At that moment the girl raised her eyes and glanced in their direction. She encountered Scotty's eager gaze, and returned it with a brilliant, laughing glance; then her eyes met Callum's and she instantly turned away with a coquettish toss of her head. Scotty felt she surely might have smiled at Callum, too. He glanced up at the young man again and was rather troubled. He was sure Callum must be very angry at either him or Nancy, for he had never seen his face get red like that unless he were in a rage.
But, meantime, Praying Donald had finished the interrupted psalm and Roarin' Sandy had started the tune. The elder men caught it up, then the women, and lastly the young men about the stove, and the song swelled out slow and solemn, the deep, full-chested notes rolling out into the winter night where the glittering stars and the solemn, silent forest seemed to give back in grand reverberations the words:
"He put a new song in my mouth
Our God to magnify!"
In the hush that followed, Praying Donald read a chapter from the Holy Word, read it in tones that arrested the most careless listener, and even Scotty felt a little tingle go over him at the yearning words:
"As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God. My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God."
And then they all knelt in prayer, old and young, serious and careless; all bowed before the God for whom their souls, whether they realised it or not, panted as the hart for the cooling streams.
The prayers were all the heartfelt repetition of the sentiment expressed in the psalm. These pioneers were children in a strange land, surrounded by new conditions, and in their wise simplicity went as children to a father for what they most needed. After Praying Donald came Big Malcolm, then Store Thompson, and Roarin' Sandy, and then the leader called upon Tom Caldwell. Tom Caldwell's big Irish heart was overflowing with good-will to his Scottish neighbours; and carried away by his emotions, he prayed long and loud and shouted hallelujahs in a manner that rather alarmed the company. Indeed, Store Thompson's wife, who was considered quite a genteel person in the community, declared afterwards that "it jist garred her ears tingle," and Store Thompson himself, though never given to censure anyone, admitted that though Tom certainly had a fine gift of prayer, he was, "jist a wee thing tumultuous-like."
The meeting had been very solemn and the youngest person there very well-behaved during the earlier prayers, but after Tom Caldwell came the host of the evening, and the young men began to grow restless. For Long Lauchie was never so long as when at his devotions. Indeed, for years it had been the scandal of the Oa that his sons were in the habit of slipping out during family worship to attend to the "chores" about the stable, returning to appear decorously upon their knees when their father arose.
At Callum Fiach's suggestion the "Lauchie boys" even arranged a competition in which the five sons strove to see who could make the longest excursion during prayer-time. The palm was yielded to Hughie, the third son, who crossed the swamp on skis one evening, and saw Kirsty John chase the Weaver from her door with the porridge stick, arriving home, breathless but triumphant, just before the amen was pronounced. No one quite believed Hughie's story, until it was ruefully corroborated by Jimmie himself; whereupon the limit was declared to be reached, and the boys turned their attention to new fields.
But on this first prayer-meeting night, spurred on by the enthusiasm of the company, Long Lauchie bade fair to give his sons ample opportunity to journey through the length and breadth of the township of Oro and return before he was finished. The pious old man had a fine poetic temperament, and to-night he soared beyond anything his family had ever heard. The petition ramified and expanded to an alarming length, and still showed no signs of stopping. Even Mrs. Lauchie, whose chief pride was her husband's devotional fluency, was somewhat concerned.