Part 24 (2/2)
The elder man's keen eyes saw the tokens of a conflict in the other's face, and he was too wise to address him directly. His occasional remarks had the effect of soliloquies, but they plunged Scotty's soul in the valley of shadows.
He was thinking how all his life he had been compa.s.sed about. He knew now that what he had called hedging circ.u.mstances had been G.o.d's very Hand. His grandmother's faithful teachings had guided his careless boyish feet; his grandfather's falls from the high position he had set himself were graphic object-lessons to teach the value of righteousness; Monteith's influence had kept him in the right way, and now how dared he turn aside of his own will?
But what was the minister reading now? What but the story of a young man, one so goodly and commendable in person and character that the Master had regarded him with an especial feeling of comrades.h.i.+p; but there was one thing he refused to give up, and he turned his back upon the Saviour of mankind and went away sorrowful, ”for his possessions were very great.” And Scotty's possessions were great also--those he was about to reach out and seize, infinitely beyond the value of gold and silver, and he wanted to turn away, too, but something held him.
The minister glanced at the young man's face, and knew his heart had been touched. He closed the Book. ”Let us pray,” he said, and rising, knelt by the side of a moss-grown log. But Scotty did not kneel; he sat erect, staring with desperate eyes into the fire, and striving with all the force of his will to harden his heart. To his relief the old man made no remark upon his strange conduct when he arose from his knees, but at once went to his bed in the shanty. Some subtle instinct told him the young man would be better alone.
Long after he had retired Scotty walked up and down before the fire, fighting out the old, weary battle; but now with a fury as if for life.
To go on with his work at Raye & Hemming's now in the light of what had come to him this night would be, he knew, to cast aside all the teachings of his lifetime--the teachings of Granny, of experience, yes, even of Monteith, for he realised now they had all come from G.o.d, and were one. He was down in the valley of the shadows, and the rod and staff were of no comfort to him, for they meant pain and renunciation.
He could not give up Captain Herbert's friends.h.i.+p and Isabel; he could not go on. The fire had died down to a red eye looking sullenly out of the smoky darkness, the moon had sunk behind the forest ring, and out of the blackness of night came a sensation of approaching change, a hint that the dawn was near. As Scotty, pale and haggard, stood looking into the dying fire, a step aroused him and the minister was by his side.
”Why, sir,” he cried in surprise, ”you will surely not be getting up yet. It is quite dark.”
”I was not sleeping,” said the old man. ”I could not but watch you,”
he added gently, ”for I cannot but see you are carrying a burden; one heavy for your time of life, my lad, and I wondered if I could be of any help.”
All Scotty's mental att.i.tude of defiance melted away before this gentle sympathy. He was silent, simply through the inability to speak, and the minister continued, ”Do not speak of it if you would rather not. I would not force your confidence, but just come and we will pray about it, and you will tell the Father and He will be making it right.”
Scotty turned with a gesture of defeat. To pray was the last thing he desired to do, it meant surrender; but this time he knelt obediently at the minister's side by the dying fire.
And as he bowed his head he was suddenly startled by the words that broke forth. It seemed as if all his own soul's struggle had been transferred to the man at his side. Old John McAlpine had a wondrous gift of prayer, one that never failed to cast a solemn spell over his hearers, and to-night he pleaded for the soul of this young man as if for his life. His big hands were knotted, the perspiration stood in beads on his white forehead, and his agonised voice rose and went ringing away into the forest. Scotty was awesomely reminded of One who prayed in a garden, quite unlike this one of nature's wild making, and sweat drops of blood because of the sin he was to bear. And before the minister had ceased it seemed as if that other One came to his side and took up the pet.i.tion, for Scotty felt his worldly desires slip from him like a garment. The struggle was over. Henceforth there could be no indecision, for he was not his own, but had been bought with a price.
When they arose from their knees the darkness had suddenly become transparent. A mysterious rustle and whisper of awakening life was on all sides, the dawn was on the point of breaking. Scotty's fire, like his worldly hopes, had died down to pale ashes, but far out on the faintly grey bosom of Lake Simcoe, and away beyond its dark forest-ring, soon to put all lesser lights to shame in their triumphant blaze, were kindling the fires of Heaven.
XIV
THE VOYAGEURS
Oh, the East is but the West, with the sun a little hotter; And the pine becomes a palm by the dark Egyptian water; And the Nile's like many a stream we know that fills its br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup; We'll think it is the Ottawa as we track the batteaux up!
Pull, pull, pull! as we track the batteaux up!
It's easy shooting homeward when we're at the top.
--WILLIAM WYE SMITH.
The Imperial transport, _Ocean King_, had loosed from her moorings at Montreal and was swinging down with the tide of the mighty St.
Lawrence, and on her deck, many leaning eagerly over the railing to get a last glimpse of home, stood some four hundred stalwart sons of the Maple Land. Great, strong fellows they were, all with the iron muscles and steady, clear eyes of the expert riverman. For these were the famous voyageurs, trained from childhood on the rapids and cataracts of Canadian streams and summoned now to the help of the mother country on the ancient river of Egypt.
When Lord Wolseley found himself face to face with the tremendous task of reaching Gordon far up the hostile Nile, he remembered the a.s.sistance he had received in an earlier expedition in a western land from the daring, untiring, cool-headed, warm-hearted Canadian boatmen.
And he asked that once more they might give him aid. And here they were, the best the country could produce, a rollicking, light-hearted crew, ready for anything--adventure, hard work, danger, death.
Among those who stood longest gazing at the receding land were two who had begun their years of apprentices.h.i.+p for this great day on the little, noisy, foaming stream that scolded its way into the Oro river.
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