“And in this corner,” said Miss Bell, on her knees, “you’ll find your Bible, the hoarhound mixture, and five-and-twenty threepenny-bits for the plate on Sundays. Some of them sixpences.”
“Irish ones, apparently,” said Uncle Dan.
“Some of them sixpences, for the Foreign Mission days, and one shilling for the day of the Highlands and Islands.”
“You’re well provided for the kirk at any rate,” said Uncle Dan. “I’ll have to put a little money for this wicked world in the other corner,” and he did.
When the coach next day set out—No, no, I cannot tell you all, for I hate to think of tears, and would hurry over partings. It went in tearful weather, rain drizzling on Bud and Auntie Ailie, who accompanied her. They looked back on the hill-top, and saw the grey slates glint under a grey sky, and following them on the miry road, poor Footles, faithful heart, who did not understand. He paddled through the mud till a blast from the bugle startled him, and he seemed to realise that this was some painful new experience. And then he stood in the track of the disappearing wheels, and lifted up his voice in lamentation.
The night came on, resuming her ancient empire—for she alone, and not the day, did first possess and finally shall possess unquestioned this space dusty with transient stars, and the light is Lord of another universe where is no night, nay, nor terror thereof. From the western clouds were the flame and gold withdrawn, and the winds sighed from the mountains, as vexed for passing days. The winds sighed from the mountains, and the mists came mustering to the glens; the sea crept out on long, bird-haunted, wailing, and piping sands, nought to be seen of it, its presence obvious only in the scent of wrack and the wash on the pebbled beaches. Behind the town the woods lay black and haunted, and through them, and far upward in the valley, dripping in the rain and clamorous with hidden burns and secret wells, went the highway to the world, vacant of aught visible, but never to be wholly vacant, since whoso passes on a highway ever after leaves some wandering spirit there. Did the child, that night, think of the highway that had carried her from home? In the hoarsely crying city did she pause a moment to remember and retrace her way to the little town that now lay faintly glowing in the light of its own internal fires?
