Alexa had not again alluded to his brother's letter concerning George Crawford, fearing he might say what she would find unpleasant. But now she wanted to get a definite opinion from him in regard to certain modes of money-making, which had naturally of late occupied a good deal of her thought.

"What is your notion concerning money-lending—I mean at interest, Mr. Ingram?" she said. "I hear it is objected to nowadays by some that set up for teachers!"

"It is by no means the first time in the world's history," answered Andrew.

"I want to know what you think of it, Mr. Ingram?"

"I know little," replied Andrew, "of any matter with which I have not had to deal practically."

"But ought not one to have his ideas ready for the time when we will have to deal practically?" said Alexa.

"Mine would be pretty sure to be wrong," answered Andrew; "and there is no time to spend in gathering wrong ideas and then changing them!"

"On the contrary, they would be less warped by personal interest."

"Could circumstances arise in which it would not be my first interest to be honest?" said Andrew. "Would not my judgment be quickened by the compulsion and the danger? In no danger myself, might I not judge too leniently of things from which I should myself recoil? Selfishly smoother with regard to others, because less anxious about their honesty than my own, might I not yield them what, were I in the case, I should see at once I dared not allow to myself? I can perceive no use in making up my mind how to act in circumstances in which I am not—probably will never be. I have enough to occupy me where I find myself, and should certainly be oftener in doubt how to act, if I had bothered my brains how to think in circumstances foreign to me. In such thinking, duty is of necessity a comparatively feeble factor, being only duty imagined, not live duty, and the result is the more questionable. The Lord instructed His apostles not to be anxious what they should say when they were brought before rulers and kings: I will leave the question of duty alone until action is demanded of me. In the meantime I will do the duty now required of me, which is the only preparation for the duty that is to come."

Although Alexa had not begun to understand Andrew, she had sense enough and righteousness enough to feel that he was somehow ahead of her, and that it was not likely he and George Crawford would be of one mind in the matter that occupied her, so different were their ways of looking at things—so different indeed the things themselves they thought worth looking at.

She was silent for a moment, then said:

"You can at least tell me what you think of gambling!"

"I think it is the meanest mode of gaining or losing money a man could find."

"Why do you think so?"

"Because he desires only to gain, and can gain only by his neighbor's loss. One of the two must be the worse for his transaction with the other. Each must wish ill to his neighbor!"

"But the risk was agreed upon between them."

"True—but in what hope? Was it not, on the part of each, that he would be the gainer and the other the loser? There is no common cause, nothing but pure opposition of interest."

"Are there not many things in which one must gain and the other lose?"

"There are many things in which one gains and the other loses; but if it is essential to any transaction that only one side shall gain, the thing is not of God."

"What do you think of trading in stocks?"

"I do not know enough about it to have a right to speak."

"You can give your impression!"

"I will not give what I do not value."

"Suppose, then, you heard of a man who had made his money so, how would you behave to him?"

"I would not seek his acquaintance."

"If he sought yours?"

"It would be time to ask how he had made his money. Then it would be my business."

"What would make it your business?"

"That he sought my acquaintance. It would then be necessary to know something about him, and the readiest question would be—how he had made his money!"

Alexa was silent for some time.

"Do you think God cares about everything?" she said at length.

"Everything," answered Andrew, and she said no more.

Andrew avoided the discussion of moral questions. He regarded the thing as vermiculate, and ready to corrupt the obedience. "When you have a thing to do," he would say, "you will do it right in proportion to your love of right. But do the right, and you will love the right; for by doing it you will see it in a measure as it is, and no one can see the truth as it is without loving it. The more you talk about what is right, or even about the doing of it, the more you are in danger of exemplifying how loosely theory may be allied to practice. Talk without action saps the very will. Something you have to do is waiting undone all the time, and getting more and more undone. The only refuge is to do." To know the thing he ought to do was a matter of import, to do the thing he knew he ought to do was a matter of life and death to Andrew. He never allowed even a cognate question to force itself upon him until he had attended to the thing that demanded doing: it was merest common sense!

Alexa had in a manner got over her uneasiness at the report of how George was making his money, and their correspondence was not interrupted. But something, perhaps a movement from the world of spirit coming like the wind, had given her one of those motions to betterment, which, however occasioned, are the throb of the divine pulse in our life, the call of the Father, the pull of home, and the guide thither to such as will obey them. She had in consequence again become doubtful about Crawford, and as to whether she was right in corresponding with him. This led to her talk with Andrew, which, while it made her think less of his intellect, influenced her in a way she neither understood nor even recognized. There are two ways in which one nature may influence another for betterment—the one by strengthening the will, the other by heightening the ideal. Andrew, without even her suspicion of the fact, wrought in the latter way upon Alexa. She grew more uneasy. George was coming home: how was she to receive him? Nowise bound, they were on terms of intimacy: was she to encourage the procession of that intimacy, or to ward attempt at nearer approach?



CHAPTER XX.

GEORGE AND ANDREW.

George returned, and made an early appearance at Potlurg. Dawtie met him in the court. She did not know him, but involuntarily shrunk from him. He frowned. There was a natural repugnance between them; the one was simple, the other double; the one was pure, the other selfish; the one loved her neighbor, the other preyed upon his.

George was a little louder, and his manners were more studied. Alexa felt him overblown. He was floridly at his ease. What little "atmosphere" there had been about him was gone, and its place taken by a colored fog. His dress was unobjectionable, and yet attracted notice; perhaps it was only too considered. Alexa was disappointed, and a little relieved. He looked older, yet not more manly—and rather fat. He had more of the confidence women dislike to see a man without, than was quite pleasant even to the confident Alexa. His speech was not a little infected with the nasality—as easy to catch as hard to get rid of—which I presume the Puritans carried from England to America. On the whole, George was less interesting than Alexa had expected.

He came to her as if he would embrace her, but an instinctive movement on her part sufficed to check him. She threw an additional heartiness into her welcome, and kept him at arm's-length. She felt as if she had lost an old friend, and not gained a new one. He made himself very agreeable, but that he made himself so, made him less so.

There was more than these changes at work in her; there was still the underlying doubt concerning him. Although not yet a live soul, she had strong if vague ideas about right and wrong; and although she sought many things a good deal more than righteousness, I do not see what temptation would at once have turned her from its known paths. At the same time I do not see what she had yet, more than hundreds of thousands of well-meaning women, to secure her from slow decay and final ruin.

They laughed and talked together very like the way they used, but "every like is not the same," and they knew there was a difference. George was stung by the sense of it—too much to show that he was vexed. He laid himself out to be the more pleasing, as if determined to make her feel what he was worth—as the man, namely, whom he imagined himself, and valued himself on being.

It is an argument for God, to see what fools those make of themselves who, believing there is a God, do not believe in Him—children who do not know the Father. Such make up the mass of church and chapel goers. Let an earthquake or the small-pox break loose among them, and they will show what sort their religion is. George had got rid of the folly of believing in the existence of a God, either interested in human affairs or careless of them, and naturally found himself more comfortable in consequence; for he never had believed in God, and it is awkward to believe and not believe at the same moment. What he had called his beliefs were as worthy of the name as those of most people, but whether he was better or worse without them hardly interests me, and my philanthropy will scarce serve to make me glad that he was more comfortable.

As they talked, old times came up, and they drew a little nearer, until at last a gentle spring of rose-colored interest began a feeble flow in Alexa's mind. When George took his leave, which he did soon, with the wisdom of one who feared to bore, she went with him to the court, where the gardener was holding his horse. Beside them stood Andrew, talking to the old man, and admiring the beautiful animal in his charge.

"The life of the Creator has run free through every channel up to this creature!" he was saying as they came near.

"What rot!" said George to himself, but to Alexa he said: "Here's my old friend, the farmer, I declare!" then to Andrew: "How do you do, Mr. Ingram?"

George never forgot a man's name, and went in consequence for a better fellow than he was. One may remember for reasons that have little to do with good-fellowship. He spoke as if they were old friends. "You seem to like the look of the beast!" he said: "you ought to know what's what in horses!"

"He is one of the finest horses I ever saw," answered Andrew. "The man who owns him is fortunate."

"He ought to be a good one!" said George. "I gave a hundred and fifty guineas for him yesterday."

Andrew could not help vaguely reflecting what kind of money had bought him, if Sandy was right.

Alexa was pleased to see Andrew. He made her feel more comfortable. His presence seemed to protect her a little.

"May I ask you, Mr. Ingram," she said, "to repeat what you were saying about the horse as we came up?"

"I was saying," answered Andrew, "that, to any one who understands a horse it is clear that the power of God must have flowed unobstructed through many generations to fashion such a perfection."

"Oh! you indorse the development theory—do you?" said George. "I should hardly have expected that of you."

"I do not think it has anything to do with what I said; no one disputes that this horse comes of many generations of horses. The development theory, if I understand aright, concerns itself with how his first ancestor in his own kind came to be a horse."

"And about that there can be no doubt in the mind of any one who believes in the Bible!" said George.

"God makes beautiful horses," returned Andrew; "whether He takes the one way or the other to make them, I am sure He takes the right way."

"You imply it is of little consequence what you believe about it."

"If I had to make them it would be of consequence. But what I think of consequence to us is—that He makes them, not out of nothing, but out of Himself. Why should my poor notion of God's how be of importance, so long as, when I see a horse like yours, Mr. Crawford, I say, God be praised? It is of eternal importance to love the animal, and see in him the beauty of the Lord; it is of none to fancy I know which way God took to make him. Not having in me the power or the stuff to make a horse, I can not know how God made the horse; I can know him to be beautiful"

"But," said George, "the first horse was a very common-looking domestic animal, which they kept to eat—nothing like this one."

"Then you think God made the first horse, and after that the horses made themselves," said Andrew.

Alexa laughed; George said nothing; Andrew went on.

"But," he said, "if we have come up from the lower animals, through a million of kinds, perhaps—against which theory I have nothing to urge—then I am more than prepared to believe that the man who does not do the part of a man will have to go down again, through all the stages of his being, to a position beyond the lowest forms of the powers he has misused, and there begin to rise once more, haunted perhaps with dim hints of the world of humanity left so far above him."

"Bah! What's the use of bothering! Rubbish!" cried George, with rude jollity. "You know as well as I do, Mr. Ingram, it's all bosh! Things will go on as they're doing, and as they have been doing, till now from all eternity—so far as we know, and that's enough for us." "They will not go on so for long in our sight, Mr. Crawford. The worms will have a word to say with us."

Alexa turned away.

"You've not given up preaching and taken to the practical yet, Mr. Ingram, I see," said George.

Andrew laughed.

"I flatter myself I have not ceased to be practical, Mr. Crawford. You are busy with what you see, and I am busy as well with what I don't see; but all the time I believe my farm is in as good a state as your books."

George gave a start, and stole a look at the young farmer, but was satisfied he "meant nothing." The self-seeker will walk into the very abyss protesting himself a practical man, and counting him unpractical who will not with him "jump the life to come." Himself, he neither measures the width nor questions his muscle.



CHAPTER XXI.

WHAT IS IT WORTH?

Andrew, with all his hard work, harder since Sandy went, continued able to write, for he neither sought company nor drank strong drink, and was the sport of no passion. From threatened inroad he appealed to Him who created to lift His child above the torrent, and make impulse the slave of conscience and manhood. There were no demons riding the whirlwinds of his soul. It is not wonderful then that he should be able to write a book, or that the book should be of genuine and original worth. It had the fortune to be "favorably" reviewed, scarce one of those who reviewed it understanding it, while all of them seemed to themselves to understand it perfectly. I mention the thing because, had the book not been thus reviewed, Alexa would not have bought a copy, or been able to admire it.

The review she read was in a paper whose editor would not have admitted it had he suspected the drift which the reviewer had failed to see; and the passages quoted appealed to Alexa in virtue, partly, of her not seeing half they involved, or anything whatever of the said drift. But because he had got a book published, and because she approved of certain lines, phrases and passages in it; but chiefly because it had been praised by more than one influential paper, Andrew rose immensely in Alexa's opinion. Although he was the son of a tenant, was even a laborer on his farm, and had covered a birth no higher than that of Jesus Christ with the gown of no university, she began, against her own sense of what was fit, to look up to the plow-man. The plow-man was not aware of this, and would have been careless had he been. He respected his landlord's daughter, not ever questioned her superiority as a lady where he made no claim to being a gentleman, but he recognized in her no power either to help or to hurt.

When they next met, Alexa was no longer indifferent to his presence, and even made a movement in the direction of being agreeable to him. She dropped in a measure, without knowing she had ever used it, her patronizing carriage, but had the assurance to compliment him not merely on the poem he had written, but on the way it had been received; she could not have credited, had he told her, that he was as indifferent to the praise or blame of what is called the public, as if that public were indeed—what it is most like—a boy just learning to read. Yet it is the consent of such a public that makes the very essence of what is called fame. How should a man care for it who knows that he is on his way to join his peers, to be a child with the great ones of the earth, the lovers of the truth, the Doers of the Will. What to him will be the wind of the world he has left behind, a wind that can not arouse the dead, that can only blow about the grave-clothes of the dead as they bury their dead.

"Live, Dawtie," said Andrew to the girl, "and ane day ye'll hae yer hert's desire; for 'Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness.'"

Andrew was neither annoyed nor gratified with the compliments Alexa paid him, for she did not know the informing power of the book—what he cared for in it—the thing that made him write it. But her gentleness and kindness did please him; he was glad to feel a little at home with her, glad to draw a little nearer to one who had never been other than good to him. And then was she not more than kind, even loving to Dawtie?

"So, Andrew, you are a poet at last," she said, holding out her hand to him, which Andrew received in a palm that wrote the better verse that it was horny. "Please to remember I was the first that found you out!" she added.

"I think it was my mother," answered Andrew.

"And I would have helped you if you would have let me."

"It is not well, ma'am, to push the bird off because he can't sit safe on the edge of the nest."

"Perhaps you are right A failure then would have stood in the way of your coming fame."

"Oh, for that, ma'am, believe me, I do not care a short straw."

"What do you not care for?"

"For fame."

"That is wrong, Andrew. We ought to care what our neighbors think of us."

"My neighbors did not set me to do the work, and I did not seek their praise in doing it. Their friendship I prize dearly—more than tongue can tell."

"You can not surely be so conceited, Andrew, as to think nobody capable of judging your work."

"Far from it, ma'am. But you were speaking of fame, and that does not come from any wise judgment."

"Then what do you write for, if you care nothing for fame? I thought that was what all poets wrote for."

"So the world thinks; and those that do sometimes have their reward."

"Tell me then what you write for?"

"I write because I want to tell something that makes me glad and strong. I want to say it, and so try to say it. Things come to me in gleams and flashes, sometimes in words themselves, and I want to weave them into a melodious, harmonious whole. I was once at an oratorio, and that taught me the shape of a poem. In a pause of the music, I seemed all at once to see Handel's heavy countenance looking out of his great wig, as he sat putting together his notes, ordering about in his mind, and fixing in their places with his pen, his drums, and pipes, and fiddles, and roaring bass, and flageolets, and hautboys—all to open the door for the thing that was plaguing him with the confusion of its beauty. For I suppose even Handel did not hear it all clear and plain at first, but had to build his orchestra into a mental organ for his mind to let itself out by, through the many music holes, lest it should burst with its repressed harmonic delights. He must have felt an agonized need to set the haunting angels of sound in obedient order and range, responsive to the soul of the thing, its one ruling idea! I saw him with his white rapt face, looking like a prophet of the living God sent to speak out of the heart of the mystery of truth! I saw him as he sat staring at the paper before him, scratched all over as with the fury of a holy anger at his own impotence, and his soul communed with heavenliest harmonies! Ma'am, will any man persuade me that Handel at such a moment was athirst for fame? or that the desire to please a house full or world full of such as heard his oratorios, gave him the power to write his music? No, ma'am! he was filled, not with the longing for sympathy, and not even with the good desire to give delight, but with the music itself. It was crying in him to get out, and he heard it crying, and could not rest till he had let it out; and every note that dropped from his pen was a chip struck from the granite wall between the song-birds in their prison-nest, and the air of their liberty. Creation is God's self-wrought freedom. No, ma'am, I do not despise my fellows, but neither do I prize the judgment of more than a few of them. I prize and love themselves, but not their opinion."

Alexa was silent, and Andrew took his leave. She sat still for awhile thinking. If she did not understand, at least she remembered Andrew's face as he talked: could presumption make his face shine so? could presumption make him so forget himself?



CHAPTER XXII.

THE GAMBLER AND THE COLLECTOR.

Things went swimmingly with George. He had weathered a crisis, and was now full of confidence, as well as the show of it. That he held himself a man who could do what he pleased, was plain to every one. His prosperity leaned upon that of certain princes of the power of money in America: gleaning after them he found his fortune.

But he did not find much increase of favor with Alexa. Her spiritual tastes were growing more refined. There was something about the man, and that not new, which she could no longer contemplate without dissatisfaction. It cost her tears at night to think that, although her lover had degenerated, he had remained true to her, for she saw plainly that it was only lack of encouragement that prevented him from asking her to be his wife. She must appear changeable, but this was not the man she had been ready to love! the plant had put forth a flower that was not in sequence with the leaf. The cause of his appearing different might lie in herself, but in any case he was not the gentleman she had thought! Had she loved him, she would have stood by him bravely, but now she could not help recalling the disgrace of the father, and shrunk from sharing it with the son. Would it be any wonder if the son himself proved less than honorable? She would have broken with him quite but for one thing: he had become intimate with her father, and the laird enjoyed his company.

George had a large straggling acquaintance with things, and could readily appear to know more than he did. He was, besides, that most agreeable person to a man with a hobby, a good listener—when he saw reason. He made himself so pleasant that the laird was not only always glad to see him, but would often ask him to stay to supper, when he would fish up from the wine-cellar he had inherited a bottle with a history and a character, and the two would pass the evening together, Alexa trying not to wish him away, for was not her poor old father happy with him! Though without much pleasure of his own in such things, George, moved by the reflection of the laird's interest, even began to collect a little, mainly in the hope of picking up what might gratify the laird; nor, if he came upon a thing he must covet, would hesitate to spend on it a good sum. Naturally the old man grew to regard him as a son of the best sort, one who would do anything to please his father and indulge his tastes.

It may seem surprising that such a man as George should have remained so true; but he had a bull-dog tenacity of purpose, as indeed his money-making indicated. Then there was good in him to the measure of admiring a woman like Alexa, though not of admiring a far better. He saw himself in danger of losing her; concluded influences at work to the frustration of his own; surmised that she doubted the character of his business; feared the clownish farmer-poet might have dazzled with his new reputation her womanly judgment; and felt himself called upon to make good his position against any and every prejudice she might have conceived against him! He would yield nothing! If he was foiled he was foiled, but it should not be his fault! His own phrase was, that he would not throw up the sponge so long as he could come up grinning. He had occasional twinges of discomfort, for his conscience, although seared indeed, was not seared as with the hottest iron, seeing he had never looked straight at any truth: it would ease those twinges, he vaguely imagined, so to satisfy a good woman like Alexa, that she made common cause with him, accepting not merely himself, but the money of which he had at such times a slight loathing. Then Alexa was handsome—he thought her very handsome, and, true to Mammon, he would gladly be true also to something better. There might be another camp, and it would be well to have friends in that too!

So unlike Andrew, how could he but dislike him! and his dislike jealousy fostered into hatred. Cowed before him, like Macbeth before Banquo, because he was an honest man, how could he but hate him! He called him, and thought him a canting, sneaking fellow—which he was, if canting consist in giving God His own, and sneaking consist in fearing no man—in fearing nothing, indeed, but doing wrong. How could George consent even to the far-off existence of such a man!

The laird also had taken a dislike to him.

From the night when Dawtie made her appeal, he had not known an hour's peace. It was not that it had waked his conscience, though it had made it sleep a little less soundly; it was only that he feared she might take further action in regard to the cup. She seemed to him to be taking part with the owner of the cup against him; he could not see that she was taking part with himself against the devil; that it was not the cup she was anxious about, but the life of her master. What if she should acquaint the earl's lawyer with all she knew! He would be dragged into public daylight! He could not pretend ignorance concerning the identity of the chalice! that would be to be no antiquarian, while Dawtie would bear witness that he had in his possession a book telling all about it! But the girl would never of herself have turned against him! It was all that fellow Ingram, with his overstrained and absurd notions as to what God required of His poor sinful creatures! He did not believe in the atonement! He did not believe that Christ had given satisfaction to the Father for our sins! He demanded in the name of religion more than any properly educated and authorized minister would! and in his meddlesomeness had worried Dawtie into doing as she did! The girl was a good and modest girl, and would never of herself have so acted! Andrew was righteous overmuch, therefore eaten up with self-conceit, and the notion of pleasing God more than other men! He cherished old grudges against him, and would be delighted to bring his old school-master to shame! He was not a bad boy at school; he had always liked him; the change in him witnessed to the peril of extremes! Here they had led to spiritual pride, which was the worst of all the sins! The favorite of heaven could have no respect for the opinion of his betters! The man was bent on returning evil for all the good he had done the boy! It was a happy thing young Crawford understood him! He would be his friend, and defeat the machinations of his enemy! If only the fellow's lease were out, that he might get rid of him!

Moved by George's sympathy with his tastes, he drew nearer and nearer to disclosing the possession which was the pride of his life. The enjoyment, of connoisseur or collector rests much on the glory of possession—of having what another has not, or, better still, what no other can possibly have.

From what he had long ago seen on the night of the storm, and now from the way the old man hinted, and talked, and broke off; also from the uneasiness he sometimes manifested, George had guessed that there was something over whose possession he gloated, but for whose presence among his treasures he could not comfortably account He therefore set himself, without asking a single question, to make the laird unbosom. A hold on the father would be a hold on the daughter!

One day, in a pawnbroker's shop, he lighted upon a rarity indeed, which might or might not have a history attributed to it, but was in itself more than interesting for the beauty of both material and workmanship. The sum asked for it was large, but with the chance of pleasing the laird, it seemed to George but a trifle. It was also, he judged, of intrinsic value to a great part of the price. Had he been then aware of the passion of the old man for jewels in especial, he would have been yet more eager to secure it for him. It was a watch, not very small, and by no means thin—a repeater, whose bell was dulled by the stones of the mine in which it lay buried. The case was one mass of gems of considerable size, and of every color. Ruby, sapphire, and emerald were judiciously parted by diamonds of utmost purity, while yellow diamonds took the golden place for which the topaz had not been counted of sufficient value. They were all crusted together as close as they could lie, the setting of them hardly showing. The face was of fine opals, across which moved the two larger hands radiant with rubies, while the second-hand flitted flashing around, covered with tiny diamonds. The numerals were in sapphires, within a bordering ring of emeralds and black pearls. The jewel was a splendor of color and light.

George, without preface, took it from his pocket, held it a moment in the sunlight, and handed it to the laird. He glowered at it. He saw an angel from heaven in a thing compact of earth-chips! As near as any thing can be loved of a live soul, the laird loved a fine stone; what in it he loved most, the color, the light, the shape, the value, the mystery, he could not have told!—and here was a jewel of many fine stones! With both hands he pressed it to his bosom. Then he looked at it in the sun, then went into the shadow of the house, for they were in the open air, and looked at it again. Suddenly he thrust it into his pocket, and hurried, followed by George, to his study. There he closed the shutters, lighted a lamp, and gazed at the marvel, turning it in all directions. At length he laid it on the table, and sunk with a sigh into a chair. George understood the sigh, and dug its source deeper by telling him, as he had heard it, the story of the jewel.

"It may be true," he said as he ended. "I remember seeing some time ago a description of the toy. I think I could lay my hand on it!"

"Would you mind leaving it with me till you come again?" faltered the laird.

He knew he could not buy it: he had not the money; but he would gladly dally with the notion of being its possessor. To part with it, the moment after having held it in his hand and gloated over it for the first time, would be too keen a pain! It was unreasonable to have to part with it at all! He ought to be its owner! Who could be such an owner to a thing like that as he! It was a wrong to him that it was not his! Next to his cup, it was the most precious thing he had ever wished to possess!—a thing for a man to take to the grave with him! Was there no way of carrying any treasure to the other world? He would have sold of his land to secure the miracle, but, alas, it was all entailed! For a moment the Cellini chalice seemed of less account, and he felt ready to throw open the window of his treasure-room and pitch everything out. The demon of having is as imperious and as capricious as that of drink, and there is no refuge from it but with the Father. "This kind goeth not out by prayer."

The poor slave uttered, not a sigh now, but a groan. "You'll tell the man," he said, thinking George had borrowed the thing to show him, "that I did not even ask the price: I know I can not buy it!"

"Perhaps he would give you credit!" suggested George, with a smile.

"No! I will have nothing to do with credit! I should not be able to call it my own!"—Money-honesty was strong in the laird. "But," he continued, "do try and persuade him to let me have it for a day or two—that I may get its beauty by heart, and think of it all the days, and dream of it all the nights of my life after!"

"There will be no difficulty about that," answered George. "The owner will be delighted to let you keep it as long as you wish!"

"I would it were so!"

"It is so!"

"You don't mean to say, George, that that queen of jewels is yours, and you will lend it me?"

"The thing is mine, but I will not lend it—not even to you, sir!"

"I don't wonder!—I don't wonder! But it is a great disappointment! I was beginning to hope I—I—might have the loan of it for a week or two even!"

"You should indeed if the thing were mine!" said George, playing him; "but—"

"Oh, I beg your pardon! I thought you said it was yours!"

"So it was when I brought it, but it is mine no longer. It is yours. I purchased it for you this morning."

The old man was speechless. He rose, and seizing George by both hands, stood staring at him. Something very like tears gathered within the reddened rims of his eyes. He had grown paler and feebler of late, ever in vain devising to secure possession of the cup—possession moral as well as legal. But this entrancing gift brought with it strength and hope in regard to the chalice! "To him that hath shall be given!" quoted the Mammon within him.

"George!" he said, with a moan of ecstasy, "you are my good angel!" and sat down exhausted. The watch was the key to his "closet," as he persisted in calling his treasury.

In old times not a few houses in Scotland held a certain tiny room, built for the head of the family, to be his closet for prayer: it was, I believe, with the notion of such a room in his head, that the laird had called his museum his closet; and he was more right than he meant to be; for in that chamber he did his truest worship—truest as to the love in it, falsest as to its object; for there he worshiped the god vilest bred of all the gods, bred namely of man's distrust in the Life of the universe.

And now here also were two met together to worship; for from this time the laird, disclosing his secret, made George free of his sanctuary.

George was by this time able to take a genuine interest in the collection. But he was much amused, sometimes annoyed, with the behavior of the laird in his closet: he was more nervous and touchy over his things than a she-bear over her cubs.

Of all dangers to his darlings he thought a woman the worst, and had therefore seized with avidity the chance of making that room a hidden one, the possibility of which he had spied almost the moment he first entered it.

He became, if possible, fonder of his things than ever, and flattered himself he had found in George a fellow-worshiper: George's exaggerated or pretended appreciation enhanced his sense of their value.



CHAPTER XXIII

ON THE MOOR.

Alexa had a strong shaggy pony, which she rode the oftener that George came so often; taking care to be well gone before he arrived on his beautiful horse.

One lovely summer evening she had been across the moor a long way, and was returning as the sun went down. A glory of red molten gold was shining in her face, so that she could see nothing in front of her, and was a little startled by a voice greeting her with a respectful good-evening. The same moment she was alongside of the speaker in the blinding veil of the sun. It was Andrew walking home from a village on the other side of the moor. She drew rein, and they went together.

"What has come to you, Mr. Ingram?" she said; "I hear you were at church last Sunday evening!"

"Why should I not be, ma'am?" asked Andrew.

"For the reason that you are not in the way of going."

"There might be good reason for going once, or for going many times, and yet not for going always!"

"We won't begin with quarreling! There are things we shall not agree about!"

"Yes; one or two—for a time, I believe!" returned Andrew.

"What did you think of Mr. Rackstraw's sermon? I suppose you went to hear him.'"

"Yes, ma'am—at least partly."

"Well?"

"Will you tell me first whether you were satisfied with Mr. Rackstraw's teaching? I know you were there."

"I was quite satisfied."

"Then I don't see reason for saying anything about it."

"If I am wrong, you ought to try to set me right!"

"The prophet Elisha would have done no good by throwing his salt into the running stream. He cast it, you will remember, into the spring!"

"I do not understand you."

"There is no use in persuading a person to change an opinion."

"Why not?"

"Because the man is neither the better nor the worse for it. If you had told me you were distressed to hear a man in authority speak as Mr. Rackstraw spoke concerning a being you loved, I would have tried to comfort you by pointing out how false it was. But if you are content to hear God so represented, why should I seek to convince you of what is valueless to you? Why offer you to drink what your heart is not thirsting after? Would you love God more because you found He was not what you were quite satisfied He should be?"

"Do tell me more plainly what you mean?"

"You must excuse me. I have said all I will. I can not reason in defense of God. It seems blasphemy to argue that His nature is not such as no honorable man could love in another man."

"But if the Bible says so?"

"If the Bible said so, the Bible would be false. But the Bible does not say so."

"How is it then that it seems to say so?"

"Because you were taught falsely about Him before you desired to know Him."

"But I am capable of judging now!"

Andrew was silent.

"Am I not?" insisted Alexa.

"Do you desire to know God?" said Andrew.

"I think I do know Him."

"And you think those things true?"

"Yes."

"Then we are where we were, and I say no more."

"You are not polite."

"I can not help it. I must let you alone to believe about God what you can. You will not be blamed for not believing what you can not."

"Do you mean that God never punishes any one for what He can not help?"

"Assuredly."

"How do you prove that?"

"I will not attempt to prove it. If you are content to think He does, if it do not trouble you that your God should be unjust, go on thinking so until you are made miserable by it, then I will pour out my heart to deliver you."

She was struck, not with any truth in what he said, but with the evident truthfulness of the man himself. Right or wrong, there was that about him—a certain radiance of conviction—which certainly was not about Mr. Rackstraw.

"The things that can be shaken," said Andrew, as if thinking with himself, "may last for a time, but they will at length be shaken to pieces, that the things which can not be shaken may show what they are. Whatever we call religion will vanish when we see God face to face."

For awhile they went brushing through the heather in silence.

"May I ask you one question, Mr. Ingram?" said Alexa.

"Surely, ma'am! Ask me anything you like."

"And you will answer me?"

"If I am at liberty to answer you I will."

"What do you mean by being at liberty? Are you under any vow?"

"I am under the law of love. I am bound to do nothing to hurt. An answer that would do you no good I will not give."

"How do you know what will or will not do me good?"

"I must use what judgment I have."

"Is it true, then, that you believe God gives you whatever you ask?"

"I have never asked anything of Him that He did not give me."

"Would you mind telling me anything you have asked of Him?"

"I have never yet required to ask anything not included in the prayer, 'Thy will be done.'"

"That will be done without your praying for it."

"Pardon me; I do not believe it will be done, to all eternity, without my praying for it. Where first am I accountable that His will should be done? Is it not in myself? How is His will to be done in me without my willing it? Does He not want me to love what He loves?—to be like Himself?—to do His will with the glad effort of my will?—in a word, to will what He wills? And when I find I can not, what am I to do but pray for help? I pray, and He helps me."

"There is nothing strange in that!"

"Surely not It seems to me the simplest common sense. It is my business, the business of every man, that God's will be done by his obedience to that will, the moment he knows it."

"I fancy you are not so different from other people as you think yourself. But they say you want to die."

"I want nothing but what God wants. I desire righteousness."

"Then you accept the righteousness of Christ?"

"Accept it! I long for it."

"You know that it is not what I mean!"

"I seek first the kingdom of God and God's righteousness."

"You avoid my question. Do you accept the righteousness of Christ instead of your own?"

"I have no righteousness of my own to put it instead of. The only righteousness there is is God's, and He will make me righteous like Himself. He is not content that His one Son only should be righteous; He wants all His children to be righteous as He is righteous. The thing is plain; I will not argue about it."

"You do not believe in the atonement."

"I believe in Jesus Christ. He is the atonement. What strength God has given me I will spend in knowing Him and doing what He tells me. To interpret His plans before we know Himself is to mistake both Him and His plans. I know this, that he has given His life for what multitudes who call themselves by His name would not rise from their seats to share in."

"You think me incapable of understanding the gospel?"

"I think if you did understand the gospel of Christ you would be incapable of believing the things about His Father that you say you do believe. But I will not say a word more. When you are able to see the truth, you will see it; and when you desire the truth you will be able."

Alexa touched her pony with her whip. But by and by she pulled him up, and made him walk till Andrew overtook her.

The sun was by this time far out of sight, the glow of the west was over, and twilight lay upon the world. Its ethereal dimness had sunk into her soul.

"Does the gloaming make you sad, Mr. Ingram?" she asked.

"It makes me very quiet," he answered—"as if all my people were asleep, and waiting for me."

"Do you mean as if they were all dead? How can you talk of it so quietly?"

"Because I do not believe in death."

"What do you mean?"

"I am a Christian!"

"I hope you are, Mr. Ingram, though, to be honest with you, some things make me doubt it Perhaps you would say I am not a Christian."

"It is enough that God knows whether you are a Christian or not. Why should I say you are or you are not?"

"But I want to know what you meant when you said you were a Christian. How should that make you indifferent to the death of your friends? Death is a dreadful thing, look at it how you like."

"The Lord says, 'He that liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.' If my friends are not dead, but living and waiting for me, why should I wait for them in a fierce, stormy night, or a black frost, instead of the calm of such a sleeping day as this—a day with the son hid, Shakespeare calls it"

"How you do mix up things! Shakespeare and Jesus Christ!"

"God mixed them first, and will mix them a good deal more yet," said Andrew.

But for the smile which would hover like a heavenly Psyche about his mouth, his way of answering would sometimes have seemed curt to those who did not understand him. Instead of holding aloof in his superiority, however, as some thought he did when he would not answer, or answered abruptly, Andrew's soul would be hovering, watching and hoping for a chance of lighting, and giving of the best he had. He was like a great bird changing parts with a child—the child afraid of the bird, and the bird enticing the child to be friends. He had learned that if he poured out his treasure recklessly it might be received with dishonor, and but choke the way of the chariot of approaching truth.

"Perhaps you will say next there is no such thing as suffering," resumed Alexa.

"No; the Lord said that in the world His friends should have tribulation."

"What tribulation have you, who are so specially His friend?"

"Not much yet It is a little, however, sometimes, to know such strong, and beautiful, and happy-making things, and all the time my people, my beloved humans, born of my Father in heaven, with the same heart for joy and sorrow, will not listen and be comforted, I think that was what made our Lord sorriest of all"

"Mr. Ingram, I have no patience with you. How dare you liken your trouble to that of our Lord—making yourself equal with Him!"

"Is it making myself equal with Him to say that I understand a little how He felt toward His fellow-men? I am always trying to understand Him; would it be a wonder if I did sometimes a little? How is a man to do as He did, without understanding Him?"

"Are you going to work miracles next?"

"Jesus was always doing what God wanted Him to do. That was what He came for, not to work miracles. He could have worked a great many more if He had pleased, but He did no more than God wanted of Him. Am I not to try to do the will of God, because He who died that I might, always succeeded however hard it was, and I am always failing and having to try again?"

"And you think you will come to it in this life?"

"I never think about that; I only think about doing His will now—not about doing it then—that is, to-morrow or next day or next world. I know only one life—the life that is hid with Christ in God; and that is the life by which I live here and now. I do not make schemes of life; I live. Life will teach me God's plans; I will take no trouble about them; I will only obey, and receive the bliss He sends me. And of all things I will not make theories of God's plans for other people to accept. I will only do my best to destroy such theories as I find coming between some poor glooming heart, and the sun shining in his strength. Those who love the shade of lies, let them walk in it until the shiver of the eternal cold drive them to seek the face of Jesus Christ. To appeal to their intellect would be but to drive them the deeper into the shade to justify their being in it. And if by argument you did persuade them out of it, they would but run into a deeper and worse darkness."

"How could that be?"

"They would at once think that, by an intellectual stride they had advanced in the spiritual life, whereas they would be neither the better nor the worse. I know a man, once among the foremost in denouncing the old theology, who is now no better than a swindler."

"You mean—"

"No one you know, ma'am. His intellectual freedom seems only to have served his spiritual subjugation. Right opinion, except it spring from obedience to the truth, is but so much rubbish on the golden floor of the temple."

The peace of the night and its luminous earnestness were gleaming on Andrew's face, and Alexa, glancing up as he ceased, felt again the inroad of a sense of something in the man that was not in the other men she knew—the spiritual shadow of a dweller in regions beyond her ken. The man was before her, yet out of her sight!

The whole thing was too simple for her, only a child could understand it Instead of listening to the elders and priests to learn how to save his soul, he cast away all care of himself, left that to God, and gave himself to do the will of Him from whose heart he came, even as the eternal Life, the Son of God, required of him; in the mighty hope of becoming one mind, heart, soul, one eternal being, with Him, with the Father, with every good man, with the universe which was his inheritance—walking in the world as Enoch walked with God, held by his hand. This is what man was and is meant to be, what man must become; thither the wheels of time are roaring; thither work all the silent potencies of the eternal world; and they that will not awake and arise from the dead must be flung from their graves by the throes of a shivering world.

When he had done speaking Andrew stood and looked up. A few stars were looking down through the limpid air. Alexa rode on. Andrew let her go, and walked after her alone, sure that her mind must one day open to the eternal fact that God is all in all, the perfect friend of His children; yea, that He would cease to be God sooner than fail His child in his battle with death.



CHAPTER XXIV.

THE WOOER.

Alexa kept hoping that George would be satisfied she was not inclined toward him as she had been; and that, instead of bringing the matter to open issue, he would continue to come and go as the friend of her father. But George came to the conclusion that he ought to remain in doubt no longer, and one afternoon followed her into the garden. She had gone there with a certain half-scientific, half-religious book in her hand, from which she was storing her mind with arguments against what she supposed the opinions of Andrew. She had, however, little hope of his condescending to front them with counter-argument. His voice returned ever to the ear of her mind in words like these: "If you are content to think so, you are in no condition to receive what I have to communicate. Why should I press water on a soul that is not thirsty? Let us wait for the drought of the desert, when life is a low fever, and the heart is dry; when the earth is like iron, and the heavens above it are as brass."

She started at the sound of George's voice.

"What lovely weather!" he said.

Even lovers betake themselves to the weather as a medium—the side of nature which all understand. It was a good, old-fashioned, hot, heavy summer afternoon, one ill-chosen for love-making.

"Yes?" answered Alexa, with a point of interrogation subaudible, and held her book so that be might feel it on the point of being lifted again to eager eyes. But he was not more sensitive than sentimental.

"Please put your book down for a moment. I have not of late asked too much of your attention, Alexa!"

"You have been very kind, George!" she answered.

"Kind is not asking much of your attention?"

"Yea—that, and giving my father so much of yours,"

"I certainly have seen more of him than of you!" returned George, hoping her words meant reproach. "But he has always been kind to me, and pleased to see me! You have not given me much encouragement!"

To begin love-making with complaint is not wise, and George felt that he had got into the wrong track; but Alexa took care that he should not get out of it easily. Not being simple, he always settled the best course to pursue, and often went wrong. The man who cares only for what is true and right is saved much thinking and planning. He generally sees but one way of doing a thing!

"I am glad to hear you say so, George! You have not mistaken me!"

"You were not so sharp with me when I went away, Alexa!"

"No; then you were going away!"

"Should you not show a fellow some kindness when he is come back?"

"Not when he does not seem content with having come back!"

"I do not understand!"

But Alexa gave no explanation.

"You would be kind to me again if I were going away again?"

"Perhaps."

"That is, if you were sure I was not coming back."

"I did not say so."

"I can't make it out, Alexa! I used to think there could never be any misunderstanding between you and me! But something has crept in between us, and for the life of me I do not know what it is!"

"There is one thing for which I am more obliged to you than I can tell, George—that you did not say anything before you went."

"I am awfully sorry for it now; but I thought you understood!"

"I did; and I am very glad, for I should have repented it long ago!"

This was hardly logical, but George seemed to understand.

"You are cruel!" he said. "I should have made it the business of my life that you never did!"

Yet George knew of things he dared not tell that had taken place almost as soon as he was relieved from the sustaining and restraining human pressure in which he had grown up!

"I am certain I should," persisted Alexa.

"Why are you so certain?"

"Because I am so glad now to think I am free."

"Some one has been maligning me, Alexa! It is very hard not to know where the stab comes from!"

"The testimony against you is from your own lips, George. I heard you talking to my father, and was aware of a tone I did not like. I listened more attentively, and became convinced that your ways of thinking had deteriorated. There seemed not a remnant left of the honor I then thought characterized you!"

"Why, certainly, as an honest man, I can not talk religion like your friend the farmer!"

"Do you mean that Andrew Ingram is not an honest man?" rejoined Alexa, with some heat.

"I mean that I am an honest man."

"I am doubtful of you."

"I can tell the quarter whence that doubt was blown!"

"It would be of greater consequence to blow it away! George Crawford, do you believe yourself an honest man?"

"As men go, yes."

"But not as men go, George? As you would like to appear to the world when hearts are as open as faces?"

He was silent.

"Would the way you have made your money stand the scrutiny of—"

She had Andrew in her mind, and was on the point of saying "Jesus Christ," but felt she had no right, and hesitated.

"—Of our friend Andrew?" supplemented George, with a spiteful laugh. "The only honest mode of making money he knows is the strain of his muscles—the farmer-way! He wouldn't keep up his corn for a better market—not he!"

"It so happens that I know he would not; for he and my father had a dispute on that very point, and I heard them. He said poor people were not to go hungry that he might get rich. He was not sent into the world to make money, he said, but to grow corn. The corn was grown, and he could get enough for it now to live by, and had no right, and no desire to get more—and would not keep it up! The land was God's, not his, and the poor were God's children, and had their rights from him! He was sent to grow corn for them!"

"And what did your father say to that wisdom?"

"That is no matter. Nor do I profess to understand Mr. Ingram. I only know," added Alexa, with a little laugh, "that he is consistent, for he has puzzled me all my life. I can, however, see a certain nobility in him that sets him apart from other men!"

"And I can see that when I left I was needlessly modest! I thought my position too humble!"

"What am I to understand by that?"

"What you think I mean."

"I wish you a good-afternoon, Mr. Crawford!"

Alexa rose and left him.

George had indeed grown coarser! He turned where he stood with his hands in his pockets, and looked after her; then smiled to himself a nasty smile, and said: "At least I have made her angry, and that's something! What has a fellow like that to give her? Poet, indeed! What's that! He's not even the rustic gentleman! He's downright vulgar!—a clod-hopper born and bred! But the lease, I understand, will soon be out, and Potlurg will never let him have it! I will see to that! The laird hates the canting scoundrel! I would rather pay him double the rent myself!"

His behavior now did not put Andrew's manners in the shade! Though he never said a word to flatter Alexa, spoke often in a way she did not at all like, persistently refused to enter into argument with her when most she desired it, yet his every tone, every movement toward her was full of respect And however she strove against the idea, she felt him her superior, and had indeed begun to wish that she had never shown herself at a disadvantage by the assumption of superiority. It would be pleasant to know that it pained him to disapprove of her! For she began to feel that, as she disapproved of George, and could not like him, so the young farmer disapproved of her, and could not like her. It was a new and by no means agreeable thought. Andrew delighted in beautiful things: he did not see anything beautiful in her! Alexa was not conceited, but she knew she was handsome, and knew also that Andrew would never feel one heart-throb more because of any such beauty as hers. Had he not as good as told her she was one of the dead who would not come alive! It would be something to be loved by a man like that! But Alexa was too maidenly to think of making any man love her—and even if he loved her she could not marry a man in Andrew's position! She might stretch a point or two were the lack but a point or two, but there was no stretching points to the marrying of a peasant, without education, who worked on his father's farm! The thing was ridiculous!—of course she knew that!—the very idea too absurd to pass through her idlest thoughts! But she was not going to marry George! That was well settled! In a year or two he would be quite fat! And he always had his hands in his pockets! There was something about him not like a gentleman! He suggested an auctioneer or a cheap-jack!

She took her pony and went for a ride. When she came back, the pony looked elf-ridden.

But George had no intention of forsaking the house—yet, at least. He was bent on humbling his cousin, therefore continued his relations with her father, while he hurried on, as fast as consisted with good masonry, the building of a house on a small estate he had bought in the neighborhood, intending it to be such as must be an enticement to any lady. So long had he regarded everything through the veil of money, that he could not think of Alexa even without thinking of Mammon as well. By this time also he was so much infected with the old man's passion for things curious and valuable, that the idea of one day calling the laird's wonderful collection his own, had a real part in his desire to become his daughter's husband. He would not accept her dismissal as final!



CHAPTER XXV.

THE HEART OF THE HEART.

The laird had been poorly for some weeks, and Alexa began to fear that he was failing. Nothing more had passed between him and Dawtie, but he knew that anxious eyes were often watching him, and the thought worried him not a little. If he would but take a start, thought Dawtie, and not lose all the good of this life! It was too late for him to rise very high; he could not now be a saint, but he might at least set a foot on the eternal stair that leads to the fullness of bliss! He would have a sore fight with all those imps of things, before he ceased to love that which was not lovely, and to covet that which was not good! But the man gained a precious benefit from this world, who but began to repent before he left it! If only the laird would start up the hill before his body got quite to the bottom! Was there any way to approach him again with her petition that he would be good to himself, good to God, good to the universe, that he would love what was worth loving, and cast away what was not? She had no light, and could do nothing!

Suddenly the old man failed quite—apparently from no cause but weakness. The unease of his mind, the haunting of the dread thought of having to part with the chalice, had induced it. He was in his closet one night late into the morning, and the next day did not get up to breakfast He wanted a little rest, he said. In a day he would be well! But the hour to rise again, much anticipated, never came. He seemed very troubled at times, and very desirous of getting up, but never was able. It became necessary to sit with him at night. In fits of delirium he would make fierce endeavor to rise, insisting that he must go to his study. His closet he never mentioned: even in dreams was his secrecy dominant. Dawtie, who had her share in nursing him, kept hoping her opportunity would come. He did not seem to cherish any resentment against her. His illness would protect him, he thought, from further intrusion of her conscience upon his! She must know better than irritate a sick man with overofficiousness! Everybody could not be a saint! It was enough to be a Christian like other good and salvable Christians! It was enough for him if through the merits of his Saviour he gained admission to the heavenly kingdom at last! He never thought now, once in, he could bear to stay in; never thought how heaven could be to him other than the dullest place in the universe of God, more wearisome than the kingdom of darkness itself! And all the time the young woman with the savior-heart was watching by his bedside, ready to speak; but the Spirit gave her no utterance, and her silence soothed his fear of her.

One night he was more restless than usual. Waking from his troubled slumber, he called her—in the tone of one who had something important to communicate.

"Dawtie," he said, with feeble voice but glittering eye, "there is no one I can trust like you. I have been thinking of what you said that night ever since. Go to my closet and bring me the cup."

Dawtie held a moment's debate whether it would be right; but she reflected that it made little difference whether the object of his passion was in his hand or in his chest, while it was all the same deep in his heart. Then his words seemed to imply that he wanted to take his farewell of it; and to refuse his request might only fan the evil love, and turn him from the good motion in his mind. She said: "Yes, sir," and stood waiting. He did not speak.

"I do not know where to find it," she said.

"I am going to tell you," he replied, but seemed to hesitate.

"I will not touch a single thing beside," said Dawtie.

He believed her, and at once proceeded:

"Take my bunch of keys from the hook behind me. There is the key of the closet door!—and there, the key of all the bunch that looks the commonest, but is in reality the most cunningly devised, is the key of the cabinet in which I keep it!"

Then he told her where, behind a little book-case, which moved from the wall on hinges, she would find the cabinet, and in what part of it the cup, wrapped in a piece of silk that had once been a sleeve, worn by Mme. de Genlis—which did not make Dawtie much wiser.

She went, found the chalice, and brought it where the laird lay straining his ears, and waiting for it as a man at the point of death might await the sacramental cup from absolving priest.

His hands trembled as he took it; for they were the hands of a lover—strange as that love was, which not merely looked for no return, but desired to give neither pleasure nor good to the thing loved! It was no love of the merely dead, but a love of the unliving! He pressed the thing to his bosom; then, as if rebuked by the presence of Dawtie, put it a little from him, and began to pore over every stone, every repousse figure between, and every engraved ornament around the gems, each of which he knew, by shape, order, quality of color, better than ever face of wife or child. But soon his hands sunk on the counterpane of silk patchwork, and he lay still, grasping tight the precious thing.

He woke with a start and a cry, to find it safe in both his hands.

"Ugh!" he said; "I thought some one had me by the throat! You didn't try to take the cup from me—did you, Dawtie?"

"No, sir," answered Dawtie; "I would not care to take it out of your hand, but I should be glad to take it out of your heart!"

"If they would only bury it with me!" he murmured, heedless of her words.

"Oh, sir! Would you have it burning your heart to all eternity? Give it up, sir, and take the treasure thief never stole."

"Yes, Dawtie, yes! That is the true treasure!"

"And to get it we must sell all that we have!"

"He gives and withholds as He sees fit."

"Then, when you go down into the blackness, longing for the cup you will never see more, you will complain of God that he would not give you strength to fling it from you?"

He hugged the chalice.

"Fling it from me!" he cried, fiercely. "Girl, who are you to torment me before my time!"

"Tell me, sir," persisted Dawtie, "why does the apostle cry, 'Awake thou that sleepest!' if they couldn't move?"

"No one can move without God."

"Therefore, seeing every one can move, it must be God giving him the power to do what he requires of him; and we are fearfully to blame not using the strength God gives us!"

"I can not bear the strain of thinking!" gasped the laird.

"Then give up thinking, and do the thing! Shall I take it for you?"

She put out her hand as she spoke.

"No! no!" he cried, grasping the cup tighter. "You shall not touch it! You would give it to the earl! I know you! Saints hate what is beautiful!"

"I like better to look at things in my Father's hand than in my own!"

"You want to see my cup—it is my cup!—in the hands of that spendthrift fool, Lord Borland!"

"It is in the Father's hand, whoever has it!"

"Hold your tongue, Dawtie, or I will cry out and wake the house!"

"They will think you out of your mind, and come and take the cup from you! Do let me put it away; then you will go to sleep."

"I will not; I can not trust you with it! You have destroyed my confidence in you! I may fall asleep, but if your hand come within a foot of the cup, it will wake me! I know it will! I shall sleep with my heart in the cup, and the least touch will wake me!"

"I wish you would let Andrew Ingram come and see you, sir!"

"What's the matter with him?"

"Nothing's the matter with him, sir; but he helps everybody to do what is right."

"Conceited rascal! Do you take me for a maniac that you talk such foolery?"

His look was so wild, his old blue faded eyes gleamed with such a light of mingled fear and determination, that Dawtie was almost sorry she had spoken. With trembling hands he drew the cup within the bed-clothes, and lay still. If the morning would but come, and bring George Crawford! He would restore the cup to its place, or hide it where he should know it safe and not far from him!

Dawtie sat motionless, and the old man fell into another feverish doze. She dared not stir lest he should start away to defend his idol. She sat like an image, moving only her eyes.

"What are you about, Dawtie?" he said at length. "You are after some mischief, you are so quiet!"

"I was telling God how good you would be if he could get you to give up your odds and ends, and take Him instead."

"How dared you say such a thing, sitting there by my side! Are you to say to Him that any sinner would be good, if He would only do so and so with him! Tremble, girl, at the vengeance of the Almighty!"

"We are told to make prayers and intercessions for all men, and I was saying what I could for you." The laird was silent, and the rest of the night passed quietly.

His first words in the morning were:

"Go and tell your mistress I want her."

When his daughter came, he told her to send for George Crawford. He was worse, he said, and wanted to see him.

Alexa thought it best to send Dawtie with the message by the next train. Dawtie did not relish the mission, for she had no faith in Crawford, and did not like his influence on her master. Not the less when she reached his hotel, she insisted on seeing him and giving her message in person; which done, she made haste for the first train back: they could not do well without her! When she arrived, there was Mr. Crawford already on the platform! She set out as fast as she could, but she had not got further than half-way when he overtook her in a fly, and insisted she should get in.



CHAPTER XXVI.

GEORGE CRAWFORD AND DAWTIE.

"What is the matter with your master?" he asked.

"God knows, sir."

"What is the use of telling me that? I want you to tell me what you know."

"I don't know anything, sir."

"What do you think then?"

"I should think old age had something to do with it, sir."

"Likely enough, but you know more than that!"

"I shouldn't wonder, sir, if he were troubled in his mind."

"What makes you think so?"

"It is reasonable to think so, sir. He knows he must die before long, and it is dreadful to leave everything you care for, and go where there is nothing you care for!"

"How do you know there is nothing he would care for?"

"What is there, sir, he would be likely to care for?"

"There is his wife. He was fond of her, I suppose, and you pious people fancy you will see each other again."

"The thought of seeing her would give him little comfort, I am afraid, in parting with the things he has here. He believes a little somehow—I can't understand how."

"What does he believe?"

"He believes a little—he is not sure—that what a man soweth he shall also reap."

"How do you know what he is or is not sure off? It can't be a matter of interest to you?"

"Those that come of one Father must have interest in one another."

"How am I to tell we come of one Father—as you call Him? I like to have a thing proved before I believe it. I know neither where I came from, nor where I am going; how then can I know that we come from the same father?"

"I don't know how you're to know it, sir. I take it for granted, and find it good. But there is one thing I am sure of."

"What is that?"

"That if you were my master's friend you would not rest till you got him to do what was right before he died."

"I will not be father-confessor to any man. I have enough to do with myself. A good worthy old man like the laird must know better than any other what he ought to do."

"There is no doubt of that, sir."

"What do you want then?"

"To get him to do it. That he knows, is what makes it so miserable. If he did not know he would not be to blame. He knows what it is and won't do it, and that makes him wretched—as it ought, thank God!"

"You're a nice Christian. Thanking God for making a man miserable. Well."

"Yes," answered Dawtie.

George thought a little.

"What would you have me persuade him to?" he asked, for he might hear something it would be useful to know. But Dawtie had no right and no inclination to tell him what she knew.

"I only wish you would persuade him to do what he knows he ought to do," she replied.



CHAPTER XXVII.

THE WATCH.

George stayed with the laird a good while, and held a long, broken talk with him. When he went Alexa came. She thought her father seemed happier. George had put the cup away for him. Alexa sat with him that night. She knew nothing of such a precious thing being in the house—in the room with them.

In the middle of the night, as she was arranging his pillows, the laird drew from under the bed-clothes, and held up to her, flashing in the light of the one candle, the jeweled watch. She stared. The old man was pleased at her surprise and evident admiration. She held out her hand for it. He gave it her.

"That watch," he said, "is believed to have belonged to Ninon de l'Enclos. It may, but I doubt it myself. It is well known she never took presents from her admirers, and she was too poor to have bought such a thing. Mme. de Maintenon, however, or some one of her lady-friends, might have given it her. It will be yours one day—that is, if you marry the man I should like you to marry."

"Dear father, do not talk of marrying. I have enough with you," cried Alexa, and felt as if she hated George.

"Unfortunately, you can not have me always," returned her father. "I will say nothing more now, but I desire you to consider what I have said."

Alexa put the watch in his hand.

"I trust you do not suppose," she said, "that a house full of things like that would make any difference."

He looked up at her sharply. A house full—what did she know? It silenced him, and he lay thinking. Surely the delight of lovely things must be in every woman's heart. Was not the passion, developed or undeveloped, universal? Could a child of his not care for such things?

"Ah," he said to himself, "she takes after her mother."

A wall seemed to rise between him and his daughter. Alas! alas! the things he loved and must one day yield would not be cherished by her. No tender regard would hover around them when he was gone. She would be no protecting divinity to them. God in heaven! she might—she would—he was sure she would sell them.

It seems the sole possible comfort of avarice, as it passes empty and hungry into the empty regions—that the things it can no more see with eyes or handle with hands will yet be together somewhere. Hence the rich leave to the rich, avoiding the man who most needs, or would best use their money. Is there a lurking notion in the man of much goods, I wonder, that, in the still watches of the night, when men sleep, he will return to look on what he leaves behind him? Does he forget the torture of seeing it at the command, in the enjoyment of another—his will concerning this thing or that but a mockery? Does he know that he who then holds them will not be able to conceive of their having been or ever being another's as now they are his?

As Alexa sat in the dim light by her brooding father she loathed the shining thing he had again drawn under the bed-clothes—shrunk from it as from a manacle the devil had tried to slip on her wrist. The judicial assumption of society suddenly appeared in the emptiness of its arrogance. Marriage for the sake of things. Was she not a live soul, made for better than that She was ashamed of the innocent pleasure the glittering toy had given her.

The laird cast now and then a glance at her face, and sighed. He gathered from it the conviction that she would be a cruel step-mother to his children, her mercy that of a loveless non-collector. It should not be. He would do better for them than that. He loved his daughter, but needed not therefore sacrifice his last hopes where the sacrifice would meet with no acceptance. House and land should be hers, but not his jewels; not the contents of his closet.



CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE WILL.

George came again to see him the next day, and had again a long conference with him. The laird told him that he had fully resolved to leave everything to his daughter, personal as well as real, on the one condition that she should marry her cousin; if she would not, then the contents of his closet, with his library, and certain articles specified, should pass to Crawford.

"And you must take care," he said, "if my death should come suddenly, that anything valuable in this room be carried into the closet before it is sealed up."

Shrinking as he did from the idea of death, the old man was yet able, in the interest of his possessions, to talk of it! It was as if he thought the sole consolation that, in the loss of their owner, his things could have, was the continuance of their intercourse with each other in the heaven of his Mammon-besotted imagination.

George responded heartily, showing a gratitude more genuine than fine: every virtue partakes of the ground in which it is grown. He assured the laird that, valuable as was in itself his contingent gift, which no man could appreciate more than he, it would be far more valuable to him if it sealed his adoption as his son-in-law. He would rather owe the possession of the wonderful collection to the daughter than to the father! In either case the precious property would be held as for him, each thing as carefully tended as by the laird's own eye and hand!

Whether it would at the moment have comforted the dying man to be assured, as George might have him, that there would be nothing left of him to grieve at the loss of his idols—nothing left of him but a memory, to last so long as George and Alexa and one or two more should remain unburied, I can not tell. It was in any case a dreary outlook for him. Hope and faith and almost love had been sucked from his life by "the hindering knot-grass" which had spread its white bloodless roots in all directions through soul and heart and mind, exhausting and choking in them everything of divinest origin. The weeds in George's heart were of another kind, and better nor worse in themselves; the misery was that neither of them was endeavoring to root them out. The thief who is trying to be better is ages ahead of the most honorable man who is making no such effort. The one is alive; the other is dead and on the way to corruption.

They treated themselves to a gaze together on the cup and the watch; then George went to give directions to the laird's lawyer for the drawing up of his new will.

The next day it was brought, read, signed by the laird, and his signature duly witnessed.

Dawtie being on the spot was made one of the witnesses. The laird trembled lest her fanaticism should break out in appeal to the lawyer concerning the cup; he could not understand that the cup was nothing to her; that she did not imagine herself a setter right of wrongs, but knew herself her neighbor's keeper, one that had to deliver his soul from death! Had the cup come into her possession, she would have sent it back to the owner, but it was not worth her care that the Earl of Borland should cast his eyes when he would upon a jewel in a cabinet!

Dawtie was very white as he signed his name. Where the others saw but a legal ceremony, she feared her loved master was assigning his soul to the devil, as she had read of Dr. Faustus in the old ballad. He was gliding away into the dark, and no one to whom he had done a good turn with the Mammon of unrighteousness, was waiting to receive him into an everlasting habitation! She had and she needed no special cause to love her master, any more than to love the chickens and the calves; she loved because something that could be loved was there present to her; but he had always spoken kindly to her, and been pleased with her endeavor to serve him; and now he was going where she could do nothing for him!—except pray, as her heart and Andrew had taught her, knowing that "all live unto Him!" But alas! what were prayers where the man would not take the things prayed for! Nevertheless all things were possible with God, and she would pray for him!

It was also with white face, and it was with trembling hand that she signed her own name, for she felt as if giving him a push down the icy slope into the abyss.

But when the thing was done, the old man went quietly to sleep, and dreamed of a radiant jewel, glorious as he had never seen jewel, ever within yet ever eluding his grasp.



CHAPTER XXIX.

THE SANGREAL.

The next day he seemed better, and Alexa began to hope again. But in the afternoon his pulse began to sink, and when Crawford came he could welcome him only with a smile and a vain effort to put out his hand. George bent down to him. The others, at a sign from his eyes, left the room.

"I can't find it, George!" he whispered.

"I put it away for you last night, you remember!" answered George.

"Oh, no, you didn't! I had it in my hand a minute ago! But I fell into a doze, and it is gone! George, get it!—get it for me, or I shall go mad!" George went and brought it him.

"Thank you! thank you! Now I remember! I thought I was in hell, and they took it from me!"

"Don't you be afraid, sir! Fall asleep when you feel inclined. I will keep my eye on the cup."

"You will not go away?"

"No; I will stay as long as you like; there is nothing to take me away. If I had thought you would be worse, I would not have gone last night"

"I'm not worse! What put that in your head? Don't you hear me speaking better? I've thought about it, George, and am convinced the cup is a talisman! I am better all the time I hold it! It was because I let you put it away that I was worse last night—for no other reason. If it were not a talisman, how else could it have so nestled itself into my heart! I feel better, always, the moment I take it in my hand! There is something more than common about that chalice! George, what if it should be the Holy Grail!"

He said it with bated breath, and a great white awe upon his countenance. His eyes were shining; his breath came and went fast. Slowly his aged cheeks flushed with two bright spots. He looked as if the joy of his life was come.

"What if it should be the Holy Grail!" he repeated, and fell asleep with the words on his lips.

As the evening deepened into night, he woke. Crawford was sitting beside him. A change had come over him. He stared at George as if he could not make him out, closed his eyes, opened them, stared, and again closed them. He seemed to think he was there for no good.

"Would you like me to call Alexa?" said George.

"Call Dawtie; call Dawtie!" he replied.

George rose to go and call her.

"Beware of her!" said the laird, with glazy eyes, "Beware of Dawtie!"

"How?" asked George.

"Beware of her," he repeated. "If she can get the cup, she will! She would take it from me now, if she dared! She will steal it yet! Call Dawtie; call Dawtie!"

Alexa was in the drawing-room, on the other side of the hall. George went and told her that her father wanted Dawtie.

"I will find her," she said, and rose, but turned and asked:

"How does he seem now?"

"Rather worse," George answered.

"Are you going to be with him through the night?"

"I am; he insists on my staying with him," replied George, almost apologetically.

"Then," she returned, "you must have some supper. We will go down, and send up Dawtie."

He followed her to the kitchen. Dawtie was not there, but her mistress found her.

When she entered her master's room, he lay motionless, "and white with the whiteness of what is dead."

She got brandy, and made him swallow some. As soon as he recovered a little, he began to talk wildly.

"Oh, Agnes!" he cried, "do not leave me. I'm not a bad man! I'm not what Dawtie calls me. I believe in the atonement; I put no trust in myself; my righteousness is as filthy rags. Take me with you. I will go with you. There! Slip that under your white robe—washed in the blood of the Lamb. That will hide it—with the rest of my sins! The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife. Take it; take it; I should be lost in heaven without it! I can't see what I've got on, but it must be the robe of His righteousness, for I have none of my own! What should I be without it! It's all I've got! I couldn't bring away a single thing besides—and it's so cold to have but one thing on—I mean one thing in your hands! Do you say they will make me sell it? That would be worse than coming without it!"

He was talking to his wife!—persuading her to smuggle the cup into heaven! Dawtie went on her knees behind the curtain, and began to pray for him all she could. But something seemed stopping her, and making her prayer come only from her lips.

"Ah," said the voice of her master, "I thought so! How could I go up, and you praying against me like that! Cup or no cup, the thing was impossible!"

Dawtie opened her eyes—and there he was, holding back the curtain and looking round the edge of it with a face of eagerness, effort, and hate, as of one struggling to go, and unable to break away.

She rose to her feet.

"You are a fiend!" he cried. "I will go with Agnes!" He gave a cry, and ceased, and all was still. They heard the cry in the kitchen, and came running up.

They found Dawtie bending over her master, with a scared face. He seemed to have struck her, for one cheek was marked with red streaks across its whiteness.

"The Grail! the Holy Grail!" he cried. "I found it! I was bringing it home! She took it from me! She wants it to—"

His jaw fell, and he was dead. Alexa threw herself beside the body. George would have raised her, but she resisted, and lay motionless. He stood then behind her, watching an opportunity to get the cup from under the bed-clothes, that he might put it in the closet.

He ordered Dawtie to fetch water for her mistress; but Alexa told her she did not want any. Once and again George tried to raise her, and get his hand under the bed-clothes to feel for the cup.

"He is not dead!" cried Alexa; "he moved!"

"Get some brandy," said George.

She rose, and went to the table for the brandy. George, with the pretense of feeling the dead man's heart, threw back the clothes. He could find no cup. It had got further down! He would wait!

Alexa lifted her father's head on her arm, but it was plain that brandy could not help. She went and sat on a chair away from the bed, hopeless and exhausted.

George lifted the clothes from the foot of the bed, then from the further side, and then from the nearer, without attracting her attention. The cup was nowhere to be seen! He put his hand under the body, but the cup was not there! He had to leave the room that Dawtie and Meg might prepare it for burial. Alexa went to her chamber.

A moment after, George returned, called Meg to the door, and said:

"There must be a brass cup in the bed somewhere! I brought it to amuse him. He was fond of odd things, you know! If you should find it—"

"I will take care of it," answered Meg, and turned from him curtly.

George felt he had not a friend in the house, and that he must leave things as they were! The door of the closet was locked, and he could not go again to the death-chamber to take the laird's keys from the head of the bed! He knew that the two women would not let him. It had been an oversight not to secure them! He was glad the watch was safe: that he had put in the closet before!—but it mattered little when the cup was missing! He went to the stable, got out his horse, and rode home in the still gray of a midsummer night.

The stillness and the night seemed thinking to each other. George had little imagination, but what he had woke in him now as he rode slowly along. Step by step the old man seemed following him, on silent church-yard feet, through the eerie whiteness of the night. There was neither cloud nor moon, only stars above and around, and a great cold crack in the north-east. He was crying after him, in a voice he could not make him hear! Was he not straggling to warn him not to come into like condemnation? The voice seemed trying to say, "I know! I know now! I would not believe, but I know now! Give back the cup; give it back!"

George did not allow to himself that there was "anything" there. It was but a vague movement in that commonplace, unmysterious region, his mind! He heard nothing, positively nothing, with his ears—therefore there was nothing! It was indeed somehow as if one were saying the words, but in reality they came only as a thought rising, continually rising, in his mind! It was but a thought-sound, and no speech: "I know now! I know now! Give it back; give the cup back!" He did not ask himself how the thought came; he cast it away as only that insignificant thing, a thought—cast it away none the less that he found himself answering it—"I can't give it back; I can't find it! Where did you put it? You must have taken it with you!"

"What rubbish!" he said to himself ten times, waking up; "of course Dawtie took it! Didn't the poor old fellow warn me to beware of her! Nobody but her was in the room when we ran in, and found him at the point of death! Where did you put it? I can't find it! I can't give it back!"

He went over in his mind all that had taken place. The laird had the cup when he left him to call Dawtie; and when they came, it was nowhere! He was convinced the girl had secured it—in obedience, doubtless, to the instruction of her director, ambitious to do justice, and curry favor by restoring it! But he could do nothing till the will was read! Was it possible Lexy had put it away? No; she had not had the opportunity!



CHAPTER XXX.

GEORGE AND THE GOLDEN GOBLET.

With slow-pacing shadows, the hot hours crept athwart the heath, and the house, and the dead, and carried the living with them in their invisible current. There is no tide in time; it is a steady current, not returning. Happy they whom it bears inward to the center of things! Alas, for those whom it carries outward to "the flaming walls of creation!" The poor old laird who, with all his refinement, all his education, all his interest in philology, prosody, history, and reliquial humanity, had become the slave of a goblet, had left it behind him, had faced the empty universe empty-handed, and vanished with a shadow-goblet in his heart; the eyes that gloated over the gems had gone to help the grass to grow. But the will of the dead remained to trouble for a time the living, for it put his daughter in a painful predicament: until Crawford's property was removed from the house, it would give him constant opportunity of prosecuting the suit which Aleza had reason to think he intended to resume, and the thought of which had become to her insupportable.

Great was her astonishment when she learned to what the door in the study led, and what a multitude of curious and valuable things were there of whose presence in the house she had never dreamed. She would gladly have had them for herself; and it pained her to the heart to think of the disappointment of the poor ghost when he saw, if he could see, his treasured hoard emptied out of its hidden and safe abode. For, even if George should magnanimously protest that he did not care for the things enough to claim them, and beg that they might remain where they were, she could not grant his request, for it would be to accept them from him. Had her father left them to her, she would have kept them as carefully as even he could desire—with this difference only, that she would not have shut them up from giving pleasure to others.

She was growing to care more about the truth—gradually coming to see that much she had taken for a more liberal creed, was but the same falsehoods in weaker forms, less repulsive only to a mind indifferent to the paramount claims of God on His child. She saw something of the falseness and folly of attempting to recommend religion as not so difficult, so exclusive, so full of prohibition as our ancestors believed it. She saw that, although Andrew might regard some things as freely given which others thought God forbade, yet he insisted on what was infinitely higher and more than the abandonment of everything pleasant—the abnegation, namely, of the very self, and the reception of God instead. She had hitherto been, with all her supposed progress, only a recipient of the traditions of the elders! There must be a deeper something—the real religion! She did not yet see that the will of God lay in another direction altogether than the heartiest reception of dogma!—that God was too great and too generous to care about anything except righteousness, and only wanted us to be good children!—that even honesty was but the path toward righteousness, a condition so pure that honesty itself would never more be an object of thought!

She pondered much about her father, and would find herself praying for him, careless of what she had been taught. She could not blind herself to what she knew. He had not been a bad man, as men count badness, but could she in common sense think him a glorified saint, shining in white robes? The polite, kind old man! her own father!—could she, on the other hand, believe him in flames forever? If so, what a religion was that which required her to believe it, and at the same time to rejoice in the Lord always!

She longed for something positive to believe, something into accordance with which she might work her feelings. She was still on the outlook for definite intellectual formulae to hold. Her intercourse with Andrew had as yet failed to open her eyes to the fact that the faith required of us is faith in a person, and not in the truest of statements concerning anything, even concerning him; or to the fact, that faith in the living One, the very essence of it, consists in obedience to Him. A man can obey before he is sure, and except he obey the command he knows to be right, wherever it may come from, he will never be sure. To find the truth, man or woman must be true.

But she much desired another talk with Andrew.

Persuading himself that Alexa's former feeling toward him must in her trouble reassert itself, and confident that he would find her loath to part with her father's wonderful collection, George waited the effect of the will. After the reading of it he had gone away directly, that his presence might not add to the irritation which he concluded, not without reason, it must, even in the midst of her sorrow, cause in her; but at the end of a week he wrote, saying that he felt it his duty, if only in gratitude to his friend, to inform himself as to the attention the valuable things he had left him might require. He assured Alexa that he had done nothing to influence her father in the matter, and much regretted the awkward position in which his will had placed both her and him. At the same time it was not unnatural that he should wish such precious objects to be possessed by one who would care for them as he had himself cared for them. He hoped, therefore, that she would allow him access to her father's rooms. He would not, she might rest assured, intrude himself upon her sorrow, though he would be compelled to ask her before long whether he might hope that her father's wish would have any influence in reviving the favor which had once been the joy of his life.

Alexa saw that if she consented to see him he would take it as a permission to press his claim, and the idea was not to be borne. She wrote him therefore a stiff letter, telling him the house was at his service, but he must excuse herself.

The next morning brought him early to Potlurg. The cause of his haste was his uneasiness about the chalice.

Old Meg opened the door to him, and he followed her straight into the drawing-room. Alexa was there, and far from expecting him. But, annoyed at his appearance as she was, she found his manner and behavior less unpleasant than at any time since his return. He was gentle and self-restrained, assuming no familiarity beyond that of a distant relative, and gave the impression of having come against his will, and only from a sense of duty.

"Did you not have my note?" she asked.

He had hoped, he said, to save her the trouble of writing.

She handed him her father's bunch of keys, and left the room.

George went to the laird's closet, and having spent an hour in it, again sought Alexa. The wonderful watch was in his hand.

"I feel the more pleasure, Alexa," he said, "in begging you to accept this trinket, that it was the last addition to your dear father's collection. I had myself the good fortune to please him with it a few days before his death."

"No, thank you, George," returned Alexa. "It is a beautiful thing—my father showed it me—but I can not take it."

"It was more of you than him I thought when I purchased it, Alexa. You know why I could not offer it you."

"The same reason exists now."

"I am sorry to have to force myself on your attention, but—"

"Dawtie!" cried Alexa.

Dawtie came running.

"Wait a minute, Dawtie. I will speak to you presently," said her mistress.

George rose. He had laid the watch on the table, and seemed to have forgotten it.

"Please take the watch with you," said Alexa.

"Certainly, if you wish it!" he answered.

"And my father's keys, too," she added.

"Will you not be kind enough to take charge of them?"

"I would rather not be accountable for anything under them. No; you must take the keys."

"I can not help regretting," said George, "that your honored father should have thought fit to lay this burden of possession upon me."

Alexa made no answer.

"I comforted myself with the hope that you would feel them as much your own as ever!" he resumed, in a tone of disappointment and dejection.

"I did not know of their existence before I knew they were never to be mine."

"Never, Alexa?"

"Never."

George walked to the door, but there turned, and said:

"By the way, you know that cup your father was so fond of?"

"No."

"Not that gold cup, set with stones?"

"I saw something in his hands once, in bed, that might have been a cup."

"It is a thing of great value—of pure gold, and every stone in it a gem."