“It could not deceive God, though,” answered Donal, “who fills with righteousness those who hunger after it. It is pride to refuse anything that might help us to know him; and of all things his sun-lit world speaks of the father of lights! If that makes us happier, it makes us fitter to understand him, and he can easily send what cloud may be needful to temper it. We must not make our own world, inflict our own punishments, or order our own instruction; we must simply obey the voice in our hearts, and take lovingly what he sends.”
The next day she told him she had had a beautiful night, full of the loveliest dreams. One of them was, that a child came out of a grassy hillock by the wayside, called her mamma, and said she was much obliged to her for taking her off the cold stone, and making her a butterfly; and with that the child spread out gorgeous and great wings and soared up to a white cloud, and there sat laughing merrily to her.
Every afternoon Davie read to her, and thence Donal gained a duty—that of finding suitable pabulum for the two. He was not widely read in light literature, and it made necessary not a little exploration in the region of it.
CHAPTER LXV.
THE WALL.
On the day after the last triad in the housekeeper’s parlour, as Donal sat in the schoolroom with Davie—about noon it was—he became aware that for some time he had been hearing laborious blows apparently at a great distance: now that he attended, they seemed to be in the castle itself, deadened by mass, not distance. With a fear gradually becoming more definite, he sat listening for a few moments.
“Davie,” he said, “run and see what is going on.”
The boy came rushing back in great excitement.
“Oh, Mr. Grant, what do you think!” he cried. “I do believe my father is after the lost room! They are breaking down a wall!”
“Where?” asked Donal, half starting from his seat.
“In the little room behind the half-way room—on the stair, you know!”