dful if it is not dreadful?"

"That is a very proper question. It looks dreadful, and must look
dreadful, to everyone who cannot see in it that which alone makes life
not dreadful. If you saw a great dark cloak coming along the road as if
it were round somebody, but nobody inside it, you would be
frightened--would you not?"

"Indeed I should. It would be awful!"

"It would. But if you spied inside the cloak, and making it come
towards you, the most beautiful loving face you ever saw--of a man
carrying in his arms a little child--and saw the child clinging to him,
and looking in his face with a blessed smile, would you be frightened
at the black cloak?"

"No; that would be silly."

"You have your answer! The thing that makes death look so fearful is
that we do not see inside it. Those who see only the black cloak, and
think it is moving along of itself, may well be frightened; but those
who see the face inside the cloak, would be fools indeed to be
frightened! Before Jesus came, people lived in great misery about
death; but after he rose again, those who believed in him always talked
of dying as falling asleep; and I daresay the story of Lazarus, though
it was not such a great thing after the rising of the Lord himself, had
a large share in enabling them to think that way about it."

When they went home, Davie, running up to lady Arctura's room,
recounted to her as well as he could the conversation he had just had
with Mr. Grant.

"Oh, Arkie!" he said, "to hear him talk, you would think Death hadn't a
leg to stand upon!"

Arctura smiled; but it was a smile through a cloud of unshed tears.
Lovely as death might be, she would like to get the good of this world
before going to the next!--As if God would deny us any good!--At one
time she had been willing to go, she thought, but she was not now!--The
world had of late grown very beautiful to her!

CHAPTER LXI.

THE BUREAU.

On the Monday night Donal again went down into the hidden parts of the
castle. Arctura had come to the schoolroom, but seemed ill able for her
work, and he did not tell her what he was doing farther.

They were rather the ghosts of fears than fears themselves that had
assailed him, and this time they hardly came near him as he wrought.
With his new file he made better work than before, and soon finished
cutting through the top of the staple. Trying it then with a poker as a
lever, he broke the bottom part across; so there was nothing