Playing With Fire

by Amelia E. Barr

Then, with a slight reluctance, Dr. Macrae went away, but long afterward he could hear, if he listened, sounds of happy talk and laughter at the pleasant table he had deserted. And he had several longings to go back to the cheerful parlor; his heart was not satisfied, and he could offer it no excuse for its deprivation that it would accept.

"I am sorry Father has gone away, Donald," said Marion. "I had a feeling you were coming to something very interesting."

"Then it is just as well his father did not stay to hear it," replied Mrs. Caird. "I never saw two men whose ideas of what was interesting were further apart than those of Ian and Donald Macrae."

"Well," continued Donald, "our next move was a doubtful one, and it might perhaps have seriously offended Father. I told Professor Blackie I had a little lecture ready about the private history of our favorite Scotch songs—the men or women who wrote them, the circumstances that produced them, the places in which they were written, and so on. And I said I would like to deliver it in Oban. He was greatly delighted, offered to be my chairman, and arranged the program, adding also to my facts many interesting anecdotes. Both Lord Cramer and I illustrated the songs with our violins and voices, and Blackie provided the enthusiasm for the crowds that came to hear the stories and the singing and to see the dancing. The enthusiasm was beyond belief. Indeed, at our battle song of Lochiel's men charging the French at Waterloo, most of the audience stood up, and from all parts of the hall came the Sa! Sa! Sa! Sa! of a Highland regiment charging an enemy. Well, when all expenses were paid, we had cleared one hundred and four pounds, which was very acceptable, as we were both out of money. At Perth we raised the sum of eighty pounds, and then at Wick we took a boat for Shetland, and had a glorious time with the fishermen on Brassey Sound—out on the ocean with them, all through the long, light nights, while the sunset lingered in the west and the dawn was tremulous in the east, and the moonlight silvered everything on earth and sea, and the aurora, with rosy javelins, charged the zenith. Such wonderful nights! Such quiet, grave, purposeful men! Such nets full of quivering fish, in the silver lights between sea and deck! We got away with the strange fishers after the foy or feast and, stopping at St. Andrews, tramped through all the queer little coast towns of the ancient kingdom of Fife and so to Edinburgh, with three times as much money as we started with, and all the health and happiness of the trip added to it."

"I am glad you called at St. Andrews. What did you think of the place?" asked Marion.

"It is pretty enough, but the very atmosphere is learned as well as religious, and you catch the spirit of the place whether you like or not. Walking the streets you appear to imbibe knowledge. I could think only of divinity, science, and philosophy. One of the professors asked me to give my lecture, and said he would sanction the meeting—but I could not sing there."

"Why?"

"Well, Marion, it is a psychical problem. The atmosphere had infected me, and the scientific or philosophical man is never a singing man. Now, Aunt, you see there was nothing wrong in our way of raising the wind, but it is very uncertain how Father would look at it."

"I do not think it would have his approval and, if you take my advice, you will tell him nothing about it."

The following morning, however, Dr. Macrae reverted over and over to Donald's adventures, and would have been really glad if Donald had taken up the subject again, but he did not care to ask the favor—partly because he was a proud man with his children, and partly because it was not a suitable preface for the serious conversation he intended to have with him. He left the table before Donald and spent the interval in steadying his mind and purpose with regard to his boy's future. Never had he been so dear to his heart, never had he been so proud of his beauty, his fine presence and mental alertness. He told himself the world would be full of temptations to such a youth, so charming, and that it was his manifest duty "to bind him, even with cords, to the horns of the altar." There only he would be safe from the lures of the world, the flesh, and the devil. Many things he was not sure about, but this thing he regarded as a duty from which he could not righteously relieve himself.