e
heart of all beauty everywhere--a man who gave himself up to his
perfect father and his father's most imperfect children, that he might
bring his brothers and sisters home to their father; for all his
delight is in his father and his father's children. He showed him how
the heart of Jesus was, all through, the heart of a son, a son that
adored his perfect father; and how if he had not had his perfect son to
help him, God could not have made any of us, could never have got us to
be his little sons and daughters, loving him with all our might. Then
Davie's heart would glow, and he would feel ready to do whatever that
son might want him to do; and Donal hoped, and had good ground for
hoping, that, when the hour of trial came, the youth would be able to
hold, not merely by the unseen, but by the seemingly unpresent and
unfelt, in the name of the eternally true.

Donal's youth began to seem far behind him. All bitterness was gone out
of his memories of lady Galbraith. He loved her tenderly, but was
pleased she should be Gibbie's.

How much of this happy change was owing to his interest in lady Arctura
he did not inquire: greatly interested in her--more in very important
ways than he had ever been in lady Galbraith--he was so jealous of his
heart, shrank so much from the danger of folly, knew so well how small
an amount of yielding might unfit him for the manly and fresh
performance of his duties--among which came first a due regard for her
well-being lest he should himself fail or mislead her--that he often
turned his thoughts into another channel, lest in that they should run
too swiftly, deepen it too fast, and go far to imprison themselves in
another agony.

To lady Galbraith he confided his uneasiness about lady Arctura--not
that he could explain--he could only confess himself infected with her
uneasiness, and the rather that he knew better than she the nature of
those with whom she might have to cope. If Mrs. Brookes had not been
there, he dared not have come away, he said, leaving her with such a
dread upon her.

Sir Gibbie listened open-mouthed to the tale of the finding of the lost
chapel, hidden away because it held the dust of the dead, and perhaps
sometimes their wandering ghosts.

They assured him that, if he would bring lady Arctura to them, they
would take care of her: had she not better give up the weary property,
they said, and come and live with them, and be free as the lark? But
Donal said, that, i