Prisoners of Conscience by Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr (books to read this summer .TXT) 📖

that he took the longest way home. He wanted to think over what his father and the minister had said, and he wanted that solitude of nature which had so often been to him the voice of God. The road itself was only a foot-path across a melancholy moor, covered with heather and boulders, and encompassed by cyclopean wrecks of mountains, the vapory outlines of which suggested nothing but endless ruin. Although the season was midsummer, there had been sharp, surly whiffs of rain all day long, and the dreary levels were full of little lochs of black moss water. So David kept to the seaward side, where the land was higher, and where he could see the roll of a spent gale swinging round Vatternish toward the red, rent bastions of Skye, and hear its thunder amid the purple caves of the basalt and the whitened tiers of the ooelite, silencing all meaner sounds.

After a trailing, thoughtful walk of a mile, he came to a spot where a circle of druidical monoliths stood huge and pale in the misty air. He went straight into the haunted place with the manner of one familiar with it, cast his nets on the low central stone which had once been the sacrificial altar of the dead creed, and then leaned wearily against one of the sheltering pillars.

His person was at this time remarkably handsome and in wonderful harmony with its surroundings. He was large and strong--a man not made for the narrow doorways of the town, but for the wide, stormy spaces of the unstreeted ocean. The sea was in his eyes, which were blue and outlooking; his broad breast was bared to the wind and rain; his legs were planted apart, as if he was hauling up an anchor or standing on a reeling deck. An air of somber gravity, a face sad and mystical, distinguished his solitary figure. He was the unconscious incarnation of the lonely land and the stormy sea.

Leaning against the pagan pillar, he revolved in his mind those great questions that survive every change of race and dynasty: Whence come we? Where go we? How can a man be justified with God? Though the rain smote him east and west, he was in the sunshine of the Holy Land; he was drawing nets with Simon Peter on the Sea of Galilee; he was listening to Him who spake as never man spake. Suddenly the sharp whistle of a passing steamer roused him. He turned his eyes seaward, and saw the _Polly Ann_ hastening to the railway port with her load of fish for the Glasgow market. The sight set him again in the nineteenth century. Then he felt the rain, and he drew his bonnet over his brows, and lifted his nets, and began to walk toward the little black hut on the horizon. It was of large stones roughly mortared together, and it had a low chimney, and a door fastened with a leather strap; but the small window wanted the screen of white muslin usual in Highland cots, and was dim with dust and cobwebs.

It was David's home, and he knew his father waited there for his coming; so he hastened his steps; but the radiant, dreamy look which had made him handsome was gone, and he approached the door with the air of a man who is weary of to-day and without hope for the morrow. At the threshold he threw off this aspect, and entered with a smile. His father, sitting wearily in a wooden arm-chair, turned his face to meet him. It was the face of a man walking with death. Human agony grimly borne without complaint furrowed it; gray as ashes were the cheeks, and the eyes alone retained the "spark of heavenly flame" which we call life.

"There has been a change, David," he said, "and it is well you are come; for I know I must soon be going, and there is this and that to say--as there always is at the parting."

"I see that you are worse, father. Let me go for the doctor now."

"I will have no man meddle with the hour of my death; no one shall either hurry or delay it."

"The doctor might give you some ease from your sore pain."

"I will bear His will to the uttermost. But come near to me, David; I have some last words to say, and there is One at my side hasting me forward."

"Tell me your wish now, father. I will do all that you desire."

"When you have put me in my grave, go to Shetland for me. I thought to do my own errand--to get there just in time to do it, and die; but it is hard counting with Death--he comes sooner than you expect. David, I have brought you up in the way of life. Think no wrong of me when I am gone away forever. Indeed, you'll not dare to," he said with a sudden flash of natural pride in himself; "for though I may have had a sore downfall, I could not get away from His love and favor."

"None living shall say wrong of you in my hearing, father."

"But, David, there are those of the unregenerate who would make much of my little slip. I might die, lad, and say nothing to any man about it. Put a few peats on the fire; death is cold, and my feet are in the grave already; so I may tell the truth now, for at this hour no man can make me afraid. And there is no sin, I hope, in letting Matilda Sabiston know, if she is still alive, that I owe Bele Trenby nothing for the wrong he did me. St. Paul left the Almighty to pay the ill-will he owed Alexander the coppersmith; but I could not ask that much favor, being only Liot Borson; and no doubt the Lord suffered me to pay my own debt--time and place being put so unexpected into my hand."

Then he was awfully silent. The mortal agony was dealing its last sharp blows, and every instinct impelled him to cry out against the torment. But Liot Borson had put his mortality beneath his feet; nothing could have forced a cry from him. His face changed as a green leaf might change if a hot iron was passed over it; but he sat grasping the rude arms of his wooden chair, disdaining the torture while it lasted, and smiling triumphantly as it partly passed away.

"A few more such pangs and the fight will be over, David. So I will swither and scruple no longer; I will tell the whole truth about the drowning of Bele Trenby. Bele and I were never friends; but I hated him when he began to meddle between me and Karen Sabiston. He had no shadow of right to do so, for I had set my heart on her and she had given me her promise; and I said then, and I say it now with death at my elbow, that he had no right to step between me and Karen. Yet he tried to do that thing, and if it had not been for the minister I had stabbed him to his false heart. But the minister bade me do no wrong, because I was of the household of faith, and a born and baptized child of God, having come--mind this, David--of generations of his saints. He said if Bele had done me wrong, wrong would come to Bele, and I would live to see it."

"'Vengeance is Mine; I will repay'," quoted David, in a low voice. But Liot answered sharply:

"The Lord sends by whom he will send. And it so happened that one night, as Bele and I were walking together, I knew the hour had come."

"You took not the matter in your own hands surely, father?"

"There was none there but me. I laid no finger on him; he fell into his own snare. I had said a thousand times--and the Lord had heard me say it--that if one word of mine would save Bele Trenby from death, I would not say that one word. Could I break my oath for a child of the Evil One? Had Bele been of the elect I would have borne that in mind; but Bele came of bad stock; pirates and smugglers were his forebears, and the women not to name with the God-fearing--light and vain women. So I hated Bele, and I had a right to hate him; and one night, as I walked from Quarf to Lerwick, Bele came to my side and said, 'Good evening, Liot.' And I said, 'It is dark,' and spoke no more. And by and by we came to a stream swollen with rain and snow-water, and Bele said, 'Here is the crossing.' And I answered him not, for I knew it was _not_ the crossing. So as I delayed a little--for my shoe-string was loose--Bele said again, 'Here is the crossing.' And I told him neither yes nor no. And he said to me, 'It seemeth, Liot, thou art in a devil's temper, and I will stay no longer with thee.' And with the ill words on his lips he strode into the stream, and then overhead into the moss he went, and so to his own place."

"Father, I am feared for a thing like that. There would be sin in it."

"I lifted no finger against him; my lips lied not. It was the working out of his own sin that slew him."

"I would have warned him--yes, I would. Let me go for the minister; he will not be feared to say, 'Liot, you did wrong,' if so he thinks."

"I have had my plea out with my Maker. If I did sin, I have paid the price of the sin. Your mother was given to me, and in two years the Lord took her away. I thought to fill my eyes with a sight of the whole world, and I was sent to this desolate place for a life-sentence, to bide its storm and gloom and gust and poverty, and in this bit cabin to dree a long, fierce wrestle with Death, knowing all the time he would get the mastery over me in the end." Then, suddenly pausing, his gray face glowed with passionate rapture, and lifting up his right hand he cried out: "No, no, David; _I_ am the conqueror! There are two ways of dying, my lad--victory and defeat. Thank God, I have the victory through Jesus Christ, my Lord and Saviour!"

"Who is the propitiation for all sin, father."

"Sin!" cried the dying man, "sin! I have nothing to do with sin. 'Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' for, 'Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin--he cannot sin, for he is born of God.' I did indeed make a sore stumble; so also did David, and natheless he was a man after God's own heart. What has man to do with my fault? _He_ has entered into judgment with me, and I have gladly borne the hand of the smiter."

"Gladly, father?"

"Ay, David, gladly. For had I not been _his_ son, he would have 'let me alone,' as he does those joined to their idols; but because he loved me he chastised me; and I have found that his rod as well as his staff can comfort in affliction. Some of his bairns deserve and get the rod of iron. Be good, David, and he will stretch out to you only his golden scepter."

"And also you have the Intercessor."

"If I had not