"I think no one but ourselves need know," he continued, thinking in his

heart of Carlen. "It is enough that he is dead. There is no good to be

gained for any one, that I see, by telling what he had done."

"No," said Mrs. Dietman, tearfully; but her husband exclaimed, in a

vindictive tone:

"I see not why it is to be covered in secret. He is murderer. It is to

be sent vord to Mayence he vas found."

"Yes, they ought to know there," said John, slowly; "but there is no

need for it to be known here. He has injured no one here."

"No," exclaimed Farmer Weitbreck. "He haf harm nobody here; he vas goot.

I haf ask him to stay and haf home in my house."

It was a strange story. Early in the spring, it seemed, about six weeks

before Hans Dietman and his wife Gretchen were married, a shepherd on

the farm adjoining Gretchen's father's had been murdered by a

fellow-laborer on the same farm. They had had high words about a dog,

and had come to blows, but were parted by some of the other hands, and

had separated and gone their ways to their work with their respective

flocks.

This was in the morning. At night neither they nor their flocks

returned; and, search being made, the dead body of the younger shepherd

was found lying at the foot of a precipice, mutilated and wounded, far

more than it would have been by any accidental fall. The other

shepherd, Carl Lepmann, had disappeared, and was never again seen by any

one who knew him, until this previous day, when he had entered the

Dietmans' door bearing his message from the Weitbreck farm. At the first

sight of his face, Gretchen Dietman had recognized him, thrown up her

arms involuntarily, and cried out in German: "My God! the man that

killed the shepherd!" Carl had halted on the threshold at hearing these

words, and his countenance had changed; but it was only for a second. He

regained his composure instantly, entered as if he had heard nothing,

delivered his message, and afterward remained for some time on the farm

chatting with the laborers, and seeming in excellent spirits.

"And so vas he ven he come home," said Farmer Weitbreck; "he make dat ve

all laugh and laugh, like notings ever vas before, never before he open

his mouth to speak; he vas like at funeral all times, night and day. But

now he seem full of joy. It is de most strange ting as I haf seen in my

life."

"I do not think so, father," said John. "I do not wonder he was glad to

be rid of his burden."

It proved of no use to try to induce Hans Dietman to keep poor Carl's

secret. He saw no reason why a murderer should be sheltered from

disgrace. To have his name held up for the deserved execration seemed to

Hans the only punishment left for one who had thus evaded the hangman;

and he proceeded to inflict this punishment to the extent of his

ability.

Finding that the tale could not be kept secret, John nerved himself to

tell it to Carlen. She heard it in silence from beginning to end, asked

a few searching questions, and then to John's unutterable astonishment

said: "Wilhelm never killed that man. You have none of you stopped to

see if there was proof."

"But why did he fly, Liebchen?" asked John.

"Because he knew he would be accused of the murder," she replied. "They

might have been fighting at the edge of the precipice and the shepherd

fell over, or the shepherd might have been killed by some one else, and

Wilhelm have found the body. He never killed him, John, never."

There was something in Carlen's confident belief which communicated

itself to John's mind, and, coupled with the fact that there was

certainly only circumstantial evidence against Wilhelm, slowly brought

him to sharing her belief and tender sorrow. But they were alone in this

belief and alone in their sorrow. The verdict of the community was

unhesitatingly, unqualifiedly, against Wilhelm.

"Would a man hang himself if he knew he were innocent?" said everybody.

"All the more if he knew he could never prove himself innocent," said

John and Carlen. But no one else thought so. And how could the truth

ever be known in this world?

Wilhelm was buried in a corner of the meadow field he had so loved.

Before two years had passed, wild blackberry vines had covered the grave

with a thick mat of tangled leaves, green in summer, blood-red in the

autumn. And before three more had passed there was no one in the place

who knew the secret of the grave. Farmer Weitbreck and his wife were

both dead, and the estate had passed into the hands of strangers who had

heard the story of Wilhelm, and knew that his body was buried somewhere

on the farm; but in which field they neither asked nor cared, and there

was no mourner to tell the story. John Weitbreck had realized his dream

of going West, a free man at last, and by no means a poor one; he looked

out over scores of broad fields of his own, one of the most fertile of

the Oregon valleys.

Alf was with him, and Carlen; and Carlen was Alf's wife,--placid,

contented wife, and fond and happy mother,--so small ripples did there

remain from the tempestuous waves beneath which Carl Lepmann's life had

gone down. Some deftly carved boxes and figures of chamois and their

hunters stood on Carlen's best-room mantel, much admired by her

neighbors, and longed for by her toddling girl,--these, and a bunch of

dried and crumbling blossoms of the Ladies' Tress, were all that had

survived the storm. The dried flowers were in the largest of the boxes.

They lay there side by side with a bit of carved abalone shell Alf had

got from a Nez Perce Indian, and some curious seaweeds he had picked up

at the mouth of the Columbia River. Carlen's one gilt brooch was kept in

the same box, and when she took it out of a Sunday, the sight of the

withered flowers always reminded her of Wilhelm. She could not have told

why she kept them; it certainly was not because they woke in her breast

any thoughts which Alf might not have read without being disquieted. She

sometimes sighed, as she saw them, "Poor Wilhelm!" That was all.

But there came one day a letter to John that awoke even in Carlen's

motherly and contented heart strange echoes from that past which she had

thought forever left behind. It was a letter from Hans Dietman, who

still lived on the Pennsylvania farm, and who had been recently joined

there by a younger brother from Germany.

This brother had brought news which, too late, vindicated the memory of

Wilhelm. Carlen had been right. He was no murderer.

It was with struggling emotions that Carlen heard the tale; pride, joy,

passionate regret, old affection, revived. John was half afraid to go

on, as he saw her face flushing, her eyes filling with tears, kindling

and shining with a light he had not seen in them since her youth.

"Go on! go on!" she cried. "Why do you stop? Did I not tell you so? And

you never half believed me! Now you see I was right! I told you Wilhelm

never harmed a human being!"

It was indeed a heartrending story, to come so late, so bootless now, to

the poor boy who had slept all these years in the nameless grave, even

its place forgotten.

It seemed that a man sentenced in Mayence to be executed for murder had

confessed, the day before his execution, that it was he who had killed

the shepherd of whose death Carl Lepmann had so long been held guilty.

They had quarrelled about a girl, a faithless creature, forsworn to both

of them, and worth no man's love or desire; but jealous anger got the

better of their sense, and they grappled in fight, each determined to

kill the other.

The shepherd had the worst of it; and just as he fell, mortally hurt,

Carl Lepmann had come up,--had come up in time to see the murderer leap

on his horse to ride away.

In a voice, which the man said had haunted him ever since, Carl had

cried out: "My God! You ride away and leave him dead! and it will be I

who have killed him, for this morning we fought so they had to tear us

apart!"

Smitten with remorse, the man had with Carl's help lifted the body and

thrown it over the precipice, at the foot of which it was afterward

found. He then endeavored to persuade the lad that it would never be

discovered, and he might safely return to his employer's farm. But

Carl's terror was too great, and he had finally been so wrought upon by

his entreaties that he had taken him two days' journey, by lonely ways,

the two riding sometimes in turn, sometimes together,--two days' and two

nights' journey,--till they reached the sea, where Carl had taken ship

for America.

"He was a good lad, a tender-hearted lad," said the murderer. "He might

have accused me in many a village, and stood as good chance to be

believed as I, if he had told where the shepherd's body was thrown; but

he could be frightened as easily as a woman, and all he thought of was

to fly where he would never be heard of more. And it was the thought of

him, from that day till now, has given me more misery than the thought

of the dead man!"

Carlen was crying bitterly; the letter was just ended, when Alf came

into the room asking bewilderedly what it was all about.

The name Wilhelm meant nothing to him. It was the summer before Wilhelm

came that he had begun this Oregon farm, which he, from the first, had

fondly dedicated to Carlen in his thoughts; and when he went back to

Pennsylvania after her, he found her the same as when he went away, only

comelier and sweeter. It would not be easy to give Alf an uncomfortable

thought about his Carlen. But he did not like to see her cry.

Neither, when he had heard the whole story, did he see why her tears

need have flowed so freely. It was sad, no doubt, and a bitter shame

too, for one man to suffer and go to his grave that way for the sin of

another. But it was long past and gone; no use in crying over it now.

"What a tender-hearted, foolish wife it is!" he said in gruff fondness,

laying his hand on Carlen's shoulder, "crying over a man dead and buried

these seven years, and none of our kith or kin, either. Poor fellow! It

was a shame!"

But Carlen said nothing.

Little Bel's Supplement.

"Indeed, then, my mother, I'll not take the school at Wissan Bridge

without they promise me a supplement. It's the worst school i' a' Prince

Edward Island."

"I doubt but ye're young to tackle wi' them boys, Bel," replied the

mother, gazing into her daughter's face with an intent expression in

which it would have been hard to say which predominated,--anxiety or

fond pride. "I'd sooner see ye take any other school between this an'

Charlottetown, an' no supplement."

"I'm not afraid, my mother, but I'll manage 'em well enough; but I'll

not undertake it for the same money as a decent school is taught.

They'll promise me five pounds' supplement at the end o' the year, or

I'll not set foot i' the place."

"Maybe they'll not be for givin' ye the school at all when they see

what's yer youth," replied the mother, in a half-antagonistic tone.

There was between this mother and daughter a continual undercurrent of

possible antagonism, overlain and usually smothered out of sight by

passionate attachment on both sides.

Little Bel tossed her head. "Age is not everything that goes to the

makkin o' a teacher," she retorted. "There's Grizzy McLeod; she's

teachin' at the Cove these eight years, an' I'd shame her myself any day

she likes wi' spellin' an' the lines; an' if there's ever a boy in a

school o' mine that'll gie me a floutin' answer such's I've heard her

take by the dozen, I'll warrant ye he'll get a birchin'; an' the

trustees think there's no teacher like Grizzy. I'm not afraid."

"Grizzy never had any great schoolin' herself," replied her mother,

piously. "There's no girl in all the farms that's had what ye've had,

Bel."

"It isn't the schoolin', mother," retorted little Bel. "The schoolin' 's

got nothin' to do with it. I'd teach a school better than Grizzy McLeod

if I'd never had a day's schoolin'."

"An' now if that's not the talk of a silly," retorted the quickly

angered parent. "Will ye be tellin' me perhaps, then, that them that

can't read theirselves is to be set to teach letters?"

Little Bel was too loyal at heart to her illiterate mother to wound her

further by reiterating her point. Throwing her arms around her neck, and

kissing her warmly, she exclaimed: "Eh, my mother, it's not a silly that

ye could ever have for a child, wi' that clear head, and the wise things

always said to us from the time we're in our cradles. Ye've never a

child that's so clever as ye are yerself. I didn't mean just what I

said, ye must know, surely; only that the schoolin' part is the smallest

part o' the keepin' a school."

"An' I'll never give in to such nonsense as that, either," said the

mother, only half mollified. "Ye can ask yer father, if ye like, if it

stands not to reason that the more a teacher knows, the more he can

teach. He'll take the conceit out o' ye better than I can." And good

Isabella McDonald turned angrily away, and drummed on the window-pane

with her knitting-needles to relieve her nervous discomfort at this

slight passage at arms with her best-beloved daughter.

Little Bel's face flushed, and with compressed lips she turned silently

to the little oaken-framed looking-glass that hung so high on the wall

she could but just see her chin in it. As she slowly tied her pink

bonnet strings she grew happier. In truth, she would have been a maiden

hard to console if the face that looked back at her from the quaint oak

leaf and acorn wreath had not comforted her inmost soul, and made her

again at peace with herself. And as the mother looked on she too was

comforted; and in five minutes more, when Little Bel was ready to say

good-by, they flung their arms around each other, and embraced and

kissed, and the daughter said, "Good-by t' ye now, mother. Wish me well,

an' ye'll see that I get it,--supplement an' all," she added slyly. And

the mother said, "Good luck t' ye, child; an' it's luck to them that

gets ye." That was the way quarrels always ended between Isabella

McDonald and her oldest daughter.

The oldest daughter, and yet only just turned of twenty; and there were

eight children younger than she, and one older. This is the way among

the Scotch farming-folk in Prince Edward Island. Children come tumbling

into the world like rabbits in a pen, and have to scramble for a living

almost as soon and as hard as the rabbits. It is a narrow life they

lead, and full of hardships and deprivations, but it has its

compensations. Sturdy virtues in sturdy bodies come of it,--the sort of

virtue made by the straitest Calvinism, and the sort of body made out of

oatmeal and milk. One might do much worse than inherit both.

It seemed but a few years ago that John McDonald had wooed and won

Isabella McIntosh,--wooed her with difficulty in the bosom of her family

of six brothers and five sisters, and won her triumphantly in spite of

the open and contemptuous opposition of one of the five sisters. For

John himself was one of seven in his father's home, and whoever married

John must go there to live, to be only a daughter in a mother-in-law's

house, and take a daughter's share of the brunt of everything. "And

nothing to be got except a living, and it was a poor living the McDonald

farm gave beside the McIntosh," the McIntosh sisters said. And,

moreover: "The saint did not live that could get on with John McDonald's

mother. That was what had made him the silent fellow he was, always

being told by his mother to hold his tongue and have done speaking; and

a fine pepper-pot there'd be when Isabella's hasty tongue and temper

were flung into that batch!"

There was no gainsaying all this. Nevertheless, Isabella married John,

went home with him into his father's house, put her shoulder against her

spoke in the family wheel, and did her best. And when, ten years later,

as reward of her affectionate trust and patience, she found herself sole

mistress of the McDonald farm, she did not feel herself ill paid. The

old father and mother were dead, two sisters had died and two had

married, and the two sons had gone to the States to seek better fortunes

than were to be made on Prince Edward Island. John, as eldest son, had,

according to the custom of the island, inherited the farm; and Mrs.

Isabella, confronting her three still unmarried sisters, was able at

last triumphantly to refute their still resentfully remembered

objections to her choice of a husband.

"An' did ye suppose I did not all the time know that it was to this it

was sure to come, soon or late?" she said, with justifiable complacency.

"It's a good thing to have a house o' one's own an' an estate. An' the

linen that's in the house! I've no need to turn a hand to the flax-wheel

for ten years if I've no mind. An' ye can all bide your times, an' see

what John'll make o' the farm, now he's got where he can have things his

own way. His father was always set against anything that was new, an'

the place is run down shameful; but John'll bring it up, an' I'm not an

old woman yet."

This last was the unkindest phrase Mrs. John McDonald permitted herself

to use. There was a rebound in it which told on the Mclntosh sisters;

for they, many years older than she, were already living on tolerance

in their father's house, where their oldest brother and his wife ruled

things with an iron hand. All hopes of a husband and a home of their own

had quite died out of their spinster bosoms, and they would not have

been human had they not secretly and grievously envied the comely,

blooming Isabella her husband, children, and home.

But, with all this, it was no play-day life that Mrs. Isabella had led.

At the very best, and with the best of farms, Prince Edward Island

farming is no high-road to fortune; only a living, and that of the

plainest, is to be made; and when children come at the rate of ten in

twenty-two years, it is but a small showing that the farmer's bank

account makes at the end of that time. There is no margin for fineries,

luxuries, small ambitions of any kind. Isabella had her temptations in

these directions, but John was firm as a rock in withstanding them. If

he had not been, there would never have been this story to tell of his

Little Bel's school-teaching, for there would never have been money

enough in the bank to have given her two years' schooling in

Charlottetown, the best the little city afforded,--"and she boardin'

all the time like a lady," said the severe McIntosh aunts, who

disapproved of all such wide-flying ambitions, which made women

discontented with and unfitted for farming life.

"And why should Isabella be setting her daughters up for teachers?" they

said. "It's no great schoolin' she had herself, and if her girls do as

well as she's done, they'll be lucky,"--a speech which made John

McDonald laugh out when it was reported to him. He could afford to laugh

now.

"I mind there was a day when they thought different o' me from that," he

said. "I'm obliged to them for nothin'; but I'd like the little one to

have a better chance than the marryin' o' a man like me, an' if

anything'll get it for her, it'll be schoolin'."

The "boardin' like a lady," which had so offended the Misses Mclntosh's

sense of propriety, was not, after all, so great an extravagance as they

had supposed; for it was in his own brother's house her thrifty father

had put her, and had stipulated that part of the price of her board was

to be paid in produce of one sort and another from the farm, at market

rates; "an' so, ye see, the lass 'll be eatin' it there 'stead of here,"

he said to his wife when he told her of the arrangement, "an' it's a

sma' difference it'll make to us i' the end o' the two years."

"An' a big difference to her a' her life," replied Isabella, warmly.

"Ay, wife," said John, "if it fa's out as ye hope; but it's main

uncertain countin' on the book-knowledge. There's some it draws up an'

some it draws down; it's a millstone. But the lass is bright; she's as

like you as two peas in a pod. If ye'd had the chance she's had--"

Rising color in Isabella's face warned John to stop. It is a strange

thing to see how often there hovers a flitting shadow of jealousy

between a mother and the daughter to whom the father unconsciously

manifests a chivalrous tenderness akin to that which in his youth he had

given only to the sweetheart he sought for wife. Unacknowledged,

perhaps, even unmanifested save in occasional swift and unreasonable

petulances, it is still there, making many a heartache, which is none

the less bitter that it is inexplicable to itself, and dares not so much

as confess its own existence.

"It's a better thing for a woman to make her way i' the world on the

book-learnin' than to be always at the wheel an' the churn an' the

floors to be whitened," replied Isabella, sharply. "An' one year like

another, till the year comes ye're buried. I look for Bel to marry a

minister, or maybe even better."

"Ye'd a chance at a minister yersel', then, my girl," replied the wise

John, "an' ye did not take it." At which memory the wife laughed, and

the two loyal hearts were merry together for a moment, and young again.

Little Bel had, indeed, even before the Charlottetown schooling, had a

far better chance than her mother; for in her mother's day there was no

free school in the island, and in families of ten and twelve it was only

a turn and turn about that the children had at school. Since the free

schools had been established many a grown man and woman had sighed

curiously at the better luck of the youngsters under the new regime. No

excuse now for the poorest man's children not knowing how to read and

write and more; and if they chose to keep on, nothing to hinder their

dipping into studies of which their parents never heard so much as the

names.

And this was not the only better chance which Little Bel had had. John

McDonald's farm joined the lands of the manse; his house was a short

mile from the manse itself; and by a bit of good fortune for Little Bel

it happened that just as she was growing into girlhood there came a new

minister to the manse,--a young man from Halifax, with a young bride,

the daughter of an officer in the Halifax garrison,--gentlefolks, both

of them, but single-hearted and full of fervor in their work for the

souls of the plain farming-people given into their charge. And both Mr.

Allan and Mrs. Allan had caught sight of Little Bel's face on their

first Sunday in church, and Mrs. Allan had traced to her a flute-like

voice she had detected in the Sunday-school singing; and before long, to

Isabella's great but unspoken pride, the child had been "bidden to the

manse for the minister's wife to hear her sing;" and from that day there

was a new vista in Little Bel's life.

Her voice was sweet as a lark's and as pure, and her passionate love

for music a gift in itself. "It would be a sin not to cultivate it,"

said Mrs. Allan to her husband, "even if she never sees another piano

than mine, nor has any other time in her life except these few years to

enjoy it; she will always have had these, and nothing can separate her

from her voice."

And so it came to pass that when, at sixteen, Little Bel went to

Charlottetown for her final two years of study at the High School, she

played almost as well as Mrs. Allan herself, and sang far better. And in

all Isabella McDonald's day-dreams of the child's future, vague or

minute, there was one feature never left out. The "good husband" coming

always was to be a man who could "give her a piano."

In Charlottetown Bel found no such friend as Mrs. Allan; but she had a

young school-mate who had a piano, and--poor short-sighted creature that

she was, Bel thought--hated the sight of it, detested to practise, and

shed many a tear over her lessons. This girl's parents were thankful to

see their daughter impressed by Bel's enthusiasm for music; and so well

did the clever girl play her cards that before she had been six months

in the place, she was installed as music-teacher to her own

schoolfellow, earning thereby not only money enough to buy the few

clothes she needed, but, what to her was better than money, the

privilege of the use of the piano an hour a day.

So when she went home, at the end of the two years, she had lost

nothing,--in fact, had made substantial progress; and her old friend and

teacher, Mrs. Allan, was as proud as she was astonished when she first

heard her play and sing. Still more astonished was she at the forceful

character the girl had developed. She went away a gentle, loving,

clinging child; her nature, like her voice, belonging to the order of

birds,--bright, flitting, merry, confiding. She returned a woman, still

loving, still gentle in her manner, but with a new poise in her bearing,

a resoluteness, a fire, of which her first girlhood had given no

suggestion. It was strange to see how similar yet unlike were the

comments made on her in the manse and in the farmhouse by the two

couples most interested in her welfare.

"It is wonderful, Robert," said Mrs. Allan to her husband, "how that

girl has changed, and yet not changed. It is the music that has lifted

her up so. What a glorious thing is a real passion for any art in a

human soul! But she can never live here among these people. I must take

her to Halifax."

"No," said Mr. Allan; "her work will be here. She belongs to her people

in heart, all the same. She will not be discontented."

"Husband, I'm doubtin' if we've done the right thing by the child, after

a'," said the mother, tearfully, to the father, at the end of the first

evening after Bel's return. "She's got the ways o' the city on her, an'

she carries herself as if she'd be teachin' the minister his own self. I

doubt but she'll feel herself strange i' the house."

"Never you fash yourself," replied John. "The girl's got her head,

that's a'; but her heart's i' the right place. Ye'll see she'll put her

strength to whatever there's to be done. She'll be a master hand at

teachin', I'll wager!"

"You always did think she was perfection," replied the mother, in a

crisp but not ill-natured tone, "an' I'm not gainsayin' that she's not

as near it as is often seen; but I'm main uneasy to see her carryin'

herself so positive."

If John thought in his heart that Bel had come through direct heredity

on the maternal side by this "carryin' herself positive," he knew better

than to say so, and his only reply was a good-natured laugh, with:

"You'll see! I'm not afraid. She's a good child, an' always was."

Bel passed her examination triumphantly, and got the Wissan Bridge

school; but she got only a contingent promise of the five-pound

supplement. It went sorely against her will to waive this point. Very

keenly Mr. Allan, who was on the Examining Board, watched her face as

she modestly yet firmly pressed it.

The trustees did not deny that the Wissan Bridge school was a difficult

and unruly one; that to manage it well was worth more money than the

ordinary school salaries. The question was whether this very young lady

could manage it at all; and if she failed, as the last incumbent

had,--failed egregiously, too; the school had broken up in riotous

confusion before the end of the year,--the canny Scotchmen of the School

Board did not wish to be pledged to pay that extra five pounds. The

utmost Bel could extract from them was a promise that if at the end of

the year her teaching had proved satisfactory, the five pounds should be

paid. More they would not say; and after a short, sharp struggle with

herself Bel accepted the terms; but she could not restrain a farewell

shot at the trustees as she turned to go. "I'm as sure o' my five pounds

as if ye'd promised it downright, sirs. I shall keep ye a good school at

Wissan Bridge."

"We'll make it guineas, then, Miss Bel," cried Mr. Allan,

enthusiastically, looking at his colleagues, who nodded their heads, and

said, laughing, "Yes, guineas it is."

"And guineas it will be," retorted Little Bel, as with cheeks like

peonies she left the room.

"Egad, but she's a fine spirit o' her ain, an' as bonnie a face as I've

seen since I remember," cried old Mr. Dalgetty, the senior member of

the Board, and the one hardest to please. "I'd not mind bein' a pupil at

Wissan Bridge school the comin' term myself." And he gave an old man's

privileged chuckle as he looked at his colleagues. "But she's over-young

for the work,--over-young."

"She'll do it," said Mr. Allan, confidently. "Ye need have no fear. My

wife's had the training of the girl since she was little. She's got the

best o' stuff in her. She'll do it."

Mr. Allan's prediction was fulfilled. Bel did it. But she did it at the

cost of harder work than even she had anticipated. If it had not been

for her music she would never have pulled through with the boys of

Wissan Bridge. By her music she tamed them. The young Marsyas himself

never piped to a wilder set of creatures than the uncouth lads and young

men that sat in wide-eyed, wide-mouthed astonishment listening to the

first song their pretty young schoolmistress sang for them. To have

singing exercises part of the regular school routine was a new thing at

Wissan Bridge. It took like wild-fire; and when Little Bel, shrewd and

diplomatic as a statesman, invited the two oldest and worst boys in the

school to come Wednesday and Saturday afternoons to her boarding-place

to practise singing with her to the accompaniment of the piano, so as to

be able to help her lead the rest, her sovereignty was established. They

were not conquered; they were converted,--a far surer and more lasting

process. Neither of them would, from that day out, have been guilty of

an act, word, or look to annoy her, any more than if they had been rival

lovers suing for her hand. As Bel's good luck would have it,--and Bel

was born to good luck, there is no denying it,--one of these boys had a

good tenor voice, the other a fine barytone; they had both in their

rough way been singers all their lives, and were lovers of music.

"That was more than half the battle, my mother," confessed Bel, when, at

the end of the first term she was at home for a few days, and was

recounting her experiences. "Except for the singin' I'd never have got

Archie McLeod under, nor Sandy Stairs either. I doubt they'd have been

too many for me, but now they're like two more teachers to the fore. I'd

leave the school-room to them for a day, an' not a lad'd dare stir in

his seat without their leave. I call them my constables; an' I'm

teaching them a small bit of chemistry out o' school hours, too, an'

that's a hold on them. They'll see me out safe; an' I'm thinkin' I'll

owe them a bit part o' the five guineas when I get it," she added

reflectively.

"The minister says ye're sure of it," replied her mother. "He says ye've

the best school a'ready in all his circuit. I don't know how ever ye

come to't so quick, child." And Isabella McDonald smiled wistfully,

spite of all her pride in her clever bairn.

"Ye see, then, what he'll say after the examination at New Year's,"

gleefully replied Bel, "if he thinks the school is so good now. It'll be

twice as good then; an' such singin' as was never heard before in any

school-house on the island, I'll warrant me. I'm to have the piano over

for the day to the school-house. Archie and Sandy'll move it in a big

wagon, to save me payin' for the cartin'; an' I'm to pay a half-pound

for the use of it if it's not hurt,--a dear bargain, but she'd not let

it go a shilling less. And, to be sure, there is the risk to be

counted. An' she knew I 'd have it if it had been twice that. But I got

it out of her that for that price she was to let me have all the school

over twice a week, for two months before, to practise. So it's not too

dear. Ye'll see what ye'll hear then."

It had been part of Little Bel's good luck that she had succeeded in

obtaining board in the only family in the village which had the

distinction of owning a piano; and by paying a small sum extra, she had

obtained the use of this piano for an hour each day,--the best

investment of Little Bel's life, as the sequel showed.

It was a bitter winter on Prince Edward Island. By New Year's time the

roads were many of them wellnigh impassable with snow. Fierce winds

swept to and fro, obliterating tracks by noon which had been clear in

the morning; and nobody went abroad if he could help it. New Year's Day

opened fiercest of all, with scurries of snow, lowering sky, and a wind

that threatened to be a gale before night. But, for all that, the

tying-posts behind the Wissan Bridge school-house were crowded full of

steaming horses under buffalo-robes, which must stamp and paw and

shiver, and endure the day as best they might, while the New Year's

examination went on. Everybody had come. The fame of the singing of the

Wissan Bridge school had spread far and near, and it had been whispered

about that there was to be a "piece" sung which was finer than anything

ever sung in the Charlottetown churches.

The school-house was decorated with evergreens,--pine and spruce. The

New Year's Day having fallen on a Monday, Little Bel had had a clear

working-day on the Saturday previous; and her faithful henchmen, Archie

and Sandy, had been busy every evening for a week drawing the boughs on

their sleds and piling them up in the yard. The teacher's desk had been

removed, and in its place stood the shining red mahogany piano,--a new

and wonderful sight to many eyes there.

All was ready, the room crowded full, and the Board of Trustees not yet

arrived. There sat their three big arm-chairs on the raised platform,

empty,--a depressing and perplexing sight to Little Bel, who, in her

short blue merino gown, with a knot of pink ribbon at her throat, and a

roll of white paper (her schedule of exercises) in her hand, stood on

the left hand of the piano, her eyes fixed expectantly on the doors. The

minutes lengthened out into quarter of an hour, half an hour. Anxiously

Bel consulted with her father what should be done.

"The roads are something fearfu', child," he replied; "we must make big

allowance for that. They're sure to be comin', at least some one o'

them. It was never known that they failed on the New Year's examination,

an' it would seem a sore disrespect to begin without them here."

Before he had finished speaking there was heard a merry jingling of

bells outside, dozens and dozens it seemed, and hilarious voices and

laughter, and the snorting of overdriven horses, and the stamping of

feet, and more voices and more laughter. Everybody looked in his

neighbor's face. What sounds were these? Who ever heard a sober School

Board arrive in such fashion as this? But it was the School

Board,--nothing less: a good deal more, however. Little Bel's heart

sank within her as she saw the foremost figure entering the room. What

evil destiny had brought Sandy Bruce in the character of school visitor

that day?--Sandy Bruce, retired school-teacher himself, superintendent

of the hospital in Charlottetown, road-master, ship-owner,

exciseman,--Sandy Bruce, whose sharp and unexpected questions had been

known to floor the best of scholars and upset the plans of the best of

teachers. Yes, here he was,--Sandy Bruce himself; and it was his fierce

little Norwegian ponies, with their silver bells and fur collars, the

admiration of all Charlottetown, that had made such a clatter and

stamping outside, and were still keeping it up; for every time they

stirred the bells tinkled like a peal of chimes. And, woe upon woe,

behind him came, not Bel's friend and pastor, Mr. Allan, but the crusty

old Dalgetty, whose doing it had been a year before, as Bel very well

knew, that the five-pound supplement had been only conditionally

promised.

Conflicting emotions turned Bel's face scarlet as she advanced to meet

them; the most casual observer could not have failed to see that dismay

predominated, and Sandy Bruce was no casual observer; nothing escaped

his keen glance and keener intuition, and it was almost with a wicked

twinkle in his little hazel eyes that he said, still shaking off the

snow, stamping and puffing: "Eh, but ye were not lookin' for me,

teacher! The minister was sent for to go to old Elspie Breadalbane,

who's dyin' the morn; and I happened by as he was startin', an' he made

me promise to come i' his place; an' I picked up my friend Dalgetty here

a few miles back, wi' his horse flounderin' i' the drifts. Except for me

ye'd ha' had no board at all here to-day; so I hope ye'll give me no bad

welcome."

As he spoke he was studying her face, where the color came and went like

waves; not a thought in the girl's heart he did not read. "Poor little

lassie!" he was thinking to himself. "She's shaking in her shoes with

fear o' me. I'll not put her out. She's a dainty blossom of a girl.

What's kept her from being trodden down by these Wissan Bridge

racketers, I'd like to know."

But when he seated himself on the platform, and took his first look at

the rows of pupils in the centre of the room, he was near starting with

amazement. The Wissan Bridge "racketers," as he had mentally called

them, were not to be seen. Very well he knew many of them by sight; for

his shipping business called him often to Wissan Bridge, and this was

not the first time he had been inside the school-house, which had been

so long the dread and terror of school boards and teachers alike. A

puzzled frown gathered between Sandy Bruce's eyebrows as he gazed.

"What has happened to the youngsters, then? Have they all been convarted

i' this twelvemonth?" he was thinking. And the flitting perplexed

thought did not escape the observation of John McDonald, who was as

quick a reader of faces as Sandy himself, and had been by no means free

from anxiety for his little Bel when he saw the redoubtable visage of

the exciseman appear in the doorway.

"He's takin' it in quick the way the bairn's got them a' in hand,"

thought John. "If only she can hold hersel' cool now!"

No danger. Bel was not the one to lose a battle by appearing to quail in

the outset, however clearly she might see herself outnumbered. And

sympathetic and eager glances from her constables, Archie and Sandy,

told her that they were all ready for the fray. These glances Sandy

Bruce chanced to intercept, and they heightened his bewilderment. To

Archie McLeod he was by no means a stranger, having had occasion more

than once to deal with him, boy as he was, for complications with

riotous misdoings. He had happened to know, also, that it was Archie

McLeod who had been head and front of the last year's revolt in the

school,--the one boy that no teacher hitherto had been able to control.

And here stood Archie McLeod, rising in his place, leader of the form,

glancing down on the boys around him with the eye of a general, watching

the teacher's eye, meanwhile, as a dog watches for his master's signal.

And the orderly yet alert and joyously eager expression of the whole

school,--it had so much the look of a miracle to Sandy Bruce's eye,

that, not having been for years accustomed to the restraint and dignity

of school visitors, of technical official, he was on the point of giving

a loud whistle of astonishment Luckily recollecting himself in time, he

smothered the whistle and the "Whew! what's all this?" which had been on

his tongue's end, in a vigorous and unnecessary blowing of his nose. And

before that was over, and his eyes well wiped, there stood the whole

school on its feet before him, and the room ringing with such a chorus

as was never heard in a Prince Edward Island school-room before. This

completed his bewilderment, and swallowed it up in delight. If Sandy

Bruce had an overmastering passion in his rugged nature, it was for

music. To the sound of the bag-pipes he had often said he would march to

death and "not know it for dyin'." The drum and the fife could draw him

as quickly now as when he was a boy, and the sweet singing of a woman's

voice was all the token he wanted of the certainty of heaven and the

existence of angels.

When Little Bel's clear, flute-like soprano notes rang out, carrying

along the fifty young voices she led, Sandy jumped up on his feet,

waving his hand, in a sudden heat of excitement, right and left; and

looking swiftly all about him on the platform, he said: "It's not

sittin' we'es take such welcome as this, my neebors!" Each man and woman

there, catching the quick contagion, rose; and it was a tumultuous crowd

of glowing faces that pressed forward around the piano as the singing

went on,--fathers, mothers, rustics, all; and the children, pleased and

astonished, sang better than ever, and when the chorus was ended it was

some minutes before all was quiet.

Many things had been settled in that few minutes. John McDonald's heart

was at rest. "The music'll carry a' before it, no matter if they do make

a failure here 'n' there," he thought. "The bairn is a' right." The

mother's heart was at rest also.

"She's done wonders wi' 'em,--wonders! I doubt not but it'll go through

as it's begun. Her face's a picture to look on. Bless her!" Isabella was

saying behind her placid smile.

"Eh, but she's won her guineas out o' us," thought old Dalgetty,

ungrudgingly, "and won 'em well."

"I don't see why everybody is so afraid of Sandy Bruce," thought Little

Bel. "He looks as kind and as pleased as my own father. I don't believe

he'll ask any o' his botherin' questions."

What Sandy Bruce thought it would be hard to tell; nearer the truth,

probably, to say that his head was in too much of a whirl to think

anything. Certain it is that he did not ask any botherin' questions, but

sat, leaning forward on his stout oaken staff, held firmly between his

knees, and did not move for the next hour, his eyes resting alternately

on the school and on the young teacher, who, now that her first fright

was over, was conducting her entertainment with the composure and

dignity of an experienced instructor.

The exercises were simple,--declamations, reading of selected

compositions, examinations of the principal classes. At short intervals

came songs to break the monotony. The first one after the opening chorus

was "Banks and Braes of Bonnie Doon." At the first bars of this Sandy

Bruce could not keep silence, but broke into a lone accompaniment in a

deep bass voice, untrained but sweet.

"Ah," thought Little Bel, "what'll he say to the last one, I wonder?"

When the time came she found out. If she had chosen the arrangement of

her music with full knowledge of Sandy Bruce's preferences, and with the

express determination to rouse him to a climax of enthusiasm, she could

not have done better.

When the end of the simple programme of recitations and exhibition had

been reached, she came forward to the edge of the platform--her cheeks

were deep pink now, and her eyes shone with excitement--and said,

turning to the trustees and spectators: "We have finished, now, all we

have to show for our year's work, and we will close our entertainment by

singing 'Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled!'"

"Ay, ay! that wi' we!" shouted Sandy Bruce, again leaping to his feet;

and as the first of the grand chords of that grand old tune rang out

full and loud under Little Bel's firm touch, he strode forward to the

piano, and with a kindly nod to her struck in.

With the full force of his deep, bass-like, violoncello notes, gathering

up all the others and fusing them into a pealing strain, it was

electin'. Everybody sang. Old voices, that had not sung for a quarter of

a century or more, joined in. It was a furor: Dalgetty swung his tartan

cap, Sandy his hat; handkerchiefs were waved, staves rang on the floor.

The children, half frightened in spite of their pleasure, were quieter

than their elders.

"Eh, but it was good fun to see the old folks gone crazy for once!" said

Archie McLeod, in recounting the scene. "Now, if they'd get that way

oftener they'd not be so hard down on us youngsters."

At the conclusion of the song the first thing Little Bel heard was

Dalgetty's piping voice behind her,--

"And guineas it is, Miss McDonald. Ye've won it fair an' square. Guineas

it is!"

"Eh, what? Guineas! What is 't ye're sayin'?" asked Sandy Bruce; his

eyes, steady glowing like coals, gazing at Little Bel.

"The supplement, sir," answered Little Bel, lifting her eyes roguishly

to his. "Mr. Dalgetty thought I was too young for the school, an' he'd

promise me no supplement till he saw if I'd be equal to 't."

This was the sly Bel's little revenge on Dalgetty, who began confusedly

to explain that it was not he any more than the other trustees, and he

only wished that they had all been here to see, as he had seen, how

finely the school had been managed; but nobody heard what he said, for

above all the humming and buzzing and laughing there came up from the

centre of the school-room a reiterated call of "Sirs!" "Trustees!" "Mr.

Trustee!" "Board!"

It was Archie McLeod, standing up on the backs of two seats, waving a

white paper, and trying frantically to make himself heard. The face of a

man galloping for life and death, coming up at the last second with a

reprieve for one about to be shot, could hardly be fuller of intense

anxiety than was Archie's as he waved his paper and shouted.

Little Bel gazed bewilderingly at him. This was not down on her

programme of the exercises. What could it be?

As soon as partial silence enabled him to speak, Archie proceeded to

read a petition, setting forth, to the respected Board of Trustees, that

the undersigned, boys and girls of the Wissan Bridge School, did hereby

unanimously request that they might have no other teacher than Miss

McDonald, "as long as she lives."

This last clause had been the cause of bitter disputing between Archie

and Sandy,--Sandy insisting upon having it in; Archie insisting that it

was absurd, because they would not go to school as long as Miss McDonald

lived. "But there's the little ones and the babies that'll be growin'

up," retorted Sandy, "an' there'll never be another like her: I say, 'as

long as she lives'"; and "as long as she lives" it was. And when Archie,

with an unnecessary emphasis, delivered this closing clause of the

petition, it was received with a roar of laughter from the platform,

which made him flush angrily, and say, with a vicious punch in Sandy's

ribs: "There, I told ye, it spoiled it a'. They're fit to die over it;

an' sma' blame to 'em, ye silly!"

But he was reassured when he heard Sandy Bruce's voice overtopping the

tumult with: "A vary sensible request, my lad; an' I, for one, am o' yer

way o' thinkin'."

In which speech was a deeper significance than anybody at the time

dreamed. In that hurly-burly and hilarious confusion no one had time to

weigh words or note meanings; but there were some who recalled it a few

months later when they were bidden to a wedding at the house of John

McDonald,--a wedding at which Sandy Bruce was groom, and Little Bel the

brightest, most winsome of brides.

It was an odd way that Sandy went to work to win her: his ways had been

odd all his life,--so odd that it had long ago been accepted in the

minds of the Charlottetown people that he would never find a woman to

wed him; only now and then an unusually perspicacious person divined

that the reason of his bachelorhood was not at all that women did not

wish to wed him, spite of his odd ways, but that he himself found no

woman exactly to his taste.

True it was that Sandy Bruce, aged forty, had never yet desired any

woman for his wife till he looked into the face of Little Bel in the

Wissan Bridge school-house. And equally true was it that before the last

strains of "Scots wha ha' wi' Wallace bled" had died away on that

memorable afternoon of her exhibition of her school, he had determined

that his wife she should be.

This was the way he took to win her. No one can deny that it was odd.

There was some talk between him and his temporary colleague on the

School Board, old Dalgetty, as they drove home together behind the brisk

Norwegian ponies; and the result of this conversation was that the next

morning early--in fact, before Little Bel was dressed, so late had she

been indulged, for once, in sleeping, after her hard labors in the

exhibition the day before--the Norwegian ponies were jingling their

bells at John McDonald's door; and John himself might have been seen,

with a seriously puzzled face, listening to words earnestly spoken by

Sandy, as he shook off the snow and blanketed the ponies.

As the talk progressed, John glanced up involuntarily at Little Bel's

window. Could it be that he sighed? At any rate, there was no regret in

his heart as he shook Sandy's hand warmly, and said: "Ye've my free

consent to try; but I doubt she's not easy won. She's her head now, an'

her ain way; but she's a good lass, an' a sweet one."

"An' I need no man to tell me that," said the dauntless Sandy, as he

gave back the hearty hand-grip of his friend; "an' she'll never repent

it, the longest day o' her life, if she'll ha' me for her man." And he

strode into the house, bearing in his hand the five golden guineas which

his friend Dalgetty had, at his request, commissioned him to pay.

"Into her own hand, mind ye, mon," chuckled Dalgetty, mischievously.

"Ye'll not be leavin' it wi' the mither." To which sly satire Sandy's

only reply was a soft laugh and nod of his head.

As soon as Little Bel crossed the threshold of the room where Sandy

Bruce stood waiting for her, she knew the errand on which he had come.

It was written in his face. Neither could it be truthfully said to be a

surprise to Little Bel; for she had not been woman, had she failed to

recognize on the previous day that the rugged Scotchman's whole nature

had gone out toward her in a sudden and overmastering attraction.

Sandy looked at her keenly. "Eh, ye know't a'ready," he said,--"the

thing I came to say t' ye." And he paused, still eying her more like a

judge than a lover.

Little Bel turned scarlet. This was not her ideal of a wooer. "Know

what, Mr. Bruce?" she said resentfully. "How should I know what ye came

to say?"

"Tush! tush, lass! do na prevaricate," Sandy began, his eyes gloating on

her lovely confusion; "do na preteend--" But the sweet blue eyes were

too much for him. Breaking down utterly, he tossed the guineas to one

side on the table, and stretching out both hands toward Bel, he

exclaimed,--"Ye're the sweetest thing the eyes o' a mon ever rested on,

lass, an' I'm goin' to win ye if ye'll let me." And as Bel opened her

mouth to speak, he laid one hand, quietly as a mother might, across her

lips, and continued: "Na! na! I'll not let ye speak yet. I'm not a silly

to look for ye to be ready to say me yes at this quick askin'; but I'll

not let ye say me nay neither. Ye'll not refuse me the only thing I'm

askin' the day, an' that's that ye'll let me try to make ye love me.

Ye'll not say nay to that, lass. I'll gie my life to it." And now he

waited for an answer.

None came. Tears were in Bel's eyes as she looked up in his face. Twice

she opened her lips to speak, and twice her heart and the words failed

her. The tears became drops and rolled down the cheeks. Sandy was

dismayed.

"Ye're not afraid o' me, ye sweet thing, are ye?" he gasped out. "I'd

not vex ye for the world. If ye bid me to go, I'd go."

"No, I'm not afraid o' ye, Mr. Bruce," sobbed Bel. "I don't know what it

is makes me so silly. I'm not afraid o' ye, though. But I was for a few

minutes yesterday," she added archly, with a little glint of a roguish

smile, which broke through the tears like an April sun through rain, and

turned Sandy's head in the twinkling of an eye.

"Ay, ay," he said; "I minded it weel, an' I said to myself then, in that

first sight I had o' yer face, that I'd not harm a hair o' yer head. Oh,

my little lass, would ye gie me a kiss,--just one, to show ye're not

afraid, and to gie me leave to try to win ye out o' likin' into lovin'?"

he continued, drawing closer and bending toward her.

And then a wonderful thing happened. Little Bel, who, although she was

twenty years old, and had by no means been without her admirers, had

never yet kissed any man but her father and brothers, put up her rosy

lips, as confidingly as a little child, to be kissed by this strange

wooer, who wooed only for leave to woo.

"An' if he'd only known it, he might ha' asked a' he wanted then as well

as later," said Little Bel, honestly avowing the whole to her mother.

"As soon as he put his hands on me the very heart in me said he was my

man for a' my life. An' there's no shame in it that I can see. If a man

may love that way in the lighting of an eye, why may not a girl do the

same? There's not one kind o' heart i' the breast of a man an' another

kind i' the breast of a woman, as ever I heard." In which Little Bel, in

her innocence, was wiser than people wiser than she.

And after this there is no need of telling more,--only a picture or two

which are perhaps worth sketching in few words. One is the expression

which was seen on Sandy Bruce's face one day, not many weeks after his

first interview with Little Bel, when, in reply to his question, "An'

now, my own lass, what'll ye have for your weddin' gift from me? Tell me

the thing ye want most i' a' the earth, an' if it's in my means ye shall

have it the day ye gie me the thing I want maist i' the whole earth."

"I've got it a'ready, Sandy," said Little Bel, taking his face in her

hands, and making a feint of kissing him; then withdrawing coquettishly.

Wise, innocent Bel! Sandy understood.

"Ay, my lass; but next to me. What's the next thing ye'd have?"

Bel hesitated. Even to her wooer's generosity it might seem a daring

request,--the thing she craved.

"Tell me, lass," said Sandy, sternly. "I've mair money than ye think.

There's no lady in a' Charlottetown can go finer than ye if ye've a

mind."

"For shame, Sandy!" cried Bel. "An' you to think it was fine apparel I'd

be askin'! It's a--a"--the word refused to leave her tongue--"a--piano,

Sandy;" and she gazed anxiously at him. "I'll never ask ye for another

thing till the day o' my death, Sandy, if ye'll gie me that."

Sandy shouted in delight. For a brief space a fear had seized him--of

which he now felt shame indeed--that his sweet lassie might be about to

ask for jewels or rich attire; and it would have sorely hurt Sandy's

pride in her had this been so.

"A piano!" he shouted. "An' did ye not think I'd that a'ready in my

mind? O' coorse, a piano, an' every other instrument under the skies

that ye'll wish, my lass, ye shall have. The more music ye make, the

gladder the house'll be. Is there nothin' else ye want, lass,--nothin'?"

"Nothing in all this world, Sandy, but you and a piano," replied Little

Bel.

The other picture was on a New Year's Day, just a twelvemonth from the

day of Little Bel's exhibition in the Wissan Bridge school-house. It is

a bright day; the sleighing is superb all over the island, and the

Charlottetown streets are full of gay sleighs and jingling bells,--none

so gay, however, as Sandy Bruce's, and no bells so merry as the silver

ones on his fierce little Norwegian ponies, that curvet and prance, and

are all their driver can hold. Rolled up in furs to her chin, how rosy

and handsome looks Little Bel by her husband's side, and how full of

proud content is his face as he sees the people all turning to look at

her beauty! And who is this driving the Norwegian ponies? Who but

Archie,--Archie McLeod, who has followed his young teacher to her new

home, and is to grow up, under Sandy Bruce's teachings, into a sharp and

successful man of the shipping business.

And as they turn a corner they come near running into another fur-piled,

swift-gliding sleigh, with a grizzled old head looking out of a tartan

hood, and eyes like hawks',--Dalgetty himself; and as they pass the head

nods and the eyes laugh, and a sharp voice cries, "Guineas it is!"

"Better than guineas!" answered back Mrs. Sandy Bruce, quick as a flash;

and in the same second cries Archie, from the front seat, with a saucy

laugh, "And as long as she lives, Mr. Dalgetty!"

The Captain of the "Heather Bell".

You might have known he was a Scotchman by the name of his little

steamer; and if you had not known it by that, you would have known it as

soon as you looked at him. Scotch, pure, unmitigated, unmistakable

Scotch, was Donald Mackintosh, from the crown of his auburn head down to

the soles of his big awkward feet. Six feet two inches in his stockings

he stood, and so straight that he looked taller even than that;

blue-gray eyes full of a canny twinkle; freckles,--yes, freckles that

were really past the bounds of belief, for up into his hair they ran,

and to the rims of his eyes,--no pale, dull, equivocal freckles, such as

might be mistaken for dingy spots of anything else, but brilliant,

golden-brown freckles, almost auburn like his hair. Once seen, never to

be forgotten were Donald Mackintosh's freckles. All this does not sound

like the description of a handsome man; but we are not through yet with

what is to be said about Donald Mackintosh's looks. We have said nothing

of his straight massive nose, his tawny curling beard, which shaded up

to yellow around a broad and laughing mouth, where were perpetually

flashing teeth of an even ivory whiteness a woman might have coveted.

No, not handsome, but better than handsome, was Donald Mackintosh; he

was superb. Everybody said so: nobody could have been found to dispute

it,--nobody but Donald himself; he thought, honestly thought, he was

hideous. All that he could see on the rare occasions when he looked in a

glass was an expanse of fiery red freckles, topped off with what he

would have called a shock of red hair. Uglier than anything he had ever

seen in his life, he said to himself many a time, and grew shyer and

shyer and more afraid of women each time he said it; and all this while

there was not a girl in Charlottetown that did not know him in her

thoughts, if indeed she did not openly speak of him, as that "splendid

Donald Mackintosh," or "the handsome 'Heather Bell' captain."

But nothing could have made Donald believe this, which was in one way a

pity, though in another way not. If he had known how women admired him,

he would have inevitably been more or less spoiled by it, wasted his

time, and not have been so good a sailor. On the other hand, it was a

pity to see him,--forty years old, and alone in the world,--not a chick

nor a child of his own, nor any home except such miserable makeshifts as

a sailor finds in inns or boarding-houses.

It was a wonder that the warm-hearted fellow had kept a cheery nature

and face all these years living thus. But the "Heather Bell" stood to

him in place of wife, children, home. There is no passion in life so

like the passion of a man for a woman as the passion of a sailor for his

craft; and this passion Donald had to the full. It was odd how he came

to be a born sailor. His father and his father's fathers, as far back as

they knew, had been farmers--three generations of them--on the Prince

Edward Island farm where Donald was born; and still more generations of

them in old Scotland. Pure Scotch on both sides of the house for

hundreds of years were the Mackintoshes, and the Gaelic tongue was

to-day freer spoken in their houses than English.

The Mackintosh farm on Prince Edward Island was in the parish of Orwell

Head, and Donald's earliest transgressions and earliest pleasures were

runaway excursions to the wharves of that sleepy shore. To him Spruce

Wharf was a centre of glorious maritime adventure. The small sloops that

plied up and down the coast of the island, running in at the inlets, and

stopping to gather up the farmers' produce and take it to Charlottetown

markets, seemed to him as grand as Indiamen; and when, in his twelfth

year, he found himself launched in life as a boy-of-all-work on one of

these sloops, whose captain was a friend of his father's, he felt that

his fortune was made. And so it was. He was in the line of promotion by

virtue of his own enthusiasm. No plank too small for the born sailor to

swim by. Before Donald was twenty-five he himself commanded one of these

little coasting-vessels. From this he took a great stride forward, and

became first officer on the iron-clad steamer plying between

Charlottetown and the mainland. The winter service on this boat was

terrible,--ploughing and cutting through nearly solid ice for long days

and nights of storm. Donald did not like it. He felt himself lost out in

the wild channel. His love was for the water near shore,--for the bays,

inlets, and river-mouths he had known since he was a child.

He began to think he was not so much of a sailor as he had supposed,--so

great a shrinking grew up in him winter after winter from the perils and

hardships of the mail-steamer's route. But he persevered and bided his

time, and in ten years had the luck to become owner and master of a trim

little coasting-steamer which had been known for years as the "Sally

Wright," making two trips a week from Charlottetown to Orwell

Head,--known as the "Sally Wright" no longer, however; for the first

thing Donald did was to repaint her, from stem to stern, white, with

green and pink stripes, on her prow a cluster of pink heather blossoms,

and "Heather Bell" in big letters on the side.

When he was asked where he got this fancy name, he said, lightly, he

did not know; it was a good Scotch name. This was not true. Donald knew

very well. On the window-sill in his mother's kitchen had stood always a

pot of pink heather. Come summer, come winter, the place was never

without a young heather growing; and the dainty pink bells were still to

Donald the man, as they had been to Donald the child, the loveliest

flowers in the world. But he would not for the profits of many a trip

have told his comrade captains why he had named his boat the "Heather

Bell." He had a sentiment about the name which he himself hardly

understood. It seemed out of all proportion to the occasion; but a day

was coming when it would seem more like a prophecy than a mere

sentiment. He had builded better than he knew when he chose that name

for the thing nearest his heart.

Charlottetown is not a gay place; its standards and methods of amusement

are simple and primitive. Among the summer pleasures of the young people

picnics still rank high, and picnic excursions by steamboat or sloop

highest of all. Through June and July hardly a daily newspaper can be

found which does not contain the advertisement of one or more of these

excursions. After Donald made his little boat so fresh and gay with the

pink and green colors, and gave her the winning new name, she came to be

in great demand for these occasions.

How much the captain's good looks had to do with the "Heather Bell's"

popularity as a pleasure-boat it would not do to ask; but there was

reason enough for her being liked aside from that. Sweet and fresh in

and out, with white deck, the chairs and settees all painted green, and

a gay streamer flying,--white, with three green bars,--and "Donald

Mackintosh, Captain," in green letters, and below these a spray of pink

heather, she looked more like a craft for festive sailing than for

cruising about from one farm-landing to another, picking up odds and

ends of farm produce,--eggs and butter, and oats and wool,--with now and

then a passenger. Donald liked this slow cruising and the market-work

best; but the picnic parties were profitable, and he took them whenever

he could. He kept apart, however, from the merry-makers as much as

possible, and was always glad at night when he had landed his noisy

cargo safe back at the Charlottetown piers.

This disposition on his part to hold himself aloof was greatly

irritating to the Charlottetown girls, and to no one of them so much as

to pretty Katie McCloud, who, because she was his second cousin and had

known him all her life, felt, and not without reason, that he ought to

pay her something in the shape or semblance of attention when she was on

board his boat, even if she were a member of a large and gay party, most

of whom were strangers to him. There was another reason, too; but Katie

had kept it so long locked in the bottom of her heart that she hardly

realized its force and cogency, and, if she had, would have laughed, and

put it as far from her thoughts as she could.

The truth was, Katie had been in love with Donald ever since she was ten

years old and he was twenty,--a long time, seeing that she was now

thirty and he forty; and never once, either in their youth or their

middle age, had there been a word of love-making between them. All the

same, deep in her heart the good little Katie had kept the image of

Donald in sacred tenderness by itself. No other man's love-making,

however earnest,--and Katie had been by no means without lovers,--had so

much as touched this sentiment. She judged them all by this secret

standard, and found them all wanting. She did not pine, neither did she

take a step of forwardness, or even coquettish advance, to Donald. She

was too full of Scotch reticence for that. The only step she did take,

in hope of bringing him nearer to her, was the going to Charlottetown to

learn the milliner's trade.

Poor Katie! if she had but known she threw away her last chance when she

did it. She reasoned that Donald was in Charlottetown far more than he

was anywhere else; that if she stayed at home on the farm she could see

him only by glimpses, when the "Heather Bell" ran in at their

landing,--in and out and off again in an hour. What was that? And maybe

a Sunday once or twice a year, and at a Christmas gathering. No wonder

Katie thought that in the town where his business lay and he slept

three nights a week she would have a far better chance; that he would be

glad to come and see her in her tidy little shop. But when Donald heard

what she had done, he said gruffly: "Just like the rest; all for ribbons

and laces and silly gear. I thought Katie'd more sense. Why didn't she

stay at home on the farm?" And he said as much to her when he first saw

her in her new quarters. She tried to explain to him that she wanted to

support herself, and she could not do it on the farm.

"No need,--no need," said her relentless cousin; "there was plenty for

all on the farm." And all the while he stood glowering at the counter

spread with gay ribbons and artificial flowers, and Katie was ready to

cry. This was in the first year of her life in Charlottetown. She was

only twenty-two then. In the eight years since then matters had quieted

down with Katie. It seemed certain that Donald would never marry.

Everybody said so. And if a man had lived till forty without it, what

else could be expected? If Katie had seen him seeking other women, her

quiet and unrewarded devotion would no doubt have flamed up in jealous

pain. But she knew that he gave to her as much as he gave to

any,--occasional and kindly courtesy, no less, no more.

So the years slipped by, and in her patient industry Katie forgot how

old she was growing, until suddenly, on her thirtieth birthday,

something--the sight of a deepened line on her face, perhaps, or a pang

of memory of the old childish past, such as birthdays always

bring--something smote her with a sudden consciousness that life itself

was slipping away, and she was alone. No husband, no child, no home,

except as she earned each month, by fashioning bonnets and caps for the

Charlottetown women, money enough to pay the rent of the two small rooms

in which she slept, cooked, and plied her trade. Some tears rolled down

Katie's face as she sat before her looking-glass thinking these

unwelcome thoughts.

"I'll go to the Orwell Head picnic to-morrow," she said to herself.

"It's so near the old place perhaps Donald'll walk over home with me.

It's long since he's seen the farm, I'll be bound."

Now, Katie did not say to herself in so many words, "It will be like

old times when we were young, and it may be something will stir in

Donald's heart for me at the sight of the fields." Not only did she not

say this; she did not know that she thought it; but it was there, all

the same, a lurking, newly revived, vague, despairing sort of hope. And

because it was there she spent half the day retrimming a bonnet and

washing and ironing a gown to wear to the picnic; and after long and

anxious pondering of the matter, she deliberately took out of her best

box of artificial flowers a bunch of white heather, and added it to the

bonnet trimming. It did not look overmuch like heather, and it did not

suit the bonnet, of which Katie was dimly aware; but she wanted to say

to Donald, "See, I put a sprig of heather in my bonnet in honor of your

boat to-day." Simple little Katie!

It was a large and noisy picnic, of the very sort Donald most disliked,

and he kept himself out of sight until the last moment, just before they

swung round at Spruce Wharf. Then, as he stood on the upper deck giving

orders about the flinging out of the ropes, Katie looked up at him from

below, and called, in a half-whisper: "Oh, Donald, I was thinking I'd

walk over home instead of staying here to the dance. Wouldn't ye be

goin' with me, Donald? They'd be glad to see ye."

"Ay, Katie," answered Donald; "that will I, and be glad to be out of

this." And as soon as the boat was safely moored, he gave his orders to

his mate for the day, and leaping down joined the glad Katie; and before

the picnickers had even missed them they were well out of sight, walking

away briskly over the brown fields.

Katie was full of happiness. As she glanced up into Donald's face she

found it handsomer and kinder than she had seen it, she thought, for

many years.

"It was for this I came, Donald," she said merrily. "When I heard the

dance was to be in the Spruce Grove I made up my mind to come and

surprise the folks. It's nigh six months since I've been home."

"Pity ye ever left it, my girl," said Donald, gravely. "The home's the

place for women." But he said it in a pleasant tone, and his eyes rested

affectionately on Katie's face.

"Eh, but ye're bonny to-day, Katie; do ye know it?" he continued, his

glance lingering on her fresh color and her smiling face. In his heart

he was saying: "An' what is it makes her so young-looking to-day? It was

an old face she had on the last time I saw her."

Happiness, Donald, happiness! Even those few minutes of it had worked

the change.

Encouraged by this praise, Katie said, pointing to the flowers in her

bonnet, "It's the heather ye're meanin', maybe, Donald, an' not me?"

"An' it's not," he replied earnestly, almost angrily, with a scornful

glance at the flowers. "Ye'll not be callin' that heather. Did ye never

see true heather, Katie? It's no more like the stalks ye've on yer head

than a barrow's like my boat yonder."

Which was not true: the flowers were of the very best ever imported into

Charlottetown, and were a better representation of heather than most

artificial flowers are of the blossoms whose names they bear. Donald was

not a judge; and if he had been, it was a cruel thing to say. Katie's

eyes drooped: she had made a serious sacrifice in putting so dear a

bunch of flowers on her bonnet,--a bunch that she had, in her own mind,

been sure Lady Gownas, of Gownas House, would buy for her summer bonnet.

She had made this sacrifice purely to please Donald, and this was what

had come of it. Poor Katie! However, nothing could trouble her long

to-day, with Donald by her side in the sunny, bright fields; and she

would have him to herself till four in the afternoon.

As they drew near the farm-house a strange sound fell on their ears; it

was as if a million of beehives were in full blast of buzzing in the

air. At the same second both Donald and Katie paused, listening. "What

can that be, now?" exclaimed Donald. Before the words had left his lips,

Katie cried, "It's a bee!--Elspie's spinning-bee."

The spinning-bees are great fêtes among the industrious maidens of

Prince Edward Island. After the spring shearings are over, the wool

washed and carded and made into rolls, there begin to circulate

invitations to spinning-bees at the different farm-houses. Each girl

carries her spinning-wheel on her shoulder. By eight o'clock in the

morning all are gathered and at work: some of them have walked ten miles

or more, and barefoot too, their shoes slung over the shoulder with the

wheel. Once arrived, they waste no time. The rolls of wool are piled

high in the corners of the rooms, and it is the ambition of each one to

spin all she can before dark. At ten o'clock cakes and lemonade are

served; at twelve, the dinner,--thick soup, roast meat, vegetables,

coffee and tea, and a pudding. All are seated at a long table, and the

hostesses serve; at six o'clock comes supper, and then the day's work is

done; after that a little chat or a ramble over the farm, and at eight

o'clock all are off for home. No young men, no games, no dances; yet the

girls look forward to the bees as their greatest spring pleasures, and

no one grudges the time or the strength they take.

It was, indeed, a big bee that Elspie McCloud was having this June

morning. Twenty young girls, all in long white aprons, were spinning

away as if on a wager when Donald and Katie appeared at the door. The

door opened directly into the large room where they were. Katie went

first, Donald hanging back behind. "I think I'll not go in," he was

shamefacedly saying, and halting on the step, when above all the

wheel-whirring and yarn-singing came a glad cry,--

"Why, there's Katie--Katie McCloud! and Donald Mackintosh! For pity's

sake!" (the Prince Edward Islander's strongest ejaculation.) "Come in!

come in!" And in a second more a vision, it seemed to the dazed

Donald,--but it was not a vision at all, only a buxom young girl in a

blue homespun gown,--had seized him with one hand and Katie with the

other, and drawn them both into the room, into the general whir and

_mêlée_ of wheels, merry faces, and still merrier voices.

It was Elspie, Katie's youngest sister,--Katie's special charge and care

when she was a baby, and now her special pet. The greatest desire of

Katie's heart was to have Elspie with her in Charlottetown, but the

father and mother would not consent.

Donald stood like a man in a dream. He did not know it; but from the

moment his eyes first fell on Elspie's face they had followed it as iron

follows the magnet. Were there ever such sweet gray eyes in the world?

and such a pink and white skin? and hair yellow as gold? And what, oh,

what did she wear tucked in at the belt of her white apron but a sprig

of heather! Pink heather,--true, genuine, actual pink heather, such as

Donald had not seen for many a year. No wonder the eyes of the captain

of the "Heather Bell" followed that spray of pink heather wherever it

went flitting about from place to place, never long in one,--for it was

now time for dinner, and Donald and the old people were soon seated at a

small table by themselves, not to embarrass the young girls, and Elspie

and Katie together served the dinner; and though Elspie never once came

to the small table, yet did Donald see every motion she made and hear

every note of her lark's voice. He did not mistake what had happened to

him. Middle-aged, inexperienced, sober-souled man as he was, he knew

that at last he had got a wound,--a life wound, if it were not

healed,--and the consciousness of it struck him more and more dumb, till

his presence was like a damper on the festivities; so much so, that when

at three in the afternoon he and Katie took their departure, the door

had no more than closed on them before Elspie exclaimed pettishly: "An'

indeed I wish Katie'd left Cousin Donald behind. I don't know what it is

she thinks so much of him for. She's always sayin' there's none like

him; an' it's lucky it's true. The great glowerin' steeple o' a man,

with no word in his mouth!" And the young maidens all agreed with her.

It was a strange thing for a man to come and go like that, with nothing

to say for himself, they said, and he so handsome too.

"Handsome!" cried Elspie; "is it handsome,--the face all a spatter with

the color of the hair? He's nice eyes of his own, but his skin's

deesgustin'." Which speech, if Donald had overheard it, would have

caused that there should never have been this story to tell. But luckily

Donald did not. All that he bore away from the McCloud farm-house that

June morning was a picture of a face and flitting figure, and the sound

in his ears of a voice,--a picture and a sound which he was destined to

see and hear all his life.

He scarcely spoke on his way back to the boat, and Katie perplexed

herself vainly trying to account for his silence. It must be, she

thought, that he had been vexed by the sight of so many girls and the

sound of their idle chatter. He would have liked it better if nobody but

the family had been at home. What a shame for a man to live alone as he

did, and get into such unsocial ways! He grew more and more averse to

society each year. Now, if he were only married, and had a bright home,

where people came and went, with a bit of a tea now and then, how good

it would be for him,--take the stiffness out of his ways, and make him

more as he used to be fifteen, or even ten years ago! And so the good

Katie went on in her placid mind, trotting along silently by his side,

waiting for him to speak.

"Where did she get the heather?"

"What!" exclaimed Katie. The irrelevant question sounded like the speech

of one talking in his sleep. "Oh," she continued, "ye mean Elspie!"

"Ay," said Donald. "She'd a bit of heather in her belt,--the true

heather, not sticks like yon," pointing a contemptuous finger toward

Katie's bonnet. "Where did she get it?"

"Mother's always the heather growing in the house," answered Katie. "She

says she's homesick unless she sees it. It was grandmother brought it

over in the first, and it's never been let die out."

"My mother the same," said Donald. "It's the first blossom I remember,

an' I'm thinking it will be the last," he continued, gazing at Katie

absently; but his face did not look as if it were absently he gazed.

There was a glow on his cheeks, and an intense expression in his eyes

which Katie had never seen there. They warmed her heart.

"Yes," she said, "one can never forget what one has loved in the youth."

"True, Katie, true. There's nothing like one's own and earliest,"

replied Donald, full of his new and thrilling emotion; and as he said it

he reached out his hand and took hold of Katie's, as if they were boy

and girl together. "Many's the time I've raced wi' ye this way, Katie,"

he said affectionately.

"Ay, when I was a wee thing; an' ye always let go my hand at last, and

pretended I could outrin ye," laughed Katie, blissful tears filling her

eyes.

What a happy day was this! Had it not been an inspiration to bring

Donald back to the old farm-house? Katie was sure it had. She was filled

with sweet reveries; and so silent on the way home that her merry

friends joked her unmercifully about her long walk inland with the

Captain.

It was late in the night, or rather it was early the next morning, when

the "Heather Bell" reached her wharf.

"I'll go up with ye, Katie," said Donald. "It's not decent for ye to go

alone."

And when he bade her good-night he looked half-wistfully in her face,

and said: "But it's a lonely house for ye to come to, Katie, an' not a

soul but yourself in it." And he held her hand in his affectionately, as

a cousin might.

Katie's heart beat like a hammer in her bosom at these words, but she

answered gravely: "Yes, it was sorely lonely at first, an' I wearied

myself out to get them to give me Elspie to learn the business wi' me;

but I'm more used to it now."

"That is what I was thinkin'," said Donald, "that if the two o' ye were

here together, ye'd not be so lonely. Would she not like to come?"

"Ay, that would she," replied the unconscious Katie; "she pines to be

with me. I'm more her mother than the mother herself; but they'll never

consent."

"She's bonny," said Donald. I'd not seen her since she was little."

"She's as good as she is bonny," said Katie, warmly; and that was the

last word between Katie and Donald that night.

"As good as she is bonny." It rang in Donald's ears like a refrain of

heavenly music as he strode away. "As good as she is bonny;" and how

good must that be? She could not be as good as she was bonny, for she

was the bonniest lass that ever drew breath. Gray eyes and golden hair

and pink cheeks and pink heather all mingled in Donald's dreams that

night in fantastic and impossible combinations; and more than once he

waked in terror, with the sweat standing on his forehead from some

nightmare fancy of danger to the "Heather Bell" and to Elspie, both

being inextricably entangled together in his vision.

The visions did not fade with the day. They pursued Donald, and haunted

his down-sitting and his uprising. He tried to shake them off, drive

them away; for when he came to think the thing over soberly, he called

himself an old fool to be thus going daft about a child like Elspie.

"Barely twenty at the most, and me forty. She'd not look at an old

fellow like me, and maybe't would be like a sin if she did," said Donald

to himself over and over again. But it did no good. "As good as she is

bonny, bonny, bonny," rang in his ears, and the blue eyes and golden

hair and merry smile floated before his eyes. There was no help for it.

Since the world began there have been but two roads out of this sort of

mystic maze in which Donald now found himself lost,--but two roads, one

bright with joy, one dark with sorrow. And which road should it be

Donald's fate to travel must be for the child Elspie to say. After a few

days of bootless striving with himself, during which time he had spent

more hours with Katie than he had for a year before,--it was such a

comfort to him to see in her face the subtle likeness to Elspie, and to

hear her talk about plans of bringing her to Charlottetown for a visit

if nothing more,--after a few days of this, Captain Donald, one Saturday

afternoon, sailing past Orwell Head, suddenly ran into the inlet where

he had taken the picnic party, and, mooring the "Heather Bell" at Spruce

Wharf, announced to his astonished mate that he should lie by there till

Monday.

It was a bold step of Captain Donald's. But he was not a man for

half-and-half ways in anything; and he had said grimly to himself that

this matter must be ended one way or the other,--either he would win the

child or lose her. He would know which. Girls had loved men twenty years

older than themselves, and girls might again.

The Sunday passed off better than his utmost hopes. Everybody except

Elspie was cordially glad to see him. Visitors were not so common at the

Orwell Head farm-houses that they could fail of welcome. The McCloud

boys were thankful to hear all that Donald had to tell, and with the old

father and mother he had always been a prime favorite. It had been a

sore disappointment to them, as year after year went by, to see that

there seemed no likelihood of his becoming Katie's husband. As the day

wore on, even Elspie relaxed a little from her indifferent attention to

him, and began to perceive that, spite of the odious freckles, he was,

as the girls had said, a handsome man.

Partly because of this, and partly from innate coquetry, she said, when

he was taking leave, "Ye'll not be comin' again for another year,

maybe?"

"Ye'll see, then!" laughed Donald, with a sudden wise impulse to refrain

from giving the reply which sprang to his lips,--"To-morrow, if ye'd ask

me!"

And from the same wise, strangely wise impulse he curbed his desire to

go again the next Sunday and the next. Not until three weeks had passed

did he go; and then Elspie was clearly and unmistakably glad to see him.

This was all Donald wanted. "I'll win her, the bonny thing!" he said to

himself. "An' I'll not be long, either."

And he was right. A girl would have been hard indeed that would not

have been touched by the beaming, tender face which Donald wore, now

that hope lighted it up. His masterful bearing, too, was a pleasure to

the spirited Elspie, who had no liking for milksops, and had sent off

more than one lover because he came crawling too humbly to her feet.

Elspie had none of the gentle, quiet blood which ran in Katie's veins.

She had even been called Firebrand in her younger, childish days, so hot

was her temper, so hasty her tongue. But the firm rule of the Scottish

household and the pressure of the stern Scotch Calvinism preached in

their kirk had brought her well under her own control.

"Eh, but the bonny lass has hersel' well in hand," thought the admiring

Donald more than once, as he saw her in some family discussion or

controversy keep silence, with flushing cheeks, when sharp words rose to

her tongue.

All this time Katie was plodding away at her millinery, inexpressibly

cheered by Donald's new friendliness. He came often to see her, and told

her with the greatest frankness of his visits at the farm. He would take

her some day, he said; the trouble was, he could never be sure

beforehand when it would answer for him to stop there. Katie sunned

herself in this new familiar intercourse, and the thought of Donald

running up to the old farm of a Sunday as if he were one of the brothers

going home. In the contentment of these thoughts she grew younger and

prettier,--began to look as she did at twenty. And Donald, gazing

scrutinizingly in her face one day, seeking, as he was always doing, for

stray glimpses of resemblance to Elspie, saw this change, and

impulsively told her of it.

"But ye're growin' young, Katie--d'ye know it?--young and bonny, my

girl."

And Katie listened to the words with such sweet joy she feared her face

would tell too much, and put up her hands to hide it, crying: "Ah, ye're

tryin' to make me silly, you Donald, with such flatterin'. We're gettin'

old, Donald, you an' me," she added, with a guilty little undercurrent

of thought in her mind. "D'ye mind that I was thirty last month?"

"Ay," replied Donald, gloomily, his face darkening,--"ay; I mind, by the

same token, I'm forty. It's no need ye have to be callin' yersel' old.

But I'm old, an' no mistake." The thought, as Katie had put it, had been

gall and wormwood to him. If Katie thought him old, what must he seem to

Elspie!

It was early in June that Elspie had had the spinning-bee to which Katie

had brought the unwelcome Donald. The summer sped past, but a faster

summer than any reckoned on the calendar of months and days was speeding

in Elspie's heart. Such great love as Donald's reaches and warms its

object as inevitably as the heat of a fire warms those near it. Early in

June the spinning-bee, and before the last flax was pulled, early in

September, Elspie knew that she was restless till Donald came, glad when

he was by her side, and strangely sorry when he went away. Still, she

was not ready to admit to herself that it was anything more than her

natural liking for any pleasant friend who broke in on the lonely

monotony of the farm life.

The final drying of the flax, which is an important crop on most of the

Prince Edward Island farms, is put off until autumn. After its first

drying in the fields where it grew, it is stored in bundles under cover

till all the other summer work is done, and autumn brings leisure. Then

the flax camp, as it is called, is built,--a big house of spruce boughs;

walls, flat roof, all of the green spruce boughs, thick enough to keep

out rain. This is usually in the heart of a spruce grove. Thither the

bundles of flax are carried and stacked in piles. In the centre of the

inclosure a slow fire is lighted, and above this on a frame of slats the

stalks of flax are laid for their last drying. It is a difficult and

dangerous process to keep the fire hot enough and not too hot, to shift

and turn and lift the flax at the right moment. Sometimes only a sudden

flinging of moist earth upon the fire saves it from blazing up into the

flax, and sometimes one careless second's oversight loses the

whole,--flax, spruce-bough house, all, in a light blaze, and gone in a

breath.

The McClouds' flax camp had been built in the edge of the spruce grove

where the picnickers had held their dance and merry-making on that June

day, memorable to Donald and Elspie and Katie. It was well filled with

flax, in the drying of which nobody was more interested than Elspie. She

had big schemes for spinning and weaving in the coming winter. A whole

piece of linen she had promised to Katie, and a piece for herself, and,

as Elspie thought it over, maybe a good many more pieces than one she

might require for herself before spring. Who knew?

It was October now, and many a Sunday evening had Elspie walked with

Donald alone down to Spruce Wharf, and lingered there watching the last

curl of steam from the "Heather Bell" as she rounded the point, bearing

Donald away. Elspie could not doubt why Donald came. Soon she would

wonder why he came and went so many times silent; that is, silent in

words, eloquent of eye and hand,--even the touch of his hand was like a

promise.

No one was defter and more successful in this handling of the flax over

the fire than Elspie. It had sometimes happened that she, with the help

of one brother, had dried the whole crop. It was not thought safe for

one person to work at it alone for fear of accident with the fire. But

it fell out on this October afternoon, a Saturday, that Elspie, feeling

sure of Donald's being on his way to spend the Sunday with her, had

walked down to the wharf to meet him. Seeing no signs of the boat, she

went back to the flax camp, lighted the fire, and began to spread the

flax on the slats. There was not much more left to be dried,--"not more

than three hours' work in all," she said to herself. "Eh, but I'd like

to have done with it before the Sabbath!" And she fell to work with a

will, so briskly to work that she did not realize how time was

flying,--did not, strangest of all, hear the letting off of steam when

the "Heather Bell" moored at the wharf; and she was still busily turning

and lifting and separating the stalks of flax, bending low over the

frame, heated, hurrying, her whole heart in her work, when Donald came

striding up the field from the wharf,--striding at his greatest pace,

for he was disturbed at not finding Elspie at the landing to meet him.

He turned his head toward the spruce grove, thinking vaguely of the June

picnic, and what had come of his walking away from the dance that

morning, when suddenly a great column of smoke and fire rolled up from

the grove, and in the same second came piercing shrieks in Elspie's

voice. The grove was only a few rods away, but it seemed to Donald an

eternity before he reached the spot, to see not only the spruce boughs

and flax on fire, but Elspie tossing up her arms like one crazed, her

gown all ablaze. The brave, foolish girl, at the first blazing of the

stalks on the slats, had darted into the corner of the house and

snatched an armful of the piled flax there to save it; but as she passed

the flaming centre the whole sheaf she carried had caught fire also, and

in a twinkling of an eye had blazed up around her head, and when she

dropped it, had blazed up again fiercer than ever around her feet.

With a groan Donald seized her. The flames leaped on him, too, as if to

wrestle with him; his brown beard crackled, his hair, but he fought

through it all. Throwing Elspie on the ground, he rolled her over and

over, crying aloud, "Oh, my darlin', if I break your sweet bones, it is

better than the fire!" And indeed it seemed as if it must break her

bones, so fiercely he rolled her over and over, tearing off his woollen

coat to smother the fire; beating it with his tartan cap, stamping it

with his knees and feet "Oh, my darlin'! make yourself easy. I'll save

ye! I'll save ye if I die for it," he cried.

And through the smoke and the fire and the terror Elspie answered back:

"I'll not leave ye, my Donald. We're gettin' it under." And with her own

scorched hands she pulled the coat-flaps down over the smouldering bits

of flax, and tore off her burning garments.

Not a coward thread in her whole body had little Elspie, and in less

time than the story could ever be told, all was over, and safely; and

there they sat on the ground, the two, locked in each other's

arms,--Donald's beard gone, and much of his hair; Elspie's pretty golden

hair also blackened, burned. It was the first thing Donald saw after he

made sure danger was past. Laying his hand on her head, he said, with a

half-sob,--he was hysterical now there was nothing more to be done: "Oh,

your bonny hair, my darlin'! It's all scorched away."

"It'll grow!" said Elspie, looking up in his eyes archly. Her head was

on his shoulder, and she nestled closer; then she burst into tears and

laughter together, crying: "Oh, Donald, it was for you I was callin'.

Did ye hear me? I said to myself when the fire took hold, 'O God, send

Donald to save me!'"

"An' he sent me, my darlin'," answered Donald. "Ye are my own darlin';

say it, Elspie, say it!" he continued. "Oh, ye bonny bairn, but I've

loved ye like death since the first day I set eyes on your bonny face!

Say ye're my darlin'!"

But he knew it without her saying a word; and the whispered "Yes,

Donald, I'm your darlin' if you want me," did not make him any surer.

There was a great outcrying and trembling of hearts at the farm-house

when Donald and Elspie appeared in this sorry plight of torn and burned

clothes, blackened faces, scorched and singed hair. But thankfulness

soon swept away all other emotions,--thankfulness and a great joy, too;

for Donald's second word was, turning to the old father: "An' it is my

own that I've saved; she's gien hersel' to me for all time, an' we'll

ask for your blessin' on us without any waitin'!" Tears filled the

mother's eyes. She thought of another daughter. A dire instinct smote

her of woe to Katie.

"Ay, Donald," she said, "it's a good day to us to see ye enter the

house as a son; but I never thought o'--" She stopped.

Donald's quick consciousness imagined part of what she had on her mind.

"No," he said, half sad in the midst of his joy, "o' course ye didn't;

an' I wonder at mysel'. It's like winter weddin' wi' spring, ye'll be

sayin'. But I'll keep young for her sake. Ye'll see she's no old man for

a husband. There's nothing in a' the world I'll not do for the bairn.

It's no light love I bear her."

"Ye'll be tellin' Katie on the morrow?" said the unconscious Elspie.

"Ay, ay," replied the equally unconscious Donald; "an' she'll be main

glad o' 't. It's a hundred times in the summer that she's been sayin'

how she longed to have you in the town wi' her. An' now ye're comin',

comin' soon, oh, my bonny. I'll make a good home for ye both. Katie's

the same's my own, too, for always."

The mother gazed earnestly at Donald. Could it be that he was so unaware

of Katie's heart? "Donald," she said suddenly, "I'll go down wi' ye if

ye'll take me. I've been wantin' to go. There's a many things I've to

do in the town."

It had suddenly occurred to her that she might thus save Katie the shock

of hearing the news first from Donald's lips.

It was well she did. When, with stammering lips and she hardly knew in

what words, she finally broke it to Katie that Donald had asked Elspie

to be his wife, and that Elspie loved him, and they would soon be

married, Katie stared into her face for a moment with wide, vacant eyes,

as if paralyzed by some vision of terror. Then, turning white, she

gasped out, "Mother!" No word more. None was necessary.

"Ay, my bairn, I know," said the mother, with a trembling voice; "an' I

came mysel' that no other should tell ye."

A long silence followed, broken only by an occasional shuddering sigh

from Katie; not a tear in her eyes, and her cheeks as scarlet as they

had been white a few moments before. The look on her face was

terrifying.

"Will it kill ye, bairn?" sobbed the mother at last. "Don't look so. It

must be borne, my bairn; it must be borne."

It was a shrill voice, unlike Katie's, which replied: "Ay, I'll bear

it; it must be borne. There's none knows it but you, mother," she added,

with a shade of relief in the tone.

"An' never will if ye're brave, bairn," answered the mother.

"It was the day of the picnic," cried Katie; "was't not? I remember he

said she was bonny."

"Ay, 'twas then," replied the mother, so sorely torn between her love

for the two daughters, between whom had fallen this terrible sword. "Ay,

it was then. He says she has not been out of his mind by the night or by

the day since it."

Katie shivered. "And it was I brought him," she said, with a tearless

sob bitterer than any loud weeping. "Ye'll be goin' back the night?" she

added drearily.

"I'll bide if ye want me," said the mother.

"I'm better alone, mother," said Katie, her voice for the first time

faltering. "I'll bear it. Never fear me, mother; but I'm best alone for

a bit. Ye'll give my warm love to Elspie, an' send her down here to me

to stay till she's married. I'll help her best if she's here. There'll

be much to be done. I'll do 't, mother; never fear me."

"Are ye countin' too much on yer strength, bairn?" asked the now weeping

mother. "I'd rather see ye give way like."

"No, no," cried Katie, impatiently. "Each one has his own way, mother;

let me have mine. I'll work for Donald and Elspie all I can. Ye know she

was always like my own bairn more than a sister. The quicker she comes

the better for me, mother. It'll be all over then. Eh, but she'll be a

bonny bride!" And at these words Katie's tears at last flowed.

"There, there, bairn! Have out the tears; they're healin' to grief,"

exclaimed her mother, folding her arms tight around her and drawing her

head down on her shoulder as she had done in her babyhood.

Katie was right. When she had Elspie by her side, and was busily at work

in helping on all the preparations for the wedding, the worst was over.

There was a strange blending of pang and pleasure in the work. Katie

wondered at herself; but it grew clearer and clearer to her each day

that since Donald could not be hers she was glad he was Elspie's. "If

he'd married a stranger it would ha' broke my heart far worse, far

worse," she said many a time to herself as she sat patiently stitching,

stitching, on Elspie's bridal clothes. "He's my own in a way, after a',

so long's he's my brother. There's nobody can rob me o' that." And the

sweet light of unselfish devotion beamed more and more in her

countenance, till even the mother that bore her was deceived, and said

in her heart that Katie could not have been so very much in love with

Donald after all.

There was one incident which for a few moments sorely tested Katie's

self-control. The spray of white heather blossom which she had worn to

the June picnic she had on the next day put back in her box of flowers

for sale, hoping that she might yet find a customer for it. The delicate

bells were not injured either in shape or color. It was a shame to lose

it for one day's wear, thought the thrifty Katie; and most surely she

herself would never wear it again. She could not even see it without a

flush of mortification as she recalled Donald's contempt for it. The

privileged Elspie, rummaging among all Katie's stores, old and new,

spied this white heather cluster one day, and snatching it up exclaimed:

"The very thing for my weddin' bonnet, Katie! I'll have it in. The bride

o' the master o' the 'Heather Bell' should be wed with the heather bloom

on her."

Katie's face flushed. "It's been worn, Elspie," she said; "I had it in a

bonnet o' my own. Don't ye remember I wore it to the picnic? an' then it

didna suit, an' I put it back in the box. It's not fit for ye. I've a

bunch o' lilies o' the valley, better."

"No; I'll have this," pursued Elspie. "It's as white's the driven snow,

an' not hurt at all. I'm sure Donald'll like it better than all the

other flowers i' the town."

"Indeed, then, he won't," said Katie, sharply; on which Elspie turned

upon her with a flashing eye, and said,--

"An' which 'll be knowin' best, do ye think? What is it ye mean?"

"Nothing," said Katie, meekly; "only he said, that day I'd the bonnet

on, it was no more than sticks, an' not like the true heather at all."

"All he knows, then! Ye'll see he'll not say it looks like sticks when

it's on the bonnet I'm goin' to church in," retorted Elspie, dancing to

the looking-glass, and holding the white heather bells high up against

her golden curls. "It's the only flower in all yer boxes I want, Katie,

and ye'll not grudge it to me, will ye, dear?" And the sparkling Elspie

threw herself on the floor by Katie, and flung her arms across her

knees, looking up into her face with a wilful, loving smile.

"No wonder Donald loves her so,--the bonny thing!" thought Katie. "God

knows I'd grudge ye nothing on earth, Elspie," she said, in a voice so

earnest that Elspie looked wonderingly at her.

"Is it a very dear flower, sister?" she said penitently. "Does it cost

too much money for Elspie?"

"No, bairn, it's not too dear," said Katie, herself again. "The lilies

were dearer. But ye'll have the heather an' welcome, if ye will; an' I

doubt not it'll look all right in Donald's eyes when he sees it this

time."

It was indeed a good home that Donald made for his wife and her sister.

He was better to do in worldly goods than they had supposed. His long

years of seclusion from society had been years of thrift and prosperity.

No more milliner-work for Katie. Donald would not hear of it. So she was

driven to busy herself with the house, keeping from Elspie's willing and

eager hands all the harder tasks, and laying up stores of fine-spun

linen and wool for future use in the family. It was a marvel how content

Katie found herself as the winter flew by. The wedding had taken place

at Christmas, and the two sisters and Donald had gone together from the

church to Donald's new house, where, in a day or two, everything had

settled into peaceful grooves of simple, industrious habit, as if they

had been there all their lives.

Donald's happiness was of the deep and silent kind. Elspie did not

realize the extent of it. A freer-spoken, more demonstrative lover would

have found heartier response and more appreciation from her. But she was

a loyal, loving, contented little wife, and there could not have been

found in all Charlottetown a happier household, to the eye, than was

Donald's for the first three months after his marriage.

Then a cloud settled on it. For some inexplicable reason the blooming

Elspie, who had never had a day's illness in her life, drooped in the

first approach of the burden of motherhood. A strange presentiment also

seized her. After the first brief gladness at the thought of holding a

child of her own in her arms, she became overwhelmed with a melancholy

certainty of her own death.

"I'll never live to see it, Katie," she said again and again. "It'll be

your bairn, an' not mine. Ye'll never give it up, Katie?--promise me.

Ye'll take care of it all your life?--promise." And Katie, terrified by

her earnestness, promised everything she asked, all the while striving

to reassure her that her fears were needless.

No medicines did Elspie good; mind and body alike reacted on each other;

she failed hour by hour till the last; and when her time of trial came,

the sad presentiment fulfilled itself, and she died in giving birth to

her babe.

When Katie brought the child to the stunned and stricken Donald,

saying, "Will ye not look at him, Donald? it is as fine a man-child's

was ever seen," he pushed her away, saying in a hoarse whisper,--

"Never let me see its face. She said it was to be your bairn and not

hers. Take it and go. I'll never look on it."

Donald was out of his reason when he spoke these words, and for long

after. They bore with him tenderly and patiently, and did as they could

for the best; Katie, the wan and grief-stricken Katie, being the chief

adviser and planner of all.

Elspie's body was carried home and buried near the spruce grove, in a

little copse of young spruces which Donald pointed out. This was the

only wish he expressed about anything. Katie took the baby with her to

the old homestead. She dared not try to rear it without her mothers

help.

It was many months before Donald came to the farm. This seemed strange

to all except Katie. To her it seemed the most natural thing, and she

grew impatient with all who thought otherwise.

"I'd feel that way mysel'," she repeated again and again. "He'll come

when he can, but it'll be long first. Ye none of ye know what a love it

was he'd in his heart for Elspie."

When at last Donald came, the child, the little Donald, was just able to

creep,--a chubby, blue-eyed, golden-haired little creature, already

bearing the stamp and likeness of his mother's beauty.

At the first sight of his face Donald staggered, buried his head in his

hands, and turned away. Then, looking again, he stretched out his arms,

took the baby in them, and kissed him convulsively over and over. Katie

stood by, looking on, silently weeping. "He's like her," she said.

"Ay," said Donald.

The healing had begun. "A little child shall lead them," is of all the

Bible prophecies the one oftenest fulfilled. It soon grew to be Donald's

chiefest pleasure to be with his boy, and he found more and more irksome

the bonds of business which permitted him so few intervals of leisure to

visit the farm. At last one day he said to Katie,--

"Katie, couldn't ye make your mind up to come up to Charlottetown? I'd

get ye a good house, an' ye could have who ye'd like to live wi' ye. I'm

like one hungry all the time I'm out o' reach o' the little lad."

Katie's eyes fell. She did not know what to reply.

"I do not know, Donald," she faltered. "It's hard for you having him

away, but this is my home now, Donald. I've a dread o' leavin' it. And

there is nobody I know who could come to live with me."

A strange thought shot through Donald's brain. "Katie," he said, then

paused. Something in the tone startled Katie. She lifted her eyes; read

in his the thought which had made the tone so significant to her ear.