he anxious note in his voice struck Ranald to the heart.

"Oh, father, it is what I want," he replied, brokenly. "I will try."

"Aye," said Macdonald Dubh, "and you will come. I will be telling HER.
Now lay me down, Tonal; I will be going."

Macdonald Bhain laid him quietly back on his pillow, and for a moment he
lay with his eyes closed.

Once more he opened his eyes, and with a troubled look upon his face,
and in a voice of doubt and fear, he cried: "It is a sinful man, O Lord,
a sinful man."

His eyes wandered till they fell on Mrs. Murray's face, and then the
trouble and fear passed out of them, and in a gentler voice he said:
"Forgive us our debts." Then, feeling with his hand till it rested on
his son's head, Macdonald Dubh passed away, at peace with men and with
God.

There was little sadness and no bitter grief at Macdonald Dubh's
funeral. The tone all through was one of triumph, for they all knew his
life, and how sore the fight had been, and how he had won his victory.
His humility and his gentleness during the last few weeks of his life
had removed all the distance that had separated him from the people,
and had drawn their hearts toward him; and now in his final triumph they
could not find it in their hearts to mourn.

But to Ranald the sadness was more than the triumph. Through the wild,
ungoverned years of his boyhood his father had been more than a father
to him. He had been a friend, sharing a common lot, and without much
show of tenderness, understanding and sympathizing with him, and now
that his father had gone from him, a great loneliness fell upon the lad.

The farm and its belongings were sold. Kirsty brought with her the big
box of blankets and linen that had belonged to Ranald's mother. Ranald
took his mother's Gaelic Bible, his father's gun and ax, and with the
great deerhound, Bugle, and his colt, Lisette, left the home of his
childhood behind him, and with his Aunt Kirsty, went to live with his
uncle.

Throughout the autumn months he was busy helping his uncle with the
plowing, the potatoes, and the fall work. Soon the air began to nip,
and the night's frost to last throughout the shortening day, and then
Macdonald Bhain began to prepare wood for the winter, and to make all
things snug about the house and barn; and when the first fall of snow
fell softly, he took down his broad-ax, and then Ranald knew that the
gang would soon be off again for the shanties. That night his uncle
talk