"Ian! Ian! I am shocked to hear you!"

"It is the truth, mother."

"What WOULD your father say!"

"'He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of
me.'"

Ian rose from the table, knelt by his mother, and laid his head on
her shoulder.

She was silent, pained by his words, and put her arm round him as if
to shelter him from the evil one. Homage to will and word of the
Master, apart from the acceptance of certain doctrines concerning
him, was in her eyes not merely defective but dangerous. To love the
Lord with the love of truest obedience; to believe him the son of
God and the saver of men with absolute acceptance of the heart, was
far from enough! it was but sentimental affection!

A certain young preacher in Scotland some years ago, accused by an
old lady of preaching works, took refuge in the Lord's sermon on the
mount: "Ow ay!" answered the partisan, "but he was a varra yoong mon
whan he preacht that sermon!"

Alister rose and went: there was to him something specially sacred
in the communion of his mother and brother. Heartily he held with
Ian, but shrank from any difference with his mother. For her sake he
received Sunday after Sunday in silence what was to him a bushel of
dust with here and there a bit of mouldy bread in it; but the mother
did not imagine any great coincidence of opinion between her and
Alister any more than between her and Ian. She had not the faintest
notion how much genuine faith both of them had, or how it surpassed
her own in vitality.

But while Ian seemed to his brother, who knew him best, hardly
touched with earthly stain, Alister, notwithstanding his large and
dominant humanity, was still in the troublous condition of one
trying to do right against a powerful fermentation of pride. He held
noblest principles; but the sediment of generations was too easily
stirred up to cloud them. He was not quite honest in his attitude
towards some of his ancestors, judging them far more leniently than
he would have judged others. He loved his neighbour, but his
neighbour was mostly of his own family or his own clan. He MIGHT
have been unjust for the sake of his own--a small fault in the eyes
of the world, but a great fault indeed in a nature like his, capable
of being so much beyond it. For, while the faults of a good man
cannot be such evil things as the faults of a bad man, they are more
blameworthy, and greater faults than the same would be in a bad man:
we must not confuse the guilt of the person with the abstract evil
of the thing.

Ian was one of those blessed few who doubt in virtue of a larger
faith. While its roots were seeking a deeper soil, it could not show
so fast a growth above ground, He doubted most about the things he
loved best, while he devoted the energies of a mind whose keenness
almost masked its power, to discover possible ways of believing
them. To the wise his doubts would have been his best credentials;
they were worth tenfold the faith of most. It was truth, and higher
truth, he was always seeking. The sadness which coloured his deepest
individuality, only one thing could ever remove--the conscious
presence of the Eternal. This is true of all sadness, but Ian knew
it.

He overtook Alister on his way to the barley-field.

"I have been trying to find out wherein lay the falseness of the
position in which you found yourself this morning," he said. "There
could be nothing wrong in doing a small thing for its reward any
more than a great one; where I think you went wrong was in ASSUMING
your social position afterwards: you should have waited for its
being accorded you. There was no occasion to be offended with the
man. You ought to have seen how you must look to him, and given him
time. I don't perceive why you should be so gracious to old mistress
Conal, and so hard upon him. Certainly you would not speak as he did
to any man, but he has been brought up differently; he is not such a
gentleman as you cannot help being. In a word, you ought to have
treated him as an inferior, and been more polite to him."

CHAPTER X.

THE PLOUGH-BULLS.

Partly, it may be, from such incidents at the outset of their
acquaintance, there was for some time no further meeting betwixt any
of the chief's family and that of the new laird. There was indeed
little to draw them together except common isolation. Valentine
would have been pleased to show gratitude to his helpers on that
stormy night, but after his sisters' account of their call, he felt
not only ashamed, which was right, but ashamed to show his shame,
which was a fresh shame. The girls on their part made so much of
what they counted the ridiculous elements of their "adventure,"
that, natural vengeance on their untruthfulness, they came
themselves to see in it almost only what was ridiculous. In the same
spirit Mr. Sercombe recounted his adventure with Alister, which
annoyed his host, who had but little acquaintance with the
boundaries of his land. From the additional servants they had hired
in the vicinity, the people of the New House gathered correct
information concerning the people at the cottage, but the honour in
which they were held only added to the ridicule they associated with
them. On the other side also there was little inclination towards a
pursuit of intercourse. Mrs. Macruadh, from Nancy's account and the
behaviour of the girls, divined the explanation of their visit; and,
as their mother did not follow it up, took no notice of it. In the
mind of Mercy, however, lurked a little thorn, with the bluntest
possible sting of suspicion, every time she joined in a laugh at the
people of the cottage, that she was not quite just to them.

The shooting, such as it was, went on, the sleeping and the eating,
the walking and the talking. Long letters were written from the New
House to female friends--letters with the flourishes if not the
matter of wit, and funny tales concerning the natives, whom, because
of their poor houses and unintelligibility, they represented as
semi-savages. The young men went back to Oxford; and the time for
the return of the family to civilization seemed drawing nigh.

It happened about this time, however, that a certain speculation in
which Mr. Peregrine Palmer was very materially interested, failed
utterly, depriving him of the consciousness of a good many
thousands, and producing in him the feeling of a lady of moderate
means when she loses her purse: he must save it off something! For
though he spent freely, he placed a great value on money--as well he
might, seeing it gave him all the distinction which before
everything else he prized. He did not know what a poor thing it is
to be distinguished among men, therefore did not like losing his
thousands. Having by failure sinned against Mammon, he must do
something to ease the money-conscience that ruled his conduct; and
the first thing that occurred to him was, to leave his wife and
daughters where they were for the winter. None of them were in the
least delicate; his wife professed herself fond of a country life;
it would give the girls a good opportunity for practice, drawing,
and study generally, and he would find them a suitable governess! He
talked the matter over with Mrs. Palmer. She did not mind much, and
would not object. He would spend Christmas with them, he said, and
bring down Christian, and perhaps Mr. Sercombe.

The girls did not like the idea. It was so cold in the country in
winter, and the snow would be so deep! they would be starved to
death! But, of course--if the governor had made up his mind to be
cruel!

The thing was settled. It was only for one winter! It would be a new
experience for them, and they would enjoy their next SEASON all the
more! The governor had promised to send them down new furs, and a
great boxful of novels! He did not apprise them that he meant to
sell their horses. Their horses were his! He was an indulgent father
and did not stint them, but he was not going to ask their leave! At
the same time he had not the courage to tell them.

He took his wife with him as far as Inverness for a day or two, that
she might lay in a good stock of everything antagonistic to cold.

When father and mother were gone from the house, the girls felt
LARKY. They had no wish to do anything they would not do if their
parents were at home, but they had some sense of relief in the
thought that they could do whatever they liked. A more sympathetic
historian might say, and I am nowise inclined to contradict him,
that it was only the reaction from the pain of parting, and the
instinct to make the best of their loneliness. However it was, the
elder girls resolved on a walk to the village, to see what might be
seen, and in particular the young woman at the shop, of whom they
had heard their brother and Mr. Sercombe speak with admiration,
qualified with the remark that she was so proper they could hardly
get a civil word out of her. She was in fact too scrupulously polite
for their taste.

It was a bright, pleasant, frosty morning, perfectly still, with an
air like wine. The harvest had vanished from the fields. The sun
shone on millions of tiny dew-suns, threaded on forsaken
spider-webs. A few small, white, frozen clouds flecked the sky. The
purple heather was not yet gone, and not any snow had yet fallen in
the valley. The burn was large, for there had been a good deal of
rain, but it was not much darker than its usual brown of
smoke-crystal. They tripped gaily along. If they had little
spiritual, they had much innocent animal life, which no great
disappointments or keen twinges of conscience had yet damped. They
were hut human kittens--and not of the finest breed.

As they crossed the root of the spur, and looked down on the autumn
fields to the east of it, they spied something going on which they
did not understand. Stopping, and gazing more intently, they beheld
what seemed a contest between man and beast, but its nature they
could not yet distinguish. Gradually it grew plain that two of the
cattle of the country, wild and shaggy, were rebelling against
control. They were in fact two young bulls, of the small black
highland breed, accustomed to gallop over the rough hills, jumping
like goats, which Alister had set himself the task of breaking to
the plough--by no means an easy one, or to be accomplished
single-handed by any but a man of some strength, and both
persistence and patience. In the summer he had lost a horse, which
he could ill afford to replace: if he could make these bulls work,
they would save him the price of the horse, would cost less to keep,
and require less attention! He bridled them by the nose, not with
rings through the gristle, but with nose-bands of iron, bluntly
spiked inside, against which they could not pull hard without pain,
and had made some progress, though he could by no means trust them
yet: every now and then a fit of mingled wildness and stubbornness
would seize them, and the contest would appear about to begin again
from the beginning; but they seldom now held out very long. The
nose-band of one of them had come off, Alister had him by a horn in
each hand, and a fierce struggle was going on between them, while
the other was pulling away from his companion as if determined to
take to the hills. It was a good thing for them that share and
coulter were pretty deep in the ground, to the help of their master;
for had they got away, they would have killed, or at least disabled
themselves. Presently, however, he had the nose-band on, and by
force and persuasion together got the better of them; the staggy
little furies gave in; and quickly gathering up his reins, he went
back to the plough-stilts, where each hand held at once a handle and
a rein. With energetic obedience the little animals began to
pull--so vigorously that it took nearly all the chief's strength to
hold at once his plough and his team.

It was something of a sight to the girls after a long dearth of
events. Many things indeed upon which they scarce cast an eye when
they came, they were now capable of regarding with a little feeble
interest. Nor, although ignorant of everything agricultural, were
they quite unused to animals; having horses they called their own,
they would not unfrequently go to the stables to give their orders,
or see that they were carried out.

They waited for some time hoping the fight would begin again, and
drew a little nearer; then, as by common consent, left the road,
passed the ruin, ran down the steep side of the ridge, and began to
toil through the stubble towards the ploughman. A sharp straw would
every now and then go through a delicate stocking, and the damp soil
gathered in great lumps on their shoes, but they plodded on,
laughing merrily as they went.

The Macruadh was meditating the power of the frost to break up the
clods of the field, when he saw the girls close to him. He pulled in
his cattle, and taking off his bonnet with one hand while the other
held both reins--

"Excuse me, ladies," he said; "my animals are young, and not quite
broken."

They were not a little surprised at such a reception, and were
driven to conclude that the man must be the laird himself. They had
heard that he cultivated his own land, but had not therefore
imagined him labouring in his own person.

In spite of the blindness produced by their conventional training,
vulgarly called education, they could not fail to perceive something
in the man worthy of their regard. Before them, on the alert toward
his cattle, but full of courtesy, stood a dark, handsome,
weather-browned man, with an eagle air, not so pronounced as his
brother's. His hair was long, and almost black,--in thick, soft
curls over a small, well-set head. His glance had the flash that
comes of victorious effort, and his free carriage was that of one
whom labour has nowise subdued, whose every muscle is instinct with
ready life. True even in trifles, he wore the dark beard that nature
had given him; disordered by the struggle with his bulls, it
imparted a certain wild look that contrasted with his speech.
Christina forgot that the man was a labourer like any other, but
noted that he did not manifest the least embarrassment in their
presence, or any consciousness of a superfluity of favour in their
approach: she did not know that neither would his hired servant, or
the poorest member of his clan. It was said of a certain Sutherland
clan that they were all gentlemen, and of a certain Argyll clan that
they were all poets; of the Macruadhs it was said they were both. As
to Mercy, the first glance of the chiefs hazel eyes, looking
straight into hers with genial respect, went deeper than any look
had yet penetrated.

Ladies in Alister's fields were not an everyday sight. Hardly before
had his work been enlivened by such a presence; and the joy of it
was in his eyes, though his behaviour was calm. Christina thought
how pleasant it would be to have him for a worshipping slave--so
interpenetrated with her charms that, like Una's lion, he would
crouch at her feet, come and go at her pleasure, live on her smiles,
and be sad when she gave him none. She would make a gentleman of
him, then leave him to dream of her! It would be a pleasant and
interesting task in the dullness of their winter's banishment, with
the days so short and the nights so unendurably long! The man was
handsome!--she would do it!--and would proceed at once to initiate
the conquest of him!

The temptation to patronize not unfrequently presents an object for
the patronage superior to the would-be patron; for the temptation is
one to which slight persons chiefly are exposed; it affords an
outlet for the vague activity of self-importance. Few have learned
that one is of no value except to God and other men. Miss Palmer
worshipped herself, and therefore would fain be worshipped--so
dreamed of a friendship de haut en bas with the country fellow.

She put on a smile--no difficult thing, for she was a good-natured
girl. It looked to Alister quite natural. It was nevertheless, like
Hamlet's false friends, "sent for."

"Do you like ploughing?" she asked.

Had she known the manners of the country, she would have added
"laird," or "Macruadh."

"Yes I do," Alister answered; "but I should plough all the same if I
did not. It has to be done."

"But why should YOU do it?"

"Because I must," laughed the laird.

What ought she to answer? Should she condole with the man because he
had to work? It did not seem prudent! She would try another tack!

"You had some trouble with your oxen! We saw it from the road, and
were quite frightened. I hope you are not hurt."

"There was no danger of that," answered Alister with a smile.

"What wild creatures they are! Ain't it rather hard work for them?
They are so small!"

"They are as strong as horses," answered the laird. "I have had my
work to break them! Indeed, I can hardly say I have done it yet!
they would very much like to run their horns into me!"

"Then it MUST be dangerous! It shows that they were not meant to
work!"

"They were meant to work if I can make them work."

"Then you approve of slavery!" said Mercy

She hardly knew what made her oppose him. As yet she had no opinions
of her own, though she did catch a thought sometimes, when it
happened to come within her reach. Alister smiled a curious smile.

"I should," he said, "if the right people were made slaves of. I
would take shares in a company of Algerine pirates to rid the social
world of certain types of the human!"

The girls looked at each other. "Sharp!" said Christina to herself.

"What sorts would you have them take?" she asked.

"Idle men in particular," answered Alister.

"Would you not have them take idle ladies as well?"

"I would see first how they behaved when the men were gone."

"You believe, then," said Mercy, "we have a right to make the lower
animals work?"

"I think it is our duty," answered Alister. "At all events, if we do
not, we must either kill them off by degrees, or cede them this
world, and emigrate. But even that would be a bad thing for my
little bulls there! It is not so many years since the last wolf was
killed--here, close by! and if the dogs turned to wolves again,
where would they be? The domestic animals would then have wild
beasts instead of men for their masters! To have the world a
habitable one, man must rule."

"Men are nothing but tyrants to them!" said Christina.

"Most are, I admit."

Ere he could prevent her, she had walked up to the near bull, and
begun to pat him. He poked a sharp wicked horn sideways at her,
catching her cloak on it, and grazing her arm. She started back very
white. Alister gave him a terrible tug. The beast shook his head,
and began to paw the earth.

"It wont do to go near him," he said. "--But you needn't be afraid;
he can't touch you. That iron band round his nose has spikes in it."

"Poor fellow!" said Christina; "it is no wonder he should be out of
temper! It must hurt him dreadfully!"

"It does hurt him when he pulls against it, but not when he is
quiet."

"I call it cruel!"

"I do not. The fellow knows what is wanted of him--just as well as
any naughty child."

"How can he when he has no reason!"

"Oh, hasn't he!"

"Animals have no reason; they have only instinct!"

"They have plenty of reason--more than many men and women. They are
not so far off us as pride makes most people think! It is only those
that don't know them that talk about the instinct of animals!"

"Do you know them?"

"Pretty well for a man; but they're often too much for me."

"Anyhow that poor thing does not know better."

"He knows enough; and if he did not, would you allow him to do as he
pleased because he didn't know better? He wanted to put his horn
into you a moment ago!"

"Still it must be hard to want very much to do a thing, and not be
able to do it!" said Mercy.

"I used to feel as if I could tear my old nurse to pieces when she
wouldn't let me do as I wanted!" said Christina.

"I suppose you do whatever you please now, ladies?"

"No, indeed. We wanted to go to London, and here we are for the
winter!"

"And you think it hard?"

"Yes, we do."

"And so, from sympathy, you side with my cattle?"

"Well--yes!"

"You think I have no right to keep them captive, and make them
work?"

"None at all," said Christina.

"Then it is time I let them go!"

Alister made for the animals' heads.

"No, no! please don't!" cried both the girls, turning, the one
white, the other red.

"Certainly not if you do not wish it!" answered Alister, staying his
step. "If I did, however, you would be quite safe, for they would
not come near me. They would be off up that hill as hard as they
could tear, jumping everything that came in their way."

"Is it not very dull here in the winter?" asked Christina, panting a
little, but trying to look as if she had known quite well he was
only joking.

"I do not find it dull."

"Ah, but you are a man, and can do as you please!"

"I never could do as I pleased, and so I please as I do," answered
Alister.

"I do not quite understand you."

"When you cannot do as you like, the best thing is to like what you
have to do. One's own way is not to be had in this world. There's a
better, though, which is to be had!"

"I have heard a parson talk like that," said Mercy, "but never a
layman!"

"My father was a parson as good as any layman. He would have laid me
on my back in a moment--here as I stand!" said Alister, drawing
himself to his height.

He broke suddenly into Gaelic, addressing the more troublesome of
the bulls. No better pleased to stand still than to go on, he had
fallen to digging at his neighbour, who retorted with the horn
convenient, and presently there was a great mixing of bull and
harness and cloddy earth. Turning quickly towards them, Alister
dropped a rein. In a moment the plough was out of the furrow, and
the bulls were straining every muscle, each to send the other into
the wilds of the unseen creation. Alister sprang to their heads, and
taking them by their noses forced them back into the line of the
furrow. Christina, thinking they had broken loose, fled; but there
was Mercy with the reins, hauling with all her might!

"Thank you, thank you!" said the laird, laughing with pleasure. "You
are a friend indeed!"

"Mercy! Mercy! come away directly," cried Christina.

But Mercy did not heed her. The laird took the reins, and
administering a blow each to the animals, made them stand still.

There are tender-hearted people who virtually object to the whole
scheme of creation; they would neither have force used nor pain
suffered; they talk as if kindness could do everything, even where
it is not felt. Millions of human beings but for suffering would
never develop an atom of affection. The man who would spare DUE
suffering is not wise. It is folly to conclude a thing ought not to
be done because it hurts. There are powers to be born, creations to
be perfected, sinners to be redeemed, through the ministry of pain,
that could be born, perfected, redeemed, in no other way. But
Christina was neither wise nor unwise after such fashion. She was
annoyed at finding the laird not easily to be brought to her feet,
and Mercy already advanced to his good graces. She was not jealous
of Mercy, for was she not beautiful and Mercy plain? but Mercy had
by her PLUCK secured an advantage, and the handsome ploughman looked
at her admiringly! Partly therefore because she was not pleased with
him, partly that she thought a little outcry would be telling,--

"Oh, you wicked man!" she cried, "you are hurting the poor brutes!"

"No more than is necessary," he answered.

"You are cruel!"

"Good morning, ladies."

He just managed to take off his bonnet, for the four-legged
explosions at the end of his plough were pulling madly. He slackened
his reins, and away it went, like a sharp knife through a Dutch
cheese.

"You've made him quite cross!" said Mercy.

"What a brute of a man!" said Christina.

She never restrained herself from teasing cat or puppy for her
amusement--did not even mind hurting it a little. Those capable of
distinguishing between the qualities of resembling actions are few.
There are some who will regard Alister as capable of vivisection.

On one occasion when the brothers were boys, Alister having lost his
temper in the pursuit of a runaway pony, fell upon it with his fists
the moment he caught it. Ian put himself between, and received,
without word or motion, more than one blow meant for the pony.

"Donal was only in fun!" he said, as soon as Alister's anger had
spent itself. "Father would never have punished him like that!"

Alister was ashamed, and never again was guilty of such an outbreak.
From that moment he began the serious endeavour to subjugate the
pig, tiger, mule, or whatever animal he found in himself. There
remained, however, this difference between them--that Alister
punished without compunction, while Ian was sorely troubled at
having to cause any suffering.

CHAPTER XI.

THE FIR-GROVE.

As the ladies went up the ridge, regarded in the neighbourhood as
the chief's pleasure-ground where nobody went except to call upon
the chief, they must, having mounted it lower down than where they
descended, pass the cottage. The grove of birch, mountain-ash, and
fir which surrounded it, was planted quite irregularly, and a narrow
foot-path went winding through it to the door. Against one of the
firs was a rough bench turned to the west, and seated upon it they
saw Ian, smoking a formless mass of much defiled sea-foam, otherwise
meer-schaum. He rose, uncovered, and sat down again. But Christina,
who regarded it as a praiseworthy kindness to address any one
beneath her, not only returned his salutation, but stopped, and
said,

"Good morning! We have been learning how they plough in Scotland,
but I fear we annoyed the ploughman."

"Fergus does sometimes LOOK surly," said Ian, rising again, and
going to her; "he has bad rheumatism, poor fellow! And then he can't
speak a word of English, and is ashamed of it!"

"The man we saw spoke English very well. Is Fergus your brother's
name?"

"No; my brother's name is Alister--that is Gaelic for Alexander."

"He was ploughing with two wild little oxen, and could hardly manage
them."

"Then it must have been Alister--only, excuse me, he could manage
them perfectly. Alister could break a pair of buffaloes."

"He seemed rather vexed, and I thought it might be that we made the
creatures troublesome.--I do not mean he was rude--only a little
rough to us."

Ian smiled, and waited for more.

"He did not like to be told he was hard on the animals. I only said
the poor things did not know better!"

"Ah--I see!--He understands animals so well, he doesn't like to be
meddled with in his management of them. I daresay he told you that,
if they didn't know better, he had to teach them better! They are
troublesome little wretches.--Yes, I confess he is a little touchy
about animals!"

Somehow Christina felt herself rebuked, and did not like it. He had
almost told her that, if she had quarrelled with his ploughman-brother,
the fault must be hers!

"But indeed, Captain Macruadh," she said--for the people called him
captain, "I am not ignorant about animals! We have horses of our
own, and know all about them.--Don't we, Mercy?"

"Yes," said Mercy; "they take apples and sugar from our hands."

"And you would have the chief's bulls tamed with apples and sugar!"
returned Ian, laughing. "But the horses were tamed before ever you
saw them! If you had taken them wild, or even when they were foals,
and taught them everything, then you would know a little about them.
An acquaintance is not a friendship! My brother loves animals and
understands them almost like human beings; he understands them
better than some human beings, for the most cunning of the animals
are yet simple. He knows what they are thinking when I cannot read a
word of their faces. I remember one terrible night, winters
ago--there had been a blinding drift on and off during the day, and
my father and mother were getting anxious about him--how he came
staggering in, and fell on the floor, and a great lump in his plaid
on his back began to wallow about, and forth crept his big colley!
They had been to the hills to look after a few sheep, and the poor
dog was exhausted, and Alister carried him home at the risk of his
life."

"A valuable animal, I don't doubt," said Christina.

"He had been, but was no more what the world calls valuable. He was
an old dog almost past work--but the wisest creature! Poor fellow,
he never recovered that day on the hills! A week or so after, we
buried him--in the hope of a blessed resurrection," added Ian, with
a smile.

The girls looked at each other as much as to say, "Good heavens!" He
caught the look, but said nothing, for he saw they had "no
understanding."

The brothers believed most devoutly that the God who is present at
the death-bed of the sparrow does not forget the sparrow when he is
dead; for they had been taught that he is an unchanging God; "and,"
argued Ian, "what God remembers, he thinks of, and what he thinks
of, IS." But Ian knew that what misses the heart falls under the
feet! A man is bound to SHARE his best, not to tumble his
SEED-PEARLS into the feeding-trough, to break the teeth of them that
are there at meat. He had but lifted a corner to give them a glimpse
of the Life eternal, and the girls thought him ridiculous! The human
caterpillar that has not yet even begun to sicken with the growth of
her psyche-wings, is among the poorest of the human animals!

But Christina was not going to give in! Her one idea of the glory of
life was the subjugation of men. As if moved by a sudden impulse,
she went close up to him.

"Do not be angry with me," she said, almost coaxingly, but with a
visible mingling of boldness and shyness, neither of them quite
assumed; for, though conscious of her boldness, she was not
frightened; and there was something in the eagle-face that made it
easy to look shy. "I did not mean to be rude. I am sorry."

"You mistake me," he said gently. "I only wanted you to know you
misjudged my brother."

"Then, if you have forgiven me, you will let me sit for a few
minutes! I am SO tired with walking in the sticky earth!"

"Do, pray, sit down," responded Ian heartily, and led the way.

But she sank gracefully at the foot of the next fir, while Mercy sat
down on the bench.

"Do go on with your pipe," she said, looking up as she arranged her
dress; "I am quite used to smoke. Papa would smoke in church if he
dared!"

"Chrissy! You KNOW he NEVER smokes in the drawing-room!" cried
Mercy, scandalized.

"I have seen him--when mamma was away."

Ian began to be a little more interested in the plain one. But what
must his mother think to see them sitting there together! He could
not help it! if ladies chose to sit down, it was not for him to
forbid them! And there WAS a glimmer of conscience in the younger!

Most men believe only what they find or imagine possible to
themselves. They may be sure of this, that there are men so
different from them that no judgment they pass upon them is worth a
straw, simply because it does not apply to them. I assert of Ian
that neither beauty nor intellect attracted him. Imagination would
entice him, but the least lack of principle would arrest its
influence. The simplest manifestation of a live conscience would
draw him more than anything else. I do not mean the conscience that
proposes questions, but the conscience that loves right and turns
from wrong.

Notwithstanding the damsel's invitation, he did not resume his pipe.
He was simple, but not free and easy--too sensitive to the relations
of life to be familiar upon invitation with any girl. If she was not
one with whom to hold real converse, it was impossible to blow
dandelions with her, and talk must confine itself to the
commonplace. After gentlest assays to know what was possible, the
result might be that he grew courteously playful, or drew back, and
confined himself to the formal.

In the conversation that followed, he soon found the younger capable
of being interested, and, having seen much in many parts of the
world, had plenty to tell her. Christina smiled sweetly, taking
everything with over-gentle politeness, but looking as if all that
interested her was, that there they were, talking about it. Provoked
at last by her persistent lack of GENUINE reception, Ian was tempted
to try her with something different: perhaps she might be moved to
horror! Any feeling would be a FIND! He thought he would tell them
an adventure he had read in a book of travels.

In Persia, alone in a fine moonlit night, the traveller had fallen
asleep on his horse, but woke suddenly, roused by something
frightful, he did not know what. The evil odour all about him
explained, however, his bewilderment and terror. Presently he was
bumped on this side, then bumped on that; first one knee, then the
other, would be struck; now the calf of one leg was caught, now the
calf of the other; then both would be caught at once, and he shoved
nearly over his pommel. His horse was very uneasy, but could ill
help himself in the midst of a moving mass of uncertain objects. The
traveller for a moment imagined himself in a boat on the sea, with a
huge quantity of wrecked cargo floating around him, whence came the
frequent collisions he was undergoing; but he soon perceived that
the vague shapes were boxes, pannierwise on the backs of mules,
moving in caravan along the desert. Of not a few the lids were
broken, of some gone altogether, revealing their contents--the
bodies of good Mussulmans, on their way to the consecrated soil of
Mecca for burial. Carelessly shambled the mules along, stumbling as
they jogged over the uneven ground, their boxes tilting from side to
side, sorely shaken, some of them, in frustration of dying hopes,
scattering their contents over the track--for here and there a mule
carried but a wreck of coffins. On and on over the rough gravelly
waste, under the dead cold moon, weltered the slow stream of death!

"You may be sure," concluded Ian, "he made haste out of the ruck!
But it was with difficulty he got clear, happily to windward--then
for an hour sat motionless on his horse, watching through the
moonlight the long dark shadow flitting toward its far-off goal.
When at length he could no longer descry it, he put his horse to his
speed--but not to overtake it."

As he spoke, Mercy's eyes grew larger and larger, never leaving his
face. She had at least imagination enough for that! Christina curled
her pretty lip, and looked disgusted. The one at a horrible tale was
horrified, the other merely disgusted! The one showed herself
capable of some reception; the other did not.

"Something might be done with that girl!" thought Ian.

"Did he see their faces?" drawled Christina.

Mercy was silent, but her eyes remained fixed on him. It was Ian's
telling, more than the story, that impressed her.

"I don't think he mentions them," answered Ian. "But shall I tell
you," he went on, "what seems to me the most unpleasant thing about
the business?"

"Do," said Christina.

"It is that the poor ghosts should see such a disagreeable fuss made
with their old clothes."

Christina smiled.

"Do you think ghosts see what goes on after they are dead?" asked
Mercy.

"The ghosts are not dead," said Ian, "and I can't tell. But I am
inclined to think some ghosts have to stay a while and look on."

"What would be the good of that?" returned Mercy.

"Perhaps to teach them the little good they were in, or got out of
the world," he answered. "To have to stick to a thing after it is
dead, is terrible, but may teach much."

"I don't understand you," said Mercy. "The world is not dead!"

"Better and better!" thought Ian with himself. "The girl CAN
understand!--A thing is always dead to you when you have done with
it," he answered her. "Suppose you had a ball-dress crumpled and
unsightly--the roses on it withered, and the tinsel shining
hideously through them--would it not be a dead dress?"

"Yes, indeed."

"Then suppose, for something you had done, or for something you
would not stop being, you had to wear that ball-dress till something
came about--you would be like the ghosts that cannot get
away.--Suppose, when you were old and wrinkled,--"

"You are very amusing, Captain Macruadh!" said Christina, with a
bell-like laugh. But Ian went on.

"Some stories tell us of ghosts with the same old wrinkled faces in
which they died. The world and its uses over, they are compelled to
haunt it still, seeing how things go but taking no share in them
beholding the relief their death is to all, feeling they have lost
their chance of beauty, and are fixed in ugliness, having wasted
being itself! They are like a man in a miserable dream, in which he
can do nothing, but in which he must stay, and go dreaming, dreaming
on without hope of release. To be in a world and have nothing to do
with it, must be awful! A little more imagination would do some
people good!"

"No, please!--no more for me!" said Christina, laughing as she rose.

Mercy was silent. Though she had never really thought about anything
herself, she did not doubt that certain people were in earnest about
something. She knew that she ought to be good, and she knew she was
not good; how to be good she did not know, for she had never set
herself, to be good. She sometimes wished she were good; but there
are thousands of wandering ghosts who would be good if they might
without taking trouble: the kind of goodness they desire would
not be worth a life to hold it.

Fear is a wholesome element in the human economy; they are merely
silly who would banish it from all association with religion. True,
there is no religion in fear; religion is love, and love casts out
fear; but until a man has love, it is well he should have fear. So
long as there are wild beasts about, it is better to be afraid than
secure.

The vague awe ready to assail every soul that has not found rest in
its source, readier the more honest the soul, had for the first time
laid hold of Mercy. The earnest face of the speaker had most to do
with it. She had never heard anybody talk like that!

The lady of the house appeared, asking, with kind dignity, if they
would not take some refreshment: to a highlander hospitality is a
law where not a passion. Christina declined the offer.

"Thanks! we were only a little tired, and are quite rested now," she
said. "How beautifully sheltered your house is!"

"On the side of the sea, yes," answered Mrs. Macruadh; "but not much
on the east where we want it most. The trees are growing, however!"

When the sisters were out of sight of the cottage--

"Well!" remarked Christina, "he's a nice young man too, is he not?
Exceedingly well bred! And what taste he has! He knows how to amuse
ladies!"

Mercy did not answer.

"I never heard anything so disgusting!" pursued Christina.

"But," suggested Mercy, "you like to READ horrid stories, Chrissy!
You said so only yesterday! And there was nothing in what he told us
that oughtn't to be spoken about."

"What!--not those hideous coffins--and the bodies dropping out of
them--all crawling, no doubt?"

"That is your own, Chrissy! You KNOW he did not go so far as that!
If Colonel Webberly had told you the story, you would have called it
charming--in fun, of course, I mean!"

But Christina never liked the argumentum ad feminam.

"I would not! You know I would not!" she exclaimed. "I do believe
the girl has fallen in love with the horrid man! Of the two, I
declare, I like the ploughman better. I am sorry I happened to vex
him; he is a good stupid sort of fellow! I can't bear this man! How
horribly he fixed his eyes on you when he was talking that rubbish
about the ball-dress!"

"He was anxious to make himself understood. I know he made me think
I must mind what I was about!"

"Oh, nonsense! We didn't come into this wilderness to be preached to
by a lay John the Baptist! He is an ill-bred fellow!"

She would not have said so much against him, had not Mercy taken his
part.

Mercy rarely contradicted her sister, but even this brief passage
with a real man had roused the justice in her.

"I don't agree with you, Chrissy," she said. "He seems to me VERY
MUCH of a gentleman!"

She did not venture to say all she felt, not choosing to be at
absolute variance, and the threatened quarrel blew over like a
shower in spring.

But some sort of impression remained from the words of Ian on the
mind of Mercy, for the next morning she read a chapter in the book
of Genesis, and said a prayer her mother had taught her.

CHAPTER XII.

AMONG THE HILLS.

When Mr. and Mrs. Palmer reached Inverness, they found they could
spend a few days there, one way and another, to good purpose, for
they had friends to visit as well as shopping to do. Mr. Palmer's
affairs calling him to the south were not immediately pressing, and
their sojourn extended itself to a full week of eight days, during
which the girls were under no rule but their own. Their parents
regarded them as perfectly to be trusted, nor were the girls
themselves aware of any reason why they should not be so regarded.

The window of Christina's bedroom overlooked a part of the road
between the New House and the old castle; and she could see from it
all the ridge as far as the grove that concealed the cottage: if now
they saw more of the young men their neighbours, and were led
farther into the wilds, thickets, or pasturage of their
acquaintance, I cannot say she had no hand in it.

She was depressed by a sense of failure; the boor, as she called
him, was much too thick-skinned for any society but that of his
bulls! and she had made no progress with the Valentine any more than
with the Orson; he was better pleased with her ugly sister than with
her beautiful self!

She would have given neither of tie men another thought, but that
there was no one else with whom to do any of that huckster business
called flirting, which to her had just harm enough in it to make it
interesting to her. She was one of those who can imagine beauty nor
enjoyment in a thing altogether right. She took it for granted that
bad and beautiful were often one; that the pleasures of the world
owed their delight to a touch, a wash, a tincture of the wicked in
them. Such have so many crooked lines in themselves that they fancy
nature laid down on lines of crookedness. They think the obliquity
the beauty of the campanile, the blurring the charm of the sketch.

I tread on delicate ground--ground which, alas! many girls tread
boldly, scattering much feather-bloom from the wings of poor Psyche,
gathering for her hoards of unlovely memories, and sowing the seed
of many a wish that they had done differently. They cannot pass over
such ground and escape having their nature more or less vulgarized.
I do not speak of anything counted wicked; it is only gambling with
the precious and lovely things of the deepest human relation! If a
girl with such an experience marry a man she loves--with what power
of loving may be left such a one--will she not now and then remember
something it would be joy to discover she had but dreamed? will she
be able always to forget certain cabinets in her brain which "it
would not do" to throw open to the husband who thinks her simple as
well as innocent? Honesty and truth, God's essentials, are perhaps
more lacking in ordinary intercourse between young men and women
than anywhere else. Greed and selfishness are as busy there as in
money-making and ambition. Thousands on both sides are constantly
seeking more than their share--more also than they even intend to
return value for. Thousands of girls have been made sad for life by
the speeches of a man careful all the time to SAY nothing that
amounted to a pledge! I do not forget that many a woman who would
otherwise have been worth little, has for her sorrow found such
consolation that she has become rich before God; these words hold
nevertheless: "It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that
man by whom the offence cometh!"

On a morning two days later, Christina called Mercy, rather
imperiously, to get ready at once for their usual walk. She obeyed,
and they set out. Christina declared she was perishing with cold,
and they walked fast. By and by they saw on the road before them the
two brothers walking slow; one was reading, the other listening.
When they came nearer they descried in Alister's hand a manuscript
volume; Ian carried an old-fashioned fowling-piece. It was a hard
frost, which was perhaps the cause of Alister's leisure so early in
the day.

Hearing the light steps of the girls behind them, the men turned.
The laird was the first to speak. The plough and the fierce bulls
not there to bewilder their judgment, the young women immediately
discovered their perception in the matter of breeding to be less
infallible than they had imagined it: no well bred woman could for a
moment doubt the man before them a gentleman--though his carriage
was more courteous and more natural than is often seen in a Mayfair
drawing-room, and his English, a little old-fashioned. Ian was at
once more like and more unlike other people. His manner was equally
courteous, but notably stiffer: he was as much at his ease, but more
reserved. To use a figure, he did not step out so far to meet them.

They walked on together.

"You are a little earlier than usual this morning, ladies!" remarked
the chief.

"How do you know that, Mr. Macruadh?" rejoined Christina.

"I often see you pass--and till now always at the same hour."

"And yet we have never met before!"

"The busy and the"--he hesitated a moment--"unbusy seldom meet,"
said the chief.

"Why don't you say the IDLE?" suggested Christina.

"Because that would be rude."

"Why would it be rude? Most people, suppose, are more idle than
busy!"

"IDLE is a word of blame; I had no right to use it."

"I should have taken you for one of those who always speak their
minds!"

"I hope I do when it is required, and I have any to speak."

"You prefer judging with closed doors!"

The chief was silent: he did not understand her. Did she want him to
say he did not think them idle? or, if they were, that they were
quite right?

"I think it hard," resumed Christina, with a tone of injury, almost
of suffering, in her voice, "that we should be friendly and open
with people, and they all the time thinking of us in a way it would
be rude to tell us! It is enough to make one vow never to speak
to--to anybody again!"

Alister turned and looked at her. What could she mean?

"You can't think it hard," he said, "that people should not tell you
what they think of you the moment they first see you!"

"They might at least tell us what they mean by calling us idle!"

"I said NOT BUSY."

"Is EVERYBODY to blame that is idle?" persisted Christina.

"Perhaps my brother will answer you that question," said Alister.

"If my brother and I tell you honestly what we thought of you when
first we saw you," said Ian, "will you tell us honestly what you
thought of us?"

The girls cast an involuntary glance at each other, and when their
eyes met, could not keep them from looking conscious. A twitching
also at the corners of Mercy's mouth showed they had been saying
more than they would care to be cross-questioned upon.

"Ah, you betray yourselves, ladies!" Ian said. "It is all very well
to challenge us, but you are not prepared to lead the way!"

"Girls are never allowed to lead!" said Christina. "The men are down
on them the moment they dare!"

"I am not that way inclined," answered Ian. "If man or woman lead TO
anything, success will justify the leader. I will propose another
thing!"

"What is it?" asked Christina.

"To agree that, when we are about to part, with no probability of
meeting again in this world, we shall speak out plainly what we
think of each other!"

"But that will be such a time!" said Christina.

"In a world that turns quite round every twenty-four hours, it may
be a very short time!"

"We shall be coming every summer, though I hope not to stay through
another winter!"

"Changes come when they are least expected!"

"We cannot know," said Alister, "that we shall never meet again!"

"There the probability will be enough."

"But how can we come to a better--I mean a FAIRER opinion of each
other, when we meet so seldom?" asked Mercy innocently.

"This is only the second time we have met, and already we are not
quite strangers!" said Christina.

"On the other hand," said Alister, "we have been within call for
more than two months, and this is our second meeting!"

"Well, who has not called?" said Christina.

The young men were silent. They did not care to discuss the question
as to which mother was to blame in the matter.

They were now in the bottom of the valley, had left the road, and
were going up the side of the burn, often in single file, Alister
leading, and Ian bringing up the rear, for the valley was thickly
strewn with lumps of gray rock, of all shapes and sizes. They seemed
to have rolled down the hill on the other side of the burn, but
there was no sign of their origin: the hill was covered with grass
below, and with heather above. Such was the winding of the way among
the stones--for path there was none--that again and again no one of
them could see another. The girls felt the strangeness of it, and
began to experience, without knowing it, a little of the power of
solitary places.

After walking thus for some distance, they found their leader
halted.

"Here we have to cross the burn," he said, "and go a long way up the
other side."

"You want to be rid of us!" said Christina.

"By no means," replied Alister. "We are delighted to have you with
us. But we must not let you get tired before turning to go back."

"If you really do not mind, we should like to go a good deal
farther. I want to see round the turn there, where another hill
comes from behind and closes up the view. We haven't anybody to go
with us, and have seen nothing of the country. The men won't take us
shooting; and mamma is always so afraid we lose ourselves, or fall
down a few precipices, or get into a bog, or be eaten by wild
beasts!"

"If this frost last, we shall have time to show you something of the
country. I see you can walk!"

"We can walk well enough, and should so like to get to the top of a
mountain!"

"For the crossing then!" said Alister, and turning to the burn,
jumped and re-jumped it, as if to let them see how to do it.

The bed of the stream was at the spot narrowed by two rocks, so
that, though there was little of it, the water went through with a
roar, and a force to take a man off his legs. It was too wide for
the ladies, and they stood eyeing it with dismay, fearing an end to
their walk and the pleasant companionship.

"Do not be frightened, ladies," said Alister: "it is not too wide
for you."

"You have the advantage of us in your dress!" said Christina.

"I will get you over quite safe," returned the chief.

Christina looked as if she could not trust herself to him.

"I will try," said Mercy.

"Jump high," answered Alister, as he sprang again to the other side,
and held out his hand across the chasm.

"I can neither jump high nor far!" said Mercy.

"Don't be in a hurry. I will take you--no, not by the hand; that
might slip--but by the wrist. Do not think how far you can jump; all
you have to do is to jump. Only jump as high as you can."

Mercy could not help feeling frightened--the water rushed so fast
and loud below.

"Are you sure you can get me over?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Then I will jump."

She sprang, and Alister, with a strong pull on her arm, landed her
easily.

"It is your turn now," he said, addressing Christina.

She was rather white, but tried to laugh.

"I--I--I don't think I can!" she said.

"It is really nothing," persuaded the chief.

"I am sorry to be a coward, but I fear I was born one."

"Some feelings nobody can help," said Ian, "but nobody need give way
to them. One of the bravest men I ever knew would always start aside
if the meanest little cur in the street came barking at him; and yet
on one occasion, when the people were running in all directions, he
took a mad dog by the throat, and held him. Come, Alister! you take
her by one arm and I will take her by the other."

The chief sprang to her side, and the moment she felt the grasp of
the two men, she had the needful courage. The three jumped together,
and all were presently walking merrily along the other bank, over
the same kind of ground, in single file--Ian bringing up the rear.

The ladies were startled by a gun going off close behind them.

"I beg your pardon," said Ian, "but I could not let the rascal go."

"What have you killed?" his brother asked.

"Only one of my own family--a red-haired fellow!" answered Ian, who
had left the path, and was going up the hill.

The girls looked, but saw nothing, and following him a few yards,
came to him behind a stone.

"Goodness gracious!" exclaimed Christina, with horror in her tone,
"it's a fox!--Is it possible you have shot a fox?"

The men laughed.

"And why not?" asked Alister, as if he had no idea what she could
mean. "Is the fox a sacred animal in the south?"

"It's worse than poaching!" she cried.

"Hardly!" returned Alister. "No doubt you may get a good deal of fun
out of Reynard, but you can't make game of him! Why--you look as if
you had lost a friend! I admire his intellect, but we can't afford
to feed it on chickens and lambs."

"But to SHOOT him!"

"Why not? We do not respect him here. He is a rascal, to be sure,
but then he has no money, and consequently no friends!"

"He has many friends! What WOULD Christian or Mr. Sercombe say to
shooting, actually shooting a fox!"

"You treat him as if he were red gold!" said the chief. "We build
temples neither to Reynard nor Mammon here. We leave the men of the
south to worship them!"

"They don't worship them!" said Mercy.

"Do they not respect the rich man because he is rich, and look down
on the poor man because he is poor?" said Ian. "Though the rich be a
wretch, they think him grand; though the poor man be like Jesus
Christ, they pity him!"

"And shouldn't the poor be pitied?" said Christina.

"Not except they need pity."

"Is it not pitiable to be poor?"

"By no means. It is pitiable to be wretched--and that, I venture to
suspect, the rich are oftener than the poor.--But as to master
Reynard there--instead of shooting him, what would you have had us
do with him?"

"Hunt him, to be sure."

"Would he like that better?"

"What he would like is not the question. The sport is the thing."

"That will show you why he is not sacred here: we do not hunt him.
It would be impossible to hunt this country; you could not ride the
ground. Besides, there are such multitudes of holes, the hounds
would scarcely have a chance. No; the only dog to send after the
fellow is a leaden one."

"There's another!" exclaimed the chief; "--there, sneaking
away!--and your gun not loaded, Ian!"

"I am so glad!" said Christina. "He at least will escape you!"

"And some poor lamb in the spring won't escape him!" returned
Alister.

"Lambs are meant to be eaten!" said Christina.

"Yes; but a lamb might think it hard to feed such a creature!"

"If the fox is of no good in the world," said Mercy, "why was he
made?"

"He can't be of no good," answered the chief. "What if some things
are, just that we may get rid of them?"

"COULD they be made just to be got rid of?"

"I said--that WE might get rid of them: there is all the difference
in that. The very first thing men had to do in the world was to
fight beasts."

"I think I see what you mean," said Mercy: "if there had been no
wild beasts to fight with, men would never have grown able for
much!"

"That is it," said Alister. "They were awful beasts! and they had
poor weapons to fight them with--neither guns nor knives!"

"And who knows," suggested Ian, "what good it may be to the fox
himself to make the best of a greedy life?"

"But what is the good to us of talking about such things?" said
Christina. "They're not interesting!"

The remark silenced the brothers: where indeed could be use without
interest?

But Mercy, though she could hardly have said she found the
conversation VERY interesting, felt there was something in the men
that cared to talk about such things, that must be interesting if
she could only get at it. They were not like any other men she had
met!

Christina's whole interest in men was the admiration she looked for
and was sure of receiving from them; Mercy had hitherto found their
company stupid.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE LAKE.

Silence lasted until they reached the shoulder of the hill that
closed the view up the valley. As they rounded it, the sun went
behind a cloud, and a chill wind, as if from a land where dwelt no
life, met them. The hills stood back, and they were on the shore of
a small lake, out of which ran the burn. They were very
desolate-looking hills, with little heather, and that bloomless, to
hide their hard gray bones. Their heads were mostly white with frost
and snow; their shapes had little beauty; they looked worn and
hopeless, ugly and sad--and so cold! The water below was slaty
gray, in response to the gray sky above: there seemed no life in
either. The hearts of the girls sank within them, and all at once
they felt tired. In the air was just one sign of life: high above
the lake wheeled a large fish-hawk.

"Look!" said Alister pointing; "there is the osprey that lives here
with his wife! He is just going to catch a fish!"

He had hardly spoken when the bird, with headlong descent, shot into
the water, making it foam up all about. He reappeared with a fish in
his claws, and flew off to find his mate.

"Do you know the very bird?" asked Mercy.

"I know him well. He and his wife have built on that conical rock
you see there in the middle of the water many years."

"Why have you never shot him? He would look well stuffed!" said
Christina.

She little knew the effect of her words; the chief HATED causeless
killing; and to hear a lady talk of shooting a high-soaring creature
of the air as coolly as of putting on her gloves, was nauseous to
him. Ian gave him praise afterwards for his unusual self-restraint.
But it was a moment or two ere he had himself in hand.

"Do you not think he looks much better going about God's business?"
he said.

"Perhaps; but he is not yours; you have not got him!"

"Why should I have him? He seems, indeed, the more mine the higher
he goes. A dead stuffed thing--how could that be mine at all? Alive,
he seems to soar in the very heaven of my soul!"

"You showed the fox no such pity!" remarked Mercy.

"I never killed a fox to HAVE him!" answered Alister. "The osprey
does no harm. He eats only fish, and they are very plentiful; he
never kills birds or hares, or any creature on the land. I do not
see how any one could wish to kill the bird, except from mere love
of destruction! Why should I make a life less in the world?"

"There would be more lives of fish--would there not?" said Mercy.
"I don't want you to shoot the poor bird; I only want to hear your
argument!"

The chief could not immediately reply, Ian came to his rescue.

"There are qualities in life," he said. "One cannot think the
fish-life so fine, so full of delight as the bird-life!"

"No. But," said Mercy, "have the fishes not as good a right to their
life as the birds?"

"Both have the right given them by the maker of them. The osprey was
made to eat the fish, and the fish, I hope, get some good of being
eaten by the osprey."

"Excuse me, Captain Macruadh, but that seems to me simple nonsense!"
said Christina.

"I hope it is true."

"I don't know about being true, but it must be nonsense."

"It must seem so to most people."

"Then why do you say it?"

"Because I hope it is true."

"Why should you wish nonsense to be true?"

"What is true cannot be nonsense. It looks nonsense only to those
that take no interest in the matter. Would it be nonsense to the
fishes?"

"It does seem hard," said Mercy, "that the poor harmless things
should be gobbled up by a creature pouncing down upon them from
another element!"

"As the poor are gobbled up everywhere by the rich!"

"I don't believe that. The rich are very kind to the poor."

"I beg your pardon," said Ian, "but if you know no more about the
rich than you do about the fish, I can hardly take your testimony.
The fish are the most carnivorous creatures in the world."

"Do they eat each other?"

"Hardly that. Only the cats of Kilkenny can do that."

"I used a common phrase!"

"You did, and I am rude: the phrase must bear the blame for both of
us. But the fish are even cannibals--eating the young of their own
species! They are the most destructive of creatures to other lives."

"I suppose," said Mercy, "to make one kind of creature live on
another kind, is the way to get the greatest good for the greatest
number!"

"That doctrine, which seems to content most people, appears to me a
poverty-stricken and selfish one. I can admit nothing but the
greatest good to every individual creature."

"Don't you think we had better be going, Mercy? It has got quite
cold; I am afraid it will rain," said Christina, drawing her cloak
round her with a little shiver.

"I am ready," answered Mercy.

The brothers looked at each other. They had come out to spend the
day together, but they could not leave the ladies to go home alone;
having brought them across the burn, they were bound to see them
over it again! An imperceptible sign passed between them, and
Alister turned to the girls.

"Come then," he said, "we will go back!"

"But you were not going home yet!" said Mercy.

"Would you have us leave you in this wild place?"

"We shall find our way well enough. The burn will guide us."

"Yes; but it will not jump over you; it will leave you to jump over
it!"

"I forgot the burn!" said Christina.

"Which way were you going?" asked Mercy, looking all around for road
or pathway over the encircling upheaved wildernesses.

"This way," answered Ian. "Good-bye."

"Then you are not coming?"

"No. My brother will take care of you."

He went straight as an arrow up the hill. They stood and watched him
go. At what seemed the top, he turned and waved his cap, then
vanished.

Christina felt disappointed. She did not much care for either of the
very peculiar young men, but any company was better than none; a man
was better than a woman; and two men were better than one! If these
were not equal to admiring her as she deserved, what more
remunerative labour than teaching them to do so?

The thing that chiefly disappointed her in them was, that they had
so little small talk. It was so stupid to be always speaking sense!
always polite! always courteous!--"Two sir Charles Grandisons," she
said, "are two too many!" And indeed the History of Sir Charles
Grandison had its place in the small library free to them from
childhood; but Christina knew nothing of him except by hearsay.

The young men had been brought up in a solemn school--had learned to
take life as a serious and lovely and imperative thing. Not the
less, upon occasions of merry-making, would they frolic like young
colts even yet, and that without the least reaction or sense of
folly afterwards. At the same time, although Ian had in the village
from childhood the character, especially in the workshops of the
carpenter, weaver, and shoemaker, of being 'full of humour, he was
in himself always rather sad, being perplexed with many things: his
humour was but the foam of his troubled sea.

Christina was annoyed besides that Mercy seemed not indifferent to
the opinion of the men. It was from pure inexperience of the
man-world, she said to herself, that the silly child could see
anything interesting in them! GENTLEMEN she must allow them--but of
such an old-fashioned type as to be gentlemen but by courtesy--not
gentlemen in the world's count! She was of the world; they of the
north of Scotland! All day Mercy had been on their side and against
her! It might be from sheer perversity, but she had never been like
that before! She must take care she did not make a fool of herself!
It might end in some unhappiness to the young goose! Assuredly
neither her father nor mother would countenance the thing! She must
throw herself into the breach! But which of them was she taking a
fancy to?

She was not so anxious about her sister, however, as piqued that she
had not herself gathered one expression of homage, surprised one
look of admiration, seen one sign of incipient worship in either. Of
the two she liked better the ploughman! The other was more a man of
the world--but he was not of her world! With him she was a stranger
in a very strange land!

Christina's world was a very small one, and in its temple stood her
own image. Ian belonged to the universe. He was a gentleman of the
high court. Wherever he might go throughout God's worlds, he would
be at home. How could there be much attraction between Christina and
him?

Alister was more talkative on the way back than he had been all day.
Christina thought the change caused by having them, or rather her,
to himself alone; but in reality it sprang from the prospect of soon
rejoining his brother without them. Some of the things he said,
Mercy found well worth hearing; and an old Scotch ballad which he
repeated, having learned it of a lowland nurse, appeared to her as
beautiful as it was wild and strange. For Christina, she despised
the Scotch language: it was vulgar! Had Alister informed her that
Beowulf, "the most important of all the relics of the Pagan
Anglo-Saxon, is written in undeniable Scotch, the English of the
period," it would have made no difference to Christina! Why should
it? She had never yet cared for any book beyond the novels of a
certain lady which, to speak with due restraint, do not tend to
profitable thought. At the same time, it was not for the worst in
them that she liked them; she did not understand them well enough to
see it. But there was ground to fear that, when she came to
understand, shocked at first, she would speedily get accustomed to
it, and at length like them all the better for it.

In Mercy's unawakened soul, echoed now and then a faint thrill of
response to some of the things Alister said, and, oftener, to some
of the verses he repeated; and she would look up at him when he was
silent, with an unconscious seeking glance, as if dimly aware of a
beneficent presence. Alister was drawn by the honest gaze of her yet
undeveloped and homely countenance, with its child-look in process
of sublimation, whence the woman would glance out and vanish again,
leaving the child to give disappointing answers. There was something
in it of the look a dog casts up out of his beautiful brown eyes
into the mystery of his master's countenance. She was on the edge of
coming awake; all was darkness about her, but something was pulling
at her! She had never known before that a lady might be lovely in a
ballad as well as in a beautiful gown!

Finding himself so listened to, though the listener was little more
than a child, the heart of the chief began to swell in his great
bosom. Like a child he was pleased. The gray day about him grew
sweet; its very grayness was sweet, and of a silvery sheen. When
they arrived at the burn, and, easily enough from that side, he had
handed them across, he was not quite so glad to turn from them as he
had expected to be.

"Are you going?" said Christina with genuine surprise, for she had
not understood his intention.

"The way is easy now," he answered. "I am sorry to leave you, but I
have to join Ian, and the twilight will be flickering down before I
reach the place."

"And there will be no moon!" said Mercy: "how will you get home
through the darkness?"

"We do not mean to come home to-night."

"Oh, then, you are going to friends!"

"No; we shall be with each other--not a soul besides."

"There can't surely be a hotel up there?"

Alister laughed as he answered,

"There are more ways than one of spending a night on the hills. If
you look from a window--in that direction," he said, pointing, "the
last thing before you go to bed, you will see that at least we shall
not perish with cold."

He sprang again over the burn, and with a wave of his bonnet, went,
like Ian, straight up the hill.

The girls stood for some time watching him climb as if he had been
going up a flight of stairs, until he stood clear against the sky,
when, with another wave of his bonnet, he too disappeared.

Mercy did not forget to look from her window in the direction
Alister had indicated. There was no room to mistake what he meant,
for through the dark ran a great opening to the side of a hill,
somewhere in the night, where glowed and flamed, reddening the air,
a huge crescent of fire, slowly climbing, like a column of attack,
up toward the invisible crest.

"What does it mean?" she said to herself. "Why do they make such a
bonfire--with nobody but themselves to enjoy it? What strange
men--out by themselves in the dark night, on the cold hill! What can
they be doing it for? I hope they have something to eat! I SHOULD
like to hear them talk! I wonder what they are saying about US! I am
certain we bored them!"

The brothers did speak of them, and readily agreed in some notion of
their characters; but they soon turned to other things, and there
passed a good deal that Mercy could not have followed. What would
she, for instance, have made of Alister's challenge to his brother
to explain the metaphysical necessity for the sine, tangent, and
secant of an angle belonging to its supplement as well?

When the ladies overtook them in the morning, Alister was reading,
from an old manuscript volume of his brother's which he had found in
a chest, a certain very early attempt at humour, and now they
disputed concerning it as they watched the fire. It had abundance of
faults, and in especial lacked suture, but will serve to show
something of lan's youthful ingenium.

    TO A VAGRANT.

    Gentle vagrant, stumping over
    Several verdant fields of clover!
    Subject of unnumbered knockings!
    Tattered' coat and ragged stockings,
    Slouching hat and roving eye,
    Tell of SETTLED vagrancy!
        Wretched wanderer, can it be
    The poor laws have leaguered thee?
    Hear'st thou, in thy thorny den,
    Tramp of rural policemen,
    Inly fancying, in thy rear
    Coats of blue and buttons clear,
    While to meet thee, in the van
    Stalks some vengeful alderman?--
    Each separate sense bringing a notion
    Of forms that teach thee locomotion!
        Beat and battered altogether,
    By fellow-men, by wind and weather;
    Hounded on through fens and bogs,
    Chased by men and bit by dogs:
    And, in thy weakly way of judging,
    So kindly taught the art of trudging;
    Or, with a moment's happier lot,
    Pitied, pensioned, and forgot--
    Cutty-pipe thy regium donum;
    Poverty thy summum bonum;
    Thy frigid couch a sandstone stratum;
    A colder grave thy ultimatum;
    Circumventing, circumvented;
    In short, excessively tormented,
    Everything combines to scare
    Charity's dear pensioner!
    --Say, vagrant, can'st thou grant to me
    A slice of thy philosophy?
        Haply, in thy many trudgings,
    Having found unchallenged lodgings,
    Thy thoughts, unused to saddle-crupper,
    Ambling no farther than thy supper--
    Thou, by the light of heaven-lit taper,
    Mendest thy prospective paper!
    Then, jolly pauper, stitch till day;
    Let not thy roses drop away,
    Lest, begrimed with muddy matter,
    Thy body peep from every tatter,
    And men--a charitable dose--
    Should physic thee with food and clothes!
        Nursling of adversity!
    'Tis thy glory thus to be
    Sinking fund of raggery!
    Thus to scrape a nation's dishes,
    And fatten on a few good wishes!
    Or, on some venial treason bent,
    Frame thyself a government,
    For thy crest a brirnless hat,
    Poverty's aristocrat!
        Nonne habeam te tristem,
    Planet of the human system?
    Comet lank and melancholic
    --Orbit shocking parabolic--
    Seen for a little in the sky
    Of the world of sympathy--
    Seldom failing when predicted,
    Coming most when most restricted,
    Dragging a nebulous tail with thee
    Of hypothetic vagrancy--
    Of vagrants large, and vagrants small,
    Vagrants scarce visible at all!
        Matchless oracle of woe!
    Anarchy in embryo!
    Strange antipodes of bliss!
    Parody on happiness!
    Baghouse of the great creation!
    Subject meet for strangulation,
    By practice tutored to condense
    The cautious inquiry for pence,
    And skilful, with averted eye,
    To hide thy latent roguery--
    Lo, on thy hopes I clap a stopper!
    Vagrant, thou shalt have no copper!
    Gather thy stumps, and get thee hence,
    Unwise solicitor of pence!

Alister, who all but worshipped Ian, and cherished every scrap from
his pen, had not until quite lately seen this foolish production, as
Ian counted it, and was delighted with it, as he would have been had
it been much worse. Ian was vexed that he should like it, and now
spent the greater part of an hour trying to show him how very bad in
parts, even senseless it was. Profusion of epithets without
applicability, want of continuity, purposelessness, silliness,
heartlessness--were but a few of his denunciations. Alister argued
it was but a bit of fun, and that anybody that knew Ian, knew
perfectly he would never amuse himself with a fellow without giving
him something, but it was in vain; Ian was bent on showing it
altogether unworthy. So, not to waste the night, they dropped the
dispute, and by the light of the blazing heather, turned to a
chapter of Boethius.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE WOLVES.

My readers may remember that Ian was on the point of acquainting his
mother with an important event in his spiritual history, when they
were interrupted by the involuntary call of the girls from the New
House. The mother, as will readily be believed, remained desirous of
listening to her son's story, though dreading it would not be of a kind
to give her much satisfaction; but partly from preventions--favoured,
it must be confessed by Ian, and yet more from direct avoidance on his
part, the days passed without her hearing anything more of it. Ian had
in truth almost repented his offer of the narrative: a certain vague
assurance that it would not be satisfactory to her, had grown upon
him until he felt it unkind to lay before her an experience whose
narration would seem to ask a sympathy she could not give. But the
mother was unable to let the thing rest. More than by interest she
was urged by anxiety. In spite of her ungodlike theories of God, it
was impossible she could be in despair about her noble Ian; still,
her hope was at best founded on the uncovenanted mercies of God, not
on the security of his bond! She did not believe that God was doing
and would do his best for every man; therefore she had no assurance
that he would bring down the pride of Ian, and compel his acceptance
of terms worthy of an old Roman father, half law-circumventing lawyer,
half heartless tyrant. But her longing to hear what her son had
proposed telling her, was chiefly inspired by the hope of getting
nearer to him, of closer sympathy becoming possible between them
through her learning more clearly what his views were. She constantly
felt as if walking along the side of a thick hedge, with occasional
thinnesses through which now and then she gained a ghostly glimpse
of her heart's treasure gliding along the other side--close to her,
yet so far that, when they spoke, they seemed calling across a gulf
of dividing darkness. Therefore, the night after that spent by her
sons on the hill, all having retired some two hours before, the mother,
finding herself unable to sleep, rose as she had often done ere now,
and stole to the door of the little room under the thatch where Ian
lay. Listening, and judging him awake, she went softly in, and sat down
by his bedside.

There had been such occasions on which, though son as well as mother
was wide awake, neither spoke a word; but this time the mother could
not be silent.

"You never told me, Ian, the story you began about something that
made you pray!"

Ian saw he could not now draw back without causing, her more trouble
than would the narration.

"Are you sure you will not take cold mother dear?" he said.

"I am warmly clad, my son; and my heart, more than I can tell you,
is longing to hear all about it."

"I am afraid you will not find my story so interesting as you
expect, mother!"

"What concerns you is more interesting to me than anything else in
the whole world, Ian."

"Not more than God, mother?" said Ian.

The mother was silent. She was as honest as her sons. The question,
dim-lucent, showed her, if but in shadow, something of the truth
concerning herself--not so that she could grasp it, for she saw it
as in a glimmer, a fluctuating, vanishing flash--namely, that she
cared more about salvation than about God--that, if she could but
keep her boy out of hell, she would be content to live on without
any nearer approach to him in whom she had her being! God was to her
an awe, not a ceaseless, growing delight!

There are centuries of paganism yet in many lovely Christian
souls--paganism so deep, therefore so little recognized, that their
earnest endeavour is to plant that paganism ineradicably in the
hearts of those dearest to them.

As she did not answer, Ian was afraid she was hurt, and thought it
better to begin his story at once.

"It was one night in the middle of winter--last winter, near
Moscow," he began, "and the frost was very bitter--the worst night
for cold I have ever known. I had gone with a companion into the
depth of a great pine forest. On our way, the cold grew so intense,
that we took refuge at a little public-house, frequented by peasants
and persons of the lowest ranks. On entering I saw a scene which
surpassed all for interest I had ever before witnessed. The little
lonely house was crammed with Russian soldiers, fierce-looking
fellows, and I daresay their number formed our protection from
violence. Many of them were among the finest looking fellows I have
ever seen. They were half drunk, and were dancing and singing with
the wildest gesticulations and grimaces; but such singing for
strange wildness and harmony combined I had never before listened
to. One would keep up a solo for some minutes, when the whole
company would join in a sort of chorus, dancing frantically about,
but with the most perfect regularity of movement. One of them came
up to me and with a low bow begged me in the name of the rest to
give them some money. I accordingly gave them a silver ruble, upon
which the whole party set up a shout, surrounded me, and in a moment
a score of brawny fellows had lifted me in the air, where I was
borne along in triumph. I took off my cap and gave three
hip-hip-hurrahs as loud as my lungs could bawl, whereupon, with the
profoundest expressions of gratitude, I was lowered from my
elevation. One of them then who seemed to be the spokesman of the
rest, seized me in his arms and gave me a hearty kiss on the cheek,
on which I took my departure amid universal acclamation.--But all
that's not worth telling you about; it was not for that I
began--only the scene came up so clear before me that it drew me
aside."

"I don't need to tell you, Ian," said his mother, with shining eyes,
"that if it were only what you had to eat on the most ordinary day
of your life, it would be interesting to me!"

"Thank you, mother dear; I seem to know that without being told; but
I could never talk to you about anything that was not interesting to
myself."

Here he paused. He would rather have stopped.

"Go on, go on, Ian. I am longing to hear."

"Well--where was I?--We left at the inn our carriage and horses, and
went with our guns far into the forest--all of straight, tall pines,
up and up; and the Little island-like tops of them, which, if there
be a breath of wind, are sure to be swaying about like the motion of
a dream, were as still as the big frosty stars in the deep blue
overhead."

"What did you want in such a lonely place at that time of the
night?" asked the mother.

She sat with firm-closed lips, and wide, night-filled eyes looking
at her son, the fear of love in her beautiful face--a face more
beautiful than any other that son had yet seen, fit window for a
heart so full of refuge to look out of; and he knew how she looked
though the darkness was between them.

"Wolves, mother," he answered.

She shuddered. She was a great reader in the long winter nights, and
had read terrible stories of wolves--the last of which in Scotland
had been killed not far from where they sat.

"What did you want with the wolves, Ian?" she faltered.

"To kill them, mother. I never liked killing animals any more than
Alister; but even he destroys the hooded crow; and wolves are yet
fairer game. They are the out-of-door devils of that country, and I
fancy devils do go into them sometimes, as they did once into the
poor swine: they are the terror of all who live near the forests.

"There was no moon--only star-light; but whenever we came to any
opener space, there was light enough from the snow to see all about;
there was light indeed from the snow all through the forest, but the
trees were thick and dark. Far away, somewhere in the mystery of the
black wood, we could now and then hear a faint howling: it came from
the red throats of the wolves."

"You are frightening me, Ian!" said the mother, as if they had been
two children telling each other tales.

"Indeed, mother, they are very horrible when they hunt in droves,
ravenous with hunger. To kill one of them, if it be but one, is to
do something for your kind. And just at that time I was oppressed
with the feeling that I had done and was doing nothing for my
people--my own humans; and not knowing anything else I could at the
moment attempt, I resolved to go and kill a wolf or two: they had
killed a poor woman only two nights before.

"As soon as we could after hearing the noise of them, we got up into
two trees. It took us some time to discover two that were fit for
our purpose, and we did not get them so near each other as we should
have liked. It was rather anxious work too until we found them, for
if we encountered on foot a pack of those demons, we could be but a
moment or two alive: killing one, ten would be upon us, and a
hundred more on the backs of those. But we hoped they would smell us
up in the trees, and search for us, when we should be able to give
account of a few of them at least: we had double-barrelled guns, and
plenty of powder and ball."

"But how could you endure the cold--at night--and without food?"

"No, mother; we did not try that! We had plenty to eat in our
pockets. My companion had a bottle of vodki, and--"

"What is that?" asked the mother with suspicion.

"A sort of raw spirit--horrible stuff--more like spirits of wine.
They say it does not hurt in such cold."

"But, Ian!" cried the mother, and seemed unable to say more.

"Don't be frightened, mother!" said Ian, with a merry laugh. "Surely
you do not imagine _I_ would drink such stuff! True, I had my
bottle, but it was full of tea. The Russians drink enormous
quantities of tea--though not so strong as you make it."

"Go on, then, Ian; go on."

"We sat a long time, and there was no sign of the wolves coming near
us. It was very cold, but our furs kept in our warmth. By and by I
fell asleep--which was not dangerous so long as I kept warm, and I
thought the cold must wake me before it began to numb me. And as 'I
slept I dreamed; but my dream did not change the place; the forest,
the tree I was in, all my surroundings were the same. I even dreamed
that I came awake, and saw everything about me just as it was. I
seemed to open my eyes, and look about me on the dazzling snow from
my perch: I was in a small tree on the border of a little clearing.

"Suddenly, out of the wood to my left, issued something, running
fast, but with soundless feet, over the snow. I doubted in my dream
whether the object were a live thing or only a shadow. It came
nearer, and I saw it was a child, a little girl, running as if for
her life. She came straight to the tree I sat in, and when close to
it, but without a moment's halt, looked up, and I saw a sweet little
face, white with terror--which somehow seemed, however, not for
herself, but for me. I called out after her to stop, and I would
take her into the tree beside me, where the wolves could not reach
her; but she only shook her head, and ran on over the clearing into
the forest. Among the holes I watched the fleeting shape appear and
disappear and appear again, until I saw it no more. Then first I
heard another kind of howl from the wolves--that of pursuit. It
strengthened and swelled, growing nearer and nearer, till at last,
through the stillness of the night and the moveless forest and the
dead snow, came to my ear a kind of soft rushing sound. I don't know
how to describe it. The rustle of dry leaves is too sharp; it was
like a very soft heavy rain on a window--a small dull padding
padding: it was the feet of the wolves. They came nearer and grew
louder and louder, but the noise was still muffled and soft. Their
howling, however, was now loud and horrid. I suppose they cannot
help howling; if they could, they would have too much power over
poor creatures, coming upon them altogether at unawares; but as it
is, they tell, whether they will or no, that they are upon the way.
At length, dark as a torrent of pitch, out of the forest flowed a
multitude of obscure things, and streamed away, black over the snow,
in the direction the child had taken. They passed close to the foot
of my tree, but did not even look up, flitting by like a shadow
whose substance was unseen. Where the child had vanished they also
disappeared: plainly they were after her!

"It was only a dream, mother! don't be so frightened," interrupted
lan, for here his mother gave a little cry, almost forgetting what
the narration was.

"Then first," he went on, "I seemed to recover my self-possession. I
saw that, though I must certainly be devoured by the wolves, and the
child could not escape, I had no choice but go down and follow, do
what I could, and die with her. Down I was the same instant, running
as I had never run before even in a dream, along the track of the
wolves. As I ran, I heard their howling, but it seemed so far off
that I could not hope to be in time to kill one of them ere they
were upon her. Still, by their howling, it did not appear they had
reached her, and I ran on. Their noise grew louder and louder, but I
seemed to run miles and miles, wondering what spell was upon me that
I could not come up with them. All at once the clamour grew hideous,
and I saw them. They were gathered round a tree, in a clearing just
like that I had left, and were madly leaping against it, but ever
falling back baffled. I looked up: in the top of the tree sat the
little girl, her white face looking down upon them with a smile. All
the terror had vanished from it. It was still white as the snow, but
like the snow was radiating a white light through the dark foliage
of the fir. I see it often, mother, so clear that I could paint it.
I was enchanted at the sight. But she was not in safety yet, and I
rushed into the heap of wolves, striking and stabbing with my
hunting-knife. I got to the tree, and was by her in a moment. But
as I took the child in my arms I woke, and knew that it was a dream.
I sat in my own tree, and up against the stem of it broke a howling,
surging black wave of wolves. They leaped at the tree-bole as a
rock-checked billow would leap. My gun was to my shoulder in a
moment, and blazed among them. Howls of death arose. Their
companions fell upon the wounded, and ate them up. The tearing and
yelling at the foot of the tree was like the tumult of devils full
of hate and malice and greed. Then for the first time I thought
whether such creatures might not be the open haunts of demons. I do
not imagine that, when those our Lord drove out of the man asked
permission to go into the swine, they desired anything unheard of
before in the demon-world. I think they were not in the way of going
into tame animals; but, as they must go out of the man, as they
greatly dreaded the abyss of the disembodied, and as no ferocious
animals fit to harbour them were near, they begged leave to go into
such as were accessible, though unsuitable; whereupon the natural
consequence followed: their presence made the poor swine miserable
even to madness, and with the instinct of so many maniacs that in
death alone lies their deliverance, they rushed straight into the
loch."

"It may be so, Ian! But I want to hear how you got away from the
wolves."

"I fired and fired; and still they kept rushing on the tree-hole,
heaping themselves against it, those behind struggling up on the
backs of those next it, in a storm of rage and hunger and jealousy.
Not a few who had just helped to eat some of their fellows, were
themselves eaten in turn, and not a scrap of them left; but it was a
large pack, and it would have taken a long time to kill enough to
satisfy those that remained. I killed and killed until my ammunition
was gone, and then there was nothing for it but await the light.
When the morning began to dawn, they answered its light with
silence, and turning away swept like a shadow back into the wood.
Strange to tell, I heard afterwards that a child had been killed by
them in the earlier part of that same night. But even now sometimes,
as I lie awake, I grow almost doubtful whether the whole was not a
hideous dream.

"Not the less for that was what I went through between the time my
powder came to an end and the dawn of the morning, a real spiritual
fact.

"In the midst of the howling I grew so sleepy that the horrible
noise itself seemed to lull me while it kept me awake, and I fell
into a kind of reverie with which my dream came back and mingled. I
seemed to be sitting in the tree with the little shining girl, and
she was my own soul; and all the wrong things I had in me, and all
the wrong things I had done, with all the weaknesses and evil
tendencies of my nature, whether mine by fault or by inheritance,
had taken shape, and, in the persons of the howling wolves below,
were besieging me, to get at me, and devour me. Suddenly my soul was
gone. Above were the still, bright stars, shining unmoved; beneath
was the white, betraying snow, and the howling wolves; away through
the forest was fleeting, ever fleeting, my poor soul, in the
likeness of a white-faced child! All at once came a great stillness,
as of a desert place, where breathed nor life of man nor life of
beast. I was alone, frightfully alone--alone as I had never been
before. The creatures at the foot of the tree were still howling,
but their cry sounded far away and small; they were in some story I
had been reading, not anywhere in my life! I was left and lost--left
by whom?--lost by whom?--in the waste of my own being, without stay
or comfort. I looked up to the sky; it was infinite--yet only a part
of myself, and much too near to afford me any refuge from the desert
of my lost self. It came down nearer; the limitless space came down,
and clasped me, and held me. It came close to me--as if I had been a
shape off which all nature was taking a mould. I was at once
everything and nothing. I cannot tell you how frightful it was! In
agony I cried to God, with a cry of utter despair. I cannot say
whether I may believe that he answered me; I know this, that a great
quiet fell upon me--but a quiet as of utter defeat and helplessness.
Then again, I cannot tell how, the quiet and the helplessness melted
away into a sense of God--a feeling as if great space all about me
was God and not emptiness. Wolf nor sin could touch me! I was a wide
peace--my very being peace! And in my mind--whether an echo from
the Bible, I do not know--were the words:--'I, even I, am he that
comforteth thee. I am God, thy saviour!' Whereas I had seemed all
alone, I was with God, the only withness man can really share! I
lifted my eyes; morning was in the east, and the wolves were
slinking away over the snow."

How to receive the strange experience the mother did not know. She
ought to say something, for she sorely questioned it! Not a word had
he spoken belonging to the religion in which she had brought him up,
except two--SIN and GOD! There was nothing in it about the
atonement! She did not see that it was a dream, say rather a vision,
of the atonement itself. To Ian her interpretation of the atonement
seemed an everlasting and hopeless severance. The patience of God
must surely be far more tried by those who would interpret him, than
by those who deny him: the latter speak lies against him, the former
speak lies for him! Yet all the time the mother felt as in the
presence of some creature of a higher world--one above the ordinary
race of men--whom the powers of evil had indeed misled, but perhaps
not finally snared. She little thought how near she was to imagining
that good may come out of evil--that there is good which is not of
God! She did not yet understand that salvation lies in being one
with Christ, even as the branch is one with the vine;--that any
salvation short of knowing God is no salvation at all. What moment a
man feels that he belongs to God utterly, the atonement is there,
the son of God is reaping his harvest.

The good mother was not, however, one of those conceited,
stiff-necked, power-loving souls who have been the curse and ruin
of the church in all ages; she was but one of those in whom
reverence for its passing form dulls the perception of unchangeable
truth. They shut up God's precious light in the horn lantern of
human theory, and the lantern casts such shadows on the path to the
kingdom as seem to dim eyes insurmountable obstructions. For the
sake of what they count revealed, they refuse all further
revelation, and what satisfies them is merest famine to the next
generation of the children of the kingdom. Instead of God's truth
they offer man's theory, and accuse of rebellion against God such as
cannot live on the husks they call food. But ah, home-hungry soul!
thy God is not the elder brother of the parable, but the father with
the best robe and the ring--a God high above all thy longing, even
as the heavens are high above the earth.

CHAPTER XV.

THE GULF THAT DIVIDED.

When Ian ceased, a silence deep as the darkness around, fell upon
them. To Ian, the silence seemed the very voice of God, clear in the
darkness; to the mother it was a darkness interpenetrating the
darkness; it was a great gulf between her and her boy. She must cry
to him aloud, but what should she cry? If she did not, an
opportunity, perhaps the last, on which hung eternal issues, would
be gone for ever! Each moment's delay was a disobedience to her
conscience, a yielding to love's sinful reluctance! With "sick
assay" she heaved at the weight on her heart, but not a word would
come. If Ian would but speak again, and break the spell of the
terrible stillness! She must die in eternal wrong if she did not
speak! But no word would come. Something in her would not move. It
was not in her brain or her lips or her tongue, for she knew all the
time she could speak if she would. The caitiff will was not all on
the side of duty! She was not FOR the truth!--could she then be OF
the truth? She did not suspect a divine reluctance to urge that
which was not good.

Not always when the will works may we lay hold of it in the act:
somehow, she knew not how, she heard herself speaking.

"Are you sure it was God, Ian?" she said.

The voice she heard was weak and broken, reedy and strained, like
the voice of one all but dead.

"No, mother," answered Ian, "but I hope it was."

"Hopes, my dear hoy, are not to be trusted."

"That is true, mother; and yet we are saved by hope."

"We are saved by faith."

"I do not doubt it."

"You rejoice my heart. But faith in what?"

"Faith in God, mother."

"That will not save you."

"No, but God will."

"The devils believe in God, and tremble."

"I believe in the father of Jesus Christ, and do not tremble."

"You ought to tremble before an unreconciled God."

"Like the devils, mother?"

"Like a sinful child of Adam. Whatever your fancies, Ian, God will
not hear you, except you pray to him in the name of his Son."

"Mother, would you take my God from me? Would you blot him out of
the deeps of the universe?"

"Ian! are you mad? What frightful things you would lay to my
charge!"

"Mother, I would gladly--oh how gladly! perish for ever, to save God
from being the kind of God you would have me believe him. I love
God, and will not think him other than good. Rather than believe he
does not hear every creature that cries to him, whether he knows
Jesus Christ or not, I would believe there was no God, and go
mourning to my grave."

"That is not the doctrine of the gospel."

"It is, mother: Jesus himself says, 'Every one that hath heard and
learned of the Father, cometh unto me.'"

"Why then do you not come to him, Ian?"

"I do come to him; I come to him every day. I believe in nobody but
him. He only makes the universe worth being, or any life worth
living!"

"Ian, I can NOT understand you! If you believe like that about
him,--"

"I don't believe ABOUT him, mother! I believe in him. He is my
life."

"We will not dispute about words! The question is, do you place your
faith for salvation in the sufferings of Christ for you?"

"I do not, mother. My faith is in Jesus himself, not in his
sufferings."

"Then the anger of God is not turned away from you."

"Mother, I say again--I love God, and will not believe such things
of him as you say. I love him so that I would rather lose him than
believe so of him."

"Then you do not accept the Bible as your guide?"

"I do, mother, for it tells me of Jesus Christ. There is no such
teaching as you say in the Bible."

"How little you know your New Testament!"

"I don't know my New Testament! It is the only book I do know! I
read it constantly! It is the only thing I could not live
without!--No, I do not mean that! I COULD do without my Testament!
Christ would BE all the same!"

"Oh, Ian! Ian! and yet you will not give Christ the glory of
satisfying divine justice by his suffering for your sins!"

"Mother, to say that the justice of God is satisfied with suffering,
is a piece of the darkness of hell. God is willing to suffer, and
ready to inflict suffering to save from sin, but no suffering is
satisfaction to him or his justice."

"What do you mean by his justice then?"

"That he gives you and me and everybody fair play."

The homeliness of the phrase offended the moral ear of the mother.

"How dare you speak lightly of HIM in my hearing!" she cried.

"Because I will speak for God even to the face of my mother!"
answered Ian. "He is more to me than you, mother--ten times more."

"You speak against God, Ian," she rejoined, calmed by the feeling
she had roused.

"No, mother. He speaks against God who says he does things that are
not good. It does not make a thing good to call it good. I speak FOR
him when I say lie cannot but give fair play. He knows he put rue
where I was sure to sin; he will not condemn me because I have
sinned; he leaves me to do that myself. He will condemn me only if I
do not turn away from sin, for he has made me able to turn from it,
and I do."

"He will forgive sin only for Christ's sake."

"He forgives it for his own name's sake, his own love's sake. There
is no such word as FOR CHRIST'S SAKE in the New Testament--except
where Paul prays us for Christ's sake to be reconciled to God. It is
in the English New Testament, but not in the Greek."

"Then you do not believe that the justice of God demands the
satisfaction of the sinner's endless punishment?"

"I do not. Nothing can satisfy the justice of God but justice in his
creature. The justice of God is the love of what is right, and the
doing of what is right. Eternal misery in the name of justice could
satisfy none but a demon whose bad laws had been broken."

"I grant you that no amount of suffering on the part of the wicked
could SATISFY justice; but it is the Holy One who suffers for our
sins!"

"Oh, mother! JUSTICE do wrong for its own satisfaction! Did Jesus
DESERVE punishment? If not, then to punish him was to wrong him!"

"But he was willing; he consented;"

"He yielded to injustice--but the injustice was man's, not God's. If
Justice, insisted on punishment, it would at least insist on the
guilty, not the innocent, being punished! it would revolt from the
idea of the innocent being punished for the guilty! Mind, I say
BEING PUNISHED, not SUFFERING: that is another thing altogether. It
is an eternal satisfaction to love to suffer for the guilty, but not
to justice that innocence should be punished for the guilty. The
whole idea of such atonement is the merest subterfuge, a figment of
the paltry human intellect to reconcile difficulties of its own
invention. Once, when Alister had done something wrong, my father
said, 'He must be punished--except some one will be punished for
him!' I offered to take his place, partly that it seemed expected of
me, partly that I was moved by vanity, and partly that I foresaw
what would follow."

"And what did follow?" asked the mother, to whom the least word out
of the past concerning her husband, was like news from the world
beyond. At the same time it seemed almost an offence that one of his
sons should know anything about him she did not know.

"He scarcely touched me, mother," answered Ian. "The thing taught me
something very different from what he had meant to teach by it. That
he failed to carry out his idea of justice helped me afterwards to
see that God could not have done it either, for that it was not
justice. Some perception of this must have lain at the root of the
heresy that Jesus did not suffer, but a cloud-phantom took his place
on the cross. Wherever people speculate instead of obeying, they
fall into endless error."

"You graceless boy! Do you dare to say your father speculated
instead of obeying?" cried the mother, hot with indignation.

"No, mother. It was not my father who invented that way of
accounting for the death of our Lord."

"He believed it!"

"He accepted it, saturated with the tradition of the elders before
he could think for himself. He does not believe it now."

"But why then should Christ have suffered?"

"It is the one fact that explains to me everything," said Ian.
"--But I am not going to talk about it. So long as your theory
satisfies you, mother, why should I show you mine? When it no longer
satisfies you, when it troubles you as it has troubled me, and as I
pray God it may trouble you, when you feel it stand between you and
the best love you could give God, then I will share my very soul
with you--tell you thoughts which seem to sublimate my very being in
adoration."

"I do not see what other meaning you can put upon the statement that
he was a sacrifice for our sins."

"Had we not sinned he would never have died; and he died to deliver
us from our sins. He against whom was the sin, became the sacrifice
for it; the Father suffered in the Son, for they are one. But if I
could see no other explanation than yours, I would not, could not
accept it--for God's sake I would not."

"How can you say you believe in Christ, when you do not believe in
the atonement!"

"It is not so, mother. I do not believe what you mean by the
atonement; what God means by it, I desire to accept. But we are
never told to believe in the atonement; we are told to believe in
Christ--and, mother, in the name of the great Father who hears me
speak, I do believe in him."

"How can you, when you do not believe what God says about him?"

"I do. God does not say those things about him you think he says.
They are mere traditions, not the teaching of those who understood
him. But I might believe all about him quite correctly, and yet not
believe in him."

"What do you call believing in him, then?"

"Obeying him, mother--to say it as shortly as I can. I try to obey
him in the smallest things he says--only there are no small things
he says--and so does Alister. I strive to be what he would have me,
nor do I hold anything else worth my care. Let a man trust in his
atonement to absolute assurance, if he does not do the things he
tells him--the very things he said--he does not believe in him. He
may be a good man, but he has not yet heard enough and learned
enough of the Father to be sent to Jesus to learn more."

"Then I do not believe in him," said the mother, with a strange, sad
gentleness--for his words awoke an old anxiety never quite at rest.

Ian was silent. The darkness seemed to deepen around them, and the
silence grew keen. The mother began to tremble.

"GOD KNOWS," said Ian at length, and again the broken silence closed
around them.

It was between God and his mother now! Unwise counsellors will
persuade the half crazy doubter in his own faith, to believe that he
does believe!--how much better to convince him that his faith is a
poor thing, that he must rise and go and do the thing that Jesus
tells him, and so believe indeed! When will men understand that it
is neither thought nor talk, neither sorrow for sin nor love of
holiness that is required of them, but obedience! To BE and to OBEY
are one.

A cold hand grasping her heart, the mother rose, and went from the
room. The gulf seemed now at last utterly, hopelessly impassable!
She had only feared it before; she knew it now! She did not see
that, while she believed evil things of God, and none the less that
she called them good, oneness was impossible between her and any
being in God's creation.

The poor mother thought herself broken-hearted, and lay down too
sick to know that she was trembling from head to foot. Such was the
hold, such the authority of traditional human dogma on her soul--a
soul that scorned the notion of priestly interposition between God
and his creature--that, instead of glorifying God that she had
given birth to such a man, she wept bitterly because he was on the
broad road to eternal condemnation.

But as she lay, now weeping, now still and cold with despair, she
found that for some time she had not been thinking. But she had not
been asleep! Whence then was this quiet that was upon her? Something
had happened, though she knew of nothing! There was in her as it
were a moonlight of peace!

"Can it be God?" she said to herself.

No more than Ian could she tell whether it was God or not; but from
that night she had an idea in her soul by which to reach after "the
peace of God." She lifted up her heart in such prayer as she had
never prayed before; and slowly, imperceptibly awoke in her the
feeling that, if she was not believing aright, God would not
therefore cast her off, but would help her to believe as she ought
to believe: was she not willing? Therewith she began to feel as if
the gulf betwixt her and Ian were not so wide as she had supposed;
and that if it were, she would yet hope in the Son of Man. Doubtless
he was in rebellion against God, seeing he would question his ways,
and refuse to believe the word he had spoken, but surely something
might be done for him! The possibility had not yet dawned upon her
that there could be anything in the New Testament but those
doctrines against which the best in him revolted. She little
suspected the glory of sky and earth and sea eternal that would one
day burst upon her! that she would one day see God not only good but
infinitely good--infinitely better than she had dared to think him,
fearing to image him better than he was! Mortal, she dreaded being
more just than God, more pure than her maker!

"I will go away to-morrow!" said Ian to himself. "I am only a pain
to her. She will come to see things better without me! I cannot
live in her sight any longer now! I will go, and come again."

His heart broke forth in prayer.

"O God, let my mother see that thou art indeed true-hearted; that
thou dost not give us life by parings and subterfuges, but
abundantly; that thou dost not make men in order to assert thy
dominion over them, but that they may partake of thy life. O God,
have pity when I cannot understand, and teach me as thou wouldst the
little one whom, if thou wert an earthly father amongst us as thy
son was an earthly son, thou wouldst carry about in thy arms. When
pride rises in me, and I feel as if I ought to be free and walk
without thy hand; when it looks as if a man should be great in
himself, nor need help from God; then think thou of me, and I shall
know that I cannot live or think without the self-willing life; that
thou art because thou art, I am because thou art; that I am deeper
in thee than my life, thou more to my being than that being to
itself. Was not that Satan's temptation, Father? Did he not take
self for the root of self in him, when God only is the root of all
self? And he has not repented yet! Is it his thought coming up in
me, flung from the hollow darkness of his soul into mine? Thou
knowest, when it comes I am wretched. I love it not. I would have
thee lord and love over all. But I cannot understand: how comes it
to look sometimes as if independence must be the greater? A lie
cannot be greater than the truth! I do not understand, but thou
dost. I cannot see my foundations; I cannot dig up the roots of my
being: that would be to understand creation! Will the Adversary ever
come to see that thou only art grand and beautiful? How came he to
think to be greater by setting up for himself? How was it that it
looked so to him? How is it that, not being true, it should ever
look so? There must be an independence that thou lovest, of which
this temptation is the shadow! That must be how 'Satan fell!--for
the sake of not being a slave!--that he might be a free being! Ah,
Lord, I see how it all comes! It is because we are not near enough
to thee to partake of thy liberty that we want a liberty of our own
different from thine! We do not see that we are one with thee, that
thy glory is our glory, that we can have none but in thee! that we
are of thy family, thy home, thy heart, and what is great for thee
is great for us! that man's meanness is to want to be great out of
his Father! Without thy eternity in us we are so small that we think
ourselves great, and are thus miserably abject and contemptible.
Thou only art true! thou only art noble! thou wantest no glory for
selfishness! thou doest, thou art, what thou requirest of thy
children! I know it, for I see it in Jesus, who casts the contempt
of obedience upon the baseness of pride, who cares only for thee and
for us, never thinking of himself save as a gift to give us! O
lovely, perfect Christ! with my very life I worship thee! Oh, pray,
Christ! make me and my brother strong to be the very thing thou
wouldst have us, as thy brothers, the children of thy Father. Thou
art our perfect brother--perfect in love, in courage, in
tenderness! Amen, Lord! Good-night! I am thine."

He was silent for a few moments, then resumed:

"Lord, thou knowest whither my thoughts turn the moment I cease
praying to thee. I dared not think of her, but that I know thee. But
for thee, my heart would be as water within me! Oh, take care of
her, come near to her! Thou didst send her where she could not learn
fast--but she did learn. And now, God, I do not know where she is!
Thou only of all in this world knowest, for to thee she lives though
gone from my sight and knowledge--in the dark to me. Pray, Father,
let her know that thou art near her, and that I love her. Thou hast
made me love her by taking her from me: thou wilt give her to me
again! In this hope I will live all my days, until thou takest me
also; for to hope mightily is to believe well in thee. I will hope
in thee infinitely. Amen, Father!"

CHAPTER XVI.

THE CLAN CHRISTMAS.

By slow degrees, with infinite subdivisions and apparent reversals
of change, the autumn had passed into winter indeed. Cloud above,
mire below, mist and rain all between, made up many days; only, like
the dreariest life, they were broken through and parted, lest they
should seem the universe itself, by such heavenly manifestations,
such gleams and glimpses of better, as come into all lives, all
winters, all evil weathers. What is loosed on earth is loosed first
in heaven: we have often shared of heaven, when we thought it but a
softening of earth's hardness. Every relief is a promise, a pledge
as well as a passing meal. The frost at length had brought with it
brightness and persuasion and rousing. In the fields it was swelling
and breaking the clods; and for the heart of man, it did something
to break up that clod too. A sense of friendly pleasure filled all
the human creatures. The children ran about like wild things; the
air seemed to intoxicate them. The mother went out walking with the
girls, and they talked of their father and Christian and Mr.
Sercombe, who were all coming together. For some time they saw
nothing of their next neighbours.

They had made some attempts at acquaintance with the people of the
glen, but unhappily were nowise courteous enough for their ideas of
good breeding, and offended both their pride and their sense of
propriety. The manners and address of these northern peasants were
blameless--nearly perfect indeed, like those of the Irish, and in
their own houses beyond criticism; those of the ladies conventional
where not rudely condescending. If Mistress Conal was an exception
to the rest of the clan, even she would be more civil to a stranger
than to her chief whom she loved--until the stranger gave her
offence. And if then she passed to imprecation, she would not curse
like an ordinary woman, but like a poetess, gaining rather than
losing dignity. She would rise to the evil occasion, no hag, but a
largely-offended sibyl, whom nothing thereafter should ever
appease. To forgive was a virtue unknown to Mistress Conal. Its more
than ordinary difficulty in forgiving is indeed a special fault of
the Celtic character.--This must not however be confounded with a
desire for revenge. The latter is by no means a specially Celtic
characteristic. Resentment and vengeance are far from inseparable.
The heart that surpasses in courtesy, except indeed that courtesy,
be rooted in love divine, must, when treated with discourtesy,
experience the worse revulsion, feel the bitterer indignation. But
many a Celt would forgive, and forgive thoroughly and heartily, with
his enemy in his power, who, so long as he remained beyond his
reach, could not even imagine circumstances in which they might be
reconciled. To a Celt the summit of wrong is a slight, but apology
is correspondingly potent with him. Mistress Conal, however, had not
the excuse of a specially courteous nature.

Christina and Mercy, calling upon her one morning, were not
ungraciously received, but had the misfortune to remark, trusting to
her supposed ignorance of English, upon the dirtiness of her floor,
they themselves having imported not a little of the moisture that
had turned its surface into a muddy paste. She said nothing, but, to
the general grudge she bore the possessors of property once
belonging to her clan, she now added a personal one; the offence lay
cherished and smouldering. Had the chief offended her, she would
have found a score of ways to prove to herself that he meant
nothing; but she desired no mitigation of the trespass of strangers.

The people at the New House did not get on very well with any of the
clan. In the first place, they were regarded not merely as
interlopers, but almost as thieves of the property--though in truth
it had passed to them through other hands. In the second place, a
rumour had got about that they did not behave with sufficient
respect to the chief's family, in the point of whose honour the clan
was the more exacting because of their common poverty. Hence the
inhabitants of the glen, though they were of course polite, showed
but little friendliness.

But the main obstacle to their reception was in themselves: the
human was not much developed in them; they understood nothing of
their own beings; they had never had any difficulty with
themselves:--how could they understand others, especially in
circumstances and with histories so different from their own! They
had not a notion how poor people feel, still less poor people poorer
than before--or how they regard the rich who have what they have
lost. They did not understand any huftian feeling--not even the
silliness they called LOVE--a godless, mindless affair, fit only
for the doll-histories invented by children: they had a feeling, or
a feeling had them, till another feeling came and took its place.
When a feeling was there, they felt as if it would never go; when it
was gone, they felt as if it had never been; when it returned, they
felt as if it had never gone. They seldom came so near anything as
to think about it, never put a question to themselves as to how a
thing affected them, or concerning the phenomena of its passage
through their consciousness! There is a child-eternity of soul that
needs to ask nothing, because it understands everything: the ways of
the spirit are open to it; but where a soul does not understand, and
has to learn, how is it to do so without thinking? They knew nothing
of labour, nothing of danger, nothing of hunger, nothing of cold,
nothing of sickness, nothing of loneliness. The realities of life,
in their lowest forms as in their highest, were far from them. If
they had nearly gone through life instead of having but entered upon
it, they would have had some ground for thinking themselves unfairly
dealt with; for to be made, and then left to be worthless, unfit
even for damnation, might be suspected for hard lines; but there is
One who takes a perfect interest in his lowliest creature, and will
not so spare it. They were girls notwithstanding who could make
themselves agreeable, and passed for clever--Christina because she
could give a sharp answer, and sing a drawingroom-song, Mercy
because as yet she mostly held her tongue. That there was at the
same time in each of them the possibility of being developed into
something of inestimable value, is merely to say that they were
human.

The days passed, and Christmas drew near. The gentlemen arrived.
There was family delight and a bustling reception. It is amazing--it
shows indeed how deep and divine, how much beyond the individual
self are the family affections--that such gladness breaks forth in
the meeting of persons who, within an hour or so of the joyous
welcome, self getting the better of the divine, will begin to feel
bored, and will each lay the blame of the disappointment on the
other.

Coats were pulled off; mufflers were unwound; pretty hands were
helping; strong hands were lifting and carrying; every room was
bright with a great fire; tea was refused, and dinner welcomed.
After dinner came the unpacking of great boxes; and in the midst of
the resultant pleasure, the proposal came to be made--none but
Christina knew how--that the inhabitants of the cottage should be
invited to dinner on Christmas-eve. It was carried at once, and the
next afternoon a formal invitation was sent.

At the cottage it caused conference, no discussion. The lady of the
New House had not called with her girls, it was true; but then
neither had the lady of the castle--for that was the clanspeople's
name for the whole ridge on which the cottage stood--called on the
new-comers! If there was offence, it was mutual! The unceremonious
invitation MIGHT indicate that it was not thought necessary to
treat them as persons who knew the ways of society; on the other
hand, if it meant that they were ready to throw aside formalities
and behave heartily, it would be wrong not to meet them half-way!
They resolved therefore to make a counter-proposal; and if the
invitation came of neighbourliness, and not of imagined patronage,
they would certainly meet it in a friendly spirit! Answer was
returned, sealed with no mere crest but with a coat of arms, to the
effect that it had been the custom since time forgotten for the
chief to welcome his people and friends without distinction on
Christmas-eve, and the custom could not be broken; but if the ladies
and gentlemen of the New House would favour them with their
company on the occasion, to dine and dance, the chief and his family
would gratefully accept any later offer of hospitality Mr. and Mrs.
Peregrine Palmer might do them, the honour to send.

This reply gave occasion to a good deal of talk at the New House,
not entirely of a sort which the friends of the chief would have
enjoyed hearing. Frequent were the bursts of laughter from the men
at the assumption of the title of CHIEF by a man with no more land
than he could just manage to live upon. The village they said, and
said truly, in which the greater number of HIS PEOPLE lived, was
not his at all--not a foot of the ground on which it stood, not a
stone or sod of which it was built--but belonged to a certain
Canadian, who was about to turn all his territory around and
adjacent into a deer forest! They could not see that, if there had
ever been anything genuine in the patriarchal relation, the mere
loss of the clan-property could no more cause the chieftainship to
cease, than could the loss of the silver-hilted Andrew Ferrara,
handed down from father to son for so many generations.

There are dull people, and just as many clever people, who look upon
customs of society as on laws of nature, and judge the worth of
others by their knowledge or ignorance of the same. So doing they
disable themselves from understanding the essential, which is, like
love, the fulfilling of the law. A certain Englishman gave great
offence in an Arab tent by striding across the food placed for the
company on the ground: would any Celt, Irish or Welsh, have been
guilty of such a blunder? But there was not any overt offence on the
present occasion. They called it indeed a cool proposal that THEY
should put off their Christmas party for that of a ploughman in
shabby kilt and hob-nailed shoes; but on their amused indignation
supervened the thought that they were in a wild part of the country,
where it would be absurd to expect the SAVOIR VIVRE of the south,
and it would be amusing to see the customs of the land. By
suggestion and seeming response, the clever Christina, unsuspected
even of Mercy, was the motive power to bring about the acceptance of
the chief's invitation.

A friendly answer was returned: they would not go to dinner, they
said, as it was their custom also to dine at home on Christmas-eve;
but they would dine early, and spend the evening with them.

To the laird the presence of the lowland girls promised a great
addition to the merry-making. During the last thirty years, all the
gentlemen-farmers of the clan, and most of the humbler tacksmen as
well, had vanished, and there was a wide intellectual space between
all those left and the family of the chief. Often when Ian was away,
would Alister, notwithstanding his love to his people and their
entire response, have felt lonely but for labour.

There being in the cottage no room equal to the reception of a large
company, and the laird receiving all the members of the
clan--"poor," I was going to say, "and rich," but there were no
rich--as well as any neighbour or traveller who chose to appear, the
father of the present chief had had good regard to the necessities
of entertainment in the construction of a new barn: companionship,
large feasting, and dancing, had been even more considered than the
storing and threshing of his corn.

There are in these days many who will mock; but for my part I am
proud of a race whose social relations are the last upon which they
will retrench, whose latest yielded pleasure is their hospitality.
It is a common feeling that only the WELL-TO-DO have a right to be
hospitable: the ideal flower of hospitality is almost unknown to the
rich; it can hardly be grown save in the gardens of the poor; it is
one of their beatitudes.

Means in Glenruadh had been shrinking for many years, but the heart
of the chief never shrank. His dwelling dwindled from a castle to a
house, from a house to a cottage; but the hospitality did not
dwindle. As the money vanished, the show diminished; the place of
entertainment from a hall became a kitchen, from a kitchen changed
to a barn; but the heart of the chief was the same; the
entertainment was but little altered, the hospitality not in the
least. When things grow hard, the first saving is generally off
others; the Macruadh's was off himself. The land was not his, save
as steward of the grace of God! Let it not be supposed he ran in
debt: with his mother at the head, or rather the heart of affairs,
that could not be. She was not one to regard as hospitality a
readiness to share what you have not!

Little did good Doctor Johnson suspect the shifts to which some of
the highland families he visited were driven--not to feed, but to
house him: and housing in certain conditions of society is the large
half of hospitality. Where he did not find his quarters comfortable,
he did not know what crowding had to be devised, what inconveniences
endured by the family, that he might have what ease and freedom were
possible. Be it in stone hall or thatched cottage, the chief must
entertain the stranger as well as befriend his own! This was the
fulfilling of his office--none the less that it had descended upon
him in evil times. That seldom if ever had a chief been Christian
enough or strong enough to fill to the full the relation of father
of his people, was nothing against the ideal fact in the existent
relation; it was rather for it: now that the chieftainship had come
to a man with a large notion of what it required of him, he was the
more, not the less ready to aim at the mark of the idea; he was not
the more easily to be turned aside from a true attempt to live up to
his calling, that many had yielded and were swept along bound slaves
in the triumph of Mammon! He looked on his calling as entirely
enough to fill full the life that would fulfil the calling. It was
ambition enough for him to be the head of his family, with the
highest of earthly relations to realize toward its members. As to
the vulgar notion of a man's obligation to himself, he had learned
to despise it.

"Rubbish!" Ian would say. "I owe my self nothing. What has my self
ever done for me, but lead me wrong? What but it has come between me
and my duty--between me and my very Father in heaven--between me
and my fellow man! The fools of greed would persuade that a man has
no right to waste himself in the low content of making and sharing a
humble living; he ought to make money! make a figure in the world,
forsooth! be somebody! 'Dwell among the people!' such would say:
'Bah! Let them look after themselves! If they cannot pay their
rents, others will; what is it to you if the rents are paid? Send
them about their business; turn the land into a deer-forest or a
sheep-farm, and clear them out! They have no rights! A man is bound
to the children of his body begotten; the people are nothing to him!
A man is not his brother's keeper--except when he has got him in
prison! And so on, in the name of the great devil!"

Whether there was enough in Alister to have met and overcome the
spirit of the world, had he been brought up at Oxford or Cambridge,
I have not to determine; there was that in him at least which would
have come to, repent bitterly had he yielded; but brought up as he
was, he was not only able to entertain the exalted idea presented to
him, but to receive and make it his. With joy he recognized the