"I mind well the words, as if it was yesterday.

'Hugh, my man,' she said, 'am no feared' (she was from the Lowlands, but she was a fine woman); 'I haena the marks, but 'm no feared but He'll ken me.

Ye'll tak' care o' Ranald, for, oh, Hugh! I ha' gi'en him to the Lord.

The Lord help you to mak' a guid man o' him.'" Macdonald's voice faltered into silence, then, after a few moments, he cried, "And oh! Mistress Murra', I cannot tell you the often these words do keep coming to me; and it is myself that has not kept the promise I made to her, and may the Lord forgive me." The look of misery in the dark eyes touched Mrs.Murray to the heart.
She laid her hand on Macdonald's arm, but she could not find words to speak.

Suddenly Macdonald recalled himself.
"You will forgive me," he said; "and you will not be telling any one." By this time the tears were streaming down her 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.