He lifted his head at last, with the light of a settled purpose shining
in his eyes.
"To man I can never be what he would have been. I am a proscribed
fugitive. You harbour me at a risk even now. But to God! Cary, I have
been a rebel: but I never was a deserter from that service. God helping
me, I will enlist now. If my worthless life have cost the most precious
life in Scotland, it shall not have been given in vain."
"There was Another who gave His life for you, Angus," I could not help
saying.
"Ay, I have been bought twice over," was the trembling answer. "God
help me to live worthy of the cost!"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We all keep the name of Duncan Keith in our inmost hearts--unspoken, but
very dear. But I think it is dearest of all in a little house in the
outskirts of Amsterdam, where, now that my Uncle Drummond has been
called to his reward, our Flora keeps home bright for a Protestant
pastor who works all the day through in the prisons of Amsterdam, among
the lowest of the vile; who knows what exile and imprisonment are; and
who, once in every year, as the day of his substitute's death comes
round, pleads with these prisoners from words which are overwhelming to
himself,--"Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price."
Many of those men and women sink back again into the mire. But now and
then the pastor knows that a soul has been granted to his pleadings,--
that in one more instance, as in his own case, the price was not paid in
vain.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Note 1. The recognised Jacobite way of answering:--"The King _over the
water_."