earnestly, "to see you prove
yourself a man before them all."

Ranald shook his head. "I would rather go away."

"Perhaps, but it's braver to stay, and to do your work like a man." And
then, allowing him no time for words, she pictured to him the selfish,
cowardly part the man plays who marches bravely enough in the front
ranks until the battle begins, but who shrinks back and seeks an easy
place when the fight comes on, till his face fell before her in shame.
And then she showed him what she would like him to do, and what she
would like him to be in patience and in courage, till he stood once more
erect and steady.

"Now, Ranald," she said, noting the effect of her words upon him, "what
is it to be?"

"I will go back," he said, simply; and turning with a single word of
farewell, he sprang over the fence and disappeared in the woods. The
minister's wife stood looking the way he went long after he had passed
out of sight, and then, lifting her eyes to the radiant sky with its
shining lights, "He made the stars also," she whispered, and went up to
her bed and laid her down and slept in peace. Her Sabbath day's work was
done.

CHAPTER X

THE HOME-COMING OF THE SHANTYMEN

For some weeks Ranald was not seen by any one belonging to the manse.
Hughie reported that he was not at church, nor at Bible class, and
although this was not in itself an extraordinary thing, still
Mrs. Murray was uneasy, and Hughie felt that church was a great
disappointment when Ranald was not there.

In their visits to Macdonald Dubh the minister and his wife never
could see Ranald. His Aunt Kirsty could not understand or explain his
reluctance to attend the public services, nor his unwillingness to
appear in the house on the occasion of the minister's visits. "He is
busy with the fences and about the stables preparing for the spring's
work," she said; "but, indeed, he is very queer whatever, and I cannot
make him out at all." Macdonald Dubh himself said nothing. But the books
and magazines brought by the minister's wife were always read. "Indeed,
when once he gets down to his book," his aunt complained, "neither his
bed nor his dinner will move him."

The minister thought little of the boy's "vagaries," but to his wife
came many an anxious thought about Ranald and his doings. She was more
disappointed than she cared to confess, even to herself, that the boy
seemed to be quite indifferent to the steadily deepening interest in
spirit