ce
would say, with infinite tenderness:

"He hath said thy foot shall not be moved. Thy keeper shall never, never
slumber nor sleep. O Lord, I am not asking Thee a very great thing, for
already Thou hast done wondrous things for me. This is a little thing, O
Thou that never sleepest! Give me ten minutes' rest, ten minutes' sleep.
To Thee a thousand years are but as yesterday. To me, O Lord, in this
weariness, a night is as a thousand years."

Helped by Marcella he would clamber into bed again, shutting his eyes,
waiting on the Lord, only to start up as the pumping of his worn-out,
strained heart almost choked him. And then, leaning back on heaped
pillows he would look out through the dark window and say, very humbly:

"Most patient hast Thou been with me, Oh Lord, when Thou wast seeking
me so far. Most patient must I be with Thee--I, who have no claim upon
Thy mercy save Thy own most holy kindliness to me."

And so the night would wear on; sometimes he would talk to God,
sometimes to Marcella, telling her how he had hated her because she was
not a boy and seemed, to his great strength, too much like her frail
English mother to be of any use in the world.

"We're a great folk, we Lashcairns, Marcella," he would say, his sunken
eyes brightening. "A great name, Marcella. I wanted you Janet, for
there has always been a Janet Lashcairn since the wild woman came to
Lashnagar. But Rose would have you Marcella--a foreign name to us," and
he sighed heavily. "I hated you, Marcella, because I wanted a boy to win
back everything we have lost. Lashcairn the Landless whose lands
stretched once from--Marcella, what am I saying? O Lord, Thou knowest
that in nothing do I glory save in the Cross of Jesus Christ. O Lord,
Simon of Cyrene, Thy cross-bearer, has naught to boast save only the
burden Thy grace has laid upon him. Be patient with me, O Lord--very
hardly dies the vanity of the flesh."

Andrew was always glad when it was Marcella's turn to stay with him at
night, for he liked her to read to him; she read the epistles of Paul
especially and F.W.H. Myers' "St. Paul" until she knew them almost by
heart. In St. Paul Andrew saw much of himself: especially could he see
himself on the Damascus road when a blinding light came down.

Three of the five cows were sold to buy the medicines and the patent
foods he did not seem to notice. Duncan, the farm man who never got any
wages, went out at night to work with Jock and Tammas in thei