The girl realised that this desperate situation was no time for false pride. "Oh, Don," she whispered softly, "how can you say that, how can you think it? You know I care, more than anyone!"
He ceased his resistance and stood a moment as if trying to understand. Jessie was praying with all her heart for strength and wisdom to meet and grapple with the despair that was driving him to destruction. She turned and gently led him back to the gate, and as they went she spoke to him as Jessie Hamilton could never have spoken had she not learned through Duncan Polite's help the true meaning of all sorrow and happiness, spoke to him of his mother, of his duty, of his God. It was the hour of Donald's weakness and trial, when Satan desired to sift him as wheat, an hour in which he might have fared ill had the woman who loved him not stood by with her new strength. But it passed in victory, and when at last he laid his head down upon the top of the gate where they stood and convulsive sobs shook his frame, she knew that he was saved.
The day was one of promising spring when they laid Duncan Polite beside Mr. Cameron under the elms. The hepaticas were peeping out around his covenant stone on the hilltop, the river was gay and smiling and all the world seemed glad. And it was well, for an eternal springtime had dawned for the old watchman of Glenoro.
When they carried him into the church for his last service the place was packed to the doors. Everyone had come to do honour to the man who had done so much for them. Even Coonie was there. He had hurried into Glenoro, early, for the first time in his life. His shoulders drooped more than ever, his wrinkled brown face was even unusually sullen, and his small green eyes were filled with a fierce sorrow. Mr. Ansdell preached the funeral sermon. To the wonder of all, Andrew Johnstone desired it, and everyone felt he must yield a deference to his wishes. As for John Egerton, he was relieved. Remembering his last interview with Duncan Polite and how he might have averted this catastrophe had he been faithful to his duty, he felt he could not bear the ordeal.
The minister's text was a strange one for a funeral sermon, but that, too, was Andrew Johnstone's choice. "Son of man, I have set thee a watchman." The old clergyman was the very one for his task. He spent no time in eulogising the dead; but he told simply and tenderly the story of Duncan Polite's covenant, how he had striven to keep it, giving at length his all, even his life, to serve the people of his Glen.
There was not a person in the congregation who did not take the lesson to heart. The story of the old man's unselfish interest in the spiritual life of the place took a firm hold upon the listeners and roused them to better and nobler aims. But there was one to whom the sermon was a fiery ordeal. For even Donald, well-nigh crushed with the weight of his grief and the knowledge of all he had missed, was no more torn by the old clergyman's words than the young minister who sat reviewing his past self-satisfied year in Glenoro in the light of Duncan Polite's hopes.
The May days had come, and Glenoro was all pink and white in a burst of apple blossoms when Donald next returned from college. On the evening after his arrival he walked down the village street with mingled feelings of joy and pain. Jessie was waiting for him at the gate; he almost fancied he could detect her white dress through the trees even at this distance, but he had just passed an old house on the hilltop, a house at which he had always stopped in the past, and now it was silent and empty. As he turned from behind the elms and came in full view of the village, he suddenly paused. The minister was just emerging from Peter McNabb's gate; he turned up the hill and he and Donald came face to face.
The two young men stood for an instant, and then, with a common impulse, stretched out their hands. John Egerton grasped the hand of Duncan Polite's nephew with a pang of regret. If he had done this long before, what a different turn affairs might have taken.
Donald was the first to speak. "This is very kind of you, Mr. Egerton," he said with his accustomed frankness. "I have misjudged you so often——"
"Don't say anything about what is past, Mr. McDonald," said the other hastily; "I can never forget what I owe you, and it would be the deepest of my many regrets in leaving Glenoro if you and I could not part friends."