CHAPTER XVII

LENOIR'S NEW MASTER

The shantymen came back home to find the revival still going on. Not a home but had felt its mighty power, and not a man, woman, or even child but had come more or less under its influence. Indeed, so universal was that power that Yankee was heard to say, "The boys wouldn't go in swimmin' without their New Testaments"--not but that Yankee was in very fullest sympathy with the movement. He was regular in his attendance upon the meetings all through spring and summer, but his whole previous history made it difficult for him to fully appreciate the intensity and depth of the religious feeling that was everywhere throbbing through the community.

"Don't see what the excitement's for," he said to Macdonald Bhain one night after meeting. "Seems to me the Almighty just wants a feller to do the right thing by his neighbor and not be too independent, but go 'long kind o' humble like and keep clean. Somethin' wrong with me, perhaps, but I don't seem to be able to work up no excitement about it. I'd like to, but somehow it ain't in me."

When Macdonald Bhain reported this difficulty of Yankee's to Mrs.

Murray, she only said: "'What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'" And with this Macdonald Bhain was content, and when he told Yankee, the latter came as near to excitement as he ever allowed himself. He chewed vigorously for a few moments, then, slapping his thigh, he exclaimed: "By jings! That's great. She's all right, ain't she? We ain't all built the same way, but I'm blamed if I don't like her model."

But the shantymen noticed that the revival had swept into the church, during the winter months, a great company of the young people of the congregation; and of these, a band of some ten or twelve young men, with Don among them, were attending daily a special class carried on in the vestry of the church for those who desired to enter training for the ministry.

Mrs. Murray urged Ranald to join this class, for, even though he had no intention of becoming a minister, still the study would be good for him, and would help him in his after career. She remembered how Ranald had told her that he had no intention of being a farmer or lumberman. And Ranald gladly listened to her, and threw himself into his study, using his spare hours to such good purpose throughout the summer that he easily kept pace with the class in English, and distanced them in his favorite subject, mathematics.

But all these months Mrs. Murray felt that Ranald was carrying with him a load of unrest, and she waited for the time when he would come to her.

His uncle, Macdonald Bhain, too, shared her anxiety in regard to Ranald.

"He is the fine, steady lad," he said one night, walking home with her from the church; "and a good winter's work has he put behind him. He is that queeck, there is not a man like him on the drive; but he is not the same boy that he was. He will not be telling me anything, but when the boys will be sporting, he is not with them. He will be reading his book, or he will be sitting by himself alone. He is like his father in the courage of him. There is no kind of water he will not face, and no man on the river would put fear on him. And the strength of him! His arms are like steel. But," returning to his anxiety, "there is something wrong with him. He is not at peace with himself, and I wish you could get speech with him."

"I would like it, too," replied Mrs. Murray. "Perhaps he will come to me. At any rate, I must wait for that."

At last, when the summer was over, and the harvest all gathered in, the days were once more shortening for the fall, Ranald drove Lisette one day to the manse, and went straight to the minister's wife and opened up his mind to her.

"I cannot keep my promise to my father, Mrs. Murray," he said, going at once to the heart of his trouble. "I cannot keep the anger out of my heart. I cannot forgive the man that killed my father. I will be waking at night with the very joy of feeling my fingers on his throat, and I feel myself longing for the day when I will meet him face to face and nothing between us. But," he added, "I promised my father, and I must keep my word, and that is what I cannot do, for the feeling of forgiveness is not here," smiting his breast. "I can keep my hands off him, but the feeling I cannot help."

For a long time Mrs. Murray let him go on without seeking to check the hot flow of his words and without a word of reproof. Then, when he had talked himself to silence, she took her Bible and read to him of the servant who, though forgiven, took his fellow-servant by the throat, refusing to forgive. And then she turned over the leaves and read once more: "'God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.'"

She closed the book and sat silent, waiting for Ranald to speak.

"I know," he said, deliberately; "I have read that often through the winter, but it does not help the feeling I have. I think it only makes it worse. There is some one holding my arm, and I want to strike."

"And do you forget," said Mrs. Murray, and her voice was almost stern, "and do you forget how, for you, God gave His Son to die?"

Ranald shook his head. "I am far from forgetting that."

"And are you forgetting the great mercy of God to your father?"

"No, no," said Ranald; "I often think of that. But when I think of that man, something stirs within me and I cannot see, for the daze before my eyes, and I know that some day I will be at him. I cannot help my feeling."

"Ranald," said Mrs. Murray, "have you ever thought how he will need God's mercy like yourself? And have you never thought that perhaps he has never had the way of God's mercy put before him? To you the Lord has given much, to him little. It is a terrible thing to be ungrateful for the mercy of God; and it is a shameful thing. It is unworthy of any true man. How can any one take the fullness of God's mercy and his patience every day, and hold an ungrateful heart?"

She did not spare him, and as Ranald sat and listened, his life and character began to appear to him small and mean and unworthy.

"The Lord means you to be a noble man, Ranald--a man with the heart and purpose to do some good in the world, to be a blessing to his fellows; and it is a poor thing to be so filled up with selfishness as to have no thought of the honor of God or of the good of men. Louis LeNoir has done you a great wrong, but what is that wrong compared with the wrong you have done to Him who loved you to His own death?"

Then she gave him her last word: "When you see Louis LeNoir, think of God's mercy, and remember you are to do him good and not evil."

And with that word in his heart, Ranald went away, ashamed and humbled, but not forgiving. The time for that had not yet come. But before he left for the shanties, he saw Mrs. Murray again to say good by. He met her with a shamed face, fearing that she must feel nothing but contempt for him.

"You will think ill of me," he said, and in spite of his self-control his voice shook. "I could not bear that."

"No, I could never think ill of you, Ranald, but I would be grieved to think that you should fail of becoming a noble man, strong and brave; strong enough to forgive and brave enough to serve."

Once more Ranald went to the woods, with earnest thoughts in his mind, hoping he should not meet LeNoir, and fighting out his battle to victory; and by the time the drive had reached the big water next spring, that battle was almost over. The days in the silent woods and the nights spent with his uncle in the camp, and afterward in his cabin on the raft, did their work with Ranald.

The timber cut that year was the largest that had ever been known on the Upper Ottawa. There was great crowding of rafts on the drive, and for weeks the chutes were full, and when the rafts were all brought together at Quebec, not only were the shores lined and Timber Cove packed, but the broad river was full from Quebec to Levis, except for the steamboat way which must be kept open.

For the firm of Raymond & St. Clair this meant enormous increase of business, and it was no small annoyance that at this crisis they should have detected their Quebec agent in fraud, and should have been forced to dismiss him. The situation was so critical that Mr. St. Clair himself, with Harry as his clerk, found it necessary to spend a month in Quebec. He took with him Maimie and her great friend Kate Raymond, the daughter of his partner, and established himself in the Hotel Cheval Blanc.

On the whole, Maimie was not sorry to visit the ancient capital of Canada, though she would have chosen another time. It was rather disappointing to leave her own city in the West, just at the beginning of the spring gayeties. It was her first season, and the winter had been distinguished by a series of social triumphs. She was the toast of all the clubs and the belle of all the balls. She had developed a rare and fascinating beauty, and had acquired an air so distingue that even her aunt, Miss St. Clair, was completely satisfied. It was a little hard for her to leave the scene of her triumphs and to abandon the approaching gayeties.

But Quebec had its compensations, and then there were the De Lacys, one of the oldest English families of Quebec. The St. Clairs had known them for many years. Their blood was unquestionably blue, they were wealthy, and besides, the only son and representative of the family was now lieutenant, attached to the garrison at the Citadel. Lieutenant De Lacy suggested possibilities to Maimie. Quebec might be endurable for a month.

"What a lovely view, and how picturesque!"

Maimie was standing at the window looking down upon the river with its fleet of rafts. Beside her stood Kate, and at another window Harry.

"What a lot of timber!" said Harry. "And the town is just full of lumbermen. A fellow said there must be six thousand of them, so there will be lots of fun."

"Fun!" exclaimed Kate.

"Fun! rather. These fellows have been up in the woods for some five or six months, and when they get to town where there is whisky and--and--that sort of thing, they just get wild. They say it is awful."

"Just horrible!" said Maimie, in a disgusted tone.

"But splendid," said Kate; "that is, if they don't hurt any one."

"Hurt anybody!" exclaimed Harry. "Oh, not at all; they are always extremely careful not to hurt any one. They are as gentle as lambs.

I say, let us go down to the river and look at the rafts. De Lacy was coming up, but it is too late now for him. Besides, we might run across Maimie's man from Glengarry."

"Maimie's man from Glengarry!" exclaimed Kate. "Has she a man there, too?"

"Nonsense, Kate!" said Maimie, blushing. "He is talking about Ranald, you know. One of Aunt Murray's young men, up in Glengarry. You have heard me speak of him often."

"Oh, the boy that pulled you out of the fire," said Kate.

"Yes," cried Harry, striking an attitude, "and the boy that for love of her entered the lists, and in a fistic tournament upheld her fair name, and--"

"Oh, Harry, do have some sense!" said Maimie, impatiently. "Hush, here comes some one; Lieutenant De Lacy, I suppose."

It was the lieutenant, handsome, tall, well made, with a high-bred if somewhat dissipated face, an air of blase indifference a little overdone, and an accent which he had brought back with him from Oxford, and which he was anxious not to lose. Indeed, the bare thought of the possibility of his dropping into the flat, semi-nasal of his native land filled the lieutenant with unspeakable horror.

"We were just going down to the river," said Maimie, after the introductions were over, "but I suppose it is all old to you, and you would not care to go?"

"Aw, charmed, I'm sure." (The lieutenant pronounced it "shuah.") "But it is rathaw, don't you know, not exactly clean."

"He is thinking of his boots," said Harry, scornfully, looking down at the lieutenant's shining patent leathers.