"'I am sorry that Tommy is killed for he had a cheery face and I liked him. But it can't be helped. He will be quite comfortable with God and I hope that someone is being kind to old Pepper for he liked him too.—Your aff. friendDavid Stuart Seton.
"'P.S.—I'm not allowed to draw riligus pictures now or I would have shown you God being very glad to see Tommy.'
"'Old Pepper' is a mongrel that Tommy rescued and was kind to, and it was so like Buff to think of the feelings of the dumb animal.
"Tommy's mother held the letter in her hand very tenderly, and the only tears I saw her shed dropped on it. Then 'Let us go out and look for old Pepper,' she said, 'for "he liked him too."'
"I came home very heavy-hearted, trying to comfort myself concerning those splendid boys.
"To die for one's country is a great privilege—God knows I don't say that lightly, for any day I may hear that you or Alan have died that death—and to those boys the honour has been given in the very springtime of their days.
"Most of us part from our lives reluctantly: they are taken from us, and we go with shivering, shrinking feet down to the brink of the River, but those sons of the morning throw their lives from them andspringacross. I think God will look very kindly at our little boys.
"And smug, middle-aged people say, 'Poor lads!' They dare to pity the rich dead. Oh! the dull people dragging out their span of years without ever finding out what living means!
"But it breaks one's heart, the thought of the buried hopes. I have been thinking of the father, the man in business who was keeping things going until his boy would be through and ready to help him. There are so many of them in Glasgow, and I used to like to listen to them talking to each other in the car coming out from business. They boasted so innocently of their boys, of this one's skill at cricket, that one's prowess in the football field.
"And now this cheery business man has no boy, only a room with a little bed in the corner, a bookshelf full of adventure—stories and battered school-books, a cricket bat and a bag of golf clubs; a wardrobe full of clothes, and a most vivid selection of ties and socks, for the boy who lies in France was very smart in his nice boyish way, and brushed his hair until it shone. Oh! I wonder had anybody time to stroke just once that shining head before it was laid away in the earth? remembering that over the water hearts would break with yearning to see it again.
"It isn't so bad when doleful people get sorrow, they at least have the miserable satisfaction of saying they had always known it would come, but when happy hearts are broken, when blythe people fall silent—the sadness of it haunts one.
"To talk of cheerier subjects. Aunt Alice is a heroine. Who would have thought of her giving up her house for a hospital! Of course we always knew, didn't we? that she was the most golden-hearted person in existence, but it has taken a European war to make her practical. Now she writes me long letters of advice about saving, and food values, and is determined that she at least won't be a drag on her country in winning the war.
"Talk about saving, I asked one of my women the other day if she had ever tried margarine. 'No,' she said earnestly, 'I niver touch it; an' if I'm oot at ma tea an' no' verra sure if it's butter, I juist tak' jeely.' I said no more.
"And now, my very dear, it is perilously near midnight, and there is not the slightest sound in this rather frightening old house, and not the slightest sound on the moor outside, and I am getting rather scared sitting up all alone. Besides, six o'clock comes very soon after midnight! I am so sleepy, with all my housework, that, like the herd laddie, I get no good out of my bed.—Goodnight, E."
*****
A more contented woman than Kirsty HamiltonnéeChristie it would have been difficult to find. Andrew Hamilton and Langhope Manse made to her "Paradise enow." The little hard lines had gone from her face, and she bustled about, a most efficient mistress, encouraging the small maid to do her best work, and helping with her own capable hands. She planned and cooked most savoury, thrifty dinners, and made every shilling do the work of two; it was all sheer delight to her. House-proud and husband-proud, she envied no one, and in fact sincerely pitied every other woman because she could not have her Andrew.
July, August, and September were three wonderful months to the Hamiltons. They spent them settling into the new house (daily finding new delights in it), working in the garden, and getting acquainted with the congregation.
After their one o'clock dinner, on good afternoons, they mounted their bicycles and visited outlying members. Often they were asked to wait for tea, such a fine farmhouse tea as town-bred Kirsty had never dreamed of; and then they cycled home in the gloaming, talking, talking all the time, until they came to their own gate—how good that sounded,their own gate—and having wheeled their bicycles to the shed, they would walk round the garden hand in hand, like happy children.
Andrew had generally something to show Kirsty, some small improvement, for he was a man of his hands; or if there was nothing new to see, they would always go and again admire his chief treasures—a mossy bank that in spring would be covered with violets, a stone dyke in which rock plants had been encouraged to grow, and a little humpbacked bridge hung with ferns.
The war did not trouble Kirsty much. She was rather provoked that it should have happened, for it hurt the church attendance and sadly thinned the choir, and when Andrew had finished reading the papers he would sometimes sit quite silent, looking before him, which made her vaguely uneasy.
Her own family were untouched by it. Archie had no thought of going to train, the notion seemed to him ludicrous in the extreme, but he saw his way to making some money fishing in the troubled waters. The Rev. Johnston Christie confined his usefulness to violent denunciations of the Kaiser from the pulpit every Sunday. He had been much impressed by a phrase used by a prominent Anglican bishop about the Nailed Hand beating the Mailed Fist—neat and telling he considered it, and used it on every possible occasion.
One afternoon in late October the Hamiltons were walking in their garden. They had been lunching at Etterick, and were going in shortly to have tea cosily by the study fire. It was a still day, with a touch of winter in the air—back end, the village people called it, but the stackyards were stocked, the potatoes and turnips were in pits, the byres were full of feeding cattle, so they were ready for what winter would bring them.
To Andrew Hamilton, country-born and bred, every day was a delight.
To-day, as he stood with his wife by the low fence at the foot of the gardens and looked across the fields to the hills, he took a long breath of the clean cold air, and said:
"This—after ten years of lodging in Garnethill! Our lives have fallen to us in pleasant places, Kirsty."
"Yes," she agreed contentedly. "I never thought the country could be so nice. I like the feel of the big stacks, and to think that the stick-house is full of logs, and the apples in the garret, and everything laid in for winter. Andrew, I'm glad winter is coming. It will be so cosy the long evenings together—and only one meeting in the week."
Her husband put out his hand to stop her. "Don't, Kirsty," he said, as if her words hurt him.
In answer to her look of surprise, he went on:
"Did you ever think, when this war was changing so much, that it would change things for us too? Kirsty, my dear, I have thought it all out and I feel I must go."
Kirsty was apt to get cross when she was perturbed about anything, and she now said, moving a step or two away, "What in the world d'you mean? Where are you going?"
"I'm going to enlist, with as many Langhope men as I can persuade to accompany me. It's no use. I can't stand in the pulpit—a young strong man—and say Go. I must say Come!"
Now that it was out, he gave a sigh of relief.
"Kirsty," he pleaded, "say you think I'm right."
But Kirsty's face was white and drawn.
"I thought you were happy," she said at last, with a pitiful little sob on the last word.
"So happy," said her husband, "that I have to go. Every time I came in and found you waiting for me with the kettle singing, when I went out in the morning and looked at the hills, when I walked in the garden and knew that every bush in it was dear to me—then I remembered that these things so dear were being bought with a price, and that the only decent thing for me to do was to go and help to pay that price."
"But only as a chaplain, surely?"
Andrew shook his head.
"I'm too young and able-bodied for a chaplain. I'm only thirty-two, and though I'm not big I'm wiry."
"The Archbishop of Canterbury says the clergyshouldn'tfight," Kirsty reminded him.
Andrew took her arm and looked very tenderly at her as he answered, laughing, "Oh! Kirsty, since when did an Anglican bishop direct your conscience and mine?" They walked slowly towards the house.
On the doorstep Kirsty turned.
"Andrew," she said, "have you thought it all out? Have you thought what it may mean? Leaving the people here—perhaps they won't keep your place open for you, for no man knows how long the war'll last—leaving your comfortable home and your wife who—who loves you, and going away to a life of hardship and exposure, and in the end perhaps—death. Have you thought of this sacrifice you are making?"
And her husband answered, "Yes, I have thought of all it may mean. I don't feel I am wrong leaving the church, because Mr. Smillie is willing to come back and look after the people in my absence. He will stay in the Manse and be company for you." Here poor Kirsty sniffed. "Oh! my dear, don't think I am going with a light heart. 'Stay at home, then,' you say. 'Better men than you are will stay at home.' I know they will, and I only wish I could stay with them, for the very thought of war makes me sick. But because it is such a wrench to go, makes me sure that I ought to go. Love and sacrifice—it's the way of the Cross, Kirsty. The 'young Prince of Glory' walked that way, and I, one of His humblest ministers, will find my way by His footprints."
Kirsty said no more. Later, when Andrew was gone, her father came to Langhope and in no uncertain voice expressed his opinion of his son-in-law. That a man would leave a good down-sitting and go and be private soldier seemed to him nothing short of madness.
"Andrew's a fool," he said, with great conviction.
"Yes," said Kirsty, "Andrew's a fool—a fool for Christ's sake, and you and I can't even begin to understand what that means in the way of nobility and courage and sacrifice, because we were born crawling things. Andrew has wings, and my only hope is that they will be strong enough to lift me with him—for oh! I couldn't bear to be left behind." She ran from the room hurriedly, and left a very incensed gentleman standing on the hearth-rug.
Mr. Christie was accustomed to the adulation of females. He was a most welcome guest at the "At Home" days of his flock. He would drop in and ask in his jovial way for "a cup of your excellent tea, Mrs. So-and-so," make mild ministerial jokes, and was always, in his own words, "the purfect gentleman."
And his daughter had called him "a crawling thing!" He was very cold to Kirsty for the rest of his visit, and when he went home he told his wife that marriage had not improved Christina.
His little invalidish wife looked at him out of her shrewd childish eyes and said, "That's a pity, now," but asked no questions.
The old minister, Mr. Smillie (who was not so very old after all), left his retirement and came back to Langhope, and preached with more vigour than he had done for ten years. Perhaps he had found Edinburgh and unlimited committees rather boring, or perhaps he felt that only his best was good enough for this time.
"Ay," said the village folk, "we've gotten the auld man back, and dod! he's clean yauld! Oor young yin's fechtin', ye ken"; and they said it with pride. It was not every village that had a minister fighting.
The arrangement at the Manse worked very well. Kirsty, too, tried to do her best, and Mr. Smillie, who had been all his life at the mercy of housekeepers, felt he had suddenly acquired both a home and a daughter. When Andrew got his commission, Mr. Smillie went into every house in the village to tell them the news, and was almost as pleased and proud as Kirsty herself.
The Sabbath before he went to France Andrew Hamilton preached in his own pulpit. His text was, "Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee."
Two months later, Kirsty got a letter from him. He said: "I played football this afternoon in a match 'Officersv.Sergeants.' Perhaps you won't hear from me very regularly for a bit, for things may be happening; but don't worry about me, I shall be all right.... I am going to a Company concert to-night to sing some Scots songs, and then, with their own consent, I am going to speak to my men alone of more serious things."
The next day he led his men in an attack, and was reported "Missing."
His colonel wrote to Kirsty: "I have no heart to write about him at this time. If he is gone, I know too well what it means to you, and I know what it means to the regiment. His ideals were an inspiration to the men he led...."
The rest was silence.
Mr. Smillie still preaches, and Kirsty still sits in the Manse waiting and hoping. Her face has grown very patient, and I think she feels that if Andrew never comes back to her, she has wings which will some day carry her to him.
*****
Alan Seton got leave at Christmas for four days.
The excitement at Etterick passed description. Marget cooked and baked everything she could think of, and never once lost her temper. Provisions were got out from Edinburgh; some people near lent a car for the few days; nothing was lacking to do him honour. The house was hung with holly from garret to basement, and in the most unexpected places; for Buff, as decorator, was determined to be thorough.
Everything was Christmas-like except the weather. Buff had been praying very earnestly for snow and frost that they might toboggan, but evidently his expectations had not been great nor his faith of the kind that removes mountains, for when he looked out on Christmas Eve morning he said, "Iknewit—raining!"
They had not seen Alan for three years, and four days seemed a deplorably short span of time to ask all they wanted to know.
Buff was quite shy before this tall soldier-brother and for the first hour eyed him in complete silence; then he sidled up to him with a book in his hand, explaining that it was his chiefest treasure, and was calledThe Frontiersman's Pocket-Book. It told you everything you wanted to know if you were a frontiersman, which, Buff pointed out, was very useful. Small-pox, enteric, snake-bite, sleeping-sickness, it gave the treatment for them all and the cure—if there was one.
"I like the note on 'Madness,'" said Elizabeth, who was watching the little scene. "It says simply, 'Remove spurs.' Evidently, if the patient is not wearing spurs, nothing can be done."
Alan put his arm round his small brother. "It's a fine book, Buff. You will be a useful man some day out in the Colonies stored with all that information."
"Would—would you like it, Alan?" Buff asked; and then, with a gulp of resignation, "I'll give it you."
"Thanks very much, old man," Alan said gravely. "It would be of tremendous use to me in India, if you'll let me have it when I go back; but over in France, you see, we are simply hotching with doctors, and very little time for taking illnesses."
"Well," said Buff in a relieved tone, "I'll keep it for you;" and he departed with his treasure, in case Alan changed his mind.
"I'm glad you didn't take it," said Elizabeth. "He would be very lonely without that book. It lies down with him at night and rises with him in the morning."
"Rum little chap!" Alan said. "I've wanted him badly all the time in India.... Lizbeth, is Father pretty seedy? You didn't say much in your letters about why he retired, but I can see a big difference in him."
"Oh! but he's better, Alan," Elizabeth assured him—"much better than when he left Glasgow; then he did look frail."
"Well, it is good to be home and see all you funny folk again," Alan said contentedly, as he lay back in a most downy and capacious arm-chair. "We don't get chairs like this in dug-outs."
It was a wonderful four days, for everything that had been planned came to pass in the most perfect way, and there was no hitch anywhere.
Alan was in his highest spirits, full of stories of his men and of the life out there. "You don't seem to realize, you people," he kept telling them, "what tremendous luck it is for me coming in for this jolly old war."
He looked so well that Elizabeth's anxious heart was easier than it had been for months. Things couldn't be so bad out there, she told herself, if Alan could come back a picture of rude health and in such gay spirits. On the last night Alan went up with Elizabeth to her room to see, he said, if the fire were cosy, and sitting together on the fender-stool they talked—talked of their father ("Take care of him, Lizbeth," Alan said. "Father is a bit extra, you know. I've yet to find a better man"), of how things had worked out, of Walter in India, of the small Buff asleep next door—one of those fireside family talks which are about the most comfortable things in the world. "I'm glad you came to Etterick, I like to think of you here," Alan said. "Well—I'm off to-morrow again."
"Alan," said Elizabeth, "is it very awful?"
"Well, it isn't a picnic, you know. It's pretty grim sometimes. But I wouldn't be out of it for anything."
"I'll tell you what I wish," said his sister. "I wish you could get a bullet in your arm that would keep you from using it for a long time. And we would get you home to nurse. Oh! wouldn't that be heavenly?"
Alan laughed.
"Nice patriotic creature you are! But seriously, Lizbeth, if I do get knocked out—it does happen now and again, and there is no reason why I should escape—I want you to know that I don't mind. I've had a thoroughly good life. We've had our sad times—and the queer thing is that out there it isn't sad to think about Mother and Sandy: it's comforting, you would wonder!—but when we are happy we are much happier than most people. I haven't got any premonition, you know, or anything like that; indeed, I hope to come bounding home again in spring, but just in case—remember, I was glad to go."
He put his hand gently on his sister's bowed golden head. Sandy had had just such gentle ways. Elizabeth caught his hand and held it to her face, and her tears fell on it.
"Oh! Lizbeth, are you giving way to sentiment? Just think how Fish would lawff!" and Alan patted her shoulder in an embarrassed way.
Elizabeth laughed through her tears.
"Imagine you remembering Fish all these years! We were very unsentimental children, weren't we? And do you remember how Sandy stopped kissing by law?"
They talked themselves back on to the level, and then Alan got up to go.
"Good-night, Lizbeth," he said, and then "WeeLizbeth"; and his sister replied as she had done when they were little children cuddling down in their beds without a care in the world:
"Good-night, Alan.WeeAlan!"
The next morning he was off early to catch the London express.
It was a lovely springlike morning such as sometimes comes in mid-winter, and he stood on the doorstep and looked over the country-side. All the family, including Marget and Watty Laidlaw and his wife, stood around him. They were loth to let him go.
"When will you be back, my boy?" his father asked him.
"April, if I can work it," Alan replied. "After two hot weathers in India I simply pine to see the larches out at Etterick, and hear the blackbirds shouting. Scotland owes it to me. Don't you think so, Father?"
The motor was at the door, the luggage was in, and the partings said—those wordless partings. Alan jumped into the car and grinned cheerily at them.
"Till April," he said. "Remember—Toujours Smiley-face, as we Parisians say——" and he was gone.
They turned to go in, and Marget said fiercely:
"Eh, I wull tak' it ill oot if thae Germans kill that bonnie laddie."
"I almost wish," said Buff, sitting before his porridge withThe Frontiersman's Pocket-Bookclutched close to comfort his sad heart—"I almost wish that he hadn't come home. I had forgotten how nice he was!"
It was in April that he fell, and at Etterick the blackbirds were "shouting" as the telegraph boy—innocent messenger of woe—wheeled his way among the larches.
"The Poet says dear City of Cecrops, wilt thou not say dear City of God?"Marcus Aurelius.
Our story ends where it began, in the Thomsons' parlour in Jeanieville, Pollokshields.
It was November then, now it is May, and light long after tea, and in happier circumstances Mr. Thomson would have been out in his shirt-sleeves in the garden, putting in plants and sowing seeds, with Mrs. Thomson (a white shawl round her shoulders) standing beside him admiring, and Alick running the mower, and Jessie offering advice, and Robert sitting with his books by an open window exchanging a remark with them now and again. They had enjoyed many such spring evenings. But this remorseless war had drawn the little Thomsons into the net, and they sat huddled in the parlour, with no thought for the gay green world outside.
This was Robert's last evening at home. He had been training ever since the war broke out, and was now about to sail for the East. They feared that Gallipoli was his destination, that ill-omened place on whose alien shores thousands and thousands of our best and bravest were to "drink death like wine," while their country looked on in anguished pride.
Mr. Chalmers, their new minister, had been in to tea. He had clapped Robert on the back and told him he was proud of him, and proud of the great Cause he was going to fight for. "I envy you, my boy," he said.
Robert had said nothing, but his face wore the expression "Huch! Away!" and when the well-meaning parson had gone he expressed a desire to know what the man thought he was talking about.
"But, man Rubbert," his father said anxiously, "surely you're glad to fight for the Right?"
"If Mr. Chalmers thinks it such a fine thing to fight," said Robert, "why doesn't he go and do it? He's not much more than thirty."
"He's married, Robert," his mother reminded him, "and three wee ones. You could hardly expect it. Besides, he was telling me that if many more ministers go away to be chaplains they'll have to shut some of the churches."
"And high time, too," said Robert.
"Aw, Rubbert," wailed poor Mrs. Thomson, "what harm do the churches do you?"
"Never heed him, Mamma," Mr. Thomson said. "He's just sayin' it."
Mrs. Thomson sat on her low chair by the fireside—the nursing chair where she had sat and played with her babies in the long past happy days, her kind face disfigured by much crying, her hands idle in her lap, looking at her first-born as if she grudged every moment her eyes were away from him. It seemed as if she were learning every line of his face by heart to help her in a future that would hold no Robert.
Jessie, freed for the night from her nursing, sat silently doing a last bit of sewing for her brother.
Alick was playing idly with the buckle of Robert's haversack, and relating at intervals small items of news culled from the evening papers, by way of cheering his family. Robert, always quiet, was almost speechless this last evening.
"I saw Taylor to-day," Mr. Thomson remarked, after a silence. "He asked to be remembered to you, Rubbert. In fact, he kinda hinted he would look in to-night—but I discouraged him."
"Wee Taylor! Oh, help!" ejaculated Alick.
"You were quite right, Papa," said his wife. "We're not wanting anybody the night, not even old friends like the Taylors."
Silence fell again, and Alick hummed a tune.
"Rubbert," said Mrs. Thomson, leaning forward and touching her son's arm, "Rubbert, promise me that you'll not do anything brave."
Robert's infrequent smile broke over his face, making it oddly attractive.
"You're not much of a Roman matron, wee body," he said, patting her hand.
"I am not," said Mrs. Thomson. "I niver was meant for a soldier's mother. I niver liked soldiers. I niver thought it was a very respectable job."
"It's theonlyrespectable job just now, anyway, Mother," said Jessie.
"That's so," said her father.
"There's the bell," cried Alick. "I hear Annie letting somebody in."
"Dash!" said Robert, rising to fly. But he was too late; the door opened, and Annie announced "Mr. Seton."
At the sight of the tall familiar figure everybody rose to their feet and hastened to greet their old minister.
"Well, I niver," said Mrs. Thomson, "and me just saying we couldn't put up with visitors the night."
"You see we don't count you a visitor," Mr. Thomson explained. "Rubbert's off to-morrow."
"I know," said Mr. Seton. "That is why I came. We are in Glasgow for a few days. I left Elizabeth and Buff at the Central Hotel. Elizabeth said you wouldn't want her to-night, but she will come before we leave."
"How is she?" asked Mrs. Thomson. "Poor thing! She'll not laugh so much now."
"Lizbeth," said her father, "is a gallant creature. I think she will always laugh, and like Charles Lamb she will always find this world a pretty world."
This state of mind made no appeal to Mrs. Thomson, and she changed the subject by asking about Mr. Seton's health. His face, she noticed, was lined and worn, he stooped more than he used to do, but his eyes were the same—a hopeful boy's eyes.
"Oh, I'm wonderfully well. You don't grudge me an hour of Robert's last evening? I baptized the boy."
"Ye did that, Mr. Seton"—the tears beginning to flow at the thought—"and little did any of us think that this is what he was to come to."
"No," said Mr. Seton, "we little thought what a privilege was to be his. Robert, when I heard you had enlisted I said, 'Well done,' for I knew what it meant to you to leave your books. And I hear you wouldn't take a commission, but preferred to go with the men you had trained with."
Robert blushed, but his face did not wear the "affronted" look that it generally wore when people praised him as a patriot.
"Ah but, Mr. Seton," Alick broke in eagerly, "Robert's a sergeant! See his stripes! That's just about as good as an officer."
Robert made a grab at his young brother to silence him; but Alick was not to be suppressed.
"I shouldn't wonder," he said in a loud, boastful voice (he had never been so miserable in all his fifteen years)—"I shouldn't wonder if he got the V.C. That would be fine—eh, Robert?"
"I think I see myself," said Robert.
"Rubbert's a queer laddie," Mr. Thomson remarked, looking tenderly at his son. "He was objectin' to Mr. Chalmers sayin' he had a noble Cause."
Robert blushed again.
"There's nothing wrong with the Cause," he grumbled, "but I hate talking about it."
"'Truth hath a quiet breast,'" quoted Mr. Seton.
There was a silence in the little parlour that looked out on the garden. They were all thinking the same thing—would they ever sit here together again?
So many had gone away! So many had not come back. Mrs. Thomson gave a choking sob and burst out: "Oh! Mr. Seton, your boy didn't come back!"
"No," said Mr. Seton gently, "my boy didn't come back!"
"And oh! the bonnie laddie he was! I can just see him as well; the way he used to come swinging into church with his kilt, and his fair hair, and his face so full of daylight. And I'm sure it wasna for want of prayers, for I'm sure Papa there niver missed once, morning and night, and in our own private prayers too—and you would pray just even on?"
"Just even on," said Mr. Seton.
"And He never heeded us," said Mrs. Thomson.
Mr. Seton smiled at the dismayed amazement in her tone.
"Oh, yes, He heeded us. He answered our prayers beyond our asking. We asked life for Alan, and he has given him length of days for ever and ever."
"But that wasna what we meant," complained Mrs. Thomson. "Oh! I whiles think I'm not a Christian at all now. Icannotsee why God allows this war. There's Mrs. Forsyth, a neighbour of ours—you wouldn't meet a more contented woman and that proud of her doctor son, Hugh. It was the biggest treat you could give her just to let her talk about him, and I must say he was a cliver, cliver young man. He did wonders at College, and he was gettin' such a fine West End practice when the war began; but nothing would serve but he would away out to France to give his services, and he's killed—killed!" Her voice rose in a wail of horror that so untoward a fate should have overtaken any friend of hers. "And oh! Mr. Seton, how am I to let Rubbert go? All his life I've taken such care of him, because he's not just that awfully strong; he was real sickly as a bairn and awful subject to croup. Many's the time I've left ma bed at nights and listened to his breathing. Papa used to get fair worried with me, I was that anxious-minded. I niver let the wind blow on him. And now...."
"Poor body!" said Mr. Seton. "It's a sore job for the mothers." He turned to Mr. Thomson. "Perhaps we might have prayers together before I go?"
Mr. Thomson brought the Bible, and sat down close beside his wife.
Jessie and Robert and Alick sat together on the sofa, drawn very near by the thought of the parting on the morrow. Mr. Seton opened the Bible.
"We shall sing the Twenty-third Psalm," he said.
Sing? The Thomsons looked at their minister. Even so must the Hebrews have looked when asked to sing Zion's songs by the waters of Babylon. But James Seton, grown wise through a whole campaign of this world's life and death, knew the healing balm of dear familiar things, and as he read the words they dropped like oil on a wound:
"The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want.He makes me down to lieIn pastures green: He leadeth meThe quiet waters by.
My soul He doth restore again;And me to walk doth makeWithin the paths of righteousnessEv'n for His own name's sake.
Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,Yet will I fear none ill:For Thou art with me; and Thy rodAnd staff me comfort still.
*****
Goodness and mercy all my lifeShall surely follow me;And in God's house for evermoreMy dwelling-place shall be."
It is almost the first thing that a Scots child learns, that the Lord is his Shepherd, that he will not want, that goodness and mercy will follow him—even through death's dark vale.
Death's dark vale, how trippingly we say it when we are children, fearing "none ill."
Mrs. Thomson's hand sought her husband's.
She had been unutterably miserable, adrift from all her moorings, bewildered by the awful march of events, even doubting God's wisdom and love; but as her old minister read her childhood's psalm she remembered that all through her life the promise had never failed; she remembered how stars had shone in the darkest night, and how even the barren plain of sorrow had been curiously beautified with lilies, and she took heart of comfort.
God, Who counteth empires as the small dust of the balance, and Who taketh up the isles as a very little thing, was shaking the nations, and the whole earth trembled. But there are some things that cannot be shaken, and the pilgrim souls of the world need fear none ill.
Goodness and mercy will follow them through every step of their pilgrimage. The way may lie by "pastures green," or through the sandy, thirsty desert, or through the horror and blood and glory of the battlefield, but in the end there awaits each pilgrim that happy place whereof it is said "sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
"We shall sing the whole psalm," said Mr. Seton. "The tune is 'French.'"