Title: The Elect Lady
Author: MacDonald, George, 1824-1905
Language: English
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THE ELECT LADY


_(A Duplex Edition)_


By George MacDonald



THE ELECT LADY



CHAPTER I.


LANDLORD'S DAUGHTER AND TENANT'S SON.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The writing of it, ma'am."

"For the exercise, you mean?"

"No; I hardly mean that."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Never. The rule is strict"

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

"Not that I know."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He rose and stood a moment.

"Well, Andrew, what is it?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER II.


AN ACCIDENT.

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER III.


HELP.

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

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

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

"Well, my dear?"

"What _shall_ we do?"

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

"We ought to go and see."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"To bring brandy," supplemented Andrew.

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

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

"Is he dead?" asked Alexa.

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

"Do you know him?"

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

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

"I was afraid it might bother the laird."

"You scarcely know my father, Doctor Pratt!"

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER IV.


THE LAIRD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"How is he, father?" she asked.

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

"I did not ask him," she replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER V.


AFTER SUPPER.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He might have been carried elsewhere!"

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

"Why did he not take him then?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not the mended leg, father?"

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

"It is our life that vanishes that way!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Father!"

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

"You don't mean it, father?"

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

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

"Is it?" said the laird, dryly.

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

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



CHAPTER VI.


ABOUT THE LAIRD.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER VII.


THE COUSINS.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER VIII.


GEORGE AND THE LAIRD.

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

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

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

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

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

Crawford was bewildered: what business had he there?

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

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

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

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

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

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

They turned together toward the door.

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

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

"Your love draws them," said George.

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER IX.

IN THE GARDEN.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alexa rose, but resumed her seat, saying:

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

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

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

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

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

Andrew was silent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

George cast on her a look of gratitude.

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



CHAPTER X.


ANDREW INGRAM.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Na, that we winna!"

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

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

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

"Ay!" said Sandy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Try what?" said Sandy.

His brother read the passage again.

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

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

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

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

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

"I don't know."

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

"Yes, yes; let us!"

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

They knelt together.

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

Andrew prayed:

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is the way his thoughts went:

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

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

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

He ran to find his brother.

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

"What?"

"What we've got to do"

"And what is it?"

"Just what He tells us."

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

"So we were! That's grand!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Does He?"

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

There came a pause.

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

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

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

"No, we don't."

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

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

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

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

"How's that?" asked Sandy.

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

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

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

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

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

"Dawtie!" cried both at once.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Naething but the want o' a mither."

"Is the mither o' 't deid?"

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

"Sic a cruel mither!"

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

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

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

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

"It's my father, than!"

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

"Na, I'm no carin'."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XI.


GEORGE AND ANDREW.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I understand you read a great deal?"

"Weather permitting," returned Andrew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"That is dangerous doctrine."

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

"Your ideas may be wrong!"

"The All-wise is my judge."

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

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

"That is a most dangerous confidence!"

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

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

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

The answer checked George a little.

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

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

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

"I should hold my peace."

"You do what He tells you then?"

"I try."

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

"No, sir."

"No?"

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

"And isn't that the same?"

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

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

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

"Well?"

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

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"You would make a slow process of it!"

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

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

"And how many is it since Christ came?"

"Toward two thousand."

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

"Dangerous doctrine for the sinner!"

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

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

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

"I can hardly say I understand you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XII.

THE CRAWFORDS.


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

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

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

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

Alexa received him with a shade of displeasure.

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

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

"Where are you going?" she asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Her voice trembled.

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

"You would have me understand--"

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

"Why should an innocent man ever do otherwise?"

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

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

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

"How?"

"By compelling their respect."

"You mean to make a fortune?"

"Yes."

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

"I shall not."

"Is such respect worth having?"

"Not in itself."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XIII.


DAWTIE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XIV.


SANDY AND GEORGE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XV.


MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.

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

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

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

"Then what's broucht ye the day?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Silence followed, but the mother was brooding.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



CHAPTER XVI.


ANDREW AND DAWTIE.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"So I got up, and thought to sweep and dust the hall and the stairs;
then if, when I lay down again, I should sleep too long, there would be
a part of the day's work done! You know, Andrew, what the house is like;
at the top of the stair that begins directly you enter the house, there
is a big irregular place, bigger than the floor of your barn, laid with
flags. It is just as if all the different parts of the house had been
built at different times round about it, and then it was itself roofed
in by an after-thought. That's what we call _the hall_. The spare room
opens on the left at the top of the stair, and to the right, across the
hall, beyond the swell of the short thick tower you see the half of
outside, is the door of the study. It is all round with books--some of
them, mistress says, worth their weight in gold, they are so scarce. But
the master trusts me to dust them. He used to do it himself; but now
that he is getting old, he does not like the trouble, and it makes him
asthmatic. He says books more need dusting than anything else, but are
in more danger of being hurt by it, and it makes him nervous to see me
touch them. I have known him stand an hour watching me while I dusted,
looking all the time as if he had just taken a dose of medicine. So I
often do a few books at a time, as I can, when he is not in the way to
be worried with it. But he always knows where I have been with my duster
and long-haired brush. And now it came across me that I had better dust
some books first of all, as it was a good chance, he being sound asleep.
So I lighted my lamp, went straight to the study, and began where I last
left off.

"As I was dusting, one of the books I came to looked so new and
different from the rest that I opened it to see what it was like inside.
It was full of pictures of mugs, and gold and silver jugs and cups--some
of them plain and some colored; and one of the colored ones was so
beautiful that I stood and looked at it. It was a gold cup, I suppose,
for it was yellow; and all round the edge, and on the sides, it was set
with stones, like the stones in mistress's rings, only much bigger. They
were blue and red and green and yellow, and more colors than I can
remember. The book said it was made by somebody, but I forget his name.
It was a long name. The first part of it began with a _B_, and the
second with a _C_, I remember that much. It was like _Benjamin_, but it
wasn't _Benjamin_. I put it back in its place, thinking I would ask the
master whether there really were such beautiful things, and took down
the next. Now whether that had been passed over between two batches I
don't know, but it was so dusty that before I would touch another I gave
the duster a shake, and the wind of it blew the lamp out I took it up to
take it to the kitchen and kindle it again, when, to my astonishment, I
saw a light under the door of a press which was always locked, and where
master said he kept his most precious books. 'How strange!' I thought;
'a light inside a locked cupboard!' Then I remembered how in one place
where I had been there was, in a room over the stable, a press whose
door had no fastening except a bolt on the inside, which set me
thinking, and some terrible things came to me that made me remember it.
So now I said to myself: 'There's some one in there, after master's
books!' It was not a likely thing, but the night is the time for
fancies, and in the night you don't know what is likely and what is not.
One thing, however, was clear--I ought to find out what the light meant.
Fearful things darted one after the other through my head as I went to
the door, but there was one thing I dared not do, and that was to leave
it unopened. So I opened it as softly as I could, in terror lest the
thief should hear my heart beating. When I could peep in what do you
think I saw? I could not believe my eyes! There was a great big room! I
rubbed my eyes, and stared; and rubbed them again and stared--thinking
to rub it away; but there it was, a big odd-shaped room, part of it with
round sides, and in the middle of the room a table, and on the table a
lamp, burning as I had never seen lamp burn, and master at the table
with his back to me. I was so astonished I forgot that I had no business
there, and ought to go away. I stood like an idiot, mazed and lost. And
you will not wonder when I tell you that the laird was holding up to the
light, between his two hands, the very cup I had been looking at in the
book, the stones of it flashing all the colors of the rainbow. I should
think it a dream, if I did not _know_ it was not. I do not believe I
made any noise, for I could not move, but he started up with a cry to
God to preserve him, set the cup on the table, threw something over it,
caught up a wicked-looking knife, and turned round. His face was like
that of a corpse, and I could see him tremble. I stood steady; it was no
time then to turn away. I supposed he expected to see a robber, and
would be glad when he discovered it was only me; but when he did his
fear changed to anger, and he came at me. His eyes were flaming, and he
looked as if he would kill me. I was not frightened--poor old man, I was
able for him any day!--but I was afraid of hurting him. So I closed the
door quickly, and went softly to my own room, where I stood a long time
in the dark, listening, but heard nothing more. What am I to do,
Andrew?"

"I don't know that you have to do anything. You have one thing not to
do, that is--tell anybody what you have seen."

"I was forced to tell _you_ because I did not know what to do. It makes
me _so_ sorry!"

"It was no fault of yours. You acted to the best of your knowledge, and
could not help what came of it. Perhaps nothing more will come. Leave
the thing alone, and if he say anything tell him how it happened."

"But, Andrew, I don't think you see what it is that troubles me. I am
afraid my master is a miser. The mistress and he take their meals, like
poor people, in the kitchen. That must be the dining-room of the
house!--and though my eyes were tethered to the flashing cup, I could
not help seeing it was full of strange and beautiful things. Among them,
I knew, by pictures I had seen, the armor of knights, when they fought
on their horses' backs. Before people had money they must have misered
other things. Some girls miser their clothes, and never go decent!"

"Suppose him a miser," said Andrew, "what could you do? How are you to
help it?"

"That's what I want to know. I love my master, and there must be a way
to help it. It was terrible to see him, in the middle of the night,
gazing at that cup as if he had found the most precious thing that can
ever have existed on the earth."

"What was that?" asked Andrew.

He delighted in Dawtie's talk. It was like an angel's, he said, both in
its ignorance and its wisdom.

"You can't have forgotten, Andrew. It's impossible!" she answered. "I
heard you say yourself!"

Andrew smiled.

"I know," he said.

"Poor man!" resumed Dawtie; "he looked at the cup as you might at that
manuscript! His soul was at it, feasting upon it! Now wasn't that
miserly?"

"It was like it."

"And I love my master," repeated Dawtie, thus putting afresh the
question what she was to do.

"Why do you love him, Dawtie?" asked Andrew.

"Because I'm set to love him. Besides, we're told to love our
enemies--then surely we're to love our friends. He has always been a
friend to me. He never said a hard word to me, even when I was handling
his books. He trusts me with them! I can't help loving him--a good deal,
Andrew! And it's what I've got to do!"

"There's not a doubt about it, Dawtie. You've got to love him, and you
do love him!"

"But there's more than that, Andrew. To hear the laird talk you would
think he cared more for the Bible than for the whole world--not to say
gold cups. He talks of the merits of the Saviour, that you would think
he loved Him with all his heart. But I can not get it out of my mind,
ever since I saw that look on his face, that he loves that cup--that
it's his graven image--his idol! How else should he get up in the middle
of the night to--to--to--well, it was just like worshiping it."

"You're afraid then that he's a hypocrite, Dawtie!"

"No; I daren't think that--if it were only for fear I should stop loving
him--and that would be as bad!"

"As bad as what, Dawtie?"

"I don't always know what I'm going to say," answered Dawtie, a little
embarrassed, "and then when I've said it I have to look what it means.
But isn't it as bad not to love a human being as it would be to love a
thing?"

"Perhaps worse," said Andrew.

"Something must be done!" she went on. "He can't be left like that! But
if he has any love to his Master, how is it that the love of that Master
does not cast out the love of Mammon? I can't understand it."

"You have asked a hard question, Dawtie. But a cure may be going on, and
take a thousand years or ages to work it out."

"What if it shouldn't be begun yet."

"That would be terrible."

"What then am I to do, Andrew? You always say we must _do_ something!
You say there is no faith but what _does_ something!"

"The apostle James said so, a few years before I was born, Dawtie!"

"Don't make fun of me--please, Andrew! I like it, but I can't bear it
to-day, my head is so full of the poor old laird!"

"Make fun of you, Dawtie! Never! But I don't know yet how to answer
you."

"Well, then, what _am_ I to do?" persisted Dawtie.

"Wait, of course, till you know what to do. When you don't know what to
do, don't do anything--only keep asking the Thinker for wisdom. And
until you know, don't let the laird see that you know anything."

With this answer Dawtie was content.

Business was over, and they turned to go home.



CHAPTER XVII.


DAWTIE AND THE CUP.

The old man had a noteworthy mental fabric. Believing himself a true
lover of literature, and especially of poetry, he would lecture for ten
minutes on the right mode of reading a verse in Hilton or Dante; but as
to Satan or Beatrice, would pin his faith to the majority of the
commentators: Milton's Satan was too noble, and Beatrice was no woman,
but Theology. He was discriminative to a degree altogether admirable as
to the brightness or wrongness of a proposition with regard to conduct,
but owed his respectability to good impulses without any effort of the
will. He was almost as orthodox as Paul before his conversion, lacking
only the heart and the courage to persecute. Whatever the eternal wisdom
saw in him, the thing most present to his own consciousness was the love
of rare historic relics. And this love was so mingled in warp and woof,
that he did not know whether a thing was more precious to him for its
rarity, its money value, or its historico-reliquary interest. All the
time he was a school-master, he saved every possible half-penny to buy
books, not because of their worth or human interest, but because of
their literary interest, or the scarcity of the book or edition. In the
holidays he would go about questing for the prey that his soul loved,
hunting after precious things; but not even the precious things of the
everlasting hills would be precious to him until they had received the
stamp of curiosity. His life consisted in a continual search for
something new that was known as known of old. It had hardly yet occurred
to him that he must one day leave his things and exist without them, no
longer to brood over them, take them in his hands, turn, and stroke, and
admire them; yet, strange to say, he would at times anxiously seek to
satisfy himself that he was safe for a better world, as he _called_
it--to feel certain, that is, that his faith was of the sort he supposed
intended by Paul--not that he had himself gathered anything from the
apostle, but all from the traditions of his church concerning the
teaching of the apostle. He was anxious, I say, as to his safety for the
world to come, and yet, while his dearest joy lay treasured in that
hidden room, he never thought of the hour when he must leave it all, and
go houseless and pocketless, empty-handed if not armless, in the wide,
closetless space, hearing ever in the winds and the rain and the sound
of the sea-waves, the one question--"Whose shall those things be which
thou hast provided?" Like the rich man to whom God said the words, he
had gathered much goods for many years--hundreds and hundreds of things,
every one of which he knew, and every one of which he loved. A new
scratch on the bright steel of one of his suits of armor was a scratch
on his heart; the moth and the rust troubled him sore, for he could not
keep them away; and where his treasure was, there was his heart,
devoured by the same moth, consumed by the same rust. He had much
suffering from his possessions--was more exposed to misery than the
miser of gold, for the hoarded coin of the latter may indeed be stolen,
but he fears neither moth nor rust nor scratch nor decay. The laird
cherished his things as no mother her little ones. Nearly sixty years he
had been gathering them, and their money-worth was great, but he had no
idea of its amount, for he could not have endured the exposure and
handling of them which a valuation must involve.

His love for his books had somewhat declined in the growth of his love
for things, and now, by degrees not very slow, his love for his things
was graduating itself after what he supposed their money-value. His soul
not only clave to the dust but was going deeper and deeper in the dust
as it wallowed. All day long he was living in the past and growing old
in it--it is one thing to grow old in the past, and another to grow old
in the present! As he took his walk about his farms, or sat at his
meals, or held a mild, soulless conversation with his daughter, his
heart was growing old, not healthily in the present, which is to ripen,
but unwholesomely in the past, which is to consume with a dry rot. While
he read the Bible at prayers, trying hard to banish worldly things from
his mind, his thoughts were not in the story or the argument he read,
but hovering, like a bird over its nest, about the darlings of his
heart. Yea, even while he prayed, his soul, instead of casting off the
clay of the world, was loaded and dragged down with all the
still-moldering, slow-changing things that lined the walls and filled
the drawers and cabinets of his treasure-chamber. It was a place of
whose existence not even his daughter knew; for before ever she entered
the house, he had taken with him a mason from the town, and built up the
entrance to it from the hall, ever afterward keeping the other door of
it that opened from his study carefully locked, and leaving it to be
regarded as the door of a closet.

It was as terrible as Dawtie felt it, that a live human soul should thus
haunt the sepulcher of the past, and love the lifeless, turning a room
hitherto devoted to hospitality and mirthful intercourse into the temple
of his selfish idolatry. It was as one of the rooms carved for the dead
in the Beban El Malook. Sure, if left to himself, the ghost that loved
it would haunt the place! But he could not surely be permitted! for it
might postpone a thousand years his discovery of the emptiness of a
universe of such treasures. Now he was moldering into the world of
spirits in the heart of an avalanche of the dust of ages, dust material
from his hoards, dust moral and spiritual from his withering soul
itself.

The next day he was ill, which, common as is illness to humanity, was
strange, for it had never befallen him before. He was unable to leave
his bed. But he never said a word to his daughter, who alone waited on
him, as to what had happened in the night. He had passed it sleepless,
and without the possibility of a dream on which to fall back; yet, when
morning came, he was in much doubt whether what he had seen--the face,
namely, of Dawtie, peeping in at the door--was a reality, or but a
vision of the night. For when he opened the door which she had closed,
all was dark, and not the slightest sound reached his quick ear from the
swift foot of her retreat. He turned the key twice, and pushed two
bolts, eager to regard the vision as a providential rebuke of his
carelessness in leaving the door on the latch--for the first time, he
imagined. Then he tottered back to his chair, and sunk on it in a cold
sweat. For, although the confidence grew, that what he had seen was but

                a false creation
  Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain,

it was far from comfortable to feel that he could no longer depend upon
his brain to tell him only the thing that was true. What if he were
going out of his mind, on the way to encounter a succession of
visions--without reality, but possessed of its power! What if they
should be such whose terror would compel him to disclose what most he
desired to keep covered? How fearful to be no more his own master, but
at the beck and call of a disordered brain, a maniac king in a _cosmos
acosmos_! Better it had been Dawtie, and she had seen in his hands
Benvenuto Cellini's chalice made for Pope Clement the Seventh to drink
therefrom the holy wine--worth thousands of pounds! Perhaps she had seen
it! No, surely she had not! He must be careful not to make her suspect!
He would watch her and say nothing!

But Dawtie, conscious of no wrong, and full of love to the old man,
showed an untroubled face when next she met him; and he made up his mind
that he would rather have her ignorant. Thenceforward, naturally though
childishly, he was even friendlier to her than before: it was so great a
relief to find that he had not to fear her!

The next time Dawtie was dusting the books, she felt strongly drawn to
look again at the picture of the cup: it seemed now to hold in it a
human life! She took down the book, and began where she stood to read
what it said about the chalice, referring as she read from letterpress
to drawing. It was taken from an illumination in a missal, where the cup
was known to have been copied; and it rendered the description in the
letterpress unnecessary except in regard to the stones and _dessins
repoussés_ on the hidden side. She quickly learned the names of the
gems, that she might see how many were in the high-priest's breast-plate
and the gates of the new Jerusalem, then proceeded to the history of the
chalice. She read that it had come into the possession of Cardinal York,
the brother of Charles Edward Stuart, and had been by him intrusted to
his sister-in-law, the Duchess of Albany, from whose house it
disappeared, some said stolen, others said sold. It came next to the
historic surface in the possession of a certain earl whose love of
curiosities was well known; but from his collection again it vanished,
this time beyond a doubt stolen, and probably years before it was
missed.

A new train of thought was presently in motion in the mind of the girl:
_The beautiful cup was stolen! it was not where it ought to be! it was
not at home! it was a captive, a slave_! She lowered the book, half
closed, with a finger between the leaves, and stood thinking. She did
not for a moment believe her master had stolen it, though the fear did
flash through her mind. It had been stolen and sold, and he had bought
it at length of some one whose possession of it was nowise suspicious!
But he must know now that it had been stolen, for here, with the cup,
was the book which said so! That would be nothing if the rightful owner
were not known, but he was known, and the thing ought to be his! The
laird might not be bound, she was not sure, to restore it at his own
loss, for when he bought it he was not aware that it was stolen; but he
was bound to restore it at the price he had paid for it, if the former
owner would give it! This was bare justice! mere righteousness! No theft
could make the owner not the rightful owner, though other claims upon
the thing might come in! One ought not to be enriched by another's
misfortune! Dawtie was sure that a noble of the kingdom of heaven would
not wait for the money, but would with delight send the cup where it
ought to have been all the time! She knew better, however, than require
magnificence in any shape from the poor wizened soul of her master--a
man who knew all about everything, and whom yet she could not but fear
to _be_ nothing: as Dawtie had learned to understand life, the laird did
not yet exist. But he well knew right from wrong, therefore the
discovery she just made affected her duty toward him! It might be
impossible to make impression on the miserliness of a miser, but upon
the honesty in a miser it might be possible! The goblet was not his!

But the love of things dulls the conscience, and he might not be able,
having bought and paid for it, to see that the thing was not therefore
_his_! he might defend himself from seeing it! To Dawtie, this made the
horror of his condition the darker. She was one of God's babes, who can
not help seeing the true state of things. Logic was to her but the smoke
that rose from the burning truth; she saw what is altogether above and
beyond logic--the right thing, whose meanest servant, the hewer of its
wood, not the drawer of its water, the merest scullion and sweeper away
of lies from the pavement of its courts, is logic.

With a sigh she woke to the knowledge that she was not doing her work,
and rousing herself, was about to put the book on its shelf. But, her
finger being still in the place, she would have one more glance at the
picture! To her dismay she saw that she had made a mark on the plate,
and of the enormity of making a dirty mark on a book her master had made
her well aware.

She was in great distress. What was to be done? She did not once think
of putting it away and saying nothing. To have reasoned that her master
would never know, would have been an argument, pressing and imperative,
for informing him at once. She had done him an injury, and the injury
must be confessed and lamented; it was all that was left to be done!
"Sic a mischance!" she said, then bethought herself that there was no
such thing as mischance, when immediately it flashed upon her that here
was the door open for the doing of what was required of her. She was
bound to confess the wrong, and that would lead in the disclosure of
what she knew, rendering it comparatively easy to use some remonstrance
with the laird, whom in her mind's eye she saw like a beggar man
tottering down a steep road to a sudden precipice. Her duty was now so
plain that she felt no desire to consult Andrew. She was not one to ask
an opinion for the sake of talking opinion; she went to Andrew only when
she wanted light to do the right thing; when the light was around her,
she knew how to walk, and troubled no one.

At once she laid down book and duster, and went to find the laird. But
he had slipped away to the town, to have a rummage in a certain little
shop in a back street, which he had not rummaged for a long time enough,
he thought, to have let something come in. It was no relief to Dawtie:
the thing would be all the day before her instead of behind her! It
burned within her, not like a sin, but like what it was, a confession
unconfessed. Little wrong as she had done, Dawtie was yet familiar with
the lovely potency of confession to annihilate it. She knew it was the
turning from wrong that killed it, that confession gave the _coup de
grâce_ to offense. Still she dreaded not a little the displeasure of her
master, and yet she dreaded more his distress.

She prepared the laird's supper with a strange mingling of hope and
anxiety: she feared having to go to bed without telling him. But he came
at last, almost merry, with a brown paper parcel under his arm, over
which he was very careful. Poor man, he little knew there waited him at
the moment a demand from the eternal justice almost as terrible as:
"This night they require thy soul of thee!"--(What a _they_ is that! Who
are _they_?)--The torture of the moral rack was ready for him at the
hands of his innocent house-maid! In no way can one torture another more
than by waking conscience against love, passion, or pride.

He laid his little parcel carefully on the supper-table, said rather a
shorter grace than usual, began to eat his porridge, praised it as very
good, spoke of his journey and whom he had seen, and was more talkative
than his wont He informed Alexa, almost with jubilation, that he had at
length found an old book he had been long on the watch for--a book that
treated, in ancient broad Scots, of the laws of verse, in full, even
exhaustive manner. He pulled it from his pocket.

"It is worth at least ten times what I gave for it!" he said.

Dawtie wondered whether there ought not to have been some division of
the difference; but she was aware of no call to speak. One thing was
enough for one night!

Then came prayers. The old man read how David deceived the Philistines,
telling them a falsehood as to his raids. He read the narrative with a
solemnity of tone that would have graced the most righteous action: was
it not the deed of a man according to God's own heart?--how could it be
other than right! Casuist ten times a week, he made no question of the
righteousness of David's wickedness! Then he prayed, giving thanks for
the mercy that had surrounded them all the day, shielding them from the
danger and death which lurked for them in every corner. What would he
say when death did get him? Dawtie thought. Would he thank God then? And
would he see, when she spoke to him, that God wanted to deliver him from
a worse danger than any out-of-doors? Would he see that it was from much
mercy he was made more uncomfortable than perhaps ever in his life
before?

At length his offering was completed--how far accepted who can tell! He
was God's, and He who gave him being would be his Father to the full
possibility of God. They rose from their knees; the laird took up his
parcel and book; his daughter went with him.



CHAPTER XVIII.


DAWTIE AND THE LAIRD.

As soon as Dawtie heard her mistress's door close, she followed her
master to the study, and arrived just as the door of the hidden room was
shut behind him. There was not a moment to be lost! She went straight to
it, and knocked rather loud. No answer came. She knocked again. Still
there was no answer. She knocked a third time, and after a little
fumbling with the lock, the door opened a chink, and a ghastly face,
bedewed with drops of terror, peeped through. She was standing a little
back, and the eyes did not at once find the object they sought; then
suddenly they lighted on her, and the laird shook from head to foot.

"What is it, Dawtie?" he faltered out in a broken voice.

"Please, sir," answered Dawtie, "I have something to confess: would ye
hearken to me?"

"No, no, Dawtie! I am sure you have nothing to confess!" returned the
old man, eager to send her away, and to prevent her from seeing the
importance of the room whose entrance she had discovered. "Or," he went
on, finding she did not move, "if you have done anything, Dawtie, that
you ought not to have done, confess it to God. It is to Him you must
confess, not to a poor mortal like me! For my part, if it lies to me, I
forgive you, and there is an end! Go to your bed, Dawtie."

"Please, sir, I canna. Gien ye winna hear til me, I'll sit doon at the
door o' this room, and sit till--"

"What room, Dawtie? Call you this a room? It's a wee bit closet where I
say my prayers before I go to bed."

But as he spoke his blood ran cold within him, for he had uttered a
deliberate lie--two lies in one breath: the bit closet was the largest
room in the house, and he had never prayed a prayer in it since first he
entered it! He was unspeakably distressed at what he had done, for he
had always cherished the idea that he was one who would not lie to save
his life. And now in his old age he had lied who when a boy had honor
enough to keep him from lying! Worst of all, now that he had lied, he
must hold to the lie! He _dared_ not confess it! He stood sick and
trembling.

"I'll wait, sir," said Dawtie, distressed at his suffering, and more
distressed that he could lie who never forgot his prayers! Alas, he was
further down the wrong road than she had supposed!

Ashamed for his sake, and also for her own, to look him in the face--for
did he not imagine she believed him, while she knew that he lied?--she
turned her back on him. He caught at his advantage, glided out, and
closed the door behind him. When Dawtie again turned, she saw him in her
power.

Her trial was come; she had to speak for life or death! But she
remembered that the Lord told His disciples to take no care how they
should speak; for when the time came it would be given them to speak. So
she began by simply laying down the thing that was in her hand.

"Sir," she said, "I am very sorry, but this morning I made a dirty mark
in one of your books!"

Her words alarmed him a little, and made him forget for the instant his
more important fears. But he took care to be gentle with her; it would
not do to offend her! for was she not aware that where they stood was a
door by which he went in and out?

"You make me uneasy, Dawtie!" he said. "What book was it? Let me see
it."

"I will, sir."

She turned to take it down, but the laird followed her, saying:

"Point it out to me, Dawtie. I will get it."

She did so. It opened at the plate.

"There is the mark!" she said. "I am right sorry."

"So am I!" returned the laird. "But," he added, willing she should feel
his clemency, and knowing the book was not a rare one, "it is a book
still, and you will be more careful another time! For you must remember,
Dawtie, that you don't come into this room to read the books, but to
dust them. You can go to bed now with an easy mind, I hope!"

Dawtie was so touched by the kindness and forbearance of her master that
the tears rose in her eyes, and she felt strengthened for her task. What
would she not have encountered for his deliverance!

"Please, sir," she said, "let me show you a thing you never perhaps
happened to read!" And taking the book from his hand--he was too much
astonished to retain it--she turned over the engraving, and showed him
the passage which stated that the cup had disappeared from the
possession of its owner, and had certainly been stolen.

Finding he said not a word, she ventured to lift her eyes to his, and
saw again the corpse-like face that had looked through the chink of the
door.

"What do you mean?" he stammered. "I do not understand!"

His lips trembled: was it possible he had had to do with the stealing of
it?

The truth was this: he had learned the existence of the cup from this
very book; and had never rested until, after a search of more than ten
years, he at length found it in the hands of a poor man who dared not
offer it for sale. Once in his possession, the thought of giving it up,
or of letting the owner redeem it, had never even occurred to him. Yet
the treasure made him rejoice with a trembling which all his casuistry
would have found it hard to explain; for he would not confess to himself
its real cause--namely, that his God-born essence was uneasy with a
vague knowledge that it lay in the bosom of a thief. "Don't you think,
sir," said Dawtie, "that whoever has that cup ought to send it back to
the place it was stolen from?"

Had the old man been a developed hypocrite, he would have replied at
once: "He certainly ought." But by word of mouth to condemn himself
would have been to acknowledge to himself that he ought to send the cup
home, and this he dared not do. Men who will not do as they know, make
strange confusion in themselves. The worst rancor in the vessel of peace
is the consciousness of wrong in a not all-unrighteous soul. The laird
was false to his own self, but to confess himself false would be to
initiate a change which would render life worthless to him! What would
all his fine things be without their heart of preciousness, the one
jewel that now was nowhere in the world but in his house, in the secret
chamber of his treasures, which would be a rifled case without it! As is
natural to one who will not do right, he began to argue the moral
question, treating it as a point of casuistry that troubled the mind of
the girl.

"I don't know that, Dawtie!" he said. "It is not likely that the person
that has the cup, whoever he may be--that is, if the cup be still in
existence--is the same who stole it; and it would hardly be justice to
punish the innocent for the guilty?--as would be the case, if, supposing
I had bought the cup, I had to lose the money I paid for it. Should the
man who had not taken care of his cup have his fault condoned at my
expense? Did he not deserve, the many might say, to be so punished,
placing huge temptation in the path of the needy, to the loss of their
precious souls, and letting a priceless thing go loose in the world, to
work ruin to whoever might innocently buy it?"

His logic did not serve to show him the falsehood of his reasoning, for
his heart was in the lie. "Ought I or he," he went on, "to be punished
because he kept the thing ill? And how far would the quixotic obligation
descend? A score of righteous men may by this time have bought and sold
the cup!--is it some demon-talisman, that the last must meet the
penalty, when the original owner, or some descendant of the man who lost
it, chooses to claim it? For anything we know, he may himself have
pocketed the price of the rumored theft! Can you not see it would be a
flagrant injustice?--fit indeed to put an end to all buying and selling!
It would annihilate transfer of property! Possession would mean only
strength to keep, and the world would fall into confusion."

"It would be hard, I grant," confessed Dawtie; "but the man who has it
ought at least to give the head of the family in which it had been the
chance of buying it back at the price it cost him. If he could not buy
it back--then the thing would have to be thought over."

"I confess I don't see the thing," returned the laird. "But the question
needs not keep you out of bed, Dawtie! It is not often a girl in your
position takes an interest in the abstract! Besides," he resumed,
another argument occurring to him, "a thing of such historical value and
interest ought to be where it was cared for, not where it was in danger
every moment."

"There might be something in that," allowed Dawtie, "if it were where
everybody could see it. But where is the good if it be but for the eyes
of one man?"

The eyes she meant fixed themselves upon her till their gaze grew to a
stony stare. She _must_ know that he had it! Or did she only suspect? He
must not commit himself! He must set a watch on the door of his lips!
What an uncomfortable girl to have in the house! Oh, those
self-righteous Ingrams! What mischief they did! His impulse was to dart
into his treasure-cave, lock himself in, and hug the radiant chalice. He
dared not. He must endure instead the fastidious conscience and probing
tongue of an intrusive maid-servant!

"But," he rejoined, with an attempt at a smile, "if the pleasure the one
man took in it should, as is easy to imagine, exceed immeasurably the
aggergate pleasure of the thousands that would look upon it and pass it
by--what then?"

"The man would enjoy it the more that many saw it--except he loved it
for greed, when he would be rejoicing in iniquity, for the cup would not
be his. And anyhow, he could not take it with him when he died!"

The face of the miser grew grayer; his lip trembled; but he said
nothing. He was beginning to hate Dawtie. She was an enemy! She sought
his discomfiture, his misery! He had read strange things in certain old
books, and half believed some of them: what if Dawtie was one of those
evil powers that haunt a man in pleasant shape, learn the secrets of his
heart, and gain influence over him that they may tempt him to yield his
soul to the enemy! She was set on ruining him! Certainly she knew that
cup was in his possession! He must temporize! He must _seem_ to listen!
But as soon as fit reason could be found, such as would neither
compromise him nor offend her, she must be sent away! And of all things,
she must not gain the means of proving what she now perhaps only
suspected, and was seeking assurance of! He stood thinking. It was but
for a moment; for the very next words from the lips of the girl that was
to him little more than a house-broom, set him face to face with
reality--the one terror of the unreal.

"Eh, maister, sir," said Dawtie, with the tears in her eyes, and now at
last breaking down in her English, "dinna ye _ken_ 'at ye _hae_ to gie
the man 'at aucht that gowden bicker, the chance o' buyin' 't back?"

The laird shivered. He dared not say: "How do you know?" for he dared
not hear the thing proved to him. If she did know, he would not front
her proof! He would not have her even suppose it an acknowledged fact!

"If I had the cup," he began--but she interrupted him: it was time they
should have done with lying!

"Ye ken ye hae the cup, sir!" she said. "And I ken tu, for I saw 't i'
yer han's!"

"You shameless, prying hussy!" he began, in a rage at last--but the
eager, tearful earnestness of her face made him bethink himself: it
would not do to make an enemy of her! "Tell me, Dawtie," he said, with
sudden change of tone, "how it was you came to see it."

She told him all--how and when; and he knew that he had seen her see
him.

He managed to give a poor little laugh.

"All is not gold that glitters, Dawtie!" he said. "The cup you saw was
not the one in the book, but an imitation of it--mere gilded tin and
colored glass--copied from the picture, as near as they could make
it--just to see better what it must have been like. Why, my good girl,
that cup would be worth thousands of pounds! So go to bed, and don't
trouble yourself about gold cups. It is not likely any of them will come
our way!"

Simple as Dawtie was, she did not believe him. But she saw no good to be
done by disputing what he ought to know.

"It wasna aboot the gold cup I was troublin' mysel'!" she said,
hesitatingly.

"You are right there!" he replied, with another deathly laugh, "it was
not! But you have been troubling me about nothing half the night, and I
am shivering with cold! We really must, both of us, go to bed! What
would your mistress say!"

"No," persisted Dawtie, "it wasna aboot the cup, gowd or no gowd; it was
and is aboot my maister I'm troubled! I'm terrible feart for ye, sir!
Ye're a worshiper o' Mammon, sir!"

The laird laughed, for the danger was over!--to Dawtie's deep dismay he
laughed!

"My poor girl," he said, "you take an innocent love of curious things
for the worship of Mammon! Don't imagine me jesting. How could you
believe an old man like me, an elder of the kirk, a dispenser of her
sacred things, guilty of the awful crime of Mammon worship?"

He imagined her ignorantly associating the idea of some idolatrous
ritual with what to him was but a phrase--the worship of Mammon. "Do you
not remember," he continued, "the words of Christ, that a man _can not_
serve God and Mammon? If I be a Christian, as you will hardly doubt, it
follows that I am not a worshiper of Mammon, for the two can not go
together."

"But that's just the question, sir! A man who worships God, worships Him
with his whole heart and soul and strength and mind. If he wakes at
night, it is to worship God; if he is glad in his heart, it is because
God is, and one day he shall behold His face in brightness. If a man
worships God, he loves Him so that no love can come between him and God;
if the earth were removed, and the mountains cast into the midst of the
sea, it would be all one to him, for God would be all the same. Is it
not so, sir?"

"You are a good girl, Dawtie, and I approve of every word you say. It
would more than savor of presumption to profess that I loved God up to
the point you speak of; but I deserve to love Him. Doubtless a man ought
to love God so, and we are all sinners just because we do not love God
so. But we have the atonement!"

"But, sir," answered Dawtie, the silent tears running down her face, "I
love God that way! I don't care a dust for anything without Him! When I
go to bed, I don't care if I never wake again in this world; I shall be
where He would have me!"

"You presume, Dawtie! I fear me much you presume! What if that should be
in hell?"

"If it be, it will be the best. It will be to set me right. Oh, sir, He
is so good! Tell me one thing, sir: when you die--"

"Tut, tut, lass! we're not come to that yet! There's no occasion to
think about that yet awhile! We're in the hands of a reconciled God."

"What I want to know," pursued Dawtie, "is how you will feel, how you
will get on when you haven't got anything!"

"Not got anything, girl! Are you losing your senses? Of course we shall
want nothing then! I shall have to talk to the doctor about you! We
shall have you killing us in our beds to know how we like it!"

He laughed; but it was a rather scared laugh.

"What I mean," she persisted, "is--when you have no body, and no hands
to take hold of your cap, what will you do without it?"

"What if I leave it to you, Dawtie!" returned the laird, with a stupid
mixture of joke and avarice in his cold eye.

"Please, sir, I didn't say what you would do with it, but what would you
do without it when it will neither come out of your heart nor into your
hands! It must be misery to a miser to _have_ nothing!"

"A miser, hussy!"

"A lover of things, more than a lover of God!"

"Well, perhaps you have the better of me!" he said, after a cowed pause;
for he perceived there was no compromise possible with Dawtie: she knew
perfectly what she meant; and he could neither escape her logic, nor
change her determination, whatever that might be. "I dare say you are
right! I will think what ought to be done about that cup!"

He stopped, self amazed: he had committed himself!--as much as confessed
the cup genuine! But Dawtie had not been deceived, and had not been
thinking about the cup. Only it was plain that, if he would consent to
part with it for its money-worth, that would be a grand beginning toward
the renouncing of dead _things_ altogether, toward the turning to the
living One the love that now gathered, clinging and haunting, about gold
cups and graved armor, and suchlike vapors and vanishings, that pass
with the sunsets and the snows. She fell on her knees, and, in the
spirit of a child and of the apostle of the Gentiles, cried, laying her
little red hands together and uplifting them to her master in purest
entreaty.

"Oh, laird, laird, ye've been gude and kin' to me, and I lo'e ye, the
Lord kens! I pray ye for Christ's sake be reconciled to God, for ye hae
been servin' Mammon and no Him, and ye hae jist said we canna serve the
twa, and what 'ill come o' 't God only can tell, but it _maun_ be
misery!"

Words failed her. She rose, and left the room, with her apron to her
eyes.

The laird stood a moment or two like one lost, then went hurriedly into
his "closet," and shut the door. Whether he went on his knees to God as
did Dawtie to Him, or began again to gloat over his Cellini goblet, I do
not know.

Dawtie cried herself to sleep, and came down in the morning very pale.
Her duty had left her exhausted, and with a kind of nausea toward all
the ornaments and books in the house. A cock crew loud under the window
of the kitchen. She dropped on her knees, said "Father of lights!" not a
word beside, rose and began to rouse the fire.

When breakfast-time came, and the laird appeared, he looked much as
usual, only a little weary, which his daughter set down to his journey
the day before. He revived, however, as soon as he had succeeded in
satisfying himself that Alexa knew nothing of what had passed. How
staid, discreet, and compact of common sense Alexa seemed to him beside
Dawtie, whose want of education left her mind a waste swamp for the
vagaries of whatever will-o'-the-wisp an overstrained religious fantasy
might generate! But however much the laird might look the same as
before, he could never, knowing that Dawtie knew what she knew, be again
as he had been.

"You'll do a few of the books to-day, won't you, Dawtie," he said, "when
you have time? I never thought I should trust any one! I would sooner
have old Meg shave me than let her dust an Elzevir! Ha! ha! ha!"

Dawtie was glad that at least he left the door open between them. She
said she would do a little dusting in the afternoon, and would be very
careful. Then the laird rose and went out, and Dawtie perceived, with a
shoot of compassion mingled with mild remorse, that he had left his
breakfast almost untasted.

But after that, so far from ever beginning any sort of conversation with
her, he seemed uncomfortable the moment they happened to be alone
together. If he caught her eye, he would say--hurriedly, and as if
acknowledging a secret between them, "By and by, Dawtie;" or, "I'm
thinking about the business, Dawtie;" or, "I'm making up my mind,
Dawtie!" and so leave her. On one occasion he said, "Perhaps you will be
surprised some day, Dawtie!"

On her part Dawtie never felt that she had anything more to say to him.
She feared at times that she had done him evil rather than good by
pressing upon him a duty she had not persuaded him to perform. She spoke
of this fear to Andrew, but he answered decisively:

"If you believed you ought to speak to him, and have discovered in
yourself no wrong motive, you must not trouble yourself about the
result. That may be a thousand years off yet. You may have sent him into
a hotter purgatory, and at the same time made it shorter for him. We
know nothing but that God is righteous."

Dawtie was comforted, and things went on as before. Where people know
their work and do it, life has few blank spaces for ennui, and they are
seldom to be pitied. Where people have not yet found their work, they
may be more to be pitied than those that beg their bread. When a man
knows his work and will not do it, pity him more than one who is to be
hanged to-morrow.



CHAPTER XIX.


ANDREW AND ALEXA.

Andrew had occasion to call on the laird to pay his father's rent, and
Alexa, who had not seen him for some time, thought him improved both in
carriage and speech, and wondered. She did not take into account his
intercourse with God, as with highest human minds, and his constant
wakefulness to carry into action what things he learned. Thus trained in
noblest fashions of freedom, it was small wonder that his bearing and
manners, the natural outcome and expression of his habits of being,
should grow in liberty. There was in them the change only of
development. By the side of such education as this, dealing with reality
and inborn dignity, what mattered any amount of ignorance as to social
custom! Society may judge its own; this man was not of it, and as much
surpassed its most accomplished pupils in all the essentials of
breeding, as the apostle Paul was a better gentleman than Mr. Nash or
Mr. Brummel. The training may be slow, but it is perfect. To him who has
yielded self, all things are possible. Andrew was aware of no
difference. He seemed to himself the same as when a boy.

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 he 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
_repoussé_ 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."

"Indeed!" returned Alexa, with marked indifference.

"Yes; it was the work of the famous Benvenuto Cellini, made for Pope
Clement the Seventh, for his own communion-chalice. Your father priced
it at three thousand pounds. In his last moments, when his mind was
wandering, he fancied it the Holy Grail He had it in the bed with him
when he died; that I know."

"And it is missing?"

"Perhaps Dawtie could tell us what has become of it. She was with the
laird at the last."

Dawtie, who had stood aside to let him pass to the open door, looked up
with a flash in her eyes, but said nothing.

"Have you seen the cup, Dawtie?" asked her mistress.

"No, ma'am."

"Do you know it?"

"Very well, ma'am."

"Then you don't know what has become of it?"

"No, ma'am; I know nothing about it."

"Take care, Dawtie," said George. "This is a matter that will have to be
searched into."

"When did you last see it, Dawtie?" inquired Alexa.

"The very day my master died, ma'am. He was looking at it, but when he
saw I saw him he took it inside the bed-clothes."

"And you have not seen it since?"

"No, ma'am."

"And you do not know where it is?" said George.

"No, sir. How should I?"

"You never touched it?"

"I can not say that, sir; I brought it him from his closet; he sent me
for it."

"What do you think may have become of it?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Would you allow me to make a thorough search in the place where it was
last seen?" asked George, turning to his cousin.

"By all means. Dawtie, go and help Mr. Crawford to look."

"Please, ma'am, it can't be there. We've had the carpet up, and the
floor scrubbed. There's not a hole or a corner we haven't been into--and
that yesterday."

"We must find it," said George. "It must be in the house."

"It must, sir," said Dawtie.

But George more than doubted it

"I do believe," he said, "the laird would rather have lost his whole
collection."

"Indeed, sir, I think he would."

"Then you have talked to him about it?"

"Yes, I have, sir," answered Dawtie, sorry she had brought out the
question.

"And you know the worth of the thing?"

"Yes, sir; that is, I don't know how much it was worth, but I should say
pounds and pounds."

"Then, Dawtie, I must ask you again, _where is it?_"

"I know nothing about it, sir. I wish I did!"

"Why do you wish you did?"

"Because--" began Dawtie, and stopped short; she shrunk from impugning
the honesty of the dead man--and in the presence of his daughter.

"It looks a little fishy, don't it, Dawtie? Why not speak straight out?
Perhaps you would not mind searching Meg's trunk for me. She may have
taken it for a bit of old brass, you know."

"I will answer for my servants, Mr. Crawford," said Alexa. "I will not
have old Meg's box searched."

"It is desirable to get rid of any suspicion," replied George.

"I have none," returned Alexa.

George was silent

"I will ask Meg, if you like, sir," said Dawtie; "but I am sure it will
be no use. A servant in this house soon learns not to go by the look of
things. We don't treat anything here as if we knew all about it."

"When did you see the goblet first?" persisted George.

"Goblet, sir? I thought you were speaking of the gold cup."

By _goblet_ Dawtie understood a small iron pot.

"Goblet, or cup, or chalice--whatever you like to call it--I ask how you
came to know about it."

"I know very little about it."

"It is plain you know more than you care to tell. If you will not answer
me you will have to answer a magistrate."

"Then I will answer a magistrate," said Dawtie, beginning to grow angry.

"You had better answer me, Dawtie. It will be easier for you. What do
you know about the cup?"

"I know it was not master's, and is not yours--really and truly."

"What can have put such a lie in your head?"

"If it be a lie, sir, it is told in plain print."

"Where?"

But Dawtie judged it time to stop. She bethought herself that she would
not have said so much had she not been angry.

"Sir," she answered, "you have been asking me questions all this time,
and I have been answering them; it is your turn to answer me one."

"If I see proper."

"Did my old master tell you the history of that cup?"

"I do not choose to answer the question."

"Very well, sir."

Dawtie turned to leave the room.

"Stop! stop!" cried Crawford; "I have not done with you yet, my girl.
You have not told me what you meant when you said the cup did not belong
to the laird."

"I do not choose to answer the question," said Dawtie.

"Then you shall answer it to a magistrate."

"I will, sir," she replied, and stood.

Crawford left the room.

He rode home in a rage. Dawtie went about her work with a bright spot on
each cheek, indignant at the man's rudeness, but praying God to take her
heart in His hand, and cool the fever of it.

The words rose in her mind:

"It must needs be that offenses come, but woe onto that man by whom they
come."

She was at once filled with pity for the man who could side with the
wrong, and want everything his own way, for, sooner or later, confusion
must be his portion; the Lord had said: "There is nothing covered that
shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known."

"He needs to be shamed," she said, "but he is thy child; care for him,
too."

George felt that he had not borne a dignified part, and knew that his
last chance with Alexa was gone. Then he too felt the situation
unendurable, and set about removing his property. He wrote to Alexa that
he could no longer doubt it her wish to be rid of the collection, and
able to use the room. It was desirable also, he said, that a thorough
search should be made in those rooms before he placed the matter of the
missing cup in the hands of the magistrates.

Dawtie's last words had sufficed to remove any lingering doubt as to
what had become of the chalice. It did not occur to him that one so
anxious to do the justice of restoration would hardly be capable of
telling lies, of defiling her soul that a bit of property might be
recovered; he took it for granted that she meant to be liberally
rewarded by the earl.

George would have ill understood the distinction Dawtie made--that the
body of the cup _might_ belong to him, but the soul of the cup _did_
belong to another; or her assertion that where the soul was there the
body ought to be; or her argument that He who had the soul had the right
to ransom the body--a reasoning possible to a child-like nature only;
she had pondered to find the true law of the case, and this was her
conclusion.

George suspected, and grew convinced that Alexa was a party to the
abstraction of the cup. She had, he said, begun to share in the
extravagant notions of a group of pietists whose leader was that
detestable fellow, Ingram. Alexa was attached to Dawtie, and Dawtie was
one of them. He believed Alexa would do anything to spite him. To bring
trouble on Dawtie would be to punish her mistress, and the pious farmer,
too.



CHAPTER XXXI.


THE PROSECUTION.

As soon as Crawford had his things away from Potlurg, satisfied the cup
was nowhere among them, he made a statement of the case to a magistrate
he knew; and so represented it, as the outcome of the hypocrisy of
pietism, that the magistrate, hating everything called fanatical, at
once granted him a warrant to apprehend Dawtie on the charge of theft.

It was a terrible shock. Alexa cried out with indignation. Dawtie turned
white and then red, but uttered never a word.

"Dawtie," said her mistress, "tell me what you know about the cup. You
do know something that you have not told me!"

"I do, ma'am, but I will not tell it except I am forced."

"That you are going to be, my poor girl! I am very sorry, for I am
perfectly sure you have done nothing you know to be wrong!"

"I have done nothing you or anybody would think wrong, ma'am."

She put on her Sunday frock, and went down to go with the policeman. To
her joy she found her mistress at the door, ready to accompany her. They
had two miles or more to walk, but that was nothing to either.

Questioned by the magistrate, not unkindly, for her mistress was there,
Dawtie told everything--how first she came upon the likeness and history
of the cup, and then saw the cup itself in her master's hands.

Crawford told how the laird had warned him against Dawtie, giving him to
understand that she had been seized with a passion for the goblet such
that she would peril her soul to possess it, and that he dared not let
her know where it was.

"Sir," said Dawtie, "he could na hae distrusted me like that, for he gae
me his keys, and sent me to fetch the cup when he was ower ill to gang
till't."

"If that be true, your worship," said Crawford, "it does not affect the
fact that the cup was in the hands of the old man when I left him and
she went to him, and from that moment it has not been seen."

"Did he have it when you went to him?" asked the magistrate.

"I didna see't, sir. He was in a kind o' faint when I got up."

Crawford said that, hearing a cry, he ran up again, and found the old
man at the point of death, with just strength to cry out before he died,
that Dawtie had taken the cup from him. Dawtie was leaning over him, but
he had not imagined the accusation more than the delirious fancy of a
dying man, till it appeared that the cup was not to be found.

The magistrate made out Dawtie's commitment for trial. He remarked that
she might have been misled by a false notion of duty: he had been
informed that she belonged to a sect claiming the right to think for
themselves on the profoundest mysteries--and here was the result! There
was not a man in Scotland less capable of knowing what any woman was
thinking, or more incapable of doubting his own insight.

Doubtless, he went on, she had superstitiously regarded the cup as
exercising a Satanic influence on the mind of her master; but even if
she confessed it now, he must make an example of one whose fanaticism
would set wrong right after the notions of an illiterate sect, and not
according to the laws of the land. He just send the case to be tried by
a jury! If she convinced the twelve men composing that jury, of the
innocence she protested, she would then be a free woman.

Dawtie stood very white all the time he was speaking, and her lips every
now and then quivered as if she were going to cry, but she did not.
Alexa offered bail, but his worship would not accept it: his righteous
soul was too indignant. She went to Dawtie and kissed her, and together
they followed the policeman to the door, where Dawtie was to get into a
spring-cart with him, and be driven to the county town, there to lie
waiting the assizes.

The bad news had spread so fast that as they came out, up came Andrew.
At sight of him Dawtie gently laughed, like a pleased child. The
policeman, who, like many present, had been prejudiced by her looks in
her favor, dropped behind, and she walked between her mistress and
Andrew to the cart.

"Dawtie!" said Andrew.

"Oh, Andrew! has God forgotten me?" she returned, stopping short.

"For God to forget," answered Andrew, "would be not to be God any
longer!"

"But here I am on my road til a prison, Andrew! I didna think He would
hae latten them do't!"

"A bairn micht jist as weel say, whan its nurse lays't intil its cradle,
and says: 'Noo, lie still!' 'Mammy, I didna think ye would hae latten
her do't!' He's a' aboot ye and in ye, Dawtie, and this is come to ye
jist to lat ye ken 'at He is. He raised ye up jist to spen' His glory
upo'! I say, Dawtie, did Jesus Christ deserve what He got?"

"No ae bit, Andrew! What for should ye speir sic a thing?"

"Then do ye think God hae forgotten Him?"

"May be He thoucht it jist for a minute!"

"Well, ye hae thoucht jist for a minute, and ye maun think it nae mair."

"But God couldna forget _Him_, An'rew: He got it a' for doin' His will!"

"Evil may come upon as from other causes than doing the will of God; but
from whatever cause it comes, the thing we have to see to is, that
through it all we do the will of God!"

"What's His will noo, An'rew?"

"That ye tak it quaietly. Shall not the Father do wi' His ain child what
He will! Can He no shift it frae the tae airm to the tither, but the
bairn maun girn? He has ye, Dawtie! It's a' richt!"

"Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him!" said Dawtie.

She raised her head. The color had come back to her face; her lips had
ceased to tremble; she stepped on steadily to where, a few yards from
the door, the spring-cart was waiting her. She bade her mistress
good-bye, then turned to Andrew and said:

"Good-bye, An'rew! I am not afraid."

"I am going with you, Dawtie," said Andrew.

"No, sir, you can't do that!" said the policeman; "at least you can't go
in the trap!"

"No, no, Andrew!" cried Dawtie. "I would rather go alone. I am quite
happy now. God will do with me as He pleases!"

"I am going with you," said Alexa, "if the policeman will let me."

"Oh, yes, ma'am! A lady's different!--I've got to account for the
prisoner you see, sir!"

"I don't think you should, ma'am," said Dawtie. "It's a long way!"

"I am going," returned her mistress, decisively.

"God bless you, ma'am!" said Andrew.

Alexa had heard what he said to Dawtie. A new light had broken upon her.
"God is like that, is He?" she said to herself. "You can go close up to
Him whenever you like?"



CHAPTER XXXII.


A TALK AT POTLURG.

It would be three weeks before the assizes came. The house of Potlurg
was searched by the police from garret to cellar, but in vain; the cup
was not found.

As soon as they gave up searching, Alexa had the old door of the laird's
closet, discernible enough on the inside, reopened, and the room
cleaned. Almost unfurnished as it was, she made of it her
sitting-parlor. But often her work or her book would lie on her lap, and
she would find herself praying for the dear father for whom she could do
nothing else now, but for whom she might have done so much, had she been
like Dawtie. Her servant had cared for her father more than she!

As she sat there one morning alone, brooding a little, thinking a
little, reading a little, and praying through it all, Meg appeared, and
said Maister Andrew wanted to see her.

He had called more than once to inquire after Dawtie, but had not before
asked to see her mistress.

Alexa felt herself unaccountably agitated. When he walked into the room,
however, she was able to receive him quietly. He came, he said, to ask
when she had seen Dawtie. He would have gone himself to see her, but his
father was ailing, and he had double work to do. Besides, she did not
seem willing to see him! Alexa told him she had been with her the day
before, and had found her a little pale, and, she feared, rather
troubled in her mind. She said she would trust God to the last, but
confessed herself assailed by doubts.

"I said to her," continued Alexa, "'Be sure, Dawtie, God will make your
innocence known one day!' She answered: 'Of course, ma'am, there is
nothing hidden that shall not be known; but I am not impatient about
that. The Jews to this day think Jesus an impostor!' 'But surely,' said
I, 'you care that people should understand you are no thief, Dawtie!'
'Yes, I do,' she answered; 'all I say is, that is does not trouble me. I
want only to be downright sure that God is looking after me all the
time. I am willing to sit in prison till I die, if He pleases.' 'God
can't please that!' I said. 'If He does not care to take me out, I do
not care to go out,' said Dawtie. 'It's not that I'm good; it's only
that I don't care for anything He doesn't care for. What would it be
that all men acquitted me, if God did not trouble Himself about His
children!'"

"You see, ma'am, it comes to this," said Andrew: "it is God Dawtie cares
about, not herself! If God is all right, Dawtie is all right. The _if_
sometimes takes one shape, sometimes another, but the fear is the
same--and the very fear is faith. Sometimes the fear is that there may
be no God, and that you might call a fear for herself; but when Dawtie
fears lest God should not be caring for her, that is a fear for God; for
if God did not care for His creature, He would be no true God!"

"Then He could not exist!"

"True; and so you are back on the other fear!"

"What would you have said to her, Mr. Ingram?"

"I would have reminded her that Jesus was perfectly content with His
Father; that He knew what was coming on Himself, and never doubted
Him--just gloried that His Father was what He knew Him to be."

"I see! But what did you mean when you said that Dawtie's very fear was
faith?"

"Think, ma'am: people that only care to be saved, that is, not to be
punished for their sins, are anxious only about themselves, not about
God and His glory at all. They talk about the glory of God, but they
make it consist in pure selfishness! According to them, He seeks
everything for Himself; which is dead against the truth of God, a
diabolic slander of God. It does not trouble them to believe such things
about God; they do not even desire that God should not be like that;
they only want to escape Him. They dare not say God will not do this or
that, however clear it be that it would not be fair; they are in terror
of contradicting the Bible. They make more of the Bible than of God, and
so fail to find the truth of the Bible, and accept things concerning God
which are not in the Bible, and are the greatest of insults to Him!
Dawtie never thinks about saving her soul; she has no fear about her
soul; she is only anxious about God and His glory. How the doubts come,
God knows; but if she did not love God, they would not be there. Jesus
says God will speedily avenge His elect--those that cry day and night to
Him--which I take to mean that He will soon save them from all such
miseries. Free Dawtie from unsureness about God, and she has no fear
left. All is well, in the prison or on the throne of God, if He only be
what she thinks He is. If any one say that doubt can not coexist with
faith, I answer, it can with love, and love is the greater of the two,
yea, is the very heart of faith itself. God's children are not yet God's
men and women. The God that many people believe in, claiming to be _the_
religious because they believe in Him, is a God not worth believing in,
a God that ought not to be believed in. The life given by such a God
would be a life not worth living, even if He made His votaries as happy
as they would choose to be. A God like that could not make a woman like
Dawtie anxious about Him! If God be not each as Jesus, what good would
the proving of her innocence be to Dawtie! A mighty thing indeed that
the world should confess she was not a thief! But to know that there is
a perfect God, one for us to love with all the power of love of which we
feel we are capable, is worth going out of existence for; while to know
that God himself, must make every throb of consciousness a divine
ecstasy!"

Andrew's heart was full, and out of its fullness he spoke. Never before
had he been able in the presence of Alexa to speak as he felt. Never
before had he had any impulse to speak as now. As soon would he have
gone to sow seed on a bare rock, as words of spirit and life in her
ears!

"I am beginning to understand you," she said. "Will you forgive me? I
have been very self-confident and conceited! What a mercy things are not
as I thought they were--thought they ought to be!"

"And the glory of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the
sea!" said Andrew. "And men's hearts shall be full of bliss, because
they have found their Father, and He is what He is, and they are going
home to Him."

He rose.

"You will come and see me again soon--will you not?" she said.

"As often as you please, ma'am; I am your servant."

"Then come to-morrow."

He went on the morrow, and the next day, and the day after--almost every
day while Dawtie was waiting her trial.

Almost every morning Alexa went by train to see Dawtie; and the news she
brought, Andrew would carry to the girl's parents. Dawtie continued
unwilling to see Andrew: he had had trouble enough with her already, she
said; but Andrew could not quite understand her refusal.



CHAPTER XXXIII.


A GREAT OFFERING.

Two days before the assizes, Andrew was with Alexa in her parlor. It was
a cool autumn evening, and she proposed they should go on the heath,
which came close up to the back of the house.

When they reached the top of the hill, a cold wind was blowing, and
Andrew, full of care for old and young, man and woman, made Alexa draw
her shawl closer about her throat, where, with his rough, plow-man
hands, he pinned it for her. She saw, felt, and noted his hands; a
pitying admiration, of which only the pity was foolish, woke in her; and
ere she knew, she was looking up in his face with such a light in her
eyes that Andrew found himself embarrassed, and let his fall. Moved by
that sense of class-superiority which has no place in the kingdom of
heaven, she attributed his modesty to self-depreciation, and the
conviction rose in her, which has often risen in such as she, that there
is a magnanimity demanding the sacrifice, not merely of conventional
dignity, but of conventional propriety. She felt that a great lady, to
be more than great, must stoop; that it was her part to make the
approach which, between equals, was the part of the man; the patroness
_must_ do what the woman might not. This man was worthy of any woman;
and he should not, because of the humility that dared not presume, fail
of what he deserved!

"Andrew," she said, "I am going to do an unusual thing, but you are not
like other men, and will not misunderstand! I know you now--know you as
far above other men as the clouds are above this heath!"

"Oh, no, no, ma'am!" protested Andrew.


"Hear me out, Andrew," she interrupted--then paused a little.

"Tell me," she resumed, "ought we not to love best the best we know?"

"Surely, ma'am!" he answered, uncomfortable, but not anticipating what
was on the way.

"Andrew, you are the best I know! I have said it! I do not care what the
world thinks; you are more to me than all the worlds! If you will take
me, I am yours."

She looked him in the face with the feeling that she had done a brave
and a right thing.

Andrew stood stock-still.

"_Me_, ma'am!" he gasped, and grew pale--then red as a foggy sun. But he
made scarcely a moment's pause.

"It's a God-like thing you have done, ma'am!" he said. "But I can not
make the return it deserves. From the heart of my heart I thank you. I
can say no more."

His voice trembled. She heard a stifled sob. He had turned away to
conceal his emotion.

And now came greatness indeed to the front. Instead of drawing herself
up with the bitter pride of a woman whose best is scorned, Alexa behaved
divinely. She went close to Andrew, laid her hand on his arm, and said:

"Forgive me, Andrew. I made a mistake. I had no right to make it. Do not
be grieved, I beg; you are nowise to blame. Let us continue friends!"

"Thank you, ma'am!" said Andrew, in a tone of deepest gratitude; and
neither said a word more. They walked side by side back to the house.

Said Alexa to herself:

"I have at least been refused by a man worthy of the honor I did him! I
made no mistake in _him_!"

When they reached the door, she stopped. Andrew took off his hat, and
said, holding it in his hand as he spoke:

"Good-night, ma'am! You _will_ send for me if you want me?"

"I will. Good-night!" said Alexa, and went in with a strange weight on
her heart.

Shut in her room, she wept sorely, but not bitterly; and the next day
old Meg, at least, saw no change in her.

Said Andrew to himself:

"I will be her servant always."

He was humbled, not uplifted.



CHAPTER XXXIV.


ANOTHER OFFERING.

The next evening, that before the trial, Andrew presented himself at the
prison, and was admitted. Dawtie came to meet him, held out her hand,
and said:

"Thank you, Andrew!"

"How are you, Dawtie?"

"Well enough, Andrew!"

"God is with us, Dawtie."

"Are you sure, Andrew?"

"Dawtie, I can not see God's eyes looking at me, but I am ready to do
what He wants me to do, and so I feel He is with me."

"Oh, Andrew, I wish I could be sure!"

"Let us take the risk together, Dawtie!"

"What risk, Andrew?"

"The risk that makes you not sure, Dawtie--the risk that is at once the
worst and the least--the risk that our hope should be in vain, and there
is no God. But, Dawtie, there is that in my heart that cries Christ
_did_ die, and _did_ rise again, and God is doing His best. His perfect
love is our perfect safety. It is hard upon Him that His own children
will not trust Him!"

"If He would but show Himself!"

"The sight of Him now would make us believe in Him without knowing Him;
and what kind of faith would that be for Him or for us! We should be bad
children, taking Him for a weak parent! We must _know_ Him! When we do,
there will be no fear, no doubt. We shall run straight home! Dawtie,
shall we go together?"

"Yes, surely, Andrew! God knows I try. I'm ready to do whatever you tell
me, Andrew!"

"No, Dawtie! You must never do what I tell you, except you think it
right."

"Yes, I know that. But I am sure I should think it right!"

"We've been of one mind for a long time now, Dawtie!"

"Sin' lang afore I had ony min' o' my ain!" responded Dawtie, turning to
her vernacular.

"Then let us be of one heart too, Dawtie!"

She was so accustomed to hear Andrew speak in figures, that sometimes
she looked through and beyond his words.

She did so now, and seeing nothing, stood perplexed.

"Winna ye, Dawtie?" said Andrew, holding out his hands.

"I dinna freely un'erstan' ye, An'rew."

"Ye h'avenly idiot," cried Andrew. "Wull ye be my wife, or wull ye no?"

Dawtie threw her shapely arms above her head--straight up, her head fell
back, and she seemed to gaze into the unseen. Then she gave a gasp, her
arms dropped to her sides, and she would have fallen had not Andrew
taken her.

"Andrew! Andrew!" she sighed, and was still in his arms.

"Winna ye, Dawtie?" he whispered.

"Wait," she murmured; "wait."

"I winna wait, Dawtie."

"Wait till ye hear what they'll say the morn."

"Dawtie, I'm ashamed o' ye. What care I, an' what daur ye care what they
say. Are ye no the Lord's clean yowie? Gien ye care for what ony man
thinks o' ye but the Lord himsel', ye're no a' His. Gien ye care for
what I think o' ye, ither-like nor what He thinks, ye're no sae His as I
maun hae ye afore we pairt company--which, please God, 'ill be on the
ither side o' eternity."

"But, An'rew, it winna do to say o' yer father's son 'at he took his
wife frae the jail."

"'Deed they s' say naething ither! What ither cam I for? Would ye hae me
ashamed o' ane o' God's elec'--a lady o' the Lord's ain coort?"

"Eh, but I'm feart it's a' the compassion o' yer hert, sir. Ye wad fain
mak' up to me for the disgrace. Ye could weel do wantin' me."

"I winna say," returned Andrew, "that I couldna live wantin' ye, for
that wad be to say I wasna worth offerin' ye, and it would be to deny
Him 'at made you and me for ane anither, but I wad have a some sair
time! I'll jist speak to the minister to be ready the minute the Lord
opens yer prison-door."

The same moment in came the governor with his wife; they were much
interested in Dawtie.

"Sir, and ma'am," said Andrew, "will you please witness that this woman
is my wife?"

"It's Maister Andrew Ingram o' the Knowe," said Dawtie. "He wants me to
merry him."

"I want her to go before the court as my wife," said Andrew. "She would
have me wait till the jury said this or that. The jury give me my wife.
As if I didn't know her."

"You won't have him, I see," said Mrs. Innes, turning to Dawtie.

"Hae him!" cried Dawtie, "I wad hae him gien there war but the heid o'
him."

"Then you are husband and wife," said the governor; "only you should
have the thing done properly by the minister--afterward."

"I'll see to that, sir," answered Andrew.

"Come, wife," said the governor, "we must let them have a few minutes
alone together."

"There," said Andrew, when the door closed, "ye're my wife, noo, Dawtie.
Lat them acquit ye or condemn ye, it's you an' me, noo, whatever come!"

Dawtie broke into a flood of tears--an experience all but new to
her--and found it did her good. She smiled as she wiped her eyes, and
said:

"Weel, An'rew, gien the Lord hasna appeart in His ain likeness to
deliver me, He's done the next best thing."

"Dawtie," answered Andrew, "the Lord never does the next best. The thing
He does is always better than the thing He does not."

"Lat me think, an' I'll try to un'erstan'," said Dawtie, but Andrew went
on.

"The best thing, whan a body's no ready for 't, would be the warst to
gie him--or ony gait no the thing for the Father o' lichts to gie.
Shortbreid micht be waur for a half hungert bairn nor a stane. But the
minute it's fit we should look upo' the face o' the Son o' Man, oor ain
God-born brither, we'll see him, Dawtie; we'll see him. Hert canna think
what it'll be like. And noo, Dawtie, wull ye tell me what for ye wouldna
lat me come and see ye afore?"

"I wull, An'rew; I was nae suner left to mysel' i' the prison than I
faun' mysel' thinkin' aboot _you_--you first, and no the Lord. I said to
mysel', 'This is awfu'. I'm leanin' upo' An'rew, and no upo' the First
and the Last.' I saw that that was to brak awa' frae Him that was
nearest me, and trust ane that was farther awa'--which wasna i' the holy
rizzon o' things. Sae I said to mysel' I would meet my fate wi' the Lord
alane, and wouldna hae you come 'atween Him and me. Noo ye hae 't,
An'rew."

Andrew took her in his arms and said:

"Thank ye, Dawtie. Eh, but I _am_ content And she thought she hadna
faith. Good-night, Dawtie. Ye maun gane to yer bed, an' grow stoot in
hert for the morn."



CHAPTER XXXV.


AFTER THE VERDICT.

Through the governor of the jail Andrew obtained permission to stand
near the prisoner at the trial. The counsel for the prosecution did all
he could, and the counsel for the defense not much--at least Dawtie's
friends thought so--and the judge summed up with the greatest
impartiality. Dawtie's simplicity and calmness, her confidence devoid of
self-assertion, had its influence on the jury, and they gave the
uncomfortable verdict of "_Not Proven_," so that Dawtie was discharged.

Alexa had a carriage ready to take her home. As Dawtie went to it she
whispered to her husband:

"Ye hae to tak me wantin' a character, Andrew."

"Jesus went home without a character, and was well received," said
Andrew, with a smile. "You'll be over to-night to see the old folk?"

"Yes, Andrew; I'm sure the mistress will let me."

"Don't say a word to her of our marriage, except she has heard, and
mentions it. I want to tell her myself. You will find me at the croft
when you come, and I will go back with you."

In the evening Dawtie came, and brought the message that her mistress
would like to see him.

When he entered the room Alexa rose to meet him. He stopped short.

"I thank you, ma'am," he said, "for your great kindness to Dawtie. We
were married in the prison. She is my wife now."

"Married! Your wife?" echoed Alexa, flushing, and drawing back a step.

"I had loved her long, ma'am; and when trouble came her the time came
for me to stand by her side."

"You had not spoken to her then--till--"

"Not till last night. I said before the governor of the prison and Mrs.
Innes that we were husband and wife. If you please, ma'am, we shall have
the proper ceremony as soon as possible."

"I wish I had known," said Alexa--almost to herself, with a troubled
smile.

"I wish you had, ma'am," responded Andrew. She raised her face with a
look of confidence.

"Will you please to forget, Andrew?"

Nobility had carried the day. She had not one mean thought either of him
or the girl.

"To forget is not in man's power, ma'am; but I shall never think a
thought you would wish unthought."

She held out her hand to him. They were friends forever.

"Will you be married here, Andrew? The house is at your service," she
said.

"Don't you think it ought to be at her father's, ma'am?"

"You are right," said Alexa; and she sat down.

Andrew stood in silence, for he saw she was meditating something. At
length she raised her head, and spoke.

"You have been compelled to take the step sooner than you intended--have
you not?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Then you can hardly be so well prepared as you would like to be!"

"We shall manage."

"It will hardly be convenient for your mother, I fear! You have nowhere
else to take her--have you?"

"No, ma'am; but my mother loves us both. And," he added, simply, "where
there's room for me, there's room for her now!"

"Would you mind if I asked you how your parents take it?"

"They don't say much. You see, ma'am, we are all proud until we learn
that we have one Master, and we all are brethren. But they will soon get
over it."

When I see a man lifting up those that are beneath him, not pulling down
those that are above him, I will believe in his communism. Those who
most resent being looked down upon, are in general the readiest to look
down upon others. It is not principle, it is not truth, it is themselves
they regard. Of all false divinities, Self is the most illogical.

"If God had been the mighty monarch they represent Him," continued
Andrew, "He would never have let us come near Him!"

"Did you hear Mr. Rackstraw's sermon on the condescension of God?" asked
Alexa.

"The condescension of God, ma'am! There is no such thing. God never
condescended, with one Jove-like nod, all his mighty, eternal life! God
condescend to His children--their spirits born of His spirit, their
hearts the children of His heart! No, ma'am! there never was a falser,
uglier word in any lying sermon!"

His eyes flashed and his face shone. Alexa thought she had never seen
him look so grand.

"I see!" she answered. "I will never use the word about God again!"

"Thank you, ma'am."

"Why should you thank me?"

"I beg your pardon; I had no right to thank you. But I am so tried with
the wicked things said about God by people who think they are speaking
to His pleasure and not in his despite, that I am apt to talk foolishly.
I don't wonder at God's patience with the wicked, but I do wonder at His
patience with the pious!"

"They don't know better!"

"How are they to know better while they are so sure about everything! I
would infinitely rather believe in no God at all, than in such a God as
they would have me believe in!"

"Oh, but Andrew, I had not a glimmer of what you meant--of what you
really objected to, or what you loved! Now, I can not even recall what
it was I did not like in your teaching. I think it was that, instead of
listening to know what you meant, I was always thinking how to oppose
you, or trying to find out by what name you were to be called. One time
I thought you were an Arminian, another time a Socinian, then a
Swedenborgian, then an Arian! I read a history of the sects of the
middle ages, just to see where I could set you down. I told people you
did not believe this, and did not believe that, when I knew neither what
you believed, nor what you did not believe. I thought I did, but it was
all mistake and imagination. When you would not discuss things with me,
I thought you were afraid of losing the argument. Now I see that,
instead of disputing about opinions, I should have been saying: 'God be
merciful to me a sinner!'"

"God be praised!" said Andrew. "Ma'am, you are a free woman! The Father
has called you, and you have said: 'Here I am.'"

"I hope so, Andrew, thanks to God by you! But I am forgetting what I
wanted to say! Would it not be better--after you are married, I mean--to
let Dawtie stay with me awhile?--I will promise you not to work her too
hard," she added, with a little laugh.

"I see, ma'am! It is just like you! You want people to know that you
believe in her!"

"Yes; but I want also to do what I can to keep such good tenants.
Therefore I must add a room or two to your house, that there may be good
accommodation for you all."

"You make thanks impossible, ma'am! I will speak to Dawtie about it. I
know she will be glad not to leave you! I will take care not to trouble
the house."

"You shall do just as Dawtie and you please. Where Dawtie is, there will
be room for you!"

Already Alexa's pain had grown quite bearable.

Dawtie needed no persuading. She was so rich in the possession of Andrew
that she could go a hundred years without seeing him, she said. It was
only that he would come and see her, instead of her going to see him!

In ten days they were married at her father's cottage. Her father and
mother then accompanied her and Andrew to the Knowe, to dine with
Andrew's father and mother. In the evening the new pair went out for a
walk in the old fields.

"It _seems_, Dawtie, as if God was here!" said Andrew.

"I would fain see him, Andrew! I would rather _you_ went out than God!"

"Suppose he was nowhere, Dawtie?"

"If God werena in _you_, ye wadna be what ye are to yer ignorant Dawtie,
Andrew! She needs her Father in h'aven sairer nor her Andrew! But I'm
sayin' things sae true 'at it's jist silly to say them! Eh, it's like
h'aven itsel' to be oot o' that prison, an' walkin' aboot wi' you! God
has gien me a' thing!--jist _a' thing_, Andrew!"

"God was wi' ye i' the prison, Dawtie!"

"Ay! But I like better to be wi' Him here!"

"An' ye may be sure He likes better to ha'e ye here!" rejoined Andrew.



CHAPTER XXXVI.


AGAIN THE GOBLET.

The next day Alexa set Dawtie to search the house yet again for the
missing goblet.

"It must be somewhere!" she said. "We are beset with an absolute
contradiction: the thing can't be in the house! and it must be in the
house!"

"If we do find it," returned Dawtie, "folk'll say them 'at could hide
could weel seek! I s' luik naegait wantin' you, mem!"

The study was bare of books, and the empty shelves gave no hint of
concealment They stood in its dreariness looking vaguely round them.

"Did it ever come to ye, mem," said Dawtie, "that a minute or twa passed
between Mr. Crawford comin' doon the stair wi' you, and me gaein' up to
the maister? When I gaed intil the room, he lay pantin' i' the bed; but
as I broodit upo' ilka thing alane i' the prison, he cam afore me, there
i' the bed, as gien he had gotten oot o' 't, and hidden awa' the cup,
and was jist gotten intil't again, the same moment I cam in."

"Dying people will do strange things!" rejoined her mistress. "But it
brings us no nearer the cup!"

"The surer we are, the better we'll seek!" said Dawtie.

They began, and went over the room thoroughly--looking everywhere they
could think of. They had all but given it up to go on elsewhere, when
Dawtie, standing again in the middle and looking about in a sort of
unconscious hopelessness, found her eyes on the mantel-shelf, and went
and laid her hand upon it. It was of wood, and she fancied it a little
loose, but she could not move it.

"When Andrew comes we'll get him to examine it!" said Alexa.

He came in the evening, and Alexa told him what they had been doing. She
begged him to get tools, and see whether there was not a space under the
mantel-shelf. But Andrew, accustomed to ponder contrivances with Sandy,
would have a good look at it first He came presently upon a clever
little spring, pressing which he could lift the shelf: there under it,
sure enough, in rich response to the candle he held, flashed the gems of
the curiously wrought chalice of gold! Alexa gave a cry, Andrew drew a
deep breath, Dawtie laughed like a child. How they gazed on it, passed
it from one to the other, pored over the gems, and over the raised work
that inclosed them, I need not tell. They began to talk about what was
to be done with it.

"We will send it to the earl!" said Alexa.

"No," said Andrew; "that would be to make ourselves judges in the case!
Your father must have paid money for it; he gave it to Mr. Crawford, and
Mr. Crawford must not be robbed!"

"Stop, Andrew!" said Alexa. "Everything in the next room was left to my
cousin, with the library in this; whatever else was left him was
individually described. The cup was not in the next room, and was not
mentioned. Providence has left us to do with it as we may judge right. I
think it ought to be taken to Borland Hall--and by Dawtie."

"Well! She will mention that your father bought it?"

"I will not take a shilling for it!"

"Is not that because you are not quite sure you have the right to
dispose of it?"

"I would not take the price of it if my father had left the cup
expressly to me!"

"Had he done so, you would have a right to what he paid for it. To give
the earl the choice of securing it, would be a service rendered him. If
he were too poor to buy it, the thing would have to be considered."

"Nothing could make me touch money for it. George would never doubt we
had concealed it in order to trick him out of it!"

"He will think so all the same. It will satisfy him, and not a few
beside, that Dawtie ought to have been convicted. The thing is certainly
Mr. Crawford's--that is, his as not yours. Your father undoubtedly meant
him to have the cup; and God would not have you, even to serve the
right, take advantage of an accident. Whatever ought to be done with the
cup, Mr. Crawford ought to do it; it is his business to do right in
regard to it; and whatever advantage may be gained by doing right, Mr.
Crawford ought to have the chance of gaining it. Would you deprive him
of the opportunity, to which at least he has a right, of doing justice,
and delivering his soul?"

"You would have us tell the earl that his cup is found, but Mr. Crawford
claims it?" said Alexa.

"Andrew would have us take it to Mr. Crawford," said Dawtie, "and tell
him that the earl has a claim to it."

"Tell him also," said Andrew, "where it was found, showing he has no
_legal_ right to it; and tell him he has no more moral right to it than
the laird could give him. Tell him, ma'am," continued Andrew, "that you
expect him to take it to the earl, that he may buy it if he will; and
say that if, after a fortnight, you find it is not in the earl's
possession, you will yourself ascertain from him whether the offer has
been made him."

"That is just right," said Alexa.

And so the thing was done. The cup is now in the earl's collection, and
without any further interference on her part.

A few days after she and Dawtie carried the cup to Crawford, a parcel
arrived at Potlurg, containing a beautiful silver case, and inside the
case the jeweled watch--with a letter from George, begging Alexa to
accept his present, and assuring her of his conviction that the moment
he annoyed her with any further petition, she would return it. He
expressed his regret that he had brought such suffering upon Dawtie, and
said he was ready to make whatever amends her husband might think fit.

Alexa accepted the watch, and wore it. She thought her father would like
her to do so.



CHAPTER XXXVII.


THE HOUR BEFORE DAWN.

The friendship of the three was never broken. I will not say that, as
she lay awake in the dark, the eyes of Alexa never renewed the tears of
that autumn night on which she turned her back upon the pride of self,
but her tears were never those of bitterness, of self-scorn, or of
self-pity.

"If I am to be pitied," she would say to herself, "let the Lord pity me!
I am not ashamed, and will not be sorry. I have nothing to resent; no
one has wronged me."

Andrew died in middle age. His wife said the Master wanted him for
something nobody else could do, or He would not have taken him from her.
She wept and took comfort, for she lived in expectation.

One night when she and Alexa were sitting together at Potlurg, about a
month after his burial, speaking of many things with the freedom of a
long and tried love, Alexa said, after a pause of some duration:

"Were you not very angry with me then, Dawtie?"

"When, ma'am?"

"When Andrew told you."

"Told me what, ma'am? I must be stupid to-night, for I can't think what
you mean."

"When he told you I wanted him, not knowing he was yours."

"I ken naething o' what ye're mintin' at, mem," persisted Dawtie, in a
tone of bewilderment.

"Oh! I thought you had no secrets from one another."

"I don't know that we ever had--except things in his books that he said
were God's secrets, which I should understand some day, for God was
telling them as fast as He could get his children to understand them."

"I see," sighed Alexa; "you were made for each other. But this is my
secret, and I have the right to tell it. He kept it for me to tell you.
I thought all the time you knew it."

"I don't want to know anything Andrew would not tell me."

"He thought it was my secret, you see, not his, and that was why he did
not tell you."

"Of coarse, ma'am. Andrew always did what was right."

"Well, then, Dawtie--I offered to be his wife if he would have me."

"And what did he say?" asked Dawtie, with the composure of one listening
to a story learned from a book.

"He told me he couldn't. But I'm not sure what he _said_. The words went
away."

"When was it he asked you?" said Dawtie, sunk in thought.

"The night but one before the trial," answered Alexa.

"He micht hae ta'en you, then, i'stead o' me--a lady an' a'. Oh, mem! do
you think he took me 'cause I was in trouble? He micht hae been laird
himsel'."

"Dawtie! Dawtie!" cried Alexa. "If you think that would have weighed
with Andrew, I ought to have been his wife, for I know him better than
you."

Dawtie smiled at that.

"But I do know, mem," she said, "that Andrew was fit to cast the
lairdship frae him to comfort ony puir lassie. I would ha' lo'ed him a'
the same."

"As I have done, Dawtie," said Alexa, solemnly. "But he wouldn't have
thrown _me_ away for you, if he hadn't loved you, Dawtie. Be sure of
that. He might have made nothing of the lairdship, but he wouldn't have
made nothing of me."

"That's true, mem. I dinna doobt it."

"I love him still--and you mustn't mind me saying it, Dawtie. There are
ways of loving that are good, though there be some pain in them. Thank
God, we have our children to look after. You will let me say _our_
children, won't you, Dawtie?"

Some thought Alexa hard, some thought her cold, but the few that knew
her knew she was neither; and some of my readers will grant that such a
friend as Andrew was better than such a husband as George.



THE END.





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