Chapter XVI: My Father's Love Story (9)

"'So, friend--you have come to see an old man die,' he said, when his eyes lighted on me; 'what, a bairn of mine, sayst thou--not after the flesh but after the spirit. Aye, I do mind that day at Kells. A gale from the Lord blew about us that day. So you are Harry of the Rude Hand, and you have fallen into sin. Ah, you must not come to me--you must to the Master! You had better have gone to your closet, and worn the whinstone a little with the knees of your breeks. And yet I ken not. None hath been a greater sinner or known greater mercy than Samuel Rutherfurd. I am summoned by the Star Chamber--I go to the chamber of Stars. I will see the King. I will carry Him your message, Harry. Fear not, the young man you smote will recover. He will yet bless you for laying a hand on him, even as this day you acknowledge the unworthy servant who on the green sward of Kells called you out of darkness into His marvellous light.

"'Sir, fare you well. Go home to your wife, nothing doubting. This night shall close the door. At five of the morning I will fasten my anchor within the veil.'

"And even as he said so it was. He passed away, and, as for me, secure that he would carry my message to the Alone Forgiver of Sins I returned home to find the youth recovered and penitent. He afterwards became a noted professor and field preacher, and died sealing his testimony with his blood on the victorious field of Loudon Hill.

"This is the testimony of me, Harry Wedderburn, sometime called Strength-o'-Airm, who now in the valley of peace and a restored Israel wait the consummation of all things. Being very lonely, I write these things out to pass the time till I, too, cast mine anchor within the veil. And I cheer myself with thinking that two shall meet me there, one on either side of the gate--Rachel, my heart's dear partner, and the Little Fair Man, who will take by either hand and lead into the presence of the Friend, poor unworthy Harry Wedderburn, sometime bond-slave of sin, but now servant most unprofitable of the Lord."

(Note by Mr. John Wedderburn.--"_My father departed this life on the morning after finishing this paper, sleeping quietly away about five of the clock._")

*MY FATHER'S LOVE STORY*

When I am putting together family stories, new and old, I may as well tell my father's. Sometimes we of a younger day thought him stiff, silent, out of sympathy with our interests and amusements; but the saving salt of humour that was in him made this only seeming. In reality tolerance and kindliest understanding beaconed from under the covert of his bushy grey eyebrows.

There was the savour of an infinite discernment in the slow "Aye?" with which he was wont to receive any doubtful statement. My mother said ever ten words for his one, and it was his wont to listen to her gravely and unsmilingly, as if giving the subject the profoundest attention, while all the time his thoughts were far away--a fact well understood and much resented by his wife.

"What am I talkin' aboot, Saunders?" she would say, pausing in the midst of a commination upon some new and garish fashion in dress, or the late hours kept by certain young men not a thousand miles away.

"Oh, breaking the second commandment, as usual," he would reply; "discoursing of the heavens above, the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth!"

"Havers," she would reply, her face, however, glancing at him bright as a new-milled shilling, "your thochts were awa' on the mountains o' vainity! Naething richt waukens ye up but a minister to argue wi'!"

And, indeed, that was a true word. For though an unusually silent man, my father, Alexander (or Saunders) McQuhirr, liked nothing better than a minister to argue with--if one of the Kirk of Scotland, well and good. There was the Revolution Settlement, the Headship of Christ, the Power of the Civil Magistrate. My father enjoyed himself thoroughly, and if the minister chanced to be worthy, so did he. But it took a Cameronian or an Original Secession divine really to rouse within him, what my mother called "his bowels of wrath."

"There is a distinct Brownist strain in your opinions, Alexander," Mr. Osbourne would say--his own minister from the Kirk on the Hill. "Your father's name was not Abel for nothing!"[#]

[#] "Abel," "Jacob," "Abraham" were not common names in Scotland, and such as occurred in families during last century might generally be traced to the time of Cromwellian occupation. David and Samuel were the only really common Old Testament names at that time.

Mr. Osbourne generally reminded him of this when he had got the worse of some argument on the true inwardness of the Marrow Controversy. He did not like to be beaten, and my father was a dour arguer. Once it is recorded that the minister brought all the way up to Drumquhat on a Communion Friday--the "off-day" as it were of the Scottish Holy Week--the great Dr. Marcus Lawton himself from Edinburgh. It happened to be a wettish day in the lull between hay and harvest. My father was doing something in the outhouse where he kept his joinering tools, and the two ministers joined him there early in the forenoon. They were well into "Freewill" before my father was at the end of the board he had been planing. "Predestination" was the overword of their conversation at the noonday meal, which all three seemed to partake of as dispassionately as if they had been stoking a fire--this to the great indignation of my mother, who having been warned of the proposed honour, had given herself even more completely to hospitality than was habitual with her.

Mr. Osbourne, indeed, made a pretext of talking to her about the price of butter, and how her hens were laying. But she saw through him even as he spoke.

For, as she said afterwards, describing the scene, "I saw his lug cockit for what the ither twa were saying, and if it hadna been for the restrainin' grace o' God, I declare I wad hae telled him that butter was a guinea a pound in Dumfries market, and that my hens were laying a score o' eggs apiece every day--he never wad hae kenned that I was tellin' him a lee!"

All day the great controversy went on. Even now I can remember the echoes of it coming to me through the wet green leaves of the mallows my mother had planted along the south-looking wall. To this day I can hear the drip of the water from the slates mingling with such phrases as "the divine sovereignty," the "Covenant of Works," "the Adamic dispensation." I see the purple of the flowers and smell the sweet smell of the pine shavings. They seemed to my childish mind like three Titans hurling the longest words in the dictionary at each other. I know nothing wherewith to express the effect upon my mind of this day-long conflict save that great line in the fifth book of _Paradise Lost_:

"Thrones, dominations, princedoms, vertues, powers!"

It was years after when first I read it, but instantly I thought of that wet summer day in Lammastide, when my father wrestled with his peers concerning the deep things of eternity, and was not overcome.

My mother has often told me that he never slept all that night--how waking in the dawn and finding his place vacant, she had hastily thrown on a gown and gone out to look for him. He was walking up and down in the little orchard behind the barn, his hands clasped behind his back. And all he said in answer to her reproaches was: "It's vexin', Mary, to think that I only minded that text in Ephesians about being 'sealed unto the day of redemption' after he was ower the hill. It wad hae ta'en the feet clean frae him if I had gotten hand o' it in time."

"What can ye do wi' a man like that?" she would conclude, summing up her husband's character, mostly in his hearing.

"But remember, Mary, the pit from which I was digged!" he would reply, reaching down the worn old leather-bound copy of Boston's _Fourfold State_ out of the wall-press and settling himself to re-peruse a favourite chapter.

* * * * *

My father's father, Yabel McQuhirr, was a fierce hard man, and seldom showed his heart, ruling his house with a rod of iron, setting each in his place, wife, child, man-servant and maid-servant, ox and ass--aye, and the stranger within his gates.

My father does not talk of these things, but my mother has often told me of that strange household up among the granite hills, to which, as a maid of nineteen, she went to serve. In those days in all the Galloway farm-towns, master and servant sat down together to meals. The head of the house was lawgiver and potentate, priest and parent to all beneath his roof. And if Yabel McQuhirr of Ardmannoch did not exercise the right of pit and gallows, it was about all the authority he did not claim over his own.

Yabel had a family of strong sons, silent, dour--the doctrine of unquestioning obedience driven into them by their father's right arm and oaken staff. But their love was for their mother, who drifted through the house with a foot light as a falling leaf, and a voice attuned to the murmuring of a hill stream. There was no daughter in the household, and Mary McArthur had come partly to supply the want. She had brought a sore little heart with her, all because of a certain ship that had gone over the sea, and the glint of a sailor lad's merry blue eyes she would see no more.

She had therefore no mind for love-making, and Thomas and Abel, the two eldest sons, got very short answers for their pains when they "tried their hand" on their mother's new house-lass. Tom, the eldest, took it well enough, and went elsewhere; but Abel was a bully by nature, and would not let the girl alone. Once he kissed her by force as, hand-tied, she carried in the peats from the stack. Whereupon Alexander, the silent third brother, found out the reason of Mary's red eyes, and interviewed his brother behind the barn to such purpose that his face bore the marks of fraternal knuckles for a week. Also Alexander had his lip split.

"Ye hae been fechtin' again, ye blakes," thundered their father. "Mind ye, if this happens again I will break every bane in your bodies. I will have you know that I am a man of peace! How did you get that black eye, Yabel?"

"I trippit ower the shaft o' a cairt!" said Abel, lying glibly in fear of consequences.

"And you, Alexander--where gat ye that lip?"

"I ran against something!" said the defender of innocence, succinctly. And stuck to it stubbornly, refusing all amplification.

"Well," said their father, grimly, "take considerably more heed to your going, both of ye, or you may run against something more serious still!"

Then he whistled on his dogs, and went up the dyke-side towards the hill.

* * * * *

After this, Alexander always carried in the peats for Mary McArthur, and, in spite of the taunts and gibes of his brothers, did such part of her work as lay outside the house. On winter nights and mornings he lighted the stable lantern for her before she went to milk the kye, and then when she was come to the byre he took his mother's stool and pail and milked beside her cow for cow.

All these things he did without speaking a word of love, or, indeed, saying a word of anything beyond the commonplaces of a country life. He never told her whether or no he had heard about the sailor lad who had gone over seas.

Indeed, he never referred to the subject throughout a long lifetime. All the same, I think he must have suspected, and with natural gentleness and courtesy set himself to ease the girl's heart-sore burden.

Sometimes Mary would raise her eyes and catch him looking at her--that was all. And more often she was conscious of his grave staid regard when she did not look up. At first it fretted her a little. For, of course, she could never love again--never believe any man's word. Life was ended for her--ended at nineteen! So at least Mary McArthur told herself.

But all the same, there--a pillar for support, a buckler for defence, was Alexander McQuhirr, strong, undemonstrative, dependable. One day she had cut her finger, and he was rolling it up for her daintily as a woman. They were alone in the shearing field together. Alexander had the lint and the thread in his pocket. So, indeed, he anticipated her wants silently all his life.

It had hurt a good deal, and before he had finished the tears stood brimming in her eyes.

"I think you must get tired of me. I bring all my cut fingers to you, Alec!" she said, looking up at him.

He gave a kind of gasp, as if he were going to say something, as a single drop of salt water pearled itself and ran down Mary's cheek; but instead he only folded the lint more carefully in at the top, and went on rolling the thread round it.

"She is learnin' to love me!" he thought, with some pleasure, but he was too bashful and diffident to take advantage of her feeling. He contented himself with making her life easier and sweeter in that hard upland cantonment of more than military discipline, from whose rocky soil Yabel and his sons dragged the bare necessities of life, as it were, at the point of the bayonet.

All the time he was thinking hard behind his broad forehead, this quiet Alexander McQuhirr. He was the third son. His father was a poor man. He had nothing to look for from him. In time Tom would succeed to the farm. It was clear, then, that if he was ever to be anything, he must strike out early for himself. And, as many a time before and since, it was the tears in the eyes of a girl that brought matters to the breaking point.

Yes, just the wet eyes of a girl--that is, of Mary McArthur, as she looked up at him suddenly in the harvest-field among the serried lines of stocks, and said: "I bring all my cut fingers to you, Alec!"

Something, he knew not exactly what, appealed to him so strongly in that word and look, that resolve came upon him sudden as lightning, and binding as an oath--the man's instinct to be all and to do all for the woman he loves.

He was unusually silent during the rest of the day, so that Mary McArthur, walking beside him down the loaning to bring home the cows, said: "You are no vexed wi' me for onything, Alec?"

But it was the man's soul of Saunders McQuhirr which had come to him as a birthright--born out of a glance. He was a boy no longer. And that night, as his father Yabel stood looking over his scanty acres with a kind of grim satisfaction in the golden array of corn stooks, his son Alexander went quietly up to him.

"Father," he said, "next week I shall be one-and-twenty!" In times of stress they spoke the English of the schools and of the Bible.

His father turned a deep-set irascible eye upon him. The thick over-brooding brows lowered convulsively above him. A kind of illuminating flash like faint sheet lightning passed over the stern face. A week ago, nay, even twenty-four hours ago, Saunders McQuhirr would have trembled to have his father look at him thus. But--he had bound up a girl's finger since then, and seen her eyes wet.

"Well, what of that?" The words came fiercely from Yabel, with a rising anger in them, a kind of trumpet blare heralding the storm.

"I am thinking of taking a herd's place at the term!" said Alexander, quietly.

Yabel lifted his great body off the dyke-top, on which he had been leaning with his elbows. He towered a good four inches above his son, though my father was always considered a tall man.

"You--you are going to take a herd's place--at the term---you?" he said, slowly and incredulously.

"Yes," answered his son; "you will not need me. There is no outgate for me here, and I have my way to make in the world."

"And what need have you of an outgate, sir?" cried his father. "Have I housed you and schooled you and reared you that, when at last you are of some use, you should leave your father and mother at a word, like a day-labourer on Saturday night?"

"A day-labourer on Saturday night gets his wages--I have not asked for any!"

At this answer Yabel stood tempestuously wrathful for a moment, his hand and arm uplifted and twitching to strike. Then all suddenly his mood changed. It became scornfully ironic.

"I see," he said, dropping his arm, "there's a lass behind this--that is the meaning of all the peat-carrying and byre-milking and handfasting in corners. Well, sirrah, I give you this one night. In the morning you shall pack. From this instant I forbid you to touch aught belonging to me, corn or fodder, horse or bestial. Ye shall tramp, lad, you and your madam with you. The day is not yet, thank the Lord, when Abel McQuhirr is not master in his own house!"

But the son that had been a boy was now a man. He stood before his father, giving him back glance for glance. And an observer would have seen a great similarity between the two, the same attitude to a line, the massive head thrown back, the foot advanced, the deep-set eye, the compressed mouth.

"Very well, father!" said Alexander McQuhirr, and he went away, carrying his bonnet in his hand.

* * * * *

And on the morning that followed the sleepless night of thinking and planning, Alexander McQuhirr went forth to face the world, his plaid about his shoulders, his staff in his hand, his mother's blessing upon his head--and, what was most of all to a young man, his sweetheart's kiss upon his lips:

For in this part of his mandate Yabel had reckoned without his host. His wife, long trained to keep silence for the sake of peace, had turned and openly defied him--nay, had won the victory. The "Man of Wrath" knew exactly how far it was wise to push the doctrine of unquestioning wifely obedience. Mary McArthur was to bide still where she was, till--well, till another home was ready for her. And though her eyes were red, and there was no one to tie up her cut fingers any more, there was a kind of pride upon her face too. And the image of the young sailor-man over seas utterly faded away.

At ten by the clock, Yabel McQuhirr, down in his harvest-field, saw his son set out. He gave no farewell. He waved no hand. He said no word. All the same, he smiled grimly to himself behind the obedient backs of Tom and Abel the younger.

"There's the best stuff o' the lot in that fule laddie," he growled; "even so for a lass's sake left I my father's house!"

And of all his children, this dour, hard-mouthed, gnarl-fisted man loved best the boy who for the sake of a lass had outcasted himself without fear and without hesitation.

* * * * *

It was to a herd's house, shining white on a hillside, a burnie trilling below, the red heather surging about the garden dyke on all sides, that Alexander McQuhirr took his wife Mary, a year later. And there in the fulness of time my brother Willie was born--the child of the cot-house and of the kailyaird. In time followed other, if not better things--first a small holding, then a farm--then I, Alexander the second. And still, thank God, we, the children of Mary McArthur, run with our cut fingers to that steadfast, loving, silent man, Saunders McQuhirr, son of Yabel, the Man of Violence and Wrath.

*THE MAN OF WRATH*

A man of wrath was my grandfather, Yabel McQuhirr, from his youth up. And I am now going to tell the story of how by a strange providence he was turned aside from the last sin of Judas, and how he became in his latter days a man of peace and a lover of young children.

He was my father's father, and I have already told how that son of his to whom I owe my life, went forth to make a new hearthstone warm and bright for the girl who was to be my mother. But after the departure of that third son, darker and darker descended the gloom upon the lonely uplying farm. Fiercer and ever fiercer fell the angers of Yabel McQuhirr upon his remaining children, Thomas and Abel--the latter named after his father, but whose Christian name never acquired the antique and preliminary "Y" that marks the border-line between the old and the new.

One dismal Monday morning in the back-end of the year there were bitter words spoken in the barn at the threshing, between Thomas and his father. Retort followed retort, till, with knotted fist, the father savagely felled the youth to the ground. There was blood upon the clean yellow straw when he rose. Thomas went indoors, opened his little chest, took from it all the money he had, shook hands silently with his mother, and took his way over the Rig of Bennanbrack, never to be heard of more.

And after this ever closer and closer Yabel McQuhirr shut the door of his heart. He hardened himself under the weight of his wife's gentle sufferance and reproachful silences. He gripped his hands together when, with the corner of an eye that would not humble itself to look, he saw the tear trickling down the wasted cheek. He uttered no word of sorrow for the past, nor did the name of either of his departed sons pass his lips.

Nevertheless, he grew markedly kinder in deed to Abel, the one son who remained--not much kinder in word perhaps, for still that loud and angry voice could be heard coming from field and meadow, barn or byre, till the fearful mother would steal silent-footed to the kitchen-door lest the last part of her threefold sorrow should indeed have come upon her. But not in this manner was the blow to fall.

Abel was the least worthy but greatly the handsomest of the sons of Yabel McQuhirr. He had a large visiting acquaintance among the farm-towns, and often did not seek his garret-bed till the small hours of the morning. Then his mother, awake and vigilant, would incline her ear on the pillow to hear whether her husband was asleep beside her.

Now, oftentimes Yabel, her husband, slept not, yet for his wife's sake, and perhaps because Abel, with his bright smile and clean-limbed figure, reminded him of a wild youth he had long put behind him, he bore with the lad, even to giving him in one short year more money to spend than had been his brothers' portion during all the time they had faithfully served their father.

And this was not good for a young man.

So that early one spring, the wild oat crop that Abel had been sowing began to appear with braird and luxuriant shoot. A whisper overran the parish swifter than the moor-burn when the heather is dry on the moors. Two names were coupled, not unto honour. And on a certain wild March morning, Yabel McQuhirr, having called his son three times, clambered fiercely up to the little garret stair to find an open skylight, a pallet-bed not slept in, and a home that was now childless from flagged hearth to smoke-browned roof-tree.

* * * * *

Yabel rode to market upon Mary Grey, his old rough-fetlocked mare, once badger-grey, but now white as the sea-gulls that fluttered and settled upon his springtime furrows. He heard no word of the story of Abel his son and the gypsy lass, for none durst tell him--till one Rob Girmory of Barscob, bolder or drunker than the rest, blurted it out with an oath and a scurvy jest. The next moment he was smitten down, and Yabel McQuhirr stood over him with his riding-whip clubbed in his hand, the fierce irascible eyebrows twitching, and wide nostrils blown out with the breath of the man's wrath.

But certain good friends, strong-armed men of peace, held him back, and got Girmory away to a quiet cartshed, where, on a heap of straw, he could sleep off his stupor and awake to wonder what had given him that lump, great as a hen's egg, over his right eye.

As for Yabel McQuhirr he saddled Mary Grey and took the road homeward lest any should bring the story first to his wife. For Jen, his Jen, was the kernel of that rough-husked, hard-shelled heart. And as he rode, he cursed Girmory with the slow studied anathema of the Puritan which is not swearing, but something sterner, solemner, more enduring. Sometimes he would cheat himself by saying over and over that there was nothing in the story. Abel had gone in his best clothes to a neighbouring town--he knew the lad had a pound or two that burnt a hole in his spendthrift pocket. He would return penitent when it was finished. And the old man found himself already "birsing" with anger, and thinking of what he would say to the returned prodigal when he caught sight of him--a greeting which would certainly not have run upon the lines of the parable.

Yet, as he went on and on, fear began to enter in, and he set his spurless heels grimly to Mary Grey's well-padded ribs. Never had that sober steed gone home at such a pace, and on brown windy braefaces ploughmen stood wiping their brows and watching and wondering. Shepherds, high on the hills, set their palms horizontally above their brows and murmured, "What's takin' auld Yabel hame at sic a pelt this day, as if the Ill Yin himsel' were after him?"

But for all his haste, some one had forestalled him. The busybody in other men's matters, the waspish gossip to whom the carrying of ill tidings is a chief joy, had been before him. Mary Grey had sweated in vain. There was no one to be heard stirring as he tramped eagerly in--no one flitting softly to and fro in milk-house or dairy.

But within Yabel McQuhirr found his wife fallen by the bake-board near the window, where she had been at work when the Messenger of Evil entered to do her fell work. Her eyes were closed, her hands limp and numb. With a hoarse inarticulate cry of rage Yabel raised his wife and carried her to the neatly-made bed with the patchwork quilt upon it. There he laid her down.

"Jen," he said, more gently than one could have believed the rough harsh man of wrath could have spoken, "Jen, waken, lassie. It's maybe no true. I tak' it on my soul it's no true!"

But on his wife's face there remained a strange fixed smile, and her eyes, opening slowly, began to follow him about wistfully, and seemed somehow to beckon him. Then with infinite care Yabel removed his wife's outer garments, cutting that which would not loosen otherwise, till the stricken woman reposed at ease beneath the coverlet.

"Now, Jen," he said, "I maun ride to the town for a doctor. Will I tell Allison Brown to come and look after you?"

The wistful following eyes expressed neither yea nor nay.

"Then will I send in Jean Murray frae the Boreland?"

The eyes were still indifferent. There was no desire for the help of any of human kind in the stricken woman's heart.

Her husband watched her keenly.

"Or wad ye like Martha Yeatman ower frae the Glen?"

Then all suddenly the dull eyes flashed, glowed, almost flamed, so fierce was the "No" that was in them.

Yabel shut down his upper lip upon his nether. He nodded his head.

"Then I will bring the doctor, and nurse you mysel'," he answered. But within him he said: "So it was Martha o' the Glen. For this thing will I reckon with Martha Yeatman."

It was fortunate for Mary Grey that the distance was not long, for, like Jehu the son of Nimshi, Yabel McQuhirr drave furiously. But at the bend of the highway called the Far-away Turn, just at the point at which the road dives down under a tangle of birch and alder, the old white mare was pulled suddenly up. For there was Dr. Brydson, riding cautiously on his little round-barrelled sheltie, his saddle-bags in front of him, and a silver-headed Malacca cane held in his hand like a riding-whip.

It was no long time before the good old doctor was raising the lax head of Yabel McQuhirr's wife. The strange distant smile was still in her eyes, and the left corner of her mouth twitched.

"She has had a shock," said Dr. Brydson, slowly, when Yabel and he had withdrawn a little. He was pulling his chin meditatively, and not thinking much of the husband.

"A stroke!" said Yabel, and the tone of his voice was so strange and terrible that the doctor turned quickly--"but not unto death! You can cure her--surely you can cure her?"

And he caught the doctor by the arm and shook it vehemently.

"Take your hands away, sir, and calm yourself!" said the physician. "If I am to do anything, we must have none of this."

"Say that she will not die!" he cried. And the deep-set angry eyes flamed down upon the physician, the great fists of iron were clenched.

Dr. Brydson was a little man, but a long course of being deferred to had given him great local dignity.

"I will say nothing of the kind, sir," he retorted. "I will do what I can; but this thing is the visitation of God, and human skill avails but little. Stand away from my patient, sir."

But at that moment a sudden and wondrous change passed over the face of Yabel McQuhirr. The physician was startled. It was like an earthquake rifting and changing a landscape while one looks. In the twinkling of an eye the fashion of Yabel's countenance was altered. He would have wept, yet stood gasping like one who knows not the way to weep. Instead he uttered a hoarse and terrible cry, and flung himself upon his knees by the bed.

"Jen," he cried, "Jen--speak to me, Jen--to your ain man Yabel! Say that this man lies! Tell me ye are no gaun to dee, Jen--Jen, my Jen!"

And at the voice of that strange crying the doctor stood back, for he knew that no earthly physician had power to stay a soul's agony.

Then, like a tide that wells up full to the flood-mark, the slow love rose in the eyes of his wife. Her lips moved. He bent his head eagerly. They seemed to form his name.

"Yes, yes," he said eagerly, "'Yabel, Yabel,' I hear that! What mair? Tell me--oh, tell me, ye are no gaun to leave me!"

He bent his head lower, holding his breath and laying his hand on his own heart as if to still its dull, thick beating. But though the pallid lips seemed to move, no words came, and Yabel McQuhirr heaved up his head and struck his palm upon his brow.

"I canna hear!" he wailed. "She will dee, and no speak to me!" Then he turned fiercely upon the doctor, as if he did not know him. "Who are you that spies on my grief, standing there and doing nothing? Get oot o' my hoose, lest I do ye a hurt."

And the indignant little man went at the word, mounting his sheltie and riding away across the moors without once turning his head, the "Penang lawyer" tapping unwontedly upon the rounded indignant flank of his little mare.

When Yabel turned again to his wife there were tears in her eyes, and the heart of the Man of Wrath was softened within him.

"I am a fool," he said, "an angry fool. I have driven him away that came to do her good. I will call him back."

But though he made the hills to echo, and the startled sheep to run together into frightened bunches, the insulted little doctor upon the sheltie never turned in his saddle.

"Vain is the help of man," said Yabel, as he turned to go in, "and if God will not help me, I will renounce Him also."

He sat awhile by Janet's side, and it was very quiet, save for the clock ticking out the moments of a woman's life. A hen cackled without in the yard with sudden joy over an egg safely nested. Yabel started up angrily and laid his hand on his gun in the rack above the smoked mantel-board. But the woman's eyes called him to desist, and he sat down again beside her with a sigh.

"What is it, Jen? Can ye no speak to me?" The eyes seemed to compel him yet lower--upon his knees.

"To pray--I canna pray, Jen; I winna pray. If the Lord tak's you, I will arise and curse Him to His face."

The direction of the gaze changed. It was upon the family Bible on the shelf, where it lay with Boston's _Fourfold State_ and a penny almanack, the entire family library.

"Am I to read?" said Yabel, reaching it down. "What am I to read?" He ran down the table of contents with his great stub-nailed fingers, "Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus." But the speaking eyes did not check him till he came to the Psalms.

He turned them over till he came to the twenty-third. The will in his wife's glance stopped him again. He read the psalm slowly, kneeling on his knees by the bedside.

At the fourth verse his voice changed. "_Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me----_"

And at the sound of these words the unstricken left hand of his wife wavered upward uncertainly. It lay a moment, with something in its touch between a caress and a blessing, upon his head. Then it dropped lightly back upon the coverlet.

* * * * *

Yabel McQuhirr sat till the gloaming by the side of his dead wife, a terrible purpose firming itself in his heart. His children had risen up against him. God had cast him off. Well, he, Yabel McQuhirr, would cast Him off. At His very Judgment Seat he would dare Him, and so be thrown unrepenting into the pit prepared for the impenitent.

He had done that which was needful to the body of his helpmeet of many years. There was no more to do--save one thing. He rose and was going out, when his bloodshot eye fell on the great family Bible from which he had read eve and morn for forty years. A spasm of anger fierce as a blast from a furnace came over the man. That Book had lied! It had deceived him. He lifted it in one strong hand and threw it upon the fire.

Then he walked across the yard to the stable to get a coil of cart rope. He stumbled rather than stepped as he went, the ground somehow meeting his feet unexpectedly. He could not find the rope, and found himself exclaiming savagely at the absent and outcast Abel who had mislaid it.

At last he found it among some stable litter, lying beneath the peg on which it ought to have hung. Gathering the coils up in his hand, he crossed the straw-strewn yard again to the barn. There were sound open beams in the open space between mow and mow.

"_It_ had best be done there," he muttered.

There was a rustling among the straw as he pushed back the upper half of the divided door--rats, as he would have thought at another time. Now he only wondered if he could reach the beams by standing on the corn bushel.

As he made the knot firm and noosed the rope through the loop, his eyes fell on the further door of the barn--the one through which, in bygone golden Septembers, he had so often pitchforked the sheaves of corn.

There was something moving between him and the orchard door. In the dull light it looked like a young child. And then the heart of Yabel McQuhirr, who was not afraid to meet God face to face, was filled with a great fear.

A faint moaning whimper came to his ear. He dropped the coil of rope and ran back to the house for the stable lantern. He lighted the candle with a piece of red peat-ash, tossing the unconsumed Bible off the fire. Only the rough calf-skin cover was singed, and its smouldering had filled the house with a keen acrid smell.

Yabel went out again with the lantern in his hand. Without entering, he held it over the lower half of the barn door which had swung to after him. A young woman, clad in the habit of a "gypsy" or "gaun body," lay huddled on the straw, while over her, whimpering and nosing like a puppy, crawled the most beautiful child Yabel had ever seen. As the light broke into the darkness of the barn the little fellow stood up, a golden-haired boy of two years of age. He smiled and blinked, then, with his hands outstretched, he came running across the floor to Yabel.

"Mither willna speak to Davie," he said. "Up--up, Mannie, tak' wee Davie up!"

A sob, or something like it, rose in the stern old man's throat. He could forfeit life, he could defy God, he could abandon all his possessions; but to leave this little shining innocent to starve--no, he could not do it.

He opened the door and went in. The child insisted fearlessly on being taken in his arms. He lifted him up, and the boy hid his face gladly on his shoulder. Yabel put his hand on the woman's breast; she was stone-cold, and had been so for hours. Death had been busy both without and within the little hill-farm that snell March afternoon.

He covered her decently up with a pair of corn-sacks, and as he did so a scrap of paper showed between her fingers, white in the light of the lantern.

"Mither will soon be warm noo," said the child, from the safe covert of Yabel's shoulder. And in the clasping of the baby fingers the evil spirit passed quite out of the heart of Yabel McQuhirr.

And when by the open door of the lantern he smoothed out the paper that had been in the dead woman's fingers, he read these words:--

"This is to bear testimony that I, Abel McQuhirr the younger, take Alison Baillie to be my wedded wife. Done in the presence of the undersigned witnesses

"Abel McQuhirr. May 3rd, 18--.
"RO GRIER. }
"JOHN LORRAINE. } Witnesses."

* * * * *

So in the day when Yabel McQuhirr defied his Maker and hardened his heart, God sent unto him His mercy in the shape of a young child. Then, after the grave had claimed its dead, the heart of Yabel was wondrously softened, and these two dwelt on in the empty house in great content. And in the rescued Book, with its charred calf-skin cover, the old man reads to the boy morning and evening the story of One Other who came to sinful men in the likeness of a Young Child. But though his heart takes comfort in the record, Yabel never can bring himself to read aloud that verse which says: "_Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these ... ye did it unto Me_."

"I am not worthy. He can never mean Yabel McQuhirr," he says, and shuts the Book.

*THE LASS IN THE SHOP*

In Galloway, if you find an eldest son of the same name as his father, search the mother's face for the marks of a tragedy. An eldest son is rarely called by his father's Christian name, and when he is, usually there is a little grave down in the kirkyard or a name that is seldom spoken in the house--a dead Abel or a wandering Cain, at any rate a first-born that was--and is not.

Now I am called Alexander McQuhirr. My father also is Alexander McQuhirr. And the reason is that a link has dropped out. I remember the day I found out that you could make my mother jump by coming quietly behind her and calling "Willie." It was Willie McArthur I was after--he had come over from Whinnyliggate to play with me. We were busy at "hide-and-seek."

"Willie!" I cried, sharp as one who would wake an echo.

My mother dropped a bowl and caught at her side.

It is only recently that she told me the whole story.

The truth was that with twelve years between our ages and Willie away most of the time, I had no particular reason to remember my elder brother. For years before I was born my mother had been compassionated with by the good wives of the neighbourhood, proud nursing mothers of ten or eleven, because she could boast of but one chicken in her brood. She has confessed to me what she suffered on that account. And though now I have younger brothers and the reproach was wiped away in time, there are certain Job's comforters whom my mother has never forgiven.

She would be sure to spoil Willie,--one child in a house was always spoilt. So the tongues went ding-dong. It was foolish to send him to school at Cairn Edward, throwing away good siller, instead of keeping him at home to single the turnips. Thus and thus was the reproach of my mother's reluctant maternity rubbed in--and to this day the rubbers are not forgotten. It will be time enough to forgive them, thinks my mother, when she comes to lie on her death-bed.

Yet from all that I can gather there was some truth in what they said, and probably this is what rankles in that dear, kindly, ever vehement bosom. Willie was indeed spoilt. He was by all accounts a handsome lad. He had his own way early, and what was worse--money to spend upon it. At thirteen he was bound apprentice to good honest Joseph Baillieson of the Apothecaries' Hall in Cairn Edward. Joseph was a chemist of the old school, who, when a more than usually illegible line occurred in the doctors' prescriptions of the day, always said: "We'll caa' it barley-water. That'll hairm naebody." All Joseph's dispensing was of the eminently practical kind.

To Mr. Baillieson, therefore, Willie was made apprentice, and if he would have profited, he could not have been in better hands, and this story never had been written. But the fact was, he was too early away from home. He was my mother's eye-apple, and as the farm was doing well during these years, an occasional pound note was slipped him when my mother was down on Market Monday. Now this is a part of the history she has never told me. I can only piece it together from hints and suggestions. But it is a road I know well. I have seen too many walk in it.

Mainly, I do not think it was so much bad company as thoughtlessness and high spirits. Sweetmeats and gloves to a girl more witty than wise, neckties and a small running account yonder, membership of the rowing club and a small occasional stake upon the races--not much in themselves, perhaps, but more than enough for an apprentice with two half-crowns a week of pocket money. So there came a time when honest Joseph Baillieson, with many misgivings and grave down-drawings of upper lip, as I doubt not, took my father into the little back shop where the liniments were made up and the pills rolled.

What they said to each other I do not know, but when Alexander McQuhirr came out his face was marvellously whitened. He waited for Willie at his lodgings, and brought him home that night with him. He stayed just a week at the farm, restlessly scouring the hills by day and coming in to his bed late at night.

After a time, by means of the minister, a place was found for him in Edinburgh, and he set off in the coach with his little box, leaving what prayerful anxious hearts behind him only those who are fathers and mothers know.

He was to lodge with a good old woman in the Pleasance, a regular hearer of Dr. Lawton's of Lady Nixon's Wynd. For a small wage she agreed to mend his socks and keep a motherly eye on his morals. He was to be in by ten, and latch-keys were not allowed.

Now I do not doubt that it was lonely for Willie up there in the great city. And in all condemnation, let the temptation be weighed and noted.

May God bless the good folk of the Open Door who, with sons and daughters of their own, set wide their portals and invite the stranger within where there is the sound of girlish laughter, the boisterous give-and-take of youthful wit, and--yes, as much as anything else, the clatter of hospitable knives and forks working together.

Such an Open Door has saved many from destruction, and in That Day it shall be counted to that Man (or, more often, that Woman) for righteousness.

For consider how lonely a lad's life is when first he comes up from the country. He works till he is weary, and in the evening the little bedroom is intolerably lonely and infinitely stuffy. If the Door of Kindness be not opened for him--if he lack the friend's hand, the comrade's slap on the back, the modest uplift of honest maidenly eyes--take my word for it, the Lad in the Garret will soon seek another way of it. There are many that will show him the guide-posts of that road. Other doors are open. Other laughter rings, not mellow and sweet, but as the crackling of thorns under a pot. If a youth be cut off from the one, he will have the other--that is, if the blood course hot and quick in his veins.

And so, good folk of the city, you bien and comfortable householders, you true mothers in Israel, fathers and mothers of brisk lads and winsome lasses, do not forget that you may save more souls from going down to the Pit in one year than a score of ministers in a lifetime. And I, who write these things, know.

Many a foot has been stayed on the Path called Perilous simply because "a damsel named Rhoda" came to answer a knock at a door. The time is not at all bygone when "Given to hospitality" is also a saving grace. And in the Day of Many Surprises, it shall be said of many a plain man and unpretending housewife: "_Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto Me!_"

* * * * *

But so it was not with Willie my brother. There was none to speak the word, and so he did after his kind. How much he did or how far he went I cannot tell. Perhaps it is best not to know. But, at all events, I can remember his home-coming to Drumquhat one Saturday night after he had been a year or fifteen months in Edinburgh. He came unexpectedly, and I was sleeping in a little crib set across the foot of my parents' bed in the "ben" room.

My mother was a light sleeper all her days, and, besides, I judge her heart was sore. For never breeze tossed the trees or rustled the beech-leaves, but she thought of her boy so far away. In a moment she was up, and I after her, all noiseless on my bare feet, though the tails of my night gear flapped like a banner in the draughty passage. The dogs upon the hearthstone never so much as growled.

"Wha's there?"

"It's me, mither!"

"Willie!"

It was indeed Willie, a tall lad with a white face, a bright colour high-set on his cheek-bone, a dancing light in his eyes, and, at sight of his mother, a smile on his lips. He was dressed in what seemed to me a style of grandeur such as I had never beheld, probably no more than a suit of town-cut tweeds, a smart tie, and a watch-chain. But then my standard was grey home-spun and home-dyed--as often as not home-tailored too. And Solomon in all his glory did not seem to be arrayed one half so nobly as my elder brother Willie.

I do not mind much about the visit, except that Willie let me wear his watch-chain, which was of gold, for nearly half-an-hour, and promised that the next time he came back he would trust me with the watch, as well. But the following afternoon something happened that I do remember. After dinner, which was at noon as it had been ever since the beginning of time, my father sat still in his great corner chair instead of going to the barn. My mother sent me out to play.

"And bide in the yaird till I send for ye, mind--and dinna let me see your face till tea-time!" was her command, giving me a friendly cuff on the ear by way of speeding the parting guest.

By this I knew that there was something she did not want me to hear. So I went about the house to the little window at which my father said his prayers. It stood open as always, like Daniel's, towards Jerusalem. I could not hear very well; but that was no fault of mine. I did my best.

Willie was speaking very fast, telling his father something--something to which my mother vehemently objected. I could hear her interruptions rising stormily, and my father trying to calm her. Willie spoke low, except now and then when his voice broke into a kind of scream. I remember being very wae for him, and feeling in my pocket for a dirty half-sucked brandy ball which I resolved to give him when he came out. It had often comforted me in times of trouble.

"Siclike nonsense I never heard!" cried my mother, "a callant like you! A besom--a designing madam, nocht else--that's what she is! I wonder to hear ye, Willie!"

"Wheesh, wheest--Mary!"

I could hear my father's voice, grave and sober as ever. Then Willie's vehement rush of words went on till I heard my mother break in again.

"Marriage! Marriage! Sirce, heard ye ever the like? A bairn to speak to me o' mairrying a woman naebody kens ocht aboot--a 'lass in a shop,' ye say; aye, I'se warrant a bonny shop----!"

Then there came the sound of a chair pushed vehemently back, the crash of a falling dish. My father's voice, deep and terrible so that I trembled, followed. "Sir, sit down on your seat and compose yourself! Do not speak thus to your mother!"

"I will not sit down--I will not compose myself--I will never sit down in this house again--I will marry Lizzie in spite of you all!"

And almost before I could get round to the front yard again Willie had come whirling all disorderedly out of the kitchen door, shutting it to with a clash that shook the house. Then with wild and angry eyes he strode across the straw-littered space, taking no notice of me, but leaping the gate and so down the little loaning and up towards the heather like a man walking in his sleep.

I remember I ran after him, calling him to come back; but he never heeded me till I pulled him by the coat tails. It was away up near the march dyke, and I could hardly speak with running so fast. He stared as if he did not know me.

"Oh, dinna--dinna--come back!" I cried (and I think I wept); "dinna vex my mither!--And--there's 'rummelt tawties'{#} to the supper!"

[#] "Rummelt tawties," _i.e._, a sort of _puree_ of potatoes, made in the pot in which they have been boiled, with sweet milk, butter, and sometimes a little flavouring of cheese. All hands are expected to assist in the operation of "champing," that is, pounding and stirring them to a proper consistency of toothsomeness.

But Willie would not stop for all I could say to him.

However, he patted me on the head.

"Bide at hame and be Jacob," he said; "they have cast out this Esau."