nd. Whaur the Lord
lays doon what he has done wi', wad aye be a sacred place to me. I
daursay Moses, whan he cam upo' 't again i' the desert, luikit upo' the
ground whaur stood the buss that had burned, as a sacred place though
the fire was lang oot!--Thinkna ye, Mr. Grant?"

"I do," answered Donal. "But I do not believe the Lord Jesus thought
one spot on the face of the earth more holy than another: every dust of
it was his father's, neither more nor less, existing only by the
thought of that father! and I think that is what we must come to.--But
where shall we bury them?--where they lie, or in the garden?"

"Some wud doobtless hae dist laid to dist i' the kirkyard; but I wudna
wullin'ly raise a clash i' the country-side. Them that did it was yer
ain forbeirs, my leddy; an' sic things are weel forgotten. An' syne
what wud the earl say? It micht upset him mair nor a bit! I'll consider
o' 't."

Donal accompanied them to the door of the chamber which again they
shared, and then betook himself to his own high nest. There more than
once in what remained of the night, he woke, fancying he heard the
ghost-music sounding its coronach over the dead below.

CHAPTER LVIII.

A SOUL DISEASED.

"Papa is very ill to-day, Simmons tells me," said Davie, as Donal
entered the schoolroom. "He says he has never seen him so ill. Oh, Mr.
Grant, I hope he is not going to die!"

"I hope not," returned Donal--not very sure, he saw when he thought
about it, what he meant; for if there was so little hope of his
becoming a true man on this side of some awful doom, why should he hope
for his life here?

"I wish you would talk to him as you do to me, Mr. Grant!" resumed
Davie, who thought what had been good for himself must be good for
everybody.

Of late the boy had been more than usual with his father, and he may
have dropped some word that turned his father's thoughts toward Donal
and his ways of thinking: however weak the earl's will, and however
dull his conscience, his mind was far from being inactive. In the
afternoon the butler brought a message that his lordship would be glad
to see Mr. Grant when school was over.

Donal found the earl very weak, but more like a live man, he thought,
than he had yet seen him. He pointed to a seat, and began to talk in a
way that considerably astonished the tutor.

"Mr. Grant," he began, with not a little formality, "I have known you
long enough to believe I know you really. Now I find m