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.