awn from the east. About half-past two
there was a stirring and a moaning among the pines, and the roar of the
sudden gust came with the breaking day through the dark arches. In the
whirlwind there came a strange expectancy and tremor into the heart of
the poetess, and she pressed the wet sheet of crumpled paper closer to
her bosom, and turned to face the light. Through the spaces of the Long
Wood of Barbrax there came a shining visitor, the Angel of the Presence,
he who comes but once and stands a moment with a beckoning finger. Him
she followed up through the wood.

They found Janet on the morning of the second day after, with a look
so glad on her face, and so natural an expectation in the unclosed eye,
that Rob Affleck spoke to her and expected an answer. The "Night Hawk"
was clasped to her breast with a hand that they could not loosen. It
went to the grave with her body. The ink had run a little here and
there, where the tears had fallen thickest.

God is more merciful than man.

A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL, By Ian Maclaren

[See also the illustrated html version: #9320]

I A GENERAL PRACTITIONER

Drumtochty was accustomed to break every law of health, except wholesome
food and fresh air, and yet had reduced the psalmist's furthest limit
to an average life-rate. Our men made no difference in their clothes
for summer or winter, Drumsheugh and one or two of the larger farmers
condescending to a top-coat on Sabbath, as a penalty of their position,
and without regard to temperature. They wore their blacks at a funeral,
refusing to cover them with anything, out of respect to the deceased,
and standing longest in the kirkyard when the north wind was blowing
across a hundred miles of snow. If the rain was pouring at the junction,
then Drumtochty stood two minutes longer through sheer native dourness
till each man had a cascade from the tail of his coat, and hazarded the
suggestion, half-way to Kildrummie, that it had been "a bit scrowie,"
and "scrowie" being as far short of a "shoor" as a "shoor" fell below
"weet."

This sustained defiance of the elements provoked occasional judgments
in the shape of a "hoast" (cough), and the head of the house was then
exhorted by his women folk to "change his feet" if he had happened to
walk through a burn on his way home, and was pestered generally with
sanitary precautions. It is right to add that the gudeman treated such
advice with contempt, regarding it as suitable f