say, mem?" he asked.

"I do, Donal," she answered.

"Weel, I wad jist say, in a general w'y, 'at I canna think muckle o'
ony sermon 'at micht gar a body think mair o' the precher nor o' him
'at he comes to prech aboot. I mean, 'at I dinna see hoo onybody
was to lo'e God or his neebour ae jot the mair for hearin' yon
sermon last nicht."

"But might not some be frightened by it, and brought to repentance,
Donal?" suggested the girl.

"Ou ay; I daur say; I dinna ken. But I canna help thinkin' 'at what
disna gie God onything like fair play, canna dee muckle guid to men,
an' may, I doobt, dee a heap o' ill. It's a pagan kin' o' a thing
yon."

"That's just what I was feeling--I don't say thinking, you know--for
you say we must not say think when we have taken no trouble about
it. I am sorry for Mr. Duff, if he has taken to teaching where he
does not understand."

They had left the city behind them, and were walking a wide open
road, with a great sky above it. On its borders were small fenced
fields, and a house here and there with a garden. It was a
plain-featured, slightly undulating country, with hardly any
trees--not at all beautiful, except as every place under the heaven
which man has not defiled is beautiful to him who can see what is
there. But this night the earth was nothing: what was in them and
over them was all. Donal felt--as so many will feel, before the
earth, like a hen set to hatch the eggs of a soaring bird, shall
have done rearing broods for heaven--that, with this essential love
and wonder by his side, to be doomed to go on walking to all
eternity would be a blissful fate, were the landscape turned to a
brick-field, and the sky to persistent gray.

"Wad ye no tak my airm, mem?" he said at length, summoning courage.
"I jist fin' mysel' like a horse wi' a reyn brocken, gaein' by
mysel' throu' the air this gait."

Before he had finished the sentence Ginevra had accepted the offer.
It was the first time. His arm trembled. He thought it was her
hand.

"Ye're no cauld, are ye, mem?" he said.

"Not the least," she answered.

"Eh, mem! gien fowk was but a' made oot o' the same clay, like, 'at
ane micht say till anither--'Ye hae me as ye hae yersel''!"

"Yes, Donal," rejoined Ginevra; "I wish we were all made of the
poet-clay like you! What it would be to have a well inside, out of
which to draw songs and ballads as I pleased! That's what you have,
Donal--or, rather, you're just