and glooms, but it was seldom or never now so clouded as when
first Donal saw her. In the solitude of her chamber, where most the
simple soul should be conscious of life as a blessedness, she was yet
often haunted by ghastly shapes of fear; but there also other forms had
begun to draw nigh to her; sweetest rays of hope would ever and anon
break through the clouds, and mock the darkness from her presence.
Perhaps God might mean as thoroughly well by her as even her
imagination could wish!

Does a dull reader remark that hers was a diseased state of mind?--I
answer, The more she needed to be saved from it with the only real
deliverance from any ill! But her misery, however diseased, was
infinitely more reasonable than the healthy joy of such as trouble
themselves about nothing. Some sicknesses are better than any but the
true health.

"I never thought you were like this, Arkie!" said Davie. "You are just
as if you had come to school to Mr. Grant! You would soon know how much
happier it is to have somebody you must mind!"

"If having me, Davie," said Donal, "doesn't help you to be happy
without me, there will not have been much good done. What I want most
to teach you is, to leave the door always on the latch, for some
one--you know whom I mean--to come in."

"Race me up the stair, Arkie," said Davie, when they came to the foot
of the spiral.

"Very well," assented his cousin.

"Which side will you have--the broad or the narrow?"

"The broad."

"Well then--one, two, three, and away we go!"

Davie mounted like a clever goat, his hand and arm on the newel, and
slipping lightly round it. Arctura's ascent was easier but slower: she
found her garments in her way, therefore yielded the race, and waited
for Donal. Davie, thinking he heard her footsteps behind him all the
time, flew up shrieking with the sweet terror of love's pursuit.

"What a darling the boy has grown!" said Arctura when Donal overtook
her.

"Yes," answered Donal; "one would think such a child might run straight
into the kingdom of heaven; but I suppose he must have his temptations
and trials first: out of the storm alone comes the true peace."

"Will peace come out of all storms?"

"I trust so. Every pain and every fear, every doubt is a cry after God.
What mother refuses to go to her child because he is only crying--not
calling her by name!"

"Oh, if I could but believe so about God! For if it be all right with
God--I mean if God be such a G