The Silver Maple. Mary Esther Miller MacGregor
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for drawing off the long, high-topped boots, and one Scotty yearned to be big enough to use. In another corner stood Granny's spinning-wheel, which whizzed cheerily the whole long day, and beside it was a low bench with a tin wash-basin, a cake of home-made soap and a coarse towel. There was very little furniture besides, except a few chairs, the big table, the clock with the long chains and the noisy pendulum, the picture of Queen Victoria, and the big, high cupboard into which Granny was putting the supper dishes. This last article of furniture was always of great interest to Scotty. For away up on the top shelf, made doubly valuable by being unattainable, stood some wonderful pieces of crockery; among them a sugar-bowl that Granny had brought from the old country, and which had blue boys and girls dancing in a gay ring about it. Then there was the glass jar with the tin lid in which Grandaddy kept some mysterious papers; one piece was called money. Scotty had actually seen it once, in Grandaddy's hands, and wondered secretly why such ugly, crumpled, green paper should be considered so precious.
"An' would Peter Lauchie not be coming across the swamp with you, m' eudail bheg?" his grandmother was asking for the fifth time.
"Noh!" The boy's answer was quick and disdainful. Somehow he would rather Granny would not pat his head and lavish endearing Gaelic epithets upon him to-night; such things had been very soothing in the past when he was sleepy and wanted to go to bed; but now he was a big boy, going to school, and had fought and defeated in single combat one of the MacDonalds' enemies, and he could not be expected to endure petting.
"Why, Granny!" he cried, "I would be knowing the road all right. Peter Lauchie jist came to his clearin', and I would be coming to the line all alone, and then I met Grandaddy an' the boys there."
"Eh, indeed, it is the great man you will be, whatever," she said, regarding him wistfully. This child, her last baby, and the best-beloved, was growing up swiftly to manhood, and like all the others would soon have interests beyond her. "An' would Granny's boy not be fearing to cross the swamp alone?" Her voice was almost pleading. She bent down, and her thin, hard hand rested caressingly on his dark, tumbled curls. She yearned to hear him confess himself her baby still. He threw back his head and looked up into her tender, wrinkled face; and one little hand went up suddenly to caress its rough surface. For Scotty had a heart quite out of proportion to the size of his body, and a look of grief on Granny's face could move him quicker than the sternest command of his grandfather.
"Yes," he confessed in a whisper, "I would be fearing jist once, and then I spoke the piece about 'the Lord is my Shepherd' and then I wouldn't be minding much. Sing it, Granny."
So Granny sang the Shepherd's psalm in Gaelic, as she went slowly about her household tasks; sang it in a thin, quavering voice to a weird old Scottish melody that had in it the wail of winds over lone heather moors, and the sob of waves on a wild, rock-bound coast. She came and went, in and out of the dancing ring of fire-light, a tall, thin figure, stooped and aged-looking, apparently more from hard work than from advanced years. But her toil-bent frame, her rough hands and coarse grey homespun dress could not quite hide the air of gentle dignity that clothed her. There was a certain lofty refinement in her movements; and on her wrinkled face and in her beautiful grey eyes the imprint of a soul that toil and pain had only strengthened and sweetened. Hers was the face of a woman who had suffered much, but had conquered, and always would conquer through faith and love.
To the little boy on the hearthstone, at least, the thin, stooped figure and worn face made up the most beautiful personality the world could produce. But he turned to the fire, and his dreams floated far away beyond the ring of fire-light, and beyond Granny's gentle voice. For he had entered a new world that day, the great new world of school, and his imagination had a wider field in which to run riot.
He was still dreaming, and Granny was half-way through the psalm for the second time, when the stamping of snowy feet at the door announced the return of Big Malcolm and his sons. Callum came swinging in first, Callum who was such a gay, handsome, rollicking fellow that he was Scotty's hero and copy. The boy sprang up, pitching himself upon him, and was promptly swung over the young man's shoulders, until his feet kicked the raftered ceiling. Scotty yelled with glee, Bruce leaped up barking, and the room was in an uproar.
"Hooch! be quate!" shouted Big Malcolm. "It is a child you are yourself, Callum!"'
At the sounds of the noise and laughter a small figure stirred in the shadowy chimney-corner, the figure of a little, bent, old man, with a queer, elfish, hairy visage. He sat up and his small, red eyes blinked wonderingly. "Hech, hech, and it will be the cold night, Malcolm!" he said in Gaelic.
"A cold night it is, Farquhar," cried Big Malcolm, piling the wood upon the fire. "But we will soon be fixing that, whatever."
"It will be a good thing to be by a warm fire this night," continued Old Farquhar solemnly, "och, hone, a good thing, indeed!"
Outside the wind had once more gathered its forces, and was howling about the house, and the swaying branches of the silver maple were tapping upon the roof as though to remind the inhabitants that it was still there to protect them. But the little old man shivered at the sound, for he had once known what it was to be homeless on those hills over which the blast was sweeping.
How Old Farquhar came to be a member of Big Malcolm MacDonald's family no one could quite tell. He was one of those unattached fragments of humanity often found in a new country. A sort of wandering minstrel was Farquhar, content so long as he could pay for a meal or a night's lodging at a wayside tavern by a song, or a tune on his fiddle. Thus he had drifted musically for years through the Canadian backwoods, until homeless old age had overtaken him. Four years before he had spent a summer at Big Malcolm's, helping perfunctorily in the harvest fields, working little and singing much, and when the first hard frost had set the forest aflame he had gathered his poor, scant bundle of clothes into his carpet-bag preparatory to taking the road again.
"And where will you be going for the winter?" Big Malcolm had asked.
"She'll not know," said Old Farquhar, glancing tremulously over the great stretches of dying forest, "she'll not know."
"Hooch!" cried his host angrily, "sit down with ye!" He snatched up Old Farquhar's carpet-bag and flung it into a corner, and there it had lain ever since.
And in another corner, the warm one by the chimney, Old Farquhar had sat every winter since, too, smoking his pipe in utter content. Always in summer his Bohemian nature asserted itself again, and he would take his stick and wander away, remaining, perhaps, for months; but as soon as the silver maple beside the house began to turn to gold he would come hobbling back, sure of a warm welcome in the home where there was no stint.
The family gathered about the cheerful hearth: every one of them, to Scotty's great delight, for there was not half the fun at home when "the boys" went off in the evenings. At one side of the fire sat his grandmother, her peaceful face bent over her knitting, and opposite her Big Malcolm smoking and happy. Hamish, as usual, retired to the old bench behind the table, and with the one candle close to him, was soon absorbed in a book. In some miraculous way Hamish always managed to have reading material at hand, though the luxury sometimes cost him a tramp half-way across the township of Oro. Near the fire, balanced uneasily on the woodbox and whittling a stick, sat Callum; for Callum could never sit down quietly, even at home. Callum Fiach, or Wild Malcolm, they called him in this land of many MacDonalds, where the dearth of names necessitated a descriptive title. Unfortunately, Callum's especial cognomen was quite appropriate and the cause of much anxiety to his gentle mother. But Scotty thought it was fine; he intended to be just like Callum when he grew up. He would stand up straight and grand and cut down great trees and fight the Murphys, and go off in the evenings and be chaffed about having a sweetheart. Rory was always teasing Callum about Long Lauchie's Mary, and Scotty was resolved that, when he was big, he would go to see Mary's sister, Betty; for then he and Callum could go together. He cordially despised the chosen Betty as a girl and a cry-baby, who gave her brother, Peter, endless trouble; but he was determined to shirk no task, however unpleasant, that would make him more like his hero.
When they were all ready to listen to him, the boy seated himself upon a bench beside Rory, and proceeded to relate once more to his admiring family the wonderful experiences of the day;