would delight to make me happy-I, who have never been happy but in sharing your joys and sorrows! But you treat me as light, vain women treat the men who love them, to make slaves of them, and bring them back and back to be hurt. It is not to be so with me. No, indeed! Farewell, Nanna!» His voice failed him; he turned toward the door, and for a moment Nanna could not realize that he was actually bidding her a final farewell. When she did, she flew to his side, and arrested his hand as it was opening the door. «Come back! Come back, David!» she entreated. You are all wrong; you are cruel to me. If you leave me, I shall break my heart. It will be the last blow, David. It is the very truth.>> He hesitated enough to make Nanna weep with passionate distress, and this emotion he was not able to bear. He took her within his arm again, led her to a chair, and sat down at her side, and as he kissed the tears from her face said, «If you do love me-> «If I do love you!» she interrupted. «I love none but you. You are heart of my heart, and soul of my soul. I hear you coming when you are half a mile away. I have no joy but when you are beside me. I shall die of grief if you leave me in anger. I would count it heaven on earth to be your wife, but I dare not! I dare not!» She was sobbing piteously when she ended this protestation, and David comforted her with caresses and tender words. «What fears you, Nanna?» he asked. "Oh, my dear, what fears you?»> This is what I fear,» she answered, freeing herself from his embrace, and looking steadily at him. «If we were married, David, I might have another child. I might have many children.» Then he clasped her hand tightly, for he began to see where Nanna was leading him, as she continued with slow solemnity: «Can you, can the minister, can any human being, give me assurance they will be elect children? If you can, I will be your wife to-morrow. If you cannot, as the God of my father lives, I will not bring sons and daughters into life for sin and sorrow here, and for perdition hereafter. The devil shall not so use my body. To people hell? No; I will not-not even for your love, David!» Her words, so passionate and positive, moved him deeply. He was the old David again the light, the gladness, all but the tender, mournful love of the past, gone from his face. He held both her hands, and he looked down at them in his own as he answered: «Both of us are His children, Nanna, by generations and by covenant. He has promised mercy to such. Well, then, we may have a reasonable hope-> «Hope! No, no, David! I must have something better than hope. I hoped for Vala, and my hope has been my hell. And as for the child-my God, where is the child?» « We love God, Nanna; and the children of the righteous-> «Are no safer than the children of the wicked, David. I have thought of this continually. There was John Beaton's son; he killed a man, and died on the gallows, to the shame and heartbreak of his good father and mother. The lad had been baptized, too,— given to God when he drew his first breath, -and God must have rejected him. Minister Stuart's son forged a note, and was sent with felons over the sea. His father and mother had prayed for him all the days of his life. He was brought to the kirk, and given to God in baptism, and God must have rejected him. Think of good Stephen and Anna Blair's children! Their daughter's name cannot be spoken any more, and their sons are bringing their gray hairs down to the grave with sorrow and shame. Go through the whole kirk, the whole town, the islands themselves, and you will be forced to say, David, that it is the children of the righteous that go to the devil. How the good God can treat his bairns so, I know not; but you and I may also deserve his wrath in like way. I am feared to hope different. Oh, David, I am feared to be a mother again!» «Nanna! Nanna! What can I say?» << There is nothing to say. If I should meet Vala in that place where infants (earnestly desire to see and love God, and yet are not able to do so, I should cover my face before the child. If she blamed me, I should shiver in speechless agony; if she did not blame me, it would be still harder to bear. Were we only sure-but we are not sure.»> « We are not sure.» David repeated the words with a sad significance. Nanna's ar gument, evolved from her own misery and illustrated by that misery, had been before David's eyes for months. He could not escape from such reasoning and from such proof; and his whole life, education, and experience went to enforce the pitiful dilemma in which their love had placed them. «It is His will, and we must bear it to the uttermost,» continued Nanna, with sorrowful resignation. «I used to think monks and nuns, and such as made a merit of not marrying, were all wrong; maybe they are nearer right than we think for. Doubtless they have a tender conscience toward God, and a tender conscience is what he loves.»>< Then David rose from Nanna's side, and walked rapidly to and fro in the room. Motion helped him to no solution of the tremendous difficulty; and Nanna's patient face, her fixed outward gaze, the spiritual light of resolute decision in her eyes, made him feel as if this offering up of their love, and all its earthly sweetness, was a sacrifice already tied to the horns of the altar, and fully accepted. He sat down again, and covered his face with his hands, and began to weep-to sob as strong men sob when their sorrow is greater than they can bear-as they never sob until the last drop, the bitterest drop of all, is added -the belief that God has forsaken them. This was the agony which tore David's great, fond heart in two. It forced from him the first pitiful words of reproach against his God: << I was sure that at last I was going to be happy, and God is not willing. From my youth up he has aye laid upon me the rod of correction. I wish that I had never been born!» « My poor lad! but you are not meaning it!» And Nanna put her arms around his neck, and wept with him. For some minutes he let her do so, for he was comforted by her sympathy. But at last he stood up, passed his hand across his eyes, and said as bravely as he could: «You are right, Nanna. If you feel in this way, I dare not force your conscience. I must go away until I get over the sore disappointment; for if I was seeing you I might get to feel hard at God. Pain and cold and hunger and weariness and loneliness I have borne with a prayer and a tight mouth, and I never said before that I thought him cruel hard.» «No, David! His ways are not cruel; they are only past our finding out. We must just believe that they are the best of all ways. And do not leave me, David. I can bear all sorrow if you are near me.»> «Ay, ay! but women are different. I cannot fight the temptation when I am in it. I must run away from it. Farewell! Farewell, Nanna!» He kissed the words upon her lips, and went hastily out of the house; but when he had walked about one hundred yards, he returned. Nanna had thrown herself despairingly upon the rude couch made for Vala, and on which the child had spent most of her life. There Nanna lay like one dead. He knelt down by her, took her within his arms, kissed her closed eyes, and murmured again on her lips his last words of love and sorrow. Her patient acceptance of her hard lot made him quiver with pain; but he knew well that for a time they must each bear their sorrow alone. Nanna's confession of her love for him had made everything different. In her presence now he had not the power to control his longing for reciprocal affection. He felt already a blind rebellion against fate, a sense of wrong, which it was hard to submit to. But how could he fight circumstances whose foundations were in eternity? At this hour, at least, he had come to the limit of his reason and his endurance. Again and again he kissed Nanna farewell, and it was like tearing his life asunder when he put away her clinging arms, and left her alone with the terrible problem that separated their lives. A dismal, sullen stillness succeeded to his angry grief. He avoided Barbara, and shut himself in his room, and his strong and awful prepossession in favor of the Bible led him, first of all, to go to the book; but he found no help there, for his soul was tossed from top to bottom, and he was vanquished by the war in his own bosom. Over and over he brought his dogmas to the Scriptures, and was crushed spiritually between them; so that at last, worn out with the mental and heart struggle, he submitted to the fatality he could not alter. «I will go the right road,» he said, «however cruel that road may be. Then death may give me back to God a miserable man, but not a guilty one.»> Nanna did not suffer so much; her battle was practically over; she had been in the van of it for months, and had come gradually to that state of submission which fears to resist, lest resistance might be found to be fighting against God. While David was yet in an agony of struggle with his love and desires, his tender conscience, and his dread of offending the Deity, Nanna had washed away her tears, and was strengthening her heart by saying continually, as her glancing needles glided to and fro: Do as Thou wilt: I ask not why; V. THE Bay of Biscay is bad quarters in any weather; in a storm it defies adequate description. When the wind has an iron ring, and calls like a banshee, and the waves rise to its order as high as the masthead, then God help the men and the ships on the Bay of Biscay! And one day, in the early spring of the year, the Ann Semple, bound from Glasgow to the Mediterranean ports, was sorely in need of such potential help. The waves were doubling over her, the fires were drowned out, and her plunges were like the dive of a whale. At the wheel there was a man lashed, -for the hull was seldom above water, and this man was David Borson. He was the only sailor left strong enough for the work, and he was at the last point of endurance. The icy gusts roared past him, the spray was like flying whip-lashes, and it was pitiful to see David, with his bleeding hands on the wheel, stolidly shaking his head as the spray cut him. He had been on deck for forty hours, buffeted by the huge waves, and he was covered with salt-water boils. His feet were flayed and frozen, and his hands so gashed that he dared not to close or rest them, lest the agony of unclasping or moving them again should make him lose his consciousness. He feared also that his feet were so badly frozen that he would never be able to walk on them any more. These miseries others were sharing with him; but David had been struck by a falling spar at the beginning of the gale, and there was now an abscess forming on his lung that tortured him beyond his usual speechless patience. «God pity me!» he moaned. «God pity me!»> When the storm broke the Ann Semple was as bare as a newly launched hull, and wallowing like a soaked log. David had fallen forward on his face, and was asleep or insensible. He did not hear the handspike thumped on the deck, and the cry, «On deck! On deck! Lord help us! She's going down!» But some one lifted him to a raft which had been hastily lashed together, and the misery that followed was only a part of some awful hours when physical pain from head to feet drove him to the verge of madness. He never knew how long it was before they were met by the Alert, a large steamer going into the port of London, and taken on board. Four of the men were then dead from exhaustion, and the physician on the Alert looked doubtfully at David's feet. «But he is dying,» he said; "and why give him further pain?» Then a young man stepped forward, and looked at David. There were both pity and liking in his face, and he stooped, and said something in the dying man's ear. A faint smile answered the words, and the youth spoke to the doctor, and both of them went to work with a will. The effort, even then so desperate, was ere long complicated by fever and delirium; and when David came to himself, it was almost like a new birth. He was weaker than an infant-too weak, indeed, to wonder or speculate, or even remember. He only knew that he was in a large room, and that two men were with him. One was at his bedside, quiet and drowsy; the other was reading in a Bible, sitting close by the shaded candle. David knew it was a Bible: who does not know a Bible even afar off? No matter how it is bound, the book has a homely and familiar look that no other book has. David shut his eyes again after seeing it; he felt as safe and happy as if a dear friend had spoken to him. And in a few days the man with the Bible began to come near him, and to read softly the most tender and gracious words he could find in that tenderest of all books. This was the beginning of an interval of delicious rest to David. It was as if some strong angel swung and hushed and wrapped him in a drowsy, blissful torpor. He felt no pain, not even in his tortured feet, and his hands lay at rest upon the white coverlet, healed of all their smarting and aching. For once in his hard life, they were not tired or sore. He knew that he was fed and turned, that his pillows were made soft and cool, and that there was the vague sense of kind presence about him; that sometimes he heard, like a heavenly echo, words of comfort that he seemed to have heard a long time ago; that he slept and wakened, and slept again, with a conscious pleasure in the transitions. And he asked no questions. He was content to let life lie in blissful quiescence; to be still, and keep his eyes closed to the world, and his ears deaf to its cries. Gradually these sensations increased in strength. One day he heard his nurse say that he might be removed into an entirely fresh room. And he knew that he was lifted in strong arms, and anon breathed a clearer atmosphere, and slept a life-giving sleep. When he awoke he had new strength; he voluntarily opened his eyes, and saw a tree waving branches covered with fresh, crinkly leaves before his window. It was like a glimpse of heaven. And that afternoon his preserver came to his side, and said: «Thee is much better. Can thee listen to me now?»> Then David looked at the young man, and smiled. And their eyes met, and their hands met, and the well man stooped to the sick man, and kissed his cheek. «I am Friend John Priestly,» he said; « what is thy name?» «David-David Borson, Shetland.» «David, thee is going to live. That is good news, is it not?» «No. Life is hard-cruel hard.» «Yes; but thee can say, The Lord is mine helper? Thee can pray now?» << I have no strength.>> << If thee cannot speak, lift up thy hand. He will see it, and answer thee.» And David's face shadowed, and he did not lift up his hand; also, if the whisper in his heart had been audible, John Priestly would have heard him say, "What is the use of prayer? The Lord has cast me off.» But John did not try the strength of his patient further at that time. He sat by his side, and laid his hand upon David's hand, and began to repeat in a slow, assuring voice the one hundred and third psalm. Its familiar words went into David's ears like music, and he fell sweetly asleep to its promises. For though men in their weakness and haste are apt to say, "The Lord hath forgotten to be gracious,» they who have but once felt his love, though dimly and far off, cannot choose but trust in it, even to the grave. And souls fraternize in their common exile. John Priestly loved the young man whom he had saved, and David felt his love. As he came fully back to life, the past came clearly back to memory. He remembered Nanna as those who love white jasmine remember it when its starry flowers have gone-with a sweet, aching longing for their beauty and perfume. He remembered those terrible days when physical pain had been prodigalized in every limb and every nerve, when he had fainted with agony but never complained. He remembered his lonely journey to the grave's mouth, and the dim human phantoms who had stood, as it were, afar off, and helped and cheered him as best they could; and he understood that he had really been born again; a new lease of life had been given him; and he had come back to earth, as so many wish to come back, with all his old loves and experiences to help him in his future. If only God would love him! If only he would give him ever so small a portion of his favor, and let him live humbly before him, with such comfort of home and friends as a poor fisherman might have! He wondered, as he lay still, what he or his fathers had done that he should be so sorely punished. Then he remembered the drowning of Bele Trenby, and he blamed himself that he had not sought out Bele's friends, and made confession and such recompense as he could. As soon as he was able he resolved to go to Shetland and do so; also he wanted to see Nanna. Oh, how he wanted to see her! Just to hold her hand, and kiss her face, and sit by her side for an hour or two! He did not wish either her conscience or his own less tender, but he thought that now, perhaps, they might be cousins and friends, and so comfort and help each other in the daily trials of their lives. One day, when he was much stronger, as he sat by the open window thinking of these things, John came to read to him. John had a faculty of choosing the sweetest and most comfortable portions of the Book in his hand. This selection was not without purpose. He had learned from David's delirious complainings the intense piety of the youth, and the spiritual despair which had intensified all his suffering. And he hoped that God, through him, would say a word of comfort to the sorrowful heart. So he chose, with the sweet determination of love, the most glorious and the most abounding words of the Divine Father. David listened with a reserved acceptance. It was in a measure a new Scripture to him. It appeared partial. When John read, with a kind of triumph, that the Lord «is longsuffering to us-ward; not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance,» David made a slight movement of dissent; and John asked: «Is not that a noble love? Thee believes in it, David?» «No.» The word was softly but positively uttered. «Some men and angels are predestined unto everlasting life, and others foreordained to everlasting death; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished.»>> And David quoted these words from the Confession of Faith with such confidence and despair that John trembled at them. « David! David!» he cried. «Jesus Christ came to seek and save the lost.» << It is impossible for the lost to be saved,» answered David, with somber confidence; "only the elect, predestined to salvation.»> «And the rest of mankind, David?» «God has been pleased to ordain to wrath, that his justice may be glorified.>> << David, who made thee such a God as this? Where did thee learn about him? How can thee love him? » "It is in the Confession of Faith. And, oh, John Priestly, I do love him! Yes, I love him, though he has hid his face from me, and, I fear, cast me off forever.» «Dear heart!» said John, «thee is wronging thy best Friend. And as we are inquiring after God, and nothing less, it is but fair to take him at his own word, and not at what men priests, long ago dead, have said of him.>> And then, one after another, the golden verses full of God's love dropped from John's lips in a gracious shower, and David was amazed, and withal a little troubled. John was breaking up all his foundations for time and eternity. He was using the Scriptures to grind to powder the whole visible church as David understood it. It was a kind of spiritual shipwreck. His slow nature took fire gradually, and then burned fiercely. Weak as he was, he could not sit still. John Priestly was either a voice in the wilderness crying «Peace!» and «Blessing!» to him, or he was the voice of a false prophet crying «Peace!» where there was no peace. He looked into the frank, glowing face of this new preacher with inquiry not unmixed with suspicion. << Well, then,» he cried, «if these things be so, let God speak to me. Bring me a Bible with large letters. I want to see these words with my eyes, and touch them with my fingers.» The conversation thus begun was constantly continued, and David searched the Scriptures from morning to night. Often, as the spring grew fairer and warmer, the two young men sat with the Bible between them, and while the sunshine fell brightly on its pages they reasoned together of fate and free will, and of that divine mercy which is from everlasting to everlasting. For where young men have leisure, spiritual things employ them much more frequently than is supposed. Indeed, it is the young who are most earnestly troubled about the next life: the middle-aged are too busy with this one, and the aged do not speculate, because they will soon know. Thus, daily, little by little, through inlets and broader ways known only to God and to himself, the light grew and grew unto perfect day, and flooded not only the great hills and promontories of his soul, but also shone into all its secret caves and gloomy valleys and lonely places. Then he knew how blind and ignorant he had been. Then he was penetrated with loving amazement, and humbled to the dust with a sense of the wrong he had done the Father of his spirit. And he locked himself in his room, and fell down on his face before his God. But into that awful communing, in which so much was confessed and so much forgiven, it is not lawful to inquire. After this the thought of Nanna became an irresistible longing. He could not be happy until she sat in the sunshine of God's love with him. He went into the garden, and tested his strength; and as soon as he was in the open air he was smitten with a homesickness not to be controlled. He wanted the sea. He wanted the great North Sea; he longed to feel the cradling of its salt waves under him; and the idea of a schooner reefed down closely, and charging along over the stormy waters, took possession of him. Then he remembered the fishermen he used to know-the fishermen who peopled the desolate places of the Shetland seas. <<I must go home!» he said with a soft, eager passion. «I must go home to Shetland.» When he saw John next he told him so, and they began to talk of his life there. John had never asked him of his past. He knew him to be a child of God, however far away from his Father, and he had accepted his spiritual brotherhood with trustfulness. He understood that it had been David's modesty that had made him reticent. But when David was ready to leave he felt, also, that John had a right to know what manner of man he had befriended. So, as they sat together that night, David began his history. «I was in the boat at six years old,» he said; «for there was always something I could do. During the night-fishing, unless I went with father, I was all alone, and I had hours of such awful terrors that I am sad yet only to remember them. It was better to freeze out on the sea, if father would let me go with him. I was often hungry and weary. I had toothaches and earaches that I never spoke of. I was frequently so sleepy that I fell down in the boat, and I had no mother to kiss me or pity me, and the neighbors were shy and far off. Father was not cross; he just did not understand. Even in those days I wondered why God made little lads to be so miserable, and to suffer so much.» He spoke also, in a guarded way, of that revelation in the boat, for he felt rebuked by his want of faith in it, and he said sorrowfully, as he left the subject: "Why, then, should God send angels to men? They are feared of them while they are present, and they doubt them when they go away. He sent one to comfort me, and I denied it to my own heart; yes, even though I sorely needed the comfort.>> Then he took John to Shetland with him. He showed him, in strong, simple words, the old Norse town, with its gray skies and its gray seas, and its fishing-smacks hanging to the rushing sides of foaming mountains. He described the hoary cliffs and their world of seabirds, the glorious auroras, the heavenly summers, and the deadly chillness of the winter fogs as one drift after another passed in dim and desolate majesty over the sea and land. Slowly, and with some hesitation, he got to Nanna in her little stone hut, braiding her straw and nursing her crippled baby. The tears came into his eyes, he clasped his knees with his hands as if to steady himself, while he spoke rapidly of her marriage with Sin |