This kindly reception was more than I had bargained for, and like the big baby I was I felt the hot tears rise and flood my eyes. There was that in my heart then which would have made me lay down my life for old McLeod if need have been. That was always the way with me, I could be brought to do anything by kindness, when force could not make me budge an inch. For the self-same reason old Betty at home had always been able to manage me—my father never.
'Mr McLeod,' said I, as I returned the pressure of the hand he held out to me, a hand that was as knotted and gnarled as any ti-tree in the scrub, 'after all that has happened this is a generous way for you to receive me. Do you know that only one soul in the township up yonder has spoken to me since my return.'
'I'm sorry to hear that, James,' said he, seating himself in a chair near by, and mopping his forehead with his red pocket-handkerchief. 'No young man can afford to lose his friends in that extravagant fashion.'
'Do you know the charge they bring against me?'
'I have heard it,' he answered, looking straight at me. 'But I think it only right to ye to say that I do not believe it all the same.'
'It is not true, so help me, God,' I burst out impetuously. 'If I had dreamt that the horse had been stolen I would no more have ridden him in that race than I would have shot him. I hope you know me well enough to believe that, Mr McLeod.'
'I think I do,' he answered; 'at any rate, this has been a lesson that should last you all your life.'
'It has,' I answered bitterly; 'but all the same I don't think I have been at all fairly treated over it. Whispering Pete was generous to me, and when he asked me to do him the favour of riding his horse I could not refuse. Then I was told by my father that he would turn me out of doors if I did not obey him. But having given my promise to Pete, how could I be expected to break it again?'
'James, James,' the old man said, when I had finished, 'the devil had ye in a tight place just then, and ye ought to thank God right down on your bended knees that He has permitted ye to come out of it as well as ye have. I shall say a word for ye next Sunday, and if ye'll mind what's right ye'll be there to hear it.'