"Thank you! thank you! Now I shall get on!" he cried, and ran up the hill.

"You seem to understand boys!" said the brother.

"I have always had a sort of ambition to understand ignorance."

"Understand ignorance?"

"You know what queer shapes the shadows of the plainest things take: I never seem to understand any thing till I understand its shadow."

The youth glanced keenly at Donal.

"I wish I had had a tutor like you!" he said.

"Why?" asked Donal.

"I should done better.—Where do you live?"

Donal told him he was lodging with Andrew Comin, the cobbler. A silence followed.

"Good morning!" said the youth.

"Good morning, sir!" returned Donal, and went away.



CHAPTER IX.

THE MORVEN ARMS.

On Wednesday evening Donal went to The Morven Arms to inquire for the third time if his box was come. The landlord said, if a great heavy tool-chest was the thing he expected, it had come.

"Donal Grant wad be the name upo' 't," said Donal.

"'Deed, I didna luik," said the landlord. "Its i' the back yard."

As Donal went through the house to the yard, he passed the door of a room where some of the townsfolk sat, and heard the earl mentioned.

He had not asked Andrew anything about the young man he had spoken with; for he understood that his host held himself not at liberty to talk about the family in which his granddaughter was a servant. But what was said in public he surely might hear! He requested the landlord to let him have a bottle of ale, and went into the room and sat down.

It was a decent parlour with a sanded floor. Those assembled were a mixed company from town and country, having a tumbler of whisky-toddy together after the market. One of them was a stranger who had been receiving from the others various pieces of information concerning the town and its neighbourhood.

"I min' the auld man weel," a wrinkled gray-haired man was saying as Donal entered, "—a varra different man frae this present. He wud sit doon as ready as no—that wud he—wi' ony puir body like mysel', an' gie him his cracks, an' hear his news, an' drink his glaiss, an' mak naething o' 't. But this man, haith! wha ever saw him cheenge word wi' brither man?"

"I never h'ard hoo he came to the teetle: they say he was but some far awa' cousin!" remarked a farmer-looking man, florid and stout.

"Hoots! he was ain brither to the last yerl, wi' richt to the teetle, though nane to the property. That he's but takin' care o' till his niece come o' age. He was a heap aboot the place afore his brither dee'd, an' they war freen's as weel 's brithers. They say 'at the lady Arctoora—h'ard ye ever sic a hathenish name for a lass!—is b'un' to merry the yoong lord. There 's a sicht o' clapper-clash aboot the place, an' the fowk, an' their strange w'ys. They tell me nane can be said to ken the yerl but his ain man. For mysel' I never cam i' their coonsel—no' even to the buyin' or sellin' o' a lamb."

"Weel," said a fair-haired, pale-faced man, "we ken frae scriptur 'at the sins o' the fathers is veesitit upo' the children to the third an' fourth generation—an' wha can tell?"

"Wha can tell," rejoined another, who had a judicial look about him, in spite of an unshaven beard, and a certain general disregard to appearances, "wha can tell but the sins o' oor faithers may be lyin' upo' some o' oorsel's at this varra moment?"

"In oor case, I canna see the thing wad be fair," said a fifth: "we dinna even ken what they did!"

"We're no to interfere wi' the wull o' the Almichty," rejoined the former. "It gangs its ain gait, an' mortal canna tell what that gait is. His justice winna be contert."

Donal felt that to be silent now would be to decline witnessing. He feared argument, lest he should fail and wrong the right, but he must not therefore hang back. He drew his chair towards the table.

"Wad ye lat a stranger put in a word, freen's?" he said.

"Ow ay, an' welcome! We setna up for the men o' Gotham."

"Weel, I wad spier a question gien I may."

"Speir awa'. Answer I winna insure," said the man unshaven.

"Weel, wad ye please tell me what ye ca' the justice o' God?"

"Onybody could tell ye that: it consists i' the punishment o' sin. He gies ilka sinner what his sin deserves."

"That seems to me an unco ae-sidit definition o' justice."

"Weel, what wad ye mak o' 't?"

"I wad say justice means fair play; an' the justice o' God lies i' this, 'at he gies ilka man, beast, an' deevil, fair play."

"I'm doobtfu' aboot that!" said a drover-looking fellow. "We maun gang by the word; an' the word says he veesits the ineequities o' the fathers upo' the children to the third an' fourth generation: I never could see the fair play o' that!"

"Dinna ye meddle wi' things, John, 'at ye dinna un'erstan'; ye may wauk i' the wrang box!" said the old man.

"I want to un'erstan'," returned John. "I'm no sayin' he disna du richt; I'm only sayin' I canna see the fair play o' 't."

"It may weel be richt an' you no see 't!"

"Ay' weel that! But what for sud I no say I dinna see 't? Isna the blin' man to say he's blin'?"

This was unanswerable, and Donal again spoke.

"It seems to me," he said, "we need first to un'erstan' what's conteened i' the veesitin' o' the sins o' the fathers upo' the children, afore we daur ony jeedgment concernin' 't."

"Ay, that 's sense eneuch!" confessed a responsive murmur.

"I haena seen muckle o' this warl' yet, compared wi' you, sirs," Donal went on, "but I hae been a heap my lane wi' nowt an' sheep, whan a heap o' things gaed throuw my heid; an' I hae seen something as weel, though no that muckle. I hae seen a man, a' his life 'afore a douce honest man, come til a heap o' siller, an' gang to the dogs!"

A second murmur seemed to indicate corroboration.

"He gaed a' to the dogs, as I say," continued Donal; "an' the bairns he left 'ahint him whan he dee'd o' drink, cam upo' the perris, or wad hae hungert but for some 'at kenned him whan he was yet in honour an' poverty. Noo, wad ye no say this was a veesitin' o' the sins o' the father upo' the children?"

"Ay, doobtless!"

"Weel, whan I h'ard last aboot them, they were a' like eneuch to turn oot honest lads an' lasses."

"Ow, I daursay!"

"An' what micht ye think the probability gien they had come intil a lot o' siller whan their father dee'd?"

"Maybe they micht hae gane the same gait he gaed!"

"Was there injustice than, or was there favour i' that veesitation o' the sins o' their father upo' them?"

There was no answer. The toddy went down their throats and the smoke came out of their mouths, but no one dared acknowledge it might be a good thing to be born poor instead of rich. So entirely was the subject dropped that Donal feared he had failed to make himself understood. He did not know the general objection to talking of things on eternal principles. We set up for judges of right while our very selves are wrong! He saw that he had cast a wet blanket over the company, and judged it better to take his leave.

Borrowing a wheelbarrow, he trundled his chest home, and unpacking it in the archway, carried his books and clothes to his room.



CHAPTER X

THE PARISH CLERGYMAN.

The next day, Donal put on his best coat, and went to call on the minister. Shown into the study, he saw seated there the man he had met on his first day's journey, the same who had parted from him in such displeasure. He presented his letter.

Mr. Carmichael gave him a keen glance, but uttered no word until he had read it.

"Well, young man," he said, looking up at him with concentrated severity, "what would you have me do?"

"Tell me of any situation you may happen to know or hear of, sir," said Donal. "That is all I could expect."

"All!" repeated the clergyman, with something very like a sneer; "—but what if I think that all a very great deal? What if I imagine myself set in charge over young minds and hearts? What if I know you better than the good man whose friendship for your parents gives him a kind interest in you? You little thought how you were undermining your prospects last Friday! My old friend would scarcely have me welcome to my parish one he may be glad to see out of his own! You can go to the kitchen and have your dinner—I have no desire to render evil for evil—but I will not bid you God-speed. And the sooner you take yourself out of this, young man, the better!"

"Good morning, sir!" said Donal, and left the room.

On the doorstep he met a youth he had known by sight at the university: it was the minister's son—the worst-behaved of all the students. Was this a case of the sins of the father being visited on the child? Does God never visit the virtues of the father on the child?

A little ruffled, and not a little disappointed, Donal walked away. Almost unconsciously he took the road to the castle, and coming to the gate, leaned on the top bar, and stood thinking.

Suddenly, down through the trees came Davie bounding, pushed his hand through between the bars, and shook hands with him.

"I have been looking for you all day," he said.

"Why?" asked Donal.

"Forgue sent you a letter."

"I have had no letter."

"Eppy took it this morning."

"Ah, that explains! I have not been home since breakfast."

"It was to say my father would like to see you."

"I will go and get it: then I shall know what to do."

"Why do you live there? The cobbler is a dirty little man! Your clothes will smell of leather!"

"He is not dirty," said Donal. "His hands do get dirty—very dirty with his work—and his face too; and I daresay soap and water can't get them quite clean. But he will have a nice earth-bath one day, and that will take all the dirt off. And if you could see his soul—that is as clean as clean can be—so clean it is quite shining!"

"Have you seen it?" said the boy, looking up at Donal, unsure whether he was making game of him, or meaning something very serious.

"I have had a glimpse or two of it. I never saw a cleaner.—You know, my dear boy, there's a cleanness much deeper than the skin!"

"I know!" said Davie, but stared as if he wondered he would speak of such things.

Donal returned his gaze. Out of the fullness of his heart his eyes shone. Davie was reassured.

"Can you ride?" he asked.

"Yes, a little."

"Who taught you?"

"An old mare I was fond of."

"Ah, you are making game of me! I do not like to be made game of," said Davie, and turned away.

"No indeed," replied Donal. "I never make game of anybody.—But now I will go and find the letter."

"I would go with you," said the boy, "but my father will not let me beyond the grounds. I don't know why."

Donal hastened home, and found himself eagerly expected, for the letter young Eppy had brought was from the earl. It informed Donal that it would give his lordship pleasure to see him, if he would favour him with a call.

In a few minutes he was again on the road to the castle.



CHAPTER XI.

THE EARL.

He met no one on his way from the gate up through the wood. He ascended the hill with its dark ascending firs, to its crown of silvery birches, above which, as often as the slowly circling road brought him to the other side, he saw rise like a helmet the gray mass of the fortress. Turret and tower, pinnacle and battlement, appeared and disappeared as he climbed. Not until at last he stood almost on the top, and from an open space beheld nearly the whole front, could he tell what it was like. It was a grand pile, but looked a gloomy one to live in.

He stood on a broad grassy platform, from which rose a gravelled terrace, and from the terrace the castle. He ran his eye along the front seeking a door but saw none. Ascending the terrace by a broad flight of steps, he approached a deep recess in the front, where two portions of the house of differing date nearly met. Inside this recess he found a rather small door, flush with the wall, thickly studded and plated with iron, surmounted by the Morven horses carved in gray stone, and surrounded with several mouldings. Looking for some means of announcing his presence, he saw a handle at the end of a rod of iron, and pulled, but heard nothing: the sound of the bell was smothered in a wilderness of stone walls. By and by, however, appeared an old servant, bowed and slow, with plentiful hair white as wool, and a mingled look of childishness and caution in his wrinkled countenance.

"The earl wants to see me," said Donal.

"What name?" said the man.

"Donal Grant; but his lordship will be nothing the wiser, I suspect; I don't think he knows my name. Tell him—the young man he sent for to Andrew Comin's."

The man left him, and Donal began to look about him. The place where he stood was a mere entry, a cell in huge walls, with a second, a low, round-headed door, like the entrance to a prison, by which the butler had disappeared. There was nothing but bare stone around him, with again the Morven arms cut deep into it on one side. The ceiling was neither vaulted nor groined nor flat, but seemed determined by the accidental concurrence of ends of stone stairs and corners of floors on different levels. It was full ten minutes before the man returned and requested him to follow him.

Immediately Donal found himself in a larger and less irregular stone-case, adorned with heads and horns and skins of animals. Crossing this, the man opened a door covered with red cloth, which looked strange in the midst of the cold hard stone, and Donal entered an octagonal space, its doors of dark shining oak, with carved stone lintels and doorposts, and its walls adorned with arms and armour almost to the domed ceiling. Into it, as if it descended suddenly out of some far height, but dropping at last like a gently alighting bird, came the end of a turnpike-stair, of slow sweep and enormous diameter—such a stair as in wildest gothic tale he had never imagined. Like the revolving centre of a huge shell, it went up out of sight, with plain promise of endless convolutions beyond. It was of ancient stone, but not worn as would have been a narrow stair. A great rope of silk, a modern addition, ran up along the wall for a hand-rail; and with slow-moving withered hand upon it, up the glorious ascent climbed the serving man, suggesting to Donal's eye the crawling of an insect, to his heart the redemption of the sons of God.

With the stair yet ascending above them as if it would never stop, the man paused upon a step no broader than the rest, and opening a door in the round of the well, said, "Mr. Grant, my lord," and stood aside for Donal to enter.

He found himself in the presence of a tall, bowed man, with a large-featured white face, thin and worn, and a deep-sunken eye that gleamed with an unhealthy life. His hair was thin, but covered his head, and was only streaked with gray. His hands were long and thin and white; his feet in large shoes, looking the larger that they came out from narrow trousers, which were of shepherd-tartan. His coat was of light-blue, with a high collar of velvet, and much too wide for him. A black silk neckerchief tied carelessly about his throat, and a waistcoat of pineapple shawl-stuff, completed his dress. On one long little finger shone a stone which Donal took for an emerald. He motioned his visitor to a seat, and went on writing, with a rudeness more like that of a successful contractor than a nobleman. But it gave Donal the advantage of becoming a little accustomed to his surroundings. The room was not large, was wainscoted, and had a good many things on the walls: Donal noted two or three riding whips, a fishing rod, several pairs of spurs, a sword with golden hilt, a strange looking dagger like a flame of fire, one or two old engravings, and what seemed a plan of the estate. At the one window, small, with a stone mullion, the summer sun was streaming in. The earl sat in its flood, and in the heart of it seemed cold and bloodless. He looked about sixty years of age, and as if he rarely or never smiled. Donal tried to imagine what a smile would do for his face, but failed. He was not in the least awed by the presence of the great man. What is rank to the man who honours everything human, has no desire to look what he is not, has nothing to conceal and nothing to compass, is fearful of no to-morrow, and does not respect riches! Toward such ends of being the tide of Donal's life was at least setting. So he sat neither fidgeting nor staring, but quietly taking things in.

The earl raised himself, pushed his writing from him, turned towards him, and said with courtesy,

"Excuse me, Mr. Grant; I wished to talk to you with the ease of duty done."

More polite his address could not have been, but there was a something between him and Donal that was not to be passed a—nameless gulf of the negative.

"My time is at your lordship's service," replied Donal, with the ease that comes of simplicity.

"You have probably guessed why I sent for you?"

"I have hoped, my lord."

There was something of old-world breeding about the lad that commended him to the earl. Such breeding is not rare among Celt-born peasants.

"My sons told me that they had met a young man in the grounds—"

"For which I beg your lordship's pardon," said Donal. "I did not know the place was forbidden."

"I hope you will soon be familiar with it. I am glad of your mistake. From what they said, I supposed you might be a student in want of a situation, and I had been looking out for a young man to take charge of the boy: it seemed possible you might serve my purpose. I do not question you can show yourself fit for such an office: I presume it would suit you. Do you believe yourself one to be so trusted?"

Donal had not a glimmer of false modesty; he answered immediately,

"I do, my lord."

"Tell me something of your history: where were you born? what were your parents?"

Donal told him all he thought it of any consequence he should know.

His lordship did not once interrupt him with question or remark. When he had ended—

"Well," he said, "I like all you tell me. You have testimonials?"

"I have from the professors, my lord, and one from the minister of the parish, who knew me before I went to college. I could get one from Mr. Sclater too, whose church I attended while there."

"Show me what you have," said his lordship.

Donal took the papers from the pocket-book his mother had made him, and handed them to him. The earl read them with some attention, returning each to him without remark as he finished it, only saying with the last,

"Quite satisfactory."

"But," said Donal, "there is one thing I should be more at ease if I told your lordship: Mr. Carmichael, the minister of this parish, would tell you I was an atheist, or something very like it—therefore an altogether unsafe person. But he knows nothing of me."

"On what grounds then would he say so?" asked the earl—showing not the least discomposure. "I thought you were a stranger to this place!"

Donal told him how they had met, what had passed between them, and how the minister had behaved in consequence. His lordship heard him gravely, was silent for a moment, and then said,

"Should Mr. Carmichael address me on the subject, which I do not think likely, he will find me already too much prejudiced in your favour. But I can imagine his mistaking your freedom of speech: you are scarcely prudent enough. Why say all you think?"

"I fear nothing, my lord."

The earl was silent; his gray face seemed to grow grayer, but it might be that just then the sun went under a cloud, and he was suddenly folded in shadow. After a moment he spoke again.

"I am quite satisfied with you so far, Mr. Grant; and as I should not like to employ you in direct opposition to Mr. Carmichel—not that I belong to his church—we will arrange matters before he can hear of the affair. What salary do you want?"

Donal replied he would prefer leaving the salary to his lordship's judgment upon trial.

"I am not a wealthy man," returned his lordship, "and would prefer an understanding."

"Try me then for three months, my lord; give me my board and lodging, the use of your library, and at the end of the quarter a ten-pound-note: by that time you will be able to tell whether I suit you."

The earl nodded agreement, and Donal rose at once. With a heart full of thankfulness and hope he walked back to his friends. He had before him pleasant work; plenty of time and book-help; an abode full of interest; and something for his labour!

"'Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee!'" said the cobbler, rejoicing against the minister; "'the remainder of wrath shalt thou restrain.'"

In the afternoon Donal went into the town to get some trifles he wanted before going to the castle. As he turned to the door of a draper's shop, he saw at the counter the minister talking to him. He would rather have gone elsewhere but for unwillingness to turn his back on anything: he went in. Beside the minister stood a young lady, who, having completed her purchases, was listening to their conversation. The draper looked up as he entered. A glance passed between him and the minister. He came to Donal, and having heard what he wanted, left him, went back to the minister, and took no more notice of him. Donal found it awkward, and left the shop.

"High an' michty!" said the draper, annoyed at losing the customer to whose dispraise he had been listening.

"Far beyond dissent, John!" said the minister, pursuing a remark.

"Doobtless, sir, it is that!" answered the draper. "I'm thankfu' to say I never harboured a doobt mysel', but aye took what I was tauld, ohn argle-barglet. What hae we sic as yersel' set ower's for, gien it binna to haud's i' the straicht path o' what we're to believe an' no to believe? It's a fine thing no to be accoontable!"

The minister was an honest man so far as he knew himself and honesty, and did not relish this form of submission. But he did not ask himself where was the difference between accepting the word of man and accepting man's explanation of the word of God! He took a huge pinch from his black snuffbox and held his peace.

In the evening Donal would settle his account with mistress Comin: he found her demand so much less than he had expected, that he expostulated. She was firm, however, and assured him she had gained, not lost. As he was putting up his things,

"Lea' a buik or twa, sir," she said, "'at whan ye luik in, the place may luik hame-like. We s' ca' the room yours. Come as aften as ye can. It does my Anerew's hert guid to hae a crack wi' ane 'at kens something o' what the Maister wad be at. Mony ane 'll ca' him Lord, but feow 'ill tak the trible to ken what he wad hae o' them. But there's my Anerew—he'll sit yon'er at his wark, thinkin' by the hoor thegither ower something the Maister said 'at he canna win at the richts o'. 'Depen' upo' 't,' he says whiles, 'depen' upo' 't, lass, whaur onything he says disna luik richt to hiz, it maun be 'at we haena won at it!'"

As she ended, her husband came in, and took up what he fancied the thread of the dialogue.

"An' what are we to think o' the man," he said, "at's content no to un'erstan' what he was at the trible to say? Wad he say things 'at he didna mean fowk to un'erstan' whan he said them?" "Weel, Anerew," said his wife, "there's mony a thing he said 'at I can not un'erstan'; naither am I muckle the better for your explainin' o' the same; I maun jist lat it sit."

Andrew laughed his quiet pleased laugh.

"Weel, lass," he said, "the duin' o' ae thing 's better nor the un'erstan'in' o' twenty. Nor wull ye be lang ohn un'erstan't muckle 'at's dark to ye noo; for the maister likes nane but the duer o' the word, an' her he likes weel. Be blythe, lass; ye s' hae yer fill o' un'erstan'in' yet!"

"I'm fain to believe ye speyk the trowth, Anerew!"

"It 's great trowth," said Donal.



CHAPTER XII.

THE CASTLE.

The next morning came a cart from the castle to fetch his box; and after breakfast he set out for his new abode.

He took the path by the river-side. The morning was glorious. The sun and the river and the birds were jubilant, and the wind gave life to everything. It rippled the stream, and fluttered the long webs bleaching in the sun: they rose and fell like white waves on the bright green lake; and women, homely Nereids of the grassy sea, were besprinkling them with spray. There were dull sounds of wooden machinery near, but they made no discord with the sweetness of the hour, speaking only of activity, not labour. From the long bleaching meadows by the river-side rose the wooded base of the castle. Donal's bosom swelled with delight; then came a sting: was he already forgetting his inextinguishable grief? "But," he answered himself, "God is more to me than any woman! When he puts joy in my heart, shall I not be glad? When he calls my name shall I not answer?"

He stepped out joyfully, and was soon climbing the hill. He was again admitted by the old butler.

"I will show you at once," he said, "how to go and come at your own will."

He led him through doors and along passages to a postern opening on a little walled garden at the east end of the castle.

"This door," he said, "is, you observe, at the foot of Baliol's tower, and in that tower is your room; I will show it you."

He led the way up a spiral stair that might almost have gone inside the newel of the great staircase. Up and up they went, until Donal began to wonder, and still they went up.

"You're young, sir," said the butler, "and sound of wind and limb; so you'll soon think nothing of it."

"I never was up so high before, except on a hill-side," returned Donal. "The college-tower is nothing to this!"

"In a day or two you'll be shooting up and down it like a bird. I used to do so myself. I got into the way of keeping a shoulder foremost, and screwing up as if I was a blob of air! Old age does make fools of us!"

"You don't like it then?"

"No, I do not: who does?"

"It's only that you get spent as you go up. The fresh air at the top of the stair will soon revive you," said Donal.

But his conductor did not understand him.

"That's all very well so long as you're young; but when it has got you, you'll pant and grumble like the rest of us."

In the distance Donal saw Age coming slowly after him, to claw him in his clutch, as the old song says. "Please God," he thought, "by the time he comes up, I'll be ready to try a fall with him! O Thou eternally young, the years have no hold on thee; let them have none on thy child. I too shall have life eternal."

Ere they reached the top of the stair, the man halted and opened a door. Donal entering saw a small room, nearly round, a portion of the circle taken off by the stair. On the opposite side was a window projecting from the wall, whence he could look in three different directions. The wide country lay at his feet. He saw the winding road by which he had ascended, the gate by which he had entered, the meadow with its white stripes through which he had come, and the river flowing down. He followed it with his eyes:—lo, there was the sea, shining in the sun like a diamond shield! It was but the little German Ocean, yet one with the great world-ocean. He turned to his conductor.

"Yes," said the old man, answering his look, "it's a glorious sight! When first I looked out there I thought I was in eternity."

The walls were bare even of plaster; he could have counted the stones in them; but they were dry as a bone.

"You are wondering," said the old man, "how you are to keep warm in the winter! Look here: you shut this door over the window! See how thick and strong it is! There is your fireplace; and for fuel, there's plenty below! It is a labour to carry it up, I grant; but if I was you, I would set to o' nights when nobody was about, and carry till I had a stock laid in!"

"But," said Donal, "I should fill up my room. I like to be able to move about a little!"

"Ah," replied the old man, "you don't know what a space you have up here all to yourself! Come this way."

Two turns more up the stair, and they came to another door. It opened into wide space: from it Donal stepped on a ledge or bartizan, without any parapet, that ran round the tower, passing above the window of his room. It was well he had a steady brain, for he found the height affect him more than that of a precipice on Glashgar: doubtless he would get used to it, for the old man had stepped out without the smallest hesitation! Round the tower he followed him.

On the other side a few steps rose to a watch-tower—a sort of ornate sentry-box in stone, where one might sit and regard with wide vision the whole country. Avoiding this, another step or two led them to the roof of the castle—of great stone slabs. A broad passage ran between the rise of the roof and a battlemented parapet. By this time they came to a flat roof, on to which they descended by a few steps. Here stood two rough sheds, with nothing in them.

"There's stowage!" said the old man.

"Yes, indeed!" answered Donal, to whom the idea of his aerie was growing more and more agreeable. "But would there be no objection to my using the place for such a purpose?"

"What objection?" returned his guide. "I doubt if a single person but myself knows it."

"And shall I be allowed to carry up as much as I please?"

"I allow you," said the butler, with importance. "Of course you will not waste—I am dead against waste! But as to what is needful, use your freedom.—Dinner will be ready for you in the schoolroom at seven."

At the door of his room the old man left him, and after listening for a moment to his descending steps, Donal re-entered his chamber.

Why they put him so apart, Donal never asked himself; that he should have such command of his leisure as this isolation promised him was a consequence very satisfactory. He proceeded at once to settle himself in his new quarters. Finding some shelves in a recess of the wall, he arranged his books upon them, and laid his few clothes in the chest of drawers beneath. He then got out his writing material, and sat down.

Though his window was so high, the warm pure air came in full of the aromatic odours rising in the hot sunshine from the young pine trees far below, and from a lark far above descended news of heaven-gate. The scent came up and the song came down all the time he was writing to his mother—a long letter. When he had closed and addressed it, he fell into a reverie. Apparently he was to have his meals by himself: he was glad of it: he would be able to read all the time! But how was he to find the schoolroom! Some one would surely fetch him! They would remember he did not know his way about the place! It wanted yet an hour to dinner-time when, finding himself drowsy, he threw himself on his bed, where presently he fell fast asleep.

The night descended, and when he came to himself, its silences were deep around him. It was not dark: there was no moon, but the twilight was clear. He could read the face of his watch: it was twelve o'clock! No one had missed him! He was very hungry! But he had been hungrier before and survived it! In his wallet were still some remnants of oat-cake! He took it in his hand, and stepping out on the bartizan, crept with careful steps round to the watch-tower. There he seated himself in the stone chair, and ate his dry morsels in the starry presences. Sleep had refreshed him, and he was wide awake, yet there was on him the sense of a strange existence. Never before had he so known himself! Often had he passed the night in the open air, but never before had his night-consciousness been such! Never had he felt the same way alone. He was parted from the whole earth, like the ship-boy on the giddy mast! Nothing was below but a dimness; the earth and all that was in it was massed into a vague shadow. It was as if he had died and gone where existence was independent of solidity and sense. Above him was domed the vast of the starry heavens; he could neither flee from it nor ascend to it! For a moment he felt it the symbol of life, yet an unattainable hopeless thing. He hung suspended between heaven and earth, an outcast of both, a denizen of neither! The true life seemed ever to retreat, never to await his grasp. Nothing but the beholding of the face of the Son of Man could set him at rest as to its reality; nothing less than the assurance from his own mouth could satisfy him that all was true, all well: life was a thing so essentially divine, that he could not know it in itself till his own essence was pure! But alas, how dream-like was the old story! Was God indeed to be reached by the prayers, affected by the needs of men? How was he to feel sure of it? Once more, as often heretofore, he found himself crying into the great world to know whether there was an ear to hear. What if there should come to him no answer? How frightful then would be his loneliness! But to seem not to be heard might be part of the discipline of his darkness! It might be for the perfecting of his faith that he must not yet know how near God was to him!

"Lord," he cried, "eternal life is to know thee and thy Father; I do not know thee and thy Father; I have not eternal life; I have but life enough to hunger for more: show me plainly of the Father whom thou alone knowest."

And as he prayed, something like a touch of God seemed to begin and grow in him till it was more than his heart could hold, and the universe about him was not large enough to hold in its hollow the heart that swelled with it.

"God is enough," he said, and sat in peace.



CHAPTER XIII.

A SOUND.

All at once came to his ear through the night a strange something. Whence or what it was he could not even conjecture. Was it a moan of the river from below? Was it a lost music-tone that had wandered from afar and grown faint? Was it one of those mysterious sounds he had read of as born in the air itself, and not yet explained of science? Was it the fluttered skirt of some angelic song of lamentation?—for if the angels rejoice, they surely must lament! Or was it a stilled human moaning? Was any wrong being done far down in the white-gleaming meadows below, by the banks of the river whose platinum-glimmer he could descry through the molten amethystine darkness of the starry night?

Presently came a long-drawn musical moan: it must be the sound of some muffled instrument! Verily night was the time for strange things! Could sounds be begotten in the fir trees by the rays of the hot sun, and born in the stillness of the following dark, as the light which the diamond receives in the day glows out in the gloom? There are parents and their progeny that never exist together!

Again the sound—hardly to be called sound! It resembled a vibration of organ-pipe too slow and deep to affect the hearing; only this rather seemed too high, as if only his soul heard it. He would steal softly down the dumb stone-stair! Some creature might be in trouble and needing help!

He crept back along the bartizan. The stair was dark as the very heart of the night. He groped his way down. The spiral stair is the safest of all: you cannot tumble far ere brought up by the inclosing cylinder. Arrived at the bottom, and feeling about, he could not find the door to the outer air which the butler had shown him; it was wall wherever his hands fell. He could not find again the stair he had left; he could not tell in what direction it lay.

He had got into a long windowless passage connecting two wings of the house, and in this he was feeling his way, fearful of falling down some stair or trap. He came at last to a door—low-browed like almost all in the house. Opening it—was it a thinner darkness or the faintest gleam of light he saw? And was that again the sound he had followed, fainter and farther off than before—a downy wind-wafted plume from the skirt of some stray harmony? At such a time of the night surely it was strange! It must come from one who could not sleep, and was solacing himself with sweet sounds, breathing a soul into the uncompanionable silence! If so it was, he had no right to search farther! But how was he to return? He dared hardly move, lest he should be found wandering over the house in the dead of night like a thief, or one searching after its secrets. He must sit down and wait for the morning: its earliest light would perhaps enable him to find his way to his quarters!

Feeling about him a little, his foot struck against the step of a stair. Examining it with his hands, he believed it the same he had ascended in the morning: even in a great castle, could there be two such royal stairs? He sat down upon it, and leaning his head on his hands, composed himself to a patient waiting for the light.

Waiting pure is perhaps the hardest thing for flesh and blood to do well. The relations of time to mind are very strange. Some of their phenomena seem to prove that time is only of the mind—belonging to the intellect as good and evil belong to the spirit. Anyhow, if it were not for the clocks of the universe, one man would live a year, a century, where another would live but a day. But the mere motion of time, not to say the consciousness of empty time, is fearful. It is this empty time that the fool is always trying to kill: his effort should be to fill it. Yet nothing but the living God can fill it—though it be but the shape our existence takes to us. Only where he is, emptiness is not. Eternity will be but an intense present to the child with whom is the Father.

Such thoughts alighted, flitted, and passed, for the first few moments, through the mind of Donal, as he sat half consciously waiting for the dawn. It was thousands of miles away, over the great round of the sunward-turning earth! His imagination woke, and began to picture the great hunt of the shadows, fleeing before the arrows of the sun, over the broad face of the mighty world—its mountains, seas, and plains in turn confessing the light, and submitting to him who slays for them the haunting demons of their dark. Then again the moments were the small cogs on the wheels of time, whereby the dark castle in which he sat was rushing ever towards the light: the cogs were caught and the wheels turned swiftly, and the time and the darkness sped. He forgot the labour of waiting. If now and then he fancied a tone through the darkness, it was to his mind the music-march of the morning to his rescue from the dungeon of the night.

But that was no musical tone which made the darkness shudder around him! He sprang to his feet. It was a human groan—a groan as of one in dire pain, the pain of a soul's agony. It seemed to have descended the stair to him. The next instant Donal was feeling his way up—cautiously, as if on each succeeding step he might come against the man who had groaned. Tales of haunted houses rushed into his memory. What if he were but pursuing the groan of an actor in the past—a creature the slave of his own conscious memory—a mere haunter of the present which he could not influence—one without physical relation to the embodied, save in the groans he could yet utter! But it was more in awe than in fear that he went. Up and up he felt his way, all about him as still as darkness and the night could make it. A ghostly cold crept through his skin; it was drawn together as by a gently freezing process; and there was a pulling at the muscles of his chest, as if his mouth were being dragged open by a martingale.

As he felt his way along the wall, sweeping its great endless circle round and round in spiral ascent, all at once his hand seemed to go through it; he started and stopped. It was the door of the room into which he had been shown to meet the earl! It stood wide open. A faint glimmer came through the window from the star-filled sky. He stepped just within the doorway. Was not that another glimmer on the floor—from the back of the room—through a door he did not remember having seen yesterday? There again was the groan, and nigh at hand! Someone must be in sore need! He approached the door and looked through. A lamp, nearly spent, hung from the ceiling of a small room which might be an office or study, or a place where papers were kept. It had the look of an antechamber, but that it could not be, for there was but the one door!—In the dim light he descried a vague form leaning up against one of the walls, as if listening to something through it! As he gazed it grew plainer to him, and he saw a face, its eyes staring wide, which yet seemed not to see him. It was the face of the earl. Donal felt as if in the presence of the disembodied; he stood fascinated, nor made attempt to retire or conceal himself. The figure turned its face to the wall, put the palms of its hands against it, and moved them up and down, and this way and that; then looked at them, and began to rub them against each other.

Donal came to himself. He concluded it was a case of sleepwalking. He had read that it was dangerous to wake the sleeper, but that he seldom came to mischief when left alone, and was about to slip away as he had come, when the faint sound of a far-off chord crept through the silence. The earl again laid his ear to the wall. But there was only silence. He went through the same dumb show as before, then turned as if to leave the place. Donal turned also, and hurriedly felt his way to the stair. Then first he was in danger of terror; for in stealing through the darkness from one who could find his way without his eyes, he seemed pursued by a creature not of this world. On the stair he went down a step or two, then lingered, and heard the earl come on it also. He crept close to the newel, leaving the great width of the stair free, but the steps of the earl went upward. Donal descended, sat down again at the bottom of the stair, and began again to wait. No sound came to him through the rest of the night. The slow hours rolled away, and the slow light drew nearer. Now and then he was on the point of falling into a doze, but would suddenly start wide awake, listening through a silence that seemed to fill the whole universe and deepen around the castle.

At length he was aware that the darkness had, unobserved of him, grown weaker—that the approach of the light was sickening it: the dayspring was about to take hold of the ends of the earth that the wicked might be shaken out of its lap. He sought the long passage by which he had come, and felt his way to the other end: it would be safer to wait there if he could get no farther. But somehow he came to the foot of his own stair, and sped up as if it were the ladder of heaven. He threw himself on his bed, fell fast asleep, and did not wake till the sun was high.



CHAPTER XIV.

THE SCHOOLROOM.

Old Simmons, the butler, woke him.

"I was afraid something was the matter, sir. They tell me you did not come down last night; and breakfast has been waiting you two hours."

"I should not have known where to find it," said Donal. "The knowledge of an old castle is not intuitive."

"How long will you take to dress?" asked Simmons.

"Ten minutes, if there is any hurry," answered Donal.

"I will come again in twenty; or, if you are willing to save an old man's bones, I will be at the bottom of the stair at that time to take charge of you. I would have looked after you yesterday, but his lordship was poorly, and I had to be in attendance on him till after midnight."

Donal thought it impossible he should of himself have found his way to the schoolroom. With all he could do to remember the turnings, he found the endeavour hopeless, and gave it up with a not unpleasing despair. Through strange passages, through doors in all directions, up stairs and down they went, and at last came to a long, low room, barely furnished, with a pleasant outlook, and immediate access to the open air. The windows were upon a small grassy court, with a sundial in the centre; a door opened on a paved court. At one end of the room a table was laid with ten times as many things as he could desire to eat, though he came to it with a good appetite. The butler himself waited upon him. He was a good-natured old fellow, with a nose somewhat too red for the ordinary wear of one in his responsible position.

"I hope the earl is better this morning," said Donal.

"Well, I can't say. He's but a delicate man is the earl, and has been, so long as I have known him. He was with the army in India, and the sun, they say, give him a stroke, and ever since he have headaches that bad! But in between he seems pretty well, and nothing displeases him more than ask after his health, or how he slep the night. But he's a good master, and I hope to end my days with him. I'm not one as likes new faces and new places! One good place is enough for me, says I—so long as it is a good one.—Take some of this game pie, sir."

Donal made haste with his breakfast, and to Simmons's astonishment had ended when he thought him just well begun.

"How shall I find master Davie?" he asked.

"He is wild to see you, sir. When I've cleared away, just have the goodness to ring this bell out of that window, and he'll be with you as fast as he can lay his feet to the ground."

Donal rang the handbell. A shout mingled with the clang of it. Then came the running of swift feet over the stones of the court, and Davie burst into the room.

"Oh, sir," he cried, "I am glad! It is good of you to come!"

"Well, you see, Davie," returned Donal, "everybody has got to do something to carry the world on a bit: my work is to help make a man of you. Only I can't do much except you help me; and if I find I am not making a good job of you, I shan't stop many hours after the discovery. If you want to keep me, you must mind what I say, and so help me to make a man of you."

"It will be long before I am a man!" said Davie rather disconsolately.

"It depends on yourself. The boy that is longest in becoming a man, is the boy that thinks himself a man before he is a bit like one."

"Come then, let us do something!" said Davie.

"Come away," rejoined Donal. "What shall we do first?"

"I don't know: you must tell me, sir."

"What would you like best to do—I mean if you might do what you pleased?"

Davie thought a little, then said:

"I should like to write a book."

"What kind of a book?"

"A beautiful story."

"Isn't it just as well to read such a book? Why should you want to write one?"

"Because then I should have it go just as I wanted it! I am always—almost always—disappointed with the thing that comes next. But if I wrote it myself, then I shouldn't get tired of it; it would be what pleased me, and not what pleased somebody else."

"Well," said Donal, after thinking for a moment, "suppose you begin to write a book!"

"Oh, that will be fun!—much better than learning verbs and nouns!"

"But the verbs and nouns are just the things that go to make a story—with not a few adjectives and adverbs, and a host of conjunctions; and, if it be a very moving story, a good many interjections! These all you have got to put together with good choice, or the story will not be one you would care to read.—Perhaps you had better not begin till I see whether you know enough about those verbs and nouns to do the thing decently. Show me your school-books."

"There they all are—on that shelf! I haven't opened one of them since Percy came home. He laughed at them all, and so Arkie—that's lady Arctura, told him he might teach me himself. And he wouldn't; and she wouldn't—with him to laugh at her. And I've had such a jolly time ever since—reading books out of the library! Have you seen the library, Mr. Grant?"

"No; I've seen nothing yet. Suppose we begin with a holiday, and you begin by teaching me!"

"Teaching you, sir! I'm not able to teach you!"

"Why, didn't you as much as offer to teach me the library? Can't you teach me this great old castle? And aren't you going to teach yourself to me?"

"That would be a funny lesson, sir!"

"The least funny, the most serious lesson you could teach me! You are a book God has begun, and he has sent me to help him go on with it; so I must learn what he has written already before I try to do anything."

"But you know what a boy is, sir! Why should you want to learn me?"

"You might as well say that, because I have read one or two books, I must know every book. To understand one boy helps to understand another, but every boy is a new boy, different from every other boy, and every one has to be understood."

"Yes—for sometimes Arkie won't hear me out, and I feel so cross with her I should like to give her a good box on the ear. What king was it, sir, that made the law that no lady, however disagreeable, was to have her ears boxed? Do you think it a good law, sir?"

"It is good for you and me anyhow."

"And when Percy says, 'Oh, go away! don't bother,' I feel as if I could hit him hard! Yet, if I happen to hurt him, I am so sorry! and why then should I want to hurt him?"

"There's something in this little fellow!" said Donal to himself. "Ah, why indeed?" he answered. "You see you don't understand yourself yet!"

"No indeed!"

"Then how could you think I should understand you all at once?—and a boy must be understood, else what's to become of him! Fancy a poor boy living all day, and sleeping all night, and nobody understanding him!"

"That would be dreadful! But you will understand me?"

"Only a little: I'm not wise enough to understand any boy."

"Then—but isn't that what you said you came for?—I thought—"

"Yes," answered Donal, "that is what I came for; but if I fancied I quite understood any boy, that would be a sure sign I did not understand him.—There is one who understands every boy as well as if there were no other boy in the whole world."

"Then why doesn't every boy go to him when he can't get fair play?"

"Ah, why? That is just what I want you to do. He can do better than give you fair play even: he can make you give other people fair play, and delight in it."

"Tell me where he is."

"That is what I have to teach you: mere telling is not much use. Telling is what makes people think they know when they do not, and makes them foolish."

"What is his name?"

"I will not tell you that just yet; for then you would think you knew him, when you knew next to nothing about him. Look here; look at this book," he went on, pulling a copy of Boethius from his pocket; "look at the name on the back of it: it is the name of the man that wrote the book."

Davie spelled it out.

"Now you know all about the book, don't you?"

"No, sir; I don't know anything about it."

"Well then, my father's name is Robert Grant: you know now what a good man he is!"

"No, I don't. I should like to see him though!"

"You would love him if you did! But you see now that knowing the name of a person does not make you know the person."

"But you said, sir, that if you told me the name of that person, I should fancy I knew all about him: I don't fancy I know all about your father now you have told me his name!"

"You have me there!" answered Donal. "I did not say quite what I ought to have said. I should have said that when we know a little about a person, and are used to hearing his name, then we are ready to think we know all about him. I heard a man the other day—a man who had never spoken to your father—talk as if he knew all about him."

"I think I understand," said Davie.

To confess ignorance is to lose respect with the ignorant who would appear to know. But there is a worse thing than to lose the respect even of the wise—to deserve to lose it; and that he does who would gain a respect that does not belong to him. But a confession of ignorance is a ground of respect with a well-bred child, and even with many ordinary boys will raise a man's influence: they recognize his loyalty to the truth. Act-truth is infinitely more than fact-truth; the love of the truth infinitely beyond the knowledge of it.

They went out together, and when they had gone the round of the place outside, Davie would have taken him over the house; but Donal said they would leave something for another time, and made him lie down for ten minutes. This the boy thought a great hardship, but Donal saw that he needed to be taught to rest. Ten times in those ten minutes he was on the point of jumping up, but Donal found a word sufficient to restrain him. When the ten minutes were over, he set him an addition sum. The boy protested he knew all the rules of arithmetic.

"But," said Donal, "I must know that you know them; that is my business. Do this one, however easy it is."

The boy obeyed, and brought him the sum—incorrect.

"Now, Davie," said Donal, "you said you knew all about addition, but you have not done this sum correctly."

"I have only made a blunder, sir."

"But a rule is no rule if it is not carried out. Everything goes on the supposition of its being itself, and not something else. People that talk about good things without doing them are left out. You are not master of addition until your addition is to be depended upon."

The boy found it hard to fix his attention: to fix it on something he did not yet understand, would be too hard! he must learn to do so in the pursuit of accuracy where he already understood! then he would not have to fight two difficulties at once—that of understanding, and that of fixing his attention. But for a long time he never kept him more than a quarter of an hour at work on the same thing.

When he had done the sum correctly, and a second without need of correction, he told him to lay his slate aside, and he would tell him a fairy-story. Therein he succeeded tolerably—in the opinion of Davie, wonderfully: what a tutor was this, who let fairies into the school-room!

The tale was of no very original construction—the youngest brother gaining in the path of righteousness what the elder brothers lose through masterful selfishness. A man must do a thing because it is right, even if he die for it; but truth were poor indeed if it did not bring at last all things subject to it! As beauty and truth are one, so are truth and strength one. Must God be ever on the cross, that we poor worshippers may pay him our highest honour? Is it not enough to know that if the devil were the greater, yet would not God do him homage, but would hang for ever on his cross? Truth is joy and victory. The true hero is adjudged to bliss, nor can in the nature of things, that is, of God, escape it. He who holds by life and resists death, must be victorious; his very life is a slaying of death. A man may die for his opinion, and may only be living to himself: a man who dies for the truth, dies to himself and to all that is not true.

"What a beautiful story!" cried Davie when it ceased. "Where did you get it, Mr. Grant?"

"Where all stories come from."

"Where is that?"

"The Think-book."

"What a funny name! I never heard it! Will it be in the library?"

"No; it is in no library. It is the book God is always writing at one end, and blotting out at the other. It is made of thoughts, not words. It is the Think-book."

"Now I understand! You got the story out of your own head!"

"Yes, perhaps. But how did it get in to my head?"

"I can't tell that. Nobody can tell that!"

"Nobody can that never goes up above his own head—that never shuts the Think-book, and stands upon it. When one does, then the Think-book swells to a great mountain and lifts him up above all the world: then he sees where the stories come from, and how they get into his head.—Are you to have a ride to-day?"

"I ride or not just as I like."

"Well, we will now do just as we both like, I hope, and it will be two likes instead of one—that is, if we are true friends."

"We shall be true friends—that we shall!"

"How can that be—between a little boy like you, and a grown man like me?"

"By me being good."

"By both of us being good—no other way. If one of us only was good, we could never be true friends. I must be good as well as you, else we shall never understand each other!"

"How kind you are, Mr. Grant! You treat me just like another one!" said Davie.

"But we must not forget that I am the big one and you the little one, and that we can't be the other one to each other except the little one does what the big one tells him! That's the way to fit into each other."

"Oh, of course!" answered Davie, as if there could not be two minds about that.



CHAPTER XV.

HORSE AND MAN.

During the first day and the next, Donal did not even come in sight of any other of the family; but on the third day, after their short early school—for he seldom let Davie work till he was tired, and never after—going with him through the stable-yard, they came upon lord Forgue as he mounted his horse—a nervous, fiery, thin-skinned thoroughbred. The moment his master was on him, he began to back and rear. Forgue gave him a cut with his whip. He went wild, plunging and dancing and kicking. The young lord was a horseman in the sense of having a good seat; but he knew little about horses; they were to him creatures to be compelled, not friends with whom to hold sweet concert. He had not learned that to rule ill is worse than to obey ill. Kings may be worse than it is in the power of any subject to be. As he was raising his arm for a second useless, cruel, and dangerous blow, Donal darted to the horse's head.

"You mustn't do that, my lord!" he said. "You'll drive him mad."

But the worst part of Forgue's nature was uppermost, in his rage all the vices of his family rushed to the top. He looked down on Donal with a fury checked only by contempt.

"Keep off," he said, "or it will be the worse for you. What do you know about horses?"

"Enough to know that you are not fair to him. I will not let you strike the poor animal. Just look at this water-chain!"

"Hold your tongue, and stand away, or, by—"

"Ye winna fricht me, sir," said Donal, whose English would, for years, upon any excitement, turn cowardly and run away, leaving his mother-tongue to bear the brunt, "—I'm no timorsome."

Forgue brought down his whip with a great stinging blow upon Donal's shoulder and back. The fierce blood of the highland Celt rushed to his brain, and had not the man in him held by God and trampled on the devil, there might then have been miserable work. But though he clenched his teeth, he fettered his hands, and ruled his tongue, and the Master of men was master still.

"My lord," he said, after one instant's thunderous silence, "there's that i' me wad think as little o' throttlin' ye as ye du o' ill-usin' yer puir beast. But I'm no gaein' to drop his quarrel, an' tak up my ain: that wad be cooardly." Here he patted the creature's neck, and recovering his composure and his English, went on. "I tell you, my lord, the curb-chain is too tight! The animal is suffering as you can have no conception of, or you would pity him."

"Let him go," cried Forgue, "or I will make you."

He raised his whip again, the more enraged that the groom stood looking on with his mouth open.

"I tell your lordship," said Donal, "it is my turn to strike; and if you hit the animal again before that chain is slackened, I will pitch you out of the saddle."

For answer Forgue struck the horse over the head. The same moment he was on the ground; Donal had taken him by the leg and thrown him off. He was not horseman enough to keep his hold of the reins, and Donal led the horse a little way off, and left him to get up in safety. The poor animal was pouring with sweat, shivering and trembling, yet throwing his head back every moment. Donal could scarcely undo the chain; it was twisted—his lordship had fastened it himself—and sharp edges pressed his jaw at the least touch of the rein. He had not yet rehooked it, when Forgue was upon him with a second blow of his whip. The horse was scared afresh at the sound, and it was all he could do to hold him, but he succeeded at length in calming him. When he looked about him, Forgue was gone. He led the horse into the stable, put him in his stall, and proceeded to unsaddle him. Then first he was re-aware of the presence of Davie. The boy was stamping—with fierce eyes and white face—choking with silent rage.

"Davie, my child!" said Donal, and Davie recovered his power of speech.

"I'll go and tell my father!" he said, and made for the stable door.

"Which of us are you going to tell upon?" asked Donal with a smile.

"Percy, of course!" he replied, almost with a scream. "You are a good man, Mr. Grant, and he is a bad fellow. My father will give it him well. He doesn't often—but oh, can't he just! To dare to strike you! I'll go to him at once, whether he's in bed or not!"

"No, you won't, my boy! Listen to me. Some people think it's a disgrace to be struck: I think it a disgrace to strike. I have a right over your brother by that blow, and I mean to keep it—for his good. You didn't think I was afraid of him?"

"No, no; anybody could see you weren't a bit afraid of him. I would have struck him again if he had killed me for it!"

"I don't doubt you would. But when you understand, you will not be so ready to strike. I could have killed your brother more easily than held his horse. You don't know how strong I am, or what a blow of my fist would be to a delicate fellow like that. I hope his fall has not hurt him."

"I hope it has—a little, I mean, only a little," said the boy, looking in the face of his tutor. "But tell me why you did not strike him. It would be good for him to be well beaten."

"It will, I hope, be better for him to be well forgiven: he will be ashamed of himself the sooner, I think. But why I did not strike him was, that I am not my own master."

"But my father, I am sure, would not have been angry with you. He would have said you had a right to do it."

"Perhaps; but the earl is not the master I mean."

"Who is, then?"

"Jesus Christ."

"O—oh!"

"He says I must not return evil for evil, a blow for a blow. I don't mind what people say about it: he would not have me disgrace myself! He never even threatened those that struck him."

"But he wasn't a man, you know!"

"Not a man! What was he then?"

"He was God, you know."

"And isn't God a man—and ever so much more than a man?"

The boy made no answer, and Donal went on.

"Do you think God would have his child do anything disgraceful? Why, Davie, you don't know your own Father! What God wants of us is to be down-right honest, and do what he tells us without fear."

Davie was silent. His conscience reproved him, as the conscience of a true-hearted boy will reprove him at the very mention of the name of God, until he sets himself consciously to do his will. Donal said no more, and they went for their walk.



CHAPTER XVI.

COLLOQUIES.

In the evening Donal went to see Andrew Comin.

"Weel, hoo are ye gettin' on wi' the yerl?" asked the cobbler.

"You set me a good example of saying nothing about him," answered Donal; "and I will follow it—at least till I know more: I have scarce seen him yet."

"That's right!" returned the cobbler with satisfaction. "I'm thinkin' ye'll be ane o' the feow 'at can rule their ane hoose—that is, haud their ain tongues till the hoor for speech be come. Stick ye to that, my dear sir, an' mair i'll be weel nor in general is weel."

"I'm come to ye for a bit o' help though; I want licht upon a queston 'at 's lang triblet me.—What think ye?—hoo far does the comman' laid upo' 's, as to warfare 'atween man an' man, reach? Are we never ta raise the han' to human bein', think ye?"

"Weel, I hae thoucht a heap aboot it, an' I daurna say 'at I'm jist absolute clear upo' the maitter. But there may be pairt clear whaur a' 's no clear; an' by what we un'erstan' we come the nearer to what we dinna un'erstan'. There's ae thing unco plain—'at we're on no accoont to return evil for evil: onybody 'at ca's himsel' a Christian maun un'erstan' that muckle. We're to gie no place to revenge, inside or oot. Therefore we're no to gie blow for blow. Gien a man hit ye, ye're to take it i' God's name. But whether things mayna come to a p'int whaurat ye're bu'n', still i' God's name, to defen' the life God has gien ye, I canna say—I haena the licht to justifee me in denyin' 't. There maun surely, I hae said to mysel', be a time whan a man may hae to du what God dis sae aften—mak use o' the strong han'! But it's clear he maunna do 't in rage—that's ower near hate—an' hate 's the deevil's ain. A man may, gien he live varra near the Lord, be whiles angry ohn sinned: but the wrath o' man worketh not the richteousness o' God; an' the wrath that rises i' the mids o' encoonter, is no like to be o' the natur o' divine wrath. To win at it, gien 't be possible, lat's consider the Lord—hoo he did. There's no word o' him ever liftin' han' to protec' himsel'. The only thing like it was for ithers. To gar them lat his disciples alane—maybe till they war like eneuch til himsel' no to rin, he pat oot mair nor his han' upo' them 'at cam to tak him: he strak them sair wi' the pooer itsel' 'at muvs a' airms. But no varra sair naither—he but knockit them doon!—jist to lat them ken they war to du as he bade them, an' lat his fowk be;—an' maybe to lat them ken 'at gien he loot them tak him, it was no 'at he couldna hin'er them gien he likit. I canna help thinkin' we may stan' up for ither fowk. An' I'm no sayin' 'at we arena to defen' oorsels frae a set attack wi' design.—But there's something o' mair importance yet nor kennin' the richt o' ony queston."

"What can that be? What can be o' mair importance nor doin' richt i' the sicht o' God?" said Donal.

"Bein' richt wi' the varra thoucht o' God, sae 'at we canna mistak, but maun ken jist what he wad hae dune. That's the big Richt, the mother o' a' the lave o' the richts. That's to be as the maister was. Onygait, whatever we du, it maun be sic as to be dune, an' it maun be dune i' the name o' God; whan we du naething we maun du that naething i' the name o' God. A body may weel say, 'O Lord, thoo hasna latten me see what I oucht to du, sae I'll du naething!' Gien a man ought to defen' himsel', but disna du 't, 'cause he thinks God wadna hae him du 't, wull God lea' him oondefent for that? Or gien a body stan's up i' the name o' God, an' fronts an airmy o' enemies, div ye think God 'ill forsake him 'cause he 's made a mistak? Whatever's dune wantin' faith maun be sin—it canna help it; whatever's dune in faith canna be sin, though it may be a mistak. Only latna a man tak presumption for faith! that's a fearsome mistak, for it's jist the opposite."

"I thank ye," said Donal. "I'll consider wi' my best endeevour what ye hae said."

"But o' a' things," resumed the cobbler, "luik 'at ye lo'e fairplay. Fairplay 's a won'erfu' word—a gran' thing constantly lost sicht o'. Man, I hae been tryin' to win at the duin' o' the richt this mony a year, but I daurna yet lat mysel' ac' upo' the spur o' the moment whaur my ain enterest 's concernt: my ain side micht yet blin' me to the ither man's side o' the business. Onybody can un'erstan' his ain richt, but it taks trible an' thoucht to un'erstan' what anither coonts his richt. Twa richts canna weel clash. It's a wrang an' a richt, or pairt wrang an' a pairt richt 'at clashes."

"Gien a'body did that, I doobt there wad be feow fortins made!" said Donal.

"Aboot that I canna say, no kennin'; I daurna discover a law whaur I haena knowledge! But this same fairplay lies, alang wi' love, at the varra rute and f'undation o' the universe. The theologians had a glimmer o' the fac' whan they made sae muckle o' justice, only their justice is sic a meeserable sma' bit plaister eemage o' justice, 'at it maist gars an honest body lauch. They seem to me like shepherds 'at rive doon the door-posts, an' syne block up the door wi' them."

Donal told him of the quarrel he had had with lord Forgue, and asked him whether he thought he had done right.

"Weel," answered the cobbler, "I'm as far frae blamin' you as I am frae justifeein' the yoong lord."

"He seems to me a fine kin' o' a lad," said Donal, "though some owerbeirin'."

"The likes o' him are mair to be excused for that nor ither fowk, for they hae great disadvantages i' the position an' the upbringin'. It's no easy for him 'at's broucht up a lord to believe he's jist ane wi' the lave."

Donal went for a stroll through the town, and met the minister, but he took no notice of him. He was greatly annoyed at the march which he said the fellow had stolen upon him, and regarded him as one who had taken an unfair advantage of him. But he had little influence at the castle. The earl never by any chance went to church. His niece, lady Arctura, did, however, and held the minister for an authority at things spiritual—one of whom living water was to be had without money and without price. But what she counted spiritual things were very common earthly stuff, and for the water, it was but stagnant water from the ditches of a sham theology. Only what was a poor girl to do who did not know how to feed herself, but apply to one who pretended to be able to feed others? How was she to know that he could not even feed himself? Out of many a difficulty she thought he helped her—only the difficulty would presently clasp her again, and she must deal with it as she best could, until a new one made her forget it, and go to the minister, or rather to his daughter, again. She was one of those who feel the need of some help to live—some upholding that is not of themselves, but who, through the stupidity of teachers unconsciously false,—men so unfit that they do not know they are unfit, direct their efforts, first towards having correct notions, then to work up the feelings that belong to those notions. She was an honest girl so far as she had been taught—perhaps not so far as she might have been without having been taught. How was she to think aright with scarce a glimmer of God's truth? How was she to please God, as she called it, who thought of him in a way repulsive to every loving soul? How was she to be accepted of God, who did not accept her own neighbour, but looked down, without knowing it, upon so many of her fellow-creatures? How should such a one either enjoy or recommend her religion? It would have been the worse for her if she had enjoyed it—the worse for others if she had recommended it! Religion is simply the way home to the Father. There was little of the path in her religion except the difficulty of it. The true way is difficult enough because of our unchildlikeness—uphill, steep, and difficult, but there is fresh life on every surmounted height, a purer air gained, ever more life for more climbing. But the path that is not the true one is not therefore easy. Up hill is hard walking, but through a bog is worse. Those who seek God with their faces not even turned towards him, who, instead of beholding the Father in the Son, take the stupidest opinions concerning him and his ways from other men—what should they do but go wandering on dark mountains, spending their strength in avoiding precipices and getting out of bogs, mourning and sighing over their sins instead of leaving them behind and fleeing to the Father, whom to know is eternal life. Did they but set themselves to find out what Christ knew and meant and commanded, and then to do it, they would soon forget their false teachers. But alas! they go on bowing before long-faced, big-worded authority—the more fatally when it is embodied in a good man who, himself a victim to faith in men, sees the Son of God only through the theories of others, and not with the sight of his own spiritual eyes.

Donal had not yet seen the lady. He neither ate, sat, nor held intercourse with the family. Away from Davie, he spent his time in his tower chamber, or out of doors. All the grounds were open to him except a walled garden on the south-eastern slope, looking towards the sea, which the earl kept for himself, though he rarely walked in it. On the side of the hill away from the town, was a large park reaching down to the river, and stretching a long way up its bank—with fine trees, and glorious outlooks to the sea in one direction, and to the mountains in the other. Here Donal would often wander, now with a book, now with Davie. The boy's presence was rarely an interruption to his thoughts when he wanted to think. Sometimes he would thrown himself on the grass and read aloud; then Davie would throw himself beside him, and let the words he could not understand flow over him in a spiritual cataract. On the river was a boat, and though at first he was awkward enough in the use of the oars, he was soon able to enjoy thoroughly a row up or down the stream, especially in the twilight.

He was alone with his book under a beech-tree on a steep slope to the river, the day after his affair with lord Forgue: reading aloud, he did not hear the approach of his lordship.

"Mr. Grant," he said, "if you will say you are sorry you threw me from my horse, I will say I am sorry I struck you."

"I am very sorry," said Donal, rising, "that it was necessary to throw you from your horse; and perhaps your lordship may remember that you struck me before I did so."

"That has nothing to do with it. I propose an accommodation, or compromise, or what you choose to call it: if you will do the one, I will do the other."

"What I think I ought to do, my lord, I do without bargaining. I am not sorry I threw you from your horse, and to say so would be to lie."

"Of course everybody thinks himself in the right!" said his lordship with a small sneer.

"It does not follow that no one is ever in the right!" returned Donal. "Does your lordship think you were in the right—either towards me or the poor animal who could not obey you because he was in torture?"

"I don't say I do."

"Then everybody does not think himself in the right! I take your lordship's admission as an apology."

"By no means: when I make an apology, I will do it; I will not sneak out of it."

He was evidently at strife with himself: he knew he was wrong, but could not yet bring himself to say so. It is one of the poorest of human weaknesses that a man should be ashamed of saying he has done wrong, instead of so ashamed of having done wrong that he cannot rest till he has said so; for the shame cleaves fast until the confession removes it.

Forgue walked away a step or two, and stood with his back to Donal, poking the point of his stick into the grass. All at once he turned and said:

"I will apologize if you will tell me one thing."

"I will tell you whether you apologize or not," said Donal. "I have never asked you to apologize."

"Tell me then why you did not return either of my blows yesterday."

"I should like to know why you ask—but I will answer you: simply because to do so would have been to disobey my master."

"That's a sort of thing I don't understand. But I only wanted to know it was not cowardice; I could not make an apology to a coward."

"If I were a coward, you would owe me an apology all the same, and he is a poor creature who will not pay his debts. But I hope it is not necessary I should either thrash or insult your lordship to convince you I fear you no more than that blackbird there!"

Forgue gave a little laugh. A moment's pause followed. Then he held out his hand, but in a half-hesitating, almost sheepish way:

"Well, well! shake hands," he said.

"No, my lord," returned Donal. "I bear your lordship not the slightest ill-will, but I will shake hands with no one in a half-hearted way, and no other way is possible while you are uncertain whether I am a coward or not."

So saying, he threw himself again upon the grass, and lord Forgue walked away, offended afresh.

The next morning he came into the school-room where Donal sat at lessons with Davie. He had a book in his hand.

"Mr. Grant," he said, "will you help me with this passage in Xenophon?"

"With all my heart," answered Donal, and in a few moments had him out of his difficulty.

But instead of going, his lordship sat down a little way off, and went on with his reading—sat until master and pupil went out, and left him sitting there. The next morning he came with a fresh request, and Donal found occasion to approve warmly of a translation he proposed. From that time he came almost every morning. He was no great scholar, but with the prospect of an English university before him, thought it better to read a little.

The housekeeper at the castle was a good woman, and very kind to Donal, feeling perhaps that he fell to her care the more that he was by birth of her own class; for it was said in the castle, "the tutor makes no pretence to being a gentleman." Whether he was the more or the less of one on that account, I leave my reader to judge according to his capability. Sometimes when his dinner was served, mistress Brookes would herself appear, to ensure proper attention to him, and would sit down and talk to him while he ate, ready to rise and serve him if necessary. Their early days had had something in common, though she came from the southern highlands of green hills and more sheep. She gave him some rather needful information about the family; and he soon perceived that there would have been less peace in the house but for her good temper and good sense.

Lady Arctura was the daughter of the last lord Morven, and left sole heir to the property; Forgue and his brother Davie were the sons of the present earl. The present lord was the brother of the last, and had lived with him for some years before he succeeded. He was a man of peculiar and studious habits; nobody ever seemed to take to him; and since his wife's death, his health had been precarious. Though a strange man, he was a just if not generous master. His brother had left him guardian to lady Arctura, and he had lived in the castle as before. His wife was a very lovely, but delicate woman, and latterly all but confined to her room. Since her death a great change had passed upon her husband. Certainly his behaviour was sometimes hard to understand.

"He never gangs to the kirk—no ance in a twalmonth!" said Mrs. Brookes. "Fowk sud be dacent, an' wha ever h'ard o' dacent fowk 'at didna gang to the kirk ance o' the Sabbath! I dinna haud wi' gaein' twise mysel': ye hae na time to read yer ain chapters gien ye do that. But the man's a weel behavet man, sae far as ye see, naither sayin' nor doin' the thing he shouldna: what he may think, wha's to say! the mair ten'er conscience coonts itsel' the waur sinner; an' I'm no gaein' to think what I canna ken! There's some 'at says he led a gey lowse kin' o' a life afore he cam to bide wi' the auld yerl; he was wi' the airmy i' furreign pairts, they say; but aboot that I ken naething. The auld yerl was something o' a sanct himsel', rist the banes o' 'im! We're no the jeedges o' the leevin' ony mair nor o' the deid! But I maun awa' to luik efter things; a minute's an hoor lost wi' thae fule lasses. Ye're a freen' o' An'rew Comin's, they tell me, sir: I dinna ken what to do wi' 's lass, she's that upsettin'! Ye wad think she was ane o' the faimily whiles; an' ither whiles she 's that silly!"

"I'm sorry to hear it!" said Donal. "Her grandfather and grandmother are the best of good people."

"I daursay! But there's jist what I hae seen: them 'at 's broucht up their ain weel eneuch, their son's bairn they'll jist lat gang. Aither they're tired o' the thing, or they think they're safe. They hae lippent til yoong Eppy a heap ower muckle. But I'm naither a prophet nor the son o' a prophet, as the minister said last Sunday—an' said well, honest man! for it's the plain trowth: he's no ane o' the major nor yet the minor anes! But haud him oot o' the pu'pit an' he dis no that ill. His dochter 's no an ill lass aither, an' a great freen' o' my leddy's. But I'm clean ashamed o' mysel' to gang on this gait. Hae ye dune wi' yer denner, Mr. Grant?—Weel, I'll jist sen' to clear awa', an' lat ye til yer lessons."



CHAPTER XVII.

LADY ARCTURA.

It was now almost three weeks since Donal had become an inmate of the castle, and he had scarcely set his eyes on the lady of the house. Once he had seen her back, and more than once had caught a glimpse of her profile, but he had never really seen her face, and they had never spoken to each other.

One afternoon he was sauntering along under the overhanging boughs of an avenue of beeches, formerly the approach to a house in which the family had once lived, but which had now another entrance. He had in his hand a copy of the Apocrypha, which he had never seen till he found this in the library. In his usual fashion he had begun to read it through, and was now in the book called the Wisdom of Solomon, at the 17th chapter, narrating the discomfiture of certain magicians. Taken with the beauty of the passage, he sat down on an old stone-roller, and read aloud. Parts of the passage were these—they will enrich my page:—

"For they, that promised to drive away terrors and troubles from a sick soul, were sick themselves of fear, worthy to be laughed at.

"...For wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous, and being pressed with conscience, always forecasteth grievous things.

"...But they sleeping the same sleep that night, which was indeed intolerable, and which came upon them out of the bottoms of inevitable hell,

"Were partly vexed with monstrous apparitions, and partly fainted, their heart failing them: for a sudden fear, and not looked for, came upon them.

"So then whosoever there fell down was straitly kept, shut up in a prison without iron bars.

"For whether he were husbandman, or shepherd, or a labourer in the field, he was overtaken, and endured that necessity, which could not be avoided: for they were all bound with one chain of darkness.

"Whether it were a whistling wind, or a melodious noise of birds among the spreading branches, or a pleasing fall of water running violently,

"Or a terrible sound of stones cast down, or a running that could not be seen of skipping beasts, or a roaring voice of most savage wild beasts, or a rebounding echo from the hollow mountains; these things made them to swoon for fear.

"For the whole world shined with clear light, and none were hindered in their labour:

"Over them only was spread an heavy night, an image of that darkness which should afterward receive them: but yet were they unto themselves more grievous than the darkness."

He had read so much, and stopped to think a little; for through the incongruity of it, which he did not doubt arose from poverty of imagination in the translator, rendering him unable to see what the poet meant, ran yet an indubitable vein of awful truth, whether fully intended by the writer or not mattered little to such a reader as Donal—when, lifting his eyes, he saw lady Arctura standing before him with a strange listening look. A spell seemed upon her; her face was white, her lips white and a little parted.

Attracted, as she was about to pass him, by the sound of what was none the less like the Bible from the solemn crooning way in which Donal read it to the congregation of his listening thoughts, yet was certainly not the Bible, she was presently fascinated by the vague terror of what she heard, and stood absorbed: without much originative power, she had an imagination prompt and delicate and strong in response.

Donal had but a glance of her; his eyes returned again at once to his book, and he sat silent and motionless, though not seeing a word. For one instant she stood still; then he heard the soft sound of her dress as, with noiseless foot, she stole back, and took another way.

I must give my reader a shadow of her. She was rather tall, slender, and fair. But her hair was dark, and so crinkly that, when merely parted, it did all the rest itself. Her forehead was rather low. Her eyes were softly dark, and her features very regular—her nose perhaps hardly large enough, or her chin. Her mouth was rather thin-lipped, but would have been sweet except for a seemingly habitual expression of pain. A pair of dark brows overhung her sweet eyes, and gave a look of doubtful temper, yet restored something of the strength lacking a little in nose and chin. It was an interesting—not a quite harmonious face, and in happiness might, Donal thought, be beautiful even. Her figure was eminently graceful—as Donal saw when he raised his eyes at the sound of her retreat. He thought she needed not have run away as from something dangerous: why did she not pass him like any other servant of the house? But what seemed to him like contempt did not hurt him. He was too full of realities to be much affected by opinion however shown. Besides, he had had his sorrow and had learned his lesson. He was a poet—but one of the few without any weak longing after listening ears. The poet whose poetry needs an audience, can be but little of a poet; neither can the poetry that is of no good to the man himself, be of much good to anybody else. There are the song-poets and the life-poets, or rather the God-poems. Sympathy is lovely and dear—chiefly when it comes unsought; but the fame after which so many would-be, yea, so many real poets sigh, is poorest froth. Donal could sing his songs like the birds, content with the blue heaven or the sheep for an audience—or any passing angel that cared to listen. On the hill-sides he would sing them aloud, but it was of the merest natural necessity. A look of estrangement on the face of a friend, a look of suffering on that of any animal, would at once and sorely affect him, but not a disparaging expression on the face of a comparative stranger, were she the loveliest woman he had ever seen. He was little troubled about the world, because little troubled about himself.

Lady Arctura and lord Forgue lived together like brother and sister, apparently without much in common, and still less of misunderstanding. There would have been more chance of their taking a fancy to each other if they had not been brought up together; they were now little together, and never alone together.

Very few visitors came to the castle, and then only to call. Lord Morven seldom saw any one, his excuse being his health.

But lady Arctura was on terms of intimacy with Sophia Carmichael, the minister's daughter—to whom her father had communicated his dissatisfaction with the character of Donal, and poured out his indignation at his conduct. He ought to have left the parish at once! whereas he had instead secured for himself the best, the only situation in it, without giving him a chance of warning his lordship! The more injustice her father spoke against him, the more Miss Carmichael condemned him; for she was a good daughter, and looked up to her father as the wisest and best man in the parish. Very naturally therefore she repeated his words to lady Arctura. She in her turn conveyed them to her uncle. He would not, however, pay much attention to them. The thing was done, he said. He had himself seen and talked with Donal, and liked him! The young man had himself told him of the clergyman's disapprobation! He would request him to avoid all reference to religious subjects! Therewith he dismissed the matter, and forgot all about it. Anything requiring an effort of the will, an arrangement of ideas, or thought as to mode, his lordship would not encounter. Nor was anything to him of such moment that he must do it at once. Lady Arctura did not again refer to the matter: her uncle was not one to take liberties with—least of all to press to action. But she continued painfully doubtful whether she was not neglecting her duty, trying to persuade herself that she was waiting only till she should have something definite to say of her own knowledge against him.

And now what was she to conclude from his reading the Apocrypha? The fact was not to be interpreted to his advantage: was he not reading what was not the Bible as if it were the Bible, and when he might have been reading the Bible itself? Besides, the Apocrypha came so near the Bible when it was not the Bible! it must be at least rather wicked! At the same time she could not drive from her mind the impressiveness both of the matter she had heard, and his manner of reading it: the strong sound of judgment and condemnation in it came home to her—she could not have told how or why, except generally because of her sins. She was one of those—not very few I think—who from conjunction of a lovely conscience with an ill-instructed mind, are doomed for a season to much suffering. She was largely different from her friend: the religious opinions of the latter—they were in reality rather metaphysical than religious, and bad either way—though she clung to them with all the tenacity of a creature with claws, occasioned her not an atom of mental discomposure: perhaps that was in part why she clung to them! they were as she would have them! She did not trouble herself about what God required of her, beyond holding the doctrine the holding of which guaranteed, as she thought, her future welfare. Conscience toward God had very little to do with her opinions, and her heart still less. Her head on the contrary, perhaps rather her memory, was considerably occupied with the matter; nothing she held had ever been by her regarded on its own merits—that is, on its individual claim to truth; if it had been handed down by her church, that was enough; to support it she would search out text after text, and press it into the service. Any meaning but that which the church of her fathers gave to a passage must be of the devil, and every man opposed to the truth who saw in that meaning anything but truth! It was indeed impossible Miss Carmichael should see any meaning but that, even if she had looked for it; she was nowise qualified for discovering truth, not being herself true. What she saw and loved in the doctrines of her church was not the truth, but the assertion; and whoever questioned, not to say the doctrine, but even the proving of it by any particular passage, was a dangerous person, and unsound. All the time her acceptance and defence of any doctrine made not the slightest difference to her life—as indeed how should it?