was a daisy--one
by itself alone; there were not many in the field. Like a mother
leaning over her child, he was gazing at it. The daisy was not a
cold white one, neither was it a red one; it was just a perfect
daisy: it looked as if some gentle hand had taken it, while it slept
and its star points were all folded together, and dipped them--just
a tiny touchy dip, in a molten ruby, so that, when it opened again,
there was its crown of silver pointed with rubies all about its
golden sun-heart.

"He's been readin' Burns!" said Donal. He forgot that the daisies
were before Burns, and that he himself had loved them before ever he
heard of him. Now, he had not heard of Chaucer, who made love to
the daisies four hundred years before Burns.--God only knows what
gospellers they have been on his middle-earth. All its days his
daisies have been coming and going, and they are not old yet, nor
have worn out yet their lovely garments, though they patch and darn
just as little as they toil and spin.

"Can ye read, cratur?" asked Donal.

Gibbie shook his head.

"Canna ye speyk, man?"

Again Gibbie shook his head.

"Can ye hear?"

Gibbie burst out laughing. He knew that he heard better than other
people.

"Hearken till this than," said Donal.

He took his book from the grass, and read, in a chant, or rather in
a lilt, the Danish ballad of Chyld Dyring, as translated by Sir
Walter Scott. Gibbie's eyes grew wider and wider as he listened;
their pupils dilated, and his lips parted: it seemed as if his soul
were looking out of door and windows at once--but a puzzled soul
that understood nothing of what it saw. Yet plainly, either the
sounds, or the thought-matter vaguely operative beyond the line
where intelligence begins, or, it may be, the sparkle of individual
word or phrase islanded in a chaos of rhythmic motion, wrought
somehow upon him, for his attention was fixed as by a spell. When
Donal ceased, he remained open-mouthed and motionless for a time;
then, drawing himself slidingly over the grass to Donal's feet, he
raised his head and peeped above his knees at the book. A moment
only he gazed, and drew back with a hungry sigh: he had seen nothing
in the book like what Donal had been drawing from it--as if one
should look into the well of which he had just drunk, and see there
nothing but dry pebbles and sand! The wind blew gentle, the sun
shone bright, all nature closed softly round the two, and the soul