Up the winding water, to the sedges and reeds below the little yard,
glided the boy Ephraim in his boat. The Quakeress started, and the color
flamed into her gentle face. She took up the distaff that she had dropped,
and fell to work again. "Thee must not speak to me so, Angus MacLean," she
said. "I trust that my heart is not hard. Thy death would grieve me, and
my father and my mother and Ephraim"-"I care not for thy father and mother and Ephraim!" MacLean began impetuously. "But you do right to chide me.
Once I knew a green glen where
maidens were fain when paused at their doors Angus, son of Hector, son of
Lachlan, son of Murdoch, son of Angus that was named for Angus Mor, who
was great-grandson of Hector of the Battles, who was son of Lachlan
Lubanach! But here I am a landless man, with none to do me honor,--a
wretch bereft of liberty"-"To me, to all Friends," said Truelove sweetly, halting a little in her
work, "thee has now what thee thyself calls freedom. For God meant not
that one of his creatures should say to another: 'Lo, here am I! Behold
thy God!' To me, and my father and mother and Ephraim, thee is no bond
servant of Marmaduke Haward. But thee is bond servant to thy own vain
songs; thy violent words; thy idle pride, that, vaunting the cruel deeds
of thy forefathers, calls meekness and submission the last worst evil; thy
shameless reverence for those thy fellow creatures, James Stewart and him
whom thee calls the chief of thy house,--forgetting that there is but one
house, and that God is its head; thy love of clamor and warfare; thy
hatred of the ways of peace"-MacLean laughed. "I hate not all its ways. There is no hatred in my heart for this house which is its altar, nor for the priestess of the altar. Ah!
now you frown, Truelove"-Across the clouds ran so fierce a line of gold that Truelove, startled,
put her hand before her eyes. Another dart of lightning, a low roll of
thunder, a bending apart of the alder bushes on the far side of the creek;
then a woman's voice calling to the boy in the boat to come ferry her
over.
"Who may that be?" asked Truelove wonderingly.
It was only a little way to the bending alders. Ephraim rowed across the
glassy water, dark beneath the approach of the storm; the woman stepped
into the boat, and the tiny craft came lightly back to its haven beneath
the bank.