LITMIR.BIZ

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heard so little! He would have gone on if only Sophy had had patience and held her peace! Perhaps he might have spoken better things if she had not interfered! It would hardly be fair to condemn him upon so little! He had said that he believed every word of the New Testament—or something very like it!

      "I have heard enough!" said Miss Carmichael: "I will speak to my father at once."

      The next day Donal received a note to the following effect:—

      "Sir, in consequence of what I felt bound to report to my father of the conversation we had yesterday, he desires that you will call upon him at your earliest convenience He is generally at home from three to five. Yours truly, Sophia Agnes Carmichael."

      To this Donal immediately replied:—

      "Madam, notwithstanding the introduction I brought him from another clergyman, your father declined my acquaintance, passing me afterwards as one unknown to him. From this fact, and from the nature of the report which your behaviour to me yesterday justifies me in supposing you must have carried to him, I can hardly mistake his object in wishing to see me. I will attend the call of no man to defend my opinions; your father's I have heard almost every Sunday since I came to the castle, and have been from childhood familiar with them. Yours truly, Donal Grant."

      Not a word more came to him from either of them. When they happened to meet, Miss Carmichael took no more notice of him than her father.

      But she impressed it upon the mind of her friend that, if unable to procure his dismission, she ought at least to do what she could to protect her cousin from the awful consequences of such false teaching: if she was present, he would not say such things as he would in her absence, for it was plain he was under restraint with her! She might even have some influence with him if she would but take courage to show him where he was wrong! Or she might find things such that her uncle must see the necessity of turning him away; as the place belonged to her, he would never go dead against her! She did not see that that was just the thing to fetter the action of a delicate-minded girl.

      Continually haunted, however, with the feeling that she ought to do something, lady Arctura felt as if she dared not absent herself from the lesson, however disagreeable it might prove: that much she could do! Upon the next occasion, therefore, she appeared in the schoolroom at the hour appointed, and with a cold bow took the chair Donal placed for her.

      "Now, Davie," said Donal, "what have you done since our last lesson?"

      Davie stared.

      "You didn't tell me to do anything, Mr. Grant!"

      "No; but what then did I give you the lesson for? Where is the good of such a lesson if it makes no difference to you! What was it I told you?"

      Davie, who had never thought about it since, the lesson having been broken off before Donal could bring it to its natural fruit, considered, and said,

      "That Jesus Christ rose from the dead."

      "Well—where is the good of knowing that?"

      Davie was silent; he knew no good of knowing it, neither could imagine any. The Catechism, of which he had learned about half, suggested nothing.

      "Come, Davie, I will help you: is Jesus dead, or is he alive?"

      Davie considered.

      "Alive," he answered.

      "What does he do?"

      Davie did not know.

      "What did he die for?"

      Here Davie had an answer—a cut and dried one:

      "To take away our sins," he said.

      "Then what does he live for?"

      Davie was once more silent.

      "Do you think if a man died for a thing, he would be likely to forget it the minute he rose again?"

      "No, sir."

      "Do you not think he would just go on doing the same thing as before?"

      "I do, sir."

      "Then, as he died to take away our sins, he lives to take them away!"

      "Yes, sir."

      "What are sins, Davie?"

      "Bad things, sir."

      "Yes; the bad things we think, and the bad things we feel, and the bad things we do. Have you any sins, Davie?"

      "Yes; I am very wicked."

      "Oh! are you? How do you know it?"

      "Arkie told me."

      "What is being wicked?"

      "Doing bad things."

      "What bad things do you do?"

      "I don't know, sir."

      "Then you don't know that you are wicked; you only know that Arkie told you so!"

      Lady Arctura drew herself up; but Donal was too intent to perceive the offence he had given.

      "I will tell you," Donal went on, "something you did wicked to-day." Davie grew rosy red. "When we find out one wicked thing we do, it is a beginning to finding out all the wicked things we do. Some people would rather not find them out, but have them hidden from themselves and from God too. But let us find them out, everyone of them, that we may ask Jesus to take them away, and help Jesus to take them away, by fighting them with all our strength.—This morning you pulled the little pup's ears till he screamed." Davie hung his head. "You stopped a while, and then did it again! So I knew it wasn't that you didn't know. Is that a thing Jesus would have done when he was a little boy?"

      "No, sir."

      "Why?"

      "Because it would have been wrong."

      "I suspect, rather, it is because he would have loved the little pup. He didn't have to think about its being wrong. He loves every kind of living thing. He wants to take away your sin because he loves you. He doesn't merely want to make you not cruel to the little pup, but to take away the wrong think that doesn't love him. He wants to make you love every living creature. Davie, Jesus came out of the grave to make us good."

      Tears were flowing down Davie's checks.

      "The lesson 's done, Davie," said Donal, and rose and went, leaving him with lady Arctura.

      But ere he reached the door, he turned with sudden impulse, and said:—

      "Davie, I love Jesus Christ and his Father more than I can tell you—more than I can put in words—more than I can think; and if you love me you will mind what Jesus tells you."

      "What a good man you must be, Mr. Grant!—Mustn't he, Arkie?" sobbed Davie.

      Donal laughed.

      "What, Davie!" he exclaimed. "You think me very good for loving the only good person in the whole world! That is very odd! Why, Davie, I should be the most contemptible creature, knowing him as I do, not to love him with all my heart—yes, with all the big heart I shall have one day when he has done making me."

      "Is he making you still, Mr. Grant? I thought you were grown up!"

      "Well, I don't think he will make me any taller," answered Donal. "But the live part of me—the thing I love you with, the thing I think about God with, the thing I love poetry with, the thing I read the Bible with—that thing God keeps on making bigger and bigger. I do not know where it will stop, I only know where it will not stop. That thing is me, and God will keep on making it bigger to all eternity, though he has not even got it into the right shape yet."

      "Why is he so long about it?"

      "I don't think he is long about it; but he could do it quicker if I were as good as by this time I ought to be, with the father and mother I have, and all my long hours on the hillsides with my New Testament and the sheep. I prayed to God on the hill and in the fields, and he heard me, Davie, and made me see the foolishness of many things, and the grandeur and beauty of other things. Davie, God wants to give you the whole world, and everything in it. When you have begun to do the things Jesus tells you, then you will be my brother, and we shall both be his little brothers, and the sons of his Father God, and so the heirs of all

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