PROLOGUE

      Psychology strips the soul and, having laid it bare, confidently classifies every phase of its mentality. It has the spring of every emotion carefully pigeon-holed; it puts a mental finger upon every passion; it maps out the soul into tabulated territories of feeling; and probes to the earliest stirrings of motive.

      A crime startles the community. The perpetrator is educated, wise, enjoys the respect of his fellows. His position is high: his home is happy: he has no enemies.

      Psychology is stunned. The deed is incredible. Of all men, this was the last who could be suspected of mental aberration. The mental diagnosis decreed him healthy. He was a man to grace society, do credit to religion, and leave a fair and honored name behind him.

      The tabulation is at fault.

      The soul has its conventional pose when the eyes of the street are upon it. Psychology's plummet is too short to reach those depths where motive has its sudden and startling birth.

      Life begins with the fairest promise, and ends in darkness.

      It is the unexpected that stuns us.

      Heredity, environment and temperament lead us into easy calculations of assured repose and strength, and permanency of mental and moral equilibrium.

      The act of a moment makes sardonic mockery of all our predictions.

      The whole mentality is not computable.

      Look searchingly at happiness, and note with sadness that a tear stains her cheek.

      A dark, sinister thread runs through the web of life.

      CHAPTER I

      "Let not ambition mock their useful toil,

      Their homely joys and destiny obscure,

      Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile,

      The short and simple annals of the poor."

      The Counties of Compton and Beauce, in the Province of Quebec, were first opened up to settlement about fifty years ago. To this spot a small colony of Highlanders from the Skye and Lewis Islands gravitated. They brought with them the Gaelic language, a simple but austere religion, habits of frugality and method, and aggressive health. That generation is gone, or almost gone, but the essential characteristics of the race have been preserved in their children. The latter are generous and hospitable, to a fault. Within a few miles of the American frontier, the forces of modern life have not reached them. Shut in by immense stretches of the dark and gloomy "forest primeval," they live drowsily in a little world where passions are lethargic, innocence open-eyed, and vice almost unknown. Science has not upset their belief in Jehovah. God is real, and somewhat stern, and the minister is his servant, to be heard with respect, despite the appalling length of his sermons. Sincerely pious, the people mix their religion with a little whiskey, and the blend appears to give satisfaction. The farmers gather at the village inn in the evening, and over a "drap o' Scotch" discuss the past. As the stimulant works, generous sentiments are awakened in the breast; and the melting songs of Robbie Burns—roughly rendered, it may be—make the eye glisten. This is conviviality; but it has no relation to drunkenness. Every household has its family altar; and every night, before retiring to rest, the family circle gather round the father or the husband, who devoutly commends them to the keeping of God.

      The common school is a log hut, built by the wayside, and the "schoolmarm" is not a pretentious person. But, what the school cannot supply, a long line of intelligent, independent ancestors have supplied, robust, common sense and sagacity.

      Something of the gloom and sternness of the forest, something of the sadness which is a conscious presence, is in their faces. Their humor has a certain savor of grimness. For the rest, it may be said that they are poor, and that they make little effort to be anything else. They do a little farming and a little lumbering. They get food and clothing, they are attached to their homesteads, and the world with all its tempting possibilities passes them by. The young people seek the States, but even they return, and end their days in the old home. They marry, and get farms, and life moves with even step, the alternating seasons, with their possibilities, probably forming their deepest absorptions. It remains only to be said that, passionately attached to the customs, the habits of thought of their forefathers, the Highlanders of the Lake Megantic region are intensely clannish. Splendidly generous, they would suffer death rather than betray the man who had eaten of their salt. Eminently law-abiding, they would not stretch out a hand to deprive of freedom one who had thrown himself upon their mercy.

      CHAPTER II. DONALD MORRISON APPEARS ON THE SCENE

      Life, could we only be well assured of it, is at the best when it is simple. The woods of Lake Megantic in the summer cast a spell upon the spirit. They are calm and serene, and just a little sad. They invite to rest, and their calm strength and deep silence are a powerful rebuke to passion.

      Amongst the deep woods of Marsden, Donald Morrison spent his young years. His parents were in fairly comfortable circumstances, as the term is understood in Compton. Donald was a fair-haired boy, whose white forehead his mother had often kissed in pride as she prepared him, with shining morning face, for the village school. Donald was the pride of the village. Strong for his years and self-assertive, the boys feared him. Handsome and fearless, and proud and masterful, his little girl school-mates adored him. They adored him all the more that he thought it beneath his boyish dignity to pay them attention. This is true to all experience. Donald was passionate. He could not brook interference. He even thus early, when he was learning his tablets at the village school, developed those traits, the exercise of which, in later life, was to make his name known throughout the breadth of the land. Generous and kind-hearted to a degree, his impatience often hurried him into actions which grieved his parents. He was generally in hot water at school. He fought, and he generally won, but his cause was not always right. He was supple, and he excelled in the village games.

      CHAPTER III. A LITTLE GIRL WITH YELLOW HAIR

      Minnie Duncan went to the same school with Donald. She was a shy little thing with big brown eyes, which looked at you wistfully, and a mass of yellow hair, which the sun in the summer mornings loved to burnish. Minnie at the age of ten felt drawn to Donald, as timid women generally feel drawn toward masterful men, ignoring the steadier love of gentler natures. Donald had from the start constituted himself her protector in a lordly way. He had once resented a belittling remark which a schoolmate had used towards her, by soundly thrashing the urchin who uttered it. Minnie pitied the lad, but she secretly adored Donald. He was her hero. Donald was good enough to patronize her. Minnie was too humble to resent this attitude. Was he not handsome and strong, with fearless blue eyes; were not all her little girl companions jealous of her? Did he not go to and come from school with her and carry her books? Above all, had he not done battle in her behalf?

      Minnie Duncan was the only daughter of John and Mary Duncan, who lived close to the Morrisons', upon a comfortable farm. She was dearly loved, and she returned the affection bestowed upon her with the beautiful abandon of that epoch when the tide of innocent trust and love is at the full. They had never expressed their hopes in relation to her future; but the wish of their hearts was that she might grow into a modest, God-fearing woman, find a good farmer husband, and live and die in the village.

      CHAPTER IV. "MINNIE, MINNIE," SHE SAID, "I MUST GUARD MY SECRET."

      Donald Morrison was now twenty-three. The promise of his boyhood had been realized. He was well made, with sinews like steel. He had a blonde moustache, clustering hair, a well shaped mouth, firm chin. His blue eyes had a proud, fearless look. The schoolmarm had taught Donald the three "R's"; he had read a little when he could spare the money for books; and at the period we are now dealing with he was looked up to by all in the village as a person of superior knowledge. His youth and young manhood had been spent working upon his father's farm. Latterly he had been working upon land which his father had given him, in the hope that he would