st anywhere for her, had been driven by the
outward desolation away from the window of the world to that other
window that opens on the regions of silent being where God is, and into
which when his creatures enter, or even look, the fountain of their
life springs aloft with tenfold vigour and beauty. Alec, whose home was
happy, knew nothing of that sense of discomfort which is sometimes the
herald of a greater need. But he was soon to take a new start in his
intellectual relations; nor in those alone, seeing the change was the
result of a dim sense of duty. The fact of his not being a scholar to
the mind of Murdoch Malison, arose from no deficiency of intellectual
_power_, but only of intellectual _capacity_--for the indefinite
enlargement of which a fitting excitement from without is alone
requisite.

The season went on, and the world, like a great flower afloat in space,
kept opening its thousandfold blossom. Hail and sleet were things lost
in the distance of the year--storming away in some far-off region of
the north, unknown to the summer generation. The butterflies, with
wings looking as if all the flower-painters of fairyland had wiped
their brushes upon them in freakful yet artistic sport, came forth in
the freedom of their wills and the faithful ignorance of their minds.
The birds, the poets of the animal creation--what though they never get
beyond the lyrical!--awoke to utter their own joy, and awake like joy
in others of God's children. The birds grew silent, because their
history laid hold upon them, compelling them to turn their words into
deeds, and keep eggs warm, and hunt for worms. The butterflies died of
old age and delight. The green life of the earth rushed up in corn to
be ready for the time of need. The corn grew ripe, and therefore weary,
hung its head, died, and was laid aside for a life beyond its own. The
keen sharp old mornings and nights of autumn came back as they had come
so many thousand times before, and made human limbs strong and human
hearts sad and longing. Winter would soon be near enough to stretch out
a long forefinger once more, and touch with the first frosty shiver
some little child that loved summer, and shrunk from the cold.

One evening in early autumn, when the sun, almost on the edge of the
horizon, was shining right in at the end of one of the principal
streets, filling its whole width with its glory of molten roses, all
the shopkeepers were standing in their doors. Little