nd
ancient Scottish classics and such like round them, while Janet went
out and in.

"So Donald has been obliged to leave his kirk;" for Kate had not yet
forgiven Janet. "He says it's very bad here; I hope you won't go to
such a place."

"What would Donald Macdonald be saying against it?" inquired Janet,
severely.

"Oh, I don't remember--lots of things. He thought you were making too
much of the minister."

"The minister iss a good man, and hass some Highland blood in him,
though he hass lost his Gaelic, and he will be very pleasant in the
house. If I wass seeing a sheep, and it will be putting on this side
and that, and quarrelling with everybody, do you know what I will be
thinking?"

"That's Donald, I suppose; well?"

"I will say to myself, that sheep iss a goat." And Janet left the room
with the laurels of victory.

CHAPTER V.

CONCERNING BESOMS.

It is one of the miseries of modern life, for which telephones are less
than compensation, that ninety out of a hundred city folk have never
known the comfort and satisfaction of dwelling in a house. When the
sashes are flying away from the windows and the skirting boards from
the floor, and the planks below your feet are a finger breadth apart,
and the pipes are death-traps, it does not matter that the walls are
covered by art papers and plastered over with china dishes. This
erection, wherein human beings have to live and work and fight their
sins and prepare for eternity, is a fraud and a lie. No man compelled
to exist in such an environment of unreality can respect himself or
other people; and if it come to pass that he holds cheap views of life,
and reads smart papers, and does sharp things in business, and that his
talk be only a clever jingle, then a plea in extenuation will be lodged
for him at the Great Assize. Small wonder that he comes to regard the
world of men as an empty show and is full of cynicism, who has shifted
at brief intervals from one shanty to another and never had a fit
dwelling-place all his years. When a prophet cometh from the Eternal
to speak unto modern times as Dante did unto the Middle Ages, and
constructs the other world before our eyes, he will have one circle in
his hell for the builders of rotten houses, and doubtless it will be a
collection of their own works, so that their sin will be its
punishment, as is most fitting and the way of things.

Surely there will also be some corner of heaven kept for the man