Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/227



If Mrs. Murray was not surprised to see Macdonald Dubh and Yankee walk in on Sabbath evening and sit down in the back seat, her class were. Indeed the appearance of these two men at the class was considered an event so extraordinary as to give a decided shock to those who regularly attended, and their presence lent to the meeting an unusual interest, and an undertone of excitement. To see Macdonald Dubh, whose attendance at the regular Sabbath services was something unusual, present at a religious meeting which no one would consider it a duty to attend, was enough in itself to excite surprise, but when Yankee came in and sat beside him, the surprise was considerably intensified. For Yankee was considered to be quite outside the pale, and indeed, in a way, incapable of religious impression. No one expected Yankee to be religious. He was not a Presbyterian, knew nothing of the Shorter Catechism, not to speak of the Confession of Faith, and consequently was woefully ignorant of the elements of Christian knowledge that were deemed necessary to any true religious experience.

It was rumored that upon Yankee's first appearance in the country, some few years before, he had, in an unguarded moment, acknowledged that his people had belonged to the Methodists, and that he himself