“Here he is, mother!” he exclaimed, to Ranald's great confusion, and to the amusement of all about him. “Isn't he splendid?”
And as Ranald greeted Mrs. Murray with quiet, grave courtesy, she felt that his winter in the woods and on the river had forever put behind him his boyhood, and that henceforth he would take his place among the men. And looking at his strong, composed, grave face, she felt that that place ought not to be an unworthy one.
The shantymen came back home to find the revival still going on. Not a home but had felt its mighty power, and not a man, woman, or even child but had come more or less under its influence. Indeed, so universal was that power that Yankee was heard to say, “The boys wouldn't go in swimmin' without their New Testaments”--not but that Yankee was in very fullest sympathy with the movement. He was regular in his attendance upon the meetings all through spring and summer, but his whole previous history made it difficult for him to fully appreciate the intensity and depth of the religious feeling that was everywhere throbbing through the community.
“Don't see what the excitement's for,” he said to Macdonald Bhain one night after meeting. “Seems to me the Almighty just wants a feller to do the right thing by his neighbor and not be too independent, but go 'long kind o' humble like and keep clean. Somethin' wrong with me, perhaps, but I don't seem to be able to work up no excitement about it. I'd like to, but somehow it ain't in me.”
When Macdonald Bhain reported this difficulty of Yankee's to Mrs. Murray, she only said: “'What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?'” And with this Macdonald Bhain was content, and when he told Yankee, the latter came as near to excitement as he ever allowed himself. He chewed vigorously for a few moments, then, slapping his thigh, he exclaimed: “By jings! That's great. She's all right, ain't she? We ain't all built the same way, but I'm blamed if I don't like her model.”
But the shantymen noticed that the revival had swept into the church, during the winter months, a great company of the young people of the congregation; and of these, a band of some ten or twelve young men, with Don among them, were attending daily a special class carried on in the vestry of the church for those who desired to enter training for the ministry.