CHAPTER X.


ANDREW INGRAM.

Of the persons in my narrative, Andrew Ingram is the simplest, therefore
the hardest to be understood by an ordinary reader. I must take up his
history from a certain point in his childhood.

One summer evening, he and his brother Sandy were playing together on a
knoll in one of their father's fields. Andrew was ten years old, and
Sandy a year younger. The two quarreled, and the spirit of ancestral
borderers waking in them, they fell to blows. The younger was the
stronger for his years, and they were punching each other with
relentless vigor, when suddenly they heard a voice, and stopping their
fight, saw before them an humble-looking man with a pack on his back. He
was a peddler known in the neighborhood, and noted for his honesty and
his silence, but the boys had never seen him. They stood abashed before
him, dazed with the blows they had received, and not a little ashamed;
for they were well brought up, their mother being an honest
disciplinarian, and their father never interfering with what she judged
right. The sun was near the setting, and shone with level rays full on
the peddler; but when they thought of him afterward, they seemed to
remember more light in his face than that of the sun. Their conscience
bore him witness, and his look awed them. Involuntarily they turned from
him, seeking refuge with each other: his eyes shone so! they said; but