lay anything to the charge of God's elect?' She
said she believed herself to be the child of God, and that, though
she had made some sore stumbles and been fractious and ill to
guide, she had done no worse than many of his well-loved bairns,
and she expected no worse welcome home. 'I have been long away,
minister,' she sighed, 'getting on to a century away, and I'll be
glad to win home again.' And those were her last words."

"God be merciful to her! In this world, I think, she was an unjust
and cruel woman."

"She was so, then, without moral disquietude. The sin had got into
her soul, and she was comfortable with it. God is her judge. He only
knew her aright. She left her money wisely and for good ends."

"I heard tell, to the kirk and the societies and the freedom fund.
Yet she had kinsfolk in the Orkneys."

"They are all very rich. They went to lawyers about her property,
but Mistress Sabiston had made all too fast and sure for any one to
alter. She was a woman that would have her way, dead or alive."

"Well, then, this time, it seems, her way is a good way."

After this David settled his life very much on the old lines. He
went to live in Nanna's cottage, and returned to the boats and
the fishing with Groat's sons. As for his higher duty, that vocation
that had come to him on that blessed night when God opened his
mouth and he spoke wonderful and gracious things of his law, he was
never for a moment recreant to it. But the kingdom of God frequently
comes without observation. To preach a sermon, that was a thing
far outside David's possibilities. The power of the church, and
its close and exclusive privileges, were at that day in Shetland
papal in prerogative. David never dreamed of encroaching on them;
nor, indeed, would public opinion have permitted him to do so.

As it was, there grew gradually a feeling of unrest about David.
Though he was humble and devout in all kirk exercises, it was known
that the people gathered round him not only in his own cottage,
but at Groat's and Barbara Traill's, and that he spoke to them of
the everlasting gospel as never man had spoken before to them. It
was known that when the boats lay stilly rocking on the water,
waiting for the "take," David, sitting among his mates, reasoned
with them on the love of God, until every face of clay flushed
with a radiance quite different from mere color--a radiance that
was a direct spiritual emanation, a shining of the soul through
mere