the evermore invisible germ--of that
he remained, much as he wondered, often as he searched his
consciousness, as ignorant to the last as I am now. Sometimes he
was inclined to think the glory of the new experience must have
struck him dazed, and that was why he could not recall what went on
in him at the time.

Donal rose and went driving the cattle home, and Gibbie lay where he
had again thrown himself upon the grass. When he lifted his head,
Donal and the cows had vanished.

Donal had looked all round as he left the meadow, and seeing the boy
nowhere, had concluded he had gone to his people. The impression he
had made upon him faded a little during the evening. For when he
reached home, and had watered them, he had to tie up the animals,
each in its stall, and make it comfortable for the night; next, eat
his own supper; then learn a proposition of Euclid, and go to bed.

CHAPTER XV.

DONAL GRANT.

Hungering minds come of peasant people as often as of any, and have
appeared in Scotland as often, I fancy, as in any nation; not every
Scotsman, therefore, who may not himself have known one like Donal,
will refuse to believe in such a herd-laddie. Besides, there are
still those in Scotland, as well as in other nations, to whom the
simple and noble, not the commonplace and selfish, is the true type
of humanity. Of such as Donal, whether English or Scotch, is the
class coming up to preserve the honour and truth of our Britain, to
be the oil of the lamp of her life, when those who place her glory
in knowledge, or in riches, shall have passed from her history as
the smoke from her chimneys.

Cheap as education then was in Scotland, the parents of Donal Grant
had never dreamed of sending a son to college. It was difficult for
them to save even the few quarterly shillings that paid the fees of
the parish schoolmaster: for Donal, indeed, they would have failed
even in this, but for the help his brothers and sisters afforded.
After he left school, however, and got a place as herd, he fared
better than any of the rest, for at the Mains he found a friend and
helper in Fergus Duff, his master's second son, who was then at home
from college, which he had now attended two winters. Partly that he
was delicate in health, partly that he was something of a fine
gentleman, he took no share with his father and elder brother in the
work of the farm, although he was at the Mains from the beginning of
April to the end