man can do wantin' a father? Human bein' canna win at the hert
o' things, canna ken a' the oots an' ins, a' the sides o' love, excep'
he has a father amo' the lave to love; an' I hae had nane, grannie. An'
that God kens.'

She made him no answer. She dared not say that he expected too much from
God. Is it likely that Jesus will say so of any man or woman when he
looks for faith in the earth?

Robert went out to see some of his old friends, and when he returned it
was time for supper and worship. These were the same as of old: a plate
of porridge, and a wooden bowl of milk for the former; a chapter and a
hymn, both read, and a prayer from grannie, and then from Robert for the
latter. And so they went to bed.

But Robert could not sleep. He rose and dressed himself, went up to the
empty garret, looked at the stars through the skylight, knelt and
prayed for his father and for all men to the Father of all, then softly
descended the stairs, and went out into the street.

CHAPTER VI. SHARGAR'S MOTHER.

It was a warm still night in July--moonless but not dark. There is no
night there in the summer--only a long ethereal twilight. He walked
through the sleeping town so full of memories, all quiet in his mind
now--quiet as the air that ever broods over the house where a friend has
dwelt. He left the town behind, and walked--through the odours of grass
and of clover and of the yellow flowers on the old earthwalls that
divided the fields--sweet scents to which the darkness is friendly, and
which, mingling with the smell of the earth itself, reach the founts of
memory sooner than even words or tones--down to the brink of the river
that flowed scarcely murmuring through the night, itself dark and brown
as the night from its far-off birthplace in the peaty hills. He
crossed the footbridge and turned into the bleachfield. Its houses were
desolate, for that trade too had died away. The machinery stood rotting
and rusting. The wheel gave no answering motion to the flow of the water
that glided away beneath it. The thundering beatles were still. The huge
legs of the wauk-mill took no more seven-leagued strides nowhither. The
rubbing-boards with their thickly-fluted surfaces no longer frothed the
soap from every side, tormenting the web of linen into a brightness to
gladden the heart of the housewife whose hands had spun the yarn.
The terrible boiler that used to send up from its depths bubbling and
boiling spouts and peaks and