Page:The Keeper of the Bees.pdf/19

 only more clearly defined the rough path he must follow. There came to his mind a passage that he had heard his father read from his pulpit on Sabbath mornings with the burr of Scotch that a generation of our country had not eliminated: “I will lift mine eyes to the hills from whence cometh my help.”

He was lifting his eyes to the hills, but no help came. He wondered whether this was because he was obeying the dictates of other men, or whether it was because he had forgotten God. In his childhood his father and mother had taught him to pray and to believe that his prayers would be answered. When he had gone out to serve his country, for some inexplicable reason he had stopped praying and concentrated all his forces on fighting. There were atrocities that had been committed against men of his race and blood in the beginning of the war that drove all men of Scottish ancestry and sympathies a trifle wild.

He had reached the war period one of the gentlest of men. But he had embarked in the venture that other men of our country of different ancestry felt was freeing the world from tyranny, with outrage in his breast, a feeling that was shared by all men of the race and country of his people. Things had happened to one certain band of Scots, that no man having a drop of Scottish blood in his veins ever could or wanted to forget. Under the stress of this feeling, the lad whose mother had always lovingly referred to him as “my Jamie” forgot her teachings and her God, and went out to see how much personal vengeance he could wreak upon the men who had wounded the