ss grows green and sweet;
But my heart is full of fears,
For the sun shines far away;
And they look in my face through tears,
And the light of a dying day.

My heart was glad last night,
As I pressed it with my palm;
Its throb was airy and light
As it sang some spirit-psalm;
But it died away in my breast
As I wandered forth to-day--
As a bird sat dead on its nest,
While others sang on the spray.

O weary heart of mine,
Is there ever a truth for thee?
Will ever a sun outshine
But the sun that shines on me?
Away, away through the air
The clouds and the leaves are blown;
And my heart hath need of prayer,
For it sitteth alone, alone.

And Robert looked with sad reverence at Ericson,--nor ever thought that
there was one who, in the face of the fact, and in recognition of it,
had dared say, 'Not a sparrow shall fall on the ground without your
Father.' The sparrow does fall--but he who sees it is yet the Father.

And we know only the fall, and not the sparrow.

CHAPTER XII. THE GRANITE CHURCH.

The next day was Sunday. Robert sat, after breakfast, by his friend's
bed.

'You haven't been to church for a long time, Robert: wouldn't you like
to go to-day?' said Ericson.

'I dinna want to lea' you, Mr. Ericson; I can bide wi' ye a' day the
day, an' that's better nor goin' to a' the kirks in Aberdeen.'

'I should like you to go to-day, though; and see if, after all, there
may not be a message for us. If the church be the house of God, as they
call it, there should be, now and then at least, some sign of a pillar
of fire about it, some indication of the presence of God whose house
it is. I wish you would go and see. I haven't been to church for a long
time, except to the college-chapel, and I never saw anything more than a
fog there.'

'Michtna the fog be the torn-edge like, o' the cloody pillar?' suggested
Robert.

'Very likely,' assented Ericson; 'for, whatever truth there may be in
Christianity, I'm pretty sure the mass of our clergy have never got
beyond Judaism. They hang on about the skirts of that cloud for ever.'

'Ye see, they think as lang 's they see the fog, they hae a grup o'
something. But they canna get a grup o' the glory that excelleth, for
it's not to luik at, but to lat ye see a' thing.'

Ericson regarded him with some surprise. Robert hastened to be honest.

'It's no that I ken onyth