LENOIR'S NEW MASTER
The shantymen came back home to find the revival still going on.
Not a home but had felt its mighty power, and not a man, woman, or even child but had come more or less under its influence. Indeed, so universal was that power that Yankee was heard to say, "The boys wouldn't go in swimmin' without their New Testaments"--not but that Yankee was in very fullest sympathy with the movement. He was regular in his attendance upon the meetings all through spring and summer, but his whole previous history made it difficult for him to fully appreciate the intensity and depth of the religious feeling that was everywhere throbbing through the community.
"Don't see what the excitement's for," he said to Macdonald Bhain one night after meeting. "Seems to me the Almighty just wants a feller to do the right thing by his neighbor and not be too independent, but go 'long kind o' humble like and keep clean.
Somethin' wrong with me, perhaps, but I don't seem to be able to work up no excitement about it. I'd like to, but somehow it ain't in me."When Macdonald Bhain reported this difficulty of Yankee's to Mrs.
Murray, she only said: "'What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'"And with this Macdonald Bhain was content, and when he told Yankee, the latter came as near to excitement as he ever allowed himself.
He chewed vigorously for a few moments, then, slapping his thigh, he exclaimed: "By jings! That's great. She's all right, ain't she? We ain't all built the same way, but I'm blamed if I don't like her model."But the shantymen noticed that the revival had swept into the church, during the winter months, a great company of the young people of the congregation; and of these, a band of some ten or twelve young men, with Don among them, were attending daily a special class carried on in the vestry of the church for those who desired to enter training for the ministry.
Mrs. Murray urged Ranald to join this class, for, even though he had no intention of becoming a minister, still the study would be good for him, and would help him in his after career. She remembered how Ranald had told her that he had no intention of being a farmer or lumberman. And Ranald gladly listened to her, and threw himself into his study, using his spare hours to such good purpose throughout the summer that he easily kept pace with the class in English, and distanced them in his favorite subject, mathematics.
But all these months Mrs. Murray felt that Ranald was carrying with him a load of unrest, and she waited for the time when he would come to her. His uncle, Macdonald Bhain, too, shared her anxiety in regard to Ranald.
"He is the fine, steady lad," he said one night, walking home with her from the church; "and a good winter's work has he put behind him. He is that queeck, there is not a man like him on the drive;but he is not the same boy that he was. He will not be telling me anything, but when the boys will be sporting, he is not with them.
He will be reading his book, or he will be sitting by himself alone. He is like his father in the courage of him. There is no kind of water he will not face, and no man on the river would put fear on him. And the strength of him! His arms are like steel.
But," returning to his anxiety, "there is something wrong with him.
He is not at peace with himself, and I wish you could get speech with him.""I would like it, too," replied Mrs. Murray. "Perhaps he will come to me. At any rate, I must wait for that."At last, when the summer was over, and the harvest all gathered in, the days were once more shortening for the fall, Ranald drove Lisette one day to the manse, and went straight to the minister's wife and opened up his mind to her.
"I cannot keep my promise to my father, Mrs. Murray," he said, going at once to the heart of his trouble. "I cannot keep the anger out of my heart. I cannot forgive the man that killed my father. I will be waking at night with the very joy of feeling my fingers on his throat, and I feel myself longing for the day when Iwill meet him face to face and nothing between us. But," he added, "I promised my father, and I must keep my word, and that is what Icannot do, for the feeling of forgiveness is not here," smiting his breast. "I can keep my hands off him, but the feeling I cannot help."For a long time Mrs. Murray let him go on without seeking to check the hot flow of his words and without a word of reproof. Then, when he had talked himself to silence, she took her Bible and read to him of the servant who, though forgiven, took his fellow-servant by the throat, refusing to forgive. And then she turned over the leaves and read once more: "'God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.'"She closed the book and sat silent, waiting for Ranald to speak.
"I know," he said, deliberately; "I have read that often through the winter, but it does not help the feeling I have. I think it only makes it worse. There is some one holding my arm, and I want to strike.""And do you forget," said Mrs. Murray, and her voice was almost stern, "and do you forget how, for you, God gave His Son to die?"Ranald shook his head. "I am far from forgetting that.""And are you forgetting the great mercy of God to your father?""No, no," said Ranald; "I often think of that. But when I think of that man, something stirs within me and I cannot see, for the daze before my eyes, and I know that some day I will be at him. Icannot help my feeling."
"Ranald," said Mrs. Murray, "have you ever thought how he will need God's mercy like yourself? And have you never thought that perhaps he has never had the way of God's mercy put before him? To you the Lord has given much, to him little. It is a terrible thing to be ungrateful for the mercy of God; and it is a shameful thing. It is unworthy of any true man. How can any one take the fullness of God's mercy and his patience every day, and hold an ungrateful heart?"She did not spare him, and as Ranald sat and listened, his life and character began to appear to him small and mean and unworthy.
