CHAPTER I

THE SCOTCH COVENANTERS

"BEHOLD, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves."

The boy who was reading in a clear, low voice, though with a foreign accent, felt the pressure of his mother's feeble hands, and lifted up his eyes to her white and placid face. He was kneeling beside her bed, and she pushed back the thick curls of his brown hair, and looked with a very tender gaze into his frank, boyish face.

"That's true, my laddie," she said; "true for you, but not for me. He calls me home, but He sends your father and you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Ah! The Lord Jesus knew; and He knows now. Never think He's away, and not minding your troubles. You'll go back to your father, when I'm gone home—not to Knishi, never again to Knishi. Oh, if I'd only known, I'd have gone home to heaven from there!"

The feeble, gasping voice ceased for a minute or two. But the mother's eyes still rested fondly and anxiously on her boy.

"And, oh, my Michael," she said, "be wise! Don't anger the neighbours more than you can help. You're only a boy yet, and they'll leave you alone if you keep quiet. Be 'harmless as doves,' says our Lord."

"But you wouldn't have me a coward, mother," answered the boy somewhat hotly.

"Me, Michael? Me?" she cried, a faint colour flushing her pallid face. "No, no! Weren't my ain forebears among the Covenanters? Both on father's and mother's sides! Didn't they suffer the loss o' all things—eh! and die for conscience' sake? Nay, Michael, I'd send you to death, if need be, for the truth. But it's hard to think of young little ones having to suffer cruelly because their parents must act according to their conscience. Oh, my Michael! And my little Velia!"

She sank back on her pillows with closed eyelids, through which the tears were slowing oozing. Michael did not go on with his reading. They were both thinking of the last twelve months, when Catherine Ivanoff had left her Russian home to try if her native air in Scotland would restore her health. Michael had accompanied her, being old enough to be a help and comfort to her during the long voyage from Odessa to Glasgow, and through her sojourn among her own kinsfolk. It had been on the whole a happy year, filled at first with delusive hopes. But all hope was gone now. She would never be able to bear the voyage and the inland journey homewards.

Her brother's house, where she lay dying, was a small Scotch farm, not unlike the homestead she had left in Russia. She lay still, thinking longingly of it now. The thick walls of dried mud, with their deep window-sills; the large house-place, with its oak table, and oak benches standing along the walls, which she had kept beautifully polished; the huge stove, which seemed to fill half the room; and the great barns and stables built round the fold-yard. Oh, if she had only been there now!—dying in the little bedroom which opened out of the roomy house-place, where she could watch her husband going to and fro, and have her little Velia in her sight. Her house in Knishi had been the best in the village, almost equal to the church-house; and she had cherished a secret pride in it. The garden on the eastern side was even better than the priest's garden, for her husband as well as herself took great pleasure in it. It was already near the end of February; and the snow would be melting, and the buds swelling on the fruit-trees, and the earliest flowers pushing their first shoots through the moist earth. Oh, how happy she and her husband had been in Knishi!

It was eight years since they had gone there, with their two young children, to rent a farm belonging to her husband's cousin, Paul Rodenko, who had been exiled to Siberia for holding fast to his Stundist faith. A sharp outbreak of persecution had taken place, during which three of the leading Stundists had been imprisoned—one of them dying in prison. And the mother of Paul Rodenko had fallen a martyr to the uncurbed violence of a mob. There had been some official inquiries into the cause of her death. And though no one was punished, the peasants, after their wild excess of savagery, were ashamed of the crime.

Since then the Stundists had been unmolested, left very much to themselves, and practically cut off from all village intercourse. Alexis Ivanoff was their presbyter; and though they had no stated hour or place of worship, it was well-known they maintained their own religious views.

Alexis Ivanoff's letters to his wife told her that this tranquil state of affairs showed signs of coming to an end. Although there was a good and kind-hearted priest, Father Cyril, appointed in the place of the old Batoushka, who had fomented the persecution eight years ago, there were symptoms of hard times coming for the Stundists. The Starosta, who was the chief layman in the village, was a fierce bigot and a churlish miser; and it lay in his power to injure those whom he disliked. Already Alexis had been compelled to pay sundry fines for himself and his poorer fellow Stundists; and the exactions were increasing. It was no use appealing to any court of law against these unjust and vexatious taxes; were they not Stundists? But he hoped the oppression would be confined to monetary forfeits.

"I would send Velia to you out of the way," he wrote, "if I thought Okhrim would do more than tax us unjustly. But he is fond of money, and will be content to fleece us; when the sheep are slain, there is no more to be gained. Velia is the treasure I value most—my only earthly joy, now you and Michael are away. Yet, if the Lord required it, you and I would give up our children, precious as they are. My Catherine, this life is only a journey, and a short one at the longest. What matters it if we come to the end soon, or travel on a little longer? If we walk in smooth paths or rough ones? Let us work while it is called to-day; 'the night cometh when no man can work.' And at nightfall we go home and rest with our beloved ones."

This was his last letter. It lay under her pillow.

Michael had risen from his knees beside his mother, and gone to the little lattice window, through which he could see the distant mountains still capped with snow. Below the house lay a pleasant valley, which had been the resort of the Covenanters in times long gone by, when they must needs worship God in secret. In the room below, on one side of the wide, old open hearth, there was a little closet four feet square, cunningly contrived behind the wainscot, where many a time godly men had hidden whilst their persecutors searched the homely farmstead for them, or sat round the fire cursing their fruitless efforts. The whole place and neighbourhood were full of legends of the Covenanters, and Michael had heard of them, and listened to them with avidity, for the last twelve months.

He was longing to be home again with his father and Velia, especially now when there was a threatening of renewed oppression. He loved his fatherland, Russia, with a boy's hot patriotism. He had fretted inwardly at his long exile, though he fancied he had concealed his home-sickness successfully from his mother. It would soon be over now, and the tears fell fast down his cheeks. For it was only when his beloved mother passed through the gates of death, already opening slowly before her, that he could be free to hasten away home.

"Michael!" cried his mother in a strong and happy voice.

He sprang towards her.

She had half-raised herself in bed, and her face was full of radiant gladness, such as he had never seen before.

"I'm dying! And it's beautiful!" she said. "Tell your father death is beautiful! And I'm not alone—no, not alone!"