United States or Lebanon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
And my love cried and waved as she looked down the path, and I heard her laughing, my own love, and then, 'Hurry fast, Neil, and take me home'; and again I heard her laughing joyously, and then in the track of grass, away and away, I saw a-coming one that halted on his foot, and he was away and away, but my love clapped her hands, and ran down the path with her arms stretched out to be carried home, and I saw all the Wee Folk run to welcome the one that halted on his foot, and I knew that the path that they were travelling so fast was just Time, and slowly, slowly only can Neil Crubach march, but she is running to meet me my love."
Kenny Crubach ejaculated; but old Donald Ross rose and said, "Let us call upon the name of the Lord." From his prayer it was quite evident that for him at least all doubts and fears as to poor Mack's state were removed.
Of the elders, only four were present as yet: Donald Ross, who was ever ready to bring the light of his kindly face to cheer the hearts of the mourners; Straight Rory, who never, by any chance, allowed himself to miss the solemn joy of leading the funeral psalm; Peter McRae, who carried behind his stern old face a heart of genuine sympathy; and Kenny Crubach, to whom attendance at funerals was at once a duty and a horror.
"If I had run to my house and the door shut, I would just be fallin' dead on the doorstep." "There's McGilp," says Dan. "He aye carries a sail needle in his kep lining, and he'll say it's just to be handy, but it's aye been in the same place. An' what will it be for, Neil Crubach?" Neil looked up, his blue eyes hazy with dreaming things out of the past.
"Yes, Mr. Ross," said Peter, ignoring Kenny Crubach, "but at times the voice of Providence cannot be misunderstood, and it will not do for the elders of the church to be speaking soft things when the Lord is speaking in judgment and wrath." Donald was silent, while Straight Rory assented with a heartrending "Aye, aye," which stirred Yankee's bile again. "What's he talkin' about?
His heart was sick with horror at Peter's meaning, which he understood only too well. "Aye," went on Peter, "it is a terrible, mysterious Providence, and a heavy warning to the ungodly and careless." "He means me, I guess," remarked Yankee to Ranald. "It will perhaps be not amiss to any of us," said Kenny Crubach, sharply. "Indeed, that is true," said Donald Ross, in a very humble voice.
"It will just be that when our forefathers would be among the hill sat night, many and many's the time the evil one would be coming to them and speaking, and sometimes he would be coming in the form of a black dog, like the Black Hound o' Nourn, wi' a red tongue lolling from his mouth, and sometimes he would be a wild cat louping among the rocks, hissing and spitting wi' his eyes lowin', and the old wise ones in the far glen found the power in the unknown places in the hills, and they said to the young hunters and warriors, 'Aye be carrying steel, for steel will sever all bargains, but a skein-dubh is the best to be carrying in the hills, for a devil will not come near the black-hefted knife wi' a strong bright blade no," and Neil Crubach smiled, and looked among the red embers for his dreams.
"Will any one second it?" Kenny Crubach at once rose and said: "We are always slow at following the Lord. Let us go forward." The minister waited for some moments after Kenny had spoken, and then said, in a voice grave and with a feeling of responsibility in it: "You have heard these brethren, my people. I wait for the expression of your desire."
After Donald Ross had finished his part of the "exercises," he called upon Kenny Crubach, who read briefly, and without comment, the exquisite Scottish paraphrase of Luther's "little gospel": "Behold the amazing gift of love The Father hath bestowed On us, the sinful sons of men, To call us sons of God " and so on to the end.
In the square pew in front of the pulpit sat the elders, hoary, massive, and venerable. The Indian Lands Session were worth seeing. Great men they were, every one of them, excepting, perhaps, Kenneth Campbell, "Kenny Crubach," as he was called, from his halting step. Kenny was neither hoary nor massive nor venerable.
Word Of The Day