Ringan, put your trust in
Him."

Whereupon I took my son's hand, and I placed it in the martyr's hand,
and I said, "Take him, lead him wheresoever ye will. I have sinned
almost to disobedience, but the confidence has been renewed within me."

"Rejoice," said Mr Cargill, in words that were as the gift of health to
my enfeebled spirit, "rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your
reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before
you."

As he pronounced the latter clause I felt my thoughts flash with a wild
remembrance of the desolation of my house; but he began to return thanks
for the comfort that he himself enjoyed in his outcast condition, of
beholding so many proofs of the unshaken constancy of faith still in the
land, and prayed for me in words of such sweet eloquence, that even in
the parting from my son,--my last, whom I loved so well, they cherished
me with a joy passing all understanding.

At the conclusion of his inspired thanksgiving, I kissed my Joseph on
the forehead, and bidding him remember what his father's house had been,
bade him farewell.

His young heart was too full to reply; and Mr Cargill too was so deeply
affected that he said nothing; so, after shaking me by the hand, he led
him away.

And if I did sin when they were departed, in the complaint of my
childless desolation, for no less could I account it, it was a sin that
surely will not be heavily laid against me. "O Absalom, my son, my
son,--would I had died for thee," cried the warlike King David, when
Absalom was slain in rebellion against him, and he had still many
children; but my innocent Absalom was all that I had left.

CHAPTER LXXX

During the season that the malady continued upon me, through the
unsuspected agency of Robin Brown, a paction was entered into with
certain of my neighbours, to take the lands of Quharist on tack among
them, and to pay me a secret stipend, by which means were obtained to
maintain me in a decency when I was able to be removed into Glasgow. And
when my strength was so far restored that I could bear the journey, the
same good man entered into a stipulation with Mrs Aird, the relict of a
Gospel minister, to receive me as a lodger, and he carried me in on his
cart to her house at the foot of the Stockwell.

With that excellent person I continued several months unmolested, but
without hearing any tidings of my son. Afflicting tales were however of
frequent occurrence,