d may be a rod, and smite for generations; but the rod is in the
hand of God, and I will remind myself that my God is the Everlasting,
Almighty, Infinite One; and I will ask him to give sentence with
me, and to deliver me from the wicked, whether they be in the body
or out of the body." And he walked through the house-place where
Barbara was sitting, and saw her not; for he was saying to himself,
"'Why art thou so vexed, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted
within me? O put thy trust in God: for I will yet give him thanks,
which is the help of my countenance, and my God.'"

Nanna sat motionless for long after David left her. She had many
causes for anxiety. She was fearful of losing her work, and absolute
poverty would then be her lot. It was a fear, however, and not a
certainty; and after a little reflection she also threw her care
upon the Preserver of men. "Be at peace," she said to her heart.
"God feeds the gulls and the ravens, and he will not starve Nanna and
Vala."

It was harder to combat her spiritual anxieties. She was sorry
she had told David about the thrall's curse. Her first instinct
was to ask his father and mother to forgive her; then she suddenly
remembered that praying to or for the dead was a sin for a kirk
session to meet on. And this thought led her easily to the dream
that had troubled her last night's sleep and made her day dark
with sorrowful fears. All her life she had possessed something of
that sixth sense by which we see and anticipate things invisible.
And it is noticeable that many cripples have often a seraphic
intelligence, a far-reaching vision, and very sensitive spiritual
aptitudes. Vala was of this order. She too had been singularly
depressed; she had seen more than she could tell; she was as restless
and melancholy as birds just before their migrations, and she looked
at her mother with eyes so wistful, so full of inquiry, so "far off,"
that Nanna trembled under their fearfully prescient intimations.
Alas for the dangerous happiness of maternity! How prodigious are its
inquietudes! How uncertain its consolations!

She told David that she had dreamed a dream, and that she looked
for a change; and she had made this statement as simply and as
confidently as if she had said, "The wind is from the north, and I
look for a storm." Repeated experiences had taught her, as they
teach constantly, that certain signs precede certain events, and that
certain dreams are dictated by that delic