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Title: The Elect Lady

Author: George MacDonald

Release Date: September, 2005 [EBook #8944]
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[This file was first posted on August 28, 2003]

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Language: English

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HOME AGAIN

and

THE ELECT LADY


_(A Duplex Edition)_


By George MacDonald




THE ELECT LADY




CHAPTER I.


LANDLORD'S DAUGHTER AND TENANT'S SON.

In a kitchen of moderate size, flagged with slate, humble in its
appointments, yet looking scarcely that of a farmhouse--for there were
utensils about it indicating necessities more artificial than usually
grow upon a farm--with the corner of a white deal table between them,
sat two young people evidently different in rank, and meeting upon no
level of friendship. The young woman held in her hand a paper, which
seemed the subject of their conversation. She was about four- or
five-and-twenty, well grown and not ungraceful, with dark hair, dark
hazel eyes, and rather large, handsome features, full of intelligence,
but a little hard, and not a little regnant--as such features must be,
except after prolonged influence of a heart potent in self-subjugation.
As to her social expression, it was a mingling of the gentlewoman of
education, and the farmer's daughter supreme over the household and its
share in the labor of production.

As to the young man, it would have required a deeper-seeing eye than
falls to the lot of most observers, not to take him for a weaker nature
than the young woman; and the deference he showed her as the superior,
would have enhanced the difficulty of a true judgment. He was tall and
thin, but plainly in fine health; had a good forehead, and a clear hazel
eye, not overlarge or prominent, but full of light; a firm mouth, with a
curious smile; a sun-burned complexion; and a habit when perplexed of
pinching his upper lip between his finger and thumb, which at the
present moment he was unconsciously indulging. He was the son of a small
farmer--in what part of Scotland is of little consequence--and his
companion for the moment was the daughter of the laird.

"I have glanced over the poem," said the lady, "and it seems to me quite
up to the average of what you see in print."

"Would that be reason for printing it, ma'am?" asked the man, with
amused smile.

"It would be for the editor to determine," she answered, not perceiving
the hinted objection.

"You will remember, ma'am, that I never suggested--indeed I never
thought of such a thing!"

"I do not forget. It was your mother who drew my attention to the
verses."

"I must speak to my mother!" he said, in a meditative way.

"You can not object to _my_ seeing your work! She does not show it to
everybody. It is most creditable to you, such an employment of your
leisure."

"The poem was never meant for any eyes but my own--except my brother's."

"What was the good of writing it, if no one was to see it?"

"The writing of it, ma'am."

"For the exercise, you mean?"

"No; I hardly mean that."

"I am afraid then I do not understand you."

"Do _you_ never write anything but what you publish?"

"Publish! _I_ never publish! What made you think of such a thing?"

"That you know so much about it, ma'am."

"I know people connected with the papers, and thought it might encourage
you to see something in print. The newspapers publish so many poems
now!"

"I wish it hadn't been just that one my mother gave you!"

"Why?"

"For one thing, it is not finished--as you will see when you read it
more carefully."

"I did see a line I thought hardly rhythmical, but--"

"Excuse me, ma'am; the want of rhythm there was intentional."

"I am sorry for that. Intention is the worst possible excuse for wrong!
The accent should always be made to fall in the right place."

"Beyond a doubt--but might not the right place alter with the sense?"

"Never. The rule is strict"

"Is there no danger of making the verse monotonous?"

"Not that I know."

"I have an idea, ma'am, that our great poets owe much of their music to
the liberties they take with the rhythm. They treat the rule as its
masters, and break it when they see fit."

"You must be wrong there! But in any case you must not presume to take
the liberties of a great poet"

"It is a poor reward for being a great poet to be allowed to take
liberties. I should say that, doing their work to the best of their
power, they were rewarded with the discovery of higher laws of verse.
Every one must walk by the light given him. By the rules which others
have laid down he may learn to walk; but once his heart is awake to
truth, and his ear to measure, melody and harmony, he must walk by the
light, and the music God gives him."

"That is dangerous doctrine, Andrew!" said the lady, with a superior
smile. "But," she continued, "I will mark what faults I see, and point
them out to you."

"Thank you, ma'am, but please do not send the verses anywhere."

"I will not, except I find them worthy. You need not be afraid. For my
father's sake I will have an eye to your reputation."

"I am obliged to you, ma'am," returned Andrew, but with his curious
smile, hard to describe. It had in it a wonderful mixing of sweetness
and humor, and a something that seemed to sit miles above his amusement.
A heavenly smile it was, knowing too much to be angry. It had in it
neither offense nor scorn. In respect of his poetry he was shy like a
girl, but he showed no rejection of the patronage forced upon him by the
lady.

He rose and stood a moment.

"Well, Andrew, what is it?"

"When will you allow me to call for the verses?"

"In the course of a week or so. By that time I shall have made up my
mind. If in doubt, I shall ask my father."

"I wouldn't like the laird to think I spend my time on poetry."

"You write poetry, Andrew! A man should not do what he would not have
known."

"That is true, ma'am; I only feared an erroneous conclusion."

"I will take care of that. My father knows that you are a hard-working
young man. There is not one of his farms in better order than yours.
Were it otherwise, I should not be so interested in your poetry."

Andrew wished her less interested in it. To have his verses read was
like having a finger poked in his eye. He had not known that his mother
looked at his papers. But he showed little sign of his annoyance, bade
the lady good-morning, and left the kitchen.

Miss Fordyce followed him to the door, and stood for a moment looking
out. In front of her was a paved court, surrounded with low buildings,
between two of which was visible, at the distance of a mile or so, a
railway line where it approached a viaduct. She heard the sound of a
coming train, and who in a country place will not stand to see one pass!




CHAPTER II.


AN ACCIDENT.

While the two were talking, a long train, part carriages, part trucks,
was rattling through a dreary country, where it could never have been
were there not regions very different on both sides of it. For miles in
any direction, nothing but humpy moorland was to be seen, a gathering of
low hills, with now and then a higher one, its sides broken by
occasional torrents, in poor likeness of a mountain. No smoke proclaimed
the presence of human dwelling; but there were spots between the hills
where the hand of man had helped the birth of a feeble fertility; and in
front was a small but productive valley, on the edge of which stood the
ancient house of Potlurg, with the heath behind it: over a narrow branch
of this valley went the viaduct.

It was a slow train, with few passengers. Of these one was looking from
his window with a vague, foolish sense of superiority, thinking what a
forgotten, scarce created country it seemed. He was a well-dressed,
good-looking fellow, with a keen but pale-gray eye, and a fine forehead,
but a chin such as is held to indicate weakness. More than one, however,
of the strongest women I have known, were defective in chin. The young
man was in the only first-class carriage of the train, and alone in it.
Dressed in a gray suit, he was a little too particular in the smaller
points of his attire, and lacked in consequence something of the look of
a gentleman. Every now and then he would take off his hard round hat,
and pass a white left hand through his short-cut mousey hair, while his
right caressed a far longer mustache, in which he seemed interested. A
certain indescribable heaviness and lack of light characterized his pale
face.

It was a lovely day in early June. The air was rather cold, but youth
and health care little about temperature on a holiday, with the sun
shining, and that sweetest sense--to such at least as are ordinarily
bound by routine--of having nothing to do. To many men and women the
greatest trouble is to choose, for self is the hardest of masters to
please; but as yet George Crawford had not been troubled with much
choosing.

A crowded town behind him, the loneliness he looked upon was a pleasure
to him. Compelled to spend time in it, without the sense of being on the
way out of it, his own company would soon have grown irksome to him; for
however much men may be interested in themselves, there are few indeed
who are interesting to themselves. Those only whose self is aware of a
higher presence can escape becoming bores and disgusts to themselves.
That every man is endlessly greater than what he calls himself, must
seem a paradox to the ignorant and dull, but a universe would be
impossible without it. George had not arrived at the discovery of this
fact, and yet was for the present contented both with himself and with
his circumstances.

The heather was not in bloom, and the few flowers of the heathy land
made no show. Brown and darker brown predominated, with here and there a
shadow of green; and, weary of his outlook, George was settling back to
his book, when there came a great bang and a tearing sound. He started
to his feet, and for hours knew nothing more. A truck had run off the
line and turned over; the carriage in which he was had followed it, and
one of the young man's legs was broken.




CHAPTER III.


HELP.

"Papa! papa! there is an accident on the line!" cried Miss Fordyce,
running into her father's study, where he sat surrounded with books. "I
saw it from the door!"

"Hush!" returned the old man, and listened. "I hear the train going on,"
he said, after a moment.

"Part of it is come to grief, I am certain," answered his daughter. "I
saw something fall."

"Well, my dear?"

"What _shall_ we do?"

"What would you have us do?" rejoined her father, without a movement
toward rising. "It is too far off for us to be of any use."

"We ought to go and see."

"I am not fond of such seeing, Alexa, and will not go out of my way for
it. The misery I can not avoid is enough for me."

But Alexa was out of the room, and in a moment more was running, in as
straight a line as she could keep, across the heath to the low
embankment. Andrew caught sight of her running. He could not see the
line, but convinced that something was the matter, turned and ran in the
same direction.

It was a hard and long run for Alexa, over such ground. Troubled at her
father's indifference, she ran the faster--too fast for thinking, but
not too fast for the thoughts that came of themselves. What had come to
her father? Their house was the nearest! She could not shut out the
conviction that, since succeeding to the property, he had been growing
less and less neighborly.

She had caught up a bottle of brandy, which impeded her running. Yet she
made good speed, her dress gathered high in the other hand. Her long
dark hair broken loose and flying in the wind, her assumed dignity
forgotten, and only the woman awake, she ran like a deer over the
heather, and in little more than a quarter of an hour, though it was a
long moor-mile, reached the embankment, flushed and panting.

Some of the carriages had rolled down, and the rails were a wreck. But
the engine and half the train had kept on: neither driver nor stoker was
hurt, and they were hurrying to fetch help from the next station. At the
foot of the bank lay George Crawford insensible, with the guard of the
train doing what he could to bring him to consciousness. He was on his
back, pale as death, with no motion and scare a sign of life.

Alexa tried to give him brandy, but she was so exhausted, and her hand
shook so, that she had to yield the bottle to the guard, and, hale and
strong as she was, could but drag herself a little apart before she
fainted.

In the meantime, as the train approached the station, the driver, who
belonged to the neighborhood, saw the doctor, slackened speed, and set
his whistle shrieking wildly. The doctor set spurs to his horse, and
came straight over everything to his side.

"You go on," he said, having heard what had happened; "I shall be there
sooner than you could take me."

He came first upon Andrew trying to make Miss Fordyce swallow a little
of the brandy.

"There's but one gentleman hurt, sir," said the guard. "The other's only
a young lady that's run till she's dropped."

"To bring brandy," supplemented Andrew.

The doctor recognized Alexa, and wondered what reception her lather
would give his patient, for to Potlurg he must go! Suddenly she came to
herself, and sat up, gazing wildly around. "Out of breath, Miss Fordyce;
nothing worse!" said the doctor, and she smiled.

He turned to the young man, and did for him what he could without
splints or bandages; then, with the help of the guard and Andrew,
constructed, from pieces of the broken carriages, a sort of litter on
which to carry him to Potlurg.

"Is he dead?" asked Alexa.

"Not a bit of it. He's had a bad blow on the head, though. We must get
him somewhere as fast as we can!"

"Do you know him?"

"Not I. But we must take him to your house. I don't know what else to do
with him!"

"What else should you want to do with him?"

"I was afraid it might bother the laird."

"You scarcely know my father, Doctor Pratt!"

"It would bother most people to have a wounded man quartered on them for
weeks!" returned the doctor. "Poor fellow! A good-looking fellow too!"

A countryman who had been in the next carriage, but had escaped almost
unhurt, offering his service, Andrew and he took up the litter gently,
and set out walking with care, the doctor on one side, leading his
horse, and Miss Fordyce on the other.

It was a strange building to which, after no small anxiety, they drew
near; nor did it look the less strange the nearer they came. It was
unsheltered by a single tree; and but for a low wall and iron rail on
one side, inclosing what had been a garden, but was now a grass-plot, it
rose straight out of the heather. From this plot the ground sloped to
the valley, and was under careful cultivation. The entrance to it was
closed with a gate of wrought iron, of good workmanship, but so wasted
with rust that it seemed on the point of vanishing. Here at one time had
been the way into the house; but no door, and scarce a window, was now
to be seen on this side of the building. It was very old, and consisted
of three gables, a great half-round between two of them, and a low tower
with a conical roof.

Crawford had begun to recover consciousness, but when he came to himself
he was received by acute pain. The least attempt to move was torture,
and again he fainted.




CHAPTER IV.


THE LAIRD.

Conducted by the lady, they passed round the house to the court, and
across the court to a door in one of the gables. It was a low, narrow
door, but large enough for the man that stood there--a little man, with
colorless face, and quiet, abstracted look. His eyes were cold and keen,
his features small, delicate, and regular. He had an erect little back,
and was dressed in a long-tailed coat, looking not much of a laird, and
less of a farmer, as he stood framed in the gray stone wall, in which
odd little windows, dotted here and there at all heights and distances,
revealed a wonderful arrangement of floors and rooms inside.

"Good-morning, Mr. Fordyce!" said the doctor. "This is a bad business,
but it might have been worse! Not a soul injured but one!"

"Souls don't commonly get injured by accident!" returned the laird, with
a cold smile that was far from discourteous. "Stick to the body, doctor!
There you know something!"

"It's a truth, laird!" answered the doctor--but added to himself--"Well!
it's awful to hear the truth from some mouths!"

The laird spoke no word of objection or of welcome. They carried the
poor fellow into the house, following its mistress to a room, where,
with the help of her one domestic, and instructed by the doctor, she
soon had a bed prepared for him. Then away rode the doctor at full speed
to fetch the appliances necessary, leaving the laird standing by the
bed, with a look of mild dissatisfaction, but not a whisper of
opposition.

It was the guest-chamber to which George Crawford had been carried, a
room far more comfortable than a stranger might, from the aspect of the
house, have believed possible. Everything in it was old-fashioned, and,
having been dismantled, it was not in apple-pie order; but it was
rapidly and silently restored to its humble ideal; and when the doctor,
after an incredibly brief absence, returned with his assistant, he
seemed both surprised and pleased at the change.

"He must have some one to sit up with him, Miss Fordyce," he said, when
all was done.

"I will myself," she answered. "But you must give me exact directions,
for I have done no nursing."

"If you will walk a little way with me, I will tell you all you need
know. He will sleep now, I think--at least till you get back: I shall
not keep you beyond a few minutes. It is not a very awkward fracture,"
he continued, as they went. "It might have been much worse! We shall
have him about in a few weeks. But he will want the greatest care while
the bones are uniting."

The laird turned from the bed, and went to his study, where he walked up
and down, lost and old and pale, the very Bibliad of the room with its
ancient volumes all around. Whatever his eyes fell upon, he turned from,
as if he had no longer any pleasure in it, and presently stole back to
the room where the sufferer lay. On tiptoe, with a caution suggestive of
a wild beast asleep, he crept to the bed, looked down on his unwelcome
guest with an expression of sympathy crossed with dislike, and shook his
head slowly and solemnly, like one injured but forgiving.

His eye fell on the young man's pocket-book. It had fallen from his coat
as they undressed him, and was on a table by the bedside. He caught it
up just ere Alexa reentered.

"How is he, father?" she asked.

"He is fast asleep," answered the laid. "How long does the doctor think
he will have to be here?"

"I did not ask him," she replied.

"That was an oversight, my child," he returned. "It is of consequence we
should know the moment of his removal."

"We shall know it in good time. The doctor called it an affair of
weeks--or months--I forget. But you shall not be troubled, father. I
will attend to him."

"But I _am_ troubled, Alexa! You do not know how little money I have!"

Again he retired--slowly, shut his door, locked it, and began to search
the pocket-book. He found certain banknotes, and made a discovery
concerning its owner.

With the help of her old woman, and noiselessly, while Crawford lay in a
half slumber, Alexa continued making the chamber more comfortable.
Chintz curtains veiled the windows, which, for all their narrowness, had
admitted too much light; and an old carpet deadened the sound of
footsteps on the creaking boards--for the bones of a house do not grow
silent with age; a fire burned in the antique grate, and was a soul to
the chamber, which was chilly, looking to the north, with walls so thick
that it took half the summer to warm them through. Old Meg, moving to
and fro, kept shaking her head like her master, as if she also were in
the secret of some house-misery; but she was only indulging the funereal
temperament of an ancient woman. As Alexa ran through the heather in the
morning, she looked not altogether unlike a peasant; her shoes were
strong, her dress was short; but now she came and went in a soft-colored
gown, neither ill-made nor unbecoming. She did not seem to belong to
what is called society, but she looked dignified, at times almost
stately, with an expression of superiority, not strong enough to make
her handsome face unpleasing. It resembled her father's, but, for a
woman's, was cast in a larger mold.

The day crept on. The invalid was feverish. His nurse obeyed the doctor
minutely, to a single drop. She had her tea brought her, but when the
supper hour arrived went to join her father in the kitchen.




CHAPTER V.


AFTER SUPPER.

They always eat in the kitchen. Strange to say, there was no dining-room
in the house, though there was a sweetly old-fashioned drawing-room. The
servant was with the sufferer, but Alexa was too much in the sick-room,
notwithstanding, to know that she was eating her porridge and milk. The
laird partook but sparingly, on the ground that the fare tended to
fatness, which affliction of age he congratulated himself on having
hitherto escaped. They eat in silence, but not a glance of her father
that might indicate a want escaped the daughter. When the meal was
ended, and the old man had given thanks, Alexa put on the table a big
black Bible, which her father took with solemn face and reverent
gesture. In the course of his nightly reading of the New Testament, he
had come to the twelfth chapter of St. Luke, with the Lord's parable of
the rich man whose soul they required of him: he read it beautifully,
with an expression that seemed to indicate a sense of the Lord's meaning
what He said.

"We will omit the psalm this evening--for the sake of the sufferer," he
said, having ended the chapter. "The Lord will have mercy and not
sacrifice."

They rose from their chairs and knelt on the stone floor. The old man
prayed with much tone and expression, and I think meant all he said,
though none of it seemed to spring from fresh need or new thankfulness,
for he used only the old stock phrases, which flowed freely from his
lips. He dwelt much on the merits of the Saviour; he humbled himself as
the chief of sinners, whom it must be a satisfaction to God to cut off,
but a greater satisfaction to spare for the sake of one whom he loved.
Plainly the man counted it a most important thing to stand well with Him
who had created him. When they rose, Alexa looked formally solemn, but
the wan face of her father shone: the Psyche, if not the Ego, had
prayed--and felt comfortable. He sat down, and looked fixedly, as if
into eternity, but perhaps it was into vacancy; they are much the same
to most people.

"Come into the study for a moment, Lexy, if you please," he said, rising
at length. His politeness to his daughter, and indeed to all that came
near him, was one of the most notable points in his behavior.

Alexa followed the black, slender, erect little figure up the stair,
which consisted of about a dozen steps, filling the entrance from wall
to wall, a width of some twelve feet. Between it and the outer door
there was but room for the door of the kitchen on the one hand, and that
of a small closet on the other. At the top was a wide space, a sort of
irregular hall, more like an out-of-door court, paved with large flat
stones into which projected the other side of the rounded mass, bordered
by the grassy inclosure.

The laird turned to the right, and through a door into a room which had
but one small window hidden by bookcases. Naturally it smelled musty, of
old books and decayed bindings, an odor not unpleasant to some nostrils.
He closed the door behind him, placed a chair for his daughter, and set
himself in another by a deal table, upon which were books and papers.

"This is a sore trial, Alexa!" he said with a sigh.

"It is indeed, father--for the poor young man!" she returned.

"True; but it would be selfish indeed to regard the greatness of his
suffering as rendering our trial the less. It is to us a more serious
matter than you seem to think. It will cost much more than, in the
present state of my finances, I can afford to pay. You little think--"

"But, father," interrupted Alexa, "how could we help it?"

"He might have been carried elsewhere!"

"With me standing there! Surely not, father! Even Andrew Ingram offered
to receive him."

"Why did he not take him then?"

"The doctor wouldn't hear of it. And I wouldn't hear of it either."

"It was ill-considered, Lexy. But what's done is done--though, alas! not
paid for."

"We must take the luck as it comes, father!"

"Alexa," rejoined the laird with solemnity, "you ought never to mention
luck. There is no such thing. It was either for the young man's sins, or
to prevent worse, or for necessary discipline, that the train was
overturned. The cause is known to _Him_. All are in His hands--and we
must beware of attempting to take any out of His hands, for it can not
be done."

"Then, father, if there be no chance, our part was ordered too. So there
is the young man in our spare room, and we must receive our share of the
trouble as from the hand of the Lord."

"Certainly, my dear! it was the expense I was thinking of. I was only
lamenting--bear me witness, I was not opposing--the will of the Lord. A
man's natural feelings remain."

"If the thing is not to be helped, let us think no more about it!"

"It is the expense, my dear! Will you not let your mind rest for a
moment upon the fact? I am doing my utmost to impress it upon you. For
other expenses there is always something to show; for this there will be
nothing, positively nothing!"

"Not the mended leg, father?"

"The money will vanish, I tell you, as a tale that is told."

"It is our life that vanishes that way!"

"The simile suits either. So long as we do not use the words of
Scripture irreverently, there is no harm in making a different
application of them. There is no irreverence here: next to the grace of
God, money is the thing hardest to get and hardest to keep. If we are
not wise with it, the grace--I mean money--will not go far."

"Not so far as the next world, anyhow!" said Alexa, as if to herself.

"How dare you, child! The Redeemer tells us to make friends of the
mammon of unrighteousness, that when we die it may receive us into
everlasting habitations!"

"I read the passage this morning, father: it is _they_, not _it_, will
receive you. And I have heard that it ought to be translated, 'make
friends _with_, or _by means of_ the mammon of unrighteousness."

"I will reconsider the passage. We must not lightly change even the
translated word!"

The laird had never thought that it might be of consequence to him one
day to have friends in the other world. Neither had he reflected that
the Lord did not regard the obligation of gratitude as ceasing with this
life.

Alexa had reason to fear that her father made a friend _of_, and never a
friend _with_ the mammon of unrighteousness. At the same time the
half-penny he put in the plate every Sunday must go a long way if it was
not estimated, like that of the poor widow, according to the amount he
possessed, but according to the difficulty he found in parting with it.

"After weeks, perhaps months of nursing and food and doctor's stuff,"
resumed the laird, "he will walk away, and we shall see not a plack of
the money he carries with him. The visible will become the invisible,
the present the absent!"

"The little it will cost you, father--"

"Hold there, my child! If you call any cost little, I will not hear a
word more: we should be but running a race from different points to
different goals! It will cost--that is enough! How much it will cost
_me_, you can not calculate, for you do not know what money stands for
in my eyes. There are things before which money is insignificant!"

"Those dreary old books!" said Alexa to herself, casting a glance on the
shelves that filled the room from floor to ceiling, and from wall to
wall.

"What I was going to say, father," she returned, "was, that I have a
little money of my own, and this affair shall cost you nothing. Leave me
to contrive. Would you tell him his friends must pay his board, or take
him away? It would be a nice anecdote in the annals of the Fordyces of
Potlurg!"

"At the same time, what more natural?" rejoined her father. "His friends
must in any case be applied to! I learn from his pocket-book--"

"Father!"

"Content yourself, Alexa. I have a right to know whom I receive under my
roof. Besides, have I not learned thereby that the youth is a sort of
connection!"

"You don't mean it, father?"

"I do mean it. His mother and yours were first cousins."

"That is not a connection; it's a close kinship!"

"Is it?" said the laird, dryly.

"Anyhow," pursued Alexa, "I give you my word you shall hear nothing more
of the expense."

She bade her father good-night, and returning to the bedside of her
patient, released Meg.




CHAPTER VI.


ABOUT THE LAIRD.

Thomas Fordyce was a sucker from the root of a very old family tree,
born in poverty, and, with great pinching of father and mother, brothers
and sisters, educated for the Church. But from pleasure in scholarship,
from archaeological tastes, a passion for the arcana of history, and a
love of literature, strong, although not of the highest kind, he had
settled down as a school-master, and in his calling had excelled. By all
who knew him he was regarded as an accomplished, amiable, and worthy
man.

When his years were verging on the undefined close of middle age he saw
the lives between him and the family property, one by one wither at the
touch of death, until at last there was no one but himself and his
daughter to succeed. He was at the time the head of a flourishing school
in a large manufacturing town; and it was not without some regret,
though with more pleasure, that he yielded his profession and retired to
Potlurg.

Greatly dwindled as he found the property, and much and long as it had
been mismanaged, it was yet of considerable value, and worth a wise
care. The result of the labor he spent upon it was such that it had now
for years yielded him, if not a large rental, one far larger at least
than his daughter imagined. But the sinking of the school-master in the
laird seemed to work ill for the man, and good only for the land. I say
_seemed_, because what we call degeneracy is often but the unveiling of
what was there all the time; and the evil we could become, we are. If I
have in me the tyrant or the miser, there he is, and such am I--as
surely as if the tyrant or the miser were even now visible to the
wondering dislike of my neighbors. I do not say the characteristic is so
strong, or would be so hard to change as by the revealing development it
must become; but it is there, alive, as an egg is alive; and by no means
inoperative like a mere germ, but exercising real though occult
influence on the rest of my character. Therefore, except the growing
vitality be in process of killing these ova of death, it is for the good
of the man that they should be so far developed as to show their
existence. If the man do not then starve and slay them they will drag
him to the judgment-seat of a fiery indignation.

For the laird, nature could ill replace the human influences that had
surrounded the school-master; while enlargement both of means and
leisure enabled him to develop by indulgence a passion for a peculiar
kind of possession, which, however refined in its objects, was yet but a
branch of the worship of Mammon. It suits the enemy just as well, I
presume, that a man should give his soul for coins as for money. In
consequence he was growing more and more withdrawn, ever filling less
the part of a man--which is to be a hiding-place from the wind, a covert
from the tempest. He was more and more for himself, and thereby losing
his life. Dearly as he loved his daughter, he was, by slow fallings
away, growing ever less of a companion, less of a comfort, less of a
necessity to her, and requiring less and less of her for the good or
ease of his existence. We wrong those near us in being independent of
them. God himself would not be happy without His Son. We ought to lean
on each other, giving and receiving--not as weaklings, but as lovers.
Love is strength as well as need. Alexa was more able to live alone than
most women; therefore it was the worse for her. Too satisfied with
herself, too little uneasy when alone, she did not know that then she
was not in good enough company. She was what most would call a strong
nature, nor knew what weaknesses belong to, and grow out of, such
strength as hers.

The remoter scions of a family tree are not seldom those who make most
account of it; the school-master's daughter knew more about the Fordyces
of Potlurg, and cared more for their traditions, than any who of later
years had reaped its advantages or shared its honors. Interest in the
channel down which one has slid into the world is reasonable, and may be
elevating; with Alexa it passed beyond good, and wrought for evil. Proud
of a family with a history, and occasionally noted in the annals of the
country, she regarded herself as the superior of all with whom she had
hitherto come into relation. To the poor, to whom she was invariably and
essentially kind, she was less condescending than to such as came nearer
her own imagined standing; she was constantly aware that she belonged to
the elect of the land! Society took its revenge; the rich trades-people
looked down upon her as the school-master's daughter. Against their
arrogance her indignation buttressed her lineal with her mental
superiority. At the last the pride of family is a personal arrogance.
And now at length she was in her natural position as heiress of Potlurg!

She was religious--if one may be called religious who felt no immediate
relation to the source of her being. She felt bound to defend, so far as
she honestly could, the doctrines concerning God and His ways
transmitted by the elders of her people; to this much, and little more,
her religion toward God amounted. But she had a strong sense of
obligation to do what was right.

Her father gave her so little money to spend that she had to be very
careful with her housekeeping, and they lived in the humblest way. For
her person she troubled him as little as she could, believing him, from
the half statements and hints he gave, and his general carriage toward
life, not a little oppressed by lack of money, nor suspecting his
necessities created and his difficulties induced by himself. In this
regard it had come to be understood between them that the produce of the
poultry-yard was Alexa's own; and to some little store she had thus
gathered she mainly trusted for the requirements of her invalid. To this
her father could not object, though he did not like it; he felt what was
hers to be his more than he felt what was his to be hers.

Alexa had not learned to place value on money beyond its use, but she
was not therefore free from the service of Mammon; she looked to it as
to a power essential, not derived; she did not see it as God's creation,
but merely as an existence, thus making of a creature of God the mammon
of unrighteousness. She did not, however, cling to it, but was ready to
spend it. At the same time, had George Crawford looked less handsome or
less of a gentleman, she would not have been so ready to devote the
contents of her little secret drawer.

The discovery of her relationship to the young man waked a new feeling.
She had never had a brother, never known a cousin, and had avoided the
approach of such young men as, of inferior position in her eyes, had
sought to be friendly with her; here was one thrown helpless on her
care, with necessities enough to fill the gap between his real relation
to her, and that of the brother after whom she had sighed in vain! It
was a new and delightful sensation to have a family claim on a young
man--a claim, the material advantage of which was all on his side, the
devotion all on hers. She was invaded by a flood of tenderness toward
the man. Was he not her cousin, a gentleman, and helpless as any
new-born child? Nothing should be wanting that a strong woman could do
for a powerless man.




CHAPTER VII.


THE COUSINS.

George Crawford was in excellent health when the accident occurred, and
so when he began to recover, his restoration was rapid. The process,
however, was still long enough to compel the cousins to know more of
each other than twelve months of ordinary circumstance would have made
possible.

George, feeling neither the need, nor, therefore, the joy of the new
relationship so much as Alexa, disappointed her by the coolness of his
response to her communication of the fact; and as they were both formal,
that is, less careful as to the reasonable than as to the conventional,
they were not very ready to fall in love. Such people may learn all
about each other, and not come near enough for love to be possible
between them. Some people approximate at once, and at once decline to
love, remaining friends the rest of their lives. Others love at once;
and some take a whole married life to come near enough, and at last
love. But the reactions of need and ministration can hardly fail to
breed tenderness, and disclose the best points of character.

The cousins were both handsome, and--which was of more consequence--each
thought the other handsome. They found their religious opinions closely
coincident--nor any wonder, for they had gone for years to the same
church every Sunday, had been regularly pumped upon from the same
reservoir, and had drunk the same arguments concerning things true and
untrue.

George found that Alexa had plenty of brains, a cultivated judgment, and
some knowledge of literature; that there was no branch of science with
which she had not some little acquaintance, in which she did not take
some small interest. Her father's teaching was beyond any he could have
procured for her, and what he taught she had learned; for she had a love
of knowing, a tendency to growth, a capacity for seizing real points,
though as yet perceiving next to nothing of their relation to human life
and hope. She believed herself a judge of verse, but in truth her
knowledge of poetry was limited to its outer forms, of which she had
made good studies with her father. She had learned the _how_ before the
_what_, knew the body before the soul--could tell good binding but not
bad leather--in a word, knew verse but not poetry.

She understood nothing of music, but George did not miss that; he was
more sorry she did not know French--not for the sake of its literature,
but because of showing herself an educated woman.

Diligent in business, not fervent in spirit, she was never idle. But
there are other ways than idleness of wasting time. Alexa was
continually "improving herself," but it was a big phrase for a small
matter; she had not learned that to do the will of God is the _only_ way
to improve one's self. She would have scorned the narrowness of any one
who told her so, not understanding what the will of God means.

She found that her guest and cousin was a man of some position, and
wondered that her father should never have mentioned the relationship.
The fact was that, in a time of poverty, the school-master had made to
George's father the absurd request of a small loan without security, and
the banker had behaved as a rich relation and a banker was pretty sure
to behave.

George occupied a place of trust in the bank, and, though not yet
admitted to a full knowledge of its more important transactions, hoped
soon to be made a partner.

When his father came to Potlurg to see him the laird declined to appear,
and the banker contented himself thereafter with Alexa's bulletins.




CHAPTER VIII.


GEORGE AND THE LAIRD.

Alexa's money was nearly exhausted, and most of her chickens had been
devoured by the flourishing convalescent, but not yet would the doctor
allow him to return to business.

One night the electric condition of the atmosphere made it heavy, sultry
and unrefreshing, and George could not sleep. There came a terrible
burst of thunder; then a bannered spear of vividest lightning seemed to
lap the house in its flashing folds, and the simultaneous thunder was
mingled with the sound, as it seemed, of the fall of some part of the
building. George sat up in bed and listened. All was still. He must rise
and see what had happened, and whether any one was hurt. He might meet
Alexa, and a talk with her would be a pleasant episode in his sleepless
night. He got into his dressing-gown, and taking his stick, walked
softly from the room.

His door opened immediately on the top of the stair. He stood and
listened, but was aware of no sequel to the noise. Another flash came,
and lighted up the space around him, with its walls of many angles. When
the darkness was returned and the dazzling gone, and while the thunder
yet bellowed, he caught the glimmer of a light under the door of the
study, and made his way toward it over the worn slabs. He knocked, but
there was no answer. He pushed the door, and saw that the light came
from behind a projecting book-case. He hesitated a moment, and glanced
about him.

A little clinking sound came from somewhere. He stole nearer the source
of the light; a thief might be there. He peeped round the end of the
book-case. With his back to him the laird was kneeling before an open
chest. He had just counted a few pieces of gold, and was putting them
away. He turned over his shoulder a face deathly pale, and his eyes for
a moment stared blank. Then with a shivering smile he rose. He had a
thin-worn dressing-gown over his night-shirt, and looked a thread of a
man.

"You take me for a miser?" he said, trembling, and stood expecting an
answer.

Crawford was bewildered: what business had he there?

"I am _not_ a miser!" resumed the laird. "A man may count his money
without being a miser!"

He stood and stared, still trembling, at his guest, either too much
startled or too gentle to find fault with his intrusion.

"I beg your pardon, laird," said George. "I knocked, but receiving no
answer, feared something was wrong."

"But why are you out of bed--and you an invalid?" returned Mr. Fordyce.

"I heard a heavy fall, and feared the lightning had done some damage."

"We shall see about that in the morning, and in the meantime you had
better go to bed," said the laird.

They turned together toward the door.

"What a multitude of books, you have, Mr. Fordyce!" remarked George. "I
had not a notion of such a library in the county!"

"I have been a lover of books all my life," returned the laird. "And
they gather, they gather!" he added.

"Your love draws them," said George.

"The storm is over, I think," said the laird.

He did not tell his guest that there was scarcely a book on those
shelves not sought after by book-buyers--not one that was not worth
money in the book-market. Here and there the dulled gold of a fine
antique binding returned the gleam of the candle, but any gathering of
old law or worthless divinity would have looked much the same.

"I should like to glance over them," said George. "There must be some
valuable volumes among so many!"

"Rubbish! rubbish!" rejoined the old man, testily, almost hustling him
from the room. "I am ashamed to hear it called a library."

It seemed to Crawford, as again he lay awake in his bed, altogether a
strange incident. A man may count his money when he pleases, but not the
less must it seem odd that he should do so in the middle of the night,
and with such a storm flashing and roaring around him, apparently
unheeded. The next morning he got his cousin to talk about her father,
but drew from her nothing to cast light on what he had seen.




CHAPTER IX.

IN THE GARDEN.

Of the garden which had been the pride of many owners of the place, only
a small portion remained. It was strangely antique, haunted with a
beauty both old and wild, the sort of garden for the children of heaven
to play in when men sleep.

In a little arbor constructed by an old man who had seen the garden grow
less and less through successive generations, a tent of honeysuckle in a
cloak of sweet pease, sat George and Alexa, two highly respectable young
people, Scots of Scotland, like Jews of Judaea, well satisfied of their
own worthiness. How they found their talk interesting, I can scarce
think. I should have expected them to be driven by very dullness to
love-making; but the one was too prudent to initiate it, the other too
staid to entice it. Yet, people on the borders of love being on the
borders of poetry, they had got talking about a certain new poem,
concerning which George, having read several notices of it, had an
opinion to give.

"You should tell my father about it, George," said Alexa; "he is the
best judge I know."

She did not understand that it was a little more than the grammar of
poetry the school-master had ever given himself to understand. His best
criticism was to show phrase calling to phrase across gulfs of speech.

The little iron gate, whose hinges were almost gone with rust, creaked
and gnarred as it slowly opened to admit the approach of a young
countryman. He advanced with the long, slow, heavy step suggestive of
nailed shoes; but his hazel eye had an outlook like that of an eagle
from its eyrie, and seemed to dominate his being, originating rather
than directing its motions. He had a russet-colored face, much freckled;
hair so dark red as to be almost brown; a large, well-shaped nose; a
strong chin; and a mouth of sweetness whose smile was peculiarly its
own, having in it at once the mystery and the revelation of Andrew
Ingram. He took off his bonnet as he drew near, and held it as low as
his knee, while with something of the air of an old-fashioned courtier,
he stood waiting. His clothes, all but his coat, which was of some blue
stuff, and his Sunday one, were of a large-ribbed corduroy. For a moment
no one spoke. He colored a little, but kept silent, his eyes on the
lady.

"Good-morning, Andrew!" she said at length. "There was something, I
forget what, you were to call about! Remind me--will you?"

"I did not come before, ma'am, because I knew you were occupied. And
even now it does not greatly matter."

"Oh, I remember!--the poem! I am very sorry, but I had so much to think
of that it went quite out of my mind."

An expression half amused, half shy, without trace of mortification, for
an instant shadowed the young man's face.

"I wish you would let me have the lines again, ma'am! Indeed I should be
obliged to you!" he said.

"Well, I confess they might first be improved! I read them one evening
to my father, and he agreed with me that two or three of them were not
quite rhythmical. But he said it was a fair attempt, and for a
working-man very creditable."

What Andrew was thinking, it would have been hard to gather from his
smile; but I believe it was that, if he had himself read the verses
aloud, the laird would have found no fault with their rhythm. His
carriage seemed more that of a patient, respectful amusement than
anything else.

Alexa rose, but resumed her seat, saying:

"As the poem is a religious one, there can be no harm in handing it you
on Sunday after church!--that is," she added, meaningly, "if you will be
there!"

"Give it to Dawtie, if you please, ma'am," replied Andrew.

"Ah!" rebuked Miss Fordyce, in a tone almost of rebuke.

"I seldom go to church, ma'am," said Andrew, reddening a little, but
losing no sweetness from his smile.

"I understand as much! It is very wrong! _Why_ don't you?"

Andrew was silent.

"I wish you to tell me," persisted Alexa, with a peremptoriness which
came of the school-master. She had known him too as a pupil of her
father's!

"If you will have it, ma'am, I not only learn nothing from Mr. Smith,
but I think much that he says is not true."

"Still you ought to go for the sake of example."

"Do wrong to make other people follow my example? Can that be to do
right?"

"_Wrong_ to go to church! What _do_ you mean? Wrong to pray with your
fellow-men?"

"Perhaps the hour may come, ma'am, when I shall be able to pray with my
fellow-men, even though the words they use seem addressed to a tyrant,
not to the Father of Jesus Christ. But at present I can not. I might
endure to hear Mr. Smith say evil things concerning God, but the evil
things he says to God make me quite unable to pray, and I feel like a
hypocrite!"

"Whatever you may think of Mr. Smith's doctrines, it is presumptuous to
set yourself up as too good to go to church."

"I most bear the reproach, ma'am. I can not consent to be a hypocrite in
order to avoid being called one!"

Either Miss Fordyce had no answer to this, or did not choose to give
any. She was not troubled that Andrew would not go to church, but
offended at the unhesitating decision with which he set her counsel
aside. Andrew made her a respectful bow, turned away, put on his bonnet,
which he had held in his hand all the time, and passed through the
garden gate.

"Who is the fellow?" asked George, partaking sympathetically of his
companion's annoyance.

"He is Andrew Ingram, the son of a small farmer, one of my father's
tenants. He and his brother work with their father on the farm. They are
quite respectable people. Andrew is conceited, but has his good points.
He imagines himself a poet, and indeed his work has merit. The worst of
him is that he sets up for being better than other people."

"Not an unusual fault with the self-educated!"

"He does go on educating himself, I believe, but he had a good start to
begin with. My father took much pains with him at school. He helped to
carry you here after the accident--and would have taken you to his
father's if I would have let him."

George cast on her a look of gratitude.

"Thank you for keeping me," he said. "But I wish I had taken some notice
of his kindness!"




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
immediately they turned to him again.

Sandy knew the pictures in the "Pilgrim's Progress," and Andrew had read
it through more than once: when they saw the man had a book in his hand,
open, and heard him, standing there in the sun, begin to read from it,
they thought it must be Christian, waiting for Evangelist to come to
him. It is impossible to say how much is fact and how much imagination
in what children recollect; the one must almost always supplement the
other; but they were quite sure that the words he read were these: "And
lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the world!" The next thing
they remembered was their walking slowly down the hill in the red light,
and all at once waking up to the fact that the man was gone, they did
not know when or where. But their arms were round each other's necks,
and they were full of a strange awe. Then Andrew saw something red on
Sandy's face.

"Eh, Sandy!" he cried, "it's bluid!" and burst into tears.

It was his own blood, not Sandy's!--the discovery of which fact relieved
Andrew, and did not so greatly discompose Sandy, who was less sensitive.

They began at length to speculate on what had happened. One thing was
clear: it was because they were fighting that the man had come; but it
was not so clear who the man was. He could not be Christian, because
Christian went over the river! Andrew suggested it might have been
Evangelist, for he seemed to be always about. Sandy added, as his
contribution to the idea, that he might have picked up Christian's
bundle and been carrying it home to his wife. They came, however, to the
conclusion, by no ratiocination, I think, but by a conviction which the
idea itself brought with it, that the stranger was the Lord himself, and
that the pack on His back was their sins, which He was carrying away to
throw out of the world.

"Eh, wasna it fearfu' He should come by jist when we was fechtin'!" said
Sandy.

"Eh, na! it was a fine thing that! We micht hae been at it yet! But we
winna noo!--will we ever, Sandy?"

"Na, that we winna!"

"For," continued Andrew, "He said 'Lo, I am with you always!' And
suppose He werena, we daurna be that ahint His back we would na be afore
His face!"

"Do you railly think it _was_ Him, Andrew?"

"Weel," replied Andrew, "gien the deevil be goin' aboot like a roarin'
lion, seekin' whom he may devoor, as father says, it's no likely _He_
would na be goin' aboot as weel, seekin' to haud him aff o' 's!"

"Ay!" said Sandy.

"And noo," said the elder, "what are we to do?"

For Andrew, whom both father and mother judged the dreamiest of mortals,
was in reality the most practical being in the whole parish--so
practical that by and by people mocked him for a poet and a heretic,
because he did the things which they said they believed. Most
unpractical must every man appear who genuinely believes in the things
that are unseen. The man called practical by the men of this world is he
who busies himself building his house on the sand, while he does not
even bespeak a lodging in the inevitable beyond.

"What are we to do?" said Andrew. "If the Lord is going about like that,
looking after us, we've surely got something to do looking after _Him!_"

There was no help in Sandy; and it was well that, with the reticence of
children, neither thought of laying the case before their parents; the
traditions of the elders would have ill agreed with the doctrine they
were now under! Suddenly it came into Andrew's mind that the book they
read at _worship_ to which he had never listened, told all about Jesus.

He began at the beginning, and grew so interested in the stories that he
forgot why he had begun to read it One day, however, as he was telling
Sandy about Jacob--"What a shame!" said Sandy; and Andrew's mind
suddenly opened to the fact that he had got nothing yet out of the book.
He threw it from him, echoing Sandy's words, "What's a shame!"--not of
Jacob's behavior, but of the Bible's, which had all this time told them
nothing about the man that was going up and down the world, gathering up
their sins, and carrying them away in His pack! But it dawned upon him
that it was the New Testament that told about Jesus Christ, and they
turned to that. Here also I say it was well they asked no advice, for
they would probably have been directed to the Epistle to the Romans,
with explanations yet more foreign to the heart of Paul than false to
his Greek. They began to read the story of Jesus as told by his friend
Matthew, and when they had ended it, went on to the gospel according to
Mark. But they had not read far when Sandy cried out:

"Eh, Andrew, it's a' the same thing ower again!"

"No a'thegither," answered Andrew. "We'll gang on, and see!"

Andrew came to the conclusion that it was so far the same that he would
rather go back and read the other again, for the sake of some particular
things he wanted to make sure about So the second time they read St.
Matthew, and came to these words:

"If two of you shall agree on earth as touching anything that they shall
ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven."

"There's twa o' 's here!" cried Andrew, laying down the book. "Lat's try
't!"

"Try what?" said Sandy.

His brother read the passage again.

"Lat the twa o' 's speir Him for something!" concluded Andrew. "What
wull't be?"

"I won'er if it means only ance, or may be three times, like 'The Three
Wishes!'" suggested Sandy, who, like most Christians, would rather have
a talk about it than do what he was told.

"We _might_ ask for what would not be good for us!" returned Andrew.

"And make fools of ourselves!" assented Sandy, with "The Three Wishes"
in his mind.

"Do you think He would give it us then?"

"I don't know."

"But," pursued Andrew, "if we were so foolish as that old man and woman,
it would be better to find it out, and begin to grow wise!--I'll tell
you what we'll do: we'll make it our first wish to know what's best to
ask for; and then we can go on asking!"

"Yes, yes; let us!"

"I fancy we'll have as many wishes as we like! Doon upo' yer knees,
Sandy!"

They knelt together.

I fear there are not a few to say, "How ill-instructed the poor children
were!--actually mingling the gospel and the fairy tales!" "Happy
children," say I, "who could blunder into the very heart of the will of
God concerning them, and _do_ the thing at once that the Lord taught
them, using the common sense which God had given and the fairy tale
nourished!" The Lord of the promise is the Lord of all true parables and
all good fairy tales.

Andrew prayed:

"Oh, Lord, tell Sandy and me what to ask for. We're unanimous."

They got up from their knees. They had said what they had to say: why
say more!

They felt rather dull. Nothing came to them. The prayer was prayed, and
they could not make the answer! There was no use in reading more! They
put the Bible away in a rough box where they kept it among
rose-leaves--ignorant priests of the lovely mystery of Him who was with
them always--and without a word went each his own way, not happy, for
were they not leaving Him under the elder-tree, lonely and shadowy,
where it was their custom to meet! Alas for those who must go to church
to find Him, or who can not pray unless in their closet!

They wandered about disconsolate, at school and at home, the rest of the
day--at least Andrew did; Sandy had Andrew to lean upon! Andrew had Him
who was with them always, but He seemed at the other end of the world.
They had prayed, and there was no more of it!

In the evening, while yet it was light, Andrew went alone to the
elder-tree, took the Bible from its humble shrine, and began turning
over its leaves.

"And why call ye me, Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" He
read, and sunk deep in thought.

This is the way his thoughts went:

"What things? What had He been saying? Let me look and see what He says,
that I may begin to do it!"

He read all the chapter, and found it full of _tellings_. When he read
it before he had not thought of doing one of the things He said, for as
plainly as He told him! He had not once thought He had any concern in
the matter!

"I see!" he said; "we must begin at once to do what He tells us!"

He ran to find his brother.

"I've got it!" he cried: "I've got it!"

"What?"

"What we've got to do"

"And what is it?"

"Just what He tells us."

"We were doing that," said Sandy, "when we prayed Him to tell us what to
pray for!"

"So we were! That's grand!"

"Then haven't we got to pray for anything more?"

"We'll soon find out; but first we must look for something to do!"

They began at once to search for things the Lord told them to do. And of
all they found, the plainest and easiest was: "Whosoever shall smite
thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also." This needed no
explanation! it was as clear as the day to both of them!

The very next morning the school-master, who, though of a gentle
disposition, was irritable, taking Andrew for the offender in a certain
breach of discipline, gave him a smart box on the ear. Andrew, as
readily as if it had been instinctively, turned to him the other cheek.

An angry man is an evil interpreter of holy things, and Mr. Fordyce took
the action for one of rudest mockery, nor thought of the higher master
therein mocked if it were mockery: he struck the offender a yet smarter
blow. Andrew stood for a minute like one dazed; but the red on his face
was not that of anger; he was perplexed as to whether he ought now to
turn the former cheek again to the striker. Uncertain, he turned away,
and went to his work.

Stops a reader here to say: "But do you really mean to tell us we ought
to take the words literally as Andrew did?" I answer: "When you have
earned the right to understand, you will not need to ask me. To explain
what the Lord means to one who is not obedient, is the work of no man
who knows his work."

It is but fair to say for the school-master that, when he found he had
mistaken, he tried to make up to the boy for it--not by confessing
himself wrong--who could expect that of only a school-master?--but by
being kinder to him than before. Through this he came to like him, and
would teach him things out of the usual way--such as how to make
different kinds of verse.

By and by Andrew and Sandy had a quarrel. Suddenly Andrew came to
himself, and cried:

"Sandy! Sandy! He says we're to agree!"

"Does He?"

"He says we're to love one another, and we canna do that if we dinna
agree!"

There came a pause.

"Perhaps after all you were in the right, Sandy!" said Andrew.

"I was just going to say that; when I think about it, perhaps I wasn't
so much in the right as I thought I was!"

"It can't matter much which was in the right, when we were both in the
wrong!" said Andrew. "Let's ask Him to keep us from caring which is in
the right, and make us both try to be in the right We don't often
differ about what we are to ask for, Sandy!"

"No, we don't."

"It's me to take care of you, Sandy!"

"And me to take care of you, Andrew!"

Here was the nucleus of a church!--two stones laid on the
foundation-stone.

"Luik here, Sandy!" said Andrew; "we maun hae anither, an' syne there'll
be four o' 's!"

"How's that?" asked Sandy.

"I won'er 'at we never noticed it afore! Here's what He says: 'For where
two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst
of them.' In that way, wharever He micht be walkin' aboot, we could aye
get Him! He likes twa, an' His Father 'ill hear the 'greed prayer, but
He likes three better--an' that stan's to rizzon, for three maun be
better 'n twa! First ane maun lo'e Him; an' syne twa can lo'e Him
better, because ilk ane is helpit by the ither, an' lo'es Him the mair
that He lo'es the ither ane! An' syne comes the third, and there's mair
an' mair throwin' o' lichts, and there's the Lord himsel' i' the mids'
o' them! Three maks a better mids' than twa!"

Sandy could not follow the reasoning quite, but he had his own way of
understanding.

"It's jist like the story o' Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego!" he said.
"There was three o' them, an' sae He made four! Eh, jist think o' Him
bein' wi' 's His verra sel'!"

Here now was a church indeed: the idea of a third was the very principle
of growth! They would meet together and say: "Oh, Father of Jesus
Christ, help us to be good like Jesus;" and then Jesus himself would
make one of them, and worship the Father with them!

The next thing, as a matter of course, was to look about for a third.

"Dawtie!" cried both at once.

Dawtie was the child of a cotter pair, who had an acre or two of their
father's farm, and helped him with it. Her real name has not reached me;
_Dawtie_ means _darling_, and is a common term of endearment--derived,
Jamieson suggests, from the Gaelic _dalt_, signifying _a foster-child_.
Dawtie was a dark-haired, laughing little darling, with shy, merry
manners, and the whitest teeth, full of fun, but solemn in an instant.
Her small feet were bare and black--except on Saturday nights and Sunday
mornings--but full of expression, and perhaps really cleaner, from their
familiarity with the sweet all-cleansing air, than such as hide the
day-long in socks and shoes.

Dawtie's specialty was love of the creatures. She had an undoubting
conviction that every one of them with which she came in contact
understood and loved her. She was the champion of the oppressed, without
knowing it. Every individual necessity stood on its own merits, and came
to her fresh and sole, as if she had forgotten all that went before it.
Like some boys she had her pockets as well as her hands at the service
of live things; but unlike any boy, she had in her love no admixture of
natural history; it was not interest in animals with her, but an
individual love to the individual animal, whatever it might be, that
presented itself to the love-power in her.

It may seem strange that there should be three such children together.
But their fathers and mothers had for generations been poor--which was a
great advantage, as may be seen in the world by him who has eyes to see,
and heard in the parable of the rich man by him who has ears to hear.
Also they were God-fearing, which was a far greater advantage, and made
them honorable; for they would have scorned things that most Christians
will do. Dawtie's father had a rarely keen instinct for what is mean,
and that not in the way of abhorrence in others, but of avoidance in
himself. To shades and _nuances_ of selfishness, which men of high
repute and comfortable conscience would neither be surprised to find in
their neighbors nor annoyed to find in themselves, he would give no
quarter. Along with Andrew's father, he had, in childhood and youth,
been under the influence of a simple-hearted pastor, whom the wise and
prudent laughed at as one who could not take care of himself, incapable
of seeing that, like his master, he laid down his life that he might
take it again. He left God to look after him, that he might be free to
look after God.

Little Dawtie had learned her catechism, but, thank God, had never
thought about it or attempted to understand it--good negative
preparation for becoming, in a few years more, able to understand the
New Testament with the heart of a babe.

The brothers had not long to search before they came upon her, where she
sat on the ground at the door of the turf-built cottage, feeding a
chicken with oatmeal paste.

"What are you doin', Dawtie?" they asked.

"I'm tryin'," she answered, without looking up, "to haud the life i' the
chuckie."

"What's the matter wi' 't?"

"Naething but the want o' a mither."

"Is the mither o' 't deid?"

"Na, she's alive eneuch, but she has ower mony bairns to hap them a';
her wings winna cower them, and she drives this ane awa', and winna lat
it come near her."

"Sic a cruel mither!"

"Na, she's no' cruel. She only wants to gar't come to me! She kenned I
would tak it. Na, na; Flappy's a guid mither! I ken her weel; she's ane
o' our ain! She kens me, or she would hae keepit the puir thing, and
done her best wi' her."

"I ken somebody," said Andrew, "that would fain spread oot wings, like a
great big hen, ower a' the bairns, you an' me an' a', Dawtie!"

"That's my mither!" cried Dawtie, looking up, and showing her white
teeth.

"Na, it's a man," said Sandy.

"It's my father, than!"

"Na, it's no. Would ye like to see Him?"

"Na, I'm no carin'."

"Sandy and me's gaein' to see Him some day."

"I'll gang wi' ye. But I maun tak' my chuckie!"

She looked down where she had set the little bird on the ground; it had
hobbled away and she could not see it!

"Eh," she cried, starting up, "ye made me forget my chuckie wi' yer
questions! It's mither 'ill peck it!"

She darted off, and forsook the tale of the Son of Man to look after her
chicken. But presently she returned with it in her hands.

"Tell awa'," she said, resuming her seat "What do they ca' Him?"

"They ca' Him the Father o' Jesus Christ."

"I'll gang wi' ye," she answered.

So the church was increased by a whole half, and the fraction of a
chicken--type of the groaning creation, waiting for the sonship.

The three gathered to read and pray. And almost always there was some
creature with them in the arms or hands of Dawtie. And if the Lord was
not there, too, then are we Christians most miserable, for we see a
glory beyond all that man could dream, and it is but a dream! Whose
dream?

They went on at other times with the usual employments and games of
children. But there was this difference between them and most grown
Christians, that when anything roused thought or question they at once
referred it to the word of Jesus, and having discovered His will, made
haste to do it. It naturally followed that, seeing He gives the spirit
to them that obey Him, they grew rapidly in the modes of their Master,
learning to look at things as He looked at them, to think of them as He
thought of them, to value what He valued, and despise what He
despised--all in simplest order of divine development, in uttermost
accord with highest reason, the whole turning on the primary and
continuous effort to obey.

It was long before they came to have any regular time of meeting. Andrew
always took the initiative in assembling the church. When he called they
came together. Then he would read from the story, and communicate any
discovery he had made concerning what Jesus would have them do. Next,
they would consult and settle what they should ask for, and one of them,
generally Andrew, but sometimes Sandy, would pray. They made no formal
utterance, but simply asked for what they needed. Here are some
specimens of their petitions:

"Oh, Lord, Sandy canna for the life o' 'im un'erstan' the rule o' three;
please, Lord, help him."

"Oh, Lord, I dinna ken onything I want the day; please gi'e us what we
need, an' what ye want us to hae, wi'oot our askin' it."

"Lord, help us; we're ill-natnr'd (_bad-tempered_) the day; an' ye wadna
hae us that"

"Lord, Dawtie's mither has a sair heid (_headache_); mak her better,
gien ye please."

When their prayers were ended Andrew would say: "Sandy, have you found
anything He says?" and there-upon, if he had, Sandy would speak. Dawtie
never said a word, but sat and listened with her big eyes, generally
stroking some creature in her lap.

Surely the part of every superior is to help the life in the lower!

Once the question arose, in their assembly of three and a bird, whose
leg Dawtie had put in splints, what became of the creatures when they
died. They concluded that the sparrow that God cared for must be worth
caring for; and they could not believe He had made it to last only such
a little while as its life in this world. Thereupon they agreed to ask
the Lord that, when they died, they might have again a certain dog, an
ugly little white mongrel, of which they had been very fond. All their
days thereafter they were, I believe, more or less consciously, looking
forward to the fulfillment of this petition. For their hope strengthened
with the growth of their ideal; and when they had to give up any belief
it was to take a better in its place.

They yielded at length the notion that the peddler was Jesus Christ, but
they never ceased to believe that He was God's messenger, or that the
Lord was with them always. They would not insist that He was walking
about on the earth, but to the end of their days they cherished the
uncertain hope that they might, even without knowing it, look upon the
face of the Lord in that of some stranger passing in the street, or
mingling in a crowd, or seated in a church; for they knew that all the
shapes of man belong to Him, and that, after He rose from the dead there
were several occasions on which He did not at first look like Himself to
those to whom He appeared.

The child-like, the essential, the divine notion of serving, with their
every-day will and being, the will of the living One, who lived for them
that they might live, as once He had died for them that they might die,
ripened in them to a Christianity that saw God everywhere, saw that
everything had to be done as God would have it done, and that nothing
but injustice had to be forsaken to please Him. They were under no
influence of what has been so well called _other-worldliness_, for they
saw this world as much God's as that, saw that its work has to be done
divinely, that it is the beginning of the world to come. It was to them
all one world, with God in it, all in all; therefore the best work for
the other world was the work of this world.

Such was the boyhood of that Andrew Ingram whom Miss Fordyce now
reproved for not setting the good example of going to church.

The common sense of the children rapidly developed, for there is no
teacher like obedience, and no obstruction like its postponement. When
in after years their mothers came at length to understand that obedience
had been so long the foundation of their life, it explained to them many
things that had seemed strange, and brought them to reproach themselves
that they should have seemed strange.

It ought not to be overlooked that the whole thing was wrought in the
children without directed influence of kindred or any neighbor. They
imitated none. The galvanism of imitation is not the life of the spirit;
the use of form where love is not is killing. And if any one is desirous
of spreading the truth let him apply himself, like these children, to
the doing of it; not obeying the truth, he is doubly a liar pretending
to teach it; if he obeys it already, let him obey it more. It is life
that awakes life. All form of persuasion is empty except in vital
association with regnant obedience. Talking and not doing is dry rot.

Cottage children are sometimes more fastidious about their food than
children that have a greater variety; they have a more delicate
perception and discrimination in the simple dishes on which they thrive;
much choice, though little refusal. Andrew had a great dislike to lumps
in his porridge; and one day the mother having been less careful than
usual in cooking it, he made a wry face at the first spoonful.

"Andrew," said Sandy, "take no thought for what ye eat."

It was a wrong interpretation, but a righteous use of the word. Happy
the soul that mistakes the letter only to get at the spirit!

Andrew's face smoothed itself, began to clear up, and broke at last into
a sunny smile. He said nothing, but eat his full share of the porridge
without a frown. This was practical religion; and if any one judge it
not worth telling, I count his philosophy worthless beside it. Such a
doer knows more than such a reader will ever know, except he take
precisely the same way to learn. The children of God do what He would
have them do, and are taught of Him.

A report at length reached the pastor, now an old man, of ripe heart and
true insight, that certain children in his parish "played at the Lord's
Supper." He was shocked, and went to their parents. They knew nothing of
the matter. The three children were sought, and the pastor had a private
interview with them. From it he reappeared with a solemn, pale face, and
silent tongue. They asked him the result of his inquiry. He answered
that he was not prepared to interfere: as he was talking with them, the
warning came that there were necks and mill-stones. The next Sunday he
preached a sermon from the text, "Out of the month of babes and
sucklings Thou hast perfected praise."

The fathers and mothers made inquisition, and found no desire to
conceal. Wisely or not, they forbade the observance. It cost Andrew much
thought whether he was justified in obeying them; but he saw that right
and wrong in itself was not concerned, and that the Lord would have them
obey their parents.

It was necessary to tell so much of the previous history of Andrew, lest
what remains to be told should perhaps be unintelligible or seem
incredible without it. A character like his can not be formed in a day;
it must early begin to grow.

The bond thus bound between the children, altering in form as they grew,
was never severed; nor was the lower creation ever cut off from its
share in the petitions of any one of them. When they ceased to assemble
as a community, they continued to act on the same live principles.

Gladly as their parents would have sent them to college, Andrew and
Sandy had to leave school only to work on the farm. But they carried
their studies on from the point they had reached. When they could not
get further without help, they sought and found it. For a year or two
they went in the winter to an evening school; but it took so much time
to go and come that they found they could make more progress by working
at home. What help they sought went a long way, and what they learned,
they knew.

When the day's work was over, and the evening meal, they went to the
room their own hands had made convenient for study as well as sleep, and
there resumed the labor they had dropped the night before. Together they
read Greek and mathematics, but Andrew worked mainly in literature,
Sandy in mechanics. On Saturdays, Sandy generally wrought at some model,
while Andrew read to him. On Sundays, they always, for an hour or two,
read the Bible together.

The brothers were not a little amused with Miss Fordyce's patronage of
Andrew; but they had now been too long endeavoring to bring into
subjection the sense of personal importance, to take offense at it.

Dawtie had gone into service, and they seldom saw her except when she
came home for a day at the term. She was a grown woman now, but the same
loving child as before. She counted the brothers her superiors, just as
they counted the laird and his daughter their superiors. But whereas
Alexa claimed the homage, Dawtie yielded where was no thought of
claiming it. The brothers regarded her as their sister. That she was
poorer than they, only made them the more watchful over her, and if
possible the more respectful to her. So she had a rich return for her
care of the chickens and kittens and puppies.




CHAPTER XI.


GEORGE AND ANDREW.

George went home the next day; and the following week sent Andrew a
note, explaining that when he saw him he did not know his obligation to
him, and expressing the hope that, when next in town, he would call upon
him. This was hardly well, being condescension to a superior. Perhaps
the worst evil in the sense of social superiority is the vile fancy that
it alters human relation. George did not feel bound to make the same
acknowledgment of obligation to one in humble position as to one in the
same golden rank with himself! It says ill for social distinction, if,
for its preservation, such an immoral difference be essential. But
Andrew was not one to dwell upon his rights. He thought it friendly of
Mr. Crawford to ask him to call; therefore, although he had little
desire to make his acquaintance, and grudged the loss of time, to no man
so precious as to him who has a pursuit in addition to a calling,
Andrew, far stronger in courtesy than the man who invited him, took the
first Saturday afternoon to go and see him.

Mr. Crawford the elder lived in some style, and his door was opened by a
servant whose blatant adornment filled Andrew with friendly pity: no man
would submit to be dressed like that, he judged, except from necessity.
The reflection sprung from no foolish and degrading contempt for
household service. It is true Andrew thought no labor so manly as that
in the earth, out of which grows everything that makes the loveliness or
use of Nature; for by it he came in contact with the primaries of human
life, and was God's fellow laborer, a helper in the work of the
universe, knowing the ways of it and living in them; but not the less
would he have done any service, and that cheerfully, which his own need
or that of others might have required of him. The colors of a parrot,
however, were not fit for a son of man, and hence his look of sympathy.
His regard was met only by a glance of plain contempt, as the lackey,
moved by the same spirit as his master, left him standing in the
hall--to return presently, and show him into the library--a room of
mahogany, red morocco, and yellow calf, where George sat. He rose, and
shook hands with him.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Ingram," he said. "When I wrote I had but
just learned how much I was indebted to you."

"I understand what you must mean," returned Andrew, "but it was scarce
worth alluding to. Miss Fordyce had the better claim to serve you!"

"You call it nothing to carry a man of my size over a mile of heather!"

"I had help," answered Andrew; "and but for the broken leg," he added,
with a laugh, "I could have carried you well enough alone."

There came a pause, for George did not know what next to do with the
farmer fellow. So the latter spoke again, being unembarrassed.

"You have a grand library, Mr. Crawford! It must be fine to sit among so
many books! It's just like a wine-merchant's cellars--only here you can
open and drink, and leave the bottles as full as before!"

"A good simile, Mr. Ingram!" replied George. "You must come and dine
with me, and we'll open another sort of bottle!"

"You must excuse me there, sir! I have no time for that sort of bottle."

"I understand you read a great deal?"

"Weather permitting," returned Andrew.

"I should have thought if anything was independent of the weather, it
must be reading!"

"Not a farmer's reading, sir. To him the weather is the Word of God,
telling him whether to work or read."

George was silent. To him the Word of God was the Bible!

"But you must read a great deal yourself, sir!" resumed Andrew, casting
a glance round the room.

"The books are my father's!" said George.

He did not mention that his own reading came all in the library-cart,
except when he wanted some special information; for George was "a
practical man!" He read his Bible to prepare for his class in the
Sunday-school, and his Shakespeare when he was going to see one of his
plays acted. He would make the best of both worlds by paying due
attention to both! He was religious, but liberal.

His father was a banker, an elder of the kirk, well reputed in and
beyond his circle. He gave to many charities, and largely to educational
schemes. His religion was to hold by the traditions of the elders, and
keep himself respectable in the eyes of money-dealers. He went to church
regularly, and always asked God's blessing on his food, as if it were a
kind of general sauce. He never prayed God to make him love his
neighbor, or help him to be an honest man. He "had worship" every
morning, no doubt; but only a Nonentity like his God could care for such
prayers as his. George rejected his father's theology as false in logic
and cruel in character: George knew just enough of God to be guilty of
neglecting Him.

"When I am out all day, I can do with less reading; for then I have the
'book of knowledge fair,'" said Andrew, quoting Milton. "It does not
take _all_ one's attention to drive a straight furrow or keep the harrow
on the edge of the last bout!"

"You don't mean you can read your Bible as you hold the plow!" said
George.

"No, sir," answered Andrew, amused. "A body could not well manage a book
between the stilts of the plow. The Bible will keep till you get home; a
little of it goes a long way. But Paul counted the book of creation
enough to make the heathen to blame for not minding it. Never a wind
wakes of a sudden, but it talks to me about God. And is not the sunlight
the same that came out of the body of Jesus at His transfiguration?"

"You seem to have some rather peculiar ideas of your own, Mr. Ingram!"

"Perhaps, sir! For a man to have no ideas of his own, is much the same
as to have no ideas at all. A man can not have the ideas of another man,
any more than he can have another man's soul, or another man's body!"

"That is dangerous doctrine."

"Perhaps we are not talking about the same thing! I mean by _ideas_,
what a man orders his life by."

"Your ideas may be wrong!"

"The All-wise is my judge."

"So much the worse, if you are in the wrong!"

"It is the only good, whether I be in the right or the wrong. Would I
have my mistakes overlooked? What judge would I desire but the Judge of
all the earth! Shall He not do right? And will He not set me right?"

"That is a most dangerous confidence!"

"It would be if there were any other judge. But it will be neither the
Church nor the world that will sit on the great white throne. He who
sits there will not ask: 'Did you go to church?' or 'Did you believe in
this or that?' but' Did you do what I told you?'"

"And what will you say to that, Mr. Ingram?"

"I will say: 'Lord, Thou knowest!"

The answer checked George a little.

"Suppose He should say you did not, what would you answer?"

"I would say: 'Lord, send me where I may learn.'"

"And if He should say: 'That is what I sent you into the world for, and
you have not done it!' what would you say then?"

"I should hold my peace."

"You do what He tells you then?"

"I try."

"Does He not say: 'Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together?'"

"No, sir."

"No?"

"Somebody says something like it in the Epistle to the Hebrews."

"And isn't that the same?"

"The Man who wrote it would be indignant at your saying so! Tell me, Mr.
Crawford, what makes a gathering a Church?"

"It would take me some time to arrange my ideas before I could answer
you."

"Is it not the presence of Christ that makes an assembly a Church?"

"Well?"

"Does He not say that where two or three are met in His name, there is
He in the midst of them?"

"Yes."

"Then thus far I will justify myself to you, that, if I do not go to
what you call _church_, I yet often make one of a company met in His
name."

"He does not limit the company to two or three."

"Assuredly not. But if I find I get more help and strength with a
certain few, why should I go with a multitude to get less? Will you draw
another line than the Master's? Why should it be more sacred to worship
with five hundred or five thousand than with three? If He is in the
midst of them, they can not be wrong gathered!"

"It _looks_ as if you thought yourselves better than everybody else!"

"If it were so, then certainly He would not be _one_ of the gathering!"

"How are you to know that He is in the midst of you?"

"If we are not keeping His commandments, He is not. But His presence can
not be _proved_; it can only be known. If He meets us, it is not
necessary to the joy of His presence that we should be able to prove
that He does meet us! If a man has the company of the Lord, he will care
little whether another does or does not believe that he has."

"Your way is against the peace of the Church! It fosters division."

"Did the Lord come to send peace on the earth? My way, as you call it,
would make division, but division between those who call themselves His
and those who are His. It would bring together those that love Him.
Company would merge with company that they might look on the Lord
together. I don't believe Jesus cares much for what is called the
visible Church; but He cares with His very Godhead for those that do as
He tells them; they are His Father's friends; they are His elect by whom
He will save the world. It is by those who obey, and by their obedience,
that He will save those who do not obey, that is, will bring them to
obey. It is one by one the world will pass to His side. There is no
saving in the lump. If a thousand be converted at once, it is every
single lonely man that is converted."

"You would make a slow process of it!"

"If slow, yet faster than any other. All God's processes are slow. How
many years has the world existed, do you imagine, sir?"

"I don't know. Geologists say hundreds and hundreds of thousands."

"And how many is it since Christ came?"

"Toward two thousand."

"Then we are but in the morning of Christianity! There is plenty of
time. The day is before us."

"Dangerous doctrine for the sinner!"

"Why? Time is plentiful for his misery, if he will not repent; plentiful
for the mercy of God that would lead him to repentance. There is plenty
of time for labor and hope; none for indifference and delay. God _will_
have his creatures good. They can not escape Him."

"Then a man may put off repentance as long as he pleases!"

"Certainly he may--at least as long as he can--but it is a fearful thing
to try issues with God."

"I can hardly say I understand you."

"Mr. Crawford, you have questioned me in the way of kindly anxiety and
reproof; that has given me the right to question you. Tell me, do you
admit we are bound to do what our Lord requires?"

"Of course. How could any Christian man do otherwise?"

"Yet a man may say: 'Lord, Lord,' and be cast out! It is one thing to
say we are bound to do what the Lord tells us, and another to do what He
tells us! He says: 'Seek ye _first_ the kingdom of God and His
righteousness:' Mr. Crawford, are you seeking the kingdom of God
_first_, or are you seeking money first?"

"We are sent into the world to make our living."

"Sent into the world, we have to seek our living; we are not sent into
the world to seek our living, but to seek the kingdom and righteousness
of God. And to seek a living is very different from seeking a fortune!"

"If you, Mr. Ingram, had a little wholesome ambition, you would be less
given to judging your neighbors."

Andrew held his peace, and George concluded he had had the best of the
argument--which was all he wanted; of the truth concerned he did not see
enough to care about it Andrew, perceiving no good was to be done, was
willing to appear defeated; he did not value any victory but the victory
of the truth, and George was not yet capable of being conquered by the
truth.

"No!" resumed he, "we must avoid personalities. There are certain things
all respectable people have agreed to regard as right: he is a
presumptuous man who refuses to regard them. Reflect on it, Mr. Ingram."

The curious smile hovered about the lip of the plow-man; when things to
say did not come to him, he went nowhere to fetch them. Almost in
childhood he had learned that, when one is required to meet the lie,
words are given him; when they are not, silence is better. A man who
does not love the truth, but disputes for victory, is the swine before
whom pearls must not be cast. Andrew's smile meant that it had been a
waste of his time to call upon Mr. Crawford. But he did not blame
himself, for he had come out of pure friendliness. He would have risen
at once, but feared to seem offended. Crawford, therefore, with the
rudeness of a superior, himself rose, saying:

"Is there anything I can do for you, Mr. Ingram?"

"The only thing one man can do for another is to be at one with him,"
answered Andrew, rising.

"Ah, you are a socialist! That accounts for much!" said George.

"Tell me this," returned Andrew, looking him in the eyes: "Did Jesus
ever ask of His Father anything His Father would not give Him?"

"Not that I remember," answered George, fearing a theological trap.

"He said once: 'I pray for them which shall believe in Me, that they all
may be one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also many
be one in us!' No man can be one with another, who is not one with
Christ"

As he left the house, a carriage drove up, in which was Mr. Crawford the
elder, home from a meeting of directors, at which a dividend had been
agreed upon--to be paid from the capital, in preparation for another
issue of shares.

Andrew walked home a little bewildered. "How is it," he said to himself,
"that so many who would be terrified at the idea of not being
Christians, and are horrified at any man who does not believe there is a
God, are yet absolutely indifferent to what their Lord tells them to do
if they would be His disciples? But may not I be in like case without
knowing it? Do I meet God in my geometry? When I so much enjoy my
Euclid, is it always God geometrizing to me? Do I feel talking with God
every time I dwell upon any fact of his world of lines and circles and
angles? Is it God with me, every time that the joy of life, of a wind or
a sky or a lovely phrase, flashes through me? Oh, my God," he broke out
in speechless prayer as he walked--and those that passed said to
themselves he was mad; how, in such a world, could any but a madman wear
a face of joy! "Oh, my God, Thou art all in all, and I have everything!
The world is mine because it is Thine! I thank Thee, my God, that Thou
hast lifted me up to see whence I came, to know to whom I belong, to
know who is my Father, and makes me His heir! I am Thine, infinitely
more than mine own; and Thou art mine as Thou art Christ's!"

He knew his Father in the same way that Jesus Christ knows His Father.
He was at home in the universe, neither lonely, nor out-of-doors, nor
afraid.




CHAPTER XII.

THE CRAWFORDS.


Through strong striving to secure his life, Mr. Crawford lost it--both
in God's sense of loss and his own. He narrowly escaped being put in
prison, died instead, and was put into God's prison to pay the uttermost
farthing. But he had been such a good Christian that his
fellow-Christians mourned over his failure and his death, not over his
dishonesty! For did they not know that if, by more dishonesty, he could
have managed to recover his footing, he would have paid everything? One
injunction only he obeyed--he provided for his own; of all the widows
concerned in his bank, his widow alone was secured from want; and she,
like a dutiful wife, took care that his righteous intention should be
righteously carried out; not a penny would she give up to the paupers
her husband had made.

The downfall of the house of cards took place a few months after
George's return to its business. Not initiated to the mysteries of his
father's transactions, ignorant of what had long been threatening, it
was a terrible blow to him. But he was a man of action, and at once
looked to America; at home he could not hold up his head.

He had often been to Potlurg, and had been advancing in intimacy with
Alexa; but he would not show himself there until he could appear as a
man of decision--until he was on the point of departure. She would be
the more willing to believe his innocence of complicity in the
deceptions that had led to his ruin! He would thus also manifest
self-denial and avoid the charge of interested motives! he could not
face the suspicion of being a suitor with nothing to offer! George had
always taken the grand rôle--that of superior, benefactor, bestower. He
was powerful in condescension!

Not, therefore, until the night before he sailed did he go to Potlurg.

Alexa received him with a shade of displeasure.

"I am going away," he said, abruptly, the moment they were seated.

Her heart gave a painful throb in her throat, but she did not lose her
self-possession.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"To New York," he replied. "I have got a situation there--in a not
unimportant house. _There_ at least I am taken for an honest man. From
your heaven I have fallen."

"No one falls from any heaven but has himself to blame," rejoined Alexa.

"Where have I been to blame? I was not in my father's confidence. I knew
nothing, positively nothing, of what was going on."

"Why then did you not come to see me?"

"A man who is neither beggar nor thief is not willing to look either."

"You would have come if you had trusted me," she said.

"You must pardon pride in a ruined man," he answered. "Now that I am
starting to-morrow, I do not feel the same dread of being
misunderstood!"

"It was not kind of you, George. Knowing yourself fit to be trusted, why
did you not think me capable of trusting?"

"But, Alexa!--a man's own father!"

For a moment he showed signs of an emotion he had seldom had to repress.

"I beg your pardon, George!" cried Alexa. "I am both stupid and selfish!
Are you really going so far?"

Her voice trembled.

"I am--but to return, I hope, in a very different position!"

"You would have me understand--"

"That I shall then be able to hold up my head."

"Why should an innocent man ever do otherwise?"

"He can not help seeing himself in other people's thoughts!"

"If we are in the right ought we to mind what people think of us?" said
Alexa.

"Perhaps not. But I will make them think of me as I choose."

"How?"

"By compelling their respect."

"You mean to make a fortune?"

"Yes."

"Then it will be the fortune they respect! You will not be more worthy!"

"I shall not."

"Is such respect worth having?"

"Not in itself."

"In what then? Why lay yourself out for it?"

"Believe me, Alexa, even the real respect of such people would be
worthless to me. I only want to bring them to their marrow-bones!"

The truth was, Alexa prized social position so dearly that she did not
relish his regarding it as a thing at the command of money. Let George
be as rich as a Jew or an American, Alexa would never regard him as her
equal! George worshiped money; Alexa worshiped birth and land.

Our own way of being wrong is all right in our own eyes; our neighbor's
way of being wrong is offensive to all that is good in us. We are
anxious therefore, kindly anxious, to pull the mote out of his eye,
never thinking of the big beam in the way of the operation. Jesus
labored to show us that our immediate business is to be right ourselves.
Until we are, even our righteous indignation is waste.

While he spoke, George's eyes were on the ground. His grand resolve did
not give his innocence strength to look in the face of the woman he
loved; he felt, without knowing why, that she was not satisfied with
him. Of the paltriness of his ambition, he had no inward hint. The high
resolves of a puny nature must be a laughter to the angels--the bad
ones.

"If a man has no ambition," he resumed, feeling after her objection,
"how is he to fulfill the end of his being! No sluggard ever made his
mark! How would the world advance but for the men who have to make their
fortunes! If a man find his father has not made money for him, what is
he to do but make it for himself? You would not have me all my life a
clerk! If I had but known, I should by this time have been well ahead!"

Alexa had nothing to answer; it all sounded very reasonable! Were not
Scots boys everywhere taught it was the business of life to rise? In
whatever position they were, was it not their part to get out of it? She
did not see that it is in the kingdom of heaven only we are bound to
rise. We are born into the world not to rise in the kingdom of Satan,
but out of it And the only way to rise in the kingdom of heaven is to do
the work given us to do. Whatever be intended for us, this is the only
way to it We have not to promote ourselves, but to do our work. It is
the master of the feast who says: "Go up." If a man go up of himself, he
will find he has mistaken the head of the table.

More talk followed, but neither cast any light; neither saw the true
question. George took his leave. Alexa said she would be glad to hear
from him.

Alexa did not like the form of George's ambition--to gain money, and so
compel the respect of persons he did not himself respect But was she
clear of the money disease herself? Would she have married a poor man,
to go on as hitherto? Would she not have been ashamed to have George
know how she had supplied his needs while he lay in the house--that it
was with the poor gains of her poultry-yard she fed him? Did it improve
her moral position toward money that she regarded commerce with
contempt--a rudiment of the time when nobles treated merchants as a
cottager his bees?

George's situation was a subordinate one in a house of large dealings in
Wall Street.




CHAPTER XIII.


DAWTIE.

Is not the Church supposed to be made up of God's elect? and yet most of
my readers find it hard to believe there should be three persons, so
related, who agreed to ask of God, and to ask neither riches nor love,
but that God should take His own way with them, that the Father should
work His will in them, that He would teach them what He wanted of them,
and help them to do it! The Church is God's elect, and yet you can not
believe in three holy children! Do you say: "Because they are
represented as beginning to obey so young?" "Then," I answer, "there can
be no principle, only an occasional and arbitrary exercise of spiritual
power, in the perfecting of praise out of the mouth of babes and
sucklings, or in the preference of them to the wise and prudent as the
recipients of divine revelation."

Dawtie never said much, but tried the more. With heartiness she accepted
what conclusions the brothers came to, so far as she understood
them--and what was practical she understood as well as they; for she had
in her heart the spirit of that Son of Man who chose a child to
represent Him and His Father. As to what they heard at church, their
minds were so set on doing what they found in the Gospel, that it passed
over them without even rousing their intellect, and so vanished without
doing any hurt. Tuned to the truth by obedience, no falsehood they heard
from the pulpit partisans of God could make a chord vibrate in response.
Dawtie indeed heard nothing but the good that was mingled with the
falsehood, and shone like a lantern through a thick fog.

She was little more than a child when, to the trouble of her parents,
she had to go out to service. Every half year she came home for a day or
so, and neither feared nor found any relation altered. At length after
several closely following changes, occasioned by no fault of hers, she
was without a place. Miss Fordyce heard of it, and proposed to her
parents that, until she found another, she should help Meg, who was
growing old and rather blind: she would thus, she said, go on learning,
and not be idling at home.

Dawtie's mother was not a little amused at the idea of any one idling in
her house, not to say Dawtie, whom idleness would have tried harder than
any amount of work; but, if only that Miss Fordyce might see what sort
of girl Dawtie was, she judged it right to accept her offer.

She had not been at Potlurg a week before Meg began to complain that she
did not leave work enough to keep her warm. No doubt it gave her time
for her book, but her eyes were not so good as they used to be, and she
was apt to fall asleep over it, and catch cold! But when her mistress
proposed to send her away, she would not hear of it So Alexa, who had
begun to take an interest in her, set her to do things she had hitherto
done herself, and began to teach her other things. Before three months
were over, she was a necessity in the house, and to part with Dawtie
seemed impossible. A place about that time turning up, Alexa at once
offered her wages, and so Dawtie became an integral portion of the
laird's modest household.

The laird himself at length began to trust her as he had never trusted
servant, for he taught her to dust his precious books, which hitherto he
had done himself, but of late had shrunk from, finding not a few of them
worse than Pandora-boxes, liberating asthma at the merest unclosing.

Dawtie was now a grown woman, bright, gentle, playful, with loving eyes,
and a constant overflow of tenderness upon any creature that could
receive it. She had small but decided and regular features, whose
prevailing expression was confidence--not in herself, for she was scarce
conscious of herself even in the act of denying herself--but in the
person upon whom her trusting eyes were turned. She was in the world to
help--with no political economy beyond the idea that for help and
nothing else did any one exist. To be as the sun and the rain and the
wind, as the flowers that lived for her and not for themselves, as the
river that flowed, and the heather that bloomed lovely on the bare moor
in the autumn, such was her notion of being. That she had to take care
of herself was a falsehood that never entered her brain. To do what she
ought, and not do what she ought not, was enough on her part, and God
would do the rest! I will not say she reasoned thus; to herself she was
scarce a conscious object at all. Both bodily and spiritually she was in
the finest health. If illness came, she would perhaps then discover a
self with which she had to fight--I can not tell; but my impression is,
that she had so long done the true thing, that illness would only
develop unconscious victory, perfecting the devotion of her simple
righteousness. It is because we are selfish, with that worst selfishness
which is incapable of recognizing itself, not to say its own
loathsomeness, that we have to be made ill. That they may leave the last
remnants of their selfishness, are the saints themselves over-taken by
age and death. Suffering does not cause the vile thing in us--that was
there all the time; it comes to develop in us the knowledge of its
presence, that it may be war to the knife between us and it. It was no
wonder that Dawtie grew more and more of a favorite at Potlurg.

She did not read much, but would learn by heart anything that pleased
her, and then go saying or singing it to herself. She had the voice of a
lark, and her song prevented many a search for her. Against that "rain
of melody," not the pride of the laird, or the orderliness of the
ex-school-master ever put up the umbrella of rebuke. Her singing was so
true, came so clear from the fountain of joy, and so plainly from no
desire to be heard, that it gave no annoyance; while such was her
sympathy, that, although she had never get suffered, you would, to hear
her sing "My Nannie's awa'!" have thought her in truth mourning an
absent lover, and familiar with every pang of heart-privation. Her
cleanliness, clean even of its own show, was a heavenly purity; while so
gently was all her spiriting done, that the very idea of fuss died in
the presence of her labor. To the self-centered such a person soon
becomes a nobody; the more dependent they are upon her unfailing
ministration, the less they think of her; but they have another way of
regarding such in "the high countries." Hardly any knew her real name;
she was known but by her pet name _Dawtie_.

Alexa, who wondered at times that she could not interest her in things
she made her read, little knew how superior the girl's choice was to her
own! Not knowing much of literature, what she liked was always of the
best in its kind, and nothing without some best element could interest
her at all. But she was not left either to her "own sweet will" or to
the prejudices of her well-meaning mistress; however long the intervals
that parted them, Andrew continued to influence her reading as from the
first. A word now and a word then, with the books he lent or gave her,
was sufficient. That Andrew liked this or that, was enough to make
Dawtie set herself to find in it what Andrew liked, and it was thus she
became acquainted with most of what she learned by heart.

Above two years before the time to which I have now brought my
narrative, Sandy had given up farming, to pursue the development of
certain inventions of his which had met the approval of a man of means
who, unable himself to devise, could yet understand a device: he saw
that there was use, and consequently money in them, and wisely put it in
Sandy's power to perfect them. He was in consequence but little at home,
and when Dawtie went to see her parents, as she could much oftener now,
Andrew and she generally met without a third. However many weeks might
have passed, they always met as if they had parted only the night
before. There was neither shyness nor forwardness in Dawtie. Perhaps a
livelier rose might tinge her sweet round cheek when she saw Andrew;
perhaps a brighter spark shone in the pupil of Andrew's eye; but they
met as calmly as two prophets in the secret of the universe, neither
anxious nor eager. The old relation between them was the more potent
that it made so little outward show.

"Have you anything for me, Andrew?" Dawtie would say, in the strong
dialect which her sweet voice made so pleasant to those that loved her;
whereupon Andrew, perhaps without immediate answer more than a smile,
would turn into his room, and reappear with what he had got ready for
her to "chew upon" till they should meet again. Milton's sonnet, for
instance, to the "virgin wise and pure," had long served her aspiration;
equally wise and pure, Dawtie could understand it as well as she for
whom it was written. To see the delight she took in it, would have been
a joy to any loving student of humanity. It had cost her more effort to
learn than almost any song, and perhaps therefore it was the more
precious. Andrew seldom gave her a book to learn from; in general he
copied, in his clearest handwriting, whatever poem or paragraph he
thought fit for Dawtie; and when they met, she would not unfrequently,
if there was time, repeat unasked what she had learned, and be rewarded
with his unfailing look of satisfaction.

There was a secret between them--a secret proclaimed on the house-tops,
a secret hidden, the most precious of pearls, in their hearts--that the
earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; that its work is the work
of the Lord, whether the sowing of the field, the milking of the cow,
the giving to the poor, the spending of wages, the reading of the Bible;
that God is all in all, and every throb of gladness His gift; that their
life came fresh every moment from His heart; that what was lacking to
them would arrive the very moment He had got them ready for it. They
were God's little ones in God's world--none the less their own that they
did not desire to swallow it, or thrust it in their pockets.

Among poverty-stricken Christians, consumed with care to keep a hold of
the world and save their souls, they were as two children of the house.
By living in the presence of the living One, they had become themselves
His presence--dim lanterns through which His light shone steady. Who
obeys, shines.




CHAPTER XIV.


SANDY AND GEORGE.

Sandy had found it expedient to go to America, and had now been there a
twelvemonth; he had devised a machine of the value of which not even his
patron could be convinced--that is, he could not see the prospect of its
making money fast enough to constitute it a _good thing_. Sandy regarded
it as a discovery, a revelation for the uplifting of a certain
down-trodden portion of the community; and therefore, having saved a
little money, had resolved to make it known in the States, where insight
into probabilities is fresher. And now Andrew had a letter from him in
which he mentioned that he had come across Mr. Crawford, already of high
repute in Wall Street; that he had been kind to him, and having learned
his object in visiting the country, and the approximate risk in bringing
out his invention, had taken the thing into consideration. But the next
mail brought another letter to the effect that, having learned the
nature of the business done by Mr. Crawford, he found himself unable to
distinguish between it and gambling, or worse; it seemed to him a vortex
whose very emptiness drew money into it. He had therefore drawn back,
and declined to put the thing in Crawford's hands. This letter Andrew
gave Dawtie to read, that she might see that Sandy remained a true man.
He had never been anxious on the point, but was very glad that ignorance
had not drawn him into an evil connection.

Dawtie took the letter with her to read at her leisure. Unable, however,
to understand something Sandy said concerning Mr. Crawford's business,
she asked a question or two of her mistress, which led to questions on
Alexa's part. Finding what was the subject of Sandy's letter, she wished
to see it. Dawtie asked leave of Andrew, and gave it her.

Alexa was both distressed and indignant becoming at once George's
partisan. Her distress diminished and her indignation increased as she
reflected on the _airt_ whence the unfavorable report reached her; the
brothers were such peculiar men! She recalled the strange things she had
heard of their childhood; doubtless the judgment was formed on an
overstrained and quixotic idea of honesty! Besides, there had always
been a strong socialistic tendency in them, which explained how Sandy
could malign his benefactor! George was incapable of doing anything
dishonorable! She would not trouble herself about it. But she would like
to know how Andrew regarded the matter.

She asked him therefore what he thought of Sandy's procedure. Andrew
replied that he did not know much about business; but that the only
safety must lie in having nothing to do with what was doubtful;
therefore Sandy had done right. Alexa said it was too bad of him to
condemn where he confessed ignorance. Andrew replied:

"Ma'am, if Mr. Crawford is wrong he is condemned; if he is right my
private doubt can not hurt him. Sandy must act by his own doubt, not by
Mr. Crawford's confidence."

Alexa grew more distressed, for she began to recall things George had
said which at the time she had not liked, but which she had succeeded in
forgetting. If he had indeed gone astray, she hoped he would forget her;
she could do without him! But the judgment of such a man as Sandy could
settle nothing. Of humble origin and childish simplicity, he could not
see the thing as a man of experience must. George might be all right
notwithstanding. At the same time there was his father--whose reputation
remained under a thick cloud, whose failed character rather than his
ill-success had driven George to the other continent. Breed must go for
something in a question of probabilities. It was the first time Alexa's
thoughts had been turned into such a channel. She clung to the poor
comfort that something must have passed at the interview so kindly
sought by George to set the quixotical young farmer against him. She
would not utter his name to Andrew ever again!

She was right in thinking that George cherished a sincere affection for
her. It was one of the spurs which drove him too eagerly after money. I
doubt if any man starts with a developed love of money for its own
sake--except indeed he be born of generations of mammon worshipers.
George had gone into speculation with the object of retrieving the
position in which he had supposed himself born, and in the hope of
winning the hand of his cousin--thinking too much of himself to offer
what would not in the eyes of the world be worth her acceptance. When he
stepped on the inclined plane of dishonesty he believed himself only
engaging in "legitimate speculation;" but he was at once affected by the
atmosphere about him. Wrapped in the breath of admiration and adulation
surrounding men who cared for _nothing_ but money-making, men who were
not merely dishonest, but the very serpents of dishonesty, against whom
pickpockets will "stick off" as angels of light; constantly under the
softly persuasive influence of low morals and extravagant appreciation
of cunning, he came by rapid degrees to think less and less of right and
wrong. At first he called the doings of the place dishonest; then he
called them sharp practice; then he called them a little shady; then,
close sailing; then he said this or that transaction was deuced clever;
then, the man was more rogue than fool; then he laughed at the success
of a vile trick; then he touched the pitch, and thinking all the time it
was but with one finger, was presently besmeared all over--as was
natural, for he who will touch is already smeared.

While Alexa was fighting his battles with herself he had thrown down his
arms in the only battle worth fighting. When he wrote to her, which he
did regularly, he said no more about business than that his prospects
were encouraging; how much his reticence may have had to do with a sense
of her disapproval I can not tell.




CHAPTER XV.


MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

One lovely summer evening Dawtie, with a bundle in her hand, looked from
the top of a grassy knoll down on her parents' turf cottage. The sun was
setting behind her, and she looked as if she had stepped from it as it
touched the ground on which she stood, rosy with the rosiness of the
sun, but with a light in her countenance which came from a higher
source, from the same nest as the sun himself. She paused but a moment,
ran down the hill, and found her mother making the porridge. Mother and
daughter neither embraced, nor kissed, nor even shook hands, but their
faces glowed with delight, and words of joy and warmest welcome flowed
between them.

"But ye haena lost yer place, hae ye, hinny?" said the mother.

"No, mother; there's no fear o' that, as lang's the laird or Miss Lexy's
to the fore. They tret me--I winna say like ane o' themsel's, but as if
they would hae likit me for ane o' themsel's, gien it had pleased the
Lord to sen' me their way instead o' yours. They're that guid to me ye
canna think!"

"Then what's broucht ye the day?"

"I beggit for a play-day. I wantit to see An'rew."

"Eh, lass! I'm feart for ye! Ye maunna set yer hert sae hie! An'rew's
the best o' men, but a lass canna hae a man til hersel' jist 'cause he's
the best man i' the warl'!"

"What mean ye by that, mother?" said Dawtie, looking a little scared.
"Am I no' to lo'e An'rew, 'cause he's 'maist as guid's the Lord wad hae
him? Wad ye hae me hate him for't? Has na he taught me to lo'e God--to
lo'e Him better nor father, mither, An'rew, or onybody? I _wull_ lo'e
An'rew! What can ye mean, mother?"

"What I mean, Dawtie, is, that ye mamma think because ye lo'e him ye
maun hae him; ye maunna think ye canna du wantin' An'rew!"

"It's true, mother, I kenna what I should do wantin' An'rew! Is na he
aye shovin' the door o' the kingdom a wee wider to lat me see in the
better? It's little ferly (_marvel_) I lo'e him! But as to wantin'him
for my ain man, as ye hae my father!--mother, I wad be ashamet o' mysel'
to think o' ony sic a thing!--clean affrontit wi' mysel' I wad be!"

"Weel, weel, bairn! Ye was aye a wise like lass, an' I maun lippen til
ye! Only luik to yer hert."

"As for no' lo'ein' him, mither--me that canna luik at a blin' kittlin'
ohn lo'ed it!--lo, mither! God made me sae, an didna mean me no' to lo'e
An'rew!"

"Andrew!" she repeated, as if the word meant the perfection of earth's
worthiest rendering the idea of appropriation too absurd.

Silence followed, but the mother was brooding.

"Ye maun bethink ye, lass, hoo far he's abune ye!" she said at length.

As the son of the farmer on whose land her husband was a cotter, Andrew
seemed to her what the laird seemed to old John Ingram, and what the
earl seemed to the laird, though the laird's family was ancient when the
earl's had not been heard of. But Dawtie understood Andrew better than
did her mother.

"You and me sees him far abune, mother, but Andrew himsel' never thinks
o' nae sic things. He's sae used to luikin' up, he's forgotten to luik
doon. He bauds his lan' frae a higher than the laird, or the yerl
himsel'!"

The mother was silent. She was faithful and true, but, fed on the dried
fish of logic and system and Roman legalism, she could not follow the
simplicities of her daughter's religion, who trusted neither in notions
about him, nor even in what he had done, but in the live Christ himself
whom she loved and obeyed.

"If Andrew wanted to marry me," Dawtie went on, jealous for the divine
liberty of her teacher, "which never cam intil's heid--na, no ance--the
same bein' ta'en up wi' far ither things, it wouldna be because I was
but a cotter lass that he wouldna tak his ain gait! But the morn's the
Sabbath day, and we'll hae a walk thegither."

"I dinna a'thegither like thae walks upo' the Sabbath day," said the
mother.

"Jesus walkit on the Sabbath the same as ony ither day, mother!"

"Weel, but He kenned what He was aboot!"

"And sae do I, mother! I ken His wull!"

"He had aye something on han' fit to be dune o' the Sabbath!"

"And so hae I the day, mother. If I was to du onything no fit i' this
His warl', luikin' oot o' the e'en He gae me, wi' the han's an' feet He
gae me, I wad jist deserve to be nippit oot at ance, or sent intil the
ooter mirk (_darkness_)!"

"There's a mony maun fare ill then, lass!"

"I'm sayin' only for mysel'. I ken nane sae to blame as I would be
mysel'."

"Is na that makin' yersel' oot better nor ither fowk, lass?"

"Gien I said I thoucht onything worth doin' but the wull o' God, I wad
be a leear; gien I say man or woman has naething ither to do i' this
warl' or the neist, I say it believin' ilkane o' them maun come til't at
the lang last. Feow sees't yet, but the time's comin' when ilkabody will
be as sure o' 't as I am. What won'er is't that I say't, wi' Jesus
tellin' me the same frae mornin' to nicht!"

"Lass, lass, I fear me, ye'll gang oot o' yer min'!"

"It 'll be intil the mind o' Christ, then, mother! I dinna care for my
ain min'. I hae nane o' my ain, an' will stick to His. Gien I dinna mak
His mine, and stick til't, I'm lost! Noo, mother, I'll set the things,
and run ower to the hoose, and lat An'rew ken I'm here!"

"As ye wull, lass! ye'r ayont me! I s' say naething anent a willfu'
woman, for ye've been aye a guid dochter. I trust I hae risen to houp
the Lord winna be disappointit in ye."

Dawtie found Andrew in the stable, suppering his horses, told him she
had something to talk to him about, and asked if he would let her go
with him in his walk the next day. Andrew was delighted to see her, but
he did not say so; and she was back before her mother had taken the milk
from the press. In a few minutes her father appeared, and welcomed her
with a sober joy. As they eat their supper, he could not keep his eyes
off her, she sat looking so well and nice and trim. He was a
good-looking, work-worn man, his hands absolutely horny with labor. But
inside many such horny husks are ripening beautiful kingdom hands, for
the time when "dear welcome Death" will loose and let us go from the
grave-clothes of the body that bind some of us even hand and foot.
Rugged father and withered mother were beautiful in the eyes of Dawtie,
and she and God saw them better than any other. Good, endless good was
on the way to them all! It was so pleasant to be waiting for the best of
all good things.




CHAPTER XVI.


ANDREW AND DAWTIE.

Dawtie slept in peace and happy dreams till the next morning, when she
was up almost with the sun, and out in his low clear light. For the sun
was strong again; the red labor and weariness were gone from his shining
face. Everything about her seemed to know God, or at least to have had a
moment's gaze upon Him. How else could everything look so content,
hopeful and happy. It is the man who will not fall in with the Father's
bliss to whom the world seems soulless and dull. Dawtie was at peace
because she desired nothing but what she knew He was best pleased to
give her. Even had she cherished for Andrew the kind of love her mother
feared, her Lord's will would have been her comfort and strength. If any
one say: "Then she could not know what love is!" I answer: "That person
does not know what the better love is that lifts the being into such a
serene air that it can fast from many things and yet be blessed beyond
what any other granted desire could make it." The scent of the
sweet-pease growing against the turf wall entered Dawtie's soul like a
breath from the fields of heaven, where the children made merry with the
angels, the merriest of playfellows, and the winds and waters, and all
the living things, and all the things half alive, all the flowers and
all the creatures, were at their sportive call; where the little ones
had babies to play with, and did not hurt them, and where dolls were
neither loved nor missed, being never thought of. Suchlike were the
girl's imaginings as her thoughts went straying, inventing, discovering.
She did not fear the Father would be angry with her for being His child,
and playing at creation. Who, indeed, but one that in loving heart can
_make_, can rightly love the making of the Maker!

When they had had their breakfast, and the old people were ready for
church--where they would listen a little, sleep a little, sing heartily,
and hear nothing to wake hunger, joy or aspiration, Dawtie put a piece
of oat-cake in her pocket, and went to join Andrew where they had made
their tryst and where she found him waiting--at his length in a bush of
heather, with Henry Vaughan's "Silex Scintillans," drawing from it
"bright shoots of everlastingness" for his Sabbath day's delight. He
read one or two of the poems to Dawtie, who was pleased but not
astonished--she was never astonished at anything; she had nothing in her
to make anything beautiful by contrast; her mind was of beauty itself,
and anything beautiful was to her but in the order and law of
things--what was to be expected. Nothing struck her because of its
rarity; the rare was at home in her country, and she was at home with
it. When, for instance, he read: "Father of lights, what sunny seeds,"
she took it up at once and understood it, felt that the good man had
said the thing that was to be said, and loved him for it. She was not
surprised to hear that the prayer was more than two hundred years old;
were there not millions of years in front? why should it be wonderful
that a few years behind men should have thought and felt as she did, and
been able to say it as she never could! Had she not always loved the
little cocks, and watched them learning to crow?

"But, An'rew," she said at length, "I want to tell ye something that's
troublin' me; then ye can learn me what ye like."

"Tell on, Dawtie," said Andrew; and she began.

"Ae nicht aboot a fornight ago, I couldna sleep. I drave a' the sheep I
could gether i' my brain, ower ae stile efter anither, but the sleep
stack to the woo' o' them, an' ilk ane took o' 't awa' wi' him. I wadna
hae tried, but that I had to be up ear', and I was feared I wad sleep
in."

For the sake of my more polished readers--I do not say more _refined_,
for polish and refinement may be worlds apart--I will give the rest in
modern English.

"So I got up, and thought to sweep and dust the hall and the stairs;
then if, when I lay down again, I should sleep too long, there would be
a part of the day's work done! You know, Andrew, what the house is like;
at the top of the stair that begins directly you enter the house, there
is a big irregular place, bigger than the floor of your barn, laid with
flags. It is just as if all the different parts of the house had been
built at different times round about it, and then it was itself roofed
in