l joined involuntarily in the laugh--even the old
man, who had been listening with his grey eyebrows knit, and hanging
like bosky precipices over the tarns of his deepset eyes, taking in
every word, but uttering not one. When at last his wife showed him
the child's back, he lifted his two hands, and moved them slowly up
and down, as in pitiful appeal for man against man to the sire of
the race. But still he said not a word. As to utterance of what
lay in the deep soul of him, the old man, except sometimes to his
wife, was nearly as dumb as Gibbie himself.

They sat down to their homely meal. Simplest things will carry the
result of honest attention as plainly as more elaborate dishes; and,
which it might be well to consider, they will carry no more than
they are worth: of Janet's supper it is enough to say that it was
such as became her heart. In the judgment of all her guests, the
porridge was such as none could make but mother, the milk such as
none but mother's cow could yield, the cakes such as she only could
bake.

Gibbie sat in the bed like a king on his throne, gazing on his
kingdom. For he that loves has, as no one else has. It is the
divine possession. Picture the delight of the child, in his passion
for his kind, looking out upon this company of true hearts, honest
faces, human forms--all strong and healthy, loving each other and
generous to the taking in of the world's outcast! Gibbie could not,
at that period of his history, have invented a heaven more to his
mind, and as often as one of them turned eyes towards the bed, his
face shone up with love and merry gratitude, like a better sun.

It was now almost time for the sons and daughters to go down the
hill again, and leave the cottage and the blessed old parents and
the harboured child to the night, the mountain-silence, and the
living God. The sun had long been down; but far away in the north,
the faint thin fringe of his light-garment was still visible, moving
with the unseen body of his glory softly eastward, dreaming along
the horizon, growing fainter and fainter as it went, but at the
faintest then beginning to revive and grow. Of the northern lands
in summer, it may be said, as of the heaven of heavens, that there
is no night there. And by and by the moon also would attend the
steps of the returning children of labour.

"Noo, lads an' lasses, afore we hae worship, rin, ilk ane o' ye,"
said the mother, "an' pu' heather to mak a bed to