he sea crept up and down outside
whispering, or dashed almost at the door shrieking.

One night as they sat toasting their fish and watching the salt
driftwood splutter and crackle with blue flames, Marcella asked
Wullie what he thought of philosophic doubt.

"I've been reading a book to father to-day, Wullie, that says we are all
unreal--that we are not here really, but only a dream."

Wullie sat back a little, turned the fish on his spit without speaking,
and then said:

"Well, maybe we are. Maybe all life's a dream. But all the same it is a
dream dreamed by God."

"I think that's what the book says, but they use such hard words."

"I wouldna fash, lassie. There's not much we do understand, any of us.
That's where I think books fall short--they explain things just as far
as the writer understands. And whiles he doesna understand very far, but
he's got a trick of putting things nicely. Most things you know without
understanding: you do them blindly and someday you see they've been
right. That's what I mean about God making us a pathway. I feel that He
has been walking along my life; I couldna prove it to ye, Marcella. But
one day He'll suddenly turn round when He gets to the end of me and
smile and thank me for carrying Him along a bit."

"I like to know things beforehand," she objected.

"Ye winna. Right at the end ye'll be able to look down yer life and see
the shining marks of His feet all over ye. An' the more ye struggle and
fuss the less He can take hold of ye, and get a grup on ye with His
feet--"

"I'd like to feel sure they were God's, and not any other sort of feet,"
she said slowly, leaving her fish to go cold, though she was very
hungry.

"Ye'll find, at the end, Marcella, that there's no feet but God's can
make shining marks on your life. Other things will walk over ye. They
may leave marks of mud, or scars. But the footsteps of God will burn
them all off in the end. I canna prove it, Marcella. But ye'll see it
some day. D'ye mind yon apple that came flooering up through Lashnagar?"

Marcella nodded. It had borne fruit two years now.

"It knew nothing: it was just still and quiet when something told it to
push on. And then life came along it--like a path. If it had known, it
couldna help the life any--"

She nodded again. She felt she understood now.

At the end of the year things began to go badly again at the farm. The
money was almost exhausted; the oat crop failed and one of the cows w