After some years she condescended to marry a farmer
on lord Morven's estate. Their only child, a thoughtful boy, and a
true reader, sought the company of the grave man with the sweet
smile, going often to his house to ask him about this or that. He
reminded him of Davie, and grew very dear to him. The mother
discovering that, as often as he stole away, it was to go to the
master--everybody called him the maister--scolded and forbade. But
the prohibition brought such a time of tears and gloom and loss of
appetite, and her husband so little shared her prejudices against
the master, that she was compelled to recall it, and the boy went
and went as before. When he was taken ill, and on his deathbed,
nobody could make him happy but the master; he almost nursed him
through the last few days of his short earthly life. But the mother
seemed not to like him any the better--rather to regard him as
having deprived her of some of her rights in the love of her boy.
Donal is still a present power of heat and light in the town of
Auchars. He wears the same solemn look, the same hovering smile.
They say to those who can read them, "I know in whom I have
believed." It is the God who is the Father of the Lord that he
believes in. His life is hid with Christ in God, and he has no
anxiety about anything. The wheels of the coming chariot, moving
fast or slow to fetch him, are always moving; and whether it arrive
at night, or at cock-crowing, or in the blaze of noon, is one to
him.
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