, "and I don't like you one bit."
But Maimie was proud of her golden hair, so Hughie's shot fell harmless.
"And when will you be going to the sugaring-off, Mistress Murray?" went on Maimie, mimicking Ranald so cleverly that in spite of herself Mrs. Murray smiled.
It was his mother's smile that perfected Hughie's fury. Without a word of threat or warning, he seized a dipper of water and threw it over Maimie, soaking her pretty ribbons and collar, and was promptly sent upstairs to repent.
"Poor Hughie!" said his mother, after he had disappeared; "Ranald is his hero, and he cannot bear any criticism of him."
"He doesn't look much of a hero, auntie," said Maimie, drying her face and curls.
"Very few heroes do," said her aunt, quietly. "Ranald has noble qualities, but he has had very few advantages."
Then Mrs. Murray told her niece how Ranald had put himself between her and the pursuing wolves. Maimie's blue eyes were wide with horror.
"But, auntie," she cried, "why in the world do you go to such places?"
"What places, Maimie?" said the minister, who had come into the room.
"Why, those awful places where the wolves are."
"Indeed, you may ask why," said the minister, gravely. He had heard the story from his wife the night before. "But it would need a man to be on guard day and night to keep your aunt from 'those places.'"
"Yes, and your uncle, too," said Mrs. Murray, shaking her head at her husband. "You see, Maimie, we live in 'those places'; and after all, they are as safe as any. We are in good keeping."
"And was Hughie out all night with those two boys in those woods, auntie?"
"Oh, there was no danger. The wolves will not come near a fire, and the boys have their dogs and guns," said Mrs. Murray; "besides, Ranald is to be trusted."
"Trusted?" said the minister; "indeed, I would not trust him too far. He is just wild enough, like his father before him."
"Oh, papa, you don't know Ranald," said his wife, warmly; "nor his father either, for that matter. I never did till this last week. They have kept aloof from everything, and really—"
"And whose fault is that?" interrupted the minister. "Why should they keep aloof from the means of grace? They are a godless lot, that's what they are." The minister's indignation was rising.
"But, my dear," persisted Mrs. Murray, "I believe if they had a chance—"
"Chance!" exclaimed the minister; "what more chance do they want? Have they not all that other people have? Macdonald Dubh is rarely seen at the services on the Lord's day, and as for Ranald, he comes and goes at his own sweet will."
"Let us hope," said his wife, gently, "they will improve. I believe Ranald would come to Bible class were he not so shy."
"Shy!" laughed the minister, scornfully; "he is not too shy to stand up on the table before a hundred men after a logging and dance the Highland fling, and beautifully he does it, too," he added.
"But for all that," said his wife, "he is very shy."
"I don't like shy people," said Maimie; "they are so awkward and dreadful to do with."
"Well," said her aunt, quietly, "I rather like people who are not too sure of themselves, and I think all the more of Ranald for his shyness and modesty."
"Oh, Ranald's modesty won't disable him," said the minister. "For my part, I think he is a daring young rascal; and indeed, if there is any mischief going in the countryside you may be sure Ranald is not far away."
"Oh, papa, I don't think Ranald is a bad boy," said his wife, almost pleadingly.
"Bad? I'm sure I don't know what you call it. Who let off the dam last year so that the saw-mill could not run for a week? Who abused poor Duncie MacBain so that he was carried home groaning?"
"Duncie MacBain!" exclaimed his wife, contemptuously; "great, big, soft lump, that he is. Why, he's a man, as big as ever he'll be."
"Who broke the Little Church windows till there wasn't a pane left?" pursued the minister, unheeding his wife's interruption.
"It wasn't Ranald that broke the church windows, papa," piped Hughie from above.
"How do you know, sir? Who did it, then?" demanded his father.
"It wasn't Ranald, anyway," said Hughie, stoutly.
"Who was it, then? Tell me that," said his father again.
"Hughie, go to your room and stay there, as I told you," said his mother, fearing an investigation into the window-breaking episode, of which Hughie had made full confession to her as his own particular achievement, in revenge for a broken window in the new church.
"I think," continued Mr. Murray, as if closing the discussion, "you'll find that your Ranald is not the modest, shy, gentle" young man you think him to be, but a particularly bold young rascal."
"Poor Ranald," sighed his wife; "he has no mother, and his father has just let him grow up wild."
"Aye, that's true enough," assented her husband, passing into his study.
But he could have adopted no better means of awakening Maimie's interest in Ranald than by the recital of his various escapades. Women love good men, but are interested in men whose goodness is more or less impaired. So Maimie was determined that she would know more of Ranald, and hence took every opportunity of encouraging Hughie to sing the praises of his hero and recount his many adventures. She was glad, too, that her aunt had fixed the sugaring-off for a time when she could be present. But neither at church on Sunday nor during the week that followed did she catch sight of his face, and though Hughie came in with excited reports now and then of having seen or heard of Ranald, Maimie had to content herself with these; and, indeed, were it not that the invitation had already been given, and the day fixed for her visit to the camp, the chances are that Maimie's acquaintance with Ranald would have ended where it began, in which case both had been saved many bitter days.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SUGARING-OFF
The sugar time is, in many ways, the best of all the year. It is the time of crisp mornings, when "the crust bears," and the boys go crunching over all the fields and through the woods; the time, too, of sunny noons and chilly nights. Winter is still near, but he has lost most of his grip, and all his terror. For the earth has heard the call of spring from afar, and knows that soon she will be seen, dancing her shy dances, in the sunny spaces of the leafless woods. Then, by and by, from all the open fields the snow is driven back into the fence corners, and lies there in soiled and sullen heaps. In the woods it still lies deep; but there is everywhere the tinkle of running water, and it is not long till the brown leaf carpet begins to show in patches through the white. Then, overhead, the buds begin to swell and thrill with the new life, and when it is broad noon, all through the woods a thousand voices pass the glad word that winter's day is gone and that all living things are free. But when night draws up over the treetops, and the shadows steal down the forest aisles, the jubilant voices die down and a chill fear creeps over all the gleeful, swelling buds that they have been too sure and too happy; and all the more if, from the northeast, there sweeps down, as often happens, a stinging storm of sleet and snow, winter's last savage slap. But what matters that? The very next day, when the bright, warm rays trickle down through the interlacing branches, bathing the buds and twigs and limbs and trunks and flooding all the woods, the world grows surer of its new joy. And so, in alternating hope and fear, the days and nights go by, till an evening falls when the air is languid and a soft rain comes up from the south, falling all night long over the buds and trees like warm, loving fingers. Then the buds break for very joy, and timid green things push up through the leaf-mold; and from the swamps the little frogs begin to pipe, at first in solo, but soon in exultant chorus, till the whole moist night is vocal, and then every one knows that the sugar time is over, and troughs and spiles are gathered up, and with sap-barrels and kettles, are stored in the back shed for another year.
But no rain came before the night fixed for the sugaring-off. It was a perfect sugar day, warm, bright, and still, following a night of sharp frost. The long sunny afternoon was deepening into twilight when the Camerons drove up to the sugar-camp in their big sleigh, bringing with them the manse party. Ranald and Don, with Aunt Kirsty, were there to receive them. It was one of those rare evenings of the early Canadian spring. The bare woods were filled with the tangled rays of light from the setting sun. Here and there a hillside facing the east lay in shadow that grew black where the balsams and cedars stood in clumps. But everywhere else the light fell sweet and silent about the bare trunks, filling the long avenues under the arching maple limbs with a yellow haze.
In front of the shanty the kettles hung over the fire on a long pole which stood in an upright crutch at either end. Under the big kettle the fire was roaring high, for the fresh sap needed much boiling before the syrup and taffy could come. But under the little kettle the fire burned low, for that must not be hurried.
Over the fire and the kettles Ranald presided, black, grimy, and silent, and to Don fell the duty of doing the honors of the camp; and right worthily did he do his part. He greeted his mother with reverence, cuffed his young brother, kissed his little sister Jennie, tossing her high, and welcomed with warm heartiness Mrs. Murray and her niece. The Airds had not yet come, but all the rest were there. The Finlaysons and the McKerachers, Dan Campbell's boys, and their sister Betsy, whom every one called "Betsy Dan," redheaded, freckled, and irrepressible; the McGregors, and a dozen or more of the wildest youngsters that could be found in all the Indian Lands. Depositing their baskets in the shanty, for they had no thought of fasting, they crowded about the fire.
"Attention!" cried Don, who had a "gift of the gab," as his mother said. "Ladies and gentlemen, the program for this evening is as follows: games, tea, and taffy, in the order mentioned. In the first, all must take part; in the second, all may take part; but in the third, none need take part."
After the laughter and the chorus of "Ohs" had subsided, Don proceeded: "The captains for the evening are, Elizabeth Campbell, better known as 'Betsy Dan,' and John Finlayson, familiar to us all as 'Johnnie the Widow,' two young people of excellent character, and I believe, slightly known to each other."
Again a shout went up from the company, but Betsy Dan, who cared not at all for Don's banter, contented herself with pushing out her lower lip at him with scorn, in that indescribable manner natural to girls, but to boys impossible.
Then the choosing began. Betsy Dan, claiming first choice by virtue of her sex, immediately called out, "Ranald Macdonald."
But Ranald shook his head. "I cannot leave the fire," he said, blushing; "take Don there."
But Betsy demurred. "I don't want Don," she cried. "Come on, Ranald; the fire will do quite well." Betsy, as indeed did most of the school-girls, adored Ranald in her secret heart, though she scorned to show it.
But Ranald still refused, till Don said, "It is too bad, Betsy, but you'll have to take me."
"Oh, come on, then!" laughed Betsy; "you will be better than nobody."
Then it was Johnnie the Widow's choice: "Maimie St. Clair."
Maimie hesitated and looked at her aunt, who said, "Yes, go, my dear, if you would like."
Marget Aird!" cried Betsy, spying Marget and her brothers coming down the road. "Come along, Marget; you are on my side—on Don's side, I mean." At which poor Marget, a tall, fair girl, with sweet face and shy manner, blushed furiously, but, after greeting the minister's wife and the rest of the older people, she took her place beside Don.
The choosing went on till every one present was taken, not even Aunt Kirsty being allowed to remain neutral in the coming games. For an hour the sports went on. Racing, jumping, bear, London bridge, crack the whip, and lastly, forfeits.
Meantime Ranald superintended the sap-boiling, keeping on the opposite side of the fire from the ladies, and answering in monosyllables any questions addressed to him. But when it was time to make the tea, Mrs. Cameron and Kirsty insisted on taking charge of this, and Mrs. Murray, coming round to Ranald, said: "Now, Ranald, I came to learn all about sugar-making, and while the others are making tea, I want you to teach me how to make sugar."
Ranald gladly agreed to show her all he knew. He had been feeling awkward and miserable in the noisy crowd, but especially in the presence of Maimie. He had not forgotten the smile of amusement with which she had greeted him at the manse, and his wounded pride longed for an opportunity to pour upon her the vials of his contempt. But somehow, in her presence, contempt would not arise within him, and he was driven into wretched silence and self-abasement. It was, therefore, with peculiar gratitude that he turned to Mrs. Murray as to one who both understood and trusted him.
"I thank you for the books, Mrs. Murray," he began, in a low, hurried voice. "They are just wonderful. That Rob Roy and Ivanhoe, oh! they are the grand books." His face was fairly blazing with enthusiasm. "I never knew there were such books at all."
"I am very glad you like them, Ranald," said Mrs. Murray, in tones of warm sympathy, "and I shall give you as many as you like."
"I cannot thank you enough. I have not the words," said the boy, looking as if he might fall down at her feet. Mrs. Murray was greatly touched both by his enthusiasm and his gratitude.
"It is a great pleasure to me, Ranald, that you like them," she said, earnestly. "I want you to love good books and good men and noble deeds."
Ranald stood listening in silence.
"Then some day you will be a good and great man yourself," she added, "and you will do some noble work."
The boy stood looking far away into the woods, his black eyes filled with a mysterious fire. Suddenly he threw back his head and said, as if he had forgotten Mrs. Murray's presence, "Yes, some day I will be a great man. I know it well."
"And good," softly added Mrs. Murray.
He turned and looked at her a moment as if in a dream. Then, recalling himself, he answered, "I suppose that is the best."
"Yes, it is the best, Ranald," she replied. "No man is great who is not good. But come now and give me my lesson."
Ranald stepped out into the bush, and from a tree near by he lifted a trough of sap and emptied it into the big kettle.
"That's the first thing you do with the sap," he said.
"How? Carry every trough to the kettle?"
"Oh, I see," laughed Ranald. "You must have every step."
"Yes, indeed," she replied, with determination.
"Well, here it is."
He seized a bucket, went to another tree, emptied the sap from the trough into the bucket, and thence into the barrel, and from the barrel into the big kettle.
"Then from the big kettle into the little one," he said, catching up a big dipper tied to a long pole, and transferring the boiling sap as he spoke from one kettle to another.
"But how can you tell when it is ready?" asked Mrs. Murray.
"Only by tasting. When it is very sweet it must go into the little kettle."
"And then?"
Her eager determination to know all the details delighted him beyond measure.
"Then you must be very careful indeed, or you will lose all your day's work, and your sugar besides, for it is very easy to burn."
"But how can you tell when it is ready?"
"Oh, you must just keep tasting every few minutes till you think you have the syrup, and then for the sugar you must just boil it a little longer."
"Well," said Mrs. Murray, "when it is ready what do you do?"
"Then," he said, "you must quickly knock the fire from under it, and pour it into the pans, stirring it till it gets nearly cool."
"And why do you stir it?" she asked.
"Oh, to keep it from getting too hard."
"Now I have learned something I never knew before," said the minister's wife, delightedly, "and I am very grateful to you. We must help each other, Ranald."
"Indeed, it is little I can do for you," he said, shyly.
"You do not know how much I am going to ask you to do," she said, lightly. "Wait and see."
At that moment a series of shrieks rose high above the shouting and laughter of the games, and Maimie came flying down toward the camp, pursued by Don, with the others following.
"Oh, auntie!" she panted, he's going to—going to—" she paused, with cheeks burning.
"It's forfeits, Mrs. Murray," explained Don.
"Hoot, lassie," said Mrs. Cameron; "it will not much hurt you, anyway. They that kiss in the light will not kiss in the dark."
"She played, and lost her forfeit," said Don, unwilling to be jeered at by the others for faint-heartedness. "She ought to pay."
"I'm afraid, Don, she does not understand our ways," said Mrs. Murray, apologetically.
"Be off, Don," said his mother. "Kiss Marget there, if you can—it will not hurt her—and leave the young lady alone."
"It's just horrid of them, auntie," said Maimie, indignantly, as the others went back to their games.
"Indeed," said Mrs. Cameron, warmly, "if you will never do worse than kiss a laddie in a game, it's little harm will be coming to you."
But Maimie ignored her.
"Is it not horrid, auntie?" she said.
"Well, my dear, if you think so, it is. But not for these girls, who play the game with never a thought of impropriety and with no shock to their modesty. Much depends on how you think about these things."
But Maimie was not satisfied. She was indignant at Don for offering to kiss her, but as she stood and watched the games going on under the trees—the tag, the chase, the catch, and the kiss—she somehow began to feel as if it were not so terrible after all, and to think that perhaps these girls might play the game and still be nice enough. But she had no thought of going back to them, and so she turned her attention to the preparations for tea, now almost complete. Her aunt and Ranald were toasting slices of bread at the big blazing fire, on forks made out of long switches.
"Let me try, auntie," she said, pushing up to the fire between her aunt and Ranald. "I am sure I can do that."
"Be careful of that fire," said Ranald, sharply, pulling back her skirt, that had blown dangerously near the blaze. "Stand back further," he commanded.
Mamie looked at him, surprise, indignation, and fear struggling for the mastery. Was this the awkward boy that had blushed and stammered before her a week ago?
"It's very dangerous," he explained to Mrs. Murray, "the wind blows out the flames."
As he spoke he handed Maimie his toasting stick and retired to the other side of the fire, and began to attend to the boiling sap.
"He needn't be such a bear," pouted Maimie.
"My dear," replied her aunt, "what Ranald says is quite true. You cannot be too careful in moving about the fire."
"Well, he needn't be so cross about it," said Maimie. She had never been ordered about before in her life, and she did not enjoy the experience, and all the more at the hands of an uncouth country boy. She watched Ranald attending to the fire and the kettles, however, with a new respect. He certainly had no fear of the fire, but moved about it and handled it with the utmost sang-froid. He had a certain grace, too, in his movements that caught her eye, and she wished he would come nearer so that she could speak to him. She had considerable confidence in her powers of attraction. As if to answer her wish, Ranald came straight to where her aunt and she were standing.
"I think it will be time for tea now," he said, with a sudden return of his awkward manner, that made Maimie wonder why she had ever been afraid of him. "I will tell Don," he added, striding off toward the group of boys and girls, still busy with their games under the trees.
Soon Don's shout was heard: "Tea, ladies and gentlemen; take your seats at the tables." And speedily there was a rush and scramble, and in a few moments the great heaps of green balsam boughs arranged around the fire were full of boys and girls pulling, pinching, and tumbling over one another in wild glee.
The toast stood in brown heaps on birch-bark plates beside the fire, and baskets were carried out of the shanty bulging with cakes; the tea was bubbling in the big tin tea-pail, and everything was ready for the feast. But Ranald had caught Mrs. Murray's eye, and at a sign from her, stood waiting with the tea-pail in his hand.
"Come on with the tea, Ranald," cried Don, seizing a plate of toast.
"Wait a minute, Don," said Ranald, in a low tone.
"What's the matter?"
But Ranald stood still, looking silently at the minister's wife. Then, as all eyes turned toward her, she said, in a gentle, sweet voice, "I think we ought to give thanks to our Father in heaven for all this beauty about us and for all our joy."
At once Ranald took off his hat, and as the boys followed his example, Mrs. Murray bowed her head and in a few, simple words lifted up the hearts of all with her own in thanksgiving for the beauty of the woods and sky above them, and all the many gifts that came to fill their lives with joy.
It was not the first time that Ranald had heard her voice in prayer, but somehow it sounded different in the open air under the trees and in the midst of all the jollity of the sugaring-off. With all other people that Ranald knew, religion seemed to be something apart from common days, common people, and common things, and seemed, besides, a solemn and terrible experience; but with the minister's wife, religion was a part of her every-day living, and seemed to be as easily associated with her pleasure as with anything else about her. It was so easy, so simple, so natural, that Ranald could not help wondering if, after all, it was the right kind. It was so unlike the religion of the elders and all the good people in the congregation. It was a great puzzle to Ranald, as to many others, both before and since his time.
After tea was over the great business of the evening came on. Ranald announced that the taffy was ready, and Don, as master of ceremonies, immediately cried out: "The gentlemen will provide the ladies with plates."
"Plates!" echoed the boys, with a laugh of derision.
"Plates," repeated Don, stepping back to a great snowbank, near a balsam clump, and returning with a piece of "crust." At once there was a scurry to the snowbank, and soon every one had a snow plate ready. Then Ranald and Don slid the little kettle along the pole off the fire, and with tin dippers began to pour the hot syrup upon the snow plates, where it immediately hardened into taffy. Then the pulling began. What fun there was, what larks, what shrieks, what romping and tumbling, till all were heartily tired, both of the taffy and the fun.
Then followed the sugar-molding. The little kettle was set back on the fire and kept carefully stirred, while tin dishes of all sorts, shapes, and sizes—milk-pans, pattie-pans, mugs, and cups—well greased with pork rind, were set out in order, imbedded in snow. The last act of all was the making of "hens' nests."
A dozen or so of hens' eggs, blown empty, and three goose eggs for the grown-ups, were set in snow nests, and carefully filled from the little kettle. In a few minutes the nests were filled with sugar eggs, and the sugaring-off was over.
There remained still a goose egg provided against any mishap.
"Who wants the goose egg? cried Don, holding it up.
"Me!" "me!" "me!" coaxed the girls on every side.
"Will you give it to me, Don, for the minister?" said Mrs. Murray.
"Oh, yes!" cried Maimie, "and let me fill it."
As she spoke, she seized the dipper, and ran for the kettle.
"Look out for that fire," cried Don, dropping the egg into its snowbed. He was too late. A little tongue of flame leaped out from under the kettle, nipped hold of her frock, and in a moment she was in a blaze. With a wild scream she sprang back and turned to fly, but before she had gone more than a single step, Ranald, dashing the crowd right and left, had seized and flung her headlong into the snow, beating out the flames with his bare hands. In a moment all danger was over, and Ranald lifted her up. Still screaming, she clung to him, while the women all ran to her. Her aunt reached her first.
"Hush, Maimie; hush, dear. You are quite safe now. Let me see your face. There now, be quiet, child. The danger is all over."
Still Maimie kept screaming. She was thoroughly terrified.
"Listen to me," her aunt said, in an even, firm voice. "Do not be foolish. Let me look at you."
The quiet, firm voice soothed her, and Maimie's screams ceased. Her aunt examined her face, neck, and arms for any signs of fire, but could find none. She was hardly touched, so swift had been her rescue. Then Mrs. Murray, suddenly putting her arms round about her niece, and holding her tight, cried: "Thank God, my darling, for his great kindness to you and to us all. Thank God! thank God!"
Her voice broke, but in a moment, recovering herself, she went on, "And Ranald, too! noble fellow!"
Ranald was standing at the back of the crowd, looking pale, disturbed, and awkward. Mrs. Murray, knowing how hateful to him would be any demonstrations of feeling, went to him, and quietly held out her hand, saying: "It was bravely done, Ranald. From my heart, I thank you."
For a moment or two she looked steadily into his face with tears streaming down her cheeks. Then putting her hands upon his shoulders, she said, softly: "For her dear, dead mother's sake, I thank you."
Then Maimie, who had been standing in a kind of stupor all this while, seemed suddenly to awake, and running swiftly toward Ranald, she put out both hands, crying: "Oh, Ranald, I can never thank you enough!"
He took her hands in an agony of embarrassment, not knowing what to do or say. Then Maimie suddenly dropped his hands, and throwing her arms about his neck, kissed him, and ran back to her aunt's side.
"I thought you didn't play forfeits, Maimie," said Don, in a grieved voice. And every one was glad to laugh.
Then the minister's wife, looking round upon them all, said: "Dear children, God has been very good to us, and I think we ought to give him thanks."
And standing there by the fire, they bowed their heads in a new thanksgiving to Him whose keeping never fails by day or night. And then, with hearts and voices subdued, and with quiet good nights, they went their ways home.
But as the Cameron sleigh drove off with its load, Maimie looked back, and seeing Ranald standing by the fire, she whispered to her aunt: "Oh, auntie! Isn't he just splendid?"
But her aunt made no reply, seeing a new danger for them both, greater than that they had escaped.
CHAPTER IX
A SABBATH DAY'S WORK
The Sabbath that followed the sugaring-off was to Maimie the most remarkable Sabbath of her life up to that day. It was totally unlike the Sabbath of her home, which, after the formal "church parade," as Harry called it, in the morning, her father spent in lounging with his magazine and pipe, her aunt in sleeping or in social gossip with such friends as might drop in, and Harry and Maimie as best they could.
The Sabbath in the minister's house, as in the homes of his people, was a day so set apart from other days that it had to be approached. The Saturday afternoon and evening caught something of its atmosphere. No frivolity, indeed no light amusement, was proper on the evening that put a period to the worldly occupations and engagements of the week. That evening was one of preparation. The house, and especially the kitchen, was thoroughly "redd up." Wood, water, and kindlings were brought in, clothes were brushed, boots greased or polished, dinner prepared, and in every way possible the whole house, its dwellers, and its belongings, made ready for the morrow. So, when the Sabbath morning dawned, people awoke with a feeling that old things had passed away and that the whole world was new. The sun shone with a radiance not known on other days. He was shining upon holy things, and lighting men and women to holy duties. Through all the farms the fields lay bathed in his genial glow, at rest, and the very trees stood in silent worship of the bending heavens. Up from stable and from kitchen came no sounds of work. The horses knew that no wheel would turn that clay in labor, and the dogs lay sleeping in sunny nooks, knowing as well as any that there was to be no hunting or roaming for them that day, unless they chose to go on a free hunt; which none but light-headed puppies or dissipated and reprobate dogs would care to do.
Over all things rest brooded, and out of the rest grew holy thoughts and hopes. It was a day of beginnings. For the past, broken and stained, there was a new offer of oblivion and healing, and the heart was summoned to look forward to new life and to hope for better things, and to drink in all those soothing, healing influences that memory and faith combine to give; so that when the day was done, weary and discouraged men and women began to feel that, perhaps after all they might be able to endure and even to hope for victory.
The minister rose earlier on Sabbath than on other days, the responsibility of his office pressing hard upon him. Breakfast was more silent than usual, ordinary subjects of conversation being discouraged. The minister was preoccupied and impatient of any interruption of his thoughts. But his wife came to the table with a sweeter serenity than usual, and a calm upon her face that told of hidden strength. Even Maimie could notice the difference, but she could only wonder. The secret of it was hidden from her. Her aunt was like no other woman that she knew, and there were many things about her too deep for Maimie's understanding.
After worship, which was brief but solemn and intense, Lambert hurried to bring round to the front the big black horse, hitched up in the carryall, and they all made speed to pack themselves in, Maimie and her aunt in front, and Hughie on the floor behind with his legs under the seat; for when once the minister was himself quite ready, and had got his great meerschaum pipe going, it was unsafe for any one to delay him a single instant.
The drive to the church was an experience hardly in keeping with the spirit of the day. It was more exciting than restful. Black was a horse with a single aim, which was to devour the space that stretched out before him, with a fine disregard of consequence. The first part of the road up to the church hill and down again to the swamp was to Black, as to the others, an unmixed joy, for he was fresh from his oats and eager to go, and his driver was as eager to let him have his will.
But when the swamp was reached, and the buggy began to leap from log to log of the corduroy, Black began to chafe in impatience of the rein which commanded caution. Indeed, the passage of the swamp was always more or less of an adventure, the result of which no one could foretell, and it took all Mrs. Murray's steadiness of nerve to repress an exclamation of terror at critical moments. The corduroy was Black's abomination. He longed to dash through and be done with it; but, however much the minister sympathized with Black's desire, prudence forbade that his method should be adopted. So from log to log, and from hole to hole, Black plunged and stepped with all the care he could be persuaded to exercise, every lurch of the carryall bringing a scream from Maimie in front and a delighted chuckle from Hughie behind. His delight in the adventure was materially increased by his cousin's terror.
But once the swamp was crossed, and Black found himself on the firm road that wound over the sand-hills and through the open pine woods, he tossed his great mane back from his eyes, and getting his head set off at a pace that foreboded disaster to anything trying to keep before him, and in a short time drew up at the church gates, his flanks steaming and his great chest white with foam.
"My!" said Maimie, when she had recovered her breath sufficiently to speak, "is that the church?" She pointed to a huge wooden building about whose door a group of men were standing.
"Huh-huh, that's it," said Hughie; "but we will soon be done with the ugly old thing."
The most enthusiastic member of the congregation could scarcely call the old church beautiful, and to Maimie's eyes it was positively hideous. No steeple or tower gave any hint of its sacred character. Its weather-beaten clapboard exterior, spotted with black knots, as if stricken with some disfiguring disease, had nothing but its row of uncurtained windows to distinguish it from an ordinary barn.
They entered by the door at the end of the church, and proceeded down the long aisle that ran the full length of the building, till they came to a cross aisle that led them to the minister's pew at the left side of the pulpit, and commanding a view of the whole congregation. The main body of the church was seated with long box pews with hinged doors. But the gallery that ran round three sides was fitted with simple benches. Immediately in front of the pulpit was a square pew which was set apart for the use of the elders, and close up to the pulpit, and indeed as part of this structure, was a precentor's desk. The pulpit was, to Maimie's eyes, a wonder. It was an octagonal box placed high on one side of the church on a level with the gallery, and reached by a spiral staircase. Above it hung the highly ornate and altogether extraordinary sounding-board and canopy. There was no sign of paint anywhere, but the yellow pine, of which seats, gallery, and pulpit were all made, had deepened with age into a rich brown, not unpleasant to the eye.
The church was full, for the Indian Lands people believed in going to church, and there was not a house for many miles around but was represented in the church that day. There they sat, row upon row of men, brawny and brown with wind and sun, a notable company, worthy of their ancestry and worthy of their heritage. Beside them sat their wives, brown, too, and weather-beaten, but strong, deep-bosomed, and with faces of calm content, worthy to be mothers of their husbands' sons. The girls and younger children sat with their parents, modest, shy, and reverent, but the young men, for the most part, filled the back seats under the gallery. And a hardy lot they were, as brown and brawny as their fathers, but tingling with life to their finger-tips, ready for anything, and impossible of control except by one whom they feared as well as reverenced. And such a man was Alexander Murray, for they knew well that, lithe and brawny as they were, there was not a man of them but he could fling out of the door and over the fence if he so wished; and they knew, too, that he would be prompt to do it if occasion arose. Hence they waited for the word of God with all due reverence and fear.
In the square pew in front of the pulpit sat the elders, hoary, massive, and venerable. The Indian Lands Session were worth seeing. Great men they were, every one of them, excepting, perhaps, Kenneth Campbell, "Kenny Crubach," as he was called, from his halting step. Kenny was neither hoary nor massive nor venerable. He was a short, grizzled man with snapping black eyes and a tongue for clever, biting speech; and while he bore a stainless character, no one thought of him as an eminently godly man. In public prayer he never attained any great length, nor did he employ that tone of unction deemed suitable in this sacred exercise. He seldom "spoke to the question," but when he did people leaned forward to listen, and more especially the rows of the careless and ungodly under the gallery. Kenny had not the look of an elder, and indeed, many wondered how he had ever come to be chosen for the office. But the others all had the look of elders, and carried with them the full respect and affection of the congregation. Even the young men under the gallery regarded them with reverence for their godly character, but for other things as well; for these old men had been famous in their day, and tales were still told about the firesides of the people of their prowess in the woods and on the river.
There was, for instance, Finlay McEwen, or McKeowen, as they all pronounced it in that country, who, for a wager, had carried a four-hundred-pound barrel upon each hip across the long bridge over the Scotch River. And next him sat Donald Ross, whose very face, with its halo of white hair, bore benediction with it wherever he went. What a man he must have been in his day! Six feet four inches he stood in his stocking soles, and with "a back like a barn door," as his son Danny, or "Curly," now in the shanty with Macdonald Bhain, used to say, in affectionate pride. Then there was Farquhar McNaughton, big, kindly, and good-natured, a mighty man with the ax in his time. "Kirsty's Farquhar" they called him, for obvious reasons. And a good thing for Farquhar it was that he had had Kirsty at his side during these years to make his bargains for him and to keep him and all others to them, else he would never have become the substantial man he was.
Next to Farquhar was Peter McRae, the chief of a large clan of respectable, and none too respectable, families, whom all alike held in fear, for Peter ruled with a rod of iron, and his word ran as law throughout the clan. Then there was Ian More Macgregor, or "Big John Macgregor," as the younger generation called him, almost as big as Donald Ross and quite as kindly, but with a darker, sadder face. Something from his wilder youth had cast its shadow over his life. No one but his minister and two others knew that story, but the old man knew it himself, and that was enough. One of those who shared his secret was his neighbor and crony, Donald Ross, and it was worth a journey of some length to see these two great old men, one with the sad and the other with the sunny face, stride off together, staff in hand, at the close of the Gaelic service, to Donald's home, where the afternoon would be spent in discourse fitting the Lord's day and in prayer.
The only other elder was Roderick McCuiag, who sat, not in the elders' pew, but in the precentor's box, for he was the Leader of Psalmody. "Straight Rory," as he was called by the irreverent, was tall, spare, and straight as a ramrod. He was devoted to his office, jealous of its dignity, and strenuous in his opposition to all innovations in connection with the Service of Praise. He was especially opposed to the introduction of those "new-fangled ranting" tunes which were being taught the young people by John "Alec" Fraser in the weekly singing-school in the Nineteenth, and which were sung at Mrs. Murray's Sabbath evening Bible class in the Little Church. Straight Rory had been educated for a teacher in Scotland, and was something of a scholar. He loved school examinations, where he was the terror of pupils and teachers alike. His acute mind reveled in the metaphysics of theology, which made him the dread of all candidates who appeared before the session desiring "to come forward." It was to many an impressive sight to see Straight Rory rise in the precentor's box, feel round, with much facial contortion, for the pitch—he despised a tuning-fork—and then, straightening himself up till he bent over backwards, raise the chant that introduced the tune to the congregation. But to the young men under the gallery he was more humorous than impressive, and it is to be feared that they waited for the precentor's weekly performance.with a delighted expectation that never flagged and that was never disappointed. It was only the flash of the minister's blue eye that held their faces rigid in preternatural solemnity, and forced them to content themselves with winks and nudges for the expression of their delight.
As Maimie's eye went wandering shyly over the rows of brown faces that turned in solemn and steadfast regard to the minister's pew, Hughie nudged her and whispered: "There's Don. See, in the back seat by the window, next to Peter Ruagh yonder; the red-headed fellow."
He pointed to Peter McRae, grandson of "Peter the Elder." There was no mistaking that landmark.
"Look," cried Hughie, eagerly, pointing with terrible directness straight at Don, to Maimie's confusion.
"Whisht, Hughie," said his mother softly.
"There's Ranald, mother," said the diplomatic Hughie, knowing well that his mother would rejoice to hear that bit of news. "See, mother, just in front of Don, there."
Again Hughie's terrible finger pointed straight into the face of the gazing congregation.
"Hush, Hughie," said his mother, severely.
Maimie knew a hundred eyes were looking straight at the minister's pew, but for the life of her she could not prevent her eye following the pointing finger, till it found the steady gaze of Ranald fastened upon her. It was only for a moment, but in that moment she felt her heart jump and her face grow hot, and it did not help her that she knew that the people were all wondering at her furious blushes. Of course the story of the sugaring-off had gone the length of the land and had formed the subject of conversation at the church door that morning, where Ranald had to bear a good deal of chaff about the young lady, and her dislike of forfeits, till he was ready to fight if a chance should but offer. With unspeakable rage and confusion, he noticed Hughie's pointing finger. He caught, too, Maimie's quick look, with the vivid blush that followed. Unfortunately, others besides himself had noticed this, and Don and Peter Ruagh, in the seat behind him, made it the subject of congratulatory remarks to Ranald.
At this point the minister rose in the pulpit, and all waited with earnest and reverent mien for the announcing of the psalm.
The Rev. Alexander Murray was a man to be regarded in any company and under any circumstances, but when he stood up in his pulpit and faced his congregation he was truly superb. He was above the average height, of faultless form and bearing, athletic, active, and with a "spring in every muscle." He had coal-black hair and beard, and a flashing blue eye that held his people in utter subjection and put the fear of death upon evil-doers under the gallery. In every movement, tone, and glance there breathed imperial command.
"Let us worship God by singing to His praise in the one hundred and twenty-first psalm:
'I to the hills will lift mine eyes,
From whence doth come mine aid.'"
His voice rang out over the congregation like a silver bell, and Maimie thought she had never seen a man of such noble presence.
After the reading of the psalm the minister sat down, and Straight Rory rose in his box, and after his manner, began feeling about for the first note of the chant that would introduce the noble old tune "St. Paul's." A few moments he spent twisting his face and shoulders in a manner that threatened to ruin the solemnity of the worshipers under the gallery, till finally he seemed to hit upon the pitch desired, and throwing back his head and closing one eye, he proceeded on his way. Each line he chanted alone, after the ancient Scottish custom, after which the congregation joined with him in the tune. The custom survived from the time when psalm-books were in the hands of but few and the "lining" of the psalm was therefore necessary.
'ST. PAUL'S," AS CHANTED BY STRAIGHT RORY AND SUNG BY THE CONGREGATION.
There was no haste to be done with the psalm. Why should there be? They had only one Sabbath in the week, and the whole day was before them. The people surrendered themselves to the lead of Straight Rory with unmistakable delight in that part of "the exercises" of the day in which they were permitted to audibly join. But of all the congregation, none enjoyed the singing more than the dear old women who sat in the front seats near the pulpit, their quiet old faces looking so sweet and pure under their snow-white "mutches." There they sat and sang and quavered, swaying their bodies with the tune in an ecstasy of restful joy.
Maimie had often heard St. Paul's before, but never as it was chanted by Straight Rory and sung by the Indian Lands congregation that day. The extraordinary slides and slurs almost obliterated the notes of the original tune, and the "little kick," as Maimie called it, at the end of the second line, gave her a little start.
"Auntie," she whispered, "isn't it awfully queer?"
"Isn't it beautiful?" her aunt answered, with an uncertain smile. She was remembering how these winding, sliding, slurring old tunes had affected her when first she heard them in her husband's church years ago. The stately movement, the weird quavers, and the pathetic cadences had in some mysterious way reached the deep places in her heart, and before she knew, she had found the tears coursing down her cheeks and her breath catching in sobs. Indeed, as she listened to-day, remembering these old impressions, the tears began to flow, till Hughie, not understanding, crept over to his mother, and to comfort her, slipped his hand into hers, looking fiercely at Maimie as if she were to blame. Maimie, too, noticed the tears and sat wondering, and as the congregation swung on through the verses of the grand old psalm there crept into her heart a new and deeper emotion than she had ever known.
"Listen to the words, Maimie dear," whispered her aunt. And as Maimie listened, the noble words, borne on the mighty swing of St. Paul's, lifted up by six hundred voices—for men, women, and children were singing with all their hearts—awakened echoes from great deeps within her as yet unsounded. The days for such singing are, alas! long gone. The noble rhythm, the stately movement, the continuous curving stream of melody, that once marked the praise service of the old Scottish church, have given place to the light, staccato tinkle of the revival chorus, or the shorn and mutilated skeleton of the ancient psalm tune.
But while the psalm had been moving on in its solemn and stately way, Ranald had been enduring agony at the hands of Peter Ruagh sitting just behind him. Peter, whose huge, clumsy body was a fitting tabernacle for the soul within, labored under the impression that he was a humorist, and indulged a habit of ponderous joking, trying enough to most people, but to one of Ranald's temperament exasperating to a high degree. His theme was Ranald's rescue of Maimie, and the pauses of the singing he filled in with humorous comments that, outside, would have produced only weariness, but in the church, owing to the strange perversity of human nature, sent a snicker along the seat. Unfortunately for him, Ranald's face was so turned that he could not see it, and so he had no hint of the wrath that was steadily boiling up to the point of overflow.
They were nearing the close of the last verse of the psalm, when Hughie, whose eyes never wandered long from Ranald's direction, uttered a sharp "Oh, my!" There was a shuffling confusion under the gallery, and when Maimie and her aunt looked, Peter Ruagh's place was vacant.
By this time the minister was standing up for prayer. His eye, too, caught the movement in the back seat.
"Young men," he said, sternly, "remember you are in God's house. Let me not have to mention your names before the congregation. Let us pray."
As the congregation rose for prayer, Mrs. Murray noticed Peter Ruagh appear from beneath the book-board and quietly slip out by the back door with his hand to his face and the blood streaming between his fingers; and though Ranald was standing up straight and stiff in his place, Mrs. Murray could read from his rigid look the explanation of Peter's bloody face. She gave her mind to the prayer with a sore heart, for she had learned enough of those wild, hot-headed youths to know that before Peter Ruagh's face would be healed more blood would have to flow.
The prayer proceeded in its leisurely way, indulging here and there in quiet reverie, or in exultant jubilation over the " attributes," embracing in its world-wide sweep "the interests of the kingdom" far and near, and of that part of humanity included therein present and to come, and buttressing its petitions with theological argument, systematic and unassailable. Before the close, however, the minister came to deal with the needs of his own people. Old and young, absent and present, the sick, the weary, the sin-burdened—all were remembered with a warmth of sympathy, with a directness of petition, and with an earnestness of appeal that thrilled and subdued the hearts of all, and made even the boys, who had borne with difficulty the last half-hour of the long prayer, forget their weariness.
The reading of Scripture followed the prayer. In this the minister excelled. His fine voice and his dramatic instinct combined to make this an impressive and beautiful portion of the service. But to-day much of the beauty and impressiveness of the reading was lost by the frequent interruptions caused by the entrance of late comers, of whom, owing to the bad roads, there were a larger number than usual. The minister was evidently annoyed, not so much by the opening and shutting of the door as by the inattention of his hearers, who kept turning round their heads to see who the new arrivals were. At length the minister could bear it no longer.
"My dear people," he said, pausing in the reading, "never mind those coming in. Give you heed to the reading of God's Word, and if you must know who are entering, I will tell you. Yes," he added, deliberately, "give you heed to me, and I will let you know who these late comers are."
With that startling declaration, he proceeded with the reading, but had not gone more than a few verses when "click" went the door-latch. Not a head turned. It was Malcolm Monroe, slow-going and good-natured, with his quiet little wife following him.
The minister paused, looking toward the door, and announced: "My dear people, here comes our friend Malcolm Monroe, and his good wife with him, and a long walk they have had. Come away, Malcolm; come away; we will just wait for you."
Malcolm's face was a picture. Surprise, astonishment, and confusion followed each other across his stolid countenance; and with quicker pace than he was ever known to use in his life before, he made his way to his seat. No sooner had the reading began again when once more the door clicked. True to his promise, the minister paused and cheerfully announced to his people: "This, my friends, is John Campbell, whom you all know as 'Johnnie Sarah,' and we are very glad to see him, for, indeed, he has not been here for some time. Come away, John; come away, man," he added, impatiently, "for we are all waiting for you."
Johnnie Sarah stood paralyzed with amazement and seemed uncertain whether to advance or to turn and flee. The minister's impatient command, however, decided him, and he dropped into the nearest seat with all speed, and gazed about him as if to discover where he was. He had no sooner taken his seat than the door opened again, and some half-dozen people entered. The minister stood looking at them for some moments and then said, in a voice of resignation: "Friends, these are some of our people from the Island, and there are some strangers with them. But if you want to know who they are, you will just have to look at them yourselves, for I must get on with the reading."
Needless to say, not a soul of the congregation, however consumed with curiosity, dared to look around, and the reading of the chapter went gravely on to the close. To say that Maimie sat in utter astonishment during this extraordinary proceeding would give but a faint idea of her state of mind. Even Mrs. Murray herself, who had become accustomed to her husband's eccentricities, sat in a state of utter bewilderment, not knowing what might happen next; nor did she feel quite safe until the text was announced and the sermon fairly begun.
Important as were the exercises of reading, praise, and prayer, they were only the "opening services," and merely led up to the event of the day, which was the sermon. And it was the event, not only of the day, but of the week. It would form the theme of conversation and afford food for discussion in every gathering of the people until another came to take its place. To-day it lasted a full hour and a half, and was an extraordinary production. Calm, deliberate reasoning, flights of vivid imagination, passionate denunciation, and fervid appeal, marked its course. Its subject was the great doctrine of Justification by Faith, and it contained a complete system of theology arranged with reference to that doctrine. Ancient heresies were attacked and exposed with completeness amounting to annihilation. Modern errors, into which our "friends" of the different denominations had fallen, were deplored and corrected, and all possible misapplications of the doctrine to practical life guarded against. On the positive side the need, the ground, the means, the method, the agent, the results, of Justification, were fully set forth and illustrated. There were no anecdotes and no poetry. The subject was much too massive and tremendous to permit of any such trifling.
As the sermon rolled on its majestic course, the congregation listened with an attentive and discriminating appreciation that testified to their earnestness and intelligence. True, one here and there dropped into a momentary doze, but his slumber was never easy, for he was harassed by the terrible fear of a sudden summons by name from the pulpit to "awake and give heed to the message," which for the next few minutes would have an application so personal and pungent that it would effectually prevent sleep for that and some successive Sabbaths. The only apparent lapse of attention occurred when Donald Ross opened his horn snuff-box, and after tapping solemnly upon its lid, drew forth a huge pinch of snuff and passed it to his neighbor, who, after helping himself in like manner, passed the box on. That the lapse was only apparent was made evident by the air of abstraction with which this operation was carried on, the snuff being held between the thumb and forefinger for some moments, until a suitable resting-place in the sermon was reached.
When the minister had arrived at the middle of the second head, he made the discovery, as was not frequently the case, that the remotest limits of the alloted time had been passed, and announcing that the subject would be concluded on the following Sabbath, he summarily brought the English service to a close, and dismissed the congregation with a brief prayer, two verses of a psalm, and the benediction.
When Maimie realized that the service was really over, she felt as if she had been in church for a week. After the benediction the congregation passed out into the churchyard and disposed themselves in groups about the gate and along the fences discussing the sermon and making brief inquiries as to the "weal and ill" of the members of their families. Mrs. Murray, leaving Hughie and Maimie to wander at will, passed from group to group, welcomed by all with equal respect and affection. Young men and old men, women and girls alike, were glad to get her word. To-day, however, the young men were not at first to be seen, but Mrs. Murray knew them well enough to suspect that they would be found at the back of the church, so she passed slowly around the church, greeting the people as she went, and upon turning the corner she saw a crowd under the big maple, the rendezvous for the younger portion of the congregation before "church went in." In the center of the group stood Ranald and Don, with Murdie, Don's eldest brother, a huge, good-natured man, beside them, and Peter Ruagh, with his cousin Aleck, and others of the clan. Ranald was standing, pale and silent, with his head thrown back, as his manner was when in passion. The talk was mainly between Aleck and Murdie, the others crowding eagerly about and putting in a word as they could. Murdie was reasoning good-humoredly, Aleck replying fiercely.
"It was good enough for him," Mrs. Murray heard Don interject, in a triumphant tone, to Murdie. But Murdie shut him off sternly.
"Whisht, Don, you are not talking just now."
Don was about to reply when he caught sight of Mrs. Murray. "Here's the minister's wife," he said, in a low tone, and at once the group parted in shame-faced confusion. But Murdie kept his face unmoved, and as Mrs. Murray drew slowly near, said, in a quiet voice of easy good-humor, to Aleck, who was standing with a face like that of a detected criminal: "Well, we will see about it to-morrow night, Aleck, at the post-office," and he faced about to meet Mrs. Murray with an easy smile, while Aleck turned away. But Mrs. Murray was not deceived, and she went straight to the point.
"Murdie," she said, quietly, when she had answered his greeting, "will you just come with me a little; I want to ask you about something." And Murdie walked away with her, followed by the winks and nods of the others.
What she said Murdie never told, but he came back to them more determined upon peace than ever. The difficulty lay, not with the good-natured Peter, who was ready enough to settle with Ranald, but with the fiery Aleck, who represented the non-respectable section of the clan McRae, who lived south of the Sixteenth, and had a reputation for wildness. Fighting was their glory, and no one cared to enter upon a feud with any one of them. Murdie had interfered on Ranald's behalf, chiefly because he was Don's friend, but also because he was unwilling that Ranald should be involved in a quarrel with the McRaes, which he knew would be a serious affair for him. But now his strongest reason for desiring peace was that he had pledged himself to the minister's wife to bring it about in some way or other. So he took Peter off by himself, and without much difficulty, persuaded him to act the magnanimous part and drop the quarrel.
With Ranald he had a harder task. That young man was prepared to see his quarrel through at whatever consequences to himself. He knew the McRaes, and knew well their reputation, but that only made it more impossible for him to retreat. But Murdie knew better than to argue with him, so he turned away from him with an indifferent air, saying: "Oh, very well. Peter is willing to let it drop. You can do as you please, only I know the minister's wife expects you to make it up."
"What did she say to you, then?" asked Ranald, fiercely.
"She said a number of things that you don't need to know, but she said this, whatever, 'He will make it up for my sake, I know.'
Ranald stood a moment silent, then said, suddenly: "I will, too," and walking straight over to Peter, he offered his hand, saying, "I was too quick, Peter, and I am willing to take as much as I gave. You can go on."
But Peter was far too soft-hearted to accept that invitation, and seizing Ranald's hand, said, heartily: "Never mind, Ranald, it was my own fault. We will just say nothing more about it."
"There is the singing, boys," said Murdie. "Come away. Let us go in."
He was all the more anxious to get the boys into the church when he saw Aleck making toward them. He hurried Peter in before him, well pleased with himself and his success as peacemaker, but especially delighted that he could now turn his face toward the minister's pew, without shame. And as he took his place in the back seat, with Peter Ruagh beside him, the glance of pride and gratitude that flashed across the congregation to him from the gray-brown eyes made Murdie feel more than ever pleased at what he had been able to do. But he was somewhat disturbed to notice that neither Ranald nor Don nor Aleck had followed him into the church, and he waited uneasily for their coming.
In the meantime Straight Rory was winding his sinuous way through Coleshill, the Gaelic rhythm of the psalm allowing of quavers and turns impossible in the English.
In the pause following the second verse, Murdie was startled at the sound of angry voices from without. More than Murdie heard that sound. As Murdie glanced toward the pulpit he saw that the minister had risen and was listening intently.
"Behold—the—sparrow—findeth—out—" chanted the precentor.
"You are a liar!" The words, in Aleck's fiery voice outside, fell distinctly upon Murdie's ear, though few in the congregation seemed to have heard. But while Murdie was making up his mind to slip out, the minister was before him. Quickly he stepped down the pulpit stairs, psalm-book in hand, and singing as he went, walked quietly to the back door, and leaving his book on the window-sill, passed out. The singing went calmly on, for the congregation were never surprised at anything their minister did.
The next verse was nearly through, when the door opened, and in came Don, followed by Aleck, looking somewhat disheveled and shaken up, and two or three more. In a few moments the minister came in, took his psalm-book from the window-sill, and striking up with the congregation, "Blest is the man whose strength thou art," marched up to the pulpit again, with only an added flash in his blue eyes and a little more triumphant swing to his coat-tails to indicate that anything had taken place. But Murdie looked in vain for Ranald to appear, and waited, uncertain what to do. He had a wholesome fear of the minister, more especially in his present mood. Instinctively he turned toward the minister's pew, and reading the look of anxious entreaty from the pale face there, he waited till the congregation rose for prayer and then slipped out, and was seen no more in church that day.
On the way home not a word was said about the disturbance. But after the evening worship, when the minister had gone to his study for a smoke, Hughie, who had heard the whole story from Don, told it to his mother and Maimie in his most graphic manner.
"It was not Ranald's fault, mother," he declared. "You know Peter would not let him alone, and Ranald hit him in the nose, and served him right, too. But they made it all up, and they were just going into the church again, when that Aleck McRae pulled Ranald back, and Ranald did not want to fight at all, but he called Ranald a liar, and he could not help it, but just hit him."
"Who hit who?" said Maimie. "You're not making it very clear, Hughie."
"Why, Ranald, of course, hit Aleck, and knocked him over, too," said Hughie, with much satisfaction; "and then Aleck—he is an awful fighter, you know—jumped on Ranald and was pounding him just awful, the great big brute, when out came papa. He stepped up and caught Aleck by the neck and shook him just like a baby, saying, all the time, 'Would ye? I will teach you to fight on the Sabbath day! Here! in with you, every one of you!' and he threw him nearly into the door, and then they all skedaddled into the church, I tell you, Don said. They were pretty badly scart, too, but Don did not know what papa did to Ranald, and he did not know where Ranald went, but he is pretty badly hurted, I am sure. That great big Aleck McRae is old enough to be his father. Wasn't it mean of him, mother?"
Poor Hughie was almost in tears, and his mother, who sat listening too eagerly to correct her little boy's ethics or grammar, was as nearly overcome as he. She wished she knew where Ranald was. He had not appeared at the evening Bible class, and Murdie had reported that he could not find him anywhere.
She put Hughie to bed, and then saw Maimie to her room. But Maimie was very unwilling to go to bed.
"Oh, auntie," she whispered, as her aunt kissed her good night, "I cannot go to sleep!" And then, after a pause, she said, shyly, "Do you think he is badly hurt?"
Then the minister's wife, looking keenly into the girl's face, made light of Ranald's misfortune.
"Oh, he will be all right," she said, "as far as his hurt is concerned. That is the least part of his trouble. You need not worry about that. Good night, my dear." And Maimie, relieved by her aunt's tone, said "good night" with her heart at rest.
Then Mrs. Murray went into the study, determined to find out what had passed between her husband and Ranald. She found him lying on his couch, luxuriating in the satisfaction of a good day's work behind him, and his first pipe nearly done. She at once ventured upon the thing that lay heavy upon her heart. She began by telling all she knew of the trouble from its beginning in the church, and then waited for her husband's story.
For some moments he lay silently smoking.
"Ah, well," he said, at length, knocking out his pipe, "perhaps I was a little severe with the lad. He may not have been so much to blame."
"Oh, papa! What did you do?" said his wife, in an anxious voice.
"Well," said the minister, hesitating, "I found that the young rascal had struck Aleck McRae first, and a very bad blow it was. So I administered a pretty severe rebuke and sent him home."
"Oh, what a shame!" cried his wife, in indignant tears. "It was far more the fault of Peter and Aleck and the rest. Poor Ranald!"
"Now, my dear," said the minister, "you need not fear for Ranald. I do not suppose he cares much. Besides, his face was not fit to be seen, so I sent him home. Well, it—"
"Yes," burst in his wife, "great, brutal fellow, to strike a boy like that!"
"Boy?" said her husband. "Well, he may be, but not many men would dare to face him." Then he added, "I wish I had known—I fear I spoke—perhaps the boy may feel unjustly treated. He is as proud as Lucifer."
"Oh, papa!" said his wife, "what did you say?"
"Nothing but what was true. I just told him that a boy who would break the Lord's Day by fighting, and in the very shadow of the Lord's house, when Christian people were worshiping God, was acting like a savage, and was not fit for the company of decent folk."
To this his wife made no reply, but went out of the study, leaving the minister feeling very uncomfortable indeed. But by the end of the second pipe he began to feel that, after all, Ranald had got no more than was good for him, and that he would be none the worse of it; in which comforting conviction he went to rest, and soon fell into the sleep which is supposed to be the right of the just.
Not so his wife. Wearied though she was with the long day, its excitements and its toils, sleep would not come. Anxious thoughts about the lad she had come to love as if he were her own son or brother kept crowding in upon her. The vision of his fierce, dark, stormy face held her eyes awake and at length drew her from her bed. She went into the study and fell upon her knees. The burden had grown too heavy for her to bear alone. She would share it with Him who knew what it meant to bear the sorrows and the sins of others.
As she rose, she heard Fido bark and whine in the yard below, and going to the window, she saw a man standing at the back door, and Fido fawning upon him. Startled, she was about to waken her husband, when the man turned his face so that the moonlight fell upon it, and she saw Ranald. Hastily she threw on her dressing-gown, put on her warm bedroom slippers and cloak, ran down to the door, and in another moment was standing before him, holding him by the shoulders.
"Ranald!" she cried, breathlessly, "what is it?"
"I am going away," he said, simply. "And I was just passing by—and—" he could not go on.
"Oh, Ranald!" she cried,, "I am glad you came this way. Now tell me where you are going."
The boy looked at her as if she had started a new idea in his mind, and then said, "I do not know."
"And what are you going to do, Ranald?"
"Work. There is plenty to do. No fear of that."
"But your father, Ranald?"
The boy was silent for a little, and then said, "He will soon be well, and he will not be needing me, and he said I could go. " His voice broke with the remembrance of the parting with his father.
"And why are you going, Ranald?" she said, looking into his eyes.
Again the boy stood silent.
"Why do you go away from your home and your father, and—and—all of us who love you?"
"Indeed, there is no one," he replied, bitterly; "and I am not for decent people. I am not for decent people. I know that well enough. There is no one that will care much."
"No one, Ranald?" she asked, sadly. "I thought—" she paused, looking steadily into his face.
Suddenly the boy turned to her, and putting out both his hands, burst forth, his voice coming in dry sobs: "Oh, yes, yes! I do believe you. I do believe you. And that is why I came this way. I wanted to see your door again before I went. Oh, I will never forget you! Never, never, and I am glad I am seeing you, for now you will know—how much—" The boy was unable to proceed. His sobs were shaking his whole frame, and to his shy Highland Scotch nature, words of love and admiration were not easy. "You will not be sending me back home again?" he pleaded, anticipating her. "Indeed, I cannot stay in this place after to-day."
But the minister's wife kept her eyes steadily upon his face without a word, trying in vain to find her voice, and the right words to say. She had no need of words, for in her face, pale, wet with her flowing tears, and illumined with her gray-brown eyes, Ranald read her heart.
"Oh!" he cried again, "you are wanting me to stay, and I will be ashamed before them all, and the minister, too. I cannot stay. I cannot stay."
"And I cannot let you go, Ranald, my boy," she said, commanding her voice to speech. "I want you to be a brave man. I don't want you to be afraid of them."
"Afraid of them!" said the boy, in scornful surprise. "Not if they were twice as more and twice as beeg."
Mrs. Murray saw her advantage, and followed it up.
"And the minister did not know the whole truth, Ranald, and he was sorry he spoke to you as he did."
"Did he say that?" said Ranald, in surprise. It was to him, as to any one in that community, a terrible thing to fall under the displeasure of the minister and to be disgraced in his eyes.
"Yes, indeed, Ranald, and he would be sorry if you should go away. I am sure he would blame himself."
This was quite a new idea to the boy. That the minister should think himself to be in the wrong was hardly credible.
"And how glad we would be," she continued, earnestly, "to see you prove yourself a man before them all."
Ranald shook his head. "I would rather go away."
"Perhaps, but it's braver to stay, and to do your work like a man." And then, allowing him no time for words, she pictured to him the selfish, cowardly part the man plays who marches bravely enough in the front ranks until the battle begins, but who shrinks back and seeks an easy place when the fight comes on, till his face fell before her in shame. And then she showed him what she would like him to do, and what she would like him to be in patience and in courage, till he stood once more erect and steady.
"Now, Ranald," she said, noting the effect of her words upon him, "what is it to be?"
"I will go back," he said, simply; and turning with a single word of farewell, he sprang over the fence and disappeared in the woods. The minister's wife stood looking the way he went long after he had passed out of sight, and then, lifting her eyes to the radiant sky with its shining lights, "He made the stars also," she whispered, and went up to her bed and laid her down and slept in peace. Her Sabbath day's work was done.
CHAPTER X
THE HOME-COMING OF THE SHANTYMEN
For some weeks Ranald was not seen by any one belonging to the manse. Hughie reported that he was not at church, nor at Bible class, and although this was not in itself an extraordinary thing, still Mrs. Murray was uneasy, and Hughie felt that church was a great disappointment when Ranald was not there.
In their visits to Macdonald Dubh the minister and his wife never could see Ranald. His Aunt Kirsty could not understand or explain his reluctance to attend the public services, nor his unwillingness to appear in the house on the occasion of the minister's visits. "He is busy with the fences and about the stables preparing for the spring's work," she said; "but, indeed, he is very queer whatever, and I cannot make him out at all." Macdonald Dubh himself said nothing. But the books and magazines brought by the minister's wife were always read. "Indeed, when once he gets down to his book," his aunt complained, "neither his bed nor his dinner will move him."
The minister thought little of the boy's "vagaries," but to his wife came many an anxious thought about Ranald and his doings. She was more disappointed than she cared to confess, even to herself, that the boy seemed to be quite indifferent to the steadily deepening interest in spiritual things that marked the members of her Bible class.
While she was planning how to reach him once more, an event occurred which brought him nearer to her than he had ever been before. As they were sitting one evening at tea, the door unexpectedly opened, and without announcement, in walked Ranald, splashed with hard riding, pale, and dazed. Without a word of reply to the greetings that met him from all at the table, he went straight to the minister's wife, handed her an opened letter, and stood waiting. It was addressed to Ranald himself, and was the first he had ever received in his life. It was from Yankee Jim, and read as follows:
Yours truely,
J. Latham.
The minister's wife began reading the letter, wondering not a little at Ranald's manner, but when she came to the words, "Mack Cameron got drownded," she laid the letter down with a little cry. Her husband came quickly to her, took up the letter, and read it to the end.
"I will go at once," he said, and rang the bell. "Tell Lambert to put Black in the buggy immediately, Jessie," he said, when the maid appeared. "Do you think you ought to go, my dear?"
"Yes, yes, I shall be ready in a moment; but, oh, what can we do or say?"
"Perhaps you had better not go. It will be very trying," said the minister.
"Oh, yes, I must go. I must. The poor mother!" Then she turned to Ranald as the minister left the room. "You are going home, Ranald, I suppose," she said.
"No, I was thinking I would go to tell the people. Donald Ross will go, and the Campbells, and Farquiiar McNaughton's light wagon would be best—for the—for Mack. And then I will go round by the McGregors."
Ranald had been thinking things out and making his plans.
"But that will be a long round for you," said Mrs. Murray. "Could not we go by the Campbells', and they will send word to Donald Ross?"
"I think it would be better for me to go, to make sure of the teams."
"Very well, then. Good by, Ranald," said the minister's wife, holding out her hand to him.
But still Ranald lingered. "It will be hard on Bella Peter," he said, in a low voice, looking out of the window.
"Bella Peter? Bella McGregor?"
"Yes," said Ranald, embarrassed and hesitating. "She was Mack's—Mack was very fond of her, whatever."
"Oh, Ranald!" she cried, "do you say so? Are you sure of that?"
"Yes, I am sure," said Ranald, simply. "The boys in the shanty would be teasing Mack about it, and one day Mack told me something, and I know quite well."
"I will go to her," said Mrs. Murray.
"That will be very good," said Ranald, much relieved. "And I will be going with you that way."
As Mrs. Murray left the room, Maimie came around to where Ranald was standing and said to him, gently, "You knew him well, didn't you?"
"Yes," replied Ranald, in an indifferent tone, as if unwilling to talk with her about it.
"And you were very fond of him?" went on Maimie.
Ranald caught the tremor in her voice and looked at her. "Yes," he said, with an effort. "He was good to me in the camp. Many's the time he made it easy for me. He was next to Macdonald Bhain with the ax, and, man, he was the grand fighter—that is," he added, adopting the phrase of the Macdonald gang, "when it was a plain necessity." Then, forgetting himself, he began to tell Maimie how Big Mack had borne himself in the great fight a few weeks before. But he had hardly well begun when suddenly he stopped with a groan. "But now he is dead—he is dead. I will never see him no more."
He was realizing for the first time his loss. Maimie came nearer him, and laying her hand timidly on his arm, said, "I am sorry, Ranald"; and Ranald turned once more and looked at her, as if surprised that she should show such feeling.
"Yes," he said, "I believe you are sorry."
Her big blue eyes filled suddenly with tears.
"Do you wonder that I am sorry? Do you think I have no heart at all?" she burst forth, impetuously.
"Indeed, I don't know," said Ranald. "Why should you care? You do not know him."
"But haven't you just told me how splendid he was, and how good he was to you, and how much you thought of him, and—" Maimie checked her rush of words with a sudden blush, and then hurried on to say, "Besides, think of his mother, and all of them."
While Maimie was speaking, Ranald had been scanning her face as if trying to make up his mind about her.
"I am glad you are sorry," he said, slowly, gazing with so searching a look into her eyes that she let them fall.
At this moment Mrs. Murray entered ready for her ride.
"Is the pony come?" she asked.
"Indeed, it is the slouch I am," said Ranald, and he hurried off to the stable, returning in a very short time with the pony saddled.
"You would not care to go with your uncle, Maimie?" said Mrs. Murray, as Lambert drove up Black in the buggy.
"No, auntie, I think not," said Maimie. "I will take care of Hughie and the baby."
"Good by, then, my dear," said Mrs. Murray, kissing her.
"Good by, Ranald," said Maimie, as he turned away to get his colt.
"Good by," he said, awkwardly. He felt like lifting his cap, but hesitated to do anything so extremely unnatural. With the boys in that country such an act of courtesy was regarded as a sign of "pride," if not of weakness.
Their way lay along the concession line for a mile, and then through the woods by the bridle-path to Peter McGregor's clearing. The green grass ran everywhere—along the roadside, round the great stump roots, over the rough pasture-fields, softening and smoothing wherever it went. The woods were flushing purple, with just a tinge of green from the bursting buds. The balsams and spruces still stood dark in the swamps, but the tamaracks were shyly decking themselves in their exquisite robes of spring, and through all the bush the air was filled with soft sounds and scents. In earth and air, in field and forest, life, the new spring life, ran riot. How strangely impertinent death appeared, and how unlovely in such a world of life!
As they left the concession road and were about to strike into the woods, Mrs. Murray checked her pony, and looking upon the loveliness about her, said, softly, "How beautiful it all is!"
There was no response from Ranald, and Mrs. Murray, glancing at his gloomy face, knew that his heart was sore at the thought of the pain they were bearing with them. She hesitated a few moments, and then said, gently: "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And there shall be no more death."
But still Ranald made no reply, and they rode on through the bush in silence till they came to the clearing beyond. As they entered the brûle, Ranald checked his colt, and holding up his hand, said, "Listen!"
Through the quiet evening air, sweet and clear as a silver bell, came the long, musical note of the call that brings the cows home for the milking. It was Bella's voice: "Ko—boss, ko—boss, ko—boss!"
Far across the brûle they could see her standing on a big pine stump near the bars, calling to her cows that were slowly making toward her through the fallen timber, pausing here and there to crop an especially rich mouthful, and now and then responding to her call with soft lowings. Gently Bella chid them. "Come, Blossom, come away now; you are very lazy. Come, Lily; what are you waiting for? You slow old poke!" Then again the long, musical note: "Ko—boss, ko—boss, ko—boss!"
Ranald groaned aloud, "Och-hone! It will be her last glad hour," he said; "it is a hard, hard thing."
"Poor child, poor child!" said Mrs. Murray; "the Lord help her. It will be a cruel blow."
"That it is, a cruel blow," said Ranald, bitterly; so bitterly that Mrs. Murray glanced at him in surprise and saw his face set in angry pain.
"The Lord knows best, Ranald," she said, gravely, "and loves best, too."
"It will break her heart, whatever," answered Ranald, shortly.
"He healeth the broken in heart," said Mrs. Murray, softly. Ranald made no reply, but let the colt take her way through the brûle toward the lane into which Bella had now got her cows. How happy the girl was! Joy filled every tone of her voice. And why not? It was the springtime, the time of life and love. Long winter was gone, and soon her brothers would be back from the shanties. "And Mack, too," she whispered to her happy heart.
"And are ye sure the news is true?
And are ye sure he's weel?
Is this a time to think o' wark?
Ye jades, fling by your wheel.
"For there's nae luck aboot the hoose,
There's nae luck ava,
There's little pleesure in the hoose
When oor gude man's awa."
So she sang, not too loud; for the boys were at the barn and she would never hear the end of it.
"Well, Bella, you are getting your cows home. How are you, my dear?"
Bella turned with a scarlet face to meet the minister's wife, and her blushes only became deeper when she saw Ranald, for she felt quite certain that Ranald would understand the meaning of her song.
"I will go on with the cows," said Ranald, in a hoarse voice, and Mrs. Murray, alighting, gave him her pony to lead.
Peter McGregor was a stern man to his own family, and to all the world, with the single exception of his only daughter, Bella. His six boys he kept in order with a firm hand, and not one of them would venture to take a liberty with him. But Bella had no fear of his grim face and stern ways, and "just twiddled her father round her finger," as her mother said, with a great show of impatience. But, in spite of all her petting from her big brothers and her father, Bella remained quite unspoiled, the light of her home and the joy of her father's heart. It had not escaped the father's jealous eye that Big Mack Cameron found occasion for many a visit to the boys on an evening when the day's work was done, and that from the meetings he found his shortest way home round by the McGregor's. At first the old man was very gruff with him, and was for sending him about his business, but his daughter's happy face, and the light in her eyes, that could mean only one thing, made him pause, and after a long and sleepless night, he surprised his daughter the next morning with a word of gentle greeting and an unusual caress, and thenceforth took Big Mack to his heart. Not that any word or explanation passed between them; it had not come to that as yet; but Big Mack felt the change, and gave him thenceforth the obedience and affection of a son.
The old man was standing in the yard, waiting to help with the milking.
Ranald drove the cows in, and then, tying up the horses, went straight to him.
"I bring bad news, Mr. McGregor," he said, anxious to get done with his sad task. "There has been an accident on the river, and Mack Cameron is drowned."
"What do you say, boy?" said Peter, in a harsh voice.
"He was trying to save a Frenchman, and when they got him out he was dead," said Ranald, hurrying through his tale, for he saw the two figures coming up the lane and drawing nearer.
"Dead!" echoed the old man. "Big Mack! God help me."
"And they will be wanting a team," continued Ranald, "to go to Cornwall to-morrow."
The old man stood for a few moments, looking stupidly at Ranald. Then, lifting his hat from his gray head, he said, brokenly : "My poor girl! Would God I had died for him."
Ranald turned away and stood looking down the lane, shrinking from the sight of the old man's agony. Then, turning back to him, he said: "The minister's wife is coming yonder with Bella."
The old man started, and with a mighty effort commanding himself, said, "Now may God help me!" and went to meet his daughter.
Through the gloom of the falling night Ranald could see the frightened white face and the staring, tearless eyes. They came quite near before Bella caught sight of her father. For a moment she hesitated, till the old man, without a word, beckoned her to him. With a quick little run she was in his arms, where she lay moaning, as if in sore bodily pain. Her father held her close to him, murmuring over her fond Gaelic words, while Ranald and Mrs. Murray went over to the horses and stood waiting there.
"I will go now to Donald Ross," Ranald said, in a low voice, to the minister's wife. He mounted the colt and was riding off, when Peter called him back.
"The boys will take the wagon to-morrow," he said.
"They will meet at the Sixteenth at daylight," replied Ranald; and then to Mrs. Murray he said, "I will come back this way for you. It will soon be dark."
But Bella, hearing him, cried to her: "Oh, you will not go?"
"Not if you need me, Bella," said Mrs. Murray, putting her arms around her. "Ranald will run in and tell them at home." This Ranald promised to do, and rode away on his woeful journey; and before he reached home that night, the news had spread far and wide, from house to house, like a black cloud over a sunny sky.
The home-coming of the men from the shanties had ever been a time of rejoicing in the community. The Macdonald gang were especially welcome, for they always came back with honor and with the rewards of their winter's work. There was always a series of welcoming gatherings in the different homes represented in the gang, and there, in the midst of the admiring company, tales would be told of the deeds done and the trials endured, of the adventures on the river and the wonders of the cities where they had been. All were welcome everywhere, and none more than Big Mack Cameron. Brimming with good nature, and with a remarkable turn for stories, he was the center of every group of young people wherever he went; and at the "bees" for logging or for building or for cradling, Big Mack was held in honor, for he was second in feats of strength only to Macdonald Bhain himself. It was with no common grief that people heard the word that they were bringing him home dead.
At the Sixteenth next morning, before the break of day, Ranald stood in the gloom waiting for the coming of the teams. He had been up most of the night and he was weary in body and sore at heart, but Macdonald Bhain had trusted him, and there must be no mistake. One by one the teams arrived. First to appear was Donald Ross, the elder. For years he had given over the driving of his team to his boys, but to-day he felt that respect to the family demanded his presence on such an errand as this; and besides, he knew well that his son Dannie, Mack's special chum, would expect him to so honor the home-coming of his dead friend. Peter McGregor, fearing to leave his daughter for that long and lonely day, sent his son John in his place. It was with difficulty that Mack's father, Long John Cameron, had been persuaded to remain with the mother and to allow Murdie to go in his stead.
The last to arrive was Farquhar McNaughton, Kirsty's Farquhar, with his fine black team and new light wagon. To him was to be given the honor of bearing the body home. Gravely they talked and planned, and then left all to Ranald to execute.
"You will see to these things, Ranald, my man," said Donald Ross, with the air of one giving solemn charge. "Let all things be done decently and in order."
"I will try," said Ranald, simply. But Farquhar McNaughton looked at him doubtfully.
"It is a peety," he said, "there is not one with more experience. He is but a lad."
But Donald Ross had been much impressed with Ranald's capable manner the night before.
"Never you fear, Farquhar," he replied; "Ranald is not one to fail us."
As Ranald stood watching the wagons rumbling down the road and out of sight, he felt as if years must have passed since he had received the letter that had laid on him the heavy burden of this sad news. That his uncle, Macdonald Bhain, should have sent the word to him brought Ranald a sense of responsibility that awakened the man in him, and he knew he would feel himself a boy no more. And with that new feeling of manhood stirring within him, he went about his work that day, omitting no detail in arrangement for the seemly conduct of the funeral.
Night was falling as the wagons rumbled back again from Cornwall, bringing back the shantymen and their dead companion. Up through the Sixteenth, where a great company of people stood silent and with bared heads, the sad procession moved, past the old church, up through the swamp, and so onward to the home of the dead. None of the Macdonald gang turned aside to their homes till they had given their comrade over into the keeping of his own people. By the time the Cameron's gate was reached the night had grown thick and black, and the drivers were glad enough of the cedar bark torches that Ranald and Don waved in front of the teams to light the way up the lane. In silence Donald Ross, who was leading, drove up his team to the little garden gate and allowed the great Macdonald and Dannie to alight.
At the gate stood Long John Cameron, silent and self-controlled, but with face showing white and haggard in the light of the flaring torches. Behind him, in the shadow, stood the minister. For a few moments they all remained motionless and silent. The time was too great for words, and these men knew when it was good to hold their peace. At length Macdonald Bhain broke the silence, saying in his great deep voice, as he bared his head: "Mr. Cameron, I have brought you back your son, and God is my witness, I would his place were mine this night."
"Bring him in, Mr. Macdonald," replied the father, gravely and steadily. "Bring him in. It is the Lord; let Him do what seemeth Him good."
Then six of the Macdonald men came forward from the darkness, Curly and Yankee leading the way, and lifted the coffin from Farquhar's wagon, and reverently, with heads uncovered, they followed the torches to the door. There they stopped suddenly, for as they reached the threshold, there arose a low, long, heart-smiting cry from within. At the sound of that cry Ranald staggered as if struck by a blow, and let his torch fall to the ground. The bearers waited, looking at each other in fear.
"Whisht, Janet, woman! "said Long John, gravely. "Your son is at the door."
"Ah, indeed, that he is, that he is! My son! My son!
She stood in the doorway with hands uplifted and with tears streaming down her face, "Come in, Malcolm; come in, my boy. Your mother is waiting for you.
Then they carried him in and laid him in the "room," and retiring to the kitchen, sat down to watch the night.
In half an hour the father came out and found them there.
"You have done what you could, Mr. Macdonald," he said, addressing him for all, "and I will not be unmindful of your kindness. But now you can do no more. Your wife and your people will be waiting you.
"And, please God, in good time they will be seeing us. As for me, I will neither go to my home nor up into my bed, but I will watch by the man who was my faithful friend and companion till he is laid away." And in this mind he and his men remained firm, taking turns at the watching all that night and the next day.
As Macdonald finished speaking, the minister came into the kitchen, bringing with him the mother and the children. The men all rose to their feet, doing respect to the woman and to her grief. When they were seated again, the minister rose and said: "My friends, this is a night for silence and not for words. The voice of the Lord is speaking in our ears. It becomes us to hear, and to submit ourselves to His holy will. Let us pray. "
As Ranald listened to the prayer, he could not help thinking how different it was from those he was accustomed to hear from the pulpit. Solemn, simple, and direct, it lifted the hearts of all present up to the throne of God, to the place of strength and of peace. There was no attempt to explain the "mystery of the Providence, "but there was a sublime trust that refused to despair even in the presence of impenetrable darkness.
After the minister had gone, Macdonald Bhain took Ranald aside and asked him as to the arrangements for the funeral. When Ranald had explained to him every detail, Macdonald laid his hand on his nephew's shoulder and said, kindly, "It is well done, Ranald. Now you will be going home, and in the morning you will see your aunt, and if she will be wishing to come to the wake to-morrow night, then you will bring her."
Then Ranald went home, feeling well repaid for his long hours of anxiety and toil.
CHAPTER XI
THE WAKE
The wake was an important feature in the social life of the people of Indian Lands. In ancient days, in the land of their forefathers, the wake had been deemed a dire necessity for the safeguarding of the dead, who were supposed to be peculiarly exposed to the malicious attacks of evil spirits. Hence, with many lighted candles, and with much incantation, friends would surround the body through the perilous hours of darkness. It was a weird and weary vigil, and small wonder if it appeared necessary that the courage and endurance of the watchers should be fortified with copious draughts of "mountain dew," with bread and cheese accompaniments. And the completeness of their trust in the efficacy of such supports was too often evidenced by the condition of the watchers toward the dawn of the morning. And, indeed, if the spirits were not too fastidious, and if they had so desired, they could have easily flown away, not only with the "waked," but with the "wakers" as well.
But those days and those notions had long passed away. The wake still remained, but its meaning and purpose had changed. No longer for the guarding of the dead, but for the comfort of the living, the friends gathered to the house of mourning and watched the weary hours. But Highland courtesy forbade that the custom of refreshing the watchers should be allowed to die out, and hence, through the night, once and again, the whisky, bread, and cheese were handed around by some close friend of the family, and were then placed upon the table for general use. It was not surprising that, where all were free to come and welcome to stay, and where anything like scantiness in providing or niggardliness in serving would be a matter of family disgrace, the wake often degenerated into a frolic, if not a debauch. In order to check any such tendency, it had been the custom of late years to introduce religious services, begun by the minister himself and continued by the elders.
As the evening fell, a group of elders stood by the back door of Long John Cameron's sorrow-stricken home, talking quietly over the sad event and arranging for the "exercises" of the night. At a little distance from them sat Yankee, with Ranald beside him, both silent and listening somewhat indifferently to the talk of the others. Yankee was not in his element. He was always welcome in the homes of his comrades, for he was ready with his tongue and clever with his fingers, but with the graver and religious side of their lives he had little in common. It was, perhaps, this feeling that drew him toward Macdonald Dubh and Ranald, so that for weeks at a time he would make their house his home. He had "no use for wakes," as he said himself, and had it not been that it was one of the gang that lay dead within, Yankee would have avoided the house until all was over and the elders safely away.
Of the elders, only four were present as yet: Donald Ross, who was ever ready to bring the light of his kindly face to cheer the hearts of the mourners; Straight Rory, who never, by any chance, allowed himself to miss the solemn joy of leading the funeral psalm; Peter McRae, who carried behind his stern old face a heart of genuine sympathy; and Kenny Crubach, to whom attendance at funerals was at once a duty and a horror.
Donald Ross, to whom all the elders accorded, instinctively, the place of leader, was arranging the order of "the exercises."
"Mr. McCuaig," he said to Straight Rory, "you will take charge of the singing. The rest of us will, in turn, give out a psalm and read a portion of Scripture with a few suitable remarks, and lead in prayer. We will not be forgetting, brethren," said old Donald, "that there will be sore hearts here this night."
Straight Rory's answer was a sigh so woeful and so deep that Yankee looked over at him and remarked in an undertone to Ranald, "He ain't so cheerful as he might be. He must feel awful inside."
"It is a sad and terrible day for the Camerons," said Peter McRae.
"Aye, it is sad, indeed," replied Donald Ross. "He was a good son and they will be missing him bad. It is a great loss."
"Yes, the loss is great," said Peter, grimly. "But, after all, that is a small thing."
Straight Rory sighed again even more deeply than before. Donald Ross said nothing.
"What does the old duck mean, anyhow?" said Yankee to Ranald.
The boy made no reply. His heart was sick with horror at Peter's meaning, which he understood only too well.
"Aye," went on Peter, "it is a terrible, mysterious Providence, and a heavy warning to the ungodly and careless."
"He means me, I guess," remarked Yankee to Ranald.
"It will perhaps be not amiss to any of us," said Kenny Crubach, sharply.
"Indeed, that is true," said Donald Ross, in a very humble voice.
"Yes, Mr. Ross," said Peter, ignoring Kenny Crubach, "but at times the voice of Providence cannot be misunderstood, and it will not do for the elders of the church to be speaking soft things when the Lord is speaking in judgment and wrath."
Donald was silent, while Straight Rory assented with a heartrending "Aye, aye," which stirred Yankee's bile again.
"What's he talkin' about? He don't seem to be usin' my language," he said, in a tone of wrathful perplexity. Ranald was too miserable to answer, but Kenny was ready with his word.
"Judgment and wrath," he echoed, quickly. "The man would require to be very skillful whatever in interpreting the ways of Providence, and very bold to put such a meaning into the death of a young man such as Malcolm yonder." The little man's voice was vibrating with feeling.
Then Yankee began to understand. "I'll be golblamed to a cinder!" he exclaimed, in a low voice, falling back upon a combination that seemed more suitable to the circumstances. "They ain't sendin' him to hell, are they?" He shut up the knife with which he had been whittling with a sharp snap, and rising to his feet, walked slowly over to the group of elders.
"Far be it from me to judge what is not to be seen," said Peter. "But we are allowed and commanded to discern the state of the heart by the fruits."
"Fruits?" replied Kenny, quickly. "He was a good son and brother and friend ; he was honest and clean, and he gave his life for another at the last."
"Exactly so," said Peter. "I am not denying much natural goodness, for indeed he was a fine lad; but I will be looking for the evidence that he was in a state of grace. I have not heard of any, and glad would I be to hear it."
The old man's emotion took the sharpness out of Kenny's speech, but he persisted, stoutly, "Goodness is goodness, Mr. McRae, for all that."
"You will not be holding the Armenian doctrine of works, Mr. Campbell?" said Peter, severely. "You would not be pointing to good works as a ground of salvation?"
Yankee, who had been following the conversation intently, thought he saw meaning in it at last.
"If I might take a hand," he said, diffidently, "I might contribute somethin' to help you out."
Peter regarded him a little impatiently. He had forgotten the concrete, for the moment, in the abstract, and was donning his armor for a battle with Kenny upon the "fundamentals." Hence he was not too well pleased with Yankee's interruption. But Donald Ross gladly welcomed the diversion. The subject was to him extremely painful.
"We will be glad," he said to Yankee, "to hear you, Mr. Latham."
"Well," said Yankee, slowly, "from your remarks I gathered that you wanted information about the doings of—" he jerked his head toward the house behind him. "Now, I want to say," he continued, confidentially, "you've come to the right shop, for I've ate and slept, I've worked and fought, I've lived with him by day and by night, and right through he was the straightest, whitest man I ever seen, and I won't except the boss himself." Yankee paused to consider the effect of this statement, and to allow its full weight to be appreciated ; and then he continued: "Yes, sir, you may just bet your—you may be right well sure," correcting himself, "that you're safe in givin'"—here he dropped his voice, and jerked his head toward the house again—"in givin' the highest marks, full value, and no discount. Why," he went on, with an enthusiasm rare in him, "ask any man in the gang, any man on the river, if they ever seen or heard of his doin' a mean or crooked thing, and if you find any feller who says he did, bring him here, and, by"—Yankee remembered himself in time—"and I give you my solemn word that I'll eat him, hat and boots." Yankee brought his bony fist down with a whack into his hand. Then he relapsed into his lazy drawl again: "No, siree, hoss! If it's doin's you're after, don't you be slow in bankin' your little heap on his doin's."
Donald Ross grasped Yankee's hand and shook it hard. "I will be thanking you for that word," he said, earnestly.
But Peter felt that the cause of truth demanded that he should speak out. "Mr. Latham," he said, solemnly, "what you have been saying is very true, no doubt, but if a man is not 'born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.' These are the words of the Lord himself."
"Born again!" said Yankee. "How? I don't seem to get you. But I guess the feller that does the right thing all round has got a purty good chance."
"It is not a man's deeds, we are told," said Peter, patiently, "but his heart."
"There you are," said Yankee, warmly, "right again, and that's what I always hold to. It's the heart a man carries round in his inside. Never mind your talk, never mind your actin' up for people to see. Give me the heart that is warm and red, and beats proper time, you bet. Say! you're all right." Yankee gazed admiringly at the perplexed and hopeless Peter.
"I am afraid you are not remembering what the Apostle Paul said, Mr. Latham," said Peter, determined to deal faithfully with Yankee. "'By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified.'"
It was now Yankee's turn to gaze helplessly at Peter. "I guess you have dropped me again," he said, slowly.
"Man," said Peter, with a touch of severity, "you will need to be more faithful with the Word of God. The Scriptures plainly declare, Mr. Latham, that it is impossible for a man to be saved in his natural state."
Yankee looked blank at this.
"The prophet says that the plowing and sowing, the very prayers, of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord."
"Why, now you're talkin', but look here." Yankee lowered his tone. "Look here, you wouldn't go for to call"—here again he jerked his head toward the house—"wicked, would you? Fur if you do, why, there ain't any more conversation between you and me."
Yankee was terribly in earnest.
"'There is none righteous, no, not one,'" quoted Peter, with the air of a man who forces himself to an unpleasant duty.
"That's so, I guess," said Yankee, meditatively, "but it depends some on what you mean. I don't set myself up for any copy-book head-line, but as men go—men, say, just like you here—I'd put—I'd put him alongside, wouldn't you? You expect to get through yourself, I judge?"
This was turning the tables somewhat sharply upon Peter, but Yankee's keen, wide-open eyes were upon him, and his intensely earnest manner demanded an answer.
"Indeed, if it will be so, it will not be for any merit of my own, but only because of the mercy of the Lord in Christ Jesus." Peter's tone was sincerely humble.
"Guess you're all right," said Yankee, encouragingly; "and as for—as for—him—don't you worry about that. You may be dead sure about his case."
But Peter only shook his head hopelessly. "You are sorely in need of instruction, Mr. Latham," he said, sadly. "We cannot listen to our hearts in this matter. We must do honor to the justice of God, and the word is clear, 'Ye must be born again.' Nothing else avails." Peter's tone was final.
Then Yankee drew a little nearer to him, as if settling down to work.
"Now look here. You let me talk awhile. I ain't up in your side of the business, but I guess we are tryin' to make the same point. Now supposin' you was in for a hoss race, which I hope ain't no offense, seein' it ain't likely but suppose, and to take first money you had to perdoose a two-fifteen gait. 'Purty good lick,' says you; 'now where will I get the nag?' Then you sets down and thinks, and, says you, 'By gum,' which of course you wouldn't, but supposin' says you, 'a Blue Grass bred is the hoss for that gait'; and you begin to inquire around, but there ain't no Blue Grass bred stock in the country, and that race is creepin' up close. One day, just when you was beginnin' to figure on takin' the dust to the hull field, you sees a colt comin' along the road hittin' up a purty slick gait. 'Hello,' says you, 'that looks likely,' and you begin to negotiate, and you finds out that colt's all right and her time's two-ten. Then you begin to talk about the weather and the crops until you finds out the price, and you offer him half money. Then, when you have fetched him down to the right figure, you pulls out your wad, thinkin' how that colt will make the rest look like a line of fence-posts. 'But hold on,' says you, 'is this here colt Blue Grass bred?' 'Blue Grass! Not much. This here's Grey Eagle stock, North Virginny' says he. 'Don't want her,' says you. 'What's the matter with the colt?' says he. 'Nothin', only she ain't Blue Grass. Got to be Blue Grass.' 'But she's got the gait, ain't she?' 'Yes, the gait's all right, action fine, good-looking, too, nothing wrong, but she ain't Blue Grass bred.' And so you lose your race. Now what kind of a name would you call yourself?"
Peter saw Yankee's point, but he only shook his head more hopelessly than before, and turned to enter the house, followed by Straight Rory, still sighing deeply, and old Donald Ross. But Kenny remained a moment behind the others, and offering his hand to Yankee, said: "You are a right man, and I will be proud to know you better."
Yankee turned a puzzled face to Kenny. "I say," he inquired, in an amazed voice, "do you think he didn't catch on to me?"
Kenny nodded. "Yes, he understood your point."
"But look here," said Yankee, "they don't hold that—that he is—" Yankee paused. The thought was too horrible, and these men were experts, and were supposed to know.
"It's hard to say," said Kenny, diplomatically.
"See here," said Yankee, facing Kenny squarely, "you're a purty level-headed man, and you're up in this business. Do you think with them? No monkeying. Straight talk now." Yankee was in no mood to be trifled with. He was in such deadly earnest that he had forgotten all about Ranald, who was now standing behind him, waiting, with white face and parted lips, for Kenny's answer.
"Whisht!" said Kenny, pointing into the kitchen behind. Yankee looked and saw Bella Peter and her father entering. But Ranald was determined to know Kenny's opinion.
"Mr. Campbell," he whispered, eagerly, and forgetting the respect due to an elder, he grasped Kenny's arm, "do you think with them?"
"That I do not," said Kenny, emphatically, and Yankee, at that word, struck his hand into Kenny's palm with a loud smack.
"I knew blamed well you were not any such dumb fool," he said, softening his speech in deference to Kenny's office and the surrounding circumstances. So saying, he went away to the stable, and when Ranald and his uncle, Macdonald Bhain, followed a little later to put up Peter McGregor's team, they heard Yankee inside, swearing with a fluency and vigor quite unusual with him.
"Whisht, man!" said Macdonald Bhain, sternly. "This is no place or time to be using such language. What is the matter with you, anyway?"
But Macdonald could get no satisfaction out of him, and he said to his nephew, "What is it, Ranald?"
It is the elders, Peter McRae and Straight Rory, " said Ranald, sullenly. "They were saying that Mack was—that Mack was—"
"Look here, boss," interrupted Yankee, "I ain't well up in Scriptures, and don't know much about these things, and them elders do, and they say—some of them, anyway—are sending Mack to hell. Now, I guess you're just as well up as they are in this business, and I want your solemn opinion." Yankee's face was pale, and his eyes were glaring like a wild beast's. "What I say is," he went on, "if a feller like Mack goes to hell, then there ain't any. At least none to scare me. Where Mack is will be good enough for me. What do you say, boss?"
"Be quiet, man," said Macdonald Bhain, gravely, but kindly. "Do you not know you are near to blasphemy there? But I forgive you for the sore heart you have; and about poor Mack yonder, no one will be able to say for certain. I am a poor sinner, and the only claim I have to God's mercy is the claim of a poor sinner. But I will dare to say that I have hope in the Lord for myself, and I will say that I have a great deal more for Mack."
"I guess that settles it all right, then," said Yankee, drawing a big breath of content and biting off a huge chew from his plug. "But what the blank blank," he went on, savagely, "do these fellers mean, stirring up a man's feelin's like that? Seem to be not a bad sort, either," he added, meditatively.
"Indeed, they are good men," said Macdonald Bhain, "but they will not be knowing Mack as I knew him. He never made any profession at all, but he had the root of the matter in him."
Ranald felt as if he had wakened out of a terrible nightmare, and followed his uncle into the house, with a happier heart than he had known since he had received Yankee's letter.
As they entered the room where the people were gathered, Donald Ross was reading the hundred and third psalm, and the words of love and pity and sympathy were dropping from his kindly lips like healing balm upon the mourning hearts, and as they rose and fell upon the cadences of "Coleshill," the tune Straight Rory always chose for this psalm, the healing sank down into all the sore places, and the peace that passeth understanding began to take possession of them.
Softly and sweetly they sang, the old women swaying with the music:
"For, as the heaven in its height
The earth surmounteth far,
So great to those that do him fear,
His tender mercies are."
When they reached that verse, the mother took up the song and went bravely on through the words of the following verse:
"As far as east is distant from
The west, so far hath he
From us removed, in his love,
All our iniquity."
As she sang the last words her hand stole over to Bella, who sat beside her quiet but tearless, looking far away. But when the next words rose on the dear old minor strains,
"Such pity as a father hath
Unto his children dear,"
Bella's lip began to tremble, and two big tears ran down her pale cheeks, and one could see that the sore pain in her heart had been a little eased.
After Donald Ross had finished his part of the "exercises," he called upon Kenny Crubach, who read briefly, and without comment, the exquisite Scottish paraphrase of Luther's "little gospel":
"Behold the amazing gift of love
The Father hath bestowed
On us, the sinful sons of men,
To call us sons of God—"
and so on to the end.
All this time Peter McRae, the man of iron, had been sitting with hardening face, his eyes burning in his head like glowing coals; and when Donald Ross called upon him for "some words of exhortation and comfort suitable to the occasion," without haste and without hesitation the old man rose, and trembling with excitement and emotion, he began abruptly: "An evil spirit has been whispering to me, as to the prophet of old, 'Speak that which is good,' but the Lord hath delivered me from mine enemy, and my answer is, 'As the Lord liveth, what the Lord said unto me, that will I speak'; and it is not easy."
As the old man paused, a visible terror fell upon all the company assembled. The poor mother sat looking at him with the look of one shrinking from a blow, while Bella Peter's face expressed only startled fear.
"And this is the word of the Lord this night to me," the elder went on, his voice losing its tremor and ringing out strong and clear: "'There is none righteous, no, not one, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. He that believeth shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.' That is my message, and it is laid upon me as a sore burden to hear the voice of the Lord in this solemn Providence, and to warn one and all to flee from the wrath to come."
He paused long, while men could hear their hearts beat. Then, raising his voice, he cried aloud: "Woe is me! Alas! it is a grievous burden. The Lord pity us all, and give grace to this stricken family to kiss the rod that smites."
At this word the old man's voice suddenly broke, and he sat down amid an awful silence. No one could misunderstand his meaning. As the awful horror of it gradually made its way into her mind, Mrs. Cameron threw up her apron over her head and rocked in an agony of sobs, while Long John sat with face white and rigid. Bella Peter, who had been gazing with a fascinated stare upon the old elder's face while he was speaking his terrible words, startled by Mrs. Cameron's sobs, suddenly looked wildly about as if for help, and then, with a wild cry, fled toward the door. But before she had reached it a strong hand caught her and a great voice, deep and tender, commanded her: "Wait, lassie, sit down here a meenute." It was Macdonald Bhain. He stood a short space silent before the people, then, in a voice low, deep, and thrilling, he began: "You have been hearing the word of the Lord through the lips of his servant, and I am not saying but it is the true word; but I believe that the Lord will be speaking by different voices, and although I hev not the gift, yet it is laid upon me to declare what is in my heart, and a sore heart it is, and sore hearts hev we all. But I will be thinking of a fery joyful thing, and that is that 'He came to call, not the righteous, but sinners,' and that in His day many sinners came about Him and not one would He turn away. And I will be remembering a fery great sinner who cried out in his dying hour, 'Lord, remember me,' and not in vain. And I'm thinking that the Lord will be making it easy for men to be saved, and not hard, for He was that anxious about it that He gave up His own life. But it is not given me to argue, only to tell you what I know about the lad who is lying yonder silent. It will be three years since he will be coming on the shanties with me, and from the day that he left his mother's door, till he came back again, never once did he fail me in his duty in the camp, or on the river, or in the town, where it was fery easy to be forgetting. And the boys would be telling me of the times that he would be keeping them out of those places. And it is not soon that Dannie Ross will be forgetting who it was that took him back from the camp when the disease was upon him and all were afraid to go near him, and for seex weeks, by day and by night, watched by him and was not thinking of himself at all. And sure am I that the lessons he would be hearing from his mother and in the Bible class and in the church were not lost on him whatever. For on the river, when the water was quiet and I would be lying in the tent reading, it is often that Mack Cameron would come in and listen to the Word. Aye, he was a good lad"—the great voice shook a little—"he would not be thinking of himself, and at the last, it was for another man he gave his life."
Macdonald stood for a few moments silent, his face working while he struggled with himself. And then all at once he grew calm, and throwing back his head, he looked through the door, and pointing into the darkness, said: "And yonder is the lad, and with him a great company, and his face is smiling, and, oh! it is a good land, a good land!" His voice dropped to a whisper, and he sank into his seat.
"God preserve us!" Kenny Crubach ejaculated; but old Donald Ross rose and said, "Let us call upon the name of the Lord." From his prayer it was quite evident that for him at least all doubts and fears as to poor Mack's state were removed. And even Peter McRae, subdued not so much by any argument of Macdonald Bhain's as by his rapt vision, followed old Donald's prayer with broken words of hope and thanksgiving; and it was Peter who was early at the manse next morning to repeat to the minister the things he had seen and heard the night before. And all next day, where there had been the horror of unnamable fear, hope and peace prevailed.
The service was held under the trees, and while the mother and Bella Peter sat softly weeping, there was no bitterness in their tears, for the sermon breathed of the immortal hope, and the hearts of all were comforted. There was no parade of grief, but after the sermon was over the people filed quietly through the room to take the last look, and then the family, with Bella and her father, were left alone a few moments with their dead, while the Macdonald men kept guard at the door till the time for "the lifting" would come.
After Long John passed out, followed by the family, Macdonald Bhain entered the room, closed the lid down upon the dead face, and gave the command to bear him forth.
So, with solemn dignity, as befitted them, they carried Big Mack from his home to Farquhar McNaughton's light wagon. Along the concession road, past the new church, through the swamp, and on to the old churchyard the long procession slowly moved. There was no unseemly haste, and by the time the last words were spoken, and the mound decently rounded, the long shadows from the woods lay far across the fields. Quietly the people went their ways homeward back to their life and work, but for many days they carried with them the memory of those funeral scenes. And Ranald, though he came back from Big Mack's grave troubled with questions that refused to be answered, still carried with him a heart healed of the pain that had torn it these last days. He believed it was well with his friend, but about many things he was sorely perplexed, and it was this that brought him again to the minister's wife.
CHAPTER XII
SEED-TIME
The day after Big Mack's funeral, Ranald was busy polishing Lisette's glossy skin, before the stable door. This was his favorite remedy for gloomy thoughts, and Ranald was full of gloomy thoughts to-day. His father, though going about the house, was still weak, and worse than all, was fretting in his weakness. He was oppressed with the terrible fear that he would never again be able to do a man's work, and Ranald knew from the dark look in his father's face that day and night the desire for vengeance was gnawing at his heart, and Ranald also knew something of the bitterness of this desire from the fierce longing that lay deep in his own. Some day, when his fingers would be feeling for LeNoir's throat, he would drink long and fully that sweet draught of vengeance. He knew, too, that it added to the bitterness in his father's heart to know that, in the spring's work that every warm day was bringing nearer, he could take no part; and that was partly the cause of Ranald's gloom. With the slow-moving oxen, he could hardly hope to get the seed in in time, and they needed the crop this year if ever they did, for last year's interest on the mortgage was still unpaid and the next installment was nearly due.
As he was putting the finishing touches upon Lisette's satin skin, Yankee drove up to the yard with his Fox horse and buckboard. His box was strapped on behind, and his blankets, rolled up in a bundle, filled the seat beside him.
"Mornin'," he called to Ranald. "Purty fine shine, that, and purty fine mare, all round," he continued, walking about Lisette and noting admiringly her beautiful proportions.
"Purty fine beast," he said, in a low tone, running his hands down her legs. "Guess you wouldn't care to part with that mare?"
"No," said Ranald, shortly; but as he spoke his heart sank within him.
"Ought to fetch a fairly good figure," continued Yankee, meditatively. "Le's see. She's from La Roque's Lisette, ain't she? Ought to have some speed." He untied Lisette's halter. "Take her down in the yard yonder," he said to Ranald.
Ranald threw the halter over Lisette's neck, sprang on her back, and sent her down the lane at a good smart pace. At the bottom of the lane he wheeled her, and riding low upon her neck, came back to the barn like a whirlwind.
"By jings!" exclaimed Yankee, surprised out of his lazy drawl; "she's got it, you bet your last brick. See here, boy, there's money into that animal. Thought I would like to have her for my buckboard, but I have got an onfortunit conscience that won't let me do up any partner, so I guess I can't make any offer."
Ranald stood beside Lisette, his arm thrown over her beautiful neck, and his hand fondling her gently about the ears. "I will not sell her." His voice was low and fierce, and all the more so because he knew that was just what he would do, and his heart was sick with the pain of the thought.
"I say," said Yankee, suddenly, "cudn't bunk me in your loft, cud you! Can't stand the town. Too close."
The confining limitations of the Twentieth, that metropolitan center of some dozen buildings, including the sawmill and blacksmith shop, were too trying for Yankee's nervous system.
"Yes, indeed," said Ranald, heartily. "We will be very glad to have you, and it will be the very best thing for father."
"S'pose old Fox cud nibble round the brûle" continued Yankee, nodding his head toward his sorrel horse. "Don't think I will do much drivin' machine business. Rather slow." Yankee spent the summer months selling sewing-machines and new patent churns.
"There's plenty of pasture," said Ranald, "and Fox will soon make friends with Lisette. She is very kind, whatever."
"Ain't ever hitched her, have you?" said Yankee.
"No."
"Well, might hitch her up some day. Guess you wudn't hurt the buckboard."
"Not likely," said Ranald, looking at the old, ramshackle affair.
"Used to drive some myself," said Yankee. But to this idea Ranald did not take kindly.
Yankee stood for a few moments looking down the lane and over the fields, and then, turning to Ranald, said, "Guess it's about ready to begin plowin'. Got quite a lot of it to do, too, ain't you?"
"Yes," said Ranald, "I was thinking I would be beginning to-morrow."
"Purty slow business with the oxen. How would it do to hitch up Lisette and old Fox yonder?"
Then Ranald understood the purpose of Yankee's visit.
"I would be very glad," said Ranald, a great load lifting from his heart. "I was afraid of the work with only the oxen." And then, after a pause, he added, "What did you mean about buying Lisette?" He was anxious to have that point settled.
"I said what I meant," answered Yankee, "I thought perhaps you would rather have the money than the colt; but I tell you what, I hain't got money enough to put into that bird, and don't you talk selling to any one till we see her gait hitched up. But I guess a little of the plow won't hurt for a few weeks or so."
Next day Lisette left behind her forever the free, happy days of colthood. At first Ranald was unwilling to trust her to any other hands than his own, but when he saw how skillfully and gently Yankee handled her, soothing her while he harnessed and hitched her up, he recognized that she was safer with Yankee than with himself, and allowed him to have the reins.
They spent the morning driving up and down the lane with Lisette and Fox hitched to the stone-boat. The colt had been kindly treated from her earliest days, and consequently knew nothing of fear. She stepped daintily beside old Fox, fretting and chafing in the harness, but without thought of any violent objection. In the afternoon the colt was put through her morning experience, with the variation that the stone-boat was piled up with a fairly heavy load of earth and stone. And about noon the day following, Lisette was turning her furrow with all the steadiness of a horse twice her age.
Before two weeks were over, Yankee, with the horses, and Ranald, with the oxen, had finished the plowing, and in another ten days the fields lay smooth and black, with the seed harrowed safely in, waiting for the rain.
Yankee's visit had been a godsend, not only to Ranald with his work, but also to Macdonald Dubh. He would talk to the grim, silent man by the hour, after the day's work was done, far into the night, till at length he managed to draw from him the secret of his misery.
"I will never be a man again," he said, bitterly, to Yankee. "And there is the farm all to pay for. I have put it off too long and now it is too late, and it is all because of that—that—brute beast of a Frenchman."
"Mean cuss!" ejaculated Yankee.
"And I am saying," continued Macdonald Dubh, opening his heart still further, "I am saying, it was no fair fight, whatever. I could whip him with one hand. It was when I was pulling out Big Mack, poor fellow, from under the heap, that he took me unawares."
"That's so," assented Yankee. "Blamed low-down trick."
"And, oh, I will be praying God to give me strength just to meet him ! I will ask no more. But," he added, in bitter despair, "there is no use for me to pray. Strength will come to me no more."
"Well," said Yankee, brightly, "needn't worry about that varmint. He ain't worth it, anyhow." "Aye, he is not worth it, indeed, and that is the man who has brought me to this." That was the bitter part to Macdonald Dubh. A man he despised had beaten him.
"Now look here," said Yankee, "course I ain't much good at this, but if you will just quit worryin', I'll undertake to settle this little account with Mr. LeNware."
"And what good would that be to me?" said Macdonald Dubh. "It is myself that wants to meet him." It was not so much the destruction of LeNoir that he desired as that he should have the destroying of him. While he cherished this feeling in his heart, it was not strange that the minister in his visits found Black Hugh unapproachable, and concluded that he was in a state of settled "hardness of heart." His wife knew better, but even she dared not approach Macdonald Dubh on that subject, which had not been mentioned between them since the morning he had opened his heart to her. The dark, haggard, gloomy face haunted her. She longed to help him to peace. It was this that sent her to his brother, Macdonald Bhain, to whom she told as much of the story as she thought wise.
"I am afraid he will never come to peace with God until he comes to peace with this man," she said, sadly, "and it is a bitter load that he is carrying with him."
"I will talk with him, " answered Macdonald Bhain, and at the end of the week he took his way across to his brother's home.
He found him down in the brûle, where he spent most of his days toiling hard with his ax, in spite of the earnest entreaties of Ranald. He was butting a big tree that the fire had laid prone, but the ax was falling with the stroke of a weak man.
As he finished his cut, his brother called to him, "That is no work for you, Hugh; that is no work for a man who has been for six weeks in his bed."
"It is work that must be done, however," Black Hugh answered, bitterly.
"Give me the ax," said Macdonald Bhain. He mounted the tree as his brother stepped down, and swung his ax deep into the wood with a mighty blow. Then he remembered, and stopped. He would not add to his brother's bitterness by an exhibition of his mighty, unshaken strength. He stuck the ax into the log, and standing up, looked over the brûle. "It is a fine bit of ground, Hugh, and will raise a good crop of potatoes."
"Aye," said Macdonald Dubh, sadly. "It has lain like this for three years, and ought to have been cleared long ago, if I had been doing my duty."
"Indeed, it will burn all the better for that," said his brother, cheerfully. "And as for the potatoes, there is a bit of my clearing that Ranald might as well use.
But Black Hugh shook his head. "Ranald will use no man's clearing but his own," he said. "I am afraid he has got too much of his father in him for his own good."
Macdonald Bhain glanced at his brother's face with a look of mingled pity and admiration. "Ah," he said, "Hugh, it's a proud man you are. Macdonalds have plenty of that, whatever, and we come by it good enough. Do you remember at home, when our father"—and he went off into a reminiscence of their boyhood days, talking in gentle, kindly, loving tones, till the shadow began to lift from his brother's face, and he, too, began to talk. They spoke of their father, who had always been to them a kind of hero; and of their mother, who had lived, and toiled, and suffered for her family with uncomplaining patience.
"She was a good woman," said Macdonald Bhain, with a note of tenderness in his voice. "And it was the hard load she had to bear, and I would to God she were living now, that I might make up to her something of what she suffered for me."
"And I am thankful to God," said his brother, bitterly, "that she is not here to see me now, for it would but add to the heavy burden I often laid upon her."
"You will not be saying that," said Macdonald Bhain. "But I am saying that the Lord will be honored in you yet."
"Indeed, there is not much for me," said his brother, gloomily, "but the sick-bed and six feet or more of the damp earth."
"Hugh, man," said his brother, hastily, "you must not be talking like that. It is not the speech of a brave man. It is the speech of a man that is beaten in his fight."
"Beaten!" echoed his brother, with a kind of cry. "You have said the word. Beaten it is, and by a man that is no equal of mine. You know that," he said, appealing, almost anxiously, to his brother. "You know that well. You know that I am brought to this"—he held up his gaunt, bony hands—"by a man that is no equal of mine, and I will never be able to look him in the face and say as much to him. But if the Almighty would send him to hell, I would be following him there."
"Whisht, Hugh," said Macdonald Bhain, in a voice of awe. "It is a terrible word you have said, and may the Lord forgive you."
"Forgive me!" echoed his brother, in a kind of frenzy. "Indeed, he will not be doing that. Did not the minister's wife tell me as much?"
"No, no," said his ^brother. "She would not be saying that."
"Indeed, that is her very word," said Black Hugh.
"She could not say that," said his brother, "for it is not the Word of God."
"Indeed," replied Black Hugh, like a man who had thought it all out, "she would be reading it out of the Book to me that unless I would be forgiving, that—that—" he paused, not being able to find a word, but went on—"then I need not hope to be forgiven my own self."
"Yes, yes. That is true " assented Macdonald Bhain. "But, by the grace of God, you will forgive, and you will be forgiven."
"Forgive!" cried Black Hugh, his face convulsed with passion, "Hear me!"—he raised his hand to heaven.—"If I ever forgive—"
But his brother caught his arm and drew it down swiftly, saying: "Whisht, man. Don't tempt the Almighty." Then he added, "You would not be shutting yourself out from the presence of the Lord and from the presence of those he has taken to himself?"
His brother stood silent a few moments, his hard, dark face swept with a storm of emotions. Then he said, brokenly: "It is not for me, I doubt."
But his brother caught him by the arm and said to him, "Hear me, Hugh. It is for you."
They walked on in silence till they were near the house. Ranald and Yankee were driving their teams into the yard.
"That is a fine lad," said Macdonald Bhain, pointing to Ranald.
"Aye," said his brother; "it is a pity he has not a better chance. He is great for his books, but he has no chance whatever, and he will be a bowed man before he has cleared this farm and paid the debt on it."
"Never you fear," said his brother. "Ranald will do well. But, man, what a size he is!"
"He is that," said his father, proudly. "He is as big as his father, and I doubt some day he may be as good a man as his uncle."
"God grant he may be a better!" said Macdonald Bhain, reverently.
"If he be as good," said his brother, kindly, "I will be content; but I will not be here to see it."
"Whisht, man," said his brother, hastily. "You are not to speak such things, nor have them in your mind. "Ah," said Macdonald Dubh, sadly, "my day is not far off, and that I know right well."
Macdonald Bhain flung his arm hastily round his brother's shoulder. "Do not speak like that, Hugh," he said, his voice breaking suddenly. And then he drew away his arm as if ashamed of his emotion, and said, with kindly dignity, "Please God, you will see many days yet, and see your boy come to honor among men."
But Black Hugh only shook his head in silence.
Before they came to the door, Macdonald Bhain said, with seeming indifference, "You have not been to church since you got up, Hugh. You will be going to-morrow, if it is a fine day?"
"It is too long a walk, I doubt," answered his brother.
"That it is, but Yankee will drive you in his buckboard," said Macdonald Bhain.
"In the buckboard?" said Macdonald Dubh. "And, indeed, I was never in a buckboard in my life."
"It is not too late to begin to-morrow," said his brother, "and it will do you good."
"I doubt that," said Black Hugh, gloomily. "The church will not [be doing me much good any more."
"Do not say such a thing; and Yankee will drive you in his buckboard to-morrow."
His brother did not promise, but next day the congregation received a shock of surprise to see Macdonald Dubh walk down the aisle to his place in the church. And through all the days of the spring and summer his place was never empty; and though the shadow never lifted from his face, the minister's wife felt comforted about him, and waited for the day of his deliverance.
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