autumn
storms arrived. And before the hard rains came down, all Macdonald's
ponies were one evening seen approaching in a string, laden with peat--a
present to the lady. In the course of the day there was stacked, at the
end of her cottage, enough to last for some months. When the widow came
out to see it and wish her joy--for a good stack of well dried peat was
the richest of all possessions in that region--the lady smiled as
cheerfully as Annie; not at the peat, however, but at the thought that
she should see little or none of it burn. She intended to dispose of
her winter evenings far otherwise.

As for the widow, she was thankful now that she had never thought her
situation dreary. If, in her former solitude, when her boy was absent,
she had murmured at that solitude, her present feelings would have been
a rebuke to her. She was not happy now; so far from it, that her former
life appeared, in comparison with it, as happy as she could desire.
Perhaps it had been too peaceful, she thought, and she might need some
exercise of patience. It was a great advantage, certainly, for both
herself and Rollo to hear the thing; the lady could tell of ways of
living in other places, and to learn such a variety of knowledge from a
person so much better informed than themselves. But then this knowledge
appeared to be all so unsanctified! It did not make the poor lady
herself strong in heart and peaceful in spirit. It was wonderful, and
very stirring to the mind, to learn how wise people were who lived in
cities and what great ability was required to conduct the affairs of
life where men were gathered together in numbers; but then these wonders
did not seem to impress those who lived in the midst of them. There was
no sign that they were watching and praising God's hand working among
the faculties of men, as more retired people do in much meaner things--
in the warmth which the eider-duck gives to her eggs by wrapping them in
down from her own breast, and the punctuality with which the herring
shoals pass by in May and October, making the sea glitter with life and
light as they go. She feared that when people lived out of sight of
green pastures and still waters--and she looked at the moment upon the
down on which the goats were browsing, and the fresh water pool, where
the dragon fly hovered for a few hot days in summer--when men lived out
of sight of green pastures and still waters, she feared that they became
perplexe