st inherit the earth in a far deeper, grander, truer way
than calling the land mine, before I shall count myself to have come
into my own. I want to have all things just as the maker of me wants me
to have them.--I will call on you again to-morrow; I must now go back
to the earl. Poor man, he is sinking fast! but I believe he is more at
peace than he has ever been before!"

Donal took his leave, and Miss Graeme had plenty to think of till her
brother's return: if she felt a little triumphant, it may be pardoned
her.

He was ashamed, and not a little humbled by what she told him. He did
not wait for Donal to come to him, but went to the castle early the
next morning. Nor was he mistaken in trusting Donal to believe that it
was not from eagerness to retrace in his own interest the false step he
had taken, but from desire to show his shame of having behaved so
ungenerously: Donal received him so as to make it plain he did not
misunderstand him, and they had a long talk. Graeme was all the readier
for his blunder to hear what Donal had to say, and Donal's
unquestionable disinterestedness was endlessly potent with Graeme.
Their interview resulted in Donal's thinking still better of him than
before, and being satisfied that, up to his light, the man was
honest--which is saying much--and thence open to conviction, and both
sides of a question. But ere it was naturally over, Donal was summoned
to the earl.

After his niece's death, no one would do for him but Donal; nobody
could please him but Donal. His mind as well as his body was much
weaker. But the intellect, great thing though it be, is yet but the
soil out of which, or rather in which, higher things must grow, and it
is well when that soil is not too strong, so to speak, for the most
gracious and lovely of plants to root themselves in it. When the said
soil is proud and unwilling to serve, it must be thinned and pulverized
with sickness, failure, poverty, fear--that the good seeds of God's
garden may be able to root themselves in it; when they get up a little,
they will use all the riches and all the strength of the stiffest soil.

"Who will have the property now?" he asked one day. "Is the factor
anywhere in the running?"

"Title and property both will be his," answered Donal.

"And my poor Davie?" said the earl, with wistful question in the eyes
that gazed up in Donal's face. "Forgue, the rascal, has all my money in
his power already."

"I will see to Davie,"