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 treetops, 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.