ce flushed a more than rosy red, and the conversation grew
crumbly.

It was a half-holiday, and he stayed to tea, and after it went over the
arm-buildings with Mr. Graeme, revealing such a practical knowledge of
all that was going on, that his entertainer soon saw his opinion must
be worth something whether his fancies were or not.

CHAPTER XXIV.

STEPHEN KENNEDY.

The great comforts of Donal's life, next to those of the world in which
his soul lived--the eternal world, whose doors are ever open to him who
prays--were the society of his favourite books, the fashioning of his
thoughts into sweetly ordered sounds in the lofty solitude of his
chamber, and not infrequent communion with the cobbler and his wife.
To these he had as yet said nothing of what went on at the castle: he
had learned the lesson the cobbler himself gave him. But many a lesson
of greater value did he learn from the philosopher of the lapstone. He
who understands because he endeavours, is a freed man of the realm of
human effort. He who has no experience of his own, to him the
experience of others is a sealed book. The convictions that in Donal
rose vaporous were rapidly condensed and shaped when he found his new
friend thought likewise.

By degrees he made more and more of a companion of Davie, and such was
the sweet relation between them that he would sometimes have him in his
room even when he was writing. When it was time to lay in his
winter-fuel, he said to him--

"Up here, Davie, we must have a good fire when the nights are long; the
darkness will be like solid cold. Simmons tells me I may have as much
coal and wood as I like: will you help me to get them up?"

Davie sprang to his feet: he was ready that very minute.

"I shall never learn my lessons if I am cold," added Donal, who could
not bear a low temperature so well as when he was always in the open
air.

"Do you learn lessons, Mr. Grant?"

"Yes indeed I do," replied Donal. "One great help to the understanding
of things is to brood over them as a hen broods over her eggs: words
are thought-eggs, and their chickens are truths; and in order to brood
I sometimes learn by heart. I have set myself to learn, before the
winter is over if I can, the gospel of John in the Greek."

"What a big lesson!" exclaimed Davie.

"Ah, but how rich it will make me!" said Donal, and that set Davie
pondering.

They began to carry up the fuel, Donal taking the coals, and Davie the
wo