sting. Grandaddy and Callum quarrelling! It was too
awful to be believed. He dared not look at Granny's face, for he
dreaded what he would see there, but he crept up close to where she sat
by the bare table, her face in her hands, her breath coming in long
sobs. Granny's heart was breaking, he was sure, and his own heart was
breaking, too, for her, and for Callum, and for everyone.

The days that followed did not lighten the misery. Big Malcolm's
repentance came over him like a flood of many waters. He left the farm
to the care of the boys, and sat in the house, or wandered in the
fields, plunged in the deepest humiliation and despair. One look at
his wife's sad face would drive him to the barn or the woods, where he
would sit, Job-like, and curse the day he was born. Like Job, too, he
had three comforters who, though well-meaning and kind, served only to
deepen his spiritual gloom. Neither Store Thompson's solemn
admonitions nor Praying Donald's hints of stern retribution were
calculated to relieve his mind; and when Long Lauchie came across the
fields on a Sabbath afternoon to mourn over him and see dire fulfilment
of prophecy in his woeful case, he was driven to the verge of
desperation.

There was no pleasure at home, and whenever Scotty had an opportunity
he went visiting in the direction of Kirsty's. Isabel's companionship
afforded him much solace, and through her wonderful ingenuity came at
last a way out of his despair.

At first he had been reluctant to confide his troubles even to her; he
knew that Granny would speak of them to no one except the one great
Comforter, no, not even to Kirsty's mother; so he nursed his mournful
secret through one long miserable day. But Isabel's eyes were very
bright and soon spied the trouble in Scotty's face. So one day, as
they sat on the edge of the old log bridge and swung their feet in the
cool, brown water, he opened his heart fully.

To the boy's relief she seemed to think none the less of Callum for
wanting to marry an Irish girl. Some Irish people weren't bad, she
declared. For her Uncle Walter and Aunt Eleanor were half Irish.
Maybe she was some Irish herself, she generously conceded, but, at
Scotty's look of incredulous dismay, she hastily concluded that she
must be entirely and exclusively Scotch. But there was Danny Murphy,
that nice boy who brought her the maple sugar and the butternuts, he
was Irish; yes, and old Brian, their coachman, was Irish