'Whatever good I may do afore my turn comes, I hae you to thank for 't. Eh, doctor, gin it hadna been for you!'
Robert's feelings overcame him. He resumed, brokenly,
'Ye gae me a man to believe in, whan my ain father had forsaken me, and my frien' was awa to God. Ye hae made me, doctor. Wi' meat an' drink an' learnin' an' siller, an' a'thing at ance, ye hae made me.'
'Eh, Robert!' said the dying man, half rising on his elbow, 'to think what God maks us a' to ane anither! My father did ten times for me what I hae dune for you. As I lie here thinkin' I may see him afore a week's ower, I'm jist a bairn again.'
As he spoke, the polish of his speech was gone, and the social refinement of his countenance with it. The face of his ancestors, the noble, sensitive, heart-full, but rugged, bucolic, and weather-beaten through centuries of windy ploughing, hail-stormed sheep-keeping, long-paced seed-sowing, and multiform labour, surely not less honourable in the sight of the working God than the fighting of the noble, came back in the face of the dying physician. From that hour to his death he spoke the rugged dialect of his fathers.
A day or two after this, Robert again sitting by his bedside,
'I dinna ken,' he said, 'whether it's richt—but I hae nae fear o' deith, an' yet I canna say I'm sure aboot onything. I hae seen mony a ane dee that cud hae no faith i' the Saviour; but I never saw that fear that some gude fowk wud hae ye believe maun come at the last. I wadna like to tak to ony papistry; but I never cud mak oot frae the Bible—and I read mair at it i' the jungle than maybe ye wad think—that it's a' ower wi' a body at their deith. I never heard them bring foret ony text but ane—the maist ridiculous hash 'at ever ye heard—to justifee 't.'
'I ken the text ye mean—“As the tree falleth so it shall lie,” or something like that—'at they say King Solomon wrote, though better scholars say his tree had fa'en mony a lang year afore that text saw the licht. I dinna believe sic a thocht was i' the man's heid when he wrote it. It is as ye say—ower contemptible to ca' an argument. I'll read it to ye ance mair.'
Robert got his Bible, and read the following portion from that wonderful book, so little understood, because it is so full of wisdom—the Book of Ecclesiastes:—
'Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.