The Hunted Outlaw or, Donald Morrison, the Canadian Rob Roy   By: Anonymous

OR

DONALD MORRISON, THE CANADIAN ROB ROY

By Anonymous

"Truth is stranger than Fiction."

PROLOGUE.

Psychology strips the soul and, having laid it bare, confidently classifies every phase of its mentality. It has the spring of every emotion carefully pigeon holed; it puts a mental finger upon every passion; it maps out the soul into tabulated territories of feeling; and probes to the earliest stirrings of motive.

A crime startles the community. The perpetrator is educated, wise, enjoys the respect of his fellows. His position is high: his home is happy: he has no enemies.

Psychology is stunned. The deed is incredible. Of all men, this was the last who could be suspected of mental aberration. The mental diagnosis decreed him healthy. He was a man to grace society, do credit to religion, and leave a fair and honored name behind him.

The tabulation is at fault.

The soul has its conventional pose when the eyes of the street are upon it. Psychology's plummet is too short to reach those depths where motive has its sudden and startling birth.

Life begins with the fairest promise, and ends in darkness.

It is the unexpected that stuns us.

Heredity, environment and temperament lead us into easy calculations of assured repose and strength, and permanency of mental and moral equilibrium.

The act of a moment makes sardonic mockery of all our predictions.

The whole mentality is not computable.

Look searchingly at happiness, and note with sadness that a tear stains her cheek.

A dark, sinister thread runs through the web of life.

CHAPTER I.

"Let not ambition mock their useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure, Nor grandeur hear with a disdainful smile, The short and simple annals of the poor." Gray .

The Counties of Compton and Beauce, in the Province of Quebec, were first opened up to settlement about fifty years ago. To this spot a small colony of Highlanders from the Skye and Lewis Islands gravitated. They brought with them the Gaelic language, a simple but austere religion, habits of frugality and method, and aggressive health. That generation is gone, or almost gone, but the essential characteristics of the race have been preserved in their children. The latter are generous and hospitable, to a fault. Within a few miles of the American frontier, the forces of modern life have not reached them. Shut in by immense stretches of the dark and gloomy "forest primeval," they live drowsily in a little world where passions are lethargic, innocence open eyed, and vice almost unknown. Science has not upset their belief in Jehovah. God is real, and somewhat stern, and the minister is his servant, to be heard with respect, despite the appalling length of his sermons. Sincerely pious, the people mix their religion with a little whiskey, and the blend appears to give satisfaction. The farmers gather at the village inn in the evening, and over a "drap o' Scotch" discuss the past. As the stimulant works, generous sentiments are awakened in the breast; and the melting songs of Robbie Burns roughly rendered, it may be make the eye glisten. This is conviviality; but it has no relation to drunkenness. Every household has its family altar; and every night, before retiring to rest, the family circle gather round the father or the husband, who devoutly commends them to the keeping of God.

The common school is a log hut, built by the wayside, and the "schoolmarm" is not a pretentious person. But, what the school cannot supply, a long line of intelligent, independent ancestors have supplied, robust, common sense and sagacity.