many men would
dare to face him." Then he added, "I wish I had known--I fear I
spoke--perhaps the boy may feel unjustly treated. He is as proud as
Lucifer."

"Oh, papa!" said his wife, "what did you say?"

"Nothing but what was true. I just told him that a boy who would break
the Lord's Day by fighting, and in the very shadow of the Lord's house,
when Christian people were worshiping God, was acting like a savage, and
was not fit for the company of decent folk."

To this his wife made no reply, but went out of the study, leaving the
minister feeling very uncomfortable indeed. But by the end of the second
pipe he began to feel that, after all, Ranald had got no more than
was good for him, and that he would be none the worse of it; in which
comforting conviction he went to rest, and soon fell into the sleep
which is supposed to be the right of the just.

Not so his wife. Wearied though she was with the long day, its
excitements and its toils, sleep would not come. Anxious thoughts about
the lad she had come to love as if he were her own son or brother kept
crowding in upon her. The vision of his fierce, dark, stormy face held
her eyes awake and at length drew her from her bed. She went into the
study and fell upon her knees. The burden had grown too heavy for her to
bear alone. She would share it with Him who knew what it meant to bear
the sorrows and the sins of others.

As she rose, she heard Fido bark and whine in the yard below, and going
to the window, she saw a man standing at the back door, and Fido fawning
upon him. Startled, she was about to waken her husband, when the man
turned his face so that the moonlight fell upon it, and she saw Ranald.
Hastily she threw on her dressing-gown, put on her warm bedroom slippers
and cloak, ran down to the door, and in another moment was standing
before him, holding him by the shoulders.

"Ranald!" she cried, breathlessly, "what is it?"

"I am going away," he said, simply. "And I was just passing by--and--"
he could not go on.

"Oh, Ranald!" she cried, "I am glad you came this way. Now tell me
where you are going."

The boy looked at her as if she had started a new idea in his mind, and
then said, "I do not know."

"And what are you going to do, Ranald?"

"Work. There is plenty to do. No fear of that."

"But your father, Ranald?"

The boy was silent for a little, and then said, "He will soon be well,
and he will not be needing me, and he said I could go." His v