say to the dear woman?"

"I said, 'It is neither kirk nor town nor almsgivers that have
provided for your necessity, Nanna; it is your cousin David Borson.'
And when she heard your name she began to cry, '_O David! David!_'
And after I had let her weep awhile I said, 'You will let your cousin
do for you at this hour, Nanna?' And she answered, 'Oh, yes; I
will take any favor from David. It was like him to think of me.
Oh, that he would come back!' So I sent her every week ten shillings
until she died, and then I saw that she was decently laid beside her
mother and her little child; and I paid all expenses from the
money you left. There is a reckoning of them in the papers. Count
it, with the money."

"I will not count after you, minister."

"Well, David, God has counted between us. It is all right to the
last bawbee. Now tell where you have been, and what you have seen
and suffered; for it is written on your face that you have seen many
hard days."

Then David told all about his wanderings and his shipwreck, and the
mercy of God to him through his servant John Priestly. But when he
tried to speak of the new revelation of the gospel that had come
to him, he found his lips closed. The fire that had burned on them
the night before, when he spoke under the midnight sky to the old
fisherman and the fisherwives, was dead and cold, and he could not
kindle it; so he said to himself, "It is not yet the hour." And he
went out of the manse without telling one of all the glorious things
he had resolved to tell. Neither was he troubled by the omission. He
could wait God's time. God, who has made the heart, can always touch
the heart, but he felt that just then his words would irritate
rather than move; besides, it was not necessary for him to speak
unless he got the message. He could not constrain another soul,
but there was One who led by invisible cords.

As they stood a moment at the manse door the minister said, "Your
aunt Sabiston has gone the way of all flesh."

"I heard tell," answered David. "How did she go?"

"Like herself--grim and steadfast to the last. She would not take
to her bed; she met death in her chair. When the doctor told her
Death was in the room, she stood up, and welcomed him to her house,
and said, 'I have long been waiting for your release.' I tried to
talk to her, but she told me to my face that I had nothing to do
with her soul. 'If I am lost, I am lost,' she said; 'and if I am
chosen, who shall