or she had
lost children, and had known sickness--in adversity, patient and
resigned; in prosperity--for their flocks had flourished, and many of
their harvests had been abundant--in prosperity, not too much elated,
but happy with a calm and grateful joy; finally, possessed of a gentle
and forbearing nature, which rendered innocuous the occasional
sternness or irritability of her husband, and turned insensibly aside
the shafts which might have otherwise struck deadly at their domestic
peace:--such was the partner of the joys and the sharer of the sorrows
of David Riddell for above a quarter-of-a-century. Thus situated, it
could not be but that he had been a happy man. For, though care and
trouble had not unfrequently entered his dwelling, they had never long
remained; nor do they ever continue to haunt a house in which
good-nature and true piety are inmates. Four sweet children had been
taken from them, each at an age which seemed more interesting than the
other, and sorrow had, for a time, darkened their dwelling; but the
tears of those griefs were now dried, and, save an occasional sigh
from the bereaved parents, as some casual circumstance recalled their
lost little ones to their recollections, the only traces of their
former afflictions were to be found in the prodigality of affection
which they lavished on their only remaining child. David Riddell was
verging towards threescore, when William, the subject of the following
narrative, was born. The old man's heart was entirely bound up in this
child of his age. Frequently, not from necessity, but impelled by
love, had he performed the ministrations of a mother to him; often, on
a sunny day, had he carried him, like a lamb, in the corner of his
plaid, up to the hills; and often, laying the unconscious infant on
the purple heath upon the mountain-side, had he knelt down before him,
beneath the solitary sky, and poured out his heart in gratitude to the
God who had bestowed on him this precious gift. When little William
was able to follow his father among the flocks, they became
inseparable; and it was beautiful to behold the old man laying aside
the gravity and sternness of his nature, and renewing, with his little
boy, the sports which the lapse of half-a-century had well-nigh swept
from his memory. They sought out together the nest of the lapwing and
the moorfowl; they chased the humble-bee over the heath in company;
or, loitering down the mountain streams, assisted eac