“Search me! ‘Nearer my God, to Thee!’ maybe.”
Both laughed coarsely. For a flash of a second, the young fellow who looked like a lumberman, and who had been regarding the girl on the stage, turned his keen eyes on the two jeering men. Then he turned his back on them, as if they were not worth steady consideration.
The opening bars of the plaintive old Scottish song, “Robin Adair,” were played by the orchestra. The melody was familiar to them—as it is to most professional musicians—and they played it well.
“Thunder!” growled one of the toughs. “Is she goin’ to give us a hymn? If she is, it will be ‘good night’ for hers!”
There were noisy laughs from many in the audience, for liquor had been flowing, and the men were not themselves. At least, it is to be hoped so, for the honor of that part of the Dominion.
The singer flushed, but she took up the song when the prelude was finished, rendering it with a delicacy and pathos that would have stirred even that rough assemblage had it not been for the ridicule a few of the hardest men saw fit to express.
Before she had finished the first verse there was a storm of hisses and catcalls, and the girl’s voice was drowned. One could see that she was still singing by watching her lips, but it was impossible for her to be heard through the growing din.
Suddenly, a big man, dressed much as was the young man who had been observing the girl in silence, got up and strode toward the stage. Here he turned and faced the audience, six feet four inches of brawn and muscle.
Many of those in the inclosure recognized him. He was a foreman up in the lumber woods, and he could strike a blow that would knock an ox senseless when he had a good swing. His name was Mackenzie Douglas.