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clair, the drowning of her father and brothers, the cruelty of her husband, his desertion, his return, Nanna's terror of losing Vala, the fatal typhus, her desolation, and her spiritual anguish about Vala's condition. All these things he told John with that powerful eloquence born of intense feeling.

John was greatly moved by the whole simple, tragic story, but he spoke only on the last topic. This roused his indignation, and he said it was a holy anger. He wondered how men, and especially mothers, could worship a God who was supposed to damn little children before they were born. He vowed that neither Moloch nor Baal, nor any pagan deity, had been so brutal. He was amazed that ministers believing such a doctrine dared to marry. What special right had they to believe their children would all be elect? And if there was a shadow of doubt on the subject, how awful was their responsibility! Nanna's scruples, he said, were the only possible outcome of a conscientious, unselfish soul believing the devilish doctrine; and he cried out with enthusiasm:

«Nanna is to be honored! Oh, for a conscience as tender and as void of offense toward God! I will go to Shetland, and kiss the hem of her garment. She is a woman in ten thousand!>>

« Well, then,» said David, softly, «I shall take comfort to her.>>

«To think, » cried John, who was still moved by a holy anger- «to think that God should have created this beautiful world as a nursery for hell; that he should have made such women as Nanna only to suckle devils! No, no, David!» he said, suddenly calming himself; << thee never could believe such things of thy God.»

"I was taught them early and late. I can say the Confession of Faith backward, I am sure.» «Never thee mind catechisms and confessions. The Word of God was before them; and the Word will be the Word when confessions and catechisms are cast into the dusty museums of ancient things, with all the other shackles of the world in bondage. Oh, David, be sure that thee knows well the Children's Portion in the Scriptures! Nanna must be shown that theirs is the kingdom,) and no distinction of elect or non-elect, as I read the title.»

I count the hours until I am able to travel. I long for the sea that stretches nor'ard to the ice, and the summer days when the sunset brightens the midnight. No need to egg me on. I am all the time thinking of the old town growing out of the mist, and I know how I shall feel when I stand on the pier

again among the fishers, when I hurry through the clean, quiet streets, while the kind people nod and smile, and call to each other, Here be David Borson come back again!>>> «And Nanna?»>

«She is the heart of my longing. I like not to sit in the sunshine and know that Nanna is weeping in the dark.»

«Thee must not be discouraged if she be at first unable to believe thy report.»>

«The hour will come. Nanna was ever a seeker after God. She will listen gladly. She will take the cup of salvation, and drink it with thanksgiving. We shall stand together in the light, loving God and fearing God, but not afraid of him.»>

« Would thee like to have a less dangerous way of earning thy bread? My father has a great business in the city, and thee could drive one of the big drays that go to the docks.>>

"I could not. I can carry a ship through any sea she can live in. I could not drive a Shetland shelty down an empty street. I am only a simple sea-dog. I love the sea. Men say for sure it is in my blood and in my heart. I must live on the sea. When my hour comes to die, I hope the sea will keep my body in one of her clean, cool graves. If God gives me Nanna, and we have sons and daughters, they shall have a happy childhood and a good schooling. Then I will put all the boys in the boats, and the girls shall learn to grow like their mother, and, if it please God, they shall marry good men and good fishers.>>

«It seems to me that the life of a fisher is hard, and withal that it hath but small returns.>>

<«<Fishers have their good and their bad seasons. They have their loves and joys and sorrows. Birth and marriage and death come to them. They have the same share of God's love, the same Bible, the same hope of eternal life, that the richest men and women have. It is enough. A fisher's life is a life as free from temptation as a life can be. He has to trust God a great deal. If he did not, he would very seldom go into the boats at all. I never feel so surely held in the hollow of his hand as when the waves are as high as my masthead, and my boat smashes into the black pit below. There is none but God then! Thank you, Friend John, but I shall live and die a fisherman.>>

« Would thee care to change Shetland for some warmer and less stormy climate?»

« Would a man care to change his own father and mother for any other father and mother? Stern and hard was my poor father, and he knew not how to love; but his memory is dear to me, and I would not break the tie

between us-no, not to be the son of a king! My native land is a poor land, but I have thought of her green and purple moors among gardens full of roses. Shetland is my home, and home is sweet and fair and dear.»

<< Traveling Zionward, David, we have often to walk in the wilderness. You have dwelt in Skye and in Shetland; what other lands have you seen?»>

<< I have been east as far as Smyrna. I sat there, and read the message of the first and the last to its church. And I went to Athens, and stood where St. Paul had once stood. And I have seen Rome and Naples and Genoa and Marseilles, and many of the Spanish and French ports. I have pulled oranges from the trees, and great purple grapes, and even while I eat them longed for the oat-cakes and the fresh fish of Shetland.»

«Rome and Naples and Athens! Well, David, thee has been in the fairest cities on earth.>>

«And yet, Friend John, what hells I saw in them! I was taken through great buildings where men and women die of dreadful pain. I saw other buildings where men and women could eat and sleep, and could not think or love or know. I saw drinking-hells and gambling-hells. I saw men in dark and awful prisons, men living in poverty and filth and blasphemy, without hope for this world or the next. I saw men die on the scaffold; and, John, I often wondered if this world were hell. Are we put here in low, or lower, or lowest hell, to work out our salvation, and so at last win our weary way back to heaven?» John Priestly was silent for some moments ere he answered. «If that were so, there is still comfort, David. For if we make our bed in such hells,-mind, we make it,-even there we are not beyond the love and pity of the Infinite One. For when the sorrows of hell compassed David of old, he cried unto his God, and he delivered him from his strong enemy, and brought him forth into a large place. So, then, David, though good men may get into hell, they do not need to stay. there.»

«I know that, John. Have I not been in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the deeps, in that lowest hell of the soul where I had no God to pray to? For how could I pray to a God so cruel that I did not dare to become a father lest he should elect my children to damnation? A God so unjust that he loved without foresight of faith or good works, and hated because it was his pleasure to hate, and to ordain the hated to dishonor and wrath? »1 1 Confession of Faith, 3, secs. v-vii. Chap. 16, sec. vii.

« And yet, David? »

« And yet, John, even while I so wronged him, he sent from above-he sent you, John; he took me; he drew me out of many waters, for great was his mercy toward me; and he delivered my soul from the lowest hell.»

VI.

A WEEK after this conversation David was near Lerwick. It was very early in the morning, and the sky was gray, and the sea was gray, and through the vapory veiling the little town looked gray and silent as a city in a dream. During the voyage he had thought of himself always as hastening at once to Nanna's house; but as soon as his feet touched the quay he hesitated. The town appeared to be asleep; there was only here and there a thin column of peat smoke from the chimneys, and the few people going about their simple business in the misty morning were not known to him. Probably, also, he had had some unreasonable expectation, for he looked sadly around, and, sighing, said:

«To be sure, such a thing would never happen, except in a dream.»>

After all, it seemed best that he should go first to Barbara Traill's. She would give him a cup of tea, and while he drank it he could send one of Glumm's little lads with a message to Nanna. There was nothing of cowardice in this determination; it was rather that access of reverential love which, as it draws nearer, puts its own desire and will at the feet of the beloved one.

Barbara's door stood open, and she was putting fresh fuel under the hanging teakettle. The smell of the peat smoke was homely and pleasant to David; he sniffed it eagerly as he called out:

« Well, then, mother, good morning!»

She raised herself quickly, and turned her broad, kind face to him. A strange shadow crossed it when she saw David, but she answered affectionately:

« Well, then, David, here we meet again!» And as she hastened the morning meal she asked question after question about his own welfare and adventures, until David said:

«There is enough of this talk, mother. Speak to me now of Nanna Sinclair. Is she well?»>

«Your aunt Sabiston is dead. There was a great funeral, I can tell you, for much money she has left to the kirk and the societies; and a white stone as high as two men has come from Aberdeen for her grave. Well, so it is! And you must know, also, that my son

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«IN THE HOLLOW OF HIS HAND.»

ENGRAVED BY M. HAIDER.

VOL. LII.-109.

has married, and not to my liking, and so he is gone from me, and your room is empty and ready, if you wish it so; and-»

«Yes. Barbara, keep your room for me, and I will pay you the price of it.»>

«I will do that gladly, and we shall have no words about the price.>>

«The room is well enough; but, mother! mother! what is there to hide from me? Speak with a straight tongue. Where is Nanna?» Then Barbara said plainly, «Nanna is dead!»

With a cry of amazed anguish, David leaped to his feet, instinctively covering his ears with his hands, for he could not bear such words to enter them. Dead!» he whispered; and Barbara saw him reeling and swaying like a tottering pillar. She pushed a chair toward him, and was thankful that he had strength left to take its support. But she made no outcry, and called in none of the neighbors. Quietly she stood a little way off, while David, in a death-like silence, fought away the swooning, drowning wave which was making his heart stand still, and his limbs fail him. For she knew the nature of the suffering man-knew that when he came to himself there would be none but God could intermeddle in his heart's bitterness and loss.

After a sharp struggle, David opened his eyes, and Barbara gave him a draught of cold water; but she offered neither advice nor consolation; only when David said, "I am sick, mother, and I will go to my room and lie down on my bed,» she answered, "My dear lad, that is the right way. Sleep, if sleep you can.» About sunsetting David asked Barbara for food, and as she prepared it he sat by the open window, silent and stupefied, dominated by the somber inertia of hopeless sorrow. When he began to eat, Barbara took from a china jar two papers, and gave them to him. «I promised Nanna to put them in your hands,» she said.

«When did she die?»

I

<«<Last December, the fourteenth day. went to her early in the morning, for I saw that there was snow to fall. She was dead at the noon hour.»

«And you saw her go?»

«No; I was afraid of the storm. I left her about ten o'clock. She could not then speak, but she gave me the papers. We had talked of them before. I went into the next cottage, and told Christina Yell that it was the last hour for Nanna, and she said, I will go to her. Already the snow was falling, so I hasted across the moor, as there was good reason to do.»

Then David went out, and Barbara watched him take the road that led to Nanna's empty cottage. The door opened readily to the lifted latch, and he entered the forsaken room. The peat fire had long ago burned itself to ashes, and the rose-plant which had been Nanna's delight had withered away on its little shelf by the window; but the neighbors had swept the floor, and put the simple furniture in order. David drew the bolt across the door, and opened the papers which Nanna had left for him. The first was a simple bequest to him of the cottage and all within it; the second was but a little slip on which the dying woman had written her last sad messages to him.

Oh, my love! my love! Farewell forever! I am come to the end of my life. I am going away, and I know not where to. All is dark. But I have cast myself at His feet, and said, «Thy will be done!»>

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These pitiful despairs and farewells were written in a large, childish hand, and on a poor sheet of paper. David spread this paper upon Vala's couch, and, kneeling down, covered it with tears and kisses; but anon he lifted it up toward heaven, and prayed as men pray when they feel prayer to be an immediate and veritable thing; when they detain God, and clasp his feet, and cling to his robe, and will not let him go until he bless them.

Christina Yell had seen David enter the cottage, and after an hour had passed she went to the door, intending to speak to him. But she heard the solemn, mysterious voice of the man praying, and she went away and called her neighbors, Margaret Jarl and Elga Fae, and Thora Thorson and her father-in-law, Magnus Thorson, and they talked of David a little; and then Magnus, being a very old man, went alone to see him. And after a while the women were called, and Christina took with her a plate of fish and bread which she had prepared, and David was glad of their sympathy.

They sat down outside the door. The tender touch of the gray gloaming softened the bleak cliffs and the brown moorland, and the heavens were filled with stars. Then softly and solemnly Christina spoke of Nanna's long

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suffering, and of the spiritual despair which be happy, even in the very presence of God, if intensified it.

«It was in season and out of season she was at Vala's grave,» said Christina, «and kneeling and lying on the cold ground above her; and the end was a cough and fever and the slow consumption that wasted her away. For it is true the child was never baptized, and there was no comfort for her. And then she began to think God had never loved her.

their sons and daughters were wandering in the awful outer darkness. And the minister did not think of her pain and her woman's heart,-what men do?-and he was angry with her, as he thought he ought to be; and Nanna said she wished they would all leave her alone with her sorrow, and so they did.>> Then, suddenly and swiftly as a flash of light, a word came to David. His heart

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He had let her meet and marry Nicol Sinclair, and by this and that prevented the baptism of her child. She lost all hope, and was too ill to go to the ordinances, and too feared to open her Bible, lest she should see her own condemnation in it. And folk wearied of her complaining, I think. The elders stopped coming to see her, for they could not answer the questions she put to them, and she angered the minister by the same thing. He said women had no call to speir after the "why" of God's purposes, and she told him plainly one day-for she was fretful with pain and trouble-that she was (not thankful to go to hell for the glory and honor of God's justice; and, moreover, she said she did not wish to go to heaven if Vala was not there; and she wondered how fathers and mothers could

burned, and his tongue was loosened, and he then and there preached to the old man and the three women the unsearchable riches of the cross of Christ. He glorified God because Nanna had learned Christ at the radiant feet of Christ, in the joy and love of the redeemed. He took his Bible from his pocket, and repeated all the blessed words he had marked and learned. Until the midnight moon climbed cold and still into the zenith he spoke, and old Magnus Thorson stood up, leaning on his staff, full of holy wonder, and the women softly sobbed and prayed at his feet. And when they parted there was in every heart a confident acceptance of David's closing words:

« Whoever rests, however feebly, on the eternal mercy shall live forever.»

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