ie might repeat her
words: she did not desire to hasten further intimacy with Donal; things
were going in that direction fast enough! Her eyes, avoiding Davie's,
kept reconnoitring the stack of chimneys.

"Aren't you glad to have such a castle all for your own--to do what you
like with, Arkie? You know you could pull it all to pieces if you
liked!"

"Would it be less mine," said Arctura, "if I was not at liberty to pull
it all to pieces? And would it be more mine when I had pulled it to
pieces, Davie?"

Donal was coming round the side of the stack, and heard what she said.
It pleased him, for it was not a little in his own style.

"What makes a thing your own, do you think, Davie?" she went on.

"To be able to do with it what you like," replied Davie.

"Whether that be good or bad?"

"Yes, I think so," answered Davie, doubtfully.

"Then I think you are quite wrong," she rejoined. "The moment you begin
to use a thing wrong, that moment you make it less yours. I can't quite
explain it, but that is how it looks to me."

She ceased, and after a moment Donal took up the question.

"Lady Arctura is quite right, Davie," he said. "The nature, that is the
good of a thing, is that only by which it can be possessed. Any other
possession is like slave-owning; it is not a righteous having. The
right and the power to use it to its true purpose, and the using it so,
are the conditions that make a thing ours. To have the right and the
power, and not use it so, would be to make the thing less ours than
anybody's.--Suppose you had a very beautiful picture, but from some
defect in your sight you could never see that picture as it really was,
while a servant in your house not only saw it as it was meant to be
seen, but had such delight in gazing on it, that even in his dreams it
came to him, and made him think of things he would not have thought of
but for it:--which of you, you or the servant in your house, would have
the more real possession of that picture? You could sell it away from
yourself, and never know anything about it more; but you could not by
all the power of a tyrant take it from your servant."

"Ah, now I understand!" said Davie, with a look at lady Arctura which
seemed to say, "You see how Mr. Grant can make me understand!"

"I wonder," said lady Arctura, "what that curious opening in the side
of the chimney-stack means! It can't be for smoke to come out at!"

"No," said Donal; "there is not a mark of smoke