world, and everything in it. When you have begun to do the
things Jesus tells you, then you will be my brother, and we shall both
be his little brothers, and the sons of his Father God, and so the
heirs of all things."

With that he turned again and went.

The tears were rolling down Arctura's face without her being aware of
it.

"He is a well-meaning man," she said to herself, "but dreadfully
mistaken: the Bible says believe, not do!"

The poor girl, though she read her bible regularly, was so blinded by
the dust and ashes of her teaching, that she knew very little of what
was actually in it. The most significant things slipped from her as if
they were merest words without shadow of meaning or intent: they did
not support the doctrines she had been taught, and therefore said
nothing to her. The story of Christ and the appeals of those who had
handled the Word of Life had another end in view than making people
understand how God arranged matters to save them. God would have us
live: if we live we cannot but know; all the knowledge in the universe
could not make us live. Obedience is the road to all things--the only
way in which to grow able to trust him. Love and faith and obedience
are sides of the same prism.

Regularly after that, lady Arctura came to the lesson--always intending
to object as soon as it was over. But always before the end came,
Donal had said something that went so to the heart of the honest girl
that she could say nothing. As if she too had been a pupil, as indeed
she was, far more than either knew, she would rise when Davie rose, and
go away with him. But it was to go alone into the garden, or to her
room, not seldom finding herself wishing things true which yet she
counted terribly dangerous: listening to them might not she as well as
Davie fail miserably of escape from the wrath to come?

CHAPTER XIX.

THE FACTOR.

The old avenue of beeches, leading immediately nowhither any more, but
closed at one end by a built-up gate, and at the other by a high wall,
between which two points it stretched quite a mile, was a favourite
resort of Donal's, partly for its beauty, partly for its solitude. The
arms of the great trees crossing made of it a long aisle--its roof a
broken vault of leaves, upheld by irregular pointed arches--which
affected one's imagination like an ever shifting dream of architectural
suggestion. Having ceased to be a way, it was now all but entirely
deserted,