as
ready to love the Son of Man the moment he heard of him; love makes
obedience a joy; and of him who obeys all heaven is the
patrimony--he is fellow-heir with Christ.

On the fourth day, the rain, which had been coming and going,
finally cleared off, the sun was again glorious, and the farmers
began to hope a little for the drying and ripening of some portion
of their crops. Then first Ginevra asked Gibbie to take her down to
Glashruach; she wanted to see the ruin they had described to her.
When she came near, and notions changed into visible facts, she
neither wept nor wailed. She felt very miserable, it is true, but
it was at finding that the evident impossibility of returning
thither for a long time, woke in her pleasure and not pain. So
utterly altered was the look of everything, that had she come upon
it unexpectedly, she would not have recognized either place or
house. They went up to a door. She seemed never to have seen it;
but when they entered, she knew it as one from the hall into a
passage, which, with what it led to, being gone, the inner had
become an outer door. A quantity of sand was heaped up in the hall,
and the wainscot was wet and swelled and bulging. They went into
the dining-room. It was a miserable sight--the very picture of the
soul of a drunkard. The thick carpet was sodden--spongy like a bed
of moss after heavy rains; the leather chairs looked diseased; the
colour was all gone from the table; the paper hung loose from the
walls; and everything lay where the water, after floating it about,
had let it drop as it ebbed.

She ascended the old stone stair which led to her father's rooms
above, went into his study, in which not a hair was out of its
place, and walked towards the window to look across to where once
had been her own chamber. But as she approached it, there, behind
the curtain, she saw her father, motionless, looking out. She
turned pale, and stood. Even at such a time, had she known he was
in the house, she would not have dared set her foot in that room.
Gibbie, who had followed and entered behind her, preceived her
hesitation, saw and recognized the back of the laird, knew that she
was afraid of her father, and stood also waiting he know not what.

"Eh!" he said to himself, "hers is no like mine! Nae mony has had
fathers sae guid's mine."

Becoming aware of a presence, the laird half turned, and seeing
Gibbie, imagined he had entered in a prowling way, supposing