Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/281



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?'"