Donald placed his elbows on his knees and buried his face in his hands with a stifled sound, which might have been groan or curse, and very gently Smiles' hand stole up in the darkness and stroked his tumbled hair, until the man's own fumblingly sought and held it close, to find mute comfort in her warm clasp.
"Perhaps I understand better than you think the reasons which underlie these most unhappy events," answered the old man slowly. There was no rebuke in his quiet voice.
"Although it is true, doctor, that the deeper we get into the heart of primal nature, the closer we get to the heart of nature's God, it is equally true that the nearer we also get to the primal in man.
"I cannot help feeling that the city's laws and conventions trammel the spirit in its free exercise of self, which is ill; but yet the inbred realization of those very laws and conventions, and the fear of consequences if they are broken, act as a salutary check on the primitive passions inherited by every one of us from our savage ancestors.
"Of course, I know that, in places where men are crowded together, such man-made laws and conventions are wise and necessary; but the life which results is not—cannot be—full and natural as it may be in an isolated place like this, when honest obedience is paid to the still higher laws of God—and it is for that obedience which all of us must strive constantly.
"You failed in the test to-day; but, believe me, there are many in these mountains who, lacking all the advantages of training and education which are yours, meet it. Their lives are lived under nature's higher laws in perfect sincerity, and, although they might not conform to the standards of so-called civilization, they are surely purer in God's sight than those of millions who pattern theirs by printed precept."
"I reckon," murmured Smiles, "that St. Peter had to put many black marks on three books to-day ... yes, mine too, for I was wickedly angry. It was hate that made me run away from Doctor Mac, and if I hadn't done it, M ... M ... Mike wouldn't have been shot." She leaned her head against Donald's arm, and cried softly.
"'The wages of sin is death,'" said the minister. "And he paid the penalty for you, Dr. MacDonald, sacrificing himself because of his great love. Poor little Mike. Such faithful animals as he must have souls, and his is now in its own paradise."
No one spoke for a little, and then Mr. Talmadge continued to muse aloud.
"Mere repentance, such as the doctor now feels, is not enough. You remember the parable of the woman who drove the evil spirit from her fleshly temple, and swept it clean, but failed to fill its place with another guest, and seven other devils came and repossessed it? So it is always with human life, Dr. MacDonald. Nature abhors a vacuum, and so does the spirit. If a man does not fill his soul—swept free of past evil by repentance—with that which is actively good, the repentance is of little avail."