“I have something else to do,” said Shenac.
“Everybody goes,” continued Dan; and he repeated the names of many people, far and near, who were in the new kirk night after night. “Come with me and Peter to-night, Shenac.”
But Shenac had other things to think about, she said. Still she thought much of this too.
“I wonder what it is, Hamish,” said she when they were alone. “I can understand why Dan and Peter McLay should go—just because other folk go; and I daresay there’s some excitement in seeing all the folk, and that is what they like. But so many others, sensible folk, and worldly folk, and all kinds of folk, in this busy harvest-time! You should go, Hamish, and see what it is all about.”
But the way was long and the meetings were late, and Hamish needed to save his strength; and he did not go, though many spoke of the meetings, and the wonderful change which was wrought in the heart and life of many through their means. He wondered as well as Shenac, but not in the same way; for he had felt in his own heart the wondrous power that lies in the simple truth of God to comfort and strengthen and enlighten; and it came into his mind, sometimes, that the good days of which he had read were coming back again, when the Lord used to work openly in the eyes of all the people, making his Church the instrument of spreading the glory of his name by the conversion of many in a day. It did not trouble or stumble him, as it did his sister, that it was not in their church—the church of their fathers—that this was done. They were God’s people, and it made no difference; and so, while she only wondered, he wondered and rejoiced.
But about this time news came that put all other thoughts out of their minds for a while. The mother was sleeping, and Shenac and Hamish were sitting in the firelight one evening in September, when the door opened and their cousin Shenac came in. She seemed greatly excited, and there were tears on her cheeks, and she did not speak, but came close up to Shenac Bhan, without heeding the exclamations of surprise with which they both greeted her.
“Did I not tell you, Shenac, that God would never drown them in the sea?”
She had run so fast that she had hardly a voice to say the words, and she sank down at her cousin’s feet, gasping for breath. In her hands she held a letter. It was from Evan—the first he had written to his father since he went away. Shenac told them that her father had received it in the morning, but said nothing about it then, going about all day with a face like death, and only told them when he broke down at worship-time, when he prayed as usual for “all distant and dear.”
“Then he told my mother and me,” continued Shenac Dhu, spreading out a crushed morsel of paper with hands that trembled. It was only a line or two, broken and blurred, praying for his father’s forgiveness and blessing on his dying son. He meant to come home with his cousin. They were to meet at Saint F—, and sail together, But he had been hurt, and had fallen ill of fever in an inland town, and he was dying. “And now the same ship that takes this to you will take Allister home. He will not know that I am dying, but will think I have changed my mind as I have done before. I would not let him know if I could; for he would be sure to stay for my sake, and his heart is set on getting home to his mother and the rest. And, father, I want to tell you that it was not Allister that beguiled me from home, but my own foolishness. He has been more than a brother to me. He has saved my life more than once, and he has saved me from sins worse than death; and you must be kind to him and to them all for my sake.”
“And then,” said Shenac Dhu, “there is his name, written as if he had been blind; and that is all.”