"In giving up?" asked Scotty eagerly. "Is it because of what you saw this afternoon?"
"No; the reward of a right act doesn't always come so suddenly; but because I have learned something since you went away, something that your grandmother taught me up there under the Silver Maple. I know now that when a man has once realised what the Great Sacrifice means he cannot choose his own way."
And Scotty went up to his old bed in the loft and lay listening to the branches of the Silver Maple softly caressing the roof, unable to sleep for joy and thankfulness.
The days that followed were very busy ones. Scotty was often at the Grange; not altogether because inclination turned his feet thither, but because there was much business to settle. Lieutenant Herbert wanted to return soon to England, and he would not leave until his new friend had received due restitution and more. Scotty wanted nothing; the look in Isabel's eyes was enough, but Harold would not listen. No, he must have the Grange and all that pertained to it, he declared; for the Captain and his sister had long thought of going back to England to end their days. "So," he concluded, "when you are through that college course, which it appears you must take, you and Bluebell can settle down here to farming; and good luck go with you, because I don't envy you your lot!"
But Scotty and Isabel cared very little whether they were envied or not. Their own happiness was sufficient.
And so Ralph Stanwell came into his inheritance at last, and by the right road, the road of truth and equity, which, though it may often descend by the way of the cross, is sure and straight and leadeth unto life eternal.
The day before he left to take up his studies in the city, Scotty went down to the Grange and brought Isabel up, ostensibly to spend the day with Kirsty, but really because they wanted to say farewell among their old haunts. The girl had spent the afternoon at Big Malcolm's and as evening fell and Scotty prepared to take her home, they went round to the side of the house and sat for a few moments under the Silver Maple. Lake Oro was a sea of gems flashing between the dusky points of the fir trees. The hilltops were flushed with rose, the valleys steeped in purple, and the vesper sparrows filled the golden twilight with their music.
"Scotty," said the girl softly, "I've been reminded all day of the psalm Granny Malcolm taught us here—'Thou hast beset me behind and before and hast laid Thine Hand upon me!'"
And Scotty, whose mind held the vivid remembrance of a great temptation, to which he had almost yielded and from which he had been saved that wonderful night in the wilderness, added: "'Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain unto it.'"