ry, and the genial companionship of terrene
sights and sounds, scents and motions, he could not help longing for
the winter and the city, that his soul might be freer to follow its
paths. And yet what a season some of the labours of the field
afforded him for thought! To the student who cannot think without
books, the easiest of such labours are a dull burden, or a distress;
but for the man in whom the wells have been unsealed, in whom the
waters are flowing, the labour mingles gently and genially with the
thought, and the plough he holds with his hands lays open to the sun
and the air more soils than one. Mr. Sclater without his books
would speedily have sunk into the mere shrewd farmer; Donal, never
opening a book, would have followed theories and made verses to the
end of his days.

Every Saturday, as before, he went to see his father and mother.
Janet kept fresh and lively, although age told on her, she said,
more rapidly since Gibbie went away.

"But gien the Lord lat auld age wither me up," she said, "he'll luik
efter the cracks himsel'."

Six weeks of every summer between Donal's sessions, while the
minister and his wife took their holiday, Gibbie spent with Robert
and Janet. It was a blessed time for them all. He led then just
the life of the former days, with Robert and Oscar and the sheep,
and Janet and her cow and the New Testament--only he had a good many
more things to think about now, and more ways of thinking about
them. With his own hands he built a neat little porch to the
cottage door, with close sides and a second door to keep the wind
off: Donal and he carried up the timber and the mortar. But
although he tried hard to make Janet say what he could do for her
more, he could not bring her to reveal any desire that belonged to
this world--except, indeed, for two or three trifles for her
husband's warmth and convenience.

"The sicht o' my Lord's face," she said once, when he was pressing
her, "is a' 'at I want, Sir Gibbie. For this life it jist blecks me
to think o' onything I wad hae or wad lowse. This boady o' mine's
growin' some heavy-like, I maun confess, but I wadna hae't ta'en aff
o' me afore the time. It wad be an ill thing for the seed to be
shal't ower sune."

They almost always called him Sir Gibbie, and he never objected, or
seemed either annoyed or amused at it; he took it just as the name
that was his, the same way as his hair or his hands were his; he had
been called wee