and the faces of young girls and boys, one here and
another there, scattered through the earnest, listening crowd.

By a strong effort Shenac turned her attention to the minister's words.
They were earnest words, surely, but wherein did they differ from the
words of other men? They seemed to her just like the truths she had
heard before--more fitly spoken, perhaps, than when they fell from the
lips of good old Mr Farquharson, but just the same.

"For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a
good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love
toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us."

This was the text. It was quite familiar to her; and so were the truths
drawn from it, she thought. What could be the cause of the interest
that she saw in the faces of those eager hundreds? Did they see
something hidden from her? did they hear in those words something to
which her ears were deaf? Her eyes wandered from one familiar face to
another, coming back to her brother's always with the same wonder; and
she murmured again and again,--

"From rivers of thy pleasures thou
Wilt drink to them provide."

"He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst."

"That is for Hamish, I'm sure of that. I wonder how it all happened to
him? I'll ask him."

But she did not. The bright look was on his face when the sermon ended,
and while the psalm was sung. It was there when the great congregation
slowly dispersed, and all the way as they walked home with the
neighbours. It was there all day, and all the week; and it never left
him. Even when pain and sickness set their mark on his face, through
all their sorrowful tokens the bright look of peace shone still; and
Shenac watched and wondered, but she did not speak of it yet.

This was Shenac's first visit to the new kirk, but it was by no means
the last.

It would be out of place to enter here into any detailed history of this
one of those awakenings of God's people which have taken place at
different times in this part of the country; and yet it cannot be quite
passed over. For a long time all the settlers in that neighbourhood
worshipped in the same kirk; but when the time came which proved the
Church in the motherland--the time which separated into two bodies that
which had long been one--the same division extended to the far-away
lands where the Scottish form of worship had prevailed