"Well, might hitch her up some day. Guess you wudn't hurt the buckboard.""Not likely," said Ranald, looking at the old, ramshackle affair.
"Used to drive some myself," said Yankee. But to this idea Ranald did not take kindly.
Yankee stood for a few moments looking down the lane and over the fields, and then, turning to Ranald, said, "Guess it's about ready to begin plowin'. Got quite a lot of it to do, too, ain't you?""Yes," said Ranald, "I was thinking I would be beginning to-morrow.""Purty slow business with the oxen. How would it do to hitch up Lisette and old Fox yonder?"Then Ranald understood the purpose of Yankee's visit.
"I would be very glad," said Ranald, a great load lifting from his heart. "I was afraid of the work with only the oxen." And then, after a pause, he added, "What did you mean about buying Lisette?"He was anxious to have that point settled.
"I said what I meant," answered Yankee. "I thought perhaps you would rather have the money than the colt; but I tell you what, Ihain't got money enough to put into that bird, and don't you talk selling to any one till we see her gait hitched up. But I guess a little of the plow won't hurt for a few weeks or so."Next day Lisette left behind her forever the free, happy days of colthood. At first Ranald was unwilling to trust her to any other hands than his own, but when he saw how skillfully and gently Yankee handled her, soothing her while he harnessed and hitched her up, he recognized that she was safer with Yankee than with himself, and allowed him to have the reins.
They spent the morning driving up and down the lane with Lisette and Fox hitched to the stone-boat. The colt had been kindly treated from her earliest days, and consequently knew nothing of fear. She stepped daintily beside old Fox, fretting and chafing in the harness, but without thought of any violent objection. In the afternoon the colt was put through her morning experience, with the variation that the stone-boat was piled up with a fairly heavy load of earth and stone. And about noon the day following, Lisette was turning her furrow with all the steadiness of a horse twice her age.
Before two weeks were over, Yankee, with the horses, and Ranald, with the oxen, had finished the plowing, and in another ten days the fields lay smooth and black, with the seed harrowed safely in, waiting for the rain.
Yankee's visit had been a godsend, not only to Ranald with his work, but also to Macdonald Dubh. He would talk to the grim, silent man by the hour, after the day's work was done, far into the night, till at length he managed to draw from him the secret of his misery.
"I will never be a man again," he said, bitterly, to Yankee. "And there is the farm all to pay for. I have put it off too long and now it is too late, and it is all because of that--that--brute beast of a Frenchman.""Mean cuss!" ejaculated Yankee.
"And I am saying," continued Macdonald Dubh, opening his heart still further, "I am saying, it was no fair fight, whatever. Icould whip him with one hand. It was when I was pulling out Big Mack, poor fellow, from under the heap, that he took me unawares.""That's so," assented Yankee. "Blamed lowdown trick.""And, oh, I will be praying God to give me strength just to meet him! I will ask no more. But," he added, in bitter despair, "there is no use for me to pray. Strength will come to me no more.""Well," said Yankee, brightly, "needn't worry about that varmint.
He ain't worth it, anyhow."
"Aye, he is not worth it, indeed, and that is the man who has brought me to this." That was the bitter part to Macdonald Dubh.
A man he despised had beaten him.
"Now look here," said Yankee, "course I ain't much good at this, but if you will just quit worryin', I'll undertake to settle this little account with Mr. LeNware.""And what good would that be to me?" said Macdonald Dubh. "It is myself that wants to meet him." It was not so much the destruction of LeNoir that he desired as that he should have the destroying of him. While he cherished this feeling in his heart, it was not strange that the minister in his visits found Black Hugh unapproachable, and concluded that he was in a state of settled "hardness of heart." His wife knew better, but even she dared not approach Macdonald Dubh on that subject, which had not been mentioned between them since the morning he had opened his heart to her. The dark, haggard, gloomy face haunted her. She longed to help him to peace. It was this that sent her to his brother, Macdonald Bhain, to whom she told as much of the story as she thought wise.
"I am afraid he will never come to peace with God until he comes to peace with this man," she said, sadly, "and it is a bitter load that he is carrying with him.""I will talk with him," answered Macdonald Bhain, and at the end of the week he took his way across to his brother's home.
He found him down in the brule, where he spent most of his days toiling hard with his ax, in spite of the earnest entreaties of Ranald. He was butting a big tree that the fire had laid prone, but the ax was falling with the stroke of a weak man.
As he finished his cut, his brother called to him, "That is no work for you, Hugh; that is no work for a man who has been for six weeks in his bed.""It is work that must be done, however," Black Hugh answered, bitterly.
