Scotty listened in dismay. Callum to be married! That itself was bad enough, people were always laughed at and chaffed when they got married, and he writhed at the thought of his hero being in such an ignominious position. But to be married to an Irish girl! Surely the MacDonalds would be disgraced forever.
And yet Scotty's heart forbade his taking sides against Nancy. She was Irish, certainly a deplorable fact, but still she was Nancy; and though she had not been at school for some time, the boy had not forgotten her. He sighed deeply over the complexity of human affairs. This, then, was the cause of their unhappiness at home, of Grandaddy's muttered threats and Granny's distressed looks.
He did not understand that there were stronger objections to Nancy in Granny's mind than the girl's nationality. Big Malcolm's wife was growing old, and the work of the farmhouse weighed heavily upon her. Ever since Callum had grown up she had cherished the hope that one day she would have sweet, trim Mary Lauchie, the finest girl in the Oa, and a MacDonald at that, to take the reins of government in her household. The loss of Mary would have been disappointment enough, but Callum's new choice was a great trial to his patient, gentle mother. The thought of Nancy Caldwell as a daughter-in-law, even though she was to live at the north clearing, instead of with her, filled her with fear. For Nancy had a reputation that had spread beyond the Flats. Since the day she left school, where she had defied McAllister at his best, she had ruled supreme in her own home from sheer dauntlessness of spirit. Many were the tales told in the Oa of her wild outlandish doings; how she would dress up in her brother's clothes and drive madly all over the country; how she could ride an unbroken colt bareback, and shoot like a man, things which everyone in the Oa knew no right-minded young woman could ever learn. And hadn't Store Thompson's wife been, as she declared, clean scandalised by seeing the hussy cross the Oro at the spring floods, standing erect in a canoe and spreading out her skirts to the gale, "Makin' a sail o' mesilf!" as she had laughingly declared when she leaped ashore.
Scotty could not force himself to tell Isabel the disgraceful truth; he was very quiet and gloomy as they walked homeward through the golden-lighted forest. But Isabel had had a grand day with Betty and had forgotten all about the original purport of their visit. She danced along at his side full of busy chatter. Didn't he love all Long Lauchie's folks? She did; for Betty was a dear and Mrs. Lauchie was 'most as nice as Scotty's Granny. But she loved Mary most of all, because she was so kind and so good. And did Mary have the heartbreak too, like her auntie? No; Scotty did not see how that was possible; for Mary had never had a dress ready for a wedding; nor a fine soldier man who did not come. But Isabel was sure he was mistaken. Yes, that was certainly what Mary had, for her face was so pale, and she had the same look in her eyes that her auntie had when her wedding day came round, only Mary's eyes were kinder. But Scotty was not interested in Mary. Callum absorbed all his thoughts, and he left Isabel at Kirsty's and hurried home.
He found the boys all gone and his grandfather sitting alone by the door. Big Malcolm was not smoking, which was a bad sign, and his grandson saw by the look in his eye that he was not at peace. In his perturbation over Callum's difficult case the boy had not noticed that a new undercurrent of excitement was running through life's everyday affairs.
For, though Big Malcolm had, with wonderful self-control, put aside his indignation at the Orangemen, all the MacDonalds had not done so. Weaver Jimmie had gone up over the hills of the Oa like a bearer of the fiery cross, and wherever he appeared the beacon-fire of anger had blazed forth. The Orangemen celebrating! The MacDonalds arose as one man, and in all the inherited fury of generations, combined with as much more produced for the occasion, banded together and swore that before the soil of this, their new home, should be polluted by a celebration in honour of the MacDonalds' betrayer, it should first be soaked with the MacDonalds' blood!
To do Tom Caldwell justice, he did not at all comprehend the enormity of the offence he was about to commit. Of course the Orangemen anticipated some trouble among their Catholic brethren, but rather looked forward to it as part of their entertainment. For though Pat Murphy and his friends prophesied death and destruction to the procession and all that had part or lot in it, what matter? The country had been growing far too quiet since the fighting MacDonalds had taken to praying instead of pugilism, and a little row at the corner would just stir things up a bit and make it seem like old times. But while they gleefully looked for tempests in the Flats, they were innocently oblivious to the fact that the formerly peaceful hills of the Oa had been converted into raging volcanoes. Occasionally vague rumours of an eruption in the MacDonald settlement did float down to King William and his men, drilling in the long June evenings, but they drowned them in the tooting of fifes and the banging of drums and went gaily on to their doom.
But while the MacDonalds raged, Big Malcolm remained at home alone or in company with Long Lauchie, and fought with himself the fiercest battle in which he had ever engaged. Not since the day he had seen Rory go down under Pat Murphy's feet had he been so sorely tried. And the MacDonalds would say he had failed them because his son was about to unite with one of the Caldwell crew. That was the sting of it! Callum had always been the first in any aggressive enterprise of the Oa, and Callum was now conspicuous by his absence. Sometimes Big Malcolm was fiercely resolved to plunge headlong into the commotion and compel his son to join him. And then calmer moments ensued; he could not forget those winter prayer meetings and the wonderful leavening effect they had had upon the community; nor could he forget Praying Donald's prophetic warnings that all strife and enmity must certainly bring retribution. No; he had forever put all feuds behind him, he finally decided, and if the MacDonalds were about to engage in strife with the Orangemen they must learn that he, Big Malcolm, was far above and beyond any such unseemly brawlings.
But upon this evening when Scotty found him alone at the doorway, his grandfather was experiencing none of the settled calm that might be expected to follow such a laudable decision. For to-night the MacDonalds were holding another mass-meeting at the house of Roarin' Sandy to decide finally what punishment should be meted out to the reckless Orangemen, and his very soul was crying out to be with them.
Scotty could elicit no answer to his remarks, and sat upon the doorstep, a small, disconsolate heap, wondering sadly how his hero could have made such a mistake, and finding in his own forlorn heart an echo of the sweet, melancholy evening music. Around him the mosquitoes wailed out their dreary little song; away down by the edge of the wet, low pastures, where the fireflies wandered, each with his weird little torch, the frogs were piping mournfully. The whitethroat was sending out his "silver arrows of song" clearly and pensively from the depths of the velvet dusk. The discordant twang of the swooping night-hawks came down from the pale clear sky where one silver star had come out above the black jagged line of forest.