aces of his kind better. His prayer for forty years had been to be
made like his master; and if that prayer was not answered, how was it
that, every year he lived, he found himself loving the faces of his
fellows more and more? Ever as they passed, instead of interfering
with his contemplations, they gave him more and more to think: were
these faces, he asked, the symbols of a celestial language in which God
talked to him?

Donal sat down, and took his Greek Testament from his pocket. But all
at once, brilliant as was the sun, the light of his life went out, and
the vision rose of the gray quarry, and the girl turning from him in
the wan moonlight. Then swift as thought followed the vision of the
women weeping about the forsaken tomb; and with his risen Lord he rose
also--into a region far "above the smoke and stir of this dim spot," a
region where life is good even with its sorrow. The man who sees his
disappointment beneath him, is more blessed than he who rejoices in
fruition. Then prayer awoke, and in the light of that morning of peace
he drew nigh the living one, and knew him as the source of his being.
Weary with blessedness he leaned against the shadowing honeysuckle,
gave a great sigh of content, smiled, wiped his eyes, and was ready for
the day and what it should bring. But the bliss went not yet; he sat
for a while in the joy of conscious loss in the higher life. With his
meditations and feelings mingled now and then a few muffled blows of
the cobbler's hammer: he was once more at work on his disabled shoe.

"Here is a true man!" he thought, "--a Godlike helper of his fellow!"

When the hammer ceased, the cobbler was stitching; when Donal ceased
thinking, he went on feeling. Again and again came a little roll of
the cobbler's drum, giving glory to God by doing his will: the sweetest
and most acceptable music is that which rises from work a doing; its
incense ascends as from the river in its flowing, from the wind in its
blowing, from the grass in its growing. All at once he heard the
voices of two women in the next garden, close behind him, talking
together.

"Eh," said one, "there's that godless cratur, An'rew Comin, at his wark
again upo' the Sawbath mornin'!"

"Ay, lass," answered the other, "I hear him! Eh, but it 'll be an ill
day for him whan he has to appear afore the jeedge o' a'! He winna hae
his comman'ments broken that gait!"

"Troth, na!" returned the former; "it'll be a sair sattl