After that came hard frost, and
brought plenty of skating, and to Davie the delight of teaching his
master. Donal had many falls, but was soon, partly in virtue of
those same falls, a very decent skater. Davie claimed all the merit
of his successful training; and when his master did anything
particularly well, would remark with pride, that he had taught him.
But the good thing in it for Davie was, that he noted the immediate
faith with which Donal did or tried to do what he told him: this
reacted in opening his mind to the beauty and dignity of obedience,
and went a long way towards revealing the low moral condition of the
man who seeks freedom through refusal to act at the will of another.
He who does so will come by degrees to have no will of his own, and
act only from impulse--which may be the will of a devil. So Donal
and Davie grew together into one heart of friendship. Donal never
longed for his hours with Davie to pass, and Davie was never so
happy as when with Donal. The one was gently leading the other into
the paths of liberty. Nothing but the teaching of him who made the
human soul can make that soul free, but it is in great measure
through those who have already learned that he teaches; and Davie
was an apt pupil, promising to need less of the discipline of
failure and pain that he was strong to believe, and ready to obey.
But Donal was not all the day with Davie, and latterly had begun to
feel a little anxious about the time the boy spent away from
him--partly with his brother, partly with the people about the
stable, and partly with his father, who evidently found the presence
of his younger son less irksome to him than that of any other
person, and saw more of him than of Forgue: the amount of loneliness
the earl could endure was amazing.
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