Page:Ralph Connor - The man from Glengarry.djvu/74

  face, and Mrs. Murray could only say, brokenly, "You know I will not."

"Aye, I do," said Macdonald, with a sigh of content, and he turned his face away from her to the wall.

"And now you let me read to you," she said, softly, and taking from her bag the Gaelic Bible, which with much toil she had learned to read since coming to this Highland congregation, she read to him from the old Psalm those words, brave, tender, and beautiful, that have so often comforted the weary and wandering children of men, "The Lord is my Shepherd," and so on to the end. Then from psalm to psalm she passed, selecting such parts as suited her purpose, until Macdonald turned to her again and said, admiringly:

"It is yourself that has the bonnie Gaelic."

"I am afraid," she said, with a smile, "it is not really good, but it is the best a south country woman can do."

"Indeed, it is very pretty," he said, earnestly.

Then the minister's wife said, timidly, "I cannot pray in the Gaelic."

"Oh, the English will be very good," said Macdonald, and she knelt down and in simple words poured out her heart in prayer. Before she rose from her knees she opened the Gaelic Bible, and turned to the words of the Lord's Prayer.

"We will say this prayer together," she said, gently.

Macdonald, bowing his head gravely, answered: "It is what she would often be doing with me."