After his niece’s death, no one would do for him but Donal; nobody could please him but Donal. His mind as well as his body was much weaker. But the intellect, great thing though it be, is yet but the soil out of which, or rather in which, higher things must grow, and it is well when that soil is not too strong, so to speak, for the most gracious and lovely of plants to root themselves in it. When the said soil is proud and unwilling to serve, it must be thinned and pulverized with sickness, failure, poverty, fear—that the good seeds of God’s garden may be able to root themselves in it; when they get up a little, they will use all the riches and all the strength of the stiffest soil.
“Who will have the property now?” he asked one day. “Is the factor anywhere in the running?”
“Title and property both will be his,” answered Donal.
“And my poor Davie?” said the earl, with wistful question in the eyes that gazed up in Donal’s face. “Forgue, the rascal, has all my money in his power already.”
“I will see to Davie,” replied Donal. “When you and I meet, my lord—by and by, I shall not be ashamed.”
The poor man was satisfied. He sent for Davie, and told him he was always to do as Mr. Grant wished, that he left him in his charge, and that he must behave to him like a son.
Davie was fast making acquaintance with death—but it was not to him dreadful as to most children, for he saw it through the face and words of the man whom he most honoured.
CHAPTER LXXXIV.
MORVEN HOUSE.
In the evening Donal went again to the home-farm. Finding himself alone in the drawing-room, he walked out into the old garden.
“Thank God,” he said to himself, “if my wife should come here some sad, sweet night, with a low moon-crescent, and a gently thinking wind, and wander about the garden, it will not be to know herself forgotten!”