man's feelin's like that? Seem to be not a bad sort, either," he
added, meditatively.

"Indeed, they are good men," said Macdonald Bhain, "but they will not be
knowing Mack as I knew him. He never made any profession at all, but he
had the root of the matter in him."

Ranald felt as if he had wakened out of a terrible nightmare, and
followed his uncle into the house, with a happier heart than he had
known since he had received Yankee's letter.

As they entered the room where the people were gathered, Donald Ross was
reading the hundred and third psalm, and the words of love and pity and
sympathy were dropping from his kindly lips like healing balm upon
the mourning hearts, and as they rose and fell upon the cadences of
"Coleshill," the tune Straight Rory always chose for this psalm, the
healing sank down into all the sore places, and the peace that passeth
understanding began to take possession of them.

Softly and sweetly they sang, the old women swaying with the music:

"For, as the heaven in its height
The earth surmounteth far,
So great to those that do him fear,
His tender mercies are."

When they reached that verse, the mother took up the song and went
bravely on through the words of the following verse:

"As far as east is distant from
The west, so far hath he
From us removed, in his love,
All our iniquity."

As she sang the last words her hand stole over to Bella, who sat beside
her quiet but tearless, looking far away. But when the next words rose
on the dear old minor strains,

"Such pity as a father hath
Unto his children dear,"

Bella's lip began to tremble, and two big tears ran down her pale
cheeks, and one could see that the sore pain in her heart had been a
little eased.

After Donald Ross had finished his part of the "exercises," he called
upon Kenny Crubach, who read briefly, and without comment, the exquisite
Scottish paraphrase of Luther's "little gospel":

"Behold the amazing gift of love
The Father hath bestowed
On us, the sinful sons of men,
To call us sons of God--"

and so on to the end.

All this time Peter McRae, the man of iron, had been sitting with
hardening face, his eyes burning in his head like glowing coals; and
when Donald Ross called upon him for "some words of exhortation and
comfort suitable to the occasion," without haste and without hesitation
the old