Chapter 2

DONALD MORRISON APPEARS ON THE SCENE.

Life, could we only be well assured of it, is at the best when it is simple. The woods of Lake Megantic in the summer cast a spell upon the spirit. They are calm and serene, and just a little sad. They invite to rest, and their calm strength and deep silence are a powerful rebuke to passion.

Amongst the deep woods of Marsden, Donald Morrison spent his young years. His parents were in fairly comfortable circumstances, as the term is understood in Compton. Donald was a fair-haired boy, whose white forehead his mother had often kissed in pride as she prepared him, with shining morning face, for the village school. Donald was the pride of the village. Strong for his years and self-assertive, the boys feared him. Handsome and fearless, and proud and masterful, his little girl school-mates adored him. They adored him all the more that he thought it beneath his boyish dignity to pay them attention. This is true to all experience. Donald was passionate. He could not brook interference. He even thus early, when he was learning his tablets at the village school, developed those traits, the exercise of which, in later life, was to make his name known throughout the breadth of the land. Generous and kind-hearted to a degree, his impatience often hurried him into actions which grieved his parents. He was generally in hot water at school. He fought, and he generally won, but his cause was not always right. He was supple, and he excelled in the village games.