y of the parish, and waited about in the kirk or kirk-yard on
fine Sundays, and in the Manse kitchen on wet ones--which were much
the most frequent--during the two hours' interval between sermons.

In the whole congregation there was hardly a person above the laboring
class except in the minister's pew and that belonging to the Castle,
which had been newly lined and cushioned, and in a corner of which,
safely deposited by Malcolm, the little earl now sat--sat always,
even during the prayer, at which some of the congregation looked
reprovingly round, but only saw the little figure wrapped in a plaid,
and the sweet, wan, childish, and yet unchild-like face, with the curly
dark hair, and large dark eyes.

Whatever in the earl was "no a'richt," it certainly could not be his
mind, for a brighter, more intelligent countenance was never seen. It
quite startled the minister with the intentness of its gaze from the
moment he ascended the pulpit; and though he tried not to look that way,
and was very nervous, he could not get over the impression it made. It
was to him almost like a face from the grave--this strange, eerie
child's face, so strongly resembling that of the dead countess, who,
despite the difference in rank, had, during the brief year she lived and
reigned at Cairnforth, been almost like an equal friend and companion to
his own dead wife. Their two faces--Lady Cairnforth's as she looked
the last time he saw her in her coffin, and his wife's as she lay in
hers--mingled together, and affected him powerfully.

The good minister was not remarkable for the brilliance of his sermons,
which he wrote and "committed"--that is, learned by heart, to deliver
in pseudo-extempore fashion, as was the weary custom of most Scotch
ministers of his time. But this Sunday, all that he had committed
slipped clean out of his memory. He preached as he had never been known
to preach before, and never preached again--with originality, power,
eloquence; speaking from his deepest heart, as if the words thence
pouring out had been supernaturally put into it; which, with a
superstition that approached to sublimest faith, he afterward solemnly
believe they had been.

The text was that verse about "all things working together for good to
them that love God;" but, whatever the original discourse had been, it
wandered off into a subject which all who knew the minister recognized
as one perpetually close to his heart--submission to the will of